Saviors or Tyrants? Protheans COMPLETE Breakdown
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- Опубликовано: 17 окт 2024
- The Protheans are one of the most important species in the galaxy, and in the history of Reaper cycles. In many ways they are our greatest aids, and in other ways some feel they should be seen as evil tyrants. Through the stories told by Javik, and the evidence found in Prothean beacons, on Ferros and Ilos, the Citadel, and with the Collectors, we can do a complete breakdown of this Mass Effect species. Including their biology, history, technology, culture and more.
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Javik had no business being paid DLC for the amount of lore that comes out of him.
(before the Extended version came out)
EA for ya
@@thepaintingbanjo8894 he's such an asssssholleeeeee. Having him in my party for the lore and hating everything he ever said and did to me xD
@@ardenskylark6235 The man knows nothing but war. His ancestors for generations knew nothing but war. He had to kill his own indoctrinated crew with a knife. He woke up to 50.000 years into the future only to see his race is long gone with not a shred of hope to bring it back. Worse, Reapers are already winning.
Of course he's an asshole.
legendary edition solved the problem by just including it in the game immediately upon purchase of legendary edition 🤷♂
@@theshadows1416 yeah well done that came *AFTER*
I’ve always loved the concept of the “passing of the torch” each cycle had at their end in ME. Halo was similar with the librarian doing so for humanity but learning of the cycle before the Protheans and how they left behind stuff has always been fascinating. I remember watching Javik’s reveal over and over wayyy back when his dlc first released.
yeah it might be my favorite theme in sci-fi, I think it applies to real life as well and is a healthier way to view our place in existence
The Ashes of a trillion tldead souls... That's one of my favorite lines from this game.
My self esteem has never been hit as hard as the prothean in ME3 telling my character no one can know we slept together at their own god damn house party. I felt so dirty xD
That wouldn't change anything, Shepard has up and down track record
Commander Shepard Résumé :
-Commander of the Normandy (most advances spaceship)
-Skyllian Blitz
-Citadel Hero
-Collector vanquisher
-Batarian Genocide
-Rachni releaser
-Shadow Broker changer
-Rannoch Liberator
-Genophage currer
Many more
As if Prothean "Lover" would change something
@@mr.crazyshadow what are you even talking about? XD
@@NatHazel but that is literally the most irrelevant thing to what I expressed. It was about how *I* felt about what occurred.
@@ardenskylark6235 I apologize forgive me and my ignorance
@@ardenskylark6235lol - I think the point is that Shepard's achieved so much that your self esteem shouldn't be able to be affected by being able to brag about bagging a Prothean...
Also I think that the Prothean cycle was the unique one not ours, it was through their actions good and bad that gave ours a chance to beat the reapers in a way that no other cycle had been given before.
Protheans said they didnt create the Crucible plans, just improved the plans they had found from previous Cycles. They were not unique.
@@Tony-ih1pg As far as we know no other non reaper race has ever made relays besides the protheans and no one has ever messed with the keeper signal before. In addition, they managed to keep at least one member of their species alive for the next cycle.
@@gono4806true enough. That we know of. Galaxy's vast. Maybe next games will show more.
@@gono4806but dont forget the Leviathans, from the FIRST Cycle. Still there
@@Tony-ih1pg Ok? Did they break the cycle? No. The current one did due to the help of the old one. Imagine if the reapers invaded in ME1 there would be NOTHING that could be done to stop them. The only reason our cycle had a chance was thanks to the sacrifice of the Prothean cycle.
Thought: How do we know Javik is even a member of the original Prothean species, since all assimilated races refer to themselves as Prothean it’s possible his people weren’t the original. Considering that the only members of his species we see are soldiers and the majority of the VIs we encounter are garbled balls off light with the exception of the one who watched over Javik and his soldiers, it is conceivable that they were merely an early addition to the empire and made up the Warrior cast while the original race remains lost to time.
Hm, interesting thought but then he praised the empire too much to be just a member of an enslaved species. Aside of he has the ability who made the beacons feasible.
@@mistercomment1622 also you see his memories....
Considering that we identified the Collectors as former Protheans based on their DNA, my guess is that scientists have found dead Protheans with bodies preserved well enough for DNA extraction.
To take this idea further since the Prothean civilization is so likened to the Roman Empire, it would be like the later years of the Roman empire becoming progressively more Greek in culture and eventually even moving their capital from Rome to Constantinople.
Just look at the Collectors from Mass effect 2. They are the corrupted evolved form of the actual Protheans. They look similar to Javik
Yes, YES! After a long day at work I come home, sit down, open RUclips and BAM! you deliver another Mass Effect lore video. I initially subscribed for your Star Wars content, but this is absolutely superb! 🤩👌
you have inspired me to start the legendary collection once again, thank you for everything you do metanerdz
Lol I've done that to myself. Might stream it but it will be crazy long idk
@@MetaNerdzLore I hear that brother! I’m about 2/3 through 2, and my playthrough is sitting at 20 hours. Would totally watch if you streamed it though!
The Prothean War must have been insane given how long it lasted.
Minuscule compared to the any war in Halo or Warhammer 40k
@@combineeliteunit8769 Never played them. Fun games?
I always thought the leviathans where lovecraftian inspired Eldritch Beings because the similarities of living beneath a ocean planet and are able to cause madness through telepathy
Why would you take a step backwards to "thermal clips"
Your weapons have unlimited ammunition and can dump waste heat in 60 seconds.
Well, thermal clips allowed us to increase the power of our weapons 50% and made supply lines vital going into the largest most logistics bamboozling war our society will ever face. And they make your gun useless if you don't have one!
But I've run the numbers, your entry level weapons power went up, but over all your weapons offensive power decreased.
In ME the best pistol (spectre gear X) could be pushed over 300 damage
In ME2 the best pistol (Phalanx) is doing a max of 141 damage.
I don't think the damage numbers in game are lore significant as they mainly scale to the enemies HP, think Minecraft with 20 hp "max" vs Left For Dead with 100 hp "max"
Even with increased damage, the fact that ALL guns swapped, even the ones from abandoned-for-20 year mining outposts is ludicrous.
If you really wanted to, you can claim the gun manufactures pushed for thermal clips to be brought back so they can get a constant income lol
Whatever the story/case may be, I don't blame Bioware for the addition of clips just because it makes gameplay balanced, and especially rewarding for headshots, ME2 had some of the best gunplay in the series, I do, however, blame them for nerfing shockwave so hard in ME3.
Its credited to the geth. Thermal clips maximize rate of fire.
@cpob2013 But they dont work when supply lines are under threat. The rate of fire is not worth the trade off. And thats not a convincing argument when the Geth fought C-Sec. Literal cops.
What makes it make sense are personal shields. In ME1 you have to lean out of cover and hose firepower for ages to drag down shields, making you vulnerable to counter fire. In ME2 you can punch through a shield in one quick burst and then duck back into cover.
Three reasons I can think of.
1) Power. Putting aside the damage numbers for obvious game balancing issues, Lorewise it might be that with the constantly evolving shields, they needed to upgrade the guns. We even see a large scale of this in ME2 where collector laser first goes through Normandy's shields and armor like butter, then with upgrades it can barely make a dent in it.
To compensate for the sudden increase of draw however they came up with the idea of universal thermal clips. You can use them in literally any weapon from pistol to Assault Rifle. Likely the upgraded weapons heated far too fast for sustained fights so they had to make external clips that would absorb the heat instead of the whole gun.
2) Nobody believes in Reapers. 98% of the Galaxy doesnt think they are real so the thought of having supply lines being an issue doesnt cross their minds. Even if they were to keep old style guns with far less punch (as Zaeed himself puts it), The supply line issue wouldnt go away as medicine, food, equipment, tech, troops themselves are always part of those lines. One extra thermal clip added to it isnt that much of a problem. ESPECIALLY when even the Reaper grunts are using same technology.
3) Cost. This goes two ways.
a) The companies made it to profit off the long run as the galaxy will always rely on them to sell thermal clips.
b) The old style guns were simply more costly to build compared to modern ones, making the new guns cheap, mass produced economically viable option.
And all three of these reasons can be viable simultaneously.
I think a cool lore discussion would be what are the 'pawns' that the catalyst used to kill the Leviathans and where are they now. They are presumably even more powerful then reapers as they were used to kill the Leviathans who can mentally destroy even a Sovereign-class reaper in groups of 3. If this is the case why does the catalyst no longer use them? In addition, another cool theory is if the Leviathans even used Eezo tech or rather used alternate tech in addition to eezo based tech as we know the reapers made the relays and yet prior to this the Leviathans were able to control and travel the whole galaxy seemingly with no problem. Also, backing this up is the quote "Lasers are not blocked by the kinetic barriers of capital ships (bar the ones employed by the Reapers, whose barriers are capable of blocking them to an extent)" which shows that we might have not seen the peak of Eezo based tech as they are not designed to stop laser weapons as far as we know.
Honestly I’m starting to wonder if the precursors from halo could look remotely as intimidating as these guys
What, some goofy Roman spider people? Not that hard.
@@voomvoom4522 not quite what I was figuring but more of an imposing figure with say multiple limbs and multiple eyes but the only precursor that’s been definitively mentioned at all in the halo franchise is the primordial
@@ashhikari626and I’d say he fits the bill honestly
Actually the precursors are the flood.
The precursors in halo can phase change and part of that phase change is transforming into the flood.
Then after the eat everything they go back to standard form and restart the cycle anew.
That’s why the ancient human scientists killed themselves upon this realisation.
@@theconclave5430 them being the flood is due to them breaking down their bodies and whatnot but I was figuring they’d be intimidating looking BEFORE they went through with the powdering idea
Dude, I swear I love your channel so much! You cover my three most favorite sci-fi franchises. Halo, Mass Effect, Star Wars. And your content is always spot on with great lore-accurate detail. Like just mentioned I have always loved the Mass Effect Universe, I've played these games so many times over and over, even having every DLC back in the Xbox 360 days. The three main novels also go in-depth into a lot of subplots that aren't explained in the games either.
Another one I think has a ton of detail and lore for a franchise is Stargate. The original movie and series have been a huge part of my childhood and early years. If it's something you aren't too familiar with then I'd definitely recommend looking into it! I think you'd really enjoy it. Anyways man, thank you for another awesome video! Keep up the great work!
yeah Stargate and Gundam are on the list. And thanks glad you like it, those are my top three too
@MetaNerdzLore That's awesome dude, definitely look forward to those. And wow kick ass to see another that loves all three also. I use to have a whole room filled with nothing but Halo! Books, comics, build sets, replicas, vehicles, plushs, pillows and small blankets, funkos, and many different figures, mainly working on the series from the Spartan collection. Collection I've been working on for years so I pretty proud of it. Thanks for replying man, much appreciated!
Javik the personification of Vengeance did his job
"You will be the voice of our people"
I will be more than that
We love you and all your content you put out, keep up the great work and amazing content🙏🙏
Javik is like a world war II vet was brought back to life and discovers the cyber-social-warfare of Twitter and tiktok.
"I am surrounded by primitives"
Loved the biblical undertones of this series. Much love for it ❤
Loving all this Mass Effect content! Star Wars and Mass Effect are my two sci-fi loves that’ll be with me forever 🤘🏻
Awakened collectors are still mindless husks just under control of leviathans instead of the reapers now no?
I played through the legendary edition a few months back and it took me 120+ hours and it felt way too short. Definitely one of the best games of all time, a titan of sci fi narrative. Good writing is so important.
Did you do a completionist run?
@@DarkZ19 no I didn't.
This is a fantastic series of lore videos, thanks for this!
You haven't put out anything in a while!! Im here for this!!!!! Good job bro!
Edit: are u ok bro? You sound more reserved than older vidoes.
thanks, long issues with throat, doc says vocal cord damage, doing some other things but mostly just reading more calm like this has seemed to been helping a lot. I think people just aren't used to it, I worry it is more boring, but then hopefully it is more soothing. I always just have youtube in the background or to go to sleep so maybe it will be better for that once people get used to it
@MetaNerdzLore well idk what I can do from athens, GA. But sending well wishes. Who knows, but maybe... if you can keep your throat properly lubed(.....pause....lol), you may be able to leverage your new voice pitch into audio book narration!! Just don't over due it!!!
@MetaNerdzLore nah dude for lore and theory I think calm and collected is the way to go
New to the channel, the voice is perfect for these kind of videos imo@@MetaNerdzLore
Very likely between cycles I can see Sovereign using the The Collectors base as a location to hide in during his hibernation cycles.
but the harvested protheans became the collectors, so before the protheans, the collector base did not exist
Haha really felt that part at 12:00 where a companion pushes you out of cover and prevents you from returning to it.
I love Mass Effect and Dragon Age lore, i just found your channel and am now binging haha I hope you put our more content like this in the future! Subbed!
That's the plan thanks!
@@MetaNerdzLore I wonder was there ever a "win" against the Reapers like in our cycle had? What i mean is by destroying or bringing down one or making a reaper to flee etc
I really like the protheans in mass effect series they are really awesome and badass
For the purposes of depicted art, I kind of like the idea that it not looking like Javik isn't too damning, seeing as many other species "became" Prothean, as they evolved within the framework of that empire,
These were a very fun set of informative videos, and I very much enjoyed them! I'm feeling kind of compelled to maybe do another play through of Mass Effect.
Great video, Meta man! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I really appreciate the video. You did a good job on it. Can you do a video on Mass Effect ships.
I agree with this!
Mass Effect > Star Wars. Especially after disney, but also before disney
Javik and Seer from Apex have the same voice actor btw
I can count on ONE HAND games that have made me actually emotional and cry. THIS entire trilogy, and especially me3, did that to me lol. AMAZING and I’ve played legendary edition at least 7 times now
if you wanna cry, try Lisa: The Painful
the game that gives you clinical depression, 10/10
Life Is Strange wrecked me as a 30 year old man
Now the urge to play it again is back
I am waiting for more ME content, it is perfect!
8:10 I think he sees it too.
5:57 man woke up and chose bluntness
I like the fact that the Leviathan Managed to free some of them from the Control of the Reapers and they fought alongside the Council Races. Hopefully we get to see them in Mass effect 4 because they were all clones. Meaning that the Protheans can be brought back to some extend.
Please do more Mass Effect species analyses ☺️ Might I also suggest alien races from Halo and Oddworld?
Instead of Andromeda, Bioware should have made a game about the Fall of the Prothean Empire... That would have been awesome.
Say what you will - fact, that Protheans were fighting Reapers for so long as they did....multigenerational war....... and Prothean VIs, especially this in bunker (Vendetta) were awesome :D
Keep it up! Great job with this entertaining video!
Tbf javik himself points out that using shards like the one he has DOES impart memories, sensations, everything that wouldnt be recalled beyond ones vivid imagination is all stored passed onto the next prothean to store their memories onto. Going by this and what javik also speaks about the past hint while we could take what he says with a grain of salt we CAN'T ignore the way the protheans themselves were at least for what pieces are known. If anything the shard he has should be something not ignored especially when we speak of their abilities to comprehend even the most complicated things in a matter of seconds with a simple touch. I only bring it up as i was playing mass effect fairly recently enough to dig into the cycle you now speak of so its why i point out;while yes we can take his words as just that words spoken by the last member of an all but extinct species or acknowledge the protheans may actually have been assholes being why they couldn't do what is done in mass effect 3.
Amazing video, thank you.
More mass effect plz. Or recommendations for channels that cover it well
I sometimes imagine that the Protheans were a peaceful tolerant and goofy hippy space species and that Javik is just making up stories to make them seem more badass.
A S S U M I N G
D I R E C T
C O N T R O L
I've always wondered what javik would do after the war is over, there's a chance that there are more protheans in cryo or over prothean VIs
He has several possible endings. If you have him look in the memory shard, he returns to the grave of his crew and suicides. If you simply keep him away from it, he decides to go to the hanar homeworld and live as a king. If he reconciles with Liara the write a book together.
They were Rakata 2.0
I dont know about you but I always thought giving the Protheans a face and a character has heavily demystified and demaged their magic. I liked them better as these unknown precursors.
I think it's better, the creation of a prothean character makes it more realistic showing the flaws of the species and gets rid of the somewhat childish notion of an all loving perfect empire watching over the galaxy
To answer the titles question - tyrants. Plain and simple 😂
You realize that Javik is not a realiable narrator, right? Everything you know of the Protheans are filtered through a soldier with severe PTSD and never knowing any sort of peace.
I have watched many of your videos, and they are wonderful, yet you describe intelligent species as aware, they are actually sapient. The difference is for sentience self-awareness is not necessary. On the other hand, sapience frequently alludes to self-awareness or the capacity for reason. Usually, sapients is what sets intelligent beings apart from animals.
I agree, idk why so many franchises use just sentient in their lore so when I describe their lore I just go with it
Op actually self awareness is synonymous with sentience. It depends on what you mean though. A concept of "I" is not sufficient for sapience. Sapience is associated with contemplating your own mortality and metaphysical considerations like that
Sapience and sentience are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings in philosophy and cognitive science. Sapience recognizes oneself as an individual, while sentience involves subjective experiences and feelings.
Dang it, I shouldn't have responded. My girlfriend just ended things with me because I corrected you on the internet. We were together for 4 years, and now I guess I'm spending tonight alone. I just needed to vent.
The thing about it is why didn't some of them just go to an uninhabited planet and pretend to be a primitive species: over CENTURIES nobody ever went "huh, maybe we should just hide out and abandon our tech for a little while"
Wow, people would rather fund a war and sacrifice lives than give up basic luxuries? Who would’ve guessed
They are both😂
I’m guessing that the Prothean scientists were top level and experts in several fields. That leads me to thinking that they did not necessarily have to have starved to death. Yeah, there might have been no food on the citadel but they could very likely convert minerals into energy and into food, they could also have cut off pieces of the Citadel and made a ship from that, then maybe left for the Andromeda Galaxy where they started anew. That’s just a thought though. But seems to be that the story is just a little too convenient and rushed. Strange to me that they credit the protheans with the Crucible yet their smartest scientists somehow could not solve the issue of dying from starvation. I mean…. Cloning… just saying.
That’s like saying “if you get stuck in the desert, just a build a car to get out 4head”
Build a ship how? Clone meat how? The citadel gets stripped of most resources, which is why there is no protean statues or databases. By the time you can make a ship or a clone vat, you have already starved to death
Basically space romans huh..
if we're being honest:
both
Protheans were both
8:10 lmao.
Nice with a cuppa
Both
Is that fuckin Bayek?
I never understood the lore reason for thermal clips, its backwards in every way and also shows lack of thought
Mass effect 1 shouldve started off with thermal clips, during ME2 thermal clip heat cooldown hybrid system and ME3 thermal cool down as more Prothean tech is reversed engineered and new solutions found as supply lines are cut by Reaper's advance across every system
Thermal clips increase unneeded weight and bulk, requires supply lines to keep them in stock and if manufacturers are destroyed or supply lines cut your thermal clip weapon is nothing more than a useless paper weight.
Another thing that doesnt makes sense is why even need the keepers signal at all when the AI starchild that controls the Reapers IS the citadel itself, theres also the dark energy plot line that got dropped during ME2.
The lore/design decisions on it is just so dumb which isnt surprising given Bioware was degrading as a studio with the ending of ME3 being ass, the flop of Anthem and ME: Andromeda.
The biggest problem with mass effect that it assumes Human's will rule the Universe. That Human's will win against the Reaper's when the fact is Liara and the Asari are the only race that could win against the Reapers. Look at it when all the races see an Asari they think it looks like them. All the races want to mate with an Asari even the Leviathan's and even the Reapers. The only being capable of a real Synthesis is an Asari. Liara is the only one that can win Mass Effect with a fifth option.
I wouldn’t go as far to say Yehweh was an evil god. If you actually look at the motivations behind Yehweh and his adversary, Yehweh is good. He created humanity and wanted a relationship with them. He gave Adam and Eve the garden of Eden. He warned Adam and Eve before their decision to go against his design by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That tree is a symbol of a child undergoing an epiphany when they realize they did something wrong. Yehweh made an allusion to the Jewish Messiah before banishing them from Eden, and after he gave them a gift of fur clothing to cover them in the wilderness. Finally if you are a Christian he sent a sacrifice to atone for their mistakes and bring hope to humanity as a whole. Is it any wonder that both Jews and Christians refer to God as a father? He delivers punishment and discipline, but also desires mercy and a relationship with his creations instead of outright destroying everything and starting over.
Yeah I would say your comment about Yehweh being an evil god doesn’t stick well. And I know there are some misguided people who would come out and try to convince me otherwise but it just doesn’t work when you look at the over all message of the Bible.
the existence of hell shows very clearly that god is evil, which is funny because the jews dont have the hell concept which means one of those religions is wrong but at the same time pray to the same god
Not defending oc, but this idea is very popular because it's gnostic. Highly recommend the two part blog review of Aronofsky's Noah entitled "Sympathy for the Devil" by Brian Mattson.
@@cosmictreason2242 Gnosticism is not supported by any of the three Abrahamic religions. It is merely a heresy and is not supported by the Old Testament or New Testament.
@@matthewschneider8075 totally agree. I'm saying this is increasing in popularity in our postchristian world and knowing more about it can help you recognize it and show others why it's wrong and where their ideas are coming from, to wake them up
@@cosmictreason2242 excellent point!
Kaidan being racist AF. The Krogan were at the nuclear age when the Salarians found them. Yes they'd nearly wiped out their own species using said nuclear weapons, but the point stands
There is no "e" in BC.
this is so tiresome, I don't use it either, but yes there is an "e" in B.C. Just like there is a such thing as mass effect fields, and Protheans. In the lore of Mass Effect, it is BCE. I'm annoyed because I see thin on Halo stuff too, people that need to make everything about their thing, most people annoyed because they don't like it gets away from referring to Jesus
BCE means before common era and CE means common era
@@ksingh66and what's it based on? A 1:1 map onto the Gregorian Calendar which is based on Christian history. The only point in saying bce is to obscure that. It's not a legitimate alternative calendar because it uses the exact same days, weeks, months and years. Like copying someone's homework and putting your name at the top like that makes it yours.
Yo wtf it's a good thing the Protheans went completely extinct they were cannibals (not of their own kind but every other intelligent species), erased vast amounts of various different species' history and were enslavers-- they were literally the Reapers before the Reapers! I dont regret exploding so many Collector heads in ME3 Multiplayer back in the day F those guys
L opinion
cannibalism is consuming your own species. (your own kind) so in this case, they are not cannibals. they were merely doing what they chose
The accent for me made me think this was a modern day political jesture and nothing to do with the actual game.