Mass Effect 3: Casey Hudson's Largest FUBAR

[boag]

Which is typical machine logic

I hate the typical machine logic that gets written in most stories these days, its always "dur hur we superior to organics therefore we must invest heavily into outright destroying them".

When the path of least resistance is "you know what, fuck organics, lets just go somewhere the ass derps cant follow."

 

[Zen Toombs]

For the first - the synthetics are not being ignored. The Reapers are "cutting the knot", so to speak. Why "treat the illness" when you can cut out the source, namely organics that can create synthetic life? And for the second - the Reapers don't think the disease of organic life creating synthetic life CAN be cured. So the Reapers respond by nipping the creation of synthetic life by the bud through mass murder.

I understand that, but I don't get how the Reapers could possibly think that the most productive method of protecting organics would be to exterminate most of them. Their goal isn't to destroy synthetics (if it was this would make sense), it's to save organics. Why would a machine, or anything, choose a path that actively hurts your goal. If they just wanted to destroy synthetics then striking at the source makes sense. But killing those you're supposed to protect when a much simpler solution is available? Disappointing. It's like throwing money in a fire so that people will pay you to stay warm. A poor investment... just use wood you stupid Reapers.

It's not even a permanent solution, as they have to keep coming back. Why not just deal with synthetics as they happen? If I want to save a hill of ants from eating out of a poisonous ant stake, I don't destroy the anthill, I get rid of the poison. Sure they may find another ant stake later, but I'm an emotionless, timeless, super intelligent legion of flying demigods, I can deal with some poison without having to cripple the very ants I'm trying to save.

The source of the danger to organic life is the creation of synthetic life. Also, their goal isn't to save ALL organic life, but to save organic life as a whole. The Reapers are basically pruning galactic civilization.

Also, remember one of the premises is that organic life will always create synthetic life. If organic life is allowed to progress, that synthetic life will become more powerful, and eventually a form of synthetic life will be able to overpower the Reapers resulting in all organic life dying.

(I'm beginning to think this analogy is more apt. An injured newt (all organic life - also note that newts regenerate tissue just as organic life creates new species) is supposed to be kept from dying by an emotionless veterinarian (the Reapers). The newt has a permanent disease (organics will always create synthetic life) that will eventually kill the newt (synthetic life will eventually kill all organic life). If you remove infected tissue (remove organic life that can create synthetic life) then the newt will live. The logical conclusion for the vet would be to repeatedly remove the infected tissue (arms and legs and so forth, analogous to entire species) in order to save the newt as a whole.)

 

[luvd1]

Which is typical machine logic

I hate the typical machine logic that gets written in most stories these days, its always "dur hur we superior to organics therefore we must invest heavily into outright destroying them".

When the path of least resistance is "you know what, fuck organics, lets just go somewhere the ass derps cant follow."

Yeah... But that would be a boring game. Who doesn't like mad killer robots with blenders for hands? It's like real zombies wouldn't do much other the decompose on your lawn what with every muscle already rotted away, and as for being bitten. Please, most won't have any teeth left. The worst a zombie could do is gum your arm leaving a nasty, smelly drawl.

 

[Nicolairigel]

Simply put, Mac should only ever write characters, Drew should write story/lore. And they should goddamn ALWAYS be up for constructive criticism.

I don't think Drew worked on me3.

Exactly. Any new major storypoint added beyond the first two is laughable. It might not be Deus Ex Machina, but the Crucible is just pathetic from a plot point of view and if you consider the series as an entire singular storyline, then it becomes very close to Deus Ex. The starchild, the purpose of reapers, etc. Its all terrible. And whilst the characters arn't perfect they're much more believeable than in 1. Don't get me wrong, the characters in 1 were good, but not so properly portrayed.

Actually, the MAIN purpose of the reapers got underplayed but was pretty express, it stated that their purpose was to manually push evolution by wiping out the advanced races and letting the others grow. And so what if it doesn't make 100% sense? He even states that it won't work anymore, and its the reason why the cycle needs to stop. Same with the synthetics versus organics, the kid was proven wrong by the geth and quarians working together.

 

[wintercoat]

Not really, it actually makes a decent amount of sense. Admittedly, some of the premises of the actual argument are incorrect, but the reasoning is valid. Essentially:

1: Organic life as a whole must be protected.
2: Organic life will always create synthetic life.
3: Synthetic life will always eventually try to destroy all organic life, down to the monocellular level.
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Therefore, destroy organic life that is able to create synthetic life, and leave the rest of organic life alone.

There are problems with the third premise, but the argument is still valid.

An analogy: a person (organic life) has an infected arm (organic life that can create synthetic life) that will result in the person dying if a doctor (the Reapers) do not remove the arm. The cells and tissue removed will die, but the person as a whole is preserved.

Think of it like this:

A = An advanced organic being.

An = multiple advanced organics

An → B

B = Synthetic being

Bn = multiple synthetics

An + Bn = C

C = 0An

Removing An from the equation is the most logical way to prevent 'C'.

I see what you're saying, and that would almost informally make sense if they weren't trying to "save" the organics.

So you have:

A = organics
B = synthetics

A -> An
An -> B
B -> Bn
Bn -> 0An
Therefore, A -> 0 (In other words, organics will cause epic death)

This is logical by transitivity. However, the final argument would be ~A -> ~0 (In other words, if no organics, then no epic death) which is an inverse error. An invalid, formal fallacy.

If they are truly beings based purely on logic, then they would never get the idea that removing one cause will change the outcome, because you cannot derive a conclusion by denying the antecedent.

If (far more likely, as they are self-aware super AIs) they are capable of more rational thought and this simple logic doesn't govern their actions then it's just as realistic to simply kill the synthetics. Killing a source in order to save a source is still a ridiculous self-fullfilling prophecy in which the actual cause (synthetics) seems to be totally ignored.

Even in the An + Bn = 0An situation, where Bn is simply the negation of An, why can't the Reapers just kill the synthetics? The quick and silly answer is that those pesky organics will simply make more synthetics, but that's what the Reapers allow to happen anyway. Why cut off an arm if you can cure the disease? Especially when the cure is an army the most advanced and powerful beings known to man. Do the Reapers think that annihilating most life in the galaxy an easier and more productive method of saving organics than just keeping the geth in check?

EDIT: I fully accept the Reaper's position if the point was that they were basically brutish pseudo-intellectuals and were in fact somehow fundamentally broken... but I never got that impression.

The Reapers believe that the Singularity is the highest form of evolution. They believe they are "ascending" advanced organics, not killing them. Their solution to the problem is to change the variables, in this case 'advanced organics' into 'Reaper'. Why cure the disease, when you can make the host immune?

 

[Fishyash]

I saw that message on pastebin, I saw it like a week ago but decided not to include it into any discussions because I had no confirmation if it was true. I actually thought it was all made up.

 

[boag]

Which is typical machine logic

I hate the typical machine logic that gets written in most stories these days, its always "dur hur we superior to organics therefore we must invest heavily into outright destroying them".

When the path of least resistance is "you know what, fuck organics, lets just go somewhere the ass derps cant follow."

Yeah... But that would be a boring game. Who doesn't like mad killer robots with blenders for hands? It's like real zombies wouldn't do much other the decompose on your lawn what with every muscle already rotted away, and as for being bitten. Please, most won't have any teeth left. The worst a zombie could do is gum your arm leaving a nasty, smelly drawl.

And now you know why Videogames are horrible as base material for movie adaptations

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Wow that post was EXACTLY how I, and a lot of dissapointed fans, felt about the ending and that was coming from someone actually within Bioware.

I think this only serves to give us angry fans a little more power.

 

[Tono Makt]

God I'm getting sick of this. The "Yo dawg" scenario that everyone so fondly brings up is completely untrue and misleading. The Catalyst didn't "create synthetics to kill organics, so that the organics won't create synthetics to kill organics". It created the Reapers to kill only the highest civilizations, in order to prevent their synthetics from wiping out everything.

And even if we forget that, there's still the whole other half of their reasoning. They don't do it simply to prevent synthetics turning on them. They do it to remove the top-dog in the galaxy, so that other species will have the chance to be uplifted, and have their shot.
Say what you will about the ending being unsatisfactory, there is nothing about this bit of it that deserves the amount of ridicule that it gets.

Yeah, it does tend to get reduced and the nuance of the position lost. It's sort of the ME3 fan's answer to the detractors (hello MovieBob and Jimquisition in particular) claim that all the biatching ME3 fans want is a perfect happy ending just the way we like it, which is just as stupid and nonsensical. (the shippers who want to see FemShep wandering around with little blue FemShep T'Soni's, or Shep canoodling with Tali sans environment suit, or that weird crossover with Shep, Steve and Big Gay Al, those folks really aren't doing the rest of us any good at all.)

Difference being that Bobby and Jimbo are getting paid for their hyperbolic idiocy, and the rest of us are just giving page views to the Escapist. Sort of a win-win for the Escapist in this regard.

 

[Something Amyss]

Given the two choices presented in the post you declined to quote and essentially taking my comment out of context, yes. It's perfectly reasonable.

Even "in context," your comment was pretty inane.

Not quoting subquotes is not neglect, it's an intentional, space-saving measure. It's also why I don't quote your five page justification.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Think of it like this:

A = An advanced organic being.

An = multiple advanced organics

An → B

B = Synthetic being

Bn = multiple synthetics

An + Bn = C

C = 0An

Removing An from the equation is the most logical way to prevent 'C'.

That sounds very clever...

Until you analyze it and realize it's just mindless dribble.

Why the fuck would An+Bn have to result in C? Because Reapers say so? Because some ghostly space super child says so? I just proved that synthetics and organics can live peacefully when I made peace between geth and quarians. Not only that but it's been revealed that geth aren't naturally violent and didn't want to fight in the first place. They just wanted to exist in their consensus. Another example is EDI and Joker relationship. Another one is Legion itself. Get are actively opposing the Reapers. Even they think Reapers are wrong.

An+Bn =/= C
An+Bn = unknown!

 

[Storm Dragon]

Made me think of something though. If the reapers are just chillin' in dark space for hundreds of thousands of years, and on top of that they're super duper (really duper) intelligent, than wouldn't at least one of them have found out that their reasons for killing organics makes no sense?

I think the point is that the logic the reapers use is valid with their (broken) robotic logic. Humans are going to kill themselves? We can't allow that! Solution: Kill them all, so they don't kill themselves. It sounds stupid from our point of view, but if you think about it, it almost makes sense in a binary fashion.

The logic is actually that a war between synthetics and organics could wipe out all life in the galaxy, including species that are just starting to discover fire. The Reapers wipe out advanced civilizations at the height of their power in order to make room for the next ones, like pruning a garden. For example: had the Reapers not wiped out the Protheans, they would likely have uplifted our ancestors 50,000 years ago and absorbed humanity into their empire.

 

[Awexsome]

Let this be a lesson to all those who ever criticized a game for being cliche' of what can happen if you try too hard to stray from that. You end up with a mess of a story that doesn't make sense. It went so well up to that point too.

Everything was gold up til then. Krogan/Turian negotiations, Quarian/Geth conflict, the Asari's role, Cerberus and the Illusive Man's role... the biggest scenes delivered in full. The thresher taking down the reaper, the Quarian/Geth fleets bombarding the reaper from space, the opening salvo of the Victory fleet vs the Reapers on Earth...

So much epic. Yet 10 minutes of trying to get too creative ended it in disaster. If this is true then I feel terrible for those other writers at Bioware because they really did craft a masterpiece.