Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread [Spoiler tag free, beware]

[kaid]

I'm currently on a complete playthrough in which Kaidan survived Virmire. Kaidan's backstory and dialogue in ME 3 is streets ahead of Ashley's.

Ashley just comes off as ungrateful and bitchy and immature and she throws several tantrums. The dialogue about the cerberus scientists and the illusive man alone is better than everything written for Ashley.

Hehe ya my first play through with ashley surviving to ME3 every interaction with her had me wondering why I did not nuke her she is the most ungrateful whiny bitch ever.

Kinda funny my second play through kaiden was better but even for him I told him to keep doing what he was doing and did not try to get him aboard the normandy.

[Nayr]

Agreed: Kaidan got the best material in ME3.


In their insert scenes after recruiting them....

- Kaidan realizes he was being unfairly prejudiced towards everyone in Cerberus and sought Shepard's counsel and came to a more enlightened state of mind.

- Ashley got drunk on a bottle of booze that Vega gave her(probably cerveza) and passes out on the floor of  the starboard observation room.


Note: After the Jacob mission, Ashley snarkily remarks "I hope we can trust a bunch of ex-cerberus. Just sayin."

And let's not forget when you sacrifice the Geth to save the Quarians that she can never forgive the Geth for Eden Prime. And she knows damn well that the ones who served sovereign were a separate faction. The true Geth disapproved of the Heretics' actions as much as she disapproves of Cerberus'.

So ME3 Ash is a complete hypocrite on top of a bitch and a bigot. I have to wonder who wrote her in ME3. As I've said at least three or four times in this thread: Ashley was much better when Stormwaltz was writing her.

[Ratman_tf]

XKCD shows how far away present day Earth can be detected by Reapers listening for prestellar civilizations.

http://xkcd.com/1212/

If they can hear us.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3058/can-alien-beings-listen-in-on-tv-and-radio-broadcasts-from-earth

[Morat20]

I'm pretty sure this is pointed out in one of the DLC's -- but the thing you'd trust MOST to kill Cerberus is a Cerberus experiment. Shepard probably holds the record at this point.

[Bunk]

- Ashley got drunk on a bottle of booze that Vega gave her(probably cerveza) and passes out on the floor of  the starboard observation room.

Ok, I can't let this go. You just stated that Ashley probably got passed-out drunk on a bottle of beer.

[Nayr]

- Ashley got drunk on a bottle of booze that Vega gave her(probably cerveza) and passes out on the floor of  the starboard observation room.

Ok, I can't let this go. You just stated that Ashley probably got passed-out drunk on a bottle of beer.

Yeah and? Vega and Cortez drink Cerveza(mention it twice in the game), and there's probably not much other human alcohol they can get ahold of.

Also would depend on how much that bottle held, and if in 200 years it still has the same alcohol content that it does today.

[Nayr]

XKCD shows how far away present day Earth can be detected by Reapers listening for prestellar civilizations.

http://xkcd.com/1212/

Well after hearing all that, they may not want to come to Earth. :p

This reminds me of that episode of Futurama where the Omicronians invaded Earth because the series finale of some Ally McBeal knockoff got interrupted. But the original broadcast was the day Fry got frozen 1000 years back and nobody knew what "Jenny McNeal" was, except for Fry.

[Jeff Kelly]

Yeah and? Vega and Cortez drink Cerveza(mention it twice in the game), and there's probably not much other human alcohol they can get ahold of.

Also would depend on how much that bottle held, and if in 200 years it still has the same alcohol content that it does today.

It's actually tequila. Drinking mescal is mentioned several times as are 'bottles with little worms in it'. Cortez even scolds Vega that he only seems to be able to enjoy himself by drinking lots of mescal.

[Nayr]

Yeah and? Vega and Cortez drink Cerveza(mention it twice in the game), and there's probably not much other human alcohol they can get ahold of.

Also would depend on how much that bottle held, and if in 200 years it still has the same alcohol content that it does today.

It's actually tequila. Drinking mescal is mentioned several times as are 'bottles with little worms in it'. Cortez even scolds Vega that he only seems to be able to enjoy himself by drinking lots of mescal.

Well I didn't say what Cerveza is, it was Bunk who called it beer. And as I'm not exactly alcohol privy(I don't drink at all), I cant agree or disagree.

I only heard mescal mentioned once. And Cortez asked "cant we at least get some decent tequila" to which Vega replied "You're the procurement officer. Set us up."(should have been an interrupt for Shepard to have a say. P: Do it Cortez, and R: No drinking on the Normandy)

But in Citadel, they were back to drinking Cerveza as referenced when they watched the Biotiball game and Vega tried to blame Cortez for forgetting it.

Beer was also mentioned in Kaidan's scene in Citadel, but Anderson probably had that when he was living there.

But the point is that with Earth being one big war zone and the galaxy in chaos, getting human food/drink is probably close to impossible, and Cerveza/Mescal are the only things they are reported having.

Side note: I can never understand why people would drink something that has a worm -- an INSECT -- inside of it. One that apparently as psychedelic properties no less.

[Fabricated]

Don't google image search "Snake Wine" then.

[Ingmar]

Argh. Stop capitalizing 'cerveza', it is not a brand. It is literally just Spanish for 'beer'.

[TNG3]

I've recently been looking at the ending sequence of ME1, and I noticed something really strange. At the very end, Shepard says that despite Sovereign's defeat, the Reaper fleet is still coming, and Anderson or Udina makes a speech about how they're going to have fight the Reapers. As far as I can tell, this doesn't make any sense in the context of the rest of the game.

When you talk to Vigil, he basically says that the Citadel relay is the only way that the Reaper fleet can ever get to the galaxy. Vigil says that the Prothean scientists found a way to "break the cycle forever" by preventing the Reapers from returning, that the Reapers are "trapped in dark space," and that Sovereign was forced to work alone for centuries because its allies were "trapped in the void." Shepard seems to accept this without question, at one point asking, "if the Reapers are trapped in dark space, how did Sovereign get here?" In addition, if you take the Paragon persuade options with Saren, at one point Shepard will say "Sovereign hasn't won yet. I can stop it from taking control of the station. Step aside and the invasion will never happen."

All of this would seem to imply that Sovereign's destruction should have meant the end of the Reaper threat. As long as the Citadel relay wasn't activated, the Reapers would be trapped in dark space forever (and possibly never even come out of hibernation). At the very least, this certainly seemed to be what Shepard believed. And then at the end, Shepard suddenly says that the Reapers are coming to the galaxy anyway, without any explanation.

[rk47]

Yeah, well...Vigil was wrong.
That's why we have Mass Effect 3: Welcome to Erf.

[Koyasha]

There's nothing wrong with Vigil having been wrong, but I always did find it bizarre that Shepard, with no explanation, says that the Reapers are still coming, blah blah.  She discovered no evidence for that, as far as I know - everything I saw suggested Vigil's assessment was correct.  I guess Shepard just knew it was a trilogy, so clearly they weren't done.   

[TNG3]

As far as I can tell, until Arrival, Shepard never actually sees any evidence that the Reapers are coming. Yet Shepard and other characters repeatedly say they are, in the last minute of ME1 as well as several times in ME2 (telling the Quarians not to attack the Geth in Tali's loyalty missions, the Rachni queen's message, and the last TIM conversation in ME2, to give a few examples). Did everyone read the ME3 script years before it was even written?

I think the most jarring bit is that, again, if you take the Paragon persuade options with Saren, Shepard will actually say "step aside and the invasion will never happen." Yet about 10 minutes later, in the last minute of the game, he/she will state matter-of-factly that the Reaper fleet is coming, so the invasion is actually going to happen regardless. What could have caused Shepard to change his/her mind so fast?

[rk47]

Look man, it's not as simple as it looks.
For a guy like Shepard, he can't just say 'OK guys, we beat this guy, we win. Let things go back to the way things are.'
I can see why he wants increased vigilance and maintain that the threat is still real and coming.
But the manner it was writing is inconsistent, yes. And face it, in the sequel - it was pretty much proven-the moment Shep died, the momentum of the anti-reaper campaign was pretty much over.

[Morat20]

Well, there's also the fact that stopping the Citadel mass relay thing was, you know, the first time it was used. The Reapers are machine intelligences. They're not the sort to go "Whelp, let's give up on milllions of years of Reaping because someone turned off our favorite back door".

They built the mass relays. They can't somehow jury-rig one to get a handful of Reapers back to the galaxy to build a new "giant" mass relay? Or build one out in the middle of dark space to fling them there?

Plus in ME2, Shepard first starts by investigating the missing colonies and being irritated that no one is taking the Reaper threat seriously --- when, if nothing else, they should be thinking "holy shit, we need ships capable of blowing that fucking giant dreadnought up because HOLY FUCKING SHIT they can be built".

Sure, experimental Geth Dreadnought, blah-blah -- aren't they worried about the Geth? Giant, single ship that ignored everything fleets threw at it and casually blew up capital ships like swatting a fly? Common sense says "Okay, that's apparently the new threat level -- not the piddling little Destiny Ascension".

Anyways, Shepard investigates the missing colonies and stumbles onto the Collectors -- which both the Collectors and the Illusive Man seem to think are tied to the Reapers. The Collectors are certainly acting like the Reapers are coming.

Actually, I think the biggest WTF is the fact that the Reapers DON'T have a hidden, backup super-relay hidden somewhere out in empty space.

[TNG3]

If the Reapers have some sort of backup (which they did turn out to have, in the form of just flying back into the galaxy in 3 years), that immediately raises the question of what the point of ME1's plot was. If they didn't need the Citadel relay, then why did Sovereign jump through all those hoops and end up getting itself killed trying to reactivate it? Even if they really wanted to invade through the Citadel for some reason, they could have at least sent a few Reapers over to help Sovereign out. I'm not saying that there couldn't be a good explanation for this, but the game never gives us one.

But I'm mostly talking about the behavior of the characters. Sure, you could argue that they would be wise not to rest on their laurels after learning about the Reapers. The problem is that Shepard, as well as Anderson, Udina, the Rachni Queen and so on, doesn't just talk about wanting to be careful, they state with absolute certainty that the Reapers are coming. Shepard doesn't say, "the Reaper fleet might be coming," he/she says "the Reaper fleet is still coming." In the final ME1 speech, Anderson/Udina doesn't say "if the Reapers come," they say, "when the Reapers come." They act as if they know-not just suspect, know-that the Reapers are coming to the galaxy and people will have to fight them. Which they shouldn't, given that there isn't any actual evidence of that.

In addition to the in-universe continuity issues, there's also the meta question of why Bioware made the story this way. Why present the player with information that indicates that destroying Sovereign would end the Reaper threat once and for all, only to contradict that 20 minutes later by saying, "sorry Shepard, but the princess is in another castle and the Reaper fleet is still coming"?

[rk47]

They just suck at writing, man. 

[Nayr]

If the Reapers have some sort of backup (which they did turn out to have, in the form of just flying back into the galaxy in 3 years), that immediately raises the question of what the point of ME1's plot was. If they didn't need the Citadel relay, then why did Sovereign jump through all those hoops and end up getting itself killed trying to reactivate it? Even if they really wanted to invade through the Citadel for some reason, they could have at least sent a few Reapers over to help Sovereign out. I'm not saying that there couldn't be a good explanation for this, but the game never gives us one.

But I'm mostly talking about the behavior of the characters. Sure, you could argue that they would be wise not to rest on their laurels after learning about the Reapers. The problem is that Shepard, as well as Anderson, Udina, the Rachni Queen and so on, doesn't just talk about wanting to be careful, they state with absolute certainty that the Reapers are coming. Shepard doesn't say, "the Reaper fleet might be coming," he/she says "the Reaper fleet is still coming." In the final ME1 speech, Anderson/Udina doesn't say "if the Reapers come," they say, "when the Reapers come." They act as if they know-not just suspect, know-that the Reapers are coming to the galaxy and people will have to fight them. Which they shouldn't, given that there isn't any actual evidence of that.

In addition to the in-universe continuity issues, there's also the meta question of why Bioware made the story this way. Why present the player with information that indicates that destroying Sovereign would end the Reaper threat once and for all, only to contradict that 20 minutes later by saying, "sorry Shepard, but the princess is in another castle and the Reaper fleet is still coming"?

The point of ME1's plot was to delay the Reaper's return and give the civilizations time to prepare for them. But the council chose to be stupid(even Udina) and deluded themselves into thinking Sovereign was a geth ship.

As for the Reapers themselves, the Citadel Relay apparently was convenient. It allowed them to literally blindside the entire galaxy with a major surprise attack. If you'll notice, in ME3 pretty much everybody saw the Reapers coming because they had to attack the Batarians first. Earth may have been the first council world hit(because it's near the border to Batarian space) but it wasn't the first world hit period.

And the advantages of having instant control of the citadel were explained by Vigil. All the census data and important records are housed there. Plus having control of the relay network is a major edge, which they lacked in ME3 because they didn't retake it till the very end. Why they didn't lock down the relay network afterward is fairly obvious as well. The Reapers knew that every ounce of military strength in the galaxy would hit Earth aiming to deliver the Crucible. By marshaling the bulk of their strength there, the Reapers could wipe out all opposition in one fell swoop(like going straight to checkmate on the first turn) and have the quickest harvest ever. They just severely underestimated Shepard.

Also the Reaper's backup was the Alpha Relay(the largest mass relay in the galaxy, located in the Bahak System at the galaxy's edge), but Shepard blew it up.

[Ingmar]

Plus in ME2, Shepard first starts by investigating the missing colonies and being irritated that no one is taking the Reaper threat seriously --- when, if nothing else, they should be thinking "holy shit, we need ships capable of blowing that fucking giant dreadnought up because HOLY FUCKING SHIT they can be built".

What, really, you post in politics like 30 times a day, and you find governments not reacting to shit properly unrealistic?

[Ratman_tf]

Shepard got the magic Prothean beacon zap, and has 'hunches' about the Reapers. Was enough for me.

[Morat20]

Plus in ME2, Shepard first starts by investigating the missing colonies and being irritated that no one is taking the Reaper threat seriously --- when, if nothing else, they should be thinking "holy shit, we need ships capable of blowing that fucking giant dreadnought up because HOLY FUCKING SHIT they can be built".

What, really, you post in politics like 30 times a day, and you find governments not reacting to shit properly unrealistic?

Most governments response to "Wait, we get to build even bigger military shit" is, in fact, "hell yes". In fact, historically, militaries (and defense contractors) make threats up to justify ever bigger and more powerful stuff.

So actually having a single ship come in and pimp slap the entire citadel fleet (geth fleet notwithstanding) should have triggered, deep in Human and Turian souls at least, the desire to make something that could pimp-slap that.

[TNG3]

Shepard got the magic Prothean beacon zap, and has 'hunches' about the Reapers. Was enough for me.

Except that the the Prothean beacon vision was a message sent by the people in the Ilos research base. Which was monitored by Vigil, who clearly believed that the Reapers would be trapped in dark space forever without the Citadel relay. So unless the Prothean scientists were witholding information from their messenger VI, there's no way the vision would have any information that contradicted that.

The point of ME1's plot was to delay the Reaper's return and give the civilizations time to prepare for them. But the council chose to be stupid(even Udina) and deluded themselves into thinking Sovereign was a geth ship.

Up until the last minute, it seemed like the point of the plot was to prevent the Reapers' return and stop them once and for all. And even with the sequel hook, there wasn't any actual evidence that the Reapers were still a threat and the civilizations had to prepare for anything.

[Lantyssa]

Shepard was using psychology to get Saren to back down.  Absolute truth wasn't the point of that.  Getting him to stop was, and he had been acting irrationally since he became indoctrinated.  The overall goal was a delaying tactic and nothing more.

Anderson and Shepard knew the Reapers were out there, and they knew the Reapers knew they knew.  Maybe Sovereign blowing up was the backup-backup signal that they needed to start moving instead of hibernating.  At no point did they think they would be safe forever.

[Nayr]

Shepard got the magic Prothean beacon zap, and has 'hunches' about the Reapers. Was enough for me.

Except that the the Prothean beacon vision was a message sent by the people in the Ilos research base. Which was monitored by Vigil, who clearly believed that the Reapers would be trapped in dark space forever without the Citadel relay. So unless the Prothean scientists were witholding information from their messenger VI, there's no way the vision would have any information that contradicted that.

01. Vigil also believed that the Reapers hibernated to conserve energy. That belief justifies his notion that the Reapers would be trapped, because with finite energy supply, an attempt to reach the galaxy via FTL would be doomed to failure.

But Vigil failed to take account of three things.

1. The Reapers, to build Mass Relays in the various reaches of the galaxy, and in Dark Space, they must first reach that location via conventional means. Meaning if they did it before, they can do it again.

2. That the Reapers, being built of technology millions of years ahead of anything modern technology has achieved, would be able to overcome energy problems(implied later on that a Reaper's power cell can power it infinitely, evidenced by the fact that the Derelict Reaper stayed semi-functional and kept it's shields up continuously for 37 million years).

3. That Sovereign wasn't the only backup plan that the Reapers had in case of emergency. And because of that, we were almost blindsided by the Collectors and Harbinger.

The point of ME1's plot was to delay the Reaper's return and give the civilizations time to prepare for them. But the council chose to be stupid(even Udina) and deluded themselves into thinking Sovereign was a geth ship.

Up until the last minute, it seemed like the point of the plot was to prevent the Reapers' return and stop them once and for all. And even with the sequel hook, there wasn't any actual evidence that the Reapers were still a threat and the civilizations had to prepare for anything.

That logic would only work if the Reapers were sleeping in an alternate dimension or something. "Dark Space" is simply the starless gap of space between galaxies.

Simple logic: If you break my car so I can't drive down the road to see my friend, I can still walk.

That's one spot where Artificial Intelligences fail in the ME Universe. They can't grasp the simple.