Harbinger in ME2

[dodger]

Every single confrontation with Harbinger:
Harbinger in deep, ominous voice: Assuming direct control.
Harbinger in deep, ominous voice:: You will feel pain Shepard.
My Shepard character kills Harbinger.
Repeat like maybe one dozen or two dozen times.
It kinda reminds me of the scene from The Princess Bride: Sir, I think the word means different than you think!

[Rhoetus]

You kill a drone controlled by Harbinger, not Harbinger himself.

Or, should I say, themself, as each Reaper is the collective consciousness of a species

[SpaceWombat]

Originally posted by Rhoetus:

You kill a drone controlled by Harbinger, not Harbinger himself.

Or, should I say, themself, as each Reaper is the collective consciousness of a species

Always made me wonder: If the reapers are capable of streaming their consciousness millions of light-years past dark space to control collector drones... why do they even have to invade in person?

Hell they could just hide capitalship sized bodies in clusters unconnected by the relays and remote control them when the cycle starts instead of going to inter-galactic space. It's not like organics would even find them anyway since it's well established that 99% of all stars in the Milky-Way are virtually inaccessible due to not being linked by primary relays.

Plotholes I guess.

[barzai]

Originally posted by SpaceWombat:

Originally posted by Rhoetus:

You kill a drone controlled by Harbinger, not Harbinger himself.

Or, should I say, themself, as each Reaper is the collective consciousness of a species

Always made me wonder: If the reapers are capable of streaming their consciousness millions of light-years past dark space to control collector drones... why do they even have to invade in person?

Hell they could just hide capitalship sized bodies in clusters unconnected by the relays and remote control them when the cycle starts instead of going to inter-galactic space. It's not like organics would even find them anyway since it's well established that 99% of all stars in the Milky-Way are virtually inaccessible due to not being linked by primary relays.

Plotholes I guess.

Same general topic, why can't Harbinger--or the Reapers more generally--control more than one drone at a time? That surely seems a bit silly.

[SpaceWombat]

Originally posted by barzai:

Same general topic, why can't Harbinger--or the Reapers more generally--control more than one drone at a time? That surely seems a bit silly.

Originally posted by SpaceWombat:

Plotholes I guess.

[Rhoetus]

Because the Catalyst and the plans for the weapon that could destroy the Reapers were put in place by the AI/Starchild, the implication is that the cycles are a test of civilizations.
The ones that fail get turned into Reapers, themselves.

I think it is interesting that the Reaper being made from humans looks human. Maybe that is just the core of it, and the finished Reaper would be Reaper shaped, but humanity seems to have caught the attention of the system in a way that the other civilizations didn't. Shepard himself/herself is of special note to the Reapers, or the AI.

Anyway, looking at it this way, the lead up to the complete harvest is the impetus of the test. Will the civilization react in time? Will it perform the tasks needed to make the weapon and get the Catalyst? Will a unique individual* with the will to activate the weapon manifest?
*remember, the Illusive Man couldn't work it. Is that only because he was (I forget the term) taken over by the Reapers? It seemed like the Starchild/AI saw Shepard as uniquely qualified to work the weapon.

Now, in a meta sense, of course this is true: everyone else is a literal NPC, so only the avatar of the player has any agency in the game. Perhaps it is this otherworldly will that inhabits Shepard that is being recognized? I'd love to grill the writing team. (after all, it could be as simple as "well, you're the hero" and I'm just overthinking)

[valky]

Originally posted by SpaceWombat:

Plotholes I guess.

This is the obvious answer.
ME1 built up a nice universe, where everything felt connected & logical in a sense .. but it got lazy up to ad absurd-um in ME3.
There are like a gazillion of possible explanation or preferable rants on the web. Though my highlight is still ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Kai Leng - he gets more screentime at any possible encounter, has insane plot armor³ and is just a nuisance for the player,

At least insanity-god Garrus can solo him with ease :P

Though, I like that deep, ominous voice: Assuming direct control.

random answer randomly written ....

[dodger]

Wow. This whole thing turned way more serious than what I had in mind. On my 3rd play-through, I just noticed Harbinger kept talking like he was going to squash Shepard like an insect, and Shepard kept defeating him each time.

[barzai]

Originally posted by dodger:

Wow. This whole thing turned way more serious than what I had in mind. On my 3rd play-through, I just noticed Harbinger kept talking like he was going to squash Shepard like an insect, and Shepard kept defeating him each time.

Bioware's villains all have some of that. I just finished (yet another) playthrough of DAI and the dialogue you have with the Big Bad Boss before the final throwdown is almost comical: he comments in a plummy Brit accent (shades of Hollywood, if there's a guy with a Brit accent you know he's gonna turn out to be a bad guy!) on how you've frustrated his plans at every turn, but, y'know...this time, for sure!

Then you fight him and spank his skinny butt before taking away his shiny World-Destroying Gizmo [tm] and banishing him to another dimension

[Xautos]

Originally posted by Rhoetus:

You kill a drone controlled by Harbinger, not Harbinger himself.

Or, should I say, themself, as each Reaper is the collective consciousness of a species

Wrong.

Each Reaper is a collection of thousands of individual programmes making up a whole. It's mentioned in the game itself by Nazara (nicknamed Sovereign) in the first game on Virmire when you converse with it as a hologram, each Reaper is its own nation made up of many, it's not a single independent lifeform, it's a very complex bio-mechanical creature made up of many different programmes that gives it the ability to act independent and sentient. In ME3, all Reapers were either controlled or willingly took direction from Harbinger, however Harbinger was controlled by the Catalyst, an ancient AI that's part of the Citadel.

Harbinger and other Reapers had the ability to jump into the body of an indoctrinated lifeform and essentially take over it by itself. With the collectors (Prothean husks), Harbinger went through the Collector General on the collector station at the center of the galaxy beyond the Omega-4 relay and from from there into one of the Collectors in the field. It's also worth noting Dr. Kenson was so thoroughly indoctrinated that Harbinger controlled her directly as well at one point.

Now what you are referring to here is, that when Reapers make more of themselves, they usually pick on a specific species that interests them in each cycle, one most worthy, then creates an embryo that looks like an approximation of the species, after this they build a ship around it. Just because a species is collected by husks between cycles and billions of these lifeforms are converted into a grey sludge and that's what makes up the construction of the embryo and Reaper ship, it doesn't mean the minds of those many victims are part of the creature when it wakes for the first time. Fact is there is no mention anywhere as to how the Reaper gets these thousands of programmes that help make it an independent nation within one ship.

[Rhoetus]

Originally posted by Xautos:

...

It seems that The "programs" are the consciousnesses of the species.
Otherwise, why bother harvesting, and not just killing?

When the reapers claim to be "your salvation", I take that to mean that the harvesting perpetuates the species... just in a very different, and controllable, form.

[SpaceWombat]

Originally posted by Rhoetus:

Originally posted by Xautos:

...

It seems that

There's not much up to interpretation regarding the Reapers motives if you finished ME3 ( *specifically the DLC ). They explain with the subtlety of a freight train that harvesting is "salvation" because it prevents organics from going extinct by creating hostile synthetic rebellions over and over again.

[WhateverWorks]

The hows and the whys of the Reapers are explained very clearly in the Leviathan DLC and in the ending conversation with the Star-Child AI.