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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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*** 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.
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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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* 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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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.
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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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* 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 [[Exclusively Evil]] and [[
*** 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:R'lyeh|R'lyeh]], and Shepard will go there and awaken him. [[Badass Creed|"That is not dead which can eternal lie]],<ref>The Reapers tried to kill him, but Cthulhu hid and lay on the ocean floor...</ref>
== A certain level of genetic diversity is required to create {{spoiler|new Reapers.}} ==
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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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== 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. ==
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== 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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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]].
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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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