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Mass Effect 3 Excitment
Topic Started: Jan 9 2012, 03:58 AM (2,178 Views)
Flisch
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*raises hand*

That was always something that I didn't quite get.

"So we have one of these artificial intelligences that are known to hack any system with ease... Now... where can it wreak the potentially greatest havoc imaginable? Mmmhhh..."
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lamna
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The only justification I can think off it that's where EDI is most powerful and so could more easily stop hacking, though that seems horribly flimsy.

More likely is that that room is designed to be able to deal with AI trying to take over the ship. You can probably flood it with plasma or jettison it or something.
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Holben
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It seems unlikely that the Rachni would get weapons in ME3... the writers do tend to put species in blocks a bit. The Rachni, though cool, aren't a race I expect to see with guns... maybe new breeds with engineered weapons, like the Bugs from Starship Troopers.
And also, the Krogan did most of their fighting underground from what I understand, inside planetary crusts. Sounds melee.

About the geth-quarian relations, it will probably much depend on Tali's loyalty mission.

Yeah, probably the most hardened and fast-responding room.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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lamna
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No, the Rachni wars were fought on planets, just toxic ones. The Salarians and Asari did much of the fighting, especially the early stuff.
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Holben
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From the codex, entry 'Rachni Wars'- "Negotiation with the rachni was impossible; their leaders, the rachni queens, dwelt in deep underground nests on worlds so hostile no one could survive them."

They were both underground and hostile.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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lamna
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I thought you meant proper deep in the crust, not simple underground. Damn it! I wanted to argue. That always makes me feel smarter.

Anyone else hoping for a long range space battle? Fiction is full of close in knife-fights between spaceships but we almost never see ultra long range battles depicted, and the codex says that's what normally happens in the Mass Effect universe.
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Flisch
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In all fairness, it wouldn't be much to look at, and since a video game is a visual medium, I wouldn't count on those being the primary focus in the war.

I'd guess those kind of fights would be "displayed" in a strategic overview.
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lamna
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Still, one can hope we'll get a battle that's just lights in the CIC.
Edited by lamna, Jan 24 2012, 11:06 AM.
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Long-range battles!

Vehicular combat is always fun.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

"It is the old wound my king. It has never healed."
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Ànraich
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Jan 22 2012, 01:45 PM
As much as I'm very excited about Mass Effect 3, I can't help but feel that the entire game will be one big deus ex machina.

The reapers have been harvesting so many species, they have such a long past, and it is not farfetched that they advance their technology every single time they harvested a civilisation. I fail to see how this time everything will be different and the reapers will fall.

Even if we take into account the two major things that change this harvest from past ones, namely the fact that the reapers don't start their invasion with the citadel and thus wipe out the head of all galactic civilisation in a blitz attack. And even if we assume that the galaxy has more races to fight the reapers than in the past (Vigil said, that the protheans were the only sapient species back then) then it's still countless of super-starships who can take out entire fleets each alone vs. a handfull of dreadnoughts and a bunch of totally irrelvant smaller spacecraft.

I simply can't help but feel the entire plot to culminate in a "humanity will win because OMG SPACE UNICORNS WE WIN" ending.


Just for a proper comparison: It's like we decide to wipe out every single ant species on earth. We might take decades to do it, but ants will never do any significant damage to human civilisation as a whole, and I doubt they'd even be able to kill a significant amount of humans.
Your assumptions are good, but a bit flawed. If the reapers have been doing their thing since long before the Protheans, and succeeding every time, then sentient spaceships or not its a pretty safe bet to say that they're rather cocky. Arrogance is the sign of a mortal being, and anything that is mortal can be defeated no matter how powerful it is. If it bleeds, we can kill it.

History is full of examples of far larger, technologically superior forces being defeated by smaller, inferior forces. China once ruled Vietnam directly, unlike the other nations surrounding it from which it demanded tribute. As you can imagine rebellion was common, and the Chinese were finally kicked out of Vietnam when the Chinese army was routed by a small sect of female Vietnamese monks fighting unarmed and completely naked in the jungle. Similarly when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 they pulled out after ten years. However the reason they pulled out wasn't because they were losing, by all means they were arguably "winning" the war in the traditional sense. Despite having the entire country under occupation, the endless insurrection of local forces broke the will of the Soviets to continue fighting, even though their casualty rate was under 20% (by all means that is a resounding success).

Besides, there's no reason to expect it to be realistic. It's a game, an interactive story. Like all stories it has a deus ex machina, because heroes who are destined to win against a clearly evil force simply don't exist in the real world.
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dialforthedevil
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Ah but the reapers don't lose morale. They are robots. Guerilla warfare is impossible. The stakes are absolute annihilation on either side. Unless the Council species want to try and hide...
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Ànraich
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Who says the reapers are robots? What, because they're spaceships they're not of biological origin? No, I think that the reapers are just as fragile and prone to loss of morale as any other intelligent being. They're doing the same thing to the Citadel races, trying to instill fear with their persona of demi-godhood. The more consecutive victories you gain, the more likely you are to lose the next encounter. The sheer arrogance they must display having destroyed all civilized life in the galaxy several times over... It's their greatest weakness.

Speaking of which, how do you know the reapers are as powerful as they say? Sure, it took all that power to take down Sovereign but if you recall nobody believed that he or the reapers even existed. It was a surprise attack made by an unknown species with unknown technology, you can't use that as a judgment of the reaper's power. And just because they say they were the ones who destroyed the protheans and made the technology from which they freely partook. I wouldn't take anyone's word on that, let alone from the guy who is openly talking about being the harbinger of my species destruction. How do you even know the reapers are even as old as they say? Or that they've actually wiped out all civilized life in the entire galaxy?
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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lamna
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We know they have been around a long time because there is a dead reaper from 37 million years ago, and plenty of planets thought the galaxy with only a few tiny traces of dead civilizations, everything else wiped out by orbital bombardment, even on barren worlds that could have only had small outposts. You should try to enjoy all the mining you have to do, you learn a lot.

Now millions of years old is different than being eternal, but they have been around a very long time indeed. They have destroyed galactic civilization a minimum of 740 times. We know they wiped all the civilizations out, because there is barely any evidence of previous civilizations left at all. If they had survived, then they would still be around, or have left more traces.

The reapers are like the Borg, when they say "We are the Borg. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." They aren't trying to scare us, they are simply stating the facts. The reapers are arrogant, but they have earned it.

But you come close to what I think might be their undoing, remember what Sovereign said on Virmire? "We are each a nation". Assuming that's true, the might not have a leader and may end up deciding to do different things, factions may form and they might fight amongst themselves.
Edited by lamna, Jan 24 2012, 04:43 PM.
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lamna
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Nope, Daleks are aliens in vehicles/suits.
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