Thanks to our friend Gaming Ambience for his contributions to this investigations and others. Check out his amazing channel here: th-cam.com/users/gamingambience
The Cerberus name comes from the fact that the Mass Effect gate is near Charon in the Solar System. Where Charon is the ferryman to the galaxy from Sol then Cerberus is the guard dog to the Solar System (and by extension humanity) in this analogy.
Man, Cerberus had the potential to be a great ally, being the only ones that took the Reapers seriously. I'm actually disappointed they turned into generic villains at the end. Even their armor was laughingly evil.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And when you think about it, with Cerberus so strictly centralized to one specific person, combined with Cerberus being so well connected across the galaxy, The Elusive Man is the perfect target for them to strike. And considering the technology and knowledge the Reapers have gained over countless eons, finding out where and how to target The Elusive Man, would be trivial. I still need to actually play the third game, but from everything this video and what I've heard about the third game, combined with the lure I picked up from playing the first few games, I think Cerberus turning evil makes a lot more sense than you may think - ESPECIALLY once they started researching how to hack human biology.
Actually a lot of people that pose a threat to Reapers, Reapers dealt with them mercilessly. Liara's Mum, Saren, Alliance Scientists and then Cerberus with Illusive Man.
@elijah mikle and they never even use that reaper mech! During my first play of ME2 i chose to keep the human reaper, i thought that it would have been cool to pilot it in battle against the reapers, but the damn mech never appeared again in ME3.
@@martinjrgensen8234 And even if it turns out to be real, I'm not the least bit excited about it. It wouldn't be the first "Remaster" that basically just sells the same game as before with very minor changes, or is actually worse than the Original.
They're an unregulated Intelligence agency run by a guy who was indoctrinated literally the entire game series. That's not irony, that's exactly what you would expect. They betrayed their stated purpose immediately by divorcing themselves from any sort of restraint by the greater will of humanity; at best they would act as an authoritarian crypto-state enslaving us as thoroughly as they feared aliens would, at worse they were a constant rolling disaster of failed research programs that posed a larger threat to humanity than anything they actually stopped, and systemically denied anything resembling and diplomacy. Cerberus was always a bad idea, born out of a need for control that is realistically impossible. It exists because of existential cowardice. Of shame for losing the First Contact War, because of the arrogant assumption that we should have won. It was always angry, childish, self-righteous, blinkered, and arrogant. The Illusive man was just charismatic and smart enough to make it seem noble, and that was a lie.
@unknown Unknown I stopped reading with all the typos. If you're not going to even try to spell the proper nouns right you either don't care, or are attempting to troll me. Debating you is pointless. If you have an actual rhetorical point try responding with enough consideration and respect that the entire block of text isn't an onerous labor to parse. Otherwise you're not worth the effort to convince. Bye
@@morganrobinson8042 Without the immoral research of Cerberus, no Cmd Shepard. Without Shepard to fight the Collector, the Humanity wouldn't have been able to defence itself.
@@omegaman7377 And that justifies everything? Using Thresher maws on foot soldiers? Jamming that one guy into a Geth instance so it drove them both mad? Literally using Dragons Teeth on people? Literally none of those helped anybody, and the last made a horde of mind-controlled shock troopers out of refugees in the third game. The problem with consequential reasoning is that as long as you get a passable result nothing else matters. It has no consideration for either necessity of an action or it's other consequences, as long as you get what you want. It is wasteful at best, and outright evil at worst. And while I can accept the premise that there are times when the need for results will outstrip ethical concerns, Cerberus never operated in any other way. The ends always justified the means, and if unnecessary suffering was created it was never their concern. And that never bore out. In fact, Miranda's professional ethics and Shepard's crew were about the only time Cerberus bothered to sanitize their behavior, and it was done deliberately to give a good impression in the latter part. And they were about the only parts of Cerberus not to turn into something actively hostile to human survival. You're excusing everything Cerberus did on the pretense that it did ultimately save everyone, when that isn't nessicarilty true. They did as much or more to hinder Shepard's efforts as they ever did to help.
@@morganrobinson8042 I understand both sides of the story. One they took things way to far at almost every turn as you said. On the other side humanity is drastically outgunned and outclassed by Asari Turians and Salarians. So they need to take drastic shit to make giant leaps and bounds trying to catch up. Any and everything is allowed in their eyes aslong as it provides a benefit. Such as the torture facility where Jack got raised in a effort to give Asari a run for their money. And boy did they get results isn't Jack one of the strongest biotics in existence ? Imagine an army of Jacks that follow orders.
Illusive Man: Don’t turn your back on me Shepard! I made you, I brought you back from the dead! Shepard: And I’m going to do exactly what you brought me back to do: I’m gonna win this war, and I’ll do it without sacrificing the soul of our species.
I was pretty annoyed with what they did with Cerberus in ME3. It made sense, but the way they wrote it was a bit over the top and cartoonish (Kai Leng being the biggest example). A part of me wishes they were instead written as a renegade ally to Shepard.
Could not agree more. ME3 was a letdown to me storywise. First of all I hated the mess the military made of my pretty ship, which I loved to just walk around in in Me2. Also the amoral pragmatic organization for some reason became a cartoon villain.
Imagine if you choose to control the collector base and ME 3 started with you still loyal to Cerberus. Anderson meets you at a bar on earth while you're on shoreleave when the Reapers attack
I personally liked it, as it made sense within the lore. In ME2, while still bad guys they were doing the right thing, but during the reaper war they were so into using reaper tech that it allowed the Reapers to take control of them and use them for the reapers gain while they still believed they were doing the right thing. Worked well to build the Reapers as truly masterminds as they fought not only directly but turned the races they genocided against each other in a proxy war
See, you should take a look at ME1 Cerberus. That whole thing about a Cerberus taco cart killing all the scientists and taking over the base? That's Entirely accurate. Also, they were absolutely speciesist idiot bad guys. Prone to murdering high ranking systems alliance military officers fir being insufficiently corrupt, luring SA marines into thresher maw nests just to record what happened, nonsense like that. And that's when they weren't experimenting on reaper husking tech right near population centres (such s they are on new colony worlds) with basically no safety precautions. They were evil stupid from the ground up. ME2 completely retconned that, and a bunch of other stuff. From what I've heard 3 apparently tried to reconcile the two or something? Actually, ME2's story was kind of a disaster in general if you'd actually played the first one.
Say what you want about Cerberus but you can't deny that the Illusive Man knows how to dress. I mean, damn, that suit! Edit: Ho-ly crap, I didn't expect so many likes!
Commander Shepard would then be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard and sent to the Pegasus Galaxy to be in charge of security on the lost City of Atlantis. Unfortunately when he was promoted there was a typo and he was never able to get the extra *p* removed.
Illusive man in ME2: "Shepard, I know our methods may differ but we both need to come together in order to beat the reapers" Illusive man in ME3: "let's blow up the citadel's council while they're fighting reapers!"
@@mikhailbychkov5042 it's pretty easy to figure out, they've been studying reaper tech for a while and the vast majority of reaper tech causes indoctrination
@@blackvial that's not my point. At the end of ME2 the illusive man, knew full well the dangers of indoctrination. Could he fall to it due to his hubris? Certainly, ME2 definitely shows that it's possible. But to leave with a Cerberus that is fully committed to defending humanity to one that wages open war only in a span of a few months in universe is too drastic. Sure we can assume from diaries and parts of dialogue to what happened during that time but not how it happened. Which is a damn shame
Honestly I think my favorite thing about Mass Effect 3 was fighting Cerberus agents... the other forces had their charms but the way Cerberus in particular was to fight hit that perfect sweet spot for me, and getting a headshot on a Centurion while the Assault Troopers he's leading scream "DAMMIT!" will likely remain one of my hardwired delighted moments in gaming.
I just started playing Mass Effect 2 on Legendary Edition. I really love Cerebus. I find them to be a interesting faction. They got really nice armor designs too.
Also noting how intense it was during my first playthrough of ME3 fighting Cerberus, felt wrong like we should be working together. It was exactly what the reapers wanted, Cerberus wasn't necessarily evil I feel. The Alliance didn't kill Cerberus, the reapers did, and there we were.. humans killing humans and such whilst the reapers dominate and conquer everything else.
Cerberus is the guard dog that became rabid. Would have been nice if in ME3 Cerberus was more grey rather generic bad guy. It would have been cool if the player as Shepard could late-game be able to convince the non-indoctrinated members to join you during the Battle of Earth.
That's exactly what happens though? Throughout the game you constanty pick up defected Cerberus members. There is like a whole tab for them in the war menu, and a signifcant chunk of the multiplayer operatives are former Cerberus agents.
@@ГлебЧерепанов-з3ч ; Oh yeah, forgot about them. Been a while since I did anything ME3. However I was referring to more of the higher ups and a Cerberus flotilla or two. Thanks for that reminder anyway.
According to the descriptions for two multiplayer characters (the Phoenix Project vanguard and adept,) this did happen, granted it was a long time before the Battle of Earth. Biotic soldiers in Cerberus defected when they learned about reaper implants. Instead, they joined Admiral Hackett and the N7 Special Ops. It's worth noting that this project is believed to have produced the dragoon, so they are essentially non-indoctrinated dragoons (which piggybacks off of arthur ryan's comment.)
Interesting theory I heard recently about Cerberus in ME2. Allegedly, they never had any interest in protecting the colonies from the Collectors, they only claimed that to be their objective in order to get Shepherd to co-operate with them. Their actual goal was to gain access to whatever was beyond the Omega-4 relay. Once they determined it was the Collectors, as well as their affiliation with the Reapers, Shepherd and his team were little more than expendable martyrs to be used to acquire the Reapers' technology for their own agenda. This is hinted at by the Illusive Man's insistence on maintaining the Collector Base and when he outright prevented the Alliance from learning of the Collector attack on Horizon, delaying their response until he got what he was after.
Bro, it's been a year now, you may have changed your mind, but I'll still say: you wrote a completely wrong theory, leaving out a lot of facts. Yes, Cerberus needed the technology from the Collectors' base. That's true. However, that technology was needed to fend off a Reaper's Invasion in the future. Cerberus' secondary mission was to save the human colonies that had been attacked, because no one cared, the Council didn't pay any attention to it because it was another sector's territory, and the System Alliance took no action at all to protect the colonies, the Alliance only investigated colonies that had already been destroyed. The Illusive Man would never allow civilians to suffer at the hands of aliens because he knows from experience what it's like to have civilians attacked (during the First Contact War, the Turians bombed a peaceful colony on Shanxi when TIM was a mercenary soldier in the Alliance. Because of the Turians' actions, TIM lost his best friends).
Cerberus was evil from the beginning in Mass effect 1. Humanity first is just a face and recruitment tactic. Unless the Reapers already got to the illusive men, but doesn't change it.
Cerberus was always my favorite, I actually really liked them and technically if it weren't for them the entire Galaxy would have fallen, they brought back Shepard to finish the job when nobody else cared to.
Fantastic video! I love Mass Effect the lore and scope of the universe they created is amazing and its wonderful to have such a fascinating organization like Cerberus discussed and explained so well. Nicely done!
Cerberus in the three games 1: Shadowy mysterious black ops group gone rouge. 2.Morally grey paramilitary, that for its faults is the one taking the initiative for the defense of humanity and agruebly the galaxy as a whole 3.Uh......ok let's get this over with........idiot troopers, lead by an idiot assassin, and reducing what was the smartest man in the galaxy to also an idiot. Man Bioware dropped the ball in 3 in more ways then one.
@Bethesda sucks, but Zerglings still are cute. yeah sure bud trilogy was perfect amirite. the only story wise good game in mass effect series was the first one. 2 was too cartooney and the only thing that saved it was its gameplay mechanics. i dont even want to speak about the 3. every buildup that came from 1 and 2 was discarded and finished the trilogy with a stupid space brat and colors ending. the only thing that was good in 3 was the reflection of hopelessness of the situation. also even a 9 yrs old could finish the trilogy with a better ending than space brat ending so your "dUh i WaNnA sEe uR wRitInG bRoh" argument is lazy as heck
Cerberus is basically the inevitable result of first contact - for every one who sees infinite possibilities, there's going to be others who will embrace xenophobia and absolute power. The worst part is that Cerberus's actions might have been justified, even though they wound up falling victim to the Reapers' influence. Anyway, since N7 Day is in a few days, will we see another Mass Effect video soon?
@Para el libro修 That's because humanity basically _were_ the children of the galactic community. Many of the species had interstellar space-flight long, long, _looooonng_ before humanity reached that milestone... And many of the members of the galactic community that had contributed much more than humanity were _still_ waiting to have a say in how things were done. Cerberus were made up by people who were either ignorant, or intitled, or fearful... Or all three.
That implies it wasn't ever a tool of the Repears. The expended works have hinted that Jack Harper, The Illusive Man was indoctrinated or at least had been set down the path towards it. It goes to show how dangerous the Repears really are and makes one wonder if the reason so many cycles had a difficult time figuring out the Repears trap and plan was because they left a lot of stuff to indoctrinated beings unwittingly.
Cerberus was such a good villain in ME2 because they succesfully convincing me into their cause, like literally I played Shepard to be Cerberus lap dog, cooperating with Illusive Man and doing whateve%he need (until the false report on Collector ship where I become distrust him and be hostile toward him inwards), in Mass Effect 3 they're just antagonist who antagonize everyone else and their cause is injustifiable at all, like you can't see things from their perspective because it's illogical and that makes them a bad villain in my eyes. It's a shame that they're not well written in ME3, reduced to only stupid Kai Leng and idiotic army, like cerberus is not about army shooting spreeing around, they're always about small team of infiltrator and recon. I think the best plot for cerberus is for them to co-operate with System Alliance but secretly still doing their exoeriments and playing around with Reaper Tech, and mid-game getting indoctrinated and literally stab Alliance and Shepard in the back, and it's so out of nowhere that no one could anticipathe that. which then would explain how Cerberus gained so much followers, becaude they're sleeper agents within the Alliance exposing other Alliance troops to indoctrination due to their secret enhancement, which will make a good display of the danger of indoctrination.
Atlas corporation vs Federation of The Americas would be good video, Atlas corporation vs Cerberus would make another good video, Atlas and Cerberus vs Imperium of Man or Galactic Empire would make another good video in the VS section.
Mass Effect is what I like to call a "Federation Future" it's a Multi-species Democratic semi-Socalist Future in which Humanity champiosn democracy above all, and takes this mindset with them in the future. This setting often gives us the closest thing the West tries to make to Anime, with wacky (not necissarily bad) storylines, and a lot of interspecies fanservice. Star Trek is another massive Federation Future, if not the main Federation Future I would point to. Anyways, in these futures, the villians are either some sort of Hive-Minded organism that can not be negotiated with, or Human Space-Nazis stomping their legs, pouting and shouting "Earth for Humanity! Humanity First! Purge Xenos! I want to live in the 40K setting!" and that, my friends, is what Cerberus is in Mass Effect.
Could we see some lore vids on the following : Sovereign colonies armed forces (dead space 3) Adeptus mechanicus (warhammer 40k ) The MCRN (the expanse)
i know some people didnt like the game, but in Mass Effect Andromeda there were Cerberus agent's that integrated with the flight to another galaxy, even in Andromeda the Illusive man's vision survives.
This feels like a good way to segway Into a special about Jacqueline Nought a.k.a Jack, a.k.a. the psycotic biotic, a.k.a. my' Mrs Shepard...... Or just NightCity instead
Cerbereus was an interesting and understandable faction, I’m still pissed at the horrible treatment and dumb down they got in ME3. Joining with them could’ve been the renegade option, they could’ve been a real path toward defeating the reapers, but no. They’re just stupid villains who act in defiance of the theme of destroying the reapers
Okay, touched on Cerberus. I do like me some Mass Effect. If they do decide to continue with Andromeda, salvage that story, Cerberus in some way could play a role since they did attach agent within the Initiative.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 yes, still a bit of a shame though. The implications that Cerberus was the organisation behind the andromeda initiative (or at least a major contributor) had a lot of potential, especially considering that Cora is probably related to Jack Harper, aka The Illusive Man. If they had managed the story better and solved the technical issues BEFORE launch, it might have been a proper mass effect successor. The Combat/traversal were after all quite fun.
I want an 8k remaster of Mass Effect with an extended version for each game, specially 3rd (there is so much more to do) 3 or 4 years from now with the new game engines.
Arrogance, i don't think so. The conclusion of the First Contact was a surprise for the member of the Counsel. Human has a good reason to be proud. The Turians were surprised by our resilience.But the Counsel see the humanity as some sort of Rachni treat. Human are strong warriors and they are very fast learner. His xenophobia was justified, every races was hiding Prothean technology at a critical time. And the Counsel didn't care about the attack of the human colony.
@@omegaman7377 I hear what you're saying but the arrogance I was speaking of was the notion that Cerberus thought that they could control the Reapers. You could say that that was due to indoctrination but there are countless references in game and in other media that shows that Cerberus' goal of using any means available to elevate only humanity to dominate and rule all other races.
I literally got this notification as the three headed dog from Blood of Zeus was first shown fully and Cerberus is the most well known, maybe only, three headed in actual Greek mythos.
I like cerber from the second game I was kind of sad when they came to the villains again in the third game. I mean I know they were never technically good guys but I would have gladly seen them split in half and they'll be a good side to them
I can still get behind putting humanity first, just not putting other species down that don’t deserve it. Also say what you want about Cerberus’ checkered past, you can’t deny their fortitude for making excellent weapons and armor
I like the idea of Cerberus (Humanity First), and it's symbolism of its name; instead of the guardian of the realm of Hades, it's the guardian of the realm of humanity. Sadly, the writers of ME decided to make them do something stupid and only fight the reapers in ME2. Though, I guess it was an eventuality that something with the idea of "Humanity First" would be seen as evil by writers that gave us color-coded endings.
The amount of people in the comments going on about how Cerberus took a drastic turn in ME3 makes me wonder if there is two very different versions of ME2 going around, and I just never got my hands on the same one as those people.
Nope, they just bought the line that was being laid down about how Cerberus was acting in humanities best interest when half of the side quests were cleaning up their horrible disasters, especially if you counted the first game's Cerberus missions. They decided to let themselves be convinced despite what we already knew and were still seeing. They allowed for a benefit of the doubt that wasn't earned on the goodwill of Shepard's resurrection, and followed the Paragon path out of habit in most cases without really thinking about the implications of what was going on past the immediate emotional response. Most of these people simply failed to care enough to bother understanding what happened, and came away with an impression curated by the group they were meant to be judging. This is why you can never trust anyone trying to sell you something. You did good. You actually figured out they were horrible, when it was being actively whitewashed by characters in the game, if not narrative.
@@morganrobinson8042 Horrible is relative in this game. Cerberus did develop something to sterilize a race like the Salarians. Or used it like the Turians. it is a brutal world. “Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps.”
@@morganrobinson8042 Well, I don't think it's about people not caring about the plot - after all, people who barely skimmed through the dialogue are unlikely to end up in this comment section - I think it has more to do with glorification of the whole "rogue cop who doesn't play by the rules" thing. Its a very famous and fleshed out trope, and I largely suspect that most people saw Illusive Man talking about "doing what needs to be done" and were like "Oh, I know this" - and just never diviated from that perception from there. So while there is personal responsibility to be had for failing to apply critical thinking (we are all susceptable to that), I think it's importnat to note that this is a systemic problem in media - video games especially.
@@omegaman7377 Horrible is very much not relative in ME. "Commiting heinous crimes is never the answer to any problem ever" is a very persistent theme throughout the trilogy. You are clearly referring to Mordin's story there as an example of "sometimes bad things need to be done" but its literally the opposite of what his story is about. He spends his life lamenting what he has done to Krogans and eventually dies to fix it. He once says that he still believes what he and his team had done was justified at the time with the information they had, but he also notes several times how little of the actual concequences of their actions they predicted. Like, most of the trilogy is about you running around fixing the concequences of someone "doing what needs to be done", and I don't know how much more transparent the writers could have been about this.
Did anyone else, without having read any supplementary materials, when playing ME2 for the first time, think of the illusive man (from the eyes) "Oh yeah, this Guy's Indoctrinated" That's an exact quote of my first thought on meeting him.
They care more about control than they do Humanity, they abandoned that when they literally dehumanized their soldiers by turning them into brain-fucked cyborgs.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 that's more due to Repear indoctrination which is hinted at in the non game works to have effected Jack Harper long ago. Removing that the existence of Cerberus does make some sense as a precaution. The Citadel does have a tendency to use races, go overboard in their rulings to the point of absurdity, or throw allies under the bus.
so i love the idea of Cerberus but only in 1 and 2, the Cerberus we get in 3 doesn't really make sense as it is just way to large, in ME2 we learn a lot about Cerberus and how it works and i did some maths and it shouldn't really be any larger than 300 people total across its 3 operations remember TIM likes to keep it all directly under his control, bringing back shepard and building the SR2 took almost everything Cerberus had in resources and money then in ME3 only a few months after the end of ME2 they can suddenly field fleets of ships all of them fully manned and drop what looks to be a full army of trained troops, ye they messed them up in ME3 sadly.
Well... even in ME2 it is mentioned that only the Illusive Man knows how big truly Cerberus is. Not even that, we get to see their space station, which in on itself would probably house tens of thousands people. Add to that that they had shipyards big enough and efficient enough to rebuild and upgrade the Normandy, and you can see that this organization was already powerful in ME2. In ME3 they were indoctrinated, which could also explain their numbers in the field. All of the non-essential personnel would become troopers after being indoctrinated.
What would have been better if Illusive Man was indoctinated, but there were many cerberus sub factions that were sympathetic to Shepard, and a battle between Cerberus forces loyal to the original goal of stopping the reapers and those indoctrinated.
@@MasterGhostf agreed, but what happened in ME3 also made sense. They could have been indoctrinated for example by a "mandatory chip enchancement" or sth like that. That would cause for all troops to be indoctrinated without residence. Besides there was a motive like that. For example the mission where you meet Jacob.
@@NomadziorBG There actually is a text log in one of the side missions which is some diary entries from a Cerberus recruit that talks about how their training regimen involves cybernetic enhancements (as seen in the very first mission to Mars in ME3 as well), which shifted the tone of their log entries from casual and personal to more serious and emotionless. It's pretty clear that all of Cerberus' armed forces are implanted with Reaper tech. Anyone that wasn't indoctrinated would have had no military power to bring to bear. With that said, the fact that they would even use those implants without any precautions or backup plans in case using literal Reaper tech backfires is just beyond incompetent
@@Lazarultos unless the Illusive Man was already Indoctrinated. But I'm not justifying BioWare. They made some poor choices in regards to ME3. Which is sad because I honestly love the game as much as the entire ME universe.
Cerberus and the Illusive Man were pretty cool in Mass Effect, and I enjoyed where they took them by ME3; I'm probably one of the few that wasn't horribly upset at how 3 turned out. But, I never did get to play the first game, so perhaps my "investment" in the series wasn't quite as concrete.
I just hope that EA includes the DLCs in the remaster. It is ridiculous that they are still full price in the old games. But its EA, so my hopes aren't to high on that
Well EA may not have a choice considering all the lawsuits and the gambling law violations in the Netherlands, so there my be SOME hope. But with that being said, I realize that has very little relevance to your response, but still...
@@shockwave487 Well i think that the dlcs really complete the games. Especially the citadel and shadowbroker dlc. It just makes the expirience more rounded and a proper remaster should include everything, to deliver the full experience and in many cases nostalgia. It would do the games the well deserved justice, if EA provided everything for everyone
I still Remember when This Channel was About 100k Templin Personnel and I'm one of them Congratulations Sir Mark! Or Marc? BTW Congratulations!!!!! I'm gonna make a TH-cam Channel also but it's like High Command Looking at the Battlefields and Space battles but i also don't know when i will Create it.
Wait, I'm confused... The latest Mass Effect product featuring Cerberus is... **checks notes** 8 years old, with ME3, afaik. What prompted THIS video of all things? xP
Earth discovers already established galactic community and has to take a junior role… Wait till they see what happens in David Brin's *Uplift* series. Still could be even worse … looking at you HALO.
The Illusive Man did nothing wrong, except when he allowed himself to become Indoctrinated. He should have focused on neutralising the Reapers *before* attempting to gain control of their technology.
The inspirations for the illusive man come from a few Sci fi sources, the obvious as the X Files Cancer man as well as the mysterious billionaire benefactor in the movie Contact. Played by John hurt if I remember correctly he alway flew from airport to airport always in the air and smoked too he was dying of cancer, but I also remember him being David bowie too so my memory is fuzzy. Edit see Contact - talking with Hadden - finding the key on youtube and note the similarities between this and the illusive man briefing scene
"Hey Tali, can you guess what happened when Cerberus tried to build a taco stand?" "Same thing that always happens. It went insane, killed everyone involved, and tried to take over the base. What's a taco stand anyway?"
If they ever make a Mass Effect Movie/Streaming Series (no one makes stuff for basic cable anymore ^_^), I would like to see Charlie Sheen in the role of the Illusive Man. Although his father brought the role to life in the game, he's probably too elderly to do so now (although in the game, he spent most of his time in a chair, so maybe Martin could still play him).
Para military force, used to be a Secret branch of the Human Alliance military, probably, but then went Rogue in ME1. Became the good guys you fight for in 22 then went full evil and you play a key role in hampering and finally destroying in 3
@@robertagu5533 This. Many people don't remember the original background of Cerberus given in ME 1. Cerberus' very nature is actually a huge retcon, but one that proved very popular I guess. I'm ever so slightly disappointed that the Templin Institute didn't mention that angle at all.
@@robertagu5533 I do not think they really went rogue, before the third game. I think the rumour was to protect the reputation of the Alliance and the Humanity. After all, the humanity for the member of the Citadel are a bunch of morons. But a bunch that are able to fight.
I wonder if their recent video on the event horizon is a prelude to that. It does have some SCP-esque vibe to it. Gateway investigation gone awry or maybe an extradimensional rift that could introduce SCPs and the the SCP foundation itself to the Templin Institute. As it stands the only real “villain” right now to the institute is the mysterious observer and the Imperium of Man from warhammer. It would be interesting to put the institute into more high pressure scenarios as opposed to their prim and proper investigations into alternate worlds and universes. After all if the templin institute’s system is easily hackable, it’s not surprising that a foundation agent has already found a way in. Could be an interesting crossover.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 keep up appearances and even Cerberus don’t have the resources to fund the whole andromeda project. By allowing all aliens to attend it move suspiciouson away from the real intention. Plus Cerberus would of laid ground work in place in the form of sympathetic supporters of there doctrine within the human ark.
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Thanks to our friend Gaming Ambience for his contributions to this investigations and others. Check out his amazing channel here: th-cam.com/users/gamingambience
Good work! Make More about the UNSC.
The Cerberus name comes from the fact that the Mass Effect gate is near Charon in the Solar System. Where Charon is the ferryman to the galaxy from Sol then Cerberus is the guard dog to the Solar System (and by extension humanity) in this analogy.
That's some really cool lore right there
In many ways, Shepard would become more worthy of the moniker Cerberus than the actual organization.
thats epic
@@stephenkenney8290 Because Shepherd could SPOT the danger coming?
@@DetectiveLance PUN ALERT!
Man, Cerberus had the potential to be a great ally, being the only ones that took the Reapers seriously. I'm actually disappointed they turned into generic villains at the end. Even their armor was laughingly evil.
That's the reapers for you. Turn those who had the ability to fight the reapers against others who can fight the reapers.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. And when you think about it, with Cerberus so strictly centralized to one specific person, combined with Cerberus being so well connected across the galaxy, The Elusive Man is the perfect target for them to strike. And considering the technology and knowledge the Reapers have gained over countless eons, finding out where and how to target The Elusive Man, would be trivial.
I still need to actually play the third game, but from everything this video and what I've heard about the third game, combined with the lure I picked up from playing the first few games, I think Cerberus turning evil makes a lot more sense than you may think - ESPECIALLY once they started researching how to hack human biology.
Actually a lot of people that pose a threat to Reapers, Reapers dealt with them mercilessly. Liara's Mum, Saren, Alliance Scientists and then Cerberus with Illusive Man.
I am a little disappointed with how they were handled in 3. I was hoping they would be the rengade option for Shepard rather than a pure antagonist.
@elijah mikle and they never even use that reaper mech! During my first play of ME2 i chose to keep the human reaper, i thought that it would have been cool to pilot it in battle against the reapers, but the damn mech never appeared again in ME3.
Can't wait for Mass Effect Remastered. All the memories.
I still don’t believe it is a thing. I won’t until I see an official release about it.
@@martinjrgensen8234 And even if it turns out to be real, I'm not the least bit excited about it. It wouldn't be the first "Remaster" that basically just sells the same game as before with very minor changes, or is actually worse than the Original.
@@UltimateSpinDash just enjoy it ffs
Can't wait what amazing things EA has prepared for us jaja
I fear for a woke version of mass effect. I will wait for the critic before buying. But i hope.
It's ironic that Cerberus would become one of the greatest threats to humanity.
They're an unregulated Intelligence agency run by a guy who was indoctrinated literally the entire game series. That's not irony, that's exactly what you would expect. They betrayed their stated purpose immediately by divorcing themselves from any sort of restraint by the greater will of humanity; at best they would act as an authoritarian crypto-state enslaving us as thoroughly as they feared aliens would, at worse they were a constant rolling disaster of failed research programs that posed a larger threat to humanity than anything they actually stopped, and systemically denied anything resembling and diplomacy.
Cerberus was always a bad idea, born out of a need for control that is realistically impossible. It exists because of existential cowardice. Of shame for losing the First Contact War, because of the arrogant assumption that we should have won. It was always angry, childish, self-righteous, blinkered, and arrogant. The Illusive man was just charismatic and smart enough to make it seem noble, and that was a lie.
@unknown Unknown I stopped reading with all the typos. If you're not going to even try to spell the proper nouns right you either don't care, or are attempting to troll me. Debating you is pointless. If you have an actual rhetorical point try responding with enough consideration and respect that the entire block of text isn't an onerous labor to parse. Otherwise you're not worth the effort to convince. Bye
@@morganrobinson8042 Without the immoral research of Cerberus, no Cmd Shepard. Without Shepard to fight the Collector, the Humanity wouldn't have been able to defence itself.
@@omegaman7377 And that justifies everything? Using Thresher maws on foot soldiers? Jamming that one guy into a Geth instance so it drove them both mad? Literally using Dragons Teeth on people? Literally none of those helped anybody, and the last made a horde of mind-controlled shock troopers out of refugees in the third game.
The problem with consequential reasoning is that as long as you get a passable result nothing else matters. It has no consideration for either necessity of an action or it's other consequences, as long as you get what you want. It is wasteful at best, and outright evil at worst.
And while I can accept the premise that there are times when the need for results will outstrip ethical concerns, Cerberus never operated in any other way. The ends always justified the means, and if unnecessary suffering was created it was never their concern. And that never bore out.
In fact, Miranda's professional ethics and Shepard's crew were about the only time Cerberus bothered to sanitize their behavior, and it was done deliberately to give a good impression in the latter part. And they were about the only parts of Cerberus not to turn into something actively hostile to human survival.
You're excusing everything Cerberus did on the pretense that it did ultimately save everyone, when that isn't nessicarilty true. They did as much or more to hinder Shepard's efforts as they ever did to help.
@@morganrobinson8042 I understand both sides of the story. One they took things way to far at almost every turn as you said. On the other side humanity is drastically outgunned and outclassed by Asari Turians and Salarians. So they need to take drastic shit to make giant leaps and bounds trying to catch up.
Any and everything is allowed in their eyes aslong as it provides a benefit. Such as the torture facility where Jack got raised in a effort to give Asari a run for their money. And boy did they get results isn't Jack one of the strongest biotics in existence ? Imagine an army of Jacks that follow orders.
Illusive Man: Don’t turn your back on me Shepard! I made you, I brought you back from the dead!
Shepard: And I’m going to do exactly what you brought me back to do: I’m gonna win this war, and I’ll do it without sacrificing the soul of our species.
Federation over Facism!
@@jakespacepiratee3740 yesw
I was pretty annoyed with what they did with Cerberus in ME3. It made sense, but the way they wrote it was a bit over the top and cartoonish (Kai Leng being the biggest example). A part of me wishes they were instead written as a renegade ally to Shepard.
Could not agree more. ME3 was a letdown to me storywise. First of all I hated the mess the military made of my pretty ship, which I loved to just walk around in in Me2. Also the amoral pragmatic organization for some reason became a cartoon villain.
Imagine if you choose to control the collector base and ME 3 started with you still loyal to Cerberus. Anderson meets you at a bar on earth while you're on shoreleave when the Reapers attack
I personally liked it, as it made sense within the lore. In ME2, while still bad guys they were doing the right thing, but during the reaper war they were so into using reaper tech that it allowed the Reapers to take control of them and use them for the reapers gain while they still believed they were doing the right thing. Worked well to build the Reapers as truly masterminds as they fought not only directly but turned the races they genocided against each other in a proxy war
See, you should take a look at ME1 Cerberus. That whole thing about a Cerberus taco cart killing all the scientists and taking over the base? That's Entirely accurate. Also, they were absolutely speciesist idiot bad guys. Prone to murdering high ranking systems alliance military officers fir being insufficiently corrupt, luring SA marines into thresher maw nests just to record what happened, nonsense like that. And that's when they weren't experimenting on reaper husking tech right near population centres (such s they are on new colony worlds) with basically no safety precautions. They were evil stupid from the ground up. ME2 completely retconned that, and a bunch of other stuff. From what I've heard 3 apparently tried to reconcile the two or something?
Actually, ME2's story was kind of a disaster in general if you'd actually played the first one.
@elijah mikle George Lucas didn't do that.
Say what you want about Cerberus but you can't deny that the Illusive Man knows how to dress. I mean, damn, that suit!
Edit: Ho-ly crap, I didn't expect so many likes!
TIM is sharp dresser
Martin Sheen's greatest role to date.
Change my mind.
@@GlidingZephyr Indeed
@@GlidingZephyr Hard to say when you look at The West Wing. Too close to call.
that he does!
Commander Shepard would then be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard and sent to the Pegasus Galaxy to be in charge of security on the lost City of Atlantis.
Unfortunately when he was promoted there was a typo and he was never able to get the extra *p* removed.
;)
Illusive man in ME2: "Shepard, I know our methods may differ but we both need to come together in order to beat the reapers"
Illusive man in ME3: "let's blow up the citadel's council while they're fighting reapers!"
Reaper indoctrination is one hell of a drug
By that time they were pretty much indoctrinated by the reapers
@@blackvial shame we never got to see how that happened
@@mikhailbychkov5042 it's pretty easy to figure out, they've been studying reaper tech for a while and the vast majority of reaper tech causes indoctrination
@@blackvial that's not my point. At the end of ME2 the illusive man, knew full well the dangers of indoctrination. Could he fall to it due to his hubris? Certainly, ME2 definitely shows that it's possible. But to leave with a Cerberus that is fully committed to defending humanity to one that wages open war only in a span of a few months in universe is too drastic. Sure we can assume from diaries and parts of dialogue to what happened during that time but not how it happened. Which is a damn shame
I just had an awesome idea: do an investigation into the Templin Institute itself!
Security breach, not a good idea.
Just go to their first video
Heresy
We a need a investigation into the Walmart multiverseal Empire
I love how almost every project Cerberus did blew up dramatically in there face
We have a naval base here in Australia called none other than HMAS Cerberus
Also, Mirandas father who works for Cerberus is Henry Lawson. Who shares the name with a famous Australian writer and poet.
are they flying the flag of Cerberus?
Honestly I think my favorite thing about Mass Effect 3 was fighting Cerberus agents... the other forces had their charms but the way Cerberus in particular was to fight hit that perfect sweet spot for me, and getting a headshot on a Centurion while the Assault Troopers he's leading scream "DAMMIT!" will likely remain one of my hardwired delighted moments in gaming.
I just started playing Mass Effect 2 on Legendary Edition. I really love Cerebus. I find them to be a interesting faction. They got really nice armor designs too.
Strength for Cerberus is strength for every youman
TH-camman
Least until they're destroyed next game by turning full darkside
Cerberus IS humanity!
Call the bondulance!
Youman?
Also noting how intense it was during my first playthrough of ME3 fighting Cerberus, felt wrong like we should be working together. It was exactly what the reapers wanted, Cerberus wasn't necessarily evil I feel. The Alliance didn't kill Cerberus, the reapers did, and there we were.. humans killing humans and such whilst the reapers dominate and conquer everything else.
Cerberus is the guard dog that became rabid.
Would have been nice if in ME3 Cerberus was more grey rather generic bad guy. It would have been cool if the player as Shepard could late-game be able to convince the non-indoctrinated members to join you during the Battle of Earth.
That's exactly what happens though? Throughout the game you constanty pick up defected Cerberus members. There is like a whole tab for them in the war menu, and a signifcant chunk of the multiplayer operatives are former Cerberus agents.
@@ГлебЧерепанов-з3ч ; Oh yeah, forgot about them. Been a while since I did anything ME3. However I was referring to more of the higher ups and a Cerberus flotilla or two. Thanks for that reminder anyway.
Do remember that phone game, it had that rogue dragoon.
According to the descriptions for two multiplayer characters (the Phoenix Project vanguard and adept,) this did happen, granted it was a long time before the Battle of Earth. Biotic soldiers in Cerberus defected when they learned about reaper implants. Instead, they joined Admiral Hackett and the N7 Special Ops. It's worth noting that this project is believed to have produced the dragoon, so they are essentially non-indoctrinated dragoons (which piggybacks off of arthur ryan's comment.)
I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite video on the Citadel.
Shepard no!
Wish we had a lore about the first contact war and even a game if thats ok
Interesting theory I heard recently about Cerberus in ME2. Allegedly, they never had any interest in protecting the colonies from the Collectors, they only claimed that to be their objective in order to get Shepherd to co-operate with them. Their actual goal was to gain access to whatever was beyond the Omega-4 relay. Once they determined it was the Collectors, as well as their affiliation with the Reapers, Shepherd and his team were little more than expendable martyrs to be used to acquire the Reapers' technology for their own agenda. This is hinted at by the Illusive Man's insistence on maintaining the Collector Base and when he outright prevented the Alliance from learning of the Collector attack on Horizon, delaying their response until he got what he was after.
Bro, it's been a year now, you may have changed your mind, but I'll still say: you wrote a completely wrong theory, leaving out a lot of facts. Yes, Cerberus needed the technology from the Collectors' base. That's true. However, that technology was needed to fend off a Reaper's Invasion in the future. Cerberus' secondary mission was to save the human colonies that had been attacked, because no one cared, the Council didn't pay any attention to it because it was another sector's territory, and the System Alliance took no action at all to protect the colonies, the Alliance only investigated colonies that had already been destroyed. The Illusive Man would never allow civilians to suffer at the hands of aliens because he knows from experience what it's like to have civilians attacked (during the First Contact War, the Turians bombed a peaceful colony on Shanxi when TIM was a mercenary soldier in the Alliance. Because of the Turians' actions, TIM lost his best friends).
Cerberus was evil from the beginning in Mass effect 1. Humanity first is just a face and recruitment tactic. Unless the Reapers already got to the illusive men, but doesn't change it.
Cerberus was always my favorite, I actually really liked them and technically if it weren't for them the entire Galaxy would have fallen, they brought back Shepard to finish the job when nobody else cared to.
Perfect timing on this video, I'm right in the middle of going back through the mass effect games for the first time in years!
Fantastic video! I love Mass Effect the lore and scope of the universe they created is amazing and its wonderful to have such a fascinating organization like Cerberus discussed and explained so well. Nicely done!
Cerberus in the three games
1: Shadowy mysterious black ops group gone rouge.
2.Morally grey paramilitary, that for its faults is the one taking the initiative for the defense of humanity and agruebly the galaxy as a whole
3.Uh......ok let's get this over with........idiot troopers, lead by an idiot assassin, and reducing what was the smartest man in the galaxy to also an idiot.
Man Bioware dropped the ball in 3 in more ways then one.
One word, Indoctrination
@@qwefhj3011 neural degradation caused by long term indoctrination
@@qwefhj3011 just because it makes sense canonically n whatnot doesn't mean it was good writing
@@Gingerninja800 it explains why cerberus turned into a dumb villain organization tho. ik it is dumb writing but it has an explanation lol
@Bethesda sucks, but Zerglings still are cute. yeah sure bud trilogy was perfect amirite. the only story wise good game in mass effect series was the first one. 2 was too cartooney and the only thing that saved it was its gameplay mechanics. i dont even want to speak about the 3. every buildup that came from 1 and 2 was discarded and finished the trilogy with a stupid space brat and colors ending. the only thing that was good in 3 was the reflection of hopelessness of the situation. also even a 9 yrs old could finish the trilogy with a better ending than space brat ending so your "dUh i WaNnA sEe uR wRitInG bRoh" argument is lazy as heck
Cerberus is basically the inevitable result of first contact - for every one who sees infinite possibilities, there's going to be others who will embrace xenophobia and absolute power. The worst part is that Cerberus's actions might have been justified, even though they wound up falling victim to the Reapers' influence.
Anyway, since N7 Day is in a few days, will we see another Mass Effect video soon?
@Para el libro修 That's because humanity basically _were_ the children of the galactic community. Many of the species had interstellar space-flight long, long, _looooonng_ before humanity reached that milestone... And many of the members of the galactic community that had contributed much more than humanity were _still_ waiting to have a say in how things were done.
Cerberus were made up by people who were either ignorant, or intitled, or fearful... Or all three.
Humans are superior to all other Life Point s except for the elephants
Are we just gonna forget about Stellaris Invicta 2? :(
It will come soon, very soon.
There was a delay to fit the new update so they didnt need to restart halfway through iirc
Cerbersus three heads = three departments
Politics-Espionage-Military
Fitting that the institute is doing a Mass Effect video in November. Here's hoping for some news on N7 day!
Ah Cerberus. The "pro-human" organization responsible for more human deaths than any faction other than the Reapers.
That implies it wasn't ever a tool of the Repears. The expended works have hinted that Jack Harper, The Illusive Man was indoctrinated or at least had been set down the path towards it. It goes to show how dangerous the Repears really are and makes one wonder if the reason so many cycles had a difficult time figuring out the Repears trap and plan was because they left a lot of stuff to indoctrinated beings unwittingly.
No matter what happens, humans will never leave the leadership of the human death:kill ratio scoreboard
Cerberus was such a good villain in ME2 because they succesfully convincing me into their cause, like literally I played Shepard to be Cerberus lap dog, cooperating with Illusive Man and doing whateve%he need (until the false report on Collector ship where I become distrust him and be hostile toward him inwards), in Mass Effect 3 they're just antagonist who antagonize everyone else and their cause is injustifiable at all, like you can't see things from their perspective because it's illogical and that makes them a bad villain in my eyes. It's a shame that they're not well written in ME3, reduced to only stupid Kai Leng and idiotic army, like cerberus is not about army shooting spreeing around, they're always about small team of infiltrator and recon.
I think the best plot for cerberus is for them to co-operate with System Alliance but secretly still doing their exoeriments and playing around with Reaper Tech, and mid-game getting indoctrinated and literally stab Alliance and Shepard in the back, and it's so out of nowhere that no one could anticipathe that. which then would explain how Cerberus gained so much followers, becaude they're sleeper agents within the Alliance exposing other Alliance troops to indoctrination due to their secret enhancement, which will make a good display of the danger of indoctrination.
Villain?
Sounds a lot better than what we got.
Atlas corporation vs Federation of The Americas would be good video, Atlas corporation vs Cerberus would make another good video, Atlas and Cerberus vs Imperium of Man or Galactic Empire would make another good video in the VS section.
"Salvation comes with a cost. Judge us not by our means, but what we seek to accomplish." - The Illusive Man.
We are judging you by what you want. That's why we judge you
Damn, that mass effect art hits me hard. Good memories
Mass Effect is what I like to call a "Federation Future" it's a Multi-species Democratic semi-Socalist Future in which Humanity champiosn democracy above all, and takes this mindset with them in the future. This setting often gives us the closest thing the West tries to make to Anime, with wacky (not necissarily bad) storylines, and a lot of interspecies fanservice. Star Trek is another massive Federation Future, if not the main Federation Future I would point to. Anyways, in these futures, the villians are either some sort of Hive-Minded organism that can not be negotiated with, or Human Space-Nazis stomping their legs, pouting and shouting "Earth for Humanity! Humanity First! Purge Xenos! I want to live in the 40K setting!" and that, my friends, is what Cerberus is in Mass Effect.
Could we see some lore vids on the following :
Sovereign colonies armed forces (dead space 3)
Adeptus mechanicus (warhammer 40k )
The MCRN (the expanse)
You left out the events of Mass Effect: Infiltrator, which is almost entirely about Cerberus.
Awesome game too bad isn't avabile to downloaf
@@unitednationsspacecommand6502 tpb will probably have ut
@@viceadmiraljassasulrana9082 Thanks! Still UNSC Doesn't advise Priracy.
@@unitednationsspacecommand6502 weakness
@@viceadmiraljassasulrana9082 No we are not hahah. UNSC Stronger than ever
Suffer not the Xeno.
Suffer not the heretic.
Damn right.
Meanwhile at Cerberus...
(Sees mutants and Xeno tech)
TIM: yes.
Suffer not the Mon'Keigh
FOR THE EMPEROR
FOR HUMANITY
i know some people didnt like the game, but in Mass Effect Andromeda there were Cerberus agent's that integrated with the flight to another galaxy, even in Andromeda the Illusive man's vision survives.
This feels like a good way to segway Into a special about Jacqueline Nought a.k.a Jack, a.k.a. the psycotic biotic, a.k.a. my' Mrs Shepard......
Or just NightCity instead
Awesome! I'm just about to finish the final installment in the trilogy this week.
"Your timing is impeccable." - EDI
Humanity first!
Oh yes the good old days... when your decisions actually mattered...
Cerbereus was an interesting and understandable faction, I’m still pissed at the horrible treatment and dumb down they got in ME3. Joining with them could’ve been the renegade option, they could’ve been a real path toward defeating the reapers, but no. They’re just stupid villains who act in defiance of the theme of destroying the reapers
Okay, touched on Cerberus. I do like me some Mass Effect. If they do decide to continue with Andromeda, salvage that story, Cerberus in some way could play a role since they did attach agent within the Initiative.
Continue? With Andromeda? HA! That has a bigger chance of happening than Bioware salvaging Anthem!
@@jakespacepiratee3740 yes, still a bit of a shame though. The implications that Cerberus was the organisation behind the andromeda initiative (or at least a major contributor) had a lot of potential, especially considering that Cora is probably related to Jack Harper, aka The Illusive Man. If they had managed the story better and solved the technical issues BEFORE launch, it might have been a proper mass effect successor. The Combat/traversal were after all quite fun.
I want an 8k remaster of Mass Effect with an extended version for each game, specially 3rd (there is so much more to do) 3 or 4 years from now with the new game engines.
I used to LOVE this faction...
I roleplay it during the game even always using their armor and clothes 😂
Cerberus fell victim to the pattern that Vendetta spoke of. Xenophobia and arrogance. At least that's what I believe.
Arrogance, i don't think so. The conclusion of the First Contact was a surprise for the member of the Counsel. Human has a good reason to be proud. The Turians were surprised by our resilience.But the Counsel see the humanity as some sort of Rachni treat. Human are strong warriors and they are very fast learner. His xenophobia was justified, every races was hiding Prothean technology at a critical time. And the Counsel didn't care about the attack of the human colony.
@@omegaman7377 I hear what you're saying but the arrogance I was speaking of was the notion that Cerberus thought that they could control the Reapers. You could say that that was due to indoctrination but there are countless references in game and in other media that shows that Cerberus' goal of using any means available to elevate only humanity to dominate and rule all other races.
I literally got this notification as the three headed dog from Blood of Zeus was first shown fully and Cerberus is the most well known, maybe only, three headed in actual Greek mythos.
Love the ME content. Thanks guys!
Is it just me, or does the Templin Institute really like the word "clandestine".
I like cerber from the second game I was kind of sad when they came to the villains again in the third game. I mean I know they were never technically good guys but I would have gladly seen them split in half and they'll be a good side to them
Ooh, I can't wait to play Mass Effect 3 when it comes to gamepass in a few days.
This helps excite me.
This gives me chills!
I can still get behind putting humanity first, just not putting other species down that don’t deserve it. Also say what you want about Cerberus’ checkered past, you can’t deny their fortitude for making excellent weapons and armor
I like the idea of Cerberus (Humanity First), and it's symbolism of its name; instead of the guardian of the realm of Hades, it's the guardian of the realm of humanity. Sadly, the writers of ME decided to make them do something stupid and only fight the reapers in ME2. Though, I guess it was an eventuality that something with the idea of "Humanity First" would be seen as evil by writers that gave us color-coded endings.
Any orginizations that says "humanity first" in a galaxy with a lot of other species will become the bad gut
The amount of people in the comments going on about how Cerberus took a drastic turn in ME3 makes me wonder if there is two very different versions of ME2 going around, and I just never got my hands on the same one as those people.
Nope, they just bought the line that was being laid down about how Cerberus was acting in humanities best interest when half of the side quests were cleaning up their horrible disasters, especially if you counted the first game's Cerberus missions. They decided to let themselves be convinced despite what we already knew and were still seeing. They allowed for a benefit of the doubt that wasn't earned on the goodwill of Shepard's resurrection, and followed the Paragon path out of habit in most cases without really thinking about the implications of what was going on past the immediate emotional response.
Most of these people simply failed to care enough to bother understanding what happened, and came away with an impression curated by the group they were meant to be judging. This is why you can never trust anyone trying to sell you something.
You did good. You actually figured out they were horrible, when it was being actively whitewashed by characters in the game, if not narrative.
@@morganrobinson8042 Horrible is relative in this game. Cerberus did develop something to sterilize a race like the Salarians. Or used it like the Turians. it is a brutal world. “Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps.”
@@morganrobinson8042 Well, I don't think it's about people not caring about the plot - after all, people who barely skimmed through the dialogue are unlikely to end up in this comment section - I think it has more to do with glorification of the whole "rogue cop who doesn't play by the rules" thing. Its a very famous and fleshed out trope, and I largely suspect that most people saw Illusive Man talking about "doing what needs to be done" and were like "Oh, I know this" - and just never diviated from that perception from there.
So while there is personal responsibility to be had for failing to apply critical thinking (we are all susceptable to that), I think it's importnat to note that this is a systemic problem in media - video games especially.
@@omegaman7377 Horrible is very much not relative in ME. "Commiting heinous crimes is never the answer to any problem ever" is a very persistent theme throughout the trilogy.
You are clearly referring to Mordin's story there as an example of "sometimes bad things need to be done" but its literally the opposite of what his story is about. He spends his life lamenting what he has done to Krogans and eventually dies to fix it. He once says that he still believes what he and his team had done was justified at the time with the information they had, but he also notes several times how little of the actual concequences of their actions they predicted.
Like, most of the trilogy is about you running around fixing the concequences of someone "doing what needs to be done", and I don't know how much more transparent the writers could have been about this.
God i love that intro, i get chills every time i hear/read it
Did anyone else, without having read any supplementary materials, when playing ME2 for the first time, think of the illusive man (from the eyes) "Oh yeah, this Guy's Indoctrinated" That's an exact quote of my first thought on meeting him.
For a group that supposedly was pro-humanity, they sure took a lot of anti-human actions.
They care more about control than they do Humanity, they abandoned that when they literally dehumanized their soldiers by turning them into brain-fucked cyborgs.
@@jakespacepiratee3740 that's more due to Repear indoctrination which is hinted at in the non game works to have effected Jack Harper long ago. Removing that the existence of Cerberus does make some sense as a precaution. The Citadel does have a tendency to use races, go overboard in their rulings to the point of absurdity, or throw allies under the bus.
so i love the idea of Cerberus but only in 1 and 2, the Cerberus we get in 3 doesn't really make sense as it is just way to large, in ME2 we learn a lot about Cerberus and how it works and i did some maths and it shouldn't really be any larger than 300 people total across its 3 operations remember TIM likes to keep it all directly under his control, bringing back shepard and building the SR2 took almost everything Cerberus had in resources and money then in ME3 only a few months after the end of ME2 they can suddenly field fleets of ships all of them fully manned and drop what looks to be a full army of trained troops, ye they messed them up in ME3 sadly.
Well... even in ME2 it is mentioned that only the Illusive Man knows how big truly Cerberus is. Not even that, we get to see their space station, which in on itself would probably house tens of thousands people. Add to that that they had shipyards big enough and efficient enough to rebuild and upgrade the Normandy, and you can see that this organization was already powerful in ME2. In ME3 they were indoctrinated, which could also explain their numbers in the field. All of the non-essential personnel would become troopers after being indoctrinated.
What would have been better if Illusive Man was indoctinated, but there were many cerberus sub factions that were sympathetic to Shepard, and a battle between Cerberus forces loyal to the original goal of stopping the reapers and those indoctrinated.
@@MasterGhostf agreed, but what happened in ME3 also made sense. They could have been indoctrinated for example by a "mandatory chip enchancement" or sth like that. That would cause for all troops to be indoctrinated without residence.
Besides there was a motive like that. For example the mission where you meet Jacob.
@@NomadziorBG There actually is a text log in one of the side missions which is some diary entries from a Cerberus recruit that talks about how their training regimen involves cybernetic enhancements (as seen in the very first mission to Mars in ME3 as well), which shifted the tone of their log entries from casual and personal to more serious and emotionless. It's pretty clear that all of Cerberus' armed forces are implanted with Reaper tech. Anyone that wasn't indoctrinated would have had no military power to bring to bear.
With that said, the fact that they would even use those implants without any precautions or backup plans in case using literal Reaper tech backfires is just beyond incompetent
@@Lazarultos unless the Illusive Man was already Indoctrinated. But I'm not justifying BioWare. They made some poor choices in regards to ME3. Which is sad because I honestly love the game as much as the entire ME universe.
Funny this comes up, I'm replaying ME2 and 3 now
Same
Wish I were more interested in mass effect so I could make use of how early I was.
Cerberus and the Illusive Man were pretty cool in Mass Effect, and I enjoyed where they took them by ME3; I'm probably one of the few that wasn't horribly upset at how 3 turned out. But, I never did get to play the first game, so perhaps my "investment" in the series wasn't quite as concrete.
I've been replaying the trilogy again
this helps
Humanity First!
"It's nationalism, not Facism!"
I just hope that EA includes the DLCs in the remaster.
It is ridiculous that they are still full price in the old games.
But its EA, so my hopes aren't to high on that
Well EA may not have a choice considering all the lawsuits and the gambling law violations in the Netherlands, so there my be SOME hope. But with that being said, I realize that has very little relevance to your response, but still...
@@shockwave487 Well i think that the dlcs really complete the games. Especially the citadel and shadowbroker dlc. It just makes the expirience more rounded and a proper remaster should include everything, to deliver the full experience and in many cases nostalgia. It would do the games the well deserved justice, if EA provided everything for everyone
I still Remember when This Channel was About 100k Templin Personnel and I'm one of them Congratulations Sir Mark! Or Marc?
BTW Congratulations!!!!!
I'm gonna make a TH-cam Channel also but it's like High Command Looking at the Battlefields and Space battles but i also don't know when i will Create it.
Finally some ME content which I'm watching on N7 day BTW!
I don't get people that unironically think Cerberus were the good guys in ME2
They are the good guys in me1 me2 and me3
@@top-notch8277 Example of person I don't get
Cerberus _is_ humanity.
I thought it was Hyperion
I'm a simple person. I see Mass Effect, I click.
Keep up the Mass Effect lore!! Don't forget that it is a vast universe with endless lore.
There was no mention of the great hero Maurader Shields.
The worst part about taking down Cerberus...
...is that I could only kill Kai Leng once.
I know many channels have already done this, but how about covering the SCP-Foundation?
There are many possible interdimensional shenanigans ;)
what a time to be alive, and more importantly to see ME content to clash through the YT community.
Wait, I'm confused... The latest Mass Effect product featuring Cerberus is... **checks notes** 8 years old, with ME3, afaik. What prompted THIS video of all things? xP
They may have lacked depth in 3, but they where easily my favorite enemy type in multiplayer.
Earth discovers already established galactic community and has to take a junior role…
Wait till they see what happens in David Brin's *Uplift* series.
Still could be even worse … looking at you HALO.
This series is...Legendary.
The Illusive Man did nothing wrong, except when he allowed himself to become Indoctrinated. He should have focused on neutralising the Reapers *before* attempting to gain control of their technology.
"But I want dem sweet Reaper tech, how is Hooman goin to b master race if we dont have Reaper Tech? Plz become Indoctrinated nau thx"
"But I want dem sweet Reaper tech, how is Hooman goin to b master race if we dont have Reaper Tech? Plz become Indoctrinated nau thx"
The inspirations for the illusive man come from a few Sci fi sources, the obvious as the X Files Cancer man as well as the mysterious billionaire benefactor in the movie Contact. Played by John hurt if I remember correctly he alway flew from airport to airport always in the air and smoked too he was dying of cancer, but I also remember him being David bowie too so my memory is fuzzy. Edit see Contact - talking with Hadden - finding the key on youtube and note the similarities between this and the illusive man briefing scene
"Hey Tali, can you guess what happened when Cerberus tried to build a taco stand?"
"Same thing that always happens. It went insane, killed everyone involved, and tried to take over the base. What's a taco stand anyway?"
If they ever make a Mass Effect Movie/Streaming Series (no one makes stuff for basic cable anymore ^_^), I would like to see Charlie Sheen in the role of the Illusive Man.
Although his father brought the role to life in the game, he's probably too elderly to do so now (although in the game, he spent most of his time in a chair, so maybe Martin could still play him).
Resurrecting Shepherd and getting him set up is probably the only thing this humans first organization did that helped humanity in the long run.
You sound like a salarian! ;)
I'm done trying to deduce what Cerberus actually is from watching Mass Effect character's videos.
Cerberus is just that Illusive, man.
@@ravager2-636 Eyyyyyyyyyyy he did the name, he said the thing
Para military force, used to be a Secret branch of the Human Alliance military, probably, but then went Rogue in ME1. Became the good guys you fight for in 22 then went full evil and you play a key role in hampering and finally destroying in 3
@@robertagu5533 This. Many people don't remember the original background of Cerberus given in ME 1. Cerberus' very nature is actually a huge retcon, but one that proved very popular I guess. I'm ever so slightly disappointed that the Templin Institute didn't mention that angle at all.
@@robertagu5533 I do not think they really went rogue, before the third game. I think the rumour was to protect the reputation of the Alliance and the Humanity. After all, the humanity for the member of the Citadel are a bunch of morons. But a bunch that are able to fight.
Love your videos of Mass Effect and Fallout!
yes, but what about Cerberus, helltaker?
they need an episode.
Man, Helltaker was such a wack game. Sharply dressed demon girls.
The out-of-game lore explicitly states that the Illusive Man has been in contact with the Reapers since the Battle of Shanxi (2157).
I wonder when the Templin Institute would clash with The SCP Foundation. That would be a story told for ages!
I wonder if their recent video on the event horizon is a prelude to that. It does have some SCP-esque vibe to it. Gateway investigation gone awry or maybe an extradimensional rift that could introduce SCPs and the the SCP foundation itself to the Templin Institute. As it stands the only real “villain” right now to the institute is the mysterious observer and the Imperium of Man from warhammer.
It would be interesting to put the institute into more high pressure scenarios as opposed to their prim and proper investigations into alternate worlds and universes.
After all if the templin institute’s system is easily hackable, it’s not surprising that a foundation agent has already found a way in. Could be an interesting crossover.
I knew you'd choke on the hard decisions, Shepard!
You forgot it is also implied in mass effect Andromeda that the Andromeda project was helped in funding by Cerberus
If so, then why were Alien colonists allowed to come along?
@@jakespacepiratee3740 keep up appearances and even Cerberus don’t have the resources to fund the whole andromeda project. By allowing all aliens to attend it move suspiciouson away from the real intention. Plus Cerberus would of laid ground work in place in the form of sympathetic supporters of there doctrine within the human ark.
Would love to see a Principality of Zeon entry 😍
Thus the gaming industry was changed massively
I had this what if idea: what if ceberus sent some operatives to andromeda around or prior to the andromeda initiative
08:08 "Unassuming" isn't a label I'd apply to Cronos Station
The Master:I am the Master and You will obey me