[Megathread] Mass Effect 3

[Elim Garak]

No, I am stressing on another point.

You seem to be missing the major piece of the puzzle here.
Sovereign is in contact with the Reapers whenever he is awake - with the Harbinger. It doesn't need keepers to communicate the problem to them.
When sovereign fell - Harbinger used Collectors to evaluate the situation. It communicated from the Dark Void with them.

The only purpose of Keepers is to keep the Citadel in prime condition so it will attract new species and when the signal from Sovereign comes - activate the Citadel Relay.

Reapers don't need Citadel to come. It's just a due process - the most effective one. Sovereign failed to activate Citadel - Reapers still came.

They come every 50k years either thru Citadel which was successfully activated or thru Alpha Relay or as in the last cycle - just fly to the galaxy.

They knew everything that happened to keepers and they didn't need to do a thing about it. The plan was - for Soveregin to activate Citadel when the time comes by any means necessary and if that fails - Reapers would be able to go thru Alpha Relay and as the last resort they can just fly.

They are unstoppable, and they knew that. The last cycle practically lost if not for Crucible - the only mistake Reapers made.

[May90]

As machines, Reapers aim at the highest effectiveness possible. Installing a simple transmission system on Citadel which notifies Reapers when something gets changed seems to be much simpler and cost effective than paying later for lack of this system by a lot of Reapers' "lives". They had so many ways to ensure that Citadel functions properly no matter what and reduce their losses by a large margin. Instead, they chose a long and resource demanding way which failed in the end. Doesn't look like machines' work.

As for the "flying through galaxy", I don't think this is how they did this. If all it took them to just fly over was 2 years or something, then why bother with Saren and the Geth at all? It is not like in 2 years much would change in terms of technology for organics. They would be much better off just arriving there to full surprise of organics, quickly taking Citadel by sheer numbers and winning right away. As I understand, they just had a complex system of Relays reaching the dark space, so they just needed to fly to the closest Relay (which might be very close to their "home").

[Deleted]

Because Starbrat wills it.

[zealo]

As machines, Reapers aim at the highest effectiveness possible. Installing a simple transmission system on Citadel which notifies Reapers when something gets changed seems to be much simpler and cost effective than paying later for lack of this system by a lot of Reapers' "lives". They had so many ways to ensure that Citadel functions properly no matter what and reduce their losses by a large margin. Instead, they chose a long and resource demanding way which failed in the end. Doesn't look like machines' work.

As for the "flying through galaxy", I don't think this is how they did this. If all it took them to just fly over was 2 years or something, then why bother with Saren and the Geth at all? It is not like in 2 years much would change in terms of technology for organics. They would be much better off just arriving there to full surprise of organics, quickly taking Citadel by sheer numbers and winning right away. As I understand, they just had a complex system of Relays reaching the dark space, so they just needed to fly to the closest Relay (which might be very close to their "home").

The explanation to that is that the reapers just showing up and annihilating everything would not have made for a very good storyline.

I don't think they had much of a system of relays other than the one linking to the citadel either since it took over 2 years to reach the alpha relay.

The question this brings is more that the reapers are apparently capable of travelling faster than the speed of light without the use of relays, considering the distances they cover in just 2-3 years.

[Elim Garak]

Flying takes too much energy, which then needs to be restored - they have a working system and if there's a way to not change a thing - they won't. It's way more effective to use Citadel Mass Relay - hence the ME1 storyline in which Sovereign attempts exactly that. If it were to succeed that would be it for the last cycle. All the united fleets of the galaxy would be destroyed in one swooping maneuver, Mass Relays would cease to work and then the individual worlds would be ripe for plucking.
They had to fly on their own exactly because Sovereign failed and Shepard destroyed Alpha Relay (a back up plan).

[May90]

The question this brings is more that the reapers are apparently capable of travelling faster than the speed of light without the use of relays, considering the distances they cover in just 2-3 years.

Well, FTL speeds are very common in Mass Effect - explanation, AFAIK, is that Eezo effectively makes the mass of a ship negative, which mathematically allows it to travel faster than light. Reapers just use more advanced fields that allow them to travel even faster. But to pass through the galaxy in 2-3 years... Our galaxy is, what, 50k light years in diameter? So they travel at, at least, a few thousands light speeds which is unbelievably fast. More likely, they just needed to reach one of their relays which lays on the edge of the galaxy. Of course, we don't even know what and where the "dark space" is: if it is something in the middle between two galaxies, then there is just no way they reach our galaxy without some kind of relay.

[Elim Garak]

They don't need to pass thu the galaxy, they just need to get to it from the Dark Void, they can get to the nearest Mass Relay and then use Mass Relay system to get around the galaxy

[Nerraw]

It appears more and more people believe we'll be seeing ME Next at E3 next month. I really hope that we do!

And I totally didn't put my 10.000th post in here on purpose *cough*

[Rukh]

One problem we have here is that communication itself is limited by the speed of light. Ok we have a theoretical method where you take a substance and modify its mass to be negative to send it through space faster than light, but does that work for energy? Is there a method for sending waves through space faster than light? Relays sure, but how would sovereign communicate with the reapers in deep space? Hyperspace communication is actually more important to a globalized galaxy than hyperspace travel, yet they haven't ever really talked about how that works.

[Very Tired]

It's odd this thread is bumped the day I reinstall ME3 to try out multi-player again.

One thing I noticed is that the reapers say that the cycle has repeated more times then we can fathom... but if the universe's age in Mass Effect is as accurate as ours is in real life around 13.8 billion years. I'm pretty sure we can fathom 13.8B/50,000 years per cycle... So two hundred seventy-six thousand cycles?

[Nazrark]

I am so ready for E3. With DA:I coming out this year. All BioWare has to do is show a small teaser of MENext and watch us throw money at them on stage.

[Elim Garak]

One problem we have here is that communication itself is limited by the speed of light. Ok we have a theoretical method where you take a substance and modify its mass to be negative to send it through space faster than light, but does that work for energy? Is there a method for sending waves through space faster than light? Relays sure, but how would sovereign communicate with the reapers in deep space? Hyperspace communication is actually more important to a globalized galaxy than hyperspace travel, yet they haven't ever really talked about how that works.

Quantum Entanglement, mate, Quantum Entanglement.

[zealo]

It's odd this thread is bumped the day I reinstall ME3 to try out multi-player again.

One thing I noticed is that the reapers say that the cycle has repeated more times then we can fathom... but if the universe's age in Mass Effect is as accurate as ours is in real life around 13.8 billion years. I'm pretty sure we can fathom 13.8B/50,000 years per cycle... So two hundred seventy-six thousand cycles?

I don't think the reapers are that old due to the content of the DLC pack leviathan, but i can't recall the exact age of them due to not having played me3 DLC in a while now but at least 1 billion years is feasible.

[May90]

One problem we have here is that communication itself is limited by the speed of light. Ok we have a theoretical method where you take a substance and modify its mass to be negative to send it through space faster than light, but does that work for energy? Is there a method for sending waves through space faster than light? Relays sure, but how would sovereign communicate with the reapers in deep space? Hyperspace communication is actually more important to a globalized galaxy than hyperspace travel, yet they haven't ever really talked about how that works.

As Elim Garak said, there is Quantum Entanglement which, theoretically, could work even in our real world; however it also may be from the fact that we still cannot merge quantum mechanics and general relativity into one single theory, they contradict each other at the moment, so perhaps there is no instant change at all. Anyway, quantum entanglement is how Reapers communicate with each other; it is also how Shepard communicated to Illusive Man and to Admiral Hackett, for example; it is even how Rachni queens control their hives. All in all, it is a very common way of communication in Mass Effect universe.

I don't think the reapers are that old due to the content of the DLC pack leviathan, but i can't recall the exact age of them due to not having played me3 DLC in a while now but at least 1 billion years is feasible.

I don't think the exact number is given anywhere in the game. Illusive Man says that the destroyed Reaper in ME2 was killed "when mammals took their first steps on Earth", which would be 225 million years ago, according to Wiki, but apparently they already did their cycles then, so they should be older. Something like 500 million - 1 billion years would be my guess.

[Deleted]

Does BioWare even have people who knows how this ultra-science works, or are they just glancing at wikipedia for ideas?

Also, maybe they even lived for longer than 1B years.

After all, the corpse was there for 225M and they didnt seem to give a fuck about it despite working to clear all evidence of their existance each cycle.
So either;
A) The reapers have lived for so long that 225M years is equal to "eh, i'll take out the thrash in the morning."
B) The reapers didnt know about it (which is rather illogical.)
C) BioWare fucked up

[Yarathir]

Does BioWare even have people who knows how this ultra-science works, or are they just glancing at wikipedia for ideas?

Also, maybe they even lived for longer than 1B years.

After all, the corpse was there for 225M and they didnt seem to give a fuck about it despite working to clear all evidence of their existance each cycle.
So either;
A) The reapers have lived for so long that 225M years is equal to "eh, i'll take out the thrash in the morning."
B) The reapers didnt know about it (which is rather illogical.)
C) BioWare fucked up

While they may have lived over 1B years, that still leaves quite a long time. Before them, there were the Leviathan, but before the Leviathan? I wonder. I very much doubt that, with what we know of Reapers, and the little we know of their aquatic organic original counterparts, that they are the oldest species. Before the Reapers, there wasn't anything actively stifling advancement and progression of organic species like the Reapers. At least something would have made it past the Mass Effect-level of tech. If so? Where are those?


If they were there before the Leviathan, their tech must just about make them deities by now. Intriguing thought, imo.

[Deleted]

You know what would be fun?

If there were beings who fulfilled the reapers part in the cycle long before there was a Reaper and the Leviathans defeated them to become the "gods" before eventually restarting the cycle.

WOuld be good with an option in the control ending to continue the cycle.

[Yarathir]

You know what would be fun?

If there were beings who fulfilled the reapers part in the cycle long before there was a Reaper and the Leviathans defeated them to become the "gods" before eventually restarting the cycle.

Boo. The pattern must not repeat itself. We need god-aliens traveling between universes. Yup-yup. *snickers*

[Yarathir]

Dont worry, i will have a massive armada for that.
All of creation will kneel before me!

No, but what with the age of the Milky Way galaxy, I would be surprised if there were no sapient species before Leviathan, and if there were, that none of them exist today. Could be that they are there, but in the mean time, they have long since left the galaxy or even universe. Yes, this is some hyper-techie Sci-fi shit I'm talking about. Y'know, type 4-5 civilizations or beyond.

[Deleted]

And who is more suited for conquering multiverses than one who conquered his own universe and made every fighting force his own?
All of creation will kneel before me!