Discussion Fridge / MassEffect

Pulled:

• I had a moment of Fridge Brilliance for Mass Effect's plot itself. Initially, he had many of the same misgivings stated on the Just Bugs Me page: Why didn't Saren activate the Citadel Relay while he was there, secretly? Why didn't Sovereign just attack the Citadel in the first place? What was the point behind Saren having to find the Beacons and Ilos? But then, this troper reached the Ilos VI, and through the dialog with it, EVERYTHING. MADE. SENSE. Sovereign's original plan was to get the Keepers to activate the Relay themselves, allowing him to let the Reapers return without ever really lifting a finger. But with the Keepers modified by the Protheans, Sovereign's essentially screwed. Sure, he could've flown in and hooked himself up to the Citadel and done the job manually, but as we see at the end of the game, he would've gotten Curb Stomped pretty badly by the defending fleets and then that'd be the end of the Reapers. So with Saren's help, he formulates a backup plan. Somehow, he knows the Protheans made a miniature Relay that let them get to the Citadel, so he sends Saren off to find it, with the Beacons able to tell him the location (likely by tracing the Beacons back to their point of origin). At the same time, Saren begins gathering allies: the Geth, the Krogan, the Rachni, etc. All of it, all of it, the gathering of allies and the finding of the Conduit, was all just to provide Sovereign with cover and protection long enough for him to activate the Citadel Relay manually. The new plan would've been thus: with the Relay on Ilos secured, Saren teleports onto the Citadel with an army of Geth, Krogan and Rachni, completely overwhelming the defenders and crippling the Citadel's "ground" defenses. Sovereign flies in with the Geth fleet, the Geth carving a path for him through the Citadel fleet and holding off any reinforcements. Saren, in control of the Citadel's Control Center, closes the Citadel's arms, preventing anyone else from approach the station. With the Geth fleet maintaining a perimeter outside and Saren's army preventing anyone still on the Citadel from interfering, Sovereign is given all the time he needs to hook himself up to the Citadel, activate the Relay manually and summon the other Reapers. EFFING. BRILLIANT. -Ghost Who Walks
  • Now take this in conjunction with what we have seen in Mass Effect 2. While Sovereign was doing his thing with Saren and the Geth, since long before the attack on Eden Prime, as Legion reveals, Harbinger was overseeing the operations of the collectors, who were researching the species of the Galaxy in order to determine the best way to exploit them during the Reaper invasion. However, the Collectors had all the systems in place to start making a new Reaper themselves, without direct intervention from their Masters, allowing them to begin building a Reaper within the Galaxy that could be used to make another attempt to open the Citadel Mass Relay. In addition to this, Harbinger makes the Collectors go to ludicrous lengths to kill Shepard and retrieve the body, just to make sure Shepard is properly dead. But that's not all! As shown in the Arrival DLC, the Reapers also had a back door into the Galaxy, the Alpha relay, that they could reach relatively quickly, and this relay, when properly configured, allowed them to quickly travel to far-flung areas of the Galaxy, including the Citadel. They could have used the Alpha relay to send several Reapers to the citadel to attempt what Sovereign himself had tried to do, and with the support of a small fleet of reapers rather than a puny fleet of geth ships, a single Reaper could succeed easily. They had three different, concurrent plans to achieve their objective, and possibly more that we do not know of yet. Dangerously Genre-Savvy does not even begin to cover it! And Shepard somehow screws with all their plans! - Valhar2000
    • Of course, we only have the word of someone who was already long indoctrinated that the reapers would be arriving there. And if the reapers did show up people would have noticed, such as anyone sent to check on the colony. It could be that the Reapers entire plan was to ignite a war between humans and Batarians and pin the blame on Shepard.
      • That would make it a nifty little Xanatos Gambit- if Shepard blows up the relay, s/he'll be sacrificed to ease racial tensions, thus negating a major foe. If s/he fails to blow up the relay, things go as originally planned. Win/Win for the Reapers, I'd say.
    • If you wait until the timer setup for The Project runs out, you get a cutscene that shows the Reapers' arrival and their indoctrination of everybody, which confirms everything that Dr. Kenson tells you about The Arrival.

This extremely long bit is full of first person (not allowed) and reads more like a WMG, and has Thread Mode all over it.

Someone please figure out what, if anything, the fridge part is, and return it to the page?

Regarding multiplayer, the equipment the Batarians bring to the are pretty much all designed in mind with taking down reaper forces. Both classes have Blade Armor, which boosts the wearer's melee attacks, and returns melee damage. Ballistic Blades is better at closer ranges, and has a wide enough spread to hit a lot of nearby targets, especially useful for husks and brutes. Submission Net traps an enemy, doing damge over time (Larger enemies like brutes aren't trapped, just damaged), and gives you time to line up your shots. Sounds useful against a force that likes getting in close. Lastly, we have the Kishock Harpoon Gun. It's weaker scope magnification compared to other sniper rifle would help for closer targets. I'd say the Batarians set up their arsenals specifically with the Reapers in mind, especially after what happened to Khar'Shan.