Mass Effect 2 *spoilers around pg 29/30*

[Koyasha]

Yeah, if they had any interest in peaceful interaction they would make some kind of effort to show that they aren't the killing machines everyone percieves them to be.  Establish a space station on the far edge of their territory and allow visitors there (whether any come is immaterial, the point is for them to allow it) and at least communicate with the rest of the galaxy.

But then, as far as I can figure, they don't really have much of any interest in peaceful interaction.  They're fine being left alone, and fear helps them in that regard, so there's no reason to try to convince the organics of anything different.  And since they aren't outwardly hostile - that is, they stay in their own territory and don't leave it - they haven't had to worry about organics building up a fleet and coming after them, since the quarians are the only ones that want to do that, and they not only don't have the resources, but aren't trying to acquire/amass them.  Everyone that does have resources is fine with them staying where they are and not coming out, and they're fine with that too.

[Ingmar]

Well to be fair, only recently has Sovereign been out of the picture - it isn't clear to me exactly how long he'd basically had the geth going as his little buddies pre-ME1, but he was only removed 2 years ago - it may have just taken this long for any kind of pro-negotiation consensus to be reached among (part of) the geth.

[UnSub]

Hmmm.  When did that happen ?

I clearly need to replay.

It's the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC for ME2. Spoilering the rest just in case:

[Ingmar]

I think maybe Stormwaltz said that was the original intent with the Shadow Broker, but it didn't really come off as a balancing force to me in ME1, just an entirely mercenary one. If you can pay, he'd do whatever.

[rk47]

If my vacuum cleaner starts asking me about life I'd unplug it as well. 

[lamaros]

What if you taught it to speak first?

[Ironwood]

Hmmm.  When did that happen ?

I clearly need to replay.

It's the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC for ME2. Spoilering the rest just in case:

Ah.  I see.

Fuck DLC.

Sorry.

[Reg]

It really is the best DLC ME2 has and well worth the money. 

[lamaros]

I found it really quite underwhelming. After all the talk it was a bit boring. And very repetitive.

[Ironwood]

It really is the best DLC ME2 has and well worth the money. 

I just don't do DLC.

[UnSub]

I found it really quite underwhelming. After all the talk it was a bit boring. And very repetitive.

I liked the idea of some of it - the Shadow Broker's ship was a nice idea - but yes, two boss fights and a long fight level didn't have me in raptures.

Plus I thought the Shepherd / Liara car ride dialogue wasn't that funny at all. Not bad, just cliched.

... I also used the Shadow Broker ship to get me the upgrades / extra stuff I missed when playing. So it was useful for that, I guess.

[NowhereMan]

Back to GethLoreChat. The whole argument that, "They're logical so it's obviously ridiculous they haven't made peace with us yet," isn't necessarily all that convincing. They're not logical thinkers in the sense most lay people use the term, they're logical in the whole quasi-mathematical formal logic sense, a logical proposition and argument can be valid without being true (that is a correct argument with one or more false premises). To translate logical to correct would require the species in question to be near omniscient, something the Geth clearly aren't, which is one of the reasons why the individual programmes that make up the Geth try to reach consensus. It not only distributes necessary processing it also allows for the maximal amount of factual input to form accurate premises, alterations to this or subtle alterations to the rules of the logic sytems they use would produce the whole, "Rogue Geth," Phenomenon.

The fact that they don't act towards organic beings the way we might expect can be explained pretty well by the alien nature on both sides. We kind of assume that legion is going to act in ways we expect because we implicitly assume he'll act like we do but we don't really know for sure how the Geth deal with information. AIs are intersting because we're dealing with a radically different form of consciousness, we're fairly comfortable labelling the Geth as intelligent because they seem to be able to do all the stuff we're able to and can conduct conversations, we may even think they're highly intelligent because they can do maths computations on the fly that would take a human months but there's a good chance they'd react in ways we'd consider pretty dumb to other normal everyday organic stuff. Remember for want of better terminology, a lot of our behaviour is governed by 'hardware' in terms of things we instinctively do or don't involve higher reasoning. That's why an AI can be super good at chess but a complete disaster at getting across the road.

I've gotta say I find chat about consciousness really interesting, I'm pretty sure Mahrin has quite a few ideas on how this stuff works to me but I really appreciate the thought he put into the Geth. It's not all explicitly put out in the writing but it's clearly all been done with a deep idea behind it and hasn't tried to hide it. They aren't just 1 dimensional bad guys and they also aren't just another organic life form (which something like BSG pretty much made them, I'd argue Mass Effect has done a much better idea of addressing oganic/machine interaction than they did). As IW said the fact that we're actually discussing this kind of shit is a testament to a well written game.

[lamaros]

There's probably a heated discussion somewhere on the Internet about which of Thane or Drizzt would win a fight, though I'm not sure that would be an indication of quality characters...

I hope the Geth become as interesting as you think they are, but I still feel that Mass Effect has just jumped them from bad guys to misunderstood good guys.

I found the idea that Geth can't understand why humans wouldn't want to be repurposed in to a reaper more interesting than their new belief that all life has a right to self determination. The former is much much more 'alien' logic than the latter, which strikes me as a very enlightenment human concern.

[tmp]

The whole argument that, "They're logical so it's obviously ridiculous they haven't made peace with us yet," isn't necessarily all that convincing.

The argument is rather "it's not very logical for them to act in manner which works against reaching potential truce while at the same claiming it takes both sides to achieve peace (in context implying it's all those bloodthirsty and irrational quarians' fault that the war is still going)"  I.e. either they do understand how establishing peace goes, in which case they should acknowledge their part of responsibility for the ongoing hostilities rather than assume the role of nothing but opressed, misunderstood innocence, or they don't understand how establishing peace goes (because machines, logic, etc) in which case they shouldn't be speaking from the position of knowledgeable sage who does.

[calapine]

The argument is rather "it's not very logical for them to act in manner which works against reaching potential truce while at the same claiming it takes both sides to achieve peace (in context implying it's all those bloodthirsty and irrational quarians' fault that the war is still going)"  I.e. either they do understand how establishing peace goes, in which case they should acknowledge their part of responsibility for the ongoing hostilities rather than assume the role of nothing but opressed, misunderstood innocence, or they don't understand how establishing peace goes (because machines, logic, etc) in which case they shouldn't be speaking from the position of knowledgeable sage who does.

I am still not cool with the idea of talking Geth in the first place. For my Shepard Geth A) make clickety-click sounds B) get shot. That's all there is to it.

[KallDrexx]

I finally got around to playing this.

So far I'm enjoying it but seriously, fuck loading screens.  I don't remember Mass Effect 1 being this bad, but maybe it's the ps3 version to blame.

[tmp]

There was a bug with the PC version on some multicore system that'd cause awful loading times (literally difference between 1-2 secs and 30) but if it's ps3 then dunno :/

[Ingmar]

I finally got around to playing this.

So far I'm enjoying it but seriously, fuck loading screens.  I don't remember Mass Effect 1 being this bad, but maybe it's the ps3 version to blame.

Remember those elevators? Those were the loading screens in ME1.

[Morat20]

I finally got around to playing this.

So far I'm enjoying it but seriously, fuck loading screens.  I don't remember Mass Effect 1 being this bad, but maybe it's the ps3 version to blame.

Remember those elevators? Those were the loading screens in ME1.

Garrus: Tali, do you miss all the conversations we used to have in elevators?
Tali: No.
Garrus: Come on, you have to admit we had fun all bugging you with questions about the quarians!
Tali: This conversation is over.
Garrus: Tell me how your immune system works again!
Tali: I have a shotgun.
Garrus : Maybe we should talk later...

[tmp]

I have to admit the loading screens of the sequel without conversations were a sharp step down :/

[KallDrexx]

Finally beat this, clocked in at about 46 hours.  Was pretty awesome.

Is there any DLC worth a damn?  Since I bought the game used I'd probably have to pay extra anyways, so I'm not sure I'm going to get anything unless one of them is spectacular.

[Reg]

Shadow Broker is awesome.  If you're just getting one that's the one to go for.

[Ingmar]

Since you bought it used the $10 or whatever for all the Cerberus stuff is probably worth it.

[lamaros]

I bought a bit of the dlc. Was a waste IMO, as I didn't use half of it and the other half wasn't anywhere near the value of the original game.
Also replay ability is ass IMO. Tried very hard but character association and repeated content foiled me.