User blog comment:Garhdo/Why the Reapers attack Earth/@comment-5122129-20120520194115


 * if you have not finished Mass Effect 3 do not read this as it contains massive spoilers...

First of all the reapers did not attack the Citadel first because that would be stupid, the take the citadel first to seperated all other species from one another plan only works if it's a surprise attack. After all the citadel is common ground for most species, that many powerful species would be willing to fight for, and possibly send the majority of their fleets for considering that the entire galactic governant, including their representation lies at the Citadel. So the Reapers would have to be able to take a fully prepared Citadel and whatever fleets protect the citadel within a few hours (which is unlikely as the citadel is prepared and it took several hours to take Earth even by surprise) or risk facing nearly every single fleet in the entire galaxy fighting them together in one place. This would be a whole lot riskier than putting pressure on every species individually and taking them out while all the other species are worried about themselves as this prevents any unity and therefore a chance to stop the Reapers.

Also they attacked Earth first because we were seen as the biggest threat. Sure we didn't have the biggest fleet or the largest empire, but the reapers don't care about that because their fleets will always be bigger. Rather they feared humans because of how unpredictable we are. We are seen as a wild card in the galaxy, rising the ranks of the citadel very quickly, beating the Turians in the first contact war despite being such underdogs,ect. Human nature is to find new and craetive ways to approach a situation. We proved this to the Reapers by Shepard foiling their long trusted plan of taking the citadel first unexpectadly and against all odds. This would be scary to a species like the Reapers who have survived solely on a predictable life style for as long as they have known and think and live solely on logic and predictability. After all this inability to predict humans actions made us the most likely species to find some crazy and unconventional way to defeat the Reapers. Which is exactly what we did.