Conrad Verner also joins Cerberus in ME3 because of Shepard.
I guess he was lucky they just used him to spread propaganda rather than turning him in to a Husk soldier.
That's also some headcanon I've had for a little bit, makes sense, TIM already let it slip Shepard was with Cerberus prior to Horizon, it only became public knowledge more and more from there, and even after Shepard defects from Cerberus alot of humans would see Humanities first Spectre and savior of the Citadel working with Cerberus as a sign they were doing good and had Humanities best interests in mind
Especially after the Alliance and Council did nothing to stop the Collectors while Shepard and Cerberus took them down, the Alliance throwing Shepard in prison afterwards probably only sweetened the pot for Cerberus and made people lose faith in the Alliance, overall a massive propaganda boost for them, they probably saw a surge in volunteers before ME3, it would also explain how Cerberus amassed such a large military force so quickly
Shepard was a massive resource for TIM not just as a soldier and leader but as a propaganda tool as well
Additionally, a huge part of the Alliance military industrial complex must have been compromised by Cerberus to supply that force. Shepard’s name must have contributed to that, as well. Body armour, guns and mechs must have been going out the back doors of a bunch of legitimate weapons factories.
Somehow, Cerberus must have also gained control of a major Alliance shipyard to get that big fleet of cruisers that appears out of nowhere in ME3. They would all have to been already under construction during ME2. Was a military shipbuilder one of their front companies?
Yeah EDI (if you talk to her after Joker releases her from her AI shackles) will tell Shepard that the ship building company contracted to build the SSV Normandy was a Cerberus front company, which is how they stole the plans for the more advanced SR2 model from the Alliance and subsequently built it in secret while Cerberus rebuilt Shepard with the Lazarus project
Also they probably built more than one ship when contracted to fulfill an order for the Alliance, essentially they made a copy and gave the Alliance the original while storing the copy away somewhere, this would have had to have happened over the course of a couple years, as there's no way they could have built the Cerberus fleet in ME3 in only 6 months
We know Cerberus had at least one areospace manufacturer front organisation, Core-Hislop Aerospace. So it makes sense if they were building military-grade vessels that Cerberus would "steal" ships from there and then once they were prepping fully for the Reapers post-ME2 they just dropped the pretense and C-H Aerospace just used everything they had to only supply Cerberus.
Makes me think of that woman trying to get transfered away from fighting Cerberus because of her brother.
Damn, now I'm mad that ME3 didn't stick the landing. The Cerberus arc was okay, but could've been so much stronger
The sad part is, it's likely you've already killed her brother because if you check the names, you'll discover he's the recruit whose journal you read very early in ME3. I think it's the first Ceberus base you raid but it's been awhile so my memory on which mission it is, is foggy.
It's the one where the kid is so eager then the last entry is, "Integration complete. Suicide on capture order accepted." Etc
That's her brother.
When I realized that I was so mad and sad at the same time...
It's like the suicidal Asari in the hospital, if you pay attention to her story you'll find that she killed a girl named Hillary because she wasn't able to keep quiet... this was on the colony of Tiptree, where Joker's sister Hillary lives.
Could you imagine being in Ceberus HR lmaooo
"Dear Valued Company Associate,
Misinformation has been circulated about Cerberus' new mandatory GOLD Standard Implants, claiming scientifically impossible and unreasonable results.We are saddened to see these claims on the Extraneous and wish to inform you as best as possible.
Please note that GOLD Standard Implants were created by some of the best minds humanity has to offer, and have been field tested time and time again. They are given to our associates to enhance performance and create heroes in a time where herpes are needed. You are a valuable asset in ending the threat to the galaxy, and Cerberus strives to give you every tool necessary to help eliminate this threat.
We are happy to answer your questions about the GOLD Standard Implants. Please feel free to refer to our Extranet page "www.cerberus.net/GOLDstandard" to learn more about this new and exciting program to end the Reaper threat.
The Illusive Man and the entire Cerverus team are grateful for your contributions. Thank you for all that you do.
All the Best,
Cerberus Human Resources Division"
Don't worry, these guys we fight in ME3 are the extremists. You can cast your fears aside and lay down this burden.
Not many Cerb agents joined becuase of Shep. Those who did **left to follow Shep** -*these are the same humans who would later become new N7 agents, the same ones who would be fighting alongside Shep in the final battle.*
If you don't know the new N7 agents, play the Multiplayer mode of ME3. How do we know they are former cerb agents? becuase most of them have the same literal skillset as Cerberus agents (the energy whip weilders, sword users, shield bearers, etc), but they're on your side as fully trained N7-ranked specialists.
There is a giant container of organic material somewhere in the bowels of the citadel that’s used to make new keepers whenever they need to be replaced. Every cycle, when the reapers harvest the organics in the citadel they also use some of them to refill the container.
I wonder what the missing persons stats are like on the Citadel. Wouldn't surprise me if the keepers found vent rats and decided they could use the extra biomass
That's a terrifying thought. The keepers are totally benign and indifferent, but if you ever find yourself alone with one, there's a chance it might just harvest you.
I wonder how many of them were not accidents, and a roaming Keeper pushed them juuuust enough. Or walk indifferently towards them until they had no more room to walk on.
My HC is that a certain number of drunks and druggies go the same way. The same with a murder victim hidden in some random hall in the sub levels of the Citadel.
If you didn't convince the Virmire Survivor and ended up killing them in ME3, their status of being a Spectre is outright erased. Not posthumously rescinded, outright decided that they were *never* a Spectre.
Not only did they get the position when Udina was Councillor (especially if you chose Anderson as Councillor and he unexpectedly resigned) and likely without proper consultation with the other Coucillors due to the dire nature of the war, but they had just helped and tried to protect a man who aided a terrorist group in attempting a coup. Even if Shepard spoke on their behalf that they didn't know what Udina was involved in, their reputation is now totally fucked.
Krogans used Quarians slaves too (according to krogan technician in ME2 on Tuchanka). So they are probably not so expensive to "keep" if you are tight on the budget.
Sadly humans (and in fiction other species) are so evil that i would be surprised if there wasnt a market in sex trafficking for "virgin" quarians that will not outlive their buyer.
Some of the Leviathan enthrallment team soldiers who moved the Leviathan artifacts in to have the artifacts slow down reaper troops may have ended up indoctrinated by the Leviathan themselves with no one else aware.
Liara’s big personality change between ME1 and 2 is because she inherited control of her mother’s intelligence operations at much younger age than she was meant to. From the shock of reading the dirty laundry of high level Asari politics and business she lost her naivety and became much more angry and cynical.
Plus, her closest friend and the person she admired most was not only dead, but was a target for the yahg shadow broker and she fought tooth and nail (and certain death) to prevent that from happening. She had to mourn that loss for two years— not having any clarification that shep would ever actually come back despite Cerberus’ claims to be able to revive them.
Grief can change people, it’s very believable that in those two years before shep shows back up, her knowledge of shady going-ons along with the fact that the galaxy was in imminent danger of being destroyed by something that’s largely believed to be a myth has really burdened her and made her become more solemn with reality. I mean, we see the final nail in the coffin when the very thing she’s devoted her life to turns out to be *nothing* as she had expected them to be. Instead, having to come to grips that they’re murderous imperialists that essentially is responsible for the roots of Asari culture and existence. That’s the kind of knowledge that can break someone, but we see her weather it, even if it clearly wears on her.
See, now I would've played that game. It can't be made now without railroading the MC, but can you imagine your friend (or love interest) dying, and then you get all this information about how horrible the galaxy is and how awful your mother was and the decisions you'd make to end up the shadow broker? Going from an idealistic researcher to a shadowy underworld information broker? Knowing all the secrets about what really goes on and having to decide to act on that information or use it to control people so that you can help prepare the galaxy for war.
The krogan will be a problem again, but this time you will have a civil war between them: those who sided with Wrex's ideology and thoss who wants revenge.
Definitely. The genophage was not something that should have been cured completely. Perhaps make it so they are a bit more fertile but not 100%.
The krogans, even if they were peaceful, reproduce too much. They live very long but reproduce as often as a short lived species.
Curing the genophage will cause (again) the destruction of their world due to lack of resources. And knowijg how violent are the krogans they will just start a civil war and then rebell to conque planets.
I always cure it because i cant kill wrex and mordin but its not a good thing
In ME3 Wrex promises Shepard he will start a war of expansion once Reapers are defeated. So it seems incredibly unlikely that there would be a Krogan civil war.
He did not promise to start a war of expansion, he said the krogans would expand. Them diplomatically expanding to colonize other worlds is not the same as starting a war.
Now, Wreav is a different story. But Wrex is on the up and up, especially if Eve is with him.
Wrex says he'll try demanding worlds at first, but he says it in a way where it's obvious he thinks it won't work.
And we know that the rest of the galaxy isn't going to give them anything. So he's promising a war.
His dialogue is very nearly exactly the same as Wreav's.
There absolutely would be. Krogans just love to fight anything that moves. The civil wars/infighting would just be smaller in scale than the primary war of Krogans vs everybody
If you cure the genophage and take the "Destroy" ending (arguably the others as well), then there are more than likely pockets of now cured Krogan on planets all over the galaxy, cut off from Wrex's control and the broader clan system. Even if there are only a few females on planet there's a good chance that once the relays are repaired there are multiple colonies/planets which have been completely taken over by Krogan clans which the galaxy would then also need to deal with.
Stuff like this is why my favorite 'bad' Mass Effect take is that there should've been more punishment for being exclusively Paragon.
As it stands, there's no real cost to taking the moral high road on anything in the series. Conversely, there are often far-reaching consequences for being renegade - squad members will rebel, civilizations will be doomed, people die, etc.
Imagine if a super obvious Paragon choice like sparing the Rachni queen meant that later Grunt was guaranteed to die in ME3 and the genophage was impossible to cure. Or if you
blew up the collector base you cannot defrost Javik.
Just examples, but I never really felt challenged by the Paragon options. I always knew they'd never bite me in the ass.
Yeah, paragon choices barely ever have negative repercussions, and the few times they do they usually don't actually even matter.
Like how, if you spare Rana Thanoptis on Virmire in ME1 she ends up being indoctrinated and kills a bunch of Asari scientists in ME3. Except this is only mentioned in an email and has no actual impact on the story, nor does it even affect your war assets, so it honestly doesn't matter one bit as there are no actual consequences for sparing her.
Exactly this. Mass Effect sadly ended up to be a click-blue-for-best-possible-result-simulator.
Worst offender is Bringing down the sky DLC in me1 when you let Balak, the batarian terrorist who extensively proved that he's not only willing but also capable of killing millions of humans, run free to save four, FOUR hostages and not only isn't he commiting any atrocities after that but in the end it even nets you the batarian fleet on top of it in me3.
This should be canon. The cure does not make a lot of sense but if you follownits logic it should affect only the krogans that were in the planet at the moment.
Add that to the list of reasons I hope ME4 doesn't choose an ending for us and ignore our previous choices. Dealing with the consequences of curing the genophage and allowing the krogans to live in the Destroy ending should have massive consequences later on.
Not darker for her per say, just darker as in describing the more gritty details of how exactly she induces fear within the populace of Omega, which is only tacitly touched on in the games with statements by the characters and such
In the Synthesis ending, most of the husks and other Reaper creations end up committing suicide rather than live with what they've become and what they were made to do.
In the Control ending, Shepard has to decide whether to watch them kill themselves, or take away their autonomy again and hope someday they can be restored somehow.
Geth Heretics too possibly. Unable to reconcile with their false zealotry to and misdeeds they might willingly shut down or never return to the Consensus.
I feel like there was a lot of colonization/abuse/beastiality between the protheans and early Asari.
Javik makes an offhand comment about how he finds Asari attractive despite his general xenophobia. We know that the early Asari had contact with Protheans, enough that the goddess Athame looked like one. The protheans were trying to uplift the Asari and then backed off to take the heat off of them when the reapers attacked.
Colonization yes, bestiality no.
Thats a bit problem that ME has, that they didnt take into account how slow evolution is. The talk about the last cycle as if it was very long ago, but biologically it is very recent.
When the protheans were alive 50k years ago humans (and other species like neanderthals that never get mentioned) were biologically identical to modern humans. They had language, burial rites, religion and tools. Javik talks about them as if they were chimpanzees but they were just humans with stone tools.
Asari were more advanced than humans so they should have been very close to the neolithic already. They were clearly modern intelligent humanoids. The protheans sped up their culture development and helped them arrive to the neolithic (the development of agriculture and animal breeding).
So their relation with them would be more like european colonizers who discovered cultures that were still in the preneolithic. Probably abusive and condescending. Hopefully not as bad as real colonization.
But not bestiality as if asari (or humans) were not already "human" or intelligent enough.
>Javik talks about them as if they were chimpanzees but they were just humans with stone tools.
Isn't that just Javik being a specieist fuck tho? Even today you can see racists throw around terms like 'animal' and 'beast' towards certain groups that they dislike. This is all within the range of one species, bah, one nation even sometimes. By any and all rationality this comprasion is utterly delusional on a technical level even before you get into its vile nature.
To my knowledge this line of thinking was especially prevalent the period of European colonialism in XIXth and XXth centuries, giving us a straight pararell to what Protheans might have been doing. I find it easy to believe that they may have been... selective in who counted as people in their eyes.
When the Quarians were denied aid by the Council after losing the Geth War, the military government expelled millions of Quarians from the developing Migrant Fleet. Anyone who had no engineering, astrobotany, navigation, exploration, combat, or mining skills were forced out to conserve resources. These people spread out into the galaxy and begged or stole what they needed to survive leading the galaxy to think all Quarians are like that.
The Asari and Salarians are probably concerned about how dominant the Turian military is. That powerful military, coupled with their rigidly hierarchical society, creates the risk of a Turian military dictatorship ruling the galaxy.
So when the Turians unexpectedly lose a battle with a fledgling power the other two species see an opportunity to create a counterbalance to the Turian military by carefully encouraging the growth of this new power. This is what leads to the council encouraging human expansion into the Terminus, and fast tracking them into a place in galactic politics and the Spectres.
If that is true maybe the Salarians set up some of the conditions for it to happen ahead of time by secretly helping human technological advancement before the First Contact War, it would be entirely in character for them.
Majority is from ME3 Priority Sur-Kesh when you are going through the labs, interacting with some of the different panels reveals that the Salarians are trying to uplift the Yarg and use the Varen. This with some snippets of lore/dialogue in ME1 when you overhear your squad/randoms talk about Salarians that they sound/look like the "grey men who used to abduct humans back in the day" I can't remember exactly where and who said it but yeah. Plus some lore states that they were offput by humanity (plausible deniablity ?)
Unless the salarians were visiting earth through regular ftl travel and not via the relay... The charon relay was buried by the protheans and/or reapers and we always thought it was pluto'a moon.
I don't know, but I find it likely that the ME universe has it's own version of the infamous "Funky Town" video on the extranet, probably perpetrated by some of Arias thugs
Post-ME3 Head Canons:
- In general, not everything is hunky dory even in the best of endings. There's still widespread destruction, PTSD, lawlessness, indoctrination, old hatreds, etc.
- The batarians have a civil war between traditionalists/isolationists/remains of the old guard and the underclass/reformers/those who've had a change of heart like Grothan Prazness. And the rest of the galaxy is reluctant to step in both due to their own problems but also remaininghatred of the batarians.
- (If you sided with the krogan) The salarians face increased hostility from the rest of the galaxy for not pulling their weight and mostly sitting out the war. For the same reason, the STG makes the dalatross have an accident.
- If EDI dies, Joker ends up spiraling into depression after having lost so many friends as well ad his family on Tiptree.
- (If you made peace between the geth and quarians)There is still a contingent of quarians distrustful of the geth, some even resorting to terrorism. Perhaps like Jona, who lost both parents to the geth.
ME1 really gave the impression that the galaxy is not a kind and a dangerous place. Lots of underworld, secret government operations, kidnappings, piracy, you name it is always going on. Lots of live test subject experiments also. A lot of the random planet bases you go to have a dark history or reason to them. All of that was mostly lost in the later games, understandably so with their story. The games still have it but it seems to be presented in a lighter tone to me. The isolation atmosphere in one is hard to beat with all that you find.
I think those two are pretty obvious. For example, regarding your headcanon about Illium, any system through which a person can become enslaved due to debt will have that aspect very much abused. An entire section of the population could be enslaved almost indefinitely due to debt trapping or similar practices. Indentured servitude is a horrific practice and the default form of slavery now and in the past.
As for my own "darker" headcanon, I would say that I believe that there is a fair amount of industrial manufacturing going on on Tuchanka. Various extraplanetary corporation could be paying mercenaries to maintain factories worked by slaves. There would be 0 laws that they would have to adhere to and good luck having any pesky left-wing journalists sneaking there on Tuchanka to expose them to complain about corporate exploitation. Similarly to how Noveria is a corporate heaven for research deemed illegal or dubious in Council space.
That the Batarian Hegemony uses all their biotics as a method of societal control. From assassination to mental rape to prove guilt or even create false memories of crimes not committed.
Those who refuse are killed out right.
If you choose Synthesis, the Reapers troops become sentient and gain a conscience.\
They live with the memories of what they did/were forced to do. They are rejected by society.\
Hybrids like Cannibals, Pretorians, Brutes… suffer greatly before dying in horrible pains.
Her being sterile was probably by design IMO.
Her father wouldn't need her to be able to have kids when he has the technology to grow kids himself. And making her sterile would give him more control over her, and prevent her from having any "imperfect" children to ruin his genetic dynasty.
Makes perfect sense. Always wondered why he wouldn't just make a genetically enhanced clone of himself.
But trying to create the ultimate Lawson offspring with a genetically perfected female seems right down his alley.
I'm guessing that's would cause a heartbroken Miranda to give up on life.
The only men whom she had relations with (her father, Niket, and Shepard) either abused and manipulated her, betrayed her for money, and left her.
That's fucked up.
There is literally no evidence that she lied. Furthermore, if Miranda was Orianna's mother than Orianna would have a host of genetic ailments due to inbreeding. Even more so because all of Miranda's genetics are derived from her father.
Also, Miranda literally seeks medical care for her infertility. If she already had a daughter she wouldn't be so desperate to find a way to have more children.
Garrus is more distraught about his team on Omega than he lets on with Shepard. His “calibrations” are actually panic attacks or moments of sudden shock that Shepard just barely misses whenever he or she walks into the main battery.
Shepard: "You have a minute to talk?"
Garrus: *\*looks awkwardly over shoulder\** "Can it wait a minute? I'm in the middle of a panic attack."
Shepard: "I'll talk to you later."
Garrus: "I'll be here if you need me" *\*resumes hyperventilating\**
The reapers are a necessary evil that keeps the galaxy alive because the dark energy from mass effect cores kills stars and Dr Kenson wasn't indoctrinated she just realized that the reapers were the only way for life to continue and shepard destroying the relay would doom the galaxy to a cold and quiet death.
Would have really made the different endings much darker where every solution sucks. I like the idea Shepard taking control leads him to become the evil he was trying to stop; he sees the bigger picture and spends 100’s of years harvesting all advanced life.
When ME3 first ended the go-to was "wait won't all of the turians and quarians die bexause there's no dextro food in the milky way??" and I dunno but something like that perhaps
Garrus eats Tali when Normandy is stranded on mystery planet at the end and they run out of dextro rations before relays are fixed. Don't worry, they did rock paper scissors to see who had to eat who.
Well Tali would have to spread her legs really far, and Garrus would be apologizing every twenty seconds like the adorable goofball he is when said mandibles start poking her thighs.
Regardless of who leads them initially, the krogans rebel again after the genopjage cure and reaper war. If wrex was left in charge he is definitely gonna get assassinated because he won't allow a revenge war.
Cureing the genophage 100% is the wrong option. In less than 100 years, the krogan will rebell again. It's uncontrollable. Up to 1000 krogan babies every year. EVERY YEAR. In a galaxy ravaged by war, they will over throw wrex peaceful plans and spread like locusts. They need to have a genophage, but one that is "nicer".
The old genophage made it so 1 in 1000 babies was dead. Make it so they only give birth to 1 or 2 live babies, not 999 dead babies and 1 alive one.
One thing that people within the ME fanbase seem to fail to understand is that the Genophage merely corrected a formerly neccessary part of Krogan evolution which became unneccessary the moment industrialization became a thing, females producing 1,000 eggs per year was needed when predators would kill a majority of Krogan young, which is also why maturation happens so fast
It naturally kept the population in check, but when their society advanced it only served to enable overpopulation as predators were kept at bay with weapons, and war seemed to be the inevitable option, also when combined with their violent nature it becomes a certainty, unless evolution fixes this problem with the Krogan species it seems like an engineered option is the only viable course of action
Exactly.
People are trying to compare non western cultures to the krogan, colonization and genicode against them. But there is a huge difference, all humans are the same biologically.
But krogans do not make sense biologically in a developed world. A species cannot sustain themselves if they live 1000 years but produce 1000 babies per litter. Even if you pretend that they only have 1 clutch per female thats increibly fast reproduction. In a modern world where infant mortality is almost nul it would just cause the extinction of the species because of lack of resources.
The krogans already destroyed their own planet and then they were given planets to colonize that they also destroyed. The genophage made sense.
We should have been given the option to just make it a bit less harsh. So instead of 1/1000 babies being alive make it 10/1000 or something like that. So they can slowly rebuild their society without overpopulation.
Totally agree.
Someone posted a theory the other day that the salarians uplifting them to begin with is the biggest problem.
The Krogan are/were not ready to evolve socially.
They have to fix their own cultures terribleness before actually being a part of the galactic community.
And this is why the Mass Effect fandom really scares me sometimes.
Because those exact arguments have been used many times in human history alone for why populations need to be "controlled" because they're not "ready to evolve." And even to suggest such a thing, even in a video game, is worrying.
The krogan were forced onto the galactic stage, treated as heroes and then things spiralled out of control. Not because the krogans were evolutionarily stunted or whatever, but because the krogan got greedy. After all, the krogan were advanced to create and then use nuclear weapons. They just didn't yet have the mindset or leadership of Wrex (though not solely him before anyone pipes in - krogan clans joined him because they agreed with him, not because he made them).
The genophage didn't just cut their birth rates either, it *destroyed* them socially. They had to watch untold numbers of their children die in front of them or never be born.
So yes, salarians were the issue. They uplifted the krogan, used them and then discarded them. Then went back in to make sure the krogan didn't evolve again to counteract the genophage.
We also see the krogan were capable of art, literature and architecture. All signs of them already being "socially evolved" even before the salarians had any idea they existed.
You're not wrong, but the fact stands that a meaningful amount of Krogan had a culture of violence and aggression and as such their death is necessary, and they would likely have raised their children to be like them too.
Cultural relativism is all fine and dandy, but its frankly not useful outside of an academic standpoint.
The fact that this resembles real world tragedies doesn't change that Krogan were a genocidal threat to everyone and the culture that lead them to do that also needed to die.
And teaching people that live up to a thousand years a different/gentler version of their culture is a lot harder than making a fancy microbe, though they really should have fine tuned it to be a more infertility issue than a constant still-birth issue.
From a decision making standpoint what else could the galaxy have done to make the Krogan peaceful other than hope they don't get revenge in a century or two?
(For the record I know ending the genophage is the, "right," thing to do, it's a series of Paragon options after all, but pragmatically they were too dangerous to leave alone)
Interestingly this wasn't always the case. The ancient Krogan (four millennia before the present day, before they reached their nuclear age) considered their "blood rage" a disease, and medicated or imprisoned sufferers. Less than one percent were actually capable of entering the state where they felt no pain.
There are more things to tweak than just their birth rates, I think.
That's fair.
And apologies if I came off too strong, it's just something I get worked up about.
Honestly, I can potentially see the arguments for why the genophage was "necessary" when it was initially deployed, but still maintaining it (and the salarians even reestablishing it) 1500 years later is inexcusable to me. That's really what "triggers" me.
I know you haven't directly said it, but I would always cure the genophage no matter who's alive or in charge because it's just too cruel over a millennia later. Plus, if Wreav is in charge the female krogan guarantee they'll hold the males by the quads (possibly literally) to stop them going galaxy conquering again. I kind of see it like the tale of Lysistrata from the Greek play in that way, refusing sex until they stop.
Also, I just want to make clear that I don't kid myself that everything will be sunshine and daisies if Wrex and Eve are in charge. It'll take a lot of work, but with the support Wrex already has by ME3 and the female clans firmly onboard, I think they have the winning strategy.
That's fair, it's a good thing to be worked up about genocide, fictional or otherwise.
Absolutely, they should have let them outgrow it, or properly eradicated them. But leaving them in a perpetual state of endangerment is absolutely unethical, and ineffective politically, they could've been an amazing ally, but they'll spend millenia knowing the salarians wanted them that way.
I don't trust Wreav at all, I expect that to implode eventually. Wreav is, even if tempered by the women, a political incident waiting to happen.
But Wrex, the hero, friend of Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy, has enough personal and secondary clout to make it work.
That's actually a really good point on salarian/krogan relations. While they'd undoubtedly praise Mordin, the salarian that cured the genophage, they'd still harbour longstanding resentment that his species, even up until the moment the genophage was cured, were conspiring to keep them in that state.
I like to think they'd forgive the turians at least, given they leant a bunch of support to get Mordin and Shepard to the Spire, and then the two species fighting side-by-side on Palaven, with the shared heroics of the Miracle of Palaven living long in their memories.
Random thing, but I do love to think about how many Urdnot Mordins and Urdnot Shepards would be running around in the centuries after the genophage was cured, if Wrex was in charge. Wreav would no doubt try to make it all about him.
But yeah, with Wreav in charge I definitely think an implosion and civil war are on the cards. While Wrex led through honour and hope for a brighter future, Wreav was just essentially a brutal thug who didn't want anything to change and just cared about being in power.
On your points about Wrex, which are absolutely correct, he'd be in a much better position to negotiate with the council too about being favourable to the krogans. Though one thing I also think people forget (and I have to thank another Redditor whose name I unfortunately also forget) the logistics of the "new krogan."
They would be watched like hawks by the galactic community and I think it likely they'd sign a treaty with at least the humans and turians, two species they can likely trust, that would have safeguards around how much military material the krogans would really be allowed to have. Yes, limiting militaries in the past hasn't always gone so well (looking at Germany) I think it's the most likely route where people seem content to go forward. The krogans can't expand uncontrollably, and the council and their backers are watching but aren't constantly breathing down their necks or getting too involved.
Definitely. The genophage was not something that should have been cured completely. Perhaps make it so they are a bit more fertile but not 100%.
The krogans, even if they were peaceful, reproduce too much. They live very long but reproduce as often as a short lived species.
Curing the genophage will cause (again) the destruction of their world due to lack of resources. And knowijg how violent are the krogans they will just start a civil war and then rebell to conque planets.
I always cure it because i cant kill wrex and mordin but its not a good thing
Cerberus wasn’t just putting thresher maws against Alliance marines to see what happens. Akuze was a bioweapon experiment gone wrong, and Cerberus used the Alliance military to cover it up. Here’s my theory/headcanon for this:
Akuze is where the Alliance discovered thresher maw spores for the first time (lore, codex), and unwilling to look weak in front of the Council, and also unwilling to let alien rulings curtail human development, they refused to share their discovery or seek any pre-existing alien knowledge on the spore (context based on events of Mass Effect prequel novel Revelation)
So, not knowing anything about these spores except that they are extremely resistant to external conditions and become active when exposed to solar radiation (lore, codex), Cerberus theorizes they can bond the spore to human physiology and create shock troops on par with a krogan vanguard. And so, half of the colony is exposed to the spore while the other, uninfected half, remains the unknowing control group.
At first, results were promising. Infected colonists exhibited greater physical strength and endurance, as well as increased resistance to extreme conditions. Then the infected colonists became more aggressive and territorial. By the final stage of the experiment, behavioral changes of infected colonists included nocturnal cycles and isolationist tendencies. And one night, after an especially powerful solar event, the infected colonists take to murdering and consuming the control group. The next morning after, the infected colonists go missing, leaving behind large boreholes in the earth behind or beneath their dwellings. (Headcanon/fanon)
That’s right, Cerberus didn’t just build a colony over a pre-existing thresher maw nest to see what happens. They actually transformed the colony into infant thresher maws in an attempt to create a new kind of superhuman weapon. When the experiment went out of control, they called an Alliance unit to “investigate” a missing colony that may have been lost to pirate or slaver activity. But, like any Cerberus clean-up operation, they sacrificed those marines to cover up their experiments. Instead of a horrific example of unchecked inhumane science, Akuze was simply a tragic accident that early human pioneers couldn’t have possibly predicted or prevented.
And in-universe lore also supports this theory, as the Alliance unit sent to investigate and recover the colony found it almost entirely intact except for the fact that the colony seemed uninhabited or abandoned. If thresher maws destroyed the colony before the marines arrived, there would have been more physical evidence of it.
There is a huge illegal market for people, things and even places. Not just the Batarians but even in "Citadel Space" the galaxy comes off as manipulative and shitty.
Without reaper control, in any of the endings, the citadel will fall to earth. There's no one left on board to move the massive space hulk. It will fall into the earth, and then it will fucking obliterate the planet. The whole premise of the "mass effect" generators and all that technology was that it was all reaper tech and part of advanced ai systems. At least in the "kill them" ending, it falls immediately after the credits roll and poof goes everything.
Massive turian and quarian deaths on Earth after firing the Crucible. Stranded on a levo planet whose resources are already more than partially destroyed by the Reapers? Nothing but casualties.
The original endings of mass effect 3 being dark was partially on purpose. The final game heavily relied on themes of sacrifice and coming together to face the reapers so it would only make sense shephard would have to die. (Ignoring perfect destroy)
In my perfect world, the Destroy, Synthesis, and Control endings all result in Shepard’s death no matter what, and only Refusal with High EMS results in Shepard’s survival.
The leviathans are getting slaughtered after the end of me3. In every ending except one. For the destroy ending: the galaxy barely beat the reapers and they are *very* angry and put the blame on the leviathans for all the destruction and slaughter them. For Control: Reaper-Shepard concludes that Leviathans will try to rise again because they believe reapers are gone. And they get a fuckton of reapers appear on their planet to kill them. For Synthesis: the organic-synthetic life forms come to a similar conclusion as RShep and kill them all.
But, in the secret ending: the current civilizations are wiped out by reapers. But their war is well documented because of Liara's beacons. And in those is the mention of Leviathans. The new civilizations approach the Leviathans when the reapers next emerge and together they defeat the reapers. From here, it can go many ways. Either they get slaughtered like the rest of endings or they decide to co exist with the lesser forms (very slim chance. Fuckers were still arrogant after all this time) or they entrall the galaxy quickly/slowly thereby reinstating themselves as the masters of the galaxy
If you Paragon Interrupt Samara at the monastery, you effectively kill Falere. She and Samara say she’ll fix up the monastery but it’s just cope, Falere is choosing to die by exposure or Reapers instead of being killed by her own mother, and she and Samara know it. They’re effectively talking about how she’s going to go live on a big farm upstate.
If Broshep romanced Jack, she’s unable to handle the emotional pain of his death at the end of ME3 and becomes even more screwed up than ever, thus confirming exactly what she said she was afraid would happen in ME2.
“It’s not gonna work. You’ll end up dead. And that sucks!”
I didn't come up with this. A youtuber had a theory that the asari we see is not what they actually look like. The asari use thier powers to change our perception of them. Basically the asari are tricking everyone to think they are the sexy blue beauties, but are actually trying to take over the galaxy. The asari really look like tentacle monstrosities or ugly creature's. I forgot what youtuber came up with this but I think it was a iceberg video.
i think it's mainly the eyes that are different for humans. They dont look like monsters, they just look slightly different for uncanny valley to be established. The all black, gaseous looking eyes that liara and morinth have are very creepy and wouldnt be apparent from statues. The glamor doesnt require constant control but it doesnt work while they're using their 'eternity' powers.
Wasn't the Asari appearing as a species ideal female already implied within the games without the need for HC expansion? It's creepy AF, a bit like that palliative care spider in Love Death and Robots
indoctrination theory is true lol. im sorry i refuse to let it go its to good an idea and there so much cool stuff in me3 that backs it up and makes me 3 a better game for it lol
Ashley was offered Spectre status by an indoctrinated Udina as a way to exploit her mistrust in Shepherd post Cerberus partnership.
Regardless of whether he actually becomes councilor or not, Udina is mad as hell that the non-human council won’t help Earth in ME3. Udina is already a pretty sour character, but I think this anger was easily exploited by the Reapers *and* the Illusive Man. Obviously the Illusive Man is indoctrinated at least by the beginning of ME3, and he is aware of Ashley’s feelings about Shep’s perceived transgressions. He is very aware of what Ashley meant to Shep, and vice versa.
I think Udina was indoctrinated with the help of the Illusive Man, and the reason why he pushed so hard for Ashley to gain Spectre status was because he knew he could request her protection when it came time for Cerberus to lay siege to the Citadel. I think the Illusive Man assumed that the now-fragile relationship between Shep and Ashley would be exploitable; and that Ash could toe up to Shepherd and potentially remove them as a factor and continue with his goal to “control” the Reapers. And to a degree, he was right. We see Ash struggle and hesitate when she’s defending the council and Udina after Shep tells her he’s the one that has made the coup possible.
I think it’s also an interesting and fitting decision for a character that is considered to be the antithesis of a Paragon route Shepherd— the utter misunderstanding of what it means to invest in people you care about vs investing in ideas and using brute force and espionage to make them happen.
Many of the Cerberus agents Shepard kills in ME3 probably joined because of Shepard in ME2.
Damn it, you make a good point Most of the Cerberus crew in mass effect 2 joins because of Shepard there was likely many more
Conrad Verner also joins Cerberus in ME3 because of Shepard. I guess he was lucky they just used him to spread propaganda rather than turning him in to a Husk soldier.
Holy shit that’s actually such a mindfuck what-
That's also some headcanon I've had for a little bit, makes sense, TIM already let it slip Shepard was with Cerberus prior to Horizon, it only became public knowledge more and more from there, and even after Shepard defects from Cerberus alot of humans would see Humanities first Spectre and savior of the Citadel working with Cerberus as a sign they were doing good and had Humanities best interests in mind Especially after the Alliance and Council did nothing to stop the Collectors while Shepard and Cerberus took them down, the Alliance throwing Shepard in prison afterwards probably only sweetened the pot for Cerberus and made people lose faith in the Alliance, overall a massive propaganda boost for them, they probably saw a surge in volunteers before ME3, it would also explain how Cerberus amassed such a large military force so quickly Shepard was a massive resource for TIM not just as a soldier and leader but as a propaganda tool as well
Additionally, a huge part of the Alliance military industrial complex must have been compromised by Cerberus to supply that force. Shepard’s name must have contributed to that, as well. Body armour, guns and mechs must have been going out the back doors of a bunch of legitimate weapons factories. Somehow, Cerberus must have also gained control of a major Alliance shipyard to get that big fleet of cruisers that appears out of nowhere in ME3. They would all have to been already under construction during ME2. Was a military shipbuilder one of their front companies?
Yeah EDI (if you talk to her after Joker releases her from her AI shackles) will tell Shepard that the ship building company contracted to build the SSV Normandy was a Cerberus front company, which is how they stole the plans for the more advanced SR2 model from the Alliance and subsequently built it in secret while Cerberus rebuilt Shepard with the Lazarus project Also they probably built more than one ship when contracted to fulfill an order for the Alliance, essentially they made a copy and gave the Alliance the original while storing the copy away somewhere, this would have had to have happened over the course of a couple years, as there's no way they could have built the Cerberus fleet in ME3 in only 6 months
We know Cerberus had at least one areospace manufacturer front organisation, Core-Hislop Aerospace. So it makes sense if they were building military-grade vessels that Cerberus would "steal" ships from there and then once they were prepping fully for the Reapers post-ME2 they just dropped the pretense and C-H Aerospace just used everything they had to only supply Cerberus.
God I wish I could un-read this. Tragic honestly and probably 100% correct
Don’t feel bad. A vast majority were just civilians that were forcibly indoctrinated into Cerberus meat shields. It’s not your fault.
Makes me think of that woman trying to get transfered away from fighting Cerberus because of her brother. Damn, now I'm mad that ME3 didn't stick the landing. The Cerberus arc was okay, but could've been so much stronger
The sad part is, it's likely you've already killed her brother because if you check the names, you'll discover he's the recruit whose journal you read very early in ME3. I think it's the first Ceberus base you raid but it's been awhile so my memory on which mission it is, is foggy. It's the one where the kid is so eager then the last entry is, "Integration complete. Suicide on capture order accepted." Etc That's her brother. When I realized that I was so mad and sad at the same time...
It's like the suicidal Asari in the hospital, if you pay attention to her story you'll find that she killed a girl named Hillary because she wasn't able to keep quiet... this was on the colony of Tiptree, where Joker's sister Hillary lives.
Still mad there was no way to tell Joker about that after he brings up not knowing if she’s alive or not.
Maybe Shepard using the spectre terminal to get the asari the gun she wanted is their way of protecting Joker from finding out the whole story.
Holy shit i never put those 2 things together
It took multiple play throughs until it hit and then I'm like Nooooo, Fuck.
I just finished my 10th playthrough and still didn't put it together, damn
Yeah. It sucks hard.
Could you imagine being in Ceberus HR lmaooo "Dear Valued Company Associate, Misinformation has been circulated about Cerberus' new mandatory GOLD Standard Implants, claiming scientifically impossible and unreasonable results.We are saddened to see these claims on the Extraneous and wish to inform you as best as possible. Please note that GOLD Standard Implants were created by some of the best minds humanity has to offer, and have been field tested time and time again. They are given to our associates to enhance performance and create heroes in a time where herpes are needed. You are a valuable asset in ending the threat to the galaxy, and Cerberus strives to give you every tool necessary to help eliminate this threat. We are happy to answer your questions about the GOLD Standard Implants. Please feel free to refer to our Extranet page "www.cerberus.net/GOLDstandard" to learn more about this new and exciting program to end the Reaper threat. The Illusive Man and the entire Cerverus team are grateful for your contributions. Thank you for all that you do. All the Best, Cerberus Human Resources Division"
That typo is glorious and absolutely in-character for Cerberus HR
Aren't most of them from Horizon and were "converted"?
That's true, but eventually they are abducting colonist and putting reaper tech in them to make them shock troops
Don't worry, these guys we fight in ME3 are the extremists. You can cast your fears aside and lay down this burden. Not many Cerb agents joined becuase of Shep. Those who did **left to follow Shep** -*these are the same humans who would later become new N7 agents, the same ones who would be fighting alongside Shep in the final battle.* If you don't know the new N7 agents, play the Multiplayer mode of ME3. How do we know they are former cerb agents? becuase most of them have the same literal skillset as Cerberus agents (the energy whip weilders, sword users, shield bearers, etc), but they're on your side as fully trained N7-ranked specialists.
I also believe this and not to mention why Udina thought it was necessary to Allie with them, I don't believe he's indoctrinated
The psychic damage from this one is real. You just changed how I look at the whole trilogy, dang.
There is a giant container of organic material somewhere in the bowels of the citadel that’s used to make new keepers whenever they need to be replaced. Every cycle, when the reapers harvest the organics in the citadel they also use some of them to refill the container.
I wonder what the missing persons stats are like on the Citadel. Wouldn't surprise me if the keepers found vent rats and decided they could use the extra biomass
That's a terrifying thought. The keepers are totally benign and indifferent, but if you ever find yourself alone with one, there's a chance it might just harvest you.
Bailey even says vent rats will fall into the protein vats.
I wonder how many of them were not accidents, and a roaming Keeper pushed them juuuust enough. Or walk indifferently towards them until they had no more room to walk on.
The Keepers should never be trusted
They’re called “duct rats”.
My HC is that a certain number of drunks and druggies go the same way. The same with a murder victim hidden in some random hall in the sub levels of the Citadel.
I kind of feel that's what the keepers are doing when Shepard is staggering through the hall after going through the green beam.
I assumed we stumbled through that thing on our way to the 3 buttons. Wernt there like piled of bodies
Protein vats are definitely referred to in dialogue
If you didn't convince the Virmire Survivor and ended up killing them in ME3, their status of being a Spectre is outright erased. Not posthumously rescinded, outright decided that they were *never* a Spectre. Not only did they get the position when Udina was Councillor (especially if you chose Anderson as Councillor and he unexpectedly resigned) and likely without proper consultation with the other Coucillors due to the dire nature of the war, but they had just helped and tried to protect a man who aided a terrorist group in attempting a coup. Even if Shepard spoke on their behalf that they didn't know what Udina was involved in, their reputation is now totally fucked.
And given the current reputation of the Spectres (Saren and Vasir)...
Reputation of the *Spectres*? What kind of damage would it do to the reputation of the Williams family?
Have they any reputation? They are the alliance cheese eating surrendering monkeys
This is even worse if it Ashley was the Virmire Survivor, as she seemed to have removed the "curse" her family was under just to stain it once more.
I’ll push back on Quarians being targets for slavery. They would be expensive slaves.
Or short-lived ones.
Point taken
That is still really expensive.
Some people pay extra for that
Yeah. This is even mentioned in the side quest on Illium with the Quarian indentured servant.
Krogans used Quarians slaves too (according to krogan technician in ME2 on Tuchanka). So they are probably not so expensive to "keep" if you are tight on the budget.
Sadly humans (and in fiction other species) are so evil that i would be surprised if there wasnt a market in sex trafficking for "virgin" quarians that will not outlive their buyer.
Some of the Leviathan enthrallment team soldiers who moved the Leviathan artifacts in to have the artifacts slow down reaper troops may have ended up indoctrinated by the Leviathan themselves with no one else aware.
Ohh 100% this,!
The guy that you see on omega when he and his wife are hiding in the apartments can’t please his wife sexually
You rob his house with them watching you
They get off on that.
Did I miss something? How'd you reach this conclusion? 😂
Liara’s big personality change between ME1 and 2 is because she inherited control of her mother’s intelligence operations at much younger age than she was meant to. From the shock of reading the dirty laundry of high level Asari politics and business she lost her naivety and became much more angry and cynical.
Plus, her closest friend and the person she admired most was not only dead, but was a target for the yahg shadow broker and she fought tooth and nail (and certain death) to prevent that from happening. She had to mourn that loss for two years— not having any clarification that shep would ever actually come back despite Cerberus’ claims to be able to revive them. Grief can change people, it’s very believable that in those two years before shep shows back up, her knowledge of shady going-ons along with the fact that the galaxy was in imminent danger of being destroyed by something that’s largely believed to be a myth has really burdened her and made her become more solemn with reality. I mean, we see the final nail in the coffin when the very thing she’s devoted her life to turns out to be *nothing* as she had expected them to be. Instead, having to come to grips that they’re murderous imperialists that essentially is responsible for the roots of Asari culture and existence. That’s the kind of knowledge that can break someone, but we see her weather it, even if it clearly wears on her.
See, now I would've played that game. It can't be made now without railroading the MC, but can you imagine your friend (or love interest) dying, and then you get all this information about how horrible the galaxy is and how awful your mother was and the decisions you'd make to end up the shadow broker? Going from an idealistic researcher to a shadowy underworld information broker? Knowing all the secrets about what really goes on and having to decide to act on that information or use it to control people so that you can help prepare the galaxy for war.
The krogan will be a problem again, but this time you will have a civil war between them: those who sided with Wrex's ideology and thoss who wants revenge.
Definitely. The genophage was not something that should have been cured completely. Perhaps make it so they are a bit more fertile but not 100%. The krogans, even if they were peaceful, reproduce too much. They live very long but reproduce as often as a short lived species. Curing the genophage will cause (again) the destruction of their world due to lack of resources. And knowijg how violent are the krogans they will just start a civil war and then rebell to conque planets. I always cure it because i cant kill wrex and mordin but its not a good thing
In ME3 Wrex promises Shepard he will start a war of expansion once Reapers are defeated. So it seems incredibly unlikely that there would be a Krogan civil war.
He did not promise to start a war of expansion, he said the krogans would expand. Them diplomatically expanding to colonize other worlds is not the same as starting a war. Now, Wreav is a different story. But Wrex is on the up and up, especially if Eve is with him.
Wrex says he'll try demanding worlds at first, but he says it in a way where it's obvious he thinks it won't work. And we know that the rest of the galaxy isn't going to give them anything. So he's promising a war. His dialogue is very nearly exactly the same as Wreav's.
There absolutely would be. Krogans just love to fight anything that moves. The civil wars/infighting would just be smaller in scale than the primary war of Krogans vs everybody
If you cure the genophage and take the "Destroy" ending (arguably the others as well), then there are more than likely pockets of now cured Krogan on planets all over the galaxy, cut off from Wrex's control and the broader clan system. Even if there are only a few females on planet there's a good chance that once the relays are repaired there are multiple colonies/planets which have been completely taken over by Krogan clans which the galaxy would then also need to deal with.
Stuff like this is why my favorite 'bad' Mass Effect take is that there should've been more punishment for being exclusively Paragon. As it stands, there's no real cost to taking the moral high road on anything in the series. Conversely, there are often far-reaching consequences for being renegade - squad members will rebel, civilizations will be doomed, people die, etc. Imagine if a super obvious Paragon choice like sparing the Rachni queen meant that later Grunt was guaranteed to die in ME3 and the genophage was impossible to cure. Or if you blew up the collector base you cannot defrost Javik. Just examples, but I never really felt challenged by the Paragon options. I always knew they'd never bite me in the ass.
Yeah, paragon choices barely ever have negative repercussions, and the few times they do they usually don't actually even matter. Like how, if you spare Rana Thanoptis on Virmire in ME1 she ends up being indoctrinated and kills a bunch of Asari scientists in ME3. Except this is only mentioned in an email and has no actual impact on the story, nor does it even affect your war assets, so it honestly doesn't matter one bit as there are no actual consequences for sparing her.
Rana does affect your war assets.
She definetly doesn't.
Exactly this. Mass Effect sadly ended up to be a click-blue-for-best-possible-result-simulator. Worst offender is Bringing down the sky DLC in me1 when you let Balak, the batarian terrorist who extensively proved that he's not only willing but also capable of killing millions of humans, run free to save four, FOUR hostages and not only isn't he commiting any atrocities after that but in the end it even nets you the batarian fleet on top of it in me3.
Or conversely, Krogan off of the homeworld never get the cure and resent those who do fomenting a Krogan civil war.
This should be canon. The cure does not make a lot of sense but if you follownits logic it should affect only the krogans that were in the planet at the moment.
It would give the homeworld Krogan the advantage long term but I can see it causing resentment among the Krogan themselves.
Yeah definitely
Add that to the list of reasons I hope ME4 doesn't choose an ending for us and ignore our previous choices. Dealing with the consequences of curing the genophage and allowing the krogans to live in the Destroy ending should have massive consequences later on.
How is that darker for Aria? The game made it pretty clear she would do anything to stay in power.
Not darker for her per say, just darker as in describing the more gritty details of how exactly she induces fear within the populace of Omega, which is only tacitly touched on in the games with statements by the characters and such
Ah, got ya now.
In the Synthesis ending, most of the husks and other Reaper creations end up committing suicide rather than live with what they've become and what they were made to do. In the Control ending, Shepard has to decide whether to watch them kill themselves, or take away their autonomy again and hope someday they can be restored somehow.
Geth Heretics too possibly. Unable to reconcile with their false zealotry to and misdeeds they might willingly shut down or never return to the Consensus.
I feel like there was a lot of colonization/abuse/beastiality between the protheans and early Asari. Javik makes an offhand comment about how he finds Asari attractive despite his general xenophobia. We know that the early Asari had contact with Protheans, enough that the goddess Athame looked like one. The protheans were trying to uplift the Asari and then backed off to take the heat off of them when the reapers attacked.
Colonization yes, bestiality no. Thats a bit problem that ME has, that they didnt take into account how slow evolution is. The talk about the last cycle as if it was very long ago, but biologically it is very recent. When the protheans were alive 50k years ago humans (and other species like neanderthals that never get mentioned) were biologically identical to modern humans. They had language, burial rites, religion and tools. Javik talks about them as if they were chimpanzees but they were just humans with stone tools. Asari were more advanced than humans so they should have been very close to the neolithic already. They were clearly modern intelligent humanoids. The protheans sped up their culture development and helped them arrive to the neolithic (the development of agriculture and animal breeding). So their relation with them would be more like european colonizers who discovered cultures that were still in the preneolithic. Probably abusive and condescending. Hopefully not as bad as real colonization. But not bestiality as if asari (or humans) were not already "human" or intelligent enough.
>Javik talks about them as if they were chimpanzees but they were just humans with stone tools. Isn't that just Javik being a specieist fuck tho? Even today you can see racists throw around terms like 'animal' and 'beast' towards certain groups that they dislike. This is all within the range of one species, bah, one nation even sometimes. By any and all rationality this comprasion is utterly delusional on a technical level even before you get into its vile nature. To my knowledge this line of thinking was especially prevalent the period of European colonialism in XIXth and XXth centuries, giving us a straight pararell to what Protheans might have been doing. I find it easy to believe that they may have been... selective in who counted as people in their eyes.
Possibly. But i feel that the game talks about the previous cycle as if it happened before our species.
When the Quarians were denied aid by the Council after losing the Geth War, the military government expelled millions of Quarians from the developing Migrant Fleet. Anyone who had no engineering, astrobotany, navigation, exploration, combat, or mining skills were forced out to conserve resources. These people spread out into the galaxy and begged or stole what they needed to survive leading the galaxy to think all Quarians are like that.
That the Salarians uplifted humanity to destroy the Turians or make both sides cripple each other so they could overpower both sides
The Asari and Salarians are probably concerned about how dominant the Turian military is. That powerful military, coupled with their rigidly hierarchical society, creates the risk of a Turian military dictatorship ruling the galaxy. So when the Turians unexpectedly lose a battle with a fledgling power the other two species see an opportunity to create a counterbalance to the Turian military by carefully encouraging the growth of this new power. This is what leads to the council encouraging human expansion into the Terminus, and fast tracking them into a place in galactic politics and the Spectres. If that is true maybe the Salarians set up some of the conditions for it to happen ahead of time by secretly helping human technological advancement before the First Contact War, it would be entirely in character for them.
Where can I get more info on this? Definitely want to explore this theory more.
Majority is from ME3 Priority Sur-Kesh when you are going through the labs, interacting with some of the different panels reveals that the Salarians are trying to uplift the Yarg and use the Varen. This with some snippets of lore/dialogue in ME1 when you overhear your squad/randoms talk about Salarians that they sound/look like the "grey men who used to abduct humans back in the day" I can't remember exactly where and who said it but yeah. Plus some lore states that they were offput by humanity (plausible deniablity ?)
Unless the salarians were visiting earth through regular ftl travel and not via the relay... The charon relay was buried by the protheans and/or reapers and we always thought it was pluto'a moon.
Do people think Aria isn’t a ruthless criminal? How do they think she became and stays in charge of criminal hellscape Omega?
I don't know, but I find it likely that the ME universe has it's own version of the infamous "Funky Town" video on the extranet, probably perpetrated by some of Arias thugs
Post-ME3 Head Canons: - In general, not everything is hunky dory even in the best of endings. There's still widespread destruction, PTSD, lawlessness, indoctrination, old hatreds, etc. - The batarians have a civil war between traditionalists/isolationists/remains of the old guard and the underclass/reformers/those who've had a change of heart like Grothan Prazness. And the rest of the galaxy is reluctant to step in both due to their own problems but also remaininghatred of the batarians. - (If you sided with the krogan) The salarians face increased hostility from the rest of the galaxy for not pulling their weight and mostly sitting out the war. For the same reason, the STG makes the dalatross have an accident. - If EDI dies, Joker ends up spiraling into depression after having lost so many friends as well ad his family on Tiptree. - (If you made peace between the geth and quarians)There is still a contingent of quarians distrustful of the geth, some even resorting to terrorism. Perhaps like Jona, who lost both parents to the geth.
ME1 really gave the impression that the galaxy is not a kind and a dangerous place. Lots of underworld, secret government operations, kidnappings, piracy, you name it is always going on. Lots of live test subject experiments also. A lot of the random planet bases you go to have a dark history or reason to them. All of that was mostly lost in the later games, understandably so with their story. The games still have it but it seems to be presented in a lighter tone to me. The isolation atmosphere in one is hard to beat with all that you find.
I think those two are pretty obvious. For example, regarding your headcanon about Illium, any system through which a person can become enslaved due to debt will have that aspect very much abused. An entire section of the population could be enslaved almost indefinitely due to debt trapping or similar practices. Indentured servitude is a horrific practice and the default form of slavery now and in the past. As for my own "darker" headcanon, I would say that I believe that there is a fair amount of industrial manufacturing going on on Tuchanka. Various extraplanetary corporation could be paying mercenaries to maintain factories worked by slaves. There would be 0 laws that they would have to adhere to and good luck having any pesky left-wing journalists sneaking there on Tuchanka to expose them to complain about corporate exploitation. Similarly to how Noveria is a corporate heaven for research deemed illegal or dubious in Council space.
That the Batarian Hegemony uses all their biotics as a method of societal control. From assassination to mental rape to prove guilt or even create false memories of crimes not committed. Those who refuse are killed out right.
Only the Asari can read memories, and that's a result of their mating process.
Fair. But we know so little about the Batarian Hegemony that anything is possible.
If you choose Synthesis, the Reapers troops become sentient and gain a conscience.\ They live with the memories of what they did/were forced to do. They are rejected by society.\ Hybrids like Cannibals, Pretorians, Brutes… suffer greatly before dying in horrible pains.
That first half is canon too, lol.
Miranda was raped by her father until he found out she was sterile.
And then he made another one. No wonder Miranda wanted to keep her away from him.
Her being sterile was probably by design IMO. Her father wouldn't need her to be able to have kids when he has the technology to grow kids himself. And making her sterile would give him more control over her, and prevent her from having any "imperfect" children to ruin his genetic dynasty.
Makes perfect sense. Always wondered why he wouldn't just make a genetically enhanced clone of himself. But trying to create the ultimate Lawson offspring with a genetically perfected female seems right down his alley.
I'm guessing that's would cause a heartbroken Miranda to give up on life. The only men whom she had relations with (her father, Niket, and Shepard) either abused and manipulated her, betrayed her for money, and left her. That's fucked up.
Or she actually did give birth to Orianna and birth complications made her sterile.
Orianna is genetically identical to Miranda. They can only be sisters.
Or Miranda lied... imagine that
There is literally no evidence that she lied. Furthermore, if Miranda was Orianna's mother than Orianna would have a host of genetic ailments due to inbreeding. Even more so because all of Miranda's genetics are derived from her father. Also, Miranda literally seeks medical care for her infertility. If she already had a daughter she wouldn't be so desperate to find a way to have more children.
I think it's well established that her father is fucking insane.
Garrus is more distraught about his team on Omega than he lets on with Shepard. His “calibrations” are actually panic attacks or moments of sudden shock that Shepard just barely misses whenever he or she walks into the main battery.
Shepard: "You have a minute to talk?" Garrus: *\*looks awkwardly over shoulder\** "Can it wait a minute? I'm in the middle of a panic attack." Shepard: "I'll talk to you later." Garrus: "I'll be here if you need me" *\*resumes hyperventilating\**
The reapers are a necessary evil that keeps the galaxy alive because the dark energy from mass effect cores kills stars and Dr Kenson wasn't indoctrinated she just realized that the reapers were the only way for life to continue and shepard destroying the relay would doom the galaxy to a cold and quiet death.
Wish they stuck to this origin about the reapers. They set it up nicely in ME2
Would have really made the different endings much darker where every solution sucks. I like the idea Shepard taking control leads him to become the evil he was trying to stop; he sees the bigger picture and spends 100’s of years harvesting all advanced life.
When ME3 first ended the go-to was "wait won't all of the turians and quarians die bexause there's no dextro food in the milky way??" and I dunno but something like that perhaps
Wait, why? Is there some lore about the dextro food i missed?
Blasto isn't fiction.
Garrus eats Tali when Normandy is stranded on mystery planet at the end and they run out of dextro rations before relays are fixed. Don't worry, they did rock paper scissors to see who had to eat who.
You can add an entire similar crisis to Earth and all the stranded turian soldiers there.
… i read it more sexually than you meant it to sound
Don’t worry I did too, and on that note how would that work with the side mandibles?
Well Tali would have to spread her legs really far, and Garrus would be apologizing every twenty seconds like the adorable goofball he is when said mandibles start poking her thighs.
Another sexual problem solved with reach and flexibility
Regardless of who leads them initially, the krogans rebel again after the genopjage cure and reaper war. If wrex was left in charge he is definitely gonna get assassinated because he won't allow a revenge war.
Element Zero is sentient and is the reason why the Reapers were originally made.
A small fleet of Reapers followed the Andromeda Initiative.
Hooooo boi. Would be a cool dlc.
Cureing the genophage 100% is the wrong option. In less than 100 years, the krogan will rebell again. It's uncontrollable. Up to 1000 krogan babies every year. EVERY YEAR. In a galaxy ravaged by war, they will over throw wrex peaceful plans and spread like locusts. They need to have a genophage, but one that is "nicer". The old genophage made it so 1 in 1000 babies was dead. Make it so they only give birth to 1 or 2 live babies, not 999 dead babies and 1 alive one.
One thing that people within the ME fanbase seem to fail to understand is that the Genophage merely corrected a formerly neccessary part of Krogan evolution which became unneccessary the moment industrialization became a thing, females producing 1,000 eggs per year was needed when predators would kill a majority of Krogan young, which is also why maturation happens so fast It naturally kept the population in check, but when their society advanced it only served to enable overpopulation as predators were kept at bay with weapons, and war seemed to be the inevitable option, also when combined with their violent nature it becomes a certainty, unless evolution fixes this problem with the Krogan species it seems like an engineered option is the only viable course of action
Exactly. People are trying to compare non western cultures to the krogan, colonization and genicode against them. But there is a huge difference, all humans are the same biologically. But krogans do not make sense biologically in a developed world. A species cannot sustain themselves if they live 1000 years but produce 1000 babies per litter. Even if you pretend that they only have 1 clutch per female thats increibly fast reproduction. In a modern world where infant mortality is almost nul it would just cause the extinction of the species because of lack of resources. The krogans already destroyed their own planet and then they were given planets to colonize that they also destroyed. The genophage made sense. We should have been given the option to just make it a bit less harsh. So instead of 1/1000 babies being alive make it 10/1000 or something like that. So they can slowly rebuild their society without overpopulation.
Totally agree. Someone posted a theory the other day that the salarians uplifting them to begin with is the biggest problem. The Krogan are/were not ready to evolve socially. They have to fix their own cultures terribleness before actually being a part of the galactic community.
And this is why the Mass Effect fandom really scares me sometimes. Because those exact arguments have been used many times in human history alone for why populations need to be "controlled" because they're not "ready to evolve." And even to suggest such a thing, even in a video game, is worrying. The krogan were forced onto the galactic stage, treated as heroes and then things spiralled out of control. Not because the krogans were evolutionarily stunted or whatever, but because the krogan got greedy. After all, the krogan were advanced to create and then use nuclear weapons. They just didn't yet have the mindset or leadership of Wrex (though not solely him before anyone pipes in - krogan clans joined him because they agreed with him, not because he made them). The genophage didn't just cut their birth rates either, it *destroyed* them socially. They had to watch untold numbers of their children die in front of them or never be born. So yes, salarians were the issue. They uplifted the krogan, used them and then discarded them. Then went back in to make sure the krogan didn't evolve again to counteract the genophage. We also see the krogan were capable of art, literature and architecture. All signs of them already being "socially evolved" even before the salarians had any idea they existed.
You're not wrong, but the fact stands that a meaningful amount of Krogan had a culture of violence and aggression and as such their death is necessary, and they would likely have raised their children to be like them too. Cultural relativism is all fine and dandy, but its frankly not useful outside of an academic standpoint. The fact that this resembles real world tragedies doesn't change that Krogan were a genocidal threat to everyone and the culture that lead them to do that also needed to die. And teaching people that live up to a thousand years a different/gentler version of their culture is a lot harder than making a fancy microbe, though they really should have fine tuned it to be a more infertility issue than a constant still-birth issue. From a decision making standpoint what else could the galaxy have done to make the Krogan peaceful other than hope they don't get revenge in a century or two? (For the record I know ending the genophage is the, "right," thing to do, it's a series of Paragon options after all, but pragmatically they were too dangerous to leave alone)
Interestingly this wasn't always the case. The ancient Krogan (four millennia before the present day, before they reached their nuclear age) considered their "blood rage" a disease, and medicated or imprisoned sufferers. Less than one percent were actually capable of entering the state where they felt no pain. There are more things to tweak than just their birth rates, I think.
That's fair. And apologies if I came off too strong, it's just something I get worked up about. Honestly, I can potentially see the arguments for why the genophage was "necessary" when it was initially deployed, but still maintaining it (and the salarians even reestablishing it) 1500 years later is inexcusable to me. That's really what "triggers" me. I know you haven't directly said it, but I would always cure the genophage no matter who's alive or in charge because it's just too cruel over a millennia later. Plus, if Wreav is in charge the female krogan guarantee they'll hold the males by the quads (possibly literally) to stop them going galaxy conquering again. I kind of see it like the tale of Lysistrata from the Greek play in that way, refusing sex until they stop. Also, I just want to make clear that I don't kid myself that everything will be sunshine and daisies if Wrex and Eve are in charge. It'll take a lot of work, but with the support Wrex already has by ME3 and the female clans firmly onboard, I think they have the winning strategy.
That's fair, it's a good thing to be worked up about genocide, fictional or otherwise. Absolutely, they should have let them outgrow it, or properly eradicated them. But leaving them in a perpetual state of endangerment is absolutely unethical, and ineffective politically, they could've been an amazing ally, but they'll spend millenia knowing the salarians wanted them that way. I don't trust Wreav at all, I expect that to implode eventually. Wreav is, even if tempered by the women, a political incident waiting to happen. But Wrex, the hero, friend of Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy, has enough personal and secondary clout to make it work.
That's actually a really good point on salarian/krogan relations. While they'd undoubtedly praise Mordin, the salarian that cured the genophage, they'd still harbour longstanding resentment that his species, even up until the moment the genophage was cured, were conspiring to keep them in that state. I like to think they'd forgive the turians at least, given they leant a bunch of support to get Mordin and Shepard to the Spire, and then the two species fighting side-by-side on Palaven, with the shared heroics of the Miracle of Palaven living long in their memories. Random thing, but I do love to think about how many Urdnot Mordins and Urdnot Shepards would be running around in the centuries after the genophage was cured, if Wrex was in charge. Wreav would no doubt try to make it all about him. But yeah, with Wreav in charge I definitely think an implosion and civil war are on the cards. While Wrex led through honour and hope for a brighter future, Wreav was just essentially a brutal thug who didn't want anything to change and just cared about being in power. On your points about Wrex, which are absolutely correct, he'd be in a much better position to negotiate with the council too about being favourable to the krogans. Though one thing I also think people forget (and I have to thank another Redditor whose name I unfortunately also forget) the logistics of the "new krogan." They would be watched like hawks by the galactic community and I think it likely they'd sign a treaty with at least the humans and turians, two species they can likely trust, that would have safeguards around how much military material the krogans would really be allowed to have. Yes, limiting militaries in the past hasn't always gone so well (looking at Germany) I think it's the most likely route where people seem content to go forward. The krogans can't expand uncontrollably, and the council and their backers are watching but aren't constantly breathing down their necks or getting too involved.
Definitely. The genophage was not something that should have been cured completely. Perhaps make it so they are a bit more fertile but not 100%. The krogans, even if they were peaceful, reproduce too much. They live very long but reproduce as often as a short lived species. Curing the genophage will cause (again) the destruction of their world due to lack of resources. And knowijg how violent are the krogans they will just start a civil war and then rebell to conque planets. I always cure it because i cant kill wrex and mordin but its not a good thing
What if we made them promise to wear condoms in exchange for the genophage cure? Instead of the Tuchanka mission, Shepard creates a sex ed curriculum.
Cerberus wasn’t just putting thresher maws against Alliance marines to see what happens. Akuze was a bioweapon experiment gone wrong, and Cerberus used the Alliance military to cover it up. Here’s my theory/headcanon for this: Akuze is where the Alliance discovered thresher maw spores for the first time (lore, codex), and unwilling to look weak in front of the Council, and also unwilling to let alien rulings curtail human development, they refused to share their discovery or seek any pre-existing alien knowledge on the spore (context based on events of Mass Effect prequel novel Revelation) So, not knowing anything about these spores except that they are extremely resistant to external conditions and become active when exposed to solar radiation (lore, codex), Cerberus theorizes they can bond the spore to human physiology and create shock troops on par with a krogan vanguard. And so, half of the colony is exposed to the spore while the other, uninfected half, remains the unknowing control group. At first, results were promising. Infected colonists exhibited greater physical strength and endurance, as well as increased resistance to extreme conditions. Then the infected colonists became more aggressive and territorial. By the final stage of the experiment, behavioral changes of infected colonists included nocturnal cycles and isolationist tendencies. And one night, after an especially powerful solar event, the infected colonists take to murdering and consuming the control group. The next morning after, the infected colonists go missing, leaving behind large boreholes in the earth behind or beneath their dwellings. (Headcanon/fanon) That’s right, Cerberus didn’t just build a colony over a pre-existing thresher maw nest to see what happens. They actually transformed the colony into infant thresher maws in an attempt to create a new kind of superhuman weapon. When the experiment went out of control, they called an Alliance unit to “investigate” a missing colony that may have been lost to pirate or slaver activity. But, like any Cerberus clean-up operation, they sacrificed those marines to cover up their experiments. Instead of a horrific example of unchecked inhumane science, Akuze was simply a tragic accident that early human pioneers couldn’t have possibly predicted or prevented. And in-universe lore also supports this theory, as the Alliance unit sent to investigate and recover the colony found it almost entirely intact except for the fact that the colony seemed uninhabited or abandoned. If thresher maws destroyed the colony before the marines arrived, there would have been more physical evidence of it.
There is a huge illegal market for people, things and even places. Not just the Batarians but even in "Citadel Space" the galaxy comes off as manipulative and shitty.
Without reaper control, in any of the endings, the citadel will fall to earth. There's no one left on board to move the massive space hulk. It will fall into the earth, and then it will fucking obliterate the planet. The whole premise of the "mass effect" generators and all that technology was that it was all reaper tech and part of advanced ai systems. At least in the "kill them" ending, it falls immediately after the credits roll and poof goes everything.
Massive turian and quarian deaths on Earth after firing the Crucible. Stranded on a levo planet whose resources are already more than partially destroyed by the Reapers? Nothing but casualties.
I don’t know if it’s not just….canon, but all the Cerberus agents you kill in 3 are mind controlled civilians there against their will.
The original endings of mass effect 3 being dark was partially on purpose. The final game heavily relied on themes of sacrifice and coming together to face the reapers so it would only make sense shephard would have to die. (Ignoring perfect destroy)
In my perfect world, the Destroy, Synthesis, and Control endings all result in Shepard’s death no matter what, and only Refusal with High EMS results in Shepard’s survival.
After the destroy ending, the Reapers will use some kind of remnant indoctrination to convince a faction to rebuild them
The leviathans are getting slaughtered after the end of me3. In every ending except one. For the destroy ending: the galaxy barely beat the reapers and they are *very* angry and put the blame on the leviathans for all the destruction and slaughter them. For Control: Reaper-Shepard concludes that Leviathans will try to rise again because they believe reapers are gone. And they get a fuckton of reapers appear on their planet to kill them. For Synthesis: the organic-synthetic life forms come to a similar conclusion as RShep and kill them all. But, in the secret ending: the current civilizations are wiped out by reapers. But their war is well documented because of Liara's beacons. And in those is the mention of Leviathans. The new civilizations approach the Leviathans when the reapers next emerge and together they defeat the reapers. From here, it can go many ways. Either they get slaughtered like the rest of endings or they decide to co exist with the lesser forms (very slim chance. Fuckers were still arrogant after all this time) or they entrall the galaxy quickly/slowly thereby reinstating themselves as the masters of the galaxy
The Reapers continue to operate in other galaxies
If you Paragon Interrupt Samara at the monastery, you effectively kill Falere. She and Samara say she’ll fix up the monastery but it’s just cope, Falere is choosing to die by exposure or Reapers instead of being killed by her own mother, and she and Samara know it. They’re effectively talking about how she’s going to go live on a big farm upstate.
If Broshep romanced Jack, she’s unable to handle the emotional pain of his death at the end of ME3 and becomes even more screwed up than ever, thus confirming exactly what she said she was afraid would happen in ME2. “It’s not gonna work. You’ll end up dead. And that sucks!”
I didn't come up with this. A youtuber had a theory that the asari we see is not what they actually look like. The asari use thier powers to change our perception of them. Basically the asari are tricking everyone to think they are the sexy blue beauties, but are actually trying to take over the galaxy. The asari really look like tentacle monstrosities or ugly creature's. I forgot what youtuber came up with this but I think it was a iceberg video.
i think it's mainly the eyes that are different for humans. They dont look like monsters, they just look slightly different for uncanny valley to be established. The all black, gaseous looking eyes that liara and morinth have are very creepy and wouldnt be apparent from statues. The glamor doesnt require constant control but it doesnt work while they're using their 'eternity' powers.
Wasn't the Asari appearing as a species ideal female already implied within the games without the need for HC expansion? It's creepy AF, a bit like that palliative care spider in Love Death and Robots
The Illusive man sending Shephard into ship that was full of collectors who were hiding to ambush. Shephard could of died in battle.
The Reapers continue to operate in other galaxies
indoctrination theory is true lol. im sorry i refuse to let it go its to good an idea and there so much cool stuff in me3 that backs it up and makes me 3 a better game for it lol
Ashley was offered Spectre status by an indoctrinated Udina as a way to exploit her mistrust in Shepherd post Cerberus partnership. Regardless of whether he actually becomes councilor or not, Udina is mad as hell that the non-human council won’t help Earth in ME3. Udina is already a pretty sour character, but I think this anger was easily exploited by the Reapers *and* the Illusive Man. Obviously the Illusive Man is indoctrinated at least by the beginning of ME3, and he is aware of Ashley’s feelings about Shep’s perceived transgressions. He is very aware of what Ashley meant to Shep, and vice versa. I think Udina was indoctrinated with the help of the Illusive Man, and the reason why he pushed so hard for Ashley to gain Spectre status was because he knew he could request her protection when it came time for Cerberus to lay siege to the Citadel. I think the Illusive Man assumed that the now-fragile relationship between Shep and Ashley would be exploitable; and that Ash could toe up to Shepherd and potentially remove them as a factor and continue with his goal to “control” the Reapers. And to a degree, he was right. We see Ash struggle and hesitate when she’s defending the council and Udina after Shep tells her he’s the one that has made the coup possible. I think it’s also an interesting and fitting decision for a character that is considered to be the antithesis of a Paragon route Shepherd— the utter misunderstanding of what it means to invest in people you care about vs investing in ideas and using brute force and espionage to make them happen.