Mass Effect fans divided over Reaper reveal we never wanted

Mass Effect 3 gets a lot of flak for its ending, but most of the criticism is usually aimed at its colour-coded attempt at summing up three games with only a handful of disappointing options.

In a recent Reddit thread however, fans of the games discussed which parts of series lore and mysteries they would have preferred to have left unexplained.

The most popular answer was about how Mass Effect 3 spelled out the Reapers’ ultimate goals in explicit detail, something that players would have apparently preferred to have been left a little more vague.

“Unanswered questions drive me nuts and I want to understand as much as I can. But the answers can be so stupid that it’s equally annoying as not knowing,” replied one user. “That would still apply to the Reapers. I hate what they ultimately gave as an answer, but I like the initial ideas they were toying with.”

A new Mass Effect game is in the works.

“This was my exact same thought. The explanation we got in Mass Effect 1 was more than enough,” replied another. “We are the harvest. They are the Reapers. Their motivations are beyond our comprehension.”

This is all in reference to the reveal towards the end of Mass Effect 3 that the Reapers caused universe-wide destruction in a bid to… permanently preserve life, apparently?

As some pointed out, the more vague and straightforward answer given in Mass Effect 2 was far more satisfying than the actual answer we got at the end of Mass Effect 3.

“When I first played ME2, I thought the Reaper larva in the Collector base was the answer,” noted one user. “And I liked it. No big epic plan eons in the making, no special destiny. We're just raw resources grown and harvested for their reproductive cycle.”

As others in the thread pointed out, the disappointment is probably as a result of the Reaper’s end goal being changed. part way through development.

At least, this is if a certain mission in Mass Effect 2 is anything to go by.

User While-Fancy gave a pretty detailed breakdown of exactly what the previous mission was implying that the Reaper’s original intentions were.

“They are referring to the rapidly aging sun subplot in ME2 on Tali's recruitment mission,” they said in reply to another commenter. “The reapers were basically allowing civilisations to rise and cutting them down and recording them to prevent the galaxy from going dark.”

Supposedly this plot would have been written by staff who left in between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, which forced the writers who remained to come up with something completely different (and, according to the fans, less satisfying).