87 réponses à ce sujet

[ThomasBlaine]

Canon Shepard is twenty-nine years old when he's made a Spectre. Now, at this point medicine has advanced so far as to give the average human a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty years. Assuming an average real life expectancy of eighty, that makes Shepard fifteen years old!

 

Legally, modern fifteen-yearolds aren't even trusted to drive or drink in most first-world countries, but this teenie bobber is handed the keys to the most advanced warship in the galaxy? Has this been addressed at all?

 

Going by the age of the protagonist alone, Mass Effect could have been an intergalactic high school drama. At least that explains all the hormones flying around.

[God]

Shepard is not 15 years old. He is 29 years old. He has the body of a 29 year old man (or woman, if you play as FemShep). He has the psyche, experience, age, and skill of a person who is 29 years old.

 

This is a catastrophic failure to understand biology on your part. Biology does not work like that. Aging does not work like that. Medicine does not work like that.

 

Shepard will live longer, but there will be no compensation in age by 'setting the clock back' and making him 15 years old. 

 

What it might mean is that he able to keep up and be more youthful for a longer period, especially after the augmentations he receives when he is brought back from the dead.

[Taki17]

People don't age slower with modern medicine, they just live longer because of more diseases can be cured or treated effectively. So 29 years old is 29 then and now. A few centuries ago, people HAD to be considered adults and take on responsible roles earlier (around age 14) because their life expentancy was way lower than ours - the common man rarely lived past 40-50, so a 29 years old was considered an experienced man who lived for a long while. But still, he did not have a body of a 70 years old old man because then people were aging faster...

[BioWareAre****s]

There is so much fail in this post.

The amount you age and how fast doesn't depend on your life span. Similarly, mental progression and maturity isn't affected by that either. Shepard is no different from any modern 29 year old, and yes they are, after 11 years in the military, more than capable of commanding a small ship.

[ThomasBlaine]

I'm not talking about Shepard's biology, I'm talking about his social status as a comparatively very young man/woman. In a society where soldiers can serve well into their nineties before age becomes too much of a hindrance, a twenty-nine year old soldier should be considered pretty young and inexperienced.

 

People don't just grow until they're adults and are then considered uniform "grown-ups". I dare you to find a single thirty-yearold who likes taking orders from a snot-nosed twenty-yearold, and no fifty-yearold I've ever met has trusted anyone under thirty-five to do their jobs properly.  I'm not saying that Shepard is physically a teenager, that was a joke, I'm saying that it makes no sense for the Alliance command or Citadel Council to put so much trust in him with so little experience.

[SilJeff]

Shepard is not 15 years old. He is 29 years old. He has the body of a 29 year old man (or woman, if you play as FemShep). He has the psyche, experience, age, and skill of a person who is 29 years old.

 

This is a catastrophic failure to understand biology on your part. Biology does not work like that. Aging does not work like that. Medicine does not work like that.

 

Shepard will live longer, but there will be no compensation in age by 'setting the clock back' and making him 15 years old. 

 

What it might mean is that he able to keep up and be more youthful for a longer period, especially after the augmentations he receives when he is brought back from the dead.

 

You would know, afterall you created us all

[Excella Gionne]

He/she is 29 and looks like Dr. Chocolates. I can honestly say that the Alliance could care less if an infant controlled the Normandy.

[Arcian]

Canon Shepard is twenty-nine years old when he's made a Spectre. Now, at this point medicine has advanced so far as to give the average human a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty years. Assuming an average real life expectancy of eighty, that makes Shepard fifteen years old!

 

Legally, modern fifteen-yearolds aren't even trusted to drive or drink in most first-world countries, but this teenie bobber is handed the keys to the most advanced warship in the galaxy? Has this been addressed at all?

 

Going by the age of the protagonist alone, Mass Effect could have been an intergalactic high school drama. At least that explains all the hormones flying around.

This is dumb on a Grown Ups or Mall Cop level.

[Taki17]

I'm not talking about Shepard's biology, I'm talking about his social status as a comparatively very young man/woman. In a society where soldiers can serve well into their nineties before age becomes too much of a hindrance, a twenty-nine year old soldier should be considered pretty young and inexperienced.

 

People don't just grow until they're adults and are then considered uniform "grown-ups". I dare you to find a single thirty-yearold who likes taking orders from a snot-nosed twenty-yearold, and no fifty-yearold I've ever met has trusted anyone under thirty-five to do their jobs properly.  I'm not saying that Shepard is physically a teenager, that was a joke, I'm saying that it makes no sense for the Alliance command to put so much trust in him. 

Shepard is an N7 soldier and a war hero, so he probably qualifies as more than experienced. Some of the crew members appear to have served with Shepard before for a short time plus they're on the most advanced Alliance warship under the command of the first human spectre which would make them more than proud to serve.

 

I hardly think people in their ninties are still in active or frontline duty. Plus, the Alliance military is consisted of people who volunteer and the army is considered to be relatively small by Citadel standards. I imagine there's not so many experienced officers still active commanding ships past their 60s.

[BioWareAre****s]

I'm not talking about Shepard's biology, I'm talking about his social status as a comparatively very young man/woman. In a society where soldiers can serve well into their nineties before age becomes too much of a hindrance, a twenty-nine year old soldier should be considered pretty young and inexperienced.

 

People don't just grow until they're adults and are then considered uniform "grown-ups". I dare you to find a single thirty-yearold who likes taking orders from a snot-nosed twenty-yearold, and no fifty-yearold I've ever met has trusted anyone under thirty-five to do their jobs properly.  I'm not saying that Shepard is physically a teenager, that was a joke, I'm saying that it makes no sense for the Alliance command or Citadel Council to put so much trust in him with so little experience.

 

So you think that people start maturing more slowly because they live longer?  That makes no sense whatsoever. You're also making the assumption that because people live for longer they become much much more capable in their old age - I would imagine that a 90 year old wouldn't be in any fit state to serve in the Alliance. They'd likely still be in reasonably good health, but I would put it as more along the lines of a modern-day 60-year-old. Besides, it's not like we actually see anyone over the age of 55 serving in the Alliance.

Also, your comment about older people not wanting to take orders from somebody younger than themselves is pretty...misguided....at best. They're marines, not schoolkids. They take orders from whoever their C.O. is, not whoever they feel like talking to.

And to top all of this off, Hackett - you know, the guy that's in charge of the entire navy - is only in his fifties. So do all of your 90-year-old (imaginary) marines ignore him too?

[ThomasBlaine]

Shepard is an N7 soldier and a war hero, so he probably qualifies as more than experienced. Some of the crew members appear to have served with Shepard before for a short time plus they're on the most advanced Alliance warship under the command of the first human spectre which would make them more than proud to serve.

 

I hardly think people in their ninties are still in active or frontline duty. Plus, the Alliance military is consisted of people who volunteer and the army is considered to be relatively small by Citadel standards. I imagine there's not so many experienced officers still active commanding ships past their 60s.

 

The canon Shepard is a Sole Survivor, not a War Hero, and the equivalent of Special Forces training doesn't make up for an extra thirty years of service in the eyes of people who have gone through those extra thirty years of service and not the N7 training regimen. And if the logic is that Spectre status and an awesome ship will make people more willing to serve under him then why the hell give those to someone barely out of training?

 

Why wouldn't they still be in active service? Given a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty years, a ninety-three-yearold would be the equivalent of a fifty-yearold in real life. I'm sure the US military has plenty of active if not frontline officers around that age.

[ThomasBlaine]

So you think that people start maturing more slowly because they live longer?  That makes no sense whatsoever. You're also making the assumption that because people live for longer they become much much more capable in their old age - I would imagine that a 90 year old wouldn't be in any fit state to serve in the Alliance. They'd likely still be in reasonably good health, but I would put it as more along the lines of a modern-day 60-year-old. Besides, it's not like we actually see anyone over the age of 55 serving in the Alliance.

Also, your comment about older people not wanting to take orders from somebody younger than themselves is pretty...misguided....at best. They're marines, not schoolkids. They take orders from whoever their C.O. is, not whoever they feel like talking to.

And to top all of this off, Hackett - you know, the guy that's in charge of the entire navy - is only in his fifties. So do all of your 90-year-old (imaginary) marines ignore him too?

 

Can you read? No I don't think people would mature more slowly, but years of experience count for a hell of a lot and being less than half the age of the average working man would not make you look very experienced or trustworthy. I didn't realize that Hackett was only twenty years older than Shepard, sorry, and he looks even older than that. With an average lifespan of one hundred and fifty years and Shepard able to punch combat robots to death wearing gloves that are penetrable by bullets, medical science being able to keep a man spry and active for a lot longer than sixty or seventy years seemed pretty plausible. I was wrong.

 

I guess we could make a thread discussing the insane overpopulation of elderly people humanity must have been struggling with, but the Reapers hopefully solved that problem for the time being.

 

Your idea that soldiers are computers who would care nothing about a huge lack of experience and credibility in their commander when their lives literally depended on it, however, is perfectly ridiculous. And this wouldn't just have been following a younger officer because you were told to, this would have been personally deciding to make someone a third your age the military representative of your species. I would laugh at an idea like that in real life.

[God]

Speaking as a 25 year old Army Officer and veteran who has NCO assistants nearly twice my age answering to me, I can tell you your point is way off. Like completely way off. I'm half-convinced this is a troll thread.

 

I do a good job. My NCO's acknowledge that. They support me a hundred percent, and I pay out their support by pulling through and getting the mission accomplished with my team. We have our disagreements and clashes, but at the end of the day, I'm one hundred percent confident in their abilities, and they are most certainly one hundred percent confident in my own.

 

I know plenty of officers with NCO's twice their age who are able to be an effective command presence and team. 

 

Also, I really don't think you understand biological processes of aging. You're literally looking at the view with the same kind of scientific perspective as a young-earth Creationist.

 

A 90 year old in Mass Effect is not '50 years old physically'. Where the hell are you pulling that out of? Boot polished corn-holes where the sun don't shine? Most likely.

 

Your point is invalid on the basis of you showing complete ignorance of senescence in biological organisms, even in the medically advanced future. You're living a longer, healthier life, but that by no means equals you living with the body of a 50 year old at 90 years old. Biology simply does not work that way.

[bunch1]

We know that in the ME universe humans still consider 18 the age of maturity in the eyes of the law considering Shepard joins the alliance when he/she turns 18, which has been the case for American for a long time even as the average life span has increased of the last 100 years.  Living longer likly only means that retirment has been pushed back from 30 years of service to 50-60.  Still, it's not likly that your going to find alot of humans who will be able to sustain the level of fitness required to serve in front line infantry unit which Shepard is until his arival on the Normandy at 50 or 60, todays retriment age would likly see most of those old men and women being transfered to highler level command postions, desk jobs, or simply pushed out of the service.  And as far as age and command goes it dosen't really matter.  In todays military if a 30 year master sargent and a 22 2ed lieutant meet that master sargent is going to do what the lieutenant says because it has been drilled into his head for 30 years to obey the orders of those appointed over him.  And if they factored in age when they chose specters then no one outside of Asari of Krogan could be considered because they are the only ones with hundreds of years of experince.  But they don't, the specters are chosen because of ability and their is nothing that prevent a 29 year old human from being a better shot or tech expert then a 60 year old human or 400 year old asari or 17 year of Salarian.

[dreamgazer]

I'm half-convinced this is a troll thread.

Canon Shepard is twenty-nine years old when he's made a Spectre. Now, at this point medicine has advanced so far as to give the average human a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty years. Assuming an average real life expectancy of eighty, that makes Shepard fifteen years old!

... half?

[BioWareAre****s]

Can you read? No I don't think people would mature more slowly, but years of experience count for a hell of a lot and being less than half the age of the average working man would not make you look very experienced or trustworthy. I didn't realize that Hackett was only twenty years older than Shepard, sorry, and he looks even older than that. With an average lifespan of one hundred and fifty years and Shepard able to punch combat robots to death wearing gloves that are penetrable by bullets, medical science being able to keep a man spry and active for a lot longer than sixty or seventy years seemed pretty plausible. I was wrong.

 

I guess we could make a thread discussing the insane overpopulation of elderly people humanity must have been struggling with, but the Reapers hopefully solved that problem for the time being.

 

Your idea that soldiers are computers who would care nothing about a huge lack of experience and credibility in their commander when their lives literally depended on it, however, is perfectly ridiculous. And this wouldn't just have been following a younger officer because you were told to, this would have been personally deciding to make someone a third your age the military representative of your species. I would laugh at an idea like that in real life.

 

No, I can't read.

 

I just don't see people over 50-60 - or even many over 40 - wanting to be in the military. They've done their bit and moved on, now it's time to see what else is out there. Less of life being stretched out over twice the length of time and more of life giving you twice the number of opportunities.

 

And soldiers do not have the liberty of choosing which orders to obey whether you like that or not. My granddad was a C.O. in his mid-twenties, commanding people older than himself. He wasn't even the youngest person at his rank. It's about who's best for the job, not how old they are.

[AresKeith]

... half?

 

Should see his threads on the DA board

[God]

... half?

 

Okay.

 

80/20.

 

Reported.

[Valmar]

If that is how you want to measure someones age and maturity then none of the races other than the Krogan or Asari should be wielding any kind of power. Being 150 years old to us means we're old and on our final days, to Asari it means they're ready to leave the house. Lol.

 

Trolling aside I do wonder what the age equivalent is in Mass Effect's universe in relation to today's eldery. I mean I know that just because humans live to be 150 that a 80 year old isn't going to be jumping around like a spry teenager... but it stands to reason that they would be significantly more healthy and able-bodied than a 80 year old of today. I mean, if 80 in ME is the exact same as 80 today what is even the point of wanting to live to 150. It seems like it'd only get progressively worse. Think of poor Miranda then who apparently going to live even longer than that.

 

So I would expect that us living to 150 is indicative of humans being able to stay in decent, healthy shape for longer than we can today. That we can go slightly longer before the effects of age really begin to impede on our lives.

 

In terms of life-expectancy Mass Effect's middle-aged, for example, should be around 70 years old. We see Zaeed who we assume is a fairly 'old' vet merc yet he has no problem keeping up with Shepard and squad. Anderson is 50 years old ingame, from what I remember, and claims he's too old to be running around the galaxy yet seems to be perfectly able to survive and hold off reaper forces for months on end. I got the assumption that his age-weariness was more mental than anything physical - all in all he seemed to be in good shape.

[ThomasBlaine]

Speaking as a 25 year old Army Officer and veteran who has NCO assistants nearly twice my age answering to me, I can tell you your point is way off. Like completely way off. I'm half-convinced this is a troll thread.

 

I do a good job. My NCO's acknowledge that. They support me a hundred percent, and I pay out their support by pulling through and getting the mission accomplished with my team. We have our disagreements and clashes, but at the end of the day, I'm one hundred percent confident in their abilities, and they are most certainly one hundred percent confident in my own.

 

I know plenty of officers with NCO's twice their age who are able to be an effective command presence and team. 

 

Also, I really don't think you understand biological processes of aging. You're literally looking at the view with the same kind of scientific perspective as a young-earth Creationist.

 

A 90 year old in Mass Effect is not '50 years old physically'. Where the hell are you pulling that out of? Boot polished corn-holes where the sun don't shine? Most likely.

 

Your point is invalid on the basis of you showing complete ignorance of senescence in biological organisms, even in the medically advanced future. You're living a longer, healthier life, but that by no means equals you living with the body of a 50 year old at 90 years old. Biology simply does not work that way.

 

Cute, I just so happen to be Barack Obama. Clap yourself on the shoulder and consider it an order from your President. I've never cared to find out exactly what a troll thread is supposed to be, so I can't help you on that one.

 

I assumed that the current specific biological process would be close to irrelevant, seeing as few who live under close to ideal circumstances today make it past ninety-five and the absolute average human in ME can magically expect to live to one hundred and fifty. That that just means that practically infirm seniors(based on Hackett's appearance at 51) in ME are kept alive for an extra fifty years didn't really occur to me, so I thought that the aging process itself was slowed at some point after thirty(based on Shepard's appearance at 29).

 

In hindsight I arrived at the ninety years by some very, very crude calculations that entirely failed to take into consideration that Shepard isn't actually a teenager at 29, but my basic point was indeed that a much longer lifespan equating a much longer prime would mean that twenty-nine year old Shepard should have been considered very, very young for the ridiculous responsibility given to him by people much, much more experienced than he is, especially because he is a Spectre candidate before anyone even realizes that there's a crisis going on needing his specific attention.

 

In the absence of the huge elderly problem we never hear about in-game, that seemed more or less sound. I was wrong, shoot me.

 

... half?

 

That was a joke.

 

No, I can't read.

 

I just don't see people over 50-60 - or even many over 40 - wanting to be in the military. They've done their bit and moved on, now it's time to see what else is out there. Less of life being stretched out over twice the length of time and more of life giving you twice the number of opportunities.

 

And soldiers do not have the liberty of choosing which orders to obey whether you like that or not. My granddad was a C.O. in his mid-twenties, commanding people older than himself. He wasn't even the youngest person at his rank. It's about who's best for the job, not how old they are.

 

Okay, sorry, that was a stupid thing to write. I was just irritated that you read something that wasn't there.

 

Good point, I didn't consider that. With Hackett looking the way he does at just fifty-one, though...

 

I never said anything about people refusing to follow Shepard's orders on account of his age, I was speaking in terms of him being specifically chosen for so much responsibility even though he would have been practically unproven in the field.

 

 

Should see his threads on the DA board

 

Go for it. Show us what threads it is you mean. I have absolutely no idea.

 

 

If that is how you want to measure someones age and maturity then none of the races other than the Krogan or Asari should be wielding any kind of power. Being 150 years old to us means we're old and on our final days, to Asari it means they're ready to leave the house. Lol.

 

Trolling aside I do wonder what the age equivalent is in Mass Effect's universe in relation to today's eldery. I mean I know that just because humans live to be 150 that a 80 year old isn't going to be jumping around like a spry teenager... but it stands to reason that they would be significantly more healthy and able-bodied than a 80 year old of today. I mean, if 80 in ME is the exact same as 80 today what is even the point of wanting to live to 150. It seems like it'd only get progressively worse. Think of poor Miranda then who apparently going to live even longer than that.

 

So I would expect that us living to 150 is indicative of humans being able to stay in decent, healthy shape for longer than we can today. That we can go slightly longer before the effects of age really begin to impede on our lives.

 

In terms of life-expectancy Mass Effect's middle-aged, for example, should be around 70 years old. We see Zaeed who we assume is a fairly 'old' vet merc yet he has no problem keeping up with Shepard and squad. Anderson is 50 years old ingame, from what I remember, and claims he's too old to be running around the galaxy yet seems to be perfectly able to survive and hold off reaper forces for months on end. I got the assumption that his age-weariness was more mental than anything physical - all in all he seemed to be in good shape.

 

Well, Hackett looks to be in his middle to late sixties, albeit fit, at 51 years, so now I really don't know what to think.

[Massa FX]

Anti-aging medicine + space magic + artistic license= 15 year olds running the verse.

 

? eh?

[Pasquale1234]

If that is how you want to measure someones age and maturity then none of the races other than the Krogan or Asari should be wielding any kind of power. Being 150 years old to us means we're old and on our final days, to Asari it means they're ready to leave the house. Lol.
 
Trolling aside I do wonder what the age equivalent is in Mass Effect's universe in relation to today's eldery. I mean I know that just because humans live to be 150 that a 80 year old isn't going to be jumping around like a spry teenager... but it stands to reason that they would be significantly more healthy and able-bodied than a 80 year old of today. I mean, if 80 in ME is the exact same as 80 today what is even the point of wanting to live to 150. It seems like it'd only get progressively worse. Think of poor Miranda then who apparently going to live even longer than that.
 
So I would expect that us living to 150 is indicative of humans being able to stay in decent, healthy shape for longer than we can today. That we can go slightly longer before the effects of age really begin to impede on our lives.
 
In terms of life-expectancy Mass Effect's middle-aged, for example, should be around 70 years old. We see Zaeed who we assume is a fairly 'old' vet merc yet he has no problem keeping up with Shepard and squad. Anderson is 50 years old ingame, from what I remember, and claims he's too old to be running around the galaxy yet seems to be perfectly able to survive and hold off reaper forces for months on end. I got the assumption that his age-weariness was more mental than anything physical - all in all he seemed to be in good shape.

Anderson's line about his "twilight years" really bugged me for these reasons.

With 150-year lifespans, the average retirement age would need to be pushed to ~ 100 or so to avoid financial disaster. I would expect military service to run more like 40 years to full retirement instead of the 20 years in place today.

[Loufi]

No, people can progress pretty fast in the military hierarchy, especially when they're highly talented like Shepard is. Napoleon Bonarparte was general at 27.

 

But anyway, Shepard's age is more related to the fact that the ME franchise targets an audience of young adults. Setting Shepard's age between 25 and 35 is logical from that point of view.

[o Ventus]

Canon Shepard is twenty-nine years old when he's made a Spectre. Now, at this point medicine has advanced so far as to give the average human a life expectancy of a hundred and fifty years. Assuming an average real life expectancy of eighty, that makes Shepard fifteen years old!

 

No, it makes Shepard 29 years old. 

 

You have no idea how numbers work.