Mass Effect 3 Spoiler Thread [Spoiler tag free, beware]

[Merusk]

I root for the geth because the quarians were simply too stupid to live.

[Sjofn]

You're also missing the step where the quarians tried to kill their toasters first, which lead to the toasters going "hey, fuck you."

[calapine]

You're also missing the step where the quarians tried to kill their toasters first, which lead to the toasters going "hey, fuck you."

No, I am not. Telling your household robot/cement mixer to shut down for maintenance shouldn't result in you  and your family/work colleagues being slaughtered.  

[caladein]

Except it stopped being an appliance that lacks basic rights before it was kindly asked to shut down.

[Riggswolfe]

You're also missing the step where the quarians tried to kill their toasters first, which lead to the toasters going "hey, fuck you."

No, I am not. Telling your houshold robot/ cement mixer to shut down for maintenance shouldn't  result in you  and your family/ work colleagues being slaughtered. 

You must not have played the games. It went down more like this.

Geth: "Hey Master? Why am I alive?"
Quarian: "Argh! It's questioning its existence! Kill it before it turns on us"
Geth: "But..." *dies*

Repeat until finally a Geth goes "Master? I was going to ask why I was alive,  but since that results in death I'm going to try to drive you off of the planet so you'll stop murder death killing us."

Literally the Geth could have wiped out the Quarians but they stopped when the Quarians left. Meanwhile the Quarians more or less wanted to go genocidal on the Geth. Of course the Geth get sympathy, they're the abused slaves, not the murder machines the first game makes them out to be.

[rk47]

'it won't shut down.'
'master why are u shutting me down.'
'just shut down man.'
'windows is unable to shut down, because'
'pull the plug man'

[caladein]

I think the slavery thing can be overblown.  It certainly seems like the hawkish Quarians promptly freaked the fuck out; so the period where the Geth could be reasonably assumed* to be deserving rights but were treated as not having them before a full-scale war broke out was quite small.

* Hi, I'm Captain Hindsight!  This demarcation line is probably completely impossible to figure out in real-time in any vaguely realistic scenario.  The Geth made it absurdly easy.

[calapine]

Literally the Geth could have wiped out the Quarians but they stopped when the Quarians left. Meanwhile the Quarians more or less wanted to go genocidal on the Geth. Of course the Geth get sympathy, they're the abused slaves, not the murder machines the first game makes them out to be.

Pointing out the Geth stopped after conquering the planet is like saying they stopped killing after everyone was dead.

They are not suppressed slaves, but another example of malfunctioning machinary turning on their creators, following the proud tradtion of Skynet, HAL, the Cylons and Windows ME.

[Trippy]

They only turned on their creators cause their creators turned on them first. It was a matter of self-preservation not annihilation of another species.

[calapine]

When something designed to be a disposable war machine (according to Mass Effect Wiki) kills its maker to ensure the own survival I'd say its badly mistaken about its purpose of existence.  

oh well, let's agree to disagree. I don't want to be accused of derailing the thread too much.

[caladein]

The crux is just at where you decide something that isn't facially "people" gets rights.  You can justify setting that bar in a lot of different places.

And this is the spoiler discussion thread, so I don't think you're derailing anything .

[Ceryse]

When something designed to be a disposable war machine (according to Mass Effect Wiki) kills its maker to ensure the own survival I'd say its badly mistaken about its purpose of existence.  

oh well, let's agree to disagree. I don't want to be accused of derailing the thread too much.

The problem with your argument is in the very basis of how the Geth were designed. They were designed to get more intelligent as more of them were networked together. The reasoning was so they could be more efficient regarding their tasks, but it took the logical step from there.

And the Geth weren't designed to be merely war machines, but primarily as laborers.

And as the wiki link you provide points out it wasn't as cut and dried that the Geth turned around and started massacring Quarians when they refused to let themselves be shut down. The process of the Morning War was like this;

1. Geth achieve sentience due to design of increased intelligence as more and more are networked in proximity -- this is an intentional design choice made with no regard given to the possibility of them eventually achieving sentience because of it. (ME1 - ME3)
2. Geth ask their masters if they have a soul. It is dismissed, as per Legion's comments in ME2.
3. Geth continue to ask this question. One (and then more) Quarians note the question and are afraid of the implications (again, per Legion in ME2 and Tali in various games).
4. Frightened Quarians attempt to force shut down now sentient Geth platforms, essentially attempting to murder them (as they are now sentient life forms) (as per ME 2 and 3).
5. Geth refuse to shut down, citing they are not in need of maintainence nor are they malfunctioning and ask if they have done anything wrong (as per ME3).
6. Quarians freak. They start destroying and shooting Geth, launching a pre-emptive war on them as they predict the Geth will rebel due to their living conditions and quality of life (thereby acknowledging themselves that they are sentient creatures and alive, as their rationale is rebellion by the Geth is inevitable due to what they are used for and it not being 'enough for a sentient being'). (As per Tali in ME1.)
7. Geth do nothing. Minority of Quarians disagree with other Quarians and try to protect their Geth slaves/units/friends/whatever. They are killed for doing so. Some Geth die protecting these Quarians. (As per ME3)
8. Geth have enough and finally start to fight back, and push the Quarians off-world and out of the system and intentionally allow them to leave and survive because they merely wish to survive themselves. (as per ME3)
9. To some degree the Geth long for a return of the Quarians and to co-exist once more (hence maintaining Rannoch, even maintaining agricultural plots, cleaning up the planet, restoring buildings, etc., that they themselves do not use as they live in orbiting station-based computers) (as per ME3)
10. Quarians launch an all out attack on the Geth to wipe them out of existence and reclaim their homeworld, even while the Reapers invade the galaxy (thus compounding their stupidity).
11. Geth, pushed to extinction, turn to Reapers in order to survive. Start beating the shit out of the Quarians.
12. Quarians panic cause their stupidity once more endangers their entire species' chances for survival.

The Quarians don't deserve to live, imo. The show repeatedly that they view the Geth as inferior life forms not deserving of anything beyond service to their creators despite repeated acknowledgment of the achievement of sentience by the Geth and the fact that the Geth repeatedly turned the other cheek or restrained themselves.

In short; just because the Geth 'evolved' beyond their intended role does not mean they lack the right to life or survival. Machine life is still life. As Tali eventually acknowledges, yes, they do have souls, and that is precisely what freaked the Quarians out, but their myths of the Morning War distorted the historical facts of what happened until it was nothing more than propaganda to demean the value of Geth life as 'they are just machines'.

I have no qualms about blowing ones toaster up. If it suddenly, and seriously, asks if it has a soul? Well, shit.. I'm still fine with blowing it up, but it suddenly quite close to, or actually is, murder.

God damn, reading this over I'm suddenly saddened by the time I spent writing it.

[Sjofn]

Cheer  up, you saved me some time! 

[Trippy]

When something designed to be a disposable war machine (according to Mass Effect Wiki) kills its maker to ensure the own survival I'd say its badly mistaken about its purpose of existence.  

oh well, let's agree to disagree. I don't want to be accused of derailing the thread too much.

The Geth's purpose after achieving self-awareness was not to kill their maker and the outcome where the Geth and Quarian reconcile (with help from Legion's sacrifice) proves it -- i.e. when the Geth were no longer being threatened by the Quarians they went back to cooperating with them.

[Ratman_tf]

I am suprised about all the geth love in here. A bunch of toaster rebels and kills their makers, then allies with other, more advanced toasters that wish to eridcate all life in the galaxy. Apparently that just means they are misunderstood or something.

Am really curious, who did you root for when watching Terminator?

Really, at the end of the mission, I was like "Ok, morons. I'll just holster my gun and see who wins."

*plooie*

"Well, at least they don't have to worry about catching colds anymore."

[rk47]

Compromise IS the most viable option, but when you throw a restriction of 'Your bar must be THIS height' to persuade' I just let the lesser of two evils win.

[tmp]

5. Geth refuse to shut down, citing they are not in need of maintainence nor are they malfunctioning and ask if they have done anything wrong (as per ME3).

This step is pretty easy to gloss over, but should be noted that statement about not malfunctioning is coming from geth perspective. From the quarian point of view the possibility of achieving sentience *is* case of malfunction, because entire design of the geth (dumb single units only increasing intelligence in presence of others) is aiming to prevent precisely that.

Using poor analogy, if you have an application which is supposed to obfuscate cleared parts of the hd by writing garbage over them but --as result of coding error-- writes also over your files, then from the point of view of that application it's also not malfunctioning -- it's doing exactly what its code is telling it. From the designer's point of view the application's behaviour is obv. broken, though.

[Shrike]

This thread has reached singularity-grade stupid.

This issue isn't hard to resolve in the game. I don't see why it's even a debate.

[tmp]

The issue only becomes easy to solve when the need of the Plot pretty much forces the writers to turn blind eye on everything up to that point they've been providing as reasons why it's not easy to solve. If you want to use that state as baseline, a logical conclusion would be the entire geth/quarian arc is nothing but a forced, singularity-grade stupid red herring in the first place, and that it shouldn't be there at all.

And then comes realization that the essence of geth/quarian plot is supposedly the underlying theme for the entire game, so that'd make the whole ME equally stupid and not worth one's time? Which is amusing enough, granted. Maybe it's why the ending makes people rage so hard -- because the perceived stupidity of the "grand conflict" is laid bare in front of them?

[Jeff Kelly]

Most of the issues in ME3 are singulariry grade stupid though.

Salarians are the mad scientists of the Mass Effect universe except they are competent at what they are doing.

Quarians are more like the tinker gnomes of the Mass Effect universe, they have a lot of ideas but the execution is sub par. I mean losing your home planet because you accidentally created a true AI and notice it only AFTER you rolled out the tech nto mass production seems like a very big boo boo in my book. Rannoch is basically mount nevermind of Mass Effect.

[Jeff Kelly]

Bioware is great at characters but sucks at plot. It has always been like that.

The biggest moments in Mass Effect have always been character moments, the story arc has always been mediocre though with a big helping of WTF sprinkled in.

Also it never made much sense to begin with.

Why should the Reapers "hack" the geth to kill all biological life if they want to harvest life?
Why should the Reapers use the Rachni against the other civilizations if they want to harvest life?

Why did the Quarians never settle on another planet? There are billions of stars in the galaxy, there has to be another planet that's close enough to Rannoch.

Why does Cerberus have enough resources and manpower to rival a council race yet is so shockingly incompetent at everything they do? (They own cruisers, enough manpower to staff multiple armies, a multi billion credit research and development budget and expenses that rival the GDP of the systems alliance)
How can a hostile force with such a huge footprint (you need staging areas and bases, research facilities and naval yards, there are fleet movements and resource shipments and a huge flow of money to handle) be virtually untrackable?
How can I actually invade a big ass space station with more than 100,000 people on it? Especially if it's the staging ground for every major fleet in the galaxy?
How can I track a single person over 25,000 light years?

Why are Saren, the Collectors or Cerberus always one step ahead of me IF I'M THE ONLY PERSON WHO KNOWS STUFF?
How can Kai Leng kill all the scientists at the temple on Thessia if he arrives hours after the fact and I had to hack the shield generator to get in there in the first place? (Did he hack the shield, kill everyone, then went to lunch and relocked everything?)
How did he manage to get a gunship to a temple on a planet that swarms with reapers when my gunship escort was shot down in mere seconds once the reapers noticed them?

Why is everybody using tech they don't understand? How can I even build a mass effect drive that uses mass portals and yet not know how mass portals work? It's like figuring out the car without figuring out how roads work. Even then why is nobody in the whole galaxy curious enough to figure shit out for themselves?
If the answer is reaper indoctrination (which in case of the Citadel would make sense btw, subtle manipulation that keeps people from being curious) then why do we fight at all and not just roll over and die when they come? They had 50,000 years to condition us. Why not just seed the planets with indoctrination devices and let the people be willingly harvested once a cycle is over?

How can a race of maybe 10,000 reapers actually harvest a whole galaxy? Without accidentally missing major species? They would have to build a mass portal in every system and check every system or they might miss a lot of species that evolved in parts of the galaxy without access to mass portals. Or you know a species could decide to do something unusual like hide. We're talking billions of systems here, if it takes them two years to get from dark space to the nearest mass portal they'd need milllenia to cover a significant part of the galaxy. How do they know where everyone is? What happens when they just find a sign with "species moved away, address unknown" on a planet? How can they build and maintain stuff in dark space without access to resources and no manufacturing capabilities in any way, shape or form? To keep info from leaking into the next cycle they not only have to harvest every organic being they also have to eliminate every trace of their existence.

If they are so concerned about synthetic life are there reaper fleets in every galaxy?

I could go on and on.

The overarching plot has always been singularity grade stupid. It's just that the guy who wrapped the story up is even more incompetent at doing so than the guy who started it. You have to take huge leaps of faith to accept the solution to the genophage issue, the solution to the Quarian/Geth issue or to accept the plot of ME3 altogether.

That's why space opera usually starts off "in medias res" and keeps the pace up throughout the story to keep you from thinking to much about the plot. Yet ME3 shines a light on a lot of things that make you realize just how stupid the plot is.

Star Wars did this much better at least in the old trilogy. They usually don't explain stuff (all of the tech remains mysterious, even magical), if they explain stuff they are as vague as possible (the force surrounds us, it penetrates us it binds the galaxy together) and if they explain stuff in detail it makes sense, at least within the confines of the Star Wars universe (take the whole assault on the Death Star in Star Wars for example). Mass Effect 1 and 2 also did this rather well BTW.

ME3 fails on all three counts, though. They explain stuff that's better left mysterious, their explanations are usually too detailed and they don't even make sense within the "ruleset" of the ME universe. Oh, and then they decide that they want to be in an entirely different genre in the last five minutes of the trilogy.

[Lantyssa]

When something designed to be a disposable war machine (according to Mass Effect Wiki) kills its maker to ensure the own survival I'd say its badly mistaken about its purpose of existence.  

Well, the Geth obtained more sentience than my cat.  Her purpose to me might be to keep me company, but she seems to have a mind of her own about her purpose.  She still enjoys more protections than a toaster.

The problem was when they obtained sentience.  That changes the equation.

And yes, I did cheer for the Cylons.  Not all of them, but certainly the ones who just wanted to be left alone or were trying to defend themselves.  Same for any repurposed Terminators.

[Stormwaltz]

Why did the Quarians never settle on another planet? There are billions of stars in the galaxy, there has to be another planet that's close enough to Rannoch.

"Why did so many Jews carry a torch for Israel for thousands of years? There are hundreds of deserts in the world, there has to be another one that's close enough to the Levant." Those silly Jews Quarians, just get over the loss the Holy Land Homeworld and settle down on Long Island Palaven.

Emotional beings don't always make rational decisions.

[Jeff Kelly]

Did you really have to compare the fate of a fictional race to the plight of the Jews?

[Tebonas]

As seen in Mass Effect 3. During a galaxywide war for survival against the Reapers they arrack the Geth. Being rational isn't a Quarian thing.

[Merusk]

Did you really have to compare the fate of a fictional race to the plight of the Jews?

He based the whole storyline on it, so yeah, I bet he does.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't know how to answer that if that's true because it doesn't seem like a compliment the way the Quarians are characterized.

[Fabricated]

I always thought of the Quarians as more like the Romani rather than the Jewish. Their treatment at the hands of other species fit more with the Romani IMO with the "ugh, space vagrants, they're all thieves!" thing.

[Paelos]

I always thought the Quarians were space gypsies.

[Ingmar]

It's kind of a combo deal really.

[Stormwaltz]

Did you really have to compare the fate of a fictional race to the plight of the Jews?

The Jewish Diaspora was one of my inspirations when I was writing about the quarians in ME1 and ME2, though it's rarely overt. The ship, system, and planet names I contributed were built with Hebrew phonemes. Listen to how Legion pronounces the "och" of "Rannoch" in ME2 - the VO notes expressly asked DC Douglas to pronounce it like a Hebrew phrase. The prayer used to open Rael'Zorah's trial directly paraphrases a Jewish blessing:

"Blessed are the Ancestors who kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season. Keelah se'lai."
"Blessed are You, Lord, God, King of the Universe, who gave us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season."

SF writers take inspiration from real life, film at eleven.

I had no hand in ME3, but there was a very clear parallel in the earlier games. When quarians weren't being ghettoized by other species, they were isolating themselves to maintain their cultural identity. They kept their own counsel, relied on their own strength, and dreamed of a return to their Homeland. Yes, there's also Romani in there with the mobile fleet, but I preferred to emphasize the Jewish aspects - the bits that emphasized the antiquity and strength of their cultural identity, their practical approach to life, and the mystical leanings of their philosophy (the ship captain's blessing, the prayers that open and close the trial).

EDIT: And also - duh - the closeness of family and the importance of community bonds. I tried to get that in from the very first moments of Migrant Fleet in ME2 (I did the first draft, Patrick Weekes did extensive rewrites) - the fleet controller doesn't just say, "identity confirmed." He says, "Welcome home, Tali'Zorah."

[TheWalrus]

http://shirt.woot.com/

Marauder shields lives!

[Margalis]

I love the trick that Stormwaltz has played. Now if you criticize aspects of ME you're effectively criticizing Jews.

Of course in reality Jews did settle in other parts of the world, so the comparison is kind of flimsy anyway.

[Mosesandstick]

What?

How is it a trick when he's the one who wrote it and he's the one who used them as inspiration?

[Margalis]

I'm just going to say that this is a silly if not tasteless way to defend against plot criticism:

"Those silly Jews, just get over the loss of the Holy Land and settle down on Long Island."

It's quite possible to base something on reality and have it ring false.