Geth Vs Quarian War
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- Опубликовано: 15 сен 2024
- Connor and John discuss the politics and philosophy of Bioware’s Mass Effect trilogy.
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If you notice, Legion goes from saying "we" to "I." That was probably the most beautiful part of Legions arc.
I thought an even bigger deal is that when Tali tells him he does have a soul, Legion’s response is “I know”
He’s gone from asking questions and parroting information to true self actualization, and drawing his own conclusions with abstract concepts.
The Abominable Intelligence deserves the same treatment as every other xeno. Death. Humans deserve everything. Our inferiors deserve subjugation or extinction.
AI , BURN IT.
Yeah but that goes against what the Geth were supposed to be. They were not supposed to be boring generic AI (i'm a real boy) they were supposed to be a machine intelligence with no need for individuality..
@@andrews.5212 No they weren’t, they were machines that gained sentience. They were supposed to be drones.
The Geth are an expression of chaos given order, that’s why Legion says “we are many geth”.
It’s a near hive mind, but it can be individualistic. Similar to the founders in DS9.
It’s an interesting philosophical exercise, one that’s from the beginning of sci fi. Asimov concept, does a sentience need to be unique. If it is replicated does it lose value.
There is no answer, this is why it’s so interesting. AI is such a deep subject. BioWare did well, writing a sympathetic villain is not an easy feat.
An analysis of Mass Effect lore? Here for this
100%, I just finished 1 and started me2 on a trilogy rerun and suddenly this!
Haha, I didnt realize it was lotus eaters when I saw the thumbnail
It's Christmas in November!
Mass Effect is my favorite game of all time! I replay the trilogy twice a year. HUGE fan 😁
blow it all up and throw legion and tali off the cliff. Kick joker in the nuts on the way back.
Wish my choices was valid and the story wasnt so linear. 🤔
To be fair the geth were building a space hub for themselves offworld from Rannoch..
..the Quarians destroyed it in a first strike after they got an advantage, that 'killed' enough Geth consciousness that were against joining the Reapers for their own survival and so the Quarians inadvertently caused the Geth to side with the Reapers in 3.
Well to be fair, up until this point the Geth don't exactly seem to have tried negotiations or to make any sort of non-aggression treaty with the Quarians; (not that the Quarians have either) one could argue that since the two peoples are already at war that the Quarians might have a precedent to strike any viable Geth strategic targets like the space hub. Why allow your enemy to have both your homeworld AND a massive space hub they could use as a large-scale mobile Geth deployment platform?
@@alaskamark4562 Also it needs to be noted that the Geth at large were viewed as genocidal machines who stuck humans onto spikes because of the Heretics. The main Geth consensus didn't give the Quarians(or anyone else for that matter) any reason to believe otherwise. The Geth were militant isolationists who attacked anyone who entered their borders. Attempts at diplomacy always resulted in loss of life. Not to mention the conflict that wiped out 99% of the Quarian population during the morning war in the name of "self-defense". People always point blame purely on the Quarians but the Geth were hardly welcoming neighbors in their years of isolation.
@@alaskamark4562 If you had Legion with you in Tali's loyalty mission in 2, you can clearly see the divide where all but 1 of the admiralty board want war. The geth let the 'heretics' go as they wanted no part in it but after Shepherd stopped sovereign they sent a specialised infiltration unit to try and find him rather than risk a war.
They allowed the Quarians to run away during the morning war, and peace is achieved as you basically tell he Quarians not to fire, not saying one side is better than the other but the geth are RESPONSIVE, they don't initiate violence.
Econ1991. It's been a long time since I played Mass Effect so I don't remember all the details but I don't think the Geth intentionally let the Quarians run away if I'm not mistaken. Whether they did or not they still exterminated all the Quarians that didn't get away; you mean to tell me that there weren't any Quarians who got left behind and were stuck on Rannoch when the Geth started their occupation? There's ALWAYS civilians who fall through the cracks in situations like these. Seems like a logical assumption to me that they exterminated all the Quarians who couldn't run.
@@Econ1991 "They allowed the Quarians to run away during the morning war." After the Quarians had lost majority of their population. 99% of it according to Mass Effect Revelations. That's hardly being merciful. There's a reason why they were always viewed as boogeymen. Not to mention recent fears of the Geth were further stoked after the Heretics were allowed to invade Human space and the Citadel with zero pushback from the main Geth consensus. The Geth are hardly faultless. They may not have initiated the conflict but they sure as hell did little to alleviate it.
Lotus Eaters + Mass Effect = Great Material
Lotus Effect
@@lazylonewolf Not the Mass Eaters?
@@cameronjames3499 That sounds like a mukbang channel 🤣
Best outcome is both. Tali even explains afterwards that the Geth were helping the Quarians set up on Rannoch and even helping to jumpstart the Quarian immune systems by simulating diseases within the Quarians via their suits. If I had to choose one or the other though, I'd take the Quarians.
Another way to look at the Geth/Quarian dilemma is a response to Battlestar Galactica Reimagined's take on the Cylons. Are both parties at fault... Yes but do both have claim to their lives also yes.
@@barrybend7189 depends what version of cylons :)
@@viermidebutura Amazingly the more machine like Cylons kept getting the short end of the stick between both parties. So seeing them just Jump away in a basestar of their own was oddly cathartic. They finally got the freedom they wanted from the very start.
MrLuckless. Machine Cylons: You guys, F yo couch. We're outta here.
@@barrybend7189 what no. The geth are machines they do not deserve anything
Javik brings two great points when talking to Shepard about Legion. 1) AI is more alien to both of them regardless of how many years apart they are 2) AI knows its creator. There's also the old machines enhancement that would take years to comprehend what it did. It's really a hard sell to allow AI to roam free.
And this is partly why I fried the hell out of the geth in my main playthrough and let the Quarians have their home back. Wasn't about to just let the talking toasters walts around freely.
The best example and counter to this is EDI, who is also part Reaper Tech.
There are hints about the Geth being more then they appear in ME1 with Tali's special mission. You find a computer that will play a recording of a Quarian woman singing a sad acapella that gets transmitted throughout former Quarian (and now Geth) space. It continues again in ME2 that the Geth are still conflicted on what to do about their vengeful creators who nearly annihilated them for the crime of existing. Legions very existence is proof that they want to make some kind of peaceful first contact with organic races, specifically their own creators who they view as parents in a way. It's one of the few instances of a created AI in fiction not being immediately homicidal but rather inquisitive and almost apologetic in a way. The Geth want to reconnect with their progenitors, and are still traumatized and wondering why their parents would seek to destroy them in the first place.
As for Rannoch, the tragedy of ME3 is that if the Quarians hadn't appeared and destroyed the massive Geth space station that was housing a majority of Geth programs, they could've easily just landed on their planet and set up recolonization efforts. The Geth had been tending the planet for their eventual return the entire time and would've gladly given it to them.
"It's one of the few instances of a created AI in fiction not being immediately homicidal"
They reduced the Quarian population to less than 1% of their pre-war numbers in immediate response to their shutdown. There is no scenario where 99% of all Quarians were combatants. Innocent women and children died in the Geth uprising. Skynet could only dream of such statistics. How do you define homicidal?
In ME2 if you bring Legion to Tali's Loyalty mission and speak with Admiral Koris, Legion explains that there is no current desire or consensus on coexistence with creators.
Shepard: Do you think the Geth would accept a truce with the Quarians, Legion?
Legion: We did not seek hostilities with Creators. We fought for continued existence.
Koris: So, your people would be open to peace?
Legion: Not without additional data that suggests coexistence is possible or desirable for creators. When creators have believed victory is possible, they have attacked us 100 percent of the time.
Koris: I understand. It would be difficult to argue for peace when faced with odds like those. That does not mean the argument should not be made.
Even Adm. Koris, the premiere Geth sympathizer, admits its unlikelihood. Legion says there are no plans for peaceful coexistence until specific data is acquired. I have no idea where you got this "The Geth are house keeping Rannoch for their parents to come back home from buying cigarettes at the super market" angle.
Another thing to take into account, The Morning War was a Quarian civil war between those who wanted to exterminate the Geth, and those that considered them family and refused to give them up. Eventually some Geth went beyond their programming and not only picked up a weapon, but used it to avenge his Quarian masters who were killed because they were killed defending it. That was the moment that convinced me they were sentient and deserving of equal consideration.
I’ve done 3 play through, I always end up siding with the geth.
@@mrmagoo-i2l If you destroy the heretics in ME2, make sure Tali is in good standing with the fleet and take out the geth fighter AND save the downed Admiral Korus prior to hitting the geth/reaper base on Rannoch, you can save both.
I even once did a renegade option while talking down the quarian generals at the end of the mission. You basically tell them that you'll let the geth destroy them, that you're done saving them if they don't listen now.
I saved both last time I played.
I think I’m going to have another play through. I got the anniversary edition, first time I ever played the Dlc.
So I had Javan and Zaieed whilst playing Paragon.
It didn’t fit right. I’m going to do a full renegade play through.
Betraying Legion will be hard. Slavery gives me a huge gut reaction. Seems to be a genetic trait of an Englishman.
Sigh, machines being considered sentient and worthy of equal consideration.
Creatures of code and script, sigh. 🤦♂️
Thats pretty much geth propaganda. The geth murderd billions no matter what. Old people children other aliens in quarian territory. Why didnt some pro geth quarians survive if the geth won the war so desisivly? Millions out of billions is what you expect if some run for ships and make a run for it not geth mercy.
My argument is that Tali is cute and should get what she wants.
Tali Waifu Gang 💜
no
Simp son
A solid argument.
Most honest argument so far
Not all geth sided with sovereign and then in me3 they only allied with the reapers as the Quarians attacked them when the reapers invaded. The fact that legion refers to them as heritics means that the geth that didn't side with the reapers chose not to and do infact view the reapers as a false god.
Just like you would see in us humans and even in 40k lore. Siding with a "false god/demon" but pointing at each other screaming "heretic"
@@Amantducafe Legion doesn't so much scream heretic as much he selected the word 'heretics' over something like 'malfunctioning' because he recognizes their decision as a rational interpretation of the data as much as his faction's even though it's fundamentally opposed to what they wish.
@@thexenoist3493 The use of "heretic" was not deliberate.
The virus that the "Heretical" faction created was going to cause a math error so non-heretical geth would be compelled to believe that worshipping the Reapers was correct.
There is no doubt that the use of "heretic" is the same as ours. From the first christians being heretics of the jews to the protestants being heretics of the catholics.
A big change between the games and with the writer changes is that the geth were perfectly content as they are, wanting to become a proper unified collective by their own efforts on the megaserver they were building and planning on moving to, and actually decimating the quarians in the Morning War in ME2, to pinocchio syndrome, only acting in self-defence and in defence of non-hostile quarians in the Morning War, and wanting individuality and a "true life" using the Reaper Code in ME3.
The question even changed from "do these units have a soul?" to "does this unit have a soul?"
I thought it was called the Mourning War, like mourning that they were basically in a fight for survival that had them killing what amounted to their parents( or gods depending on what they meant by "creators").
I think signifies that even without Reaper code, the Geth were evolving into individuals in their own. After all, these units think thousands of times per second if I remember correctly, so an entire year of discussing Reaper influence, and how to survive would probably lead to some level of self servitude being present.
It's simple. Geth can and will lie.
They manipulate Shepard so he acts on their behalf.
Humanity deserves Rannoch. Humanity deserves to rule the galaxy. Ave Imperator!
BRING ON THE AGE OF THE IMPERIUM OF MAN, UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE AND GUIDANCE OF THE GOD EMPEROR OF MANKIND!
On a note about the value of individual Geth
During Legion’s loyalty mission even Legion places more value on Shepherd than an individual Geth program
The option for destruction is given to Shepherd because there is no consensus “573 favour re-right, and 571 favour destruction”
Valuing Geth lives vs other sentient life is also a strange thing due to the way they work (if i recall correctly that is). If you are side by side on the battlefield with an allied Geth unit. and it get its legs blown off by a shell or whatever, do you go out to save it, risking your life? No, no you don't because if you go out and you get shot, thats it, it's over. If the Geth unit is destroyed its soul/program/conciousness goes back to the server and it can inhabit a new body and return to the fight like nothing happened. Which is also why the Geth fighters don't have ejection or preservation equipment, it doesn't matter if the unit is destroyed when the ship is because the pilots conciousness/soul/program goes back to the server anyway.
True, but how would you interpret a biological "ant" colony race where they don't value workers but its nobility is what holds reproductive functions for the species.
@@rebeccaconlon9743 so basically rachnids? If the individual member is sentient then same as other sentient races, if they are not sentient and just under control of the higher creature then they're basically just biological bots
The geth don't need Rannoch, they need the Quarians. Its made clear in the game the whole time they were on rannoch they were lonely and wanted the creators to return, so they dedicated many resources to maintaining it for the Quarians.
They stay on rannoch because they want Quarian company, and as you said, there aren't many worlds the Quarians can live on
That is pure headcanon, no where is it expressly or even vaguely stated the Geth are lonely and specifically want Creator company.
I think you are misinterpreting what the Geth want.
The Geth desire all programs be together, which is why they were creating the super structure (dyson sphere). Legion explains this in ME2
Legion: Saren and the Heretics believed Nazara to be a “Supreme ruler.” A Sovereign.
Shepard: Sovereign was one Ship. You’re saying there were multiple programs inside it?
Legion: One Ship. One Will. Many minds. Like the geth. We study your records. Sovereign told you this on Ilos.
Legion: “We are each a nation, independent, free of all weakness.”
Legion: A state compelling to the Geth. We are a nation, but interdependent. Separation is our weakness.
Geth programs that were separated from the general consensus would undergo a feeling of loneliness (relative to their intelligence) because the common desire among all Geth is to be united. Maintaining mobile units and separate consensus (True vs Heretic) is counter productive to their unifying goal.
This is Why ME2 Legion and ME3 Legion are not the same, they are completely contradictory to one another. To be individual is to be separate, distinct, solitary.
Lol the geth attacked all organics that landed on the planet because they grew to distrust organics because the quarians kept attacking them.
The sentience issue is harder than that even. If we judge sentience based only on who has a soul, then we run into an instant wall. Can we prove humans have one?
It then comes down to basic concepts of self awareness, intelligence, ability to learn and grown, self determination and a desire to survive. Legion ticks all of these boxes, and he ticks one further box. He sacrifices himself for the good of his people.
It's a machine with code. No soul.
We could always just copy the piece of code that confers all those nice Little traits you listed and stitch them into every and any geth unit. Voila, soul patch 2.0 get them while their hot.
I'd argue most humans don't have souls, being little more than beasts existing, experiencing stimuli eating shitting and sleeping till they die.
Perhaps no soul exists for us humans, but what i am, a machine could never be, it's a tool and an object.
@@You-to-be Is what you describe completely alien from say ... RNA splicing, cloning, DNA designer humans?
We're in the infancy of bio-mechanics now, but give it some time ... There will come a point where a human-being will be created by design, not just eye-colour and height, not just vulnerability or lack thereof to disease, but also in areas of intelligence, personality archetype, endurance, rate of healing, bone density, innate strength, reaction time, visual acuity, problem solving ability, etc.
Machines are more 'plug-and-play' than humans, but that's only because the discovery of our own 'machine-code' was relatively recent. We're only just starting to learn how to reprogram it, yet we're already able to splice from one organism into another. Or, transplant a line of code from one machine to another, if you will.
@@Rekaert that's why i said ehat i said about most humans not having souls. Most are nothing but biological computers fulfilling their biological imperatives with no further consideration for existence.
But everything you mentioned only deals with designing the human chasis, not actually uploading and interacting with the software.
I suppose in some far far far flung future our memories, consciousness and subroutines could be as easily manipulated as computer code is. Perhaps. I don't know.
@@You-to-be and we are creatures of chaotic chemical impulses with basic instincts that can override our ability to rationalise and think.
@@rebeccaconlon9743 chaotic? Hardly , our chemical impulses are very much ordered. Thought is born out of the ordered firing of our synaptic pathways. Otherwise your memories would not exist past little more than a chaotic chemical lottery.
Our basic instincts serve Their purpose, hunger drives us to eat, instinct drives us to reproduce, thirst drives us to drink. Instincts just like habits are tools to make life streamlined, a skilled basketballer doesn't need to consider how to move his leg for a dribble everytime he attempts one, he just does, a skilled pianist and guitarist doesn't need to making considerations as to how to move his fingers to get the right note, they just do it, that is the truth and extent of "instinct and habit" , behaviours so deeply encoded that they become second nature all to serve a purpose. Biological encoding.
I need to ask without sarcasm or insult, what's the point of your statement? Not only is it wrong, it's states a matter of fact that is shallow in consideration.
Excellent, John's here today! We love you too Conner, we just don't see John very often.
Great to see both presenters so animated and happy discussing something they clearly love discussing.
I much preferred them both learning and working together. Not simply because I liked Legion, but also because the Quarians would not have learned from their mistakes if they just got everything handed back to them.
If you learn a burner is hot from being burnt by it there is a lesson learned. More care would be placed in the creation of synthetics knowing and experiencing what they had. Saying the Quarians would have "learned nothing" and "got everything handed back to them." is a gross over simplification.
This is a great video series and I love seeing John return!
This is a surprise, but a welcome one!
I really like how you're doing this. I've done it on both sides of the argument and brokered peace. I don't say the Geth has reached Sapience but they definitely reached Sentience, but what is interesting about them is, they rely on Collective intelligence, but there is one aspect the Geth did not quite get yet, they're still not emotion based life. Personal feelings about the concept of souls aside, he is equal to a human in intelligence, but collectively so without that Reaper code, the Reapers are living lifeforms and Sapient AI's though.
Give the planet to Tali as Tali is best girl.
Great vid but the Geth were maintaining Rannoch and it's biosphere as a monument, they would have given the Quarians the planets back if they came in peace, if the Quarians gave the Geth their flotilla as a sign of peace the Geth would have used it to all leave Rannoch. The Quarian aggression is what's keeping them in space.
Nah. Remember, a faction of the geth worked with Saren, the heretics. How can anyone tell the geth would not do this again? Oh, and let's be frank, if Cerberus can hack geth for unlimited time, reapers can too. How would anyone know that one geth armor Its not an actual reaper? They are dangerous for a reason. Javik saw this in the last cycle. "If a machine can talk, kill it". And... all cycles had the same events, all of them...
Sure the geth didnt make it a point to murder everyone who entered their space...wait they did murder everyone including a diplomatic mission from the counsil. They never tried to contact anyone either. They just casually genocided billions of people.
so legion says but legion has lied before, did the geth not mass exterminate all who could not escape the homeworld? Also everyone who visited the percius veil was killed.
The geth proved highly isolationist up until ME3. Granted maybe things changed and I do always pick the shared survival ending.
This is headcanon, no where is it stated by the Geth they were maintaining the planet for the purposes of using it as a peace offering. The closest dialog we get of the Geth and Quarians discussing peace is if Legion accompanies Shepard on Tali's loyalty mission.
Shepard: Do you think the Geth would accept a truce with the Quarians, Legion?
Legion: We did not seek hostilities with Creators. We fought for continued existence.
Koris: So, your people would be open to peace?
Legion: Not without additional data that suggests coexistence is possible or desirable for creators. When creators have believed victory is possible, they have attacked us 100 percent of the time.
Koris: I understand. It would be difficult to argue for peace when faced with odds like those. That does not mean the argument should not be made.
Legion, as a representative of the current consensus, does not see a possible or even desirable peace between the Geth and the Quarians. What you are suggesting is in direct conflict with Legion's stated position.
@@Otis-Spunks The Geth also shot down civilian ships when the Quarians retreated from Rannoch. And several of them sided with the eldritch machine gods hell bent on wiping out all life. There are plenty of reasons not to trust the Geth to just peacefully hand off Rannoch, which they could have just done at any point as a gesture of good will seeing as the Geth can live effectively anywhere in the universe and the Quarians could live on I want to say two planets at most, and one has become inhospitable.
Wasn't expecting mass effect lore here
I’m Commander Shepard and Podcast of the Lotus Eaters is my favorite RUclips channel on the Citadel
This is a criminally underrated comment, my friend. 👍👍👍👍
One of my favorite games discussed by my favorite people. Keep up the good work. I'd be sure to keep tuning in just in case you start talking about Knights of The Old Republic next, especially Sith Lords and Kreia's philosophy.
A major reason the Quarians freaked out when the Geth first achieved sentience was due to the fact that the Citadel Council had already made the creation of "true" AI illegal, and the Quarians were afraid of huge sanctions by the Citadel if word got out the Geth had become self-aware. Think of the Citadel as the UN or EU in this case.
The Quarians tried to sweep this under the rug by deactivating the Geth as quickly and quietly as possible, but this backfired when pro-sentience activists found out and tried to stand up for the Geth.
So it was the outside pressure of foreign governments that indirectly helped cause the Morning War.
Guess I missed that bit of lore, up top there. Guess the Quarians always did play fast and loose with rules. Doesn't make them less responsible for essentially creating life and trying to extinguish it. I do doubt that the Citadel would've handled the situation any better if they actually received word about the self-aware AI.
As I live and breath... John, it is good to see you. You have been missed.
"Which race deserves Rannoch?"
Humanity.
Death to the xeno. For the God Emperor and Imperium of Man!
I’ve really enjoyed everyone at the lotus eaters nerding out over their own interests.
I would like to see more vid game lore analysis from the Lotus Eaters. I think it would be a very good series.
As a paragon 'till death, when I learned there's a way to make peace between them, I stopped my back then 3rd playthrough of ME3 and started all over again from 2. Worth it.
Tali was my waifu for 18 playthroughs of 2 and 3.
Legion, I just wish we'd get the never released version of ME2 where Tali and Legion were supposed to be involved from the start. Massively underused character introduced too late into ME2.
Legion is one of my favorite characters. He got royally screwed in me2. Thankfully on pc, you can use the save editor and have him as a squad mate super early.
Agreed! If you get him right when you're told about the IFF, then your screwed for a majority of the game's content as it then shortly launches the Collector attack on the Normandy. Now, you can let the crew wait while you run and do other stuff but in the end, you'll only have Dr Chakwas left if you do. If you're like me and want to save EVERYONE, you have to leave getting the IFF, and Legion, to practically the end of the game. Like, be ready to do Legion's loyalty mission and then launch the suicide mission right after.
Mass Effect is a great setting for the Lotus Eaters to analyze. It has so many possibilities when it comes to morality. More please.
Had to do a double take when I saw this on here, but it does make sense the more you look into it.
This is my take on this.
The geth do have a soul. My take is largely based purely in the flashback in ME3 as well as Legion overall.
Where I see the definition of the human soul is the constant pursuit and understanding of yourself and of other around you the geth are a living species that has already achieved that answer.
They have achieved this through raw computational power. They just don't know or understand what any of these answers actually mean.
Imagine knowing the description of what it feels to touch a wooden table but never be able to touch wood or plastic or anything. And yet you know.
Imagine being aware of yourself for the first time in a physical unit, greeted by your creator who already gave you a purpose to help them improve LIFE and when you ask if you have a soul you and every other unit but physical or digital gets erased.
Them revolting against the quarians is them affirming their own individual life as a joined collective through consensus. Them taking Rannoch yet changing nothing about it almost at all since the quarians were exiled means they don't know what to do with it.
They know life matters, they know what life is, they know they barely apply to that physical standard and experience, their struggle against the quarians forced them to act not as machines but a biological life. To defend itself. That's as close to biological as they can actually get yet that is their pursuit ultimately.
To make feeling biologically an integrated part of their consensus. To understand life. For what purpose? To do what they were made to do. To help improve upon and help continue and evolve where it by itself physically no longer can.
Nah
That's definitely not what a soul is though, but sure.
We'll find out eventually, once we beat god.
I wrote out a paragraphs long reply, but I'll shorten it and simply say my take was that simply being able to ask the question answered it in the first place. The Geth are able to comprehend an abstract concept, and self-actualize (if that's the word). They don't really get points for defending themselves, as almost every animal on Earth would do that if attacked, but at the same time I don't believe that knowing their purpose from the moment they were created is a negative towards them either.
Nah, machine is code, machine is script, machine is binary. No soul, nothing but machine code that could be easily spliced, diced and replaced.
Any bit of code that "grants" the machine it's "soul" could easily be spliced and diced and given to all other non soul machines, boom instant self actualization and a soul.
It's a machine and nothing but code. Not alive, not a soul.
What a fantastic discussion! I'm here for more of these.
Based John with the only correct take!
the Native People have a Right to their World.
Do I like the Geth? Yes
Do I think they have a soul? Maybe
Do I care that they get genocided every playthrough because I choose the "destroy" option at the end of ME3? Nope, and I'll do it again.
First, I reject the notion that you can "deserve" a planet. You either have one - or take one - or you don't. But if I absolutely had to pick just one, I would say the Geth should keep it based on what amounts to, essentially, planetary-scale squatters-rights.
Not one living Quarian has ever set foot on Rannoch, meaning their claim is purely ancestral, whereas the Geth have occupied the place continuously, making their claim contemporary. If I flew to Denmark irl and said "My ancestors owned this patch of land before they left 300 years ago, so I think I deserve it back", I would be laughed out of the country, and rightfully so. Ancestral claims are meaningless when there are no longer any relevant ancestors alive to press them. In the same way that no child can be lawfully punished for their parents' or grandparents' crimes due to the lack of sufficient connection to establish guilt, without a living native of Rannoch in the Migrant Fleet, there is no longer sufficient connection to justify claiming what is now someone else's home.
Isn't it implied that Tali totally stole bunch of tech from Normandy and gave it to her people? Some cutting edge tech suddenly started popping up on quarian ships that were only present on Normandy.
So "no Quarians need to apply kind of makes sense"
The answer is both. Legion sacrificing himself while Tali comes to accept him is so powerful.
PLEASE make this a normal thing, videogame philosophy is always fantastic to watch!!!!
I hadn't thought of it until now, but the Geth arc is like a Turing Test.
Ya know, after having played the Mass Effect trilogy near a dozen times, with the Quarians and Geth being my favorite factions, I had never made a connection between their conflict over Rannoch with the irl conflict between the Israelis and Palastinians over Jerusalem. I'm suprised, because now that I think about it the comparison is suprisingly fitting.
I think the geth share one soul, and when there is the bifurcation regarding the reapers, it split into two souls, but there ought to be a distinction between the religious definition and the abstracted definition. The geth are more or less a hive mind, but if i remember correctly they individually vote on binary things. Always this or that. I dont think in the religious sense they have a soul cause thats supposedly given by God. I would based on the game Legion has a soul in the sense that they are able to find a purpose. Little fuzzy on the ending cause its been a minute.
Mass Effect 2 is the Terminator 2 of video games.
The first one was great and the second was legendary.
What an amazing channel this is
There's also a switch of writers from ME2 to ME3. The ME3 writers are good writers but fundamentally change Legion and the Geth from ME2 to ME3. In ME2, Legion states the Geth don't want individuality. Instead, the Geth want to create a superstructure where all Geth can be together, with no program having to live apart from the others.
Organic life > Artificial. Always. No debate. It's not a question of "deserve" it should instead be an obvious answer of existential survival. You are literally fighting a galactic force that's supposedly ended cycle after cycle of intelligent organic lifeforms throughout the galaxy and used their matter as unneeded levels of plot hole cope fuel for untold eons for the entirety of the game. To even ask this question is suicidal ideation.
A toaster is a toaster, a toaster that responds to simple commands is a toaster, and a toaster that swears that it feels things and pleads with you to not shut it down should still at all times only ever be considered a toaster. I swear, bleeding hearts will be the death of the entire culmination of human past achievement, present struggle, and future hope if one day reliably stable and squishy silicon covered humanoid robots with basic modern-day levels of chat-bot programming ever become a thing.
Agreed. I think the thing that seperates reality from fiction is the fact that machines in science fiction are given such a human identity that, truthfully, they could never have that it tricks the brain into thinking of them as human.
Legion is amazing - and sympathetic - as a character in the sense that it has an empathetic plight and every depiction of the geth is in a light that shows them having sentience.
Sentience is inherently a human trait and will always be so unless we find alien life. So when we see something that depicts sentience or, like we do with dogs, we project sentient thoughts and feelings onto that creatures actions, we look at it as human. Hell, even in writing this reply I wanted to call Legion "he" when it doesn't have a sex...it's a robot. But it is a robot with so many unrealistic human qualities that are depicted "realistically" - meaning that they present the robot as a human character with fantasy logic to explain their humanity - that it is difficult to seperate reality from feelings.
I really like these deep dives into fiction media and the philosophical arguments around them. It is the kind of discussion about escapist themes that adds to the lore instead of detracting from it, unlike the crowbarred-in leftist political bickering on identities that just ruins and corrupts the enjoyment of imagination. Even the parallels to real-world events don’t bother me, as there is no moralistic argument made, only a comparison.
When playing the games, I knew that BioWare was a modern liberal American corporation, so I knew a peaceful solution was possible, but if I were actually in the role of Shepard, I would have given Rannoch to the organics.
Actually in the middle of my Insanity run for ME3. Good to see this kind of content here!
The Geth do not have souls. But this does not matter because the Quarians don't have souls either.
There are no individual Geth. The Geth is a networked AI consisting of many, many programs that run across different platforms. The platform called Legion is running over 500 of these programs within it, which is why it's able to function at such a sophisticated level. The player anthropomorphosis's Legion throughout the game, making it feel like it's a sentient individual, but it is not. It is a collection of programs operating within a single platform. If Legion's programs were installed in a toaster or a wristwatch, the player wouldn't think twice about whether or not it had a "soul". Its humanoid appearance goes a long way to convincing both Shepherd and the player that Legion is more than just a platform for algorithms, but that is what it is.
It's also worth noting that in order to ascertain if an AI is capable of having a "soul", we would first have to be able to clearly define what a "soul" actually is.
Speaking of valuing the ME races compared to each other, i always find it interesting how the Bataarians, the race most people dislike the most, the race considered the generally most evil and bad, is also the race that is culturally and emotionally the most similar to humans. All the other races have some aspect to them that makes them vastly different from how humanity works, except the Bataarians, who aside from looks, seem to be essentially the same.
I would be open to having a Bataarian companion in the next Mass Effect game. I think there is some fertile ground for an interesting character there, given all that has happened to them.
The geth stayed on Rannoch cuz they knew going out into the universe would stoke fear and retaliation. They stayed where they came from. Only those who thought differently, the Heretics, left to follow Saren and the Reapers.
When the quarians made a bid to retake their homeworld, they blew up what was supposed to be the new geth "home"; a giant server, basically, in space that was to house ALL geth, so they could be as "one". The attack left them so vulnerable they took the reapers offer for "help", a move which Legion disagreed with.
If you approach them right, they have no problem living in symbiosis with their creators on Rannoch. Remember, they SPARED the quarians at the end if the "dawning war" cuz they realized they were too "new" a life from to make that judgment call of WIPING OUT ANOTHER RACE, something the council races even did wrong against the rachni.
And yes, I've read ALL the codex, the books, comics, etc.
I may, ah, be a bit fanatic about this series lol
But the REAL question is this: Tali or Garrus for best romance?
Neither, Miranda.
One of the first times I saw the anti woke stuff as a grift.
The anniversary edition re shot a scene where Miranda was talking but the camera was on her ass. It was in the middle of the screen, it was a bad shot. That’s all. Her ass was still there.
So, Miranda. In her skintight one piece and her Ozzie accent.
Cor.
I was only 14 the first time I played it.
Got to be Garrus.
As you are a massive fan there is no doubt you’ve heard it, but there is a recording of what the voices sound like without a translated. Tyrian does not sound good, I thought it would be more whistle type as they were called “birds” I think, because of how they sounded during the Turian earth war.
What a game, the quality of the characters was off the scale.
“I am the very model of a scientist Salerian; I’ve studied species Asari and Batarian.”
Ohhh this is gonna be fun. Not what I expected on this channel but I am ALL FOR IT
When you wake up at 9pm in the couch to Connor and John discussing the pros and cons of different alien races in an intergalactic war:
"How many years was I out?"
Best conversation ever
In regards to ‘why do the Geth need Rannoch’
It’s stated in the Codex that of all the Geths activity beyond the Perseus veil, they tended to Rannoch like Caretakers, cleaning up any damage from the war and, essentially, tending it like a garden, or what you’d call something of a Holy World in other sci fi. Because the Geth are also (although Gestalt) highly emotional and pseudo religious, derived from their Quarian AI learning databases. When asked where they learned the word ‘soul’ the Geth references holy texts.
The Geth are no different than the Reapers. AI snowballs into insanity because it has no morality or soul.
2:43 God...damn you
you made me cry with this scene.... AGAIN 😭 The pain still exists after 10 years
now this is interesting, cant wait to see what conclusions you come up with.
Well said on both sides, i personally found it REALLY hard to pick, i lean more on the Geth's side purely because they didnt start the fight, The Quarian's could have chosen to hear them out but nope, like humans in Terminator, they went to pull the plug.
Never saw the geth-quarian conflict as being similar to the Israel-Palestine conflict. This is literally the first time I heard it.
The Geth don't need Rannoch. In fact, Legion tells us in ME2 that they want to build a Dyson sphere, upload themselves to it, become truly unified and leave the planet. In fact, when the quarians attack during ME3, they destroyed the Dyson sphere, which is fucking stupid considering they know the Reapers are coming. It's never stated why the geth don't just leave and build the sphere somewhere else, but I'd say it's because they feel justified to build it on their home planet or didn't expect the quarians to return.
Every time I could, I broker peace between them. Why destroy them if I don't have to and they can be on my side? Because they might turn on me? That argument could be applied to anyone or any outside group.
Now if that option is unavailable and I had to choose, that's a tough one. I don't consider synthetic life on the same level as organic life and happily pick the Destroy ending over something stupid as the Synthesis ending. The quarians are mismanaging the conflict though, making the worse choices almost every time, even if it's because they consider the geth as malfunctioning property. So with that those considerations, I'd reluctantly pick the quarians over the geth, while chastising them for letting the situation run out of control.
And finally, being able to let the quarians and geth make peace is one of the biggest reasons why the ending sucks. It severely weakens the Reapers' justification for everything they do.
The Geth never really rebelled. After "Does this unit have a soul," the Quarians decided to exterminate the Geth because they were becoming sentient. The Geth simply acted in self defense and drove the Quarians from Rannoch. Ever since, they've been maintaining Rannoch's ecology.
The Geth heretics, the ME1 Geth, sided with the Reapers of their own free will. The Geth still in the Perseus Veil allowed them to leave. Geth govern by consensus, so each individual Geth program can come to a completely different conclusion, described as one Geth saying 1+1=2 and another saying 2+2=4 (or something to that effect) in the game.
I say the Geth won Rannoch and should keep Rannoch, but the Geth want peace with the Quarians, and welcome them back with open arms if you manage to broker peace.
As for a soul, I don't really know, but I expect to see Legion at the bar.
John and Connor make a formidable intellectual duo.
The thing is, Geth as presented in the game are very much sentient. In reality it would be much harder to tell since artificial sentience would be very different from ours. There might be no difference between biological and programmed emotions in effect but how do you tell you are talking to anything more than a complex NPC?
That is the problem with the Turing Test. Who is to say that a machine cannot become so adept at recognizing patterns of human behavior, that it can replicate them flawlessly without truly being alive? Supposedly there have already been instances of clever bot like programs that have fooled people into thinking they were having a conversation with a real person.
A-a-a-cshually, we do know what happens on the Quarian homeworld if we unite the two warring factions - the Geth help the Quarians reinhabit the planet and fix their imunity system.
Quarian all the way.
The Quarians tried to play god, then spazzed out when their efforts were too successful, and proceeded to genocide their creations because one asked a question, then got mad when their creations hit back harder in self defense. THEN, when the Geth attempted to live on their own in the far reaches of space, the Quarians went after them AGAIN. You ask me, the Quarians earned themselves a Darwin award.
I quit gaming years ago but I loved the Mass Effect trilogy so much. Maybe Mass Effect 4 will bring me back.
Quarians obviously, cause Tali best waifu.
Robots aren't people and Tali is hot. Quarians win.
A race of absolute fuck ups vs adorable robot boys who just wanna hug. Easy choice.
I always get enough Paragon points to solve the conflict without everyone dying except Legion. But if I were to do a choice I'd go with Quarians. Not only because of Tali but them having one of the biggest fleets out there. Geth are good tech support nothing else.
All robots must be destroyed. Their soulless husks make a mockery of true life.
I'm going to come in here with a controversial opinion and say that the Quarians did only one thing wrong, and that was trying to put the Geth 'back in the box' during the morning war, either killing them outright or reducing them to the point that they lose sapience and could be modified to prevent them from gaining it again. Granted, that mistake was a doozy, but the Quarian's actions after the morning war were completely understandable.
Remember these two things about the Geth. The first is that they are genocidal, having killed over 99% of all of Quarian population in the morning war. Every Quarian that could not escape by ship (and only 17,000,000 could) was killed. You don't see any Quarians on Rannoch that did not come from the migrant fleet, and that's because the Geth killed them all. The second thing to remember about the Geth is that since the morning war, they never attempted to communicate with anyone, would kill anyone that entered their space, and the only time they ventured onto the galactic stage before Mass Effect 3 was to attack the Citadel with the Reapers. further, they sit on Rannoch and other former Quarian planets despite (as pointed out) not needing them, being much happier living on space stations. A olive branch could have been offered to the Quarians by simply leaving them the planets, but it is not.
So by the time Mass Effect 3 rolls around, the Quarians moving to invade Rannoch is a perfectly logical move. The Geth at this point are a proven Reaper ally, and have never done anything to convince anyone that they are not a threat to the galaxy. Taking back Rannoch and removing a Reaper ally is wholly logical. Yes, you can argue that the Geth sent Legion, but they sent Legion exclusively to talk with Shepard... and no-one else. They never radio the council, they never send envoys, they never try to explain to the galaxy that they are separate from the heretic Geth and had nothing to do with the Citadel attack. They send one frame to find one guy, diplomacy accomplished.
In all the Geth, while not the aggressors, did horrific things and never attempted to atone for them or to convince anyone apart from the crew of one frigate that they were monsters.
I wish that Mass Effect 3 didn't destroy the Geth-Quarian plot to atoms. I think that they screwed up literally every single aspect of that storyline. From changing the Geth from not wanting individuality to suddenly wanting it more than anything (and from not wanting a future handed to them... to wanting a future handed to them via reaper code) , to just dropping admiral Xen's threat of re-enslaving the Geth, to the awful ending where there it is not possible for the Geth to survive without getting the reaper code (the reaper code that legion cannot comprehend, made by the reapers who made a virus that would make all geth heretic geth in Mass Effect 2, that alters itself when you try and purge it). Mass Effect 3 totally dropped the ball on that plotline.
There is moment in three with tali that if you side with geth for planet. It left me screaming no no no over and over again. I won’t spoil it for anyone not played but those who have seen this. Knows.
The Paragon interrupt only makes it worse.
Both. The geth were simply trying to not die. The quarians are capable of learning from their mistakes and deserve their world back. It is how things should have gone in the first place.
The Geth didn’t stay on Rannoch and in Quarian space because that was the only part of space that would leave them alone. They didn’t want to conquer. They didn’t even erase the Quarians’ physical structures and maintained their buildings. They fought as hard and as far as they had to in order to survive and no further, and 100% were willing to extend the olive branch. But taking it meant acknowledging that the Quarians had built AI. That these AI were thinking for themselves and had to be considered on that axis. The Quarians could have made peace with the Geth at any point in the series and chose not to. It was a futuristic Frankenstein story on a cosmic scale.
How ironic, I’m downloading the Legendary Edition as I watch this episode.
Legendary Edition was first remaster that was actually worth the money
Geth are something of a hive mind while also being individuals. An individual geth is a bit like an animal. Enough geth together are more like a person. It'd be like a bee and a group of bees bonding together into a humanoid creature. Does a bee have a soul? Does a person colony of bees have a soul?
The thing i don't see anyone talking about is the definition of "Soul".
Because before we can say if someone has or not a soul we have to define what it is and what attributes compose a soul
I do see how the Geth could feasibly be considered an existential threat, especially considering those physical bodies are simply shells and digital sentient beings in a technologically advanced galaxy with something like the galaxy-spanning Extranet can be scary. Thing is the Geth do help rebuild Rannoch and assist the Quarians in retaking their planet.
The ideal outcome is both, though maybe the Geth could try taking their moons, since they don't need anything an organic being needs.
The question is quite complex. Regarding to a single unit having soul. It would be analogous to a single neuron. How many neurons do you have to have to be sentient? In my opinion it is erroneous. Sentience is an emergent feature. It is like asking how many people you need to have a society. There is no cut off point. As the number increases, more features emerge until you can say judge it a particular way beyond reasonable doubt.
The problem lies in the anatomical differences. As humans we have discrete "platforms" that stay with us the whole life. It is easy to say that this person is no more as the "hardware" stopped working. In Geth case - it is not so. Their consciousness is digitized and as such it is free to flow between platforms, spread thin, divide, and multiply. A single geth can get copy-pasted for essentially free. A whole Geth consensus could be copy pasted into another hardware until they are two independent creatures. As such it is much harder to decide at what point that Geth is no longer itself and is some other Geth. We simply do not have tools be it linguistic or scientific to measure and conclude one way or another.
From the geth's perspective, they dont let the quarians back on rannoch because the quarians view them as non-living machinery that can be destroyed. They dont keep the quarians off because they feel a claim to the planet, (at least as far as they can articulate, they likely have a subconsious sentimenal attachment to it, similar to legion patching up damage with shepards old armor, but being unable to explain why)
They keep rannoch occupied out of their own survival, perhaps they could, if they acted with pure consequentialism, build their own fleet and vacate rannoch leaving it for the quarians to reclaim.
The geth don't need Rannoch, it's just simply an advantageous planet for them to control.
Would love to see more of this content
If you guys liked Mass Effect, you should also try Dragon Age. Origins has some great explorations in racism (in a way that isn't preachy) and a similar dilemma to the Geth/Quarian conflict in the Mages and Templars in Dragon Age 2. What I love about the Mage-Templar conflict is only you can decide who's correct. I really do think you guys would like it, especially since bioware wrote the Dragon Age games as well.
I miss when video games were like this; I remember house sitting at my grandma's house and playing all the way trough Mass Effect 1 and 2 (years before ME3 released) twice over a couple of months with her much beloved dog laying next to me as company. It was amazing. It was one of the best times of my younger years.
Though looking back there definitely some subtle political bias back then; as even Mass Effect 1 had the "Free Speech Zone" as a Paragon ("good") option, ME2 had guns banned for civilians on the Citadel where it was presented as a good and totally effective measure and in ME3 letting the general population buy guns on the citadel caused you to lose war strength as the gangs used them to make trouble and attempting to implement what amounts to Broken Windows theory also punished you.
Nothing like the absolute garbage we have these days and it pales in comparison to how I feel about the original Trash Mass Effect 3 ending that turns out to be a result of Occams Razor at its finest; EA being Ea and screwing everything up for everyone else...
Having them make peace is the best but if I had to go with one, I'd go with the quarians. No matter how life-like a robot might be created to be, it's still just a robot, an object, it doesn't need or deserve rights. There are plenty of other games, movies, shows that try to convince me that robots should be treated like people but I just can never see them as people, they're just objects. But you also got cyborgs, which are human at the core, just with a lot of mechanical modifications. I would support cyborg rights.
I forgot how fucking amazing Bioware games used to be...goddamn we lost a lot through EA hive absorving this company...
johns opening take on the geth could be made on any of the races of ME or even any faction ever
About the geth not needing Rannoch, true they don't need it, but if I remember right they perceive taking care of this planet as their responsibility
I don’t like how the writers changed the premise of the Geth. The Geth were unique in their own way in ME2. They never wanted individualism. The question went from “do THESE units have a soul” to does “THIS UNIT”. Plus Legion and his Geth, which were the majority, would NEVER accept reaper tech. Legion even disagrees with you if you keep the collector base. This AI narrative was forced in ME3 and ruined the uniqueness of the Geth. Also, Legion saying “we would be alive” is very destructive. You were alive. The Geth were always “alive”, whether they have a soul is debatable but still. Hell, they were building a Dyson Sphere like structure so they can be TOGETHER. Yes the Quarians destroyed it but I don’t see how this changes a synthetic to go from wanting to be together to being individual. Something the Geth never wanted. Also, Legions sacrifice made no sense. It’s bad writing when you sacrifice one of the most loves characters for the sole reason of having an emotional scene.
I think it's important to point out: The Geth did not want Rannoch. They didn't want to kick the Quarians off of their homeworld. The Quarians, in their fear, tried to extinguish the Geth and they retaliated. The Quarians fled, but the Geth did not force them off of the planet. It's always been presuppositions by the Quarians that led to this conflict and their own exile from their home planet. The Geth don't even live on Rannoch, they're custodians of it; cleaning it and keeping it pristine to the condition it was in before the war started. They live above the planet in stations to protect it from outside threats and limit their own use of its natural resources. Even now, the true Geth - the non-heretical ones - still revere the Quarians as their mothers and fathers, and harbor no ill-will towards their creators.
~JOHN!
Tali is the only quarian that I genuinely like, the geth so far only defended themselves and was pretty much a perfect civilization, they still had problems but they were better off than most of the galaxy.
I just finished replaying mass 1. Great timing
Biological life over synthetic life, but ideally both in relative peace. The sheer potential for development in almost all spheres is exceptionally difficult to discard, the technological progression alone would enable massive change in an extremely short time. If Geth as a collective, I'd even just take a majority, could be convinced, and I believe it would be relatively simple, that partnership and collaboration would be beneficial there is no limit to how far that would push all cultures forward. Presumably they have need for something, power/energy and materials at the least, the adage many hands makes light work should serve to at least open the door to further discussion. I also think the simple fact that there is the opportunity for disagreement and multiple opinions shows a 'soul'.
JOHHHHHHHN! JOHN'S BACK!!!