Jebel Krong wrote...
frudi wrote...
lillitheris wrote...
That is the point of the Paragon, is it not? To take the harder, possibly riskier path, because the easier one is guaranteed to be morally wrong?
No.
Please either elaborate or refrain from making meaningless arguments such as that.
should be obvious that paragon comes as a moral - or opinion - choice. objectively it may be easier or harder, depending on the situation, it is not guaranteed to be right or riskier or harder. there seems to be a bias of opinion that paragons are the "correct" way to play, particularly on this thread - that is not the case.
Well, obviously paragon choices are based on morality, I've stated as much in my question. I guess that I should have structured the question differently though, in the sense that a paragon, when faced with one morally wrong course of action, would try and seek another way, one more morally justifiable, even if that alternative appears harder or riskier (for themselves or even for others).
And I agree that paragon choices are not always "correct", in as much as the "correct" label even makes sense (I would probably characterise it in the sense of a cost/benefit assessment). That's why the Destiny Ascension decision is so fascinating to me in this discussion (others as well, but this one is of particular relevance) and why I brought it up in the first place.
In that instance we are faced with a very similar dilemma as in the Reject ending, only the probabilities and weights of each outcome are different. By trying to save the council we are increasing the chances that Sovereign succeeds and starts the Reaper invasion. The 'cost' part of that decision is astronomical - even if the chances of stopping Sovereign are only slightly improved by ignoring DA, the associated negative outcome (the wiping out of the entire galaxy) is pretty much unquantifiably disastrous. On the other hand the positive outcome, the benefit (the council surviving), is effectively negligible, considering the Reapers are going to shut down the relays anyway.
The game and most people who've chimed in on this over the last pages seem to agree with me that saving DA is the morally right choice, the paragon choice. Where we don't seem to agree though, is whether it was the "correct" choice. I claim that it is not, it makes zero sense to divert any resources from the singular relevant objective, stopping Sovereign. The council and the thousands of asari on DA are an acceptable loss compared to even the ever so slightly increased chance of the whole galaxy getting wiped out.
Now fast forward to the Reject choice... the same people who were willing to risk a trillion deaths to save 10.000 (and the council) are now unwilling to risk the same trillion deaths to save billions of Geth. Since both scenarios deal with a very similar situation - risking the whole galaxy at the expense of a far smaller number of lives, I believe the same moral criteria should be applied to both; therefore, in my view, saving DA and choosing Reject are both the morally right, or paragon, choices.
Determining the "correctness" is a different matter... of course the probabilities in both situations are different, so it's not fair to just compare 10.000 to billions. But unless the chance of a Reject victory is ridiculously negligible (think something like 0.1% or even less) AND the additional risk of Sovereign succeeding if DA is saved is simultaneously equally negligible, the cost/benefit assessment is simply in favour of the Reject choice (as opposed to saving DA) - Reject is therefore, effectively, more "correct" than saving DA (though I believe that both decisions are in fact "incorrect", just that Reject is less "incorrect" than saving DA).
And herein lies the moral contradiction - on the one hand people consider saving DA as both morally right and "correct", while on the other hand they consider Reject as morally wrong and "incorrect". My best explanation why people end up in this contradiction is that they simply aren't separating their moral assessment of the situation from their knowledge of the actual outcome - saving DA turns out to be objectively better, therefore it is judged "correct" and consequently justified as morally right, while Reject turns out a disaster, therefore it is judged "incorrect" and labelled morally wrong.
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