192 réponses à ce sujet

[Clayless]

The worst line in the series I think. It just makes Shepard look so stupid, and it's unavoidable.

[SwobyJ]

Robosexual wrote...

The worst line in the series I think. It just makes Shepard look so stupid, and it's unavoidable.

Meh. It's just Shepard recalling his grunt days.

It's too bad that we don't get to see who he was during/before the N7 program. Why? Because we wouldn't have complaints like this.

It's his travels on the Normandy (+ maybe even the Prothian beacon experience) that wakes him up a little (even when Renegade) to the greater world out there (remember that it was his first time on the Citadel along with Ashley and Kaidan), and then his outright perspective can change in ME2.

There's a hell of a lot of people, even in the MEU, that will look at a machine and go "that's not alive, that's a machine, and machines aren't alive". Not everyone subscribes to anything remotely to transhumanism, and so far irl, we only have what equates to drones and chatbots.

In the MEU, most intelligences are VIs, and yes, are 'stupid machines'.

So yeah, we see giant robots who want to kill everyone. What's the first reaction? Not "Oh, you're so smart! Let me try to leave some room for you to do it." or "I'll kill you, but not without a trial or investigation!"

NO, we, or at least Shepard goes: "Nope, I'll destroy you before I let you to this to the galaxy." (orrrr to that effect - thus "You're not even alive. Not really. You're a machine, and machines can be broken.")

I think a lot of people are just annoyed at it being autodialogue, but really, ME1 Shepard never says AI are alive. Ever. It's his perspective, and we're just riding along with it, nudging it towards one turn or the other.

And up til that point, we just dealt with clicky clacky Geth arming bombs and shooting down colonists 0_0.

Not everyone's gonna be Ray Kurzweil. And I guess, neither was Shepard there. Over time, Bioware lets us stretch out and yeah, believe that AIs are alive. Or not. The options are there, and Bioware presents arguments for all sides, really.

Modifié par SwobyJ, 06 janvier 2014 - 07:29 .

[AlanC9]

It's nice to remember that ME1 had its full share of bad writing. I'm still trying to figure out how Liara knew who Saren was before meeting Shepard. She also knows that her mother is working with Saren even if Shepard doesn't bring it up, which is a neat trick considering she hasn't spoken to Benezia in years.

Modifié par AlanC9, 06 janvier 2014 - 08:37 .

[Sir DeLoria]

You know what, I agree with the "You're not even alive part", I just think the "and machines can be broken part" is incredibly dumb. Anything and anyone can be broken, wether or not Sovereign is a machine is pretty irrelevant.

Modifié par Necanor, 06 janvier 2014 - 03:04 .

[Sir DeLoria]

CosmicGnosis wrote...

Like I said, killing the quarians seems more depressing than killing the geth:

Of course it is, because:

1. Shepard is one of the very few people who even consider synthetics alive and they were after all enemies since the beginning
2. The Quarians were Shep's allies and he just stabbed them in the back
3. Not one but two of your team mates get killed
4. Millions of innocent civilians, including children were just murdered, the Geth had neither

[Hazegurl]

I don't see the issue with the line or how it makes Shepard stupid. At the time he knew nothing at all about the Reapers. He most likely figured it was "alive" in some way, as he states way before that line when he calls Sovereign a "live" Reaper. but overall I see it as trash talk. "I will break you" has been used often in organic vs organic confrontations It doesn't mean the person saying it believes they can break a person like a toy.

Anyway, To take knowledge from Game 3 and apply it to Game 1 is silly and useless.

As for Shepard's opinion in ME1. Well, if he picks Destroy he sort of does make due on that promise to break the Reapers. And I still don't consider the Reapers as being alive, most certainly not in the same way as organics.

[DeinonSlayer]

@wolfhowwl
All valid concerns. Still, I've yet to see anyone suggest a different course of action they could take, besides spontaneously pulling a habitable dextro world ready for settlement out of their butts or "You have reached the Citadel Council - please hold. *elevator music*"

Go to the Citadel after the dreadnought mission and before Priority: Rannoch, and Tali has a different set of dialogue with a different Turian. Instead of arranging for Quarian ships to evacuate a Turian colony, she's asking for - and being denied - Turian aid. I doubt any kind of arrangement could have been made to house seventeen million Quarian civilians on Turian worlds when they're already overwhelmed by their own refugee crisis. News bulletins even say the Citadel itself is facing food shortages.

If you choose certain dialogue options before the dreadnought mission, it becomes clear that Koris had no viable alternative to war. His plan was basically to drift in their fleet as long as they could and hope the Reapers didn't find them, which by necessity would mean the Quarians could not help the wider war effort. Gerrel's invasion was perhaps brash, and certainly bears risks, but it's far less risky IMO than an encounter with the Reapers in space, where a single destroyer taking a potshot at a single liveship would doom 1/3rd of the remaining population to starve to death.

As for why the entire fleet had to tag along, that's another essay. Suffice to say, I don't believe retreat during the Dreadnought mission was ever a viable option.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 06 janvier 2014 - 04:36 .

[General TSAR]

Stupid line but I agree with the Philosophy.

[RatThing]

David7204 wrote...

Weekes said point-blank that they wanted the player to feel the geth were ultimately in the right for the Rannoch arc.

I just don't get it. What is it to them if people choose to feel different about it. Do they get a hard-on while reading the stats if people chose their preferred path? The cornerstones for the Geth-Quarian history were already set, only the resolution was missing. Just give everyone a piece of good content and let people feel like they want about it dammit. It's like they deliberately gave everyone who doesn't share their mindset **** content to ****** them off.
I've already figured Weekes likes to push his opinion on the player after watching that panel where he called the Quarians racists. Hopefully he stays writing for Dragon Age.  

Modifié par RatThing, 06 janvier 2014 - 05:32 .

[FlyingSquirrel]

Hazegurl wrote...
I don't see the issue with the line or how it makes Shepard stupid. At the time he knew nothing at all about the Reapers. He most likely figured it was "alive" in some way, as he states way before that line when he calls Sovereign a "live" Reaper. but overall I see it as trash talk. "I will break you" has been used often in organic vs organic confrontations It doesn't mean the person saying it believes they can break a person like a toy.

Anyway, To take knowledge from Game 3 and apply it to Game 1 is silly and useless.

As for Shepard's opinion in ME1. Well, if he picks Destroy he sort of does make due on that promise to break the Reapers. And I still don't consider the Reapers as being alive, most certainly not in the same way as organics.

I don't think it's a question of retroactively applying knowledge from ME2/3. I can't remember for sure, but I think I was a bit bothered by that line before I ever played ME2, and ME3 didn't yet exist when I got into the series. Again, Shepard can attempt to negotiate with the hostile AI on the Presidium, and when Tali talks about how the geth started asking philosophical questions, a possible response for Shepard is along the lines of "What's wrong with that?"

And I find it hard to imagine that, in a galaxy where the geth and quarians fought a war and the creation of AIs is part of history, people haven't at least considered whether or not AIs are living beings who have rights. Being opposed to their creation or seeing them as potentially dangerous isn't incompatible with this. I tend to think that we shouldn't create AIs precisely because it raises a lot of questions that I don't think we're yet prepared to answer, but if someone did create one that appeared to share human characteristics like intelligence and self-awareness, I would argue for it to be given the same rights as a human being.

If the player wants to *choose* to have Shepard take the opposite position, i.e. they aren't truly conscious or self-aware and don't have rights, that's one thing, but we shouldn't be forced into it when Shepard is otherwise allowed to express a diverse range of opinions on controversial issues.

[General TSAR]

RatThing wrote...
I've already figured Weekes likes to push his opinion on the player after watching that panel where he called the Quarians racists. 

Seriously? 

Modifié par General TSAR, 06 janvier 2014 - 05:35 .

[Seboist]

AlanC9 wrote...

It's nice to remember that ME1 had its full share of bad writing. I'm still trying to figure out how Liara knew who Saren was before meeting Shepard. She also knows that her mother is working with Saren even if Shepard doesn't bring it up, which is a neat trick considering she hasn't spoken to Benezia in years.

There's also Udina knowing about Geth sightings on Noveria despite the local authorities being oblivious to it and Wrex showing up on the normandy with no explanation if you took him in the Chora's den mission.

[RatThing]

General TSAR wrote...

RatThing wrote...
I've already figured Weekes likes to push his opinion on the player after watching that panel where he called the Quarians racists. 

Seriously? 

Yes, seriously.

Modifié par RatThing, 06 janvier 2014 - 05:46 .

[AlexMBrennan]

Without Legion and EDI, Mass Effect's message would be that machines, even intelligent machines, can never be alive, and that to integrate oneself with technology is to risk losing one's humanity.

No offence, but you seem to be trying very hard to mis-interpret content in the game to fit your conclusion:

Saren isn't bad because he dabbled in transhumanism but because got evil mind controlling implants from evil reapers and because he was sabotaging the war effort thinking that the reapers would let the HiWis live; the game would have been exactly the same if the reapers had been an organic bug species or something along those line.

The organics-vs.-synethetics theme is also complicated by the revelation that the Reapers contain the minds of organics. Again, we have some kind of fusion, but it's still presented as something horrific and wrong.

It would have been just as bad if the reapers had kept the heads of all their victims in life support tanks I.e. the methods (brain uploading) has nothing to do with why we think it's bad.

the geth want to upgrade themselves with "Reaper code" so that they will be considered "alive", and Synthesis is a possible ending. We have come a long way since ME1

We've come a long way indeed since Legion explicitly said in ME2 that the geth want to go their own way, but I guess something had to get retconned for a contrived geth-quarian war (quarians reigniting a Cold War at the worst possible time, geth making a bargain with the reapers knowing that they'd get wiped out by the Reapers anyway).

Again though, the motive here is almost completely unrelated to the organic-synthetic conflict - the geth are facing military defeat unless they become vassals of the big bad. Note that the geth are NOT fighting to use the reaper upgrades to gain sentience as only legion knows about them.

The morning war, too, had nothing to do with any inherent conflict between organics and synthetics - the quarians simply got scared of the potential of their creation (uplifted species, killer robot, genetically engineered super virus, etc) and botched their preemptive strike.

If it had been important, then it would have focused on bridging the gap between organics and synthetics

Why? Where is the logic in "well done resurrection plot" => "organic-synthetic cooperation"? There are many resurrection stories (including the all time best seller - the bible) which never mention the organic-synthetic conflict at all.

Tl;dr: just because organics and synthetics are fighting doesn't mean that they are fighting because they are organics and synthetics.

[AlanC9]

Hazegurl wrote...

I don't see the issue with the line or how it makes Shepard stupid. At the time he knew nothing at all about the Reapers. He most likely figured it was "alive" in some way, as he states way before that line when he calls Sovereign a "live" Reaper. but overall I see it as trash talk. "I will break you" has been used often in organic vs organic confrontations It doesn't mean the person saying it believes they can break a person like a toy.

It's not only trash talk, it's silly trash talk. I'm not particulary happy about having my character forced into trash talk in the first place -- it's kinda juvenile unless you're doing it for psychological advantage, which would be preposterous here -- but if Shepard's absolutely got to do it, couldn't he do better with it? Sovereign's a machine? So frelling what?

[AlanC9]

DeinonSlayer wrote...
Go to the Citadel after the dreadnought mission and before Priority: Rannoch, and Tali has a different set of dialogue with a different Turian. Instead of arranging for Quarian ships to evacuate a Turian colony, she's asking for - and being denied - Turian aid.

Considering how tight the ME3 word budget seems to have been, I'm amazed stuff like this made it in. How many players fly to the Citadel between missions at Rannoch?

If you choose certain dialogue options before the dreadnought mission, it becomes clear that Koris had no viable alternative to war. His plan was basically to drift in their fleet as long as they could and hope the Reapers didn't find them, which by necessity would mean the Quarians could not help the wider war effort. Gerrel's invasion was perhaps brash, and certainly bears risks, but it's far less risky IMO than an encounter with the Reapers in space, where a single destroyer taking a potshot at a single liveship would doom 1/3rd of the remaining population to starve to death..

Wait a second. Is a planet more defensible that the Migrant Fleet?

[FlyingSquirrel]

Seboist wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

It's nice to remember that ME1 had its full share of bad writing. I'm still trying to figure out how Liara knew who Saren was before meeting Shepard. She also knows that her mother is working with Saren even if Shepard doesn't bring it up, which is a neat trick considering she hasn't spoken to Benezia in years.

There's also Udina knowing about Geth sightings on Noveria despite the local authorities being oblivious to it and Wrex showing up on the normandy with no explanation if you took him in the Chora's den mission.

Well, Saren seems to be one of the more well-known Spectres, so it's credible that Liara would have heard of him, and there might at least be unsubstantiated rumors of his ruthlessness. As for her mother, that does seem odd, unless Saren's been preparing all this for a while and Benezia joined up with him early on.

Wrex and Garrus both seem to go from "I'll help with your investigation on the Citadel" to "I'm a full-fledged member of your crew" without much explanation, as opposed to Tali, who makes it clearer that she wants to come along. I often purposely avoid Wrex at first so I can recruit him by the C-Sec elevator instead. I figure that Shepard might be a little skeptical of someone who's only known as a bounty hunter under suspicion from C-Sec, and it's not like (s)he's desperate for leads with Barla Von, Harkin, Garrus, and Dr. Michel already providing information.

[Hazegurl]

FlyingSquirrel wrote...

Hazegurl wrote...
I don't see the issue with the line or how it makes Shepard stupid. At the time he knew nothing at all about the Reapers. He most likely figured it was "alive" in some way, as he states way before that line when he calls Sovereign a "live" Reaper. but overall I see it as trash talk. "I will break you" has been used often in organic vs organic confrontations It doesn't mean the person saying it believes they can break a person like a toy.

Anyway, To take knowledge from Game 3 and apply it to Game 1 is silly and useless.

As for Shepard's opinion in ME1. Well, if he picks Destroy he sort of does make due on that promise to break the Reapers. And I still don't consider the Reapers as being alive, most certainly not in the same way as organics.

I don't think it's a question of retroactively applying knowledge from ME2/3. I can't remember for sure, but I think I was a bit bothered by that line before I ever played ME2, and ME3 didn't yet exist when I got into the series. Again, Shepard can attempt to negotiate with the hostile AI on the Presidium, and when Tali talks about how the geth started asking philosophical questions, a possible response for Shepard is along the lines of "What's wrong with that?"

And I find it hard to imagine that, in a galaxy where the geth and quarians fought a war and the creation of AIs is part of history, people haven't at least considered whether or not AIs are living beings who have rights. Being opposed to their creation or seeing them as potentially dangerous isn't incompatible with this. I tend to think that we shouldn't create AIs precisely because it raises a lot of questions that I don't think we're yet prepared to answer, but if someone did create one that appeared to share human characteristics like intelligence and self-awareness, I would argue for it to be given the same rights as a human being.

If the player wants to *choose* to have Shepard take the opposite position, i.e. they aren't truly conscious or self-aware and don't have rights, that's one thing, but we shouldn't be forced into it when Shepard is otherwise allowed to express a diverse range of opinions on controversial issues.

I'm not getting what you would have wanted from that exchange with Sovereign. He made it clear that he was not there to negotiate anything other than Shepard being his mind slave on the off chance that he will be spared. I don't think it's fair to even compare the Reapers and the Geth's war with the Quarians. Sovereign isn't there to ask questions or even gain an understanding of anything. He is there to flat out declare that he will kill all organics. It would be foolish to even want to reason with him. The way I see it if the reapers see organics as a mistake et al then why should Shepard extend any sort of niceties his way? Him telling sovereign he's nothing but a machine has nothing at all to do with the Geth or other AI. 

What should the dialogue wheel look like for a different response to that situation anyway? 

"You have rights."
"Meh"
"You're just a machine" 

@Alan, I see your point but I don't think the entire point of Shep's trash talk was to just call sovereign  a machine, imo. I think of it as Shep saying "Get off your freakin' high horse." Just like it doesn't matter if reapers are machines it doesn't matter if organics are "mistakes" both of them were dishing out unnecessary trash talk. sovereign just had a more badass voice.

Modifié par Hazegurl, 06 janvier 2014 - 06:25 .

[DeinonSlayer]

@Alan
Yeah, I also hear there's different dialogue for James and Traynor if you spend a good deal of the game ignoring them. James says something different if you first speak to him in the cargo hold:
1) After meeting the Council
2) After meeting Garrus and before encountering EDI
3) After encountering EDI

Seriously. Immediately after Priority: Palaven, you leave the war room and the lights flicker, and you're directed to the incident in the AI core. How many people blow that off to go wander the cargo bay and see what James is up to? How many people would ever encounter #2 in the list there? Yet Ashley is essentially mute after the Citadel coup. Strange how they chose to allocate it.

Re: second point, yes. Not by much, but getting their civvies out of the cargo holds and on a planet frees up their ships to aid the war effort. Besides, you can hide in the hills and put up a guerilla resistance, live off the land, that kind of thing far longer than you can survive in a blown-apart ship. The Idenna, for example, is a repurposed Batarian cruiser designed for a crew of 80, but 700 quarians called it home. In the event of an attack, there wouldn't be enough escape pods for those living in the cargo hold because the ship wasn't designed to support that many people. On land they can hide, they can fight, maybe not for long but the option is there. If attacked in space, all they could do is die.

[AlanC9]

FlyingSquirrel wrote...

Well, Saren seems to be one of the more well-known Spectres, so it's credible that Liara would have heard of him, and there might at least be unsubstantiated rumors of his ruthlessness. As for her mother, that does seem odd, unless Saren's been preparing all this for a while and Benezia joined up with him early on.

I can see Liara having heard of Saren. It's not even inconceivable that she caught a news bulletin about him being a traitor; as usual in ME1, it's best not to think about the precise timing of events. Maybe she could even jump to the conclusion that the geth who are after her are working with Saren. But I don't see any way to make knowledge of Benezia work. Her dialogue goes both ways on the subject.

[AlanC9]

DeinonSlayer wrote...
 If attacked in space, all they could do is die.

Or run? Scatter and the Reapers could only chase some of the ships.

Modifié par AlanC9, 06 janvier 2014 - 06:22 .

[Steelcan]

AlanC9 wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...
 If attacked in space, all they could do is die.

Or run? Scatter and the Reapers could only chase some of the ships.

A gteat long term plan that is, if one liveship is downed 1/3 of the quarians will starve, and they cant stay too far away from obwle vecause they need regular food shipments.

[DeinonSlayer]

AlanC9 wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...
 If attacked in space, all they could do is die.

Or run? Scatter and the Reapers could only chase some of the ships.

Run... where? They'll block relay access with a nice big solid Sovereign-class dreadnought, and all you can do then is fight and get annihilated or FTL out-system until your drive core overcharges or you run out of fuel and wait to get picked off. Shutting down the relays and scouring the galaxy system-by-system is how the Reapers have always won.

Incidentally, it's what they had their Geth thralls do to the flotilla in ME3. Blockade the relay to keep them corralled and attrit them down to nothing.

[AlanC9]

Steelcan wrote...

AlanC9 wrote...

DeinonSlayer wrote...
 If attacked in space, all they could do is die.

Or run? Scatter and the Reapers could only chase some of the ships.

A gteat long term plan that is, if one liveship is downed 1/3 of the quarians will starve, and they cant stay too far away from obwle vecause they need regular food shipments.

Eggs in three baskets are still better than eggs in one basket. What's the source for there only being three liveships, anyway? I don't recall seeing an official count.

Anyway, these are both fail states. Harvested in months on Rannoch, or dying quick in space if they can't run. Probabilities of getting away with running aside, Rannoch is a conspicuous target, a mobile fleet is not.

Modifié par AlanC9, 06 janvier 2014 - 06:41 .

[DeinonSlayer]

It's a reaper invasion, Alan. Where, exactly, is "safe?"

What you're ignoring is that as long as their ships' cargo holds are laden with civilians who have to be protected (as in, not dragged along with them to the Battle for Earth) and fed daily (which by itself necessitates that the fleet move as a single mass which takes days to traverse one relay - not exactly mobile), those same ships can not be used to transport, say, platinum for the Crucible project, or airlifting a division of Alliance troops, or evacuating a colony. Those ships can't be used for the work they NEED to be doing in this war so long as the entire Quarian civilian populace is on board - their cargo bays are already full. Even in the best of times pre-Reaper War, the fleet was dependent on external infrastructure for basic survival. This infrastructure is now being rapidly destroyed. Waiting to die in space, neither offering nor receiving help from anyone, isn't an option. Reclaiming Rannoch was simply the least-worst option available to them.

To borrow a line from Tremors, "Running ain't a plan. Running's what you do when a plan fails."

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 06 janvier 2014 - 07:02 .