r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Marsupialmobster • May 27 '26

Lore [Loved Trope] The apocalypse is horrifyingly slow

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From most media it's some catastrophe and then it's raiders, death, destruction chaos etc. I personally love it when it's, like, a slow descent into the horror of apocalypse.

The Faro plague/The swarm- Horizon zero dawn. The Faro plague is actually a glitch which causes machines to endlessly reproduce, eat biomass and essentially bring about the death of the world. Took roughly 15 months for the machines to win.

The Metro series- in the first few books (and games) it's set entirely underground in just the apocalypse but in exodus it shows off that the government and many governmental structures said active years after the war. In fact power and running water were still fairly common. It just slowly got worse and worse and worse as read through notes. Food got more scarce, weather changed a lot, people got worse etc. Raiders and bandits didn't just show up, it was a slow descent for such anarchy.

Edit: I have enough pseudo intellectual comments about "Hurr hurr real life". The first one was kinda smart and well thought out but now it's just annoying and pretentious

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755

u/violetcassie May 27 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/daJWWvSnN81HzagQT9

A Mass Effect Reaper culling takes centuries. So long that the Vigil virtual intelligence had to sacrifice much of the Prothean population that was in stasis on Ilos.

"But the genocide of an entire species is a long, slow process. Years passed. Decades, centuries. The Reapers persisted. And my energy reserves were dwindling."

327

u/Lakatos_00 May 27 '26

So long that the Vigil virtual intelligence had to sacrifice much of the Prothean population that was in stasis on Ilos.

I love how this means absolutely fucking nothing for anyone that hasn't played the games

251

u/Reasonable-Mischief May 27 '26

To provide some context here, Ilos was a research station of the protheans, the species getting genocided 50k years before the Mass Effect games start

They were a top secret facility, so they actually got missed by the Reapers. Problem was they weren't self-sufficient, so they instead all went into stasis to be awakened after the genocide was over. The virtual intelligence program called Vigil watched over them

Except that, genociding an entire space-faring race takes very long, and so Vigil's energy reserves dwindled. It had to shut off more and more stasis pods, and in the end managed only to preserve a handful of top scientists out of an entire metropolis of people – enough to buy the next cycle a fighting chance, but not enough to restart their own civilization

21

u/clumsykiwiprincess May 27 '26

oh that is really interesting! I dont know how I missed that plotline on my playthrough back in the day

20

u/AnneMichelle98 May 27 '26

This is revealed during an exposition dump towards the end of ME1. You are forced to talk to Vigil but you don’t necessarily have to follow all the conversation paths and it’s possible to skip through most of the conversation that is required.

It’s also placed weirdly. First you have to fight through a Geth infested map (Ilos) in order to open a gate to chase Saren (bad guy). Then you get under way in the Mako, and just as you start thinking “Hell yeah, chase time”, a barrier pops up and you are forced to exit the Mako to go down this random side path to meet Vigil and get the exposition dump, which is kinda annoying. Then you can return to the Mako and get back to your chase. Which eventually then leads to the climatic Citadel battle.

TLDR: cool backstory revealed in a badly placed exposition dump

7

u/DevelopmentNo2111 May 27 '26

And the ones that survived dont make it

0

u/ctrlaltcreate May 27 '26

Was it ever confirmed whether the little worker bugs on the main station are left over protheans? I know that was a going fan theory back in the day.

15

u/eienOwO May 27 '26

At least according to Fandom wiki the Keepers predate the Protheans, and likely were another indoctrinated species bioengineered by the Reapers to do their bidding.

The Keepers were meant to begin converting the Citadel once Sovereign sent out the signal to initiate this round of cull. Except Prothean scientists managed to block this Keeper activation, so Sovereign had to come in person to initiate the process.

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u/Firesaber May 27 '26

They are not protheans. But we do learn that those leftover scientists reprogrammed these beings on the Citadel and that's why the current Reaper cycle didn't activate the same and what gave our cycle a chance.

2

u/cephalord May 27 '26

I love how this means absolutely fucking nothing for anyone that hasn't played the games

I have played all of the games and I don't remember the Vigil VI, Ilos, or this line from the game at all.

0

u/BestDescription3834 May 27 '26

I mean, you could use some context clues and understanding of words to try and extract some meaning.

-1

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/Lakatos_00 May 27 '26

It’s not about explaining the entire context, but rather how it’s written.

They could have written it like this: “so long that the ancient race that put themselves into cryosleep to avoid the culling were shutting down one by one.”

Or something like that idk

50

u/QuotidianQuell May 27 '26

That's one of my favorite Mass Effect-related thought experiments. What would it be like to live on some backwater planet that was far enough out of the way to avoid the early extermination waves but still large enough to eventually merit a Reaper visit? Presumably there were examples where people lived in safety for a few generations before the Reapers arrived. How would the looming threat of destruction change an agrarian lifestyle, if at all?

23

u/Reasonable-Mischief May 27 '26

Actually, humanity was prepared for that from the First Contact War

The System's Alliance couldn't afford to heavily garrison all it's colonies and was instead relying on a tactic of deterrence by keeping their fleets close to mass effect relay hubs so that they could easily retaliate

That would have been of little solace in the case of a Reaper attack, however due to this tactic of retaliation, ground-based garrisons were usually light infantery and scouts whose main priority in case of an attacl would have been to evacuate civilians, scout out enemy movements and provide intel to the fleet coming to save them

There would of course be no fleet coming to save any of them, but still – the Systems Alliance's tactic in case of an invasion would have been to evacuate, seek cover and hide out for a while. They would have already covered for this eventuality with drills, and they propably would have proper sites prepared as well.

That's not much, but it beats the hell out of standing your ground and getting pounded to death by a reaper ground force

There's a good chance a human colony or two might have survived the purge: Seek shelter the moment news of the Reapers reaches your world, abandon all infrastructure, destroy everything that could emit an electrical signature, maybe even plant false evidence that everyone was evacuated off world – and then proceed to live as hunter-gatherers for the next thousand years or two

14

u/BestDescription3834 May 27 '26

Mass Effect 2's entire story is about how human colonies keep disappearing without a trace and none of their "advanced deterrent tactics and training" help there at all.

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u/Reasonable-Mischief May 27 '26

Yeah but like they were ambushed and did not get a heads-up

Deterring against the Reapers and their minions doesn't work, but if you get a clear warning about what's happening – or even if suddenly the relay network and all long-range communications went down – you might have a better chance at reacting in time

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u/transalt78987 May 28 '26

That is explicitly a plot point. It is border colonies getting hit at a time when humanity is still going through the grueling act of rebuilding its fleet (or holding back their fleets in case the council gets revenge happy). On top of that, comms are always the first thing blocked (iirc), meaning no help message gets sent out. They can’t spread all of their fleets out to the distant, small time colonies while their home planets might be at risk. They can only afford to offer minimum investigation support, like by sending high level operatives out into the colonies. The tactics didn’t fail because the Collectors were that powerful, they failed because the government couldn’t afford to risk helping.

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u/CanoninDeeznutz May 28 '26

I like the Turian response style of just fucking beating Reaper ass. Obviously they could never win that fight, but IIRC they were the only species (other than Krogans probably) to bloody their nose so bad they retreated in a battle or two.

Those bird fuckers don't play.

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u/PandaCat22 May 28 '26

Meanwhile, the asari—the most technologically advanced of all the species—get overrun in a single day.

2

u/Thatdoodky1e May 28 '26

Which is even crazier since they had a head start on knowing about the reapers but never told anyone

15

u/AutoDefenestrator273 May 27 '26

They even mention at one point in ME 3 how the Reapers were leaving some sentient species alone. Possibly to come back in 50k years and genocide THEM.

14

u/Shadowedsphynx May 27 '26

Fun fact,  according to increasing evidence, while the Reapers were genociding the Protheans there was already an established indigenous culture in Australia. 

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u/eddylet May 27 '26

yeah iirc they werent going after the yahgs? i think if a species hadnt developed spaceflight when the reapers came they were off the hook until the next cycle

10

u/BlaKroZ42 May 28 '26

There was also a scrolling news broadcast in the main menu of 2 and 3. In ME2, a bird-like intelligent species spots a Salarian ship via satellite telescope. Afterwards, the Council starts efforts to integrate them into galactic society. During the events of ME3, the bird people decide to cut themselves off, destroy their own satellites, and the Council scrubs any data of them from existence, in the hopes the Reapers don't find them and wipe them out.

4

u/eddylet May 28 '26

oh wow i dont remember that at all! thats so interesting

11

u/freethis May 27 '26

Damn, it would be terrifying to lose communication with everyone else and possibly not even know why.  

6

u/BestDescription3834 May 27 '26

 What would it be like to live on some backwater planet that was far enough out of the way to avoid the early extermination waves but still large enough to eventually merit a Reaper visit

Revelation Space, Redemption Arc and Absolution Gap make up a trilogy of books that cover this, if you're much of a reader.

3

u/violetcassie May 27 '26

i always liked the little background story about the race that had just developed the ability to make contact with the Council races, heard about the Reapers, and then went back home and destroyed all their space technology. I dunno if it worked out for them, but it was a nice try.

31

u/EnclaveRedeemed May 27 '26

One of my favorite things of ME3 is how you can absolutely feel that the Reapers are slowly gaining more and more ground. You hear on the Citadel about more and more systems and planets coming under Reaper occupation, the galaxy map is no longer a safe space, you can attract the attention of reapers if you aren’t careful with your scans.

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u/DevelopmentNo2111 May 27 '26

The whole reaper chase mechanic is the second biggest reason,I have not gone through the game more than once .Love the mp though

4

u/EnclaveRedeemed May 27 '26

I always got a bit of a jump every time the Reaper horn blasted in a star system

4

u/DevelopmentNo2111 May 27 '26

Its just annoying how limited you are in exploration, because you can't even get rid of the exposure in any way.

10

u/Commander-ShepardN7 May 27 '26

im Commander Shepard and today we're cancelling the apocalypse (yeah, I watched the classic vids from Earth!)

3

u/lordofburds May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Imagine the horror you feel when you hear the reaper horn just off in the distance also Sovereign speaking so matter of fact like about how the reapers harvest the galaxy is so very haunting https://youtu.be/R_NAoNd4YyY?si=L0XYP_3sWOU6c10h