Gaming plot holes

[Shocksplicer]

Wow, second page and still not a single person has brought up an actual Plot-hole.

That's got to be some sort of record...

Though you make a fair point, because most people often jump onto characters making stupid decisions when they could have made better ones as "plot-holes", I don't think you are entirely right. A plot hole is when one piece of information clashes and is contradicted by an earlier given piece of information, which is still said to hold true.
From the first page, I can't seem to argue against this dude's point.

Not much of a plothole, but you see it all the time. Especially in Skyrim.

You're entering a dungeon that has been sealed off for centuries. It's clearly evident by all the seals that you're the first adventurer for a long time who enters here.
But somehow, EVERY dungeon is brightly lit by candles and torches. Fresh ones.

Of course, it's a mistake to think for a single second how this makes no sense. It's done so you don't have to carry a torch for 50% of the game. But there's one quest that makes it impossible to not notice this.
You're in a secret part of a castle that hasn't been entered by anyone for centuries, with the possible exception of one person you hope to find here. Again, you find the place brightly lit, fresh blood, partially lived in. You're looking for clues like these, because you want to know wheter that person is still here. Spoiler alert, he/she hasn't been around for another lifetime.

I mean, it literally is a contradiction. How could these torches have been lit and this place freshly lived in if no-one has been down this secret castle area for over a lifetime, because only one person knows and goes into this place and he hasn't been there for ages.

Though I don't recognize this questline from skyrim, (So I could be missing information, like he really is there or someone else has recently been looking for him just before you) it seems legit to me.

Or i'm ill-defining a plot-hole. I mean, I guess it doesn't "ruin" the plot, but it is a hole that has not been covered up with anything other than "because it is a game and it is convenient for there to be light"

It's not related to the plot in any way though. It's just a contrivance that exists for gameplay purposes, like regenerating health or being able to hold 400 arrows at once.

NO.

What the actual fuck, I can't even...?!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Every game in which the Umbrella Corporation plans to make a buck out of turning everybody into zombies has yet to get around the 'profit' plot hole.

Yeah, but the same can be said of any story that features an evil corporation of some sort, like say for example Weyland Yutani from Aliens. How much money are they going to throw away trying to harness the xenomorphs before they realize that trying to harness them is not profitable??

 

[Euryalus]

um humanity, or ancient humans did not push the flood out of the galaxy, and in either halo 4 plot the flood was following humanity for food or the plot before halo 4 came out that the flood randomly appeared in milky way, possiblely from another galaxy. In either case the forunners couldn't handle the flood, in halo 4 they were weaken by the conflict with the ancient humans, or were just plain unable to deal with them with anything short of mass geonicde in the story before halo 4.

So in a sense the Didact has a point with humanity leading the Flood to the Milky Way, as well as engaging with a war for what no reason really. Petty good reason to be hostile to a species that openly attacked you without good cause and lead another hostile life form to you. Though that is in the halo 4 plot, before that yea he would have little reason to hostile to humanity.

Yes, they did.

http://www.halopedia.org/Human-Flood_war

" The war destroyed countless human-populated systems and cost more than a third of humanity's population and significant military resources. Despite the setback of two massive wars ongoing at the same time, humanity managed to prevail over the Flood and still nearly prevailed over the Forerunners, as well."

And the flood were created as a weapon by the precursors to "test" humanity.

http://www.halopedia.org/Flood#Origins

"the surviving Precursors put into action a plan that would involve a kind of test that would come to the Milky Way galaxy... This test would serve as a means to eliminate the Forerunners, ensure greater peace and unity amongst the galaxy's inhabitants, and to test whether or not humanity was worthy of the Mantle. This test took the form of the Flood, an all-consuming collective parasite. Around this time, an ancient Gravemind was created from 12 or more unspecified creatures."

The humans lost several colonies in the war against the flood and attacked the forerunners in order to survive.
They weren't blameless or completely innocent, but they didn't just attack for no good reason.

http://www.halopedia.org/Human-Forerunner_War#Origins

"Driven to desperation after losing many of their colonies in their conflict against the Flood, humanity invaded a Forerunner-controlled sector of space and annihilated fifty defenseless systems in which the Forerunners had resettled other species. After the indigenous populations were eliminated, humanity replaced them with human colonies to strengthen their hold over their new territories. Humanity looked to forcibly take new worlds anywhere, including those inhabited by Forerunners.[10] However, not all of this seemingly irrational violence was driven by the will to expand; instead, human fleets were sterilizing planets with Flood infestations.[11]"

 

[BlindedHunter]

here's one for every zombie game EVER!
how are there so many zombies? If zombies eat their victims who exactly is it that's turning into a zombie?
Where does the food go, they don't have a digestive system so they'll end up bloated with rotten food right?
What about flies? They feast on rotting meat (zombies) and implant their eggs so in a matter of days all zombies will turn into walking maggots which assuming they stop reproducing (the maggots) it would roughly take them around 10 days to eat the whole thing!

so every zombie game ever, explain to me how the zombie apocalypse isn't over within 10 days?

Naturally, a great deal of movies/games/books gloss over or don't reveal the specific details of these things because they aren't significant to the actual point of the movie/game/book in question. However, this kind of thing has been pretty well hashed out to several reasonable forms by those of us in the world that are significant fans of that kind of apocalypse.
My favorite take is Max Brooks', seen in The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, both of which I highly recommend.
Anyway, to answer those questions as best as I can, using Brooksian zombies:
Infection travels fairly easily through bodily fluids. The most commonly brought up transfer is the bite, but there are other ways it can happen as well. In World War Z,

Spoiler

a huge catalyst in the outbreak was the black market organ industry, which ended up with infected organs being transplanted into people all over the globe from the original hotspot

. Blood contact will usually do it as well, so if you had a cut, and a close call with a zombie that is dripping with infectious fluids, you're likely to end up infected. Even with bites, zombies don't always get the opportunity to fully consume someone, possibly getting distracted, or the person getting away. The majority of zombies originate in the initial outbreak, when there is a lot of confusion, a lot of panic, and a lot of close contact.
Zombies do end up overfilling their bodies with flesh, and pack their gut full, but, with Brooks, this wasn't considered a weakness. They aren't terribly impeded by it, partly since they can only manage to pack in so much, and will end up just overfull, and less deterred by it than we would be since they have no reason to feel ill after consuming so much.
And finally, most conceptions of zombies involve a great many insects being repelled by infected flesh, or unable to use it, possibly dying if they try. There are however details in Brooks' take that limit the time a zombie will be a threat, mostly involving muscle falling apart. I don't have the book with me, but I believe he marked it as something that could occur totally over the course of a year, so a year after the last zombie is created you end up with a zombie that is no threat.

OT: ... oh yeah, there was a topic!
Probably the things I consider the most annoying plot holes (I think they could be considered plot holes, being inconsistent internal logic), are two things in more recent GTA games,specifically San Andreas and GTA4: drinking as an activity, and feeling remorse for some murder in the plot. One of the things I like about the GTA games is that there is an interesting, and I think often unnoticed, theme of the major players in the game having various addictions that the main character forgoes, in the plot at least. In GTA4, for example, Niko turns down an opportunity to drink while with one of the NPCs who drinks, (and also snorts crack), and is portrayed in a fairly poor light. Similarly, he turns down other offered vices, to the point it could be considered an anti-drug PSA - but then, with Roman or friends, you can get completely wasted and drive a car home drunk. You can do something that totally contradicts a pretty consistent theme in the plot. Similarly, the characters are often specific about who they wish death on in the plot, and sometimes make a very big deal of it, but I don't think you can go through that game without running someone over at least once - and there is no mechanism to feel remorse for that. It is a bit contradictory.

 

[Silvanus]

Super Mario Bros 3. So, the Koopalings break into the castles, use magic wands to transform the kings into various animals, and then escape back onto their doomships. Makes sense so far.

But then they just float right there in their doomships, above the castles, waiting for Mario to come and defeat them? Madness. Why didn't they escape back to Dark World?

 

[Orks da best]

um humanity, or ancient humans did not push the flood out of the galaxy, and in either halo 4 plot the flood was following humanity for food or the plot before halo 4 came out that the flood randomly appeared in milky way, possiblely from another galaxy. In either case the forunners couldn't handle the flood, in halo 4 they were weaken by the conflict with the ancient humans, or were just plain unable to deal with them with anything short of mass geonicde in the story before halo 4.

So in a sense the Didact has a point with humanity leading the Flood to the Milky Way, as well as engaging with a war for what no reason really. Petty good reason to be hostile to a species that openly attacked you without good cause and lead another hostile life form to you. Though that is in the halo 4 plot, before that yea he would have little reason to hostile to humanity.

Yes, they did.

http://www.halopedia.org/Human-Flood_war

" The war destroyed countless human-populated systems and cost more than a third of humanity's population and significant military resources. Despite the setback of two massive wars ongoing at the same time, humanity managed to prevail over the Flood and still nearly prevailed over the Forerunners, as well."

And the flood were created as a weapon by the precursors to "test" humanity.

http://www.halopedia.org/Flood#Origins

"the surviving Precursors put into action a plan that would involve a kind of test that would come to the Milky Way galaxy... This test would serve as a means to eliminate the Forerunners, ensure greater peace and unity amongst the galaxy's inhabitants, and to test whether or not humanity was worthy of the Mantle. This test took the form of the Flood, an all-consuming collective parasite. Around this time, an ancient Gravemind was created from 12 or more unspecified creatures."

The humans lost several colonies in the war against the flood and attacked the forerunners in order to survive.
They weren't blameless or completely innocent, but they didn't just attack for no good reason.

http://www.halopedia.org/Human-Forerunner_War#Origins

"Driven to desperation after losing many of their colonies in their conflict against the Flood, humanity invaded a Forerunner-controlled sector of space and annihilated fifty defenseless systems in which the Forerunners had resettled other species. After the indigenous populations were eliminated, humanity replaced them with human colonies to strengthen their hold over their new territories. Humanity looked to forcibly take new worlds anywhere, including those inhabited by Forerunners.[10] However, not all of this seemingly irrational violence was driven by the will to expand; instead, human fleets were sterilizing planets with Flood infestations.[11]"

Hmmm I didn't know that, and the games are once again a bit short on the story...

 

[Malkav]

Though I don't recognize this questline from skyrim, (So I could be missing information, like he really is there or someone else has recently been looking for him just before you) it seems legit to me.

It's in the Dawnguard questline. It appears nobody knew the place or was even looking, not to mention the entrance mechanism was incomplete. Since you don't know what to expect, you're told to look for clues. The abundance of lights and the fresh looking blood look like clues, or at least give a strong impression this place is not deserted. Just remembered the lab is lit and full of alchemy ingredients, some of which should be rotten or shrimpled by now.

But yes, it's not plot-related clues and mostly for convenience and aesthetics. But deliberate or not, it's still details that are part of the experience and that carry the plot, and they're contradicting what you find out later. As minor as it is.

Its because of the daedric lord Balfatam the lord of the never ending flames who's cult has been going around Tamriel for millinea lighting torches that will stand untouched by time until he returns in all his well lit glory.

Damn, and I thought Boethia servants had it rough! Nice of them, though

 

[Rastrelly]

Because you proove Saren has gone wrong in the first 2 hours of the 30 hour game, he can't walk on the Citadel as a 'regular spectre' anymore without being arrested.

As far as the council is aware, the Omega relay is no threat and would be a waste of resources sending ships there to guard the relay.

Give a reason for ME3, so far I have seen one legitamate plot hole for ME3, and the rest has just been angry fan boys trying to make people think the game is bad when it really isn't.
(Also, your 'plot holes' for ME1 and ME2 are not plot holes)


To the other people here who realise that most of these aren't plot holes and are actually people who just have questions about stuff that didn't get answered because it would be done so in blatant exposition, why don't we make a thread that is just titled "Questions about certain games". This way people who have no idea of what a plot hole is will stop filling up plot hole threads. I will make the thread if someone tells me how to make threads.

1) The problem is that neither Sovereign nor Saren needed the Eden Prime beacon at all. They already had all they needed - support of Matriarch, support of spectre and a f-ing Geth fleet. They just had no need in Conduit at all. THIS is the main plothole of the game - villains lead by the almighty AI of Sovereign didn't need to go to Eden Prime, Feros or Noveria, they didn't even need those Krogans, what Sovereign would obviously point out to Saren. All that really mattered is to stay in the shadows and use the opportunity to get Saren to the command console, which would be really easy if Saren would be present on the Citadel at the moment when Geth attack'd begin and nobody would really care about council chamber.
2) My point stands. It is impossible for such an anomaly to be not investigated. There WOULD be at least a research station, but most possibly there would be a military garrison. For God's sake, a f-ing Collectors starship comes out of that thing once in a while, that's already a reason to control that thing! And if there was a military base (I assure you, in the world that works under laws of common sense it would be no matter what political consequences it would call) a pair of f-ing Turian battleships or even cruisers would solve the collectors problem in a matter of seconds. As the Normandy has clearly shown in a 1-on-1 battle of a frigate and a battleship-class object.
3) All right. The Reapers attack. As we remember, Reapers usually were planning to strike through the Citadel to get rid of the central interstellar government that usually situated at the Citadel. Quite logical tactics, I must admit. Later it is clearly shown that the Citadel poses no threat to the Reapers, so, yes, there was no reason for them not to start their attack from blocking the Citadel. They had no hurry and no one would spot their fleet - the galaxy is too big for that. After that it would be much easier to attack whichever planet they want. But suppose they did what they did. How long would it take for them to wipe out, say, the Turian resistance? As the planet surface clearly indicates - not that much. For example, why the hell reapers decided to attack the surface with GROUND FORCES?! They needed husks? Maybe. But it would be wise to gather husks AFTER all the resistance is broken. And the resistance would be broken if, for example, the Reapers would attack the moonbase. With their beam weapons there is no problem to make a couple of shots in that direction. Poof! No Turian military command.

Next: the construction of the Crucible. I suppose everyone understands that this thing could not be built in less then a year +-? It is clearly indicated that construction of space stations of the same size takes about 7 years. But the way the story flows it seems the Alliance needed a week or two at most! Wow! And it is an unknown technology with technical documentation yet to be decrypted (and I mean not only Prothean language, I mean also the way of drawings are designed, the way the materials are indicated, etc.) And whatewer the finances and effort were thrown into construction of this thing - it's ENORMOUS. It's impossible to build it that fast.

And this way nearly everything in ME3 can be deconstructed. The storyline simply does not work! The way the Reapers invasion is presented there is no way to survive it.

Instead of making this stupid military drama BioWare could simply make the story start, say, a year or two before the invasion. And within this year the player had to find a way to stop the reapers. And the faster it is done - the more effective will be the galaxy's defence. All that peacemaking lines would actually work. All those resolutions would actually work. And the ending would be satisfactory: you did what you did. You found all the data on Reapers, you found the date concerning Crucible. You organised Council races into a force able to build that thing within the year or two. And you met the Reapers at full strength of the Galactic Community. This game would be logical, well-paced and really engaging to play, both leading to the climactic battle and allowing to make the third part more strategic. But no. We needed a hollywood-like "space epic" with no sense at all.

And please notice: I said nothing about the endings. But I can. They suck. Both gameplay-wise and story-wise.

 

[bug_of_war]

1) The problem is that neither Sovereign nor Saren needed the Eden Prime beacon at all. They already had all they needed - support of Matriarch, support of spectre and a f-ing Geth fleet. They just had no need in Conduit at all. THIS is the main plothole of the game - villains lead by the almighty AI of Sovereign didn't need to go to Eden Prime, Feros or Noveria, they didn't even need those Krogans, what Sovereign would obviously point out to Saren. All that really mattered is to stay in the shadows and use the opportunity to get Saren to the command console, which would be really easy if Saren would be present on the Citadel at the moment when Geth attack'd begin and nobody would really care about council chamber.

Saren needed the Conduit so he could transport hundreds of Geth to the Citadel quickly so as that they could take over the Citadel and stop ANYONE from signaling out to other colonies what is happening. They also need the Citadel to act as a relay for the Reapers to make it through, thus it is easier to surprise everyone by teleporting large units armed to the teeth into the Citadel than to fly into an armed station and hope you make it far enough to reach the console. Saren never stepped foot on Fero, Noveria or the lava planet Liara was on, he sent Geth units/Benezia to do all that shit. As for the research lab planet, Saren was trying to figure out the prolonged effects of indoctrination, which we can then assume means that he is worried about his own mental stability. As for the Krogan 'cure' it has been established that the Reapers use organics to fight organics. They were basically taking the toughest race the galaxy had and making them work for the Reapers. As for Eden Prime, it can be assumed Saren went there under direction from Soverign, who probably didn't want other organics getting the Prothean warning.

2) My point stands. It is impossible for such an anomaly to be not investigated. There WOULD be at least a research station, but most possibly there would be a military garrison. For God's sake, a f-ing Collectors starship comes out of that thing once in a while, that's already a reason to control that thing! And if there was a military base (I assure you, in the world that works under laws of common sense it would be no matter what political consequences it would call) a pair of f-ing Turian battleships or even cruisers would solve the collectors problem in a matter of seconds. As the Normandy has clearly shown in a 1-on-1 battle of a frigate and a battleship-class object.

It is also stated that they normally work for live trade exporters, and the likely hood of them taking large numbers of sentient species is too low to waste the resources on. Also, the Collectors are thought to be immaginary by many, kind of like the Reavers in Firefly. Your point doesn't stand as being a plot hole, it just shows that in this universe the reigning council believe that 10 people of any species being abducted every now and then is not worth sending a ship/s out to stand by just in case a relatively docile race pops out of the relay. It's a waste of resource, and while WE as gamers know what the Collectors get up to, many pople in that unverse do not. You can't blame them for complacency when they lack any evidence that the Collectors are a serious threat. So yeah, again this is not a plot hole.

3) All right. The Reapers attack. As we remember, Reapers usually were planning to strike through the Citadel to get rid of the central interstellar government that usually situated at the Citadel. Quite logical tactics, I must admit. Later it is clearly shown that the Citadel poses no threat to the Reapers, so, yes, there was no reason for them not to start their attack from blocking the Citadel. They had no hurry and no one would spot their fleet - the galaxy is too big for that. After that it would be much easier to attack whichever planet they want. But suppose they did what they did. How long would it take for them to wipe out, say, the Turian resistance? As the planet surface clearly indicates - not that much. For example, why the hell reapers decided to attack the surface with GROUND FORCES?! They needed husks? Maybe. But it would be wise to gather husks AFTER all the resistance is broken. And the resistance would be broken if, for example, the Reapers would attack the moonbase. With their beam weapons there is no problem to make a couple of shots in that direction. Poof! No Turian military command.

The Citadel is the easiest way to deal with a cycle, but it is not the key. Harbinger basically says to the player in ME2, "Just cause you stopped that plan, does not mean we haven'tgot back up plans". They use Husks for psychological warfare, and if they have bodies of the dead lying around, they can convert our numbes into theirs. It's like zombies, one kills a human, that human turns into a zombie, there are now 2 zombies, they each kill another human, there are now 4 zombies. As the people in Mass Effect loose soldiers/civilians, the Reapers gain soldiers. As for why they didn't attack the Turian moon, well it's a case of big planet with millions of people on it as opposed to 1 moon with a small army of roughly 1000. It's also easier to kill civilians and turn them into Husks than it is to kill a soldier who is willing to blow themselves up to kill their enemy.

Next: the construction of the Crucible. I suppose everyone understands that this thing could not be built in less then a year +-? It is clearly indicated that construction of space stations of the same size takes about 7 years. But the way the story flows it seems the Alliance needed a week or two at most! Wow! And it is an unknown technology with technical documentation yet to be decrypted (and I mean not only Prothean language, I mean also the way of drawings are designed, the way the materials are indicated, etc.) And whatewer the finances and effort were thrown into construction of this thing - it's ENORMOUS. It's impossible to build it that fast.

Let's be generous. Let's say that it took them 6 months to build the Crucible. It starts ofwith just the Aliiance and then gradually more and more tech savvy species start to help build it. Assuming they work night and day (which is implied) it is plusible that they could build the Cruible. Unlikely yes, but still plausible.

Instead of making this stupid military drama BioWare could simply make the story start, say, a year or two before the invasion. And within this year the player had to find a way to stop the reapers. And the faster it is done - the more effective will be the galaxy's defence. All that peacemaking lines would actually work. All those resolutions would actually work. And the ending would be satisfactory: you did what you did. You found all the data on Reapers, you found the date concerning Crucible. You organised Council races into a force able to build that thing within the year or two. And you met the Reapers at full strength of the Galactic Community. This game would be logical, well-paced and really engaging to play, both leading to the climactic battle and allowing to make the third part more strategic. But no. We needed a hollywood-like "space epic" with no sense at all.

Mass Effect was always going to be a war drama. If you don't like it that's fine, but your points seem half assed more than actually well thought out. This is a thread about plot holes and you have yet to point out a single plot hole. You've pointed out things that annoyed you/didn't quite understand, and I've been able to answer these questions due to paying ttention to the game and not needing it to spell everything out. Mass Effect is Bioware's space epic, and the idea of a trilogy where in which te first 2 games is just making friends and researching he enemy doesn't make for an exciting trilogy. Let's look at the Lord of the Rings, Fellowship, Two Towers and Return of the King all have climactic battles in them. Same can be said for the Star Wars tilogy. Three films were linked together by an overarching plot but were segmented into 3 parts, each of which had an interesting climactic conclusion that would have an effect on the final chapter. Just cause YOU didn't like the Mass Effect trilogy, does not mean the trilogy in whole doesn't make sene. I HATE Half-Life, but I don't spend my time bagging it and saying it makes no sense because I didn't enjoy the game.

And please notice: I said nothing about the endings. But I can. They suck. Both gameplay-wise and story-wise.

The endings don't suck, YOU personally don't enjoy the endings, which is fine, but they don't suck. Your choices do effect what choices you have at the end and their effectiveness. I know people who loved the ending/thought it was fine/didn't enjoy it, but admit that it made sense and wa plausible. So, yes, you and a vast majority of people (If we are to believe the internet) disliked the endings, but that doesn't mean they're bad, or that the series in whole makes no sense.

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

Mass Effect 1 - Why didn't Saren just take the Beacon with him? Or better yet why didn't he just blow it up? This is one of the most confusing parts about the series to me. It makes no sense.

He didn't expect someone to be right behind him, disarming all those demo charges he ordered the Geth to set up.

EDIT: Whoops, got ninja'ed.

 

[UBERfionn]

With respects to ME2 and camera footage. Given the advanced technology it would have been very easy to fake footage, so why bother. If they didn't belive what Shepard was telling them they woudl not have belived the pictures either. The Council probably would have not belived Shepard unless he dragged a Reaper ship back to show them. And maybe not even then. They seemed really thick about some stuff.

Matches? Lara didn't know there would be a fire already made at that location.

Another M from what I heard is a plothole pretending to be a game. So don't worry about it.

And yet an audio file was enough to convince them that Saren was evil...

 

[Kaymish]

what i always wondered from mass effect is how the reapers were still around after all this time and hundreds of cycles if the reapers only make 1 cap ship and a handful of destroyers a cycle and the organic races destroy a couple of cap ships and a bunch of destroyers a cycle would the reapers just ya know run out of reapers?
this current cycle has already cost them at least triple their cap ship production and there are bits in the lore that indicate the citadel fleets have blasted a few more cap ships and you personally kill like 2+ destroyers and if they other fellas can take down a few capships im sure they can make easy work of a few destroyers and thats on top of them not believing you and being totally unprepared

normally i can suspend my disbelief and i don't notice plot holes unless they are as big as the hole EA dug with their PR and this one is a doosey

 

[Kyrian007]

There are a few plotholes in Metroid: Other M.

* whine, whine, whine, whine... etc.

There, I think that covers about a quarter of them.

I can address every one, most just with a snarky flippant remark. Mostly because I hated OM less than most.

I'll respond to just one of my favorites though.

Why didn't Adam authorize the Varia Suit until I was at the peak of a freaking volcano?

Because unless the gamer was hopelessly ham-fisted or unfortunately disabled... this wasn't hard to just breeze through... just like going through heat damage areas without the varia suit wasn't particularly hard in 2 previous Metroid games (but it's even easier in OM, seriously if this troubled you... be a better gamer.)

 

[Tohuvabohu]

Maybe not so much a plot hole, but an extreme plot contrivance (At least I think so, I don't even know but whatevs.)

Anyway, it's regarding FF8. And this video sums up the cosmically massive problem better than I can...

http://youtu.be/j0zPzhugNBg?t=4m45s

(Question, how do I embed videos starting at a certain time on here? Whenever I try to, it just embeds the video at the start instead of the time I've chosen.)

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

Whew, snip

Okay, lots to get to.

1)So, the Conduit. Now, as I understand it, no one knew what the Conduit was. It probably wasn't until Saren reached Ilos that even he or Sovereign became aware that the Conduit was merely a mass relay leading to the Citadel. So, if you are Sovereign, and your many-million-year old plan has suddenly gone awry when your signal to the keepers doesn't work, and you know it is because of some prothean technology called the Conduit, what do you do? Do you immediately bum-rush the Citadel in the hopes that when you get there you can figure out what went wrong? Or, as an ageless space cthulu, do you take your time in figuring out what the Conduit is and what the protheans might have done to your signal, to make sure that the next time you try it actually works out? Sovereign wasn't going to gamble on this, he needed to get it right. In fact, probably the only reason he moved when he did is because Shepard had begun taking his plans apart, and he needed to act fast before the whole galaxy knew what he was about.

This is why he has Saren collecting beacons, trying to find info on the Conduit and what it did. Saren only came to the conclusion that it was on Ilos at the same time Shepard did, since he also had to go to Eden Prime to check out what this newly discovered beacon might say about the Conduit, to Noveria to get the Mu relay location from the Rachni, and to Feros to get the Cipher from the Thorian. Virmire is a bit harder to explain, but I imagine that he and Sovereign thought the Citadel would be a lot easier to secure if they had a few hundred krogan to go in and wipe out C-Sec forces. Again, remember that Sovereign has, literally, all the time in the world. He can wait centuries if need be to lay his plans, as long as no one finds him out. Which Shepard finally did.

2)So, next point. The Omega 4 relay. No. Listen to yourself. The Council WOULD NOT send a military force to Omega. If they had, that would constitute an ACTUAL plot hole, being a complete contradiction to their statements in the previous game that they would not send any fleet into the Attican Traverse. The Terminus systems, where the Omega relay resides, is a fractured and unstable region, but they fear the combined power of the various governments and organizations there if they had reason to unite and fight a perceived invasion from Citadel Space.

Whatever threat the collectors pose, it is not enough to start a galactic-scale war. The collectors, as Anderson himself says, "have always been considered a fringe threat." They only deal in the Terminus systems, and they only ever appear rarely. No sane Councillor would even propose a military expedition to the Omega 4 relay.

As far as a scientific research station, that's still debatable. Quite possibly they did have one there at one point. All they found, apparently, was that the relay only let collector ships through, and anyone trying to follow them never returned. This is not a major concern, it just means you have to tell everyone not to go through the relay and leave it at that. Anyone foolish enough not to heed the warning only got what they were asking for. It's a scientific curiosity, but not a top-priority one. There are plenty of other forbidden relays leading who-knows-where for them to wonder about, including ones that are not all the way out in dangerous and lawless space.

3)Okay, it is hard to defend some of that. I will concede that it makes no sense to build the Crucible that fast. It is unfamiliar technology, it is nearly the size of the Citadel itself, and the timeframe probably wouldn't allow for that. As the game goes on you do continue to pool resources into the project, until near the end you have most of what remains of the galactic community building the thing. And the game actually place over several months, not weeks. But still, it's a lot to buy that they could decode the plans, understand the concepts, and then construct it that quickly.

Also, yes, there is little sense in the reapers allowing themselves to be bogged down in ground battles. You do eventually (at the end) find out that they are concerned with preserving as much of a civilization as possible, and that may be why they would take such a tactic. But then you remember that all over the previous games you find evidence on abandoned planets that the reapers have no issues with completely obliterating a population from orbit. So yeah, it's damn unlikely that they wouldn't just do that to all these pesky organic armies, especially since they don't have the advantage they have always had of starting the war by killing all the galactic leaders and taking control of the mass relay network.

But the thing is, since it's a third person shooter, they needed to have the reapers do what they did or else Mass Effect suddenly becomes a space combat game. Really, the problem is the way they had set up the reapers in the previous games. It was a corner they had no way out of other than to just ignore the issue.

And the reason they began with the reaper invasion instead of your idea....It's more exciting this way. The game gets to be about the horrors of war. Also, since you've spent the first two games essentially doing just what you describe, preparing for the reaper invasion, it would get repetitive the third time around.

 

[TheTygre]

An oldie, but still;

In God of War 2, when Kratos had that portal to go back in time, why didn't he just go back and stop himself from killing his family or making a pact with Ares to begin with?

Son, Nox is disappoint.

 

[Shrack]

Don't know if its a plot hole, but Dead Space had something that bugged me. You play an engineer. Just some shmook who goes to the Ishumora(spelling?) to fix the thing. The necromorphs start to show up and you kill them. Tons of them. Yet, an escape pod with 1 fucking necromorph docks onto a military ship and takes out nearly the whole damn ship. Either this is a plothole or that necromorph was the reincarnation of Bruce Lee.

All it did was have to kill a single person and it probably killed a lot more than that before being put down. And that given the necomorphs the material to work with. The main character of the series had an advantage because he read messages from other people how to destroy some of the necromorphs when he got on to the Ishimura. The military types didn't have that info.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

http://youtu.be/j0zPzhugNBg?t=4m45s

(Question, how do I embed videos starting at a certain time on here? Whenever I try to, it just embeds the video at the start instead of the time I've chosen.)

You see the t=[time] bit?
You replace that with &start=[time]

 

[bafrali]

snip

We are talking about plot holes not game design flaws. So yes Hell run was a plothole because it depicted Adam as a moron who neglect the safety of those under his command even though story is trying to pass Adam off as a military genius and a passionate soldier.

Now what were you saying about whining?