So I was just replaying Mass Effect 1 and...

[Skalman]

Err... did you miss the entire beacon thing?

That was their message. Unfortunately they didn't bank on you having to be Prothean to understand it.

Actually they did. They coded the beacons to work with any organic life, but not synthetic life.

Also, they displayed already that they could make VI that could perfectly communicate with alien life forms already: ie Vigil.

Wrong. Only you were able to understand Vigil because of a) the beacons and b) Liara re-tuning your brain.

Actually no, when you meet vigil your companions says something along the lines of: "Hey another hologram, and I can understand it!" Vigil then says it's been monitoring our communication as we moved throughout the compound and translated it to a format we can comprehend, it has nothing to do with the beacons, the cipher or liara's mind-melding mojo.

 

[squeeble69]

Are you implying that Vigil can speak English (or Galactic, or whatever) Because that's not the case. You could understand him becuase the codex gave you the ability to understand the Prothean Language. NOT the other way around.....

Wrong. Only you were able to understand Vigil because of a) the beacons and b) Liara re-tuning your brain.

Actually, that's not true. When you talk to Vigil, he tells you that he can speak galactic, due to him having been studying you since you landed on Ilos. That's why your whole squad can understand him.

[Edit] Damn! Ninja'd

 

[VulakAerr]

Regardless of these semantics, they did send a message in the form of the beacons.

Which is completely irrelevant to the question about why they left no clues in the Citadel.

since it was a reaper station they must have thought it wasn't the best place to leave it

A completely disarmed Reaper station that every new race would inevitably be drawn to. They would have been right to take the chance. All they needed to do was copy the datadisc and put it in there. Or write it down. If it was discovered (which it would not have been as the Reapers were gone) then it would have been no loss in trying.

Maybe they did. However, it's stated in the codex that the Keepers change things in the Citadel without warning and on a regular basis. It's almost certain they'd have cleared up any clues before the Asari found the station.

 

[Ranorak]

So I was just replaying Mass Effect 1. Can anyone explain this.

The Protheans had a secret research base on Ilos.
After the Reaper threat was gone they went to the Citadel and reprogrammed the Keepers so that they would not send the 'attack' signal to the Reapers.

... they didn't leave some notes behind to say, "Hey guys, every 50,000 years a giant spacefaring army of sentient robots come in and exterminate all life. All that technology you found and never questioned? It's theirs. Here's everything we knew before we were wiped out".

A few of the Prothean relics are apparently unable to operate 50,000 years later but their statues and artwork in Ilos is perfectly intact. Why couldn't they just do things the old fashioned way and engrave it somewhere? Or, if the Keepers are going to remove that, put something small into orbit outside of their reach but at the citadel itself. I doubt the Keepers will remove things anyway, considering the Conduit was left totally untouched...

Because the council flat out denies the reapers after one of them came crashing down on their heads with a loud and audible CLUNK!

I think they'll dismiss a post-it note even faster then you can say boomboombillybillybyebye.

 

[GBlair88]

When you speak to Vigil on Ilos he/it communicates in english after studying radio messages between the Normandy and the ground crew. He explains this after one or more of your squadmates mentions being able to understand what he/it is saying. It is also possible that Vigil gains some knowledge of humans when Shepard uses the beacons.

Any messages left by the Protheons probably would've been removed by the keepers or agents working for the Reapers. Or perhaps just ignored/misinterpreted by whatever race found them eg. the conduit. Reprogramming the keepers to not clean up the station probably would've been noticeable and would have taken a lot of time and resources that the Protheans had little of.

Some of the Prothean beacons were found buried underground, perhaps buried intentionally so the Reapers wouldn't find them.

 

[Simon Pettersson]

Regardless of these semantics, they did send a message in the form of the beacons.

Which is completely irrelevant to the question about why they left no clues in the Citadel.

since it was a reaper station they must have thought it wasn't the best place to leave it

A completely disarmed Reaper station that every new race would inevitably be drawn to. They would have been right to take the chance. All they needed to do was copy the datadisc and put it in there. Or write it down. If it was discovered (which it would not have been as the Reapers were gone) then it would have been no loss in trying.

There is still the Keepers that clean up the evidence.

i was thinking about that but since they stopped the attack code couldn't they have done something something about that too

I don´t know what would happen to the citadel if they change the keepers too much, It could break them and then the citadel would break down. None of the races really understands the keepers and the keepers are what keeps the citadel running.

 

[mps4li3n]

Protheans left behind not only a VI that could communicate clearly with all at hand but also a datadisc that was uploaded instantly to Shepherd's tech-arm-gadget-thing.

Yes, on a planet that was their high tech research hub for centuries or more (and Vigil's explanation that he's been monitoring only the chatter of the ships that just arived was weak, they really should have just said he's been listening in for centuries to random signals that got to him to learn the language)... while the same VI said himself that the Protheans that went to the Citadel after the Reapers where gone would only be able to modify that one small thing about the signal and then starve to death because they had no way off the Citadel... so they probably didn't have enough resources to leave any high tech messages on the Citadel that would be easily found by the new races, but not destroyed by the keepers.

It's never suggested that Protheans' language could not be deciphered, it is simply left unmentioned.

Liara was the biggest Prothean expert around according to ME1... and yet if you take her with you on Illos she doesn't understand the broken console at all... if the Prothean Language had been deciphered she'd know it.

 

[webzu]

... they didn't leave some notes behind to say, "Hey guys, every 50,000 years a giant spacefaring army of sentient robots come in and exterminate all life. All that technology you found and never questioned? It's theirs. Here's everything we knew before we were wiped out".

A few of the Prothean relics are apparently unable to operate 50,000 years later but their statues and artwork in Ilos is perfectly intact. Why couldn't they just do things the old fashioned way and engrave it somewhere? Or, if the Keepers are going to remove that, put something small into orbit outside of their reach but at the citadel itself. I doubt the Keepers will remove things anyway, considering the Conduit was left totally untouched...

The invasion lasted for nearly a century and by that time, Ilos' fuel supply was running low. The AI (I forgot his name; Virgil, was it?) had to sequentially shut down the pods containing low level personnel to save power for the most important scientists, Only the ones who would be able to both use the conduit AND sabotage the Citadel. No medics. No craftsmen. Just researchers.

By the time the invasion ended, all that was left of the species was, like, half a dozen bruised and battered Protheans who had been in Cryo-stasis for nearly a century (which I'm sure takes it's toll on an organic body) and thus couldn't do ANYTHING other than complete their race's final mission and promptly die due to a lack of medical services.

Besides, they didn't KNOW that their beacons would break down by the time anyone found it. That's my take on it anyway.

So simply put, they can because they already have (see Vigil, above).

Are you implying that Vigil can speak English (or Galactic, or whatever) Because that's not the case. You could understand him becuase the codex gave you the ability to understand the Prothean Language. NOT the other way around.....

Actually Vigil can understand you because he accessed your intercom and listened in and then translated his output into that language so we could understand him, it was just the security VI that was damaged near where we opened the door Saren closed when we landed that was speaking prothean, thats how your other two units understand Vigil (Liara always makes a little fuss about getting info from Vigil and talking about understanding him so she obviously understands yet she couldn't understand the other VI
Edit: Beaten too it

 

[Shaoken]

Wait, i'm pretty sure it a big plot point that no one actually understands the Prothean language... remember when Shepard can understand that broken message when he's opening those gates to the tunnel that lead to the Conduit, but no one else, including Liara, can?

So maybe they did try to leave some messages on the Citadel itself, but most got destroyed by the Keepers and the others where considered just art, like the Relay Monument (which was actually part of the Conduit)?

Protheans left behind not only a VI that could communicate clearly with all at hand but also a datadisc that was uploaded instantly to Shepherd's tech-arm-gadget-thing.

It's never suggested that Protheans' language could not be deciphered, it is simply left unmentioned.

The problem was that the only VI they had, Vigil, remained on Ilos. Yes it could manage to piece together languages just by listening in to Shepherd's comms chatter (which also explains how it uploaded the data to Shepherd's omnitool), but it was also hard-wired into the facility and would require a lot of effort to move, which was made impossible that only a dozen Prothean's survived to the point where the Reapers left. So they couldn't practically take Vigil with them, and it was a one-way trip to the Citadel. And I should mention that Vigil dies shortly after you talk with him, showing he barely survived the 50,000 years to talk to you.

As for just leaving something on the citadel, they probably did. The problem is that it had no way of lasting long enough to get to the next race; etching out a message on the wall would just prompt the Keepers to repair that wall, put something into orbit around the citadel and it'll eventually either float away from the citadel (it's artifical gravity is limited entirely to it's surface, with no evidence that it extends to ships in the area between the wards (which is why none of teh alliance ships get sucked into said wards during the fight with Sovergn) or smashed by some Asari ship coming to the Citadel for the first time (who would ignore the floating space junk). And if it was close enough to the citadel to remain in it's gravity well, it would have eventually fallen back into the citadel because there would be no way to keep it in a stable orbit (on account of them having no ships).

As for leaving it there in data form, the Beacon's were built to be robust and survive, so unless they had a few of them lying around on Illos no other means they had would have lasted the entire time; normal storage devices would simply erode over time, and get disposed of by the reapers. The citadel might have had an auto-delete function for it's own databases if they weren't used in several years or decades, cutting off that option to them.

So really it boils down to the fact that there were only a dozen Protheans left after the Reapers left, and they were lacking in usuable technology that wasn't built into their facility. They had no foolproof means of leaving a message that would last tens of thousands of years for the next sentient life form to evole and progress to the point that they'd find the Mass Relays.

 

[mps4li3n]

Regardless of these semantics, they did send a message in the form of the beacons.

Which is completely irrelevant to the question about why they left no clues in the Citadel.

since it was a reaper station they must have thought it wasn't the best place to leave it

A completely disarmed Reaper station that every new race would inevitably be drawn to. They would have been right to take the chance. All they needed to do was copy the datadisc and put it in there. Or write it down. If it was discovered (which it would not have been as the Reapers were gone) then it would have been no loss in trying.

There is still the Keepers that clean up the evidence.

i was thinking about that but since they stopped the attack code couldn't they have done something something about that too

I don´t know what would happen to the citadel if they change the keepers too much, It could break them and then the citadel would break down. None of the races really understands the keepers and the keepers are what keeps the citadel running.

Listening to Vigil tell it it seems that doing that small change so the Keepers took them decades of study, and it's likely that figuring out how to leave a message that any race finding the Citadel would find in time (the Council had no clue their chamber was where you gain root control of the Citadel) would require them to put more resources then they could spare into it.

But you know what would be a nice easter egg... Shepard walking past the Relay Monument in ME3 for some reason and because he can now understand Prothean somewhat he's look closer and see some prothean writing on it that warns about the Reapers, but no one understood it before...

 

[Chrono212]

No one understands their language apart from Commander Shepherd and Saren because of their contact with the Eden Prime bacon.

Ergo, anything they left would be illegible.
Even pictograms (like on the Voyager or Mariner probes) are hard to understand.

 

[Shaoken]

Are you implying that Vigil can speak English (or Galactic, or whatever) Because that's not the case. You could understand him becuase the codex gave you the ability to understand the Prothean Language. NOT the other way around.....

Wrong. Only you were able to understand Vigil because of a) the beacons and b) Liara re-tuning your brain.

Actually, that's not true. When you talk to Vigil, he tells you that he can speak galactic, due to him having been studying you since you landed on Ilos. That's why your whole squad can understand him.

[Edit] Damn! Ninja'd

Sorry, you're only half-right. You can understand Vigil instantly the first time he tries to talk to you, but both of your companions can't. Vigil also can't talk clearly, with his whole message being fragmented. The second time you meet him he says he listened to your comm chatter to figure out how to talk to you, but it was mentioned that you could understand him the whole time because of the Beacon.

 

[Snotnarok]

50,000 years is a long long time for anything like that to last especially electronic. And we're talking a galaxy, don't assume that because you have these mass relays to warp you to another area in a few days means the galaxy is any smaller because of it.

The Relays link to one another, there's still a LOT of the galaxy that's left open and such. And these relays were created by the Reapers mind you. So what where exactly would you put these things to warn people? Near relays where the reapers are going to be hanging around? Or near the citadel where they visit?

I assume the only reason you know is because you're actively fighting the Geth and the Geth are leading you towards more and more clues. It's ONE team finding all the info vs species potentially hording these artifacts and technology for their own gain.

Look at the US government, 1 government of 1 race and they can barely communicate between the branches. Now you're talking different alien species some of which have been at war with one another? They're not sharing shit, and without all the pieces you might just wind up with a lot of info you don't understand. Hell the jellyfish (racist!) wanted to stop people from digging at a site with artifacts because it was against their religion, that's proof enough honestly that there very well could be info that all the races have but just don't want to put the pieces together.

Also Shepard was granted the understanding of their language by the beacon they found, which would really help because we're not talking about writing on surfaces, we're talking data, and if your data isn't compatible with your computer it's just not going to be readable.

 

[TheScottishFella]

I may be oversimplifying this but...

If you found that on a stone wall 50,000 years later (or in a computer for that matter), would you believe it?

I think of it like religion but yeah you are right.

 

[Indecipherable]

No one understands their language apart from Commander Shepherd and Saren because of their contact with the Eden Prime bacon.

Ergo, anything they left would be illegible.
Even pictograms (like on the Voyager or Mariner probes) are hard to understand.

Vigil

 

[Chrono212]

No one understands their language apart from Commander Shepherd and Saren because of their contact with the Eden Prime bacon.

Ergo, anything they left would be illegible.
Even pictograms (like on the Voyager or Mariner probes) are hard to understand.

Vigil

Party memebers didn't understand Virgil but Shepherd did.
Also mind your low content posts.

 

[mps4li3n]

They had no foolproof means of leaving a message that would last tens of thousands of years for the next sentient life form to evole and progress to the point that they'd find the Mass Relays.

Besides the Beacons, which they used... and had someone found the one on Eden Prime before Sovereign understood the Keepers have been sabotaged it would have been a different ball game...

 

[Indecipherable]

No one understands their language apart from Commander Shepherd and Saren because of their contact with the Eden Prime bacon.

Ergo, anything they left would be illegible.
Even pictograms (like on the Voyager or Mariner probes) are hard to understand.

Vigil

Party memebers didn't understand Virgil but Shepherd did.

Yes they do, I was just playing it an hour or so ago.

Vigil 'listens' to you on the way in and then talks to you in English-or-whatever-language-is-universal-nowadays.

 

[Chrono212]

No one understands their language apart from Commander Shepherd and Saren because of their contact with the Eden Prime bacon.

Ergo, anything they left would be illegible.
Even pictograms (like on the Voyager or Mariner probes) are hard to understand.

Vigil

Party memebers didn't understand Virgil but Shepherd did.

Yes they do, I was just playing it an hour or so ago.

Vigil 'listens' to you on the way in and then talks to you in English-or-whatever-language-is-universal-nowadays.

Well Ilos was 'lost' so no-one was there until Shepherd and Saren were there.
Although that is a point that they could have left a VI on the Citadel however it probably isn't the size of desktop or something and isn't easy to transport.
But I'm going to go with the 'because the writer said so' reason

 

[mps4li3n]

No one understands their language apart from Commander Shepherd and Saren because of their contact with the Eden Prime bacon.

Ergo, anything they left would be illegible.
Even pictograms (like on the Voyager or Mariner probes) are hard to understand.

Vigil

Party memebers didn't understand Virgil but Shepherd did.

Pls do read what was said before...

Vigil deciphered english from the comm chatter he picked up, and everyone could understand him, the part you're thinking of is before you enter the long tunnel to the Conduit where Vigil is, and there's a broken console transmitting the signal to the beacons... not even Liara understand that.