Mass Effect (video game)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

Read at your own risk, there be no spoiler tags here! '''Please feel free to add new entries at the bottom of this page.'''

 

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== Female Turians ==

**** Which is exactly why it doesn't make sense. Liara - [[Age Is Relative|who is 106, and still barely considered an adult]]- is STILL older than the typical Turian lifespan (stated several times to essentially match that of a human), not even mentioning the fact that even if a Turian did live that long, they certainly wouldnt be in any condition to be serving on C-Sec

**** Actually, that's exactly why it does make sense. Calling someone a kid isn't just about their numerical age. It's about their mind-set. Liara is 106 years old but is equivalent to a 18 year old human. If a 60 year old human, who has lived a full life full of experiences called Liara a kid, it wouldn't just be about numbers. She's considered a kid by all, therefore she'd be called a kid.

***** Actually in [[ME 1]] Shepard mentions to Liara that the human (and, in turn, turian) lifespan is about 150 years by the time of the series, so if she's a green recruit who's just past adulthood than he could easily have a decade or two on her.

***** Liara is the equivelent of a twenty year old physically but is also a social shut in who spends most of her time studying prothean dig sites shes not a child shes a nerd.

** Age doesn't factor into it. It's a rookie asari talking to an experienced turian. That's all.

* In Mass Effect Redemption, we see Dark Horse's rendition of a female turian with a distinct lack of a fringe. However... the turian in the Salarian Bachelor Party on Illium expresses his like of asari (and assertion that they look like turians) based on the head tentacles resembling a turian fringe. If he was presumably straight (based simply on probabilities), wouldn't he be put off by a fringe since it would be a decidedly masculine aspect of turian sexual dimorphism?

** By that point, the design of female turians probably wasn't finalized. Alternatively, maybe that particular turian was into masculine women. I wouldn't take the bachelor party too seriously anyway -- it was meant as a joke. At worst, this is a retcon.

 

 

== Elkoss Combine making Human Armor ==

** Note that the Terminus clans include humans. You meet one if you're a War Hero. So a company based in the Terminus Systems would have incentive to make armor for humans. And since Elkoss is just a company and not smuggling anything anyway, searching them isn't likely to turn up anything other than the armor and weapons already on board which aren't necessarily illegal.

* Humans make us a good portion of soldiers mercs and other people requiring armor. Asari compatibility is also notable.

 

== Geth Armory License ==

** The geth themselves have killcodes - it wouldn't be a stretch to think that their weapons have similar codes to make their stuff unusable.

** Also remember, The geth may act like individuals, but in reality their minds are programs that inhabit a "body" that they are not restricted to. Geth armatures, and EVEN SHIPS could be sentient in the same way the footsoldiers are. So it isnt't really a big stretch to think that a geth program could inhabit a geth weapon. that means your weapons could actualy be sentient geth. so why are they letting you use tham to shoot at their fellows.it also means {{spoiler|that you have a geth on the team far sooner than the end of mass effect 2}}

** In the second game we learn that the mainstream geth are opposed to those geth who follow Saren. Perhaps they are ''themselves'' covertly selling geth weaponry onto the black market in order to level the playing field?

 

 

== Omni-Tools ==

***** Perhaps not... but having [[Applied Phlebotinum]] doesn't make it not hard Sci-Fi... so long as it doesn't outright contradict what we already know about science. For example... nanotechnology is both [[Applied Phlebotinum]] and Hard Sci-Fi (if done realistically). "Mass Effect Fields" could be some method of increasing and decreasing mass... something quantum physics is, in our own time, hinting at being possible. This could allow you to effect gravity which lets you bend space-time or make heavy metal ships float. Element Zero, or rather the element on the periodic table coming before hydrogen and having an atomic mass of zero, is in fact theorized to have existed just after the big bang. It's not completely impossible for it to exist today in small quantities. Whether or not access to it would give us the ability to manipulate mass is unknowable at this time. We don't know what mass actually is or how it effects gravity. But there are theories backing up what is showing in Mass Effect... and very little contradicting it. Might not be hard Sci-Fi but it is very very close.

** You can't make holograms with light any way... or at least not just light. "Mass Effect Field" sounds a little like "manipulating gravity." If we could do that all sorts of interesting things could happen. Like making ships that hover in the air... or dilating space-time to allow FTL travel. In the ME universe mass effect fields handle everything... including shields. I say again shields... hard invisible barriers that stop bullets. How hard would it be to project a hologram onto just such an invisible barrier around your wrist and read finger movement across it via small cameras in the wrist mount (sort of like a very advanced PS Move)? As for fixing stuff.. again... mass effect fields. Generating minute gravitational fields across the surface of an object as you fix it to help structure the raw materials correctly... or inside a computer system to alter behavior. Combine that with a solid wireless transmitter in the style used by modern computers and you have a hacking and repairing tool on your wrist. Explaining how they store the Omni-Gel is... still difficult. Thermos of some kind? Remember that, technically, molten just means liquified. Water is "molten" at room temperature.

* In Mass Effect 2, it is explained that the light is only used to display the data, and is not actually "hard" light. Interacting with it comes from circuitry built into the computers and gloves (or implants in the hands, for more serious computer users) which interface with each other to track which buttons are being pressed, and send feedback pulses into the hands to simulate the pressing of a physical button.

 

== The Hanar ==

 

 

== Carrying all four weapons ==

**** Except in the cutscenes where an infiltrator Sheperd sprays Assault Rifle rounds everywhere when s/he can't equip one in game. [[Story and Gameplay Segregation]] anyone?

 

 

== Sapient species alongside the Protheans ==

*** It's also possible that one civilization being in space is the normal series of events, and the reason multiple different spacefaring species are around now is because of Prothean uplift efforts. Remember not only the hanar mythology about "The Enkindlers", but that one easter egg on the UNC world Eletania that shows the logs of the Prothean science team studying the mentality of Cro-Magnon man on Earth.

*** This easter egg, along with the one where Shepard touches a Prothean artifact and is shown a vision of a Cro-Magnon man witnessing the Protheans, indicates that the Protheans were not the only sapient species at the time. In fact, the other species in the series - asari, turians, hanar, et cetera - presumably existed too and may have even discovered space travel, just not reached a Mass Relay or the Citadel. Perhaps, the Protheans (along with anything coming before them) were simply at an earlier stage in galaxy-wide ecological succession: a few fast-evolving species in early stages, then as the galaxy ages the number of species grows larger and larger between extinction events. In fact, there could have even been a galactic civilization as diverse as (or more diverse than) the one shown in the series, but it was all destroyed by the reapers, devastating the entire galaxy and as such it is now (in-universe) undergoing secondary, or tertiary, 'ecological' succession.

 

== The volus, the Turian Hierarchy, and the galactic economy ==

** They probably consider running the economy a valuable 'service', and feel they get no respect for that. It's not that they're any less powerful or wealthy, but they don't have a shiny 'We're a council race, aren't we awesome' plaque.

** Look in real life at the Jews of Europe or the Chinese around Asia. Due to a variety of reasons they would come to control the economic interests in those areas but lacked political representation. When the regime were displeased with them their money didn't mean much. Same for the Volus, they may have a huge gloved hand in the economy but they could be excised. Money can only hire so many mercenaries while most states will have much greater martial power. It would also be very expensive for them to get any mercenaries if it was common knowledge a major power was after them.

** Yes, the volus have a strong position. Yes, the volus have a great deal of economic power. Yes, they can exert quite a bit of influence in a lot of regard, especially considering that they're essentially the bankers for the biggest military power in the galaxy. Yes, they are already very powerful overall. But you know what's better than having all that power? Having ''even more power.'' Because if volus motivations are anything like human motivations, they ''will'' want more power. And a Council seat would give the volus a hell of a lot more power. No longer would they be entirely dependent on the turians; they'd be able to make political decisions and exert political influence to an even greater degree than they already do. Din Korlac is, quite simply, complaining that his powerful species just doesn't have ''even more'' power. The volus have a strong position, but they want an even stronger one. That's ''all'' it is about.

 

== Feros after the Thorian ==

*** Closer than you'd think. If you save the colony, in ''[[Mass Effect|Mass Effect 2]]'' {{spoiler|a representative of the colonists gives you a side quest to re-negotiate a nasty contract. The colonists suffered side-effects from spore inhalation, and the contract was signed to help find a cure for it.}}

** The Thorian is some kind of plant. Plants rot, but it's not quite as virulent as an animal body, especially if it's largely underground. It also could be that the tendrils survived, but without the core thing you destroy, it's just a giant plant.

 

== Save/kill the Council - no real choice ==

** If you take a look at the FMVs, going after Sovereign has the fleet bypass the battle almost completely and head straight for Sovereign. That means less losses for them, because sitting around clearing the space around the Ascension means more damage dealt to the fleet in the effort.

* What prevents geth from attacking Alliance fleet after taking out Destiny Ascension? Or simply changing priorities to protect their messiah? In any case, there is a high chance the Alliance fleet fighting Sovereign would get pincered between Mecha-Cthulhu and remaining geth. Do I have to explain how such scenario would have ended? Was there really any other (tactically sound) choice but to save the Council?

== The asari's hat ==

* The asari's hat are being nice, peaceful, and working for the better good. How come most of the ones you meet in game are bitches? There's the one on Noveria who asks you to spy on the human guy and insults you ("Dull stone" must be some kind of insult in asari culture) then there's the one who tricks you into murdering her own sister who is herself a slaver and a pirate. Then there's that stupid bitch at Peak 15 I just want to reach through my screen and strangle every time I talk to her, and turns out to be a plant by Saren .

** A normal asari, with their nice, peaceful, greater good outlook, is unlikely to ever be opposing you. There are hundreds of unnamed asari wandering about the citadel that you never speak with, because they are neither helping nor hindering any of your assignments. The only asari you interact with are the weird ones, Liara, and the counselor.

** Yeah, and why isn't my Japanese neighbour good at math? And I swear I've met Irish people who don't drink! For real! What's the world coming to when you can't even rely on general stereotypes any more?

** The problem is not that the asari avert their hat; every other race does. The problem is we see ''faaaaaaar'' more asari that avert the hat instead of ramming it straight on.

 

== Normandy's stealth systems ==

** I thought that the explanation was that "light" coming off the Normandy would be blue-shifted. I.e., when stealth mode is on, the hull emits radiation identical to the 3 degree K cosmic background microwaves. Go too fast, and those microwaves get blue-shifted up to infrared or whatever to anything you're moving towards, and you become visible from the front.

**** ....no. That is not ''at all'' how the stealth system works. It works by trapping ''all'' outgoing emissions in sinks, and using a propulsion system that doesn't generate radiation.

*** Radio waves are too slow?! They propagate at c, same as everything else you could possibly use in a sensor system. I'll buy that future-RAM coatings render the LIDAR they use a better choice for their active sensors, but the positional uncertainty from travel time is going to be the same for radar as for any other sensor system.

**** Radio waves that propagate at c are all very well when your target is within a few light-seconds of your position, but further out it becomes far too slow for any kind of effective tracking. A light second, BTW, is a mere 300,000 km - not much good if you're looking for something the size of Normandy in something the size of a solar system!

 

== Nihlus and his kinetic barrier ==

** Also, note that the scene cuts as Saren fires. Nothing says only fired one shot, he could have fired once, Nihlus staggers and Saren keeps shooting 'till he goes down.

*** If that's the case then why did we only hear one shot fired?

 

== Refund guy ==

*** Two years later, he's still trying to get a replacement for the item.

*** I don't know who hyperlinked you here, we don't do refunds at this tropes page.

 

== Thorian clones ==

 

 

== "Flattering" body armour ==

*** The [http://imgur.com/2Gb43.jpg arse-crack] on the female human medium armour seems neither flattering (YMMV) nor practical. It Just Bugs Me. Gives a new meaning to '[[Negative Space Wedgie|Space]] [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Wedgie]]'...

*** As noted above, the armor is form-fitting to be lightweight.

*** Also the designers needed to give [[Male Gaze|something]] to the player to look at during those ungodly long elevator rides.

 

 

== Garrus' eyepiece ==

*** Man, what doesn't it do? From the Shadow Broker files: Magnification up to 100x integrated target tracing, optional wind/gravity compensation solutions. Sonar, LADAR, thermal, and EM targeting capable. Monitors biofeedback on target within 10 meters to detect heart-rate fluctuations or changes to breath pattern. Can detect and measure biotic fields up to 100 meters away and provide optimized firing solution to collapse kinetic barriers or synthetic shielding support. Optional kill-timer can track number of enemies taken down by self or suit-synced team members in given time period. Armor hotlink provides backtracing of incoming fire and corrects for microrefraction of outgoing shots through kinetic barrier. Audio link plays music per user request.

**** Impressive.

== Secretly racist Council ==

* All the minor races are "different." The elcor are four legged and come from a high gravity world. The hanar are sea creatures, The volus don't even breathe the same air as the other races, the geth are robots, the batarians have four eyes, and the quarians have compromised immune systems. Of all the minor races the only ones being considered for council leadership are the humans, and they're oxygen breathing humanoids like everyone else. [[Unfortunate Implications]]? (Which is to say, [[Fantastic Racism|must one be a bipedal humanoid oxygen breather who doesn't rely on mass effect fields or environment suits to survive on the Citadel in order to hold any real galactic power?]])

*** Just as a side note, the quarians 'were' part of the Citadel (though not the Council). They were kicked out after the Geth Rebellion. And their immune systems are only weakened due to centuries of being confined to the flotilla.

** More practically, the three council races are humanoid because Bioware needed to reuse as many assets as possible, including animations. IIRC, you never see hanar, volus or elcor moving aroud, just staying still in one spot. They're there to illustrate to the player that not every species is a [[Rubber Forehead Alien]], but they never serve more than talking roles due to development constraints. All the races that get involved in combat (krogan and quarian included) are humanoid, allowing the developers to reuse the same animations for all of them.

** The krogan buck this trend - they're bipedal humanoids who don't rely on environment suits, and they aren't allowed to hold galactic power because of other reasons (the war that they started, and the fact that they tend to go off and join mercenary companies rather than stay on their homeworld and do anything to build up their strength as a unified species.) Of course, by all indication, most of them are just fine with not being part of the Council.

 

 

== The Prothean on Ilos ==

***** Because cloning just means lots more inbreeding. And at any rate, at some point, the population would either be too big to hide, too big to sustain, or too old to continue with dwindling resources.

 

 

== Virmire - guarding the nuke ==

********* Considering that you, the Commander, undertake pretty much every mission using only two people from these specific groups kinda suggests that they are above the rank and file.

** Even if the nuke wasn't armed so early, you got to remember that Sovereign was on its way to Virmire by then (Joker says so after the second beacon). If Ashley or Kaiden waited on the nuke, they might not have had time to arm it before Sovereign was on top of them. No amount of backup would help against that.

 

== Squadmembers' tasks aboard the Normandy ==

*** Furthermore, various in-game descriptions outright states what party members do at some time. For example, scanning an asteroid led to a comment that both Tali and Adams have done analysis on said chunk of space metal.

 

 

** Yes, and they say as much. And they didn't know about the capabilities of their enemies, so using nukes would be prudent. Not to mention that if a ship captures a drone, that's a quick way to take out said ship. And while putting nukes on drones is overkill, remember that in the military, there is no such thing as overkill.

 

 

== AI - illegality, and sanity ==

** It was hostile because he KNEW that C-Sec would inevitably destroy it.

** The new "''Overlord''" DLC of Mass Effect 2 shows why AIs can be problematic.

*** AI research was illegal and repressed before the geth were made. That's why their creation as AIs was accidental. The only way the quarians could have known what the geth would do once they gained sentience is if there had already been big problems with rebellious AIs in the past.

** It's possible that all AI go crazy because of the Reapers. Most technology in the game is based off of the stuff they left lying around, and Sovereign doesn't seem very happy about the geth. It wouldn't be much of a strech to assume the Reapers don't want competition and took steps to discourage organics from making AIs.

** EDI proves that not all AIs are bad.

** EDI is a VI, not an AI. She isn't sentient.

 

== Tali's environment suit ==

*** Plus, in context, armor in the ME universe doesn't just mean the physical armor (consisting of protective plates and self-repairing stuff) but also the mass effect fields around them. She could very well be asking if Shepard's suit (and me fields) is working enough to stop bullets - after all, as a quarian she's used to things -not- working.

*** Of course all the costumes used by your party, Tali's included are fully functional spacesuits that let you run around the surface of the Moon unharmed.

*** Tali mentions that the suits have area seals, similar to the concept of emergency bulkheads in ships. Also, lots of antibiotics.

 

 

== The morality system ==

** The fact you get Renegade points for ostensibly 'good/nice' (i.e., the upper-right/upper-left responses every time) actions in the sequel bugs me for this reason. You're not being a dick, but you still get points as if you are. Seems to go against this general reputation mechanic.

 

 

== The Creepers on Nodacrux ==

** Then there is Quantum Entanglement... or as Einstein called it: Spooky Action at a Distance.

*** Mass Effect 2 has shown that Quantum Entanglement Pairs are entirely possible in this universe allowing instantaneous communication regardless of the distance between. It is possible that the Thorian has a natural version of this theoretical concept which makes it a terrifying creature indeed. Or it could simply be instantaneous psychic abilities that throws the biggest middle finger to physics the likes of which the universe has never seen before.

 

== Cherenkov radiation ==

** That Irregular Webcomic annotation also points out that Cherenkov radiation is "relatively" harmless. Not completely harmless.

** Also, most Cherenkov radiation is UV. Which, as anyone who has had skin cancer will tell you, is decidedly not harmless.

 

== Mass Effect - a violation of the Conservation of Energy/Momentum ==

**** Conservation of Mass is not violated by relativity, as the conservation of mass is an extension of the conservation of energy, tied together by E=Mc^2. So it is possible that mass effect fields could increase the mass of an area, but since the most efficient energy conversion would only allow you to increase the mass of an area by the amount of mass you used for energy (1kg for 1kg), this still wouldn't explain the power of the mass effect fields we've seen, nor does it explain decreasing mass.

****** While the mass effect field independent of the eezo might seem to violate conservation of energy there's no reason to believe that the mass effect field + the eezo used to create it violates the laws of physics. Eezo could just be a ridiculously high energy density substance with a tiny fraction being drained off to power the mass effect field. Or alternatively it draws power from somewhere else to power the mass effect. Either way there's no way to determine whether the entire system violates conservation of energy.

* A quick reminder folks, the "Laws" of physics are not immutable, they're based on observations of phenomenon which we have made. If something violates the "laws" of physics it doesn't mean that the impossible has happened, it means that we are wrong about what is impossible. If Mass Effect fields do in fact violate Conservation of Mass/Energy/Momentum/whatever, it means that Conservation of Mass/Energy/Momentum/whatever is incorrect.

*** Actually, a "Scientific Law" is just a term for a pattern that shows up in observations that people made without bothering to give an explanation ''why''. This was popular a few hundred years ago but these days that's just sloppy science. They can be disproved and replaced just like any scientific theory.

* The biggest problem I have with mass accelerator weapons is not the mass reduction due to the mass effect. As someone else has mentioned, mass reduction is theoretically possible. The problem is the idea of accelerating the reduced mass to high velocity and it remaining the same speed when it leaves the mass effect field. That is where the violation of conservation of energy comes into play: for the slug to maintain the high speed requires the energy to increase apparently from nowhere. If, as suggested above, the field is maintained after the slug leaves the cannon (which is possible as the slug held by the gunnery chief on the Citadel has flashing lights indicating that it is not a simple slug of metal) the slug is a low mass object striking the target which is not going to do catastrophic damage unless the slug is accelerated to relativistic velocities, which a standard mass accelerator does not.

*** If the above Tropers math is correct then the Gunny Sergeant was incorrect in his assessment of the destructive power of the slug. The Hiroshima bomb yielded 58 [[Giga Joules]] of energy (about 14 kilotons of TNT) and the yield of the slug is 60 [[Giga Joules]] if the math is correct. Basically, every one you fire is a Hiroshima nuke all it's own which is still amazingly destructive power for what is basically a gigantic hunk of metal. The Sergeant may have exaggerated when he said that the yield was three times the power of the Hiroshima nuke. This also makes sense in the story itself as the nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima would be outlawed by the Councils WMD policy as a Teir 3 WMD. If they dropped a Tsar Bomba (50,000 kilotons of TNT or 210 petajoules of energy, although they had the technology to double the power) or even the 38 kiloton bomb then it would likely get a Teir One WMD status which the council would crap their collective formal wear about.

 

 

== The Supply Sergeant ==

**** It's not ridiculous though it may be ridiculous as far as practicality goes. It happens in real life after all; this one had a marine friend who not only brought a side arm but additional armor, a better carrying harness, and other odds and ends that made his life a heck of a lot more comfortable, safe, and better. And it was all on his own dime. As the saying goes, standard-issue just means all your stuff was made by the lowest bidder. And for the supply officer, even if he could give it to you for free, the other half of his dealings involve people that won't just work on bartering. So he needs money regardless and the SA or the Citadel isn't about to give him a budget. His only budget is whatever the CO wants to give him.

**** To paraphrase a [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]] from another sci-fi series, 'Standard issue' isn't cheap and it is only the bare minimum that you need in order to survive. Military budgets are vast but not inexhaustible and as contrary to the point as it may sound a defense department will not outfit every soldier with the latest and greatest tech. It is not really surprising that any military force, especially one that spans a gigantic region of space, will have soldiers utilizing old tech and that makes people like the supply sergeant and independent dealers indispensable. Enterprising individuals or companies can be relied upon to mod out or upgrade tech where the major weapons manufacturers can not (quality over quantity as it were) and therefore weapons might be able to perform better than the factory basic given to any soldier. As the above poster mentioned soldiers today can buy their own gear to compliment the military standard issue and if they are truly talented in gunsmithing (and VERY careful about it in general) modify their weapons for a boost in their performance over standard issue equipment.

*** Unless you're turian. (^_^)b

** Like he said though, he is thinking about straight-up combat, and it is only one ship - it would be unlikely for it to be useful against entire militaries, because... it's just one ship. It might be worth investing in later, but since the turians did help make it, the advantages of it are shared with them (which an untrustworthy military would hate to do). There is a reasonable amount of justification to believe the funds and time they spend on it are more or less useless to the navy, and were just a PR stunt.

** Mikhailovich also seems to be completely unaware of the significance of you being a Spectre. The Renegade option allows you to inform him of the fact that you answer to 3 very specific individuals, and he is likely to never, by any stretch of the imagination, be one of those individuals. This is part of why I like ''Normandy'' SR-2 more: she's your private ship (good luck taking her back if you want her, TIM), and no one questions the fact that you answer to the Council.

** Mikhalovich seems to be the conservative kind of commander who prefers what is proven and reliable over what is new and untested. Remember that for a lot of military officers, the terms "new" and "prototype" are synonymous with "unreliable." He likely prefers "tried-and-true" methods of recon (as he is in command of a "scout flotilla") probably including passive sensors and observation equipment and recon patrols with frigates. In fact, if he prefers passive observation, it would explain his complaint that the ''Normandy'' can only hide for a few hours at best, as opposed to passive sensors that could sit there indefinitely. He also seems to be of a negative opinion regarding covert operations as opposed to the "find em and kill em" mentality. All of these, combined together, would result in a competent if conservative officer who dislikes the ''Normandy'' because she's new and unreliable technology that doesn't fit with how he believes recon and naval combat should work.

 

== Bullets and mass ==

** The bullets are shaped to minimize air resistance. The weapon itself precisely calculates the necessary shape of the bullet to ensure it hits its target.

*** It doesn't matter what shape it is if the density is too low. It's basic momentum. Light stuff gets slowed down, which is why we use bullets which aren't made of feathers.

 

== Conveniently-placed equipment ==

** Pirates and slaver camps: arms and armament for the pirates and slavers. Feros: arms for the Exogeni security teams. Noveria: Arms for the corporate security forces. Virmire: Arms for Saren's guards. Ilos....uh, got me there.

*** Ilos would also be weapons for Saren's crew. All of that stuff was outside the bunker, so you were presumably just raiding their base camp. That still leaves the question of why nobody ever tries to consolidate their weapons and equipment to better protect it, instead of scattering it everywhere.

*** Not to mention random space probes.

** It actually depends. Elkoss Combine for instance which is the main supplier for the pirates, as a whole, their products are inferior to other manufacturer products of equal rating. So even the best of the crap is still crap.

** What bugged me was that people keep things like omni-tool upgrades and ammo in their wall safes. I can see why someone like Fist would do it, but why does Lorik Qu'in have, if memory serves, radioactive ammunition and an armour exoskeleton in his safe?

 

== Virmire - stealing the genophage cure ==

** In order to get a sample for it, they'd have to stop and dig around in the labs for whatever the cure was. That would take a while, and in the meantime salarian soldiers would be dying. It would take even longer to dig through the research notes. It's also worth noting that the "cure" appears to consist of cloning tanks, which are evident in the "breeding area" of the base, and that the researchers working on the cure were hip-deep in research on husks. Even if the cure could be transportable, there's all indications that it involves Reaper technology in some shape or form, so either way, it's bad mojo.

*** Maybe so, but you'd think someone would've said something like "If we have time, let's try to download as much as we can from their medical database". The cure's gotta be in there somewhere and the techs can sort the files out later. As for the "bad mojo", there's no reason to believe that would've been a problem. Indoctrination is bad mojo, but there's no evidence any other part of Reaper technology is too.

*** Doesn't mean they can't derive some kind of cure from husk technology. Seriously, this isn't the T-Virus we're talking about, it's science. We know for a fact that the Systems Alliance is already studying captured husks. Why would they do that if there wasn't something useful to be learned from them? And again, this doesn't answer the question of why they didn't download as much as they can and sort out the files later. Even if none of the files were useful, at least they tried.

***** But s/he has time to hack weapons lockers and item boxes? I'm not opposed to letting the genophage cure get destroyed, I just have a problem with the fact that they didn't even bother with a basic justification. Something like:

'''Squad Mate #2:''' No, there's no time! The geth are on their way, we've gotta get outta here now! }}

*** To put this argument to rest, it's confirmed in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' that Saren's cure consisted entirely upon creating clones.

 

 

== Working with the Systems Alliance and the Citadel ==

** The crew on the ''Normandy'', like the ship, are still Alliance military and are on loan to Shepard. They still get paid by the Alliance, and when the need arises, Udina takes the ''Normandy'' back using perfectly legal means.

*** ^This. As the first human Spectre, Shepard is a huge publicity win for the Systems Alliance. They have a vested interest in making sure s/he has everything he needs to complete his missions, and that includes a fully crewed ship. Plus, in theory this gives them a significant amount of control over Shepard's actions. If s/he acts against Alliance interests they can threaten to strip away his/her ship and crew.

** Shepard is still Alliance military, officially. It's just that, as the first human Spectre, s/he is effectively above the chain of command since any kind of official discipline would screw humanity over in terms of PR.

** Both of those ideas make some more sense of it. It's an unstable relationship but, as we know, Udina's actions at the end kind of prove that.

*** I figure the same applies with many other Spectres, Saren is after all rated as one of the best and most experienced. Most likely Spectres start off with backing from their government, and later on acquire enough resources to go 'freelance' so to speak.

** Shepard is both SA and Spectre. Spectre technically means s/he is above most laws including his/her own, but as Hackett points out, that doesn't absolve him/her of his/her responsibilities. Hackett can order Shepard around as a SA officer but not as a Spectre; but Hackett plays on Shepard's SA past by bringing it up.

 

== The Council Chambers after the Battle of the Citadel ==

*** This kind of force-field effect is possible with current technology (with enough energy); it's called a plasma window. In a setting with personal energy barriers that can stop bullets traveling at integer percentages of light speed, they no-doubt have rather effective atmosphere-retention fields.

** WRT "no debris" - Giant hunks of Sovereign are everywhere, blocking most lines of sight to the room. And considering the chunks of Sovereign smashed through the window instead of the wall, why would there be any debris besides glass?

** In [[Mass Effect 2]], the crew of the Normandy are seen patching up holes in the hull, which have force fields around them - It seems likely that an energy shield of some description activates when a hull breach is detected.

 

== Synthetic biotics ==

****** There isn't just one kind of drone - they have numerous applications, not just one. Furthermore, there still is no indication that it would require significant amounts of eezo to produce biotic effects. As mentioned before, the amounts within a biotic nervous system are minute. Furthermore, lift and throw have serious applications in a firefight, as you'd know if you'd read Revelations. A favourite biotic tactic outside the game engine's limitations is to lift whatever the enemy is using for cover, allowing your squad to take them by surprise - and that's just one example. Again, comparing the costs of building a device with some expensive material are still significantly lower to the costs of raising and training a member of a tiny minority population to do the same job.

******* Also keep in mind that drones are ''much'' less durable than a trained biotic soldier. A biotic drone wouldn't be any harder to shoot down than standard support and rocket drones, so you've used more eezo to make a support weapon that's going to go down just as easily as the cheaper ones. On top of that, where is this idea that biotics are only "useful" in special forces coming from? Absolutely no such thing is said of Alliance biotics, ''all'' asari soldiers are trained to use their biotics, and the codex specifically notes that turian and salarian biotics are relegated to special forces because their species simply has an ''extremly'' low biotic occurance, making them extremly finite resources. I find it hard to believe that biotics wouldn't be "that useful" as is being implied, that sentiment seems to come mostly from how much the second game nerfs biotics away from being the gamebreakers they are in the original. Like tech attacks and kinetic barriers, biotics would alter the fundamentals of gun combat, and this is another reason why you wouldn't want those abilities in drones; it's the same reason LOKI mechs don't replace frontline soldiers. You don't want a simple drone VI making descisions about how to nullify enemy cover, how to handle armor, which targets to prioritize with such things, etc.

*** Don't forget that there's another issue with using drones: network security. This is a setting where it is trivially easy for anyone with an omnitool and some reasonable tech training to override a drone's security systems and give it new targets. Hell, ME2 has at least three instances where mechanized units whose programming has been altered went on rampages. Drones can easily be reprogrammed, while organics can't.

*** Yeah, the ubiquitous nature of the omnitool is the real killer here. Any reasonably competent engineer can literally point, click, and turn all your drones against you, remotely, ''any time they want to''. Now factor in the threat represented by rogue AI that can theoretically be assembled by any asshole with a grudge and off-the-shelf components, and then factor in the geth, who whirr and tweet electronic warfare. There's a reason why drones are not used in large numbers for conventional combat, because you don't want an enemy engineer to zap your drones and turn them against you. That's also why they don't use drones to replicate biotics and only trust biotics to relatively unhackable organics.

*** In addition, one of the prototype projects mentions using a VI to assist a biotic in improving their biotic effects. However, as each biotic is different, the VI also needs to be unique (or at least, learn over time how any given person does any particular effect). This suggests that making biotic fields requires some measure of adaptability that VIs just don't have. AIs, sure, but VIs, no.

** Why would it be any more expensive to train biotics than regular soldiers? Look at the expense involved in ''modern'' military training. Right now, in the modern US military, each soldier can cost up to half a million dollars to train, and these are ''infantrymen''. Hell, biotics might be ''cheaper'' to train than infantry; the majority of cost in training an infantryman comes from teaching him how to use various equipment - and every shot fired costs money. For example, the Javelin missile launcher features missiles that cost about ten thousand dollars each - and qualifying soldiers on the Javelin requires firing multiple missiles. And that's just qualifying on one weapon. This doesn't even factor in the costs of ''running'' the training facilities. Biotics, on the other hand, don't require expensive equipment to train on and they don't expend ammo, so a major cost in training is eliminated right there. Hell, you can easily train biotics by just driving out to a random part of the countryside or a junkyard and let them have at it. Can't do that with riflemen or weapons specialists.

*** Even assuming that training is cheap and easy- and Kaidan's accounts of Jump Zero suggest it is anything but- it would come on top of the basic military training a biotic soldier would need to go to war. Kaidan and Shepard, if s/he is a biotic, still have to know how to run around in full combat armor and fire a variety of weapons with the best of them. Biotics also have special dietary and medical needs. It all adds up.

 

 

== The ''ME 1'' Squad mates after your death ==

** What can one person (or a small group of people) do against a numberless horde of sentient starships? The old ''Normandy'' crew had very little pull with their own species, and once the Council tries to hush everything up, who's going to believe them? But you're ignoring two facts: one, Wrex ''does'' do what he can to fight against the Reapers, namely by uniting the krogan. Liara, meanwhile, does everything she can to recover Shepard - she's the reason he's still fighting in the second game. We don't know if Garrus or Tali tried anything, but it's likely. I imagine Garrus being brushed aside by C-Sec and being told there are more important things to worry about, and Tali getting a similar treatment from the Admiralty Board. "Reapers? What about the '''''geeeeettttthhhhhh???!?!!!?!''''' We'll fight them ''after'' we've exterminated the toasters!" As for Ash/Kaiden, they're marines. They do what they're told to.

*** It's painfully obvious that the species of the setting are too wrapped up in internal business to properly prepare for the coming war. For example: the second novel states that the quarian reaction to the Reapers was basically: "We can totally use these against the geth!! Let's go find one!!" Your former crew members simply don't have enough influence or resources to change that fact. It seems Shepard will need to pull a good number more miracles by ''Mass Effect 3'' for the galaxy to stand a chance.

*** Except ''Al-Jilani is still a reporter''. Saracino ''is a major politician''. Beating up a major politician is a Very Bad Idea.

**** Honestly, I don't agree that hitting a politician is a worse idea than hitting a reporter, (at least when you're virtually immune to legal prosecution) but this is becoming natter, so let's move past that. The heart of the matter is that it bugs me that a non-racist Shep must be ultimately courteous to Saracino, and I can't at least say 'screw you.'

* For that matter, I wish I could punch Pressly, too, because his racism has apparently made him delusional. When you tell him the aliens on the ship are 'on our side', he responds, "They said the same thing about Nihlus, and look how that turned out." Uh, yeah, Nihlus got murdered in the line of duty, ''fighting on our side!''

** You might live to regret that come ''ME2''. {{spoiler|Not only does Pressly get killed, you find his private logs, which shows that he does a complete 180. He concludes that he would die for any member of the ''Normandy's'' crew, regardless of what world they were born on.}}

**** Honestly, the fact that they were both Spectres had more to do with Nihilus's fate than their race. Nihilus himself states that he doesn't care about race so much as credentials; Pressly has no justification there.

*** ^ True, but I don't think Pressly ever talked to Nihlus, and he didn't see what happened on the ground, so he probably just made up a version of events that fit his own biases. The question being asked isn't really whether Pressly is justified in what he said, just whether or not his statement about Nihlus makes any amount of sense. Pressly is still wrong, but from that viewpoint what he's saying isn't 'completely nonsensical'.

** Alternate explanation: the line was supposed to say "Saren" and either the writer or voice actor messed up.

*** Which totally makes sense, because Nihlus has a really evil-sounding name. In fact, I'd be surprised if at the start of the game, given that Nihlus is the first Turian you see (and they are pretty evil-looking race, to players who haven't met Garrus yet) and given his name, most players didn't assume that he would be the one betraying you

** Eh, Mikhalovich has reason to have the hate-on for turians and krogan. One has been an enemy of the Alliance, the other is, well, krogan. The issue with asari is probably also understandable - asari are part of the Citadel, and Mikhalovich doesn't like them. Quarians are different - after all, the quarians are at war with the geth, making them nominally the Alliance's ''allies'' - or at least from Mikhailovich's perspective. Quarians may also be hated by other species, but humans don't necessarily have the same preconceptions about them. If anything, I would be surprised if humans weren't fairly sympathetic towards the quarians for their situation. After all, the quarians are separate from the Citadel, independent, and their own nation of refugees. They're not "enemies" like the Citadel species are.

** The Codex mentions that the Alliance has no official policy towards the Quarians, as they have yet to have any real contact with them, since the Migrant Fleet has yet to visit a Human system.

 

== Quarians-Evo Suits and the flotila ==

* Tali herself mentions that quarians need to wear the evosuits outside of their ships because living on the clean ships for so long weakened their immune systems, this in and of itself makes sense. What bothers me is the fact that even though by this logic they don't need their suits while on the flotilla, later conversations say that they do infact need their suits on the flotilla. This makes no sense, if their immune systems weakened from being on the ships (presumably not in evo suits to begin with) then they shouldn't need their suits while ON the ships.

*** Sorry, but no. Tali (or any quarian, for that matter) has never said that the suits give them privacy.

***** Hmm. I actually have read ''Ascension'', and had completely forgotten that detail. It still makes little sense to me, though.

**** Not trying to sound insulting, but that part was kind of hard to miss. Anyway, if it helps, they're aliens. They have an alien culture.

***** Well, it was a long time ago. It must be some psychological thing though, logically it makes little sense. So they can't see your face, so what? And they do have their own small areas on their ships to call home.

*** They are also allergic to ''each others''. Codex in ''ME 2'' states that if Quarians want to reproduce, they go to special clean ships, that are 100% sterile and still spend atleast week having a allergic reaction. So it's not only privacy, it's also their immune system rejecting everythign that doesn't come from the body.

* So why is there a Relay near the Migrant Fleet in the second game? Or a refueling station for that matter? The solar system they're in has no planets, and Relays are presumably built in close proximity to a sentient species or any planets that could possibly support sentient life.

** Not exactly. The title of the office means something different in other languages; when the Citadel encountered humanity, they programmed the translators to translate the term into an acronym suitable for the human language. A good comparison here is, say the Japanese Self Defense Forces. There's an English acronym for them and a Japanese one, despite the fact that the Japanese don't ''use'' acronyms. So, most likely the asari simply translated their word for that particular office into a suitable term in the various human languages.

*** The language everyone is speaking isn't English, it's Basic. The Basic word for SPECTRE is the same for everyone.

**** Dude, go re-read [[All There in the Manual|the Codex]]. There's a galactic trade language to specifically get around the problem that every race has hundreds to ''thousands'' of distinct languages. I have my doubts as to whether Shepard can speak it, but it's supposed to be very simple -- if you're going to be working with other races, then it would pay to be able to speak in a universal tongue.

**** Yes, there is a "trade language." But to claim the Council uses it during their proceedings is dubious, as the trade language was made primarily for trade, because it is a simplified language in itself.

** Since Shepard probably didn't see the nonchalant ship-ramming, should s/he simply assume that ''Sovereign'' is an ordinary ship, if a very big one, that can be blown to bits with enough firepower? I don't remember if ''Sovereign's'' impenetrable shields get a mention prior to Joker going in for the kill after Saren dies (and the fate of the ''Destiny Ascension'' has already been decided).

** My question inverts itself after Saren dies -- no matter whether you sacrificed the Arcturus fleet to save the ''Destiny Ascension'' or held them back "just in case," ''Sovereign'' still gets destroyed just as easily, and those extra ships were effectively not needed anyway. In the end you either have several thousands dead, or a few more thousands dead on top of that, three of whom were the most powerful people in Citadel space if not the galaxy, along with an allied fleet that's been effectively cut in half with the loss of one ship. If the two choices were meant to be [[Grey and Grey Morality|justifiable in their own ways]], shouldn't they have gone something like this -- "You chose to save the ''Ascension'', so in the meantime, the ships you lost were unable to save a secondary target that would have somehow been saved<ref>instead of the Council, the ''Ascension'', and its other 10,000 passengers</ref> if you had reserved the fleet for ''Sovereign''?"

**** Tens of thousands of humans? "[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1Y2zZhFZIE The Turians lost 20 cruisers. Figure each had a crew of around 300. The Ascension - the Asari dreadnought we saved - had a crew of nearly 10,000.]" (1:05) "The Alliance lost eight cruisers." So unless those cruisers were much bigger and higher-staffed than the Turian cruisers, it would have been nothing like exchanging tens of thousands of lives for three. I'm guessing 8400 (28 cruisers * 300 occupants/each) versus 10,000.

***** That's why it's a renegade decision. Renegade Shepard puts the needs of humans/the Alliance above other races. Also, Renegade Shepard acts impulsively, and is probably more than happy to let the Council die. Add that to the fact that Shepard doesn't know how many Alliance ships will go down (you find out 8 ships after the fact, but that doesn't help Shep when he's making the decision before the fact) and you've got a pretty good reason to make that decision.

**** Besides, that doesn't answer my question. Though Shepard wouldn't have seen this happen, what good would it have done to hold back the Alliance fleet to go after Sovereign if Sovereign can just ram or blow up enemy ships (until its shields go down while it's implanted on the Citadel)? As for the government itself, it was certainly hard to work with, but considering its greatest agent just became a traitor and its rookie agent is one of a handful of people in the entire galaxy who can actually back up the things he says, I wouldn't call its actions in the first game "extremely stupid."

***** Keep in mind that Shepard's in a race against time: the file Vigil gave you doesn't lock Sovereign out of the Citadel's systems permanently. By preserving the Alliance fleet (at the cost of the Destiny Ascension), you bring more firepower to bear on the Reaper and ostensibly hasten its destruction.

***** However, even the most Renegade of Shepards should know at least the following facts: the need to ask the Destiny Ascension about what they're up against (ie force strength of the geth ships), force strength of the Alliance 5th Fleet, and relative strength of 5th Fleet compared to X number of geth ships - he should know that the human fleet will end up curbstomping the geth if he chooses to save the Destiny Ascension. Furthermore, holding the fleet back makes no tactical sense - we are explicitly told that holding the fleet back means it's sitting there and doing nothing while waiting for the Citadel's arms to open and expose Soverign, which means as far as the space battle is concerned, it's only Citadel fleet vs geth. All saving the Destiny Ascension does is basically have all of Team Milky Way's assets combine to take on half of Team Reaper's assets, then the other half, which even a [[Modern Major-General]] would tell you is far superior to letting half your own guys take on half their guys, hope their guys don't win, then send half your guys to deal with (what hopefully is only) the other half of their guys.

 

*** The most [[Egregious]] problem with the Mako is the turret's limited elevation, when almost every single place you can use it features very rugged, steep terrain. As for the other vehicles, we should probably be thankful that we did not get saddled with one. We only ever encounter a couple of them that aren't smoking wrecks.

** Most of my complaint is really aimed at the controls/physics of the thing, but it does seem a touch foolish for the Alliance to send their first human Spectre against 'armies' in what is effectively an armoured car. Not a massive issue compared to some of the others on this page and Bioware did fix it in the sequel by removing it, so I guess I can't moan too much.

** Or perhaps they all sank their research budget into the tires to give them the insane traction that allows you to climb an 80 degree incline covered in sheer ice.

 

*** To be honst, I do think that it ''was'' justified, simply because of what happened the last time they opened a relay without checking what was on the other side. The Citadel was nearly completely wiped out by the rachni. The "save a child from being attacked by an alligator by shooting the child" doesn't really match up. To the Citadel, its more like "Stop someone from fiddling with a possible nuclear bomb by shooting them in the head if they don't listen." I imagine that the turians felt that destroying a few human ships was a small price to pay to prevent a potential encounter with a violently hostile species.

*** You don't avoid feeding wild alligators to keep from being attacked. Well, you do, but that's not the main reason. The main reason you never feed wild alligators (or any other wild predator) is because it causes them to associate humans with food. In the future they may specifically attack humans for food or invade areas where humans live in hopes of getting a meal. So it's the same principle. The turians murdered several ships full of humans without any provocation, based on a law the humans could not possibly have known about (and again, Citadel law at that time ''did not apply to humans in the first place''), without even ''trying'' to communicate first. Whether you agree or disagree with the idea that opening uncharted mass relays is dangerous, there's no getting around the fact that the turian attack was completely unprovoked. Therefore, they started the war. EDIT: Also, your "Stop someone from fiddling with a possible nuclear bomb by shooting them in the head if they don't listen" analogy? Completely false. That would be a reasonable policy, but from what we've been told that isn't what happened. Once again, the turians ''didn't even attempt to communicate with the humans'', they just opened fire and destroyed them. The humans weren't even given the option to listen before the turians murdered them. Then the turians pursued the lone surviving vessel back to the colony of Shanxi and dropped asteroids on it until they surrendered. FYI, according to the codex orbital bombardment of garden worlds is explicitly illegal under Citadel law. So not only did the turians fire unprovoked against a species ''outside'' the jurisdiction of Citadel law without even attempting to communicate first, by their own laws they committed a blatant and egregious war crime during the occupation of Shanxi. '''And you think the HUMANS were at fault?'''

***** "Orbital bombardment" also refers to asteroid/colony drops, which is what the turians did to Shanxi. This is expressly against Citadel law.

***** No. [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Citadel_and_Galactic_Government#Citadel_Conventions the Citadel Conventions only bans WMDs, and expressly describes what those are.] While the turians did orbital bombardment, none of their actions created a "nuclear winter" on Shanxi, as there is no report of the planet being uninhabitable or loss of "garden" status(which is required for the Conventions to qualify).

******* By "colony drop" I believe the previous troper was referring to, well, [[Colony Drop]] - as in, the trope, which very much does include deorbiting space stations.

********* Actually by my logic, if one fired a Nerf Gun at another, and hit him, said person shouldn't be arrested for Attempted Murder, even though he used a gun to shoot another person. The point is, any attack that ''does not cause'' permanent damage to a garden world is considered a "Nerf Gun" type attack by the Council, because if an attack '''does not cause permanent damage, it is not a WMD'''. This reality will not warp to suit your beliefs.

********** Above is correct. Currently, as in today, we can drop a tungsten rod about the size of a telephone pole at ~1/100,000 the speed of light, and its impact would have about the same force as a bunker busting nuclear bomb. AKA, enough to "level [a] city block for one fire team". This would produce no fallout, and no permanent damage to the landscape. In Mass Effect, the technology exists to replicate this effect with a MUCH smaller mass (~5-10kg as opposed to 7.5 metric tons). It's far more likely that the Turians' orbital bombardment consisted of something similar to this as opposed to dropping an asteroid onto the colony, which would cause an extinction level event.

*** I apologize; I just figured they'd at least ''try'' to come up with some good arguments (this universe isn't supposed to be black and white, right?).

*** This is a universe where you're fighting against deliberate, galactic extinction being perpetrated by sapient life forms. That's pretty much black and white right there.

** Point of order: Humans were unequivocally NOT at fault for Shanxi. At all. ''Maybe'' you could pass off the destruction of the original human exploration fleet as a tragic mistake. But the turians had no reason to pursue the survivors back to Shanxi and occupy the colony. Not to mention the fact that the turians used ''orbital bombardment'' to force a surrender. An action that is '''explicitly illegal''' under Citadel law!

*** Actually, it's not. The use of WMDs against garden worlds is banned. A WMD is defined as something that causes environmental damage to a world. A nuke would fall under this, but a normal bomb that simply makes a crater doesn't.

*** [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Medi-gel Medi-gel] is also technically illegal.

*** [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Citadel_and_Galactic_Government#Citadel_Conventions Citadel Conventions] list "large kinetic impactors, such as asteroid drops or de-orbited space stations" as Tier 1 prohibited weapons and considers them "the greatest threat to galactic peace". They cannot be used against garden worlds at any time, for any reason. According to the very same laws they claimed to be enforcing at the time, the turians committed a blatant war crime.

***** Whether or not it was a WMD or not is irrelevent it is illegal to damage a gradan world at all under citidel law (it was in a different codex entry something relating to space combat). And besides when you see someone doing something dangerous you stop them and then explain why it is dangerous.

****** Incorrect. If this were true, war would be illegal, as most wars in the ME universe are related to garden worlds being fought over. The other codex entry simply states that space combat around garden worlds are complex because the attacker needs to be careful of free-firing into the defending fleet because misses may impact the planet, and Citadel Conventions prohibit large kinetic impactors (and when reading the conventions, they add "that causes environmental alteration.") The act of "damaging" a garden world is not illegal. Causing long-term damage is.

****** It's causing damage to garden worlds that makes the attack a WMD, not the other way around. I continue to say this, and you continue to refuse to accept the statement. As above, if one uses a Nerf Gun to shoot another, said person is not guilty of attempted murder.

****** "which is what the turians did" They did no such thing. They did not drop asteroids or space stations. They simply fired slugs from orbit, which did enough damage to wreck a city block, but didn't cause any sort of major environmental impact. It's the difference between a Tomahawk missile and a nuclear warhead. The latter is a WMD. The former is not. It's the difference between tear gas and mustard gas. The latter is banned under international laws, he former is not.

*** Point in case: the turians used orbital bombardment on one of their colony worlds to deal with an insurrection, and this was considered par for the course. No one even objected to the use of orbital artillery directed against turian civilian population centers. It is quite clear that the conventions forbid using WMD-scale bombardments, but anything below that is fair game. Leveling a city block is fair game.

* To be honest, I think this discussion misses the point, though it has been very interesting. My point wasn't to discuss the ethics of the turian invasion of Shanxi, but to deconstruct Ashley's and Charles' generalization-filled arguments against working with aliens. <ref>Hence why I mentioned the [[Gray and Gray Morality]] aspect which I had assumed was this entire story universe's [[Planet of Hats|hat]] -- the game likes to make so many other issues morally ambiguous, such as the genophage, so why did it give these characters arguments that could be deconstructed with about a minute of thought?</ref> As for Ashley's willingness to cooperate with aliens if you asked her to do so, I always got the feeling that she was doing this not because she truly believed that this was worth doing, but because she believed in following your orders.

** And to make it even better, next time you play through Mass Effect, kill Kaidan on Virmire and make sure you have Ash in your party when you talk to Saracino. Listen to what she says to him. It's very, ''very'' obvious from that little exchange that no matter how racist Ash was before (if she was actually speciesist, which she tries to deny), working alongside aliens who went through just as many life-threatening situations as she did and probably saved her life many times over, has changed her view on them. She still doesn't necessarily trust aliens--but she certainly doesn't think Terra Firma and their explicit racism is the right way to go, especially when he mentions Shanxi and it's clear he's using it for political leverage, not out of any respect or concern for those who lost their lives there...

** On the Turians zero-tolerance on activating dormant relays. What everyone keeps forgetting about in this who-did-what-to-who-first argument, is that ''by their logic'' the Turians are basically charging Humanity for breaking a law they didn't know about. A law, which by extension, they first broke the law by activating the ''Charon'' relay. So, therefore it is completely justified if they wanted to go to ''Earth'' and invade the entire planet as well, right? '''Of course not!''' The fact they didn't bother to contact the Council first is completely irresponsible! They should have contacted the Human vessels, explained the laws in place and escorted them to the Citadel to attempt to sort the matter out... '''not open fire'''. The fact that the Council is mentioned as being understandably ''pissed'' is telling of how much of a political clusterfuck the Turians caused by shooting first and not asking any basic questions.

 

== Saren's appearance ==

** Implants. Lots of them. Other differences probably just ethnic or whatever.

** That's certainly a possible explanation, but why would he go so overboard with implants if that's the case? We never see any other turians who gone that crazy with em.

 

== Lip-syncing ==

** Because it would look strange if they didn't. The writers for the game tried really hard to justify everything in the game, but when you're dealing with such a complex setting, there are still some things you just have to let go.

** Simple answer: [[Fanon Discontinuity|there ARE no translators, and everyone is speaking a basic language. Just ignore any mentions of translators, because it really is an EXTREMELY unrealistic technology, and Mass Effect is EXTREMELY realistic, so one can pretend that they don't exist in this universe]].

*** You keep saying this, and I keep asking: ''how'' are they unrealistic, considering the setting has literally had thousands of years to develop the technology, and we earthbound humans have the basics for automated translation technology ''now''? I mean, come on; they have the time to develop firearms technology to the point that they can precisely shave off grain-sized bullets and shape them so they can precisely hit the target in the middle of their crosshairs with enough force to penetrate hyper-dense armor alloys, and make this so simple and reliable that the technology is ubiquitous, but somehow ''rapid-translation technology'' of ''existing languages'' is somehow supposed to be beyond them? That's ''fucking ridiculous''.

*** In practice, you would probably here the original dialogue, and the translators probably wouldn't have the vocal diversity you see in the game, but that's just the sort of thing that gets dropped to make the game more... whatever the auditory version of aesthetically pleasing is.

* At one point in [[Mass Effect]] Shepard actually says to someone "speak galactic, will you?" I assume that most people are talking in a common language (which [[Translation Convention]] renders as English). However, for entities like Hanar (which physically ''can't'' make the right sounds), Elcor (who have odd shaped mouths) and possibly Volii and Quarians (whose mouths we never see) a universal translator is used.

* Plus you were deep inside a fucking mountain. The worst that could happen is the moutain becomes substatially shorter.

** Deep enough underground, yes. And this might be a case of [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]. But judging by the look of that mine, what he's done is create a mountain-shaped frag grenade. But then again, Physics is not exactly high on the list of things space thugs commit to memory.

 

== Body Language ==

 

== No Krogan Scientists ==

** Maybe they just enslaved the people on the planets they conquered and forced them to build that stuff?

** Well, the reason Tuchanka went through a nuclear winter in the first place was because somebody came up with nuclear fission, and that was before they met the salarians. So obviously there ''are'' Krogan scientists, but my guess is that they tend to focus on weapons research (read: [[Stuff Blowing Up]]) and not, say, biology or agriculture (which is backed by Fortack's complaining that Wrex is making him do non-explodey research for a change).

* So... why is it that, when you inspect the mummified salarian's corpse on Nepheron (the planet with the large Cerebus Base for mission UNC: Hades' Dogs), the game describes him as a "Cerberus soldier" who happens to have a salarian League of One medallion? One would think that most Cerberus soldiers would be humans, ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' notwithstanding. Why not make him a salarian agent who tried to infiltrate the base and failed, or any number of other options that would make sense?

** Developer screw-up I suspect. Same as that quest with Elanos Haliat, who was supposed to be a turian (or so I heard) but when he contacts you by hologram he appears as a human.

 

== Visual Resemblance of Geth to Quarians ==

*** Also, the exo-suits might at least partly resemble Quarian fashions prior to their dependency on exo-suits.

*** Plus Quarian's immune systems were not all that great before exile, in mass effect 2 Tali says that when her people went to a new world it took them time for them to adapt to the new environment so it would be logical to assume that they used envro-suits before the Morning War.

 

== Element Zero ==

* I'm just confused how Element Zero works. The codex says its mass can be altered by passing a current through it, allowing the ability to reduce the mass of ships, vehicles, weapons etc... But that can't be true, since it only alters its own mass without affecting the mass of surrounding objects. That's mass effect fields. Wouldn't loading eezo on a ship just increase its mass no matter how strong a current you put through it? Because there can be no negative mass? It's similar to loading wood on a conventional sea-faring ship. Wooden planks float on water, and properly constructed can be used to hold up a person above water, but loading wood on a ship just makes the ship heavier and eventually sink. Or why NASA doesn't fill the space shuttle with helium to make it lighter. Eezo should just increase a ship's mass no matter how much you use, or what current you put through it.

** No. You are completely incorrect. The Codex does ''not'' say that. [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex/Technology#Element_Zero_.28.22Eezo.22.29 The Codex says:]

** Element zero's mass does not rise or fall when it subjected to current. Element zero generates the mass effect field that causes mass to rise or fall.

** You're also not quite right on the physics front. Negative mass is, at least theoretically, possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass

* If Newton's Second Law still holds, objects with negative mass would go in the opposite direction from what you'd expect when you pushed or pulled them. I'm not even sure how that would work. What would happen if a positive mass object ran into a negative mass one?

** My best guess is that the negative mass would keep going in the same direction, taking the positive mass object with it. This would lead to weirdness if the positive mass object were much larger, since any force the positive object exerts would be reflected back at it.

*** So if someone was willing to lose ammo space in exchange for larger bullets, they might drop shields faster? Also, you'd think there'd be more use of mines and trap pi--[[Rule of Fun|oh, right]]. Still, it'd be funny if there were trap plates that simply launched foes far into the air, or dropped pianos on them.

*** Larger bullets would not likely drop shields any faster, unles syou increase the size of the firearm to compensate and boost the power of the rounds being fired. As for mines, those aren't used much because kinetic barriers render them largely ineffective unless they're using specialist materials. Explosives are largely ineffective because conventional explosives don't generate enough energy to do much damage to kinetic barriers or armor; you'd need a mine that hurls shrapnel at hypervelocity speeds to damage them.

*** The problem with that is that the mines rapidly become more expensive than they're really worth. A mine such as the one you're describing that would only go off inside the shield would only be effective if deployed in mass numbers over a landscape as area denial, and with ubiquitous air mobility that would have limited utility. Mines designed for anti-personnel use would by necessity spread their blasts over a wide area, which would limit their effectiveness against anyone with kinetic barriers unless the shrapnel is being propelled at hypervelocity speeds - in which case, the weapon is using element zero masses and therefore can be detected easily by conventional scanners which renders the entire excercise largely moot.

*** Kinetic Barriers don't work on everything. The second game had all the defenses work like another life bar, but that's just [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]. Kinetic barriers won't do a thing to stop the force of the explosion itself. Whether the shrapnel gets past depends on the strength of the barriers versus the force delivered by the shrapnel, and even improvised explosions can get shrapnel really moving. And even if one mine doesn't do the trick, setting a whole bunch of them to go off at once isn't that hard.

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[[Category:Games/Headscratchers]]

[[Category:Headscratchers]]

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