I may be missing something fundemental here but for the timeline the reapers have of 50 000 years to allow organisms to re-evolve into sentience and then into spacefaring civilizations only to be harvested again brings up a major issue. Isn't 50 000 years way too short of a time period to allow the species in the galaxy to reach maturation? If truly all sentient life is destroyed it would take much longer than 50 000 years to allow for evolution to take place and for a civilization to become space bound.

Is it all "sentient" life though? I can see them bypassing earth if all we were doing at the time was banging rocks together.

All sentient life that has discovered the Mass Effect drive-thingys.

I would imagine that the Asari, Turians, Batarians, Humans, etc. had all been alive and evolving last time, but none of them had even discovered space travel so they were of no concern to the Reapers.

One more thing: If there are several different species now, why was there only one last time (the Protheans)? Or were there just more we didn't know about?

@believer258 said:

All sentient life that has discovered the Mass Effect drive-thingys.

I would imagine that the Asari, Turians, Batarians, Humans, etc. had all been alive and evolving last time, but none of them had even discovered space travel so they were of no concern to the Reapers.

One more thing: If there are several different species now, why was there only one last time (the Protheans)? Or were there just more we didn't know about?

Wondered that myself. I have a feeling that the Protheans might have exterminated the other races.

@KatyGaGa said:

I may be missing something fundemental here but for the timeline the reapers have of 50 000 years to allow organisms to re-evolve into sentience and then into spacefaring civilizations only to be harvested again brings up a major issue. Isn't 50 000 years way too short of a time period to allow the species in the galaxy to reach maturation? If truly all sentient life is destroyed it would take much longer than 50 000 years to allow for evolution to take place and for a civilization to become space bound.

As has been said, they only exterminate species who have reached galactic travel technology. Humanity was around last time they came (for the Protheans), but we were cavemen.

@believer258 said:

One more thing: If there are several different species now, why was there only one last time (the Protheans)? Or were there just more we didn't know about?

A lot of the text makes it sound like they were one massive galactic civilization, yeah. It makes sense, really. It would be completely random how many species reach galactic flight in a 50,000 year cycle.

@UlquioKani said:

Wondered that myself. I have a feeling that the Protheans might have exterminated the other races.

So more like the Rakata then. Interesting.

Only species that are space traveling are the concern of the reapers.

not according to creationists. maybe the reapers are christians

The discoveries of the Protheans made it easier for other races to get to where they got to in less time. They just built on what came before. Humans went from basically us, to a galactic power in about 200 years because they simply built on top of what the Protheans left behind.

@The_Ruiner said:

The discoveries of the Protheans made it easier for other races to get to where they got to in less time. They just built on what came before. Humans went from basically us, to a galactic power in about 200 years because they simply built on top of what the Protheans left behind.

Well it's not like the Protheans were the first to discover high technology in the game's fiction. That's kind of the point of the ME1 - Liara's discovered in her research that the were simply the latest in a line of space-faring races. The mass relays and the Citadel, rather than being Prothean creations, were actually made by the Reapers to facilitate the spread of galactic civilizations.

The games do say the Reapers wipe out all life, but I think that has to be interpreted simply as "civilization." In real life, 50,000 years was enough for humans go from behaviorally modern hunter/gatherers to spaceflight, so it seems like a realistic timeline in the game, if you assume that the Reapers ignore developing species. From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

I always assumed it was 50,000 years after the first citadel discovery.

ah, I see now. I was under the impression that the reapers would come into the galaxy and wipe out all sentient life forms. Sentience being defined as a being being able to reason, no matter how rudimentary. Which would mean that dolphins, puppies, kangaroos, zebras, monkeys etc. would be all be wiped out and the evolutionary cycle would have to start again.

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

@Rolyatkcinmai said:

@KatyGaGa said:

I may be missing something fundemental here but for the timeline the reapers have of 50 000 years to allow organisms to re-evolve into sentience and then into spacefaring civilizations only to be harvested again brings up a major issue. Isn't 50 000 years way too short of a time period to allow the species in the galaxy to reach maturation? If truly all sentient life is destroyed it would take much longer than 50 000 years to allow for evolution to take place and for a civilization to become space bound.

As has been said, they only exterminate species who have reached galactic travel technology. Humanity was around last time they came (for the Protheans), but we were cavemen.

There's an interesting side quest in the first game that is about just that, where...you discover a metallic orb on a random planet with a story about how a human caveman came into contact with a Prothean exploration ship that was studying humans.

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

@Dany said:

Only species that are space traveling are the concern of the reapers.

Space hamsters?

I always assumed the Reapers are like the Borg, interested in new biological and technological information, not just meat.

@AndrewB said:

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

I assume they are also interested in the technology the race created. Even if it's not as advanced as them, a little R&D on others technology/history/tactic would only make them stronger at the ends. I wonder if we'll find out the source of the reaper, where they coming from, and what was the evolution of the reaper (they can't have been big technological ship from the get go). I want to do a trip on the reaper homeworld! :0

                   

not according to creationists. maybe the reapers are christians

                   

               

@Darklight said:

@AndrewB said:

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

I assume they are also interested in the technology the race created. Even if it's not as advanced as them, a little R&D on others technology/history/tactic would only make them stronger at the ends. I wonder if we'll find out the source of the reaper, where they coming from, and what was the evolution of the reaper (they can't have been big technological ship from the get go). I want to do a trip on the reaper homeworld! :0

In a huge twist the Reaper homeworld is Earth! Shepard you were a reaper all along!

I think that the cut off point for when Reapers wipe out a civilization is a bit after hunter gather societies turn into agricultural ones. The reason I say this is because they don't only wipe out spacefaring species but single planet bound ones as well. Aphrasis a planet that had a planet wide extinction event happen to to its native species who were a Bronze Age civilization. The fact that population centers were wiped out is a pretty clear indicator of Reaper intervention being the cause of the destruction. I think that the Reapers wipe out species that could be a serious threat in 50000 years. If we use our civilization in comparison, our first Bronze Age began in 4000 BC. Even if humanity never discovered the Mars Prothean cache and we had to figure out mass effect ourselves that would still leave around 44000 years in which humans could have developed into a formidable adversary if we had been left alone during our Bronze Age. I think the Reapers extrapolate on where a species will be at in 50000 years according to average growth rates and if they are and will be farther along than they'd like they wipe them out just to be sure they don't have trouble later on.

@AndrewB said:

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

But that's not entirely right.

@DefaultProphet said:

@Darklight said:

@AndrewB said:

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

I assume they are also interested in the technology the race created. Even if it's not as advanced as them, a little R&D on others technology/history/tactic would only make them stronger at the ends. I wonder if we'll find out the source of the reaper, where they coming from, and what was the evolution of the reaper (they can't have been big technological ship from the get go). I want to do a trip on the reaper homeworld! :0

In a huge twist the Reaper homeworld is Earth! Shepard you were a reaper all along!

I can see it... the reaper is advancing slowly toward the commander. Shepard is out of breath and kneeling on the ground awaiting for the final strike. The reaper then whisper: Shepard... I am... your ancestor.

....

Ok that would be kinda lame.

@SteamPunkJin said:

@AndrewB said:

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

But that's not entirely right.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Their plan seems to be to harvest the majority of life and convert a single species into Reaper form - their plan didn't work with the Protheans (possibly due to their quad-strand DNA) and they were instead converted into a slave class - The Collectors. During the Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2 you see the Human-Reaper Hybrid that's being constructed. General idea being that when Shepard killed Nazara (Sovereign) she basically singled out humanity as the race to convert this cycle rather than harvest.

True that they emphasize they're after DNA, so ostensibly they're after good DNA. Not sure you're right that they couldn't use Protheans, though. The fact they left some alive as their slaves does not mean that most weren't gobbled up.

@Veektarius said:

@SteamPunkJin said:

@AndrewB said:

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

But that's not entirely right.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Their plan seems to be to harvest the majority of life and convert a single species into Reaper form - their plan didn't work with the Protheans (possibly due to their quad-strand DNA) and they were instead converted into a slave class - The Collectors. During the Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2 you see the Human-Reaper Hybrid that's being constructed. General idea being that when Shepard killed Nazara (Sovereign) she basically singled out humanity as the race to convert this cycle rather than harvest.

True that they emphasize they're after DNA, so ostensibly they're after good DNA. Not sure you're right that they couldn't use Protheans, though. The fact they left some alive as their slaves does not mean that most weren't gobbled up.

If they had turned them, the current reaper forms would resemble the Protheans. Thus, their current form has to be the alien race they choose as the "right" one last time 'round.

@SteamPunkJin said:

@AndrewB said:

@JeanLuc said:

@Gooddoggy said:

From codex entries and the like, the implication is that a species' technological development speeds up drastically once the mass relays/Prothean relics are discovered, which would seem to be the Reapers' plan. Ignoring low-tech worlds would be, for them, like leaving a field fallow to improve the soil, or setting a minimum size limit of fishing.

Exactly. The Reapers want to harvest advance life to create more of themselves. They would only be hindering themselves if they destroyed less advance species that will later become advance.

Considering their master plan seems to be turning a given race into a slurpee meal for their gigantic space robots, I can't understand why the race's intelligence would really matter. Blood and guts is blood and guts.

But that's not entirely right.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

Their plan seems to be to harvest the majority of life and convert a single species into Reaper form - their plan didn't work with the Protheans (possibly due to their quad-strand DNA) and they were instead converted into a slave class - The Collectors. During the Suicide Mission in Mass Effect 2 you see the Human-Reaper Hybrid that's being constructed. General idea being that when Shepard killed Nazara (Sovereign) she basically singled out humanity as the race to convert this cycle rather than harvest.

Collectors are to Protheans as Humans are to Husks.

I think that the cut off point for when Reapers wipe out a civilization is a bit after hunter gather societies turn into agricultural ones. The reason I say this is because they don't only wipe out spacefaring species but single planet bound ones as well. Aphrasis a planet that had a planet wide extinction event happen to to its native species who were a Bronze Age civilization. The fact that population centers were wiped out is a pretty clear indicator of Reaper intervention being the cause of the destruction. I think that the Reapers wipe out species that could be a serious threat in 50000 years. If we use our civilization in comparison, our first Bronze Age began in 4000 BC. Even if humanity never discovered the Mars Prothean cache and we had to figure out mass effect ourselves that would still leave around 44000 years in which humans could have developed into a formidable adversary if we had been left alone during our Bronze Age. I think the Reapers extrapolate on where a species will be at in 50000 years according to average growth rates and if they are and will be farther along than they'd like they wipe them out just to be sure they don't have trouble later on.

@lclay: If it's so easy for a civilization to surpass the reapers when they get a hold of their tech, how come the reapers don't continue advancing?

@lclay: If it's so easy for a civilization to surpass the reapers when they get a hold of their tech, how come the reapers don't continue advancing?

It only annihilates species who find the Mass Effect relay, Reapers don't kill evolving species..  This has been answered awhile back.  

@UlquioKani said:

@believer258 said:

All sentient life that has discovered the Mass Effect drive-thingys.

I would imagine that the Asari, Turians, Batarians, Humans, etc. had all been alive and evolving last time, but none of them had even discovered space travel so they were of no concern to the Reapers.

One more thing: If there are several different species now, why was there only one last time (the Protheans)? Or were there just more we didn't know about?

Wondered that myself. I have a feeling that the Protheans might have exterminated the other races.

I'm guessing for impact purposes. Maybe there were other species but the Protheans were the ones that were most important and were the ones that left records of their existence. 50,000 years is a long time to forget an extinct race.

I'm still amazed at how many people still think the Protheans built the mass relays and the Citadel. Are they just imitating the Council? "Reapers? No, you mean Protheans, yeah the Protheans built all that stuff. Sovereign was a geth ship! You can't prove otherwise! Lalalalala!"

@lclay said:

@OmegaChosen said:

I think that the cut off point for when Reapers wipe out a civilization is a bit after hunter gather societies turn into agricultural ones. The reason I say this is because they don't only wipe out spacefaring species but single planet bound ones as well. Aphrasis a planet that had a planet wide extinction event happen to to its native species who were a Bronze Age civilization. The fact that population centers were wiped out is a pretty clear indicator of Reaper intervention being the cause of the destruction. I think that the Reapers wipe out species that could be a serious threat in 50000 years. If we use our civilization in comparison, our first Bronze Age began in 4000 BC. Even if humanity never discovered the Mars Prothean cache and we had to figure out mass effect ourselves that would still leave around 44000 years in which humans could have developed into a formidable adversary if we had been left alone during our Bronze Age. I think the Reapers extrapolate on where a species will be at in 50000 years according to average growth rates and if they are and will be farther along than they'd like they wipe them out just to be sure they don't have trouble later on.

Yeah man, I was just thinking about what would happen if a species found the mass effect technology only a thousand years after a Reaping. I reckon given 49000 years to develop on what the Reapers left behind, any species would be formidable threat to the Reapers, they'd probably find the Reapers no threat at all really. As it is, the Asari only discovered the citadel about 3000 years ago in the ME timeline so even they must have been pretty primitive when the Protheans got wiped out.

Sovereign doesn't just signal every 50,000 years, the game never explicitly implies that the cycle is scheduled for 50,000 years, just that there is a cycle, and the last one was roughly 50,000 years ago. Sovereign sends the signal to the Citadel when he feels the time is right. Say that no one found the Citadel in 50,000 years... it would make no sense to Reap just to hit the schedule.

A major problem for the Reapers, and for Sovereign, is that this cycle has gone on too long. He wanted to start the Reaping long ago, but the Keepers weren't responding anymore and he didn't want to risk a frontal assault. So he corrupted a Spectre, someone with supreme access to every level of Council society. Through Saren he built an army of geth, krogan and asari commandos, and it would've worked if not for those meddling humans!

The Reapers are very scary killing machines... but this time there are more complications than they're used to. This time, the galaxy actually has a chance. The races have better technology, they're better prepared, and Shepard has done everything to debilitate the invasion efforts.

No species has surpassed the Reapers yet, they even say that. The Reapers intend for species, once they are space faring, to find the mass relays and citadel.

I always thought of it like the reapers were performing some type of science experiment that spans eons. It almost seems as though the reapers wipe their results every 50k years as some form of creating a control group by allowing non-spacefaring species to survive the cycle. Either way, because of the way ME2 ended (with the human-like reaper terminator thing) it makes me believe that whatever experiment the reapers have been formulating eon after eon, with failed results, that for whatever reason they are obviously extremely interested in humans; almost like humans are the outcome they have finally been waiting for.

@Brodehouse said:

I'm still amazed at how many people still think the Protheans built the mass relays and the Citadel. Are they just imitating the Council? "Reapers? No, you mean Protheans, yeah the Protheans built all that stuff. Sovereign was a geth ship! You can't prove otherwise! Lalalalala!"

@lclay said:

@OmegaChosen said:

I think that the cut off point for when Reapers wipe out a civilization is a bit after hunter gather societies turn into agricultural ones. The reason I say this is because they don't only wipe out spacefaring species but single planet bound ones as well. Aphrasis a planet that had a planet wide extinction event happen to to its native species who were a Bronze Age civilization. The fact that population centers were wiped out is a pretty clear indicator of Reaper intervention being the cause of the destruction. I think that the Reapers wipe out species that could be a serious threat in 50000 years. If we use our civilization in comparison, our first Bronze Age began in 4000 BC. Even if humanity never discovered the Mars Prothean cache and we had to figure out mass effect ourselves that would still leave around 44000 years in which humans could have developed into a formidable adversary if we had been left alone during our Bronze Age. I think the Reapers extrapolate on where a species will be at in 50000 years according to average growth rates and if they are and will be farther along than they'd like they wipe them out just to be sure they don't have trouble later on.

Yeah man, I was just thinking about what would happen if a species found the mass effect technology only a thousand years after a Reaping. I reckon given 49000 years to develop on what the Reapers left behind, any species would be formidable threat to the Reapers, they'd probably find the Reapers no threat at all really. As it is, the Asari only discovered the citadel about 3000 years ago in the ME timeline so even they must have been pretty primitive when the Protheans got wiped out.

Sovereign doesn't just signal every 50,000 years, the game never explicitly implies that the cycle is scheduled for 50,000 years, just that there is a cycle, and the last one was roughly 50,000 years ago. Sovereign sends the signal to the Citadel when he feels the time is right. Say that no one found the Citadel in 50,000 years... it would make no sense to Reap just to hit the schedule.

A major problem for the Reapers, and for Sovereign, is that this cycle has gone on too long. He wanted to start the Reaping long ago, but the Keepers weren't responding anymore and he didn't want to risk a frontal assault. So he corrupted a Spectre, someone with supreme access to every level of Council society. Through Saren he built an army of geth, krogan and asari commandos, and it would've worked if not for those meddling humans!

The Reapers are very scary killing machines... but this time there are more complications than they're used to. This time, the galaxy actually has a chance. The races have better technology, they're better prepared, and Shepard has done everything to debilitate the invasion efforts.

Indeed. Vigil says that while Saren was the most visible pawn of Sovereign, he was very likely not the first. It is even implied that the Rachni's hostility towards all the other races upon first contact was also Sovereign's work.

I think the reapers Are limited by the law of diminishing returns. They're abilities have limits. other species can come close to their abilities before the reapers have no choice but to destroy them.