[Jeff Vader]

John Shepppard

[Colonol Dekker]

S-H-E-P-A-R-D

Christ, why do people get it always wrong.

I won't apologise for spelliong it as the career dictates

[Kosh]

Also because they are superintelligent machines with the intellects of entire species, they should be able to plot out a tactical situation like you can tie your shoes.

That doesn't mean they are infallible, after all they missed Ilos completely and didn't foresee the keepers evolution. They've been running the same scenario hundreds of times, it was inevitable that sooner or later something would come up that would have the potential to screw them over.

I am basically resigned to the fact that Bioware is not going to be able to write the Reapers in a believably unstoppable and intelligent fashion. So I'm just rooting for the Geth.

fake edit: and the Fat Reaper, who is our salvation through consumption

What would you have done instead? I suspect that it will actually be possible to screw up and lose, think losing everyone (including your character) in ME2 but multiply it by trillions to get a scale of the potential to **** up.

[General Battuta]

Also because they are superintelligent machines with the intellects of entire species, they should be able to plot out a tactical situation like you can tie your shoes.

That doesn't mean they are infallible, after all they missed Ilos completely and didn't foresee the keepers evolution. They've been running the same scenario hundreds of times, it was inevitable that sooner or later something would come up that would have the potential to screw them over.

Yeah that whole Ilos/Keeper thing was ridiculously tenuous. I replayed ME1 recently and was laughing my ass off at that part. 'Oh, we, uh...we jammed the signal, and we messed with the Keepers...luckily the nigh-omnipotent post-singularity machine intelligences had just that one invasion plan with one enormous failure point...it was pretty chill. Let me introduce you to our tech wizard, Drew Karpyshyn.'

I am basically resigned to the fact that Bioware is not going to be able to write the Reapers in a believably unstoppable and intelligent fashion. So I'm just rooting for the Geth.

fake edit: and the Fat Reaper, who is our salvation through consumption

What would you have done instead?

I wouldn't have done anything yet because I don't know what Bioware is going to do yet (they probably don't either). It will probably involve Prothean MacGuffins though.

[Luis Dias]

If they were smart, it would involve a whole library of ancient civilizations mcguffins for us to get a sense of real deep time...

It isn't as dumb as the Matrix, but in parts it sure tries .

[achtung]

If they were smart, it would involve a whole library of ancient civilizations mcguffins for us to get a sense of real deep time...

It isn't as dumb as the Matrix, but in parts it sure tries .

You mentioned library, and that made me think. The idea of a sort of timeline, or library, for how long the reapers have been doing this would be intriguing to me. A brief history of the reapers? I know the "ooh ahh" mysterious aura turns people on, but sometimes it's nice to be able to discover something truly revealing. Stumbling upon something that adds mountains of data to the Codex, or finding some archive on a planet. It doesn't have to read like a history textbook or anything, maybe something like the log of a reaper who actually felt remorse (yeah, lame, I know).

[Luis Dias]

Remorse would be fine, if accompanied by ennui and irony. But that would be too human.

No. What I would like to it to be was to know the first traces of the reaper "singularity" happening and what had happened to the species that created them, or that merged with them.

There's a kind of cult in Earth right now about how we will eventually upload our brains into a  machine and that will be part of the singularity. Perhaps a whole civilization uploaded itself into these machines we now call "the reapers". Perhaps they were trying to build "god" and instead created an eternal "hell". A story about hubris, again.

It sort of reminds me of Leto the second as well.

[General Battuta]

No please don't ruin them with an origin story.

Reapers better be uploaded civilizations though, it's one of the better ideas the series ever had and if they **** it up it will suck.

[The E]

Yes, thank you for your opinions, Battuta. We all know that BioWare should have hired you

[General Battuta]

They probably should have!

Bioware is in the weird position of having really decent technical resources and some great worldbuilding, and then consistently telling pleasantly cliched peanut butter and jelly stories in said worlds. I am cool with this, I really enjoy Mass Effect, but it'd be interesting to see what Obsidian or whatever would do with the setting.

[The E]

I personally just find it ridiculous to complain about stories of unreleased games. It's just incredibly silly, imho.

[dANGER boy]

Th

I personally just find it ridiculous to complain about stories of unreleased games. It's just incredibly silly, imho.

Thank you, that needed to be said.  Let's wait for the game to release, then comment on the quality/direction of the story.

[General Battuta]

I find it ridiculous that people can't read posts. Try scrolling up to the part where we're discussing Mass Effect 1's story with a side of Mass Effect 2.

Literally nobody has complained about the story in Mass Effect 3 because nobody knows what it is.

[The E]

Okay, so, given that ME3 will probably be another enormous hit, what are your thoughts on continuing the Mass Effect franchise beyond ME3? How would a possible ME4 look like? What other stories can be told within Mass Effect?

[General Battuta]

They will probably do an MMO (they have talked about this). This has a non-zero chance of making Mass Effect 3 ****ty by forcing them to allow all the ME3 endings to converge on the same status quo. Hopefully they won't do that and instead allow you to get wildly divergent outcomes.

[The E]

Well, they can always declare a given ending non-canon (Like the really really bad ending of ME2)...

[General Battuta]

That would be the better approach. Or they could set it 500 years later or whatever.

ed: Inevitably they will piss someone off though, like say in ME3 you get the Quarians to invade the Geth and somehow they win, then in the MMO the Geth are still a power and the Quarians have gone off to build a new World Tree in Kalimdor. Pissed off Talimancers erryday.

[Luis Dias]

That is completely boring. Way funnier to guesstimate the direction of the script and then blame the writers for the stupidity of it!

EDIT: I was replying to Danger and E.

[PsychoLandlord]

First I've heard of an ME MMO. Not sure how I feel about that. But as for not pissing people off or declaring endings canon, it could totally be set a ridiculous amount of years later like Batutta said, or hell, set it pre-game around the Skyllian Blitz or something like that. They've created this whole awesome world with a rich history, any development team should be able to take that history and create a fun game in it without stepping on anyone's toes.

[The E]

You are underestimating the amount of nerdrage the internet is capable of, I think.