253 réponses à ce sujet

[Sunnie]

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

Sunnie22 wrote...

I think rewriting the Heretics is the most compassionate thing to do, which I believe makes it a neutral/Paragon choice. Its not about brainwashing, the Geth are a collection of software, software that can easily and painlessly be altered. we write programs all the time, and then alter the code because it didn't do what we wanted, or wanted to add or change it to do something else.

But the question is whether your average code is sentient? How is re-writing the Heretics any different from brainwashing a human being? At the fundamental level, how are the two separate from each other? You've still altered the way they think.

It's more about choosing the lesser of 2 evils. Lets say you just commited a serious crime and were sentanced to either death or having your brain reprogrammed . Would you choose to become a different person or throw your life away?

[knightnblu]

I let Shiala go because I didn’t perceive her to be a threat anymore.



I let Rana Thanoptis go for the same reason.



I saved the Council to a) preserve continuity of government, as a SPECTRE it was my duty to do so, c) the loss of such a dreadnaught would be devastating re: trained crew and firepower.



I blew the collector base because of what Mordin said about technology before I assaulted the base. Also, the Reapers want us to proceed down that path and I believed that by doing so we would be playing into their hands.



I hid the evidence at Tali’s trial because she was a friend and that is what she so desperately wanted me to do in order to protect the reputation of her father.



I re-wrote the heretics in order to strengthen the Geth faction because they would grow stronger and hopefully make the Quarians think twice before launching a campaign against them and thus I would preserve both forces.



I saved the Rachni for two reasons: a) by killing her I would be terminating her entire species, the rate of growth of the Rachni would provide me with a substantial ally against the Reapers when the time came.



I try to play ME as if there were real world consequences to my decisions. Therefore, if I were to be faced with the exact same circumstances and conditions in real life, I would change nothing. On subsequent plays I do tend to lean toward the metagaming paradigm.

[BaladasDemnevanni]

Sunnie22 wrote...

It's more about choosing the lesser of 2 evils. Lets say you just commited a serious crime and were sentanced to either death or having your brain reprogrammed . Would you choose to become a different person or throw your life away?

Hmm, not to turn this into a philosophical debate, but some would say they are exactly the same thing. I could be wrong, but I think Locke writes on the subject. He considers the question of complete annihilation vs. losing your identity. Most would respond they prefer the latter. But is this logical? Without your identity, you are no longer 'you': your memories, way of thinking, etc.

Modifié par BaladasDemnevanni, 05 avril 2010 - 03:54 .

[enormousmoonboots]

Zalocx wrote...

I never understood why rewriting the Heretics, tantamount to mass brainwashing, is the Paragon option. . . it that's true than the Reapers are the most Paragon race in the universe seeing as how many millions of times they have indoctrinated sentient beings

Maybe I'm seeing it wrong, but I always thought that you were removing the Reaper influence; I can't remember if Legion tells you that the Heretics came to the conclusion to ally with the Reapers out of their own free will or because of a Reaper virus. I may have muddled the Heretic virus and Reaper alliance plot points since you get them in the same conversation, but that was how I viewed it. You have such a limited perspective (only Legion's word) there that it's hard to say exactly what happens.

[Collider]

Doesn't Legion say that the Heretic Geth that are "rewritten" could still decide to rejoin the Reapers? If so, basically what you are doing is allowing or suggesting to the Heretic Geth that the Reapers may not be the best option.

[sammcl]

Sunnie22 wrote...

sammcl wrote...

 thinking that saving the council is a tactically better decision is silly. 

Maybe for you. I believe that us older people have more compassion and can weigh the benefits of greater cooperation amoung the galaxies diverse residents. Our life experiences have given us the wisdom to find options, options that we do not think of when we are young and inexperienced.  Letting the Council die, like letting our own Government die, would result in more enemies, and with the impending Reaper invasion, you want a united front, one where you are not always looking over your shoulder.  There is nothing "silly" about trying to save lives and reduce casualties.

This is exactly the kind of response the thread is looking for, except that you misunderstood my use of "tactically," I meant tactically better in the immediate battle to kill Sovereign. You chose to save the council to preserve galactic stability, not because you thought that saving the council was a better tactical decision to take down Sovereign. Some people are saying saving the council would get help from the Destiny Ascension, or you'd be taking out the Geth who could finish off the Ascension then come in behind you. That is NOT the decision people!

The decision is:
Do you sacrifice the council for the greater good? OR
Do you save the council to save 10000 lives, preserve galactic stability, gain political goodwill and HOPE that you still have enough firepower to take out Sovereign?

There are obvious arguments for both sides, I personally, would concentrate on Sovereign, entire destruction of the Galaxy is too great a risk to save the council.

[enormousmoonboots]

I admit, metagaming is built into me. Even as a little kid playing Final Fantasy I used to strip characters who I knew were about to die/betray me/otherwise become unavailable, and outright ignore the ones who just briefly joined your party. I always looks at decisions to see which one I like best and give me the most options. In that vein, the fact that I lean so much towards Paragon is because 1) I AM THE HERO OF JUSTICE I dislike murdering people/I can't execute helpless people, 2) I simply enjoy being a good guy, and 3) you can't question corpses. Dead people won't show up in the trilogy again.

Edit: 4) People who you defeat/threaten you I never consider a real threat simply since Shepard is so powerful. Gets shot in cutscenes all the time, bosses aren't really that hard, etc.

Also, is this supposed to be on why you, the player, made your decisions, or why your Shepard, the character, did?

Modifié par enormousmoonboots, 05 avril 2010 - 04:09 .

[sammcl]

enormousmoonboots wrote...

Maybe I'm seeing it wrong, but I always thought that you were removing the Reaper influence; I can't remember if Legion tells you that the Heretics came to the conclusion to ally with the Reapers out of their own free will or because of a Reaper virus. I may have muddled the Heretic virus and Reaper alliance plot points since you get them in the same conversation, but that was how I viewed it. You have such a limited perspective (only Legion's word) there that it's hard to say exactly what happens.

The Heretics came to the conclusion themselves, Sovereign approached the Geth, the Heretics saw value in using his technology, the Geth wanted to make their own future. That is why rewriting them might result in the Heretics reaching the same conclusion, it wasn't a reaper virus, so if they chose that path once, they might choose it again.

[sammcl]

enormousmoonboots wrote...

Also, is this supposed to be on why you, the player, made your decisions, or why your Shepard, the character, did?

Why Shepard made those decisions, knowing what he knows up to that point in the game.

[Sunnie]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

Sunnie22 wrote...
Maybe for you. I believe that us older people have more compassion and can weigh the benefits of greater cooperation amoung the galaxies diverse residents. Our life experiences have given us the wisdom to find options, options that we do not think of when we are young and inexperienced.  Letting the Council die, like letting our own Government die, would result in more enemies, and with the impending Reaper invasion, you want a united front, one where you are not always looking over your shoulder.  There is nothing "silly" about trying to save lives and reduce casualties.

I am not a spring chicken Sunnie22.  With that said, I understand the need for allies and reducing casulties.  I still believe that the best odds are concentrating all forces on Soverign to neutralize the threat.  If you don't neutralize the threat, then Goverments, Councils, caualties, etc will not matter anyway because we will all be extinct.  If we have life then we can always rebuild.    I think you may be making your decisons based on emotion with compassion and not survival in the present. 

Well, yes and no. I already knew how many were on the Destiny Ascension from a conversation I eves dropped on while running around the Citidel. The couple were talking abotu the DA as it passed by and dropped the crew number then. So I had fore knowledge of the massive amount of life loss that would happen if I had not saved the DA. Now from the meta-gaming side of it, it ended up being the best choice anyway since choosing to let the Council die only resulted in a few hundred extra lives being saved. I guess I am a solid paragon through and through, willing to take greater (albeit informed) risks for greater rewards.  It was just 'the right thing to do', for me.

[cos1ne]

@lastpawn

I have a problem with this. How does Shepard know this prior to it happening? If watched the video online to confirm, and there is no indication of this - the particular timing of the gate opening isn't made clear UNTIL Shepard makes that decision. Specifically, there is no way for Shepard to know that Alliance has the time to assist council and THEN fight Sovereign without you the player knowing this - i.e., metagaming.

It says that Vigil's datafile, has given me, Shepard full access to the Citadel, which means that the relay will not be able to opened by Sovereigned until he reassumes control of the station. Also when they say  standby and "wait until the arms open" I assume it will take a bit of times for the arms to open.  

As a ships commander and an alliance military officer, Shepard would know the approximate time it takes for a skirmish to rescue a dreadnaught would take. Also my particular Shepard is an engineer so he is quite versed in tech, which means he has a fairly good idea of how long it would take for Sovereign to regain control.

Of course I'll be honest with you, the way I played it was as scripted for the paragon ending, I was playing paragon and saving the council was said by bioware to be the paragon move. However that doesn't mean that my character acted in a metagaming fashion, as I think what I described is a decent enough explanation for my Shepard's reasoning.

------------------Now as to my other views on the choices---------------------


Letting Shiala and Rana go :
Shiala to me is a no brainer if your playing a good guy. She obviously messed up, paid for it (by being thrown into the thorian's gullet) and wants to repent. She even gives Shepard the cipher of her own free will, thus making an effort to show she wants to help you.

Rana is a bit of a different story, now I do agree that it would probably be better for the universe if she died. However, my Shepard has this habit of not killing people unless they actively try and harm him, his crew or his mission. Rana didn't do any of this so I figure I'd give her the same chance I gave her victims, leave her an open door and that's it.

Letting the Rachni go : Ok, maybe this has to do with the fact that humans didn't have to face the rachni in the wars, but from what I could tell this queen wasn't a warmongering psycho, and seemed to be just an innocent victim. Compassion goes a long way to creating allies, and my Shepard couldn't give a damn about being a spectre, he was an alliance soldier through and through though. And he made a calculated political decision to form an alliance with the Rachni, because a human had saved them, they would look favorably on humanity in the future. After all at this point in the game all the Big 3 races seemed to be more anti-human then pro, and this seemed to be a good option. Besides when I questioned the rachni she gave satisfactory answers to warrant freedom.

Handing over the trial data :  Again this has to do with Shepard and forming alliances. What does the alliance and galactic stability have to gain by demonizing a geth admiral? I had all ready destroyed the geth on the Alarei, and everyone on the ship was all ready dead, so the only person who could be harmed by withholding evidence was Tali. Seeing as at this point in time Tali was my love interest I had a vested reason in keeping with her wishes. So seeing as the worst she could be was exiled, I just left it to chance and bluffed my way through the trial.

Destroying the Base : Ok, the most common theme in this game is every time someone touches something made by the reapers they get indoctrinated. So why would this base be ANY different. Also it's TIM who is telling me it's safe, the same TIM who has been consistently lying to me from the very beginning of the game to further his agenda. Plus I had my own suspicions that TIM was planning on creating his own human reaper with that, which totally wouldn't fly with me at all. At this point I thought Cerberus had done pretty much all it could do for me so I figured burning this bridge wouldn't be such a bad idea. That is why I blew up the base, the risks of indoctrination were too great. Also flipping off TIM was a nice bonus.

Rewriting the Heretics : This decision was the least metagamed decision in the whole game, I decided that whatever legion decided would be the response, considering as a geth he would know what is best for his people. Final tally 573 rewrite 571 destroy. Democracy wins, geth get rewritten.

[Lisa_H]

About the saving the council decision. I always thought it was the one that made more sense from a strategical point of view. The geth ship attacking the DA most be destroyed before the fleet can attack Sovereign otherwise the geth ships might attack the alliance in the back while they try to take out Sovereign. This is why I always save the council both as paragon and renegade.

[TobyHasEyes]

Just to clarify Sammcl, we were told by Legion that there is no guarantee the Heretic Geth wouldn't revert to their ways. The idea I had that that could affect the loyal Geth is just an idea I had. Its not based on any external information, and as such I don't think it counts as metagaming. Its an assumption I think my Shepard could have made, as it isn't beyond the realms of believability. My main reason for destroying was, as said before, there is no guarantee they won't revert. And with as difficult a fight ahead as fighting the Reapers, when faced with the risk of a known enemy becoming a possible ally; I'd rather have fewer enemies than more potential allies. I have enough allies as it is

[sammcl]

TobyHasEyes wrote...

Just to clarify Sammcl, we were told by Legion that there is no guarantee the Heretic Geth wouldn't revert to their ways. The idea I had that that could affect the loyal Geth is just an idea I had. Its not based on any external information, and as such I don't think it counts as metagaming. Its an assumption I think my Shepard could have made, as it isn't beyond the realms of believability. My main reason for destroying was, as said before, there is no guarantee they won't revert. And with as difficult a fight ahead as fighting the Reapers, when faced with the risk of a known enemy becoming a possible ally; I'd rather have fewer enemies than more potential allies. I have enough allies as it is

Yaya, I don't think I said it was metagaming, just pointing out how some people's decision about the heretics may have been based on false assumptions. Your main reason is very valid, that's the decision I'll be making on my renegade this time around. I'd rather destroy the enemy while I have the chance than risk the virus not working and having to fight them all in future. My paragon rewrote them, always the optimist : / part of me hopes his optimism screws him over

[Xaijin]

Collider wrote...

Doesn't Legion say that the Heretic Geth that are "rewritten" could still decide to rejoin the Reapers? If so, basically what you are doing is allowing or suggesting to the Heretic Geth that the Reapers may not be the best option.

Yup. he says they will review and recollate. Which sounds like the virus is held in TSR prior to execution, and the heretics get to check it out prior to application OR they get a gaint back up file with the old info around for reapplication.

[Bigdoser]

So basiclly rewriting them gives them a chance to think things over?

Modifié par Bigdoser, 05 avril 2010 - 04:13 .

[Sunnie]

BaladasDemnevanni wrote...

Sunnie22 wrote...

It's more about choosing the lesser of 2 evils. Lets say you just commited a serious crime and were sentanced to either death or having your brain reprogrammed . Would you choose to become a different person or throw your life away?

Hmm, not to turn this into a philosophical debate, but some would say they are exactly the same thing. I could be wrong, but I think Locke writes on the subject. He considers the question of complete annihilation vs. losing your identity. Most would respond they prefer the latter. But is this logical? Without your identity, you are no longer 'you': your memories, way of thinking, etc.

Well, if you spin as the death of the personality, then yes it is. But if reprogramming kills the "bad" (for lack of a better term), personnality, the platform still remains to possibly do some good. Killing the body to change the programming is a huge waste of resources. Obviously there are other ways to spin something like this, and again, it comes down to ones own values.

[Zulu_DFA]

JohnnyDollar wrote...

Meta Gaming http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Metagaming

It is often convenient at times for one to say that his/her decision was the right one to make from the benefit of metagaming and hindsite. 

I want to hear the arguments from players that think the following decisions were the right ones to make from a non metagaming perpective without the advantage of metagaming and hindsite.

I want to hear counter arguments to those arguments.

Letting Shiala go
Letting Rana Thanoptis go
Saving the Council

Other ones to consider regarding metagaming.

Destroy the Collector Base 
Letting the Rachni Queen live
Hiding the evidence at Tali's trial
Rewriting the Geth Heretics

I am sure I have missed several decisions.  If you want to add other big decisions to the argument then that is fine.

If you don't feel like covering all of them at once, then that is fine too.  Just pick a few out if you like.  Not just the easy ones though. 

Are most of the decisions I have listed above hard to justify and
rationalize without the benefit of metagaming?

Hi, OP!

As you might know, I'm a proud Renegade, so you wont be expecting to hear any justifications from me for those choices. But I will comment on a couple of them neverhtheless.

1. I kill Shiala and regret doing so because the way she dies actually 99%-proves in-game that she was not hostile. However, the standard procedure is to deliver the POWs to prison unless there are some complicartions. In case of Shiala there aren't any complications, so I actually would like to be able to deliver her back to the Citadel, but the game does not provide such an option. So I have to metagame, that there is some reason Shepard can't put Shiala in one of those sleeping pods and bring her to the Citadel "in irons", and therefore his duty is to execute her. Obviously, letting her go is a silly choice.

2. Rewriting the Heritics is in fact  the haredest choice for me. Not one took me so long to decide on. And at first I deided to rewrite them, for the reason, that the Geth are the most capable would-be ally, and it will be a prudent call to reinforce them with their own wayward "folks" after their "political re-education". If there were any danger, I thought, Legion would not bring up this opportunuti at all. Most of all I wanted to ask Legion for the reasons, why half of his programs were in favor of destruction, as it was quite a troubling thing. What would happen if the Heretics were rewritten and rejoined the true Geth? The geth will acquire the Heretics' logs of "thought process", which contain their "perspective" that driven them into worshipping the Reapers. This may have two outcomes. Either the Geth will receive it as an inoculation agaist the Reaper creed, or they may all go for it! The latter is definitely not the greatest idea. Now, Legion said somthing about Sovereign corrupting the logic of the Heretics, and the opportunity to correct it by introducing the reversed Reaper virus. So I finally hit the [Rewrite] option.

And regretted it, for I came to conclusion later on that the choice was in part influenced by the subconscious metagaming that ME2 is just a game and no real harm may come out of the wrong decision. And the right way of thinking for the in-game character of Commander Shepard is not to take chances. What if Legion had mistaken and it was not the corrupted logic that made the Heretics follow Sovereign, but some act of thier own "free will", based on some their first hand experience they had (for instance some "miracle" performed by Sovereign), and when such an experiensce will be made available for all the Geth in their Dyson Structure, they will all come to the same conlusion, that the Reapers are good? And Legion's own "doubts" seem to support this possibility (or another, that I haven't thougt of). So on my subsequent playthroughs, for "my canon" I blew up the Heretics station.

This is a good example of how metagaming is a two-level thing. On the first level one gets eventually "spoiled" on the results of his choices andon subsequent playthought takes those result into conscious consideration. But on the second level (deep down), the player is always "spoiled" that "it's just a game" and no real harm may be the result, and this is true to the very first playthrough. It maybe difficult to pinpoint this factor in makin every single choice, aspecially in a game like ME, when there are hundreds of these choices and some of them are indeed "emotioally engaging". But when accouted for players can try to avoid this sort of metagaming their decisions. I definitely try to do so, for all the BIG CHOICES.

However, the on small ones I sometimes metagame quite heavily. For the "dramatic" purposes. For example, on the first run of the "suicide mission" I lost only Mordin (in the pipes) and the entire crew, including Chakwas. For the ME3 import I'll be using a file with half crew dead and 5 dead squadmates.

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 06 avril 2010 - 05:29 .

[Nightwriter]

What if your lack of a little metagame usage results in worsening your game experience?

For instance, by your non-metagaming reasoning Shiala had to die. Well, I can tell you letting her live enhances the story. And yet in order to decide to keep her alive you do have to dip a little bit into metagaming.

This could be said for a lot of decisions in Mass Effect. Is it really worth a poorer experience or outcome to abandon metagaming completely?

[Collider]

It's subjective. It depends on how much you value roleplaying. I find playing as yourself or a character you have imagined is satisfying.

[Nightwriter]

It's quite satisfying, Collider. I love it.

But some people tend to take it to extremes. They can even be unreasonable about it.

[Zulu_DFA]

Nightwriter wrote...

What if your lack of a little metagame usage results in worsening your game experience?

For instance, by your non-metagaming reasoning Shiala had to die. Well, I can tell you letting her live enhances the story. And yet in order to decide to keep her alive you do have to dip a little bit into metagaming.

This could be said for a lot of decisions in Mass Effect. Is it really worth a poorer experience or outcome to abandon metagaming completely?

It does not worsen my game experience. A hundred idiotic "Thank you" e-mails do.

8 old NPC faces from ME1 would make the game a Deja Vu Effect for me. Seriously, the Galaxy feels a real tight place with just 2 re-appearing NPCs (Parasini and Fist) that made it through *my* ME1, and 4 old squadmates.

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 06 avril 2010 - 03:39 .

[Nightwriter]

Zulu_DFA wrote...

Nightwriter wrote...

What
if your lack of a little metagame usage results in worsening your game
experience?

For instance, by your non-metagaming reasoning Shiala
had to die. Well, I can tell you letting her live enhances the story.
And yet in order to decide to keep her alive you do have to dip a little
bit into metagaming.

This could be said for a lot of decisions
in Mass Effect. Is it really worth a poorer experience or outcome to
abandon metagaming completely?

It does not worsen my
game experience. A hundred idiotic "Thank you" e-mails do.

8 old
NPC faces from ME1 would make the game a Deja Vu Effect for me.
Seriously, the Galaxy feels a real tight place with just 2 re-appearing
NPCs (Parasini and Fist) that made it through *my* ME1, and 4 old
squadmates.

To each their own I guess.

Personally, I love watching Bioware follow through with their storylines and characters. I love seeing what they'll do next, even on minor storylines.

I guess I feel like, if I kill off a bunch of characters for the sake of non-metagaming, I'm seriously limiting myself and my gaming experience. There's going to be so much content I don't get to see, because that person's dead.

If not for metagaming, most people would lose half their crew in the final mission and proceed into ME3 that way, which would be sad, cuz they'd be missing some seriously awesome characters.

Modifié par Nightwriter, 06 avril 2010 - 03:51 .

[Zulu_DFA]

Nightwriter wrote...
Personally, I love watching Bioware follow through with their storylines and characters. I love seeing what they'll do next, even on minor storylines.

Two words:

You Tube.