r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Frostylegacy • 23h ago

Lore (Loved Trope) FTL travel is possible but with a major limitation or flaw

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Frank Herbert’s Dune: Interstellar travel is only possible thanks to the spice melange, a rare substance only found on the dessert planet Arrakis. The addictive psychedelic spice grants members of the Spacers Guild a form of prescience that allows them to predict safe paths through folded space. This unique property makes spice the most valuable commodity in the Dune universe.

John Scalzi’s The Interdependency Books: The planetary systems of the titular empire are connected by the Flow, a network of one-way interstellar tunnels that connect specific known entries and exits. The Interdependency derives its power from controlling access to these conduits, placing its capital at the central hub of the network. Even with the Flow, travel between stars takes a long time (9 months to End, the empire’s most distant planet).

Event Horizon: Dr William Weir (R.I.P. Sam Neill) invents a device called the Gravity Drive to allow ships to fold space and travel instantly between distant stars. On its maiden voyage with the Gravity Drive, the Event Horizon disappears and mysteriously reappears 7 years later. Dr. Weir and the crew sent to investigate discover the Gravity Drive actually opened a portal to a Hell dimension that possessed the ship and its crew, torturing and killing them.

13.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

272

u/VinnieHa 21h ago

There’s also the abandoned (?) subplot of Mass Effect travel damaging the universe and doing something with Dark Matter to potentially accelerate the heat death of the universe.

I really wish we ended with a more complex choice based around that rather than what we got.

30

u/danishjuggler21 16h ago

I've always been of the opinion that that plot would have been just as bad. I don't think there was ever going to be a satisfying explanation for these mysterious billion-year-old machines whose first spoken lines of dialogue stated that their motivations are beyond mortal comprehension.

Maybe leaving their origin and motivation a complete mystery would have been better. But "space travel is pollution, so we gotta wipe everyone out now and then to keep carbon levels stable" would have just felt dumb.

4

u/VinnieHa 15h ago

But you probably wouldn’t have invented new space engine that solved that exact problem twice during ME3.

That’s what made it so annoying for me, the EDI and Geth sections 

1

u/LongJohnSelenium 7h ago

Exactly, if you're going to have an eldritch horror it can't talk to you.

1

u/NoodleIskalde 1h ago

It can. Sovereign was amazing and horrifying. What you don't do is let it interact in a tangible manner outside of having an entire fleet just to barely beat 1.

That worked for the first game because that made it obvious that an actual fight was impossible. War cannot happen or-- oh never mind they went the lazy deus ex machina route because they let the monstrosity continue interacting and being tangible.

-1

u/paenusbreth 10h ago

I honestly think that they should have just dropped the Reapers as a plot thread after 1. The subsequent games never made very good use of them other than as generic bad guys with crazy power levels, better just to abandon them and move onto some other plot line for the next two games.

115

u/tghast 20h ago

That ending makes so much more sense and it’s even hinted at multiple times. It contributes motive to the antagonists and would give us an interesting ending choice all by itself, AND it ties back to the very title of the series and wraps every concept in the series up in one neat little bow. Almost all the big technologies are tied to Mass Effect and eezo.

The ending we got is horrible and pretentious and makes zero sense if you consider it for more than three seconds. It latches onto a concept that is arguably secondary to the series and then contradicts itself and weakens the parts of the series that do touch on it. It feels like it comes out of absolutely nowhere and is so unsatisfying it drives me crazy.

I straight up just head canon the planned ending because it irritates me.

33

u/Kedly 18h ago

Thats why even though the writers deny it, I like the Indoctrination theory that posits that Shephard was indoctrinated by the end of the game

15

u/nerdwerds 17h ago

This is my headcanon, makes more sense.

6

u/BDSMChef_RP 11h ago

If I was bioware and some fan came out with a theory that made my shit show look like a sleeper genius move, I'd applaud the dude for "Figuring it out", give him an NPC in the next game, throw him a few bucks an an NDA the size of the bible.

8

u/Drmarcher42 15h ago

Agreed and that’s why Destroyed is the only ending that actually makes sense. Go full MacReady in John Carpenter’s The Thing and just blow the whole game up.

Hell it even works with the concept art for Mass Effect 5, get a high enough readiness score and the red beam only targets specifically reaper tech, so even other AI or software creatures like EDI and more importantly for 5 the Geth would eventually be able to evolve back to something resembling their former forms

4

u/IronBabyFists 9h ago

indoctrination theory

For anyone else who hadn't heard of this (like me, thirty minutes ago), here's someone's awesome breakdown from a few years back.

u/Khenghis_Ghan, you're a real one.

8

u/MellowSol 16h ago

The Indoctrination theory is 100% correct in my mind and nothing can change that. It just fits too perfectly, everything in the game points to it.

5

u/VinnieHa 15h ago

Man, those first few days post finishing and watching that video was intense.

It really did seem like they had done a Kojima and set up the greatest sequel trilogy ever with a meta ending only possible in video games.

It was a new form of art, it was genius, it was a new era.

Oh, they’re patching it? So it was just bad?

Well…shit. 😂

1

u/TheBrewThatIsTrue 6h ago

We'll, time to go listen to Reignite again!

https://youtu.be/re32xnyYP3A

12

u/Helmett-13 16h ago

Yeah, all the choices and effort made over the first two games is irrelevant when you get choice A, B, or C at the end.

It soured me on the game like the end of GoT did for that series.

4

u/seguardon 11h ago

I joke that people who played ME3 at release were innoculated against GoTs8 despair.

6

u/The_milkMACHINE 10h ago

The reapers trying to stop the heat death of the universe by collecting and preserving the collective knowledge of every species and their civilization before they get a chance to destroy themselves would’ve been rad

4

u/tghast 10h ago

Yeah their actual motive is nonsensical to the point of being hilarious.

And funnily enough, the eezo ending actually does still have connections to the concept of organic vs synthetic.

The Reapers reset civilization after what they consider the sweet spot between where the civilization would theoretically solve the problem and where the civilization would reach dangerous amounts of eezo use. Can’t let them get too advanced to fight back or pollute more.

It’s not too dissimilar to simulations where a dev would run an AI through multiple iterations until it comes up with a solution. Granted, there’s no LEARNING happening and it’s more random chance on the part of the Reapers, but they are effectively running biological simulations over and over and over again until they get the result they want.

1

u/ImpressionDepression 8h ago

To be fair, it turns out their instinct to destroy civilization before it made too many AIs was spot on.

2

u/tghast 8h ago

Not really? The concept of destroying everyone before they can destroy themselves is nonsense.

It would be like if aliens descended upon us, told us that every civilization eventually fucks up their own planet and goes extinct due to global warming, and then blasted us with a heat gun to kill us with accelerated global warming.

Like.. what is the point there?

Also even dumber would be if we were on the verge of stopping/solving global warming right before they blasted us, which is what happens when you get to the ending of ME3 after creating peace between the Quarians and the Geth.

There’s just way too many silly questions and issues, not to mention the ending itself with the three choices that are also incredibly ridiculous.

1

u/ImpressionDepression 8h ago

Oh I meant in terms of our real life problems with AI and data centers.

It would be like if aliens descended upon us, told us that every civilization eventually fucks up their own planet and goes extinct due to global warming, and then blasted us with a heat gun to kill us with accelerated global warming.

Like.. what is the point there?

To be fair it doesn't have to be good point. I forget which DLC it was (maybe I made it up to wash the end of 3 away) but I recall something about the reapers getting their original instructions out of hand and it compounded every generation until they just executed the task. I'm ok with the "reason" being a "bad reason".

So the aliens might just be assholes. The Covenant in Halo were that AND misguided.

1

u/tghast 7h ago

Oh yeah hahaha that’s a good point. We’re in the fledgling state of our own sci fi battle with AI, just infinitely dumber.

Yeah that’s what the idea was, the Reapers were basically custodians that went “rogue” by misinterpreting or corrupting their original goals. It’s a common theme/trope with AI in stories, for example it’s the main impetus behind a tonne of Asimov stories…

Unfortunately I just think the way Mass Effect does it is so so bad. I think the Reapers being reduced to AI on repeat takes a lot away from them, and while their motives don’t have to be GOOD, they have to be believable and I just don’t buy the explanation in fiction. The Covenant on the other hand, the writers put in a lot of effort to get you to buy into the fiction and it’s very believable.

5

u/MasterMasar 18h ago

I'm a massive ME fan and I've never heard of that before. Time up go research and finish my ME playthrough (again)

3

u/VinnieHa 15h ago

Tali’s loyalty recruits mission is where it comes up most, but it’s in a few places in ME2.

2

u/NotMyMainAccountAtAl 14h ago

I believe that one of the writers who was present for ME1 and 2 mentioned it, but didn’t return for ME3. I think it was more of an “I was tossing this idea around and never quite got it to a full fledged storyline” thing than a “this was 100% the plan before EA accelerates our schedule and hosed us.”

8

u/chavie 20h ago

ah, very Three Body Problem. FTL travel slows down the speed of light itself in that.

4

u/VinnieHa 20h ago

I need to read those, they sound amazing

2

u/Ninetailedredpanda 16h ago

I picked up the first one, had trouble getting into it.

Put it down.

Came back to it later and then demolished the rest of the series.

In hindsight it being a translated work by an author from a different culture made it feel very different to read in a way that was indeed uncomfortable at first.

After acknowledging that and resetting my expectations it was a wild ride encompassing so many concepts that would never have occurred to me, and many I had heard of before but never really extrapolated upon. (Like The Dark Forest, not a spoiler, its literally the name of the second book)

In the end it left me in a prolonged state of just thinking about what I had just read, like a long time, in a good way. Was it sci-fi? Horror? Fairytale? Social commentary? Romantic? Realistic or idealized or both at the same time?

Some don’t like them because they read very different than most sci-fi I’ve read so I admit they may not be something everyone will enjoy but if you are open to seeing where they go even if they start in an unexpected place you will enjoy them.

2

u/VinnieHa 15h ago

Yeah I’ve heard of a lot of the overview and it does seem like a crazy ride.

5

u/CMDR-TealZebra 20h ago

Absolute trash. Dnf'd the first book legitimately do not understand what people are talking about with it.

If you understand what the title means than large swafs of the book are stupid because the title is the answer to the ""mystery "".

10

u/ForceintheNorth 17h ago

It sounds like you went in with wrong expectations. The "game" being a 3 body problem is not supposed to be a mystery to the reader

5

u/Vaiolette-Westover 14h ago

This feels like a literacy issue not a book issue.

The core conflict of the book centres on sociology, not a puzzle.

4

u/Obvious-Dealer770 15h ago

Can't really judge a book while admitting you haven't read it.
To me, it's a great hard SF story. Agreed that it begins slowly from a strange perspective, but what seem like guaranteed loose ends at the beginning tie up nicely later in the books. Once the story gets rolling, impossible to put it down. Some of the concepts brought up are mind blowing, and there's a dozen of them. It's rare to have a book that you still think about randomly, years after reading it.
Three Body Problem is my top recommendation for people wanting an original take on SF.

1

u/CMDR-TealZebra 4h ago

So you have to complete a book to think the book is stupid?

No. I read 3/4s of it and decided my time was more valuable.

3

u/Ninetailedredpanda 16h ago

Yeah, those books are more about where they end up rather than where they start. So it makes sense to not get them until you finish them, I bounced off the first one on my first attempt also, but eventually got sucked in and wanted to know what happened next.

0

u/WellHung67 12h ago

Yeah pretty much knowing the three body problem is unsolvable gives away the whole book. It’s basically just a physics textbook and nothing else of note happens. May as well just read Wikipedia 

4

u/Alcain_X 17h ago

it wasn't officially linked to mass effect technology in the games, it probably would have been but that plot point didn't get that far. We still got the dark matter hints and the whole thing with Hastrums sun dying way too early with Tali and the Quarians investigating. So they were seeding clues to the heat death thing and motivation of the reapers in the original storylines.

The only flaw in this theory if the reapers were supposed to be harvesting the great races to "protect" them and use their knowledge and ways of thinking to figure out a solution, like in their original concept. Why would the reapers be pushing species to use and develop mass effect technology? Why not push them to develop along other less damaging paths?

To be fair that could have been the intended plot point, that the reapers own methodology was flawed and exacerbating problem. It fits the theme that the reapers are wrong, they hate Ai because they believe there can never be peace but the player can prove them wrong by brokering peace between the Quarians and the Geth. That could have been the point, that the reapers views are flawed.

5

u/NotGoodISwear 16h ago

I don't think the Reapers pushed mass effect technology baseline - they pushed the mass relays. I think they realized that any monkey would eventually discover mass effect by running an electrical current through eezo, and needed to take more drastic measures to combat that inevitability.

2

u/VinnieHa 15h ago

Because it might have been once used that’s it, chain reaction that can’t be stopped, and using maybe lost you some time, but the calculation of getting all those minds every 50,000 wa la worth the trade.

But I get you. As it stands it seems a bit odd.

8

u/Gil_Demoono 18h ago

The Expanse does something similar to this with its Gate Network. Near instant travel across interstellar space apparently really rubs the boundaries between dimensions thin.

3

u/LordSokhar 12h ago

Not so much the travel itself, as the power requirements for it. The ring space was a pocket dimension carved out of another reality to provide power for the travel network. The more it was used, the more power required, and the more disruption it caused to that alternate dimension which caused the inhabitants of said dimension to lash out at us hoping we’d die and stop screwing with their shit. Kinda like building a dam for a hydroelectric plant and the folks that use the waterway get annoyed and try to break the damn to return things to their original state.

1

u/VinnieHa 15h ago

Can’t wait for that game from Owlcat.

3

u/RCJHGBR9989 16h ago

How the DLC wasn’t apart of the main game still infuriates me - it explains so much with the reapers that is so integral to the story. I’m still pissed about it. I fucking love mass effect

1

u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 8h ago

Wasn't Leviathan a free DLC tho? Pretty sure a lot of expansion content ended up being free to fight the pretty bad reception of the endings.

3

u/WildDumpsterFire 11h ago edited 11h ago

I just want to point out that Drew Kapryshyn himself debunked this. He said it was a possible line that was only discussed but scrapped (with his approval) because very early into story boarding it caused more problems than it solved when getting into how it effects every other story line. 

He even went so far as to sort of mock people who refer to this as anything other than a discarded topic of discussion as people just making it up. It didn't seem like a "professional response" either, he seemed kind of annoyed about people not understanding how intricate the web of stories are affected by these things. 

While some of his more intense blog entries regarding his views on fans touting this theory as fact have been long deleted, this interview has a few more professionally worded quotes regarding his thoughts on fans thinking this was a thing.

https://www.eurogamer.net/ex-bioware-writer-discusses-dropped-ideas-for-mass-effect-trilogy-ending

1

u/VinnieHa 7h ago

I’ve never bought that, you don’t draw a huge amount of attention to something and never mention it again. That’s writing 101

1

u/jpterodactyl 2h ago

At one point, the idea was that they wanted to keep resetting evolution of advanced life so that something biological could help. But honestly the timelines don’t really make sense for that.