808 réponses à ce sujet

[spartan5127]

If there is a way to magic everyone to having new DNA, there had better be a way to magic the geth to not being dead. I will not be happy if the only option that lets my character survive involves committing genocide.

[spartan5127]

doublepost oops

Modifié par spartan5127, 08 avril 2012 - 04:09 .

[tractrpl]

dreaming_raithe wrote...

tractrpl wrote...

Actually, we know enough about Dark Energy to know it's everywhere, making something like 70% of the universe. You have more Dark Energy in your body right at this very instant than you have atoms, so to speak. It's also very uniform. To suggest is has a conscience and is out to kill all life is...very far fetched indeed.

Do they actually state that in the games? I'm not one of those types that's read much of the codex, so if dark energy being sentient is in there, I missed it, heh.

We know dark energy is everywhere and all that, but more what I meant is that we don't really know much about what it is. We don't really know any of its properties since we can only detect it by inference and so on. It's fertile ground for speculative fiction, which is a big part of sci-fi in general.

Evolution isn't really, though. Hasn't been for a long time.

Sentient Dark Energy is implied by Drew Karpyshyn's novels. He also revealed that evil Dark Energy being the true antagonist/Reaper motivation just recently.

As far as "not knowing what it is", actually, there's a pretty good concenses of what it is, but the exact details are in debate depending on what version of quantum gravity you agree with. But we do know that it is an energy associated with what you might call spacetime itself. Space itself has this inherent, you might call it vacuum energy. Empty space has a repulsive effect, if you favor string theory, or it has the property of replicating itself, if you prefer loop quantum gravity. In the former, space pushes distant objects away from each other. In the latter, space creates more space, so what happens is that the space between to objects "grow" so that they appear to be pushed away from eachother.

[lolspawn]

there not organics... there machines! people are so blind.... thats all im going to say.

[greggm2000]

tractrpl wrote...

For me, the notion that synthetic life inevitably wipes out organic life is something that's repeated to often in sci-fi. I think the Mass Effect audience is a little more mature than that, and that argument is tired. It's not logical for that to happen because synthetics aren't likely to need "garden worlds" to survive. They might still need radiation from the sun and mineral resources, but there's so much of that kind of stuff in the galaxy that organics would have to coexist for billions of years before they start to compete for resources.

I do think that synthetic life will replace organic civilization eventually, but not through conflict. It will first start out with synthetic augmentation, we are already doing that. Then we'll augment our mental capabilities using synthetics, like chips in the brain, and we'll have artificial limbs to make us stronger and faster, and perhaps even able to survive in outer space. Eventually, our descendants will likely do away with their organic bodies totally, synthetics replaced organics, but not through war, through evolution. This is where Bioware got it wrong. This whole "synthetics will fight organics" is an old theme in Sci-fi, but not one that a SCIENTIFICALLY MINDED audience is likely to believe. A space magic audience, maybe, but not ME fans.

I agree.

It may very well be that AIs and humans can get along perfectly fine, and they'll be treated just like any other alien, to the mutual benefit of both. Or, we may see the transhumanist future you describe (and we certainly will see it to some degree, with personal augmentation, and sooner than most people think).  This is one area that Bioware got right in the ME series, they looked at synthetic intelligence in a way that treats them as the sentients that they would be. Plotwise, I'm a little surprise that the Geth wanted a more individual personality, since the collectivity would be a strength, I think... diversity that could be a way forward just as the other races evolve in their own way. IMO of course

[greggm2000]

lolspawn wrote...

there not organics... there machines! people are so blind.... thats all im going to say.

See, that's a very Quarian attitude to take.

... see what I did there?

[greggm2000]

tractrpl wrote...

dreaming_raithe wrote...

tractrpl wrote...

Actually, we know enough about Dark Energy to know it's everywhere, making something like 70% of the universe. You have more Dark Energy in your body right at this very instant than you have atoms, so to speak. It's also very uniform. To suggest is has a conscience and is out to kill all life is...very far fetched indeed.

Do they actually state that in the games? I'm not one of those types that's read much of the codex, so if dark energy being sentient is in there, I missed it, heh.

We know dark energy is everywhere and all that, but more what I meant is that we don't really know much about what it is. We don't really know any of its properties since we can only detect it by inference and so on. It's fertile ground for speculative fiction, which is a big part of sci-fi in general.

Evolution isn't really, though. Hasn't been for a long time.

Sentient Dark Energy is implied by Drew Karpyshyn's novels. He also revealed that evil Dark Energy being the true antagonist/Reaper motivation just recently.

As far as "not knowing what it is", actually, there's a pretty good concenses of what it is, but the exact details are in debate depending on what version of quantum gravity you agree with. But we do know that it is an energy associated with what you might call spacetime itself. Space itself has this inherent, you might call it vacuum energy. Empty space has a repulsive effect, if you favor string theory, or it has the property of replicating itself, if you prefer loop quantum gravity. In the former, space pushes distant objects away from each other. In the latter, space creates more space, so what happens is that the space between to objects "grow" so that they appear to be pushed away from eachother.

My understanding is that some theorie(s) have dark energy not existing at all. So there's that as a possibility.

[tractrpl]

Vexille wrote...

I laugh at those who say killing a few billion (In my case just EDI as I had already eliminated the geth threat) to save trillions = wrong.

forcibly violate and mutate EVERY BEING IN THE GALAXY without any input from the people affected = "ok"

im sorry but synthesis is truly the most disgusting and morally repugnant "Solution" imaginable. I really doubt anyone who picked that option really grasps what the option is.

I honestly dont comprehend how anyone sees the violation and forced conversion of EVERYONE to be "good".

Hell if you pick synthesis why not just lose to Saren in ME1 and save some time

The difference is that you retain your individuality and self-recognition. You don't get tranformed into a reaper or anything, you are still you, just with a few extra bits and pieces. It's like Joker waking up one day realizing he's 10 times smarter and no longer has Vrolik's syndrome. He still has his body and mind, just upgraded. It's a big difference.

[dreaming_raithe]

tractrpl wrote...

dreaming_raithe wrote...

tractrpl wrote...

Actually, we know enough about Dark Energy to know it's everywhere, making something like 70% of the universe. You have more Dark Energy in your body right at this very instant than you have atoms, so to speak. It's also very uniform. To suggest is has a conscience and is out to kill all life is...very far fetched indeed.

Do they actually state that in the games? I'm not one of those types that's read much of the codex, so if dark energy being sentient is in there, I missed it, heh.

We know dark energy is everywhere and all that, but more what I meant is that we don't really know much about what it is. We don't really know any of its properties since we can only detect it by inference and so on. It's fertile ground for speculative fiction, which is a big part of sci-fi in general.

Evolution isn't really, though. Hasn't been for a long time.

Sentient Dark Energy is implied by Drew Karpyshyn's novels. He also revealed that evil Dark Energy being the true antagonist/Reaper motivation just recently.

As far as "not knowing what it is", actually, there's a pretty good concenses of what it is, but the exact details are in debate depending on what version of quantum gravity you agree with. But we do know that it is an energy associated with what you might call spacetime itself. Space itself has this inherent, you might call it vacuum energy. Empty space has a repulsive effect, if you favor string theory, or it has the property of replicating itself, if you prefer loop quantum gravity. In the former, space pushes distant objects away from each other. In the latter, space creates more space, so what happens is that the space between to objects "grow" so that they appear to be pushed away from eachother.

Looks like I'm a bit behind on my reading then. But I don't have the head to dive into the cutting edge research, so I tend to read/watch stuff from some of the populists like Brian Greene and Stephen Hawking. Thanks for the info.

[pikey1969]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I'm not sure.  Depending on how significant the probability is, and especially if the Catalyst isn't infalliable, it may be making decisions with imperfect information.  Shepard is the first organic to ever meet the Catalyst, which the Catalyst points out as being noteworthy... it changes things.  It's possible that synthetic/organic wars have occurred on a more routine bases, maybe even along the lines of how the Quarian-Geth war started out, and it's ended poorly.

Maybe Shepard has already done something that the Catalyst didn't predict (reaching the Crucible), and it's added an unknown variable that the Catalyst cannot anticipate.  Or maybe it has, but it still doesn't make his conclusion incorrect.

It doesn't neccessarily make his conclusion correct either.

One of the biggest issues I have with the none-destroy ending  choices is the rather silent assumption that the 'new solutions' the Catalyst offers, are final/definite/infallible, on two grounds.

One, is the fact that Shepard reaches the Catalyst at all. This indicates that the Catalyst's logic and solutions so far have been fallible, and the Catalyst himself admits to this.

Two, is on a more meta-scale. If I read the conversations with the Catalyst correctly, he's the outcome of a technological singularity. Anything beyond the Technological Singularity is just as much a realm of the unknown outside the bounds of science, perhaps even more so than the origin of the universe. Now, unlike many, I really appreciated the introduction of the catalyst, even in the last 5 minutes of the triology, because of the fact that Technological Singularity was introduced as the root cause of all of the 'reaper hassle'. But the options he offers, rather the options offered to the player as a conclusion seemed to rather trivialize this concept, barring the Destroy option, which is basically a 'cop-out' for hoping for the best nature of organics, an acceptable solution given the uncertain nature of the concept of 'Technological Singularity'.

This is ultimately why I went with the Destroy option, even though I cringed at the prospect of having to sacrifise the Geth (who might as well have been the hope for this galaxy to keep it from reaching its own technological singularity/chaos).

That said, given the 'flawed' nature of the Catalyst's logic, would/could it not have been within the realm of possibility that Shepard could have simply asked the Catalyst to back off?

Meh, I dunno, maybe it's that inner 'unicorn/happy ending lover' in me that doesn't want to kill off the Geth, but alas.

Modifié par pikey1969, 08 avril 2012 - 04:22 .

[Allan Schumacher]

Tunrda wrote...

Allan,

You talk about moral dilemma and liking how the destroy ending gives you that. Wouldn't then the control ending be the best as there is no real down side there? Sure the reapers exist but Shepard controls them, isn't that good?

I think this comes down to a bias of approaching the Citadel with the mind that the Reapers had to be stopped.  In other words, I was already heading into the Citadel with a plan in mind.  This would bias me to maintaining that plan unless some heavy duty cognitive disonnance came in to convince me otherwise.  As it is, I only got some medium duty cognitive disonnance


I don't remember my entire thought process 100% for why I felt the Control decision was inadequate.  I think the ME team did a good job of placing queues to help slant me away from that choice, though, leading up to it.  My Shepard was decidedly Paragon and always responded to The Illusive Man by talking about how controlling the reapers wasn't the answer.  They also (for some reason... I'm curious by it as well!) had the imagery of The Illusive Man when the Catalyst was describing that choice.  I wouldn't be surprised if it helped influence me since my Shepard definitely didn't agree with the Illusive Man's perspective on things.

I also didn't 100% trust the Catalyst.  Should something go wrong and the Reapers continue to run free unchecked, then it was all for naught!  Granted, you can run with this and feel "If I didn't trust the Catalyst, how could I trust that it'd destroy the Reapers."  So I don't really think I don't trust the Catalyst in that he's outright lying to me, but rather I have doubts about the certainty of his suggested outcomes.  I'm skeptical that it will necessarily play out the way he suggests, and if Shepard somehow loses himself while controlling the Reapers, well then that's bad!


Having said that, assuming everything plays out perfectly based on what the Catalyst says, I'd agree with you that controlling the Reapers is the best decision.  Heck, Shepard can use them to help rebuild, help mediate, etc.  Hmmm, maybe I was worried that that would affect the self-determinism of the various species too.  HAHA.

[CavScout]

M0keys wrote...

Just wondering how Bioware thinks the player avatar commiting total genocide of an entire race of sentient, friendly beings is supposed to give us, as they said at PAX, satisfaction?

Who do they think their player base is? Genocide isn't cool

Killing all the Reapers is very cool. You should get a medal or something.

[tractrpl]

greggm2000 wrote...

My understanding is that some theorie(s) have dark energy not existing at all. So there's that as a possibility.

Maybe, but not really. Some Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) theorists speculate that the energy is just "space replicating", or space growing. String theory, space is continuous, so it can't "grow", but in LQG, space is made up of tiny individual space "quanta" just like you are made up of individual atoms, so space is made up of, um, space atoms, hehe. In this theory, there's not Dark Energy per se, it's just that the space between distance objects is growing, literally. Space creates more space. This gives the appearance of objects accelerating away from each other, thus implies there's an energy responsible. This interpretation is correct, the creation of "new" spacetime could be said to be a type of energy, it's just a different view, I suppose.

No scientist would say that Dark Energy "doesn't exist" the proof is conclusive. Galaxies are accelerating away from each other. SOMETHING is causing it, and that thing is called Dark Energy for lack of a better term.

[Vexille]

tractrpl wrote...

Vexille wrote...

I laugh at those who say killing a few billion (In my case just EDI as I had already eliminated the geth threat) to save trillions = wrong.

forcibly violate and mutate EVERY BEING IN THE GALAXY without any input from the people affected = "ok"

im sorry but synthesis is truly the most disgusting and morally repugnant "Solution" imaginable. I really doubt anyone who picked that option really grasps what the option is.

I honestly dont comprehend how anyone sees the violation and forced conversion of EVERYONE to be "good".

Hell if you pick synthesis why not just lose to Saren in ME1 and save some time

The difference is that you retain your individuality and self-recognition. You don't get tranformed into a reaper or anything, you are still you, just with a few extra bits and pieces. It's like Joker waking up one day realizing he's 10 times smarter and no longer has Vrolik's syndrome. He still has his body and mind, just upgraded. It's a big difference.

Im sorry thats just nonsense, you cant say "well were gonna rewrite your DNA but you will TOTALLY be just the same"

Its Violation of every beings body on a galactic scale... not to mention theres absolutely ZERO reason to believe that people wouldnt STILL make VIs/AIs to do menial tasks... unless your saying people will have no issue doing menial tasks... and if they dont anymore then your individuality and personality has indeed been changed.

It is one of the most disgusting endings ever written into a video game. (From an ethical pov)

Modifié par Vexille, 08 avril 2012 - 04:24 .

[Vexille]

sorry double post

Modifié par Vexille, 08 avril 2012 - 04:24 .

[DGuyton]

It's fine for me because I believe that the Bioware ending is idiotic. If I have EDI on my team she walks out of the Normandy same as any other character. In my ending the Starchild is a hallucination, Shepard destroys the Reapers and the Geth and EDI live. And guess what? My ending is just as 'artistic' and inspired as the one that the drunken writers at Bioware dreamed up!

[tractrpl]

Vexille, if you had a heart attack, blacked out, and woke up with a new fangled heart that's 10X better than you current heart would you say "That's a violation!" No, you'd say, "Well, at least I'm alive." That's the point, amigo.

[kimuji]

tractrpl wrote...

Vexille, if you had a heart attack, blacked out, and woke up with a new fangled heart that's 10X better than you current heart would you say "That's a violation!" No, you'd say, "Well, at least I'm alive." That's the point, amigo.

The green ending is a bit more than just adding an artificial limb or organ. Make it sound like an upgrade, remember that synthetics become partly organic too, I don't even know what that means.

Modifié par kimuji, 08 avril 2012 - 04:32 .

[tractrpl]

kimuji wrote...

And remember that synthetics become partly organic too, I don't even know what that means.

Have you ever watched Star Trek: First Contact?

[Deraldin]

tractrpl wrote...

Vexille, if you had a heart attack, blacked out, and woke up with a new fangled heart that's 10X better than you current heart would you say "That's a violation!" No, you'd say, "Well, at least I'm alive." That's the point, amigo.

Not equivalent. Heart attack is a negative condition and implies that you are fixing something with the transplant. If you want something equivalent, you went to sleep last night just like any other night. When you woke up in the morning you discover you had an organ transplant. The new one works just fine and hey, you're told it's "better" than what you had before, but someone still operated on you without your consent. That is a violation.

Also don't believe Allan's lies! He's evil!

Modifié par Deraldin, 08 avril 2012 - 04:33 .

[Utopianus]

I don't think it's a matter of what's cool or not. BioWare for whatever reason needed at least one of the ending with Shepard alive, and so they might've just chosen it out of lot and Red came out on top.

Edit: Spelling

Modifié par Utopianus, 08 avril 2012 - 04:34 .

[kalasaurus]

It almost feels as though Shepard survives in the destroy option just to throw in some extra guilt for being selfish (can see friends, LI) after committing the genocide of an entire race. Shepard makes the hero's sacrifice by compromising with the Reapers, either by rewriting everyone's DNA forcibly or attempting to control an all powerful ancient AI that we can't comprehend.

I can see "control" as being a good ending, but it's too vague on what's going to happen in the future. Will Shepard still be the same/have the same morals after giving up her humanity? I don't care if it's TIM's choice, but I care if it corrupts Shepard to the point that cycles can continue in the future.

Modifié par GlassElephant, 08 avril 2012 - 04:36 .

[greggm2000]

tractrpl wrote...

greggm2000 wrote...

My understanding is that some theorie(s) have dark energy not existing at all. So there's that as a possibility.

Maybe, but not really. Some Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG) theorists speculate that the energy is just "space replicating", or space growing. String theory, space is continuous, so it can't "grow", but in LQG, space is made up of tiny individual space "quanta" just like you are made up of individual atoms, so space is made up of, um, space atoms, hehe. In this theory, there's not Dark Energy per se, it's just that the space between distance objects is growing, literally. Space creates more space. This gives the appearance of objects accelerating away from each other, thus implies there's an energy responsible. This interpretation is correct, the creation of "new" spacetime could be said to be a type of energy, it's just a different view, I suppose.

No scientist would say that Dark Energy "doesn't exist" the proof is conclusive. Galaxies are accelerating away from each other. SOMETHING is causing it, and that thing is called Dark Energy for lack of a better term.

I thought it was a matter of the mathematics in at least one mainstream theory which explains that acceleration that Dark Energy was invented to explain? .... and (correct me if I'm wrong), isn't the rate of acceleration decreasing at the very largest scales?

I'm not nearly as informed on this as I could be, and I'm certainly no astrophysicist, heh!  So I could be totally wrong in this.

[kimuji]

tractrpl wrote...

kimuji wrote...

And remember that synthetics become partly organic too, I don't even know what that means.

Have you ever watched Star Trek: First Contact?

Do they become partly organic when touched by a green beam?

Deraldin wrote...

Also don't believe Allan's lies! He's evil!

He's just giving his opinion. He didn't write ME3's ending.

[Allan Schumacher]

kimuji wrote...

Allan Schumacher wrote...

My assumption is that organics create VIs to make their lives easier, and given enough VIs, eventually one becomes a true AI. Maybe the idea is that as a hybrid, the desire to create VIs in order to free up our spare time, make things easier, and so forth is less prevalent?

That's pretty much my idea, though I remember the Starchild saying: "the created will always rebel against the creators", he uses it as a justification for the Reapers actions. But this is a false statement, the AIs don't rebel for no reason, like you said we use VIs like tools to make our life easier, and so did the Quarians, if these VIs become sentient then they are no longer tools they are slaves. The Geths rebelled against the Quarians because the Quarians tried to wipe them out, not just because the Quarians were their creators. As I said in another thread if the Quarians had never tried to destroy the Geth but the Turians had, then the Geths would have attacked the Turians and not the Quarians. The created only rebel against the creator if the creator makes him a slave or tries to kill him when he become sentient. The rebellion is only inevitable if you give your creations valid motives to do so.

This is a good point, which I think might impact why I think the Catalyst is not truly omnipotent.  It is somehow imperfect in its analysis. 

If we want to get more philosophical, while you and I can come to the conclusion that the created will always rebel against the creators for no reason is false, but it doesn't necessarily make the statement "the created will always rebel against the creators" false.  I wouldn't be surprised that it's because of mistakes that the organics make that cause this conflict to happen, not because of an innate desire for synthetics to destroy their creators.  The Catalyst is simply describing an outcome, not the causes that lead to such an outcome.  He might not even entirely understand the causes.

Hmm, and I can see how such a thing could interrupt the cycle, since the
prime motivator for creating Sythetics in the first place is to do the
work of Organics.. but now, you could just fragment off a segment of
your own code to serve as a temporary VI in a chassis. You don't have
the risks, because in a sense, these VIs are *you*

The situation becomes additionally complicated if they end up getting a Geth-like Hive mind as well