The novel Mass Effect: Deception is getting torn to shreds by fans who have found multiple errors and inconsistencies.
Book tie-ins to popular videogame franchises are hardly a new fad. In fact, I recall checking out S.D. Perry’s Resident Evil adaptation a few years back and finding it to be a decent read. Unfortunately, book tie-ins don’t always do justice to their source material, as proven with the most recent and apparently error-filled Mass Effect book tie-in, Mass Effect: Deception.
Fans of the series have gone through the novel very thoroughly and complied a massive Google Doc detailing the dozens of issues present in the book, ranging from timeline inconsistencies related to other ME novels, inaccuracies with how technology works in ME, to simple plotholes in the story. There are so many mistakes that one ME fan even went so far as to set his copy on fire out of frustration.
Here are a few (remarkably thorough) examples of mistakes found by fans:
10. Batarian pirates slave-raid on the turian homeworld of Palaven – while not impossible, this is incredibly unlikely due to the militaristic nature of turian society, one consequence of which is possession of one of the largest military fleets in the galaxy. And even if there had been a raid on Palaven, the turians would have likely responded with overwhelming military force. [Error: Lore]
27. Two volus are described as wearing masks that don’t completely cover their faces – This would result in instant death for a volus, as they must wear completely sealed environmental suits that provide both the ammonia atmosphere and high pressure they require to survive, and keep them isolated from the oxygen-nitrogen mixture breathed by other species, which is poisonous to them. [Error: Lore]
4. Hand Weapons that fire at “relativistic speeds” – for those who don’t know it the term, relativistic speed means close or apprising the speed of light. The term is usually used when talking about speeds higher than 10% of C – considering that a sand corn fired of those speeds will have the impact of 90 kg TNT and also that a main gun on a Everest class dreadnought only fires at 1.3% of C I would say that relativistic speeds might be a bit high. [Error: Technology]
Unlike the previous novels, which were written by Mass Effect’s Lead Writer Drew Karpyshyn, Deception is written by William C. Dietz. A veteran author of several original sci-fi novels and many others based off Halo, Starcraft, and Resistance: Fall of Man, Deception marks his first foray into the Mass Effect universe. Sadly though, it doesn’t look like anyone at at EA or BioWare did much proof-reading of Dietz’s novel, let alone provide him with a guidebook on how the ME universe works… Like the comprehensive codex found right in the games.
Source: Kotaku
Published: Jan 31, 2012 08:30 pm