3 réponses à ce sujet

[Obadiah]

This device - what the hell is this?



It looks like two high energy electric arcs between two sets of unconnected leads that form some sort of circuit. But it can't be just electricity, right? Because that would just fry Shep and that would be the end. What do you think the original purpose of that thing is?

Obviously, what happens is some kind of destructive analysis, but how?

A few random ideas:
1) Its some kind of information transmission across some unknown high energy arc, and when Shepard grabs it, he gets destroyed, but his information is transmitted through some kind of reaction as part of the circuit.

2) It is an incomplete circuit of some unknown energy, and when Shepard completes the circuit, whatever flows through him, sort of "transmits" him into the Crucible.

3) The process has some aesthetic similarities to the Collector breakdown of the crew in ME2 in the rescue mission, as well as the Synthesis breakdown, so perhaps it is some sort of "essence" transfer into the Reapers instead of all life.

4) Other things in the game that give off high energy arcs and glows are eezo cores and ships using the Mass Relay networks, so maybe the device is something related to that.

Spoiler

Thoughts?

[Edited because I'm still coming up with ideas...]

Modifié par Obadiah, hier, 02:22 .

[JasonShepard]

To me it's clearly some variation on destructive analysis. Honestly, nanites is my best idea for how you would analyse someone down to the molecular level (and thus create an accurate simulation of them as an AI), but that doesn't look like nanites.

 

On the other hand it looks like raw electricity, but as you say, electricity shouldn't analyse you (other than giving the Crucible a read on your average Ohmic resistance). There's no information being recorded by a flow of electrons moving through your body.

 

So yeah. I'd personally put this down to Rule of Cool where the physical explanation wasn't really thought through. If you want an in-universe explanation... possibly a blue nanite swarm that just happens to look like electricity, perhaps because the nanites have miniature Mass Effect field generators? Not the best explanation, but it's something. Otherwise - sufficiently advanced science etc etc (hence it doesn't make sense to us, and looks like magic).

[JasonShepard]

Sidenote: I've never liked mention of 'essences' in Mass Effect. The 'essence' of a species is hardly something scientifically quantifiable, which makes it useless when trying to figure out what's really going on. You know, unless Mass Effect wants to just declare that souls are real and that's what they mean by 'essence'...

So when the game mentions essence, I generally prefer to just substitute in "Constructive information about the individual/species". Which would support the destructive analysis idea in both Control and Synthesis.

 

(I also have a fairly grim headcanon about Reapers in order to get around a related problem back in ME2: They directly wire a species' nervous systems into a new Reaper, rather than plugging in some nebulous 'essence'. In my mind, those collector pods weren't completely dissolving people - they were reducing people down to just their brains, then transporting them to become the equivalent of electrical circuits within the new Reaper.)

[Obadiah]

The nanides idea makes a lot of sense. Maybe it is some sort of high energy stream where the open air is used to cool them from some intial stage of manufacturing, and Shepard interrupts the stream by placing his hands there, nanides latch on and analyze and the continue into the stream to the beam?

This actually makes the whole room make a little more sense. Perhaps the high energy beam in the middle from the Crucible is being regulated or adjusted by these two side platforms which inject into, or combine some whatsit to create the beam in the middle. One side is nanides, and the other side is... let's call it "destructo" energy.

I had always thought that Destroy was the original purpose of the Crucible, but since the Destroy option has Shep break something and the only place with controls is the Control platform, maybe that was the original purpose. Hah! The Crucible plans could have originated with one of the previous cycle's Cerberus/TIM factions.

In this case, the Control platform would be working by design to upload a controlling conscience to the Reapers. Destroy would be breaking the flow control of whatever is passing through that platform and, since no one is at the Control platform, uploading nothing into the Reapers and destroying their intelligence, and Synthesis is the Catalyst repurposing the beam to disperse the nanides with the "essence" into everything.