Watching the Reapers come and destroy Earth basically jolted me awake as to what this plot really is: an HP Lovecraft reboot, set IN SPACE and given a shiny, awesome sci-fi background. If you're not familiar with Lovecraft, you're probably familiar with his most famous creation: Cthulhu. If you're not familiar with him, I'll give you a brief rundown--He's an ancient god (later expanded to part of a pantheon of Great Old Ones, nasty-ass Gods that are waiting for the right time to ruin everyone's day) who slumbers deep beneath the surface of the sea. His very presence causes discomfort to people who aren't even aware of him--much of humanity's subconscious worries center around Cthulhu. Once one learns of Cthulhu's existence (rare) one of two things happen: a) you become a follower of Cthulhu and attempt to bring about his awakening (Lovecraft, being racist as hell, said that the more weak-minded succumbed to this; thus all of Cthulhu's priests in The Call of Cthulhu are tribal natives, mostly Inuits) or
you go absolutely bat**** insane.Obviously the parallel between the Great Old Ones and the Reapers, in theory, isn't one of a kind. I'm sure there are other sci-fi or fantasy stories that feature ancient, evil gods incomprehensible to Man that come around to **** **** up every so often. The Necrons, or more accurately the C'Tan from WH40K come to mind as something not quite the same but not too different.
But check this out:
http://www.evilontwo...ys1/cthulhu.jpg
http://images.wikia....f/f0/Reaper.jpg
They're both pretty goddamn squiddy in appearance, no?
Cthulhu's relics in the Call of Cthulhu also deeply disturb the protagonist, much like the Prothean ruin in Mass Effect 1. Cthulhu's priests also are prone to kidnapping people to hasten his arrival.
Let's recap the similarities briefly as background, then I'll get to the plot predictions.
We have:
a) a legendary, almost-unheard of race of creatures that nobody believes in
who live out so far away that there's no way for anyone else to interact from themc) who are extremely malevolent
d) who express this malevolence every aeon or so by coming round and tearing apart civilization
e) who look like tentacle-beasts
f) who are incredibly powerful
g) whose motives are incomprehensible to civilization
h) who utilize lesser beings (In Lovecraft these are tribal people because once again, racist, in ME it's the insectoid Collectors) to carry out their will
i) these lesser beings' primary function is to kidnap people to use to hasten the coming of the legendary creatures
j) one of their methods of domination is either subtle psychological bending of the enemy's will toward their own ends (Saren, the Collectors)
h) both have icons/relics that contain more information about them than meets the eye (Prothean relic, the cthulhu bas-relief)
i) The icons/relics and direct contact with the creatures drive people (usually the protagonist) insane.
"But Sharzak," you say, "nobody's gone insane in Mass Effect!"
My prediction is that Shepard does.
The Lovecraft connection and what we saw in the demo is too much evidence combined really forces me to believe this. What I'm referring to is the first mission. Shepard sees the kid playing with the model ship, then later sees the same kid, 4 or 5 floors up in a vent for some goddamn reason? After Shepard and Udina have to struggle through wreckage and debris to make it to that point?
Consider the dialogue with the kid. If you don't remember it, go back and play the mission again. I'll wait. Just kidding, I know you remember it because <b>IT WAS CREEPY AS HELL.</B>
"you can't help me"
The kid's tone of voice and timbre change completely at this point, almost as though the kid wasn't really speaking, and the emotionless and flat maleshep (cheap jab at the voice actor, who I actually love) was instead!
Then Shepard looks away for a second and the kid is gone, without making a noise on those vents with the noisy tin floors. Intelligent consumers of horror/psychological fiction know this is a great way to establish that a character is losing it, and it has a profound effect on the viewer as well. It serves as a red flag; things are not what they seem.
Shepard inexplicably sees this kid again. Do you remember all the drops and wreckage-moving you had to go through to get to where those dropships were? You were probably distracted by how awesome it is that Shepard can slide across stuff now, but spoiler alert, it was a long-ass way through a lot of wreckage, fraught with danger, husks, and explosions. But the kid makes it through, without a scratch, drop of blood, or dirt on his gray, detail-free (i.e., easy to hallucinate) hoodie. So it's a video game, stuff like that happens all the time, they probably just didn't want to do a new model or mesh or whatever; but then we see the kid get on the dropship and nobody says a Christing thing. Nobody even helps him up, nobody moves to let him sit down, it's like they <i> can't see him at all.</i>
It's because they can't.
There's evidence aplenty apart from the Lovecraft connection (where, once again, protagonists always go insane), but the most damning piece is when you select squad loss: numerous. It says quite plainly that <i>such losses are having a profound effect on Shepard's psychological profile.</i> When the kid says "yOu CaNt hElP mE" in that terrifying voice, it's Shepard's squadmates he's hearing in his head. He couldn't help Ashe/Kaidan when they got blown up on Virmire, he couldnt' help the crew if he went through the Omega relay a mission too late, he couldn't help any of the squaddies that get inconvenienced in various ways throughout the end of ME2, and he couldn't help this little boy when the reapers blew his dropship to kingdom come.
And don't let's forget that Sovereign (ME1 spoilers I guess) completely changed Saren's personality as well.
Anybody have any evidence or counterevidence that I missed? What do y'all think?
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