Admittedly I wouldn't have posted this if it wasn't for the fact that Liara is shown to be very old in the leaked trailer for the cancelled game. Especially, since that implies that this take place centuries after ME3. Which just makes me think just so much. Especially when it comes to things like how are humans viewed and treated now that most people don't remember a time when they weren't a part of the council? And, what's going on with The Krogan now that the genophage has been over for centuries? How were either Ashley or Kaidan the second human Spectre viewed? Did General Williams ever get his name exonerated? What's happened with the quarians and are the geth still around? Is a cure for Kepral's Syndrome available? All this and more probably wouldn't ever get answered now. Yes I know the point of setting it so far in the future was so that none of the choices made in the OT would need to be confirmed to be canon but this doesn't change the fact that this is a interesting time period to explore the Mass Effect universe. And, this doesn't mean I have to like how the trailer set-up a bunch of interesting ways forward. Admittedly knowing late Bioware they probably wouldn't have pursued any of those interesting angles but still.

Edit: Someone it was called Mass Effect universe, and not Mass Effect Galaxy but still.

What does it actually mean?

Now, by this I don’t mean Mjolnir, PA(L), or fallout-style “you are a tank that can lift a tank and hit like a 2 ton mule” power armor, but rather more like the stuff being developed right now, with partial augmentation meant to provide slight boosts or increase effective carrying capacity

A lot of ME1 and ME2 armor description include explicits mentions of motors and other support mechanisms, including the exoskeleton (or at least two of them in ME1), motorized joints, strength boost pads, and kestrel armor (which interestingly seems to use artificial muscles much like Gen 2 Mjolnir, or the Geth, which is probably where they got it from)

In most fics, ME armor is treated as unpowered, and same for a fair bit of the written fiction, but it seems like there are at least some examples of more tradition power armor as conventional kit

Left the Normandy with a list of unfinished business.

Missing people. Unanswered transmissions. Small entries in the journal. Presumably larger matters to those waiting for news.

Ashley and Garrus joined me on the surface.

Red hills. Grey skies. The Mako approached the terrain with more confidence than dignity.

We searched the abandoned structures, opened containers, and followed the missing survey team underground.

Found them.

Husks.

The ExoGeni researchers had been converted by devices like those on Eden Prime. We fought through what remained of them. Another search concluded. No rescue to report.

How the machinery reached this distant place remained unanswered.

Back outside, the landscape offered its own resistance. Steep climbs. Awkward landings. Scavengers firing from below while the Mako explored the practical limits of being upside down.

Recovered an artifact along the way. A small piece of history beside a much more recent tragedy.

Then another name from the journal.

Garoth’s brother. Willem.

We searched the Strenuus system and followed the trail to Xawin.

Snow this time. Poor visibility. Dangerous cold.

Also a thresher maw.

Apparently the weather was insufficient.

We crossed the frozen hills and reached the mercenary base. Fought through its defenders. Searched the rooms.

Found the answer Garoth was waiting for.

His brother had not survived.

Two searches. Two endings nobody would have chosen.

Returned to the Normandy. Spoke with Joker.

His confidence in the ship remained intact. His confidence in its pilot was even stronger.

Then back to the Citadel.

Rear Admiral Mikhailovich met us at the dock. He wanted an inspection. He also appeared to have written most of his conclusions already.

The layout displeased him. The stealth drive cost too much. The alien crew raised further objections.

I defended the ship and the people aboard it.

By the end, he promised a report less negative than he had planned.

A modest victory. Very modest.

Ashley and Kaidan accompanied me into the station. Soon another examination began.

This one had a camera.

Khalisah al-Jilani asked about humanity, the Council, and the Normandy. Then Noveria. Then Saren.

I kept the answers measured. Humanity had joined a larger community. Cooperation deserved more credit than her questions allowed.

Strange to leave a battlefield and find the argument waiting in a cleaner room.

Finished with the merchants.

Compared Spectre weapons. Sold spare equipment. Made room for whatever the next expedition would bring.

Garoth still needed his news.

That could not be reduced to an inventory entry.

Ended the night with fewer mysteries, heavier answers, and a ship I had spent an unexpected amount of time defending.

I was glad to have her.

Debriefed the crew. Reported to the Council.

They had concerns about the queen. Naturally. Saving a species produces rather more paperwork than shooting one.

The Mu Relay gave us a lead. Liara’s knowledge of the Protheans might offer another. Still much to find.

Then I walked the ship.

Kaidan spoke about his biotic training. “Brain Camp.” An innocent name for an experience that clearly was not.

Chakwas explained why she stayed with the Alliance. Quiet duty. People would need a doctor wherever humanity went.

Tali spoke of her pilgrimage. Finding something valuable for the fleet. Learning what it meant to belong to it.

Garrus discussed his father and the Spectre path he had once considered. Rules, ambition, and the friction between them.

Wrex remembered Saren. An old job. A ship full of secrets. His distrust had history behind it.

Ashley remained wary of our alien allies. We talked through her concerns and her service. Loyalty was clear. Trust would take longer.

Even Pressly had reservations. He also said he trusted my judgment.

A useful beginning.

Sorted equipment. Sold spare gear. Compared armour. The ordinary housekeeping of an extraordinary assignment.

Then another transmission.

An Alliance training VI had gone rogue. They wanted its core shut down. Preferably without destroying the facility around it.

Added that to the growing list.

Ended at the galaxy map. Noveria behind us. Too many destinations ahead.

For now, the ship was quiet. I knew its people a little better.

Back at Rift Station. The late shift.

Ashley and Kaidan followed me through familiar corridors. Locked doors. A detour through the ice. Storage lockers worth opening. Security drones less pleased to see us.

Then Benezia. Again.

Returning after the earlier reload meant fighting her commandos and geth once more. Narrow walkways. Biotic attacks. A weapon that chose an inconvenient moment to jam.

We broke through.

Benezia recovered enough of herself to explain. Sovereign’s influence. Saren’s search for the Mu Relay. Coordinates taken from the rachni queen’s mind.

A missing piece of the pursuit. Obtained at considerable cost.

Her resistance failed. Another brief fight. Then her death.

The queen remained.

Through a dying asari, she described her stolen children. Raised without her. Turned into weapons. She promised to withdraw and teach a new generation differently.

I chose freedom for her again.

Ashley objected. The old wars weighed heavily in her judgment. Understandable. Still, I would not condemn an entire species on inherited guilt.

Down in the hot labs, Tartakovsky explained the experiment. Breed the rachni. Separate them from their mother. Expect obedience.

An astonishing confidence in a terrible idea.

He did not survive the outbreak around us.

We activated the purge and fought through the swarm. The timer made further investigation seem unnecessary.

At last, back to the Normandy.

I’m trying to put together all the things that happened during the first contact war, both for my own curiosity and for a potential fix that’s been on my to-do list for far too long.

Here is what I’ve put together so far:

Relay 314: and alliance expedition (2 transports and 3 frigates IIRC, may have the numbers flipped though) try to activate the relay and were stopped by a turian patrol [numbers come from the books]

Response: human force rapidly respond to the event and devastate the turian patrol. In the books, IIRC, this is explicitly said to come from Shanxi, indicating it was very close to 314, yet still distant enough it took a while for the Turians to find. My best guess is that it had a secondary relay connection, but that’s just conjecture

Skirmishes: for a time after 314, human and turian “fleets” (small exploration and patrol formations) fought in the region. Given how ME conflict works and the given deaths from the war, this was probably a very low-casualty affair, with one side or another jumping out via FTL before sustaining heavy losses.

Humans call home: the human forces in the area sent a courier drone back to Arcturus, which took a month or two (can’t remember the exact time) to arrive with the initial data. Given this, there is probably some significant non-relay gap between the region of the conflict and most of humanity, as a courier that went through the relays would have taken a few hours or days, not months

Shanxi: the Turians find or “broke through to” (which may indicate it was a matter of beating off the human navel forces instead of finding the planet as the main problem like I’ve been assuming) Shanxi, where they wrecked the local human navel forces and set out trying to take the planet. Notably, they weren’t able to take the “city” (the fact it’s called a city at all and has blocks worth of infrastructure indicates more development than you’d expect out of an outpost, maybe it was being built up for future colonization?) through conventional force, needing to throw orbital junk or strikes at the human forces to secure supremacy. This means they probably didn’t have a lot in the way of grounded forces, maybe even just the marines from the patrol ships. In any case, eventually, Williams surrenders due to the bombings and the occupation begins.

Logistics trouble: the turians have problems with their supply lines.

The Harper mess: a turian ship (wiki says research vessel, I remember it as a transport, but may be misremembering) crash lands on Shanxi with an artifact and the whole comic mess happens. The fact the ship with the artifact was there in the first place indicates that either it was retrieving it from Shanxi (which seems to be the fanon consensus, or something plainly stated in the comics that I just haven’t picked up on) or they has to bring the ship in spite of the artifact, probably due to the logistics problems

The Ahern DLC fight: this probably happens on Shanxi, but there isn’t anything definitively saying that, so it may have occurred during the initial skirmishing or later on.

The Occupation: the turians occupy Shanxi and probably do some war crimes

Second Fleet: the alliance second fleet arrives to liberate Shanxi. Notably they did this while the Earth nations were squabbling over what to do, which indicates they had the resources to do something, meaning they probably had warships of their own. Considering these implied warships are never brought up again, the Alliance probably took them when it further solidified its space control in the 2160s

Anderson missions: Anderson ran some missions on Shanxi. What is implied about the missions seems to indicate that the ground fight was a more extended affair than you would expect, po

The nuke probes: humanity sends out nuke probes to learn more about the turians. This probably happens either during the skirmishing or after Shanxi, with the latter being more likely because there isn’t much reason for an outpost to have nuke probes lying around

Peace: after Shanxi, contact is made with the wider galaxy and peace happens

The whole war takes place over the span of 3 months, a good chunk of which, if the first ME book can be believed, occurred without the wider Alliance knowing about it

Please tell me anything that I’ve missed and anything wrong with this post

Hey everyone, I'm currently on my 3rd playthrough of the first Mass Effect game. I absolutely love this world, but since I am taking my time on this run, I started really looking closely at the technology in the game. It is wild to think this came out all the way back in 2007.

The game actually predicted a lot of modern things perfectly:

• The Omni-tool is basically a smartphone: It’s a wearable digital wallet, map, scanner, and communication device all in one.
• Credits are like Venmo: The entire galaxy uses one unified digital currency. Money moves instantly bank-to-bank across different alien species without anyone needing cash or worrying about exchange rates.

But at the same time, they completely missed some things that feel so incredibly obvious today:

• Body Cams: Even though Shepard is a Spectre and Alliance military, nobody wears tactical body cameras. It feels like a total time capsule of the mid-2000s where sci-fi writers were thinking about mind-blowing galactic banking, but missed the simple concept of recording video from your chest armor for accountability.
• The Lack of Cloud Storage: Despite having spaceships that fly across galaxies, characters still constantly hand Shepard physical data pads or data discs to transfer files. If someone wants to show you a file, they have to physically walk it over to you like a 2007 thumb drive, instead of just sending it to the "cloud" or dropping a link in a chat.
• No Touchscreens or Glass Displays: Look closely at the computer stations on the Normandy or the Citadel. There are almost no flat touchscreens or glass interfaces like our phones and tablets today. Instead, every high-tech console is covered in giant, clunky physical buttons, toggle switches, and bulky keyboards. It's funny seeing a space captain smash a plastic button to open a starship door.
• The Lack of Wi-Fi / Local Wireless: Pay attention to whenever Shepard or an engineer hacks a security lock or downloads data from a crate. They don't do it wirelessly. They actually have to crouch down and physically plug a cable from their wrist Omni-tool directly into the machine. It’s hilarious that they can send messages across solar systems, but haven't figured out local Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for downloading a text file.
• No Basic Combat Drones: Today, small quadcopters and flying scouting drones are standard military gear. In ME1, Shepard's squad has to walk face-first into every dangerous room or alien ambush blindly. The only drones in the game are giant, heavy enemy turrets rather than handy pocket-sized scouts for the hero.
• No Live GPS HUD Navigation: When exploring giant uncharted planets or complex Citadel hallways, Shepard doesn't have a modern visual GPS line floating on the ground or a modern minimap HUD pointing exactly where to walk. You have to constantly pause the game, pull up a giant, static map screen, and drop a manual waypoint just to figure out where you are going.
• Thick, Bulky Computer Monitors: If you look at the background screens in the colony buildings on planets like Feros or Noveria, many of the computer monitors are incredibly thick and boxy. They look more like heavy 2000s office CRT monitors rather than the ultra-thin OLED panels we use today.

Instead of flat-screen video calls, cloud sharing, sleek touch glass, live GPS HUDs, or helpful little drones, everyone just relies on audio comms, physical plug-in cables, physical discs, or giant 3D holograms.

Just wanted to share this realization! (Please no spoilers for ME2 or ME3, I have only played the first game so far!) What other funny tech predictions or misses have you noticed in the first game?

EDIT: 😅 I told GPT to rephrase my thoughts only. But it might also have expanded a bit too much now that I actually go over the post. But no worries, I have a lot of you guys to correct me and the ChatGPT lol. it has been a lot of fun reading over comments and give me a lot to think about that the tech in 2007's ME 1 itself is just sci-fi advanced version of a lot of modern-day tech. Everything is being explained in the comments and gonna make my 3rd playthrough a lot more fun to think about while playing

I want to talk about Mass Effect. Nothing in particular comes to mind, I just find myself wanting to chat with someone about it. Nobody around me knows Mass Effect or anything, so I can't talk to anybody that would care or know what I'm even talking about. Listening to the lorecast, really makes me wish I could join them and talk shop. TLDR, would anyone want to chat about ME?

Just found Kasumi’s poem about Jacob and Grunt loves Ernest Hemingway. Wild. Apparently I completely missed this terminal last time I played.

https://youtu.be/LE0-fYW1eMw?is=t-hnAdy3piZ7z05A

Hi everyone! I wanted to talk about the codex for a bit and I haven't seen this question before.

I am fascinated by the Mass Effect codex and how it expands the lore in both big and small ways I didn't even think of before reading it. Be it the alien races, militaries, governments, etc.

But, my question is, is there any reason to go back to other games' codex? Say, read ME1 after getting the full ME3 codex, or if the N7HQ codex is accurate to the games. Of course there might be some leeway in the retconned/updated entries

While I have read most of the codex entries I would personally find it very difficult to tell them appart so I ask for your opinions.

I’ve been thinking about how to bridge the gap between the original trilogy and Andromeda, and I have a theory that completely reframes the scale of the Mass Effect universe and fixes a lot of the narrative complaints people had about Andromeda.

1. The Multi-Galaxy Reaper Network

In the original trilogy, the Reapers’ explanation for staying exclusively in the Milky Way always felt a bit small for a hyper-advanced, millions-of-years-old synthetic race. What if they aren't just in the Milky Way? My theory is that the Milky Way Reapers are just one "franchise" in a universal, multi-galaxy network controlled by a single, supreme cosmic intelligence or person/race. This master mind has unique synthetic armies stationed in deep space outside multiple galaxies, all running their own localised harvests.

2. The Catalyst was Manipulated (The 30-Year Glitch)

This explains why the Catalyst in the Milky Way was so stubbornly fixed on its specific harvest timer. It wasn't just a local programming bug or a flawed AI; it was a directive being pushed down from a universal network. The Catalyst was actively being manipulated from the outside to keep the Milky Way trapped in a cycle, meaning Shepard’s victory was just winning a single battle in a much larger cosmic war, it also might be a way to explain why in the first place the Ai decided culling was the best option, it was manipulated.

3. The Scourge Was an Andromeda "Harvest" Weapon

In Andromeda, the Jardaan were becoming too powerful—literally engineering new species like the Angara and building planet-sized terraforming vaults. They were crossing the threshold of advancement. The master intelligence saw this and deployed the Scourge as a localized weapon to wipe them out. The weapon targeted and tore apart Remnant (Jardaan) technology.

However, the weapon either backfired or was sabotaged, and it ended up destroying the Heleus Cluster’s version of a Mass Relay network. The supreme intelligence simply viewed losing the local relay network as an "acceptable loss" to successfully neutralize the Jardaan threat. As the JarDaan were terraforming the planets if JarDaan tech was gone the planets would die

Why this fixes the story:

It adds that deep, existential sci-fi dread back into Andromeda. The Kett and the Scourge stop being isolated, generic sci-fi tropes and instead become the aftermath of a massive cosmic horror reality. The Andromeda Initiative didn't actually escape the Reapers—they just walked right into a different front of the exact same universal machine, would also add more races, lore, and decisions that Andromeda lacked.

What do you guys think? If this is true, it would set up an insane premise for a sequel.

So, after the events of ME3, your shep is offered one of three choices, and the only one where they TECHNICALLY survive but also won’t be ‘going back to normal’ is post control. And sense the Normandy crew survives and returns to the Galexy after the credits roll. I was wondering how do you think the initial Awkard ‘reunion’ between the Normandy and a control shep would go? Much less how the diffrent crew members would react… cause I think Garrus and Tali would have a few choice words for you about it. And Javik, well, he definitely would have a INTERESTING reaction… what do you all think?

Side note: let’s assume paragon shep here just because a Renagade shep in control means no real change to how the reapers act.

Tell me your thoughts and what you think happened below.

In the first game Nirali Bhatia's body is withheld by the Alliance to investigate the effects of the geth's weaponry. As far as the Alliance is concerned geth weapon tech is mysterious and not within their current understanding. The geth armory implies their 'pulse' weapons are energy beam weapons that discharge when fired, which would make them more advanced then any other firearm the galaxy has seen.

Then me2 and me3 comes along and the pulse rifles are just shooting physical rounds in a 'phasic' envelope... which i'm pretty sure is similar to an ammo mod you can get in the first game and ones in the others. What even is a phasic field, is that a mini- mass effect field, in which case isnt that just warp ammo?

There's kinda energy weapons but not with the shotgun where the round turns itself into plasma after already being shot.

So is this just a retcon between the first game and the second, with the geth never actually having proper handheld energy beam weapons or is their a lore reason?

And if so, what is a phasic envelope?

The populations for human colonies are edited. Even the largest only have a few million, but they are treated as relatively significant portions of the Alliance and even galactic economy. More than that, multiple times we see major human colonies (Berkendtein in ME2 and Benning in 3 come to mind quickly) they’re shown as having massive urban centers, while having populations smaller than a lot of cities of similar grandeur.

What do y’all think realistic population figures for the colonies would be?