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See, when last year's N7 Day video came out, I didn't get it. But then I figured the reason why it was Captain Shepard signing off was because next year's N7 Day will probably be some sort of unveiling of the new characters, so this (2015) was Shepard's last November 7th.

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So I'm back on Ilos, and there's all these statues all over that are presumably Prothean relics. But why do they look nothing like Collectors? The Collectors are devolved Protheans, but... Banshees look like fucked up Asari. Husks look like fucked up Humans. Ravagers look like Rachni, Ravagers look like Turians, Brutes look like Krogans.

Did the Protheans decorate Ilos with statues of something other than themselves?

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11 hours ago, AxB said:

So I'm back on Ilos, and there's all these statues all over that are presumably Prothean relics. But why do they look nothing like Collectors? The Collectors are devolved Protheans, but... Banshees look like fucked up Asari. Husks look like fucked up Humans. Ravagers look like Rachni, Ravagers look like Turians, Brutes look like Krogans.

Did the Protheans decorate Ilos with statues of something other than themselves?

Here is the discussion at the Mass Effect Answers wikia.

The lazy and obvious answer being that the developers came up with the concept image for Javik in total ignorance of the original ME1 concept art.

The geek answer that tries to address the question within the scope of game lore is:

Spoiler

The facility on Ilos is either built on the ruins of an unnamed and advanced humanoid species that was native to Ilos and enslaved by the Protheans (ie. the statues are of them, not the Protheans), or the Prothean base on Ilos is built within the ruins of a research facility that previously belonged to the Inusannon (the dominant spacefaring race in the cycle prior to the Prothean Empire) and the statues were put there by the Inusannon and are created in their image...

.So our initial conclusion about the Conduit is probably incorrect.  More than likely, the Protheans didn't create The Conduit by themselves.   They were building on the tech left behind by the Inusannon and like the Protheans, the Inusannon were wiped out by the Reapers before they could finish.

 

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So, although we think that 'Prothean' is like the Prothean word for 'human', it's actually the Prothean word for 'Council Race'. It would be like the failed ending for ME3 aliens finding the Liara beacon and wondering why she looks nothing like the Krogan statue in the Citadel. Prothean is a catch-all term for 'Race wiped out by the Reapers in the previous extinction cycle', that encompasses many different species. Interesting.

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Precisely.  The only reason that "we" know about the Inusannon is because Javik acknowledges their existence, so it is logical to assume that our concept of what is "Prothean" extends to everything beyond the Prothean extinction cycle.   But in reality, the Inusannon came before the Protheans just as the Protheans came before the Council races. 

Every dominant race in the galaxy builds on the technological advances of the previous race and when they become advanced enough to notice that the galaxy is a giant hamster wheel, the Reapers wipe everyone out and the cycle starts again.

in the time frame covered by ME1, Shepard (and we as players) has never seen a live Prothean, so we automatically assume that the statues littering Ilos were made in the image of the Protheans.  

As of the events of ME3, we know that may not be the case.  The bloom falls from the rose when Liara meets Javik and discovers that her concept of Protheans as the benevolent gentle all-wise spacefaring race is a fantasy.

This is why I am looking forward to ME: Andromeda.  The whole premise of ME is that the Reapers set up the Mass Drivers in such a way that allowed spacefaring races to travel ONLY within the confines of the Milky Way.  There is no race in the galaxy that evolves socially or advances technologically in a way that the Reapers do not want them to.

So, is the new Mass Driver pointing towards Andromeda lead to another galaxy wide Reaper biotech farm, or is this the first time ever that spacefaring races will jailbreak Reaper tech and use it for our their advancement?

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I was about to say, didn't Javik basically say that the Protheans didn't totally come up with the Conduit, they just built what they found from last cycle, and that the Conduit has pretty much been slowly advancing over the course of several cycles, with each dominant race building apon the last until someone finally finished it, as evidenced by making the Citadel the final piece, ensuring that the final piece would always be there (since the Citadel is always rebuilt and left for someone to find every cycle, being the usual starting point of the Reaper Invasion and all)

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10 minutes ago, Raziel403 said:

 

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I was about to say, didn't Javik basically say that the Protheans didn't totally come up with the Conduit, they just built what they found from last cycle, and that the Conduit has pretty much been slowly advancing over the course of several cycles, with each dominant race building apon the last until someone finally finished it, as evidenced by making the Citadel the final piece, ensuring that the final piece would always be there (since the Citadel is always rebuilt and left for someone to find every cycle, being the usual starting point of the Reaper Invasion and all)

In a word, yes.

Spoiler

Every dominant species prior to ours has added their ideas and tech to the completion of the Conduit.   The Protheans finished it but they never got to use it.

 

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The Protheans did use it, but only after their own extinction. The Scientists on Ilos were brought out of hypersleep after the Reapers left and used the conduit to travel to the Citadel, so they could rig the keepers to not open the portal next time*. This is why Sovereign recruited Saren in the first place, so he could get someone to deprogram the keepers and make them open the portal after all. I just talked to the Prothean beacon on Ilos last night, it was very clear about that.

* The Scientists then starved to death in the Citadel, although they knew their numbers were too few to repopulate the species anyway.

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15 hours ago, AxB said:

The Protheans did use it, but only after their own extinction. The Scientists on Ilos were brought out of hypersleep after the Reapers left and used the conduit to travel to the Citadel, so they could rig the keepers to not open the portal next time*. This is why Sovereign recruited Saren in the first place, so he could get someone to deprogram the keepers and make them open the portal after all. I just talked to the Prothean beacon on Ilos last night, it was very clear about that.

* The Scientists then starved to death in the Citadel, although they knew their numbers were too few to repopulate the species anyway.

Crap, that's right.  I remember Vigil telling me that during the Infiltrator replay.  I think I shotgunned though my first game for the sake of completion. 

Vigil has a lot of dialogue branches in his tree.  I think I was overwhelmed with the urgency to save the galaxy during my Soldier run.

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Well, that's my second playthrough of ME1 complete. I got the trophies for completing it twice and completing it on Hardcore, but I only got one companion trophy, for Tali. I did a bunch of Citadel stuff and Bring down the Sky before I went and got Liara, so even though she was on every mission after that it still didn't count as completing 'most of the game' with her.

Also, Evil Shepard* got no romance. He was a complete tool to Ashley, then left her to die (I got things backwards; Babyface Femshep on my first playthrough should have saved the nice boy with the migraines, Evil Manshep should have saved intergalactic space racist Ashley because he is also a human supremacist... although he saved the council at the cost of human lives because you have to reverse every decision**). He told Liara to keep things professional, because he finds aliens disgusting and wants to kill them... and when Kaiden said he thought Liara was cute, he said "I saw her first". So I think he really wanted to romance Kaiden himself, and was sad because that wasn't an option in ME1. Maybe if they do an HD remaster they'll change it so you can be gay all the way through the story (if you're male, I mean. I think most femsheps go for Liara over Kaiden in ME1... if only they tracked that online like Telltale do), instead of having to be celibate for two games before you have a shot at that boy on boy action.

Having said that, he's not met Jack or Miranda yet. And who knows how he'll react to them?

* Yes, that is his first name.

** Helen Shepard sacrificed the Council on my first playthrough because she thought it's what they would have done for her; Really the council are complete twats to you all the way through ME1, so I bet everyone kills them on their first run, for revenge.

EDIT: By the looks of things, if I want to Platinum it, I need to go through three more times. Once as a pure biotic (I have no Biotic use trophies), once as a Soldier (Assault Rifle kills), and once as pure tech (for Neural Shock and Hacking)... plus I need trophies for playing with Wrex, Garrus, Kaiden, Ashley, and Liara. Three more  playthroughs... I want the Gold for Insanity though. Level 60 shouldn't be too hard, because I'm at, like, 53 already and you can keep your character. 400-odd Omni-Gels and 9999999 credits, too.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So I'm doing my Renegade Insanity playthrough on ME2, and trying to do everything different to what I did on the first run through... but I couldn't bring myself to not hatch Grunt (I want to see how he interacts with Wrex now Wrex isn't dead). So has anyone completed the game while keeping Grunt in the tube the whole time, or does it hatch him against your will at some point?

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On 5/6/2016 at 6:46 PM, AxB said:

So I'm doing my Renegade Insanity playthrough on ME2, and trying to do everything different to what I did on the first run through... but I couldn't bring myself to not hatch Grunt (I want to see how he interacts with Wrex now Wrex isn't dead). So has anyone completed the game while keeping Grunt in the tube the whole time, or does it hatch him against your will at some point?

He can't hatch against your will because you tell EDI to maintain his vitals and keep him in stasis if it is your decision to keep Grunt in the pod..  Note that you never elect to "kill" Grunt by switching his pod off although IMO that should be a Renegade option.

I guess the game takes the Mr. Sardonicus route and assumes that you will free Grunt for the sake of gameplay and because the Elusive Man advises against it.

His pod has enough nutrient solution and battery power to last a year and IIRC it wasn't tied to Normandy's life support systems, so even if the Normandy is trashed during the Suicide Mission, Grunt should survive the crash in suspended animation as long as his pod wasn't damaged.

Time elapsed between ME2 and ME3 is roughly six months.  Unless the Alliance disposed of Grunt when they confiscated the SR2, Grunt should still be alive in stasis.

 

 

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So, this replay I'm doing, I dropped $20 and decided to pick up the PC versions because that's what I'm able to play more.

 

Man, if you thought controlling the Mako with a controller was bad... fuck keyboard and mouse.

 

But it's way easier to control everything else.

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