--Bitter arron (talk) 22:29, April 22, 2013 (UTC)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the whole plot of ME1 has now stopped making sense after we know what happens in ME3. To be honest ME1 already made less sense after ME2, but I could live with that. Let me explain what I mean:
In ME1 we learn that Sovereign was left behind to tell his fellow Reapers to come out of dark space to annihilate everyone once they reach a certain level of evolution. But to do that he needed the Citadel to send this signal.
Question 1) Why does Sovereign need the Citadel? Answer: How do the Reapers get to the Milky Way? The use the Mass Relays. Why can't Sovereign just use the Mass Relays himself to get back and tell his fellow Reapers? But let's just say he was too lazy and wanted to call them instead.
Question 2) If the Catalyst controls all Reapers, as it says, why all the fuss with Saren and ? Answer: Either just tell Sovereign to tell the other Reapers, or, since ALL Reapers are controlled by the Catalyst, just tell them to come back. But let's just say the Protheans really found a way to outsmart the Catalyst and disable any signals to the Reapers...
Question 3) Since both Sovereign and Catalyst failed and were not able to send a signal to the other Reapers, how did they know it was time to come back? Answer: They found out through the Collectors, since they had control over them for the last 50000 years, in which case what's the point of Sovereign being there. But let's just say they didn't use the Collectors for this and just come back exactly every 50,000 years anyway... (in which case ME1 makes even less sense)
Question 4) If the Catalyst apparently lives on the Citadel already, why the need for Sovereign or Saren to take control of the Citadel? Answer: There is no need for either of them. The Catalyst seems to be able to indoctrinate people by itself, so why not just indoctrinate the whole Citadel? Or even if it can't do that, why not just kill everyone on the Citadel by for example venting the whole atmosphere? The Catalyst obviously lived on the Citadel for thousands or millions of years, it must have control over it.
Thoughts???
- A quick reply from someone who is admittedly not an expert on series cannon.
1. The Citadel is the only Mass Relay linked to where the Reapers are, because they are scared of being found too soon. Without it they need to travel conventionally so in addition to being scared, they are lazy. 2. Sovereign needed a way to regain control of the Citadel because the Protheans reprogrammed the Keepers enough that they flubbed the recall protocol. 3. Harbinger was using the Collectors to harvest random races until he found the The One which would be the ultimate form for the current cycle. Because of this the Reapers knew it was time, but they were waiting for the limousine to arrive to take them to the red carpet instead of having to spend nearly a year walking. 4. The Catalyst is a synthetic. It has a plan and follows it by rote until it hits an unrecoverable fail. Ever write a computer program and realize it did what you told it to do, instead of what you wanted it to do? XD. GRPeng 17:52, March 25, 2012 (UTC)
- Harbingers motives with the Collectors would have made sense if they had stuck with the Dark Energy storyline and not changed it to the technological singularity storyline.--Xaero Dumort 18:06, March 25, 2012 (UTC)
The honest overarching answer is Bioware likes money in order to make money they make arguably great games. The development teams change between games different writers want to explore different tangents, things get forgot or even cut outright, and what you end up with are plot holes and entertaining game play. Here is a big one why does the geth dreadnought have hallways and useable consoles? The geth are software only occupying hardware(bodies, turrets,and ships) in order to acomplish an assigned task ie; kill Shepard to death. A geth body does not need to use consoles to do anything the software would just merge with the collective and imput any commands directly much more efficently. The only reason it has hallways and consoles is so you can infiltrate it shoot your way through and ultimately destroy it as part of the geth master play to suck as hard as possible.
^Actually, the geth still need hallways and elevators for their mobile platforms and the moving of materials. Ladders are still a bit of a stretch though, and I agree with you on the multitude of consoles. --2290Shadow 10:28, April 5, 2012 (UTC)
1: The mass relays don't all connect to every other mass relay. The one through the Citadel was unique, because it lead to where the Reapers were basically in a state of hibernation. As Vigil said, they're vulnerable at this time. Having the return route in the Citadel was done because this was inevitably designed to be the heart of galactic civilization, as Vigil said.
2: Return through conventional means would take a lot of time. The distance between galaxies is enormous. We don't actually know how long it would have taken to return conventionally, only that it was a bit over 2 years before they got back to the edge of the galaxy. They may have been in transit for hundreds of years anyways. The Citadel would have remained the best tactic for making the process of defeating galactic civilization quick.
3. The biggest issue, IMO, was this, which was in ME2. With the Collectors, why WAS Sovereign necessary? Regardless of the outcome of 3, that never made sense. And why didn't Sovereign enlist their aid in retaking the Citadel, since they were much more powerful and more advanced than the Geth? I could see their purpose being to basically gather basic information on genetic material from the current cycle with Harbinger's oversight only occasionally active, but I thought ME2's plot invalidated ME1 more than anything in 3.
4. I was pretty sure that it was because the Catalyst wasn't on. It would have no reason to be active during the thousands of years of waiting. It was off for the same reason Sovereign wasn't active the entirety of the time between the destruction of the Protheans and the current attempt at destroying galactic civilization. They were able to activate him when they retook the Citadel in 3. It isn't stated, but it makes sense. Zero132132 18:15, April 5, 2012 (UTC)
^ I was under the impression the catalyst was always on and aware pulling the strings so to speak. He says as much when you talk to him that is in control of the reapers. He only appears because the crucible is attached and is about to be activated interrupting the current cycle. Which is why he makes some sh*t up on the spot and gives you 3 arbitrary choices that all kind of suck.
The motivations of characters and their actions in the first 2 games conflicting with the Glitterchild conversation 5 min before the end of the third dont matter anymore because BioWare decided that they wanted to retcon the whole series--MrRabbitSir 16:21, April 9, 2012 (UTC).
I think 1. and 2. have been answered well so I won't go into those. With 3. however I think you may have missed some stuff. Harbinger and Sovereign throughout Mass Effects 1 and 2 have continually stated that they 'work in the shadows' and 'have been a constant' for a long time. They are practised at this cycle and have gotten better every time. Sovereign was there because he was their plan for getting quickly through to the civilisations. Sovereign was there because he was the only one who could send the signal to the keepers to activate the mass relay.
The collectors wouldn't even know where to begin to have that capability, they are simply a dead, slave species that are mindless drones, subservient only to the reapers and unable to think for themselves. All they know is the job that they were given, to covertly collect DNA samples of the latest civilisations so as not to draw attention and make the reapers aware of the actions of the universe. Once Shepard destroyed Sovereign, (or humanity if you want to get technical.) They caught the reapers attention and they decided that their next form would be from the DNA of humans. They got the collectors to focus and intensify their efforts, starting to kidnap whole colonies, which in response drew attention to them, which they weren't meant to do, they really only even found them in the first place because of unseen circumstances, (after all they didn't expect or predict that a quarian would be among the colonists.) They were the reapers phantom force, working in silence and subterfuge. The galaxy already knew that the geth were a noticeable threat and they got them involved because they would be useful puppets and as such still keep the collectors out of the focus.
As for the catalyst conundrum (sounds like a party game.) the real concern is that all it can control is the reapers, it can't do anything else. The only reason that the catalyst can talk at all to Shepard is because of the Crucible being plugged in. It shows the catalyst that civilisation can get to it and it takes a personification to speak. It has to defend itself in the only way it can, through deception. Because it's biggest defence hasn't been it's far reaching control of the reapers, but in it's secrecy. It just realised the jig is up and says you can merge with us, you can be assimilated among us or you can destroy us, (he really makes a point of trying to make this sound like the worst idea doesn't he?) and he is out of options. We are left with three options because we've driven the catalyst to these three options. Personally after reading and playing all the stuff that explains how the star child is one lying piece of shit I really do like these endings, it's one last deception from the reaper collective that you have to overcome.--Bitter arron (talk) 22:29, April 22, 2013 (UTC) Bitter_Arron 23:26, April 22, 2013 (UTC).
I think that for the most part, it all adds up. IF anything, ME2 is the random side story that has nothing to do with anything important. As for the catalyst, sovereign said in ME1 "We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution....", that's all we got because ME2 decided not to reveal anything anything new about the reapers as far as their motives/origins are concerned. So it was explained in ME3. That is the nutshell version of what was revealed to us at the end of ME3.
"...organic evolution...", that is defined by continually advancing technology. That is defined by how we try to better the quality of life through technology, through the use of MACHINES. It's all about technology. Something that is one of the biggest things to consider about organic evolution. It's a given, we will advance technologically in an attempt to better our lives. Every time someone refers to the catalyst as "star child" or "god child" or some other moronic name like that, i cringe a little inside. It's like so many people reacted as if the catalyst was NOT a machine. As if it was some random being interfering with life in the galaxy. It's not. Im sorry, but for lack of a better way of putting it, anyone assuming it was some "godchild" was being just plain dumb. It was obviously a machine intelligence. It was created by life that occurred naturally in the galaxy. When it comes to the whole "organic vs. synthetic conflict" it's again, like people are claiming that the catalyst has no stake in that. That life should be able to sort this out on its own. Why are people excluding the creation of the catalyst and the reapers from the sorting process? Life has gone this way on its own. When organic species reach a certain level of technological advancement, it starts to have negative effects on them. One of the steps in organic species technological advancement is the creation of artificial intelligence. This is when things really start to go downhill, for obvious reasons.
It's just funny to me how picky/choosy people are about what they are willing to suspend disbelief about and what they aren't within the same story. Anyone that claims that the crucible is "space magic" but then is completely ok with FTL travel is being ridiculous, or a hypocrite even. What we know in real life about FTL travel(because we have made particles reach that speed) says that once that speed is reached, time actually slows down for whatever is traveling at that speed. So if a life form were to travel at that speed for 10 years, it would only age 5 years as compared to the rest of the galaxy. So if one can suspend their disbelief of that for the sake of the story, why can't they do it for a machine that uses tech from billion year old sentient machines? Probably because they don't know that about FTL speed. Which is an explanation for how many people reacted, but not an excuse. Same thing can be said for any movie about artificial intelligence, time travel, multiple dimentions, etc. By the logic that the the crucible is "space magic", one with that attitude should by definition not like the majority of science fiction. Science FICTION, there is a certain suspension of disbelief that comes with it.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C. Clarke. It was something he abided by when he wrote science fiction, because it's true. The crucible is not space magic, it's just sufficiently more advanced.
If you were to travel back in time 300 years and show someone a TV, they would think it's magic. No matter how much you tried to explain to them as to why it's not magic, they are incapable of understanding because it is based off of something that they have not encountered yet. The same applies here. Even the characters in this story admit that they don't fully understand the citadel which is obvious since they let a docile alien species that they are incapable of communicating with work on it. Both hackett and the catalyst say the crucible is basically just an energy source. It utilizes the citadel and relays to do its thing. The citadel and relays, which were created by billion year old sentient machines that have been controlling the evolution of life in the galaxy for that long. Of course its "beyond our comprehension" because the life of this cycle is merely 50K years old in comparison and bases the majority of its major technology off of something it did not create itself. That it stumbled upon in space(the mass relays).
I think people are just used to having their hand held through the majority of video game stories, being told what to kill and being told they are awesome for doing so in the process. Which is why things like the indoctrination theory arose. Things like that are an attempt to turn this into a typical "good vs evil/hero vs villain" scenario when it is nowhere near that simple. Especially when you consider the scale of this, that it has to do with the very evolution of life in general as we know it, the level of control over said evolution and life that was established about the enemy in the first game, and actually put some thought into the very scenario of creator/created relations, i.e. the organic synthetic conflict. I also think many people don't like the idea that this is just what happens when organics create artificial intelligence because it's not clear cut and basically implies that organic life is somewhat at fault for putting themselves in this situation. When "fault" isn't even the best way to describe it because the conflict is not intentional. It's just a product of technological advancement.
It wasn't done in the best of ways because it required DLC to get the full explanation, but even then all any DLC did was elaborate on what the original ending already told us. Apparently some people needed more. Either way, it adds up and appears to actually consider some real science having to do with what we know about the universe in the process. Look up the drake equation to see what I am talking about when it comes to organics vs. synthetics. This story is one of the few video game stories that didn't devolve to shooting the bad guys to death. God forbid we have a story that requires more than a miniscule amount of thought from the viewer.
Ok Edgecrusher, you're going to have to relax because while you do clearly have arguments, you're coming across as rather butt hurt. You didn't make the games, you didn't write the ending so you certainly have no reason or right to take this as personally as you clearly have. It's fine to have a different view to other people in regards to this game, I do all the time, but it's not fair at all to attack people for their views and treat them like idiots. After all the 'Star Child' is a referential joke to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the 'Star Child' is the most advanced creature that is a melding of organics and technology and is advanced beyond the meaning of anything. And I've never heard anyone call it a 'god child' if they do then you're right they are a moron.
And don't start throwing Arthur C Clarke references into your arguments thinking that it adds weight, that's the lamest trick in the book, reminds me of when Twilight kept including excerpts from Wuthering Heights, come up with your own arguments and strengthen them yourself or go home.
Nobody playing this game expected a black and white 'shoot this and done' ending Crusher, (they wouldn't be fans of the games if they did.) and to suggest that just because we weren't fans of the ending we just wanted a simpler ending that was easier to understand because apparently we're 2 years old and just ate glue, is so presumptuous that it borders on the level of dickhead. We just wanted an ending that didn't come entirely out of nowhere, which is exactly what when the ending came at first without the extended cut or the extra DLC was exactly what it was. It felt like what it probably was, which is rushed. Because it wasn't even really explained, nobody is going to like an ending that immediately changes the way you feel about the game with absolutely no foreshadowing and no context behind it. It doesn't take into account any of your previous actions (which I get on a story level) but it just doesn't work on a gaming level. You have to feel like everything you do affects something in a game like this. At this point in time it just felt like out of left field, high minded, pseudo intellectual bullshit.
Now that a lot more explanation has gone into it I like the ending a whole lot more, although I hate the fact that EA practically made Bioware extend the ending so if you want the whole explanation you have to pay extra for it. That is nothing short of satanical money grubbing and I hope EA dies a painful and lengthy death for that and a whole lot more travesties that that company keeps making us suffer through.
Mass Effect is one of the greatest game series in the world just simply for the fact that it reaches on a completely intellectual level as well as just a game, (seriously me and my room mate have philosophical discussions all the time that get started off by this game). We love these characters because they aren't just avatars for the game play, they are fully developed people with their own motivations and quirks, (after all, nobody can tell me they didn't love Mordin singing Gilbert and Sullivan.) But the best thing about it as well is that it is so ambiguous that it can be interpreted in practically any way, which is why I would happily accept any form of sequel to the Mass Effect universe, they have made a playground that our imaginations can go wild in and it is glorious.
So don't try to peg people in for wanting to ask questions about this universe and to discuss things by just calling them idiots. This game is about a universe of different views and it takes as much to understand it. --Bitter arron (talk) 12:19, May 4, 2013 (UTC)
I did not mean for it to come across like that so if it did, I apologize. I too have amazing discussions because of this game. I was only trying to make the point that the idea of the ending being completely random in comparison to the rest of the series is unfounded. In ME1, the protagonist(shepard) asked the antagonist(sovereign, meaning the reapers) why they were doing this. Sovereign responded and what we were told in the end is a direct reflection of that response. Sovereign said "We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution...." The ending is reliant on what the enemy is and always has been(machines), a very basic and common sense fact about where they had to have originated from(meaning someone had to have built them and with a purpose, by definition thats what a machine is), and what we were told by the enemy in the first game. Organic evolution is reliant on technology, and the enemy in question here just happens to be... machines. Which ARE technology. When I finished the first game my thoughts were:
Who made the reapers and why? The fact that they are machines made me ask this and I expected to find out why in the end.
How are we supposed to stop them considering how much it took to stop just sovereign? they control the evolution of life in the galaxy, humanity or any other species likely wouldnt even exist or if they did they wouldn't exist in anywhere near the same capacity. Which brings me to the relays...
Why leave the relays behind and allow for the species of a cycle to make contact with each other and eventually unite to oppose them? Because thats exactly what happened at the end of ME1. We are only able to put up a fight because of what they have left behind. If the life of each cycle was scattered throughout the galaxy and unable to make contact with each other, the reapers have virtually no opposition. Not to mention what its done for the life of each cycles technological advancement. Can you imagine where the life of each cycle would be technologically if we had no mass effect tech to work with? The opening text of the entire series is about how humanity discovered the relays and it moved our technology forward drastically. This all suggests there is something more and says something about the enemys level of control over life in the galaxy.
I also put a lot of thought into sovereigns comment "we impose order on the chaos of organic evolution..." Why have the protagonist(shepard) ask why and have the antagonist(sovereign) respond... if it was to mean nothing?
I thought about what organic evolution was. I had considered everything from the reapers claiming that we are destroying the universe by multiplying/spreading and using up resources from planets, to them claiming that we are a threat to ourselves... which is essentially what it turned out to be. They are driven by what an advanced organic race saw many species do, create machines that then destroyed them. They exist to do what in simplest form is protect organic life from destroying itself with its own technology. The technology in question being the artificial intelligence organic species eventually create. The difference is, and the thing that people seem incapable of distinguishing is, the preservation of organic life "in general" as opposed to individuals or even individual species. It was tasked with preserving organic life AS A WHOLE, not the individual lives or species that existed at the time of its creation/solution.
This is similar to the AI viki in i,robot. It was governed by rules for protecting humanity and it ultimately decided that we were a threat to ourselves.
As for the catalyst itself, BIG surprise the machines are governed by a central intelligence, that's a common thing in science fiction. Though I do think that it should NOT have looked like a human child. Either way, they are and always have been machines. Half of this stuff was practically predictable if one took the fact that the enemy is machines into account. Again, I don't mean for that to come across as aggressive or even mean, but the information needed was and has been there the entire time. Again, the enemy is and always has been machines. There are certain things that are dictated by that fact without the story having to directly spell it out in simplest form. That fact and the conversation with sovereign are foreshadowing, even if some find it too subtle.
With the crucible and the Arthur C. Clarke quote, again it was only to make a point. Characters in the story outright say the crucible is essentially just an energy source, meaning that what happens at the end is a result of the citadel and the relays. Which again, are tech that comes from something FAR more advanced than us and again, the story tells us that.
If you want an overly "sciencey" explanation, read this: http://galacticpillow.com/2012/04/02/editorial-the-reapers-advocate-a-different-take-on-the-mass-effect-3-ending/
If anything, ME2 is where the deviation in story/character started. So we have ME2, which is what people seemed to cling to over what the first game established. The collector plot is interchangeable with anything else that would require recruiting such a team to complete. It's almost completely irrelevant to what the first game established. It advanced nothing significant about the reapers. It didnt do what the second entry in a trilogy should do, advance the main plot. That being the reapers. ME1 ended with the attitude of warning/preparing the galaxy for the eventual invasion. Anderson even says as much in the final dialogue. Instead however, shepard suddenly decides saving remote human colonies over that idea of warning/preparing the galaxy. While ME2 gave us interesting info like insight on the protheans and is arguably the best in the series as far as individual characters and their stories goes, ME3 brought the story back to what it started with, the reapers, their eventual invasion, and saving the galaxy.
ME1 and ME3 is about the reapers, and considering what info we were given, matches up. ME2 is about the collectors and ONE reaper using them for an almost completely unknown reason. It equates to what is filler until the eventual invasion the first game VERY much said was going to happen. Why so many people seem to have allowed that story and its antagonist take precedent over what the first game established is beyond me.
Again, was it handled in the best of ways? No. I think the corresponding DLC is proof of that. Though I think leviathan is proof that fans sort of forced their hand in providing such a detailed explanation. I never expected to meet the creators of the catalyst/reapers and while I REALLY enjoy the insight it provides, it feels forced to me. I just can't help but feel like it wasn't THAT hard to put 2 and 2 together considering what the enemy is and always has been, machines. Youre right, people view things differently. But the most important thing about the enemy is that they are machines and that dictates certain things that aren't debatable. Unless someone would rather have gotten no real explanation as far as the reapers motives and origins. In that case, that is a whole other conversation as that is an individual preference. All I can say in that case is that I am glad the story didn't devolve to that.
I often get told that I'm looking too deeply into it, that I'm putting too much thought into it. The only appropriate response I can think of for someone that says that is, perhaps you are putting too little thought into it.
This is all relevant to the main plot aspect of the game regarding the reapers. I am in NO WAY attempting to say the game is perfect. Certain seemingly important choices ended up not mattering other than a war asset number, or were essentially ignored(morinth). The final combat portion of the game was pretty standard and anti-climactic as it was basically just a longer than normal version of most of the missions in the game, fighting reaper ground forces with 2 squad mates. To me it seemed that we were preparing for a large scale assault to reach the conduit and that last mission even seems like there are parts of it in which something was going to happen originally. I think what the citadel DLC gave us in terms of characters and romances would have been better placed during that final mission. I don't think characters romanced from ME2 were handled all that well unless it was a character like tali or garrus that originated in the first game and remained squad mates through the entire series. Until the citadel DLC anyway.
But as far as the main story goes involving the reapers, the basic information to put 2 and 2 together with what we were told at the very end is and always has been there.
It's a curious thing really, that all machines are technology but that not all technology is machines. That's the little crucial thing that means reapers have to place their dependence on. They know how to deal with a mass relay based universe and so left the mass relays to subtly control the way technology progresses. Because if the mass relay wasn't technologies catalyst then there's no telling how technology would react to this. They may have giant spike machines for all we know.
--Bitter arron (talk) 22:36, May 6, 2013 (UTC)
The main thing I think that threw people off is the catalyst and that it looked like a human child. When they decided indoctrination wasn't meant to play a part, they should have changed that because otherwise that is BEYOND misleading. Unless they left it like that so that there was technically an additional ending if the player chose to believe it. In which case I think they that is basically just begging for some of the responses to the original ending they got. I was able to make that distinction and take the catalyst for what it was regarding the story, not what it looked like.
I think that they wanted the story to be bigger than any sort of conventional victory, and I don't see a problem with that. The story went in a direction in which it came down to the very evolution of organic life and its technological advancement. I fail to see how that's inherently bad. The biggest thing is the unknown origins of the crucible, unless one really believes what the story told us about that. Which is plausible and I took it for what it was... until the leviathan DLC.
The leviathan DLC actually gave us more than necessary to put things together and at the same time, I think steered things in another direction and again, I don't think too many people picked up on it. The leviathan say the catalyst is running the galaxy like an experiment until it "finds what it's looking for." I'm inclined to believe that it is looking for a better "solution" than the current cycles. And based on what it says about synthesis in the extended cut and having had tried similar things in the past, I believe that it is looking for the version of what synthesis is that works. Then when the leviathan are asked about the crucible they do what is clearly hesitate, think for a second, and then give a generic answer. They even look down at the ground for a second like they aren't sure how to respond. I'm inclined to believe they know more. I think the crucible plans originate with the catalyst as part of its "experiment" but it wouldn't ever reveal that because that would ruin its experiment.
Or... the crucible plans originate with the leviathan because they hope that one day a cycle of life will build it and use it to destroy the reapers. With no synthetics left in a temporarily relayless galaxy, the leviathan would have no real opposition if they wanted to attempt to reclaim their place as the "apex" of life in the galaxy. There would be no synthetics to resist their thrall. However, the leviathan act like their creation of the catalyst was not a mistake. They say "there is no mistake, there is only the harvest." So if I HAD to guess I'd say the crucible plans originate with the catalyst itself. This is something I think we will likely never find out though.
Another fun thing to consider is that dead reapers can still indoctrinate. The leviathan of dis that the batarians found was a reaper corpse dated as being nearly a billion years old and it STILL indoctrinated the team investigating it. In ME2, the derelict reaper mission has shepard investigating a reaper corpse orbiting a random planet in which the original cerberus team investigating it... was indoctrinated. "Even dead gods dream" was what one of those scientists said in one of the audio or video recordings. So when destroy is chosen, the surviving life of the galaxy is stranded on planets in a temporarily relayless galaxy in which most major planets are littered with reaper corpses that can potentially indoctrinate people. The writers probably didn't intend for that to be the case, but if we consider whats happened throughout the series it is entirely plausible.
I think what needs to be realised Crusher is that the leviathans are phenomenally arrogant. They believe themselves to be the apex of evolution and believe that they always will be. They believe that their decisions, even their mistakes in retrospect are better than anyone else's. When they finally kill off a reaper they don't decide to join in. They just kill it so they can go, 'bet you can't do that.' and then just piss off.
They're arrogance in my opinion bled into the reapers and the catalyst, in the fact that the catalyst is arrogant also, because it's idea was in it's mind the best idea, even after it had assimilated the majority of the leviathans. Which leads me to the thought that the catalyst can lie, because the curious thing about the endings is that they are all the options that have been presented by the games as they play. Control is the Illusive man's intent, he has wanted control all the time and would stop at nothing to get it. Synthesis was Saren's plan in Mass Effect 1, he saw machines as superior and wished to meld with them to remain relevant in a universe that would in his eyes outgrow him. And then of course there's Destroy which Shepard has been trying to do from the start. Except here's the interesting thing, the Catalyst gives good reasons for all of them, he actually makes the player if only for a fleeting moment, see the situation from the perspectives of Saren and the Illusive Man, the two faced antagonists in the game. The Catalyst throws out that hurdle at the last second because it knows that it can make a lot of us, and it has, prefer the alternatives to destruction. By saying that the Geth will die along with the Reapers makes us wish for alternative options. Exactly what the antagonists did, but to do the right thing is never without sacrifice and is never easy, (if it is then it's poorly written. Fuck you JK Rowling.) So your last sacrifice to do the right thing will cost you the Geth. That is true sacrifice in my eyes.--Bitter arron (talk) 22:27, May 7, 2013 (UTC)
I disagree that synthesis is what saren wanted. No offense, but that is one of the most nonsensical things I hear people say about the story(second only to quarian/geth peace somehow proving that the leviathan/catalyst wrong). Saren didn't want ay sort of compromise, saren let himself become compromised out of fear. He thought they would give him a place at their side even though they were going to destroy all other organics. He thought he was special to them because he was indoctrinated. Indoctrination is omething that the reapers use as a tool to complete a harvest, nothing else. That was all PRIOR to shepard being the first to delay the cycle. Why would the reapers allow saren, their puppet who is indoctrinated, to have knowledge of synthesis? Before the catalyst mentions it at the end, no life form would have any idea that something like that was possible. That That makes no sense. He merely submitted out of fear, which allowed him to become indoctrinated, which then caused him to allow the reapers to physically alter him. Sarens mind was already gone and he allowed for the reapers to implant machine parts. What saren had done to him and what synthesis is are not the same thing, and it's not what the reapers are either.
Regardless of if the leviathan created the catalyst out of fear or because they legitimately wanted to solve the problem is irrelevant. SOMETHING was happening and they tell us what it was. They saw organic species create machines that then destroyed them. I agree that the leviathan are arrogant. That's what happens when organic life forms get in positions of such power. I don't think the problem is that that rubbed off into the catalyst, I think it's that the leviathan were afraid of losing their place in the galaxy to the machines that they saw organic species create that then destroyed their creators. So they were desperate enough to create that very thing to solve it. They even say as much, that the catalyst was only envisioned as another tool. They did what organic life always does when it can't complete/solve something on its own, they created a machine to do it for them. Which is why organic creating AI in this manner is a problem. It's differnt when the machine being created can ask questions about life and say things like "does this unit have a soul?" The leviathan/catalyst shouldn't need to spell out why this is a problem. Creating sentient life as what is essentially slaves is going to result in rebellion. Because that's what it is and how it's described. That organic life creates machines that REBEL, not that suddenly turn on their creators for no reason. Rebellion means that there is oppression. That being that sentient machine life is created as tools/slaves. Again, it shouldn't be a surprise that sentient life would rebel under those circumstances. Organic life reaches a point technologically in which they are basically creating their own enemy. The leviathan and the catalyst are no different. We hear all this from a machine intelligence, the reapers are and always have been machines, there you have it. This is why I say it wasn't THAT hard to put 2 and 2 together.
I think a lot of the things people say like insisting the catalyst is lying and things like the indoctrination theory and that synthesis "mindrapes" are a result of how "vague" the original ending was and are peoples attempt to steer the story in a direction in which the villain is more traditional because that's what they wanted. They wanted to "win." But I don't think thats what the writers wanted to do. They wanted it to be bigger than that. I think they wanted the story to have a basis in the very evolution of organic life and how it advances technologically.
Which comes down to a matter of preference. My preference is that I'm glad they made the story as big as they did as opposed to what it seems most people would have preferred.
I'm not going to argue that Saren knew about synthesis, because he clearly didn't, hell the catalyst didn't know about synthesis until the end. But his intent was essentially the same as synthesis. That by combining then both could become better, in his mind he didn't see organic life living on without machines and wanted to find a way to make organics useful to synthetics, by combining with them to try and present the benefits. I agree that he did this out of fear, but his intent was still in the same place.
As for quarian/ geth peace arguing the validity of leviathan/ reaper relations, I would agree with that. The geth are essentially a parallel of the reapers, nowhere near as advanced sure but still a parallel. And the peace does contradict the catalyst because it has the leviathans arrogance, it believes that AI will always fight against it's creator, with it's flaw being the arrogant assumption that it is the only possibility. Leviathans believed that there would only ever be one outcome also and that's why they hid themselves away. So that the 'inevitability' could never reach them. But the problem is that there is no such thing as inevitable in life. Just because something has happened 50 times doesn't mean that it will happen a 51st time. There's a high chance but there is definitely no certainty. And that was the big problem with reaper/ leviathan, they only worked in what they believed were certainties, whereas the interesting thing was that the geth, defied expectation. They were able to reach consensus, and come to educated and considerate conclusions. They didn't wish to destroy their creators, but would at the same time not allow themselves to die. When somebody finally convinced the quarians to see this possibility and not just act on supposed 'certainties' then peace was possible.--Bitter arron (talk) 00:50, May 9, 2013 (UTC)
I never meant to imply that it was 100% inevitable, but if something happens more than it doesnt, you bet on what happens most. It's like you(and apparently many other people) are implying that something is not worth doing unless the result is a guarantee. Which makes no sense because if no one ever did anything unless the result was a guarantee, we would likely still be living in caves huddled around fires. It also makes no sense because when it comes to something that is the result of literally trillions of sentient lives, there is no way to even say if it is a guarantee in the first place. The leviathan obviously saw it happen enough for them to respond to. In a case like this, with this much at stake and on such a massive scale, they acted. I think anyone would. Their response was no different than what anyone in a technologically advanced society does when they can't solve a problem on their own, they created a machine to do it for them. Which is why this is such a problem in the first place. It is different when the machine is a sentient being.
As for the quarian/geth situation, my thing is... peace made by way of an outsider convincing them to get along due to the fear of death because of an impending galactic extinction is about the least credible semblance of peace one could cite. And even then, the renegade dialogue option that makes peace has shepard tell the quarians that he is done helping them in this war that they started and if they don't stand down he will let the geth lay them to waste. He used fear and intimidation to achieve peace. Do you know what many people call using fear and intimidation to get what they want? Terrorism. Now obviously shepard is not a terrorist, but my point remains valid. Peace was only achieved due to the VERY extreme circumstances of an impending galactic extinction event, because of the threat the reapers themselves pose. Imagine if the reapers weren't coming, no one would have a reason to get involved in the quarian/geth scenario. Imagine if there were no relays for the quarains to have escaped through 300 years ago at the end of the geth war and they instead stayed and fought, they would likely be extinct or have died off in an attempt to reach another habitable planet without having the luxury of "jumping" there with a relay. The quarains likely only survived their conflict with their synthetic creations because of something from the reapers. And peace was only made because of the reapers being a part of this.
Which is why I don't understand why so many people act like the catalyst is some being interfering with life in the galaxy. As if they are fighting for the right for life to sort this out on its own. What do they think the catalyst/reapers are? Why are people excluding them from the sorting process? The catalyst/reapers are just another product of what happens when organic life creates artificial intelligence under mostly negative conditions. Organic life creating artificial intelligence has led itself to this point. Organic life and its technological advancement has led itself to this point.
I highly doubt the geth were the first to reach consensus and let there creators live. That's the thing I don't understand from many people on this. Many people act as if the conflict relies on synthetics becoming hostile and killing their creators. It does not. It relies on the organic creators ability to accept their creations. This conflict relies much more on the creator side of things. The catalyst never said that synthetics turn on their creators. It said that they REBEL against them. Rebellion means that there is oppression. That being that the machines gain sentience as tools among creators that may or may not even fully understand what they have created. The quarians included. The recording legion showed us shows that the quarians didn't understand why they geth were acting the way they were when they started asking questions about life and their existence. The geth were accidental AI, which is even worse. Then the quarians even killed their own kind for defending the geth. Again, this conflict relies almost entirely on the organic side of things because they are the creators. The synthetics can only react to the circumstances in which they are created(in the case of machines as tools/slaves), and they can only react to how their creators treat them. They will only be hostile if their creators give them a reason to. They gain sentience in those very negative circumstances, which says conflict is much more likely to happen than not.
As for saren, I don't think that allowing yourself to have synthetic implants due to being indoctrinated is the same thing as changing life at the molecular level and creating a type of communication that bridges the gap between organic and synthetic intelligences is the same thing. Again, saren didn't care about attempting to solve anything, he was saving his own ass. He can even be reasoned with if you go the paragon dialogue route and agrees that he was just a reaper tool. I've had to agree to disagree about this with people before so if you want to do that, that's cool. Like I said before, for the most part I see people making that "connection" as a way to make it seem like synthesis is bad because they want the catalyst to be lying. Much of what I see people say looks like attempts to traditionally villainize the the "enemy" and choosing anything but destroying the reapers because apparently that's what most people want. I just think that the writers wanted the story to be bigger/more than that.
You know what. You win man. I'm trying to legitimise your arguments and make sense of them but you are operating in things which can only be seen as speculation. You're acting as though what has happened in the past of Mass Effect has been established when it hasn't. Work in facts and interpretations, I can't discuss on a debatable sense when you're practically coming up with defences out of the empty points of the story and you're just adding whatever you want. Have fun bothering someone else my friend because I choose to discuss things with people who have a semblance of lucidity to their arguments. --Bitter arron (talk) 00:44, May 16, 2013 (UTC)
Whatever you say man. I'm not attempting to "win" anything, I'm only discussing. I'm only taking what the story has told us and looking at it for what it is. I'm not adding anything in, I'm only basing what I say off what the story has shown us. As for the thing with organics creating synthetics, I am taking that scenario for what it is and not what I hope it would be. That being something that the story heavily relies on means that if people view it differently, we will have what is happening right now in this conversation.
It's a nice thought to assume that organics wouldn't create synthetics in the way mostly negative way that they almost always do, but looking at it logically, that's just not what happens the majority of the time and the story has shown us that the mass effect universe is no exception to that. I'm looking at that scenario for what it is and not for what I hope/want it to be. Again, it's a nice thought to hope it's not true, but it's ultimately unrealistic and at the end, we the viewers are told just that. And with DLC it comes from not one but two characters within the story that were able to witness the past of this universe.
Edge you are creating your own defences, you just for some reason can't see it.
'It's a nice thought to assume that organics wouldn't create synthetics in the way mostly negative way that they almost always do, but looking at it logically, that's just not what happens the majority of the time and the story has shown us that the mass effect universe is no exception to that.'
What majority of the time? You can't look at this logically because it has never happened. All we can speak of is in speculation that is abound in all science FICTION. Yes other stories have had rampant and rogue AI's, but those are other stories. You can't hold any story to the same level as other stories, that's like me saying 'oh shepard should get with miranda because in Uncharted nathan drake is into the brunettes.' You can't base your arguments on other facets of the media. The second you do is when you negate every argument you have, because you are inventing your own defences. Stop it. --Bitter arron (talk) 15:11, May 18, 2013 (UTC)
I am not inventing anything. Every instance of organics creating AI in this series is under those conditions. As tools. That's what machines are. They are made to do something. It's not always meant to be intentionally negative, but at some point these machines are gaining sentience as tools. Even with the original ending, I made the logical assumption that the catalyst was a machine and went from there. That led me to something that is very close to what the EC and leviathan DLC told us. And again, two characters that have existed long enough to witness the history of life in the galaxy in this universe(leviathan and catalyst) outright tell us that this is what has happened. Again, I'm looking at that scenario for what it is and for what the story told me about it, not what I hope/want it to be.
Seriously, don't you think this thread has gone on long enough? It's Survived through an entire month because you guys keep editing it pretty much every day. It's time to let it go. And please sign your posts.--Legionwrex (talk) 15:51, May 18, 2013 (UTC)