Forum:Reaper Forces....seriously?

Like many veterans of the Mass Effect franchise I eagerly awaited the third and supposedly final installment of the series with great anticipation, and understandably high expectations. The saga had breached into new and bold territories, inviting fans to spend countless hours exploring an entire galaxy of mythology and consequence as envisioned by Casey Hudson and the Bioware team. The plot was intricate and detailed while still leaving room to the unknown and no matter how deeply our questions were answered they still kept us shrouded in mystery regarding the ultimate fate of these characters we'd come to love and admire.

I like so many others played the third installment thoroughly, eager to find closure to this immense series and the relationships we'd established within it. And just like so many countless others we found the ultimate conclusion bitterly disappointing if not outright appauling, this among the sea of smaller and yet nonetheless noteable of mistakes made upon Bioware's part. Before I go further, I must reiterate that the final installment to Commander Shepard's story, even before the extended cut DLC, was a masterpiece of beauty and brilliance that achieved so much and cultivated the imaginations of hundreds upon millions across the world. Unfortunately with such high expectations finding faults was inevitable, though most could be overlooked in light of the sheer gorgeousness that was Mass Effect 3.

Among the faults I found, the Reaper forces stood out the most. On the colony of Horizon during Mass Effect 2 we're specifically told that the human converted husks had evolved, so naturally I expected something more than mindless zombies for the third run. The logic being that the husks were mindless due to the Reaper's inability to control so many to the point of anything more than animal intelligence. But now with tens of thousands of Reaper vessels on every world I expected the husks, the most basic infantry of the Reaper armada, to be more than what they ultimately where. It was annoying to see humanity, the core species of the story was reduced to nothing more than brainless drones while the likes of Turians and Asari became such formidable foes.

Another throw back to Mass Effect 2 I fully expected was the return of the 'improved' husk mutations, the Praetorian and scions, which were absent in this final rally when the Reapers where supposed to be throwing every weapon in their arsenal at the galaxy. The newly extended Reaper ground force was by no means any less imaginative, the Cannibals in particular where a favourite of mine truly pushing forward the apparent genocide of the Batarians, along with Harvesters which we had stumbled across briefly in their true organic forms. Other variations I found crude and annoying, while no less imaginative or deadly, the Brutes and Ravagers irked me. The entire point of husks was to take the bodies of thier victims and transform them into cheap, disposable infanty as a crude yet potent form of pyschological warfare. Taking the time to genetically modify each and every Rachni soldier was a stretch, waiting to match up one dead Turian with another dead Krogan was just riddiculous.

So while we know the converted form of a Turian becomes a Maruader, what does a pure Krogan husk become? And then other races where exluded entirely, Vorcha and Quarians, Salarians and others. Why weren't any of those converted? Which leads to another point, think back on your entire experience of Mass Effect 3. Every mission and every side stop, every quest and every war tore landscape. Did you ever see any dragon's teeth? The tools used to create the husks in the first place? No, neither did I. And that's not even getting into the Reaper's themselves, in the climax of Mass Effect 2 we saw hundreds if not thousands of Reapers following Harbinger out of hibernation and sailing towards the galaxy, and no two where identical. What did they stop of at a make over store before launching their mass genocide?

That was a fair old rant, and I feel the need to stress again that I absolutely loved this series and that game in particular was the perfect crescendo to over two hundred hours of game play and downloadable content, of emotional investment and multiplayer mayhem. Final marks for the third installment where 9/10 even before they released the new and improved ending cinematics which pushed the game into immortal levels of brilliance.