Mass Effect 3 (Seriously, Use Spoilers People!)

[Yakk]

Sure. But how much more are we talking about?

At 50k years, you go from agriculture to spaceflight. You maybe spawn a geth-like civilization. You either make peace and live side-by-side with it, or you defeat it.

Over the next 50k years, you are wiser. You grow in technology. Maybe you spawn one more synthetic civilization. Maybe things go a bit differently.

Another million years pass. Over this time, you develop the technology to build mass effect relays (from scratch). Entire organic races come and go.

At this point, your galactic civilization becomes powerful enough to stand against the reapers. Maybe you have lived in peace with synthetics, or maybe you have suppressed the creation of same (along with uncontrolled breeding species, like Krogans). And then the synthetics win. They have technology that matches the Reapers. What do the Reapers do then?

A million years is a blink of an eye. But civilizations that have had energy sources stronger than chemical for mere centuries will look like children to a civilization with million-years-of-technology development.

The current races technology wasn't even developed by them. They reverse engineered prior epoch's technological development to get where they are, to a greater or lesser extent. So not only are the current races young, they are also like animals who have figured out how to use a metal spoon to fish ants out of a log: they don't know what the metal spoon is really, and their use of it is merely clever and improvised. They have no hope to ever figure out how to make a new metal spoon.

And yes, I presumed that the end ptah of "organic" life would be a Matrioshka brain. Where synthetic life proceeds to turn the universe into computronium. The Reaper's decided that this path wasn't what they wanted, and think that the only route is to keep life from developing to that point.

[Belial]

The only reasonable conclusion is that the reapers are the space amish. Life can proceed to this point of advancement, and no further.

[maybeagnostic]

B) The Reapers do not exist, the Quarians create the Geth, the Geth destroy all organic life, and then organic life can never exist again. EVER.

I haven't played any of the games, though, so I could be missing something, but it makes sense from my perspective.

You are just making incorrect assumptions. The geth have been around for three(?) centuries in which time they never threatened organics in any way. The only time they attacked organics was when a Reaper showed up and tricked a part of the geth into revering it as a deity- even then they just followed orders and showed no desire to attack organics. Then, before anyone could do anything about it, the geth went and self-corrected by either wiping out or rewriting the aggressive branch so they returned to their state of isolation. Then after the quarians returned and destroyed a huge fraction of the geth and the geth got the upper hand in the battle, all it took for them to stop killing the quarians is a mutual cease-fire. The geth are saints.

The two other true AIs we see in the games (EDI on Luna and the AI on the Citadel) are only trying to prevent people from destroying them. The one 'AI' that might actually intend to harm innocents (Project: Overlord) turns out to not be an AI at all.

By comparison both the rachni and the krogan are extremely dangerous species that tried to wipe out all competing organics and nearly succeeded.

What actually annoyed me about the duality was that it was entirely artificial. Sci fi had it's 'robots will kill us all' craze in the 60s and long ago moved to more interesting and nuanced subjects. Having an AI tell you that any AI will inevitably try to wipe you out... well, we know four AIs and only the delusional one doing it 'for your own good' actually wants to kill anyone. That's a good reason to fight it, not roll over and do what it tells you to do.

Is it just me, or do the packs give you all the weapons and upgrade you never use, so you'll start using them?

I've noticed the same thing. I have ~20 unique shotgun upgrades and ~10 unique SMG upgrades but only 1 unique pistol (Paladin I). I haven't even seen a unique sniper or assault rifle. I finally created a few characters that use shotguns (one with disciple and one with geth shotgun) and I haven't gotten an upgrade to either of those since. Either I am rather unlucky or the game is set up to give you things you don't use. The second option seems a little absurd.

[An Enraged Platypus]

I haven't even seen a unique sniper or assault rifle. I finally created a few characters that use shotguns (one with disciple and one with geth shotgun) and I haven't gotten an upgrade to either of those since. Either I am rather unlucky or the game is set up to give you things you don't use. The second option seems a little absurd.

It would force people to play diverse characters. I'm now going to play a ton of assault rifle classes/games to see if it gets me a sweet set of shotguns.

[Kulantan]

I think that the reapers might be more concerned with the activities of the Geth in peacetime rather than their potential for wiping out all organic life.

The problem is that they were building a Dyson sphere/matryoshka brain. To be most efficient per system a Dyson sphere/matryoshka brain will incorporate as much mass as from the system as possible. Since the Geth don't really have population growth, instead having c:geth/run, they could fill the Dyson sphere/matryoshka brain pretty darn fast. If they then decide to go for multiple Dyson sphere/matryoshka brain there is a problem. Dyson spheres don't provide the possibly of life evolving again once built. If there are serious risks associated with technological progress that could render Dyson spheres/matryoshka brains lifeless or stupider than a pile of rocks (viruses, mementic pyramid schemes, processing speed traded for storage space, blue-screen of death or other unforeseen trouble) then the galaxy could be rendered permanently lifeless.

It is also highly unlikely that organics could co-exist with synthetics. In the previous cycle the Protheans managed to become the dominate species in the galaxy by being the best warriors and the biggest bastards. It is suggested that this is the more usual pattern rather than the "council of species" thing this cycle. In fact the Rachni*, the Krogan and Humanity have all come pretty close this cycle to being the dominate species in the galaxy. All of these species are prone to serious wars and territorial expansion. If the Geth managed to Dyson sphere/matryoshka brain every currently uninhabited system and the Krogans were the only organics left, I'm pretty sure the Krogans would declare war. They would surely loose to the Geth, no question. Maybe they would be wiped out by the first war, but if they recovered I'm sure there would be another and another till they were extinct. At this point the Geth could Gethiform all of the formerly Krogan systems.

If this was all true and the Reapers' goal was to maximise the amount of life that occurred during the galaxy's life, it would explain almost all of the Reapers' behaviour.

*Under Reaper control sure, but they had the potential for doing the galactic domination thing.

[Vaniver]

If this was all true and the Reapers' goal was to maximise the amount of life that occurred during the galaxy's life, it would explain almost all of the Reapers' behaviour.

This comes back to the Space Amish point, though. A single Matrioshka brain could fit massively more "life" in it as the rest of the galaxy combined, if by "life" you mean sapient life. Do some back of the envelope calculations- even if the AIs each took as much energy to run as an individual human's share of the Earth's energy budget, the sun puts out 2 billion times as much energy as hits the Earth, and so a Dyson sphere around the Sun could support a population of 15 quintillion. And that's assuming that an energy input of 25 megawatts is necessary- you could easily wring out another factor of a thousand there, and probably much more. (Humans require about 100 W as chemical energy input, but only about 20% of that goes to the brain. Suppose we bump it up a bit and assume 25 watts per AI- we're up to 15 septillion in a Matrioshka brain that's able to use all solar energy effectively.)

Galactic population in ME is probably in the neighborhood of a trillion. This single Dyson sphere has as many galactic populations in it as there are individuals in the galactic population. (And then we can also throw in the effect of thinking faster on how much life they're living, and...)

It's also not limited to stars with habitable worlds- any star will do (although it's more convenient if it has the raw materials necessary already orbiting it).

[SecondTalon]

Sure, but if you're playing the long game, what's the harm in spending a few hundred thousand years collecting asteroids and the like, with no harm to places where organic life can grow. Zero problems.

[Vaniver]

Sure, but if you're playing the long game, what's the harm in spending a few hundred thousand years collecting asteroids and the like, with no harm to places where organic life can grow. Zero problems.

I'm sure if you spent five minutes on this problem, you could come up with a list of possible harms that could result from putting off the transition from type I civilization to a type II civilization.

I mean, just to start off, suppose you think lives are worth living. Why would you put off the creation of so many lives?

I do agree that polite civilizations will only sphere stars not being used by other sapient life. There are lots of stars, after all.

[VectorZero]

Hmm. Just found out something I hadn't noticed about the PTSD asari commando.

Spoiler:

The girl she killed to keep her quiet? Joker's sister.

Christ.

[maybeagnostic]

Hmm. Just found out something I hadn't noticed about the PTSD asari commando.

Spoiler:

The girl she killed to keep her quiet? Joker's sister.

Christ.

How did you find that out?

[Okita]

Spoiler:

Same name and colony as Joker's sister which he mentions in a conversation.

[Belial]

And mass effect functions on the "there are only about 500 people in the galaxy" model, so the chances that there was more than one person on a planet with the same name and age are basically nonexistent.

[VectorZero]

One Steve Limit

[eculc]

I'm pretty sure I only caught myself from spending the day on TvTropes because it's lunchtime and I've started to get hungry. label your TvTropes links people, please!

[An Enraged Platypus]

Looks like a longer wait for the Victory packs this week.

[The Scyphozoa]

I'm pretty sure I only caught myself from spending the day on TvTropes because it's lunchtime and I've started to get hungry. label your TvTropes links people, please!

But it's no FUN that way!

[Azrael001]

Having finished the game finally, I can once again read this thread.

Spoiler:

Knowing only that the ending was universally reviled, I was initially not all that upset by the ending. I picked the control option, as it was the only one that didn't end with the genocide of a race that I tried very hard to save (the Geth) or massively violate all of everyone's right to bodily autonomy.

The crash landing of the Normandy, however, made no sense to me at all. Ignoring questions like: how did they get there? why are they running away? The main question has got to be Why did the blue space explosion wreck the Normandy, when it was shown to have no negative effect on all of the rest of the Galaxy's fleet?!

As for the fleet getting home, I think that if they use their regular light speed engines, they can go infinitesimally below the speed of light, and, from their relative perspective, get to anywhere in enough time that they don't starve. Going that fast actually makes the distance that they have got to travel shorter, which is a hilarious and non-intuitive way to save everyone left at least?

[SlyReaper]

Having finished the game finally, I can once again read this thread.

Spoiler:

Knowing only that the ending was universally reviled, I was initially not all that upset by the ending.

Spoiler:

To be honest, I wasn't too upset by the ending first time round either. I had to mull on it and play the other endings to truly grasp the monumental shittitude of it.

[Azrael001]

After having picked my ending, and reading the others online, I can very much see everyone's point.

[SlyReaper]

It might be worth reading up on the indoctrination theory too. It's the fan-base's way of trying to convince themselves the ending is not utterly irredeemable.

[Azrael001]

I don't buy it. Strong willed people, and powerful Biotics are able to resist for a time.

[SlyReaper]

For a time, yeah. But the Reapers had years to work their juju.

[Dauric]

I don't buy it. Strong willed people, and powerful Biotics are able to resist for a time.

Saren was the best of the Specters before he was indoctrinated by Sovereign. You don't become the pinnacle of a galactic special operations force (or even be inducted among their number at all) by being weak willed.

Now my complaint with the Indoctrination Theory is twofold: 1) It's an ass-pull and it smells like one, and 2) the timeline for Shepard's potential indoctrination is just as confused and made of as much swiss-plot-cheese (full of holes) as the original ending.

[An Enraged Platypus]

Premium Spectre Packs.

Fuck yes.

Let the gold chain-running commence.

[Xanthir]

Since we're long past the point where we need spoilers (the thread's been warning about this for at least a week), I won't use any.

The warning is on the thread because you fucksticks seem to absofucking REFUSE to use spoiler tags, and I'd rather not piss anyone off unnecessarily. It's not just a warning, it's me personally calling every one of you assholes. Having not played the game myself, I don't know 100% what is and is not a spoiler, but I know lots of shit's been said that seems pretty damn spoilery to me with nary a tag in sight.

Continue using Spoiler Tags. Don't be a dick. - ST

Spoiler:

The endings sucked. I was mildly disappointed with them at first, and when I thought about them more the next day, I realized they *really* sucked. It was very clear to me the ending we got was spliced together from some already-completed ideas and videos from an older, somewhat different ending.

In particular, literally *nothing* about Joker escaping the wave with some of your party members made sense. It would imply that Joker swooped down and picked up your other party members (who also survived the beam rush alongside you) then *deserted an ongoing space battle* (and you!) to hoof it to the Charon relay so he could be in some other system when the blast hit him. This is just utter nonsense; I refuse to believe that someone actually wrote that by choice, rather than because of deadline pressure.

After thinking about the indoctrination theory a lot, I think it's an excellent retcon of what we got, but it's absolutely not the "intended" interpretation. I think that, as I said above, the ending was changed due to deadlines or something, and what we see is literally what they intended within those restrictions. However, until something changes, I accept the theory as the best retcon within what we've been given, and consider it headcanon.

As for the original, intended ending, the one laid out in the thread here seems legit. No way to tell if the person is telling the truth or trolling, but the story laid out there (1) makes some goddam sense, (2) matches what we know of earlier thinking on endings that were mentioned in interviews (such as including more Harbinger, fighting a husk TIM, and having indoctrination effects on Shep), (3) meshes with the unused audio clips people have found, such as the one where Joker announces that he's coming to pick people up, and (4) is reasonably close to the ending we actually got, such that it's easy to see where they could have partially completed this one and then changed it to the one we actually got.

Edit: In case the above link disappears at any point, or if you just (like me) found that person very hard to read and understand, here's a restatement of the post:

Spoiler:

First, EMS determines what happens during the beam-rush, when Harbinger comes down and starts blasting everyone.

• With very low EMS, you get the failure ending. Harbinger kills everyone (and blows Joker out of the sky when he comes in for support). He talks to you personally to gloat that you've lost, then lasers you to death. Reapers win, destroy the fleets, spend the next century reaping the galaxy unchallenged.
• With merely low EMS, Harbinger blows up *most* people. You're the only survivor to reach the beam.
• With medium EMS, you and Anderson survive to reach the beam, but your party still dies.
• With high EMS, you and Anderson make it to the beam. Your party survives, and stays on the ground to defend the beam against husks that might try to follow you up.

From there, the ending is the same as what we got, up until the point that TIM is dead, and you and Anderson (if you had enough EMS to get him up there with you) are talking and he dies. If you have very high EMS, Anderson's conversation is about twice as long, and much more heart-wrenching. See the audio here.

You try to activate the Crucible, Hackett says its not working. Harbinger speaks through the dying TIM, telling you you've failed and that he's got your friends in his cross-hairs. He shows you an image of Joker loading up the parts of your party that survived.

Harbinger demands that you submit to him. He claims that he is impressed with humanity and will have the Reapers spare your race and your squad if you do so (but still reap the rest of the galaxy). If you press him for information, you learn that the reason for reaping is largely fear of rivals getting too powerful, but they've convinced themselves it's for our own good to be remade into Reapers like them as well.

You can submit to him, getting the second ending. The Reaper fleet spares Earth, but wins the overall war and reaps the rest of the galaxy.

If you challenge him, and your EMS is low, he kills your entire squad. If it's high he still attacks, but only some of your party may die, depending on choices you've made.

He activates the lift to take you to the area with the three options, explaining that a new solution may be needed. (No Citadel-Child here! Yay!) He originally only gives you the Synthesis option, which saves his kind. This is the third ending. It's basically the same as the Synthesis ending we actually got.

If you have a high enough reputation, you can challenge him again and open up the Control and Destroy options. He acknowledges that Shepard may present a perspective he hadn't considered, and so the Control option makes the Reapers leave, at least for now. This is the fourth ending. The Reaper fleet lifts off and simply goes away. Everyone is happy they've "won", but uneasy about what the future may hold since the Reapers may return some day.

Finally, since you're in control of the damn machine, you can just do Destroy. Harbinger explains that doing so will kill the Geth and blow up the relays, too (and he's telling the truth). This is the fifth ending. After blowing things up, you're beamed back down to Earth and found by your squad. Everyone celebrates, but it's a pyrrhic victory with the relays gone.


This, all together, is a *much* better ending. Every ending is distinct, the order you're presented them makes sense, the Reapers have a believable reason for reaping, and it's just altogether ridiculously more coherent.

[VectorZero]

After having picked my ending, and reading the others online, I can very much see everyone's point.

Pretty much this for me too, now.

I don't buy it. Strong willed people, and powerful Biotics are able to resist for a time.

Shepard's been intermittently exposed to Reaper artifacts for well over 2 years, not to mention been rebuilt by indoctrinated Cerberus staff and knocked out by exposure to Object Rho. I think "for a time" has been covered. Whether it is a coherent story is a different matter.

I'm pretty sure I only caught myself from spending the day on TvTropes because it's lunchtime and I've started to get hungry. label your TvTropes links people, please!

:)
D'awwww
Make sure you have time to compose yourself after reading

[Vaniver]

:)

Holy shit this.

[Gellert1984]

I don't buy it. Strong willed people, and powerful Biotics are able to resist for a time.

Shepard's been intermittently exposed to Reaper artifacts for well over 2 years, not to mention been rebuilt by indoctrinated Cerberus staff and knocked out by exposure to Object Rho. I think "for a time" has been covered. Whether it is a coherent story is a different matter.

I don't buy it purely because

Spoiler:

the prothean VI artifact on Thessia knows that Cerberus are indoctrinated but considers you a prothean because of the beacon in ME1.

I had more or less assumed by this point that the beacon had offered some kind of immunity to indoctrination. Note: It didnt work for Saren because he was already indoctrinated. If Shepherd were to fall to indoctrination it should have happened on the dead reaper, after being hit by object Rho or at the collecter base.

Best ending is sythesis ending cos EDI <3 Joker.

[Belial]

If the beacon offered immunity to indoctrination, there wouldn't be all those stories from the prothean extinction of prothean colonies falling to indoctrinated agents.

Ditto for prothean VIs being able to detect all stages of indoctrination. It's far more likely that prothean VIs only trigger on the "you actually have reaper tech inside you, I can see it with x-rays" level of indoctrination.

If Shepherd were to fall to indoctrination it should have happened on the dead reaper, after being hit by object Rho or at the collecter base.

Arguably she did. The thing about indoctrination is that it doesn't magically convey the reapers' wishes to you. It just softens you up, makes you more open to suggestion, and also unhinges you a little bit (or a lot). The scientists on the derelict reaper (and the salarian research subjects on virmire) weren't working coherently on the reapers' agenda, because there was no one to communicate that agenda to them, no conscious mind to sculpt their newly pliable brains. Instead, they just went ratshit nuts, because the reaper's emanations made them extremely suggestible and unstable and then...failed to suggest anything coherent, because it didn't have a brain.

So it's fully possible that shepard is fully or partially through the "softening up" stage of indoctrination throughout most of the game, and waiting to be activated by a suitably strong-willed reaper, much like Rana Thanoptis, who the game offers as a conveniently-timed example of a character who appeared to be totally okay until she was triggered and it was revealed that she'd been indoctrinated for years, since you first met her.

Also, the synthesis ending makes even less sense than all the other endings. "A new DNA"? What does that mean? And how does everyone get circuitry in them? How does that change anything? If organic/synthetic synthesis is the solution to everything forever, why aren't cyborgs and the Zha'til already perfect and acceptable? And where did the silicon to make all those arbitrary circuits come from? Did it come from handwavey space magic? It did? Graaaarr.

[ArgonV]

So I received the N7 Eagle as my reward for this weekend. It's nice, a fully automatic heavy pistol. However, it seems to be useless against barriers/armor. It's excellent at dispatching anything with health/shields, but seems to be useless against Phantoms/Banshees/Brutes/whatever else closes fast and can't be dealt with by my sniper rifle.

[Belial]

I got the N7 Valiant again, which is the best possible result I could've gotten. I hope that pattern continues.

[Azrael001]

All I want for Christmas (and multiplayer) is my multishot sniper rifle. Is that too much to ask?

[Yakk]

All I want for Christmas (and multiplayer) is my multishot sniper rifle. Is that too much to ask?

Mmm, raptor.

[Telchar]

Got the ultra-rare pistol last night in an uberspector pack. A touch better than the carnifex, but that's all you really get when you're upgrading from next to awesome--->awesome. Will still instakill with headshots on gold assuming I'm playing an asari with their improved pistol damage.

[VectorZero]

Got the Sabre last night. Oh that is good fun.

[VectorZero]

Best ending is synthesis ending cos EDI <3 Joker.

This is the problem with any ending scenario where "Destroy" is the 'best' option. Whatever you say about established themes, they clearly want Geth and EDI to be sympathetic characters, not sacrificial.

[Azrael001]

Indeed, the synthesis also kills most of the geth that aren't already in their mobile suits. What happens to the ones in the quarian suits? Do they merge, or hatch or what? Do the giant servers become quivering flesh heaps?

[VectorZero]

*mind blown*

[ArgonV]

All I want for Christmas (and multiplayer) is my multishot sniper rifle. Is that too much to ask?

Which one? Incisor, Raptor or Viper? I've got all three

[An Enraged Platypus]

They're still holding up some of the N7 weapon packs because people were duplicating them. Give unto me my Valiant II already!