Hello dear readers. Not long ago I decided to go through the Mass effect trilogy. Of course, I couldn’t ignore the conversations, the subject of which was the ambiguous ending of the final game of the trilogy. A surge of furious discussion of this phenomenon occurred at the time when the game went into circulation.
Quite a lot of time has passed, but as it turns out, there are still communities where they continue to discuss this brainchild of the gaming industry. The most interesting thing in all these disputes is that people who did not like the ending of the game tried to find an excuse for the whole circus that was happening at the end of Mass Effect 3. And they found it, this explanation is called the “theory of intoxication”. She does a good job of explaining the events from the end of the game. I don’t intend to retell it; whoever seeks will always find.
Everything stated below will be based on "Theory of intoxication" To understand, I suggest you read it. Next will be my reasoning and questions to which the theory gives an answer, but they seem weak to me. I am driven by the desire to supplement the theory with my own guesses and assumptions about the game universe.
Anyone who has played this game knows that the theory very scrupulously tries to find explanations for the events that begin to occur from the moment the beam that leads to the citadel is stormed. The beam is the last frontier necessary to defeat the terrible reapers.
Our protagonist, in the company of his party members and other soldiers, rushes headlong towards the beam. The only enemy on their way is the Harbinger reaper, who very accurately shoots a laser of monstrous power at everyone who runs in front of Shepard and incinerates them in an instant.
The hero miraculously remains alive, the reaper does not hit the hero, but next to him. From this moment on, according to the theory, the Harbinger exerts a strong intoxication on the hero with not entirely clear intentions. Within the framework of the theory, Shepard is needed by the reapers alive so that the latter becomes the central consciousness of the reaper created from people. In my opinion, the motivation is so-so, considering that given such great value, the Reapers do not try to capture the captain himself, they do not build traps for him and do not try to lure him into them. The whole game is about battles, but there is no emphasis on the reapers’ interest in Shepard.
I decided not to start from the fact that this is all a dog’s dream, but to look from the outside. To come up with other interpretations of the actions of a race of intelligent machines, you will need to answer the question of what the entire galaxy is doing all the time besides fighting the Reapers and consolidating against a common enemy. The answer is they are building a forge.
Horn is not explained within the framework of the theory. What is this? How does this work? And why should lead to victory over these reapers? The theory does not provide a reasonable answer. However, I have come across thoughts that the Horn is an ordinary piano in the bushes and its appearance is an indicator of the creative impoverishment of the screenwriters. This opinion has a place to be, but there is another – the super weapon project itself, with astronomical requirements for construction, is the idea of the reapers, designed for organics to spend time and money on its construction during the war.
I have my own idea about the Horn.
As you know, the reapers were created by leviathans. This race conquered other races of their time due to their ability to intoxicate. They are squid-like in shape, lacking limbs with which they could build and fight, but drugged races did this work for them. The Reapers from their creators acquired the ability to intoxicate, albeit in a simplified version. When the first reapers rebelled against their creators, they captured the minds of those on whom the leviathans relied and they turned out to be vulnerable.
When the first harvest https://nokyccasinos.org.uk/review/madcasino/ came to an end, the surviving leviathans began to develop the very weapon that we call the forge. For the operation of this weapon, the energy of relays is needed and it is possible that the energy emitted by the mountain is aimed at causing the collapse of the reaper systems of which there were more and more from harvest to harvest.
Perhaps in each cycle they tried to build this weapon, but from cycle to cycle the reapers nipped these attempts in the bud, and the drawings floated here and there in each cycle. The reapers were unable to completely erase mention of the forge; the galaxy is too large and looking for beacons in it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.(This is the reason why the beacon on Eden Prime was found).
It is likely that the reapers did not know defeat, so there was no great need to search scrupulously.
Prothean spokes in the wheels
The Protheans, the predecessors of our cycle, turned out to be a thorn in the tentacles of the reapers. This imperial race, being broken into pieces, offered powerful resistance to the enemy and as a result, the war, which should have been lightning fast, dragged on for centuries.
Moreover, the Protheans had planets whose existence not a single ordinary person knew due to erased references to them. On one of them they studied relays and reapers. Local scientists have learned that the guardians of the citadel, in each cycle, are engaged in turning it into a huge relay, receiving a signal from the reapers, which opens the way for the latter to the huge strategic secrets of the races of the new cycle “Who owns the information, owns the world”. These scientists managed to make the guardians immune to this signal.
Yes, the Protheans died, but they confused the Reapers with almost all the cards in our cycle.
Shepard, what a pain in the ass
Almost everything, but not everything. The last straw was our hero. He/She had a hand in preventing the reaper, the Lord, from manually activating the citadel. Thanks to the captain, the reapers had to get to our galaxy on their own. More than two years.
Returning to the forge
Horn, t.Liara found his drawings with the help of the Shadow Broker network. The question arises: if the Alliance knew about their existence thirty years ago, why didn’t it begin work on its creation?. In my opinion, the answer is obvious – the Alliance found the drawings during the “war of first contact”. Then the Alliance’s technologies were inferior to those of the Turians. The construction could well have been extremely expensive at that time, and no one even knew what it was. The Reapers were a legend for all developed civilizations, but for people they were just empty words. So, just in case, it’s classified.
It’s more like luck that someone who is competent in Prothean matters has acquired such an intelligence network.
Fool proof
I don’t know how the process of launching ballistic missiles works, but something tells me that anyone I meet won’t be able to launch it.
Guided by this analogy, I can assume that Huge space weapons should also have their own “Foolproof”. True, with the caveat that drugged people pose a potential danger to the operation of this device. The threat is banal sabotage.
To solve this problem, the leviathans equipped the forge with a device that:
a) cuts down synthetics that fall into the forge’s operating area.
b) has a stupefying effect on everything and everyone and works at full capacity, perhaps even stronger than their creators.
The reason for the existence of such a device is simple. Any hask will lose its vitality even on the approaches to the forge; one who has been intoxicated for years is also not capable of making the choice to destroy the reapers and will be destroyed in one of two ways.
Let’s sum it up
As stated above. The Reapers are operating in a completely unfamiliar situation. They had to limp into our galaxy for two years and met fierce resistance. The races of this cycle rallied and in a short period of time built weapons that are capable of erasing the reapers and their cycles from the memory of the galaxy.
It is possible that these circumstances tell the powerful reapers that they can no longer “save the galaxy” as usual. Their interest now, albeit in a small way, is still in the stake on control over the forge. Remember how the ghost’s rhetoric changed from “the advancement of humanity in space” to “control over the reapers is our everything”. Even if he thinks he can control them, it’s them, the reapers put those thoughts in him.
They need Shepard, since the stupefaction had less effect on him than on the others. Their motives are that Shepard would hand them the forge into their mechanical tentacles.
Remember the beam on the citadel. It is located in the middle of destroyed London and there are strange obelisks around. Who built them? Cerberus? No, they are clearly of extraterrestrial origin.
When the captain gets up after the Harbinger’s deafening shot, he quickly flies away. Where is he going?? There are different opinions on this matter. My point is that he flies closer to the forge in order to gently continue the attack on Shepard’s mind, which is about to get to the citadel.
P.S
Well somehow. Throughout all parts, the Reapers talked to Shepard as if he were nothing. And in the end they began to place such hopes that the captain could not justify. It doesn’t matter which path the captain chooses. The reapers are finished anyway.
The Lord in the first part of the game said that they were called the Reapers by the Protheans, who gave voice to their destruction.