AngryFrozenWater
N5
Sir Nose D'VoidOfFunk
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Post by AngryFrozenWater on Dec 13, 2021 5:49:39 GMT
The harvest is intended to use the genetic material of their victims to create new reapers and to preserve the minds (and thus the knowledge) of those being harvested.
At first glance one would argue that the reapers must be very advanced, because they have existed for a very long time, in which they could accumulate a lot of knowledge. Below I will argue that, in the reapers case, it is a misconception.
First, consider that they have existed for 1 billion years. The average time between cycles is roughly 50,000 years. So, there have been about 20,000 harvests. The lore also suggests that it takes some time to harvest the civilizations. It is unclear how long that takes, but I will be generous and give that 500 years for each harvest. It is used for harvesting, extermination, hiding their tracks, and planting the seeds of the knowledge of a new civilization.
We also know that the reapers hibernate in between harvests, with the exception of a single reaper, which checks civilizations every once in a while to see if they are ready to be consumed. Given the earlier approximations, they have been active for about 10 million years. However, in their active time they are solely busy harvesting. So the harvesting time is not used to gain additional knowledge on top of what they do collect from the civilizations. According to the lore, in the rest of their time they have a nap in dark space to conserve energy. That means that the reapers have been dormant for about 990,000,000 years in their 1 billion year lifetime.
Yes, but doesn't a harvest provide new knowledge itself? I don't think so, because the reapers provide the civilizations with knowledge in the first place. They leave artifacts to be found, which lift up a civilization to a certain point, but in such a way that they cannot become a threat for the reapers themselves.
Also, there is a maximum that a civilization can achieve in a given amount of time. However, some may become smarter than others, but roughly speaking, harvesting the knowledge of 20,000 Einsteins (one Einstein-equivalent in each harvested civilization), for an example, doesn't make the relativity theory much more advanced, because all these Einsteins have a limit, imposed by their similar situation in each cycle.
No doubt, the reapers are technologically advanced, but not on a scale of millions of years.
And frankly, it doesn't make sense to harvest knowledge, that you already know, over and over again. There is little to no return of investment.
With all that said, I suspect therefore that the reapers are on the same technological level as the leviathans had (or slightly above that) at the time the first reaper was created. After that, they made little progress. The first reaper doesn't know much more than the last one.
That doesn't sound like a smart strategy to advance their technological level.
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Post by garrusfan1 on Dec 13, 2021 18:59:24 GMT
They're the result of a computer glitch so of course they have problems. They keep the knowledge and so on of harvested races more as an act of preserving that races history then actually gaining anything from them except a new reaper. A comparison to how advanced their tech is compare to the organics they harvest would be like comparing our present technology in the early 21st century to the protheans right before the reapers harvested them. How the levitheans were decimated to such a level by a very small amount of reapers confuses me to be honest and I chalk it up to arrogance.
But as to them not gaining new knowledge..well that isn't their purpose. The supposed purpose they have was to stop synthetics from wiping out organics and it came up with the reapers. Thus by continuing the cycle it was fuffilling it's programing. Think of it like this. Do you expect a program like microsoft office to solve algebra problems? Of course not because that is not it's purpose or what it's programmed to do. Thus the reapers are not going to search out new tech as it isn't what they are programmed to do. The sole exception of this is their ability to adapt to tactics that are used against them which suggest that they can learn but that is just to accomplish it's purpose.
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AngryFrozenWater
N5
Sir Nose D'VoidOfFunk
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Post by AngryFrozenWater on Dec 14, 2021 0:39:31 GMT
They're the result of a computer glitch so of course they have problems. They keep the knowledge and so on of harvested races more as an act of preserving that races history then actually gaining anything from them except a new reaper. A comparison to how advanced their tech is compare to the organics they harvest would be like comparing our present technology in the early 21st century to the protheans right before the reapers harvested them. How the levitheans were decimated to such a level by a very small amount of reapers confuses me to be honest and I chalk it up to arrogance. But as to them not gaining new knowledge..well that isn't their purpose. The supposed purpose they have was to stop synthetics from wiping out organics and it came up with the reapers. Thus by continuing the cycle it was fuffilling it's programing. Think of it like this. Do you expect a program like microsoft office to solve algebra problems? Of course not because that is not it's purpose or what it's programmed to do. Thus the reapers are not going to search out new tech as it isn't what they are programmed to do. The sole exception of this is their ability to adapt to tactics that are used against them which suggest that they can learn but that is just to accomplish it's purpose. Agreed. I don't claim it to be their purpose. However, Sovereign claims to be superior to all organic life. Hence its name. "Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. - Sovereign. "There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own, you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign." - Sovereign. And in terms of technological advancement or understanding, that contradicts with how the harvest works, like what I wrote earlier. BTW: According to the leviathan, the initial reaper was created by the Intelligence's "army of pawns". And I agree: That's pretty vague. 
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Post by lordmoral on Dec 14, 2021 3:03:07 GMT
Remember this little detail in Leviathans, after the creation of Harbringer the indoctrination technology was refined up to the present point. We know the Leviathans had a natural indoctrination ability but that coupled with the big mistakes the Reapers did and should have been exploited:
-underestimating organics;
-leaving the Reapers on Dis and in the orbit of that Brown Star (which should have been used by Shepard to tell the Alliance of a hidden Cerberus lab in that place just to have whoever responds see the Reaper and launch a few probes into the ship as it also prepares to have it towed away from the place, something that can't happen due to the events of the mission and it is then that more people start realizing the full terror of Sovering and as an added bonus, the VS was called to serve on that cruiser as a way to show they were still loyal to the Alliance) just out there and not take accountability of their numbers;
-Legion mentioning that the Reapers are just that, advanced constructs which the Geth themselves were building a superstructure to house all the Geth collective (basically a Reaper but with the combined intelligence of the Geth would have likely surpassed them honestly, the Geth were an abnormality as were the Zha on Javik cycle but in this cycle he calls the machines having an irrational behaviors ie: that they are willing to cooperate with organics.
The material they used as armor does seem impressive as does the shielding but it is just that, technology they originally got to a point of no more advancement and they ended up in a stagnant state, no more powerful than the beings they were harvesting in the first place but in Sovering own words: "...the pinnacle of evolution." It sure was but of the ones who designed the Reaper concept, their tech is not impossible to achieve but easy to surpass given that even Legion states that: "Technology is not a straight forward way and that by using the tech as the Reapers permitted blinds all to its alternatives."
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Biotic Booty
Games: Mass Effect Trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age 2, Dragon Age Inquisition, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Mass Effect Andromeda, SWTOR, Mass Effect Legendary Edition
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Post by dmc1001 on Dec 14, 2021 4:17:01 GMT
And frankly, it doesn't make sense to harvest knowledge, that you already know, over and over again. There is little to no return of investment. They don't actually claim to be building knowledge. They're simply seeking to preserve the knowledge of a given race. The theory is that the races will die no matter what when synthetics inevitably (so they claim) destroy organics. Everything from that race is obliterated forever. The Reapers preserve the sum of the race in the form of a gigantic, mass-genocidal monster for all of eternity. Sounds good, right? Even so, all the rest of the races cease to be in every way possible since all the other "saved" races kill them off. They're the result of a computer glitch so of course they have problems. Are they"? The Leviathans were content to allow the Reapers to play things out until a solution could be found to the organic/synthetic problem. The real issue was that the Leviathans were too stupid to understand that they were creating a synthetic entity that would do exactly as every other synthetic entities they were aware of did. They turned on their creators and went about destroying organic races. This wasn't a glitch so much as a terrible idea. I don't claim it to be their purpose. However, Sovereign claims to be superior to all organic life. Hence its name. It is superior to all organic life. Name one that was better? Sure, the MW races eventually beat Sovereign but it took the resources of most of the galaxy to accomplish. The Reapers really are superior. Things went awry when the Protheans reprogrammed some old slaves (Keepers). With that slowing things down, Shepard enters the picture and the Reapers waste inordinate amounts of time focusing on him/her rather than, say, opening the Alpha Relay. Shepard would never have been successful without disabling certain Keeper programming. It just took almost a billion years for a race to find a way to alter the Keepers. To me, it sounds like the Reapers were superior but that some well-hidden Protheans were willing to sacrifice themselves to find a way for the next cycle to have a chance. Remember this little detail in Leviathans, after the creation of Harbringer the indoctrination technology was refined up to the present point. We know the Leviathans had a natural indoctrination ability but that coupled with the big mistakes the Reapers did and should have been exploited: -underestimating organics; This makes sense. The Leviathans were convinced that organics would always be killed by synthetics. The default programming was that synthetics were superior. Which they were. the Geth were an abnormality as were the Zha on Javik cycle but in this cycle he calls the machines having an irrational behaviors ie: that they are willing to cooperate with organics. All of which is to say that the zha'til followed the same route as SAM. Integration bred cooperation, at least until the Reapers sabotaged it. It was different with the geth. The geth were meant to be non-sentient labor. Once they gained sentience they were already in the de facto role of slaves. It was a negative from the get-go. I can't help wondering if that was the case with every synthetic race. If you build things to be your free labor, and those laborers gain sentience, conflict is inevitable. The zha (Alec Ryder) were the only ones we know of who worked around it by implanting themselves with the zha'til (SAM). |
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Post by themikefest on Dec 14, 2021 5:36:36 GMT
The reapers are so advanced they've been doing the same crap over and over again using the same solution. And what has that got them? Nothing. Javik is right. Stupid machine.
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Post by garrusfan1 on Dec 14, 2021 19:37:24 GMT
They're the result of a computer glitch so of course they have problems. They keep the knowledge and so on of harvested races more as an act of preserving that races history then actually gaining anything from them except a new reaper. A comparison to how advanced their tech is compare to the organics they harvest would be like comparing our present technology in the early 21st century to the protheans right before the reapers harvested them. How the levitheans were decimated to such a level by a very small amount of reapers confuses me to be honest and I chalk it up to arrogance. But as to them not gaining new knowledge..well that isn't their purpose. The supposed purpose they have was to stop synthetics from wiping out organics and it came up with the reapers. Thus by continuing the cycle it was fuffilling it's programing. Think of it like this. Do you expect a program like microsoft office to solve algebra problems? Of course not because that is not it's purpose or what it's programmed to do. Thus the reapers are not going to search out new tech as it isn't what they are programmed to do. The sole exception of this is their ability to adapt to tactics that are used against them which suggest that they can learn but that is just to accomplish it's purpose. Agreed. I don't claim it to be their purpose. However, Sovereign claims to be superior to all organic life. Hence its name. "Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. - Sovereign. "There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own, you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign." - Sovereign. And in terms of technological advancement or understanding, that contradicts with how the harvest works, like what I wrote earlier. BTW: According to the leviathan, the initial reaper was created by the Intelligence's "army of pawns". And I agree: That's pretty vague. To be fair they didn't know what the ending to ME3 would be when they made ME1. They didn't even know there would be an ME2. So they didn't know if they would have to justify what soverign said. However in my head the reapers can have personalities to a degree so Soverign was just arrogant or trying to be an a** hole. Or he was trying to intimadate Shepard and crew. To be fair though the Reapers are far beyond our understanding when it comes to their tech.
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Post by garrusfan1 on Dec 14, 2021 19:42:49 GMT
The reapers are so advanced they've been doing the same crap over and over again using the same solution. And what has that got them? Nothing. Javik is right. Stupid machine. If they thought it was working why change things. My argument about the geth is that they should have been building a fleet continously for three hundred years and thus had a fleet to rival the reapers in sheer size if not in technology. Instead we find out they have been chilling out relaxing for some reason doing nothing. They should have had dozens if not hundred of those massive dreadnoughts but instead they have a fleet that wasn't much bigger then the quarians.
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Post by lordmoral on Dec 14, 2021 20:05:29 GMT
The reapers are so advanced they've been doing the same crap over and over again using the same solution. And what has that got them? Nothing. Javik is right. Stupid machine. If they thought it was working why change things. My argument about the geth is that they should have been building a fleet continously for three hundred years and thus had a fleet to rival the reapers in sheer size if not in technology. Instead we find out they have been chilling out relaxing for some reason doing nothing. They should have had dozens if not hundred of those massive dreadnoughts but instead they have a fleet that wasn't much bigger then the quarians. Besides the Heretics, the Quarians did destroyed most of their fighting force with an EMP/Flash-bang (nice going jerks) and they were also focusing on the Dyson Sphere, also destroyed by Quarians. It would have been wild to find an intact space station with a few Dreadnoughts almost finished with the materials set aside. |
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N5
Sir Nose D'VoidOfFunk
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Post by AngryFrozenWater on Dec 14, 2021 22:11:17 GMT
Agreed. I don't claim it to be their purpose. However, Sovereign claims to be superior to all organic life. Hence its name. "Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh. You touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. - Sovereign. "There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own, you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign." - Sovereign. And in terms of technological advancement or understanding, that contradicts with how the harvest works, like what I wrote earlier. BTW: According to the leviathan, the initial reaper was created by the Intelligence's "army of pawns". And I agree: That's pretty vague. To be fair they didn't know what the ending to ME3 would be when they made ME1. They didn't even know there would be an ME2. So they didn't know if they would have to justify what soverign said. However in my head the reapers can have personalities to a degree so Soverign was just arrogant or trying to be an a** hole. Or he was trying to intimadate Shepard and crew. To be fair though the Reapers are far beyond our understanding when it comes to their tech. If a company makes a trilogy then they better plan the story and make it one cohesive story. The fact that they didn't is not a problem for the player. I'm not trying to be rude, but I have enough of making excuses for what BW did or didn't do.  About the "personalities". Sovereign had no conscious, was narcissistic, and murderous. So were Harbinger and all other reapers.  The reapers were more advanced, because they didn't let us get more advanced. That was one of the ideas behind the harvests.
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Post by garrusfan1 on Dec 14, 2021 22:25:55 GMT
To be fair they didn't know what the ending to ME3 would be when they made ME1. They didn't even know there would be an ME2. So they didn't know if they would have to justify what soverign said. However in my head the reapers can have personalities to a degree so Soverign was just arrogant or trying to be an a** hole. Or he was trying to intimadate Shepard and crew. To be fair though the Reapers are far beyond our understanding when it comes to their tech. If a company makes a trilogy then they better plan the story and make it one cohesive story. The fact that they didn't is not a problem for the player. I'm not trying to be rude, but I have enough of making excuses for what BW did or didn't do. About the "personalities". Sovereign had no conscious, was narcissistic, and murderous. So were Harbinger and all other reapers. The reapers were more advanced, because they didn't let us get more advanced. That was one of the ideas behind the harvests. Well they didn't know it would get a sequel so they were trying to make a game that could lead to other games but if it didn't the fans would get closure. I can appreciate that unlike some people who leave their fans waiting. Not pointing any fingers or GRRM I'M STILL WAITING D*** IT!
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Post by lordmoral on Dec 14, 2021 22:41:02 GMT
If a company makes a trilogy then they better plan the story and make it one cohesive story. The fact that they didn't is not a problem for the player. I'm not trying to be rude, but I have enough of making excuses for what BW did or didn't do. About the "personalities". Sovereign had no conscious, was narcissistic, and murderous. So were Harbinger and all other reapers. The reapers were more advanced, because they didn't let us get more advanced. That was one of the ideas behind the harvests. Well they didn't know it would get a sequel so they were trying to make a game that could lead to other games but if it didn't the fans would get closure. I can appreciate that unlike some people who leave their fans waiting. Not pointing any fingers or GRRM I'M STILL WAITING D*** IT! With ME1 I respect that but that can't be excusse from ME2 who only delivered half what it should have done with the game story. |
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AngryFrozenWater
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Sir Nose D'VoidOfFunk
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Post by AngryFrozenWater on Dec 14, 2021 22:53:44 GMT
And frankly, it doesn't make sense to harvest knowledge, that you already know, over and over again. There is little to no return of investment. They don't actually claim to be building knowledge. They're simply seeking to preserve the knowledge of a given race. The theory is that the races will die no matter what when synthetics inevitably (so they claim) destroy organics. Everything from that race is obliterated forever. The Reapers preserve the sum of the race in the form of a gigantic, mass-genocidal monster for all of eternity. Sounds good, right? Even so, all the rest of the races cease to be in every way possible since all the other "saved" races kill them off. Yes. I get what you mean. Preserving the knowledge of a race doesn't make sense, when it has no purpose, because that knowledge was already known. I have seen players using the argument that the harvests also makes sure that it helps the reapers advancing. This cannot be true. Another argument that I have heard is that the races aren't really exterminated, because of the mind preservation. If the reapers preserve the minds of those being harvested then lets hope that these are kept in passive storage, because if the minds were kept active then they would be held hostage in an eternal nightmare.
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Post by AngryFrozenWater on Dec 14, 2021 23:48:39 GMT
Remember this little detail in Leviathans, after the creation of Harbringer the indoctrination technology was refined up to the present point. We know the Leviathans had a natural indoctrination ability but that coupled with the big mistakes the Reapers did and should have been exploited: -underestimating organics; -leaving the Reapers on Dis and in the orbit of that Brown Star (which should have been used by Shepard to tell the Alliance of a hidden Cerberus lab in that place just to have whoever responds see the Reaper and launch a few probes into the ship as it also prepares to have it towed away from the place, something that can't happen due to the events of the mission and it is then that more people start realizing the full terror of Sovering and as an added bonus, the VS was called to serve on that cruiser as a way to show they were still loyal to the Alliance) just out there and not take accountability of their numbers; -Legion mentioning that the Reapers are just that, advanced constructs which the Geth themselves were building a superstructure to house all the Geth collective (basically a Reaper but with the combined intelligence of the Geth would have likely surpassed them honestly, the Geth were an abnormality as were the Zha on Javik cycle but in this cycle he calls the machines having an irrational behaviors ie: that they are willing to cooperate with organics. The material they used as armor does seem impressive as does the shielding but it is just that, technology they originally got to a point of no more advancement and they ended up in a stagnant state, no more powerful than the beings they were harvesting in the first place but in Sovering own words: "...the pinnacle of evolution." It sure was but of the ones who designed the Reaper concept, their tech is not impossible to achieve but easy to surpass given that even Legion states that: "Technology is not a straight forward way and that by using the tech as the Reapers permitted blinds all to its alternatives." Good post. In addition to what you wrote, another mistake of the Intelligence was to create the reapers in the image of the leviathans. Not only led that to a leviathan-like indoctrination technology, but much like the leviathans the reapers used the other species as thralls to advance their goals. Like the leviathans, the reapers had no empathy, which allowed slavery to be normalized. It also allowed the rationalization of "organics are not really exterminated, because we make sure their minds are preserved, their genetics are passed to us and other organics will take their place".
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Post by lordmoral on Dec 15, 2021 2:12:15 GMT
Remember this little detail in Leviathans, after the creation of Harbringer the indoctrination technology was refined up to the present point. We know the Leviathans had a natural indoctrination ability but that coupled with the big mistakes the Reapers did and should have been exploited: -underestimating organics; -leaving the Reapers on Dis and in the orbit of that Brown Star (which should have been used by Shepard to tell the Alliance of a hidden Cerberus lab in that place just to have whoever responds see the Reaper and launch a few probes into the ship as it also prepares to have it towed away from the place, something that can't happen due to the events of the mission and it is then that more people start realizing the full terror of Sovering and as an added bonus, the VS was called to serve on that cruiser as a way to show they were still loyal to the Alliance) just out there and not take accountability of their numbers; -Legion mentioning that the Reapers are just that, advanced constructs which the Geth themselves were building a superstructure to house all the Geth collective (basically a Reaper but with the combined intelligence of the Geth would have likely surpassed them honestly, the Geth were an abnormality as were the Zha on Javik cycle but in this cycle he calls the machines having an irrational behaviors ie: that they are willing to cooperate with organics. The material they used as armor does seem impressive as does the shielding but it is just that, technology they originally got to a point of no more advancement and they ended up in a stagnant state, no more powerful than the beings they were harvesting in the first place but in Sovering own words: "...the pinnacle of evolution." It sure was but of the ones who designed the Reaper concept, their tech is not impossible to achieve but easy to surpass given that even Legion states that: "Technology is not a straight forward way and that by using the tech as the Reapers permitted blinds all to its alternatives." Good post. In addition to what you wrote, another mistake of the Intelligence was to create the reapers in the image of the leviathans. Not only led that to a leviathan-like indoctrination technology, but much like the leviathans the reapers used the other species as thralls to advance their goals. Like the leviathans, the reapers had no empathy, which allowed slavery to be normalized. It also allowed the rationalization of "organics are not really exterminated, because we make sure their minds are preserved, their genetics are passed to us and other organics will take their place". Or my favorite: "You may be in conflict with the Reapers but they have no interest in war." Shepard everytime after hearing all arguments (including the slip up that the damage shouldn't take long to fix and knowing that EDI willingly sacrificed herself filled me with acceptance of the Destroy ending): |
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Post by garrusfan1 on Dec 15, 2021 13:05:10 GMT
Well they didn't know it would get a sequel so they were trying to make a game that could lead to other games but if it didn't the fans would get closure. I can appreciate that unlike some people who leave their fans waiting. Not pointing any fingers or GRRM I'M STILL WAITING D*** IT! With ME1 I respect that but that can't be excusse from ME2 who only delivered half what it should have done with the game story. I only refer to ME1 on that point. I personally loved ME2 but I get that it felt like filler.
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Post by garrusfan1 on Dec 15, 2021 13:08:11 GMT
They don't actually claim to be building knowledge. They're simply seeking to preserve the knowledge of a given race. The theory is that the races will die no matter what when synthetics inevitably (so they claim) destroy organics. Everything from that race is obliterated forever. The Reapers preserve the sum of the race in the form of a gigantic, mass-genocidal monster for all of eternity. Sounds good, right? Even so, all the rest of the races cease to be in every way possible since all the other "saved" races kill them off. Yes. I get what you mean. Preserving the knowledge of a race doesn't make sense, when it has no purpose, because that knowledge was already known. I have seen players using the argument that the harvests also makes sure that it helps the reapers advancing. This cannot be true. Another argument that I have heard is that the races aren't really exterminated, because of the mind preservation. If the reapers preserve the minds of those being harvested then lets hope that these are kept in passive storage, because if the minds were kept active then they would be held hostage in an eternal nightmare. I felt like it was less about the actual "knowledge" then the races history and traditions and so on. Think of it like people who dance like their ancestors did a thousand years ago. Or like archealogists looking at stuff from the bronze age. We are way more advanced then they were but we want to learn more "about" them. Grrr think of it like studying history that is the best way I can put it.
In the reapers or catalyst's mind this is them preserving organics like they were supposed to do. It's wrong but it's what they think.
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Post by AngryFrozenWater on Dec 15, 2021 23:47:37 GMT
Yes. I get what you mean. Preserving the knowledge of a race doesn't make sense, when it has no purpose, because that knowledge was already known. I have seen players using the argument that the harvests also makes sure that it helps the reapers advancing. This cannot be true. Another argument that I have heard is that the races aren't really exterminated, because of the mind preservation. If the reapers preserve the minds of those being harvested then lets hope that these are kept in passive storage, because if the minds were kept active then they would be held hostage in an eternal nightmare. I felt like it was less about the actual "knowledge" then the races history and traditions and so on. Think of it like people who dance like their ancestors did a thousand years ago. Or like archealogists looking at stuff from the bronze age. We are way more advanced then they were but we want to learn more "about" them. Grrr think of it like studying history that is the best way I can put it. In the reapers or catalyst's mind this is them preserving organics like they were supposed to do. It's wrong but it's what they think. Yes. I have heard that before. I think it is a romanticized view. Separating cultural knowledge from those being harvested, like you mentioned, sounds like a byproduct of knowledge in general. The reapers consider themselves to be "each a nation". That sounds more like each reaper having a collective brain made from the individuals harvested. If true then that is terrifying.
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Post by lordmoral on Dec 16, 2021 0:19:58 GMT
The reapers consider themselves to be "each a nation". That sounds more like each reaper having a collective brain made from the individuals harvested. If true then that is terrifying. This is why I hate Bioware for dropping the concept of the alien race which escaped the destruction of their solar system by uploading themselves to a computer system on a ship, that draws to much parallels with the Reapers. |
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Post by shotgunjulia on Dec 18, 2021 19:58:30 GMT
And they had a party after each harvest and left a few Go Pro cameras around that had recorded the harvest - see the Reaper Artifacts - yeah, really cleansed the galaxy of all evidence of their existence.
"Preserving organic life" by turning it into a slurry and loading it into reapers. Remember "Marmalade Theory?" Yeah, that.
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Post by garrusfan1 on Dec 18, 2021 20:42:30 GMT
And they had a party after each harvest and left a few Go Pro cameras around that had recorded the harvest - see the Reaper Artifacts - yeah, really cleansed the galaxy of all evidence of their existence. "Preserving organic life" by turning it into a slurry and loading it into reapers. Remember "Marmalade Theory?" Yeah, that. Well I could excuse a few artifacts showing up. The sheer scale of hundreds or thousands of galactic scale genocides means some stuff will be left behind. After all we don't know when those artifacts were left behind. However they left so little behind that nobody could even come close to figuring it out. Liara was the closest and she said it herself in ME1 she just had too little evidence to prove it. It wasn't that she was too young it was that she would never been able to find enough to prove it. Remember every once in a while a reaper is destroyed.
As for their "preserving organic life" stuff...yeah it was insane. This is the reason that I said reapers were based on a computer glitch.
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Post by themikefest on Dec 18, 2021 22:48:28 GMT
And they had a party after each harvest and left a few Go Pro cameras around that had recorded the harvest - see the Reaper Artifacts - yeah, really cleansed the galaxy of all evidence of their existence. "Preserving organic life" by turning it into a slurry and loading it into reapers. Remember "Marmalade Theory?" Yeah, that. Was it only two reaper artifacts encountered in the trilogy? One during that side mission in a mine in ME2. The other in Arrival dlc? Since this cycle found a few prothean artifacts hinting at something bad, I'm curious if previous civilizations before the protheans left a few artifacts for others to encounter? Preserving organic life? Ha. It's more like they're using the goo from organics to keep all that machinery lubricated. With regards to having a party. Harbinger would invite all reapers to gather at Club Darkspace to celebrate the harvest.
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Post by lordmoral on Dec 19, 2021 2:45:30 GMT
And they had a party after each harvest and left a few Go Pro cameras around that had recorded the harvest - see the Reaper Artifacts - yeah, really cleansed the galaxy of all evidence of their existence. "Preserving organic life" by turning it into a slurry and loading it into reapers. Remember "Marmalade Theory?" Yeah, that. Was it only two reaper artifacts encountered in the trilogy? One during that side mission in a mine in ME2. The other in Arrival dlc? Since this cycle found a few prothean artifacts hinting at something bad, I'm curious if previous civilizations before the protheans left a few artifacts for others to encounter? Preserving organic life? Ha. It's more like they're using the goo from organics to keep all that machinery lubricated. With regards to having a party. Harbinger would invite all reapers to gather at Club Darkspace to celebrate the harvest. They left behind those as well two Reapers at the least, apperantly the one the Batarians found was another 2km ship. The biggest WTF Bioware I have in ME2 is the BS Derelict Reaper and Shepard not saying: "maybe those a---holes don't belive us about this ship, but what if we tricked them with showing up and give us chase inside the Brown Star?" The "I told you so" should have started in that mission, not in ME3. |
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Post by shotgunjulia on Dec 22, 2021 21:14:13 GMT
And they had a party after each harvest and left a few Go Pro cameras around that had recorded the harvest - see the Reaper Artifacts - yeah, really cleansed the galaxy of all evidence of their existence. "Preserving organic life" by turning it into a slurry and loading it into reapers. Remember "Marmalade Theory?" Yeah, that. Was it only two reaper artifacts encountered in the trilogy? One during that side mission in a mine in ME2. The other in Arrival dlc? Since this cycle found a few prothean artifacts hinting at something bad, I'm curious if previous civilizations before the protheans left a few artifacts for others to encounter? Preserving organic life? Ha. It's more like they're using the goo from organics to keep all that machinery lubricated. With regards to having a party. Harbinger would invite all reapers to gather at Club Darkspace to celebrate the harvest. Let's not forget the one that Jack Harper found in the lore. So that's three easy to find reaper artifacts. I'm sure previous cycles had their warnings about the reapers in their archives. But they were probably put in by some crazy scientist like Manuel (in ME1) so no one would believe it.
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Post by AnDromedary on Dec 26, 2021 16:36:26 GMT
I agree with the OP. I also think the reapers are not that much more advanced than we are in 2186. Sure, they have somewhat better weapons, drives and ships but it doesn't seem like anything really paradigm shifting. Given that the protheans wouldn't have been much more advanced than us and that they already started to build mass relay prototypes, even that technology doesn't seem to be that far away.
They certainly don't seem more advanced than their original builders, the leviathans, which indicates that they didn't advance at all in the time they kept up the cycles. This also makes some sense, since it wasn't their function.
However, it also makes the entire idea of the cycles as a measure to safeguard organic life rather ridiculous. After all, the reapers prevent advancement only in our (their) own galaxy. Presumably, in other galaxies this would not be the case. From Andromeda, we know that even humans have the tech to travel between galaxies, so one would assume the reapers would at least be aware that this tech may exist. Keeping the Milky Way stagnant like the reapers do seems very dangerous to me since they'd have to assume that eventually either organic or (more likely, given the reaper's logic) synthetic forces from another galaxy may come over that wouldn't have been in a billion+ year cycle. What then?
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