Rumours of Mass Effect Trilogy Trilogy Remaster: What would you like to see?

But that is entirely pointless to Shepard. Shepard knows about the Crucible. Along with Liara and pretty much everyone on the Normandy, because they discovered it. So I don't see the point of keeping the intricacies secret. If there is a point, I don't see it. If Shepard and crew become indoctrinated, it is too late, regardless. If anything, under that reasoning, it would make sense to keep everyone that knows isolated within the Crucible construction facility, because it is far too important to compromise it.


I beg to differ. Putting that much faith in a "Hail Mary"? It isn't that some people know but aren't telling us. We are told that literally nobody knows. Hackett could have just said something along the lines of "our team of crack scientists have figured out how it works. I won't bog you down with the details, but rest assured, this will fry every Reaper in the galaxy". Infinitely better.


I would like to know. I'm pretty sure that Shepard himself would want to know, too, just for the reassurance, rather than having faith that it will.

Obviously, for this to function, the story’s structure around the “Crucible” would need to be changed, so how Shepard discovers it exists would be under different circumstances. It wouldn’t be a matter of recovering data from the prothean archive on Mars at the last minute anymore. This is a change that would need a vastly different rewrite of the plot of the game, one that I hadn’t really put much effort to conjuring off the top of my head just yet. I’d even question whether or not the Crucible should be based on an ancient set of plans passed down, and rather something people came up with in the current cycle, perhaps based on what they learned from the protheans’ sabotage of the keeper signal, or perhaps even what they might have learned from the Collector base. I dunno.

When I say that it isn’t really of interest, I mean that it would be better if the people actually working on the project knew, but kept the information strictly within their ranks. Hackett saying something to the effect you mentioned would probably be something that would be part of that. 

I don’t think what Shepard wants in that regard would very much matter. Shepard could complain, but it’s not like it would make a difference. They wouldn’t be able to force Hackett to tell them anything, and they’d be in no position to refuse either. Shepard & Co are, for the most part, the cannon fodder. They go to the ground, kill things and hopefully manage to wrangle up enough people to do the same so that the reapers’ attention remains elsewhere, or to find people that possess the expertise that Shepard lacks. But really, what good is Shepard’s knowledge of the details other than for maybe having some peace of mind? Shepard has no technical expertise, and nothing to add. Shepard could go out and find scientists that would be better suited (which we do anyway), but as far as being on a need to know basis goes, Shepard doesn’t really seem to qualify. 

FWUW, showrunner interviews gave me the impression that PIC is explicitly designed for fans who see DS9 as Peak Trek. I think this is the plurality position among the hardcore fans. Obviously YMMV.

DSC doesn't seem to be organized enough to be analyzed in such fashion.

Again, we wouldn't need specifics. Just a "we figured it out, rest assured" would be enough. Otherwise, it looks like you are throwing resources that could perhaps be better used elsewhere on a project that has very little chance of being legit, because nobody understands what it is that it does. Maybe it turns everyone to orange juice, Neon Genesis Evangelion style. I support your rewrite idea. Sounds good to me, as it addresses my concerns regarding the Crucible, at least on the superficial level.


It keeps getting worse and worse.

Yeah ... you'd think the very real blueprint of a weapon that is meant to kill an all powerful machine god race, would have raised a few alarms. Like, holy shit, fuck the eezo drive, we need to build this fucking thing first. But no, just a foot note.

Genocide on a galactic scale? Pfft. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about. It's not like the entire Prothean race was wiped out without a trace, because a very powerful boogeyman came around and wrecked their shit. Not like we got any legends about those "Reapers".

Well I doubt it's good enough for Special Me up above, but it's waived rather acceptably that the scientists haven't unlocked everything in the Prothean Archive. Given the nature of the data, it could very well be that some of it is hidden due to the Prothean system of transmitting information via sensory stimulation like in the Beacon, and that the information in particular wasn't available until Shepard touched the Eden Prime Beacon. It could be that the subsequent study of this provided the scientists with insights into further access such as the context that Shepard got from the Thorian, Rachni Queen, and Liara that helped him fully decipher the Protheans message about the Reapers. Liara melded with Shepard to help him understand that information, and it's probable that she used that information as a latch key to understand what the Protheans were really saying on Mars. 

It could also have occurred from insights acquired from studying the Ilos archives. 

Point is, I'm willing to handwave this particular issue. 

One of the most laughable plot devices I've ever seen in any media. I chortle every time characters in the story refer to it as "the device" because that's exactly what it is lmao.

Like the Council races barely know anything about how Reapers or their tech function, but they know with 100% certainty that this sketchy ancient thing they found 5 minutes ago that they also don't understand the tech of is going to somehow find and kill every last Reaper everywhere.

It was so plot convenient, I half expected the form it would take to be a big red button with the word KILL printed on it.

That aside, the concept makes no sense to me. Supposedly, it has been slowly constructed and refined over all the other cycles , but we were previously told that ours is the first cycle where the Reapers didn't simply come in through the Citadel and immediately shut down the Relay network (and thus all travel/communication through the galaxy) then pick off all the stranded systems 1 by 1. How did the other cycles even coordinate to build the thing in the first place?

But then i think the ME3 writers forgot about the whole Citadel relay part of the ME1 plot in general, seeing as in 3 the Reapers don't take it and shut down the relays right at the beginning, when there's nothing stopping them from doing so and winning, save the need for the plot to continue

The writers seemed to forget a lot between each game.

And if you align the clit tickler of the Sith Dagger, with the ruins of the Death Star on Endor, after they've been stranded there for 30 years and eaten away by the salt water, to erode just enough to match the blade of the dagger, it'll point you to the direction of the Wayfinder, that will take you to the Emperor, in Exogol, who didn't want to be found, but made the devices that would take you to him, anyway, before the Death Star was even destroyed, because he knew Vader would betray him.

That's way too much effort trying to explain away something, with zero effort put in by the writing team. This is headcanon territory.


They do. But they don't know how it would do it. Maybe it would destroy the Milky Way in its entirety as well. Maybe it would be a bomb that would disintegrate the entire cluster. We don't know how it works, only that its energy output would kill Reapers. It sounds catastrophic and self harming, plausibly more self-harming than could be survivable, under the current explanation, for the Milky Way races. Bioware simply wanted us to assume that it would all turn out fine, but we are getting conflicting writing, either through the war effort and its thematical writing of casualty, heavy losses etc, or what they do tell us about the Crucible, with vague statements about its capabilities and what it should do, without knowing what any of it entails. We don't even know how or even if we can aim the Crucible at a Reaper and what would that beam do to anything beyond it, if we miss. If it even is a beam, in the first place. Nobody knows.
I always wonder about that, since, when the Crucible docks to the Citadel everyone is astounded. And then we find the Crucible controls lack the "Friendly user Interface" mod, so the user just HAS to kill himself, to fire it. There are so much better ways to go about making this fucking thing, I mean, seriously, what the hell where they thinking?