Headscratchers / Mass Effect: Paragon Lost

• What was the planet the Citadel was orbiting?
  • It's not known- in-canon, the Citadel sits in a giant cloud most of the time. Probably just a screw-up by Production I.G.
• Why were some of the Collectors like fifteen feet tall?
  • Probably an artistic choice by Production I.G to make them more intimidating.
    • They're soulless bug monsters that are invading, kidnapping, and grinding up humans, Production I.G. You don't need to make them more so.
  • In addition, the Reapers modified the Collectors significantly from the original Prothean baseline. It's possible that like the Collector-Generaly-type, there might be other varieties- a captain variation can be seen in Mass Effect 3, for example. A larger variant of Collector might be used for hauling cargo.
• Why was Treeya an Asari? I know that seems like an odd question, but she didn't do anything a human couldn't have done. One thing that the Asari are known for is that all of them are biotics to one degree or another... which would have been massively useful at various points. She could have been replaced with a human with minimal differences. It feels like she was made an asari just so this movie could say "Look, this is Mass Effect!"
  • Not all asari are good at biotics- it's mentioned in several places that asari with underdeveloped eezo nodes or limited training aren't as good as those who do have properly developed eezo nodes and training.
  • Her being Asari meant that she wasn't paralyzed with Vega's squad, so she could interface with the Prothean beacon and setup the Sadistic Choice. If she were human she would have been put in a pod with the others, not get the data, and thus mean that Vega wouldn't have anything to angst over, he'd be a hero who saved as many colonists as possible.
    • Then again she was given the antidote to the seeker swarms' paralysis by Vega along with everyone except Messner.
  • It's literally stated in the film that Messner needed her natural asari biotics to interface with the Collector ship without dying. Asari physiology is the only one that's able to Mind Meld. Non-asari biotics are never shown to have that particular ability. All they can do is levitate stuff.
• Treeya says that Liara was her mentor. Liara, who in the first game says that in asari terms, her age of 106 made her considered as barely more than a child, given that asari live to be at least a thousand. While asari are later said to reach physical maturity in their forties or so, and Treeya's age is never given, leaving the possibility for Treeya to be younger than Liara, the fact that we later see in Mass Effect 3 research notes of Liara's dated only a few years before the first game that indicate that she was probably not long out of university at the time of the first game - when would she have the time to serve as a mentor?
  • Tutor, maybe?
  • Given that Liara had a direct hand in saving the Citadel, she probably had a ton of accolades and honorary titles under her belt by that point. It doesn't seem like a big stretch that she'd wield enough influence in the field to garner a couple of understudies or apprentices. Or Liara could have been more of an inspiration/ guiding voice in Treeya becoming an archaeologist, we don't actually know the degree to which they served together.
    • Shepard dies one month after the first game, with Liara jumping to recovering their body and setting herself up against the Shadow Broker, which she says occupied most of her time between the first two games. To say that's enough time to get her to a point where the character from Mass Effect, who was shy, reclusive, and uncomfortable around others, to where she is in Mass Effect 2, seems at the least a stretch, at the most generous.
  • It's not uncommon in university for senior students (students who are graduating that year) to help lecturers teach. Liara mentoring Treeya could be the same as a senior student mentoring a first year.
• Why did the Collectors have the non-Collector freighter that the heroes use to escape on their ship? The wiki◊ even calls it a freighter ex machina.
  • Messner uses the same model of ship, and given his known dealings with them, it could be one of his and how he intended to leave afterwards.
  • Salvage? They raided the ship? They have to get resources some somewhere.
  • The freighters owners willfully sent them supplies? Funny to think about until you realized what they do business in and what happened to the crew.
• Why did Messner attack Vega in the final battle? Since the Collectors were about to pull an You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on him, why antagonize (given how he begs for his life, being arrested by Vega would be preferable) or waste the chance to escape?
  • He may have had another plan to escape (see the above-mentioned freighter), and needed to off him as a witness to his crimes.
  • Given Messner gloated he was gonna betray the Collectors in their presence and surprised they would kill him rather than let him get away with intel, being Stupid Evil is well within his character. That still leaves the question why Cerberus hired him or he didn't screw up sooner.
    • Maybe he only recently got employed and it's the first time he's had a chance to screw up.
• Why did the Collector ship crash in the ending? Given it had turned off its main engine, it must have been far enough from the planets gravity it shouldn't have fallen back as quickly as it did. And why did it fall in the first place? The heroes were stopped before they had a chance to do any serious damage.
  • It had to stay low enough to fire its Wave-Motion Gun on the colony, which may have drained power from engines. They didn't have time to reactivate them before they lost control due to the battle.