We're taking on gaming's biggest sci-fi franchise
to talk about zombies.
whit, what the?
Hello internet.
Welcome to Game Theory, the most controversial
in gaming.
So I love the Mass Effect games and I can't wait
to get my hands on the newest installment.
In fact, I haven't been more excited about a new
release since Kirby Super Star in 1996.
And for a show where we look at the science in games,
there is so much to cover here.
Dark matter.
Biotic Powers.
Futuristic weaponry
But today, forget about all of that, because for as
brilliantly realised as this game is, one thing has really
bothered me.
The main character is literally a zombie.
For those of you who don't know and don't care if I spoil
it, in the first 10 minutes of Mass Effect 2, Commander
Shepherd, your character, DIES in the cold reaches of
space.
Predictably, in the next scene, it's two years later and
he's magically brought back to life by an experimental
and highly expensive procedure known as the Lazarus
Project.
And that's it, that's ALL we know.
And not once does this raise anything but mild curiosity.
or a small joke from anyone, including Commander
Shepherd himself!
"Weren't you dead?"
"Pretty much, now lets mine for Palladium."
I don't know about you, but if I was officially declared as
dead for any length of time I would express some
interest in what had reanimated my decaying, lifeless
torso.
For a game where EVERYTHING you look at activates a
new codex entry, the Lazarus Project is just glossed
over.
Really, Mass Effect?
You're willing to explain to me how this "element zero"
reduces the mass of my ship to allow to travel faster
than the speed of light, but you won't give me details on
a process that made my character into a planet hopping
zombie hero of the universe?!
[Sigh]
So today, Game Theory fills in the gaps.
Just how close are we to reanimating the dead?
Could there be an actual Lazarus Project in the year
2183 when Mass Effect 2 begins?
And what could all of this say about potential plot twists
in Mass Effect 3?
Let me throw in a disclaimer here.
This episode will be shocking and disturbing, because
think about it.
We're talking about real world doctor Frankensteins.
and often times, their work deals with animals.
Don't get me wrong!
I won't show you anything questionable, I promise.
You can look that stuff up for yourself, but still, just
talking about it is pretty out there.
Anyway, have you been sufficiently warned?
Great!
Now we an talk about disembodied heads in Soviet
Russia.
Ha!
How's that for a segway?!
Some of the earliest and most well documented studies
in reanimating the dead came in the late 1930s, when a
scientist named Sergei Bryunkonhenko began
developing a machine that would take the place of an
organisms heart and lungs.
He called his machine the "Autojecter."
In 1940, he filmed the results of his research in a short
movie entitled "Experiments in the Revival of Organisms."
It's now in the public domain and easy to find on
YouTube in its entirety.
Over the course of 20 minutes, he walks us through his
groundbreaking discoveries, starting first with the
revival of single organs.
He demonstrates how he has been able to get an
isolated, canine heart to pump normally, surgically
remove lungs to oxygenate blood and most shockingly
of all, how his newly developed autojecter is able to keep
a decapitated dogs head alive.
But not only alive, responding to stimuli like sound,
touch and taste.
His grand finale consists of draining a dog of it blood
for 10 minutes, then attaching the autojecter.
This revives the dog and he's healthier and happier than
than any zombie dog you've seen in resident evil.
Today many conside rthe video a hoax or merely an
artistic re-staging of his experiments, but there's no
doubt that Dr Bryunkonhenko's work had a huge
influence on medical equipment and medical
procedures of today.
In 2005, the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in
Pittsburgh, the same people responsible for mouth to
mouth resuscitation and CPR took Sergei's mad
scientist routine one step further, not only draining the
animals blood like some sort of FDA-approved vampire,
but then pumping in a cold saline solution, chilling the
test subjects body to 44.6 degrees Farenheit,
or 7 degrees celsius if you're smart and use the Metric
system.
In this way, they were able to delay cell death, keeping
their dogs dead for 3 hours before bringing them back to
life with a high success rate.
However, while testing, some cases weren't quite as
successful, and the test animals experienced brain and
motor damage, causing them to quite literally exhibit
zombie like behaviours.
A year later, in 2006, the procedure was shown to have a
90% success rate with Pigs.
Zombie Pigs!
That's something you don't see in House of the Dead.
Eh.
Not really that scary.
But as anyone who watches Mythbusters knows, pig
tests are only one step away from humans, and in
September of 2011, news spread that the US's Food
and Drug Administration had approved this sort of
procedure for use in hospitals.
So if you live anywhere near Harvard, Yale or Touson,
Arizona, where these methods are being put to use, just
know that, those zombie's might not have eaten your
neighbours, they might BE your neighbours.
Now look at this Lazarus Project clip from Mass Effect
2.
Clearly, there is some fluid being injected into
Shepherd's system that reawakens his cells, and here is
changed from rotting to rejuvenated.
Crazy futuristic stuff right?
Nope.
Forget high-tech space stations centuries in the future,
this exact scene happened 4 years ago
[in Minnesotan accent] In Minnesota, don't ya know.
The centre for cardiovascular repair at the university of
Minnesota is on the frontlines of research that could
lead to customised organ transplants.
In 2008, they revived dead rat hearts through a process
very similar to the Lazarus Project.
Using a powerful detergent, they washed away the
decaying cells in the heart, leaving behind only the
organ's basic connective tissue.
They then injected heart stem cells taken from newly
born rats into this collagen scaffolding.
In four days, the heart had been repaired and was
beginning to beat normally.
They speculate that this method can be used for
practically any organ, and unlike transplants don't run as
high a risk of being rejected by the host body becuase
the organ is regrowing using tissues already present.
It's like Netflix, but with body parts!
Organs on demand!
So all told, I'm nearly 100% confident saying that in 170
years, we will have the technology to bring the dead
back to life.
As you can see, we're practically there already.
But here's the thing.
In Mass Effect, it doesn't matter, Lazarus Project or not,
Shepherd could not have been brought back to life.
The problem is that he didn't have a normal death like
getting decapitated by the commies or having his blood
sucked out by stealers fans.
Instead, he died out in space, which carries with it a
bunch of bizarre effects.
In the Dig Dug episode, I briefly touched on death by
vacuum, but let's revisit it here.
At most, an astronaut with a compromised suit can last
15 seconds before losing consciousness from lack of
oxygen.
On earth, he would be able to last a couple minutes by
holding his breath, but in a vacuum, there's no air
pressure, meaning that any oxygen in the lungs will
will expand outwards, rupturing the organ and leaking
fatal air bubbles into the blood stream.
But that's the least of Shepherd's concerns.
The lack of air pressure would mean that in a matter of
minutes, bodily fluids would start to BOIL, cold boil.
On Earth, we associated boiling with heat, but in a very
low-pressure situation, fluids can boil without even
being warm.
This is called Ebullism.
It would utterly destroy Shepherd's brain, and THAT is
why the Lazarus Project cannot work the way it's
portrayed in the game.
Miranda, who apparently shops at the same stores as
Zero-suit Samus, states that Cerberus's goal was to
completely resuscitate Shepherd, making him into the
exact man or woman he/she was before he/she died.
But following the timeline presented in the game,
Shepherd's brain would have been boiled beyond repair,
leaving no possible way to reconstruct the unique layout
of nerve connections that makes him either the
upstanding Paragon or ass-kicking Renegade that he is.
Try as you might, you just can't repair something that's
turned to mush, especially when it's as complicated as
the Human brain.
What does this reveal about Mass Effect's lore?
Basically that the game's lied to us.
If we are indeed playing as a revived, zombie Shepherd
as the game wants us to believe, then his floating body
would have had to have been picked up mere seconds
after this scene for his brain to remain intact.
To react to this quickly, Cerberus would have had to
have known about the attack on the Normandy in
advance.
Or in other words, they would have had to have been in
cahoots with the Collectors.
But evidence in the Mass Effect comics series negates
this, leaving us with only one option.
Thus!
I propose that the real Shepherd is dead beyond repair
and that the Lazarus Project, is actually a means of
creating clones that are tricked into believing they're the
real Shepherd.
Very reminiscent of the movie Moon.
This theory is also supported in the Mass Effect
Redemption comics, where Miranda, upon seeing the
recovered Shepherd, comments that they may not be
able to restore him, that he's in worse condition than
expected.
So could we have stumbled across a hidden plot point?
WILL this plot twist appear in Mass Effect 3?
We just gotta play the game and find out, all I can say is,
Will the real Commander Shepherd please stand up!
Anyway, it's all just a theory.
A Game Theory.
Thanks for watching.