522 réponses à ce sujet

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Really massive? You're taking a pro-totalitarianism stance?

No. Just a cruel, brutal, backstabbing, sociopathic path to get where I want to go.

Consider it like this. 

I'm like Prince Bhelen. I'm going to rule with a firm hand, but it will be benevolent, and it will genuinely work more towards the benefit of all. 

[Cainhurst Crow]

I would consider cerberus, with its autonomy, resources, military, sovereignty, etc, to be at the very least a corporate like state. And a state that is seeking a complete and total control of its people, even to the point of re-programing them to serve unquestioningly. I would call that totalitarianism really, since it achieves the primary goal of making the people completely dependent and loyal to the state. And cerberus achieved this process through the experiments at sanctuary, which you defended.

And moral relativism doesn't really stop you from being a totalitarian, it just means you don't really care that you are one, which makes you more a dick then anything else. IMO.

[Ryzaki]

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Really massive? You're taking a pro-totalitarianism stance?

No. Just a cruel, brutal, backstabbing, sociopathic path to get where I want to go.

Consider it like this. 

I'm like Prince Bhelen. I'm going to rule with a firm hand, but it will be benevolent, and it will genuinely work more towards the benefit of all. 

Bhelen wasn't altrusistic when he made his plans. He was being a selfish ****. It just ended up also benefiting groups such as the casteless and was better for the dwarves than Harrowmont's bury head in the sandism. Also benevolent? LAWL.

Modifié par Ryzaki, 28 novembre 2013 - 03:57 .

[Cainhurst Crow]

To be honest I think Bhelen did have other peoples interest in mind when he made his decisions. He did however put himself as the top priority of a lot of those decisions. Reforming the caste system and essentially bringing a cultural renaissance to orzummar could be seen as proof of that. The problem is he never tells you, the warden, what his plans are for orzummar, while harrowmont at least does.

He's not like the illusive man who really doesn't care about anyone else to the point of watching his entire organization crash and burn is nothing but a minor distraction to him. Bhelen is probably a much better leader and would have made a better illusive man in the end imo.

[Ryzaki]

Bhelen did that so his bit on the side had some legitimacy. I didn't see anything other than his affection for Rica and desire for more bodies to throw at the darkspawn (since the casteless can only move up by volunteering to fight) leading to his betterment of the casteless.

I do wish I could stand to play a DN past the origin. Pretending to side with Bhelen only to side with Harrowmont right at the end is probably glorious.

Modifié par Ryzaki, 28 novembre 2013 - 04:01 .

[Argentoid]

BringBackNihlus wrote...

D24O wrote...

No.

YOUR OPINION SUCKS

YOUR USERNAME ROCKS

[Rotward]

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Really massive? You're taking a pro-totalitarianism stance?

No. Just a cruel, brutal, backstabbing, sociopathic path to get where I want to go.

Consider it like this. 

I'm like Prince Bhelen. I'm going to rule with a firm hand, but it will be benevolent, and it will genuinely work more towards the benefit of all. 

You could shorten that post to, "yes." 

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Kataphrut94 wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Yes, I can. And do. Essentially, my Shepard was fired from Cerberus. The messes that Cerberus makes are sides for what they do fundamentally achieve. And they did achieve a lot. On this, they did gain information on the Derelict Reaper, and they did gain the Reaper IFF that was vital for the mission.

I will consent that Cerberus Operations due tend to have a very heavy body count.

IMO, if that's the cost to achieving my goals though, then it will be met without hesitation or remorse.

It's why I pride my Shepard on being unfettered.

I think you might be misunderstanding me; I'm not trying to say that Cerberus are evil or immoral. I have nothing against the whole unfettered 'ends justifies the means' business that you and Cerberus preach. As a matter of fact, I support it.

The issue I have is with practicality; put simply, they were incompetent morons. If achieving your goal means sacrificing a few people, then that's fine so long as the end result is worth it and the losses weren't meaningless. For every one of the failed experiments I brought up, you justified it with 'oh, they technically succeeded, it's just that they couldn't benefit from it because everyone died'. That's not success; they had good ideas and proved they could work, but they still screwed up and gained nothing practical from them. What's worse is that I can think of several ways they could have achieved their goals without all the death and failure.

Quite simply, I disagree on the supposed chronic incompetence of Cerberus. Yes, they were messy, but yes, they did succeed. I view what Cerberus' outcomes were as a success, or partial success. Yes, I can think of ways they could achieve goals without death, but I simply don't view Cerberus' flaws as failures. I view them errors to be corrected in future iterations for practical purposes.

First, Akuze. Assuming they were studying how thresher maws kill armed squadrons or whatever, that's easy; set the same trap, but spring it on turian soldiers. Still devious, but at least you aren't hurting your own species, plus you also gain some insight into how your enemy reacts to these situations as well. Assuming they were just studying the maws themselves, they wouldn't even need to; galactic civilisation is over a thousand years old, thresher maws are even older. There's probably several comprehensive studies of thresher maws out there they could have used. There's a Galactic Codex, use it.

To this I really can't say why they decided to test Threshers on an alliance team. Yes, they probably should have used Turians. Or perhaps they wanted to see how humans could react to Threshers, and vice versa. Perhaps they were using it as a field test for Shepard (that's a putative idea of mine). Perhaps it was psychological in purpose, designed to gruesomely demonstrate to humanity what some of the dangers await colonial expansion in the galaxy, as a means to increase colonial defence. There's a lot of possibilities for where this might have gone.

Second, Lazarus. I don't care what anyone thinks, Shepard's life is not more important than the cure and what happened at that place was an absolute mess. Definitely save him if you can, but Miranda's top priority should have been preserving the important medical research. Regardless, that situation was stupid to begin with; why would Wilson try to betray the people he's working for when they're the ones trying to bring a person back from the dead? Do I really need to spell out how ridiculous that is?

I don't care what you think, I believe Shepard's life is more important than the information to restore death. Hell, I view him as more important than the entirety of the alliance Why do you believe this is so necessary anyway? The purpose of Lazarus was never to cure death, it was to bring Shepard back so he could continue fighting the Reapers. Plus the expenditures in resources, the time and effort, all of it on one man, the only man who could make a difference. That was the point of Lazarus. As for Wilson? Well, that was a problem. Not Cerberus'. Why blame them for Wilson's actions? I think Wilson was more of a disgruntled employee who decided that he wasn't getting the proper reward for his work or contributions, be it monetary, power, or, as I personally view as subtely implied, sexual favors from Miranda (which of course could just be simple desire for acknoweldgement). It's impractical and undesirable for everyone involved to try to find a means to revive the dead on a more permanent basis. As was mentioned, the whole purpose was to bring Shepard back to fight the Reapers. It was about Shepard, not overcoming death.

Third, Overlord. Would it really have been that unreasonable for Archer to ask for more time once he knows he has a way of controlling the geth? The Illusive Man seems to be pretty chill about project management, he should have been fine with being made to wait a bit longer. And if he wasn't, Archer should have just said 'screw you' and taken his work somewhere better. Either way, they could have had complete control of the geth, rather than dead scientists and a sentinent computer virus.

Where's he going to get his funding if he does that? Do you think TIM would just let him go? Granted, the brutal means of putting David into the machine did backfire. They could have eased him in and worked from there. And think of how much money and resources TIM might have already poured into this Project. Even TIM doesn't have limitless resources. I figure that Overlord was in the red long enough for TIM to lay his foot down and demand results or cancel the entire Project. Dr. Archer obviously had a lot of pressure put on him and decided to use a rash implementation of what should have been a gradual process. Yes, this did bite them in the ass, but indeed it did prove Cerberus' idea was plausible. It needed refinement.

Forth, the derelict Reaper. This is laughable simple; don't send your boys off to a derelict Reaper then just leave them to their own devices with no apparent effort to monitor them.

I have a theory on this: Who says they weren't being monitored? In fact, I believe completely that TIM was monitoring the installation. And I'll explain why...

TIM knows about indoctrination, he should have figured out something was wrong and made an effort to rescue them.

Because an ulterior purpose was to study indoctrination, directly from the source - a Reaper itself. Yes, I believe TIM felt it was unfortunate to waste such a team for such an operation (nor do I think it was one that was best to put a science team on), but at the same time, the team seemed to be more of a salvage team than a true science and research effort. I believe their purpose was to recover or catalog various pieces of Reaper technology and examine them. Who knows? Maybe they did succumb to indoctrination and it wasn't by design. If that was the case, I believe TIM would rather cut his losses rather than send a S&R team to recover them (and risk them being indoctrinated themselves as well as being attacked by the indoctrinated/huskified team). Shepard's goal involves gaining a Reaper IFF, plus he can handle any husks that come his way, so it makes sense for Shepard to be the one to recover the tech. I'd imagine EDI would use her abilities to download and copy all the acquired information from the computers, so minus the raw technology (which might have a danger of indoctrination anyway), all the gathered information on the technology is secure. Of course, this too is entirely notional.

Shepard can still grab the IFF, but my version has a net gain in that none of the scientists die to achieve it. Then they can do something useful, like hooking up with Brynn and Jacob and contributing to the good guys side in 3.

I view them as sacrified in the name of studying direct indoctrination. 

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Ryzaki wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Really massive? You're taking a pro-totalitarianism stance?

No. Just a cruel, brutal, backstabbing, sociopathic path to get where I want to go.

Consider it like this. 

I'm like Prince Bhelen. I'm going to rule with a firm hand, but it will be benevolent, and it will genuinely work more towards the benefit of all. 

Bhelen wasn't altrusistic when he made his plans. He was being a selfish ****. It just ended up also benefiting groups such as the casteless and was better for the dwarves than Harrowmont's bury head in the sandism. Also benevolent? LAWL.

Believe it or not, there is such thing as benevolent authoritarianism.

[MR CauSe iM GoD]

tickle267 wrote...

what's this thread about again?

This, not sure if the title should be changed to Cerberus or TIM. 

But Miranda, was my favorite LI in throughout the ME series. 

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Rotward wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...

Really massive? You're taking a pro-totalitarianism stance?

No. Just a cruel, brutal, backstabbing, sociopathic path to get where I want to go.

Consider it like this. 

I'm like Prince Bhelen. I'm going to rule with a firm hand, but it will be benevolent, and it will genuinely work more towards the benefit of all. 

You could shorten that post to, "yes." 

It's not true though. I'm not out to make a cult of personality worshipping me. I don't seek to control people's very lives and thoughts. 

I'm more on the side of creating a meritocratic progressive federal democratic republic. I do acknowledge that I'm going to have to be a complete ass to get there. And my Cerberus happens to serve as a shadow superpower illuminati that works behind the scenes to bring things forward.

Modifié par MassivelyEffective0730, 28 novembre 2013 - 04:30 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Darth Brotarian wrote...

I would consider cerberus, with its autonomy, resources, military, sovereignty, etc, to be at the very least a corporate like state. And a state that is seeking a complete and total control of its people, even to the point of re-programing them to serve unquestioningly. I would call that totalitarianism really, since it achieves the primary goal of making the people completely dependent and loyal to the state. And cerberus achieved this process through the experiments at sanctuary, which you defended.

And moral relativism doesn't really stop you from being a totalitarian, it just means you don't really care that you are one, which makes you more a dick then anything else. IMO.

I'm not saying anything about relativism and totalitarianism. That's really not my ideal end state. To be honest, we'd be more of a shadow organization illuminati than anything else. 

[ImaginaryMatter]

Cerberus is pretty incompetent. I'm pretty sure everyone knew about them in ME2 because they slapped the Cerberus logo onto everything. So much for subterfuge.

Modifié par ImaginaryMatter, 28 novembre 2013 - 04:39 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

Cerberus is pretty incompetent. I'm pretty sure everyone knew about them in ME2 because they slapped the Cerberus logo onto everything.

Did anybody really know what it meant?

[ImaginaryMatter]

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

Cerberus is pretty incompetent. I'm pretty sure everyone knew about them in ME2 because they slapped the Cerberus logo onto everything.

Did anybody really know what it meant?

Considering everyone knows about Cerberus, I'm assuming yes.

[Cainhurst Crow]

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

Cerberus is pretty incompetent. I'm pretty sure everyone knew about them in ME2 because they slapped the Cerberus logo onto everything.

Did anybody really know what it meant?

Considering everyone knows about Cerberus, I'm assuming yes.

In the age of the internet/extranet, branding really is a hella stupid idea. It's just invivitng people to make the connection that you're involved with such and such orginization and therefore probably trying to accomplish a lot of horrible things.

Reminds me of the "made in USA" labels we put on the gas grenades that the egyptian military uses. It just makes us have bad PR by association.

[Rotward]

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Rotward wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...
Really massive? You're taking a pro-totalitarianism stance?

No. Just a cruel, brutal, backstabbing, sociopathic path to get where I want to go.

Consider it like this. I'm like Prince Bhelen. I'm going to rule with a firm hand, but it will be benevolent, and it will genuinely work more towards the benefit of all. 

You could shorten that post to, "yes." 

It's not true though. I'm not out to make a cult of personality worshipping me. I don't seek to control people's very lives and thoughts. 

I'm more on the side of creating a meritocratic progressive federal democratic republic. I do acknowledge that I'm going to have to be a complete ass to get there. And my Cerberus happens to serve as a shadow superpower illuminati that works behind the scenes to bring things forward.

Both your posts conform to a totalitarian ideal. I'm not judging it one way or the other, I'm just saying that ruling with a firm hand and having black-ops enforcement is totalitarian. Good lord, that word's like a tongue twister for my fingers. In theory, a government could be both meritocratic an totalitarian. You could then develop a democratic republic from that government, but that's not how you plan to start out, based on your posts.

Modifié par Rotward, 28 novembre 2013 - 05:02 .

[Han Shot First]

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

Cerberus is pretty incompetent. I'm pretty sure everyone knew about them in ME2 because they slapped the Cerberus logo onto everything. So much for subterfuge.

That was one of the more bizarre artistic decisions made in the series. Cerberus shouldn't had uniforms or paint schemes that identified them as Cerberus.

If the crew of the Normandy needed to have uniforms those uniforms should have been for Cord-Hislop Aerospace. Cord-Hislop is a corporate front for Cerberus.

[Ryzaki]

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Believe it or not, there is such thing as benevolent authoritarianism.

Believe it or not that's not what Bhelen was doing.

Bhelen was out for him. If you benefitted that's great that wasn't his intention.

Modifié par Ryzaki, 28 novembre 2013 - 05:39 .

[Jorji Costava]

Han Shot First wrote...

ImaginaryMatter wrote...

Cerberus is pretty incompetent. I'm pretty sure everyone knew about them in ME2 because they slapped the Cerberus logo onto everything. So much for subterfuge.

That was one of the more bizarre artistic decisions made in the series. Cerberus shouldn't had uniforms or paint schemes that identified them as Cerberus.

If the crew of the Normandy needed to have uniforms those uniforms should have been for Cord-Hislop Aerospace. Cord-Hislop is a corporate front for Cerberus.

As odd as it seems, there have been terrorist and/or criminal organizations that have made use of logos and even uniforms. The LTTE of Sri Lanka, for instance, had both logos and distinctive tiger-striped uniforms. The Zetas have a logo as well, so it's more common than one would think. Of course, none of these groups had their origin in some kind of black ops unit (the Zetas are the closest in this regard, being founded by ex-Mexican special forces), so it's not a perfect analogy, but nonetheless, it makes some sense. When you have an organization like Cerberus that's trying to win the hearts and minds of humanity at large, symbolism can be an important part of the campaign to gain popular support.

[HiddenInWar]

How did a conversation about Miranda turn into a debate about totalitarianism?

[Cainhurst Crow]

Los Zetas strike again.

[TheMyron]

Unless you are the big cheese himself, you should beware of supporting totalitarian statehood, it can turn around and bite you too. Trotsky knew learned this the hard way.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Rotward wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Rotward wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Darth Brotarian wrote...
Really massive? You're taking a pro-totalitarianism stance?

No. Just a cruel, brutal, backstabbing, sociopathic path to get where I want to go.

Consider it like this. I'm like Prince Bhelen. I'm going to rule with a firm hand, but it will be benevolent, and it will genuinely work more towards the benefit of all. 

You could shorten that post to, "yes." 

It's not true though. I'm not out to make a cult of personality worshipping me. I don't seek to control people's very lives and thoughts. 

I'm more on the side of creating a meritocratic progressive federal democratic republic. I do acknowledge that I'm going to have to be a complete ass to get there. And my Cerberus happens to serve as a shadow superpower illuminati that works behind the scenes to bring things forward.

Both your posts conform to a totalitarian ideal. I'm not judging it one way or the other, I'm just saying that ruling with a firm hand and having black-ops enforcement is totalitarian. Good lord, that word's like a tongue twister for my fingers. In theory, a government could be both meritocratic an totalitarian. You could then develop a democratic republic from that government, but that's not how you plan to start out, based on your posts.

That's an authoritative ideal. Not totalitarianism. Totalitarianism is what I'd be doing if I was trying to control every aspect of life in the galaxy. It's the exercise by the political government of  absolute control of the population, with all individuals being subordinated to the state, and opposition political groups and cultural expression are nigh completely banned and suppressed and oppressed.

Authoritatianism is a strong leadership, but much more of a 'don't screw with the people in power, and we won't bother you'. It's a strong elite cadre with vast powers put into it. An authoritarian style power does not have to be a totalitarian state. Black-ops enforcement isn't exactly the case - it's more for stopping potential zealots or ideological extremists from causing public displays of anarchy or terrorism.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Ryzaki wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

Believe it or not, there is such thing as benevolent authoritarianism.

Believe it or not that's not what Bhelen was doing.

Bhelen was out for him. If you benefitted that's great that wasn't his intention.

He seemed to be doing things that were genuinely meant to progress the Dwarves. And he's bringing them on the path forward whether they want to go or not. Yes, it's authoritative, but absolute monarchies usually are. I don't see how his intention was entirely selfish - Or maybe it was, but it was out of a legitimate desire to better Dwarven society.