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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 มิ.ย. 2024
- In todays Mass Effect Legendary Edition video, we'll be looking into who exactly made/created the Reapers & why. I've made a similar video about this before, but that was mainly to discuss the idea of having the Leviathans return in Mass Effect 4.
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Mass Effect 3 - What Happens if You Bring JAVIK to THESSIA (All Unique Dialogue)
• Mass Effect 3 - What H...
Would You SURVIVE a REAPER INVASION? - Mass Effect Theory
• Would You SURVIVE a RE...
#masseffect #masseffectlegendaryedition
00:00 - Reaper Introduction
00:30 - Reapers explained shortly
01:00 - Sovereign
02:15 - The Collectors
03:01 - Harbinger
03:34 - The Apex Race rises
04:18 - Leviathan
05:17 - The Problem
06:13 - The Solution
06:40 - The Catalyst
07:16 - The first Reaper
08:25 - Ending words - เกม
What really baffles my mind is that this all just takes place in the milky way, the Reapers only harvest life in the milky way. And There are trillions of other galaxies. Meaning that there could be things far older and far more powerful then the reapers or the leviathan in other galaxies
I dont really think they are the only ones. We only see portions of reapers as obviously having everyone in one place would be moronic
Like Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws.
Andromeda has its faults but I think it does a great job of showing a mass effect galaxy without reapers and cycles.
Considering that the only advanced organic life in the heleus cluster are actually created by other advanced species who may or may not have wiped themselves out and nearly destroyed the entire cluster with their technology
I really hate how they handled the reapers in the second/third game. I'm pretty sure the original motivation for the reapers was to prevent or reverse entropy and in doing so prevent the universe ending at all. There are hints towards this in the first two games. Their original goal was in fact to save all life in the universe forever.
But we got what we got I guess.
Milkey.
Finding out Sovereign is a sentient ship and a reaper was one of the best twists to a storyline in a game I've ever seen so far
well technically the reapers are cyborgs
Plus the voice for Sovereign and the voice actor in how he delivered the lines just make such an impact too
Revan from KOTOR takes the prize. No one saw that coming!
@@Revan-eb1wb "best of both worlds" Also sipping a drink.
Still remember my first run in ME1. The conversation with sovereign was just terrifiying.
Leviathan: guys don't build super advance AI, it will turn on you and wipe you out
Also Leviathan: builds super advance AI and gets *almost* wiped out
honestly i would classify the reapers and the catalyst as vis as they clearly can't feel emotions, unlike the get and edi, who clearly can
It's almost as if the writing is trash.
Yo, Dawg. I heard you don't like being killed by Machines so I built a Machine that kills you every 50k Years so you don't get killed by other machines.
@Kissalude
Don't try to poke holes into a grater 🙃
Leviathan: "This is fine."
Sovereign: we have no beginning or end
Leviathan: we made the reapers
Sovereign: I'm going to ignore that
Shepard: I am your end
Sovereign I'm going to ignore that too
I think he meant about the time he got sapience. He had no natural beginning but he had a end goal
Shepherd: I should go
I mean, of you've existed on a long enough timeline, I think it's fair to boast that you have no beginning. Reapers could have theoretically existed for millions of years in ME. The lifespan of a regular organic being is but blink by comparison.
Hey what is the theme in the background? 7:26, can somebody please tell? Comes for ~3 seconds
It's so sad when the collector is freed by harbinger and then he/she looks back and just calmly accepts it's fate
😢
That’s a generous fate compared to living on like that😂
@@SkankHunt007 yes but it's still sad but also kinda happy that it gets to pass in a more or less painless death and die free rather than live as a shell of it's former enemy a
maybe it gained sentience in the first time in 50k years after it was released.
@@TheMookie1590 sentience and freedom :) even if it meant death
Leviathan: we need you to preserve life at all costs
Reapers:kill absolutely everyone. got it.
They dont kill absolutely everyone. Even earth as it is in the modern day would be spared. They only kill the most highly advanced races to make sure they leave room for the next races to evolve. Like chopping down an oak tree so the saplings in its shade can grow
@@madcap3450 That's not wholly true. They also seem to kill any life that doesn't evolve to their specifications. For example, Sovereign ordered Seren to kill the Thorian even though it was not an advanced species. Same with the Rachni queen which they captured if you spared it, even though the Rachni show no interest in developing any technology and largely rely on their brute force.
@@koonteriskool Well the rachni were already advanced and it was actually the reapers who sent them against the other milky way races in the first place. The thorian is a different matter since we dont know its origin and it's a one of a kind who knows
@@koonteriskool The rachni was a Reaper tool, the reason the Rachni Wars started was the reapers controlling the Queen to invade. Probably probing the races and seeing how advance they where.
@@koonteriskool "Thorian even though it was not an advanced species" By that logic the Leviathans weren't an advanced species either. Both Thorians and Leviathans were advanced through their pawns. The Rachni were space faring and built technology....
The Leviathans rising up to reclaim their galaxy would be a great plot for Mass Effect 4. Biggest obstacle to a ME4 is how to deal with the several ending options of ME3.
I think Destroy is the ending they're going with as it would make the most sense story wise but we'll just have to see when they release the story trailer
They could honestly just loosely connect them together and do a mostly new cast. Wouldn’t be the first time a game does it even if it is a little disappointing. Hopefully they don’t though but after the quality of Andromeda I don’t have super high hopes
Based on what we see in the trailer for the 4th game, it seems pretty obvious that they're going to go with the destruction ending. We see a dead reaper, and we see that the characters don't have any of the synthetic traits that we saw in the green ending.
@@xXImikoXx My thoughts exactly.
@@TheGingiGamer yeah which explains why mass effect Andromeda a.k.a mass effect 4 is different
I like that they designed the Reapers to look of a cross between a leech and a tick. The legs also tap into our primal fear of creepy crawlies. Being so colossal and imposing is a great way to impart dread every time you see them or hear them.
Well considering the Levvies leeched off their "thralls" i'd say it's pretty appropriate 😂
@@MrHulthen Well, Reapers sounds more haunting than Leechers.
"I will stop the Leechers!"
😅
They designed the reapers after cuttlefish. They made them as space kraken basically
I wonder if their character design was during ME3 or if they had some ideas during the original development of me1
One word: Lovecraft
Think about how hilarious the Human Reaper would've been if we didn't stop it. Out of all the Reapers that we know of they all more or less share a uniform appearance, then there would be this super out of place humanoid Reaper thing floating through the stars...
Like a human skeleton swimming through space lul
Not quite. I envision it would have been encased in the standard reaper hull because it was not finished yet. Further my understanding is out of all the space fairing civilizations the reapers harvested became reapers themselves.
The full fledged Reaper dreadnoughts are all unique and have weird looking heads, the Human Reaper would have had vaguely humanoid arms and a skull face mounted on a Reaper chassis.
it's all fun and games until you see a human reaper sprinting at you full speed screaming "We are your salvation!"
After several decades of consensus we reached the conclusion that Sovereign is called Nazara, which means "the one who sees/observes" in old Turkish.
If "Shepard and Friends" doesn't become a Saturday morning cartoon, i'll be very disappointed
😂
I love Sovereign's quote:
"There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign!"
sent chills down my spine when I first played this game...
maybe that's a hint from Sovereign on the next bigger threat... There's a realm of existence so far, it's beyond imagination... but a reaper is beyond our comprehension. Sounds like Lovecraftian, and I like it :)
Oh yeah, one of the top moments in Mass Effect for sure. Hnngh more Lovecraft pls
They should never have revealed the origins of the reapers. They should've kept the mysterious lovecraftian vibe of them. The leviathan on the DLC should not have been the reaper's maker race but rather just a normal reaper capital ship who broke away from the rest of the reapers. "We are each a nation, independent, free of all weakness", well this reaper could've been independent enough to choose its own path and choose to stop harvesting organics.
Then of course this could set up a plot for mass effect 4 whereby there are threats worse than reapers. "There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you can it even imagine it."
That could lead to a plot whereby if you chose destroy, then you face the new threat without the aid of the reapers and if you chose control then the reapers will protect the galaxy from this threat under the control of the Shepard AI.
So much wasted potential because biowar revealed the origin of the reapers and watered their lovecraftian horror down to nothing
@@phantomwraith1984 Honestly... I like that they revealed it. It tells/shows us, that there are greater threats out there (the reapers were outside of the milky way, not the universe) and can continue the story... I (personally) hope that Shepard would be in it... but it concluded with the current trilogy... he was plagued by the kid that got killed in ME3 (shouldn't be a spoiler at this point in time), that he managed to come up with a solution to the original trilogy. It's time for a new Shepard to rise (no woke BS either... the original writer's vision for ME)
Come to think of it🤔 the reaper's form were all the same in design no matter each cycle but why they created human reaper differently 🤔 maybe for battle since it's form is bipedal it can do an enormous damage if Harbinger manage to completed it, I do have some suspicion when I played the games several times like what if the human reaper created is not for harvesting cycle but for something else in the dark space🤔 or the worst case scenario trying to invade another universe, I do have theories that the reapers have found another universe and try to do same thing and got their butt kick off by another forces that is equally powerful or too op for them to handle, lastly I do feel excited if the reapers have encounter with the Old Ones and foolishly challenge them🤭
@@Hikarushinyi no. A reapers core is reminiscent of the species that created it. The human reaper would've just formed the core of a sovereign class reaper
"Uplifting many species, demanding tribute in return, becoming thrall species"... Well the Protheans did the same thing. Kinda interesting that this also continues in a cycle...
what's more interesting about Prothean, that the reaper can't hybridize them into half machine like any other race, thus making the collector instead in the process. and as we can see, they pretty much very different from husk, banshe, or harvester. collector is fully organic creature
@@chakravartin3356 Mordin very literally states the parts of the Collector's replaced by robotics I'm afraid so that's not the case.
@@capuchinseven oh yeah, i remember that. but EDI said their bodies failed to mutate into Reaper's design or something. i thought she means the reaper can't put their tech insied their bodies
@@chakravartin3356 hm maybe, could simply be a good old fashioned bit of incontinently from the writers.
@@chakravartin3356 if anything Ardat Yackshi are the most organically transformed into banshee. They quite literally start turning right in front of us. They also appear to have very limited cybernetics.
It will be awesome if in the next mass effect they give us more of the leviathans
@Gameclock10 yes
@Gameclock10 the new one will be a few hundred years after the shepard trilogy. I think the only one who is alive is Liara and maybe grunt.
@Gameclock10 yeah grunt maybe too, forgot to add him to. Maybe he is a krogan leader, i can imagine that they will have some kind of democracy or Parliament.
@Your Favorite Killer Spectre There was a teaser released by bioware in 2020.
@@dupimmelberger1079 "the new one will be a few years after the shepard trilogy." No it won't Mike Gamble already confirmed the game will have something to do with Andromeda, it can't have much of anything to do with Andromeda if it takes place only a few years after 3. Liara had zero wrinkles in ME3, and looks like a 45 year old 3 pack a day smoker in the teaser.
Maybe harbingers purpose was to pass the butter.
Then sh*t went crazy.
Oh my god
That's the story EA filed under deleted scenes.
@@audiovisualproductions4725
"Yup. Welcome to the club, pal."
LMAO
Actually its purpose was to make sure others could pass butter. Which they proceeded to fuck up because they took the order the wrong way.
I wish that stopping the conflict between the quarins and geth would automatically make the star child think
“Maybe I was wrong”
The star child is thinking in terms of geologically vast timescales. That makes just one accord between AI and organics a trivial moment. It has likely seen many synthetics and organics get along over the countless cycles. It's what happens a thousand, ten thousand or even a million years in the future that concerned the Leviathan and their construct. They reckoned that sooner or later it was inevitable that a species creates machine intelligence which won't play nice.
It only changes star child's mind when the Crucible essentially boots into the construct's bios settings.
Well all cycles seem to have a pattern of synthetic vs organic conflicts and if our cycle is the only one out of countless others that managed to find peace with synthetics, then it's largely irrelevant even a broken clock is correct twice but it's still broken
Shepherd and friends saving the galaxy Saturday mornings.
Who built the Reapers?
Probably Disney.
the game specifically dictated that the keeper is the first civilization in the universe. and it probably is the one who created the reapers.
its just like the geth attacking their quarian masters. i learned this while playing the legendary version of the game.
Disney would name them Wokers
😂😂😂
can u imagine the disney intro screen but the castle is a reaper
Up to Cronos station.. it's been one of the best experiences. I hope ME has a bright future, the world they built deserves it.
Quantum Entanglement is not how ships communicate. That kind of communication is reserved for VIPs due to the nature of how it works. It's a two-way street and only works between 2 paired devices.
It's actually based in reality and proven by scientific experiments. Quantum pairs change their state to the opposite of their quantum counterpart over infinite distances. This can be translated into binary code and used for communication. For now, it's unfeasible for real world use, but it could be a potential communication channel in the future over vast distances.
Yeah, current science says it cannot be used for communication. The spin of a particle changes every time it is measured. Sure they both entangled particles always have the same spin. It can be used for quantum encryption, because it's a source of random sequence of spins that is the same for sender and receiver, this is already used to encrypt data. But since the spins are fully random it's not useful for transferring information between the two.
Literally finished Leviathan under an hour ago.
The first reveal blew me away
No big bad can match the scale and threat of the reapers. If another mass effect is going to succeed, then it has to have a good story. A really good story. Because unless they come up with some kind of crazy that comes out of dark space, there just isn’t anything as scary as the reapers.
It’s like playing the new halo games without the flood. It’s just...it doesn’t feel as epic haha
Next game will probably have aliens coming from another galaxy fleeing a terrible foe
Personal, more realistic, evils are more powerful than the vaque threat of the end of the universe. A abusive father can e a worse enemy than and genocidal dictator in terms of story telling.
What I am trying to say is that the story does not need a massive threat. It just needs good writting.
@@JeroenDoes that’s basically exactly what I was getting at. Lol they need to tell a good story. And that’s what will make the next mass effect game great. Since I don’t think there is much in the way of inventing a more intimidating enemy than the reapers.
What I’m also saying is that if they can’t manage a compelling enough story, then they need a scary enough villain at least, for it to be fun. For me personally.
That’s honestly what I didn’t like andromeda. The Kett were basically collectors. It just didn’t feel as epic, and that’s part of mass effect for me. I like feeling the impossible odds.
Of course realistic enemies can be just as compelling. But I personally don’t play mass effect to fight realistic enemies. I love their inclusion in the story to keep it all grounded and make it all seem like it could be realistic. But at the end of the day, my taste craves an epic big bad to overcome lol or some catastrophic event.
Star Wars Legends pulled it off.
The Empire seemed like the ultimate evil, until the Vong came around
I don’t think the Leviathan’s are soley aquatic. Looks like they have the ability to fly and move through space, I presume its natural and not necessarily a technological thing
Leviathan and its kind have been around for at least 37 million years or something ridiculous like that,possibly much longet... at this point it would not surprise me in the slightest if they have all of the stuff necessary for an FTL drive miniaturized to the point that it's inside their shells.
Remember these guys have been around for a very very very long time and there is literally nothing you cannot do with millions of years of tinkering.
@@Shinzon23 I thought it was mentioned somewhere that the leviathans ships were fucking huge because they had to fit the leviathans in them and be filled with water for them to survive.
@Yankee [Cerberus Co.] We're not actually told just how large their ships are but given how physically large they seem to be, Yeah,their ships that have to be either enormous or you would have to be a case of one starship per adult leviathan
@@Shinzon23 I don't think they need ships. Maybe they get technological assistance like adding rockets to them or a mass effect drive. I'm thinking due to their biology being adapted for ocean life (Assuming they are oceatic and not just chilling underwater because its easier to hide) they may be able to weather space through their own natural biology. Or travel using other sentients as drones with those pearls they produce. Less resources would be required to send smaller humanoids with a pearl. So many cool possibilities to pick from, would love to see something more canon about their existence, would be super cool
So the Leviathans created an AI that's tasked to find a way to preserve life (aka Immortality), but due to the unlimited means of "Preserving Lives", the AI decide that the only way to oreserve life is to turn organics into Synthetics, hence preserving them by transforming them into codes.
Yes, thank you. it wasn't about stoping the creation of AI's as people were joking about but to preserve life so tribute could keep flowing
Purpose: "Preserve life at all cost", Its solution: "We harvest organic and synthetic life, making way for new life to flourish and leaving the younger ones alone while preserving the older in reaper form" thus preventing other synthetics from completely and permanently wiping out all organic life in the galaxy
The reapers were always to stop the Galaxy's synthetics from wiping out everyone. It was explained in Mass Effect 3's Leviathan DLC where the leviathan talks about how they built the reapers to stop species from dying to their own synthetics
"Yo, smaller species create AI and it keeps destroying them, lemmie make an AI to help me figure out why AI keeps wiping out civilizations." That is so fucking dumb, I am still baffled they went with this instead of the dark matter storyline.
It makes more sense than dark matter macguffin plotlines
@@DavidHosey1 dark matter didn't have a mcguffin. The AI over throw plot did though, the crucible.
would have made more sense, take the species that exist and make them reapers so that the universe could recover. Meanwhile an inevitable war would cull the weak from both sides for new resources and thus continue the cycle of life.
@@hopefulmayhem5744 dark matter isn't explainable in a way that wouldn't devolve into that. The AI stuff was foreshadowed from 1 with some of the things that Sovereign says and the crucible is straight alluded to by Vigil, talking about a connection to the citadel maybe being the solution to really deal with the reapers and not just delay them
@@DavidHosey1 Sovereign was completely contradicted by the end of the third game.
AI stuff was not foreshadowed because it wasn't the plan.
Reapers were supposed to be stopped be the Citadel failing to send the signal. They never should have come.
Finally the dark energy was actually alluded to 100's of times between the first 2 games. And the solution was to stop discharging mass effect energy buildup to stars.
finished ME Legendary last night ... the conversation in the final scene is most revealing
Hope you went with destroy otherwise your indoctrination is complete
@@EchoGates This theory has been debunked.
@@voilenoire1246 whaaaat, was such a good one tho
The developers also slightly change the dialog of starchild: f.e. when speaking about contol ending, the starchild mentioned that he does not like to be replaced by Shepard.
Another banger video! Love how you’re smashing the YT scene recently!
Thanks man! Well, some are hit & miss but otherwise it's been on the upside the last week :D
Another great video my friend! I always enjoy your content. Nicely done.
Just had a thought. The leviathans were hiding bc of the reapers. Well if the destroy ending is cannon, wouldn’t they want to and have the power to reclaim their seat as the “apex species”?
This has been my thought process. Post ending the Levi are primed to rebuild and take over the galaxy. They have the technological know how and the ability to slave entire races.
I would suspect the next series is going this way.
There are only a hand full of them, and since the other races were strong enough to destroy the Reapers, I think they could handle their creators.
Especially since they know the thread and wouldn't give them time to build up to the level they would need to be a thread.
I'm very much hoping this is the plot of ME4. Make Destroy the canon ending (it's the only one that makes sense in the game logic anyway) and then explore the greater threat of the leviathans returning and trying to enslave the 'lesser races' again.
Martine Le Fay That could be A heck of a cool plot where shepherd must defeat the leviathans
not with 3-4 examples left.......not enough to be a serious force
Great video as always my friend
Great video. I recommend the book “All Tommorows.” It grows this theme of manipulation from a more advanced species. It gets dark
That's the thing about AI: the good news is it does exactly what you tell it to do, the bad news is that it does exactly what you tell it to do. Perhaps this corruption of perception is the dark energy. Honestly that sounds like way too much of a philosophical concept to make into a super cool final boss lol
think of it in the same way as making a wish, be very carefull with the wording or it could come back to bite you in the ass.
I feel like this is an unwanted question. All of the Reaper ships look likes the original race. Why Do they start building a "human" reaper? I just find it so strange that they would make a model that looks like a human that is so obviously vulnerable.
I think I remember a dialogue stating that on each cycle a new reaper is created from the dominant species. In this cycle I believe the look of that reaper to be human was simply Harbinger trying to add insult to injury for Sheppard. Remember, Harbinger (as all reapers) believes we are less than crap and will never be able to take them down, one mere human capable of killing a reaper (Sovereign) probably pissed Harbinger off (reapers are not 100% mahcines) and he certainly wanted to demoralize Sheppard.
Just like the Collectors, basically they modified the Protheans in such a way that it would serve them and humilliate the race. Pretty spiteful mofos if you ask me lol
I believe it's an oversight. Prothean weren't finalized until the 2nd game. Ilos were meant to be Prothean Planet but suddenly it's turned into a race called Inussanon.
I thought it was said somewhere that the human reaper embryo would have been the “core” of the reaper which would then be encased in a “shell” which is the classic reaper shape.
If so, maybe underneath the shell each reaper does look like the race that was harvested to create it
@@kurtismay1325 I find that a very cool Idea and very creapy.
Great video bro 👌🏼👌🏼
thank you 😁
Shepard: those darn Reapers are turning the frogs Geth !
It seems like the whole concept of the reapers was dramatically changed somewhere along the lines of development between the first game and the sequels. Shepard's entire conversation with Sovereign in the first game is essentially negated by the end of the trilogy. On Virmire Sovereign clearly states that the reapers are not an AI, are not using us for resources but for reasons we "cannot hope to comprehend," that each reaper is an "independent nation" not a collective, and that they were not created but have "always been." By the end none of that is the case. The reapers were watered down to a created AI all controlled by the catalyst working as a collective to harvest us for resources. That is so boring compared to what Sovereign implied originally. I'd love to know what he original plan was. I still love the games and all, its just something I noticed.
Agreed. The Reaper "goal" should have involved protecting the galaxy against a threat way beyond humanity's current understanding as Sovereign said. The Reapers farm to collect energy, technology and to save memories of races to improve themselves against the threat which would wipe out all life in the galaxy. The same way humanity farms, but also stores seedlings in vaults. Humanity becomes the seedlings being "protected " by a higher life form. Keeps the Reaper motivation with the farming motif.
@@DarkCamelinMaroc if they kept that original premise in mind, ME4 could've revolved around this new threat invading the milky way and if you chose the control ending then you could've had the reapers under the control of Shepard defending the galaxy. Destroy will of course mean you face this new threat alone
@@phantomwraith1984 Agreed. They simultaneously diminished the Reapers and shut them out of a meaningful role in ME4.
There is no "seems" it's a straight fact. Dru Karpishin's original scenario was different but he left bioware in the middle of ME2 development. There is a draft on the internet you can read it
It all comes down to BioWare over promising dozens of endings and all that nonsense. I think the original idea was that the mass effect was somehow linked to the premature death of stars, essentially accelerating the heat-death of the universe. The Reapers, wherever and whenever the came from, act as an automated stop-gap, preventing sentient species from ever developing mass relay technology themselves.
So how do you tie that into a story with multiple different endings and huge decisions? Truth is you can't. You either let the cycle continue, or stop the cycle, ensuring the eventual doom of the galaxy anyway. So by game 3 they cut everything way back and just opted for a lame Deus Ex ripoff, where you just pick one of three endings. The whole concept of the Crucible (McGuffin) is something they just pulled out of their asses to make that possible.
00:30 This is incorrect. Actually it's first uttered by Matriarch Benezia, heard from Tali's omni tool recording.
I love how you cut to the Predator scene,..when explaining thrall species
"Everyone is creating AI who then rise up and destroy them. How do we stop this?"
"Let's create an AI and have it figure it out for us."
"Brilliant!"
One thing you have to admire about the Leviathans is that they admit their mistake. They say that the Catalyst "still serves its purpose" and it does fulfill its goals in letter, if not in spirit. And they fully acknowledge that the flaw was in their arrogance.
Nice video, your channel is underrated..
🍻👊
This is one of my favorite dlc simply for the lore factor.
You know, Hulthen I would your opinion on this: I feel between changing their writers and how much info is in each game the series almost got too big for itself.
In ME 1 they state there is no beginning when there was a clear start. Also, what Exactly wakes up the Reapers from their sleep? I thought it was always the keepers but that gets stopped in ME1. but they wake up anyway so how would they know its time for the harvest without the signal going off
Then I feel that the trip from dark space into the milky way would take quite some time. I guess we don't know how long they have been traveling through.
It is also established that why they always went to the Citadel first was basically to collect data such as locations of planets and colonies but since Sheppard stopped that you'd think it takes them a while to locate earth and the other planets that have a decent population.
The Protheans lasted 100 years before being fully harvested and the citadel got hit first, yet in the duration of the game from the start of ME3 to the end of ME3 they had almost completed their harvest. even though Javik states their greatest weakness is once the reapers learned their strategy it was what lead to their doom and this cycle has a better chance because all the races have a different fighting strategy.
In ME1 the reapers are a myth that every one of power denies but like there is tons of evidence from Thessia having a Prothenan AI that let their race advance quicker than other races yet they discovered 0 info about reapers, almost a challenge in itself to find zero info about them or like blueprints for the crucible. The AI in Illum learned to communicate with the current cycle, in theory, shouldnt the one on Thessia have as well?
legit a dead Reaper was found (reaper IFF) that no one for 50,000 years found before Cerberus and the Geth? Other technology like the Reaper tech in the arrival DLC
the last example was in the leviathan DLC, no one ever checked in on the space station for 10 years or noticed anything fishy except the doctor that was looking up leviathan.
Just interesting how much changed from ME1 lore to end of ME3.
Those are some pretty good points. I think that they just had to change routes with the story & whoever oversaw the lore just missed out on alot of the logic.
Some of that isnt accurate or is already explained.
The evidence that could point to Reapers was all found by specific races or groups and kept classified and heavily guarded so that they could use the technology to their own advantage. The "Leviathan of Dis" for example was a Reaper corpse discovered by the Batarians and kept secret. The Prothean VI that allowed the Asari to advance was kept secret for their entire history. Sovereign's corpse was cleaned up from the Citadel and its existence as a Reaper was covered up to prevent ppl from learning of their existence; in the Citadel DLC archives one of the historical videos describes Sovereign's attack as a Geth dreadnought until it recognizes Shepard as a Spectre, at which point it shows the classified info that Sovereign was a Reaper. This also implies that the Council was aware of the Reaper threat and chose to cover it up rather than act on it. And derelicts floating freely in space away from populated worlds or shipping lanes could potentially not be discovered for millions of years unless someone is specifically looking. The galaxy is an incomprehensibly big place.
Then when the Reapers attacked, they were not anywhere near to harvesting all advanced life in the galaxy in ME3. The harvest had begun on species homeworlds and population centers. Shepard's coalition fighting back and building the Crucible caused the Reapers to try to speed up their harvest of Earth, but there were survivors on every planet attempting to fight back and planets throughout the galaxy they never even reached. The Salarian homeworld Sur'Kesh is never invaded in earnest by the Reapers during the course of the game, though Earth, Palaven, and Thessia had been targeted. The Reapers targeted population centers, so anywhere refugees fled to en masse would then become a target, but if they were anywhere close to being done then there would have been no one left to fight back and no one left to save. The Reaper harvest would have continued for decades all across the galaxy.
@@mediumvillain yah I only played mass effect twice all the way through so yeah gotta digest some of this but this is exactly what I was maybe looking for, just trying to past of the storylines together and I kept running is some logic issues. The Asari Prothean VI being the big one. I get that it was kept secret from most of the other Asari I can also understand that getting any data from it was probably almost impossible let alone to understand it but to find nothing about reapers seems convenient. but I think this must be how they discovered the location of the citadel, or else the same logic of what your say of the IFF could be also the same case for the citadel unless they are specifically looking for it, it potentially would have taken millions of years.
interesting find about the implication of Sovereign in the citadel DLC, just refusing to act on the Reaper threat. I wish that was explored more. basically, the council is responsible for millions of deaths as a result.
Good points, the reaper lore is generally inconsistent, they didn't plan it out into the first game in detail they were up to Mass Effect 3 trying to come up with a back story and motivation for them. EA rushing the project they created all the catalyst bullshit deus ex machina in the eleven hour and I bet the Leviathan DLC was a attempt of making it's less stupid after the fact.
That being said two of your point were well justified. First;
"In ME 1 they state there is no beginning when there was a clear start. Also, what Exactly wakes up the Reapers from their sleep? I thought it was always the keepers but that gets stopped in ME1. but they wake up anyway so how would they know its time for the harvest without the signal going off
"
In Mass Effect FTL communication is faster than FTL travel, because they make instant communication over thousands of lights years. Sovereign was left behind to monitor the progress of the races, probably at the end of every cycle a reaper was left behind. He probably had the ability to talk to the others in dark space and warned them that the time was ready, and they probably were already were on route after Sovereign destruction in 2183, Mass Effect 3 happens 3 years later, it took the reapers 3 years to get to the edge of the galaxy up to a Mass Relay in standard FTL speed. They could potentially travel the hole galaxy this way but it would taker longer. Also the collectors and other slaved races through the cycles acted like backup plans and also shows they had instant communication from dark space. Which brings us to the second point the Citadel and Mass Relay Network into their plan.
"It is also established that why they always went to the Citadel first was basically to collect data such as locations of planets and colonies but since Sheppard stopped that you'd think it takes them a while to locate earth and the other planets that have a decent population. "
While data collection is true is not the primary objetive of the Citadel and Mass Relay network. They primary role was to drive technological, economic, sociological and political evolution of the organic species into a path dependent of the infrastructure left by the reapers to accelerate the harvesting. The Citadel would serve as galactic center of government and economic trade. With one strike they would destroy the central government and through the Citadel disable the Mass Relay network. Now home worlds and colonies wouldn't for a long time even know that they were being attacked and were cut off from each other, without supports of troops, trade routes or supply lines, etc each world was fundamentally alone. With diminished greatly they capacity to fight back and organize against the reapers. From there they would patiently decimated planets without spreading they fleet and harvesting planet by planet with no worries of a massive resistance like we see in Mass Effect 3. Sure Mass Effect 3 seems like they are being more efficient, but probably there wasn't a cycle were the reapers had sustained so much loss by having they forces spread so tin (and if they lose more reapers that they create, they harvesting cycle is unsustainable). And it still probably would take decades of even a century for them to harvest all the colonies of every space faring species. We seem in the game they mostly focusing their forces in the home worlds and capitals of the strongest races in the galaxy.
@@lonewolf48 Yeah, I mean part of the Thessia mission, although it sort of has weird/bad writing for different reasons, is that everyone is pissed off at Asari leadership when they discover the Prothean VI. Liara notes that Benezia must have been aware of it all along and never told her anything about it, and Liara was literally a Prothean researcher and archaeologist. But Shepard and everyone else are pissed bc the Asari used the information in it to advance their own race, becoming the most technologically advanced race in the galaxy and the first to reach the Citadel, and never revealed to anyone its existence until Thessia itself was being attacked. When humans discovered the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime they could have kept it for themselves, but chose to inform the other races, meanwhile the Asari had been hiding a similar discovery for centuries.
When Mass Effect was released for the 360 I think I completed it 5 or 6 times for all the achievements. I absolutely loved it. When Mass Effect 2 arrived I remember playing it.. then life got a bit hectic and Mass Effect 3 passed me by. Imagine my surprise when something called “Mass Effect - Legendary Edition” was on sale on the Xbox store. That was about 6 weeks ago. I’ve been playing it since. It’s wonderful. Up There with Red Dead 2 for story and characters. The voice acting is superb as well. I’ve just completed the LEVIATHAN mission and thought I understood it. Glad I found your video to clarify things. Thanks for making it. 👍👍👍
We definitely know who ended them xD
Yoooo got emmmm.
Whom?
Shepard, who by now I'd dead. You end is inevitable.
“I am commander Shepherd and I will do everything to stop the reapers” best line ever in gaming
@@thomaspiscioneri7917 nah it’s “report to the ship as soon possible, we’ll bang ok”
If only they would add more to the lore of mass effect in the next next next sequel to this game. 5 minutes ago my game deciders to update while I was fighting Donavin as my second fight on insanity mode.... pretty tough but not as bad as I expected. Until the update hit.
The way he casually says "Shepard and friends" instead of "Shepard and his crew" is the equivalent of playing funny music over a serious topic. Its just so..de-escalating and funny...Shepard and friends casually saving the galaxy from destruction! Come alongggg
Nice video
Excellent video. It's good to see Mass Effect being back in the spotlight with the Legendary Edition. More people need to experience this phenomenal series.
With that being said, I think the position of the leader of the Reapers is debatable. While it is true that the Catalyst/Intelligence is the creator of the Reapers and mastermind behind the Cycles, it doesn't seem to really participate in the harvests. Harbinger on the other hand, being the first, largest and strongest of the Reapers is stated by Codex to be one of the Reapers that leads the attack on Earth. So he does have a leading role while the Catalyst is just chilling in the Citadel, not really doing anything. So I think it's safe to say that Harbinger is the leader of the Reapers, effectively doing stuff while the Catalyst plays a more observation type of role. Don't get me wrong, the Catalyst is the collective consciousness of all Reapers and he does control them but he doesn't get involved in the war in a way that will grant him a leading role.
The God kid was awful, leviathan was alright. But by far the most interesting to me was the original "we have no beginning, we have no end, we simply...are" how much more awe inspiring and worrying is that explanation it gives you a sense of how far beyond us the reapers are . Instead they're reduced to just the big mean robots made by an old ass ai made by a ancient alien race
I know. Sovereign also says something along the lines of "we are each a nation" suggesting how independent each Reaper is. But in the end they're all basically controlled by the Citadel, that makes EDI and Legion more advanced than a Reaper since both of them actually have free will. Kind of destroyed their whole mystique.
@@koonteriskool well actually each reaper has the entire collective memory of all the people used to make it so sovereign wasnt really lying. And we can assume they have some sense of individualism since the one on rannoch says "Harbinger speaks of you" to shepherd which tells us they have they're own personalities and communicate with eachother
After more than a dozen playthroughs I will soon b able to c the last couple bits of the puzzle with the legendary edition. Excited to play with a prothean team member and very much looking forward to the leviathan dlc. Minus the last 10minutes or so of ME3, I love this trilogy. Its soooo good!
"You're my thrall species. " "oh is it time to play? "
I just bought Legendary Edition. For my father birthday xD And that scene when Normandy shoot torpedo too finish Sovereign, I think that he "feel" some sort of "pain". :o
I do like how each game answers the more immediate burning questions. First game answers what, second answers how, and last answers why
People forget that the Collectors always was there at the edges of space, preparing their do called army, hence why in ME2 even thou the signal in ME1 never went off, they had some form of info as to what is happening. I guess they tried to do the human Reaper thing to see if it could work before they arrived.
Leviathan was one of the most intense gaming exerpiences I've ever had. Imagine that in VR
I've always thought.... Sovereign was perhaps the Prothean reaper. You know, the one that is made from the dominant species of the cycle is left as a vanguard. If we choose the "ignore" ending (the 4th ending) I would like to think that a "human" reaper was left as the vanguard for the next cycle
Honestly, I think Shepard made a grave mistake by "awakening" Leviathan in the DLC. Leviathan States that they are, and remain the apex species. He says he'll enslave the reapers again and all species can either serve them, or be destroyed.
they can try in my playthrough but not sure how you enslave reaper corpses because thats all i left behind.
its like having 3 wolves in the entire forest.they are the apex predators of a small area but cant control everything
Drew Karpyshyn: I am gonna create a great cosmo saga revolving around themes of nature polution
Bioware: haha, terminator bootleg goes brrrr
Terminator/Matrix
Is there more info on the other races that have been harvested? For example those before the Protheans.
And to me this is why synthesis makes the most sense. You stop the reapers, you solve the problem that the catalyst was made for in the first place, You save the Galaxy, and joker finally gets to thrust them hips without having to break them
I just had a nostalgia :)😊😉👍
The words that chilled my spine when said by Leviathan:
"They're functioning as intended"
One could say this is hubris in trying to create a god race only to be the first assimilated into it's collective.
But that is contrivance and i have played the DLC's. It was nothing more than an answer to an extinction cycle.
7:43 I was on this mission yesterday and there wasnt a harbinger holo! There was a holo from the leader of the collectors!
Depends if you do it before or after the suicide mission
No matter I see Sovereign's convo, I will always speak in sync with him.
Shepard to Leviathans, "You. Big. Stupid. Cuttlefish"
This game series pretty much took a look at Lovecraft's gods and monsters, then asked "What if they did something stupid as well?"
It’s interesting how Harbinger looks slightly different than all the other Reapers, and I’m not sure how much bigger and/or more powerful it is. I wish they addressed this more and gave Harbinger more screen time.
Leviathan: *hiding from the reapers for a few thousand years*
Also leviathan: *has the power to wipe out all of humanity with a single thought*
I wonder if the Reapers “harvested” and converted advanced AIs during the galactic cull like organics. I suspect the Reapers just wipe out AI from existence
Funny, the leviathan race saw what AI created by the lesser races was doing to the lesser races and decided the best course of action to stop it from happening was to make their own AI......
That's how arrogant they were
Hey what is the theme in the background? 7:26, can somebody please tell? Comes for ~3 seconds
is the story writers forget how shepard know about harbinger in mass effect 2
I still wonder if the catalyst was that boy Shepard sees throughout the game and was there in his/her head as an hallucination and to haunt her dreams? Just to warn Shep about the final choice he/she must make. Foreshadowing the three endings.
I'm also curious about that.
I believe the catalyst being a child is symbolism, describing that the AI has the mindset and childish arrogance of a child. As for the boy Shepard keeps seeing in their nightmares, I believe those to be symbolic representations of Shepard's mindset in the war.
The first nightmare, Shepard thinks about all the people that were left behind, all the innocent people they couldn't save.
Second nightmare comes after mordin dies. In that nightmare you hear the whispers of teammates who dies up until then like Ashley/kaiden and mordin. Represented by the boy again, Shepard is lamenting over the loss of their friends.
Third nightmare where Shepard sees themselves burning with the child, that's symbolic over how Shepard's anxiety is getting worse and how they don't know if they'll be able to win this war. That they're afraid they'll die along with everyone else soon.
If you're romanced then it could also be a symbol as to how Shepard's potential future of settling down and having a family is being ripped away from them
i like to think that was just 'recreational' marijuana
Thanks.
I have a question? What about the 2nd reaping?, how long must that have taken…there was the catalyst and Harbinger. One super AI and one 8:52 reaper against a whole galaxy. How did they “win”? Am I missing something?
"You have come too far. You have breached the darkness." - Leviathan
Leviathan was such a big component of the whole mass effect story that it feels like it should have been part of the main game and not a dlc
Shepard and friends sounds like the title of a really morbid kids show. "Cmon gang it's time to bust heads and save the galaxy with Shepard and friends." *kids cheering*
😂
Leviathans are basically organic Reapers but with their indoctrination abilities MASSIVELY boosted. Pretty creepy. Would love to see them return in Mass Effect 4
Was cool to see them indoctrinate the already indoctrinated/altered Reaper forces to let Shepard escape the planet and continue the fight..!
Reapers should be more scared of the Leviathon... The power to influence what's already been influenced. Talk about turning the tables.
So glad to be a reader of the Premiseverse where the Reapers get to be the eldricht terrors they truly are.
I honestly wish they stuck with the Dark Energy storyline. It would be way better than the hamfisted and very ambivalent "synthetic vs organic" thing they came up with in ME3
Why do I get a feeling, that destroying citadel would solve most of the problems. I had this feeling after talking to prothean VI on Ilos, when he said that Citadel is mass relay to dark space. My first thing was, get back there via conduit and blow this thing into piecies. Then i got confromation thai it would be the best option when catalyst said, it is Citadel and it control Reapers.
This kind of reminds me of Halo. With the space station being a Halo ring. And a super weapon.
Liara: What is that? Some kind of VI Interface?
*Sovereign let out a scary robotic voice
Liara: I'll take back what I said
There was a video long ago on TH-cam kinda “fixing” the ending of Mass Effect and giving it more moments where the forces you gathered made a difference in the outcome. The OP used audio and videos clips from all the games to piece together a narrative.
That narrative made it completely obvious that the Star Child-Catalyst is a villain and was trying to manipulate Shepard into not killing it’s Reapers.
Taking what Saren said about a peaceful coexistence between man and machine-that would be the Synthesis Ending.
Taking what The Illusive Man said about controlling the tech to his benefit-that would The the Control Ending.
And both of those men were being controlled and were indoctrinated.
So to me the ending conversation with the catalyst is the FINAL BOSS battle done in the form of a conversation. If you don’t pick Destory or Deny then I think your Shepard is also indoctrinated.
I wish I could find that video. The narrator, who I assume was the OP, kinda sounded like you actually.
Destroy is the true ending. I like to think that the in some way the catalyst was still doing its job and that it was waiting for a species that would make the "correct" decision. I wasn't one of those people who wanted 4 billion endings to ME3. I knew exactly how i wanted it to end and i got that ending. It was always going to end with the destruction of the reapers.
I always assumed, since ME1; that it was my Mom who sent the Reapers.
The Reapers destroying the Leviathans doesn't look likely. In the Leviathan DLC we witness just one of the later effortlessly neutralizing a capital Reaper and his minions.
He had a lot of time to observe The Reapers & evolve though.
How did the catalyst kill the leviathans if it doesn't create the first reaper until after their deaths? Also as powerful as the leviathans are, they'd just kick stomp one reaper. It would take thousands, millions even to take them out.
Good question. The Catalyst supposedly used "pawns" which makes me think of botlike creations, which probably swarmed the Leviathans.
@@MrHulthen just sounds inefficient for an AI to build bots in order to kill leviathans, in order to create new bots to kill other races, to use them to create new bots to kill the next race. Lol
they used a mighty power called 'plothole'
there are several theories on this. First, it's never stated how long it took to kill the leviathan race, nor how many they were or anything else really. Second, there are severaly types of reapers, the one that gets killed by leviathan is a "simple" destroyer like the ones in Rannoch and Tuchanka; is not as powerful as Harbinger or Leviathan itself. Of course we also do not know how many harbinger class reapers there are, but I believe we see at least 3 (Thessia, Earth, Palaven) that are mentioned in ME3 if I'm not mistaken.
Second, yes Leviathans are powerful and massive but they started to rely more and more on their thralls for their needs. Think of it as the relationship between barnacles and whales, barnacles attach to whales to live and feed from the plankton as the whales swim and the whales think of them as "armor" without paying much attention, but if there are tens of thousands of barnacles on one whale it can cause skin infection and other problems, "death by a thousand cuts" as they say. So just like millions of ants taking down a grasshopper, it is not crazy to think leviathans can be killed by less powerful species.
So the core programming of the AI drove it to harvest the leviathans and found that species to be the most dominant and powerful of that cycle, thus making it the perfect candidate for a subservient race that would do the harvest efficiently, enter the reapers. Likely the AI has been modifying and rearranging the harvesting and reapers to keep being efficient, until Sheppard introduced the Crucible (a new variable) and the AI couldn't compute (like geth not reaching a consensus)
I have a little plot for next mass effect series.
The sovereign in the past knows about the catalyst and it wants to be free and fully annihilate the organic life once and for all.
So in secret, sovereign creates a new reaper X which is not controlled by the catalyst.
what standard do they use in calculating 1 year? even earth and mars each have a different number of days in 1 year. and one day on each planet is also different.
"The reapers are coming! The reapers are cooooooming!"
- Timmy, Giants: Citizen Kabuto
I was disappointed that they were created, I much preferred the illusion and mystery surrounding them, mass effect 1 and 2 did this really well but they hyped them up way too much. We expected these unstoppable exterminators and then in ME3 they’re just kinda..there. I hate the idea of the crucible, it just felt very rushed. They hyped these reapers up so much that they literally couldn’t be defeated so had to make a BS way of destroying the reapers
yeah, unfortunately this is how I feel as well. I never wanted an explanation anyway. It is not necessary. "they are beyond our comprehension anyway" so why bother? Honestly, I wouldn't have created multiple endings either. I imagined that we will get a Dragon Age Origins / Suicide Mission type of ending. One ending (defeat of the Repears with dozens of variations for the characters and races based on our choices. If you think about it, ME 3's plot is very similar to Dragon Age Origins'. Did you play that game? It is exactly the same story, only fantasy not sci-fi. Get allies, unite the land, defeat the impossible threat. Done. That's what I expected from ME 3 after ME 2. Unfortunately, I guessed correctly, that Bioware will make up some kind of a MacGuffin, (crucible) to defeat the Reapers. It was not necessary. My actions in uniting a divided galaxy should have been the deciding factor of success or failure. Or any combination of happy, sad, bittersweet, complete failure endings. That should have been the ending IMO.
Anyone else ever notice that Reapers kinda resemble bedbugs?
It took me 2 playthroughs to understand all this.
Mass Effect 2 was especially confusing.
How the Collectors are connected to the Reapers, why they do what they do and where they came from.
Speaking of which: Shouldn't the Collectors also gather Asari, Turians or Salarians to build a Reaper out of them?
Or do they only build one new Reaper per "Harvest"? If so, I guess they went with humans because they destroyed the Sovereign and therefore seemed most advanced...
So wait, If I understand correctly the Catalyst was the AI that created the Reapers?
I'm confused as to the nature of who created the Reapers 🤔
You're correct. The Leviathans created the Catalyst AI, which then proceeded to create the Reapers :)
@@MrHulthen Ok, so it's still the Leviathans technically as the original creators.
I see, the catalyst is the name of their AI program that came to the conclusion of creating the Reapers!
So in short the diffrence between when a Kardashev type 1 and type 3 civilization create an AI that goes rouge is when humans make Terminators vs and leviathans Reapers XD
If it is not too much trouble, could you please make a video about how to get the perfect ending? Please, i've been looking on internet and haven't found anything about how much war assests you need for the legendary edition, thanks!
If i am right you need 7000+ (i got 8000) just get scan all Planets, unite Geth and quarian, let wrex live and cure the genophage.
You need a minimum of 5000 war assets to get the ending where Shepard survives the destroy ending. The easiest way to get that is full paragon and always pass the paragon speech checks, like getting peace between quarians and Geth, keeping Wrex alive, curing the genophage while keeping bakara alive etc. Ideally the only people who should've died by the end of the trilogy are thane, mordin and legion.
I always start priority earth with 8200 war assets
How did they build anything? They don't have hands
Haha exactly. They probably used their Thralls for that
"Tribute does not flow from a dead race". So Greed is the root of all the suffering, desire.
Question: Why didn't Nazara know about the Collectors, or at least why didn't it used them for the attack on the Citadel? That one Collector ship could have easily tipped the scale in that battle...
Great observation actually. Two things pop up in my head immediately.
I wonder if Nazara “panicked”. Shepard was said to have “altered the variables” and i wonder if nazara didn’t have any relevant contingency to deal with a single organic causing so much ruckus. Nazara also cashed all its chips in with saren and thus, became vulnerable strategically. The geth were known evils and were thus counter-able by Shepard.
The second thing is that harbinger seems to be the sole overseer of the collectors? Only one reaper seems to assume control of collectors. Harbinger may well have been inactive, still in stasis along with the rest of the reaper fleet when sovereign was investigating/ getting trounced by organics.
Third thing maybe is that when the reapers sent the signal to the citadel to open the relay to dark space, and it was corrupted by the prothean alterations to the citadel, the reapers decided to ONLY investigate?
Since we get the Leviathan history from one of the surviving Leviathan's, it's fair to assume they may be biased in their account. Maybe they saw the AI as more useful to them than the organic tributes but they were immune to their influence ability. They began research into their own AI/Organic hybrids and the original Reaper, Harbinger, was the first to volunteer for the experiment. The rest is history. This account makes them seem more altruistic than they actually are.
I wonder what was so special about Sovereign. Was Harbinger the equivalent to Megatron, and Sovereign was his Starscream?
I think Sovereign was pretty much just a reaper that stayed behind to open the mass relay the reapers usually go through and to let them know it's time for another harvest
@@Hunter-im3tg Ya, but why Soverign? Does it always do it? Do they pick straws? Clearly they won't leave one of the smaller reapers behind to do it. Harbinger must have saome reason to trust Soverign if each reaper is a nation, as Sovereign says.
@@drg8687 well sovereign is a "soverign class" reaper....
So probably one of the biggest bar Harbinger.
If the reapers plan ent ahead as normal soverign wouldn't have had to become this geth god and contact strength. He woupdve just sent a signal to the keepers