My take: (Destiny)

by Quirel, Thursday, February 11, 2016, 06:00 (2997 days ago) @ Durandal

You know what the difference between a Mass Relay and a mass driver is?

Programming.

That's the flaw in the Reaper's plans, and it's one they know about. The Mass Relays they built to allow interstellar civilizations to flourish and constrain the galaxy's technological development can be used against them. If the Relays were reprogrammed by a cultivar race and fed with accurate targeting data, the Reaper fleet could be torn apart with FTL projectiles.

This is a known flaw, and the Reapers have taken it into account. Considerable effort has gone into protecting the Relays from tampering, and only the control terminal on the Citadel can reprogram the Relays. Every Reaper invasion begins with a decapitation strike that captures the Citadel. Complete operational surprise is achieved each time.

This is why Sovereign was so desperate to assume control of the Citadel, even though a Reaper fleet is only two years away from the galaxy. The Prothean team from Illos managed to disable the Mass Relay without alerting it, and it didn't know what else they had done. As it turns out, they did some of the preliminary work in opening up the Citadel's control network, but died before they could complete the work.

Fortunately, previous cycles have worked on the problem, and the most complete Prothean archives available speak of ancient plans to turn the Mass Relay network into a weapon. The Protheans themselves were interested in this project as a tool to maintain compliance throughout the galaxy, but were ignorant of the weapon's intended target. The Mars archives speaks of other Prothean research installations that were working on the project. Perhaps more information could be hidden there?

Just when it looks like the game is winding up for a repeat of the original game, it's revealed that you don't have to go hunting all over the galaxy. The Council dispatched research teams shortly after your death, and didn't tell you of their plans to combat the Reapers because of, you know, Cerberus.

You just have to pick them up and bail them out of trouble, but that's more of a side quest. The galaxy is falling apart, the Reapers are assaulting home systems and pushing toward the Citadel, and Shepard is the best bet to reunite everyone. Cue the missions we had in Mass Effect 3, with some rewriting to make Cerberus less stupid. Oh, and Kai Leng is going to be reworked into a less annoying stress ball.

Hell, you know what? Forget swords. Forget the trashy JRPG design. Forget making Kai Leng the anti-Shepard. We've already had an anti-Shepard, and his name was Saren. By this point, Shepard has waded through armies. Hotshots and criminal warlords and the galaxy's best assassins have tried to kill her and failed spectacularly. Kai Leng should be a villain who acknowledges that. Kai Leng should be a villain who fights asymmetrically, who avoids direct conflict with Shepard, who books it when it looks like he might get trapped in the same room as Shepard.

The Reapers capture the Citadel after a long and shut down the relay network. Fortunately, by this time the Reaper IFF you captured in ME2 has been distributed among the Council, so entire fleets are passing through the network unhindered. You've got the same buildup to retake the Citadel that there was to retake Earth in the original ME3, you've built a coalition with diplomacy and bravery and offering seats on the Council, and Reaper offensives are stalling across the board.

Side note: Keep the Reapers weird. They aren't here to make synthetics and organics play nice. The cycle does not repeat itself for any reason you can wrap your head around. If you make certain decisions, the Illusive Man turned himself into a husk hybrid trying to understand the Reaper's motives, and when you find him, he's eaten his gun. There are multiple conflicting answers as to what the Reapers were doing with the genetic paste in ME2, and when asked if the Reapers have anything to do with Dholen, credible sources answer yes and no, independently.

And when the Reapers take the Citadel, they activate something. Not a Mass Relay, but it's firing superluminal masses of dark matter out of the galaxy. Telemetry data suggests that they're launching these pulsed masses at dark portions of the sky. Even at superluminal speeds, these masses won't encounter a galaxy for billions of years.

So the coalition comes in hard to retake the Citadel. The Reapers are outnumbered, but they might be outgunned as well. But not for long.

You see, locking down the Citadel really did strand the Reapers out in darkspace. It would take hundreds if not thousands of years for them to return, but they had a contingency plan in place. And that plan was Harbinger's fleet, stationed relatively close to the galaxy. If the sentinel, Sovereign should fail, Harbinger and his fleet would rush in and open the doors.

And that there? That's the doors opening right now.

So the last level is a race through the Citadel to deliver the Crucible (A handheld device that will hack into the Citadel's control terminal and grant access) while Reapers pour through the Citadel's Mass Relay. And you aren't alone. Asari commandos and Salarian STG operatives are racing to other parts of the Citadel with their own Crucibles as mixed units of Turian infantry and Krogan Kakliosaur cavalry eliminate the Reaper ground forces and Geth artillery embeds itself on every flat surface available and pummels the Reaper small craft. It's ME2's suicide mission all over again, only instead of individual squad members, it's all the people you've united under a common banner.

I think there's got to be a boss battle, and Harbinger is the best candidate. He was underutilized in ME3 anyway. The fight should be to protect the Crucible as waves upon waves of Reaper troops descend upon your position. Harbinger is ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL of whatever he can, and argues with you in between waves.

You are, of course, going to survive with the Crucible intact. That doesn't mean that the Reaper invasion will be successfully averted. In order to control the Mass Relay network, dozens of Crucibles have to be in place and functioning, and if your forces are weak (Killing the Rachni, Quarians, or Geth incurs a massive penalty) then they might be wiped out. Even if they are successful, they may be delayed long enough for the Reapers to tear the Citadel apart, or destroy the Widow Mass Relay, or anything else that might cripple galactic civilization. The targeting of the Mass Relay turned Mass Driver might be shody enough that the Citadel itself is all but obliterated in the crossfire.

There isn't necessarily a happy ending. But victory and unity can be achieved, and the result respects your choices.