First of all, great thread and great theory, Arcian.
The way I see it, it's not at all impossible for
some Protheans to have had some inkling concerning the Reapers' existence and/or invasion plans. Now, obviously the vast, overwhelming majority of them did not know, hence the fact that their leaders got owned before they even knew what was happening. But if the Reapers had managed to invade on schedule in Mass Effect 1, would the fate of the current Council have been any different? They only pledged to respond to a concrete and obvious threat, and that was Saren and Sovereign, and even deemed Shepard an annoyance for repeatedly insisting the Reapers were the real threat. I would say that it's entirely possible that if a Prothean individual ever stumbled across the realization that there was indeed a recurring cycle of extinction in the galaxy and then attempted to prove their theory and advocate action, they would have been just as unable to prove the legitimacy of their claim as Liara was before she met Shepard, and as Shepard still is, to the present day. All that individual may have been able to do was begin the classified Ilos project as a safeguard against not necessarily an invasion, but from any apocalyptic threat whatsoever that would result in extinction.
The complex on Ilos in which the Protheans took refuge upon hearing of the Reaper invasion is called "the Archives." Vigil, the stasis pods and the Conduit (which is above ground) are all housed here. The word “archives” prompts ideas of information, documents, libraries, what have you, and evidenced by the countless hallways jutting off from the main corridor Shep and co. take through the complex, the place is huge and could potentially possess (or have possessed, since the power seems to have failed) troves of knowledge, like a time capsule of Prothean civilization. In addition to the fact that the majority of the complex was contained in a bunker, and, as the OP stated, that it contained a ton of cryogenic pods, it seems like Ilos was not only a research project, but a place of preservation, as well.
In addition, I was playing through ME 1 again tonight and I noticed how similar the Conduit is to the "statue' relay on the Presidium. They're both constructed vertically, albeit this may be because they're both linked to an object and not merely space. They also have rings that gyrate noticeably faster than those found on the relays in space. The Prothean scientists had to have known the "statue" relay wasn't a statue at all--otherwise how would they have known to connect the Conduit directly to the Citadel, and not to the nearby space relay? Would knowing that it wasn't a statue have prompted curiosity as to where it led, and possibly be interpreted as a suspicious flaw in the integrity of the station? Did the Ilos team use this particular relay as the model for their reverse engineering project? --Just some things I was wondering, as the current populace of the Citadel obviously didn't care to examine the "statue"--perhaps the majority of the Prothean populace was just as ignorant.
Ieldra2 wrote...
Generally, my problem with your "beneficial precursor hypothesis" is that you assume intention and foreknowledge where I can't see any evidence for it, and that your scenario sounds more like a golden age myth set in space than like real history. As a rule, I would find it much more plausible to assume the Protheans were a species like any other. The distance in time and certain historical events then brings people to engage in myth-building around them, which is what the hanar have done. If some character in the ME universe published your scenario in a book and we heard about it on CDN, I would find it very interesting, but the actual, real, material history behind stuff like this tends to be a little less mythological and more down-to-earth.
The principle I'm using, btw, is an extension of the "principle of mediocrity": unless we have evidence to the contrary, it's plausible to assume that the protheans were a species like any other.
They obviously were
not a species like any other, if for no other reason than they totally screwed up the Reaper's plans. That is not to say that had time gone on, some other species could not have done the same thing, eventually, but the fact of the matter is their race's achievements served as a significant turning point in thwarting the Reapers. For example, name another race that managed to reverse engineer a mass relay, or that actually managed to have the foresight, ability and desire to leave a warning for other races and safeguard them against the Reapers? Even if the arthenn or the zeioph, the precursors to the Protheans,
did manage these things or things like them, the fact that they weren't the ones that influenced the events of Mass Effect is testament to
their being a species like any other, but the Protheans managed to break the cycle. ...Whether or not their actions will lead to it being permanently broken, and not just delayed, remains of course, to be seen. But it is undeniable that they messed things up.
Admittedly the majority of the galaxy
does blow the Protheans out of proportion--as far as the galactic-society-who-doesn’t-believe-in-the-Reapers knows, the Protheans built the relays and the Citadel. That’s giving them undue credit. The Protheans were
not exceptional for using the technology that they did not create like every other spacefaring race did, but they were exceptional for the technology that they did create, i.e., the beacons and the Conduit, which allowed Shepard and co. to foil Sovereign’s plans.
Personally I see that whole bit about the Keepers being representative of organic life evolving in unexpected ways as a parallel to the overall plot. The Reapers went for millions (or more) of years, perpetuating their cycle, but eventually organic life (the Protheans) managed to throw a monkey wrench in their plans. According to the game, the Reapers arrive every 50,000 years. After countless cycles, they had apparently come to believe that (or approximately that) was the magic number. The trouble wth the Protheans was, as I've seen it stated it other threads, that 50,000 years was too long, and the Reapers began that particular culling too late. The Protheans surpassed the Reapers' expectations, demonstrating that organic life can adapt and act in unpredictable ways, just like the Keepers responding to the Citadel's signals rather than those broadcasted by Sovereign. Since Shepard and humanity have caught on and responded to the Reaper threat in the past two games, we can infer that the current races (perhaps most of all humanity) are even more exceptional than the Protheans.
Modifié par LostValkyrie22, 25 août 2011 - 06:35 .
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