Things that don't make sense (v2)

well no internal logic but it is an excuse to get a fembot. I don't mind having a fembot, but Edi as a Sexy Fembot, is out of place. To me, her purpose is served better to serve as the Ship's AI than a robotic AI.

Well this is just me, Having Dr. Eva Core as a liason between the Alliance and Cerberus would serve the story better. Also I would remove Cerberus as the Second Coming of the Sith Empire from ME3. 

Powerhungry is one thing but if you pay attention to ME2 that it was expensive to make Normandy twice as big as the original and rebuild Shepard is expensive as well. Also they took a massive hit in Manpower and resources to recover the bases from the Turians with the Mercs out of Omega within ME: Retribution. To hire Mercenaries, it cost money then Repair any damage that is caused by the re-taking of those Cerberus bases.

Also bribing Officials within Citadel space to recover will cost a pretty penny as well.


Well Internal flow in important within any good story.

There is a lot of internal logic there. Eva bot had the Crucible data and other related content downloaded to it.  Only way to recover the data is to access the systems and try and get it back. Just like when your computer crashes and you bring it to IT and see if they can salvage the data off your hard drive. While poking around tries to access stuff (because free thinking being are capable of curiosity) and starts up a back up program that attacks the system digitally as well as minor physical damage.

Once the back up systems are taken down tries to control the body and success at it. Thus allowing EDI to interact with the crew in a way a disembodied voice would be unable to. Because the simple fact is people are more comfortable with what they are familiar with.  And EDI's physical body is more familiar then a heavy frigate with it's own will.  Because even in ME universe racism and bigotry is still shown to exist. And the basis of racism and bigotry is fear of anything that is different.

This particular sub-forum is about topics related to the Mass Effect Trilogy.  MEA has separate areas for this sort of thing.

The whole circlejerk in 3 about assembling a summit for Earth beacause there's more Reapers than eslewhere by lending forces from the Turians whose homeworld is already burning, who then need the Krogan as leverage whose homeworld is also being attacked, but there is no larger picture becausr everything regarding the crucible is speculation. We're building it but despite knowing exactky what kind of tech we're making we have zero idea what it will do besides being one superweapon... What do they expect it to be something you fire at Earth and blow the planet up with it and even so, there's other Reapers in the galaxy. Everything riding on one weapon is just... Wow what a stretch even if the narrative acknowledges this is desperate.

I don't know.  I acknowledged in the other thread (which I'm assuming your post was a followup to) that it was a stretch.  However, since it didn't make sense I'm trying to at least make some sense out of it.  Maybe the Oculus works differently.

Yes. I made the post because of what you posted in the other thread.

I have never supported the IFF to be an explanation for Harbinger not firing at the Normandy. I've always believe the purpose was to get through the omega 4 relay. If the Normandy is undetected to the reapers with the IFF, why not install it for all the other ships in the Alliance and other species? TIM was able to copy the IFF to put on his ships so they could get through the omega 4 relay.

Hackett did. At least he sound like he did in Arrival.

Yeah I don't think the Alliance ever fully doubted it, however, they were more concerned with galactic politics at the time, and I always saw ME2 as showing you that they simply used the first Reaper strike as a ladder for furthering human influence in galactic politics and then due to all the red tape of the Reapers and not sparking galaxy-wide panic, it was kept under wraps, officially putting Shepard on cleanup duty. Perhaps in reality, Shepard always had direct communication with individuals like Anderson and Hackett prior to his death (only 2 weeks or so) where everyone conceded the existence of Reapers.

I believe this has been said before, but if refuse is chosen, the story is told through what Liara put in the time capsule. How does she know what happened after Shepard went up the beam? Or what happened after Shepard passed out? Did a shuttle pick up Shepard to take her/him back to the Normandy for Shepard to tell T'soni what happened? Did Liara ask Shepard why he/she didn't choose an ending? If so, did Shepard deflect the question realizing at that point it was stupid on her/his part for not making a choice?

The same could be said about if a choice was made. How is it the guy, or for that matter, all the previous story tellers, know what happened after Shepard passed out?

While it would have made sense if the reapers just stomped us out on earth instantly, it's not like you can't make the premise work. IMO the ME3 writing team didn't do such a bad job of providing a bunch of explanations why there is a war that can be faught on the scale of ground troops:
1. The reapers don't want to kill everyone. They want to harvest mankind. Killing people, even making them into husks looses them genetic material that they apparently need to make a new human reaper. They don't really care that the battle on earth may last months or years (and as you say, the troops that they actually use are perfectly expendable to them). They care to get enough living humans into their harvesting centers to make the next reaper.
2. The reapers themselves do not necessarily stay on earth. This reaper invasion is different from previous cycles because the reapers do not control the Citadel and the relay network this time. They need to fight differently. They still have a big overall advantage but they are not invincible and - contrary to Sovereign's boasts - their numbers are not limitless. They are probably better off sending their actual reaper capital ships (the real reapers) and most Destroyers back into space after the initial attack on earth. The reapers only come back to earth in force once they move the Citadel there, just before the final mission.
3. All of this is not without some foreshadowing from the previous games. Vigil already established that conquering the entire galaxy takes centuries, even for the reapers and even if they have the Citadel. Now, they don't have the Citadel and they have an enemy on their hands, that is building the crucible somewhere. Their first priority has to be to establish as much dominance over as much of the galaxy as possible as quickly as they can. This may stretch their forces thin and that is the only reason that actually allows us to fight them half way effectively.

So yea, sure, the reapers will crush us whenever there is a "fair fight" (and that does happen quite a lot in ME3, if you read the codex entries on how the war goes) but Hackett even says it in the game at some point, the goal is not to let these battles happen but to stay as mobile as possible, find weak spots and hit those. The goal is to win time for the crucible project and fight a kind of galactic guerrilla war to keep the reapers occupied and spread out on as many fronts as you can open.

Could there have been a different story where the reapers basically wipe out earth in an instant? Yes, sure but I do think the story we got can work if you are willing to give it a chance.

Nope, EDI explained that human reaction time would have been too slow. Makes me wonder why no one removed the limbs or placed heavy shackles on the body to prevent mobility.

Actually, I do have one more thing that bothers me. In Project Overload, why the deuce were the Geth platforms not restrained, contained in sealed areas or missing limbs to prevent manipulation of tools or weapons? Feels like several common sense precautions would have been taken in real life like isolating machines that could download software from outside programs and assemble Geth bodies.

Hm, you say you are not arguing for a specific story but then you kinda come up iwth one again.

That revenge idea you are talking about might have worked. I doubt it though because as you say in your previous post, if the reapers would really have focused on earth completely, earth would probably be gone by the time we make the crucible and Anderson should be dead within a week. So how would that work then? Sure, you could then make a story where Earth is gone and Shepard fights for all the other planets in the galaxy but again, it would be a different story, one which the BW people clearly didn't want to write. Even from ME1 and 2, I don't get the feeling that the reapers are about revenge. I always thought they are particularly interested in humans after ME1 because they are impressed by us, not really mad at us but who knows. I am not the biggest fan of my colony Shepard suddenly being all about Earth and whatnot (I think he spent too much time with TIM ) but ok, I get it, Earth is still the cradle of humanity and no human left our solar system until only 30 years ago, so I get it, it's plausible.
The same goes for the war. It does make sense that it can be fought galaxy wide. Vigil from ME1 gives the best argument. Yes, conventionally without the the crucible, we'd definitely loose but it would take decades, even centuries for the reapers to win completely. So it does make sense that, at least within the first year of the war, the reapers do not yet have an all powerful presence everywhere at once. You don't need to confine the reapers to earth to explain that.

As for specifics, having a single reaper on Rannoch made sense to me since they had subdued the geth, so those were their troops (the main illogical point there was that they needed Legion to transmit their signal, that was honestly weird).
As for Tuchanka, I interpreted this as the reapers basically just not having gotten around to that system yet. Why they sent that single destroyer is anyone's guess (maybe just general reconnaissance, maybe they heard about the genophage plan through indoctrinated agents, who knows) but they can't be in every system in force, after all, they don't get to Thessia until close to the very end of the game either.

BTW, if you feel like ME3 doesn't give you a clear enough picture of the war (and if you are playing on PC), I wholeheartedly recommend you use the EGM (Expanded Galaxy Map) mod for your next playthrough. It really is a masterpiece of modding. Those guys added a ton of content, most of it giving more insight into how the war goes. Prepare to spend lot's of time at the galaxy map and read a lot but IMO, it's completely worth it. I think the base game works fine as it is, as far as the war is concerned but EGM does improve upon it.