Mass Effect: ANDROMEDA
- Thread starter HotRod
- Start date
Really? I honestly didn't recognise it.
It's possible they just recycled the old Earth textures for the sake of that one clip. The game is still pre-alpha after all so I'd be surprised if the pre-rendered cutscenes are already completed.
Again though, we're still lacking any context. That shot could well take place just as the Reapers showed up in Sol, with the Arks being moved to a secure location for the duration of the war. Remember that it's likely these things were most certainly loaded with Salarians, Krogan, Asari and Turians as well as humans and it would be unlikely that all of those would already be there just waiting on the humans.
So maybe the purpose of that shot is to show some of the events of ME3 from the Ryder siblings' eyes. The flight from Earth just at the onset, the long period of preparation interspersed with news from the front followed by the seemingly disastrous attempt to retake earth, the panicked departure and the long cryo-sleep to Andromeda. Indeed, the shot of femRyder waking up seems to imply we'll see at least some of this sort of thing in the prologue.
It just now occurred to me that being an N7, Papa Ryder most likely fought in the war. Would be amusing if he turned out to be one of the multiplayer characters.
Please forgive me if you took that image as a "prove you wrong moment". That was never my intent. Just something I saw on the forums awhile back that I thought was interesting. Again, forgive my perceived arrogance.
On a side note, it sure is nice to see those Alliance Dreadnought, Cruisers, and Fighters again.
On a side note, it sure is nice to see those Alliance Dreadnought, Cruisers, and Fighters again.
Somehow I doubt crime lord Sanders is the same person, or even related to school teacher Sanders. Fairly common name.
As for the contest, I might go for it. Seems quick and easy enough, and I can't see how it could hurt.
After some thought, I think the Arks departed many years after the end of the Reaper Invasion, when the decisions of Shepard have faded away into irrelevance.
If the Arks left the Milky Way before the end of the Reaper War, then it would be limited to technology that the Alliance had during the war, meaning a journey to Andromeda would take centuries. After the war, the availability of Reaper technology would likely lead to a revolution in the speed of ships, and this would allow new ships to make the journey in a fraction of the time, meaning that the post-Reaper War Alliance would be able to get to Andromeda way before the original Arks arrived, making the whole endeavor useless. In fact, this problem is just an intergalactic version of the Wait Calculation (which is a central part of A.E. van Vogt's short story Far Centaurus), which states that a ship launched too early will be overtaken by future ships using more advanced technology to get to the destination before the first ship will arrive. (Hopefully the newer ships would be nice enough to stop midway and give the passengers of the older ship a faster ride to their destination, but there would still be no point in launching the older ships in the first place.)
Besides the theory that the Arks are a post-Reaper War creation, there are 2 other ways I can think of to get around the problems associated with the Wait Calculation, and the impending technological breakthroughs derived from the Reapers after their defeat. The first way would be to take a page from XCOM 2 and assume that the Alliance lost the Reaper War, which would neatly ignore any Player decisions (they wouldn't matter if the assumption is that you lost Mass Effect 3) and prevent anyone in the Milky Way developing faster methods of travel to overtake the Arks. It would also make the decisions in Andromeda more important, as the Arks would contain the last remnants of the Alliance anywhere in the Universe.
The other option would be to assume that the Arks were constructed with the help of the Leviathans, who had technology even more advanced than the Reapers. This would leapfrog the postwar technological revolution that would occur with Reaper technology, but it might not prevent any further development of Leviathan technology that could be used to eventually overtake the Arks. However, any Leviathan technology is likely highly developed, and it is unlikely any drastic improvements will be possible to it postwar. In fact, this theory is slightly supported by the fact that the Arks do glow blue in the same way that Leviathans do. It is also supported by the fact that Leviathans are not seen much after their discovery, and might have been working on the Arks this entire time (perhaps because they decided (or secretly knew) the Crucible wouldn't work as intended). However, the theory is also weakened by the fact that the Leviathans were discovered only after the Reaper invasion began, and so wouldn't have much time to integrate their technology into the Arks (or build them from scratch). Leviathans also didn't show much inclination to help humans.
If the Arks left the Milky Way before the end of the Reaper War, then it would be limited to technology that the Alliance had during the war, meaning a journey to Andromeda would take centuries. After the war, the availability of Reaper technology would likely lead to a revolution in the speed of ships, and this would allow new ships to make the journey in a fraction of the time, meaning that the post-Reaper War Alliance would be able to get to Andromeda way before the original Arks arrived, making the whole endeavor useless. In fact, this problem is just an intergalactic version of the Wait Calculation (which is a central part of A.E. van Vogt's short story Far Centaurus), which states that a ship launched too early will be overtaken by future ships using more advanced technology to get to the destination before the first ship will arrive. (Hopefully the newer ships would be nice enough to stop midway and give the passengers of the older ship a faster ride to their destination, but there would still be no point in launching the older ships in the first place.)
Besides the theory that the Arks are a post-Reaper War creation, there are 2 other ways I can think of to get around the problems associated with the Wait Calculation, and the impending technological breakthroughs derived from the Reapers after their defeat. The first way would be to take a page from XCOM 2 and assume that the Alliance lost the Reaper War, which would neatly ignore any Player decisions (they wouldn't matter if the assumption is that you lost Mass Effect 3) and prevent anyone in the Milky Way developing faster methods of travel to overtake the Arks. It would also make the decisions in Andromeda more important, as the Arks would contain the last remnants of the Alliance anywhere in the Universe.
The other option would be to assume that the Arks were constructed with the help of the Leviathans, who had technology even more advanced than the Reapers. This would leapfrog the postwar technological revolution that would occur with Reaper technology, but it might not prevent any further development of Leviathan technology that could be used to eventually overtake the Arks. However, any Leviathan technology is likely highly developed, and it is unlikely any drastic improvements will be possible to it postwar. In fact, this theory is slightly supported by the fact that the Arks do glow blue in the same way that Leviathans do. It is also supported by the fact that Leviathans are not seen much after their discovery, and might have been working on the Arks this entire time (perhaps because they decided (or secretly knew) the Crucible wouldn't work as intended). However, the theory is also weakened by the fact that the Leviathans were discovered only after the Reaper invasion began, and so wouldn't have much time to integrate their technology into the Arks (or build them from scratch). Leviathans also didn't show much inclination to help humans.
remember, your voice sounds different in your own head
and even then, you don't need to like your own voice, just the casting committee
How can every living cell in the galaxy merge with artificial life "fade into irrelevance"? Or a super AI with an army of bio-mechaniod terrors ruling the galaxy? Or every mass relay blowing up and Earth being burnt to a cinder?
The ME3 endings are a lot of things, (most of them lame) but one of them is most assuredly "mutually exclusive". The only way ME:A can work as described is if they either: A) pick an ending to be canon (not happening) or B) bypass them by having the Arks leave before the Crucible is activated.
I actually wonder that since we saw multiple Arks that maybe they didn't all depart at once.
Unless I'm forgetting something, I never got a clear sense of how long the Reaper War went on for but it seems like it was at least a year. So maybe they each launched as they were ready, starting with the invasion on Earth with the last one coming right down to the wire.
From a dramatic standpoint it seems the most interesting scenario might be that the protagonist was on the last ship out, but when they wake up on the other side find that the other ships got there *way* ahead of them. It'd only take a small variance in relative velocity over the course of a centuries long journey for them to all arrive years, even decades apart.
That also gets around the somewhat tedious set-up needed to establish the setting. The first people there would spend most of the time scouting for a suitable colony world and laying the groundwork for said colony before even thinking about starting to spread out. That's years of digging wells and assembling prefabs before all the exciting stuff happens. Certainly enought time for a schism to develop amongst the new settlers, since I suspect that'll be the main source of conflict. At least I hope so because if these new advanced ancient technological "remnants" they're uncovering are little more than a re-skin of the Reapers and/or Protheans then I'm going to be very disappointed.
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The consequences of the Wait Calculation (namely that more advanced ships will be developed and then beat the Arks to Andromeda) will occur in all three "canonical" endings because the Galaxy would ultimately recover, whether that was expected or not when the Arks were launched. The only ways around that would be to make the Reapers win in the canon, or to have the Arks being designed with extremely advanced technology that wouldn't be surpassed by the time they got to Andromeda (like the tech from the Leviathans).
It's also interesting to note that there is a cut in the trailer between the ships leaving Earth and the ships approaching the Arks, so it's still possible that the ships aren't being built around Earth at all.
Wasn't a similar idea used on the TV show Andromeda where they found an old Earth ship still travelling in space but it was like 3000 years from the past travelling at slower then light speed, the Bellerophon?
So is that the same kind of idea?
So is that the same kind of idea?
Not sure how relevant the Wait Calculation is in this particular circumstance. If humanity and it's allies lose the Reaper war, there's no possibility for a second expedition to Andromeda. If they win there's no incentive for one. Not for many centuries or millenia at least. They'd turn to the still unexplored 90+% of the Milky Way and the various satellite galaxies first.
Yeah, it's not a natural colonial expansion but a panicked evacuation to an unknown safe haven away from the scary bio-mechaniod squid monsters of eldrich horror and loud creaky noises. They don't expect anyone to be coming after them. At least they *hope* nobody is coming after them because they're probably the aforementioned bio-mechaniod squid monsters of eldrich horror and loud creaky noises and everyone else is dead and/or liquefied. It's likely a one-way trip by design and if they had any sense, they'd make sure nobody left behind even knew exactly where they went.
Also, since the lore establishes that conventional FTL is limited in how far it can go before thermal and static build-up microwaves the crew to death, the engines of the Arks are almost certainly going to be based either directly or indirectly on reaper drives. Those are established to be able to travel in dark space for years and at speeds way beyond what conventional drives can do, so the likelihood of anyone bettering that by any meaningful margin so as to catch up or overtake simply isn't credible.
The Reapers were around for *billions* of years and the Leviathans before them potentially billions more. That's an unfathomable technological head start that nobody is about to improve on any time soon.
Also, since the lore establishes that conventional FTL is limited in how far it can go before thermal and static build-up microwaves the crew to death, the engines of the Arks are almost certainly going to be based either directly or indirectly on reaper drives. Those are established to be able to travel in dark space for years and at speeds way beyond what conventional drives can do, so the likelihood of anyone bettering that by any meaningful margin so as to catch up or overtake simply isn't credible.
The Reapers were around for *billions* of years and the Leviathans before them potentially billions more. That's an unfathomable technological head start that nobody is about to improve on any time soon.
The Arks would have to be pretty damn quick or launched considerably before the activation of the Crucible, or they wouldn't have cleared the galaxy before the effect (whichever one Shepard chose) propagated through the Mass Relay network. For that matter, if the Crucible's effect DID propagate via the network, what stops it travelling to Andromeda along with the Arks? Signal decay? What if a Reaper had hung back in intergalactic space as a living time capsule?
That would then be a huge plot hole...... Was the effect able to go outside the galaxy into the space between galaxies? Isn't that where the reapers like to hang out?
remember, your voice sounds different in your own head
Perhaps, but hearing my own voice in a game (especially from a character that I'm not in control of) would just throw me out - and going off recordings, I'm not overly fond of my voice anyway
I think from a storytelling perspective, having the Arks or at leas the one the Ryder the player chooses is on, leave at the latest moment possible would be my preference. By having them leave at the last possible moment they can have more oportunities to follow up on plot points from ME3. Even if the player choices don't effect the game, it would still be nice to get a few references to the previous games just to cement it's place in the ME universe.
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