374 réponses à ce sujet

[terdferguson123]

Welsh Inferno wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

Welsh Inferno wrote...

Its pointless to destroy the relays. Life advanced enough to do it once, life WILL advance to a point where we can travel the stars the same way again one day.

Your right, eventually this will happen, it does not change the fact that from an AI perspective who's goal is stop the destruction of all organic life, it will do whatever it can to prolong that even if it fails in it's initial plan.

An AI will also know that just OUR galaxy, forget all the others wil last an incrediblly long long time. Trillions or more years. It will take us a few thousand at the most(10,000?) to be able to start establishing a relay network.  The timeframe it delays us is so short in comparison, that it remains pointless to me.

I can almost guarantee it would take a LOT longer than 10k years to reestabilish mass effect style relay technology. 

[Kashola]

terdferguson123 wrote...

iamthedave3 wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

cavs25 wrote...

Ummm so why not just wipe out the evil synthetics the organics create?

Because, given enough time, they could potentially create Synthetics more powerful than the Reapers. The best course of action that the Catalyst as a computer with no feelings for organics whatsoever, is to destroy the root of the problem before it can happen.

Okay, but here's the problem.

Why does the Catalyst then give Shepherd the option to Destroy? Why does it give Shepherd any options at all? If the Catalyst has already considered everything and believes it has found the mathematically correct solution, any outcome other than Synthesis should be dismissed out of hand. Shepherd cannot possibly do this job better than the catalyst, so why make the offer? Without the reapers, the creation/destruction process cannot be averted, so why give that option either?

By the time Shepard reaches that point on the Citadel, the Catalyst knows Shepard has won, at this point it's only option to try and preserve its goal is fire the crucible (preferably from the catalysts side to have shepard control or merge the dna) and destroy the mass effect relays preventing galactic communication and advancement for potentially millions of years.

Because a stray marauder or two couldn't take the beam up and kill Shepard that is bleeding all over the place armed with only a pistol.

[Pottumuusi]

[zsom]

cavs25 wrote...

Ummm so why not just wipe out the evil synthetics the organics create?

Because there are no evil synthetics... The quarians and the geth aren't evil yet they are more than happy to exterminate each other at one point or another. Neither form of life is more valuable according to the catalyst. And ascending organic life while perserving its essence (DNA) seems better than to choose one form of life over another.
It's not that complicated really...

[bo_7md]

terdferguson123 wrote...

Jae510 wrote...

 It's not that I'm confused about it, it's that it makes no sense to begin with.

"We're going to prevent you from destroying all organic life with synthetics. By destroying ALMOST all organic life with Synthetics."

Why does that not make sense? It's a computer, it is doing what is most efficient, creating something to destroy the root of the problem before it can destroy EVERYTHING. It makes perfect sense you are just reading way too much into the synthetics stopping synthetics part.

Simply put the Geth will not leave primitive civilizations alone to grow if they decide to attack they will kill everyone.
Compared to Reapers who Weed out the problem and go away!

[DJBare]

Starbrat: The reapers are mine, I control them.
Shepard: *broken, bleeding, a single pistol*; so how about you control one of them to target me now before I ruin your plan?
Starbrat, hmmm.

[terdferguson123]

Kashola wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

iamthedave3 wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

cavs25 wrote...

Ummm so why not just wipe out the evil synthetics the organics create?

Because, given enough time, they could potentially create Synthetics more powerful than the Reapers. The best course of action that the Catalyst as a computer with no feelings for organics whatsoever, is to destroy the root of the problem before it can happen.

Okay, but here's the problem.

Why does the Catalyst then give Shepherd the option to Destroy? Why does it give Shepherd any options at all? If the Catalyst has already considered everything and believes it has found the mathematically correct solution, any outcome other than Synthesis should be dismissed out of hand. Shepherd cannot possibly do this job better than the catalyst, so why make the offer? Without the reapers, the creation/destruction process cannot be averted, so why give that option either?

By the time Shepard reaches that point on the Citadel, the Catalyst knows Shepard has won, at this point it's only option to try and preserve its goal is fire the crucible (preferably from the catalysts side to have shepard control or merge the dna) and destroy the mass effect relays preventing galactic communication and advancement for potentially millions of years.

Because a stray marauder or two couldn't take the beam up and kill Shepard that is bleeding all over the place armed with only a pistol.

Now your just trying way too desperately to think of some way to not make sense of it. This is like someone saying why didn't gandalf just fly over mount doom and drop the ring in during Lord of the Rings. Becuase it doesn't make for a good story. Plus, things are never that simple.

[Baafee]

The godchild is able to speak. It denotes that he is able to make a choice with his words, which is outside of a basic mathematical context.

Therefore, Reapers doesn't relay on mathematics only.

Also, trying to classify things as mathematical or not mathematical is a wrong approach: mathematics are a way to describe in an objective way some aspects of an universe.
Are humans motivated by something else than mathematics? Are AI only referring to mathematics? Those two questions are none-sense: mathematics are just a representation of actual concepts.
For example, a computer doesn't know a word in mathematical, but the binary language describes the way electricity is going on through some silicon pieces. We can arbitrary interpret it as computations.

You can take an hardware device, let's say a captor or an organic eye. You can define some of their aspects with mathematics, but it doesn't make sense to say one is mathematical and the other is not.
Same for thoughts and sentient life.

Just saying.

Modifié par Baafee, 24 mars 2012 - 07:32 .

[rma2110]

It just seems odd that the same story allows us to make peace between the Quarians and the Geth; and tells us that synthetics are bad, evil, and will destroy you. I fell like it's messing with my head. Which is it? Plus, my favorite people are synthetics. EDI and Legion ate some of the most human characters in Mass Effect.

[Ck213]

They should have just left the Catalyst out of the plot. Throwing in the ultimate antagonist in the last few minutes of the game is a bad move. You have to accept a lot of his claims as true. So I've been fighting all this time not knowing who I was fighting and now I have to throw in the towel and accept the choices before me that are given by the antagonist?

I could give a rip about the logic of Catalyst. Hate the scenario. Very unsatisfying way to end the game. My proactive Shep is a reactive one. A patsy.

[defenestrated]

terdferguson123 wrote...

- Is it so hard to believe that organics, left to their own devices, may eventually create something that is       incredibly harmful to the galaxy?

That is not the Catalyst's premise. His premise is that we're chaotic, we'll create synthetics, and that the created will always turn
on the creator. He's not culling advanced species because we're going
to nuke the universe.

- The Catalyst can easily see this self destructive behavior present in Organics (saying because Shepard united the Geth/Quarians is proof that the Catalyst is wrong is an incredibly silly argument, this is one example in a small time frame of galactic life, the galaxy has been around for close to 13 billions years)

Again, you're twisting the Catalyst's premise. What he's describing should hold true for the Geth and it doesn't. This points to, at the very least, a misunderstanding on the Catalyst's part as to the nature of the conflict.

2.) The Catalyst is a computer/AI, it only understands mathematics. The mathematics behind the probobility of organics destroying themselves eventaully is astounding, in turn, the Catalyst must do what is most mathematically efficient to prevent this from happening.

By that reasoning, we could say people only understand firing synapses. What you're describing is more a calculator than an advanced AI.

-The Catalyst sees that the most efficient way to reach it's goal is to never let advanced civilizations go long enough to allow this to happen. To do this, it uses the Reapers as a way to stop galactic extinction from happening, by destroying and harvesting advanced civilizations, this in turn gives the under-evolved life a chance to grow, until they themselves become powerful enough to create that which can destroy themselves.

What is the point in "preserving" advanced species in Reapers? Are we ever presented with an indication that a Reaper made from a species is in any way a meaningful continuation of that species? It sounds good on paper but what we got is that processed DNA might be a part of their ships. So it's a lifeform created out of genocide to perpetuate a cycle of genocide and controlled by an AI. Yay?

3.) The catalsyst, Does. Not. Understand. Organic. Moral. Behavior. It cannot get any simpler than this. It does not believe that destroying advanced civilizations is wrong/right/moral/etc, becuase it lacks the ability to "believe" anything. It can only do what it is tasked to do, and that is prevent galactic extinction in the most mathematically efficient way that it can.

Again, there is no reason an AI couldn't believe, learn, etc. I'd actually be much more accepting of the Catalyst (as a device in the plot, not of his reasoning) if we got a better sense that he was kind of a crap AI.

[Kawamura]

terdferguson123 wrote...

Jae510 wrote...

 It's not that I'm confused about it, it's that it makes no sense to begin with.

"We're going to prevent you from destroying all organic life with synthetics. By destroying ALMOST all organic life with Synthetics."

Why does that not make sense? It's a computer, it is doing what is most efficient, creating something to destroy the root of the problem before it can destroy EVERYTHING. It makes perfect sense you are just reading way too much into the synthetics stopping synthetics part.

EDI is the same sort of computer. The Geth are the same sort of computers. 

Do they only concern themselves with the most efficient? And is destroying organic life really the most efficient action?

[bo_7md]

terdferguson123 wrote...

Kashola wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

iamthedave3 wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

cavs25 wrote...

Ummm so why not just wipe out the evil synthetics the organics create?

Because, given enough time, they could potentially create Synthetics more powerful than the Reapers. The best course of action that the Catalyst as a computer with no feelings for organics whatsoever, is to destroy the root of the problem before it can happen.

Okay, but here's the problem.

Why does the Catalyst then give Shepherd the option to Destroy? Why does it give Shepherd any options at all? If the Catalyst has already considered everything and believes it has found the mathematically correct solution, any outcome other than Synthesis should be dismissed out of hand. Shepherd cannot possibly do this job better than the catalyst, so why make the offer? Without the reapers, the creation/destruction process cannot be averted, so why give that option either?

By the time Shepard reaches that point on the Citadel, the Catalyst knows Shepard has won, at this point it's only option to try and preserve its goal is fire the crucible (preferably from the catalysts side to have shepard control or merge the dna) and destroy the mass effect relays preventing galactic communication and advancement for potentially millions of years.

Because a stray marauder or two couldn't take the beam up and kill Shepard that is bleeding all over the place armed with only a pistol.

Now your just trying way too desperately to think of some way to not make sense of it. This is like someone saying why didn't gandalf just fly over mount doom and drop the ring in during Lord of the Rings. Becuase it doesn't make for a good story. Plus, things are never that simple.

Well couldn't you say since the star child can process several years ahead, He saw the pattern. Now finding out that civilizations have been sending messages and leaving small clues of the crucible.

Older civs left clues ----> Crucible Completed------> Humans Left Clues----->Impossible to find everything in space.

allready lost no moves--->Check mate.

He says himself something like "Now that you are here i know the solution doesn't work anymore".

Would this make sense ?

[jla0644]

terdferguson123 wrote...

By the time Shepard reaches that point on the Citadel, the Catalyst knows Shepard has won, at this point it's only option to try and preserve its goal is fire the crucible (preferably from the catalysts side to have shepard control or merge the dna) and destroy the mass effect relays preventing galactic communication and advancement for potentially millions of years.

First, stop saying the Catalyst is just a computer.  At most we can conclude it's an AI, but the game gives us nothing to say for sure what it is.

Second, Shepard hadn't won. Shepard was unconcious, the Crucible wasn't working, the Reapers were going to wipe out the fleet, and continue their reaping. All the Catalyst has to do is leave Shepard lying on the floor to die. It doesn't have to wake him up and give him three ways to defeat the Reapers.  Shepard had not won.  It was over, the Reapers were to reap again until the Cataylst decided to wake Shepard up.

[sadako]

Question to the OP,
if all your arguments is true, then the catalyst should have been able to do something in ME1 when citadel was supposed to turn into a giant mass relay for the reapers to come through.

But wait, do you know why it didn't happen? because catalyst didn't exist in ME1 and ME2.

And if you want to argue logic, you can say that the reapers tries to maintain population quota in the galaxy by pruning every 50K years Still logical.

I've thought about the story a lot, and although I can defend some of them, I chose not to, because it's obvious the ending is cobbled together without caring about quality, and pride in their franchise built over half a decade.

Modifié par sadako, 24 mars 2012 - 07:39 .

[terdferguson123]

Baafee wrote...

The godchild is able to speak. It denotes that he is able to make a choice with his words, which is outside of a basic mathematical context.

Therefore, Reapers doesn't relay on mathematics only.

Also, trying to classify things as mathematical or not mathematical is a wrong approach: mathematics are a way to describe in an objective way some aspects of an universe.
Are humans motivated by something else than mathematics? Are AI only referring to mathematics? Those two questions are none-sense: mathematics are just a representation of actual concepts.
For example, a computer doesn't know a word in mathematical, but the binary language describes the way electricity is going on through some silicon pieces. We can arbitrary interpret it as computations.

You can take an hardware device, let's say a captor or an organic eye. You can define some of their aspects with mathematics, but it doesn't make sense to say one is mathematical and the other is not.
Same for thoughts and sentient life.

Just saying.

EDI and Legion are able to speak too, but that does not change the fact that they are both deadset on meeting their obligations. Take Legion for example, he is willing to do whatever it takes to prevent the extinction of the Geth, siding with the Reapers, if you choose the Renegade option on Rannoch he even attacks Shepard and probobly would have killed him had Tali not intervened. The point is, even if an AI has some semblance of thought, it's still just calculating the best way to obtain it's goal. In the case of the Catalyst, it is much more black and white, it will obtain galactic existence at very high cost simply because it is the most efficient way to do it.

[Welsh Inferno]

terdferguson123 wrote...

I can almost guarantee it would take a LOT longer than 10k years to reestabilish mass effect style relay technology. 

No it wont. We wern't kicked back to the stone age(just the dark ages), we are intelligent beings not animals or cavemen and the sheer amount of Reaper tech lying about(Actual reaper corpses if you choose destroy/ actual benevolent reapers if control was chosen) should be more than enough to start understanding and rebuilding relays in a few hundred years. The Protheans were beginning to understand how mass relay technology worked, they built the conduit and if there were no Reapers they would likely have started to expand on that work. Admittedly that is only the start though, creating a network to span the entire galaxy would then take thousands of years. To expand to ALL the stars? You'd be right on that one but even the Reapers didnt try to connect every star system.

Also I'd like to point out that Earth was hit harder than lots of other worlds. Thessia was hit very late on, I'd bet that Thessia might be one of the first to start the rebuild.

Modifié par Welsh Inferno, 24 mars 2012 - 07:41 .

[Bantz]

cavs25 wrote...

Ummm so why not just wipe out the evil synthetics the organics create?

exactly, if reapers showed up to destroy the geth and only the geth because of the possible threat they could be to organics in the future I'd fight to protect the geth (in honor of legion) but i'd undestand it. But the idea that Organics might create synthetics that might in turn someday possibly destroy organics therefor an army of synthetics must wipe out organics to protect them from being destroyed by the synthetics they might someday create is a weak and poorly thought out conclusion no matter how you try to reason it.

[Kashola]

terdferguson123 wrote...

Kashola wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

iamthedave3 wrote...

terdferguson123 wrote...

cavs25 wrote...

Ummm so why not just wipe out the evil synthetics the organics create?

Because, given enough time, they could potentially create Synthetics more powerful than the Reapers. The best course of action that the Catalyst as a computer with no feelings for organics whatsoever, is to destroy the root of the problem before it can happen.

Okay, but here's the problem.

Why does the Catalyst then give Shepherd the option to Destroy? Why does it give Shepherd any options at all? If the Catalyst has already considered everything and believes it has found the mathematically correct solution, any outcome other than Synthesis should be dismissed out of hand. Shepherd cannot possibly do this job better than the catalyst, so why make the offer? Without the reapers, the creation/destruction process cannot be averted, so why give that option either?

By the time Shepard reaches that point on the Citadel, the Catalyst knows Shepard has won, at this point it's only option to try and preserve its goal is fire the crucible (preferably from the catalysts side to have shepard control or merge the dna) and destroy the mass effect relays preventing galactic communication and advancement for potentially millions of years.

Because a stray marauder or two couldn't take the beam up and kill Shepard that is bleeding all over the place armed with only a pistol.

Now your just trying way too desperately to think of some way to not make sense of it. This is like someone saying why didn't gandalf just fly over mount doom and drop the ring in during Lord of the Rings. Becuase it doesn't make for a good story. Plus, things are never that simple.

"Because it doesn't make for a good story".  Well the ending doesn't make for a good story either and putting shep into that ridiculous position isn't either.  If the Catalyst truly thinks like an A.I, the geth/quarian situation he should've at least mentioned and shot down for whatever reason, but as it stands he ignores new data.  As said before, we are left to speculate instead of being given a good ending(s).

[terdferguson123]

sadako wrote...

Question to the OP,
if all your arguments is true, then the catalyst should have been able to do something in ME1 when citadel was supposed to turn into a giant mass relay for the reapers to come through.

But wait, do you know why it didn't happen? because catalyst didn't exist in ME1 and ME2.

Or, because the 50,000 years were not up yet. It's a cycle, it just wasn't time yet.

[WeAreLegionWTF]

[sydranark]

the catalyst is fake, assuming the indoctrination theory is correct. what we saw (catalyst/star child/whatever) was an image the reapers created to make it easier for shepard to see things their way.

the logic is false. it only appears logical because the reapers are grasping at straws, trying to come up with an explanation as to why synthesis is the best solution. of course you can choose "control" but no one can really control the reapers. plus if shep is indoctrinated then they are already controlling him. you can't control something that is controlling you. so the only "right" choice is to destroy the reapers.

to dissuade you from choosing this option, the catalyst/start child/reapers say that you'll end up killing all synthetic life, including yourself. obviously this is false, since we see shep waking up in the rubble at london if his/her EMS was high enough.

this is their argument: synthetics come to kill organics every 50 thousand years. why? so organics don't get killed by synthetics. =/ That's almost like saying "there's a chance i'll die in a car crash some time in my lifetime. so instead, i'll shoot myself in the head today and get it over with."

[Kashola]

terdferguson123 wrote...

sadako wrote...

Question to the OP,
if all your arguments is true, then the catalyst should have been able to do something in ME1 when citadel was supposed to turn into a giant mass relay for the reapers to come through.

But wait, do you know why it didn't happen? because catalyst didn't exist in ME1 and ME2.

Or, because the 50,000 years were not up yet. It's a cycle, it just wasn't time yet.

lol , yes it was.  The cycle was up... but the Protheans botched the system with the Reapers invading through the citadel.  That is why Saren had to go to Ilos and then to the conduit. 

[ItsFreakinJesus]

Go back into all three ME games and look at all of the planets that were bombarded to the point where they're uninhabitable by anything. You now know why nothing said makes sense. Even through targeting advanced civilizations, the Reapers kill off the potential for other species to evolve simply through the way they target and attack.

If the Reapers got what they wanted and culled humans, Earth would've been inhospitable afterward. There wouldn't be a chance for dolphins or whatever to evolve into a new sentient species that starts a new civilization, things wouldn't get that far. Same thing if someone like the Asari colonized a planet they didn't know had primitive life on it. Reapers show up, bombard the planet, kicking up all kinds of stuff into the air that chokes every living thing on the planet to death.

Not to mention, the Catalyst and the Reapers themselves represent the pinnacle of organic life creating something that will eventually destroy it.