- The Conduit becomes known to Saren like it does to Shepard and the crew: by the visions from the Prothean beacons. Since Saren communicates with Sovereign, it's likely interpreting the vision is much easier for him than it is to the Normandy crew.
- Mass Effect 3 shows Cerberus trying to do that, except that they have at their disposal one elite agent (Kai Leng) and tons of augmented soldiers (I think it's the first time you fight Phantoms in game?) that are indoctrinated to learn to fight. Saren is surrounded by geth, not exactly the best entourage to form a massive mercenary army stealthy enough to take over the Citadel.
- And Mass Effect 2 shows that races eventually do tend to notice when people go missing at random.
- And finally, you should remember that by Reaper standards, Sovereign/Nazara is already late on schedule. He should have activated the Keepers to take control of the Citadel by that point, except the last Prothean scientists modified them to make it impossible for the Reapers to control them. So considering this plus the MASSIVE pride and sense of superiority of Reapers as a whole, it makes complete sense for them to just resort to the semi-brute force method of finding the Conduit, instead of planning a long covert operation that might take years or even decades until they have enough troops to assault the Citadel. After all, Sovereign is just one ship, he can't move at random in the galaxy to abduct mercenaries...and the geth would raise instant suspicion if they started doing the same all over.
- And Mass Effect 2 shows that races eventually do tend to notice when people go missing at random.
And as I recall, explicitly stated that the great majority of people never get to see it from within. So I'm guessing it's under extra security and scrutiny to make sure that, for example, you can't just pose as a tourist and leave behind a time-delayed explosive set to go off during the Council's next audience.
I would also point out that the Reapers, their power levels, and their plans are retcon'd in different ways between ME 1 and ME 3.
ME 1 explicitly says that, if Soverign outright attacked the Citadel, he would be easily destroyed and has never attempted to do so. Ergo, even pre-ME 1 warships could kill a Reaper. Sovreign explicitly needs the Geth and their fleet.
ME 3 upgrades the Reapers to being damn near impossible to kill even with the Reaper-Tech upgrades reverse engineered from Soverign after ME 1 like the Thanix Canon. They are suddenly so powered up that the script repeatedly turns to the camera and goes "We cannot justify a direct war" as a means to justify the Macguffin.
ME 1 has Soverign several thousand years behind schedule getting the Reapers to come, well, reap. We explicitly know he attempted to use the Rachni as well as other attempts in the intervening years. Yet between ME 2 and ME 3; a matter of less than a year, the Reapers just fly to the Milky Way. If they could just fly there in a matter of months, one wonders why they didn't do that thousands of years ago.
There are retcons here and I don't quite blame audience members for being confused.
I really don't see the retcon in Reaper strength from 1 to 3. In 1 it's one Reaper hypothetically attacking the single most defended location in the galaxy. In 3 there are more Reapers than the Milky Way races have capital ships. The strength of the Reaper force in 3 is literally thousands of times higher. What's the retcon?
ME 1: Reapers are strong but not too strong. They must rely on the surprise galactic decapitation and interdiction plan in order to not incur unacceptable losses during the reaping. Sovereign requires a geth fleet to distract the Citadel fleet so he wouldn't get blown up before he can dock with the Citadel.
ME 3: Reapers are literally Cthulhus who laugh at your conventional weapons and require a previously unheard of plot device to defeat, except in flavor text where they can get blown up.
Just because you technically can justify a later plot development on the basis of lack of contradictory evidence in earlier works doesn't mean it's not a retcon. In fact, such scenarios often cause audiences to cry shenanigans.
...I literally said "it's the way they can do a Reaping without incurring unacceptable losses," not "only way they can win". That's not headcanon, that's just the most obvious explanation for a thing, and if you're going to upend that notion in a sequel, you better have an explanation for it beyond "lol just go with it".
Suppose you're watching a fighting show, and one of the characters chooses to raise their shield to block an attack. Obviously that's because the attack posed a threat to them. While it's not explicitly stated that the attack would have killed them if they didn't block, you see how that's a much more reasonable conclusion to draw from the available information than "actually they're pretty strong so they probably could have lived through that attack even if they didn't block"?
How do you know what are "unacceptable losses" to them? Perhaps, given what we know of how they think, and how each one is made of a past civilization, the loss of a single Reaper is unacceptable.
Or maybe they do a decapitation strike just because they can and it makes their job easier. There's no reason to assume it's the only way they can push their losses below the "unacceptable" threshold.
In your analogy, the character could block just to avoid being hurt, even if they wouldn't have been killed.
Regardless, I see zero contradiction between "a single Reaper can be defeated by an entire fleet, at a high cost" and "thousands of Reapers cannot possibly be defeated by conventional means".
Edited by Aetol on Jan 17th 2025 at 10:47:55 AM
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a choreAnd frankly, given that ME 1 makes it very clear that stopping Sovereign only temporarily halted the Reapers, even then it was clear that they would attack even without a decapitation strike.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianThe ME 3 codex makes it clear that the alliance needed a 4 to 1 advantage to destroy the equivalent of a Reaper capital ship (that is 4 capital ships to destroy 1 Reaper of equivalent class). One you're just one Reaper ship heading directly through an entire enemy fleet is a reckless move. When you're apart of an entire invasion armada and aren't outnumbered 4 to 1 it's a different story.
Four dreadnoughts to one Reaper capital ship. I just looked it up, and the turians have 39 dreadnoughts. That would suggest, what, around 26 each for the asari and salarians? And 9 for humanity. The Alliance also have some carriers, which are a loophole to have giant ships that aren't technically dreadnoughts. But we're looking at probably under 100 dreadnoughts total among all the Council species.
If it takes 4 dreadnoughts to take out one Reaper, and there's only 100 dreadnoughts . . . the math doesn't math in organics' favour. There's no getting around how absolutely screwed they are in a straight-up fight.
And it's not like Sovereign was shown as being a pushover. He was tanking sustained fire from an entire fleet of Alliance ships, and wasn't looking to be in any danger. I think the main reason he used the geth fleet was honestly because the Reapers are exceptionally cautious. They don't want to put themselves in any danger that isn't completely necessary.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.There's also the fact that the Reapers alone are a huge threat, but it isn't just the Reapers you have to contend with. Given the strength of the Collectors and those bugs they use to incapacitate people, I don't think the organics would have had a chance in hell in the third game if Shepherd hadn't destroyed most of them by the end of the second game. Even with the collectors destroyed, you still have to contend with all the Reaper forces, including those that have been indoctrinated (like Cerberus). The Protheans didn't have the benefit of stopping Sovereign (so the Reapers immediately attacked the capital, massively weakening the Prothean government) or the benefit of dealing with the indoctrinated forces of the previous cycle, so add that to the Reapers themselves and the indoctrinated forces they'd be creating out of the Protheans, and it's shocking that the Protheans survived as long as they did.
Edited by king15 on Jan 17th 2025 at 2:20:45 PM
It's less that the Protheans resisted for a long time and more that it takes a long-ass time to scour an entire galaxy of advanced life. No matter how overwhelming your advantage is, it's still hundreds of planets you have to systemically bombard to annihilation and thousands of systems you have to scour of all traces of those people to make sure no records are left (and they can't always find every remnant as indicated by the Protean beacons being left here and there and the hidden laboratory on Ilos), not to mention the process of acquiring all that people juice to make new Reapers out of.
Its why the Reapers didn't immediately shitstomp the galaxy in ME 3 when they came in. I mean its better than suddenly claiming the Reapers are "sadistic" or something, an explanation that would have its own issues, frankly.
Are explosions science?The priority targets for the Reapers in ME 3 are pretty obvious in their significance. Earth and Palaven to decapitate the greatest military threats to their invasion (and Harbinger has recognized Shepard as the Reapers' nemesis so Earth's destruction is a personal gut punch as well). Thessia is attacked a little later but the Asari are a bit more decentralized so don't pose as much of a unified threat and Surkesh is basically ignored for the majority of the war because the Salarians aren't much of a military threat (and if anything are almost a detriment to the galaxy's defenses).
Though there are parts that don't make much sense. Such as why it takes them so long to take the Citadel. If they could casually capture it off-screen at the end of the game, they should have been capable of doing so much earlier and really cripple the galaxy's ability to defend itself.
Also, while the Reapers do have a clear advantage, they are not getting handed their victory on a silver platter.
Don't forget how the arrival of the Krogans actually turned the tide for the Battle of Palaven, at least temporarily.
Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% ScandinavianI didn't forget them, they just weren't part of the point about Citadel species. Tuchanka wasn't as high priority as Palaven or Earth for the initial assault anyway. I could have also mentionned the Quarians, who are ignored by the Reapers save for giving a boost to the Geth so they can kill each other.
Edited by Resileafs on Jan 17th 2025 at 11:41:30 AM

YMMV.Mass Effect 1
I deleted this as misuse, Fourth Wall Myopia only applies when audiences neglect they know things in-universe characters can't/don't which doesn't seem the case as written. Can it be re-written to fit, and or anything else this can be moved to? And is this a common complaint maybe Common Knowledge is the better fit if they don't know.
I also see some possible legit Fridge Logic.