M0tty said:
TopazFusion said:
ME3 SPOILERS FOLLOW
Johnny Wishbone said:
(since the Reapers want to destroy all sentient life)
Not quite true.
If catalyst kid is to be believed, the Reapers want to "preserve" organic life, in the form of new Reapers.
But the kid completely fails to sell us on WHY WE WOULD WANT THAT.
That's not how they mean to preserve organic life. The reapers kill advanced organic life (along with non-reaper synthetics) in order to preserve the concept of organic life. Their belief is that if organic life is left to advance unchecked, it will eventually create synthetic life (such as the geth), which will inevitably go on to kill ALL organic life in the galaxy. The kid doesn't try to sell us on being a reaper because he doesn't care if individuals want to be reapers or not, what the species under threat want doesn't matter. It's not about them, but the existence of organic life as a whole.
You're both right. They preserve individual civilizations as reapers, in order to keep alive the essence of each advanced galactic society. Then they wipe the rest of them off the map to leave room for new civilizations to develop, thus ensuring that synthetic creations do not become powerful enough to kill all organic life for good. So they preserve life both by saving each society as it arises, and on a universal scale by preventing the ultimate destruction of life. That is, in their opinion.
On topic; the three Council Races are just another example of bureaucratic incompetence. They've been in charge long enough that they are primarily concerned with holding on to the power they have, rigidly enforcing their rules and suppressing the things they don't want to hear, hence ignoring Shepard's warnings.
Their solutions to the threats of the rachni and the krogan were extreme, perhaps, but in both cases it was becoming a desperate situation. The rachni were just too dangerous for any of them to withstand, and only the krogan could take the fight to their homeworlds. Once the krogan got a taste of galactic power, they wanted to expand. It was in their very nature; the Council tried to reason with them, but the krogan refused anything less than full capitulation, and so the Krogan Rebellions began.
The krogan, over decades, were unstoppable. With all the weapons and technology the Council had given them, and their incredible birthrate, they were overrunning council space. Fortuitous first contact with the turians slowed the krogan advance, but eventually the weight of krogan numbers would have destroyed the council government. The genophage was literally a last-ditch effort to save themselves from total defeat and either subjugation or extinction. It's hard to argue that it was the wrong thing to do when they were so close to destruction.
All this trouble was kicked off by the reapers when they indoctrinated the rachni queens to attack the rest of the galaxy. So, really, all the council races are guilty of here is reacting to reaper plots.
Humanity holds a unique place in the story; they proved themselves capable and useful immediately after first contact, and they are aggressive in gaining all the influence they can. Remember that the volus have been part of galactic politics for centuries and still aren't a council race; humanity took 30 years. That's an absurdly short time to gain so much influence when you look at the relative age of the council government. Of course the Council is holding us back; otherwise we would have taken over completely already.
Their treatment of the quarians is entirely unfair; they should at least be trying to give the quarians a few worlds to settle on so they can stop being a huge pain in the Council's neck. They really don't like the geth, though, and I think that the asari especially don't see three hundred years of exile as that strict a punishment. To them, three centuries is only about 30 years to us, so I think they want the quarians to really feel the punishment for their mistake.
As for the other races, second-class citizens is way too harsh a term. At worst they are seen as assets to Council politics instead of real groups of people. All that means is that their interests are secondary to the council races', but only in the case of a direct conflict, which rarely happens. The Council government is a cooperative one; even if it gets tense at times, everyone knows that positive relations with the other races is mutually beneficial.
Unless, of course, that race is the batarians. When humanity showed up and the Council gave them special treatment, the batarians threw a fit and severed their own ties with the galactic government. Their predicament is their own fault. They are clearly an adversarial race by nature, and refuse to get along with anyone who doesn't give them everything they want. To be honest, until their government learns to play nice with the other races, they don't belong in council space, and everyone knows it.
Finally, the vorcha are a bit of a special case. They don't fit anywhere in galactic society, they don't offer much or fill a particular niche. They are treated like vermin because they act like vermin because they are are treated like vermin. Really, their predicament is like that of the homeless in the U.S. They are ignored for the most part, put off as often as possible, because there really isn't a good solution to their problems.
Man. I know way too much fake politics. I am such a nerd.
