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[WillowLuman]

Yeah, they thought we'd make the perfect troops to fight whatever they were running from. It's funny, though, because they outright said they thought we were better than them. What did they expect to happen?

[Neonivek]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Hopefully they'll give us a better set of endings too, rather than "WE WERE TRYING TO HELP YOUUUUUU~" nonsense.

The Ethereals weren't trying to help humanity, they were trying to assimilate it in order to have their perfect supersoliders. They just ended up biting off more than they could chew.

I got the impression they were going to inhabit the human body so that they would finally have a race with both psionic potential and strong physical bodies. Since the Etherials are psionic megaminds but physically weak.

I didn't exactly like the reveal.[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, they thought we'd make the perfect troops to fight whatever they were running from. It's funny, though, because they outright said they thought we were better than them. What did they expect to happen?

What happens if you lose, I imagine, where they take control, establish shadow superiority, and direct the entirety of humanity as their own personal pet project.

[umiman]

Wasn't the ending about them whining about all their failures, including themselves which they consider the chief failure, and that the humans were the prime candidates to replace even them. And about some sort of super god alien overlord race that they were trying to reconnect with... and how humans needed ethereals to show them how to reach their peak... etc. etc.

The megaethereal's last words were:

"This is not your path. You need us. You need our guidance."

 

It was really quite dumb.

[WillowLuman]

I didn't think it was dumb. I like the idea of someone waging a war just to ripen a race for the harvest, and thinking it's justified.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Hopefully they'll give us a better set of endings too, rather than "WE WERE TRYING TO HELP YOUUUUUU~" nonsense.

The Ethereals weren't trying to help humanity, they were trying to assimilate it in order to have their perfect supersoliders. They just ended up biting off more than they could chew.

I got the impression they were going to inhabit the human body so that they would finally have a race with both psionic potential and strong physical bodies. Since the Etherials are psionic megaminds but physically weak.

I didn't exactly like the reveal.

I'm not really sure where you got that impression. You can't switch bodies with psionics, you can only mind control someone. Even the Ethereals can only mind control people for a few turns.

They wanted a race with both physical and psionic strength in order to fight "the coming threat". All the other races of the Ethereal Collective are failed attempts at creating this.

Yeah, they thought we'd make the perfect troops to fight whatever they were running from. It's funny, though, because they outright said they thought we were better than them. What did they expect to happen?

What happens if you lose, I imagine, where they take control, establish shadow superiority, and direct the entirety of humanity as their own personal pet project.

Essentially what Shen is afraid of happening.

Wasn't the ending about them whining about all their failures, including themselves which they consider the chief failure, and that the humans were the prime candidates to replace even them. And about some sort of super god alien overlord race that they were trying to reconnect with... and how humans needed ethereals to show them how to reach their peak... etc. etc.

The megaethereal's last words were:

"This is not your path. You need us. You need our guidance."

 

It was really quite dumb.

No, that wasn't it at all, though there are some things we don't quite know. They said they, the Ethereals, "failed to Ascend", but we don't know what that means. They wanted humanity as the weapon to fight the coming threat. There was nothing about humans replacing them.

[CognitiveDissonance]

While all of this is spoilers to me (damnit!) this does seem like a tidy tie-in with Apocalypse. Remember the poor sectoids...

[Neonivek]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I didn't think it was dumb. I like the idea of someone waging a war just to ripen a race for the harvest, and thinking it's justified.

Think about the sheer number of hoops that had to be jumped through in order to make this plot work. Not to mention the number of inconsistencies that are require for you to glance over.

As intelligent as the Etherials are they sure are dumb! I mean REALLY dumb! They couldn't get any dumber.

Remember the poor sectoids

No, they pretty much got the shaft in these remakes. Turning from the "peewee champions and conspirators" into "Mushy fuzzy cannon fodder"

I'm not really sure where you got that impression. You can't switch bodies with psionics, you can only mind control someone

The devices were right there.

[GlyphGryph]

As intelligent as the Etherials are they sure are dumb! I mean REALLY dumb! They couldn't get any dumber.

Intelligence often seems to correlate quite highly with arrogance. And they've conquered countless races before with a similar strategy, and they actually do look to be WINNING and doing well for most of a normal game of x-com, so the plan isn't actually that terrible. They overestimated their own abilities, sure, but most people, especially smart people, do that pretty often anyway.

And I suspect they aren't so much "super smart" as "have psychic powers and are good at being manipulative assholes".

You've never adequately explained the "hoops" the game has to hop through to justify why this is possible - it seems pretty basic.

[CognitiveDissonance]

Remember the poor sectoids

No, they pretty much got the shaft in these remakes. Turning from the "peewee champions and conspirators" into "Mushy fuzzy cannon fodder"

Have you played through XCOM: Apocalypse?

[Neonivek]

You've never adequately explained the "hoops" the game has to hop through to justify why this is possible

You played the game. In how many ways could have things failed?

Have you played through XCOM: Apocalypse?

Yes, but remember... they did that on their on violation.

[GlyphGryph]

You played the game. In how many ways could have things failed?

How many times had they succeeded, only to have it wind up meaningless?

You've got to take risks if you want a chance of real victory.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You've never adequately explained the "hoops" the game has to hop through to justify why this is possible

You played the game. In how many ways could have things failed?

If not for X-COM, pretty much none. They're quite efficient at subverting people if left undisturbed, as you have to fight for the span of the entire game.

[GlyphGryph]

Neo, keeping in mind their goals (to gain control of humanity to serve as a weapon both far more powerful than them but that they could use to point at something else, so a weapon that acts at their direction), at what point could they have made another, superior decision than ones they made, and what form would that decision have taken?

[hemmingjay]

Come on guys, please go back and spoiler your stuff relating to plots of the X-COM games. Not everyone has played them out.