User blog comment:Mexican215/So who was satisfied with the last battle against the Reapers?/@comment-1786741-20130206052209/@comment-4950455-20130206060010

And that's why I think what Bioware did in ME2 was a mistake. Trying to put a "face" on "faceless" antagonists almost never works well (c.f. the Borg), as it always dilutes the original concept and causes the "face" to take on a disproportionate importance. I was sort of reluctant to admit it, because Harbinger was such an enjoyable villain, but the more I read things like this, the more I think the same happened with it.

Harbinger is not "the big bad". That's either the Reapers as a whole or the Catalyst (if there's even a meaningful difference). By giving Harbinger such a big role in ME2, I think Bioware made it seem disproportionately important to the storyline, in a way that ultimately detracts from the Reapers' mystique.

A lot of what makes the Reapers frightening/cool, at least as far as I'm concerned, is the way in which they just seem to fundamentally unconcerned with the 'younger races' (which is part of the reason why the "benevolent motives" reveal does not sit well with me). Giving them a "face" hurts that.

I think it would have been nice to have more cases of actual interaction with the Reapers, a la Rannoch, but I don't think having Harbinger play the same role it did in ME2 would have really worked - and the fact that so many people apparently expected just that makes me think that said role was itself an error.