Your guess: construction start/end dates for MEA Arks?

It comes from Hyperion and ships like her having technology that goes against the established lore and never being mentioned by anyone, thus only could make sense if kept a secret from the rest of the galaxy. 

Uhm. No, not exactly. As I've laready mentioned - character knows much MUCH more about the world around them than the player does.
E.g. Shep DOES see Tali's face long before they give you a stock photo pic in ME3. Does it mean that Tali has no face up to that very moment? Is her face a secret?

AI is totally irrelevant for the Shep\ME123 plot. Characters may or may not know about it. We (players) don't, but it dos not mean anything per se.

The issue with 'super-space-magic-tech' does not rely upon the secrecy. It does not make sense and does not fit in, secret or not.

Interesting they show the ship near the moon. It wasn't seen when Shepard was on the moon in ME1 during the rogue vi mission. It could've been on the other side. Sure. If so, I'd be a little surprised that no one especially Joker wouldn't say there's a lot of construction going on. So I would assume any construction would've started after ME1. Shepard could still give that speech and than used later when the ships leave.

I made a post on the first page that one theory I had is the ships were built during the prothean cycle. Why weren't they used? Simple. They had the same problem as they did with the crucible. The project was sabotaged from within by an indoctrinated group. The ships were either completed or nearly completed. The Alliance find them while searching for whatever. The ships are towed back to the moon where they get the once over. The ships get a new paint job. Some features added. Other fixings happen. The amount of resources needed is much less than having to build these ships from scratch making it very possible to have the ships up and running in a short period of time.

It was in Mass Effect: Ascension. There wasn't an image. The book described what a Quarian looked like via text. Basically, the book describes their faces as looking like a human's with the exception of the ears. 

Nope, not what I am referring to. As I said above, I'm referring to the description given in Mass Effect: Ascension. 

Yes, but it is specifically noted that he had eyes, eyelids, a nose, lips, teeth, cheeks, and cheekbones like a human, the only difference being ears that were significantly smaller, or as the book put it "what passed for the quarian version of an ear". 

First, I don't think this being a human-led initiative makes any sense in a pre-Reaper War setting. We lacked the economic, industrial and political clout to be the prime movers prior to circa 2183, barring substantial retcons. I know everyone thinks that the advertising has claimed that this is a human endeavor, but there hasn't really been any advertising. There have only been a few vague statements by devs in interviews. I think the true reveal will show the Ai to be a vast, multi-species initiative. We shall see.

Secomdly, I like the complete removal of the Reapers from the story. I agree they have no part to play in MEA. I don't want them to inspire the Ai,,and I don't want them to intersect with it in any way. That being the case, I'd drop that whole bit about dire news from the Milky Way upon arriving in Andromeda. There's no need. I do t think it would add to the current narrative. It might needlessly muck things up, in a minor way, for the few newcomers who are unaware of the original trilogy plot line. There's basically nothing to gain by mentioning the Reapers at all.

Otherwise, I'm on board. It's very similar to the story I've outlined in my own mind. That doesn't mean we will be right, but I'm eager to find out on Monday.

I disagree about there not being ways for it to have blended seamlessly with the previous games. Fans have pointed out multiple ways that it could be done. Now it's just a waiting game to see if Bioware sees the same ways, or don't care enough to use them. 

The original Trilogy isn't really very consistent between games to begin with. So I really wonder where this "they better explain this ARK-project thingie perfectly, otherwise I will hate what the writers come up with" mentality is coming from. I believe you have to allow some plotholes and inconsistencies when it comes to mass effect, or at the very least allow yourself to head canon to some degree.

I'm not saying anyone should accept it whatever happens though, but whatever...

That't not how it works, that's not how any of this works. You don't need to discharge around stars because there are planets around stars. And there are no stars in Dark Space.
_{Technically there are, but their presense is non-existant.}

Hanako Ikezawa


Yeah, and Tutorial Character from KOTOR had asked me to 'click the left mouse button'. Game-mechanical stuff that is supposed to introduce the setting to a new player is unavoidable. Best a player can do is NOT to ask Doc 'what's L2?' had they picked up the Adept class.

Even the dumbest of the dumb Shepard should know a lot of things about the world, big and small ones. The entire trilogy takes ~100 hours, and assuming that anything that had not been spoken about does not exist seems like a bad idea to me. We never hear about Earth!Shep's city of birth, we don't know what medigel tases like, we don't know how to program&operate the omnitool, who's the best singer among the Humans, what modern ME literature looks like (and no - Blasto comic and Drew's promotional easter-eggs from ME2 do not count! ). We only know what's relevant to the current events and people around us.


This book only has a general description, and it has nothing to do with Tali specifically. And nothing indicates than quarians' basic features are a big mystery for everyone (other than Joker who..well, makes jokes about it at some point). Shep SEES HER FACE during the ME2 scene, while the player DOES NOT. I'm using it as an example of why 'player not knowing' =\= 'a secret' =\= 'something that never happened'.

Have in mind that I'm still rather sceptical about the entire 'Human\Lunar Ark' concept, but we dont' have much yet.
All I'm saying is that I see no problem with players not knowing about something in ME universe, be it Shep's Mommy favourite color or name of the recent President. It's safe to assume that Mommy did have her preferences and the President had their name.