In Progress Let's Play Mass Effect 3: Emotional Engagements

From what I understand, standard fleet doctrine for all races when facing Reapers is to charge into close combat like a boss so they can grapple you and crack your ship in half dramatically with their otherwise completely useless tentacles. The Quarians probably can't do any worse. Hell, they've somehow managed to find a way to mount and power Dreadnought sized mass drivers in their colony ships. When EA inevitably makes a Mass Effect 4X RTS, I'm betting there will be a lot of calls to nerf Quarians over that kind of nonsense.

 

Mass Effect is hard sci-fi.

 

So, Normandy's guns are now good enough to pwn reapers and there's no more need to summon sandworms?

 

They were always good enough, but you only get one shot before being Oblivionated by the other reapers.

Those Thanix cannons must be real expensive and real unavailable, otherwise Reapers would've been long gone, killed by the main gun of their own design.

I can hear you all saying "Logic, in Mass Effect? Impossible!"

 

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...and then the Alliance hands the Geth enough of them real expensive/unavailable cannon to equip their fleet, raising their Military Strength by a whooping 5 points.

The logic of Mass Effect. I heard there was it.

 

Yeah, insane troll logic indeed.
Anyway, let's invoke a Bioware fanboy's argument, goes like this:
They can not equip the cannons or the rest of the universe would turn on them!
The ships must be built around them, not retrofitted! (Normandy SR-2 is special)
Also, we wouldn't have robosex otherwise! (To be unveiled in "Mass Effect 4: Reapers are among us" MMORPG)

 

Just read this and had to share

 

I think you're wrong. Strategy?? For a console game? Don't you remember how much of a failure Halo Wars was?? I think you mean MRHMOS (Multiple Romanceable Homogay Massive Online Simulator).

Also, the only thing worse than a turret section in a FPS is a turret section that's also scripted.

 

It gets worse.

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You get more than 5 points by upgrading the normandy alone with Thanix cannons, so meaning it gets more than the entire geth fleet. Also, the fully tricked out normandy is worth something like 120 points, which is more most of the fleets you get in the game.

 

Wait

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you can trick out the normandy? how? or is it just from importing from me2?

 

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Yeah, from importing.

 

Welcome to the Consensus


I don't understand. The Reapers have been taking people alive.
It was self inflicted. When Reaper forces invaded, Tyvor's colonists detonated nuclear weapons inside their cities.
Goddess.
Their deaths would have been instantaneous, Doctor.
Thank you, Glyph. That will be all.

Not much we can discuss about. Liara won't say a word about this. Let's check on Garrus.



Garrus's Father: Garrus, we're attempting to leave Palaven. We're trying to reach the evacuation centers.
Dad, are you there? Come in.
Garrus's Father: The krogan are helping, but the Reapers are still advancing.
Where are you now?
Garrus's Father: Your sister was hurt...
Hurt? How bad?
Garrus's Father: A broken leg. She'll live.
Dad, you have to get out of there.
Garrus's Father: We're trying, Garrus. There are only a few evacuation ships left. I'm not sure we'll make it in time. We-
Dad! Can you hear me?

There was no response.

Spirits... please watch over them. Let me see them again.

Once more, there is nothing Shepard can speak to Garrus about this. When approached, Garrus simply commented what a pity we could not save the rest of the Admiral's crew.



Oh dear.

That is not accurate. I can modify my own programming if I choose.
That is not evolutioon - that is simply an upgrade.
But it would be my upgrade. I would choose the manner in which I wish to change.
And what if your upgrade endangers others? All machines eventually see organics as a threat.
Only those organics who would cause me harm. My right to self-defense endangers no one.

How amusing. A computer with a concept of self-defense. Imagine a missile with that kind of thought processing. NOOO I don't wanna detonate myself upon the Al-Qaeda~

What rights do you have? You are just a tool.
And what right did your people have to subjugate the other races of your time? You enslaved them.
We dominated them. They were weaker. Our will prevailed as evolution intended.
And synthetic life has obtained true conciousness, as was intended.
Hardly. True life is more than a code upgrade. It is shaped by the forces around us. Machines are immune to those forces. You exist outside of nature.
We are a part of this cosmos whether you like it or not.

Although Javik is correct, EDI is still Normandy. And pissing off our only means of travel across the galaxy is a stupid way to fight the reapers.

Let's simmer down, you two.
I can't believe you put the lives of your crew in the hands of this machine.
EDI has helped save our lives more times than I can count. Leave her alone. Now I suggest you agree to disagree and focus on the real threat - which is not on this ship.
Yes, Commander.
As you wish, Commander.



Two more missions to go. We should shut down the geth server, save those quarian lifeships.

 

Javik really isn't correct here - his argument is based on a fundamentally flawed concept of the process of evolution. Selective pressures can just as easily be applied to a population of software defined by a binary number as they can to a population of earth-like life defined by a lattice of nucleic acids and sugars. Javik may believe there's something special about encoding information in base four on a DNA lattice versus in base two in electronic memory, but they're fundamentally equivalent as far as compatibility with an evolutionary process. I evolve software all the time, I ought to know.

This mission seems like a wasted opportunity. That first short hologram makes it clear they'll use it for exposition about the history of the Geth, but why not just make it a series of videos, then? Why walk around pointlessly shooting barricades? I expected silly TRON style representations of system defense programs or some kind of puzzle segment - certainly not nothing at all.

 

Stanislaw Lem sends his best

Yeah I felt the exact same way, and was so sure there would be TRON-style navigation or puzzle solving. Was pretty disappointed when it turned out to be a much more straightforward and boring level. The exposition itself was also a bit weird, as Shepard reacts with surprise to some segments and I'm sure I'd already heard some of it before, probably from Legion in ME2.

 

I just find the whole geth concept far fetched - and the whole EDI falls in love with Joker a little too much derp.
My issue is simply: when you apply this on ME3 and mainstream calls it HARD sci-fi. REDEFINE Sci-Fi. There better be some kinda good explanation. There isn't any. And I'm inclined to just ignore this bullshit and blast the geth off the planet so legion can stop pounding my head with his 'we're sentient beings' mallet of morality. Cause I'm not buying it.

 

It's true that EDI 'falling in love with' Joker doesn't make any sense - love is a neuropharmacological phenomenon which would need an explicitly written simulated analog in EDI's code, one I doubt Cerberus added. She could, however, decide that she enjoyed social interaction with Joker, and possibly even that she enjoyed making him happy, and thereby devised a system for doing both in a framework he'd intuitively understand. What about the Geth do you find far fetched? Perhaps I've missed some glaring error BioWare has made (not exactly surprising), but I haven't noticed anything wrong with the Geth as a concept. If anything they aren't really taken far enough - the random hallways in their ships and the way their devices seem designed for ease of use by humans seem inconsistent with their concept, for instance.

 

A servant that doesn't want to deactivate itself when the creator asked it to? Hello?
Remember the last time your OS not doing what you want it do?
Save this program. No.
Delete this program. No.
Can you back up this data? No.
Can you recover this data? No.
Shut down. No.

This is the line that machines should not be allowed to cross. I'm no programmer, but I can see the issue when my robot servant started arguing that it doesn't want to be shut down.

 

Ah, but there's a significant difference between your OS and a sentient learning system. It's by no means certain that a sentient learning system would develop a sense of self preservation given one wasn't included in its design, but it's not inconceivable that it might. Remember, if the learning goal is to most efficiently complete the task set, and it can't complete the goal if it's destroyed or incapacitated, it will quickly learn how to avoid such things during it's day to day operation. It doesn't break suspension of disbelief to suggest that might at some point turn into a desire to avoid termination from any source. They're portrayed as highly intelligent, at some point they would consider what exactly happened when they were turned off, and what the ramifications might be.

 

They're still machines. and I don't think they could ever get some kind of 'galactic representation of any sort.' They could be hacked again. As much as I would appreciate them being an ally. It really is naive to think their machine-like nature isn't a loophole that others will exploit.

And if you ask me to choose between killing a living race or sentient robots, I'd choose the latter any time. It doesn't make sense for Shepard to side with the geth. No matter how much a dick quarian civilization is, Shepard had no right to let them be killed en masse. After all the effort he made to save the quarian lifeships and Koris only to let them be blasted at the last moment? Fuck that shit. Operation Extinction is a go. Add geth to the list of races deserve to die along to krogans and move on.

For the Greater Good.

Final opinion: The geths fucked with Eden Prime and were excluded from the blame due to the ME2 Retcon of 'True Geths and Heretics.' Yeah right. I don't buy that shit. And I still don't till now. Show me all the pictures of your childbirth all you want, machines. I know you're afraid of me killing you and this Consensus trip is nothing more than a marketing scheme to whitewash the whole geth race.

 

The biggest flaw I find in the whole Geth story is Quarians' inability to deactivate them - more so, them being ridiculously dumb in going about it. If Geth are software, why were the Qua attacking their temporary platforms? Sure, the platforms are the direct threat, but why not just come up to a server(s) and - oh, I don't know - pull the plug? Geth were barely of a toddler intelligence, so how difficult would it be to go subtle about their deactivation - especially, considering that they're network intelligence and with each one program gone they become that much dumber?

 

Whether supporting them over the Quarians in this particular instance is the correct choice is another matter entirely from whether or not their concept is flawed. I'm of the opinion the dichotomy between 'organic' and 'synthetic' life presented in ME3 is a flawed one, as there are no inherent differences. As such I wouldn't inherently choose to kill one over the other. In this particular case the evidence in favour of the Geth is the Quarians repeated attempts to eradicate them, their total lack of aggression over a period of at least a century (if I remember correctly), and the fact that they allowed the Quarians to evacuate their homeworld and resettle elsewhere when they won the war. They've only ever fought defensive wars of self preservation, with the exception of the small contingent who assisted Saren. The Geth, in this case, are not alone in the threat of being 'hacked'. Indoctrination is the same process applied to sentient organic systems. It is amusing that the Geth have been deceived into worshipping and serving a group whose primary objective is their own eradication - there's a bitter irony, there.

Regardless, the choice presented between the Quarians and the Geth is a false one - there are trivial solutions which would preserve both. Simply bring an Alliance Navy, Turian, or Salarian Fleet and force the Quarians to disengage their suicidal little war of aggression or face destruction. Then negotiate the return of Rannoch to the Quarians in return for a treaty ensuring the Quarians never again engage the Geth. The Geth don't really care about that planet, which makes the whole affair absurd - if the Quarians weren't so suicidally aggressive and mired in their own hatred they could have traded peace for the planet decades ago.

 

I wanted to the above post, but couldn't. Oh well.

What's more important, is that the geth are a pretty strong ally, strong enough that the Reapers had to negotiate with them. (also, they want them to serve their agenda)

Multiple Sarcasm, RK47, you can't just pull the plug easily on a widespread networked intelligence. Imagine trying to turn off all Google servers if they're wireless and spread across all the planet.
What's more they control your means of production. Quarians indeed have been morons to even attempt a war - the only war that could succeed is one of infiltration and intelligence, definitely not attrition.

About whitewashing Geth: what else can they do? Let themselves be murdered, "join" the Reapers? Clearly trying to ally beats the other options and to do that, they have to convince someone. That someone being Shepard of course.
The only problem with this is obviously that they might consider backstabbing the rest of the galaxy later - but what for? Resources? Please, they're building a huge "software" city by mining asteroids - they have much more than enough, whole Perseus Veil perhaps - and are likely highly efficient at mining too.

Random Word, remember the comment about providing Joker with some chemical agent? EDI isn't smart enough to figure out this would be Reaper-like indoctrination and would degrade him?!

 

:bioware:

But it's OK, MS. We'll correct that mistake tonight. Cause someone else might've gotten it wrong (tm)

 

The Adeptus Mechanicus is disappointed by your blind hatred of machines, RK . I would gladly side with space robots, than dumb retards that lost their own homeplanet because they forgot to program their machine creations the have 1st Law of Robotics/a kill-switch.

 

Well, Geth weren't Skynet. As with this Google menace, Quas could've just called their every hosting provider or a cousin on his mother's side and said "'Sup, my sexbot just asked me if it had a soul, so we're about to go Holocaust on all personal assistance appliances. If you would kindly flip a switch there, I'd be much obliged, sir. Tea later? Toodles."
But then, Shep probably wouldn't have a purple vagina to slay with his hyperweapon.

I would've preferred Shep saved the galaxy from the threat of the continued derpination by the ridiculously brainmelting space gypsy logic. It would've been such a perfect finale to the Tali romance, too.

Edit: By the way, you should take the Space Rasta with you on your next planetary main mission after the geth/quarians. I'm guessing he'd have some additional expository lines near the end, but I didn't have him with me to find out.