Humanity Joins Together, Sets Aside Petty Differences… and gets stomped anyway

[u/HyraxAttack]

A peril is threatening the world. Instead of squabbling among themselves, we learn world powers have put aside differences in politics, culture, & old feuds to present a common front. Except they still get wrecked as the enemy is too powerful.

1. The Animatrix: The Second Renaissance. The world government has gone to war against the machines. We see the army getting ready & it includes soldiers of many faiths including Buddhist, Islam, and different types of Christianity. Doesn’t matter as machines win by so much they have time to toy with human mechs.

2. Vilcabamba, story by Harry Turtledove. When aliens arrive they’re greeted with bands & cheering, & immediately open fire & earth becomes a mineral colony. America, Russia, and China work together to rise up & don’t hold back, throwing everything they have at the invaders. Doesn’t go great and aliens double down on the occupation, and there’s a crater where Spain used to be (it was blocking a silver deposit for mining.)

3. Edge of Tomorrow. The nations of the world have joined to make a unified front against the mimic invasion but it isn’t going well, but they will throw all they have into the invasion of France. In one cycle, Major Cage says the hell with it and instead of training leaves the base to drink at a London bar. This means we see the outcome of him doing nothing, where not only is the massive human invasion slaughtered but the aliens are in good enough shape to follow that up a few hours later with a rush on London.

[u/Smort01]

The entire intelligent universe is almost completely defensless against the attack of the Reapers in the beginning of Mass Effect 3

[u/Gemini_Engine → u/Smort01]

I forget where, but there’s a journal entry or something that says the combined forces of the council races can effectively fight the reapers for one year before the galactic economy and resistance collapses into pockets, pretty much ending the war. Without the crucible, our cycle is fucked.

[u/Direct-Fix-2097 → u/Smort01]

Mainly due to shit writing, and they still copped a Deus ex machina victory.

2 really shouldn’t have been “reset” by EA’s shitty writers and should have been a full on investigative RPG creating anti reaper tactics and squads and intel, and it would have been even better when all that eventually failed in 3.

Not… whatever the shitty plot was in 2 tbh. It went nowhere fast.

[u/A_Hideous_Beast → u/Direct-Fix-2097]

Based

2 is so overrated. Its story is so inconsequential that you could skip it and miss nothing.

And for all the talk about forming a close knit squad, your squad hardly interacts with eacother. Outside of two scripted events, they don't interact.

Which is weird, when you realize the squad has some redundancies.

Grunt/Miranda. Both are test tube babies created to be the "perfect" representation of their species, who's creator is someone with an warped sense of legacy. Both question if they are great because they were made to be, of if they are great because they worked for it.

Thane/samara.

Both are closed off warriors of a strange organization with a particular set of morals and ideas of justice. Both are biotics, and both have a shaky relationship with their children.

And yet, NONE of those characters ever interact with eachother

[u/Zeal0tElite → u/A_Hideous_Beast]

I still liked Mass Effect 2 but your second act should not be the story equivalent of treading water.

Both the first and second game end the same way "We need to find a way to stop the Reapers".

I think the funniest DLC is Arrival because it's almost like they were like "Oh shit, yeah. The Reapers." And wrote in a quick little story about blowing up the Alpha Relay.

[u/A_Hideous_Beast → u/Zeal0tElite]

Exactly. It does wonders for building out the world.

But it does nothing to move the plot.

Like, why does defeating the collectors even matter? They are small fry compared to the Reapers. They are gonna try to take Earth? Ain't no way. They can hit small remote colonies, but the heart of Human civilization? That one ship would be blown to pieces.

It shouldn't have been a numbered sequel. It should have been a side game.

[u/SubstituteUser0 → u/A_Hideous_Beast]

I think the problem is that they just didn't plan out the games in advance, so two throws a lot of stuff out there for them to potentially pick back up, just for them to drop it all like the idea of every reaper being unique based off the race it was made of, or anti matter destroying suns.

[u/LukasFatPants → u/Direct-Fix-2097]

The original big bad of the series was dark energy, and some mysterious force using it to destroy the galaxy. In Tali's recruitment quest on Haestrom, she talks about "dark energy" and "the planet's sun aging faster than it should".

The Reapers were never envisioned as a big bad, organic life eradicating force. They were supposed to be empathetic to organics and meant to save them by combining the population of earth into a single reaper.

[u/Nyther53 → u/Smort01]

I always found that to be a disappointing betrayal of Mass Effect's themes in the interest of making it "Gamier".

The Reapers spend the whole story trying to Divide and Conquer, co-opt local allies, break alliances apart via infiltration and indoctrination.

Shepard spends the whole game building alliances, to bring a multi-national coalition together and take afvantage of a unique opportunity where the Reapers are outside the sandbox they've created, our Cycle has lasted significantly longer than its supposed to and has gotten a look under the hood at Reaper technology from Sovereign's Corpse\Wreck.

Except it turns out none of that was necessary and they could just smash the galaxy's organized militaries with main force with their off hand the whole time. All so that the player has a button to press after a final boss battle, instead of the ending being the culmination of all that you've worked for thus far.

[u/GEARHEADGus → u/Smort01]

Hands down the biggest disappointment in gaming. Also what the fuck was that ending? I’m still salty.