164 réponses à ce sujet

[Megaton_Hope]

I understand Shepard working with Cerberus, because they're throwing resources and personnel at him and asking him to do what he'd do anyway, while the Alliance and Council mistrust him and refuse to believe in Reapers.

What I don't understand is Shepard sticking up for Cerberus, when even Cerberus personnel are feeling used and betrayed. He has, of course, seen the things they will do and the depths they will sink to already. He's met Toombs and heard his story, he's seen Cerberus labs full of horrors, he's touched the corpse of the Alliance Admiral they murdered, uncovered their plan to enslave Rachni as shock troops, gone to the laboratory where Jack was tortured as a little girl, all of that. There are just no surprises in Cerberus's evil, it's something he can rely on.

But he seems invested in their being trustworthy regardless.

[thehomeworld]

NeonFlux117 wrote...

Nykara wrote...

NeonFlux117 wrote...

This is just my opinion and headcanon, and cannot be confirmed or denied with ME's lore. But I think TIM has been indoctrinated (not fully, this only happens in ME3) for decades. Also, I think Cerberus has reaper tech- before ME2. And that TIM's not fully indoctrinated part of his brain, built Shepard- with reaper tech- hence why TIM can "control" him aboard the Citadel at the end of ME3, he built Shep because Shep is the best chance for humanity to defeat The Reapers, however TIM still struggles in a battle of wills with the Reapers- TIM's crucible of sorts. This is why things like Horizon, the collector ship, and wanting to save the collector base creep into TIM's actions.

But this is just me. And is probably just silly and far fetched.

If TIMs ability to control Shepard is limited to Reaper tech then how come he can also control Anderson at the same time?

Yeah, this is a ****** in the armor so to speak. I guess you could say that Anderson's exposure to reapers, tech and signals during the occupation of Earth can be attibuted to this- but this is thin. Or it could be the Citadel, maybe when Under reaper control it emmits signals that indoctrinated agents can use to control people. I don't know. All these questions are great. And I wish we could as Bioware these- particually Casey and Walters, cause they wrote the endings. I fear without there input we are just guessing. Although, it is fun to specualte. 

The only way I can say how TIM controls Anderson is that he's basically a walking dragons tooth or a similar device but to do so with such ease even Soverign couldn't do that.

[Getorex]

RainbowDazed wrote...

Getorex wrote...

RainbowDazed wrote...

I didn't read the whole thread. Just wanted to say that the beginning of ME2 was AWESOME. Awesome.

I think the disbelief and the following lack of trust from former allies (and from players) was an important part of the story and what made it great. Only thing I wish is that they would've more strongly undermined the fact that reaper-tech was an integral part of bringing Shepard back. That should've been a continuous strong theme in ME2 and ME3.

I saw no evidence in ME2 that Shepard's resurrection had ANYTHING to do with Reaper tech at all.  It was all just high-tech biomedicine/biomechanics.  No magic reaper juice anywhere.

Yeah, that was what I meant. 

I haven't played ME2 in a few months but if I remember correctly there were hints about Shepard having implants (which were the cause of my ren-Sheps scars and the glowing para/ren eyes) and in Overlord Shep got hacked. Those suggested that Shepard had some high-end tech in her, but it would've helped the story-arc if Project Lazarus was handled with more detail already in ME2. 

Overlord didn't indicate Shepard was hacked, he was just interfaced into the machine mind like he was with Legion in that mission in ME3.  A VI-like direct interface.  The autistic brother wasn't "Reapered" into the Geth network, he was simply interfaced into it via direct brain implants and connections.  A much more advanced form of modern cochlear implants or some very new eye-chip implants to return sight to some blind people. 

[Getorex]

Megaton_Hope wrote...

I understand Shepard working with Cerberus, because they're throwing resources and personnel at him and asking him to do what he'd do anyway, while the Alliance and Council mistrust him and refuse to believe in Reapers.

What I don't understand is Shepard sticking up for Cerberus, when even Cerberus personnel are feeling used and betrayed. He has, of course, seen the things they will do and the depths they will sink to already. He's met Toombs and heard his story, he's seen Cerberus labs full of horrors, he's touched the corpse of the Alliance Admiral they murdered, uncovered their plan to enslave Rachni as shock troops, gone to the laboratory where Jack was tortured as a little girl, all of that. There are just no surprises in Cerberus's evil, it's something he can rely on.

But he seems invested in their being trustworthy regardless.

Not my Shepard.  He was suspicious of cerberus the entire time.  He made it a point to repeatedly tell people (Ashley, Garrus, Tali, Jack) that he and cerberus were working together but that he was NOT working FOR cerberus, he was not part of cerberus.  It was a temporary marriage of convenience.  He then destroyed the Collector base and told TIM to suck off. 

[Getorex]

David7204 wrote...

Shepard would not burn up. Really, that is just nonsense. People look at meteors and space shuttles and fail to take into the account the one crucial difference between them and Shepard - that meteors and space shuttles are already moving at many thousands of meters per second when they approach planets, and Shepard isn't. Also the simple fact that enough metoers fall to Earth without burning up for us to have a specific term for them - meteorites.

You clearly do not understand the nature of meteorites.  They DO burn up.  MOST of the rock that was the meteor that entered the atmosphere is gone by the time it hits the surface unless it is a big and dense rock.  If you find a marble-sized meteorite on the ground you can bet your lungs that the ORIGINAL rock that entered the atmosphere was substantially bigger. 

The Normandy wasn't geostationary over the ground on that planet, it wasn't even in real orbit - it was high-tailing it away from the planet so any debris (including Shepard) who gets ejected from the ship is traveling at high velocity, whatever velocity the ship was traveling when it got shattered by the Collector ship.  Shepard was shown entering the atmosphere and developing a nice, red re-entry tail.  He cooked.

[Megaton_Hope]

Getorex wrote...

Not my Shepard.  He was suspicious of cerberus the entire time.  He made it a point to repeatedly tell people (Ashley, Garrus, Tali, Jack) that he and cerberus were working together but that he was NOT working FOR cerberus, he was not part of cerberus.  It was a temporary marriage of convenience.  He then destroyed the Collector base and told TIM to suck off. 

Your Shepard doesn't come off the Collector Ship, talk to the Illusive Man, and then go back to his crew and talk them down from being angry that the Illusive Man sent them onto said Collector Ship under false pretenses and nearly got Shepard and his squad captured in a Collector trap? Including Jacob and Miranda?

[Iakus]

Megaton_Hope wrote...
]Your Shepard doesn't come off the Collector Ship, talk to the Illusive Man, and then go back to his crew and talk them down from being angry that the Illusive Man sent them onto said Collector Ship under false pretenses and nearly got Shepard and his squad captured in a Collector trap? Including Jacob and Miranda?

I think my Shepard's line was "If he tries anything like that again, the Collectors will be the least of his problems"

But yes. there were not enough options for Shepard to tug at the leash.

[Megaton_Hope]

Regarding Shepard surviving atmospheric reentry to leave a basically intact corpse...Not really believable. I am willing to accept that his suit and shields will protect him when falling from a great height (although this is pushing it); the terminal velocity of an average adult body is something like 200kph, and Shep's shields deflect bullets traveling ten or twenty times that fast without damage. That part's not such a problem.

The heat, on the other hand, would be considerable. Laika, the first Earth creature in space, burned to death on reentry. Merely dropping through air causes friction, which produces heat. The shuttle deals with that heat by collecting it in an ablative layer of ceramic tiles. Shepard lacks that accommodation. We know that Shepard's suit protects from excess heat only in a limited fashion.

However, it's not certain that Shepard's orbit decayed into an uncontrolled descent and impact before recovery. Initially I thought that myself, and my inner nitpicker was screaming "bull****!" at the screen for a while. However, looking back at it, what appears to be a trail as Shepard's body hits atmo could actually be a cloud of air released from Shepard's suit, following his body in its orbit around the planet. The blackened tissue that we see inside the body may merely be frozen from its time circling the planet.

I mean, the game never actually says that his body was recovered from the surface of the planet, it just kind of seems like that.

[Dieb]

iakus wrote...

thehomeworld wrote...

iakus wrote...

It's space magic, plain and simple. The first real sign of story decay in the trilogy.

The President of the UNAS "dies of a stroke for an hour and a half and basically gets turned into a VI. But Shepard can somehow spend two years dead and come back exactly as before? Because reason.

Oh I forgot about him! But I remember them saying he was so bad mentally they were looking to not only remove him of his post but redeclare him dead because of how extensive his nerve and mental damage was. Another reason for why shep being brain dead at least 1 1/2 years makes no sense.

And now that I think about it...remember that man who was brain dead on the ship with the crazy biotic woman if such reserrection technolgy existed why didn't they use it on him? I highly doubt Cerberus found the solution to death in 1 - 1 1/2 years and used it on nobody muchless didn't market the crap out of it.

Indeed.  The Lazarus Project is not only space magic to those of us living in the 21st century, it's pretty much space magic to those living in the Mass Effect universe!

I don't understand how you can make it that simple and accuse the writers of doing the same, within the very same argument.

The crazy biotic woman's crew was not affiliated or of any interest to, Cerberus. And neither was President Huerta; obviously being a human political leader doesn't automatically make you irreplaceable to Cerberus' plans. Maybe even quite the contrary was the case. We don't know that.

They could have saved both the maybe, but simply felt no need to. Why do people die from shockingly simple diseases in some parts of the world, when all you'd have to do is send them basic medication availible in every corner store?

It was Shepard they had a reason to provide with this treatment, however, and since it is called "Project Lazarus" and not  "The Lazarus Method", it is safe to assume this treatment is indeed unheard of even in the MEU and not availible to anyone who felt like dying. Shepard is even very likely the "subject zero" of Project Lazarus.

Modifié par Baelrahn, 27 mars 2013 - 09:45 .

[Soirreb]

Shepard & Cerberus: Coming from the end of ME1, Commander Shepard has no reason to ever do anything except kill Cerberus agents on sight. They are responsible for the murder of Admiral Kahoku, his team sent looking into a distress beacon, the Alliance Marine unit killed on Akuze, more Alliance marines at listening posts Alpha & Theta, and the colonists on Chasca. They attempt to experiment on Thresher Maws, Rachni, and Thorian Creepers, with maybe a 50% chance of the experiment going horribly wrong before Shepard even discovers the experiment.

Once we get to ME2, things get worse. We never get a choice to not work for Cerberus; even at the end of the Lazarus Station tutorial level, we can clearly see three other shuttles in the background, but Miranda says that the one behind her is the only shuttle off the station, with no mention or hand-waving of the other shuttles by stating they're not working or something, were just forced to believe Miranda, and follow her to Minuteman Station.

The reasoning TIM gives Shepard - that Collectors are kidnapping human colonies in the Terminus systems - is nonsensical. Coming from the first game, our impression of the Terminus systems is a nation of slavers and pirates who reject the Council's authority and collectively are capable of challenging the Council races in an interstellar war. The Council thus refuses to send a fleet into the Terminus, and forbids Shepard from going in to find the Mu Relay, all because they fear provoking the Terminus Systems into war. If we believe what we learned in ME1, then how did the humans -who have only known about other species in the galaxy for a little more than 30 years- establish colonies in the Terminus Systems?

If colonists went in without any military support, then how would any survive long enough to actually establish a colony before being raided by pirates & slavers? If they went in with Alliance support and receive Alliance protection, why hasn't an interstellar war started between the Terminus Systems and the Systems Alliance? If human colonists went in with protection from a new or existing merc group, then it stands to reason that they'd become another group in the Terminus conglomerate. This is the most likely scenario I can believe for human colonies existing in the Terminus Systems, so given this, why should Shepard, a current or former Systems Alliance marine and a Council Spectre, care that human colonies in the Terminus systems are disappearing? Why doesn't the merc / pirate / slaver gang the colony belongs to do anything? Why don't they contract with other merc / pirate / slavery gangs in the Terminus systems for protection?

Unfortunately, though, we aren't given the choice to call out TIM on that, and are forced to go to Freedom's Progress. One we're back, we learn that Joker and Chakwas have also joined Cerberus. Two crew members who were in the Normandy and were presumably watching as missions unfolded on the SR 1, and thus know everything Shepard does about Cerberus, have now apparently willingly joined Cerberus after bring told that they had Shepard join up too or were about to resurrect him/her? We're never given any reasoning for this, just that the plot says so.

Anyway, once we get control of the Normandy SR2, why exactly can't we turn in everyone on the Normandy to C-Sec the instant we dock at the Citadel? The Council even refers to Cerberus as a terrorist organization, so there's logically nothing preventing us from turning everyone in, but instead of being given a choice to do the logical thing, we instead learn that apparently the Systems Alliance and the Council turned into vindictive douchebags the instant the original Normandy blew up and spent a lot of time and effort breaking up Shepard's team, declaring Shepard dead (not even going in to try to look for a body, by the way), and reversing all the progress made toward acknowledging and recognizing the Reaper threat from the first game... because of reasons. We are not given the option to ask for help from the Alliance, the most we get from the Council is potentially getting reinstated as a Spectre (which is either useless or actually harmful since we're confined to the Terminus Systems, where Spectre authority is meaningless, and still something that might provoke galactic war with the Terminus Systems given what we know from the first game).

So, without ever being given an alternate choice, we're forced to go do TIM's bidding and run around in the Terminus Systems where we begin to see one of the bigger disconnects between the first and second games: the Terminus Systems. Instead of a collection of pirate, slaver, and merc gangs capable of rivaling the Council species in a galactic war, we encounter a bunch of weak wannabes who cannot prevent one single assassin and a small support team from securing two towers, who cannot storm one building to get rid of one Turian veteran, who lack the foresight to plan for a worst-case scenario prison escape despite having a technological advantage and are inhabiting a space station capable of venting all atmosphere while all the guards are wearing pressure suits, and are unable to prevent two people from breaking into and escaping from a theoretically highly-protected vault where they have the advantage of knowledge of the terrain. If a Terminus merc gang is asked to hold a position, they will fail miserably (Mordin loyalty mission, Thane recruitment mission, Jack recruitment and loyalty missions, Garrus loyalty mission, Zaeed loyalty mission, Kasumi loyalty mission, Samara recruitment mission) with one exception: Grunt's recruitment mission. If they are ever asked to take a location, they fail miserably (Garrus's recruitment mission, Mordin's recruitment mission). These groups have no space power or combat-capable ships to speak of. The only opposition Shepard ever encounters are cannon fodder. So, given what we learn in the course of ME2, then why was the Council ever afraid of the Terminus Systems? What was the point of running around the Attican Traverse putting together clues to get to Ilos if the Council could have just sent in a fleet or two to kill or capture Saren wherever he might try to hide in the Terminus Systems?

The idea of the Terminus Systems being composed of a bunch of pushovers does mean that the Collectors, relatively, are still a threat - in the Terminus Systems. Ultimately they still have one and only one ship, and one and only one base, while the Citadel fleets still exist, if only a little weakened by the Battle of the Citadel. The one Collector ship, which is eventually defeated by the Normandy SR 2, isn't going to be able to last long against a Citadel fleet. So, the only reason we might even want to work with Cerberus is if we really care about a bunch of secessionists who can't find enough combined military power in all of the Terminus Systems to stand up to one well-armed cruiser.

The only three choices we ever get, in fact, to do something contrary to Cerberus interests is whether or not to destroy the Collector base, who to give encrypted Cerberus data to in a side mission, and who to give David to at the end of the Overlord DLC, and the only choice that even matters in-universe is the Overlord choice, since that governs whether or not we meet David at Grissom Academy in ME3 and get an extra Cerberus gun or not.

The Lazarus Project: the Lazarus project is space magic because it is never explained, nor does it explain how it is able to overcome certain death, and the rest of the narrative doesn't care how Shepard came back to life, except maybe the VS encounter on Horizon, but even then Shepard is forced to either dodge the question or claim to never have died, and just have been in a coma.

As for the possibility of the Lazarus project to begin with, let's start with Cerberus's reasoning in the game intro: Miranda claims Shepard is a living legend, an icon that people will follow, even, apparently, into death if Shepard dies. TIM says "then see to it that we don't lose him/her." What, exactly, is this existential threat to Shepard's life that they know about ahead of time? If it's the Collectors, then why the hell didn't they just scramble a few fighting ships together to go save Shepard's life the easy way? No, instead, they have to try to prove that they can do some kind of science project properly, and instead come up with the Lazarus Project in the space of maybe a month, if we believe Miranda's line "but they're sending [Shepard] to fight Geth!" to imply that her conversation with TIM is taking place right after the Battle of the Citadel.

Now, what does the Lazarus project have to overcome to bring Shepard back to life? Death via suffocation and disintegration via atmospheric reentry: At the end of the unskippable intro where the Normandy is finally breaking apart, we see Shepard struggling with a broken air hose and gas escaping from the suit, then a bow shock forming as Shepard begins to enter Alchera's atmosphere. Absent a very robust heat shield (armor doesn't provide significant thermal protection: http://masseffect.wi...r_and_Equipment ), Shepard's body would have burnt up in the atmosphere, leaving nothing to recover.

However, if we believe the Normandy Crash Site DLC (optional content that, while free, still isn't part of the main game and thus might not be installed alongside all ME2 installations), then given all the wreckage we see of the Normandy without any heat scoring or scorch marks, it's entirely possible that Alchera has no atmosphere whatsoever, so it follows that Shepard's body could have reached the planet's surface intact. Here's the next problem: without an atmosphere to slow down Shepard's body, then the body would have kept picking up speed, never slowing down, until hitting the surface of the planet at potentially thousands of miles an hour. Hitting a wall at 80 MPH is almost always lethal for humans, even in a car designed to save lives in front-impact crashes, objects traveling faster tend to disintegrate into their constituent components, so why should we believe, even with being able to find an N7 helmet on Alchera, that Shepard's body would be anything but a red smear on the planet's surface, let alone N7 armor-shaped scrambled goop, after landing?

But OK, given that we can find an N7 helmet on the planet (but no other organic remains to go along with the twenty other dog tags we can find), let's say that Shepard's body did magically make it onto the surface and survive impact without a scratch. Here's the next problem: Alchera is cold. The planet's description says its average surface temp is -22°C (along with stating it has a thick atmosphere of methane and ammonia, which would preclude a surface landing because that would have burnt Shepard's body to ashes during reentry, but we're engaging in a thought experiment here), so water would freeze. Human bodies have a lot of water in them: water in every cell, to be precise. The problem with that is that when water freezes, its volume increases, and water inside a cell will burst the cell when it freezes if the rate of temperature change is too fast for the water to evacuate the cells via osmosis. Modern day cryonics relies on a very controlled process, starting within minutes of death and involving the injection of cryoprotectants (fluids intended to replace water and prevent water freezing and associated tissue damage); neither of which is ever mentioned in the game.

The only in-game explanation we do get as to what was involved is from Jacob. Apparently Shepard's body was brought in as meat and tubes, then we mix in four billion credits (enough to train an entire army from one of the conversations with TIM), top scientists, the best technology money can buy, bake for two years (making sure to check the temperature one along the way so we can give the player a face to go along with Miranda's's voice), then upend into a pointlessly violent tutorial level to get a newly-resurrected Shepard. What exactly were the scientists doing? What was the technology, and what were they buying it to do? Those security mechs were rather defective; I think Cerberus should ask for their money back. Wilson's motivation for trying to sabotage the whole thing makes no sense (if indeed he really was the saboteur, since we also never get to investigate that and Shepard is forced to take Miranda's word on it) either; Shepard's alive, they managed to defeat death and other unexplained circumstances to bring a human back to life, so what's to stop them from selling this immortality and becoming filthy rich?

Once we leave the Lazarus station, it and the Lazarus Project are never referred to again outside of two conversations with Miranda. Any time we encounter someone who thought we were dead, they spare maybe one or two lines on that, then move on and take it in stride, never caring or wondering how Shepard came back to life except for Liara, who apparently found Shepard's body and gave it to Cerberus.

TL:DR, Shepard working for Cerberus makes no sense because they were a lethal and lethally incompetent Alliance black-ops outfit gone rogue that very few people knew about in ME1, turned into a lovable terrorist organization that everyone knows about in ME2 (while still being lethally incompetent), the Collector threat is exposed to be only threatening in a vacuum as we play the game, and we're never given a choice not to work for them.

The Lazarus Project is space magic because nothing but only the most vague and abstract of details are ever revealed to the player, and the game narrative forgets about it ten minutes after we leave Lazarus Station.

Edited for spelling mistakes.

Modifié par Soirreb, 01 avril 2013 - 04:51 .

[RedBeardJim]

The thing that really gets me about Cerberus: they're a clandestine organization with fairly independent cells and need-to-know operations, they're considered a terrorist organization by the Council and the Alliance.....

.....and they have an official color scheme and a logo that they plaster on every piece of property they own, including this brand-new warship that apparently still gets to dock at the Citadel despite said logo on prominent display.

[Frostmourne86]

That logo is for Cord-Hislop, the starship manufacturer - and one of the corporate fronts for Cerberus; it seems to be recognized as such by people in "the know".

[fr33stylez]

Soirreb wrote...

Shepard & Cerberus: Coming from the end of ME1, Commander Shepard has no reason to ever do anything except kill Cerberus agents on sight. They are responsible for the murder of Admiral Kahoku, his team sent looking into a distress beacon, the Alliance Marine unit killed on Akuze, more Alliance marines at listening posts Alpha & Theta, and the colonists on Chasca. They attempt to experiment on Thresher Maws, Rachni, and Thorian Creepers, with maybe a 50% chance of the experiment going horribly wrong before Shepard even discovers the experiment.

Once we get to ME2, things get worse. We never get a choice to not work for Cerberus; even at the end of the Lazarus Station tutorial level, we can clearly see three other shuttles in the background, but Miranda says that the one behind her is the only shuttle off the station, with no mention or hand-waving of the other shuttles by stating they're not working or something, were just forced to believe Miranda, and follow her to Minuteman Station.

The reasoning TIM gives Shepard - that Collectors are kidnapping human colonies in the Terminus systems - is nonsensical. Coming from the first game, our impression of the Terminus systems is a nation of slavers and pirates who reject the Council's authority and collectively are capable of challenging the Council races in an interstellar war. The Council thus refuses to send a fleet into the Terminus, and forbids Shepard from going in to find the Mu Relay, all because they fear provoking the Terminus Systems into war. If we believe what we learned in ME1, then how did the humans -who have only known about other species in the galaxy for a little more than 30 years- establish colonies in the Terminus Systems?

If colonists went in without any military support, then how would any survive long enough to actually establish a colony before being raided by pirates & slavers? If they went in with Alliance support and receive Alliance protection, why hasn't an interstellar war started between the Terminus Systems and the Systems Alliance? If human colonists went in with protection from a new or existing merc group, then it stands to reason that they'd become another group in the Terminus conglomerate. This is the most likely scenario I can believe for human colonies existing in the Terminus Systems, so given this, why should Shepard, a current or former Systems Alliance marine and a Council Spectre, care that human colonies in the Terminus systems are disappearing? Why doesn't the merc / pirate / slaver gang the colony belongs to do anything? Why don't they contract with other merc / pirate / slavery gangs in the Terminus systems for protection?

Unfortunately, though, we aren't given the choice to call out TIM on that, and are forced to go to Freedom's Progress. One we're back, we learn that Joker and Chakwas have also joined Cerberus. Two crew members who were in the Normandy and were presumably watching as missions unfolded on the SR 1, and thus know everything Shepard does about Cerberus, have now apparently willingly joined Cerberus after bring told that they had Shepard join up too or were about to resurrect him/her? We're never given any reasoning for this, just that the plot says so.

Anyway, once we get control of the Normandy SR2, why exactly can't we turn in everyone on the Normandy to C-Sec the instant we dock at the Citadel? The Council even refers to Cerberus as a terrorist organization, so there's logically nothing preventing us from turning everyone in, but instead of being given a choice to do the logical thing, we instead learn that apparently the Systems Alliance and the Council turned into vindictive douchebags the instant the original Normandy blew up and spent a lot of time and effort breaking up Shepard's team, declaring Shepard dead (not even going in to try to look for a body, by the way), and reversing all the progress made toward acknowledging and recognizing the Reaper threat from the first game... because of reasons. We are nut given the option to ask for help from the Alliance, the most we get from the Council is potentially getting reinstated as a Spectre (which is either useless or actually harmful since we're confined to the Terminus Systems, where Spectre authority is meaningless, and still something that might provoke galactic war with the Terminus Systems given what we know from the first game).

So, without ever being given an alternate choice, we're forced too go do TIM's bidding and run around in the Terminus Systems where we begin to see one of the bigger disconnects between the first and second games: the Terminus Systems. Instead of a collection of pirate, slaver, and merc gangs capable of rivaling the Council species in a galactic war, we encounter a bunch of weak wannabes who cannot prevent one single assassin and a small support team from securing two towers, who cannot storm one building to get rid of one Turian veteran, who lack the foresight to plan for a worst-case scenario prison escape despite having a technological advantage and are inhabiting a space station capable of venting all atmosphere while all the guards are wearing pressure suits, and are unable to prevent two people from breaking into and escaping from a theoretically highly-protected vault where they have the advantage of knowledge of the terrain. If a Terminus merc gang is asked to hold a position, they will fail miserably (Mordin loyalty mission, Thane recruitment mission, Jack recruitment and loyalty missions, Garrus loyalty mission, Zaeed loyalty mission, Kasumi loyalty mission, Samara recruitment mission) with one exception: Grunt's recruitment mission. If they are ever asked to take a location, they fail miserably (Garrus's recruitment mission, Mordin's recruitment mission). These groups have no space power or combat-capable ships to speak of. The only opposition Shepard ever encounters are cannon fodder. So, given what we learn in the course of ME2, then why was the Council ever afraid of the Terminus Systems? What was the point of running around the Attican Traverse putting together clues to get to Ilos if the Council could have just sent in a fleet or two to kill or capture Saren wherever he might try to hide in the Terminus Systems?

The idea of the Terminus Systems being composed of a bunch of pushovers does mean that the Collectors, relatively, are still a threat - in the Terminus Systems. Ultimately they still have one and only one ship, and one and only one base, while the Citadel fleets still exist, if only a little weakened by the Battle of the Citadel. The one Collector ship, which is eventually defeated by the Normandy SR 2, isn't going to be able to last long against a Citadel fleet. So, the only reason we might even want to work with Cerberus is if we really care about a bunch of secessionists who can't find enough combined military power in all of the Terminus Systems to stand up to one well-armed cruiser.

The only three choices we ever get, in fact, to do something contrary to Cerberus interests is whether or not to destroy the Collector base, who to give encrypted Cerberus data to in a side mission, and who to give David to at the end of the Overlord DLC, and the only choice that even matters in-universe is the Overlord choice, since that governs whether or not we meet David at Grissom Academy in ME3 and get an extra Cerberus gun or not.

The Lazarus Project: the Lazarus project is space magic because it is never explained, nor does it explain how it is able to overcome certain death, and the rest of the narrative doesn't care how Shepard came back to life, except maybe the VS encounter on Horizon, but even then Shepard is forced to either dodge the question or claim to never have died, and just have been in a coma.

As for the possibility of the Lazarus project to begin with, let's start with Cerberus's reasoning in the game intro: Miranda claims Shroud is a living legend, an icon that people will follow, even, apparently, into death if Shepard dies. TIM says "then see to it that we don't lose him/her." What, exactly, is this existential threat to Shepard's life that they know about ahead of time? If it's the Collectors, then why the hell didn't they just scramble a few fighting ships together to go save Shepard's life the easy way? No, instead, they have to try to prove that they can do duke kind of science project properly, and instead come up with the Lazarus Project in the space of maybe a month, if we believe Miranda's line "but they're sending [Shepard] to fight Geth!" to imply that her conversation with TIM is taking place right after the Battle of the Citadel.

Now, what does the Lazarus project have to overcome to bring Shepard back to life? Death via suffocation and disintegration via atmospheric reentry: At the end of the unskippable intro where the Normandy is finally breaking apart, we see Shepard struggling with a broken air hose and gas escaping from the suit, then a bow shock forming as Shepard begins to enter Alchera's atmosphere. Absent a very robust heat shield (armor doesn't provide significant thermal protection: http://masseffect.wi...r_and_Equipment ), Shepard's body would have burnt up in the atmosphere, leaving nothing to recover.

However, if we believe the Normandy Crash Site DLC (optional content that, while free, still isn't part of the main game and thus might not be installed alongside all ME2 installations), then given all the wreckage we see of the Normandy without any heat scoring or scorch marks, it's entirely possible that Alchera has no atmosphere whatsoever, so it follows that Shepard's body could have reached the planet's surface intact. Here's the next problem: without an atmosphere to slow down Shepard's body, then the body would have kept picking up speed, never slowing down, until hitting the surface of the planet at potentially thousands of miles an hour. Hitting a wall at 80 MPH is almost always lethal for humans, even in a car designed to save lives in front-impact crashes, objects traveling faster tend to disintegrate into their constituent components, so why should we believe, even with being able to find an N7 helmet on Alchera, that Shepard's body would be anything but a red smear on the planet's surface, let alone N7 armor-shaped scrambled goop, after landing?

But OK, given that we can find an N7 helmet on the planet (but no other organic remains to go along with the twenty other dog tags we can find), let's say that Shepard's body did magically make it onto the surface and survive impact without a scratch. Here's the next problem: Alchera is cold. The planet's description says its average surface temp is -22°C (along with stating it has a thick atmosphere of methane and ammonia, which would preclude a surface landing because that would have burnt Shepard's body to ashes during reentry, but we're engaging in s thought experiment here), so water would freeze. Human bodies have a lot of water in them: water in every cell, to be precise. The problem with that is that when water freezes, its volume increases, and water inside a cell will burst the cell when it freezes if the rate of temperature change is too fast for the water to evacuate the cells via osmosis. Modern day cryonics relies on a very controlled process, starting within minutes of death and involving the injection of cryoprotectants (fluids intended to replace water and prevent water freezing and associated tissue damage); neither of which is ever mentioned in the game.

The only in-game explanation we do get as to what was involved is from Jacob. Apparently Shepard's body was brought in as meat and tubes, then we mix in four billion credits (enough to train an entire army from one of the conversations with TIM), top scientists, the best technology money can buy, bake for two years (making sure to check the temperature one along the way so we can give the player a face to go along with Miranda's's voice), then upend into a pointlessly violent tutorial level to get a newly-resurrected Shepard. What exactly were the scientists doing? What was the technology, and what were you buying it to do? Those security mechs were rather defective; I think Cerberus should ask for their money back. Wilson's motivation for trying to sabotage the whole thing makes no sense (if indeed he really was the saboteur, since we also never get to investigate that and Shepard is forced to take Miranda's word on it) either; Shepard's alive, they managed to defeat death and other unexplained circumstances to bring a human back to life, so what's to stop them from selling this immortality and becoming filthy rich?

Once we leave the Lazarus station, it and the Lazarus Project are never referred to again outside of two conversations with Miranda. Any time we encounter someone who thought we were dead, they spare maybe one or two lines on that, then move on and take it in stride, never caring or wondering how Shepard came back to life except for Liara, who apparently found Shepard's body and gave it to Cerberus.

TL:DR, Shepard working for Cerberus makes no sense because they were a lethal and lethally incompetent Alliance black-ops outfit gone rogue that very few people knew able in ME1, turned into a lovable terrorist organization that everyone knows about in ME2 (while still being lethally incompetent), the Collector threat is exposed to be only threatening in a vacuum as we play the game, and we're never given a choice not to work for them.

The Lazarus Project is space magic because nothing but only the most vague and abstract of details are ever revealed to the player, and the game narrative forgets about it ten minutes after we leave Lazarus Station.

Winner winnner, chicken dinner. Nothing more to add in this regard.

[marcelo caldas]

Sci fi = space magic

[AlexMBrennan]

Sci fi = space magic

Incorrect. "Space magic" is a criticism of bad writing, specifically the introduction of new concepts without forshadowing as they are needed to resolve plot difficulties. It is a polite euphemism for ass pull.

Biotics are not real in our world, but they are well established in the ME universe. You can read about them in the codex, see them in action in the game, etc. Biotics are fine.

Project Lazarus, on the other hand, is not. Prior to Miranda somehow piecing together a pile of ashes to restore Shepard to health, there was no hint that anything of the sort might be possible. Cerberus suddenly having these capabilities is "space magic".

Similarly, there is no hint at anything like Synthesis being even remotely possible or that the tech singularity is a real threat prior to meeting Godchild at the eleventh hour. That is what makes Bioware's utopia ex culo "space magic".

And by the way, there is no need to have something like the Lazarus project to allow PS3 players to make a character - just allow the user to update the character record when importing the character (essentially, retconning Shepard to have looked like that all along); it certainly beats breaking your story for the sake of a gameplay mechanic.