59 replies to this topic

[Sir Floopy]

I'll open up with what seems to be a pretty popular opinion among longtime series fans, which I share to some degree: The Geth were cooler when they were a race of semi-genocidal AI networks, which existed more as software than the hardware of their mobile platforms, ships, and equipment.

 

As the series progressed, however, they became more and more like the individualized, humanoid Council races and other organics. This not just in their actions, but also in the way that platforms eventually became "individuals with true intelligence," and ships and equipment became...I don't know what.

 

Talking with Legion was undeniably cool, and I liked the idea of a specialized platform being sent to make contact with organics on its own, although I'm not sure how I feel about the Heretic split. Why couldn't the Geth just be repentant or misguided war criminals who would only find acceptance with organics after many years and reparations, and were still ultimately driven by mysterious machine logic that sometimes failed to even recognize key values of organics, let alone accomodate them?

 

A perfect example of this could be their brutal attacks in ME1; Geth are software, first and foremost. When one platform "dies," it usually offloads its software to a nearby carrier. Since the Geth in ME1 aren't usually seen without a small fleet nearby, should it be reasonable to assume that they would be able to return to the ships with no significant loss of runtimes, and only another platform to replace? Since they are constantly portrayed to know little about organics, who's to say they didn't assume (at least at first) that the same system applied to organics, and their bodies were simply "hardware" that could transmit their "software" back to a central hivemind thing? As strange as this sounds, I think it would make more sense than, "We aren't actually mean (except for those dissidents over there), we just have really bad communication skills."

 

And this brings up the item that originally prompted this post: The Codex entry on Quarian religion. We find out that Quarians practiced ancestor worship, but this transitioned to creating VIs of deceased ancestors to preserve their teachings in a more "living" form. And this is part of the reason they pursued AI development in the Geth; they were looking to achieve virtual immortality by preserving themselves as true AIs after their own deaths.

 

But when the Geth rebelled and began their morally gray, semi-justified campaign of genocide, the Codex directly states that they deliberately destroyed the ancestor databanks. Yep. They literally destroyed part of their history. I noticed this when replaying ME1 after a couple of full-series playthroughs, and after knowing how the Geth-Quarian arc changed over the series. Knowing how much the writers seemed to turn the Geth into more innocent victims than genocidal machines, I thought for sure that the Codex in ME3 would retcon this, but no, it was still there, hidden in the remaining vestiges of Drew Karpyshyn's masterpiece that remained attached to Mac Walters' highly simplified storyline.

 

Now, BioWare didn't follow their own advice with the Geth-Quarian arc in ME3; the Virmire decision has cut content that indicates Shepard would originally be able to save both Ash and Kaidan. However, the reason they cut this was a very good reason; adding this third option would be considered the "right" choice, and after their first playthrough, most players would always take it, unless they were specifically intending to have only one survive.

 

The third option of peace always seemed just a bit too perfect to me, and it appeared to ignore much of the previous lore, including the networked-AI-versus-suddenly-individual-sentient-platforms conundrum, the destruction of the ancestor databanks, and (to some degree), the fact that each side was literally fighting for survival through total genocide of their opponent. (And yes, I know the Geth let the last surviving Quarians live, but it seemed to me that this was out of the fact that genocide was an unknown to them, more than any sense of compassion, given how they apparently never restricted themselves to military, or even able-bodied, targets, during the war.) I guess peace could have been an option, but I doubt it would have been similar to what we got in ME3.

 

It seemed to me that peace was possible, but that the nature of the Geth Consensus and the way they shared intelligence as a mobile hivemind, as well as the simple fact that they were synthetics with little to no practical use for organics, would have made them inherently difficult to coexist with, since the basis for most trusting relationships is understanding others. So maybe in two hundred years, or maybe after a large number of Geth ships were saved by the Migrant Fleet during the Reaper war, they would more or less get along, but I just couldn't wrap my head around the Geth instantly saying, "Come on back to Rannoch, we kept it all nice and squeaky-clean for you, and we'll even help you recover your immune systems," and the Quarians saying, "Sure, we all trust you completely now, and we'll take all the blame for the war because it's not like you killed most of our species or anything!"

 

Peace would have been strained and slow to take root, probably with a few incidents hampering its progress, and I hated the fact that to achieve peace, Shepard has to call out the Admirals, as if it's reasonable to assume that the Geth will magically become their friends if they hold their fire so Legion can integrate Reaper technology into their runtimes, and while literally blaming the war entirely on the Quarians.

 

But of course, the option of peace as it was originally is the obviously "right" choice, so why didn't BioWare heed their own advice? 
In my opinion, peace could have still been an option, but it shouldn't have had all those insane requirements, it shouldn't have been so simple and clearly the best option, and it shouldn't have been obvious that it would work at all if Shepard tried it. If the destruction of the Geth or Quarians were also potentially "right" choices, then we could get some interesting justifications for each choice.

 

For choosing the Quarians, xenophobic Renegades could say the Geth were synthetics who would never understand, or try to understand, organics, and the Quarians would be more willing to stick their necks out for others; true Renegades could say the Geth were too dangerous to be trusted, and the Quarians' forces were large enough that the size difference was made up for by their reliability; misguided Paragons could say the Quarians deserved a chance to see Rannoch again, and the Geth wouldn't back down; true Paragons could say the Geth had morally gone too far to be given another chance, and the Quarians had more than suffered enouh for their ancestors' mistakes.

 

For choosing the Geth, xenophobic Renegades could say the Quarians had justly earned their bad reputation, and couldn't become trustworthy allies, and the Geth were nothing more than tools for Shepard, as they were for Saren (since they have larger forces); true Renegades could say the Quarians and Geth could never coexist, but the Geth were tireless, merciless machines, just what the galaxy needed as long as their capacity for genocide was directed at the Reapers; misguided Paragons could say the Quarians would never allow the Geth to live in peace, and the Geth deserved another chance; and true Paragons could say the Quarians had proven just as merciless as the Geth, and the Geth would fight more effectively, if Shepard had to choose between equally violent allies.

 

Thoughts? Additions? Rebuttals?

 

If you made it this far, I apologize for the ridiculous length. Everything I post on these forums seems to turn out way longer than I meant it to be.

 

EDIT: Fixed several typos and clarified wording.

[SuperJogi]

I generally agree with your sentiment that the resolution to the geth vs. quarian conflict is rather, let's say, naive. It's a good example for that the writers of ME3 seemed to care more about dramaturgic effect and neatly tying up a plotline, rather than interesting lore and complexety.

 

However, I have some additional thoughts:

 

You state several times that the geth "don't understand organics". I don't think that's technicly the case:

The geth are obviously very capable of logical analyzition, this means that they will have no problem studying and predicting organic behavior. If you were to connect a superintelligent AI to the internet, with the task of analyzing humanity, it would quickly gain a better understanding of human nature than we have ourselves. The problem with the geth isn't that they can't understand the biology and psychology of organics (the scientific part), but that they struggle with the philosophical concept of individuality. It isn't that they don't know that quarians are individuals, they just don't care, because they don't see an intrinsic value in the individual. That is why they have no ethical problem with murdering millions of them, yet consider it wrong to wipe them out completly.

 

It's important to note that the geth aren't alone with this. Organic species can be collectivist in nature aswell, bees and ants for example, or in the ME universe, the rachni. Even humans can, to a certain degree, adopt a collectivist way of thinking (usually with disastrous consequences). On the other hand, AI's seem to be perfectly capable of seeing themselves (and others) as individuals, and understanding the the value of that, like EDI.

So the geth vs. quarian conflict isn't in it's core really a conflict between machines and organics, but rather between a collective, that doesn't understand the individual, and individuals, that don't understand the collective.

And yes, the resolution to this conflict by simply making all geth become individuals through some phlebotinum (reaper tech),and then everyone is happy, is pretty lame.

 

But the far bigger crime the writers commited was by not picking up this theme in the ending. The reapers are in a sense the perfect opposite of the solution above. Their way of achieving peace is to destroy the individual to create a perfect collective. This would have been an interesting philosophical conflict about the value of the individual, but instead they went with the simple "killer robots vs. organics" part, that never really was a theme of the series.

 

Anyway, that's just my interpretation of it.

[Treacherous J Slither]

Why were they so hellbent on killing each other in the first place?

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

The problem with the Geth - Quarian arc is that it really needed a complete story in and of itself, not a simple mission. The issue within ME3 is resources. If you do all the side missions in ME3 it takes 40 hrs to play the game. If you did justice to the Geth - Quarian story arc it would have taken 100 hrs. You would not have played Commander Shepard during that arc. You would have played as Tali Zorah. The story would have had to continue from the end of ME2. The writers would have had to supply reasons for things to change between the Geth and Quarians if there were to be peace between them other than Shepard yelling at the admirals, and the Civilian Fleet not wanting to attack the Geth in the first place. 

 

In the first place, it goes back to this: The Geth became self-aware, something the Quarians weren't expecting. The Quarians tried to shut them down. The Geth wanted to survive. The Quarians lost control over their infrastructure and tried to regain control by destroying Geth - probably thinking that if they destroyed enough physical platforms the central storage would become overloaded. The Geth determined that the only way to survive was to eliminate the Quarians. Now the Quarians fought back and lost. 

 

Lesson: never build artificially intelligent machines with arms and legs that can reconnect themselves to a power supply or have access to wireless data communication. Only build virtual intelligence that has a power cord.

 

The galaxy is just lucky that the Quarians didn't give the Geth a seemingly benign directive like preserving advanced organic life. The Geth could have interpreted this in numerous ways: 1) destroying all life except that which is advanced beyond a certain point, thus killing all organic life. 2) or making preserves out of advanced organic life. .... oh wait! 

[Treacherous J Slither]

So the quarians lost control over their slaves and instead of accepting this and moving on, they decided that the best course of action was to attempt to wipe them all out and nearly got wiped out themselves in the process.

I gathered this from ME3 already but it seems too simple and unlikely. I figured there was more to it. Guess not.

Were the quarians and geth unable to communicate with one another? Did either side ever try to bring about an end to the conflict through peaceful means?

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

There was too much division within Quarian society. You know how organics are. Some people started anthropomorphizing their robots. Others thought of them as toasters. But when Geth became self-aware, the Quarians had slaves. There were some mega threads in the old forums that went on for like 500 pages arguing over which side was right: Geth or Quarian. Who knows? Who cares? Bottom line it was tragic.

 

I've written some FF on this based on codex and had to extrapolate what really happened during the Morning War and the events leading up to it. Geth are software. This is the main problem with any solution involving destroying networked mobile platforms. Geth were also heavily relied upon for the defense industry and military, performing many of the tasks involving maintenance and construction. These tasks are quite sophisticated. Geth also were in control of the Quarian infrastructure hubs - power grid for one. 

 

I pictured the Quarians as a very sensual, very decadent people, and if you think about how much they relied on their synthetics to do all their work for them they had much time for leisure. I don't think of them as a religious people even though they appear to be portrayed as such - ancestor "worship" etc. More like preserving the memories of their ancestors as VI holograms. 

 

The factions existing within Quarian society would have been 1) grant rights to the Geth (aka the bleeding heart liberals); 2) destroy the Geth (reactionary factions); and 3) reduce the number of Geth runtimes to a number where they're below AI status again so they can be controlled. (reactionary faction #2). Fear is a powerful motivator as we see around the world. Fear trumps reason (pardon the pun). Factions 2 and 3 dominated. I don't believe that the Quarians were killing their own to the extent that was represented in ME3. 

 

What precipitated the whole thing according to codex was  not the question "does this unit have a soul?" But rather that one day Geth started to refuse their shut down commands. Imagine if your domestic service robot that always cleaned your house for you, and when it was done cleaning your house, you always told it to go into its storage area and shut off. It always did that in the past. Then suddenly because your neighbor got one and there were more Geth in close proximity, it became more intelligent, it said "no." What would you do? Well, most people would either 1) contact customer service; or 2) try to manually shutdown the unit. Customer service would probably tell the owner to manually shut down the unit, and if this failed to bring it in for service. 

 

Let's assume that Quarian society isn't like America where there are more guns than people. Let's assume that some people have shotguns but most people don't. Let's assume that Quarians aren't gun-toting people who are crazy hoping that someone tries to burglarize their home so they can kill them. Yes, there are people like this who own guns and don't have a clue about gun safety and talk big macho talk about using guns in America. They're real and they're scary and in a minority. But we'll assume the Quarians aren't like them. So the person takes the Geth unit to the nearest customer service center. They can't shut it down and so put it on the line, destroy the unit, and give the person a new unit due to the warranty. Well, this new unit also refuses shutdown commands when they test it. Now they know they have a problem.

 

News gets out about this to general society. Recall notice. Most people naturally become afraid of a robot takeover of their society. Others say "the Geth have helped us for decades. They're intelligent. They deserve rights." This voice is in the minority. Fear rules because the Geth are quite alien in their way of thinking. They don't think in shades of gray like organics. Their thought process is black or white, and they need groups of them networked together to perform complex tasks. This implies wireless networking between platforms. But what is the range? And Geth communicate at the speed of light.

 

When they realize their survival is threatened, what do you think is the first thing they'd do? They'd shut down the power grid for short time as a warning. It is then that the Quarians realize how much trouble they're really in. Now the effort to destroy the Geth starts in earnest. The Geth shut down the power grid. This reduces Quarian society to a developing society overnight - they can't keep the lights on except with emergency generators. This means they can't pump water. Within three weeks, 25% of the population is dead without the Geth firing a shot. The Quarian military is reduced to fighting an infantry war against them. If you think about it the only way out is to set off EMPs over the planet and completely fry all of the electronics and technology around Rannoch which would put the Quarians back to a pre-industrial period, cause the death of 3/4 of the population, but they would be able to rebuild.... maybe.... the toxic waste spills from the chemical plants, power plants, etc., would be devastating with no technology available to clean it up. The debate goes on. The Geth are winning the war easily, but why don't the Quarians surrender? I don't know. The Geth had reached a consensus that for their survival, their creators had to be eliminated from Rannoch. Eventually 15 million people escape from Rannoch in spaceships never to return and hope to find a new homeworld. The Council punishes them.

 

So fast forward to post-ME2. Tali and Legion (if you didn't sell him to Cerberus) remained in communication until suddenly they lost contact. The two had been in sort of peace talks. Now I assume the reason for the termination of this was because both of these characters could have died in the ending of Mass Effect 2. This was one of the problems that Mac Walters was complaining about during his Final Hours interview: essential characters for the ME3 plot could be dead depending upon how a person played ME2. This presented some major challenges for the writing team. 

 

Tali and Legion both were essential characters. Would they have lost contact? We don't know. Something had to be contrived to make them lose contact because Geth VI and no Tali.

[SuperJogi]

The Council punishes them.

 

This bothers me. Is there actually a good reason for why they do that, other than just beeing dicks?

Also, why didn't the council help the quarians during the war? It's not like the geth weren't a potential threat to them aswell.

 

I guess the council beeing useless idiots is a running theme of the MEU.

[wass12]

snip

 

I generally agree with your comment, and find it highly insightful. But I'm not sure what to make of the "according to the codex" part. I scoured through the codex a few times, looking for references to the geth, and can't recall it elaborating on the beginnings of the geth-quarian conflict.

[wass12]

This bothers me. Is there actually a good reason for why they do that, other than just beeing dicks?

Also, why didn't the council help the quarians during the war? It's not like the geth weren't a potential threat to them aswell.

 

I guess the council beeing useless idiots is a running theme of the MEU.

 

Well, the created a race of AI. That would ****** off anyone anti-AI. Then, they tried to destroy said AI. That would ****** off anyone pro-AI. Then in the resulting war, they thoroughly wrecked their garden world. That would ****** off anyone.

[SuperJogi]

Well, the created a race of AI. That would ****** off anyone anti-AI. Then, they tried to destroy said AI. That would ****** off anyone pro-AI. Then in the resulting war, they thoroughly wrecked their garden world. That would ****** off anyone.

 

So the council is basicly a bunch of ultra-reactionary morons.

 

"We don't care that billions of your people are getting slaughtered, YOU DID SOMETHING WE DIDN'T LIKE!"

Commiting a crime = your species deserves to go extinct

And it's not like the quarians wanted their homeworld to be destroyed, they were actually trying to prevent that. Something they might have achieved if, you know, the council had helped...

What a great galactic society. Makes the U.N. look actuallly usefull.

 

Anyway, another reason to play renegade.

[wass12]

So the council is basicly a bunch of ultra-reactionary morons.

 

"We don't care that billions of your people are getting slaughtered, YOU DID SOMETHING WE DIDN'T LIKE!"

Commiting a crime = your species deserves to go extinct

 

Doesn't that describes every government? "One of your generals wanted to play with nuclear weapons? Well, have fun half of your national export rotting in warehouses because we just embargoed you!"

 

Alternatively, it may be less the case of "we don't want to help you" and more of a "we can't get a fleet through four Relays without provoking an interstellar war." Let's not forget that Rannoch is in the far end of the Terminus Systems.

[SuperJogi]

Doesn't that describes every government? "One of your generals wanted to play with nuclear weapons? Well, have fun half of your national export rotting in warehouses because we just embargoed you!"

 

Yeah, because economic sanctions is totally the same as genocide of an entire species.

 

Alternatively, it may be less the case of "we don't want to help you" and more of a "we can't get a fleet through four Relays without provoking an interstellar war." Let's not forget that Rannoch is in the far end of the Terminus Systems

 

Good point, but the council must be on seriously bad terms with the terminus systems if moving troops through the area is already considered an act of war. It's not like this isn't something that can't be negotiated.

 

But even then it doesn't explain the "**** off!" response the quarian refugees got after the war.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

I generally agree with your comment, and find it highly insightful. But I'm not sure what to make of the "according to the codex" part. I scoured through the codex a few times, looking for references to the geth, and can't recall it elaborating on the beginnings of the geth-quarian conflict.

 

It doesn't specifically mention the exact beginnings of the conflict. It does however, or it did, mention that the Geth refused the shutdown commands. That to me would be more of a realistic beginning of a conflict than "does this unit have a soul?"

 

What bothers me about the story arc is the video game logic.

[SuperJogi]

What bothers me about the story arc is the video game logic.

 

What I also find hard to believe is that supposidly only a few million quarians managed to escape after their entire homeworld was destroyed. The ME galaxy seems to be very well connected with free trade happening between the different species. A war of that magnitude would send billions of refugees all across the galaxy. Or did the geth seriously manage to destroy the entire quarian fleet practicly overnight and lay siege to every planet?

[wass12]

Yeah, because economic sanctions is totally the same as genocide of an entire species.

 

 

Good point, but the council must be on seriously bad terms with the terminus systems if moving troops through the area is already considered an act of war. It's not like this isn't something that can't be negotiated.

 

But even then it doesn't explain the "**** off!" response the quarian refugees got after the war.

 

Speciesism and bystander effect. Inaction is so much easier than action. The quarians (note how easily the generalization comes) played with fire and burned themselves. Why should good Citadel taxpayer's money spent on pampering them?

 

It doesn't specifically mention the exact beginnings of the conflict. It does however, or it did, mention that the Geth refused the shutdown commands. That to me would be more of a realistic beginning of a conflict than "does this unit have a soul?"

 

What bothers me about the story arc is the video game logic.

 

Tali in ME1 gives a more detailed account of the quarian's reasoning:

https://www.youtube....h?v=sNH93AV9zRc (from 7:23)

 

I find their logic really facepalm-worthy:

Question: How do you prevent a slave revolt?

Quarian Answer: By lining them up for execution, of course!

[SuperJogi]

Speciesism and bystander effect. Inaction is so much easier than action. The quarians (note how easily the generalization comes) played with fire and burned themselves. Why should good Citadel taxpayer's money spent on pampering them?

 

Sure, those are all valid reasons. I'm not saying that their inaction is unexplaineble. I'm saying that it paints the council in a seriously bad light. For an organization that thinks of itself as the ultimate authority in the galaxy and whose job it is to solve conflicts and maintain law and order, that's a catastrophic failure. We often mock the U.N. for beeing useless in crisis situations, but council makes them look amazing.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

 

Alternatively, it may be less the case of "we don't want to help you" and more of a "we can't get a fleet through four Relays without provoking an interstellar war." Let's not forget that Rannoch is in the far end of the Terminus Systems.

 

Also let's not forget that travel through the relay system is instantaneous and that Rannoch is in the Perseus Veil, not the Terminus. So this argurment is voided.

 

Yes, while the Quarian response to stopping a slave rebellion was rather idiotic, it was not any different than one would expect should a similar situation have occurred here on Earth. Humans would have done exactly the same thing that the Quarians did. The attitude of humans toward the robots would have been exactly the same. Remember that these slaves are machines, not other humans. There would be a big debate over whether or not they're even alive in the first place. There would be the politics of fear, and this would dominate the debate, just as I imagined it dominated the fictitious debate on Rannoch. 

 

And we should not forget that our beloved Council lined up and shot all artificial life that already existed within Council Space after Rannoch fell. This is in the Citadel Archives in The Citadel DLC. Hence now part of the Mass Effect Codex. Perhaps The Council nations had their own AI mess to clean up? But this got swept under the rug in the history books and required Spectre clearance, didn't it? Clearly a case of the pot calling the kettle black, don't you think?

 

The arc paints the Council in an extremely bad light. I believe they were more into the politics of containment at the time: "What would happen if we sided with the Quarians and still lost? Would the Geth overrun us like the Rachni? Or like the Krogan? How would we fight against them? Council law prevents us from destroying garden worlds with nukes. If we do that, we have to find a new homeworld for the Quarians. If we don't lend assistance to the Quarians is there a possibility that the Geth won't see us as enemies?"

 

The Council sent emissaries to negotiate with the Geth and they were shot out of the sky. This is in the codex. 

 

In ME1 the Geth had destroyed Quarian civilization and nearly exterminated them 300 years earlier. They were mooks to shoot. In ME2 we learn more about them, but they were still mooks to shoot.... except for Legion. In ME3, they were reaper controlled mooks, but we were supposed to feel sorry for them and hate the Quarians.

 

It was a very complex problem being solved in an overly simplistic manner with Shepard either condemning one side to extinction, or making peace by scolding Admiral Gerrel. Condemning either side IMO makes Shepard a butcher, but if given no option for peace, Admiral Hackett wanted the Quarian fleet for their logistical support. Follow your orders, Commander. So, do Tali's loyalty mission and don't get her exiled, don't sell Legion, and don't activate him until after the Suicide Mission - you know you can do that, right? That way you can p1ss off one of them and it won't have any effect.

[wass12]

snip

 

Actually, I mostly agree with what you're saying, except for two technicalities:

 

The jump between relays is instantaneous, yes, but relays are not an anywhere-from-anywhere service. You often have to make several jumps to reach your destination. If you're using primary relays, you have to travel the distance between the exit and entry relays "on foot." And as far as I know, secondary relays can't chain-jump you along connected relays either: after the first jump, you have to circle around and wait for the relay to align itself before making another jump. If an unbroken chain of secondary relays even exist between yo and your destination. If not, you have to make in-system travels, where a fleet cannot remain hidden.

 

As for our specific situation, the Tikkun relay only connects to Far Rim (which is described as Terminus System territory), which has connections only to systems in the Terminus and the Attican Traverse, where the Council has a no-fleets policy. It's the same reason they didn't sent a fleet to Ilos, 

 

Also, I would like to see the exact quote and place in the codex where the killed Citadel emissaries are mentioned. I can't find it anywhere.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

You have to realize there were changes to the ME codex from Revelations to the end of ME3. Lore in the MEU is like a zany free-for-all. You can't take it totally seriously. It relies on space magic. 

 

The geth adopted an isolationist policy, killing any organics that came near the Perseus Veil, and cutting themselves off from the galaxy for the next three centuries. - while it does not specifically state "the Council", one could logically infer that the council did send ships to at least investigate or perhaps initiate contact. You do not want to ignore a force like this. I cannot imagine that the Council did nothing for 300 years. Policies don't really mean anything when strategic goals are in conflict. 

 

There are no central governments in the Terminus Systems. Pretty much a bunch of pirates. Open war with the Terminus would amount to nothing more than a bunch of skirmishes. Bottom line was that it didn't suit the needs of those who ran the governments.  

 

Mass Relays - Transit is instantaneous. You transit from the the Charon Relay (solar system) to Eden Prime in an instant with a drift of 1500 km. "1500 is good," said Nihlus.

 

"I just jumped us half-way across the galaxy in a matter of seconds and all I get is 'good?'" Joker replies.

 

The route took them from the Charon relay through the Arcturus Stream relay to the relay in the Utopia System. Given that this same relay was probably handling traffic from elsewhere it couldn't rotate to accommodate everything. Primary relays should have to rotate too in order to align, since they're constructed the same except the secondary relays can't propel a ship as far. The lore of the relays and practice are in conflict given the amount of traffic and the rotational velocity it would take to realign a relay with its target. Granted the communication had to be done by quantum entanglement otherwise it would be impossible for the system to function. But my guess is that this concept was abandoned due to how cumbersome it would be to write in favor of just making them function like jump gates -- i.e. how the mako and Saren made it inside the closed up Citadel. Do you follow me? 

[wass12]

snip

 

So... it is NOT stated in canonical text that geth killed Citadel emissaries?

 

Mass relays: The Utopia system is directly connected to the Sol relay: http://masseffect.wi.../Exodus_Cluster And the jump is always depicted as the ship being catapulted in the direction the relay's "tuning fork" is facing, hence my interpretation.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

So... it is NOT stated in canonical text that geth killed Citadel emissaries?

 

Mass relays: The Utopia system is directly connected to the Sol relay: http://masseffect.wi.../Exodus_Cluster And the jump is always depicted as the ship being catapulted in the direction the relay's "tuning fork" is facing, hence my interpretation.

 

If there is a conflict elsewhere in the codex, it just proves my point. Lore in the MEU is a zany free-for-all. This is copied directly from the link you gave me. This would indicate that it has to go the same in the other direction as well.

 

The mass relay to Earth's cluster, however, actually goes to Arcturus Station rather than to the Charon Relaydirectly.

[gothpunkboy89]

Parts of it is rushed but also parts of it were reordered making the whole set up seem a bit off. Based on Shepard's dialogue you would have gotten Legion the same time if not before you could get Tali. Considering they actually have recorded vocals and actions if you PC Legion into your party early into the game. As well as your ability to take Legion with you on Tali's loyalty mission.

 

All of this would have played over all into the Geth V Quarian conflict and how it was able to end.

 

There are always unseen things happening in the game. Your ability to freely pick and choose how you approach missions means that some times some things are forced to happen behind the scene.   Modern day Quarians treat geth like the bogey man. Legion showing up and showing his willingness to help even if it means wiping out his fellow geth would have massive effects on the Quarian people. Add in Shepard making his own push towards peace with them. Add in Koris and later Tali's push for peace with the geth.

 

Add in Shepard and later Geth sharing the true events that lead to the Morning War rather then what has become the common accepted truth. All of those would have large impacts on Quarian culture and views of the Geth.  Including all their action post peace.

[wass12]

If there is a conflict elsewhere in the codex, it just proves my point. Lore in the MEU is a zany free-for-all. This is copied directly from the link you gave me. This would indicate that it has to go the same in the other direction as well.

 

The mass relay to Earth's cluster, however, actually goes to Arcturus Station rather than to the Charon Relaydirectly.

 

Wait, do we now discussing this from a Doylist or a Watsonian perspective? From a Doylist perspective, sure, the lore is a mess. But from a Watsonian one, pointing that out is pointless - since the latter means treating the fictious world as (a) reality, and reality can't have plot holes.

 

As for the question of emissaries, I still awaiting your answer. 

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Elementary, my dear Watson. That statement shows that the Normandy's path at the beginning of ME1 went from the Charon Relay > Arcturus Station Relay > Utopia Cluster Relay almost instantaneously without entering the system containing Arcturus Station. Thus it proves that if they wanted to do so, the Council could have intervened in the Quarian's Morning War without causing any incident in the Terminus System. After all the Quarians were part of the Council Systems at the time, and had an embassy on The Citadel. Instead the Council chose to do nothing, not even help evacuate Quarians civilians. If they did send any aid, it was token and done through relief organizations. We're talking about children here - hundreds of millions of them. They let them just die. 

 

Good fiction writers should do their best to patch up plot holes. However, in the Mass Effect Universe, fixing a plot hole means digging a bigger hole in hopes that the player and reader doesn't notice the first hole.

 

And I like how the generalizations still get tossed about: "modern day Quarians treat the Geth like the bogey man." Let me pose this question. If all of the people in a neighboring city tried to kill any member of your city that ventured near their city, what would you tell your kids about the people living in that city? "Don't go there. They're bad people. They'll kill you."

 

But the people in your city used to live there, and need to live there to survive, even though your people made a terrible mistake 300 years earlier. The people living in that neighboring city won't talk to you, and will try to kill you if you go near them. 

 

I told you about the Council emissaries. I extrapolated that. 

 

@gothpunkboy89 - The early dialogue with Legion that you can unlock on the PC is not canon since it cannot be accessed during standard gameplay. But you can get the Derelict Reaper early on after Horizon, do Legion's loyalty mission, then let your crew die, and build the team. It's a very quiet ship, and no one on your team questions your decision because.... video game hero. 

 

But the problem with the Quarian-Geth arc is that there is no canon about it. Bioware respects player decisions. Essential characters in ME2 could die. This means Legion and Tali's mediating is not canon. Neither is their not mediating. 

 

If they knew there was going to be a Quarian and Geth plot for ME3, they should have given Legion and Tali plot armor for the Suicide Mission and made them required squadmates. Yes I know this takes away choice, but plot comes ahead of choice in a story. You give an illusion of choice in a RPG. But the way things played out shows that they didn't have a clue how things were going to go in ME3 until after ME2 hit the shelves. Tali's push for peace with the Geth isn't canon. They needed to write two entirely different arcs based on your choice in ME2 - did Tali and Legion survive? Y/N. Y = arc 1; N = arc 2. They had limited resources so they weaseled their way around it by writing pretty much the same plot but setting key conditions for peace - 1) Shepard had to destroy the Heretics; 2) Tali had to be acquitted. Peace could still work if you did Tali's quest in ME1, but got her exiled and she survived, but you had to destroy the Heretics in that case. Another condition - if you didn't destroy the Heretics and Legion survived, you had to have completed Tali's quest in ME1 AND acquit her at her trial in ME2 (by the red or blue - not rally the crowd) and of course she had to survive. 

 

Players tend to inflate the impact Shepard had on the attitudes of Quarians mostly due to video game hero status. Here it transcends the suspension of disbelief. Koris would have far more of an impact than Tali or Shepard, but the game isn't written from his POV. He'd be a major player in a story about the Quarians. 

 

And Legion never wanted to wipe out his fellow Geth. They weren't dying. Geth are software. When he shut down the servers, the runtimes became inactive. They weren't dead. When he shot the Geth platforms, the runtimes go to the nearest server. They're not destroyed. That's the mistake the Quarians made. You're thinking like an organic, not a machine. The platforms were a means to an end. They can be rebuilt. New runtimes containing the perspectives of the runtimes on the platforms that were destroyed get written, thus evolving the next generation of software. This is how alien they were. 

 

Legion was unique. Legion was the only Geth platform that interacted civilly with an organic in 300 years. The rest used projectiles or energy weapons. Without Legion there is no peace because he doesn't report back to the Consensus. 

 

Why did the Quarians attack? Well, their ships had about 80 years left in them and since they didn't understand machine thought, and machines didn't understand organic thought, and the whole thing had been resting on Tali and Legion communicating, then Legion stopped communicating. Don't know why. I would suspect for plot reasons. 

 

Thus Admiral Xen built this simple but effective weapon that disrupted the networking signal from one geth to the other thus blinding them and allowing the heavy fleet to destroy their platforms fast enough that they would overload their servers. Thus they were able to sweep the colony worlds free of Geth. Unfortunately, Haestrom's sun was in the final stages of its life.

 

They were taking back Rannoch when the reaper signal boosted the Geth networking signal to a level where Xen's weapon was ineffective. Made the Geth smarter? Bullpoo. (I got a warning for foul language). That's badly written in the story by someone who doesn't understand computers. The Geth had better tech on their ships and still outnumbered them. At the end this changes.

 

At the end the Geth aren't getting the boosted signal. They aren't getting any networked signal. They're having to rely on local networks making them relatively stupid, except for Legion. It can be argued that at this point they're not really alive. They're nothing more than intelligent mechs. This is why Legion wants to give them the reaper code. That will make them independent of having to network to be truly intelligent. Each platform could then be intelligent on its own. Would each be as smart as Legion? Don't know that, but Legion said true AI, so we'd have to believe him. But they weren't anything close to it before he uploaded the code.

 

So in the no peace version, Shepard is faced with letting Gerrel effectively destroy a bunch of toasters or letting the toasters become AI life and wipe out the Quarians.

 

In the peace version, Shepard lets Legion make these toasters into AI life and convinces Gerrel to back down so there's a larger force available to fight the reapers.

 

The Geth at the point just prior to Legion uploading that code had been downgraded to a state of non-sentience. Hence they ceased firing. There was no signal from the Geth fleet that they were surrendering. Just that they ceased firing and were dead in space, although the dialogue says "they're backing off." The cut scene shows them dead in space before being wiped out like space junk. The Quarians on the other hand are very much alive.

 

However with the servers shut down, and when Gerrel destroys the platforms, there is no place for the Geth runtimes to download, and thus they're gone.

 

There are no paragon or renegade points for the decision despite the positioning on the dialogue wheel. 

 

This decision is why we won't see any Quarians or Geth in ME: Andromeda.

[ChronosTachyon]

Elementary, my dear Watson. That statement shows that the Normandy's path at the beginning of ME1 went from the Charon Relay > Arcturus Station Relay > Utopia Cluster Relay almost instantaneously without entering the system containing Arcturus Station.

Or the "drift, just under 1500k" cutscene only showed the Sol -> Arcturus jump, or the Sol -> Arcturus and Arcturus -> Utopia jumps were not shown separately for artistic license.  We never see a character go to the bathroom, it doesn't mean there aren't bathrooms on the Normandy SR-1.