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Moved to Headscratchers.Mass Effect. It was just an unnecessary, nattery mess.
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* In Jack's loyalty mission, you end up confronting the only other survivor, a guy called Aresh who wants to restart the facility. You can convince Jack to let him go, but shortly afterwards you plant a huge bomb in her cell and blow the place up. Is it really that likely that he managed to make it out?
** There's a pretty significant time delay between letting Aresh go and blowing up the facility, and the Blood Pack troops didn't sprout from the firmament. Aresh likely ran back to the ships they used to get there and hightailed it out.
*** [[spoiler: If you let him go, Aresh is confirmed via an e-mailed news report to have died fighting off Reaper ground forces to give time for another civilian shuttle to evacuate, so he did in fact make it out alive.]]
* The Romance Options in general for Male and Female Shepard have a common pattern. Both Shepards can romance the Virmire Survivor and Liara in the First Game. In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' they can have a relationship with a Dextro DNA alien, romancing the Cerberus Operative and romancing a notorious criminal. However, It seems that Male Shepard is always the lucky one to get the smooth skinned females while Female Shepard has to settle for scaly aliens who have a penchant for sniper rifles. FreudWasRight?
** Hey, you forgot Jacob with that last bit... Just like everyone else. Except [[NoAccountingForTaste Kasumi]].
*** Well, she only wants him for his body.
** And apparently, Male Shepard only likes pure blooded human/asari/quarians which define perfection of their genes.
*** Exactly how are Ashley or Tali "pureblooded" or "genetically perfect", again? Only Liara and Miranda are described in those terms, and in Liara's case it's an insult, not a praise.
* So, regarding the now-infamous ending for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', I have a theory regarding why it is the way it is. Think about how the first game was deliberately a {{Reconstruction}} of the SpaceOpera of the '70s and '80s, and the second was more heavily influenced by DarkerandEdgier '90s sci-fi. That would mean that the third game would logically be more influenced by sci-fi from the '00s and '10s. Which means the ''{{Series/Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'' reboot, ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' and ''Series/StargateUniverse'' (not so much ''Series/StargateSG1''), and ''Series/{{Lost}}'', among others. All of which were far bleaker than what had come before and had endings that were either [[DownerEnding bleak, unsatisfying]], [[GainaxEnding obtuse, outright insane]], or some combination of the above.
** The point being that {{Bioware}} did it [[TrollingCreator intentionally]].
*** So we get that ending because Bioware is staffed with fans of {{Lost}}? [[SarcasmMode That certainly makes it better, right?]]
**** Not to dispute the complaints about the ending; ("choices don't matter", "multi-colored explosions", etc.) but the point isn't in the details of Shepard's story. At the very end, when the Stargazer and their child are looking out into space, the child asks to hear another story about "the Shepard", the Stargazers says it's getting late, but "okay, one more story". The ENTIRE trilogy is a story told from a parent to their child. The WHOLE POINT is that the Reaper threat is OVER. That's what Commander Shepard promised, that he/she would end the Reaper threat. Destroy simply destroys them outright, Control re-purposes them so they work the right way, and Synthesis simply renders the Reapers moot. It's a bit to wrap your head around, but it does make sense.
* Shepard's ShutUpHannibal to Sovereign: "You're not even alive. Not really. You're just a machine, and machines can be broken," comes off slightly worse when viewed in light of Legion and EDI.
** And as of [=ME3=], there's new light in knowing that each individual reaper is the entirety of an advanced (organic) civilization, preserved in Reaper form. "Just a machine", eh?
** It sort of makes sense if you consider that Shepard's interactions with AI in the first game were largely negative. The heretic geth were essentially at war with the Alliance (at were thought to represent all geth instead of a small minority), the AI on the Citadel (which tried to blow itself up, killing Shepard and “as many organics as I can”), the rogue AI on Luna and now Sovereign, a literal OmnicidalManiac. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Shepard though all AI were AlwaysChaoticEvil. But interactions with EDI, Legion and the true geth over the next two games probably changed his/her opinions.
*** Even in [=ME1=], Shepard can argue with Tali that the geth were living beings with a right to life, and that the quarians were in the wrong.
* The Omniblade actually isn't a new development for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. After all, look at Kasumi whenever she uses Shadow Strike. She's striking at enemies with her omnitool! So those things can be pretty nasty weapons as early as ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''.
** According to the Codex the tech is almost as old as Omnitools and a standard app, but until the Reaper invasion and the necessity of fighting Husks in close combat everyone thought it was an idiot's weapon. Except Kasumi apparently.
*** Specifically, the codex explains that the use of omni-tools as a weapon is almost as old as omnitools themselves. The omni-blade, specifically, was developed explicitly in preparation for the reaper invasion as a good hand to hand weapon against husks. This is somewhat demonstrated by how in multiplayer, Batarians(who've isolated themselves for a while), developed a different weapon; [[TalkToTheFist the omni-gauntlet.]]
*** Not to mention that in the Shadow Broker DLC, the Broker busts out an omni-shield.
* Jacob's loyalty mission. Eight years. No children.
** So the flora screws up more than just your brain?
** Either that, or none of the women were allowed to carry to term, which opens up a whole other can of FridgeHorror.
** Maybe long-term contraceptives are commonplace?
* Overlord DLC. The Rogue VI has taken over security mechs, geth units, a geth cannon, and the station's computer system. Gavin Archer is worried that Legion might get hacked too if you bring them. So why is no one worried about the M-44 Hammerhead's VI? Especially since you have to drive around on the planet in it!
** Because its not on the same network and is not communicating with any of the VI's systems. Just because its an electronic intelligence doesn't mean it can be instantly hacked.
* This was my (Kodemunkey's) Fridge combination (logic, horror etc)
Having landed in London in ''Mass Effect 3'', it was pure fridge horror listening to the radio listing off the kill rates at the various london bases, as i've been to some of the areas listed.
Not only that, but the loading screen shows an area of the england glowing from the fires, this area is one the most densely populated part of england, and extends from london, up into the home counties, over into east anglia and into Kent (where i live) as well as down into portsmouth and various other towns and areas. Most of these areas are full of industrial and military facilities of all types.
* That damn kid at the ending. Okay, Shepard was watching him at the start of the game, and is understandably torn up the Reapers killed him. But is Shepard really that badly affected by it? Really? It's not like it was Shepard's son or anything.
** One explanation is that Shepard's been under house arrest for seven months by this time and their room overlooks that kids house. Shepard has likely seen or heard that kid playing a couple times, then had to watch helplessly as they got vaporised. Which, when you look at it, is the entire theme of the nightmare.
** Another reason is because Shep faced their first clear defeat, even Akuze had Shepard eventually finding Toombs and can at least talk him out of his murder spree and sleep easy for both sides. But for the kid, there was no consolation of any kind. This was the first time Shepard suffered from a catastrophic failure until Thessia.
** The child is symbolic. He's supposed to be representative of all of humanity, in Shepard's eyes, representing the ones s/he couldn't save. When you see the kid in Shepard's dreams, you're not seeing one child, you're seeing a symbolic representation of mankind.
** Also represents failure, failure to warn the galaxy about the reapers, failure to do something that made their deaths not be in vain.
** Be in a position of power where you can or could have helped people but no one listened and then watch a kid get killed infront of your eyes as a consequence of that. or just an experience of being in the presence of a child being murdered. It will eat you alive unless there's nothing inside you already.
* Ok, why is it that Legion is so eager to use the Reaper code to make all Geth true independent intelligences when in the second game it couldn't wrap its head around the concept of individuality and couldn't understand why anyone would want to do that?
** Part of the Geth goal is to achieve full sentience, which would be harder with the extermination of so many runtimes. Besides, it's been six months, and given that Geth supposedly think at light speed, he's likely had the time to think it over for the equivalent of several hundred years.
*** Well, given that the choice was upload the Reaper code or '''''extinction''''' by the Quarian fleet...
* So in the Extended Cut by the space elevator, we discover that your squad mates survive by [[spoiler: you calling in the Normandy to pick them up.]] Well that's all well and good until you realize that Harbinger is just hovering there doing nothing. So why doesn't he take advantage of [[spoiler: your ship, you and your crew, the very things that have been messing up the Reapers plans for years are just sitting there]] and attack it? [[spoiler: The Normandy is there for more than enough time to blow it up, killing you and everyone else]] and guaranteeing Reaper victory. There is little logic in him doing nothing in this situation.
** Looking closely reveals [[spoiler: Harbinger's cannons are not visible. It was probably prioritizing all the people making a mad dash to the conduit over the ship with both a state-of-the-art stealth drive and a Reaper IFF that wasn't actually attempting to make it to the conduit.]]
*** The reaper IFF is a really good point. When you're not making a spectacle of yourself (pinging planets), is there any time in VideoGame/MassEffect3 where the reapers actually shoot at the Normandy?
* I have two problems with the Destroy ending:
** Why does Shepard keep walking towards the obviously exploding capacitor-thing? The range isn't that bad on a pistol; s/he could have easily stood back a safe distance once it became apparent that it was going to explode and shot it from there.
*** It's implied at a couple of points that Shepard has developed some DeathSeeker tendencies.
*** DeathSeeker tendencies aside : just a few minutes before this Shepard was [[spoiler: at least grazed by one of Harbinger's main cannons, shot by a Marauder, bounced around some steel walls upon landing in the Citadel, and had fallen unconcious from blood loss and various traumas.]] Also, do you remember just how difficult it was to take those last shots even before all that happened to the Commander? At that moment, Shepard is pretty much physically incapable of making a pistol shot at anything but point blank range.
*** Agreed, I have used a pistol myself at a target range; it is more difficult to consistently aim than it appears (and this was in ideal conditions and I was perfectly healthy). The Commander is injured/shot/exhausted, so holding the pistol properly AND accurately in those conditions would be quite difficult.
** How exactly does the ''Crucible'' destroy all synthetic life? It makes sense that EDI would be affected seeing as she was partially built using Reaper tech and could conceivably be susceptible. And then there's the Catalyst's remark about Shepard being partly synthetic. No s/he's not. Unless ''all'' advanced technology is affected; in which case, all of galactic civilization would have gone boom.
*** As pointed out in Brilliance Part 1, all synthetic life is built based on Reaper technology, however distant the apparent connection. As such, any true synthetic life will bear sufficient similarities to the Reapers to be affected as well.
*** No, Shepard ''is'' partially synthetic. The cybernetic parts that make up his/her body when she was rebuilt from the shattered remains of a chunk of burnt meat and tubes make him/her "partially" synthetic. The Destroy ending indicates that the Crucible is a targeted weapons system capable of freely discerning between definitions of "synthetic" and "organic" and between what is actually intelligent and what is simply machinery.
* If the Rachni queen died in ''1'', the Reapers clone a synthetic queen to breed up Ravagers and pods with. So if she didn't die and Shepard either freed the original queen or let her die, why is everyone so sure this will cut down on the production of new Ravagers? Can't the Reapers make another, maybe one that's guarded by more than a token force of husks and the children she produces? The Reapers have not been in this galaxy for long. Either they made a synthetic queen in the few weeks since the invasion, Sovereign decided to whip up a clone before leading geth against the Citadel, or the Collectors under Harbinger's control did it and stashed her somewhere well away from their base despite believing it was safe.
** For that matter, you find Spore Pods and Gestation Pods on different worlds too. Do Husks just tote them in and arrange them as very obvious mine traps? Do Ravagers lay/make them when there's a break in the fighting?
** Because people are not aware of what happened in alternate timelines where Shepard killed the Rachni Queen, this is Shrodinger's Plot Point. If the Rachni Queen survived in 1, the Reapers have never cloned any synthetic queen. In this scenario, the possibility of a synthetic queen being cloned has never come up; there is one Rachni Queen, and if she dies or is liberated from the Reapers, then that cuts off the Ravager production.
** Even if they do successfully create a fake, the fact is that Shepard's allies also have Rachni among them. While they don't go out into battle, they could educate the others on Ravager biology, leading to more efficient ways to kill them. (Of course, there is also the possibility that the rest of the galaxy might turn this knowledge against them, but they're demonstrating good will by helping.)
* One thing I never understood was just how it was possible that in the entire time the Reapers have existed not a single cycle has gone by without synthetics and organics playing nice long enough to convince the Catalyst not to continue the cycle. It is made relatively clear that this has been going on for several hundred if not thousands of cycle and in all those years not one civilization has looked upon it's creaters/created and been like "you know you are ok. Let's share." I just don't see how Shepard is the first person in literally MILLIONS of years to be nice to a non-organic...and if such a civilization did arise in the past than shouldn't those two working together have been enough to defeat the Reapers?
** Shepard's probably not the first person to be nice to a non-organic, but wars are not won on kindness and respect, they're won on military strength. We don't know what any of the civilizations from the past millions of years of cycles were like. There may have been, for example, a civilization that was an absolute utopian paradise, with man and machine living in harmony with each other, no famine, no hunger, no wars, etc. until the Reapers came and steamrolled them all because such a society has no need for a powerful military. There could have been plenty of cycles in the past where, like the possibility exists for Shepard's, organics and synthetics managed to make peace with each other, and the Reapers slaughtered them anyway becauze the Conduit ''does not care'' if there's a standing example of organic/synthetic peace, he is committed to his idea that war is inevitable.
** Actually that brings up another question. Just how many Reapers are there in existence? If you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still in alive in one giant fleet wouldn't that have put up a pretty damn good fight? I think I have a problem with scale here...how can that many Reapers exist to truly be able to defeat a united front of a GALAXY's worth of advanced beings. Especially after they had managed to reverse engineer many of the Reaper advantages and figure out good strategies against them.
*** Even if you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still alive in one giant fleet, that still pales in comparison to the Reapers' ''millions of years'' of technological superiority, building their weapons, building their fleets, and the synthetic advantage of not having a natural lifespan means that all the Reapers that fought in the first cycle, except any that were destroyed, are still around fighting in this cycle ''in addition to'' all the future generations of Reapers created in the meantime. The cycle was designed with the specific intent that all the races of the galaxy would not, could not ever be sufficient to overpower the Reapers. It was designed as such by a race of malicious AI in a time when all the races that populate the galaxy were barely even a microbe of bacteria on their planets' surface, and it has been carried out so often and so thoroughly that any and all possible bugs or loopholes with the system have long since been weeded out. There are too many, they are too thorough, and they've done this so many times that the basic idea of "THIS TIME it will be different if we just do the same thing the last cycles did!" is laughably suicidal. This is why we're explicitly told [[spoiler: the Crucible is the only hope]]; the Reapers cannot be defeated by military strength. Whatever military advantage you can try to bring to the party, they've seen it a million times before and it's never been enough.
** To go back to the first point, how has one race not gotten lucky by now? Dodged the cullings by being just under the threshold of advancement and then by the time the Reapers come back they have better technology that is able to put up a grand fight? Technology that would if not trounce the Reapers at least put them on the same playing field out of the gate? Is the universe so stagnated that EVERYONE has the exact same ideas? That is really sad if so. 50,000 years is an awfully long time for someone to have a random stroke of brilliance. Maybe figure out mass effect fields themselves before stumbling on the leftovers. Maybe figure out a better way of doing things? I just find it hard to believe nothing has changed in thousands of cycles of potential change.
*** The Reapers have ''several millions of years advantage'' as technology goes. 50,000 years is ''nothing'' to them. I'm sure plenty of races over the many, many countless cycles managed to slip under the advancement threshold, and then when the Reapers came, there was absolutely no difference whatsoever because 50,000 years is a meaningless drop in the pond compared to 1 billion. In the end, it's all a matter of scale.
**** Plus the Reapers have been sandbagging literally every civilization that's come since. They've ensured that they're the most advanced by sabotaging the technology that the new guys come across. And it's mentioned that the cycle isn't exact - sometimes they'll come at 30,000 years in, sometimes 70,000. It all depends on the civilization. Of course, this time around it got mucked up thanks to [[spoiler: those Protheans pulling a HeroicSacrifice to fiddle with the Keepers.]]
*** Except the Reapers don't actually advance technologically. All they do in dark space is hibernate. As evidenced by the fact that the Council races could make even the least bit of sense of Sovereign's remains. Or do you think they could successfully reverse-engineer technology that is millions of years more advanced than anything they had ever seen before?
*** It is mentioned that the Reapers do leave advanced civilizations without space-flight alone. It's stated that they're leaving the Yahg alone and that they may become the dominant race of the next cycle. Also in one of the Cerberus dailies there is a mention of a recently discovered civilization that took one look at the Reapers and said "screw this" and destroyed all their advanced technology in the hopes they'll just pass them by.
** There's always the possibility that the Catalyst was wrong or lying for whatever reason. Maybe they did suffer catastrophic defeats in the past, maybe far worse than Sovereign's defeat, just it turns out the Crucible was the ''worst'' defeat they had. After all, it wasn't us or the Protheans who even came up with the idea in the first place. So we haven't had to start over from scratch each time, we were building on what civilizations before us did and learned. We just happened to figure out the most. It's a standing on the shoulders of giants thing.
** Shepard is not the first to be nice to a synthetic. Shepard is the first person to ever manage to complete the crucible and be so near using it. Catalyst said that any peace between organic life and synthetic life can only be for a short time before war begins, and as a V.I(as oppose to an A.I.) it is not able to see beyond that. from it's point of view, life between the two is simply ''impossible''. and you are unable to convince it otherwise. about the war, the reapers always had a dormant ship to prepare the invasion, like sovereign, who probably made sure invasion went smoothly. as it is mentioned in [=ME1=], a normal reaper invasion is "control the mass relays and the citadel and make every race in this cycle blind", which is a ''huge'' advantage in the reaper's side. second, as garrus mentions in 3, the reapers have none of the normals weakneses most armies have. they don't need supplies and can make people into their soldiers, which garrus mentions, every new husk is 2 less soldiers in your side. the soldier who is a husk now, and the soldier who was his friend when alive. Even is a civilization was able to make a scientific jump long enough as to catch to the reapers technology, the reapers have ''too much''' advantages at their side.
** By the way, as we know from [[spoiler: trip to geth consensus, part of quarians were kind to geth. What happened to them? They were killed. By their fellow quarian compatriots. Just think about it: it's not synthetics who were the cause of war, it's '''organics'''. So maybe the point is not that synthetics will wipe out organics, but organics will force synthetics to destroy them, like it happened with quarians, if you choose to let Legion upload Reaper upgrades to geth and are unable to convince quarians to hold fire?]]
* Kind of a small thing, but really bugs me. ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. The Paragon ending of Zaeed's loyalty mission has Vido escape in a gunship, with Zaeed [[ShoutingShooter yelling and shooting mostly ineffectually]] at said gunship as it retreats. In most shows this is a fairly well-justified WeWillMeetAgain scenario (by the time Shepard finds transport Vido is long gone), but not this time: ''Shepard has a frigate in orbit'' that probably outguns and out-flies the (likely atmosphere-bound) gunship by several orders of magnitude. Vido didn't have to escape; all they had to do was have the orbiting ''Normandy'' track it with sensors and pursue in the shuttle. Or better yet, just have the ''Normandy'' itself come in and shoot it down. Point is, Vido shouldn't have escaped but for PlotInducedStupidity on the part of Shepard.
* There is another thought: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CKHLDgz2zE The Indoctrination Theory]]. The strange dreams and weird ending of ''Mass Effect 3'' are the Reapers attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard. Remember how in ''Mass Effect 1'', [[spoiler:Saren wanted to merge with the Reapers to prevent the extinction of everyone? And how now the Illusive Man wants to control them, yet Shepard insists they HAVE to be destroyed? Now think about the decision chamber. Think about how the color code is flipped. Think about how the Catalyst is made of stars, and claims he is the Reaper intelligence, yet the Rachni queen describes the Reaper voices as "oily". Think about how there are shadow people in your dream who look oily. Think about how weird it is that Shepard can survive a hot beam of laser that can cleave Dreadnoughts in two. And finally, think of how even though the Catalyst makes it seem like Shepard dies no matter what and that Destroying the Reapers will destroy all synthetics, the only way to get the last gasp after the credits is to pick Destroy. So, maybe Shepard didn't do anything and it was all just an indoctrination dream battle in his/her mind.]] -Ashuraspeaks
* Exactly what do the Elcor use for hands?
** Their ''hands'' are used for hands. The elcor forearms have long fingers that they use to manipulate tools.
* In the Citadel DLC for VideoGame/MassEffect3 you can play an arcade game called Relay Defense, where you send ships away from Earth through a Mass Relay while blowing up ships attempting to destroy the planet. Wouldn't it be considered highly insensitive to have released this game considering the Reaper invasion of Earth?
** It's worth noting that the game uses Turian ships for the enemies, suggesting it's based on a hypothetical turian invasion of Earth during the First Contact War, and thus predating the Reaper invasion.
* Why does the game measure planetary info relative to Earth? For instance Cyone has a gravity of 0.95 of Earth's. Gravity is measured in Newtons with Earth's as 9.8.
** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units ([=AUs=]). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
** HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.
** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that you're reading the human version of the Codex. Reading the Turian or Asari translations probably would have different measurements.
* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'', calls Shepard ''loco'', and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
*** Probably the latter. Shepard could have picked up his usual sprinklings, as the opening implies that Vega was his/her guard while under house arrest for at least a good chunk of the six months between Arrival and ''MassEffect3'', and thus set his/her Omni-Tool to identify Vega's voice patterns and forego translating what he says.
* Something that occurred to me last night. Why does anyone care about death anymore? Cerberus managed to resurrect a corpse, and depending on your choices, the leader of that little project is still out there. So if Shepard dies in the destroy ending, you bring him back again. Mordin sacrifices himself? Dig the body out and jump start it. Wrex, Eve, the Virmire survivor, Tali. Anyone who dies could conceivably be revived as long as they have some semblance of a body. Sure, it cost 2 billion credits at the time, but that could be attributed to a terror group running R&D testing. They've got the formula down, and could conceivably adapt it to any species.
** A valid point, but during Mass Effect 3, a little problem called the Reapers that everyone is worried about, so not a whole lot of focus on a then-experimental procedure that MIGHT work. Of course, with the Reaper threat over at the end of Mass Effect 3, that could probably be researched.
** There's a pretty significant time delay between letting Aresh go and blowing up the facility, and the Blood Pack troops didn't sprout from the firmament. Aresh likely ran back to the ships they used to get there and hightailed it out.
*** [[spoiler: If you let him go, Aresh is confirmed via an e-mailed news report to have died fighting off Reaper ground forces to give time for another civilian shuttle to evacuate, so he did in fact make it out alive.]]
* The Romance Options in general for Male and Female Shepard have a common pattern. Both Shepards can romance the Virmire Survivor and Liara in the First Game. In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' they can have a relationship with a Dextro DNA alien, romancing the Cerberus Operative and romancing a notorious criminal. However, It seems that Male Shepard is always the lucky one to get the smooth skinned females while Female Shepard has to settle for scaly aliens who have a penchant for sniper rifles. FreudWasRight?
** Hey, you forgot Jacob with that last bit... Just like everyone else. Except [[NoAccountingForTaste Kasumi]].
*** Well, she only wants him for his body.
** And apparently, Male Shepard only likes pure blooded human/asari/quarians which define perfection of their genes.
*** Exactly how are Ashley or Tali "pureblooded" or "genetically perfect", again? Only Liara and Miranda are described in those terms, and in Liara's case it's an insult, not a praise.
* So, regarding the now-infamous ending for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', I have a theory regarding why it is the way it is. Think about how the first game was deliberately a {{Reconstruction}} of the SpaceOpera of the '70s and '80s, and the second was more heavily influenced by DarkerandEdgier '90s sci-fi. That would mean that the third game would logically be more influenced by sci-fi from the '00s and '10s. Which means the ''{{Series/Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'' reboot, ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' and ''Series/StargateUniverse'' (not so much ''Series/StargateSG1''), and ''Series/{{Lost}}'', among others. All of which were far bleaker than what had come before and had endings that were either [[DownerEnding bleak, unsatisfying]], [[GainaxEnding obtuse, outright insane]], or some combination of the above.
** The point being that {{Bioware}} did it [[TrollingCreator intentionally]].
*** So we get that ending because Bioware is staffed with fans of {{Lost}}? [[SarcasmMode That certainly makes it better, right?]]
**** Not to dispute the complaints about the ending; ("choices don't matter", "multi-colored explosions", etc.) but the point isn't in the details of Shepard's story. At the very end, when the Stargazer and their child are looking out into space, the child asks to hear another story about "the Shepard", the Stargazers says it's getting late, but "okay, one more story". The ENTIRE trilogy is a story told from a parent to their child. The WHOLE POINT is that the Reaper threat is OVER. That's what Commander Shepard promised, that he/she would end the Reaper threat. Destroy simply destroys them outright, Control re-purposes them so they work the right way, and Synthesis simply renders the Reapers moot. It's a bit to wrap your head around, but it does make sense.
* Shepard's ShutUpHannibal to Sovereign: "You're not even alive. Not really. You're just a machine, and machines can be broken," comes off slightly worse when viewed in light of Legion and EDI.
** And as of [=ME3=], there's new light in knowing that each individual reaper is the entirety of an advanced (organic) civilization, preserved in Reaper form. "Just a machine", eh?
** It sort of makes sense if you consider that Shepard's interactions with AI in the first game were largely negative. The heretic geth were essentially at war with the Alliance (at were thought to represent all geth instead of a small minority), the AI on the Citadel (which tried to blow itself up, killing Shepard and “as many organics as I can”), the rogue AI on Luna and now Sovereign, a literal OmnicidalManiac. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Shepard though all AI were AlwaysChaoticEvil. But interactions with EDI, Legion and the true geth over the next two games probably changed his/her opinions.
*** Even in [=ME1=], Shepard can argue with Tali that the geth were living beings with a right to life, and that the quarians were in the wrong.
* The Omniblade actually isn't a new development for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. After all, look at Kasumi whenever she uses Shadow Strike. She's striking at enemies with her omnitool! So those things can be pretty nasty weapons as early as ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''.
** According to the Codex the tech is almost as old as Omnitools and a standard app, but until the Reaper invasion and the necessity of fighting Husks in close combat everyone thought it was an idiot's weapon. Except Kasumi apparently.
*** Specifically, the codex explains that the use of omni-tools as a weapon is almost as old as omnitools themselves. The omni-blade, specifically, was developed explicitly in preparation for the reaper invasion as a good hand to hand weapon against husks. This is somewhat demonstrated by how in multiplayer, Batarians(who've isolated themselves for a while), developed a different weapon; [[TalkToTheFist the omni-gauntlet.]]
*** Not to mention that in the Shadow Broker DLC, the Broker busts out an omni-shield.
* Jacob's loyalty mission. Eight years. No children.
** So the flora screws up more than just your brain?
** Either that, or none of the women were allowed to carry to term, which opens up a whole other can of FridgeHorror.
** Maybe long-term contraceptives are commonplace?
* Overlord DLC. The Rogue VI has taken over security mechs, geth units, a geth cannon, and the station's computer system. Gavin Archer is worried that Legion might get hacked too if you bring them. So why is no one worried about the M-44 Hammerhead's VI? Especially since you have to drive around on the planet in it!
** Because its not on the same network and is not communicating with any of the VI's systems. Just because its an electronic intelligence doesn't mean it can be instantly hacked.
* This was my (Kodemunkey's) Fridge combination (logic, horror etc)
Having landed in London in ''Mass Effect 3'', it was pure fridge horror listening to the radio listing off the kill rates at the various london bases, as i've been to some of the areas listed.
Not only that, but the loading screen shows an area of the england glowing from the fires, this area is one the most densely populated part of england, and extends from london, up into the home counties, over into east anglia and into Kent (where i live) as well as down into portsmouth and various other towns and areas. Most of these areas are full of industrial and military facilities of all types.
* That damn kid at the ending. Okay, Shepard was watching him at the start of the game, and is understandably torn up the Reapers killed him. But is Shepard really that badly affected by it? Really? It's not like it was Shepard's son or anything.
** One explanation is that Shepard's been under house arrest for seven months by this time and their room overlooks that kids house. Shepard has likely seen or heard that kid playing a couple times, then had to watch helplessly as they got vaporised. Which, when you look at it, is the entire theme of the nightmare.
** Another reason is because Shep faced their first clear defeat, even Akuze had Shepard eventually finding Toombs and can at least talk him out of his murder spree and sleep easy for both sides. But for the kid, there was no consolation of any kind. This was the first time Shepard suffered from a catastrophic failure until Thessia.
** The child is symbolic. He's supposed to be representative of all of humanity, in Shepard's eyes, representing the ones s/he couldn't save. When you see the kid in Shepard's dreams, you're not seeing one child, you're seeing a symbolic representation of mankind.
** Also represents failure, failure to warn the galaxy about the reapers, failure to do something that made their deaths not be in vain.
** Be in a position of power where you can or could have helped people but no one listened and then watch a kid get killed infront of your eyes as a consequence of that. or just an experience of being in the presence of a child being murdered. It will eat you alive unless there's nothing inside you already.
* Ok, why is it that Legion is so eager to use the Reaper code to make all Geth true independent intelligences when in the second game it couldn't wrap its head around the concept of individuality and couldn't understand why anyone would want to do that?
** Part of the Geth goal is to achieve full sentience, which would be harder with the extermination of so many runtimes. Besides, it's been six months, and given that Geth supposedly think at light speed, he's likely had the time to think it over for the equivalent of several hundred years.
*** Well, given that the choice was upload the Reaper code or '''''extinction''''' by the Quarian fleet...
* So in the Extended Cut by the space elevator, we discover that your squad mates survive by [[spoiler: you calling in the Normandy to pick them up.]] Well that's all well and good until you realize that Harbinger is just hovering there doing nothing. So why doesn't he take advantage of [[spoiler: your ship, you and your crew, the very things that have been messing up the Reapers plans for years are just sitting there]] and attack it? [[spoiler: The Normandy is there for more than enough time to blow it up, killing you and everyone else]] and guaranteeing Reaper victory. There is little logic in him doing nothing in this situation.
** Looking closely reveals [[spoiler: Harbinger's cannons are not visible. It was probably prioritizing all the people making a mad dash to the conduit over the ship with both a state-of-the-art stealth drive and a Reaper IFF that wasn't actually attempting to make it to the conduit.]]
*** The reaper IFF is a really good point. When you're not making a spectacle of yourself (pinging planets), is there any time in VideoGame/MassEffect3 where the reapers actually shoot at the Normandy?
* I have two problems with the Destroy ending:
** Why does Shepard keep walking towards the obviously exploding capacitor-thing? The range isn't that bad on a pistol; s/he could have easily stood back a safe distance once it became apparent that it was going to explode and shot it from there.
*** It's implied at a couple of points that Shepard has developed some DeathSeeker tendencies.
*** DeathSeeker tendencies aside : just a few minutes before this Shepard was [[spoiler: at least grazed by one of Harbinger's main cannons, shot by a Marauder, bounced around some steel walls upon landing in the Citadel, and had fallen unconcious from blood loss and various traumas.]] Also, do you remember just how difficult it was to take those last shots even before all that happened to the Commander? At that moment, Shepard is pretty much physically incapable of making a pistol shot at anything but point blank range.
*** Agreed, I have used a pistol myself at a target range; it is more difficult to consistently aim than it appears (and this was in ideal conditions and I was perfectly healthy). The Commander is injured/shot/exhausted, so holding the pistol properly AND accurately in those conditions would be quite difficult.
** How exactly does the ''Crucible'' destroy all synthetic life? It makes sense that EDI would be affected seeing as she was partially built using Reaper tech and could conceivably be susceptible. And then there's the Catalyst's remark about Shepard being partly synthetic. No s/he's not. Unless ''all'' advanced technology is affected; in which case, all of galactic civilization would have gone boom.
*** As pointed out in Brilliance Part 1, all synthetic life is built based on Reaper technology, however distant the apparent connection. As such, any true synthetic life will bear sufficient similarities to the Reapers to be affected as well.
*** No, Shepard ''is'' partially synthetic. The cybernetic parts that make up his/her body when she was rebuilt from the shattered remains of a chunk of burnt meat and tubes make him/her "partially" synthetic. The Destroy ending indicates that the Crucible is a targeted weapons system capable of freely discerning between definitions of "synthetic" and "organic" and between what is actually intelligent and what is simply machinery.
* If the Rachni queen died in ''1'', the Reapers clone a synthetic queen to breed up Ravagers and pods with. So if she didn't die and Shepard either freed the original queen or let her die, why is everyone so sure this will cut down on the production of new Ravagers? Can't the Reapers make another, maybe one that's guarded by more than a token force of husks and the children she produces? The Reapers have not been in this galaxy for long. Either they made a synthetic queen in the few weeks since the invasion, Sovereign decided to whip up a clone before leading geth against the Citadel, or the Collectors under Harbinger's control did it and stashed her somewhere well away from their base despite believing it was safe.
** For that matter, you find Spore Pods and Gestation Pods on different worlds too. Do Husks just tote them in and arrange them as very obvious mine traps? Do Ravagers lay/make them when there's a break in the fighting?
** Because people are not aware of what happened in alternate timelines where Shepard killed the Rachni Queen, this is Shrodinger's Plot Point. If the Rachni Queen survived in 1, the Reapers have never cloned any synthetic queen. In this scenario, the possibility of a synthetic queen being cloned has never come up; there is one Rachni Queen, and if she dies or is liberated from the Reapers, then that cuts off the Ravager production.
** Even if they do successfully create a fake, the fact is that Shepard's allies also have Rachni among them. While they don't go out into battle, they could educate the others on Ravager biology, leading to more efficient ways to kill them. (Of course, there is also the possibility that the rest of the galaxy might turn this knowledge against them, but they're demonstrating good will by helping.)
* One thing I never understood was just how it was possible that in the entire time the Reapers have existed not a single cycle has gone by without synthetics and organics playing nice long enough to convince the Catalyst not to continue the cycle. It is made relatively clear that this has been going on for several hundred if not thousands of cycle and in all those years not one civilization has looked upon it's creaters/created and been like "you know you are ok. Let's share." I just don't see how Shepard is the first person in literally MILLIONS of years to be nice to a non-organic...and if such a civilization did arise in the past than shouldn't those two working together have been enough to defeat the Reapers?
** Shepard's probably not the first person to be nice to a non-organic, but wars are not won on kindness and respect, they're won on military strength. We don't know what any of the civilizations from the past millions of years of cycles were like. There may have been, for example, a civilization that was an absolute utopian paradise, with man and machine living in harmony with each other, no famine, no hunger, no wars, etc. until the Reapers came and steamrolled them all because such a society has no need for a powerful military. There could have been plenty of cycles in the past where, like the possibility exists for Shepard's, organics and synthetics managed to make peace with each other, and the Reapers slaughtered them anyway becauze the Conduit ''does not care'' if there's a standing example of organic/synthetic peace, he is committed to his idea that war is inevitable.
** Actually that brings up another question. Just how many Reapers are there in existence? If you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still in alive in one giant fleet wouldn't that have put up a pretty damn good fight? I think I have a problem with scale here...how can that many Reapers exist to truly be able to defeat a united front of a GALAXY's worth of advanced beings. Especially after they had managed to reverse engineer many of the Reaper advantages and figure out good strategies against them.
*** Even if you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still alive in one giant fleet, that still pales in comparison to the Reapers' ''millions of years'' of technological superiority, building their weapons, building their fleets, and the synthetic advantage of not having a natural lifespan means that all the Reapers that fought in the first cycle, except any that were destroyed, are still around fighting in this cycle ''in addition to'' all the future generations of Reapers created in the meantime. The cycle was designed with the specific intent that all the races of the galaxy would not, could not ever be sufficient to overpower the Reapers. It was designed as such by a race of malicious AI in a time when all the races that populate the galaxy were barely even a microbe of bacteria on their planets' surface, and it has been carried out so often and so thoroughly that any and all possible bugs or loopholes with the system have long since been weeded out. There are too many, they are too thorough, and they've done this so many times that the basic idea of "THIS TIME it will be different if we just do the same thing the last cycles did!" is laughably suicidal. This is why we're explicitly told [[spoiler: the Crucible is the only hope]]; the Reapers cannot be defeated by military strength. Whatever military advantage you can try to bring to the party, they've seen it a million times before and it's never been enough.
** To go back to the first point, how has one race not gotten lucky by now? Dodged the cullings by being just under the threshold of advancement and then by the time the Reapers come back they have better technology that is able to put up a grand fight? Technology that would if not trounce the Reapers at least put them on the same playing field out of the gate? Is the universe so stagnated that EVERYONE has the exact same ideas? That is really sad if so. 50,000 years is an awfully long time for someone to have a random stroke of brilliance. Maybe figure out mass effect fields themselves before stumbling on the leftovers. Maybe figure out a better way of doing things? I just find it hard to believe nothing has changed in thousands of cycles of potential change.
*** The Reapers have ''several millions of years advantage'' as technology goes. 50,000 years is ''nothing'' to them. I'm sure plenty of races over the many, many countless cycles managed to slip under the advancement threshold, and then when the Reapers came, there was absolutely no difference whatsoever because 50,000 years is a meaningless drop in the pond compared to 1 billion. In the end, it's all a matter of scale.
**** Plus the Reapers have been sandbagging literally every civilization that's come since. They've ensured that they're the most advanced by sabotaging the technology that the new guys come across. And it's mentioned that the cycle isn't exact - sometimes they'll come at 30,000 years in, sometimes 70,000. It all depends on the civilization. Of course, this time around it got mucked up thanks to [[spoiler: those Protheans pulling a HeroicSacrifice to fiddle with the Keepers.]]
*** Except the Reapers don't actually advance technologically. All they do in dark space is hibernate. As evidenced by the fact that the Council races could make even the least bit of sense of Sovereign's remains. Or do you think they could successfully reverse-engineer technology that is millions of years more advanced than anything they had ever seen before?
*** It is mentioned that the Reapers do leave advanced civilizations without space-flight alone. It's stated that they're leaving the Yahg alone and that they may become the dominant race of the next cycle. Also in one of the Cerberus dailies there is a mention of a recently discovered civilization that took one look at the Reapers and said "screw this" and destroyed all their advanced technology in the hopes they'll just pass them by.
** There's always the possibility that the Catalyst was wrong or lying for whatever reason. Maybe they did suffer catastrophic defeats in the past, maybe far worse than Sovereign's defeat, just it turns out the Crucible was the ''worst'' defeat they had. After all, it wasn't us or the Protheans who even came up with the idea in the first place. So we haven't had to start over from scratch each time, we were building on what civilizations before us did and learned. We just happened to figure out the most. It's a standing on the shoulders of giants thing.
** Shepard is not the first to be nice to a synthetic. Shepard is the first person to ever manage to complete the crucible and be so near using it. Catalyst said that any peace between organic life and synthetic life can only be for a short time before war begins, and as a V.I(as oppose to an A.I.) it is not able to see beyond that. from it's point of view, life between the two is simply ''impossible''. and you are unable to convince it otherwise. about the war, the reapers always had a dormant ship to prepare the invasion, like sovereign, who probably made sure invasion went smoothly. as it is mentioned in [=ME1=], a normal reaper invasion is "control the mass relays and the citadel and make every race in this cycle blind", which is a ''huge'' advantage in the reaper's side. second, as garrus mentions in 3, the reapers have none of the normals weakneses most armies have. they don't need supplies and can make people into their soldiers, which garrus mentions, every new husk is 2 less soldiers in your side. the soldier who is a husk now, and the soldier who was his friend when alive. Even is a civilization was able to make a scientific jump long enough as to catch to the reapers technology, the reapers have ''too much''' advantages at their side.
** By the way, as we know from [[spoiler: trip to geth consensus, part of quarians were kind to geth. What happened to them? They were killed. By their fellow quarian compatriots. Just think about it: it's not synthetics who were the cause of war, it's '''organics'''. So maybe the point is not that synthetics will wipe out organics, but organics will force synthetics to destroy them, like it happened with quarians, if you choose to let Legion upload Reaper upgrades to geth and are unable to convince quarians to hold fire?]]
* Kind of a small thing, but really bugs me. ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. The Paragon ending of Zaeed's loyalty mission has Vido escape in a gunship, with Zaeed [[ShoutingShooter yelling and shooting mostly ineffectually]] at said gunship as it retreats. In most shows this is a fairly well-justified WeWillMeetAgain scenario (by the time Shepard finds transport Vido is long gone), but not this time: ''Shepard has a frigate in orbit'' that probably outguns and out-flies the (likely atmosphere-bound) gunship by several orders of magnitude. Vido didn't have to escape; all they had to do was have the orbiting ''Normandy'' track it with sensors and pursue in the shuttle. Or better yet, just have the ''Normandy'' itself come in and shoot it down. Point is, Vido shouldn't have escaped but for PlotInducedStupidity on the part of Shepard.
* There is another thought: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CKHLDgz2zE The Indoctrination Theory]]. The strange dreams and weird ending of ''Mass Effect 3'' are the Reapers attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard. Remember how in ''Mass Effect 1'', [[spoiler:Saren wanted to merge with the Reapers to prevent the extinction of everyone? And how now the Illusive Man wants to control them, yet Shepard insists they HAVE to be destroyed? Now think about the decision chamber. Think about how the color code is flipped. Think about how the Catalyst is made of stars, and claims he is the Reaper intelligence, yet the Rachni queen describes the Reaper voices as "oily". Think about how there are shadow people in your dream who look oily. Think about how weird it is that Shepard can survive a hot beam of laser that can cleave Dreadnoughts in two. And finally, think of how even though the Catalyst makes it seem like Shepard dies no matter what and that Destroying the Reapers will destroy all synthetics, the only way to get the last gasp after the credits is to pick Destroy. So, maybe Shepard didn't do anything and it was all just an indoctrination dream battle in his/her mind.]] -Ashuraspeaks
* Exactly what do the Elcor use for hands?
** Their ''hands'' are used for hands. The elcor forearms have long fingers that they use to manipulate tools.
* In the Citadel DLC for VideoGame/MassEffect3 you can play an arcade game called Relay Defense, where you send ships away from Earth through a Mass Relay while blowing up ships attempting to destroy the planet. Wouldn't it be considered highly insensitive to have released this game considering the Reaper invasion of Earth?
** It's worth noting that the game uses Turian ships for the enemies, suggesting it's based on a hypothetical turian invasion of Earth during the First Contact War, and thus predating the Reaper invasion.
* Why does the game measure planetary info relative to Earth? For instance Cyone has a gravity of 0.95 of Earth's. Gravity is measured in Newtons with Earth's as 9.8.
** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units ([=AUs=]). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
** HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.
** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that you're reading the human version of the Codex. Reading the Turian or Asari translations probably would have different measurements.
* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'', calls Shepard ''loco'', and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
*** Probably the latter. Shepard could have picked up his usual sprinklings, as the opening implies that Vega was his/her guard while under house arrest for at least a good chunk of the six months between Arrival and ''MassEffect3'', and thus set his/her Omni-Tool to identify Vega's voice patterns and forego translating what he says.
* Something that occurred to me last night. Why does anyone care about death anymore? Cerberus managed to resurrect a corpse, and depending on your choices, the leader of that little project is still out there. So if Shepard dies in the destroy ending, you bring him back again. Mordin sacrifices himself? Dig the body out and jump start it. Wrex, Eve, the Virmire survivor, Tali. Anyone who dies could conceivably be revived as long as they have some semblance of a body. Sure, it cost 2 billion credits at the time, but that could be attributed to a terror group running R&D testing. They've got the formula down, and could conceivably adapt it to any species.
** A valid point, but during Mass Effect 3, a little problem called the Reapers that everyone is worried about, so not a whole lot of focus on a then-experimental procedure that MIGHT work. Of course, with the Reaper threat over at the end of Mass Effect 3, that could probably be researched.
to:
** There's a pretty significant time delay between letting Aresh go and blowing up the facility, and the Blood Pack troops didn't sprout from the firmament. Aresh likely ran back to the ships they used to get there and hightailed it out.
*** [[spoiler: If you let him go, Aresh is confirmed via an e-mailed news report to have died fighting off Reaper ground forces to give time for another civilian shuttle to evacuate, so he did in fact make it out alive.]]
* The Romance Options in general for Male and Female Shepard have a common pattern. Both Shepards can romance the Virmire Survivor and Liara in the First Game. In ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' they can have a relationship with a Dextro DNA alien, romancing the Cerberus Operative and romancing a notorious criminal. However, It seems that Male Shepard is always the lucky one to get the smooth skinned females while Female Shepard has to settle for scaly aliens who have a penchant for sniper rifles. FreudWasRight?
** Hey, you forgot Jacob with that last bit... Just like everyone else. Except [[NoAccountingForTaste Kasumi]].
*** Well, she only wants him for his body.
** And apparently, Male Shepard only likes pure blooded human/asari/quarians which define perfection of their genes.
*** Exactly how are Ashley or Tali "pureblooded" or "genetically perfect", again? Only Liara and Miranda are described in those terms, and in Liara's case it's an insult, not a praise.
* So, regarding the now-infamous ending for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', I have a theory regarding why it is the way it is. Think about how the first game was deliberately a {{Reconstruction}} of the SpaceOpera of the '70s and '80s, and the second was more heavily influenced by DarkerandEdgier '90s sci-fi. That would mean that the third game would logically be more influenced by sci-fi from the '00s and '10s. Which means the ''{{Series/Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'' reboot, ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' and ''Series/StargateUniverse'' (not so much ''Series/StargateSG1''), and ''Series/{{Lost}}'', among others. All of which were far bleaker than what had come before and had endings that were either [[DownerEnding bleak, unsatisfying]], [[GainaxEnding obtuse, outright insane]], or some combination of the above.
** The point being that {{Bioware}} did it [[TrollingCreator intentionally]].
*** So we get that ending because Bioware is staffed with fans of {{Lost}}? [[SarcasmMode That certainly makes it better, right?]]
**** Not to dispute the complaints about the ending; ("choices don't matter", "multi-colored explosions", etc.) but the point isn't in the details of Shepard's story. At the very end, when the Stargazer and their child are looking out into space, the child asks to hear another story about "the Shepard", the Stargazers says it's getting late, but "okay, one more story". The ENTIRE trilogy is a story told from a parent to their child. The WHOLE POINT is that the Reaper threat is OVER. That's what Commander Shepard promised, that he/she would end the Reaper threat. Destroy simply destroys them outright, Control re-purposes them so they work the right way, and Synthesis simply renders the Reapers moot. It's a bit to wrap your head around, but it does make sense.
* Shepard's ShutUpHannibal to Sovereign: "You're not even alive. Not really. You're just a machine, and machines can be broken," comes off slightly worse when viewed in light of Legion and EDI.
** And as of [=ME3=], there's new light in knowing that each individual reaper is the entirety of an advanced (organic) civilization, preserved in Reaper form. "Just a machine", eh?
** It sort of makes sense if you consider that Shepard's interactions with AI in the first game were largely negative. The heretic geth were essentially at war with the Alliance (at were thought to represent all geth instead of a small minority), the AI on the Citadel (which tried to blow itself up, killing Shepard and “as many organics as I can”), the rogue AI on Luna and now Sovereign, a literal OmnicidalManiac. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Shepard though all AI were AlwaysChaoticEvil. But interactions with EDI, Legion and the true geth over the next two games probably changed his/her opinions.
*** Even in [=ME1=], Shepard can argue with Tali that the geth were living beings with a right to life, and that the quarians were in the wrong.
* The Omniblade actually isn't a new development for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. After all, look at Kasumi whenever she uses Shadow Strike. She's striking at enemies with her omnitool! So those things can be pretty nasty weapons as early as ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''.
** According to the Codex the tech is almost as old as Omnitools and a standard app, but until the Reaper invasion and the necessity of fighting Husks in close combat everyone thought it was an idiot's weapon. Except Kasumi apparently.
*** Specifically, the codex explains that the use of omni-tools as a weapon is almost as old as omnitools themselves. The omni-blade, specifically, was developed explicitly in preparation for the reaper invasion as a good hand to hand weapon against husks. This is somewhat demonstrated by how in multiplayer, Batarians(who've isolated themselves for a while), developed a different weapon; [[TalkToTheFist the omni-gauntlet.]]
*** Not to mention that in the Shadow Broker DLC, the Broker busts out an omni-shield.
* Jacob's loyalty mission. Eight years. No children.
** So the flora screws up more than just your brain?
** Either that, or none of the women were allowed to carry to term, which opens up a whole other can of FridgeHorror.
** Maybe long-term contraceptives are commonplace?
* Overlord DLC. The Rogue VI has taken over security mechs, geth units, a geth cannon, and the station's computer system. Gavin Archer is worried that Legion might get hacked too if you bring them. So why is no one worried about the M-44 Hammerhead's VI? Especially since you have to drive around on the planet in it!
** Because its not on the same network and is not communicating with any of the VI's systems. Just because its an electronic intelligence doesn't mean it can be instantly hacked.
* This was my (Kodemunkey's) Fridge combination (logic, horror etc)
Having landed in London in ''Mass Effect 3'', it was pure fridge horror listening to the radio listing off the kill rates at the various london bases, as i've been to some of the areas listed.
Not only that, but the loading screen shows an area of the england glowing from the fires, this area is one the most densely populated part of england, and extends from london, up into the home counties, over into east anglia and into Kent (where i live) as well as down into portsmouth and various other towns and areas. Most of these areas are full of industrial and military facilities of all types.
* That damn kid at the ending. Okay, Shepard was watching him at the start of the game, and is understandably torn up the Reapers killed him. But is Shepard really that badly affected by it? Really? It's not like it was Shepard's son or anything.
** One explanation is that Shepard's been under house arrest for seven months by this time and their room overlooks that kids house. Shepard has likely seen or heard that kid playing a couple times, then had to watch helplessly as they got vaporised. Which, when you look at it, is the entire theme of the nightmare.
** Another reason is because Shep faced their first clear defeat, even Akuze had Shepard eventually finding Toombs and can at least talk him out of his murder spree and sleep easy for both sides. But for the kid, there was no consolation of any kind. This was the first time Shepard suffered from a catastrophic failure until Thessia.
** The child is symbolic. He's supposed to be representative of all of humanity, in Shepard's eyes, representing the ones s/he couldn't save. When you see the kid in Shepard's dreams, you're not seeing one child, you're seeing a symbolic representation of mankind.
** Also represents failure, failure to warn the galaxy about the reapers, failure to do something that made their deaths not be in vain.
** Be in a position of power where you can or could have helped people but no one listened and then watch a kid get killed infront of your eyes as a consequence of that. or just an experience of being in the presence of a child being murdered. It will eat you alive unless there's nothing inside you already.
* Ok, why is it that Legion is so eager to use the Reaper code to make all Geth true independent intelligences when in the second game it couldn't wrap its head around the concept of individuality and couldn't understand why anyone would want to do that?
** Part of the Geth goal is to achieve full sentience, which would be harder with the extermination of so many runtimes. Besides, it's been six months, and given that Geth supposedly think at light speed, he's likely had the time to think it over for the equivalent of several hundred years.
*** Well, given that the choice was upload the Reaper code or '''''extinction''''' by the Quarian fleet...
* So in the Extended Cut by the space elevator, we discover that your squad mates survive by [[spoiler: you calling in the Normandy to pick them up.]] Well that's all well and good until you realize that Harbinger is just hovering there doing nothing. So why doesn't he take advantage of [[spoiler: your ship, you and your crew, the very things that have been messing up the Reapers plans for years are just sitting there]] and attack it? [[spoiler: The Normandy is there for more than enough time to blow it up, killing you and everyone else]] and guaranteeing Reaper victory. There is little logic in him doing nothing in this situation.
** Looking closely reveals [[spoiler: Harbinger's cannons are not visible. It was probably prioritizing all the people making a mad dash to the conduit over the ship with both a state-of-the-art stealth drive and a Reaper IFF that wasn't actually attempting to make it to the conduit.]]
*** The reaper IFF is a really good point. When you're not making a spectacle of yourself (pinging planets), is there any time in VideoGame/MassEffect3 where the reapers actually shoot at the Normandy?
* I have two problems with the Destroy ending:
** Why does Shepard keep walking towards the obviously exploding capacitor-thing? The range isn't that bad on a pistol; s/he could have easily stood back a safe distance once it became apparent that it was going to explode and shot it from there.
*** It's implied at a couple of points that Shepard has developed some DeathSeeker tendencies.
*** DeathSeeker tendencies aside : just a few minutes before this Shepard was [[spoiler: at least grazed by one of Harbinger's main cannons, shot by a Marauder, bounced around some steel walls upon landing in the Citadel, and had fallen unconcious from blood loss and various traumas.]] Also, do you remember just how difficult it was to take those last shots even before all that happened to the Commander? At that moment, Shepard is pretty much physically incapable of making a pistol shot at anything but point blank range.
*** Agreed, I have used a pistol myself at a target range; it is more difficult to consistently aim than it appears (and this was in ideal conditions and I was perfectly healthy). The Commander is injured/shot/exhausted, so holding the pistol properly AND accurately in those conditions would be quite difficult.
** How exactly does the ''Crucible'' destroy all synthetic life? It makes sense that EDI would be affected seeing as she was partially built using Reaper tech and could conceivably be susceptible. And then there's the Catalyst's remark about Shepard being partly synthetic. No s/he's not. Unless ''all'' advanced technology is affected; in which case, all of galactic civilization would have gone boom.
*** As pointed out in Brilliance Part 1, all synthetic life is built based on Reaper technology, however distant the apparent connection. As such, any true synthetic life will bear sufficient similarities to the Reapers to be affected as well.
*** No, Shepard ''is'' partially synthetic. The cybernetic parts that make up his/her body when she was rebuilt from the shattered remains of a chunk of burnt meat and tubes make him/her "partially" synthetic. The Destroy ending indicates that the Crucible is a targeted weapons system capable of freely discerning between definitions of "synthetic" and "organic" and between what is actually intelligent and what is simply machinery.
* If the Rachni queen died in ''1'', the Reapers clone a synthetic queen to breed up Ravagers and pods with. So if she didn't die and Shepard either freed the original queen or let her die, why is everyone so sure this will cut down on the production of new Ravagers? Can't the Reapers make another, maybe one that's guarded by more than a token force of husks and the children she produces? The Reapers have not been in this galaxy for long. Either they made a synthetic queen in the few weeks since the invasion, Sovereign decided to whip up a clone before leading geth against the Citadel, or the Collectors under Harbinger's control did it and stashed her somewhere well away from their base despite believing it was safe.
** For that matter, you find Spore Pods and Gestation Pods on different worlds too. Do Husks just tote them in and arrange them as very obvious mine traps? Do Ravagers lay/make them when there's a break in the fighting?
** Because people are not aware of what happened in alternate timelines where Shepard killed the Rachni Queen, this is Shrodinger's Plot Point. If the Rachni Queen survived in 1, the Reapers have never cloned any synthetic queen. In this scenario, the possibility of a synthetic queen being cloned has never come up; there is one Rachni Queen, and if she dies or is liberated from the Reapers, then that cuts off the Ravager production.
** Even if they do successfully create a fake, the fact is that Shepard's allies also have Rachni among them. While they don't go out into battle, they could educate the others on Ravager biology, leading to more efficient ways to kill them. (Of course, there is also the possibility that the rest of the galaxy might turn this knowledge against them, but they're demonstrating good will by helping.)
* One thing I never understood was just how it was possible that in the entire time the Reapers have existed not a single cycle has gone by without synthetics and organics playing nice long enough to convince the Catalyst not to continue the cycle. It is made relatively clear that this has been going on for several hundred if not thousands of cycle and in all those years not one civilization has looked upon it's creaters/created and been like "you know you are ok. Let's share." I just don't see how Shepard is the first person in literally MILLIONS of years to be nice to a non-organic...and if such a civilization did arise in the past than shouldn't those two working together have been enough to defeat the Reapers?
** Shepard's probably not the first person to be nice to a non-organic, but wars are not won on kindness and respect, they're won on military strength. We don't know what any of the civilizations from the past millions of years of cycles were like. There may have been, for example, a civilization that was an absolute utopian paradise, with man and machine living in harmony with each other, no famine, no hunger, no wars, etc. until the Reapers came and steamrolled them all because such a society has no need for a powerful military. There could have been plenty of cycles in the past where, like the possibility exists for Shepard's, organics and synthetics managed to make peace with each other, and the Reapers slaughtered them anyway becauze the Conduit ''does not care'' if there's a standing example of organic/synthetic peace, he is committed to his idea that war is inevitable.
** Actually that brings up another question. Just how many Reapers are there in existence? If you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still in alive in one giant fleet wouldn't that have put up a pretty damn good fight? I think I have a problem with scale here...how can that many Reapers exist to truly be able to defeat a united front of a GALAXY's worth of advanced beings. Especially after they had managed to reverse engineer many of the Reaper advantages and figure out good strategies against them.
*** Even if you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still alive in one giant fleet, that still pales in comparison to the Reapers' ''millions of years'' of technological superiority, building their weapons, building their fleets, and the synthetic advantage of not having a natural lifespan means that all the Reapers that fought in the first cycle, except any that were destroyed, are still around fighting in this cycle ''in addition to'' all the future generations of Reapers created in the meantime. The cycle was designed with the specific intent that all the races of the galaxy would not, could not ever be sufficient to overpower the Reapers. It was designed as such by a race of malicious AI in a time when all the races that populate the galaxy were barely even a microbe of bacteria on their planets' surface, and it has been carried out so often and so thoroughly that any and all possible bugs or loopholes with the system have long since been weeded out. There are too many, they are too thorough, and they've done this so many times that the basic idea of "THIS TIME it will be different if we just do the same thing the last cycles did!" is laughably suicidal. This is why we're explicitly told [[spoiler: the Crucible is the only hope]]; the Reapers cannot be defeated by military strength. Whatever military advantage you can try to bring to the party, they've seen it a million times before and it's never been enough.
** To go back to the first point, how has one race not gotten lucky by now? Dodged the cullings by being just under the threshold of advancement and then by the time the Reapers come back they have better technology that is able to put up a grand fight? Technology that would if not trounce the Reapers at least put them on the same playing field out of the gate? Is the universe so stagnated that EVERYONE has the exact same ideas? That is really sad if so. 50,000 years is an awfully long time for someone to have a random stroke of brilliance. Maybe figure out mass effect fields themselves before stumbling on the leftovers. Maybe figure out a better way of doing things? I just find it hard to believe nothing has changed in thousands of cycles of potential change.
*** The Reapers have ''several millions of years advantage'' as technology goes. 50,000 years is ''nothing'' to them. I'm sure plenty of races over the many, many countless cycles managed to slip under the advancement threshold, and then when the Reapers came, there was absolutely no difference whatsoever because 50,000 years is a meaningless drop in the pond compared to 1 billion. In the end, it's all a matter of scale.
**** Plus the Reapers have been sandbagging literally every civilization that's come since. They've ensured that they're the most advanced by sabotaging the technology that the new guys come across. And it's mentioned that the cycle isn't exact - sometimes they'll come at 30,000 years in, sometimes 70,000. It all depends on the civilization. Of course, this time around it got mucked up thanks to [[spoiler: those Protheans pulling a HeroicSacrifice to fiddle with the Keepers.]]
*** Except the Reapers don't actually advance technologically. All they do in dark space is hibernate. As evidenced by the fact that the Council races could make even the least bit of sense of Sovereign's remains. Or do you think they could successfully reverse-engineer technology that is millions of years more advanced than anything they had ever seen before?
*** It is mentioned that the Reapers do leave advanced civilizations without space-flight alone. It's stated that they're leaving the Yahg alone and that they may become the dominant race of the next cycle. Also in one of the Cerberus dailies there is a mention of a recently discovered civilization that took one look at the Reapers and said "screw this" and destroyed all their advanced technology in the hopes they'll just pass them by.
** There's always the possibility that the Catalyst was wrong or lying for whatever reason. Maybe they did suffer catastrophic defeats in the past, maybe far worse than Sovereign's defeat, just it turns out the Crucible was the ''worst'' defeat they had. After all, it wasn't us or the Protheans who even came up with the idea in the first place. So we haven't had to start over from scratch each time, we were building on what civilizations before us did and learned. We just happened to figure out the most. It's a standing on the shoulders of giants thing.
** Shepard is not the first to be nice to a synthetic. Shepard is the first person to ever manage to complete the crucible and be so near using it. Catalyst said that any peace between organic life and synthetic life can only be for a short time before war begins, and as a V.I(as oppose to an A.I.) it is not able to see beyond that. from it's point of view, life between the two is simply ''impossible''. and you are unable to convince it otherwise. about the war, the reapers always had a dormant ship to prepare the invasion, like sovereign, who probably made sure invasion went smoothly. as it is mentioned in [=ME1=], a normal reaper invasion is "control the mass relays and the citadel and make every race in this cycle blind", which is a ''huge'' advantage in the reaper's side. second, as garrus mentions in 3, the reapers have none of the normals weakneses most armies have. they don't need supplies and can make people into their soldiers, which garrus mentions, every new husk is 2 less soldiers in your side. the soldier who is a husk now, and the soldier who was his friend when alive. Even is a civilization was able to make a scientific jump long enough as to catch to the reapers technology, the reapers have ''too much''' advantages at their side.
** By the way, as we know from [[spoiler: trip to geth consensus, part of quarians were kind to geth. What happened to them? They were killed. By their fellow quarian compatriots. Just think about it: it's not synthetics who were the cause of war, it's '''organics'''. So maybe the point is not that synthetics will wipe out organics, but organics will force synthetics to destroy them, like it happened with quarians, if you choose to let Legion upload Reaper upgrades to geth and are unable to convince quarians to hold fire?]]
* Kind of a small thing, but really bugs me. ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. The Paragon ending of Zaeed's loyalty mission has Vido escape in a gunship, with Zaeed [[ShoutingShooter yelling and shooting mostly ineffectually]] at said gunship as it retreats. In most shows this is a fairly well-justified WeWillMeetAgain scenario (by the time Shepard finds transport Vido is long gone), but not this time: ''Shepard has a frigate in orbit'' that probably outguns and out-flies the (likely atmosphere-bound) gunship by several orders of magnitude. Vido didn't have to escape; all they had to do was have the orbiting ''Normandy'' track it with sensors and pursue in the shuttle. Or better yet, just have the ''Normandy'' itself come in and shoot it down. Point is, Vido shouldn't have escaped but for PlotInducedStupidity on the part of Shepard.
* There is another thought: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CKHLDgz2zE The Indoctrination Theory]]. The strange dreams and weird ending of ''Mass Effect 3'' are the Reapers attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard. Remember how in ''Mass Effect 1'', [[spoiler:Saren wanted to merge with the Reapers to prevent the extinction of everyone? And how now the Illusive Man wants to control them, yet Shepard insists they HAVE to be destroyed? Now think about the decision chamber. Think about how the color code is flipped. Think about how the Catalyst is made of stars, and claims he is the Reaper intelligence, yet the Rachni queen describes the Reaper voices as "oily". Think about how there are shadow people in your dream who look oily. Think about how weird it is that Shepard can survive a hot beam of laser that can cleave Dreadnoughts in two. And finally, think of how even though the Catalyst makes it seem like Shepard dies no matter what and that Destroying the Reapers will destroy all synthetics, the only way to get the last gasp after the credits is to pick Destroy. So, maybe Shepard didn't do anything and it was all just an indoctrination dream battle in his/her mind.]] -Ashuraspeaks
* Exactly what do the Elcor use for hands?
** Their ''hands'' are used for hands. The elcor forearms have long fingers that they use to manipulate tools.
* In the Citadel DLC for VideoGame/MassEffect3 you can play an arcade game called Relay Defense, where you send ships away from Earth through a Mass Relay while blowing up ships attempting to destroy the planet. Wouldn't it be considered highly insensitive to have released this game considering the Reaper invasion of Earth?
** It's worth noting that the game uses Turian ships for the enemies, suggesting it's based on a hypothetical turian invasion of Earth during the First Contact War, and thus predating the Reaper invasion.
* Why does the game measure planetary info relative to Earth? For instance Cyone has a gravity of 0.95 of Earth's. Gravity is measured in Newtons with Earth's as 9.8.
** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units ([=AUs=]). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
** HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.
** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that you're reading the human version of the Codex. Reading the Turian or Asari translations probably would have different measurements.
* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'', calls Shepard ''loco'', and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
*** Probably the latter. Shepard could have picked up his usual sprinklings, as the opening implies that Vega was his/her guard while under house arrest for at least a good chunk of the six months between Arrival and ''MassEffect3'', and thus set his/her Omni-Tool to identify Vega's voice patterns and forego translating what he says.
* Something that occurred to me last night. Why does anyone care about death anymore? Cerberus managed to resurrect a corpse, and depending on your choices, the leader of that little project is still out there. So if Shepard dies in the destroy ending, you bring him back again. Mordin sacrifices himself? Dig the body out and jump start it. Wrex, Eve, the Virmire survivor, Tali. Anyone who dies could conceivably be revived as long as they have some semblance of a body. Sure, it cost 2 billion credits at the time, but that could be attributed to a terror group running R&D testing. They've got the formula down, and could conceivably adapt it to any species.
** A valid point, but during Mass Effect 3, a little problem called the Reapers that everyone is worried about, so not a whole lot of focus on a then-experimental procedure that MIGHT work. Of course, with the Reaper threat over at the end of Mass Effect 3, that could probably be researched.
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* Something that occurred to me last night. Why does anyone care about death anymore? Cerberus managed to resurrect a corpse, and depending on your choices, the leader of that little project is still out there. So if Shepard dies in the destroy ending, you bring him back again. Mordin sacrifices himself? Dig the body out and jump start it. Wrex, Eve, the Virmire survivor, Tali. Anyone who dies could conceivably be revived as long as they have some semblance of a body. Sure, it cost 2 billion credits at the time, but that could be attributed to a terror group running R&D testing. They've got the formula down, and could conceivably adapt it to any species.
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* Something that occurred to me last night. Why does anyone care about death anymore? Cerberus managed to resurrect a corpse, and depending on your choices, the leader of that little project is still out there. So if Shepard dies in the destroy ending, you bring him back again. Mordin sacrifices himself? Dig the body out and jump start it. Wrex, Eve, the Virmire survivor, Tali. Anyone who dies could conceivably be revived as long as they have some semblance of a body. Sure, it cost 2 billion credits at the time, but that could be attributed to a terror group running R&D testing. They've got the formula down, and could conceivably adapt it to any species.species.
** A valid point, but during Mass Effect 3, a little problem called the Reapers that everyone is worried about, so not a whole lot of focus on a then-experimental procedure that MIGHT work. Of course, with the Reaper threat over at the end of Mass Effect 3, that could probably be researched.
** A valid point, but during Mass Effect 3, a little problem called the Reapers that everyone is worried about, so not a whole lot of focus on a then-experimental procedure that MIGHT work. Of course, with the Reaper threat over at the end of Mass Effect 3, that could probably be researched.
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*** Agreed, I have used a pistol myself at a target range; it is more difficult to consistently aim than it appears (and this was in ideal conditions and I was perfectly healthy). The Commander is injured/shot/exhausted, so holding the pistol properly AND accurately in those conditions would be quite difficult.
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**** Not to dispute the complaints about the ending; ("choices don't matter", "multi-colored explosions", etc.) but the point isn't in the details of Shepard's story. At the very end, when the Stargazer and their child are looking out into space, the child asks to hear another story about "the Shepard", the Stargazers says it's getting late, but "okay, one more story". The ENTIRE trilogy is a story told from a parent to their child. The WHOLE POINT is that the Reaper threat is OVER. That's what Commander Shepard promised, that he/she would end the Reaper threat. Destroy simply destroys them outright, Control re-purposes them so they work the right way, and Synthesis simply renders the Reapers moot. It's a bit to wrap your head around, but it does make sense.
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*** Probably the latter. Shepard could have picked up his usual sprinklings, as the opening implies that Vega was his/her guard while under house arrest for at least a good chunk of the six months between Arrival and ''MassEffect3'', and thus set his/her Omni-Tool to identify Vega's voice patterns and forego translating what he says.
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*** Probably the latter. Shepard could have picked up his usual sprinklings, as the opening implies that Vega was his/her guard while under house arrest for at least a good chunk of the six months between Arrival and ''MassEffect3'', and thus set his/her Omni-Tool to identify Vega's voice patterns and forego translating what he says.says.
* Something that occurred to me last night. Why does anyone care about death anymore? Cerberus managed to resurrect a corpse, and depending on your choices, the leader of that little project is still out there. So if Shepard dies in the destroy ending, you bring him back again. Mordin sacrifices himself? Dig the body out and jump start it. Wrex, Eve, the Virmire survivor, Tali. Anyone who dies could conceivably be revived as long as they have some semblance of a body. Sure, it cost 2 billion credits at the time, but that could be attributed to a terror group running R&D testing. They've got the formula down, and could conceivably adapt it to any species.
* Something that occurred to me last night. Why does anyone care about death anymore? Cerberus managed to resurrect a corpse, and depending on your choices, the leader of that little project is still out there. So if Shepard dies in the destroy ending, you bring him back again. Mordin sacrifices himself? Dig the body out and jump start it. Wrex, Eve, the Virmire survivor, Tali. Anyone who dies could conceivably be revived as long as they have some semblance of a body. Sure, it cost 2 billion credits at the time, but that could be attributed to a terror group running R&D testing. They've got the formula down, and could conceivably adapt it to any species.
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** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
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** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.language.
*** Probably the latter. Shepard could have picked up his usual sprinklings, as the opening implies that Vega was his/her guard while under house arrest for at least a good chunk of the six months between Arrival and ''MassEffect3'', and thus set his/her Omni-Tool to identify Vega's voice patterns and forego translating what he says.
*** Probably the latter. Shepard could have picked up his usual sprinklings, as the opening implies that Vega was his/her guard while under house arrest for at least a good chunk of the six months between Arrival and ''MassEffect3'', and thus set his/her Omni-Tool to identify Vega's voice patterns and forego translating what he says.
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explination to question : \"Why does Shepard keep walking towards the obviously exploding capacitor-thing? The range isn\'t that bad on a pistol; s/he could have easily stood back a safe distance once it became apparent that it was going to explode and shot it from there.\"
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*** DeathSeeker tendencies aside : just a few minutes before this Shepard was [[spoiler: at least grazed by one of Harbinger's main cannons, shot by a Marauder, bounced around some steel walls upon landing in the Citadel, and had fallen unconcious from blood loss and various traumas.]] Also, do you remember just how difficult it was to take those last shots even before all that happened to the Commander? At that moment, Shepard is pretty much physically incapable of making a pistol shot at anything but point blank range.
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Natter. Pulling to discussion if someone can merge this.
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** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.
** That's because that isn't actually how it works. Before the Keepers were modified by the Protheans, they activated the Citadel on their own, without needing a Reaper to come in an activate it. Sovereign was essentially a back up plan.
* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.
** That's because that isn't actually how it works. Before the Keepers were modified by the Protheans, they activated the Citadel on their own, without needing a Reaper to come in an activate it. Sovereign was essentially a back up plan.
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** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.
** That's because that isn't actually how it works. Before the Keepers were modified by the Protheans, they activated the Citadel on their own, without needing a Reaper to come in an activate it. Sovereign was essentially a back up plan.language.
* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.
** That's because that isn't actually how it works. Before the Keepers were modified by the Protheans, they activated the Citadel on their own, without needing a Reaper to come in an activate it. Sovereign was essentially a back up plan.
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* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.
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* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.place.
** That's because that isn't actually how it works. Before the Keepers were modified by the Protheans, they activated the Citadel on their own, without needing a Reaper to come in an activate it. Sovereign was essentially a back up plan.
** That's because that isn't actually how it works. Before the Keepers were modified by the Protheans, they activated the Citadel on their own, without needing a Reaper to come in an activate it. Sovereign was essentially a back up plan.
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** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
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** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.language.
* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.
* The Reapers wait in dark space between cycles and typically warp to the Citadel to begin the process of wiping out the galaxy. To do this, a lone Reaper vanguard has to approach the citadel and tell the keepers to open the path between the Citadel and dark space. This is foiled by Commander Sheppard and crew, but the Reapers only take 3 years or so to travel the distance with standard FTL propulsion. Considering that they wait in dark space for 50,000 years between cycles, this seems kind of pointless. If they can cross the galaxy that quickly, why do they even have this plan to begin with? It's kind of hilarious to note that the only reason that they galaxy knew to defend against the Reapers is because the Reapers wanted to implement this plan in the first place.
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** Because its not on the same network and is not communicating with any of the VI's systems. Just because its an electronic intelligence doesn't mean it can be instantly hacked.
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* Overlord DLC. The Rogue VI has taken over security mechs, geth units, a geth cannon, and the station's computer system. Gavin Archer is worried that Legion might get hacked too if you bring them. So why is no one worried about the M-44 Hammerhead's VI? Especially since you have to drive around on the planet in it!
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* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'', calls Shepard ''loco'', and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
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* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'', calls Shepard ''loco'', and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?ship?
** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
** I can think of two explanations; Vega's translator only works when he speaks English/Galactic due to him fiddling with the 'preferences' tab in the Omni-Tool options menu, or Shepard speaks Spanish and thus does not translate the language.
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* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'' calls Shepard ''loco'' and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
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* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'' ''abuella'', calls Shepard ''loco'' ''loco'', and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
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** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that you're reading the human version of the Codex. Reading the Turian or Asari translations probably would have different measurements.
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** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that you're reading the human version of the Codex. Reading the Turian or Asari translations probably would have different measurements.measurements.
* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'' calls Shepard ''loco'' and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
* Mass Effect 3, why does Vega's GratuitousSpanish not get autotranslated? Sure, Thane's "Siha" was not autotranslated, but that was a name. But Vega refers to his ''abuella'' calls Shepard ''loco'' and flirts with Ash in Citadel DLC in Spanish. I've considered that perhaps English is the human's standardized language and that fluency and literacy was a requirement for space travel, but would pirates and criminals really apply for a permit and proof of literacy before they get their ship?
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** HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.
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** HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.
** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that you're reading the human version of the Codex. Reading the Turian or Asari translations probably would have different measurements.
** FridgeBrilliance sets in when you realize that you're reading the human version of the Codex. Reading the Turian or Asari translations probably would have different measurements.
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* The Romance Options in general for Male and Female Shepard have a common pattern. Both Shepards can romance the Virmire Survivor and Liara in the First Game. In MassEffect2 they can have a relationship with a Dextro DNA alien, romancing the Cerberus Operative and romancing a notorious criminal. However, It seems that Male Shepard is always the lucky one to get the smooth skinned females while Female Shepard has to settle for scaly aliens who have a penchant for sniper rifles. FreudWasRight?
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* The Romance Options in general for Male and Female Shepard have a common pattern. Both Shepards can romance the Virmire Survivor and Liara in the First Game. In MassEffect2 ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' they can have a relationship with a Dextro DNA alien, romancing the Cerberus Operative and romancing a notorious criminal. However, It seems that Male Shepard is always the lucky one to get the smooth skinned females while Female Shepard has to settle for scaly aliens who have a penchant for sniper rifles. FreudWasRight?
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Having landed in London in Mass Effect 3, it was pure fridge horror listening to the radio listing off the kill rates at the various london bases, as i've been to some of the areas listed.
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Having landed in London in Mass ''Mass Effect 3, 3'', it was pure fridge horror listening to the radio listing off the kill rates at the various london bases, as i've been to some of the areas listed.
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** Shepard is not the first to be nice to a synthetic. Shepard is the first person to ever manage to complete the crucible and be so near using it. Catalyst said that any peace between organic life and synthetic life can only be for a short time before war begins, and as a V.I(as oppose to an A.I.) it is not able to see beyond that. from it's point of view, life between the two is simply ''impossible''. and you are unable to convince it otherwise. about the war, the reapers always had a dormant ship to prepare the invasion, like sovereign, who probably made sure invasion went smoothly. as it is mentioned in ME1, a normal reaper invasion is "control the mass relays and the citadel and make every race in this cycle blind", which is a ''huge'' advantage in the reaper's side. second, as garrus mentions in 3, the reapers have none of the normals weakneses most armies have. they don't need supplies and can make people into their soldiers, which garrus mentions, every new husk is 2 less soldiers in your side. the soldier who is a husk now, and the soldier who was his friend when alive. Even is a civilization was able to make a scientific jump long enough as to catch to the reapers technology, the reapers have ''too much''' advantages at their side.
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** Shepard is not the first to be nice to a synthetic. Shepard is the first person to ever manage to complete the crucible and be so near using it. Catalyst said that any peace between organic life and synthetic life can only be for a short time before war begins, and as a V.I(as oppose to an A.I.) it is not able to see beyond that. from it's point of view, life between the two is simply ''impossible''. and you are unable to convince it otherwise. about the war, the reapers always had a dormant ship to prepare the invasion, like sovereign, who probably made sure invasion went smoothly. as it is mentioned in ME1, [=ME1=], a normal reaper invasion is "control the mass relays and the citadel and make every race in this cycle blind", which is a ''huge'' advantage in the reaper's side. second, as garrus mentions in 3, the reapers have none of the normals weakneses most armies have. they don't need supplies and can make people into their soldiers, which garrus mentions, every new husk is 2 less soldiers in your side. the soldier who is a husk now, and the soldier who was his friend when alive. Even is a civilization was able to make a scientific jump long enough as to catch to the reapers technology, the reapers have ''too much''' advantages at their side.
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* There is another thought: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CKHLDgz2zE The Indoctrination Theory]]. The strange dreams and weird ending of Mass Effect 3 are the Reapers attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard. Remember how in Mass Effect 1, [[spoiler:Saren wanted to merge with the Reapers to prevent the extinction of everyone? And how now the Illusive Man wants to control them, yet Shepard insists they HAVE to be destroyed? Now think about the decision chamber. Think about how the color code is flipped. Think about how the Catalyst is made of stars, and claims he is the Reaper intelligence, yet the Rachni queen describes the Reaper voices as "oily". Think about how there are shadow people in your dream who look oily. Think about how weird it is that Shepard can survive a hot beam of laser that can cleave Dreadnoughts in two. And finally, think of how even though the Catalyst makes it seem like Shepard dies no matter what and that Destroying the Reapers will destroy all synthetics, the only way to get the last gasp after the credits is to pick Destroy. So, maybe Shepard didn't do anything and it was all just an indoctrination dream battle in his/her mind.]] -Ashuraspeaks
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* There is another thought: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CKHLDgz2zE The Indoctrination Theory]]. The strange dreams and weird ending of Mass ''Mass Effect 3 3'' are the Reapers attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard. Remember how in Mass ''Mass Effect 1, 1'', [[spoiler:Saren wanted to merge with the Reapers to prevent the extinction of everyone? And how now the Illusive Man wants to control them, yet Shepard insists they HAVE to be destroyed? Now think about the decision chamber. Think about how the color code is flipped. Think about how the Catalyst is made of stars, and claims he is the Reaper intelligence, yet the Rachni queen describes the Reaper voices as "oily". Think about how there are shadow people in your dream who look oily. Think about how weird it is that Shepard can survive a hot beam of laser that can cleave Dreadnoughts in two. And finally, think of how even though the Catalyst makes it seem like Shepard dies no matter what and that Destroying the Reapers will destroy all synthetics, the only way to get the last gasp after the credits is to pick Destroy. So, maybe Shepard didn't do anything and it was all just an indoctrination dream battle in his/her mind.]] -Ashuraspeaks
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** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units ([=AUs=]). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
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** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units ([=AUs=]). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.Sol.
**HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.
**HiroshimaAsAUnitOfMeasure.
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** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units (AUs). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
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** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units (AUs).([=AUs=]). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
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* Why does the game measure planetary info relative to Earth? For instance Cyone has a gravity of 0.95 of Earth's. Gravity is measured in Newtons with Earth's as 9.8.
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* Why does the game measure planetary info relative to Earth? For instance Cyone has a gravity of 0.95 of Earth's. Gravity is measured in Newtons with Earth's as 9.8.8.
** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units (AUs). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
** Earth is what we're familiar with, so it's the baseline we use to judge other planets. We do the exact same thing in real life. For example, distance between a planet and its sun is measured in Astronomical Units (AUs). One Astronomical Unit is the average distance between Earth and Sol.
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** It's worth noting that the game uses Turian ships for the enemies, suggesting it's based on a hypothetical turian invasion of Earth during the First Contact War, and thus predating the Reaper invasion.
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** It's worth noting that the game uses Turian ships for the enemies, suggesting it's based on a hypothetical turian invasion of Earth during the First Contact War, and thus predating the Reaper invasion.invasion.
*Why does the game measure planetary info relative to Earth? For instance Cyone has a gravity of 0.95 of Earth's. Gravity is measured in Newtons with Earth's as 9.8.
*Why does the game measure planetary info relative to Earth? For instance Cyone has a gravity of 0.95 of Earth's. Gravity is measured in Newtons with Earth's as 9.8.
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** Their ''hands'' are used for hands. The elcor forearms have long fingers that they use to manipulate tools.
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** Their ''hands'' are used for hands. The elcor forearms have long fingers that they use to manipulate tools.tools.
* In the Citadel DLC for VideoGame/MassEffect3 you can play an arcade game called Relay Defense, where you send ships away from Earth through a Mass Relay while blowing up ships attempting to destroy the planet. Wouldn't it be considered highly insensitive to have released this game considering the Reaper invasion of Earth?
** It's worth noting that the game uses Turian ships for the enemies, suggesting it's based on a hypothetical turian invasion of Earth during the First Contact War, and thus predating the Reaper invasion.
* In the Citadel DLC for VideoGame/MassEffect3 you can play an arcade game called Relay Defense, where you send ships away from Earth through a Mass Relay while blowing up ships attempting to destroy the planet. Wouldn't it be considered highly insensitive to have released this game considering the Reaper invasion of Earth?
** It's worth noting that the game uses Turian ships for the enemies, suggesting it's based on a hypothetical turian invasion of Earth during the First Contact War, and thus predating the Reaper invasion.
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** Be in a position of power where you can or could have helped people but no one listened and then watch a kid get killed infront of your eyes as a consequence of that. or just an experience of being in the presence of a child being murdered. It will eat you alive unless there's nothing inside you already.
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Split. That one link was YMMV.
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* In Jack's loyalty mission, you end up confronting the only other survivor, a guy called Aresh who wants to restart the facility. You can convince Jack to let him go, but shortly afterwards you plant a huge bomb in her cell and blow the place up. Is it really that likely that he managed to make it out?
** There's a pretty significant time delay between letting Aresh go and blowing up the facility, and the Blood Pack troops didn't sprout from the firmament. Aresh likely ran back to the ships they used to get there and hightailed it out.
*** [[spoiler: If you let him go, Aresh is confirmed via an e-mailed news report to have died fighting off Reaper ground forces to give time for another civilian shuttle to evacuate, so he did in fact make it out alive.]]
* The Romance Options in general for Male and Female Shepard have a common pattern. Both Shepards can romance the Virmire Survivor and Liara in the First Game. In MassEffect2 they can have a relationship with a Dextro DNA alien, romancing the Cerberus Operative and romancing a notorious criminal. However, It seems that Male Shepard is always the lucky one to get the smooth skinned females while Female Shepard has to settle for scaly aliens who have a penchant for sniper rifles. FreudWasRight?
** Hey, you forgot Jacob with that last bit... Just like everyone else. Except [[NoAccountingForTaste Kasumi]].
*** Well, she only wants him for his body.
** And apparently, Male Shepard only likes pure blooded human/asari/quarians which define perfection of their genes.
*** Exactly how are Ashley or Tali "pureblooded" or "genetically perfect", again? Only Liara and Miranda are described in those terms, and in Liara's case it's an insult, not a praise.
* So, regarding the now-infamous ending for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', I have a theory regarding why it is the way it is. Think about how the first game was deliberately a {{Reconstruction}} of the SpaceOpera of the '70s and '80s, and the second was more heavily influenced by DarkerandEdgier '90s sci-fi. That would mean that the third game would logically be more influenced by sci-fi from the '00s and '10s. Which means the ''{{Series/Battlestar Galactica|Reimagined}}'' reboot, ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'', ''Series/StargateAtlantis'' and ''Series/StargateUniverse'' (not so much ''Series/StargateSG1''), and ''Series/{{Lost}}'', among others. All of which were far bleaker than what had come before and had endings that were either [[DownerEnding bleak, unsatisfying]], [[GainaxEnding obtuse, outright insane]], or some combination of the above.
** The point being that {{Bioware}} did it [[TrollingCreator intentionally]].
*** So we get that ending because Bioware is staffed with fans of {{Lost}}? [[SarcasmMode That certainly makes it better, right?]]
* Shepard's ShutUpHannibal to Sovereign: "You're not even alive. Not really. You're just a machine, and machines can be broken," comes off slightly worse when viewed in light of Legion and EDI.
** And as of [=ME3=], there's new light in knowing that each individual reaper is the entirety of an advanced (organic) civilization, preserved in Reaper form. "Just a machine", eh?
** It sort of makes sense if you consider that Shepard's interactions with AI in the first game were largely negative. The heretic geth were essentially at war with the Alliance (at were thought to represent all geth instead of a small minority), the AI on the Citadel (which tried to blow itself up, killing Shepard and “as many organics as I can”), the rogue AI on Luna and now Sovereign, a literal OmnicidalManiac. It’s not unreasonable to assume that Shepard though all AI were AlwaysChaoticEvil. But interactions with EDI, Legion and the true geth over the next two games probably changed his/her opinions.
*** Even in [=ME1=], Shepard can argue with Tali that the geth were living beings with a right to life, and that the quarians were in the wrong.
* The Omniblade actually isn't a new development for ''VideoGame/MassEffect3''. After all, look at Kasumi whenever she uses Shadow Strike. She's striking at enemies with her omnitool! So those things can be pretty nasty weapons as early as ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''.
** According to the Codex the tech is almost as old as Omnitools and a standard app, but until the Reaper invasion and the necessity of fighting Husks in close combat everyone thought it was an idiot's weapon. Except Kasumi apparently.
*** Specifically, the codex explains that the use of omni-tools as a weapon is almost as old as omnitools themselves. The omni-blade, specifically, was developed explicitly in preparation for the reaper invasion as a good hand to hand weapon against husks. This is somewhat demonstrated by how in multiplayer, Batarians(who've isolated themselves for a while), developed a different weapon; [[TalkToTheFist the omni-gauntlet.]]
*** Not to mention that in the Shadow Broker DLC, the Broker busts out an omni-shield.
* Jacob's loyalty mission. Eight years. No children.
** So the flora screws up more than just your brain?
** Either that, or none of the women were allowed to carry to term, which opens up a whole other can of FridgeHorror.
** Maybe long-term contraceptives are commonplace?
* This was my (Kodemunkey's) Fridge combination (logic, horror etc)
Having landed in London in Mass Effect 3, it was pure fridge horror listening to the radio listing off the kill rates at the various london bases, as i've been to some of the areas listed.
Not only that, but the loading screen shows an area of the england glowing from the fires, this area is one the most densely populated part of england, and extends from london, up into the home counties, over into east anglia and into Kent (where i live) as well as down into portsmouth and various other towns and areas. Most of these areas are full of industrial and military facilities of all types.
* That damn kid at the ending. Okay, Shepard was watching him at the start of the game, and is understandably torn up the Reapers killed him. But is Shepard really that badly affected by it? Really? It's not like it was Shepard's son or anything.
** One explanation is that Shepard's been under house arrest for seven months by this time and their room overlooks that kids house. Shepard has likely seen or heard that kid playing a couple times, then had to watch helplessly as they got vaporised. Which, when you look at it, is the entire theme of the nightmare.
** Another reason is because Shep faced their first clear defeat, even Akuze had Shepard eventually finding Toombs and can at least talk him out of his murder spree and sleep easy for both sides. But for the kid, there was no consolation of any kind. This was the first time Shepard suffered from a catastrophic failure until Thessia.
** The child is symbolic. He's supposed to be representative of all of humanity, in Shepard's eyes, representing the ones s/he couldn't save. When you see the kid in Shepard's dreams, you're not seeing one child, you're seeing a symbolic representation of mankind.
** Also represents failure, failure to warn the galaxy about the reapers, failure to do something that made their deaths not be in vain.
* Ok, why is it that Legion is so eager to use the Reaper code to make all Geth true independent intelligences when in the second game it couldn't wrap its head around the concept of individuality and couldn't understand why anyone would want to do that?
** Part of the Geth goal is to achieve full sentience, which would be harder with the extermination of so many runtimes. Besides, it's been six months, and given that Geth supposedly think at light speed, he's likely had the time to think it over for the equivalent of several hundred years.
*** Well, given that the choice was upload the Reaper code or '''''extinction''''' by the Quarian fleet...
* So in the Extended Cut by the space elevator, we discover that your squad mates survive by [[spoiler: you calling in the Normandy to pick them up.]] Well that's all well and good until you realize that Harbinger is just hovering there doing nothing. So why doesn't he take advantage of [[spoiler: your ship, you and your crew, the very things that have been messing up the Reapers plans for years are just sitting there]] and attack it? [[spoiler: The Normandy is there for more than enough time to blow it up, killing you and everyone else]] and guaranteeing Reaper victory. There is little logic in him doing nothing in this situation.
** Looking closely reveals [[spoiler: Harbinger's cannons are not visible. It was probably prioritizing all the people making a mad dash to the conduit over the ship with both a state-of-the-art stealth drive and a Reaper IFF that wasn't actually attempting to make it to the conduit.]]
*** The reaper IFF is a really good point. When you're not making a spectacle of yourself (pinging planets), is there any time in VideoGame/MassEffect3 where the reapers actually shoot at the Normandy?
* I have two problems with the Destroy ending:
** Why does Shepard keep walking towards the obviously exploding capacitor-thing? The range isn't that bad on a pistol; s/he could have easily stood back a safe distance once it became apparent that it was going to explode and shot it from there.
*** It's implied at a couple of points that Shepard has developed some DeathSeeker tendencies.
** How exactly does the ''Crucible'' destroy all synthetic life? It makes sense that EDI would be affected seeing as she was partially built using Reaper tech and could conceivably be susceptible. And then there's the Catalyst's remark about Shepard being partly synthetic. No s/he's not. Unless ''all'' advanced technology is affected; in which case, all of galactic civilization would have gone boom.
*** As pointed out in Brilliance Part 1, all synthetic life is built based on Reaper technology, however distant the apparent connection. As such, any true synthetic life will bear sufficient similarities to the Reapers to be affected as well.
*** No, Shepard ''is'' partially synthetic. The cybernetic parts that make up his/her body when she was rebuilt from the shattered remains of a chunk of burnt meat and tubes make him/her "partially" synthetic. The Destroy ending indicates that the Crucible is a targeted weapons system capable of freely discerning between definitions of "synthetic" and "organic" and between what is actually intelligent and what is simply machinery.
* If the Rachni queen died in ''1'', the Reapers clone a synthetic queen to breed up Ravagers and pods with. So if she didn't die and Shepard either freed the original queen or let her die, why is everyone so sure this will cut down on the production of new Ravagers? Can't the Reapers make another, maybe one that's guarded by more than a token force of husks and the children she produces? The Reapers have not been in this galaxy for long. Either they made a synthetic queen in the few weeks since the invasion, Sovereign decided to whip up a clone before leading geth against the Citadel, or the Collectors under Harbinger's control did it and stashed her somewhere well away from their base despite believing it was safe.
** For that matter, you find Spore Pods and Gestation Pods on different worlds too. Do Husks just tote them in and arrange them as very obvious mine traps? Do Ravagers lay/make them when there's a break in the fighting?
** Because people are not aware of what happened in alternate timelines where Shepard killed the Rachni Queen, this is Shrodinger's Plot Point. If the Rachni Queen survived in 1, the Reapers have never cloned any synthetic queen. In this scenario, the possibility of a synthetic queen being cloned has never come up; there is one Rachni Queen, and if she dies or is liberated from the Reapers, then that cuts off the Ravager production.
** Even if they do successfully create a fake, the fact is that Shepard's allies also have Rachni among them. While they don't go out into battle, they could educate the others on Ravager biology, leading to more efficient ways to kill them. (Of course, there is also the possibility that the rest of the galaxy might turn this knowledge against them, but they're demonstrating good will by helping.)
* One thing I never understood was just how it was possible that in the entire time the Reapers have existed not a single cycle has gone by without synthetics and organics playing nice long enough to convince the Catalyst not to continue the cycle. It is made relatively clear that this has been going on for several hundred if not thousands of cycle and in all those years not one civilization has looked upon it's creaters/created and been like "you know you are ok. Let's share." I just don't see how Shepard is the first person in literally MILLIONS of years to be nice to a non-organic...and if such a civilization did arise in the past than shouldn't those two working together have been enough to defeat the Reapers?
** Shepard's probably not the first person to be nice to a non-organic, but wars are not won on kindness and respect, they're won on military strength. We don't know what any of the civilizations from the past millions of years of cycles were like. There may have been, for example, a civilization that was an absolute utopian paradise, with man and machine living in harmony with each other, no famine, no hunger, no wars, etc. until the Reapers came and steamrolled them all because such a society has no need for a powerful military. There could have been plenty of cycles in the past where, like the possibility exists for Shepard's, organics and synthetics managed to make peace with each other, and the Reapers slaughtered them anyway becauze the Conduit ''does not care'' if there's a standing example of organic/synthetic peace, he is committed to his idea that war is inevitable.
** Actually that brings up another question. Just how many Reapers are there in existence? If you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still in alive in one giant fleet wouldn't that have put up a pretty damn good fight? I think I have a problem with scale here...how can that many Reapers exist to truly be able to defeat a united front of a GALAXY's worth of advanced beings. Especially after they had managed to reverse engineer many of the Reaper advantages and figure out good strategies against them.
*** Even if you have an entire galaxy fighting together with pretty much every ship and free entity still alive in one giant fleet, that still pales in comparison to the Reapers' ''millions of years'' of technological superiority, building their weapons, building their fleets, and the synthetic advantage of not having a natural lifespan means that all the Reapers that fought in the first cycle, except any that were destroyed, are still around fighting in this cycle ''in addition to'' all the future generations of Reapers created in the meantime. The cycle was designed with the specific intent that all the races of the galaxy would not, could not ever be sufficient to overpower the Reapers. It was designed as such by a race of malicious AI in a time when all the races that populate the galaxy were barely even a microbe of bacteria on their planets' surface, and it has been carried out so often and so thoroughly that any and all possible bugs or loopholes with the system have long since been weeded out. There are too many, they are too thorough, and they've done this so many times that the basic idea of "THIS TIME it will be different if we just do the same thing the last cycles did!" is laughably suicidal. This is why we're explicitly told [[spoiler: the Crucible is the only hope]]; the Reapers cannot be defeated by military strength. Whatever military advantage you can try to bring to the party, they've seen it a million times before and it's never been enough.
** To go back to the first point, how has one race not gotten lucky by now? Dodged the cullings by being just under the threshold of advancement and then by the time the Reapers come back they have better technology that is able to put up a grand fight? Technology that would if not trounce the Reapers at least put them on the same playing field out of the gate? Is the universe so stagnated that EVERYONE has the exact same ideas? That is really sad if so. 50,000 years is an awfully long time for someone to have a random stroke of brilliance. Maybe figure out mass effect fields themselves before stumbling on the leftovers. Maybe figure out a better way of doing things? I just find it hard to believe nothing has changed in thousands of cycles of potential change.
*** The Reapers have ''several millions of years advantage'' as technology goes. 50,000 years is ''nothing'' to them. I'm sure plenty of races over the many, many countless cycles managed to slip under the advancement threshold, and then when the Reapers came, there was absolutely no difference whatsoever because 50,000 years is a meaningless drop in the pond compared to 1 billion. In the end, it's all a matter of scale.
**** Plus the Reapers have been sandbagging literally every civilization that's come since. They've ensured that they're the most advanced by sabotaging the technology that the new guys come across. And it's mentioned that the cycle isn't exact - sometimes they'll come at 30,000 years in, sometimes 70,000. It all depends on the civilization. Of course, this time around it got mucked up thanks to [[spoiler: those Protheans pulling a HeroicSacrifice to fiddle with the Keepers.]]
*** Except the Reapers don't actually advance technologically. All they do in dark space is hibernate. As evidenced by the fact that the Council races could make even the least bit of sense of Sovereign's remains. Or do you think they could successfully reverse-engineer technology that is millions of years more advanced than anything they had ever seen before?
*** It is mentioned that the Reapers do leave advanced civilizations without space-flight alone. It's stated that they're leaving the Yahg alone and that they may become the dominant race of the next cycle. Also in one of the Cerberus dailies there is a mention of a recently discovered civilization that took one look at the Reapers and said "screw this" and destroyed all their advanced technology in the hopes they'll just pass them by.
** There's always the possibility that the Catalyst was wrong or lying for whatever reason. Maybe they did suffer catastrophic defeats in the past, maybe far worse than Sovereign's defeat, just it turns out the Crucible was the ''worst'' defeat they had. After all, it wasn't us or the Protheans who even came up with the idea in the first place. So we haven't had to start over from scratch each time, we were building on what civilizations before us did and learned. We just happened to figure out the most. It's a standing on the shoulders of giants thing.
** Shepard is not the first to be nice to a synthetic. Shepard is the first person to ever manage to complete the crucible and be so near using it. Catalyst said that any peace between organic life and synthetic life can only be for a short time before war begins, and as a V.I(as oppose to an A.I.) it is not able to see beyond that. from it's point of view, life between the two is simply ''impossible''. and you are unable to convince it otherwise. about the war, the reapers always had a dormant ship to prepare the invasion, like sovereign, who probably made sure invasion went smoothly. as it is mentioned in ME1, a normal reaper invasion is "control the mass relays and the citadel and make every race in this cycle blind", which is a ''huge'' advantage in the reaper's side. second, as garrus mentions in 3, the reapers have none of the normals weakneses most armies have. they don't need supplies and can make people into their soldiers, which garrus mentions, every new husk is 2 less soldiers in your side. the soldier who is a husk now, and the soldier who was his friend when alive. Even is a civilization was able to make a scientific jump long enough as to catch to the reapers technology, the reapers have ''too much''' advantages at their side.
** By the way, as we know from [[spoiler: trip to geth consensus, part of quarians were kind to geth. What happened to them? They were killed. By their fellow quarian compatriots. Just think about it: it's not synthetics who were the cause of war, it's '''organics'''. So maybe the point is not that synthetics will wipe out organics, but organics will force synthetics to destroy them, like it happened with quarians, if you choose to let Legion upload Reaper upgrades to geth and are unable to convince quarians to hold fire?]]
* Kind of a small thing, but really bugs me. ''VideoGame/MassEffect2''. The Paragon ending of Zaeed's loyalty mission has Vido escape in a gunship, with Zaeed [[ShoutingShooter yelling and shooting mostly ineffectually]] at said gunship as it retreats. In most shows this is a fairly well-justified WeWillMeetAgain scenario (by the time Shepard finds transport Vido is long gone), but not this time: ''Shepard has a frigate in orbit'' that probably outguns and out-flies the (likely atmosphere-bound) gunship by several orders of magnitude. Vido didn't have to escape; all they had to do was have the orbiting ''Normandy'' track it with sensors and pursue in the shuttle. Or better yet, just have the ''Normandy'' itself come in and shoot it down. Point is, Vido shouldn't have escaped but for PlotInducedStupidity on the part of Shepard.
* There is another thought: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CKHLDgz2zE The Indoctrination Theory]]. The strange dreams and weird ending of Mass Effect 3 are the Reapers attempting to Indoctrinate Shepard. Remember how in Mass Effect 1, [[spoiler:Saren wanted to merge with the Reapers to prevent the extinction of everyone? And how now the Illusive Man wants to control them, yet Shepard insists they HAVE to be destroyed? Now think about the decision chamber. Think about how the color code is flipped. Think about how the Catalyst is made of stars, and claims he is the Reaper intelligence, yet the Rachni queen describes the Reaper voices as "oily". Think about how there are shadow people in your dream who look oily. Think about how weird it is that Shepard can survive a hot beam of laser that can cleave Dreadnoughts in two. And finally, think of how even though the Catalyst makes it seem like Shepard dies no matter what and that Destroying the Reapers will destroy all synthetics, the only way to get the last gasp after the credits is to pick Destroy. So, maybe Shepard didn't do anything and it was all just an indoctrination dream battle in his/her mind.]] -Ashuraspeaks
* Exactly what do the Elcor use for hands?
** Their ''hands'' are used for hands. The elcor forearms have long fingers that they use to manipulate tools.
