Have you ever wanted to be the captain of a FTL ship? Would you like to become an intergalactic agent to punish evil and promote good in the universe? Are you eager to contact all kinds of alien races? These distant fantasies that accompany many people growing up are within reach in the classic science fiction RPG “Mass Effect” (ME) series.
With a time span of one billion years and a space span of the galaxy, Mass Effect asks about the eternal conflict between the creator and the creation, and countless races and civilizations, including human beings, leave their own marks in this epic scroll.
And it all begins with the bizarre fall of an ancient civilization.
The tragedy of Leviathan
A long time ago, an intelligent race called Leviathan ruled the galaxy. They studied the various civilizations under their rule and discovered that once organic life developed to a stage where it could create mechanical life (or synthetic life, artificial intelligence), it was inevitably destroyed by these mechanical creations.
Leviathan in order to break this situation, decided to create a code name “Catalyst” (TheCatalyst) super artificial intelligence, trying to solve the problem once and for all through its computing.
Just as we know Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, The Catalyst has a built-in supreme rule, which is to protect organic life at all costs and to serve as a bridge between organic and synthetic life. Upon reflection, this super AI believes that the best way to permanently preserve organic life is to be the first to destroy them before they are destroyed by the synthetic life they have created.
The catalyst’s logic may seem absurd, but it believes it is in line with the guidelines set by Leviathan. If organic civilizations were allowed to develop their technology, it would be too late by the time they developed technology stronger than Catalyst’s own, and organic life might no longer be able to continue in any form.
So, the Catalyst came up with this twisted scheme to destroy organic life to a certain extent, then save their genes, knowledge and culture as data and wait for the galaxy to evolve a new advanced civilization and so on. The first person it put this program into practice was its own master – Leviathan.
The reincarnation of the galaxy
In order to control the development process of the lower civilizations after a round of harvesting, the Reapers built some Mass Relays in the galaxy, which are equivalent to portals and can travel quickly through the galaxy through a network of relays. After all, even if some civilizations are able to travel at the speed of light, the scale of the universe in terms of the Milky Way is still insurmountable, while mass relays can span hundreds or thousands of light years in an instant.
Normally, as soon as a civilization develops to the stage where it is capable of exploring outer space, they will encounter these mass relays and gain insight to achieve a technological revolution.
Only, the mass relay is also a decoy. Higher civilizations will gather around the Mass Relay due to their development needs. At that time, the Reapers will suddenly descend into the galaxy through the mass relays, so that they can easily slaughter all the higher intelligent life.
After a billion years of iterations, the Reapers performed their duties perfectly in the cycle of history, completing the harvesting of the galaxy every 50,000 years, as leisurely and naturally as an experienced gardener restricting the growth of flowers and trees.
Everything about each harvested race is encapsulated and made into a new reaper. You could say that this behemoth looks like a spaceship, a monster or any other contraption, but in any case it is the only proof that an intelligent race has ever existed in history.
Around 70,000 years ago, a powerful civilization called Prothean appeared in the galaxy, and they had achieved large-scale interstellar colonization, spreading across the galaxy, with their capital at a large space station called Citadel – of course, this space station was also placed by the Reapers long ago. Not only are there several mass relays located near the Citadel, but the Citadel itself is also a large, inactive mass relay.
The Reaper army would not have been expected to emerge from the fortress alone, and their failure was already sealed. The Mass Repeater is both a gift from the Reapers to galactic civilization and the starting point for the Reapers to initiate the Great Purge. At that time, humans were still using beaten stone tools and knew nothing of the tragic battles in the distant stars.
Despite failing to hold off the Reapers, Proxian left behind a number of architectural relics and even prepared the ultimate weapon solution for the intelligent species in the next reincarnation, The Crucible, which it did not have time to finish building.
The Reapers conducted more experiments on some of the captured Proxian, adding mechanical accessories to their bodies and modifying their genes. This was later known as the Collector, who was considered the Reaper’s fighter and drudge.
The new cycle of interstellar order
In the new 50,000-year cycle, the endless cycle continues insidiously. Towards the end of the cycle, the Collectors have begun to search for genetic information on all races, but all civilizations are still ignorant of this until a legendary hero, Commander Shepard, is born among humans.
For a long time, however, humans have had little presence in the galaxy, coming into contact very late with other alien civilizations that have established the political and economic order of the galaxy. This is, of course, because they unlocked the key to interstellar civilization early on by studying the Proxian relics, the “mass effect” as the game title says.
The so-called mass effect must be consumed by Element Zero, a special element not included in the periodic table, which can trigger a “mass effect” field under the action of an electric field, which can increase or decrease the mass of matter. This principle has a wide range of applications, from making kinetic bullets with incredible lethality to driving spaceships to travel faster than the speed of light.
The first to understand the mass effect through the study of the Proxian relics were the Asari, the alien race that was the first to discover the God’s Keep space station.
The Asari are distinctly female in appearance, but they can reproduce with individuals of any gender or species by regulating their nervous systems. They live up to a thousand years, and each individual has a long time to learn some kind of knowledge or skill, and the most powerful individual elite warriors in the galaxy are mostly Asari. Based on their maternal instincts, they prefer compromise and cooperation, abhor conflict and war, and use diplomacy to create what would become the Galactic Council of Supreme Power.
The original race that formed the Council of the Citadel with the Asari was the Salarians.
They discovered the Fortress on their own initiative and were invited by the Asari to take seats on the Council. The Salarians have an unusually active metabolism, they are quick thinking, quick and fast, with a sharp observation ability and unique non-linear thinking, in research and intelligence capabilities are quite outstanding. However, this also leads to a relatively short life span, with the Selarites living long lives at the age of 40 or more.
It was a long time before the Turians became the third race to join the Council of the Citadel. The honorable and disciplined Turians have a motto: “You only see a Turian’s back when he dies.” The Turians contributed the largest number of fleets and soldiers to the Fortress, and their strong military power ensured that they were qualified to sit firmly on the council. However, there is a bitter history involving several races.
When the Asari and Selareans first formed the Council of the Godfort, they kept activating new mass relays in order to establish contact with more civilizations. More and more alien civilizations were discovered, and they set up embassies in the Fortress. Just as the Council of the Citadel was growing, the insectoid Rachni dealt them a head-on blow.
Not only did they refuse to cooperate with the council, but they also started a war, and at one point, they were on their way to the Fortress. Even if the Council wanted to make peace with the Insects, there were no conditions, because the environment of the Insects’ home planet was so harsh that few other races could survive there for a single second. Since neither the Asari nor the Cyranids attached much importance to military construction, the council had no choice but to create a warlike and physically tough race, the Krogan.
The Krogan, who had advanced to the atomic age before being used by the Council, misused nuclear weapons in a civil war that reduced their home planet, Tuchanka, to a wasteland. The Council promised the Krogan that it would help them find a new habitable planet after the war, and “fast-tracked” their technology, eager to put it to work in the war against the Insects. The battle-hardened Krogan, aided by cutting-edge technology, were unstoppable and nearly wiped out the entire Bug race.
However, after the war, the Krogan were so proud of their achievements that they expanded their colonies with impunity and clashed with the Council on several occasions. The Council had to use the power of another powerful military race, the Turians, to suppress the Krogan, and the condition was to allow the Turians to join the Council. At the same time, the scientists of Xelaray developed a genetic weapon that made the survival rate of Krogan newborns only one in a thousand. After that, the Krogan were no longer able to resist, and formed an unbreakable feud with the Turians and Selarenes.
This genocidal act of the Krogan and its historical legacy is one of the heaviest but most moving stories in the Mass Effect trilogy.
Finally, one more race must be mentioned, the Quarians. The Quarians originally had their own homeland, but now they are in exile in the universe, and even the Fortress of God is not willing to accept them. It turns out that they once created a kind of mechanical life Jeth (Geth), initially Jeth was only seen as a new type of labor, but later gradually developed self-awareness, and some Quarians still ignore the right to life of Jeth.
This group of artificial intelligence eventually betrayed their creators and expelled them from their home planet. This lesson, plainly laid out before organic life, led the Council to place many restrictions on AI research, and seems to confirm the Reapers’ judgment.
This was the general order of the galaxy until humans came on the scene.
Commander Forever
Since there are a large number of plot branches in the Mass Effect games, different choices may lead to very different endings for important characters, so here we can only briefly mention the main body, in addition to the ending part is also reserved.
Mass Effect 1″ to Shepard to hunt down Saren and the Overlord as the main line, although the Reaper plot is also gradually discovered by the Shepard team, but the Council is not much alert to this, until the end of the Reaper vanguard with Jace army invasion of the Fortress of God only to realize the seriousness of the problem. Good in Shepard and the human star alliance arrived in time, concentrated firepower destroyed the overlord, the fortress was temporarily preserved.
After this, humans were invited to become the fourth race to join the Council of the Citadel, and Shepard, after proposing what he thought was a suitable representative, boarded the Normandy to continue the search for a way to fight the Reapers.
Unfortunately, the opening scene of Mass Effect 2, the Normandy in the Star League arranged a mission to encounter the Collector raid, the crew mostly abandoned the ship to escape, Shepard to save the cockpit teammates too late to evacuate, a man wearing a faulty space suit near-Earth orbit to fall into the unknown planet. Of course, if the protagonist is really gone, the game can not continue.
Soon, the leader of Cerberus, Phantom Man, in order to use the human hero to achieve his ambitions, at any cost to start the bioengineering Lazarus Project (Lazarus is the person who was resurrected by Jesus in the Bible), Shepard miraculously resurrected from a pile of fuzzy flesh and blood.
In order to delay the arrival of the Reapers, Shepard’s team had to go to the sector where the Reapers were most likely to be the first to arrive and destroy the mass repeater there. The destruction of the repeater triggered a huge energy explosion, which led to the destruction of most of the Batarians, the main race of the sector. Shepard was unanimously condemned by the League and the Council and imprisoned.
The Human League governor Anderson risked his life to rescue Shepard, who was in a city that was already at war. Shepard witnessed that the human armed forces could not touch the Reapers, this is not a war, but a unilateral slaughter of humans by the Reapers, the Reapers are the real death.
The commander, who was always calm and wise, had the urge to stay on Earth and fight until the last moment.
But under Anderson’s persuasion, Shepard came to his senses and immediately set out for the Fortress of God for help. At the same time, one of Shepard’s former teammates discovered on Mars the design drawings of the secret weapon Prime Furnace left behind by Proxian.
Despite the fact that Earth is under the heaviest attack, with over a million people dying every day, the other races of the Council think it might be worthwhile to use Earth as bait to buy time for them to organize their military forces. In this way, Shepard’s team explored how to build the Prime Furnace while addressing the immediate needs of the various races to gain their support for Earth.
However, by the time Shepard’s team made the impossible possible and came to the core of the Reapers, the Catalyst, it would not have occurred to anyone that the Reapers had given Shepard the choice of the fate of the galaxy.
At this point, the reaping cycle repeated for billions of years finally came to an end, and the relationship between organic and mechanical life was concluded. However, the most precious part of the player’s memory may still be the eternal commander Shepard, is still those distinctive personality, once for a variety of reasons in Shepard’s side of the battle partners.
Conclusion
From the point of view of today’s science fiction fans, there is nothing new about depicting aliens as looking like Homo sapiens, and then imagining some human heroes adventuring through space with the trust and respect of other races, and it always seems to have an arrogance of an anthropocentric perspective.
In the last century, Star Wars, Star Trek and other classic science fiction films once pushed this narrative to the extreme. But when video games also have the ability to present a realistic picture of space, the story full of personal heroism will still be hard to resist as the protagonist of the player into it.
Sometimes, what’s wrong with wanting to be a hero? It is not something dishonorable. At least you can use the celebrity effect to advertise like Shepard: “I’m Commander Shepard, and Mass Effect is my favorite game.”
Game Information.
The Legendary Edition of Mass Effect includes a remastered version of the original trilogy, as well as over 40 DLCs from Generations 1 to 3, but not Pinnacle Station, one of the initial DLCs, because the source code has been lost, though this DLC is a less important training level.
Relatively speaking, the 1 generation of Mass Effect remake is larger, in terms of combat system, UI will have a small adjustment, because the original version would have been more RPG-oriented, in the action shooting than 2, 3 generations have a large gap. So comprehensive, the legendary version of 2, 3 generations compared to the original version should not change much, and 1 generation will have more changes.
