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** You guys win the internet for the ''[[Marathon Trilogy|Marathon]]'' reference.
== [[
* We have no actual evidence of AIs turning evil, apart from the Reapers. Every other "evil" AI in the game - the geth, the AI on the Citadel, and the Alliance AI on Luna were all acting in self-defence. The quarians explicitly state that they preemptively attacked the geth, the Citadel AI knew that C-Sec would be trying to shut it down, and the one on Luna was confused and attempting to defend itself from the Alliance.
** Except for the fact that all attempts to communicate with the geth failed. They were left alone behind the Perseus Veil until Sovereign convinced them to join him, in the process committing what organics would call war crimes.
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**** In fact, wouldn't that make it easier to coexist, since they're not competing for resources?
***** Indeed. That quote is pure [[You Fail Logic Forever]], the actual implication of said fact is the ''exact opposite'' of what she says it is.
****** No it doesn't. Troper two levels above misread; synthetics and organics have no common needs or goals. They do compete for raw mineral resources. In such a situation, both orgs and synths would be trying to expand as much as they can. Due to the synths lack of need for things like food/water/air/whatnot, this makes them better able to proliferate than the organics. Meanwhile, the lack of common goals means that the two sides will not cooperate with each other. Think of organic life = native Australian wildlife, and synthetics = rabbits/cane toads, and you get the idea of why said "xenophobic genocide" is justified on the side of the organics.
******* Are you serious? You actually think that competition over resources is grounds for '''genocide?'''
******* Original statement is meant to address error of fact. But to answer your question - I think the "genocide" will happen anyway, it's just a question of who it happens to. The important thing for me to consider is "will extinction happen" and "what means is there to stop it." If you are the Australian native wildlife, and the rabbits are outbreeding you and doing everything better than you, do you accept getting pushed out? or do you push out the rabbits first? Cooperation here is not an option, as pushing you out benefits the rabbits far more than cooperation. I do not see a Third Option that can be taken, but if you have one I'd love to hear it.
******** The Geth have no reason to try to compete for resources with organics. As stated, there are enormous numbers of worlds they can use that noone else can. Also, remember that the geth function as well or better in 0G than planetside. They can mine random asteroids or barren worlds for anything they need. The only resource that is limited to planets that organics would want is complex biochemicals, and guess what, the geth don't need those. There is no reason for the geth to fight for resources organics want when they can easily get at things organic life cannot.
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*** Then what would be the point of ''leaving'' only to periodically come back to kill everyone? They could just stay in their newly-conquered galaxy doing whatever it is killer robots do when they're not exterminating people and nuke any offending life-forms as they appear.
**** This is explained in the second game - {{spoiler|Reaper reproduction requires massive amounts of [[Human Resources|Sapient Resources]]. They stay away so the [[Knights of the Old Republic|meatbags]] can breed free-range, and seal up their hidey-hole in between harvests so they can conserve energy.}}
**** Only sort-of explained, as a dominated galaxy where they ran no risk of destruction by uppity organics wouldn't need reproduction. Even if they thought they had to reproduce, battery-farming of a promising species would be far more efficient. There doesn't really seem to be any motivation for their cycle except for shoddy programming and thus crapshoot AI. Perhaps they were made as war machines by a race millions of years ago and accumulation of computing errors led to the current cycle that doesn't make sense.<ref>pending justification in ''[[Mass Effect 3]]''</ref>
**** So, explanation from [[Mass Effect 3]]. Major spoilers, obviously. {{spoiler|It's not the Reapers perpetuating the cycles. It's the Citadel itself. There's an AI on the Citadel that realized organics and synthetics can't live peacefully. They would always go to war with each other. It knew that in every cycle, organics would build synthetics, and the two would go to war. And if the synthetics won, they would wipe out all organic life. The Citadel AI didn't want that to happen. It believed organics had a right to exist. So it created the Reapers. Their purpose is to come back when organics reach a certain level of development, and harvest them, preserving them as new Reapers. Primitive species would be left alone for the next cycle.}}
* Note that every AI you encounter is bad because they 'act out'; however, note as well that in the climate that exists, a non-evil AI would likely either pretend to be 'dumb' and thus go undetected (or not being notable enough for Shepard to worry about) or attempt communication which would either result in destruction or secrecy on the part of those who it communicates with. As well EDI from [[Mass Effect 2]] lends additional weight to this; she's a perfectly normal personality who, while yes, defying her creators, demonstrates that an AI does not mean 'organics are inferior' or that an AI will automatically be hostile. She shows that you can't really judge [[A Is]] as an all-or-nothing idea - you have to judge each AI within its own context as its own entity and individual.
* Kaidan probably said it best when he described aliens: they're jerks or saints, but ultimately individuals. AI are probably like that. There probably isn't a benevolent Reaper faction, but the Reapers are kinda like a very evil organization that would exterminate more benevolent [[Assimilation Plot|transhuman hive-minds]].
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* Think about it. ALL asari are biotics. Even their mating process is biotic. Biotics are created from in-utero exposure to Element Zero, so the only way asari could evolve is on a planet with plentiful Eezo. Now, before someone says 'but Eezo is made from supernova remains': Space has no gravity. Thus, anything that moves in space won't stop moving until it gets caught in an orbit. The asari planet is, logically, a Supernova'd star's remains caught in the orbit of another star.
** You know what else is made of supernova remains? The solar system. And every star system with elements heavier than carbon.
** Thessia has been confirmed to be full of eezo, [https://web.archive.org/web/20111110190202/http://masseffect.bioware.com/me3/n7ops/zones/ to the point that it's in the food and they have to make special food for visitors with the eezo purified out].
== Ardat-Yakshi ''can'' reproduce. ==
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== It was not uncommon for Ardat-Yakshi to become Justicars. ==
A combination of several above WMG about Ardat-Yakshi and about Samara. As Ardat-Yakshi are more likely to be a result of mating between two asari, they were quite common before asari started leaving their planets. While most Ardat-Yakshi are sociopaths, sociopaths are not [[
== The asari erogenous zone is [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|morphic]]. ==
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== Commander Shepard is the young God-Emperor of Mankind. ==
* Seriously people, this long without this being said? Canon-Shepard is the God-Emperor of Mankind and is fooling everybody. He's building himself an empire, trying to do everything right and nice and gentle, but every time the Council stymies him or some-such, they push Shepard even closer to establishing an Imperium of Man. Shepard loves all of his children, loves all of humanity, and would ''rather'' work with the aliens than kill them. But as the Council continues to stymie the future God-Emperor, he'll eventually say 'Yeah, this isn't working, let's eliminate the uncooperative elements'. This relatively limited genocide (of the races that continue to get in Humanity's way) will be expanded over time into kill all the Xeno's instead of kill all of the Xeno ''threats''.
** Alternatively, the Council races had nothing to do with Shepard/Emperor becoming anti-Xeno. It was the emergence of the Orks and Eldar, who started screwing shit up for the Council Races. In the end, only humanity was left and was only saved by the fall of the Eldar. The Emperor [[Start of Darkness|suffered a nasty case]] of [[Despair Event Horizon]] and decide there's no point in playing nice with anyone.
== Shepard is part-Reaper. ==
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* Yeah, Saren got that too, but Shiala wasn't "absorbed" for long enough for the psychic counters to perfect; plus he went along with Sovereign enough for it to get through the chinks in his mental defenses.
* Actually, in [[Mass Effect 3]], you get an email where she says she IS still indoctrinated. But due to the mental connection she has with the other colonists, caused by the thorian spores, she's able to resist.
== Shepard's Arcana is Persona 4's The Fool ==
Shepard is a Persona User, yet s/he hasn't fully awakened. Each member of his/her party is a Social Link, and after gaining their loyalty, s/he maxes out their social link. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, when s/he got into an argument with Ashley/Kaiden on Horizen, His/Her Social Link reversed, meaning that s/he lost their loyalty. If s/he reconsiles with Ashley/Kaiden, their Social Link will repair and s/he'll gain their loyalty.}} The key difference between the Persona games and Mass Effect is that romances are only available after gaining Loyalty. As for who is each Arcana...
* Magician: Garrus fills the role of Yosuke and Junpei, a second banaba to Shepard, who has similar qualities to Shepard. Between Mass Effect 1 and 2, {{spoiler|He changed to the Tower after his squad was killed.}} Jacob takes this role in [[Mass Effect 2]].
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== Shepard might be Immortal. Or at least, can be revived from death indefinitely, due to being exposed to the Prothean Beacon during Mass Effect 1. ==
* Despite this being a futuristic world, death is treated as something permanent. And in Shepard's case, his death at the start of Mass Effect 2 was a particularly harsh.
** Space Suit failure, leaking air, exposure to deep space, falling from ORBIT, suffering re-entry into a planet that might not even be suitable for human life and hitting the ground so hard there's a sizable crater at the impact site. The fact that there was even a body left after all that is impressive by itself.
* It wasn't just the 40 billion credits and years of ground breaking treatments that bought him back, there has to be SOMETHING that could have allowed "Shepard", personality, memories and all, to survive his extensively damaged mortal shell. My guess is that whatever was downloaded into Shepard, being designed to last near forever, allowed Shepard to come back as himself.
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* This is obviously a [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|terrible idea,]] because this is ''Conrad'' we're talking about, and this response isn't going to do anything but encourage him. In the next game, if you gave him this response, you'll find him still tooling about with his "mercenary" work, except this time, instead of just running into him, he runs into ''Shepard'' during a mission after all hell's broken loose, gets tangled up in the firefight, and ends up running his ass off towards the ''Normandy'' with them. We'll learn at this point that his replica armor is at least somewhat functional; considering he's been wandering the edge of the Terminus Systems, he'd probably have gotten himself killed on Illium after annoying someone too much if he didn't have an actual kinetic barrier. He'll also have wisened up enough to carry a pistol he can barely use.
* On the ''Normandy'', continuing on the Paragon path will once again result in Shepard trying to make Conrad go away through kindness, this time by telling him he can join the team... if he's willing to be trained in order to keep up. You can choose who will fulfill this role; the renegade option is Grunt, who ends up accidentally killing him, eating him, and shrugging apologetically. The neutral option is Jack, who just scares him off with her crazy. The Paragon option, however, is Garrus, who turns into [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]]. With this option, Garrus can be seen running Conrad ragged all around the ship while sounding a whole lot like [[R. Lee Ermey]] after the next couple of missions, until it finally ends with an exhausted Garrus admitting that Conrad actually works perfectly well under decent military authority (naturally, Shepard can ask Garrus which of them has reach and which of them has flexibility here). Conrad is finally recruited at this point as an Engineer, because he's clearly not a biotic and can only use a pistol without killing himself, but turns out to be mechanically inclined.
** Apparently, if you go back to the Citadel or somewhere after Paragon-convincing Conrad to go home, he'll have started up a charity for orphans and other unfortunate souls called the Shepards, so unfortunately I believe this is [[Jossed]]. I think I like this idea better, though - it would probably be the best example of [[Took a Level
*** Oh, that's easy to work in; the report specifically mentions that his charity helps human slaves escaping from batarian slavers. Batarians don't like things like that very much and will probably go after him to put an end to it. Conrad runs into Shepard and co while on the run from batarians or mercs hired to kill him. Alternatively, he tries to keep being a mercenary as the charity's primary source of funding.
**** Shepards only helped already-freed slaves. So, unfortunately, not going to happen.
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*** It was established that Conrad has no combat training whatsoever. Probably never even been in a firefight. All the other party members are either long-time veterans (Zaeed, Samara, Garrus) or specially engineered to be powerful (Jack, Grunt, Legion).
* Conrad: [[Joke Character]]?
** If you do his Loyalty Mission, he either [[Took a Level
* Sadly, you can't recruit him. Maybe with the next batch of DLC.
** You can get {{spoiler|a copy of his doctorate dissertation on Xenoscience to help the Crucible Project}}, though.
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** {{spoiler|Confirmed! Though he can survive if you completed the Rita's Sister sidequest in [[ME 1]].}}
== Conrad will actually [[Took a Level
* At first the Shepards will help slaves that are already free, but the stories about the abuse and horrors slaves go though at the hands of their masters compels Conrad to act. He'll go actively freeing any slave outside of batarian space (because even Conrad is not that stupid) and trying to stop slave raids while they happen. He'll even start gathering allies and hiring mercenaries for the cause. He starts off as the strategist, coming up with the battle and raid plans, but will eventually learn how to actually fight because the people he recruits teach him how in case one of the people on his rapidly growing list of enemies tries to kill him. A mission will involve several groups of slavers trying to kill Conrad and his group because they hate them like the mercs on Omega hated Garrus when he was Archangel. He can call Shepard for backup, and surprise everyone by holding them off successfully until he/she gets there with minimal losses to his combatants, and no freed slave casualties. He only calls Shepard because the plan he came up with to get out of the situation requires three more people, and he noticed that [[Genre Savvy|Shepard always had two other people with him/her whenever he met up with him/her.]]
** The Paragon choice will end in the plan working perfectly, and Shepard getting Conrad's charity/organization a large amount of donations by enforcing it and visiting the Shepard's regularly. Especially significant and sweet for the Colonist background and/or Ruthless reputation.
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== The Council knows ''exactly'' what's going on. ==
* While the Council {{spoiler|has been adamant to acknowledge there's anything going on with the Reapers whatsoever,}} their sheer willingness to plant their heads under the sand makes this troper think something else is going on. In ME1, it was plausible for them to deny the Reapers' existence because no one knows anything about them. But near the end, this giant cuttlefish-shaped warship that no one's ''ever'' seen before launches an attack on the Citadel ''just'' like Commander Shepard said it would. {{spoiler|There's just no logical reason for them to keep saying, "CLEARLY it was a geth ship".}} So what are they doing? Simple. Since Shepard's working for Cerberus, they're conspiring to keep him in the dark, just to be safe, while they're making plans to deal with the Reapers. They're probably going about it [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/105/index/1109816/11 like so:]{{Dead link}}
{{quote|'''SHEPARD''': Guys, thanks for seeing me on such short notice. Sorry our last meeting didn't go so well, but this time I have definitive PROOF of the Reaper menace. The Illusive Man told me {{spoiler|there was a derelict Reaper ship in the Hawking Eta, so I checked it out, and what do you know! It's there!}} If you don't believe me, you can go send a fleet to -
'''ASARI COUNCIL MEMBER''': Commander Shepard, this proves nothing.
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** Though they did set up defenses at the end of [[ME 1]], they weren't sufficient. The fleet at the Citadel were plowed through (unfortunately for one ship, literally) by Sovereign, Saren, and the Geth, and the remainder of the Citadel fleets were spread out at the other Mass Relays that led to the Citadel. One can assume that communications were disabled since Shepard wasn't able to hear the Destiny Ascension's distress call or Joker until he took control of the citadel with the program from Vigil on Ilos, thus the full power of the fleet wouldn't have been called upon to defend against Sovereign. For that matter, had Shepard stayed on the Citadel, Sovereign would've just flown in like before and close the Citadel. Without Shepard having gone to Ilos and getting the program from Vigil, they wouldn't have been able to reopen the Citadel and allow Joker and the Alliance Fleet to kill Sovereign. Instead, he/it would have gotten enough time to activate the Citadel Relay to Dark Space and the Reapers would've returned to continue the cycle.
*** Sovereign could not have taken control of the Citadel merely by parking himself on it. The protheans had overriden the keeper controls, so he needed someone to manually access the controls. He required Saren to use the Conduit to attack the citadel from the Presidium, and do an override of the Citadel's keeper control systems from the Citadel tower. That's the whole point of the Conduit, and the whole point of involving Saren and giving him cybernetic implants. Shepard, staying in the Presidium like the Council wanted, would have stopped Saren from carrying out his part of the plan, with the end result that Sovereign would have been blasted to pieces by the Citadel's defense guns before he even managed to dock. And the Alliance fleet was perfectly poised to counterattack with Sovereign caught in a trap. The only flaw is that Shepard left, and thus weakened the station's internal defense.
**** Except the Council's response to the attack was to evacuate the station. There is no reason to think they would have ordered Shepard to stay behind and watch for Saren. It's Vigil that tells Shepard about Sovereign needing someone to give him access to the station, and the Council was completely ignorant of that. The Council just let the station fall into Saren's hands, which was exactly the wrong thing to do.
***** The council's response was to evacuate *the council itself*, and that only came after Saren had overwhelmed station defenses, taken control, and the station's defense guns were rendered unoperational. Learning lessons from the prothean conflict, a secondary aim of Sovereign's attack was to decapitate the galactic leadership and capture intel. Evacuating the command and control structure from the Citadel at least denies the enemy that.
== The Council is denying the existence of the Reapers because they don't think they can win. ==
Consider the horror that must have set in amongst the Council when they dwelled over the implications of the Reapers following the Battle of the Citadel. Those Prothean fellows you've been holding up as the standard for a super-advanced race for fifteen hundred years? Utterly annihilated. And what about all those post-garden worlds your survey teams have found over the centuries that have evidence of orbital bombardment that targeted population centers? Those were great interstellar civilizations as well, just like you are now. Only they're dead. And this has been going on for untold millions of years in fifty thousand year cycles. Every species that has ever tried to fight the Reapers has lost and is now extinct.
Going public with information about the Reapers would only cause a panic. So, instead, the Council are going to [[Take a Third Option]] and focus on simply enduring the coming tsunami of destruction. How? By taking a page from the Protheans and hiding for a time. The Council will build ark
== The Council believes Shepard, but they cannot admit it officially. ==
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*** Where did they confirm this? I'd really like to know.
**** They certainly didn't confirm it in Mass Effect 2.
***** https://web.archive.org/web/20100315221859/http://meforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=599022&forum=123
****** Well, until we do see female turians, the WMG is still valid.
** As of the new Evolution comic, we have now seen a female turian. And . . . they apparently look a lot like the males. It sorta looked like the female might have had small breasts, but maybe not.
*** And also, they don't have fringes.
*** Which almost certainly makes this look non-canonical. Remember how many times we've had male turians complementing the females' head-crests in the games? This troper can remember two times for certain, and is almost sure there's a third as well. Whoever drew that comic wasn't paying attention.
== The reason why we don't see any female turians... ==
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*** FTL Travel without use of Mass Relays ''is'' possible in Mass Effect, its just woefully ineficcient, averaging at about 12 lightyears a day with a decent drive, range limited to how much static charge you can build up before it discharges and fries your crew. It could be that some rogue Salarians went through a Mass relay that was a hundred lightyears or so away from Earth and then hoofed it through dark space to try and avoid being tracked down by the law.
**** The Charon Relay, the one closest to Earth, was also encased in ice when it was found, making it virtually impossible that any salarians used it before humans discovered it.
*** The Codex says it's standard Council policy to check out any and all mass relays through ship travel before activation. They came to Earth to see if it was safe. [[Humans Are
== Human women are considered attractive by the rest of the galaxy's species. ==
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** Are the asari really considered attractive by all races? The only species that we know of so far are humans and turians.
*** Well, we know that they can ''breed'' with more or less anything, so it makes sense, from a biological standpoint, if they could also ''attract'' more or less anything.
*** In ''ME2'', a conversation you can overhear on Illium reveals that asari look attractive to each species through mental
**** The neon sign in Chora's Den is a silhouette of human-like asari. The owner of the club ''is/was'' human, but some turian/salarian should have noticed that peculiarity long ago and the asaris' chameleon attribute should have become common knowledge long ago.
** The number of alien-human romances in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' kind of confirms this, as the humans have to the find the ''aliens'' attractive as well. There's a few alien-alien romances as well.
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*** Especially since the sequel added in "nutrient paste" that the keepers produce, which feeds them and poorer citizens of the Citadel.
**** Of course, it's kind of a moot point. They may have lived to a ripe old age, but 50 000 years have passed - they're long dead and gone.
** One, ''[[Mass Effect]]'' is not exactly squishy (setting-wise, it's harder than most TV and video game SF), nor does it include [[Disney Death]]. We have ''one'' character come [[Back
*** And that one who came back had an intact brain buried on a frozen world and then kept in cryo until his body was rebuilt. Closer to "mortally wounded and frozen at the brink of death" than "dead and resurrected," and certainly a long way from "starved to death 50,000 years ago while surrounded by robot bugs that break everything down into its component materials and use them for maintenance."
** Personally, I'm pretty sure the Protheans set up the council. Remember how apparently the council was making laws against AI research even before the Quarians created the Geth? The protheans almost certainly left some hints.
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== The Protheans calculated that humans were the race [[Humans Are Special|most likely to effectively combat the Reapers]] in the next cycle, and froze the Charon Relay to isolate Earth in case the Reapers decided to pre-emptivly wipe humanity out. ==
* Seconded. Further strengthened by a particular side mission on the planet Eletania. If you got
* Actually, no. The Protheans banked on the asari.
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* 2. On Jartar, there is a crater which once held the Leviathan of Dis, the billion-year-old corpse of an organic starship.
** Uh, about the Leviathan. {{spoiler|[[Y Ou]] know how the Reaper larva has organic material being pumped into it? Yeah, the Leviathan of Dis was a dead Reaper.}}
* These seem like [[Chekhov's Gun
** This is rather heavily backed up by some of the things {{spoiler|Harbinger}} says in Mass Effect 2 - {{spoiler|Harbinger}} claims humanity has "attracted the attention of those infinitely your greater". If he was referring to the Reapers, he would have said something like, "you have attracted our attention, and we are infinitely your greater". This, combined with the fact that right after that, he says, "that which you know as Reapers..." heavily implies he's talking about something else and NOT referring to the Reaper species. He also claims the Reapers are "your salvation through destruction", a quote that seems odd and out of place... unless the Reapers believe there's another race out there that's even more dangerous than them, and that the Reapers are doing humanity a favor by "saving" them, and by "saving" them the Reapers mean {{spoiler|melting them down into goo to make new Reapers...}}
*** However, consider: Reapers don't call themselves Reapers. Sovereign says explicitly that the Protheans gave them the name, so that they'd have a word for the species that wiped them out. As for "salvation through destruction", in a twisted way, Saren was right - the Reapers ''do'' "spare" the species most useful to them - by pureeing them, in this case...
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* Hence the Sovereign's declaration: "We have no beginning. We have no end." At the end of Mass Effect 3 Shepard closes the time loop, throwing the Reapers to the beginning of time, starting the cycle anew.
** Shepard has two choices, to send the Reapers back or to destroy them. The first one [[Bittersweet Ending|makes everyone hate you and you become public enemy #1]]. The second option [[Downer Ending|ends the universe]]. Have fun with that!
** The [[Final Boss]] will be a Reaper [[Stalker with a Crush]] [[Yandere]] [[
** This could just be rhetoric induced by an arrogant god complex. Remember, this is the same being that thought itself so high above these puny organics but got soundly defeated by them.
*** Seems to have been rhetoric. There are certainly no time loops going on.
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** {{spoiler|Legion. To elaborate, before Mass Effect 2 having a geth squadmate would be out of the question. But Mass Effect 2 has shown that not all geth are evil; as a matter of fact, most hate the Reapers and the geth that helped Sovereign.}} What if this applies to the Reapers? If the Reapers are fully machines, then the above theory applies, and if {{spoiler|they're partly organic}}, then surely at least one of them can overcome their "society's" peer pressure.
** It would be a great plot point. Plenty of players have probably chosen {{spoiler|to not help the Illusive Man and destroy the Collector Station}}, so additional help on fighting the Reapers will have to come from somewhere, and where better than from a rebel Reaper?
** In terms of tropes, this would elegantly deconstruct both [[
*** Sovereign even says that the Reapers are "nations onto themselves". Each one is able to make its own choices. If every single other alien race in the game universe has proven itself immune to the [[Planet of Hats]] syndrome, then this one can't possibly be an exception.
** Of course it's likely that the Reapers don't see other creatures as anywhere near significant enough to care about.
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** Could be the alternative to working with Cerebus and using {{spoiler|the Collector's stolen tech.}}
** ''Normandy'' MK II in ''Mass Effect 2''? Entertaining. Having a Reaper as your [[Cool Starship]] in ''Mass Effect 3'', possibly as a late game perk? [[Rule of Cool|Oh yeah.]] Suddenly I'm reminded of starting off ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'' in the Little Jack {{spoiler|before upgrading to the Delphinus halfway through the game.}}
** I nominate Cthulhu as the good reaper. It tried to communicate with [[H.P. Lovecraft]] and warn him about the [[Cosmic Horror]] that threatens all life in the galaxy, but poor communication lead Lovecraft to believe Cthulhu was the bad guy. Cthulhu is buried in [[wikipedia:
== A certain level of genetic diversity is required to create {{spoiler|new Reapers.}} ==
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== The Council is actually right, and the Reapers do not exist. ==
Sovereign was merely a very advanced Geth ship. Saren just made up the entire Reaper thing to gain the loyalty of the Geth. Saren claims that he’s working with the Reapers simply to intimidate Shepard (as the Council predicted). Vigil was just a VI left by Saren to not only delay Shepard, but to also feed more false information to Shepard about the Reapers in order to add to his deception.
The Collectors are just a messed up, albeit advanced race, and were merely making a human-cyborg hybrid as an experiment. Harbinger was just their AI leader, who pretended to be a Reaper in order to gain more respect.
The 37 million year old Reaper is just an old ship from a war that took place between a now extinct race. The Cerberus officers on board were not indoctrinated, but were merely suffering a nervous breakdown from being in space for so long, and them remembering each other’s lives was just a complete coincidence.
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** Include Ben Stein as a major Elcor character and it would be perfect.
== The Reapers and the vorcha are not [[
* How many [[
** The vorchas' problem is that they only live 20 years; not long enough to learn a profession or anything, and everybody treats them as vermin. Their only options are unskilled labour, scavenging or acting as hired guns. They're not evil, but they're in a bad spot with precious few means to better themselves. This might be explored further in ME3.
*** Living 20 years is a problem now? Try one [[Ray Bradbury]] short story, where people lived eight days.
** As for the Reapers, they're treated more like a malign force than an actual race. They may be [[
** The Reapers would agree, actually. Actually, if we're going by overly simplistic terms, they'd probably be Lawful Evil.
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* Lastly, there's the fact that Vigil seems to be MIA in ME2 for very vague reasons. The prevailing theory is that Vigil ran out of power, but this doesn't seem to work on second thought. When your computer shuts off during a power outage, you don't lose your files or your operating system. Theoretically, Prothean VI's and AI's should operate the same way. There should be nothing stopping someone from hooking a generator up to Vigil and turning him back online...
* ... unless Vigil isn't a VI or an AI after all, but {{spoiler|an incomplete "friendly Reaper" posing as one.}}
** Vigil seemed to know a lot about what was going in the galaxy, despite being trapped on Ilos for fifty millenia. I don't know if {{spoiler|he's a Reaper}}, but there's definately more to him than meets the eye. It would fit with the whole "nothing is [[
== There are advanced civilizations still in existence that predate the Prothean Extinction. ==
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== The Reapers are what [[H.P. Lovecraft]] was trying to warn us about. ==
And there's one buried off the eastern US coast. That's why they look a bit like Cthulhu.
* Alternatively, Cthulhu is actually a good reaper that tried to make humans aware of it's existence, but the fragmentary pieces of information it could provide lead [[H.P. Lovecraft]] to believe the beast lurking in [[wikipedia:
== Indoctrination has a nanotechnological basis. ==
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== "It was lonely. It called to us." ==
This was taken from the [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/323/index/8188367/1 Bioware Social Board]{{Dead link}}. Apparently it was supposed to be in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' but got cut.
{{quote|It was lonely. It called to us.
It wanted to remember. The Masters had been gone so long. The Masters were lost when it was shattered. Currents swept through their inner worlds. They were turned to noise. Babble.
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It would also explain how many gas giant we see close to stars for discharge sites, the reapers want you to explore the galaxy, so theirs enough of you you can make a full meat smooth rather then a small slurp. so they moved them to make it easier to move around.
If Shepard beats the Reapers expect a full on element zero slump and have stars getting old all over the places.
== The [[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Tin Man]] is the last Reaper. ==
In the Season 3 episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' titled "Tin Man" (which takes place canonically on October 12, 2366), the [[Cool Starship|''Enterprise'']] crew is sent to a far away star in the process of destabilizing to investigate a [[Living Ship|bioship]] they've code-named "Tin Man". [[The Federation|Starfleet]] sends a [[Telepathy|telepathic]] man named [[The Empath|Tam Elbrun]], [[Hearing Voices|who happens to be]] [[A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read|so psychic he's]] [[Blessed with Suck|becoming insane]]. Turns out Elbrun has been in contact with the ship the whole time, and the ship is named Gomtuu. It is described as a pod-like ship, brown in color, who's technology is far beyond that of Starfleet or the [[
Gomtuu's species mirrors the [[Eldritch Abomination|Reapers]] in many ways; they are a biological/technological race of living starships, are ancient, have immense technological abilities, and have a small need for smaller humanoids. Gomtuu even ''looks'' like a Reaper, albeit without the [[Combat Tentacles|tentacles]]. He is the last of his species because [[Big Damn Heroes|Commander Shepard]] killed the rest. Two hundred years later, and the last Reaper, with no where to go and no way to rebuild its species, tries to kill itself...[[Interrupted Suicide|but the the Enterprise shows up]], and gives it a whole new purpose.
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== The Reapers - origins and motivations ==
== The Great Rift is a relic of the original Reaper harvest, a war between the Reapers and their creators. ==
* The Great Rift on Klendagon is estimated to be 37 million years old, and it was caused by a round from a mass
== The Reapers are the ultimate version of a gene bank. ==
* Ahem. Each Reaper superficially looks like a space cuttlefish, but inside themselves is a main core of the vanquished species, containing liquified genetic material. This genetic material is used by the Reaper core in ways unknown, but is probably used to power the computing processes that keeps a Reaper operational. Indoctrination by Reaper is compared to having a single voice drowned out by millions of other voices. Reapers see the systemic eradication of a species a "gift" and a "blessing". Why would the Reapers systematically wipe out civilisations? Lacking the genetic material of a billion organisms makes no difference when your harvest numbers in the quadrillions (10^15, for the unfamiliar) Why? Simple. The Reapers are storing genetic material. The billion they miss out may contain untold numbers of genetic diversity, which may be lost through war within the the species. The Reapers started out cataloging genetic diversity, but along the way their methods changed. Feel free to expand.
== The Reapers are merely the puppets of another race (And don't even know it). ==
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== The Reapers have a good counterpart. ==
* Related to the above. There is a different species or a factional offshoot of the Reapers that is as advanced as they are, but oppose the cycle of extinction. For the purposes of this theory, imagine them as Space Whales called "The Gardeners." The Heretics are a much smaller faction from the true Geth. The same is true of the gardeners, only they are the minority so they can't oppose the Reapers directly. The Leviathan of Dis may be one of these creatures. Like the Reapers, they watch civilizations rise and use subtle forms of control to ensure events play to the organic's advantage. They play the same game as the Reapers, just on the other side of the board. With a slight variation, while the Reapers prefer to indoctrinate wholesale populations to pacify them into oblivion; these guys understand the impact individuals of free will can have on events. So instead of out and out "good" indoctrination; they drop hints, give leads, provide motivation. When it was clear to them the galaxy at large wasn't going to do anything, but Shepherd managed to kill Sovereign. They focused entirely on supporting him like Athena did for Odysseus. Shepherd was killed by the Collectors under the Reapers orders. Odd how the Shadow Broker managed to loose Shepherd's body due to just two people working together. When Shepherd was gathering a team, they were not fully committed and needed motivation. Notice how a number of Loyalty leads come from leaked information being related to the team member in question. Odd how, Samara discovered Morinth was suddenly on Omega after centuries of tracking with little success, Thane's son just happened to discover his father's past, Thane himself heirs from his contacts about this before Kolyat's first job is even done, Miranda discovered both the fate of the Hugo Gernsback and the (likely covert) Eclipse operation to kidnap her sister, Mordin getting intel on Maleon, Garrus discovering Sidonis is on the Citadel, all right before a suicide mission where they need to put the baggage away? The Gardeners are just that, they cultivate individuals so they grow into the Paragons of their civilizations.
== The Reapers were created by [[Precursors|an ancient alien race]], of which the Thorian is the sole survivor. ==
* Think about it: The Thorian and Reapers both operate using similar ''modus operandi''. The Thorian resorts to using spores to [[Mind Control]] its thralls; Reapers operate using indoctrination. Both are massive, [[Eldritch Abomination|Eldritch Abomination-type]] creatures/machines with a grand scale of time and a similarly derogatory look towards other, "lesser" species. [[Deeman 45|This troper's]] theory is that there was once a whole race of Thorians, spread out all across the galaxy, maybe about one per planet. They traveled through spaceborne spores, like how the Thresher Maws have been shown to do. They enslaved all other species, but after a time their thralls began fighting back and resisting their masters. The Thorians couldn't effectively fight a united army of multiple enslaved species, and so created a race of sentient supermachines in their own image - the Reapers - to hunt down and exterminate all advanced organic life other than their own. The Reapers handily slaughtered the rebelling races, but [[
** Taking this theory one step further, if their original function was to deal with threats to their masters, perhaps the other species need to reach a certain developmental threshold before thay can intervene (to ensure they only target the threatening species, and not the submissive ones) but their creators failed to take into acount the fact that they themselves were above this threshold. In the ensuing war, they destroyed all but a few Reapers, and those that survived 'adapted' their core directive to use it as a means of recuperating their numbers. Generations later, their numbers have been restored and they've developed from programmed intelligence into true sentience, but the cycle that got them there is so badly ingrained into their minds that they continue it endlessly out of habit.
** There could be some very solid in-game evidence for it. The asari who's trapped in the Thorian specifically notes that the Thorian's life cycle consists of long periods of hibernation punctuated by periods of extreme activity. It's hard to believe they wouldn't include that information if it wasn't a connection of some sort to the Reapers.
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== The Reapers are the pinnacle of naturally occurring silicon based life, carbon-based life was their technology. ==
* They're so old they think they have no beginning, but they really were the original precursor. They can indoctrinate organics because organic life was their technology. Eventually they got booted out of the universe by the organic equivalent of [[
** This would be incredibly awesome, but unfortunately the sequel confirms that {{spoiler|the Reapers are partially organic and have to be constructed at least partially out of organic components}}, so organic life ''had'' to come first.
*** Unless... {{spoiler|the organic components of their bodies are their equivalent of our cybernetic implants.}}
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== The Reapers' goal is Absolute Despair. ==
* That is to say, the Reapers are [[Well
** Close. [[spoiler:Their concern is actually that ''synthetic'' life will run rampant and wipe out ''all'' organic life. The Reapers harvest advanced civilizations at a point before they can develop synthetic life, leaving alone more primitive races.
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== The first Reaper was built by Cerberus. ==
* From the first game, we know that Reapers believe that they "have no beginning, [and] have no end". From the second, we know that Cerberus is actively looking to reverse-engineer Reaper technology, that {{spoiler|Reapers need organic parts to function}}, and in the Renegade ending you've {{spoiler|given a Reaper factory over to Cerberus}}. That last one represents a problem for Paragons, except for one thing: Paul Grayson. In the novel ''[[Mass Effect: Retribution|Retribution]]'', set between ''ME2'' and ''ME3'', the Illusive Man implants Reaper technology in a former Cerberus Operative. Ultimately, the project will fail like all Cerberus projects, and Grayson will become a platform for Sovereign or a brand-new Reaper. Grayson will indoctrinate the Cerberus staff, then proceed to do the same to TIM. The Reapers will use Cerberus to construct a Reaper factory and start pumping out new ones. One of the missions in ''ME3'' will have Shepard go to this facility and destroy it, but a single Reaper will manage to escape. This Reaper will do what so many bad guys in ''[[Doctor Who]]'' have done and inadvertently or on purpose travel through time to the distant past. The Reaper will possess all the knowledge it needs to conquer the galaxy and build more, and will not know if Shepard succeeds in wiping its brethen out. The Reapers ''created themselves''; it's a [[Stable Time Loop]]. Saving {{spoiler|the Collector Base}} just means TIM is faster in building more Reapers and presents a bigger obstacle in the endgame.
** {{spoiler|Paul Grayson dies in that book, after taking a few too many shotgun blasts.}}
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== Reason for the Reapers' cycle of destruction ==
Lemme list this for ease of reading.
* The Reapers were created be a sentient species millions or billions of years ago.
* That species had been sentient for about fifty thousand years, give or take.
* This creator species also builds the Citadel and the Mass Relays and learn how to harness eezo.
* The creator species dies out through some kind of plague or something, leaving only a handful of machines.
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This is also why the series is called 'Mass Effect'. It ends with Shepard discovering the truth behind mass effect, and possibly the end of mass effect altogether.
== Reapers were created by The Keepers, who [[
Well, think it over for a bit. The Reapers had to come from SOMEWHERE. What of all things, would make them keep the Keepers as the one race they specifically kept alive [in a way] for all time, with possibly infinite more species better suited to the job? The old, "Protecting Maker's Life Against His Will" thing that popped up in [[I Robot]].
Look at a Reaper turned on it's side, like when Soverign is hooking up to the Citadel. It looks more like a bug than anything else, made in the image of their creators.
Why the need to destroy all other forms of organic life, except the Keepers? Mmm, perhaps because they were programmed to by a certain buggy, weak, but technologically masterful and fearful race, and the Reapers just took it a BIT too far. The only reason they don't absolutely destroy everything is refusal to terminate their own selves, without the "fuel" for production they need in the form of organics.
Furthermore, this also explains why the Keepers are as old as the Citadel, yet the entire Reaper scheme requires the Citadel in the first place; '''the Keepers''' built it, as well as the Reapers, regardless of whether or not the Reapers had taken over yet. The Reapers in turn used that technology to set up their grand plan.
== The Reapers are an evolution of the [[Revelation Space|Inhibitors]] in an alternate reality where faster-than-light travel is possible ==
The [[Revelation Space|Inhibitors]] are like the Reapers - they are artificial, drop by every once in a while to wipe out all intelligent life, then travel back into deep space. They have the same origin - but the Reapers are pathological liars and the {{spoiler|Catalyst}} lied as well - they were made billions of years ago to help reduce the destruction (star systems being thrown into inter-galactic space) from the Milky Way - Andromeda collision a few billion years in the future. The Inhibitors originally were more gentle with intelligent species by just keeping them in their home system, but they just started bombing species into extinction when too many started popping up. The Reapers were the same way, though since they have FTL travel capabilities, they don't need to lay traps around the galaxy to trigger them, instead just popping up ever 50,000 years to curb-stomp the species into extinction since they don't want to bother blockading them into their home systems. However, the Reapers and Inhibitors started to diverge due to the lack of FTL in one universe and the presence of FTL in the other: Reaper {{spoiler|reproduction is like it is because of the FTL - they can just zip around collecting organic life across solar systems}}, whereas the Inhibitors have to reproduce asexually since they don't have the luxury of FTL to {{spoiler|gather organics for reproduction}}. Additionally, the Reapers are sentient, whereas the Inhibitors are not self-aware most of the time - centuries of travel time, drifting between solar systems, would cause them to go insane.
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* In the end, when [[The Dragon]] attacks the Citadel - [[The Plan|in order to cripple the Citadel fleets]] and make Citadel retaliation against subsequent geth incursions into Alliance space impossible - the replica locks out the Relays linking to human systems, effectively dooming the Citadel. Not even when the Player manages to follow the replica through the [[Portal Network]]-backdoor called the ''Conduit'', unlocking the relays from the Citadel, does [[The Dragon]] flinch. No, being the [[Magnificent Bastard]] that he is, he grins with satisfaction as Sovereign in its death throes manages to destroy a vast amount of human lives, thinning out the forces [[The Dragon]] was expecting to face off later on while [[The Dragon]]... no, the '''[[Big Bad]]''' himself is believed dead via his replica and his deceitful lie about the "impending Reaper invasion" is one-hundred percent intact. [[Crowning Moment Of Villainy]] indeed.
* Cue successful [[Badass]] Villain Invasion a la [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill]] "[[Pulp Fiction|I Lay my Vengeance Upon Thee]]" in the sequel.
* If this troper's paraphrased [[Wall of Text]]-rambling made no sense to you, check out the original post made on the official Mass Effect forums: [http://masseffect.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=665067&forum=123 He Is Not Kidding, For Real]{{Dead link}}. Most likely [[Poison Oak Epileptic Trees]], unless [[Your Mileage May Vary|you're that kind of guy]].
** That would work, except for the fact that Vigil implicitly shoots it down.
*** I'm assuming you didn't bother to read the guy's original post on the official ME forums. He specifically states that Saren reprogrammed Vigil to relay faux information to anyone who accessed it so that no one would figure out what the hell he was truly doing. [[God Mode Sue|Apparently Saren, being an elite space police, can do that]].
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== Saren went nuts because the Council are stupid jerks. ==
* It wasn't indoctrination... it was the Council stalling and debating with him every step of the way. (Not my idea, no matter how much I wish it was. [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/105/index/1516824/3 Give thanks to Vigna.]{{Dead link}})
{{quote|'''Saren:''' But there is a giant Reaper out there. I have proof...
'''Turian:''' A giant...whaaaa?
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* Pretending to serve Sovereign gave Saren several advantages. It allowed him to monitor Sovereign and to study his capabilities. It's canon he was studying indoctrination. Killing Sovereign is good, but that still leaves thousands more like him. Learning how to kill a Reaper is more profitable in the long run.
* Unfortunately for Saren, his plan failed when Shepard critically injured him on Virmire and Sovereign rebuilt him, and in the process indoctrinated him to the point he truly began working for the Reaper. As Shepard himself points out, Saren's gone from being a servant to a slave, and it's still possible for Saren to recognize that he's lost and heroically kill himself.
** POINT: Saren needed the The Conduit in order to sneak the Geth into The Citadel.
** COUNTER-POINT: Saren had organic allies who were also allowed access to The Citadel, such as that Asari commando squad.
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== There will be a salarian Spectre in ''Mass Effect 3'', you will have to fight him, and he will be [[That One Boss]]. ==
For anyone to be considered for Spectre status, they have to be a decorated career combat operative who has performed at least one Crowning Moment of Awesome. [[We Are as Mayflies|Salarians only live 40 years.]] A theoretical salarian Spectre will have [[Tyke Bomb|entered military service as early as possible]], completed several years of military training, and performed at least one Act of God, thus having spent a significant portion of his life [[Taught By Experience|surviving being shot at by mercenaries and terrorists]]. Result: any salarian Spectre will be, ''by definition'', an [[Old Master]] that makes '''[[Crazy Awesome|Mordin Solus]]''' look like '''''Bea Arthur'''''.
* [[Completely Missing the Point|That means that Mordin gets a loyal folower in the form of]] [[Deadpool]]?
* There is a salarian Spectre, but you help him with a minor Citadel quest.
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== Quarians are basilisks ==
That's why they wear almost opaque visors, so they don't kill everyone the meet. the Geth, being machines, wouldn't be affected.
As for why Shepard doesn't die when he removes Tali's mask; He's commander Shepard, and thus just that awesome.
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** It's also possible that the Quarians distanced themselves from the weapon after it became strongly associated with the Geth. The image of a weapon can conjure plenty of emotive content and association, such as an AK-47 or a Thompson (the latter even varies depending simply on the magazine used, a drum magazine might conjure the image of a gangster in the 1930s while a straight magazine might conjure the image of an allied soldier in World War 2). The Widow might have become a symbol of the Geth Uprising and the Quarians came to regard the weapon with some measure of contempt themselves. After all, it was the first weapon picked up by a Geth, which by extension implies it was the first weapon used by a Geth to kill a Quarian. In short, the near genocide of their species may have literally begun with the report of an M-98 Widow. One might reflect negatively on that.
== Thedas is Earth after the reaper invade it, the relays are destroyed and Earth isn't quite destroyed or saved fully. ==
* The biotics become the magi
* The Relays would be the Maker's City as man's 'hubris' in taking to the stars resulted in the reapers taking notice of humanity
* The husks are the dawkspawn
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