Archived Discussion

This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.

Midas Mint: Dame! mah first time being blocked from editing 'cause someone else is doin it. Heh, heh doing it ;) Here's what to put in while I'm gone, Saurous (or whoever's feeling sweet) Moral Myopia: It's ok for the council races to commit genocide against the Krogan but it'd be wrong if Krogans conquered the council races. It'd be a "renegade" move to kill the last known Rachni queen but the option to preserve and use the genophage cure doesn't even come up.

Unknown Troper: That's a gross oversimplification of matters. This issue has been extensively discussed on the JBM page, and it comes up in ME2, where the issue becomes a hell of a lot murkier.

Tillian: I've noticed the the General Fiction section under the FanficRecs: Mass Effect page seem to be a bit dry so I've added a couple of other original fictions that are recommended by me. Still I've felt I maybe a bit too bias so feel free to discuss this, flame me or take it off if necessary. However, before you do that, read it first if you have time and see what you think, since there's a saying "Don't judge a book by it's covers"...

Vulpy: You know, I was debating over giving Mass Effect a Blue Shifting this weekend. I'll help where I can, 'kay? Here's my first question: does the Codex from this game count as an Encyclopedia Exposita? It's not necessarily treated like an in-world reference, but it sure sounds that way...especially narrated by Cam "I know I've heard you somewhere before" Clarke.

Webrunner: There is at least one in-game reference that the Codex exists- if you are on the Map screen and look at Earth it has virtually no information, instead directing you to a 'standard issue Alliance Codex' for more information

Vulpy: Added. If someone else doesn't think it fits the criteria, let 'em delete it. ;)

Vulpy: Pulled:

The Virus - Krogan naturally breed very quickly due to evolving on a very hostile world; to stop them, the salarians created a genophage that caused the Krogan to be infertile.

Wrong kind of virus, compadre. The genophage is closer to a Depopulation Bomb, I'd reckon. The Thorian might qualify, as might this vague "indoctrination", or the transformation into geth husks, so I did put in a vague entry for The Virus. Thoughts?

Danel: Are your allies really Friendly Fireproof? They certainly don't react, but I'm sure I'd heard somewhere that they do take damage from your gunshots.

Vulpy: As someone who played an Infiltrator, I can tell you that you're immune to your teammate's weapons. But damned if they don't interfere with your aim. Especially if you're, say, trying to snipe the nubby little head off of a geth at 300 meters.

Alhazred: Amusingly enough, the .ini files for the PC version include a config line for enabling friendly fire damage.

Skarmory The PG: Also amusingly enough, the Mako isn't immune to your guns. Making parking it on top of a walking tank and getting out to shoot it up risky but still worthwhile.

Duckay: My favourite thing to do when I was getting frustrated was to walk up to Kaidan/Ashley/Garrus/whichever one was nearest and empty my pistol into their head. It did nothing, but it made me feel better. However, I think it's more true to say that they're affected by some damage, but not others, because they still get damaged by explosions you get off and stuff.

Vulpy: Pulled:

Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? - The final battle against Sovereign.

Were we ever told that we should expect the character in question to be Immune to Bullets? I went in fully expecting that a whole fleet just might pack enough conventional firepower to pull through.

Blork: Actually, we were explicitly told that the reason it had to go to such lengths was that while powerful it would not be a match for the combined might of the various fleets in a straight fight, so no, it doesn't count.

Vulpy: I realized on my second playthrough that the means of defeating the Thorian should count, though. Planet-scale sapience? Hell, it's practically a second Cosmic Horror.

Vulpy: Pulled:

Although this might be a chicken and egg problem-the only truly human AI you encounter (other than the Reapers, who don't count) hates you specifically because he knew the Spectres were quite willing and able to delete him. Heck, even the geth themselves only rebelled because the quarians struck first (and not for a good reason either: it just so happened that a geth came up to his then-master and asked "What is the meaning of life?", at which point the quarians decided they didn't like ther Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids and decided to wipe them out. One wonders about the real reason everyone hates the quarians).
- By what Tali says, the quarians had designed the geth to serve as menial, nonsapient laborers, and the develoment of sapient AI was completely unexpected. The quarians themselves realized that the geth were essentially slaves, and panicked when they realized that the geth would realize this sooner or later. By their reckoning, war between the geth and quarians was inevitable - its only logical that the quarians got in the first shot.

Under the Instant A.I.: Just Add Water! example. It's not that this discussion is without merit, it's that it's natter. If someone wants to add these points in a less natter-ly fashion, by all means.

Vulpy: The hanar have a Hive Mind? Did I miss something, or did this game really go all in on Hive Minds in general?

Vulpy: Okay, gang, the Natter is gettin' real old. Pulled:

To be fair, its not magical translators. Its translation computers programmed to translate one of several specific known languages into another specific known language. Any unknown alien races met in the course of the game communicate with you by having actually learned how to speak English. Or using telepathy.

from under the Aliens Speaking English example. Pulled:

Its unclear whether the Thorian entity you defeat (by putting very large bullet holes in its brain nodes) is actually encompassing the entire planet, or is simply one of many Thorian entities who collectively encompass the entire planet. In the former event, you're obviously not killing it just by shooting up its local brain nodes, you're simply making it hurt enough that it gives up and lets you go.

from under the Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu? example. And:

The Council, who are the only known check and balance upon the power of their Spectre employees, signed off on that decision. If they hadn't, no one else could have done it to you.

from under Dude, Where's My Respect?. All three of those seem like Justifying Edits to me, and they popped up as Conversation In The Main Page. If anyone wants to edit the example bullets in question, then just do so. If "we" disagree—and odds are we will—we'll change it back. That's all advice from the "rules of the road" for this wiki; my personal advice would be to keep your example bullets fairly brief.

Pastafarian: Is there a reason none of the species names are capitalized?

Something to do with BioWare's presentation. None of the species names in-game or in the novel are capitalized either, kind of the same way "human" isn't capitalized in most sci-fi.

Dark Soldier: The species names are collective nouns, not proper nouns. It makes grammatic sense.

Bob: Editing the Karma Meter and Slave to PR examples to be more neutral because we could discuss endlessly which tropes a Renegade or Paragon Shepard would fall into, but it would probably descend into a Flame War.

Karma Meter-Really less "Good vs. Evil" and more of "Knight In a Shining Spacesuit Good vs. Bad Ass, Anti-Hero Good."
- More like Lawful Stupid Knight In a Shining Spacesuit Good Vs Specist Bad Ass Heroic Sociopath
  - Wait, how is this an example of "Lawful Stupid" ?
Slave to PR - What Ambassador Udina is, and essentially the Paragon roleplaying options for you, though it pretty much IS true the entire galaxy is watching right now... Also Wrex, as he executes a gang leader against your orders because he was hired by another to personally kill said gang leader.

Also, I put all the "just mentioning this as an example is a spoiler" and put them spoiler-marked under The Reveal.

Gloating Swine: Cut

Bioware/EA recently caught a case of Common Sense from the controversy and have removed ALL Copy Protection schemes from the PC version. The code for it is still reportedly in retail copies, but they have said they have simply turned off the authentication servers, ...Or So I Heard.

It was Bioshock that just had its copy protection turned off. Mass Effect will probably follow suit at some point, as the greatest benefit from strict copy protection is preventing a zero day cracked release cutting into first week sales (typically the highest for videogames), so after six months or so the job has already been done, and the protection can be removed.

Divra:

I think the Leeroy Jenkins entry should be removed and the facts placed under Shout-Out. Cpl Jenkins is ambushed and killed. He doesn't do anything idiotic, is ordered to take point, and is the only one on the team who isn't in command or a commisioned specialist, an is as such the sensible choice for a point man. He doesn't fit the trope, plain and simple.

Haesslich: He's also the guy who was 'itching for action' when you first met him, and wanted to get the mission over with so he could get into some 'real fighting'. Plus, this was also his homeworld. Even before seeing the walkthroughs, I mentally tagged him as 'Redshirt about to die'. Then he got put on the recon team...

Gloating Swine: Nuking discussion in the main page

If you're actually trying to fight with weapons as a Sentinel, you are doing it wrong.
- More like something went wrong, which it often does. Situations that you might be able to escape as another class can be death for
This troper thinks the Thorian qualifies also. Hey, it was willing to at least talk things out with people, until Saren stabbed it in the back and it lost all trust in all other intelligent life. Playing a paragon Shepard, this troper would have liked to have ended things peacefully; it was a huge blow when she realized that the only possible conclusion was the destruction of a >50000 year old life-form, and even the brainwashed Asari commented as such.
- Rebuttal: Even before Saren's betrayal, the Thorian's idea of a fair deal was trading the cipher to Saren in return for several hundred human colonists for it to mind-control, enslave, and torture as it saw fit. This troper thinks the Thorian was an evil monstrous thing and even his Paragon side is entirely glad its dead.
- Re-rebuttal: They plainly said in-game that it wasn't doing it to be malicious, it simply needed organic life to sustain itself. No different from any carnivorous entity.
- "The Old Growth regards you as meat, good only to dig or decompose." Yeah, real friendly... —~~~~

Skarmory The PG: Pre-emptively removed own comment:

In fact, with the exception of Kaiden and possibly Shepard, everybody has Parental Issues of some sort.
- Shephard ranges from "My parents are dead ;_;" through "I never met my parents ._." to "Hi mom, how's stuff? ^_^"

Gloating Swine: This would turn into natter, so I brought it here.

Uh, Garrus and Tali's respective species are both based on sugars with different chirality from humans. Neither race can eat human/asari/salarian/etc food. Because most biological molecules (most importantly DNA and RNA) incorporate sugar into their basic structure, viruses and probably most bacteria would be entirely unable to jump species between the two groups. And that's ignoring the more basic problem of how an alien would contract diseases from an unrelated species. We don't know if their body pH, temperature and other characteristics are a remotely hospitible environment for any particular microbe. Besides the hand-wavy explanation of asari reproduction, the notion of procreation with a species that evolved on a different planet is completely silly, even if you assume that the rubber-forehead alien trope is possible and that they all find the same atmosphere and temperature comfortable.

Also, it does make sense for Quarians to wear their encounter suits anywhere there are likely to be Turians, because they could get a species jumping infection from them, and since Turians are one of the most common races in galactic society, that means pretty much anywhere. Even on a human ship like the Normandy, where the decontamination process might not catch biological nasties that don't worry humans (and there's Garrus), and shore crews are likely to have encountered Turians and tracked in their bugs. On the subject of Asari reproduction, they basically reproduce via parthenogenesis, their method of genetic transfer is actually by copying gene sequences from a partner and internally modifying the molecular structure of a clone embryo's DNA via biotics, rather than chemical recombination (which can also explain their secondary sexual characteristics, they imported them from another genome and they caught on).

Would the Cerberus organization count as an example of The Syndicate?

Just wondering, the "pretzels" quote under "Bizarre Alien Biology"... source? I've never run up against it in game, and searching around only brings me back to this page. If its actually triggerable in game, I'd like to know how, as that sounds like an amusing exchange. The bit about turian's not being able to eat human food IS true, however, but something I've only come up against in the Codex.

Grimace: Just out of curiosity - how are there 3 endings? As far as I can remember, there's Council Survives, Council Dies, each having variations whether you were particularly Renegade/Paragon throughout the game. Where does the third ending come from?

C Ouncil dies and humanity makes a new council, council dies and humanity rules completely, council survives.

Ramidel: Can I ask what was with the insertion of a lot of random #8212 comments into the page's code?

ccoa: Removed the following, since only characters can be expies.

Expy-Several, those most glaring being:
- The Citadel, which is nearly identical to Sigil from the Planescape D&D setting. In short, they're both ancient cities of uncertain origin with an enclosed architecture (Sigil is a torus and the Citadel is a cylinder; the upshot being that when you look up, you see more city instead of the sky), considered the metaphorical "center" of the setting due to being the hub of the network that allows travel (portals in Sigil's case, mass effect relays in the Citadel), and taken care of by a mysterious race found nowhere else in the setting (Sigil's dabus and the Citadel's keepers). The individual neighborhoods of both cities are even called "wards".
- The rachni, which are nearly identical to the Buggers from Ender's Game. They're Big Creepy-Crawlies who where killed off after a Bug War, because the Hive Mind that ruled them couldn't figure out how to talk with other species. And, of course, Shepard can choose to revive the race, as Ender did, by releasing a rachni queen he discovers in captivity. Or he can fill her cage with acid. Either/or.
  - Note: the Buggers (or Formics, as we're supposed to call them now) are actually mostly humanoid, with a head, two arms, and two legs. Or at least the drones are. Still an expy as far as the plot goes, though.
  - This troper was reminded of the Zerg from Starcraft after first encountering rachni, mostly due to the fact that the soldiers have tentacles on their backs that slightly resemble zerglings, and the whole hive mind queen and threat to galactic life as we know it sort of thing.

I'm not sure, but is the targeting system labeling them "Rachni Soldier" etc. and example of an Interface Spoiler? After you kill them, your teammates ponder what the insects are, even though the player is already informed (if I am remembering correctly).

Unknown Troper: Got some natter here from The Cassandra/ The Jor-El entry. Putting it here. Feel free to continue the discussion.

And why should they? There is actually very, very little real evidence that the Reapers actually exist, and the initial accusation of Saren is very flimsy.
They should still probably listen to you, of all people—depending on your background, of course.
- When you have absolutely zero hard evidence to back any of your claims up? Listening to a rookie Spectre who is possibly emotionally or mentally unhinged ranting about mechanical abominations from beyond the edge of the galaxy when you don't have even a shred of actual hard evidence to really support it is not a good idea.
- How about the time when they believed that Anderson was responsible for the deaths of all those colonists (on Saren's word) and the destruction of the element zero plant? Did they have "hard evidence" then? The fact of the matter is that the Council does play favorites, and to act like Saren has no motive for attacking Eden Prime (Reapers or not) is irresponsible in the extreme. This is why it's best as Shepard to bypass the Council's interests - they are simply not founded in logic, nor are they in your favor.
- Most people are simply biased due to Shepard being the player character. One of the reasons This Troper chose the Paragon ending was because the Council was so objective, refusing to defer to the heroic-sounding but hardly believable claims of one person when they have an entire galaxy's interests to think about.
- There is evidence, especially if Shepard had bothered to record the conversations with Sovereign and Saren on Virmire. But Shepard never bothers to actually present any evidence. In both Saren's hearing, and any conversation about the Reapers Shepard resorts to simply yelling accusations without ever bothering to explain what made him/her believe that in the first place.

Unknown Troper: Now, to offer my opinion on this here, the Council's disbelief is perfectly justified in this instance. Hell, even looking at things from Shepard's perspective, everything seems very suspect. The only evidence Shepard has the Reapers are even real is the Prothean beacon, and even Shepard doesn't understand the visions very well. And Shepard doesn't present any evidence to back up his/her claims. Considering what Shepard is saying - that there's a race of sapient ancient killing machines that come around every fifty thousand years to wipe out all sentient life for no fathomable reason - the Council is only right to be skeptical. Shepard's making an extremely extraordinary claim, without providing evidence to back it up. Burden of proof is on Shepard, and he/she can't provide that beyond repeatedly yelling that the Reapers exist. As an aside, the instance of Saren and Anderson is a completely different matter; in that case, you've got two conflicting claims, and the Council defaults to the account offered by the older, more experienced and proven agent they've been working with for decades over the claims of a young, unproven source. That's simply a rational decision based on who has proven to be more trustworthy. In Shepard's case, there is no such counterclaim against what he/she is claiming. Shepard is simply spouting off over and over about the Reapers without backing it up. Hell, were I in the Council's place, I'd consider Shepard to be, at best, overly obsessed, and at worst, dangerously unstable and possibly unfit to be a Spectre.

Grimace: I actually agree - one of the things that always stuck out for me was that Shepherd got really gun ho for Saren, despite (to my memory) only having the word of a guy who had been hiding behind some boxes to go on. Admitted, the guy had heard Saren's name, which Anderson recognised, but that's pretty flimsy evidence to get all frothing-at-the-mouth about.

catgirl789: I wanted to add something I found interesting to the page but I don't know how to categorize it. I thought it was Fridge Brilliance before rereading the page and realizing it didn't quite fit with the definition. Heck, I'm not even sure it's a trope. Here was what my original entry was going to be, can anyone figure out what trope it might be?

Fridge Brilliance: Remember that song that played every time you died? That one that you began to associate with death and eventually hated? Well, it's Saren's theme song. Meaning that the game developers have been conditioning you the entire game to hate him. Brilliant.

JBK 405: Well, that seems like straight Fridge Brilliance to me, and if it's accurate (Not that I'm doubting you, I can just never recognize something as a particular "theme" until somebody points it out and I go back to listen to it again) then you should put it in just lke that. Maybe also mention it under Crowning Music of Awesome, pointing out how the creators used the awesome music of the game to actually get across emotions, isntead of just getting the blood pumping.

catgirl789: Maybe I just made a mistake then, thanks for the advice. I'll post it up now. If anyone has a problem with it, they can take it down.

The Conduit Plot Hole

JBK 405: Rather than get into an edit-war while this is discussed in the comment boxes, I figure the existence or not-existence of a Plot Hole relating to the conduit should be covered here so we can all come to an agreement for the main page. Now, it is not immediately apparent, but I realized after repeated play throughs that the entire plot of the game (Though a good and fun plot) is actually based on a flawed premise that results in a rather large Plot Hole. The entire plot of the game revolves around the quest to find the Conduit. Saren wants it so that he can get into the Citadel and give Sovereign control, and we want it to stop Saren. However, the whole reason Saren needs the Conduit is because he has been stripped of his Spectre status and can no longer gain access to the Citadel, and the reason he has been stripped of his Spectre status is because of his actions while searching for the Conduit. Before his attack on Eden Prime he could have simply walked into the Council room, waited for Soverign to attack with the Geth as he does in the game, and then taken control of the station once the Council had evacuated, since he is already in the room. The entire plot of the game, his need to find the backdoor, only comes about because he is already looking for the backdoor.

Now, when I put that in the page it was removed, and the editor made a good point. The Council room probably has soldiers, guards and automated defenses covering the whole thing (And Ashley and Wrex actually point out as much during the game), and if Saren were to try and attack or conquer the room by himself they would kill him (Probably). He needs his Geth with him so that he can storm he place and still be alive to transfer control to Sovereign once the Reaper docks with he Citadel. However, that assumes that Saren would need to physically clear the Council room, and that isn't the case. Here's how it could have easily worked out: Saren walks into the Council chambers without problem or hassle, since he is their star agent, and just loiters for a bit. Then Sovereign and the Geth come storming through the Mass Relay just as they did in the game (Epic scene, by the way) and everybody panics and screams and "OMG we're all gonna die!" and then, per established emergency guidelines as stated by Avina when you board the Citadel through the conduit, the Council is evacuated to the Destiny Ascension. Now the council room is empty, the guards left with the Council (Or at least most of them did, since they are not guarding the room, but the people in the room) and Saren now has free reign to take control of the station. Even if not all the guards leave (It's likely, for example, that there are always a few Secret Service agents in the White House, even when the President isn't there), there will be much less, and Saren can either just kill them (he is a Spectre) or even order them out of the room (Again, he's a Spectre). He can just say "I know how to defeat these guys, but I need privacy, so everybody get out."

I'm not saying it's completely foolproof, but neither is his other plan to storm the Citadel by force through the conduit, and it has the added bonus of not requiring any activities that would alert the Council to a threat, since he is not out there raiding colonies or cloning Rachni. However, this option becomes unavailable once he is fired and he needs to go find a way around the problem, looking for a backdoor to the Citadel, but the only reason he is fired at all is because he is already looking for a backdoor to the Citadel. In effect, the effect (Looking for a secret way on to the Citadel) actually precedes the cause (he is forbidden from entering the Citadel), and actually causes the cause. It's a Plot Hole.

Thoughts?

Skarmory The PG: Two things: Firstoff, just because the Council scrams doesn't mean whatever defenses are there will be disabled. Or that nobody'll question why the Spectre isn't helping. As somebody put it so aptly, it's gonna raise questions, and those questions are gonna quickly become bullets. Maybe they'd fail to stop him in time, but Saren doesn't want to do a (un)Heroic Sacrifice.

Second thing, I'm pretty sure the evacuation of the council only starts after the Destiny Ascension fails to raise Citadel Control, courtesy of them being killed by Saren. Saren's presence in the Council chambers would quite possibly ensure they don't go, since they feel safe in his presence.

Unknown Troper: As was shown during the assault on the Citadel itself, the very first thing Saren needs to do is not only gain control of the Council Chamber, but he also needs to neutralize Citadel Control so they don't close the arms early. That is going to raise the alarm. C-Sec is going to go after him as a result, and at that point Saren is going to need troops to secure both Citadel Control and the Tower itself. On its own, the plan is too risky. Sovereign has shown it is too cautious to just send Saren in by himself. for the most part, Saren's other plans went off without a hitch; Eden Prime got Shepard on his case, but were it not for Shepard's intervention and saving of the colony, and his/her dogged pursuit of the truth, Saren would have gotten away from Eden Prime clean as a whistle.

JBK 405: Fair points, actually. I still hold true to original statement that Saren would have had unopposed access to the Council Chamber, but I did not consider how he would hold it once Sovereign is within the arms and he closed them, or how he wold keep them open in the irst place since he can't be in in Citadel Control and the Council Chamber at the same time. I still think Sovereign's plan was a bit rickety and unecessary in its finished form, but you're right, it's not a plot-thole.

biznizz: This is what I gathered from the plot: After the Reaping of the Protheans was completed and the last Reaper (sans Sovereign, who goes into hibernation) leaves, the remaining scientists on Illos were awakened by Virgil. After decades of study, they realize the Citadel Relay was activated by the Keepers who were responding to a signal emanating from the Citadel itself, which in turn was activated by the Reaper vanguard. The Protheans, who had sent out the message to their Beacons about Illos and the Conduit, realize that the cycle of extinction had to be broken. The Protheans had no ships with a mass drive, and even if they did, all of the previously activated relays had shut down, meaning the only way they could get to the Citadel was through the Conduit, a Prothean-made prototype one-way Mass Relay. The Protheans, realizing that they would be stranded on the Citadel, left Vigil with the Emergency Overrides to the Citadel Council room; leaving the message they had sent for their own people as a warning to future races about the Reapers. Upon arriving at the Citadel, the Protheans altered the signal so the keepers would not be able to respond to the call of Reaper Invasion and the Protheans eventually die out, leaving only Vigil on Illos.

50,000 or so pass, and Sovereign decides that galactic civilization is ripe for Reaping. However, it's signal to the Citadel fails to register and thus never make it to the Keepers. {This is just me, but I'd like to think that this occurred some time before the quarians were exiled, meaning that without the Prothean intervention, Earth would be spared due to the Charon Relay not being active.) Realizing that attacking the Citadel head on would be suicide, since the fleets would decimate it and, since the Relay was under Council control, the impervious arms would lock it out. So Sovereign decides to lay low, using "agents" over centuries to gain information and allies.

Now we get to the current date in the game. Saren, a Spectre, is now Sovereign's newest agent, and for the first time in centuries, Sovereign is making visible progress: Saren would be able to do almost anything to help Saren, the Geth and their armadas worship Sovereign like a god and fight for it, and finally, Saren finds a beacon on Virmire. However, like Shepard would later, the Virmire beacon was incomplete and otherwise indescribable. Hearing that another beacon was found on Eden Prime, Sovereign and Saren attack with the geth armies and Saren is able to fill the holes in the visions he has gotten. Realizing that the Protheans had set up a mysterious Conduit that correlates with the Citadel, Saren and Benezia find the Cipher and the location of the Mu Relay to Illos, so Saren can use the Conduit. Using the backdoor to the Citadel which the Conduit allows, Saren swarms the Citadel with geth, killing Citadel Control before they could close the arms. Then Sovereign attacks, not alone, with with an armada of geth ships, which not only draws the Citadel Fleets' attentions, but almost decimates them.

Simply put, while Sovereign could have attacked the Citadel with the geth fleet, it did not want to risk it since there were to many chances for it to go wrong (Saren is discovered killing Citadel Control, the arms close, etc). In any case, even if Sovereign was confident that it could still attack, Shepard was exposed to the beacon and unknowingly learned of the Conduit, the Reapers, and Saren's role in one fell swoop, so the Conduit had to be found.

—-

biznizz: Anyone see the new Launch Trailer that Bioware just put out? It was AWESOME.

Skarmory The PG: wantwantwantWantWantWantWANTWANTWANT.

Unknown Troper: In case anyone is wondering what that song was in the trailer, it's "Heart of Courage" by Two Steps From Hell.

Skarmory The PG: Unknown Troper, I love you how as mach as a man can love a mysterious being now.

—-

Skarmory The PG: Random thought. I wanna see if I can find Shephard's trope alignement!

Colonist / War Hero - Roaring Rampage of Revenge?
Colonist / Sole Survivor - The Woobie
Ruthless / Paragon - The Atoner

I'll see if anything ele comes to mind.

Colonist / Ruthless would be far more appropriate for Roaring Rampage of Revenge.

Rogue 7: OK, what the frak, people?! The game comes out tomorrow and I'm glancing through the page and seeing unmarked spoilers?! Could someone who doesn't care about being spoiled (because I very much do) go through and take a crack at putting tags around relevant entries? For God's sake, it shouldn't be this hard to remember to put spoilertags around information for a game that hasn't been released yet!

Raveled: Would it possible to create a CMOF page for ME? A salarian singing Gilbert And Sulliven has to be immortalized for the ages.

The Other Steve: Should we make a seperate page for Mass Effect 2? It'd reduce the chance of spoilers, and clean up the current page. The series is very much Trope Overdosed.

Skarmory The PG: I don't think a separate PAGE is absolutely neccessary, but we could separate the tropes into relevant to the first game, the second game, the setting, etc.

Sooty: T Vtropes is missing a particular trope about the Bartender giving information, which Mass Effect 2 lampshades in the bar in Citadel. You try to ask the Turian Bartender for Local News, he tells you hit the news stations and that he only serves drinks, and has no idea why humans always like to ask him that.

Who keeps deleting the alignment tropes on the character sheet? Please stop ding that.

Skarmory The PG: Then stop adding them. There history page and edit reason fields are there for a reason.

Unknown Troper: Alignments are strongly subjective and heavily up for individual interpretation. Leave them off unless we have a very strong case ofr a character being of a particular alignment.

onyhow: Given the explanation in ME2, I don't think that the Geth are Hive Mind anymore. I mean, normal definition of Hive Mind is one mind, many bodies, but in case of the Geth, it's many minds, one body. I think I might delete it, but anyone disagrees?

Skarmory The PG: I say go for it. The Geth are more Mind Hive than Hive Mind.

onyhow: Done. Just in case anyone can argue against the point and want to restore it, here's the copy:

2. The geth, who are "networked" their equivalent of a sub consciousness is joined, meaning an individual has the intelligence of an animal, but in groups, they grow gradually stronger.
- Expanded on in Mass Effect 2. An individual geth "terminal" can potentially contain thousands of geth programs. Some or all of those programs can later be uploaded to a hub and then downloaded to a different terminal. Geth programs running on the same hardware will disseminate information and reach a consensus, but each individual terminal has a unique perspective, which will cause the programs to reach different conclusions, until they re-interface with a hub and share any new data.

"....you do realize you can't "max" out sniper rifles in ME 2, because there's no "Sniper Rifles" skill to put points into, right? "

Skarmory The PG: I agree with removing that, but not the abovequoted reason. You can max out Sniper Rifles as in get all seven upgrades for them.

Skarmory The PG: I think I'm going to remove most of the "Rescue Romance" entry. Yes, yes, you rescue them all, but check this, from the Rescue Romance trope:

One of the methods writers use to jumpstart relationships. A variety of Meet Cute where Person A rescues Person B, causing said Person B to fall in love with Person A.

Now, this fits for Tali perfectly - (how do you do those extendable thingies?) "What could I possibly be suggesting? I mean, a young woman gets saved by a dashing commander who lets her join his crew and then goes off to save the galaxy? How could she possibly develop any kind of interest in him? " - But the others? Let me see...

Ashley? She falls for Shepard's nice ass and not being an ass about her background.

Liara? Shepard catches her interest by encountering a Prothean relic, with a small bit of caring for her in the cutscene with the Krogan.

Thane? He rediscovers his late wife's spirit in fem-Shep.

Su Ze, Miranda, Garrus, Jacob, Kelly? Also nada.

Thoughts?

Okay, this was deleted from the page (from under the "Rogue Angles of Satin" listing):

Actually, Materiel means, essentially, military hardware. So, an anti-material rifle would be good at shooting through fabric, while an anti-materiel rifle would be good at shooting through tanks. And Reticle is the more common spelling of reticule. Not sure about Justicar, but this is a bit of a Fan Dumb moment here...

Am I missing something? Because Materiel and Reticle are the correct spellings for the words they mean. Maybe the fan dumb bit was a bit much, but, well, not knowing what 'Materiel' and complaining about it seems a bit Fan Dumb -y to me...

Gfrequency: Because in the game, they're spelled "Anti-Material Rifle" and "Reticule." They use the incorrect spelling. Justicar as well, which is supposed to be "Justiciar."

-Ah. *beats self over head with Fan Dumb page*

biznizz: Could we replace the picture on the main page? Instead of the box art of the first game, could it be the weathered N7 logo, the one from the box the Collector's Edition that ME 2 came in? I'll admit, it's all for Rule of Cool.

codenamehunterwolf: You mean how it is now?

biznizz: AWE. SOME. Thanks! Anyone got objections to the new page image?

The Recreator: Aye. Though the original doesn't do much to communicate what the game's all about, the N7 logo does even less. Awesomeness aside, I think the original pic would draw new tropers in more effectively.

Wild Knight: I agree. Sorry, it is cool, but it's also not indicative of much of, well, anything. A newcomer to the series isn't going to get what N7 means. I think a good option would be either the first game's box art (which the original pic was half of), or...I'm sure there's a picture of it somewhere, it has the series logo superimposed over a planet view.

codenamehunterwolf: One thought...people who come to the page and see the cover art will think 'duh', but someone who maybe isn't familiar with the game would see the logo scratched and damaged and maybe think 'what the hell, what happened to Shepard?' and keep reading. I'm not saying to keep it or dump it, just a thought.

The Recreator: I didn't notice the scratch until you pointed it out. Also, will a person just coming to this page for the first time know who Shepard is?

codenamehunterwolf: Someone who would have an interest in the game would likely know that much, or at the very least recognise the uniform. At the very least it hints at the darker tone the game takes.

Haesslich: Given the first game's box art is getting horribly dated now, perhaps just the Mass Effect logo would've been a good compromise? It's on the website, it's on both games' covers, and it would fit both equally even if it's not 'dramatic'. Even a complete newcomer to the series ought to recognize it.

codenamehunterwolf: Have a vote on it then and see what people want. Perhaps some think the cover of Redemption might fit the bill, I don't know. But perhaps that's the best way to sort it, for people to say 'this is the image we think fits, this is the image we want' and for the majority to decide.

Wild Knight: @Haesslich: Something like this, perhaps?◊ I don't know if there's a version without the "2"... @codenamehunterwolf: Remember that a fair number of people (at least...I think so) hop around TV Tropes by hitting the random item button. If they randomly land on Mass Effect, which picture do you think would grab their attention enough to keep reading?

codenamehunderwolf: What Cooper Lawrence evisioned when she said the game was a fully interactive, completely customisable rape simulator of course.

Seriously, I cannot speak for other people but what I would evision would be something that people who have at least heard of how awesome the game is, something that people would instantly recognise as Mass Effect and instantly go "Now THAT'S awesome" and keep reading. Any ideas? I'm not sure what might fit. A shot of Grunt killing a Thrasher Maw? But would people see that as Mass Effect?

Fuck, we all might just be overthinking this, but whatever.

Haesslich: You can always use the log on the Mass Effect site at masseffect.bioware.com since they only stuck the '2' on the right side. Otherwise, we could try a shot of the Normandy or something - Cool Starship which looks pretty much the same between both games, unless you look at the color schemes or the relative sizes. Either that, or take a picture of the Citadel, which doesn't change between games and is a constant in both.

The Recreator: I'd vote for a pic of a mass relay, given that they're even more central to the game than the Citadel. If someone can find a good piece of promotional artwork with one, we'd be golden. Anyways, here's a pic of the Normandy in front of the Citadel.◊ Seems a bit stale to me, but there may be others out there.

Sandor: It seems this article is becoming overly long and unwieldy. Perhaps some splitting is in order? Along the lines of say ‘Common throughout Mass Effect’ an article for each game, and an article for everything else (the expanded material and I-Phone game). Nothing to hurry into, but what’s the standard procedure for doing so?

shadowwolf75: Yeah, there should at least be a page for each of the main games, this one's getting a bit crowded. A Mass Effect 2 page would be a start.

Sandor: Perhaps someone could throw up suggestions on the forums? If a consensus does get reached I'll pull the literature off to its own page, that's easy. But splitting off the main body of the article into the two games (or three if we want to include a throughout series page as well) seems like it will be a hell of an undertaking for whoever takes it on.

JBK 405: The problem is that, unless I'm mistaken, that really wouldn't shrink down the page at all. Except for a few isolated tropes, the two games share the same tropes. They both have ActionGirls, both have Abusive Precursors, both have more than their fair share of Whams, etc. There are some tropes that only apply to one or the other (They Changed It, Now It Sucks!, for example, would apply to 2 but not 1. Not that I think 2 sucks. It was awesome. This is just an example of a trope that would apply to one game and not the other), but most of them fit into both games. There are probably ways of shrinking down the page, but I don't think splitting the games apart would do it.

Gfrequency: Simply condensing the tropes would halve the length of the page. Consolidate the natter, move character tropes to the character page, eliminate the redundancies, etc.

JBK 405: That would certainly be a big first step, but aren't character tropes supposed to go on a main article page, not just the character page?

shadowwolf75: I TRIED to ax some natter but they just put it right back . . . I think I need bigger guns. (borrows the Normandy and it's Thanix Cannon for a moment)

Sandor: They are JBK. Even if we cut the natter the aricle will still be really long. Whereas my suggestion would what, cut it by at least half or more depending upn how you want to do it?

Rebochan: I started a discussion on the forums here. I still think splitting would cut the page in half. Even if some of the tropes are shared, keeping the tropes straight by game will produce easier to navigate pages overall. It's a pain in the butt right now when all the entries are woven together.

JBK 405: Rather than get into an edit-war (Which I can already see brewing), I think we should go over Kelly's status as a "Romance." To me, it seems perfectly clear that Kelly does not count as a romanceable character in Mass Effect 2. Believe me, that's not how I want to see it, on my first playthrough she was the character I was trying to romance, since numerous sources (Not just here, but other web-sites) told me she was an option, but nothing in the game says she is a romanceable character. There is no cutscene, not even after you rescue her from the Collectors, which would make sense since she was absent during the normal cutscene period, no other characters react to her as a relationship (Mordin does not give you any tips, other romanceable characters do not demand that you break it off with her first, etc.) and, perhaps most importantly, the game itself does not consider her a partner, since she does not earn the Paamour achievement no matter what you do. Yes, she flirts with Shepard, and you can get her to dance for you if you so choose, but that's it, and considering you can actually go to a strip club (And tip, too) and half a dozen random NPC's also flirt with Shepard (Gianna Parasini even gives male Shepard a kiss, which is more sexual contact than Kelly ever gets), that doesn't make her a romance. Several portions of this article refer to her as a potential love-interest, but the fact of the matter is that she is no more a love-interest than the Consort or the Asari you rescue from the Thorian (Curses, her name escapes me right now). Thoughts?

codenamehunterwolf: She's a semi romance option. Throughout the game you can flirt with her, invite her to your cabin (and earn renegade points for it...?) and there's a special scene, apparently unhacked, where you cuddle and she dances for you, regardless of gender. I call a vote, but I say it applies.

Wild Knight: I have to side with JBK over there, mostly. While she is more involved than the other random NP Cs throughout the game who flirt with Shepard, and you can only call her up if you're not with anyone else, I'd say the lack of the Paramour achievement is the nail in the coffin. Again, she requires more work than Sha'ira or Gianna, but she's not in the same category as the other six romance options. Another point to make is that having her dance for you and stuff does not put down the photo of your ME 1 love interest. The game does not consider flinging with Kelly to be cheating on your previous partner. She's a fling.

Aminatep: Somebody, please, move all corresponding tropes to the Character list.

Haesslich: Removed the following entries due to natter or/and speculation - they belong in the WMG pages, if that. Also, "Dark Energy" is a real concept and its effects in game reflect the real-world theories: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy

The sequel is squishier, though. Aside from the alleged "dark energy", which is likely to be promoted to Minovsky Particle in the third game, the skills used in battle should be especially mentioned. Engineers make a sort of grenades, and biotics just manipulate gravity, right? Wrong. Now you can burn or freeze people using only your palmtop or, if you prefer vanguards, become a ball of energy and fling yourself into the enemies. And tech armor and battle drones are Hard Light.
Turns out the geth are pretty nice folks with a strong belief in allowing all species to self-determine. Turns out only five percent of them was needed to screw up the Citadel fleet. Turns out they have the technology to render worlds uninhabitable via rapid climate change and blow up stars!

shadowwolf75: Ah, locked out; had to happen sooner or later, I guess. For my next edit, nuking some of the natter in the Tear Jerker examples, unless the person who's editing it now does it themselves . . .

Haesslich: Removed the following:

You Fail Biology Forever: quarians have an atrophied immune system, thus they catch diseases easily and have to rely on vaccinations and immunizations to survive. And a contact with nearly everything tends to cause allergy, a reaction of the immune system.

Reason: If you follow the Tali romance arc in the second game, she explains the way their immune systems work, and that while she COULDN'T get infected by Navigator Pressly's chicken pox, her immune system went into overdrive to react to it... causing the illness. The bug can't infect her (just as anything levo-protein based can't survive in her system, as she's as toxic to it as turian cuisine is to a human diner), but her "severe allergic reaction" is what caused her to get ill, just as a person with lupus or some other autoimmune system disease suffers because their immune system goes nuts instead of attacking the invasive organism. They're not suffering because they're infected by some superbug; their problem is their immune system is causing the 'disease' to begin with.

Proof: See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXQ1a_LKulY - at 0:50 in, she talks about Pressly's chicken pox and how she gets sick.

Shepard: How exactly does the sickness work? It's an allergic reaction?

Tali: Right. Say I get exposed to a human disease, like.... What did Navigator Pressly have that time? Chicken pox? I wouldn't get chicken pox. But I would run a fever as my system reacted to the foreign presence. Depending on where it hits me, I could get other symptoms. Nausea, vomiting, everything you expect from being sick.

Unknown Troper: Personally, I'm wondering the logic behind how that even falls into You Fail Biology Forever. It's already more or less established in Real Life that if your immune system isn't adapted to diseases, it's ineffective against them. The quarians don't face any disease at all due to the nature of life on a ship inside environment suits.

Haesslich: That's why I removed that entry when it first showed up. The original submitter wanted an explanation, per the 'reason' entry in the edits, and I've just given it. Especially since the entry he quoted was from the Alliance Codex, which means we're dealing with second-hand sources at that point in-game, versus a first-person source. As long as we're not talking about the geth, the quarians don't seem as prone to distorting the facts as some people we know (eg: The Illusive Man).

Aminatep: I specifically requested first game and the Codex. Why? From the first game it seems that quarians have got an atrophied immune system, thus it is be an example, it's just retconned away. And if the Codex does not explicitly state that quarians have an incredibly strong immune system but lack adaptation capabilities, this is just another example of in-universe You Fail Biology Forever.

Wild Knight: A cursory glance over the Codex has a single-sentence mention of quarian biology, under Secondary -> Quarians: Pilgrimage: "Quarians are surgically fitted with their various immunity-boosted implants in preparation for leaving on Pilgrimage. Having grown within the sterile, controlled environments of the Migrant Fleet ships, quarians have virtually no natural immune system." However, before you take this as indisputable fact, remember that the Codex entries for Sovereign make no mention of the fact that it's a Reaper or that it was the true mastermind behind Saren's villainous plot from the first game. The Codex is, in-universe, probably written by a bunch of researchers that are as fallible as the rest of the galaxy, so I wouldn't take it as cold hard indisputable fact. Certainly, I'd trust a quarian herself to know how her immune system works better than that which amounts to a big galactic textbook, even one narrated by Neil Ross. This is not a retcon, if anything it's a quarian overriding misconceptions made by a bunch of researchers in-universe. Even if it was a retcon, that doesn't make it untrue by default, as you seem to be implying.

ETA: Also, the second game's Codex is almost identical to the first game's, and it only adds new entries, and does not rewrite older entries. Asking for the first game's Codex specifically is a bit redundant.

Haesslich: This is the same Alliance System Codex which states that Saren and the geth were alone in attacking the Citadel, and that Sovereign was just the geth flagship. At this point, you have to treat the Codex as an in-game encyclopedia written by the Alliance; it's based on second-hand data, and may not necessarily be completely truthful, or at least is missing data due to being written by humans with only the data available to the writers. Look at how they refer to the conflict with the Turian Hierarchy as the First Contact War, where the turians and the rest of the Council see it as the "Relay 314 Incident", which makes it sound more like a skirmish than an actual conflict. This is also the same Codex which states the rachni are extinct (and if your choice in the first game was to save the last queen, they're not), and that Freedom's Progress is a thriving colony (it no longer is). The Codex is not the Halo Story Bible - it contains in-universe facts as known by the writers, but isn't the whole and only truth. New data directly from a first-hand source is usually more accurate than a second-hand reference. Unless, of course, you're willing to believe the rachni really are extinct, even if you saved them, and that all geth attack humans despite recruiting Legion. Or that Husks are a geth creation (which is what the Codex states, IIRC).

Stating that the quarians are an example of You Fail Biology Forever because of that, especially when there's in-game data to counter this (Tali's statements, the statements of the quarian in Eternity, what we saw of the Migrant Fleet) is like having you as the player insisting that the Reapers don't exist despite seeing them in-game. The Council at least has the excuse of not seeing either the Prothean Beacon's visions or having talked to Sovereign or Vigil.

Aminatep: Judging from that, quarians are a perfect example of You Fail Biology Forever. In this case biology was failed in-universe. Codex authors (that is, Alliance scientists) can be wrong in regards to Sovereign and such, because contradicting information is classified or not widely spread. But by stating that quarians have little to no immune system they failed biology (school-level to be precise).

Haesslich: Read the definition on the You Fail Biology Forever page:

A subtrope of Hollywood Science.

Contrast Improbable Taxonomy Skills. See also Hollywood Evolution.

Note that there are cases where the MST3K Mantra certainly applies, especially if the entire world of the work of fiction is pretty crazy and, thus, all bets are off in terms of good science. Therefore, most of the examples below are culled from series who were at least trying to be taken seriously. (So please keep that in mind before adding an example on this page.)

Contrast or compare Art Major Biology, which contains things that are blatantly biologically impossible but the author never bothers to rationalize with pseudo-science.

The Codex is not Hollywood Science or anything even close - an in-game example of Did Not Do The Research but not You Fail Biology Forever which refers to the writers of the story screwing up scientific methodology or terminology in order to try to explain why the plot works the way it does. As such, this removed entry does not fit the definition.

King Zeal: Was the "troper's failure to read" bit really necessary? None of us are faultless.

Haesslich: Editing previous edit. With the previous natter and hyperbole in the main entry it seemed fitting, but removing it now.

Aminatep: As if the Codex wasn't a framing device. Thus it's an interesting example of writers of in-story literature making a Critical Research Failure.

Haesslich: It still isn't You Fail Biology Forever, since it's a factual error on the part of the Codex researchers rather than "Science Does Not Work That Way", which is what the trope is for. Did Not Do The Research or honest error due to being human-centric, but not You Fail Biology Forever.

Larseis: Not as pressing a concern as the heated plot-related arguments above, but I've been wondering if anyone knows how the effect was created for Sovereign's vocal reverb? I haven't ever heard anything that resonates quite like Sovereign's voice, and I've been trying to replicate it. It's as if it exists in multiple, distinct channels, but I don't know much in terms of sound production terminology. Anyone have any thoughts? I'd much appreciate it.

Haesslich: No clue, but it sounded like the took a single voice, then resampled it multiple times while modulating it and dropping the whole thing an octave. Perhaps they slowed it down a bit as well in the process.

witchdoctor: I was listening to Sovereign's voice and wondered if it might be similar to how they did GLADOS from Portal. Here's a video showing how they did it for GLADOS. Though even more simply they probably took the actor's voice and dropped it really low and possibly added a minor reverb effect to it and then suppressed pitch modulation.

Larseis: Another sound-related question: I notice the score album to the ME 2 doesn't feature the music from Afterlife. I particularly dig the VIP club's music. Is there any way I've overlooked to get hold of the Afterlife tracks? And, barring the actual tracks themselves, is there a real-world genre or artist with a similar sound?

Aminatep: tangentially related, but I need moar Wiki Magic to improve Bioware page.

Archived Discussion Franchise / MassEffect