98 réponses à ce sujet

[Mangalores]

In SF or fantasy the story aside I am also often drawn to the concept of the world behind it. Which is precisely the combo which draws me to Mass Effect.

However when looking at the timeline and ingame narration/dialogue as well Revelation I wonder if the expansion of mankind is not a little too excessive to feel wellpaced. Or more precisely, that there is a felt rift between the actual expansion and the supposed impact of it.


Population:
When one looks at it mankind has settled a couple of dozen planets but only a select few colonies have actual population in the millions.

Planet Earth is described in the Galaxy Map as having 12 billion people.

So 15 billion humans, most of which living on Earth and most of the rest on 3-6 colonies would already be a generous guess.

Now it is constantly said that mankind is growing at an excessive rate, its fleet is second only to the Turians and they excert great influence throughout the galaxy (you can even make them leaders of the Council in ME1).

But humans are only around a couple of decades...

Turians are around at least 700 years

Asari and  Salarians are around 2000 years.

So where's their power and influence gone? Ilium, an Asari border world has 6 billion inhabitants! Wouldn't that speak for several worlds closer at home to be as densely populated? Wouldn't they have spent 2000 years colonizing the best spots they could find? Turians don't strike me as the types to not aquire vast territory and either settle or at least exploit it.

Military might:
The human fleet is supposed to be big. How do we sustain that fleet with our economy speckled over a few frontier worlds and only a couple of decades of us having adapted revolutionary tech (everyone else already has) when a far more militarized race like the Turians can only maintain a fleet about the same size? Where does all this shipbuilding capacity suddenly come from. Building massive infrastructure takes time and as the Citadel needs years to clean up their mess there seem to be a certain limit to how much advanced tech will speed up things, esspecially since this new infrastructure is beyond anything before.

There's also the human grab for dominating the Council. How was that accomplished? The Turians have 40 dreadnaughts, the Asari ~25 and the Salarians 18. Mankind has 8. That's 10:1 reasons why claiming a political entity those three races occupied for centuries seems like a very bad idea politically. Now the Citadel Fleet suffered in ME1 but the cinematic doesn't really show a suffient amount of carnage to suggest that those odds would go down sufficiently. It also seems:
Council Fleet at the Citadel < Geth fleet + Sovereign < 5th Fleet of Acturus.

So the Geth were defeated by at most a single human fleet(5th fleet) and defeated the Council fleet rather quickly in turn which kinda begs the question of how big the Council fleet actually was. From cinematics it would be 1 dreadnaught + a few dozen Turian cruisers.

That's significant but not really enough to landgrab a political title and a station inhabited by millions of  citizens from the Council races (ultimate renegade choice). Assuming at least the Asari and Salarians have a rather big economy that's not even enough to attempt to ****** them off because there should be more ships out there and they can afford to build new ones.

It's a bit like the United Nations blowing up and Germany claimning all seats on the Security Council in the aftermath because they shot the terrorists. Germany might be big economywise, but would the USA, China, Russia or even France and Britain buy into that just because they were roughed up a bit in the action?

And why would the Citadel seek more humans to replace C-Sec losses? Have humans extraordinary experience with large multicultural space stations compared to Asari, Salarians and Turians who certainly have multicultural colonies of significant size elsewhere? Wouldn't they have plenty of colonies and stations from which to draw new recruits for C-Sec?

Excuse my rambling and I know this is at times rather subjective evaluation but the maximum gain mankind can achieve in the Mass Effect games (through your actions) seems very contradictory to mankind being a fledgling just spreading its wings over a significant part of yet unclaimed territory (which yet again suggests alot of the rest is claimed).

Of course this is more the typical plot device/dramatization for story purposes but what do you think? Do you think it's a bit too convenient for storytelling purposes or just right? Or maybe even too small?

Would like to know what others think.

[Collider]

I do call the Asari race Mary Sues.

[Barquiel]

http://tvtropes.org/...umansAreSpecial



The one thing I hate about the ME universe...Bioware used it too much imo.

[Ieldra]

Yeah. 30 years from system-bound species, from first contact, to galactic power. The timeline is complete nonsense, the absolute worst world-breaking flaw of the ME universe conception. It also causes a lot of other problems.

300 years, that would have been OK.

And it's so much worse because it's completely unnecessary. They could've said 300 years and there'd have been no problems elsewhere. Of course they' have to change Earth a bit more....

Modifié par Ieldra2, 04 mai 2010 - 07:38 .

[Skilled Seeker]

Barquiel wrote...

http://tvtropes.org/...umansAreSpecial

The one thing I hate about the ME universe...Bioware used it too much imo.

Agreed.

[Texaboose]

Bioware has a problem with timelines and reality (at least they do with Dragon Age as well as ME).

In Dragon Age it was time vs. distance, in ME2 it's time vs. galactic growth.

On the surface it all looks plausible, since they already have a timeline set up and you assume that since they've created this timeline they must know what they're doing, but when you look at the details it all goes to hell.

[Daerog]

More and more humans are moving into the Citadel, so with that there are more recruits being human, and C-Sec hired who they could get, which happened to be more humans.

Humanity is really focused on getting their cut of the galaxy, while some of the aliens are not being that ambitious in politics because they already have their footholds and are more focused in other parts of the galaxy. So, with the events of ME1, humans were more prepared to fill the gaps than the aliens with investments elsewhere.

Aliens have larger fleets, but they also have larger areas that they need to patrol with their larger populations. I would hope that they are not stupid enough to start a civil war by using military aggression against human interests. It's not like the aliens are being cooperative if you brought over a renegade ending to ME2, the turians are actually being more isolated. If paragon was brought over, not much for the aliens to fear if the humans are just keeping things as they were before.

Just trying to counter some points, I'm not so sure either way if it was unrealistically fast or not, food for thought?

[casedawgz]

New ambition often trumps old, deep-seated complacency.

[Kissamies]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Yeah. 30 years from system-bound species, from first contact, to galactic power. The timeline is complete nonsense, the absolute worst world-breaking flaw of the ME universe conception. It also causes a lot of other problems.

300 years, that would have been OK.

And it's so much worse because it's completely unnecessary. They could've said 300 years and there'd have been no problems elsewhere. Of course they' have to change Earth a bit more....

I guess they didn't wan't to try figuring out what humanity would be like after 300 years of alien influence. That, or they figured humans living in that culture wouldn't be as relatable. Could have just ignored that, of course, but it seems to me that despite being pretty soft, space opera-ish sci-fi, ME tries to take these kinds of things seriously. I can respect that.

Too bad, humans that have been part of a galactic community for several lifetimes might have been interesting.

[Daerog]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Yeah. 30 years from system-bound species, from first contact, to galactic power. The timeline is complete nonsense, the absolute worst world-breaking flaw of the ME universe conception. It also causes a lot of other problems.

300 years, that would have been OK.

And it's so much worse because it's completely unnecessary. They could've said 300 years and there'd have been no problems elsewhere. Of course they' have to change Earth a bit more....

300 years? The United States isn't even 300 years old yet, and humanity went from using cannons to nuclear warheads, puppets and ragdolls to robots, discovering new islands to discovering new stars/asteroids/planets and actually being able to leave the planet, and more.
Technology advances faster and faster, things can happen fast. 300 years for Humanity to colonize several planets and set up a formidible (spelled wrong i bet) military fleet would be pretty poor compared to how far we have advanced in the last 300 years.
I would actually go for 100 years at most, but not 300. I'm also leaving the whole take over the council out of the equation because that was just a lucky fluke with the events of ME1.

[Barquiel]

DaerogTheDhampir wrote...

I would hope that they are not stupid enough to start a civil war by using military aggression against human interests.

I hope they do (renegade ending).

It would make more sense than "We dominated the galaxy for 2500 years...boring...humans can rule/we don't care"

Modifié par Barquiel, 04 mai 2010 - 07:55 .

[Vegielamb]

Collider wrote...

I do call the Asari race Mary Sues.

The Asari have a darkside, it's just that we only hear about it in passing. They're spying, manipulating, biggoted, shallow narcissists. Illium hints at a lot of this.

Modifié par Vegielamb, 04 mai 2010 - 07:59 .

[Daerog]

Barquiel wrote...

DaerogTheDhampir wrote...

I would hope that they are not stupid enough to start a civil war by using military aggression against human interests.

I hope they do (renegade ending).

It would make more sense than "We dominated the galaxy for 2500 years...boring...humans can rule/we don't care"

It would not make sense, they still have their own space territory they can govern, they can ignore humanity (which it does sound like some aliens are being uncooperative with human renegade council), and starting a war is very costly. The only ones who may consider it would be Asari or Turians; Asari likely wouldn't considering not being very warlike and the Turians wouldn't because they like quick victories not long wars. So, maybe the Turians are building up arms with the renegade ending and will strike after ME3. I don't see why they would have an issue with Paragon ending, it's just like adding another seat to the Security Council or welcoming another country on another UN council.

Modifié par DaerogTheDhampir, 04 mai 2010 - 08:00 .

[Collider]

Vegielamb wrote...
The Asari have a darkside, it's just that we only hear about it in passing.
They're spying, manipulating, biggoted, shallow narcissists. Illium hints at a lot of this.

Which is true of basically every race. The Asari as a race are Mary Sue.

[Vegielamb]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Yeah. 30 years from system-bound species, from first contact, to galactic power. The timeline is complete nonsense, the absolute worst world-breaking flaw of the ME universe conception. It also causes a lot of other problems.

300 years, that would have been OK.

And it's so much worse because it's completely unnecessary. They could've said 300 years and there'd have been no problems elsewhere. Of course they' have to change Earth a bit more....

Until they reveal that humans were "created" by the Protheans and are the closest living relatives to the Protheans (or are direct decendents of surviving Protheans). I see this one coming a mile off.

[Collider]

Shandepared wrote...

Collider wrote...

Which is true of basically every race. The Asari as a race are Mary Sue.

Only humans and asari qualify as Mary Sue.

I don't agree humans are Mary Sue in this game at all.

[Skilled Seeker]

wtf is Mary Sue?

[Texaboose]

Mary Sue:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue

[MotoSkunkX]

It actually makes perfect sense.



The Asari think in the long term, which isn't surprising given how long they live. Most Krogan are too busy killing things for credits to care about anything else. Salarians die quickly, and given their odd method of reproduction it's possible they're in a self-imposed reproductive straightjacket. Turians had that problem with their colonies fighting wars with each other, and then they had to deal with the Krogan Rebellions, which probably inflicted more than a few casualties on all parties involved



Humans haven't been in any major wars, think in the short-term(now now now) due to their lifespan and have no turian-esque qualms about taking what they think is rightfully theirs. Which is partly why Batarians hate us so much(we're so alike).