Moiaussi wrote...
Dean_the_Young wrote...
Any perspective that compares Cerberus to the historic actions of the genophage and Spectres is not favoring the Council.
So.... the actions within a hot war that is going badly, that stabilize the enemy population growth to sustainable levels rather than simply killing them equate to Cerberus' actions during peacetime, with no such threats and no such relatively altruistic end goals?
I wasn't aware Mordin fought in a hot war with the Krogan, Moiaussi.
As for the Spectres, other than Saren, who was indoctrinated, precisely what have they done? The Council should be providing much greater scrutiny and oversight, but saying the Council is bad doesn't make Cerberus good.
Well, just by going by my Shepard, the Council certainly didn't find multiple accounts of genocide abhorently exceptional, and in truth Shepard can easily surpass all the crimes Cerberus has ever done (none of which, at this point, have come close to genocide).
So in your opinion, Saren was right, and the Protheans at Illos were wrong... they should have surrendered and survived as Collectors. Interesting take, but I think we have different definitions of survival. If you cease being 'you' in your attempts to survive, have you really survived? Isn't beating the Reapers that way a pyrhic victory?
Not really. Who 'you' are changes daily, let alone by years. I am not who I was five years ago: in five years, I will not be whom I am. Three hundred years ago, my nation didn't exist: two hundred years ago it was insignificant: one hundred years ago, it was something else quite different from today. There is no permanence of identity, either in a life time or between them.
Change happens. We have already been changed by the Reapers, simply in our knowledge of them, and we will be changed again in our survival, no matter how it happens. There is not, however, some 'worthiness' that we are now that will be ruined, nor should we invest in baseless conservatism for a fake purity that never existed. If we survive, we will continue to change, and can do so however we desire. If we die, who we are will be as insignificant as the Prothean's precursors.
Saren was not right, but that was because his argument was flawed. The Reapers weren't going to compromise with us, nor do they accept surrender.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. Commit genocide against the Thorian and possibly the Collectors, or commit genocide by letting them kill us. We were not going out of our way looking for races to kill, nor were we given alternative options. Do you really not see a difference between the situations or are you just arguing semantics for the sake of trolling?
The Thorian wasn't a pre-necessary kill for Shepard: had we simply walked (or flown away), taking the colonists with us, it would have done no more damage and not died. We didn't know about the cipher as it was, so killing the Thorian was a 'it's bad, kill!' more than 'necessary.'
For the Collectors, simply destroying the Collector Cruiser neutered them as any sort of existential threat. Their lives might not have had any worth in preserving, but we certainly didn't have to kill them at that point if we were disinclined: we could contain them more or less easily.
We certainly have gone out of our way to commit genocide in Mass Effect, and we're going more out of our way to do it again. But it's
good genocide, which convinces most people it doesn't qualify.
Funny, cause scouring Prothean computers yielded no evidence of Illos to the Reapers, too. Most Cerberus cells would presumably be similarly 'clean.' Lack of proof of existance isn't proof of non-existance.
...why would Prothean computers confirm or deny the additional existence of Collectors?
The game tells us (and novels) tell us the Collector Threat ended with the Collector Base. The game (and novels) also have the basis and opportunity to refute this claim if it were not true.
We didn't just 'beat' them. We beat them incredibly easy. We had a cruiser equivalent (full upgrades) against a cruiser and beat it easily. Even with no upgrades we beat it with a frigate. On the base, they exhibited nothing remotely superior in tech. Could they have beaten us if they fought intelligently? You bet, but they didn't need anything better than we had for that. They outnumbered us by a large margin.
I doubt anyone in the lore would call the Suicide Mission incredibly easy. The Normandy was piloted by the best pilot in the Alliance and a Super AI, against what was more of a cargo freighter than any sort of warship. The Collectors were an army, but they were never a combat-dedicated army: they were support, and mooks at that. Skill overcoming countless numbers goes with the genre, and the medium. Especially when we get a whole themed spelled out for us that indoctrination makes people useless, and the Collectors as a whole are super-indoctrinated that they have to use technology to break even.
Your argument is based more around that the game was easy, not a disproof of the lore's position of the potency of Collector Technology.
Hardware can be damaged by a radiation pulse too. It is just not a given that there are any major gains.
Since it's the entire basis of the Collector Base decision, and the basis of everyone's concern afterwards (that the Illusive Man has something potent to abuse), it sort of is.
That is a judgement call. You may well be right, but it isn't a given that you are right. it is an opinion on your part rather than a statement of fact.
That's the fundamental rule of every decision making process, economics or strategic. You might weigh some things differently from person to person, and place values on intangible non-existent things (like, say, 'soul of the species'), but they've yet to find the person who doesn't decide by a cost-benefit analysis and then choose the benefit side, however scewed their interpretation might be.
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