Things that don't make sense (v2)

Well you say it isn't hard to grasp and yet you seem to not grasp it in the same sentence. So I'm a bit confused about do you understand it or do you not understand it? Because that is the point every possible outcome is canon.  Andromeda would be following one of the near infinite possibilities that exist.  So there is literally no reason for them not to do it and no reason for any players to complain. Particularly if BW specifically had that in the opening.

I bring this up and players still complain about canon choices as if that actually matter. That is why I bring up ignorance or arrogance. Ignorance because they don't understand what is being said. Or arrogance who can't stand that even the concept of the idea of the concept that any choice but theirs could possibly ever exist in any form ever in the history of the universe(s).

The problem is the shift in her personality is in the comic books, not the game itself.
Specific in Redemption #4 and Homeworlds #4.

Take the codex for example, they put a lot of depth and perspective on things, but I saw in more than one occasion players complaining about it. Even ME hardcore fans.
"Oh, you have to read too much" they say. Facepalm.

I love the codex in ME games, most of the time they aren't essential or even needed, but they expand some subjects greatly.

This I have to thank to ME's writers, it allows you to pick something and imagine to the limit.

Theoretically, Sovereign's plan had been working for millions, if not billions, of years.  The problem was that the protheans had changed the game and Sovereign was in the dark.

The writers in ME2 and ME3 didn't followed with ME1 themes or story, so it isn't strange the reapers and catalyst main strategy in ME3 contradicts or even throw away most of that themes.

Which in turn makes the story of ME3 having absolutely no sense.

Gosh, ME2 is so disconnected from the trilogy story and themes wise.

This one comes up every now and so often and has been discussed a number of times (though I am not sure if it has been in this thread).
For the sake of simplicity, let's forget about ME2/3, the catalyst and all that and just look at ME1 alone.

The way I understand it, the prothean scientists from Ilos have meddled with the Citadel, so when Sovi tried to activate the keeper signal, it didn't work. At this point, Sovi has no idea what exactly is wrong. If he just flies up to the Citadel, he's already playing his end game. What if the protheans also meddled with his interface to the Citadel? what if he can't just close the arms? As we've seen, Sovi is powerful but not invincible and - and this really is a bit strange - the entire reaper plan hinges on him succeeding. So he's taking it slow and careful.

As a first step he "recruits" Saren because he needs a puppet to get onto the Citadel and check out what's going on before Sovi makes his big entrance. Now the question is: As a spectre, Saren already has access to the Citadel and the tower. Why doesn't Saren just stroll in and check it out? Well, though we may not see it in game, the council chambers got to have some security measures. While Saren might be able to go there, he certainly wouldn't be able to just walk up to the council podium, activate a completely hidden console and meddle with the Citadel systems, poking around, looking for issues whith no one asking questions or trying to stop him. So, he couldn't just go in alone, he needed backup.
However, he couldn't just show up with an army of geth, so he needed a backdoor. From the Virmire beacon, they already had some inkling about the conduit, so they decided to attack Eden Prime to get more information. Note that Saren and Sovereign planned to completely destroy Eden Prime after their attack, wiping out all evidence and thus keeping Saren's cover intact. They didn't plan on loosing anything there. But then, the Normandy showed up, Shepard disabled the bombs, an investigation was started, leading to Tali and her evidence, which in turn blew Saren's cover.
At this point, Sovi had no choice anymore and the events of ME1 had to play out as they did.



I haven't read the Homeworld comics but you are right about Redemption, Liara is already pretty ... stern at the very beginning of that story. But then, I guess they figured that her character already changed a bit during ME1. After all, if you take her on missions, sh'es already killing plenty of people with her biotics and guns while fighting Saren/Sovereign. Unfortunately, ME1 suffers from the typical disconnect between gameplay and cutscnes here. In the dialogues, Liara remains that "innocent nerd girl" while during gameplay, she's a biotic badass already.

I wasn't a big fan of her sudden change of character in ME2 either (especially that they chose to introduce her by making her first sentence in ME2 a direct Benezia knock-off, what the hell was that?).
But I made my peace with it, between the Redemption storyline and her explanations in LotSB (how she went through a lot of shit in the past 2 years) it's plausible enough for me. Besides, during her Normandy visit in LotSB, she kinda shows that she still has a softer side as well.

Oh ok, sorry, I missed the indoctrination angle. There are three points there, that I would mention on this issue:
1. If we take the other games into account, ME1 doesn't make sense anyway because of the catalyst and the whole mess its continued existance around the Citadel creates. It can be explained away with lot's of twists and knots but to me, it still falls squarely under "makes no sense" category.

2. From where exactly in the later games do you get the impression that reapers can "instant-indoctrinate"? You mention Arrival but the folks of the Project were around object Rho for days/weeks or months for all we know. Shepard does get an instant vision and is knocked out but not indoctrinated.
The only guy who can instant-control people is TIM but what he does to Shepard and Anderson at the end of ME3 is not reaper indoctrination, it's some other weird body-control thing and we have no idea how it works, how many people it could affect simultaneously or how complex the actions could be that those "puppets' could perform.
The only instance in the trilogy where we see instant mental take over that I am aware of is what the Leviathans do in Arrival and even there it is mentioned that the subjects need to be around a Leviathan orb for a while before it works (which is why Ann Bryson is affected by the orb but not Shepard or James).
It's very possible that I missed something though. But to the best I can remember, indoctrination consistently takes time (and according to Saren and the codex, to make people do complex stuff and not just turn them into husk like creatures like some of the salarian prisoners on Virmire, it takes even longer).

Actually, now that I think about it some more, there is one instance of fairly fast influence on people in the novel Retribution. Kahlee Sanders is hearing the reapers in her mind almost instantly when she is near Paul Greyson but even she can still resist at that point.

3. If the reapers could instant-indoctrinate large swaths of people like that, the reaper war in ME3 should be over and done with by the time James fetches Shepard for that committee meeting.

If Shepard can be indoctrinated, than I would say Garrus would be as well. He's the only squadmate that can be with Shepard for nearly every mission in the trilogy. The only time he doesn't encounter any type of possible indoctrination is arrival since only Shepard is in it and that dlc is optional.

All Sovereign had to do was fly to the Citadel, dock somewhere, and pretend to be dormant.

People would be curious about this strange new ship and investigations will ensue. In time large numbers of people would be indoctrinated and subject to Sovereigns will. Then he could do as he pleases.

Or the Reapers could skip the Citadel nonsense entirely and just fly in from dark space en masse and lay waste to everything. No vanguard, no advanced warning.

that is why indoctrination should be more of a threat to the Player, Shepard and his squad.  Personally I do think Indoctrination is woefully underused as a plot device. 

I guess so. However, he didn't do that. Maybe he thought it would be too risky if people found out too much too fast or if some more military minded group argued for caution too early (only 300 years after the geth, people might be very cautious about unknown tech showing up out of nowhere). Sure, there are alternative plans. The point is, the plan that Sovi went with was not a bad one. If not for the coincidence that an unannounced military vessel with an N7 and a spectre on board happened to arrive at Eden Prime just in the nick of time, they'd have had no problems whatsoever.


This is one of those weird things that Arrival brought in. I was completely shocked when I learned in Arrival that the reaper could just "fly in" and I believe I facepalmed pretty hard when I first played it.
When only ME1 was around, going by Vigil's speculations, the consensus among fans was that the reapers were sitting so far out in dark space that they'd overload their drive cores before getting to the edge of the Milky Way (no discharge sites in dark space). Granted, this would also have been massively stupid by the reapers but it would have kinda fit to their arrogance in a way.
We all figured that that's why Harbinger tried to have Collectors build another reaper, to take up Sovi's mission. But then came Arrival and the reapers could just get in. I still think playing Arrival before the ME2 ending makes no sense whatsoever since we see Harby and the others far far away from the Milky Way out in dark space during the main game's final cutscene.
So yea, the later games do make a mess of things for sure but I think - apart from the fact that the reapers plan hinging on Sovi's success is stupid on the reaper's part - the ME1 plot on its own worked rather well back in the day.

outlaw1109 : Kenson was in contact with object rho for quite a while before she was captured by the batarians. You can find some of her audio logs that describe here gradual indoctrination as you make your way through the Project station. Her yellow eyes right after the object rho fight are really weird, that's true. Not sure what was going on with that  to be honest.
And yea, as I said, the catalyst/star kid really screws up the entire plot. That was one of the main cricisms people had about the ending in the first place. Not only was it a weird thing on it's own at the ending but it brought up some huge question marks about large parts of the earlier trilogy plot that used to work fairly decently before.

Yea, but it's a weird scene altogether. Shepard gets to hear Harbinger's voice in his head. Is that him talking through object rho, or through Kenson or whatnot? And then, when she has the yellow eyes, everything is blurry and Shep is only half conscious. I always figured Shep is just hallucinating at that point. But yea, it's a really strange scene.