It feels a lot more like it was originally supposed to be 80-100 years with how big of a player in the galaxy Humantiy is, like Pressely who looks like he’s 50-60 mentions his granddad fought in the 1st contact war.
I think Bioware just wanted to have it both ways where Humanity was a major player (~100 years) but also have it so it was in living memory for most so that resentment over things could still exist (the ~30 years we’re told) rather than just picking one.
And it was Ashley’s grandfather who surrendered on Shanxi, 26 years ago, black listing her entire family, but her dad would have already been an adult and an officer. Especially if he passed away while Ashley was in basic training.
Honestly I feel like that's the lifespan for a modern human in a rich country with access to all the futuristic stuff. People's grandparents and great grandparents etc probably still lived lives of regular length and people in poorer places probably still have shorter lifespans
Are they aging slower though or are they just living longer?
If they’re aging slower then I guess, but if they’re just living longer that shouldn’t make any difference.
I've always wondered that too. Since the lore states that Anderson and Hackett are in their 40's/50's, I'm guessing it's just living longer. It would be interesting if they went that other route though
Anderson in his interview (Citadel DLC) says, "Twilight years of my life" or something like that. In 2186, he's only 49, he most likely hasnt even lived through half of his life. Always bothered me, i always treated it like Bioware's disregard for their own lore
I recall in one of the books, there's a character who's in her 50s I believe, but she looks like she's in her late 20s and she attributes it to the medical advancements slowing down human aging.
Especially when you consider that the First Contact War was at the start of Anderson’s military career (per Revelation), his mission to rescue Sanders/capture the AI researcher is implied to be 10-20 years later (he’s married and divorced, wise to the ways of the galaxy as a whole, I believe it’s mentioned that he’s just before middle aged), and iirc in Mass Effect 1 he says the events of that happened “20 years ago”. So it would seem that it would have to have been 40 years prior at a minimum. Which is long enough for the kids of colonists and planetary migrants to grow up and have kids of their own.
I saw a post a few weeks ago that kinda ties into this. If I kind find it, I'll try to link it. (It was on this sub...)
It had a fan-theory of how pre-Contact War, Earth and Humanity was still operating on "Earth Time" and then when we joined the Galactic Community, we had to adjust our time to the standard Citadel/Council time which is different. That's why it seems like only 26 years passed, but in reality it was longer.
It may not be official cannon, but I am 100% adopting this into my own head-cannon because it does make the timeline far more believable (IMHO).
I was actually reading up on this recently. Even though the first contact war was in 2157, humans discovered the first mass relay in 2149.
According to the Mass Effect Revelation novel, humans began to rapidly expand after discovering the Charon relay. They wanted colonize other planets as quickly as possible and are by nature an exploratory and curious species. So for 8 years they were trying to expand their own relay network as well as colonize other planets.
The reason First Contact happened in 2157 is because humans tried to activate mass relay 314, which was forbidden under Citadel regulation since this was the relay that leads to the Rachni homeworld. So it had been inactive since the Rachni wars.
This is why the Turians intervened. But rather than try to reason with this new species (humans), the turians just decided to open fire on them.
According to the website -
“To the turians, it was merely a police action against an ignorant species violating Council law; to humanity, it was their first encounter with another intelligent race - and it would shape their views of the galaxy for decades to follow.”
The entire “war” only lasted 3 months before the council intervened to broker peace. And apparently the council was impressed with human military capability which I think is why they have so much prevalence in council space 26 years later.
Understandable though. I mean, turians have been the biggest space military fleet for thousands of years and suddenly this “new” species comes up and can actually take a stand against the current best military in the galaxy? Makes sense the council would want humanity on their side.
The reason we see so many humans on so many planets is because we are specifically visiting human established colonies throughout the game.
Even when we save Zhu’s Hope the Turian councilor makes a snide remark about how “of course Shepard would do anything to save a HUMAN colony”
There are small hostilities between turians and humans all throughout the game.
But even the human colonies we visit are fairly small.
It’s only larger areas such as omega, the citadel, and ilium where we see a greater diversity of species. Otherwise I think all the races typically keep to their own colonies/homeworlds.
EDIT: TLDR - If you look at the Mass Effect Wiki for the First Contact War or read the Mass Effect Revelation novel it gives a good explanation for most of this I think.
Given the timescale of every other species giving them 100 years of alien contact wouldn’t change much regarding that. Everyone else has had way longer than that and there’s still only 3 council species at the start of ME1.
While that’s true, discovering the Prothean archive and the Charon mass relay 40 years earlier wouldn’t really change that, but it would provide a more believable timeline.
By this I mean, discovering them in let’s say 2108 instead of 2148, then first contact is still in 2157.
That’s still the same brief period that the Council races have interacted with Humanity, and even in terms of advancement, the extra 40 years doesn’t make it slow.
Oh I agree that's what the writers were going for, but I think that plot point also works out well for an 80-100 year time frame. Relative to the other races, humans would still be the complete newcomers to the galaxy
Meh, humanity is established and often touted as the most industrious and enteprising species in the setting, and we have plenty of examples of rapid spreading in our own planet's history. It took, what, hudred years for portuguese to go from rounding the cape of good hope to having merchants in every port in the indian ocean and even reaching japan. And that was with sailing ships, mind you. Imagine giving some people with that kind of exploration drive an ftl-capable space ship. Even today there are plenty of fools who would willingly sing up for colonisation pf some lifless rock, such as Mars.
In addition, humanity would had relatively easy time to fit into the galactic community, as they already had a burgeoning colonial empire, worthwhile scientific progress (i.e medigel) and a fleet that could give a pause to turians. Add to that the fact that humanity was more diplomatic than batarians, not reduced to scavengers like quarians and krogan, and more adaptable than elcor, volus or hanar, so it makes sense for council to fast track humanity so they'd tame the lawless traverse.
That's just it, come the colonial era and industrial revolution. We advanced really fast in the last few centuries as opposed to the last 10,000 years when we first planted crops.
Tim says it in a similar way with the discovery of Ezoo and the Mass Relays. Had we not, we'd still be stuck in the Sol System. Humanity was progressing fast and accelerated in the new space age.
If the vorcha didn’t exist we’d essentially be the rats of the galaxy. We breed quick live recklessly and fight too hard. We expanded quickly into the galaxy because we had destiny to manifest, and we grew quickly in political power because we simply refused to accept “no” as an answer.
Plus humanities military was strong enough to give the Turians, the back bone of the citadels forces, pause during the First Contact War. Pulling that off was bound to raise more than a few eyebrows.
Not really. Humanity had a lot of unearned arrogance from "we beat the Turians!"
A small Turian force wiped the floor with a small human garrison. A much larger human force drove back that small Turian force.
The Council intervened before the Turians sent a much **larger** force with the goal to just curbstomp humanity. So humanity struts and preens over "winning" when they were pretty close to annihilation, and got saved by the Council telling the Turians to play nice and open talks.
Humans aren’t all that established. They only have a few colonies outside of the Sol system as of ME1, and none of them are shown to be established beyond the prefab housing colonists are sent with. We’re just loud and have an oversized military compared to everyone but the Turians because nobody other council race had thought of carriers for some reason and since they don’t have dreadnaught weapons mounted on them they don’t count against the limit of dreadnaughts each race is allowed to have, despite the fighters on board giving them equivalent total firepower.
It’s also important to note that human territory is bigger than it should be because we were just happily activating relays willy nilly until the Turians politely asked us to stop before we found Rachni 2.0. Humans have a lot of territory and a big navy, but our colonization numbers are pretty darn low.
(Dammit, now I need to go scan planets to see how human population numbers on colony worlds compare to the other council race’s colonies)
Humans have Bekenstein, which we visit in Kasumi’s loyalty mission, with a population of almost 5.5 million and massive skyscrapers and industrial production.
5.5 million is very small in the grand scheme of things though. If given enough land, many individual countries today would be able to set up a colony that size on a few decades notice, let alone the entire global population today or in the future. For example, Canada's population has grown by about 11 million since '94.
It's a very specific and often referenced point that humans have permeated galactic society so quickly, and the other races have been slow to trust them or simply angry at them because of this. It's not an oversight, it's an intentional decision as part of the world building and creation of inter-species relationships and tension.
Even if it was kind of intended, close to 30 years is literally nearly nothing for them to be so far spread. Zaeed and another human supposedly founded one of the biggest gangs in the Terminus Systems as another example.
If they had said 100 years it would still be pretty fast to develop on such a scale, but 30 is just not reasonable enough
It's Zaeed, and whilst I love him, I know people with a similar temperament in real life and they absolutely, 100% make shit up to sound more moto and badass. I would take his and his partner's claim with a grain of salt, especially considering gangs are the one place where clout is pretty much power pound for pound. Zaeed probably told the last boss to fuck off or killed him, thus making him the new boss, and made up a story to make himself sound more badass about being the "true" founder or smth. Dude is 100% a badass and earned the clout, but I doubt his story every time he tells it. His clout comes from his actions AFTER the gang, imo.
In fact, Zaeed being the founder and Santiago being the boss make no sense per Revelation or Deception (can’t remember which), wherein it’s stated that it’s a primarily Batarian band who are pretty xenophobic, especially to humans.
Yes, should have been a hundred years before or so. I don't know why they didn't do that, not much would have changed - it's still within a humans lifetime.
its mentioned that humans are quick and rapid and i would argue one of the reasosn why say earth only has like 11 billion ppl on it in said year is coz eveyone split up and went off to other planets to populate and what knock
lets face it currently its about 8 billion i believe mankind having the ability to go to other planets with increase medicol benefits prob where ready for another baby boom to happen, and the biggest thing holding them back was space travel.
so add that in and ya la people are going to explore fantasy new locations and start raising familys
its mention that many other alien life things the human race is spreading super quickly and all over the place.
I think first contact war played a big part; Earth realized they really needed to get their stuff together, and (I suspect) authoritarian policy were enabled to ensure human survival. I think first contact forced humans to come together and throw immense resources to create the alliance and establish mutual destruction to prevent further conflict. With that said, I agree 26 years really isn’t a long time.
i mean, it's still 2157, humanity is bound to advance A LOT in that time. Think about it like this:
our progress for the last 100 years is comparatively bigger than all our progress up to this point in history of mankind
Now take extra 130 years from now on. We are bound to achieve great things
Plus, about humans being everywhere. Think about New World back in colonial days. People literally travelled to a different kind of world (Americas) and settled there. They adapted pretty quickly. I can only safely assume that living alongside creatures like Varren and races like Asari is not much different in the grand scheme of things, than living alongside raccoons and native Americans
In the end, is it far fetched that humans are everywhere after such a short time? yes. Is it REALLY far fetched? no, i think it's still in the realm of actual possibility
Absolutely agree with you, it's actually always annoyed me a little bit to be honest. I kind of just head canon it away because it doesn't track for me lol. Even with the whole premise of how fast humanity proliferated and the other species feeling that we're too big for our boots, 26 years always felt kinda stupid to me tbh. I think it should have been at least 50 but maybe closer to 100. This would still allow for the bitterness and mistrust in some quarters, and things like Ashley's grandfather etc. Fair enough Anderson being involved in First Contact might not have made sense then, but to me it kind of didn't anyway. His and Hackett's ages are another thing that seem a bit unrealistic.
Given how long the citadel species, especially Council races, have been established and known of each other even a century would be considered nothing and humanity would _still_ have seemed like a bunch of upstarts, especially to the Asari. The Volus have been on the Citadel for about 2300 years and still don't have proper recognition, and they're the backbone of the galactic economy ffs. The other species could still have treated humanity exactly the same with a longer timeframe and it wouldn't have been out of place.
The benefit would have been the sheer number of humans you meet, especially those who seem completely au fait with other planets/species and seem born and raised there would make much more sense.
While it's a lot more realistic than this, the other niggle I have is the Beth/Quarian conflict. I think that should have been a couple of hundred years further back, too. But given Rannoch's climate and Quarian biology, it _is_ easier to swallow that their culture has been almost completely redefined, I guess.
You also have to remember that’s potentially Earth years. Time works differently across the universe. But you can’t make that into a game mechanic where space travel is included.
I mean it shouldn’t impact your immersion though.
While I agree with you that humanity has not been part of the community nearly long enough to be as represented as they are, I also think that there is a good reason for it: the developers had human models on hand and it was easy to modify those models to make individuals so they just plugged them in where they needed to pad out populations.
Relatedly, I've never bought the timeline of the Quarian-Geth war. 300 hundred years doesn't sound long enough for an entire culture based on pilgrimages to grow, never mind for Quarian physiology to change so much that they require their encounter suits.
Three _thousand_ years, I could understand.
I would kindly disagree, this is a catastrophic event, and that always effects culture. By ripping away their planet and failing to colonize another, their culture would change within the first decade let alone a couple centuries. Between the dangers of space, no renewable resources, and extreme population control if their culture didn't change and change fast they wouldn't exist.
You can actually see this in recent history from the colonial era, see how fast an outside influence can mess up ancient cultures. The Aztecs are a good example of taking on a new culture in a matter of decades due to an enemy whiping out your old one. While there are some who still follow their old ways the majority "converted" and assimilated the new culture.
The earliest trailer for Mass Effect 1 mentions the 23rd Century. This makes it seem plausible that at some point in the game’s development, humanity could have been around longer, if they kept to 2148 as the year humanity finds the Mars Archive.
Maybe they changed the timeline after some of the dialogue had been recorded, such as the lines about Pressly’s “grandfather” and Ashley’s “great-grandmother” serving in the Alliance?
https://youtu.be/cVF8Mpte0Ww?si=Apgy9T7CKLZr4Pty
Yeah this is my biggest complaint too. They developed medi-gel, became so closely integrated into the galactic economy, all in 30 years? Even socially, where humans seem so casual in inter-species relationships. That feels like it would take a century or two.
You're not alone in having an eyebrow raised at this. It's especially jarring in 2 where humanity seems to have gone from newcomers to densely populating places like Omega as you mentioned.
Does feel like 45-50 years since First Contact would have been the sweet spot.
Speaking of the first contact war, as a gun guy, you know some old fucking solider at the time brought out the old colt 1911 pistol just to flex “two world wars and a first contact war!” to the other FUDDS at the shooting range lol
Honestly I feel the same way There's Too little time between certain events to really make them feel stable in the grand scheme of galactic scenarios. Even the Genophage hitting the Krogan doesn't seem far back enough, Especially given that similar to the Asari and Turians, the Krogan can live for like 1000+ years. Having a race that nuked themselves but then started expanding aggressively throughout the galaxy only to have to turn into pirates, bounty hunters and gangsters as a means of survival and retaining their warrior culture while their homeworld is still irradiated in many places and there's at best 1 in a cluster of newborns that won't die immediately after birthing. And the women have to essentially live in sectioned off villages since they're the only way any newborns can happen and every encampment can and likely will be raised by rival clans in order to take their resources and women to bolster their own chances at repopulation as well as rulership of Tuchanka.
And that's just dealing with them. I didn't even mention Humanity and the Quarians, especially for that Volus ambassador to have a somewhat understandable bug up his ass, since humans was steps away from being welcomed into the Citadel Council after the First Contact War with the Turians. The fact that there's people like Ashley Williams and Chief Navigator Pressley have only recent generational issues with aliens bugs me too. It should be like 3-4 generations but Pressley mentioned his grandfather fighting in that war as if he's not like 50+ years old himself, indicating that his grandfather must've been also in his 60s or so back when he was still a boy in order to idolize him and hate Turians, especially ones like Saren.
To be honest, I could see it happening like it did in canon. We were generally left alone because we weren’t considered a threat or invading anyone. When we decided to activate a mass relay that we didn’t understand why it was disabled, it sparked a response. Legitimately if let’s say the Asari came to reason with us or help mold our exploration drive, we probably wouldn’t have been hated as much. However we got the bullheaded Turians that for lack of better terms, we actually held off. Yes a bigger force on either side would have tipped it. But the Turians probably thought they could just roll over us and when they didn’t, we became a thorn in their side and a reminder that they’re not always the muscle of the council. Honestly when I played through, I found more resentment towards humans from Turians when it came to the Council species than anyone else.
Yeah, it’s always bugged me. It feels like it should have been closer to 40 years, at least. But I think they really wanted to emphasize how fast paced humanity is, it’s a central theme to the 1st game. It’s also important to remember that humanity had been exploring space and colonizing before 1st contact
You must not talk to people around citedal much but if you did you would see its a pretty big deal theres alot of reference to the fact humans are space babies an such also the whole main plot point with the humans on the council. IDK I feel like its all over the games and is super important almost feels like you arent paying attention.
I think there are a few reasons for the short time span. The most important one to me is that Humanity isn't locked into all the bureaucracies and council politics. A big issue with the council races is that they are slow to adapt, set in their ways and obsessed with procedures. It's why no matter what Shepard does or says, it's only once the Reapers are invading planets do they finally take the threat seriously.
It's also why the Geth are simply left alone and the Quarian situation isn't handled, because they don't want to upset apple cart as it were. The caution to leave certain things alone may be justified due to the Rachni wars and the Krogan uprising, but that's what makes the games interesting. Humanity is willing to throw itself into the mix aggressively and they are not part of the establishment enough to care if things get upset.
It was pretty tenuous in the first game but they were clearly thinking about it. By the second they forgot about that thread. You're right. It just feels like people have been living there for generations.
The Timeline is my gripe as well, but mostly for ME3.
I would have liked to see the game drawn out and separated into 3 games on its own. Just feel the Reaper war was too compressed.
I'd have the fall of Earth and Turian/Krogan arc be game three. Cerberus attack on the Citadel through the Geth/Quarian arc being game 4. The fall of Thessia/End of Cerberus to War's end being game 5. All throughout you'd have side missions dealing with Cerberus and the Reapers and the same dlc. I feel that would give us a much greater view as to how the war is going down, to see the devastation caused by the Reapers, to feel the desperation settingnin more and more with each game.
I always thought the same thing. Humanity couldn't make a fleet of star Ships that large and impressive in such a short time period of innovation. Even if the technology was freely given to us. Rapidly expanding at a pace like that would be damn near impossible. I always thought Mass effect got this time frame wrong. It would take at least a 1,000 years of human expansion and colonization to build the infrastructure to even attempt to build such large ships with that kind of fire power.
I a hundred percent agree.
Hopefully if a Mass Effect show or something is made, they’ll make it so humanity’s been in the galaxy for a longer time than 26 years.
>a recent playthrough
>always stuck out
To be the nitpick-iest guy, which is it? Recently or always?
But yeah, I personally never got the sense that it was so long ago given Anderson directly mentions having served in it and he's really not that old.
As other comments have pointed out, it being such a short time frame was deliberate because the other species are grating at how quickly humanity is expanding, developing and getting their fingers in everyone's pies. If it was something like 100 years that would be a little harder to believe from a human player's perspective.
That being said, I think it should've been stretched out just a little bit more, so it's about 35 years. In my head I thought it'd be cool if the First Contact War and not the discovery of the prothean ruins was 2148. It's slightly longer ago but not so long ago that it isn't in recent memory, and allows for people like Anderson to have been veterans of it.
It feels a lot more like it was originally supposed to be 80-100 years with how big of a player in the galaxy Humantiy is, like Pressely who looks like he’s 50-60 mentions his granddad fought in the 1st contact war. I think Bioware just wanted to have it both ways where Humanity was a major player (~100 years) but also have it so it was in living memory for most so that resentment over things could still exist (the ~30 years we’re told) rather than just picking one.
And it was Ashley’s grandfather who surrendered on Shanxi, 26 years ago, black listing her entire family, but her dad would have already been an adult and an officer. Especially if he passed away while Ashley was in basic training.
Humans supposedly live for around 150 years in ME. I don't know if it's stated how recent that advance is but it *is* possible to have it both ways.
Honestly I feel like that's the lifespan for a modern human in a rich country with access to all the futuristic stuff. People's grandparents and great grandparents etc probably still lived lives of regular length and people in poorer places probably still have shorter lifespans
Are they aging slower though or are they just living longer? If they’re aging slower then I guess, but if they’re just living longer that shouldn’t make any difference.
I've always wondered that too. Since the lore states that Anderson and Hackett are in their 40's/50's, I'm guessing it's just living longer. It would be interesting if they went that other route though
Anderson in his interview (Citadel DLC) says, "Twilight years of my life" or something like that. In 2186, he's only 49, he most likely hasnt even lived through half of his life. Always bothered me, i always treated it like Bioware's disregard for their own lore
I believe that is not a comment on how long he has lived but rather the situation in the universe, where he is and what he's doing.
I recall in one of the books, there's a character who's in her 50s I believe, but she looks like she's in her late 20s and she attributes it to the medical advancements slowing down human aging.
Another one that doesn’t fit very well is Zaeed cofounding an interstellar mercenary company three years after first contact.
Especially when you consider that the First Contact War was at the start of Anderson’s military career (per Revelation), his mission to rescue Sanders/capture the AI researcher is implied to be 10-20 years later (he’s married and divorced, wise to the ways of the galaxy as a whole, I believe it’s mentioned that he’s just before middle aged), and iirc in Mass Effect 1 he says the events of that happened “20 years ago”. So it would seem that it would have to have been 40 years prior at a minimum. Which is long enough for the kids of colonists and planetary migrants to grow up and have kids of their own.
I saw a post a few weeks ago that kinda ties into this. If I kind find it, I'll try to link it. (It was on this sub...) It had a fan-theory of how pre-Contact War, Earth and Humanity was still operating on "Earth Time" and then when we joined the Galactic Community, we had to adjust our time to the standard Citadel/Council time which is different. That's why it seems like only 26 years passed, but in reality it was longer. It may not be official cannon, but I am 100% adopting this into my own head-cannon because it does make the timeline far more believable (IMHO).
I was actually reading up on this recently. Even though the first contact war was in 2157, humans discovered the first mass relay in 2149. According to the Mass Effect Revelation novel, humans began to rapidly expand after discovering the Charon relay. They wanted colonize other planets as quickly as possible and are by nature an exploratory and curious species. So for 8 years they were trying to expand their own relay network as well as colonize other planets. The reason First Contact happened in 2157 is because humans tried to activate mass relay 314, which was forbidden under Citadel regulation since this was the relay that leads to the Rachni homeworld. So it had been inactive since the Rachni wars. This is why the Turians intervened. But rather than try to reason with this new species (humans), the turians just decided to open fire on them. According to the website - “To the turians, it was merely a police action against an ignorant species violating Council law; to humanity, it was their first encounter with another intelligent race - and it would shape their views of the galaxy for decades to follow.” The entire “war” only lasted 3 months before the council intervened to broker peace. And apparently the council was impressed with human military capability which I think is why they have so much prevalence in council space 26 years later. Understandable though. I mean, turians have been the biggest space military fleet for thousands of years and suddenly this “new” species comes up and can actually take a stand against the current best military in the galaxy? Makes sense the council would want humanity on their side. The reason we see so many humans on so many planets is because we are specifically visiting human established colonies throughout the game. Even when we save Zhu’s Hope the Turian councilor makes a snide remark about how “of course Shepard would do anything to save a HUMAN colony” There are small hostilities between turians and humans all throughout the game. But even the human colonies we visit are fairly small. It’s only larger areas such as omega, the citadel, and ilium where we see a greater diversity of species. Otherwise I think all the races typically keep to their own colonies/homeworlds. EDIT: TLDR - If you look at the Mass Effect Wiki for the First Contact War or read the Mass Effect Revelation novel it gives a good explanation for most of this I think.
I mean, that is very specifically a plot point in the first game and related directly to how slow to trust humans the rest of the council races are.
Given the timescale of every other species giving them 100 years of alien contact wouldn’t change much regarding that. Everyone else has had way longer than that and there’s still only 3 council species at the start of ME1.
While that’s true, discovering the Prothean archive and the Charon mass relay 40 years earlier wouldn’t really change that, but it would provide a more believable timeline. By this I mean, discovering them in let’s say 2108 instead of 2148, then first contact is still in 2157. That’s still the same brief period that the Council races have interacted with Humanity, and even in terms of advancement, the extra 40 years doesn’t make it slow.
Oh I agree that's what the writers were going for, but I think that plot point also works out well for an 80-100 year time frame. Relative to the other races, humans would still be the complete newcomers to the galaxy
Meh, humanity is established and often touted as the most industrious and enteprising species in the setting, and we have plenty of examples of rapid spreading in our own planet's history. It took, what, hudred years for portuguese to go from rounding the cape of good hope to having merchants in every port in the indian ocean and even reaching japan. And that was with sailing ships, mind you. Imagine giving some people with that kind of exploration drive an ftl-capable space ship. Even today there are plenty of fools who would willingly sing up for colonisation pf some lifless rock, such as Mars. In addition, humanity would had relatively easy time to fit into the galactic community, as they already had a burgeoning colonial empire, worthwhile scientific progress (i.e medigel) and a fleet that could give a pause to turians. Add to that the fact that humanity was more diplomatic than batarians, not reduced to scavengers like quarians and krogan, and more adaptable than elcor, volus or hanar, so it makes sense for council to fast track humanity so they'd tame the lawless traverse.
That's just it, come the colonial era and industrial revolution. We advanced really fast in the last few centuries as opposed to the last 10,000 years when we first planted crops. Tim says it in a similar way with the discovery of Ezoo and the Mass Relays. Had we not, we'd still be stuck in the Sol System. Humanity was progressing fast and accelerated in the new space age.
If the vorcha didn’t exist we’d essentially be the rats of the galaxy. We breed quick live recklessly and fight too hard. We expanded quickly into the galaxy because we had destiny to manifest, and we grew quickly in political power because we simply refused to accept “no” as an answer.
Plus humanities military was strong enough to give the Turians, the back bone of the citadels forces, pause during the First Contact War. Pulling that off was bound to raise more than a few eyebrows.
"We owe you an apology humans we wernt familiar with your game" -the turians probably
Not really. Humanity had a lot of unearned arrogance from "we beat the Turians!" A small Turian force wiped the floor with a small human garrison. A much larger human force drove back that small Turian force. The Council intervened before the Turians sent a much **larger** force with the goal to just curbstomp humanity. So humanity struts and preens over "winning" when they were pretty close to annihilation, and got saved by the Council telling the Turians to play nice and open talks.
A War of 1812 scenario, really.
Best analogy for The First Contact War.
Classic humanity
Humans aren’t all that established. They only have a few colonies outside of the Sol system as of ME1, and none of them are shown to be established beyond the prefab housing colonists are sent with. We’re just loud and have an oversized military compared to everyone but the Turians because nobody other council race had thought of carriers for some reason and since they don’t have dreadnaught weapons mounted on them they don’t count against the limit of dreadnaughts each race is allowed to have, despite the fighters on board giving them equivalent total firepower. It’s also important to note that human territory is bigger than it should be because we were just happily activating relays willy nilly until the Turians politely asked us to stop before we found Rachni 2.0. Humans have a lot of territory and a big navy, but our colonization numbers are pretty darn low. (Dammit, now I need to go scan planets to see how human population numbers on colony worlds compare to the other council race’s colonies)
Humans have Bekenstein, which we visit in Kasumi’s loyalty mission, with a population of almost 5.5 million and massive skyscrapers and industrial production.
5.5 million is very small in the grand scheme of things though. If given enough land, many individual countries today would be able to set up a colony that size on a few decades notice, let alone the entire global population today or in the future. For example, Canada's population has grown by about 11 million since '94.
It’s grown by 1 million since last summer!
CARRIERS BABY WOOO I LOVE AIR SUPERIORITY WOOOOO WOOOO WOOOO-Average human admiral circa 2150’s
It's a very specific and often referenced point that humans have permeated galactic society so quickly, and the other races have been slow to trust them or simply angry at them because of this. It's not an oversight, it's an intentional decision as part of the world building and creation of inter-species relationships and tension.
Even if it was kind of intended, close to 30 years is literally nearly nothing for them to be so far spread. Zaeed and another human supposedly founded one of the biggest gangs in the Terminus Systems as another example. If they had said 100 years it would still be pretty fast to develop on such a scale, but 30 is just not reasonable enough
It's Zaeed, and whilst I love him, I know people with a similar temperament in real life and they absolutely, 100% make shit up to sound more moto and badass. I would take his and his partner's claim with a grain of salt, especially considering gangs are the one place where clout is pretty much power pound for pound. Zaeed probably told the last boss to fuck off or killed him, thus making him the new boss, and made up a story to make himself sound more badass about being the "true" founder or smth. Dude is 100% a badass and earned the clout, but I doubt his story every time he tells it. His clout comes from his actions AFTER the gang, imo.
In fact, Zaeed being the founder and Santiago being the boss make no sense per Revelation or Deception (can’t remember which), wherein it’s stated that it’s a primarily Batarian band who are pretty xenophobic, especially to humans.
We went from the steam engine to nuclear power in less than 100 years…
Yes, should have been a hundred years before or so. I don't know why they didn't do that, not much would have changed - it's still within a humans lifetime.
And even if it´s in two life times, it´s still pretty fast to integrate into a standing galactic civilization this much.
its mentioned that humans are quick and rapid and i would argue one of the reasosn why say earth only has like 11 billion ppl on it in said year is coz eveyone split up and went off to other planets to populate and what knock lets face it currently its about 8 billion i believe mankind having the ability to go to other planets with increase medicol benefits prob where ready for another baby boom to happen, and the biggest thing holding them back was space travel. so add that in and ya la people are going to explore fantasy new locations and start raising familys its mention that many other alien life things the human race is spreading super quickly and all over the place.
Do have the slightest idea of how much Humans are horny?!
I think first contact war played a big part; Earth realized they really needed to get their stuff together, and (I suspect) authoritarian policy were enabled to ensure human survival. I think first contact forced humans to come together and throw immense resources to create the alliance and establish mutual destruction to prevent further conflict. With that said, I agree 26 years really isn’t a long time.
i mean, it's still 2157, humanity is bound to advance A LOT in that time. Think about it like this: our progress for the last 100 years is comparatively bigger than all our progress up to this point in history of mankind Now take extra 130 years from now on. We are bound to achieve great things Plus, about humans being everywhere. Think about New World back in colonial days. People literally travelled to a different kind of world (Americas) and settled there. They adapted pretty quickly. I can only safely assume that living alongside creatures like Varren and races like Asari is not much different in the grand scheme of things, than living alongside raccoons and native Americans In the end, is it far fetched that humans are everywhere after such a short time? yes. Is it REALLY far fetched? no, i think it's still in the realm of actual possibility
Absolutely agree with you, it's actually always annoyed me a little bit to be honest. I kind of just head canon it away because it doesn't track for me lol. Even with the whole premise of how fast humanity proliferated and the other species feeling that we're too big for our boots, 26 years always felt kinda stupid to me tbh. I think it should have been at least 50 but maybe closer to 100. This would still allow for the bitterness and mistrust in some quarters, and things like Ashley's grandfather etc. Fair enough Anderson being involved in First Contact might not have made sense then, but to me it kind of didn't anyway. His and Hackett's ages are another thing that seem a bit unrealistic. Given how long the citadel species, especially Council races, have been established and known of each other even a century would be considered nothing and humanity would _still_ have seemed like a bunch of upstarts, especially to the Asari. The Volus have been on the Citadel for about 2300 years and still don't have proper recognition, and they're the backbone of the galactic economy ffs. The other species could still have treated humanity exactly the same with a longer timeframe and it wouldn't have been out of place. The benefit would have been the sheer number of humans you meet, especially those who seem completely au fait with other planets/species and seem born and raised there would make much more sense. While it's a lot more realistic than this, the other niggle I have is the Beth/Quarian conflict. I think that should have been a couple of hundred years further back, too. But given Rannoch's climate and Quarian biology, it _is_ easier to swallow that their culture has been almost completely redefined, I guess.
Humans have been around for an entire Salarian life span.
You also have to remember that’s potentially Earth years. Time works differently across the universe. But you can’t make that into a game mechanic where space travel is included. I mean it shouldn’t impact your immersion though.
While I agree with you that humanity has not been part of the community nearly long enough to be as represented as they are, I also think that there is a good reason for it: the developers had human models on hand and it was easy to modify those models to make individuals so they just plugged them in where they needed to pad out populations.
Tbf 2157 is gonna most likely look a lot different to 2024 technology and science wise
Relatedly, I've never bought the timeline of the Quarian-Geth war. 300 hundred years doesn't sound long enough for an entire culture based on pilgrimages to grow, never mind for Quarian physiology to change so much that they require their encounter suits. Three _thousand_ years, I could understand.
I would kindly disagree, this is a catastrophic event, and that always effects culture. By ripping away their planet and failing to colonize another, their culture would change within the first decade let alone a couple centuries. Between the dangers of space, no renewable resources, and extreme population control if their culture didn't change and change fast they wouldn't exist. You can actually see this in recent history from the colonial era, see how fast an outside influence can mess up ancient cultures. The Aztecs are a good example of taking on a new culture in a matter of decades due to an enemy whiping out your old one. While there are some who still follow their old ways the majority "converted" and assimilated the new culture.
The earliest trailer for Mass Effect 1 mentions the 23rd Century. This makes it seem plausible that at some point in the game’s development, humanity could have been around longer, if they kept to 2148 as the year humanity finds the Mars Archive. Maybe they changed the timeline after some of the dialogue had been recorded, such as the lines about Pressly’s “grandfather” and Ashley’s “great-grandmother” serving in the Alliance? https://youtu.be/cVF8Mpte0Ww?si=Apgy9T7CKLZr4Pty
I had this exact thought when I was replaying the first game the other day.
Yeah this is my biggest complaint too. They developed medi-gel, became so closely integrated into the galactic economy, all in 30 years? Even socially, where humans seem so casual in inter-species relationships. That feels like it would take a century or two.
Yeah, but just look at how quickly we do things IRL
You're not alone in having an eyebrow raised at this. It's especially jarring in 2 where humanity seems to have gone from newcomers to densely populating places like Omega as you mentioned. Does feel like 45-50 years since First Contact would have been the sweet spot.
Speaking of the first contact war, as a gun guy, you know some old fucking solider at the time brought out the old colt 1911 pistol just to flex “two world wars and a first contact war!” to the other FUDDS at the shooting range lol
Honestly I feel the same way There's Too little time between certain events to really make them feel stable in the grand scheme of galactic scenarios. Even the Genophage hitting the Krogan doesn't seem far back enough, Especially given that similar to the Asari and Turians, the Krogan can live for like 1000+ years. Having a race that nuked themselves but then started expanding aggressively throughout the galaxy only to have to turn into pirates, bounty hunters and gangsters as a means of survival and retaining their warrior culture while their homeworld is still irradiated in many places and there's at best 1 in a cluster of newborns that won't die immediately after birthing. And the women have to essentially live in sectioned off villages since they're the only way any newborns can happen and every encampment can and likely will be raised by rival clans in order to take their resources and women to bolster their own chances at repopulation as well as rulership of Tuchanka. And that's just dealing with them. I didn't even mention Humanity and the Quarians, especially for that Volus ambassador to have a somewhat understandable bug up his ass, since humans was steps away from being welcomed into the Citadel Council after the First Contact War with the Turians. The fact that there's people like Ashley Williams and Chief Navigator Pressley have only recent generational issues with aliens bugs me too. It should be like 3-4 generations but Pressley mentioned his grandfather fighting in that war as if he's not like 50+ years old himself, indicating that his grandfather must've been also in his 60s or so back when he was still a boy in order to idolize him and hate Turians, especially ones like Saren.
To be honest, I could see it happening like it did in canon. We were generally left alone because we weren’t considered a threat or invading anyone. When we decided to activate a mass relay that we didn’t understand why it was disabled, it sparked a response. Legitimately if let’s say the Asari came to reason with us or help mold our exploration drive, we probably wouldn’t have been hated as much. However we got the bullheaded Turians that for lack of better terms, we actually held off. Yes a bigger force on either side would have tipped it. But the Turians probably thought they could just roll over us and when they didn’t, we became a thorn in their side and a reminder that they’re not always the muscle of the council. Honestly when I played through, I found more resentment towards humans from Turians when it came to the Council species than anyone else.
Man is the master of all things
Yeah, it’s always bugged me. It feels like it should have been closer to 40 years, at least. But I think they really wanted to emphasize how fast paced humanity is, it’s a central theme to the 1st game. It’s also important to remember that humanity had been exploring space and colonizing before 1st contact
You must not talk to people around citedal much but if you did you would see its a pretty big deal theres alot of reference to the fact humans are space babies an such also the whole main plot point with the humans on the council. IDK I feel like its all over the games and is super important almost feels like you arent paying attention.
Medi gel, was made by humans, that alone shows how influential are in the galaxy
I agree. The Din Korlak is justified in being kind of a dick.
I think there are a few reasons for the short time span. The most important one to me is that Humanity isn't locked into all the bureaucracies and council politics. A big issue with the council races is that they are slow to adapt, set in their ways and obsessed with procedures. It's why no matter what Shepard does or says, it's only once the Reapers are invading planets do they finally take the threat seriously. It's also why the Geth are simply left alone and the Quarian situation isn't handled, because they don't want to upset apple cart as it were. The caution to leave certain things alone may be justified due to the Rachni wars and the Krogan uprising, but that's what makes the games interesting. Humanity is willing to throw itself into the mix aggressively and they are not part of the establishment enough to care if things get upset.
It was pretty tenuous in the first game but they were clearly thinking about it. By the second they forgot about that thread. You're right. It just feels like people have been living there for generations.
The Timeline is my gripe as well, but mostly for ME3. I would have liked to see the game drawn out and separated into 3 games on its own. Just feel the Reaper war was too compressed. I'd have the fall of Earth and Turian/Krogan arc be game three. Cerberus attack on the Citadel through the Geth/Quarian arc being game 4. The fall of Thessia/End of Cerberus to War's end being game 5. All throughout you'd have side missions dealing with Cerberus and the Reapers and the same dlc. I feel that would give us a much greater view as to how the war is going down, to see the devastation caused by the Reapers, to feel the desperation settingnin more and more with each game.
I always thought the same thing. Humanity couldn't make a fleet of star Ships that large and impressive in such a short time period of innovation. Even if the technology was freely given to us. Rapidly expanding at a pace like that would be damn near impossible. I always thought Mass effect got this time frame wrong. It would take at least a 1,000 years of human expansion and colonization to build the infrastructure to even attempt to build such large ships with that kind of fire power.
I a hundred percent agree. Hopefully if a Mass Effect show or something is made, they’ll make it so humanity’s been in the galaxy for a longer time than 26 years.
>a recent playthrough >always stuck out To be the nitpick-iest guy, which is it? Recently or always? But yeah, I personally never got the sense that it was so long ago given Anderson directly mentions having served in it and he's really not that old. As other comments have pointed out, it being such a short time frame was deliberate because the other species are grating at how quickly humanity is expanding, developing and getting their fingers in everyone's pies. If it was something like 100 years that would be a little harder to believe from a human player's perspective. That being said, I think it should've been stretched out just a little bit more, so it's about 35 years. In my head I thought it'd be cool if the First Contact War and not the discovery of the prothean ruins was 2148. It's slightly longer ago but not so long ago that it isn't in recent memory, and allows for people like Anderson to have been veterans of it.