@BrockNRolla said:

So far, Thanix Cannons is the most plausible answer, but even then, they hadn't been shown effective yet, so while it's possible, it's still conjecture.

True, but even with upgraded firepower... there's a lot of Reapers out there.

I have the same problem with this that you do. I'm only four hours into the game, but when I see the main menu and see that allies are holding back the threat.... how the fuck would that even be possible? I mean, they breach our defenses early on with minimal trouble, and Sovereign was taken down because of the Saren connection after withstanding an entire fleet beforehand.

Maybe when I finish this and see more Reaper attacks, it'll make more sense as to how we even stand a chance.

There is a conversation you have with Liara aboard the Normandy where she says that according to her calculations it would take the reapers a century to conquer the galaxy (the same amount of time it took to conquer the protheans).

The prothean character later states that we have a better chance against the reapers then his people did because we are not one massive empire but a number of smaller ones.

IMO mass effect does a really bad job of explaining the true problem with the reapers. As far as I can tell from around 10 hours of game time, it is not that they are invincible, it is that they have such numbers that they will eventually weigh us down with vastly superior numbers. In fact in the areas where the numbers are reasonably even the reapers are being fought to a draw.

The true fuck up in this game's lore isn't the reaper threat, it is how Cerberus can go from a paramilitary terrorist group with decent numbers/cash to matching the combined arms of all the council races and its affiliates fleets combined. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the game ends with the illusive man punching Harbinger to death and then Haduken'ing the rest of the reapers into extinction, yeah it's that fucking ridiculous.

@Turambar said:

@ll_Exile_ll said:

@DeF said:

Shit like that happens all the time ... you make up a super powerful enemy that the hero can barely best one time which happens before the end and then you realize your big climax has to be a huge epic battle against an armada of these enemies and suddenly they can be taken down like regular folk in order to move the plot along...

Same thing happened in the final season of Buffy.

It happened in Stargate as well. The Anubis warriors were unbeatable, then they were wiping them out.

There were actually multiple episodes that season dedicated to the slow development of the weapon that makes killing those soldiers possible. Not an apt comparison.

I'm aware of that, I didn't say it was poorly executed or that I had a problem with it, it's just an example of the same type of situation. While the Anubis warriors were definitely better explained than the uber vamps, the result is the same. An enemy that was once practically invincible became only a minor inconvenience as the show progressed.

i submit this video to demonstrate whats going on.

jump 17 seconds in to cut to the chase faster

@BrockNRolla said:

Anyone saying "They killed one in ME1," needs to listen to their codex. They explain why that worked which doesn't explain the rest.

It's pretty funny seeing you post this and then seeing every subsequent person completely ignore it, even when you reiterate it.

@BrockNRolla said:

Anyone saying "They killed one in ME1," needs to listen to their codex. They explain why that worked which doesn't explain the rest.

It's pretty funny seeing you post this and then seeing every subsequent person completely ignore it, even when you reiterate it.

Sovereign was the first Reaper encountered by the modern Citadel races. Military leaders initially assumed that Sovereign was a geth or Prothean flagship commanded by Saren Arterius, a rogue Spectre. The truth was far more alarming. The massive ship was itself intelligent, and Saren proved to be under its control.

The attacks by Sovereign against Eden Prime and the Citadel removed any uncertainty about the Reapers' technological superiority. Sovereign's formidable shielding and firepower allowed it to hold off the combined fleets of the Citadel, and its mass effect fields proved powerful enough to let the enormous vessel land on a planet's surface.

Sovereign's mission -- to open a mass relay that would transport the other Reapers from dark space -- proved its undoing. During the Battle of the Citadel, Sovereign linked its consciousness to Saren's. When Saren's death corrupted the signal and shut down Sovereign's shields, Sovereign's destruction soon followed. 

I'll even be so kind as to provide ME1 and ME2 codex links. Do note the word virtually in the ME2 entry. And no mention of Soverign defensive capability in ME1 codex.
Full current Reaper codex.

Maybe you should read up on the codex yourself.
Ironic.

@Tennmuerti said:

@FunExplosions said:

@BrockNRolla said:

Anyone saying "They killed one in ME1," needs to listen to their codex. They explain why that worked which doesn't explain the rest.

It's pretty funny seeing you post this and then seeing every subsequent person completely ignore it, even when you reiterate it.

Point me to the codex entry in any ME3 game where it says that Reaper shields are completely impenetrable.

It has already been pointed out that there was simply not enough firepower present at the Citadel to take down Severign's shields.
Hence Soverign was destroyed when Shepard brought down it's shields for a bit by killing Saren.
There is no codex entry that has ever said that their shields are invulnurable to everything. They are simply extremely powerfull.

Here is your precious codex entry by the way:

Sovereign was the first Reaper encountered by the modern Citadel races. Military leaders initially assumed that Sovereign was a geth or Prothean flagship commanded by Saren Arterius, a rogue Spectre. The truth was far more alarming. The massive ship was itself intelligent, and Saren proved to be under its control.

The attacks by Sovereign against Eden Prime and the Citadel removed any uncertainty about the Reapers' technological superiority. Sovereign's formidable shielding and firepower allowed it to hold off the combined fleets of the Citadel, and its mass effect fields proved powerful enough to let the enormous vessel land on a planet's surface.

Sovereign's mission -- to open a mass relay that would transport the other Reapers from dark space -- proved its undoing. During the Battle of the Citadel, Sovereign linked its consciousness to Saren's. When Saren's death corrupted the signal and shut down Sovereign's shields, Sovereign's destruction soon followed.

I'll even be so kind as to provide ME1 and ME2 codex links. Do note the word virtually in the ME2 entry. And no mention of Soverign defensive capability in ME1 codex.
Full current Reaper codex.

Maybe you should read up on the codex yourself.
Ironic.

Yes. You're right. "Combined fleets" of ships couldn't breach the shields. That isn't enough fire power. "Combined fleets." Forget that the only reason they were able to kill it was because of the Shepard's actions with Saren. They just needed more fire power! It doesn't say anywhere that Reapers are impenetrable. You just need a lot more than the "combined fleets of the Citadel" to take down a single Reaper. That's only "virtually" impenetrable. Which is good since you know, the galaxy has plenty of those fleets just lying around, waiting to be used. That show of force in ME1 shouldn't have implied that the Reapers were unstoppable, only that we weren't shooting them hard enough.

So obviously my confusion and irritation isn't warranted. I'm just not reading carefully.

If you want to fill in the logic holes with your own explanations, such as "We just needed to shoot more guns," that's fine. Based on ME1 and the battle with Sovereign, Reapers seem to be an unstoppable killing force, or at least the big ones, without some kind of special circumstance. Lest we come up with some alternative plan to stop them, we can't win. That's part of what ME3 is about, which is obvious to anyone going into the game. The notion though that we can somehow "hold them back" makes no sense to me without evidence as to why.

They say, "We're holding them back!" and I say, "How?" If people think that our tech can do that or if we have enough troops, and that answer works for them, that's fine, but I don't think that answer is sufficient based on the previous games. That's why I think "Thanix Cannons" is a reasonable response. At least there is some evidence that Reaper backed technology can be destroyed with them based on ME2.

Pointing to the word "virtually" and saying, "Ha, got you," doesn't work as an answer for me given what I've been shown over the last two games. We've never seen a Reaper get taken down by conventional weapons and ME1 points to that being a futile effort. So why can it now work? I'm not trying trying to make people angry, I just want a reasoned response to my question based on what the games have provided.

@stinky said:

i submit this video to demonstrate whats going on.

jump 17 seconds in to cut to the chase faster

Wait, wait. Hold up.

ME3 is basically just one big Star Wars reference?

That makes an odd, perfect kind of sense.

Dont they even say in Mass Effect 1 that reapers arnt invincible? I remember Shepard asking Vigil why they dont just attack instead of using the Citadel to sneak in or whatever. It makes total sense that the reapers came off as unstoppable in the first game when no one even knew what the hell the reapers were and by the third game everyone is more prepared and the element of surprise is gone.

@Tennmuerti:

Look, realistically, my irritation is not for you, but the for the game. I apologize for any vitriol. It's fine if you don't think added explanation was needed. I just don't see it that way.

I'm very invested in the series though, and I've put a lot of thought into this problem, so don't dismiss it out of hand. My opinion is that at worst it's a plot whole, and at best, poor writing.

We can agree to disagree on this.

@Rawrz said:

Dont they even say in Mass Effect 1 that reapers arnt invincible? I remember Shepard asking Vigil why they dont just attack instead of using the Citadel to sneak in or whatever. It makes total sense that the reapers came off as unstoppable in the first game when no one even knew what the hell the reapers were and by the third game everyone is more prepared and the element of surprise is gone.

I believe that was more about cutting-off-the-head of the galactic empire so to speak. It would simply make their victory that much quicker. I don't think they ever said there was any doubt about them conquering though. It's been a while.

Clearly, as the ending from ME1 shows, it wasn't only weapons that killed Sovereign. As you can see from when him and his geth drones warp into the battlefield, he is literally CRASHING into other ships while taking their fire, even from ships as massive as the Ascension.

After Saren had either committed suicide or was killed, Sovereign desperately put all his consciousness into the circuitry of Saren's body in hopes of killing Shepard and opening the Citadel for the other Reapers himself. If Sovereign had not have took the risk and let his defences down, he would have got out unscathed. The downside to that option was obvious - the organic lifeforms would have a more focused defence and possibly make the Reapers' job more difficult by spreading themselves out more across the galaxy. After all, his purpose was to open the way for the other Reapers; even if it meant his own death he would at least try to see it through.

@BrockNRolla said:

@Rolyatkcinmai said:

Sovereign was the largest class of Reaper. There are only a handful of those. The vast majority of Reapers seen (so far, in my experience) in ME3 are the much much smaller dreadnought-sized Reapers. There are plentiful codex entries describing this. There are something like four or five different classes and types. They are far easier to take down than one like Sovereign. And yeah, the Thanix cannons definitely play a part.

Do those entries say anything about them being easier to destroy though? Or are you filling in the logic whole with a personal explanation? I'm not saying you're wrong for doing so, I'm just looking for some kind of evidence to show the writers thought about this rather than just waving their hands.

"These are smaller reapers" is a good enough answer for me, really.

Also I've not seen anyone destroy a reaper yet, but yknow.

I don't think the implication is that conventional weapons will win the day at all. It seems like you may be misinterpreting something. If I said the best chance of you and I surviving a rampaging silverback gorilla was to stick together, you'd probably expect a pretty slim chance of victory but it's probably still the best chance we have. They're gathering forces because, regardless of how effective everyone's weapons are, a combined assault is probably the best hope.

Likewise, Anderson speaks pretty bluntly about the fact that whatever unit he's with spends most of its time running away and that the reapers are sticking to the major cities for the time being, giving the resistance plenty of places to hide out. Holding off an enemy and defeating one are two completely different things.

@BrockNRolla: Having finished ME3, I can tell you that Reapers are just as hardcore dangerous as Sovereign was.

I will leave it at that.

There is a conversation you have with Liara aboard the Normandy where she says that according to her calculations it would take the reapers a century to conquer the galaxy (the same amount of time it took to conquer the protheans).

The prothean character later states that we have a better chance against the reapers then his people did because we are not one massive empire but a number of smaller ones.

IMO mass effect does a really bad job of explaining the true problem with the reapers. As far as I can tell from around 10 hours of game time, it is not that they are invincible, it is that they have such numbers that they will eventually weigh us down with vastly superior numbers. In fact in the areas where the numbers are reasonably even the reapers are being fought to a draw.

The true fuck up in this game's lore isn't the reaper threat, it is how Cerberus can go from a paramilitary terrorist group with decent numbers/cash to matching the combined arms of all the council races and its affiliates fleets combined. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the game ends with the illusive man punching Harbinger to death and then Haduken'ing the rest of the reapers into extinction, yeah it's that fucking ridiculous.

@Tennmuerti said:

@FunExplosions said:

@BrockNRolla said:

Anyone saying "They killed one in ME1," needs to listen to their codex. They explain why that worked which doesn't explain the rest.

It's pretty funny seeing you post this and then seeing every subsequent person completely ignore it, even when you reiterate it.

Point me to the codex entry in any ME3 game where it says that Reaper shields are completely impenetrable.

It has already been pointed out that there was simply not enough firepower present at the Citadel to take down Severign's shields.
Hence Soverign was destroyed when Shepard brought down it's shields for a bit by killing Saren.
There is no codex entry that has ever said that their shields are invulnurable to everything. They are simply extremely powerfull.

Here is your precious codex entry by the way:

Sovereign was the first Reaper encountered by the modern Citadel races. Military leaders initially assumed that Sovereign was a geth or Prothean flagship commanded by Saren Arterius, a rogue Spectre. The truth was far more alarming. The massive ship was itself intelligent, and Saren proved to be under its control.

The attacks by Sovereign against Eden Prime and the Citadel removed any uncertainty about the Reapers' technological superiority. Sovereign's formidable shielding and firepower allowed it to hold off the combined fleets of the Citadel, and its mass effect fields proved powerful enough to let the enormous vessel land on a planet's surface.

Sovereign's mission -- to open a mass relay that would transport the other Reapers from dark space -- proved its undoing. During the Battle of the Citadel, Sovereign linked its consciousness to Saren's. When Saren's death corrupted the signal and shut down Sovereign's shields, Sovereign's destruction soon followed.

I'll even be so kind as to provide ME1 and ME2 codex links. Do note the word virtually in the ME2 entry. And no mention of Soverign defensive capability in ME1 codex.
Full current Reaper codex.

Maybe you should read up on the codex yourself.
Ironic.

Yes. You're right. "Combined fleets" of ships couldn't breach the shields. That isn't enough fire power. "Combined fleets." Forget that the only reason they were able to kill it was because of the Shepard's actions with Saren. They just needed more fire power! It doesn't say anywhere that Reapers are impenetrable. You just need a lot more than the "combined fleets of the Citadel" to take down a single Reaper. That's only "virtually" impenetrable. Which is good since you know, the galaxy has plenty of those fleets just lying around, waiting to be used. That show of force in ME1 shouldn't have implied that the Reapers were unstoppable, only that we weren't shooting them hard enough.

So obviously my confusion and irritation isn't warranted. I'm just not reading carefully.

If you want to fill in the logic holes with your own explanations, such as "We just needed to shoot more guns," that's fine. Based on ME1 and the battle with Sovereign, Reapers seem to be an unstoppable killing force, or at least the big ones, without some kind of special circumstance. Lest we come up with some alternative plan to stop them, we can't win. That's part of what ME3 is about, which is obvious to anyone going into the game. The notion though that we can somehow "hold them back" makes no sense to me without evidence as to why.

They say, "We're holding them back!" and I say, "How?" If people think that our tech can do that or if we have enough troops, and that answer works for them, that's fine, but I don't think that answer is sufficient based on the previous games. That's why I think "Thanix Cannons" is a reasonable response. At least there is some evidence that Reaper backed technology can be destroyed with them based on ME2.

Pointing to the word "virtually" and saying, "Ha, got you," doesn't work as an answer for me given what I've been shown over the last two games. We've never seen a Reaper get taken down by conventional weapons and ME1 points to that being a futile effort. So why can it now work? I'm not trying trying to make people angry, I just want a reasoned response to my question based on what the games have provided.

@StarvingGamer said:

@twigger89

There is a conversation you have with Liara aboard the Normandy where she says that according to her calculations it would take the reapers a century to conquer the galaxy (the same amount of time it took to conquer the protheans).

The prothean character later states that we have a better chance against the reapers then his people did because we are not one massive empire but a number of smaller ones.

IMO mass effect does a really bad job of explaining the true problem with the reapers. As far as I can tell from around 10 hours of game time, it is not that they are invincible, it is that they have such numbers that they will eventually weigh us down with vastly superior numbers. In fact in the areas where the numbers are reasonably even the reapers are being fought to a draw.

The true fuck up in this game's lore isn't the reaper threat, it is how Cerberus can go from a paramilitary terrorist group with decent numbers/cash to matching the combined arms of all the council races and its affiliates fleets combined. At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the game ends with the illusive man punching Harbinger to death and then Haduken'ing the rest of the reapers into extinction, yeah it's that fucking ridiculous.

It's actually the opposite. The Reapers are incredibly strong, with one Reaper worth tens of thousands of troops/ships or more. However, they have entire planets to raze along with numerous colonies and afterwards they have to hunt down and kill anyone in hiding with any knowledge of the Reapers in order to ensure that the next cycle goes smoothly. For example, imagine you and 49 of your buddies have to kill 12 billion ants spread out over 42,500 square kilometers. Also you have to capture a decent percentage of them alive in order to use them as resources. Plus these ants will run, hide, try to trick you and, if you're not careful, possibly even kill one or two of you. It would take you a fucking long time to pull that off, and that's just one planet. In terms of Cerberus, I think you're giving them too much credit. Granted I'm only about 2/3 through the game so maybe Cerberus suddenly comes out with a massive fleet in the end, but the Cerberus I've seen has been a group likely a few thousand strong that has top-of-the-line tech. The reason they are able to cause so much damage is because they are striking where the opposition is spread too thin due to fighting a galactic war. Also the Illusive Man is cashing in all his chips by activating the numerous spies he has spent years inserting into prominent positions everywhere. I have yet to see Cerberus go toe-to-toe with a prominent portion of any military force anywhere. They perform small, surgical strikes in meaningful locations where they have an inside man to help feed them information and disrupt any attempts at mounting a defense. If the group they are attacking manages to rally and starts pushing back in a meaningful way, they cut their losses and retreat.

There are a ton more than 50 reaper ships. In fact I don't remember a situation where they said that the combined anti reaper fleet was any larger than the combined reaper fleet. I will grant you that the galaxy is a giant place and it will take time to absorb the organic matter of every conquered being. And the fiction does say that in a conventional war the reapers would inevitably win, but it also makes it very clear that it would take them a very long time to do so, so they are not so technically superior that they just swat away alliance/turian/citadel forces.

This must be my first time using the spoiler tag because I can't seem to get it to work right. If it is not working right let me know and I'll just remove the section.

well you can always use a gun that shoots thresher maws and it was a pretty good joke in the game...it would be super effective i guess!!!

@twigger89 said:

At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the game ends with the illusive man punching Harbinger to death and then Haduken'ing the rest of the reapers into extinction, yeah it's that fucking ridiculous.

Better ending than what ME3 got.

None of this arguing makes sense : ( You clearly see that some reapers are bigger than others from the start of the game. You also see that even the smallest reapers require repeated bombardments of heavy ordinance in a specific weak point to kill. Why is this breaking so many minds? It isn't like we were going to win the war by focusing every space ship in the galaxy at one reaper at a time. None of this really requires any exposition from the characters, just someone playing the game who actually cares enough about what is going on to pay attention to it. People trying to beat the game as fast as they in order to nitpick about why the reapers should be even more or less invincible are not those people.

all the reapers you personally kill in ME3 are the tiny land based ones (tiny in comparison to sovereign or harbinger). so its understandable they'd be significantly easier to kill.

also by the time ME3 comes around, every has upgraded to thanix tech, which is based on sovereigns main gun. so its understandable that they could shoot down reapers using that.

@BrockNRolla said:

@Kevin_Cogneto said:

@BrockNRolla: I think a lot of that stuff is in the codex. The reapers you see stomping around on the ground are like 200m tall and can be destroyed (though with great difficulty), but the full sized reapers are like 5km long and they're the ones that are basically invincible.

Fair enough. I just wish that was laid out more clearly in the storyline. I don't feel like they did a good job breaking it down. Hell, the fact that we have to read codex entries to piece it together seems like clear evidence of bad story design. Hoping that irritation goes away as I keep playing.

Liara lays it out very clearly at some point in the story.

I'm surprised no one has extrapolated the 'Thanix Cannon' response even more, or maybe I haven't read the entire thread :p

Sovereign being defeated wasn't supposed to happen, by achieving said goal, technology and weaponry got a bit of a jump start, as evidence by EDI and the Thanix Cannon. Even with this tech however, it's a matter of adapting Reaper tech (which is vastly more advanced than the rest of the galaxy, considering they built the Mass Relays etc, etc) to the current tech and weaponry of this cycle(which I don't think reached Prothean level yet) which gave them a better chance but not enough to win the battle alone.

Like i said, I didn't see anyone say this specifically so I decided to add my two cents, now someone add or subtract 98 more cents and we got a dollar :p

It's a sloppy retcon so the writers didn't have to work too hard. I'm having fun with the game but the story is pretty dumb. I think I'm about halfway through and I think they've had to ignore about half the established lore to force their story into working. Lazy, bad writing.