101 réponses à ce sujet

[Iakus]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

lol @ "damage."

I bet the drell wish they were "damaged" by mass-relay transit while overpopulating and starving on their planet.

The benefits that every organic species had enjoyed by using the 'relays far, far outweighs the negatives (if there are even negatives at all). That the Reapers planted them there as a trap is a moot point because the trap failed. It's just ironic that people think they're somehow safer from "stagnation" (which, again, I don't know why this scares the crap out of them so much in the first place) by choosing Destroy or Control, when those endings return them to the status-quo that invited complacency. You don't see them in the Green ending, which almost seems to suggest their looking into alternatives.

The negatives are no one bothered to learn how to make relays themselves.  The galaxy is completely reliant on the relay network, which was built for them.  And, in the case of Synthesis (and Control) was repaired for them.

There was an explanation. Do your research.

"organic energy" isn't an explanation.  It's pure handwavium.

Appeal-to-nature fallacy.

Argument from fallacy fallacy

[Rasofe]

@HYR
*Cough* Research, right.
If Shepard chooses Synthesis, there's no explanation by SHEPARD why they made the choice. If you pick Control, they explain afterwards. If you pick Destroy, the explanation can be presumed to be every moment before that when they argued for it.

As for "appeal to nature fallacy", go design a few boolean classes, then come back with lectures on what is a fallacy and what isn't. Even then, I probably won't care. You either acknowledge the first principle and carry consistent logic, or you don't. Equivalently, you're either right or you're wrong.

[Clayless]

I assume everyone that's harping on about stagnation ignored my post about how they'd need to at least overcome the heat death of the universe for that to happen. Something that, for a civilisation still stuck in the Milky Way, they seem a looooooooooooooooong way off from.

Modifié par Robosexual, 02 décembre 2013 - 09:46 .

[His Name was HYR!!]

iakus wrote...

The negatives are no one bothered to learn how to make relays themselves.  The galaxy is completely reliant on the relay network, which was built for them.  And, in the case of Synthesis (and Control) was repaired for them.

No, the 'relays are not in the Sync epilogue.

Both relays and Citadel are only seen in Destroy and Control epilogues.

It almost suggests that they're actually considering alternatives in the "stagnant" Green ending...

There was an explanation. Do your research.

"organic energy" isn't an explanation.  It's pure handwavium.

Ah, my bad. I thought "explanation" meant why choose it.

Appeal-to-nature fallacy.

Argument from fallacy fallacy

It's no less a fallacy just because you agree with it, friend-e.

Rasofe wrote...

If Shepard chooses Synthesis, there's no explanation by SHEPARD why they made the choice. If you pick Control, they explain afterwards. If you pick Destroy, the explanation can be presumed to be every moment before that when they argued for it.

... Or, because it's an RPG, we can assume their reasoning is consistent the kind of character the player is RP'ing.

To say nothing of the countless times Shepard can change the mission parameters at the last moment, and not necessarily always explaining their rationale behind doing so (like, giving the sensitive Cerberus data to the Alliance).

As for "appeal to nature fallacy", go design a few boolean classes, then come back with lectures on what is a fallacy and what isn't. Even then, I probably won't care. You either acknowledge the first principle and carry consistent logic, or you don't. Equivalently, you're either right or you're wrong.

I think I'll just wait for your panties to dry out instead.

[shodiswe]

They will probably advance, but if noone is telling the story nothign will happen... It's fiction after all.

[Rasofe]

"Because it's an RPG, we can assume the reasoning is consistent with the kind of character the player is RP'ng."
That's just invalid. There's no roleplaying opportunity to fill in the gap here, so your assumption is basically headcanon. The game isn't giving you an opportunity to express your rationale through Shepard, so for all intents and purposes you never clarify why your character does it in-story. It's like explaining the motivations of a character for their actions after the novel is printed and published. The writer - and in this case, the player too - would be incompetent at character development to do that.

No one has to care about your wonderful overuse of the golden crutch-word "fallacy" anyway. Logic has a specific boolean format and requires initial - preferably observed - axioms to reach conclusions through implications. "The human mind is good for humanity" is a simplified sub-premise of the axiom I like to call the first principle, and the description of the new "synth enlightenment and perfection through technology" is determinably not in line with knowledge we have of human psychology.
Literally no fallacy has been made. Only knowledge, an ordinary axiom, and tertium non datur.

[JasonShepard]

Rasofe wrote...

"Because it's an RPG, we can assume the reasoning is consistent with the kind of character the player is RP'ng."
That's just invalid. There's no roleplaying opportunity to fill in the gap here, so your assumption is basically headcanon. The game isn't giving you an opportunity to express your rationale through Shepard, so for all intents and purposes you never clarify why your character does it in-story.

Considering that the story is half on screen, and half in my mind, if the justification for the actions exists purely within my mind, I don't see a problem. Video games are funny like that - the player brings something to the story, whereas in most media the story is already complete without the player.

If Mass Effect never had anyone play it, Shepard would still be standing in the SR1 cockpit, as Kaidan and Joker wait for the Commander to make a comment on Nihlus...

Modifié par JasonShepard, 02 décembre 2013 - 04:52 .

[Iakus]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

No, the 'relays are not in the Sync epilogue.

Both relays and Citadel are only seen in Destroy and Control epilogues.

It almost suggests that they're actually considering alternatives in the "stagnant" Green ending...

The war is over, and the Reapers are helping to rebuild.  Where once they threatened us with extinction, they now bring us the collective knowledge of the cultures that came before

Sounds like the Reaper are doing all the heavy lifting and giving free candy to the galaxy.

Ah, my bad. I thought "explanation" meant why choose it.

Indeed.  Why choose it?

Organic energy rewrites the framework to eveeryone's DNA leading to the final evolution of life.

Wut?

It's no less a fallacy just because you agree with it, friend-e.

And it's no less accurate just because you don't agree with it,

... Or, because it's an RPG, we can assume their reasoning is consistent the kind of character the player is RP'ing.

To say nothing of the countless times Shepard can change the mission parameters at the last moment, and not necessarily always explaining their rationale behind doing so (like, giving the sensitive Cerberus data to the Alliance).

If headcanon=role playing, then Pac-Man is an rpg.

[Rasofe]

Jason, the entire story is in your mind.
The important part is what you get to put on the screen. You don't get to put any reasoning for Synthesis on the screen - at all. You can tell Shepard to do it but you can never justify it with character development.

[JasonShepard]

Rasofe wrote...

Jason, the entire story is in your mind.
The important part is what you get to put on the screen. You don't get to put any reasoning for Synthesis on the screen - at all. You can tell Shepard to do it but you can never justify it with character development.

I can see and understand that perspective. I just don't consider it overly important that I tell the game why I did something.

It's also not exclusive to Synthesis - take Destroy. A Paragon who's hardly ever sacrificed anything throughout the trilogy doesn't get a chance to explain his/her justification for sacrificing an entire species to win (possibly more than one species, if there are other synthetics out there).

I'd assume, judging from the Catalyst conversation, that if Shepard picks Synthesis it's becase he or she finds that future desirable. Just like I can assume for Destroy that the Sacrifice of the Geth was deemed 'worth it' to remove the Reaper threat.

Modifié par JasonShepard, 02 décembre 2013 - 09:18 .

[Clayless]

Rasofe wrote...

Jason, the entire story is in your mind.
The important part is what you get to put on the screen. You don't get to put any reasoning for Synthesis on the screen - at all. You can tell Shepard to do it but you can never justify it with character development.

Not true, you can easily consider wanting peace, a bright future, and coexistence of synthetics and organics to be a justification of it.

Destroy wouldn't, as it considers genocide better than coexistence, and Control wouldn't as it's more about, well, control.

Trying to say that you can't justify Synthesis with character development is simply untrue.

[JasonShepard]

StreetMagic wrote...

JasonShepard wrote...
I'd assume, judging from the Catalyst conversation, that if Shepard picks Synthesis it's becase he or she finds that future desirable. Just like I can assume for Destroy that the Sacrifice of the Geth was deemed 'worth it' to remove the Reaper threat.

If that future was desirable, they should have let you voice it earlier. Especially when Saren told you something similar. It's just an option that comes out of left field at the end. The rest of the games prepare you for a mentality that favors either Destroy or Control (most of the main thrust of the series is Destroy the Reapers, but there are at least hints here and there about controlling synthetics in general. Like the Heretic choice).

Now that, I completely agree with. There was NO reason to expect the Crucible to be capable of such a fundamental change, let alone one that seems so tangential to the whole "build a device to stop the Reapers" point of the Crucible. And I still can't figure out a decent explanation for how Synthesis works, headcanon or otherwise.

[Deathsaurer]

The transhumanism element is in the series it just seems random the Crucible would be capable of it in such a way.

[His Name was HYR!!]

Rasofe wrote...

"Because it's an RPG, we can assume the reasoning is consistent with the kind of character the player is RP'ng."
That's just invalid. There's no roleplaying opportunity to fill in the gap here, so your assumption is basically headcanon. The game isn't giving you an opportunity to express your rationale through Shepard, so for all intents and purposes you never clarify why your character does it in-story.

rofl... this is hilarious. So, if I'm playing an RPG with a silent protagonist and/or no NPCs present at the time of any decisions I make, those decisions don't count as role-playing?? That's the kind of ignorant statement I'd expect David7204 to make -- making up arbitrary rules of storytelling or video games based solely off of how it's done in the Mass Effect trilogy.

And what of the Cerberus sensitive-data mission in ME2? Cerberus asks him to go in and recover the data for them, but Shepard can send it to the Alliance -or- keep it for himself without ever offering an explanation why he does so.

overuse of the golden crutch-word "fallacy"

"Overuse" referring to the wropping two times I used it.

Logic has a specific boolean format and requires initial - preferably observed - axioms to reach conclusions through implications. "The human mind is good for humanity" is a simplified sub-premise of the axiom I like to call the first principle, and the description of the new "synth enlightenment and perfection through technology" is determinably not in line with knowledge we have of human psychology.
Literally no fallacy has been made. Only knowledge, an ordinary axiom, and tertium non datur.

You were/are trying to claim that it the creative output in the Green ending is somehow bad/undesirable/inferior ... because it is coming from those who are no longer pure, natural human/organics. It's more poetry than anything in the realm of reason. Nothing about technologically-based evolution is inherently worse than "natural" processes. This is just a case where repulsion clouds reason. But that's an issue among this whole fanbase, not just where ME or its endings are concerned.

iakus wrote...

HYR 2.0 wrote...

No, the 'relays are not in the Sync epilogue.

Both relays and Citadel are only seen in Destroy and Control epilogues.

It almost suggests that they're actually considering alternatives in the "stagnant" Green ending...

The war is over, and the Reapers are helping to rebuild.  Where once they threatened us with extinction, they now bring us the collective knowledge of the cultures that came before

Sounds like the Reaper are doing all the heavy lifting and giving free candy to the galaxy.

... which doesn't contradict my original statement. The Citadel and 'relays being rebuilt were important enough to show in Red and Blue, so their absense in Green has significant implications as well. And no, the Reapers would not have the answer to this, seeing as their knowledge stems from civilizations that were built on the same Catalyst foundations.

And while we're bringing up epilogue quotes, here's one that flies in the face of this "stagnation"-nonsense:

"To recover the greatness that was lost... and surpass it." - EDI.

Ah, my bad. I thought "explanation" meant why choose it.

Indeed.  Why choose it?

Organic energy rewrites the framework to eveeryone's DNA leading to the final evolution of life.

Because if I started thinking like that, I wouldn't be able to play the Mass Effect trilogy past half-way through ME1.

It's no less a fallacy just because you agree with it, friend-e.

And it's no less accurate just because you don't agree with it,

That's why I pointed out the objectively flawed logic behind it rather than simply say "No, I disagree."

If headcanon=role playing, then Pac-Man is an rpg.

Please. Obtusity is beneath both of us.

Modifié par HYR 2.0, 03 décembre 2013 - 01:45 .

[Iakus]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

... which doesn't contradict my original statement. The Citadel and 'relays being rebuilt were important enough to show in Red and Blue, so their absense in Green has significant implications as well. And no, the Reapers would not have the answer to this, seeing as their knowledge stems from civilizations that were built on the same Catalyst foundations.

The Reapers built the freaking relays to begin with!

And while we're bringing up epilogue quotes, here's one that flies in the face of this "stagnation"-nonsense:

"To recover the greatness that was lost... and surpass it." - EDI.

"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence." Sovereign

"Synthesis is the final evolution of life" The Catalyst

What surpassing do you think will be going on?

Because if I started thinking like that, I wouldn't be able to play the Mass Effect trilogy past half-way through ME1.

So we are in agreement?  Synthesis requires the shutting off of the brain?

That's why I pointed out the objectively flawed logic behind it rather than simply say "No, I disagree."

You stated that the logic was flawed, therefore, the sentiment was incorrect.

Please. Obtusity is beneath both of us.

Then explain to me how it's different.  I am apparantly stupid.

[Obadiah]

iakus wrote...
...
"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence." Sovereign

"Synthesis is the final evolution of life" The Catalyst

What surpassing do you think will be going on?
...

Biological evolution is a slow multi-thousand/million year process. All of the changes in the last 200, maybe 2000 years of human society have been done with a fairly stable species with almost no biological evolution (probably none). So why would no evolution mean no "surpassing"?

[His Name was HYR!!]

iakus wrote...

The Reapers built the freaking relays to begin with!

I'm not saying the Reapers wouldn't know how to build the 'relays, but the fact remains, they are notably absent in the Green ending. EDI's quote, though, indicates that the galaxy is looking to reclaim what they lost and improve over it. So the mass-relays could be one of many things they collectively decide to improve upon and move past. It would explain why they're not there, though they should be as easy to rebuild here as in the Blue ending, and easier than in Red.

"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence." Sovereign

"Synthesis is the final evolution of life" The Catalyst

What surpassing do you think will be going on?

I took "final evolution of life" to mean that it's the point where organics and synthetics reach an "equilibrium" -- synthetics won't evolve at a faster rate than organics -- provided organics don't fall victim to their own stupidity before reaching it.

I didn't get the impression it meant "evolution stops here."

Because if I started thinking like that, I wouldn't be able to play the Mass Effect trilogy past half-way through ME1.

So we are in agreement?  Synthesis requires the shutting off of the brain?

Hardly. If anything, I think a prerequisite to going Green at all is putting a lot of --unbiased-- thought into it.

I went into ME3 spoiled but didn't have any real opinion on the three endings. The first time around, I put 0 thought into the decision and chose Red because it was the most straightforward and I just wanted to skip ahead to the next part. It's not 'til I came here that I started thinking about which ending I felt was "best." Initially all the opposition to Green in particular scared me away from it. Then I began to see that these arguments against it were not particularly compelling, but simply appeals to emotion, nature, or other things that I don't fall for so easily. And since few people were offering a positive outlook on it, I resolved to come up with some myself. At some point I decided I liked most what Sync had to offer.

If you want an agreement so badly though then YES, from a purely in-game standpoint, it is nonsense. That's just more reason, though, why I find it necessary to do a little headwork (without using "indoctrination" or "bad writing" as crutches).

That's why I pointed out the objectively flawed logic behind it rather than simply say "No, I disagree."

You stated that the logic was flawed, therefore, the sentiment was incorrect.

No, I only said it was fallacious, not "incorrect."

I was responding to the implication that it's somehow bad/undesirable to live with "unnatural" conditions, which is subjective and therefore cannot be right or wrong, but it's still rooted in the flawed logic of equating being natural to being good.

Please. Obtusity is beneath both of us.

Then explain to me how it's different.  I am apparantly stupid.

Not sure where you got "stupid" from. I thought you were deliberately trying to be obtuse.

See my response above: I've played plenty of RPGs where the my controlled characters doesn't necessarily give any explanation for any decisions they make -- voiceless character, no NPCs are around to order or question them, or I may choose dialogue where I choose not to explain. I even brought up an example of where it happens in Mass Effect (2).

So, the character has no motivation for doing what they do in those scenes. Does that make any sense??

You're given the power to role-play the character as you see fit. You are what drives the character, motives included.

[Giga Drill BREAKER]

I can't believe we are still arguing about how ridiculous synthesis is at this stage.

[Rasofe]

Robosexual wrote...

Rasofe wrote...

Jason, the entire story is in your mind.
The important part is what you get to put on the screen. You don't get to put any reasoning for Synthesis on the screen - at all. You can tell Shepard to do it but you can never justify it with character development.

Not true, you can easily consider wanting peace, a bright future, and coexistence of synthetics and organics to be a justification of it.

Destroy wouldn't, as it considers genocide better than coexistence, and Control wouldn't as it's more about, well, control.

Trying to say that you can't justify Synthesis with character development is simply untrue.

Character development that you headcanon doesn't count.
For destroy, Shepard can spend all game agreeing that the Reapers have to be destroyed, and that difficult choices may be necessary to eliminate the enemy completely.
For Control, Shepard will explain the choice after you've made it. That's not ideal, but it works.
For Synthesis there's not a peep. Shepard never says why they're doing it. You'd only be making up reasoning. So there's no character development involved - just your assumptions. The narrative connection between character development and
character action is missing. That's a roleplay 101 failure in other scenarios of ME1 and ME2 where this happens as well.

Modifié par Rasofe, 03 décembre 2013 - 02:41 .

[Rasofe]

[quote]HYR 2.0 wrote...

[quote]Rasofe wrote...


Logic has a specific boolean format and requires initial - preferably observed - axioms to reach conclusions through implications. "The human mind is good for humanity" is a simplified sub-premise of the axiom I like to call the first principle, and the description of the new "synth enlightenment and perfection through technology" is determinably not in line with knowledge we have of human psychology.
Literally no fallacy has been made. Only knowledge, an ordinary axiom, and tertium non datur.[/quote]

You were/are trying to claim that it the creative output in the Green ending is somehow bad/undesirable/inferior ... because it is coming from those who are no longer pure, natural human/organics. It's more poetry than anything in the realm of reason. Nothing about technologically-based evolution is inherently worse than "natural" processes. This is just a case where repulsion clouds reason. But that's an issue among this whole fanbase, not just where ME or its endings are concerned.


[/quote][/quote]

You're either overeducated or an idiot.
Using fallacy as an argument even once is overuse. You'll never hear a mathematician or a physicist use it to prove a point.
The axiom that I used and have repeatedly stated is not that natural is better than unnatural. It is that the human mindset is the best possible psyche for human beings. Reason doesn't factor into this at all, it's a bloody axiom. It's not a logical conclusion or a bias, it's a fundamental fact on which to build everything else. Like 1 = 1. It's what must be assumed for any further conclusion to be even remotely relevant between human beings. Otherwise, we spin of into ridiculous metaphysics about "natural vs unnatural" or "slave morality vs overman" or other useless tripe.

Modifié par Rasofe, 03 décembre 2013 - 02:38 .

[Iakus]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

I'm not saying the Reapers wouldn't know how to build the 'relays, but the fact remains, they are notably absent in the Green ending. EDI's quote, though, indicates that the galaxy is looking to reclaim what they lost and improve over it. So the mass-relays could be one of many things they collectively decide to improve upon and move past. It would explain why they're not there, though they should be as easy to rebuild here as in the Blue ending, and easier than in Red.

Headcanon

 
I took "final evolution of life" to mean that it's the point where organics and synthetics reach an "equilibrium" -- synthetics won't evolve at a faster rate than organics -- provided organics don't fall victim to their own stupidity before reaching it.

Headcanon

I didn't get the impression it meant "evolution stops here."

Isn't that what "final stage" means?

If you want an agreement so badly though then YES, from a purely in-game standpoint, it is nonsense. That's just more reason, though, why I find it necessary to do a little headwork (without using "indoctrination" or "bad writing" as crutches).

I'm sure the writers thank you for putting more thought into the endings than they did

I was responding to the implication that it's somehow bad/undesirable to live with "unnatural" conditions, which is subjective and therefore cannot be right or wrong, but it's still rooted in the flawed logic of equating being natural to being good.

How about being forced into that life?

[Rasofe]

The idea that a statement can't be right or wrong because it's subjective alone is ludicrous. It can't be proven right or wrong, much in the same way that the most basic rules of logic can't be proven right or wrong, but they can still be postulated as true or wrong when necessary.
Hence why the intersect of A and not A is the empty set. Purely subjective statement that has always and will always be true.

[Obadiah]

Rasofe wrote...

Robosexual wrote...

Rasofe wrote...

Jason, the entire story is in your mind.
The important part is what you get to put on the screen. You don't get to put any reasoning for Synthesis on the screen - at all. You can tell Shepard to do it but you can never justify it with character development.

Not true, you can easily consider wanting peace, a bright future, and coexistence of synthetics and organics to be a justification of it.

Destroy wouldn't, as it considers genocide better than coexistence, and Control wouldn't as it's more about, well, control.

Trying to say that you can't justify Synthesis with character development is simply untrue.

Character development that you headcanon doesn't count.
For destroy, Shepard can spend all game agreeing that the Reapers have to be destroyed, and that difficult choices may be necessary to eliminate the enemy completely.
For Control, Shepard will explain the choice after you've made it. That's not ideal, but it works.
For Synthesis there's not a peep. Shepard never says why they're doing it. You'd only be making up reasoning. So there's no character development involved - just your assumptions. The narrative connection between character development and
character action is missing. That's a roleplay 101 failure.

Shepard wants to destroy the Reapers up until the end because that is the only option that appears plausible until speaking to the Catalyst. ME is a game of choice, and all motives for those choices are head-cannoned by players.

The narrative connection to Synthesis is pretty straight-forward: it's Shepard trusting and working with an enemy (as with Aria, Balak, etc), or getting others to work with their enemy (Krogan and Turian/Salarian, Quarian and Geth, the Council and the Rachni), to acheive something.

Modifié par Obadiah, 03 décembre 2013 - 03:10 .

[Rasofe]

Roleplay does not work that way. Roleplay involves dialogue. Dialogue is an element of narrative. No dialogue for a decision is a lack of narrative connection. How much more simple can I try to make this for all of you so that you'll understand?
It's an attitude like this that gave Bioware the reasoning to reduce the dialogue wheel in the first place. "They'll just headcanon their decisions". You synthesists are acting like a bunch of pushovers about this, too. The game designers literally removed the option from you to justify the decision in-game with dialogue, and you're acting like it's no big deal since you can headcanon it all anyway. Well, fair enough, but don't expect the rest of the fanbase - who actually care to define a proper character for Shepard - to buy into this asinine garbage and the self-evidently inaccurate statements Bioware provided for synthesis.