Mass Effect Lore Series - Ancient Aliens - All Episodes

Full series on ancient aliens of the Mass Effect Universe, exploring the prehistoric civilizations that came before the Protheans.

Music:

Clips links seen in this video:

Special thanks to the folks at the unofficial Mass Effect wiki for maintaining their invaluable archive of planet and system descriptions:

Additional Images:

Gameplay footage from Mass Effect: Legendary Edition.

Bookmarks:
0:00 - Intro
1:02 - The Existence of Evidence
4:17 - The Risks
7:01 - Sources & Disclaimers
9:12 - Classification & Prevalance

11:55 - Council & Earth Systems Alliance Space Intro
13:14 - Yan Tao
14:01 - Carcosa
15:15 - Spekilas
16:04 - Altaaya
16:47 - Chasca
18:53 - Farcrothu
20:28 - Armeni

22:36 - Attican Traverse Intro
23:03 - Vecchio
23:56 - Gigula
24:52 - Zaherux
23:29 - Junthor
26:06 - Bothros
29:20 - Etamis
30:05 - Klendagon, Presrop, & Mnemosyne

33:13 - Terminus Systems Intro
33:57 - Anjea
34:44 - Siano
36:59 - Aphras & Tosal Nym
38:17 - Parnassus & Cyllene
41:53 - Joab & Laban
43:21 - The Arthenni: Helyme Galeon, & Epho
46:35 - The Inusannon, Ilos & The Thoi'Hann
52:30 - Closing Thoughts

#masseffect #masseffectlegendaryedition #lore

[jrr]

Look up my works? Not look upon my works?

[windwind]

God... the scale of it... the Reapers have been around for at least a billion of years. How many sentient races have they harvested? Thousands? Millions? How many people have they killed? Is there even a number that could possibly quantify the lives they've taken?

[TmN]

Head-cannon. The dinosaurs where not killed by an asteroid, but by the Reapers. "Save yourselves, mammals. We will fend off the Reapers!".- Tyranosaurs Wrex, probably.

[lordomacron]

I can’t help but think that some of the former water worlds might have been Leviathan planets culled in the first harvest.
And that some of the Frozen over water worlds might hiding places for the few Leviathan that escaped the first harvest.

[threepoint]

2 other things:

1. It's strongly implied that the adjutants from the Omega DLC are the reaperized versions of the inusanon.

2. There's one more potential alien race: Klencory's lost crypts of beings of light, at least according to that one volus. Complete hallucinations? Prothean beacon gone awry? Another alien race's final warning? Who knows.

[ebusive]

I'm going to speculate that the only reason the Terminus SEEM to have more info on ancient civilizations is explicitly because they're not under the control of the Council.

It's not unreasonable to assert that the Asari are the dominant race of this cycle. The Asari ability to suppress and hide information is unrivaled even by the Salarians. They hid the existence of an intact Prothean beacon for thousands of years. On top of that, how many valuable archeological sites in Council space are off-limits only because of Council mandates?

I fully believe that the Asari hoarded most of the valuable relics and information in the space they controlled.

[pvtcmyers]

I really wish we knew more about the planet Klendagon or the people who took out a reaper.

[Wade]

7:39 Ah yes, "superman". We have dismissed those claims

[Whippets]

For me the "galaxy building" aspect of ME is what truly stands out as EXCEPTIONAL. That said, I wish the series had expanded more on Liara's ME1 comment about prior civilizations.

[spencerstevens]

If you guys haven't seen "Forbidden Planet" it is a masterpiece. It's crazy what they could do in the 50s with limited technology

[stealthSGMB]

30:58 These guys basically had the Galaxy Gun from Star War legends. I really wish we could have seen what this cannon looked like.

[windwind]

Remember how ME2 kept dropping Dark Energy left and right? And the amount of planets all over the galaxy being described as extra-solar captures? It could be that before Bioware cut the dark energy plotline, that the inhabitants of those planets were using Mass Effect fields and biotics so much that their stars went supernova prematurely and blew up their planets out of orbit.

[batpig]

Yessss ive been looking for long-form Mass effect lore videos for ages

[locker]

Loved it. I always wanted to know more about the Mass effect mystery planets. Thanks.

[Graymeyne]

Here for my obligatory "Ah yes, "Reapers"." comment.

[thefairylovesniper]

I always belived that at 30:30 that mass weapon was an older, unfinished version of the crucible that we see in me3.

[TheSpaceHamster]

Great video, and you've got a fantastic speaking presentation. Truly hope you continue various lore/story series, even into other games/genres. Well done!

[RichardChomindy]

Listening to this as i do work on the car, beautiful. Very mentally stimulating

[rokusho]

It’s also possible that the reapers just simply couldn’t find the info or there were random stragglers who put whatever they could into time capsules on other worlds.

Remember reaper invasions were fast but not instant as these harvests took decades. That’s a long time for information to be lost or survivors desperate on worlds that the reapers would assume is not safe for their species to leave information behind that the reapers didn’t want to be found.

Another thing to consider is that reapers wanted some pieces of previous civilizations to persist to allow them to continue evolving in systems they prefer.

Lastly the reason so much prothean information survived is that since more of their tech is based off their genetic ability to perceive details…the reapers may not have known or be able to perceive what was on…well a lot of them. Aside from the fact they interacted with non space faring species allowing the them to potentially cover them up much like the ancient asari did for the temple. When a species is made their thralls, while obtaining the original species unique abilities they are notably muted.

Like the banshees. They can barely throw a warp, dash, and shield…but nothing like the precision and skill of even some basic asari biotics.

So it’s entirely possible when the protheans were enthralled the thralls didn’t have the means anymore to perceive the beacons as…well beacons and just thought it was architecture or what little information they could gleam was not perceived as a threat to the reapers.

[Robert-clft]

In my opinion when a new race discovers the remnants of a ancient civilization it’s destroyed in the reaper harvest of their time only a small fraction of artifacts and information survives but becomes damaged or mistaken for another civilization in a different cycle, like how the statues of the Inusannon on Ilos could be mistaken for the Protheans or another race, also how many relics were destroyed in wars across the galaxy or natural means such as earth quakes or supernovas