T w e n t y S i d e d
We’ve reached the Expositional payload of the game. I can’t think of another (active) AAA game company that’s still willing to focus on story to this degree. In other games, the story just there as a (lazy, often incoherent) justification for combat, but in BioWare games it feels like they design it the other way around. It’s used as an in-game reward, and they’re not afraid to let players sit through several minutes of it at once. I don’t want to snipe our eventual play-through of Mass Effect 2 here, but it’s instructive to compare this deep, thorough, lengthy, and thoughtful conversation with what we get at the end of Mass Effect 2: pew pew pew! boom!
Sorry about the massive framerate drop in the middle of the episode. Randy posted this an earlier thread:
In what might be the biggest “DO OVER” of my life, I realized today that I had been running ME at max resolution, even tho during the editing process it was being reduced to a much more appropriate resolution. I apologize to all you viewers out there that were forced to witness abysmal FPS, I just tested it, and Fraps+Livestream+Mass Effect+Vent+Steam ect.. was running at a smooth 30 FPS consistently when done with 1080 Resolution. I demand a do over!
Ouch. The last episode is already done, so we will have to apply this knowledge to our next series. I’ll be announcing the next game and some other changes to the series on Thursday.
Grand Theft Auto Retrospective
This series began as a cheap little 2D overhead game and grew into the most profitable entertainment product ever made. I have a love / hate relationship with the series.
Overthinking Zombies
Let's ruin everyone's fun by listing all the ways in which zombies can't work, couldn't happen, and don't make sense.
The Best of 2013
My picks for what was important, awesome, or worth talking about in 2013.
I Was Wrong About Borderlands 3
I really thought one thing, but then something else. There's a bunch more to it, but you'll have to read the article.
Top 64 Videogames
Lists of 'best games ever' are dumb and annoying. But like a self-loathing hipster I made one anyway.
First!
I love this part. I love this kind of plot-reward. It is the best kind of reward they can give a story guy like me.
I believe this subject came up in the past on some forum, and someone said that the minimum number of people needed to restart a species is about 50.
50 people doesn’t sound like enough, but I suppose it could be if you used a very deliberate mating scheme and had more males than females and the people were sufficiently genetically diverse.
You’d have to do things like have every female have a child with every male and then probably also have a child with some of the other women’s offspring when they come of age.
You’d have to keep a very detailed family tree of everybody’s relationships to maximize gene spread for several generations before you could permit any unstructured breeding.
I forget the specifics, but I’ve heard it said that scientists believe that there was an ecological disaster in our early history, & that the human race was reduced to just a few hundred individuals in one isolated tribe in Africa. Presumably, there was no systematic species-rescue plan in place at the time, so they must’ve made out okay, since we’re here to barely recall the event. It makes you think, though, just how close our entire species was to utter irrevocable extinction.
I think the number was a few thousand, but, still there was a mass die off. The result is we actually have very little genetic diversity as a species.
Then Human genetic diversity becomes a plot point in Mass Effect 2 and they get it backwards…
There’s also a big lifespan / average # of children variable here, since we’re in the realm of science fiction. The rachni can probably repopulate with just a couple queens, while you’d need a whole bunch of salarians because lower lifespan means fewer opportunities for every female and every male to bear children.
Salarians do reproduce via numerous eggs,so their short lifespan isnt that big of a problem.
Yeah, I was talking about humans or those who reproduce like humans. decreased time from conception to birth, increased litter size, asexual reproduction, all can and will change the number.
Still, Why didn’t they try to rebuild the prothean civilization? i mean even if it was like twelve scientists or something shouldn’t they be able to reproduce a few kids and repopulate a little? i mean yeah you have to have sex with cousins for a couple of generations but still they are surrounded by the most advanced prothean technology. The planet is fertile enough for weeds then you can grow stuff and even if the planet wasn’t viable for crops and stuff you are the protheans the Reapers have left and gone back to sleep, you are the most advanced species the galaxy has known so far… Go back to the citadel or some fetile oasis planet. And really top researchers were the ones to keep alive why keep a couple of young healthy boys and girls to repopulate around?
And even if the repopulate thing didn’t work out your contingency plan was to tell future civilizations that there doom is nigh? why set a few how it works books around so people knew what you were building and how it worked. or just leave the how it works book next to the memory thing…
Actually the plan with the keepers is pretty sound,because the cycles were timed so that other races would just start making a permanent hold on the citadel when it gets activated.This cycle,however,was disrupted by protheans,so current races have been on the citadel for far longer than those before them.And there are scientists trying to figure out the keepers.Theres even a quest about it.The weirdest thing,however,is that if you finish that quest,in 2 the scientist sends you an email saying how the keepers might be undercover and there is a hidden signal waiting to be activated.If only you could somehow tell him all this exposition,youd save him 2 years of tedious research.
About saren:You guys forget that his initial plan wasnt to give the galaxy to the reapers,and he probably fought silently against the sovereign for a long time before becoming its full slave.So most of what he did was probably just stalling.
Im not sure the migrant fleet would survive for long.They have been drifting for 300 years now,and they are already in a pretty bad shape.When reapers enter the galaxy,they take their time,they meticulously wipe it clean for centuries.I dont think quarians would survive in hiding for so long.
Also,I like to think that reapers are using organics in order to evolve.Mordin said about collectors how they are sterile,and how that is a bad thing.So reapers probably know this as well because they are pretty intelligent.And in order for them to advance,they need variety,which they get from organics every now and then in order to refresh their race.It is a pretty nifty way for a machine race to keep itself up to date.
I wonder about sovereigns appearance though.It was established in 2 that they take on the appearance of the race they incorporate into themselves,and the dead reaper is similar to sovereign.So are they made out of the same species,or are they the original reapers?Or are they neither,but just made to look like that for some other reason?
The way I like to think of it (if I have to, it kinda makes my head hurt) is that every reaper eventually ends up looking like Sovereign.
The human-reaper in ME2 is MUCH smaller than Sovereign, even if you extrapolate it out and make it more than just a skeleton and give it legs.
So I like to think of that as either some sort of embryonic stage that will completely metamorphose, or eventually a “reaper shell” will grow around it and that human form will just be the core.
There’s actually a picture of it in the art book, if you got the CE.
Maybe it’s just me, but I saw Vigil’s “broken” appearance as a transparent attempt to desperately keep the physical details of protheans as a mystery, much like with the quarians.
I saw the statues before Vigil’s chamber during my playthrough though.. So maybe I am just bitter about Tali’s romance in ME2.
Colossus wrestling was hilarious!
Mako gets better AFAIK, since you’ll find it’s corpse in ME2 when you visit the Normandy crash site.
I wonder whether you are going to kill our rogue colleague once, or twice?
Twice. You need 11 intimidate to talk him to death, they’ve got 9. You might need 12 given that they blew the conversation on Vermire.
Well, the Mako is a standard vehicle, so they probably just replaced it.
Couple of things:
1) Cephalopods are molluscs, not crustaceans! Shamus! I am offended by this travesty of incorrect biology! Blaaaagh!
2) On gene diversity, it depends a lot on the species and whether it’s r-selected or k-selected.
3) On the reaper appearance, there’s a lot of possibilities. Maybe they only originally look like the species they’re made from, a larval state, and then transform into those squidthings. Maybe the overwhelming majority of the reapers ARE from one species (molluscs can breed like crazy, you know) but we’ll see more in ME3. Or maybe, just maybe, humans are SOOOO special that they’ve never tried to get another species in on the game. I have too much faith in BioWare’s writing to think that theory holds weight, but you know, it’s still a possibility.
4) You know, it’s been established that the Quarian homeworld doesn’t have / didn’t have insects or an insect analogue. This suddenly makes me curious as to why or how the geth ships are insect-like.
5) Shamus, seriously, wth? Crustaceans are arthropods, and I guess if you were thinking about insects (which are also arthropods) that might have thrown you, but cephalopods? They’re basically as far away from crustaceans as an invertebrate can get! Geez!
6) I think the migrant fleet would be screwed. Don’t forget that the reapers control the mass relays.
7) Since Randy isn’t going to save the council, I’ll just say it here. (SPOILER WARNING, minor) In ME2, the turian councilor says “Ah yes, ‘reapers.’ The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. We have dismissed this claim.” I really, really, really hope that in ME3, if you saved the council, they’ll call you up for help while under a reaper attack. And as a renegade option… “Ahh yes, ‘reapers.’ The immortal race of sentient starships allegedly waiting in dark space. You had dismissed that claim.” /DISCONNECT.
It would be glorious.
Actually, wait, I take it back. Cnidarians are about as far away from a crustacean as you can get while still being an invertebrate. Point stands regardless.
The concentrated level of stupid dismissing that would require hurts my brain. Did they not notice that Sovereign is the only ship of that size in existence so far encountered intact?
They just think it’s a huge geth warship, which almost makes sense – they’re certainly never around to hear it say hi.
Well, yes, but still. It’s massively larger than any other geth ship encountered before or since.
While I do agree that the council is too dumb to live, you have to keep some things in mind:
– Sovereign is classified as a dreadnought and the only other one we see in the final battle is the Destiny Ascension, unfortunately they are never in the same shot. But roughly estimating from the scene where Sovereign crushes the turian cruiser he/it is not substantially larger then other dreadnoughts in the citadel fleet.
– The geth haven’t been sighted for about 300 years before the beginning of the game, leaving them unmonitored (which is damn stupid) behind the perseus veil. Under these circumstances I wouldn’t be surprised if the geth show up with a Death Star.
– It would make sense from a strategic vantage for the geth to deploy their dreadnought not until the assault on the citadel to deny the enemy tactical data to prepare accordingly. Furthermore, as far as the council knows, the majority of the geth’s forces is still in geth space and all battles with them since the assault on the citadel have been little more then minor border skirmishes.
– Denial, quite and simple. Some assumptions point to one conclusion (Sovereign was the geth’s flagship and was ultimately destroyed, everything is as it should be) and some to the other (there is a enormous fleet of thinking war ships out there keen on destroying all sentient life in the galaxy with a damn good chance of accomplishing that considering you had trouble defeating a single one). So yeah, I don’t really blame them for ignoring the evidence.
If I remember the description correctly,sovereign is at least twice as big as any other dreadnought in existence.Furthermore,it uses technology beyond the wildest dreams of anyone.And while I understand the reason behind denying the existence of reapers to general public,there is no reason not to prepare for the eventuality of there being more ships like sovereign.And even if such a thing was done in secret,why wouldnt you tell that secret to the guy that helped destroy the last one?Yes,yes,working with cerberus and all that,but come on,thats childish.
Crustaceans vs. cephalopods:
*shrug*
I really don’t know anything about biology.
If you ever do, feel free to ask me. I don’t have a degree but I plan to some day get a degree in marine biology. I’m currently an english major, so it’s a several-years-down-the-road kind of thing.
Anyways, yeah. Best way to get people interested in biology: “Cnidocytes” are a specialized cell that EXPLODES POISONOUSLY. If you make the C the word starts with soft instead of silent, it also becomes a good name for a rock band.
YOU CAN’T NAME YOUR BAND THAT; THAT IS MY BAND NAME RAAAUGH.
Uh. I’m getting off-topic. The point is: I’m available if you have questions for some project or something.
Wow, sounds like you know your sci-fi stuff there. Particularly on the gene diversity. I know this seems out of the blue, but I’d like to ask you some more questions if you don’t mind, TSED. Any ways I could contact you outside this comment thread?
Well, Sovereign looks more like a lobster than a squid to me, and lobsters are crustaceans.
The humans are so special thing. I always thought that the reaper in ME2 looks like a human because a human was the first ever to beat the reapers so they decided to try and build one to see how it works out for them. I mean they must be going “what the hell how did THAT thing beat one of US!”
Relying on the citadel for a mass relay has another downside: What if one species decided the keepers were an abomination/too dangerous? If one species decided to kill off all the keepers whenever they appeared, then the entire master plan would be virtually useless. Even if no species figures out citadel systems, which is obviously not impossible since the protheans managed to do so, Sovereign would be forced to attack and then reactivate the citadel. Relying on consistency between various races to that extent seems foolish.
It seems to me that they should have built two citadels and made the second one only accessible via the main citadel, and possibly making it one of those certain death relays just in case. Then they’d be able to destroy the center of government at a single blow, and not have to rely on no one deciding to kill all the keepers for some reason.
Yes. This is what I was getting at. Some new race shows up and is simply DRIVEN to find out about the keepers from the get-go. Or they kill them for sport. Or have extreme distaste for keepers and be unwilling to tolerate them. Or decide to eat them. Given the extreme value of the place, it’s actually more likely than not that there would be war over control of it. What happens if some nutter nukes the place? I don’t care how advanced the station is, a nuke is likely to break some important stuff.
There are just so many ways this plan can go wrong.
And really, just having TWO mass relays out in dark space would be a lot more sensible. A back door into the galaxy. Might not be as ideal as jumping directly to the citadel, but it’s better than being stuck in dark space.
The Citadel is basically the centre of all mass relays, so while there is a tatical advantage to having it, I do agree that it’s not really necessary for a species to possess, and thus is totally plausible that it could be destroyed, or at least significantly damaged.
As far as Keepers go: it’s stated that they self-destruct whenever you try to touch or manipulate one in any way, and their genetics don’t mesh well with conventional scanners for whatever reason. Even if you killed every one you saw, there’s likely a Keeper factory of some sort deep in the Citadel (nobody’s ever explored much beyond the residential and administrative quarters), and if it’s as difficult to find as implied by the game, they getting rid of all of the Keepers would be a pretty difficult task, considering that there would have to be thousands of them all over the place.
I don’t see how it would really be hard for an intersteller civilization to sweep the entire citadel. According to the wiki, the “arms” are only 45 km long. That’s quite a large area to search, but a few million people could probably locate anything in a fairly short timeframe. Now, the keeper factory might have self-defense systems, but if that is the case the jig will be up. Something that resists tampering to that extent would almost certainly cause immediate suspicion of the keepers and everything on the citadel.
Also, I refuse to believe that self-destructing using acid would actually stop people from finding things out. They’d just be standing by with a strong base before poking one.
In fact, self-destructing seems like it’d tip people off that something is up. It’s out of line with the behavior of the rest of the citadel, which doesn’t explode when poked, and not a sensible feature in a maintenance drone unless trying to hide something. Since the rest of the citadel is fine with tampering and study, it doesn’t reflect an omnipresent view of, “Screw future races, the toys are all OURS,” and thus is hiding something specific. Most races would obviously tolerate the presence of the keepers even if something strange was noticed, but they’d start making a serious effort to track down the origin point.
In 2000 years no one managed to discover that there is a small mass relay inside a statue,so why do you think the keeper factory would be easily found?Unless someone decided to strip the citadel piece by piece,theyd never search it completely.
Also,why would an advance space faring race kill everything on sight,especially a very,very advanced technology they can (ab)use for their gain?Even humans arent depicted as that dumb in this game,and humans pretty much are that dumb in real life.
That’s the other thing… nobody has ever said “Okay, let’s put like five million people on this and just take it apart and then put it back together again!”
It’d be an ENORMOUS project, of course… but look at the LHC for instance. And that’s a much more theoretical project than what you would get out of figuring out how the citadel works.
You are a race that has just arrived on a station that is way beyond your technological understanding and is inhabited by a race of willing servants, maintaining this station, giving you access to all its wonders and providing you with everything you need and want.
For one thing, I never bought the Proud Warrior Race trope when it comes to science fiction. Space travel, especially initially, requires more resources any one nation could provide and unification goes against this mentality. Especially when the whole prospect that might be interesting for you is the vague chance that you meet another race you could fight. Why do that when you could simply smash a club in your neighbors face? The krogan as the ME example of this trope were picked up by the salarians, elevated technologically and pointed at an enemy. That works. Klingons don’t.
And you would’ve to be a gigantic moron to do something about the keepers that would harm them. For all you know they are simply the maintenance drones of the precursor race, simply doing their job at fulfilling your wishes subserviently. For another, technology of this magnitude and size degrades damn fast, faster then you could study it to maintain yourself and having the marvel of the galaxy crumble around you is a level of stupidity I don’t expect from a space-faring race.
Yes, scientific curiosity is a valid point. One that is addressed by the game; the keepers don’t like it to be poked, the citadel depends on the keepers so they are banned from being poked by the political leaders. That still doesn’t answer why no one before managed what … that salarian scientist scanning the keepers whose name I cannot remember did.
As for the war aspect, certainly. I cannot remember where I read this but the point why the citadel is populated by numerous races in contrast to just one (like it was with the protheans) is the fact that the citadel was originally found by the asari, a race where cooperation and coexistence is so far ingrained into their culture they regard any asari-asari offspring as inferior.
The station itself would prove to be a enormous strategic advantage otherwise to the one first discovering it, which would serve as some kind of natural selection. Which would again serve the reapers if you take ME2’s hints regarding the selection of “worthy” race and unworthy race at face value.
And to finish this wall of text: ME plays the arrogance as downfall trope as straight as it can get. The conversation with Sovereign on Virmire paints him as a complete dick and Harbinger isn’t that much better. So yeah, their plan is flawed because they underestimated the other races more then once. They need to be flawed, even if it is the most clichéd flaw around.
And obviously they have still an ace in the hole in the form of *some* fast way back. Otherwise ME3 would not be about the final confrontation (which is unlikely after all that buildup and considering the fact Bioware isn’t completely moronic) or would star Shepard’s remote descendant (and its been outright stated that you cannot import a save game with a dead Shepard) because it’s established canon that conventional travel without a relay would take way too long.
“And you would've to be a gigantic moron to do something about the keepers that would harm them.”
History is brimming with such morons. Some brought us great advances. Most destroyed themselves. Either way, the Reaper plan requires that NO MORONS EVER INHABIT OR CONTROL THE STATION.
Therefore, their plan is senseless.
No morons or paranoid people.
The thing is, the reapers planned on running this gig FOREVER, so banking on no one somehow managing to get into space while not liking silent machines with unknowable purpose who randomly dick around with their furniture and refuse to be dissected seems like kind of a bad idea. All it’d take is one race figuring out how to control the keepers and goodbye plan A, B, and every single other plan involving hijacking the citadel. Certainly, that is unlikely to occur any given cycle, but as t -> infinity, odds -> 100%
For all my fanboyish ranting I don’t regard the reaper plots as masterpieces of writing. Hell I still have no clue what Harbinger’s plan was supposed to be:
“What? They defeated Sovereign? OK, here is my plan: they defeated an isolated reaper, so let’s remain here fiddling our tentacles for the next two years while we build *another* isolated reaper instead of proceeding with open war on the outnumbered and outgunned milky way. I’m a strategic mastermind!”Or for that matter: the citadel is the hub of the relay network, relays can be shut down at will. The council is aware of that since at least Saren’s attack, if not longer. So why is Terminus a problem? Or the geth?
But I can see that citadel relay plot working, even though assuming it worked for millions of years is really stretching it.
Oh, I can see it working, even fairly reliably. I just can’t see it working forever.
Actually, Harbringer’s plan seems pretty solid to me, except for the fact that
it requires the mass-kidnappings and can’t be done in secrecyHUMAN history is brimming with such morons.Assuming that any aliens will resemble humans is too arrogant.
You’re saying it’s ARROGANT to assume humans are the only race which could have MORONS? Particularly in this game, where we have the all-moron leadership? Are you sure you want to try to say that? :)
Anyway, the Reapers think we’re all a bunch of fuddle-brain insects, yet enact a plan which DEPENDS on the inhabitants living in the place for centuries without making any number of mistakes like I mentioned above.
Not too curious. Not too warlike. Not too paranoid. Not too destructive. Not too crazy. No race can ever fall outside of these parameters, ever. Or the reapers get their dumb asses stuck in deep space.
EDIT: Added smiley. Re-reading this, it came off as less “raised eyebrow” and more “OMG YOU DISAGREE WITH ME ABOUT VIDEOGAMES”, which is actually not what I was going for.
Out of those,I think that just too paranoid and too destructive present a real threat.For example,turians are warlike,but arent destructive like the other warrior races.And I doubt that a too destructive race would endanger the citadel.Rachni are too destructive,but theyve remained locked for a long time before someone opened a mass relay for them to use.So just the paranoid part remains.But youd have to be extremely paranoid to believe an extinct races isnt really extinct but hidden somewhere.
And yes,there are idiots throughout the whole mass effect universe,but very few are destructive enough to kill on sight.Even the krogans dont do that,and theyve managed to destroy their own homeworld with nukes.
See, the problem is, if a race ever gets into space while disliking things that look/act like the keepers, the plan be screwed. It only needs to happen once ever.
I think it would be Sovereign’s job to prevent such an event. He watched organic life waiting for it to reach the desired level, or amount, so maybe he would have sent the signal early if the Cididel was in danger. It would also be his job to ensure that the Reapers return was unhindered, and in that he failed.
It’s clear Sovereign didn’t respect orginaics or even view them as threats to his untimate goal, prehaps that made him blind to the failings of the plan?
I would assume that messing too much with the Keepers would cause them to open the relay and bring the Reapers back. It’s not too hard to think the Keepers have that as a self-defense program, or that the Reapers would rather kill everything prematurely than let some idiot blow up their station.
Here’s a great plothole for Mass Effect, as well:
Ok, so you just came across the citadel, an incredible technological marvel.
Instead of, say, researching it, you MOVE YOUR SEAT OF GOVERNMENT THERE?
I mean, it makes sense for the current galaxy with their whole “we have so many races trying to get along la tee da” thing, but seriously, wth were the Protheans thinking? I can’t think of any [admittedly earth-based] culture that would find some great marvel like that and then move their politicians and bureaucrats there. Except the punks, but that’s just because they’re trying to explode them anyways and figure it’d be easier to do on a giant space station no one understands.
So, uh, yeah. Wth, Protheans? Sure, the case of a single race being the only space-faring guys in the galaxy is… unlikely… but not impossible. Just, ugh. You can make an argument about ‘indoctrinating politicians’ but it just rubs thin (and really, are YOU going to want your top political leaders in a setting where they can’t be held accountable to you? It’d be like if your president / prime minister decided to move his government to the MOON and there’s no public shuttles there.) Assuming a democratic society, anyways. And why would a fascist regime / communist utopia / whatever want to move offworld anyways?
Jeez. Plothole you could drive Sovereign through.
The citadel is the center of other mass relays,so moving your seat of government there makes sense.Capitals were moved to newly conquered cities all the time when empires grew,so even our history has such examples.
If you were to colonize numerous worlds,why would you keep your capital as far away from them as possible,when you have this huge space station in the middle of them all?
I can’t think of any examples after the invention of the notion of nationalism, though. Berlin in WW2, to Washington DC, to London, to Ottawa to Moscow to pretty much every western nation (admittedly I guess it’s possible there’s some I don’t know about. Korea, for example?).
Once transportation stops being an issue of “it takes literally weeks to get there” to “we can get there FAST it just might not be cheap” that moving-capitol thing tends to change.
You do make a very valid point, however, and I applaud you for that!
I’m tempted to think, since Citadel Council position = your species is tops militarily, that there may not be a lot of civilian oversight of the asari military. They took the most strategically useful spot in the galaxy as an ops center and it sort of… grew.
Yeah, i guess the other thing is that if you’re on a hub and the citadel is the center then if someone else controls it you’re at a disadvantage. Sort of like nuclear weapons.
Theres this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abuja
And probably others Im not aware of.
The Cididel is at the nexis of all mass relays.
Its a very defendable posision once the arms close and allows you to attack everything with ease.
Earth has a better setup I belive, you need two relay jumps to reach it.
On the Reaper-appearance:
Isn’t it possible that the “core” of the Reaper looks like the species it was originally made of, and the squid-like form is actually some kind of armor that gets added once the core is complete?
I hope you are right on this because I keep imagining the human reaper flying like superman through space and it is not a pretty sight.
Of course. The ME2 reaper is called a larvae, we see a whole fleet of them and they look pretty much identical with subtle differences and the dimensions wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
Based on the images in the artbook you’re basically right, except the core we see will actually be down at the base of the tail, and the arms would have been… well, the arms.
I’ve heard the “why doesn’t Saren just walk in and take control” argument before and I don’t really think it works. In order for him to be able to transfer control Sovereign needs to connect with the citadel (it seems) while Saren does the whole hacking the council thingy. Since we are told at some point (unsure of when) that there is constantly sniper support on the council it seems unlikely that Saren could get away with taking control of the computers while the worlds most ominous ship has parked outside.
That said the citadel is really poorly designed, wouldn’t it make more sense to build it so that Sovereign don’t need to connect with the ship or maybe hide the controls somewhere more obscure like in a vent somewhere so that only the keepers or someone who already knew where it was could realistically find it? Oh well suspension of disbelief and what not.
Sovereign usually doesn’t need to connect with the Citadel to open the relay, he just needs to send a signal. He could do so from the other side of the galaxy. The base control for the relay are hinted to be in an isolated section of the station only the keepers can access and the whole scheme with the keepers is to instill complacency within the population of the citadel.
And I highly doubt the reapers ever even considered the possibility that their plan might fail some day, at least if you apply the level of Sovereign’s (and Harbinger’s for that matter) arrogance to the others.
Something that popped up while watching, have you done the conversation with Sovereign and if so, in which episode was that?
And I do love the utterly stupid and blockheaded remarks that a renegade Shepard can make, so stupid that they’re amusing.
It was in episode 16.
Thank you!
On the part about vigil watching the news… you know what would be on the news?
Shepard punching that reporter XD
It occurs to me that the side view of the Reaper stuff attacking the Citadel in the cutscene looked a lot like the side shot they gave you at the start of the space battle in Serenity. Am I the only one who thought that?
Why Saren and Sovereign were looking for the Conduit: The best reason I can come up with as to why they spent all this time looking for the Conduit was because even they didn’t know what exactly the Conduit was. Sovereign knows that the Prothean scientists did SOMETHING to change the signal, but until they found Ilos and were able to examine the Conduit firsthand, they couldn’t have known that the Conduit was simply another mass relay. For all they knew, the Conduit could have been some Prothean device that was broadcasting some sort of signal altering the Keepers.
Once they DID find Ilos, and they realised what the Conduit really was, Sovereign then went, “Aha! I see what they did. OK, here’s the NEW plan…”
Vigil being so knowledgable: I guess when Saren landed on the planet and started hacking into the systems here, Vigil tapped in and learned what was going on.
Didn’t the Reapers make all the Mass Relays? I can’t imagine Sovereign not knowing a mass relay from miles away :)
I read “I had been running ME at max resolution” and thought why is he still running Windows ME? No wonder it’s slow! It was only later that I realised ME stood for Mass Effect.
“It’s good to know through all that, Mako is still a terrible car.”
So this is the first time I’m leaving a comment, but I’ve been greatly enjoying a lot of the content on your site not just these spoiler warning vids. I really think you’re doing a great job and would love to see more.
The thing is I’ve been going straight to viddler and downloading them so I can watch them in a small window while doing other things.This made me find a new video that is not Mass Effect and seems to be Randy doing something on his own and what’s more the ending credits said something about a lawsuit? =S
So basically I’m wondering what is up and kinda scared we won’t be getting any more of these great videos from the three of you.
Please tell me I’m jumping to conclusions and getting it all wrong?
Yeah, that’s a joke.
Yeah, sure it is buddy. I am mad at you for kicking me off the team.
While I enjoyed the game, the reveal here always bothered me. Ultimately, missing twelve people during one harvest was all it took to break the cycle. A second year computer science major would shake their head at the algorithm’s lack of robustness.
Then we have Sovereign’s attempts at fixing the error. I can understand its desire to be cautious. Saren might have been able to activate the signal/relay to the other Reapers without a Geth army or the Conduit, but failure would be risky. What I don’t understand, is why it felt the need to invade the Citadel.
I may be wrong, but my impression has always been that the indoctrination field extends beyond Sovereign’s exterior. There were people on Eden Prime heard the signal, and seemed to be affected by it. Also, Saren was researching indoctrination on Virmire because he was afraid the Sovereign might be influencing his reasoning. The first test subject of the Asari scientist you meet on Virmire was her predecessor. If Indoctrination was only effective onboard the ship than it should have been much easier for the previous scientist to avoid exposure.
C-Sec Academy is right outside of the dock Sheperd uses. Why didn’t Sovereign just park there. Over a period of time, every new security officer on the ship would be under his control. If any higher ups want to inspect the big ship and its alien technology, all the better. Heck, I can’t believe there wasn’t at least one Turian politician or officer that tried to bully his way onto the ship to inspect the alien tech the same way the human admiral did with the Normandy earlier.