Mass Effect 3 SPOILER THREAD! - Page 6

Originally Posted by benjamin-benjami

just finished and i thought people were blowing the whole ending thing out of proportion... well until i saw it... the plot holes are huge?? how did my team get back on the normandy, why were they going through a mass relay? how will all the standard people survive with no way to get back home, etc.....

don't really care about not having 20 endings to choose from, how about an ending that makes sense??

also, can someone expound on the reapers a little bit, over the last 5 years it is all running together... so this "kid" created them to kill everyone because eventually everyone will go to war and kill eachother?? so he is killing them ever so often because they might get killed??? also how did they get created (what resources did he have), etc... sorry for the dumb questions on the reapers just hoping someone can clear me up... thanks

The Reapers destroy advanced organic life in order to preserve a fragile balance. The Reapers believe that without the extinction cycles, synthetic intelligence would completely annihilate all organic life. This is because of a natural tendency to chaos; organics will always create synthetics and synthetics will always rebel against them. The Reapers also believe that destroying advanced civilizations is the only way to allow new civilizations to come into existence. The Reapers leave no evidence of their conquest, nor of their existence - only desolate, barren ruins of those who came before.
The trap created by the Reapers was simple. A sentient species would develop an FTL drive, but would still be limited in its speed. By leaving a network of relays capable of instant transport across the galaxy that led to the impressive Citadel, the Reapers ensured that it would become the center of galactic civilization. Further, Sovereign implies that the presence of the mass relays would lead the sentient species down a predetermined route with regards to weapons and armor technology (both of which are based upon element zero technology for the Citadel races). It is probable that this reduces the possibility of organic life discovering alternative, more advanced technology and progressing down a different 'path'; or, as Sovereign explains, "By using it [mass relay technology] your society develops along the paths we desire."

Once the sentient races have established themselves on the Citadel with the aid of the keepers, a lone Reaper vanguard stationed within the galaxy sends a signal to the Citadel, instructing the keepers to activate the station's hidden mass relay. This opens a path between the Citadel and dark space. The Reapers then flood through, killing the leaders of the assembled species before branching out and obliterating all spacefaring life around them.

Because the Reapers first enter the galaxy at the point that they have ensured will be the center of galactic politics, information and finance, they are able to cripple any resistance almost before the Citadel civilizations have any idea that they are under attack. The Citadel also gives them control of the relay network, cutting off star systems from each other and destroying communications.

The Reapers then use their control of the Citadel and its data to begin the most sinister phase of their attack. Records allow them to track down every settled planet and attack them, harvesting their populations or enslaving them through indoctrination.

The extinction events may be part of the Reapers' reproductive cycle, in which all the sentient life in the galaxy is harvested and essentially melted down into techno-organic Reaper shells based on the individual species' physical form, as seen with the Human-Reaper in Mass Effect 2. This is further expanded upon in Mass Effect 3 where it is explained that the Reapers harvest organic civilizations at the height of their power in order to "preserve" the individual species in Reaper form.

Originally Posted by spyder696969

Sorry, but MY Shep is far too bad-ass to simply be taken over at the last minute in the darkest hour with the fate of the galaxy at stake, particularly given the series of events and monumental sacrifices that we were led to believe actually happened.

Originally Posted by darklordjames

Formula - Are you even paying attention to your own explanation? You tell us that the relays didn't explode, then three lines later tell us about the exploding relays crashing the Normandy.

Normandy crashes before Lazarus kicks back in. It didn't happen.

Let's spell this out nice and simple guys. What happened is that you spent an entire game wrangling up the galaxy's military forces and bringing them to one location for extremely efficient anihilation by the Reapers. Meanwhile, you also made sure that the galaxy was occupied dumping all of their available resources in to a mcguffin that the Reapers provided you with, instead of on something useful. There is no other missing two hours of story. We already know the end, but Bioware made the mistake of thinking that their audience was smart enough to follow along.

Shepard left the rest of the galaxy defenseless and ill-prepared. This will now be the quickest Reaper cleansing in history.

Originally Posted by SteveCallas

Shepard gets indoctrinated by the Illusive Man while up in the Citadel, and his indoctrination abilities can't be nearly as potent as those of Harbinger.

Shepard spent time on a reaper in ME2, fought a reaper in close quarters at the end of ME2, spent a lot of time in close proximity to a reaper artifact in ME2 Arrival, and spent time next to three of four reapers in ME3 before having Harbinger land in front of him. That's a lot of exposure. He fought it off as long as he could - crew members noting how stressed he seemed - but when Harbinger's blast knocked him out, that was the opening it needed to enter Shepard's mind.

It's really not a far stretch at all. Why else would Shepard be shown alive in London and not still up in the Citadel at the end of the destruction ending? Did an explosion in the Citadel knock him towards earth, and without any armor, he passed through the atmosphere without burning up and plumitted to earth at several thousands of miles per hour to land safely and come back to life? No. He woke up from Harbinger's blast.

Just think how clever Bioware will be if they can pull this off.

Originally Posted by spyder696969

Nobody has ever mentioned it, but is it possible that ALL of ME 2 and 3 are all in Shepard's mind? That she was never rebuilt by the Illusive Man at all?

Originally Posted by spyder696969


For as much as people bitched, whined, cried, moaned, and threw childish temper tantrums over Shepard dying, this option is 1,000,000 times worse. I'd take a dead, yet strong Shepard that held to her beliefs and died a hero's death over a weak-minded and indoctrinated Shepard anyday.

For as much as people bitched, whined, cried, moaned, and threw childish temper tantrums over Shepard dying, this option is 1,000,000 times worse. I'd take a dead, yet strong Shepard that held to her beliefs and died a hero's death over a weak-minded and indoctrinated Shepard anyday.

Originally Posted by bd2003

Seriously. I hate the idea that there's any ending at all in which she lived.

Originally Posted by spyder696969

Agree 100%. This is ME, not a Disney flick.

Originally Posted by Lord_Zath

I have a feeling that the "ending DLC" that's coming out in June will answer this. We'll just have to wait till then.

FWIW, if BW does go for indoctrination, it's a masterpiece of literature. NOT history or science. The best writing is when the audience doesn't even realize what's happened and is left to interpret everything again. We've looked at this world through Shepard's eyes for three games. To us, we've never lost sight of our goal to defeat the Reapers. Saren and TIM had similar goals (one to join because we couldn't defeat, the other to control). Both of these people became indoctrinated without even knowing it. With Saren, it was easy for us to detect the indoctrination. At what point did TIM become indoctrinated? Both of them realized their indoctrination with our help. So who is there to check us at the end?

Originally Posted by Lord_Zath

I agree with your 2nd paragraph. Gamers aren't the same as readers (usually). We want to know how things ended so we can have closure and move on to the next game. Perhaps you're right - the intentional ambiguity is to keep interest on the game with the plan to sell new content and make $$$.

In reading all the press about the ending (BW execs saying choices matter, not A/B/C, etc...), I'm wondering if EA simply told BW to finish the game and be done with it. There are so many stories to tie up that I am starting to think EA could only tolerate one delay. After that, it was publish the game or lose funding. The ending could very well be something that people kept pushing off to later until it was too late.

Originally Posted by bd2003

Seriously. I hate the idea that there's any ending at all in which she lived.