You forgot to mention the similarities in the protagonist’s story - Both Picard and Shepard inadvertently gather together a team of generally misfit characters, along with humans who have previously worked for the same heroic spacefaring organisation (Starfleet, or the Systems Alliance Navy). Although still holding some attachments to that organisation, they still have similar motivations for effectively “going rogue” from them - Indeed Shepard goes rogue, in some fashion, from the Council, and this underpins much of the ME trilogy’s storyline. There is also the (preferred) outcome, where the conflict of synthetics and organics is concerned, that a peaceful resolution is found. The finale of Picard is very much a reminder of the mission at Rannock, in Mass Effect 3, whereby the player has to choose between the survival of the robotic Geth, or giving the Quarians a chance to re-settle their homeworld. Only with the right previous efforts, is the player afforded a third option: bringing peace to Geth and Quarians, and recruiting both races into Shepard’s effort to stop the Reapers.
I find Picard's actions to be terrific, and in this episode, as in all of them, correct to his character in a turbulent time. Precisely the character we needed to see in action again. Looking forward to future episodes.
"Both Picard and Shepard inadvertently gather together a team of generally misfit characters, along with humans who have previously worked for the same heroic spacefaring organisation" hardly something unique to either francise. It happens in Firefly, Star Wars, Stargate
a team of gathered misfits? then you dont mean mass effect, you mean firefly, or even before that farscape? both way b4 mass effect. plus most of the actual trek stuff they ripped off was ripped from the star trek online game, at least the parts regarding the borg+romulan synergy plus all the space mexican romulan refugee bits from their 2013 playable romulan expansion.
Well sort of, Sheperd was rebuilt, using his original body. Picard actually died, and a copy of him was created, so technically not the original Picard, just a robot with is memories.
The Mass Effect/Reaper plot simply doesn't work in Trek at all because there are tons of ancient/advanced/super powered aliens around. The Voth have been around for millions of years, did they not notice synth/organic wars leading to galactic genocides that occurred every couple hundred thousand years? There are a bunch of energy beings that evolved from "lesser" lifeforms similar to humans. And some of them, like the Organians, Metrons, and Q have even implied that humanity will become like them eons into the future. That proves the synth/organic conflicts are not inevitable and probably not that common. I also find it hard to imagine that the super advanced and godlike beings in Trek would even allow such galactic level genocide. For example, the Organians interfered to stop a war between the Klingons and Federation because they don't want violence in their space. So if a synth genocide ever occurred, either the Organians would stop it with their powers or Organian space would become a sanctuary for organics to hide from extermination. Also, time travel is a thing in Trek. People can change history. If synths attacked, Starfleet can pull a "Voyage Home" or reverse-Terminator and stop the creation of synths. The Orbs of the Prophets allow people to see into the future. Sisko exists outside of time, I'm pretty sure he'd intervene if he saw a future with a horrific galactic genocide.
Well, everything you just said can be skirted because these particular synths are 'god-like' and can do what they want, even with time travel. One thing Star Trek hasn't really revealed is how god-like beings like Qs interact with other powers like them. We know they have wars among themselves but what if they had wars against powerful synths and there are no clear winners? Besides, I don't think some of these god-like beings would be opposed to a genocide or two. It's best not to think about it.
I think the Q would interfere if something like the Reaper would happen in Star Trek. They already interfered several times to stop a galactic wide threat, at least according to some books (e.g. they're responsible for the galactic barrier, they created it to keep out a powerful being from an other dimension that planned to destroy and reshape all organic life. That being, among others, was brought into our Universe by Q, the John de Lancie Q that is, when he was "young" - whatever that means for a Q. Quinn was also still free at that time)
@@saiga6360 Except there's nothing to suggest the super synths have godlike powers. Godlike aliens are able to do things that defy physics and our understanding of the universe. Kevin Uxbridge for example, erased an entire civilization of billions of people with a thought. Q has the power to trick Picard into creating a paradox that prevents life from ever evolving on earth. Even non-godlike races like the Krenim have technology that can erase a species from history. If the super synths have anything close to that level of power, they would be able to erase organics without leaving any evidence. It wouldn't be some horrific war with planets blowing up. They'd just think about organics disappearing and organics would be gone. In fact, they wouldn't need to commit genocide at all to protect other synths.
@@KingOfMadCows The Krenim in the current timeline don't have that timeship technology. At the end of _Year of Hell, Part 2_ when Janeway & company destroy the Krenim Timeship the timeline resets. We see the guy who created and commanded the timeship leave his office to spend time with his wife, implying he won't develop it in this timeline. But yeah, the Q, Organians and others wouldn't have any difficulty at all putting a stop to super synths killing all organics in the galaxy, stopping it instantly. They'd probably get rid of the super-synths entirely, wiping them from the timeline to protect organics going forward as well.
I'am watching this after Picard's first season is now over and when those synthetic worms did try to get through the protal my first thought was: Hey, this remembers me of the Reapers. And Jean-Luc took the green color coded option - btw. had a very broad smile on the face when you mentioned the much discussed ending of ME1-3 later in the video.
I think the red portal AI looks aesthetically more like the robotic creatures in ME Andromeda. And they established the AI issue in discovery second season
Well the green option is generaly the stupidiest option there is. Like remote complete rewriting of DNA on molecural level utilizing FTL propagating energy wave? :D and funny enough - even if you take red option you will not wipe out the Geth in fact... (sure it will destroy part of Geth platforms and it will kill EDI, but at most - Geth are only software not hardware as Tali pointed out... (like holograms Starfleet has) lot of them are processed in regular hardware like quarian suits and ship computers. it wont wipe them out, they are just 1 and 0 on hardrives indistinguishable from any program in ship computers. No quantum bluebox. and in essence- seems those synths are quite advanced... however - I am pretty sure that given federation battlefleet could just lob impossible amount of quantum torpedos to the rift to a point it actually rips subspace of tearing appart anything that tries to get trough.
@@Paerigos What is EDI even to begin with. She is still the Normandy by some extension. The Platforms that tags along on missions is just another extension of her. Shutting EDI down, would effectively shut the Normandy down as well. She controls and maintains almost all major and minor functions of the ship. Nope, the Starchild is just freakin lying about the red option. It is afraid and for a good reason. If the Geth exist on, so does EDI. Just because that mobility platform of hers get's destroyed doesn't mean, that she gets destroyed in total. Just build a new platform and be done with it. I mean, in essence what the starchild says is, that every computer would fry. Or every higher computersystem like quantum based neural networks. Whatever the case, this would leave society in general and spacetravel especially crippled as many ships at the very least use V.I. to perform many repetitive tasks. So, nope. I don't believe a single word. The red option is something tailored specificly to destroy the reapers and associated synthetic life. My guess would be, that it targets a specific part/component of the reapers which is nessecary for them to exist. Like our hypothalamus or heart. At least that's how an intelligent race would design such a weapons system.
@Manek Iridius A story that has already been told is fine, as long as you either, add something significant and new to the story, or, tell the story in a new and interesting way, updating it for new generations. Picard does nothing new, nothing interesting, and adds nothing to the old story, so no, it isn't worth telling.
When I saw the scene about the galaxy creating advanced AI and attracting the attention of some galaxy level threat the Mass Effect parallel became clear even before it was outright confirmed in the last episodes. Frankly, the writers and director should have just approached Bioware to ask for their permission to make a live-action Mass Effect series rather than tarnishing Star Trek's already dire reputation further. At least then they could have avoided wasting their budget on paying for over-priced, famous actors and simply hired some competent non-brand actors instead which could allow for the extra production budget to make sure the plot didn't have gaping logic holes, trivial characters or tedious story pacing. How many times now have the Borg fallen for the "blow them out an airlock" trick? Haven't they assimilated the tech for gravity/magnetic boots yet?
It's not ME tough, it's a few much older sci fys. There is a pretty much identical old German Novel where an Alien species leaves behind a ship on the moon as a Warning from a hidden interstellar alliance of AIs that survived their masters and now experminate all Biological life that develops to the point of interstellar travel /bouild Synths because they won't tolerate new slavers.
More importantly than that, space doesn't kill the borg, which was established in First Contact when they were outside the hull of the enterprise and wearing space suits, but none of the borg were.
@@ReivecS More than that though. If seven had control over the whole cube and it's systems she could teleport them back inside since clearly transporter technology has advanced so much that the "beaming" process is so fast that you just step into a gate outside starfleet HQ and reappear somewhere else on the planet.
@@ReivecS It doesn't kill them within a shield that deflects most space hazards. Armor plating can also work. One just floating in space alone though could be killed by what is in space.
kurtzman and his ilk stealing ideas from video games? No that can’t be true it’s just a coincidence like the tardigrade and the charterers from discovery being similar (pretty much identical) to Anas Abdins game.
You forgot the 4th Mass Effect ending: shooting the interface. AI throws a tantrum and retracts it's offer of options, leaving you to watch the Reapers harvest the galaxy. Learned this through personal experience. I would have to replay the last mission all over again to get the choices again, as this finishes the game, lol.
There are two reasons: 1) This ending was patched in after it became obvious even to BioWare that the original version was... bad, and thus wasn't discussed when the topic was 'hot.' By the time it came out, the discussion was largely over. 2) It sounds more like a non-standard game over, rather than an actual ending; Shepherd's (and thus, the player's) goal was to stop the reapers, which doesn't happen here.
@@boobah5643 But even in that ending the Reapers are stopped, though one cycle later. I very much like the final scene. "Its getting late, but...okay, one more story".
When I played that game, I didn't like the AI thing, so I shot it. I got the cool ending where I got killed but at least I didn't take any of that AI's crap, haha.
Another issue with the whole premise in the ST universe is that this simplification to man vs machine completely sidelines holograms ... like the doc, vic and that sherlock villain that was created on the enterprise who are also artificial lifeforms wit largely the same capabilities as androids .... and also the Borg ... who are already there to represent technology gone to far ... That is another thing how come the Borg did not know about this at all ... they have been assimilating Romulans and there is no way they are the only ones who know about this ....
@Crashie-J their budget was pretty tiny (most Amazon originals have a bigger one ). And It's not like Me is actually original. Mass effect copied from other , older sci fi.
Was it just me or did the "AI serpent of doom" thingy coming through look an awful lot like the AI from the future in Discovery that attacked the shuttle and hacked it?
@@Plush.Hunter reminiscent of the Captains Table book series. A bar outside of space and time, which only captains can access. Captain Pike went to use the restroom after some flirting with a DS9 era Klingon woman; small room, flat plate protruding from the wall, small discs by the door. He theorized it used teleporter tech to remove contaminants, but didn't risk sitting on the throne. Bartender stated (jokingly?) that, had he used the facility incorrectly, he would have been sucked into another dimension. Heh.
Control, yes. I had assumed the comparison was intentional - that Control was essentially giving itself a wormhole back into the galaxy by convincing biddable organic and synthetic lifeforms in. I think Chabon might have started that way but either backed off conceptually (as was pointed out, Trek does not have a history of synthetic v organic to build on) or just decided it was too much of a stretch.
Whats ironic is that I believe Bioware actually wanted to make Mass Effect a "Star Trek" video game. They went to the Star Trek license holders, and were denied permission. So Bioware made their own universe instead.
Even more ironic is that BioWare were given permission by George Lucas and a licence to make two Star Wars games instead. One of which is still online and active, The Old Republic. This was obviously long before Disney purchased Star Wars and Lucasfilm, they were some of the last games George was actively involved in too.
So, they stole the 'spore drive' idea from that guy, and now they are copying ME? Why create original ideas when you can just steal from other sources?
I thought the same. It was like Mass Effect copying Star Trek copying Mass Effect. It's like it came full circle because I always thought the reapers were based on the Borg but even bigger and more powerful. .
If you ever see Babylon 5 then the Reapers have a few things in common with the Shadows. Returning periodically causing destruction. Can't say why they return, that is a big spoiler. The story of B5 is better than Mass Effect, though I really like ME. It just makes more sense. The Shadows have good reasons and believable liabilities. The ending of ME is very similar to B5 but isn't as convincing.
I’ll admit, I’ve seen not one episode of Picard (only bits of syndicated Trek episodes here and there), not played one minute of Mass Effect. But as soon as I saw “Control”/“Synthesis”, my immediate reaction was: *WE ARE BORG*
That was also slightly cribbed off from later seasons of TNG. Remember the Warp 5 Speed Limit thing? Supposedly all that warp travel was damaging subspace, and then suddenly they're like "Look at Voyager Flex its nacelles" and suddenly every ship in the Alpha Quadrant no longer had that problem and they forgot about that plot arc. Same deal with the dark energy plot... the idea of the plot is that use of element zero was causing dark energy to build up in the universe and it would eventually cause a big rip millennia into the future (but still far sooner than it otherwise would on an astronomical time scale), and the Reapers were there to stop folks from using eezo in the first place. They were exploring it in Tali's recruitment mission in ME2 until the writer that came up with the idea left Bioware and they forgot about that plot arc.
Honestly a rogue AI makes more sense than the reapers just being immortal beings harvesting people to figure out a way to stop the universe from dying. Like just a bunch of big old robots floating around in dark space makes more sense as a mechanical function waiting for an instruction more than some kind of civilization, because what kind of society would they have just waiting outside of the galaxy all by themselves anyway? Maybe if each reaper acted as a server and their entire civilization was online but the issue would still be why they make themselves out of organic species in the 1st place unless they were somehow using their collective knowledge to try and figure out a way to stop dark energy. Like maybe each reaper simulates the species they're made out of which may have been the plot if the writer didn't leave. But that's still more convoluted and ridiculous then just a super AI trying to preserve life before it went extinct in a convenient storage device that also functioned as making other storage devices that preserve more life. The whole process being just a giant cold and calculated method of keeping sentient species immortalized
No, it was not, it was equally stupid and also had a "choose from three things that don't give a shit what you were doing before this not-actually-a-choice".
I really liked a lot of the implications behind the Leviathan storyline, but it's a crying shame that it never got integrated into the greater narrative in a satisfying way. I want an option to just blow up the Catalyst and free the Reapers from their eternal cycle of slavery and enslavement.
Although I didn't play Mass Effect, I still was aware of this cycle in it's Lore. But it was nice to see this in a more detailed manner than the rudimentary approach I had until now.
Given that CBS is facing a court case over Discovery’s writers allegedly copying from a video game all about tardigrades and also containing characters with very similar physical appearances to what is seen on screen, it stands to reason other video games would also serve for future “inspiration”.
They won by demonstrating that the claim was complete and utter garbage. The guy had blue tardigrades that help transport a person. The case showed that tardigrades had entered the cultural zeitgeist due to the show cosmos discussing how the little water bears can survive in zero gravity and even vacuum. This lead to a glut of stories and properties folding in tardigrades. Much of the claimed background to the game was very light on detail, often modified after the fact to bend interpretation to fit the idea of similarity between the two properties, but when displayed in the cold light of day, the case against Discovery was proven to be false. Though CBS wont say it, it's fairly obvious that, having noticed a slight similarity, (imagine if the makers of the film Lawnmower Man sued the makers of The Matrix for using virtual reality in a story where the protagonist develops super powers able to dominate the computer world and even effect the real world a bit) he then proceeded to bend interpretations and claim to have developed work he simply had not in order to sue CBS. If you cherry pick the points of similarity, ignore the differences and reinterpret your own work to make it appear much closer to the other work than it was... trhat takes malice of forethought. CBS may not be willing to come out and say it, but I will. The guy was trying to scam money from CBS. Now, I need to go scrub my mouth out for having had to defend a fucking corporation. Ick.
I've played ME1 3 times, ME2 twice, and ME3 4 times their all great games, and are deserving of being held in the 'halls of legendary games' do to their aweao.e gameplay, wide variety of storylines, and how easily the games creator was able to add new feature, and stories to the games to expand them. These games ARE the pinnacle of gaming, in my opinion.
Along these lines, after finishing me3 I felt like I had actually gone through and saved the Galaxy.. earning that win with blood and sacrifice.. I think honestly if there were a game that give you ptsd, its Mass Effect 1,2 & 3.
According the Leviathan DLC, the Reapers have been around for at least a billion years, not hundreds of thousands. And the Leviathan probably come up with the idea to create the AI to solve the issue of the cyclic extinctions a better part of a billion years prior to that.
My first time playing ME1 I thought it was a pretty cool Trek-Like game; going from world to world as a representative of a council (Federation of planets), meeting new civilizations and solving problems with diplomacy where you can and force when you have to. It’s kind of weird that Trek is feeling more like a Mass Effect series. Now more than anything I want to see a Mass Effect series, I’ll have to settle with dusting off my Xbox 360.
Anyone else find it interesting that the evil AI destroyers looked like mechanical centipedes, because apparently civilization ending robots need to be creepy while doing so.
I was on a work trip to Florida when it first came out. I played thru the entire game in one sitting after work Friday until Sunday morning. no sleep. ME1 is one of my all time favorite story driven games. I loved it.
@@cmcbunch wow. That is hardcore dedication. Hope you enjoyed it, I took a lot longer at weekends and evenings but I wasn't very good but thoroughly enjoyed the designs. I played again when I finished. Slightly different responses to choices but usually I would play how I would in real life. The one game I truly felt 'at home' playing. Well written back story and history.
@@gotellbossc4t-vb9hz I was a young man then. used to play stuff like doom for an entire weekend like that with no sleep, 4 pizzas, and four 2 liters of mountain dew. Cant do that anymore. I get to like 5 hours and my body starts hating me.
@@cmcbunch been there comrade, early hours on Project Gotham online was one too. Work became an inconvenience and a hinderance to playing! Nowadays I go for months without turning the xbox on. Maybe I've grown out of playing now. We had fun tho eh. Good times.
No, it's more similar to the Paragon solution to Rannoch, where the geth and quarians reconcile to rebuild their world together. Picard managed to persuade Soji to simply call off the "Reaper" invasion. (Also, these guys were intent on obliterating all organic life, not just harvesting technologically-advanced species.)
@@Swahhillie not really, there are massive similarities, the fact that they were stopped before an invasion doesn't change that. Kurtzman has been ripping off a number of other properties for Discovery. It's just a question of which property will he rip off next.
I swear to god after i watched the last episode thats the exact impression i got, was "really supreme synth life, beacon? whats left is a bloody citadel" but then i realized that the cube can serve as that. And the RED choice in Mass Effect would destroy all synth life.
thank you for making this! I keep having to tell people who know know Trek but not ME that there's a REALLY suspicious line running between the two right now. This is a good reference to have.
The writers of Picard, just like those of Discovery are so devoid of ideas that they would scringe any scrap from other sci-fi creations to help them overcome their own lack of imagination.
The real irony is that Mass Effect itself the third iteration of a scenario. First, there was Star Control, Second, Descent: Freespace, which had everything perfect. The third copy, Mass Effect, copied the formula badly, and the Fourth iteration, Picard, made it only worse.
Because that was 50,000 years ago, when they were effectively a stone-age people that could barely farm, couldn't read, and lacked advanced mathematics. They never forgot, they never understood in the first place and remembered them as the goddesses of their religions and lore.
That’s still more than 50 generations. In human terms that’s over a millennia. It’s no suprise that their knowledge is incomplete, it’s like studying the 10th century for us. And they never forgot, they regarded the Protheans as gods. They jsut never knew what happened to them.
Humans can live up to 100 years in our time thanks to modern medicine; doesn't mean we've always lived this long. We can probably assume the same for the Asari.
Great video I love mass effect and any excuse to talk about it I'll take thank you and keep up the great work
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All of tge aesthetics in Picard reminded me so much of ME. I know ME leaned into quite a lot of overused SciFi tropes on purpose, but they tried to do their own thing with it. There's one scene in Picard, when 7 of 9 is shooting her way out of that bar, her phaser rifles look just like some of the guns in Mass Effect.
It can also be said that Mass Effect “borrowed” story elements from Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2. Not to mention Picard`s space “orchids” were pretty much a deliberate ripoff of the Thargoids from Elite: Dangerous.
The problem is that Star-trek doesn't need to borrow, it has its own story and background with a lot of characters and factions. Mass effect was a video game not a television show.
Star Trek Picard Season 2 - Picard gets recruited by Section 31, finding the body snatchers, Harvesters, a transwarp portal leads to the centre of the Galaxy, and either Picard destroy the Collector base or captured it for Section 31. Picard warns Starfleet, and attempts to get help from them, however, rullde the ancient super synth as false. The ancient super synth descends from dark space into the milky way. Star Trek Picard Season 3 (series finale) - The rumours of ancient super synth starts a war with the entire galaxy, Picard reinitiated into Starfleet and tasked to get all known race in the Galaxy to defeat the ancient super synth. At the final episode, there are four endings, Refusal, Destroy, Control, Synthesis. Picard Refused to do anything, stated that it's freedom of choice, thus the cycle continues. Picard destroys all technology including synths. B4 is destroyed, Soji is destroyed. If watched post-credit scene, Picard's gasped for air. Picard controls all technology including synths. Picard body is absorbed and energy is spread throughout the galaxy. Picard is in every synth or other AI-like, including holograms. Picard uses his hybrid body (thus disintegrating) and spreads its DNA throughout the galaxy, thus both synth and organic are of both.
Since they won the Tatagrade lawsuit we are they feel that if they see anything in a game that idea is (to them) fair game to use. The JJ verse is bankrupt for ideas and this was a good idea (generally) that they borrowed.
And in the Picard finale we saw that once again the reason for the conflict between synthetic and organic life was the distrustful and fearful nature of organics. The resolution to the Picard season is exactly what Trekkies have always loved about the optimism of Star Trek. Conflict isn't inevitable. Peace can be achieved. etc.
What? The genocidal Synth Federation was contacted & is now on its way to exterminate all organic life in the galaxy. The Picard series showed that the Romulans & Federation were correct in their xenophobia. & that Picard had become a senile imbecile that helped doom the whole galaxy.
Basically, this time the story will led to synthetic vs organic plot, just like Mass Effect. The way Picard share the same plot make me think, "how about if it was Mass Effect Series?" :v
The Shivans were there first! I mean I don't know if you can find a similar idea in earlier decades of sci-fi works, but Shivans definitely preceded ME, and it would be lovely if you could at some point talk about Descent Freespace 1&2 and also the Blue Planet community mod (which also consist of 2 parts, Age of Aquarius and War in Heaven) that greatly expands on the lore and story of the original games. Those are nothing short of amazing.
Thank you it was fun to watch. As a fan of Mass Effect and Star Trek i noticed this similarities quite early. And i am happy that Picard ended the way it did. However i am not sure why we don't have any mentions from the Q about this or why the Q never stopt that in the beginning. Also the cycle seems to be far longer in ST than in ME. I will soon(g) return to my ME playthroughs til i replayed my first character which i had to delete thanks to an incredibly stupid bug on my EA connected Microsoft account... I simply don't know how many hours of lost game time that was but at least 7 walkthroughs of ME 1-3...
I look forward to seeing how your opinion has changed since the last episode of PIC aired. I know it confirmed for me that the similarities between Mass Effect and PIC are surface level, and mostly stuff that has appeared in Trek. Especially since the message wasn’t about Organics vs Synthetics, it was using that as a backdrop to talk about allowing fear to control your actions and especially fear of “the other” based on only words and the actions of a small group that wish to control through fear. Along with discussions of mortality, humanity, etc. Other than those couple surface level things, everything is different.
I hope we see more of Picard's ancient synths in season 2 as we really didn't get any background on them in the finale other than the ancient story that along with the beacon were the basis that caused the creation of the Zhat Vash...with the strangest thing Narek said being, "some say it dates back from long before *our ancestors first arrived on Vulcan* "...either Harry Treadaway meant to say "first founded Romulus" or the writers were implying Vulcan was colonize by a race trying to survive the Ganmadan
Actually been done before in sci-fi novels - Revelation Space is a 2000 science fiction novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds "They soon discover that Cerberus is actually a massive beacon aimed at alerting a machine sentience of the appearance of new star-faring cultures so that it can destroy them. It is that sentience, Sylveste belatedly realises, that caused the demise of the Amarantin" Revelation Space > Mass Effect and always thought Mass Effect borrowed from that series of books a bit too much....
The main reason the Prothean lost was technological inferiority and the weakness towards attrition that pretty much characterize most if not all organics compared to Synthetics. The protheans monolithic organization merely hastened their fall. The Laviathan galactic empire rose and fell billions of years before the events of mass effect. It is also worth to mention that the Reapers harvest is just a temporary solution they devised until a better alternative is found. BONUS point: Given that all the tech and knowledge is maintained, synthesis could be voluntarily ashieved in a control ending, thus rendering the synthesis ending obsolete unless the player want to force it immediately upon the galaxy.
I kind of thought of Picard as drawing from Mass Effect, yes, but also quite a bit from New Battlestar Galactica, in the whole human-appearing synths thing and so on. There are many similarities throughout and the comparisons are interesting. That said as soon as the Admonishment was revealed for what it was I was shouting how Picard was going full Mass Effect, and I kind of like it. I especially like the way it's turning the concept on its head. And we'll see those Trek "Reapers" again. They're not going away. Not by a long shot. They may not have come through this first time, this... Sovereign at the Citadel, if you will... but they'll find a way. They'll return.
I've never played Mass Effect and I've come up with stories like this, with repeating cycles and such. I've even based some parts on the Borg. The idea of the Borg being like a galaxy cleansing virus for instance that starts up, wipes everything out, leave, and the cycle continues. So I wouldn't ever assume something like this is stolen or borrowed from, especially when the lore and intrigue of the medium itself, Trek in this case, is so diverse and has plenty of entry points into the idea itself. If I could take Data and the Borg and come to similar conclusions, then so could the writers, without Mass Effect. In fact, I think it's only logical. Look at how absurdly advanced Data is, and just jump from there, to the Borg (which we've seen in the movies) and imagine the progression and expansion and boom. I can easily get to any of the aspects of Picard.
You'd need to explain that; the Prime Directive is about interfering with people, and the relays didn't have people. Unless you count the Keepers, and it's not clear that you should since, as far as I'm aware, they're just meaty robots. Unless... maybe your claim is that the Prime Directive would be cited as a reason to not leave time capsules for successor species? Not sure how that helps.
STP literally just copy-pasted stuff and it shows, especially at the end. The big fight with the space flowers and the Romulan fleet literally looks like it was a reskinned version of the ME3 final fight. Not to mention the portal scene that would've let in an eldritch looking robo-monster from outside the galaxy. Even without this nonsense the show would suck, poor Picard was just an old man who was always yelled at by arrogant women. A husk (pun intended) of his former self that stood up to beings like Q.
Always enjoy a excuse to talk about mass effect 💙. Gotta admit, just now realized the Inusannon do look a lot like the abominations; though I don't think they are, are they? I thought Cerberus was just turning people from omega into them.
To be fair, I remember wondering why we never saw any of the A.I. issues actually explored like I had seen it in other SF works. The closest we had come to was the borg.
I caught this similarity pretty early. I am a huge ME fan - although we can pretend Andromeda never existed. Picard felt and looked more like a mid-grade fan film, minus the attention to detail. That final episode cemented it... Dear god it was bad.
A little nitpicky technical comment. The derelict reaper found in mass effect 2 is 37 mio. years old, which means 740 cycles of 50.000 years in between. The Leviathan of Dis (another reaper) was estimated at 1 billion years old, which would be 20.000 cycles of the same 50.000 years in between. Somewhat more than "hundreds of thousands of years ago". :)
Mass Effect (Game 1-3, ans what else is there Mass Effect related, not that I know of ;-) Other than some books I haven' read yet) is ONE of my all time favorite sci-fil games. And when they came out I of course picked up the Star Trek, Star Wars and other sci-fi references, and so now the whole thing has gone full circle back to Star Trek! :-) I went the unification route if anyone wants to know. I had organized peace between the geth and their creators, helped the kling... I mean krogans with their genetic disease and done all the paragon things the trilogy had to offer so destruction of al artificial life was not an option, control over the reaper felt a bit "we become them" sort of thing so that was off the table. Besides, I was a huge supporter of the Joker-Edi matchup so it could only help with that. ;-)
Picard is the complete opposite of the Mass Effect Reapers... The advanced AI the synths were trying to contact in Picard sought to destroy organic life in order to persevere synthetic life and the Reapers in Mass Effect were trying to stop the progression of synthetic life by destroying both synthetic and organic life (unless they learned to work together, and that's why the protagonists of both series ultimately prevailed).
Alistair Reynolds' book series, Revelation Space seems to be the predecessor to Mass Effect also. But many a scifi trope is 'man versus his creation' or 'man versus the gods', so combining that is not copying. However, the Admonition is totally from ME3. The corridors are already there. The Borg used them. The Iconians (from Trek lore) in STO also borrow from the idea. It doesn't make sense the Federation resorted to fear and turned on all synthetics based on a conspiracy. It's kind of goofy.
Well, the thing is, most of the people involved in the production of the show probably played Mass Effect games. And given how there is a debate going on at the moment on whether or not building AIs is a good idea in the first place, I can see how all these thing would influence these people when making Star Trek Picard. And then there's the fact that people write what they know, so every new TV show or movie is a product of its time and the people who made it. People who made TNG grew up watching and reading different things than people making Picard.
and as expected Star Trek Pictard chose the syntheses option where humanity gains immortality by either being able to endlessly copy one's mind into a superhuman body or by mind uploading
Picard did not punch the reporter, so he got 100% paragon
he's saving that punch up for when John DeLancie returns as Q perhaps? maybe the next season?
Hehe, would've still liked to see him accuse of her of making "disingenuous assertions"
you meant Picard did not punch Kirsten Clancy
BrollydictCumberbatch Montour Nah, Sisco beat him to the punch (pun intended) long ago!
I’d love to see Renegade Picard. 😁
You forgot to mention the similarities in the protagonist’s story - Both Picard and Shepard inadvertently gather together a team of generally misfit characters, along with humans who have previously worked for the same heroic spacefaring organisation (Starfleet, or the Systems Alliance Navy). Although still holding some attachments to that organisation, they still have similar motivations for effectively “going rogue” from them - Indeed Shepard goes rogue, in some fashion, from the Council, and this underpins much of the ME trilogy’s storyline.
There is also the (preferred) outcome, where the conflict of synthetics and organics is concerned, that a peaceful resolution is found. The finale of Picard is very much a reminder of the mission at Rannock, in Mass Effect 3, whereby the player has to choose between the survival of the robotic Geth, or giving the Quarians a chance to re-settle their homeworld. Only with the right previous efforts, is the player afforded a third option: bringing peace to Geth and Quarians, and recruiting both races into Shepard’s effort to stop the Reapers.
I find Picard's actions to be terrific, and in this episode, as in all of them, correct to his character in a turbulent time. Precisely the character we needed to see in action again. Looking forward to future episodes.
when did shepard go rogue? wasn't she a spectre? how do you go rogue if rules don't apply?
And they both died and came back.
"Both Picard and Shepard inadvertently gather together a team of generally misfit characters, along with humans who have previously worked for the same heroic spacefaring organisation" hardly something unique to either francise. It happens in Firefly, Star Wars, Stargate
a team of gathered misfits? then you dont mean mass effect, you mean firefly, or even before that farscape? both way b4 mass effect. plus most of the actual trek stuff they ripped off was ripped from the star trek online game, at least the parts regarding the borg+romulan synergy plus all the space mexican romulan refugee bits from their 2013 playable romulan expansion.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Picard got Project Lazarus-ed in the finale.
omfg he did..../eyeroll
Well sort of, Sheperd was rebuilt, using his original body. Picard actually died, and a copy of him was created, so technically not the original Picard, just a robot with is memories.
@@ishii3230 so, citadel dlc's shepard clone then.
We got some Shakespeare in the last episode, but it didn't hold a candle to Elcor Hamlet.
Best comment ever
Deadpan snark: Ah, a fellow being of culture.
The Mass Effect/Reaper plot simply doesn't work in Trek at all because there are tons of ancient/advanced/super powered aliens around.
The Voth have been around for millions of years, did they not notice synth/organic wars leading to galactic genocides that occurred every couple hundred thousand years?
There are a bunch of energy beings that evolved from "lesser" lifeforms similar to humans. And some of them, like the Organians, Metrons, and Q have even implied that humanity will become like them eons into the future. That proves the synth/organic conflicts are not inevitable and probably not that common.
I also find it hard to imagine that the super advanced and godlike beings in Trek would even allow such galactic level genocide. For example, the Organians interfered to stop a war between the Klingons and Federation because they don't want violence in their space. So if a synth genocide ever occurred, either the Organians would stop it with their powers or Organian space would become a sanctuary for organics to hide from extermination.
Also, time travel is a thing in Trek. People can change history. If synths attacked, Starfleet can pull a "Voyage Home" or reverse-Terminator and stop the creation of synths. The Orbs of the Prophets allow people to see into the future. Sisko exists outside of time, I'm pretty sure he'd intervene if he saw a future with a horrific galactic genocide.
Well, everything you just said can be skirted because these particular synths are 'god-like' and can do what they want, even with time travel. One thing Star Trek hasn't really revealed is how god-like beings like Qs interact with other powers like them. We know they have wars among themselves but what if they had wars against powerful synths and there are no clear winners? Besides, I don't think some of these god-like beings would be opposed to a genocide or two. It's best not to think about it.
I think the Q would interfere if something like the Reaper would happen in Star Trek. They already interfered several times to stop a galactic wide threat, at least according to some books (e.g. they're responsible for the galactic barrier, they created it to keep out a powerful being from an other dimension that planned to destroy and reshape all organic life. That being, among others, was brought into our Universe by Q, the John de Lancie Q that is, when he was "young" - whatever that means for a Q. Quinn was also still free at that time)
@@saiga6360 Except there's nothing to suggest the super synths have godlike powers.
Godlike aliens are able to do things that defy physics and our understanding of the universe. Kevin Uxbridge for example, erased an entire civilization of billions of people with a thought. Q has the power to trick Picard into creating a paradox that prevents life from ever evolving on earth. Even non-godlike races like the Krenim have technology that can erase a species from history.
If the super synths have anything close to that level of power, they would be able to erase organics without leaving any evidence. It wouldn't be some horrific war with planets blowing up. They'd just think about organics disappearing and organics would be gone. In fact, they wouldn't need to commit genocide at all to protect other synths.
It's just bad writing, period.
@@KingOfMadCows The Krenim in the current timeline don't have that timeship technology. At the end of _Year of Hell, Part 2_ when Janeway & company destroy the Krenim Timeship the timeline resets. We see the guy who created and commanded the timeship leave his office to spend time with his wife, implying he won't develop it in this timeline.
But yeah, the Q, Organians and others wouldn't have any difficulty at all putting a stop to super synths killing all organics in the galaxy, stopping it instantly. They'd probably get rid of the super-synths entirely, wiping them from the timeline to protect organics going forward as well.
I'am watching this after Picard's first season is now over and when those synthetic worms did try to get through the protal my first thought was: Hey, this remembers me of the Reapers. And Jean-Luc took the green color coded option - btw. had a very broad smile on the face when you mentioned the much discussed ending of ME1-3 later in the video.
I think the red portal AI looks aesthetically more like the robotic creatures in ME Andromeda. And they established the AI issue in discovery second season
Well the green option is generaly the stupidiest option there is. Like remote complete rewriting of DNA on molecural level utilizing FTL propagating energy wave? :D
and funny enough - even if you take red option you will not wipe out the Geth in fact... (sure it will destroy part of Geth platforms and it will kill EDI, but at most - Geth are only software not hardware as Tali pointed out... (like holograms Starfleet has) lot of them are processed in regular hardware like quarian suits and ship computers.
it wont wipe them out, they are just 1 and 0 on hardrives indistinguishable from any program in ship computers. No quantum bluebox.
and in essence- seems those synths are quite advanced... however - I am pretty sure that given federation battlefleet could just lob impossible amount of quantum torpedos to the rift to a point it actually rips subspace of tearing appart anything that tries to get trough.
@@Paerigos What is EDI even to begin with. She is still the Normandy by some extension. The Platforms that tags along on missions is just another extension of her. Shutting EDI down, would effectively shut the Normandy down as well. She controls and maintains almost all major and minor functions of the ship.
Nope, the Starchild is just freakin lying about the red option. It is afraid and for a good reason. If the Geth exist on, so does EDI. Just because that mobility platform of hers get's destroyed doesn't mean, that she gets destroyed in total. Just build a new platform and be done with it.
I mean, in essence what the starchild says is, that every computer would fry. Or every higher computersystem like quantum based neural networks. Whatever the case, this would leave society in general and spacetravel especially crippled as many ships at the very least use V.I. to perform many repetitive tasks. So, nope. I don't believe a single word. The red option is something tailored specificly to destroy the reapers and associated synthetic life. My guess would be, that it targets a specific part/component of the reapers which is nessecary for them to exist. Like our hypothalamus or heart. At least that's how an intelligent race would design such a weapons system.
I literally exclaimed “Reapers!” when I saw them. The whole series has reminded me a lot of Mass Effect!
Its funny how all she had to do was break the computer screen its like a teenage girl breaking her cellphone out of fear or anger.
Anyone who played the Mass Effect games should have seen the similarities. Creations rising against their creator (golems), are a very old trope.
@Manek Iridius A story that has already been told is fine, as long as you either, add something significant and new to the story, or, tell the story in a new and interesting way, updating it for new generations.
Picard does nothing new, nothing interesting, and adds nothing to the old story, so no, it isn't worth telling.
Did they steal the ending too? I feel really bad for the people who sat through that if so.
When I saw the scene about the galaxy creating advanced AI and attracting the attention of some galaxy level threat the Mass Effect parallel became clear even before it was outright confirmed in the last episodes. Frankly, the writers and director should have just approached Bioware to ask for their permission to make a live-action Mass Effect series rather than tarnishing Star Trek's already dire reputation further. At least then they could have avoided wasting their budget on paying for over-priced, famous actors and simply hired some competent non-brand actors instead which could allow for the extra production budget to make sure the plot didn't have gaping logic holes, trivial characters or tedious story pacing. How many times now have the Borg fallen for the "blow them out an airlock" trick? Haven't they assimilated the tech for gravity/magnetic boots yet?
It's not ME tough, it's a few much older sci fys. There is a pretty much identical old German Novel where an Alien species leaves behind a ship on the moon as a Warning from a hidden interstellar alliance of AIs that survived their masters and now experminate all Biological life that develops to the point of interstellar travel /bouild Synths because they won't tolerate new slavers.
More importantly than that, space doesn't kill the borg, which was established in First Contact when they were outside the hull of the enterprise and wearing space suits, but none of the borg were.
@@ReivecS More than that though. If seven had control over the whole cube and it's systems she could teleport them back inside since clearly transporter technology has advanced so much that the "beaming" process is so fast that you just step into a gate outside starfleet HQ and reappear somewhere else on the planet.
Agreed. I miss the Star Trek of hope.
@@ReivecS It doesn't kill them within a shield that deflects most space hazards. Armor plating can also work. One just floating in space alone though could be killed by what is in space.
kurtzman and his ilk stealing ideas from video games? No that can’t be true it’s just a coincidence like the tardigrade and the charterers from discovery being similar (pretty much identical) to Anas Abdins game.
The bigger problem is that Picard basically started stealing shots wholesale from Mass Effect while ALSO using the same base plot.
Next season they will steel from BSG and Babylon 5 lol too
@@MeNoOther those add something new or give a interesting twist. This is just coping.
BrollydictCumberbatch Montour they already stole from Babylon 5
me good sci fi uses good writing to put a new spin on old tropes. This show was just crap writing.
Not even. Talking about "stealing shots wholesale from Mass Effect" is as forced as it gets.
Levels of Similarity:
6. Homage.
5. Tribute.
4. Knock-Off.
3. Rip-Off.
2. Outright Plagiarism.
1. Alex Kurtzman.
Ty now my wife finally understands why I kept screaming at the TV, “reapers”
Ah yes reapers...
@@nicholasavasthi9879 We have dismissed this claim.
You forgot the 4th Mass Effect ending: shooting the interface. AI throws a tantrum and retracts it's offer of options, leaving you to watch the Reapers harvest the galaxy.
Learned this through personal experience. I would have to replay the last mission all over again to get the choices again, as this finishes the game, lol.
There are two reasons: 1) This ending was patched in after it became obvious even to BioWare that the original version was... bad, and thus wasn't discussed when the topic was 'hot.' By the time it came out, the discussion was largely over. 2) It sounds more like a non-standard game over, rather than an actual ending; Shepherd's (and thus, the player's) goal was to stop the reapers, which doesn't happen here.
@@boobah5643 But even in that ending the Reapers are stopped, though one cycle later. I very much like the final scene. "Its getting late, but...okay, one more story".
The 4th ending was released after someone released a video of them repeatedly shooting the AI and nothing happening.
When I played that game, I didn't like the AI thing, so I shot it. I got the cool ending where I got killed but at least I didn't take any of that AI's crap, haha.
@@boobah5643 It is a non-standard game-over, even though the credits roll, you don't get the achievement for beating the game.
Another issue with the whole premise in the ST universe is that this simplification to man vs machine completely sidelines holograms ... like the doc, vic and that sherlock villain that was created on the enterprise who are also artificial lifeforms wit largely the same capabilities as androids .... and also the Borg ... who are already there to represent technology gone to far ...
That is another thing how come the Borg did not know about this at all ... they have been assimilating Romulans and there is no way they are the only ones who know about this ....
If this question needs to be asked, the answer is *TOO MUCH.*
@Crashie-J their budget was pretty tiny (most Amazon originals have a bigger one ). And It's not like Me is actually original. Mass effect copied from other , older sci fi.
Was it just me or did the "AI serpent of doom" thingy coming through look an awful lot like the AI from the future in Discovery that attacked the shuttle and hacked it?
@@siriax1691 there are 3 seashells on every lavatory
Yes. I imagine there's going to be some loose linkage between the series.
It kinda did didn't it 0.o
@@Plush.Hunter reminiscent of the Captains Table book series. A bar outside of space and time, which only captains can access. Captain Pike went to use the restroom after some flirting with a DS9 era Klingon woman; small room, flat plate protruding from the wall, small discs by the door. He theorized it used teleporter tech to remove contaminants, but didn't risk sitting on the throne. Bartender stated (jokingly?) that, had he used the facility incorrectly, he would have been sucked into another dimension. Heh.
Control, yes. I had assumed the comparison was intentional - that Control was essentially giving itself a wormhole back into the galaxy by convincing biddable organic and synthetic lifeforms in. I think Chabon might have started that way but either backed off conceptually (as was pointed out, Trek does not have a history of synthetic v organic to build on) or just decided it was too much of a stretch.
Whats ironic is that I believe Bioware actually wanted to make Mass Effect a "Star Trek" video game. They went to the Star Trek license holders, and were denied permission. So Bioware made their own universe instead.
Even more ironic is that BioWare were given permission by George Lucas and a licence to make two Star Wars games instead. One of which is still online and active, The Old Republic. This was obviously long before Disney purchased Star Wars and Lucasfilm, they were some of the last games George was actively involved in too.
Picard : "Agnes. Report to the ship as soon as possible.... We'll bang okay?"
sooooo can we just call the like mega synths in Picard , the Reapers ?
That's what I'm doing.
So, they stole the 'spore drive' idea from that guy, and now they are copying ME? Why create original ideas when you can just steal from other sources?
That’s what research IS...
Kurtzman is a certified HACK.
I thought the same. It was like Mass Effect copying Star Trek copying Mass Effect. It's like it came full circle because I always thought the reapers were based on the Borg but even bigger and more powerful. .
Well the Borg were copied from Doctor who (they are a mix of Cybermen and Daleks )
If you ever see Babylon 5 then the Reapers have a few things in common with the Shadows. Returning periodically causing destruction. Can't say why they return, that is a big spoiler. The story of B5 is better than Mass Effect, though I really like ME. It just makes more sense. The Shadows have good reasons and believable liabilities. The ending of ME is very similar to B5 but isn't as convincing.
@@UteChewb B5 was way cooler with Sheridan telling the meddling elder races to get the fuck out of their Galaxy.
sorry but Mass Effect beats Picard hands down. the latter is trash.
I’ll admit, I’ve seen not one episode of Picard (only bits of syndicated Trek episodes here and there), not played one minute of Mass Effect. But as soon as I saw “Control”/“Synthesis”, my immediate reaction was: *WE ARE BORG*
The original "Dark energy" lore behind the Reapers actions was much better.
That was also slightly cribbed off from later seasons of TNG. Remember the Warp 5 Speed Limit thing? Supposedly all that warp travel was damaging subspace, and then suddenly they're like "Look at Voyager Flex its nacelles" and suddenly every ship in the Alpha Quadrant no longer had that problem and they forgot about that plot arc.
Same deal with the dark energy plot... the idea of the plot is that use of element zero was causing dark energy to build up in the universe and it would eventually cause a big rip millennia into the future (but still far sooner than it otherwise would on an astronomical time scale), and the Reapers were there to stop folks from using eezo in the first place. They were exploring it in Tali's recruitment mission in ME2 until the writer that came up with the idea left Bioware and they forgot about that plot arc.
Honestly a rogue AI makes more sense than the reapers just being immortal beings harvesting people to figure out a way to stop the universe from dying. Like just a bunch of big old robots floating around in dark space makes more sense as a mechanical function waiting for an instruction more than some kind of civilization, because what kind of society would they have just waiting outside of the galaxy all by themselves anyway?
Maybe if each reaper acted as a server and their entire civilization was online but the issue would still be why they make themselves out of organic species in the 1st place unless they were somehow using their collective knowledge to try and figure out a way to stop dark energy. Like maybe each reaper simulates the species they're made out of which may have been the plot if the writer didn't leave.
But that's still more convoluted and ridiculous then just a super AI trying to preserve life before it went extinct in a convenient storage device that also functioned as making other storage devices that preserve more life. The whole process being just a giant cold and calculated method of keeping sentient species immortalized
No, it was not, it was equally stupid and also had a "choose from three things that don't give a shit what you were doing before this not-actually-a-choice".
@@xBINARYGODx lol
I really liked a lot of the implications behind the Leviathan storyline, but it's a crying shame that it never got integrated into the greater narrative in a satisfying way.
I want an option to just blow up the Catalyst and free the Reapers from their eternal cycle of slavery and enslavement.
Although I didn't play Mass Effect, I still was aware of this cycle in it's Lore. But it was nice to see this in a more detailed manner than the rudimentary approach I had until now.
And to think Startrek Discovery got an ass kicking for lifting the tarrigrade game as its story and plot device.
Given that CBS is facing a court case over Discovery’s writers allegedly copying from a video game all about tardigrades and also containing characters with very similar physical appearances to what is seen on screen, it stands to reason other video games would also serve for future “inspiration”.
They won by demonstrating that the claim was complete and utter garbage. The guy had blue tardigrades that help transport a person. The case showed that tardigrades had entered the cultural zeitgeist due to the show cosmos discussing how the little water bears can survive in zero gravity and even vacuum. This lead to a glut of stories and properties folding in tardigrades. Much of the claimed background to the game was very light on detail, often modified after the fact to bend interpretation to fit the idea of similarity between the two properties, but when displayed in the cold light of day, the case against Discovery was proven to be false. Though CBS wont say it, it's fairly obvious that, having noticed a slight similarity, (imagine if the makers of the film Lawnmower Man sued the makers of The Matrix for using virtual reality in a story where the protagonist develops super powers able to dominate the computer world and even effect the real world a bit) he then proceeded to bend interpretations and claim to have developed work he simply had not in order to sue CBS.
If you cherry pick the points of similarity, ignore the differences and reinterpret your own work to make it appear much closer to the other work than it was... trhat takes malice of forethought. CBS may not be willing to come out and say it, but I will. The guy was trying to scam money from CBS. Now, I need to go scrub my mouth out for having had to defend a fucking corporation. Ick.
I've played ME1 3 times, ME2 twice, and ME3 4 times their all great games, and are deserving of being held in the 'halls of legendary games' do to their aweao.e gameplay, wide variety of storylines, and how easily the games creator was able to add new feature, and stories to the games to expand them.
These games ARE the pinnacle of gaming, in my opinion.
Along these lines, after finishing me3 I felt like I had actually gone through and saved the Galaxy.. earning that win with blood and sacrifice.. I think honestly if there were a game that give you ptsd, its Mass Effect 1,2 & 3.
According the Leviathan DLC, the Reapers have been around
for at least a billion years, not hundreds of thousands. And the Leviathan probably come up with the idea to create the AI to solve the issue of the cyclic extinctions a better part of a billion years prior to that.
oh so the reapers are even older than the leviathans? thats neat
@@Aleph-Noll No, impossible. Leviathan tells Shepard that they created the AI but it turned against them.
The Leviathan created the Catalyst. The Reapers are the result of the Leviathan's assimilation by the Catalyst.
@@thatbloomer5642 The Catalyst is the AI.
Thanks for reminding me of what it was actually called.
I see a certifiably Ingame video, I click, I watch, I hit like. The cycle repeats!
Literally had a Prothean Beacon in the show.
My first time playing ME1 I thought it was a pretty cool Trek-Like game; going from world to world as a representative of a council (Federation of planets), meeting new civilizations and solving problems with diplomacy where you can and force when you have to. It’s kind of weird that Trek is feeling more like a Mass Effect series. Now more than anything I want to see a Mass Effect series, I’ll have to settle with dusting off my Xbox 360.
Anyone else find it interesting that the evil AI destroyers looked like mechanical centipedes, because apparently civilization ending robots need to be creepy while doing so.
I think a cuddly teddy bear wouldn't have done it.
K Mart Avengers 1
I figured those were just the tentacles of a larger AI entity. I was totally expecting a Mecha Cthulhu to come through, lol.
@NotJo cuttlefish i think they're supposed to b
@@Andreas-gh6is
I can remember a scary teddy bear, was the name of the film Screamers?
I'm watching a Mass Effect video whilst wearing an N7 tshirt. I remember loving the first time I played Mass Effect.
I was on a work trip to Florida when it first came out. I played thru the entire game in one sitting after work Friday until Sunday morning. no sleep. ME1 is one of my all time favorite story driven games. I loved it.
@@cmcbunch wow. That is hardcore dedication. Hope you enjoyed it, I took a lot longer at weekends and evenings but I wasn't very good but thoroughly enjoyed the designs. I played again when I finished. Slightly different responses to choices but usually I would play how I would in real life. The one game I truly felt 'at home' playing. Well written back story and history.
@@gotellbossc4t-vb9hz I was a young man then. used to play stuff like doom for an entire weekend like that with no sleep, 4 pizzas, and four 2 liters of mountain dew. Cant do that anymore. I get to like 5 hours and my body starts hating me.
@@cmcbunch been there comrade, early hours on Project Gotham online was one too. Work became an inconvenience and a hinderance to playing! Nowadays I go for months without turning the xbox on. Maybe I've grown out of playing now. We had fun tho eh. Good times.
@@cmcbunch those were the days indeed (I'm 37 now)
So Picard chose Synthesis...
No, it's more similar to the Paragon solution to Rannoch, where the geth and quarians reconcile to rebuild their world together. Picard managed to persuade Soji to simply call off the "Reaper" invasion.
(Also, these guys were intent on obliterating all organic life, not just harvesting technologically-advanced species.)
So, Picard went for the Green muffin.
I've literally been saying this since before Picard aired
And then in the finale the reapers never came! Bummer, miss predicted the whole thing in the end.
@@Swahhillie not really, there are massive similarities, the fact that they were stopped before an invasion doesn't change that. Kurtzman has been ripping off a number of other properties for Discovery. It's just a question of which property will he rip off next.
I wish Star Trek Picard used the Tkon Empire or the Iconians instead.
the iconians are don int eh online game
badly in my opion but still ''canon'' of some sort
Star Trek online continued everything better that STD or Picard could ever hope to do. Despite it still not being that great.
I swear to god after i watched the last episode thats the exact impression i got, was "really supreme synth life, beacon? whats left is a bloody citadel" but then i realized that the cube can serve as that. And the RED choice in Mass Effect would destroy all synth life.
thank you for making this! I keep having to tell people who know know Trek but not ME that there's a REALLY suspicious line running between the two right now. This is a good reference to have.
remember playin mass effect and thinking the Reapers were a very similar concept to Alistair Reynolds' Inhibitors.. it goes full circle..
The writers of Picard, just like those of Discovery are so devoid of ideas that they would scringe any scrap from other sci-fi creations to help them overcome their own lack of imagination.
Becuase the writers of Discovery and Picard are the same people and production company.
The real irony is that Mass Effect itself the third iteration of a scenario.
First, there was Star Control,
Second, Descent: Freespace, which had everything perfect.
The third copy, Mass Effect, copied the formula badly, and
the Fourth iteration, Picard, made it only worse.
I can’t believe I’m just now realizing. That If the asari could live 1000 years how could they forget about the protheans?
Because that was 50,000 years ago, when they were effectively a stone-age people that could barely farm, couldn't read, and lacked advanced mathematics. They never forgot, they never understood in the first place and remembered them as the goddesses of their religions and lore.
THIS
That’s still more than 50 generations. In human terms that’s over a millennia. It’s no suprise that their knowledge is incomplete, it’s like studying the 10th century for us. And they never forgot, they regarded the Protheans as gods. They jsut never knew what happened to them.
Humans can live up to 100 years in our time thanks to modern medicine; doesn't mean we've always lived this long. We can probably assume the same for the Asari.
i have not, as yet, played Mass Effect so yes this video did help a lot! Thank you Rick, awesome as always. :-)
Thanks for sharing you insightful opinion and I hope all is well with you this day.
BioWare should sue "writters" of Picard TV series.
Great video I love mass effect and any excuse to talk about it I'll take thank you and keep up the great work
All of tge aesthetics in Picard reminded me so much of ME. I know ME leaned into quite a lot of overused SciFi tropes on purpose, but they tried to do their own thing with it. There's one scene in Picard, when 7 of 9 is shooting her way out of that bar, her phaser rifles look just like some of the guns in Mass Effect.
Real good video. Engrossing lore logically laid out. Top marks.
Mass Effect: Andromeda
is like Star Trek, the scanner, looking for a home, learning about alien races and uniting everyone
It can also be said that Mass Effect “borrowed” story elements from Descent: Freespace and Freespace 2. Not to mention Picard`s space “orchids” were pretty much a deliberate ripoff of the Thargoids from Elite: Dangerous.
Don't forget how ME was heavily "inspired" by Babylon 5, and star control 3. And final fantasy Spirits Within.
The problem is that Star-trek doesn't need to borrow, it has its own story and background with a lot of characters and factions.
Mass effect was a video game not a television show.
Took me less than a second of get the Mass Effect similarities from the monologue. Played all of them, so well spotted. :)
Background music/non diegetic music in "Picard" is hauntingly reminiscent of the ME sound track, no?
no
I half expected to see some Reapers trying to come through that portal in the Picard season finale.
Star Trek Picard Season 2 - Picard gets recruited by Section 31, finding the body snatchers, Harvesters, a transwarp portal leads to the centre of the Galaxy, and either Picard destroy the Collector base or captured it for Section 31. Picard warns Starfleet, and attempts to get help from them, however, rullde the ancient super synth as false. The ancient super synth descends from dark space into the milky way.
Star Trek Picard Season 3 (series finale) - The rumours of ancient super synth starts a war with the entire galaxy, Picard reinitiated into Starfleet and tasked to get all known race in the Galaxy to defeat the ancient super synth.
At the final episode, there are four endings, Refusal, Destroy, Control, Synthesis.
Picard Refused to do anything, stated that it's freedom of choice, thus the cycle continues.
Picard destroys all technology including synths. B4 is destroyed, Soji is destroyed. If watched post-credit scene, Picard's gasped for air.
Picard controls all technology including synths. Picard body is absorbed and energy is spread throughout the galaxy. Picard is in every synth or other AI-like, including holograms.
Picard uses his hybrid body (thus disintegrating) and spreads its DNA throughout the galaxy, thus both synth and organic are of both.
Since they won the Tatagrade lawsuit we are they feel that if they see anything in a game that idea is (to them) fair game to use. The JJ verse is bankrupt for ideas and this was a good idea (generally) that they borrowed.
Having never played any Mass Effect, I have to believe it was much better done than the flaming diaper dumpster fire that was Picard.
I'd be surprised if Mass Effect don't sue them right out. Lol
I’m glad that I’m not the only one who made this connection
And in the Picard finale we saw that once again the reason for the conflict between synthetic and organic life was the distrustful and fearful nature of organics. The resolution to the Picard season is exactly what Trekkies have always loved about the optimism of Star Trek. Conflict isn't inevitable. Peace can be achieved. etc.
What? The genocidal Synth Federation was contacted & is now on its way to exterminate all organic life in the galaxy. The Picard series showed that the Romulans & Federation were correct in their xenophobia. & that Picard had become a senile imbecile that helped doom the whole galaxy.
Basically, this time the story will led to synthetic vs organic plot, just like Mass Effect. The way Picard share the same plot make me think, "how about if it was Mass Effect Series?" :v
The Shivans were there first! I mean I don't know if you can find a similar idea in earlier decades of sci-fi works, but Shivans definitely preceded ME, and it would be lovely if you could at some point talk about Descent Freespace 1&2 and also the Blue Planet community mod (which also consist of 2 parts, Age of Aquarius and War in Heaven) that greatly expands on the lore and story of the original games. Those are nothing short of amazing.
Thank you it was fun to watch.
As a fan of Mass Effect and Star Trek i noticed this similarities quite early.
And i am happy that Picard ended the way it did.
However i am not sure why we don't have any mentions from the Q about this or why the Q never stopt that in the beginning. Also the cycle seems to be far longer in ST than in ME. I will soon(g) return to my ME playthroughs til i replayed my first character which i had to delete thanks to an incredibly stupid bug on my EA connected Microsoft account... I simply don't know how many hours of lost game time that was but at least 7 walkthroughs of ME 1-3...
La Sirenna (sp) definitely looks to be inspired by the Normandy. After watching your video, I want to play Mass Effect again.
I look forward to seeing how your opinion has changed since the last episode of PIC aired.
I know it confirmed for me that the similarities between Mass Effect and PIC are surface level, and mostly stuff that has appeared in Trek. Especially since the message wasn’t about Organics vs Synthetics, it was using that as a backdrop to talk about allowing fear to control your actions and especially fear of “the other” based on only words and the actions of a small group that wish to control through fear. Along with discussions of mortality, humanity, etc.
Other than those couple surface level things, everything is different.
Admit it the first time he said Reaper you air quoted and went ah yes reapers.
That was the best explanation of the ME3 ending I can accept. Why couldn't Bioware think of that? lol
I hope we see more of Picard's ancient synths in season 2 as we really didn't get any background on them in the finale other than the ancient story that along with the beacon were the basis that caused the creation of the Zhat Vash...with the strangest thing Narek said being, "some say it dates back from long before *our ancestors first arrived on Vulcan* "...either Harry Treadaway meant to say "first founded Romulus" or the writers were implying Vulcan was colonize by a race trying to survive the Ganmadan
My Shepard. Chose synthesis just like Picard!
Actually been done before in sci-fi novels - Revelation Space is a 2000 science fiction novel by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds "They soon discover that Cerberus is actually a massive beacon aimed at alerting a machine sentience of the appearance of new star-faring cultures so that it can destroy them. It is that sentience, Sylveste belatedly realises, that caused the demise of the Amarantin" Revelation Space > Mass Effect and always thought Mass Effect borrowed from that series of books a bit too much....
The malevolent AI looked more like the future drones from STD.
I think they'll try to tie some of it together in the future.
I have to say that when they described the advanced synthetic race in deep space, all I could think was "Reapers".
Mass Effect + Good Omens = Star Trek: Picard
I'm a big Mass Effect fan and I've been saying this for a bit. La Sirena even like a lot like the Normandy without it's forward most portion.
The main reason the Prothean lost was technological inferiority and the weakness towards attrition that pretty much characterize most if not all organics compared to Synthetics.
The protheans monolithic organization merely hastened their fall.
The Laviathan galactic empire rose and fell billions of years before the events of mass effect.
It is also worth to mention that the Reapers harvest is just a temporary solution they devised until a better alternative is found.
BONUS point: Given that all the tech and knowledge is maintained, synthesis could be voluntarily ashieved in a control ending, thus rendering the synthesis ending obsolete unless the player want to force it immediately upon the galaxy.
I kind of thought of Picard as drawing from Mass Effect, yes, but also quite a bit from New Battlestar Galactica, in the whole human-appearing synths thing and so on. There are many similarities throughout and the comparisons are interesting. That said as soon as the Admonishment was revealed for what it was I was shouting how Picard was going full Mass Effect, and I kind of like it. I especially like the way it's turning the concept on its head.
And we'll see those Trek "Reapers" again. They're not going away. Not by a long shot. They may not have come through this first time, this... Sovereign at the Citadel, if you will... but they'll find a way. They'll return.
I've never played Mass Effect and I've come up with stories like this, with repeating cycles and such. I've even based some parts on the Borg. The idea of the Borg being like a galaxy cleansing virus for instance that starts up, wipes everything out, leave, and the cycle continues.
So I wouldn't ever assume something like this is stolen or borrowed from, especially when the lore and intrigue of the medium itself, Trek in this case, is so diverse and has plenty of entry points into the idea itself.
If I could take Data and the Borg and come to similar conclusions, then so could the writers, without Mass Effect.
In fact, I think it's only logical. Look at how absurdly advanced Data is, and just jump from there, to the Borg (which we've seen in the movies) and imagine the progression and expansion and boom. I can easily get to any of the aspects of Picard.
I like how the whole Relay Network trap is an example of why the Prime Directive is so important.
You'd need to explain that; the Prime Directive is about interfering with people, and the relays didn't have people. Unless you count the Keepers, and it's not clear that you should since, as far as I'm aware, they're just meaty robots.
Unless... maybe your claim is that the Prime Directive would be cited as a reason to not leave time capsules for successor species? Not sure how that helps.
STP literally just copy-pasted stuff and it shows, especially at the end. The big fight with the space flowers and the Romulan fleet literally looks like it was a reskinned version of the ME3 final fight. Not to mention the portal scene that would've let in an eldritch looking robo-monster from outside the galaxy. Even without this nonsense the show would suck, poor Picard was just an old man who was always yelled at by arrogant women. A husk (pun intended) of his former self that stood up to beings like Q.
I’m Commander Shepherd and this is my favorite channel in the Citadel.
Always enjoy a excuse to talk about mass effect 💙.
Gotta admit, just now realized the Inusannon do look a lot like the abominations; though I don't think they are, are they? I thought Cerberus was just turning people from omega into them.
To be fair, I remember wondering why we never saw any of the A.I. issues actually explored like I had seen it in other SF works. The closest we had come to was the borg.
"We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it... This exchange is over."
I caught this similarity pretty early. I am a huge ME fan - although we can pretend Andromeda never existed. Picard felt and looked more like a mid-grade fan film, minus the attention to detail. That final episode cemented it... Dear god it was bad.
i stopped playing games before mass effect was released... so, yes, this was *very* helpful and appreciated, thanks
I'll be honest. You should probably give Mass Effect a chance. It's a great story. One of my fav Sci-Fi storyline of the last 15 years.
A little nitpicky technical comment. The derelict reaper found in mass effect 2 is 37 mio. years old, which means 740 cycles of 50.000 years in between. The Leviathan of Dis (another reaper) was estimated at 1 billion years old, which would be 20.000 cycles of the same 50.000 years in between.
Somewhat more than "hundreds of thousands of years ago". :)
I'm glad I'm not the only who made that connection
Well,the comments section is probably the best crossover dialogue I have ever seen.
Another thing, anyone else notice how Rios' ship kinda resembles the Normandy a little? I doubt that was a coincidence.
thanks for that, never been into gaming but I love the storyline you presented of mass effect. It is an awfully interesting universe.
Mass Effect (Game 1-3, ans what else is there Mass Effect related, not that I know of ;-) Other than some books I haven' read yet) is ONE of my all time favorite sci-fil games. And when they came out I of course picked up the Star Trek, Star Wars and other sci-fi references, and so now the whole thing has gone full circle back to Star Trek! :-)
I went the unification route if anyone wants to know. I had organized peace between the geth and their creators, helped the kling... I mean krogans with their genetic disease and done all the paragon things the trilogy had to offer so destruction of al artificial life was not an option, control over the reaper felt a bit "we become them" sort of thing so that was off the table. Besides, I was a huge supporter of the Joker-Edi matchup so it could only help with that. ;-)
Nice recap!
Picard is the complete opposite of the Mass Effect Reapers... The advanced AI the synths were trying to contact in Picard sought to destroy organic life in order to persevere synthetic life and the Reapers in Mass Effect were trying to stop the progression of synthetic life by destroying both synthetic and organic life (unless they learned to work together, and that's why the protagonists of both series ultimately prevailed).
Alistair Reynolds' book series, Revelation Space seems to be the predecessor to Mass Effect also. But many a scifi trope is 'man versus his creation' or 'man versus the gods', so combining that is not copying. However, the Admonition is totally from ME3. The corridors are already there. The Borg used them. The Iconians (from Trek lore) in STO also borrow from the idea. It doesn't make sense the Federation resorted to fear and turned on all synthetics based on a conspiracy. It's kind of goofy.
Loved M.E.
"The cycle " continues as Picard now borrows from M.E where as M.E was inspired by Star Trek/ Wars etc...
Well, the thing is, most of the people involved in the production of the show probably played Mass Effect games. And given how there is a debate going on at the moment on whether or not building AIs is a good idea in the first place, I can see how all these thing would influence these people when making Star Trek Picard.
And then there's the fact that people write what they know, so every new TV show or movie is a product of its time and the people who made it.
People who made TNG grew up watching and reading different things than people making Picard.
Glad I'm not the only one that saw a similarity.
Sp spoilers for masseffect 2 as well? Or is that some DLC Javik?
and as expected Star Trek Pictard chose the syntheses option where humanity gains immortality by either being able to endlessly copy one's mind into a superhuman body or by mind uploading