173 replies to this topic

[Philiposophy]

The plot analysis makes some good points but I think it harms itself in other areas with some factual mistakes and possibly erroneous conclusions. There is still a lot of speculation because we haven't had ME3 yet, which will probably (well, hopefully) clear up any unanswered questions.

So I have these things to point out (please note though, that some of this is, while derived from the games, still conjecture):

Spoiler

Vigil. At one point he mentions the Prothean AI (it was actually VI, IIRC, but what the hell) saying how the Reapers behave being in contrast to how the Reapers actually are behaving as a plot hole. Vigil is only guessing though, he says as much, being stuck deep underground on Ilos. He has no way of knowing what the Reapers are actually doing besides obliterating the Protheans. Vigil even says he's guessing when asked about the Reapers' motivations.

The Collectors. The first criticism is that the Reapers hate organics yet are working with them. It's explained in game though that the Collectors are nothing more than temporary tools. EDI speculates that the Protheans were being melted into a new Reaper, which didn't work, so they just repurposed the survivors to suit their needs. My conclusion from that (conjecture of course) is that while the Reapers do it all to reproduce, sometimes it doesn't work. If it doesn't, they retool the survivors and use them for something else. It's hinted that the Collectors have spent their time studying other races in the galaxy to see which is the best to make a new Reaper from.

There's also a factual error about the Collectors. He says they've spent millions of years doing nothing. However we know that they can only be about 50,000 years old and that they have been doing something, just out of most people's sight.

As for why the Collectors don't aid Sovereign against the Citadel, well there's a decent question. I think there might be an answer hinted at in the two games but not confirmed, maybe one for ME3. I concluded (again, conjecture) that the Reapers are very ordered in how they conduct themselves. The Collectors (possibly under the direction of Harbinger, it's not told at what point he begins to intervene) have their role in studying the species and ultimately building the next Reaper. Sovereign's job is to open the floodgates. When Sovereign fails, they have to adapt their plan. The Collectors might not have made a huge difference at the Citadel anyway, the Geth still got their arses kicked by the Alliance despite having a large fleet.

Where did Mordin get his bug? Conjecture but I reckon he got it from Veetor. Veetor says he took samples and stuff on Freedom's Progress.

The Human-Reaper. I don't know if it's meant to look like that at completion. Remember that it's tiny compared to Sovereign and all the other Reapers look like cuttlefish - different but a similar theme. Maybe it's meant to be a core for a Reaper shell that looks like the others, maybe this is the first time it's been tried. Whatever the reason, it's probably more a question for ME3.

[WeeRLegion]

The Human-Reaper. I don't know if it's meant to look like that at completion. Remember that it's tiny compared to Sovereign and all the other Reapers look like cuttlefish - different but a similar theme. Maybe it's meant to be a core for a Reaper shell that looks like the others, maybe this is the first time it's been tried. Whatever the reason, it's probably more a question for ME3.

Or, you know, maybe the devs just didn't feel like designing a hundred different reapers just for the sake of a single cutscene?

[Dark-Mage]

To be frank, I feel that Samus (or whatever he is called) was simply talking out of his arse for the most part. Any points he made that came close to even resembling a coherent argument were utterly overshadowed by his misunderstanding of the game's storyline. In fact, at times, it's not even a case of misunderstanding but rather a case of being outright wrong.

Maybe it's because I've thought about it and used my own conjecture etc, but I don't see any plot holes in the story. Things that have yet to be explained in full detail perhaps, but that does not a plot hole make.

For the sake of example,

Spoiler

The Reaper IFF broadcasting the Normandy's location to the Collectors. He offered this up as a plot hole because how could a piece of technology from a derelict Reaper thousands of years old signal the Collectors? How would the Collectors know what to look for? How would they have known to set that trap all that time ago etc etc...

Well, maybe it was not signalling them directly but rather just sending out a general reaper-tech signal. Since the Collectors are currently using Reaper technology, hell they're even communicating with a Reaper, so I imagine it would be a relatively easy thing for them to detect. Perhaps that simply detected this new reaper-tech based signal and, knowing the Normandy was moving in opposition against them and the Reaper threat, put two and two together.

Pure speculation on my part, sure, but it makes sense when you think about it. I think that Bioware can be forgiven for not feeling like they had to explain every single occurrence in minute detail.

Oh, and in regards to the final boss, Philiposophy pretty much summed up my opinion. But I would add that,

Spoiler

they would need some form of land/planet based Reaper for rounding up conquered species etc. Indoctrination(sp) is very effective, but I think the Reapers are too intelligent/methodological to rely on that and a massive space fleet for total Galactic domination/culling.

Just my two credits :-)

[WeeRLegion]

Mmm.

The key points of the criticism were targeted at the startup, discontinuity, and the ending of the game:

-Mysteriously a ton of old Normady SR1 crew has happened to jump over to Cerberus. Some apparently only for the kicks.
-Basically you start with precisely the same setup as you end the first game with; from a storyline perspective they could just as well have skipped the whole dying part and split up the old crew with more plausible plot devices.
-In ME1, Cerberus was a completely evil organization, feeding soldiers to thresher maws just to see what happens, and generally engaging in unacceptable behavior. In ME2, all of this somehow just goes away, and Cerberus is turned into an fairly openly operating group that actually paints their fricken logo on their ships. xP

-The reapers have apparently left themselves with no viable contingency plans in case the citadel invasion goes wrong. This makes no sense. Reapers are supposed to be smart.
-It is implausible to claim that the Collectors' modus operandi (flying about in a big damn mountain with atmosphere-burning rocket thrusters) would not leave any marks on the colonies they hit. It suggests implausible incompetence on part of whoever was investigating.
-With hundreds of thousands of colonists missing, the Alliance and the Council seem to implausibly not give a rat's ass.

And the endgame.
-Big WTF. Why on earth would anyone build a robot from liquefied human remains? Why? Why Sure, it's a question for ME3, but c'mon, a little something to hint at it would have been terrific. I think someone at the office just figured "Hay, guys, you know what would be creepy? ". xD


So really, the core point as I see it is, that the games don't really hold together.
ME2 doesn't continue where ME1 left off; all of the significant old acquaintances are thrown to the corner, and make at most a cameo appearance at some point, all without affecting the core plot in any significant way.
Even the reapers, who are the central nemesis of the game, just sit back in the dark while their feeble insect minions try to not get squished on Shepard's windshield.

Bioware planend Mass Effect as a trilogy right from the start, so they could write a proper trilogy here, with something more than a few characters and overarching themes to connect them.
But instead, they're apparently intent no making 3 loosely connected games, the way game trilogies usually are made.

Oh well.


And me, personally, I think the IFF mission is just plain silly. The reapers supposedly operated in a way to leave no traces of themselves.
So. What are you saying? They can't locate a powered-on, yet somehow disabled reaper? Are they stupid? Cerberus did it fergawdssake...
It's not like there isn't enough spare time to go looking in between wiping out all life in the galaxy.

Also, it paints the Illusive man as an completely retarded prick. Throwing your only ace card blind into an ambush simply isn't the way you run a successful operation.
Oh well, at least they somewhat lampshaded it with the after-war argument...



Make no mistake though, I love this game. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother writing this here. xD

[Qwinn]

-Mysteriously a ton of old Normady SR1 crew has happened to jump over to Cerberus. Some apparently only for the kicks.

Er, actually, far as I can tell, it was only Joker and Chakwas. And Chakwas explicitly says that she is deliberately sticking close to Joker because he needs her. That specific point was one of the things that bothered me most about that analysis, in fact. He made it sound like the entire crew flipped over. Er, the pilot and his doctor isn't a whole crew.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Some other points:

-Basically you start with precisely the same setup as you end the first game with; from a storyline perspective they could just as well have skipped the whole dying part and split up the old crew with more plausible plot devices.

I personally do think that the dying bit was to explain why you were starting over again from level 1. And I don't find that all that problematic the way he does.

-In ME1, Cerberus was a completely evil organization, feeding soldiers to thresher maws just to see what happens, and generally engaging in unacceptable behavior. In ME2, all of this somehow just goes away, and Cerberus is turned into an fairly openly operating group that actually paints their fricken logo on their ships. xP

There's some merit to this. I actually think Miranda at one point gives a decent defense of *most* of Cerberus's activities such as the experiments with the thorian creepers and rachni. The only two incidents from ME1 that are really indefensible are the Toombs/Sole Survivor thresher maw incident and the Kahoku's men/thresher maw incident. I agree it would've been nice if those incidents hadn't been totally washed down the memory hole.

-The reapers have apparently left themselves with no viable contingency plans in case the citadel invasion goes wrong. This makes no sense. Reapers are supposed to be smart.

This doesn't bother me much. The Reapers are also *staggeringly* arrogant. The really arrogant see no need for contingency plans, as they don't believe their first effort could ever fail. And really, they had no way to envision that a last few surviving Protheans (after over a century of their presence wiping them all out) would manage to sneak via a back door onto the Citadel and successfully reprogram the keepers, which is pretty much the only way their first plan *could* have failed.

-It is implausible to claim that the Collectors' modus operandi (flying about in a big damn mountain with atmosphere-burning rocket thrusters) would not leave any marks on the colonies they hit. It suggests implausible incompetence on part of whoever was investigating.

Eh. I don't think we can assume that what looks like big rockets operates under the same principles as ours do. They may well not be all that damaging, or leave "HUGE CRATERS". I didn't *see* any big craters on Freedom's Progress or on Horizon. Did you?

-With hundreds of thousands of colonists missing, the Alliance and the Council seem to implausibly not give a rat's ass.

If it were happening in Alliance space, that would certainly be implausible. But the first game made it extremely clear that the Terminus systems are basically considered a no-man's land, Alliance ships don't *dare* ever go there, and in that context it would seem to me that no one is simply surprised at all that humans going there don't survive. Their response was probably, "Well, duh."

And the endgame.
-Big WTF. Why on earth would anyone build a robot from liquefied human remains? Why? Why Sure, it's a question for ME3, but c'mon, a little something to hint at it would have been terrific. I think someone at the office just figured "Hay, guys, you know what would be creepy? ". xD

Won't really argue with this one. But at least it was a hell of a lot better final battle than the lame lame lame Saren fight at the end of ME1.

Oh, I thought his complaint about the Reapers not using organic servants like the Collectors was ridiculous. Sovereign saw no problem at all using indoctrinated organics as tools in ME1, why would they not do so in ME2?

Qwinn

[Dark-Mage]

The key points of the criticism were targeted at the startup, discontinuity, and the ending of the game

That they were, and if you’ll allow me to waft the wet flannel of weak excuses, I shall try to rebuke some of these criticisms. Or, in the very least, offer my own opinions on them. What you do with that is entirely up to you.

Also, there may be spoilers :-)

-Mysteriously a ton of old Normady SR1 crew has happened to jump over to Cerberus. Some apparently only for the kicks.

This is one of the instances when he was outright wrong.

With the exception of Joker and the Dr., all the other crew members are Cerberus agents/operatives. Handpicked by the Illusive man because they don’t have the same level of Xenophobia that a lot of Cerberus recruits do.

Joker gave his reasons for joining Cerberus, and I’ve read that if certain conditions are met the Dr (Can’t remember her name) does the same. Their logic/reasoning might not seem adequate to some people, but then to others they do. I guess that is why I love stories so much, as they are all about interpretation.

-Basically you start with precisely the same setup as you end the first game with; from a storyline perspective they could just as well have skipped the whole dying part and split up the old crew with more plausible plot devices.

This is true. The way Shepard is separated from the original Normandy, its crew, the systems alliance and the council, does seem a little along the lines of overkill. However, I think that beginning serves three purposes.

1. It demonstrates how vastly superior, in terms of technology, the Collector ship is. Outside of the marketing surrounding the game, this is pretty much the first in game hint that if certain conditions aren’t met then Shepard and his team are going to die. Bioware really does go out of its way to emphasis this point. They probably felt they had to make it extremely obvious to avoid any kind of negative backlash. I may be wrong about this though.

2. It allows Cerberus to establish some kind of ‘ownership’ over Shepard. Gives them leverage with which to force him onto this mission, kind of along the lines of ‘we brought you back, now you owe us’. This may seem a tad unnecessary, given the stakes of the mission, but when looked at the organisation employing this technique it seems like the kind of thing they would do, and would need to do in order to even get a Paragon/Survivor Shepard to even talk to them.

3. It also allows for the new Normandy to be introduced, with all the new rooms and features without having to add them to the old Normandy. I think that starting with the same old Normandy, but with all the new rooms etc added onto it would have been a plot hole/massive inconsistency... But, to be honest, even I feel this justification is particularly weak and almost didn’t mention it. Just tack it onto the end for sack of a completed picture, as it were.

-In ME1, Cerberus was a completely evil organization, feeding soldiers to thresher maws just to see what happens, and generally engaging in unacceptable behavior. In ME2, all of this somehow just goes away, and Cerberus is turned into an fairly openly operating group that actually paints their fricken logo on their ships. xP

Before I begin on this point, I just want to mention that I think there is no such thing as good and evil. Meaning, these two things are not absolute truths, but rather different points of view. Nobody thinks of themselves as being evil.

With that in mind, we were given a very negative view of the effects and actions of Cerberus, and I obviously disagree with their ideas but that does not make them evil. Instead, they are portrayed as a group who believe the ends justify the means. Sacrificing the lives of a thousand humans, and perhaps countless non-humans along aside is deemed a worthwhile cause if in the long run it saves the lives of 10,000 humans, or keeps all of humanity safe for a little bit longer.

Essentially, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
And this is still present within ME2. The dark past of Cerberus is very much in the minds of all your former allies. Anderson and the council stonewall you because of Intel linking you to this particular group. Ashley/Kaiden pretty much outright snub you, and the Illusive man sends you, a selection of his own people, and a team of aliens with varying expertise on a suicide mission. Knowing full well that the chances of any of you returning are slim, but it might just stop the abduction of human colonies and thus keep humanity as a whole a little safer for the time being. Like I said, the ends justify the means. That aspect of Cerberus did not go anywhere.

Cerberus does seem to be operating more freely, but for the most part, they confine their actions to the terminus systems which are home to a vast array of ‘dark’ organisations and societies. It’s not like they have this large team flying around through Citadel space. Again, for the most part.

Additionally, Cerberus is a secret society. The reason Shepard encounters such limited resistance to his presence on civilised worlds is because most people are unaware of this groups actual existence. Thinking back to ME1, even an Alliance Admiral had to go to the shadow broker for Intel on Cerberus, and I imagine that he had top security clearance. Anderson refuses to hand out Intel to Shepard about Banes, who I believe was a scientist linked to Cerberus... Not too sure aobut that though.

So, since few people know of their existence, I imagine that their specific logo/symbol is even less known. It, perhaps, has weigh in the Terminus systems and thus may even be acting as a warning to other groups (like the shadow broker) who are thinking of interfering with Shepard’s mission. Given what Liara tells you about the SB, that seems to make sense to me. Just thought of that whilst typing, pretty good idea I thought 

Mindless self indulgence aside, I’ll move onto the next point.

-The reapers have apparently left themselves with no viable contingency plans in case the citadel invasion goes wrong. This makes no sense. Reapers are supposed to be smart.

Reapers are also greatly arrogant and believe that no organic life could ever resist them or break their cycle. Given the fact that no organic life has done this until now, that is only going to fuel that arrogance.

Reapers are machines, so first and foremost their thought process is driven by logic. Logic based on calculations and previous evidence. They believe no race will ever discover the secrets of the Citadel, and be able to stop them. Until this date, no race ever did discover the secrets of the Citadel or were able to stop them.

So why waste resources on contingency plans when your Plan A will never fail? Expecting the worst, and preparing for that, is a very human characteristic. Based on past experiences, and emotional fears, we know that things can go wrong so we make preparations. A machine would operate differently. They don’t fear organics, they feel the secrets of their technology are safe, and finally, they know that their trap is perfect.

If the Ilos research station had not remained hidden, their trap would still be perfect.

You could even argue this the other way, and say that they did have a contingency plan, in the form of Harbinger. I’m pretty convinced that Harbinger is another Reaper. It could be hiding in the Milky Way somewhere, or perhaps it was controlling the Collectors from dark space.
Personally, the former option seems the most likely.

Sovereign failed to take the Citadel by force on two occasions, as I believe the Rachni queen hinted at their aggressive actions was somehow forced, so it could have been reaper indoctrination.

If not, then Sovereign’s only attempt, which was the calculated and flawless an invasion plan you’d expect from an ancient machine, ultimately failed. So Harbinger would learn from that force would not work, as Sovereign had an army, a back door onto the Citadel for an infiltration team and a Geth fleet.

-It is implausible to claim that the Collectors' modus operandi (flying about in a big damn mountain with atmosphere-burning rocket thrusters) would not leave any marks on the colonies they hit. It suggests implausible incompetence on part of whoever was investigating.

Throughout the game you are told Colonists are disappearing, not Colonists are packing up of their own free will and all simultaneously leaving their colonies. That kind of implies that they are being taken, which kind of implies somebody noticed the great big scorch marks of the rockets.

-With hundreds of thousands of colonists missing, the Alliance and the Council seem to implausibly not give a rat's ass.

It’s a purely human problem, so the council can’t get involved. The colonies are all in the terminus systems, so neither the council or the alliance has any real jurisdiction or powerbase there.

Also, since Kaiden/Ashley are sent to install defence towers, and they believe it’s Cerberus kidnapping these colonists that kind of implies that notice has finally been taken.

Think I’m going to stop mulling over every point in minute detail now, as this has gotten longer than I originally intended.

So really, the core point as I see it is, that the games don't really hold together.

But I guess that is where we will have to disagree. But like I said, stories are all about interpretation.

EDIT: I see Qwinn beat me to most of it. Oh well :-)

Edited by Dark-Mage, 19 February 2010 - 12:27 PM.

[WeeRLegion]

I personally do think that the dying bit was to explain why you were starting over again from level 1. And I don't find that all that problematic the way he does.

Oh yes, definitely that reason. And I thought it was very dramatic when considered apart from the rest of the plot.

The point in the article was mostly based on how it works storyline wise; "When you?re planning to write a three-game trilogy, scene one of Act II should not begin with ?start over?."
It's more about wasting potential for building a solid trilogy as opposed to 3 loosely connected games.

There's some merit to this. I actually think Miranda at one point gives a decent defense of *most* of Cerberus's activities such as the experiments with the thorian creepers and rachni. The only two incidents from ME1 that are really indefensible are the Toombs/Sole Survivor thresher maw incident and the Kahoku's men/thresher maw incident. I agree it would've been nice if those incidents hadn't been totally washed down the memory hole.

Yeahh. She says something about how they quite the experiments on [whatever] when they discovered [insert applicable downside].
Except they never did, since Shepard shot up their bloody experiments. xP

It's odd, as it leaves an icky taste of spontaneity to the whole 'working for cerberus' deal.

This doesn't bother me much. The Reapers are also *staggeringly* arrogant. The really arrogant see no need for contingency plans, as they don't believe their first effort could ever fail. And really, they had no way to envision that a last few surviving Protheans (after over a century of their presence wiping them all out) would manage to sneak via a back door onto the Citadel and successfully reprogram the keepers, which is pretty much the only way their first plan *could* have failed.

There is that side to it.
But that brings up another point: all that interesting stuff happened in ME1.
So what does happen in ME2? Well, um, you shoot up some insects and a silly skeleton thingy made up of human sludge. But as far as progressing the overarching reaper storyline, things are at a standstill.

As far as the common ideas of dramatic arcs go, downgrading from galaxy threatening exterminator machines to bugmen who live in a rock seems like a bad step for the second part of a trilogy.

Really, if it weren't for the recruitment missions, ME2 story, and indeed, the game, would fit well as a side quest for ME1. o_o

Eh. I don't think we can assume that what looks like big rockets operates under the same principles as ours do. They may well not be all that damaging, or leave "HUGE CRATERS". I didn't *see* any big craters on Freedom's Progress or on Horizon. Did you?

Ha! Point.
But I'd personally add the bugs to the list of problems; did you see Ashley/Kaidan shooting at the swarms? That no doubdt cut off a few limbs and wings and everything.

Now, take the terminus systems, where everyone walks aronud armed with SOMETHING... Calculate in 100000 people, and... there's bound to be some genetic material and evidence left on the scene.

Then, take into consideration that the bugmen missed a whole damn quarian, and later on a human managed to momentarily dodge the threat by the old-fashioned trick: HIDING IN A DAMN WAREHOUSE. xP

Seriously. The collectors worked less in a stealthy and abductey manner, and more like US Army shock and awe.
There would have been someone at a safe distance from some colony that got hit to avoid detection and successfully witness their flying mountain hover over the colony. There would have been SOMETHING. xP

Oh, but I'm just raving on, it's just a silly little plot hole; over-emphasizing the collector's stealthy manner for dramatic effect.

If it were happening in Alliance space, that would certainly be implausible. But the first game made it extremely clear that the Terminus systems are basically considered a no-man's land, Alliance ships don't *dare* ever go there, and in that context it would seem to me that no one is simply surprised at all that humans going there don't survive. Their response was probably, "Well, duh."

Valid point there again.

But still, with 10000 people missing, you'd think they'd be curious, as anything capable of pulling it off would definitely qualify as a serious threat.

Won't really argue with this one. But at least it was a hell of a lot better final battle than the lame lame lame Saren fight at the end of ME1.

Mmm. the devs must have loved that one, seeing how they repeated the trick over and over with the Harbinger. ^^

[WeeRLegion]

This is one of the instances when he was outright wrong.

With the exception of Joker and the Dr., all the other crew members are Cerberus agents/operatives. Handpicked by the Illusive man because they don’t have the same level of Xenophobia that a lot of Cerberus recruits do.

Joker gave his reasons for joining Cerberus, and I’ve read that if certain conditions are met the Dr (Can’t remember her name) does the same. Their logic/reasoning might not seem adequate to some people, but then to others they do. I guess that is why I love stories so much, as they are all about interpretation.

Not so much wrong, as exaggerated, I would say. .p

And yeah, the Doc will explain her motivations in some dialogue, and the article had that right; she joined Cerberus because she wanted to serve on a spaceship.
Given Cerberus' Al-Quaedaesque reputation, that does seem like an... O_o worthy explanation.
But accepting it's a matter of opinion, I'll give you that.

Spoiler

This is true. The way Shepard is separated from the original Normandy, its crew, the systems alliance and the council, does seem a little along the lines of overkill. However, I think that beginning serves three purposes.

1. It demonstrates how vastly superior, in terms of technology, the Collector ship is. Outside of the marketing surrounding the game, this is pretty much the first in game hint that if certain conditions aren’t met then Shepard and his team are going to die. Bioware really does go out of its way to emphasis this point. They probably felt they had to make it extremely obvious to avoid any kind of negative backlash. I may be wrong about this though.

2. It allows Cerberus to establish some kind of ‘ownership’ over Shepard. Gives them leverage with which to force him onto this mission, kind of along the lines of ‘we brought you back, now you owe us’. This may seem a tad unnecessary, given the stakes of the mission, but when looked at the organisation employing this technique it seems like the kind of thing they would do, and would need to do in order to even get a Paragon/Survivor Shepard to even talk to them.

3. It also allows for the new Normandy to be introduced, with all the new rooms and features without having to add them to the old Normandy. I think that starting with the same old Normandy, but with all the new rooms etc added onto it would have been a plot hole/massive inconsistency... But, to be honest, even I feel this justification is particularly weak and almost didn’t mention it. Just tack it onto the end for sack of a completed picture, as it were.

It seems a little like feeding a book to a shredder just to rewrite a few details.
Also, as far as building an dramatic arc that spans the whole series, scrapping most of what happened in ME1 and dismissing it with a few character comebacks and a handful of dialogues...
Well.
ME2 COULD have made something of, say, if you saved the council or not. It doesn't. The council only appears for a brief flash that contributes shite for the story.

And writing this brings me to the realization that the whole jump to Cerberus is only a plot device used to justify the lack of continuity and significance for ME1 choices. *sigh*

Before I begin on this point, I just want to mention that I think there is no such thing as good and evil. Meaning, these two things are not absolute truths, but rather different points of view. Nobody thinks of themselves as being evil.

Of course. G & E are just handy for a conversation. You could have Altruism stand in for good and self-centered profiteering and all kinds of harm to fellow humanoids for evil.

With that in mind, we were given a very negative view of the effects and actions of Cerberus, and I obviously disagree with their ideas but that does not make them evil. Instead, they are portrayed as a group who believe the ends justify the means. Sacrificing the lives of a thousand humans, and perhaps countless non-humans along aside is deemed a worthwhile cause if in the long run it saves the lives of 10,000 humans, or keeps all of humanity safe for a little bit longer.
Essentially, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

I think the issue is, that in ME1 Cerberus was used as a standard faceless evil interest group whose reps you could riddle with bullets all day long and still keep a clear conscience.
In ME1 there is nothing to suggest there is anything redeemable about the organization.

So since it's not really foreshadowed in any way... I'm thinking the Cerberus twist may actually have been introduced to the storyline fairly late in the development of the game.
Possibly when the devs figured they couldn't squeeze out a quality game with the little amount of time they had and the massive amounts of alternate realities that would be required to cover all possibilities for proper continuity.

So, since few people know of their existence, I imagine that their specific logo/symbol is even less known. It, perhaps, has weigh in the Terminus systems and thus may even be acting as a warning to other groups (like the shadow broker) who are thinking of interfering with Shepard’s mission. Given what Liara tells you about the SB, that seems to make sense to me. Just thought of that whilst typing, pretty good idea I thought.

May-be.

Reapers are also greatly arrogant and believe that no organic life could ever resist them or break their cycle. Given the fact that no organic life has done this until now, that is only going to fuel that arrogance.

Reapers are machines, so first and foremost their thought process is driven by logic. Logic based on calculations and previous evidence. They believe no race will ever discover the secrets of the Citadel, and be able to stop them. Until this date, no race ever did discover the secrets of the Citadel or were able to stop them.

Ehm. Counting in the longest estimates for the age of the universe, and the estimates for time it takes for life to develop at all... The reapers couldn't possibly have enough data to make for an acceptably thorough statistical analysis.
Therefore, being logical machines, they would start making predictions for eventualities, and calculating their probabilities accordingly.

So why waste resources on contingency plans when your Plan A will never fail? Expecting the worst, and preparing for that, is a very human characteristic. Based on past experiences, and emotional fears, we know that things can go wrong so we make preparations. A machine would operate differently. They don’t fear organics, they feel the secrets of their technology are safe, and finally, they know that their trap is perfect.

Because all they have is time and the stockpiled resources of entire species?

Sovereign failed to take the Citadel by force on two occasions, as I believe the Rachni queen hinted at their aggressive actions was somehow forced, so it could have been reaper indoctrination.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten that. Yeah, it sure did sound like reaper influence. Except, um, wait. What? Have all life wiped out by bugs instead of wiping it all out themselves?
Hm, I dunno.

Oh, but somewhere you mentioned that Harbinger might be another reaper.
Yeah, might be, I had mostly focused on shooting him up thus far, but the way it leaves the collector general empty in the endgame suggests it might not be a collector.
And the possession system seems similar to ME1 endgame Saren.

And that would make things a bit more sensible from the perspective of not leaving everything hanging on one card.

But MUCH less sensible from the POV of: "Where the hell was Harbinger when Sovereign was getting shot up?".
As pointed out in the article, a reaper double-team would have owned the field back and forth.
(And where were the Collectors then? even they would have helped. xP)

Throughout the game you are told Colonists are disappearing, not Colonists are packing up of their own free will and all simultaneously leaving their colonies. That kind of implies that they are being taken, which kind of implies somebody noticed the great big scorch marks of the rockets.

Hahaha. xD
Fun.

But no.
I can't specifically pinpoint who it is, but someone states clearly that there's no evidence of anyone ever having visited the scenes of abductions, not even DNA traces.
The only reason they're assuming they're abducted is are:
-Rotting meals on tables
-People generally don't spontaneously mass-migrate


^^

Edited by WeeRLegion, 19 February 2010 - 01:25 PM.

[Philiposophy]

But MUCH less sensible from the POV of: "Where the hell was Harbinger when Sovereign was getting shot up?".
As pointed out in the article, a reaper double-team would have owned the field back and forth.
(And where were the Collectors then? even they would have helped. xP)

The endgame of ME2 strongly implied, to me at least, that Harbinger was outside the galaxy. My guess is that he was the Reaper at the front when you see the armada wake up.

As for the Collectors... there don't seem to be that many of them. This makes sense if the bulk of the Protheans were melted into goo before the Reaper failed to form (if EDI's right on that, of course), leaving only a fraction (of a colossal number, it has to be said) left. I don't know if we can really speculate on how much of a boost they would have given Sovereign, to be honest. The Alliance smashed through the Geth, who Sovereign had already pimped out a bit, without too much hassle. A few Collector ships might not have been able to turn the tide quite so much.

As for why Sovereign didn't have them on standby, well that's a better question. The only answer I can really offer to that is that the Collectors (under Harbinger's supervision) have their place in the Reapers' plans and Sovereign has his. That isn't a particularly good explanation but it's probably the best I can come up with right now.

[WeeRLegion]

But MUCH less sensible from the POV of: "Where the hell was Harbinger when Sovereign was getting shot up?".
As pointed out in the article, a reaper double-team would have owned the field back and forth.
(And where were the Collectors then? even they would have helped. xP)

The endgame of ME2 strongly implied, to me at least, that Harbinger was outside the galaxy. My guess is that he was the Reaper at the front when you see the armada wake up.

As for the Collectors... there don't seem to be that many of them. This makes sense if the bulk of the Protheans were melted into goo before the Reaper failed to form (if EDI's right on that, of course), leaving only a fraction (of a colossal number, it has to be said) left. I don't know if we can really speculate on how much of a boost they would have given Sovereign, to be honest. The Alliance smashed through the Geth, who Sovereign had already pimped out a bit, without too much hassle. A few Collector ships might not have been able to turn the tide quite so much.

As for why Sovereign didn't have them on standby, well that's a better question. The only answer I can really offer to that is that the Collectors (under Harbinger's supervision) have their place in the Reapers' plans and Sovereign has his. That isn't a particularly good explanation but it's probably the best I can come up with right now.

Whoa. Whoa. Stop there.
Rejuvenating dead and desiccated flesh with magic science? Sure, whatever.
Realtime communication across the galaxy with a few magic particles? Sure, whatever, I'll buy that.

'Possessing' creeps in the galactic core from the void outside the galaxy? Whoa! Whoa! o_o
That's some serious magic there.
Seriously, if they could connect into the galaxy from the void like that, they could no doubdt with no trouble whatsoever haxor the citadel with no need for proximity, too.

Saying the Collectors were directed by a reaper that resides in the void doesn't patch things up, it only brings rise to more questions. o_o


Also, I disagree about the implication. I saw the cinematic as just a 'Hey! You might not have seen much of us in this game, but we're still here! Mwahahahaha!' reminder.

[Philiposophy]

If Harbinger was in the galaxy, I'd have expected him to be at the Collector base minding the shop. But he wasn't, so I guessed he must be somewhere outside. My reasoning is this: the Collector base is the safest location for a Reaper in the entire galaxy. Only they or their pawns know what's there and how to get there without wrecking themselves. There's no real reason to suspect Harbinger would be hiding out anywhere else that I can think of, with that in mind.

[WeeRLegion]

Or maybe he's not a reaper after all.
Hm.
Yes, I may have agreed to that a bit too hastily.

[Qwinn]

I thought we *saw* Harbinger several times during the game, and he was a Collector... kinda looked like Pilot from Farscape. I thought he was the one we see crawling to some sort of comm station as the place is about to blow up in the end game.

Qwinn

[Dark-Mage]

Not so much wrong, as exaggarated, I would say. .p

Inaccuracy by any other name is still inaccuracy :-P

But yeah, I reckon calling it an exaggeration fits. His outright determination to make some kind of negative point prevented something silly, like the facts, from getting in his way.

And yeah, the Doc will explain her motivations in some dialogue, and the article had that right; she joined Cerberus because she wanted to serve on a spaceship.

True, she wanted to serve on a spaceship. A spaceship piloted by a sick patient of hers, and that was eventually going to be captained by her former commanding officer, but a spaceship none the less :-)

It seems a little like feeding a book to a shredder just to rewrite a few details.

Which is also why I used the term overkill. That explanation, which referred to game play mechanics rather than story, is pretty weak to be honest. But I stand by what I said, for me it just fits. I can see why you wouldn?t buy it though :-)

Also, as far as building an dramatic arc that spans the whole series, scrapping most of what happened in ME1 and dismissing it with a few character comebacks and a handful of dialogues...

How was it scrapped exactly? Sure, it didn?t dwell in excruciating detail on everything that happed in ME, but everything that did happen was somehow acknowledged as part of the continuity/timeline.

ME2 COULD have made something of, say, if you saved the council or not. It doesn't. The council only appears for a brief flash that contributes shite for the story.

A brief flash that acknowledges you saved them, and in return they reinstate you as a Spectre. In comparison, if you don't save them, and Made Uldina(sp) the Human councillor at the end of ME, you don't get made a Spectre again. At least, that is what I found when I started up the games 'canon' story.

It is only minor reference to past events, but then again that is all I was expected and wanted from a sequel.

I think the issue is, that in ME1 Cerberus was used as a standard faceless evil interest group whose reps you could riddle with bullets all day long and still keep a clear conscience.
In ME1 there is nothing to suggest there is anything redeemable about the organization.

That is true, and to be honest that is how I still feel about them.

So since it's not really foreshadowed in any way... I'm thinking the Cerberus twist may actually have been introduced to the storyline fairly late in the development of the game.

Here we agree. Read an interesting theory somewhere that the protagonist was originally going to be a Cerberus agent. I think, from that point of view, the Cerberus storyline fits quite a bit more. Then the role was shoe horned onto Shepard. I?m happy with the outcome, many people aren?t

Ehm. Counting in the longest estimates for the age of the universe, and the estimates for time it takes for life to develop at all... The reapers couldn't possibly have enough data to make for an acceptably thorough statistical analysis.

True, but Sovereign does strong suggest that this cycle has repeated itself quite a few times. That is still a massive ego boost, a confirmation of the Reaper?s superiority when compared to organics, even if not enough data is available for a realistic statistical analyse.

Therefore, being logical machines, they would start making predictions for eventualities, and calculating their probabilities accordingly.

Not if they did not consider an organic species resisting their plan. Which they did not. Even though his activation of the Citadel failed, making it obvious that something had changed, Sovereign still considered himself and the Reapers unbeatable.

Although, I suppose that could have been AI bravado, and in fact his attack on the station was motivated by desperation. Maybe he was scared the other Reapers would make fun of him that his turn at being the Vanguard didn?t go so smoothly :-(

I actually feel kind of sorry for him now lol

Because all they have is time and the stockpiled resources of entire species?

Most of which they spend snoozing.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten that. Yeah, it sure did sound like reaper influence. Except, um, wait. What? Have all life wiped out by bugs instead of wiping it all out themselves?
Hm, I dunno.

Tis just a theory, Virgil did mention that Sovvy was possibly acting out of desperation. Maybe he just wanted a distraction so he could get to the Citadel and find out what was going on there.

Oh, but somewhere you mentioned that Harbinger might be another reaper.
Yeah, might be, I had mostly focused on shooting him up thus far, but the way it leaves the collector general empty in the endgame suggests it might not be a collector.
And the possession system seems similar to ME1 endgame Saren.

I felt quite sorry for the Collector general in that scene, and yes I?ve noticed the re-occurring pattern of feeling sympathy for the villains. But still.

But MUCH less sensible from the POV of: "Where the hell was Harbinger when Sovereign was getting shot up?".
As pointed out in the article, a reaper double-team would have owned the field back and forth.
(And where were the Collectors then? even they would have helped. xP)

Which I also think was another inaccuracy of that article.

To be honest, based on the cut screen of the Citadel attack, I doubt another Reaper there would have made much of a difference. The article made it sound like Sovereign single handily raped the entire Citadel defence fleet, (When all ship casualties, except one vessel, can be attributed to the Geth fleet) And sure, it took out a fair few Alliance vessels in that battle, but it was destroyed pretty damn easily itself. And that was just a small portion of the Galaxies overall ship numbers.

No, even with Harbinger, Sovereign?s plan would have failed. Just like Harbinger and the Collectors launching their own attack against the Citadel also would have failed, since they would have lacked the ability to send in an infiltration team to disable the Citadel?s defences.

Hahaha. xD
Fun.

But no.
I can't specifically pinpoint who it is, but someone states clearly that there's no evidence of anyone ever having visited the scenes of abductions, not even DNA traces.

Maybe they clean up after themselves? They do seem to be doing a pretty thorough job on Horizon. That obviously leads the issue of Vicaar remaining undiscovered, which the game tries to explain away. I guess it?s up to the player if they find the explanation sufficient or not, I bet it?s no surprise as to what side of that argument I come down on :-P

[Philiposophy]

I thought we *saw* Harbinger several times during the game, and he was a Collector... kinda looked like Pilot from Farscape. I thought he was the one we see crawling to some sort of comm station as the place is about to blow up in the end game.

Qwinn

I think that we were meant to think that that was Harbinger (and you're so right about the Farscape pilot! ) until the end, but in the final cutscene there's a hologram of a Reaper where that Collector thing was working which says something like "Releasing control" before the Collector's eyes dim from glowy to normal. The voice also says "You have failed me" or something. My guess is that Harbinger is a Reaper who is controlling the Collectors via the Collector's leader thingy.

[Dark-Mage]

I thought we *saw* Harbinger several times during the game, and he was a Collector... kinda looked like Pilot from Farscape. I thought he was the one we see crawling to some sort of comm station as the place is about to blow up in the end game.

Qwinn

Spoiler

But right before the station exploded an image of a Reaper faded from the comm station's screen thingy, and that pilot/general thingy seemed to slouch forward, a sif it had just been released from control. But yeah, I might be remembering it wrong and the whole Harbringer is a reaper argument is just a theory. Nothing solid I cna point to in order to support it.

[WeeRLegion]

How was it scrapped exactly? Sure, it didn’t dwell in excruciating detail on everything that happed in ME, but everything that did happen was somehow acknowledged as part of the continuity/timeline.

Sure you can look at it that way, too.

Me, with all the 'keep your savegames! your decisions are gonna be important!' fuss ME1 made, I was looking for significance and impact, not a mere acknowledgement.
I think it's something of a let down.

A brief flash that acknowledges you saved them, and in return they reinstate you as a Spectre. In comparison, if you don't save them, and Made Uldina(sp) the Human councillor at the end of ME, you don't get made a Spectre again. At least, that is what I found when I started up the games 'canon' story.

AFAIK, the council doesn't, despite their promises, reinstate you. Anderson says something about how they're actually going to do nothing.
And even if they did reinstate you, it has zero impact on the game, you can't even slap people in the face with it; 'Hay, I'm a spectre, ure my biotch now.'.

So again, it's an acknowledgement with no storyline or gameplay significance.

Bioware could have built the game in a way to give your choices consequences and everything, but they've stuck with the bare minimal obvious results.

-You save the council, therefore, the council is saved.
-You picked Anderson/Udina for the council, therefore, A/U is a part of the council.

Mind it, I there are a few well done acknowledgements, like Gianna Parasini from Noveria, and that fanboy Shepard-imitator whose name I forget.

However, good as they are, neither of those bears any significance for the main story.

Not if they did not consider an organic species resisting their plan. Which they did not. Even though his activation of the Citadel failed, making it obvious that something had changed, Sovereign still considered himself and the Reapers unbeatable.

Although, I suppose that could have been AI bravado, and in fact his attack on the station was motivated by desperation. Maybe he was scared the other Reapers would make fun of him that his turn at being the Vanguard didn’t go so smoothly :-(

I actually feel kind of sorry for him now lol

Lol. xD

Most of which they spend snoozing.

Yeah, lacking anything important to do, they probably snort lines of alien resources off eachothers' shiney shells. ^^

Tis just a theory, Virgil did mention that Sovvy was possibly acting out of desperation. Maybe he just wanted a distraction so he could get to the Citadel and find out what was going on there.

Mmmm. As I understood it, Sovvy was getting desperate because of Shepard getting in his way. The rachni reference goes back, what, 1K years or so?

Which I also think was another inaccuracy of that article.

To be honest, based on the cut screen of the Citadel attack, I doubt another Reaper there would have made much of a difference. The article made it sound like Sovereign single handily raped the entire Citadel defence fleet, (When all ship casualties, except one vessel, can be attributed to the Geth fleet) And sure, it took out a fair few Alliance vessels in that battle, but it was destroyed pretty damn easily itself. And that was just a small portion of the Galaxies overall ship numbers.

Ah, but that's only because it for some reason took down it's shields once Shepard whacked the red Saren.
Had there been another laser-lobster on the scene, they couldave had a proper alliance BBQ. :]

Maybe they clean up after themselves? They do seem to be doing a pretty thorough job on Horizon. That obviously leads the issue of Vicaar remaining undiscovered, which the game tries to explain away. I guess it’s up to the player if they find the explanation sufficient or not, I bet it’s no surprise as to what side of that argument I come down on :-P

Considering their displays of inefficiency, first at finding the Quarian, and then the Human, they couldn't possibly have been thorough enough to wipe away every trace of their bug swarms. o_o

And the bug swarms, BTW, that's just, like, the dumbest idea ever...

Would gas be better? Sure, it'd get into pretty much every place, and you could argue that it's a super special magic gas that gets through ordinary filters.

Would Disease be better? Well, Mordin points out that disease wouldn't necessarily infect everyone simultaneously, but eh, that's an obstacle that I think could well be overcome.

But the bugs... Massive bugs that can be simply locked out by closing a door. They could just as well have used angry packs of wiener dogs to disable the colonies. ^^



EDIT:
My third playthrough has convinced me that Harbinger is indeed a reaper. Sensible or not, it is clearly the devs' intended interpretation.
...
Which actually sucks, since it means that besides not advancing the main storyline much at all, you don't even take out the creep who's actually behind all of it.
ME2 is all about shooting wittle minions. o_o

Edited by WeeRLegion, 20 February 2010 - 06:59 AM.

[Archmage Silver]

Today's News:
Mass Effect 2 Deconstructed: Part One @ Critical Gamer

Edited by Archmage Silver, 20 February 2010 - 06:57 AM.

[Dark-Mage]

Today's News:
Mass Effect 2 Deconstructed: Part One @ Critical Gamer

Pretty good article so far. He makes some good points, as do the comments beneath the article. More importantly, he draws attention to, and comments on, some of Mass Effect 2's short comings without being a complete douche bag about it. I?m looking forward to the next instalment.

How's your play through going, Archmage? Been able to finish yet whilst being distracted by the Winter Olympics?