194 réponses à ce sujet

[ahandsomeshark]

Gill Kaiser wrote...

Nathan Redgrave wrote...

Interestingly, the Prothean codex entry in ME3 still has one of those tentacle-bearded things in the picture above it.

The codex is written in-universe. Therefore it is not infallible. For example, in ME2 it classified Sovereign as a geth ship.

I never realized that, that's actually pretty cool.

[LordJeyl]

Call me an unimaginative loser for this, but I was not impressed with Javik. To me, he was just another bada** who just wants to fight. I would have preferred it if the Prothean was as Liara expected. I mean, just imagine. A Prothean who was part of a society that wasn't always in non-stop conflict, a society where everyone stood by one another. Imagine how someone from that kind of society would feel in Shepard's universe. Isolated, alone and even afraid with all the conflict that now surrounds him. Couple that with the fact that he is the last of his kind and he has nothing familiar to turn to. The only thing that's familiar to him are the machines who took everything away from him.

Instead of that, we just get another squad mate with a gun.

[Zuka999]

Star fury wrote...

Zuka999 wrote...

Wait, a lot of you guys are actually seriously bringing up the Third Reich as an example of a country that advanced science but was also brutal? You're.. joking.. right? None of their experiments on humans advanced science in any meaningful way. Their military advances were ridiculous and almost always scrapped, save for minor rocket advances that were overcome by the Allies anyways. They also sent out groups to find Biblical artifacts so they could use them as weapons. All of the so called great minds of Germany at the time ended up working for other countries where their works weren't suppressed.

You guys might want to try again. Godwin's Law is too true.

Google name Wernher von Braun. ****sts tried to develop nuclear bomb(but failded due to fighting with Soviet Union), had ballistic and cruise missiles, jet aircraft.
As was mentioned before, Roman empire was perfect
example, so much developed and surrounded by hooplessly barbaric tribes.
The fall of the Roman empire led to Dark Ages.
Regarding Protheans I don't see a problem when empire has no problem with science and development. 

You obviously don't understand the realities of history. Wernher von Braun defected just like most German scientists because their works were being supressed or exclusively used to either horrifically murder people or find ways to win wars. Most scientists don't like these things, because they're actually intelligent. Again, measuring the success of a culture in history shouldn't be based on how great their military was. That's ridiculous, you don't advance by killing each other.

The Roman Empire is definitely a case of rose-tinted glasses. Again, if you want the most egregious examples of how horrible Roman culture was:

- They employed mass enslavement as a tool of war and as a result relied on it so heavily that the average Roman couldn't even find a job. There was no need to advance technology - such as the steam engines developed at Alexandria - because they could just use human labor.

- They forced millions of people to kill each other for their enjoyment in the arenas. Yeah, what a great place.

- They burnt down the Great Library! I mean, come on! You want to talk about causing a dark age, why do you think they collapsed to begin with? Because they were stagnant and reliant on ancient customs for far longer than was viable!

[Teacher50]

joe4201 wrote...

Why is it so hard to believe that a race spanning the entire galaxy might have different sounding accents?

Hell, I can't understand half the people on this planet. My Russian is really rusty... lol.

I did think that I remember the VI on Ilos say that it interpeted the language from current broadcasts. Could be wrong.

The reallity is that it's all about literary license.

[Lyrandori]

I'm not sure if I'm part of a minority, if so then so be it, but I like what they did with the Protheans. The fact that the Protheans did not share power as much as the current cycle does is the major reason why their empire crumbled so easily, not to mention that the subjugated species within the Prothean empire did not fight united, but granted, the Citadel was attacked first in their cycle, and from there the Mass Relays shut down, isolating star systems on their own.

The way they "changed" the Protheans from what we believed they had been like makes our current cycle unique, otherwise it would have shown us that uniting a galaxy worth of advanced species and military forces did not succeed in their cycle, so why would it have been successful in ours? Especially considering that the Protheans' technology was more advanced than pretty much anything our current cycle can come up with, with perhaps the exception of the Crucible, since the Protheans tried to complete it too.

Generally speaking I like what they've done with the Protheans, and honestly the way they were represented in ME1 did make me wonder why such a grand civilization could indeed seemingly vanish like that. Well that's because we were wrong about them all that time. They had been romanticized like Liara puts it (in the Shadow Broker terminal logs to the right side of Liara in the Normandy) over time. It turns out that the Protheans were indeed very wide spread in the galaxy, much more so than the current cycle's species are, they were indeed very advanced technologically (they did create a miniaturized Mass Relay), but they did not share most of their power or knowledge with the subjugated species, nor did they seek to ally the entire galaxy during the invasion (not that they could even if they wanted anyway, since they were isolated from the start).

[Zuka999]

Lyrandori wrote...

I'm not sure if I'm part of a minority, if so then so be it, but I like what they did with the Protheans. The fact that the Protheans did not share power as much as the current cycle does is the major reason why their empire crumbled so easily, not to mention that the subjugated species within the Prothean empire did not fight united, but granted, the Citadel was attacked first in their cycle, and from there the Mass Relays shut down, isolating star systems on their own.

The way they "changed" the Protheans from what we believed they had been like makes our current cycle unique, otherwise it would have shown us that uniting a galaxy worth of advanced species and military forces did not succeed in their cycle, so why would it have been successful in ours? Especially considering that the Protheans' technology was more advanced than pretty much anything our current cycle can come up with, with perhaps the exception of the Crucible, since the Protheans tried to complete it too.

Generally speaking I like what they've done with the Protheans, and honestly the way they were represented in ME1 did make me wonder why such a grand civilization could indeed seemingly vanish like that. Well that's because we were wrong about them all that time. They had been romanticized like Liara puts it (in the Shadow Broker terminal logs to the right side of Liara in the Normandy) over time. It turns out that the Protheans were indeed very wide spread in the galaxy, much more so than the current cycle's species are, they were indeed very advanced technologically (they did create a miniaturized Mass Relay), but they did not share most of their power or knowledge with the subjugated species, nor did they seek to ally the entire galaxy during the invasion (not that they could even if they wanted anyway, since they were isolated from the start).

Wasn't the fact that the Protheans were such a grand civilization with such great minds and great advancements - yet were destroyed just as easily as the rest of the civilizations - what made the Reapers compelling? If they had to retcon the Protheans just to make the Reapers beatable.. Ugh.

[Shadowstalker79]

in the end guys... why fight over voices when its just a game and all the races speak the English language lol. In reality, we all know if there were this many races living in the known Milky Way...we would all speak differently and TRANSLATING tech would be needed to understand each other.

[bboynexus]

The thing is though, the Protheans weren't exterminated as easy as others. As Vigil himself said, it took centuries.

[bloodstalker1973]

Zuka999 wrote...

ROTTOK Crapgame wrote...

A great civilisation can be strong militarily and great scientist, philosophers and academics, take the Greeks, at their height they made the Romans look like an angry mob at pub chucking out time, Peter the Great, Alexander the Great both led the largest armies ever to have taken to the battlefield up to that point, but Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, their philosophy still taught in universities today.

And Javik says that he had known nothing but war, the Reaper invasion was already underway when he was born, no wonder hes view is a little jaded.

The era when the Greeks were driving advancements in philosophy and science is not the same as the era of Alexander the Great. The Wars of the Diadochi were essentially a dark age for Greece from which they never recovered. By the time of the Roman invasions of Greece, the Greeks were just holding on to ancient teachings. All of which were destroyed in the Library of Alexandria.

Sorry, brutal governments always quell scientific advancement. if you can't see that, you're blind. Science drives change. Change is bad for governments built on subjugating people. Ergo, brutal governments always suppress science. How much does this have to be hammered into our skulls during primary school for it to be obvious?

The Golden Age of Athens was not just philosophy and science. Athens became the lead state of what was basically an Athenian Empire in all but name. They expanded democrocy to other city-states, even when said city-state wanted no part of democracy. Athens pretty much exploited a lot of their allied states for wealth to fund their building projects, and military resources (mostly naval warships), and were often very willing to move to brutally crush any ally who wanted to break from the alliance.

Athens dictated to it's allies in everything from demanding tribute from them to ordering cities to tear down their local defenses to dictating what type of government a city could have. They also demanded and kept hostages from various cituies as a means of making sure those cities fell in line.  They attempted to bring Melos into their alliance against its will, and when that city resisted, Athenians executed all the adult men and enslaved the women and children. That was not out of character for Athenians. Socrates, and most other Athenian philosophers, were also veterans of the military with Socrates having fought at the battle of Potidea, another city that Athens would not allow to leave the alliance without a long, drawn out siege.

The Athenians became so intent on their own power that Sparta was able to lead a group of Greek States against them and, in the end when they conquored Athens, the Greek world roundly proclaimed it a victory for freedom against Athenian tyranny. So while Athens was a great flower of philosophy and science, it was funded by it's exploitation of it's allies after the Perisan Wars on up through the outbreak and eventual defeat during the Peloponessian Wars.

[Raxxman]

Zuka999 wrote...

You obviously don't understand the realities of history. Wernher von Braun defected just like most German scientists because their works were being supressed or exclusively used to either horrifically murder people or find ways to win wars. Most scientists don't like these things, because they're actually intelligent. Again, measuring the success of a culture in history shouldn't be based on how great their military was. That's ridiculous, you don't advance by killing each other.

The Roman Empire is definitely a case of rose-tinted glasses. Again, if you want the most egregious examples of how horrible Roman culture was:

- They employed mass enslavement as a tool of war and as a result relied on it so heavily that the average Roman couldn't even find a job. There was no need to advance technology - such as the steam engines developed at Alexandria - because they could just use human labor.

- They forced millions of people to kill each other for their enjoyment in the arenas. Yeah, what a great place.
- They burnt down the Great Library! I mean, come on! You want to talk about causing a dark age, why do you think they collapsed to begin with? Because they were stagnant and reliant on ancient customs for far longer than was viable!

While this is all  true I think you've missed a few points

-Empires often form because they were technical powerhouses. Rome modernised warfare, which allowed them to dominate much larger nations. The german blitzkrieg was too effective for the French/British to stop, at the start of the war they had more advanced technology in terms of tanks and aircraft. The Mongols were famous for their adaptablity. Indeed it's when Empires stop adapting (due to many factors) is when they go into decline (EG Romans never adapted to heavy cav, + their armies became more Germanic Mercs, among otherthings, I'm aware it's a simplification)

-Like Jarvik, the scientists on Ilos repesent a small snapshot of Prothean society. Namely scientists. They'd awoke to find out they'd lost, hadn't the genetic population to restart their society. A military base would of probably just died out, but the scientists did something in character with scientists (or it was a final screw you).

-The Roman Empire might not of been the greatest place but their infulence on culture today (Roads, language etc) can't be denied. Even if a lot of that was founded during the days of the republic.


All in all I think you're largely correct but maybe just a bit too cinical here.

[Star fury]

Zuka999 wrote...

Star fury wrote...

Zuka999 wrote...

Wait, a lot of you guys are actually seriously bringing up the Third Reich as an example of a country that advanced science but was also brutal? You're.. joking.. right? None of their experiments on humans advanced science in any meaningful way. Their military advances were ridiculous and almost always scrapped, save for minor rocket advances that were overcome by the Allies anyways. They also sent out groups to find Biblical artifacts so they could use them as weapons. All of the so called great minds of Germany at the time ended up working for other countries where their works weren't suppressed.

You guys might want to try again. Godwin's Law is too true.

Google name Wernher von Braun. ****sts tried to develop nuclear bomb(but failded due to fighting with Soviet Union), had ballistic and cruise missiles, jet aircraft.
As was mentioned before, Roman empire was perfect
example, so much developed and surrounded by hooplessly barbaric tribes.
The fall of the Roman empire led to Dark Ages.
Regarding Protheans I don't see a problem when empire has no problem with science and development. 

You obviously don't understand the realities of history. Wernher von Braun defected just like most German scientists because their works were being supressed or exclusively used to either horrifically murder people or find ways to win wars. Most scientists don't like these things, because they're actually intelligent. Again, measuring the success of a culture in history shouldn't be based on how great their military was. That's ridiculous, you don't advance by killing each other.

The Roman Empire is definitely a case of rose-tinted glasses. Again, if you want the most egregious examples of how horrible Roman culture was:

- They employed mass enslavement as a tool of war and as a result relied on it so heavily that the average Roman couldn't even find a job. There was no need to advance technology - such as the steam engines developed at Alexandria - because they could just use human labor.

- They forced millions of people to kill each other for their enjoyment in the arenas. Yeah, what a great place.

- They burnt down the Great Library! I mean, come on! You want to talk about causing a dark age, why do you think they collapsed to begin with? Because they were stagnant and reliant on ancient customs for far longer than was viable!

Well, who am I to question you the genius? When and where did Wernher von Braun defect in the first place? By defection of von Braun you mean joining SS and using slave labour? You think that all scientists are very altruistic? Majority of german scientists worked for ****s, they thought it was patriotism. Also american and soviet scientists were pleased with all work that germans did in the WW2. They used it post-war to their benefit. Americans made von Braun head of their space programm.
The bolded part just show your big knowledge. Wars actually drive humanity's progress. WW2 just accelerated our progress, as I mentioned nuclear energy, ballistic missiles, jet aircraft, radars etc.
Eastern part of the Roman empire survived and lasted 1000 years more - Byzantine. Again empire, and yet again it was much more developed than it's neighbors.
I heard that Great Library was burned by arabs. It's a myth actually.

I think Prothean empire was much more suitable for the war with Reapers. For any war actually. Democracy is not an option in the life or death situations. The difficulty of combining allied forces in ME3 clearly shows us. For example Salarians never join you if you help Krogans. 

[Zuka999]

bloodstalker1973 wrote...

Zuka999 wrote...

ROTTOK Crapgame wrote...

A great civilisation can be strong militarily and great scientist, philosophers and academics, take the Greeks, at their height they made the Romans look like an angry mob at pub chucking out time, Peter the Great, Alexander the Great both led the largest armies ever to have taken to the battlefield up to that point, but Aristotle, Plato and Socrates, their philosophy still taught in universities today.

And Javik says that he had known nothing but war, the Reaper invasion was already underway when he was born, no wonder hes view is a little jaded.

The era when the Greeks were driving advancements in philosophy and science is not the same as the era of Alexander the Great. The Wars of the Diadochi were essentially a dark age for Greece from which they never recovered. By the time of the Roman invasions of Greece, the Greeks were just holding on to ancient teachings. All of which were destroyed in the Library of Alexandria.

Sorry, brutal governments always quell scientific advancement. if you can't see that, you're blind. Science drives change. Change is bad for governments built on subjugating people. Ergo, brutal governments always suppress science. How much does this have to be hammered into our skulls during primary school for it to be obvious?

The Golden Age of Athens was not just philosophy and science. Athens became the lead state of what was basically an Athenian Empire in all but name. They expanded democrocy to other city-states, even when said city-state wanted no part of democracy. Athens pretty much exploited a lot of their allied states for wealth to fund their building projects, and military resources (mostly naval warships), and were often very willing to move to brutally crush any ally who wanted to break from the alliance.

Athens dictated to it's allies in everything from demanding tribute from them to ordering cities to tear down their local defenses to dictating what type of government a city could have. They also demanded and kept hostages from various cituies as a means of making sure those cities fell in line.  They attempted to bring Melos into their alliance against its will, and when that city resisted, Athenians executed all the adult men and enslaved the women and children. That was not out of character for Athenians. Socrates, and most other Athenian philosophers, were also veterans of the military with Socrates having fought at the battle of Potidea, another city that Athens would not allow to leave the alliance without a long, drawn out siege.

The Athenians became so intent on their own power that Sparta was able to lead a group of Greek States against them and, in the end when they conquored Athens, the Greek world roundly proclaimed it a victory for freedom against Athenian tyranny. So while Athens was a great flower of philosophy and science, it was funded by it's exploitation of it's allies after the Perisan Wars on up through the outbreak and eventual defeat during the Peloponessian Wars.

Athens was also a democracy. And one city. Which existed in the form you've mention 2,500 years ago in the bronze age. And their contributions barely added up to anything until a much more enlightened society rediscovered them.

Are we to believe the galaxy-spanning Prothean Empire, built on the subjugation and assimilation of entire species, is somehow comparable to a city-state in Greece in the bronze age? I don't even know if these arguments are jokes anymore.

[Tank207]

I kind of liked having all my preconception of the Protheans turned on its head by Javik. I very much enjoyed that twist, despite the retcons.

Modifié par Tank207, 02 avril 2012 - 02:47 .

[bboynexus]

There were no actual retcons.

[Teacher50]

Raxxman wrote...

Zuka999 wrote...

You obviously don't understand the realities of history. Wernher von Braun defected just like most German scientists because their works were being supressed or exclusively used to either horrifically murder people or find ways to win wars. Most scientists don't like these things, because they're actually intelligent. Again, measuring the success of a culture in history shouldn't be based on how great their military was. That's ridiculous, you don't advance by killing each other.

The Roman Empire is definitely a case of rose-tinted glasses. Again, if you want the most egregious examples of how horrible Roman culture was:

- They employed mass enslavement as a tool of war and as a result relied on it so heavily that the average Roman couldn't even find a job. There was no need to advance technology - such as the steam engines developed at Alexandria - because they could just use human labor.

- They forced millions of people to kill each other for their enjoyment in the arenas. Yeah, what a great place.
- They burnt down the Great Library! I mean, come on! You want to talk about causing a dark age, why do you think they collapsed to begin with? Because they were stagnant and reliant on ancient customs for far longer than was viable!

While this is all  true I think you've missed a few points

-Empires often form because they were technical powerhouses. Rome modernised warfare, which allowed them to dominate much larger nations. The german blitzkrieg was too effective for the French/British to stop, at the start of the war they had more advanced technology in terms of tanks and aircraft. The Mongols were famous for their adaptablity. Indeed it's when Empires stop adapting (due to many factors) is when they go into decline (EG Romans never adapted to heavy cav, + their armies became more Germanic Mercs, among otherthings, I'm aware it's a simplification)

-Like Jarvik, the scientists on Ilos repesent a small snapshot of Prothean society. Namely scientists. They'd awoke to find out they'd lost, hadn't the genetic population to restart their society. A military base would of probably just died out, but the scientists did something in character with scientists (or it was a final screw you).

-The Roman Empire might not of been the greatest place but their infulence on culture today (Roads, language etc) can't be denied. Even if a lot of that was founded during the days of the republic.


All in all I think you're largely correct but maybe just a bit too cinical here.

Oops... Bad example. Wernher von Braun (and other German scientists) didn't defect. He was transported to the United States after the war in an operation that was called "Paper Clip."

[Raven4030-2]

I can provide a perfect example of an Empire built after the industrial revolution that was brutal, exploitative, and literally believed themselves superior to their subjects: The British Empire. Now, I'm not going to sit here and say that the British were all evil and wanted to conquer the world, the Empire did have its good points, but you also can't ignore things like the Armristar Massacre.

It is not inconceivable to imagine the sciences advancing under a social darwinist regime. And just a note, this is all we know about the Prothean Empire. We don't actually know how their government was organized, we just know it favored Protheans over all other species.

[Star fury]

Teacher50 wrote...


Oops... Bad example. Wernher von Braun (and other German scientists) didn't defect. He was transported to the United States after the war in an operation that was called "Paper Clip."

OP thought that von Braun made Einstein.

[Silvair]

Here's what I don't get.

Ilos was filled to the brim with Prothean bodies in Stasis. No longer alive, but still preserved somewhat.

And we know the Council investigated Ilos after ME1.

So how is it, that we still didn't know what they looked like until Javik?

Also, they made the Collectors out to be some insane mutation from the Protheans, with 50k years having made them totally unrelated to Protheans.

And yet with Javik, we are shown that the only change was they lost their mouth and nose.

[Dean_the_Young]

Star fury wrote...

Google name Wernher von Braun. ****sts tried to develop nuclear bomb(but failed due to fighting with Soviet Union), had ballistic and cruise missiles, jet aircraft.

Yeah, but here's the thing: Von Braun was educated before the ****s came to power.

The ****s basically canibalized the education system they inhereted and destroyed it. They were profoundly anti-intellectual and if they hadn't been taken out when they were, the German science base would have never recovered.



Now, that's not to say that authoritarianism can't lead in technical progress. Given that much of what we consider 'liberal' past societies were horifically authoritarian by modern standards, that's a bit ridiculous, even if you don't count the Chinese, the Mulims, or the Soviet Union.

But the ****s are entirely the wrong argument to make.

[The Interloper]

I was okay with it.

Still wondering how come noone knew what they looked like though. Asari artifacts, the hanar, the collectors, all the other artifacts....no faces? No head shapes?

[Zuka999]

Star fury wrote...

Teacher50 wrote...


Oops... Bad example. Wernher von Braun (and other German scientists) didn't defect. He was transported to the United States after the war in an operation that was called "Paper Clip."

OP thought that von Braun made Einstein.

Oh, okay, my bad. I was wrong about von Braun. Your logic is still stupid.

Lets take a look:

In Germany: 
Built the V2, which is a rocket entirely meant to just kill and demoralize other people.

In America:
Lead the design of the US space program for like 2 decades, basically giving us the modern space age.

Yeah, he sure did a lot in that brutal empire. Certainly his crowning achievement wasn't found in a more free country like America. Nope, everyone remembers Braun foremost for the V2 rocket. Yep.

[Teacher50]

Star fury wrote...

Teacher50 wrote...


Oops... Bad example. Wernher von Braun (and other German scientists) didn't defect. He was transported to the United States after the war in an operation that was called "Paper Clip."

OP thought that von Braun made Einstein.

Yep. Einstein was visiting the US when Hitler took power and wisely decided to stay here.

As a side bar, if Einsteins "Theory of Inverse Space" is correct, we may actually be able to travel to distant stars. This is where the term "Warp Drive" was coined. Yep, Star Trek!

[sistersafetypin]

bboynexus wrote...

ryuasiu wrote...

Also as far as the statues are concerned I never thought they were the protheans. The first thing I thought was if it was possibly the gods they might have worshiped.

Great point!

The statues were always quite strange to me. If they were Prothean it would be self-serving to the extreme.

I'm pretty sure Liara said they were great warriors.. Kind of like in DA:O when you first get to Orzammar. It's a retcon I found slightly annoying as I was interested in the point of those tentacles 

[sistersafetypin]

J717 wrote...

I'm pretty sure that BioWare did in fact retcon the Protheans...

Somewhere along the way, someone probably thought, "wouldn't it be cool if the Collectors WERE Protheans?!" and incorporated it into the story, and it was probably too late to change the "bug-like" looks of the Collectors...so they changed the Protheans to resemble a Collector instead....

They WERE supposed to be the tentacle-faced creatures on Ilos (those were not the Inusannon, the ME1 art book even says they are Protheans).

Hence, the BLATANTLY LAZY changes in flashbacks between ME1 and ME2:

If you pay attention both photos... You can tell it's meant to depect the same scene. And yet, in one there are tentacles and in the other... We have Javik type Protheans

[bboynexus]

Silvair wrote...

Here's what I don't get.

Ilos was filled to the brim with Prothean bodies in Stasis. No longer alive, but still preserved somewhat.

And we know the Council investigated Ilos after ME1.

So how is it, that we still didn't know what they looked like until Javik?

Also, they made the Collectors out to be some insane mutation from the Protheans, with 50k years having made them totally unrelated to Protheans.

And yet with Javik, we are shown that the only change was they lost their mouth and nose.

There are strict Council regulations against grave looting.

No one would have been allowed to open them, even for scientific investigation.

Modifié par bboynexus, 02 avril 2012 - 03:18 .