Mass Effect 2 - Arrival DLC (contains spoilers)

[kelsyk]

In Independence Day the signal being monitered wasn't quantum. It was a standard radio signal, hidden among other signals.

How exactly is the concept of QEC stupid? It is currently beyond our ability and theoretical knowledge to create such a device, but the basic physics of quantum entanglement would allow such a device to exist.

The immune system question was directed at Bara_no_Hime (see his comment on page 2).

 

[Etra488]

kelsyk, I have no idea what Bara_no_Hime is referring to.

I think the idea of a QEC, no matter how it appears, is a silly contrivance that allows your questgiver (TIM) to nag you no matter where you are, but you can't call TIM back. It's a leash that Cerberus put around Shepard's neck, not a walkie-talkie. It doesn't matter what the technology is, it matters what it means.

[ul][li]It's ridiculous that TIM communicated to Shepard from inside the Collector base, but not during the Overlord DLC.[/li]
[li]Or during the mission where Shepard recovered the packet of Cerberus information.[/li]
[li]Or that Shepard wasn't able to contact TIM following Jack's Loyalty mission.[/li][/ul]

TIM sends Shepard a fucking email washing his hands of involvement from the torture his company exacted upon this "volunteer" that he hand-picked for this mission. What the fuck?!

In gameplay, very obviously the QEC only exists as a means for the questgiver to jump in, say his peace, and then leave.

It was not intended, and does not allow, for the player to contact TIM and consult him. One-way communication only. Really bullshit.

 

[kelsyk]

davidarmstrong488, I agree with your points about the ridiculusness of the gameplay depiction of QEC. I am confused as to whether you consider the idea of QEC is silly on scientific grounds or because of its gameplay depiction.

 

[Etra488]

Because of it's gameplay depiction.

Basically, what QEC culminates in is unbreakable communications from person A to person B.

[ul][li]Every military ship ought to have at least one.[/li]
[li]Every planetary government ought to have at least 100.[/li]
[li]Every company ought to have at lest 10.[/li][/ul]

It's a CB that a teenager with a scanner can't listen in on. It's a cell phone that the CIA can't spy on. It's an email that can't be intercepted. It's a letter in the mail that can't be stolen.

QEC is the greatest breakthrough in secure communications since the whisper. It shouldn't be all that rare or underused.

As far as the science behind it, I don't know. I don't care.

The Alliance switched from infinite ammo guns to using clips. So no one's acting very rational or scientific here.

 

[EMFCRACKSHOT]

Hi again Penitent.

So all it would take to escape the Reapers is a moon-base. Make an artificial living environment on a world that can't sustain life - like on the moon - and the Reapers will overlook you.

Said moon base will most likely have its existence documented, and will most likely exist in a populated system liked with a mass relay. Easy pickings for the reapers. If however, there are no easy to get hold of records, as was the case with ilos, and the base/planet/whatever, is inaccessible by mass relay (Mu relay was knocked out of position and lost remember) then it is quite plausible that isolated settlements could escape being culled.

And the Reapers - being machines that live in the vacuum of space where no life exists - hadn't considered this. They've never once - in all their time doing this job - ran across a space station and learned that the stupid meatbags will go out of their way to live where the universe, very clearly, says they don't belong.

of course they have, they just expect this to be located near systems with access to mass relays as that is what makes logical sense. if you spent say 60 years flying to the most remote part of space, no mass relays within years of ftl travel, and cut yourself off from the rest of the galaxy, with no records of where you went, then how in the name of odins balls could the reapers hope to find you?

And this point needs to be made: Mass Effect already has FTL travel. The ME relays allow for instantaneous travel. So even talking about the vastness of space is irrelevant - the Bioware writing staff has very cleanly negotiated that obstacle.

So no - over the course of the centuries long harvesting process, the Reapers, with all their numbers, CAN check every planet. They can - all of them. They have already distributed the ME relays across the galaxy. They know what clusters and systems are the hot spots. They know where to go.

The vastness of space is not irrelevant as ftl travel is limited, and the relay network does not cover every system in the galaxy. yes they will go to the the hotspots, but organics can be somewhat unpredictable, and finding and checking very planet would take a hundreds of thousands of years. hell, there is no evidence they even came to our solar system during the last culling. And the vast majority of the galaxy is still unexplored despite ftl travel and the relay network

Ilos has the ruins of Prothean structures. Ilos was a Prothean planet. Better head back there and double check that we didn't miss anyone! You know, because it would be a shame if we left survivors on a planet that we know from the ruins belongs to our victims. They might feel bitter about this whole gencide thing and fuck up our scheme. We wouldn't want that!

You aren't thinking like a robot. "hmm, this planet is empty, nothing to harvest lets move on to the next one", if they did indeed know of the planets existence in the first place.
you forget they have an interest in leaving the technology intact for future species to learn from

 

[Etra488]

[ul][li]The Mu Relay was knocked out 3,000 years before the events of the ME1 game, meaning that it was active and accessible during the events of the Reaper-Prothean invasion. How else did the Protheans get there? Ilos wasn't their homeworld.[/li]
[li]It is absurd to think any race would have computers, but not redundant storage of data. The Citadel computers may have been knocked out, but wouldn't Prothean planets, ships, and even individuals have starcharts that had Ilos listed?[/li]
[li]You say it'd take hundreds of thousands of years for the Reapers to check every planet - how thorough is the Relay network and how many Reapers are there? How many planets are there to check? These are variables in an equation that the game has not fleshed out. It is premature to presume such as task is impossible.[/li]
[li]Clues indicate the Protheans were on Ilos, which means they might still be there, hiding. The Reapers just fucked over the Citadel. That event would alert the rest of the Protheans. There are cowards in every population, who wouldn't fight; just hide.[/li]
[li]The Reapers want to leave behind their own technology. Liara even says as much - that it's like effort was made to erase all Prothean existence.[/li][/ul]

The Citadel races only think the Reaper tech is Prothean because of a misunderstanding.

All your points get answered by the minutia of the game dialogue.

 

[Grey_Focks]

Magenera, that's a nice bit of fan-fiction there. Questions:

How were the Rachni anything but insects fulfilling their biological imperative?

Just throwing my two cents in, but the rachni queen from ME1 mentions something about how the reapers, or maybe she just said it was an "outside song", really hard to tell with the way she communicates, had influenced the last generation of rachni. The reapers have proven they use organics as puppets, so in a way it makes sense, and if someone less lazy then I were to really look into it, I'm sure they could find out 100% one way or the other.

Ofcourse, this whole argument is based around the existence of these...."Reapers", the so called sentient machines that destroy advanced life in the galaxy every 50,000 years.

We have dismissed that claim.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

In gameplay, very obviously the QEC only exists as a means for the questgiver to jump in, say his peace, and then leave.

It was not intended, and does not allow, for the player to contact TIM and consult him. One-way communication only. Really bullshit.

While you're correct that players can only initiate conversations with The Illusive Man when he specifically requests they do so, it's pretty clear that Shepard the character could fire it up whenever he/she wanted to, and that the game simply isn't giving you that as an option - take the sequence immediately following Jacob's loyalty mission for example: you come in on a conversation that Jacob has clearly initiated on his own with TIM, trying to wrest answers from him. Various other post-mission conversations that Shepard has also suggest that your character doesn't have to wait for TIM to initiate the QEC (the player still does of course).

As for TIM not contacting you during various other pieces of DLC, or any other situation where you the player might feel a face to face conversation is warranted but the game simply sends you an email, well that probably has more to do with the constraints of our present day reality than it does any in-universe explanation - TIM is voiced by Martin Sheen. Email from TIM could be written by anyone, but if you want him to say something in game that means bringing Sheen back into the recording studio and paying him.

Voice acting is expensive, it's why a lot of the time games have certain lines or conversations that don't quite seem to gel (or voice casts comprised of people from the mail room) - script rewrites often take place after voice actors have already come in and recorded their lines, and once you have that dialog you can only ever take things away from it without spending more money to bring them back into the studio to re-record dialog; if you want Martin Sheen to come back in and re-read say... 2 lines of dialog, you still have to pay him for the entire day. Hence why studios generally try to work around needing to do that - I have no idea what the actual sequence of development was for the various post-release DLC, but if the dialog in the DLC wasn't recorded at the same time as the dialog for the main game, it makes sense that they would only bring in the voice actors they absolutely have to have to make those DLC scripts work; every person that talks is another person you have to pay.

 

[Etra488]

Gildan Bladeborn, so your main point is that Bioware cheaped out. That does wonders for their sterling reputation.

As to the QEC directly - please don't refer to the gap between the player and the character. In another thread, I got into a big screaming fight with another poster about Half Life 2's Gordon Freeman being a silent protagonist, with the other guy saying,

"No, Gordon Freeman talks all the time! You just don't hear it!"

If it isn't in the game, as part of the gameplay, then it doesn't exist. The fact of the matter is, I cannot walk into the conference room and dial-up TIM. I can't even tell EDI to do it for me. There is no way for the player to contact TIM.

Therefore, Shepard has no way to contact TIM. One-way communication only. Miranda and Jacob are Cerberus, Shepard isn't, so I'm not sweating that they seem to have an inside line on Shepard.



Edit: And besides - the Jack Loyalty Mission is vanilla in the game. It wasn't part of any DLC or post-release content. There's no reason why Martin Sheen couldn't have been bothered to read another half-page of dialogue in addition to the reams they had him read already.

Overlord DLC, I concede the point. But Arrival saw the absence of the entire cast. How many players were disappointed that they collected this menagerie of freaks and we couldn't use them?

Even Joker was uncharacteristically silent. When Bioware cheaps out, it shows.