00:00Have you ever been playing Mass Effect, and on the planet of Iloos wondered,
00:04these statues, what's their deal? What are they? Where did they come from?
00:08Well, at first, you'd be safe in assuming these are the Protheans,
00:11the long-dead galactic-spanning civilization that mysteriously disappeared long before the events of the game.
00:17But then Mass Effect 2 comes along, and the main enemy of the Collectors are revealed to be converted Protheans,
00:24and don't look anything like these statues.
00:26Okay, so this conversion makes them all bug-like. Sure, fine.
00:31But then in Mass Effect 3, you meet a Prothean, and he looks just like the Collectors.
00:36So, the Iloos statues aren't Prothean. Then what are they?
00:40Well, from a dev perspective, it's probably just a retcon.
00:43But from a lore point of view, there's a really interesting implication.
00:47The Mass Effect universe is trapped in a cycle,
00:50where galactic civilization reaches a certain point in advancement,
00:53which triggers the Reapers to emerge.
00:56They destroy and consume all sentient life before retreating to dark space
01:00and leaving the galaxy to recover and restore anew, continuing the cycle.
01:05So, while these statues may not be the preceding long-dead civilization from humanity's perspective,
01:10they're actually the long-dead civilization that preceded the Protheans.
01:15It's even more daunting when you learn in Mass Effect 3
01:17that the Protheans were the primary race in the last cycle to fail to stop the Reapers.
01:23So, these statues to the Protheans were monuments to their impending doom.
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