On a different matter: Are the visuals associated with Biotic powers supposed to be real, or just for the benefit of the gamers? And if they're the former, has anyone worked to turn them off?
Its a bit confusing really.
For biotic powers like other noted its most likely due to masses of dark energy doing... well... something. I imagine there is a nice bit of science to explain it in universe. Biotic powers tend to flare blue-purple IIRC.
There are a few instances of mass effect field of a different color, though this may be just due to holograms covering it up. One of the best examples is the green levitation field used by the Prothean beacon on Eden Prime. Other fields are more or less invisible, like the ones around camera drones and a few other flying drones. Tech tends to produce a nice light blue color. Thought that's also usually when lots of dark energy is present.
Another oddity is that the standard shield in ME (at least for ships) is basically a reactive system that triggers to swat objects either stopping them out right (normal shields) or deflecting them (cyclonic shields). That means that shield shouldn't be visually present unless their blocking something, implying that the shield flare just after it recharges is most likely either a hologramatic effect or for the player's benefit. On top of that barrier becomes an odd power, esp if you can cast it on others as it, either is a constant field that can deflect bullets (some sort of stable rotating field?) or it wielder can work in bullet time which is silly.
(Also this makes the power of capital class shields insane, they can drop the power of an atomic bomb on call, get close enough to the enemy and you can shoot them with your shield projectors... boom, dark energy weapons are very nice, just need to solve that range issue)
Tech shields also deserve a call out as they have a holographic component, and also work very differently then normal shields.
Its important to note that biotics and technological use of eezo are implied to be somehow qualitatively different I'd guess that its due to biotic being a function of many separate sources of dark energy all working together. While most technological uses just use one source per application.
So yeah I'd say that any large amount of dark energy causes the light show and if you're clever or build the field right it might even be a different color then blue/purple due to light physics. Low levels of dark energy on the other hand won't show up.
And now to go do some thing a little less nerdy....
Oh and hi new guy.
