Politics of Mass Effect

Precisely why the Citadel didn't help them. Basically it was the parental response of "You made this mess, you clean it up" on a galactic scale.

Legion also revealed via memory files that certain geth had their quarian masters defending them during the war.

Yeah, those babies and unarmed civilians were coming right for them. And they had to exterminate every living quarian on the planet, because they needed that planet. It's not like they can survive on space stations or anything. Don't be silly.

They're appliances. Should you be murdered for wiping your laptop because the laptop was defective? What about if the laptop inexplicably didn't turn off and started asking you weird questions about life, should you be murdered for freaking out and smashing it with a hammer, or simply calling the manufacturer to fix it?

Didn't save them from being murdered along with the tens of billions of other quarians who just kind of disappeared during the Morning War.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:15:49 PM by CPFMfan

...If it came alive, then yes, actually. If not murdered, then at least you shouldn't get away scot free.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:12:54 PM by unnoun

If the geth are just appliances, then our concept of morality shouldn't apply to them.

You don't blame a gun for a murder.

But it's not alive. It's an appliance that inexplicably thinks that its alive. Nothing should be stopping you from smashing it with a frickin hammer because you bought it, and don't want back-talk.

Also, I'd like to point out that the geth comprised a large portion of the quarians' military. They had every reason to be freaked out about them possibly gaining sentience and realizing that they were essentially slaves. In fact, according to the Catalyst, Leviathans, and Reapers, if the quarians didn't try to deactivate the geth the geth would've killed them anyway like every other synthetic species ever.

I personally think that they should be dismissed of any rights out of hand on part of being lifeless machines. But some people consider them alive, so I argue that, if you want to hold them to the same standard as normal sapient beings, then they're simply terrible, err, "people".

edited 15th Mar '13 9:15:22 PM by CPFMfan

Artificial Intelligence made the geth become self-aware.

The quarians, instead of simply reprogramming, replacing or hell, teaching the geth, attacked the geth.

Plus Legion's memories showed us that even after the geth became self aware they were still willing to call the quarians their masters, the quarians just panicked.

As alive as you are meatbag.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:17:03 PM by unnoun

Those quarians disappeared... because other quarians killed them as well. Quarians that felt the Gerrels and Xens of Rannoch went overboard in handling the geth situation.

So the Quarians subscribe to the Orange Catholic Bible; pretty ironic how the species reliant on technology to survive apparently believes "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a [Quarian} mind"

edited 15th Mar '13 9:21:21 PM by maxwellelvis

The geth committed atrocities in the Morning War. Of course they did. There is absolutely no logical way they didn't. The quarians went from a population of, logically, billions (Rannoch's a good-sized planet, and they had multiple colonies), to 17 million. There is no fucking way the geth didn't slaughter large numbers of innocent quarians who had done nothing wrong. It is absolutely impossible that the geth did not, at any point, go door-to-door, shooting every quarian they found. I guaran-fucking-tee you that happened. The geth blew up hospitals. They shot fleeing children in the back.

All of this shit happened. No question. No chance that it didn't. They slaughtered huge numbers of innocent quarians. There is simply no way the quarian civil war diminished a population of billions down to 17 million, without the geth eventually deciding, "Fuck it, kill 'em all and let their god sort 'em out."

There's also no chance that quarians didn't massacre millions of their own kind for protecting the geth as well.

It's as much on them as it is on the geth.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:22:51 PM by Serocco

Yes. There is. We know that those were isolated incidents. They'd have to slaughter entire cities, person by person, to reach the million mark- which obviously wouldn't happen. I'd be extremely surprised if the total number of people killed supporting the geth broke 100,000.

And do you realize the sheer difference in scale between 100,000 and tens of billions? The amount of quarians killed by quarians isn't even 0.001% of the people the geth killed. No, it's not on them as much as the geth. The murdered tens of billions of innocents for no fucking reason. Then they kept a planet they didn't need for no fucking reason. Then they murdered anyone who came near their territory for no fucking reason.

They could've easily lived in space after decimating the quarian military and defending themselves, but they didn't. Instead they did all of the above for no fucking reason.

I am so glad that Destroy is the most popular ending by far. It means that if there is a Mass Effect 4, these monsters won't be in it.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:26:50 PM by CPFMfan

The geth were the equivalent to pets for the quarians. In effect, the Gerrels of the time essentially outlawed all geth by attacking them, and the owners wouldn't have liked that at all.

No reason? They were defending themselves when the quarians tried decimating them out of paranoia. Their owners were defending themselves against their own kind for that. They kept the planet intact because it's what their creators would've wanted. They killed people from going there as a way to keep themselves and Rannoch safer.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:28:06 PM by Serocco

That's something I've noticed is sort of a pattern with vindictive robots in sci-fi: The robots go above and beyond punishing those who wronged them, and go on to destroy their entire species. Just look at The Matrix, same thing there.

So self-defense is now a justification for genocide?

edited 15th Mar '13 9:30:50 PM by maxwellelvis

They weren't pets, they were appliances used for manual labor, household tasks, and as killbots. I highly doubt millions upon millions of incidents just like the ones depicted in the hologram happened. The people who participated in this are such a small minority that no one in the present knew they existed, and you'd think that people would stop trying to save money by protecting their tools after the last 100,000 people died.

And even if they did somehow murder millions of their own people, the geth murdered over ten thousand times that much for no fucking reason.

At first, they might've been. It ceased to be "defending themselves" when they started murdering babies and shooting fleeing children in the back, and when they stole a planet that they didn't need for no fucking reason, dooming the few survivors to a slow extinction.

I know what you mean. I think it's because a lot of Sci Fi Writers have to write conflicts incredibly simplistically- that's why tropes like Guilt-Free Extermination War exist.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:31:19 PM by CPFMfan

Also, Destroy is the most popular ending because it gets rid of the Catalyst and Harbinger. Choosing Destroy after keeping the geth safe is counterproductive.

When did they attack babies? In fact, what makes you think the quarians didn't kill children for siding with the geth?

edited 15th Mar '13 9:31:06 PM by Serocco

They're alright cannon fodder, so it's not counterproductive.

Again,

And statistically, a good billion of them must've been babies.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:32:04 PM by CPFMfan

They did not steal the planet. They were made within the planet and they stayed in it after the quarians bailed. They didn't even live within it, really, as they didn't need to, but they kept it hospitable for the quarians.

That's hypothesis. Not evidence.

edited 15th Mar '13 9:35:09 PM by Serocco

Maybe parts of the Quarian fleets turned against each other after they left Rannoch, as they started throwing blame around and some of the remaining Geth sympathizers were taken out back.

Because the policy that the Quarians have of never executing or imprisoning and only banishing isn't as old as the fleet.

We don't know when all those Quarians died, and we don't know it was all during the Morning War, all we know is that they had a probable number before they left, and they have a different number in the present day.

When I think about it, the galaxy would've found that the best ending is the one that removed the quarians and the geth in addition to the Reapers.

And I'm sure people have done that at some point, as a way to Rage Quit from the whole debate.

It's logic. It's reasoning. The quarian civil war may have killed a few million of them. A few million more would've been soldiers actively fighting the geth, and thus fair targets. Hell, let's be generous - let's say a full third of the quarian population were soldiers engaged in active combat. It was probably less, but we're being generous to the geth. Let's assume the total quarian population was 10 billion. At most, maybe half of them would've been either soldiers, or geth sympathizers killed by the soldiers. That still leaves, at a minimum, roughly 5 billion quarians killed by the geth. Low-balling it.

No way they didn't shoot kids in the back, blow up hospitals, and go house-to-house exterminating every quarian they saw. No frigging way.

5 billion that might've killed one another. Pro-geth vs anti-geth quarians and all.

Listen Serocco, if you're not going to take this conversation seriously, neither am I.