24 réponses à ce sujet

[Zurcior]

 I apologize if this topic has ever discussed previously, but I've always been confused as to how the beacon on Joab had images of the Collectors if it was after the Prothean extinction. Weren't the beacons prothean memories or something? If so, how'd one manage to put that memory into the beacon when they were all enslaved? Someone please help me sort out this confusion. Thank you.

[Fiery Phoenix]

I've wondered the same, but I would be lying to you if I said I knew anything.

[didymos1120]

The beacons were part of a comm network, not a memory storage system. They just worked by way of direct-neural interface, at least when someone viewed a message. Also: the extinction took centuries. The implication is that the first Collectors appeared before it was over, and some prothean had figured out what they were.

[ADLegend21]

Maybe an escaped prothean warning th others sruvivors of his/her/it's fate?...yeah that's my best guess.

[Count Viceroy]

It's kinda cool that if you scout around, It is possible run into that beacon and it's spoiler before the revelation about the collectors on the collector ship mission.

Modifié par Count Viceroy, 30 août 2010 - 08:43 .

[OBakaSama]

Weren't the Prothean beacons supposed to be a relaying a message of what the Reapers were doing? The beacons held the message; sort of like an answering machine.



My suspicion is you're confusing the Cipher which Shiala gives you on Feros, which is some sort of race memory.

[coinop25]

I had interpreted it to mean that the Protheans looked like Collectors all along, and only now is Shepard able to piece this together (and those Prothean statues you see around Ilos are their gods or something). Then again, if EDI was able to compare Collector DNA to Prothean DNA, you'd think that means that Prothean remains have been found...

[Darziel]

In ME1 Vigil explains that the message sent out via the beacon was intended as a warning and wasn't actually sent until the reapers had left (or pretty much so).



As Vigil also comments on some of the protheans being converted and working as quislings it would make sense that they'd include that in the warning.



However, as you then discover the truth on the collector ship it is quite possible that these aren't images of the collectors (prothean quislings) but rather the protheans themeselves ... the genetic modification wouldn't necessarily mean they would look much different.



There you go - my pointless meandering thoughts for the day :]

[Fiery Phoenix]

coinop25 wrote...

I had interpreted it to mean that the Protheans looked like Collectors all along, and only now is Shepard able to piece this together (and those Prothean statues you see around Ilos are their gods or something). Then again, if EDI was able to compare Collector DNA to Prothean DNA, you'd think that means that Prothean remains have been found...

You remember those statues scattered around Ilos? Apparently that's how the Protheans actually looked.

[Sajuro]

I have the theory that Collector's were there before the reapers began their harvest of Protheans. Collectors could have very well been the slave class in a Prothean caste system, Protheans who were genetically modified to be more suitable for hard labor and the reapers just replaced their internal systems with more tech as they failed. The Collector you see is back when they had some semblance of free will.

[Renaikan]

The beacon is a warning to other Protheans what the Reapers are doing to them. Changing them into Collectors.

Two Protheans


Screaching Mouth


Reaper


Two Protheans in dispare


Finally what the Reapers turn them into, the Collectors

Modifié par Renaikan, 30 août 2010 - 09:38 .

[EmperorSahlertz]

Protheans could also always have looked like the collectors, we will never know.

[Renaikan]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

Protheans could also always have looked like the collectors, we will never know.

It is plane as day in the Beacon. The Protheans were like the statues on Ilos. Reapers turned them into Collectors.

[Sajuro]

EmperorSahlertz wrote...

Protheans could also always have looked like the collectors, we will never know.

Except that we do, and they don't

[achwas]

Mordin actually says - the Proteans as established in ME 1 changing into the Collector breed through the influence of the reapers - as much ( when rambling on about collector "society" being stagnant and dead ) prior to the jump through the Omega IV relay. Since Mordin is rather smart, I assume he has pretty much figured out the plot through his analysis of Collector and reaper sample, observations taken from Horizon, The Collector ship and the "mordant reaper vessel " where the IFF is acquired- 
Although according to him, the Reapers actually destroyed Protean free will first, then adapted the race to their specific purposes, using genetic modification and cybernetics - which leaves open the question how a Collector hologram was featured in a Protean message...

How.....tantalizing that some mysteries actually do remain !

PS I also wondered about the Protean artifact in the side-quest mission with the abandoned mine was being guarded by Husks. Perhaps the Protean weren't as benign as ME 1 had us assume and actually pioneered husking....yet were still victims of the Reapers ?

Modifié par achwas, 30 août 2010 - 10:54 .

[PsyrenY]

Are we all forgetting what Vigil said?



"The genocide of a species is a long, slow process. Days passed, then weeks, months, years. And still the Reapers persisted. As years turned to decades, I began disabling the stasis pods of nonessential personnel, then security staff. In the end, only the pods of the top research staff remained centuries later - and even these were in danger of failing when the Reapers finally retreated back through the Citadel relay."



Centuries is plenty of time to morph a species, especially with Reaper phlebotinum tech powering the change.

[didymos1120]

achwas wrote...
PS I also wondered about the Protean artifact in the side-quest mission with the abandoned mine was being guarded by Husks. Perhaps the Protean weren't as benign as ME 1 had us assume and actually pioneered husking....yet were still victims of the Reapers ?

That's not a Prothean artifact.  It was an indoctrination device.  What's more, it looked very much like geth tech:






It certainly looks nothing like any of the Prothean stuff we've seen, and none of the datapads you read says anything about it being prothean.  It's just "alien".  The mission complete screen explicitly calls it a Reaper Indoctrination Device, but it doesn't look like one of those much either:

[kidbd15]

Renaikan wrote...

The beacon is a warning to other Protheans what the Reapers are doing to them. Changing them into Collectors.

Two Protheans


Screaching Mouth


Reaper


Two Protheans in dispare


Finally what the Reapers turn them into, the Collectors

This

[Zurcior]

Thanks. That cleared up a lot.

[Pacifien]

Well, you know, the developers might decide to completely change the Prothean design on a scale way beyond what we see with the Qunari change for Dragon Age 2. Possibly meld the original design we see in the statues with the Collector design that we see in ME2. Since we haven't actually seen a Prothean in the flesh, they have a bit of leeway to retcon whatever they like.

Mordin does mention the centuries (going on millennia) of tampering the Reapers had done with the Collectors. Why that would transform them into insectoid creatures after what we had seen of the Protheans is anyone's guess. I mean, from within the ME universe reasoning. I've seen people speculate that connecting the Collectors to the Protheans in ME2 might not have been the original intent, but no one at Bioware has said one way or the other about that.

Anyway, I think the beacon we find in ME2 is meant to be a small reward to continuing players, a throwback to the impetus of all their travails in the previous game while giving a nice connecting tidbit to the game they are currently playing. Again, going to back to an ME Universe explanation, not sure how the Prothean scientists on Ilos would know of the altered Collectors as they were secluded from all the other Prothean worlds. They could speculate on what the Reapers had done with the Citadel, but not with their remaining brethren. Not unless they found Collectors on Ilos.

For an off-the-wall speculation, I like to think there were other surviving Protheans to the mass extinction, desperately trying to find a safe haven off the radar. A story of paranoia and intrigue as they search for a new world all the while trying to figure out who had been indoctrinated and could turn on them at any second. These Protheans could have possibly modified the beacons as a warning of the new threat.

Um. Yeah. Okay then.

Modifié par Pacifien, 31 août 2010 - 03:18 .

[Thompson family]

There's a very good statue of a Prothean in good lighting in the vault of Donovan Hock in Kasumi's loyalty mission. It's the best look at a likeness of the Protheans I've seen in the game, except for the one in the Codex.

[OBakaSama]

Hm...following from the above and in-game knowledge I think it's possible to create an in-game explanation that doesn't 'break the fourth wall'.

Some Protheans were, presumably, indoctrinated. These were the Reaper sleeper agents. Any that weren't indoctrinated were likely to have been killed, thus been part of the death toll of the genocide.

Indoctrination, when thorough, leaves the individual with no free-will as such. Reapers use tech to compensate as Mordin explains.

EDI also explains, when finding the Collector body on the Collector ship, that their DNA shows signs of extensive rewriting; and that only a quad-strain (I think) could be matched to traces of DNA from Prothean ruins. Assume a quad-strain is a tiny fraction of the DNA of an individual.

A 2% difference in DNA, or thereabouts, separates us from monkeys and apes. Considering the amount of DNA the indoctrinated Protheans had rewritten, it is plausible that their physical appearance changed. (If I remember correctly, I think it's possible to change one gene in some fly and they'd have legs sticking out of its head.)

Pacifien wrote...

For an off-the-wall speculation, I like
to think there were other surviving Protheans to the mass extinction,
desperately trying to find a safe haven off the radar. A story of
paranoia and intrigue as they search for a new world all the while
trying to figure out who had been indoctrinated and could turn on them
at any second. These Protheans could have possibly modified the beacons
as a warning of the new threat.

I like this speculation.

[Monochrome Wench]

It'd be a bit of a reach but if Bioware wanted to explain the large differences between the Protheans and the Collectors, they could just have it explained to something as simple as the Collecters were another specices from the Protheans home world. It could explain the unsuitability of the Protheans too. Two specices in a somewhat symbiotic relationship, say Protheans are the brains, the 'collectors' are the muscle, may produce exceedingly poor reaper material because neither are good at everything.

I don't think this explination fits particularly well with the beacon though.

Modifié par Monochrome Wench, 02 septembre 2010 - 02:37 .

[didymos1120]

OBakaSama wrote...
EDI also explains, when finding the Collector body on the Collector ship, that their DNA shows signs of extensive rewriting; and that only a quad-strain (I think) could be matched to traces of DNA from Prothean ruins. Assume a quad-strain is a tiny fraction of the DNA of an individual.

Uh, no, it's quad-strand.  Prothean DNA has four coiled strands, instead of two.  It's a feature unique to them, which is how EDI immediately knew the Collectors were related to Protheans.  She was then able to find Collector genes that were homologous to known fragments from Prothean sites.

[OBakaSama]

Yeah. My bad.



General point still stands I believe.