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[The Heretic of Time]

Am I the only one who actually thinks the reapers look really cool? I don't find them scary at all. Their design is rather awesome.

[Reorte]

I didn't pick Control simply because I don't trust it one inch. I certainly rejected it outright at the time (anything that involves killing myself sounds like a trap) and even with hindsight it still leaves me as nervous as hell. IF it's an accurate copy of Shepard, and IF he can be trusted to not abuse it, and IF there are no underlying shackles built in to the Catalysts, and IF the Reapers are under direct control and have no independence then it's the best option. That's too many big ifs for me.

[kal_reegar]

[quote]Heretic_Hanar wrote...
Assuming the reapers themselves don't continue developing and improving themselves. Which I find a rather empty assumption. We already see in the Control ending epilogue that Miranda and Oriana are studying a reaper. No doubt they're studying it, not only to improve their own tech, but to improve the reapers as well.
[quote]

sovereing says that they are "the pinnacle of evolution"...
maybe there is still something that can be improved, but for other races is a much easier to fill the gap.

maybe the reapers will always be one step ahead... but is one step enough? They aren't so many, after all...


[quote]

How about using the reaper armada to smash every damn synthetic that even dares to rebel against organics? Sounds like a fine solution to me.


[quote]

if it was such a good solution, why didn't the catalyst choose that?

no, if you let the organics develop themselves, they will build always more advanced synthetics, and smashing them will become always more difficult and expensive. Up to the point you can defeat them.

you can do it for a long time, but it can be the final solution.



[quote]
The balance in Control is rather easily found. Shepard with his reaper armada will restore the balance, he said so himself in the Control epilogue. How can Control Shepard achieve balance? Easy. Simply Smas every damn fool who dares to start a war, be it a rebelling synthetic or an ignorant organic. Shepalyst has a whole army of reapers at his command to do this. Piece of cake.[/quote]

you cant' do this forever. Costantly maintai the primacy is simply impossible.
it's one of the rules of evolution, of species and human societies, and only synthesis "changes" how evolution works. Control doesn't.

[kal_reegar]

Heretic_Hanar wrote...
Assuming the reapers themselves don't continue developing and improving themselves. Which I find a rather empty assumption. We already see in the Control ending epilogue that Miranda and Oriana are studying a reaper. No doubt they're studying it, not only to improve their own tech, but to improve the reapers as well.

sovereing says that they are "the pinnacle of evolution"...
maybe there is still something that can be improved, but for other races is a much easier to fill the gap.

maybe the reapers will always be one step ahead... but is one step enough? They aren't so many, after all...

How about using the reaper armada to smash every damn synthetic that even dares to rebel against organics? Sounds like a fine solution to me.

if it was such a good solution, why didn't the catalyst choose that?

no, if you let the organics develop themselves, they will build always more advanced synthetics, and smashing them will become always more difficult and expensive. Up to the point you can defeat them.

you can do it for a long time, but it can be the final solution.

The balance in Control is rather easily found. Shepard with his reaper armada will restore the balance, he said so himself in the Control epilogue. How can Control Shepard achieve balance? Easy. Simply Smas every damn fool who dares to start a war, be it a rebelling synthetic or an ignorant organic. Shepalyst has a whole army of reapers at his command to do this. Piece of cake.

you cant' do this forever. Costantly maintain the primacy is simply impossible.
it's one of the rules of evolution, of species and human societies, and only synthesis "changes" how evolution works. Control doesn't.

[Yate]

Reorte wrote...

I didn't pick Control simply because I don't trust it one inch. I certainly rejected it outright at the time (anything that involves killing myself sounds like a trap) and even with hindsight it still leaves me as nervous as hell. IF it's an accurate copy of Shepard, and IF he can be trusted to not abuse it, and IF there are no underlying shackles built in to the Catalysts, and IF the Reapers are under direct control and have no independence then it's the best option. That's too many big ifs for me.

TIM's not stupid. If he believed it could work before he got indoctrinated, I trust him. And even at the end he wasn't fully indoctrinated, not like Saren or Benezia.

I mean really, there are as many caveats with Destroy. One spanner in the works and you just fried the life support of every ship in the Sol system.

[Enhanced]

Heretic_Hanar wrote...

Am I the only one who actually thinks the reapers look really cool? I don't find them scary at all. Their design is rather awesome.

You're not the only one. I'm sure the other indoctrinated people think the same as you do.

[Xilizhra]

Oh no. That's not the problem at all. The problem is that the story favors Paragons to an almost silly degree. Positive Paragon consequences do materialize, while negative consequences never do - while they easily could. Take the Rachni queen decision: take a risk and save her, she'll be an ally. The Paragon is validated. The opposite *never* happens, not in important decisions. Whenever a Paragon lets someone live, it will turn out right. Cure the genophage and you'll get a second chance for gaining salarian support. The net benefit of sabotaging the cure is a measly 10 points of EMS. It shouldn't always turn out right. Pragmatism wouldn't be pragmatic if it never had a point.

This is because Renegade is rarely pragmatic, very often simply expedient. This could be a design flaw, to be sure, but in-universe, Renegade Shepard fails to comprehend the difference between pragmatism and expedience, too often.

[CronoDragoon]

Heretic_Hanar wrote...
Wait, the Collector base... keeping is the Renegade decision, blowing it up is Paragon. But this is completely against your philosophy. In this scenario, the Paragon is destroying the base to prevent possible future harm, while the Renegade is keeping the base despite the risks that come with it. This is completely the opposite of all other Paragon and Renegade decisions. Maybe your philosophy isn't as water-tight as you thought it was?

The Collector Base works, depending on how you see it. If you see the Reaper process as an evil (and the Paragon says as much when you choose to destroy it) then by destroying it you are rectifying an evil, but RISKING the fact that you are possibly destroying your best chance to study Reaper tech and find a way to destroy the Reapers. "We'll win without sacrificing the soul of our species" is saying "I am risking that we can win this war without this tech which has caused so much evil."  Renegades utilize the tech in an attempt to be as prepared for the Reapers as possible.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Heretic_Hanar wrote...

Am I the only one who actually thinks the reapers look really cool? I don't find them scary at all. Their design is rather awesome.

Nope. Husks are one thing, but Reaper ships (the dreadnoughts especially) are quite elegant.

Do want.

[Reorte]

Yate wrote...

Reorte wrote...

I didn't pick Control simply because I don't trust it one inch. I certainly rejected it outright at the time (anything that involves killing myself sounds like a trap) and even with hindsight it still leaves me as nervous as hell. IF it's an accurate copy of Shepard, and IF he can be trusted to not abuse it, and IF there are no underlying shackles built in to the Catalysts, and IF the Reapers are under direct control and have no independence then it's the best option. That's too many big ifs for me.

TIM's not stupid. If he believed it could work before he got indoctrinated, I trust him. And even at the end he wasn't fully indoctrinated, not like Saren or Benezia.

I mean really, there are as many caveats with Destroy. One spanner in the works and you just fried the life support of every ship in the Sol system.

Frying ever ship's life support amounts to much less in the long term (other than for the quarians I suppose). As well as thinking what the results will be now I wonder about them in a few thousand years' time. I can't see too many negatives to Destroy in the very long term unless the Catalyst's arguments were all completely correct and they just sound flat out far-fetched to me.

TIM's not stupid but he's not necessarily right either, and his Control, if it worked, would remove some of the ifs (it didn't involve making the big gamble of killing yourself to make a copy of unknown accuracy and independence). It would've made a nice split during the game if you could chose to go along with his plans and help TIM.

I don't have a problem with the basic concept of Control (unlike Synthesis), just the risks and I can't flat out say that the bad things with it that I fear could happen definitely will.

[Reorte]

CronoDragoon wrote...

The Collector Base works, depending on how you see it. If you see the Reaper process as an evil (and the Paragon says as much when you choose to destroy it) then by destroying it you are rectifying an evil, but RISKING the fact that you are possibly destroying your best chance to study Reaper tech and find a way to destroy the Reapers. "We'll win without sacrificing the soul of our species" is saying "I am risking that we can win this war without this tech which has caused so much evil."  Renegades utilize the tech in an attempt to be as prepared for the Reapers as possible.

There's nothing fundamentally good or evil with any piece of technology, just what you do with it (although some might have very few acceptable uses). Handing the base over to Cerberus though is what makes it sound like an unquestionably bad idea.

[CronoDragoon]

I want to clarify: I am NOT saying that Destroy is Renegade and Control is Paragon. Funnily enough, I chose Destroy for paragon and Control for Renegade. There are P/R interpretations for EVERY ending.

I don't want this thread to turn into that type of debate.

However, if you choose Destroy over Control because you are worried about the great harm that an all-powerful Shepard could possibly do, and you are willing to kill the geth and EDI specifically to prevent that harm, then I think a Renegade would approve of that logic.

There are other Paragon reasons for choosing Destroy and Renegade reasons for Control, obviously.

[The Heretic of Time]

kal_reegar wrote...

sovereing says that they are "the pinnacle of evolution"...
maybe there is still something that can be improved, but for other races is a much easier to fill the gap.

Sovereign also said the reapers had no beginning. Sovereign said so many things. I wouldn't take everything he said too seriously. There is no such thing is "pinnacle of evolution". Evolution will always continue as long as life exists.

 

maybe the reapers will always be one step ahead... but is one step enough? They aren't so many, after all...

I'd say they are more than just 1 step ahead... More like... 100 steps ahead.

if it was such a good solution, why didn't the catalyst choose that?

Because the Catalyst was a dumb AI that tried to preserve both, organics and synthetics (in the EC, in the original endings he only talked about preserving organics). My Shepard and I don't care about synthetics (except for the geth maybe, they've proven themselves to be good guys). That's the big difference.

no, if you let the organics develop themselves, they will build always more advanced synthetics, and smashing them will become always more difficult and expensive. Up to the point you can defeat them.

Not if we introduce a law where it states creating synthetics is forbidden. If an organic race does create a synthetic race, Catalyst Shepard  will first crush the synthetics and then harvest the organics who created them as an example for the rest of the galaxy. Don't create synthetics or else you'll get harvested! 

you can do it for a long time, but it can be the final solution.

Maybe, maybe not. At least in the Control scenario they have plenty of time to find a final solution that doesn't involve green space magic.

you cant' do this forever. Costantly maintain the primacy is simply impossible.
it's one of the rules of evolution, of species and human societies, and only synthesis "changes" how evolution works. Control doesn't.

Nonsense. There is no rule in evolution that says one species can't stay on the top of the food chain forever, or at least for a very very very long time. Just look at us humans (in real-life). Do you think any of the other species on earth will ever catch up on us? I don't think so, unless humanity gets whiped out by a natural disaster or something. The reapers don't have to fear that though.

[CronoDragoon]

Ieldra2 wrote...
Consequentialism is a meta-ethical principle. It's not one we are intuitively wired for, but it is as valid as deontology.

I wasn't discounting consequentialism as an ethical system (I've argued it is as recent as yesterday on these boards) but rather that Refuse has very little going for it outside of the weighing of principle vs. consequences. If you discount moral principle, the only other reasons to choose Refuse are 1. middle finger to BW or 2. You believe in conventional victory.

Oh no. That's not the problem at all. The problem is that the story favors Paragons to an almost silly degree. Positive Paragon consequences do materialize, while negative consequences never do - while they easily could. Take the Rachni queen decision: take a risk and save her, she'll be an ally. The Paragon is validated. The opposite *never* happens, not in important decisions. Whenever a Paragon lets someone live, it will turn out right. Cure the genophage and you'll get a second chance for gaining salarian support. The net benefit of sabotaging the cure is a measly 10 points of EMS. It shouldn't always turn out right. Pragmatism wouldn't be pragmatic if it never had a point.

By "consequences" I obviously meant the connotation of "negative consequences". Renegades' negative consequences are immediately apparent, whereas Paragons' negative consequences are associated with the non-immediate future.

[KotorEffect3]

Heretic_Hanar wrote...

Am I the only one who actually thinks the reapers look really cool? I don't find them scary at all. Their design is rather awesome.

For once you are right about something.  I have always loved the look of the reapers themselves ever since I first saw Sovereign back on Eden Prime.

[CronoDragoon]

Reorte wrote...

There's nothing fundamentally good or evil with any piece of technology, just what you do with it (although some might have very few acceptable uses). Handing the base over to Cerberus though is what makes it sound like an unquestionably bad idea.

I don't know if I agree with that. If the primary purpose of a piece of tech is to do X, and X is considered evil, then the tech is evil. Now, you can always make breakthroughs for something good based on that tech, but that is just saying that it's possible for good to unintentionally be born from evil (which I do agree with).

Tech like relays, the primary purpose of which is transportation, is neutral and can be used for either. But nerve gas is designed to kill people, and though you can take parts of the process and use it for good, nerve gas itself is an evil.

[The Heretic of Time]

KotorEffect3 wrote...

Heretic_Hanar wrote...

Am I the only one who actually thinks the reapers look really cool? I don't find them scary at all. Their design is rather awesome.

For once you are right about something.

I feel really honored that you think I'm right. It really means a lot to me.

Modifié par Heretic_Hanar, 20 décembre 2012 - 08:56 .

[Ieldra]

Heretic_Hanar wrote...
Am I the only one who actually thinks the reapers look really cool? I don't find them scary at all. Their design is rather awesome.

I find the Reaper concept interesting. I've always thought I'd like to talk to one without all that harvesting business getting in the way. I'll have that....

[AlanC9]

CronoDragoon wrote...
But nerve gas is designed to kill people, and though you can take parts of the process and use it for good, nerve gas itself is an evil.

Is that true for all weapons, or is there something special about nerve gas?

[CronoDragoon]

AlanC9 wrote...

CronoDragoon wrote...
But nerve gas is designed to kill people, and though you can take parts of the process and use it for good, nerve gas itself is an evil.

Is that true for all weapons, or is there something special about nerve gas?

Well, it depends how the weapon is used. I don't consider killing animals for substinence to be evil, for example, so I wouldn't say a bow and arrow is evil technology. As far as I know nerve gas has never been used for hunting, just killing people en masse.

[Ieldra]

Xilizhra wrote...

Oh no. That's not the problem at all. The problem is that the story favors Paragons to an almost silly degree. Positive Paragon consequences do materialize, while negative consequences never do - while they easily could. Take the Rachni queen decision: take a risk and save her, she'll be an ally. The Paragon is validated. The opposite *never* happens, not in important decisions. Whenever a Paragon lets someone live, it will turn out right. Cure the genophage and you'll get a second chance for gaining salarian support. The net benefit of sabotaging the cure is a measly 10 points of EMS. It shouldn't always turn out right. Pragmatism wouldn't be pragmatic if it never had a point.

This is because Renegade is rarely pragmatic, very often simply expedient. This could be a design flaw, to be sure, but in-universe, Renegade Shepard fails to comprehend the difference between pragmatism and expedience, too often.

The examples I quoted are pragmatic. The big Renegade decisions often are - leaving the Council to die, killing the Rachni queen, keeping the base, sabotaging the cure, killing the geth heretics. However, they would only be validated if the opposite decision had a downside, for avoiding that downside is the point of making the Renegade decision. But that never happens. Sabotaging the cure would fit - but no, they give the Paragon extra cookies by giving us an extra opportunity to win Salarian support. In other words, the designers go out of their way to favor Paragons.



 

[FlyingSquirrel]

Heretic_Hanar wrote...
Wait, the Collector base... keeping is the Renegade decision, blowing it up is Paragon. But this is completely against your philosophy. In this scenario, the Paragon is destroying the base to prevent possible future harm, while the Renegade is keeping the base despite the risks that come with it. This is completely the opposite of all other Paragon and Renegade decisions. Maybe your philosophy isn't as water-tight as you thought it was?

My Paragon rationale for destroying the base is the other way around, i.e. TIM will almost certainly do something harmful with it, so I'll take the risk of losing a possible asset against the Reapers.

[AlanC9]

Ieldra2 wrote...
 Sabotaging the cure would fit - but no, they give the Paragon extra cookies by giving us an extra opportunity to win Salarian support. In other words, the designers go out of their way to favor Paragons.

But that doesn't get back the fleet you lost if you don't sabotage the cure. It's a separate asset. I'm also not sure how the salarian support you do get counts as a result of Paragon action; surely saving the Salarian councilor isn't something that a Renegade would pass up if he can do it.

[kal_reegar]

[quote]Heretic_Hanar wrote...

Sovereign also said the reapers had no beginning. Sovereign said so many things. I wouldn't take everything he said too seriously. There is no such thing is "pinnacle of evolution". Evolution will always continue as long as life exists. 
[quote]

[quote]I'd say they are more than just 1 step ahead... More like... 100 steps ahead
[/quote]

once you have reached a certain level of perfection, in every field, improving becomes more difficult and requires more time.

for example, it requires 100 hours training to go from average to fit, but to go from fit to a Arnold Schwarzenegger body.. well, you have to work really hard.

US pil grows every year around 2-3%.
China and India? around 10%.
Why? Not because they are better or smatter, simply because is a lot easier to go from 0 to 100 than from 100 to 110.

the same with the reapers. In a long term scenario, other races will fill the gap. Slowly, but they will. And they don't need to fill ALL the gap, because the reapers are few and they are billions.
Unless you do as the catalyst, more or less... destroyning the more advanced and leaving the others, or forcing them in a sort of tech stagnation...



[quote]

Because the Catalyst was a dumb AI that tried to preserve both, organics and synthetics (in the EC, in the original endings he only talked about preserving organics). My Shepard and I don't care about synthetics (except for the geth maybe, they've proven themselves to be good guys). That's the big difference.
[/quote]

synthetics rebelling against organics is not the only problem.
organics can be a very dangerous problem too.
if they want more freedom and more power (and there is no if), they will try to destroy their benevolent, wise, paternalistic ruler.

no way you can beat them always and forever.
even the catalyst failed at last, and he "cheats", genocide and indoctrinate...


[quote]Not if we introduce a law where it states creating synthetics is forbidden. If an organic race does create a synthetic race, Catalyst Shepard  will first crush the synthetics and then harvest the organics who created them as an example for the rest of the galaxy. Don't create synthetics or else you'll get harvested! 


[/quote]

prohibitionism has NEVER worked. You're just going to create a synthetics mafia! 


[quote]

Maybe, maybe not. At least in the Control scenario they have plenty of time to find a final solution that doesn't involve green space magic.


[/quote]


I agree with this... space magic is bad...



[quote]

Nonsense. There is no rule in evolution that says one species can't stay on the top of the food chain forever, or at least for a very very very long time. Just look at us humans (in real-life). Do you think any of the other species on earth will ever catch up on us? I don't think so, unless humanity gets whiped out by a natural disaster or something. The reapers don't have to fear that though.[/quote]

maybe nobody will catch up on us, but we will change, evolve. Become something different. Or extinct.

[Dean_the_Young]

AlanC9 wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...
 Sabotaging the cure would fit - but no, they give the Paragon extra cookies by giving us an extra opportunity to win Salarian support. In other words, the designers go out of their way to favor Paragons.

But that doesn't get back the fleet you lost if you don't sabotage the cure. It's a separate asset. I'm also not sure how the salarian support you do get counts as a result of Paragon action; surely saving the Salarian councilor isn't something that a Renegade would pass up if he can do it.

Gotta agree with Alan here, Ieldra. While you might still be able to argue that the Tuchanka arc has a slight bias in that the paragon decision of keeping the cure data is always better in terms of points (barely edging out a Mordin save), Tuchanka is pretty solidly balanced on P/R outputs.

If anything, it might have a slight Renegade tilt in having a Renegade-unique path to save a popular and sympathetic character (Mordin), unique content (the Wrex confrontation scene afterwards), and a definite tone change to validate Renegade concerns about the threats of the Krogan.