User blog comment:Diyartifact/Shepard's adversaries/@comment-1895174-20120408234519/@comment-1895174-20120409161844

@Diyartifact:

If you don't consider the Collectors as different from Harbinger, then you would have to conclude that Saren and the geth are no different from Sovereign. In that case, why is Harbinger the primary antagonist of Mass Effect 2 when you say Saren, not Sovereign, is the primary antagonist of the first game?

I went back and watched some of the cutscenes from ME2 that heavily featured the Collector General, and the game leads you toward believing that the General IS Harbinger rather than being it's puppet. In other words, Saren and the Collector General play similar roles in the first two games (albeit in a very different way), in that the two both seemingly lead a large number of troops when really they are being controlled by a Reaper.

In simplest terms: Sovereign -> Saren -> Geth : Harbinger -> Collector General -> Collectors