The Mass Effect Iceberg Explained

hey everyone this store discriminates against the poor howdy welcome to the mass effect iceberg this iceberg was created by penguin of doom 3 on reddit some points have been combined for continuity and some additional points have been added this video will contain spoilers for the original trilogy comics and some books you have been warned level one the sky 1. cerberus often portrayed as an antagonistic organization to shepherd's goals cerberus is a human survivalist paramilitary group led by the elusive man generally speaking cerberus believes that advancing humanity through illegal or dangerous experimentation terrorist activities sabotage and assassination and other avenues are all justified as a result it has been labeled as a terrorist organization by the systems alliance and the citadel council one of many assassinations carried out by cerberus was the assassination of pope clement the 16th with his own rosary beads which were coated with toxic materials of course the next pope leo xiv had catalogical beliefs more in line with cerberus's goal of militarizing humanity two protheans are collectors the collectors are a race of completely subservient beings that the reapers control and as their physiology suggests were once members of the prothean race when comparing them to javik the similarities are striking the crested head the placement of their four eyes and overall bodily structure is fairly comparable that being said it is clear that the collectors have gone through some form of quote extensive genetic rewrite end quote as stated by shepard after seeing their dna morden determines that the reapers indoctrinated the protheans and added cybernetic modifications to them due to the sheer length of their indoctrination and bodily limitations it is further noted that quote each collector drone being little more than a clone it's unknown if they even still possess any form of gender riddled with cybernetics lacking glands or digestive system and having any form of intelligence or self-awareness completely eradicated by indoctrination what has been done to these former protheans is irreversible down to the genetic level and as it is revealed they were utilized against their former prothean brethren in the final stages of the reaper's harvest of the protheans three reapers reapers are essentially an advanced machine race of synthetic organic starships with many noting a resemblance to a squid or cuttlefish they normally reside in dark space the incredibly vast starless nothingness between galaxies wherein they remain dormant for an estimated 50 000 years at a time before returning to the galaxy to resume their harvest specifically they harvest the galaxy's advanced space-faring sentient life on thessia vendetta explains that the patterns concerning the development of galactic civilization and the cycles of extinction are too regular and repetitive to be coincidence and thus infers that the reapers are servants to this pattern and not its creators which is ultimately proven to be correct when shepherd meets the catalyst the creator and impetus behind the reapers and harvests 4. harvesting during their invasion at the end of each cycle the reapers gather and process vast numbers of individuals from each of the galaxy's sentient space-faring races victims who cooperate with or are captured by reaper husks are rounded up into camps where the husks select individuals deemed fit for processing it is believed that the husks use scent or chemical receptors to analyze the genetic composition of victims those who are deemed unsuitable are turned into more husks individuals who are determined to be suitable for processing are loaded onto reaper processors where they are ushered into a single person pod like a slaughterhouse the interior of the processor is designed to prevent any visual or auditory contact between individuals being processed once in the pods reaper nanites dissolve the victims into a raw genetic paste for ease of transport this paste will then be used in the construction of a newborn reaper with the victims minds being preserved to form the reaper's gestalt consciousness the only known facilities used for reaper construction are located on the citadel and within the collector base in the galactic core available information suggests that a single race is harvested during each cycle to produce reaper capital ships it appears that other space-faring races harvested during this same cycle are used to produce destroyer class reapers exactly how or why this distinction is made is unknown thus a single reaper is the culmination of not just thousands but millions or billions of lives given how many reapers we see how many species have been wiped out and how long have they ruled the galaxy allowing civilizations to ripen for slaughter five the council races while humans may be added by the end of mass effect 1 the council races of mass effect were comprised of the asari solarians and turians the asari with their impressive thousand-year lifespans were the first to discover the citadel and it was they who proposed the citadel council to the solarians upon their arrival after them they are known in the council for their diplomacy and leadership the solarians known for their research and technological prowess were responsible for advancing the primitive krogan race to be used against the rachni they were also responsible for the brutal genophage that afflicted krogan fertility they are known most for their military intelligence and scientific contributions finally the turians who were invited to join the council about 1200 years prior to the first game fulfill the role of the council as the main military or galactic peacekeepers owed in part to their unmatched fleets 6. krogans and genophage krogans are a bipedal reptilian species native to the planet tachanka with a harsh environment flora and fauna of their homeworld their species have adapted to be equally as violent and harsh in order to survive such harsh conditions krogan developed redundant bodily organs and systems including but not limited to having two hearts four lungs and four testicles they have been demonstrated to live for hundreds if not over a thousand years such as in the case of warlord o'keer as krogan society became more technologically advanced so did their weaponry the end result is that they destroyed their homeworld in a nuclear war that reduced their race into primitive warring tribes with the help of the solarians the krogan were uplifted into galactic society and lent their numbers and military prowess to bring an end to the rachni wars however after the rachni were eradicated the rapidly expanding krogan became a threat to the galaxy in turn starting the krogan rebellions and forcing the turians to unleash the genophage this genetic infection dramatically reduced fertility in krogan females causing a severe drop in births secondary to prenatal and postnatal death with only one in every 1000 births producing live offspring 7. first contact war the first contact war referred to as the relay 3-1-4 incident by most turians was a three-month conflict between the human systems alliance and the turians thanks to the discovery of the cairn relay and the mass relay network in 2149 humans began a rapid expansion activating every mass relay they came across it wasn't until 2156 that the turians noticed these occurrences when they found human explorers reactivating an inactive mass relay known as relay314 the reactivation of this relay was forbidden by citadel regulations following the rakhine war and the turians immediately responded by opening fire rather than negotiating or otherwise interacting with the human explorers however a human vessel managed to retreat warning the human alliance who sent a retaliatory force to destroy the turian vessels this escalated into a war that was halted by the citadel council who intervened to negotiate a peace with the end of the war being known as armistice day despite the turians being the initial aggressors humanity was generally coupled with a poor reputation as being aggressors themselves 8. starchild the star child is the catalyst or the intelligence created by the leviathans with its latest form or projection taking the visage of the child that shepherd saw killed it reveals the nature of the reapers and poses the choice of the galaxy's fate to shepherd it serves as the architect and overseer of the reapers and their cycles and was programmed to ensure the continued existence of life in the galaxy through any means necessary according to the catalyst crucible theory in previous cycles the reapers believed that cooperation between organics and synthetics was impossible at the time however in commander shepard's cycle shepard was able to unite organics and synthetics together under one banner against a common enemy the reapers shepard was finally able to destroy the reapers because for once the galaxy had passed the test and worked towards a peaceful future together which is why the starchild speaks to him and allows him a leader of this movement a choice another reasoning for this theory is that the reapers made no attempts to stop the crucible's construction or destroy it 9. the elusive man originally known as jack harper the elusive man was a mercenary that would come to form cerberus after the first contact war and 2157 ce after foiling a turian general's plot to use an alien artifact to transform turians into a race of invincible super soldiers under his command with the aid of sarin arterius 10 vermeyer after receiving word that a solarian reconnaissance team had word about sarin shepard and his crew race to the planet furmeyer's codex entry reads vermeyer is a lush world located on the frontier of the attican traverse its vast seas and orbital position on the inner life zone had created a wide equatorial band of humid tropical terrain only the political instability of the region has impeded efforts at colonization as a result shepard's team is mostly on its own save for the solarian team already stationed there as they are then expected to cut through the geth about the area it is discovered that sarin has found a cure to the genophage and is breeding an army of krogan the solarian's captain kirihei plans to destroy the cure much the fury of rex whose people now mostly give birth to stillborn children as their numbers continue to dwindle either killing rex or swaying him to your side is necessary before destroying the base additionally shepard will have to decide whether to save caden or ashley during the assault on saren's face as geth are swarming their respective bomb sites 11. stargazer a child found alongside the entity known as the stargazer is asking about the story of the shepherd if the crucible is activated a male stargazer is seen finishing the tale of the shepherd to a child he states that it happened long ago and that many of the details have been lost in time if the crucible is not activated and the reapers continue their cycle a female stargazer of an unknown species is seen finishing the tale of the shepherd she explains that they know about the shepherd's actions and the war through the archives of liara tosoni left behind the information the archives contained save the contemporary generation from the threat and are the reason why they are at peace some fans speculate that regardless of the ending chosen the child is told the story of the shepherd the arguable saver whose deeds or journey is passed down albeit like much of history the details and particulars have been lost over time as previously mentioned the stargazer recounts parts of what shepard accomplished to a child however early in storyboarding the stargazer seen in the final product featured a companion and child that are distinctly identified as an asari mother-daughter pair but with circuitry patterns the same circuitry patterns could be seen from the dandelion-like objects floating on a hill the pair are sitting on in contrast to the snowy forest in the final game some have taken this to suggest that the idea of a true synthesis of machine inorganic life has been achieved through all facets of the universe but was ultimately scrapped in this form additionally as a fun bit of trivia buzz aldrin an astronaut that made three space walks in 1966 and landed alongside neil armstrong on the moon voices the male stargazer 12. sarin a major antagonist in the first game sarin arterius was a specter of the citadel council who used his power and insight to aid the reapers as a spectre saren had resources reach and influence when reporting to the council and the freedom to move about as he wished saren's indoctrination by the reaper sovereign which made him believe in the reaper's purpose followed the pattern of reaper indoctrination of high-ranking individuals in order to infiltrate sentient racist governments and bring them down from within he endeavors over the course of the story to retrieve the conduit which he believes will bring back the reapers he attempts to revive the rachni breed the krogan and ultimately do the reaper's bidding in order to make their takeover easier he is ultimately convinced of his ill deeds thanking shepherd for it before he ends himself with a bullet to the head to prevent himself from opening the citadel relay for the reapers however sovereign reanimates sarent's body through its destruction the signal linking it to sovereign causes the reaper to temporarily lose control of its shields allowing the alliance fleet to destroy it 13. husks the aptly named husks are synthetic organic zombie-like creatures created from organic beings an organic being such as a human is impaled on huge spikes nicknamed dragon's teeth that over time caused the body's organs skin and water content to be converted into cybernetic materials blood is changed to a sickly green fluid and the body generates an electrical charge when one approaches these spikes the husks are released sent after the interlopers to kill or add them to their ranks 14. geth the geth are sentient artificial intelligences created by the quarians initially they were merely intelligent robotic beings without sentience or wills of their own created as laborers and warriors for their quarian masters however when the geth became sentient and began to question their masters the horrified quarians attempted to exterminate them the geth won the resulting war and reduced the quarians to a race of nomads geth communicate through a neural network sharing their processing power and sharing sensory data an individual geth has only a basic intelligence on par with animal instincts but in groups they can reason analyze situations and make tactical decisions as well as any of the organic races however legion a geth companion appears to be specifically designed to be autonomous and is not linked up to the other geth possessing quote over 11 times as many guesth programs as a standard geth platform and can function intellectually on its own the emergence of this sentient ai has served as a warning to other species particularly to ensure that such sentient ai does not revolt once more 15. the elevator a running joke from the original games was the incredibly slow speed of the elevator in the citadel in the meta sense the long times were the result of a more interactive loading screen while also further establishing companion dialogue and background in universe however the fact that a hyper-advanced space station with space-faring races were beholden to as slow as molasses elevator system is preposterous some believe that perhaps the function and inner workings of the elevator systems despite attempts to fix them were continually refixed by the keepers or their mechanisms were so finely attuned with the rest of the citadel that they were unable to be overridden 16. pre-human galaxy there are various interpretations to what a pre-human galaxy may imply first the solar system we are acquainted with may have once been home to various other space-faring species but they were summarily wiped out by the reapers perhaps other planets house them or even earth itself the ruins destroyed after eons of reaper harvests secondly could this reference a pre-space-faring human galaxy humanity had only advanced to the point of joining the citadel and other advanced space-faring races less than 50 years before the reaper's return had they waited or not discovered the mass relays it stands to reason they would have been considered too underdeveloped to harvest thus resulting in their continuation and progression for another 50 000 years perhaps making them the first to discover the citadel in this cycle not the asari and being the subsequent leaders of this new empty galaxy as sovereign says you exist because we allow it you will end because we demand it thus they would have been allowed to continue existing with their emergence as an advanced space-faring race leading to the demand for their assimilation 17. exile of batarians and quarians both batarians and quarians are often looked down upon and seen in a negative light by members of citadel space quarians are shunned to a degree due to their creation of the geth and the threat they pose leading to their isolation on their flotillas and the distrust and animosity shown to them when they venture into citadel space or interact with other races generally on their pilgrimages batarians have a more actively antagonistic approach to other races in the early 2160s humans began to colonize the skyline verge a region the batarians were already actively settling the batarians asked the citadel council to intervene and declare the verge an area of battarian interest when the council refused the batarians closed their citadel embassy and severed diplomatic and economic relations becoming an inward-looking rogue state as a result many batarians run smuggling slavery and drug rings and have actively participated in terroristic attacks on human and other species colonies for their own interests level 2 the tip 18. shadow broker files the shadow broker is an enigmatic figure at the head of an expansive organization which trades in information always selling to the highest bidder all secrets that are bought and sold never allow one customer of the broker to gain a significant advantage forcing the customers to continue trading information to avoid becoming disadvantaged allowing the broker to remain in business he is revealed in the dlc to be a yag a pre-space flight race native to upper neck which liara surmises means that he usurped the former shadow broker this is later confirmed to be true as the yag known once as the operative kelchu had been in command for the past six decades and now liara asserts him to become the new one how could a pre-space-faring being take over so seamlessly the yog were known to possess technology equivalent to 20th century human tech but as this yog was studied it demonstrated impressive displays of intelligence and learning on par with a much shorter lived solarians some of the premier mines in the galaxy as the shadow broker studied this yogg it was studying him still without integrating or advancing as a member of the council races the yogg were ultimately passed over by the reapers and are speculated to be leading species in the next cycle the shadow broker's files demonstrate that he was aware of the reapers the collectors and their plans he sold information on thane's identity leading to his wife's death additionally the data file tally has proving saren arterius had gone rogue was acquired from the shadow broker and many more he did not share the information concerning the reapers or saren with the citadel or attempt to ban others together to combat this threat but instead sought to try and aid them and protect himself before they came 19. harbinger and sovereign harbinger and sovereign are two named reapers encountered throughout the games sovereign was the first perhaps acting as a scout and paving the way for the other reapers to emerge from their hibernation and return through the citadel's relay according to legion sovereign was the name given by saren with its actual name being nizara as it was known to the geth regardless it addressed itself as sovereign to those who knew it as such a sovereign can be defined as a supreme ruler especially a monarch which is exemplified by its dominion and superiority over other non-reaper races as it ruled over the geth's subsect saren and its other followers by gaining more allies for the coming harvest it was essentially acting as a sovereign calling forth its followers armies or subjects to fight as its conscripts in the coming war as such it was pre-ordained as being the rightful sovereign that they should submit to if it was so named by sarin not by itself then this could be his projections of it on the other hand the name nazara can be found as a quranic name and in some other cultures generally meaning bloom beauty or brilliance as for it divulging this name to the geth perhaps it was meant to embody the blooming or brilliance of itself as the perfect melding of what the geth could be and what they could blossom or develop into perhaps as other species fail to understand the gaff the consolidation of so many ai or conscious minds as seen in the geth and reapers as a thing of beauty or brilliance however in old turkish nazara means the one who sees observes and this is just what he does monitoring organic civilization for the time in which it must be cultivated and prepared for its reaping in mass effect 2 and 3 harbinger serves as the main reaper antagonist and is responsible for the collector's movements after shepard activates the project to delay the reaper's arrival assuming the collectors have been defeated harbinger will appear as a hologram to chastise shepard for his futility in fighting against the reapers a harbinger is a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another or is a forerunner of something as harbinger begins the active deployment of collectors and begins initiating events to further the harvest and eradication of advanced sentient life it is the harbinger of the harvest or death also as it is the one to tell shepherd of the futility and that the reapers are still coming he is literally the harbinger or spokesperson for the coming invasion 20. vorcha the vorcha known for their aggressive and savage behavior as seen on omega are a clear threat although most of them are regarded simply as pests and scavengers their physiology and abilities have allowed them to adapt and thrive a primitive violent blight to all species and environments they have clusters of non-differentiated cells similar to those found on the planarian worm of earth these cells allow the vorta limited regenerative abilities as well as the ability to adapt quickly to its environment for example a vortra that is cut or burned will adapt to have thicker skin the lungs of a worship placed in a barely breathable atmosphere will adapt to better use the gases there a vorcha subjected to high gravity will quickly develop stronger heart and leg muscles however as a result of this adaptation the vorte do not evolve in the same sense that other species do as their equivalent dna has remained unchanged for millions of years as they merely adapt as individuals making evolutionary adaptations unnecessary due to their ability to adapt and their fast breeding their homeworld of hesh talk has long been stripped of natural resources resulting in never-ending fighting for the scant scraps that remain 21. slavery and mass effect in particular slavery is rampant in a prominent business venture in batarian society the blue sun's group regularly sold slaves often times to the collectors whose fates leave little to the imagination in one instance as of 2182 slavery had been fully reintroduced to a human world when corporate influencers and politicians on the world of and her effectively abolished the minimum wage this incident led to the and her rebellions in turn leading to the re-abolishing of slavery on the world 22 drell extinction the drell ancestors emerged from dry rocky deserts on the barren world verkana around the 1380s ce the already arid drill homeworld began its swift descent into lifelessness due to disastrous industrial expansion at the time the drill lacked interstellar flight capacity and with their population bursting at 11 billion they faced certain extinction it was around the 1980s ce that the hannah made first contact with the drell race in the following 10 years the hanar would transport a total of 375 000 drow to the hanar homeworld kaje the remaining billions left on rakana would perish on their dying planet warring against each other for diminishing resources of the rescued drill on the humid ocean covered in our homeworld of kaje it was not a perfect transition the climate proved tolerable only when the drill stayed inside a climate-controlled dome city the leading cause of death for drill on cajay is kepral syndrome caused by cumulative long-term exposure to a humid climate the syndrome erodes the ability of drill lungs to take in oxygen and eventually spreads out to other organs 23 key 9 getting the name bolto ke9 is a dog mech that was left behind by an engineer working on the overhaul of the normandy sr2 in exceedingly rare circumstances shepard may refer to c9 as bolto where k9 is a potential riff off of k9 the term for a canine unit in a police department or the k9 robot from the doctor who series bolto is also unique as some fans have speculated it is a riff off of balto the siberian husky that led a dog sled team to gnome alaska to deliver diphtheria anti-toxins 24. conrad verner known to some as commander shepard's biggest fan conrad verner can be encountered in mass effect 1 where he idolizes shepherd and depending on how shepherd deals with him he can be killed or allowed to fanboy for another day similar occurrences in about all subsequent games can be followed as well if shepard tells him to get lost conrad will march off determined to prove he too can represent humanity after which he will not be seen again an elevator announcement later explains his absence conrad would go on to pick a fight with a group of turians and is killed as a result if shepard is courteous and agrees to give him an autographed and then a photo conrad eventually convinces himself that he can be a hero as well and asks shepard to sign him on as a fellow specter and member of the squad shepard can charm conrad and convince him to stay at home with his wife in which case he leaves quietly thanking the commander for setting him straight alternatively shepard can intimidate him to show him what it is like to have a gun in your face conrad will then renounce shepard as his hero and leave in mass effect 2 assuming he wasn't killed he will appear impersonating an alliance officer and wearing replica in 7 armor claiming that he decided to travel around the galaxy to combat crime despite having no formal training shepard can choose to hit him fire a grazing shot or simply ask him why he is impersonating the commander whatever the choice conrad claims that he is working for an undercover officer who told him that the eternity bar is selling red sand but of course further investigation reveals that he was lied to in order for the officer to obtain the deeds to the bar confronting the officer at gateway personal defense allows shepard to get a discount conrad will praise shepherd and thank the commander for returning from the dead then leave after that it is reported on the news that conrad has formed a charity foundation shepherds for refugees and orphans however conrad will storm off unhappily if shepard tells him to get lost when first talking to him in the bar eventually a news report will be heard reporting that conrad had gotten himself killed attempting to capture transient youths hitchhiking a ride on top of a bus the report carries on detailing that conrad fell from the bus struck several passing cars and eventually fell into the power turbine of a biomass recycling facility because of course if shepard bothered to interact with conrad twice before and conrad didn't die horrifically either time shepard can see him again in mass effect 3 in the refugee sector of the citadel in 2186 while investigating sabotage on local medical stations near avena where he is actively recruiting for cerberus his reasoning being of course that his hero was previously aligned with a pro-human organization cerberus sabotaged the metagel stores while he had everyone distracted shepard tells him what he is doing is wrong and realizing how he screwed up again he agrees to stop and then asks the commander what he can do to help this leads to finding out he has a doctoral degree in xenoscience and sends shepard a copy of his dissertation on dark energy if shepard keeps talking to conrad the commander can get him to talk about his friends and family when asked if he lost anybody conrad says that he lost some of the former and had none of the latter to speak of shepherd reminds conrad of his wife which he then reveals that he lied about conrad then admits that he has a tasteful picture of shepherd surrounded by candles as a shrine 25 refuse ending the refusal ending see shepard refused to make a decision from the catalyst instead claiming to retain his and everyone else's freedom as a result the reapers continue their work wiping out sentient life in the galaxy and setting up the cycle to continue rendering everything shepard did for naught and more races are left to encounter the same fate some 50 000 years later the only shred of a chance the next generation has is the recording from liara compiling what happened in their own feeble attempts 26. cerberus skunk works cerberus skunkworks is a hidden manufacturer only accessible with a pc cheats this manufacturer would have produced the gorgon line of assault rifles the hydra line of shotguns the harpy line of pistols and the titan line of sniper rifles 27. council alive or dead ending based on shepard's decision to save the council or allow them to die has various effects should shepherds save them they will be grateful and humanity will be allowed a seat on the council despite being such a young race additionally in mass effect 3 the destiny ascension will be added to your military strength overall you will be reinstated as a spectre and other alien races will be more open to shepherd in other humans however if shepard allows the council to die whether it is recreated with the addition of a single human things will be quite different being wary of shepherd the council will not even grant him an audience and prioritize human soldiers over the leaders of all other races will make citadel npcs far less friendly with you 28. zaid and kasumi stories both dlc additions to the roster zaid and kasumi have interesting stories to tell zaid reveals that he co-founded the blue sun's mercenary group with vito santiago who betrayed him and shot him in the face he asks for shepherd's aid in subduing and killing him he is still contracted by cerberus to aid commander shepard in the mission to save mankind and can be seen in mass effect 3 assuming he wasn't killed kasumi is an expert thief proficient in stealth infiltration and sabotage cerberus tried to contact kasumigoto to get her to join commander shepard's mission she noticed this and contacted cerberus instead after trailing them when that's done cerberus sends shepard an email containing meetup instructions entitled rendezvous with kasumi goto for her loyalty mission and to join the crew she requests that shepard join her heist and recover kaiji okuda's grey box from donovan hawk 29 prothean history as drawn from the wiki a brief history of the protheans can be read as thus after achieving space flight the protheans discovered the ruins of a previous space-faring race the una-senen and from these ruins learned about mass effect physics and developed faster-than-light technology the protheans would expand throughout the galaxy with the help of the mass relay network and make the citadel their capital early in their development the protheans encountered a hostile machine intelligence which threatened to overwhelm them to defeat the machines the protheans decided to unite all of the galaxy's sentient organic life under their empire the other organic races were free to resist but those that tried were crushed and none ever managed to best the prothean's might in time each of the subjugated races assimilated into prothean culture and came to think of themselves as prothean united under a single cause the prothean empire successfully held off the enemy machines in a conflict known as the metacon war the protheans extensively observe primitive species such as the asari hanar humans quarians solarians and turians during their time a cultivated species they deemed to have potential numerous outposts were placed on or near the primitive home worlds with prothean interference and activities kept beyond their subject's comprehension in time the protheans would have given these primitives the choice to be part of their empire the prothean's belief that they could hold their own against machine intelligence was shattered with the arrival of the reapers in approximately 48 000 bce who were far more advanced than the machines the protheans had been battling they were caught completely off guard by the scale and rapidness of the assault the reapers entered the galaxy through the citadel instantly decapitating the prothean's government and disrupting the mass relay network isolating prothean systems from one another worse records on the citadel provided the reapers with access to all of the prothean census data and star charts allowing them to effectively track every prothean in the galaxy the prothean's greatest strength their unified empire proved to be their downfall as the protheans were united under the leadership of a single governing species with a series of subordinate races the reapers were able to quickly undermine the prothean hierarchy and cause prothean forces to become scattered when their ruling body had been compromised in addition as all the races within the empire conform to a single military doctrine they proved unable to adapt when the reapers identified and exploited their weaknesses while their domain crumbled the protheans were powerless to defend other races from the reaper's predations they ceased all study of primitive species in the hope that the reapers would deem them too primitive to harvest it was hoped that some protheans would survive the reaper's purge and go on to unite these species to create a new empire the prothean's primitive subjects survived and went on to become the present cycle's dominant ones other races subjugated under them however weren't as lucky the dinsorin a race who had mastered sciences beyond even the prothean's understanding attempt to pacify the reapers by sacrificing their own children to them but this only allowed the reapers to destroy them more quickly the zatil symbiotic ais that have been created by a race called the zaw to keep themselves alive on their dying homeworld were subjugated by the reapers and formed hostile mechanical swarms they became such a threat that the protheans were forced to obliterate the zaateel entirely by sending the star of the tsa's home system into supernova over the next several centuries the protheans fought the reapers from system to system world to world and city to city if necessary whole colonies were sacrificed and abandoned to the reapers while the reapers concentrated on subsuming the inhabitants of those colonies the protheans had time to regroup in the long run however this strategy was extremely costly depriving the remaining protheans of whatever infrastructure in manpower they had given up and absorbably the reapers conquered enslaved or destroyed protein-controlled planets growing desperate some protheans made repeated offers a surrender to the reapers but these were always met with silence in addition to the overt threat of the reapers the protheans had to increasingly deal with enemies from within their own ranks indoctrinated protheans acted as sleeper agents for the reapers infiltrating and swiftly betraying their own kind and revealing their prothean's dwindling hiding places and carefully laid planes to survive the destruction it was on the planet known to them as e4 that the protheans discovered the plans for the crucible using an information cache that had been left behind by the long extinct rectili to both find and translate the schematics for the weapon having reconquered the citadel late in their war during a last-ditch effort the protheans moved into the space near e4 to unite the two pieces and fire the weapon heroically defending their engineering teams the prothean fleets held their ground while the process was completed the energy wave that pulsed out upon firing of the weapon destroyed both the reaper and prothean fleets spreading through the mass relays to every corner of the galaxy and doing the same to any modern technology it encountered although the reapers had finally been defeated the small pockets of protheans that remained were too insubstantial in population and vastly spread out to continue within a century the last living prothean vanished from the galaxy level three under the surface thirty liar is beacon for the next cycle as seen in the refuse ending and when discussed when answering liara's message and inviting her into the captain's quarters liara leaves a beacon filled with information from their failed cycle in order to better aid the races of the next including information about shepard she was seating copies of this module on multiple planets so that should a race develop and find one they may be better prepared for the reapers than they were 31. indoctrination theory the indoctrination theory speculates that commander shepard has become fully brainwashed by the reapers by the time they reach the end of the game due to their proximity to beacons reapers and other such indoctrinating artifacts and that they have been manipulated over the course of the trilogy furthermore the ending sequence of the game after harbinger attacks shepard is merely a figment of shepherd's mind thus all that happens after this is a result of indoctrination further extrapolated upon by away or afk this theory states after shepherd gets hit by harbinger he's unconscious maybe near death and weak-minded everything that follows is the subconscious struggle to get him to submit to indoctrination i believe that the hallucination begins after shepard passes out the second time anderson and the elusive man supposedly each represent a side of shepard's psyche while he must choose between them the scene is beautiful because shepard overcomes or dies after this scene the true test presents itself shepard after watching anderson die crawls toward the main control panel but passes out a few inches short and some people believe that this is where shepard truly goes unconscious whatever the case this is where the indoctrination theory shines keep the following points in mind the dream sequence little boy obvious symbolism throughout the game taking place in shepherd's subconscious the boy who may or may not actually exist is present in the dreams always being enveloped in flames then in the final dream we see shepherd with a boy also being enveloped do not trust the child the appearance of the catalyst implies this heavily why else would it look like the child shepherd's eyes if synthesis or control is chosen in the end shepherd's eyes are shown to have indoctrinated eyes like the elusive man or sarin ironically these two antagonists supported control and synthesis respectively reverse moral colors this is a subtle yet effective clue that the reapers are trying to play on shepard's morals destroy the only reasonable choice to some is colored red the renegade choice well the two other choices are virtuous and best as they do not lead to the full destruction of the reapers breath scene this is the most important point in this theory there is no reason to include this scene otherwise the devs also didn't omit this with the extended cut so it was meant to be there seeing shepard take that last breath showing he survived however chris helper who worked on mass effect talked about the indoctrination theory with the gamer stating the indoctrination theory is a really interesting theory but it's entirely created by the fans while we made some of the ending a little trippy because shepard is a breath away from dying and it's entirely possible there's some subconscious power to the kids words we never have the sort of meetings you need to have to properly seed it throughout the game we weren't that smart by all means make mods and write fanfic about it and enjoy whatever floats your boat because it's a cool way to interpret the game but it wasn't our intention we didn't write that 32 killing wrecks both times there are two situations throughout the game that are considered the two killing grounds for rex the first takes place on vermeire after either failing to quell rex or outright shooting him as he may conflict with destroying seren's base and the genophage cure housed there the second takes place in mass effect 3 if the genophage wasn't cured rex will learn that shepard allowed the solarian sabotage to go unfixed if shepard doesn't shoot rex the first time the opportunity presents itself shepard signals commander bailey and a few turian sea sec officers to riddle rex with bullets if shepard shoots rex the second time when the chance presents itself the shot blasts rex out of the window and the krogan falls to his demise otherwise commander bailey will be the one to blast rex out the window but not before letting rex have his last words i know what you did shepherd 33. ardat yakshi and morith companion arda takakshi or demon of the night winds are asari suffering from a genetic disorder preventing conventional melding of nervous systems during mating instead ardat yakshi electrochemically ravaged their partner's nervous systems in extreme cases leaving victims as vegetative invalids or corpses asari psychologists regard this incapacity for mental fusion as preventing the development of empathy leading to psychopathy and there is no known cure the disorder generally begins in infancy reaching full pathology during maiden adolescent sexual development while seductive and sexually driven as other asari ardak yakshi are congenitally sterile ancient asari mythology held ardat yakshi as gods of destruction depicting them as villains of countless legends and as the anti-heroes of numerous asari epics contrary to popular belief ardatyakshi are neither extremely rare around one percent of a sorry dwell on the ardak yakshi spectrum nor are they all murderers most cultivate and discard countless exploitive or abusive relationships during their legally marginal lives despite rumors of ardak yakshi syndicates by nature ardagyakshi are incapable of long-term cooperation as a disproportionately wealthy species asari employed their economic reach and media ownership to hide the ardak yakshi pathology from the galactic community placing most yakshi in monitored work programs or seclusion only the most aggressive cases are sentenced to sanitaria in prisons or to the execution lists of justicars in samara's personal mission shepard helps her locate and kill one of her daughters morins who is an ardhakyakshi that has eluded capture for her entire life leading to countless deaths as she melds with her partners showing no remorse over their deaths however shepard may have the choice to help morith betraying samara and killing her as a result morith will use her powers to assume samara's form as she takes her mother's place on the normandy and if romanced will kill shepard through the melding process as well resulting in a game over 34. blasto and shepherd act blasto is a hannah character introduced in the film blast out the jellyfish stings and is described as having a lover in every port and a gun in every tentacle with his character and movies reminiscent of spy movies or action heroes after the normandy hijacking javik informs commander shepard that he has been invited to star in a vid which turns out to be blasto 7 blasto goes to war the solarian director introduces the cast including the vortia salarian and volis council members and blasto upon realization of shepherd and javik's involvement the actor blasto insists that he does not share top billing but is convinced by the director in javik otherwise in the film the council gives blasto shepard and javik the mission of stopping the reapers it zooms become apparent that in the vids blasto is considered the hero of the citadel and shepard can take issue with that portrayal or play along javik is a bit more disruptive even going so far as to threaten the solarian counselor and blasto the director soon cuts to a new scene where sovereign's half-brother sluggard attacks seeking revenge the vortcha counselor is revealed to be indoctrinated and threatens the heroes while shepard and blasto can argue who gets to shoot kevik decides that enough is enough and strikes the vortra actor with a biotic attack knocking him off his feet as javik and shepard leave disappointed the director is overheard calling for a new vorcha actor so they can start work on blasto eight blasto cures the genophage 35 sluggard the reaper as previously stated sluggard the reaper appears in blasto 7 blasto goes to war being sovereign's half-brother who has come for revenge against the hero of the citadel who was stated to be blasto not shepherd 36. shepherd's pre-mass effect 1 history as part of the profile reconstruction and mass effect 1 shepard's history can be broken up into the options of spacer earthborn or colonists impacting how others talk to the character and when in conjunction with their psychological profile impacts how many paragon or renegade points that they start the game with their pre-service history reads as thus spacer both of your parents were in the alliance military your childhood was spent on ships and station as they transferred from posting to posting never staying in one location for more than a few years following in your parents footsteps you enlisted at the age of 18. earthborn you were an orphan raised on the streets of the great megatropolises covering earth you escaped the life of petty crime and underworld gangs by enlisting in the alliance military when you turned 18. colonist you were born and raised on mindor a small border colony in the attic and traverse when you were 16 slavers raided mindor slaughtering your family and friends you were saved by a passing alliance patrol and you enlisted with the military a few years later shepard's psychological profile choices read as thus soul survivor during your service a mission you were on went horribly wrong trapped in an extreme survival situation you had to overcome physical torments and psychological stresses that would have broken most people you survived while all those around you fell and now you are alone and left to tell the tale the soul survivor's unit was slaughtered in a thresher ma attack on a couse war hero early in your military career you found yourself facing an overwhelming enemy force you risked your own life to save your fellow soldiers and defeat the enemy despite the impossible odds your bravery and heroism have earned you medals and recognition from the alliance fleet the war hero almost single-handedly repelled and attacked by batarian slavers on elysium earning the star of terra the alliance's highest honor ruthless throughout your military career you have held fast to one basic rule get the job done you've been called cold calculating and brutal your reputation for ruthless efficiency makes your fellow soldiers wary of you but when failure is not an option the military always goes to you first the ruthless character sent three-fourths of his her unit to its death and murdered surrendering batarians on taurfan 37. anderson's history captain david edward anderson is a human war hero and the original captain of the ssv normandy anderson was born on june 8 2137 to ursula and paul anderson a nurse and flight mechanic respectively in the city of london on earth and was the last of three children by his parents second marriage anderson is one of the alliance's most decorated special forces operatives and the first to graduate from the n7 special forces program at arcturus station serving with honor in the first contact war he was once considered for specter candidacy but things went sour on a mission with saren who already disliked him and broke from their plan many innocent people died due to seren's actions however saren shifted the blame onto anderson claiming the lieutenant had alerted the guards and forced his hand true or not this was enough to keep anderson out of the specters 38. the geth are actually nice the violent geth seen in mass effect 1 working for saren and at other locations are known as heretics by the true geth as the heretics vie to please sovereign who they believe to be an old god in actuality most true geth seek the peaceful advancement of their own race independent of the influence of the rest of the galactic society and believe every sentient species should be able to do the same an attitude which shows that the geth are significantly less hostile than the galactic community initially believed they fought because they wanted freedom from the quarians who made them and enslaved them they merely wish for the ability to self-determinate so it may be assumed that had the quarians merely accepted the geth as they gained sentience instead of trying to destroy them peace could have been achieved outright 39. paul and jillian grayson jillian grayson was a student at the john grissom academy and the adoptive daughter of paul grayson a cerberus operative and red sand addict she showed promising biotic ability early on and had high functioning autism jillian was 12 during her time as a victim of a cerberus operation and was likely exposed to element zero during the cerberus orchestrated industrial accident on yendoa after jillian is found by a corian on his pilgrimage and brought to the migrant fleet where paul grayson finds her paul agreed to let her stay in the flotilla to protect her from service which he no longer believed in along with hendell who had formed a bond with the autistic girl both hendell and jillian were picked by the captain of the edena to accompany him on his search for a new quarian homeworld paul escaped from the quarian vessel threatening the elusive man that should any harm come to khali sanders who helped jillian and suede paul against cerberus or jillian herself he would tell the alliance everything he knew 40. james vega's pre-mass effect 3 anime in the pre-mass effect 3 anime mass effect paragon lost we see an animated feature film following the early career of james vega as he leads an elite special forces squad into battle against collectors the synopsis claims that stationed at a colony in a remote star system vega and his troops must protect the colonists from the alien invaders bent on abducting humans for unknown purposes outmanned and outgunned vega must rally his squad to defend the colony at all costs even if it means making the ultimate sacrifice 41. joker's sister's fate as heard in snippets from a recovering asari commando ayan the presumed fate of joker's lost sister the hoped last surviving member of his family is revealed as we learned that joker's home of tip tree was invaded and no signs of his family have been found in refugee camps it is presumed that they were all killed turned into husks or worst after ayan took off her weapons to shower a banshee and husks attack leading her and a young human girl named hillary the same name as joker's younger sister to flee after two days with no food and only rudimentary weapons ayan realized that their only chance was to retrieve the radio she left at the farm and signal for help she and hillary snuck back in to find a number of farmers still alive unaware of the farmer's indoctrination hillary freed them only for them to begin screaming raising the alarm and beginning to attack ayan used her biotics to carve a path to escape again but hillary broke her leg and was unable to stay quiet let alone run at risk of being discovered by niara the banshee ayam was forced to kill hillary surviving to escape with valuable data that earned her a medal this particular hillary was confirmed by writer patrick weeks as being joker's sister 42 cerberus daily news network the cerberus daily news network cdn delivers daily news about the mass effect universe via the cerberus network in universe these news reports take place in 2185 ce various discoveries and world events are detailed in the cdn such as the manuel expedition in this expedition victor manswell funded a venture in 2070 with 300 people being cryogenically frozen and departing in 2075. contact was re-established with the expedition more than a century later by an asari expedition with a now established manswell colony having lived in isolation outside of the saul system this entire time with no knowledge of aliens or the state of earth of course other entries some quite in line with cerberus's values question human parents leaving too much child rearing to synthetic hands with studies indicating that the practice is on the rise and should be cause for alarm could this should it be allowed to continue and still a greater compassion for synthetic life and values perhaps leading to more empathy towards the geth and other such races after all the study notes how more than half of urban households utilize them thus conditioning human infants and children to view them as safe stand-in caretakers 43. mass effect comics and books there are currently 11 comic books of which six are series and seven main books with additional stories many of the comics focus on alternate characters excluding shepherd which is the main focus of the games while three of these books focus on andromeda another three focus on jillian and paul grayson's story and the final one on anderson's rise through the ranks meeting sarin and his spectre position being lost 44. emily wong's fate emily wong was a human journalist in mass effect 3 or rather the twitter build up in anticipation for mass effect 3 emily wong reports for fcc news and the alliance news network from earth on the saul system's mysterious calm buoy outage she is able to establish limited off-world communications through short text-only messages sent via a quantum entanglement communicator while reporting she witnesses a reaper descending through earth's atmosphere into airspace over los angeles she eventually arrives at el monte airport where she meets some members of the national guard who are attempting to hold off the reapers the anti-aircraft guns wong realizes that the signal she is broadcasting led the reaper forces to that location in an attempt to escape in a sky van wang is shot at and injured as the alliance forces an airport are destroyed bleeding badly and without any other weapons to use she steers her sky van toward an approaching reaper at ramming speed her signal is subsequently lost and she is presumed dead 45 dead reapers everywhere as in the case of the derelict reaper dead reapers can be found throughout the universe other reapers have been destroyed in previous and current cycles if so why were these reapers left behind would not the other reapers perhaps mourn them or wish to keep their advanced technology and secrets from the next cycle or their current enemies perhaps they imagine that their fallen comrades would never be found or were otherwise unable to locate them once they fell silent another theory suggests that they were left behind their true intent unknown in order to provide technology and aid to the next unwitting sentient species that would rise to the stars thus accelerating them toward their inevitable harvest level 4 center of the iceberg 46 asari true forms as drawn together and postulated by a sense-deleted reddit user what we see of the asari are not their true forms the asari are the famous blue race of aliens which inhabit thessia in the mass effect series the species is famous for looking extremely human-like even having a similar eye type to humans how could two species from two different parts of the galaxy come to look so similar to one another the answer the asari aren't as they are depicted in the game the asari are famous for their ability to play with the minds of other species this is depicted multiple times with the line embrace eternity at this time their eyes would turn a deep black and they would reach into the minds of others to manipulate or fuse memories with them in one scene shepard is on omega looking for morith the rogue daughter of one of your companions as she tries to seduce you her eyes turn pure black and her skin lightens by a few shades of color my theory is that the asari reveal a small aspect of their true form as they manipulate the minds of other species why because just as they touch upon your thoughts you are also coming into contact with the surface of theirs this reveals a small aspect of who they really are in mass effect 2 you travel to an asari colony called ilium on this planet there is a bar which you can go into to find missions and so on one aspect of this bar is a notable easter egg in this scene you can see a group of friends a solarian a human and a turian all enjoying the dance of an asari they were throwing a bachelor party for the solarian the characters begin to question whether the asari may be manipulating them at a telepathic level to keep them enticed the solarian even says my people don't have sex drives the way you humans do even so the solarian begins to show sexual attraction to the asari after a few moments of watching her dance how can a species which lacks such a definitive sex drive experience sexual attraction unless there was some underlying manipulation of their minds occurring this scene also touches upon the most important piece of evidence they all claim the asari resemble their own species the salarian claims that asari looks like him the human claims the same as does the turian essentially this could be taken as irrefutable evidence that the asari are actually an unknown species in terms of what they actually look like i believe that their species has black eyes and lighter colored skin impossible tentacles which would explain the shape of their heads beyond that the rest is up for debate but what of the ancient statues of asari anthea perhaps this mind trick goes as far as being able to alter the conscious perception of a living being's ability to recognize an asari's true form and as the asari statues are found deep within their home planet the odds are that an alien race must have encountered an asari prior to this so that they have been subject to this effect also is this a conscious or unconscious feat given the uniformity of the image projected to each particular race could this just be keying into what each race or potential breeding partner would most like based on their psyches 47 dextro and levo species the terms dextro and levo are latin in origin meaning to the right and to the left respectively in the context of the mass effect universe this is noted in relation to the many alien species for example this refers to genome or dna which is spiral in shape and rotates either left or right krogans and humans for example have levodna and quarians and turians are dextro based cross-chiral reproduction would be impossible although it doesn't have to be cross-chiral to be impossible a cat cannot reproduce with a dog even though they are both levo as there are many other factors in play as well thus a male shepherd romancing tally would not result in any offspring nor would a female ship mating with a krogan assuming she would even survive the ordeal this may also factor into dietary and allergen interactions that is stated in canon as to the dextro amino foods of turians and corians versus the levo-based foods of pretty much all other races as a turian dextro could eat human food but would not digest it properly perhaps like a lactose intolerance in humans being otherwise not super harmful a quarian however with hypersensitive immune system to add to this would probably have an anaphylactic shock from the same food or a severe allergic reaction perhaps necessitating a species-specific epipen or something much stronger 48. protheans eating the other races during the citadel dlc house party shepard asked javik about what the protheans ate and makes a comment that he should get cooking and javik stated most of our ingredients went extinct except for krogan asari turian salarian and quarian is there any we could spare admittedly he seems to be somewhat drunk or otherwise impacted by alcohol when stating this but it is known that the aforementioned species were seen as primitive at the height of the prothean empire and the protheans were a carnivorous species of evolved hunters so this is perhaps not altogether unthinkable additionally there are the following dialogue lines between rex and jovik rex i prefer my solarian liver served raw javik he is correct it was a delicacy in my cycle going back to the idea of dextro and levo proteins at least two of these species most likely would have not agreed with their physiology according to universe lore so perhaps this really was a drunken chest or poking fun at the others 49. paddlefish bonus the preject paddlefish bonus gives shepard a 10 bonus to either weapon or power damage if you import a save from mass effect 2 with a live project paddlefish keeping it alive through an entire mass effect 3 playthrough and a mass effect 3 new game plus playthrough you can get a special intel bonus from the rs quarters on the normandy 50. original batarians an early iteration of mass effect's story featured the batarians as the primary enemies in place of the geth the batarians were also originally intended to be small bat-like people 51. shepherd's apartment and mass effect 1. the pinnacle dlc and mass effect 1 debuted on august 29 2009 over a year after the game's release on november 16 2007. as a part of this arguably late dlc shepard gains an apartment in in taisei however at some point between the original release and the subsequent release of the ps3 version and the later mass effect legendary edition bioware's source code archive for the dlc was discovered to be corrupted the backups of the original developer demiurge studios were checked as well and also discovered to be mostly unusable in an interview mack walters the mass effect legendary edition team described an emotional roller coaster and said that it would basically take us another full six months just to do this with most of the team we've got i wish we could do it honestly just because this is meant to be everything that the team ever created brought together again all the single player content and so leaving it all in the cutting room floor was heartbreaking 52. leviathan the leviathans are an ancient aquatic race that dominated the galaxy in the time before the reapers of which the reapers based their appearance with the advent of the reapers the leviathans were forced into hiding to preserve themselves and were content to observe the reaper's harvests while surreptitiously erasing any evidence of their existence over the course of hundreds of millions of years the leviathans possess the natural ability to influence the behaviors of lesser-minded organisms to the point of complete physical and mental control an effect that is similar to indoctrination they can use this ability to communicate with other beings in a manner similar to telepathy as well as to turn them into thralls the exact mechanics of this ability are unknown but it has been compared to the rachni's theorized ability to communicate using an organic quantum entanglement communicator analog that stimulates neural activity over exertion of this mind control ability causes nose bleeds in humans and in extreme cases can lead to brain damage and death it is possible that the leviathans further enhance themselves cybernetically allowing them to use element zero to travel through space and breathe air with the use of filtration systems they might have even modified themselves with biotic amplifiers in addition they're faster than light communication pulses require precise control with technology completely unknown to modern science every new species they encountered was enthralled to serve them and provide tribute and in return the thralls were cared for and protected over time however they observed that their thralls would frequently build synthetic constructs to aid them these synthetics consistently rebelled wiping out many thrall species in response the leviathans created an intelligence with the mandate to preserve life at all costs the leviathans failed to perceive the intelligence as a threat they considered it nothing more than another tool to achieve a set goal as the intelligence sought out the means to fulfill its mandate it created an army of pawns that were dispatched to collect genetic data from species throughout the galaxy much like the collectors employed by the reapers in modern times eventually the intelligence came to the conclusion that the leviathans themselves were part of the problem and turned against them the intelligence's betrayal of its creators was sudden and devastating its pawns slaughtered most of the leviathans using their genetic material to create the very first reaper as the leviathans hid they surreptitiously enthralled subsequent species to erase the remaining evidence of their existence resigned to the reaper's reign they focused their efforts on ensuring the survival of their species watching the galaxy through organic artifacts for signs of their discovery though they had the power to destroy reapers demonstrated when they killed the leviathan of dis the leviathans declined to aid the galaxy's species against the reapers realizing that the reapers fear shepherd for defeating sovereign and the collectors other leviathans reveal themselves together they agree to aid the galaxy in the war against the reapers because they still consider themselves the galaxy's apex race not out of a desire to help lesser species the leviathans swear to make slaves out of any reapers daring to trespass on their domain as shepherd departs the planet the leviathans turn a brute against other husks and use their artifacts to transmit a powerful pulse that disables an attacking reaper capital ship illustrating their power during the war the leviathans are able to sever the reaper's control over a group of collectors these awakened collectors subsequently joined the fight against the reapers to avenge the protheans with assistance from spec-op soldiers leviathan artifacts are also deployed behind enemy lines allowing them to subvert reaper forces to their will during the final battle over earth shepard can inform the intelligence that its creators have joined the war to which it responds they are welcome to as it is only carrying out their commands 53. shepard clone and vi shepard's clone is a cerberus made clone of the commander it was originally created to provide spare organs and limbs for the real commander shepard who was being revived by the lazarus project sometime in 2184 the order was given for the clone's termination agent rossa had other ideas and decided to liberate it from cerberus's hands a violent shootout at lazarus research station resulted in rasa severing ties with cerberus and escaping with the clone's tank one of its known hiding places was ross's old stomping grounds on an asteroid orbiting themis the clone remained in storage until six months before the reaper invasion in 2186 when it was awoken by rasa then known as maya brooks over the intervening months during shepard's incarceration the clone learned how to be human with the help of neural implants and with brook's help devised a plan to kill and assume the role of the commander in order to carry out a pro-human agenda to accomplish this the clone hired the cat 6 private military corporation to eliminate shepherd and his her close allies since the clone lacked the originals memories thereby unable to perfectly impersonate the commander the shepherd vi can be found in the doc's holding area of the citadel near cargo hold a simply speak to the shopkeeper and she will activate him can then be spoken to and will run through a number of shepherd-like sayings 54. fornax costing five credits an issue and available on omega fornax is a magazine of human publication featuring acts of xenophilia featuring various alien races by its fifth year it became the first human magazine to offer full five sensory stimulation take that as you will 55. leviathan of dis the leviathan of dis is the name given to a gigantic corpse that disappeared from a crater on jarter in 2163. it is believed to be the remains of a genetically engineered starship and its age was originally placed at nearly a billion years old dr bryson's real interest in the reaper corpse is the entity that killed it which he identifies as the true leviathan 56. overlord dlc project overlord was a cerberus research project that sought to control the geth david archer chief scientist dr gavin archer's brother volunteered for the experiment to meld his mind to a vi the vi overwhelmed david and the resulting hybrid essentially became a virus which proceeded to take over the facility and used the life geth that had been acquired for the project to kill off the cerberus staff in hermes vulcan prometheus and atlas stations it is later revealed that david archer the human component of the hybrid vi was autistic and a mathematical savant david's unparalleled understanding of mathematics allowed him to communicate with a geth on a fundamental level communication had previously been a significant hurdle for the project without any results the elusive man threatened to shut the project down dr archer realized the potential of this breakthrough and forcibly incorporated david into the vi at this point the hybrid vi went berserk and began its rampage in escape attempt in 2186 gavin archer can be met again by shepard and gaelic where he took up refuge with other ex-cerberus scientists if asks he shares his knowledge of what happened to the project if shepard freed david gavin began feeling regret over being involved in project overlord thus he chose to erase all information on the project and left cerberus david was left in the care of john grissom academy and is one of the students trapped there when cerberus invades the station in 2186 if shepard chose to let overlord continue gavin reveals that as the test continued david began communicating better and better before suddenly becoming catatonic out of regret and feeling it was the only way he euthanized his brother to end his suffering and fled cerberus he gives shepherd the overlord results if shepard never investigated project overlord gavin states that the situation in the research facilities eventually grew out of control and he was forced to detonate its nuclear fail-safe device which destroyed the whole base it is also revealed that the geth had been eavesdropping on cerberus regarding project overlord the synthetics have refined the human vi interface into a much safer construct instead of intrusive body probes as was done with david archer the geth version of the interface takes the form of an easily deployable man-sized pod that scans its occupant requiring only a minimum of movement during the initial mind upload legion or the gethvi constructs such a device incorporating normandy equipment on ranoc if shepard embarks on a mission that requires entering the geth consensus 57 how saren started to work for sovereign through sovereign saren learns the fate of the many civilizations of eons past instead of using sovereign as a weapon as he intended sarin makes it his goal to save the races of the galaxy by aiding the reapers proving the worth of organics to the reapers so that they might be spared however the more time saren spends in service to sovereign the more indoctrinated he becomes his free will is gradually sapped and supplanted by the desires of the reaper and the values of his people that saren still believes in that an individual's personal needs are always subordinate to the greater good of the group are twisted so gradually that saren remains certain he is right as for why sovereign used sarin in the first place super theanine of reddit states that vigil on ilo said sovereign couldn't reveal itself and attack the citadel as it wouldn't be able to stand against the unfettered combined might of the council race's fleets as for why sovereign didn't go straight to the citadel and open it as a relay it most likely didn't know what happened it wouldn't have known the source of the issue i think vigil explained this too that the keepers ignored the call to open the relay so instead of just outright attacking the citadel he looked for the root cause of the keepers ignoring the signal to avoid this happening again this led to using sarin since sovereign wouldn't be able to act on the ground like saren could saren finding and using the beacons on eden prime and vermeire required him to go to pharaohs so that saren can get the cipher to decipher the beacons thus the beacon showed ilus which was lost behind the moo relay so cyren used his connections to novaria to get to the raknai queen and get the coordinates after finding ilos in the conduit that got him into the citadel from within which made sovereign's attacks much easier as serum was able to close the arms around sovereign to protect it while it did what was needed 58 shepherd is a myth theory as stated by kamikaze girl as we already know at the ending of mass effect 3 our infamous commander is referred to as the shepherd implying that the outcome of his or her actions were seemingly a part of his her destiny and even portrayed as a mythical being depending how far into the future the story was told this made me think about something i think some of us have overlooked who is commander shepard and why is he or she such an integral part of the galaxy surviving the reaper threat i mean think about it shepherds survive the prothean beacon on eden prime a device concocted for prothean mines not humans sovereign sarin arterius matriarch benezia the elusive man potentially the rak nye queen the collectors cerberus and countless mercenaries throughout all three games and last but not least potentially his or her own death two times if destroy was chosen then we take into account that shepard is the only person who made it as far to reach the catalyst whom allows him or her the right to choose the fate of the galaxy thus shepherd is now the shepherd passed on into a myth with accomplishments far beyond any other mortal 59. normandy memorial when the alliance finds the wreckage of the ssv normandy on the planet alchera they ask that a monument be placed on the site and any sign of the remaining 20 missing crew members recovered as shepard explores the wreckage collecting dog tags and other items flashbacks of times aboard the ship will play while there are four possible outcomes to this assignment the one in which all dog tags and n7 helmet recovered items reads as follows a monument has been placed at the last resting place of the ssv normandy on alcara and the families of all missing crew members have been notified of their ultimate sacrifice shepherd's lost and seven helmet was recovered sixty shepherd lives destroy ending in this variant of the destroy ending shepard must choose to activate the crucible earth and the normandy crew will all survive the blast in the epilogue cutscene shepard's love interest if they are a squad mate will refuse to put the commander's name on the normandy's memorial wall and the final shot before the end credits will show the debris of the crucible and shepherd taking a breath amid the rubble how could shepherd have possibly survived this plunge and the destruction within the rubble regardless some fans have taken this to mean that this variant of the destroy ending is the canon one as shepherd lives 61. elkor hannah soldiers the giant slow-moving elkor and the jellyfish as canar are known to have military soldiers however each have adapted uniquely based on their physiology the alcor because of their slow conservative psyches are not suitable for making the spur-of-the-moment decisions necessary in combat situations instead they rely on sophisticated vi combat systems these war machines can choose between thousands of gambits developed and polished over centuries by elcor strategists the slow speed and immense size of the elkor makes them easy targets fortunately their durable hide allows the shrug off most incoming fire elkor warriors don't carry small arms their broad shoulders serve as a stable platform for the same size of weapons typically mounted on alliance fighting vehicles according to an elkhorn diplomat on the citadel elkhorn soldiers are called living tanks by their enemies among other less flattering names the elkhorn do not maintain a large fleet of military starships this seems to be due to a combination of their conservative nature preventing hasty rushes to war and their relatively isolated and self-sufficient economy that would never encounter a trade dispute serious enough to threaten a war over they do have several cruisers and carriers at their disposal though their real value is in troop transport the hen are on the other hand of what we know simply make use of a navy that is relatively small but it is heavily supplemented by drell combat specialists the species that they saved composed of accomplished spies saboteurs and assassins trained from an early age 62 verloy the verloi are an alien species from the planet terves that made contact with the asari in 2184 after launching their first space telescope as reported by cerberus daily news in 2185 the citadel council formally welcomed the reloy to the galactic community sold out council-sponsored shuttles arrived at treves bearing intrigued visitors and gifts of goodwill during the welcoming ceremonies at one point the kroger representatives of the council delegation were ejected from the proceedings after introducing a violent sport called cowla which resulted in multiple deaths and injuries after the conclusion of the ceremonies a reloy delegation was dispatched to the citadel for a three-month stay to learn about intergalactic law history alien biology and culture and mass effect physics in 2186 during the reaper invasion the reloyd delegation withdraws from the citadel unwilling and unable to fight the reapers the reloyd decide to isolate themselves onto vests and destroy any satellites and observation equipment in orbit around their planet they hope that the reapers will see them as a pre-space flight civilization and spare their planet 63. arya taloq is elena the arya to loka zelina theory speculates that the two are the same person elena was a former asari commando and mercenary during her mercenary years she was a close friend of verd not rex before his encounter with commander shepard they stayed close until rex received a contract to kill alina since the two were friends they decided to test their abilities and battle it out they found an old space station and fought for days until rex realized that the station's core was about to explode and managed to escape just in time he later received a message from alina who was also able to escape telling him better luck next time since then alina's location had been unknown arya talok appears in the mass effect trilogy as the ruler of omega during dialogue with arya and mass effect 2 she hints at her past as a former asari commando and mercenary this has led many fans to theorize that the two of them are the same since it cannot be a mere coincidence that one disappears just as the other emerges 64. human reaper weird design the human reaper was a reaper in its early stages of production and is actually considered a human reaper larva despite its relative infancy it was alive and was able to react to stimulus thus attempting to crush shepherd in his team every cycle reapers select one sentient species in particular to be the basis of their core it's stated that the core of any reaper is constructed in the image of the species that was harvested to create it while the exterior follows a standardized design that is most efficient for their purpose in other words this human reaper emulating a human's upper half and torso would eventually be cocooned in the more squid-like body based off of leviathans that we are familiar with 65. elkor hamlet there is a new story for frances kitt's elkor hamlet theater a medium in which tone inflection physical cues the like are utilized and infusing emotion into a believable performance would be completely lost if an elcore were to perform it elkore cannot express readable emotions when talking to them as their race uses a complex pheromone system to do that so they preface every sentence with a statement of tone of the sentence it would sound as monotone and lifeless as one could imagine level 5 lower half 66 delayed menstruation in humans humans biologically active longer in the mass effect universe humans typically live to be approximately 150 years old thanks in part to medical advancements and having eradicated almost all known diseases that can afflict them perhaps as a result the onset of physical maturity has shifted it is stated that humans reach physical maturity at approximately 18 years of age suggesting that the process is delayed or humans have adapted to develop maturity over a longer course of time perhaps due to hormones or other factors from their advancements 67 soviet moon probe the soviet moon probe luna 23 was launched in october 1974 that can be found in the game and salvaged when found in the mayor christian 68 major religions died out the novels describe how the main or major religions of earth died out after the discovery of the mars prothean technology but is that truly feasible would the existence of alien technology completely shake so much of earth's populace so that they would abandon their religious doctrine perhaps it wasn't immediate but fell away with each successive generation and rapid suggestion with few consistent followers that being said humans have only been part of the galactic republic for a mere 26 years however small examples of those that still prescribe to these traditional beliefs such as the williams family being christian or at least ascribing to a monotheistic religion can be found ashley williams has strong religious beliefs but is hesitant to discuss them with shepard because she's concerned of the uneasiness it may cause in others most likely due to how uncommon or backwards it may seem now her faith only appears to be strengthened by her work in space quote how can you look out at this galaxy and not believe in something end quote and she believes that her father who has passed away is with god thus the major religions of our time have slowly died out save for a select few families that continue the belief system and who generally hide these beliefs from others 69 sha'irah mind controls people the asari shaaira known to many as the consort is an influential asari with many famous and powerful clients and she charges a hefty sum for her services she is surrounded by many acolytes of various races that tend to her and her clients that she is unable to see personally due to her fame and being such a highly respected figure on the citadel many believe that she is actually utilizing mind control on her clients and those that have met her to some degree as previously speculated the asari may use some of their mind-melding abilities to project whether consciously or unconsciously the visage of a being most close to the viewers most likely to ensure their reproductive diversity with other alien races comes to fruition what if sha'ira's abilities are particularly potent her powers ensuring that the vast majority of those that come into contact with her view her in a favorable light and she uses these powers to satisfy her clients even other asari and her acolytes are so pulled by this supposed magnetism that they devote themselves to her 70. kelly chambers dies first appearing in mass effect 2 as a yeoman and psychologist and romanceable option kelly chambers can meet her end in a couple of ways the first occurs in the same game after she is abducted by the collectors should shepard delay the mission to go through the omega-4 relay then they will witness kelly and the other crew members being dissolved into raw organic material or paste as dr chakwa states and be used to create the human reaper in mass effect 3 she can die in two specific ways if after she reveals to shepherd that she sent reports on them and the crew to the elusive man and she is admonished for it she will cry before later ingesting a cyanide pill next after the cerberus attack on the citadel if she is not told to change her identity it is discovered that she was killed by cerberus as can be overheard by other refugees her initial loyalty to cerberus and her potential death by their hands is all the more depressing when reading her cut dialogue from mass effect 3. she reads well i've been questioning myself i owe cerberus a great deal was it right for me to leave them it's a long story did you know that i actually met the elusive man face to face once few have before cerberus i was a waitress on a luxury liner with a very exclusive clientele i'm not sure if the elusive man was there for business or pleasure i just kept his drinks coming bourbon three fingers neat he had his pick of any working girl but he took an interest in me i suspect precisely because i wasn't for sale we spoke for hours it was obvious he wanted more than just good conversation and i can't say i didn't want the same he can be very seductive i knew if i slept with him i'd lose all his respect i didn't want that to happen i never saw him again after that night at least not in person the management of the liner changed sometime later batarians took over things got really bad some of the staff were beaten others just disappeared none of us could leave i don't know exactly why but one day cerberus boarded and cleaned the ship out killed every batarian but they took care of the entertainers made sure we were all safe set us up with lodging until we got on our feet i got a message from the elusive man he'd pay for my college and if i did well i'd have a job waiting for me so you see i owe in my life in more ways than one so long story short the elusive man got me out of a bad situation gave me an education and a job he gave me a future 71 lots of uncharted star systems due to council mass relay opening first it is important to understand that there are two main types of mass relays primary and secondary primary relays can propel a ship thousands of light years but only linked to one other relay its partner secondary relays can link to any other relay over shorter distances only a few hundred light years the council refused to open a primary relay without knowing what and where it links to as the last time they did this it opened up the way to rachni controlled space heralding the start of the rachni wars this is also why the turians attacked the humans leading to the first contact war when they tried to open a primary relay as a result countless star systems remain undiscovered as the primary relay would be the quickest way to discover them in a single lifetime 72 green asari the asari shiala was originally the blue and purple associated with other asari however in the months after her exposure to the thorian an ancient sentient plant at least 50 000 year old that has mind controlling and telepathic abilities as well as the ability to release spores to control those that inhale them shayala's skin pigment turned green unless shiala is killed shepard will see that she continues to retain this green pigmentation for the remainder of her life given the thorium spores which also can't infect or breach the mind akin to an asari's capabilities in a way perhaps it has fundamentally altered her dna or perhaps her mental ability to project the specific color visage that other asari project 73 space hamster the space hamster and mass effect 3 gives shepard the run around before it is caught and its info states that this small furry rodent looks up at you with what seems like a knowing smile what does it mean by a knowing smile could it suggest that the hamster is intelligent or sentient additionally unlike the fish it doesn't need to be fed meta decisions so that a furry little friend won't die or a more telling one about its physiology further evidence of the uniqueness of this hamster comes after the leviathan dlc if shepard chooses to take the husk head from dr bryson's lab when interacting with a space hamster it will poke his head out see the husk's head and scream before the husk head screams at it and darts back into its shelter additionally the space hamster is almost certainly a reference to bioware's balder's gate series in which a party member named minsk carried a miniature giant space hamster named boo in his inventory any attempts to remove the rodent would result in an audiophile being played the same squeak that the space hamster and tones when interacted with in the citadel dlc shepard tells the hamster to go for the eyes if anyone attacks it something minsk frequently says to boo in baldur's gate 74. morton was a biotic other dialogue wherein morden states possible for me to generate a biotic field etc that never made it into the game implies that morden was originally intended to be a biotic apparently able to maintain a biotic field powerful enough to have everyone survive during the final mission when loyal 75 citadel and mass relays are traps the citadel and mass relays were created as traps to both accelerate and draw in advanced space-faring species that would use them as hubs for their civilization making the harvest all the easier as outlined by the wiki a sentient species would develop an ftl drive but would still be limited in its speed by leaving a network of relays capable of instant transport across the galaxy that led to the impressive citadel the reapers ensured that it would become the center of galactic civilization as in the prothean's time further sovereign implies that the presence of a mass relays would lead the sentient species down a predetermined route with regards to weapons and armor technology both of which are based upon element zero technology for the citadel races as sovereign explains by using it the mass relay technology your society develops along the paths we desire the relays also serve to reduce the amount of time it takes for galactic civilization to advance thus shortening the time period between the reefers harvests once the sentient races have established themselves on the citadel with the aid of the keepers a lone reaper vanguard stationed within the galaxy sends signal to the citadel instructing the keepers to activate the station's hidden mass relay this opens a path between the citadel and dark space the reapers then fled through killing the leaders of the assembled species before branching out and harvesting all space-faring life around them because the reapers first entered the galaxy at the point that they have ensured will be the center of galactic politics information and finance they are able to any resistance almost before the citadel civilizations have any idea that they are under attack the citadel also gives them control of the relay network cutting off star systems from each other and destroying communications the reapers then use their control of the citadel in its data to begin the most sinister phase of their attack records allow them to track down every settled planet and attack them harvesting their populations or enslaving them through indoctrination once they have harvested the galaxy the reapers wipe every trace of their existence from record and retreat back into dark space 76 shepherd's name reason commander shepard is named after alan bartlett shepherd jr the second person and the first american in space may 5th 1961. he later commanded the apollo 14 mission in 1971 and became the fifth person to walk on the moon others have added to this suggesting that shepherd is synonymous with the traditional shepherd or person who tends sheep or a pastor over a congregation in the refuse ending he essentially speaks for all life leading the sheep or populist to slaughter or otherwise dictating the of this intergalactic flock the galaxy led and molded by his decisions up until this time as well in the given cycle 77 legion and jack in cerberus base during the priority cerberus headquarters if shepard chose to turn legion over to cerberus after its acquisition during the reaper iff mission it will appear here as a unique enemy similar to a nemesis furthermore if shepard did not complete grissom academy emergency evacuation jack will appear here as an indoctrinated foe specifically a phantom 78 leaked mass effect 3 script in the leaked mass effect 3 script various aspects did not make it into the game although some did some points that fans pick out in particular would have been javik wasn't just a prothean survivor he was the catalyst to the crucible when he awakens uneden prime he causes so much chaos and death that shepherd is blamed and loses their specter status kai lang frames shepherd for the murder of a specter turning kaden or ashley against you during the thessia confrontation you must choose to save either liara or the vermier survivor after the citadel coup saving the council again shepard is given the title lord protector of the galaxy zaid infiltrates cerberus to assassinate its leaders and learn more about how the troops are being augmented with reaper tech the final priority earth mission like the ending of mass effect 2 would have had more interactivity and consequences as lord protector you would have to order ships and troops to protect the crucible's approach sacrificing troops and potentially fan favorite characters in the process you sink the crucible to the citadel as per the original ending you learn revelations from the starchild then must choose to destroy control or become one with the reapers 79 elusive man not indoctrinated at least potentially not until the very final scenes of mass effect 3. hyr laid out a detailed theory as to why the elusive man was not indoctrinated for so long conventional wisdom among fans is that the elusive man henceforth tem was indoctrinated many years ago by the artifact he was touched by at the arca monolith it is also widely held that his eyes are proof of his indoctrination malen in mass effect 2 said please professor you wrote a paper on this forced behavior modification always results in mental degradation whether reaper indoctrination or drugs test subjects always lose higher cognitive function reapers can only hold on to their enthralled agents for so long before they lose their minds so the question now becomes for how long can they hold them we have our answer in the codex the mass effect codex says long-term effects of the manipulation are unsustainable higher mental functioning decays ultimately leaving the victim a gibbering animal rapid indoctrination is possible but causes this decay in days or weeks slow patient indoctrination allows the thrall to last for months or years the events of mass effect evolution take place in 2157 the events of mass effect 3 begin taking place in 2186 nearly 30 years later the codex states that slow indoctrination could allow the thrall to last for months to years that is not really similar to saying that the thrall can last for almost three decades you could argue technicalities and say that strictly speaking decades does not contradict years but that is a suspect defense how does indoctrination work anyway again turning to the mass effect codex reaper indoctrination is an insidious means of corrupting organic minds reprogramming the brain through physical and psychological conditioning using electromagnetic fields infrasonic and ultrasonic noise and other subliminal methods the reaper's resulting control over the olympic system leaves the victim highly susceptible to its suggestions organics undergoing indoctrination may then complain of headaches and buzzing or ringing in their ears as time passes they have feelings of being watched and hallucinations of ghostly presences ultimately the reaper gains the ability to use the victim's body to amplify its signals manifesting as alien voices in the mind so it fills your head up with various forms of radiation the like of which has various adverse effects in real life also if you remember the cerberus team on the derelict reaper they were all complaining of various ailments while indoctrination was settling in again it's kind of questionable to argue that tim was dealing with all sorts of mind-altering forces inside his head even if one wants to claim that the true control was simply lying dormant and then comes perhaps the biggest problem with this theory simply put since between the founding of cerberus and the end of mass effect 2 tim's actions do far far more harm to the reapers or their plans than good after the collector successfully kills shepard they are then able to almost recover his body from mercenaries this is a huge victory in the making for the reapers then tim comes and ruins everything with help from liara liara steals back shepard's body and tim is able to resurrect him or her not only does it not make sense for them to have their minion handle shepard's body unnecessarily and given liara's involvement without secrecy but the reapers are more likely to be able to pull off this miraculous experiment the like of which has not been accomplished by anyone in their cycle than some unofficial human pair military group the idea that the reaper's control of tim's mind was laying dormant also falls apart here because the reapers had many chances to clearly see the enemy foiling their plans cerberus whose leader they'd supposedly be in control of so if they were not aware of tim's actions before they'd have seen it eventually at winch point they would inexplicably be standing by while their thrall ruins everything they're doing then after taking away the single most prized possession from the reapers and bringing back one of the best reaper hunters in the galaxy tim proceeds to find a key to neutralizing one of their best weapons seeker swarms venture into the omega-4 system and wipe out an entire proxy army of the reapers and the prototype for what likely would have been its crown jewel of our cycle a reaper capital ship from human subjects to which harbinger angrily rants at shepherd on the way out of their base there is no way to justify tim's actions during and just before mass effect 2 if we are to believe that he was an indoctrinated agent the sheer amount of damage done to the reaper's plans here far outweighs anything that they could have reasonably expected from tim later no these were not merely some acceptable losses for them as they waited to use tim for their true purpose this also plays to a theory of a mental battle within tim's mind where he's partly helping shepherd on his free will but partly sabotaging him due to being slowly indoctrinated now cerberus itself is an organization dedicated largely to fighting the reapers tim's manifesto for cerberus is a subtle acknowledgement of the reaper menace warning of distant alien threats in the darkest corners of the galaxy that threaten humanity's very existence again tim's brief interaction with the arca monolith artifact showed him visions of the imminent reaper invasion it is probable that this vision galvanized him into taking actions a few later quotes from tim seemed to support this in the intro to mass effect 2 tim refers to shepherd's discovery of the reaper threat to be the truth as well it is notable that the reaper threat is treated as common knowledge among all cerberus personnel we meet even while most other groups doubt or deny it other fans interpret this line as meaning that cerberus is anti-alien i will not even try to argue that tim is not racist but whether he is or not is irrelevant while i certainly believe that vigilance against rival species like the turians is no small part of cerberus's purpose i do not believe they are what tim was referring to in his manifesto they are not an existential threat in the same vein as the reapers cerberus was thus founded in large part to fighting the reapers tim himself pointedly tells shepard that he has been fighting them longer than shepard who would likely have believed himself or herself to have been the first to uncover the reaper threat can imagine shepard even seems to understand cerberus's value saying in an optional paragon line that cerberus was supposed to be humanity's shield and not its stacker in the back so when does tim fall one would argue that tim may fall or won't become a reaper pawn until after the sanctuary data returned at which point he judged that he could safely implant himself with reaper tech because what cerberus found gave him the ability to control them this of course was a fatal miscalculation that only resulted in tim becoming indoctrinated this leads into the next point shepard's showdown with tim in the end tim was still not beyond the point of doubting the reapers i believe this is only possible because he was not indoctrinated for a super long time compare this to dr kenson whom is indoctrinated when we meet her in arrival and any place to make her think better of helping them are to no avail she's too far gone similarly the reapers talked paul grayson out of killing himself in the mass effect novels again too far gone tim however was not too far gone to redeem himself if he were truly under such perfect careful indoctrination and had been for so many years i would doubt he'd have been able to be talked into killing himself as he did other red hearings tim says i've been fighting the reapers longer than you can imagine a lot of fans interpret this as tim reflecting on a private personal battle with indoctrination however this quote can be taken at its face value and arguably makes more sense that way tim simply saw what was coming when he touched the artifact maya brooks states he is indoctrinated one could chalk this up as another person who got tim wrong whom shepard admits in the end was not wrong to believe that control of the reapers was an option to stop them and just another one of many red herrings and mass effect 3 about tim and cerberus to keep the player from figuring them out too much after all what would be the point of all the mystery behind the writer's favorite clandestine black ops group if they gave you all the information like it was no secret early signs of implantation in the beginning of mass effect 3 we see tim on the other side of the hologram with black markings on his face later he tells and implanted kai lang that the cybernetics he was outfitted with take time to get used to was it reaper tech sure it's possible but given the very limited information we have not a strictly logical conclusion to make next reckless treatment in mass effect 2 another fan talking point is that tim often throws shepard into near-fatal danger and mass effect 2 as though symbolizing some internal battle in tim's mind where he was somewhat finding the reapers but also at times losing the likelier explanation is that tim did not trust shepard with more information at risk of compromising the mission parameters as tim had carefully set them that is tim wanted the job done a certain way and did not want shepard to change that other evidence comes from the novels the mass effect novels use third person on the present narration and we are thus privy to the thoughts of many characters as a result one such character is paul grayson who was indoctrinated the book explicitly details his indoctrinated state by making us aware of the whispers in his head the elusive man by contrast is not depicted as being compromised mentally in any similar fashion one might respond by saying that the authors did not want to give away his indoctrination to the readers but this stands in contrast to the claim that the mass effect evolution's comic he was in serve to clearly tell the fanbase that tim has long been indoctrinated object row commander shepard gets a very similar experience to what tim did back at the arca monolith he is touched by a reaper artifact that shows him visions of what's to come he is then rendered unconscious and remains within the facility for two days or so before escaping he is not indoctrinated from the experience indoctrination requires sustained exposure for close to a week to set in on that note the elusive man also was not exposed to the artifact for the continuous amount of time required for indoctrination to set in control and sanctuary a lot of fans may see the death toll or experiments of sanctuary and conclude that this is an indoctrinated tim doing the reaper's work for them on the surface it may certainly appear that way however when you consider the very real breakthrough made there towards controlling and in turn stopping the reapers civilian casualties are no longer a big deal at least not for the reapers for whom sanctuary is less than a drop in the bucket as far as victims go the mere possibility that tim and company had nearly cracked the code on controlling the reapers was so threatening to the reapers that they diverted forces to the colony in an effort to stop it again the idea that tim was indoctrinated here becomes silly one could argue again that sanctuary was doing the reaper's work for them while chasing some fool's errand it did not however turn out to be a fool's errand in the end but a viable possibility to stop the reapers that being the case it does not make sense that they would urge tim to investigate a vulnerability of theirs especially for returns that were meager in the big scheme of things again refugees on some far-off colony being huskified is not some big prize for the reapers enough to justify potentially giving away their very downfall how did they find sanctuary then if not through tim's mind henry lawson indicates that the reaper signals from their facility tip them off and once again shepard admits in the end that his doubts about tim's plan were not as far-fetched or unattainable as shepard may have initially dismissed them as and if you dismiss the catalyst as untrustworthy as many fans do well then there is just the plain rational argument to be made nobody likes to relinquish powers to others as zaid says about despots start showing them you're in charge and they're not and they start whining like little girls character simply put the desire to take control of the reapers is just who tim is he is a maverick always has been when told things are impossible he goes and does them anyway like bringing shepherd back from the grave it is also notable that tim never says in mass effect 2 that the goal is to destroy the reapers just to stop them some claim that the only people shown to want to control the reapers have turned out to be indoctrinated not normal people one possible example that disproves this though it is a regrettable one miranda's father yes the man is an awful evil man but there is nothing to indicate he is indoctrinated if anything his work at sanctuary would not have been possible if he was because one his mental state would have been too weak and two again the reapers would have known about the project through him and nipped it in the bud sooner also shepard can let mr lawson walk free if miranda is not alive to kill him when watching tim's paragon or suicide death scene very carefully you will notice that shortly after falling dead the lights and thames reaper implants power down however the blue eyes from his contact with the arca monolith artifact what many fans point to as evidence of indoctrination remains lit 80. morith banshee morith can appear during the assault on earth as a banshee an ardot yakshi that has been repurposed by the reapers after shepard destroys the hades cannon shooting down most of the incoming hammer forces in combat morith behaves like any other banshee without any special properties and as some fans have pointed out samara's words of you will regret this decision when siding with morith over her that had come back to haunt shepard 81 the council knew about the reapers the citadel archives in the citadel dlc revealed that the council were aware of what a reaper was with notes suggesting that the aggressor was a reaper aided by saren of course the council continued to deny shepard calling the commander crazy even in private should they have survived many fans believe that they maintained this ruse so as not to trigger a full intergalactic panic in so doing they failed to fully prepare for the coming threat leaving shepard and others to scrabble a fighting force to combat them with little to no time in the grand scheme of things level six bottom of the iceberg 82 shepherd can indoctrinate originally speculated by youtuber zero zero meat plays this theory argues that commander shepard had his own mind influencing ability this would explain why shepard was able to resist the reaper's attempts to control him and why he could influence so many people into following him into battle in mass effect 1 the beacon on eden prime was instrumental in changing shepard biologically managing to transfer some prothean abilities to shepherd and giving shepherd some form of extra powers that had a lasting effect throughout the series one of these powers may be the paragon or renegade abilities which shepard coincidentally obtained just after leaving eden prime and allowed him or her to exert additional influence over others in dialogue besides the reapers and leviathans shepard was one of the few people that had the power to successfully change another being's mind potentially against their will essentially paragon or renegade points acted as charm or intimidating influence gained over their own acquired powers with the ability to exact them over others in dialogue the reason shepard can't use them on certain people in certain situations is because depending on the subject and the target's own mental will more power or strength was needed to subvert their beliefs youtube commenter actor took this one step further and theorized that the leviathans may have been controlling shepherd providing a means for shepherd to obtain and harness these special abilities the leviathans are one of the most ancient species in the galaxy and have the ability to influence lesser minds it might be argued that as they watched over shepherd they managed to influence some events in the series 83 keepers were a harvested race similar to the protheans being harvested and utilized as collectors to do the reaper's bidding so too have the keepers been harvested and molded to a new design in order to ensure that their secrets and physiology are not discovered perhaps is the reason that attempts to capture a keeper or take it into custody for study will cause the creature to undergo a sudden self-destruct with a form of acid being released internally the affected keeper literally melts into a puddle of proteins and minerals in less than a minute preventing any serious research researchers also suggested and theorized that the keepers were as old as the citadel itself it is later revealed that the keepers along with the citadel predate the protheans they are in fact of course as previously stated the key to the reaper genocide which occurs when a civilization is judged to be sufficiently advanced according to vigil the keepers were likely once a race that was either created conquered or indoctrinated by the reapers possibly even the first race that they enslaved whatever their origins the main purpose of the keepers now is to maintain the citadel in its attractive state so that sentient organic life will settle there and support their habitation of the citadel once they take possession of the station as they have for countless other races throughout time however once an organic species has settled on the citadel and reach the required level of technological advancement the reaper's current vanguard a single reaper left behind to monitor the situation sends a signal to the citadel which in turn signals the keepers compelling them to activate the citadel relay to dark space and begin the process of genocide the protheans of course succeeded in altering the citadel signal so that the keepers ignored it though too late to save the protheans themselves from extinction at the hands of the reapers the keepers have changed and evolved so they only respond to the citadel itself they are now no longer under reaper control and pose no threat to anyone 84. lady liberty and other stolen goods and hawks mansion in hawks museum vault various stolen artifacts such as the head of the statue of liberty and michelangelo's david ancient egyptian statue as well as many others such as arachna queen statue and other alien artifacts can be found 85. beings of light theory the beings of light theory proposes that there are entities called the beings of light this theory came to light due to the mass effect 1 codex entry on clincory a planet owned by volus billionaire kuman shoal the codex explains that a vision of a higher being told shoal to seek the lost scripts of beings of light on clinkori and that these entities were created at the dawn of time in order to protect organic life from synthetic machine devils it then goes on to say that shoal has been excavating clencory for two decades with no luck many fans believe that this is a direct reference to the catalyst which takes the form of a child shining with light however no one quite knows what the machine devils refer to the catalyst created the reapers and therefore it seems contradictory that they would be the machines of devils the reapers were designed to harvest all life in order to preserve it before it has lost the inevitable conflict between organics and synthetics this may indicate that all synthetic beings are machine devils or may be a reference to an entirely new group i.e the remnant 86. rachnae could have saved galaxy from reapers assuming that shepard previously saved the rackdie queen and mass effect 3 she will be captured by the reapers however unlike other sentient beings she is resistant or perhaps entirely immune to reaper indoctrination although some of her children have been indoctrinated dr ann bryson speculates that the queen is not actually telepathic but uses pheromones for short-range communication across the vast distances of space rachni queens are speculated to have used some sort of an organic quantum entanglement communicator to control their populace similar to how the leviathans communed with their artifacts and threw them their servants assuming that the queen was able to maintain such communication and control of her children and warriors does this mean that she could produce an army immune to indoctrination providing a powerful army to destroy them furthermore had they been at their apex could they have aided the other races driving back or destroying the reapers that being said would they have eventually turned their sights to the other races anyway 87. conrad verner is a genius as previously mentioned conrad werner appears as a fanboy of shepherds that generally makes ill-conceived or outright stupid decisions that results in him being killed much to the amusement and ridicule of fans however it is revealed that he has a doctoral degree in xenoscience and his copy of his own dissertation on dark energy but can only be realized after utilizing all of matriarch lanaga's writings and other aids can be of considerable use in essence he is a certified genius with the self-preservation and street smarts of a mouse inflicted with the toximo plasma gandhi parasite 88. arya controls the asari counselor arya seems to have substantive control of the asari counselor as when she is halted by a seasec immigration officer this exchange occurs so you admit you and your thugs are here illegally yes and it only took c-sec three weeks to figure it out i don't care who you are you're required to go through processing like all other refugees come with me i don't think so shirk get me the asari counselor after a moment a hologram of counselor arisa or the other counselor tevos appears arya to what do i have the pleasure i'm being asked to submit to immigration processing i see the hologram then reaches out of fame and appears to manipulate some unseen controls and now you have been processed is there anything else nothing thank you any time the dialogue is mildly different if tevos is the asari counselor instead of orisa but there is no substantial change in outcome it is also applied that arya's daughter lacelle is by tevos but why still do both asari counselors aid her is it blackmail the threat of violence by her gangs or something more prothean beacon effects prothean beacons are designed to interact directly with the flesh of protheans the prothean people can acutely sense information from their surroundings by touch even genetic data or very faint odors or emotions commander javik demonstrated this when he sensed commander shepard's emotional state and picked up on grunt's traces in the cargo hold protheans could easily store and read information in their beacons by touch inputting and reading vast amounts of ultra precise highly detailed data with ease as a result without the cipher all shepard saw was a mixed up conglomeration of visuals sounds and meanings that tormented his mind and recurred in nightmares there are those that as previously stated believe that shepard gained some powers or form of prothean dna or gene alteration by his contact with the beacon as a result this has led to some of his abilities persuasion capabilities and the like 90. spectres are poorly funded while the normandy was gifted to shepherd by the alliance most of the missions in their equipment come out of the pocket of specters not from the council that gave them their status morton solas states that during his service with the stg they didn't have to buy their own weapons a joke referring to shepard having to purchase the squad's equipment with personal funds some believe that the council doesn't fund spectres personally as should they run afoul or something or go too far in an issue they have some leeway to preserve or distance themselves from the spectre i.e we may have given them some power but we didn't give them the materials or weapons to do what they did on the other hand why would the council not properly fund spectres extremely talented individuals who have proven that they can get results where others could not it would still make more sense that they would want them to be at their best 91 metagel works on geth as derived from the games and official sources metagel is an all-purpose medicinal cell binding and anesthetic and clotting agent used by paramedics emts and military personnel produced by the serta foundation it heals various wounds and ailments instantly sealing injuries against infection and allowing for rapid healing by having the gel grip tight to flesh until subjected to a frequency of ultrasound it is sealable against liquids most notably blood as well as contaminants and gases given its ability to interact with blood and mend injuries it is surprising at first that it also works on the geth and mech team members thus it is capable of repairing entirely synthetic or artificial platforms while technically its properties make it illegal under genetic modification laws in this case the restriction is ignores because of the product's beneficial properties former cerberus operative maya brooks claims that overdosing on the substance may cause side effects that include alterations of the user's perceptions and mood given its ability to replicate or hide by targeting an individual's damaged cells for reconstruction what are the implications of this repurposing or mimicking of dna and cells and how might it advance 92 rachni were caused by reapers there are various theories as to what caused the rachni to attack other than the need to feed or destroy it is postulated that another party possibly the reapers manipulated the rachni into starting the rachni wars when confronting the rachni queen on novaria she will explain to commander shepard that she was unaware of why the rachni went to war against the galaxy while in her egg the queen heard only the sounds of oily shadows and a tone from space that hushed one voice after another and forced the singers to resonate with its own sour yellow note if shepherd allowed the queen to live and escape from the peak 15 facility an asari acting in service to the rachni can be found on ilium who says that the raknai are not an inherently hostile race shepard can question her on what might have caused the rachnite to attack upon their discovery by the citadel races and shepherd can't suggest mind control the asari is uncertain but the rachni queen's description of how her race was forced to resonate with a sour note is reminiscent of reaper indoctrination but why make them fight at all some believe that this was just an earlier attempt at breaching the citadel without sarin accelerating the plans for the harvest or they were simply used to sow chaos destabilizing or weakening their military an additional theory suggests that the reapers were not ready to reveal themselves meaning they couldn't handle the threat of any rachni who had survived their previous cycle coming in friendly contact with other races in the galaxy since rachni retained genetic memory spanning hundreds of thousands of years thus instigating a war between the two was the best option dr garrett bryson speculated that the mythical leviathan was responsible instead and may have been trying to create an army to confront the reapers since the reapers were in dark space at the time of the rakhine wars and the ancient rachni bore no traces of the cybernetic augmentation that the reapers utilized to convert organics into troops bryson believed that they could not have been responsible bryson attempted to use the activity patterns of the ancient rachni to track possible leviathan artifact sites but this parameter turned out to be irrelevant to the search and bryson's theory remains unconfirmed 93. secret turian dancing during thane's loyalty mission in mass effect 2 a dancing turian can easily be missed and can be seen joining in on the dance floor 94 keeper 20. this particular keeper seems significant enough to be in the shadow brokers vid collection it is seen staring into the screen as it goes in and out of static some believe this to be a riff outside of the lore being a reference to a bug that would happen during the scan the keeper side quest in mass effect 1 where one of the keepers out of 20 would bug outside of the map making it impossible to scan thus even the shadow broker loses connection when this keeper warps leaving it as an anomaly 95 cut ability to save both on vermeire there are cut audio files between shepard ashley and cayden after saving both teammates with ashley commenting why didn't you just leave one of us behind as it put the mission in jeopardy and potentially leads to shepherd being court-martialed 96 turians can't swim according to garrus the entire species of turians as a whole can't swim very well normally resulting in flailing and drowning because their bodies are literally too dense 97 prothean error races while primitive ancestor to the asari and many galactic races existed other advanced races lived and were wiped out like the protheans such as the densorin that attempted to pacify the reapers by sacrificing their children the orovores that attacked the asari homeworld of thessia and were repelled by the protheans the previously mentioned sateal and za other races mentioned by javik were that did occur the aggressive didiker wiped out the senril the enduromi which conquered the vandamar the senril which claimed to have found the path to eternal peace but were wiped out by the didiker and the vandemar which were conquered by the endoromi level seven under the iceberg 98 probing uranus there are two main lines of dialogue when launching probes on uranus or uranus in this case and edie sarcastically says really commander doing so a second time elicits a sarcastic probing uranus the subtext isn't the hardest to pick up on here 99 humans are the apex race leviathans claim and are said to be the apex race it is also known that the reapers specifically choose one sentient race for their main reapers while others are harvested for their destroyers as they attempted to make a human reaper this suggests that the apex race from this cycle and the main cores of these new reapers would be humanoid despite leviathans regarding themselves as the first and only apex race it is still shepard and humanity that has the potential of breaking the cycle 100 dragon age ogre and hawks museum a dragon age ogre can be found in hawk's museum as previously covered in the dragon age iceberg both mass effect and dragon age potentially take place within the same universe the mass effect 2 dlc kasumi stolen memory there is a darkspawn ogre statue in donovan hawk's vault some fans argue that hawke is interested in preserving not only art but also pieces depicting extinct species in dragon age inquisition there are several mounted krogan heads scattered across the game this may indicate that krogan had attempted to land on dragon age's planet thedas and scout the area but were killed and mounted as trophies due to their oddity thedas moon is quite large in fact it is so large that some believe it to be a planet there is a planet in mass effect that looks similar to the moon of thedas it is called clandagon and has a moon called press-up which may be thedas the mass effect 1 codex explains that press-up is barren and consists of jagged ridges due to an ancient disaster which might be a reference to the events of dragon age inquisition while other fans see these as merely easter eggs some believe that there is enough evidence to at least consider this a theory additionally could the races of dragon age have been advanced enough that they too were eventually harvested by the reapers others posit that the fade was merely a mental manifestation or otherwise allowing for their linkage this plane where all could meet like a hive mind or supercomputer akin to the geth or reapers communicating with one another all at once while biotics use element zero could some form of this been present in the people of thedas's diet or in the earth in some alternate form the exposure to individuals somehow passing down through the generations this could manifest as some of the powers we see magic users wield 101 mass effect 1 vision of human ancestors on uncharted planet some believe that human ancestors were seen in the mass effect 1 visions on an uncharted planet suggesting that either part of their population was uprooted and receded in the sol system by unknown or prothean means or that a delegation of advanced humans survived and landed on earth losing much of their technology such theories are generally fairly vague in nature and rife with speculation 102 shepherd has an insane liver in mass effect 2 there is a sequence in which shepherd imbibed some of the strongest alcoholic beverages on offer at the bar after downing a few particularly strong drinks he's served batarian ale which the bartender remarks that he's never seen anyone stay on their feet after drinking shepherd does finally shepherd downs a glass of wrinkle a krogan alcohol that grunt had mentioned hits aliens like ground glass and the bartender jokes will make shepherd set off radiological alarms other notes signify that it is highly acidic capable of melting through machinery and grunt narrates to shepherd that he in fact used it as a molotov cocktail merely by throwing a regular bottle at a sea sec air car while shepherd does black out after a moment he wakes up surrounded by his teammates seemingly no worse for wear in a bathroom many speculate that the commander should have needed medical attention or it should have killed him especially given how much was consumed in such a short time frame others still claim that shepard either has the strongest human liver in the galaxy or attain some form of biological boon to organic matter and functions from the prothean relic 103 every cycle has a shepherd when speaking with a prothean vi the aspect of a continuous repeating cycle is put forth and generally accepted as fact society's peak in evolution and dissolve the reapers attack and so much more happens in this pattern as a result some theorize that a shepherd-like figure is present in every cycle as a part of this pattern whether this figure is a legendary leader or any given cycles events and trials serve as a breeding ground for the development of one is unclear as the elusive man went to such great pains to revive shepherd who he believed to be integral to this cycle or at least humanity's survival recreating the commander in every conceivable way possible was imperative so that the essence was the same as a result some additionally believed that javik was his cycle shepard but he ultimately failed 104 shifty cow the shifty looking cow is a space cow found on the planet of antarum and the newton system of the kepler verge it roams near the southwestern corner of the operational area near a gold deposit an otherwise normal member of the species talking to it also does nothing however on seeing commander shepard it starts following them around on reaching a close enough distance it steals the spectre's credits slowly as long as shepard doesn't turn around to face it the cow continues its activities whether it's stalking shepherd or siphoning their money only moving when the commander is not looking at it the cow can be killed with a single shot but will disappear and respawn in a few moments doing so does not recover any lost credits however according to a post by lead technical designer dusty everman on the official mass effect forums the shifty cow easter eggs nature is as follows i love the history of the shifty cow easter egg when the character artist designed the space cow with two extra arms preston our lead designer was a little creeped out his comment was you can't trust any animal that can milk itself those extra little hands look so grabby so preston came up with the idea of shifty cow turn your back on him and those creepy little hands are going to go to work kiss those credits goodbye thus this cow has the power to siphon off credits from shepherd but for what purpose it seems isolated here so what could it spend them on or is it somehow able to convert them into something else 105 cut anderson conversation originally anderson's final conversation with shepard was meant to be longer being cut to reduce the sluggishness in the final scenes as supposedly directed by casey hudson others say it was cut as anderson saying he never had a family and never got to be a father himself would contradict lore of his ex-wife and adult son while it's only a few lines in the grand scheme of things some fans still miss their inclusion some lines definitely hit home for some fans as anderson asked shepard if he or she would want a family and kids saying their children would be proud of them with shepherds stating that i don't know about that not everything i've done is something i'm proud of and anderson responds i'm proud of you 106 dark energy theory and rewritten ending as commented upon by drew curpission a lead writer for the first two mass effect games and some books the subtext of tally's loyalty mission in mass effect 2 was about dark energy causing the unnatural speed at which haystrom's main star or sun was dying the premise was such that the mass effect the very thing that makes everything in the universe work as we understand it is actually killing it galactic civilization's use of mass effect technology was effectively causing a buildup of dark energy thus the reapers were supposed to prevent the buildup from reaching catastrophic levels the reapers clean up every 50 000 or so years to allow the universe time to recuperate and prevent its destruction hoping with each cycle that there might be a solution found in order to halt the dark energy from element zero and mass effect fields killing the universe additionally humans were the last best chance at salvation because of their genetic diversity the original final choice was supposedly between sacrificing humanity or destroying the reapers again three options remained in the end humanity lives and the reapers die the galaxy falls into infighting and eventually fails as dark energy builds up and starts killing stars or humanity is martyred to create a super reaper that gives everyone else a chance 107 how humans became biotics after a series of starship accidents in the 2150s that dispersed element zero over populated areas the first human biotics were born by the time these children were teenagers the alliance had made contact with the citadel and learned of the effects of in-utero element zero or ezo exposure a company called kinetics industries was founded to track down exposed individuals and develop implants for humans there are rumors that after the link between ezo and biotics was discovered some human colonies were deliberately exposed to dust form element 0 to create more biotic children 108 cerberus are or were good there is a saying that goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions and cerberus's modus operandi of the ends justify the means seems to line up with this fact that being said many boons to shepherd including his or her life are owed to cerberus why because the elusive man believed that shepard was the key to stop the reapers and preserve life or at least humanity cerberus also sent miranda lawson to assist jacob taylor in an investigation into a potential batarian terrorist attack and when the pair discovered a plot to assassinate the citadel council using a bioweapon they stopped the attack preserving even an alien galactic council and preventing mayhem and while they may be extremists some argue that at least in mass effect 2 they cared more than the council or other factions about the reapers and collector attacks aiding shepard and setting the commander up for success 109 galaxy population makes no sense according to mass effect sources populations are given for most inhabited areas such as the citadel although the numbers seem quite low for example the citadel the seat of the galactic empire is home to a mere 13.2 million people not including the permanent keepers to put this in perspective the population of new york city in 2022 is approximately 8.4 million and tokyo's is 35.2 million given the large swatches of skyscrapers seen on the citadel in addition to the wards one would think the population tourists and passerbys notwithstanding would be far higher going to estimates of alien populations when compared to earth the earth's current population is over 7 billion and in the mass effect universe it is over 11 billion the asari homeworld athesia contains a paltry 5.5 billion and all others seem to have but a fraction when compared to humans say for the solarians with 10.3 billion on their home planet of sirkesh some theorize that these numbers are altogether too small as significant populations are not normally documented outside of these home worlds and overall space stations and colonies don't make significant contributions to these numbers with expansion possible why are so few of these comparable species around some believe that although the krogan fought in the rachni wars many other races lost countless numbers to rachni and then the kroger themselves before the rebellion and the genophage although solid proof is so far unobtainable 110 legion does the robot in mass effect 2 when observed at his ai core legion may be seen beat boxing and dancing in the style known as the robot other than a meta easter egg it would be interesting to learn the impetus behind this 111 una sanen and other pre-prothean races prior to the prometheans a number of races existed in the previous cycle and asano inhabiting islos at some point in its ruins providing protheants with the knowledge to develop mass effect technology foihan who ward with the inusanan and whose starships litter a disputed planet angana are then a vast civilization with technology found to be equivalent to the current best of the galactic citadel and the ziof that built elaborate crypts on the surface of the planet are many 112 hidden rachni songs in mass effect 1 you can only hear these songs after novaria where you encounter the rachni and as the rachnite are stated to be able to communicate with certain advancements countless light years away it is believed that these songs are reaching these various points across the planets in the hopes that other rachni or another queen has survived assuming the first one did they are focused on rebuilding their race and staying out of sight of the other races at least for now so this could also be a point at which they are searching for a new home these songs commonly associated with fracking eye can be heard near the wreckage where the asari writings are found on alta hay at the abandoned mining camp on nepmos at the abandoned camp on noodacrux near the landing zone on raengri near the downed recon probe on latania on the hill near the crashed cccp luna 23 on luna where it should be impossible for any iraq knight to be present and on the hill to the west of the thresher maw and crash probe on zawin 113 harbinger is the first reaper and created from leviathan before the reapers came to be the galaxy was under the thrall of a race known as leviathans they created an intelligence to solve the problems of organics and synthetics killing each other however this intelligence turned on them slaughtering most of their kind and processing others into the very first true reaper harbinger harbinger's form that of the leviathans themselves became the template for subsequent reapers harvested from the galaxy's races on cyclical purges over the next million years 114 shepherd is a mass murderer as the commander has killed reapers which are the collections of millions of sentient minds he has effectively killed millions upon millions of trapped or assimilated souls especially if he chooses the destroy ending additionally owing to the destruction of the bahak system by commander shepard's actions and arrival sending an asteroid into the alpha relay that tears it apart and creates an explosion akin to a supernova that easily kills the more than three hundred thousand batarian colonists in the system and countless more really makes shepherd a mass murderer level 8 the abyss 115 how do elkor use computers the elkor from mass effect or a large lumbering species with incredible strength that moves slowly as a result of their evolution on their high gravity homeworld we know that the lips of an elkor are strong enough to hold small objects but this doesn't explain how the lcord do things such as operate machinery or input information to a computer or even pilot spacecraft they have not demonstrated psychic or biotic abilities in lore and their large wide legs aren't suited for performing most tasks that dexterous species such as humans solarians or asari can perhaps they merely build their controls to suit their physiology for example instead of tiny keyboards and control yokes made for human fingers they have giant control switches built into the floors of their ships they also have pressure sensitive pads and tilting pedals for finer control when piloting all that being said some technology and creations do require death movements and small parts how can their giant fumbling fingers accomplish this we know that their species wasn't simply uplifted by more dextrous races as they had made their first attempts into space travel by the time the asari found them meaning that they created intricate technology on their own 116 keepers were enslaved by leviathans as leviathans created the citadel and as an aquatic species made use of land-based thralls and it is noted that they most likely evolved on a planet with one other sapient species which many theorized to be keepers the first thralls allowed for the building of such technologies that sparked the exploration the leviathans needed and so it seems were the first creatures indoctrinated by the reapers made in the leviathan's image who have shown that they are already weak to indoctrination like mind control powers and the collective reaper psyche may seek keeper species as a similar asset now the keeper's inclusion upon the citadel working on the technology their masters cannot remains the same regardless of who rules it the reapers or the leviathans 117 the biotic god is actually a biotic nifty cal evolus who claims to be a biotic god throwing a weak warp at the mercenaries if shepard encourages him to fight them is generally regarded as a joke the fact that he is impaired by the drugs the asari injected into him is perhaps why his powers and balance are so poor like the quarians volas are rarely seen outside of their suits and rarely have biotics amongst their numbers however those that do are said to demonstrate impressive biotic powers despite their diminutive size and perhaps nifty cal would have been a more serious threat given he was in full possession of his mental and physical faculties 118. mass effect 1 and 2 were possibly pointless and only delayed the attack this theory suggests that all of the events of mass effect 1 and 2 were ultimately pointless as they did not stop the reapers but merely delayed the inevitable if so would that mean that shepard would have still made it to the star child and been able to make the decision or was the delay entirely necessary to learn and gather forces together giving shepard and the others a fighting chance to reach the catalyst in the first place 119 citadel dlc is purgatory the purgatory theory believes that commander shepard had died at the end of mass effect 3 and the mass effect 3 dlc citadel takes place in the afterlife citadel is a tribute dlc offering up everything fans loved about the series it provides shepherd with a new domicile some casino drama and the chance to hang out with all of his old companions again jordan rivas came up with this theory based on dialogue from citadel with avena the virtual intelligence unit in the dlc shepard can once again ask avena about information on different locations in the citadel however when you bring up purgatory the citadel's nightclub aveena will begin defining purgatory a catholic concept about a place between heaven and hell this theory argues that it cannot be merely coincidence that the writers of the dlc chose to make this reference and in fact the idea of the citadel being a temporary purgatory for shepherd makes sense shepherd has a strong connection with the citadel it being where he began forming close alliances and started his journey and so too it is now where he makes peace with his death and all that he has done for the galaxy 120 mass effect space cigarettes cigarettes can be found throughout the games such as with the elusive man a batarion on job captain chavka when you go to recruit garrus and an alcor in a shop an omega has a cigar sticking out of his mouth in universe cancer and presumably the negative effects of smoking have been cured so there is no inherent health risk to the act any longer 121 virtual aliens an unnamed race of virtual aliens are a race of some one billion individuals who downloaded their minds into a virtual world aboard a starship long ago to avoid the destruction of their civilization as of 2185 ce the virtual aliens have established diplomatic contact with the citadel council in order to secure a new power source for the systems that maintain their virtual world to facilitate communication with the citadel council the virtual aliens show that they are capable of swapping consciousnesses with other sentient beings and can control their bodies approximately 8 000 years ago the virtual aliens faced an imminent crisis their homeworld star was about to go supernova to survive the virtual aliens built a starship equipped with a network of supercomputers one billion virtual aliens transferred their consciousness into the supercomputers which contained an entire virtual world for them to inhabit for the duration of the crisis with a purpose-built a.i piloting the ship and maintaining the virtual world the virtual aliens departed their home and began a millennial long sojourn across the galaxy 122 what did shepherd see after mass effect 2 death a cut conversation between shepherd and ashley discusses what shepard did or didn't see after his death and i've highlighted a few sections you were dead weren't you i mean really dead right well i heard i couldn't say for sure but i think so what did you see bright light dark tunnel anything that's a big question ash i'm not sure the answer will be what you're looking for it is what it is shepard there's no right or wrong i remember floating after an explosion in the normandy pushed me out into space there was a sharp pain in my chest i couldn't breathe but i could feel air being leeched from my lungs i struggled tried to stop air from leaking all pointless but it doesn't take long before it was blackness did you see anything i did see a light really it was the cerberus lab ash nothing else i heard voices muffled for a bit next time i woke up i had to escape the facility so you don't know i don't know i'm sorry ash i don't know if i died and came back or simply died what do you mean i don't know if i'm the shepherd you knew or some incomplete copy i don't know all that being said this could indicate that there is no real afterlife or higher plane that one goes to when they die or that shepherd is not the same consciousness as he went through a form of death wherein perhaps his ultimate soul was not sent back or recovered and that aspect of the commander did go on to the afterlife leaving his supposed consciousness or aspects or clone of himself behind 123 marauder shields was a good guy marauder shields is an inside joke among the community at the end of mass effect 3 when shepard is walking to the beam a random marauder jumps out of nowhere this is marauder shields the joke goes that he knew about the horrible ending was trying to save you from your own disappointment which is why he attacked you 124 leviathan will take over the galaxy it's canon that the leviathans were once the apex lifeform employing all other races as their thralls making them pay tribute their enemy is obviously the reapers who were originally created by the intelligence to harvest life forms although it betrayed them and started with theirs but now with the reapers gone what can stop the leviathans from regaining their position as the apex life form they destroyed a reaper with a simple thought transmitted of course through several orbs and state that your own species could be destroyed with a single thought assuming they indeed take over the galaxy after the defeat of the reapers particularly from the destroy option what would living in the galaxy be like then and will they recruit shepherd to be their agent the leviathan supposedly built the mass relays so that they may be able to control or subvert them however they are a shadow of their former selves and without the sprawling empire they once commanded depending on the ending would they see comradeship or any amount of worth in the other races or simply see them as future thralls to begin their empire anew now cognizant of the threat such a powerful intelligence could be and wary to not make the same mistake that led to the reapers once again 125 organic quantum entanglement communications the quantum entanglement communicators qec are incredibly powerful and useful pieces of technology when a pair of quantum entangled particles is separated a change to one particle will affect the other instantaneously wherever it lies in the universe qecs exploit this effect to transmit binary data any distance of course two pairs of entangled particles are necessary for transmission and reception it allows instantaneous communication over any distance without reliance on the network of calm buoys nothing short of falling into a black hole would disrupt the signal second quantum communications cannot be intercepted between sort and destination allowing no wiretaps this intergalactic communication is incredible however the artava project headed by the asari may develop past this and incorporate geth originated programming models and technologies some believe that sovereign was able to use qecs to contact the other reapers which is why they are alerted to begin the harvest the use of the citadel was merely meant to expediate this process physically bringing the other reapers to the system not as a form of communication as a semi-organic construct the capabilities of harnessing such feats by any organic could be replicated eventually by other organics or semi-organics specifically the rachni which already seemed to harness this organic form of this communication and seem to communicate or project their songs as previously mentioned across seemingly insurmountable distances should they rise to power once more who's to say they can't coordinate instantaneously in intergalactic war i should go i should go i should go i should go i should go i should go

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Keywords: mass effect 3, mass effect legendary edition, mass effect 2, mass effect iceberg, mass effect iceberg explained, leviathan, leviathan of dis, rachni, rachni song, mass effect theory, the mass effect iceberg explained, mass effect, shadow broker, marauder shields, the illusive man, star child, the catalyst, prothean

Id: Ba587wRGwdc

Length: 171min 56sec (10316 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 18 2022