(XL) Was the Ending a Hallucination? - Indoctrination Theory Mark IV!

ZerebusPrime wrote:I think it's better to say that shit gets weird after the third dream.  The whispers at a crescendo.  The red light that does not vanish.  The Shepard that burns!!!

This.  I saw half a dozen things seriously wrong with Cronos.  Horizon?  Combed it quite a few times, couldn't find anything wrong.  It starts at Cronos.  Or rather, the third dream.

Eryri wrote:Maybe the citadel has FTL engines in its own right? From what I remember it has some sort of engine to maintain its position in the nebula, and perhaps those weird sparking capacitor plates that resemble the Shadowbroker's engines that you see on Shepard's long, painful walk are there to absorb the massive amount of static electricity created by a big mass effect drive?

The Citadel is roughly 50k light years from Earth.  It would take four and a half YEARS to get it to Earth even if it moved at a Reaper's top speed.  And no, it can't fit through a relay corridor.  That'd be like trying to trying to push a basketball through a garden hose.  It's so grossly, ludicrously oversized for the passage that it's not even worth discussing.

DoomsdayDevice wrote:The only thing about Cronos that seems weird to me is hearing that the Reapers moved the Citadel to Earth. I mean, how long was Shepard on Cronos Station? They somehow did that within a matter of hours. I mean how? Did it go through a relay? It just seems bizarre.

Moved the Citadel to Earth without word reaching the Normandy at that.  In an age with QEC equipped starships and a major command station on the Normandy constantly processing communication feeds.

Yet somehow the Prothean AI constrained within Cronus knew exactly where it was when EDI did not.

Rifneno wrote: The Citadel is roughly 50k light years from Earth.  It would take four and a half YEARS to get it to Earth even if it moved at a Reaper's top speed.  And no, it can't fit through a relay corridor.  That'd be like trying to trying to push a basketball through a garden hose.  It's so grossly, ludicrously oversized for the passage that it's not even worth discussing.

This.
I actually remember the first time i played through Cronos and the aftermath when i was told that the Citadel had been moved to earth. Thinking i'd missed something in the science of Mass Effect knowing a bulky thing like the Citadel couldn't have gone through a relay, but nope i didn't miss anything. Sure enough come priority earth there it was in all it's glory above Earth. I refuse to believe it.
Also the fact it's rebuilt and so brand spanking new after the destroy explosion in such little time...one of the arms actually breaks off, and with 0 reaper help they wouldn't of had it up and running that quick.

DoomsdayDevice wrote:Also



Okay then.

i fail to see how much fucking dummer bioware can get.

the ONLY reference any mass effect player has to N7 is shepard. that's it. N7 is shepard, not some fucking fanboy wankdream. "what does N7 mean to you?" seriously bioware just grow some fucking brain cells and stop fucking about with this poorly thought out bullshit.

WeAreHarbinger wrote:

Rifneno wrote: The Citadel is roughly 50k light years from Earth.  It would take four and a half YEARS to get it to Earth even if it moved at a Reaper's top speed.  And no, it can't fit through a relay corridor.  That'd be like trying to trying to push a basketball through a garden hose.  It's so grossly, ludicrously oversized for the passage that it's not even worth discussing.

This.
I actually remember the first time i played through Cronos and the aftermath when i was told that the Citadel had been moved to earth. Thinking i'd missed something in the science of Mass Effect knowing a bulky thing like the Citadel couldn't have gone through a relay, but nope i didn't miss anything. Sure enough come priority earth there it was in all it's glory above Earth. I refuse to believe it.
Also the fact it's rebuilt and so brand spanking new after the destroy explosion in such little time...one of the arms actually breaks off, and with 0 reaper help they wouldn't of had it up and running that quick.

That the Citadel took any real damage at all is insane. The Citadel superstructure is quantum shielded. They never explained exactly what that means, I suspect it's one of the few pre-ME3 things that's just plain space magic, but they did discuss how tough that protection is. One of Karpyshyn's novels said that it would take every dreadnought in the galaxy doing concentrated, sustained attacks for several days to start doing damage.

There were ~86 dreadnoughts in the galaxy before the Reaper invasion. We're told that an Everest class dreadnought's main gun hits with the force equivalent to 38 KT. About 3 times the Hiroshima atomic bomb for comparison's sake. It should be noted that Everest class dreadnoughts are among the smallest and weakest, if not THE smallest and weakest dreadnoughts. To my knowledge, they're the only dreadnought under 1 kilometer. Only slightly under it, but still under it. Not to say that human dreadnoughts suck, the Kilimanjaro class dreadnoughts are beefier. I'm just saying, that "3 atomic bombs per shot" figure was from the runt of the dreadnought litter. So imagine a fleet of 86 ships continually firing rounds, the smallest of which is 3 times the Hiroshima nuke, and that fleet requiring several DAYS of nonstop bombardment to break through quantum shielding.

Quantum shielding is goddamn tough. As massive as that explosion we see on the Citadel at the end of destroy is, up to the defense of the Citadel superstructure, it's like shooting a 9mm at Superman.

While we're on the topic of stuff surviving impossible stuff, the human Reaper embryo was almost fully in-tact on Cronos. What the fuck is that? You guys claiming you saw nothing wrong at Cronos, can you explain what the deal was there? Did you guys choose to irradiate the base rather than blow it up, or did you forget how ME2 ended? Okay, here's the deal. Shepard did essentially the same thing as he did at the heretic station if you destroyed them: fucked with their antimatter reactor so the antimatter was released, mixed with regular matter, and blew up. An antimatter explosion makes a nuclear plosion look like fucking bang snaps. Let us take a refresher.



You see how the entire Collector base just fucking disintegrated and the explosion just went on and on and on and consumed an area dozens, maybe hundreds of times the size of the Collector base? Here's a fun fact for you... the Collector base is 11.8 kilometers long. 6 Reapers head-to-toe in size. The human Reaper was right at ground zero, the reactor. So riddle me this: how was the human Reaper not atomized by an explosion that looks like a million times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb? Even a fully finished adult Reaper would be vaporized by that blast. There wouldn't even be a wreckage. It would just disappear. How did Cerberus salvage that? I'll buy that they were able to salvage stuff from beyond the Omega 5 relay - the supermassive black hole's accretion disc is colossal beyond imagining. Maybe the Collector base's superstructure, like the Citadel, is quantum shielded. So maybe they even managed to find some the base, even if just about everything inside it was incinerated by the explosion. But nothing explains that Reaper surviving. They've told us outright that the Reapers themselves are NOT quantum shielded. For a variety of reasons, it's only practical to shield space stations and such. There's just no explaining one bit of scrap surviving from that Reaper, let alone the whole thing in-tact.

In the battle above Earth we see Reapers destroyed easily with Thanix weapons, arms fly off...and those are Sovereign classes. Destroyer classes are probably more weaker but a Cain still takes one down. There is no way in the "destroy the base" ending of 2 did any remains of that proto reaper survive, and if it did it wouldn't of been almost fully intact, like it's not even broken. IIRC the head is intact at least.
Cronos is still bullshit, i haven't played in a while but even now i'd likely switch it off at that point if i got that far. I can't stomach it from a literal perspective at all, it only ever made sense as a major setup for an IT style ending.

Rifneno wrote:

Eryri wrote:Maybe the citadel has FTL engines in its own right? From what I remember it has some sort of engine to maintain its position in the nebula, and perhaps those weird sparking capacitor plates that resemble the Shadowbroker's engines that you see on Shepard's long, painful walk are there to absorb the massive amount of static electricity created by a big mass effect drive?

The Citadel is roughly 50k light years from Earth.  It would take four and a half YEARS to get it to Earth even if it moved at a Reaper's top speed.  And no, it can't fit through a relay corridor.  That'd be like trying to trying to push a basketball through a garden hose.  It's so grossly, ludicrously oversized for the passage that it's not even worth discussing.

Well, that shoots that idea down in flames. Is there a codex entry that talks about the maximum width of the corridor? I wouldn't mind having it as ammunition the next time I see someone say that the ending makes literal sense. Come to mention it, wouldn't the Sword fleet have the same problem all coming through the Charon relay at once?

dorktainian wrote:

DoomsdayDevice wrote:Also



Okay then.

i fail to see how much fucking dummer bioware can get.

the ONLY reference any mass effect player has to N7 is shepard.  that's it.  N7 is shepard, not some fucking fanboy wankdream.  "what does N7 mean to you?"  seriously bioware just grow some fucking brain cells and stop fucking about with this poorly thought out bullshit.

IKR? Pass the sick bucket. I like a little bit of wide-eyed idealism as much as the next Star Trek geek, but N7 has a very specific meaning in the ME universe which has little or nothing to do with exploration.

IKR?

*sigh*

WeAreHarbinger wrote:In the battle above Earth we see Reapers destroyed easily with Thanix weapons, arms fly off...and those are Sovereign classes. Destroyer classes are probably more weaker but a Cain still takes one down. There is no way in the "destroy the base" ending of 2 did any remains of that proto reaper survive, and if it did it wouldn't of been almost fully intact, like it's not even broken. IIRC the head is intact at least.
Cronos is still bullshit, i haven't played in a while but even now i'd likely switch it off at that point if i got that far. I can't stomach it from a literal perspective at all, it only ever made sense as a major setup for an IT style ending.

We're not really sure what weapons those ships were using. Given the immensity of Sword fleet, it's entirely possible that the Reapers' shields had simply been brought down by conventional fire. They're resistant to being shot, but they're not immune. It only takes 3 or 4 dreadnoughts to penetrate their defenses and pretty much the entire galactic military showed up for that fight. I'm actually inclined to think this is the case and that the Reapers' defenses had simply been overwhelmed and it was helpless because (A) thanix cannons do tons of heat damage but that didn't look like heat damage it looked like explosion damage and (B) if you look closely you can see the Reaper has suffered heavy hull damage and there's hull breaches all over the place, especially on its upper body. True, those could be from thanix shots, but it just looks more to me like its defenses dropped and a bunch of smaller ships that usually had no chance to hurt a capital ship saw it and took a shot. Basically, the dreadnoughts punched through his shields and now the smaller vessels are swarming it.

Anyways. I attribute the cain thing to London being a crazy dream of a diseased mind. A cain can clear a room, no doubt, but down a Reaper? Even a destroyer? How come we never saw this before London? Even if it is real, it would have to be because of that Hades cannon on the Reaper. The cain shell detonated its ammo or something. I just can't believe that after all the effort it took to stop destroyers on Tuchanka and Rannoch, they can be OHKO by a weapon we had in ME2. Nobody's even surprised at it. "Well fuck, I sure wish we had one of those when we were so desperate we pulled turian air forces tens of thousands of light years in a suicidal effort to just distract one of these things. Maybe we should've brought a Terminus weapons catalog instead? I'd hate to find out later they have a gun that can destroy Reaper capital ships in one shot. Boy, would there be egg on my face!"

Eryri wrote:Well, that shoots that idea down in flames. Is there a codex entry that talks about the maximum width of the corridor? I wouldn't mind having it as ammunition the next time I see someone say that the ending makes literal sense. Come to mention it, wouldn't the Sword fleet have the same problem all coming through the Charon relay at once?

Unfortunately no. It never really comes up because even dreadnoughts can through very easily. It's never been a real limitation before because nobody's ever tried to stick something that retardedly huge in one. But I can't imagine the corridor is any bigger that the "fork" end of the relay, or possibly the eezo core itself. I don't really see how it could be. Imagine a laser gun. Now try to imagine the laser it fires being bigger than the barrel of the gun itself. How would that work? It's just simply a matter of "the bullet can't be bigger than the gun firing it" essentially. Here's some size reference.



Up there at the top you can see the largest ships in the galaxy (minus, for some reason, the quarian liveships). Reaper capital ships, the Collector "cruiser" that's twice the size of a dreadnought, and some dreadnoughts. As you can see, all of them could very easily fit through the "fork" era of the relay. That's where the corridor is projected from. It's really huge, so you can see why it's never really been discussed much as a limitation of transport size. You could stack multiple dreadnoughts on top of each other and pass through easily.

The bottom two images are the Collector base, irrelevant for this discussion, and a closed Citadel. The Citadel, even horizontal like that, is soooo much bigger than the entire mass relay. How could it possible fit through it?

I Know Right?

I'm good with acronyms, too!

I assumed the Proto-Reaper had been pieced back together like a wrecked airplane, but even that is insane.  There was already so much debris around the Collector Base before it blew up that retrieving Reaper-specific debris from that field would be utterly unfeasible.  It's not like you can set your mega-magnets to "attract Reaper parts!" and go at the hay stack.

I get the impression, late, that the Citadel DLC may have been a subtle message to go back to the main game and pay closer attention to the lore breaks. And..... that bucket is full of puke, isn't it...

You know, I just realized something. I'm not sure the Crucible could fit through a mass relay corridor either.

Of course, that's not that big an issue since until the end of Cronos, we had no idea that the Crucible would need to go through a relay because until then we assumed the catalyst would be brought to it, not the other way around. And by that point, we've already raped the laws of physics, common sense, and Udina's corpse by having the Citadel assumedly transported through the relay network.

Rifneno wrote:You know, I just realized something.  I'm not sure the Crucible could fit through a mass relay corridor either.

Of course, that's not that big an issue since until the end of Cronos, we had no idea that the Crucible would need to go through a relay because until then we assumed the catalyst would be brought to it, not the other way around.  And by that point, we've already raped the laws of physics, common sense, and Udina's corpse by having the Citadel assumedly transported through the relay network.

how could the hub of the relay network transfer itself through its own network? surely as soon as the citadel 'moved' the network would collapse?

Rifneno wrote:

Eryri wrote:Well, that shoots that idea down in flames. Is there a codex entry that talks about the maximum width of the corridor? I wouldn't mind having it as ammunition the next time I see someone say that the ending makes literal sense. Come to mention it, wouldn't the Sword fleet have the same problem all coming through the Charon relay at once?

Unfortunately no.  It never really comes up because even dreadnoughts can through very easily.  It's never been a real limitation before because nobody's ever tried to stick something that retardedly huge in one.  But I can't imagine the corridor is any bigger that the "fork" end of the relay, or possibly the eezo core itself.  I don't really see how it could be.  Imagine a laser gun.  Now try to imagine the laser it fires being bigger than the barrel of the gun itself.  How would that work?  It's just simply a matter of "the bullet can't be bigger than the gun firing it" essentially.  Here's some size reference.

Think I found something in the Quarian codex:

The Migrant Fleet is the largest concentration of starfaring vessels in the galaxy, sprawling across millions of kilometers. It can take days for the entire fleet to pass through a mass relay.

It is still not a hard limit, but it makes it clear that there is a limit on how much can pass through at once.

Which brings us back to the Allied Fleet sequence in ME3...

ZerebusPrime wrote:Which brings us back to the Allied Fleet sequence in ME3...

Rule of cool + weirdness. Would not be very epic to cut to "three days later" as the entire fleet has finally gathered at the outskirts of the solar system. There also seems to have been 0 drift in the jump in regards to the fleets arrival going by the Relay right next to them.

Same series of cinematics also have the problem of the fleets firing with Earth right behind the Reapers. Even if we win, the Earth should be uninhabitable from any misses that happened.

But add that to the list of things wrong with post Chronos.

Also it should be noted the Codex entry I linked was from ME1.

To play devils advocate, possible explanation could be the Reaper IFF playing in. We know it reduces drift to basically 0 when going through relays as that was part of the problem with the Omega-4 Relay (drift in the galactic center will most likely kill you). Maybe, and that is a big maybe, it also increases the mass transit limit of relays? But there is no hint of this, ever.

Hey look, a green zombie in N7 armor!

What's all this about an Omega 5 relay? Surely you mean Omega 4?

DoomsdayDevice wrote:What's all this about an Omega 5 relay? Surely you mean Omega 4?

Right, just remembered wrong.

Raistlin Majere wrote:Rule of cool + weirdness. Would not be very epic to cut to "three days later" as the entire fleet has finally gathered at the outskirts of the solar system. There also seems to have been 0 drift in the jump in regards to the fleets arrival going by the Relay right next to them.

Same series of cinematics also have the problem of the fleets firing with Earth right behind the Reapers. Even if we win, the Earth should be uninhabitable from any misses that happened.

Damnit, I thought you were going to mention the problem that's a real problem: that the Reapers fire second. Reapers' have superior targeting systems (obviously) and can fire from a longer range than... damnit, what do we even call the unified races of the galaxy? I can't even say "organics" because there's the geth. Anyway, Reapers have longer range attacks, yet allied forces close in and wait for Shepard to order an attack before firing on the Reapers, who in turn waited for the attack to begin attacking back. Makes no sense. Also makes no sense that Hackett is giving the motivational speech while Shepard is giving the actual attack orders. Should be, and always has been, the other way around.

As for firing with Earth behind them, what the hell choice do they have? Politely ask the Reapers to move? It's either fire on the Reapers above Earth, or just do nothing and let them harvest. Pretty obvious choice.

Which brings us back to either the Reapers were pulling their punches for some reason or else that whole fight wasn't what it seemed...

I'd almost accept it if the Citadel went somewhere else entirely and Shepard just thought he was chasing after it to stop the Reapers when in fact everything he sees, hears, and feels has been hijacked. The Earth becomes a visible carrot on a stick in this example and the progressive lack of sense things seem to make points to the mental deterioration found in any Reaper indoctrinated agent.

I'd almost accept that. It's kinda late and naive to be hoping for such a thing in a future Mass Effect installment. I feel we are sitting atop a giant pile of assumptions about Mass Effect: Andromeda with little concrete information aside from which galaxy the game is in and that "Shepard won't be in it".

ZerebusPrime wrote:Which brings us back to either the Reapers were pulling their punches for some reason or else that whole fight wasn't what it seemed...

My favorite part is in the refuse ending when a Reaper capital ship catches a heavy cruiser or dreadnought or something and crushes it in its tentacles. That's not utterly retarded at all!

I'd almost accept it if the Citadel went somewhere else entirely and Shepard just thought he was chasing after it to stop the Reapers when in fact everything he sees, hears, and feels has been hijacked.  The Earth becomes a visible carrot on a stick in this example and the progressive lack of sense things seem to make points to the mental deterioration found in any Reaper indoctrinated agent.

I'd almost accept that.  It's kinda late and naive to be hoping for such a thing in a future Mass Effect installment.  I feel we are sitting atop a giant pile of assumptions about Mass Effect: Andromeda with little concrete information aside from which galaxy the game is in and that "Shepard won't be in it".

You'd almost accept it if the Citadel moved even further away?

Some perspective. If a Reaper was at the Citadel at ME3's release and it took off for Earth now without trying to drag an immense space station, it still wouldn't be here yet.

Androme-duh tells us all we need to know. There's not going to be any reveal or even any intelligent story. We don't need to know anything more. It's like if instead of story, our obsession was graphics, and they told us that the game is going to be exclusive to the Atari 2600. We don't need to know anymore, there's no way it can't look like vomit with that bit of information. Andromeda tells us the same about story. It's the Atari 2600 of story.

I know it's hard, but it's time to throw in the towel on hoping for a reveal/continuation. We got screwed, intelligent people in general got screwed. It sucks, but that's life.

Rifneno wrote:

Raistlin Majere wrote:Rule of cool + weirdness. Would not be very epic to cut to "three days later" as the entire fleet has finally gathered at the outskirts of the solar system. There also seems to have been 0 drift in the jump in regards to the fleets arrival going by the Relay right next to them.

Same series of cinematics also have the problem of the fleets firing with Earth right behind the Reapers. Even if we win, the Earth should be uninhabitable from any misses that happened.

Damnit, I thought you were going to mention the problem that's a real problem: that the Reapers fire second.  Reapers' have superior targeting systems (obviously) and can fire from a longer range than...  damnit, what do we even call the unified races of the galaxy?  I can't even say "organics" because there's the geth.  Anyway, Reapers have longer range attacks, yet allied forces close in and wait for Shepard to order an attack before firing on the Reapers, who in turn waited for the attack to begin attacking back.  Makes no sense.  Also makes no sense that Hackett is giving the motivational speech while Shepard is giving the actual attack orders.  Should be, and always has been, the other way around.

As for firing with Earth behind them, what the hell choice do they have?  Politely ask the Reapers to move?  It's either fire on the Reapers above Earth, or just do nothing and let them harvest.  Pretty obvious choice.

True.

But they could at least have acknowledged the fact in game. "We are taking Earth back,but it is unlikely there will much left of it."

But then again they acknowledge nothing and don't even make a fleeting attempt at consistency at this point.

This is what i think happens when we let Carmine do as he pleases.

ZerebusPrime wrote:Which brings us back to either the Reapers were pulling their punches for some reason or else that whole fight wasn't what it seemed...

I'd almost accept it if the Citadel went somewhere else entirely and Shepard just thought he was chasing after it to stop the Reapers when in fact everything he sees, hears, and feels has been hijacked.  The Earth becomes a visible carrot on a stick in this example and the progressive lack of sense things seem to make points to the mental deterioration found in any Reaper indoctrinated agent.

I'd almost accept that.  It's kinda late and naive to be hoping for such a thing in a future Mass Effect installment.  I feel we are sitting atop a giant pile of assumptions about Mass Effect: Andromeda with little concrete information aside from which galaxy the game is in and that "Shepard won't be in it".

The Reapers wanted Shepard to make it to the Citadel Control panel.