Reflecting back to the past, the original Mass Effect was my favorite video game. I played it numerous times before the release of Mass Effect 2, eager to lose myself in BioWare’s sleek narrative space opera and its interstellar enigmas. Back in 2007, I was still fairly young, just a college student who wasn’t old enough to legally drink, and a lifelong Star Wars enthusiast grappling with my strong dislike for the prequel films. Mass Effect perfectly resonated with me.
Fast forward to a couple of decades later. I have recently finished reading a series of novels known as the Revelation Space series, initiated by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds. In the early 2000s, Reynolds released a trilogy along with a standalone side novel, a prequel, several novellas, and a collection of short stories. All these works are set within his unique and extraordinarily imaginative science fiction universe that seems to have profoundly impacted the gaming industry. Having now read the series, it’s hard not to recognize how some of Reynolds’ most brilliant and peculiar concepts have influenced various games—Stellaris, Destiny, Dead Space, Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect are just a few that come to mind.
I finally got around to reading these novels because they are often cited as inspiration for Mass Effect’s Reapers. In Mass Effect, the Reapers are a race of ancient machines that periodically emerge to annihilate any galactic civilization that might have developed. In Revelation Space, published in 2000, we find the Inhibitors, another race of ancient machines that likewise appear to destroy any advanced civilization that begins to rise. While sci-fi authors have historically been fascinated by their ancient space civilizations, these two concepts are particularly similar to overlook.
While the influence of Revelation Space on Mass Effect is quite evident, I am not accusing BioWare of copying—like all stories, Mass Effect is a collage of numerous influences that preceded it. It embodies as much Star Wars, Babylon 5, and Starship Troopers in its essence as it does Revelation Space, and Mass Effect is not truly hard sci-fi like Revelation Space is. BioWare may have drawn inspiration from Revelation Space, but it channeled those ideas in very different directions. In my humble opinion, none of these differing paths can hold a candle to Reynolds’ vision.
The Revelation Space series narrates the distant future of human expansion into the vastness of outer space and some of the monumental peculiarities they encounter along the way. Due to Reynolds’ expertise as an astrophysicist, Revelation Space is characterized as a piece of “hard” sci-fi that deeply explores the mechanics of its universe, even when depicting the unimaginable. This penchant leads to a unique narrative structure that may not appeal to everyone in traditional ways—it is more about challenging conventions than being purely a matter of competence.
Revelation Space is a vast series, but the core of it is a 400-year epic beginning in the 26th century during an archaeological dig on a remote planet named Resurgam. The dig revolves around an alien race known as the Amarantin, who were driven to extinction one million years prior, just as they began to reach for the stars. As we learn later in the book, the Amarantin fell victim to the Inhibitors, machines that arise and obliterate any civilization advanced enough to leave their home solar system, unintentionally triggering any of the signaling devices left by the Inhibitors scattered across the galaxy. And while humanity had managed to expand within a 20-light year bubble surrounding Earth without triggering the Inhibitors, that streak of luck is coming to an end.
However, with Revelation Space’s hard sci-fi foundation, this conflict unfolds over an extended period. One of the primary tenets of this universe is that faster-than-light travel is not as feasible as one might imagine—those who attempt it, in a delightful twist, tend to inadvertently erase themselves from history during their attempts. Without any FTL means, travel between solar systems takes an exceedingly long time (like years or decades), thus making it impossible to traverse the universe casually.
Throughout the narrative, we delve deeply into a plethora of fantastically bizarre ideas. We encounter alien beings like the Shrouders (entities inhabiting restructured and compressed areas of spacetime) and the Pattern Jugglers (seemingly sentient oceanic bacteria that influence all sorts of strange and fascinating phenomena to human perception). We also encounter the human Conjoiners, who have computer systems embedded in their minds, granting them a semblance of a hive mind, and who have been communicating with future iterations of themselves to be better prepared for the inevitable arrival of the Inhibitors. Moreover, there are numerous intriguing cyberpunk themes within the novels, including discussions surrounding AI, digital consciousness, and various forms of body modifications. And I would be remiss not to mention the neutron star housing an alien computer accessible only by physically destroying one’s body.
It’s remarkable to note that Reynolds did not quite possess the narrative finesse to execute everything he aimed to achieve with these novels—Revelation Space is extraordinarily ambitious for a debut. The most common criticism of these earlier works specifically concerns their hurried climaxes; however, I believe this issue arises from Reynolds’ intense dedication to contemplating every…
It’s the complete draw through aspect. When he’s in that mindset, natural halting points just don’t appear due to one element consistently leading to another. Consequently, his conclusions are often abrupt and excessively polished. Yet, the journey to these conclusions is consistently so incredibly unexpected and enlightening that I can overlook these missteps.
It’s that distinct element of the Revelation Situation universe that, almost two decades later, allows me to process some lingering subconscious frustrations I’ve harbored regarding the Mass Possess trilogy without fully realizing their nature. I’ve always perceived Mass Possess 2 as the trilogy’s weakest link—it presents a plethora of intriguing individual narratives, yet they fail to coalesce into a cohesive whole. Cerberus and the Illusive Man remain completely enigmatic and largely nonsensical; the human Reaper is a significant letdown, and you spend the entirety of the game engaged in side missions that are mostly disconnected from the main quest or each other. I recognized what elements of that game vexed me, yet I couldn’t quite grasp the why behind it.
However, after perusing these novels, I’ve surprisingly found myself intrigued by that human Reaper once more, because I now possess a clearer understanding of what it signifies about how the higher-ups at BioWare opted to convey Mass Possess’s narrative. The concept surrounding the Reapers posits that when they obliterate a civilization, they “harvest” individuals by dismantling them and uploading their essence to create a new Reaper. Mass Possess 2 doesn’t want you to ponder this too deeply—it presents this process merely as a threat that must be eliminated at all costs. So, you blast the human Reaper until it collapses, and then you face a choice regarding what to do with the remains, which ultimately feels inconsequential.
Nevertheless, the human Reaper could have been a genuinely captivating concept if BioWare had followed through with their original idea, which was that the Reapers were actually uploading these individuals wholesale into a digital format of some kind—gathering civilizations, more or less intact, and storing them in Reaper confines. Essentially, it’s almost the same