47 réponses à ce sujet

[Shauk]

Couple of observations.

Omega 4's mass relay is red.

Illusive man's backdrop is red.

complete the game and at the end, for some reason his backdrop is blue.

Harbinger says "releasing control" and the collector looks around like "wtf" just before being consumed in the explosion (paragon ending, not sure how the "keep the base" option plays out.)
Makes me thinkg that Harbinger was a reaper overmind of sorts.

the end showing the fleet of reaper ships just confused me. Did they just decide that since they can't use the mass relay thru the citadel that they're going to hoof it across space manually? did the collectors build another "citadel" scale relay somewhere closer?


what do you guys think?

[g0tanks]

The star behind the Ilusive Man will be either red or blue, depending on what you chose to do with the collector base. The paragon choice would've been to destroy it, making the star blue, choosing to keep it will be the renegade choice, making it red.

[Shauk]

ah, that's strange though, why would your decision have a bearing on the physical existence?

[SpideyKnight]

Not meant to make sense, it's meant as a symbol.

[VettoRyouzou]

It simple really if you add the math up the answer is... For ****s and giggles.

[Sursion]

Harbringer was a reaper, not the general. And Harbringer was controlling the general aswell (note generals glowing eyes).



That was sort of a twist at the end. I didn't catch it my first time through.

[VettoRyouzou]

I must say.. Harbinger sounded allot weaker next to Sovereign When I herd Sovereign for the first time I got the "oh... ****...." Feeling. Harbinger not so much.

[marshalleck]

VettoRyouzou wrote...

I must say.. Harbinger sounded allot weaker next to Sovereign When I herd Sovereign for the first time I got the "oh... ****...." Feeling. Harbinger not so much.

Well maybe Harbinger is Nazara's little brother.  He's got big tentacle-lasers to fill.

[VettoRyouzou]

marshalleck wrote...

VettoRyouzou wrote...

I must say.. Harbinger sounded allot weaker next to Sovereign When I herd Sovereign for the first time I got the "oh... ****...." Feeling. Harbinger not so much.

Well maybe Harbinger is Nazara's little brother.  He's got big tentacle-lasers to fill.

I actually pondered if Sovereign was perhaps a Ancient reaper or at least not one of the newer ones Just when she... he.. IT talked.. I got a sense of what I was fighting exactly Harbinger dunno felt like all he could do is shoot hollow threats at you, Sovereign on the other hand never threatened you.. no.. It was more like you were talking to some one who knew everything who understood everything and really thought you were nothing but bacteria infesting the universe around it.

[Shauk]

Yeah I think Nazara/Sov was much more powerful than Harbinger anyways, though I can't prove that.



Basically look at how powerful Saren was when Naz/Sov took over his body compared to how easy it is to take out a harbinger possessed collector.(mainly cuz that lil effer wouldn't sit still and let me pick cover for long)



I guess some of that has something to do with proximity but I don't know where he was in relation to say... the Collector base at the end of the game.

[marshalleck]

Well we never really talked to Harbinger at all. It just spoke through Collector drones, and it was essentially limited to trash talk and taking pot shots at Shepard with Collector weapons.



I would imagine that another face-to-mind encounter with a Reaper like the chat with Nazara in the first game will be much more impressive if we see it in ME3.

[Shauk]

anyway, my theory for ME3 is that since they lost control of the keepers on the citadel, maybe they're working on building another citadel scale mass relay via their indoctrinated agents (The collectors/protheans/reprogrammed geth)



I mean they basically made it sound like the reapers were really, really, really friggin far away in the 1st one. Did anyone catch the name (if it had one) of the reaper ship that we find legion on?

[VettoRyouzou]

No name was ever given only the sleeping god. Or well the now Dead sleeping god.

[Shauk]

Wasn't it the "old god"?

[DK_DOOM]

Shauk wrote...

Couple of observations.

Omega 4's mass relay is red.

Illusive man's backdrop is red.

complete the game and at the end, for some reason his backdrop is blue.

Harbinger says "releasing control" and the collector looks around like "wtf" just before being consumed in the explosion (paragon ending, not sure how the "keep the base" option plays out.)
Makes me thinkg that Harbinger was a reaper overmind of sorts.

the end showing the fleet of reaper ships just confused me. Did they just decide that since they can't use the mass relay thru the citadel that they're going to hoof it across space manually? did the collectors build another "citadel" scale relay somewhere closer?


what do you guys think?

The backdrop for the Illusive Man was explained so I won't touch on that.

Harbinger says releasing control because he is leaving the body of the Collector he was in, and then you see an image of what I assume would be Harbinger's actual reaper form (which looks like the reaper Joker shows Shepard in the picture thereafter), and then the Collector looks around confused because it has just awaken from being used basically.

As far as how exactly the Reapers have made it out of dark space, that's going to be something BioWare has to carefully explain. I would assume it has something to do with the Omega 4 Relay, possibly.

[Shauk]

Yeah I wondered about that, like what was the relevance of the picture of the reaper ship in the crews hands? Was it something they extracted from the ship before it went kablooey?

[mhenders]

Harbinger says "releasing control" and the collector looks around like "wtf" just before being consumed in the explosion (paragon ending, not sure how the "keep the base" option plays out.)
Makes me thinkg that Harbinger was a reaper overmind of sorts.

the end showing the fleet of reaper ships just confused me. Did they just decide that since they can't use the mass relay thru the citadel that they're going to hoof it across space manually? did the collectors build another "citadel" scale relay somewhere closer?


what do you guys think?

I think the shot of the huge Reaper fleet meant that they're still stuck in dark space. They're so far away that from where they are, the entirety of the Milky Way was visible. To me, it looked like they were at least as far away from the Milky as the Milky Way is wide. I don't remember the exact codex lore for it, but I recall that the Mass Relays exist because even FTL drives are far too slow to travel distances more than a few dozen or hundred light years at a time. So... the reaper fleet is still waiting for the Citadel relay  to open and let them in.

After I spent some time thinking about the ending of ME2 and of ME1, these are the things I've decided:

1. The Reapers are stupid, for not building more relays from their dark space lair to the Milky Way. Remember that the relays themselves are pretty inconspicuous, in terms of cosmic scale. The Mu Relay  in ME1 couldn't be found without the information from the Rachni queen because it was a cold, dark object floating randomly in space. Why didn't the Reapers leave lots of hidden relays to dark space floating around where they likely would never be seen by Milky Way inhabitants? For godlike AIs, they don't really have any concept of redundancy.

2. Shepherd, the Illusive Man, Anderson, and all the other people in the Milky Way who believe in the Reaper threat are also stupid. The way to defeat the Reapers isn't to go chasing the Collectors around, it's to blow up the Citadel. The Citadel is the one route the Reapers have into the Milky Way. If it were destroyed, the Reapers would be stuck in dark space forevermore. There's only 25 million or so people on the Citadel. It could be replaced with an asteroid habitat, something like a non-ghetto version of Omega.

3. The reason that the Reapers come around every 50K years and harvest the Milky Way is apparently for the purposes of maintenance and/or reproduction. Solyent Green is made of peoples! Organics get processed into Reaper parts and/or new Reapers.

4. Why the Collectors exist just... isn't apparent. Are they Sovereign's backup, in case it failed? If so, that's also stupid. If you're the Reapers and you're worried about the vanguard you left behind not getting the job done, then... why would you use a lobotomized race of organics you indoctrinated as your vanguard's back up? The better, and more obvious, solution would seem to be to leave more vanguards. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Reapers in the dark space fleet. Why didn't they leave five or ten behind instead of just one? It's not like they're conspicuous. Sovereign hid for 50K years, and the derelict Reaper went unnoticed for... 37 million years. In fact, the derelict Reaper makes you wonder why they bother retreating to dark space at all. Milky Way organics don't really seem to be good at noticing Reapers.

5. If you can suspend belief really hard, or else come up with some sort of Rube Goldberg explanation for why the Collectors are there instead of a few other vanguard Reapers, then I think that the best explanation of what they were trying to do is to build a new Reaper vanguard, to take Sovereign's place using an early  mini-harvest of available organics. My guess is that it will be revealed that since the Keepers are no longer in thrall of the Reapers, it takes an actual Reaper to activate the Citadel relay to dark space. Why the new Reaper would look like a human skeleton is beyond me. What would it have looked like once it was full grown? A 2km long Terminator robot flying through space like Superman? That would be farcical, not menacing. The whole "Reapers look like the species they're made of" plot detail is just... really dumb. It also doesn't fit with the image of the amassed dark space Reaper fleet. If Reapers looked like the Solyent Green they were made of, then there ought to have have been hundreds, if not thousands, of differently shaped Reapers in the fleet. Unless, of course, the Squid Reapers were the Cool Kids and hung out in a clique by themselves away from all the others.

6. I think it's pretty obvious that Harbinger the Bug, the boss of the Collectors, was being remotely controlled by a Reaper. I'd even go so far as to say that it was the Reaper Formerly Known As Sovereign doing the controlling. Legion implies the Reapers are software, like the Geth are. So if the Reapers are like the Geth, in that they're just a collection of programs, then Sovereign would be able to work like the Geth by being able to take control of different physical platforms. A Reaper squid ship would be one such platform, as would implanted Saren and the King Collector Bug who got incinerated at the end of ME2. Thus, I think the main antagonist of the story arc is Harbinger the Reaper, who controlled Sovereign the squid ship in ME1, the Collector King in ME2, and will be back in another form trying to open the Citadel Relay again in ME3. Thus, the plot of ME2 is driven by Harbinger the Reaper trying to build itself a new physical platform for retaking the Citadel. Another clue is the name: "Harbinger" is a roughly a synonym of "vanguard" and of course, Sovereign described itself as the vanguard of the Reapers. I believe that Legion also said that it was Saren who came up with the name "Sovereign". 


Apologies if this seems like an unduly harsh take on the ME storyline. I have conflicting impulses with respect to the Mass Effect story. One the one hand, stupid plot holes that ruin my suspension of disbelief really annoy me, but on the other, ME is somewhat less stupid than most science fiction that makes it to the mainstream. And, as video games, they've been great fun. In other words, I only hit them because I love them. >.<

I've been meaning to write up a huge cumulative list of plot holes and inconsistencies in the Mass Effect story and post it, but I am lazy. I should probably do it soon, though, since all developers love to read their forums right after a new release. I should know. I've done the same myself. <.<

[Giantevilhead]

mhenders wrote...

Harbinger says "releasing control" and the collector looks around like "wtf" just before being consumed in the explosion (paragon ending, not sure how the "keep the base" option plays out.)
Makes me thinkg that Harbinger was a reaper overmind of sorts.

the end showing the fleet of reaper ships just confused me. Did they just decide that since they can't use the mass relay thru the citadel that they're going to hoof it across space manually? did the collectors build another "citadel" scale relay somewhere closer?


what do you guys think?

I think the shot of the huge Reaper fleet meant that they're still stuck in dark space. They're so far away that from where they are, the entirety of the Milky Way was visible. To me, it looked like they were at least as far away from the Milky as the Milky Way is wide. I don't remember the exact codex lore for it, but I recall that the Mass Relays exist because even FTL drives are far too slow to travel distances more than a few dozen or hundred light years at a time. So... the reaper fleet is still waiting for the Citadel relay  to open and let them in.

After I spent some time thinking about the ending of ME2 and of ME1, these are the things I've decided:

1. The Reapers are stupid, for not building more relays from their dark space lair to the Milky Way. Remember that the relays themselves are pretty inconspicuous, in terms of cosmic scale. The Mu Relay  in ME1 couldn't be found without the information from the Rachni queen because it was a cold, dark object floating randomly in space. Why didn't the Reapers leave lots of hidden relays to dark space floating around where they likely would never be seen by Milky Way inhabitants? For godlike AIs, they don't really have any concept of redundancy.

2. Shepherd, the Illusive Man, Anderson, and all the other people in the Milky Way who believe in the Reaper threat are also stupid. The way to defeat the Reapers isn't to go chasing the Collectors around, it's to blow up the Citadel. The Citadel is the one route the Reapers have into the Milky Way. If it were destroyed, the Reapers would be stuck in dark space forevermore. There's only 25 million or so people on the Citadel. It could be replaced with an asteroid habitat, something like a non-ghetto version of Omega.

3. The reason that the Reapers come around every 50K years and harvest the Milky Way is apparently for the purposes of maintenance and/or reproduction. Solyent Green is made of peoples! Organics get processed into Reaper parts and/or new Reapers.

4. Why the Collectors exist just... isn't apparent. Are they Sovereign's backup, in case it failed? If so, that's also stupid. If you're the Reapers and you're worried about the vanguard you left behind not getting the job done, then... why would you use a lobotomized race of organics you indoctrinated as your vanguard's back up? The better, and more obvious, solution would seem to be to leave more vanguards. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Reapers in the dark space fleet. Why didn't they leave five or ten behind instead of just one? It's not like they're conspicuous. Sovereign hid for 50K years, and the derelict Reaper went unnoticed for... 37 million years. In fact, the derelict Reaper makes you wonder why they bother retreating to dark space at all. Milky Way organics don't really seem to be good at noticing Reapers.

5. If you can suspend belief really hard, or else come up with some sort of Rube Goldberg explanation for why the Collectors are there instead of a few other vanguard Reapers, then I think that the best explanation of what they were trying to do is to build a new Reaper vanguard, to take Sovereign's place using an early  mini-harvest of available organics. My guess is that it will be revealed that since the Keepers are no longer in thrall of the Reapers, it takes an actual Reaper to activate the Citadel relay to dark space. Why the new Reaper would look like a human skeleton is beyond me. What would it have looked like once it was full grown? A 2km long Terminator robot flying through space like Superman? That would be farcical, not menacing. The whole "Reapers look like the species they're made of" plot detail is just... really dumb. It also doesn't fit with the image of the amassed dark space Reaper fleet. If Reapers looked like the Solyent Green they were made of, then there ought to have have been hundreds, if not thousands, of differently shaped Reapers in the fleet. Unless, of course, the Squid Reapers were the Cool Kids and hung out in a clique by themselves away from all the others.

6. I think it's pretty obvious that Harbinger the Bug, the boss of the Collectors, was being remotely controlled by a Reaper. I'd even go so far as to say that it was the Reaper Formerly Known As Sovereign doing the controlling. Legion implies the Reapers are software, like the Geth are. So if the Reapers are like the Geth, in that they're just a collection of programs, then Sovereign would be able to work like the Geth by being able to take control of different physical platforms. A Reaper squid ship would be one such platform, as would implanted Saren and the King Collector Bug who got incinerated at the end of ME2. Thus, I think the main antagonist of the story arc is Harbinger the Reaper, who controlled Sovereign the squid ship in ME1, the Collector King in ME2, and will be back in another form trying to open the Citadel Relay again in ME3. Thus, the plot of ME2 is driven by Harbinger the Reaper trying to build itself a new physical platform for retaking the Citadel. Another clue is the name: "Harbinger" is a roughly a synonym of "vanguard" and of course, Sovereign described itself as the vanguard of the Reapers. I believe that Legion also said that it was Saren who came up with the name "Sovereign". 


Apologies if this seems like an unduly harsh take on the ME storyline. I have conflicting impulses with respect to the Mass Effect story. One the one hand, stupid plot holes that ruin my suspension of disbelief really annoy me, but on the other, ME is somewhat less stupid than most science fiction that makes it to the mainstream. And, as video games, they've been great fun. In other words, I only hit them because I love them. >.<

I've been meaning to write up a huge cumulative list of plot holes and inconsistencies in the Mass Effect story and post it, but I am lazy. I should probably do it soon, though, since all developers love to read their forums right after a new release. I should know. I've done the same myself. <.<

ME falls into the same trap as Star Trek and Star Wars in assuming that space isn't very big. There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Assuming that technologically advanced organic life forms are as common as portrayed in ME, the Reapers could never wipe out all organic life in the galaxy even if they numbered in the millions. The Reapers would have needed to build billions of mass relays to truely cover the galaxy and ensure that all intelligent life falls under their domain.

Modifié par Giantevilhead, 30 janvier 2010 - 01:17 .

[Jigero]

mhenders wrote...

Harbinger says "releasing control" and the collector looks around like "wtf" just before being consumed in the explosion (paragon ending, not sure how the "keep the base" option plays out.)
Makes me thinkg that Harbinger was a reaper overmind of sorts.

the end showing the fleet of reaper ships just confused me. Did they just decide that since they can't use the mass relay thru the citadel that they're going to hoof it across space manually? did the collectors build another "citadel" scale relay somewhere closer?


what do you guys think?

I think the shot of the huge Reaper fleet meant that they're still stuck in dark space. They're so far away that from where they are, the entirety of the Milky Way was visible. To me, it looked like they were at least as far away from the Milky as the Milky Way is wide. I don't remember the exact codex lore for it, but I recall that the Mass Relays exist because even FTL drives are far too slow to travel distances more than a few dozen or hundred light years at a time. So... the reaper fleet is still waiting for the Citadel relay  to open and let them in.

After I spent some time thinking about the ending of ME2 and of ME1, these are the things I've decided:

1. The Reapers are stupid, for not building more relays from their dark space lair to the Milky Way. Remember that the relays themselves are pretty inconspicuous, in terms of cosmic scale. The Mu Relay  in ME1 couldn't be found without the information from the Rachni queen because it was a cold, dark object floating randomly in space. Why didn't the Reapers leave lots of hidden relays to dark space floating around where they likely would never be seen by Milky Way inhabitants? For godlike AIs, they don't really have any concept of redundancy.

2. Shepherd, the Illusive Man, Anderson, and all the other people in the Milky Way who believe in the Reaper threat are also stupid. The way to defeat the Reapers isn't to go chasing the Collectors around, it's to blow up the Citadel. The Citadel is the one route the Reapers have into the Milky Way. If it were destroyed, the Reapers would be stuck in dark space forevermore. There's only 25 million or so people on the Citadel. It could be replaced with an asteroid habitat, something like a non-ghetto version of Omega.

3. The reason that the Reapers come around every 50K years and harvest the Milky Way is apparently for the purposes of maintenance and/or reproduction. Solyent Green is made of peoples! Organics get processed into Reaper parts and/or new Reapers.

4. Why the Collectors exist just... isn't apparent. Are they Sovereign's backup, in case it failed? If so, that's also stupid. If you're the Reapers and you're worried about the vanguard you left behind not getting the job done, then... why would you use a lobotomized race of organics you indoctrinated as your vanguard's back up? The better, and more obvious, solution would seem to be to leave more vanguards. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Reapers in the dark space fleet. Why didn't they leave five or ten behind instead of just one? It's not like they're conspicuous. Sovereign hid for 50K years, and the derelict Reaper went unnoticed for... 37 million years. In fact, the derelict Reaper makes you wonder why they bother retreating to dark space at all. Milky Way organics don't really seem to be good at noticing Reapers.

5. If you can suspend belief really hard, or else come up with some sort of Rube Goldberg explanation for why the Collectors are there instead of a few other vanguard Reapers, then I think that the best explanation of what they were trying to do is to build a new Reaper vanguard, to take Sovereign's place using an early  mini-harvest of available organics. My guess is that it will be revealed that since the Keepers are no longer in thrall of the Reapers, it takes an actual Reaper to activate the Citadel relay to dark space. Why the new Reaper would look like a human skeleton is beyond me. What would it have looked like once it was full grown? A 2km long Terminator robot flying through space like Superman? That would be farcical, not menacing. The whole "Reapers look like the species they're made of" plot detail is just... really dumb. It also doesn't fit with the image of the amassed dark space Reaper fleet. If Reapers looked like the Solyent Green they were made of, then there ought to have have been hundreds, if not thousands, of differently shaped Reapers in the fleet. Unless, of course, the Squid Reapers were the Cool Kids and hung out in a clique by themselves away from all the others.

6. I think it's pretty obvious that Harbinger the Bug, the boss of the Collectors, was being remotely controlled by a Reaper. I'd even go so far as to say that it was the Reaper Formerly Known As Sovereign doing the controlling. Legion implies the Reapers are software, like the Geth are. So if the Reapers are like the Geth, in that they're just a collection of programs, then Sovereign would be able to work like the Geth by being able to take control of different physical platforms. A Reaper squid ship would be one such platform, as would implanted Saren and the King Collector Bug who got incinerated at the end of ME2. Thus, I think the main antagonist of the story arc is Harbinger the Reaper, who controlled Sovereign the squid ship in ME1, the Collector King in ME2, and will be back in another form trying to open the Citadel Relay again in ME3. Thus, the plot of ME2 is driven by Harbinger the Reaper trying to build itself a new physical platform for retaking the Citadel. Another clue is the name: "Harbinger" is a roughly a synonym of "vanguard" and of course, Sovereign described itself as the vanguard of the Reapers. I believe that Legion also said that it was Saren who came up with the name "Sovereign". 


Apologies if this seems like an unduly harsh take on the ME storyline. I have conflicting impulses with respect to the Mass Effect story. One the one hand, stupid plot holes that ruin my suspension of disbelief really annoy me, but on the other, ME is somewhat less stupid than most science fiction that makes it to the mainstream. And, as video games, they've been great fun. In other words, I only hit them because I love them. >.<

I've been meaning to write up a huge cumulative list of plot holes and inconsistencies in the Mass Effect story and post it, but I am lazy. I should probably do it soon, though, since all developers love to read their forums right after a new release. I should know. I've done the same myself. <.<

1. They aren't stupid, They are the absolute power in the universe. They said they can't be stopped and to them they know they can't be stoped, they been doing this for billions of years and always been successful at it. Why build some thing they know they will never need. So what if Shepard stopped them so far, it's only been two year in a process that takes thousands, to them this no more troubling then if you got an intch.

2. Your talking about a hand full of people, who been dismissed by the general public and the council as crazys, how do you reckon they go and "blow up" a Indestructable space station that sports the the largest and most powerful fleet in the milkey way. On top of that destroying the citidel does nothing, the gate way will still be there. 

4. The collecters where left behind by the Reapers after they where done harvesting, they got along like any other speacies, but when the reapers need them they just called apon them like they did with the geth.

5. Little information has been given on why they made the Human reaper and I think it's far to early to even begin to speculate. It could have been made to understand why Shepard was able to beat them and the only one to ever do so.

[Nimander]

Giantevilhead wrote...
ME falls into the same trap as Star Trek and Star Wars in assuming that space isn't very big. There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Assuming that technologically advanced organic life forms are as common as portrayed in ME, the Reapers could never wipe out all organic life in the galaxy even if they numbered in the millions. The Reapers would have needed to build billions of mass relays to truely cover the galaxy and ensure that all intelligent life falls under their domain.

Actually, ME is pretty good about that in that it takes a fair bit to get from A to B without Mass Relays, and you can't just hop around otherwise.  Remember, the Reapers don't eliminate -all- life or even all -sapient- life.  They eliminate life that has reached the level to use the Mass Relays.  Also, there aren't that many races.  What are there?  Asari, Batarians, Drell, Hanar, Humans, Krogan, Salarians, Turians, Volus?  Toss on a few more and it's still a minute number of races for the entire Milky Way.

This makes things a lot more manageable.  Just use the Citadel as a source -- it's the heart of the network, so for all we know, somewhere in those banks rests data on which relays are being used, giving the Reapers exact locks.

The only assumption that causes issues is the seeding of mass relays in the first place, and we can probably assume that one, reaper engines are far better than ours so go faster up to a point and don't need to discharge as much (if at all), and two, they live so long they can deal with a few hundred thousand years of seeding.

Modifié par Nimander, 30 janvier 2010 - 01:36 .

[Giantevilhead]

Nimander wrote...

Giantevilhead wrote...
ME falls into the same trap as Star Trek and Star Wars in assuming that space isn't very big. There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Assuming that technologically advanced organic life forms are as common as portrayed in ME, the Reapers could never wipe out all organic life in the galaxy even if they numbered in the millions. The Reapers would have needed to build billions of mass relays to truely cover the galaxy and ensure that all intelligent life falls under their domain.

Actually, ME is pretty good about that in that it takes a fair bit to get from A to B without Mass Relays, and you can't just hop around otherwise.  Remember, the Reapers don't eliminate -all- life or even all -sapient- life.  They eliminate life that has reached the level to use the Mass Relays.

This makes things a lot more manageable.  Just use the Citadel as a source -- it's the heart of the network, so for all we know, somewhere in those banks rests data on which relays are being used, giving the Reapers exact locks.

The only assumption that causes issues is the seeding of mass relays in the first place, and we can probably assume that one, reaper engines are far better than ours so go faster up to a point and don't need to discharge as much (if at all), and two, they live so long they can deal with a few hundred thousand years of seeding.

But the network isn't nearly big enough to cover the entire galaxy. If technologically advanced life have arisen every 50,000 years for millions of years in just the small regions where there are mass relays then there must be a lot of hyper advanced races in areas of the galaxy where mass relays don't exist. They may not have gotten the tech boost from discovering a mass relay but they would have plenty of time to advance tech on their own.

Warhammer 40K gets the scale of the galaxy much more accurately. Even though the Imperium of Man has millions of worlds and trillions of citizens, they are still a speck in the galaxy.

Modifié par Giantevilhead, 30 janvier 2010 - 01:43 .

[Nimander]

Look at the star maps. Mass Relays are all over the galaxy. It /is/ big enough. The Local Cluster is on the south, there's stuff on the west, east, and north.

The only place there isn't relays are in the center, and that's all black holes apparently. Even if a race did advance in a place where there wasn't a Mass Relay, there'd be one in a nearby system.

Yes, there are issues. But it's not nearly as bad as you're saying. Heck, I can think of ways right off the top of my head.

Reapers could be predicting where sapient life will evolve because they know statistically what factors favor it.

The Mass Relays could have been built by Von Neuman Machines.

Lots of ways. We don't know enough to say cateogrically it's not possible, at least in a Scifi setting.

Modifié par Nimander, 30 janvier 2010 - 01:44 .

[marshalleck]

Giantevilhead wrote...

Nimander wrote...

Giantevilhead wrote...
ME falls into the same trap as Star Trek and Star Wars in assuming that space isn't very big. There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Assuming that technologically advanced organic life forms are as common as portrayed in ME, the Reapers could never wipe out all organic life in the galaxy even if they numbered in the millions. The Reapers would have needed to build billions of mass relays to truely cover the galaxy and ensure that all intelligent life falls under their domain.

Actually, ME is pretty good about that in that it takes a fair bit to get from A to B without Mass Relays, and you can't just hop around otherwise.  Remember, the Reapers don't eliminate -all- life or even all -sapient- life.  They eliminate life that has reached the level to use the Mass Relays.

This makes things a lot more manageable.  Just use the Citadel as a source -- it's the heart of the network, so for all we know, somewhere in those banks rests data on which relays are being used, giving the Reapers exact locks.

The only assumption that causes issues is the seeding of mass relays in the first place, and we can probably assume that one, reaper engines are far better than ours so go faster up to a point and don't need to discharge as much (if at all), and two, they live so long they can deal with a few hundred thousand years of seeding.

But the network isn't nearly big enough to cover the entire galaxy. If technologically advanced life have arisen every 50,000 years for millions of years in just the small regions where there are mass relays then there must be a lot of hyper advanced races in areas of the galaxy where mass relays don't exist. They may not have gotten the tech boost from discovering a mass relay but they would have plenty of time to advance tech on their own.

Warhammer 40K gets the scale of the galaxy much more accurately. Even though the Imperium of Man has millions of worlds and trillions of citizens, they are still a speck in the galaxy.

There are relays in the lore that don't feature in the game, so if your concern is that we only actually interact with up to maybe 20 relays while playing the game, you can go ahead and discount that.

The fact that the turians referred to the First Contact War as the "Relay 314 Incident" suggests that there are hundreds of known relays.

But yes, there are species that are "living off the grid" so to speak. All species start that way until they encounter their first relay, and eventually work their way back to the Citadel at the heart of the network.

Modifié par marshalleck, 30 janvier 2010 - 01:57 .

[Jonny_Evil]

Giantevilhead wrote...

Nimander wrote...

Giantevilhead wrote...
ME falls into the same trap as Star Trek and Star Wars in assuming that space isn't very big. There are at least 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. Assuming that technologically advanced organic life forms are as common as portrayed in ME, the Reapers could never wipe out all organic life in the galaxy even if they numbered in the millions. The Reapers would have needed to build billions of mass relays to truely cover the galaxy and ensure that all intelligent life falls under their domain.

Actually, ME is pretty good about that in that it takes a fair bit to get from A to B without Mass Relays, and you can't just hop around otherwise.  Remember, the Reapers don't eliminate -all- life or even all -sapient- life.  They eliminate life that has reached the level to use the Mass Relays.

This makes things a lot more manageable.  Just use the Citadel as a source -- it's the heart of the network, so for all we know, somewhere in those banks rests data on which relays are being used, giving the Reapers exact locks.

The only assumption that causes issues is the seeding of mass relays in the first place, and we can probably assume that one, reaper engines are far better than ours so go faster up to a point and don't need to discharge as much (if at all), and two, they live so long they can deal with a few hundred thousand years of seeding.

But the network isn't nearly big enough to cover the entire galaxy. If technologically advanced life have arisen every 50,000 years for millions of years in just the small regions where there are mass relays then there must be a lot of hyper advanced races in areas of the galaxy where mass relays don't exist. They may not have gotten the tech boost from discovering a mass relay but they would have plenty of time to advance tech on their own.

Warhammer 40K gets the scale of the galaxy much more accurately. Even though the Imperium of Man has millions of worlds and trillions of citizens, they are still a speck in the galaxy.

The Relay network covers the whole galaxy, the Council races have only explored a fraction of it because of the (perceived) dangers of opening dormant relays. Any species that does venture out into space finds their local Relay sooner or later and they all eventually lead to the Citadel, the heart of the network. The races in ME aren't just from a local cluster of stars, they're from all over the galaxy, they Relay network itself funnels them to the Citadel. As new species like humanity use the network they very quickly encounter the Citadel or a Citadel species, so the ones in ME now are all the species in the galaxy capable of FTL travel and the Reapers get a full log of where they are and what they've been doing when the Citadel relay is activated.

The Reapers don't need to investigate all 100 billion stars in the galaxy. All they need is the log of Relay activity for the previous 50,000 years.

[Giantevilhead]

It doesn't matter if the mass relays are "all over the galaxy." There are between 100 to 400 billion stars in the galaxy. There could be hundreds of millions of earth like planets in the galaxy. Putting a mass relay "near" a star system where life evolves doesn't even come close to guaranteeing that life will find it.



Also, the fact that the Citadel races have been to many planets formerly occupied by the Protheans suggests that the relay network isn't that big. It would take at least millions of relays to cover a significant portion of the galaxy. The chances of the Citadel races occupying or even finding so many Prothean worlds is extremely low if there are millions of relays.