Given that there are still a ton of geth and less than rounding-error's worth of quarians, nowhere near as much as quarians were killed by geth.
Furthermore, there is a problem when trying to draw equivalence between the two sides when one holds all the power and can end the conflict whenever it chooses to do so, but simply doesn't. The other has no choice.
...speaking of which why is making peace even an option? Like, does Shepard seriously think the geth will abandon that universal "shoot all organics on sight" policy after being free from the Reaper? Why?
edited 23rd Jan '17 4:46:13 PM by MonsieurThenardier
"It is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just."Well, because Tali is not a geth fangirl, not the daughter (or niece) of a geth fangirl, she has no reason to lie about it, and because she is the single most respected Quarian in the galaxy. Plus what she says can be corroborated by a number of other trustworthy individuals, including Shepard and whoever helped them retake the Alarei - okay, maybe not anyone, but there are a couple of respected individuals in your 2 team (Garrus, Mordin, or even Thane). Technically, you can even bring Legion on Tali's LM.
It's not "crazy ramblings", it's groundbreaking news. The geth have been shooting everyone on sight for three hundred years, and now for the first time they are engaging in conversation - and not with anyone, with their creators.
I think Legion only cut contact when he got turned into a giant antenna to broadcast the Reaper signal - so, after the war started and the geth requested Reaper assistance.
The resolution of the dispute between Tali and Legion in 2 is explicitly them exchanging information to establish the first steps towards mutual trust, and Tali mentions that between 2 and 3 she kept the exchanges going. And again, she is not any Quarian. She is the daughter of an admiral, and she even admits being the best Quarian when it comes to killing geth - so when she starts saying that mmmmaybe extermination might not be needed, there is no reason not to listen to her. I mean, imagine if Donald Trump, tomorrow, said that 'there might be a problem with global warming' - if he said that, you bet that people would listen (and unlike him, Tali is not known for being a pathological liar).
Of course, all those assumptions are a "perfect run" - Tali and Legion survived 2, were loyal, and Tali didn't get exiled. Gerrel's actions might be more justified if either of those things did not happen, but I (and I assume, most people) end up with this outcome, which makes the Quarian warmongering in 3 that much more jarring.
That would be true if there wasn't the "establishing communication" part to trump it - it is mentioned during Tali's LM that the Quarians might want to get rid of the geth, but they don't really want to risk everything in a war. Koris even proves that not all quarians feel like it is justified to kill the geth, so especially after something as significant as "talking to a geth" happened, any talks of war should have been significantly delayed (especially as they couldn't predict that their weapon would become obsolete).
It's not about the risks, it's about launching a (not that popular) war at a moment where something happened that might have allowed to avoid it. Again, all of this is only true if you go for a perfect run, but it's not that hard to do and in this situation, the hawks really look like a bunch of gigantic dickheads instead of the Well-Intentioned Extremist they can be if you didn't establish a cordial relationship between Tali and Legion (and cleared Tali of the treason charge).
Since one of the three outcomes of the arc in 3 is clearly made for "perfect runners" - peace - then it's a bit painful to see that everything else plays out the exact same way. In a perfect world, the war in a "perfect run" wouldn't have been as bloody or deadly because Tali would have managed to hinder the Quarian war effort, and the missions would have been more about stopping the Reapers from taking control of the geth - instead of making the interactions between Tali and Legion insignificant aside from some hidden arithmetics.
edited 23rd Jan '17 4:48:26 PM by Julep
Well, as much as I might value their opinions, they aren't the ones making the decision.
Besides, everyone seems pretty okay with the idea of peace anyway. Well, maybe not Javik, but I've come to expect that from him.
I'm totally in favor of peace - nobody has to die, and we get double the resources to fight the Reapers. It's a win-win.
Oh God! Natural light!The geth are machines, and they had access to all of Rannoch and those other planets' resources and whatever was left of the quarians' infrastructure. We don't know what their population looked like at the end of the war, but they had a major advantage in rebuilding, especially since, as machines with minds that can be backed up to digital copies, it's a lot easier for them to reproduce.
The geth could have tried to make peace and maybe they should have— that's on them. Though given the initial response of the quarians to their newfound sentience, I don't know if it's too surprising that they weren't very trusting after the war.
By that same token, there's no reason to assume the quarians will keep to the terms of the peace either, although it's certainly in their best interests to do so, given the numbers involved— but in this case the geth, still in a position of power, are in fact the ones offering peace. 300 years late, maybe, but it's something.
edited 23rd Jan '17 5:44:20 PM by Unsung
Their reaction to attempts at diplomatic contact by the Council races are the same btw, even though the Council took no action against them.
My head canon to explain this is that the "old" geth were disproportionately concentrated in the Dyson Swarm that the quarians destroyed, and that the ones who were outside it at the time were "younger, more liberal" geth (created after the war) more open to negotiation.
I mean, obviously it's pretty much objectively the Golden Ending. But it's not one that makes any sense in context. While I've gotten peace in most of my playthroughs, I can't really justify any path but destroying the geth from a roleplaying perspective.
I would assume they thoroughly tested their weapon. Especially since, well, it didn't become obsolete. Worked like a charm until the Reapers intervened. What I don't think you're getting is that the quarians did not have the luxury to wait any longer. The Reapers were coming soon (even if they didn't know exactly when), their species was growing closer to extinction every day even without the Reapers, and they needed to make a choice now. And, given the overwhelming majority of available evidence showed the geth to be both hostile and friendly to the Reapers, they wisely decided to use their weapon.
edited 23rd Jan '17 5:06:56 PM by MonsieurThenardier
"It is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just."Waited, because they already waited for 300 years. Attacking just after the most significant event since the Morning War is stupid - if this happened, so again, perfect run. But there was no ticking clock over the Quarian's future. The biggest risk at the moment was actually to go to war.
Gerrel didn't believe in "the geth's masters" though. Tali did, and she used that knowledge to try and delay the war because something much more dangerous was coming. It did not work.
The only somewhat valid point in a perfect run that is made to support the war is "what to do with the civilians" (Raan says it if memory serves) since they have no homeworld. But in a "perfect run", again, you already allowed the krogan population to thrive with the blessing of the freaking Turian hierarchy, so I will go on a whim and say that the Turians would be super happy to know that the largest fleet in the galaxy is on their side if a few of their colonies welcome the, what, 20 million Quarians? Not even that, as those 20 millions include the military and the crew of the ships.
edited 23rd Jan '17 5:15:23 PM by Julep
Yeah, the peace offering on Rannoch after the Reaper invasion is what I meant. And it does sort of come out of nowhere.
The geth held enough power at the end of the original war with the quarians to drive them off, but that's a lead that could have been tenuous, for all we know— certainly letting the quarians come back and re-entrench themselves right away wouldn't be very sound militarily for the geth. As for trust, I was just saying the geth don't trust organics enough to give any ground lest they be destroyed— simple logic, but the geth are kind of naive in certain ways even in the present day. And the quarians originally tried to kill them because they were afraid the Council might find out, so it's not like their wariness of other races is totally baseless.
My point is not to absolve the geth, but rather to say that there plenty of others who are by no means blameless either. It's just going to be an endless cycle— see what I did there— if nobody ever puts down their arms and forgives the other side, no matter what they did.
edited 24th Jan '17 2:14:09 AM by Unsung
I maintain that the quarians were entirely reasonable in attacking the geth. Outside of Shepard's crew, no one has ever come across anything that could be considered a "friendly" geth. And that crew? The crew Tali served on? It was a fucking Cerberus vessel. A Cerberus vessel, I remind you, with a functional AI installed. There's certainly no reason to think Cerberus would be incapable of creating an AI that pretends to be geth. It should be well within their capabilities. So the question becomes "would they" and the answer to that question is always going to be "holy shit look at the things we know they've done." So Cerberus absolutely would do it, if it benefited them, and they're fucked-up enough that it's tough to tell what they think would benefit them.
In fact: We know Cerberus was working on ways to control the geth. If they could do it, it would give them a massive army. If the quarians wiped them out, it would deprive Cerberus if that army. Or, worse, if the quarians figured out how to control the geth first, then they get the massive army. So why wouldn't Cerberus try to find ways to delay the quarians in going after the geth?
So Legion's not actually the proof people think he is. Tali may believe it's truly geth, and that it's sincere in wanting peace between the geth and the quarians. But she's young and optimistic, and could be seen as naive, so she may have let her guard down and fallen for Cerberus' ploy.
The bulk of the evidence still suggests the geth are bastards who hate organics and would gladly work with the Reapers. So wiping out the geth would deprive the Reapers of a massive army. It's the most reasonable, most responsible course of action.
The reason people object to it is because of player knowledge. We know Legion's a real geth, and it's honest, and the geth want peace. We know this, because we know it's a game, and we know the rules of the game's narrative. But in-universe, a lot of the knowledge players have doesn't actually apply.
Anyway, Rannoch was easily one of the biggest missteps of the whole trilogy. It was such a huge missed opportunity. It could have been great. It really could have been. But they took too easy an approach, they took some unfortunate shortcuts, they kept the narrative too simple and made it too unbalanced. Some of it may very well have come down to time constraints. The mission inside the collective smacks of slapping shit together to save time.
Ideally, there should have been five possible outcomes. Kill the quarians, kill the geth, make peace between them, and the additions of the geth chasing off a small number of surviving quarians (say, 50 000), or taking control of the geth. I would change the geth collective mission, so Xen would be involved, and you'd be figuring out a way to take control of the geth. I'd also change the logs, to make them more balanced; most of what's there would be unchanged, but there'd also be logs showing the geth committing atrocities.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.I know they think they're justified and they have reason to think so, and it's actually more of a stretch for me that anyone among either the geth or quarian sides is willing to deal, both before and after the quarians invade. My main problem with the war is that it's so (in-)conveniently timed. The Reaper War just feels so rushed. I would've liked it better if the Quarians had gone to war months before the game began, were deeply entrenched in a protracted naval theatre with the geth across multiple systems, and you got news updates about just how much of a morass it all was. Instead it feels like... 'Oh yeah, we pulled the trigger on this what REAPERS oh no we're fucked!" And contrary to capitalizing on the drama and badassery that a war with the geth could've provided, it just makes everyone involved seem kind of...dumb. You're supposed to be able to interpret them as wrong in-universe, but the way they're wrong makes them seem incompetent, and I don't think that worked.
edited 24th Jan '17 2:13:59 AM by Unsung
Yeah, well, Suspiciously Convenient Timing is what 3 runs on.
"Oh no! The Reapers are invading and we have no way of fighting them! Wait! What's this? A super-weapon that was just now discovered? Wow!"
"The turians need help from the krogan? But the krogan have no reason to help! What do we do? Wait! What's this? The salarians have just now found a way to cure the Genophage? Wow!"
Yeah, it's just another case of laziness in terms of the plotting.
X-Men X-Pert, my blog where I talk about X-Men comics.I'm aware. I'm just stating that in most wars (in general), civilian casualties far outnumber the military's. Not in Mass Effect, but in real life.
The disappointing thing for me about the geth is that they underwent a Pinnochio moment in 3 - in 1 they were mooks, in 2 we glimpsed some of their complexity - Legion being a proper collective. And then 3 turns them into frightened individuals. They lose the complexity. They loose the "otherworldiness" - and that had to be done to present them as equivalents to the Quarians in terms of suffering.
It's why I go "Duwha?" when you see the Geth on the ship MANNING CONSOLES. Or FLYING FIGHTERS. The mobile platforms are combat rigs. That's their point. It'd be like sticking a man in a tank and then sticking the tank in the cockpit of a fighter plane, surely?
Anyway, as to the AI before the war - that's Citadel which seems to try to contradict a few things. If you talk to Tali in ME 1 when she talks about the geth war, Shepard can ask about it being AI research and she tries to downplay it - as, when the Quarians were doing it, there was clearly an issue with AI development, hence why the Quarians panicked when they realised the geth WERE an AI. And sentient. They were intended to be linked up V Is, remember, to get around the Citadel conventions.
So it seems like there's a timeline discrepancy...
There might have been history rewriting on the Quarian side, and history selection on the Geth side.
Not necessarily.
World War 1 had 8M military deaths and 2M direct civilian deaths, plus 6M indirect civilian deaths (malnutrition and epidemics).
World War 2 did have much more civilian deaths (50M vs 25M) but a lot of those were due to the Holocaust, Soviet repression and famines. The Axis had twice as much military deaths (8M vs 4M).
The Vietnam War had 700k military deaths and 600k civilian deaths.
Desert Storm, arguably the last conventional war, had over 20k military deaths (some estimate up to 35k) and 4k civilian deaths.
The Syrian Civil War, so far, has made about 50k dead, less than 15k of which were civilians.
Of course, the increasing prevalence of asymmetric warfare in recent history tends to blur the line between military and civilian casualties.
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a choreTo say nothing about how propaganda blurs the lines of categorization as well...
@Julep:
Tali was in the wrong. Because she is, at heart, a kind and idealistic person, no matter how many geth, terrorists, and mercenaries she guns down. Entirely too forgiving and too trusting.
@Unsung
@Jerek:
@Colossus:
Actually, in modern war, the overwhelming majority of deaths will be military deaths unless one or both sides pursues an intentional policy of extermination- or even if they do. Desert Storm, a short and decisive mechanized war, featured featured the fourth largest army in the world getting destroyed in four days, with 30,000 military deaths and hundreds of thousands of deserters or PO Ws, with under 5,000 collective civilian deaths. World War I, famed for its brutality, had 12 million military and 7 million civilian deaths, and 1/3 of those came from the Ottoman genocides. The current state of Syria is an incredibly dirty war, yet only 150k out of 500k deaths are civilian. The Iran-Iraq War featured war crimes galore on both sides, and a whole branch of Iraq's military served quite literally no purpose other than to bomb civilian targets at fixed towns, yet civilian deaths were only 100,000 (200,000 if you include the genocide the Iraqis enacted at roughly the same time the war was being waged) compared to between 500,000 and 1,000,000 military deaths. The 2001-2014 phase of the war in Afghanistan had ~67,000 collective military deaths to 26,000 civilian deaths.
Even in World War II in Europe, military deaths were the majority... if you exclude the 11 million killed in the Holocaust and the additional ~10 million others killed in the Hunger Plan.
edited 24th Jan '17 10:21:34 AM by MonsieurThenardier
"It is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just."As I understand it, the Council banned all AI research before the geth, which is why the quarians were so afraid of them finding out. VI research was allowed because— well, if you talk to Avina, she's not much smarter than a phone directory. Geth are a combination of multiple V Is working in tandem, so they were sort of a loophole...right up until they weren't.
17 million quarians against how many geth at that time? How many geth (if push came to shove) against the full might of the Council fleets? Bunkering down for 300 years might not have been the most diplomatic choice, but it did keep the geth alive. It might not have been the best or only choice either, but it's the one they made.
edited 24th Jan '17 10:34:33 AM by Unsung
The Salarians having a cure for the Genophage shouldn't come out of nowhere
since, The Salarians if working on a biological weapon should have the means to fix it since thats how the Salarians think... and Ya know They have the data to MODIFY it when the Krogan started to adapt to it. The whole deal shouldn't have been A Cure would take Time or is only theorictically possible... Its the Salarians are sitting on the cure and are refusing to hand it over.
Really the whole Female Krogan thing is just so Wrex can have a love interest out of it!
Essentially the whole Genophage arc Really should have taken place Equally on Tuchanka and Surlesh. With Shepard, Victus and Wrex trying to play diplomat until Cerberus crashes the party
I'm A Pervert not an Asshole!@ Monsieur Thenardier and Aetol
Ah. My mistake.
(Note to self: Don't be half asleep next time you check for sources)
Anyway, on topic. I wonder if the geth have, or had, any understanding of the concept of a civilian themselves. The turians don't, and they lack the arguable excuse of literally having an alternative form of consciousness.
edited 24th Jan '17 4:29:48 PM by SilentColossus
That's because there's no such thing as a civilian amongst turians. Every single member of the turian species is a member of the military, just not every one is an active member of the military
But they regularly interact with species that do. They're part of the council. They have no excuse for not knowing.
edited 24th Jan '17 5:00:10 PM by SilentColossus
The Turian system is chaste-based, so they probably have a good way of understanding it.
The Geth... well, the best way of working with Geth, is thinking of a Geth runtime as a neuron; a small neural circuit at most. Then, make them very plastic, the brain huge, and information pretty much instantaniously transmitted. Intelligent and well-read, but also pretty much devoid of contact with others.
Remember that we are networked intelligences as well; to begin with, we are two fully functional and not totally symmetrical hemispheres with the corpus callosum as an information sharing pathway; people with that part severed are pretty much two desynced individuals. And don't forget that our brains are made up of a massive ammount of complex circuits, a network of neurons. We tend to think of a singular "I", but after all each of us builds consensus inside. Shame this wasn't really explored in the series.
"KILL EVERYONE OVER THE AGE OF 10"
-Turian generals, probably.
There's absolutely zero justification for what the geth have done for the past 300 years, even ignoring their initial genocide of tens of billions. 17 million people could never be a real threat without a superweapon. That's less people than some cities, with no functioning industry. They doomed the remnants to extinction essentially out of spite.
edited 24th Jan '17 5:54:27 PM by MonsieurThenardier
"It is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just."Can they? Why would... whoever's running the extranet allow access to the murderous A.I.s from beyond the Perseus Veil?
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore
Well, how many geth did the quarians destroy before that happened? How many linked programs, and how do you quantify that in human terms? This is why it's kind of pointless to make this about keeping score or getting vengeance for the fallen. It's just got to stop, regardless of the other factors.
edited 23rd Jan '17 4:44:44 PM by Unsung