Chris L'Etoile!
He left BioWare because he was being forced to write a universe that he felt uncomfortable with. And he just hated being told to act against his own creativity. He is for the more alien aspects.
Also:
In my personal opinion Chris, L'Etolie was the best writer that the Mass Effect team (maybe even BioWare as a whole) had.
All his work helped bring a level of nuance to the setting that the subsequent title(s) lacked.
The Swapper is a different type of sci-fi than ME. I wouldn't compare the two.
Also, I agree that Chris L'Etoile was the best writer. It's unfortunate that he left.
Beautiful music. The aliens are anything but alien...These are aliens:
also this film really shows the depth of human/alien contact:
That looks like one of the sculptures from Beetlejuice.
Beautiful music. The aliens are anything but alien...These are aliens:
Is that image not from a tv program that looked at a possible 1st contact of alien species and an alien world by some semi intelligent drones sent from earth? Was a pretty good show, they had experts in biology, ecology and of course astronomers and such speculating on what might be found. If I recall the critter shown in the image lived on the seas of the planet.
A fellow fan of the Scramblers I see. Blindsight was an excellent science fiction exploration of the concepts of intelligences vs. consciousness as well as being one of the few narratives I've seen (though I will admit to not having a huge library of experience) to depict an 'alien' intelligence without resorting to the whole "Beyond our comprehension" copout either:
Spoiler
It's very hard to make alien aliens.
Because they would be alien.
Alien aliens are unknown unknowns.
By Alien aliens are you talking facehuggers and xenomorphs?
Agree with the sentience and consciousness aspects of the Geth. A very promising start, disappointing evolution over the game however.
I would enjoy a take on distributed sentience, especially if non conscious.
Peter Watts modeled an alien antagonist like this in his excellent book "Blindsight". Modelled on the ideas of T. Metzinger (Being No One) and D.M. Wenger (The illusion of Consciousness).
It would be interesting and enjoyable to have a smart take on these concepts.
Edit (sp)
Is that image not from a tv program that looked at a possible 1st contact of alien species and an alien world by some semi intelligent drones sent from earth? Was a pretty good show, they had experts in biology, ecology and of course astronomers and such speculating on what might be found. If I recall the critter shown in the image lived on the seas of the planet.
Yes, it's called a "sea strider" I can pull up more weirds specualtive creatures, but the mods might think it's furry pron
And the "seas" it walked on were a giant unicellular amoeba type organism if I remember correctly.Yes, it's called a "sea strider" I can pull up more weirds specualtive creatures, but the mods might think it's furry pron
Here's the documentary that creature came from:
So it seems Chris L'Etoile wrote every single thing in Mass Effect that I love the most...unsurprising. As much of a ME fan that I am, Im surprised I didnt know that. Thanks guys! That makes me worried for Andromeda's writing caliber now, though.
Cool, I now have something new to read. I am familiar with both of them, but not this particular work. It would be interesting to see how they address this concept from the perspective of modern neurology as a "distributed sentience, but non conscious" doesn't make sense to me by the modern usage of these terms. Sentience is basically now viewed as "possessing a state of awareness, the experience of qualia" which is basically synonymous with consciousness. So if you are sentient, you possess consciousness. Almost every neuroscientist I know agrees on that definition. But sapience...that is more nebulous. The most useful definition, I think, is "a sentient being that also possesses reflexive self-awareness". Ie- a conscious being that experience the phenomenological quality of "I am", "thinking about thinking" or "thinking about oneself". Even if such is in abstract terms, which would extend sapience to other Great Apes, cetaceans, elephants and several avian species as self-awareness is something that we can test for, to a degree. Other definitions for sapience are untestable, and therefore do not qualify as scientific.
Although, admittedly I am biased. I am a comparative neurologist - I study the brains and minds of animals. And I got into this field by first being a veterinarian, so obviously I would prefer a definition that extends sapience to non-human species (I abhor anthropocentrism). But it also is a definition that makes a ton of sense and can be tested.
Bringing the discussion back to the Geth, L'Etoiles description is fascinating, and mind blowing. The Geth are described as each possessing individual sentience - individual conscious awareness that is described as animal-like when units are isolated. However, when they link to each other, they share processing capabilities and they form a gestalt awareness, a single experience of "I am", a single reflexive self-awareness, a single sapience. One sapient mind, many sentient perspectives. A legion, would be a perfect description.
What is crazy is that not only does our current understanding of neurocomputation and the neural correlates of consciousness not forbid such a thing from existing...but they may even predict that such a thing would be possible. The brain itself even sort of does this, to a degree - processing is largely parallel and independent in the cortex (but this is unconscious), and only when information is linked in a network does it become conscious. However, there is nothing that should preclude individual consciousnesses from sharing information in a network with each other, and such a thing should form a gestalt awareness - the perception of the individual self would be lost in the stream of information from a million alternate perspectives.
Too long, didnt read: L'Etoile is an effing genius. And if I didnt know any better I would think he had a background in neuroscience.
Chris L'Etoile!
He left BioWare because he was being forced to write a universe that he felt uncomfortable with. And he just hated being told to act against his own creativity. He is for the more alien aspects.
Also:
Can we not swap this man back in for Mac?
Can we not swap this man back in for Mac?
I just want him back. I had no idea that the guy wrote literally all of my favorite (and arguably the most memorable and iconic) moments of the series. He rivals Drew for being the major creative mind behind mass effect.
Same here.
Literally everything I found interesting, and engaging about Mass Effect, the things that drew me into the setting and the universe was what Chris wrote.
None of the other writers have been able to capture that level of nuance and variety that L'Etoile brought to the table.
And the stuff he wrote was well thought out, creative, and not cliche even if he borrowed well known sci-fi tropes. It was objectively good, insofar as a subjective media can be interpreted objectively. The parts he wrote, I think most of us can agree on, weren't the bad parts of the trilogy.
And the writers that wrote the worst parts are still on the team, right? Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but being in a new galaxy is like carte blanche for creativity, and I have a feeling they are gonna blow it big time.
I've said it before, but I don't have very much faith in BioWare being able to create 'alien' aliens. Outside of Chris's work there was nothing added to the setting that even came close to what he was able to create.
In fact the only 'alien' that I can think of that was added after L'Etoile's left BioWare would be the Leviathans and they are just organic (Pre-Catalyst) Reapers; just a recycled and re-skined idea.
I've said it before, but I don't have very much faith in BioWare being able to create 'alien' aliens. Outside of Chris's work there was nothing added to the setting that even came close to what he was able to create.
In fact the only 'alien' that I can think of that was added after L'Etoile's left BioWare would be the Leviathans and they are just organic (Pre-Catalyst) Reapers; just a recycled and re-skined idea.
I just played The Swapper. Two years late, I know.
I think it does a better job in a few hours exploring an alien form of consciousness than anything ME did with the reapers (lol) or geth (though this was a good effort before the whole Pinocchio aspect came along), much less the other aliens, who, despite having features that one might expect to rightly engender vastly different mindsets on account of thousand year versus thirty year lifespans, psychic powers, etc, are all characterized fundamentally as humans with rubber foreheads/tentacles/etc. and maybe a personality quirk to represent their race. It's no wonder people here want to bang everything, since everything is really just a thinly disguised person.
So will ME:A have more alien aliens?
The Pinocchio aspect of the geth story arc was actually really cool. Despite what some people on the internet consumed by the fotm brand of "open minded" anti-anthropocentricisim may have you believe, conciousness and creativity are actually significant in the grand scheme of things. So for an intelligence to want these things is not a cheap anthropocentric ploy, but actually a fundamental existential problem, the sort of things you would think Mass Effect would be applauded for discussing.
Also, with regards to the comment about the striking similarities between the races in the ME universe, the truth is I think that all intelligent races will in fact converge in their views as a general rule of thumb. Not gonna go into why I think this is but you can do some looking around. It is a big coincident that the way these other races do things is so similar to how humans go about it right off the bat, but I'm ok with that as a simplification that makes driving the narrative much simpler.
Except the Geth already had both consciousness and creativity (see the two longer posts I made here for elaboration). Arguably, their consciousness was equivalent, albeit different, to that of organics. They were a collective of sentient (conscious) beings that when linked together had a gestalt, singular sapient awareness - thus they identified themselves as a singular individual - a singular conscious being, called Geth - rather than multiple conscious individuals. That is a fascinating thing, and gives the Geth a unique and truly alien perspective.The Pinocchio aspect of the geth story arc was actually really cool. Despite what some people on the internet consumed by the fotm brand of "open minded" anti-anthropocentricisim may have you believe, conciousness and creativity are actually significant in the grand scheme of things. So for an intelligence to want these things is not a cheap anthropocentric ploy, but actually a fundamental existential problem, the sort of things you would think Mass Effect would be applauded for discussing.
Except the Geth already had both consciousness and creativity (see the two longer posts I made here for elaboration). Arguably, their consciousness was equivalent, albeit different, to that of organics. They were a collective of sentient (conscious) beings that when linked together had a gestalt, singular sapient awareness - thus they identified themselves as a singular individual - a singular conscious being, called Geth - rather than multiple conscious individuals. That is a fascinating thing, and gives the Geth a unique and truly alien perspective.
That's why people (including myself) were annoyed. As a neurologist, what the Geth were described as initially I found to be incredibly unique and creative. But what the became was just like EDI - another classic AI with no writing imagination whatsoever.
To me, that's a step back in the narrative, rather than forward.
As long as I can remember the hive mind is still very much present after they attain individuality. This new setup is actually more effective as far as the evolution of ideas is concerned, but I can see how it's not as authentic since it's moving towards a norm rather than away from it. I understand your point about their individual sentience, by I always thought of their 'animal' like individual intelligence as more of a reflex oriented thing than the ability to process and experience qualia, but I suppose without specific input from the author that's a little too ambiguous to seriously discuss, not that that sort of sentience on it's own is of any value. The thing with the geth is an important move and one in the right direction (in terms of the advancement of the race) , but again, I can see how it could be annoying to some people as it brings something authentic and original back in line with what is 'accepted'.
The Swapper is a different type of sci-fi than ME. I wouldn't compare the two.
Also, I agree that Chris L'Etoile was the best writer. It's unfortunate that he left.
Yep, Chris L'Etoille was IMO the best writer on the ME team. Can we have a petition to get him back?
As for the topic: It seems to me that ME was never really the kind of SciFi that particularly wanted to ever get the prize for the most alien alien. The entire trilogy is based around character interaction more than the illustration of what weird things are possible out in space. This was already the case in ME1 and only got more and more emphasized in the later games. Aliens were more designed to allow for certain character types, rather than to portray something truly different and unfamiliar. L'Etoille's concept for the geth was an exception (which is probably one of the reasons why it got retconned, ME3 simply didn't want to deal with it).
Unless Andromeda deliberately deviates from that pattern, I doubt we'll see many truly wacky aliens (and if so then probably in very confined roles, like the Thorian in ME1). I'd also like to see more "out there" concepts for aliens but I am not expecting much in that regard.
I'm confused by your position here. You do realize that many animals clearly possess sentience - ie: Consciousness, they experience "qualia" and have an awareness, and that this is distinct from reflexive behavior...right? You aren't seriously adopting the position that animals cannot possess consciousness, or that the consciousness that they do possess is "not of any value", to use your own words? Because that would be...incredibly archaic, so I have a feeling that's not what you meant and I read that wrong. So if so, I apologize.As long as I can remember the hive mind is still very much present after they attain individuality. This new setup is actually more effective as far as the evolution of ideas is concerned, but I can see how it's not as authentic since it's moving towards a norm rather than away from it. I understand your point about their individual sentience, by I always thought of their 'animal' like individual intelligence as more of a reflex oriented thing than the ability to process and experience qualia, but I suppose without specific input from the author that's a little too ambiguous to seriously discuss, not that that sort of sentience on it's own is of any value. The thing with the geth is an important move and one in the right direction (in terms of the advancement of the race) , but again, I can see how it could be annoying to some people as it brings something authentic and original back in line with what is 'accepted'.
If an alien doesn't have legs, arms and opposable thumbs, or speaks in first person plural all the time it's a real alien because reasons.
Not to mention this doesn't even get into the seperate distinction between normal and illegal aliens, who just wanna take our jobs and welfare
Those damn SleetStacks!
Hissssss!
Anyway, The shift from a more "alien" like Legion may be part and parcel with things like humanizing the heck out of Edi. I think they really wanted people to pick Synthesis. So, they went out of their way to humanize, and try to make relate able, the AI's so that you would not want to kill them. They were trying to give you these choices, while at the same time they were really trying to funnel as many as they could into Synth.
Having the game focus on Taking Earth Back, and convincing the other races to come help Earth. lol..And the Reapers tow truck the Citadel over to Earth. There 's this whole earth/human focus that felt...forced. It was goofy, but I think marketing may have felt it was more accessible to a wider audience if it was focused on Earth and humans.
Ah, but alien aliens
oh, wait, no. that's just some poor guy in Flint, MI.
(and then they wonder why we have trust issues.)
Retour en haut
