Why the Mass Effect Reapers Should Have Won

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted here, so hello and welcome back to anyone who might have read my early stuff. Today is a brand new day, and it’s time I reinvigorated my website. You’re more than welcome to watch the video version of this article here. I’ve taken the transcript from there and done a bit of reworking. Today, I have a very interesting question. Why would the Reapers from Mass Effect probably have won the battle for the Galaxy?

Now, to get to the heart of why I think they would have probably won, we need to get some background for those unfamiliar or who need a reminder.

In the middle of the 22nd century, humanity has been digging on Mars and finds an alien data cache. It’s official. We’re not alone in the universe. And it looks like these aliens had been watching us for a long time. More specifically, a very long time ago. This is craziness. What?

Quickly we learn about the new physics (old physics really but new to humanity) and we find out that there’s this object that’s been orbiting around the distance of Pluto for a very long time, and it’s not just a block of ice. It is in fact a Mass Relay. Now, what is a Mass Relay? Well, it turns out that based on the new physics that was discovered on the surface of Mars, there are things called Mass Effect fields.

These Mass Effect fields allow you to sort of Higgs Boson-ish affect the mass of an object. You can increase the mask or decrease the mass. Now, quickly, it turns out that you can basically have force powers if you were hit with what’s termed “element zero” while you were in the womb.

The hard science isn’t super hard in Mass Effect, but hey, force powers! And then it turns out that not only can people affect the mass of an object. They discover through the data cache that the Protheans, this ancient civilization that was watching us 50,000 years ago, vanished without a trace. There’s absolutely no explanation for this in any of the dig sites or data caches they find.

Turns out, those aliens were quite industrious because they created Mass Relays. And with a Relay, you can affect the mass of a ship. Through a process that’s pseudoscience basically, you’re able to fling an object way faster than the speed of light. And it turns out the one that we found near was not the only one. In fact, there aren’t just a handful of these throughout our little section of space. There are hundreds of these things, if not thousands, all over the galaxy.

Quickly, humanity finds out we’re not alone in the universe and we’re now coming in contact with other life. So, things are looking quite exciting!

Spoilers for the Mass Effect Trilogy from here on out. This is your only warning.

20-some years later, we learn a devastating fact. Something that will change the course of galactic civilization. You, playing as Commander Sheppard, learn that it wasn’t the Protheans that built the Relays.

It was the Reapers. A super-intelligent race of machine spaceships. Not only do they plan to wipe us all out, but they’ve done it before. They have engaged in a cycle of destruction, wiping out all space-faring species, hundreds if not thousands of times before now. It’s simply what they do. So it wasn’t just that they wiped out the Protheans 50,000 years ago. They wiped out the progenitors that the Protheans thought had built the mass relays and the progenitors that came before them and before them and before them.

This is where my theory crafting comes in. Why do I think the Mass Effect Reapers should have won the fight? Even though it was very close, we still win because, frankly, the Mass Effect 3 Reapers are pretty stupid.

It’s not controversial for me to say that Mass Effect 3 is overall the worst of the trilogy. And that’s not just about the ending. The whole thing is way worse because the people who worked on, developed, and wrote the first two games were gone by the time the third game came around. So, there’s no real wonder why it’s far weaker than 1 and 2.

You’re probably familiar with routers. How about a smartphone? The internet? You’re using it right now to read this article, after all. What does this have to do with the Reapers winning? Well, these are modern technologies, and we’ve only been building and using this stuff for a few decades, not even a century at the time of writing this.

I think it’s safe to assume that an ancient race of super-intelligent computers could come up with basic cybersecurity practices that humans already have.

Let’s take this very website as an example.

There are a few different ways I can distribute this article to you. The first, and the one that’s happening right now, is that you can come to the website and find this without needing an account. Anyone with a working internet connection can connect to the server running this site and show you what you’re looking for.

I could have, however, made it an account-based website, where you’d have to make an account and log into it if you wanted to view the material on here. If I ever get around to having a forum section, you’d need to do that to interact, to leave comments, etc. That’s how most social media works these days, you need an account to interact, and often to even view what’s been posted.

Above the user accounts are the admin accounts. They have total control over who can make posts, decide who gets banned, and even if they want the website to be accessed without an account. See where I’m going with this?

The Mass Effect Relays are massive constructs developed by a hyper-advanced, hyper-intelligent machine race. Not only that, but the Relays themselves are clearly sophisticated machines themselves. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to read the mass of a ship or multiple ships in range, determine what level of mass effect field it needs to apply onto that ship (meaning it can detect and calculate the size, shape, and weight).

Using all that information, a Relay can safely fling the ship across the galaxy, way faster than anything else in the universe, as far as we know. And then the next relay in the network has to receive all of this information to safely catch it without, you know, having it just fly off into the ether or smash into something nearby and explode.

Clearly, a router and a smartphone and a little website with a blog are small fry compared to the software that’s running inside a Mass Relay. Why Sovereign in the first game simply send a signal to the closest relay and then wirelessly, without the need for the keepers and the citadel or any of that, simply be able to trigger the network to enter lockdown mode?

Stop non-user accounts from sending a signal anywhere in the network from an admin account. Hell, they’d probably have a single command for that in the operating system. And then the reapers show.

Let’s say Mass Effect 1 happened the way it did because the keepers were involved in the process of sending these signals, and the call to arms/lockdown feature really was built into the Citadel only. Okay, fine. But by the time Mass Effect 3 rolls around, Harbinger, who was made the leader of the Reapers in Mass Effect 3 for some reason, would have admin access. So as soon as it reaches relay range, that lockdown should go into effect.

The signal happens. No-more users without privileged access can use the relay network. What does that do? Well, the games state that part of the reason the Reapers laid these relays all over the galaxy was to guide civilizations’ development. To ensure their next cycle would provide a good harvest, they manipulate the next spacefaring species to use the Reaper’s own technology. To make them rely on it.

See why I don’t like closed-source software?

Everybody dies in this scenario. There is no beating the Reapers if they had done this in ME3 rather than whatever the hell their strategy in that game was supposed to be.

The only people with user accounts are the Reaper ships themselves. All they’d need to do is flood into a single star system and do their Reaper thing. They do all the harvesting, all the brainwashing. They do all the horrendous things that they do. But there are no ships coming from somewhere else to help, because nobody can use the Mass Relays anymore.

There’s not even a distress call going out saying, “Please help us!” Because all non-user accounts have been banned. Meaning even the distress calls are not getting out. So, it could take years, or even decades before their cries for aid reach their closest galactic neighbors, thanks to the speed of light, well after it’s too late to do anything.

By the time the light reaches the next major settlement, it’s too late. The slaughter is already over, and the Reapers are onto their next star system. You may not know the invasion is even happening until the Reapers come through the nearest relay and start harvesting.

It’s game over.

In this version of events, we have a situation where the Citadel in Mass Effect 3 is not overburdened with thousands upon thousands of refugees. It is dead. The only people there are the ones who were there before the Reapers said, “no more relays for you.”

Now, perhaps this isn’t an unwinnable scenario. In-fact, we could still have a game and potentially even come out on top with enough war assets. It’s mentioned in ME2 that Edi has a cyber attack sweet. She’s a state-of-the-art warship, with Reaper tech running in there too.

Why not make use of that more? I don’t understand how they could introduce that and then hardly use it later on. In my version of ME3, the Reapers invade Earth out of nowhere. Perfect. They came to the solar system unannounced.

But there’s a problem. How the hell do they get out of the system and get help? The relays aren’t working! Well, now we have a totally different opening level. Rather than going to Mars and finding out that the Illusive Man has, you know, betrayed humanity and all that stuff, we have to sneak onto a Reaper without being detected and steal its login credentials.

In ME2, we learned Reapers use IFFs, friend or foe tags. And we’ve also seen through Mass Effect 2 that they can in fact alter their relays to act on the IFFs. The whole point of Mass Effect 2 was that we have to get through the Omega 4 relay. No one who’s ever gone to do that has come back alive because that relay is set to only safely allow reapers or their servants to pass through.

This is great stuff! Hell, we already have an IFF, so why do we need to steal one? Well, there’s a bit of a problem with the ME2 tag. Two, actually. The first is that the one we take off the derelict Reaper near the end of ME2 shouldn’t work. That ship has been dead for a very long time; no doubt the Reapers have noticed, right? Well, the admin should have removed that account centuries ago.

Even if they didn’t before, that IFF was used to destroy the collector base. A simple check of the logs inside the Omega-4 relay would show that. So even if it worked in ME2, for some reason, it doesn’t work anymore and they need a new one.

So we have some mission and successfully steal a working, valid IFF, without the reapers finding out. Somehow. No idea how. I don’t really think it would be possible, which means we have no game. So somehow, someway, we manage.

The Normandy is now the only ship in the galaxy that can still use the Relays.

This makes for a very different experience. You, with your stealth ship, are the only ones who can lend aid, or carry information. Even if you steal more IFFs, it’s a small group who can slip through the cracks.

There could be a timer in the background. The more hops you make, the more missions you complete, the closer you get to losing a star system. It’s a balancing act. You need more war assets, but you also have to work quickly. It could make for a very tense game, where you literally can’t complete all the objectives in any one playthrough, unless you know exactly what you’re doing, because of the clock.

Would this have made for an overall better game? I don’t know. I’m not a game dev. All I know is I’d have preferred a more cybersecurity-aware scenario. I believe the Reapers would have far better cybersecurity practices than we do today.

Since you made it all the way to the end of the article, I thank you for reading. If you like my take, and want to see more of my creative writing, you can read the first 5 chapters of my debut dark fantasy novel The First Ogre King Book I when you sign up for my mailing-list here.