82 réponses à ce sujet

[TheTurtle]

Is this ever confirmed in-game?

No it's not. It kinda contradicts the whole real commander Shepard thing that TIM wanted.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

Is this ever confirmed in-game?

 

No and given that nothing like that is even suggested in the Crono Station logs I think it is pretty much a busted theory.

[Iakus]

No, but it makes sense. If current technology couldn't bring people back to life, then the only other option is using Reaper technology.

Nonono.  The answer is RESOURCES!!!

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

No and given that nothing like that is even suggested in the Crono Station logs I think it is pretty much a busted theory.

 

Again just because it isn't stated doesn't mean it isn't. All advanced technology is derived from reaper technology. Don't you see? It had to be. It was the only way Shepard could be "the one," "The Shepard" who was ready to ascend the galaxy to synthesis. Ordinary tech wouldn't do. 

[KaiserShep]

Again just because it isn't stated doesn't mean it isn't. All advanced technology is derived from reaper technology. Don't you see? It had to be. It was the only way Shepard could be "the one," "The Shepard" who was ready to ascend the galaxy to synthesis. Ordinary tech wouldn't do. 

 

But if we're to go by this logic, then "reaper tech" is a meaningless distinction. The Normandy (beyond the bits in the AI core) then would be just as much reaper technology as the recycled bits of hardware manufactured by the reapers themselves that Cerberus uses on Sanctuary to create husks. Anything and everything that emits a mass effect field is reaper tech, insofar that it's all based on the principles learned from the mass relays.

 

In any case, its absence from the narrative makes it safe to assume that whatever was used to restore Shepard was not the same things used to create EDI, or Grunt or implant Cerberus troopers with. Without any evidence in fiction, all that's left is what fans make up.

[SwobyJ]

All we know is that a control chip was/could have been involved.

 

We don't know the extent of that chip's capability. Would it have shut Shepard down? Would it have essentially indoctrinated him? Or what?

 

The Lazarus stuff, even when touched on in late ME3, doesn't really feel resolved, but instead is a bunch of ignored loose threads.

[KaiserShep]

It kind of has to be. Project Lazarus has a great deal of techno-voodoo that must gloss over the impossibility of restoring a person that's suffered as much damage as Shepard would have.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Again just because it isn't stated doesn't mean it isn't. All advanced technology is derived from reaper technology. Don't you see? It had to be. It was the only way Shepard could be "the one," "The Shepard" who was ready to ascend the galaxy to synthesis. Ordinary tech wouldn't do. 

 

In life, that may hold true, but in stories, what's stated (the narrative) dictates what's fact. Unless various parts of the narrative soundly lead to the reader's conclusion, speculation like this is merely headcanon, however well thought out it may be.

[Tyrannosaurus Rex]

Again just because it isn't stated doesn't mean it isn't. All advanced technology is derived from reaper technology. Don't you see? It had to be. It was the only way Shepard could be "the one," "The Shepard" who was ready to ascend the galaxy to synthesis. Ordinary tech wouldn't do. 

 

So if reaper tech was used then why did the logs not mention anything? The doctor TIM is talking to shows concern about the idea of combining the Luna VI with Sovereign's remains, but when talking about the Lazarus project he is apparently not concerned one bit about the idea of planting reaper tech in a corpse in order to ressurect somebody in a medical operation no one has ever tried before in recorded history?

 

That's nuts.

[TheTurtle]

In life, that may hold true, but in stories, what's stated (the narrative) dictates what's fact. Unless various parts of the narrative soundly lead to the reader's conclusion, speculation like this is merely headcanon, however well thought out it may be.

I agree with you, but I think she was being sarcastic .

[Daemul]

BioWare tried to bury the whole resurrection thing as deep as possible from the very start, they were never going to go into much detail about how it was done. 

[General TSAR]

... and the creation of EDI...

 

 

 

You imply that's a good thing. 

[KaiserShep]

I agree with you, but I think she was being sarcastic .

 

Blast. I've been tricked yet again.

[Aimi]

I apologize for bringing up a day-old post, but I...ehhh.

If Cerberus really stood what was best for Humanity, they'd get out of military/espionage and use all those scientists of theirs to start a huge R&D corporation to bolster the Alliance economy; to make the other races dependent on their products.

The late nineteenth century called, it wants its views on the economics of trade back.

"What's best for humanity" should be what generates the most utility for humans, right? How does exporting goods for nonhuman consumption generate utility for humans? As far as I know, one of the things people like best about stuff is having that stuff and using it - not giving that stuff to somebody else. Wouldn't "humanity" be better off if humans enjoyed the benefits of consuming those goods rather than nonhumans doing so? The only way in which it makes sense for humans to be better off by exporting, is if those exports are used to pay for imports of their own: nonhumans buy human products so that humans can buy nonhuman products, and so on.

And if that's the case, who cares about whose economy is "dependent" on whom?

That sort of export-based dependency only makes sense in a distorted version of the New Imperialism, whereby countries exported to poorer countries. These poorer countries couldn't actually afford those products, by dint of being poorer and (usually) less well-developed, so they had to grant major political concessions to the exporter countries, theoretically as some form of loan security but in reality as a means of exploiting the raw materials of the importer countries. Places like Qing China, the Ottoman Empire, Qajar Iran, and Siam became informal colonies by this method of imperialism; other places, like much of Africa, became quite formal colonies.

The ultimate goal of that sort of export orientation ended up being the same imperialism that you appear to decry: Cerberus fulfilling the same goals via marginally different mechanisms. They would still get their war, eventually...but only after the nonhumans defaulted on their loans, or attempted to switch suppliers, or whatever.

In modern Earth history, most of the exploitative aspect has fallen away - one almost never sees anything like the old extraterritorial privileges anymore - but the bizarre thought process remains. Many people still think that it's great for the home country if companies in their home country are selling things to people who are not in that home country. And they think it's awful that foreign companies try to sell them things.

[General TSAR]

Nothing good ever came out of Reaper Tech and nothing fair ever came out the barrel of a gun.

[KaiserShep]

You imply that's a good thing.

Well, In fairness, you won't find an example of EDI's creation being a bad thing (no Joker's robosexuality doesn't count).

[General TSAR]

Well, In fairness, you won't find an example of EDI's creation being a bad thing (no Joker's robosexuality doesn't count).

Well too bad for you.....J/K.

 

******, being an artificial construct, rebelling against true Masters, being annoying, thinking it's a member of the crew, can't be shut down, thinking it's alive.

 

It must be destroyed.

 

Really? ****** is censored? Fine, camel cavity between toes, HA!

[KaiserShep]

How dare EDI help Shepard out of Cerberus' trap.

[themikefest]

edi was better as a hologram then as a platform.

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

I apologize for bringing up a day-old post, but I...ehhh.


The late nineteenth century called, it wants its views on the economics of trade back.

"What's best for humanity" should be what generates the most utility for humans, right? How does exporting goods for nonhuman consumption generate utility for humans? As far as I know, one of the things people like best about stuff is having that stuff and using it - not giving that stuff to somebody else. Wouldn't "humanity" be better off if humans enjoyed the benefits of consuming those goods rather than nonhumans doing so? The only way in which it makes sense for humans to be better off by exporting, is if those exports are used to pay for imports of their own: nonhumans buy human products so that humans can buy nonhuman products, and so on.

And if that's the case, who cares about whose economy is "dependent" on whom?

That sort of export-based dependency only makes sense in a distorted version of the New Imperialism, whereby countries exported to poorer countries. These poorer countries couldn't actually afford those products, by dint of being poorer and (usually) less well-developed, so they had to grant major political concessions to the exporter countries, theoretically as some form of loan security but in reality as a means of exploiting the raw materials of the importer countries. Places like Qing China, the Ottoman Empire, Qajar Iran, and Siam became informal colonies by this method of imperialism; other places, like much of Africa, became quite formal colonies.

The ultimate goal of that sort of export orientation ended up being the same imperialism that you appear to decry: Cerberus fulfilling the same goals via marginally different mechanisms. They would still get their war, eventually...but only after the nonhumans defaulted on their loans, or attempted to switch suppliers, or whatever.

In modern Earth history, most of the exploitative aspect has fallen away - one almost never sees anything like the old extraterritorial privileges anymore - but the bizarre thought process remains. Many people still think that it's great for the home country if companies in their home country are selling things to people who are not in that home country. And they think it's awful that foreign companies try to sell them things.

Individual humans would benefit from the existence of the products, and the political faction of Humanity would get a great deal of power. China has a monopoly on rare earth metals, and if they so choose they could shut if off and cause a global economic meltdown as the entire electronics business goes under. They have a huge political tool there. 

The economy of the political entity known as the Earth Systems Alliance can't compare with any of the Council races, and probably any of the Citadel races. Every single human could disappear and the Asari wouldn't even notice. Oh, that dog down the street stopped barking. 

That is exactly what the goal is. To create a market where humans control the supply. If China threatened to embargo rare earth, then the US would have to give in to their demands. 

It's not the same. Dominating the political and economic landscape is infinitely better than vivisection, torture, and warfare. 

[General TSAR]

How dare EDI help Shepard out of Cerberus' trap.

I know! Bloody Hell minion of SkyNet's offspring with MIR! 

[Aimi]

Individual humans would benefit from the existence of the products, and the political faction of Humanity would get a great deal of power. China has a monopoly on rare earth metals, and if they so choose they could shut if off and cause a global economic meltdown as the entire electronics business goes under. They have a huge political tool there. 

The economy of the political entity known as the Earth Systems Alliance can't compare with any of the Council races, and probably any of the Citadel races. Every single human could disappear and the Asari wouldn't even notice. Oh, that dog down the street stopped barking. 

That is exactly what the goal is. To create a market where humans control the supply. If China threatened to embargo rare earth, then the US would have to give in to their demands. 

It's not the same. Dominating the political and economic landscape is infinitely better than vivisection, torture, and warfare.

Individual humans don't benefit from products that they don't individually own. And they don't own them if those products are being sold to nonhumans. Some humans would see benefits from the sale of those products - those involved in the firms that produce them. But they get the same money regardless of whether humans or nonhumans purchase them. (Due to transport and transaction costs, they may get more from the humans.) That's not an argument for export-oriented production.

In fact, arguments for export-oriented production usually involve taking stuff away from the domestic market in order to give it to foreign markets. That is because, if people have to argue in favor of re-orienting production to foreign consumers, that means that the situation that currently exists is one where production is oriented more towards domestic consumers. If production is re-oriented, then domestic consumers will be sold fewer goods, and will be able to consume fewer goods.

And, since re-orientation is not costless (usually involving some form of subsidy or trade agreement to induce firms to sell abroad, which has to be paid for, usually out of taxation, and taxes leave consumers with less wealth to spend on Stuff They Want - or out of borrowing, which is similar, but time-lagged - or out of inflation, which is also a tax on consumers), domestic consumers will be paying twice in order to benefit foreign consumers.

So your program for aiding humanity would probably leave human consumers with less money to spend on Stuff They Want at the expense of nonhuman consumers.

In fact, as you accurately mentioned, the Alliance's economy is so small compared with those of the asari, or the turians, or the salarians, or possibly even the volus, that even by retooling the entire economy to the production of export goods (impossible) the Alliance would never be able to force any of the Citadel races into a position of economic dependency along the lines of the aforementioned Ottoman or Qing Empires. Even trying to do this would impoverish humans to an incredible extent.

Some countries have had certain amounts of success in the real world by following export-encouraging activist trade policy, but only under certain restrictions, and with the important caveat that there were lots of other things going on in those countries too and no economists are sure what actually caused the economic growth. (The prime example is the Republic of Korea.) More importantly, in none of those cases were the export-oriented policies ever followed in an effort to try to gain economic domination and political concessions. They were successes, but only because they resulted in an overall growth of the domestic economies, and rises in purchasing power for average citizens. Not because they allowed those countries political control...because they didn't. They probably never could have.

And, for every country that has seen economic growth after the imposition of export-encouraging policies, there are two or three that have seen the costs of those policies become overwhelming. YMMV.

Admittedly, it's not as bad as actual torture, but Cerberus would still be in the business of hurting humans while espousing empty slogans about helping humanity.

---

You shifted your argument there at the end of the first paragraph, from export-oriented production to "cornering the market" on strategic resources. Those aren't the same things at all, so the argument doesn't really make any sense. But your program of controlling strategic resources, judged on its own merits, isn't all that peaceful either - or it if is, it's not a program for active state policy. Let me explain.

There are two possibilities for achieving this corner. The first is that when a new important technology is developed, the Alliance simply happens to control most of the major sources of a material crucial to the technology. That isn't the result of an activist policy: it's serendipity, it just happens. Cerberus would be superfluous.

The second possibility is that the resources are in territory not controlled by humans, in which case it is either controlled by nonhumans or located on unclaimed worlds. The former possibility would force humans to wage war in order to claim a corner on the market; the latter would involve a political and military race between humans and nonhumans to stake claims and exploit the resources first, another activity with a high probability of inducing conflict. If avoiding open conflict between humans and nonhumans is your goal, that is a remarkably poor way of going about it.

---

In your example, you claimed that the modern People's Republic of China possesses considerable political and economic leverage because of its control of rare earth metals. The extent to which this rare earth metal corner is a Thing and to what extent it has real political effects could be discussed elsewhere. But the primary issue is that China did not claim the territory it now controls in order to secure rare earth metals. When the Kangxi and Qianlong Emperors conquered the North and Northeast, they weren't looking for dysprosium. And modern technology requiring rare-earth metals was not developed by the Chinese in order to find a use for their rare earth mother lode. In fact, the situation in which the modern Chinese government finds itself with regard to rare-earths has absolutely nothing to do with what the modern Chinese government itself has actually done. There was no activist policy at all: they are simply exploiting a situation that 'happened'. Where would an organization such as Cerberus fit into this picture?

To go back to "the extent to which this is a Thing"...well, is it? I mean, you don't need rare earths to explain the position the PRC now occupies in the world. It's got a humongous population and a humongous economy, and its military is large and of reasonably good quality. It possesses nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them. It has a network of agreements and alliances with a wide variety of other states, and possesses client relationships of varying strength with several of them. China's political weight can be explained entirely without reference to rare earth metals.

That brings up the rather relevant question of whether a comparable bottleneck under possession by the Alliance would have the same impact. You argue that the Alliance can't rely on its population, (size of) economy, military, etc. to exert political control, and would need to employ devices like resource bottlenecks. But China can rely on its population, economic size, military, etc. to give its government's opinions political weight. Why do you think that the Alliance would be able to do the same thing as China without the same foundation?

This is an especially crucial point because the PRC does not exercise any sort of a hegemony on Earth, yet you propose that the Alliance to do just that in the rest of the galaxy. Humanity is supposed to accomplish a larger mission with fewer resources. That seems like a recipe for disaster to me.

---

My main problem with what you're suggesting is that it's not really coherent. You've shoved together two different 'ideas' (not policies) that supposedly have to do with exerting some form of economic coercion leading to political benefits. You cite these as examples of how Cerberus might be useful to "humanity" without involving itself in violent applications of Reaper technology, although your ideas either a: have a high probability of involving violence or b: do not actually require Cerberus or a Cerberus-like organization to exist for any reason.

I would also suggest that the general idea is flawed: that what you are proposing amounts to economic blackmail, that it would unquestionably face retaliatory measures up to and possibly including war, that even if successful (improbable) that it would result in widespread resentment of humanity among the rest of the galactic community, and that the rest of the galaxy would pursue any and all plausible means of circumventing the human economic bottleneck.

And make no mistake: the bottleneck would disappear. Technology changes constantly. The likelihood of the Alliance controlling the lion's share of any strategic resource is small enough, given its small size and population relative to the other Great Powers of the Citadel-led galaxy. But the likelihood of such a strategic resource remaining a strategic resource to the extent that it can lead to political concessions is even more vanishingly small.

Domination might make sense as a policy when the dominator can squash most forms of resistance to its rule. Domination backed by control of a resource bottleneck that is virtually impossible for humanity to be likely to be able to control in the first place...and by military and economic weakness otherwise...well, that sort of domination is very unlikely to last, if it ever exists at all, and very likely to end badly when it stops lasting.

On the other hand, the inadvisability of the project you propose means that Cerberus would almost certainly have been willing to try it. Cerberus tends to do ill-considered stuff like that.

[Urdnot Amenark]

Though, in the previous cycle, it also permitted the protheans to subjugate the entire galaxy. Imagine what society would be like if they defeated the reapers instead. They'd probably be the antagonists for some of the current races.

 

That would be interesting. Just imagine if the Leviathans had survived though...

[TurianRebel212]

Is this ever confirmed in-game?

 

Not face slapping you with a character and/or codex entry that say's "Lazarus Project and the rebirth of Commander Shepard used Reaper nanites/cybernetics to accomplished the goal of bringing back Commander Shepard from Brain Death."

 

But like many big, shall we say, 'revelations' that occur in ME3 it is more implied and left to YOU the player to connect the dots. 

 

So, lets connect them, using FACT based evidence and in-game footage to support this perspective that the Lazarus Project and the Rebirth of Shepard used Reaper technology. 

 

-It is confirmed via ME2 on Derelict Reaper that Husks are indeed Reaper tech and origin. Husks are, once dead humans, that are re-programed through reaper implants and major cybernetic augmentation to be, well, to be Husks. The come back from the dead and be, "huskie" like things. Hence the name. Husk. 

 

During the ending of ME1, after Saren gets brainshotted at close range with a Heavy Pistol rendering Saren's brain completely and utterly brain dead and destroyed, Sovereign through Reaper cybernetic implants, rezz'd a brain dead Saren back to "life". 

 

 

The only known entities to have technology that can rezz brain dead/destroyed subjects back to life, are the Reapers, as the evidence above shows. There is no other instance in MEU to imply or show another group, other than Reapers, to possess such technology. 

 

So, lets go over the first half of the dot connecting:

 

Husks are Reaper tech and origin. Check. 

 

A complete brain dead/destroyed Saren was brought back to "life" by Reaper cybernetic implants. Check.

 

Okay, so know lets fast forward a bit to the Collector attack, destruction of Normandy SR1 and the Death of Commander Shepard. 

 

Shepard did not have a "normal" death so to speak. During the cutscene in the beginning of ME2 it clearly shows Shepard's suit suffering a rupture. Now in the void and vacuum of Space when one suffers exposure to said vacuum (as a suit rupture is) the subject suffers what is known as ebullism. Ebullism is when gas bubbles form in the blood stream due to decreased environmental pressure, such as space exposure, i.e. when a suit rupture occur while the subject is in the vacuum of space. 

 

Like what happened to Commander Shepard during the Destruction of the SR1. Ebullism would have boiled Shepard's blood stream, now what makes this interesting and to the point, is that the arteries and vein would carry said boiled blood to Shepard's brain..... 

 

The human brain is quite interesting and is quite, shall we say, fragile. Also, it is lined with not 1, but 2 arteries. And also 7 veins, 3 being major arterial veins. 

 

So Shepard's Brain would literally boil to mush. This would take anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds. 

 

 

Shepard was completely and utterly dead. But not only that, complete brain destruction occurred as well.

 

Shepard's brain was not salvageable. Shepard's brain was destroyed. 

 

Much like Saren's was..... 

 

 

And there it is. 

 

Shepard 2.0 is given life by Cerberus through the "Lazarus" project. Through "cutting edge technology" and "vast resources" and many other types of hot words and cool scifi "wordiness" stuff. 

 

But, if you think about it a little bit and connect the dots, the technology is obviously of Reaper origin. 

 

And given TIM stance on Reaper's and "stuff", well before Mass Effect 2 (Arca Monolith event)..... I think it's a plausible, if not an inevitable interpretation of how Lazarus project came to be.