Virmire: Sovereign

Were Mass Effect a film, or a book, or one of those art forms that was actually, you know, legit in some manner, this would be one of Those Scenes that Professor Bullshit of Fuckstone University would write his dissertation on and present it at The Convention Of Sexually Frustrated Academics to much great applause.

For this is where Shepard meets Saren's magical spaceship, Sovereign.

First off, we need to quit saying "magical spaceship". Sovereign is a reaper. Remember that thing Benezia was talking about in Sarenistotallyguilty100%.mp3? Taa daaaaa.

Reapers are giant space bugs. They're the big fucking spider things we saw all over Eden Prime. During this sequence, just so he can kind of scale down to Shepard, Sovereign appears in a hologram instead of in person. (You later learn that Sovereign is a baby reaper, and they make bigger reapers. Damn!)

This scene is significant because it's the only time in the three games where Shepard and the reapers really get to talk. ... enh, I mean, there's the one in ME2, but he doesn't ... you'll see. This is it for the reapers stepping up and explaining what they're all about, and the only time you'll ever get any direct quotes regarding reaper plans and motivations.

So what's the first thing this super significant space bug has to say to us?

You laugh, this sums up the reapers quite nicely.

So, legit, what does Sovereign say? Here, have a direct quote from the game: "We [the reapers] are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."

I want you to promise me that you'll remember that come Mass Effect 3, because you'll need that piece of information. Sovereign just told you the reaper's Final Solution, most people just don't realize it because it's under some flowery bullshit.

But, uh, point being, the reapers? Are gonna kill us all dead. Specifically, they do it at the end of their cycles (Liara mentioned this), at "the apex of their glory," 'their' in this case being whatever organic life is chilling around in the galaxy. It used to be the Protheans, now it's the ... uh ... actually, they're after a couple of different races. Humans are on the list, though.

But, to be quite frank, the reapers give no shits, they'll reap everybody just because they forgot to get a mid-morning snack or whatever. NOT EVEN THE ELCOR ARE SAFE YOU GUYS.

The reapers made the Citadel. Oh, and the mass relays, too! They like leaving technology lying around so that organic life develops along the path that the reapers want. This ensures that organic life gets to the point in develop that the reapers need to reap.

"But Bean, what the hell is that point?" -- I love you, but you can never know. Until Mass Effect 3, anyway. But rest assured, the reapers have gotten us right where they want us. YAY.

So, there's another direct quote from Sovereign that always makes me snort:

Bah! No, but really. He goes on:

And here we come to the crux of what makes Commander Shepard tick.

See, you can make Shep a lot of things. Male, female, black, white, gay, straight, theist, atheiest, saint, dick, loves peanut butter, whatever. Anything! But there is one thing that runs common through every Shepard ever imagined by any player:

No reaper tells Shepard what to do and lives through it.

First of all, that's an exact quote. Yes, I died too when I heard it. Holla at, ME3, holla at.

Second: get used to Shepard Getting Mat At Reapers. It will happen only slightly less than the krogans having four balls thing.

You can watch the conversation here, if you want more than the highlight reel I laid out:

Anyway, Sovereign gets pissed and makes some windows explode while cutting off the conversation right as Joker calls.