61 réponses à ce sujet

[DeinonSlayer]

Shepard's old body was pulverized beyond salvaging, but the commander had a graybox which survived relatively unscathed. The graybox got slapped in a clone's head, with the memories transferred to the wetware in reverse, while Shepard's old body enjoyed a brief new existence as pet food.

While it provided a decent excuse to re-carve Shepard's face between games, as a plot point, I've frequently seen Lazarus derided as one of the dumbest twists in the trilogy. What are your ideas on how this could have been handled differently, humorous or no?

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 05 février 2014 - 01:30 .

[Darks1d3]

 The only way the Lazarus Project makes sense is if Shepard just died from suffocation while drifting in space, instead of also falling towards a planetoid and becoming "dog food" as he crash lands in the process. Otherwise, I'm not going to try to make sense from nonsense.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Preferably, I would have avoided anything that required any sort of forced time skip, including death, going comatose, cryogenic freezing, stasis pod, etc. However, what bothered me most about Shepard dying and being brought back to life wasn't the particular science or space magic behind it but rather how poorly handled it was in the story, the game world including Shepard is rather indifferent to the fact that a man died and was brought back to life through the miracle of technology. Because such an event I feel trivializes death I think any kind of 'Lazarus' experiment should be avoided and Shepard should, for example, as you said, be a clone with implanted memories.

If that path is chosen though, and I'm liking it the more I think about it (although I'm not sure where the Gray Box would come from) I think what should be emphasized is Shepard's connection to the Prothean beacon, Cipher, and all that other Prothean mind stuff. Basically Shepard should be brought back, in whatever method, because there is valuable information trapped inside Shepard's head that only Shepard -- or an individual close enough to Shepard -- can access; rather than some obscure concept that he symbolically represents mankind or whatever.

[JasonShepard]

Warning, Fanon ahoy!
(I spent a fair bit of time thinking about this during ME2.)

Miranda was assigned to keep Shepard alive before the Collector attack. But how do you prepare for the unexpected? How do you make sure that someone doesn't die, when you don't know what might be trying to kill them?

You don't. You simply make sure that they can be brought back.

Death is irreversible because of death of the brain - the loss of all the information stored within the game. It's like burning down a library - you can't rebuild the library if you don't know what was written there.

Brain death is irreversible - so Miranda decided to prevent brain death from happening to Shepard - no matter how the Commander might die.

In the month following the end of ME1, Cerberus arranged for Shepard's helmet to secretly be replaced with a new prototype. If Shepard's vital signs fell below a certain limit, the helmet would engage a stasis field around the Commander's brain, preventing the very processes that would usually lead to brain death.*

Unfortunately, when the attack happened, the system took slightly too long to kick in. Shepard suffered some brain damage and loss of information - this is why the Commander can come back from Lazarus as a different person.

Between the brain damage and the level of physical damage to the body, Shepard's reconstruction took much longer than originally anticipated. As a result, and because of the attack on the Lazarus Station, TIM decided that the cost had been too high to try again should Shepard die a second time (hence why an in-game death is still a "Game Over", not a "Let's rebuild the Commander again!").

EDIT: Regarding the planetary landing... it didn't happen.

Honestly, I haven't seen a single canon source to say that the Commander actually did hit the planet. Yes, you see atmospheric flare around the body at the end of ME2's intro, but it's just as easy to bounce off an atmosphere as it is to fall through. (Also, Shepard really shouldn't be anywhere near the atmosphere at that point, judging by the perspective of the camera and the relative sizes of Shepard and the planet, but now I'm being picky.)

Shepard floated in space until being discovered by the Blue Suns. All those broken bones you see during the reconstruction? Some were from the Normandy explosion and... I don't know... some come from the Blue Suns' ship hitting Shepard? (How did you think they found the Commander?)



*Unfortunately, my explanation stumbles slightly at the "Shepard is clinically brain dead" line on Kronos Station in ME3. I think I have to assume that particular Cereberus scientist wasn't in possession of all the facts...

Modifié par JasonShepard, 05 février 2014 - 01:59 .

[DeinonSlayer]

When I saw the flare around Shepard, I didn't interpret it as a sign of reentry. It looked to me like (s)he exited the planet's shadow, with the oxygen which leaked from the suit trailing along, illuminated in the vacuum. Sort of like how Jim Lovell was able to look out the window and see Apollo 13's oxygen spilling out into space.

Seriously, the idea that any part of Shepard bigger than a cough drop was recoverable after tearing through an atmosphere and striking a mountainside at a hundred meters per second is too stupid for words. The damage described in audio logs refers to long-term exposure to vacuum and subzero temperatures, not dismemberment associated with a high-speed impact.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 05 février 2014 - 02:11 .

[RangerSG]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

When I saw the flare around Shepard, I didn't interpret it as a sign of reentry. It looked to me like (s)he exited the planet's shadow, with the oxygen which leaked from the suit trailing along, illuminated in the vacuum. Sort of like how Jim Lovell was able to look out the window and see Apollo 13's oxygen spilling out into space.

Seriously, the idea that any part of Shepard bigger than a cough drop was recoverable after tearing through an atmosphere and striking a mountainside at a hundred meters per second is too stupid for words. The damage described in audio logs refers to long-term exposure to vacuum and subzero temperatures, not dismemberment associated with a high-speed impact.

This has always been my thinking as well. The deep space insta-freeze (given the damage to Shepard's suit) allowed for something akin to cryogenic stasis (at least neurologically). The body gets beaten up bouncing off debris and scrap from the wreck, leaving a very ugly, if recoverable, corpse.

But any kind of re-entry would incinerate the body before it had the chance to be pulverized on impact. 

[Jorji Costava]

As far as I can tell, Lazarus serves two major functions in ME2; first, it jumps time ahead two years (this seems mostly to weaken the PC's connections to the ME1 squadmates so that room can be made for the new ones), and second, it sets up Shepard's recruitment by Cerberus. There's no reason at all why a plot device other than death can't be used to accomplish these story goals.

Here's a half-baked idea: Instead of being attacked by a Collector ship, the Normandy is attacked and destroyed by Batarians; perhaps someone sabotaged the SR-1's stealth and navigation systems, causing the Normandy to take an unexpected detour through Batarian space, where a group of ships suspiciously prepared for their arrival shows up and destroys the SR-1; Shepard is captured by the Batarians and put into a slave labor camp, believed to be dead by most of the former crew.

Shep escapes two years later to find himself as a persona non grata, as the Normandy incident through Batarian space was perceived as an act of aggression for which Shepard is responsible; this explains why the Council's preparation for the Reapers is reset back to zero by ME2: Shepard's loss of credibility makes it politically inconvenient to make a big deal about the Reapers.

Meanwhile, Cerberus emerges as the only group able and willing to do anything about Batarian (as opposed to Collector) attacks on human colonies. With seemingly nowhere else to turn, and with a first-hand knowledge of what the Batarians are willing to do to those they enslave and imprison, Shepard now has a bit more motivation to join up with Cerberus than he or she does in the vanilla game, all without the need for death/resurrection.

Anyways, that's my idea, for whatever it's worth. Feel free to poke any holes and/or make whatever devastating criticisms you will.

[CrutchCricket]

No to the graybox idea- grayboxes are not indicated to be full-brain backups. A graybox would have some, not all memories, plus it may not be possible to dump graybox files back into a brain.

Shepard being "not-quite dead" (a coma, stasis, whatever) is better and would still allow for the time skip and cybernetic implants.

[DeinonSlayer]

CrutchCricket wrote...

No to the graybox idea- grayboxes are not indicated to be full-brain backups. A graybox would have some, not all memories, plus it may not be possible to dump graybox files back into a brain.

Shepard being "not-quite dead" (a coma, stasis, whatever) is better and would still allow for the time skip and cybernetic implants.

Bah, details. We're talking about this in the context of reanimating a brain-dead corpse.  

Full-brain backup may not be as hard as one might think - it's estimated that the human brain has only around 200MB of storage capacity. A cheap USB flash drive will put several thousand times that much information in an area the size of your thumbnail.

EDIT: On a related topic, has anyone here read 3001? The astronaut from 2001 who got body-checked by a shuttle, almost-recovered and then released into the void ("Open the pod-bay doors, Hal") came back as the main character in that book, recovered and revived after being frozen for a thousand years in orbit. Step aside, Shepard.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 05 février 2014 - 04:31 .

[Iakus]

CrutchCricket wrote...

No to the graybox idea- grayboxes are not indicated to be full-brain backups. A graybox would have some, not all memories, plus it may not be possible to dump graybox files back into a brain.

Shepard being "not-quite dead" (a coma, stasis, whatever) is better and would still allow for the time skip and cybernetic implants.

Not to mention grayboxes have been outlawed in the Alliance for over a decade.  There's no way Shepard could have joined the military with one of those in his/her head.

[AresKeith]

The only way to make Lazarus more realist is to completely change what happened to Shepard at the beginning of ME2

[ImaginaryMatter]

osbornep wrote...

As far as I can tell, Lazarus serves two major functions in ME2; first, it jumps time ahead two years (this seems mostly to weaken the PC's connections to the ME1 squadmates so that room can be made for the new ones), and second, it sets up Shepard's recruitment by Cerberus. There's no reason at all why a plot device other than death can't be used to accomplish these story goals.

Here's a half-baked idea: Instead of being attacked by a Collector ship, the Normandy is attacked and destroyed by Batarians; perhaps someone sabotaged the SR-1's stealth and navigation systems, causing the Normandy to take an unexpected detour through Batarian space, where a group of ships suspiciously prepared for their arrival shows up and destroys the SR-1; Shepard is captured by the Batarians and put into a slave labor camp, believed to be dead by most of the former crew.

Shep escapes two years later to find himself as a persona non grata, as the Normandy incident through Batarian space was perceived as an act of aggression for which Shepard is responsible; this explains why the Council's preparation for the Reapers is reset back to zero by ME2: Shepard's loss of credibility makes it politically inconvenient to make a big deal about the Reapers.

Meanwhile, Cerberus emerges as the only group able and willing to do anything about Batarian (as opposed to Collector) attacks on human colonies. With seemingly nowhere else to turn, and with a first-hand knowledge of what the Batarians are willing to do to those they enslave and imprison, Shepard now has a bit more motivation to join up with Cerberus than he or she does in the vanilla game, all without the need for death/resurrection.

Anyways, that's my idea, for whatever it's worth. Feel free to poke any holes and/or make whatever devastating criticisms you will.

You're not completely alone. I've always liked the idea of replacing the Collectors with Batarians.

[Steelcan]

*long winded post by David saying why its totally possible that Shepard survived in good condition*

[TuringPoint]

Honestly it's more than a little melodramatic. It could've been done better. It did serve some purpose. To show beyond cutting age medical work to bring him back, even for the sci-fi setting where medi-gel exists, rather than going into an ordinary coma; to prove his vulnerability; and make him indebted to Cerberus in a particular way, going further than a government would to get him back.

They didn't have to do any of that. It worked out on some levels, while being quite peculiar in others.

[NeroonWilliams]

The body could easily remain relatively intact so long as its relative velocity was low enough, OR the planetary atmosphere was thin (not dense) enough.

I think it's plausible that Shepard's relative velocity was low enough to allow the body to be in free fall for reentry rather than at orbital speed which is what causes the massive heat buildup on ships entering the atmosphere.

Think Felix Baumgartner's skydive from the edge of the atmosphere. He made supersonic speed before the atmosphere thickened enough for him to slow to close to what we normally think of as terminal velocity. If Shepard were to have been thrown clear by the Normandy's explosion in such a way to cut velocity down to say 1000 mph (instead of 40,000-50,000), the body could absolutely survive reentry. The armor would be the only thing holding it together, but it would be there.

[TuringPoint]

Interesting idea about saving him from brain death. A little convoluted, and I think they just wanted us to take his resurrection on faith. To make it more powerful and intimidating for us, more cathartic.

If they had explored the resurrection as a theme, there's only so much you can do without just side tracking the story and themes they already had.  They could have made resurrection a theme for the series, but that would reduce the impact.  They went out of their way to prove that what had been done with Shepard was impossible, to set a certain tone blahblahblah

I can't really know their reasoning, that's just what comes to my mind.

If they had a better explanation - no need for lots of jargon, just logical steps from point a to b, that would've been enough.  I think they tried to do that on the starting station but didn't quite get there.

Modifié par Alocormin, 05 février 2014 - 08:22 .

[Arcian]

Steelcan wrote...

*long winded post by David saying why its totally possible that Shepard survived in good condition*

Stop reminding me that he's gone. 

[GimmeDaGun]

There's nothing realistic about it. It was one of the most ridiculous ideas and worts written parts in the whole trilogy. That idea shouldn't have been implemented at all, just like the whole ME2 story-line and being forced to join Cerberus... I mean come on. No matter how entertaining ME2 is, it's just a cheap filler with lots of action flick cliche characters with their boring daddy issues and the option to turn the Normandy into a playboy-love boat.

[Dubozz]

Thought that resurrection idea was pretty cool.

[AlexMBrennan]

That sounds like something more fitting in the GITS universe.

My suggestion for fixing the resurrection: Don't have Shepard die but that of course would to isolate Shepard from his friends and force him to work with space!al-Qaeda - people can already "miraculously" survive a lot of stuff (being submerged under a frozen lake for hours), and we are starting to use those techniques (e.g. when surgeons have to temporally stop blood flow to the brain) and it would not be inconceivable that future magical spacesuits of ME include appropriate emergency mechanisms to prevent the brain death of a soldier who, say, gets flung into space... Timmy could still get his role as a Shepard fanboy by insisting that Shepard be kept alive and treated long after the point where normal doctors should have switched off life support.

If Shepard were to have been thrown clear by the Normandy's explosion in such a way to cut velocity down to say 1000 mph (instead of 40,000-50,000)

That's right, rapid acceleration (50000 mph to 1000 mph in half a second from the force of the explosion) never killed anyone.

Modifié par AlexMBrennan, 05 février 2014 - 10:28 .

[dreamgazer]

Dubozz wrote...

Thought that resurrection idea was pretty cool.

Why?

[dreamgazer]

Is Lazarus better or worse than revealing Shepard to be an unknowing alien, or a literal cyborg with his/her heroic consciousness---with the Prothean cipher intact, I assume---crammed in a machine?