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

[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.

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

Vigil gives you a datadisc with all of his information. The datadisc also grants complete control over the Citadel. The datadisc takes a 2 second animation to upload onto your arm-gadget-techie-thingy.

 

[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.

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.

Point still stands ¬_¬
OP said message, not a VI

 

[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

Vigil gives you a datadisc with all of his information. The datadisc also grants complete control over the Citadel. The datadisc takes a 2 second animation to upload onto your arm-gadget-techie-thingy.

'Writer said so' X3
Ok, ok, I'm no Prothian, so lets all agree that it was a waisted opportunity but wouldn't Mass Effect been a lot less fun if you just put the disk in and it went "oh noes, more alien aliens we should plan for this. Shepherd! Do some accounts! *fight* *boom* *credits*"

 

[Bobbity]

If you look hard enough, you can find plot holes in almost any game. It's better just not to look, and to take most things at face value. If a plot hole is so bad that you simply can't ignore it, then the dev team probably hasn't put together a game worth playing.

 

[Indecipherable]

If you look hard enough, you can find plot holes in almost any game. It's better just not to look, and to take most things at face value. If a plot hole is so bad that you simply can't ignore it, then the dev team probably hasn't put together a game worth playing.

I have a love affair with Mass Effect, but that one just left me scratching my head.

I wish they would have made a Mass Effect MMO instead of Star Wars MMO.

Oh well I can only hope.

 

[beddo]

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?

We believe things we find in caves and tombs now don't we? It would certainly warrant research of some sort, especially if the people who wrote it were no longer around and especially if they were Protheans.

 

[Lenvoran]

We believe things we find in caves and tombs now don't we? It would certainly warrant research of some sort, especially if the people who wrote it were no longer around and especially if they were Protheans.

Sometimes people believe things that aren't even written. Or stated. Or said in any way, shape, or form, beyond thinking that because a certain calender doesn't go past a certain point, the world will explode or something.

Yep. A bright and proud people we are.

 

[Quellist]

I'm guessing the Protheans didnt leave direct messages because:

1) If the later races can find it that easily so can Sovereign and any creatures under his sway (remember they were building the collectors, its quite possible for them to have visited the citadel to make sure nothing remained to clue in any new inhabitents. The Protheans made the adjustment to the (i forget the name) Insect-thingys that maintain the station, to be very subtle and to not show up until Sovreign called for the other Reapers to return.

2) If the later races find it too soon (i.e before they have a fully developed galatic community with resources to make some kind of fightback) then Sovereign might panic and call the Reapers early

Essentially the galatic community had to be 'ready' for the information before it could be found otherwise it would all be for nothing.

 

[mps4li3n]

Vigil gives you a datadisc with all of his information. The datadisc also grants complete control over the Citadel. The datadisc takes a 2 second animation to upload onto your arm-gadget-techie-thingy.

Which probably means it gives you control to it's main OS (operating system)... which would have been needed to access the keeper activation signal code so they could modify it.

But being able to use the OS doesn't mean you can re-write it at your leisure...

I mean the Council already had partial access to the Citadel OS, otherwise they couldn't use the arms or the docking bays etc. It was just more like a guest account, while that disk gave you Admin rights... but having Admin rights won't let you modify stuff Windows is using or the knowledge on how to do it without the auto-fix system (the Keepers, which don't really have a win equivalet) fixing it.


Basically they did a good job or using "not enough time for it" to explain it so that it makes sense. Now Vigil learning english or another language you have on translator just by some simple comm chatter for a few hours at most, especially since even with a lost relay FTL communication exists and he could have been picking asari up for over a millennia and that would have been a better explanation... hell, even hearing Shep translate what the broken console said would have been more believable, is stretching it a bit too far.

 

[mps4li3n]

I'm guessing the Protheans didnt leave direct messages because:

1) If the later races can find it that easily so can Sovereign and any creatures under his sway (remember they were building the collectors, its quite possible for them to have visited the citadel to make sure nothing remained to clue in any new inhabitents. The Protheans made the adjustment to the (i forget the name) Insect-thingys that maintain the station, to be very subtle and to not show up until Sovreign called for the other Reapers to return.

2) If the later races find it too soon (i.e before they have a fully developed galatic community with resources to make some kind of fightback) then Sovereign might panic and call the Reapers early

Essentially the galatic community had to be 'ready' for the information before it could be found otherwise it would all be for nothing.

Actually what Vigil says about the Beacons makes it way simpler...

They wanted to make sure only biological beings would be able to get the message (while not indoctrinated), so the Reapers won't notice it and destroy it at any point, and they didn't imagine they'd use someone like Saren, who was serving willingly.

So they tried to leave a message that the Reapers wouldn't notice before their new victims.

 

[Davey Woo]

The real reason is because the story/background information writer for the game didn't think about it at the time...

 

[Zhukov]

Uh... they did. There were the beacons that beam, "Holy crap, the Reapers are coming!" into people heads, remember? Kind of a major plot point.

Not to mention the Vigil VI.

Also, bear in mind that nobody can really read or speak Prothean. Even Liara, who has studied them for decades.

 

[dancinginfernal]

Of the few remaining Prothean relics that actually manage to say something, they're almost indecipherable even when working.

The did leave messages. The "Reapers" message was sent post-Prothean genocide to inform other survivors and warn exploring races. Of course, a 50,000 year old language isn't exactly simple to understand.

 

[ChipSandwich]

"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".

Play Mass Effect 2. The Council Scientists have some of the pieces of Sovereign in their possession, yet come to the conclusion that it is just an extremely powerful Geth construct.

Also, if you did the "Scan the Keepers" sidequest in Chorban's favor, he sends you an email in ME2 stating that whoever built the Citadel also constructed the Keepers and Sovereign. He also tells you that he is a laughing stock of all the other scientists on the Citadel.

Also:

Shepard: 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
Turian Councilor: Ah yes, "Reapers"

 

[Rayne870]

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...

remember that thing that Shep touches in the first mission that screws with your head and shows you the reapers. yeah that was one of those notes left behind.

 

[mps4li3n]

The real reason is because the story/background information writer for the game didn't think about it at the time...

Actually the more you think about it the more it's obvious that they did think of it...

Any message that would be obvious to the Council races would also be obvious to the Reapers, and the Protheans entire plan was based on the Reapers not finding out about he Keepers until it was too late.

Leaving a big sign somewhere on the Citadel that the Reapers could notice (remember, Sovereign is there watching) would make them suspicious about what else they might have been up to on the Citadel, and they might have discovered what they did to the Keepers earlier then 50.000 years later.

This way even if they realise that the Beacons are transmitting a warning they wouldn't know about the signal change.

And seeing how the beacons are set only for biological beings it's almost guaranteed that the new races would find out about the Reapers before the Reapers found out about the message the beacons are giving.

 

[GrizzlerBorno]

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.

Ok. Even if that is true, all of this language discussion is completely irrelevant.

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.

As I pointed out in my first post here, The Prothean team that used the conduit was a tiny group of exhausted and broken down Portheans (because, as I said, they were in Cryo-stasis for a century). There a hundred things that could have gone wrong. Here's some:

1) They didn't have the equipment needed to construct a new, reliable VI on the Citadel.
2) They couldn't just carry Vigil's CPU from Ilos to Citadel. Maybe they needed him to operate the Conduit?
3) They thought that since they had already fired off a mass-broadcast into the Beacon Network, that would suffice (which btw it did)
4) There WERE Prothean Beacons on the Citadel, but they were too visible so the Reapers easily found them and had them all destroyed.
5) You were saying about how Vigil managed to easily copy Data to Shepard when they met. Well this was AFTER he managed to figure out how their data storage system work (like he "figured out" English). The Protheans themselves didn't know what a ...I dunno... Blu-Ray disc looks like becuase they've never seen one. For all we know, THEY'RE discs could have look like Banana peels. Maybe one of the Early Asari's found it, thought it was trash (like a banana peel is) and threw it into a garbage bin/incinerator?

Fact is: We can never know for certain. Vigil couldn't go into the details because they were running out of time. I guess they could make, like, a short about it. In the meanwhile, you can either build your own explanation (as I have) or call it a plot hole if you really want, though it really isn't....

 

[Superior Mind]

I assume the Protheans didn't think a full evolutionary cycle ahead. They reprogrammed the Citidel as a method to help their own species' survivors from a future Reaper attack. They knew they were pretty screwed but I doubt they gave up complete hope.

They could have constructed another Vigil-like entity but I assume resources were pretty scarce. They couldn't simply transfer Vigil because it needed to remain behind to take care of the remaining Protheans. There's also no knowledge about what state the Citidel was in after a fully-fledged Reaper attack.

Also it's not entirely clear if they did leave a message. Possibly not on the Citidel but think about all those Prothean artifacts and the people like Liara working to work out what they mean. A lot of them could have beeninformation on the Reapers.

Interesting point though.