No Leviathan, you ARE the Reapers.

Hmm.

demersel wrote:Crucible Blueprints showing up in Mars Archives, Vendetta VI at Thessia and Cronos Station, conversation with the Leviathan - those are four instances that have to do with the crucible, Intelligence, and repeating patterns. In three out of four of those cases Cerberus is present and directly involved. Those are coincidently all the instances that happen durting the course of Mass Effect 3 core game.  All the info that we get out of those three instances get backed up and repeated in the conversation with the leviathans. What was that achievement that is abtly named "Conspiracy Theorist"? "use clues to pinpoint exact location of an objective"  - Did we find our culprit or what?

So we have Ceberus and Leviathan...

We know that the reapers are at least partially behind cerberus.
This thread theorises that Leviathan is really a reaper.
Crucible is also looking a lot like the reaper trap from the start of it. And all those four instances are there to convince us it isn't not. What else is there to convince us to use the crucible? Oh, right, that one huge invasion of identical looking reapers that have nothing in common with the real reapers we know of.

Reapers are masters of diversion and deception. Those are their main weapons and tactics. They twist and trick and subdue and confuse. They do that. someone who can just come in force and take everything they want - don't bother with that. The reapers do. For some reason. They make a hell of an effort to inspire the image of them being almost devine and unnatural. Except the one reaper we have actually SEEN - spent hundrets of years plotting and pulling strings in secret, but when it mattered -  went like a punk in a straight fight. How much time it took to take him down? Half an hour? An hour? Two hours? Fifteen minutes?

What if the reapers STAGED the invasion? With decoy reaper looking ships that just happen to have real guns. With one real goal - to get us to make the crucible, and use it?

what are the footsoldiers of the reapers? - the repurposessed coprsess of the current cylce habitants. Where are the collectors? Where are all the others countless races turned into husks?

Where are different looking reapers?

from what we know from ME1 and ME2 - each reaper ship is priceless and the loss of it is unthinkable. That's not supposed to happen.
However we have 2 confirmed reaper corpses (Darelict Reaper and Leviathan of Dis) and Sovereing who is left behind. for all this time for some reason (why is he special, and if he's not - why is he singled out?) - so all of that is unclear. But that gives interesting facts and statistics. Out of three reapers we discover - three are killed/disabled/get killed. That is actually 100% death rate. I will say that again - IN 100% OF DOCUMENTED REAPER SIGHTINGS THEY GET DESTROYED OR DISABLED. Make that actually 4 out of 4. Human Larva reaper counts.

Fact - reapers can't afford to act directly and in the open. - They get off'd.

What do you do when you can't risk any of your personel? YOU SEND IN UNMANNED DRONES. (with men in them.)

What is the first thing the reapers do when showing up, according to hour knowledge? - They SHUT DOWN THE RELAY NETWORK SO IT CAN'T BE USED. So they can go in and harvest out planets one at a time.

What does the crucible regardless of your color choice? IT DISABLES THE REALY NETWORK.

So what your saying is that, the actual "Reapers" as we see them in the series- gigantic 3 KM tall cuttlefish with amazing firepower and defenses and the ability to indoctrinate; are not the actual "Reapers" and that they (Super, huge, Cuttle fish of death) are just unmanned drones. And that the the 'real' threat is still out there? Perhaps in Darkspace?

I like that idea. And that's a game I could get behind. But gee, I wonder who we (galactic civilization) would send beyond the black, into the darkness. One very special, 'anomaly'.... One protector. One warrior. One leader. A Shepard.

count me in. i'd buy the shit outta that game.

at last someone sees this... was beginning to think it was only me.

dork wrote:at last someone sees this... was beginning to think it was only me.

But we don't have evidence that it is that. We do have substantial evidence for IT, and now we're getting evidence that it's all just a thrall by Leviathan and the narrative is trying to reveal itself. But as cool as the 'secret' and 'real' enemy reveal would be, we don't have evidence supporting this. It's only implied, a little, but not substantially.

TurianRebel212 wrote:

dork wrote:at last someone sees this... was beginning to think it was only me.

But we don't have evidence that it is that. We do have substantial evidence for IT, and now we're getting evidence that it's all just a thrall by Leviathan and the narrative is trying to reveal itself. But as cool as the 'secret' and 'real' enemy reveal would be, we don't have evidence supporting this. It's only implied, a little, but not substantially.

no we dont have any evidence. however why would the reaper risk themselves in confrontation with the fleets if they are so 'valuable'? They may be machines but they wouldnt risk their 'populations'. Just indoctrinate someone and have them use the crucible to disable the relays then its game over.

dork wrote:

TurianRebel212 wrote:

dork wrote:at last someone sees this... was beginning to think it was only me.

But we don't have evidence that it is that. We do have substantial evidence for IT, and now we're getting evidence that it's all just a thrall by Leviathan and the narrative is trying to reveal itself. But as cool as the 'secret' and 'real' enemy reveal would be, we don't have evidence supporting this. It's only implied, a little, but not substantially.

no we dont have any evidence.  however why would the reaper risk themselves in confrontation with the fleets if they are so 'valuable'?  They may be machines but they wouldnt risk their 'populations'.  Just indoctrinate someone and have them use the crucible to disable the relays then its game over.

I've got to say it makes sense, especially pre EC, but didn't the EC show that the relays weren't destroyed?? I though it did. But you gotta wonder why the big bad reapers set up their base of operations at Earth, and not say Thessia, or Palavan. Hell the Batarians we're hit first and the reapers just kept right on going, then Earth and Harby and tons of Sovereign class Reapers stayed at Earth. There's only one reason for this.

Shepard.

And then they moved the Citadel+catalyst to Earth. Why??? just for the lulz?? Why? To what, to face potentially The Geth, Quarian, Turian and remaining Human fleets??? Then go ground to ground with the Krogan, Shepard, N7 marines, Salarian STG, Hammer, Geth Primes, Asari commandos and billions of other pissed off people??? Dafuq??? That makes no sense.

If the reapers weren't worried about the this cycle- or any cycles military capabilities why not bleed them slow like they did with the protheans. And why not destroy the citadel. I mean at this point, if the the catalyst was so close and the crucible was finished and you're the reapers and for the first time in your existence you're face with loosing. Why not just blow the citadel up. And literally glass earth with nukes. Then kill shepard and then the rest will fall like domino's. That's what a machine would do. Seriously. Point A to Point B. Take out the possibility of even shepard getting to the citadel by blowing it up.


Why???

Cause the reapers/leviathans and the catalyst are the same entity- it literally tells you this; and is verified via DLC. And also the crucible is a Trojan Horse. it's a trap. And Shepard is indoctrinated. This cycles great betrayer..... Unless you choose destroy. Then, when you get High EMS destroy Bioware gives you the only ending in which Shepard wakes up and the Reapers are defeated. Basically, saying. "This is not real. Wake up. This isn't right!!".


It takes an incredible amount of suspension of disbelief and/or impossible events/terrible writing. To take the endings at face value.

Hackett. at the end of Arrival.

''You make sure you're there with your dress blues on ready to take the hit''

 

This discussion is over! I found the evidence! Ladies & Gentleman! I give you..."Leviathan"!!! BEHOLD!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w1upGFwyyU

Nice, eh? Huge machine with red eyes, impenetrable hull, frakkin' death ray, sinister "voice" and shit...

But wait! There's moar! We saw him before! In Mass Effect 2, remember? Just look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOHnHWdy_oQ 1:00 - Harby's right side!

Yep, I proved it. Gimme a medal or something...

NihlusMaximus wrote:This discussion is over! I found the evidence! Ladies & Gentleman! I give you..."Leviathan"!!! BEHOLD!!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w1upGFwyyU

Nice, eh? Huge machine with red eyes, impenetrable hull, frakkin' death ray, sinister "voice" and shit...

But wait! There's moar! We saw him before! In Mass Effect 2, remember? Just look!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOHnHWdy_oQ 1:00 - Harby's right side!

Yep, I proved it. Gimme a medal or something...

??

TurianRebel212 wrote:

demersel wrote:Crucible Blueprints showing up in Mars Archives, Vendetta VI at Thessia and Cronos Station, conversation with the Leviathan - those are four instances that have to do with the crucible, Intelligence, and repeating patterns. In three out of four of those cases Cerberus is present and directly involved. Those are coincidently all the instances that happen durting the course of Mass Effect 3 core game.  All the info that we get out of those three instances get backed up and repeated in the conversation with the leviathans. What was that achievement that is abtly named "Conspiracy Theorist"? "use clues to pinpoint exact location of an objective"  - Did we find our culprit or what?

So we have Ceberus and Leviathan...

We know that the reapers are at least partially behind cerberus.
This thread theorises that Leviathan is really a reaper.
Crucible is also looking a lot like the reaper trap from the start of it. And all those four instances are there to convince us it isn't not. What else is there to convince us to use the crucible? Oh, right, that one huge invasion of identical looking reapers that have nothing in common with the real reapers we know of.

Reapers are masters of diversion and deception. Those are their main weapons and tactics. They twist and trick and subdue and confuse. They do that. someone who can just come in force and take everything they want - don't bother with that. The reapers do. For some reason. They make a hell of an effort to inspire the image of them being almost devine and unnatural. Except the one reaper we have actually SEEN - spent hundrets of years plotting and pulling strings in secret, but when it mattered -  went like a punk in a straight fight. How much time it took to take him down? Half an hour? An hour? Two hours? Fifteen minutes?

What if the reapers STAGED the invasion? With decoy reaper looking ships that just happen to have real guns. With one real goal - to get us to make the crucible, and use it?

what are the footsoldiers of the reapers? - the repurposessed coprsess of the current cylce habitants. Where are the collectors? Where are all the others countless races turned into husks?

Where are different looking reapers?

from what we know from ME1 and ME2 - each reaper ship is priceless and the loss of it is unthinkable. That's not supposed to happen.
However we have 2 confirmed reaper corpses (Darelict Reaper and Leviathan of Dis) and Sovereing who is left behind. for all this time for some reason (why is he special, and if he's not - why is he singled out?) - so all of that is unclear. But that gives interesting facts and statistics. Out of three reapers we discover - three are killed/disabled/get killed. That is actually 100% death rate. I will say that again - IN 100% OF DOCUMENTED REAPER SIGHTINGS THEY GET DESTROYED OR DISABLED. Make that actually 4 out of 4. Human Larva reaper counts.

Fact - reapers can't afford to act directly and in the open. - They get off'd.

What do you do when you can't risk any of your personel? YOU SEND IN UNMANNED DRONES. (with men in them.)

What is the first thing the reapers do when showing up, according to hour knowledge? - They SHUT DOWN THE RELAY NETWORK SO IT CAN'T BE USED. So they can go in and harvest out planets one at a time.

What does the crucible regardless of your color choice? IT DISABLES THE REALY NETWORK.

So what your saying is that, the actual "Reapers" as we see them in the series- gigantic 3 KM tall cuttlefish with amazing firepower and defenses and the ability to indoctrinate; are not the actual "Reapers" and that they (Super, huge, Cuttle fish of death) are just unmanned drones. And that the the 'real' threat is still out there? Perhaps in Darkspace?

I like that idea. And that's a game I could get behind. But gee, I wonder who we (galactic civilization) would send beyond the black, into the darkness. One very special, 'anomaly'.... One protector. One warrior. One leader. A Shepard.

count me in. i'd buy the shit outta that game.

I actually theorized about this a long time ago in the main thread. I've thought about making it its own topic, but never got around to it.

Basically, I theorized that the actual reapers resided in dark space. For example, the human proto reaper wouldn't have been put into a cuttlefish shell, it would reside in dark space with all the other unique reapers. From the safety of dark space they "assume control" of the reaper ships and harvest.

We get to see EDI, who is made from reaper tech, do this. Even if Dr. Eva's body is destroyed EDI lives on, just like the reapers and could potentially take control of another form.

"We do not die" "I always survive"  

The fact is, the reapers would NOT sacrifice all that work they did harvesting, just to have their new reaper destroyed. And over the billions of years, many reaper ships must have been destroyed, the only way the reapers would be able to maintain their numbers, is if they weren't actually being destroyed. Reaper capital ship gets destroyed? The reaper in dark space just assumes control over a new reaper ship, and continues harvesting.

So, naturally this would call for a suicide mission 2.0 through the citadel relay.

Anyway, back on topic  

i want my suicide mission 2 through the relay!!!!

wait a minute. If the leviathan are reapers then just nuke their planet from orbit.

Or poison the damn water, will work too. After all, they're just big fish, right?

Ok so...

Maybe Harbinger Reaper is real though, being in the proper shape for his race, and he oversees the reaping as the herald of the apocalypse. Or not?

I wonder about Sovereign though. As I've said before, he seems to appear to be only synthetic, no goo involved. Is he a drone? Or rather... what if he is indeed 'assumed control' of a Reaper body, but then transfers to Citadel before the shell is destroyed? (Which would make him never in danger to start with, but being in the Citadel might prove advantageous and he can manipulate this cycle's end) I'm just thinking of this, after the whole deal above with the 'Reapers' just being avatars/vessels of consciousness.

There is no war, there is only the Harvest.

So yeah, it could all be a chess board from the start. This is regardless of Leviathans secretly being Reapers, but even then if that is true, it would make the whole war, including possible 'resistance by the Leviathans', just a giant game (heh).

Personally though, I do think the Leviathans are real beings in the story, and indeed rebels. Could be that they're running an illusion and they're really Reapers on the bad side, but I just don't think Bioware will make a DLC where *everything* is a *lie*. Yes, even Citadel DLC, which I consider completely illusory, has a lot of *truth* in it, even with the setting/events/characters being fake. Leviathan though? Yeah ok, let's make a DLC where everything the tell you is a lie and doesn't really advance anything, pony up that $10 *eyeroll*.


Thing is, I don't think the Reapers need to do any more experiments of the "torturing Turian" type. I think they know all they want to know, and they're already going full force on the Reaping. I don't think Cerberus and their experiments provides them anything new (assuming that Cerberus is actually totally under their thumbs, which I kinda contest), and anything the 'Leviathan thralls' are after, doesn't seem like it'd be useful either.
It really really does seem like there's a hidden race of the children of Leviathans, doing their best to keep as hidden as possible while they weave a more invisible web around the galaxy so they can eventually strike.


"Unless Leviathan is only telling that story about a mythical AI because it's Reaper aligned and it knows that doing so will lend credibility to Starbinger later on."

I agree, but in a different way. We hear nothing from the Leviathans that they wish to BREAK the cycle. If anything, they want to subjugate (not destroy) the Reapers, and take over the cycle themselves, and as the 'protectors' (barf) of 'lesser organics', the Leviathans would make a more perfected cycle work for their benefit. They're not friends.

It's a real possibility that the HARVEST (and its procedure by the Reapers) STARTED with Leviathans, with them wiping out any species that dares to create synthetics, after seeing a (few?) bad situations where AI rebelled. If there's an Intelligence for real, maybe it really did see what happened over and over (the "Old Harvest") and decided it could do it better, and involve the Leviathans as part of the New Harvest. And now, what the Leviathans may wish, is that they start a New New Harvest with Reapers as their slaves. And btw, that's what makes Leviathan DLC a "Control" one, because Leviathans are ALL about making servants out of others.

Amazing how TIM seemed to know so much about the Crucible :). Makes me wonder if Leviathans have been feeding him info, still remaining in the darkness . More because the more I play, the more I see TIM seem like how we see Leviathans, instead of personalities like Harbinger or Sovereign. And how TIM wants to use the Crucible to control the Reapers, not join them. We can't believe Vendetta that the splinter group were Indoctrinated by the Reapers - they could very well instead be Leviathan tools, the big secret of the galaxy.

Yet there is this
"If so, it worked magnificently. Look how many people stopped believing in IT, even with all the evidence amassed, because Leviathan "confirmed the catalyst is real". That's the only way this makes sense. There is no central intelligence. There is no catalyst. They are each a nation. Independent. Free of all weakness."

And that always remains possible. The Reapers send everyone on wild goose chases instead of just making really damn good weapons to spread and get ready, and the whole Intelligence/Catalyst/Crucible stuff is all part of the same trap, which includes the Citadel. We then construct the Crucible, dock it with Citadel, and fire it up, to shut down the entire relay network and have a major Indoctrinated Leader (Shepard) to become the lead mind of a new species Reaper. Synthesis, we're fully integrated, Control, we resist but we will fail, Destroy, we are rejected when we have too much Hope and want a future that the Reapers don't want a Reaper to work towards (so Shepard is ejected from the illusion).

Lots of possibilities Rif, and this is one I can get behind, even if its not my ideal story - mainly because it means that most 'information' we are given are not even clues, but just lies lies lies. I'll feel like shit for playing a game for $60 plus $40+ for DLC, and just finding out the vast majority of 'answers' are just fake, and not even symbolically helpful.