Thoughts On: The Lore of Mass Effect

The beauty of storytelling is that there are so many ways to tell stories – books, obviously, but also orally, visually, and interactively. The Mass Effect series of games has been a favourite of mine, all four of which I’ve played over the last 12 months, and all have been immersive sci-fi adventures that have entertained me for a collective 200 hours and still left me wanting more!

Most recently, I completed the fourth game, Mass Effect: Andromeda, and as much as I enjoyed the gameplay (despite the bugs!), I loved the story and want to share some thoughts, so read on, but spoiler warning: key story points from all four games will be discussed! If you’ve played the games or haven’t and don’t mind spoilers, read on, or else skip to the final paragraph!

The Mass Effect universe is one that I have found, and continue to find, utterly fascinating. The pre-history is that many billion years ago, the first dominant race in the Milky Way was called Leviathans, who positioned themselves over perceived lesser races. Over time, they lost thrall species as those races developed and were subsequently destroyed by synthetic life. Naturally, the Leviathans made their own synthetic life.

Cue Palpatine Ironic gif (my blog software doesn't let me embed it 😅)

They tasked it with solving the problem of organic life being destroyed by synthetic life – and the AI’s solution was to ‘archive’ advanced organic life before it could develop advanced synthetic life, thus preserving organic life as a whole. Subsequently, the Leviathan's fate was sealed, and the cycle of galactic reaping was born.

Each time organic life reached the predetermined level, the Reapers would appear and remove advanced races from the galactic board, converting the biomass of countless individuals into a new Reaper, which served as an archive of that species' culture, achievements, genetics, etc. As any good AI does, they also sought to improve the efficiency of the cycle, thus building the mass relay networks and the citadel to speed up the development of advanced races, reducing the cycle duration to roughly every 50,000 years.

I love this as the backdrop to the Mass Effect universe – an armada of colossal biomechanical sentient vessels that sleep away the millennium in the dark space outside the galaxy, returning periodically in a continual cycle of reaping that maintains the ‘balance’ of life throughout the Milky Way, albeit in a forceful, mass-extinction kinda way. Thanos would be proud.

So, this is the universe into which the human race evolves, where, along with dozens of other advanced, sentient species, they inhabit a galaxy unaware of their impending doom. Thanks to the discovery of Prothean ruins (the Protheans being the dominant race of the previous cycle) on Mars (in 2148 CE), humanity learns about mass effect physics (fields of mass manipulation that can increase mass to do things like generate artificial gravity, or decrease mass, enabling time-relativity free FTL travel – also the phenomenon from which the series derives its name!). They discover the mass relay network (in 2149 CE), a mass effect utilising network of relays that facilitate interstellar travel. Thirty-five years later, Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3 occur (2183 CE – 2186 CE), wherein humanity and the other sentient races struggle to survive the start and commencement of the next reaping.

Part of that original trilogy is that the Citadel council and the advanced races don’t believe the warnings spread by those aware of the impending Reaper threat, which I love as a worldbuilding element – so little evidence and knowledge persists between cycles that the Reapers and their cycle are no more than a myth. Moving into the lore added by Mass Effect: Andromeda, an as yet unidentified benefactor became aware of and believed the warnings and thus sought to formulate and execute a backup plan – a way for the current advanced races to survive the coming reaping (races of previous cycles had attempted this in their own ways but ultimately failed). Coincidently, the benefactor learns of the Andromeda Initiative, a private venture to colonise the Andromeda galaxy – and subsequently throws their financial backing behind the project as a silent partner.

Based on observations from the Milky Way, the Initiative identifies 7 ‘golden worlds’ in the Heleus Cluster of Andromeda, worlds that are either resource-rich or most likely to support life and settlement. In 2185 CE, the first wave of the Initiative departs for Andromeda, comprised of the Nexus (a smaller Citadel equivalent) and four Arks: Hyperion (the Human Ark), Leusinia (the Asari Ark), Natanus (the Turian Ark), and Paarchero (the Salarian Ark). A Quarian Ark (Keelah Si’yah) would depart in 2186 CE, mere months before the Reaper invasion of the Milky Way (talk about close timing for all the Initiative vessels given their launch proximity to the reaping).

Roughly six hundred years later, the first wave of ships arrived in the Heleus Cluster, only to find it a far cry from their observations six centuries earlier. The entire sector is plagued by an energy phenomenon known as the Scourge, ravaging planets and vessels that encounter it, and the previously identified ‘golden worlds’ are no longer viable. The trip to Andromeda was always intended to be one-way, and the events of Mass Effect: Andromeda play out as the Initiative tries to make the best of a bad situation and settle in Heleus anyway.

Andromeda turns out to be quite a different beast to the Milky Way, however: there’s only a single living advanced race (that we know of) within the cluster, the Angara, who are being invaded by the Kett, an advanced race from elsewhere in Andromeda, who assimilate other races via a transmutation process known as exaltation. Functional technological ruins and robots, known as Remnant, are dotted throughout the cluster – another development that occurred during the Initiative's journey across the intergalactic void – and many of the planetary Remnant structures are discovered to be a terraforming network. The plot thickens when the creators of the Remnant, a race called the Jardaan (who are suspiciously absent in the game events), turn out also to be the creators of the Angara. Whilst their motives aren’t discovered during the game’s runtime, it is believed that they were seeding the cluster with life, making worlds habitable with the terraforming vaults, and then spreading plant and animal life, as well as the Angara.

I found all this world-building utterly fascinating, not only in that it differed so much from the lore of Mass Effect’s Milky Way but also in dealing with some exciting sci-fi concepts. A multi-world terraforming network? Yes, please! An engineered race? More! A conquering race that reproduces via transmutation of other species? Terrifying and amazing!

So many threads were also left unresolved, including the fate of the Keelah Si’yah, the Quarian Ark, which was intended to be part of a DLC that was eventually scrapped. However, the story was repurposed into an official tie-in novel, Mass Effect Andromeda: Annihilation, which has gone onto my TBR pile! Other unresolved threads included the origin of the Scourge (and can the Initiative neutralise it?), the origin of the Kett, where the Jardaan went, and given the scale of their Remnant tech and biological engineering, what else were, or are, the Jardaan capable of? I certainly loved the story of Mass Effect: Andromeda, and I hope that the fifth game (currently in development) picks up where the Andromeda storyline left off, as there is so much more to explore and learn! It’s fascinating to think that Andromeda takes place 600 years after the conclusion of the trilogy and the implications thereof as to the state of the Milky Way in a post-Reaper galactic civilisation – I mean, do they even know of the Andromeda Initiative at large? I’d love to see an intergalactic mass relay constructed that allows a fifth or sixth mass effect game to explore both galaxies and the evolving relationship between them as they deal with the fallout of the Reapers and the ongoing struggle against the Kett and any other new challenges Andromeda conjures up!

In conclusion, I have enjoyed all four Mass Effect games immensely, and whilst Mass Effect Andromeda is quite different to the trilogy that proceeded it, it builds on all the rich lore that was established in those earlier games and contributes a fair share of its own rich world-building to the universe. If you’ve never played the games, I highly recommend all of them for hours of interactive storytelling, sci-fi awesomeness, and fascinating world-building that’ll keep you entertained and coming back for more! If you have played the games, I hope you appreciate them as much as I do, but let me know in the comments below what you think about Mass Effect’s lore.

P.S. Whilst writing down my thoughts, I came across EA Games #MyShepard art creator, a promotional website feature where you can create custom Mass Effect artwork with your favourite characters, paragon background tone, etc. – and it is where I created the art used in the blog art. Go and check it out for yourself @ https://www.ea.com/games/mass-effect/mass-effect-legendary-edition/my-shepard-art-creator!

Background image by Fred Moon on Unsplash