1005 réponses à ce sujet

[Farangbaa]

You are not going to like what the Reapers 'get out of' the Harvest:

 

They save you.

 

 

 

 

I'll get back to you later, now I gotta hit the road.

[JasonShepard]

There's no such thing as partial free will. They either have free will or they don't. Choose one.

 

I disagree. Indoctrination fits the bill of partial free will quite handily. You're unaware that you are being manipulated, and you still have a free choice... among the options that you are allowed to think of. TIM never considered that, while he might prefer Control, Destroy was still preferable to Reaper victory. Saren never considered that Reaper victory might be just as bad as extinction. Kenson never considered that, while life continued after a Reaper harvest, civilisation clearly didn't.

 

Indoctrination presents itself in the series as a form of tunnel vision, restricting your thoughts without you even being aware of it, but within that 'tunnel vision', you still have free will. (TIM, Saren and Kenson all still made individual choices.)

 

Hence you are not entirely free, but you can still make choices.

 

Hence - partial free will.

[Farangbaa]

Or lets put it differently: Assume they do have complete free will.

 

How come they all do the same?

How come they all have been doing this for billions of years? (aside from, obviously, those that were just 'born')

 

For a large group of entities having full free will, they are remarkably similar.

[Arcian]

You are not going to like what the Reapers 'get out of' the Harvest:

 

They save you.

No, they save my DNA. The things about me that makes me, well, me, are all destroyed.

 

 

I disagree. Indoctrination fits the bill of partial free will quite handily. You're unaware that you are being manipulated, and you still have a free choice... among the options that you are allowed to think of. TIM never considered that, while he might prefer Control, Destroy was still preferable to Reaper victory. Saren never considered that Reaper victory might be just as bad as extinction. Kenson never considered that, while life continued after a Reaper harvest, civilisation clearly didn't.

 

Indoctrination presents itself in the series as a form of tunnel vision, restricting your thoughts without you even being aware of it, but within that 'tunnel vision', you still have free will. (TIM, Saren and Kenson all still made individual choices.)

 

Hence you are not entirely free, but you can still make choices.

 

Hence - partial free will.

You are always entirely free as long as no one is literally remote-controlling your actions (a'la the movie Gamer). Indoctrination can pretty much be defined as very specific brain damage. The brain damage caused by indoctrination affects the person's judgment. It makes them susceptible to suggestion, causes them to lose their inhibitions. It gradually turns them into baser creatures without higher brain functions. It doesn't strip a person's free will, it just makes them less able to make educated choices.

 

It's really a lot like being intoxicated or under the influence of narcotics and having people convince you to do really idiotic things you would otherwise never do. You're never forced to act like an idiot while drunk or high, but your judgment is so impaired that the stupid ideas stops looking stupid. People do this all the time, and we still hold them accountable for their actions. Why should the indoctrinated be any different?

 

Even worse, implanting yourself gives the Reapers a shortcut. As demonstrated in Mass Effect: Retribution, the Reaper implants in Grayson's body allowed the Reapers to regulate his hormone levels. So whenever he began to protest against their demands, they simply strangled the release of dopamine - the neurotransmitter responsible for the feeling of reward and satisfaction in the brain, in case you were unaware - until he complies with the demands, at which point they massively release dopamine into his body to positively reinforce his obedience and associate it with satisfaction. This hormonal trickery is what drives him to obey the Reapers. Even so, he was never physically forced to follow through with these actions - simply very strongly encouraged to do so biologically.

 

With sufficient discipline, the negative effects of low dopamine can be ignored and over time reduced. That's how drug addicts can overcome withdrawal and finally kick their habit and become sober. Of course, against something as destructive as indoctrination, discipline only gets you so far - the area in the brain responsible for discipline is likely one of the first to be wiped out.

 

As a nice side note, Grayson was a red sand addict and had managed to overcome his addiction through discipline prior to being implanted. Because of his discipline, he was putting up a tough fight against the Reapers until Cerberus deliberately used red sand to wear down his will.

 

For a better example of literally remote-controlling someone's free will, take the Illusive Man during the ending. He used the biotic powers granted to him by the Reapers to, pardon the pun, assume direct control of Shepard and Anderson's nervous systems. This resembles Morinth's Dominate power, which operates on a similar basis. This doesn't affect the person's motivation the way the Reapers do, it directly usurps control of the victim's actions, which is why Shepard is able to react negatively to being forced to shoot Anderson as opposed to feeling satisfied about it, which is what an indoctrinated person feels when they obey the Reapers.

 

The Illusive Man, meanwhile, isn't being forced by the Reapers to do what he does in the end. His brain is just completely overwhelmed by the damage from indoctrination and the cocktail of hormones being endlessly released into his system by his implants that he performs mental gymnastics worthy of the Olympic Games in order to justify his actions as beneficial for humanity. Saren was just the same (replacing humanity with all galactic life), but both were able to muster enough discipline and common sense to remove themselves from the equation (with some persuasion from Shepard, of course).

 

 

Or lets put it differently: Assume they do have complete free will.

 

How come they all do the same?

How come they all have been doing this for billions of years? (aside from, obviously, those that were just 'born')

 

For a large group of entities having full free will, they are remarkably similar.

They are synthetics created with a specific purpose. Whereas the aptitudes and talents of organics are decided by genes (which are decided by evolution), the aptitudes and talents of synthetics are decided by design. Synthetics are not driven by hormones and environmental factors the same way we are. That's, in a way, what makes them both superior and inferior to us.

 

What this amounts to is that, if the Catalyst designed them to reap, there are not many logical reasons for them to do something else. Their design is what encourages them to reap, just how a person whose genes are adapted to play piano will gravitate them towards doing just that. Even if a Reaper for some reason wanted to play piano, their design simply prohibits it, just how a person who wished they could fly like a bird never will because our bodies prohibits such physical action. So they resign themselves to reaping the same way we resign ourselves to walking.

 

So, unless we scrap the Crucible in favor of a giant ass piano, the Reapers are going to continue happily reaping the crap out of our galaxy until the end of days.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Or lets put it differently: Assume they do have complete free will.

 

How come they all do the same?

How come they all have been doing this for billions of years? (aside from, obviously, those that were just 'born')

 

For a large group of entities having full free will, they are remarkably similar.

 

I don't want to get too into this. As far as ME1 is concerned though... I think it very possible for the Reapers to be set up in a structure similar to the Geth or some kind of collective conscience. And also does anything Sovereign says preclude some sort of past Reaper dissent?

 

Also, given the huge Hobbes-ian motif behind the Reapers (at least in ME1) could it also be possible that the Reapers are some sort of large Hobbes-like society?

[Lyrandori]

At peace, with ME3? No, not really.

 

Well, I mean I "got over it" with time... a lot of time.

 

The thing is I've completed ME3 just one time to this day, and I've had it the hard way with the vanilla non-Extended Cut ending. You know, with that infamous insulting punch-to-the-gut "continue to build the legend through downloadable content" line (or something like that) at the end of the credits (without a single thanks from BioWare, very short message, heck even that very message was rushed, pathetic).

 

I actually went through a depression for a few months following that (for about 4 months or so I felt miserable), it actually had a physical and psychological impact on me, so I couldn't just "forget" about it over night. I got over it by now, however. I've "healed" (psychologically) and moved on. I'm not "at peace" with ME3 in the sense that now out of nowhere I'd happen to "like it", I still think that it's a rushed and unpolished game with very few interesting portions (I did like the Tuchanka arc, but that's it). But I'm "ok" now in the sense that I don't rage anymore as I used to when I think about it. Now I just sort of shake my head while having a smile and laughing about it more than anything else. I take it with more humor and perhaps some cynicism, but my anger is definitely gone.

 

I do really like the multi-player mode, however. That's quite the irony, because I remember myself thinking before ME3's actual release that if there was one thing I'd never approach with a light-year-long stick would be anything regarding multi-player in the Mass Effect franchise. And look at myself today, playing ME3 multi-player pretty much on a daily basis and completely ignoring and forgetting about the single-player campaign, meh. I might end up buying ME4 just for its multi-player mode (especially if it's the same team as the one that made ME3's multi-player, and I do think it's the same team so yeah).

[Jukaga]

He controls them exactly the same way that the Shepardlyst would control them. They do what the Shepardlyst tells them to do. The Shepardlyst commands an army that none dare oppose. Without control, they would be without purpose. Unless they really enjoy what they're doing. Considering what they once were and the terror their inhabitants went through becoming what they are, I just can't imagine that they would purposely inflict that on others unless they were directed to do so. Which brings me to the next question. Is the dead meat in them alive? Or is it just dead. And the part operating the machine really just a machine. I mean Legion interfaced with Nazara, and who knows? Maybe what Legion really saw was the Catalyst? Or maybe for Legion, it was like viewing a demo program. You know how demos are. They look fantastic, and then when you get them, they're not exactly what the demo showed. Take "Aliens: Colonial Marines" for example.

 

And then there's the other thing about war. There is no war. Only the harvest. Is fire at war when it burns? Is it in conflict? Or is it simply doing what it was created to do?

 

 

My reasoning is that the goo is not alive, but simply a genetic repository of the extinct civilization for... reasons. The only thing that makes sense to me is that the minds of the people dissolved into the reaper are flash uploaded at the moment of disintegration and form a gestalt self-awareness sorta like Legion is.

[Jukaga]

At peace, with ME3? No, not really.

 

Well, I mean I "got over it" with time... a lot of time.

 

The thing is I've completed ME3 just one time to this day, and I've had it the hard way with the vanilla non-Extended Cut ending. You know, with that infamous insulting punch-to-the-gut "continue to build the legend through downloadable content" line (or something like that) at the end of the credits (without a single thanks from BioWare, very short message, heck even that very message was rushed, pathetic).

 

I actually went through a depression for a few months following that (for about 4 months or so I felt miserable), it actually had a physical and psychological impact on me, so I couldn't just "forget" about it over night. I got over it by now, however. I've "healed" (psychologically) and moved on. I'm not "at peace" with ME3 in the sense that now out of nowhere I'd happen to "like it", I still think that it's a rushed and unpolished game with very few interesting portions (I did like the Tuchanka arc, but that's it). But I'm "ok" now in the sense that I don't rage anymore as I used to when I think about it. Now I just sort of shake my head while having a smile and laughing about it more than anything else. I take it with more humor and perhaps some cynicism, but my anger is definitely gone.

 

I do really like the multi-player mode, however. That's quite the irony, because I remember myself thinking before ME3's actual release that if there was one thing I'd never approach with a light-year-long stick would be anything regarding multi-player in the Mass Effect franchise. And look at myself today, playing ME3 multi-player pretty much on a daily basis and completely ignoring and forgetting about the single-player campaign, meh. I might end up buying ME4 just for its multi-player mode (especially if it's the same team as the one that made ME3's multi-player, and I do think it's the same team so yeah).

Damn, it's posts like this that make me happy I ignored all pre-release spam from Bioware about ME3 and waited to play it till the EC and Leviathan came out. It still ain't pretty but it's a hell of a lot better than what all your early adopters got.

[ImaginaryMatter]

My reasoning is that the goo is not alive, but simply a genetic repository of the extinct civilization for... reasons. The only thing that makes sense to me is that the minds of the people dissolved into the reaper are flash uploaded at the moment of disintegration and form a gestalt self-awareness sorta like Legion is.

 

My theory is that the organic slushy forms the basis of some sort of biocomputer into which a VI like program that responds to the Catalyst is installed. The VI program then does Reaper things and runs a villainous dialogue routine in case any one talks to it. The minds of the people are completely destroyed and Legions dialogue is considered a byproduct of the original human Reaper idea.

[Arcian]

Damn, it's posts like this that make me happy I ignored all pre-release spam from Bioware about ME3 and waited to play it till the EC and Leviathan came out. It still ain't pretty but it's a hell of a lot better than what all your early adopters got.

Not even Zaeed got out of the original ending unscathed...

[SporkFu]

I played the game with the original ending a couple of times before the EC came out. I still enjoy(ed) the rest of the game... hell, since the EC I don't even have any real issues with the ending. It is what it is, bring on ME:Next. In the meantime, the cycle must continue, especially now that DA:I is delayed for about six weeks. That's good enough for two extra playthroughs.

 

Unless Bulletstorm's shininess finally distracts me enough to step away from the ME 'verse for a bit. I wonder if that's the game that inspired the Lash BP from the Omega DLC. 

[Gkonone]

Just to reiterate how I feel about the ending, although I'm mostly done with this debate, I'll sum it up briefly. 

The principals, ideals and notions that are prevelant throughout the series revolve around choice, self-determination, believing, hope, bringing people/races together etc.

 

Almost every action by Shepard is driven by these themes. The Catalyst offers options that go directly against all those things, and not only must you accept it, but embrace it as well. The Catalyst is the rational entity that has never evolved, sees everything as inevitable and doesn't understand what Shepard has done to get so far (and the writers probably forgot).

Throughout the games your are faced with moral ambiguities, curing the genophage or not, saving the Geth or conflicts on a smaller scale. You can take the way of the Catalyst there, exerting force based on cold heart logic, but the game predominantly steers you to those principals I mentioned above.

 

The games make this quite obvious through many conversations:

In a conversation with Garrus, he tells Shepard 'If we reduce this war to arithmetic, we are no better than the reapers.'

Admiral Hackett tells Shepard 'You can pay a soldier to fire a gun. You can pay him to charge the enemy and take a hill. But you can't pay him to believe.'

Before the fight on Earth Ashley asks Shepard about the odds of winning and Shepard replies 'There's always hope, it's how we got this far'.

Liara asks what keeps Shepard going 'When there's so much at stake I think about what I'd lose if I fail'(..) 'We'll stop them Liara, together'.

 

Both control and synthesis are amoral from Shepard's point of view. Controlling Reapers, other beings, didn't Shepard fight the Reapers because they were doing just that? Controlling other beings, indoctrinating them?

Synthesis is nulliflying what you've accomplished with the Geth and Quarians, proving that synthetics and organics can coexist. Didn't Shepard just end an age old conflict between the Geth and the Quarians so they can enjoy freedom and determine their own fate? At a certain point Legion asks Tali 'does this unit have a soul?' Does Edi for that matter?

Lets reverse that and have them melt into one big goo of happiness shall we, whether they like it or not.

Destroy, thanks for trying, you lose.

 

You get to be the god of the galaxy doing things you thought were amoral for the past three games. 

[Hello!I'mTheDoctor]

 

Just to reiterate how I feel about the ending, although I'm mostly done with this debate, I'll sum it up briefly. 

The principals, ideals and notions that are prevelant throughout the series revolve around choice, self-determination, believing, hope, bringing people/races together etc.

 

Almost every action by Shepard is driven by these themes. The Catalyst offers options that go directly against all those things, and not only must you accept it, but embrace it as well. The Catalyst is the rational entity that has never evolved, sees everything as inevitable and doesn't understand what Shepard has done to get so far (and the writers probably forgot).

Throughout the games your are faced with moral ambiguities, curing the genophage or not, saving the Geth or conflicts on a smaller scale. You can take the way of the Catalyst there, exerting force based on cold heart logic, but the game predominantly steers you to those principals I mentioned above.

 

The games make this quite obvious through many conversations:

In a conversation with Garrus, he tells Shepard 'If we reduce this war to arithmetic, we are no better than the reapers.'

Admiral Hackett tells Shepard 'You can pay a soldier to fire a gun. You can pay him to charge the enemy and take a hill. But you can't pay him to believe.'

Before the fight on Earth Ashley asks Shepard about the odds of winning and Shepard replies 'There's always hope, it's how we got this far'.

Liara asks what keeps Shepard going 'When there's so much at stake I think about what I'd lose if I fail'(..) 'We'll stop them Liara, together'.

 

Both control and synthesis are amoral from Shepard's point of view. Controlling Reapers, other beings, didn't Shepard fight the Reapers because they were doing just that? Controlling other beings, indoctrinating them?

Synthesis is nulliflying what you've accomplished with the Geth and Quarians, proving that synthetics and organics can coexist. Didn't Shepard just end an age old conflict between the Geth and the Quarians so they can enjoy freedom and determine their own fate? At a certain point Legion asks Tali 'does this unit have a soul?' Does Edi for that matter?

Lets reverse that and have them melt into one big goo of happiness shall we, whether they like it or not.

Destroy, thanks for trying, you lose.

 

You get to be the god of the galaxy doing things you thought were amoral for the past three games. 

 

 

IMO, a lot of this is why the series is bad. I wish the games did push a more amoral view of the conflict. That's why I'm so drawn to Cerberus and so utterly disgusted by the alliance. That's one thing I applaud the writers for; making the series truly amoral and disconnected from foolish notions of idealism somehow 'winning' a fight alone.

 

'Hope' doesn't stop Reapers. 'Believing' doesn't harm the Reapers. It doesn't change reality at all. All this 'hope' and 'believing' crap spewed by Hackett and Garrus and Ashley just shows that they don't know how to handle reality. Hollow words by cowards who can't face the truth and deserve annihilation.

 

Arithmetic does. If that's what it takes, so be it. You are neither better nor worse than Reapers. They are too alien to be put into matters of morality. Only cold, hard logic will win.

 

The Catalyst has his logic; I have mine. They're incompatible. I have the means to make my perspective come ahead. I do so.

[AlanC9]

'Hope' doesn't stop Reapers. 'Believing' doesn't harm the Reapers. It doesn't change reality at all. All this 'hope' and 'believing' crap spewed by Hackett and Garrus and Ashley just shows that they don't know how to handle reality. Hollow words by cowards who can't face the truth and deserve annihilation.

I don't remember when Garrus talks like that. And Hackett talks about using belief instrumentally, which didn't strike me as a problem. Unless I've forgotten something else.

[AlanC9]

What this amounts to is that, if the Catalyst designed them to reap, there are not many logical reasons for them to do something else. Their design is what encourages them to reap, just how a person whose genes are adapted to play piano will gravitate them towards doing just that. Even if a Reaper for some reason wanted to play piano, their design simply prohibits it, just how a person who wished they could fly like a bird never will because our bodies prohibits such physical action. So they resign themselves to reaping the same way we resign ourselves to walking..

I'll bite. In what way does the Reapers' design encourage them to follow those silly cycles?

[Hello!I'mTheDoctor]

I don't remember when Garrus talks like that. And Hackett talks about using belief instrumentally, which didn't strike me as a problem. Unless I've forgotten something else.

 

Garrus doesn't like the idea of seeing people as numbers and statistics. He states this in one of his conversations, asking how far you're willing to go to fight the Reapers. I get the impression he wants to hold onto some kind of sense that he's still a good guy even if the Reapers are making him adopt tactics that the good guys would normally never use. My Shepard is of course completely undaunted about what he needs to do. Garrus is a bit dismayed that Shepard is so willing to be a bad guy if that's what it takes to win (even though he doesn't really say it). I'm with TIM; just because I adopt my enemy's tactics, methods, and strategy does not automatically mean that that foe is no longer my enemy, or that I'm no better than him because I choose to win.

 

I'm not really a fan of the 'believe' concept that Hackett is espousing at all. It's nigh useless against an enemy such as the Reapers.

[JosieFrances]

I was bummed at first and the the EC did improve it a bit more but after the Citadel DLC was released that made me pretty happy. For me as I played that at the very end, that was my ending for me and was us all celebrating defeating the reapers

[Treacherous J Slither]

ME3 is a disappointment. I've done 2 playthroughs. Pre EC and post EC. That's it. The last time I played I had got up to the temple on the Thessia mission and after all that nonsense I just couldn't touch story mode anymore. Multiplayer only. The mp is full of flaws as well but it's fun and not fos like the sp.

[Arcian]

I'll bite. In what way does the Reapers' design encourage them to follow those silly cycles?

Because they are specifically built for it. The indoctrination technology, their powerful weapons, the dragon's teeth, the implant control technology, the atmospheric control within their shells that allows them to carry tens of thousands of organics, etc...

 

They are built as invading war machines. Why would an invading war machine want to be anything else? Could it be anything else, even if it wanted to? If my Roomba spontaneously became intelligent, would it stop doing what it was built to do?

 

I think it's naive to believe that artificial intelligences will behave the same way we do. All intelligence wants a purpose. We, and by extension all the organics we've seen in the ME universe, are born without purpose, and spend most part of our lives trying to find a purpose that we are genetically compatible with. The Reapers, and by extension all the synthetics we've seen in the ME universe, are created with a pre-defined purpose. They have no need to search for a purpose. The geth only had to change because the quarians tried to wipe them out, and because the resulting war drove the quarians away from their galactic territory. As soon as they reunited with the quarians, they were happy to go back to helping them rebuild their civilization. Not as slaves, mind you, but as free beings.

[AlanC9]

I specifically asked about the cycles, not harvesting per se. Or are you making a case that without the Catalyst's influence it'll be No More Mr. Nice Guy from them? It's pretty easy to imagine the Reapers setting up something like the Goa'uld operation if they weren't being artificially restricted.

[Arcian]

I specifically asked about the cycles, not harvesting per se. Or are you making a case that without the Catalyst's influence it'll be No More Mr. Nice Guy from them? It's pretty easy to imagine the Reapers setting up something like the Goa'uld operation if they weren't being artificially restricted.

What would the benefit of such an operation be? They lack all imaginable organic motivations for what they do, and we have nothing they want save for our DNA. I think the comparison may be a bit misapplied, after all the Goa'uld are organics and not synthetics.

[Sheridan31]

No, i am not fully at peace with ME1-3. For one i am confused about the ending, especially since no way leads to blue or green. - TIM´s Controle ideas can only be rejected prior to the last 10 minutes - Even EDI does not awake sympathy for the reapers, or suggests a synthesis-peace. Still, intuitively... the green ending has something to it, that attracts me. I´d like to share another green ending breaking the Film/Story rules of no-antagonist / No-Winner: http://thematrix101....ons/meaning.php Go green?

[Kabraxal]

Garrus doesn't like the idea of seeing people as numbers and statistics. He states this in one of his conversations, asking how far you're willing to go to fight the Reapers. I get the impression he wants to hold onto some kind of sense that he's still a good guy even if the Reapers are making him adopt tactics that the good guys would normally never use. My Shepard is of course completely undaunted about what he needs to do. Garrus is a bit dismayed that Shepard is so willing to be a bad guy if that's what it takes to win (even though he doesn't really say it). I'm with TIM; just because I adopt my enemy's tactics, methods, and strategy does not automatically mean that that foe is no longer my enemy, or that I'm no better than him because I choose to win.

 

I'm not really a fan of the 'believe' concept that Hackett is espousing at all. It's nigh useless against an enemy such as the Reapers.

 

Garrus doesn't like the idea of seeing people as numbers and statistics. He states this in one of his conversations, asking how far you're willing to go to fight the Reapers. I get the impression he wants to hold onto some kind of sense that he's still a good guy even if the Reapers are making him adopt tactics that the good guys would normally never use. My Shepard is of course completely undaunted about what he needs to do. Garrus is a bit dismayed that Shepard is so willing to be a bad guy if that's what it takes to win (even though he doesn't really say it). I'm with TIM; just because I adopt my enemy's tactics, methods, and strategy does not automatically mean that that foe is no longer my enemy, or that I'm no better than him because I choose to win.

 

I'm not really a fan of the 'believe' concept that Hackett is espousing at all. It's nigh useless against an enemy such as the Reapers.

Becoming a monster to defeat a monster sitll leaves you with a monster.

[AlanC9]

What would the benefit of such an operation be? They lack all imaginable organic motivations for what they do, and we have nothing they want save for our DNA. I think the comparison may be a bit misapplied, after all the Goa'uld are organics and not synthetics.

So their nature motivates them to harvest us, but only in a silly fashion? I can't follow your argument.

Or is there no argument, just an assumption: the Reapers' nature is whatever would cause them to naturally follow the cycle scheme because that would be the efficient design? I don't see why it wouldn't be just as efficient to do this with programming.

[AlanC9]

Becoming a monster to defeat a monster sitll leaves you with a monster.

Once you've fallen to the dark side, forever will it consume you? Maybe in some mystical universe.