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Subject: So is 343i making the flood like the reapers?

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by: ROBERTO jh
Posted by: Colonel Watts
Posted by: ROBERTO jh
Basically. The Protheans, initially believed to be the innocent and enlightened victims of fate, are revealed through the DLC to have forcefully subjugated the rest of galactic civilization.

Like the Forerunners.
Yes, but Forerunners did not assimilate other species into their society.

@Top, yes but it's the same concept: turning the enlightened Ancients into the highly advanced dicks.

I think there are different underlying messages to both of them though. They were both turned into dicks for different reasons, not just for the sake of doing that for a random plot twist. Unity and free will are big parts of Mass Effect. (At least in the Paragon version of events) To defeat the Reapers, everyone needed to come together, but interweaved in this was also the idea that they did so under their own free will.

The Protheans enforced unity in the galaxy and shut out anyone who did not co-operate, disrespecting their right to decide their own destiny. They failed in the end. Shephard gives everyone a choice to join him, and due to his inspiration he achieves unity. They have the same goal, but different means; the Prothean's one which is unethical and unsustainable whilst Shephard's one is not. It seems to be the idea that, ultimately, lasting peace cannot be forced down the sights of a gun barrel, nor can it be achieved by simply ignoring people who you do not like.

With the Forerunners, I saw it as more of a warning about the dangers of hubris, overconfidence and stagnation. They were arrogant, unchanging in their views and had very little tolerance, to say nothing about acceptance, of others. Eventually, these things resulted in their annihilation as they had no one to pick them up when they fell, and they underestimated their opponents. Perhaps this is also a message about how peace through subjugation is not true peace, but the difference I see between Halo and Mass Effect is that there is no indication in Halo that unity and free will are possible at the same time. Halo seems to say that unity under free will is impossible. Its solution to the issue of chaos is the Flood, which is the removal of free will and all sense of individuality to achieve "peace", and Glasslands highlights how we are all too different to get along at all. The Flood destroys the very concept of "race" in its quest for unity, thus making it seem clear that peace cannot exist whilst there are different races and cultures. This is about as far from Mass Effect as one can get.

Mass Effect seemed to change the Protheans to contrast subjugated peace with free peace. Halo changed the Forerunners to make a point about the dangers of hubris, and even if it is to also warn about subjugated peace, its proposed alternative is entirely different from Mass Effect's one.

  • 03.21.2012 5:53 PM PDT

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