What a fascinating character. Brilliant but misguided, simultaneously embodying the best and worst of our nature, the Illusive Man works from the shadows to further what he believes to be the common interests of humanity. He is a visionary in every sense of the word, having created a galaxy spanning extralegal organization with a (mostly) unified goal and nearly unlimited financial resources. In a galaxy filled with aliens of every stripe, he's able to keep up with or outpace all of them. The man is cunning enough to play the game on even footing with the goddamn Shadow Broker. If we need proof that we're just as capable or intelligent as any other Citadel race, we need look no further than the Illusive Man. But on the other side of the coin, he also proves that we, as a species, can be just as petty and tribal, with our own inner demons.
One of the things, I believe, that Mass Effect has encapsulated beautifully is a human being or, to be more precise, human nature. For instance, it took us only 8 years to receive an embassy on the Citadel when it mostly takes a century or more for any species to receive one. There is a reason why Council wanted us on their side. They recognized the potential benefits of that relationship, and also, the dangers of leaving us unchecked and as possible enemies.
If I would come to make a business deal with you and I would enter a room like this my next words to you would probably be: ¨Yes Sir¨, Right away Sir¨, ¨Anything else Sir ?!¨ ....
@@pacificblue5461 Bruh, being a ceo is being both spending and economical. But i agree with you on that, that's the part that goes under the spending part.
The Illusive Man was just visually brilliant. We don’t even have to talk about his merit as a character. Few characters in fiction are so aesthetically captivating and scenery-chewing as him. His room conveys an all-knowing presence with its endless screens implying he knows about everything happening in the ME universe. He has a lone chair, signifying that he alone makes decisions at Cerberus, a visual cue to his genius. It just speaks to his character overall: you admire but also fear him, you’re fascinated by him but you also don’t trust him. He’s created an empire out of nothing, and he’s utterly determined to see his vision of human dominance achieved. Just looking at his room, you know it’s not wise to bet against someone like this.
@@High_7 They never really flesh out G-man. He's just some weird being that can stop time or some shit. The Illusive Man is a part of the story, rather than a tool to move it along.
and probably the best one. I mean who else has a privilege of having an office in outer space and a grandiose view of a dying star before them? Nobody.
You know, some people see the Illusive Man as being "butchered" in ME3, but I'm actually fine with the arc his character goes on. In my mind, the final conversation you have with him in ME2 is the last time we ever meet him; everything after that is a different character. He died before ME3 even began, with some reaper walking around and speaking through his body. He was "butchered" in ME3 because, in the lore, that is EXACTLY what happens to someone who is indoctrinated. They begin to lose their mental faculties and contradict themselves and go insane, like he did throughout the Reaper War. Edit: Honestly I'd say the Illusive man is one of the only things ME3 actually did well (Aside from Tuchanka, Rannoch, the intro, and the final goodbyes on Earth).
Yeah its what happened to Saren, you could talk him into killing himself once you helped him realize how much he had messed up, just like the Illusive man in ME3's ending
To be honest, TIM was a loonie before ME3 as well. His depiction in ME2 is uncharacteristic because he is purposefully trying to appear nice to Shepard. But see e.g. Mass Effect: Ascension that gives a less biased picture.
"I tried, Shepherd" Have to give that man his dues. He tried his best but unfortunately his ambitions were far too great for only one human to shoulder.
That's exactly why I kinda stopped regular gaming ~2 years ago. I've tried to play the newer AAA titles and the well-received ones released in the past two years, and am utterly disappointed. Been having some free time and have decided to go back to "older" games with good stories, memorable characters and soundtracks...**sighs**
Yeah I haven’t bought a whole lot of new games in recent memory because of this but one day, just one day they will see how this is financial suicide and need to step up with the games alot
just replay all the older games, and enjoy the trip down memory lane. That's the thing about video games, you can play them over again, and it will feel new every time.
I miss how focused the experience was in this era. Currently, games are pumped full of side content and (essentially) mini-games. It's not all bad, but it can break the flow a bit. I'm 66% of the way through Spider-Man, but had to take a break due to banging out so much of the side content. Put RDR2 down weeks ago. Not sure if I'll get back to it. Witcher 3 was awesome, though. Haven't played anything great since.
The problem is, Basil Gaizka that you need a rocket/ship to get there AND have sufficient heat shielding. A proper window is necessary too, you dont want to go blind, but you dont want a darkened vision of the sun either... we were born in wrong generation, we can only hope that hibernation will be discovered soon, so we could freeze ourselves until the proper tech is avaible.
@@xDxD-hm5vt If we freeze ourselves there will be nothing to wake up to. It's up to us to develop that technology, so that our desecandants can thrive. That is the human way now. We work to better our species, not ourselves. If we are frozen then so is our progress, we would never wake up. We would be frozen until the sun expands to the point where the earth is swallowed, then we are no more. We are dead. The elements that cosnitituted our bodies have been recycled and we will finally be one with the universe agian. Life is entropy, and death is equilibrium. Do not fear it, embrace it. Enjoy your life. We are the universe. It has birthed us, given us the ability to live. Do not squander that gift, do not live your life wishing for another.
I think the best thing about his character was that he realized all the way up to the end exactly what he was doing even with the reapers banging on his brain. I frequently associate him with being manipulative, murderous and a kind of schemer. I equate him to some form of cancer that humans should have dispensed with by this point in the fiction of Mass Effect but when I look at his overall purpose and what he was trying to do, I feel bad for him. He truly wanted what was best for humanity and he really believed what he was doing was right.The world is full of grey areas and he was the most interesting character to me in the series because he made me think twice about the difference between right and wrong. A lot of the characters in the series seemed to focus on what he had done to accomplish his goals but never the goals that he had attained. He was the personification of "the ends justify the means". It would be easy to dismiss him as a kind of Hitler and put him in a box but I don't think I'd be the only one to say that if he hadn't made some of the decisions that he did the reapers would have taken over a lot sooner. Hell there wouldn't have been a second and third game if it wasn't for him reviving Shepard.
fireeverything many times in the trilogy do characters mention that they are glad that they aren’t the ones making the hard decisions. The illusive man embodies that very train of thought. Near the end he lost the thing he was fighting for, humanity
I've always seen him as a calculating opportunist in dire situations. Also someone that does whatever it takes and refuses to bargain with morality and ethics. Rationality and logic always come first in decision making, like an artificial intelligence. In fact, his eyes symbolize this concept. Paradoxically, humans are all about morality and ethics. Perhaps he was cheering for the wrong 'team'.
Just found out they were reviving the trilogy and I randomly thought of this song again. I had forgotton about this comment and thought, " jesus they screwed up Andromeda so bad". God damn THIS trilogy was so good. I'd give up alot of shit to go back and play this game with a blank slate and not know what happens.
I never thought of it like that, that the Illusive Man just has speakers that play his theme consistently. Also you sir just got yourself another subscriber.
Gaming Ambience I can't help but laugh now whenever I think about that. The Illusive Man just playing his song throughout the entire base and especially his personal chamber. It's a funny thought.
Maybe it helped his enormous ego. Wonder what his brainwashed soldiers and scientists thought hearing it all day while performing their regular duties there.
"Fascinating race, the Protheans. They left all of this for us to discover, but we've squandered it." The Illusive Man is one of the best characters in Mass Effect, and also one of the most tragic. He dedicated most of his life to finding a way to defeat the Reapers by sacrificing countless numbers of lives, but, in the end, that would be useless for he was already under Reaper control.
Mass Effect was great at creating an ambience, this is well known - it did this through the creation of convincing locations, discernable characters, an aura of mystery around some of them, and a pace with which to absorb it all. Great game, few other games are as good.
One thing I absolutely loved was how his music was NOT dark and sinister. It seemed intelligent, high tech, and superior, with a hint of a romantic kind of desperation. In the second game I really wanted to believe in something with him that would benefit mankind, even if it was radical. Throughout the whole second game, I played as a renegade who did not trust Cerberus, but in the end he still praised me enough when I made difficult choices (such as how I handled keeping David in project overlord) The whole second game where most of my crew approved of cerberus, I diddnt. But then my Shepard gave in handed him the collector base, and SUDDENLY everyone disapproved. I felt like that was a real turning point in my perspective. He did not want to stop the collectors because he cared. He wanted to replace the collectors so he could control the reapers and use people like test subjects as well. Even at the end-in the third game-part of you felt nostalgic and wanted to work with him even though you knew he was a lost cause
If EA didn't rush 3, if they let the game have 4 or 5 years development instead of 2, I think they would have expanded cerberus a bit more. Fallout let's you entirely side with different factions, something like that could have been implemented to side with the alliance or cerberus, and whichever you side with, the opposition seems indoctrinated. Imagine Hackett and the virmire survivor with reaper eyes
@@cpob2013100% agree Cerberus was doing good in the Second game. Even if you try to point out some bad, like Project Overlord the illusive man himself disavows what Archer did to his brother.
I think it's safe to say that this them and the Illusive Man himself were inspired by the X-Files (Cigarette Smoking Man/Cancer Man etc.). This theme (among many of the trilogy) are so iconic and stand the test of time. It was great to be back in this universe with the Legendary Edition. Brilliant work.
You know when you have one those sort of blush response feelings and along comes goosebumps and then the hairs stand on end at the back of your neck, this invoked that in me. Hearing this deeply melancholy track while seeing that dying star really puts it into perspective how nothing lasts forever. Nothing escapes entropy. Even magical Jovian stars die eventually. Mass Effect 2, great game.
At the end of Mass Effect 3 where Shepard has to choose which path to save the galaxy, he concedes that the illusive man was right all the time. The only way to defeat the reaper is either to control them or to sacrifice yourself, the illusive man of course chose to control the reaper to protect humanity's interest and as a mean to raise humanity status above all species in the galaxy. This proves that Illusive man's prowess and vision exceeds billions of species in the entire galaxy even Commander Shepard himself. I love that man, indeed he was indoctrinated by the reapers by he didn't submit to them he was too deluded to realize his limit, pride and overconfidence were his downfall. In the end, his victory was that he manages to achieve the impossibility the attempt to confront or control the reapers.
not necessarily sacrificing yourself, but sacrificing all synthetics. If you have over 3100EMS (used to be 5000 but they changed it) and destroy the reapers shepard survives the ending.
But he was never given the chance, not truly. "The reapers knew TIM could never control the reapers, because the reapers already controlled him" in other words, he only got so close because they knew there was nothing he could do
There is some thing very unique about this soundtrack it doesn’t make you feel emotional in a sad way but it makes you feel perplexed in the mass effect sense shepherd has this huge undertaking of trying to save the galaxy and doing the right thing but having to work with such a shadowy figure like the illusive man he doesn’t know or understand. I listen to this to fall asleep
The greatest antagonist in video game history. Misguided by his ambition, fell doing what he truly believed what was best for his species, until the reapers had him under their full control as a means to bring Shepard down.
"Mankind is not to be seen as only people. Mankind is a civilisation, Shepard. We both know that sacrifices are to be made for the greater good and we should not be egotistical about the resources and the people we lose in this war. What is a generation lost for a thriving and powerful civilisation living on for centuries, millennias even. I went against the very laws of nature to bring you back from the dead, do you really think anything could stop me from sacrificing what needs to be sacrificed on the altar of our success as a species, Shepard? You don't understand. If I have to go against these very laws of nature that bind us to our mortality, our fragility... I will. Again and again. Forever if I have to."
Having read all the books, comics and passed all 3 parts of the Mass Effect, my attitude to The Illusive Man and Cerberus can be described: "Neutral, mixed with disgust". I understand the goals and motives of this organization, to elevate and protect humanity, but the way they try to achieve it I hate, especially after what The Illusive Man has done to Paul Grayson, their experiments on people and not only and the study of Reaper technology where they subsequently indoctrination The Illusive Man. I understand why they did it, but I do not accept it. I have no hatred for Cerberus or The Illusive Man, I just have a neutral-disgust for him and his organization.
This is easily my favorite song in the entire franchise. I love Cerberus and what it stands for to begin with (bad writing in ME 3 aside), but I've honestly had this theme as my ring tone since ME 2 came out over ten years ago.
I've always loved this cutscene part of the mass effect - it reminds me the view from the Oblivion movie with Tom Cruise - but there was our Sun instead :)
I know this post is almost a year old, but what I found strange about that scene was that the Illusive Man didn't have his implants. You watch the video of TIM getting ready for the reaper implants just before you go into his room, and then he appears without them. However at the end of the game he has them. So I don't know if that was some sort of mistake by the developers or what.
@@hawksm2783 he had his implants, however they were underneath his skin. They were concealed as it was a surgical operation. However, after the battle of earth and the failure of the reaper operations to crush the remnants of human resistance, the Illusive man starts to grow impatient and his inner conflict with his indoctrination intensifies thereby overloading his implants. This, in turn, leads to the implants burning through his skin and starting to become visible. It is similar to when when we kill the biological Saren in ME1 and his skin and flesh burns off the reveal his implants. It is an obvious assumption that the Illusive man would do his best to hide his reaper based implants. He didn't know his plan would fail and he intended to address the leaders of the resistance after his plan was fulfilled and the reapers were under his control.
@@hououinkyoma1662 To bad that he was part of the Reapers game from the beginning. Their very last line of defense to be more accurate. It seems the Illusive Man never expected that the Reapers themselves were just tools of an incredible powerful god ai hiding behind the scene. In fact the Reapers had won once more through the Illusive Mans help if the AI hadn't intervened. I mean Shepard does succumb to his/her wounds on the finish line.
The Reapers saw great danger in Cerberus. The unprecedented potential of an organization that stood to protect humanity from numerous enemies, internal and external, and later to protect the whole galaxy. Even after massive indoctrination, Cerberus was still a threat to the Reapers. Thanks to me, the Reapers fell but at what cost? Is controlling the Reapers worth it?
This is legit in my floor plan in my house build right now. Minus the tech interface and hologram projector unless people know of any. But one wall will be completely made of LED panels to display the dying star. All reflective tiles and flooring. Surround sound to play this song on repeat. Can also act as a sensory deprivation/meditation/light therapy room as well. I don't do many video calls for business but I will hop into this room for those calls specifically.
I thought the Dragon age series missed a villain like the Illusive man, I mean, Corypheus is nice for what he is, but the charachter itself is just meh. Well, Tresspasser tried to rectify it, but as charming as I find *****, the Illusive man is more awesome.
metalgear thekonamipain Hey, try to look some in the Steam libraries - there's couple of interactive wallpapers available there, however they eats some of your pc's resources
When i started my first playthrough of Me2 the second TIM showed up on screen i knew i shouldnt trust him he gave of vibes that he would betray Shepard or any of his friends if it would somehow benefit him so under my Me2 playthrough evrytime i got an oportunity to screw over Cerberus and the Illusive man i did it
I saw it recently and thought the same thing. I would have much preferred that than what we got: surviving the gauntlet of infinite spawning marauders and banshees followed by three husks and the infamous Marauder Shields.
I wish ME3 dropped the idea of making him the bad guy completely. I guess BioWare didn't want to risk making people think that TIM might be in the right, tho, so they just indoctrinated him and stripped him of any redeaming qualities
