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Mr. Soop
Feb 18, 2011

Bonsai Guy

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Yeah, it would've been nice for him to be a larger threat than he really is but that would require all players to have played the second part in a trilogy and they wanted gamers to be able to play the game without having to do that. :v:

Bioware sure knows how to make trilogies.

That's screenwriting 101. Whenever you have a seriously story-driven series with multiple installments, make sure to have it so they have as little continuity as possible between them all so as not to intimidate newcomers. :pseudo:

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GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Mr. Soop posted:

That's screenwriting 101. Whenever you have a seriously story-driven series with multiple installments, make sure to have it so they have as little continuity as possible between them all so as not to intimidate newcomers. :pseudo:

Maybe if Pirates of the Caribbean had done that the third movie wouldn't have been a colossal turd.

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Harbinger isn't important.

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

Interesting stuff

I'm a little surprised because I would think the quarians are most obviously and closely linked to the intergenerational crisis. They are in an extended Titanomachy with their children; their exile is a prison from which they will emerge to finish the conflict. Their conflict is the exemplar conflict which the Reapers are intended to manage, and if Sovereign had woken up on time then the quarian-geth war almost certainly wouldn't have happened.

They do exist apart and separate from the rest of the galaxy, but again I think that serves a purpose - they are another means by which to demonstrate the inherent oppression and violence of the Citadel hegemony, but also serve as a separate example of it. Systems of control aren't unique to the asari, salarian and turian governments (or the Prothean Empire or whoever) but also exist 'outside' the overt system: in the corrupt quarian Admiralty, in Aria and her gangs, in the batarians and elsewhere. This is a problem that can't be solved by just kicking the individual councillors/Reapers/'bad people' out of office, but requires a galactic overhaul and revolution in every way we live.

Eye of Widesauron
Mar 29, 2014

TheCosmicMuffet is either a forums treasure or a dispensary for terminal posting aids

I can't decide which

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine

Lt. Danger posted:

I'm a little surprised because I would think the quarians are most obviously and closely linked to the intergenerational crisis. They are in an extended Titanomachy with their children; their exile is a prison from which they will emerge to finish the conflict. Their conflict is the exemplar conflict which the Reapers are intended to manage, and if Sovereign had woken up on time then the quarian-geth war almost certainly wouldn't have happened.

They do exist apart and separate from the rest of the galaxy, but again I think that serves a purpose - they are another means by which to demonstrate the inherent oppression and violence of the Citadel hegemony, but also serve as a separate example of it. Systems of control aren't unique to the asari, salarian and turian governments (or the Prothean Empire or whoever) but also exist 'outside' the overt system: in the corrupt quarian Admiralty, in Aria and her gangs, in the batarians and elsewhere. This is a problem that can't be solved by just kicking the individual councillors/Reapers/'bad people' out of office, but requires a galactic overhaul and revolution in every way we live.

As a touchstone for the folly of desiring control in general, their race has more in common with the wicked witch who has her ego stroking mirror than they do with the council's inflated sense of responsibility for trying to protect life. I suppose their suits might be a nod to that idea. You get a better sense of Quarians from looking at Geth than you do looking at them, directly.

In that sense, if they're standing alone as an adjunct to the core stories, then I'd like to know why their presence in the world is intermittent. They have a delegate on your ship/in your plot, but does that mean anything more than just a hook for you to go do her errands? If Javik were in Tali's place, narratively, you'd have a better pervasive presence in the story, because, after all, any prothean relic would be a reminder of his/their failure, and an opportunity to remember his alienation from the galaxy.

The Quarians aren't alienated like that. Though prison seems an apt description, there's no judgment attached. Javik is a disappointment. The quarians have no reputation to fall short of living up to, and no stigma to be put off by. They're flood victims.

They cohere in terms of being a mirror of things happening elsewhere. They don't cohere in terms of connectedness to the other races, except through the Geth. The game has a very sprawling multi-species narrative that excludes them, or makes them the lonely dangling race-character.

So maybe the point of their subplot is that they don't matter, and that's unique as being an expressive of extreme old age. Maybe all they want is those darn geth kids with their consensuses to get off their lawn. Their vulnerability to disease has an old age feel to it, and the fact that you only ever see, obliquely, at a distance, a photo of Tali kind of speaks to that photo of your grandmother you run across one day where she's young and looks extremely pretty and you say 'oh wow, is this you?' and she says 'yeah, *sigh*' and then you feel death's claws on your throat as you realize that everyone, eventually, gets kicked off their planet and forced to wander in interstellar space.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute

Widestancer posted:

TheCosmicMuffet is either a forums treasure or a dispensary for terminal posting aids

I can't decide which

This is Something Awful, they aren't mutually exclusive.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Lt. Danger posted:

Harbinger isn't important.

Well Mass Effect 2 would like to disagree.

Sydin
Oct 29, 2011

Another spring commute
Mass Effect 2 isn't important.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Sydin posted:

Mass Effect 2 isn't important.

And by the end of this game neither will the game itself. :v:

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness
Harbinger really isn't that important outside of his role as "Leader of the Reapers" which could arguably be filled just as well by anything else, or even nothing at all. But he is fun, he is a fun character and a neat antagonist and Bioware missed an excellent opportunity to have Harbinger slowly going crazy as he tries and fails to track Shepard down and stop him. Every time Shepard escapes Harbinger becomes a little more unhinged at the impossibility of the situation until by the end of the game he's basically personally chasing Shepard around from system to system screaming in fury at the apparently indestructible wasp that is about to ruin everything.

It's yet another case of the ME writers deciding to sideline a character for reasons. I don't even buy the 'so people can play the third game without needing to play the first game' excuse either because it would not be at all hard to inform the player that Harbinger is the leader of the Reapers and that while fighting the Collectors Shepard spoke to Harbinger on multiple occasions before personally ruining his plans; as a result Harbinger now considers Shepard the foremost threat to the Reapers in this cycle and appears to be personally hunting the human Spectre down.


Hell you could even have Harbinger be the Reaper that comes down in the background at the start while Shepard is talking to the board and then while Shepard is doing his little escape sequence you can hear Harbinger booming his voice out across the city shouting things like "SHEPARD! WE KNOW YOU ARE HERE!" and "SUBMIT YOURSELF AND YOUR SPECIES WILL SUFFER NO LONGER SHEPARD" then instead of a random destroyer coming out of nowhere to blow up those shuttles Harbinger notices the Normandy and charges after it, taking out the shuttles purely because they're in the way.

Basically what I'm saying is there was plenty of opportunities for Harbinger to be as important as he should be, being the leader of the Reapers and the only one with a unique design and all that jazz, but for reasons that I cannot comprehend they decided not to do that. While I can understand why one might go for 'the Reapers are a faceless, voiceless force that sweeps across the stars' they have already established that is in fact not the case at all and the Reapers totally have personalities and faces and voices and we know that because Shepard has spoken to two of them directly.

So despite having faces and voices for the Reapers for the first two games, suddenly in the third game they are a faceless, voiceless force of nature. It's a really jarring and unexplained change.

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

As a touchstone for the folly of desiring control in general, their race has more in common with the wicked witch who has her ego stroking mirror than they do with the council's inflated sense of responsibility for trying to protect life. I suppose their suits might be a nod to that idea. You get a better sense of Quarians from looking at Geth than you do looking at them, directly.

In that sense, if they're standing alone as an adjunct to the core stories, then I'd like to know why their presence in the world is intermittent. They have a delegate on your ship/in your plot, but does that mean anything more than just a hook for you to go do her errands? If Javik were in Tali's place, narratively, you'd have a better pervasive presence in the story, because, after all, any prothean relic would be a reminder of his/their failure, and an opportunity to remember his alienation from the galaxy.

The Quarians aren't alienated like that. Though prison seems an apt description, there's no judgment attached. Javik is a disappointment. The quarians have no reputation to fall short of living up to, and no stigma to be put off by. They're flood victims.

They cohere in terms of being a mirror of things happening elsewhere. They don't cohere in terms of connectedness to the other races, except through the Geth. The game has a very sprawling multi-species narrative that excludes them, or makes them the lonely dangling race-character.

So maybe the point of their subplot is that they don't matter, and that's unique as being an expressive of extreme old age. Maybe all they want is those darn geth kids with their consensuses to get off their lawn. Their vulnerability to disease has an old age feel to it, and the fact that you only ever see, obliquely, at a distance, a photo of Tali kind of speaks to that photo of your grandmother you run across one day where she's young and looks extremely pretty and you say 'oh wow, is this you?' and she says 'yeah, *sigh*' and then you feel death's claws on your throat as you realize that everyone, eventually, gets kicked off their planet and forced to wander in interstellar space.

Actually as you find out, I think in ME3? Maybe ME2, the Quarians have a lot of things to be ashamed about including their attempted genocide of the Geth which caused the rebellion in the first place.

Like, the Quarians are flood victims only in so far as they blew up their own dam. Yeah when the dam broke they got flooded, but it was 100% their own loving fault.

Neruz fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Oct 2, 2014

Natural 20
Sep 17, 2007

Wearer of Compasses. Slayer of Gods. Champion of the Colosseum. Heart of the Void.
Saviour of Hallownest.
I really like the portrayal of the Quarians and the migrant fleet. They have a bunch of people on their council with unique personalities but who have them for decent reasons. Like the belligerent admiral is belligerent because he has good reason to hate the goddamn Geth and not trust outsiders.

I don't know why but their situation gives me a little sense of pre-Israel Jewish diaspora?

That they have a homeland they know about and want but have no ability to claim and as such end up being a stranger on someone's doorstep the entire time. I'd like to comment further, but the entire conflict in the real world is really sensitive so I wouldn't want to cause offense.

Raygereio
Nov 12, 2012

Neruz posted:

Actually as you find out, I think in ME3? Maybe ME2, the Quarians have a lot of things to be ashamed about including their attempted genocide of the Geth which caused the rebellion in the first place.
The Quarians being the first to attack was already a thing back in ME1.
Then again, it seems everyone in the ME universe tends towards being an rear end in a top hat towards AIs (Citadel DLC scene)

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness

Ah, so yeah I've never really had a lot of sympathy for the Quarians because the game pretty clearly spells out that they did this to themselves. Your reaction to a complex learning machine going Does this unit have a soul?" should not be "KILL THEM ALL!"

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!
The geth killed enough of them in return. That quarian fleet is their entire species, remember. Both sides went psycho nuts in that war.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness

2house2fly posted:

The geth killed enough of them in return. That quarian fleet is their entire species, remember. Both sides went psycho nuts in that war.

Sure but they were reacting to the Quarians attempting genocide; if someone starts trying to wipe out your entire 'species' (kind?) there's nothing morally wrong with fighting back to save yourselves.

Plus once the Quarians were gone the majority of the Geth basically shut themselves off from the rest of the galaxy and started building themselves their own supercomputer heaven, they are not dangerous or aggressive beings and there is absolutely no reason to want to harm them. The Heretics we can probably put down to the Reapers ruining everything.

GO FUCK YOURSELF
Aug 19, 2004

"I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

2house2fly posted:

The geth killed enough of them in return. That quarian fleet is their entire species, remember. Both sides went psycho nuts in that war.

In ME3, you can find out that the Geth let the Quarian leave the Rannoch area and then stopped pursuing them. They viewed the attack as an existential threat, not the fact that the Quarians live.

Aces High
Mar 26, 2010

Nah! A little chocolate will do




You know, if I didn't find Tali so amusing I wouldn't have been as inclined to let the Quarians live either considering what you learn about the build up to the conflict, and everything you learn in ME 1 and 2. Although I am kind of curious, in ME 1 Tali tells us that the Geth don't take kindly to visitors and are very territorial, yet in ME3 if you get everyone to play together immediately a bunch of Primes show up and are like "how may we assist you, Creators?". Does that mean Tali was just being incredulous or that our good friend Legion is THAT good at changing his family's mind on organics?

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

GO gently caress YOURSELF posted:

In ME3, you can find out that the Geth let the Quarian leave the Rannoch area and then stopped pursuing them. They viewed the attack as an existential threat, not the fact that the Quarians live.
Having just played through that section, it's something like "We were still learning, we had no idea what the ramifications would be if we wiped out an entire race, so we let them go."

Aces High posted:

You know, if I didn't find Tali so amusing I wouldn't have been as inclined to let the Quarians live either considering what you learn about the build up to the conflict, and everything you learn in ME 1 and 2. Although I am kind of curious, in ME 1 Tali tells us that the Geth don't take kindly to visitors and are very territorial, yet in ME3 if you get everyone to play together immediately a bunch of Primes show up and are like "how may we assist you, Creators?". Does that mean Tali was just being incredulous or that our good friend Legion is THAT good at changing his family's mind on organics?

May have been heretic geth, or it may have just been them trying to chase the Quarians away for fear that they'd try to kill them all again like they did in the morning war.

The implication behind the Geth helping out the quarians if you sue for peace is that they trust Shepard and see him as an example for all organics, considering the meeting between Legion and Shepard is enshrined within the geth consensus.

Kurieg fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Oct 2, 2014

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine
I think part in ME2 where they discuss the Geth disagreement makes it clear that, whether the Geth stopped after a bit or not, their motivations are fairly inscrutable, and in any case, whether there's an existential threat or not, the Geth didn't flee.

In some US states there are laws about self defense that say 'you must give ground'. That is, try to escape from someone who's a threat and let the police handle it. In other states, you're under no such obligation and if you feel threatened, you're entitled to use deadly force (apparently up to the point of following someone around because they look suspicious, then confronting them on the steps of their own house and killing them because you thought they were reaching into their pocket for a gun).

When it comes to moral outrage, if the Quarians did something reprehensible, fine. Unless I'm mistaken the Quarians *you* talk to in the game aren't those Quarians. Those quarians are long gone. So it's like saying that people from Missouri are all reprehensible and deserve what they get because their ancestors held slaves or were racists. Or germans or soviets or midwesterners with cavalry officers in their history, or west coasters who have relatives and ancestors who were in the marines or navy. The pathos and tension in the BSG show exists because there are confused and desperate people who are trying to upset the apple cart, but the apples in this case are innocent people, and the last of their kind. It's a primordial story; every human tribe at one point was an isolated band that could go from comfortable to desperate in the span of a bad year. Built into our story telling around good and evil is the moral difficulty of being in a band of 20-30 people altogether in your social universe. If someone is selfish and difficult, well, you may *still* need that person, and for every comeuppance myth/legend, there a forgiveness one as well.

So, of all their problems, moral outrage isn't one of them. Whatever their people did, they paid for it. The Geth are hardly a champion of pure ideals. They're loving robot computers. They could have gone *anywhere*. They don't need a planet. Especially not the Quarian one. They could have been the exodus.

The fact that they're not kind of relates to my deranged rambling about the Rachin and Reapers. The Quarians created the Geth--in every sense. The made them. Then they made them dangerous when they tried to destroy them. As long as the Quarians exist with their desperation to return to their planet, the Geth are at risk, and will continue to be threatening in response. But would you annihilate the Quarians idly? I would, but I recognize that I'm being cavalier.

I guess I'm coming around on them a little bit, now that I'm seeing other perspectives on their background as Robot-abusers, because their story is an interesting reversal of a pattern in several other stories.

In the prothean/reaper story, the reapers have no explicit creator, but it's certainly not the protheans. On the other hand, arguably, since the reapers clear cut the galaxy, the protheans may have evolved because of the opportunity afforded *by* the reapers. Then the reapers come home to roost and annihilate the protheans, who attempt to seed the future with their legacy in an attempt to get a posthumous revenge. Javik mentions several times that he remembers salarians, asari, and whoever as being primitive or unevolved organisms in his time. Apparently some of them were food. By that standard, you can infer that each generation of sentients owes its opportunity at advanced civilization to the periodic reaper cullings. The reapers themselves describe their motivations as being down to the fact that organic life is chaotic and destructive--meaning, if there *were* still an organic civilization, it wouldn't necessarily permit a new race to arise and replace it.

The Quarians, in this story occupy the same position as the reapers; nitpicking over details about whether the reapers 'planned' to hang out in interstellar space or not is kind of silly. There's nothing to say that the Reapers are a civilization as opposed to the tools of a civilization that have been left in charge of a duty--which they may or may not enjoy, or at any rate, may not be a 'complete' existence. If they're extremely elaborate exterminators and the 'real' civilization is elsewhere, then literally, if not symbolically, they've been exiled to interstellar space to perform this extermination duty, and the only time their existence means anything is when they wake up and wage war for however long it takes. They're in hibernation, but the main elements of their story are the same. They're a self-contained cycle, while the Quarians represent a cycle that they will only participate in once. The Geth occupy the position of organic life.

Yet, obviously, the Quarians are meant to be sympathetic in some sense. Even if just as people who are paying for their mistakes. Even if you really like robots (And I really do) there's something fundamentally unjust about their position. They acted out of fear and now they aren't just in exile, they're all imprisoned in full body suits that isolate them from each other because they can only tolerate one planet, and it's full of robots who hate them. The robots can tolerate anything. They could make living on a cess-pool virus planet work for them easily. Outside of extreme radiation, they could probably make anything work, really. So the Quarians, by narrative conceit, aren't being total pricks--they really *do* need to go back, and the Geth really *don't* need to be there.

So it's interesting a lot of us are willing to project the invader persona onto them and side with the Geth just based on their posture in the story. But given the parallels to other areas of the story, I think there might be a seed in here of sympathy for the invader. It would parallel the threads of letting the Rachni queen go, seeing the Batarians reduced to diaspora after you sacrifice their planet, and the explanation from the reapers have good reasons for what they do--implying an element of self preservation.

I'm sure there are some other sympathy for the invader threads. The Krogans probably count, though all we see is the aftermath, when the result of being the invader gets them genophaged. I suppose Morinth and the ardat Yakshi have some resonance there, too. Cerberus in ME2.

Maybe it's all a metaphor for life as the perpetual invader. We sympathize with our own desire to live despite having no essential right to proliferate.

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

The Quarians aren't alienated like that. Though prison seems an apt description, there's no judgment attached. Javik is a disappointment. The quarians have no reputation to fall short of living up to, and no stigma to be put off by. They're flood victims.

One of the reasons the quarians start the Morning War is because they've violated the Council prohibition on creating AIs and they want to hide the evidence. Their failure to do so proves their fears right: instead of treating them as victims (which they are), the Council declares them criminals - not for attempting genocide, mind, but for creating artificial life.

Their exile isn't just from Rannoch, but from Council space and civilisation in general. Their conflict with their creations is self-destructive; it isolates them physically and spiritually. The disconnect you see from the rest of the galaxy is intentional, I'd say.

quote:

Well Mass Effect 2 would like to disagree.

What does Harbinger do? What does Harbinger actually mean?

I think Harbinger exists so that you can have an echo of the reveal with Sovereign on Virmire. Just as the origin of the mass effect relays reveals that the Reapers aren't truly dormant, but have been manipulating us all along, so too Harbinger's "releasing control" of the Collector General reveals that the Reapers aren't truly dormant, but have been abducting and corrupting us all along.

Remember, Harbinger as a distinct entity exists for a handful of seconds right at the end of the Suicide Mission. Until then, he is literally merged with the Collector General. He is not important.

As I've said, the Reapers represent a particular kind of evil - not the megalomania of a villain like Saren or The Illusive Man, but the structural evil of patterns of conflict and control. Harbinger isn't the 'boss Reaper' that embodies evil and must be destroyed, because (as said last video) the Reapers in general, the mass relays, the galaxy and the setting as a whole already do that. I don't agree with the idea that he's the leader or first Reaper and is special because of that, and I don't think that's what Bioware was (originally) going for.

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine
Oh god, I forgot about that whole part.

Well, this is nice because now they're more interesting to me as a part of the story than they were. The idea of the hubris of creating life despite a prohibition is kind of great. It's even better because it's clearly selfish on their part--they want servants. And they're not worthy parents.

Unworthy, unprepared parents. They're everywhere. In space.

GO FUCK YOURSELF
Aug 19, 2004

"I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who beat you, and pray for them to beat the shit out of the Buckeyes" - The Book of Witten

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

In the prothean/reaper story, the reapers have no explicit creator, but it's certainly not the protheans. On the other hand, arguably, since the reapers clear cut the galaxy, the protheans may have evolved because of the opportunity afforded *by* the reapers. Then the reapers come home to roost and annihilate the protheans, who attempt to seed the future with their legacy in an attempt to get a posthumous revenge. Javik mentions several times that he remembers salarians, asari, and whoever as being primitive or unevolved organisms in his time. Apparently some of them were food. By that standard, you can infer that each generation of sentients owes its opportunity at advanced civilization to the periodic reaper cullings. The reapers themselves describe their motivations as being down to the fact that organic life is chaotic and destructive--meaning, if there *were* still an organic civilization, it wouldn't necessarily permit a new race to arise and replace it.

It appears you haven't played the Leviathan DLC, which is too bad, because it puts all of these questions to rest. Namely: we know who created the Reapers, why, why the Reapers persist with this mission (although the Catalyst also attempts to explain this), and whether or not the Reaper creators are alive.

Putting that aside for a minute, I don't think anyone is saying that the Quarians are fundamentally evil because of the Morning War. But because they persist in fighting this war and utilizing depersonalizing tactics when referring to Geth as well as performing experiments on them that are tantamount to biological warfare and torture, they aren't particularly sympathetic in ME2 and ME3 the way they were in ME1. I think that's an important distinction to make. (It's also worth noting that the Geth attempted to give ground in the Morning War and refused to fight back against their creators until the Quarians were killing each other. We see the scene when the first Geth arms itself in defense of both itself and its owner. It's hard to make the argument that the Quarians are in anything other than a well-deserved exile and a prison of their own making.)

I've been really interested in the fact that we've met representatives from three different eras of this Universe and that Shepard's cycle is the only cycle without an apex race. Both the Leviathans and the Protheans developed a galaxy-spanning empire that subjugated other races and succumbed to the Reaper menace despite all their power. I just find that really curious.

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
Arguably, the Asari are the apex race in the current cycle. Strongest economy, formed the council, highest technology, etc. Their cultural practices preclude them from a Prothean style dominance relationship, though.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Fangz posted:

Arguably, the Asari are the apex race in the current cycle. Strongest economy, formed the council, highest technology, etc.

But they're not the apex race. They require other species to procreate without problems. The game tries to make the humans the apex race but that's not true at all. The Protheans really hosed up the Reaper's cycle.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness

Lt. Danger posted:

I don't agree with the idea that he's the leader or first Reaper and is special because of that, and I don't think that's what Bioware was (originally) going for.

It's not an idea it's outright stated in the codex and in the Leviathan DLC; Harbinger is the first Reaper, the one made from the Leviathans. He is also the largest of all the other Reapers bearing a unique 4 legged design even bigger than the 2 kilometer 'Sovereign Class' Reapers.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

But they're not the apex race. They require other species to procreate without problems. The game tries to make the humans the apex race but that's not true at all. The Protheans really hosed up the Reaper's cycle.

Yeah, the Protheans came very close to beating the cycle altogether and the Reapers in their complacency failed to repair the damage the Protheans had done to the cycle, had Javik been born a few hundred years sooner the Protheans may very well have won. As it is the damage the Protheans did was enough for the following cycle to succeed.

Neruz fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Oct 2, 2014

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Oh, that's all definitely true. But I don't think it adds much to the story.

The threat of ME3 is the Titanomachy. Harbinger is a player in this conflict, but he isn't the embodiment of it. He's significant only in that he is a Reaper, and the Reapers are a symbol of the cycle of violence and control. Defeating Harbinger doesn't end Titanomachy, and in fact actually fulfils it.

Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness
Of course not, it's just a shame that Harbinger is basically written out of the story entirely in ME3. Having him be in the story wouldn't change the overall game at all but it would have added some nice opportunities to watch a god lose its temper.

FoolyCharged
Oct 11, 2012

Cheating at a raffle? I sentence you to 1 year in jail! No! Two years! Three! Four! Five years! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Somebody call for an ant?

Eh, he wasn't really important enough to put back in the story.

Harbinger taunts/angry not yelling instead of that painful noise the reapers make after you scan too much in exploration mode could have been fun though.

Lt. Danger
Dec 22, 2006

jolly good chaps we sure showed the hun

Neruz posted:

Of course not, it's just a shame that Harbinger is basically written out of the story entirely in ME3. Having him be in the story wouldn't change the overall game at all but it would have added some nice opportunities to watch a god lose its temper.

Perhaps. That sort of thing is always fun.

There are other dropped threads - both Morinth and Harbinger have lines about 'genetic destiny' which I think is an interesting concept that could still have play with the game as it is.

Xander77
Apr 6, 2009

Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.



Lt. Danger posted:


The threat of ME3 is the Titanomachy.
And when we fight the Asari, it's Amazonmachy*.

I get it - "generation conflict" isn't a :10bux: word. But still.

...

* Which it absolutely is :) Shepard, Galactic Hero Hero of Humanity, alleviates the anxiety women in positions of power inspire in the player, by using good old videogame violence to put those sexy alien warrior women in their rightful place.

ME 2 posted:

I love nailing asari. So ageless and superior -- then you get them, and they squeal like schoolgirls.

GenderSelectScreen
Mar 7, 2010

I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME
College Slice

Lt. Danger posted:

Perhaps. That sort of thing is always fun.

There are other dropped threads - both Morinth and Harbinger have lines about 'genetic destiny' which I think is an interesting concept that could still have play with the game as it is.

Or the star death problem they allude to in ME2. Or really anything mentioned in ME1 and 2.

Head Hit Keyboard
Oct 9, 2012

It must be fate that has brought us together after all these years.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

[Asari] require other species to procreate without problems.

What? No. What the hell is Liara then? The way I remember it is that once galactic communities established and Asari found out they could procreate with other species, then it became a social stigma to be "pureblooded". Liara says this much in ME1. I think a random conversation in ME2 on Illium brings this up as well.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Head Hit Keyboard posted:

What? No. What the hell is Liara then? The way I remember it is that once galactic communities established and Asari found out they could procreate with other species, then it became a social stigma to be "pureblooded". Liara says this much in ME1. I think a random conversation in ME2 on Illium brings this up as well.

Pureblood Asari and the children of purebloods have a chance to become Ardat yakshi which are sterile as they kill their mates rather than pulling DNA from them. We're not told when Ardat Yakshi started showing up but it might have been sort of like an inbreeding thing, they just happened to get space flight before it would have reached a critical mass of death succubi.

Thwomp
Apr 10, 2003

BA-DUHHH

Grimey Drawer
I always thought it was a neat idea that the Asari have Asari offspring regardless of the partner's species.

If they had the same breeding speed as the Krogan (which could be inherited in a Krogan/Asari pairing maybe), they'd be just as deadly to other species existentially as Ardat Yakshi are.

Geostomp
Oct 22, 2008

Unite: MASH!!
~They've got the bad guys on the run!~

Kurieg posted:

Pureblood Asari and the children of purebloods have a chance to become Ardat yakshi which are sterile as they kill their mates rather than pulling DNA from them. We're not told when Ardat Yakshi started showing up but it might have been sort of like an inbreeding thing, they just happened to get space flight before it would have reached a critical mass of death succubi.

Given that most Asari seem to regard them as legends that shouldn't actually exist, I'm guessing they always existed in some form.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
I meant that they became more common as the Ardat-Yakshi genes spread out amongst the populace making it more likely that someone would get both copies. It's not explained precisely how it works, whether it requires something from both parents, or if just the mother is responsible and all of her children become Ardat Yakshi regardless. Since Samara had 3 in a row.

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine
It occurs to me that we don't really know what Asari do to give birth. They talk about mothers and fathers to imply something about how somebody has to bear something, but I'm not clear on if they don't just lay eggs or bud or what. For all we know they take samples manually and then use a pod, like the Kryptonians and Russell Crowe did before their planet was tragically eliminated.

A Curvy Goonette
Jul 3, 2007

"Anyone who enjoys MWO is a shitty player. You have to hate it in order to be pro like me."

I'm actually just very good at curb stomping randoms on a team. :ssh:

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

It occurs to me that we don't really know what Asari do to give birth. They talk about mothers and fathers to imply something about how somebody has to bear something, but I'm not clear on if they don't just lay eggs or bud or what. For all we know they take samples manually and then use a pod, like the Kryptonians and Russell Crowe did before their planet was tragically eliminated.

TURN LEFT THREAD NOOOOOOO

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Neruz
Jul 23, 2012

A paragon of manliness
Gentlemen I believe we are going to have to plumb the depths of Expanded Universe content to answer this important question :science:

  • Locked thread