Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

It probably should be a bigger deal than sending the Normandy to investigate in 2. But even if they did take it as such, they still might also want to work more subtly, through their espionage forces, rather than declare open war. Which would risk a panic, and salarians want their wars won before they start, etc. Know your enemy before you strike. Have the equivalent of the genophage in your pocket before you even begin this time.

But then that's not what they were doing either, so all the speculation becomes moot.

Edited by Unsung on Aug 1st 2021 at 10:23:06 AM

There were efforts to eradicate the Geth presence in Council space after Mass Effect 1... But going beyond the Veil and attacking the Geth in their core territories is basically suicide as far as the Council is concerned. It's a complete mystery what's beyond there, it would be basically a throw of the dice whether invading Rannoch would result in victory or defeat. Especially considering the possibility of the Geth having another Sovereign.

It would be difficult to convince the galaxy at large that you need to risk millions of lives to fight the Geth instead of just reinforcing defenses.

I mean that the issue though

Sitting around and letting them build another Sovereign or 4 is a bad idea

its especially jarring with how much the Sit on our asses decisions conflict with the narratives backstory.

cause the Narrative is gonna love to showcase the Asari's Top dog mentality and do anything to maintain it nature when it wants to show the Asari aren't as above it all

or

The Turian's amoral pragmatic win the war no matter what even before it starts

or

and the Salarian's compulsive nature to create things they shouldn't

Yet The only reason the Geth remain as much a player is cause Narratively ME 2 doesn't want to change much it just wants to reset Shepard's clout rating to zero

I mean any real recon would reveal the Geth are severely punching above their weight class... I mean the Quarian's whose budget can be described at best as Dollar bin discount, manage to so thoroughly beat the Geth with basic breakthrough.

Like The Quarian's come up with a Flashbang that neutered the Geth's ability to fight back

Give the Salarians a year with the Geth tech the Quarians have and you'd probably get full scale EMP AI Killer "nukes" and thats if they don't already have one...

Your framing of the Geth as weak is an absurd misreading of Canon.

The Geth had centuries to build up, they had a massive Dyson sphere that far eclipsed anything constructed by Council races and they had a super-dreadnought that singlehandedly tied down the Quarian fleet.

The Geth were not weak, not in the slightest. Nor for that matter were the Quarians, they had a massive fleet that had dreadnought tier vessels. And despite that, the only reason the Quarians were able to fight the Geth was because they launched a surprise attack that destroyed the aforementioned Dyson Sphere that contained multitudes of Geth programs. The Council had no idea of any such weakness existed and there was no certainty that a war with the Geth would offer the same opportunity to hurt Geth capabilities so decisively.

Could the rest of the Galaxy beat the Geth if they ganged up on them? Probably, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be costly. From the perspective of the Council starting a horrendously destructive and expensive Galactic conflict when there was no reason to believe that the Geth were coming for them would've been a terrible idea. And they would've been right, the Geth were around for centuries and they didn't launch any attack. There was no reason to believe that the attack on the Citadel wasn't an aberration that only existed because of Saren's charisma, which is more or less the truth. Remove Saren and the Geth no longer become a threat that justifies a galactic war against them.

Very well put The Geth are extremely advanced. Even without the Reapers, I wager the Galaxy would have a hard time putting them down.

Also, my GOD, this random dialogue on Ilium is sooooo freaking repetitive. And you can barely walk 2 inches without triggering another one.

I don't mind the Council not quite believing Shepard in ME 1. Fine, smaller time scale, not a whole time of investigation, and it's plot logical to have them as they are; they think they *are* doing something by parking their big ass fleet in prep thinking no one is stupid enough to just ram them and no fleet could survive... except Sovreign is a Reaper and there are backdoor agents sabotaging the Citadel.

Had they sent the fleets to the Traverse after Saren, who knows how badly the Citadel could have gotten fucked.

I have problems with them being dumb after that because there's far more evidence now. The only evidence the narrative brings up is the "dream", Saren-Benezia conversation, and Vigil. I don't understand how, rationally speaking, that's it.

By the end of the game, we have a dead Reaper floating at the Citadel which was able to integrate with Citadel systems in an unprecedented manner, we have former employees, slaves, and agents of the enemy who are willing to testify what happened like Shiala or Rana or anyone the fuck else. Not only do we have one dead Reaper, there are at least two more out there we know of; the Reaper from ME 2 and the Leviathan of Dis. Explicitly known quantities in the lore. Hell, we even have Kirahe since the Council themselves sent Shepard to go save his ass "Ah, yes, the agent we found important for you to answer the call to assistance of. Thanks for saving him. What? He also says Saren has a "Reaper". Bah. Both of you must be fools!".

How can there be THIS MUCH TECH in the setting and just... nothing??? Especially when... boy does this game just love expositing to us via data pads or videos of people talking or... other things that would constitute as "evidence".

If I could rewrite it, the council believes Shepard. They send Shepard out to investigate the Reapers and the Geth. But... the investigation goes dead. Geth are all that are found and just nothing comes up. The general feeling starts shifting to that Sovereign was a failsafe that then failed so the Reapers are trapped in Dark Space, no way back any time soon, and maybe we're in the clear. We'll study the tech from Sovreign safely, but... war seems over.

Only Shepard keeps insisting the Reapers are coming. After two years of insistence and finding nothing, Shepard seems... kinda like he just will see Reapers anywhere. Which is not a totally illogical leap from where ME 1 leads into ME 2 and then the beginning time skip.

Even with ME 2's conflict being "Collectors", they aren't inherently on the outset tied to Reapers. It would be easy enough to isolate Shepard by saying "It's a new Galaxy threat. But why are you trying to make everything about the Reapers?" Especially when, again, the Reaper stuff probably went dead post-Sovereign. The threat is validated and not ignored, but they have more logical reasoning to disconnect from the Reapers.

Which can then become an accomplishing moment when Shepard finally gets concrete evidence between Reapers and Collectors (and Protheans) and finally tying that together. The Council can still dismiss them a bit; they're still with Cerberus for ME 2, but there's at least promise of "I can do something with this after I solve the Collector problem and gtfo from Cerberus". Which, say we have to keep Arrival, Shepard now looks like a war vet gone terrorist who REALLY can't put the gun down and he blew up a fucking system in the process.

That creates a far more logical arc and more understandable motives; The Council acknowledge Reapers and Indoctrination, but there's seemingly no further step from that if the conflict is dealt with and Shepard's insistint actions kinda look *actually* unhinged from the outside.

And "escalating things"? Really? The Geth tried to assassinate not just the president but all of the East Coast in a single move. It's already escalated. They're utterly stupid to not wage war on the geth and a move that I really don't think it that suicidal. I don't want to undervalue the Geth but... even in ME 3, they are deleted by the Migrant Fleet. Not without heavy losses, but a pure military power attacking them...? Nah, they bye-bye. Their strongest asset on a larger scale is no one cares enough to deal with them if they've fucked off and don't interact with anyone.

As for Collectors; one thing always bugged me in ME 2. Love ME 2 but they got confusingly dumb. Introduction: They're a mysterious race no one has never had contact with and occasionally "collect" things at random and kinda just this mythical oddity. Only for Vorcha to clearly announce they were told by collectors to release a plague on a major space station. Or a prison warden announce that "Hey, the collectors want me to sell you to them". Like... are they a known quantity or not??? How the FUCK did these conversations go down? Is there a Collector Deal Maker who negotiates terms and agreements???

ME 2 shoe-horns Collectors into a lot more conflicts than make sense. The plague should have just... been a conflict. Blood Pack wanted territory and took a really extreme agent and it got out of hand. The Warden knows that even the dirtiest of Shepards has a lot of criminal enemies and maybe some rich prisoner paid for Shepard to be thrown in with them to get revenge or some shit?

Collectors being behind everything shrinks and is reductive to this massive galaxy narrative, and does not expand it.

Edited by InkDagger on Aug 1st 2021 at 4:15:36 AM

Found my favourite take on the indoctrination ending theory, plus a way better alternate ending than what we actually got.

And here are some armour colour schemes that I'm unreasonably proud of. Still haven't decided on which one to wear for the Suicide Mission.

The Geth are significantly more advanced than the Council races and have vast power far beyond any individual race (they have real time galactic-telescopes as later discovered).

It's just that the Quarians are ridiculously optimized to fight robots. Its why both races are huge advantages against the Reapers.

Aren't the plague and Okeer's dealings with them about the only times the Collectors are behind things outside of the main plot missions? The plague is a bit contrived, that I'll grant you, but the more common complaint I generally hear is that the Collectors are too *un*involved in ME 2, that they don't show up enough to be the main villains/because they don't show up that much, they might as well have been cut. Either of which is kind of fair.

Edited by Unsung on Aug 1st 2021 at 6:30:24 AM

Yeah, I agree that's fair.

The Collectors always felt more like a plot device than an actual enemy with agency. Which is kind of fitting considering what they actually are, but yeah.

They were definitely just put in as a new enemy to fight and to kill Shepard at the beginning (I'm one of the people who thinks that plot point was unnecessary and pointless). Their existence is definitely a retcon as well since logically they would've appeared in the first game if they were conceptualized before the second game.

You could sort of say the same about the batarians before Bring Down the Sky, or the drell, or, say, female turians/krogan/salarians before the third game. I think it's good to show there are more aliens in Council space than we know, that all the worldbuilding isn't locked down in the first game, that the already-wide galaxy is wider still. That said, the Collectors are definitely a retcon, a retool that didn't quite work. Their one real moment is the derelict ship, and that's not really enough.

Could've worked, though. I do like their whole aesthetic and mood, and if they'd just been given a little more to do, a bit more presence instead of just being ooh-mysterious offscreen all the time, they could've gone places. Even just as an extension of the Reapers, you could've sold them better. The idea that the Reapers have in fact been operating almost in the open for all these years, that's plausible and interesting. It's just that nothing is done with it.

Really, the main thing I'd keep from them are their specific husks, and you don't necessarily need the Collectors themselves for that. They could've been created some other way, still controlled by Harbinger or whoever.

Edited by Unsung on Aug 1st 2021 at 8:11:43 AM

I feel ME 2 works well with ME 1 and why ME 3 makes no goddamned sense.

The Reapers are shown, above all things, to be SUBTLE and intelligent.

Without Saren, the Rachni, and the Geth they have other slave races to do their bidding.

I think you're drastically overstating how much hard evidence there is and what qualifies as hard evidence.

Sovereign's remains are the strongest evidence but in pieces all they prove is that the Geth had a freakishly advanced ship. Going from that to "Reapers and everything about them is true" is a hell of a leap. And not one that most governments would make.

As evidence former agents of Saren testifying is frankly worthless, these people have zero credibility and were almost certainly not in a position to know much about Saren's objectives anyway. Sure they can say that he was doing it to bring back the Reapers but that's no more convincing than the recording that was already dismissed.

As for the Leviathan of Dis and ME 2 Reaper... I'm not sure how they're relevant. The Leviathan of Dis is an urban legend that disappeared, maybe Citadel Intelligence suspects it exists but that's about the level of citing a conspiracy theory and using it as evidence. I don't know how the ME 2 Reaper fits into this, suffice to say they're not going to volunteer themselves into the Citadel's custody.

Finally, Kirahe didn't know anything about a Reaper. All he saw was that Saren had a Krogan cure and had established a breeding facility on Virmire.

Ultimately I don't feel any particular sense of attachment to the Council denying the existence of Reapers and if the devs had wanted to write a different story I doubt it would've been a bad thing. But in the story we actually had there was barely any hard evidence to suggest that the Reapers were real.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 1st 2021 at 7:08:39 AM

Honestly, I'd be inclined to believe Saren was lying too.

Important to note that the Vigil VI die right after you talk to it, so he can't back up your sort. Beyond that there is no evidence that states Soveriegn is a reaper rather than a geth ship.

You have Rana Thanoptis understanding and studying Indoctrination. Or Shiala who explains Indoctrination to Shepard the first time to Shepard and explains Benezia's fall to Saren's non-charismatic influence. Liara, a well credited Prothean scientist, is just... dismissed? Further she explains Reapers to Shepard. Meaning it has to be some degree of a known quantity. Sure, Vigil VI dies... no one can record five mins of footage? Y'know, tech that creates evidence record? You can't... really have indoctrination with out a Reaper to define a doctrine to follow. Ok, so Shepard doesn't think of it in ME 1, two years later during ME 2 with no one believing him he can't record Harbinger on a blind rant? Or *anything* Kensen did in Arrival?

Here's the thing about evidence. Not always does a single piece create a damning conclusion, but multiple pieces weaving a tapestry. Maybe sending mercs to kill Liara is a distraction. But... all three locations with massive forces and firepower from Saren's army?

"Saren is just lying to distract you Shepard!" ...In a voice call to his second in command that no one would have possible access to except Geth who don't care? "He's just sending you on a wild goose chase!" ...To what end? Ok, Saren is lying about Reapers. Let's accept this premise for a second.... what would it actually cause Shepard to deviate from? Saren is still headed to Ilos anyway. Something demonstrable since Noveria and Feros because he's after the Mu relay. If it's a "distraction" why the hell is Saren wasting his resources and second in command on nothing. Saren gains absolutely nothing from these being lies because they don't actually send Shepard anywhere that Saren also isn't involved. Or what is he distracting from exactly? An attack on the Citadel that... Shepard isn't even denying in the first place? "Saren is just persuasive to the Geth population!" ...Something that just... isn't how geth function? Especially in the frame of ME 1? Might as well tell me he convinced Volus that pressure won't affect them out of their suits if they believe hard enough.

Or, ok, Saren's motive is not "The Reapers" and he is... doing what exactly? He attacks Eden Prime... to steal a Prothean Beacon? Why? Just to... piss of a human colony? A beacon which, ha ha, Asari have been hiding a similar version for decades. Ok, he sends his second in command to an ice base where he's funded resurrection of a species to interrogate a resurrected rachni about the location of a specific relay to... why? Or the Thorian??? Or... Saren wants to destroy the council and attack the Citadel... and then what? And why? He's an asshole but he isn't stupid and he was the council's previous agent so they know he's competent. How do any of these objective fulfill goals otherwise?

And, again, the council hired Shepard. They didn't call Vasir. They didn't call Jondum Bau. They didn't call Avitus Rix. Or even Blasto. They unprecedently asked a human to become a Spectre and chose them. But then cherry pick everything they say. They question conclusions endlessly with no real argument except to be contrarian and fail to give alternative interpretations and solutions besides blanket ones such as "He is lying" that have holes big enough for a frigate to fly through. Do you trust your agent or no? Simple question. If not, send someone else. Who is likely to return the same story.

This is hand of the author at some of it's most blatant. The Council acknowledging the Reapers at all changes the status quo to something the writers don't want (nevermind you can still have the same status quo with almost no tweaks) but, instead of actually giving logical reasons for them to not listen to anything their own government agents say, they just... don't listen anyway. Don't need to give a reason.

Or, let's put this in an irl context. A health official shows up to the leader of the country. He presents his findings on a recent health crisis; a pandemic is on the rise! It is a massive threat. There are options, however, to circumvent the crisis. The leader listens. Contemplates. "Your reports are wrong." "Excuse me?" "You have it wrong. The sources are lying to you. This is just a distraction to weaken the country." "Uh... based on what?" "You have no evidence." "...Do you... not trust me to report to you?" "You are my health advisor." "This is the disaster I'm warning you of! Advising you to prevent!" "You're wrong."

We have been screaming for a year on how painfully blindingly stupid this nonsense was from irl officials.

She works for Saren so her testimony is suspect, all her research data is blown up by the nuke, and to top it all off she's already indoctrinated and if is let live until 3 kills several top asari when she is brought in for questioning on Indoctrination. All of which is moot as if she's not killed she escapes and stays out of Citadel space.

She explains this after being absorbed by a strange plant monster that influenced her mind, might as well take the testimony of a cultist whose been on an extended acid trip, easy to dismiss as her mind being affected by the Thorian and buying into Saren's lie.

Imagine for a second if an archaeologist came out tomorrow and said "the nephilim are real and they're coming to kill us all!" She knows the Reapers as an ancient story, that still amounts to "these agent books said there are these scary killer robots, therefore there must actually be killer robots rather than this dude using them to spin a story to get some known killer robots on side."

Nobody did, the only recording equipment we see in the franchise are floating drones things, nothing that goes on someone's armour.

Again, that kind of miniaturized technology doesn't seem to exist in the ME universe. That's not even that hard to believe; every part of combat armour is going to be absolutely optimized so it's as light and as sturdy as can be with minimal inefficient functions or features. Are you really going to want an internal camera if that comes at the cost of navigation or survival based helmet functions?

Devil's advocate; Saren did that all to get/keep leverage over her mother.

Devil's advocate; Saren is using the Reapers as a lie to keep the Geth on board (who are a complete unknown quantity to the council as no council race has ever interacted with the Geth before), so you're arguing that the council should have seen through the lie based on evidence they literally have no way of knowing about. The only thing the council races know about the Geth is what the Quarians told them, which is centuries out of date by ME 1 and not free from the Quarian's biases.

As for the lie in general it's to have people like Shepard grasping at straws and looking at a much larger conspiracy; now Shepard is jumping at shadows looking for giant killer space robots about to launch a galaxy-wide genocide rather than a more mundane explanation. It's easier to buy that Saren is just using an ancient legend to pull together followers the same way tyrants and dictators and cults use old myths or legends to build up their own cult of personality, and has used that to get one rather impressive ship, than it is to believe that there is this absolutely massive force of killer robots who conveniently destroy all traces of themselves, at the ready to destroy all life any second now, and the only evidence happens to be one human who also has a habit of blowing up any supporting evidence.

Couple of devil's advocate reasons: provoke humanity into starting a major war with the Terminus Systems, use the Beacon for prestige purposes to sell his lies, indulge his grudge with humans which he has already been doing on smaller scales for decades.

The Rachni are an absolutely devastating weapon, it makes more sense that he's brought the rachni back to use in his plots. The only two people who knew that he was there to talk to the Queen are killed by or let go by Shepard respectively.

A monster that makes clones that are effective canon fodder, sounds perfect for someone whose already building up his armies anyway.

Destroy the council and seize the citadel and you've pulled off a decapitation strike, seized a fortress and created plenty of anarchy that you can then use to seize more territory to become a full fledged warlord. If you operated under the assumption that this was all for Saren gaining power then yes, that makes perfect sense. You demonstrate your power, you cripple your opposition's leadership, and you demonstrate to your armies and potential allies that you're able to get shit done.

Simplest explanation is that all of the other Spectre's weren't there at the time and would need to be brought in, brought up to speed, and then organise the hunt for Saren, while Shepard already has the motivation, means, skills, and ability to get results that makes them right for the job. You're acting like Shepard was just some random who showed up completely unknown to the council rather than them being a handpicked trained operative who was actively being considered to be a Spectre candidate.

And again, there's no evidence of the Reaper's existing beyond what Saren says and what Shepard says. From the devil's advocate point of view the only bits of evidence Shepard isn't executing or blowing up points to Saren doing a lot of shit that happens to give him a lot of power, and nothing suggesting there is an ancient species of killer robots whose existence completely goes against everything the council races believe to be true about the universe. Shepard gets results which justifies why they don't take them off the case until things blow up at the end of the 2nd act.

That doesn't work because COVID-19 is just the latest strain of a disease that has been documented and scientifically proven for decades. People know diseases exist, they're scientifically proven, it's a known quantity and absolutely simple to prove in a lab that it exists.

A more IRL context would be a SAS operative coming to Parliament and ranting about how they discovered that ancient Human-Angel hybrids of Biblical legend actually do exist, that the Earth has had many more sentient species on it than science has proven, that every set number of years like clockwork the nephilim show up and murder everyone, that all the great ancient wonders of the world were actually built by the nephilim, that the nephilim have the ability to brainwash people that has no comparison, and offers no other evidence rather than their word as they just so happened to have destroyed or killed anyone who could have cooberated their story. You just have to accept that everything you knew is absolutely wrong and take on pure blind faith that hey, half-angel hybrids are a thing with absolutely no way to verify.

Like; there is literally nothing to suggest the Reaper's existed outside barely-discovered myth prior to ME 1. Shepard doesn't get any solid proof that they existed until they actually talk with Sovereign, everything else you learn either third hand or from a source that Saren demonstrably has been fucking around with. Even the Beacon and it's ill-defined vision Shepard got to after Saren had used it.

ME1 literally opens with Shepard, Anderson, and Nilhus reviewing helmet cam footage.

Edited by Primis on Aug 2nd 2021 at 9:41:02 AM

Well there you go. No recordings, because no one important wears a helmet.

That was a really stupid decision by the devs, I believe. Revealing something early, then spending the rest of the franchise hyping it up always results in narrative disappointment.

It would've been so much easier if you cut the part where Tali extracted exposition from the geth and instead merely have Benezia mention the word once, leaving the question of what is a Reaper hanging for the rest of the game until Virmire. Even then, the only answers we get is that a Reaper is some kind of super-AI that's older than the protheans, but why was Saren so desperate to get on their good side isn't answered until the second game when the actual reason for why the Reapers are a threat is finally revealed.

For how to do a gradual reveal of the Big Bad properly, look at Fallout 2: you get a first glimpse of the Enclave in the very first town (a corpse and a vertibird), they're mentioned in passing in the second town (by a slaver trying to tap into their radio frequencies) if you pay attention, you catch another glimpse of them in a random encounter (executing a dissident), a mid-game sidequest lets you find out a bit more about them (they're the local stand-in for the Collectors) but it's not until about three-quarters through the story when you actually get to interact with them for real and not until the endgame when all those pieces finally come together to reveal what they're up to. By comparison, Mass Effect reveals and names the Reapers as the Man Behind the Man right out of the damn prologue and the main character instantly starts hyping them up as the Big Bad despite extremely limited in-universe information about what the Reapers actually do.

Edited by amitakartok on Aug 2nd 2021 at 7:40:03 PM

It seems like if you can summon combat drones out of omni-gel, a camera oughtn't be out of the question. But what do I really know.

The Council's purpose is to be obstructive, politically expedient so that Shepard can show them up. They could've been written in such a way that demanded less suspension of disbelief, but the series never really felt like working that hard. Its interest in its worldbuilding versus its desire to be an action movie were always kind of at odds with each other. Strong moments, strong narrative foundations — good looks and strong bones — weak connective tissue.

Ironically despite my defense of the Council's disbelief, I do have fairly strong disagreements with Mass Effect's themes as a series. There was a very troubling pattern where all civilian authorities were obstructive bureaucrats who weren't willing to "do what had to be done" and prominent military officials were trustworthy and practical.

It had pretty ugly stratocratic vibes.

I don't think that Bioware's writers intentionally meant to write a story that played soft-apologist for military rule but it was there all the same. Probably because Mass Effect always had a strong military sci-fi vibe and that genre has been right-wing for a while.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Aug 2nd 2021 at 10:57:58 AM

Right. The power fantasy offered by post-9/11 action movies is fun (when freed from context) and Mass Effect does often offer a little bit of a counterbalance, but there's only so much it can do without undermining its own premise — and it doesn't always make more than a token effort, a shrug and a wink. So the Unfortunate Implications remain.

But so it goes. Medieval fantasy has its wise, benevolent nobles and theocrats, military sci-fi has its take-no-shit supersoldiers, paranormal romance has its predatory relationships. Fine as guilty pleasures, just so long as you can separate fiction from reality.

Edited by Unsung on Aug 2nd 2021 at 12:12:54 PM