The fact that the Reapers only build one capital ship per cycle seems to imply that they rarely - if ever - lost one in their previous harvests, which speaks not only to the insidious genius of their original plan, but also just how much of a game changer the Prothean sabotage of the Citadel was.
Never really thought about it, but you're right. That extra bit of time was just enough for the galaxy to reach a point where it can, at least, bloody their noses during a harvest.
Id say they are arrogant They claim no evidence of theirs is ever left behind, yet they leave the Derelict Reaper there for milions of years. So that means they are not omnipotent and merely full of themselves
Or it speaks to the poor writing behind them and how if you even glance at their plan and cycle, they would've failed long ago. Losing even 2 capital ships a cycle (which is very likely in a galactic scale war) would but them at a constant net negative. It doesn't imply they rarely lost them at all in the slightest, in fact there is plenty of evidence that they lost them regularly. BioWare fucked up trying to explain their eldritch horror race and left them full of plot holes that don't hold up upon closer examination. They always attack at the same level of technological progression because that is the perfect time to harvest and they have used the same tech with little to no shown innovation in millions of years. Unless they are regularly getting pacifistic races in between the massive war-like ones, their continued existence makes no sense. And if they attacked at lower tech levels to make up their numbers then they nullify and contradict the very cycle that drives them. Note for future reference, if you are going to explain an eldritch horror and turn it into just an advanced scifi race, don't fuck it up and make sure you have competent writers. I love the Mass Effect games but they fumbled the later Reaper lore hard if you bother to give more than a passing glance. They are scary and terrifying, but their continued existence to this point is quite nonsensical when you look at how incompetent the Reapers actually are. A past cycle should've defeated them long ago. In fact I would argue that if they have always followed their cycle to the letter (which we have no reason to believe they deviated) they should've been exterminated in the first few cycles.
@@Nyx_2142 Not really. Try to remember that their plan was built around their point of entry being the Citadel itself, which is the hub of the Mass Relay network, and that the station itself was intended to encourage and entrap the most powerful race or races in each cycle into using it as a major governmental hub. The idea being that the one they left behind would signal the Keepers on the station to trigger the relay built into it, bringing the entire Reaper force to bear against the station's defenders. They would then be able to lock the Mass Relay network down, presumably only allowing ships with a Reaper IFF to use them, before pillaging the station for all of the records of that cycle and then going about the harvest. Wide-scale conflict, like we see in Mass Effect 3, wasn't supposed to happen. The races of any given cycle were never supposed to be able to travel and reinforce like they did in the game, but be isolated so that the Reapers could destroy and harvest them peacemeal. Yeah, their plan was rather intricate, but it was built on the arrogant assumption that no one would be able to recognize their design, let alone interfere with it in any meaningful way. And that arrogance led to a lack of proper fail safes in the event that anyone ever did screw with their cycle, like when that group of Protheans managed to alter the Keepers at the end of their cycle. This isn't a writing problem, this is a character flaw with their faction as a whole being exploited.
_"You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."_ _"Human, you've changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction."_ The Reapers are indeed a perilous and threatening antagonist to Humanity and the rest of the Milky Way in Mass Effect, and a cool foe to face off against. Yet still, so much of them remains a mystery. It would be interesting to find out more about them in future ME games. Also, it is nice see more content on this channel. I look forward to seeing what other universes are to be visited.
I thought Sovereign was more threatening than Harbinger. Yes Harbinger was older, but you never got a battle against him. Sovereign was taking everyone else out with him. He was trying to win. With a ME game. I would like to see first contact and how Shepard became an N7. That or like you said go back in time to the creations of a Reaper, or The Morning War
I'm kind of the opposite, I think the story would have benefited from leaving some of the big questions around the Reapers unanswered. As Tolkien once said of his own setting: "Leaving gaps in the map, mysteries unsolved, and questions unanswered is what keeps you interested even years after having read my works. On the other hand, what you know, you get bored with".
This is the most effective enemy in video games ever. The concept of them was so unique, their design was mysterious. Their power seemed so impossible to beat, you felt their superiority instilling fear unto you. Their origin was intriguing, keeping you wanting to know more. This was an enemy that was able to hold Mass Effect Trilogy.
I have a theory... the reaper we met in Mass Effect 1, Sovereign, was the newest reaper built. This seems to be selected as he would have the collected memory of the Protheans, as it was after their cycle things went wrong
Unfortunately that’s not possible as the reapers never created a reaper from the prothean race due to some form of error with their DNA hence they were formed into the collectors
@@DeclanMcCreadie The interesting thing is this is merely speculation from EDI. It has never been factually confirmed. EDI assumed they didn't make a reaper because the collectors exist, but I ask this. Why couldn't the Reapers have done both, build a Prothean Reaper and create the collectors. Some evidence for this being the case is that the collectors seemed to first appear near the end of the total extiction of the Protheans which took 300 years or so in total. Maybe they had already completed a Prothean Reaper at that point and so enslaved or killed the remaining Protheans. According to Javik and Liara the Prothean Empire seemed to span the entire Galaxy and was larger than the combined Citadel races own empires.
I actually have a theory of my own regarding what race was used to create sovereign. We know that when an organic species is harvested, their bodies are melted down into genetic paste that would be used to create the hull, while their minds are digitally copied and used to create the gestalt intelligence of the reaper. My theory is that the race used to create Sovereign was the Nazara. Since "that's what the programs inside the old machine called themselves."
"Find peace in the multiverse." Oh yeah, after having a talk about immortal space squids that are hell bent in exterminating all life in the Galaxy, I'LL BE SLEEPING WELL TONIGHT!
I love the Mass Effect universe and it'd be great to see more of your in depth analysis on the ME tech. The reapers are one of the most terrifying antagonists in gaming, right up there with the Flood.
Glad this has come back from whatever beyond it was hibernating in. Very ominous video detailing the Reapers. I could almost hear sinister cackle in the background. Figuratively speaking. Would love for more. If I can give suggesting, how about tackling a subject form a silent universe: E99 from Singularity.
The fact that Shepard finds the burned toy in the destroyed sunflower field....and the little girl is nowhere to be seen is very chilling. You can feel both Shepard's anger and sense of urgency at the same time
I like the fact that they streamlined their methods in order to complete their given task in the most effective way possible. Help them to advance quickly so they can be harvested quickly.
It’s also unsettling. The idea of another, infinitely more powerful species cultivating your _entire species history_ according to some pre-set ideal is remarkably terrifying; you aren’t sentient. You aren’t a person; you’re product.
It's pretty ingenious and incredibly insidious. By giving the sentient species of the galaxy a readily accessible way to achieve FTL with the Mass Relays, they can be certain that they won't develop another form of FTL travel that doesn't use the relays. That way, when the Reapers return, they can flip a switch and turn off the FTL capabilities of all the species in the galaxy. Making them easy pickings for the Reapers to take on just a few at a time with overwhelming numbers. Those Prothean scientists that snuck back aboard the citadel after the Reapers had harvested, really saved everyones bacon.
The reapers a force so powerful that everything seemed hopeless. Like the horrors they would bring and something that can even worm it’s way into your head
It is my greatest fear. Imagine if the humanity discovered FTL technology and started to explore distant stars and then BAM! your civilization is going to be erased by ancient AI because they dont want to see a space parasites. A dark forest theory
this was awesome, thank you for making this! having played the Original trilogy, this was a fantastic overview and filled in some gray areas too. love this content, you did an incredible and professional job
One thing about the Reapers that should be noted, and really cannot be overstated, is the vastly overwhelming strength of their actual fleet when it comes to traditional space combat. The combined fleets of every spacefaring species in Mass Effect, as of 2186, cannot even begin to approach them. It is clearly demonstrated in both ME1 and ME3 that a single capital-scale Reaper outclasses the combined firepower of multiple dreadnought-class starships. According to the in-game codex, as of 2186 there are a grand total of 85 dreadnoughts in the Citadel fleet (39 turian, 20 asari, 16 salarian, 9 human and 1 volus). The geth are thought to possess nearly as many dreadnoughts as the turians, but the exact number is not known. It is also not known how many (if any) dreadnoughts exist in the batarian Hegemony, but considering the tactics they employed during the Skyllian Blitz, the batarians' fleet must be significantly smaller and weaker than that of the human Systems Alliance. The point is, even the most generous estimate possible would put the total number of dreadnoughts in service throughout the Milky Way galaxy under 150. And a single capital-scale Reaper is equivalent to at least 5-10 of them, at once. Now, to get a sense of the likely strength of the Reaper fleet, we have to do some speculative math based on the data presented in the games. And to establish the kind of scale we're talking about, I'm going to start with two assumptions that are probably wrong. Assumption #1: Each harvesting cycle results in the creation of one, single capital-scale Reaper. Assumption #2: The Leviathan of Dis, which was confirmed in ME3 to have been a derelict Reaper, represents the very first harvesting cycle. As I said, both of these assumptions are probably wrong. Considering the likelihood of at least a handful of Reapers being disabled or destroyed during each harvest, for every harvest to result in only a single new full-size Reaper, and a few smaller destroyer-class Reapers, would be too inefficient for the cycle to sustain itself. It also wouldn't really be worth the amount of time and resources required for each harvest, every 50,000 years. And even using this transparently flawed reasoning, the Leviathan of Dis couldn't represent the very first harvest, because if it did, the cycle would have ended there. But just for the sake of establishing a numerical baseline, let's go ahead and assume that both of these things are true (even though, realistically, neither of them probably are). The Leviathan of Dis is important because the salarians who originally discovered it determined it to be over one billion years old. And as we all know, the harvesting cycle repeats like clockwork every 50,000 years. This would mean that, operating under the two assumptions outlined above, there are AT LEAST 20,000 capital-scale Reapers in dark space. And given that both of those assumptions are almost certainly wrong, the true number is probably much higher.
I wish we got the original planned origin of the Reapers; they were originally created billions of years ago to solve the riddle of Heat Death, and that them taking races to make new Reapers was an attempt at making a Reaper that could find the solution of heat death. Also hottake: I enjoyed Andromeda and hope we get a continuation of that plot at some point
@@nihilityjoey dunno about it being the heat death of the universe, Pierce might be confusing them with Worm's Entities, but in ME2 there is a loose thread about Haestrom's star dying too quickly, with a guess being made that it's 'dark energy' that's doing the damage. Sadly this plot thread is as I said, loose, with no mention ,at-least to em knowledge in ME3, or Andromeda for that matter.
Agreed, it would make Harbinger's line about how they're our salvation through destruction actually make sense. I assumed that all the DNA gathered of other species over the millions of years would allow the Reapers to repopulate the galaxy of these extinct species if they ever solved the problem. Plus it's infinitely better than "Yo I heard you don't like being killed by synthetics, so we built some synthetics to kill you every 50,000 years, so you won't be killed by synthetics."
Who would had thought that an enemy with such a cheese name like reapers. Would actually be a very good written and developed character. As a kid playing these games specifically ME2. I always thought that Reapers were actually humans that failed in the previous cycle. And pherhaps were able to save humanity by putting us on earth. Thus why the whole "we are made on its image" thing.
Playing mass effect... Again.... I've been thinking though. Sovereign (the Reaper from ME1). Might actually be the Reaper that was made from the remains of the Prothean race, before ours
"Find peace in the multiverse." I get that this is just a twist on your regular tagline, and I'm not knocking it. Just feel like pointing out that this would be harder than you think, since the multiverse would include all incarnations of Warhammer.
Ah yes, The Reapers. Can you imagine the Doom Slayer VS reapers? Poor reapers, RIP. Also... Halo's ships can take reapers like they were a joke... fight me.
I think a large prt of their strategy was the mass use of the reaper-ified indonctrinated races in ground battles. Which I think the Combined UNSC and Sangheili might be able to hold the line on. They'd stand no chance against the Forerunners though. Just send out Offensive Bias.
lol Covenant ships, maybe. Even then Covenant ships were able to be destroyed by primitive UNSC ships, while even an entire Alliance fleet that has technology on par with the Covenant was nearly decimated by one Reaper
Ok so yes domm slayer would probably use something like sovereign as a baseball Bay but I doubt most kinds of halo ships would be able to do anything to a reaper unless something like the infinity got a precise mac round shot on the core and that's only assuming they could take the barriers down
In a straight fight, sure. But that's not what makes Reapers dangerous. Even in spite of the power they wield in their own franchise, indoctrination lets them punch well above their own weight class if you bring in other sci fi universes.
Here is the thing about the Reapers/Leviathans regime that is established in the Milky Way. The Leviathans were largely responsible for guiding intelligent races in return for tribute. We are never told what this tribute is. How do we know that the conclusion Leviathans made about synthetic and organics conflict wasn't forgone because of their meddling? It's ironic the solution they proposed, creating an AI to solve the problem of synthetics is entirely something you shouldn't do. So essentially the zeitgeist put forth by the Leviathans/Reapers is a fallacy of their own making and it only solidifies the Reapers hold on the galaxy guaranteeing their perpetual existence. Lastly doesn't this seem like an indoctrination attempt? To confuse the lower life in the galaxy into thinking the synthetic vs organic question has a predetermined conclusion? It guarantees their continued reign as the apex predators of the galaxy. Its also something the Leviathans originally did to sapient races. The sapient races perhaps know no evolutionary gain without Leviathan meddling somewhere down the line. I think the synthetic vs organic question is a fallacy as you are able to find a more nuanced reality to the Geth vs Quarian conflict. It was clear that it stemmed from a faction war in the Quarian society and was instigated out of fear. The Geth only responded to protect themselves, they never once tried to rise up against the Quarians and in fact stopped pursuing when the Quarian's were out of threat range. The Geth also acknowledge that they have no ill will towards their creators and understand the fear. This is an amazingly emotionally intelligent take from a synthetic species that supposedly only thinks in binary and is a tool.
Even machines playing games today will pause the game if they feel like they cant win. Self preservation is a law of existence, sonlong as both have the power to destory and create their can be peace, it is only when a machine or organism becomes self destructive, that all hope is lost.
My worst nightmare is simply an intergalactic Reaper fleet... they hide in dark space, outside the stars of the Milky Way, so we don't know what they're doing. We assume they're sleeping or resting between cycles. But they could be doing ANYTHING. They are beyond our understanding after all...
Interestingly enough if you put the Reapers in most Sci Fi they would downright struggle to getting massacred in a space conflict due to how unadvance and underpowered they are to a faction like the Imperium of Man or Galactic Empire in the first old EU. Even the realm of New Eden in EVE Online would kick them to oblivion with a fleet of a few dozen Titans and hundreds of other ships and independent factions.
The Reapers' most powerful weapon isn't their guns, it's their indoctrination. Plenty of mainstream Sci Fi ships could beat one in a fight, but how many are immune to being destroyed from the inside? The Imperium of Man is governed from the top down and already manages its population like cattle. Indoctrinate a few extremely powerful people, and worlds of trillions are being handed over to their new xeno overlords for processing. Also it's unclear just how large the Reaper armada is, but I think it's fair to put an upper estimate somewhere in the *millions.*
@@viperblitz11 Indeed! Entice tech advancing races with tech > Concentrate the leadership with and within that enticing tech> stealth monitor those races as they advance, explore, discover other races > begin the indoctrination when the time comes. A very insidious and clever Fifth Column strategy.
1. How do the reapers scrub the citadel clean of any thumbdrives, pieces of paper and writings on the wall? 2. How do the reapers know there's no civilizations not yet capable of large scale space flight, but can observe the space battles, the bursts of the gateways, or the use of the catalyst? 3. How do the reapers scrub planets clean of hidden bunkers? Seems like they can't, the Protheans did it, and if you fail ME3, Liara leaves a bunker behind 4. Pretty sure a highly civilized planet destroyed by the reapers, will be extremely obvious to an archeological team investigating on-site, how do they deal with this? 5. Do the reapers know about any primitive species contacted by a space faring species? Do they exterminate those too? 6. The reapers come at fixed time intervals, but it really seems like there's many random factors that could affect the rate of technological development, like what if they come late and find out that a machine intelligence have already taken over the galaxy and have a much stronger fleet than the reapers?
1. The erasure isn't directly stated, but it's implied that the menials not turned into Reapers are responsible for sensitive operations in places too small for a Reaper to fit. Also, they don't erase evidence of the ones they harvest, only that of the Reapers themselves. Though sometimes things slip through the cracks, like the 37 million year old derelict that was found orbiting a gas giant in the middle of nowhere. 2. They don't prey on species that aren't interstellar. They *want* them to find the Mass Relays and expand to the stars. Also Mass Effect teeters on the harder end of sci fi (with the exception of certain alien clarktech that's incredibly advanced, but framed as something which could be understood eventually), and so respects the speed of light. 3. Again, this is also done by menials. A cycle can last centuries, from the first strike to the last gasps of their prey. Most of the decisive battles are done in the first few years and all the following ones are spent harvesting and mopping up. 4. This is a main plot point in the series lore. Prothean ruins dot several planets across the galaxy. New civilizations tend to build on and around the ruins of predecessors, so basically nothing has survived more than one cycle. 5. Primitive species are left alone, as they'll be the next generation to be harvested. The Protheans had documented every intelligent species seen in the games, but the Reapers didn't touch them. 6. Contrary to popular belief, it's never confirmed that the Reapers come at fixed intervals. It's just an assumption that characters made because the last cycle was 50,000 years ago. The objective of the Reaper vanguard (one ship that's left behind after each harvest) is to observe the state of the galaxy's species, and to call the fleet once the organics are ripe but not *too* powerful. Furthermore, they originally built the interstellar infrastructure so that civilizations would come to depend on it, further weakening their resistance once the Reapers showed up and disrupted the primary means of transit. It's also not confirmed just how huge the Reaper armada is. They've been building it up over a billion years.
Hope this helps. 1. It was originally the Keepers until their link was severed. 2. The artifacts they leave behind indoctrinate any sapients nearby, and they in turn report their findings. 3. They can't; they're not infallible or all-knowing. If the bunkers are cut off from the information network or other potentially indoctrinated sapients, they don't know the bunkers exist. 4. Evidence of the Reapers is scrubbed by leftover indoctrinated workers, the same way the Leviathans scrubbed evidence of their existence using thralls. 5. That depends. In the game's canon, the Reapers had interacted with early humans during the harvest of the Protheans but they left them behind to develop because they were still young. In addition, there were space faring and non-space faring species that cut themselves off from the galaxy on purpose to avoid interaction with other species. If you don't interact with Reaper tech, they don't really know you exist. 6. They leave at least one Reaper behind to watch and study sapients, and when they feel the time is right, they start their takeover in the same way they did with Saren: they indoctrinate, subjugate, divide, and conquer the galaxy starting with the Citadel (the seat of government, government, and galactic commerce).
As much as I like to argue how underrated the Reapers' power is, they would get absolutely shit stomped by the Forerunners. The Flood is a more interesting versus, though I think it really depends on whether a Reaper could indoctrinate a Gravemind before succumbing to the Logic Plague (if at all). I'd probably bet on the Flood overall.
Maby the reepers were only told of half of there purpus We know the ai was told to find a way to protect biological life and machines the ai's responce was to melt down biologicals and stuff them into reapers mabye ounce a solution to the biological synthetic problem is found the genetic matirial inside each reper can be used as an ark to bring back all speshes
Wow. It almost looks like how WE treat animals, plants, rocks, soil and the entire planet as a whole. 😊 But I feel that's not what the video games bros are going to take away from this.
So when a reaper ship is destroyed the civilization stored in it is gone forever? Seeing as they only make 1 per cycle this would mean tons of civilization were destroyed during the war.
Oh the forerunners would dominate them. Completely. Don't get me wrong, the Reapers are immensely powerful and dangerous antagonists... but the forerunners were next level. I'm talking "so advanced that energy harvesting literally draws power from the big bangs of other universes" kind of next level. They may have lost to the flood, but it still took a LONG time for the flood to whittle them down to the point of them using the Halo array, and the flood, unlike the reapers, become exponentially more dangerous over a much smaller amount of time, and can eventually understand, use, and even create new forerunner tech because of all of the forerunner minds it's absorbed.
Good video. But after coming from the wiki I can tell you pretty much just read me what I JUST finished reading. So that was a little disappointing. Was looking for more of a personal explanation supported by facts found in the wiki. You have a good narration voice though
Still not sure how to feel about this. Destroying the reapers doesn't seem like a good solution to me. It's the only one where Shepard might live, but, on the other hand, you have to wipe out ALL ancient civilizations. Seems like the exact genocide they wanted to inflict on us. Except, we're one cycle worth of species, they are x-1. All the cycles, minus our one cycle. Wiping the reapers seems to me like a bigger crime they them wiping us. Controlling the reapers also doesn't seem reasonable. Shepard dies and on top of that, all races from X-1 cycles are basically slaves to the races of just the latest cycle, even though in terms of wisdom and technology, it prolly shouldn't be like that. Synthesis also seems weird to me. Everybody is forcefully upgraded without actually knowing the consequences, + Shepard dies. Woopy. And I didn't understand the last one at all. How does the next cycle get out of trouble?! The reapers just decided to extract this last cycle and then give up?
The fact that the Reapers only build one capital ship per cycle seems to imply that they rarely - if ever - lost one in their previous harvests, which speaks not only to the insidious genius of their original plan, but also just how much of a game changer the Prothean sabotage of the Citadel was.
Never really thought about it, but you're right. That extra bit of time was just enough for the galaxy to reach a point where it can, at least, bloody their noses during a harvest.
Id say they are arrogant
They claim no evidence of theirs is ever left behind, yet they leave the Derelict Reaper there for milions of years.
So that means they are not omnipotent and merely full of themselves
Or it speaks to the poor writing behind them and how if you even glance at their plan and cycle, they would've failed long ago. Losing even 2 capital ships a cycle (which is very likely in a galactic scale war) would but them at a constant net negative. It doesn't imply they rarely lost them at all in the slightest, in fact there is plenty of evidence that they lost them regularly. BioWare fucked up trying to explain their eldritch horror race and left them full of plot holes that don't hold up upon closer examination. They always attack at the same level of technological progression because that is the perfect time to harvest and they have used the same tech with little to no shown innovation in millions of years. Unless they are regularly getting pacifistic races in between the massive war-like ones, their continued existence makes no sense. And if they attacked at lower tech levels to make up their numbers then they nullify and contradict the very cycle that drives them.
Note for future reference, if you are going to explain an eldritch horror and turn it into just an advanced scifi race, don't fuck it up and make sure you have competent writers. I love the Mass Effect games but they fumbled the later Reaper lore hard if you bother to give more than a passing glance. They are scary and terrifying, but their continued existence to this point is quite nonsensical when you look at how incompetent the Reapers actually are. A past cycle should've defeated them long ago. In fact I would argue that if they have always followed their cycle to the letter (which we have no reason to believe they deviated) they should've been exterminated in the first few cycles.
@@Nyx_2142 Not really. Try to remember that their plan was built around their point of entry being the Citadel itself, which is the hub of the Mass Relay network, and that the station itself was intended to encourage and entrap the most powerful race or races in each cycle into using it as a major governmental hub.
The idea being that the one they left behind would signal the Keepers on the station to trigger the relay built into it, bringing the entire Reaper force to bear against the station's defenders. They would then be able to lock the Mass Relay network down, presumably only allowing ships with a Reaper IFF to use them, before pillaging the station for all of the records of that cycle and then going about the harvest.
Wide-scale conflict, like we see in Mass Effect 3, wasn't supposed to happen. The races of any given cycle were never supposed to be able to travel and reinforce like they did in the game, but be isolated so that the Reapers could destroy and harvest them peacemeal.
Yeah, their plan was rather intricate, but it was built on the arrogant assumption that no one would be able to recognize their design, let alone interfere with it in any meaningful way. And that arrogance led to a lack of proper fail safes in the event that anyone ever did screw with their cycle, like when that group of Protheans managed to alter the Keepers at the end of their cycle.
This isn't a writing problem, this is a character flaw with their faction as a whole being exploited.
They probably build one for each species
_"You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."_
_"Human, you've changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as Reapers are your salvation through destruction."_
The Reapers are indeed a perilous and threatening antagonist to Humanity and the rest of the Milky Way in Mass Effect, and a cool foe to face off against. Yet still, so much of them remains a mystery. It would be interesting to find out more about them in future ME games.
Also, it is nice see more content on this channel. I look forward to seeing what other universes are to be visited.
I thought Sovereign was more threatening than Harbinger. Yes Harbinger was older, but you never got a battle against him. Sovereign was taking everyone else out with him. He was trying to win. With a ME game. I would like to see first contact and how Shepard became an N7. That or like you said go back in time to the creations of a Reaper, or The Morning War
@@peterversiononeA S S U M I N G D I R E C T C O N T O L is a banger though
I'm kind of the opposite, I think the story would have benefited from leaving some of the big questions around the Reapers unanswered. As Tolkien once said of his own setting: "Leaving gaps in the map, mysteries unsolved, and questions unanswered is what keeps you interested even years after having read my works. On the other hand, what you know, you get bored with".
@@thundercricket4634 ; That is true for some people, yes. But not everyone.
In this case, to each their own.
The Leviathan dlc wasn't enough for you?
This is the most effective enemy in video games ever. The concept of them was so unique, their design was mysterious. Their power seemed so impossible to beat, you felt their superiority instilling fear unto you. Their origin was intriguing, keeping you wanting to know more. This was an enemy that was able to hold Mass Effect Trilogy.
I have a theory... the reaper we met in Mass Effect 1, Sovereign, was the newest reaper built. This seems to be selected as he would have the collected memory of the Protheans, as it was after their cycle things went wrong
Unfortunately that’s not possible as the reapers never created a reaper from the prothean race due to some form of error with their DNA hence they were formed into the collectors
@@DeclanMcCreadie The interesting thing is this is merely speculation from EDI. It has never been factually confirmed. EDI assumed they didn't make a reaper because the collectors exist, but I ask this. Why couldn't the Reapers have done both, build a Prothean Reaper and create the collectors.
Some evidence for this being the case is that the collectors seemed to first appear near the end of the total extiction of the Protheans which took 300 years or so in total. Maybe they had already completed a Prothean Reaper at that point and so enslaved or killed the remaining Protheans. According to Javik and Liara the Prothean Empire seemed to span the entire Galaxy and was larger than the combined Citadel races own empires.
I actually have a theory of my own regarding what race was used to create sovereign. We know that when an organic species is harvested, their bodies are melted down into genetic paste that would be used to create the hull, while their minds are digitally copied and used to create the gestalt intelligence of the reaper. My theory is that the race used to create Sovereign was the Nazara. Since "that's what the programs inside the old machine called themselves."
Slightly disappointed we didn't hear the reaper horn sound effect at least once
"Find peace in the multiverse."
Oh yeah, after having a talk about immortal space squids that are hell bent in exterminating all life in the Galaxy, I'LL BE SLEEPING WELL TONIGHT!
I love the Mass Effect universe and it'd be great to see more of your in depth analysis on the ME tech. The reapers are one of the most terrifying antagonists in gaming, right up there with the Flood.
Glad this has come back from whatever beyond it was hibernating in.
Very ominous video detailing the Reapers. I could almost hear sinister cackle in the background. Figuratively speaking. Would love for more.
If I can give suggesting, how about tackling a subject form a silent universe: E99 from Singularity.
The fact that Shepard finds the burned toy in the destroyed sunflower field....and the little girl is nowhere to be seen is very chilling. You can feel both Shepard's anger and sense of urgency at the same time
The best thing to grace my morning, good to see you again ZeroZero!
I like the fact that they streamlined their methods in order to complete their given task in the most effective way possible. Help them to advance quickly so they can be harvested quickly.
It’s also unsettling. The idea of another, infinitely more powerful species cultivating your _entire species history_ according to some pre-set ideal is remarkably terrifying; you aren’t sentient. You aren’t a person; you’re product.
It's pretty ingenious and incredibly insidious. By giving the sentient species of the galaxy a readily accessible way to achieve FTL with the Mass Relays, they can be certain that they won't develop another form of FTL travel that doesn't use the relays. That way, when the Reapers return, they can flip a switch and turn off the FTL capabilities of all the species in the galaxy. Making them easy pickings for the Reapers to take on just a few at a time with overwhelming numbers. Those Prothean scientists that snuck back aboard the citadel after the Reapers had harvested, really saved everyones bacon.
I find it interesting that I’m watching this after recently finishing my play through of Mass Effect Legendary Edition
Iam watching this after countless playthroughs over the years. Still interesting.
YES! Great video!
Looking forward to some more Mass Effect lore!
Cheers!
The reapers a force so powerful that everything seemed hopeless. Like the horrors they would bring and something that can even worm it’s way into your head
It is my greatest fear. Imagine if the humanity discovered FTL technology and started to explore distant stars and then BAM! your civilization is going to be erased by ancient AI because they dont want to see a space parasites. A dark forest theory
I took control as the best ending turning them into galactic guardians and with that the story line can easily be connected back with Andromeda.
Ummm the cannon is that adromeda happened BECAUSE of the reapers
@@Slushi_Slushi What do you mean? I never played Andromeda. They were fleeing from the milky way?
they couldt beat the reapers and so instead fled the milky way@@Kokorocodon
@@Slushi_Slushi fascinating
Great break down definitely more Mass Effect content
this was awesome, thank you for making this! having played the Original trilogy, this was a fantastic overview and filled in some gray areas too. love this content, you did an incredible and professional job
First video I've seen outside of your main channel 00, glad you're branching out and covering many different franchises
Love to see more content.
One thing about the Reapers that should be noted, and really cannot be overstated, is the vastly overwhelming strength of their actual fleet when it comes to traditional space combat. The combined fleets of every spacefaring species in Mass Effect, as of 2186, cannot even begin to approach them.
It is clearly demonstrated in both ME1 and ME3 that a single capital-scale Reaper outclasses the combined firepower of multiple dreadnought-class starships. According to the in-game codex, as of 2186 there are a grand total of 85 dreadnoughts in the Citadel fleet (39 turian, 20 asari, 16 salarian, 9 human and 1 volus). The geth are thought to possess nearly as many dreadnoughts as the turians, but the exact number is not known. It is also not known how many (if any) dreadnoughts exist in the batarian Hegemony, but considering the tactics they employed during the Skyllian Blitz, the batarians' fleet must be significantly smaller and weaker than that of the human Systems Alliance.
The point is, even the most generous estimate possible would put the total number of dreadnoughts in service throughout the Milky Way galaxy under 150. And a single capital-scale Reaper is equivalent to at least 5-10 of them, at once.
Now, to get a sense of the likely strength of the Reaper fleet, we have to do some speculative math based on the data presented in the games. And to establish the kind of scale we're talking about, I'm going to start with two assumptions that are probably wrong.
Assumption #1: Each harvesting cycle results in the creation of one, single capital-scale Reaper.
Assumption #2: The Leviathan of Dis, which was confirmed in ME3 to have been a derelict Reaper, represents the very first harvesting cycle.
As I said, both of these assumptions are probably wrong. Considering the likelihood of at least a handful of Reapers being disabled or destroyed during each harvest, for every harvest to result in only a single new full-size Reaper, and a few smaller destroyer-class Reapers, would be too inefficient for the cycle to sustain itself. It also wouldn't really be worth the amount of time and resources required for each harvest, every 50,000 years. And even using this transparently flawed reasoning, the Leviathan of Dis couldn't represent the very first harvest, because if it did, the cycle would have ended there. But just for the sake of establishing a numerical baseline, let's go ahead and assume that both of these things are true (even though, realistically, neither of them probably are).
The Leviathan of Dis is important because the salarians who originally discovered it determined it to be over one billion years old. And as we all know, the harvesting cycle repeats like clockwork every 50,000 years.
This would mean that, operating under the two assumptions outlined above, there are AT LEAST 20,000 capital-scale Reapers in dark space. And given that both of those assumptions are almost certainly wrong, the true number is probably much higher.
I wish we got the original planned origin of the Reapers; they were originally created billions of years ago to solve the riddle of Heat Death, and that them taking races to make new Reapers was an attempt at making a Reaper that could find the solution of heat death.
Also hottake: I enjoyed Andromeda and hope we get a continuation of that plot at some point
Where was this stated?
@@nihilityjoey dunno about it being the heat death of the universe, Pierce might be confusing them with Worm's Entities, but in ME2 there is a loose thread about Haestrom's star dying too quickly, with a guess being made that it's 'dark energy' that's doing the damage. Sadly this plot thread is as I said, loose, with no mention ,at-least to em knowledge in ME3, or Andromeda for that matter.
Agreed, it would make Harbinger's line about how they're our salvation through destruction actually make sense. I assumed that all the DNA gathered of other species over the millions of years would allow the Reapers to repopulate the galaxy of these extinct species if they ever solved the problem. Plus it's infinitely better than "Yo I heard you don't like being killed by synthetics, so we built some synthetics to kill you every 50,000 years, so you won't be killed by synthetics."
So glad this channel is back :)
Oh goddess, your voice is so soothing.
More please! This content is great
This is like a movie documentary . Thank you so much ! This was great . Saved .
Ah yes, "Reapers".
No views: 3 likes.
Makes sense
As a mass effect vet player this is a interesting seg 👍👍
Now look at the Iconians ships and constructs.
Keep building your channel! You have the makings of a Master Lorist of game worlds!
new sub here
He never had the makings of a varsity athlete.
Don’t fear these guys!
I don’t think it’s one per cycle but one per advanced species. Males more sense for me
Thanks for the content
Who would had thought that an enemy with such a cheese name like reapers. Would actually be a very good written and developed character.
As a kid playing these games specifically ME2. I always thought that Reapers were actually humans that failed in the previous cycle. And pherhaps were able to save humanity by putting us on earth.
Thus why the whole "we are made on its image" thing.
Just imagine how devastating Reapers would be if they possessed the numerous powers of Darkness from Destiny 1-2!
The Reapers looks like the Leviathan.
The catalyst mentions that should your character brings it up with the leviathan dlc
Harbinger, the first reaper, was created in the leviathan's image and was used as a template for all reapers that followed.
Still want a lore core video on raidens cyborg chassis breakdown. Please. Please, please
Playing mass effect... Again.... I've been thinking though. Sovereign (the Reaper from ME1). Might actually be the Reaper that was made from the remains of the Prothean race, before ours
Bro you did that video great!!
The Reapers are brutal !!!!
Underrated channel!
Can you make a video about Mass effect reapers vs halo flood and what force will win?
for like the first 30 seconds I thought the guys voice was the damn ingame narrator lol
Nice. More Mass Effect content.
"Find peace in the multiverse."
I get that this is just a twist on your regular tagline, and I'm not knocking it.
Just feel like pointing out that this would be harder than you think, since the multiverse would include all incarnations of Warhammer.
Ah yes, The Reapers.
Can you imagine the Doom Slayer VS reapers? Poor reapers, RIP.
Also... Halo's ships can take reapers like they were a joke... fight me.
I think a large prt of their strategy was the mass use of the reaper-ified indonctrinated races in ground battles. Which I think the Combined UNSC and Sangheili might be able to hold the line on.
They'd stand no chance against the Forerunners though. Just send out Offensive Bias.
lol Covenant ships, maybe. Even then Covenant ships were able to be destroyed by primitive UNSC ships, while even an entire Alliance fleet that has technology on par with the Covenant was nearly decimated by one Reaper
Ok so yes domm slayer would probably use something like sovereign as a baseball Bay but I doubt most kinds of halo ships would be able to do anything to a reaper unless something like the infinity got a precise mac round shot on the core and that's only assuming they could take the barriers down
In a straight fight, sure. But that's not what makes Reapers dangerous. Even in spite of the power they wield in their own franchise, indoctrination lets them punch well above their own weight class if you bring in other sci fi universes.
they resemble me, they make sounds so do i, they shoot lasers so do i, are they massive world destroying creatures? so am i
Best metaphor for Commies in fiction.
Low key, the Reapers remind me of headlice.
Here is the thing about the Reapers/Leviathans regime that is established in the Milky Way. The Leviathans were largely responsible for guiding intelligent races in return for tribute. We are never told what this tribute is. How do we know that the conclusion Leviathans made about synthetic and organics conflict wasn't forgone because of their meddling? It's ironic the solution they proposed, creating an AI to solve the problem of synthetics is entirely something you shouldn't do. So essentially the zeitgeist put forth by the Leviathans/Reapers is a fallacy of their own making and it only solidifies the Reapers hold on the galaxy guaranteeing their perpetual existence.
Lastly doesn't this seem like an indoctrination attempt? To confuse the lower life in the galaxy into thinking the synthetic vs organic question has a predetermined conclusion? It guarantees their continued reign as the apex predators of the galaxy. Its also something the Leviathans originally did to sapient races. The sapient races perhaps know no evolutionary gain without Leviathan meddling somewhere down the line.
I think the synthetic vs organic question is a fallacy as you are able to find a more nuanced reality to the Geth vs Quarian conflict. It was clear that it stemmed from a faction war in the Quarian society and was instigated out of fear. The Geth only responded to protect themselves, they never once tried to rise up against the Quarians and in fact stopped pursuing when the Quarian's were out of threat range. The Geth also acknowledge that they have no ill will towards their creators and understand the fear. This is an amazingly emotionally intelligent take from a synthetic species that supposedly only thinks in binary and is a tool.
Even machines playing games today will pause the game if they feel like they cant win. Self preservation is a law of existence, sonlong as both have the power to destory and create their can be peace, it is only when a machine or organism becomes self destructive, that all hope is lost.
I wonder if the reapers traveled to other galaxies
My worst nightmare is simply an intergalactic Reaper fleet... they hide in dark space, outside the stars of the Milky Way, so we don't know what they're doing. We assume they're sleeping or resting between cycles. But they could be doing ANYTHING. They are beyond our understanding after all...
Ah yes, Reapers....
The council dismissed this claim. XD
Well done!
Interestingly enough if you put the Reapers in most Sci Fi they would downright struggle to getting massacred in a space conflict due to how unadvance and underpowered they are to a faction like the Imperium of Man or Galactic Empire in the first old EU. Even the realm of New Eden in EVE Online would kick them to oblivion with a fleet of a few dozen Titans and hundreds of other ships and independent factions.
The Reapers' most powerful weapon isn't their guns, it's their indoctrination. Plenty of mainstream Sci Fi ships could beat one in a fight, but how many are immune to being destroyed from the inside? The Imperium of Man is governed from the top down and already manages its population like cattle. Indoctrinate a few extremely powerful people, and worlds of trillions are being handed over to their new xeno overlords for processing.
Also it's unclear just how large the Reaper armada is, but I think it's fair to put an upper estimate somewhere in the *millions.*
@@viperblitz11 Indeed!
Entice tech advancing races with tech > Concentrate the leadership with and within that enticing tech> stealth monitor those races as they advance, explore, discover other races > begin the indoctrination when the time comes.
A very insidious and clever Fifth Column strategy.
@drdevice5424
The Mass Effect's technology capabilities and their tech progression are very weak compared to many sci fi verses.
Please do more mass effect videos.
It could be even minor or irrelevant stuff.
There just arent enough videos about mass effect stuff
ZERO! Please look into the N7 selection and / or training. With our shared love of mass effect and halo these channels are amazing.
1. How do the reapers scrub the citadel clean of any thumbdrives, pieces of paper and writings on the wall?
2. How do the reapers know there's no civilizations not yet capable of large scale space flight, but can observe the space battles, the bursts of the gateways, or the use of the catalyst?
3. How do the reapers scrub planets clean of hidden bunkers? Seems like they can't, the Protheans did it, and if you fail ME3, Liara leaves a bunker behind
4. Pretty sure a highly civilized planet destroyed by the reapers, will be extremely obvious to an archeological team investigating on-site, how do they deal with this?
5. Do the reapers know about any primitive species contacted by a space faring species? Do they exterminate those too?
6. The reapers come at fixed time intervals, but it really seems like there's many random factors that could affect the rate of technological development, like what if they come late and find out that a machine intelligence have already taken over the galaxy and have a much stronger fleet than the reapers?
1. The erasure isn't directly stated, but it's implied that the menials not turned into Reapers are responsible for sensitive operations in places too small for a Reaper to fit. Also, they don't erase evidence of the ones they harvest, only that of the Reapers themselves. Though sometimes things slip through the cracks, like the 37 million year old derelict that was found orbiting a gas giant in the middle of nowhere.
2. They don't prey on species that aren't interstellar. They *want* them to find the Mass Relays and expand to the stars. Also Mass Effect teeters on the harder end of sci fi (with the exception of certain alien clarktech that's incredibly advanced, but framed as something which could be understood eventually), and so respects the speed of light.
3. Again, this is also done by menials. A cycle can last centuries, from the first strike to the last gasps of their prey. Most of the decisive battles are done in the first few years and all the following ones are spent harvesting and mopping up.
4. This is a main plot point in the series lore. Prothean ruins dot several planets across the galaxy. New civilizations tend to build on and around the ruins of predecessors, so basically nothing has survived more than one cycle.
5. Primitive species are left alone, as they'll be the next generation to be harvested. The Protheans had documented every intelligent species seen in the games, but the Reapers didn't touch them.
6. Contrary to popular belief, it's never confirmed that the Reapers come at fixed intervals. It's just an assumption that characters made because the last cycle was 50,000 years ago. The objective of the Reaper vanguard (one ship that's left behind after each harvest) is to observe the state of the galaxy's species, and to call the fleet once the organics are ripe but not *too* powerful. Furthermore, they originally built the interstellar infrastructure so that civilizations would come to depend on it, further weakening their resistance once the Reapers showed up and disrupted the primary means of transit. It's also not confirmed just how huge the Reaper armada is. They've been building it up over a billion years.
Hope this helps.
1. It was originally the Keepers until their link was severed.
2. The artifacts they leave behind indoctrinate any sapients nearby, and they in turn report their findings.
3. They can't; they're not infallible or all-knowing. If the bunkers are cut off from the information network or other potentially indoctrinated sapients, they don't know the bunkers exist.
4. Evidence of the Reapers is scrubbed by leftover indoctrinated workers, the same way the Leviathans scrubbed evidence of their existence using thralls.
5. That depends. In the game's canon, the Reapers had interacted with early humans during the harvest of the Protheans but they left them behind to develop because they were still young. In addition, there were space faring and non-space faring species that cut themselves off from the galaxy on purpose to avoid interaction with other species. If you don't interact with Reaper tech, they don't really know you exist.
6. They leave at least one Reaper behind to watch and study sapients, and when they feel the time is right, they start their takeover in the same way they did with Saren: they indoctrinate, subjugate, divide, and conquer the galaxy starting with the Citadel (the seat of government, government, and galactic commerce).
Oh hell yes
Who would win in a head to head forerunners or reapers??? Or better yet, flood or reapers
As much as I like to argue how underrated the Reapers' power is, they would get absolutely shit stomped by the Forerunners. The Flood is a more interesting versus, though I think it really depends on whether a Reaper could indoctrinate a Gravemind before succumbing to the Logic Plague (if at all). I'd probably bet on the Flood overall.
Sovereign was so cool compared with the reapers from the third game. With all that red lightning and most of all, his voice.
Harbinger was quite lame.
Maby the reepers were only told of half of there purpus
We know the ai was told to find a way to protect biological life and machines the ai's responce was to melt down biologicals and stuff them into reapers mabye ounce a solution to the biological synthetic problem is found the genetic matirial inside each reper can be used as an ark to bring back all speshes
BAR FOR BAR
Wow.
It almost looks like how WE treat animals, plants, rocks, soil and the entire planet as a whole. 😊
But I feel that's not what the video games bros are going to take away from this.
So when a reaper ship is destroyed the civilization stored in it is gone forever? Seeing as they only make 1 per cycle this would mean tons of civilization were destroyed during the war.
I want to see reapers from mass effect invading galaxy control by forerunners of halo
Oh the forerunners would dominate them. Completely. Don't get me wrong, the Reapers are immensely powerful and dangerous antagonists... but the forerunners were next level. I'm talking "so advanced that energy harvesting literally draws power from the big bangs of other universes" kind of next level. They may have lost to the flood, but it still took a LONG time for the flood to whittle them down to the point of them using the Halo array, and the flood, unlike the reapers, become exponentially more dangerous over a much smaller amount of time, and can eventually understand, use, and even create new forerunner tech because of all of the forerunner minds it's absorbed.
the leviathans aspect of the reapers kinda took away their mystery and lovcraftian aspect of them
Good video. But after coming from the wiki I can tell you pretty much just read me what I JUST finished reading. So that was a little disappointing. Was looking for more of a personal explanation supported by facts found in the wiki. You have a good narration voice though
Come back
This whole video is copied word for word from Fandom lol
Still not sure how to feel about this.
Destroying the reapers doesn't seem like a good solution to me. It's the only one where Shepard might live, but, on the other hand, you have to wipe out ALL ancient civilizations. Seems like the exact genocide they wanted to inflict on us. Except, we're one cycle worth of species, they are x-1. All the cycles, minus our one cycle. Wiping the reapers seems to me like a bigger crime they them wiping us.
Controlling the reapers also doesn't seem reasonable. Shepard dies and on top of that, all races from X-1 cycles are basically slaves to the races of just the latest cycle, even though in terms of wisdom and technology, it prolly shouldn't be like that.
Synthesis also seems weird to me. Everybody is forcefully upgraded without actually knowing the consequences, + Shepard dies. Woopy.
And I didn't understand the last one at all. How does the next cycle get out of trouble?! The reapers just decided to extract this last cycle and then give up?
"Wiping the reapers seems to me like a bigger crime they them wiping us"
Yeah you completely lost me lol.
#installation000online