Disappointing Viallins Part Deux

[Skyblade]

I actually hated the Reapers in ME1 more than later. Any villain that comes in saying tired bulltrout like their motivations are beyond you is always lying. It's also just a really old, really dumb trope that's basically never true. Certainly not if you plan on actually explaining their motivations as almost all games do. Just lazy, lazy writing that. They still weren't great in 2 and 3 but at least they didn't try to pretend they were some impossible to understand eldritch horror when we all knew they weren't going to be anyway. And their ultimate motivations weren't even that bad if you ask me. Machines (sorta) who try and preserve the history and legacy of sapient species by preserving them in reaper form. It may be a bit of an old sci-fi trope to have the machines that are given a directive then go about implementing it in the worst way possible, but it's a good one and I didn't mind it here.

See and my issue is that I wished they had stuck to them being an eldritch horror the lower races can't understand. The sequels spend too much time explaining them and by the time it's time to confront them it just cyborg alien space ships run by a crazy A.I. which was way more of a letdown to me. I'm simply disappointed the devs didn't stick to their guns an leave them as something more alien.

I definitely agree. In Mass Effect, they were space Cthulhu. And it was awesome.

In Mass Effect 2, I think they're actually still okay. They're a little more defined, but it's all left vague enough that they still serve as a good eldritch horror.

It was Mass Effect 3, where they tried to actually define them and give them goals and logic and such that they completely fell apart.

Rule Number One of eldritch horror: DO NOT EXPLAIN EVERYTHING! The unknown is ALWAYS more terrifying than the known. Lovecraft made this same mistake in The Call of Cthulhu. Our own imagination can think up thinks so terrifying that we can't define them with logic, words, or reason. DON'T TRY!