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[Smeelia]

Raven4030 wrote...

You know, not everything has to be a Reaper plot. I doubt the writers considered this more than an interesting aside that is irrelevant to the storyline, and the Cro-Magnon reference a writing error. If the writers are like me, they likely assumed 'Cro-Magnon' simply referred to 'primitive man' and didn't think it was important enough to wikipedia. Honestly, if the Mars outpost were a Collector outpost it would utterly destroy continuity anyway, not to mention suspension of disbelief.

Making stuff up to explain possible errors in continuity/accuracy is part of the fun of being a fan though.

Also, are you trying to suggest this thread isn't a Reaper plot? Maybe you're one of THEM!

[I AM KROGAAANNN]

Smeelia wrote...

I don't think we know how long the Reaper "clean-up" operation takes.  I suppose it's possible that a group of Protheans were stranded in the Sol system and perhaps headed to Earth in the hopes of surviving there (possibly abandoning their base on Mars, which the Reapers didn't find or didn't care about).

Perhaps the surviving Protheans implanted monitoring devices in some of the developing species and continued studying them even when they were on their own.  This could be where the "vision" comes from (it could be a recording), although how and why they transmitted the data off-world I'm not sure.  If the "bird" is an Oculus then it could be hunting for surviving Protheans, the reason for attacking the human (the description sounds like it could be a laser blast) would be to destroy any Prothean technology on Earth (so that humans don't get any too early).

Vigil states that they Reapers stayed behind for several centuries (he states that years, decades, centuries passed before the Reapers left) to "clean up" before leaving through the Citadel. 

I don't think so. Vigil states that the Conduit was a one way Mass Relay to the Citadel. Once they got there, they had to remain there, as any means of transportation would most likely have been destroyed or would not exist in the first place. 

This is adding too many unnecessary variables. I'll pull out Occam's Razor. 

Modifié par I AM KROGAAANNN, 24 juin 2011 - 03:38 .

[I AM KROGAAANNN]

Pride Demon wrote...

I AM KROGAAANNN wrote...

I have a theory, but it requires me to make the underlying assumption that the Oculus is a Collector/Reaper weapon/invention OR **passed down Prothean technology** (see below). 

If the former assumption is true, then that means that the Prothean ruins are actually Collector base ruins. This is in perfect harmony with the time range given for the ascendancy of the ****** sapiens sapiens (Cro Magnons), which is well after the Prothean's extinction/enslavement. 

This can only mean that the Reapers, through the Collectors, were studying the viability of using various species throughout the galaxy for suitable organic material needed to ensure their livelihood/reproduction(?), as EDI surmises during your encounter with the Human Reaper on the Collector base, VERY early on.

EDIT 2: I just realized something!!!! If the first assumption is true, the Collectors/Reapers might have intentionally built the base to simultaneously monitor the humans and to ensure that they get the technology in the base to advance themselves at just the right time before the extinction cycle!!!!

Indeed! The Oculi are Reaper tech, they are mentioned as being present in ME3, they are probably the Reaper equivalent of multi-purpose drones...

Also I made a thread regarding this topic sometime ago and reached similar conclusions to yours...

Consider: Reapers are mentioned sometimes harvesting tech from the planets they destroy, considering they are already the most advanced beings in existence what do you think they'll need that harvested tech for? Planting it somewhere else to ensure other species evolve "along the paths [they] desire" but no one can track the evolution to them, instead pinning it to some extremely advanced precursor (for us, the Protheans)...

As for the Eletania thing, no one says the recording was from Prothean studying humans, that's just Shepard theory, since he/she didn't know about the Reaper-Collector-Prothean link yet...

Oh lol, that saves me the trouble of creating a thread. 

Glad to know we think alike! 

[Smeelia]

I AM KROGAAANNN wrote...

Vigil states that they Reapers stayed behind for several centuries (he states that years, decades, centuries passed before the Reapers left) to "clean up" before leaving through the Citadel. 

I don't think so. Vigil states that the Conduit was a one way Mass Relay to the Citadel. Once they got there, they had to remain there, as any means of transportation would most likely have been destroyed or would not exist in the first place. 

This is adding too many unnecessary variables. I'll pull out Occam's Razor. 

Well, I meant that the Protheans in the system were a different group to the ones on Ilos.  The Reapers had plenty of time to kill everyone, especially a minor research station, so there's no reason to think every Prothean was dead/indoctrinated within the first year.  This is all based on what Vigil says.

[I AM KROGAAANNN]

Smeelia wrote...

I AM KROGAAANNN wrote...

Vigil states that they Reapers stayed behind for several centuries (he states that years, decades, centuries passed before the Reapers left) to "clean up" before leaving through the Citadel. 

I don't think so. Vigil states that the Conduit was a one way Mass Relay to the Citadel. Once they got there, they had to remain there, as any means of transportation would most likely have been destroyed or would not exist in the first place. 

This is adding too many unnecessary variables. I'll pull out Occam's Razor. 

Well, I meant that the Protheans in the system were a different group to the ones on Ilos.  The Reapers had plenty of time to kill everyone, especially a minor research station, so there's no reason to think every Prothean was dead/indoctrinated within the first year.  This is all based on what Vigil says.

Highly unlikely. The Oculus is Collector/Reaper tech. It couldn't have been Protheans studying primitive humans at all.

[Pride Demon]

Smeelia wrote...

I don't think we know how long the Reaper "clean-up" operation takes.

Hundreds of years if Vigil is to be believed... A very long time... But to be able to study a Cro-Magnon those Protheans would have to still be alive at least 15000 years after the beginning of the extinction cycle...
I somehow doubt the Reapers would take that long, or they'll be at risk of being discovered by some newly emerging civilization...

Raven4030 wrote...

You know, not everything has to be a Reaper plot.

Hmm... Didn't Sovereign basically mention how the whole relay network, the citadel and as a general rule the entirety of Mass Effect tech are just a ploy to force organics to develop "along the paths [the Reapers] desire"?
It's true not everyhting is a reaper plot, but everything regarding Mass Effect tech is directly or indirectly part of their plan... And basically everything uses Mass Effect tech somehow in ME...

Raven4030 wrote...

I doubt the writers considered this more than an interesting aside that is irrelevant to the storyline, and the Cro-Magnon reference a writing error. If the writers are like me, they likely assumed 'Cro-Magnon' simply referred to 'primitive man' and didn't think it was important enough to wikipedia.

This may be true... It's a pretty big mistake for a game that tries so hard to be believable, but then again the Illusive Man said the 37 million old Reaper was a relic from a battle taking place when mammals took their first steps on Earth (which is quite a bit off), so it could be...

Raven4030 wrote...

Honestly, if the Mars outpost were a Collector outpost it would utterly destroy continuity anyway, not to mention suspension of disbelief.

Well, the point is that there was no base to begin with... The Collectors planted there Prothean ruins taken from somewhere else merely so that we could eventually find them and lern how to manipulate Mass Effect tech...

After all, unless the Reapers are omniscient and can pinpoint the location of every sentient creature everywhere, they'll need to have some help in serching for new candidates for the next reaping cycle...
Then have a way to make sure said candidates evolve using Mass Effect tech, like for instance planting data on how to use it (which is easily obtained by harvested civilizations), and planting it somewhere near the new prospect homeworld, so they'll think it was an alien base studying them from long ago and not think about why the data is there further (we weren't the only ones which were fortuitously "studied by the Protheans" and ended up finding their ruins and so learning about mass effect tech, the Hanar tell a similar story)...

Maybe they'll even have to move relays around a bit, since I doubt they placed them all in advance knowing that maybe in 15 million years organic life will develop there...
To do all this they'll need help, since they come harvest and go to avoid detection and don't spend more time then necessary in the galaxy: what better help than repurposed indoctrinated agents? I doubt the Protheans where the first to take on the mantle of Collectors, and in fact I doubt they'll be the last too (unless we defeat the Reapers that is)...

Consider the Mars base was supposedly a biological research facility, and in fact humans found many useful medical data there... However there was also data regarding how to use Mass Effect tech to reach FTL...
Now, what the he*k would that kind of data do in a biological research station?

True, it's all implementation of Mass Effect tech, but dumping that data there would be the same as me putting an icecream in my hoven together with a pizza since "it's all food anyway", or a current genetic research firm keeping in their hard drives data about how an internal combustion engine works since "it's all scientific stuff anyway"...

To me the "Collectors did it!" is quite plausible, studying people to see if they were good for the harvest was their job after all...
Just my two cents anyway...

[SandTrout]

The premise that humans did not exist 50k years ago is not necessarily true. The oldest known Cro Magnon fossils are 35k years old, but there are various other human species have existed for far longer, with the oldest anatomically humans dated back to 200k years ago and behaviorally humans dated back to about 50k years ago. Also, just because the oldest known fossils are less than 50k years old does not implicitly mean that Cro Magnon did not exist in the proper time period.

[Reever]

SandTrout wrote...

The premise that humans did not exist 50k years ago is not necessarily true. The oldest known Cro Magnon fossils are 35k years old, but there are various other human species have existed for far longer, with the oldest anatomically humans dated back to 200k years ago and behaviorally humans dated back to about 50k years ago. Also, just because the oldest known fossils are less than 50k years old does not implicitly mean that Cro Magnon did not exist in the proper time period.

This.

And for the Occulus, Reapers are known to acquire the tech of the species they reap. So the Occuli could still be of prothean origin...

[Moiaussi]

Given that the Reapers are appearantly harvesting for specific organic material, it is reasonable to conclude that they alter early life to ensure their 'crop' turns out useful. If they actually need to harvest as opposed to doing so for the lolz, then it would be important to them to ensure that there is something worth harvesting on each and every cycle.

[KevShep]

Moiaussi wrote...

Given that the Reapers are appearantly harvesting for specific organic material, it is reasonable to conclude that they alter early life to ensure their 'crop' turns out useful. If they actually need to harvest as opposed to doing so for the lolz, then it would be important to them to ensure that there is something worth harvesting on each and every cycle.

This^
It is possible that the protheans at sol where in fact collectors and that sovereign knew about humans. We know that in ME2 the reapers are interested in humans, They may have been interested in humans longer then that. It makes sense that they would be collectors in sol coming to prepare for the next harvest, and its possible that because of the interest in humans that sovereign tried to kill off all other races with the rachni (Sovereign was behind the rachni war). The plan...clear out everyone before invasion so humans can be harvested without any fighting. This is made clear again in omaga during mordins mission with the virus that kills all but humans. It sounds as if the reapers really dont care about any other race and a big clue to this is the rachni war and there interest in humans. So I think that they were in fact collectors.

Modifié par KevShep, 24 juin 2011 - 10:23 .

[Pride Demon]

SandTrout wrote...

The premise that humans did not exist 50k years ago is not necessarily true. The oldest known Cro Magnon fossils are 35k years old, but there are various other human species have existed for far longer, with the oldest anatomically humans dated back to 200k years ago and behaviorally humans dated back to about 50k years ago. Also, just because the oldest known fossils are less than 50k years old does not implicitly mean that Cro Magnon did not exist in the proper time period.

There was no premise saying that humans didn't exist before 50000 years ago, I'm well aware of the things you wrote and was referring to Cro-magnon specifically in all my posts... However like you said Cro-Magnon only goes as far as 35000 years ago as far as today's knowledge go...
And the vision on Eletania specifically mentions a Cro-Magnon hunter as the captured human...

Now, while Cro-Magnon may have existed from before 35000 years, predating them of 15000 years to fit the story is a tad bit extreme, at least in my opinion...

[Raven4030]

Pride Demon wrote...

There was no premise saying that humans didn't exist before 50000 years ago, I'm well aware of the things you wrote and was referring to Cro-magnon specifically in all my posts... However like you said Cro-Magnon only goes as far as 35000 years ago as far as today's knowledge go...
And the vision on Eletania specifically mentions a Cro-Magnon hunter as the captured human...

Now, while Cro-Magnon may have existed from before 35000 years, predating them of 15000 years to fit the story is a tad bit extreme, at least in my opinion...

This is what I was going to say. More than likely it was just a writing error, the writers are only human so once in a great while something will slip through the editing process, but if you all WANT to try to force the writing error into continuity, I have a far, far, FAR simpler explination:

The exact wording mentioning the Cro-Magnon hunter is as follows:

You don't answer right away, wondering at the implications of what
you have seen: the memories of a Cro-Magnon hunter, captured by an
implanted Prothean data recorder. How long did they study the primitive
humans, observing them and analyzing the results at their base on Mars?
And what, if anything, did they learn from us?

This implies the thought that it was a Cro-Magnon originated with 'you' (in this context: Shephard). Shephard is a marine, and so his grasp of history is not likely to be very strong and just assumed it was Cro-Magnon. I mean, really, how many of you off the top of your head would have known Cro-Magnon only first showed up in the fossil record 35k years ago if one of us didn't wikipedia it and post it here? Basically: Shephard thought incorrectly and he was in fact witnessing a member of ****** sapien not classified as Cro-Magnon (which alot of people mistakenly interchange with 'cave man' that covers pretty much all of the humans going back to Neanderthals).

[Pride Demon]

Raven4030 wrote...

This is what I was going to say. More than likely it was just a writing error, the writers are only human so once in a great while something will slip through the editing process, but if you all WANT to try to force the writing error into continuity, I have a far, far, FAR simpler explination:

The exact wording mentioning the Cro-Magnon hunter is as follows:

You don't answer right away, wondering at the implications of what
you have seen: the memories of a Cro-Magnon hunter, captured by an
implanted Prothean data recorder. How long did they study the primitive
humans, observing them and analyzing the results at their base on Mars?
And what, if anything, did they learn from us?

This implies the thought that it was a Cro-Magnon originated with 'you' (in this context: Shephard). Shephard is a marine, and so his grasp of history is not likely to be very strong and just assumed it was Cro-Magnon. I mean, really, how many of you off the top of your head would have known Cro-Magnon only first showed up in the fossil record 35k years ago if one of us didn't wikipedia it and post it here? Basically: Shephard thought incorrectly and he was in fact witnessing a member of ****** sapien not classified as Cro-Magnon (which alot of people mistakenly interchange with 'cave man' that covers pretty much all of the humans going back to Neanderthals).

True, I understand what you mean, but the notion that those were Protheans originated with the 'you' also... I doubt Shepard knows a Prothean ship (or a Collector ship for that matter) just by looking at it... ;P
Besides, there's nothing wrong in trying to come up with some innovative ways of explaining what could be a slip up: with a bit of luck the devs may get some interesting ideas and expand the universe further...

[Lapis Lazuli]

hmmm...so the anthropologists of 2011 had Cro-Magnon pinned down so well that by First Contact War 2157, anthropologists still had nothing to add to the 146 year-old data. whoa...them old-school 2011 anthropologists were straight pimpin'