2+ million year old data?

Ok, I guess that came out wrong. I didn't really want to defend Lazarus, it's definitely not one of the proudest moments of ME story telling, no argument there.

I should have said, that I just find this one more offensive in a way because it is done in such a smug hand-wavey manner. At least with Lazarus, people in universe were amazed at it and didn't quite believe it (just as we didn't). Even Shepard can habe lingering doubts as to what exactly was going on there.
This thing however, is just put out there and everyone is like "ok, guess that it then". As I said, it's like the writers are now at the level where they think just putting random strings of mass effect-y words together will solve everything.
And yea, the relays may be entirely fictional and eezo is obviously also just green phplibotinum (or whatever the trope is called) but it was their one primary green rock and they took the implications from its existence to a surprising level of diversity in applications while it was still very nicely thought through. Obviously it falls apart at some level but you could fill a few pages of discussions (as we used to on the old boards) before you got to the point where everyone would agree that that's where the fiction really ends.
The Lazarus project was already bad in that it would reach the limits of any plausibility very quickly but IMO, the example with the three mass relays is so blatant handwaving that it takes the cake.


Wello, there is a difference IMO between retro-engineering something and surpassing the original by a long shot.
As for the Omega 4 relay, I certainly was under the impression that it had a partner. Sure, we don't see it but there isn't really a frame where it needed to be visible. At least, I am not aware of any mention that it didn't have a partner relay near the collector base.

As for "they could send light through but no ships", well, if the corridor is mass-free, it shouldn't matter. But anyway, even if we assume, that this was something, that only worked for photons for whatever reason, it still didn't make any sense.

At the very least, they should have made it some experimental QEC device or something, maybe say that through some freak accident, the entangled with something in the Andromeda galaxy that allowed them to gather data or whatever. AFAIK, QECs are the only established tech in the ME universe that should have had the potential to bridge the gap. (Now, I am not saying this is a good explanation or anything, I didn't spend more than a minute of thought on this either but IMO it already beats the "3 relays is better than 1" idea.)

Which reminds me (and I apologize for going off topic but this has been bothering me for a while), what's up with the QECs? Do they have any or not? The game is super vague on this. They definitely don't have established contact with the milky way but it sounds like they expect to have it soon (that HNS news sound-bite about the dead space worker mentioned that they will not release his name until next of kin in the milky way are notified, well, that may take a while if he still has "next" of kin over there).
Also, how did theyThat seems plausible to me but it would have been nice to at least get a mention for all those weird things that are happening. Given everything else, my guess is, they never thought about it and just wanted to shove in a cool little reference there.

I am just getting pissed whenever they just try to shove stuff into the game because they need "a cool story" right now and they can't be bothered to give it at least a minuscule amount of thought to make it fit. Unfortunately, with the geth 3-relay-telescope, they did the same to shove the entire scenario for ME:A into the universe and they couldn't be bothered to spend more than 2 lines of dialogue and a sub-clause in the codex on it. That just feels like they don't respect their own creative work anymore.

God, I want Chris L'Etoille back.

I can suspend disbelief only up to a point. The telescope could work if there was a matching relay in Andromeda, or if the relay used was some special design (maybe made in a former cycle, and the Geth found it). The explanation given is just stupid. Having the Ark ships leave when they did required the lore to be screwed with a lot. Special FTL drives, jump jets which were clearly only experimental in ME3 (or Shepard would have had one), and more. It's insulting.

Andromeda could have worked much better if the Ark ships left at some point post Reaper war, when technology had advanced enough to make the venture more realistic. It would mean dealing with ME3's ending to a degree, but it need not have gone into much detail at all. Just a few ending possibilities would need to be decanonised such as Krogan/Quarian/Geth extinction, and of course refuse, which didn't make a lot of sense anyway. Most people could live with that I think. The ending problem could have been tackled in greater detail in a future game, once fans had been brought back on board.

You know, it's hard to set limits for things like that. I bet anyone from 1666 would hardly believe what our med tech is capable of.

Lazarus IS a risky and crazy 1-time project with enormous budgets, and that's how in-game world sees it too.

Geth 'FTL relay telescope' directly contradicts the in-game lore & common sense, to me it's much worse than Lazarus, because smartest people (like Suvi) go like 'oh, yeah, FTL telescope, from Geth, sure, why not, makes sense'.


And if we start talking physiology issues, we'd rather begin with human biotics. The entire 'exposing the fetus in uterus developes eezo nodes' is...highly problematic, imo. hell, we're yet to know where do they come from. The only human biotics that have solid background and make sense so far are Alenko (the 'accidental' L2), Miranda (the genetic lab construct) and Jack (the Cerberus experiment gone wrong).

E.g. here's Cora. She's supposed to be elder than Alenko, she can't be the 'accidental'. She's not known to be an L2\L3R. Yet, she was good enough for asari to consider her (20something, a baby by asari age) among their ranks?

Plot holes are happening in almost every game, but as long story in good and entertaining, i could live with that.

Shepard was dead. Completely fucking dead, beyond resuscitation. Brain cut from oxyen for much more than 10 minutes, which is pretty much the absolute maximum.

And no one batted an eye. At best, they said:

'Didn't you die?'
'Yeah, but I got better'.

again, again I will say the average Joe should complete the family secrets quest if they want to become a bit more invested in this game.

I still think too many people just WANT to hate this game and are looking for ANY excuse.

Yeah, I don't get why this is some egregious crime against the setting when this is a rather simple exploit of a device with an already fantastical function by default. 

The only thing strange to me about the telescope thing, is there doesn't really seem to be a need for it. They get there, everything has gone to shit anyway. So why not make the only information they had millions of years old.

It makes just as much sense to say, while we know next to nothing about Andromeda right this moment. The data we do have when coupled with the advanced calalcutions our scientist have come up, suggest that at the time frame in which we look to hit Andromeda, it will be a golden period in Andromedas life cycle. With several promising planets we have marked. While there are other targets none score as high as Andromeda and we think it is worth the risk.

But I imagine the Geth got written in because they will show up.

Future? Is that a joke? If so, I missed it.

My understanding of relay corridors is that lightspeed communication is possible through them (it's how comm buoys work, after all)  One could extrapolate that the corridor allows for instantaneous travel of information as well as matter.

So the information gleaned on Heleus would be close to current.  No more than a few years off, depending on where exactly the corridor comes out.

The problem comes from how can such a corridor be formed without a relay on the other end?  Logically, the Andromeda Initiative could have shaved 600 years off their trip simply by shotgunning themselves to Andromeda using this "telescope"

It's not inconceivable that the relay would simply be used to create a corridor with an indefinite exit point, so it could possibly be used to transmit and receive signals, but a ship would be unable to travel through safely as there would be no way to control its exit point, potentially overshooting the target by a few million lightyears.