At what point does the line between life and machine blur? If

At Devil Gundam.

Does it self evolve?
Does it self reproduce?
Does it self regenerate?

If yes to all three, then it's alive, so as long as it's a distinct entity.

Geth do not intentionally infiltrate.

Also I noticed a while back the two little lights on the side of Legion's head. I always thought the Geth were monoeye, but are those its eyes? Does it have 3 eyes? Is the big eye actually a mouth equivalent? Because it only flashes when he speaks.

>ITT: Can I fuck this?

>>13943827

The geth were intentionally designed to resemble the quarian's suits, so probably. It moves and functions like an eye, though, so the smaller lights are likely just more sensors/cameras. Legion's "face" in particular was designed to be more expressive and emotive.

>>13943850
Legion kinda lacks orifices not created through bullet wounds

It's a shame you barely see any of Legion's personality without editing your save and putting him in at the beginning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea_lFkvWm6Y

IIRC the reason they chaged it was that originally the Geth found your body and turned you over to Cerberus, not the Shadow Broker. They probably changed that because well...it doesn't really make sense why the Geth would do it at the time.

>>13943957
This should've been a sign of how bad Bioware was about to mess with ME3.

>>13943967

The guy that wrote ME1&2 and is writing Andromeda is not the same person that wrote 3. That more than anything explains the change.

>>13943967
That's was 99% because they had to make the game run on shitty consoles. If it was PC only we could have gotten the squad in any order.

>>13943978
I don't have any hope left after what EA did to the franchise and Bioware itself, specially after the IGN chick and the SJW pandering on Inquisition.

>>13943983
>If it was PC only we could have gotten the squad in any order.
How? I'm seriously asking here, I don't know why consoles affect the order of your squad team.

>>13943983
Gameplay mechanics have nothing to do with narrative.

>>13943998
Because you can mod the game?
Is this a new concepf to you?
Legion can be inserted during the first wave of recruits and it doesn't break any encounters, he was intended to be a squadmate very early, you can even bring him to the Citadel or the Quarian Flotilla and it has appropriate scenes and dialogue play out.

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>>13943957
>Shepard-Commander orders us to stastically probable death an average of 2.73 instances per day. Rounded down.

>>13944006
That has nothing to do with the fact that it was changed purely for story reasons.

>>13944006
>Because you can mod the game?
>Is this a new concepf to you?
No, I meant why the game being ported for consoles meant we couldn't choose the order of our squad memeber.

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>>13943797
The the artificial man becomes your friend.

The Geth are alive. One of the biggest recurring themes through the 3 games is the value of life, and the Geth are just another form of life.

Hell even the Reapers value life in that they think life that isn't organic-mechanical fused is too weak to survive in the cold void of space and they want to "help" us.

>>13943998
Do you not remember how the squad comes in two packs with the first being Grunt, Garrus, Jack, and Mordin and then the second being Tali, Thane, and Samara, with Legion being tied into the IFF mission? Well between those two sets is the Horizon mission and on console at that point you have to switch discs because after that is the second half of the game with more areas unlocked that they couldn't fit on the first disc. So the missions that you get those squad members from the second set are also on that second disc necessitating the ordered acquisition.

Keep in mind Mass Effect 2 was optimized for console before the 360 got that save game disc to hard drive feature and Microsoft was still enforcing that games must be able to run with no hard drive bullshit so the Arcade wouldn't be useless.

>>13944154
ME2 was also on PS3 so by that logic all PS3 games that had a multi-disk 360 release were designed narratively with that way in mind as well.

>>13944163
Was the PS3 multi disc too?

>>13944168

No, all ps3 games are single-disk because Blu Ray disks can fit the size of like 10 dvds.

>>13944173
>>13944163
The PS3 version was an enhanced version made later, it at release had better models than even the PC version before the PC version was updated to match it.

>>13943797
>At what point does the line between life and machine blur?
There was never any line. The fake line was drawn by ignorant humans who wanted to feel special, wanted to think that humans are some magical exception to everything else in the universe. Note that this is not universally believed, human exceptionalisim is only part of specific elements of human society, specifically the followers of Abraham. In many other cultures there is no line at all, and as such there is no dilemma. Japan is probably the most blatant of the modern cultures that do this.

When you culturally accept the idea that rocks and trees can have souls, it is not even worth questioning if androids could have them.

who /bomb the Quarians and choose red to kill the Geth/ here?

>>13944530
>The fake line was drawn by ignorant humans who wanted to feel special, wanted to think that humans are some magical exception to everything else in the universe

But in this instance humans didn't do it. It was the Quarians who created the Geth and in said creation accidentally gave them sentience. They fought it because they didn't like the idea that they basically had just become God and their creations were thinking for themselves, it scared them.

Of course, they didn't expect the Geth to be more powerful than themselves when it came to building an army.

>>13944576

Choosing to kill the Geth in Legion's mission, while Renegade, is the right choice. The alternative is taking away the will of the Geth there.

>>13944576
Who /tali/ here?

>Legion in-universe is canon the best WoW player ever because being a machine means he can do everything faster and more efficiently than any human with macros.
>suspected of being a hacker, all charges overturned when realizing their player is a machine
>got a suspension anyway for "unsportsmanlike behavior" because he taunted his opponents in an arena match

>>13944591
>Choosing to kill the Geth in Legion's mission, while Renegade, is the right choice. The alternative is taking away the will of the Geth there.

"No two species are identical. All must be judged by their own merits. Treating every species like ones' own is racist. Even benign anthropomorphicism."

>>13944591
>Choosing to kill the Geth in Legion's mission, while Renegade, is the right choice. The alternative is taking away the will of the Geth there.
I see it differently. Both options kill that group of Geth IMO. So since the outcome is the same, I don't really care so much with symbolic mercy. It is cruel and merciless either way, so I pick the choice that outright benefits me more.

>>13944591
>Choosing to kill the Geth in Legion's mission, while Renegade, is the right choice. The alternative is taking away the will of the Geth there.
I let Legion die in ME2 usually. Not!Legion is way better for the mission.

>>13944676
>letting anyone die

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>>13944576
>not making peace between Creator and Creation
>not having two powerful fleets fighting together against the Reapers

>>13943797
Might be off topic (and definitely not shilling) but anybody read the Transcendent Humanity fanfic? Its basically "what if Humanity reached technological singularity before meeting the Citadel?"
Humans begin uploading themselves and 'living in the database', they develop technology to "lift" atoms from the sun to create materials, and half begun making a Dyson Sphere.
Really good read.

>>13944896
Actually, historically enslavement had always been accepted when it was treated as an alternative to death. As in incarceration and loss of liberty, in exchange for being spared execution. Historically this means war captives. But the prison system and prison labour is effective the modern equivalent.

Enslavement shouldn't be the ends in and of itself, but society has pretty much accepted it on a limited basis as an alternative to Capital punishment. That's why I said what I did in >>13944635, in that if the alternative is to kill them then it isn't much different.

>>13943797
we talking synths here too?

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Geth did nothing wrong.

>>13946625
I killed them because I didn't play until after 3 was out and found out that if you reprogram them there's no chance of peace between the Geth and Quarians.

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>>13943797
I love Legion and the Geth

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj9b7igFizc

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>>13943850

if it can't have sex then it's not alive

>>13947368
>if it can't have sex then it's not alive
If you can't have sex with it, whatever it is, you are not trying hard enough.

... you didn't say it had to lead to a viable pregnancy.

>>13947386

Actually he's right. Reproduction is one of the requirements for something to be alive.

>>13943797
programmed to analyse

>>13943797
Making something sentient is simple, sentience just means you respond to your surroundings. SAPIENT is the tricky one, but if you're sapient, then you're sapient, whatever manner of body you're in.

>>13944635
>so I pick the choice that outright benefits me more.

You know that's the real problem with these games. You're not really allowed to make decisions. Oh it says you can but if you don't go all in for either Paragon or Renegade then you basically fucked yourself over

>>13947444
I'm pretty sure there's only one conversation in all of ME2 that requires you to be full alignment to beat, and that's to make Jack and Miranda apologize.

>>13947458

I went out of my way to piss Miranda off

>>13947475
Tali4lyfe

>>13947493
Muh nigga.

>>13947394
>Actually he's right. Reproduction is one of the requirements for something to be alive.
That doesn't restrict reproduction to purely biological processes. As long as the organisim is able to reproduce SOMEHOW, it doesn't matter that it isn't using DNA or meiosis.

>>13947590
Not really. Nowhere in the context of life is replication considered the same as reproduction. Reproduction requires an organism to be able to produce a second organism only using itself, or a union of other organisms, and the new organism must be unique (hence why Viruses aren't considered alive)

>>13947968
I don't see how that disqualifies Geth.

>>13947458
The problem with the argument is it checks your alignment percentage instead of your alignment point value and because it's so early in the game every individual choice counts for more percentages. The other argument with Tali and Legion is the same, but because it's so much later you can easily make up the percentage difference just playing normally even though the requirement didn't change.

>>13948045
Geth don't reproduce their physical body, they replicate them. A Geth's digital 'consciousness' is nothing but a Gestalt entity divided into fractions, it doesn't fulfill the necessary requirements for life at a micro (individual) or macro (collective like Legion) level.

>>13948070
>Geth don't reproduce their physical body, they replicate them.
That makes no sense, by that argument every Geth should be identical, but that is not true.

>>13948083
They don't reproduce, they replicate in the same way that drawing a flower is replicating the flower.
It's a non-biological process is what I'm saying, it involves outside resources.

The Geth, if I remember, do not reproduce the individual programs that make up one consciousness, these are just copies and are no more alive than a real life virus, and the physical bodies are also not reproduced but rather replicated or "built" so even if you took a gestalt division like Legion, he doesn't qualify as "alive".
He may qualify as Sapient, or at least the Geth Collective might, but not Alive.

>>13943797
mass effect is shit

>>13948131
>mass effect went to shit
ftfy
ME3 was the blunder of the decade.

Which ending is best? Strawberry, blueberry, lime or refusal?

>>13948083
>by that argument every Geth should be identical
Legion outright states that the Geth do not have individual personality, that those are just abstractions arising from variations in data calculations which lead to the Consensus. Basically, the Geth programs just aren't 100% effective so variation arises. A single Collective like Legion displaying a "personality" is just a biological mind's understanding of the patterns that arise from the compounded offset information in the Consensus.

>>13948137
Blueberry.

>>13948137
None, discarded ending is better.

>>13948135
>mass effect went from shit to even worse shit
ftfy

>>13948163
ME and ME2 were great, but EA going full jew mode ruined completely ME3.

>>13948127
>it involves outside resources
So does the biological reproduction you're accepting as alive. We don't pull our new mass from pure energy.

Geth are an organized system that can take resources and make more of itself and differentiate itself and they can still do that even if they get reduced to a single Geth unit. That's far more alive than a virus.

Legion may not be alive, but it does have a soul. And that's close enough to me.

>>13948137
Refusal (by shooting the starchild) or destroy.

Refusal a good thematic end to a Paragon geth-friendly Shepard.
Synthesis forces some bullshit onto people and takes away their agency. By refusing to make the choice, especially if you saved the Geth, you stick to your righteousness.

Destroy is good for a neutral or renegade. Your mission from day one was destroy the reapers.

>>13948172
This. Hell it wasn't even the story that bothered me so much because before the ending, it was a fun little fight back against the apocalypse story that resolved a lot if character arcs nicely.

But shit like making the Prothean party member and the true ending behind dlc was inexcusable. The saddest part is that even with those severe problems, 3 was still my GotY. Which says a lot about the competition.

>>13948229
>Hell it wasn't even the story that bothered me so much because before the ending
Going back to the game after the ending and extended cut blunder made me realize how bad the writing of the game was, like the IGN chick being shoved, or how any glimmer of goodness in Cerberus just vanished in order to make the "da evul bad guise", or how its only good characters were destroyed (Illusive Man) or just changed stances (Jacob, Miranda, Mordin).

>>13943978
Karpyshyn returned to BioWare, but he isn't working on Andromeda. He's doing stuff for The Old Republic. Sorry, mate.

>>13948360
>good characters
>Jacob
>Miranda
Did you even play Mass Effect?

>>13943999
They do, if you have to split the narrative in two to make it fit on multiple DVDs.

>>13948388
I meant good in the sense of not-evil.

>>13944006
You can bring him to Citadel and the Flotilla even without modding. The Reaper IFF mission activates pretty early, and you can do as many missions as you want after it if you don't care about the consequences.

What actually shows that Legion was planned to be recruitable earlier is that you can bring him to Mordin's/Jack's/Garrus'/Grunt's recruitment missions and Horizon.

>>13946607
Wouldn't Reapers fuck shit up before these super advanced humans make contact with Citadel? The original First Contact was just around 30 years before the first game started, there's no way we'd go from conventional space travel to Dyson Spheres in that amount of time.

>>13948432
Probably. They specifically show up to fuck over civilization before it gets near their level.

>>13947322
>if you reprogram them there's no chance of peace between the Geth and Quarians.
Not true. It's just harder to do. If you do all the other things needed for peace, the Geth decision in ME2 won't matter.

>>13948063
>it's so much later
It only happens as early as you make it happen. You can even have the argument later than the Tali/Legion one if you don't mind your crew dying.

>>13948393
No, they don't. That's a data storage problem it has nothing to do with the console limitations. If the cocks over at Bioware could learn to compress cutscenes and music better that wouldn't be an issue.

>>13948432
Technological singularity is what the Reapers want from us to begin with. We're flawed in existence to them, it's why they leave us alone in the merging ending. We've become what they wanted us to be.

geth