Aliens play a huge role in Mass Effect. I mean, obviously. It's a game set in space where one of the core themes is how different races approach problems, ranging from the tiniest disputes to huge galactic threats. I love the aliens in Mass Effect, but I recently wrote about how Starfield needs to avoid Mass Effect's biggest problem – that problem being humanoid aliens. I mean, the asari are great but they're just smart blue ladies, right? There are some actual aliens in Mass Effect – the fascinating hanar come to mind – but still, I'd rather Bethesda's epic thought about alien life a little differently. Part of the reason it seems like Mass Effect is just a bunch of multicoloured humans with tentacles or scales is because those are the ones the game pushes forward. Peer beneath the service and much more fascinating tales start to emerge – tales like those of the keepers.
If you're a fairly casual Mass Effect player – or if you rushed through the first game to get to the second and third entries – you might not even really know why the keepers are so special. No judgement here, either. My first playthrough was casual enough to not get to the bottom of them, and in my most recent Legendary Edition playthrough I hit the accelerator, only doing what was necessary to complete the game (and keep Wrex alive) before switching to a completionist approach for Mass Effect 2 and 3. The keepers are brilliant lore-wise, but goddamn do you have to work for that lore.
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In the first Mass Effect game, you'll talk to a salarian near the start and he'll rope you into his research into the keepers. Citadel law says no one is allowed to interfere with the keepers, but he doesn't feel his scanner qualifies as interference. After a brief chat, you can accept the side quest and scan them on his behalf – after all, you're a Spectre, and the rules don't apply to cops.
Of all the quests in Mass Effect, this is the most gruelling. The keepers are hidden in various places around the Citadel, with no way to tell which ones you've already scanned beyond looking at a guide (here's our All Keeper Locations guide, by the way), and even then, the map doesn't highlight the ones you've visited, so you might still be shuffling around wondering which ones are left. That's why most people see the keepers as nothing more than an irritant invented to increase their playtime. The collectathon nature of the quest might have been designed with that in mind, but as far as the keepers themselves go, there’s so much more happening under the surface.
You learn more about the keepers as you scan them, although this information is doled out in such a way that you only really get rewarded for your efforts towards the end of your scanning adventures. It turns out that the keepers are older than every race on the Citadel – they were bioengineered by the Protheans, the civilisation that existed in the previous cycle before the Reapers wiped them out. We later learn that the Citadel and the mass effect relays were put in place by the Reapers to ensure evolution took place along their predetermined paths, but that's a separate issue. What this means for the keepers is that when the next wave of civilisation arrived after the Protheans, they discovered this simple – yet effective – uncommunicative race that maintained the Citadel while seemingly having no other wants or purpose. By the time Shepard arrives, the 'do not interfere' rule is set in stone, but how did those early encounters go? Imagine you've just ventured out across space for the first time in this cycle's history, and you find technology far beyond your understanding. When you reach what is clearly a galactic hub built by long dead civilisations, you find tiny green gardeners scuttling around the place, keeping the plant life alive and maintaining the machinery. They don't talk, they don't even look at you. Surely, they have the answers to all the questions you've ever dreamed of, but they won't answer any of them. They won't even look at you.
By the time Shepard's story starts, everybody has come to terms with how the keepers work, and so they're shuffled away into the background – a minor curiosity amongst a much bigger story. We don't do an awful lot of discovery in Mass Effect; most of the places we travel to have already been colonised and instead have much more active stories to tell – stories about events and conflicts instead of unknowable mysteries. We start our story too late for us to be present for the mystery of the keepers, and it's a shame there's never any opportunity to explore them in the way they truly deserve. It's to BioWare's credit that there’s such deep lore around every aspect of the game, but the downside is there's so much we never get to explore.
Next: Mass Effect’s Bars Are Proof Of Its Great World Building
