ME3 End: Do you agree with the Reapers?

[wintercoat]

IF it was true that synthetics and organics could never cooperate...then quite possibly yes. As awful as killing trillions now is, its better then no1 else living ever.

But......its not true. Indeed the geth are FAR more tolerant, forgiving, and willing to cooperate then ANY of the organic races.

But what if you were shown that it has happened before. That organics had made synthetics that tried to wipe out all forms of life, both great and small. What if you were shown that it has happened several times. You have one single data point: the current cycle(two with From Ashes. The Protheans were just turning the tide against the machines when the Reapers appeared). The Reapers claim to have multiple data points stretching back an unknown number of cycles where the pattern has always repeated itself.

This is probably a point where everyone can agree that Bioware screwed up. There should have been much, much more dialog with the Catalyst. This was one area that they shouldn't have cut to it's basic elements. We need this information, otherwise it's just ridiculous "because" logic. Reasons for such drastic actions can't just be boiled down to "because". It leaves the audience confused and irate. It causes the story to seem silly, and when you're going for deep and meaningful, the last thing you want is the audience to not take you seriously.

 

[llew]

Um, no.

Because the "solution" is the most ridiculous idea ever. While it sort of make sense to get rid of advanced lifeforms to protect lower forms of life from being destroyed by the synthetics that the higher forms of life made, just looking at the Geth/Quarian peace situation completely blows the God Child's theory that synthetics will always destroy organics out of the water.

And you are complexity ignoring the fact tat the ONLY reason peace was able to be made between the two races was because of the impending threat of total annihilation by the Reapers.

Had there been no reapers there would have been no sovereign, no Saren going rouge, no Geth attack on Eden prime, no Shepard doing ANYTHING in ME1, no Legion being built to find Shepard, no Shep finding Legion, no bringing together of the two races.

Had the Reapers not shown up the Geth would have remained as they were, behind the Perseus veil suffering from on again off again attacked by vengeful Quarrian's and other organics hateful of AI which very likely could have led to an AI/Organic war, despite the Geth's want for peace.

Do not try to take actions that only resulted because of the existence of the Reapers as proof of what things would be like without them.

It is terribly flawed logic.

Secondly because pace was made does not guarantee that it would last, the prospect for an AI/Organic war are just as likely after peace was made as they were before peace was made.

Nor does the fact peace was made with the Geth mean future synthetic races relationships would turn out the same

question, i know the geth wanted peace and all, but at what point (Legion in ME3 does NOT count to this) did the geth state, or even attempt to state, that they want peace? they just sat behind the veil assuming everything would be well and the quarians would leave them be on the quarian home planet

 

[Fidelias]

Well, I'm pretty sure that "The Catalyst" was lying to Shepard.

I mean, let's look at the facts.

Reapers try to Zerg an unsuspecting Galaxy every 50,000 years.

Reapers use assets like the Collectors, and mercenaries to cause instability and further their goals.

Reapers mind control people.

Reapers have tried to kill Commander Shepard for at least 4 years.

Given all that, "The Catalyst" lying to the person who has foiled it's plans throughout 3 games doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

 

[JediMB]

question, i know the geth wanted peace and all, but at what point (Legion in ME3 does NOT count to this) did the geth state, or even attempt to state, that they want peace? they just sat behind the veil assuming everything would be well and the quarians would leave them be on the quarian home planet

I would say that the Geth's inaction was enough to prove that they desired peace. Hell, the entire period between the Morning War and Sovereign's recruitment of the Heretics was a time of peace between Geth and Quarians, even if the Quarians didn't realize it.

 

[Edward_Bear]

**Spoiler** discussion topic for the antagonist of ME3.

So, knowing now what the Reapers and Catalyst's goals were, do you agree with them? That's it's necessary to wipe out all advanced civilization every 50,000 years?

I don't care for the Reapers myself as their existence seems to be based on a fear, although, still I can understand their mission at least. Without them, who's to say another more powerful organic/inorganic race could take over and/or cause greater problems for everyone in the galaxy?

The way i see it, the Glowing child AI killed of it's own creators. (they're not around anymore, that must have a reason). and being an sentient program, instead of accepting responsibility his, guilt drives him to rationalize his crime away by taking the extreme deterministic view of this. If this is the natural cycle then then he does not have to feel guilty. And then the space kid creates the reapers to "save organics". This leads to the reaper cycle which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

 

[Kahunaburger]

The way i see it, the Glowing child AI killed of it's own creators. (they're not around anymore, that must have a reason). and being an instead of accepting responsibility his guilt drives him to rationalize his crime away by taking the extreme deterministic view of this. If this is the natural cycle then then he does not have to feel guilty. And then the space kid creates the reapers to "save organics". This leads to the reaper cycle which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Congratulations, you are unironically a better writer than the Mass Effect 3 team!

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I could get behind their whole ascension to a higher state, thing, if the higher state in question wasn't a giant machine that eats life across the galaxy. Though, who knows, maybe the galaxy has a sustainable limit, and civilizations must be kept in check some how, lest the destroy all the resources available.

 

[Jfswift]

**Spoiler** discussion topic for the antagonist of ME3.

So, knowing now what the Reapers and Catalyst's goals were, do you agree with them? That's it's necessary to wipe out all advanced civilization every 50,000 years?

I don't care for the Reapers myself as their existence seems to be based on a fear, although, still I can understand their mission at least. Without them, who's to say another more powerful organic/inorganic race could take over and/or cause greater problems for everyone in the galaxy?

The way i see it, the Glowing child AI killed of it's own creators. (they're not around anymore, that must have a reason). and being an instead of accepting responsibility his guilt drives him to rationalize his crime away by taking the extreme deterministic view of this. If this is the natural cycle then then he does not have to feel guilty. And then the space kid creates the reapers to "save organics". This leads to the reaper cycle which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

I was thinking more like some super geth was created (or some other powerful force) and the reapers were created to combat that force. The makers of the catalyst then decided on making sure no society ever had to deal with that kind of menace again by making the hard decision of building more reapers and having them 'harvest' every 50,000 years. If you want a better example think about the game sol feace (shooter I like from sega cd). The robots had become so powerful that they now enslaved all human life in the galaxy and were nearly impossible to overthrow. Luckily the resistance in that world had time to scrap together one fighter and a virus that shut down the opponent computer long enough to launch it. I don't like the reaper solution but presented with a nightmare like in sol-feace I can at least understand their purpose (as much as we're told through game lore anyway).

Your idea could be too though. There really isn't enough to go on about their origins. I'm hoping in the next game they cover that a bit more.

 

[SajuukKhar]

question, i know the geth wanted peace and all, but at what point (Legion in ME3 does NOT count to this) did the geth state, or even attempt to state, that they want peace? they just sat behind the veil assuming everything would be well and the quarians would leave them be on the quarian home planet

In ME2 Legion states that the Geth would have let the Quarrians come back to their homeworld if they felt the Quarrians weren't going to attack them.

Ironically had the Quarrians stopped attacking the geth in attempts to regain their homeworld, they would have regained their homeworld.

 

[GuerrillaClock]

You know, I can buy the Reapers' reasons for wiping out life every 50,000 years. They use organics to make new Reapers, so they don't want all organics wiping out or they too will presumably, eventually, die. They're acting out of self-preservation based on machine logic. Forget all this stuff about whether war is inevitable, empirical data suggests that it is, the Reapers don't care about what 'might' happen, so they activate their 50,000 year failsafe to make sure they can continue. I don't think I 'agree' with them because I'm not a machine but I can understand.

The Reapers probably came to the conclusion that all organics deserved to die when one of them decided to tear down 5 years and hundreds of hours of storytelling with a shitty, nonsensical ending just so they could sell more DLC. If that's their motivation, then sign me up to the Husk club.

But the thing is, that isn't their motive according to ME3's ending. That motive would have at least sufficed. It would have sucked, because we've been hearing all along that the Reapers have motives that are inscrutable to any mere organic, but at least it would have made sense.

Oh, I agree the ending was nonsensical and bullshit. I just don't think the Reapers lacking motivation was the reason for it, rather it was the starchild appearing completely out of nowhere and giving you a meaningless, confusing A, B or C choice when Bioware promised that's not what we'd get. I was willing to buy that the Reapers were evil machines just because, using typical machine logic to kill everything.

Unrelated: For the record, there is no way they thought this through enough to put the indoctrination theory into it, either.

 

[Syzygy23]

You know, I can buy the Reapers' reasons for wiping out life every 50,000 years. They use organics to make new Reapers, so they don't want all organics wiping out or they too will presumably, eventually, die. They're acting out of self-preservation based on machine logic. Forget all this stuff about whether war is inevitable, empirical data suggests that it is, the Reapers don't care about what 'might' happen, so they activate their 50,000 year failsafe to make sure they can continue. I don't think I 'agree' with them because I'm not a machine but I can understand.

The Reapers probably came to the conclusion that all organics deserved to die when one of them decided to tear down 5 years and hundreds of hours of storytelling with a shitty, nonsensical ending just so they could sell more DLC. If that's their motivation, then sign me up to the Husk club.

Reapers don't age though. They don't have to worry about dying. And considering that they have barriers that can shrug off entire volleys of slugs accelerated to relative speeds, they would never have to repair themselves due to micrometeorite damage either.

 

[Grygor]

The way i see it, the Glowing child AI killed of it's own creators. (they're not around anymore, that must have a reason). and being an sentient program, instead of accepting responsibility his, guilt drives him to rationalize his crime away by taking the extreme deterministic view of this. If this is the natural cycle then then he does not have to feel guilty. And then the space kid creates the reapers to "save organics". This leads to the reaper cycle which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

My take, which I hinted at back on page 7, is basically that the reapers are the AIs that rebelled against their creators - the civilization that also built the Citadel and the mass relays; let's call them the precursors - and utterly destroyed them.

Then, in a fit of regret, the reshaped what was left of the precursors into the Keepers, set them to the task of maintaining the precursors' greatest achievement, the Citadel (much like the Geth maintained the Quarian structures on Rannoch after the Morning War), and then fled into dark space.

Several millennia later, another civilization attained space flight, discovered the mass relay network left behind by the precursors, and discovered the Citadel, establishing it as their galactic capitol. Upon learning of strangers walking on a place they now viewed as somehow sacred, the reapers reacted violently, and ultimately annihilated them as well.

Rather than face the realization that they had become complete monsters, the reapers came up with the idea of a "cycle of extinction", wherein they saw themselves as the heroes of the galaxy, protecting organic life as a whole by culling dangerously advanced civilizations and preserving their DNA in the form of new reapers.

The fact that organics didn't agree - for starters, by realizing that there's more to the "essence" of a species than its genetic code, and thus the reapers' "preservation" didn't preserve anything - was seen by the reapers as proof that their ideas were incomprehensible to organic minds, with simply strengthened their belief in the righteousness of their cause.

So then the Crucible was originally a planned expansion of the Citadel by the precursors, to upgrade the mass relay network's capabilities beyond simply allowing high-speed, long-range travel. (Perhaps the reapers saw that this expansion had the capability of destroying them utterly, and that is why they rebelled in the first place...)

And the Catalyst is actually the mass relay network interface AI. It's actually a shackled AI, with very little actual power, but has been around so long and seen the cycle of extinction play out so many times that it has since convinced itself that it controls the reapers and the cycle itself.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Um, no.

Because the "solution" is the most ridiculous idea ever. While it sort of make sense to get rid of advanced lifeforms to protect lower forms of life from being destroyed by the synthetics that the higher forms of life made, just looking at the Geth/Quarian peace situation completely blows the God Child's theory that synthetics will always destroy organics out of the water.

And you are complexity ignoring the fact tat the ONLY reason peace was able to be made between the two races was because of the impending threat of total annihilation by the Reapers.

Had there been no reapers there would have been no sovereign, no Saren going rouge, no Geth attack on Eden prime, no Shepard doing ANYTHING in ME1, no Legion being built to find Shepard, no Shep finding Legion, no bringing together of the two races.

Had the Reapers not shown up the Geth would have remained as they were, behind the Perseus veil suffering from on again off again attacked by vengeful Quarrian's and other organics hateful of AI which very likely could have led to an AI/Organic war, despite the Geth's want for peace.

Do not try to take actions that only resulted because of the existence of the Reapers as proof of what things would be like without them.

It is terribly flawed logic.

Secondly because pace was made does not guarantee that it would last, the prospect for an AI/Organic war are just as likely after peace was made as they were before peace was made.

Nor does the fact peace was made with the Geth mean future synthetic races relationships would turn out the same

The Quarians were winning against the Geth in ME3, entirely through their own research
(Nothing to do with Shepard or the Reapers), before the Reapers interfered.

Which suggests that eventually (Without any of Mass Effect happening) the Quarians would have annihilated the Geth rather than the other way around....

 

[Prof. Monkeypox]

I can see their point, to a limited degree. Better to live forever as an immortal collective than have a brief existence that is ultimately doomed to extinction? Perhaps.

Of course, their motives were somewhat clumsily explained in ME3, so using that as a base only, definitely not.

 

[cdstephens]

If it was to prevent synthetic life in the Milky Way Galaxy from exterminating all organic life in the entire universe or in other galaxies, then yes, it is logical, because by destroying a few civilizations you could be saving lifeforms not only in the galaxy but also in other galaxies, thus the benefit would outweigh the cost. Considering that the Reapers seem to reside outside the Milky Way, perhaps they vanguard many galaxies at the same time.

If it was to prevent synthetic life from destroying organic life in just the Milky Way Galaxy, then it doesn't make sense, because you're destroying the very things you are trying to protect. The only way around this is if instead of simply killing organics, Reapers elevate the organics to a higher state of consciousness (or something).

Unfortunately, since Bioware leaves too many questions and not enough answers, I'm just gonna call bullshit on the entire thing because they didn't give a valid explanation.

 

[Syzygy23]

I can see their point, to a limited degree. Better to live forever as an immortal collective than have a brief existence that is ultimately doomed to extinction? Perhaps.

Of course, their motives were somewhat clumsily explained in ME3, so using that as a base only, definitely not.

Bioware should never have attached any sort of meaning to their motives. The most they should have done is hinted at something, to keep the Reapers mystique and horror.

It's like if Lovecraft had said at the end of his short story "The Call of Cthulhu" that Cthulhu's reason for rising from the deep was to do his Space-Taxes and take a shit before going back to sleep.

 

[DarthSka]

It's basically arguing inevitability. And since inevitability is truly impossible to determine as absolute, I would have to disagree. If in any situation, every possibility is possible, then A-B-C might end up as A-B-D instead of an exact repeat. Sure, organics might create synthetics and destroy themselves, but maybe not. For the Reapers, it's not a "just in case," scenario, but a "it will happen," scenario. The cycle present somewhat proved that it's not absolute. Synthetics were created (geth), rose up and rebelled, but did not seek to destroy organics in the end.

 

[MyFooThurTS]

Sort of, yeah. But, I'd kind of expect that an intelligence of nigh-infinite terabytes would have a moral world-view that might, perhaps, be a little more advanced than, "Chaos bad. Life good." In fact, without instinct, and without motivation programs such as EDI's, I can't imagine why synthetic ideology would amount to anything but nihilism.
The truth of their premise, anyway, would lead me to agree with them - although, there's no reason the Reapers couldn't just join the catalyst with the crucible in their own time and trigger the synthesis in the first couple of weeks.

Ah, well. I've got an essay to write, and I doubt my knowledge of ME trivia will impress the history tutor.

 

[survivor686]

Nope. The idea of wiping out organics, melting em down into paste, creating half-robotic zombies, in order to ensure that organic life will never be destroyed by synthetic life...Is the result of some very bizarre and twisted logic.

Of course if the Reapers had simply insisted that every synthetic have the "Three Laws" or something similar imprint on all synthetics none of this would have happened.

Bear in mind, the Starbrat could have been lying for all we know. He really had no motivation to start telling us the truth and could have been twisting the facts in order to suit his purposes. After all isn't that what Reapers do?