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[Pacifien]

Captain Uccisore wrote...
@Pacifien if you say it's not a spoiler then I believe you. What does Retribution say about biotics and how did it relate to Jack's training from hell Teltin.

Nothing we don't already know. Biotics without the implants will never be able to move more than a glass of water, if that. There's an eleven year old who has just recently received his implants. Takes years of training to even fine tune the use of the implants into usable biotic power. A fifteen year old's use of biotics is shown, still raw and unfocused, but usable in battle.

So I started wondering just what is the minimum age one has to be before receiving these implants, knowing that a person has to get used to them, grow with them, train with them. Implant Jack with one device, then discover the merits of another device. Risk her life every time to rip out the old and retrofit the new. Jack mentions the L5 schematics, which I think was just their cheap way of saying "give Jack 20% biotic boost." I think Jack's biotic implants are modifications of the L2 and are the bridge between the L2 to the L5 implants. I even wonder if the L5 implants Shepard has are even being used for the newer biotic generations -- I suspect it's a Cerberus only innovation and that the biotics of the Alliance are still being equipped with the less powerful L4s as seen in the Ascension Project.

Also started thinking about when Jack would have escaped. Again, we see a 15 year old demonstrating skill with biotics, but not control yet. And we're talking a character who wasn't being trained to be a killer that holds nothing back and had biotic training mixed with normal education.

I think that when Jack escaped Teltin, her biotic training from that point on was likely self-taught. Trial and error. But she had to have had a good foundation with which to base her new innovations. She might have studied an asari in battle, but that would only give her a new idea on how she can use biotics. The mnemonics used by the asari are going to be different than the ones Jack has learned to use with her own implants.

I doubt Jack would have come across any other biotics aside from asari. Maybe another human, but I think human biotics are much rarer than the impression given in the games. And again, what sort of training is she going to witness from another human biotic that improves upon what she's been forced to learn? Maybe if she ran across someone from BAaT... actually, that might be an interesting fanfic. Jack escaping Teltin with extreme biotic abilities, but before they really concentrated on teaching her control. Then meeting some disillusioned soul from BAaT who provides her with her own biotic training outside of Teltin before she eventually meets up with Shepard.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, so I used to think Jack could have been as young as 12 when she escaped, but instead I'm thinking she was more like 15. Old enough to have been given the maximum amount of training from Teltin that she could then use to teach herself from that point on and still become an incredibly powerful biotic soldier. Because what the latest book showed me is that it wasn't enough to have the implants and potential for power, you have to train hard to match that potential. And if I think Jack hadn't been around any other human biotics after Teltin, her best years of biotic training were at Teltin. Everything she learned after Teltin were all the other skills she needed to know to survive.

Still wondering about where I see Jack's origins. I'd written a story about her being stolen as a toddler after already showing biotic skill. I think I might stick to that. Running down the timeline...
2151 - first eezo exposure leading to biotics
2151/2152 - humans being born with biotic potential
2154 - Shepard is born. There's supposedly a second publicized incident for eezo exposure. (This is apparently the explanation for those who have a biotic Shepard.)
2156 - when people started noticing the biotic potential in children
2157 - first contact war. This is apparently the origin point for the Illusive Man and Cerberus upon discovering all the other alien species.
2158 - humans learn about biotics from the other alien species. From this point, now that there is a definite connection to be made between eezo exposure and biotics, I think this is when the not-so-accidental eezo accidents started happening.
2160 - BAaT created.
2167 - L2 implants developed
2168 - Kaidan grew some balls. Shepard supposedly gets secondary eezo exposure in the developers' further attempt to explain biotic Shepards.
2169 - BAaT closed down.
2170 - Industrial complex accident at Yandoa as orchestrated by Cerberus.
2170/2171 - Gillian Grayson born

So at this point we're looking at 17/18 year olds being the oldest trained human biotics. Shepard at this point is 14, and the assumption I suppose is that the secondary eezo exposure is what led Shepard down the path of biotic training.

2176 - Grissom Academy opens. The Ascension Project begins.
2183 - Events of Ascension, so Gillian's 12/13 years old at this point.
2185 - current year

So we know that Teltin is before the Ascension Project, that they fully plan to transfer their research to Ascension. Not known if the Ascension Project was already in full swing when Teltin failed or if it was just in the planning stages at this point.

Anyway, so Ascension Project opens 2176. Assuming Jack was 15 like I think she was at the time of her escape, then her birthdate is 2161. This works out well if it was Cerberus who orchestrated the accident leading to Jack developing biotic powers, as the Illusive Man would have been well into his stint of Evil Mastermind for Humanity by then. Then we have an age of 24 by ME2.

Oh, but there's more. I actually think you could push her birthdate back a couple of years if you consider the Ascension Project was only in the development stage when Teltin failed. So 24-26.

I'm not going to touch any "secondary eezo exposure" hypotheses. Someone else can, but I thought it was simply a lazy method of explaining how you can play an Adept.

Oh, but there's also something to be said for creating a biotic from a normal child. But if Cerberus succeeded with that on Teltin, I would think they wouldn't have needed to resort to the eezo accidents they were using by 2170. Unless this was being down concurrently to the experiments at Teltin, meaning Jack was actually around 8-10 years old when they first brought her to Teltin. I don't particularly like this explanation either, so I'm going with my original kidnapped as child hypothesis.

I have no idea how long this post ended up being in the end. Good thing my browser didn't crash while I was writing it. That would have sucked.

[adriano_c]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

Just think if we had an alien squadmember that had two heads, and was a love interest.  That would be a trip, wouldn't it?

*Shepard has a love scene with Pat, the two headed alien, after a long night of boozing out on the town.*

The following morning:
Pat's 1st head:  Wow, that was fantastic Shepard.
Pat's 2nd head:  Umm yes, but it was bit too brief.<_<
Shepard:   God help me, what the hell have I done?

2 weeks later:
Journal Entry:  Cmdr. Shepard, Normandy, Stardate whatever, 1800 hrs.
I have had sex with Pat on three more occasions, but I still don't know what Pat is.
End journal entry.

/silliness

Really pushing the boundaries of relevance, huh?

@Pacifien

Hell of a lot of words.

[Pacifien]

adriano_c wrote...
@Pacifien

Hell of a lot of words.

Yeah, I was driving a lot this afternoon. Lots of sun.

[NICKjnp]

I always wondered why Shepard wasn't at BAaT.... Shepard is only two years younger than Kaidan.

[stormrain]

Well, I'm thinking Shepard was off the grid as an Earthborn, shielded or recieved special tutelage as a Spacer, and a sort of mixture of the two as a Colonist. How old was Kaidan when he was taken to BAaT anyway?

Pacifien wrote...
-long snip-

"Ask and ye shall receive" huh. That was one heck of an answer to my question.  

I'll need to collect my thoughts to give a proper reply.

On an off note, this is the first time I've realized how condensed the timeline is. Damn, Bioware, couldn't you have lengthened it just a bit? 50 or 100 some years would have been good enough for me. 

Modifié par Captain Uccisore, 31 juillet 2010 - 03:01 .

[Pacifien]

Captain Uccisore wrote...
Well, I'm thinking Shepard was off the grid as an Earthborn, shielded or recieved special tutelage as a Spacer, and a sort of mixture of the two as a Colonist. How old was Kaidan when he was taken to BAaT anyway?

Kaidan never mentions an age, but he makes more references to being a teenager than to being a kid. Then again, BAaT was created in 2160 specifically with the goal of studying and training the children exposed to the first eezo accidents, so that would have made Kaidan something like 8 years old if he was one of the first. Oh wait... the L2's weren't even created until 2167 when Kaidan would have been 16 years old, so the real aggressive training probably didn't start until then.

I'd figured an Earthborn orphan or a kid on some meager colonial world would manage to escape notice if they had some biotic potential. Afterall, without the implants, looks like all an untrained biotic would manage is a lot of static discharge and maybe making a pencil wobble. Spacer is much harder to figure out, but if we actually work with the secondary eezo exposure as the true catalyst of Shepard's biotic potential, then BAaT was already shutting down just as Shepard was receiving implants and getting ready for training.

At this point, Spacer makes more sense than the other two, because who better to receive a different kind of biotic training than a Spacer kid who probably gets more exposure to alien environments than other humans? Special tutelage at that point indeed. Could probably make a backstory for how an Earthborn or Colonial eventually make it to biotic training, but it's still all done after the age of 14. So if Kaidan was only 16 before his aggressive training started, Shepard being 14 before getting implants and training isn't too far off the mark either.

The whole concept of the secondary eezo exposure puts Jack's own timeline up in the air. All I figure is that Teltin had to have started some time after the Illusive Man had established a stable regime with Cerberus, but Jack still had to be considered a kid versus young adult at the time of her escape.

[axl99]

The other day I was tinkering with the idea of a Jack origin story for fun, but instead of concentrating on our favourite badgirl, we delve into the mind of the person who created her. Knowing that TIM loves rushing projects ADHD-style, I thought it'd be funny if he got his come-uppance once in a while from that particular character.

A perfectionist chain-smoking geneticist with a sailor's mouth and a mind as brilliant as a diamond. A FEMALE perfectionist chain-smoking geneticist with a sailor's mouth and a mind as brilliant as a diamond.

The training and conditioning of biotic users at the time was controversial as it got, and it was difficult to push past the red tape in finding alternate ways of negating its negative effects. So this scientist hooked up with Cerberus to make that dream happen, working her way up the ladder with pure ingenuity as her colleages burned with envy. If not for her abrasive social attitude, they might begrudgingly admire her.

Her thoughts on Lord Lawson on creating the perfect human woman? A sick loner who might be depraved enough to try reproducing with an altered clone to construct his "empire". As a scientist she may have one or two ideas on how else complete that research objective, but that isn't what she joined up with Cerberus to do.  As part of her experiments she has her engineering staff construct biotic amps that can also be used as inhibitors for rehabilitation purposes in biotic users. While they're working on that, she cross-references asari biology while tinkering around with a artificial human embryo that won't reject prolonged eezo exposure. She knows the real objective TIM had in mind for her research wasn't just to create effective biotic users with a high threshold for pain, but she could care less. TIM gets impatient about the slow progress, she gives him the middle finger for trying to force a rush job out of the project.

Fast forward a couple years from then, we get Jack. Lord Lawson's do-it-all baby ain't got nothin. Her scared colleages on the other hand capitulated to TIM's demands and began going behind her back. Tensions escalate and eventually some had the stones to shoot her in the face - completely forgetting just how good she is at hiding what she finds out in her research. TIM is getting all itchy now and needs his fix, and is quickly fed falsified reports instead.. Now that things have gotten out of hand, we have the riot and the story goes from there.

Granted, this is just all pretty rough stuff for now, but what you guys think?

Modifié par axl99, 31 juillet 2010 - 06:45 .

[adriano_c]

Is that, like, a "fan fic" or an idea for one you want to develop further?

[Epantiras]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I've finally finished ME2 with my Maleshep. I had to do a sh*tload of side missions first, just to be sure that the Cerberus crew would be genetic soup by the time I found them in the Collector's Base (yes, I decided to kill them as opposed to my Femshep who saved them).



I saw the Jack paragon lovescene so I can haz an opinion on it now.



1. I accidentally went through the Omega 4 Relay without switching Jack's outfit, so she entered Shep's room with her visor on... that was awful, she was talking with that weird "I'm so weak protect me" voice, totally disconnected from her face. Since I knew I was going to reload, I chose the rejection lines i.e. Shep saying "You're too late to change your mind I'm not listening la la la". Ehm... that was lame on Shep's part, I understand why Jack exits the room saying "you're like everyone else". And she cries :-(



2. I reloaded and switched to her loyal outfit. The whole scene makes more sense if you can see her eyes ;-)



3. *IF* the cutscene had ended with them kissing on the bed, then I'd have thought that they were going to have sex, but the last thing you see is them laying on the bed as if it was a post-coital scene. A FULLY DRESSED post coital scene. Which does not make sense. In other cutscenes, sex is heavily implied even if not shown: Miranda and Jacob undress, Femshep says "feel alive with me tonight" to Thane and we see the bed in the background... so, did Shep and Jack have sex? "Maybe yes, but probably not."



4. The lovescene is cute / sweet / ponies & rainbows & flowers and all, but I think that this scene beats it:

[LiquidGrape]

Epantiras wrote...

4. The lovescene is cute / sweet / ponies & rainbows & flowers and all, but I think that this scene beats it:

[Imagesnip]

I forget...is it the squad member you pick first or second who end up falling? I believe there was a pattern to that.

[Mondo47]

LiquidGrape wrote...

Epantiras wrote...

4. The lovescene is cute / sweet / ponies & rainbows & flowers and all, but I think that this scene beats it:

[Imagesnip]

I forget...is it the squad member you pick first or second who end up falling? I believe there was a pattern to that.

As many times as I've played through, I've had severe difficulty with the proposed system for making sure you get to catch the person of your choosing. Based on the methodology exhaustively tested by Paci, it should be the second-selected squadmember (whoever is on Shep's "right" on the squad equip screen, or whoever's icon is on the right in-game). But I've found that on my machine at least, almost anything can screw with this. Altering weapons can reverse the two squad members, taking your "left-hand" squaddie to the right, but even when I alter nothing, it still insists most of the time in reversing my squadmates. I've taken Legion & Jack, had to catch Legion. Miranda and Jack, had to catch Miranda (though to be fair, she overrides other squadmates to be caught). Thane and Jack, caught Thane. Grunt and Jack, caught Grunt. Jacob and Jack, caught Jacob. Tali and Jack, caught Tali... the list goes on.

I did though, on my last playthrough, manage to catch Jack - and with Warren, who had just romanced her. The only thing I had done differently from my usual method was use Samara for the bubble instead of Jack (I tend to be very dull with picking specialists for the SM's stages, and go with Garrus and Legion, Jacob and Jack, and Jack and whoever for the final stage). To finally catch her again (I've not managed it since my second playthrough, and Warren is my 12th Shep). I was doing so much of a happydance I forgot to take a bloody screengrab.

[axl99]

adriano_c wrote...

Is that, like, a "fan fic" or an idea for one you want to develop further?

An idea based on speculation with very little evidence.

[Mondo47]

Actually, as a neat little addendum to what I was saying about squad members getting their order swapped, I'm currently in Illium, with Miranda and Jack (off to do Miri's loyalty mission). Drinking the Mystery Drink in the bar just made Miranda and Jack swap places. Curiouser and curiouser...

[adriano_c]

axl99 wrote...

An idea based on speculation with very little evidence.

Well, the "brilliant as a diamond" part made me smile, at least.

[MirshanDR]

These screens were most likely uploaded here for like a billion times but still))

I can't stop admiring just how beautiful Jack's face is... I mean it. Every argument about her tattoos and overall appearance aside she has like THE most beautiful and expressive face features. Lord praise the designers))













Espesially like the first two. She can keep silent not saying a word, her eyes speak for themselves))
And that teeeeeasing look)) Beeing a complete hetero I find her unstoppably attractive 

[Jackal904]

Epantiras wrote...

4. The lovescene is cute / sweet / ponies & rainbows & flowers and all, but I think that this scene beats it:

Yeah that's a really good scene. On my first playthrough I had romanced Jack and she ended up being the one that fell in that scene, and I remember saying outloud, "No. No. No." Because on my first playthrough I didn't how that scene would play out, and I wasn't sure when or how squadmates could die.

Y'know, some extra bit of dialogue would have been nice for the person you saved from falling. Especially for Jack because there's some similarities with that scene and the whole Murtock situation. Shepard risked his life to catch her. And you'd think someone would throw in an extra special "thanks" for saving their life.

LiquidGrape wrote...

Epantiras wrote...

4. The lovescene is cute / sweet / ponies & rainbows & flowers and all, but I think that this scene beats it:

[Imagesnip]

I forget...is it the squad member you pick first or second who end up falling? I believe there was a pattern to that.

Someone made a thread telling what happens with many different squadmate combinations. I don't remember if the results in the thread showed any kind of pattern though. I think it's essentially random. But from my experiences, it seems to be whoever you pick first, but apparently that doesn't always work for everyone.

I usually pick Jack first and then Legion to go take on the human reaper, and every single time I've ended up catching Jack. It hasn't failed me once. But next time I'm going to choose Jack first and Thane second, because apparently with that combination you'll catch Jack and she'll also be the one who helps you up on the Normandy.

[Jackal904]

MirshanDR wrote...

Where is that screenshot taken from? It's been posted here before but I keep forgetting to ask where it's from.

[LiquidGrape]

Mondo47 wrote...

As many times as I've played through, I've had severe difficulty with the proposed system for making sure you get to catch the person of your choosing. Based on the methodology exhaustively tested by Paci, it should be the second-selected squadmember (whoever is on Shep's "right" on the squad equip screen, or whoever's icon is on the right in-game).

It does ring a bell...

I've taken Legion & Jack, had to catch Legion. Miranda and Jack, had to catch Miranda (though to be fair, she overrides other squadmates to be caught)

Not necessarily. I picked Samara and Miranda for the final stretch with my infiltrator, and I remember doing it twice and alternating the order in which I picked them. Samara did overrule Miranda the second time.

I did though, on my last playthrough, manage to catch Jack - and with Warren, who had just romanced her. [...] I was doing so much of a happydance I forgot to take a bloody screengrab.

Ouch.

[MirshanDR]

Jackal904 wrote...


I usually pick Jack first and then Legion to go take on the human reaper, and every single time I've ended up catching Jack. It hasn't failed me once. But next time I'm going to choose Jack first and Thane second, because apparently with that combination you'll catch Jack and she'll also be the one who helps you up on the Normandy.

Last time I took Jack and Thane for the boss fight, picked Jack first (always do). Ended up saving Thane from falling, but however, Jack was the one to pull me back to the Normandy. 
Too bad, I didn't happen to save the LI even once through all my games ((
Ahah, the one time my Shep pulled out Grunt made me laugh to tears... Seriously, Grunt?!
A more likely scenario would be Shepard swearing like a truck-driver and falling with my beloved krogan to meet their doooooooom 

Jackal904 wrote...

Where is that screenshot taken from? It's been posted here before but I keep forgetting to ask where it's from.

Oh, found it in my screen-storage, so I don't even remember if I took it myself or stumbled at it in the internet.

[Pacifien]

Jackal904 wrote...

MirshanDR wrote...

Where is that screenshot taken from? It's been posted here before but I keep forgetting to ask where it's from.

Ooh, I hadn't seen that screenshot before. I will always wonder about Jack's face model. I really don't think it's been any of the suggested actresses. Afterall, Samara's was an obscure model.

[Pacifien]

MirshanDR wrote...
Last time I took Jack and Thane for the boss fight, picked Jack first (always do). Ended up saving Thane from falling, but however, Jack was the one to pull me back to the Normandy. 
Too bad, I didn't happen to save the LI even once through all my games ((
Ahah, the one time my Shep pulled out Grunt made me laugh to tears... Seriously, Grunt?!

I did do an extensive test on the whole falling/catching aspect, and came up with a pretty good idea of how it works. However, I tested with the XBox, and I suspect it might get trickier for the PC.

There are these icons for the squadmates at the bottom of the screen. During the final boss fight, it seems to be pretty random which squadmate's icon is going to be on the right, no matter who you choose first and second on the selection screen. To catch the squadmate, their icon has to be on the right. If at any point that icon switches, whether from a reload or changing weapons or whatever reason, then who you're going to catch is still whatever squadmate is on the right.

If the squadmate you want to catch is on the left, it can be somewhat difficult to get the icons switch places because they don't always switch on a reload. The best method I had for switching the icons is to not reload from a save point, but to actually get Shepard killed so you reload from the Critical Failure screen. Incidentally, it was near impossible to get the Human Reaper to kill me when I was playing on Normal difficulty or below. Just imagine this insane gamer sitting on the couch screaming "KILL ME ALREADY!" at the screen. That was me.

Who's going to catch Shepard is a different matter. The icons have nothing to do with it, it runs on a set pattern.
Miranda -> Zaeed -> Kasumi -> Tali -> Jacob -> Mordin -> Samara -> Grunt -> Legion -> Garrus -> Jack -> Thane

So to get Jack to pull Shepard up, either the second squadmate fighting the final boss needs to be dead or the squadmate needs to be Thane. Because Thane is a dick who never catches Shepard.

Modifié par Pacifien, 31 juillet 2010 - 05:39 .