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Forums: Index > Watercooler > Could the thorian species be the template for the reapers?


I'm replaying ME 1 and there's an idea that struck me. The thorian is incredibly old, so I assume a long time ago there was more than just one of them. Also, the thorian is able to control people through spores, lives along time and sleeps for rougly 50,000 years and even calls this "the cycle" it also has face tentacles and if you remove the "arms" that go to the nueral bundles it has a elongated, diagonal shape that end in a head with tentacles. Now let's compare this to reapers. They live incredibly long, come back every 50,000 years as part of a cycle of extiction, control people through a signal (the synthetic verison of a spore if you ask me) have a long, diagonal body that ends in a head with tentacles. I think the reapers were based off of the thorians body, habits and abilities


Remember that true Reapers (the giant ones like Sovereign and Harbinger) are supposed to each have a unique shape. Specifically, they look like whatever species provided the genetic slurpee used to create them. The generic space squid design is laziness on the part of the graphics designers, so we can't really use physical form as a clue for their origins. The idea of the first Reaper being a Thorian is an interesting one though =) Kestrella 20:46, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the whole "sample sentients and build reapers out of them" thing was established in 2 (with the human reaper baby), and expanded in 3, but in the first point it's speculated (by EDI) that they use the sampled race to build the reaper's core and the larger organism is more uniformly weaponised. It's not laziness, it's that it would make no sense to have prothean- or human- or whatever-shaped megaweapons when they could be more reasonably designed to murder planets. If the Reapers' form is based on any sentient race, it's one much more ancient than the Thorian, probably whoever designed the catalyst. Laziness on the artists' part would be having them appear to whoever activated the catalyst in a "familiar form," perhaps a small child, or somebody that person had a lot of guilt wrapped up in OH WAIT. Ctrl alt belief 06:04, April 25, 2012 (UTC)
Personally, while I'm not sure there's any in-game connection, I was always under the definite impression that the Thorian was meant to be the opposite side of the Reaper's coin - organic "perfection" to synthetic.--Zxjkl 06:15, April 25, 2012 (UTC)
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