Theoretically? Yes.
Really? Depends.
Tech at the most part in ME1 was based on real life theoretical/proposed technologies. Element Zero is the in-universe version of exotic particles, ie. "Space Magic".
However, all this started to decay as the devs took more and more artistic liberties on the cost of credibility.
Near future: holographic interfaces, gene therapy and enhancements, VI computers, some medical improvements like medigel - very possible.
Distant future: space travel to other star systems, would require some new type of power source.
Very distant future: FTL? This one's tricky. Laws of the universe say you can't travel faster than the speed of light. This rule would have to be bent somehow. Problematic.
Unknown: galactic society - galaxy is a huge place, if other races are out there it would be difficult for 2 of them to make contact even more for 3-4 like the Council races in ME.
To answer the original question, yes Mass Effect is pretty realistic, at least compared with other science fiction brands like Star Wars. ME tries to explain a lot of the tech and in-universe stuff and make them sound at least plausible. That is one of the things i like about this game.
No, not a chance humanity would get this advanced and surpass aliens in matter of just 40 years.
As well political parts of the ME universe is way too simplistic.
However, all this started to decay as the devs took more and more artistic liberties on the cost of credibility.
Like the Lazarus Project. I'm not that well informed on medical facts, but I knew while seeing it that even if, and that's a big IF, you could restore the body and mind to working condition that there would be no remenants of the person in it. It would be a hollow shell, or blank sheet so to say.
When I play Mass Effect the one thing I always thought that in 150 years this could actually happen (besides the Reapers) It makes sense the way the aliens are and the galatic government thing and how the Humans discover and react to the other species, relays etc..
I think it would be awesome to have Turians, Krogans, Asari etc..
Do you think this future (besides Reapers) is possible?
Very very very very doubtful.
Let's start off with hearing. Because you've got to be able to hear somebody to communicate with them. Aliens could have hearing that is waaaaaaaaaay above our ability to hear and could have ears that drown out lower voices. In other words, we could be spouting off information (in the form of FM or AM radio waves) that sound like absolute garbage to them simply because they can't decode it.
Possible? Yeh. Probable? Prolly not. But I suspended belief towards this to enjoy the game.
What we'd have to do is figure out a way to build some sort of translator for everything and then figure a way out mathematically to build it (just like in Contact) and then we could get our xenolinguists (or rather, people who have studied how aliens communicate (or possibly linguists, hell, I dunno)) on it and then we might be able to have a conversation with them. And that after it's traveled X number of years and if they have a listening spot set up and are convinced it's not an alien attack of some sort. Just like in Contact.
There's actually a creature on Earth that can sort of have sex with anything, although they look far from sex dolls
http://news.sciencem...ng-borrowed-dna
Well QECs are slowly becoming a reality:
http://www.nature.co...the-lab-1.15093
Obviously, we aren't to the point of Mass Effect with seamless audio and visual communication across the galaxy, but we the fact that we are starting to incorporate quantum mechanics into our communication networks is pretty sci-fi/Mass Effect-ish.
Well apart from the mass effect and asari. Mass Effect requires some modified laws of physics or a particle so elusive that we havent managed to even glimpse it while smashing protons together at gigaelectronvolt energy ranges. It still might exist but I dont think it would be as convenient as eezo is. As for Asari, well their main method of procreation is just plain magic and ties in with the ability of a biological being somehow use the already mentioned mass effect.
Oh and quantum entanglement, while most evidence says its impossible to make it I suspect they simply used the name because it sounded cool. After all a lot of ME2 is about looking and sounding cool.
As for the rest. Well, omnitools are certainly possible, most of the technology exists today but just is not small enough or refined enough to work in a way its advertised in ME games.
Genetic engineering is also possible, and more than that its probably within a decade or two before its in more than experimental use. After all they have already managed to successfully create a baby out of 3 parent dna.
travel to other star systems is also possible, probably within a decade or two if the big space powers stop trying to fight and cooperate. Project deadalus was calculated using the 60's technology in mind. It would probably take a few dozen years to go to Alpha Centauri and back and would cost more than pretty much anything ever done combined but its doable. Just very very hard.
But really before we go off jetting to other solar systems we have so much to do in our own. There are whole planets worth of resources just floating in between mars and Jupiter, Saturn or Neptune would be a great source of hydrogen and its various isotopes like H-3. The world's economy is stalling because the growth markets are tiny compared to 30 years ago. Everyone knows that our industry is using way too much of various rare elements and most of them can never be recycled. So if we dont want to slide back into pre-WW2 era technology we actually do need to go to space and start mining and exploiting. Plus imagine how many jobs it would create.
EDIT: Haha, I forgot I already posted here!
No. In fact, looking back, we'll see it as not just fictional, but absolutely cartoonish.
However, aspects of pretty much everything is possible.
Technology? We'll likely use a lot of these tech concepts as time goes on, though not even close to the same use or extent.
Species? Very unlikely we'll see these humans in alien masks.
Mass Relay-ish transportation? Maybe. We like to think it can be a thing. But we have very little to go on.
Much of Mass Effect 'works' because of a very specific 'setup' that the Reapers put us into, and the writers allow. It is humanity breaking out into the unknown and going... oh, we were basically a small tribe that bumped into the first world. We see there's already a 'federation of planets' going on and we're the relative small fries for at least a little while.
So we have to take that as a given, and I'm not prepared to do that. Even if there are more 'enlightened federations' out there, their way of things may still not match our ways at all.
A lot of things also depend on your default standpoint for technological development:
Humanistic (flat) - None of Mass Effect is even close to what we'll see in our lifetimes, or any predictable future
Transhumanistic (increasing) - Much of Mass Effect is possible, but the context is totally off in nearly every way
Posthumanistic (exponential) - Most of Mass Effect is possible and may be at least glimpsed in our lifetimes, not that it'll actually happen
Mass Effect presents us with a 'stage'. And this 'stage' is filled with props and dialogue that all 'fits' together. We don't get challenged too much about the messiness of how things would really work, or how much work it'd take to make things happen. Mass Effect is made as the type of scifi meant to *inspire* us, but we have to know that it is based on hope, not reality. Mass Effect is NOT 'low scifi', but a whole range of low, mid, and high scifi at different points, and depending on choices and what missions you expose yourself to.
Low - What we know is possible (ME1 trending here)
Mid - What we can think is possible (ME2 trending here)
High - What we can imagine is possible (ME3 trending here)
This may be a contentious position, but I like to think of the 3 'games' as the 'Books of Shepard'. 100s of years from now, we may (or may not, but I'm just saying how it looks like how part of them are set up as) look back on them and pick and choose what was right or wrong about the games and how much was predicted of the whole fate of humanity, and what was complete fantasy.
Scifi is so often meant as an experiment in itself. It knows that we're not going to live in those stories. It knows that the context of 100s-1000s of years in the future is going to be actually unrelatible to us. But it tells the story anyway, to inspire us not just about humanity on Earth (this is more a religion thing, and something we more often see in Dragon Age), but either moving our humanity beyond Earth, or moving beyond humanity itself.
So there's going to be a tether to 'Earth' - there's going to be a lot of things we see (tech, aliens, planets, govts, etc) that either look familiar or look more possible than other things... but there's also going to be a lot of things that we just - based on the info we currently have - HOPE (or fear) will happen.
Normandy is a big example. We want it to exist. Many of us even have a part of us that needs to believe that a ship like that will exist. We really desire humanity to get to the point where space flight like that is not just possible, but widespread and encouraged. But it isn't - we're only going off the foundations of our lives here on Earth, and imagining a future that trends off of this foundation.
If Mass Effect was exclusively low scifi then I'd say that it was quite possible and realistic. However, it isn't. It goes all over the place, and acts as a tribute to all degrees of scifi that I can never say that it is going to happen in any real way. But it makes us think. It makes us want. It makes us dream. I think it is successful as scifi because of that.
And because it is that kind of scifi, Mass Effect seems to already be, and may in the future be instrumental in where we guide our science and technology in the near to mid future. Millennials, of business and of government and of science, etc, now have a segment of their population that doesn't just dream of Star Trek, but PLANS FROM Mass Effect. We (not just media, imo) call a development that heals wounds quickly, 'medigel'. We think of the Reapers with AI now. We take the concept of the Citadel from an art rendering to dream of, into an actual desired future living space that we'll want to have if (*IF*) we get to live in space this century. There was probably an increased curiosity in 'hard light', and wondering about how we'll actually practically and ethically develop and use brain implants. I could go on and on.
So yeah, Mass Effect being real isn't the point. It is about the science, and the fictions we can create from it, that propel us forward. This is one of the biggest differences between 'fantasy' genre and 'scifi' genre. Fantasy keeps us where we are, but happier about that. Scifi takes us outside, and encourages us to explore it. (IN GENERAL)
Near future: holographic interfaces, gene therapy and enhancements, VI computers, some medical improvements like medigel - very possible.
Distant future: space travel to other star systems, would require some new type of power source.
Very distant future: FTL? This one's tricky. Laws of the universe say you can't travel faster than the speed of light. This rule would have to be bent somehow. Problematic.
Unknown: galactic society - galaxy is a huge place, if other races are out there it would be difficult for 2 of them to make contact even more for 3-4 like the Council races in ME.
To answer the original question, yes Mass Effect is pretty realistic, at least compared with other science fiction brands like Star Wars. ME tries to explain a lot of the tech and in-universe stuff and make them sound at least plausible. That is one of the things i like about this game.
I like this post. Mass Effect DOES have several major developments that at the time (2000s, as opposed to our 2010s) were seen as more fanciful, but potentially possible. And now (in the 2010s) seem to be on their way in the next 10-20 years in widespread use.
Its the stuff that takes us more into space, and beyond (applications of space, like the LOL-Crucible), that take us into more fanciful territory.
A lot of things also depend on how VI and AI development will proceed. Some think it won't make good enough strides (to make breakthroughs by itself, without constant human programming) for another 1-2 decades, while others think several decades, and others think it won't happen for centuries - even fewer think it'll never happen, but they're now becoming a distinct minority that blocks themselves off from any sort of futurethinking. But once it does, it sounds possible that technological advancement may skyrocket (something the Kurzweils of the world seem to count on this century, or even half century).
But as it is, I'm preparing myself for the world of my 30s-50s (I'm 25 today) to include, as you said: greater use of holograms and virtual interfaces, more natural *seeming* computers (thus still VI), significant (though gradual) medical strides that may astonish many, and well, having a child with my GAY boyfriend and even being able to decide if I want proactive immunity to some of the worst conditions that child may be born with otherwise. And of course, more.
SOME SOURCES:
Biological Same Sex Parent Babies Could be a Reality by 2017 -http://www.thedailyb...reality-by-2017
(what was approx 10% as useful as a normal human hand in the 2000s, if that, is now more like 50% or more (and obviously better than the impaired hand from the video), and on its way to possibly near-human capability in the 2020s PLUS sensors that send the sense of touch to our minds; once it reaches at least around human capability, we may see the mainstreaming begin)
Like the Lazarus Project. I'm not that well informed on medical facts, but I knew while seeing it that even if, and that's a big IF, you could restore the body and mind to working condition that there would be no remenants of the person in it. It would be a hollow shell, or blank sheet so to say.
I don't think it was just about restoring the body and mind, but the memory centers themselves.
http://www.techtimes...rs-patients.htm
Memories are about connections, and restoring memories is about matching the brain to other parts of itself that was the condition it was in earlier (to put it in more kindergarden terms I guess lol).
Lazarus Project was making a 'new' Shepard, despite the tone of the trilogy that this was the 'real' Shepard. But this Shepard was, in fact, a manufactured one that only has a brain that is emulated to have as close to Shepard's known memories as possible. Thus the testing by Miranda between Lazarus Base and Freedom's Progress.
ME2+ Shepard, upon recovery, could certainly be seen as a blank sheet, but Cerberus/Miranda 'drew' on it in the recovery process. Shepard is dead, long live Shepard.
We can surmise that Cerberus attempted to learn as much about Shepard as possible, and had the technology to emulate the memories of these events (or rather the facts and feelings of these events) in Shepard's brain. Since it was STILL HIS brain, I'm sure many memories were easier to rejuvenate (see the above link on what we're even working on in the 2010s, let alone 2170s), but others had to be more artificially constructed. They had the organic base to work off of (so things didn't need to be exact!!! an important point), but it had to be as close as they could manage. They wanted 'Shepard'.
The interesting side effect of all this that we can imagine, is that ME2+ Shepard actually has more room to grow and change (in various ways) compared to ME1 Shepard. ME1 Shepard was in his 30s and with a matured mind that would likely believe certain things forever. But this Shepard may be more open to new information and new choices and along with a more powerful body, he can enact greater change and violence and possibilities based on this changing perspective. I actually doubt that ME1 Shepard would ever ever talk to Legion in such an initially diplomatic manner, TBH.
Basically... Lazarus Project itself is not based on medical fact, but general theory. But ME1 Shepard DID die, and we have to decide whether what was (in the brain) organically rebuilt was a return of ME1 Shepard, or that ME2+ Shepard is a new entity that works off of what ME1 Shepard started. The trilogy does handwave most of this off though, with the bigger message of 'It is Shepard enough, regardless.'
I think Bioware was more interested at the time in the philosophy of it, than the plausibility. It may be plausible in the future, but we don't know really how it could be done ('bio synthetic fusion'? Uh, huh? Okay!), and when it'll be possible. And even then, from our HUMAN perspective, such a person would have already been dead and will stay dead, and the resulting person from the surgery is the revenant. Or more spiritual or mental resurrection, if you're less human and more transhuman in thought about it.
The more Renegade you play things in ME2, keeping the scars, the more you can believe Shepard is but a vengeful zombie Shepard. Still a Shepard, but a corruption, a tool to make things happen.
It's a universe based on the power of magic rocks, so no.
I don't think it was just about restoring the body and mind, but the memory centers themselves.
http://www.techtimes...rs-patients.htm
Memories are about connections, and restoring memories is about matching the brain to other parts of itself that was the condition it was in earlier (to put it in more kindergarden terms I guess lol).
Lazarus Project was making a 'new' Shepard, despite the tone of the trilogy that this was the 'real' Shepard. But this Shepard was, in fact, a manufactured one that only has a brain that is emulated to have as close to Shepard's known memories as possible. Thus the testing by Miranda between Lazarus Base and Freedom's Progress.
ME2+ Shepard, upon recovery, could certainly be seen as a blank sheet, but Cerberus/Miranda 'drew' on it in the recovery process. Shepard is dead, long live Shepard.
We can surmise that Cerberus attempted to learn as much about Shepard as possible, and had the technology to emulate the memories of these events (or rather the facts and feelings of these events) in Shepard's brain. Since it was STILL HIS brain, I'm sure many memories were easier to rejuvenate (see the above link on what we're even working on in the 2010s, let alone 2170s), but others had to be more artificially constructed. They had the organic base to work off of (so things didn't need to be exact!!! an important point), but it had to be as close as they could manage. They wanted 'Shepard'.
The interesting side effect of all this that we can imagine, is that ME2+ Shepard actually has more room to grow and change (in various ways) compared to ME1 Shepard. ME1 Shepard was in his 30s and with a matured mind that would likely believe certain things forever. But this Shepard may be more open to new information and new choices and along with a more powerful body, he can enact greater change and violence and possibilities based on this changing perspective. I actually doubt that ME1 Shepard would ever ever talk to Legion in such an initially diplomatic manner, TBH.
Basically... Lazarus Project itself is not based on medical fact, but general theory. But ME1 Shepard DID die, and we have to decide whether what was (in the brain) organically rebuilt was a return of ME1 Shepard, or that ME2+ Shepard is a new entity that works off of what ME1 Shepard started. The trilogy does handwave most of this off though, with the bigger message of 'It is Shepard enough, regardless.'
I think Bioware was more interested at the time in the philosophy of it, than the plausibility. It may be plausible in the future, but we don't know really how it could be done ('bio synthetic fusion'? Uh, huh? Okay!), and when it'll be possible. And even then, from our HUMAN perspective, such a person would have already been dead and will stay dead, and the resulting person from the surgery is the revenant. Or more spiritual or mental resurrection, if you're less human and more transhuman in thought about it.
The more Renegade you play things in ME2, keeping the scars, the more you can believe Shepard is but a vengeful zombie Shepard. Still a Shepard, but a corruption, a tool to make things happen.
Oh. It always came off as "we restored him from charcoal, Shepard is alive mind body and soul all original." The body? Sure. The brain? Sure. The soul? I don't buy it one bit. That is gone and duplicating it would be a near imposible miracle. Mainly because of his morality, no matter how many original memories you put in the new conciousnes in him will make it's own morality because Shepard, who was made through his life experiences, is dead. I get you could make a close enogh copy, but they never treated him as that.
Oh. It always came off as "we restored him from charcoal, Shepard is alive mind body and soul all original." The body? Sure. The brain? Sure. The soul? I don't buy it one bit. That is gone and duplicating it would be a near imposible miracle. Mainly because of his morality, no matter how many original memories you put in the new conciousnes in him will make it's own morality because Shepard, who was made through his life experiences, is dead. I get you could make a close enogh copy, but they never treated him as that.
The soul is utterly subjective, and people only believe it for Shepard because:
1)They want to, they think they need to
2)Shepard is convincing enough as the continuation of Shepard's soul
Shepard may still be a (even so barely by the end, in ways) human, but the 'soul' part is more of an emerging, but still minor, posthumanist narrative.
If you don't buy the soul part, I think the trilogy is completely fine with that, as it never confirms it. You can even believe that the mind is not the soul.
I think the deal with ME2 Shepard was that he was, in fact, to the extent that a human organization and program a human mind, designed to have remembered his experiences like ME1 would, even if not exactly. Especially given that he 'thinks like a Prothian' from the Cypher, this may be possible.
Keep in mind that there's many scientific thoughts that we change who we fundamentally are on a fairly regular basis - we just don't consider it that way until put in front of that mirror. For the resurrection of Shepard, it was just much more drastic and involved a time of being dead. This is especially a big deal for us, as we still debate whether someone can come back from brain death, and whether the ones who seemed they did, were actually 'brain dead' or simply a form of comatose and therefore it doesn't count.
I think there were just so many debatable and fundamental questions about this subject in 2009-2010, that Bioware decided to just present the SUBJECT to us and let us decide what we wanted to decide. In the end, we get *A* Shepard, and one that others and himself either views as either Shepard-returned, or Shepard-enough, or new-Shepard, depending on the scene and character POV and part in the plot it takes place on.
At the very least, it can get us to wonder a bit about human identity (as in, identity about being human) without the theme being forced on us or us being dictated constantly about it. If we want to believe Shepard died and came back - the narrative supports that the most. But if we want to believe he never came back, and we're playing a false reconstruction of him - the narrative brings that up and it may nag at our thoughts. And if we want to believe we're playing a both newly returned AND utterly improved version of him - the narrative suggests this.
EDIT: I don't want to say that I think Bioware is going for 'deep thoughts' on the matter, but that instead, they at least want to bring up the concept, as it may be important or interesting either now (IRL or in the series) or in the future.
Personally, I have my theories on how the more handwaved aspects of what Shepard went through, may actually be core to how a lot of the next game, or 'ME5' at latest. But for now, they're just introduced and brought up now and then. Shepard is Shepard, is the trilogy consensus, whatever 'Shepard' means.
Well, medi-gel exists and holograms are sort of a thing so... half-way there.
but they may actually find something greater than we ever imagined.
No element zero, no mass effect fields. In the near future we will find that the subatomic world is either pixelated or infinitely small (re: holographic universe theory). If the former, then there are smallest, finite pieces of information that make up every piece of matter that we may eventually learn to manipulate. Could such a technology approximate a mass effect field? I have no clue. I couldn't even get past Special Relativity and Electromagnetism in college. A pox upon Fourier equations and my inability to wield them.
Well, lets think about how fast humanity is developing. In 1903 the first plane was invented. In less than 40 years a plane achieved the speed of sound. Less than 30 years after that, a human was walking on the moon. 50 years ago, a military with laser technology was only seen in Science Fiction and Space Operas. The United States NAVY has a ship armed with a LaWS laser canon. And speaking of the US NAVY, they have magnetic railgun prototypes. As far as space travel goes, NASA now has an ION Thruster. Space shuttles can reach 18,000 mph, an ION Thruster can reach speeds of over 200,000 mph. It is small and rudimentary, but over time I can see it evolving over the years. In 150 years, I do not believe humanity will have left our solar system, but I can picture a small colony on Luna and Mars. That might be aiming a little high, but God gave us brains, and I have faith in our race.
Just my two cents on the "Lazarus project/soul" discussion going on above: There is no such thing as a soul. It is an infantile concept, cannot be defined scientifically and even beyond that doesn't even have a layman definition that everyone can agree upon. It is an utterly worthless and archaic concept, and modern neurology has kicked that dead horse for well over half a century now..Swoby is (if I am understanding his position correctly) correct - Bioware clearly and obviously takes the modern approach that mind = brain = consciousness, and the philosophical ramifications of someone being truly dead but subsequently revived are equivalent to the SAME thing happening on a shorter time scale commonplace in modern hospitals today. We don't question the person's identity now, and it is stupid to question it in Shep's case for the same reasons. But, the concept touches on the philosophical concept of the "self" and what it even means to be an individual in the first place, as well as religious concepts that Bioware tiptoed around (probably to avoid pissing off fundies or alienating any religious fans). And so, they left the concept of Shep's returning consciousness up to interpretation...even to Shep himself who actively questions the nature of his existence. Which is, in my opinion, one of the most profound concepts presented in the entire series. Bioware handled the matter well.
Moving on. One thing I haven't seen talked about much here are space stations. Within a few hundred years, provided that we don't nuke ourselves to oblivion, we will almost certainly construct Stanford torus style space stations at the Lagrangian points. It is a natural evolution of commercialization of space, and once mining asteroids becomes lucrative it really wont be that hard at all for tech to advance to the point where we can construct one.
And so, I can completely envision a human in the 2200s gazing across a Presidium-esque vista of a Stanford torus in earth orbit. The realism and practicality of that design is one of the reasons I fell in love with mass effect, and also Elysium (although they did it way less accurately).
When I say soul I'm just talking about all the things that make me me and you you. Maybe there is a better word. Conciousnes maybe? Anyway I think you can recreate everything about a person except what made them "them" you know what I mean?
Edit: I shoulda read further before reply, sorry. But I still think it wouldn't be possible to rebuild a persons conciousnes after all that trauma and damage.
It would. All you are is neurons and synapses. If I killed you, and then recreated the architecture of your brain in perfect microscopic detail - you would effectively be revived. That is what our modern understanding of neurology suggests. But beyond that, it likely isn't even necessary to recreate every neuron and synapse perfectly because they change throughout your life - and yet, you still have the perception that "you" have always been the same.When I say soul I'm just talking about all the things that make me me and you you. Maybe there is a better word. Conciousnes maybe? Anyway I think you can recreate everything about a person except what made them "them" you know what I mean?
Edit: I shoulda read further before reply, sorry. But I still think it wouldn't be possible to rebuild a persons conciousnes after all that trauma and damage.
As cool as it would be to discover a world of an all female race that closely resembles human females or the ability of some indiviudals to move crap with their minds harnessing dark energy. In reality I doubt the human race will ever leave our solar system.
I doubt the human race will ever leave our solar system.
Ever? Really?
I'm thankful no one like you was in charge of NASA in the 60's telling everyone we'd never escape our own atmosphere and gravity.
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