Mass Effect took the world by storm wh꧂en it was first released back in 2007. It had one of the most expansive and deeply developed video game universes out there. It had a deeply thought out plot and a highly intricate galactic society with dozens of alien races that were explored in depth.

Th🌃e internal encyclopedia in the game contains entire books worth of data on the worlds, the species, the places, individuals, quest items, and a whole myriad of stuff to show that the developers weren’t cutting any corners, as they wanted to make a world as expansive as possible. This didn’t just apply to minutiae of the objects and locatio🅘ns, but also to every single planet you could visit, as they had a biography page that was richly detailed.

The characters are also major scene stealers, if not the main focus. Actually scratch that, they ARE the best thing about the game series 🦩by far. Each character is a fully developed person in their own right with their own personal history, motivations, and personality. They’re also so appealing on so many levels that if they just made a show about them ☂going about their daily lives it would be a massive hit. They really knew how to make the players fall in love with them. Thankfully they didn’t hire George R. R. Martin as a writer, otherwise he would have killed them off just to see our reaction.

But even in the most developed of worlds, there are still a lot of questions to be asked. They presented so much information, but at the same time they gleefully hid a lot of factoids, or just neglected to add even more information for fear of opening more holes than they could close. But regardless of that, here are some questions that we absolutely must have answered from Mass Effect.

15 ꧋ How Do The Turians Reproduce?

Turians are a militaristic alien race in the Mass Effect universe. They’re like a combination of Sparta and the United S🅺tates Marine Corp, except IN SPACE!!! (I promise it’ll be the last time I make that joke).

All Turians are required by age 15 to enlist in the military and learn how to fight. Their culture is so militaristic that they have no concept of civilians in any conflict. That being said, you know what else is on the minds of many 15 year olds other than venting all the adolescent rage into military training? It’s sex. Mass Effect goes into the reproduc🧸tive habits of the Asari and Salarians in quite some detail.

That being said, they have absolutely no information on how Turians reproduce. Why? Is it beওcause they’re so into being a militaristic race that they’ve forgotten what emotional bonding is like? Are they a bunch of Chuck Norr✤is'? As in, they cannot love, only not kill? If that’s the case, then were do baby Turians come from?

14 Wh♛y Do Aliens Have Ample Chests?

Yeah, this one is probably a cheapshot, but it will always raise some interesting questions. They have such a variety of alien body shapes in many species, which is refreshing, but for some odd reason, too many humanistic aliens seem to always have breasts. Is there an in-universe reason for this or are they just putting it in to appeal to a male audience? Or maybe it was jus⭕t there so people would ask this quest🍨ion?

I mean there were quite a few alien species where they could have added them for comedic effe𓃲ct, like the Hanar and their long tentacles that could easily l🌺and them a job in the Japanese adult industry. Or the Elcor, with their large bull-like bodies, could clearly use a pair of udders for the females. I’m just kidding by the way, no one wants to see that.

But while still on the t🌜opic of sexual reproduction…

13 Why Do Asari Never Lo𝔉ok Like Both Parents?🍸

The Asari are an alien species that is somehow capable of reproducing with another species and making healthy off-spring. This applies to even ridicules and blatant violations of biology. In Mass Effect 2, there is an Asari female who is being pursued by a smitten Krogan who writes a lot of heartfelt love poetry to her (no seriously, I can’t find anything creepy about what he’s saying. The guy is totally in love with for real) and you can convince her to give the guy a chance and date him. They end up marrying if you do. Whether or not they had any kids, I don’t know, but in Mass Effect 3 he ⛦ended up dying in battle and leaving behind one last poem to his now widowed love.

So we know the Asari can have kids with almost anyone, but if born of an Asari, they look 100% Asari witho𝓰ut even the slightest influence from the father. This is not how sexual reproduction works…

12 🌞 How Did Legion Know Destroying The Heretics Was 'right'? 🐟

Legion is one of my favorite characters in the Mass Effect series. He’s a robot friend who is part of a robot race that are surprisingly complex for a bunch of people who were conceived to basically be terminators. Now there’s a pretty 𓆏big part of his character arc that involved some kind of robot religion that is partitioning his program into numerous subroutines that are turning them into religious fanatics. Alright, so that wasn’t entirely how it was described, but I’m poking fun at a robot who must think like a computer.

With that being said, the ultimate choice rests on you, Commander Shepꦏard, to destroy the heretics or to rewrite their programming to remove their heretical beliefs. Now he tells you he doesn’t want to make that call because his own inner runtimes haven’t reached a majority vote or something. But despite this, if you choose to destroy the Heretics, he says you made the ‘right’ decision. Then, if you choose to rewrite them, he says you made the ‘wrong’ choice. What gives here?

11 Why Is The Krogan Genophage So Inconsistent🐟?

The Krogan Genophage is a specifically engineered disease to increase infertility in Krogan females to stop the Krogan from having ཧlots 💞of children and expanding in the universe.

The reason for the Genophage was answered in game and forms a major plot between the Salarians and the Krogan. But that’s not the question. The question is why is the Genophage portrayed so inconsistently? The disease apparently works by making most of the Krogan eggs unviable for fertilization… or does it make their females infertile? Krogan females also are written inconsistently. Do they experience pregnanc🉐y like mammals or do they just lay eggs? Even with the Genophage, the Krogan have a fairly long life span of around 100 years or so. Females apparently produce one surviving child out of the 1,000 eggs they lay, meaning they should still have a massive amount of children despite the Genophage.

10 How Did The Reapers Sneak Up🐻 On Earth?

The Reapers are the bad guys in the series and those who believe in them are terrified of their arrival. So, how did they get so close to Earth and attack it without anyone noticing? Earth in the Mass Effect universe has some pretty long range sensors and, on top of that, they also have a lot of sensors planted on the moon and Mars. Did everyone just take an extra-long break from their jobs for the Reapers to emerge unnoticed? Did the Reapers managed to knock out all communications in the solar system? If that was the ca🗹se, it should have raised so many alarms and red flags that they should've known they were coming. What happened exactly?

9 💎 How Do The Reapers Sustain Thems💦elves?

There aren’t that many actual Reapers in the Mass Effect universe, which is why when one is knocked out, the game is usually over or it at least progresses into another act within the same game. You knock off Sovereign in the ⛎first game and several more in ME2, and those are just the ones we see. Yet, despite these causalities, the Reapers just keep coming. This is a pre🌠tty big deal and here’s why.

In-game, the Reapers only produce one additional Reaper per c𒅌ycle. A cycle is when the Reapers allow civilization to build, before they come along and destroy it. Now this happens once in many millennia (achieving a space-born civilization takes time and a lot of growing pains). So with all the Reapers being knocked off left and right, how do they sustain themselves without going extinct? It isn’t the current cycle that kills the most. Civilizations generally don’t go down with⭕out a fight and they did say that many cycles before have killed two or more Reapers as well, so where are these guys coming from?

8 No Time Di💙lati꧙on For The Normandy?

Time dilation is one of those aspects that should be taken more seriously in Science Fiction, but rarely is. In Planet of the Apes, they did most certainly use it (and i🔯t becomes evident what happened towards the very end of the movie that a LONG time had passed since Charlton Heston left Earth), but most sci-fi pieces with space travel just doesn’t bother, even if it is something that they should be concerned wi🌺th.

During the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2, brave Commander Shepard and his stalwart crew go to the galactic core to destroy the Collector Base in a daring attempt to save the universe. Even if traveling faster than the speed of light won’t cause time dilation, being that close to a massive black hole will. Yet, not a single bit of it is evident either in-game or from the reactions of the characters. This is pretty huge and anyone with a mild interest in science wou♔ld just be dying to know what the writers were thinking.

7 ܫ Why Can't You Use Enemy Weapons?ཧ

Mass Effect is an action shooter with varying game mechanics depending on which one in the series you’re currently enjoying. And like most shooters, there are a wide variety of shooty gun thingies that go pew pew or boom boom, depending on how childish you’re feeling and what kind of gameplay style you’re going for. That being said, there are also a wide variety of weapons in-game that you can use and modify if you ﷺfeel like playing future gunsmith.

But one thing that is strange is that while you can discover new weapons, you cannot pick up guns from fallen enemies like you can in most other action shooters. There is no in-game explanation as to why you cannot do this, since you can go ahead and change your load out from mission to mission as you see fit. There is also an interesting situation in Mass Effect 2 where Garrus gives you his sniper rifle to pop-off a few bad guys, but ✃you cannot pick up the same rifle from one of the dozens of Blue Suns mercenaries that you killed along the way…

6 𝕴 Why Aren't The Languages Detailed?ꦍ

This one is really strange. As I mentioned before, the sheer level of detail in the Mass Effect universe is astounding. However, there is one aspect that could have made the Mass Effect universe even better and much more alive… language. They do give a handful of phrases and some names that are clearly in an alien language, but they don’t flesh out any of them. I understand that creating languages is something that is very time consuming, but for a game with the size and budget of Mass Effect, it could ha✨ve made it even better. There's need for complete languages like Esperanto, just having more than an alphabet for a few, a basic pronunciation system, basic words and pronouns, and basic grammar, which wouldn’t have been that hard to do. It would have mad♏e for a much more interesting game and attract even more gamers to the franchise.