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*** The command given to the Catalyst wasn't "stop people from building AI's", it was "find a ''permanent'' solution to this organic-AI war thing" or "make it so that synthetics and organics will never fight each other ever again, period". Simply using military force to halt AI development isn't enough to do that. That's why the Catalyst went with the Reapers.
*** Some may point out that the Reaper Cycles don't accomplish the above either. No, they don't, and the Catalyst admits as much when speaking to Shepard. The Reaper Cycles were simply the best plan it was able to come up with. It was still looking for a better solution all throughout the Cycles, and this is one reason it hands off the decision to Shepard: evidently, the Catalyst is ''unable'' to find this solution (or, perhaps the solution is literally impossible). Shepard is largely responsible for defeating its best solution, so perhaps Shepard can find a better one.
*** Some may point out that the Reaper Cycles don't accomplish the above either. No, they don't, and the Catalyst admits as much when speaking to Shepard. The Reaper Cycles were simply the best plan it was able to come up with. It was still looking for a better solution all throughout the Cycles, and this is one reason it hands off the decision to Shepard: evidently, the Catalyst is ''unable'' to find this solution (or, perhaps the solution is literally impossible). Shepard is largely responsible for defeating its best solution, so perhaps Shepard can find a better one.
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*The statues are statues of the Inusannon, quite possibly looking at their somber appearance represent them after Reapers had their way with them. A stark reminder for the remaining Prothean populace on Ilos that this is your future if you cannot defeat them?
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*** And ''nothing'' about that could say "just send a Reaper over and make sure they aren't building anything like that"? It ''really'' turned to galaxy-wide xenocide? If you can build an army of nigh-invulnerable xenocidal cyborg ships, I think you can enforce a basic rule of "no A.I.'s" without resorting to extinction.
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** The Leviathans were lazy. Literally, that was their reasoning. They made the Catalyst to figure it out for them so they didn't need to bother doing it themselves, and it worked right up until the Catalyst attacked and wiped them out. As for the Catalyst itself preventing AI from being developed, that's the whole point of the cycle to begin with.
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[[folder: The Necessity of the Cycles]]
* If the entire point of the Cycle system was that organic slave species kept developing AI's and AI's kept rising up in rebellion, why didn't the Leviathans or the Catalyst just use their overwhelming power to prevent anyone ''from building AI's''? The Leviathans have the power to ''kill Reapers'' and the Reapers have been repeatedly capable of wiping out space-faring life for possibly a billion years. Would it ''really'' have been that hard to just force the organic species to stop, especially when it's made clear just how thorough their mind control powers are?
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** Reapers do have point defense weapons of some type. You can see the tracer fire coming off the one on Tuchanka when the turian fighters attack it.
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** Just because two ships are of the same class does not make them equal; there's a fair bit of difference in power between most of the Council and Alliance dreadnaughts, but they're still all Dreadnaught class star ships. Harbinger and Sovereign may well be to the other Reaper-capital ships what the Destiny Ascension is to the Everest; technically the same class, but would tear through it like tissue paper.
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** As of the Reckoning DLC, Collectors are alive and well and absolutely kicking ass, proving to be far more dangerous than the standard reaper ground forces deployed in the rest of the game. As for why they aren't deployed against Shepard, specifically, the best guess is that, as suggested above, there simply aren't that many of them and it is a big galaxy.
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*** It could be that the Council simply disabled the function altogether after Sovereign's attack in order to avoid something like that happening in the future. Temporary control over the Citadel aside, Saren revealed the console through which to control the Citadel to Shepard and thus such knowledge became common, at the very least, to the Council. With this in mind, they probably assembled a crack team of engineers to figure out such a process should it ever happen again...
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** The Sovereign-class Reapers are called such simply because they heavily resemble Sovereign. That doesn't change the fact that Sovereign carried a main gun in each of his tentacles and was particularly resilient to concentrated fire from the remnants of the Citadel fleet and the combined might of the Third, First, and Fifth fleets of the Alliance. The only other Reaper showing such firepower and durability is, indeed, Harbinger himself. The other Sovereign class Reapers, meanwhile, have a single main gun and several are shown being taken out by groups of cruisers in the final battle. So it's safe to assume that Sovereign was one of the more powerful Reapers.
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* Sovereign was definitely not strong for a Reaper; there's a reason that the average capital Reaper is explicitly called ''Sovereign-class'' (except Harbinger, who is the only abnormally strong Reaper). The reason we were able to fare better against the Reapers was mainly because of thanix cannons; they're standard issue on frigates and cruisers by MassEffect3 and essentially multiply the offensive power of a ship by six. We were still woefully outmatched (the Reapers were clearly winning before the Crucible was fired, and even the massive turian navy only takes out a few capital Reapers) but that doesn't mean we couldn't slow them down with a good ZergRush.
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* Sovereign was definitely not strong for a Reaper; there's a reason that the average capital Reaper is explicitly called ''Sovereign-class'' (except Harbinger, who is the only abnormally strong Reaper). The reason we were able to fare better against the Reapers was mainly because of thanix cannons; they're standard issue on frigates and cruisers by MassEffect3 ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'' and essentially multiply the offensive power of a ship by six. We were still woefully outmatched (the Reapers were clearly winning before the Crucible was fired, and even the massive turian navy only takes out a few capital Reapers) but that doesn't mean we couldn't slow them down with a good ZergRush.
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** In ''MassEffect2'' it was explained that the Human-Reaper was merely the core. The familiar Reaper shape is actually the outer hull, which in that case, had yet to be constructed around it. Even the Human-Reaper core was still in the early phases of construction, as it's only partially finished when Shepard destroyed it.
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** In ''MassEffect2'' ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' it was explained that the Human-Reaper was merely the core. The familiar Reaper shape is actually the outer hull, which in that case, had yet to be constructed around it. Even the Human-Reaper core was still in the early phases of construction, as it's only partially finished when Shepard destroyed it.
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I\'m not even really sure what you\'re trying to say here. It\'s imporbable that someone tried to kill a Hades Cannon with...a Hades Cannon?
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*** Ok, it seems really improbable that no one tried to kill it with a Hades yet given how easy it was just to get 1 shot at that distance.[[/folder]]
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The only part of this entry that is relevant to the topic at hand is complaining that Bioware could have used a different model - nevermind that the Hades has a different model. The rest is irrelevant to the topic of the folder.
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*** Ok, it seems really improbable that no one tried to kill it with a Hades yet given how easy it was just to get 1 shot at that distance.
All this could be avoided by just having the designers make the Hades Cannon without the chassis to avoid confusion. In case it IS an actual Reaper, i must say that this is just a painful design flaw for a "species" that has lived for almost an eternity out of millions of cycles. Then again, this is the same antagonist that don't use the Quantum Shielding of the Mass Relays (that they made themselves) to survive long enough for their enemies to deplete their ammunition and then attack them. Also, if the Reaper on Rannoch lowers its shields to attack Shep, then why doesn't try to squash Shep with its legs or big side to avoid being killed by orbital strike? or why doesn't just fly to the Quarian fleet, destroy them, THEN come back and kill Shep and take over the Geth again?
[[/folder]]
All this could be avoided by just having the designers make the Hades Cannon without the chassis to avoid confusion. In case it IS an actual Reaper, i must say that this is just a painful design flaw for a "species" that has lived for almost an eternity out of millions of cycles. Then again, this is the same antagonist that don't use the Quantum Shielding of the Mass Relays (that they made themselves) to survive long enough for their enemies to deplete their ammunition and then attack them. Also, if the Reaper on Rannoch lowers its shields to attack Shep, then why doesn't try to squash Shep with its legs or big side to avoid being killed by orbital strike? or why doesn't just fly to the Quarian fleet, destroy them, THEN come back and kill Shep and take over the Geth again?
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*** Ok, it seems really improbable that no one tried to kill it with a Hades yet given how easy it was just to get 1 shot at that distance.
All this could be avoided by just having the designers make the Hades Cannon without the chassis to avoid confusion. In case it IS an actual Reaper, i must say that this is just a painful design flaw for a "species" that has lived for almost an eternity out of millions of cycles. Then again, this is the same antagonist that don't use the Quantum Shielding of the Mass Relays (that they made themselves) to survive long enough for their enemies to deplete their ammunition and then attack them. Also, if the Reaper on Rannoch lowers its shields to attack Shep, then why doesn't try to squash Shep with its legs or big side to avoid being killed by orbital strike? or why doesn't just fly to the Quarian fleet, destroy them, THEN come back and kill Shep and take over the Geth again?
distance.[[/folder]]
All this could be avoided by just having the designers make the Hades Cannon without the chassis to avoid confusion. In case it IS an actual Reaper, i must say that this is just a painful design flaw for a "species" that has lived for almost an eternity out of millions of cycles. Then again, this is the same antagonist that don't use the Quantum Shielding of the Mass Relays (that they made themselves) to survive long enough for their enemies to deplete their ammunition and then attack them. Also, if the Reaper on Rannoch lowers its shields to attack Shep, then why doesn't try to squash Shep with its legs or big side to avoid being killed by orbital strike? or why doesn't just fly to the Quarian fleet, destroy them, THEN come back and kill Shep and take over the Geth again?
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**** No one said a Reaper ''couldn't'' fire at individuals. The point was that a Reaper isn't ''optimized to fire at individuals''. Even when a Reaper is engaging infantry, it is shown firing upon groups. All that video shows is that the Reaper's gun is not optimized for firing upon targets the size of humans, as demonstrated by the fact ''that it missed Shepard.'' The Reaper's main weapon simply isn't designed to kill individual infantry, anymore than a tank's cannon isn't designed to shoot down aircraft.
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*** Ok, it seems really improbable that no one tried to kill it with a Hades yet given how easy it was just to get 1 shot at that distance.
All this could be avoided by just having the designers make the Hades Cannon without the chassis to avoid confusion. In case it IS an actual Reaper, i must say that this is just a painful design flaw for a "species" that has lived for almost an eternity out of millions of cycles. Then again, this is the same antagonist that don't use the Quantum Shielding of the Mass Relays (that they made themselves) to survive long enough for their enemies to deplete their ammunition and then attack them. Also, if the Reaper on Rannoch lowers its shields to attack Shep, then why doesn't try to squash Shep with its legs or big side to avoid being killed by orbital strike? or why doesn't just fly to the Quarian fleet, destroy them, THEN come back and kill Shep and take over the Geth again?
All this could be avoided by just having the designers make the Hades Cannon without the chassis to avoid confusion. In case it IS an actual Reaper, i must say that this is just a painful design flaw for a "species" that has lived for almost an eternity out of millions of cycles. Then again, this is the same antagonist that don't use the Quantum Shielding of the Mass Relays (that they made themselves) to survive long enough for their enemies to deplete their ammunition and then attack them. Also, if the Reaper on Rannoch lowers its shields to attack Shep, then why doesn't try to squash Shep with its legs or big side to avoid being killed by orbital strike? or why doesn't just fly to the Quarian fleet, destroy them, THEN come back and kill Shep and take over the Geth again?
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****Incorrect. Destroyers CAN shot right AT individual soldiers as demonstrated here at 14:29 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTeLkBx7A1k There is no reason for the Destroyer to miss with its godlike mathematical power of a machine, other than the game will be over if they do.
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*** A Reaper Destroyer isn't intended to fight individuals on the ground. This is kind of the equivalent of taking a B-52 into a dogfight, or tasking a tank platoon to shoot down aircraft. A Reaper Destroyer works well at tearing up ships, aircraft, tanks, leveling sections of urban landscape, etc. Its not supposed to shoot at a single human on foot.
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*** Well clearly the Reaper on Rannoch did ''need'' some other form of weaponry. Must have been embarrassing for that Reaper to keep missing while Shepard only dodged a couple of feet to the side every time. If it had anything else it probably would have wiped Shep out no problem.
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** Destroyers have only one primary weapon because that's all they ''need''. Their point defense is "nothing below capital ship weaponry can kill me unless applied to my eye when it is opened to fire." Their secondary weapons are "I don't need them because my main gun can do everything I need to do." They don't use torpedoes because their main gun can cleave through most starship kinetic barriers like paper, and torpedoes are only used by fighters to bypass kinetic barriers. They don't fly and shoot because a large ship entering atmosphere has to direct a lot of power to keeping itself airborne. Remember that in ''Mass Effect: Revelation'', a frigate entering the atmosphere of a planet had to redirect so much power that it was shot down by a single man-portable anti-air weapon. We only see a few ships actually fly and fight in atmosphere, and ''all'' of them are shot down very quickly. The Reaper destroyers land because that's the best way to operate on the ground, as it lets them keep at least a significant amount of power available to devote to defense, allowing them to shrug anything short of direct bombardment by half the Migrant Fleet, direct hits to the eye section with Thanix missiles, or the Mother of All Thresher Maws.
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There\'s an actual headscratcher buried in here underneath the whining. I\'ll try to cut it loose.
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Reaper Destroyers suck. Like, really suck. They have no point-defense weapons, no secondary weapons, no torpedoes, and seemingly lack the ability to fly and shoot at the same time when in the atmosphere. Contrast the similarly sized organic frigates, which are equipped with a bunch of GARDIAN lasers, secondary mass accelerators in each 'wing', massive disruptor torpedoes and missiles, and are shown to be able to fly and shoot in the atmosphere repeatedly. Was this just because if the Destroyers were equipped with anything resembling appropriate weaponry, Shepard would get vaporized by a stray laser turret the minute one of them showed up?
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* Reaper Destroyers suck. Like, really suck. destroyers seem to be inferior to organic frigate designs. They have no point-defense weapons, point defense systems, no apparent secondary weapons, no torpedoes, and seemingly lack the ability to do not fly and shoot at the same time when in the atmosphere. Contrast Why are they lacking the similarly sized same weapons organic frigates, which are equipped with a bunch ships of GARDIAN lasers, secondary mass accelerators in each 'wing', massive disruptor torpedoes and missiles, and are shown to be able to fly and shoot in the atmosphere repeatedly. Was this just because if the Destroyers were equipped with anything resembling appropriate weaponry, Shepard would get vaporized by a stray laser turret the minute one of them showed up?comparable tonnage possess?
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[[folder: Reaper Destroyers]]
Reaper Destroyers suck. Like, really suck. They have no point-defense weapons, no secondary weapons, no torpedoes, and seemingly lack the ability to fly and shoot at the same time when in the atmosphere. Contrast the similarly sized organic frigates, which are equipped with a bunch of GARDIAN lasers, secondary mass accelerators in each 'wing', massive disruptor torpedoes and missiles, and are shown to be able to fly and shoot in the atmosphere repeatedly. Was this just because if the Destroyers were equipped with anything resembling appropriate weaponry, Shepard would get vaporized by a stray laser turret the minute one of them showed up?
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* Sovereign is a Harbinger-level capital Reaper; the Reapers you're talking about are the relatively small Reaper Destroyers. Also, yes, Sovereign was very strong even for a Reaper; it's explicitly stated that three dreadnoughts equipped with futuristic reverse engineered geth and Reaper weaponry are able to kill one capital reaper.
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* Sovereign is a Harbinger-level capital Reaper; the Reapers you're talking about are the relatively small Reaper Destroyers. Also, yes, Sovereign was very strong even for a Reaper; it's explicitly stated that three four dreadnoughts equipped with futuristic reverse engineered geth and Reaper weaponry are able to kill one capital reaper.
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* Sovereign was definitely not strong for a Reaper; there's a reason that the average capital Reaper is explicitly called ''Sovereign-class'' (except Harbinger, who is the only abnormally strong Reaper). The reason we were able to fare better against the Reapers was mainly because of thanix cannons; they're standard issue on frigates and cruisers by MassEffect3 and essentially multiply the offensive power of a ship by six. We were still woefully outmatched (the Reapers were clearly winning before the Crucible was fired, and even the massive turian navy only takes out a few capital Reapers) but that doesn't mean we couldn't slow them down with a good ZergRush.
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Not the trope.
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* Okay, so in the battle to take back earth, the marines mention that Thanix missiles are the only thing they have that has a chance of killing the Spider Reaper. Um, guys, did you just forget that Shepard took down one on Rannoch via guiding the fleet to attack it with a targeting laser? Why not just do that again, especially with all the air support you've got? Sure you also have several airborne Reapers, but some should be able to get through. ItGetsWorse when you then remember that Shepard not 20 minutes ago took down a Spider Reaper with a single Cain blast. Was that the only Cain? Why not just use those?
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* Okay, so in the battle to take back earth, the marines mention that Thanix missiles are the only thing they have that has a chance of killing the Spider Reaper. Um, guys, did you just forget that Shepard took down one on Rannoch via guiding the fleet to attack it with a targeting laser? Why not just do that again, especially with all the air support you've got? Sure you also have several airborne Reapers, but some should be able to get through. ItGetsWorse It gets worse when you then remember that Shepard not 20 minutes ago took down a Spider Reaper with a single Cain blast. Was that the only Cain? Why not just use those?
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Finishing a cleanup.
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*** [[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100522072723/masseffect/images/7/7d/Wcb6ug.png Concept art of Mass Effect 2]] show ideas of how the core and the "traditional reaper look" would have combined.[[/folder]]
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*** [[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100522072723/masseffect/images/7/7d/Wcb6ug.png Concept art of Mass Effect 2]] show ideas of how the core and the "traditional reaper look" would have combined.[[/folder]]
[[folder: Terminal Ethnocentrism]]
Based on what we've seen, it seems clear that the Prothean beacons were designed by and for Javik's people, rather than some other Prothean race. They require you to think like a Prothean to get meaningful data out of one, can potentially kill someone without a sufficiently strong mind and are designed around Javik's race's inherent form of communication. Now that's all good and well if you're not planning on other species using them, but if the point was to warn the next cycle about the Reapers then why wouldn't they make their user interface a bit more generic? The one on Thessia was meant for the asari to use, but the asari don't have the Cipher—it takes the presence of Commander Shepard (or Javik) to activate the beacon. Javik's remark about "communication still being primitive in this cycle" seems especially narrow-minded since it presupposes that other races will have evolved his race's innate ability. The Protheans bet the future of all life on the galaxy on the hope that the next cycle would be ''just like them.''
* For all we know, Javik could be right. Evolution in the ME universe seems to follow some patterns (like different races developing the same Biotic powers, and the general similarities between races we're used to take for granted). For all we know, their "empathic" form of communication '''is''' going to show up in the future. The asari in special seem to be on their way to something like that, or at least similar. And they did manage to take information from that beacon (since it's the reason they're the most advanced race of the cycle), even if they never unlocked the VI, somehow.
** Exactly. The asari already have, and probably had back then, moderate psychic ability, just ability limited to intimate physical contact and only practical use being Vulcan Mind Melds. The Protheans made the logical, if erroneous, assumption that this weak psychic ability would increase to the point of compatibility with Prothean Empathic Psychic Technology.
** Implicitly the Prothean empathic abilities are something that can be taught or otherwise introduced to other species, since Javik appears to be mildly surprised that the "primitives" haven't mastered this skill yet, and since the Prothean Empire spanned numerous different species they all must have been granted this ability for Javik's surprise can make sense. Or perhaps they measured how "advanced" different species were on the basis of whether they shared this ability or not, and only conquered those that did.
** This is actually indirectly brought up as a problem with the Prothean approach to doing things. Whenever they encountered a new race, they basically turned them into more Protheans or destroyed them - the end result being a lack of perspective and diversity amongst themselves, which means that at the time none of them ever stopped to think 'what if they aren't like us?'. It's the same as a person writing a message for their descendants in the future, only for it to turn out that all of said to descendants just so happen to be blind. Hence Liara stuffing every mode of communication she can into her own beacon, since she not only has the Protheans' mistake to learn from, but also comes from a notoriously diplomatic race and very diverse group of friends during a cycle where differences must be accounted for all the time.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Terminal Ethnocentrism]]
Based on what we've seen, it seems clear that the Prothean beacons were designed by and for Javik's people, rather than some other Prothean race. They require you to think like a Prothean to get meaningful data out of one, can potentially kill someone without a sufficiently strong mind and are designed around Javik's race's inherent form of communication. Now that's all good and well if you're not planning on other species using them, but if the point was to warn the next cycle about the Reapers then why wouldn't they make their user interface a bit more generic? The one on Thessia was meant for the asari to use, but the asari don't have the Cipher—it takes the presence of Commander Shepard (or Javik) to activate the beacon. Javik's remark about "communication still being primitive in this cycle" seems especially narrow-minded since it presupposes that other races will have evolved his race's innate ability. The Protheans bet the future of all life on the galaxy on the hope that the next cycle would be ''just like them.''
* For all we know, Javik could be right. Evolution in the ME universe seems to follow some patterns (like different races developing the same Biotic powers, and the general similarities between races we're used to take for granted). For all we know, their "empathic" form of communication '''is''' going to show up in the future. The asari in special seem to be on their way to something like that, or at least similar. And they did manage to take information from that beacon (since it's the reason they're the most advanced race of the cycle), even if they never unlocked the VI, somehow.
** Exactly. The asari already have, and probably had back then, moderate psychic ability, just ability limited to intimate physical contact and only practical use being Vulcan Mind Melds. The Protheans made the logical, if erroneous, assumption that this weak psychic ability would increase to the point of compatibility with Prothean Empathic Psychic Technology.
** Implicitly the Prothean empathic abilities are something that can be taught or otherwise introduced to other species, since Javik appears to be mildly surprised that the "primitives" haven't mastered this skill yet, and since the Prothean Empire spanned numerous different species they all must have been granted this ability for Javik's surprise can make sense. Or perhaps they measured how "advanced" different species were on the basis of whether they shared this ability or not, and only conquered those that did.
** This is actually indirectly brought up as a problem with the Prothean approach to doing things. Whenever they encountered a new race, they basically turned them into more Protheans or destroyed them - the end result being a lack of perspective and diversity amongst themselves, which means that at the time none of them ever stopped to think 'what if they aren't like us?'. It's the same as a person writing a message for their descendants in the future, only for it to turn out that all of said to descendants just so happen to be blind. Hence Liara stuffing every mode of communication she can into her own beacon, since she not only has the Protheans' mistake to learn from, but also comes from a notoriously diplomatic race and very diverse group of friends during a cycle where differences must be accounted for all the time.
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Continuing cleanup.
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[[folder: Cerberus working with the Collectors?]]
Vega says his squad was killed because of a "Cerberus spy, working WITH the Collectors". How and why in the hell would Cerberus be working with the Collectors? Why would Cerberus work to sabotage the defense of a human colony when their whole objective in [=ME2=] was to prevent the abductions?
* Vega is not omniscient. You're currently fighting a Reaper-allied Cerberus, so he may have made the connection there. Or he could just be flat-out wrong.
* The true goal of Cerberus was not to prevent the abductions, but learn as much about the Collectors, and by extension the Reapers as possible. It was strongly implied that the Illusive Man leaked Virmire Survivor's presence on the Horizon to the Collectors to cause the attack. In the loosest sense of the word, Cerberus was indeed working with the Collectors for a bit, albeit with the intention of destroying them and stealing their technology.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Taking Down Spider Reapers]]
* Okay, so in the battle to take back earth, the marines mention that Thanix missiles are the only thing they have that has a chance of killing the Spider Reaper. Um, guys, did you just forget that Shepard took down one on Rannoch via guiding the fleet to attack it with a targeting laser? Why not just do that again, especially with all the air support you've got? Sure you also have several airborne Reapers, but some should be able to get through. ItGetsWorse when you then remember that Shepard not 20 minutes ago took down a Spider Reaper with a single Cain blast. Was that the only Cain? Why not just use those?
** Shepard took down a Hades Cannon with the Cain. Hades Cannons are ground-based anti-air weapons systems, not Reapers unto themselves. The distinction was quite clear during the briefing. Shepard also cannot call down orbital fire on the Reaper because the space-based forces were a bit busy with the ''gigantic Reaper fleet'' overhead. Every single warship they had was tasked with simply holding off the massive Reaper force. Furthermore, Shepard doesn't have the special target designator needed to cut through the jamming like the one s/he had on Rannoch.
*** Yes, the Hades Cannon is a gound based anti-air defense system... Strapped to the back of a Spider Reaper.
*** The fact that it can be taken down by a Cain indicates that it is not a destroyer but simply some four-legged war machine carrying the Hades Cannon. Reaper Destroyers can tank direct hits by cruiser-grade weaponry and vehicle-portable Thanix missiles; a Cain isn't even going to scratch the paint. It ''looks'' kind of like a Reaper destroyer, but observed abilities paint it as something much less durable, much like many armored personnel carriers look outwardly like tanks but have nowhere near the armor or durability of a main battle tank.
** If the Spider Reaper is just "some four-legged war machine", according to the poster above, that devalues the concept of the Reaper itself (which is supposedly those 'nation(s) unto itself' as established in the first game). A Reaper is a Reaper - no matter what they are, they're still skyscraper-sized entities that can deal a lot of destruction, and were supposedly being setup as NighInvulnerable. The introduction of the Cain in the final mission devalues their threat level. The questions you should really be asking yourself are:\\
a) How does Cortez know that a Cain can one shot Spider-Reapers?\\
b) Why does he not tell Shepard or anyone else about this at any point prior to this mission? Shepard sits through an entire briefing, and never mentions this once to Anderson or any soldier (hell, a soldier asks over the radio later on how they're supposed to take these things down).\\
c) Why didn't Cortez and/or Shepard, at any point prior to this mission, pick up a Cain at any one of the worlds they visited? This one is more a gameplay/story problem - Bioware removed heavy weapons because they apparently broke the plot.\\
d) Why does the Hammer operation insist on outfitting vehicles (trucks? tanks? missile batteries?) with cannons and spend time escorting them through "no man's land" when they could just as easily have done the same thing with a handful of support specialists outfitted with Cains? The Blue Suns specialize in heavy weapons - why not just send them to take out as many Spider Reapers as possible?
*** First: ''stop calling them "spider Reapers"''. That's not the correct term. They're Reaper destroyers. Second, how does that "devalue" the Reapers? We know the Reapers already use large, non-Reaper warmachines in the first place. Both their troop transports and their "supply" craft are non-Reaper craft, and they use husks extensively. Suggesting that that the Reapers using a weapons system that is not a Reaper somehow "devalues" them is not only incorrect, but silly. Hades Cannons are simply a large, four-legged weapons system used for an anti-air role. It is ''obviously'' not a Reaper unto itself, because, once again, ''a Cain can destroy them'', when it has been shown repeatedly that it takes far in excess of a single Cain shot to consistently damage let alone disable a Reaper destroyer. The answers to all of the aforementioned questions you just asked is summed up by that simple fact: The Hades Cannon ''was not a Reaper''.
*** "The Hades Cannon is an anti-aircraft weapon of Reaper design. It is a massive directed-energy cannon, '''capable of being mounted on the four-legged chassis of a Destroyer-class Reaper.'''"
**** In the absence of more detailed information (and without fanwanking), it is logical to assume that the Spider-Reaper (the term being used to simply this discussion) is a primarily offensive-based entity - it has nothing to do with other support craft. The "devaluing" part comes from the information presented by the story itself - the Cain is shown to destroy these creatures in a single shot by aiming at their eyepiece. It's already known that the cannon is mounted on their back - that's not the point. It's the revelation that apparently anyone who can aim a Cain (or, as Cortez puts it, a heavy weapon) can put them down. That makes the whole "we have to escort tanks" mission completely pointless, and calls into question how these forces are so crippled if this whole battle could have been solved by a bunch of troops carrying Cain - it not only devalues the Spider-Reaper, but the entire point of the Hammer invasion. If this is the case, the questions posed earlier are valid, as they highlight the confusion and illogical nature of the final mission. That's the whole point of it being a "headscratcher".
** I demand a canon source that states that the Hades Cannon is mounted on a Reaper destroyer. Not an unsubstantiated quote from the Mass Effect wiki. Otherwise, observed evidence indicates that the cannon is not a Reaper but a Reaper weapons system that does not have the same degree of defenses as a full-scale Reaper. We've ''seen'' the kind of firepower needed to disable a Reaper destroyer in three instances: direct hits on vulnerable points by vehicle-mounted Thanix missiles, repeated orbital bombardment by cruiser broadside weapons, and a skyscraper-sized Thresher Maw. At no point do we see a man-portable weapon take down a Reaper destroyer in a single shot, and everything needed to take down the Reaper destroyers previously and afterward were in excess of the firepower exhibited by the Cain in that scene. The logical conclusion based on observed evidence: the Hades Cannons' defenses are not as strong as those observed surrounding Reaper destroyers, therefore they are ''not'' Reaper destroyers. And even if it ''is'' mounted on an actual Reaper destroyer, that is not an inconsistency; that simply means that the Hades Cannon renders the Reaper destroyer more vulnerable to attack, perhaps by drawing off power from its barriers.
*** Also worth noting: just because the Hades Cannon is ''capable'' of being mounted on a Destroyer's chassis, does not mean that the Hades Cannon in question actually ''was''. This entire discussion is going around in circles and ignoring the point that answers all questions being raised: the Hades Cannon is not a Reaper Destroyer, it is an entirely different piece of technology. Reaper Technology does not automatically equal Reaper.
*** The thing is a destroyer chassis, which either means it is in fact a Reaper, or the Reapers had a bunch of them lying around doing nothing. They would not have the time to just build a bunch of anti air guns. They treat the destroyers like fodder anyway. Theres no 'canon' source because we see the cannon once, like everything after the Cerberus base, it gets a bit lazy. You can however see when the Hades cannon is dying, it gives off the same red sparks like the Reapers do.\\
Cains, however are somewhat unique, "The M-920 Cain is a portable particle accelerator surrounding an array of dust-from element zero chambers. By subjecting its eezo chambers to extreme positive and negative currents fueled by antimatter reactions, the weapon projects mass effect fields that shear away at the target. The fields warp ambient materials with such explosive force that the impact produces a mushroom cloud". Reapers are tough, no doubt, but on the ground with severely weakened barriers, something that literally warps their armour would wreck them. Shouldn't be in one shot(thats why the second Cain should be used as well), but it would cause a crapload of damage.
*** How do you figure the Reapers didn't have time to do that? They had 50,000 years. You think they had a lot of cleaning to do instead? Anyhow, it's plainly not a Reaper Destroyer (the so-called "Spider-Reaper", a term never used in the game) as it is clearly just a big gun mounted on a set of legs, lacking the whole upper part of a Reaper Destroyer. As evidenced by the fact that you could take it out with a single shot from an infantry-portable heavy weapon, it lacks the defensive barriers and armor of a Destroyer, given that the only other time we saw a Destroyer taken on in combat, it took multiple volleys from an entire fleet of undistracted ships in orbit, and even then only succeeded due to having targeting assistance. Now, a better question, is why did the Thanix missiles need some kind of sophisticated guidance system that could be jammed externally, when they only needed to hit a giant stationary target a few hundred meters away? It looked like they could have about eye-balled that one without computer assistance.
**** Blame Marine training for the guidance system. Because Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest sonuvabitch in space, the Alliance does not ''eye-ball'' their shots.
** ''The thing is a destroyer chassis, which either means it is in fact a Reaper, or the Reapers had a bunch of them lying around doing nothing. They would not have the time to just build a bunch of anti air guns.'' Since when? The Reapers have the time to make Brutes, build more Reapers, establish entire deathcamps, and build a gigantic portal directly connecting London and the Citadel, and you're going to seriously suggest they don't have the time or resources to build anti-air weaponry?
** ''Theres no 'canon' source because we see the cannon once, like everything after the Cerberus base, it gets a bit lazy.'' So you admit that there's no canon evidence that it actually is a Reaper. Thanks.
** ''You can however see when the Hades cannon is dying, it gives off the same red sparks like the Reapers do.'' You mean, like all instances of large-scale Reaper technology? "Gives off red sparks" != "Reaper destroyer."
** Also, the beam was interfering with the Thanix missiles' ability to lock onto the Destroyer in the first place. Who's to say that the target designator wouldn't have the same problem?
*** Well, it fires in a straight line, you don't need to target, just aim it.
** Reapers split their power between three main sources: mass effect fields that allow them to stand on a planet, weapons and barriers. Increasing power to one decreases the power to the other two. Since the Reaper Destroyer on Rannoch could only be damaged when its main weapon was active—and thus had less power to its barriers—it's possible that the Hades Cannon (if it is indeed mounted on the back of a Destroyer) draws so much energy that it has nearly no power left for barriers and could then be defeated by a Cain.
** The Hades Cannon platform does not appear to be large enough to be a Reaper Destroyer. It's big, but Reaper Destroyers are absolutely huge. Although there isn't a really solid scaling, the Hades Cannon looked like a Reaper Destroyer could sit on top of it and the legs would still reach the ground. The Hades Cannon appears to be a dedicated AA platform, probably nonsentient, that simply resembles a Destroyer. Remember, the Reaper on Rannoch was a Destroyer, and look how big that one was.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Accounts of the Prothean / Reaper War]]
When asked about the Prothean strategy against the reapers, Javik says that entire worlds were sacrificed to the Reapers, by making them fight for each city, while the rest of the Prothean forces could gather and regroup on other worlds for counter offensives. Fine... Except how DID this regrouping happen? According to Vigil in [=ME1=], the war started when the reapers activated the Citadel's relay, and then used it to override the entire Mass Relay network, isolating each and every solar system so the Reapers could crush them. So how were Prothean forces regrouping at various world when the Mass Relay network was inoperable?
* Vigil has always been an UnreliableExpositor, as it pretty much tells you everything it knows about the Prothean/Reaper War is theory. The Reaper ability to override the Mass Relay network is only ever mentioned by Vigil and never, not even once, brought up or alluded to in the story. And the third game seems to forget about it entirely, because the Reapers never even try to utilize it. The point being: take your pick at how you want to explain it. Maybe Vigil was wrong about the relay network. Maybe it was right about that, but wrong about systems being cut off from each other. Or maybe the writers just plain forgot about it.
** ...Yeah the ability of the Citadel to disable mass relays is alluded to. It's in fact outright SEEN. Saren shuts down the Serpent Nebula relay from the Mass Relay override atop the Citadel tower. Shepard uses the same controls to override said lock-out to allow Normandy and the Alliance fifth fleet to jump in and join the fight. Furthermore, according to Vigil, disabling the Mass Relays is one of the first things the Reapers did. Seeing as Vigil was created ''long'' after the initial attack of the Reapers, I'd assume it's not "theory". By then the Prothean would likely know if the relays stopped working or not. It's kind of a hard thing to miss.
*** ''Seeing as Vigil was created long after the initial attack of the Reapers, I'd assume it's not "theory". By then the Prothean would likely know if the relays stopped working or not. It's kind of a hard thing to miss.'' When is it stated that Vigil was created ''during'' the Reaper invasion? In fact, it's made abundantly clear that the second the Reapers attacked, the Ilos facility immediately "went dark". Vigil never explains how it obtained the little data it had on the Reapers actions, methods, and details of the war. It knows things, but we're not exactly what forms of investigation it used. So it could still very much be a theory.
**** Considering their entire plan '''hinged''' on what happened at the Citadel, they'd have to be more than a vague guess, since they dedicated their whole time and effort to building the conduit and reprogramming the keeper. Furthermore, if the Reapers didn't disable the network... why use the conduit at all? Why not use the regular relays to go to the Citadel and fix the keepers and not die of starvation on the station because their mean of transport was exactly one-way?
***** Because going through the regular relays requires them to have a ship that is spaceflight-capable after the Reapers have finished exterminating their civilization. The Conduit, on the other hand, has much less stringent requirements. That being said, whatever reason the Protheans couldn't access the Citadel through the Relay Network is ultimately irrelevant. The Reapers were gone from the galaxy by the time the last Protheans made their jump. Even if the Reapers had the capacity to disable the Relay Network, it would have been back online by the time they left the galaxy; leaving the Relays disabled as they exited the galaxy would have prevented their use by the next civilizations to come along, screwing over the entire galactic cycle by disallowing the Relay Network and the Citadel from ever being used. As this is not what happened, we can assume that the Last Protheans used the Conduit for reasons completely unrelated to the Relay Network Killswitch.
****** Hrrm, the relays WERE disabled by the time the next cycle came around. That's why the Rachni war happened: Relays had to be manually re-enabled and people were doing it left and right, leading Salarians to wander into Rachni space and open the Rachni's relay letting them spill forth into the Galaxy. Turians watching humans re-activate relay 314 is what sparked the First Contact War. The Charon relay being dormant is why it got covered in ice and we confused it for a moon of Pluto and what cause Pluto to gain its elliptical orbit. Once the Relay was activated again, Pluto's orbit became circular.
******* Relays were dormant. That's not the same as disabled. If the Relay Killswitch could be defeated by something so simple as landing a ship on the relay and turning the Relay back on, the entire point of the killswitch would be moot. It would be a completely useless weapon, because as soon as they fired it, the races of the galaxy would just ''turn all the Relays back on''. With the Killswitch supposedly being the game-ending weapon that guarantees galactic extinction, that would be a pretty glaring weakness.
**** Furthermore, the station can't have gone immediately dark - Vigil is equipped with sensors to detect indoctrination. Which would not have been possible if the station had never had access to reaper-indoctrinated people.
**** Not necessarily. We know Vigil was monitoring the Reapers somehow, and that other facilities also came up with VIs that could detect indoctrination. If we're speculating, it's also possible that Vigil figured out how to detect it from the way the other VIs were calibrated. Either way, though, it still makes Vigil's exposition unreliable. As I said, take your pick as to how much.
** I always assumed that locking down individual Relays was possible, but locking down the entire network was not feasible, for whatever reason. The Reapers may have left the Relay network operational simply for the ease of their own logistics and movement, and did not care that the Protheans were using it; they were clearly and inevitably winning anyway. It is also possible that they left the Relays operational because that would make Prothean movements easier to predict and then counter.
** Yeah, the Relay Lockout is a problematic plot element to deal with. Mass Effect 2 further muddles the issue with the introduction of the Omega-4 Relay. The Omega-4 proves that the Reapers can tune a Mass Relay to behave differently to their own IFFs than to any other ship. Applied to the Lockdown, this means the Reapers ''should'' have the ability to shut down the Mass Relays entirely, preventing anyone from using them...''except themselves'', because they have a Reaper IFF that the Relays can be specifically tuned to. This alone would make the Reapers a completely unbeatable adversary, and seems to be a key element of the galactic extinction cycle. This wouldn't be a problem if it was only the Normandy traversing the galaxy; after all, it has a Reaper IFF, so it would be able to use locked down Relays. It also wouldn't be an issue if the Reapers never managed to gain control of the Citadel in order to utilize the Lockdown, but...they do. Ultimately, the only way anything makes sense is if the Normandy's Reaper IFF was either mass-distributed among the fleets and Crucible prior to the final battle, or if the Normandy herself opened the Relay every time anyone had to make a jump to bring the fleets in. Either way, this is the kind of detail that would really need to be shown; it's too obscure and easy to miss to expect the audience to just assume.
** As I see it, there are three possibilities for the Relays being operational: The Council wanted to make sure the trick Saren pulled disabling the Relays couldn't be done again and somehow permanently disabled the Citadel's ability to do this. The Reapers deliberately left the Charon Relay open so the militaries of the galaxy could be funneled into one spot and defeated all at once, rather than a drawn out guerrilla war. Normandy's Reaper IFF was copied and used on all ships so the initial disruption in transportation wouldn't work, which may have been the tactic the Protheans used in the later years of their war.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Making a Reaper (Unmarked Leviathan Spoilers)]]
* So at the end of the DLC when talking to Leviathan, or one of them at least, he mentions that Harbinger is the first Reaper, modeled in their image, as they are basically a biological looking and behaving Reaper. However, it then goes on to mention that all subsequent Reapers are made the same way, with Harbinger as essentially the template. Reaper-Destroyers notwithstanding, as they are established to be more numerous and made up of the "lesser" species of the cycle, all the capital Reapers have the squid look going? Why were the Collecters making a Human-Reaper? Is it perhaps the core of a Reaper, each species aspect being contained within the squid shell (which would certainly explain the lack of a Mecha-Cthulhu-Javik wrecking havoc)? Were the Collecter's incompetent at building or confused their instructions, but considering they were controlled directly by Harbinger and had no free-will in order to screw up, this seems unlikely. Or is BioWare just trying to retcon stuff?
** In ''MassEffect2'' it was explained that the Human-Reaper was merely the core. The familiar Reaper shape is actually the outer hull, which in that case, had yet to be constructed around it. Even the Human-Reaper core was still in the early phases of construction, as it's only partially finished when Shepard destroyed it.
*** [[http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100522072723/masseffect/images/7/7d/Wcb6ug.png Concept art of Mass Effect 2]] show ideas of how the core and the "traditional reaper look" would have combined.[[/folder]]
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[[/folder]]
[[folder: Discrepancies in Prothean physiology (Major spoilers)]]
Mass Effect 1 established a rather surreal image of the Protheans on Ilos by showing statues of them as spindly, long-limbed humanoids with tentacle faces. Mass Effect 2 continued this in their codex entry with a husk-like, but otherwise identical, Prothean. The Collectors [[spoiler:were established as being mutated beyond recognition as Protheans]]. Mass Effect 3's codex page retains the husk-prothean image, but [[spoiler:Javik's appearance is immediately recognizable as being inspired by Collector anatomy]]. In short, [[spoiler:if the Collectors are so drastically mutated from baseline Protheans, why do they look virtually physically identical?]]
** First of all, there's no real evidence that the tentacle-faced statues were supposed to be Protheans of Javik's species. They could have been anything. They could have even been one of the "lesser" species incorporated into the empire. Second, the Collectors only resemble the Protheans in the most extremely superficial ways. Going by Javik's appearance, the original Protheans did not have chitnous skin, glowing eyes, no mouths, armor plating and ''insect wings''. If a human were covered din armor, grew insect wings, had glowing eyes and no mouths, that would be an example of "drastic mutation".
*** This is supported by statements made by Javik that the ruins of Ilos are not Prothean at all. He mentions that the ruins on Ilos were from a previous civilization, the Inusannon, and that the Protheans built on top of the ruins of that previous civilization.
** I think the tentacle aliens were maybe the leaders of the Prothean empire, and the Javikans (it's as good a name as any) were the soldiers. It would therefore be natural for the Reapers to use them as the template for the collectors, as they are more physically powerful. And/Or all the tentacle aliens were used to make a Reaper.
*** Javik does mention the Protheans building on the ruins of older races. It's possible that the statues belonged to an earlier cycle, and historians just got it wrong.
**** In one of his conversations Javik outright states that the Protheans built over the previous civilization on Illos.
**** Though he also makes clear, in the very same conversation, that "Prothean" referred to numerous species, rather than one.
** That doesn't reconcile the fact that the creatures in the Beacon visions that were slaughtered by the Reapers and turned into Collectors were the tentacle-bearded humanoids, though.
*** The beacon could have just been trying to tell whoever found it to go to Ilos.
** What makes it even more confusing is the art books depict protheans with tentacle faces also.
*** The new Protean appearance is a retcon, based on the appearance of the Collectors who most likely became repurposed Protheans only after their appearance had been set in stone. The tentacle-face was scrapped because it would have required completely new motion-capture work and animation to get the strange physique to work correctly; having those long, pseudo-tentacular limbs climbing ladder for example would have required more work than the character was worth.
*** WordOfGod states that the tentacle-protheans were actually Javik's race's predecessors; they were essentially the "protheans" to the Protheans. (I can't find the link, not now)
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Why did the Reapers wait to attack the Citadel?]]
They couldn't get a vanguard in to bring the whole fleet down at once, but Vigil told us the core of their strategy in his time was capturing the citadel and locking down the whole Mass Relay network so that every system was isolated and they had access to the Empire's full records of every planet and species. I can't think of any reason they didn't even attempt it until the off-screen attack at the end of the game. Well, except that it would have ''worked'' and Shepard's mission would have failed before it began.
* Because it wouldn't have worked. The Citadel has the ability to close its arms, making access impossible. It's unlikely that the Reapers would want to risk destroying it, seeing as it houses their boss (which they may or may not know) and the key to the next successful invasion (which they definitely do). It may even be that it is literally indestructible. Plus, attacking the Citadel would have instantly rallied every council race under one banner, since they're fully aware of the Citadel's strategic importance.
Admittedly, there is a single problem with that theory: Later, the Reapers seemed able to get into the Citadel without problems. I would guess that there was another attack from inside the Citadel, perhaps by sleeper agents, perhaps by TIM, that gave the Reapers some control over the Citadel.
* Why would they want to attack the Citadel? Everybody and their dog is fleeing to that place from the invasion -- a place that was in no way hidden, that they know better than anyone. It's a perfect set-up: destroy the civilizations, let the refugees flee in one place where they can be easily mopped out in the end, instead of scattering all over the galaxy into tiny enclaves. Three guesses which is more efficient solution in terms of completing the harvest in least time with least energy spent.
** Because in the first game it was established that they can shut down the entire mass relay network from the citadel, which prevents the races of the galaxy from gathering enough forces to present a legitimate threat and traps them in whatever cluster they happened to in at the time. In other words, they could have easily averted the entire game and effortlessly won the war in one strike. At the end-game they take it so easily that it happens off-screen and is over by the time word of the attack gets out. They still don't close the relays, but this may be to bring all the fleets into one doomed battle (even with them all together they can't win without the Crucible) or a final test by the Catalyst.
*** The difference is that in previous cycles nobody knew the Reaper's were coming, so taking the Citadel allowed them to plunge the galaxy into chaos. This time around Shepard found out about them and put a stop to them, so they don't have that advantage anymore. If they shut down the relays the local forces there would know what was going on and could just mine the entrance to the relays, or kill themselves to stop the Reaper's using them to make more Reapers, or any other scenarios that would inconvience them. They don't shut off the Mass Relay network because leaving it open gives the organics hope that they can win, allowing the Reaper's indoctrinated agents to deal with them and get them into a position that suits the Reaper's purpose.
** All the ideas above likely have some bearing on the decision not to attack the Citadel. Remember, the final assault was after the the Alliance might have recovered a way of taking control of their husks, which understandably seems to have worried them. There's also the fact that they've just wiped out the homeworld of the last major species, meaning their plan and take out the last remaining major centre of government makes sense at this point.
* Technically, the Reapers did try to capture the Citadel early on. Cerberus attack, anyone? They were surely indoctrinated by that point, and it's possible Udina was as well. It seems the Reapers wanted to avoid a direct assault on the Citadel (probably to avoid the risk of destroying it as mentioned above), but must have deemed it necessary after they found it's the final piece of the Crucible.
** Which doesn't make the situation any better, because they ''were'' able to move it without harming it. If that hadn't happened, we could have assumed that the Reapers felt it might be too costly. But after they just waltz in and take the thing, it only makes their earlier precautions seem like overcautiousness.
*** By the time they "waltz in and take the thing", they have thoroughly exhausted galactic defenses. The Reapers spend the entirety of [=ME3=] pulling a Divide and Conquer war; keeping the various races separated by forcing them to focus on defending their own worlds. If they'd attacked the Citadel at the start, the combined forces of all the races of the galaxy would have come together to defend it. Instead, by the time they attack the Citadel, the turians are exhausted from the war on Palaven, the Alliance is busy trying to not get exterminated on Earth, the asari homeworld is destroyed, the geth and quarians have weakened each other with their pointless war, Citadel Security's been put through the ringer by Cerberus, etc. etc. And whoever isn't wiped out is busy halfway across the galaxy building the Crucible. The galaxy at that point is weak enough that there's nobody left to put up a fight when they stroll in and seize the Citadel.
*** That's base speculation. For one thing, before the game even starts, we know that every species was too busy defending its own territory to help do anything else. It isn't until ''you'' show up and personally solve their problems that they even have a fleet to spare (or, in the case of the quarians/geth, have a fleet at all). By the time the Reapers actually show up to take the Citadel, they're not pushing against a ''weakened'' galaxy--because the galaxy was at its weakest before Shepard began gathering allies. The point where the Reapers take the Citadel is ''specifically'' to ''protect it'' from the forces Shepard had just gathered.
**** Only if you assume that nobody has been dying in the wars that have been waged between Reapers and everyone else in the time that Shepard's been gathering allies. It's made pretty clear several times that people are throwing more and more support behind the Crucible because as the war wages on, everyone's dying, all the defensive forces people have are being wiped out, and what started as a silly "You want me to throw my forces at your plan when I have my defense to think about?" is instead rapidly becoming the only hope anyone has left. Getting allies for the Crucible was difficult because as far as anyone else was concerned, it was just a human project to defend Earth, and they had much larger priorities to think about (namely, saving their own worlds) to care about what they perceived as Shepard's selfish plan to ensure the survival of his own planet at the cost of everyone else. If the Reapers had hit the Citadel instead, every race has a stake in that and would have thrown their immediate support into defending it.
**** And again, that is a severe violation of ShowDontTell. Furthermore, that has nothing to do with how the Reapers come in and take the Citadel earlier. ''Show'' us that the Citadel is being constantly defended. Show us that the other races are willing to drop whatever they're supposedly doing in order to come to the Citadel's aide. When the Citadel goes dark during the Cerberus attack, only Shepard, who ''happened'' to be there, did anything about it. If the Citadel was being so rigorously and staunchly defended, where were the council races' reinforcements? How come the Salarian councilor comes to ''you'' instead of the fleets you're speculating were ready to come to their aide? Even if we assume that they were waiting for a full-on attack rather than an attack from within, Cerberus didn't even put up a pretense that things were working normally. In RealLife, if NORAD went out of commission for even a few minutes, the entire US military would effectively lose its mind. We've actually almost gone to nuclear war several times in the past because of this. And lastly, even if we assume people have been suffering heavy casualties or whatever throughout the war, there's no reason why none of those fleets still wouldn't be defending the Citadel to their dying breath. That's where their seat of government was, and we know for a ''FACT'' from the first game that if the Citadel fell, the Reapers would control the relay network and everyone would be screwed. So, with all of that in mind, no--that plot point still fails.
**** You missed the point. I never said that there ARE huge fleets defending the Citadel. I said that there WOULD BE huge fleets coming to the rescue of the Citadel as soon as word hit the extranet that the Reapers were bombarding the Citadel and killing everyone. It would stir up a hornet's nest that would bring the fury of the galaxy to bear against them. One guaranteed way to unite a divided people is to threaten something that all of those people love, and in this case, that is the Citadel. This changed as the war dragged on, because there wasn't much left to defend with. The Asari councilor even says as much when she talks to Shepard after Thessia falls; that the Crucible is their last hope. When Shepard tells her that the Crucible can't work without the information Cerberus stole, she loses hope and starts talking about "continuity of civilization".
**** As for the Cerberus attack earlier, that was rather explicitly an assassination attempt, not a conquest. Assassinating the Council is one thing; successfully conquering and then holding and defending the Citadel against a united fleet is another thing entirely. The Reapers are only really capable of precision strikes like that through indoctrinated agents, such as Cerberus. An assassination attempt by terrorists does not merit pulling the fleet away from their respective warzones; it's what Citadel Security and agents like the Spectres exist for. An armada of Reapers showing up through the Widow Relay and attacking the Citadel is on a completely different threat scale than Cerberus.
**** Finally, as to the point of shutting down the Relay System, that also gets back to ShowDontTell; as it is, we've never actually seen this. We've only been told this is something they can do; at no point in the history of the series has the Reapers' ability to disable the Relays ever actually been used as a plot point in modern galactic civilization. As we do not know the full extent of what the Protheans did when they sabotaged the Citadel, we don't know how much of the Citadel's Reaper functionality is operational, or how long it would take to bring such functionality online. Supporting this point is the fact that, as many have decried, when the Reapers DID take control of the Citadel, their vaunted ability to disable the the Relays was still never implemented; the Crucible and the invading fleets came through just fine. People have argued back and forth about WHY the Reapers didn't shut down the Relays, when the real question is whether or not they even COULD. They could before the Prothean sabotage, but for the modern conflict, we've certainly never seen it.
I didn’t miss it. I specifically said that the claim is shot to pieces when the Citadel goes dark and NOBODY comes to its rescue. As I said, it’s ShowDontTell: if we’re supposed to buy that a large number of fleets are on “standby” to come running if the Citadel is in trouble, why are YOU the first person alerted and the only one who shows up to help when there’s even a HINT of trouble at the Citadel. As I mentioned before, if NORAD or the Pentagon went dark in real life, the US military would mobilize every available unit to figure out what the hell happened, and WE’RE not even at war. The argument of “it was assassination, not outright war” is BS. It was a SIEGE; even if assassination was the goal, they still CAPTURED the Citadel. Again, ShowDontTell. What you're saying is speculation based on out-of-context rationalization. But this is a BIG plot element because it was the entire FOCUS of the first game. It needed to be addressed directly, not hand-waved or speculated. As for the “we don’t know how much of the Citadel is Reaper-operational” theory, that is still a crappy explanation. It renders the entire plot of [=ME1=] moot (as it destroys the tension and purpose of Sovereign’s attack) and it’s once more something that should be SHOWN.
**** Again, I never said anything about a large number of fleets being on "standby". There are no such standby fleets. There are, however, many fleets engaged in combat with Reapers that could be pulled away to defend the Citadel if the Reapers had focused their attack there instead of spreading out their forces to engage everyone simultaneously. Best case scenario, they would succeed and take the Citadel, and the martyrdom of the Citadel would be the rallying cry that unites the entire galaxy in a single move. The original plan of taking the Citadel as the first move of the war only works because it's a surprise attack; without the ability to blitzkrieg the galaxy during the chaos caused by the loss of the leadership, taking the Citadel means nothing. Without that, there is no gain in conquering the Citadel except for a Relay-disabling ability that has been PROVEN not to function properly.
**** Not everything needs to be shown. Some things can be assumed, and the Citadel is one of those, because that point was '''NOT''' the focus of the first game; the Citadel's ability to disable the Relays has nothing whatsoever to do with the first game at all. The only time it was ever relevant is in how the Reapers conquered the old cycles, and that method was closed to them as a result of the first game. The focus of the first game was the Citadel Relay's ability to bring the Reapers out of dark space and into Citadel space for a surprise ambush that kicks off the war by destroying the leadership. Preventing them from popping a surprise war on an unprepared galaxy, wiping out the Council, and following through with the immediate extermination of everyone else was the central focus of the first game. The only reason the war in [=ME3=] is anything less than a one-sided curbstomp is because the Reapers were delayed, and because technology like the Thanix Cannon that would not exist without the reverse-engineering of Sovereign is now available. Had Sovereign succeeded in opening the Citadel Relay, rocks would fall, everyone would die, and [=ME2=] and 3 never would have happened. I do not see how the fact that they never take advantage of the "disable the Relays" functionality we've only heard mention of here and there in any way invalidates the fact that if Sovereign succeeded, the war would be over before it began.
**** Those are called "standby fleets". A fleet that could be pulled away from somewhere else to come to the Citadel's aid ''are'' standby fleets. Let's not be semantic here. And this assumption that destroying the Citadel would be a "rallying cry" is speculation, again. You don't know what would happen anymore than any other fan. For all we know, destroying the Citadel could affect morale. And finally, where in the series is it stated that the Relay control doesn't work? Who said it? When is it said?
**** And yes, it NEEDS to be shown. Because the Conduit was the '''main MacGuffin''' of the first game. The entire point to Sovereign's plot was to get Saren in the Citadel to keep it open long enough for Sovereign to open it and call the Reapers through dark space. Then, we're explicitly told that the Reapers would cut off the leadership of galactic civilization ''and'' shut down the relay network. The last two things are ''still'' very powerful tools at this stage in the war, surprise attack or not. Claiming that shutting down the relays wouldn't be effective without the ambush is like saying destroying supply lines wouldn't matter in RealLife conflict. And again, the ''scariest'' thing about the Citadel is that it '''isolated entire star clusters from each other'''. Cutting off the head of governement is brutal yes, but the Reapers then had the ability to isolate and destroy each cluster one by one at their leisure, since only they could use the Relays. Nowhere does it state in the narrative that this was disabled, and even if it was, that makes stopping Sovereign somewhat less meaningful.
**** And nowhere in the narrative is it ever suggested that the Relay control still functions, either. You keep throwing ShowDontTell around, but we've only ever been told that the Citadel can do that. When have we been explicitly shown that the Citadel still possesses this functionality? Even when the Reapers controlled the Citadel, the Relays worked just fine. If the Citadel truly possesses the power to disable the Relays, why didn't they? Because we don't know the full extent of the Prothean sabotage, anything and everything that we have been told the Citadel ''should'' be able to do should not be assumed to be something it ''can'' do if we never see it for ourselves.
**** No, but we were told that was the Reapers' goal. That's part of what they used to defeat the old cycle. So, we know it happened--therefore, if something changed, you have to demonstrate that it changed, not speculate it. Claiming, "But they never said that X did/didn't happen" is the creed of FanWank theory.
**** We know the Citadel still possesses that functionality because ''both Sovereign and Shepard used it.'' When Shepard talks to Joker after Saren's death, Joker says that Shepard needs to open the relays before the Alliance fleet can come in. It seems odd that this is never addressed afterwards. Sure, you can fan wank it away by saying the Council somehow changed that later, but nothing ever says they did. It's unlikely that Vigil's data file got rid of it, as Vigil says it only gives ''temporary'' control over the Citadel. It's more likely the writers ignored this plot point because it was inconvenient. Not only might it allow the Reapers to stop the use of the Crucible, it also opens up the possibility of the Council races finding some way of locking the ''Reapers'' out of the network. The fact that this is nowhere ever even mentioned, even as a failed strategy like those discussed in the "Desperate Measures" codex entry, makes it seem like the writers, again, just kinda decided to ignore that whole thing.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Collectors in Reaper forces]]
Now this is admittedly a very minor quibble, but I might as well ask. I was looking through the Codex (specifically, the "Miracle at Palaven" entry for the Reaper War section) when I found this sentence. "The Reapers did not understand the seriousness of the threat at first--those that detected the landing crafts sent husks and Collector swarms to intercept them, but little more." If the Reapers still have the Collectors and/or their resources at their disposal, then how come Shepard never comes across them? Or any {{Non Player Character}}s, for that matter. Yes, I am aware that the Reapers use those Oculus things as fighters, but I don't think that's what they were talking about.
* It's a big war. It stands to reason that Shepard simply never found them. They canonically still are in the Reaper forces, so we'll probably get a DLC with them.
** You wiped out the vast majority of them at the Collector Base. They are probably being concentrated in areas where they might be the most use, and as Shepard demonstrated, that's not against him/her.
* "Collector swarms" refers to the artificial insect things that the Collectors used to paralyze people in colonies for abduction. Even if the Collectors are all gone, it makes sense for the Reapers to still have the template for the swarms ready at hand, and they make a very useful tool for breaking resistance.
*** Those are "Seeker Swarms", not Collector swarms. This troper figured the Turians killed all of the Collectors with their badassery while defending Palaven.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Reaper Strength]]
In Mass Effect 1, it took two whole fleets to destroy a single Reaper, and even then, it took outside intervention (destruction of Saren's Sovereign-possessed husk) to make it vulnerable. That same Reaper also had weapons in each of its tentacles. Yet in Mass Effect 3, the Reapers seemed to be much weaker. For one, they only had one laser, mounted on their undersides. For another, they are visibly taking damage and exploding during the final battle. Is the Worf Effect in play here, or was Sovereign simply unusually powerful for a Reaper?
* I believe that one, yes, Sovereign was an abnormally strong Reaper, but two, there are a lot more ships being brought to bear in Mass Effect 3.
* Also, keep in mind that weapons experienced some revolutionary advances after analyzing Nazara/Sovereign's corpse. Thanix cannons and all that.
* The original battle scene is flat-out wrong. Bioware confirmed that the animators making that cutscene were not in active communication with the writers and portrayed Sovereign as simply being too powerful.
** While it was the result of poor communication, there is nothing to indicate that the original scene is non-canonical. It can be easily explained by the fact that no dreadnoughts besides Destiny Ascension that was surprised pants down took part in the Citadel's battle, as well as the fact that Thanix cannons adapted from the Reaper tech have been widely adapted to large ships in the intervening years.
* Sovereign is a Harbinger-level capital Reaper; the Reapers you're talking about are the relatively small Reaper Destroyers. Also, yes, Sovereign was very strong even for a Reaper; it's explicitly stated that three dreadnoughts equipped with futuristic reverse engineered geth and Reaper weaponry are able to kill one capital reaper.
* Quite a few of the assets you find are research and intel relating to structural weaknesses in the reapers; way to bypass their defenses and counter their offense. This is info the fleets fighting Sovereign would have no way of knowing, where as Sovereign likely knew the full capabilities of all the ships mustered against it. Knowledge is power.
* Something that holds up with the idea of Sovereign being unusually strong is his position in the Reaper fleet, too. Being a solo act, he was probably designed to be particularly fast and tough. Or maybe they chose him for his position because he happened to be created during a cycle that was especially replete in resources and compatability. Either way, you would want a sneaky ship or a strong ship for his job, and since Sovereign happily monologues about himself the first time he and Shepard talk, it's pretty obvious what direction they went in.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Dead Reapers(some ending spoilers)]]
Why don't the Reapers take better care to collect their dead? We know of at least two that were just left where they lay(the derelict reaper and the leviathan of dis), and given how old those two are, it's obvious that reapers have been getting killed during the harvests for a while. Thing is, these aren't just troops or war assets; these are living museum pieces. The whole point of harvesting is preserving species in reaper form; these reapers may no longer be awake, but they're still active in some form, and represent the continuity of species extinct for tens/hundreds of millions of years; don't the reapers place any value on that?
* I think the Reapers are suffering from a severe case of BelievingTheirOwnLies.
* Or they think "Meh, maybe that species wasn't worth it after all."
* They may have simply failed to locate them. The Reapers aren't perfect and the galaxy is big.
* To quote [[http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Harbinger_%28Collector%29/Battle_Quotes the main man]]: "LEAVE THE DEAD WHERE THEY FALL."
* Bear in mind that a dead Reaper is still a powerful weapon, capable of indoctrinating those who stray near it. One of the reasons why the Batarians fall so easily is because a dead Reaper indoctrinated several officials who went on to sabotage their infrastructure.
* My guess: the talk of "preservation" is either just PR or purely symbolic (like a plaque or other monument). Unless I missed something, a Reaper is no more "x species" than a leather jacket is a cow; Reapers are machines made of the liquified bodies of the dead, not the dead beings/culture themselves, and they know it, giving only symbolic value for preservation.
* In the "Synthesis" ending, it says the Reapers are using the knowledge of the species they were made from to help rebuild. Therefore the Reapers truly are, on some level, a preservation of that civilization. They are simply incapable of disobeying their PrimeDirective: to perpetuate the cycle and harvest organic civilizations.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Reaper Reproduction]]
How many reapers do the reapers make from a single harvested species? The games seem to imply one species= one reaper, but this seems horribly inefficient to me. Now, my estimates could be wrong, but based on sheer biomass, 11billion humans should be more than enough to make multiple capitol ships. Also, assuming it is one species, one reaper, the reapers should ultimately lose any war of attrition; maybe not in a single cycle or even a dozen, but sooner or later their numbers should dwindle. If it's one for one, then in this cycle they're only getting one(possibly two, we don't know what the battarians are being made into) capitol ship/s and at most, twelve destroyers. That seems a fair bit shy of the casualties they've taken this time around.
* We don't have hard numbers on how many organics it takes to produce a single Reaper, or even if they only produce one Reaper per species. Saying that they only produce one Reaper per species is baseless.
* Also remember that this cycle is not typical. The previous cycle managed to sabotage the Citadel to prevent the Reapers from using it to divide and conquer. They may only have lost a handful of capital ships in all the previous wars.
* Perhaps they are making a lot of dreadnaughts each cycle, but are holding most of their number back. After all, had millions of Reapers appeared, there could have been a galaxy scale suicide from sheer hopelessness, and that would have been counterproductive. Or perhaps they are using most of the biomass for other projects... I wrote a small [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8032864/1/Perfection one-shot]] about that.
* The average human masses less than 100Kg. So you're only talking about a billion tons. Squeeze the water out, much, much less. And the high gravity fields created by mass effect technology allow the production of hyper-dense armours - maybe even Neutronium. Spread that out over a several-kilometer-long Reaper, and you probably won't have much left.
[[folder: Discrepancies in Prothean physiology (Major spoilers)]]
Mass Effect 1 established a rather surreal image of the Protheans on Ilos by showing statues of them as spindly, long-limbed humanoids with tentacle faces. Mass Effect 2 continued this in their codex entry with a husk-like, but otherwise identical, Prothean. The Collectors [[spoiler:were established as being mutated beyond recognition as Protheans]]. Mass Effect 3's codex page retains the husk-prothean image, but [[spoiler:Javik's appearance is immediately recognizable as being inspired by Collector anatomy]]. In short, [[spoiler:if the Collectors are so drastically mutated from baseline Protheans, why do they look virtually physically identical?]]
** First of all, there's no real evidence that the tentacle-faced statues were supposed to be Protheans of Javik's species. They could have been anything. They could have even been one of the "lesser" species incorporated into the empire. Second, the Collectors only resemble the Protheans in the most extremely superficial ways. Going by Javik's appearance, the original Protheans did not have chitnous skin, glowing eyes, no mouths, armor plating and ''insect wings''. If a human were covered din armor, grew insect wings, had glowing eyes and no mouths, that would be an example of "drastic mutation".
*** This is supported by statements made by Javik that the ruins of Ilos are not Prothean at all. He mentions that the ruins on Ilos were from a previous civilization, the Inusannon, and that the Protheans built on top of the ruins of that previous civilization.
** I think the tentacle aliens were maybe the leaders of the Prothean empire, and the Javikans (it's as good a name as any) were the soldiers. It would therefore be natural for the Reapers to use them as the template for the collectors, as they are more physically powerful. And/Or all the tentacle aliens were used to make a Reaper.
*** Javik does mention the Protheans building on the ruins of older races. It's possible that the statues belonged to an earlier cycle, and historians just got it wrong.
**** In one of his conversations Javik outright states that the Protheans built over the previous civilization on Illos.
**** Though he also makes clear, in the very same conversation, that "Prothean" referred to numerous species, rather than one.
** That doesn't reconcile the fact that the creatures in the Beacon visions that were slaughtered by the Reapers and turned into Collectors were the tentacle-bearded humanoids, though.
*** The beacon could have just been trying to tell whoever found it to go to Ilos.
** What makes it even more confusing is the art books depict protheans with tentacle faces also.
*** The new Protean appearance is a retcon, based on the appearance of the Collectors who most likely became repurposed Protheans only after their appearance had been set in stone. The tentacle-face was scrapped because it would have required completely new motion-capture work and animation to get the strange physique to work correctly; having those long, pseudo-tentacular limbs climbing ladder for example would have required more work than the character was worth.
*** WordOfGod states that the tentacle-protheans were actually Javik's race's predecessors; they were essentially the "protheans" to the Protheans. (I can't find the link, not now)
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Why did the Reapers wait to attack the Citadel?]]
They couldn't get a vanguard in to bring the whole fleet down at once, but Vigil told us the core of their strategy in his time was capturing the citadel and locking down the whole Mass Relay network so that every system was isolated and they had access to the Empire's full records of every planet and species. I can't think of any reason they didn't even attempt it until the off-screen attack at the end of the game. Well, except that it would have ''worked'' and Shepard's mission would have failed before it began.
* Because it wouldn't have worked. The Citadel has the ability to close its arms, making access impossible. It's unlikely that the Reapers would want to risk destroying it, seeing as it houses their boss (which they may or may not know) and the key to the next successful invasion (which they definitely do). It may even be that it is literally indestructible. Plus, attacking the Citadel would have instantly rallied every council race under one banner, since they're fully aware of the Citadel's strategic importance.
Admittedly, there is a single problem with that theory: Later, the Reapers seemed able to get into the Citadel without problems. I would guess that there was another attack from inside the Citadel, perhaps by sleeper agents, perhaps by TIM, that gave the Reapers some control over the Citadel.
* Why would they want to attack the Citadel? Everybody and their dog is fleeing to that place from the invasion -- a place that was in no way hidden, that they know better than anyone. It's a perfect set-up: destroy the civilizations, let the refugees flee in one place where they can be easily mopped out in the end, instead of scattering all over the galaxy into tiny enclaves. Three guesses which is more efficient solution in terms of completing the harvest in least time with least energy spent.
** Because in the first game it was established that they can shut down the entire mass relay network from the citadel, which prevents the races of the galaxy from gathering enough forces to present a legitimate threat and traps them in whatever cluster they happened to in at the time. In other words, they could have easily averted the entire game and effortlessly won the war in one strike. At the end-game they take it so easily that it happens off-screen and is over by the time word of the attack gets out. They still don't close the relays, but this may be to bring all the fleets into one doomed battle (even with them all together they can't win without the Crucible) or a final test by the Catalyst.
*** The difference is that in previous cycles nobody knew the Reaper's were coming, so taking the Citadel allowed them to plunge the galaxy into chaos. This time around Shepard found out about them and put a stop to them, so they don't have that advantage anymore. If they shut down the relays the local forces there would know what was going on and could just mine the entrance to the relays, or kill themselves to stop the Reaper's using them to make more Reapers, or any other scenarios that would inconvience them. They don't shut off the Mass Relay network because leaving it open gives the organics hope that they can win, allowing the Reaper's indoctrinated agents to deal with them and get them into a position that suits the Reaper's purpose.
** All the ideas above likely have some bearing on the decision not to attack the Citadel. Remember, the final assault was after the the Alliance might have recovered a way of taking control of their husks, which understandably seems to have worried them. There's also the fact that they've just wiped out the homeworld of the last major species, meaning their plan and take out the last remaining major centre of government makes sense at this point.
* Technically, the Reapers did try to capture the Citadel early on. Cerberus attack, anyone? They were surely indoctrinated by that point, and it's possible Udina was as well. It seems the Reapers wanted to avoid a direct assault on the Citadel (probably to avoid the risk of destroying it as mentioned above), but must have deemed it necessary after they found it's the final piece of the Crucible.
** Which doesn't make the situation any better, because they ''were'' able to move it without harming it. If that hadn't happened, we could have assumed that the Reapers felt it might be too costly. But after they just waltz in and take the thing, it only makes their earlier precautions seem like overcautiousness.
*** By the time they "waltz in and take the thing", they have thoroughly exhausted galactic defenses. The Reapers spend the entirety of [=ME3=] pulling a Divide and Conquer war; keeping the various races separated by forcing them to focus on defending their own worlds. If they'd attacked the Citadel at the start, the combined forces of all the races of the galaxy would have come together to defend it. Instead, by the time they attack the Citadel, the turians are exhausted from the war on Palaven, the Alliance is busy trying to not get exterminated on Earth, the asari homeworld is destroyed, the geth and quarians have weakened each other with their pointless war, Citadel Security's been put through the ringer by Cerberus, etc. etc. And whoever isn't wiped out is busy halfway across the galaxy building the Crucible. The galaxy at that point is weak enough that there's nobody left to put up a fight when they stroll in and seize the Citadel.
*** That's base speculation. For one thing, before the game even starts, we know that every species was too busy defending its own territory to help do anything else. It isn't until ''you'' show up and personally solve their problems that they even have a fleet to spare (or, in the case of the quarians/geth, have a fleet at all). By the time the Reapers actually show up to take the Citadel, they're not pushing against a ''weakened'' galaxy--because the galaxy was at its weakest before Shepard began gathering allies. The point where the Reapers take the Citadel is ''specifically'' to ''protect it'' from the forces Shepard had just gathered.
**** Only if you assume that nobody has been dying in the wars that have been waged between Reapers and everyone else in the time that Shepard's been gathering allies. It's made pretty clear several times that people are throwing more and more support behind the Crucible because as the war wages on, everyone's dying, all the defensive forces people have are being wiped out, and what started as a silly "You want me to throw my forces at your plan when I have my defense to think about?" is instead rapidly becoming the only hope anyone has left. Getting allies for the Crucible was difficult because as far as anyone else was concerned, it was just a human project to defend Earth, and they had much larger priorities to think about (namely, saving their own worlds) to care about what they perceived as Shepard's selfish plan to ensure the survival of his own planet at the cost of everyone else. If the Reapers had hit the Citadel instead, every race has a stake in that and would have thrown their immediate support into defending it.
**** And again, that is a severe violation of ShowDontTell. Furthermore, that has nothing to do with how the Reapers come in and take the Citadel earlier. ''Show'' us that the Citadel is being constantly defended. Show us that the other races are willing to drop whatever they're supposedly doing in order to come to the Citadel's aide. When the Citadel goes dark during the Cerberus attack, only Shepard, who ''happened'' to be there, did anything about it. If the Citadel was being so rigorously and staunchly defended, where were the council races' reinforcements? How come the Salarian councilor comes to ''you'' instead of the fleets you're speculating were ready to come to their aide? Even if we assume that they were waiting for a full-on attack rather than an attack from within, Cerberus didn't even put up a pretense that things were working normally. In RealLife, if NORAD went out of commission for even a few minutes, the entire US military would effectively lose its mind. We've actually almost gone to nuclear war several times in the past because of this. And lastly, even if we assume people have been suffering heavy casualties or whatever throughout the war, there's no reason why none of those fleets still wouldn't be defending the Citadel to their dying breath. That's where their seat of government was, and we know for a ''FACT'' from the first game that if the Citadel fell, the Reapers would control the relay network and everyone would be screwed. So, with all of that in mind, no--that plot point still fails.
**** You missed the point. I never said that there ARE huge fleets defending the Citadel. I said that there WOULD BE huge fleets coming to the rescue of the Citadel as soon as word hit the extranet that the Reapers were bombarding the Citadel and killing everyone. It would stir up a hornet's nest that would bring the fury of the galaxy to bear against them. One guaranteed way to unite a divided people is to threaten something that all of those people love, and in this case, that is the Citadel. This changed as the war dragged on, because there wasn't much left to defend with. The Asari councilor even says as much when she talks to Shepard after Thessia falls; that the Crucible is their last hope. When Shepard tells her that the Crucible can't work without the information Cerberus stole, she loses hope and starts talking about "continuity of civilization".
**** As for the Cerberus attack earlier, that was rather explicitly an assassination attempt, not a conquest. Assassinating the Council is one thing; successfully conquering and then holding and defending the Citadel against a united fleet is another thing entirely. The Reapers are only really capable of precision strikes like that through indoctrinated agents, such as Cerberus. An assassination attempt by terrorists does not merit pulling the fleet away from their respective warzones; it's what Citadel Security and agents like the Spectres exist for. An armada of Reapers showing up through the Widow Relay and attacking the Citadel is on a completely different threat scale than Cerberus.
**** Finally, as to the point of shutting down the Relay System, that also gets back to ShowDontTell; as it is, we've never actually seen this. We've only been told this is something they can do; at no point in the history of the series has the Reapers' ability to disable the Relays ever actually been used as a plot point in modern galactic civilization. As we do not know the full extent of what the Protheans did when they sabotaged the Citadel, we don't know how much of the Citadel's Reaper functionality is operational, or how long it would take to bring such functionality online. Supporting this point is the fact that, as many have decried, when the Reapers DID take control of the Citadel, their vaunted ability to disable the the Relays was still never implemented; the Crucible and the invading fleets came through just fine. People have argued back and forth about WHY the Reapers didn't shut down the Relays, when the real question is whether or not they even COULD. They could before the Prothean sabotage, but for the modern conflict, we've certainly never seen it.
I didn’t miss it. I specifically said that the claim is shot to pieces when the Citadel goes dark and NOBODY comes to its rescue. As I said, it’s ShowDontTell: if we’re supposed to buy that a large number of fleets are on “standby” to come running if the Citadel is in trouble, why are YOU the first person alerted and the only one who shows up to help when there’s even a HINT of trouble at the Citadel. As I mentioned before, if NORAD or the Pentagon went dark in real life, the US military would mobilize every available unit to figure out what the hell happened, and WE’RE not even at war. The argument of “it was assassination, not outright war” is BS. It was a SIEGE; even if assassination was the goal, they still CAPTURED the Citadel. Again, ShowDontTell. What you're saying is speculation based on out-of-context rationalization. But this is a BIG plot element because it was the entire FOCUS of the first game. It needed to be addressed directly, not hand-waved or speculated. As for the “we don’t know how much of the Citadel is Reaper-operational” theory, that is still a crappy explanation. It renders the entire plot of [=ME1=] moot (as it destroys the tension and purpose of Sovereign’s attack) and it’s once more something that should be SHOWN.
**** Again, I never said anything about a large number of fleets being on "standby". There are no such standby fleets. There are, however, many fleets engaged in combat with Reapers that could be pulled away to defend the Citadel if the Reapers had focused their attack there instead of spreading out their forces to engage everyone simultaneously. Best case scenario, they would succeed and take the Citadel, and the martyrdom of the Citadel would be the rallying cry that unites the entire galaxy in a single move. The original plan of taking the Citadel as the first move of the war only works because it's a surprise attack; without the ability to blitzkrieg the galaxy during the chaos caused by the loss of the leadership, taking the Citadel means nothing. Without that, there is no gain in conquering the Citadel except for a Relay-disabling ability that has been PROVEN not to function properly.
**** Not everything needs to be shown. Some things can be assumed, and the Citadel is one of those, because that point was '''NOT''' the focus of the first game; the Citadel's ability to disable the Relays has nothing whatsoever to do with the first game at all. The only time it was ever relevant is in how the Reapers conquered the old cycles, and that method was closed to them as a result of the first game. The focus of the first game was the Citadel Relay's ability to bring the Reapers out of dark space and into Citadel space for a surprise ambush that kicks off the war by destroying the leadership. Preventing them from popping a surprise war on an unprepared galaxy, wiping out the Council, and following through with the immediate extermination of everyone else was the central focus of the first game. The only reason the war in [=ME3=] is anything less than a one-sided curbstomp is because the Reapers were delayed, and because technology like the Thanix Cannon that would not exist without the reverse-engineering of Sovereign is now available. Had Sovereign succeeded in opening the Citadel Relay, rocks would fall, everyone would die, and [=ME2=] and 3 never would have happened. I do not see how the fact that they never take advantage of the "disable the Relays" functionality we've only heard mention of here and there in any way invalidates the fact that if Sovereign succeeded, the war would be over before it began.
**** Those are called "standby fleets". A fleet that could be pulled away from somewhere else to come to the Citadel's aid ''are'' standby fleets. Let's not be semantic here. And this assumption that destroying the Citadel would be a "rallying cry" is speculation, again. You don't know what would happen anymore than any other fan. For all we know, destroying the Citadel could affect morale. And finally, where in the series is it stated that the Relay control doesn't work? Who said it? When is it said?
**** And yes, it NEEDS to be shown. Because the Conduit was the '''main MacGuffin''' of the first game. The entire point to Sovereign's plot was to get Saren in the Citadel to keep it open long enough for Sovereign to open it and call the Reapers through dark space. Then, we're explicitly told that the Reapers would cut off the leadership of galactic civilization ''and'' shut down the relay network. The last two things are ''still'' very powerful tools at this stage in the war, surprise attack or not. Claiming that shutting down the relays wouldn't be effective without the ambush is like saying destroying supply lines wouldn't matter in RealLife conflict. And again, the ''scariest'' thing about the Citadel is that it '''isolated entire star clusters from each other'''. Cutting off the head of governement is brutal yes, but the Reapers then had the ability to isolate and destroy each cluster one by one at their leisure, since only they could use the Relays. Nowhere does it state in the narrative that this was disabled, and even if it was, that makes stopping Sovereign somewhat less meaningful.
**** And nowhere in the narrative is it ever suggested that the Relay control still functions, either. You keep throwing ShowDontTell around, but we've only ever been told that the Citadel can do that. When have we been explicitly shown that the Citadel still possesses this functionality? Even when the Reapers controlled the Citadel, the Relays worked just fine. If the Citadel truly possesses the power to disable the Relays, why didn't they? Because we don't know the full extent of the Prothean sabotage, anything and everything that we have been told the Citadel ''should'' be able to do should not be assumed to be something it ''can'' do if we never see it for ourselves.
**** No, but we were told that was the Reapers' goal. That's part of what they used to defeat the old cycle. So, we know it happened--therefore, if something changed, you have to demonstrate that it changed, not speculate it. Claiming, "But they never said that X did/didn't happen" is the creed of FanWank theory.
**** We know the Citadel still possesses that functionality because ''both Sovereign and Shepard used it.'' When Shepard talks to Joker after Saren's death, Joker says that Shepard needs to open the relays before the Alliance fleet can come in. It seems odd that this is never addressed afterwards. Sure, you can fan wank it away by saying the Council somehow changed that later, but nothing ever says they did. It's unlikely that Vigil's data file got rid of it, as Vigil says it only gives ''temporary'' control over the Citadel. It's more likely the writers ignored this plot point because it was inconvenient. Not only might it allow the Reapers to stop the use of the Crucible, it also opens up the possibility of the Council races finding some way of locking the ''Reapers'' out of the network. The fact that this is nowhere ever even mentioned, even as a failed strategy like those discussed in the "Desperate Measures" codex entry, makes it seem like the writers, again, just kinda decided to ignore that whole thing.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Collectors in Reaper forces]]
Now this is admittedly a very minor quibble, but I might as well ask. I was looking through the Codex (specifically, the "Miracle at Palaven" entry for the Reaper War section) when I found this sentence. "The Reapers did not understand the seriousness of the threat at first--those that detected the landing crafts sent husks and Collector swarms to intercept them, but little more." If the Reapers still have the Collectors and/or their resources at their disposal, then how come Shepard never comes across them? Or any {{Non Player Character}}s, for that matter. Yes, I am aware that the Reapers use those Oculus things as fighters, but I don't think that's what they were talking about.
* It's a big war. It stands to reason that Shepard simply never found them. They canonically still are in the Reaper forces, so we'll probably get a DLC with them.
** You wiped out the vast majority of them at the Collector Base. They are probably being concentrated in areas where they might be the most use, and as Shepard demonstrated, that's not against him/her.
* "Collector swarms" refers to the artificial insect things that the Collectors used to paralyze people in colonies for abduction. Even if the Collectors are all gone, it makes sense for the Reapers to still have the template for the swarms ready at hand, and they make a very useful tool for breaking resistance.
*** Those are "Seeker Swarms", not Collector swarms. This troper figured the Turians killed all of the Collectors with their badassery while defending Palaven.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Reaper Strength]]
In Mass Effect 1, it took two whole fleets to destroy a single Reaper, and even then, it took outside intervention (destruction of Saren's Sovereign-possessed husk) to make it vulnerable. That same Reaper also had weapons in each of its tentacles. Yet in Mass Effect 3, the Reapers seemed to be much weaker. For one, they only had one laser, mounted on their undersides. For another, they are visibly taking damage and exploding during the final battle. Is the Worf Effect in play here, or was Sovereign simply unusually powerful for a Reaper?
* I believe that one, yes, Sovereign was an abnormally strong Reaper, but two, there are a lot more ships being brought to bear in Mass Effect 3.
* Also, keep in mind that weapons experienced some revolutionary advances after analyzing Nazara/Sovereign's corpse. Thanix cannons and all that.
* The original battle scene is flat-out wrong. Bioware confirmed that the animators making that cutscene were not in active communication with the writers and portrayed Sovereign as simply being too powerful.
** While it was the result of poor communication, there is nothing to indicate that the original scene is non-canonical. It can be easily explained by the fact that no dreadnoughts besides Destiny Ascension that was surprised pants down took part in the Citadel's battle, as well as the fact that Thanix cannons adapted from the Reaper tech have been widely adapted to large ships in the intervening years.
* Sovereign is a Harbinger-level capital Reaper; the Reapers you're talking about are the relatively small Reaper Destroyers. Also, yes, Sovereign was very strong even for a Reaper; it's explicitly stated that three dreadnoughts equipped with futuristic reverse engineered geth and Reaper weaponry are able to kill one capital reaper.
* Quite a few of the assets you find are research and intel relating to structural weaknesses in the reapers; way to bypass their defenses and counter their offense. This is info the fleets fighting Sovereign would have no way of knowing, where as Sovereign likely knew the full capabilities of all the ships mustered against it. Knowledge is power.
* Something that holds up with the idea of Sovereign being unusually strong is his position in the Reaper fleet, too. Being a solo act, he was probably designed to be particularly fast and tough. Or maybe they chose him for his position because he happened to be created during a cycle that was especially replete in resources and compatability. Either way, you would want a sneaky ship or a strong ship for his job, and since Sovereign happily monologues about himself the first time he and Shepard talk, it's pretty obvious what direction they went in.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Dead Reapers(some ending spoilers)]]
Why don't the Reapers take better care to collect their dead? We know of at least two that were just left where they lay(the derelict reaper and the leviathan of dis), and given how old those two are, it's obvious that reapers have been getting killed during the harvests for a while. Thing is, these aren't just troops or war assets; these are living museum pieces. The whole point of harvesting is preserving species in reaper form; these reapers may no longer be awake, but they're still active in some form, and represent the continuity of species extinct for tens/hundreds of millions of years; don't the reapers place any value on that?
* I think the Reapers are suffering from a severe case of BelievingTheirOwnLies.
* Or they think "Meh, maybe that species wasn't worth it after all."
* They may have simply failed to locate them. The Reapers aren't perfect and the galaxy is big.
* To quote [[http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Harbinger_%28Collector%29/Battle_Quotes the main man]]: "LEAVE THE DEAD WHERE THEY FALL."
* Bear in mind that a dead Reaper is still a powerful weapon, capable of indoctrinating those who stray near it. One of the reasons why the Batarians fall so easily is because a dead Reaper indoctrinated several officials who went on to sabotage their infrastructure.
* My guess: the talk of "preservation" is either just PR or purely symbolic (like a plaque or other monument). Unless I missed something, a Reaper is no more "x species" than a leather jacket is a cow; Reapers are machines made of the liquified bodies of the dead, not the dead beings/culture themselves, and they know it, giving only symbolic value for preservation.
* In the "Synthesis" ending, it says the Reapers are using the knowledge of the species they were made from to help rebuild. Therefore the Reapers truly are, on some level, a preservation of that civilization. They are simply incapable of disobeying their PrimeDirective: to perpetuate the cycle and harvest organic civilizations.
[[/folder]]
[[folder: Reaper Reproduction]]
How many reapers do the reapers make from a single harvested species? The games seem to imply one species= one reaper, but this seems horribly inefficient to me. Now, my estimates could be wrong, but based on sheer biomass, 11billion humans should be more than enough to make multiple capitol ships. Also, assuming it is one species, one reaper, the reapers should ultimately lose any war of attrition; maybe not in a single cycle or even a dozen, but sooner or later their numbers should dwindle. If it's one for one, then in this cycle they're only getting one(possibly two, we don't know what the battarians are being made into) capitol ship/s and at most, twelve destroyers. That seems a fair bit shy of the casualties they've taken this time around.
* We don't have hard numbers on how many organics it takes to produce a single Reaper, or even if they only produce one Reaper per species. Saying that they only produce one Reaper per species is baseless.
* Also remember that this cycle is not typical. The previous cycle managed to sabotage the Citadel to prevent the Reapers from using it to divide and conquer. They may only have lost a handful of capital ships in all the previous wars.
* Perhaps they are making a lot of dreadnaughts each cycle, but are holding most of their number back. After all, had millions of Reapers appeared, there could have been a galaxy scale suicide from sheer hopelessness, and that would have been counterproductive. Or perhaps they are using most of the biomass for other projects... I wrote a small [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8032864/1/Perfection one-shot]] about that.
* The average human masses less than 100Kg. So you're only talking about a billion tons. Squeeze the water out, much, much less. And the high gravity fields created by mass effect technology allow the production of hyper-dense armours - maybe even Neutronium. Spread that out over a several-kilometer-long Reaper, and you probably won't have much left.
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** On Mars, the Reapers weren't trying to hide; you could look out the window and ''see'' them. On Rannoch, the Reaper in question was hiding under an entire Reapertech military base.
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** On Mars, the Reapers weren't trying to hide; you could look out the window and ''see'' them. On Rannoch, the Reaper in question was hiding under an entire Reapertech military base.base.
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The Normandy is equipped with IFF device, in the Mars mission it is shown that EDI is capable of "detecting Reaper presence". Then why is it that no one is aware that a Reaper is present on Ranoch? There are a lot more questions about IFF, like how the Salarian are able to equip their dreadnought with IFF but human can't (considering it is on the Normandy), but I just like to know how Normady couldn't detect Reaper presence on Rannoch.
* The Rannoch Destroyer could have been in some kind of "silent mode" to keep it from being detected until Shepard and co. got close enough to tag it with the targeting laser. Also, there were geth jamming towers all over the area that could have made detecting it from orbit more difficult.
* Reaper IFF does not allow one to detect Reapers. It lets one masquerade as one to defeat the Omega-4 Relay. Also, the Reaper was deep underground and not active, whereas the ones over Mars were moving and putting off massive emissions that could be easily detected. Its the difference between using a thermal scope to spot a moving vehicle through its hot engine and using it to try to find a vehicle whose engine is not active and still cold.
** So, a Reaper can become inactive yet still be able to send signal to control the whole Geth armada?
*** A truck can shut off its engine while still being able to send radio transmissions.
*** The Derelict Reaper in the 2nd game could indoctrinate AND turn humans into husks despite being dead. So why not?
**** The Derelict Reaper wasn't dead, quite so much as it was unconscious. The core was still perfectly operational and much of its functionality was still in operation. The inactive Reaper on Rannoch is probably a similar example; just because the systems that comprise its consciousness aren't fully online doesn't mean that the entire Reaper is shut down.
** On Mars, the Reapers weren't trying to hide; you could look out the window and ''see'' them. On Rannoch, the Reaper in question was hiding under an entire Reapertech military base.
* The Rannoch Destroyer could have been in some kind of "silent mode" to keep it from being detected until Shepard and co. got close enough to tag it with the targeting laser. Also, there were geth jamming towers all over the area that could have made detecting it from orbit more difficult.
* Reaper IFF does not allow one to detect Reapers. It lets one masquerade as one to defeat the Omega-4 Relay. Also, the Reaper was deep underground and not active, whereas the ones over Mars were moving and putting off massive emissions that could be easily detected. Its the difference between using a thermal scope to spot a moving vehicle through its hot engine and using it to try to find a vehicle whose engine is not active and still cold.
** So, a Reaper can become inactive yet still be able to send signal to control the whole Geth armada?
*** A truck can shut off its engine while still being able to send radio transmissions.
*** The Derelict Reaper in the 2nd game could indoctrinate AND turn humans into husks despite being dead. So why not?
**** The Derelict Reaper wasn't dead, quite so much as it was unconscious. The core was still perfectly operational and much of its functionality was still in operation. The inactive Reaper on Rannoch is probably a similar example; just because the systems that comprise its consciousness aren't fully online doesn't mean that the entire Reaper is shut down.
** On Mars, the Reapers weren't trying to hide; you could look out the window and ''see'' them. On Rannoch, the Reaper in question was hiding under an entire Reapertech military base.
