I REALLY hope this whole Cora Harper name thing is nothing...

I agree but like I said even just the fact that they might say that she is TIM's daughter works to shrink the world of MA. There are billions of humans around but we get the one that is related to TIM? come on. I am just afraid that MA will go the Dragon Age rout. They shrunk that world so much! Every game is the same damn people with a few new ones thrown in.

BioWare never correlated Cora Harper with TIM; people in forums like this do, so I'm optimistic about that.

What is Cerberus? They are a human splinter group, who's goal is the advancement of humanity at whatever cost. That's the quick and simple definition of them right? Well there are a few things I would like to note, based on what we've seen so far:

1. Based on his bio Alec Ryder became interested in Artificial Intelligence as a means of human advancement.
2. Cora Harper shares the same last name as The Illusive Man. She is also Alec's 2nd in command.
3. The Andromeda Initiative is not a branch of the human military.
4. The Human Arc is operated by an AI named SAM.

The chances of all these things being a coincidence, is very slim. Given the experiments we saw Cerberus run in ME1 and ME2, going to another galaxy to discover new technology, would be the kind of thing Cerberus would leap at without hesitation. I would actually go as far as to say it would be bad writing, if the Andromeda Initiative weren't connected to Cerberus in at least some way.

Does that mean Cora is going to have the same extreme ideals as daddy? No it doesn't. She could, but I would be very surprised if Cora is a indeed a horrible person with no way of redeeming her throughout the game. If anything, I think the chances of Alec Ryder sharing more of TIMs ideals, is greater than Cora's. 

I would be a little more keen on considering this, if it weren't for the other things I mentioned. Believe me I'm one of the people who got annoyed at others for thinking Finn was Lando's son, just because he's black. But it would be really weird to give a character the last name of one of your franchises main antagonists, if they weren't connected at all. It's like Rey being a Skywalker, but has no relation to Luke or Anakin. 

I like for her to be his daughter. I like for my Ryder to encourage her to build Cerberus in Andromeda and eventually be called the Illusive Daughter(TID). excellent.

I wouldn't be surprised if the only thing she has in common with TIM is the last name and nothing more

Partially agree on that. Except that 'Harper' is entirely an out of game thing. That is, as far as the main franchise is concerned he's the Illusive Man, not a Harper. If skywalkers name NEVER came up except in some throw away comic book that only some fans and a wiki keeps track of, then yeah. Not the most prominent name in the entire damn movie chain.

I mean, as far as 99% of the player base is concerned, Harper is just another last name. So I could see it going either way, them liking the last name and just deciding since it wasn't part of the main game (TIM's actual name) that it was ok to use. Or now, I frankly think it's a damn 50/50. Well I mean it's not, it's set in stone, we just don't know exactly what but yeah...

Anyway I hope it's not, I wouldn't find it weird due to the reasons I stated above. It's only weird if you don't realize it's not a remotely prominent part of the series and barely anyone knows about it.

They would not have given her that last name if she wasn't somehow related to TIM.

I also don't want anything to do with Cerberus in ME:A but I'm pretty sure Cora is somehow related to TIM. One of the devs even hinted at it on twitter- at least that was the impression I got. They could've picked any other surname, but they went with Harper? I find it very unlikely that that's a coincidence. Of course it doesn't mean Cora shares TIM's ideals and I'm pretty sure it won't be a major plot point, BUT the whole Andromeda Initiative sounds very Cerberus-y anyway, and wasn't it privately funded and working separately from the Systems Alliance? To me that practically confirms it.

And then there's the whole AI thing. It seems very likely that Cerberus had something to do with this whole expedition to Andromeda, and Cora being the second-in-command for the Pathfinder AND sharing a last name with TIM doesn't look like a coincidence to me... But then again, this is all speculation. They might just mention it in the game and that could be it. Doesn't have to be a big deal at all.

I don't know. Most of the options feel like a been-there-done-that. Cerberus operative, daddy issues (A "he's a supremacist beep, I'm nothing like him", B "I never knew my dad" - but the players know about the connection), XO to the protagonist? Secret agent (/LI) working for her people, potentially turning against the pc at some point? Sound familiar?

It would make sense for TIM to embed agents in the AI, but after ME3 I just don't want to deal with Cerberus anymore. So I hope it's just coincidence/clever tactic on BW's part to fuel the Cora hype.

Great stories have conflicts and subplots. Given TIM's obsession with advancing the interests of humans, it would be strange if he didn't send an agent or two on the Andromeda mission to promote human interests. And what better agent than a relative? Cora needn't be a daughter; could be a niece. Anyway, a key character promoting human interests would make a fertile subplot and could lead to fertile conflicts. It's all politics and does not have to be in-your-face Cerberus. 


It would be a strange plot with no politics, given the hyper-political Council species all trying to advance their own species' interests. ME:A without conflict between the species would not be believable. Give it a chance, people. A vanilla pablum story is uninteresting.

I think I read a theory somewhere where they think Cora Harper could be some kind of clone or genetic project to do with Eva Core. If you haven't read the Mass Effect comics, that might be confusing. Since the only one with that name was the robot EDI took over in ME3. But Eva Core was actually the name of the woman TIM fell in love with when he was still just Jack Harper. It would be interesting if that were the case. It wouldn't be a super-direct relation to TIM, but it would still be one.

Who knows, maybe the discovery to Cora's relation with Cerberus might be why she is passed up for the Pathfinder promotion.