The number is based off a statement made by Ashley Williams in the first game. She mentioned taking time off from her duties to spend time with family when speaking with Commander Shepard. In the course of the conversation, she stated that the distance between her deployment and the world her family lived on was 12 light years, and that she was able to get there in a day.
Yeah, it's not a great ending, but the benefit of it is that it doesn't contradict series lore and it was foreshadowed in the previous game. The current ending wasn't even foreshadowed properly in its own game, so in a choice between an ending that vaguely works and one that doesn't work at all, it's confusing why they chose the latter. Personally, I don't think the Reapers needed an explanation beyond being giant machines that see themselves as being above us and try to impose order on the galaxy. Humans don't mow the lawn for a greater purpose, we do it because we don't like how unruly grass gets when it grows too long, and we don't care how grass feels about it because it's clearly "inferior". That sort of explanation would have been fine for me
Plus I liked how Mass Effect made the Reapers seem alien by making their motives seem beyond the comprehension of the races they wipe out.
The Reapers are an incredibly ancient synthetic life form. The Leviathan of Dis, a billion year old wreck, was a dormant Reaper. I would think that in that span of time the Reapers would have evolved beyond their original programming, and formed a new consensus on what they are and what their purpose is. The ending states otherwise; this contradicts what is learned from other AIs and synthetic lifeforms. (EDI confirms that the Reapers are a synthetic lifeform.)
^Not exactly. They're bio-synthetic constructs created with the distilled genetic material of billions of individuals from a given race. That's just the hardware. According to Legion their consciousnesses are similar composed of many individual minds working in unison. "We are each a nation." The implication being that they're made up of the distilled intelligence of those self same billions of individuals. Don't ask me how that's supposed to work, but I'd guess the prothean talent for "reading" things through DNA is supposed to imply the existence of race memory, the collective unconscious or some-such. Well I'd like to have *some* kind of explanation. I mean that they concern themselves at all with squishy organics means that their motivations should still be *somewhat* comprehensible to lesser minds. But I agree, having them reduced to mindless (indoctrinated?) attack dogs at the end of ME3 totally ruined any sense of mystery. It wasn't even internally consistent. I mean what's the point of preserving advanced civilizations if they all end up thinking and acting the same? Which is I suppose another theme that the ending totally trampled over. The Reapers weren't just a big bad, they homogeneity incarnate and Shepard's mission amounted to the strength in unity through diversity.
That's why I stated that EDI identified the Reapers as a synthetic lifeform. I tend to think of the matter like this. A planet is a class of astronomical body. A garden world is a type of planet. A synthetic lifeform is a class of lifeform. A bio-synthetic lifeform is a type of synthetic lifeform. It's possible I think that through indoctrination that the Reapers learn about a species. Indoctrination I think acts like a virus infecting a computer program. For a virus to work, it needs to have knowledge of the program's structure. Once the computer program is infected, the virus can rewrite the program to its needs. It's possible that Reapers see individual members of a species as programs to be rewritten. I think the liquid slush makes each Reaper distinctive. Our DNA defines us from other animals on Earth. A human Reaper would be different from a Prothean Reaper.
Okay, it's looking more likely that the claim about the ending being written in isolation and not involving the rest of the writing staff is true. Source: http://geek.pikimal.com/2012/03/22/...ass-effect-3-writers-forum-post-name-release/ If true, it makes perfect sense to me. 98% of the game is excellent, but those last five minutes feel like an entirely different game, and if the writing staff weren't involved in the process until after the dialogue was recorded then that would explain the dissonance. As to why this would be the case? I would assume they were pretty annoyed by the previous script leaks and chose to keep as few people involved as possible. Whatever the reason, it appears to have been a huge mistake that has damaged Bioware's reputation.
Which is nonsense- it wasn't an actual script that leaked, someone dumped the .TLK tables from the beta that was accidentally released (and Bioware made pains at the time to make that clear). Not having peer review wouldn't have made the content any more private!
That math skips a step. It would actually be 5,416 days. Just under 15 years. Yeah, that ignores all the other limiting factors. Such a trip would still be impractical. Just pointing out the math error. Depending on which series/episode you go by, Mass Effects FTL is as fast or faster than Star Trek's warp drive. A galaxy wide civilization would be a no-no, but regional interstellar civilizations would still be possible. Assuming of course that the relays didn't irradiate everyone.
Unless of course the energy released from the Crucible shut down all Mass Effect based technology - not necessarily everything, but FTL based on Mass Effect fields could be non-operational in order to give organic races chance to evolve in a different direction. Still, I doubt that repairing the drives would be problematic. Worst case scenario would be that they need to rebuild FTL Mass effect cores. The Crucible wave would probably shut down ME fields throughout the galaxy, but they could still be generated anew if the reactors are rebuilt.
No, I think the only way that FTL could have been eliminated across the whole galaxy is if the Crucible wave somehow nullified all of the eezo it came into contact with, which I seriously doubt. Of course it's worth keeping in mind that historically, dark ages aren't necessarily the result of a single cataclysm. Sure, Rome fell, but it's not as if every horse in the Empire died and all the wheels on the trading carts suddenly burst into flames. After the relays are destroyed, I'm sure there were plenty of ships around able to make relatively long distance flights between nearby clusters and for a while I'm sure there may have been small enclaves of civilization scattered all over the place. After a few centuries though, with most resources dedicated to rebuilding and just surviving from day to day, the survivors would find that the ships begin to break down. Few worlds would have the spare resources to maintain the old ships, let alone construct new ones, then even this avenue of trade would break down. Some of the surviving QECs might have kept isolated areas in contact with one another, but those too would eventually wear out. Social and economic collapses would become endemic and political turmoil as people fought over the scraps left over, sending many worlds hurtling back into the stone age. ...you know, while I do still detest the execution of the end if Shepard's story, the more I think of it, the more intrigued I am by the state of the galaxy following this galactic dark age. Sort of the sci-fi equivalent of Mad Max with a little wild west and King Arthur thrown in for good measure. Whole worlds reduced to barbarism, a scant few trying to rebuild and bring about the proverbial renaissance of galactic civilization...That'd be a fascinating setting for ME4.
If the fleet survived the destruction of the mass relay, where could the ships go? They are in the Local Cluster. What do I know about the Local Cluster? If I go by what happen in other systems visited by the Reapers, I think I can safely state that all orbiting stations, satellites, refueling depots, and other artificial structures in the Sol system were destroyed by the machines. On Earth itself, the major industrial areas were reported destroyed. The system is eezo poor, and the only source of eezo was discovered in the Prothean archives on Mars. I know very little of the other stars in the Local Cluster. The only system available in the Local Cluster was the Sol system. According to the CDN, the closest star system, Alpha Centauri, was surveyed by the asari. They discovered a pre-spaceflight civilization on a planet in the system. In the course of their studies, the survey team, while on an anthropological mission, discovered the descendants of a lost colonization mission sent from Earth in the late 21st century. The fact that humans were able to survive and have children on this world implies that this world can support human, krogan, salarian, and asari lifeforms. However, turians and quarians would be unable to live on this planet. I don't know much about the indigenous population of this world. I find it curious that it was the asari who surveyed this system and not the humans. Did the humans explore the Local Cluster, or did they decide to explore the systems open to them via the mass relays and ignore the Local Cluster? The fleet may not be completely stranded in the Sol system, but they are faced with a serious issue - finding resources in the Local Cluster. If the humans didn't survey the systems in the Cluster, this work falls to the fleets who will need to send expeditions to find eezo and fuel for their ships. In the meantime, the infrastructure will have to be rebuilt in the Sol system, and ships will need to discharge their drive cores somewhere. I haven't seen evidence in the game that starships are capable of leaving a cluster and traveling to a nearby cluster. Even the Migrant Fleet used mass relays to travel between clusters.
That's what was running through my mind actually, but I never got around to finishing the second been so I wasn't sure the parallels were entirely consistent. The difference here of course is that in Foundation it's a totally human empire that shattered. In this case you have massive numbers of planets that have large populations of several different species. Cut off for ten millennia there's all kinds in interesting potential for the type's of societies they'd build.
There is another issue that I haven't seen mentioned before is the effect of ambient dust on starships. According to EDI, the Normandy's hull is abraded by this dust when the starship is moving at subliminal speed. At speeds faster than light, the starship is protected by a bubble that protects the ship from the dust. After a year of service, the Normandy will need to undergo maintenance. When we talk about the possibility of ships in the fleet returning to their homeworlds, this issue should be considered.
^I'm pretty sure the ships would run out of fuel and supplies LONG before that could become an issue. The simple fact is that it's highly unlikely any of the stranded ships would try and make it back home without the relays. They'd know none of the crew would live to see the end of the journey and there's no telling if the reapers even left them homes to return to. It's just not feasible.
I am playing the game on a second play through. I feel that up to the beginning of Priority: Thessia that the series was adhering to what was established about the Reapers. The Reapers are harvesting the galaxy's advanced species for incomprehensible reasons. Then, in Priority: Thessia, there is a sudden shift in my perception of the Reapers. In this mission, I learned that the Reapers are controlled by an outside influence (the Catalyst). I feel that from this point on the game begins to lose its focus and coherence.
I dunno. I don't think it lost focus and coherence until the Catalyst started talking. The writing was on the wall from the start; the Reapers couldn't have evolved naturally. Something had to create them. I don't think having their creator still around is much of a stretch.