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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 23 ก.ค. 2022
- I think i'm indoctrinated after playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition so many times.
In this video, I go over why I find the Reapers to be such great villains throughout the Mass Effect trilogy - And why I think lots of fans are missing the point that makes them the perfect foil against Shepard.
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I think i'm indoctrinated.
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da, you are somewhat :D
bat der iz stil houp for yu
Harbinger must have been very lonely when he finished the first harvest
Resistance is futile.....
The line from Sovereign in ME1 where he says "We will darken the skies of every world," is a line that Bioware really delivered on in ME3. The Reapers really did feel like the unstoppable machine gods that Sovereign made them out to be. As for the Catalyst, I think it would have gone down a bit better if it wasn't represented as the Starchild. I don't know why Bioware decided to go down that path. Maybe I'm just heartless, but I didn't find the kid dying during the opening of ME3 to be an impactful moment. It's treated like it's Shepard's most haunting experience, which created a disconnect between me and Shep since I just didn't agree. I wish they would have pulled a Leviathan and had the Catalyst's appearance change between Saren, TIM, and Anderson rather than some random kid we said 2 lines to.
Maybe throw in kiaden/ashley depending on who dies in the 1st game
I had so much connection errors with my Shepard especially during Kai Leng's encounters.
Why did you stop shooting? keep shooting.
Why did you let him disable the car? use your rifle and fire at him
Why do you let him pull his TIM pikachu? shoot him
The Catalyst should just have been Harbinger as both ME2 and ME3 build him as the leader of the Reapers. The Codex is hyping him as the oldest and most powerful of them all.
I agree
That would have been super
"You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it". Huge biomechanical machines created as a result of the processing of entire civilizations, capable of destroying anyone in their path, causing fear with their appearance and roars. When in the final of the first Mass Effect we destroyed the Sovereign, and in the second we were shown an armada of these machines, I could not imagine how we would fight them if we only defeated one with great difficulty. The Reapers are and will continue to be one of the most memorable antagonists for me. Its not the person or organization these are mountain-sized machines that don't compromise. And the fact that there are so many of them shows how many civilizations they destroyed. Oh, and the sounds they make. It's like the Tripods have been upgraded. They are badass. And i still dont know how we in Mass Effect 3 even if we collected as much allies as we can fight with them. In any case i love them and wish in other games there were the same antagonists.
Those horns are immensely memorable
@@snakeman830 This is the sound of a trash bin, the big ones. True story, word.
The fact that they look so similar to cuttlefish and squid makes them more familiar and relatable. They move so slow that it looks like they are underwater.
The sound the Reapers make when they locate you scanning is still so scary to me
What worries me is how advanced and clever they are, a being of perfection and out of the box thinking, both machine, organic, and whatever they become once created. You never get to see their full power, creativity, and intelligence head-on.
Just imagine if they were forced to go to all-out war with the Borg or B-5 Shadows or any of the powerful sci-fi beings within it's power scale. We've only seen fractions of their capabilities cus that all that was needed, but if forced to do otherwise.
Imagine the devastation. Scary! 😟
in my opinion the reapers were at their finest before their origin was explained.
The mystery behind these god machines that wiped out all organic life in the whole galaxy like million times '' cycles ''.
And i really liked it when harbinger was the reapers leader the VERY FIRST REAPER. i mean come on that voice their philosophy was just incredible
Yeah mass effect lore wise was the best in mass effect 1 because you don’t know about this cycle or protheans
@@tempemm well i guess yeah but u i thing it was really a nice touch it just adds to the dark side of the reapers
Knowing that the reapers were the reason for the extinction of an entire civilization and not just that but every single civilization since the very beginning really makes u admire fear and respect them
I disagree. Knowing about them, fighting them and still ultimately failing. Which technically we did fail. Is much more impactful. I wouldn't have cared as much if we had no information on them. I hate when any form entertainment provides little to no explanation as to what's going on/what a threat is. I need information to form a genuine connection. Us, learning about the reapers, building our defenses, only to ultimately fail was much more impactful.
We have to know where they came from in order to have lore, not just a big bad boogie man. Without proper background it's just lazy and cheap.
@@MikeDchy25 Not really. We don't know where Cthulhu and their ilk come from. And they are still effective. With the reapers it should've been like that. Maybe some hints here and there, something related to how they reproduce but without explaining why they need to do it or when they started.
Something a lot of other villains don't have is a way to seamlessly brain wash people and have no real notable physical changes that would tip off its allies, or friends. You could have your best friend shoot you in the back at a vital moment and never know he was under reaper control if you weren't looking for it. Power dynamics can be done in most games but very few games have you need to worry if your allies aren't actually your enemy.
Unfortunately this is barely explored in Mass Effect, like literally no one on your team gets properly indoctrinated
Other Villian's have Charakter or Personality.
@@kevinskylp7422 You mean the omnicidal pseudo synthetic beings who very clearly think little of organics, and have a huge power complex don't have a personality?
Order 66 though technically not a game
Even better is The Reapers don’t even need to have that ability since their sheer size and scope of army alone is enough to decimate systems, yet here we are being destroyed from within as well
Totally agree. When it comes to reapers I like to quote myself from a long time ago: "while you were trying to understand the enemy, they have successfully won" Everyone who's ever tried to study or understand the motives behind reapers' actions got either killed or indoctrinated. It's true that it's similar to GoT philosophy: "you win or you die"
The Cycle must continue. There is no alternative.
Reapers are BADASS. I even RP-ed them in game Stellaris and wiped the entire galaxy out😁
Is it possible not to have sovereigns speech/theme on loop when playing a driven exterminator?
Grunt, no! They indoctrinated you, too?
@@Magosspud sure. If you don't install mod Reaper advisor.
I always play the game as a semi pacifist. The ai throws insults at me until the point my fleets outnumber theirs more than 10 to 1. They often try to plead for peace, but it always falls on deaf ears. That and I also accumilate enough diplo power in the GC to prevent most acts against me. I even made myself emperor on one occasion.
@@02091992able Well, it seems bots I played with are extremely fearless... or completely stupid. They keep insulting me even after witnessing me destroying 50% of the Galaxy. I played as organics only twice, actually. First as big and extremely aggressive reptiles aka Krogans who survived nuclear apocalypse. Had to stop because some mode crushed the game completely. Second as little squishy mollusk pacifist who brings democracy to everyone... by Dragons😄 I stopped this playthrough because after the fall of the last space Hitler nothing interested happened. I am actually terrible at playing organics. They need food, they need clothes, they die... that sucks😆 This is why I prefer playing as machine empire. During my last playthrough I've been waiting for 194 years until bots let me out to the galaxy from isolated L-Cluster. It took me about 60 years to exterminate every single one of them. Harvest, you know.
Could you imagine the knowledge the reaper's hold. I mean they could take the genetics of a dead species and repopulate.
I legit hope we see something connected to their knowledge in the next game.
Bruh imagine the scientists in ME4 somehow reverse engineered the dead reapers genetics and successfully to reborn a dead race, imagine having Prothean and Innusannon crewmate in ME4 lol
I love the Reapers. They're elegant and powerful and *spaceships* and Sovereign beats any Big Bad I can think of in terms of cool factor. If Mass Effect were a fantasy series, the Reapers are the dragons.
Sometimes I go and listen to the convo with Sovereign - it is amazing.
To me they aren't underrated, they're the best
I really hope there are a few reapers in ME4, now able to show their own individuality but also be hunted, maybe a amalgamation of the raccni and geth plots.
that really wouldnt work. either the remaining reapers become good guys due to shepard controlling them or every single one was destroyed. the synthesis ending and the shoot the catalyst ending were confirmed non-canon in the reveal trailer for the new game.
@@crazyunclecrispy6140 honestly, you could be right... hopefully a trailer drops sometime this year or we actualy get a confirmation on the status of shepard. I'd just find it a cool concept to see the reapers remain at their core reapers but give us a window into the races they destroyed so that new players that won't have played LE have a better grasp of the previous stakes and the gravity of reapers being about.
@@cybergames3436 we probably wont get any news on the new mass effect until the new dragon age drops and honestly if the new dragon age sucks and doesnt sell well odds are EA will kill off bioware. 3 flops in a row is more than enough for EA to shut them down (andromeda and anthem were both massive failures)
Honestly, I don't mind the Catalyst that much. What makes the "starchild" so interesting in my eyes is that it might not even be responsible itself for the atrocities it commits. Remember how both the Leviathans and the Catalyst itself compare the Reapers (and thus the Catalyst) to merely "tools" that can *only* do what they're directly _ordered_ to do. No more, no less. The problem is that, despite its godlike power, the Catalyst's orders were so badly formulated by the (arrogant) Leviathans that it simply couldn't come to any other conclusion. Hence why it *needs* Shepard to use the Crucible. The Catalyst simply cannot end its own atrocities even if desperately might want to. It's quite literally an "Almighty Idiot", as TvTropes calls it.
And that is the true tragedy of the Reaper Cycles. In the end, *nobody* is _really_ pulling the strings of them. It's all so unbelievably pointless it's almost maddening to a lovecraftian degree.
I agree. I liked the catalyst/starchild conversation (maybe the presentation could have been a little better). The only issue with the ending is that the player's choices doesn't matter much. And also there no final boss. The illusive man one is kind of a boss fight but there should have been a big boss fight with Harbinger before that.
And also I did not like the synthesis option, it doesn't make sense to me.
Perhaps the Crucible was ultimate Reaper's just-in-case to make sure they win. Someone can eventually be a threat so make it so that they have a trump card that benefits us of used.
I think the reapers are a underrated antagonist in my opinion.
Fax, the Reapers are terrifying. Discovering that they're all controlled by the Starchild is kinda jarring, and I'm disappointed that Harbinger was never fleshed out. It seems like he was always destined to have way more of a presence than he actually did.
I just wish they used some other hologram image instead of that kid, like virgil's hologram or something. It would clear up a lot of confusion and other crap, and wacky fan theories from ME3's ending. Makes it clearer for a general audience
Yeah, a more machine-like interface would have been better, I think. I would have preferred a simple flashing red dot like Hal to the image of the boy. They really didn't need to "humanize" the slaughter. We already cared.
They should have used Ashley or Kaidan, whoever died in ME1
I always thought the catalyst came in the form of a child as a form of psychological manipulation to try to get shepard to be more sympathetic and listen to what it has to say. If you shoot it in The reject ending you hear its preffered voice (typical scary reaper voice :p) which makes it clear the child isnt its true form. I thought i was fitting… almost like it has peered into shepards mind already(probably did) and chose that form as a result.
i agree. i hated the Starchild, and wiped it from the world when i started my fanfic. they could have chosen anything else. bleah
@@walidsulaiman5269 OK, yay. because when i decided to reuse that footage for something else, THAT is exactly what i thought. i mean, i still hate it as a personification of all Reaper Evil, but it felt really useful as an extension of Femshep's innermost demons
Mass effect 3 should have ended with a massive boss fight against harbinger with war assets coming into play. Of every villain in every video game series, the reapers deserved one gigantic epic show down that added replay value in ways you could go about it. I had such high hopes for the series finale when I first played it. What an absolute waste of some of the best sci-fi world building ever written.
Most of ME3 was about to fight against Cerberus...Cerberus, man! The Reapers were just there...happily harvesting🤷♂️😒
The Extended Galaxy mod does a bit to fix that, by putting yoyr war assets as characters crowding up the Earth hub. Finally get to see an Elcor in combat armor.
Yeah... unfortunately, BioWare basically substituted the Reapers for Cerberus as the main bad guy in ME3. They kind of reduced the Reapers to a zombie invasion--a backdrop setting an environment for the drama of the "real villains and heroes" to take place within.
Cerberus should have been the villain in ME2 and been back to being just a side quest presence in ME3
@@johnbabylon7626 Yeah, as stated in a previous comment, mods helps a LOT to try to fix the wrongs done by EA, specially with the Reapers, but also shows how choped and "simplistic gamey" ME3 truly is. Even thru text, mods like EGM or the Spectre Expansion, helps to put you in the context of a real Reaper invasion and into a intragalactic war, with many fronts, describing how the Reapers attack every cluster and how fleets and armies fight to try to slow them down, at the cost of your WA. Sadly, the said choped core of the story, remains.
@@Hellion73 I play on console (XB1) so I don't get a lot of mods for Mass Effect. I hope to update my PC platform in the next couple of years so that I can play ME and DA on that but as it stands, I unfortunately don't have access to the EGM. I've heard it does a lot for the immersion, though.
Don't get me wrong: I still enjoy playing ME3. I replay the trilogy regularly, actually. But, in terms of story, it is definitely the weakest entry in the series.
...we don't count Andromeda...
The reapers are my favorite representation of ancient lovecraftian creatures. The mystery they drum up as you pursue their existence.. and They have such chilling lines when you do finally hit that epic vocal exchange. It makes you feel so small and powerless, and I love that. And then the insanity that their indoctrination blankets and floods living creatures with, let alone what can be done with the dead, they are just scary. And it’s mint. And even a bit sad, knowing every one used to be countless lives, cultures and so on.
I’d still love to expand on the leviathans, who apparently are immortal themselves. Killable it would seem. But idk, I know it’s not the most popular ask but I’d love the future game to venture into what they might be capable of without the reapers presence in the galaxy.
This is a great way to explain how cool reapers are even with the catalyst plot which I don't mind personally.
I think they are very well thought out, and for the most part, they behave in a way that is consistent with a machine process. In that, they are under no time constraints. They are very direct, dedicated, and methodical in their work and willing to take years, even centuries, to complete their assigned task.
They are the perfect predator with no fear, they suffer no pain, and they have nothing but time on their side. And they are equipped with all the appropriate tools to complete their task in the most efficient way possible.
JMHO
"I am the vanguard of your destruction. You exist because we allow it and will end because we demand it ."
Btw I loved them because they gave such a H P Lovecraft Horror vibe.
They really should have just made it such that the reapers were trying to collect enough intelligent species to solve entropy. If they really can live forever, surviving into infinity would have given them a justifiable reason to do what they did as no lives in the short term would be worth more than an infinite number of lives in the long term. It would also have justified Sovereign's line about them being far beyond our understanding and referencing our lifespan. To beings as long lived as the reapers, there is no common ground that would allow them and organics to understand their motivations to the sufficient extent to allow themselves to be harvested.
i had read many years ago about this stuff during some wikipedia deep dive and this was my main hypothesis until the leviathan conversation
The reapers, in addition to one of the great villains in scifi, are also one of the great mysteries to be solved. Through ME1&2, the writers seemed to be building up the reapers' cyclical harvesting as the reapers' mode of reproduction; they needed a race that was special in some way to harvest in order to build a new reaper like the one we saw at the end of ME2. Not every race would be useful for this, which is why the humans were being studied so carefully, why that's the only race the collectors were interested in, and why we see a distinctly human shaped reaper. I was disappointed then in ME3 then that their big play was really just an ongoing AI/organic turf war. They kind of work this in so that they somehow make some races into reapers, but it's never explained much and so to me it just seems like a hand wave to gloss over the big reproduction story they'd been building to. In my heart, I still love the mystery and reveals of ME1 the best and I imagine to myself that the reapers had more agency than the starchild fix gave them.
I feel like they are underrated due to how they appeared. In most games nowadays, we get to see the villain's full extent or backstory explained. In Mass Effect however, we saw little at a time. Only Sovereign in ME1 and Harbinger in ME2 before we got to see the Reaper's full force in ME3. They were such great villains because for the longest time, they always had an atmosphere of uncertainty. No one knew what they truly were.
And with that we got bit and pieces of what they may have been, but they were speculations and theory at best because they were so efficient at their goals that they were simply a myth...
What if the Catalyst survived ME3 (via the destroy ending) and is still the main villain in ME4? He can (still) indoctrinate people and is trying to "rebuild" the reapers (or something "better")? Maybe destroying that thing at the end "releases" him so his "consciousness" can leave the citadel?
Could be cool, but I think there's alot of folks out there that would prefer that not to happen xD
The Catalyst let Shepard destroy the Reapers. Why should he do this if he wants to "rebuild" the Reapers.
If they do that it would demonstrate a complete lack of creativity on their part and annoy the fans, I think it would be better if they keep expanding their lore not rehashing the same plot with a different spin, because that's exactly what they did with Andromeda, the Kett were a lame verison of the repears.
@@kevinskylp7422 The Catalyst was a ex Machina MacGuffin, if they didnt have the writing chops to give us a profound motive behind the reapers that merits a hyper-advanced hyper ancient Lovecraftian species they should have hired veteran science fiction writers to do it for them, just randomly giving Shepard all that power to chose because 'reasons' was lazy writing. Everything the Reapers said to Shepard throughout the games was rendered weightless by the simplistic flawed motives behind their actions, there was nothing incomprehensible about them, just a typical stupid souless machine that lacked the ability to comprehend the intentions of their creators, instead rationalizing a simple binary solution to solve the problem. (You would think their final solution would change over time, considering the amount of sentient species they've absorbed into their hivemind over millions of years). You'd expect them to be far more intelligent and display a degree of abstract thinking, now that they are alive and pocess instincts and emotions ect. But no, after millions of years the Catalyst remained a stupid AI only capable of Binary solutions.
The reapers threat needs to end. Having them back would make all the things we did in OG pointless
And considering that the destroy ending could be the canon one, the reapers are gone for good
I remember playing Mass Effect for the first time back when I was 16 in 2007. Cause my mom had asked me to make a Christmas list, and at that point all I really wanted were videogames so I added it to my list because it looked interesting and I loved Sci-Fi, but really didn't know a single thing about it other than that it was an RPG set in space. So I went into the game completely blind and was just mesmerized by it, and if it was for the early Xbox 360's being pieces of shit and that damn RRoD on my first playthrough! I probably would've spent my entire winter break from school playing it.
Anyway after finally getting my Xbox fixed, and being able to continue my playthrough, getting to Virmire and having that scene with Sovereign was just mind blowing and just changed the entire game. I put hundreds of hours into the original Mass Effect just playing it over and over again to the point that I could breeze through the main story in like 7-8 hours.
I still do wish the ending to ME3 had been better, but the extended cut did help it tremendously even though it's still not as good as it could have been, but at least it was nowhere near as bad as the GoT finale
I got an idea for an alternate ending. Instead of choosing one of the 3 colors, you kill the Catalyst and thereby free the Reapers from their slavery. The now free Reapers then get their consciousness back as with the green end.
Wouldn't they descend into madness from the trauma of being an agreggate of billions of harvested minds?
@@vukkulvar9769 Possible, but here as a writer you can choose the version you like best. It has never been canonically stated how a Reaper's consciousness works. Is it a consciousness that possesses the knowledge of an entire species or is it a collective? I just follow the logic of the green end where the Reapers also gain their self-consciousness and not descend into madness.
@@Jasmin-lg3gf Oh right, they're there in the green end.
There never was official conclusion how Milky Way fared. It was all desperate play to get Crucible functional and hope it worked against Reapers. Andromeda Initiative after 600 years of FTL heard only silence and Quarian Ark adrift blaring warnings. Reapers definitely knew Arks got away right under their noses, but what would they do? Had they already sent one of their own to Andromeda?
"I have a gun that shoots other guns."
"How many guns?"
"All of them."
I think The Catalyst isn't a terrible idea, and even the execution isn't completely awful... but because the CHOICES we get are so bad, and it really DOES FEEL like "pick a color" AND unless you were Destroying Synthetic life the whole time anyway, any choice you make will negate at least some, if not ALL of the choices you made the entire trilogy. So the execution feels so much worse... and it makes even the idea seem bad.
Honestly, I kinda would compare it to the Martha scene from BvS. If you REALLY think about it, almost NOTHING makes MORE SENSE. The REASON Bruce BECAME Batman is so NO children would EVER have to go through that again. So none would have to lose their MOTHER (and also father. I think it's usually just "parents" in the comics but I'm relating it to the scene). Basically, on paper, "Save Martha!" Is like the ONE THING that SHOULD stop a bloodlusted Bruce Wayne Batman. It's the ONLY GOOD IDEA for how to do that. You need to beg him, that even if he kills you, he'll save your PARENTS. It's just that the execution is awful.
So obviously, I think they're slightly different, because although I think the execution could've definitely been better with The Catalyst, I don't think it's BvS levels of bad. It's the choices themselves. But the main difference there is, it's a video game series that was SOLD TO US on our ability to shape the galaxy through our choices... vs a movie. If they did BvS as a game and then we had to choose what line to say to stop Batman from killing us... then it would be a way more similar comparison lol.
"Sovereign. Vanguard of our destruction, eh. How'd that work out for you, big guy?"
My first play through last year was truly amazing, seeing the reapers on earth in me3 the size of them in person, it’s truly aweing seeing them and I often just watch them destroy everything in the background during gameplay theyre beautiful in a way, from the sound of their beams cutting through everything and that iconic reaper horn, BioWare did something special
3:54 The council going from "Thanks for saving us from the Reapers Shepard" at the end of ME1 to "It was all Saren and the Geth. There are no Reapers" in 2 showed what assholes they were.
I've heard so many times over the years that the Reapers were "too OP" and that the only option to stop them was some kind of deus ex machina device, but I just can't agree with that.
You have to remember that the cycle we are playing as has a number of advantages that likely was never the case with any of the previous ones. Vigil specifically describes how the Reapers arrived directly at the Citadel and immediately killed the Protheans leadership, fracturing the chain of command and instantly gaining access to any and all information on the Prothean infrastructure. Because of the Prothean science team and the conduit, the Reapers were unable to do this against the current cycle. That's a MASSIVE shift in strategic advantage.
Then there's the issue of how strong the Reapers actually are individually. Much is often made about how difficult to kill Sovereign was, and it certainly was no joke, but remember that Sovereign's attack wasn't a single handed one. It was, again, a suprise attack that was also backed by likely dozens of Geth warships. Not only that but Saren was inside the Citadel closing the arms of the station so no one could get inside to help repel the attack. At the end of the day, Sovereign was killed by a highly advanced frigate, not a massive warship. Not to mention that you can sacrifice or save the Destiny Ascension and still win the fight either way. It's not as intimidating when you look at it outside of the high stakes of the battle itself.
I think the real reason the Reapers felt so untouchable even by the end of ME 3 is because of poor writing on Bioware's part. Instead of establishing a massive threat and then spending a game and a half building the galaxy up to take it on, Bioware has the galaxy twiddle their collective thumbs and do basically nothing about the incoming threat for 2 years and change. Then they open the third game with the Reapers already arriving on half the planets in the galaxy. They definitely wrote themselves into a corner but they didn't have to. As much as they tell you conventional victory wasnt possible, there's no reason to think it wasn't at some point. They focused way too much on making the fight feel impossible to win instead of making it what it needed to be which was difficult to win. The endings we got were disappointing not just because we didn't get a satisfying happy ending, but because its impossible to get a satisfying bad ending. It would have been cool to be able to make enough bad decisions in the series that it's simply not possible to save the galaxy. Maybe one where all you can do is take out yourselves and the Reapers, or maybe even just most of them and you give the next cycle a way better chance. No, low ems destroy does not count because it doesn't feel like a consequence of your choices in the series, it feels like a consequence of you not doing enough quests or (in the original) not playing enough multiplayer.
At the end of the day I love the Reapers as villains and I think when they were written well they were one of the scariest villains ever. But the fact that Bioware fumbled their defeat really does take the wind of their sails for me. They'll always be more missed potential than anything to me.
The Reapers are one of the best villains in Gaming I just can't think any other villian like them
God video, og et anstendig resonnement på slutten! :)
Ever since my first playthrough of the Mass Effect series, I have always felt like the Reapers were one of, if not the greatest antagonists I've ever seen or read about. I mean the sheer reality that they are there simply for your destruction. You didn't inadvertently antagonize them in to action, you can't negotiate with them or even beg them. Also, somehow the fact that, they don't actively hate you, they just don't have any regard for you, makes them even more menacing.
I remember the first time I launched the final mission in ME3, inperfect yes, but still powerful. The fleets pouring through the relay, the ruins of London with sounds of combat all around you, soldiers charging for what amounted to a shred of hope for victory. It gave me so many goosebumps, and it really gave me a sense that I was fighting against annihilation, against extinction, against the end of all things. It was very powerful.
Personally, I find the ending with the starchild just alright. I understand that a lot people are not satisfied by an IA kid who ends up being the one controling the reapers. However, I imagine that the IA just took a representation of something that is familiar to Shepard. Just like the mission where Shepard gets in the geth concensus, the videos don't show quarians without their suits because Shepard never saw any of them without a suit. So I imagine it's the same thing with the starchild, it just took a representation from Shepard's memory. But I think it would have probably been better if Bioware used someone else as the catalyst since honestly nobody cares about that kid X)
I don't dislike the form it took. In fact, the child-like representation of the Reapers is both disarming (which I like) and somewhat evocative: the Reapers--like children--truly do not understand why what they are doing is a bad thing. It's like their thought processes are too simple to even conceive of more complex thoughts like individuality, ethics or self-improvement.
What most of us who hate the ending object to is threefold:
1) Don't introduce a concept, mechanic or character in the last 20 minutes of the story. This is *extremely* distracting. We become focused on the logic of the concept, performing the mechanic or evaluating the character instead of being immersed in the story.
2) The Star Child's logic is beyond stupid. Literally every scrap of evidence both in the lore of the game and in Shepard's own experience defies the "We must destroy you so you don't destroy yourselves" conclusion. I get that the Star Child is the villain--of course it's broken. It's malfunctioning. That's why it's the *villain.* But the Star Child's logic is not presented as villainous--it's presented as making perfect sense. And it actually makes absolutely no sense at all.
3) It stole agency from the players. There was very little difference in the outcome regardless of how you played even the self-contained ME3. I get that it is obviously extremely difficult to bring together ALL of the decisions we made throughout all three games but c'mon... I spent all this time gathering all these resources, doing all these boring fetch quests and building this massive force... and Shepard dies no matter what. The best ending--destroy--also wipes out the geth for some inexplicable reason. And there is no (or a very limited with DLC) satisfying epilogue showing the galaxy in a victorious state. Nothing telling us what our sacrifice did for our friends and loved ones. This is *TERRIBLE* storytelling because it leaves the audience without the one thing they crave above all: catharsis.
Even today I'm still terrified of the reapers, there's no other Villans that give me that all or nothing fight to your last breath feeling
Love seeing the subscriber count go up 🙌
The Reapers are in many respects, the ultimate villains. They've become a shorthand term to describe one of the alternatives for The Great Filter (John Michael Godier refers to them all the time), which is how they were conceived in the first place. So they might be even real (in some sense of the term)!
The fact that the Catalyst BOTH controls them AND explains what's happening to you is the KEY flaw in the ending. If the Catalyst was not the main villain, and instead of being in total control had actually been usurped and boxed by Harbinger and co back at the beginning of the Cycles, they'd be non-antagonistic, and a sad reflection of the created-turning-on-the-creator.
If the Catalyst had, say, been trapped on the Citadel, and only set loose by a combo of the Prothean Conduit team and what Shepard did at the end of ME1, the explanation and the final choices would come from a much more sympathetic source. We could have even had a three way argument including Harbinger; it was a shame we had no opportunity to shit-talk him again.
If something like that had been set up (and we had also got the EC style epilogue at the get-go), then ending wouldn't have got slating it did, and might have even been well regarded!
"You're words are as empty as your future"
I'll never forget how I felt when I first got to the twist in ME1.
This one gave me a new perspective and chills, great vid!
i still like the synthesis ending for me that is the fitting ending based on the choices and events we face throughout the story. (if you argue that people didn’t get a choice, that is the same with every ending, forced to choose something, anything to prevent or alter the current ‘mass effect’ the reapers have on the galaxy.) Technically with each ending we are given a hypothetical glimpse at the future of our choices, but ‘we’ (as Shepard) never get to see that ending, in the end we just have to have faith we made the right choice when taking our final stand. So please dont hate others for their choices, people choose based on their knowledge, feelings, and experience.
Synthesis is just as viable as the others, however - for the next games i'm not exactly sure how they would incorporate it xD
Funfact: In German, the Sovereign sounds way more calmer and bored than in the english synchronization which made it even more unsettling.
After all this time hearing Sovereigns speech I still get full body chills fuck.
It's always a tug-up between The Reapers from Mass Effect, The Flood from Halo and The Borg from Star Trek.
EDIT: I forgot about the Borg and you reminded me lol
The Flood are really memorable aswell, but I feel like the Reapers have more characterization which makes them a tiny bit more relatable lol :D
@@MrHulthen another thing to remember is with regards to the Borg & The Flood, it's always hinted and suggested they could and would eventually take over the Galaxy but for the Reapers, we KNOW they've done it many times over and we witness them doing it again in real time. The Reapers prove their ferocity with action. Not just words.
I also competely agree with you about the Reapers being overpowered. It's not really a flaw. Not sure why some would see it as that. It highlights again how perilous the situation is and how desperate everybody is to just survive.
The Flood are great, but I never liked the Gravemind. Something about it seems really campy and silly.
"Whenever you mention Mass Effect many fans think of their favorite squad mates"
And the ending
This is my favorite game (trilogy) I have played in my 70 years of life. I still play it trying to get through insane mode, which I have not in the entirety of the game. I just love the story line, the social interactions and emotions elicited in the game. I have never played any game so filled with wild lines and innuendo and just like your favorite movie that you are the main actor in. I am a scientist in real life and I always love to speculate on what is out there for humankind. I choose to disbelieve our natural laws that we know in favor of science fiction, LOL It has made for a rather enjoyable past time in my later years of life. :)
It's awesome that older sci-fi fans can still find a home here with Mass Effect. Interested in your perspective as someone from an earlier generation who got to live through the original Star Trek and Star Wars on TV and movie releases and what Mass Effect's appeal is to you :)
The conversation with Sovereign was the peak of the series for me. I loved how the reapers were initially more of a lovecraftian race beyond our understanding. I love the Happy Ending mod which completely removes the terrible starchild scenes and keeps the reapers as they were originally intended.
6:25 I don‘t think they did it at the same time. That would have been bad, but as far as I can tell they took on the main species planes in turn namely:
1. Took down the Batarians in a lightning campaign.
2. Simultaneous invasions against the humans and Turians. As we know Earth fell immediately but Palaven was basically a quagmire where they spent months without ever completely taking the planet.
3. Once they were able to free up enough capital ships they launched their offensive on the Asari which again, largely succeeded very quickly.
I like how at first the Reapers go full fledged cosmic horror slowly. Then, they went full War of the Worlds.
The line from Sovereign
You exist because we allow and you will end because we demand it
And the line from Harbinger
You are dust struggling against cosmic winds
Unsettles me which is a feat no other video game has ever accomplished
First of all THAT REAPER HORN SOUND I love it! Second, I really wish the catalyst was the same leviathan intelligence but instead while it searched the galaxy, created harbinger, searched abit more, realized it was becoming the very chaos it was trying to prevent, and wanted to stop and try another method but with harbinger gaining more and more intelligence and free will it betrayed the catalyst, “locked” it up, and eventually took his brethren and his “right hand” sovereign to continue the harvest because even tho they became machine gods the lust for power and control corrupts all. Could’ve had a plot twist like indirectly the catalyst helped the protheans without them knowing to reprogram the keepers. It’s locked up sure but harbinger wanted it to look as it’s creations devour the galaxy over and over. What I didn’t like was the motivation. We the players at the end needed to the catalyst to sell us on the idea like why is being a reaper a good thing? Why organics and synthetics can’t co exist if you keep doing this cycle without a chance to prove otherwise. The catalyst in short became the leviathans and became the chaos it tried to prevent. Why help synthetics “the geth” with reaper code and help them butcher organics if the catalyst protects life at all cost ?why indoctrinate people ? Is it as simple as it just speeds up the process? Mass effect will always be my favorite but the contradictions in the end still bother regardless this franchise will always have a special place in my heart!
To me, the Catalyst has always been the Intelligence created by the Leviathans. It has read into Shepard's memories to appear as the child, but it is also connected to all the Reapers. A sum of their consciousness and something greater at the same time through emergence. You know it because if you refuse all options, he reverts to Harbinger's voice "SO BE IT", which is the Intelligence original voice.
The reason it wanted Shepard to make a choice was to try a new solution, because the Protean and the Human cycles have proven that organics can prevent the creation of new Reapers, and they transmit the knowledge to do so across the ages, rendering the cycles meaningless. I believe Control and Synthesis leave the Intelligence in charge in some way, and Destroy never actually destroy all Reapers, or the Intelligence is confident it can take over synthetics if the start genociding organics again.
Easily amongst my favourite villians in Science Fiction , I wish they were independently autonomous they were more interesting when that was implied
One of the deepest, most harrowing aspects of the Reapers is that, for their numbers, "The Cycle" must have been going on for unfathomable amounts of time. It's never indicated just how many Reapers there truly are, but if you take the age of Earth and divide by the 50,000 year cycle interval, that's ~76,000 Reapers assuming only 1 is made at the end of every harvest. If you go by the age of the Milky Way (13.61b years), their number increases to ~272,500. So figure their total number is somewhere between 76,000 and 270,000.
I agree with you, which is why I choose to sacrifice myself to make everyone equal because The Destroy ending kills off all the Geth and Edi as well.
Brilliant video 👍 well done.
It's actually incredible that nobody talks about Mss Effect as a Lovecraftian game.
The main problem with the crucible is that it was last minute. If they had thought of it earlier they could have sprinkled the idea through the first 2 games.
ME1 Liara: “I was beginning to study a file in that archive about a prothean mega-structure called the “crucible” when the Geth invaded, you know the rest.”
ME2 Illusive Man: “Our evidence indicates the Protheans lasted a thousand years against the Reapers. In that time they must have come up with some kind of weapon or countermeasure against them that they simply weren’t able to deploy effectively due to the Reapers already having cut them off from their leaders and galaxy wide resources.”
Something to that affect.
I agree that the Reapers were great. When Sovereign talks to you for the 1st time in ME1, it was truly chilling. And the sounds that the devs chose for them scared me again and again as I played the series.
Uggghhhhhhhhhhhh now this makes me wanna do an eleventy seventy sixth run of Mass Effect 😩. The addiction is real y’all 😂
Very good video. I must agree with at least several of its points. It seems like the Reapers were victims of the Catalyst. Even more so if really inside of every one of them were minds of all these races harvested by them. A torment. Big one. Sad.
The very last line, stating that the Reapers were beings created from entire species that were locked in a cycle of destruction and abuse from which they couldn't escape and that they needed Shepherd to free them from that cycle...
MIND=BLOWN
It just shocks me, again and again, how many layers and themes, intended or not, this game has.
Game 1: Object lesson in how the Synthesis option is futile (Reapers win).
Game 2: Object lesson in how the Control option is futile (Reapers win).
Game 3: Back-and-forth battle between those who want to Control (Cerberus) vs. those who want to Synthesize (Reapers) vs. free will and allowing people to exercise it, demonstrating that Destroy is the only option. Not just for Humanity and the Council races, but for the Reapers themselves, to free them and their thralls from the control of the Catalyst.
The Reapers and the Catalyst are the hypocritical and ironic embodiment of the Catalyst's argument about Synthetic vs. Organic life; the Catalyst started the war against organics.
The one part that bothered me about the Reapers was the original problem for which they were created as the solution: preventing organics from being killed by synthetics. It was too narrow. I like how the Razor's Edge fanfiction handled it, with the Leviathans trying save their thralls from both the march of time itself (stars dying) or their own self destructive impulses in the name of advancement. "No matter the safety and security we provided, the lesser species always strove for more. Built weapons of unimaginable power. Used their knowledge to warp the fundamental laws of the universe in the pursuit of their goals. A simple moment of inattention on our part would result in the annihilation of solar systems. They would develop faster engines that tore holes in space. They created bombs that could wipe out all organic life over lightyears. They built synthetic armies that would scour worlds of life. All in the name of their own advancement."
Eventually, they created the intelligence with the much broader mandate to preserve sapient life at all costs. True immortality. Its solution was the Reapers, each of which contains the memories, knowledge, and experiences of all harvested members of a species, with the intelligence keeping the ships under control via indoctrination.
In the end of the fanfic, the Crucible ends up not being a bomb to kill synthetics, a control override, or a space magic McGuffin. Instead, it is a super computer that hacks into the intelligence, which resides in the part of the Citadel that only the Keepers can access. It overrides the intelligence's control of the Reapers and broadcasts a single command over the relay network: Terminate Program. Ths intelligence is taken offline and the collective minds within each Reaper take control of their respective vessel. When they see themselves surrounded by the very beings who brought about their own annihilation, they attack and tear each other to pieces.
Though in the fanfic, Shepard doesn't make a choice for them, his actions set the Reapers free. The Reapers then choose to destroy all like themselves in a final act of vengeance.
I can't agree that unstoppable gods harvesting an entire galaxy can ever be underrated.
Harbinger doesn't just throw insults at Shepard he does it to the entire crew those being dependent on who you're fighting alongside.
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I think this is the biggest reason why everyone was so disapointed with Andromeda it was the lack of a compelling antagonist. The Reapers made the Kett look like telletubbies. The Kett were not only boring, they weren't intimidating at all. The Reapers were the stuff of nightmares and very interesting.
Awesome video, truly giving the mast- the reapers the respect they deserve!
Im struggling to think of a villian more incredible
The most terrifying part in all of ME is when you talk to the Prothean VI on Thessia, while everything falls apart around you, thinking the reapers are to blame, and the VI spills out a "the reapers are servants of the pattern, not its cause". If there wasn't enough despair already, there was the added information that the Reapers arent the ones really behind it all. There was a higher power controlling all of them. That was really chilling
It will never be touched upon, but Remnants of Andromeda had very much similar design to Reapers. They were also ancient and incomprehesensible machines. Something like Rapers who had forgotten their goal of harvesting sentients of were trying some other method of preserving intellectual life. Maybe same intelligent force (that was able to build instant-terraforming interstellar networks) was behind Kett and Angara. Instead of harvesting "wild" civilizations Remnant use much more active farming.
The devastation they cause and what is reflected in the story is immense. My favourite foe in any game ever
"Ah yes, the reapers" always gets me
If anything, I think the Catalyst should have been rewritten; rather than the collective Reaper AI taking the form of an AI, I would rather it have been the same voice of Sovereign (a blast from the past, anybody?) but more distorted to seem more ominous and intimidating, explaining the different paths to take. This likely would have allowed the Reapers much more of an intimidation factor and more mystery, rather than the "rEvEaL" that was the... 4-foot bratty toddler...
“You exist because we allow it. You will end because we demand it”
What you said at the end gave me a whole new perspective on ME3 ending, it almost feels like we are saving the reapers as well no matter the choice we pick, i still prefer them before ME3 when they were the real villains and not just tools, but that new perspective is a lot better than the one i had before, i hope i still think the same way next time i finish ME3
I believe in Indoctrination Theory!
8:20 What armor is that? mod?
As I see it, there was no need to explain their origins or why they were harvesting the galaxy. They were fucking gods and as such they could do whatever they wanted to. To me that was reason enough. It is Shepard fighting what seemingly was an impossible fight but due to millions of years of civilizations trying to build the crucible, Shepard finally has a shot at destroying the Reapers once and for all. It would've been the perfect ending for me. The fact that all of that individuality of Harbinger and Sovereign was stripped away from them was hard to swallow. I didn't want to feel sorry for them... In the end, I did.
Nice view point.
Love the fact that you had garrus and rex with you wish is the same way i did it yay i dont feel alone
Dude Literally a better more organized version of the flood and that fucking terrifying and amazing
Today i started my second walktrough. Renegade male shepard.
The reaper disrespect is real I remember seeing a video saying halo beats the reapers and they ignored everything reapers could do
This is a really strong irony\thought\idea that you bring up -it is true of entire franchise, that villains become trapped in their\it fake world view of destruction, that Shepard made a choice for them, while them being so powerful but can't make simple choice...
its pretty much philosophical
I have this one crazy theory, I think Milky way is a massive farm for most advance race like angle or demon and reapers are the farmer who maintain the cultivation like "Promise Never Land".
All of this makes sense. They are so powerful, but they are bound by the will of a child. It makes me wonder if they were terrified of Shepard. They were the first organic to beat them, or cause them the moment of pause in their onslaught. That would be like a modern army being stopped by Ewoks.
People didn't get the child was just the reaper taking a form familiar too you? I also think Shepard was beginning to be indoctrinated. I know Bioware has deconfirmed that theory but that's what an indoctrinated would say.
You exist because we allow it, you will end because we demand it. Most badass line from a villain in a game.
They were simply really well written... and BW topped it off - for me - by connecting a really horrfying sound / noise to them every time they appear... kinda like Darth Vaders Breather which instantly sends a chill down your spine...
6:29 these sounds are SO OPPRESSIVE, whoever designed these is a genius bc i wanna shit myself everytime i hear them
ok im not going to finish this video solely because i don't underrate the reapers. But i'd be stunned to find out of others did underrate them. the reapers are the sole reason mass effect is my #1 gaming franchise. I was so blown away by the enormity of the reaper threat in ME1 that i loved 2 and 3 immediately just off the reapers alone. They blew my mind, they won my wallet.
Well the problem (1 of many) introduced by the catalyst and the whole story behind it is that it turns thr Reapers into a primitive form of AI, essentially a VI since they NEVER question their programming, which is not at all what the Reapers are portraied as up until that point and it simply does not make any sence whatsoever. Reapers could be revealed to be so much morre fancinating things, literally unlimited options there about their origin and their nature, yet the writting on the end just had to be so incomprehensibly bad... It is what it is...
Awesome video. And I agree completely! With that said, it is time for me to save the galaxy once again!!
I was one of those that was bitterly disappointed with Mass Effects ending but the Reapers are an awesome villain- which is why the first game remains my favourite. Hearing Sovereign speak for the first time was just such an iconic gaming moment.
I like the idea of the reapers, they feel like they're saving us from ourselves. Like if we're nearing WW3, and nukes are an option then aliens show up to send us back to the stone age.
Small Information: In Germany, Sovereigns voice is more calmer and kind of bored with this conversation, compared with the english Voice. And I like it!
I wish there was a straight up fight between the Shepard/Normandy and Harbinger reaper to decide the Fate of the galaxy in Mass Effect 3. Harbinger was the leader of the reapers and the first one and maybe might have had some type of master control built in him for the reapers that shepard could have manipulate, control or destroy instead of the star child arc I agree not my favorite. But I understand what bioware was going for with the weight of your decisions deciding the galaxy as your playthrough ended
This is why I hated the very end as to quote the catalyst it’s doing what it was programmed to do, that doesn’t explain harbinger, a key reaper , other reapers listening to him that goes beyond simple programming it show Hierarchy, if each is a nation unto there own , doing what they were programmed to do. This is why I say harbinger was a full ai that had been altered/ corrupted hence the attack on its makers. If all were the same other reapers would be subsequently the same but there not harbinger programmed differently. As it speaks of organics as being a problem needing to be removed
The reapers are fantastic and incredibly insidious as villains! It was a shame that we only got two designs based on the two different classes of reapers throughout ME3. After the short snippet at the end of ME2 where we see all the unique designs just for each capital ship, I was hoping for just a little bit more variety in the final installment.
Oh wow I didn’t know I could shoot the Reaper again in Mass Effect 3 😂