I like how in Legendary Edition they didn’t change Kelly Chambers model to the updated version, probably because no one in hell would sit through that timer just for a 5 second game over screen
@Kisa Vorobianinov This is a typical trope of a ‘Hero is you’ found in works of fiction and PR. One savior and everything rests on them, when of course IRL many people are involved and is a group effort.
@@Jasmin-lg3gf that would be cool. Destroy maybe 100 reapers. It's reflect in the 1st scene with the Alliance parliament and on the logistics board on the Normandie.
@Kisa Vorobianinov Very few people believed Shepherd and he was one of the first to sound the alarm. But he only does it with his crew so in my opinion, it doesn’t humiliate humanity.(Nor should the focus be on just humanity) The reapers were a threat very few people even knew about and even fewer thought was real. They were ignored or doubted up to the very second when they showed up. Ashley could have been “the one.” Anyone could, it just happened to be Shepherd. Shepherd brought together his team and his team helped him. It’s a mutual effort. Think of Shepherd like the leader of a special task force. No one would say the entire reason the Nazis lost was because of the team that destroyed their heavy water plant. Shepherd did the special tasks required but he wouldn’t have been able to do so if the alliance and council races weren’t keeping the Reapers busy. He wouldn’t have been able to do it if smarter people weren’t setting up the crucible. It’s all a mutual thing. Shepherd just so happened to be the one to take action *first.* Hell, we could say it’s all thanks to Tali since Shep wouldn’t have become a spectre without her help. We could put all the victory on Liara too. How about Joker, Shep couldn’t get anywhere without a ship. It’s all a team effort.
Even though its a deus ex machina, I always just loved the idea of the crucible. Like every cycle adding to it until it could defeat the readers. Thats poetic as hell.
The refuse ending is even more poetic imo, where the crucible doesn’t work. Maybe the only way to get rid of the reapers is to live a simple tech free life and evolve naturally.
@@ElleDeas Not to mention the Reapers guide our tech progress. Eh, what we have is still better than the Dark Energy plot. People such it's dick just because it's not what we got
Notice how In the vision, the illusive man is standing with your friends and allies… just watching as the Reapers destroy everything. It really drives home the point that the Reapers are so powerful and threatening that your everyday enemies are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. And you will suffer all the same.
@@GinsengStrip-wt8bl Except they didn't fight. They hid, because that was all they could do. They were ants trying to avoid a sadistic bully who loves smashing them. The reason they "hung on" as long as they did, as is explained in the first game, is that they wanted to eradicate the Protheans entirely (and I'm not going into the NONSENSE that the 3rd game shoehorns in, literally, at the last SECOND with that Star Child crap) and that took a very, very long time.
But this was also dlc, so I don’t see why not include them in the scene due to it being the last dlc. But it was locked behind a two hour time limit, so maybe that was just something that didn’t fully think of due to it being such a long wait time.
It looks like a Destroyer class Reaper if we are thinking of the frames with Anderson in them (they are much smaller than Sovereign class) It also looks so cool to see all the other unused Reaper types in the start of that cut-scene.
Don’t forget that if the reapers seized the citadel early in the war, then they would’ve shut down the mass relays which is something they did in every cycle before. So yeah, if we didn’t destroy the alpha relay then there wouldn’t even be a war and the reapers would’ve won instantly.
you do realize that thought hinges on IF you bother with the arrival DLC? a fresh character in ME3 doesn't have that variable try it for yourself, make a fresh character in the game and carry it over without doing arrival. events play out the same
@@aaron75fy That’s because the cause is shifted to the alliance’s 103rd marine division for causing it instead of shepherd, alpha relay gets destroyed regardless. The reapers would have won if the alpha relay was not destroyed, which is why it blows up even if shepherd doesn’t do it. Arrival being done only makes it so Shepard deals with the mess, saving tons of marines in the process, but also giving him a specific reason to be grounded by the alliance
@@arlessbad and exactly how would that happen? the reason Shepard was able to succeed is his high tolerance for anesthetics (the stuff Amanda's team used to keep him down) no one else would be able to resist it arrival was DLC which means BioWare really didn't plan for it outside of an honorable mention in the 3rd game face facts, it never happened. and even if it did BDG assumed the entire galaxy downplaying the reaper menace would be preparing for a threat they believed didn't exist speculating despite opposing evidence
@@aaron75fy It's literally in the game, bro. You literally can't argue it, its an actual part of the game, you're an idiot. Even if it wasn't in the game it is completely feasible, imagine like a few hundred marines vs some mercenaries. Again, I don't know why you are arguing when its literally in the game. You can even check the mass effect wiki. The 103rd alliance marine division suffers losses if you don't do arrival. They send a team to blow up the alpha relay, it also affects dialogue with the batarian pirate from me1's dlc.
@@aaron75fy my first playthrough of the me trilogy did not include any of the dlc. I remembered how the alpha relay incident was mentioned a few times in me3 with the most notable incident being the Batarian terrorist who was less hostile towards Shepard and Shepard explicitly mentions the alliance marines who gave their lives to destroy the alpha relay. To be honest, BioWare should’ve made arrival part of me2’s main quest instead of a dlc. At least now legendary edition players won’t have to worry about it too much
That 5 seconds cutscene is indeed portraiting the future of a reality where the Alpha Relay wasn't destroyed: First scene: The Reapers reached the galaxy. Second scene: Shepard was killed - although this scene can be representing the effort of Humanity to fight the Reapers unsuccessfully -. Third scene: The Reapers, with the use of the Alpha Relay, got to the Citadel. Anderson is killed in the process, as he wasn't capable of returning to Earth before the Reapers got to the Citadel. Fourth Scene: in a last effort, every enemy and ally unite, in a desperate attempt to win the war - that's why the Illusive Man is there -. Fifth scene: The Reapers won - Kelly is representing all of the organic life on the galaxy - dead/processed -. An eerie and downright miserable ending to the ME saga.
Did you know that if you talk to Anderson and Udina after each main storyline mission in Mass Effect 1 they have different things to say? I think a lot of people miss these especially the Virmire since most players save that for last.
4:56 I’m pretty sure the Krogan in that shot is actually Wrex. He’s wearing his clan leader armor with the two big taillights on the back, which Grunt’s doesn’t have.
@thelifewithin098 Wrex wouldn't have freaked out, he's not really the type to do so. He was already expecting that the Reapers would eventually show up. He's done what he could to prepare the krogan for it, for whatever good that did. He would've rallied his people and get ready for a fight. Basically, he would've done what he did before the events of Mass Effect 3, minus Mordin (or whoever replaces him if he's dead) curing the genophage. And he didn't go looking for Liara at the start of ME3, why do you think he would here?
When you were speaking about the "convenient plot device" of Liara discovering the plans for the Crucible "just in time," I recall that we actually get to see Shepard ask her about that during the Mars mission in ME3. I do not know if this is the exact dialogue, but the conversation goes something like this: Shep: Why now? We've known about the archives for 30 years. Why are we only now finding this out?" Liara: After you destroyed the Alpha Relay, I knew it was only a matter of time. Hacket knew it, too. He asked me to use my resources as the Shadow Broker..."
I know the Crucible doesn't work for everybody, but I've always been fine with it. The writers write themselves into a corner where they needed something like the Crucible since is had been stressed repeatedly that a conventional war against the Reapers can't be won. And I personally feel that the in universe justification for why nobody knew about it for a while works, coupled with how the Crucible has been passed down for who knows how long. The biggest issue would be that the actual discovery is contrived, though you can make the argument that specifically looking for useful Reaper killing data would make you more likely to find said data, and there is the possibility that the blueprint was already discovered but dismissed since it was useless at the time.
Liara the shadow broker found it but she was....late in her discovery. Her judgment is overall bad too, given that she trusted that cerberus bot eva core
I nice solution would be for the data to make itself available on Reaper invasion detection to evade being discovered by the Reapers. Playing the long game even if a couple cycle fail to use the data one of them will avenge the rest.
honestly, i think the problem wasnt the Crucible in and on itself...it was the whole "star child" thing. people would have probably been fine if shepard would have just used his last strentgh to blast all the reapers into smitherins with the thing instead of the whole "Conversation with a dead child metapher"thingie.
@@mermidion7552 i wasnt bothered by the ending being a conversation. I was bothered that the catalyst wasnt cool. Talking to a literal child who is the big bad is lame af. Woulda been cooler if it was an unfeeling monotone AI or sumfing
Conventional war with the Reapers never worked because they always arrived through the Citadel first, destroyed the galactic government, turned off the relays, and then wiped out all populations one at a time. In this cycle, all the different species in the galaxy were united against them for the first time in all the cycles. The ending should have been everyone united in a massive army and defeating the Reapers as a united galaxy in conventional warfare. The cost would have been enormous, but it would have been a victory in the end. That's how the whole game should have gone down. It was the whole theme of the story after all, uniting the galaxy, overcoming prejudice and division, to stand as one. But no, the writers yeeted that theme in the third game for some reason.
Imo, them finding the crucible plans and having barely enough time makes sense to me. They said durring the Mars mission that the Prothean Archive on Mars had tons and tons of data they still hadn't mined. I figure they started looking specifically for anti-reaper weapons and tactics in the archive after the collector base was destroyed, had they taken the reaper threat more seriously 2 years before, they might have used the archive back then, but Liara wasn't given access to it until post ME2
The Arrival DLC always drove me nuts look I get the reason for "stealth" but why wouldn't Shepard give the team a semi heads up, come looking after 10hrs or something 😵😵
Its especially odd when you have an old friend sitting in the middle of the Shadow broker web - Liara doesnt send any agents or hired mercs to save Shepard? Or doesnt come herself? What about Hacket or Anderson sending Ash or Kaidan. Also, Marine division should be already on its way to blow up the relay in case Shepard chose not to go to Bahak system and instead went to Earth to get arrested for working with Cerberus.
First time I played this DLC I wanted to see what would happen when the time ran out, I left my console on for two days and I regretted it when I found out I only had to wait for 2 hours later in the plot
The one with Anderson shielding himself too me, looked like a forshadow of ME3s final sequence. It looks pretty similar too the original scene before the extended cut changed it.
Bro. I was playing this DLC a few days ago and I was asking myself what happrns if that time runs out. I never bothered googling it, nice to get an answer though!
You can ignore the mission completely. Don't even go there. And nothing will happen. The game goes on and in ME3 the Reapers appear as normal. As to why one may not want to play that mission is simple: It's a solo mission. And on Insanity it's a pita. Hence: "Sometimes the only way to win is to not play the game." - WarGames.
Shepard being in Cerberus or not kind of depends on your choices. It's very possible to be reinstated as a spectre. Also, it's explained in ME3 that EDI blocked all of TIM's surveillance equipment when they cut ties...
That's a reference to the Suicide mission, where if you do another mission after your crew gets kidnapped, then Chambers will be the one dissolved in the collector pod.
What would really have been cool is if Shepard had timed it perfectly, actually LET the Reapers arrive through the Alpha Relay just seconds before the asteroid collided with it, thereby blowing up the relay, along with all the Reapers. Then, in that instant, he singlehandedly wins the war with the Reapers once and for all.
Lol at Harbinger being the TOTAL boss of the Presidium; and the Illusive Man standing there like "hey, at least in this ending, I don't die like an indoctrinated evil creepo"
I would like to point out one additional level of "completely screwed" that the galaxy would have been had Shepard not destroyed the Alpha Relay that you either forgot out about or didn't realize: The relay network would have been completely inaccessible. In ME1 on Ilos, Vigil told us that when the Reapers came through the Citadel relay in their cycle, they killed/indoctrinated all the leaders and immediately seized control of the mass relay system. That means had Shepard not destroyed the Alpha relay, the Reapers would have arrived in Arahtot, jumped to the Citadel, killed everyone, and then took over the relay network through the Citadel. Meaning every system would now be cut off from the rest and be left to fend for themselves with no hope of resupply, reinforcement or escape.
I think the 11th squad mate is Wrex rather Grunt. You can most likely make that out due to the armor he’s wearing, which is the same one when you meet with him on Tuchanka.
I've always been annoyed by Shepard's death at the start of ME2. Especially because it's a thinly veiled excuse to split Shepard up from his squad because Bioware wasn't sure at this point how they should handle the idea of recurring squadmates that could be dead or in a relationship with Shepard at the end of ME1, which is why the only two characters that DID return were the ones that couldn't die or hook up with Shepard in ME1.
That’s the #1 problem that RPGs struggle with. Every RPG wants to let players make big decisions that produce big consequences, but most RPGs simply can’t manage branching consequences. In the case of Mass Effect 2, the writers were unable to explore the massive decisions in ME1 (Rachni queen decision, Virmire decision, Council flagship decision) because they would have to create 8 unique versions of the game just to account for every combination of those three decisions. One brilliant RPG that bypasses this problem entirely is Undertale. In that game, the player doesn’t make numerous big decisions at key moments. Rather, the player makes one small decision a thousand times throughout the game: to kill or not to kill. This setup is brilliant because it allows for three huge branching consequences (good ending, neutral ending, bad ending) to be decided by a thousand tiny decisions that all matter.
If that was their main concern, they really set themselves up with problems for the future, given that all your what... 9? 11? squadmates in ME2 can die.
@@nicolasleroux5302 I'll admit I never played Undertale, but from my knowledge, aren't you locked out of the Pacifist route if you kill even one enemy and locked from the Genocide route if you spare even one, and you're put on the neutral route if you deviate at all? Because if that's the case, I wouldn't say that's making a thousand tiny decisions, that's making one big one at the start of the game and doing everything you can to follow through. I'm not saying Undertale is bad or anything, as again, I never played it, I'm just saying that if I'm right, it isn't exactly the same as the way you're presenting it. The only games I know of that actually have a system that works similarly to the way you said Undertale does are some of the Shin Megami Tensei games, albeit it's not a thousand decisions, it's a few dozen you make throughout the game. Basically you're given a meter that's essentially split into three sections: order, chaos, and neutral. You start in the neutral position and each choice you make pushes you towards either order or chaos, while there are also neutral choices that don't change your standing at all. Then near the end of the game, your place on the meter determines what ending you get. Interestingly, the neutral ending are treated as the "best" endings and are also the hardest to get because the neutral portion of the meter is the smallest one.
@@tSp289 Yeah. I'd imagine that's why you're once again split from your Squad between ME2 and 3, because you're being held responsible for your dealings with Cerberus and/or actions during the Arrival DLC at the start of ME3. That way there's a reason why you only start the game with a small number of squad mates. That's also a major reason why the only characters returning from ME2 are once again Garrus and Tali while everyone else from ME2 are turned into support characters with missions they'll be part of if they survived ME2 rather than returning as squad mates. They definitely handled it better for ME3 IMO, but at the same time, I'm still annoyed they didn't have most of your squad from ME2 return if they survived both that and the mission you come across them in ME3. I can understand some of them not coming back, like Kasumi, Mordin, Zaed, and Thane, but I find it to be a bit of a stretch that characters like Samara, Grunt, and Miranda don't come back to help you directly. Legion is also part of that, but I'm mentioning him seperately because his reason for not returning is the worst, as his death felt like a very deliberate and stupid way to make sure he doesn't come back to your squad. This while thing ties into one of my hot takes in regards to the trilogy: that a significant portion of the problems in Mass Effect 3 are cause by plot problems introduced in Mass Effect 2. Almost the entire squad from 2 not returning in 3 because almost all of them could've died in 2, the Reapers being made of of people, the relatively short amount of time it takes Reapers to invade from dark space even without the Citadel Relay, the way that there's literally no plan to fight the Reapers before the start of ME3, the council still never believing Shepard about the Reapers until ME3 when they invaded, the fact that defeating the Collectors did nothing for the overall plot of the trilogy other than setting up Cerberus' baffling heel turn come ME3. Like, I still LIKE ME2, but It's my least favorite on the trilogy because of just how much it screws up the plot for ME3 to try and fix, while also even retconning ME1 and making it worse because the Arrival DLC made Sovereign, aka the BEST villain in the series, look like an idiot because when you consider that Arrival established that it only takes about 3 years for the Reapers to reach the edge of the Galaxy from Dark Space, it leaves us questioning why Sovereign bothered with the Geth instead of just flying out to Dark Space itself and just getting the rest of the Reapers once the Keepers didn't activate the Citadel Relay. I mean, it's about a 6 year journey round trip, but that's literally nothing to a multiple millions of years old Reaper.
@@MoostachedSaiyanPrince I suppose you could view it as being locked into the neutral route if you accidentally kill someone at the start of the game. However, a large part of Undertale’s charm is that no two Neutral Routes are the same. If you kill a single minor enemy and nobody else, you get a very pleasant neutral ending. If you kill a few minor enemies and one or two main characters, you get a mixed neutral ending. If you kill 95% of people you come across, you get a deeply unsettling neutral ending. In fact, I believe there are over 90 different neutral endings you can experience- 90 endings determined by all of the tiny decisions you made throughout the game. And I think that’s pretty neat!
1:10 I would even recommend playing beyond the first knockout, because when you encounter Kenson again later, Shepard goes unconscious again and after that the timer goes down to about half an hour.
It would be really cool if they gave you the option to explore this future. As bleak as it is, it would be very interesting and fun since it would branch out into a completely different story. We would obviously lose, but it would be awesome to see, and we would also get to see more of how the reapers operated in past cycles.
Props to you for actually talking about each scene in that lol I thought I was going to have to keep rewinding and pausing it to see it. Also, that last shot of the girl turning and screaming and dying was hilarious
The crucible plan was there, it was found, and then nobody had any idea what it is for. So it was simply ignored. With the impending Reaper threat Liara started to search all prothean stuff for anything. The previous shadow broker also did such. Liara re-discovers the crucible, and now that she is aware of the reapers she can figure out what it is for.
Tbh when you mentioned that shepherd was brought back and it was ridiculous, I thought, finally someone also said it. Because I hated the fact that shepherd died and cane back like some space Jesus.
@@andrescortes7460 a lot of people definitly seem to forget shepard even died. Even the own ME3 team. Iv never understood why if ashly/kaiden is so offputting with you that they get angry when you find a new lover for ME2.
Would've made way more sense for him to have been severely injured and have been in a coma for 2 years as opposed to dead. That's how I play it in my own head Canon lol
So, if you play through the ME 1 & 2 without ever buying/playing the DLC content the events of the DLCs still occur, just without Shepard there. The Batarian pirates successfully crash the asteroid into the colony, and when Shepard encounters Malak (?) on the Citadel in ME3 they only recognize him by reputation. They have to crash a small asteroid into the Cerberus facility from the Overlord DLC to stop David from infecting the entire extra-net. Liara eventually finds and supplants the Shadow Broker but the friend she went to rescue dies in the process. For the Arrival DLC, if you never rescue the good indoctrinated doctor the plan to destroy the Alpha relay goes off without a hitch. Not really sure why that one would have been so similar, since the rest of the team was indoctrinated too, I guess it was just because to do otherwise would have broken the storyline.
I always assumed the timer was fake. I love that DLC except for one part. The cut scene after you get knocked out and before you enter the room with the reaper fragment. If you are going for the achievement, 1 screw up and damn you have to sit through a lot. Doesn't help that some of the enemies seem bugged so you can't target them with abilities. A galaxy ender fail screen is pretty dope though.
Yeah, thinking too much would really drive one insane. What you said is true that to make the story, certain seemingly impossible plot points have to be used. Shepard came back from the dead, no questions asked. Yet in many other movies, i have seen that there was no way to bring people back. So, yeah, each story and it's own rules.
I wouldn’t say it was “no questions asked”. It’s made clear in the game that Project Lazarus was incredibly difficult and expensive, as well as requiring some luck (Shepard’s brain having escaped any trauma for example). Only with Cerberus resources and an obscene amount of money was it even remotely possible, so as a plot point it was not at all a magic resurrection button a la Star Trek: Into Darkness.
Minor nitpick: "asset flip" _REALLY_ should not be used to describe any and all forms of reusing assets. "asset flip" is, *very specifically* the practice of buying a set of assets off an engine store, then republishing them unaltered in a way that is not transformative. It is _not_ recycling assets you originally created, or using bought assets from someone else for the purpose of enhancing a fully original product. Sorry, it just irks me when people use the term incorrectly to imply that re-using assets, or using purchased assets for their correct purpose, is in some way an unethical practice by associating it with the term "asset flip".
I think the cutscene is probably just some indoctrination vision Shepard gets as the reapers arrive. Maybe Harbinger beams it into his head to try and turn him. It kinda makes sense if you think that's probably how Saren was turned by Sovereign.
Oh, I've complained about the stupidity of Shepherd being jettisoned into space, surviving re-entry on a frozen planet, and being reconstructed from matter they would've had to spoon off the surface. And yes, you see his reentry trail in the atmosphere as the cutscene ends. So only one way he goes from there.
Mass Effect 2 also has the Normandy magically repaired after the credits, when you're ready to do that Arrival mission (keep some side missons for after so Shepard still has something that needs to be done out there). Perhaps the ship spent the whole credits in drydock lol 😝. Credits are definitely really long if you don't "fast-forwarding memory to a more recent one" Never had the patience to let the time run out. Two hours is still too much time left before you hit the switch, surely the cutscenes doesn't happen if you hit the switch (like if you only start waiting when Amanda blows herself up) because collision is still imminent (although I imagine you still get critical misson fail). Amanda would've been a great scapegoat for those Batarians, "Amanda blew up the relay"
Jack, Kasumi, Legion, Samara and Zaeed aren't attached to the crew enough to join them i guess, and Tali probably leaves to try to join the flottila. My question is if the Normandy is in the Viper Nebula when the reapers arrive, and they can use the alpha relay to go to the Citadel immediately and shut down the relays, how did the crew and the Illusive Man end up on Illium?
that is one of my biggest complaints about ME3: that you can't tell the council "for the 1st time in millions of years the reaper invasion doesn't start with the death of everyone on the Citadel and the council can't be bothered to accept the warnings of the impending and obvious.
Did the destruction of the Alpha Relay kill any of the Reapers? Depending on the timing, Harbinger may have been mere seconds away from showing up before the relay went off. If the explosion destroyed the entire system, it would make sense that the Reaper Vanguard would be caught in the blast radius.
Yeah, I had issues with nobody having any trouble with Shep resurection, the Aliance should've been an "enemy" to run against at some stage of ME2, when they find out that their hero was with Cerberus, even just to make the game little longer🤷♂️
This is even more complicated. If Cerberus had immediately captured Shepard's body and, using technology, kept it permanently in stasis and repaired it to bring it back to life, it would have been acceptable. Meanwhile, according to history, this body was moved from place to place, under unspecified conditions, for an indefinite period of time before work on it even began. The human brain begins to degenerate after a short period of time and is the most important element on which the effectiveness of a project such as Lazarus depends.
I honestly thought that absolute nothing will happen after the clock hits 0 😂 That is why I didn't bother to bring that up. Thank very much for this video and prove me wrong. Puthing that cutscene above the end game, expacting for someone to actually wait for 2 days or 2 hours for the time to hit 0 is actually a surprise.
I think Javik mentioned once the reapers had conquered the citadel the protheans had all but lost as they had no way to communicate with any other races or their empire. Something similar might've happened in ME3, as Dan explains with no way to build alliances it would be harder to fight against the Reapers.
After Legendary Edition i'm liking a lot more the gameplay of ME1 than the other two, it's more loose in battle, you make your own choices of armor, upgrade in suit and wepons, it changes the way you look, the minimap is better, bla bla bla. Wish all of them had that way of gameplay.
Speak for yourself this game's plot contrivances bother the hell out of me. The rushed reveal of the Crucible was mandatory because this game had no build up to anything meaningful about the main plot of the Reapers.
Its almost like they shouldve focused more than 2 hours of dlc on the reapers in a critically acclaimed sequel that contributes literally nothing to the plot hey
@@212mochaman Worse than that because of Shepard's pointless death and joining Cerberus unofficially. The game then introduces new characters and enemies that have nothing to do with anything. This makes no sense to me because Mass Effect 1 had ended on the notion that we were going to find a way to stop the Reapers. Mass Effect 2 comes along and Shepard saws their legs off.
@@spartanq7781 yeah but despite that the worst part of mass effect 2 is probably the 2nd most famous quote of the trilogy. "Ah yes, reapers". Its like EA came along and said great story, now be a good lapdog and retcon the whole bloody thing in one line so we can appeal to the masses would you
@@212mochaman Actually the lowest point is Shepard's death. It was because of that everyone in universe sits on ass for two years. Then the game used that as a excuse for everything else.
Mass Effect 2 broke the trilogy. It refused to explore the massive consequences of Sovereign’s failed invasion. It refused to utilize the Cypher plot device that was at the heart of ME1. It refused to teach us anything new about the Reapers. It refused to include intelligent sci-fi horror enemies like Sovereign and the Rachni Queen and the Thorian-enemies that defined the original. I just don’t understand how everything went so wrong. I don’t understand why they thought “The A-Team: In Space” was a great idea.
Watching this video has made me wonder though; why didn’t the Reapers simply hop the Relay network to get to the Citadel once they got to the Sol relay? With how critical the Citadel was, it doesn’t make sense for the Reapers to waste time ravaging Earth first.
I always wondered that too, I never got why the alpha relay was that special, like in game it seemed like bouncing between relays took seconds so once you got to one relay you should easily be able to jump to any other relay in a couple minutes tops. I remember at the end of me2 when Joker was like "we will be there in a few hours" and I always thought it was weird like we have ftl tech and the relays are basically instant.
Well, their ideology is "Yo dude, we heard robots were gonna kill you, so we made robots to kill you before that happens" so I think poor military tactics are the least of their problems.
The harvest had already been delayed multiple times by that point, so they probably decided that actually getting to the homeworlds and taking their inhabitants was more important than the citadel itself. That’s probably why they send Cerberus to take the citadel at first, because they’re too busy with actually fighting the galaxy.
@@Noschool100 Does make some sense. The Citadel doesn’t seem self sustaining, so the entire populace would probably be forced into a surrender (what the Reapers want) without worlds sending them food. It’s easy to forget the Reapers really do try taking prisoners to turn into goop for their slushee machines, but... eh xD
I'm playing through Arrival again and in the conversation you and Kenson have when you get to the Project base, you can ask about the timer and it'll leave you in a dialogue wheel, staring at the timer as it counts down. It's 51 hours and 20 something minutes. I had guessed that if you waited the timer out when it had got down to a couple hours after being capture, that Bioware would give you a game over screen but now I'm curious. Will the same thing happen if you're in a conversation dialogue? Because as far as I know, nothing happens when you're talking to someone. So would you still get the game over cutscene or would it just sit at 0 until you finished the conversation? Obviously, I'm not going to let my laptop run for two straight days to find out but I am still curious.
The crucible doesn’t feel like a plot device, it feels like resistance. A device built up over cycles. Species after species with different pathways of technology (mass effect being the exception) adding to and building on a device that could in theory kill the reapers. Probably starting as a weapon used in one cycle to kill a reaper one on one, then becoming this thing that could theoretically kill them all by using the mass relays. Every cycle since trying to pass down knowledge of the reaper killer. A general trend is at least one species seems to get their tech via inheritance as well (protheans, asari, humans) probably part of the reapers plans for 50000 years
Its not an image of either the invasion or anything of mass effect 3. That is basically an image of the crashed Normandy SR-1 where you find the crashed Mako & the previous helmet. So it is OBVIOUSLY the Normandy SR-1 crash site.
Would have been best to wait for the last moment to crash it into the relay so it impacts the moment all the reapers come threat then you take out as many as you can in one shot.
I sorta doubt that. In the lore, it is clearly stated that the Mu Relay(the one that connects to the mass relay near Ilos) was knocked out of its original orbital path by a supernova, but remained completely undamaged and functional. Not too far-fetched to wager a guess that Reapers would also not be particularly affected by it, then.
8:23 I've heard people complain about this plot point myself. Personally, I think it''d make more sense if Shepard was just in a coma for 2 years instead of dead.
One way you can see what happens in mass effect 3 if you dont destroy the alpha relay in mass effect 2 is by not doing the dlc in mass effect 2 but it makes it seem like the Easter egg ending in the me2 dlc is different than the ending in me3. I think what they should have done is what they did with thanos loyalty where when you "fail" you can still continue.
I highly doubt the images were "a callback to the first collector attack" most likely they needed some images and models to make a game over cutscene and took what they had. They wouldn't have spent money on new assets for a frame or two that no one would see without screencapping software.
I’ve heard people wish that we had the choice between saving and sacrificing the Batarians. And to that I say…”Ah! Don’t insult my intelligence by thinking I would ever choose to save the Batarians.”
Wow just the other day I played the arrival dlc for the first time, and thought why this relay and the time were so important and if sth happens for real if the timer runs out, we'll I know everything thx to you Big Dan!
Mass Effect huge replay value is due to all these branches they took time to code, write, animate, voice etc... As if they knew, some players will try this or that, and thought hey we got you and won't disappoint.
I’ve speculated that the true reason why Earth was the end goal (For both the war and the Reapers), is not just because of Shepard, but because Humanity has come farther in such a short time than most of the races. How long did it take them to get a seat on the Council and a Spectre? How long did it take them to master space flight? Humanity adapts because evolution dictates it, but unlike the Krogan we got smarter AND hit harder. Just like Shepard says in the Arrival DLC, “No matter how ‘insignificant’ we might be, we will sacrifice and we will find a way. That’s what Humans do.” And humans were sacrificed to destroy just one Reaper. Whose to say the lengths they would go to in the end? Yeah they might lose, but they’re not going out quietly or lying down.
what that Normandy crash part of the cutscene says to me is that they already had disaster footage from the beginning of the game so they chopped that up to show Shepard losing without having to animate something new.
You know if this happened in a timeline where a renegade Shepard gives the Illusive man the collector base, it might end with him working with Cerberus during the war vs the reapers
Unfortunately no, Shepherd and Illusive man split at the end of ME2 either way. Shep wants to continue looking for a way to stop the Reapers, and Cerberus continues to dive deeper into Cybernetics and Synthetic engineering. Basically, Illusive man wanted a bunch of Kai Lang's running around. Control, control. It's all about control for the Illusive man. Renegade Shep is much more of a "If it doesn't benefit us, blow it up" type guy. It's safe to assume that the Illusive man had started to succumb to indoctrination by the start of the third game. By halfway through me3, He is completely under Reaper control.
Illusive man becomes indoctrinated no matter what bcs he thinks he can control them(control option)Saren thought if we would just surrender to them everyone would be alright(synthesis)
It is a bit disappointing that the events of the Arrival DLC don't actually matter. If you don't do the DLC, the Alliance are the ones to destroy it. So either way, the relay is destroyed; hampering the Reaper's invasion for about 6 months.
You can't exactly blame Bioware, considering the alternative would presumably be if you didn't buy the Arrival DLC, ME3 would just be "welp, the reapers won before the game even started".
