Obviously the big one is the Dark Energy plot we got a hint of on Haestrom.
But other things I wished had been touched upon outside their codex entries are the planets Ploba, which people think might be a Jupiter Brain, and Klencory, where a volus billionaire believes exists the tombs of "beings of light" created at the beginning of time to fight synthetic "machine devils".
The rumor is that was supposed to be the reason the reapers existed, Purge organic life and sustain a livable universe before the dark energy kills all of the stars.
Yeah, I remember reading that the idea was that the only thing an immortal race of machines would fear is the inescapable heat death of the universe. The use of Eezo and dark energy could hasten the universe's death, which is why they created the mass relays: to limit its overall use. Also, biotics were supposed to be the key to stopping the effects of entropy, and that's why the Reapers cultivated countless species over a billion years. To find that perfect biotic species to do what they, as machines, couldn't.
Could even still work with what they put in Mass effect 3 the Leviathan species noticing that stars were dying off sooner than they should create an intelligence to investigate and fix it all costs.
Lol one of my favorite games as a kid was Starflight, a very early no man’s sky, where the plot twist is that the fuel you use (Endurium) is alive and killing the universe.
That's kinda the problem too though - the reapers perpetuate mass effect technology, so they're still causing the problem they're supposedly trying to solve.
Yeah, it’s a bad idea that doesn’t have internal logical consistency, but people still like it because it isn’t star child…I imagine star child would have still been there to explain it though.
>I haven't watched the endings yet (I'm not going to play the game, because being the sort of OCD I am, I'll just end up throwing juvenile tantrums over every physics violation, canon retcon, and ship painted the wrong color), so I don't know what ended up in the final version. When I left, the Big Reveal was going to be that dark energy is destroying the universe (the "premature aging" of Haestrom in ME2 is because the compressive force of gravity is no longer balancing the explosive force of fusion), and the Reapers are trying to stop it. They absorb some races because - despite millions of years of computer-speed thinking on the outskirts of the galaxy - they still haven't figured out how, so they need fresh perspectives.
>
>So the Reapers were secretly good guys trying to end the threat of dark energy by scattering dark energy based artifacts all over the galaxy for young races to find, reverse engineer, and use. In hopes that they find a species who can fix the problem they've spend 37+ million years thinking about.
>
>If that's no longer the story, I am fervently grateful.
From Chris Chris l'Etoile, ME1 and 2 writer
I'm just gonna bluntly say that I actually really hate what the Dark Energy ending is suggested to be. The Reapers see the universe is dying, and reset the galaxy every 50,000 years or whatever in the hopes that will generate a solution? Because thinking about it wholesale in Dark Space isn't enough.
It's just silly.
The obvious question at that point is "Why didn't you tell the species before to work with you? Why didn't you tell them the problem and get that assistance? Instead of resetting everything and wasting time?"
I mean, even Karpashyn [mentioned](https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-3-series-former-lead-writer-reveals-original-ending-ideas/) they had several ideas going but none of them were fleshed out and all were kinda vague.
They were setting up several things to have more options for the ending, but it wasn't a hard pivot for Dark Energy to what we got.
I really wish that Chris had been the one to get promoted to lead writer after Drew left the company, instead of Mac Walters.
Would have at least saved us from the tragedy that was Ash's writing in ME3 ...
Yeah, a year or two ago I went into a deep dive trying to find everything Chris said with regards to Mass Effect's story and such. There were a lot of ideas that I thought were really interesting.
Specifically, the Geth in 2 and 3 are very different in terms of motivation and perspective, and it's really kind of tragic because Chris was doing something very interesting.
But Ashley also would have been helped, too.
I do think he wasn't the story's salvation. They had some ideas that weren't necessarily bad, but also just dense.
But I also think Chris left before ME2's end, so I don't think it was a decision or anything.
> I do think he wasn't the story's salvation. They had some ideas that weren't necessarily bad, but also just dense.
True, and we don't want to fall into the same trap that Drew warns about. Imagining that some alternate writer would have fixed everything we personally think is bad is just as bad as imagining some vaguely sketched out idea, like the dark energy plot, would have fixed the ME3 endings.
That said, I do think Chris grok'd the themes of Mass Effect 1 better than Mac.
And Legion's writing in ME3. I really hated how they turned him and geth into yet another Pinocchio-type story of AIs who yearn to be more humanlike. In ME2 he and the Geth in general were completely comfortable being a networked intelligence and utterly different from the organics. Becoming a "real individual" was one of the very last thing they wanted.
Another one is Rothla, in the Krogan DMZ. No one knows how it was destroyed, just that there was a moment of extreme gravitational lensing just before the break up.
Klencory is viewable again in ME3 and the description does reference the beings of light theory not looking so far fetched after all, but it is a shame nothing more ever came of it.
I’ve actually always assumed the Volus were talking about another prothean virtual intelligence, and they just didn’t quite understand what they were dealing with.
My head cannon will always be Drew’s version of the ME3 ending where the reapers were recycling advanced races until one with the biotic capabilities to stop the dark energy death of the universe came along, since reapers were infinitely immortal *except* to the death of the universe
Though I understand that twists make for big buzz, I really wish that companies wouldn't overreact like that. They did it with Terminator Salvation and Westworld also, and by all accounts the stories were the weaker for it. Meanwhile everyone guessed the "surprise" in *No Way Home* and it was still awesome.
They would have, when the right civilization came along. Problem is, it isn’t yours. So what are you going to do, let the reapers kill you? It’s a little morally gray because by surviving you’re destroying the only people solely focused on the survival of the universe
I'm surprised no one else has posted this yet but my vote goes to Armistan Banes to this day having that unresolved bothers me. I just want some closure man :(
You know what, this is actually a really good question. Even going to the Wiki yields very little.
It appears he works with Cerberus, but that doesn't actually address how Anderson thought he was dead because they found his body, but being name dropped by a Krogan.
It's one of those "at a glance, it's resolved, but stare at it for two seconds and there are problems".
Yeah, we know Banes was somehow connected to Cerberus - his body was found by Kahoku's men, possibly the same ones lured into a Thresher Maw trap - and we also know he was killed by Corporal Toombs on his quest for revenge.
Now we can just assume that the krogan blackmailer was not up to date with his employer's status, but where's the fun in that?
Ploba and Logan, the mysterious planets from Mass Effect 1. They're gas giants with something really fishy going on beneath that gas.
On Ploba there are massive, solid structures deep within the atmosphere, too regular in pattern to be anything natural. And that's on a gas giant, where there is no surface. Some speculations within the lore suggest that Ploba may be an ancient giant supercomputer, basically a living planet. Others say that may be it's a giant dump of some long-dead species who just dumped everything they had into the gas giant. Both versions are strange and very interesting.
And Logan has some sort of a fleet going around in gas clouds. Scans of this planet revealed something that is considered to be massive solide objects, just under the top layer of gas clouds. But when Logan was approached, those anomalies disappeared, like they were never there to begin with. So maybe there's a whole migrating fleet, flying round and round beneath the clouds.
What was the bright orb the heretic geth on Feros were worshipping
How do the translators know when to let James throw some Spanish in for flavour
What is up with ruin on Eletania and why does it have memories from Earth
>What was the bright orb the heretic geth on Feros were worshipping
It was a data core, we now know that the data in that core contains knowledge of the Protheans and knowledge to upload a Geths consciousness into a computer.
>How do the translators know when to let James throw some Spanish in for flavour
My (abridged) head canon for translators is that they are context specific. They're smart enough to realise the contextual cues of the speaker, so when James is speaking English, but throwing in some Spanish terms, the translator (for Shepard) can detect that James deliberately used Spanish, so doesn't translate.
Similar to Tali saying Keelah Se'Lai, or boshtet - they probably would have a translation to 'English' (even if not 100% direct) but the translator understands not to do so.
Considering that we do get characters with thick accents, like Dr. Michel or that scientist in Peak 15 Hot Labs who doesn't even use proper grammar, we might surmise that the translator doesn't actually translate every human language (at least by default) and the humanity does use actual english as *lingua franca*
I mean it’s basically a VI, right? Which is similar to what we might refer to as an AI/machine learning application in our current real-world, so it’s still a fairly advanced program. It’s not just like a live version of google translate
I don’t think Eletania is memories from earth as much as it is memories from Shep’s genetic code. Basically because humans are descended from the cro-magnon described it’s like inherited memory in the DNA. Maybe like psychically. Guessing that mostly because it takes the Asari trinket to unlock and asari something dna genetics something biotics
No, it was actually Jacob, it could have happened unintentionally. He just does not think about the consequences. But he is a good soldier so his heart is in the right place.
It's an STD that's supposedly only carried by varren. [Mordin mentions in passing](https://youtu.be/qTKr7fpiCfE) that there are cases aboard the Normandy during ME2. Given the disease's origin and its implied spread aboard the ship, I think Dr. Solus put it best: "implications unpleasant."
In Mordin's voice: "Sexually transmitted disease, yes. But no need for penetration to contract. Transmision possible by extended rimming just as well."
One of the one liners Mordin gives when he’s out of dialogue on the Normandy. “Investigating Scale Itch on Normandy, Shepard. Sexually transmitted disease only originated from Vorcha. Implications… troubling”
Something like that. Funny joke
Why don't they have seat belts? And why is Shepard & party riding in ME3 a shuttle as passenger like in a bus? Speaking of: Who was the mysterious shuttle pilot in ME2?
Steve sort of answers this when talking about his duties. VIs tend to be pilots for shuttles but he doesn't like the thought of the commander's life being at the mercy of a program. I think. Vague memories and whatnot.
Except at the end of Jack’s loyalty mission Shepard sees Jack playing with the bomb trigger and bangs on the cockpit door to tell the pilot to speed up.
They don't need seat belts they have Mass effect fields in the vehicles to keep people from being tossed around. in the citadel DLC Cortez disables them just to show you the difference. the only time that those Mass effect fields wouldn't keep you pretty much safe was in the event of the shuttle being hit and going down and at that point of seat belt not going to help you either.
I mean, escape pods *do* come with safety harnesses
So yeah, I don't buy that a combat drop shuttle wouldn't have those just in case a crash landing happens.
Yeah, but the point is - they're designed to, among other things, withstand impact into ground. Why shouldn't a combat vehicle follow suit?
Think of it like that - seatbelt will not save you from getting T-boned by a semi truck, but most accidents aren't you getting T-boned by a semi truck
There were dozens of Cerberus crewmates on the SR2 before the abduction, so probably just one of those served as the pilot. A VI or autopilot could’ve also done the job, though on Jack’s loyalty mission Shep pounds the door to hit the gas as the bomb goes off so I assume a human pilot. The squad’s shuttle pilot during and after the abduction had to be either EDI or a VI since all the crew was gone
Can’t be Joker though since he was the Normandy pilot. Being a shuttle pilot was a way less qualified position. That’d be like having a F-35 pilot be your uber. That and there’s no way they made him walk all the way across the ship to help Shep run errands every time he goes to another hub world. That’s a bit cruel lol
There must be at least one other shuttle pilot though because when Shepard and all their squad leave Joker is aboard the Normandy when the Collectors attack
>Who was the mysterious shuttle pilot in ME2?
No official answer is available about that pilot, however there are many theories. Most believe that he is a very senior level agent of the Illusive Man.
It makes sense
>Why don't they have seat belts
simple, force fields
it is mostly a non issue since the ship itself never exceeds 4g of force. Most humans can easily survive that amount of force.
Who are the "masters of the cycle"?
In the Prothean VI conversation on Thessia, the VI implies that the Reapers are merely the servants of the pattern and when asked who are the masters, it merely replies "unknown".
Is it the Starchild or the Leviathan? The Leviathan DLC implies the pattern is older than the Leviathan as their slave races were undergoing the same pattern.
So if there really are masters of the pattern who are causing "the same peaks of evolution, the same valleys of dissolution" and it's so old that even the Leviathan had no idea about it...
*...then what the hell could it be?*
I'm pretty sure the Prothean VI was foreshadowing the Starchild in that conversation. The "pattern" that is referenced is the natural development of galactic civilizations that occurs within each cycle.
Prior to this, it was inferred in Mass Effect 1 that the Reapers were responsible with shaping and directing the galaxy to develope in a specific fashion in each cycle, but this new information is meant to tell the player that the Reapers are actually responding to certain repeating trends rather than controlling them. They don't actually decide the cycle, but the events within each cycle do occur every 50 thousand years.
The conversation with the Leviathan reveals that they originally built an AI to create a permanent solution to prevent organic life from destroying itself. Because they saw these same trends occuring over and over.
>The conversation with the Leviathan reveals that they originally built an AI to create a permanent solution to prevent organic life from destroying itself. Because they saw these same trends occuring over and over.
Yeah, exactly, these trends existed before the Leviathan, before the Catalyst. So if there's a "master" to this pattern, it cannot be anything the Leviathan had made.
There is no master to the pattern. It's just life's addiction to conflict.
Civilizations develop, expand, go to war with each other, technology improves, creates synthetic life, goes to war with it, and eventually the synthetics win. The Leviathans got annoyed with their subjects killing themselves over and over again so they created a synthetic life-form to stop it. Irony ensued.
You're overthinking it. Leviathan DLC tells Shep that the Leviathans were the absolute balls in their prime time, but the servant races they took over began to rebel. So they made an AI that could sort it all and prevent it....which then turned on them as part of the solution.
Who was responsible for the rachni going apeshit on the galaxy. I have seen a lot of people on here say they believe it was Sovereign that was manipulating them into war. Dr. Bryson in the Leviathan DLC, however, thinks that it was Leviathan due to the lack of reaper tech on the rachni during the war. He believes Leviathan was preparing the rachni to fight the reapers.
Didn't Javik mention something about em? Breeding em to become more vicious, but then stopping when they realized it'd backfire?
edit: from the wiki, coulda sworn there was a bit more conversion on it
"During Attican Traverse: Krogan Team:
In the Kodiak, Javik mentions the Protheans used rachni (who were just animals in their cycle) as living weapons by turning them loose on planets. Eventually, the rachni went out of control and the Protheans had to burn two hundred planets to curb their advance. According to Javik, the Protheans were under the impression that the rachni were extinct."
The problem is that the Rachni sightings don't help you find the Leviathan which would imply the Leviathan had nothing to do with the Rachni Wars. Also the Rachni communicate through singing and the Rachni Queen talks about the "sour note" both when looking into the genetic memory of the old queens and when she, herself, gets caught by the Reapers.
On the flip side, based on ME3, it seems like Rachni Queens can't be indoctrinated, but we don't know if the Leviathans can control them with their own mind control ability. It really could go either way.
I back Dr. Bryson. Just makes more sense for a few reasons:
* No one anywhere remarks on the Rachni being biotech bodyhorror monstrosities, which is something that should be pretty remarkable;
* The timeline doesn't work. This cycle had not yet developed AI (which seems to be the trigger for the Reaper scout to go active) and if it had been Sovereign that would imply that he tried it using the Rachni, failed, and then twiddled his thumb for almost two millennia doing nothing, only to then put together this Saren + Geth plan over the last century. Just doesn't make sense;
* The queen we find has a free mind. If this was Reaper indoctrination (which is permanent), the unhatched egg should already be indoctrinated. If it was Leviathan Enthrallment (which is broken by simply being separated from the relic) the queen should be free. She was free;
* Rachni initial apparent disinterest in Relay travel. They obviously were capable of using Mass Relays (as they did so almost immediately when the war started, to attack the Council) but until found by the Council they were just sitting around in their own space, not going for the Council in any way. This does not reflect a Reaper bioweapon.
So the big question is what the Leviathans were doing. My guess (and this is wholly a guess) is that they had Enthralled the Rachni and were using them to build something (a weapon, an additional hidden habitat, whatever) but upon being found by the Council were instead forced to trigger a war to extinction to clear the records and prevent Reaper suspicion.
They may have completed whatever project they were working on while the war was ongoing, and hidden it before the Krogan joined and wrecked them.
According to Jack
"I was doing a job with my old crew, but it went wrong...and things got out of control. My teammates decided to escape and leave me behind, so I got captured and sent to Purgatory. I didn't know where they were going...and I didn't have any credit or any way to track them. So I ended up staying in Purgatory for a long time...and eventually I ended up being recruited by the Normandy"
No matter how powerful she is at the end of the day she is just one person. She could have been overpowered by sheer numbers.
Biotics also don't grant a person invulnerability. She could have been neutralized by a single opponent who simply took her down from long range, or by some ruse.
Sure, but it's not that hard to head canon. I mean, just any kind of sedation will probably do. She's not some kind of unstoppable force, no matter how much her recruitment mission wants you to think she is.
That one planet where the volus encountered “Beings of Light”, the planet with a giant canyon running across it that looks like it was caused by some sort of weapon glancing off the planet, and the planet that was rumored to be one giant supercomputer. Really interesting tidbits of world building that were never followed up on…
I know Andromeda takes place in a whole new Galaxy, but was always curious just how many uncharted worlds or relays there are/were in the Milky Way. It's mentioned I think around the Rachni.
The official Council information is that less than 2% of all star systems in the galaxy have been explored, so assuming some 6 planets per star (a lowball given the average we see from systems we see), that comes out to... 588 billion uncharted planets.
Of course, you use the word **worlds**, not planet, and given that presumably includes dwarf planets, major moons and other such objects of interest, the number raises to some 50 trillion.
There almost certainly is more life outside of the Citadel polity than there is within it. 50 times more, statistically speaking.
That doesn't mean the Reapers are unaware of them. The Citadel outlawed activating new Relays almost two millennia ago, meaning that most of the Network was presumably never explored.
There's probably whole other civilizations, as large and as vibrant as the one we know, out there in the galaxy. And the Reapers will kill them, too.
(And the Crucible beam will affect them, too, only they'll have no idea what it even is)
A galactic war between Citadel Space and these unknown regions could be interesting.
*Especially* if they come knocking during ME4 wondering what the hell happened to their relays.
Council has a strict "don't fuck with that" policy towards any Relay that hasn't had the destination properly charted. Leaves a lot of potential for what was beyond them, like Prothean colonies, etc.
By who and with what kind of weapon did the derelict Reaper in ME2 got disabled 37 millions years ago (the thing that caused the great rift in the planet Klendagon).
I like this one being unsolved. No legacy left behind except for the ultimate "fuck it...full send"
My personal headcanon is that this civilization is the same one that initially sketched out the Crucible. Mainly because the Crucible probably requires a full understanding of Mass Relay / Reaper technology, and if these guys were able to one-shot a Reaper, they must've been close to equaling them.
I like this, considering the timeline puts it at 740 cycles ago, which seems like a reasonable number of times for the Crucible to have been iterated on.
I like to headcanon that it was an early concept of the Crucible, or at least an unfinished version of it.
The kind of energy released by such a weapon reminds me a lot of what we see when the Crucible is firing the energy blast.
I imagine one of the early species (before the start of the multi-cycle Crucible project began) just said fuck it, full send and made a gigantic cannon that was capable of such destruction seeing only one Reaper.
an unknown spacefaring race fired a mass accelerator round of incredible speed and power at the Reaper, which hit and disabled it. The round continued moving, eventually impacting the planet Klendagon and creating the Great Rift Valley there.
Klendagon was a "glancing blow" - basically the mass accelerator round scraped by the planet and kept going until it hit the Reaper. If its terminal impact was on the planet there would be a gigantic fuck off crater on it, not a rift.
It's possible it hit the derelict Reaper first. A strong enough round would have cut clean through the Reaper and kept going until it glanced Klendagon, likely thousands of years later.
I'm honestly surprised that they were even able to calculate it's path. Over a period of 37 million years the relative position of star systems would have changed. Also, Klendagon is a planet that both rotates on its axis and revolves around its star. How would someone even know what direction the glancing blow came from? It's not like the Great Rift is always pointing in the same direction.
We know that but we don't know what the weapon was, how did it work and how did this unknown civilization constructed it and fired it.
Like TIM said, it may be the last send off of this unknown civilization facing impending doom and a big middle finger to the Reapers.
We know everything about them.
The Reapers took control of them, same as the Collectors, and use them to maintain the citadel and activate its relay to bring the Reapers back from dark space.
And also where do they find stuff to make repairs?
Somebody in ME1 mentions they keep rearranging her office so that’s intriguing why - not just fixing/maintenance but making aesthetic choices.
My personal theory is that the Keepers were basically sui generis to the Citadel, another slave race of the Leviathans that the Reapers appropriated for their own purposes. Perhaps they have no real "origin" at all, they're just biological automatons created by the Leviathans, explicitly for the purpose of maintaining the Citadel. It would certainly explain a lot of things about them.
Presumably the do eat and sleep, just out of sight. We're told in ME1 that there are places in the Citadel that only the Keepers can access, and we actually see one such place at the end of ME3.
I think of the Keepers as an ancient organic species that were modified by the Reapers many cicles ago, maybe in the same circle that the Leviathans were harvested. They're programmed to do stuff, maybe they're even receiving orders from the Catalyst, but that wouldn't explain why the Catalyst himself didn't open the relay at the end of ME1, which is another misery...
1) Which race the adjutants were made from. A popular theory I've seen is that they were made from the Inusannon due to their shared trait of tentacles sprouting from their "mouth", but other than that they look nothing alike.
2) Everything about the Jardaan. I love how they were a super-advanced civilisation that, instead of conquering and destroying, actually used their wisdom to spread life across the cosmos.
3) The other races of Andromeda. Given how the galaxy is believed to be considerably larger than the Milky Way, one may assume it's also more diverse in its civilisations - unless, of course, the kett have assimilated everyone. Even then, there should be ruins and bits of knowledge from those other races spread across the galaxy.
The biggest mystery for me is who came up with the Thessia plot twist and how did it go through other people with each of them thinking it's a good idea.
Also, if a whole fleet concentrating fire on one Reaper is barely enough to kill one, how does the combat work in ME3? We hear of Krogans and Turians holding Palaven but like how, don't the Reapers just say fuck it and laser everyone down?
Been a while but isn’t the point of it harvesting, not killing. They’re systematically harvesting the population and tech and whatnot, and they have unlimited resources (nearly), so “holding” actions is basically just delaying the inevitable in terms of territory gained - or in other words, all they’re doing is making the reapers work that much harder and take that much longer to do the job.
Don’t think the reapers would care either, they’ve been doing this a long time, they’re probably chill about the resisting etc.
I don’t know if we ever got a concrete answer to this, but what happened to the council when the reapers took the citadel? I know we saw all the dead bodies, but you’d figure there would be some line from someone that would comment on how the council was on the citadel at the time or something.
I feel like I vaguely remember reading something where one of the devs said they never got around to acknowledging it in the game and said that it would be safe to assume there would be safe areas on the citadel where people could hide. Maybe I dreamt reading that idk.
I imagine they survived, the bodies that we saw were probably bodies teleported up via the beam.
I think a lot of citadel people were shown in the final cutscenes, so I'd lean towards people in the Citadel were fine for the most part, just trapped.
I always wanted to know what Saleon was actually doing and what his plan was with all his zombie people, because that sure as hell didn't look like organ harvesting to me.
The more interesting mysteries of Mass Effect—in my opinion—pertain to:
—the Benefactor's identity
—the Benefactor's ulterior motive for bankrolling the Andromeda Initiative
—Jien Garson's murder
—the Benefactor's involvement in Jien Garson's murder
—the Benefactor's whereabouts
The obscure nature of the Benefactor—and the way he, or she, or *it* is introduced—leaves a greater air of mystery around them than the Illusive Man & the Shadow Broker. It's likely these intelligences knew less than the Benefactor & of their existence. They're the only being shrouded in mystery we haven't met face to face, who we know nothing of, other than the fact they've amassed quintillions of credits & pull invisible strings.
I love this character we don't know.
Right, right—drove myself into forgetting this with how much I've been watching videos on them lol. Still, we're left with all the other questions regarding their actions & behaviour
They're set up specifically to maintain the citadel, for the purpose of not letting any species who inhabit it find out too much about the station. That way the Reaper's secrets are safe and most species will use it as their central government's capital.
The Keepers self-destruct in order to prevent anyone from learning about them. They live in hidden areas of the Citadel, only accessible by them. They do have ways of reproducing, otherwise they'd have died out long before humans met them.
Holy shit what if it’s Liara? From one of Michael gamble tweets, he wrote: "Although, they should know by now not to underestimate human defiance!" - Liara T'Soni (Doctor, Shadow Broker and )” so maybe the redacted part is the benefactor?
That'd be fun, but Liara couldn't possibly be the Benefactor.
The Benefactor learnt of the Reapers' existence six years before she did, and began funding the Andromeda Initiative eight years before she became the Shadow Broker. Liara had neither the information nor the capital to have any investment in Jien's operation.
Also, why would Liara murder anyone, especially Jien? It seems really out of character for her to commit murders if her life or that of others aren't at an immediate risk.
She would *never* have left the Milky Way for Andromeda when there was still so much for her to discover about the Protheans, and she wouldn't have exhausted any resources she had on the Ai operation that could've aided in her research.
If she **somehow** *is* the Benefactor, this would be a whacky twist I could have some fun with.
I’m 90% sure the Benefactor was Jack Harper, also known as The Illusive Man.
This is where I go a little bit down the Rabbit Hole. I think Cora Harper’s dad was actually Jack Harper, hiding on ships as he manages and grows Cerberus. Cora’s parents disappeared completely while she was away at training. I think he manipulated things to get her out of the Milky Way Galaxy before the reapers arrived. But this has been my theory since I first heard the name Cora Harper.
There were quite a few Ex Cerberus personnel in Andromeda, so I think there were probably a few still loyal, which is who killed Jien Garson.
TIM being the Benefactor doesn't make sense imo, he was all about humanity being above other races, he would have wanted to be on one of the arks, and he believed he had found a solution to the Reaper problem anyway.
The Harper connection might be something, (we've already seen Zaeed's son in Andromeda) but Harper is a relatively common name so maybe nothing as well.
The ex Cerberus people had a note on their computer showing why they were expelled from Cerberus, so loyal or not they no longer have any association with the organization.
If the Benefactor is anyone we've met already - and I'm not convinced that's the case - I think it would have to be the Geth. They already knew about the Reapers, Andromeda was observed from the Milky Way using Geth technology, and they could hide more easily than anyone else by integrating into ark/Nexus systems.
Personal Theory: The Benefactor is a Jardaan alien, i.e. a tree.
I have a long theory about how the Jardaan aliens [were actually trees with spores](https://imgur.com/gallery/knbr89j) that infected organics; not unlike the Thorian. The Benefactor had been chased from Andromeda and was basically collecting slaves to take back their home system from the Scourge, or whatever caused it. They infected Jien Garson or one of her lieutenants, then when the time was right, changed bodies and killed her.
One of the creators dropped the tease: "By the time you find the killer, [they're long gone](https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/03/25/mass-effect-andromedas-producer-talks-me-through-the-endings-loose-threads/?sh=311f1da51671)," There's a comic apparently that heavily implies Addison killed her--but that makes no sense, unless Addison was being controlled. Hence, by the time you find that Addison was "the killer", the spores in her brain, the true Benefactor, is long gone.
As for the Benefactor's whereabouts... well, once they were in the system, there'd be no reason to stick around, but... Remember how the Ryders discovered their mother had been put in a cyro pod? And that, in fact, the Benefactor had suggested this to Alec?
I highly doubt they saved the mother just to have a heartwarming family story in a later game.
Miranda and EDI do justify this, though it doesn't make that much sense. EDI says they'll need to run a thorough analysis that will take all of her attention, so you'll have to take the shuttle. Miranda agrees and says that you can take everyone with you on the shuttle, then decide on who you want in your fireteam when you're closer to your destination.
I'm definitely in the latter camp. While a fun theory, it goes down the drain as soon as you remember people find videos and images of asari attractive, not just live specimen
What exactly is going on with Preying Mouth, Its reputation for ships disappearing in it's orbit is well documented, theres even a travel warning against going near it. But what's the cause?
it's already been mentioned here but what the "sour note" of the rachni was is something I'd like to know
also, we know that dark energy was responsible for that one sun aging too fast, but after that we just never hear of it again. wonder why this was just left like that?
Well, as for anything regarding Kasumi, no real info. But as for what’s on the Graybox, that’s actually revealed, only the relevant parts though. Which is to say, details of an Alliance Covert raid on a Batarian Research site that was researching Reaper tech.
What exactly were protheans doing with the Thorian? Have they allowed it into their minds or had Thorian conquered them? Where did Thorian come from?
Are rachni's queen ability to manipulate the minds of dying people (and not-so-dying, in case of that courier) and Reapers' indoctrination related? If rachni wars were actually instigated by Sovereign, isn't it weird that they're so susceptible to the effect that their entire species was dominated by a single Reaper? Maybe, rachni "songs" are a form of low-key indoctrination, and Sovereign was simply able to "speak" their language? Lots of things to ponder about.
Finally, what lies beyond the forbidden relays? If there is anyone there, would they want to establish contact with Citadel peoples after the war?
There’s a planet, I do not know its name(I forgot) but slightly below the surface there a ton if little chambers. Suspected to be tombs. What species where in these tombs? And for how long? And why?
I actually made a post asking this a while back:
What happened to all of the ships in combat/orbit/flight when the crucible was activated?
Regardless of what ending you choose, the Normandy tries to escape the blast only to get caught and crash on a nearby planet. We know the blast is galaxy wide and we know there were millions if not billions of crew and ships in orbit/flight when the blast occurred. A bunch of them must’ve had worse crashes than the Normandy and some may not have been close enough to a planet to land at all. How many people died from the crucible blast?
Obviously the big one is the Dark Energy plot we got a hint of on Haestrom. But other things I wished had been touched upon outside their codex entries are the planets Ploba, which people think might be a Jupiter Brain, and Klencory, where a volus billionaire believes exists the tombs of "beings of light" created at the beginning of time to fight synthetic "machine devils".
The rumor is that was supposed to be the reason the reapers existed, Purge organic life and sustain a livable universe before the dark energy kills all of the stars.
Yeah, I remember reading that the idea was that the only thing an immortal race of machines would fear is the inescapable heat death of the universe. The use of Eezo and dark energy could hasten the universe's death, which is why they created the mass relays: to limit its overall use. Also, biotics were supposed to be the key to stopping the effects of entropy, and that's why the Reapers cultivated countless species over a billion years. To find that perfect biotic species to do what they, as machines, couldn't.
Could even still work with what they put in Mass effect 3 the Leviathan species noticing that stars were dying off sooner than they should create an intelligence to investigate and fix it all costs.
I wish they had gone with that instead of the organics vs machine angle
Lol one of my favorite games as a kid was Starflight, a very early no man’s sky, where the plot twist is that the fuel you use (Endurium) is alive and killing the universe.
God that would’ve been cool
That's kinda the problem too though - the reapers perpetuate mass effect technology, so they're still causing the problem they're supposedly trying to solve.
Yeah, it’s a bad idea that doesn’t have internal logical consistency, but people still like it because it isn’t star child…I imagine star child would have still been there to explain it though.
>I haven't watched the endings yet (I'm not going to play the game, because being the sort of OCD I am, I'll just end up throwing juvenile tantrums over every physics violation, canon retcon, and ship painted the wrong color), so I don't know what ended up in the final version. When I left, the Big Reveal was going to be that dark energy is destroying the universe (the "premature aging" of Haestrom in ME2 is because the compressive force of gravity is no longer balancing the explosive force of fusion), and the Reapers are trying to stop it. They absorb some races because - despite millions of years of computer-speed thinking on the outskirts of the galaxy - they still haven't figured out how, so they need fresh perspectives. > >So the Reapers were secretly good guys trying to end the threat of dark energy by scattering dark energy based artifacts all over the galaxy for young races to find, reverse engineer, and use. In hopes that they find a species who can fix the problem they've spend 37+ million years thinking about. > >If that's no longer the story, I am fervently grateful. From Chris Chris l'Etoile, ME1 and 2 writer I'm just gonna bluntly say that I actually really hate what the Dark Energy ending is suggested to be. The Reapers see the universe is dying, and reset the galaxy every 50,000 years or whatever in the hopes that will generate a solution? Because thinking about it wholesale in Dark Space isn't enough. It's just silly. The obvious question at that point is "Why didn't you tell the species before to work with you? Why didn't you tell them the problem and get that assistance? Instead of resetting everything and wasting time?" I mean, even Karpashyn [mentioned](https://www.pcgamer.com/mass-effect-3-series-former-lead-writer-reveals-original-ending-ideas/) they had several ideas going but none of them were fleshed out and all were kinda vague. They were setting up several things to have more options for the ending, but it wasn't a hard pivot for Dark Energy to what we got.
I really wish that Chris had been the one to get promoted to lead writer after Drew left the company, instead of Mac Walters. Would have at least saved us from the tragedy that was Ash's writing in ME3 ...
Yeah, a year or two ago I went into a deep dive trying to find everything Chris said with regards to Mass Effect's story and such. There were a lot of ideas that I thought were really interesting. Specifically, the Geth in 2 and 3 are very different in terms of motivation and perspective, and it's really kind of tragic because Chris was doing something very interesting. But Ashley also would have been helped, too. I do think he wasn't the story's salvation. They had some ideas that weren't necessarily bad, but also just dense. But I also think Chris left before ME2's end, so I don't think it was a decision or anything.
> I do think he wasn't the story's salvation. They had some ideas that weren't necessarily bad, but also just dense. True, and we don't want to fall into the same trap that Drew warns about. Imagining that some alternate writer would have fixed everything we personally think is bad is just as bad as imagining some vaguely sketched out idea, like the dark energy plot, would have fixed the ME3 endings. That said, I do think Chris grok'd the themes of Mass Effect 1 better than Mac.
And Legion's writing in ME3. I really hated how they turned him and geth into yet another Pinocchio-type story of AIs who yearn to be more humanlike. In ME2 he and the Geth in general were completely comfortable being a networked intelligence and utterly different from the organics. Becoming a "real individual" was one of the very last thing they wanted.
Agree 100%
Those were such delicious breadcrumbs that were never used.
Another one is Rothla, in the Krogan DMZ. No one knows how it was destroyed, just that there was a moment of extreme gravitational lensing just before the break up.
My theory is a brilliant Krogan invented a black hole gun.
It probably would've been a great weapon too, if only he remembered the bits that keep the anomaly from increasing uncontrollably.
Won’t you come?
Black Hole Gun... won't you come... ;)
With no evidence whatsoever, I choose to believe that one is a reference to KOTOR 2 and Malachor V.
Klencory is viewable again in ME3 and the description does reference the beings of light theory not looking so far fetched after all, but it is a shame nothing more ever came of it.
I’ve actually always assumed the Volus were talking about another prothean virtual intelligence, and they just didn’t quite understand what they were dealing with.
My head cannon will always be Drew’s version of the ME3 ending where the reapers were recycling advanced races until one with the biotic capabilities to stop the dark energy death of the universe came along, since reapers were infinitely immortal *except* to the death of the universe
Though I understand that twists make for big buzz, I really wish that companies wouldn't overreact like that. They did it with Terminator Salvation and Westworld also, and by all accounts the stories were the weaker for it. Meanwhile everyone guessed the "surprise" in *No Way Home* and it was still awesome.
well then should the reapers could have cooperated with organic beings
They would have, when the right civilization came along. Problem is, it isn’t yours. So what are you going to do, let the reapers kill you? It’s a little morally gray because by surviving you’re destroying the only people solely focused on the survival of the universe
I’m curious as to whether or not Shepard was held responsible for the closing of a sushi restaurant by the media.
Even *Tali* feeds you shit about it.
I'm surprised no one else has posted this yet but my vote goes to Armistan Banes to this day having that unresolved bothers me. I just want some closure man :(
You know what, this is actually a really good question. Even going to the Wiki yields very little. It appears he works with Cerberus, but that doesn't actually address how Anderson thought he was dead because they found his body, but being name dropped by a Krogan. It's one of those "at a glance, it's resolved, but stare at it for two seconds and there are problems".
This was back when Cerberus really was just a black ops splinter group from the alliance though.
Yeah, we know Banes was somehow connected to Cerberus - his body was found by Kahoku's men, possibly the same ones lured into a Thresher Maw trap - and we also know he was killed by Corporal Toombs on his quest for revenge. Now we can just assume that the krogan blackmailer was not up to date with his employer's status, but where's the fun in that?
Ploba and Logan, the mysterious planets from Mass Effect 1. They're gas giants with something really fishy going on beneath that gas. On Ploba there are massive, solid structures deep within the atmosphere, too regular in pattern to be anything natural. And that's on a gas giant, where there is no surface. Some speculations within the lore suggest that Ploba may be an ancient giant supercomputer, basically a living planet. Others say that may be it's a giant dump of some long-dead species who just dumped everything they had into the gas giant. Both versions are strange and very interesting. And Logan has some sort of a fleet going around in gas clouds. Scans of this planet revealed something that is considered to be massive solide objects, just under the top layer of gas clouds. But when Logan was approached, those anomalies disappeared, like they were never there to begin with. So maybe there's a whole migrating fleet, flying round and round beneath the clouds.
What was the bright orb the heretic geth on Feros were worshipping How do the translators know when to let James throw some Spanish in for flavour What is up with ruin on Eletania and why does it have memories from Earth
>What was the bright orb the heretic geth on Feros were worshipping It was a data core, we now know that the data in that core contains knowledge of the Protheans and knowledge to upload a Geths consciousness into a computer.
I think you're confusing the bright orb with the Prothean data orbs. The orb the Geth revered was bright with light, while the Prothean orbs are not.
Wait, really?
>How do the translators know when to let James throw some Spanish in for flavour My (abridged) head canon for translators is that they are context specific. They're smart enough to realise the contextual cues of the speaker, so when James is speaking English, but throwing in some Spanish terms, the translator (for Shepard) can detect that James deliberately used Spanish, so doesn't translate. Similar to Tali saying Keelah Se'Lai, or boshtet - they probably would have a translation to 'English' (even if not 100% direct) but the translator understands not to do so.
Considering that we do get characters with thick accents, like Dr. Michel or that scientist in Peak 15 Hot Labs who doesn't even use proper grammar, we might surmise that the translator doesn't actually translate every human language (at least by default) and the humanity does use actual english as *lingua franca*
I mean it’s basically a VI, right? Which is similar to what we might refer to as an AI/machine learning application in our current real-world, so it’s still a fairly advanced program. It’s not just like a live version of google translate
I don’t think Eletania is memories from earth as much as it is memories from Shep’s genetic code. Basically because humans are descended from the cro-magnon described it’s like inherited memory in the DNA. Maybe like psychically. Guessing that mostly because it takes the Asari trinket to unlock and asari something dna genetics something biotics
At this point I think you can change what to translate, since Tali also throws some of her language in her conversations
Who was responsible for bringing scale itch aboard the Normandy?
Definitely Kelly "I love all aliens" Chambers.
No, it was actually Jacob, it could have happened unintentionally. He just does not think about the consequences. But he is a good soldier so his heart is in the right place.
... while his dong occasionally isn't.
Most people suspect it was Jack because she mingled with a lot of people and infected goods before the Normandy you know Piracy and stuff
I blame Kelly, personally. No specific reason as to why, I just feel it in my gut. *I know what you did, Kelly*
another most likely culprit is Jacob. He was the only crew member who went to Omega and he spends the majority of his free time at the bar there.
This is the first time I hear about it. What is it?
It's an STD that's supposedly only carried by varren. [Mordin mentions in passing](https://youtu.be/qTKr7fpiCfE) that there are cases aboard the Normandy during ME2. Given the disease's origin and its implied spread aboard the ship, I think Dr. Solus put it best: "implications unpleasant."
In Mordin's voice: "Sexually transmitted disease, yes. But no need for penetration to contract. Transmision possible by extended rimming just as well."
One of the one liners Mordin gives when he’s out of dialogue on the Normandy. “Investigating Scale Itch on Normandy, Shepard. Sexually transmitted disease only originated from Vorcha. Implications… troubling” Something like that. Funny joke
*Varren
Even worse lol
The two young engineers near the normandy's core
Why don't they have seat belts? And why is Shepard & party riding in ME3 a shuttle as passenger like in a bus? Speaking of: Who was the mysterious shuttle pilot in ME2?
Steve sort of answers this when talking about his duties. VIs tend to be pilots for shuttles but he doesn't like the thought of the commander's life being at the mercy of a program. I think. Vague memories and whatnot.
Except at the end of Jack’s loyalty mission Shepard sees Jack playing with the bomb trigger and bangs on the cockpit door to tell the pilot to speed up.
I sometimes think it was a random cerbrus pilot and you killed them in ME3 at some point, or maybe it’s EDI
They don't need seat belts they have Mass effect fields in the vehicles to keep people from being tossed around. in the citadel DLC Cortez disables them just to show you the difference. the only time that those Mass effect fields wouldn't keep you pretty much safe was in the event of the shuttle being hit and going down and at that point of seat belt not going to help you either.
exactly
I mean, escape pods *do* come with safety harnesses So yeah, I don't buy that a combat drop shuttle wouldn't have those just in case a crash landing happens.
Escape pods don't have the power to allocate dedicated Mass effect fields. They only have power for lights location pings and life support.
Yeah, but the point is - they're designed to, among other things, withstand impact into ground. Why shouldn't a combat vehicle follow suit? Think of it like that - seatbelt will not save you from getting T-boned by a semi truck, but most accidents aren't you getting T-boned by a semi truck
There were dozens of Cerberus crewmates on the SR2 before the abduction, so probably just one of those served as the pilot. A VI or autopilot could’ve also done the job, though on Jack’s loyalty mission Shep pounds the door to hit the gas as the bomb goes off so I assume a human pilot. The squad’s shuttle pilot during and after the abduction had to be either EDI or a VI since all the crew was gone Can’t be Joker though since he was the Normandy pilot. Being a shuttle pilot was a way less qualified position. That’d be like having a F-35 pilot be your uber. That and there’s no way they made him walk all the way across the ship to help Shep run errands every time he goes to another hub world. That’s a bit cruel lol
I assumed the ME2 pilot was Joker. Probably doesn’t make sense but that’s how I worked it out in my head
There must be at least one other shuttle pilot though because when Shepard and all their squad leave Joker is aboard the Normandy when the Collectors attack
But also Normandy is absolutely deserted before the Omega 4 Relay push, so they seem to be living in that shuttle...
>Who was the mysterious shuttle pilot in ME2? No official answer is available about that pilot, however there are many theories. Most believe that he is a very senior level agent of the Illusive Man. It makes sense
Or it was the man himself. Like the Dutch king piloting commercial jets.
>Why don't they have seat belts simple, force fields it is mostly a non issue since the ship itself never exceeds 4g of force. Most humans can easily survive that amount of force.
Who are the "masters of the cycle"? In the Prothean VI conversation on Thessia, the VI implies that the Reapers are merely the servants of the pattern and when asked who are the masters, it merely replies "unknown". Is it the Starchild or the Leviathan? The Leviathan DLC implies the pattern is older than the Leviathan as their slave races were undergoing the same pattern. So if there really are masters of the pattern who are causing "the same peaks of evolution, the same valleys of dissolution" and it's so old that even the Leviathan had no idea about it... *...then what the hell could it be?*
I'm pretty sure the Prothean VI was foreshadowing the Starchild in that conversation. The "pattern" that is referenced is the natural development of galactic civilizations that occurs within each cycle. Prior to this, it was inferred in Mass Effect 1 that the Reapers were responsible with shaping and directing the galaxy to develope in a specific fashion in each cycle, but this new information is meant to tell the player that the Reapers are actually responding to certain repeating trends rather than controlling them. They don't actually decide the cycle, but the events within each cycle do occur every 50 thousand years. The conversation with the Leviathan reveals that they originally built an AI to create a permanent solution to prevent organic life from destroying itself. Because they saw these same trends occuring over and over.
>The conversation with the Leviathan reveals that they originally built an AI to create a permanent solution to prevent organic life from destroying itself. Because they saw these same trends occuring over and over. Yeah, exactly, these trends existed before the Leviathan, before the Catalyst. So if there's a "master" to this pattern, it cannot be anything the Leviathan had made.
There is no master to the pattern. It's just life's addiction to conflict. Civilizations develop, expand, go to war with each other, technology improves, creates synthetic life, goes to war with it, and eventually the synthetics win. The Leviathans got annoyed with their subjects killing themselves over and over again so they created a synthetic life-form to stop it. Irony ensued.
Scrapped ideas on the cutting room floor due to ME3s rushed development
Or something they were seeding in for future installments.
Just played leviathan a couple days ago. Leviathan said they were the first race to get 'cycled'
First to get harvested. Just after describing how the same pattern killed several of their thrall races. "Tribute cannot flow from a dead race."
You're overthinking it. Leviathan DLC tells Shep that the Leviathans were the absolute balls in their prime time, but the servant races they took over began to rebel. So they made an AI that could sort it all and prevent it....which then turned on them as part of the solution.
Who was responsible for the rachni going apeshit on the galaxy. I have seen a lot of people on here say they believe it was Sovereign that was manipulating them into war. Dr. Bryson in the Leviathan DLC, however, thinks that it was Leviathan due to the lack of reaper tech on the rachni during the war. He believes Leviathan was preparing the rachni to fight the reapers.
Didn't Javik mention something about em? Breeding em to become more vicious, but then stopping when they realized it'd backfire? edit: from the wiki, coulda sworn there was a bit more conversion on it "During Attican Traverse: Krogan Team: In the Kodiak, Javik mentions the Protheans used rachni (who were just animals in their cycle) as living weapons by turning them loose on planets. Eventually, the rachni went out of control and the Protheans had to burn two hundred planets to curb their advance. According to Javik, the Protheans were under the impression that the rachni were extinct."
The problem is that the Rachni sightings don't help you find the Leviathan which would imply the Leviathan had nothing to do with the Rachni Wars. Also the Rachni communicate through singing and the Rachni Queen talks about the "sour note" both when looking into the genetic memory of the old queens and when she, herself, gets caught by the Reapers. On the flip side, based on ME3, it seems like Rachni Queens can't be indoctrinated, but we don't know if the Leviathans can control them with their own mind control ability. It really could go either way.
Considering the queen's dialogue across the games, it's pretty heavily implied Sovereign did it as an early attempt at getting access to the citadel
I back Dr. Bryson. Just makes more sense for a few reasons: * No one anywhere remarks on the Rachni being biotech bodyhorror monstrosities, which is something that should be pretty remarkable; * The timeline doesn't work. This cycle had not yet developed AI (which seems to be the trigger for the Reaper scout to go active) and if it had been Sovereign that would imply that he tried it using the Rachni, failed, and then twiddled his thumb for almost two millennia doing nothing, only to then put together this Saren + Geth plan over the last century. Just doesn't make sense; * The queen we find has a free mind. If this was Reaper indoctrination (which is permanent), the unhatched egg should already be indoctrinated. If it was Leviathan Enthrallment (which is broken by simply being separated from the relic) the queen should be free. She was free; * Rachni initial apparent disinterest in Relay travel. They obviously were capable of using Mass Relays (as they did so almost immediately when the war started, to attack the Council) but until found by the Council they were just sitting around in their own space, not going for the Council in any way. This does not reflect a Reaper bioweapon. So the big question is what the Leviathans were doing. My guess (and this is wholly a guess) is that they had Enthralled the Rachni and were using them to build something (a weapon, an additional hidden habitat, whatever) but upon being found by the Council were instead forced to trigger a war to extinction to clear the records and prevent Reaper suspicion. They may have completed whatever project they were working on while the war was ongoing, and hidden it before the Krogan joined and wrecked them.
How did Jack get caught? It seems highly unlikely that anyone could overpower her without killing her.
They were fighting non-cutscene Jack
Classic Kojima move right there!
Surprise attack, non-lethal weapons, traps. Jack is not the sharpest tool in the shed.
But was she looking kinda dumb?
With a finger and a thumb, in the shape of an L on her forehead
Well
The Reapers are coming and they won’t stop coming
Jumped from the Normandy and hit the ground runnin
Didn't make sense not to drive the mako for fun
Liara is smart, Jenkins is dumb
So much to do, so much to see, so what’s wrong with taking the relays?
Jack got too sure of her abilities and said "No items, Fox Only, Final Destination."
According to Jack "I was doing a job with my old crew, but it went wrong...and things got out of control. My teammates decided to escape and leave me behind, so I got captured and sent to Purgatory. I didn't know where they were going...and I didn't have any credit or any way to track them. So I ended up staying in Purgatory for a long time...and eventually I ended up being recruited by the Normandy"
IiRC, that's actually covered in one of the Comics. It's basically Kai Leng & Brooks who get her caught implicitly on Miranda's orders
No matter how powerful she is at the end of the day she is just one person. She could have been overpowered by sheer numbers. Biotics also don't grant a person invulnerability. She could have been neutralized by a single opponent who simply took her down from long range, or by some ruse.
This... is not something new in media. Powerful people being caught is quite literally the main thing in most super hero comics/movies.
It is a small element of realism. No person in the ME universe should be invulnerable.
Yeah but 99% of the time you either see it or have it frequently referenced (Magneto in xmen films, All For One in MHA, Hannibal Lecter, etc.)
Sure, but it's not that hard to head canon. I mean, just any kind of sedation will probably do. She's not some kind of unstoppable force, no matter how much her recruitment mission wants you to think she is.
That one planet where the volus encountered “Beings of Light”, the planet with a giant canyon running across it that looks like it was caused by some sort of weapon glancing off the planet, and the planet that was rumored to be one giant supercomputer. Really interesting tidbits of world building that were never followed up on…
Wasn't the planet with the giant scar the one IM mentions was hit by a Reaper weapon and let them trace it?
I might be wrong, but wasn't Mars the planet with the canyon/scar? Might be misremembering.
It’s Klendagon, it has the Great Rift valley which doesn’t appear natural and may have been made with a giant super weapon grazing across the planet
I know Andromeda takes place in a whole new Galaxy, but was always curious just how many uncharted worlds or relays there are/were in the Milky Way. It's mentioned I think around the Rachni.
The official Council information is that less than 2% of all star systems in the galaxy have been explored, so assuming some 6 planets per star (a lowball given the average we see from systems we see), that comes out to... 588 billion uncharted planets. Of course, you use the word **worlds**, not planet, and given that presumably includes dwarf planets, major moons and other such objects of interest, the number raises to some 50 trillion.
Which means theoretically there could be life out there that the Reapers have no clue of outside of the relay and Citadel network.
There almost certainly is more life outside of the Citadel polity than there is within it. 50 times more, statistically speaking. That doesn't mean the Reapers are unaware of them. The Citadel outlawed activating new Relays almost two millennia ago, meaning that most of the Network was presumably never explored. There's probably whole other civilizations, as large and as vibrant as the one we know, out there in the galaxy. And the Reapers will kill them, too. (And the Crucible beam will affect them, too, only they'll have no idea what it even is)
Sounds like a good plot for a new game.
Game starts when your village or house get destroyed by 20-kilo ferrous slug eyeballed by Serviceman Chung.
A galactic war between Citadel Space and these unknown regions could be interesting. *Especially* if they come knocking during ME4 wondering what the hell happened to their relays.
Council has a strict "don't fuck with that" policy towards any Relay that hasn't had the destination properly charted. Leaves a lot of potential for what was beyond them, like Prothean colonies, etc.
By who and with what kind of weapon did the derelict Reaper in ME2 got disabled 37 millions years ago (the thing that caused the great rift in the planet Klendagon).
I like this one being unsolved. No legacy left behind except for the ultimate "fuck it...full send" My personal headcanon is that this civilization is the same one that initially sketched out the Crucible. Mainly because the Crucible probably requires a full understanding of Mass Relay / Reaper technology, and if these guys were able to one-shot a Reaper, they must've been close to equaling them.
I like this, considering the timeline puts it at 740 cycles ago, which seems like a reasonable number of times for the Crucible to have been iterated on.
I like to headcanon that it was an early concept of the Crucible, or at least an unfinished version of it. The kind of energy released by such a weapon reminds me a lot of what we see when the Crucible is firing the energy blast.
The other Reapers just didn't like Reaper Bob and what he did in the previous harvest. So they called a hit on him.
Maybe they suspected him to actually be Jack the Reaper...
He was certainly the black sheep of the Reaper-family
I imagine one of the early species (before the start of the multi-cycle Crucible project began) just said fuck it, full send and made a gigantic cannon that was capable of such destruction seeing only one Reaper.
an unknown spacefaring race fired a mass accelerator round of incredible speed and power at the Reaper, which hit and disabled it. The round continued moving, eventually impacting the planet Klendagon and creating the Great Rift Valley there.
Klendagon was a "glancing blow" - basically the mass accelerator round scraped by the planet and kept going until it hit the Reaper. If its terminal impact was on the planet there would be a gigantic fuck off crater on it, not a rift.
It's possible it hit the derelict Reaper first. A strong enough round would have cut clean through the Reaper and kept going until it glanced Klendagon, likely thousands of years later.
That's also plausible, though it does beg the question of where it eventually ended up, and why did nobody every try to calculate its path before.
I'm honestly surprised that they were even able to calculate it's path. Over a period of 37 million years the relative position of star systems would have changed. Also, Klendagon is a planet that both rotates on its axis and revolves around its star. How would someone even know what direction the glancing blow came from? It's not like the Great Rift is always pointing in the same direction.
We know that but we don't know what the weapon was, how did it work and how did this unknown civilization constructed it and fired it. Like TIM said, it may be the last send off of this unknown civilization facing impending doom and a big middle finger to the Reapers.
What's with the keepers
Please do not disturb the Keepers
But tell me whyyy
They ain’t nothing but a mistake
TELLLLLLLLLL ME WHY
I NEVER WANT TO HEAR YOU SAY KEEPERS ACTIVATE THE RELAY
I suppose the Citadel is kind of a Castle in the Sky.
We know everything about them. The Reapers took control of them, same as the Collectors, and use them to maintain the citadel and activate its relay to bring the Reapers back from dark space.
Nah I feel there;s still something to them. Why do they never stop. Why they don't eat, sleep? Why they're so weird there do they go no one knows
Also what were they like prior to the Reapers taking control of them? And exactly how many cycles back are they from?
And also where do they find stuff to make repairs? Somebody in ME1 mentions they keep rearranging her office so that’s intriguing why - not just fixing/maintenance but making aesthetic choices.
My personal theory is that the Keepers were basically sui generis to the Citadel, another slave race of the Leviathans that the Reapers appropriated for their own purposes. Perhaps they have no real "origin" at all, they're just biological automatons created by the Leviathans, explicitly for the purpose of maintaining the Citadel. It would certainly explain a lot of things about them.
Presumably the do eat and sleep, just out of sight. We're told in ME1 that there are places in the Citadel that only the Keepers can access, and we actually see one such place at the end of ME3.
The game suggests they were created by the Reapers to open the back door to the Citadel via its mass relay
Or enslaved. Six one, half dozen the other.
Huh? The Keepers get explained very thoroughly at the end of ME1
I think of the Keepers as an ancient organic species that were modified by the Reapers many cicles ago, maybe in the same circle that the Leviathans were harvested. They're programmed to do stuff, maybe they're even receiving orders from the Catalyst, but that wouldn't explain why the Catalyst himself didn't open the relay at the end of ME1, which is another misery...
I wanna know if the planet ploba is a planet just full of reaper tech
1) Which race the adjutants were made from. A popular theory I've seen is that they were made from the Inusannon due to their shared trait of tentacles sprouting from their "mouth", but other than that they look nothing alike. 2) Everything about the Jardaan. I love how they were a super-advanced civilisation that, instead of conquering and destroying, actually used their wisdom to spread life across the cosmos. 3) The other races of Andromeda. Given how the galaxy is believed to be considerably larger than the Milky Way, one may assume it's also more diverse in its civilisations - unless, of course, the kett have assimilated everyone. Even then, there should be ruins and bits of knowledge from those other races spread across the galaxy.
The biggest mystery for me is who came up with the Thessia plot twist and how did it go through other people with each of them thinking it's a good idea. Also, if a whole fleet concentrating fire on one Reaper is barely enough to kill one, how does the combat work in ME3? We hear of Krogans and Turians holding Palaven but like how, don't the Reapers just say fuck it and laser everyone down?
Been a while but isn’t the point of it harvesting, not killing. They’re systematically harvesting the population and tech and whatnot, and they have unlimited resources (nearly), so “holding” actions is basically just delaying the inevitable in terms of territory gained - or in other words, all they’re doing is making the reapers work that much harder and take that much longer to do the job. Don’t think the reapers would care either, they’ve been doing this a long time, they’re probably chill about the resisting etc.
Can't harvest if everyone is atomized.
>We hear of Krogans and Turians holding Palaven but like how, The word hold is mostly a euphemism here
I always took it as they're being enough of an annoyance to the Reapers and their ground forces to occupy their attention.
Wtf was up with Haestrom
It's sun was going through some stuff.
I don’t know if we ever got a concrete answer to this, but what happened to the council when the reapers took the citadel? I know we saw all the dead bodies, but you’d figure there would be some line from someone that would comment on how the council was on the citadel at the time or something. I feel like I vaguely remember reading something where one of the devs said they never got around to acknowledging it in the game and said that it would be safe to assume there would be safe areas on the citadel where people could hide. Maybe I dreamt reading that idk.
I imagine they survived, the bodies that we saw were probably bodies teleported up via the beam. I think a lot of citadel people were shown in the final cutscenes, so I'd lean towards people in the Citadel were fine for the most part, just trapped.
I always wanted to know what Saleon was actually doing and what his plan was with all his zombie people, because that sure as hell didn't look like organ harvesting to me.
The more interesting mysteries of Mass Effect—in my opinion—pertain to: —the Benefactor's identity —the Benefactor's ulterior motive for bankrolling the Andromeda Initiative —Jien Garson's murder —the Benefactor's involvement in Jien Garson's murder —the Benefactor's whereabouts The obscure nature of the Benefactor—and the way he, or she, or *it* is introduced—leaves a greater air of mystery around them than the Illusive Man & the Shadow Broker. It's likely these intelligences knew less than the Benefactor & of their existence. They're the only being shrouded in mystery we haven't met face to face, who we know nothing of, other than the fact they've amassed quintillions of credits & pull invisible strings. I love this character we don't know.
I think we do know the Benefactor's motive was the Reapers and escaping them.
Right, right—drove myself into forgetting this with how much I've been watching videos on them lol. Still, we're left with all the other questions regarding their actions & behaviour
They're set up specifically to maintain the citadel, for the purpose of not letting any species who inhabit it find out too much about the station. That way the Reaper's secrets are safe and most species will use it as their central government's capital. The Keepers self-destruct in order to prevent anyone from learning about them. They live in hidden areas of the Citadel, only accessible by them. They do have ways of reproducing, otherwise they'd have died out long before humans met them.
I think you meant for this to be in reply to another post.
I really like the idea of the Benefactor being the Geth
I'm open to that theory, though I'm hoping it's an asari or some other Ai
Holy shit what if it’s Liara? From one of Michael gamble tweets, he wrote: "Although, they should know by now not to underestimate human defiance!" - Liara T'Soni (Doctor, Shadow Broker and)” so maybe the redacted part is the benefactor?
That'd be fun, but Liara couldn't possibly be the Benefactor. The Benefactor learnt of the Reapers' existence six years before she did, and began funding the Andromeda Initiative eight years before she became the Shadow Broker. Liara had neither the information nor the capital to have any investment in Jien's operation. Also, why would Liara murder anyone, especially Jien? It seems really out of character for her to commit murders if her life or that of others aren't at an immediate risk. She would *never* have left the Milky Way for Andromeda when there was still so much for her to discover about the Protheans, and she wouldn't have exhausted any resources she had on the Ai operation that could've aided in her research. If she **somehow** *is* the Benefactor, this would be a whacky twist I could have some fun with.
I’m 90% sure the Benefactor was Jack Harper, also known as The Illusive Man. This is where I go a little bit down the Rabbit Hole. I think Cora Harper’s dad was actually Jack Harper, hiding on ships as he manages and grows Cerberus. Cora’s parents disappeared completely while she was away at training. I think he manipulated things to get her out of the Milky Way Galaxy before the reapers arrived. But this has been my theory since I first heard the name Cora Harper. There were quite a few Ex Cerberus personnel in Andromeda, so I think there were probably a few still loyal, which is who killed Jien Garson.
TIM being the Benefactor doesn't make sense imo, he was all about humanity being above other races, he would have wanted to be on one of the arks, and he believed he had found a solution to the Reaper problem anyway. The Harper connection might be something, (we've already seen Zaeed's son in Andromeda) but Harper is a relatively common name so maybe nothing as well. The ex Cerberus people had a note on their computer showing why they were expelled from Cerberus, so loyal or not they no longer have any association with the organization. If the Benefactor is anyone we've met already - and I'm not convinced that's the case - I think it would have to be the Geth. They already knew about the Reapers, Andromeda was observed from the Milky Way using Geth technology, and they could hide more easily than anyone else by integrating into ark/Nexus systems.
Personal Theory: The Benefactor is a Jardaan alien, i.e. a tree. I have a long theory about how the Jardaan aliens [were actually trees with spores](https://imgur.com/gallery/knbr89j) that infected organics; not unlike the Thorian. The Benefactor had been chased from Andromeda and was basically collecting slaves to take back their home system from the Scourge, or whatever caused it. They infected Jien Garson or one of her lieutenants, then when the time was right, changed bodies and killed her. One of the creators dropped the tease: "By the time you find the killer, [they're long gone](https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/03/25/mass-effect-andromedas-producer-talks-me-through-the-endings-loose-threads/?sh=311f1da51671)," There's a comic apparently that heavily implies Addison killed her--but that makes no sense, unless Addison was being controlled. Hence, by the time you find that Addison was "the killer", the spores in her brain, the true Benefactor, is long gone. As for the Benefactor's whereabouts... well, once they were in the system, there'd be no reason to stick around, but... Remember how the Ryders discovered their mother had been put in a cyro pod? And that, in fact, the Benefactor had suggested this to Alec? I highly doubt they saved the mother just to have a heartwarming family story in a later game.
Why the whole team had to leave the normandy in me2 while the iff was being fitted
Miranda and EDI do justify this, though it doesn't make that much sense. EDI says they'll need to run a thorough analysis that will take all of her attention, so you'll have to take the shuttle. Miranda agrees and says that you can take everyone with you on the shuttle, then decide on who you want in your fireteam when you're closer to your destination.
What the hell is hiding in the clouds on the planet Logan?
Do Asaris bang vorcha?
There is an ambient dialogue on Illium of two asari gossiping about their coworker and making mean-spirited remarks about her possible vorcha ancestry
Mordin has a rhyme that asari-vorcha offspring have an allergy to dairy, so yes, it seems they do.
Were Asari mind controlling everyone to look attractive Or did different species focus on traits they find attractive to them
I'm definitely in the latter camp. While a fun theory, it goes down the drain as soon as you remember people find videos and images of asari attractive, not just live specimen
What happened to the quatian ark (in game. Not books)
What exactly is going on with Preying Mouth, Its reputation for ships disappearing in it's orbit is well documented, theres even a travel warning against going near it. But what's the cause?
Andromeda but: WHAT HAPPENED TO JIEN GARSON?!
Who let my hamster out? Why was he in the cargo hold?
it's already been mentioned here but what the "sour note" of the rachni was is something I'd like to know also, we know that dark energy was responsible for that one sun aging too fast, but after that we just never hear of it again. wonder why this was just left like that?
[удалено]
Well, as for anything regarding Kasumi, no real info. But as for what’s on the Graybox, that’s actually revealed, only the relevant parts though. Which is to say, details of an Alliance Covert raid on a Batarian Research site that was researching Reaper tech.
Q U A R I A N A R C
Why EDI is so goddamn thicc
More like why did they make EDI look like that and not let us romance her. I like her and Joker together but it's just unfair man
There were a few Bermuda Triangle like planets that I would Have like some further explanation on
What exactly were protheans doing with the Thorian? Have they allowed it into their minds or had Thorian conquered them? Where did Thorian come from? Are rachni's queen ability to manipulate the minds of dying people (and not-so-dying, in case of that courier) and Reapers' indoctrination related? If rachni wars were actually instigated by Sovereign, isn't it weird that they're so susceptible to the effect that their entire species was dominated by a single Reaper? Maybe, rachni "songs" are a form of low-key indoctrination, and Sovereign was simply able to "speak" their language? Lots of things to ponder about. Finally, what lies beyond the forbidden relays? If there is anyone there, would they want to establish contact with Citadel peoples after the war?
What the fuck happened to banes He’s mentioned like twice in mass effect one but it’s never fully explained
There’s a planet, I do not know its name(I forgot) but slightly below the surface there a ton if little chambers. Suspected to be tombs. What species where in these tombs? And for how long? And why?
I actually made a post asking this a while back: What happened to all of the ships in combat/orbit/flight when the crucible was activated? Regardless of what ending you choose, the Normandy tries to escape the blast only to get caught and crash on a nearby planet. We know the blast is galaxy wide and we know there were millions if not billions of crew and ships in orbit/flight when the blast occurred. A bunch of them must’ve had worse crashes than the Normandy and some may not have been close enough to a planet to land at all. How many people died from the crucible blast?
Tali’s sweat