campbell

Judging from the title, this posting will contain numerous spoilers for Mass Effect.  It will also contain spoilers for the second novelisation of the universe, Mass Effect: Ascension.  If you consider Mass Effect 2 details revealed at E3 to be spoilers, they are present here as well.  Be ye fairly warned.

Lately, I've been wondering how the story of Mass Effect will expand into its scheduled second and third iterations.  Below is my (likely feeble) forecast of how the story arc will play out, looking at what's been revealed thus far, BioWare's past storytelling tendencies, and literary archetype.

What we know:

- The Reapers are a highly advanced & sentient AI machine race bent on harvesting/eliminating all galactic (Milky Way) civilisation, roughly every 50,000 years.  They function as extremely large and nimble warships.

- Commander Shepard eliminated Sovereign, the vanguard of the Reaper fleet, in the events of Mass Effect, thus delaying an impending Reaper invasion.

- The Collectors are a mysterious race who live beyond the Omega-4 relay.  While many doubt their existence, periodic sightings on Omega repute them to offer highly advanced technology in exchange for sets of genetically unique individuals, e.g. two dozen left-handed salarians.  Attempts to contact/investigate the Collectors have been stymied, as no ship that has ventured beyond the Omega-4 relay has ever returned.

- Cerberus, led by the Illusive Man, is a black ops military research organisation borne out of those in the Alliance (read: human) Navy who believe that humans must foremost serve the interests of humanity at the exclusion of alien species/races and are willing to take any means necessary in accomplishing this end.

- Shepard will be working with Cerberus in the events of Mass Effect 2.

- Human colonies are "disappearing" in Mass Effect 2.

- Shepard will be gathering a cadre of 'specialists,' many of whom purportedly operate with little regard for the law, to aid him in his "suicide mission" for Mass Effect 2.

- The Normandy will be attacked by an unknown warship in Mass Effect 2.

What I believe will occur:

- The Normandy attack will open the game.  Shepard's love interest (or in the absence of one, another squad member from ME1) will die in the attack.  This will serve as motivation for Shepard to seek revenge on the party or entity responsible for the attack.

- Cerberus will rescue Shepard from either the remains of the Normandy or an escape pod.  The Illusive Man will inform him that the technology behind the ship that assaulted the Normandy is beyond that of any known species, and can only be the work of the Collectors.  Furthermore, he will indicate that it is the Collectors who are also behind the disappearing human colonies.

- Cerberus will fashion Shepard with a new ship and hand him a list of prospective crew members to recruit for his mission to quell the Collectors.

- After all recruitment/side quests/etc., Shepard will enter the 'end game' sequence by going through the Omega-4 relay.  There he will encounter the Collectors;  after fighting his way through hordes of them, he will meet the 'final boss,' a leader of the Collectors.

- This individual will not recognise Shepard, and will indicate s/he has no idea why Shepard's ship was attacked;  furthermore, s/he will also know nothing of the disappearing human colonies.  The only recent event that s/he is even tangentially aware of concerning the latter is the recent attempted Reaper invasion that s/he orchaestrated .... what?!??

- S/he will reveal that the Collectors date to before antiquity and created the Reapers as a means of ensuring one of two things [I haven't decided which is more plausible]:  the first possibility is that the Reapers were created to ensure that no other race could ever technologically surpass the Collectors, thus assuring their hegemony over the galaxy.  The second is that the Reapers were created to ensure that no other race could ever sufficiently advance to raise the attentions of an even larger galactic threat of which we are currently unaware.  The former seems more probable, but I think the latter is sort of cool.  For our purposes, let's temporarily assume the former to be true.  The reason that the Collectors "collect" is so that they can determine through scientific and genetic study of the current spacefaring species when the ideal time to signal the next Reaper invasion will be.

- Shepard will encounter the Collector leader in a computing control room of sorts, which will house the technology (likely an interface powered by a drive or disk) used to activate and control the Reapers.  A failsafe mechanism to destroy the Reapers was also devised in the event that the Reapers, as AIs, ever went rogue or turned on the Collectors.  A backup interface was also installed inside an otherwise inconspicious Reaper "flagship" should the Collectors either need to control the Reapers from other points in the galaxy, or in the event the Collector base facility were destroyed.  After the preceding plot exposition, Shepard will fight the 'final boss' over control of the interface.  Emerging victorious, Shepard will prove unable to subsequently utilise the interface for one of three potential reasons:  either (i) the interface requires a specific input, such as a password or retinal scan, (ii) the interface will be irreparably damaged during the struggle or permanently shut down by the leader in his/her death throes, or (iii) the facility will be about blow and Shepard + crew must vacate the premises immediately. 

- Regardless of any of the three, Shepard will pop out the powering disk and/or drive and take it back to his handlers at Cerberus, in the hopes that they can help him infiltrate this unknown Reaper 'flagship' for purposes of manual shutdown of the fleet.

- Upon returning to Cerberus HQ, Shepard will encounter the Illusive Man once more.  He will obtain the disk/drive from Shepard and thank the Commander for his service to Cerberus.  Now, the Illusive Man explains, Cerberus will be able to control the Reapers, and the entire galaxy will be at his mercy.  He reveals that the initial assault on the Normandy, as well as the disappearance of human colonies, were all part of an elaborate plot to motivate Shepard to infiltrate Collector territory and obtain this disk/drive.  The few must perish to empower the many, or so he believes.  He will then slap Shepard, batter & humiliate him, and leave him on an unchartered world with three (or any random #) days' ration.

- The task of Mass Effect 3, then, will be for Shepard to reassemble his crew, track down Cerberus and the Collector disk/drive, defeat the Illusive Man, and finally infiltrate the Reaper flagship and install the manual shutdown sequence, thus saving the galaxy from any further Reaper threat.

So is all this plausible?  I suppose.  Will it happen?  Wouldn't bet on it.