Mass Effect 2 Plot Holes (Spoilers)

[Alarien]

Personally I subscribe to the whole "core of the ship" belief in regards to why the bit TerminatoReaper at the end appeared human. It is just a "Larva" and metal doesn't grow, so that presumes that something (a "cocoon" maybe?) will be built around it in time.

The decision not to blow up the relay is possibly a plot hole, but probably not. Consider the size of the full relays and they are comparable in size to, perhaps, and arm of the Citadel. Cerberus simply doesn't have the firepower to take down something like that (remember, they have all of one known frigate and most of their resources have been pumped into you and it, so they can't have a large fleet of their own). The thing presumably has defensive barriers as well that would protect it from small attacks. Perhaps a combined fleet from the Council races could easily destroy a relay, however, the Council 1) doesn't believe in Reapers, so would not commit resources to randomly destroying a relay and 2) won't send a full fleet into the Terminus Systems, where the Omega 4 relay is located.

Besides, the Illusive Man wanted to evaluate and obtain the tech of the Collectors as much or more than he wanted to stop them initially, so it makes sense that the only option that HE sees is to go through.

What we accomplished in ME2 was, without question, the saving of millions of human lives being harvested by the collectors. That is a worthy goal in itself. We also stopped the creation of a new Reaper within the galaxy that could have (though there is no confirmation) had some effect on the speed with which the full Reaper fleet could return, one way or another. We just don't know. Certainly there can't really be much question that we "accomplished" something worthwhile and that the current arc of the overall story was well wrapped up.

As someone else posted, the real plot hole is "WTF is up with Banes and why did that storyline dead end in ME1?"

 

[Ghostleader]

1. I don't think it ever says that the Omega 4 Relay is attached to another Omega 4 Relay, I thought that the Omega 4 Relay was the only one that connects to the relay by the collector's area...the one by the Collector's "world" could connect too any of them, meaning that the humans would loss they're only way to get too the world...of course the collector's wouldn't be able to get back either...but thats not a "for sure" you're talking as if the Humans know everything about all this tech, for all they know theres another relay like this they don't know about that the collector's could use, putting Cerberus at a disadvantage.

Plus having a Reaper possesed leader =I'm sure the collector's would be able to connect they're Relay to anyother, even if the relay was only connected to the Omega 4.


3. If this Reaper was made I'm sure it would have tried to get the Reapers out of Dark Space, so indirectly you do stop them.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

I have another question, if someone could please help me with it:

When EDI is installing the IFF, and tells you to take the shuttle to your next destination, you agree and set off with all of your squad, leaving Joker and the rest of the Normandy crew at the hands of the Collector assault. Now, my question is this: Where the hell did Shep and the squad go during this time? No destination was mentioned, just that he needs to take the shuttle to "his next mission". I probably missed something here, but it sort of ruined it for me. Surely it wouldn't have been too difficult for Bioware to put in some dialogue about going to some random off-world armory or something to prepare.

I suppose it was lucky that this confusion was immediately followed by the fantastic kick-ass Joker mission, thus momentarily covering up the plot hole

Yeah, how hard would it be for an extra mission or cutscene just to show where they went or even better, plan out an extra mission to lull you into a false sense of security then when you least expect it, at the end or in the middle of the mission they strike. Heck it'd even be better if the Collectors sent a distress signal to lure them away.

What do we get? You have use the shuttle for this mission.
What mission? The Omega Relay? WTF!?
No Commander, just that mission that doesn't exist, oh and take the whole team, it's fine, no one would attack us...

 

[Alarien]

Banes was part of Dr. Chloe Michel's questline on the Citadel. When Morlan or the Krogan or whoever is blackmailing her (I can't remember which one a this point) and you intercede, they tell you that it's Banes who hired them. The doctor tells you to ask Kahoku about it (hopefully he's not dead at this point). You can ask him an Anderson and Anderson simply tells you he was found dead on a derelict ship... like 2 years before if I remember right (so how did he start a blackmailing scheme?). Anyway, the whole thing just stops dead at that point.

 

[Ghostleader]

I have another question, if someone could please help me with it:

When EDI is installing the IFF, and tells you to take the shuttle to your next destination, you agree and set off with all of your squad, leaving Joker and the rest of the Normandy crew at the hands of the Collector assault. Now, my question is this: Where the hell did Shep and the squad go during this time? No destination was mentioned, just that he needs to take the shuttle to "his next mission". I probably missed something here, but it sort of ruined it for me. Surely it wouldn't have been too difficult for Bioware to put in some dialogue about going to some random off-world armory or something to prepare.

I suppose it was lucky that this confusion was immediately followed by the fantastic kick-ass Joker mission, thus momentarily covering up the plot hole

Yeah, how hard would it be for an extra mission or cutscene just to show where they went or even better, plan out an extra mission to lull you into a false sense of security then when you least expect it, at the end or in the middle of the mission they strike. Heck it'd even be better if the Collectors sent a distress signal to lure them away.

What do we get? You have use the shuttle for this mission.
What mission? The Omega Relay? WTF!?
No Commander, just that mission that doesn't exist, oh and take the whole team, it's fine, no one would attack us...

Maybe you never make it to the mission, something like you get far enough away and your about to choose who too have and were to go when the shuttle tells you "OMG, the ship is blowing up! Get Back!"

 

[YIDOSH]

The whole "you have to take the whole team and the shuttle down for this mission" is explained after you choose the planet to land on. I remember because I had avoided doing Zaeed's loyalty mission for ages because I saw him as some tacked on fool of a squadmate and hated him at the time. Unfortunately, however, I can't remember the damn reason, but I'm nearly there in my Insanity run-through and so shall know soon.

 

[baratona]

I think the bigger plot hole people are missing is the Reaper that you get the IFF from.

So its been sitting there for 37 million years, and no other race found it, even though there was pretty much an arrow drawn across a planet that pointed to it.
Then the Reapers are brought up and Cerberus thinks "oh lets work out what fired a mass effect beam large enough to scar a planet."

"oh shepard, btw we found a massive mass effect gun that doesnt work anymore (blatent lie) and a dead reaper, its been there 37 million years, go check it out."

 

[BlackStar42]

I don't get why since Udina is such an arsehole, we can't kill him. He is almost as much of a douche as those ****ing kids at Little Lamplight in Fallout 3.

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, I think some people are missing some obvious points here, which susprises me actually.

The reason why they don't just destroy the Relay is because the overall mission is both to rescue the colonists and find out WHY they are being harvested. It's also noteworthy that to begin with it's not known with 100% certainy that The Collectors and Reapers are working together, they comment later when the connection is made obvious. It also clarifies that the "Husk"/"Dragon Teeth" technology is Reaper in origin not Geth, something that is commented on during the storyline.

Cerberus COULD have just destroyed the relay, but would have learned nothing, and doomed all of those people who were not known to be dead for sure. As Ruthless as they are, Cerberus is actually pretty heroic/benevolent in their own way, especially to humans. They do care about their own people, it's not just a wierd power grab from what I've seen.


-

As far as the organic technology, nobody has really examined a reaper in that much detail. Sure they looked at pieces from Sovreign, and went into a derelict (where the crew went insane before accomplishing anything) but their tech was unknown.

We also do not know what they are using from the bodies. Some of you might remember that the "Dragons Teeth" don't just re-animate the dead, but also collect certain miniscule amounts of minerals from the dead as they do so. It was a mystery in the cyclopedia of ME1 as to why anyone would bother to collect something seemingly so trivial. It's quite possible that they are actually harvesting certain trace elements on an uber-scale we simply do not know.


-

As far as the need for building a human reaper, that is presented as being mysterious and horrific, and definatly intended to be a cliff hanger of sorts for the third game (along with the data pad).

The mission thing was poorly implemented when the crew was captured. They should have created a mission for that if you had exhausted everything else.

At any rate, I can made a pretty educated guess as to what the human reaper is all about given both the information in the game, and having read a lot of science fiction.

What I think is going on is that the Reapers periodically pop out to judge the universe and select the greatest species of any given era, which they then absorb/grant immortality in the form of a reaper. Each Reaper effectively being the collective minds of the greatest species of it's era preserved in a sort of super-ship formed VR bank, commanded by the dominant personality of whomever the Reapers deemed the greatest representitive of the species in question. They basically wipe everything out to create a darwinistic process of competition from which they can evolve and "absorb" another species into a Reaper.

I'd make a guess that while drifting in "Dark Space" the minds involved in a Reaper exist in some kind of VR utopia. Given the 50k year cycles species upset about the process come to grips with this reality and learn to accept it, even if it's massively elitist (or perhaps because of it).

I suspect "Harbinger" knows specifically who Shepard is, and says some of the things it does, because The Reapers would like Shepard to be taken as the dominant personality commanding a reaper during harvesting time or whatever. They could replace him, but he made the top slot on the "A" list by being the guy who took down Sovreign. This is also probably why Humanity was the race chosen to be this Era's reaper.

If I am correct about this, it means that all of the minds of the colonists and those turned into husks, were actually stored inside the human-form reaper.

So far we have only seen one real Reaper, we have no idea what they look like. It's possible that if my theory is correct the race that made up Sovreign were some kind of squid-like life form. Put into that perspective a giant humanoid flying through space or whatever might not be entirely out of line.

-

Now the plot hole that kind of annoys me in Mass Effect, is the entire Prothean thing. I guess they decided the previous cycle of the galaxy only had one species for the sake of simplicity, but I find it hard to believe. Even if the Protheans were the best, I would have expected there to be remnants from dozens of sentinent life forms left behind. I mean I find it odd that we've probably got a dozen or more races in the "current" ME timeline, but apparently when the Protheans were around there was only one?


At any rate, those are my thoughts. The last bits are speculation, but the former ones are taken directly from the game. Especially the bit about the relay, I kind of thought why they didn't just blow it to pieces was obvious.

Not to mention the fact that in doing so they would ruin a doorway to that part of the universe, even if there is a hostile race there now, they might very well want to go there or colonize at some point (hostile now, does not mean they wouldn't develop technology to weather it).

 

[TheDoctor455]

Yeah, that's right another ME2 thread. Before you start I used the search function and didn't find a similar topic.

Also, obviously, Spoilers.

Anyway, I love the game. I think it has far superior gameplay and the story's focus on characterization and personal moments was a great way to tell the story of ME2. Looking forward and back I'd say it's one of the best games of the last decade. I am a tragic case of ME fanboy.

However I couldn't help but notice a few things that bugged me about the main mission story.

1. The Omega 4 Relay
Most of ME2 is spent discussing the suicide mission that is traveling through the Omega 4 Relay. It is the ONLY way to the source of the Collectors and going through it is almost certain death. However...doesn't this work both ways? If I recall, Mass Relays work like giant two-way teleport systems. So as soon as Cerberus learns that the Omega 4 Relay is the source of the Collectors - why don't they just destroy it? If you destroy the Omega 4 Relay, you cut off the Collectors from the rest of the galaxy and isolate them in their homeworld in the galactic core. As the plot says, they can't just fly away from their homeworld because it is surrounded by a large Mass Effect shield that protects it from the black holes and anomalies. They HAVE to use the Omega 4 Relay to travel ANYWHERE in the galaxy. If you destroy it (or disable it if destroying it would be too dangerous), they're stuck. End of story. We win. Why does no one consider this option? If the idea is to save the humans that were abducted, why is the Paragon decision to blow the Collector base to smithereens without rescuing anyone outside of your crew? Also, if the hidden intention of Cerberus was to utilize Collector and thus Reaper technology, why doesn't anyone on the crew consider this as an option?

2. The Human Reaper
I...don't get it. Why were they doing this? What purpose does this serve the Reapers? There are presumably hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of Reapers in dark space. While the human Reaper looks badass and made a great end-game boss, it never really made any sense to me. Why are they using organic tissue? Why is that necessary? There wasn't anything organic about Sovereign that I could see. Why does the Reaper take on the image of the race that it conquers? Were all previous races squid-like? Why don't any Reapers look like keepers or Protheans? What did the Collectors plan to do with the human Reaper if it was completed? Stomp around on Earth like Godzilla? Why is it necessary to give it all the weaknesses of a human form - like frail limbs and obvious weak spots? Why is is so small compared to Sovereign? This is more than likely something I missed on my first two play-throughs, but I did not understand the ultimate plot of the Collectors (and thus the Reapers) in Mass Effect 2. Especially since we already saw that one Reaper would be torn to pieces by the united races of the galaxy as in Mass Effect 1.

3. What did we actually accomplish in ME2?
Well...nothing really. This isn't so much a plot hole as it is a plot problem. We stopped the Collectors from making a single additional Reaper that would add ONE to the coming fleet of thousands. We did not stall the actual Reaper fleet in any way, as we did in ME1. We did not expose the threat of the Reapers to the galaxy. We did not defeat any actual Reapers, just a single half-made prototype. We didn't even slow them down, or defeat an agent that was attempting to hasten their arrival. We killed a single Reaper that was not related to the original Reaper threat created in ME1. The game ends with the galaxy in the exact same situation it was in at the beginning. Sure, we learned a few things about Reapers, but we didn't actually do anything to stop or slow their arrival.


Now to reiterate, I loved the game. But I felt because of these plot holes that the story suffered. The character moments were well written and interesting, but the main plot could have used a lot more refinement.

So convince me that these are not actually plot holes/problems, or tell me some plot holes that you may have discovered. As I said I am a Mass Effect fanboy, so I'd really like someone to come in and tell me it's alright and that these plot holes have logical and reasonable explanations to them.

1. Because, if you'll recall, the Illusive Man wanted to preserve the technology at the Collector Base for his own ends. And while he doesn't bring this up until the VERY end of the game, I seriously doubt that he wasn't planning to take their tech once they were gone. So, destroying the relay wouldn't help him accomplish that... and Mass Relays can actually work in 1 of 2 ways: Yes, they can be a two-way link system, but they can also be omni-directional... that is... send you in any direction you want, but with no guarantee of a return trip.
2. If you go for the "investigate" option, EDI hazards a guess that this could be the Reaper means of reproduction, and that each Reaper's design might be based off of the species it came from... hinting that even the Reapers were once organic.
3. You prevented more human colonies (and possibly earth, if you remember) from being wiped out. And... at the very least, you did make the Reapers waste at least some amount of time and resources.

 

[ModsDeleteThisAccountPlease]

1. The Omega 4 Relay

I don't think they are destructible. They've stood for millions of years, used by the Reapers to guide Civilizations along the path they wished. The technology used to create the Relay's is something no race understands. I'm pretty sure the Reapers would make these things near to impossible to shut down.

2. The Human Reaper

I believe EDI says something along the lines of "I'm detecting a massive source of organic and inorganic energy. Shepard, if my calculations are correct, this thing is a Reaper."

I think that the Reapers were trying to make a new model of them selves. A perfect blend of Organic and Inorganic materials. The ultimate Reaper. What better race to use, than the one that defeated their Vanguard?

ME3 will explain better

3. What did we actually accomplish in ME2?

No more Collectors, we wiped them out, took away their home. Harbinger, from what I can extrapolate, was a Reaper controlling a Collector general. By taking out their servants, the Reapers lose an advantage.
The Citadel races need every advantage they can get.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I agree with the idea that you don't accomplish "as much" on a galactic scale in Mass Effect 2 as you do in Mass Effect 1. What ME2 was trying to do was tell a classic "Men on a Mission" story in the vein of "The Guns of Navaronne" or "The Dirty Dozen" and the overall plot is just a means to facilitate that and while I feel a little let down in terms of overall plot revelations... I love these kind of stories, they do a great job of assembling a team of interesting personalities then putting them through a hard as hell mission with low odds of success where many of them could end up unceremoniously killed (that's why they work so hard on having you "get to know them" through their loyalty missions, that way there's more emotional impact when they bite it).

One could also speculate that The Collectors create new Reapers and that their attempt to make a "human reaper" was to take the best possible revenge on the only race able to defeat one of them in thousands of years, by performing what Mordin called "the ultimate insult," turning us into them, their worst enemies.

 

[Steampunk Viking]

Ok, I have my own theories on these points:

1. The Omega 4 Relay
Most of ME2 is spent discussing the suicide mission that is traveling through the Omega 4 Relay. It is the ONLY way to the source of the Collectors and going through it is almost certain death. However...doesn't this work both ways? If I recall, Mass Relays work like giant two-way teleport systems. So as soon as Cerberus learns that the Omega 4 Relay is the source of the Collectors - why don't they just destroy it? If you destroy the Omega 4 Relay, you cut off the Collectors from the rest of the galaxy and isolate them in their homeworld in the galactic core. As the plot says, they can't just fly away from their homeworld because it is surrounded by a large Mass Effect shield that protects it from the black holes and anomalies. They HAVE to use the Omega 4 Relay to travel ANYWHERE in the galaxy. If you destroy it (or disable it if destroying it would be too dangerous), they're stuck. End of story. We win. Why does no one consider this option? If the idea is to save the humans that were abducted, why is the Paragon decision to blow the Collector base to smithereens without rescuing anyone outside of your crew? Also, if the hidden intention of Cerberus was to utilize Collector and thus Reaper technology, why doesn't anyone on the crew consider this as an option?

I got the option to save the people in the pods, which I did, so technically you do save them. Also, the reason why people on the crew wouldn't consider this an option is because I don't think anyone in Cerberus is as flexible on their morales as the Illusive Man (and that's saying something). Miranda was the closest and you have to gain her loyalty for her to disagree with the Illusive Man, she usually just follows his orders blindly. The other crew members just owe Shepard, like fighting or agree to his cause because it's the "right thing to do".

As to why they don't destroy the relay, they kind of allude to this in the novel "Ascension". Most people believe the collectors to be a myth, but every race slowely expand outwards, discovering more relays and sectors. If they destroy the Omega 4 Relay, they may have shot themselves in the foot, they don't know better. Remember, one theory is that it leads to a paradise that no-one wants to come back from. The people who know of the Collector's existance either work for them or want to harness their technology.

2. The Human Reaper
I...don't get it. Why were they doing this? What purpose does this serve the Reapers? There are presumably hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of Reapers in dark space. While the human Reaper looks badass and made a great end-game boss, it never really made any sense to me. Why are they using organic tissue? Why is that necessary? There wasn't anything organic about Sovereign that I could see. Why does the Reaper take on the image of the race that it conquers? Were all previous races squid-like? Why don't any Reapers look like keepers or Protheans? What did the Collectors plan to do with the human Reaper if it was completed? Stomp around on Earth like Godzilla? Why is it necessary to give it all the weaknesses of a human form - like frail limbs and obvious weak spots? Why is is so small compared to Sovereign? This is more than likely something I missed on my first two play-throughs, but I did not understand the ultimate plot of the Collectors (and thus the Reapers) in Mass Effect 2. Especially since we already saw that one Reaper would be torn to pieces by the united races of the galaxy as in Mass Effect 1.

Humans are repeatedly said to be the most adaptable race genetically and the Collectors had abducted lots of different races in small amounts, probably testing their genetic materials for their adaptability. Reapers are known to "harvest" the universe by destroying races, indoctrinating them (or rebuilding them, as they did with the Keepers and the Collectors) or just stealing their technology. Maybe they use what technology they take to adapt and improve themselves?

3. What did we actually accomplish in ME2?
Well...nothing really. This isn't so much a plot hole as it is a plot problem. We stopped the Collectors from making a single additional Reaper that would add ONE to the coming fleet of thousands. We did not stall the actual Reaper fleet in any way, as we did in ME1. We did not expose the threat of the Reapers to the galaxy. We did not defeat any actual Reapers, just a single half-made prototype. We didn't even slow them down, or defeat an agent that was attempting to hasten their arrival. We killed a single Reaper that was not related to the original Reaper threat created in ME1. The game ends with the galaxy in the exact same situation it was in at the beginning. Sure, we learned a few things about Reapers, but we didn't actually do anything to stop or slow their arrival.

I'm sure all will be revealed in the third installment...

 

[Von Dean]

Has anyone considered the possibility that Shepard is a reaper? At the start when you see him getting rebuilt: some of that robotic stuff could be from Sovereign,maybe Cerberus got hold of some of his remains, kinda reverse engineered him (Reapers are formed from sentient beings so why not rebuild a human with parts from a Reaper) and created Reaper Shepard.
This links in to why Wilson was concerned about you at the start,he was worried about the lengths Cerberus would go to stop the Reapers and tried to stop/circumvent that from happening.

p.s sorry this is my 1st post and it seems more of a conspiracy thoery now that I read it through

 

[Vaer]

1. It may not be possible for any race to destroy it with their current level of technology.. that and Cerberus actually wanted to take the base and not destroy it

2.My theory is that every time the reapers conquer the races they build themselves in the image of said race ... or anyway close enough, humans probably have something that is key to creating the reapers and we will probably find out more in the 3rd game

3.A lot more then appears at first was resolved, got a better ship and better crew, stopped the collectors from creating more reapers which actually is very important and saved a lot of other colonies and maybe earth itself from being attacked by the colectors, helped find a cure for the virus that killed any other species except humans, something that would have made a huge impact in the coming war if it was to be released on several planets by the reapers, made significant steps toward making an alliance with the geth which will most likely help a lot when the reapers come, also got the respect of the quarians and krogan this will probably help in getting them to help with the reapers, we also got news that the rachni will help us when the time comes(obviously all of this depending on choices).

Basically saved a lot of people and made some allies which will help a lot considering the council doesn't want to admit the threat of the reapers..

 

[Stainless]

Now the plot hole that kind of annoys me in Mass Effect, is the entire Prothean thing. I guess they decided the previous cycle of the galaxy only had one species for the sake of simplicity, but I find it hard to believe. Even if the Protheans were the best, I would have expected there to be remnants from dozens of sentinent life forms left behind. I mean I find it odd that we've probably got a dozen or more races in the "current" ME timeline, but apparently when the Protheans were around there was only one?

I don't think they were the only ones around, I just think they were the only ones the Reapers left traces of. The Collector abductions show that the reapers have the tech to remove people without leaving a trace, and considering how they pretty much had a few million years untill the next space-faring species popped up after they did the Prothean Purge, they could probably remove the traces after people as well.

The Prothean trail was left behind because they needed someone the following species could pin the Mass Relays and the Citadel on without having them ask the question "What the fuck happened to all these other races we keep finding bits and pieces of?"

Or the Protheans might've been douches and just conquered the universe, killing everyone and everything. That'd be a hum-dinger right there.

 

[tkioz]

1) Destroying a Mass Relay is likely either very very hard or completely impossible, it was said in the first game one survived a star going Super Nova [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mu_Relay] also they lead to multiple points, not to every relay in the network like say Stargates, but ones nearby, so to get from one side of the galaxy you have to go through several relays, the Omega 4 relay is the one we know leads there, there could be dozens of others, after all the reason the First Contact war started was humans were blindly opening up "cold" relays without regard for what could be on the other side, the same thing that lead to the Rachni War. So yes, destroying it on the surface sounds reasonable, it would actually be self defeating if you look at it deeper.

2) Makes little sense to me as well, didn't care much for it personally, I thought it was stupid, not the reproduction part, that made sense, biological beings evolve naturally, synthetics don't, they need to be changed, so by taking biological material from a species that has proven to be resilient and capable they are improving and evolving themselves. The human form to me was stupid, it's okay for being on a planet, but for a space ship? plain stupid, I guess it could of made up the "core" for the ship, with the actual ship built around it (doubt they have that in mind but that's how I chose to view it)

3) You've actually achieved quiet a lot, you've got information (and that's power), you've got solid real evidence of reaper existence, and depending on your choice at the end of the game you've got either a lot of working tech and databases, or at least bits of them. Not to mention you've made good ground on building alliance with some other races and individuals.

 

[tkioz]

One other thing I'd like to say, someone made a point about the distance needed to travel using "slow FTL" (which they must have in Mass Effect, because travelling at STL between star systems that don't have a Mass Relay would take years), I agree completely, lets assume they are 1/4 of the way to Andromeda that's still 625,000 light-years away, to get here in a reasonable time frame, say 5 years? They'd need to be travelling at 125,000 times the speed of light, the power needed to move at such a speed... is so massive I can't even imagine it.

The only way the Reapers are getting here for Mass Effect 3 is if something massive goes wrong on our end that lets them access a Mass Relay, because frankly if they can move at speeds like that, they don't need Mass Relays.

My bet is Mass Effect 3 is going to be massive and the first 1/4 of the game will be about you trying to stop a Reaper plot, and failing, the middle half will be gathering allies, doing good deeds, etc, and the final 1/4 will be about taking the fight to them and kicking them out of our galaxy.