160 réponses à ce sujet

[Former_Fiend]

Speaking as someone who rather enjoys the series overall and doesn't necessarily see this as a bad thing, I'd have to agree that if anything, the setting did become less realistic, less hard in the sci-fi sense as it went on. When put next to something like Project Lazarus bringing a person back from the dead, more military jargon doesn't tip the scales towards more realistic.

 

Again, I don't see this as an inherently bad thing. My favorite sci-fi tend to be on the soft end of the Mohs scale.

[dreamgazer]

Xelander is right. Mass Effect was a hard Sci-Fi.

Nope, never was. Whatever minuscule hardness was left after the world-building, magic brain filters and asari-cloning plants of ME1 was lost when the universe cured death with "resources".

[rashie]

Xelander is right. Mass Effect was a hard Sci-Fi. People tend to misunderstand what fiction means, That introducing new element like Element Zero is space magic and yet you find the same people praising Star Wars, That's basically a fantasy franchise set in space. It lost this hardness to a poetic, Emotional and post-modernist narrative in ME3 though.

Whether something is hard or soft sci-fi isn't so much about whether it introduces new concepts but whether those concepts would be even remotely plausible within known physics and science at the time of judging.

 

Concepts such as bringing someone back from beyond the grave after they have been dead for a month, doesn't fit there.

[dreamgazer]

As i have stated, Do some research about the subject, It's plausible and it's something that has crossed my mind before. And i imagine it has crossed the mind of several other fiction writers.

"Do some research" on what subject?

Magic brain filters? Plants that instantly clone humanoid creatures? Brain death and the revitalization of a person's memories and personality afterwards?

Having the same thought as other writers somehow makes the science-fiction harder?

[Former_Fiend]

For the Record, ME1 was rated as a 4 on the Mohs Scale, which is on the harder end, with Element Zero and the mass effect fields it generates being the "one big lie" that separates the series from true physical accuracy. 

 

Personally I'd be more inclined to label the series as a whole as a three, and I could see how someone might label it as a two.

[dreamgazer]

Whether something is hard or soft sci-fi isn't so much about whether it introduces new concepts but whether those concepts would be even remotely plausible within known physics and science at the time of judging.
 
Concepts such as bringing someone back from beyond the grave after they have been dead for a month, doesn't fit there.

Ding, ding, ding.

[SlottsMachine]

Yeah, but I don't think resurrecting a human that has been turned into hamburger was what they had in mind.

[Helios969]

And about the whole Lazarus thing, I don't get why it's so hated. You just have to imagine the thing and do some research. It's theortically possible right now to bring people from the dead, But the causes of death is the foggy and unstable subject right now though they have made some progress. Give humans 100 years and a budget of 4 billion credits, According to Wilson, And they'd get it done. Whether you want to believe it or not, Death is really a disease. The reason why not many details were revealed, Storyline-wise, It's because it doesn't really make sense for you to know it. As the test subject of the project. Though later, BioWare dropped a few hints in ME3. Which made sense.

Sorry, but while it may (eventually) be possible to resurrect someone from the dead, the real issue is returning that person to who they were because memories and thoughts and generally the brain chemistry would decay overtime.  Not to mention the trauma Shep suffered from exposure to vacuum and the resultant freezing of cellular tissue in the brain and the general implausibility of any portion of Shepard surviving reentry intact really tears away at the whole suspension of disbelief.  So unless Cerberus just happened to have a recent neural map of Shep's brain, he or she would have been a drooling vegetable at best.

[Former_Fiend]

That's pretty distant theory, though. An Alcubierre drive that allows FTL travel via manipulating space around the ship is theoretically possible and fits within most models of physics, but is still relatively soft sci fi due to how far off we are from something like that.

[Former_Fiend]

I'm sorry, I'm afraid i don't follow, Maybe it's because I'm not well-versed at geology as much as I am on astrophysics. So, Correct me if I'm wrong, The Mohs scale evalutes how hard it's to obtain a minreal, Am i right?

 

That's where the name comes from, but there is an (unofficial) Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness as well. 

 

There's also a Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness referring to the music genres, for those interested.

[dreamgazer]

The dark energy concept was a bigger mess than the shipped ending. Good riddance.

[Former_Fiend]

I have read what they think of Mass Effect, They kinda have a point, But, They kinda don't as well. In order to judge "Sci"-"Fi", You have to judge the "Sci" as the "Fi" implements it. In other words, You have to understand if things are left open for a reason, Or it's because the writers won't go into larger details. Mass Effect as they have stated, Revolves around Dark Energy, Right from the start, Contrary to popular belief, And its original ending concpetion included Dark Energy. That ending was supposed to answer all the questions that was left open because they were narrative necessities. But changes in the writing team and wiriting incosistencies got in the way.

 

That's kind of why it falls into the "one big lie" category; they use Dark Energy as a patch for their bending the laws of physics, which really is just a slightly more clever way of saying "a wizard did it".

 

And, of course, as others have mentioned, there are several things that are more out there that aren't covered by the DE patch; Project Lazarus, the Thorian, Prothean and Asari quasi-psychic abilities. The Reapers essentially functioning as perpetual motion machines. 

[Former_Fiend]

The dark energy concept was a bigger mess than the shipped ending. Good riddance.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that.

[SlottsMachine]

What is this Dark Energy ending concept anyway? 

[Former_Fiend]

What is this Dark Energy ending concept anyway? 

 

If memory serves, the idea was that the use of Mass Effect technology was speeding the rise of Dark Energy and, as a result, speeding the heat death of the universe or some such. The harvest was the reaper's attempts at culling ME-using civilizations to stop the spread, but by our cycle we've reached critical mass, and the only way to stop it is by converting humanity into a reaper because of humanity's genetic diversity.

 

Problems with this ending include; reapers created the ME relays, and between the relays and themselves, are the largest source of ME technology in the universe. They also guide other species to use ME tech more heavily as part of the cycles. So them opposing this makes no sense.

 

There's also the question of how, exactly, creating a new reaper helps solve this problem, and what the genetic diversity of the species in question has to do with the effect of dark energy on the universe. 

 

The biggest issue is that instead of an Option A, B, and C ending, we're now presented with an Option A or B ending; become a reaper, or don't.