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The Mass Effect Community Thread
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Nostremitus
Member
Wouldn't the destroy ending also disable the Quarian powersuits and kill them all anyway? Their own programs are based on the same base code that the Geth use since that is the basis of their technology...
figadapaura
Member
Are there stats on how many people chose which ending? As well as the (small) variations of those. That would be quite interesting to know.
I always figured the geth were destroyed (or just switched off basically) because they had reaper tech in them by the end of the game. Same goes for EDI.
Edit: Since Tali clearly survives the end.
Nostremitus
Member
Surviving the initial blast and surviving long term after the suits start malfunctioning are two different things. Consider that most galactic technology was based off of (or augmented by) reverse engineering technology the Reapers seeded throughout the galaxy in order to guide development along a known path. But then, the drive cores of the ships still function after the blast, so I guess all Reaper based/augmented tech wasn't destroyed...
Edit: I guess this counts as a plot hole?
I still think they're going to throw all the endings out the window and craft a universe where we basically had the Destroy ending with none of the negative side effects.
So there will still be Quarians and Geth, the Reapers will be gone, and the whole thing will kind of be handwaved.
Nostremitus
Member
Yeah... or it takes place hundreds or thousands of years later and the stories in the original trilogy were different interpretations/tellings of an ancient myth...
That's how the trilogy ended...
figadapaura
Member
Depends what you mean by long term. It's not exactly clear how long it takes the Normandy to be fixed after crash landing (I've always thought EDI could have been easily fixed in that time too), but she's still fine after that.
Are the drive cores reaper technology though? I thought Element Zero existed before they did. Was it mentioned somewhere that they created it?
figadapaura
Member
Who did they ask?! No krogans would be terrible.
SlasherJPC
Banned
How the performace of the Mass Effect trilogy on PS3?
I can live without Quarians but Krogans need to be in the game.
Nostremitus
Member
There's a difference between the fuel and the technology that uses it. Eezo cores produce a Mass Effect field around the ship that increases the speed of light while traveling.
From the Codex
My point is that once the Asari found the citadel and the relays they started reverse engineering mass effect tech and augmenting their own technology. They never reached a point where they could create their own relays, but they were able to create a lot of smaller applications using this Reaper tech.
figadapaura
Member
The first game is a bit touch and go. I had no real issues on my first playthrough though, I just didn't realise how often I'd have to manually save....
I can't think of any problems I've had with 2, but some of the updates for 3 have left some pretty bad glitches like people disappearing and sound out of sync. :/ If you can look past that, it works fine.
I'm really hoping for a PS4 release to smooth all that out.
Destroy is just frustratingly vague, since it's never clear what it does. The Catalyst mentions that the wave will affect (possibly kill) Shepard, but he says it will target synthetics. How is a synthetic being defined here? Then Shepard lives and the quarians are fine: besides showing Tali post-wave, we also see a slide of the quarians inhabiting a Rannoch city, so they appear to be fine.
Someone asked about stats; this doesn't show the ending distribution (the highest samples there are going to be old BSN polls, but since those are a) voluntary and b) likely to be skewed towards Destroyers since those are apparently the most unhappy of the lot, I don't think they are very representative) but it does have some interesting stats, including the Rannoch distribution which is, frankly, a bit surprising:
Nostremitus
Member
I played 2 and 3 on PS3, the bought the Trilogy on PC... I sold my PS3 copies because my save files weren't even reason enough to deal with the headache again once I found out how much better it was elsewhere...
There are a lot of audio problems in 2 and to some extent 3 on PS3, it likes to cut the audio out two to five words before the line is finished, you'll have to use subtitles if you want to know what's going on. That, and the load times are atrocious... I dreaded having to use the elevator on the normandy because of how long it took to load the next area.(and the hard locks after waiting forever for the next area to load...
If you have a PC with at least a Phenom II X6 or i5 2500 with an HD 5570 or equivalent I'd suggest playing it on there instead... you'll have a higher resolution and an equivalent or better framerate... Even a dated low-end PC like that will perform better than the PS3... as long as you don't mind mouse and keyboard.
tringworldso
Member
Yes, this is what I think will happen as well. If the game turns out to be a prequel then I'm going to spank somebody.
figadapaura
Member
I think they actually were at a point where they could create their own relay, like Aethyta mentions, they were just too afraid to.
The asari were already far more advanced than any other race thanks to the protheans. Would they not have needed FTL to get to the Citadel in the first place?
Since the asari are born with the ability to manipulate mass effect fields with their minds, it seems feasible they could have figured that out before reaching the Citadel. I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere where it originated though, so I might just be talking out of my arse.
I wonder how many people uploaded the reaper code simply because it was the paragon option and didn't realise it would wipe out the quarians. It still amazes me how many people went into ME3 as their first game (or without importing).
Nothing will ever baffle me more than the survival % for Liara. So many people just rushed through the game or what?
BouncyFrag
Member
Good to see Kaiden at 1.5 percent popularity.
Nostremitus
Member
Not really... they found the Citadel by using the relays...
figadapaura
Member
If such a high % of people didn't choose MaleShep, it'd probably be a bit different. He's actually a really useful squad member. Far more than Ashley anyway.
That doesn't mean they didn't have FTL though.
Marvel
could never
Just random fans, someone linked it here many months ago. Was shocked at the result of the choices.
Nostremitus
Member
Nah... I play FemShep and let him sacrifice himself as a mercy killing. Dude had chronic(if not terminal) brain damage... Ashley was the more viable asset.
Clearly everyone's been playing Mass Effect wrong.
figadapaura
Member
Hopefully BioWare took no notice of those random fans.
Hah, I originally sacrificed him too, but I've played with both since then and I actually prefer Kaidan in ME3. I find Ashley to be kind of useless in battle. I'd much rather take Garrus since they're pretty similar but he's better.
Nostremitus
Member
No, but I was contesting the assertion that FTL would have been required to find the Citadel.
Mass Effect technology (a requirement for FTL, essentially a renaming of "warp" technology from Star Trek) is Reaper Tech. It was reverse engineered from studying the Mass Relays. Whether the Asari developed the tech by studying the relays themselves or by studying Prothean databanks that detailed their own efforts studying the technology is irrelevent, as it is still Reaper Tech.
If the Destroy ending destroyed the relays because they were Reaper Tech, then the Mass Effect Drives on the ships should have been damaged as well.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Destroy is just frustratingly vague, since it's never clear what it does. The Catalyst mentions that the wave will affect (possibly kill) Shepard, but he says it will target synthetics. How is a synthetic being defined here? Then Shepard lives and the quarians are fine: besides showing Tali post-wave, we also see a slide of the quarians inhabiting a Rannoch city, so they appear to be fine.
Someone asked about stats; this doesn't show the ending distribution (the highest samples there are going to be old BSN polls, but since those are a) voluntary and b) likely to be skewed towards Destroyers since those are apparently the most unhappy of the lot, I don't think they are very representative) but it does have some interesting stats, including the Rannoch distribution which is, frankly, a bit surprising:
3.7% of people who shot Mordin are ASSHOLES !
BouncyFrag
Member
Someone once got mad at me for sacrificing Kaiden and supporting a 'space racist.'
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Space Boring vs. Space Racist is perhaps BioWare's toughest written moral conundrum.
You're a monster.
Nostremitus
Member
I did on my renegade playthrough... ...Mordin is my favorite character in the series.
I didn't read any spoilers beforehand...
I thought that maybe Shepard would knock him out and drag him out of there or something.... nope...
I cried man tears while watching what came next.
TheLegendOfMart
Banned
No u
Ivory Samoan
Gold Member
I'm not much for the combination of endings idea, but I roll with this same bias err' day.
Destroy ending is the Tony Montana of the endings, go out with a bang.
....or we could down on some Indoc theory feels, my more true bias
figadapaura
Member
Just found this in the timeline on the wiki:
So, yeah, they did need FTL to find the Citadel, but they also did use prothean databanks. I'm not sure I agree with that last part though, since it's literally just Eezo and electricity. The mass relays are clearly far more complex than that.
I couldn't even bring myself to do it on my renegade playthrough. Felt bad enough lying to him and him calling me on it.
royox
Member
I did it full paragon and cried those manly tears in 3 steps.
-"had to be me. someone else might have gotten it wrong"
-"Would have liked to run test on the seashells"
-"....I am the very model of a scientist......" booom
Man...that was freaking impossible to bear.
Nostremitus
Member
It's not just Eezo and electricity, it's a drive core that produces a smaller version of the mass effect field that the relays do. The Relays are large enough that they can create fields dense enough to allow speeds so fast that travel seems to be instantaneous. The Drive cores produce the exact same field, just weaker.
figadapaura
Member
The mass effect fields are created by manipulating the Eezo with electricity.
If the mass relays were just bigger versions of drive cores, why would they require so much study? Nobody even knows what they're made of, besides the large ball of Eezo.
I assume they would have to be advanced. So, you are suggesting "long lost" species that rise up after the reapers?
Best class.
Nostremitus
Member
That's like saying that rocket Science and modern space travel is acheived by applying a spark to an explosive mixture.
Nuclear reactors just produce electricity by dropping radioactive elements into water.
The internal combustion engine is just applying a spark to gasoline...
Computers work by applying a current to silicon...
None of these are wrong, but they are huge oversimplifications of how these technologies work.
The scientists in the Mass Effect universe used Reaper Tech in order to harness this ability into something useful. They needed to create stable mass effect fields, containment fields capable or containing the mass effect drive's residual output, a method of feeding the appropriate ammounts of Eezo, finding the correct frequency of energy, etc. That's what the Mass Relays do... The relays are giant drive cores that create super stable mass effect fields that can exist without their continuous output, but that can also absorb mass effect fields that come near them. That's why Joker likes reminding people of how great he is when he makes a jump. If the pilot were to miss the next relay, they'd continue in that bubble until it eventually degraded on it's own in a devistating influx of space-time turbulence or they were able to make it to another relay. That's why pilots call Relay jumps "Threading the needle." They have to hit that next relay, the trajectory has to be plotted before the field generating relay places them in a bubble of expanded space-time. They keep moving the same direction they are traveling at that very moment until the field is removed. (Technically, they can adjust their trajectory while in a field, but they are moving so fast from the relay jump that they generally wouldn't have enough time to make any corrections before missing the next relay.
Edit: This is another possible plot hole as it would be difficult to use one relay to find another as you would essentially be firing blindly... Unless this is detailed elsewhere that I haven't read. IE, the relays occasionally send data-bursts to each other that the people of the Mass Effect Universe use to map out other relay locations or something...
figadapaura
Member
Of course it's a simplification, but I still disagree that the cores themselves are reaper tech. You might as well say that omni-tools and the chip in Kaidan's head are reaper tech, too.
EatChildren
Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Yep. Mass Effect establishes that a majority of the galaxy hasn't been mapped out. Early exploration by the Asari/Salarian Citadel empire hit a standstill when the Rachni war started, followed by the Krogan Rebellion. The then Asari/Salarian/Turian empire agreed that sanctions were to be put on relay activation, and as a result for at least Citadel space few relays were activated. They perceived the risk of opening doorways to fuck-knows-where too risky if something very advanced and hostile sat on the other end.
The implication is that the galaxy is very, very large, full of potentially habitable planets, and it's reasonable to believe species can evolve into space faring societies and even activate relays before making contact with the Citadel species. You've got a window of about 3000 Earth years where species came in and out of contact with each other.
Years passed: Event.
1: Asari discover the citadel.
60: Salarians discover the citadel. Council formed.
80 - 580: Volus, Elcor, Hanar, Quarian, and Batarian contact during this ~500 year window.
580: Rachni contact, war.
660: Krogan contact, uplifted.
1180: Turian contact.
2180: Collectors sighted.
2475: Geth created, rebellion, war.
2541: First human in space, Yuri Gagarin. Year is 1961 on Earth.
2580: Drell contact.
2705: Yahg contact.
2728: Humanity discovers mass technology, first relay one year later.
2737: Human contact, political stand-off, Council intervention prevents war.
2745: Humans join Citadel space embassies.
2763: Mass Effect begins.
2764: Raloi contact, written out of the story because *shrug*.
2766: Reaper contact, war.
So really, within the logic of the Mass Effect series the possibility of a species advancing to space faring, even opening relays and exploring, isn't at all unlikely despite having come into no contact at all with the species we know. It took 2700 years for the Asari to hit the Citadel then see through to the end of the Reaper war. That window for humans, discovering mass technology, meeting aliens, fucking them, then seeing through the Reaper war was only ~38 years. The series timeline accuracy is totally fucked, mind you, but that's as close as we have.
As I've said earlier in the thread, I think (hope!) the premise is that the Reaper war is over, and the relays for whatever reason are active or being opened (or destroyed, whatever, I don't care about the ending canon), and now that the galaxy is somewhat stabilised we basically get first contact 2.0. Citadel species come in contact with a new space faring species or two.
Nostremitus
Member
Aren't they? The Reapers left this type of technology behind as a tool to guide the development of these species along a path that best suited their needs. They'd been doing this for eons and had it down to a science.
That's the biggest thing about the series that bugs me. How seriously fucked up the whole timeline for humanity is. The fact that we went from just opening our first relays to having multiple colonies and getting on the council in a matter of decades is just... ugh.
I don't even understand why they wanted that accelerated timeline instead of having it be 100 or 200 years after first contact.
So I would assume this would be another yahg situation, where they add an alien that we hadn't seen but apparently was around.
Personally, I liked the idea that somebody proposed a while back about encountering a new advanced species that developed without Mass technology.
Technically, all the known races have had their technological development guided by mass tech because they've had exposure. What about a race that didn't have that leg up and had to develop their own?
Suddenly you could have a threat that isn't bound by the known rules and limitations.
Technically, all the known races have had their technological development guided by mass tech because they've had exposure. What about a race that didn't have that leg up and had to develop their own?
Suddenly you could have a threat that isn't bound by the known rules and limitations.
TC McQueen
Member
IIRC, it was something about making it more relatable to players, because they intended to have it set 100 years later than it was (that's why Pressley mentions his grandpa fought in the First Contact War in ME1, even though Pressley is old enough to have fought in it himself).
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