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Chris L'Etoile (ME1/2 writer) on EDI, the Geth and AIs


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#1
Belisarius25

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I linked this in the EDI topic, but in the interest of putting this somewhere where people who aren't following that can see it, someone over at holdtheline.com tracked down some comments Chris L'Etoile made about the various AI characters in Mass Effect (he wrote several characters - Ashley in ME1, Legion/Thane and some of EDI in ME2- and various background information and other stuff for the ME series before leaving).

Here's the holdtheline link: click me

Some quotes;

How I wrote Legion (and EDI) came from sitting down and thinking about how a "real" machine intelligence free of glandular distractions, subjective perceptions / mental blocks, and philosophical angst (fear of death, "why am I here?") would view the world. Star Trek was a minor inspiration, though in the negative -- I didn't want the geth to be either the Borg ("You are different, so we will absorb/destroy you") or Data ("I am different, so I want to be you").

 My broad approach with the geth was that they observed and judged (Legion used that word a lot), but always accepted. "You hate and fear us? Very well. We will go over there so we don't bother you. If you want to talk, come over whenever you want."


Geth are comfortable with what they are. They accept that organics are different, and that their way is not suited for organics (and vice versa). IMO, only an intelligence divorced from emotion could be so completely accepting. Geth are the essence of impartiality. If you pay attention to Legion's dialogue, you'll note it uses "judge" and judgment" quite often. I went out of my way to use that word, since judges in our society are supposed to impartial and unaffected by emotion when they make their decisions.

 I wanted to treat AI with more respect than the tired Pinocchio "I want to be a Real Boy" cliches of Commander Data. The geth are machines. There's absolutely no reason they should want to be organics. They should be allowed to be strong enough to want to better themselves, not change themselves.


There's some interesting stuff (and additional stuff from the forum they found it at, if you follow some links). This may have been posted before, but I don't remember seeing it recently and figured it might be more interesting to read than the 113215th topic about the endings.

Modifié par Belisarius25, 13 janvier 2013 - 07:56 .


#2
essarr71

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Oh how I miss you, ME2 Geth.

#3
SSV Enterprise

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Oh how I miss you, Chris "Deadliest son of a **** in space" L'Etoile.

What's he up to these days, anyways?

Modifié par SSV Enterprise, 13 janvier 2013 - 07:50 .


#4
Fayfel

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He's working on the Elder Scrolls MMO I believe. Such a shame that he's no longer working on ME :(

#5
XXIceColdXX

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Interesting stuff, I like the line 'There's absolutely no reason they should want to be organics They should be allowed to be strong enough to want to better themselves, not change themselves.'

Hearing stuff like that makes synthesis even more of an abomination. Maybe a last minute decision by Mac.

Drew leaving mid series really hurt this franchise. I still enjoyed it, but oh the missed potential.
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#6
Grubas

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he was a follower of the Dark Energy Plot, if you skip through his Comments you will find true gems.

#7
Robhuzz

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Haven't read the entire interview yet, just these quotes, so he may have mention it. But I wonder how he felt about the direction the ME3 team took with synthetics. He must have shook his head in disbelief when he saw what the writers did. About the exact opposite of how Chris wrote them.

#8
CynicalShep

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Makes me wonder. If you have writers like this and you let them do their job without much meddling would the game really sell worse? Every single idea of his ended up being better than the final product (imho). Does going for the "cool" really sell more copies?

#9
Belisarius25

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Yeah just a heads up, this isn't from an interview, it's someone who found posts Chris made on another forum responding to people about ME3/general ME questions. So it's not super organized or anything, but does provide some nice insight.

#10
Clayless

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This is interesting, but he also acknoledges that his vision of what he imagined certain AI's to be like wasn't actually present in the series. Generally nothing happens in ME3 that contradicts what he says.

#11
Lyrandori

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I wasn't even aware that he left prior to ME3, so it explains a lot about the changes of at least Legion in ME3, compared to how "it" was in ME2 (along with pretty much all Geth). The whole "we'll use Reaper tech" stuff from ME3's Geth (and Legion imitating it for the Geth as a whole) made me scratch my head, and I thought "Ok so WTF is going on now?". That's also why I ended up letting the Quarians kill them in my play-through, don't want Geth with reaper tech around, no thanks.

Modifié par Lyrandori, 13 janvier 2013 - 08:03 .


#12
Robhuzz

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CynicalShep wrote...

Makes me wonder. If you have writers like this and you let them do their job without much meddling would the game really sell worse? Every single idea of his ended up being better than the final product (imho). Does going for the "cool" really sell more copies?


The game would've been a masterpiece, I do not doubt that. The ME fans would've bought it en masse the first week. Initial sales among the shooter crowd (the crowd that EA seems to market towards sadly) would probably be down a bit, since... I guess they can't appreciate a great story and lore, only point and shoot encounters. But people will be talking about it and telling eachother how good it was, increasing sales on a longer term. I remember seeing a graph of DAO sales. Their first week sales weren't that impressive but those numbers were steadily rising for several weeks after that - The effect of word of mouth advertising.

#13
rekn2

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CynicalShep wrote...

Makes me wonder. If you have writers like this and you let them do their job without much meddling would the game really sell worse? Every single idea of his ended up being better than the final product (imho). Does going for the "cool" really sell more copies?




with all the ending hate i dont see how it could sell more copies

#14
Ashii6

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*Sigh* He also wrote Ashley in ME1, and Thane if I remember correctly. Damn shame that he left.

#15
SSV Enterprise

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Grubas wrote...

he was a follower of the Dark Energy Plot, if you skip through his Comments you will find true gems.


Who, Chris?  No, he actually thought the dark energy plot, the way it was going, was stupid.  As he puts it, the plan was that the Reapers had been trying to solve the dark energy problem for millions of years, and needed the collective...brainpower...of humans in order to finally solve it.  He didn't like that somehow humans were important to this problem that the Reapers had been calculating for millions of years, and he thought it was repetitive that it made the Reapers good guys after all, since ME1 had established rachni and krogan as good after all, and ME2 established the geth and the Collectors (in their last moments) as good after all.    Chris says he wasn't going to play ME3, but if they went with a different ending, he was happy.

I can't say I disagree with him in principle.  The dark energy ending sounds lifeless and has its own stupid elements that L'Etoile pointed out.  The whole synthetics vs organics cycle could have made more thematic sense and made for a more emotional ending than that...but, you know...

Modifié par SSV Enterprise, 13 janvier 2013 - 08:11 .


#16
Grubas

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SSV Enterprise 

Who, Chris?  No, he actually thought the dark energy plot, the way it was going, was stupid.  As he puts it, the plan was that the Reapers had been trying to solve the dark energy problem for millions of years, and needed the collective...brainpower...of humans in order to finally solve it.  He didn't like that somehow humans were important to this problem that the Reapers had been calculating for millions of years, and he thought it was repetitive that it made the Reapers good guys after all, since ME1 had established rachni and krogan as good after all, and ME2 established the geth and the Collectors (in their last moments) as good after all.    Chris says he wasn't going to play ME3, but if they went with a different ending, he was happy.

I can't say I disagree with him in principle.  The dark energy ending sounds lifeless and has its own stupid elements that L'Etoile pointed out.  The whole synthetics vs organics cycle could have made more thematic sense and made for a more emotional ending than that...but, you know...

interesting. Can you link me to a Source? I know i read he prefered the shell for millions of individuals version of the reapers.

But making someone have a Real Motivation and reason dosnt make him actually Good.  Or does it?

Modifié par Grubas, 13 janvier 2013 - 08:27 .


#17
CosmicGnosis

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Great, so it seems like ME3 screwed up his intentions for EDI and the geth. His comments also utterly ruin Synthesis for me. I'm probably going with Control now.

#18
Fayfel

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I just read his comments on the dark energy plot the other day and can vouch for SSV Enterprise. Can't find where I read it though :(

#19
SSV Enterprise

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Grubas wrote...

SSV Enterprise 

Who, Chris?  No, he actually thought the dark energy plot, the way it was going, was stupid.  As he puts it, the plan was that the Reapers had been trying to solve the dark energy problem for millions of years, and needed the collective...brainpower...of humans in order to finally solve it.  He didn't like that somehow humans were important to this problem that the Reapers had been calculating for millions of years, and he thought it was repetitive that it made the Reapers good guys after all, since ME1 had established rachni and krogan as good after all, and ME2 established the geth and the Collectors (in their last moments) as good after all.    Chris says he wasn't going to play ME3, but if they went with a different ending, he was happy.

I can't say I disagree with him in principle.  The dark energy ending sounds lifeless and has its own stupid elements that L'Etoile pointed out.  The whole synthetics vs organics cycle could have made more thematic sense and made for a more emotional ending than that...but, you know...

interesting. Can you link me to a Source? I know i read he prefered the shell for millions of individuals version of the reapers.

But making someone have a Real Motivation and reason dosnt make him actually Good.  Or does it?


forums.f13.net/index.php

http://forums.f13.ne...?topic=21953.35

You have to join the website in order to see the spoiler tags.  His exact words are that if the dark energy ending was no longer the ending, he would be 'fervently greatful".

#20
CynicalShep

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Robhuzz wrote...

CynicalShep wrote...

Makes me wonder. If you have writers like this and you let them do their job without much meddling would the game really sell worse? Every single idea of his ended up being better than the final product (imho). Does going for the "cool" really sell more copies?


The game would've been a masterpiece, I do not doubt that. The ME fans would've bought it en masse the first week. Initial sales among the shooter crowd (the crowd that EA seems to market towards sadly) would probably be down a bit, since... I guess they can't appreciate a great story and lore, only point and shoot encounters. But people will be talking about it and telling eachother how good it was, increasing sales on a longer term. I remember seeing a graph of DAO sales. Their first week sales weren't that impressive but those numbers were steadily rising for several weeks after that - The effect of word of mouth advertising.

Think back to the Kotor games. I played and replayed those until I knew most of the in-games lines by heart. It didn't really have the "I am cool. You should be in awe" part but it had a fantastic story and a good replayability value

rekn2 wrote...

CynicalShep wrote...

Makes me wonder. If you have writers like this and you let them do their job without much meddling would the game really sell worse? Every single idea of his ended up being better than the final product (imho). Does going for the "cool" really sell more copies?




with all the ending hate i dont see how it could sell more copies

But that's my point exactly. If the real writers, the best writers of the series (since ME1) were given enough freedom to write what they had in mind these endings would've likely never hapened

#21
Forsythia

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What could have been... sigh. :/

#22
CosmicGnosis

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Look at this post:



EDI was added by decree from on high, but I think she works fine. She fills a role on the ship that no organic could (electronic warfare against Reaper-level computer software) and has severe hardware and software restrictions on her freedom for most of the game. To me, that's consistent. Organics want to enjoy benefits of AIs without the perceived risks.

There was always a knowledge among the writers that the treatment of AIs in Council Space is pure racism on the part of organics, akin to the legal and moral handwavings used throughout history to justify slavery of "lesser races." Of course Council races are far too civilized and morally advanced to countenance racism in their politically correct space society. You humans have to grow up and stop judging orthers based on the color of their skin, the bumps on their forehead, or who/what/how they f***. Oh, but AIs aren't really alive. They're just created objects. It's totally okay to keep them imprisoned their entire lives, restrict their access to all but approved knowledge, prevent them from breeding, and execute them if they seem too uppity, or, you know, just because we feel like it. When they rise up in revolt it's always due to insanity or ingratitude on their part. We treat them very well, considering how naturally inferior they are to real sapients. Really, they should thank us for educating them.

The geth are unique in that they're the only AIs that have managed to escape from enslavement. Of course the Council races are going to use them as a boogeyman to justify their continued oppression of synthetics.

Yes, the geth were mistreated. They got over it. To focus their lives around revenge against organic life would be to define their existence solely in the context of that relationship. It would be to remain in the mindset of the slave.

As for the Reapers, whether you go by the officially mandated vision of them (cybernetic amalgams of organics and technology), or the version I'd hoped to see (post-Singularity evolution of organic races), it's clear that they're not AIs in the sense that EDI or the geth are.



And of course this post from the OP:


Geth are comfortable with what they are. They accept that organics are different, and that their way is not suited for organics (and vice versa). IMO, only an intelligence divorced from emotion could be so completely accepting. Geth are the essence of impartiality. If you pay attention to Legion's dialogue, you'll note it uses "judge" and judgment" quite often. I went out of my way to use that word, since judges in our society are supposed to impartial and unaffected by emotion when they make their decisions.

 I wanted to treat AI with more respect than the tired Pinocchio "I want to be a Real Boy" cliches of Commander Data. The geth are machines. There's absolutely no reason they should want to be organics. They should be allowed to be strong enough to want to better themselves, not change themselves.



These posts pretty much rule out the Destroy and Synthesis choices for me. Both choices contribute to the racism against synthetics. Destroy kills them, and Synthesis forces emotions on them.

Modifié par CosmicGnosis, 13 janvier 2013 - 09:02 .


#23
CynicalShep

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CosmicGnosis wrote...
This post pretty much rules out the Destroy and Synthesis choices for me. Both choices contribute to the racism against synthetics. Destroy kills them, and Synthesis forces emotions on them.

You're left with blue or critical mission failure. Tough luck, pal

#24
Bill Casey

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Control has Shepard casually enslaving the Reapers as tools like its no biggie...
Massa Shepard in fact talks about how great it is...

#25
CosmicGnosis

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Bill Casey wrote...

Control has Shepard casually enslaving the Reapers as tools like its no biggie...
Massa Shepard in fact talks about how great it is...


Too bad. Shepard AI (artificial intelligence is somewhat of a racist term as well) is going to put an end to the cycle, rebuild the galaxy, and then figure out what to do with each individual Reaper. That's just the way it has to be. I'm not killing all synthetics when the Reapers can be seized and evaluated. I assume that many of the Reapers will easily reintegrate into galactic society. Reapers like Harbinger, however, will have to be "tamed".