Did Reaper harvest include other galaxies?

To the best of the lore knowledge...NO.

Please don't give them any ideas of adding them, cause once was enough.

Am just wondering, because from logical point of view, Milky Way cycles made sure the technological advancement stayed at certain level. Since this is Sci-Fi genre which is short for scientific fantasy, usually everything has to make some sort of sense, which is why we get explanation how Asari biology works, explanation about dextro races, why vouls wear suits, how mass relays work, how eezo works and so on. There is no space magic involved in Science Fantasy genre as a whole, and shouldn't be. Magic is the domain of fantasy series.

Back to the topic, Milky Way's technological advance was controlled with reaper harvests, but Andromeda had no such control over this. That would mean there could be some apex race which spans for over 50 000 years easily few times that number.

When the arks reach the new galaxy, the technological advancement of Kett or Angara isn't either below or above what the arks have. This would mean that a similar control had existed in that galaxy as well. We also know the fact that Reaper numbers had been enough to "darken the sky of every world' to quote the game. However, each cycle ended with birth of new Reaper and given their numbers that would mean thousands of 50 000 years cycles. That would make Leviathan to be old enough to be 50 000 000 years old at least (which gives us exactly 1000 Reapers) so quite impossible number of years unless we account for harvests happening in places outside Milky Way. That would make the Reaper numbers possible to exist. Also, the reaper intelligence was looking for a solution and it is logical to expand it's test outside Milky Way to find it faster. Or are we to assume the Reapers waited patiently doing absolutely nothing for 50 000 years? That's a waste of time IMO. when in that time, they could be harvesting other galaxies.

One, the engine technology shown in Reapers is it takes years to travel relatively short distance outside the Galaxy and requires the use of the Citadel relay to get them back in time.  This is why what the Protheans did worked for as long as it did.  Since according to Leviathan DLC, the original race was in the Milky Way, then so far, no real info on them going outside the Milky Way.  The engines used by the Initiative was something new and different from previous Reaper based technology, so it is something they MAY have, but again, the way the lore and timeline is presented says not. 

As far Andromeda, there WAS an advanced race that by the hinted lore had some sort of Civil war or inter-species war resulting in the end or greatly reduced existence.  So, while there MAY be no real reason for the Reapers to not be in Andromeda by lore....I hope Bioware doesn't go that route as it would just be a rehash of ME original series.  Honestly, there is so much we don't know lore wise about Andromeda, and I hope for something new and fresh instead of same ole same ole.

Also as a thought...the Remnant are machine based, which kinda counters the idea that they were wiped out by the Reapers.  Plus there aren't Relays, so...if the Reapers set the Galaxy up to follow a certain path, I doubt they would change tactics between Galaxies since it has worked so well in the past, so there SHOULD be relays if there were Reapers harvesting Andromeda.  Also as far as the numbers go, they do produce more than one reaper per cycle....we don't know how many, but they do produce more than one. 

This does create slight plot hole tho, right? I mean, the arks can't possibly have non-reaper tech base, whole galaxy technology is reaper based as stated in ME trilogy. The initiative didn't have enough time OR resources to develop a new drive core from nothing (were too poor to even do anything until the mysterious benefactor showed up). It had to base on tech left by reapers for other races to ascend lore-wise or it would take them tens of years to develop new and unique drive. It could be built upon reaper tech as in upgrading it but that still makes a plot hole, because wouldn't the reapers have issue with the races they came to harvest to escape like that to another galaxy that is outside their reach? Again, this makes no sense.

The citadel relay purpose isn't only needed for reapers to get back in time, it took them not that long between ME1 and ME3 timeline and again, we don't know how deep in dark space the reapers were waiting. Most of citadel's purpose is to gather the galactic rulers in one place (council, seat of prothean empire) and get rid of the leadership thus crushing possible resistance. It's second purpose is to also disrupt communications. As Javik pointed out, the citadel was first to fall, which left the worlds with no warning and no mobilization for reapers to pick them one by one until it was too late. So all in all, it MIGHT be possible for Reapers to actually go to other galaxies.

As for the absence of mass relays, they might not have been built by the reapers though but by Leviathans, who are shown to have traveled Milky Way. We don't know if Reapers build anything actually, what we know is that Keepers were doing their work of keeping the citadel ready for next cycle and we can assume they did likewise for the relays.

As for the info how many reapers are created each cycle we know that from leviathan dlc where you literally are told "Each harvest ends with the birth of the new reaper". This quote comes from the game itself so it's a confirmed info there is one, as in one reaper stores all knowledge of one cycle.

The remnants though is a good point for you to bring up as well as the civil war. It would point to the conflict of synthetics wiping out organic life. I am unsure where I stand with Bioware potentially bringing in reaper lore to Andromeda, it could be done right but as you said, it's an old stuff and that would be reusing it. However I would welcome for them to not completely ignore this, just don't make it main plot or something.

Thanks for this conversation. It helped me sort out some thoughts as to why the cycle of harvest doesn't appear in Andromeda. The reapers are machines which operate in their own set way. If Leviathans didn't build mass relays to go to andromeda, it means the reaper activity is indeed limited to the galaxy of their creators. I think the reapers just leave Andromeda be while it follows the route of apex race being wiped out by synthetic life. While reapers clearly COULD go there, they simply don't, it's not their test zone to find the solution they were tasked with.

@Neizd87 

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Neizd87  wrote:

This does create slight plot hole tho, right? I mean, the arks can't possibly have non-reaper tech base, whole galaxy technology is reaper based as stated in ME trilogy. The initiative didn't have enough time OR resources to develop a new drive core from nothing (were too poor to even do anything until the mysterious benefactor showed up). It had to base on tech left by reapers for other races to ascend lore-wise or it would take them tens of years to develop new and unique drive. It could be built upon reaper tech as in upgrading it but that still makes a plot hole, because wouldn't the reapers have issue with the races they came to harvest to escape like that to another galaxy that is outside their reach? Again, this makes no sense.

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It is not Reaper technology that the Arks use.
Reaper technology is what the Reaper use, all other tech is only based on Reaper tech, but was developed by the individual races.

That still is an engineering masterpiece, and so it is completely possible that good engineers could simply advance existing, self developed technology.

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Neizd87  wrote:

When the arks reach the new galaxy, the technological advancement of Kett or Angara isn't either below or above what the arks have. This would mean that a similar control had existed in that galaxy as well.

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The reason for Kett and Angara being on the same level of evolution than the Milky Way races is that the game only can work that way. 😉

But there is no indicator of when a biological civilization will develop.
The fact that the Angara and the Kett are at the same level (at least the Kett in this part of Andromeda) only suggests that their evolution began at about the same time as the evolution of the Milky Way races, but it is by no means an indication for the existence of a similar "controlling" element in the Andromeda galaxy.

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@Neizd87  wrote:
We also know the fact that Reaper numbers had been enough to "darken the sky of every world' to quote the game. However, each cycle ended with birth of new Reaper and given their numbers that would mean thousands of 50 000 years cycles. That would make Leviathan to be old enough to be 50 000 000 years old at least (which gives us exactly 1000 Reapers) so quite impossible number of years unless we account for harvests happening in places outside Milky Way

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The Leviathan that spoke to Shepard referred tho himself as the "progeny" of the original Leviathan race.

He also only referred to "The Galaxy" in his speech, that on the other hand means that they most probably programed the AI (there is really no such thing as free will of the reapers, just the programing of an AI that controls them.) to solve the "problem" inside our Galaxy.

Furthermore, our Galaxy is 13 510 000 000 Billion years old, that is enough time for over 270000 cycles.

Edit: Typo

Thanks for bringing up the galaxy's age, I actually didn't consider this (stupid of me ) and I can see now that 270 000 reapers would indeed be a vast army, considering the fact that quarian migrant fleet is 50 000 ships and is the biggest one. That would mean whole galaxy fleets could 'maybe' reach half the number of reapers that have superior technology.

As for the Ark's tech being unique and individual, I still wonder if it truly is due to the fact that Reapers wanted the organics to advance in specific way.however I assume it might be possible the races of Shepard's cycle went outside of reaper's expectations due to the simple fact, the reapers showed up way later than they intended. This gave those races rime to develop better engine for inter-galacic travel.

The 'same development level' of Kett and drama queen Angara (I really just dislike that over-emotional aspect of them xD)  races seems to be indeed made on the level of initiative due to the fact the game needed that to work its story 🙂

No, the reapers are only concerned with the Milky Way. The main problem with basing the new game in Andromeda is that it is so ridiculously far away. We are required to suspend all logic to accept that such voyage or "Geth FTL telescope" were somehow feasible within ME universe framework. A much more palatable destination would have been the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is the fourth largest galaxy in the Local Group, and with diameter of 14 thousand LY certainly big enough for the game's purposes. And above all, it's "only" 163 thousand LY from the Milky Way, whereas Andromeda's distance is a whopping 2.5 MILLION LY. Even the name of the game would have been just as good: Mass Effect: Magellan.

One of the big gripes that I have about ME3 is that there's no explanation how the reapers were able to cross the dark space from wherever they lay in wait so quickly after the citadel relay was closed to them. It shouldn't have been possible at all without some agent of theirs re-enabling the relay. Or by using some backup plan, like Haestrom's sun converted to a worm-hole (hey, SOMETHING was fishy about it!) They couldn't even travel within the Milky Way without the relays, right?

Another big problem is that the extinction cycle is a mere 50 000 years, since that's only maybe 100 asari generations. But that's another story.

Ha hahaaa . Oh boo-hoo