Replaying Mass Effect 2 for the 560 x 10 to the 15th power’d time with my main Shep, and I’m coming up to the end.
Mouseover space…
I have to say, despite being a Paragon most of the time I always preserve the Collector base, despite the obvious foreshadowing back on the Normandy after the event. Years of playing RTS’s have impressed upon me the idea that it is better to capture an enemy resource than destroy it, and in Shep’s words - a threat this big, rules go out the window. Without the Collector base, Shep relies on either a miracle or a war of attrition to win the upcoming war with the Reapers. With it - a facility that was constructing a Reaper no less - the galaxy’s chances against the Reapers seem a hell of a lot better.
Of course, as a Renegade choice, it’ll probably bite me in the ass when TIM starts building an asari Reaper to attack the Citadel…
My main character is a paragade- on all the big decisions he goes paragon but he leaves crippled, intimidated and tortured enemies in a bloody trail behind him as he goes.
And he destroyed the base.
In fact, all my characters destroy the base. Even the super renegade ones.
No offense, but I think, realistically, preserving the base is stupid. You have no idea how much control the reapers have over the facility (remember “Assuming direct control”?), you have no clue how collector technology works or if there are other collector bases near the galactic core. It’s sort of like trying to hijack a Borg cube. You’re just asking for trouble.
And constructing a reaper likely wouldn’t help as much as you think. Sovereign may have been speaking hyperbolically, but when he said that they would blacken the sky of every world, I take it semi-seriously. We see hundreds of reaper vessels in the ending cinematic- I don’t think a single reaper would change things much.
Not to mention that even if you were able to pull it all off without a hitch you’d still be giving a fucking superweapon to a group of terrorists. And not terrorists in the loose sense of the word, but actual fucking terrorists. Somehow that doesn’t seem wise.
We have no idea how Collector technology works, exactly. Since Collector tech = Reaper tech (building bases next to black holes), understanding the Collectors more leads to greater knowledge of the Reapers. The first rule of warfare is know thine enemy.
You make a valid point in that it is incredibly dangerous, as we’ve seen with the derelict Reaper (and many other Cerberus projects). But, without the sacrifice of the Cerberus science team we wouldn’t have the IFF, Collectors would still be attacking human colonies and the Normandy SR-2 would be decorating the Tartarus Debris Field.
You’re right that building a Reaper (which would require liquidation of sentient life forms) would be pissing in the wind - but I compare it to capturing an enemy manufacturing facility, for, say, tanks. You may not necessarily want to build enemy tanks, but it’ll give you vital info on fighting them - finding weakspots and designing weapons to counter them. Here Reaper tech has a proven track record, in the form of the Thanix Cannon which royally handed the Collector Cruiser’s ass to itself, and EDI - who saved the Normandy from Collector attack.
I’d also quibble with the last paragraph - at the start of the game, TIM says he wishes for nothing more than the defence and preservation of humanity, and his actions in the game and before that bear his aim out to the letter.
First of all, tough. Their “sacrifice” doesn’t absolve them of their crimes and it doesn’t make giving them the ability to create sentient superweapons developed by a race of galaxy-harvesting monsters any wiser.
You mean sentient super tanks.
Cerberus doesn’t want the facility intact so it can go over reaper blueprints. It wants the facility so that it can build them; sentient world-devourers. These guys are Boromir hoping to use the ring against Sauron. Any research done would be ancillary to that primary purpose. Again, these guys are terrorists. They aren’t going to hand the facility over to the Alliance. They’re going to continue to do the same thing they’ve always done.
They don’t want to use reaper tech. They want to build a reaper. It’s the difference between trying to use a reaper gun and trying to breed a reaper. This plan is so bad that it’s destined to fail. And that goes for anyone trying to use it. Things only look worse considering it’d be Cerberus trying to use it.
Yeah, he and Hitler are both a couple of real humanitarians.
Oops, too late to edit. EBWOP: When his organization sacrificed a unit of human marines (who, depending on your origin of choice, could be your character’s brothers-in-arms) in order to test viability of thresher maws as weapons they were just looking out for humanity. When they tortured children in an attempt to breed biotics they were doing it for the greater good. When they enslaved the thorian in an attempt to develop mind-control weapons they were doing the right thing. These guys are nutjobs. Incompetent nutjobs. Everything they touch turns to shit. The only reason the suicide mission was a success was because they had a non-Cerberus agent handling it. These are the ones you want to give a reaper to?
True, but it does prove that they’re on the money when they talk about protecting humanity.
I could concede all your points, but it changes nothing - terrorists>omnicidal mecha-cthulus. The question is, who else? The Alliance? Ha! Consider the Collector threat a precurser to the Reaper invasion - the Reapers certainly consider it to be. What does the Alliance do? Bugger all! Tens of thousands of humans go missing and the Alliance respond by sending one soldier to Horizon. With intel so faulty they thing Cerberus is behind it all. Then when they confirm the Collectors are behind it, they still do nothing - leaving Shep to fly the Cerberus built SR-2 in and kick the Colelctors in their daddy-bags. Given their casualties against Sovvie, there’s not much they can do.
Who else? The Council? “Ah yes, ‘Reapers’.” 'Nuf said. Besides which, one Reaper tore through the Citadel fleet like piss through toilet paper - one asari dreadnought, the flagship of the Citadel fleet and possessing enough firepower to match the entire Alliance fleet, gets its kinetic barriers taken down within moments. Even if every dreadnought in Citadel space - 83 as of 2185 - was brought to bear - “We are legion. The time of our return is coming. Our numbers will darken the skies of every world.” EDI also confirms that “Reaper kinetic barriers are impervious to dreadnought fire.”
Only the salarian STG and Cerberus appear to be doing anything regarding the Reaper threat.
One necessarily entails the other, and the alternative is still far worse.
“A mistake. No question. Not mine.”
Details in the facility confirms the Subject Zero project was conducted by a rogue element, without TIM’s knowledge. As for the other experiments, again Miri points out that these were still conducted with the best interests of humanity in mind - using thorian creepers as cannon fodder and rachni as shock troops to save human lives. Even Overlord tried this with geth, before Archer went a bit nuts. Regardless, the question remains - what’s the alternative? How will Shep defeat the Reapers without the base?
For all we know Alliance/Council personnel may have been able to do it without fucking it all up. They certainly seemed able to develop the Thanix without everything going to shit.
That’s the point. No one can hope to use it successfully.
The job of the Alliance isn’t to protect humans any more than the United States’ job is to protect humans. The people of those colonies chose to shrug off their ties to the Alliance and live on their own- not only on their own, but on the border of the most dangerous space in the known galaxy. So these colonies aren’t Alliance colonies- and yet the Alliance still spends a fortune assembling defense cannons to protect them. And that “one soldier”? They didn’t just send one soldier; that’s just the one soldier we saw. Alenko/Williams likely had a detachment with them to, you know, assemble the giant weapons they brought with them. And, remember, these colonies aren’t part of the Alliance to begin with and yet the Alliance is going out of its way to help them even while still recovering from massive losses at the siege of the Citadel.
Exactly. There’s not much they can do. Given time they would have likely told the colonies that they were being targeted by collectors and instituted a widespread evacuation. Without a source of humans to harvest the Collectors would have been forced to attack Alliance space itself. Even after their losses at the Citadel I’m convinced the Alliance would have been able to defend their own space. They then could have, with this newly gained time, assembled a proper strike into Collector space.
No argument. The council is stupid- almost suspension of disbelief-shatteringly so.
Is Hitler responsible for only the misery he specifically approved? TIM created an organization that would do anything, irrespective of the costs, for the “greater good”. That’s what it’s doing. It’s performing exactly as it should. I’m sure there are a dozen other Cerberus facilities doing far worse things that we haven’t even seen yet.
TIM is shown to be an informational powerhouse. He’s also shown himself to be more than willing to lie to just about everyone to “protect humanity”. You’re being played.
And don’t forget human Alliance marines, potentially Shepard’s own unit (depending on backstory chosen), that were fed to a thresher maw. But hey, it’s all for the greater good, right?
EDI has shown herself capable of making uplinks to Collector vessels- that’s Reaper technology. In the third game I predict the point of the story will be to fly around looking for clues that culminate in her having the ability to upload a virus a la Independence Day, probably in another suicide mission.
Let’s not forget that the Reaper we found the IFF on didn’t commit suicide. It was destroyed by a super-powerful mass effect round - the kind reverse engineered by the turians to create the massive Thanix cannon. They were capable of creating that weapon based on research conducted on the obliterated Sovereign after only 11 months.
Things aren’t as bleak as you seem to think. Not enough to justify murdering hundreds of thousands of whatever species we decide to base a new reaper on and risking indoctrination of whatever workers we station on the facility. And all of this assumes that any new reaper we make won’t just link up to the others of its kind and attack us.
There’s the crux - for all we know. Cerberus is the only organisation with balls enough to stand up for humanity at colossal risk to its own personal. In any case, we know how the Alliance/Council handled the remains of Sovvie - poorly.
You misunderstand - if we blow up the station and tell Timmy to go eff himself, who else can the galaxy turn to for real hope against the Reaper threat? The salarian STG might have the wherewithal to inflict a few blows against the invasion, but when push comes to shove their job isn’t the protection of humanity. Cerberus has this as its entire raison d’etre.
All this is true, but still doesn’t speak well of the Alliance’s military ability compared to Cerberus. By the time the bureaucrats and politicians pull their fingers out and realise that the Reapers don’t give a wooden nickle for political distinctions between Alliance space and the terminus systems, it may be too late - a Sovereign Mk II on the way to the Citadel with its Collector allies, ready to beat the crap out of the Citadel and open the way to dark space. With no guarantee an ostracised Shep could save them again, it’s game over man - game over. Note that the abductions only began after Sovvie went boom - time is not on our side. The galaxy needs men willing to go on the offensive - note that after you defeat the Collectors, Harbie states that they will “Find another way” - and the fleet begins its journey to the Milky Way.
True dat. But most of the galaxy’s defensive capabilities are vested with these fools.
With WWII analogies, Stalin is probably more apt. He did horrific things, but he stopped an arguably greater evil. And there is no doubt that the Reapers are a far greater threat than TIM.
To what end? We know he stands nothing to gain by helping the Reapers as Saren did, and has taken many measures against them - even before ME2 starts, he nabs Shep’s carcass from the Shadow Broker, working for the Collectors, working for the Reapers. He correctly identifies the Reapers as the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, where the Alliance and Council are quite content to declare ‘peace in our time’ and declare the previous unpleasantness as the geth and Saren up to no good.
My main Shep is a Sole Survivor, who wiped out every Cerberus project in ME1. But again, Cerberus is the lesser of two evils. At the end of ME2, there’s an option for Shep to say that he’ll stop the Reapers - but won’t “sacrifice the soul of our species to do it.” It’s a shame TIM doesn’t ask him what exactly he plans to do, as the silence would be deafening.
EDI is Reaper tech - reverse engineered from Sovvie, hence her ‘anti-Reaper algorithms’. The Thanix cannon too, reverse engineered from Sovvie’s main guns. In short, Reaper tech has a proven and effective track record (although the Thanix cannon will likely be ineffective against Reapers - the Codex notes that it gives the frigate SR-2 the firepower of a cruiser, but Reapers can wipe the floor with dreadnoughts). The Collector base - Reaper tech. We were there for what, a few hours? And the revelations we discovered were previously unimaginable. What other treasures could be hidden there?
Things aren’t as bleak?! The Derelict Reaper is 37 million years old. Assuming the pattern of 50,000 years is typical, the Reapers have repeated this pattern at least 740 times. The species that took the shot - visit their home planet of Etamis and see what happened to them. The Protheans, the Arthenn. All races with tech equivalent to the current galactic standard - all of whom were wiped out by Reaper orbital bombardment. Without the base, we’re in no better position than these poor saps. With it, we might have a crucial ace-in-the-hole.
Not to mention; you underestimate Shep himself - who tells TIM in no uncertain terms that he’s playing by his rules now. With the command of the SR-2 (which took up a significant proportion of Cerberus resources, including the capabilities of an unshackled AI), a loyal crew and in my case making my lover the Shadow Broker, this isn’t an idle threat. Chakwas says it best - ‘I trust that your dealings with Cerberus will be ethical’. If Shep catches wind of TIM up to his old tricks, he loses one of his most vital assets and makes a powerful enemy.
I disagree. It was because of their work with Sovereign’s remains that Shep was capable of destroying the Collector ship after going through the Omega Relay. Cerberus didn’t develop the Thanix cannon. I fully expect a fleet of Council-controlled dreadnoughts all equipped with this weapon to appear in the final stand that’ll inevitably take place in ME3.
1.) The Council has access to the Thanix cannon.
2.) We have EDI, who has shown herself capable of hacking reaper tech.
3.) We have an army of Geth who, because of their wayward brothers’ time spent with the Reaper, likely have invaluable information regarding their capabilities, etc.
4.) We have Shepard and the Normandy.
5.) We, or at least I, have the very model of a scientist salarian whose xenoscience ranges from urban to agrarian.
He wants to use the Reaper to establish humans as the rulers of the galaxy. What else? He’s brilliant but ultimately a madman.
There’s a difference between using Reaper tech and constructing a Reaper.
Shepard should have taken the SR2, said “fuck you!” to Cerberus, picked up Mordin on his own, hacked EDI to free her from her blocks, etc, and done everything by “his rules” from the very beginning. Then, when he’s done blowing up the collector base he should personally hunt TIM down and let Jack kill him. Miranda gets dropped off on Earth and Jacob given the choice of leaving Cerberus or getting the boot with her.
Why would Shepard ditch TIM if he learned he was up to his old tricks? Under your logic everything TIM did was hunky-dorey in the greater scheme of things. And under your logic even if it wasn’t hunky-dorey that’d be no reason to ditch him- how else would we defeat them without him?!
Frankly, the fact that I’m capable of destroying the base at the end of 2 indicates that there’ll be some way to defeat them without it in 3. That’s a metagame, genre-savvy confirmation, true, but there you have it.
We have plenty of tools available to us (I listed them earlier) but no, you think we should go and murder literally hundreds of thousands of people (and which race is going to get put on the chopping block? Asari? Turian? Hell, might as well just keep feeding humans to the reaper - it’s all in the name of the greater good! I’m sure all those people would volunteer their lives if they just understood things like TIM does) to create a massive reaper whose completion was to be the herald of our destruction. And you don’t just want to do that- oh no, you want to give control of this facility to the Osama Bin Laden of space. A lying, murdering, human rights violating monster with delusions of human superiority. I feel sorry for the inhabitants of your galaxy. In mine we’re going to save the human race without destroying our humanity.
Well, since the game contains 10 secret save slots. (I.e. where the decisions you made for your character get recorded for importation into the next game, and each gets created upon finishing the game), I saved right at the final save point, completed the game one way, and then completed the game the other way. So for a few minutes extra effort, I have my parashep doing both. Besides, even on Insane the final boss fight is not all that difficult, especially after doing the collector ship fight on Insane (which really comes down to a lot of luck).
More than half of Sovvie went missing after the Battle of the Citadel, and the Alliance/Council are so inept that they think the rest of it is a geth construct. The turians managed to develop the Thanix, and Cerberus built EDI, but overall it’s a pretty poor effort given Sovvie’s tech level.
The Thanix cannon is a cruiser-level armament - Reaper shields stop dreadnought fire. EDI is an AI, illegal in Council space and built by Cerberus. Against a Reaper fleet, even EDI is hopelessly outmatch - she can’t even protect the Normandy against David in Overlord.
The heretic geth are separate from the ‘main’ geth - but if you reintegrate them in Legion’s loyalty mission they might have this knowledge. Although it’s doubtful the geth will have a great deal of valuable intel - “The reaction of their deity is most telling - it is insulted. Sovereign does not require the pitiful devotions the geth hurl at it.” - Saren. You don’t let cannon-fodder in on your most intimate plans.
Shepard has been pretty much hung out to dry by the Council and Alliance - you save the galaxy in ME2 without any help from them at all - they’re more of a hindrance, if anything, accusing you of treason more than once.
Let’s look at the timeframe. He does this before the Reapers invade - one Reaper against the Citadel, well Shep took that down last time. If they can’t take down one, the imminent arrival of their entire fleet means game over for all sentients in the universe anyway.
After the Reapers invade, he’s the least of our problems - and if we’ve survived that, one more isn’t gonna be much of a problem having dealt with a fleet of them.
I’m not sure how Cerberus would go about constructing a Reaper, to be honest. If they do construct one, they’ll at least have detailed schematics of one, which is just what you need when fighting a fleet of the mechanical fiends. Even so - the Collectors had capabilities and numbers far beyond that of Cerberus, and in 2 years of constant abductions had only a Reaper ‘embryo’ - and that’s working with tech specifically designed for/by them. What are Cerberus - whose reconstruction of the Normandy and Project Lazarus took up a significant proportion of their resources (and the SB notes that even the deaths of Miri or Jacob would ‘cripple’ Cerberus) - going to do? Kidnap some tramps from Omega and make a Reaper spermatozoa?
Then the Illusive Man never keys you in on Horizon, the Collector Cruiser or the Derelict Reaper - you have no means of safely traversing the Omega-4 relay. Again, TIM is pretty straight with you in ME2 (with the exception of the Collector Cruiser, but that fits with his whole ‘necessary evil’ schtick).
Eh? My Shep is with TIM as far as defeating the Reapers goes. He shut down every project in ME1 and shut down Overlord in ME2 (TIM didn’t care). As much as Shep needs TIM, TIM also needs Shep. 4 billion credits and the SR-2, after all - can’t afford to lose that.
Metagaming, you’re bang-on, and crewmates comments after confirm it. Although if BioWare had some seriously big balls there might be a way for Shep to totally screw things up and fail.
The tools available pale in comparison to the data available in the Collector base. The denizens of Etamis even developed a weapon that killed a Reaper in a single shot (and took a lump out of Klendagon at the same time), but even that didn’t do them much good. Their planet is covered with craters from saturation bombardment from dreadnoughts in orbit. Without the base, we have even less than those unfortunates.
Deal with the Reapers first, that’s my Sheps attitude. If TIM becomes a greater threat to galactic peace and stability (than the omnicidal Reapers - hell, I’d side with batarians if they had some way of harming the Reapers), then his life is forfeit as well.
Speaking of Etamis, I’ve got a crazy theory that TIM is actually one of the survivors of that culture. (It was them that he brings up about in conversation about a culture that destroyed a reaper, right?) He’s obviously not your standard human even if you don’t figure his cybernetic eyes into the equation. Plus he knows a lot about the reapers and their history, more than seemingly anyone else out there. It makes sense if you’ve been around for millions of years. If not Etamis, then conceivably another civilization that was able to resist the reapers at least for a while.
I still don’t trust him any further than I can throw him, but I really do think he wants the reapers destroyed once and for all.
I think the implication is that they’re studying it in secret without telling anyone. Not sure.
I can’t even begin to say how certain I am that she’ll pull an Independence Day. You’ll see!
Not plans. But some of the geth (and therefore all of the geth) rode around in Sovereign. Legion seems like a pretty smart guy (and therefore they all are).
You prevent another reaper attack. Personally I think that another success like the Battle of the Citadel could have been pulled off.
I fully expect Cerberus to continue the abductions.
I, like you, hope there’s a way that you can fail. But it shouldn’t be as a result of destroying the collector base. The game is supposed to be about choice. It would be seriously questionable for them to come back now and basically send the message “the game isn’t about choice- it’s about choosing renegade options.”
So far I haven’t heard anything that justifies giving a madman galaxy-ending superweapons. If things are as bleak as you’ve painted them, one reaper on our side wouldn’t help anyway and I doubt we’d have the time to create more than that.
You say “how else are we going to beat them?!” and I think that’s going to be the point of most of ME3- finding a way to beat them. And you’re going to have to find that solution whether you picked to save the facility or not. In the end I think saving the facility is just a generic renegade action that’ll add a cinematic of a reaper fighting on your side during the end battle with some fluff about the enemy having been beaten easier or something.
As far as I’m aware Cerebus doesn’t have a single project that didn’t end up in mass murder. Why would I trust them with [del]Old Ones[/del] Reaper tech?
Of course, given the tremendous amount of resources TIM invested in a lone agent with an known independent streak, it may well be that he’s just in the habit of trusting rebellious go-getters, and so far they’ve all been in favor of setting up inhumane research labs. Who could possibly guess that these roguish elements he keeps putting in charge of shit would go rogue? I mean, six or seven times, sure. But like eight? Come on, nobody saw that coming.
Myself. I would have kept the base as my headquarters. Bring in scientists I could control (and who would kill to take a look at the tech I was offering).
I tend to blow up the base with all of my characters (the notable exception being my technophile engineer). Saving the base just seems like a submission on your part to TIM, and I am basically letting my pride determine the fate of the galaxy. I just don’t like his tone during the whole conversation.
And in all actuality, while Sovereign was formidable, he probably had his power supplies pretty close to topped off, while I’m assuming the reapers who have to hoof it back to the milky way are going to be somewhat depleted. Perhaps they are even on the verge of starving, since they were supposed to have devoured a couple of planets by now (although this didn’t apply to Sovereign)… the point is, maybe they will have less power to reinforce their barriers and weapons, and a decent sized council or geth or quarian fleet might be a match for one of them at a time.
I suspect the Collectors are probably all dead, and if the Reapers have any stooges in part 3, it will be the Batarians. After finally reaching the galatic fringe, the reapers are low on eezo, but encounter an outcast and renegade race that has a serious grudge against the council and humanity in particular. The reapers can give them some new tech, which turns what were once mere raiders and pirates into a formidable military force. Then we can all experience the continued joy of having the council not listen to us about the reapers, while they try to address the Hegemony threat. Might even turn out the four eyed bastards aren’t even indoctrinated and are just doing it out of revenge.
At least that would give you plenty of things to run around and kill with your guns. I don’t know how they’re going to actually kill the reapers, though I’m afraid it probably will end up being a virus. Can’t think of much else they could try-- turning the Citadel into a giant mass driver? A shockwave from a planet full of biotics? A scrubbing bubbles army of the dead made up of the ghosts of destroyed civilizations? Ok, that last one is just ridiculous.
I always blow the base. Remember that the Citadel appeared entirely harmless and under Council control for centuries - until it didn’t. It is certainly possible that retaining the base could yield valuable intelligence, and that this could be done safely. But the danger that the base would remain vulnerable to Reaper influence is a terrifying one, especially when one considers the damage that Indoctrination could do.
It isn’t a black-and-white call, which is why Bioware is so great. But Shep has defeated the Reapers twice with mostly human tools - I would rather stick with an approach that I know can work than muck about with Reaper tech. I really don’t care to be fighting a Cerberus Reaper in a year or so, when the next game comes out.
But Shep has defeated the Reapers twice with mostly human tools - I would rather stick with an approach that I know can work than muck about with Reaper tech. I really don’t care to be fighting a Cerberus Reaper in a year or so, when the next game comes out.