Funkdrspot wrote...
When i hear people talk bad about the ending, i don't quite understand how the relays blowing up factors into the plot holes or the whole 'everyones gonna die/back to midevil times' ideas.
Did i miss something or are people in Mass Effect times somehow completely helpless and totally unable to hunt/farm? It sounds like a FTL-extension of '1st world problems'. I just don't get the idea of complaining about transportation difficulties when the alternative is galaxy wide genocide.
It's not like earth is overpopulated at the moment. Plenty of beach front property in London and Canada, that's for sure.
As far as the plot hole about the relays not asploding entire solar systems, I always assumed that because the radius of the endgame blast were covering each star cluster ( cluster>>>>>system ), that the energy wasn't as concentrated.
***** edit *****
Ok i'm getting tired of being asked the same questions so I'll try to lay out my theories for all of it.
- Starvation issue. The Reapers target large cities, not rural areas. The
whole 'OMG Quarians and Turians will starve' thing has already been
shown to be overblown as D-proteins occur naturally and can be
synthesized NOW so you KNOW they can be made with better tech. Will some people have it tough? Sure, but they'll survive which is the point.
- Relays blowing up. The
idea that the relays blow up the solar system has already been
addressed and is refuted by the different destroy endings. Obviously the
crucible CAN fry planets (BAD destroy ending) but if you built it well enough it doesn't(every other ending). Simply put, there's a difference between releasing RAW energy ( slamming an asteroid into Alpha ) and the
crucible converting the relays energy into a form of radiation. Basic chem teaches that the larger the radius you have to energize, the more diffuse the
energy is going to be.
Whatever the crucible releases is some form of
radiation that bathes the entire star cluster the relay is in which is
1000x of times larger in radius than blowing up a single solar system. It's converting that raw energy from the relay and turning it into a controlled burst not unlike a radio station tower.
- Citadel falling to earth. Lastly
the whole, nuclear winter from the citadel falling back to earth is
wrong too b/c the citadel has little to no kinetic energy behind it. We
fear extinction level events from asteroids because they travel 25km/s
or 90,000km/h. It's the kinetic energy behind the asteroid that makes it
the threat, not the asteroid itself.
Dude, to borrow one of my niece's favorite phrases, you don't understand how *things* work.
First, as to the Turians and the Quarians starving to death, a lot of that will depend on whether or not the live ships survived intact, how many Quarians remained on Rannoch, and how many Turians survived the battle. It's *possible* that, assuming you did *not* pick the destroy ending, the Turians and Quarians survive using the resources of the Quarian Migrant fleet. Ironically, in this case, the Turians and Quarians may be more likely to survive. If you did pick the destroy ending... well, we'll get back to that.
As to everyone else starving... Yeah. That pretty much happens. Here's why. All the infrastructure has been destroyed, and a lot of the people who know how to farm are dead, and those who are alive probably don't have the specialized equipment they need. Farming is not as simple as "hurp, throw some seeds on the ground, durp." Farming is a highly skilled profession. You have to know what to plant, when to plant, where to plant, how to rotate crops, how to harvest, how to use a lot of dangerous, specialized equipment without getting killed. You can not feed billions of people without industrial scale agriculture. PERIOD. Even if the Reapers had been destroyed and the Mass Relays left intact, you were looking at *massive* food shortages on a galactic scale, just because of the damage done.
Second, with explosions, there is one simple rule you can follow. The bigger the total volume affected by the explosion, the stronger the explosion was at the flashpoint. If you have an explosion that spreads out over 25 or so light years (which is the estimated range at which a type 1A Super Nova would sterilize all worlds of life) and an explosion that spreads out over 50 light years, that means that conditions were *worse* at the point of detonation in the 50 light year explosion, because it took more energy to push the shock wave out that far.
Third, raditation *is* energy.
Forth, Let's assume the Citadel is parked right on the edge of what would be considered "space". 80 km up. This means it would hit with the force of 1.5 Gigatons. Not that bad, really. That's only a hundred thousand times the size of the Hiroshima blast. Except, it doesn't come down in one spot, it comes down in at least five different spots, so, while the impacts aren't as big individually, they actually end up doing more damage because they are spread out. Then there's all the Ezo and other toxins on the station.
And then, there's the destroy option. Oh, the destroy option. The option which "will destroy all synthetic life, including the Geth, and most of the technology you use."
So, leaving aside the genocide of the Geth, you just effectively destroyed every ship in the fleet. You can not glide a Kodiak shuttle down from orbit on a ballistic re-entry. It has to have it's computers and Mass Effect core intact, but it doesn't, because the crucible just destroyed it. So, no one on the fleet has any way to get back to Earth from those floating tombs that used to be a fleet. Congratulations, everyone on the fleet is now doomed to die. EVERYONE. Most likely within hours, as they use up the air which is no longer being recycled. The Quarians will go first, having only the small amount of air in their suits. If they crack their suits to get at the air in the ships, they might last a little longer, but then they'd die of infection.
Oh, and all those suddenly powerless ships and Reapers fighting around the Citadel. More falling projectiles that make a very big, very toxic boom when they hit the ground.
What ever ending you chose, nice job breaking it, Hero.
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