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[Etocis]

Here is a space for everyone to discuss the "Ark Theory", so theorize away.

[Zazzerka]

Okay, I'll start.

 

What's the "Ark Theory?"

[Chala]

Okay, I'll start.

 

What's the "Ark Theory?"

Do you remember the Rapture?
Well, something like that. But instead of going to heaven, we go to another galaxy by travelling on a huge ship.

[HenkieDePost]

Okay, I'll start.

 

What's the "Ark Theory?"

The discussion about this theory has been going on since the E3 trailer for Mass Effect 4. The problem though, was that this discussion was taking place in the twitter thread, making it very hard to find tweets in the huge walls of texts regarding this theory. If you really want to not miss anything regarding this fan fiction called 'Ark Theory', I'd suggest you look in the twitter thread first and post your findings about the theory here. Otherwise you can just wait, the discussion about this theory has been raging on since the trailer, so I think the chances are pretty high it will rage on in this thread as well.

On Topic: I personally do not find the idea attractive for a new game. No matter how possible or not possible it might be given the background lore we have now, the entire idea still doesn't appeal to me, and I'd probably find a game set in another galaxy alot less interesting than a game set in the Milky Way. So if the dev's are really considering this: Look at if it appeals to people or not and base your decision on that. I find it a horrible idea. Might just as well make a prequel or an alternate universe imho. If alot of other people agree with me, disregard the idea. Otherwise build on it.

[ntrisley]

Okay, I'll start.

 

What's the "Ark Theory?"

Dumb. It's like Indoctrination Theory, but worse.

[Medievalist]

Okay, I'll start.

 

What's the "Ark Theory?"

 

The "Ark Theory" is basically a kind of conspiracy theory that gives too much attention to little aspects of BioWare's E3 presentation and the things their staff mentioned afterwards. It evolved from the Twitter Thread immediately after the presentation.

Someone interpreted the "Galaxy Map" sequence from said trailer in such a way, that the shown galaxy is no longer the Milky Way, but Andromeda. And because of something the Asari Councilor said after the fall of Thessia, the "Ark Theory" suggests that ME4 will be about an ark ship that will take members of council races to Andromeda to form a new colony.

You'll see from my reply that I regard the "Ark Theory" as a mere figment of some fans' imagination. I call myself a Mass Effect fanboy and want ME4 rather today than tomorrow, but for me the "evidence" supporting the "Ark Theory" is virtually non-existent.

[Zazzerka]

Fair enough. I'll pass, OP. Thanks.

[Beerfish]

It's a very good idea and a good theory. 

 

Problem.  How do we set a game at the same time as ME3 or after ME3 and not have it subject to one of three big decisions made at the end of ME3 that would really set the course for a future game. 

 

Move the locale of the new game out of the galaxy thus giving a totally new canvas.

 

Early desire for the next iteration of the franchise, exploration of new areas and new worlds.  The ark theory handles this well.

 

Desire to include some of the favoured existing races and add some new ones.  The ark theory handles this as well.

 

Is it a logical development?  Well this is up for debate but I certainly think it is.  Countless civilizations have failed in what we are doing with the crucible.  We need a back up plan, the Protheans actually had a top secret base that the reapers never found, lets try something similar to keep the species going.  We can just tray and get out of the galaxy to recolonize, we can send them off into dark space to try and see where the reapers live, a lot of different possibilities.

[Reever]

Why a conspiracy theory? And why dumb?!

There's be enough reasons for different races to send out ships just to be sure they won't go extinct! We even had those guys from Earth organizing that expedition to Alpha Centauri and who were discovered 80 years later or so.

 

It's like sometimes people don't have any imagination. Or don't like to have any.

[durasteel]

I don't know what the setting of ME4 is, but I certainly hope that the so called "ark theory" is dead wrong.
 
As I understand it, the ark theory is based on the idea that it is better to throw away everything we've ever known in Mass Effect, to exile ourselves from every place our characters have ever seen, to depart forever the known Mass Effect universe, than to risk invalidating anyone's choice in the ending to Mass Effect 3. Because green space magic and refusal of the star brat can essentially result in destroying the galaxy, we have to leave the galaxy out of respect for the possibility of those outcomes.
 
I say that's bullcrap.
 
If the entire Mass Effect universe that we've explored so far in the series, from Ilum to Tuchanka, Omega to the Citadel, isn't worth saving... If all of the places and things we've seen and all of the places and things we've heard about and wanted to explore someday aren't worth keeping... If every single thing in the galaxy that isn't on a hypothetical ark ship can just be discarded for a "fresh start" in a new setting, then why the hell are we even talking about another Mass Effect game?
 
If the setting is worth fixing after the ending of 3 broke it, then BioWare should clean up the mess and let's move forward. If the setting has been broken so badly that BioWare is unable or unwilling to fix it, then it should be retired and EA can use the IP to make some kind of Battlefront type multiplayer game that I won't pay attention to.
 
Let's not make a game in a completely new and unfamiliar setting and just adapt some of the concept art and music from the trilogy and call it Mass Effect.

(Post copied from here)

[iPatrikolby]

Ark or Alt universe or Dream....Its all just a struggle to get out from under the crippling end of ME3. 

[tehturian]

The decidedly Prothean looking fella in this image made me think. 

What if the reason we're seeing Protheans is because we're traveling to a galaxy that the Protheans escaped to on their own 'Ark'. Given what we already know about the protheans, that they had at least two survival attempts with Ilos and Javik, it wouldn't surprise me if they endeavored to resurrect the glorious Prothean empire through sending their own ark. 

[Heimdall]

Okay, now let's someone that actually understands the logic behind Ark Theory explain it.   Its been discussed quite a lot on the Andromeda thread here.  The "Galaxy Map" image isn't a spiral galaxy like the Milky Way, which gives some credit to the possibility.

 

The Basics - The basic idea of Ark theory is that some group, possibly but not necessarily bankrolled by the Council, has been working on a plan to escape the galaxy to avoid certain death at the hands of the Reapers.  This group, more of a secret society maybe, may have known about the Reapers for years, like Saren, and been assembling resources since long before the Reaper's arrival.  The "Ark" could be a single massive ship or a fleet of smaller vessels.  Another idea put forward is the Ark could be a Prothean vessel, built for the same purpose, but incomplete.

 

Plausibility - Someone's crunched the numbers, it would take 500-600 years for a ship moving at normal FTL speeds to traverse the distance between galaxies.  You can knock off a few centuries at Reaper FTL speeds.  It would be difficult, but not implausible for a properly equipped ship to make the journey assuming they found

• A way to deal with the core discharge issue (Some sort of "ballast" periodically ejected from the ship maybe)
• A durable power source (Some reverse engineered Prothean power source maybe, one managed to keep Javik alive for 50,000 years despite being heavily damaged)
• Some way to keep the crew alive (A young Asari skeleton crew could man the ship(s), the rest of the passengers could use stasis pods reverse engineered from Prothean tech.  They wouldn't need to be up to the Prothean standards, they need to last centuries, not millennia)

Yes, that's a lot to assume, but if the writers decided to go that way, it wouldn't be unreasonable.  All the Prothean tech reverse engineering isn't implausible if some Asari official gave them access to the beacon on Thessia.  We've also brought up the idea of using the Citadel Relay to jumpstart the journey.  It could have happened shortly before the Reapers attacked the Citadel to take it to Earth.  That way all witnesses were either evacuated on the Arks or killed immediately thereafter.  As for why they would carry out the Ark plan, bare in mind that most of the galaxy didn't know about the Crucible and the Crucible designs weren't found in every Prothean database.  I imagine a massive influx of resources from frightened individuals desperate for a seat helping this secret group along during the months of the Reaper war as they watched conventional forces slowly succumbing to the overwhelming force of the Reapers.

 

Why Ark Theory - If Bioware were to set the next ME game in the Milky Way, they really only have two options:  Either they can pick a canon (Probably Destroy) or homogenize the outcome of the endings to the point where the galaxy is more or less the same no matter what choice Shepard made.  Some of us aren't particularly enthused by the idea of Bioware going even further down the road of player-choice-doesn't-matter and the homogenization option brings back unpleasant memories of how they handled the Rachni in ME3.

 

Ark Theory avoids interfering with player choice and the entire headache of the endings completely.  Instead, we get a fresh start (Likely a few centuries or a thousand years after resettlement) with at least the majority of the races we've come to know with a completely Reaper-free galaxy and the opportunity for a brand new adventure free of the baggage ME has accrued over the years.

[Kabooooom]

It really makes me lol when people say the galaxy map image they showed us is the milky way. Yes, it could be a nonsensical image that Bioware trolled us with as a placeholder for teh speculations. But it sure as hell isn't a barred spiral galaxy like the Milky Way.

If you are going to object to the analysis/speculation of the trailer, Jesus tap dancing Christ at least be intelligent about your objections.

[Madcat 124]

It really makes me lol when people say the galaxy map image they showed us is the milky way. Yes, it could be a nonsensical image that Bioware trolled us with as a placeholder for teh speculations. But it sure as hell isn't a barred spiral galaxy like the Milky Way.

If you are going to object to the analysis/speculation of the trailer, Jesus tap dancing Christ at least be intelligent about your objections.

My fried said it might be the map materializing or dispersing. It's food for thought. 

 

And what if it's a bigger map that includes our galaxy somewhere in it? What if we'll be exploring a much larger region of space and the Milky way is just part of it? Also, if we are in a new galaxy, why do we have a map of it already?

[Kabooooom]

My fried said it might be the map materializing or dispersing. It's food for thought.

And what if it's a bigger map that includes our galaxy somewhere in it? What if we'll be exploring a much larger region of space and the Milky way is just part of it? Also, if we are in a new galaxy, why do we have a map of it already?

Actually that's why I am starting to prefer the Dark Energy Theory - that they went back to Drew's plot and the image IS the Milky Way, but the Milky Way ravaged, distorted, and torn asunder by dark energy such that it no longer resembles a barred spiral galaxy at all.

I'm not bettin on the bigger region of space thing though. 400 billion stars in this galaxy. And that's an average to small amount. There's too much space for a story of that scale.

[Heimdall]

My fried said it might be the map materializing or dispersing. It's food for thought. 

 

And what if it's a bigger map that includes our galaxy somewhere in it? What if we'll be exploring a much larger region of space and the Milky way is just part of it? Also, if we are in a new galaxy, why do we have a map of it already?

Presumably because ME:N takes places centuries or even a thousand years after resettlement.

[Madcat 124]

Presumably because ME:N takes places centuries or even a thousand years after resettlement.

And you wouldn't think that the races wouldn't have reconnected with the Milky Way by then? 

[Kabooooom]

And you wouldn't think that the races wouldn't have reconnected with the Milky Way by then?

Not if they did not know the outcome of the Reaper war, no. Reconnecting would not only make no sense but could be potentially fatal.

[durasteel]

Presumably because ME:N takes places centuries or even a thousand years after resettlement.

I feel pretty confident that if Mass Effect 4 does turn out to be a spin off in a GNOCA (galaxy no one cares about) as postulated by the "ark theory," it will be set during the arrival at and settlement of the GNOCA. To just start the game somewhere in the Koprulu Sector without an actual gameplay link to the existing setting would be too great a departure even for a spin-off.

[dreamgazer]

Is Noah confirmed to be the name of the new game's protagonist?

[Beerfish]

I don't know what the setting of ME4 is, but I certainly hope that the so called "ark theory" is dead wrong.
 
As I understand it, the ark theory is based on the idea that it is better to throw away everything we've ever known in Mass Effect, to exile ourselves from every place our characters have ever seen, to depart forever the known Mass Effect universe, than to risk invalidating anyone's choice in the ending to Mass Effect 3. Because green space magic and refusal of the star brat can essentially result in destroying the galaxy, we have to leave the galaxy out of respect for the possibility of those outcomes.
 

How did you come up with this assumption?  The ark theory doesn't have the citadel or the present solar system locations.  All races can still be included.  Sooner or alter games move away from past locations as they should.  We had three games to explore and deal with our own region.  I don't want to go back to the citadel or past planets myself.  Hey, if someone can come with a good alternative I'm all ears.

[Heimdall]

I feel pretty confident that if Mass Effect 4 does turn out to be a spin off in a GNOCA (galaxy no one cares about) as postulated by the "ark theory," it will be set during the arrival at and settlement of the GNOCA. To just start the game somewhere in the Koprulu Sector without an actual gameplay link to the existing setting would be too great a departure even for a spin-off.

Stasis pods that were lost in a crash or somesuch and only rediscovered centuries later could solve that issue.  The game could even start with the departure from MW.

[durasteel]

So, our PC is in a settlement of some sort, somewhere in a GNOCA and permanently cut off from anyone, anywhere, anything from the trilogy games. The timeframe is centuries or more removed from the trilogy games. The region is governed, if it is governed, by some authority we've never heard of. Our adversary, when we get one, is one we've never heard of before. 

 

What, if anything, makes this a Mass Effect game? Is it enough to repurpose some concept art from the trilogy, and musical themes from the Mass Effect soundtracks, and to stick an N7 decal on your character's armor?

[Kabooooom]

The region is governed, if it is governed, by some authority we've never heard of. Our adversary, when we get one, is one we've never heard of before.

What, if anything, makes this a Mass Effect game? Is it enough to repurpose some concept art from the trilogy, and musical themes from the Mass Effect soundtracks, and to stick an N7 decal on your character's armor?

You do realize that you just exactly described how all of us felt when we were first introduced to Mass Effect at the start of Mass Effect 1, right? We were dumped on a colony none of us cared about, governed by an organization none of us heard of, which itself was part of a larger organization none of us heard of, composed of multiple unfamiliar species to which we had no emotional attachment, and we were introduced to an enemy that we had never encountered before.

Again, wtf is up with all this nonsense talk about what Mass Effect *should* be and what defines it? Do you seriously think that you couldn't start fresh with a new trilogy in a brand new setting and have it NOT be Mass Effect?

I'm sorry man, but that seems super closed-minded to me. And unadventurous.