30 Days of Mass Effect: Days 24 & 25
Yup, this meme is still ensuring I don't go radio silent for like, a year. But also, hoorah! Almost to the end!
Basically I've just been coping with STUPID HEAT and a few other things, nothing dramatic. I do finally have some other things I want to be posting about! Pacific Rim! Welcome to Night Vale! But I'm also too hot and greedy at seeing the end of this meme in sight, so I think I'll press on with this, and talk about those other things shortly.
But! EVERYONE GO SEE PACIFIC RIM BECAUSE OF IDRIS ELBA AND MAKO MORI. YES I KNOW I JUST USED ONE ACTOR'S NAME AND ONE CHARACTER NAME. THAT'S HOW I ROLL.
24. Opinion on the Genophage.
The Genophage isn't my favourite plotline in the Mass Effect series, but I think it is probably the best written. It's a storyline where what seems best or most compassionate genuinely changes based on your previous choices.
I think Mordin is one of the most complex and well-written characters in the series. His breadth is extraordinary - he's hilarious and funny and light and responsible for a war crime that he can articulately and convincingly defend.
I'm certain I've spoken about this before during this meme, but I'm being asked the question directly now, so, again:
The third game's set piece around curing the Genophage is a brilliant example of the same events taking on different meanings. If you fake the cure, you get the exact same scenes with Wrex and your crew, the exact same congratulations, and you have the same options in response. You can thank them and tell them you just had to do what was right, or you can talk about how you hope it doesn't backfire. Sure, later you get different scenes and consequences, but at the time, you have the exact same situation but your decision changes the entire experience and what your identical sentences mean. It's deeply effective and eerie.
More than that, it's one of the few situations where what I believe is actually the best solution changes radically based on who's alive and who's dead. If you saved Maelon's data, if Wrex is alive and Eve is going to survive, then it's easy to imagine a kind future, one where you're a hero and everything works out.
But it gets less certain from there. If you destroyed the data, Wrex is cagey and distant with you, understandably he does not trust you with his plans. With that painful reminder of the distance between you, it's easier to focus on the fact that Wrex is an assassination away from ceding control of the clans to someone like Wreav, that for all his good intentions, he may not have the ability to carry through.
If you have Wreav instead of Wrex, there's no ambiguity that after the war his intention is to begin a war of conquest and no reason to think it won't end as violently and tragically as it did before.
If Eve is dead, there's no one to keep those ambitions under control.
It means a great deal to me that Mordin can, in the worst of these circumstances - where Wreav has control of the clans and Eve is dead - be convinced that he needs to stand down. I think if that weren't the case it would render his defence of his previous actions hollow. It wouldn't feel like someone reassessing, it would feel like an absolute moral statement from the game. And I do think that part of Mordin's motivation is guilt and a desire to atone, but I think that's more powerful for the fact that in this circumstance he can see there's a bigger, more important picture and doing this now will cause more harm than good.
But I also think it's important that in other circumstances you may disagree, violently and tragically. If you no longer trust Wrex; or if you doubt Eve's ability to stand against Wreav - if you're not willing to gamble on a single heartbeat as the balance point between probable peace and probable war - then you have to make that choice. You have to shoot Mordin.
It's horrifying, but I think it's incredible that they created a situation where a character might choose to do it and not just because they were doing the Evil Playthrough. But because they genuinely thought that was what they had to do in that circumstance.
It's right that Wrex finds out and makes you murder him too. You betrayed him on a fundamental and brutal level.
Refusing to cure the Genophage, insisting the Krogan aren't capable of responsibly handling their own biology is imperialistic, brutal bullshit. It is, it just is.
But it's also easy to overlook the fact that their population isn't declining. The brutal destruction of their culture is down to psychological damage not a drop in actual numbers. The Genophage was designed to keep the Krogan population stable, because they evolved to deal with an environment that killed their young in droves, and then the Salarians uplifted them past that with nothing in place to deal with the population explosion because at the time they were exploiting them militaristically.
So is it also a story about resources and ecology?
Was the real war crime uplifting a species in such a way that its inherent natural traits became toxic to it? Without any way to get around that that didn't cause psychological anguish? Congratulations! You must now police your natural behaviour forever more or face a devastating population explosion you cannot cope with. You will then either get to starve to death or start waging a war of galactic conquest! Please consider referring others to Uplift with the Salarian Union!
To be honest, it's one of the few stories that illustrates to me why the Prime Directive might be a good idea. Since I sort of also find that pretty paternalistic and arbitrary at times.
So yeah. I dunno, which I guess is the point. I think this is a genuinely fascinating and unanswerable moral conundrum. With Wreav in charge and Eve dead, I am genuinely not sure that the Krogan species will ultimately be better off without the Genophage.
And I think it's pretty rad that the game managed to illustrate such a contentious topic with such complexity.
25. Opinion on the Geth/Quarian Conflict.
Similar to the Genophage plotline, I do really enjoy how the series complexified this conflict as it continued. Unlike the Genophage, I think the happiest outcome remains the same regardless of context here - it's really a story about the sins of previous generations and whether ingrained prejudice can be overcome. But I also wish that there'd been more attention paid to the fact that we really have no idea what the Geth would have done or become had they completed their megastructure? Because I think that gets overlooked a lot. Granted, that's probably largely because all the Legion conversations that explain it were conversations most people never got because they meant either saving missions for after the suicide mission, or dragging your heels so long your crew all die.
Speaking of amazing things hidden in conversation fragments - that comment from Tali if you achieve peace? About the Geth uploading themselves into Quarian suits and mimicking infections in order to bolster immune systems? That is one of the coolest ideas in the entire game! Fucking cyborg symbiosis, man!
It makes me want to extrapolate into the future, like, when the Quarians may no longer need the suits, but they're part of their culture, and I'm sure they offer loads of benefits in terms of physical augmentation and portable tech. But then, to whom does the suit belong? The Quarian or the uploaded Geth? What level of symbiosis would they achieve? FASCINATING QUESTIONS, PEOPLE.
So yeah, I have less to say about this because I don't think it's quite so...contentious in the various choices you can make, like, morally? I think it's a simpler situation even if stemming from an equally complex history? But do not take this to mean I love it less! Because as a storyline, due to my deep and abiding love of ROBOTS, I have more fun playing through it than the Genophage plotline.
But, if you want my opinion on the best choice, dudes, OBVIOUSLY making peace. Anything else is epic tragedy. But I do salute the writers for engineering the situation so that if you can't make peace (and I think it's the thing that's most difficult to achieve in the whole game based on what you did/didn't do in previous games?), then just trying to do the right thing means you're probably going to lose Tali. And doesn't make that obvious. Like you don't know you're taking a chance with her life - unless you're willing to actively endorse the genocide of the Geth, instead of continuing to hope you're not endorsing the genocide of the Quarians through inaction, you're gonna lose her. It's hard, like it should be. I think that's reflected in the player stats that Bioware released, about people's choices? Where I think it was a fairly even thirds split between peace/Geth/Quarians, but actively siding with the Quarians was the smallest group. Unlike the Genophage, where it was some really low percentage that didn't cure it. Which makes sense to me, not only because it's such a renegade choice, but also because it's really clear what side you're taking and the consequences of it. For all the storyline's ethics are more complicated, it is - like the Virmire choice - very clear what's going to happen based on your choices. Whereas the Geth/Quarian conflict is more like the suicide mission in that you just have to hope you can pull it off.
I also liked that because you're there, yelling at various sides, trying to get other people to trust you, and Tali and Legion are the representatives from each faction, it actually does make sense that stuff like their standing in their societies and their opinion of each other matters in how likely you are to resolve the situation. I also like that if you spare the heretics in the second game, it makes it harder to achieve peace (because you strengthened the Geth numbers) but you get better results if you still manage it, as well as the survival of the Civilian Admiral because he's the only one who'll side with you.
Yes, I am enough of a dork I went and looked up all the contributing factors in this calculation, and anyway, I think they all make sense, is what I'm saying!
Which I think ends this section. WE ARE NEARING THE END.
Basically I've just been coping with STUPID HEAT and a few other things, nothing dramatic. I do finally have some other things I want to be posting about! Pacific Rim! Welcome to Night Vale! But I'm also too hot and greedy at seeing the end of this meme in sight, so I think I'll press on with this, and talk about those other things shortly.
But! EVERYONE GO SEE PACIFIC RIM BECAUSE OF IDRIS ELBA AND MAKO MORI. YES I KNOW I JUST USED ONE ACTOR'S NAME AND ONE CHARACTER NAME. THAT'S HOW I ROLL.
24. Opinion on the Genophage.
The Genophage isn't my favourite plotline in the Mass Effect series, but I think it is probably the best written. It's a storyline where what seems best or most compassionate genuinely changes based on your previous choices.
I think Mordin is one of the most complex and well-written characters in the series. His breadth is extraordinary - he's hilarious and funny and light and responsible for a war crime that he can articulately and convincingly defend.
I'm certain I've spoken about this before during this meme, but I'm being asked the question directly now, so, again:
The third game's set piece around curing the Genophage is a brilliant example of the same events taking on different meanings. If you fake the cure, you get the exact same scenes with Wrex and your crew, the exact same congratulations, and you have the same options in response. You can thank them and tell them you just had to do what was right, or you can talk about how you hope it doesn't backfire. Sure, later you get different scenes and consequences, but at the time, you have the exact same situation but your decision changes the entire experience and what your identical sentences mean. It's deeply effective and eerie.
More than that, it's one of the few situations where what I believe is actually the best solution changes radically based on who's alive and who's dead. If you saved Maelon's data, if Wrex is alive and Eve is going to survive, then it's easy to imagine a kind future, one where you're a hero and everything works out.
But it gets less certain from there. If you destroyed the data, Wrex is cagey and distant with you, understandably he does not trust you with his plans. With that painful reminder of the distance between you, it's easier to focus on the fact that Wrex is an assassination away from ceding control of the clans to someone like Wreav, that for all his good intentions, he may not have the ability to carry through.
If you have Wreav instead of Wrex, there's no ambiguity that after the war his intention is to begin a war of conquest and no reason to think it won't end as violently and tragically as it did before.
If Eve is dead, there's no one to keep those ambitions under control.
It means a great deal to me that Mordin can, in the worst of these circumstances - where Wreav has control of the clans and Eve is dead - be convinced that he needs to stand down. I think if that weren't the case it would render his defence of his previous actions hollow. It wouldn't feel like someone reassessing, it would feel like an absolute moral statement from the game. And I do think that part of Mordin's motivation is guilt and a desire to atone, but I think that's more powerful for the fact that in this circumstance he can see there's a bigger, more important picture and doing this now will cause more harm than good.
But I also think it's important that in other circumstances you may disagree, violently and tragically. If you no longer trust Wrex; or if you doubt Eve's ability to stand against Wreav - if you're not willing to gamble on a single heartbeat as the balance point between probable peace and probable war - then you have to make that choice. You have to shoot Mordin.
It's horrifying, but I think it's incredible that they created a situation where a character might choose to do it and not just because they were doing the Evil Playthrough. But because they genuinely thought that was what they had to do in that circumstance.
It's right that Wrex finds out and makes you murder him too. You betrayed him on a fundamental and brutal level.
Refusing to cure the Genophage, insisting the Krogan aren't capable of responsibly handling their own biology is imperialistic, brutal bullshit. It is, it just is.
But it's also easy to overlook the fact that their population isn't declining. The brutal destruction of their culture is down to psychological damage not a drop in actual numbers. The Genophage was designed to keep the Krogan population stable, because they evolved to deal with an environment that killed their young in droves, and then the Salarians uplifted them past that with nothing in place to deal with the population explosion because at the time they were exploiting them militaristically.
So is it also a story about resources and ecology?
Was the real war crime uplifting a species in such a way that its inherent natural traits became toxic to it? Without any way to get around that that didn't cause psychological anguish? Congratulations! You must now police your natural behaviour forever more or face a devastating population explosion you cannot cope with. You will then either get to starve to death or start waging a war of galactic conquest! Please consider referring others to Uplift with the Salarian Union!
To be honest, it's one of the few stories that illustrates to me why the Prime Directive might be a good idea. Since I sort of also find that pretty paternalistic and arbitrary at times.
So yeah. I dunno, which I guess is the point. I think this is a genuinely fascinating and unanswerable moral conundrum. With Wreav in charge and Eve dead, I am genuinely not sure that the Krogan species will ultimately be better off without the Genophage.
And I think it's pretty rad that the game managed to illustrate such a contentious topic with such complexity.
25. Opinion on the Geth/Quarian Conflict.
Similar to the Genophage plotline, I do really enjoy how the series complexified this conflict as it continued. Unlike the Genophage, I think the happiest outcome remains the same regardless of context here - it's really a story about the sins of previous generations and whether ingrained prejudice can be overcome. But I also wish that there'd been more attention paid to the fact that we really have no idea what the Geth would have done or become had they completed their megastructure? Because I think that gets overlooked a lot. Granted, that's probably largely because all the Legion conversations that explain it were conversations most people never got because they meant either saving missions for after the suicide mission, or dragging your heels so long your crew all die.
Speaking of amazing things hidden in conversation fragments - that comment from Tali if you achieve peace? About the Geth uploading themselves into Quarian suits and mimicking infections in order to bolster immune systems? That is one of the coolest ideas in the entire game! Fucking cyborg symbiosis, man!
It makes me want to extrapolate into the future, like, when the Quarians may no longer need the suits, but they're part of their culture, and I'm sure they offer loads of benefits in terms of physical augmentation and portable tech. But then, to whom does the suit belong? The Quarian or the uploaded Geth? What level of symbiosis would they achieve? FASCINATING QUESTIONS, PEOPLE.
So yeah, I have less to say about this because I don't think it's quite so...contentious in the various choices you can make, like, morally? I think it's a simpler situation even if stemming from an equally complex history? But do not take this to mean I love it less! Because as a storyline, due to my deep and abiding love of ROBOTS, I have more fun playing through it than the Genophage plotline.
But, if you want my opinion on the best choice, dudes, OBVIOUSLY making peace. Anything else is epic tragedy. But I do salute the writers for engineering the situation so that if you can't make peace (and I think it's the thing that's most difficult to achieve in the whole game based on what you did/didn't do in previous games?), then just trying to do the right thing means you're probably going to lose Tali. And doesn't make that obvious. Like you don't know you're taking a chance with her life - unless you're willing to actively endorse the genocide of the Geth, instead of continuing to hope you're not endorsing the genocide of the Quarians through inaction, you're gonna lose her. It's hard, like it should be. I think that's reflected in the player stats that Bioware released, about people's choices? Where I think it was a fairly even thirds split between peace/Geth/Quarians, but actively siding with the Quarians was the smallest group. Unlike the Genophage, where it was some really low percentage that didn't cure it. Which makes sense to me, not only because it's such a renegade choice, but also because it's really clear what side you're taking and the consequences of it. For all the storyline's ethics are more complicated, it is - like the Virmire choice - very clear what's going to happen based on your choices. Whereas the Geth/Quarian conflict is more like the suicide mission in that you just have to hope you can pull it off.
I also liked that because you're there, yelling at various sides, trying to get other people to trust you, and Tali and Legion are the representatives from each faction, it actually does make sense that stuff like their standing in their societies and their opinion of each other matters in how likely you are to resolve the situation. I also like that if you spare the heretics in the second game, it makes it harder to achieve peace (because you strengthened the Geth numbers) but you get better results if you still manage it, as well as the survival of the Civilian Admiral because he's the only one who'll side with you.
Yes, I am enough of a dork I went and looked up all the contributing factors in this calculation, and anyway, I think they all make sense, is what I'm saying!
Which I think ends this section. WE ARE NEARING THE END.