Mass Effect The Illusive Man Was RIGHT About Literally EVERYTHING
- Thread starter DarthOne
- Start date
'Everything' is subjective especially when 99% of Cerberus plans weren't helping regardless of if the basis of his philosophy being justified or not. It's like agreeing with Marx on some aspects of view in his philosophy while saying that communism in practice is dogshit.
DarthOne
☦️
How much of that is Mass Effect 3 and the expanded universe retroactively messing with TIM’s character though? Honest question because it’s been a long time since I touched the ME universe, for obvious reasons.
Why the thought of the cheating war wife eventually being forced to pay child support when her Asari mistress leaves her not a wet dream enough?
In all seriousness though you were the one who bought up the loaded statements of being right about 'literally everything' if you want to discount everything in Mass Effect 3 just arbitrarily just because you don't like it I got to say arguments don't work like that.
That being said even discounting ME3 Cerberus has had skeletons in the closet even in ME1, hell the entire reason Cerberus spiraled so far in ME3 was based in totality off his already stupid decisions made in ME2 the key one being Illusive Man screwing around with reaper tech despite full well knowing the risk.
Then there is the fact that the Illusive Man even outside the Reapers often puts terrible pressure for results on his men for results while giving them bare minimum of oversight with dangerous and often unethical experiments, which when they inevitably get out of control is catastrophic, the thing which happened to David in Overlord being a key example of it.
We got a sanitized more fleshed out version in ME2 and IM was still hiding/omitting shit from us, that isn't good.
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I never did a Renegade Playthrough where you let the Citadel Council die and all of them are replaced by Human Councilors but I can only assume that the Citadel Council is probably just as unhelpful in the sequels as the standard one.
And having not seen the video, but I feel that defining the First Contact War as a "genocidal" conflict seems like an exaggeration unless I'm misremembering. Like I'm pretty sure the Turians occupied Shanxi and yet somehow the Human colonists largely survived this apparent attempt at genocide? Yes the Turians were overly aggressive but they were also convinced to stand down by the other Alien powers just as well and in the thirty years since then the Systems Alliance of Humanity had apparently jumped ahead to the point where they were considered a power just a smidgen below the three main Citadel Races and given privileges and allowances that outstripped that of other longer established Races like the Volus and Elcor and Hanar etc, so much so it caused resentment from the Batarians to boot.
And literally within years after the First Contact War and this so-called attempt at "Genocide" the Turians were training the first class of Biotic Users like Kaiden Alenko and of course also cooperated on the development of the SSV Normandy prior to Mass Effect. And a bunch of other minor things as well because shocker, each of the alien races in the Mass Effect series are made up of individuals, not hive minds. Even the Geth lol.
And while the Illusive Man might've been a positive force in Mass Effect 2, that's because he was supporting the actual protagonist. It's not hard to sound like your the right guy when your basically the maverick rogue leader supporting the hero on his hero quest because the BUREAUCRACY is too insipid to do anything. Which is a pretty common trope anyways in fiction.
The truth is what was set up in Mass Effect 2 where Shepard has plenty of doubts about the Illusive Man and Cerberus' motivations are actually completely validated in Mass Effect 3. Shepard was worried that the Illusive Man would try and capitalize on Collectors and Reapers knowledge to advance Cerberus, seeing them as the pinnacle of Humanity at the expense of basically everything else and that turned out to be true.
He made an alliance with Aria on Omega Station, then tried to betray her. He had research on the Reapers and Collectors he could share with Liara, the Shadow Broker, but refused and instead tried to betray and kill her and replace her as well. When the Reapers assaulted Earth, he had his forces invade and take over a Systems Alliance Mars Facility doing research on Reapers. He attacked Human colonies and bases in multiple areas like the Biotics school where Jack was or the colony of... *looks it up* Horizon. He attacks a Salarian STG base, tries to foment a War between the Krogan and Turians and even attacks the Citadel itself and tries to purge everyone there... all while the Reapers are invading. He even dedicates most of Cerberus' (where does Cerberus get all of these resources) Fleet to battling an Earth fleet to defend his Reaper research and keep it away from other Humans.
He does this despite ALSO admitting that there are Humans like David Anderson and likely others such as Admiral Hackett as well as folks like Liara T'Soni who he KNOWS he can trust to do the right thing with the research and information he has but steadfastly and adamantly refuses to do so because he wants to keep all of that knowledge and power for himself not for the benefit of Humanity in general, but Cerberus specifically.
And having not seen the video, but I feel that defining the First Contact War as a "genocidal" conflict seems like an exaggeration unless I'm misremembering. Like I'm pretty sure the Turians occupied Shanxi and yet somehow the Human colonists largely survived this apparent attempt at genocide? Yes the Turians were overly aggressive but they were also convinced to stand down by the other Alien powers just as well and in the thirty years since then the Systems Alliance of Humanity had apparently jumped ahead to the point where they were considered a power just a smidgen below the three main Citadel Races and given privileges and allowances that outstripped that of other longer established Races like the Volus and Elcor and Hanar etc, so much so it caused resentment from the Batarians to boot.
And literally within years after the First Contact War and this so-called attempt at "Genocide" the Turians were training the first class of Biotic Users like Kaiden Alenko and of course also cooperated on the development of the SSV Normandy prior to Mass Effect. And a bunch of other minor things as well because shocker, each of the alien races in the Mass Effect series are made up of individuals, not hive minds. Even the Geth lol.
And while the Illusive Man might've been a positive force in Mass Effect 2, that's because he was supporting the actual protagonist. It's not hard to sound like your the right guy when your basically the maverick rogue leader supporting the hero on his hero quest because the BUREAUCRACY is too insipid to do anything. Which is a pretty common trope anyways in fiction.
The truth is what was set up in Mass Effect 2 where Shepard has plenty of doubts about the Illusive Man and Cerberus' motivations are actually completely validated in Mass Effect 3. Shepard was worried that the Illusive Man would try and capitalize on Collectors and Reapers knowledge to advance Cerberus, seeing them as the pinnacle of Humanity at the expense of basically everything else and that turned out to be true.
He made an alliance with Aria on Omega Station, then tried to betray her. He had research on the Reapers and Collectors he could share with Liara, the Shadow Broker, but refused and instead tried to betray and kill her and replace her as well. When the Reapers assaulted Earth, he had his forces invade and take over a Systems Alliance Mars Facility doing research on Reapers. He attacked Human colonies and bases in multiple areas like the Biotics school where Jack was or the colony of... *looks it up* Horizon. He attacks a Salarian STG base, tries to foment a War between the Krogan and Turians and even attacks the Citadel itself and tries to purge everyone there... all while the Reapers are invading. He even dedicates most of Cerberus' (where does Cerberus get all of these resources) Fleet to battling an Earth fleet to defend his Reaper research and keep it away from other Humans.
He does this despite ALSO admitting that there are Humans like David Anderson and likely others such as Admiral Hackett as well as folks like Liara T'Soni who he KNOWS he can trust to do the right thing with the research and information he has but steadfastly and adamantly refuses to do so because he wants to keep all of that knowledge and power for himself not for the benefit of Humanity in general, but Cerberus specifically.
The Illusive Man is a mess of a character, it has to be said.
They had something they wanted to do with him in the form of him being the ultimate Renegade route, of doing terrible things to get the jobs done, but that gets lost amidst a sea of impractical villainy at every turn. He never needed to be a nice guy, but chop him out and replace him with another human supremacist like, say, 40k’s God Emperor, and about seventy-five percent of Cerberus’s stupidity goes poof.
If TIM was based, he’d be helping out with the war effort whilst working on some contingencies of his own. Shepard’s concerns would grow because in this case, should the war be won, Cerberus will end up very influential in the post war galaxy. But that’s an unfortunate truth of life: sometimes the situation is so dire that you have to break bread with nasty people (cough, the Soviets in the Second World War, cough).
They had something they wanted to do with him in the form of him being the ultimate Renegade route, of doing terrible things to get the jobs done, but that gets lost amidst a sea of impractical villainy at every turn. He never needed to be a nice guy, but chop him out and replace him with another human supremacist like, say, 40k’s God Emperor, and about seventy-five percent of Cerberus’s stupidity goes poof.
If TIM was based, he’d be helping out with the war effort whilst working on some contingencies of his own. Shepard’s concerns would grow because in this case, should the war be won, Cerberus will end up very influential in the post war galaxy. But that’s an unfortunate truth of life: sometimes the situation is so dire that you have to break bread with nasty people (cough, the Soviets in the Second World War, cough).
Karmic Acumen
Well-known member
Evil people can't write smart characters unless they're utterly, unscrupulpusly self-aware. Otherwise, they MUST make them even worse than themselves, because the alternative is admitting that the 'better' choices they themselves would make are actually already totally evil. Thus, stupid evil.
Similarly, author avatars of such people end up evil as well, regardless of authorial intent. Conversely, their 'inversion' and 'deconstruction' gotcha characters become memetic badasses (Rorschach from Watchmen).
For the same reason, good people can write evil, but evil people can't write good.
Similarly, author avatars of such people end up evil as well, regardless of authorial intent. Conversely, their 'inversion' and 'deconstruction' gotcha characters become memetic badasses (Rorschach from Watchmen).
For the same reason, good people can write evil, but evil people can't write good.
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Yeah the Illusive Man was a mess of a character in ME3 but the whole game was messy so to speak. I think the main "direct" issue was making Cerberus some sort of co-villain alongside the Reapers which was absolutely silly. From Mass Effect 2 I always figured that Cerberus was some sort of private organization with deep pockets so it could do all of those cool PMC type of things it did in Mass Effect One and Two.
But in Mass Effect 3 they turned into like their own galaxy wide power taking over entire Colonies, invading and conquering the Citadel, having its own fleet that is the equal of one of the System Alliances fleets and invading foreign territory and all of that nonsense. Keeping in mind their investments in bringing Shepard back to life and rebuilding the Normandy was apparently a significant investment for Cerberus in Mass Effect 2.
Cerberus... was founded as a fringe of an already minor Earth political party, the Terra Firma Party. What happened in ME3 is like if... the Constitution Party of the United States suddenly got the backing of not just every Academi/Blackwater PMC and multibillion dollar corporations, but enough to fund its own Carrier Battle Group and Marine Expeditionary Unit that could carry out operations that could take over Hawaii or invade the Hague all simultaneously.
The Illusive Man could've been a Deuterantagonist but it should've been done more subtly with far more setup. Like the storyline of him trying to work with Aria T'Loak on Omega, or co-opting EDI, or his operatives he has throughout the Systems Alliance. He'd be helping Shepard and Humanity and trying to coax Shepard into his line of thinking (in rivalry to someone like David Anderson) and then towards the end make his gambit for controlling the Reapers instead of eliminating them and the difficulty in stopping him is based on whatever choices you made in the game... huzzah!
Also no Kai Leng or Reaper Spirit Child which would also be a bonus.
But in Mass Effect 3 they turned into like their own galaxy wide power taking over entire Colonies, invading and conquering the Citadel, having its own fleet that is the equal of one of the System Alliances fleets and invading foreign territory and all of that nonsense. Keeping in mind their investments in bringing Shepard back to life and rebuilding the Normandy was apparently a significant investment for Cerberus in Mass Effect 2.
Cerberus... was founded as a fringe of an already minor Earth political party, the Terra Firma Party. What happened in ME3 is like if... the Constitution Party of the United States suddenly got the backing of not just every Academi/Blackwater PMC and multibillion dollar corporations, but enough to fund its own Carrier Battle Group and Marine Expeditionary Unit that could carry out operations that could take over Hawaii or invade the Hague all simultaneously.
The Illusive Man could've been a Deuterantagonist but it should've been done more subtly with far more setup. Like the storyline of him trying to work with Aria T'Loak on Omega, or co-opting EDI, or his operatives he has throughout the Systems Alliance. He'd be helping Shepard and Humanity and trying to coax Shepard into his line of thinking (in rivalry to someone like David Anderson) and then towards the end make his gambit for controlling the Reapers instead of eliminating them and the difficulty in stopping him is based on whatever choices you made in the game... huzzah!
Also no Kai Leng or Reaper Spirit Child which would also be a bonus.
Galactica Actual
Chrome Anthropologist
Cerberus as a faction feels like a casualty of whatever was going on behind the scenes during ME3's development. Remember hearing about lots of ME1-2 devs jumping ship at the time.
MrBirthday
Agent of Catgirl Genocide
*skims thread* Considering how I've seen you talk about Mass Effect before, I believe that this is a topic that's begging for you to throw in your two cents, @bullethead.
I think ultimately that the problem goes beyond ME3's problems, (And yeah it has issues) ultimately, I will ask this if you think that Cerberus should be exonerated because bad writing in ME3 made them the bad guys why can't I demand the Alliance be the same because ME2 made them imbeciles?
I mean Cerberus only is argued to be a 'good' entity in ME2 is because like Husky says The Alliance is inept and not doing literally anything beyond scouting and watching the situation, while it's understandable they don't have the capital to just massively start a military buildup on Shepards words alone they could have at least have put money towards Early Warning Systems at Hackets request, (Similar to what Garrus did for Palaven) it also baffles me and defies my belief that Shepard could be assassinated by the Collector's after being such a recognized Hero of the Aliance and the Citadel (And possible savior of the council) and literally nobody does anything about it, even more so when taken into account that SRV-1 (An Alliance Warship) was destroyed and Human Colonies are vanishing wholesale everywhere allegedly at their hands as well...
I mean people in the Alliance are still salty about the first contact war and only 623 humans died in it, even before Shepard was bought back the Collectors are known to have participated in the mass kidnapping of at least six human colonies which probably had at least 100 people each where is the outrage? Even if the right course of actions was to keep things on the down low there was no reason to do so, the Collectors aren't a known major military power worth tiptoeing around so why keep an act of terrorism, kidnapping, and piracy quiet?
I mean Cerberus only is argued to be a 'good' entity in ME2 is because like Husky says The Alliance is inept and not doing literally anything beyond scouting and watching the situation, while it's understandable they don't have the capital to just massively start a military buildup on Shepards words alone they could have at least have put money towards Early Warning Systems at Hackets request, (Similar to what Garrus did for Palaven) it also baffles me and defies my belief that Shepard could be assassinated by the Collector's after being such a recognized Hero of the Aliance and the Citadel (And possible savior of the council) and literally nobody does anything about it, even more so when taken into account that SRV-1 (An Alliance Warship) was destroyed and Human Colonies are vanishing wholesale everywhere allegedly at their hands as well...
I mean people in the Alliance are still salty about the first contact war and only 623 humans died in it, even before Shepard was bought back the Collectors are known to have participated in the mass kidnapping of at least six human colonies which probably had at least 100 people each where is the outrage? Even if the right course of actions was to keep things on the down low there was no reason to do so, the Collectors aren't a known major military power worth tiptoeing around so why keep an act of terrorism, kidnapping, and piracy quiet?
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I feel like one of the few people who didn't like Mass Effect 2 because of changes like that.
In ME1, Cerberus was some small rogue black-ops group that hid itself very well, to the point that they were only rumored to exist, and a high-ranking admiral was getting nowhere while attempting to investigate them. They had small ships and bases made from mixed up bits and pieces to make it harder to trace who owned them if someone should happen to stumble across them. They conducted some horrible experiments on their fellow humans for unknown reasons, which included doing stuff like feeding entire groups of marines to thresher maws, and they killed people for investigating them too closely, which included an admiral. If you chose that background for Shepard, you were one of the people experimented on by them and have the trauma of being a sole survivor from it. Meanwhile, the Shadow Broker actually helped Shepard out significantly, not only in the main mission, but in investigating Cerberus, which included finding the Admiral who originally tasked you with that investigation and his missing marines.
Fast-forward to ME2, and now Cerberus is a recognized group that has been labelled as terrorists, slaps their logo on everything, and wears uniforms. While they have stations and facilities all over the place, it is suggested that it was really stretching their resources to not only bring Shepard back from the dead, but to build the Normandy SR-2. Shepard's background basically doesn't matter, and all the bad shit you know Cerberus did in the first game is basically brushed under the rug, and blamed on "rogue cells." Which is what ends up happening with all the bad shit you uncover during the second game, too.
Fast-forward to ME3, and Cerberus has just gone back to being straight-up evil, kidnap and experiment on thousands of humans, probably racking up as much or more of a body count as the Collectors, and are essentially a massive military force with full-sized warships, that you end up facing almost as much as the Reapers that are taking over the entire galaxy.
Going back to ME2, though, so much of it is contrived to either cut Shepard off from any support outside of Cerberus, and just to make the plot work. As @Free-Stater 101 mentioned, there is a severe lack of outrage over what happened to Shepard and the SR-1 Normandy, as well as all the human colonies. The Systems Alliance is trying to arm colonies, and provides them with military advisors, but it comes off as not doing much (to be fair in part due to some of the colonists being morons and thinking that arming them is making them a target), and the colonies that have disappeared seem to be not of much concern to anyone. It's also appalling that the Reaper attack on the Citadel has somehow been covered up, and there is little in way of thanks from the Council for saving the Citadel and civilization as they know it, or even themselves (provided you did that) beyond reinstating Shepard as a Spectre again and letting him/her do whatever he/she wants. Even more frustrating is how people Shepard saved and should probably give them the benefit of the doubt considering they saved the galaxy together act like morons, basically so Shepard can't just recruit them and has to work with the new lineup of characters for the game. The way Kaiden or Ashley treats Shepard when they first meet them after saving them, yet again, is especially frustrating.
I could probably spend a lot of time ranting about how dumb ME2 can get at times, but I think I'll wrap it up by saying that while people complained a lot about how in ME3, it really doesn't matter what choices you've made throughout the games in the end, I honestly felt a bit like that already in ME2 because of how many choices end up not mattering in that game, too. Even something as basic as Shepard's background.
And that's why the first game was the best one.
In ME1, Cerberus was some small rogue black-ops group that hid itself very well, to the point that they were only rumored to exist, and a high-ranking admiral was getting nowhere while attempting to investigate them. They had small ships and bases made from mixed up bits and pieces to make it harder to trace who owned them if someone should happen to stumble across them. They conducted some horrible experiments on their fellow humans for unknown reasons, which included doing stuff like feeding entire groups of marines to thresher maws, and they killed people for investigating them too closely, which included an admiral. If you chose that background for Shepard, you were one of the people experimented on by them and have the trauma of being a sole survivor from it. Meanwhile, the Shadow Broker actually helped Shepard out significantly, not only in the main mission, but in investigating Cerberus, which included finding the Admiral who originally tasked you with that investigation and his missing marines.
Fast-forward to ME2, and now Cerberus is a recognized group that has been labelled as terrorists, slaps their logo on everything, and wears uniforms. While they have stations and facilities all over the place, it is suggested that it was really stretching their resources to not only bring Shepard back from the dead, but to build the Normandy SR-2. Shepard's background basically doesn't matter, and all the bad shit you know Cerberus did in the first game is basically brushed under the rug, and blamed on "rogue cells." Which is what ends up happening with all the bad shit you uncover during the second game, too.
Fast-forward to ME3, and Cerberus has just gone back to being straight-up evil, kidnap and experiment on thousands of humans, probably racking up as much or more of a body count as the Collectors, and are essentially a massive military force with full-sized warships, that you end up facing almost as much as the Reapers that are taking over the entire galaxy.
Going back to ME2, though, so much of it is contrived to either cut Shepard off from any support outside of Cerberus, and just to make the plot work. As @Free-Stater 101 mentioned, there is a severe lack of outrage over what happened to Shepard and the SR-1 Normandy, as well as all the human colonies. The Systems Alliance is trying to arm colonies, and provides them with military advisors, but it comes off as not doing much (to be fair in part due to some of the colonists being morons and thinking that arming them is making them a target), and the colonies that have disappeared seem to be not of much concern to anyone. It's also appalling that the Reaper attack on the Citadel has somehow been covered up, and there is little in way of thanks from the Council for saving the Citadel and civilization as they know it, or even themselves (provided you did that) beyond reinstating Shepard as a Spectre again and letting him/her do whatever he/she wants. Even more frustrating is how people Shepard saved and should probably give them the benefit of the doubt considering they saved the galaxy together act like morons, basically so Shepard can't just recruit them and has to work with the new lineup of characters for the game. The way Kaiden or Ashley treats Shepard when they first meet them after saving them, yet again, is especially frustrating.
I could probably spend a lot of time ranting about how dumb ME2 can get at times, but I think I'll wrap it up by saying that while people complained a lot about how in ME3, it really doesn't matter what choices you've made throughout the games in the end, I honestly felt a bit like that already in ME2 because of how many choices end up not mattering in that game, too. Even something as basic as Shepard's background.
And that's why the first game was the best one.