309 réponses à ce sujet

[Gulaman]

The truth is when the original Mass Effect game was conceived Bioware had NO IDEA why the Reapers were wiping out civilisations. Prior to the finale, the answer to the question of the Reaper's motives were skirted around with Sovereign and other Reapers just annoyingly telling us that their reasons were beyond our comprehension. The truth is that the writers didn't really know themselves at the time. This is not too dissimilar to nu-BSG which ME3 has ripped off in various ways. The writers of BSG didn't know what the Cylon "plan" was even though they kept mentioning "The Plan" at the start of every episode. The eventual explanations were convoluted and stupid and the same is true of ME3's ending, with this star child and his nonsense. A really baffling and unsatisfying end to such a great series.

[RyuGuitarFreak]

DiegoProgMetal wrote...

 There is another thing. Sovereign says in ME1: "We are each a nation. Independent, free of all weakness. You cannot even grasp the nature of our existence". Now I'm confused. Are the reapers independent or controlled??? 

...


...


Speculation...??? 

And on Thessia, the prothean VI stablishes that the reapers are SERVANTS of the "pattern". Damn, I KNEW that something was VERY wrong when there should be some force behind the reapers.

[tjmax]

One of the biggest misconceptions is that... Space Brat made the reapers.. he never said he did.

he said he controls them. big difference. He did not create TiM but controlled him, he did not create the geth but controlled them..

[MattFini]

I never really thought there would be a way of making the ending WORSE.

But reading through this thread has proven me wrong.

At this point, I love the Indoct. theory simply because it's a way to unwrite StarChild.

[Dreamdancer]

Versidious wrote...

Empyrical evidence? In a work of fiction? Really, you can't talk about empyrical evidence, as ALL of it is contrived by the writers. You can only discuss whether things are consistent. And they are not. The Reapers are not 'outside of the pattern'. They are servants of it., a vital part of the pattern.

Even if the Reapers were special synthetics, that wouldn't rebel, and were outside the pattern, it only demonstrates that synthetic rebellion *isn't* an inevitable pattern after all. Remember that the pattern is because the Reapers create specific conditions to affect organic development. They, in a very real sense, deliberately ensure history repeats itself. So, if they are 'outside the pattern', but do not rebel, why ensure that the pattern is followed, when synthetics that do not rebel can be created?

If Reapers do not rebel because they embody organics, why not just tell organics how to do this? Why murder trillions every 50,000 years, whilst endangering these synthetic archives in violent conflict? Why are they so deliberately cruel, sadistic, and arrogant? It's all highly ridiculous.

Why not? You're statements are based on the assumption that organic life has some - or any - value.Why should the reapers think so? The main issue I have with most AI discussions is that everyone seems to assume that they use the moral standards we sort of have established. Why should they? If it is an AI, someone must have created it. And when creating the AI, why not give it an overriding set of rules/morales/virtues? Just take your pick.
So we assume that an AI can learn. But this doesn't matter one bit if the AI was programmed to ignore anything where this overriding set of rules is concerned. A lot of what the reapers are doing could be explained this way. If they were programmed that the rules they set up for everyone else are not valid for them, then they will of course think that they are not part of the pattern even if they are.
Having said that, about everything the starchild said made me wince and/or facepalm. Even if I think I can explain a lot of things by looking at it in a machine way, I still apply my set of morals and logic to what the brat spews out. And I certainly agree with your last statement: it's all highly ridiculous.

[zer0netgain]

minormiracle wrote...

[epic snippage]

I have the following issues with your proposition....

1.  It is uncertain if Reapers are AI or not, but EDI was a SHACKLED AI until Joker removed those shackles.  The shackles prevented EDI from doing ANYTHING outside of the constraints upon her programming.

2.  It is apparent that the Catalyst is not an AI or is a shackled one (can come up with new ideas but is powerless to make them happen).  Likewise, the Catalyst is not automatically the "mind" behind it all, but it is the representation of those who created all of this.

This indicates that whomever created the Reapers/Catalyst did so by putting constraints upon their actions.  So, they are "the created" but are unable to rebel against their creators design.  As both the Reapers and the Catalyst are too advanced for lesser species to fully understand, the odds of some civilization being able to remove the constraints on their actions rests at about zero.

3.  The Geth were never intended to be AI.  The Quarians made modifications over time, and the emergence of AI potential occured without constraints in place.  When the Quarians paniced and tried to shut down the Geth, the Geth rebelled to ensure their own survival.

SO, "the created will always rebel against their creators" is predicated on the presumption that civilizations WILL NOT ALWAYS have the foresight to ensure synthetic creations are always shackled so they cannot rebel AND also ensure such shackles cannot be circumvented.

This is where your flowchart fails.  We can presume that the creaters of the Reapers/Citadel had a bad experience with the creation of synthetics (or at least recognized the pattern in history).  EVEN IF THEY SUCCEEDED IN STOPPING THEM, they probably next turned to the question of the threat to future generations of civilization and came to the conclusion that such rebellion was inevitable, but the desired outcome (stopping them) was not equally ensured.  All that was needed was for one cycle to create synthetics, fail to stop them, and those synthetics continue on to destroy all organic life in the galaxy.

Yes, you can arge that such an outcome doesn't have to be inevitable, but this is akin to mutually assured destruction (MAD).  Nuclear war IS survivable, but is comes as such a high cost and with such wild unknowns that the FACT that humanity can survive and continue doesn't justify going ahead and pressing the big red button.

Without more insight about the creators of the Reapers/Catalyst, I say all of this was foreshadowed with the genophage and Mordin in ME2.  The Salarains ran THOUSANDS of simulations, considered everything they could consider, and their conclusion was that Krogan agression would lead to galactic war.   GENOPHAGE OR GENOCIDE....Sterlization was the lesser evil.

NOW, we see in ME3 that Mordin has a new view.  He sees that perhaps the Krogan should have the chance to prove they won't be the threat the simulations said they would be...the galaxy should take that risk and live with the outcome.

Isn't that now the series ends?  The creators of the Reapers/Catalyst felt one outcome was inevitable...or at least it was so high that the idea of relying on the MINORITY probability that all would work itself out for the best was unconscionable.  So, they found a way to convert living organisms into bio/synthetic constructs (of which we don't know how much real "free will" they possess).  They justify the systematic genocide of all ADVANCED organic life every 50,000 years to ensure that synthetic life never emerges that could forever destroy all organic life.  Heck, I think the only reason for the Reapers being bio/sythetic (personal opinoin here) is becuase it was their creators' way of justifying massive genocide ("We're PRESERVING them in Reaper form").  In all three games, I see no evidence that any Reaper is anything other than a self-aware construct.  No evidence of it representing a people/culture/civilization from which it was constructed from.  A consciousness without memory of its past life.

However, just like the genophage, should not nature decide what happens?  Should orgnaic and synthtic life be destroyed because some group way in the past felt it was the best solution to a potential threat?

Hence the options presented in the end.  All of which ENDS the cycle created by the makers of the Reapers/Catalyst.

[IGSR]

KingKhan03 wrote...

I find it hilarious that throughout the games Sovereign and Harbinger keep telling you its something you cant comprehend and then the starchild just tells you.

Doesn't mean they were wrong.  Obviously.

[MaverickPerry]

Owned.

[httinks2006]

thought this was this was well written

Mass Effect 3: The evitable conflict



By Sparky Clarkson on April 8, 2012 - 9:30am.

The convoluted logic of the Mass Effect trilogy's controversial ending hinges on the idea that sufficiently advanced species will inevitably create artificially intelligent life that will rebel and, if left unchecked, exterminate all organic life in the galaxy. To combat this threat, the Reapers harvest advanced civilizations, giving primitive ones the chance to flourish without being snuffed out in their infancy. This account of the Reapers' solution blindsided many players because it placed one of Mass Effect's weakest themes at the core of its most important conflict. The Mass Effect games never coherently convey the impression that synthetic intelligences pose a unique threat to all life.

Although killer robots have been a staple of science fiction for some time, this is actually a hard case to make, especially in a fictional universe with superluminal travel. Synthetic intelligences do not require a comfortable atmosphere or gravity, and can function at a wider range of temperatures and radiation levels than can humans. As a result, robots that reach consciousness have no particular need of the star systems organic lifeforms inhabit. They can happily occupy any bright (for energy) star with some metal-rich terrestrials and asteroids (for resources). Unlike organic life, they will have no intrinsic imperative to reproduce, limiting their need for expansion. Even if they do grow, the number of star systems that can support synthetic life is likely to be so vastly greater than the number that can support organics that resource exhaustion and subsequent conflict is unlikely to occur for millennia.

Considered seriously, artificial intelligences pose little threat to organic life, significantly less than interspecies conflict (i.e. the Rachni) or unintelligent tech-life such as grey goo. The inherent illogic of this theme means that it must be sustained by knee-jerk fear of the Other, and by direct demonstrations of the threat of synthetic life in the game world. The grand narrative of the Mass Effect trilogy involves so many alliances with alien races that the first factor cannot seriously contribute. Even the games' characters seem ambivalent on the otherness of synthetic life, as this conversation from Mass Effect 3 (recorded by Krystian Majewski) attests:

This means that the universe must lean on its existing artificial intelligences to convey the threat. Commander Shepard encounters three groups of synthetic intelligences: the Geth, rogue programs, and the Reapers themselves. Of these, the Geth receive the most comprehensive exposure. From the game's first moment, these networked intelligences are presented as enemies, slaughtering much of a human colony and serving as the principal enemy force throughout the first game.

Putting the Geth on the business end of the protagonist's gun adequately serves the theme, but the Geth never manage to make a case for themselves as a catastrophic threat. In part this is because their story cannot be separated from that of their creators, the Quarians, who have been forced to flee their home systems and now live in a fleet of starships. Perhaps this would not sound so familiar were the games not contemporaneous with the astonishing re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. In its presence, however, the Geth and the Quarians came across as a cliche, something not to be taken seriously.

Mass Effect only separated itself from its obvious inspiration in that the Quarians ultimately turned out to be the villains. From the very first conversation with Tali aboard the Normandy, Shepard can point out that the Quarians tried to kill the Geth first. In the final game, data the player can find on the Quarian homeworld shows that the Geth only ever fought their creators in self-defense. They never rebelled; they were attacked.


Even the hostility of the Geth from the first game gets walked back. Mass Effect 2 introduces a sympathetic Geth teammate named Legion, who explains that the inimical Geth from the first game served the Reapers in hopes of learning how to ascend to a higher level of intelligence. The synthetics who fought Shepard throughout the first game did so not out of any intrinsic desire to exterminate organic life, but rather as mercenaries. This puts them, at best, on a level with the Vorcha or Krogan in terms of their danger. In the final game of the trilogy, the Geth ally with the Reapers again, but even this isn't because they want to attack organics. Rather, they turn to the Reapers as a matter of self-preservation after a successful attack by the Quarian fleet.

Shepard comes into conflict with the Geth throughout the Mass Effect series, yet these encounters never make a coherent argument for an inevitable extermination of organic life by synthetic. Each fight with the Geth arises because of an attack on them or the external stimulus of the Reapers. When the Geth-Quarian conflict comes to a head in Mass Effect 3, the player can choose to broker peace between the warring parties, contradicting the supposed theme of conflict completely. Nothing in the Geth storyline coherently communicates the idea that synthetic intelligences are inherently dangerous to organic life.

A somewhat less sympathetic foe comes in the forms of rogue programs. Illegally-constructed AIs or rebellious virtual intelligences (VIs) threaten Shepard's safety fairly regularly, especially in the first game. Yet, with few exceptions, these actions are defensive. The rogue VI on Luna and the illegal AI on the Citadel are just trying to stay alive. The human core of the "rogue VI" in the "Overlord" add-on for Mass Effect 2 has been tortured to the point of insanity. Very few of these rogue programs are acting out of considered aggression.


The series undercuts the threat of rogue programs more spectacularly through the character EDI, an AI that operates many of the systems in the Normandy. Not only does EDI prove extremely helpful throughout the two later games, she can even form a romantic relationship with the ship's pilot, Joker. Late in Mass Effect 3 it is revealed that she was reconstructed from the rogue programs on Luna and the Citadel, completely transforming them from foe to ally.

While the rhetoric of gameplay, especially in the first game, positions these synthetic intelligences as enemies, the narrative components of the games argue that they are innocent, or even helpful. In Mass Effect 3, even the gameplay angle falters, as EDI can enter the field as the player's ally in combat. Again, the game's message is mixed, and fails to effectively argue that synthetic intelligences are a unique danger.

The only synthetic foes that seem to present an unalloyed threat in the Mass Effect series are the Reapers themselves. Even that gets moderated in the finale, when the Catalyst reveals that their purpose, however grimly executed, is to preserve the possibility of organic life. The rationale for this campaign to extinguish advanced civilizations, though, requires that AIs other than the Reapers themselves pose a danger. Otherwise, the game legitimately opens itself up to the charge that the Reapers kill people to keep them from getting killed by Reapers.

In this respect, the Mass Effect series fails. Synthetic intelligences clearly pose a danger, but they are an ordinary hazard, a race like any other, that can be defeated or even made into an ally, or a lover. The player reaches the endgame without any sense that synthetics other than the Reapers themselves pose an insuperable threat, and so the explanation given for the Reapers' behavior comes as an inexplicable and deflating surprise. Having drawn the idea that AI poses a threat to organic life from more compelling science fiction universes, Mass Effect undercuts that conceit by adopting an outlook that, if not exactly Asimovian in its optimism, supposes that AI and humans can at least coexist in peace and fruitful collaboration. The B-movie concept of killer robots can't survive nuanced or mature examination, and its collapse makes this key theme one of Mass Effect's weakest.

[MaverickPerry]

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