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[Big Bad]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Big Bad wrote...
In short, if the inevitability of genocidal conflict between organics and synthetics introduced by the Catalyst is truly the over-arching theme of the series, Casey did an amazingly poor job of building up to that moment. It seems far more likely that Casey imposed this theme onto the series at the very last moment, regardless of what came before, which is why it seems to come so far out of left field.

We don't know if it was Casey or Mac's idea. Mac's the writer of the two so I always assumed it was his idea.

One way you could interpret the endings with Leviathan though is to point out that this giant evil synthetic threat was pretty much a result of organic stupidity. You can either frame that as "everything is the organics' fault" or you could see it as another subversion of the expected "organics good synthetics bad" theme that ME1 had.

True, I guess I shouldn't just blame one person for the endings, as I don't actually know who is responsible for them.  Not surprisingly, I am more prone to go with the latter interpretation you mentioned above. 

[The Night Mammoth]

Right. They may say it was what shaped all the story choices, but they completely and utterly failed to convey this to the audience.

If you were to ask someone what they thought the 'key theme' or most important part of the Mass Effect series was before they experienced the last few minutes, I'd doubt anyone who say it's all about organics versus synthetics.

And maybe they planned to do trilogy, but there's no way they actually laid out even the most basic plan for how it was going to play out. We'll do three games, but make it up as we go along, essentially.

[Eshaye]

Dr_Extrem wrote...

Eshaye wrote...

I don't actually see the problem here, the theme was always about organic life vs robots, always. ME2 , the geth and EDI do not eliminate the theme they add to it, pointing that maybe the Reapers are wrong. At least that is my perspective on it. And it makes the Geth and EDI's sacrifice if you choose destroy, that much more poignant.

no it was not ..

if you would turn the reapers into giant space-walruses, who do what thes do, the theme would still be the same.

it is the classic "good vs. evil" theme.

No it isn't.  
There's too much evidence that points that there's no evil, just miscalculation... 

[Dr_Extrem]

Eshaye wrote...

Dr_Extrem wrote...

Eshaye wrote...

I don't actually see the problem here, the theme was always about organic life vs robots, always. ME2 , the geth and EDI do not eliminate the theme they add to it, pointing that maybe the Reapers are wrong. At least that is my perspective on it. And it makes the Geth and EDI's sacrifice if you choose destroy, that much more poignant.

no it was not ..

if you would turn the reapers into giant space-walruses, who do what thes do, the theme would still be the same.

it is the classic "good vs. evil" theme.

No it isn't.  
There's too much evidence that points that there's no evil, just miscalculation... 

well .. it does not matter .. if the evil is evil because of a miscalculation. it will not change - it can only be stopped.

its a narrative and this narrative follows the century old theme of good (we) vs. evil (reapers).

[Xamufam]

they made up organic vs synthetics at the end of the games development they had no idea how they wanted to end it & time was running out.

Both legion, Edi & peace between quarians & the geth did a lot of damage to organic vs synthetics theme.

They had really no idea how they wanted to end the game
I would have said keep it simple make the ending based on passed choices & the reapers motivation by harvesting they gather new technology & culture & make more of themselves & remove a threat to them.
in Kansas they farm corn
In Idaho they farm potatoes
In reaper ville they farm civilizations

I always got this theme in my head was strength through unity (the story was about shepard & the companions not the reapers)
Just look at star wars 4,5,6

www.youtube.com/watch

You always introduce something like the crucible when you have no idea how to end it at the third part of a trilogy & didnt planned anything

edit: and if leviathan was so important he should have been in the main game to begin with & the catalyst doesnt have any narrative coherence

Legion canon dieing was a bad writing decision in my opinion. For
starters WHY did he need to die? Secondly, he's a data construct, all
he'd have to do is upload a copy of himself somewhere else and he'd have
been fine.

Modifié par Troxa, 21 mars 2013 - 05:37 .

[Dr_Extrem]

Troxa wrote...

they made up organic vs synthetics at the end of the games development they had no idea how they wanted to end it & time was running out.

Both legion, Edi & peace between quarians & the geth did a lot of damage to organic vs synthetics theme.

to what was left of it ... most of it was already disambled in me2 and not only by edi and legion.

[Giantdeathrobot]

The Night Mammoth wrote...

Right. They may say it was what shaped all the story choices, but they completely and utterly failed to convey this to the audience.

If you were to ask someone what they thought the 'key theme' or most important part of the Mass Effect series was before they experienced the last few minutes, I'd doubt anyone who say it's all about organics versus synthetics.

And maybe they planned to do trilogy, but there's no way they actually laid out even the most basic plan for how it was going to play out. We'll do three games, but make it up as we go along, essentially.

Sadly that's the vibe I got too, even before the ending. I mean, ME2 added pretty much nothing to the main plot. It created a side-villain the destroyed it in the end. I mean, that's great, the Collectors were evil and stuff, and the Suicide Mission was a highlight of the series, but the whole game did absolutely nothing to address the Reaper threat, who then jump out of friggin nowhere at the beginning of ME3.

It's painfully obvious they didn,t have any sort of plan or storyboard for the whole trilogy. Each game could virtually be stand-alone if not for the import thing.

[SaintsFan101]

Not reading all six pages, but my 2 cents are this:

I could have sworn the "THEME" of Mass Effect was going to be that, despite differences, when enough individuals come together for a cause, they can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

The whole deal with ME3 was that Shepard was UNITING the entire GALAXY to combat the Reapers. It's what the Protheans failed to do in their cycle because they had dominated all the other races. This cycle's strength was the unity combined with the diversity of all the races.

But that's just what I thought. The whole organic v. synthetic thing caught me off guards during the final moments of Shepard's story.

[Iakus]

SaintsFan101 wrote...

Not reading all six pages, but my 2 cents are this:

I could have sworn the "THEME" of Mass Effect was going to be that, despite differences, when enough individuals come together for a cause, they can overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

The whole deal with ME3 was that Shepard was UNITING the entire GALAXY to combat the Reapers. It's what the Protheans failed to do in their cycle because they had dominated all the other races. This cycle's strength was the unity combined with the diversity of all the races.

But that's just what I thought. The whole organic v. synthetic thing caught me off guards during the final moments of Shepard's story.

Clearly you're confused.  At least, according to Bioware

[Xellith]

Some synthetics are bad. Some synthetics are good. Some organics are bad. Some organics are good. The reapers are Synthetic starships created using organic components at some stage in their creation.

= trilogy is organic vs synthetic?

lolwut

[dreamgazer]

Xellith wrote...

Some synthetics are bad. Some synthetics are good. Some organics are bad. Some organics are good. The reapers are Synthetic starships created using organic components at some stage in their creation.

= trilogy is organic vs synthetic?

lolwut

Essentially, yeah: the enduring conflict that arises between the creators and their created.

That doesn't mean a black-and-white battle between all organics and all synthetics, though. 

[remydat]

InvincibleHero wrote...

I think people sympathize with the geth too much and that is the fault of some of the writers. They did not go with the totally alien mind-set that was established in ME 2 via Legion. No they made them human-like and experiencing emotions and tried to white-hat the geth as innocent victims.

People want to romanticize robots for some reason. They want to hold them up as an artificial "person" when they are not. The whole soul gibberish was an example. Did they manufacture a soul? The geth would know if they did and would not then ask the question. It is fictional as lines of code cannot ever think for itself. Of course the writers being human cannot but create things that are like humans no matter what rules they establish for them.

This is illogical.  How did you get your soul.  You certainly did not manufacture it.  How do you even know you have one?  You have no proof.  You believe you have a whole and the Geth being able to ask whether they have one is proof enough for me that if such a thing exists they probably do.

Point is if you have a soul it is not something you decide, it is something gifted to you by either God or the machinations of the universe and until you can measure it you have no logical basis to claim another entity lacks one except your own prejudice.

[remydat]

SiriusXI wrote...

remydat wrote...

SiriusXI wrote...

remydat wrote...

SiriusXI wrote...

Eterna5 wrote...

daaaav wrote...

Eterna5 wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

What I think? That the perception of the writers that specific story arcs became more important in the context of the main theme "organics vs. synthetics" was not sufficiently communicated to the players. The geth/quarian conflict and Legion's story do not appear to be more important than, say, the genophage arc. The first hint we get of the organic/synthetic theme being more important is is at the end of the Reaper Base mission on Rannoch.

But isn't the Reaper vs all organic life a prime example of Synthetic vs organic theme which was present in each installment? 

It's Reapers vs non reapers. Not Reapers vs Organics. Can you give me one reason why synthetics and organics are supposed to hate each other that isn't resolved during the trilogy?

http://masseffect.wi...Signal_Tracking

Also, most of the Synthetic conflicts would not be resolved without Shepard. There would have been no peace on Rannoch without him/her, not to mention that there is no canon outcome for the Rannoch arc. It is only resolved for some people and honestly they should have removed the peace option entirely. 

But the very fact that Spehard achieves peace is evidence for the
fact that peace can exist between organics and synthetics. Geth are way
more poweful as true AIs and yet they help their creators.

But you are right. In order for the ending to make more sense, the peace option should have been removed. That yould have made the Rhannoch arch a lot worse, would have rendered the previous games even more meaningless, but it would indeed have helped the endings to make more sense.

That proves nothing except that in any conflict moments of peace are possible.  Did the peace at the end of WWI prevent WWII.  To sit there and assume that the peace brokered between two enemies fighting for centuries is solved by one man permanently is naive.  England and France had moments of peace admist about a 500 years of conflict.

Furthermore, what happens when more synthetic races pop up?  The council still has bans on synthetic life.  What happens when Shepard dies when again the peace was forged basically based on one man.

Haha, WWI did not really end in "peace" but in defeat, followed by a the Treaty of Versailles, which was forced on Germany. The German people felt mistreated and oppressed by the Treaty of Versailles, this is why Hitler could mobilize the Germans to follow his lead.

The Geth/Quarian conflict ended in TRUE peace. No side was ever defeated. there was no victory for either Quarians or Geth.

That's semantics.  It was peace.  And in any event you have to ignore all of human history to pretend like conflicts between nations just end permanently.  They don't.  There is a single organic synethetic conflict.  Once again what happens when the Geth want to expand their terroritories?  What happens if the Geth want to create more synthetic life?  What happens when another species wants to crate synthetic life?  What happens when the man who made peace possible dies?

Again, to see organic vs synthetics was resolved is naive.  You are entitled to be navie but life is far more complicated than you are admitting to here.

ohhhh my... no it is not semantics. There is peace and there is defeat. These are two ways to end a war. And a conflict between nations does not fire up becaue "France is always going to be in conflict with Germany, because reasons". There can always be circumstances that lead to war, but not because two enbtities are inherently doomed to fight each other.

Also, concerning the Geth:
1. it is clearls stated that geth do not want to expand their terretory. They ant to be left alone.

2. If they want to creat more synthetic life it could lead to rebellions of that synthetic life against their creators (the Geth). So it is Synthetic vs. Synthetic, but oh... that does not fit into the ME logic, does it...

3. Well maybe organics can LEARN to not build synthetics after the whole Geth debacle? Why can the Galaxy not "grow up" and try to aviod these mistakes? Why can't they learn that enslaving synthetics is not better than enslaving organics? Slavery is always bad.

4. Shep dying does not mean peace ends. Shep initiated peace, but peace does not last because of Shepards presence. It's not that these two parties are at their throughts. There is peace for now. Shep initiated it, but it does not persist because of his presence. So he he/she is gone, they won't attack eachh other. After all, Geth help their creators strengthen their immune system and they are not forced ti do this by shepard, they do it out of free will.

Yes it is, when you are defeated you sue for peace.  The Germans surrended and sue for peace.  That is what the Treat of Versailles was the official terms for peace.

The Geth not wanting to expand was based on their original collective consciousness.  They are now individuals. 

And Legion and the Geth already fight heretics and the Reapers so synthetic vs synthetic already fits into the logic.  I think you are confused.  Conflict is inevitable for all life because all life seek to survive.  Conflict is even more inevitable. between sentient life because our brains allow us to define ourselves and by extension anyone who is not us is the other.  There will always be someone somewhere who thinks the other is not as deserving as life as they are.  Humans are millions of years old and we still like to kill each other based on race, religion, nationality, or for simple sh*ts and giggles.  And we are the same species.  Conflict with synthetics is inevitable because they suffer from even more otherness than different human groups.  We can conclude in our minds they are toasters not worthy of life and kill them.

The galaxy has been making machines for billions of years probably because organics seek to use tools to master their environment.  

I never said peace lasts because of Shepard.  I said there is no guarantee it lasts when he dies.  We have ample examples of alliances breaking down when the people that forged them die.  How many times in history has an English King died and his replacement is not as friendly with the French King and so their peace dissolves?

The point is all of these are reasonable possibilities whether you agree with them or not so no one conflict resolved proves nothing especially when it is the only synthetic vs organic conflict that appears to ever have been resolved with one group being pretty much wipd out.

[remydat]

There isn't a single idea in Mass Effect that hasn't been told in human vs human stories. People miss the point. The overriding them is not good vs evil. It is how good and evil is a matter of perspective and there is conflict in this world because good vs evil is subjective. Sentient beings are unique because we can identify ourselves as I but doing so naturally means there is an other. And the other is different, the other is unworthy of life and the other can be killed for what I want because well it is not me. This has been a constant them since the dawn of man. Good vs Evil is subjective and so it is evil to committ genocide unless I say well those toasters over there aren't really alive so I can kill them.

The Reapers are not evil from their perspective. They are merely a solution to this inherent conflict. The function synthetics serve is merely as a means to judge how much we are willing to bend our ideas of good and evil based on how alient or foreign the other looks to us. You could explore how far someone will go to get what they want by merely having the other be someone of a different race, religion, nationality, etc. because if I was a White American in 1800, my idea of evil did not apply to a black slave because I did not consider that slave's life as worthy of respecting.

Today, when most sensible human beings don't openly hate people for their race, religion or nationality, if you want to see how their notion of good and evil is subjective then you introduce a synethetic because obviously we have yet to encounter one and so because it is foreign to us a large segment of people will adjust their notions of what good vs evil means. I can kill that Geth because he is a toaster just like I could kill that black slave several hundred years ago because he was a black slave.

So no, it was not a story about good vs evil or us vs Reapers. It was a story about how our ideas of morality and good and evil change based on circumstances and who we are applying them too. Are we willing to accept the sterilisation of the Krogan because they look like big ugly beasts or do we abhor what was done to them. Same with the Rachni, they look very alien to us.  But the pretty Asari.  No they are wise and good and I would never hurt them.  You had all these moral decisions based on whether you identified with a particular group or not and the most distinct of which was organic vs synthetic because a Geth was even more foreign to us than a Krogan or a Rachni because at least those ugly beasts were organic.

Modifié par remydat, 21 mars 2013 - 07:37 .

[CronoDragoon]

remydat wrote...
Are we willing to accept the sterilisation of the Krogan because they look like big ugly beasts or do we abhor what was done to them. Same with the Rachni, they look very alien to us.

Yeah, I'm sure that's why people keep the genophage and kill the rachni. Because of how they look.

[remydat]

CronoDragoon wrote...

remydat wrote...
Are we willing to accept the sterilisation of the Krogan because they look like big ugly beasts or do we abhor what was done to them. Same with the Rachni, they look very alien to us.

Yeah, I'm sure that's why people keep the genophage and kill the rachni. Because of how they look.

Why do you think most literature depicts heroes as pretty in and villains are ugly.  Subsconsciously, we like to think of good vs evil in those terms.

Why do you think it is later revealed that the Rachni may have been indocrinated or controlled by the Reapers during the Rachni Wars.  We are suppose to stop and consider whether we even pondered their side of the story or whether we just assumed their guilt and the version the people we like gave.

Just about every ugly and foreign thing in the game including the Reapers start out appearing evil.  That confirms with our subsciousness ideas of good and evil.   The most wise race are the beutiful feminine Asari who naturally must be good from the perspective of the majority male demographic that buys the guys.  And then slowly but surely are idealistic ideas of what good and evil look like are peeled away as the ugly people get reasons for why they did their evil acts and the pretty people are revealed to have done things that are not so pretty. 

By then forces us to decide how far do we want to go in admitting that perhaps we were wrong about what good and evil are or really looks like.

Modifié par remydat, 21 mars 2013 - 07:55 .

[CronoDragoon]

remydat wrote...
Why do you think most literature depicts heroes as pretty in and villains are ugly.  Subsconsciously, we like to think of good vs evil in those terms.

The krogan were never portrayed as evil so I fail to see your point. Nobody keeps the genophage because the krogan look like dinosaurs, they keep the genophage because the krogan when previously given autonomy acted like dinosaurs.

As for the rachni, plenty of people picked to save the Queen in ME1 so I don't see this supposed subversion.

[SiriusXI]

remydat wrote...

And Legion and the Geth already fight heretics and the Reapers so synthetic vs synthetic already fits into the logic.  I think you are confused.

... oh boy... It was YOU who said that the "all organics vs. all synthetics" theme was central to Mass Effect. Therefore I made a JOKE saying Synthetic vs. Synthetic does not fit into Bioware's logic, even if the game clearly shows that such conflict exists and is likely to exist in the future.

"conflict" was a theme of Mass Effect. Conflict between organic vs. organic (Turian/Salarian/Krogan), synthetic vs. synthetic (Geth vs. Heretics/Reapers), an also organic vs. Synthetic (Heretics/Geth vs. Quarians).

But NEVER was there the theme "Only all organics vs. only all synthetics". Also, while most of the conflics shown ingame are solvable without spacemagic, this sudden new conflict is not. Krogan make peace with Salarians/Krogans, Quarians make peace with Geth.


And once again, if peace is dictated by the party that win the war, it is not really peace. It may be peace legally, but usually the loser will suffer penalties, like occupation of territory, loss of territory, loss of military forces, reparations and so on. If there is TRUE peace, as in, the two parties decide to stop the war BEFORE one party is defeated and works out a peace contract TOGETHER, we have a completely different situation. This is more than just a semantic difference. Do you really consider it the same thing, whether I settle a conflict with my friend Billy by giving him a hand and say "come on, let's stop fighting", or by punshing him so haard he can barely move, saying "Stop attacking me Billy or else"?

[Reorte]

If there was a Synthetic vs. Organics theme, suggesting that what the Catalyst claims is true, then I'd have given up on Mass Effect a long time ago since it's simply an undefendable position. *Some* synthetics causing trouble is fine for a theme but relying on them being fundamentally bad and inevitably destructive is both a bit, unsupported assumption and a rather unpleasant point of view (it has very strong tones of different == bad - unfortunately some parts of ME3 really tried to reinforce that).

[Eshaye]

remydat wrote...

-snip-

So no, it was not a story about good vs evil or us vs Reapers. It was a story about how our ideas of morality and good and evil change based on circumstances and who we are applying them too. Are we willing to accept the sterilisation of the Krogan because they look like big ugly beasts or do we abhor what was done to them. Same with the Rachni, they look very alien to us.  But the pretty Asari.  No they are wise and good and I would never hurt them.  You had all these moral decisions based on whether you identified with a particular group or not and the most distinct of which was organic vs synthetic because a Geth was even more foreign to us than a Krogan or a Rachni because at least those ugly beasts were organic.

What he said ^ The more you find out about the Reapers, the more it's evident that a simple absolute of good vs evil isn't adequate. In fact what the Reapers are doing is something good. True evil would be to annihilate organic life at all cost with no mind for their preservation, it would be a selfish cause, when the opposite is true. 

[Reorte]

Eshaye wrote...

What he said ^ The more you find out about the Reapers, the more it's evident that a simple absolute of good vs evil isn't adequate. In fact what the Reapers are doing is something good. True evil would be to annihilate organic life at all cost with no mind for their preservation, it would be a selfish cause, when the opposite is true.

Just about every large atrocity ever committed has been committed by someone claiming that they're doing good.

[CosmicGnosis]

You know, "organics vs. synthetics" basically means "Creator vs. Created". Flipping that on its head, the Catalyst is somewhat of a creator as well, and the rebelling species are the created.

[SurfaceBeneath]

Keep in mind that the "Synthetic vs Organic" conflict is much broader than most people seem to think and is not solely limited to robots and people going to war. It's an overarching tendency of organics at a certain point in their evolution to create machines, augmentations, or whatever that expand their abilities beyond organic capabilities and how the logical conclusion of that is that organics will be replaced entirely. Not because organics and synthetics hate each other yadda yadda (though admittedly it was phrased too much like this) but because organics simply become redundant at a certain point. The Catalyst's goal was to prevent this from happening, to allow races to grow to the point where evolution no longer was the sole dictator of their species fate. The harvest was in some ways done to protect developing races that had not reached that level of technology yet.

So yeah, when viewed on a broader level organic vs synthetic is a core theme of the entire series.

Modifié par SurfaceBeneath, 21 mars 2013 - 09:33 .

[CosmicGnosis]

SurfaceBeneath wrote...

Keep in mind that the "Synthetic vs Organic" conflict is much broader than most people seem to think and is not solely limited to robots and people going to war. It's an overarching tendency of organics at a certain point in their evolution to create machines, augmentations, or whatever that expand their abilities beyond organic capabilities and how the logical conclusion of that is that organics will be replaced entirely. Not because organics and synthetics hate each other yadda yadda (though admittedly it was phrased too much like this) but because organics simply become redundant at a certain point. The Catalyst's goal was to prevent this from happening, to allow races to grow to the point where evolution no longer was the sole dictator of their species fate. The harvest was in some ways done to protect developing races that had not reached that level of technology yet.

So yeah, when viewed on a broader level organic vs synthetic is a core theme of the entire series.

That's pretty much how I interpret it. It baffles me that people on this site struggle to consider such interpretations. No wonder they hate the story so much...

Modifié par CosmicGnosis, 21 mars 2013 - 09:36 .