290 réponses à ce sujet

[Wildecker]

Koen Casier wrote...
I don't claim it was pleasant, I don't claim it was necessary, I don't claim to know much of this Cortes guy since South American history is not particularly well covered in Western European school curriculum, I claim that on a pure macroscopic scale where you have two organisms one representing the geth and a other the quarians, the quarians organism attacked the geth organism, and that geth organism did no moral wrong in taking any measure they deem necessary to survive, even if in after sight this measure was (clearly) to extreme.

Speak for yourself, man, and don't blame your school. Cortez? One of two famous conquistadores, the other being Pizarro? Cortez wasted the Aztec Empire in Mexico, Pizarro wiped out the Inca in Peru. It didn't do them much good in the long run, no matter how much gold they sent to their king ... but "Never heard of him" is just lame.

And yes, I'm from Western Europe.

[Amethyst Deceiver]

its lose/lose situation. neither choice is the right or wrong one.



one can justify your own decision all you want but it doesnt make it the "right" choice. it only makes it your choice.

[prem0nition]

Shandepared wrote...


You went after Sidonis knowing that Garrus wanted to kill him. How did your Shepard know he'd ever be given the opportunity to stop him? That's what I mean. Shepard doesn't know beforehand that he'll get the chance to resolve things in a peaceful way, so why does he go at all?

Talking in character here (rather than metagame knowledge), in most cases, a paragon Shepard probably hopes that there will be a way to resolve the situation peacefully, but knows that likely wont happen. If there's a chance for a peaceful resolution then a paragon will jump at the chance, if not, well a traitor that cost the lives of some good men, and the self respect of a member of your crew ends up dead... not really a loss to the galaxy.

In my case, My Shepard didn't consider a peaceful resolution once he was walking up to Sidonis, he'd tried to talk Garrus out of it on a few occasions before hand, but when the time came, he stood aside to give his friend and companion the closure he needed to get his head in the game.

Shandepared wrote...
By a lack of data I mean that the geth probably don't know everything about the Reapers or even about Sovereign. The nature of the disagreement might have to do with some geth programs judging that Sovereign should not be trusted. Sovereign is not geth, he is not part of their mind, and so they know he could be lying.

I disagree that more data would not fix this disagreement.  If they knew for certain what Sovereign planned for them they'd have no reason not to cooperate. In the end the heretics have been offered the exact same thing the "true" geth want.

As I mentioned in an edit at the bottim of my post, it seems that the only way to collect more data in this case was to let the Heretics break away from the main group and gather it by working for Sovereign for a period before returning at a later date with the new data, allowing the Geth as a whole to reformulate and hopefully reach a new consensus. That didn't happen, the heretics broke away and while following Sovereign they chose to spy and then re-write the True Geth programming to bring them round to the Heretics way of thinking. There could have been some level of re-writing done by Sovereign while the Heretics were working for him, but there's been no evidence of that in game so far, and we've only seen Sovereigns Indoctrination work on Organics.

As far as the offer to the Heretics goes, yup the offer is exactly the same, but the opinions of the offer were different. To misuse a bit of Star Wars Light/Dark side quotes, the Heretics took the quick and easy path, expecting Sovereign to give them the technology to speed them towards their goal of creating a gigantic super Geth Mind hub, while the True Geth chose to mistrust Sovereign's offer and believe that they'll get to that end goal all on their own, thank you very much Mr Sovereign, but no thanks.

Shandepared wrote...
They're working under a time limit. The longer they stay on the station the worse their chances of success. Once the heretics finish scrubbing the junk data the mission is going to **** really quickly. Legion can't afford to wait and gather more information.

The time limit once again pushes Legion's programming to follow the majority rule. There isn't time to collect more data, nor is there time to contact the rest of the True Geth. A decision has to be made, and the Majority ruled for rewrite (by two votes), It is time for a Consensus to be built and the others should fall in line with the majority, why don't they?  Why do as the Heretics did during the original split and hand the fate of the Geth to Shepard, a Non-Geth (and unlike Sovereign, Shepards an Organic on top of that)? It is an odd choice and shows that there's more going on under the surface of Legion and the Geth as a whole.

Shandepared wrote...
Indeed, so why gamble with so many lives on the uncertain?

It's a hard question to answer, in my opinion, there's no right answer available for this decision, which is why I personally am annoyed that bioware have linked paragon/renegade points to it. This, along with quite a few other decision points in both games could easily be argued either way.

Shandepared wrote...
That's why we're better off blowing the heretics up.

Amusingly enough, we both agree on what is the correct decision, just for completely different reasons. For me it's the ramification of interfering with the natural evolution of a synthetic lifeform by reprogramming it's first real steps towards becoming a true Race and Culture in the Galaxy (one that could end up being a very productive member of the galactic community millenia after my Shepard dies), and you because destroying the Heretics would strengthen humanities position in the galactic community by removing a very real threat to galactic stability.

Modifié par prem0nition, 23 avril 2010 - 07:54 .

[Solomen]

I couldn't bring myself to exterminate millions of geth with the push of a button. Face to face is one thing but thats just harsh. Better to give them a second chance.

[prem0nition]

Of course, there could be another possibility that I don't think has been brought up in this thread yet... That Legion is a big fat LIAR, and in fact he's part of a heretic faction of the Geth wishing to make contact with organics, while the true Geth were the ones following Sovereign and Co... Now that would make a fun twist with either outcome of that mission

Modifié par prem0nition, 23 avril 2010 - 08:25 .

[Solomen]

I'm all for forcing the geth and quarians to get along, like I forced Tali and Legion to play nice.

"Do you want to go to war right this second and leave yourselves weakened for the bigger threat or are you going to behave like reasonable people and quit this 300 year old posturing. You're going to have to get over it eventually so you may as well do it now."

[prem0nition]

Shandepared wrote...

prem0nition wrote...

 To misuse a bit of Star Wars Light/Dark side quotes, the Heretics took the quick and easy path, expecting Sovereign to give them the technology to speed them towards their goal of creating a gigantic super Geth Mind hub, while the True Geth chose to mistrust Sovereign's offer and believe that they'll get to that end goal all on their own, thank you very much Mr Sovereign, but no thanks.

I take an extremely dim view of people using  fiction to justify their positions.

Okay, before I answer any of the other points in your post, I'd like you to clarify what you mean by this as you've completely lost me. I have no idea what you're objecting to or what you are saying is fiction. (the whole mass effect series is fiction to my knowledge)

[Nu-Nu]

It was that or killing them..

Think of it this way, they were mentally ill geth and the virus fixes the error in their head...Like you give anti-depressents to a clinically depressed paitent.

Modifié par Nu-Nu, 23 avril 2010 - 08:54 .

[Tdr3d]

I blew them up, simply because there is a chance that the re-write might not hold. Though i'm thinking that if it does, who's to say that we won't revert the re-written heretics to the original programming, allowing them to make a consensus in a galaxy without Reapers.



With the reaper threat gone, the geth would have no logical choice to continue the war with organics and side with the "true" geth.



Basically, its taking the heretics out of the picture until the evil threat is disposed of, then have them reconsider through consensus with the true geth.

[Solomen]

Tdr3d wrote...

I blew them up, simply because there is a chance that the re-write might not hold. Though i'm thinking that if it does, who's to say that we won't revert the re-written heretics to the original programming, allowing them to make a consensus in a galaxy without Reapers.

With the reaper threat gone, the geth would have no logical choice to continue the war with organics and side with the "true" geth.

Basically, its taking the heretics out of the picture until the evil threat is disposed of, then have them reconsider through consensus with the true geth.

You know when you "blow them up" you are actually erasing every heretic program right?  Massive scale genocide. 

[Tdr3d]

At the time of my decision i was aware of that. I favoured no geth support in the fight in ME3 than potential geth support which could have me fight them again should they side with the reapers once more.

[Koen Casier]

Shandepared wrote...


Was your grandfather in the Red Army? That would explain a lot about you.

No he was not, my understanding of his military service was that he once had guard duty, he was conscripted during the early 1950's for the Belgian army. Why do you insist on insulting people or dragging a persons family into it? Your arguments are strong enough to stand on their own, you even have a more populist view so you have large part of the crowd with you, yet you damage that credibility by making these statements.

As for the rest, if you truly feel the geth are incapable of being a moral beings (either at the time of the morning war, or at any time) then their acts carry no moral weight in the same sense that a malfunctioning machine that killed a lot of people did not do evil for it just a malfunctioning machine. If you state that their actions where evil than they must have made a moral choice. Edit: meant to add: they made a moral choice as moral beings.

So answer me this: was the geth genocide of the quarians people evil / wrong therefore stating that geth are moral beings (i.e. have a moral system) that have chosen a evil coarse of action or if the geth aren't moral beings (don't have a moral system) then any act even that of genocide can't be truly considered evil, just a unfortunate accident were a machines malfunctioned. You can not have both.

And for clarity, my statement is that geth are moral beings that while defending themselves overreacted an committed genocide, but since it was as a defense to an aggressor that they did not provoke in any meaningful way their act of genocide is morally neutral (that means it's not wrong, but also not right its neutral) action, since their action is but an effect provoked by something outside their control.

~ four hours of sleep is not really enough ;-)

Modifié par Koen Casier, 23 avril 2010 - 09:49 .

[prem0nition]

Shandepared wrote...

I don't like when people reference other fictional universes to justify
or explain their reasoning. Granted, that really wasn't what you were
doing. I felt I should point it out anyway.

There are... other forum posters who sometimes talk about Tolkien or Vulcans when they wish to reinforce a point.

I can understand your point, however, sometimes an analogy from another piece of (popular) fiction can help with making someone's opinion understood. As long as it's kept as an analogy and not pushed further or overly used anyway

Shandepared wrote...
No, apparently it doesn't or else Legion wouldn't have left the decision to Shepard.

This is why I find it so interesting, and why I asked my questions, why I believe that there's more going on with the Geth than we are seeing, and why I see an evolution occuring in the Geth. The decision to re-write or destroy the heretics is an internal Geth matter and it really does strike me as odd that such an important decision for the Geth was left to a Non-Geth, an organic Non-Geth at that.

The more I think about it, the stranger I find Shepard being given the final Call on which option to choose. I find myself wondering how Legion would have coped with this decision point had there been no Commander Shepard to make that call. Would Legion have been paralysed in indecision because the programs available to him were unable to reach a consensus, or would they have gone with the majority vote and re-wrote the heretics for good or ill? I guess we'll never know.

Shandepared wrote...
You could argue but I don't think you'd be able to do it with any merit. Letting the rachni queen go is a betrayal of your job as a Spectre. You aren't supposed to go around handing out righteous justice; you're supposed to keep the galaxy stable. Unleashing the rachni is a great way to disrupt that stability be they conquerors or not. Damn good thing the queen (mostly) kept her word and did not destroy Noveria.

Shandepared wrote...
...and you shouldn't
tinker with politics on such a massive scale based merely on your own
personal morality. There are much greater things at stake than just
you.

I combined these two points because they kinda follow the same path and the answers are definitely connected.

The Rachni decision point is very much like the Geth decision point we have been discussing when it comes to galactic stability etc. This is very much where the renegade/paragon system falls down. Both outcomes to the Rachni problem could be very easily argued into either camp IMO.

There are quite a few points like this where the situation can be considered too controversial to be made by one person on the ground. In the Rachni case there really should have been a third option "This decision is too big for me, I'll inform the council of what has happened here, and they can decide what to do with you." A third option (or perhaps, even a third bar tracking your "duty" points)  wouldn't work for every Galaxy changing decision Bioware decides to throw at you, but it would somewhat mitigate the feeling of "WTF?!?" when you only have two choices, make a decision only to have what you feel are the wrong set of points thrown at you.

[prem0nition]

Shandepared wrote...

Solomen wrote...

You know when you "blow them up" you are actually erasing every heretic program right?  Massive scale genocide. 

It is nowhere near genocide. The heretics are a small portion of the total geth population and their space station is a legitimate military target.

Also, you aren't wiping out the heretic Geth by destroying the space station. Legion admits that there are likely isolated pockets of the Heretics remaining that werent affected by the space station going *Boom*. The Heretics have been significantly weakened to the point they're no longer a threat to the Citadel races, but they have a chance to either rebuild their forces over a long period of time, or rejoin the True Geth if they so choose.

[Brako Shepard]

Brainwashing AI means that they can have a chance to learn and live again. Blowing them up...well thats the end of that then.



I always chose to save the Geth. Even in Mass Effect, Shepards questions Tali that surely the Geth just wanted there freedom. Be it extreme the way the Geth acted, an entire race doesn't deserve to be murdered just because a select few dicide to go on the rampage.

[FlintlockJazz]

Wildecker wrote...

Koen Casier wrote...
I don't claim it was pleasant, I don't claim it was necessary, I don't claim to know much of this Cortes guy since South American history is not particularly well covered in Western European school curriculum, I claim that on a pure macroscopic scale where you have two organisms one representing the geth and a other the quarians, the quarians organism attacked the geth organism, and that geth organism did no moral wrong in taking any measure they deem necessary to survive, even if in after sight this measure was (clearly) to extreme.

Speak for yourself, man, and don't blame your school. Cortez? One of two famous conquistadores, the other being Pizarro? Cortez wasted the Aztec Empire in Mexico, Pizarro wiped out the Inca in Peru. It didn't do them much good in the long run, no matter how much gold they sent to their king ... but "Never heard of him" is just lame.

And yes, I'm from Western Europe.

The 'gold' Cortez brought back also turned out to be gold-plated as well, which Europeans didn't know about at the time and why Cortez attacked the Aztecs (he thought the place was filled with gold).  Once they got back and started melting it down, they realised their mistake, and Cortez's backers were very upset (he was supposed to open trade negotiations, not wipe everyone out).

I'm from western Europe too.

[True Zarken]

This has got to be the most in depth discussion on this matter that has ever happened on the boards =P



And it’s awesome! Keep it up guys!



Prem0nition you’re really making me question my motives for Destroying the Heretic base =P

[Solomen]

Shandepared wrote...

Koen Casier wrote...

So answer me this: was the geth genocide of the quarians people evil / wrong therefore stating that geth are moral beings (i.e. have a moral system) that have chosen a evil coarse of action or if the geth aren't moral beings (don't have a moral system) then any act even that of genocide can't be truly considered evil, just a unfortunate accident were a machines malfunctioned. You can not have both.

It can be considered evil when sapient beings attempt to justify it. As for the geth, yes, they're just malfunctioning machines. That's why annihlating them is no more tragic than deleting all the existing copies of LINUX in the world.

Ah... so there is the malfunction that lets you percieve Xen as a rational being