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

[mps4li3n]

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

Actually, the bigger question I had is...

Why did Saren need to attack Eden Prime to learn the location of the Conduit?

Wait - I'm not done yet...

Spoiler

When, as a Spectre, he already had full access to the Citadel and could have walked in, pressed the doom button, and left no one the wiser until hot Reaper death arrived.

(of course, the real answer is "because if he'd done that, there wouldn't have been a game")

Except that the control consoles was smack in the middle of the most guarded room in the whole Citadel, and Bioware made that clear by having Wrex, or Ashley, or both (it's been a while) wonder where the hidden snipers are, because they must be there. And people would indeed question what he was doing in the council chamber, messing with stuff no one else knew about.

With the conduit he can invade the citadel with a bigger force and kill everyone in the normal control room before activating the main control console.

As you find out in ME2, ordinarily the Keepers are supposed to reactivate the Citadel to let the Reapers through, but the Protheans managed to modify them so they became harmless caretakers instead of Reaper agents. This is why Sovereign had to recruit Saren and find the Conduit on Ilos to seize control of the Citadel directly.

The thing about the keepers was made clear in ME1 as well.

 

[MrTub]

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.

I do not know if this have been answered but Vigil was analyzing shepards language and when you meet him he is talking in "english" which is pointed out by Vigil and that you're teammates could understand what he said.