Alastair Reynolds in his Revelation Space books has a machine intelligence which killed technologically advanced races only (not primitive ones) because it had a massive engineering task to perform (stopping the collision of the Milky Way Galaxy with another galaxy in a hundred thousand years from wiping out all life) and it viewed space-faring civilisations as too short-sighted and an unpredictable risk to it's project.
Nope. They weren't there to stop it, even they couldn't do that. They were there to prevent space faring life from interfering with their work, which was to move stars and planets around to avoid the extinction of life when the two galaxies DID collide (Andromeda and Milky Way specifically, which is actually going to collide with us). It was an interesting idea, although the wolves eventually failed when the greenfly emerged.
Ender's Game had aliens with a hive mind, who considered killing a few humans as no more terrible than killing a few skin cells during a handshake.
Well, they considered the first humans they contacted to be drones. As their own species was primarily composed of drones which were controlled by the queen and thus weren't actually individuals.
Babylon 5 had the Shadows, whose goal is not to kill all life but to strengthen it by weeding out the weak.
Well, the Shadow and the Vorlons had different ideals about how life should evolve and grow. The shadows embraced struggle as the mechanism to cause a species to grow and advanced.
In time the project grows, the ignorance of its devs it shows, with many a convoluted function, it plunges into deep compunction, the price of failure is high, Washu's mirth is nigh.
I worded the first point clumsily and you seem to have misread it. They were not stopping the collision, they were stopping it *from wiping out all life*.
Interpretation aside, I feel they are examples of more plausible directions the writers could have gone, rather than "we're killing you to stop you killing yourselves". There doesn't seem to be a plausible win condition by which the Reapers save more than they kill, at least in any way that the putative creators of the Reapers would approve of.
The biggest logical fallacy I see here is the kid (or whoever it was) saying that there is only salvation through destruction -- yet, one of the choices is merging synth and organic, to which the Reapers seem to be okay. Did such a possibility pop out of nowhere, or was it just a gigantic troll plot from the Deus ex Kid?
Before I commited to the ending, I gave it a lot of thought. Destuction was obviously a no-go, spent too much time brokering peace between the retarded Quarians and Geth. Synthesis, while probably easy, is a gigantic change in everyone's life -- a choice too big to take by a single person "because he/she thought it was good". It is akin to a man being granted a choice by God to change every human into females or males (reproduction issues aside) -- there is just too many voices and opinions and lives at stake. So, the control option seemed kind of legit, as the only one affected would be Shepard him/herself, and the Reapers would at least for some time go away.
In fact, controlling the Reapers could pretty much counter what each and every ending does to the game world -- destruction of the Mass Relays, effectivelly killing travel, commerce and galactic civilisations. With the Reapers under controll, the relays could be rebuilt (their technology after all) and galactic civilisations pushed even further in technology thanks to some selfless Reaper sacrifices. Then, people would eventually find out how to hybridize organics and synthetics, allowing the choice to become natural.
Eh, as the others said above, it is sloppy story-writing. hopefully the summer DLC will rectify things with a *TrollFace* "You thought that was the real ending? THINK AGAIN LOLOLOL".
Disclaimer: Each my post is intended as an attempt of helping and/or brining some meaningfull insight to the topic at hand. Due to my nature, my good intentions will not always be plainly visible. I apologise in advance and assure I mean no harm and do not intend to insult anyone, unless stated otherwise
1) the Reapers do not extinguish ALL life, just advanced life. Synthetics or Organics alike, if they're advanced at the 50,000 year mark, they are harvested and/or destroyed. This is why the Human, Asari, Turian, Salarian, etc. races were not extinguished despite Javik (the Prothean) having had knowledge of their existence. They existed during the last Reaper harvest, but were all primitive races at the time, so the Reapers left them alone. The theory is that synthetic life, should it engage in warfare with organic life, would not have such restraint and would instead eliminate all sentient organic life.
2) ***BIGGER SPOILERS*** If you get the Geth and Quarians to work together, rather than taking a side, and later talk to Tali, she notes how the Geth, being software, are transferring into Quarian suits to assist in repairing the Quarian's atrophied immune system. This seems to me to be a big push towards the synthesis option, as the game is constantly changing who your enemies and allies are. Think ME1, you largely fight the Geth and Cerberus, and yet in ME2 you end up teaming up with both. ME2 you often find yourself fighting mercenaries, whom you enlist in 3. This is also the same with every race you ever fight in ME2, since you unite the galaxy agains the Reapers. With the Collectors being represented by Javik, the only enemy you have yet to team up with is the Reaper army, who your former ally the Illusive Man believes can be controlled and is right.
I am going to put my thoughts into it, after looking at all the endings and what not i believe that it is the "Indoctrination Theory". Shephard has had a lot of contact with the Reapers, there has to be some sort of indoctrination happening to him. I believe there will be a fourth game (or DLC but i doubt the DLC part) where you will play as a completely new person where you find out that the ending of ME3 was a lie, to try and convert Shephard into accepting the Reapers (ex: synthesis and control options) the right choice was to destory them, to completly reject them. I have my reasons for all of this so if someone wants me to explain them just ask.
I think the whole ending should have been scrapped and the big weapon should actually have been a big weapon with a big boom and a lot of blown up reapers. Close out with a touching cut scene and everyone would have had their warm and fuzzies.
I think previous posters were right in pointing out that the reapers may well have been the antagonist just because they are really cool. If Bioware didn't hire enough philosophy/lit double majors to figure out something better, then they should have gone with their first instinct and done what was cool, big booms.
Holy burning hand of wrath
piercing forever through the heart
I think the whole ending should have been scrapped and the big weapon should actually have been a big weapon with a big boom and a lot of blown up reapers. Close out with a touching cut scene and everyone would have had their warm and fuzzies.
I think previous posters were right in pointing out that the reapers may well have been the antagonist just because they are really cool. If Bioware didn't hire enough philosophy/lit double majors to figure out something better, then they should have gone with their first instinct and done what was cool, big booms.
Have to side with Burning Hand on this one. They went for artsy/deep and we got a jar of piss with ME1 and 2 in it. At least, had the secret weapon been an actual weapon, we would have been granted the satisfaction of taking down more Reapers, something that had been maintained even through ME3 as an incredibly tough feat. Gives you that ol' RPG sense of progress and accomplishment.
if the crucible was a real weapon, humanity would lost. think, a gun that is the size of the citadel shooting reapers that are engaging the last fleet at earth's orbit. the reapers wouldn't be the only ones to be destroyed,
I personally love the new reject ending. I didn't care for the old endings, but with reject sure we lost, but the entire series set it up that we were in a losing battle. The Prothean's lost, and were far more united then us. what we did do though is setup the next cycle to win the conventional battle, they are told straight up that the crucible does not work, so they'd never bother to build it(as i disagree with anyone whom claims they just made the same decisions in that cycle for victory). They were given schematics for the reaper weapons, the tatic's used in our battle's. and on top of that, from reading the codex, it's likly the next species to become space faring were the Yahg, a violent and highly intelligent species, who would build the weapons necessary to defeat the reapers.
so at the end of the day, we lost, for them to win. and i'm personally cool with that.
