144 réponses à ce sujet

[Homey C-Dawg]

scyphozoa wrote...

 In my canon, Krogan Warlords will ride on the backs of Rachni Brood Warriors into battle against the Reapers. 

This idea is pure ****ing WIN!

Brilliant.

[Dean_the_Young]

ThisIsMadness91 wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Oh, it's pretty easy. You just have to care about people more than yourself.

"Are the beliefs of one person (me) more important than saving a greater number of people/preventing future threat to greater number of people?"

A Paragon says yes. A Renegade says no, and is insulted you asked the question.

(Not always, but for the big questions.)

You really think Paragons are that selfish? Perhaps in some cases it could be interpreted that way, but if you try to say that Renegades are all selfless, you're deluded.

Paragons have moral codes which dictate their actions on more than a life-by-numbers approach. A Paragon who destroys the Collector Base, for example, is throwing away millions if not billions of lives which could have survived because he/she thinks that the cost (that Cerberus will get the tech and use it to make Humanity dominant, the ethical questions of Reaper process, etc.) outweigh the difference in the lives saved by arming with advanced tech. A Paragon who saves the Council at the end of ME1 is putting the existence of the galaxy in peril for the sake of a few politicians who are fleeing the battle,  throwing away precious ships at a point where if Sovereign succedes everyone dies regardless: they are actively putting the lives of a politically/morally important few over the lives of all sentient life in the galaxy.

No, I make no claims it's always uniform. And as I've said before, you can do Paragon choices for Renegade reasons, and vice versa. But the defining aspect of the most true Paragons is that they won't stray from their moral codes. But as Samara shows us, a just Code is not necessarily nice or good.

DuffyMJ wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

All
Reaper technology is bad. Except for the the Normandy's weapons, the
Normandy's engines,, EDI, every gun in the game, shields, the Citadel,
the Mass Relays, biotics, and everything known about and using element
zero.

Remember folks, history shows that with pluck, cunning, and
moral superiority, there's no need for anything close to technological
parity between foes: after all, they already know how it works, so it
must be ineffective against them.

By which
historiography would you prefer us to use?  One that's dominated by male
historians who marginalize almost all history besides major battles,
even though most had absolutely no effect on civilization outcomes
besides terrible battle poetry?  The Romans crushed Attila the Hun in
France, didn't change jack, culture wiped out regardless.  Basques and
Irish and others never won a battle in their history and have been
occupied and colonized and abused for centuries, yet continue to exist
and quite prosperously as well...

I prefer the analysis of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, though by his inclusion in the worse half of the human race I'm afraid he may fail your exacting standards.

[ThisIsMadness91]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

ThisIsMadness91 wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Oh, it's pretty easy. You just have to care about people more than yourself.

"Are the beliefs of one person (me) more important than saving a greater number of people/preventing future threat to greater number of people?"

A Paragon says yes. A Renegade says no, and is insulted you asked the question.

(Not always, but for the big questions.)

You really think Paragons are that selfish? Perhaps in some cases it could be interpreted that way, but if you try to say that Renegades are all selfless, you're deluded.

Paragons have moral codes which dictate their actions on more than a life-by-numbers approach. A Paragon who destroys the Collector Base, for example, is throwing away millions if not billions of lives which could have survived because he/she thinks that the cost (that Cerberus will get the tech and use it to make Humanity dominant, the ethical questions of Reaper process, etc.) outweigh the difference in the lives saved by arming with advanced tech. A Paragon who saves the Council at the end of ME1 is putting the existence of the galaxy in peril for the sake of a few politicians who are fleeing the battle,  throwing away precious ships at a point where if Sovereign succedes everyone dies regardless: they are actively putting the lives of a politically/morally important few over the lives of all sentient life in the galaxy.

No, I make no claims it's always uniform. And as I've said before, you can do Paragon choices for Renegade reasons, and vice versa. But the defining aspect of the most true Paragons is that they won't stray from their moral codes. But as Samara shows us, a just Code is not necessarily nice or good.

Fair enough. I guess it's just that a lot of Renegade decisions just seem too cruel to me.

[Annihilator27]

scyphozoa wrote...

 In my canon, Krogan Warlords will ride on the backs of Rachni Brood Warriors into battle against the Reapers. 

Win, That is all.

[Annihilator27]

**** my shepard is going to ride in on an elcor with a big ass cannon on its shoulder. "Enraged, Charrrggggeeee"

[Malanek]

primero holodon wrote...
2. the citidel fleet is severley damaged because the asari and Turians have refused to aide reconstruction

Agreed with your other points but this one isn't a disadvantage. Although it's possible the fleet directly under the control of the council is smaller, the overall fleets available to all species are significantly greater. News clips etc talk about it with the spike in Turian dreadnought production. Because of this the Alliance will need more ships etc as a deterent. It is an arms race and ironically leaves them prepared for war with the reapers even though the weapons weren't intended for them.

[Amethyst Deceiver]

the story is conveniently written so that NONE of the choices you make are good ones.

thats why none of these "big choices" are significant in any way

Modifié par Amethyst Deceiver, 21 avril 2010 - 01:37 .

[Malanek]

As to the OP, why is any of this an irony? I was under the impression that ME renegades weren't greedy or evil, rather they don't let morals get in the way of the big picture, which is defeating the reapers and protecting humanity. I can understand the writers choosing to balance the approaches (most people like the more heroic choices), but renegade choices should be at least as advantageous against the reapers over all.

[Lucky Thirteen]

Keeping the collector base would be a mistake, because as Matriarch Aethyta alludes to, not inventing your own technology and instead, basing everything on someone elses technology, weakens people. It's the whole reason all the races previously fell against the Reapers, because they didn't bother to come up with much of their own technology and became too reliant on the technology from the Reapers.



I say some people need to get off their lazy butts and figure something else out.

[Lucky Thirteen]

No, not isolationism. People, the turians and asari and salarians and humans and everything, need to use their brains to come up with new technology.



The Reapers bet on people being to lazy to think for themselves.

[Malanek]

Shandepared wrote...

Lucky Thirteen wrote...

Keeping the collector base would be a mistake, because as Matriarch Aethyta alludes to, not inventing your own technology and instead, basing everything on someone elses technology, weakens people.

So what other option is there? Complete isolationism? I suppose the geth and batarians are the only sensible people out there.

The Geth are happy to take other species technology. Legion was scanning Tali's omni-tool. I don't have a specific example but I am sure the batarians don't mind using other technology either.

No one says you have to base all your technology on the reaper base, but I don't buy this argument. Technology is an evolving process. Revolutionary ideas, not based on any existing technology or therom, basically don't exist any longer.

Modifié par Malanek999, 21 avril 2010 - 02:26 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Indeed. The reason previous races fell to the Reapers is that the Reapers are extremely advanced and out tech everything else. No matter how you go around it, they're extremely advanced. If you build biological starships, the Reapers are very advanced. If you develop other means of FTL travel, the Reapers are very advanced. If you sacrifice lives for blood-magic, the Reapers are very advanced. The reason the Reapers left behind the Mass Relays and e-zero tech is for their own convenience, not necessity. If you develop by some other technological line (like the Geth evolution), they'll still use and destroy you.

Different tech is not better tech. It's just what the name implies: different. It's not innately superior. If you want to beat Reapers, you'll have to match their tech level. You can do that by matching it with Reaper tech, or you can match it with equivalent alternative tech. Of course, you're going to be starting from scratch if you're not going to do anything Reaper-derived, and that means that you're going to have spend a full thousand+ years to catch up to the difference between pre-Prothean tech and the equivalent Reaper tech.

For rather obvious reasons, you don't have a thousand years to go Luddite and find something else that may or may not exist.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 21 avril 2010 - 02:29 .

[MColes]

It's gonna be both. Im confident in my saving of the Rachni, but also much paragonning it up and blowing the heretics to hell. Saving them puts every other Geth at risk, and THEY are the real potential allies, not the heretics. If the heretics live, theyre memories join with the rest of the Geth, so it can go either way. I was able to blow it up through paragon choices, just ask lots of questions and guide it towards the heretics being bad men.

[Hyper Cutter]

From the OP's point of view, Renegade Shepards also set themselves up to be screwed over, both by continuing to work with Cerberus and by alienating or killing other potential allies...

[Schroing]

Malanek999 wrote...

Shandepared wrote...

Lucky Thirteen wrote...

Keeping the collector base would be a mistake, because as Matriarch Aethyta alludes to, not inventing your own technology and instead, basing everything on someone elses technology, weakens people.

So what other option is there? Complete isolationism? I suppose the geth and batarians are the only sensible people out there.

No one says you have to base all your technology on the reaper base, but I don't buy this argument. Technology is an evolving process. Revolutionary ideas, not based on any existing technology or therom, basically don't exist any longer.

Whether you buy it or not, whether it's logical or not, doesn't really matter. It's clearly what Bioware is trying to say.

[Schroing]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

It's not a trap in the sense your thinking, in that it leads to a technological dead end. It's the Reapers way of being able to know exactly what their next targets are capable, by presenting a linear path of development. But it depends on the target being at that point of development: due to the actions of the Protheans, the galaxy has proceeded past the point where it's entirely susceptible, and the Reaper's path is fast becoming the tool of their own destruction. We have gone past the point where the Reapers could have effortlessly wiped us out. The galaxy was not supposed to defeat Sovereign and gain the first tangents of peer-level Reaper weapon technology, and it was never supposed to have the opportunity for gaining the Collector base.

You're not understanding. It certainly is a trap; the end isn't a ceasation of technological advancement, but the Reapers returning and killing everyone. The technology is a trap in the sense that it leads to that point, which is an end. And we certainly -haven't- passed such a technological point; you're grossly misinterpreting what we've been shown, there. At the time that Sovereign assaulted the Citadel, if he had succeeded, the galaxy would've standed no chance whatsoever. Even at the current timeline, we would stand no chance.

The trap wasn't ended because of Reaper technology, but because of Prothean ingenuity. The plan that had clearly worked so many times before didn't work this time because the Protheans were simply smart/lucky enough to know what they needed to know, and were lucky/smart enough to pass that knowledge on.
They passed it on through technology, sure, but that's a nonelement; the beacons were just a deus ex machina that could've been easily replaced by, say, a piece of paper floating around in space, or a rock with some carvings on it.

None of those are caused by technology. All of those are examples of varying levels of social development, which is neither uniform or absolute. When the Krogans got off planet, they acted like barbarians, but when the humans got off the planet they acted like rational state actors and the Asari as very patient state actors. Technology in ME has been about enabling the character of those who use it.

...Which is exactly the problem. The message I've seen is that societal development has not reached the point in which technology can cause more good than bad (evidenced by every tragedy from the First Contact Wars to now) nor can it (evidenced by the Reapers themselves, "pinnacles of evolution" and whatnot).

There are counterexamples, but they're few and far between.

[Schroing]

Cerberus is a xeno-nationalist group. The entire Council is based around xeno-nationalism. It's the reason each race has exactly one Ambassador.

Cerberus is a terrorist group based around the idea of Humanity's superiority. The Council is a government based around no such sense of worth; it's simply a "if you contribute, you can help, too" organization, in which the people who help the most are given the biggest roles.

Cerberus is not a genocidal group. The Council has performed/stood by and allowed genocide as a matter of policy. (Rachni, Quarians, Krogan, Turian mode of warfare that they tried to use against Humans).

Against the Rachni, there was ultimately no choice. Against the Krogan, not actually genocide. Against the Humans, again, not actually genocide.
Genocide isn't the only bad thing possible to do, nor is Cerberus even necessarily capable of it. The Illusive Man has certainly alluded to being completely willing to doing that and much worse in the path of human superiority. With the technology gained from the Reaper base, they would be fully capable (once the war with the Reapers ended) and would most likely make use of that capability; if not for genocide, then for simple oppression.

Cerberus is the only option because they're the ones on the ball. If you destroy the base, no one gets it, but if you save it, Cerberus has ships ready to capitalize on it. (Seen in the everyone-dies ending.)  If you said 'screw you, this goes to the Alliance', then the moment the Normandy was away to the Citadel, Cerberus would swoop in and take it.

And you don't think that the Alliance, combined with the rest of the Council forces are capable of defeating Cerberus in a naval assault? ...Or space naval?
Cerberus might still be able to gain some of the information and technology there, but at least in such a case they wouldn't be doing so exclusively.

'Every species must make its own advances' is a bunch of crock. All education is centered on the premise of learning from what others have discovered, not re-discovering it yourself. Everything you learn in chemistry, physics, all the natural laws and constants, other people discovered them, not you. Most people here probably have no idea how to make a computer, yet they see nothing wrong with using technology given to them by others.

Again; whether that's technically true or not, it's true/going to be true in Bioware's universe that technology made by onself is superior to technology made by another.

[Zulu_DFA]

@ Schroing

Stop this Unabomber crap!

If you're getting this "message" in BioWare's Mass Effect, maybe it's time for you to try a tin foil hat for size.

Homey C-Dawg wrote...

scyphozoa wrote...

 In my canon, Krogan Warlords will ride on the backs of Rachni Brood Warriors into battle against the Reapers. 

This idea is pure ****ing WIN!

Brilliant.

How old are you, kids? Do your parents watch over you when you play Mass Effect?

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 21 avril 2010 - 02:38 .

[Schroing]

Zulu_DFA wrote...

@ Schroing

Stop this Unabomber crap!

If you're getting this "message" in BioWare's Mass Effect, maybe it's time for you to try a tin foil hat for size.

You obviously don't read many books <_<

[Zulu_DFA]

Schroing wrote...

Zulu_DFA wrote...

@ Schroing

Stop this Unabomber crap!

If you're getting this "message" in BioWare's Mass Effect, maybe it's time for you to try a tin foil hat for size.

You obviously don't read many books <_<

Not any more. I read them all. Twice.

[tonnactus]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Different tech is not better tech. It's just what the name implies: different. It's not innately superior.

The reapers know their technology and their weak points better then any organic race could figure them out in just a few years.When the races will use reaper tech,they will be destroyed.Different technology:Harder to evulate by the reapers.

[Zulu_DFA]

tonnactus wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Different tech is not better tech. It's just what the name implies: different. It's not innately superior.

The reapers know their technology and their weak points better then any organic race could figure them out in just a few years.When the races will use reaper tech,they will be destroyed.Different technology:Harder to evulate by the reapers.

You don't know your weak points before someone hits you at them.

Also, Reapers seem to have never meant for the organics to make that far... There is something bothering about the Vigil, though.

But don't forget Cerberus also found that mega-gun, that took out the Reaper in the Hawking cluster.

Also, again. The Europeans did not invent gunpowder, astrolabia and oceanic sailing ships. But they were the ones to put those "techs" to their ultimate use.

This Green Peace technophobia has only one conclusion in the end of it: people should grow some tails and get back on the trees.

[Dean_the_Young]

tonnactus wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Different tech is not better tech. It's just what the name implies: different. It's not innately superior.

The reapers know their technology and their weak points better then any organic race could figure them out in just a few years.When the races will use reaper tech,they will be destroyed.Different technology:Harder to evulate by the reapers.

Find a point in history at which understanding technology nullified it. The best you'll find is chemical/biological warfare, where the countermeasures could only mitigate problems. Seriously, military technology doesn't work like that: we understand how bombs work, how IEDs explode, how bullets fly, how UAV's operate, and we're still vulnerable to them. The closer the technological levels of any two factions, the less decisive the advantage of technology. In fact, the bloodiest (in terms of combat) wars in history have been between factions of comparable technology, because technology cuts both ways. If Reaper technology can invalidate Reaper technology, that's a case for it, not against it, because Reaper technology is the Reaper's primary advantage and anything they can do to us we can do to them.

'Different' technology will be, by necessity, hundreds of years behind the galactic state of the art, let alone Reaper, because it will have to be made from scratch. 200 hundred years of catching up to the galactic standard will take 200 years because there are no short cuts for different avenues... if they even exist.