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

[ultrachicken]

Also I think the team was too small to put anything into orbit, though it is debatable.

Perhaps. They could have just written it down though.

Likewise there is the highly questionable plot hole that the Protheans were exterminated over the course of hundreds of years but yet again... they leave a number of broken beacons. How hard is it to write this down?

The reapers go out of their way to leave as little remains of whatever species they wipe out as possible. They can't destroy everything, but they did a pretty good job of removing evidence.

Also, how would the Council races be able to read something written in an ancient language?

The Reapers were already gone when the remaining Protheans went to the Citadel.

It would amaze me that the Reapers would be able to determine that there is a book/datadisc left behind but not determine earlier that their signal and the keepers left behind were now essentially neutered. The logical assumption from me is that once they were gone, they were gone.

The purpose of the beacons was to communicate without language, most likely because they didn't believe that future races would have the same language. I don't think whatever Protheans that were left at the Citadel had the resources to build any.

 

[Kreett]

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?

And would they even understand it if they actually left carvings?

 

[88chaz88]

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.

The Protheans counted on organic life yes, but not non-Protheans. They believed (hoped) that some Protheans still survived. That was what the base on Ilos was all about.

 

[Indecipherable]

Vigil has a datadisc that he gives to you at the end of the conversation that includes all of the information/coding that he has and 'about how to defeat the Reapers'. So they could just leave that. Or copy it. I mean they have a whole research station I bet there's a few floppy discs floating around

 

[88chaz88]

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

 

[Indecipherable]

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.

 

[Tony2077]

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.

The Protheans counted on organic life yes, but not non-Protheans. They believed (hoped) that some Protheans still survived. That was what the base on Ilos was all about.

well they did but not in the way they were hoping

 

[Tony2077]

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

 

[Indecipherable]

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.

 

[Jesus Phish]

They knew it was a cycle, they didn't know how many years of a cycle it was, being mostly killed off except for the few who went into stasis in llos, I don't remember any going to the Citadel, wasn't it done remotely/during the Reaper invasion.

Either way, they did leave messages, the beacons and the VI on llos were messages, they just weren't crystal clear as "yo dudes, couple years time ya'll gonna be killed, here's what we knew glhf!"

 

[Anomynous 167]

Vigil has a datadisc that he gives to you at the end of the conversation that includes all of the information/coding that he has and 'about how to defeat the Reapers'. So they could just leave that. Or copy it. I mean they have a whole research station I bet there's a few floppy discs floating around

As civilizations advance, vulnerability of their infrastructure also advances.

The protheans, being an advanced civillization of incomprehensible tech levels, should then logically have their floppy disks made on a material 17 times more fragile than soggy cardboard.

 

[Tony2077]

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 didn't think it was worth the risk so they decide with plan b

 

[Zantos]

Maybe they decided to pull a dick move and thought that since their species got wiped out it'd be unfair to let us off lightly.

Or maybe they did leave messages all over in the form of those really ugly statues, and people just thought they were bits of artwork.

 

[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.

 

[Indecipherable]

They knew it was a cycle, they didn't know how many years of a cycle it was, being mostly killed off except for the few who went into stasis in llos, I don't remember any going to the Citadel, wasn't it done remotely/during the Reaper invasion.

Either way, they did leave messages, the beacons and the VI on llos were messages, they just weren't crystal clear as "yo dudes, couple years time ya'll gonna be killed, here's what we knew glhf!"

None of this is correct.

Vigil tells you it's every 50,000 years. Not that it's relevant to them warning someone or not.

They do leave messages, and the VI, although graphically corrupted, explains everything to you flawlessly and then gives you a copy of it too, in case you forget. It cannot be more crystal clear than the final villain giving his epic speach to explain everything that just happened.

 

[Tony2077]

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

 

[mps4li3n]

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)?

 

[Indecipherable]

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.

 

[Frotality]

im pretty sure the conditions in which that small team of protheans were in is left ambiguous for this very purpose. there could be any number of things they COULDVE done, but we dont know what condition they or the keepers or the citadel were in; maybe they were starving to death and reprogramming the keepers was all they could do before dying of exhaustion; maybe the citadel was still a wreck and nothing worked but the innermost parts that only the keepers know how to access.

maybe they figured, "we've done enough for these hypothetical future space-faring dickweeds, lets live out the rest of our doomed lives partying".