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[Jelle]

ME1 was all around good. 2 was a bit more streamlined but in a good way and the story was still gold, in my opinion the best of the trilogy. 3 didn't streamline so much as it dumbed down everything, and the story seemed to have been written by a bunch of monkeys behind typewriters, it was utter pigshit and ruined the story cumination of 1 and 2. Disgraceful.

[mainiac]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The reapers were already on their way for us when the first game started. And they had been for hundreds of years. No avoidance, no "keep em asleep." They work on a schedule, and we were past overdue. The Rachni Wars were caused by the reapers. Sovereign was only looking for the conduit because the citadel keepers failed to respond to the "open" code. I'm assuming the invasion plan wasn't to drop dormant reapers into the heart of galactic civilization... They were awake and aware before Shepard did the first mission.

I don't remember that being established in the first game.  Wasn't the whole point of the first game that this hadn't yet happened and you were trying to avoid it?

[Cecilff2]

I don't remember that being established in the first game.  Wasn't the whole point of the first game that this hadn't yet happened and you were trying to avoid it?

I seem to recall ME2 being the whole catalyst for their return(They were just going to use the prothean ship to get materials for a new reaper and just stomp the citadel defense and open up the conduit again I think.), Sovereign's reactivation is probably what doomed them all though.  The moment he reactivated is when the rest of the reapers knew what was happening, so their return was inevitable by that point.(Though I assumed given how far out in space they were said to be, that this was the preferred outcome because of how long it would take them to reach the galaxy.  But apparently it doesn't take long at all)

[fenrif]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The reapers were already on their way for us when the first game started. And they had been for hundreds of years. No avoidance, no "keep em asleep." They work on a schedule, and we were past overdue. The Rachni Wars were caused by the reapers. Sovereign was only looking for the conduit because the citadel keepers failed to respond to the "open" code. I'm assuming the invasion plan wasn't to drop dormant reapers into the heart of galactic civilization... They were awake and aware before Shepard did the first mission.

I don't remember that being established in the first game.  Wasn't the whole point of the first game that this hadn't yet happened and you were trying to avoid it?

Don't worry. You've just stumbled across the hidden ME minigame: "Spot the Retcon". You'll be playing this a lot in the ME series.

[mainiac]

Looking around in the wiki I can't even find what it is that reactivated the reapers in the first place.  I'm suspecting that the reason is probably a change in the writing team.

[fenrif]

Looking around in the wiki I can't even find what it is that reactivated the reapers in the first place.  I'm suspecting that the reason is probably a change in the writing team.

Space magic?

I think once they introduced that as a major plot element it kind of makes worrying about the little inconsitencies and innacuracies of the plot pointless. Because space magic.

[Darkmere]

Sovereign was never "deactivated." Sovereign had been watching civilization progress and acting against it/to facilitate the purge. When you talk to the Rachni queen on Noveria, she tells that their entire race, who communicate telepathically, were indoctrinated (all our songs were drown out by a sour note from space) and made to fight the Rachni War. Sovereign knows about the Ilos relay being in Rachni space, because Sovereign had indoctrinated the rachni in the first place.

Failing that... You see sovereign active and hostile in the very first mission, and the conversation with Vigil at the end confirms that the keepers were "hacked" and didn't respond to the Citadel relay code. Saren (controlled by sovereign) shoots keepers out of fustration on the way to manual override, showing anger that it already tried to open the citadel remotely and failed.

ME2:  Making the human reaper was trying to get a jump start on the war. If Sovereign was unable to storm the citadel with the geth fleet, I don't think they'd just throw one newborn reaper at it and hope for the best. What they needed was someone who understood us and could think like us. The events in Arrival show that the reapers were after the Alpha relay... basically an underground tunnel into the heart of the relay network. When Shepard destroyed it, they were forced into a very long "ground march" through Batarian space, which bought everyone else more time.

Ninja'd. Where did anything say the reapers were "inactive"? This comes up a lot... enough that I'm wondering if I missed something somewhere, despite playing all the games 3 or 4 times each. What I wrote above is (AFAIK) canon and the first two paragraphs all come from the first game, so there was no writing change. I tried to limit my argument to ME1 for that reason.

[mainiac]

They talk about the reapers being inactive a lot in ME1.  They are waiting in deep space, with no reason to wake up unless Sovereign activates the citadel with it's message.  Then in ME2 they suddenly aren't anymore.

[Digital Hellhound]

Well, Sovereign was inactive. When it woke up, it tried to call in the rest of the Reapers through the Citadel relay, but that no longer worked. Here the canon kinda derps, but I assume the Reapers then started to move towards the galaxy, arriving just in time for ME3.

Though this raises the question of why Sovereign didn't just wait for his buddies hidden somewhere. Trying to capture the Citadel and everything else (Rachni Wars etc.) could've warned the galaxy and allowed them to prepare (which didn't really happen, though, but oh well).

[Darkmere]

I think I see what you're getting at.

Between cycles, they are inactive, and nothing really happens apart from leaving one behind to monitor everything. However... since we're already past due for a good biological purge (keeper hacks and all that), the reapers were already awake for this cycle, just waiting for Sovereign to open the citadel relay. I'm basing this on one assumption: That dropping an inactive fleet into citadel space would lead to more casualties than dropping an active fleet into citadel space. I think that's a reasonable assumption, since the reapers are usually pretty genre savvy.

So yes, between cleansings, the reapers are inactive, but their period of inactivity between the prothean cycle and ours had already ended before ME1 began.

Ninja'd again...

Though this raises the question of why Sovereign didn't just wait for his buddies hidden somewhere. Trying to capture the Citadel and everything else (Rachni Wars etc.) could've warned the galaxy and allowed them to prepare (which didn't really happen, though, but oh well).

As far as Sovereign was concerned, the citadel had malfunctioned and one flip of the manual override switch would have brought the entire reaper fleet in at once, and ended the whole war right then. Arrogance is the reapers' consistent failing.

[mainiac]

But the story in ME1 specifically says that the reapers aren't already awake.

[Darkmere]

Where?

[mainiac]

The million times that Shepherd says that Saren intends to wake the reapers?

[Digital Hellhound]

'Bring back the Reapers', is how it's practically always phrased. There's no implication they're not awake, though it sounds like they're waiting for Sovereign to fire up the Citadel, not making their way towards the galaxy. Shepard doesn't really know this, anyway - the only really concrete information he gets is from Vigil near the end (and Sovereign himself, and IIRC he doesn't say actually reveal that much anyway).

[mainiac]

In that case it's a plausible handwave but it's still a handwave, not the explicit plot.  It's also a pretty bad handwave.  The Devil should never sing in an opera and the reapers should have always been the danger lurking in the wings.