269 réponses à ce sujet

[Solomen]

I've seen people putting down Mordin's claim that humans have more genetic variability than other sapient species.  In the case of salarians, krogans, drell and quarians he is absolutely correct.  I don't have enough information to make a determination on the other species such as turians so I'll take Mordin's word for it. 

[Thundertactics]

Now, does anyone mind explaining why humans have such varied DNA?
Is it because of our varied climate? (Most worlds we visit in ME only seem to have one climate and temperature... )
Or perhaps the other species had much more, and much more succesful, wars and attempts at genocide? (Say, Hitler who actually accomplished his plans)

[Solomen]

Thundertactics wrote...

Now, does anyone mind explaining why humans have such varied DNA?
Is it because of our varied climate? (Most worlds we visit in ME only seem to have one climate and temperature... )
Or perhaps the other species had much more, and much more succesful, wars and attempts at genocide? (Say, Hitler who actually accomplished his plans)

Well salarians have a natural genetic bottleneck in that 10% of the salarians are female and unfertilized eggs become male.  Effectively male salarians are clones of their mother's father.

Krogans nearly exterminated themselves with a nuclear war.  Those that survived are now being limited by the genophage.  Its a double bottleneck.

Drell destroyed their homeworld so only those saved by the hanar survived.

Quarians were nearly driven extinct by the Geth and have been confined to ships for 300 years. 

[Thundertactics]

Yeah, I was mainly talking about the other sapient species (the ones that weren't decimated), because apparantly, we're so incredibly varied, that people who made a virus designed to work on every single other species in the universe, thought it was too complicated to make it work on humans too.

[Rocket Weazle]

HUMAN...

OUR PLOT HAS FAILED

THIS CHANGES NOTHING

WE WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY

IN THE SEQUEL

[abstractwhiz]

When I heard Mordin say that, I instantly thought of the Humans are Special trope. I just looked there, and it turns out they actually mention this as one of the examples. So it's just your average scifi plot point. It's been done thousands of times before, in tons of different ways - humans are the most adaptable, humans the smartest, humans are the best warriors, humans are the most enduring, blah blah blah...

That said, they might explain it in ME3 as Prothean tampering or something. 

[Lemonwizard]

Alot of Mordin's science seems minorly bogus to me. The stuff about genophage testing....who really gives a crap about DNA variety instead of getting the specific DNA it needs to work on? I see no practical reason why you'd be testing genophage stuff on humans instead of krogans.

[Rocket Weazle]

We're all Inbred. Inbreeding = Genetic variance, obviously...

[Solomen]

Shandepared wrote...

It makes no sense. If anything humans should have less than the other races due to our species being reduced to only a thousand or so individuals some 50 to 70,000 years ago in a near extinction event.

We weren't decimated as badly as cheetahs were about 5,000 years ago.  Think of the other species as cheetahs in comparison to humans. 
Plus your exmple is 50.000 to 70,000 years ago.  That is more than enough time for a species as prolific as humanity to recover

[Solomen]

Rocket Weazle wrote...

We're all Inbred. Inbreeding = Genetic variance, obviously...

Thats funny since I just got done showing the opposite...

[Lemonwizard]

Also, logically, species that have been living on multiple different planets for over a thousand years should have vastly more genetic variability than one which has been stuck on their home planet until a generation ago.

[Festi]

Shouldn't Asari have a good deal of genetic diversity? Seeing as they use genetic information from multiple other species, including humans, to randomize their own?

[Solomen]

Lemonwizard wrote...

Also, logically, species that have been living on multiple different planets for over a thousand years should have vastly more genetic variability than one which has been stuck on their home planet until a generation ago.

Not really.  Not how the species in mass effect have been presented.  That is like saying cheetahs in america aren't basically identical to cheetahs in africa simply because they live in a different environment.   Cheetahs are so genetically similar that they are practically clones.  An american cheetah is closer to an african cheetah than a human is to its own mother. 

[Solomen]

Festi wrote...

Shouldn't Asari have a good deal of genetic diversity? Seeing as they use genetic information from multiple other species, including humans, to randomize their own?

Depends on how long they have been doing it...  that and how much of the code is actually affected.   

[yellowpride]

It might be because of how recently our technology has advanced, and how isolated various groups were prior to that.  The Alliance has only been a real political entity for 30 years or so, while most other races have had Alliance-like organizations for dozens of generations.  Therefore, humans have evolved more in isolated groups up to now, while the other races have had more opportunity to evolve collectively.  Over several generations, humanity will probably show a similar homogenization.

[Gyroscopic_Trout]

abstractwhiz wrote...

When I heard Mordin say that, I instantly thought of the Humans are Special trope. I just looked there, and it turns out they actually mention this as one of the examples. So it's just your average scifi plot point. It's been done thousands of times before, in tons of different ways - humans are the most adaptable, humans the smartest, humans are the best warriors, humans are the most enduring, blah blah blah...

That said, they might explain it in ME3 as Prothean tampering or something. 

It's still probably the least egregious use of this trope in sci-fi history.  The aliens aren't irational idiots, or comic relief; they don't arbitrarily worship some guy who dresses up as an  Egyptian god; and they don't run around like headless chickens screaming "It's the demon!  Run!"  whenever Shepard shows up.  

Shepard and Kaiden have a chat in the first game where they say that every other species are basically the same as humans ("they're not different, they're jerks and saints, just like us" or something to that effect).  The Citadel races seemed to get along just fine without humans, and the Alliance saves them at the end, not by correcting the huge retarded flaws in their massively dysfunctional civilization (as with Star Trek) but by shouldering some of the responsibility for galactic governance.

As for Prothean tampering they have suggested this wit the Hanar religion, that one side-mission where you find the big orb/recording of Protheans experimenting on cavemen, and in ME2 on the Collector ship when EDI says they were experimenting on one of their own to find similarities between human and Collector (re:  Prothean) DNA.

[Collider]

Why not use Turians or Asari? I haven't heard justification for not using them yet.

[mentosman8]

I'll quote Harbinger on the Asari "reliance on other species for reproduction shows genetic weakness." Similarly, the "father" doesn't actually contribute anything to the child, it essentially just flips a coin for some of the genes, so there's not as much ability for the DNA to change drastically.



Turians I'm not sure on though.

[DPSSOC]

Lemonwizard wrote...

Alot of Mordin's science seems minorly bogus to me. The stuff about genophage testing....who really gives a crap about DNA variety instead of getting the specific DNA it needs to work on? I see no practical reason why you'd be testing genophage stuff on humans instead of krogans.

When we do medical research do we immediately start testing on humans?  No, we don't even start testing on animals similar to humans (pigs, chimps, etc.).  We start with rats, rabbits and other rodents because they have stronger reactions to smaller doses.  Same thing with the genophage testing, before finding out how a cure attempt affects a krogan they use it on humans to ensure it's actually going to do what it's intended to.  Let's say they develope a treatment in the hopes of enlarging certain hormonal glands they test humans to make sure it actually effects the hormonal glands and not say, the brain.

[Solomen]

Turians also never killed a Reaper... I'm just sayin

[Collider]

Solomen wrote...

Turians also never killed a Reaper... I'm just sayin

They disabled one, didn't they? Or maybe I'm remembering incorrectly.

[yellowpride]

Collider wrote...

Solomen wrote...

Turians also never killed a Reaper... I'm just sayin

They disabled one, didn't they? Or maybe I'm remembering incorrectly.

No, they fake disabled a Collector Ship.  We don't know who killed that other Reaper.

[GodWood]

mentosman8 wrote...

Turians I'm not sure on though.

Harbinger's excuse for turians was something like:
Turians, too primitive...