History Fridge / MassEffect

**** And the Canadians! *cough* But, on a related note, on the ME3 mission to London, the initial drop is really, really reminiscent of fictional representations of the Normandy landing. So does that make Commander Shepard's invasion the [[IncrediblyLamePun second invasion of Normandy?]]

* It's been already mentionned here and there, but let's go at it with more details: [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzdleJarI0 Go and watch]] the Longest day scene when the allied fleet is first seen from Normandy. Then rewatch [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYTsXIITeGA the arrival of the fleets]]: the point of view changes, but It's pretty much the [[MeaningfulName Normandy Landings]] all over again. In fact: look at the Council Races: the ancient advanced civilization of the Asari are the British who spent most of the last two centuries under the reign of two long-lived matriarchs. The Salarians are the USA: the tech-savvy ally with a much smaller standing army before the War and powerful politicians in favor of isolationism. The Turian are the USRR: an authoritarian meritocracy which takes the brunt of the damage and manage hold long harrowing sieges of its biggest metropolises. And finaly, the Earth alliance is France: its homeland is occupied early, it suffers greatly from the influence of a well connected collaborateur, but their is still a sizable and increasingly organized resistance which manage to interfere with their plan and play a vital role with a very important '''and''' symbolic battle (London instead of Paris), with the help of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle an exiled officer turned political leader]] with a taste for [[RousingSpeech Rousing Speaches]] rallying the forces of Earth/France colonies and forced through sheer force of will the other three powers to give his world/country a seat at the great powers table. Yep: we're all French now.

** Really? Seems to me that Shepard always arrives well after the nick of time. If he'd been quicker on the draw, [[spoiler: There would be more survivors from Ashley's squad than just Ash herself, and with additional backup, Nilus may not be dead. Liara's entire excavation crew wouldn't have been wiped out. Neither would all the scientists on Noveria save for the handful that Shepard manages to find, etc. etc.]] Everything looks like a BigDamnHeroes entrance when you ignore all the people who died before the hero got there; rather, Shepard tends only to be able to prevent the catastrophic losses of a given situation from becoming total.

* In multiplayer, geth and cerberus troops will stomp on a downed player to prevent them from getting up, or being helped up by allies. Reaper forces do not do this. Think for a second what they plan on doing to your characters.

** 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.

*** Appears that frigate-class human ships are named after battles (''Hastings'' and ''Iwa Jima'' and likely others), and they're all ''Normandy'' '''Class''', so that is kind of the case. Still, it's pretty brilliant.

* The GrandFinale takes a lot of flak, but given enough thought, the entire series has been leading up to those [[spoiler:[[MultipleEndings Three Possible Endings]]. The Reapers are believed to be a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere, but the [[ExpositionFairy Catalyst]] points out that to its knowledge, ''every'' civilization falls apart due to failed [[TheSingularity Singularities]]; "[[TurnedAgainstTheirMasters The Created Destroys The Creator.]]" In the previous cycle, the Protheans had the "[[NoodleIncident Metacore War]]", and the current cycle has managed to do it ''twice''; not only the quarians and the geth, but also the turians/salarians and the krogan(uplifting a species to fight their battles for them and sterilizing them once they rebelled is no different ideologically from creating servants who refused to be turned off - creating life then throwing it away once it becomes troublesome). These wars destroy biospheres, preventing future species from evolving. When Harbinger spoke of being "salvation through destruction", he was right FromACertainPointOfView; they preserve civilizations as data, they preserve worlds from {{Robot War}}s. Once organics became capable of interacting with the Catalyst, that cycle became inherently flawed; the Reapers' network was no longer secure, and would eventually fall, destroying everything the Reapers had preserved. Hence it is left to Shepard what the new solution should be: preventing synthetic life from ever evolving again(by means of making technology impossible), subduing synthetic life so they cannot harm organics, or merging with synthetic life with the hope that interaction would defeat fear.]]
* The child that Shepard keeps having nightmares about throughout the game [[spoiler:turns out to be the Catalyst, the controlling intelligence behind the Reapers.]] His only words to Shepard? "Everyone's dying!" [[spoiler:He's not just talking about humans, he's talking about the occasional Reaper that falls, taking millions of uploaded sapients with it.]] "You can't help me!" [[spoiler:When Shepard activates the Crucible and reaches the Catalyst, ''all Shepard can decide is how it dies!'']] And he pulls off his StealthHiBye [[spoiler:by simply cutting communications to Shepard's Reaper implants when Anderson gets Shepard's attention for a moment.]]
* Contemplating on the ending, I couldn't help but feel a little guilty that I chose [[spoiler:the third option instead of the one where Shep might survive, since that'd leave Tali alone.]] But, thinking about it, the Normandy [[spoiler:crash-landed who knows how far away in the galaxy, and the Mass Relays are destroyed. So, essentially, Tali has ''no idea'' that Shep is dead, since they would have had to leave before the Citadel exploded. Chances are they won't see a resurgence of Mass Relay-level tech in her life-time. It's really a form of CruelMercy, that she'll never have to deal with that he's dead.]]
* Why was Joker trying to [[spoiler:outrace the Crucible's effect]]? Why did it cause [[spoiler:the Normandy to crash onto a deserted garden planet with a breathable atmosphere?]] Why were [[spoiler:Tali and Garrus]] on it, when (at least in this troper's game) they'd been fighting alongside Shepard down on Earth? Easy. [[spoiler:Joker was trying to save EDI (though how he knew she was in danger, or ''why'' she would be in danger if you chose the Paragon ending is unclear), but failed to (again, ''why?''), and then died in the resulting crash. Meanwhile, Tali and Garrus were killed by Harbinger while Shepard was K.O.'ed. The garden planet he, Tali and Garrus emerge on is some version of Heaven.]] Hopefully, it has a bar where they can wait for Shepard.

* This was mentioned offhandedly above, but take a good look at [[spoiler:the Reaper that fries Shepard.]] Notice the pattern of its "eyes?" Looks sort of like the Collector General, doesn't it? If that isn't Harbinger, this troper will eat his shoe.

* Considering what we learned about its translation, Shepard's pointed use of "''keelah se'lai''" ("by the homeworld I hope to see someday") to punctuate his/her attempt to convince the quarians to stand down near the end of the Rannoch mission is not just a case of appealing to them by using a phrase important to their culture, or even a reminder that they're right at the mthreshold of the homeworld it refers to. It's ''also'' a very pointed reminder to the quarians that Shepard, too, is now in a position of having to hope that s/he will get the chance to see his/her homeworld again someday.

** Secondly, [[spoiler:with all the collected knowledge of Mass Relays and Reapers and now the ability to interface with what use to be just machines on a personal level, it's possible that they could create a network of living mass relays. ]]
** Third Medical technology will be almost overnight revolutionized [[spoiler:due to all species being techno-organic.]]

* Geth gaining sentinence is often a concern for the Quarians, but it wasn't because of the fact they are alive. But because it is against Citadel Laws to have sentinent AI, they could have let the Geth live as sentinent machines. But with the laws of artificial intelligence. The Quarians have legitimate concern on why Geth can be sentinent, this also leads to another thing about Legion's Shadow Broker Dossier. The games it plays are not for fun like normal humans but literally training programs to make sure targeting software (FirstPersonShooter games), marco management (MMORPG games) and psyche research (Quarian Date Sim) are fully functional.

*** Or he could just be drawing out the logic from what Samara tells you when you first meet her, or he could have done a bit of research into the Justicars and realised "Oh, this person could be a threat to me in the future. Better use this opportunity to remove it."

** Heck, even ''Paragon'' Shepard is slowly becoming Saren's inverse: [[spoiler:The Geth? On your side thanks to Legion. The Krogan? On your side thanks to Wrex. The Rachni? On your side thanks to the Queen you spared on Noveria. With former enemies like these, who needs friends? (Though you probably made a lot of those, too.)]]

** [[spoiler:And remember, Saren was in control of several research corporations. He could very well have 'leaked' Geth designs and tech. Why? Because it would be tech that he, and by extension, Nazara could control.]]

** When asked about the genophage in Mass Effect, Wrex asks Shepard "When was the last time you saw a Krogan scientist?" In fact, if you keep an eye out, shepard does meet quite a few people that could qualify. In Mass Effect, the Krogan supervising the breeding program on virmire is arguably a scientist, and in Mass Effect 2, Okeer (the creator of Grunt) is somewhat of a scientist as well as most of Clan Weyrloc that are undertaking tests to try and cure the genophage. While Krogan scientists aren't exactly widespread, there are a few. - Kuri

* While some may complain that the Refusal Ending of the Extended Cut was simply a FU to fans from Bioware, it actually makes a bit of sense when you realize that organics were losing the war to begin with and the Alliance were relying on the Crucible to win the war.[[spoiler: Since they didn't use the Crucible in the end, they pretty much just wasted all their resources and thus, the Reapers were able to curb stomp everyone on Earth and galactic civilization was annihilated.]]
** However, thanks to the efforts of a direct confrontation and Liara's effective time capsules, [[spoiler: The next cycle has a considerably easier time of it ("They fought a terrible war so we didn't have to.") and are able to defeat the reapers themselves.]]
** In essense, [[spoiler: the Refusal Ending is both. Much of the fanbase was enraged that they didn't have the ability to refuse the Catalyst's options, but the game pointed out on numerous occasions that galactic civilization was losing badly and the Crucible was the only hope for defeating the Reapers. The Refusal DLC was the answer to all the fans shouting, "We should be able to tell the Catalyst where to stick his choices, and beat the Reapers without the Crucible!" There you go. You told him to f himself, you fought the Reapers without the Crucible, and you lost spectacularly like you've been told repeatedly is exactly what would happen. It's the inevitable result of certain elements in the fanbase's choice to ignore the plot in favor of a nonexistant GoldenEnding.]]

*** It's revealed in [[spoiler:Leviathan just exactly which species created the AI that eventually created the first Reaper.]]

*** During Thane's Loyalty mission, he mentions that "duct rats" (young orphans who live within the air vents of the Citadel) sometimes disappear without a trace. Combined with the above theory, and the keepers suddenly become NightmareFuel.

*** The Reapers' basic shape has been around [[spoiler:for at least 37 million years]], so the tentacles aren't something they adopted from the Protheans.

** It could be much worse than that: let's say the Keepers were the first race the Reapers wipe out. There must have been millions of Keepers damaged/killed/self-destructed during the (at least) 37 million years that the Reapings have been going on. It also isn't that much of a stretch to assume that some races harvested might have been pretty brutal, and likely killed at least some of the keepers when they first discovered them. It seems unlikely that the Citadel could hold (not to mention, conceal) enough raw biological material for millions of years of replacement - but there again, with all those millions living aboard it, nobody will notice if a few people "disappear" from time to time...

*** 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 37 million. In the end, it's all a matter of scale.