Source
r/masseffect•
booleanlogicgate

Sovereign in the context of Mass Effect 3

So let me first say that I was pretty happy with the Extended Cut. It wasn't perfect...it didn't fix any of the major plot holes...but it gave me the closure I needed.

That being said, I have a strong personal need for story continuity, and I go to sometimes ridiculous lengths to maintain it...and there's one thing I'm really still struggling to conceptualize. I don't understand how what Sovereign said to us in Mass Effect 1 is consistent with what we're told in Mass Effect 3.

The main reason, I imagine, is because the story writers changed, but like I said...continuity at any cost. My biggest issue with Sovereign is that he says "There is a realm of existence so far beyond your own you cannot even imagine it. I am beyond your comprehension. I am Sovereign." What, exactly, is the realm of existence so far beyond our own that we can't comprehend it? What does this mean in the context of what we learned in Mass Effect 3?

I have some of my own ideas, but I'm interested to see what other people think... My best explanation, so far, is that it refers to how Reapers are able to turn entire civilizations into new Reapers, and absorb people's "essences." (For instance, absorbing the human colonists to get the "essence" of humanity to make the human Reaper; adding your own energy to the Crucible in the synthesis ending; also, preserving the technology of other cultures in Reaper form.) I suppose this could have something to do with some kind of interdimensional...thing, but I don't know if this helps me understand Sovereign any better.

Also, yes, I realize Sovereign could have simply been lying. One other explanation is that he simply thought organics are arrogant and he didn't owe us any explanation, but I don't really like that interpretation.

Thanks for reading!

Posted Jun 27, 2012, 8:23 AM UTC

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Vicktaru•

I think you take things too literally, Sovereign is a Lovecraftian villain, and to understand him you have to look at Mass Effect from a more literary view. H.P. Lovecraft wrote what is now called cosmic horror or cosmicism. The basic premise of this is that the universe is a dark cold empty place with little care of humanity. That in the ancient vastness of space there exist creatures that are so beyond humanity that they look at us as we look at ants. What does an ant know about what people do? They do not have the intellectual capability to recognize our patterns or our motivations.

It becomes hard to fathom this as a person because we are so intelligent, and that is where the brilliance of Lovecraft comes in. He rejects this notion and says that we aren't as smart as we think we are. Lovecraft states that when a person is forced to face how insignificant they truly are in the universe that the human mind, so confident in its brilliance and mastery of the world around them, has only one response: to break. The problem with this in Mass Effect is that the game has a classic hero. Lovecraft heroes stumble across a plot of some cultists that worship one of his aliens as a deity, or happen upon some ancient ruins that hides ancient blasphemes of nature that one of the beings left behind in prehistoric times. They are usually able to foil the plot of these people, but in the cost of either their life or their sanity. Mass Effect requires its hero to win against the Reapers directly, this starts to create a wall between what the game does and classic cosmicism. In the end when they decided they wanted to explain the Reapers to us that was the final nail in the coffin. Any ending that a human writer can come up with is by definition not beyond human comprehension. Still it helps to understand that this is where that line comes from, not from a literal statement but from a literary back ground. Sovereign simply believes itself to be beyond the comprehension of the people before it, as such it says so.

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booleanlogicgateOP•

That's why it bothered me. He's a Lovecraftian villain. I don't think it has anything to do with taking things too literally. Lovecraft had other dimensions that were literally beyond human understanding. I was hoping something like that would come into play as the Mass Effect series went on.

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Vicktaru•

I say literal because everyone who has a problem with this line seems to assume realm must mean a physical place, such as another dimension as you were saying.

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booleanlogicgateOP•

Okay, then yes, but obviously in light of ME3 it CAN'T be taken literally anymore. Doesn't mean it wouldn't have been cool or interesting in ME1, and it seemed at the time that that's the direction they were going.

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Sepherchorde•

One way to look at it is this: Sovereign is at that point closer to a "synthesis" being (as are the other Reapers) than anything else in the galaxy. That being the case, he really is on a whole different level, and beyond true comprehension of a human.

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booleanlogicgateOP•

Hmm. It seemed to me that he was saying it was impossible for an organic to even comprehend whatever his explanation of Reaper motives might have been, but I see now that I might have been mistaken. I shall have to give this some thought.

Edit: Also, thank you for your input!

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Sepherchorde•

I agree: I don't think an organic could comprehend him and his kind. Although if you go with Synthesis, they are now a few steps ahead of the Reapers. :)

And no problem.

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SilentMobius•

I think it's much better explained in the EC, add in what EDI says about "destructive uploading" and IMHO you get:

Live subjects are uploaded using nanotech that destructively transposes their conciousness into software form. Much like the EC-Control Catalyst-Shepard, but where each mind only becomes a small part of the whole (And the whole is bound to the Catalyst and it's directives) Live and dead subject are broken down into the DNA fragments and added into the techno-organic computer of the new Reaper all the information that Javik can read via DNA markers is recovered and stored like this.

This is why Harbinger says

If you continue to resist, there will be a price.

In that, the more a race resists "Ascending", the fewer actual consciousnesses make up the Reaper and the more it needs to rely on the base AI+DNA imprints.

The Catalyst also talks about integrating their technology, This is much like what Vigil said in that worlds are stripped of technology and resources to build the Reaper.

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booleanlogicgateOP•

I think this is most likely what the writers had in mind, but it still doesn't sit quite right with me. Might be because I'm a Cognitive Science researcher and so the idea of transforming consciousness into software is what bugs me, though...I need to suspend my disbelief more.

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Parrk•

Sovereign was like the scout in tf2. Anything he might have said was just to get at your sandvich.

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raginglion•

The Starchild himself is an AI created by a race of beings known as "the creators" to find a solution to the chaos. The reapers are his solution. Perhaps these "creators" are a reference to that "realm of existence" Sovereign hinted at in the first game. It would serve as an excellent premise to a new game, imo.

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booleanlogicgateOP•

Yeah, I've actually toyed with that myself. It is an interesting idea.

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Robotochan•

I've been thinking along the same lines, Sovereign even says that they have always been, nobody created the Reapers.

I had originally expected some kind of paradox type event where the Reapers were responsible for their own creation.

And why would he lie? He's a machine, none of the Reapers or the Catalyst lie to us at any point (AFAIK). They have no need to lie, since they don't give a shit about what the organics think.

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booleanlogicgateOP•

Yeah...my reasoning exactly. I think this would have been much more interesting, and would have made the Reapers more terrifying villains. But oh well. I did also think that they'd have to retcon that eventually or it just becomes too "supernatural" feeling.

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Alekazam•

I'm guessing Sovereign was referring to the original planned ending surrounding Dark Energy. By ME3 what he said in the first seems a bit less relevant.

Link

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