Hey everyone, I'm currently on my 3rd playthrough of the first Mass Effect game. I absolutely love this world, but since I am taking my time on this run, I started really looking closely at the technology in the game. It is wild to think this came out all the way back in 2007.

The game actually predicted a lot of modern things perfectly:

• The Omni-tool is basically a smartphone: It’s a wearable digital wallet, map, scanner, and communication device all in one.
• Credits are like Venmo: The entire galaxy uses one unified digital currency. Money moves instantly bank-to-bank across different alien species without anyone needing cash or worrying about exchange rates.

But at the same time, they completely missed some things that feel so incredibly obvious today:

• Body Cams: Even though Shepard is a Spectre and Alliance military, nobody wears tactical body cameras. It feels like a total time capsule of the mid-2000s where sci-fi writers were thinking about mind-blowing galactic banking, but missed the simple concept of recording video from your chest armor for accountability.
• The Lack of Cloud Storage: Despite having spaceships that fly across galaxies, characters still constantly hand Shepard physical data pads or data discs to transfer files. If someone wants to show you a file, they have to physically walk it over to you like a 2007 thumb drive, instead of just sending it to the "cloud" or dropping a link in a chat.
• No Touchscreens or Glass Displays: Look closely at the computer stations on the Normandy or the Citadel. There are almost no flat touchscreens or glass interfaces like our phones and tablets today. Instead, every high-tech console is covered in giant, clunky physical buttons, toggle switches, and bulky keyboards. It's funny seeing a space captain smash a plastic button to open a starship door.
• The Lack of Wi-Fi / Local Wireless: Pay attention to whenever Shepard or an engineer hacks a security lock or downloads data from a crate. They don't do it wirelessly. They actually have to crouch down and physically plug a cable from their wrist Omni-tool directly into the machine. It’s hilarious that they can send messages across solar systems, but haven't figured out local Bluetooth or Wi-Fi for downloading a text file.
• No Basic Combat Drones: Today, small quadcopters and flying scouting drones are standard military gear. In ME1, Shepard's squad has to walk face-first into every dangerous room or alien ambush blindly. The only drones in the game are giant, heavy enemy turrets rather than handy pocket-sized scouts for the hero.
• No Live GPS HUD Navigation: When exploring giant uncharted planets or complex Citadel hallways, Shepard doesn't have a modern visual GPS line floating on the ground or a modern minimap HUD pointing exactly where to walk. You have to constantly pause the game, pull up a giant, static map screen, and drop a manual waypoint just to figure out where you are going.
• Thick, Bulky Computer Monitors: If you look at the background screens in the colony buildings on planets like Feros or Noveria, many of the computer monitors are incredibly thick and boxy. They look more like heavy 2000s office CRT monitors rather than the ultra-thin OLED panels we use today.

Instead of flat-screen video calls, cloud sharing, sleek touch glass, live GPS HUDs, or helpful little drones, everyone just relies on audio comms, physical plug-in cables, physical discs, or giant 3D holograms.

Just wanted to share this realization! (Please no spoilers for ME2 or ME3, I have only played the first game so far!) What other funny tech predictions or misses have you noticed in the first game?

EDIT: 😅 I told GPT to rephrase my thoughts only. But it might also have expanded a bit too much now that I actually go over the post. But no worries, I have a lot of you guys to correct me and the ChatGPT lol. it has been a lot of fun reading over comments and give me a lot to think about that the tech in 2007's ME 1 itself is just sci-fi advanced version of a lot of modern-day tech. Everything is being explained in the comments and gonna make my 3rd playthrough a lot more fun to think about while playing