Giantevilhead

Hey, maybe they only did it at Yvonne Strahovski's request. Didn't think of that, did you? I guess it's up to open minded people like me to think about Yvonne Strahovski wanting to show her ass.

At least BSG has an excuse. Ron Moore wanted a fifth season, Sci-Fi refused to commit, so he rushed to a conclusion.

Because Bioware has constantly advertised it as being serious sci-fi. Heck, when ME2 came out, they did a special where they had physicists show up and say how great the science in Mass Effect was. Bioware has put a lot of emphasis on how they've tried to have the universe make sense and keep at least some real science without devolving into meaningless technobabble. They were the ones who made it part of the franchise so why should players ignore it just because it's no longer convenient for them?

If that's the case then,

The Legion is full of supersitious tribals who are afraid of what's inside the bunker.

You forgot Babylon 5, which is probably the biggest influence on Mass Effect. Nobody watched Babylon 5. Well maybe the Mass Effect writers. Anyway I tend to group it with Star Trek, same makeup artists. In terms of the setting, tone, and story, Mass Effect has a lot in common with Babylon 5. You have humans being newcomers to the galactic community but becomes powerful very quickly. Every race in the galaxy use FTL technology left behind by an ancient unknown race. A lot of advances in technology is gained from reverse engineering tech left by alien races. There's an intergalactic UN but unlike the Federation in Star Trek, there is a lot of conflict and backstabbing between the various factions. There's a pro-human/earth conspiracy backed by powerful shady corporations. Aliens tampered with the evolution of various species across the galaxy. There's an ancient evil that sows chaos and destruction across the galaxy every few thousand years. The protagonist tries to convince all the races to unite and combat the threat but everyone is too concerned with their own problems to care. Various people want to exploit the technology of the ancient evil, including secretive human factions and corporations. This is also met with disastrous results.

You forgot Babylon 5, which is probably the biggest influence on Mass Effect.

They already ruined Kreia, the Exile, and the True Sith so there's basically no way we'll get a real sequel to KotoR2.

They were kind of cheap with the animation budget. Instead of having a line of text that says Christine tapped her fingers, it would have been nice to show her tapping her fingers.

When you realize that one of the factions consists into fascist rapists with a narcissistic history major at their helm, it starts getting creepy. Rapist Fascism is one of the three most popular political ideologies in the wasteland.

Wasn't the point of the suicide mission that they didn't know what would happen after crossing the Omega relay? Makes sense that they'd want to cover their asses with all kinds of teammates. It would make sense for them to be prepared for everything. It would also make sense for the writers to put all those characters to use. Think about it this way, if you go see a a bank heist movie and they spend a significant amount of time developing a character as the best, most bad ass getaway driver in the world. Then the bank robbers manage to escape by sneaking through the sewers and the movie ends up with no car chases. Would you not think, "what the hell was the point of that getaway driver character?" Yes, it makes sense logically for that character to be there but in terms of the narrative structure, there's no point in developing a character that won't play a significant role in the plot.

I really hope that your actions will have real impact on the story. One thing I really disliked about Mass Effect 2 was how other than Mordin, none of your other teammates were really that important. Why did I have to go recruit Thane? His assassin skills never got used. Why did I have to recruit Jack? Her uber biotic power got used once and she could have been replaced with Samara/Morinth, Miranda can replace her too but someone dies as a result. Why did I have to recruit Kasumi? I didn't have to steal anything from the Collectors. It seems like a cadre of highly trained, but expendable, mercenaries could have done just as well as this super uber team you had to recruit.

It seems like the third game is kind of pointless. Shepard could have destroyed the Reapers during the Arrival DLC if he had just waited until after the Reapers arrived before destroying the Mass Relay, the explosion would destroyed the Reapers.

The real problem is whether or not they can get the politics to work and I don't think Bioware can really do that. Maybe Jon Van Caneghem's Bioware Victory can do it but probably not Bioware.

Yet more reminders of how un-nuked the earth is.

I suppose an explanation could be that they didn't visit the Citadel and get the entire rundown of each race. Perhaps they didn't even realize what those funny looking vehicles with toy guns even were! Or, since the fleet apparantly was like paper mache to them, perhaps they don't care. They've had their agents gather intel on the galaxy for years. The whole overconfidence thing doesn't really make sense considering how often their plans have been foiled.

I think the Reapers might be more like the Shadows from Babylon 5. In fact, Mass Effect is pretty much Babylon 5 without the Vorlons or a lot of the political intrigue.

The Reapers want to capture people, kind of like the Borg. Although, that doesn't explain why the Reapers don't nuke earth's military bases first to render the civilian population defenseless.

At least the aliens in Independence Day nuked earth's major cities. The alien in Stargate also tried to nuke earth.

Whatever happened to those Seeker Swarms the Collectors were using to kidnap entire colonies? Come on Reapers, you don't use anti-matter weapons, you don't use nukes, you don't use chemical weapons, you don't use genetically engineered diseases, you don't even use paralyzing locust warms. What kind of genocidal eldritch horrors are you?

Homeworld 2 King's Bounty Command and Conquer: Renegade Sins of a Solar Empire Sword of the Stars Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War