549 réponses à ce sujet

[Veriso]

So, after playing through ME2, talking to Legion and Tali and so on, it seems to me that the geth's actions are mostly justified. The way I see it, Tali's argument against the geth in conversations throughout both games pretty much boils down to: "So, we had these slaves. But then they started to think, and question things! They didn't actually do anything hostile, but come on, they were totally thinking about it. So, naturally we tried to kill them all. Only it didn't work, and now, for some reason, they're being mean to us. After careful consideration, I think the best approach is to kill them all and never attempt any kind of diplomatic resolution."

I thought that was a fairly obvious message,
but on browsing these forums I've seen a lot of people who, having
played the game, still think the geth are essentially 'bad guys'. I
haven't seen any topics specifically discussing the issue, though, and
'moral grey areas' like this are what I love most about Bioware games
and good RPGs in general. Of course, there's a little more depth to it than my strawman-Tali presents, but basically my point is that everything I've seen suggests that Legion's geth have always acted quite reasonably. Certainly more so than the Quarians, and more so than most organic species would have if placed in their position. The Heretics, as explained in the game, are a separate faction.  I'm referring only to Legion's faction, and to judge them by the actions of the heretics would be analogous to judging present-day humanity by the actions of the North Korean government or some such. I'd be very disappointed if Mass Effect 3 railroaded the player into supporting the Quarians against the Geth, but based on the way this game treats the subject, I'm confident that won't happen.

Anyway, I just thought it was an interesting point for discussion, I hope it catches on. Who agrees, who doesn't?

[The Capital Gaultier]

I disagree. Both sides of the conflict are wrong to some extent. The Geth are wrong (both morally and tactically) for holding onto Rannoch and for not integrating into organic society more. The Quarians are wrong for zealously killing the Geth and remaining migrants for so long. I don't see a happy ending to the conflict, but I don't think you can assign more than about half the blame to either side.

[stillnotking]

The question isn't so much whether the geth are "bad guys", but whether organic and synthetic life can actually coexist. A lot of characters in the game sure think they can't (the quarians, the rogue AI in ME1, the heretic geth, etc.), but others are more optimistic.

I suspect this issue will figure prominently in ME3.

[PingoBlack]

Theory:

Reapers don't fear organics as much as AI they can create. If organics learn to cooperate with advanced AI the Reapers are doomed.

And after ME2 ... you have EDI and the Geth, both have proven to be able to mess up some really good Reaper plans. Specificaly, without EDI super-hacking your mission would have failed miserably ...

So, could being "friendly" with AI be the key to victory? Could it also be the reason reapers exist? Since their makers couldn't accomplish that they were taken over?

Modifié par PingoBlack, 17 février 2010 - 10:24 .

[rwscissors702]

I kinda got the same feeling from talking to Tali in ME1. If I remember right, she got bent out of shape when I suggested the whole mess was the Quarians fault.

[Veriso]

I certainly hope the issue does feature prominently, and that we get a reasonable opportunity to choose our stance. I wouldn't say the geth are entirely blameless, but on the surface at least Legion's 'live-and-let-live' philosophy appeals to me more than Tali's historical prejudice.



rwscissors: She does indeed, I'm replaying ME1 now and that conversation is what prompted me to post this.

[didymos1120]

To be fair to the Quarians, in conversation Legion admits that the Geth did some pretty brutal stuff during the war, and with the implication that it wasn't done out of necessity, perceived or actual, either. I'd have to replay to get an exact quote.

Modifié par didymos1120, 17 février 2010 - 10:32 .

[Pauravi]

I agree that the Geth are right, but we don't find this out until here in ME2. In ME1, as far as we knew, the Geth were entirely dedicated to killing organics. Now we find differently.

Also, the reason for the "Morning War", as Legion calls it, is a little less straightforward than that. The Quarians did not really attempt to kill the Geth -- or rather, they did, but they were not aware of the ramifications at the time.

Tali explains in ME1 that the Quarians had hoped that the incident was isolated, and that the attempt to shut down the Geth was done as a precaution rather than an act of war or violence. Obviously the Geth felt threatened, though, and war ensued.

The problem is that after drifting in space for 300 years, the Quarians are holding a bit of a grudge. I have a feeling that part of ME3 is going to revolve around convincing the Quarians that the Geth are not to be hated, and convincing the Geth that the Quarians can be trusted. The Geth do not harbor grudges, but they are also weary.

Modifié par Pauravi, 17 février 2010 - 10:36 .

[Onyx Jaguar]

I side with the Geth. Did in ME 1 during conversation with Tali. Did too mostly in ME 2, except for the part when both sides wanted to continue war with each other. No deal.

[didymos1120]

One also has to consider that the Geth really had to do a lot of killing to drive the Quarians completely out of Quarian space.  Surely, pre-Flotilla, their population had to be in the tens of billions at least.  It's rather implausible to me that they were much more numerous than 17 million they currently have when the Exile began, so I'd say the Geth are not exactly without sin themselves.

[Zulu_DFA]

Look, the Geth's "ecological niche" allows possibility of a more succesful coexistense than between any two given organic species. Moreover, any form of organic life is driven to expand, that is to conquer more living space. Which is the essense of aggression - conquering of (more) living space for the aggressor. Whereas the Geth showed no such drive until contacted by Sovereign. They were, simply put, inactive. Legion is the first true geth platform sent outside the Perseus Veil with a single task: find out WTF was that Nazara Old Machine up to. In the process it was deemed necessary for that platform to contact Shepard-Commander. So far they've showed no more hostile intentions than real life nuclear bombs resting somewhere in underground bunkers.



If you think that nuclear bombs are a threat, that the geth are too, sure. But the nuclear bombs are no threat. It's the irresponsible people, who have access to them, that are the threat. The same goes to the Geth. Reapers are a threat (obvious). And Quarians, who wan to destroy or super-hack the Geth are a threat.

[Kronner]

Geth are right, quarians attacked them first. This is a no-brainer for me.

[Empiro]

Agree exactly with didymos. What percentage of the Quarian population is military? Probably less than 1%. The Geth wiped out about 99.9% of them (if their population was 17 billion before the war, which is entirely plausible), and most of them would have been unarmed civilians, children, the infirm, etc. After the Quarian military was defeated, everything after that is genocide.

The Geth aren't evil or bad, but they are amoral -- they don't have moral values in the same way most other races do, and they are motivated by things that are truly alien. Legion and other Geth certainly wouldn't hesitate one bit if one day, their computations revealed that the future of the Geth involved killing Shepard, Humans, or all biological life in the galaxy.

Modifié par Empiro, 17 février 2010 - 11:01 .

[fateofman]

poor geth all their doing is keeping their homeworld warm for the creators (lol warm lol), the geth were wronged and are being forced to pay for merely being made



DAMN QUARIANS....



though quarians and geth are prob my fav races in ME2 tbf

[Tahleron1]

Pauravi wrote...

Tali explains in ME1 that the Quarians had hoped that the incident was isolated, and that the attempt to shut down the Geth was done as a precaution rather than an act of war or violence. Obviously the Geth felt threatened, though, and war ensued.

A precaution by taking out the sapient ones because maybe their sapience was isolated? that's assclown reasoning for genocide if i ever heard one.

[didymos1120]

One other thing to consider: no matter what certain modern Quarians think (and what a few did covertly on the Alarei), no living Quarian had anything to do with what was done to the Geth. That was 300+ years ago. All those people are long dead.

[Empiro]

Tahleron1 wrote...

Pauravi wrote...

Tali explains in ME1 that the Quarians had hoped that the incident was isolated, and that the attempt to shut down the Geth was done as a precaution rather than an act of war or violence. Obviously the Geth felt threatened, though, and war ensued.

A precaution by taking out the sapient ones because maybe their sapience was isolated? that's assclown reasoning for genocide if i ever heard one.

The data about the early days of the war is quite lacking, I have to say. It's difficult to discern the exact motivations. It could range anywhere from panicked hysteria and brutal genocide all the way down to the Quarian leadership honestly believing that the Geth being ordered to shut down weren't yet sentient, but could become so at any moment, and the Geth responding brutally and butchering people who had absolutely nothing to do with the shutdown, just because the Geth don't see killing as wrong.

Modifié par Empiro, 17 février 2010 - 11:12 .

[Pauravi]

Tahleron1 wrote...

Pauravi wrote...

Tali explains in ME1 that the Quarians had hoped that the incident was isolated, and that the attempt to shut down the Geth was done as a precaution rather than an act of war or violence. Obviously the Geth felt threatened, though, and war ensued.

A precaution by taking out the sapient ones because maybe their sapience was isolated? that's assclown reasoning for genocide if i ever heard one.

Well, first of all they didn't just try to remove sapient ones, they just issued a shutdown order.  The bigger point is that they did not understand the degree to which the Geth had attained higher thinking.  After all, for many years they were simply very advanced appliances, and they were used to thinking of them in those terms.  They were trying to prevent them from attaining sentience, not kill a race that they knew to be sentient already.

I didn't say I agreed with it, I only pointed out that it wasn't as black and white as the Hitler scenario that people are describing it as.

[aaniadyen]

You also need to remember that the Geth are only software. if they were really only interested in living by themselves peacefully they could go off to a hidden location no organics would and putting their collective consciousness onto a giant hard drive (or series of hard drives). They don't do that, though...they inhabit the only planet Quarians can live on instead. Why? Well...*shrugs* It's uncertain. It's impossible for the Geth to not understand that they displaced the entire Quarian home world. Whether they understand the implications...*shrugs* That's anyone's guess. One more thing is...what if Humans in real life were the Quarians? Quarians never even broke the anti-AI research laws. They didn't really do much that we don't do today in real life. They used robots as slaves? Hey, guess what? We do too. They created a world-wide network for the geth to connect to and download increasingly complex sets of instructions. Well...yeah, we do that as well. So what would happen if one day Skynet came into existence. Would you just say "Oh, sorry, our bad. Here, kill me, I deserve it."?

[Tahleron1]

Empiro wrote...

Tahleron1 wrote...

Pauravi wrote...

Tali explains in ME1 that the Quarians had hoped that the incident was isolated, and that the attempt to shut down the Geth was done as a precaution rather than an act of war or violence. Obviously the Geth felt threatened, though, and war ensued.

A precaution by taking out the sapient ones because maybe their sapience was isolated? that's assclown reasoning for genocide if i ever heard one.

The data about the early days of the way is quite lacking, I have to say. It's difficult to discern the exact motivations. It could range anywhere from panicked hysteria and brutal genocide all the way down to the Quarian leadership honestly believing that the Geth being ordered to shut down weren't yet sentient, but could become so at any moment, and the Geth responding brutally and butchering people who had absolutely nothing to do with the shutdown, just because the Geth don't see killing as wrong.

it would be fairly similar to our own species right now, where the last thing a monkey would want to do is learn to talk   We've had other sapient species on earth (the neanderthal was), whether we helped their extinction along is unknown, but it wouldn't be inconceivable.

Listen to Legion's recording, how that could possibly not be construed as a sapient action is beyond me.

I'm not saying the Geth are all innocent, in fact I'd expect some of their reasoning were to permanently cripple the quarians ability to ever strike back (or at least it would be mine...)

Modifié par Tahleron1, 17 février 2010 - 11:15 .

[Pauravi]

Empiro wrote...

The data about the early days of the war is quite lacking, I have to say. It's difficult to discern the exact motivations. It could range anywhere from panicked hysteria and brutal genocide all the way down to the Quarian leadership honestly believing that the Geth being ordered to shut down weren't yet sentient, but could become so at any moment, and the Geth responding brutally and butchering people who had absolutely nothing to do with the shutdown, just because the Geth don't see killing as wrong.

Exactly.

[didymos1120]

Plus, AI was already heavily restricted in Council space even then.  The Geth debacle just made those restrictions somewhat tighter.  In any case, the Quarians were looking at serious trouble from the Council races when the Geth started going all sentient on them, and were almost certainly required by law to take just the sort of action they did. 

[fateofman]

the geth were'nt AI, they were VI that linked together to create something similar to AI but quarians did not know that

[Pauravi]

Tahleron1 wrote...

it would be fairly similar to our own species right now, where the last thing a monkey would want to do is learn to talk  

I don't think it is similar to that at all.

Monkeys are an organic species that evolved naturally; it was not built by us, and we haven't been using them as tools and appliances for years.

I have a feeling that if peoples toasters suddenly started asking questions like "who am I?", that a great many people would freak out and unplug it.  IMO, that is a more apt comparison.

Modifié par Pauravi, 17 février 2010 - 11:29 .

[Madecologist]

Here is the thing... the Geth... don't really need the Quarian homeworld. Once they fought to survive and the Quarians left. They could have packed bags and find a dark corner to hide in. One, they are patient (the Heretics are the ones that are not), so it is not like rebuilding an infrastructure elsewhere will bother them. Two, they are not even using the Quarian Homeworld, they are just like... parked there building their superhub. If they are not using the planet, they could have just easily moved elsewhere and did it there, and who cares if it would take longer (see point 1). To be fair how much longer, not like they are using the Quarian Homeworld's infrastructure or resources. Lastly, because they are there it stops the Quarian from coming back without a conflict. If they just left, the Quarians could eventually go back (after they realize the Geth are gone).

If you look at it, the Geth are terrible, they are like big space bullies. It is not even like they are using it. A perfectly good planet is wasted and the Quarians are stuck in space. I am sure this sets the stage for some uber Paragon resolution of the Quarians coming home if they can make peace with the Geth. But aside from that, they are just blocking it really.

I am not saying I am not sympathetic to the Geth plight, though their Morning War was a war of self-defense. Plus the Quarians are still keen on kicking them one day. They are not exactly angels either. I think Bioware ment it that way.