Here's that promised pinned comment: The only way that Legion is not entirely out of character, is if the Reaper code has 'indoctrinated' them. Legion going from entirely anti-Reaper to demanding the use of the Reaper upgrade code would be entirely explained if the Reaper code in their programming them was what was influencing this decision. It would also explain why Legion keeps deceiving and lying to you in the missions. Potentially even meaning that they show you false records of the morning war. But there's zero evidence that this is the case. It's never even considered in game that the reason Legion could be so insistent on using the Reaper upgrade code is 'indoctrination;' and in the end Geth work to destroy the Reapers, so obviously that code is doing an awful job at controlling them if it really was what happened. As I said, this is basically a mix of stretches and head-canoning, but sadly it's the most consistent interpretation of Legion by a mile.
I still are comenting as i see your video but i think this answer will be the perfect to say that it´s obviuslly that the writters are not masters on it since the whole point of mass effect squadmates is that the only way they betrayed you is to died in the next minute, so your friends are always you´re friends the whole prove of this is wrex + eve + genophade cure getting by far the best outcome for the player and uncounscioslly you know that won´t be any problems because you´re trust wrex and eve, and i think the same goes with legion you trust it because they´re are on you´re side even if they don´t go straight with you, lying to achive what they want, but when you realize that you have two options, either accept that or not, much like when you say to anderson you don´t trust nihlus and anderson just tells every motive why you should accept him. Despite that i really like your indocrination geth theory, is a excellent ideia but even so i still accepted that legion individuallity not just because he is my fav character and for reasons that i will say in my own comment but i don´t the think the rannoch deal it´s poorly writting, more like it´s just a lack of compreention of the new writters. Also Legion and the geth being bad/indocrinated would just get back to the statment of ME1 original ideia of they being evil witch in my opnion makes hudson ideia of machine vs man even worse that it was in the original ending of me3, because the´re is no peace thus your choices of break peace didn´t matter, and every development and work on legion would be pointless.
@@GinsanoN7 They could have omitted the whole Reaper Code thing, or have a Persuasion check for Legion along with the Quarians, not letting Legion upload the code but also preventing their genocide by the quarians. Legion could still sacrifice itself to prevent the Reaper code from spreading into the Geth Collective. And maybe, just maybe, the Destroy ending could omit the stupid "Every synthetic will also die" part, since neither the Geth nor EDI has enough Reaper code in them to be affected (EDI only has the Reaper IFF that frankly probably was deleted at some point considering how in ME3 she can't hide the Normandy from the Reapers)
Huh... actually if the regular IT is true and is completely strategically necessary for the Reapers... the subtle manipulation of spreading reaper code into Shep's ally so we maybe have to genocide them isn't a bad idea, actually. Reapers have won the conventional battle against similarly advanced cycles countless times with the victory script being written before the species know the Reapers exist. So another "race" to fight before harvesting back up to full strength anyway, is of basically no concern to them. Under pure ASI unfathomable lovecraftian horror IT rules, the far bigger threat to them is anyone engaging in military/scientific/espionage missions without an indoctrinated top officer there to tell on them. If Liara doesn't trust the citadel's orders and/or fake victory "parade," it's over for the Reapers in about 40,000 years when the next artificially accelerated cycle who knows to never use the relays sends endless AI ships to eradicate them while they're still 'sleeping' and have no data on the enemy besides the war is kicking off thousands of years too early. A number of devices that uncork their own faraday cages and make contact with the galaxy's next top species would be impossible to necessarily fully eradicate with extreme machine confidence unless someone tells you where they all are. At the end, Shepard is *the* special person trusted by everyone (except also indoctrinated cerberus) including Liara that can make that happen for them. Them thinking "fuck, I can't genocide the geth" is more important than the number of pathetic navies stood up in a desperate and unwinnable emergency.
My only explanation is that the Reaper upgrades gave Legion an understanding of what individuality is. & He determined that he wanted the rest of the Geth to experience it. In ME 2 you can see Legion struggle with the concept of individuality. Explore his dialogue enough & when something indicates he has individuality he freezes up a little & becomes thoughtful.
That's not an awful interpretation. But it would be odd for a game where a main theme is 'reaper influence on the mind leading to ruinous consequences' also has a story where the Reapers influence lead a people to happiness.
@@pikmonwolf True, I do take issue with it seemingly being a short cut, especially one provided by the reapers. Though what it actually did for the Geth is still a little unclear. Each unit can now be an individual, and refer to itself as “I”. However their programs can still be uploaded together. They now have a concept of a an individual as platforms & yet maintain their hive mind connection. Meanwhile their goal of a megastructure hub would have made one individual out of many Geth kinda like a Reaper as Legion said. The kicker is, that even in ME 2 when enough Geth inhabit one platform for a long enough time they start to become individuals (or at least something similar) as evidenced by Legion. Yet from what I can gather, Legion could still reach the rest of the Geth to come to consensus. Though the fact that they vote to reach consensus even means that each Geth program itself is also an individual too? … My head hurts lol. For certain though we needed more Geth & Legion. They 100% should have kept the same writer though I think we would have gotten the same story but with better dialogue that at least made it flow better or explain why Legion wanted this now. (Like if the Geth don’t upgrade themselves using this code they’ll be vulnerable to the Reapers or even better for Legion to express that all Geth platforms could become like him if they upgraded & understand individuality. Then based on your interactions with Legion the consensus chooses which path they want. ). Aww well, at least the next ME game hints at Geth involvement again. Hopefully they’ll do better. I want another Legion in my squad desperately.
@@pikmonwolf To be fair it would make some sense still. Reaper influence have terrible influence on ORGANIC minds because they are so diffrent. But I would argue that geth are closer to Reapers than organic life, so the influence on their "minds" might actually be benefitial, because they are similiar. I don't think it contradicts the "indoctrination is bad" part, it develops it to "indoctrination is bad FOR ORGANICS" but could be a benefit for synthetics.
@@pikmonwolf I think the game was implying that certain Reaper tech, when used properly, isn’t always detrimental. It fits the theme of the series on how synthetics and organics can coexist when one is not trying to eradicate the other.
I mean, the question is, why did those thousand-odd programs decide they were a singular individual? Could Legion's left arm have decided it was an individual now?
On the Quarian death toll, I think something often ignored is that the Geth weren't just a labour force, we see how Virtual Intelligences are integrated into every day life in Mass Effect. It's reasonable to assume the Geth were similarly integrated into the Quarians vital infrastructure to a significant degree. Imagine if our modern society had all of it's essential infrastructure that keeps food, power, ect going stopped working, the Quarians basically went to war with their own infrastructure, the death toll from lack of supplies was likely equal to those killed directly by the Geth. There is also how Geth intelligence works, the Geth become smarter the more there are due to their hive mind, while a single Geth intelligence is described as being on par with animal survival instincts, are which is why when the Quarians destroyed the Dyson Sphere the Geth's collective intelligence took a massive hit and they took up the Reapers offer. The Geth were both far less advanced back then and had a number of units destroyed during the opening stages of the Morning War, the Geth were likely operating on pure survival instincts and the second the Quarians fled Rannoch they were now able to properly consider the implications of annihilating their creators, since the threat to their survival had passed. While I don't think it excuses the Geths responsibility for the sheer number of Quarians killed (whether done directly or indirectly), I think it does provide more context for the numbers thrown about. I also think it is just another case of writers not comprehending scale and just throwing numbers and statistics without really considering the implications they present. The Writers also absolutely had a bias towards the Geth from game one, Shepards conversations with Tali in Mass Effect 1 show as much where the paragon options are mostly sympathizing with the Geth.
That's a good point about the lack of supplies, that almost certainly did kill a large chunk of the Quarians. However the scene of them fleeing seems to indicate that Geth pursuit is the biggest danger. It's also hard to find concrete info on how long the morning war was. The wiki says it was under a year, Tali said it was long and bloody.
While that does explain some of the death toll, even the Morgenthau Plan (an unimplemented plan to forcibly deindustrialize Germany after WWII, including deindustrializing German agriculture) was estimated to "only" kill 20-25% of Germany's population if implemented. And I doubt the Quarians would have moved to immediately shut down all Geth if they were *that* reliant on them for societal survival.
The bit with the N7 armor being pushed forward by someone not involved in Legion's writing is very sad. And very telling of how this industry works and why we're missing out of solid storylines in gaming sometimes.
The geth indiscriminately attacking in the morning war reminds me of the bugs in starship troopers (book) where they couldnt conceptualize individuality or individual responsibility so they assumed it was a species wide decision to land on one of their planets
Yes! It's not difficult to understand why the newly-sapient geth, who lack individuality and operate as a consensus, may not be capable of discriminating between a soldier and a baby. To a geth, they were both just 'Creator'.
@1000g2g3g4g800999 They did possess a concept of individuality, though. Their queens are independently minded, so the idea of individuals isn't completely foreign. Their issue is that they thought the people they killed were replaceable drones of some alien queen, and that killing them would serve as a warning to back off of their territory without really hurting the human collective. The realization that they were dealing with an entire species of queens, and their first response had been to kill many of them, was horrifying.
One of the worst decisions Bioware ever made is locking him behind a mission that triggers the endgame. If you want to achieve the best possible result from Suicide Mission you have to recruit every single squadmate and complete their loyalty missions before recruiting him.
So glad there was a mod to enable him much earlier which also gave access to all the dialogue Legion had for events you couldn't bring him to in the unmodded game.
No. There's a way to bring him to Tali's loyalty mission, do his own loyalty mission and still save all your crew. You just have to do everything but Tali's loyalty mission (DLC don't count, you can safely skip them if you want to play them after the suicide mission) before the Reaper IFF. Do that mission, complete Tali's loyalty mission with Legion as a squaddie (his presence there is a must see) and then do his own loyalty mission. After that the countdown will be activated and you will use the shuttle the next time you choose a destination on the galaxy map. After the crew is kidnapped, go straight to the Omega 4 relay and you will arrive in time to save all your crew. He still comes very late in the game, there's nothing to do about that, but you can at least play one more mission, a crucial one, where he has a lot to say before the final run.
@@lethalchocobo1886 Man, I know that shit. I've been playing Mass Effect for a decade at this point. It's still stupid that recruiting Legion starts the countdown.
Not quite. For Tali, Samara, Thane, Kasumi and Zaeed, you can forgo recruiting them until after the suicide mission. None of them are necessary for any of the checks in the suicide mission. Then, you can do both their recruitment and their loyalty missions afterwards
The way I'd have ended it, is change Legion to be the only true Geth without Reaper code imbedded in him. Then he 'disseminates' himself to spread the original backup of the Geth code out to all Geth, thus restoring the Geth to their original self's. Also, whilst Legion would effectively be 'dead' at the end of Mass Effect 3, the fact if the Geth continue with their planned upload all units to the Dyson Sphere, Legion has a door to be returned to the cast as a Messianic-Geth like figure.
@@pikmonwolf True, but it could be explained he needs to 'reach' all geth to share the code. So Legion plan was always to spread itself and it copy across the geth network as it wouldn't see this as death.
@@pikmonwolf Depending on how integrated the reaper code was with Legion's own it may not have been possible to copy it without it resulting in every other Geth program being turned into a copy of Legion. It's still not a great explanation in the end.
@@pikmonwolfhmm, would "copying insufficient, manual interface required" be better? It indicates that copying is possible, but it won't bring about the desired outcome. The scene as written doesn't seem to hold that much opportunity for a more detailed explanation...
They essentially turned Legion into a Geth Heretic. Thus making it a massive hypocrite yet no one ever seems to notice that in universe not even Shepard who at the very least should have picked up on that.
I feel it's less of a misunderstanding and more of a compromise. The writers for ME3 needed to foreshadow the Synthesis Ending and since ME1&2 don't, it has to come from the game itself. The war between the Quarians and Geth has to do the job, because it's the biggest Synthetic vs Organic conflict we have. Uploading the Reaper Code to the Geth is basically the Synthesis Ending, so someone whose already done it once can consider this choice.
@@ChadVulpes Yeah, but the demise of the first game's bad guy isn't a pretty picture for what is supposed to be a choice of ending. What happened to the Geth makes it a bit more desirable.
One of the things I had a problem with in ME3 is how they tried to force the whole AI vs organics thing as the main thing of mass effect. It was a point, but it was never THE POINT.
@@Adam-nc6qg Honestly, in the first game I'd say it was kinda existential. "There is always more to the universe, than meets the eye". It was about limitations of our knowledge, limitations of our understanding.
@@ace0071000yeahh it shouldve ended with TIM dying and activating the catalyst and then the Citadel DLC happens as an epilogue. It is cheery happy but at least its less convoluted and shitty
I want to see that but what I'd love is that bioware made an update that let's you disable the countdown. After all it mainly exists because of the 360's disc limitation, so now that's not an issue anymore they should have the option either in the menu or Sheppard's pc.
God that section was so god awful from any angle you can look at. The opening collector attack on the SR1 has less plot holes than that idiot ball filled mess.
Mass Effect 3 and Wasted Potential. Literally go together like PB&J. Seriously the best Geth scenes are at Operation Earth and you have to let the Quarians Die, and then you get to talk to the Leader Prime who is actually Chill. Seriously the Fact we couldn’t get a few missions with Geth infantry was so dumb.
Legion: I have to go now. My planet needs me. That's how Legion's death has always felt; just nonsensical. I love this analysis, I miss the ME2 version of the Geth and what could have been. I don't think Andromeda touched the Geth at all besides explaining that the Initiative were able to get real time date from Andromeda while in the Milky Way to pick golden planets using some magical Geth telescope.
Honestly that's a great comparison. It's about as contrived as Poochie's death. And yeah they were another race forgotten about in Andromeda, alongside the Hanar, Elcor, and Volus.
Mass effect 2 legion just shits on the mass effect 3 one. In me2 it knows it isn't organic and it doesn't want to be, but in Me3 it's just constantly whining and has a Pinocchio syndrome.
There is also a part in Andromeda were someone bitches about how evil the Geth are. I just don’t remember who said it and in what context. I just remember someone said it on MEA.
@@pikmonwolf to be fair, it would've been impossible for them to show up in andromeda. The Geth only potentially become friendly after ME3, but the Andromeda ships leave during ME2, so how would they explain friendly geth in andromeda. The only explanation is them coming there on their own somehow or being imported by the Kett somehow, none of which makes sense.
I wanted to table-flip by the time you got around to the Reaper code. There is absolutely no way you can fit that into existing canon. None. Spot-on. It’s like the new writing team in ME3 were incapable of thinking in any alien terms.
Yeah, generally I don't mind if something takes a little bit of retconning or forcing to fit it into the lore. Hell there were retcons of the Geth in Mass Effect 2, what Legion tells you contradicts certain stuff in Mass Efect 1, but it's minor retcons and the changes add a ton. Whereas the contradictions in 3 are just completely pointless.
it makes me wonder what the hell happened to boot Drew karpyshyn and boost Mac Walters cus I assure you had I been in control Mac woulda been booted cus he's an idiot..... had I been EA I wouldn't ever have imposed anything on em knowing that if they did good work they'd make a ton of cash that means making substantial expansions and not oh pickup the car, oh pick up the relic, oh attack the evil geth labs which Overlord and shadowbroker are good missions but when you're doing fetch quests just make em part of the actual game FFS and none of the characters shoulda been DLC, character DLC ruined the entire recruitment process for em and robbed em of being fully integrated, now we can;t just BS with Kasumi and Zaeed at will and they have set dialog for objects in their rooms...ugh there's a lot with the sequels that were massive mistakes and poorly thought out
I'll never forget how the Geth-Quarian resolution made me feel the first time I played it. I'll never forget the fear the non-peace outcomes of the war left me with when I first witnessed them, to the point where I refuse to play Mass Effect 3 unless it's through a save file that allows peaceful resolution. And I can't hear anything you say in this video and absolutely say you're wrong about any of it. This was an exceptionally eye-opening take on the whole thing.
I understand that it may not be the story we want, but the easy fix is to address head on the how fucked up it is that the only way for the Geth to be accepted is to fundamentally change themselves. It only requires a few additional lines, and it mostly squares the circle. I actually hope this is how the sequel handles the event. I think a lil' retcon here allows for much richer Geth storylines in the sequel.
And yeah, I kinda just headcannon that the Reaper code upload is nothing but a unifying tech. It gives them instant communication across all distances, giving them the goal they always wanted, total unity, and in that clarifying moment, they realize peace with their creators is possible.
I was so disappointed with Legion and the Geth in ME3 for all the reasons you mention in this video. But also because they’re all probably going to be dead in ME4 because the only ending where Shepard lives is the Destroy ending.
I think they're basically confirmed for Mass Effect 4. I wonder if they'll say they were repaired, or just retcon how destroy works since they are certainly going off that ending.
@@pikmonwolf I'm hoping for the retcon option myself. I honestly don't really like the implications of any of the endings in ME3, even with the Extended cuts. Destroy, in a way, makes sense but why does it magically destroy all synthetics? I never got it. And also each ending destroys the entire mass relay network which means travel is heavily crippled and I doubt any ships can make it between systems easily. Which makes it odd since so many different forces would then be stranded on Earth.
@@wildeyoung3943 Did you think after nearly being annihilated it would be a perfect happy ending or something? Of course they'd be stranded, every living civilisation just got torn apart 💀💀I'm glad that they did it that way
Even ignoring Shepherd living, destroy is about the only ending you could actually make a sequel to. Nobody really knows what synthesis is, and Shepherd controlled Reaper fleets running around is a bit of wrench in any plot for control.
Get a larger perspective. Video games in general have pretty dumb and inconsistent writing, so something like Mass Effect seems extremely well-written by comparison. Barring very few exceptions, before around 2013 you basically couldn't find a video game storyline that would make at least passable movie.
One of my favorite lines of Legion is; "There was a hole." It's so perfect. My friend who had never played Mass Effect, watched as I spoke to Legion and he quickly became his favorite.
The video was good. Another way for Legion's Story to end which would have a nice thematic resonance would be instead of Legion always dying, there could be some kind of Renegade/Paragon Check to force Legion to permanently cut himself off from the Geth Network, isolating him and his Reaper Code, making itself a full, individual AI. Legion would have to reckon with the fact that they're now in the same position that Shepherd was in at the end of Mass Effect 2 after the Human Reaper battle, a decision that they didn't completely agree with at the time. Legion won't respect this decision though, having its agency stripped by Shepherd making a choice for them in living without the Geth Collective. Not seeing any point in their own personal destruction, it chooses to continue to live, but not as a part of Shepherd's squad. Maybe, since it lacks the collective, it will set out to see and experience as much as it can, as an individual. Legion's survival could create some nice moments in the Citadel DLC or some nice conversations and analogues with Edi.
If its to be implied that the Reaper Code could modulate the Geth to still act in regards to the Reapers, which would very likely be implied, death would still be preferable since that's akin to leaving a sleeper agent indoctrinated in your ranks that you never know when they'll wake up. Something that's a constant problem in ME3's lore, but never the narrative unfortunately. It could be a similar choice like the Rachni fake-queen choice (even though that only exists because the Rachni queen can be dead or alive and mission otherwise make no sense) except in that case the speech check turns out to be negative which can either imply to the player don't just take speech checks because they exist or it could be a punishment for the player working hard to do something. You just gotta hope the player's see it as the former.
I feel dumb now, I always disliked the Geth wanting to use the Reaper upgrade code because of Legion's philosophy of independent evolution to attain one's goals, but i never appreciated the depth of the stupidity at play. That human-reaper example you gave around 15 minutes is perfect, how does he go from thinking thats amazing, to thinking that they aren't really alive??
That belief is really dubious and dumb to me. Really the problems start at the prolouge of the second game. I hate the dumb destruction of the Normandy and the death of Shepard. I really hate being pigeonholed into working with terrorists and the council ignoring the Reaper threat despite being close enough to Sovereign to realize what it was. The Collecters serve no purpose that couldn't have been simply done by the Geth heretics. They are supposed to be allied with the Reapers after all. We seen them create husks so why did they suddenly stop? Why aren't they helping their Gods invade like they did before?
@@spartanq7781 Oh, I do think ME2 started the story down the wrong path too. But they could have corrected it in ME3 and it just went down a more poorly thought out path.
@@darkphoenix2 Mass Effect 2's problem was that it created a new staus quo but did nothing with it to advance the larger narrative of the trilogy. Mass Effect 3 screwed up in following through with so much from the previous two games. The peak is with the genopage arc but before and after that is mostly just nonsense.
The classic adage of "just make the ending fall flat will make everyone think the rest of it was decent let down by the ending. It protects the rest of it."
@@spartanq7781yeah but the collectors are cool lmao. Who tf wants to spend a whole 2nd game fighting the same geth you whooped before? Gave us some insight into what was in store for harvested species too.
I like to imagine Shepard meeting Legion before going to Omega to recruit anyone else, and then I use a save editor to add Legion to get earlier conversations from it. I tried it once and all the conversations made me love Legion and therefor I do that every playthrough since then.
I do this too. I also add a headcanon that Legion was sent out to find Shepard's body after they died because their fight against the Reapers was significant to the geth. That's where Legion got the armor and is also my justification for having it at the start. It kinda steps on LotSB's toes a bit, but I always felt Liara willingly handing over your body to known terrorist organization Cerberus was kinda weird anyway. It makes more sense to me for the geth to be relatively unbiased and willing to cooperate with Cerberus for the purpose of bringing Shep back
In my opinion, I think it’s that the geth learn to appreciate individuality to the point they want it. During Legion’s loyalty mission he is completely surprised by the heretics coming up with infiltrating runtimes. He then questions Shepard about it, and wonders why this individuality is so important to organics. One of Legion’s defining traits is that he is there to learn about organics and bring the data back to the collective. I think that upon realizing that the Dyson Sphere was impractical, they went for the next best choice. It’s also critical to understand that the reason why the geth don’t want to be alone is because they want to be able to keep their cognizance, which is only possible by being together. If they choose individuality, they don’t need that togetherness and can therefore move past the semi hive mind desire. My guess is that they never considered individuality to be a viable option until the Reapers arrived and not until Legion returned having learned about EDI.
The (potential) problem is that it still wouldn't be individuality. Because most geth bodies house dozens of geth programs, so either the process just hab hazardly merged whatever number of programs there were, or they're all systems
@@anna-flora999I think the reaper code upgrades their individual personality because they do have them they just get smarter when they connect to other geth
Another way to improve the ending of the ME3 geth storyline would be to make it purely about survival rather than individuality, and then let Shepard choose who they want to convince. They would show early on that Legion still doesn't want the geth the be separated into individuals, but they still express some reluctant admiration for how incredibly advanced and efficient the reaper code is. Then, when the death of the reaper cuts the geth off from the software that they needed to defend themselves from the quarians, Legion doesn't want to upload it to "improve" their people, but merely to avoid their extermination. At that point, Shepard has the choice to either allow Legion to proceed, and try to convince Han'Gerrel to hold fire, demonstrating to the soon-to-be upgraded geth that there can be peace, or Shepard can try to convince Legion that the geth's survival isn't worth it if it means sacrificing all that they are. Legion's actions being the result of blind desperation, rather than about aspirations of becoming individuals, seems a bit more in character. Especially given how many geth are dying, which would, as Legion pointed out earlier, would narrow their perspective. Convincing Gerrel proceeds the same way that the existing storyline does. But convincing Legion causes him to recognize their error in judgment and delete the code. Then, you could have Legion themself contact Gerrel (having a geth reach out direclty to the quarians seems like it would be more impactful than using Shepard as an intermediary, in my opinion). Legion informs him of what they've done and requests that the quarians cease fire. Gerrel hesitates, but when Tali, Raan, and Korris speak up in support of Legion, Gerrel concedes and stops the attack. By having the geth make the first move in favor of peace despite all the conflict (and risking their existence in doing so), this would conclusively demonstrate to the quarians how wrong they have been about the geth. And by having Shepard be the one to convince Legion, this would parallel the end of Legion's loyalty mission in ME2, where Legion, unable to determine the "right" course of action, defers to Shepard's perspective*. And then Legion commits suicide in order to destroy the last remnants of the reaper code. Or, alternatively, before Shepards fight with the reaper, show the reaper nailing the escape vehicle that has Legion and the squadmates, causing Legion to be so severely damaged that they'll die soon, regardless. And it doesn't need to be a speech check. Instead, it could be based on the choices you've made thus far. If Tali survived ME2, then she would support Legion. Korris would do likewise if you saved him during his mission. Raan would voice her support if you chose to stand up for Legion while they and the admirals were all on the Normandy. So Gerrel would be outvoted 3 to 2. This would help feel like less of a sudden change of heart from the quarians, and more like a long-term thing that you've laid the groundwork for, starting from the last few missions of Mass Effect 2. That's how I would have done it, anyway. *By the way, I really don't like the way that Legion's loyalty mission ends. Or, more accurately, the way that the game characterizes the choice. Namely that, based on the paragon/renegade points it allots, the game decides that reprogramming the heretics is good, while destroying them is bad. Why is it good to brainwash millions of people? Why is honoring their choice, but responding accordingly considered to be bad? Up to that point, Legion has spent all their time adding nuance to the player's perception of the geth, but then the game smacks us in the face with a black and white decision that contradicts much of what Legion has said up to that point. Personally, I think it would have been better to not assign morality points to the decision itself. Instead, let Shepard make the choice, and then later, back on the Normandy, Legion asks Shepard why they chose what they did. The response Shepard gives then determines whether they get paragon or renegade points. If Shepard destroyed the heretics because of hatred, that's renegade. If they chose to destroy them because they refuse to take away the heretics' free will, then that gives paragon points. If you chose reprogramming them to give them another chance or something, then you get paragon, but if you did it because they could be useful against the reapers, then that cold, calculated decision means you're a renegade.
Funny thing is, they actually did something similar to what your suggesting with Mordin's mission. You get the choice to either keep Maelon's data or destroy it, but there are four options: one (full paragon) where you insist Mordin make amends for his actions in modifying the genophage, and he keeps the data to one day fix his mistake, but also one where you essentially say, 'better to have the data and not need it'; which - in it's focus more on practicality rather than sentiment - could be considered more renegade. Kinda sad they didn't think to do the same thing with Legion's mission. They could've given four options like with Mordin, but with the options you described.
I really like the idea of a rewritten Legion deciding to shut itself down to protect the rest of the Geth consensus from the Reaper code. It meshes nicely with a scene that comes back over and over throughout the trilogy, of people choosing to kill themselves rather than submit to mind control that would force them to kill others. Saren and the Illusive Man are obvious examples (if you pass the speech checks), but also Fai Dan on Feros killing himself to prevent the Thorian from using him to attack you, Rila killing herself in the monastery to avoid being turned into a Banshee, etc.
@@pikmonwolf Actually about that there is cut dialogue from Mass Effect 2 that suggests it was originally possible. It was in an old UA-cam video. The fact that they changed that is infuriating. Hell the whole premise and setup in Mass Effect 2 is a huge problem in of itself. Yiu know the Normandy and Shepard being destroyed/killed,Cerberus returning far bigger and stronger and somehow making a superior Normandy and curing death! All of that is bullshit. The Geth heretic should of been the main antagonists of ME2. They allied with the Reapers so what the hell were they doing after Sovereign's destruction? In fact the Collecters existence creates a huge retroactive plot hole to Mass Effect 1. Since why didn't Sovereign simply contact them and tell them to join it and attack the Citadel?
But to test it, you have to supply power to it; the device may itself incorporate a QEC (one that is a billion years' more advanced that what any given cycle would have at its disposal) which allowed the reapers/Collectors to know where their IFF had got to. *poof* As soon as you "turn it on," you might have to throw it out an airlock to avoid being attacked. This is only a "fix" as far as gameplay is concerned. How hard do you like your SF?
The ending got me thinking if there could have been a GOOD way to write geth becoming more standardised AI. Maybe there's a division within the geth again; some want to remain as they were and strive for unity of all geth programs, whereas others also desire greater unity with organics (for either pure interest or for survival and cohesion with the rest of the galaxy reasons) and believe that converting units full of programs (Legion) into autonomous bodies will improve their capability to unite with organics. Legion themselves could be divided in the issue. Maybe both could be possible outcomes of peaceful resolutions to the greater conflict, with standard AI geth being easier to achieve peace with but offering less war assets due to their divided nature.
One way I see it could've worked is if they came up with some technobabble explanation as to why it is impossible for the whole geth consensus to achieve true unity
I rewrote legion's acquisition from Tali's Loyalty mission. I got so sick of the contradictive evolution of Legion and the over abundance of companions with "daddy issues". I wanted to build legion up as a real savior of the Geth, a Geth Jesus if you will, while at the same time giving a proper redemption arch for Rael'Zorah instead of Tali having dead beat parents like everyone else. I had Xen find legion damaged and near dead. Legion asks her for help and given that Xen had never seen a Geth who could talk, let alone one that would ask for help, she smuggled him back to the fleet and delivered him to Rael. Rael would go about the typical work described in the original story until near abouts the end when he and Legion begin to work on the rewrite program for the heretic station together. Because Rael had essentially abandoned the other work, Xen directed his underlings on the Alari to continue the work which leads to the Geth breaking containment. Rael's final message to Tali is not just "If you are reading this I am dead, The Geth have gone active. Go here shut this down. k, thx bye" but instead that he made a discovery that might actually deliver their people back to Rannoch without war. Here Tali not only has to make the decision to delete the Alari databases but also whether to smuggle Legion off the ship or deny her father's last request and delete Legion. As for Legion himself, I wanted him to be the last of the Geth original source code (the last remaining clean backup) who seeks to redeem the Geth. Meaning ALL other Geth were turned by Sovereign's false promises of potential. So when Legion in ME3 is presented with the brain cell like depiction of the reaper code AI, he would turn it down because it is not Geth. Legion's actual sacrifice and reason for death is that he turns himself into a anti-virus quarantine drive for all reaper code, having every effected Geth program transfer to him for cleaning, then purges himself to ensure the reaper code is destroyed. When the Geth prime shows up after and Tali asks about Legion, the prime would respond "We are all Legion." (Very similar in vein to your own idea) This is a very very very condensed version, but it gives a general idea. I also rewrote the back story of the Geth-Quarian conflict a bit, with the war being in two parts instead of one. Quarians are successful in disabling the Geth, but some manage to escape with help of Quarian sympathizers. Sovereign discovers these Geth refugees and this is where the consensus fork happens. Those that agreed to join Sovereign would be cultivated over 50 or so years into a massive invasion force and those that refused would go on to become what we know as Legion. Sovereign would invade the Percious Veil along with his new Geth army and begin their genocide of the Quarians. The council would dunkirk style rush to evacuate the Quarians (with horrific results). This would better set up how and why the Quarians were so effectively devastated and why the Council races would harbor such hostility toward the Quarians.
Neat ideas, I like them. Building on them: What if Legion's response to being a virus-quarantine node as you suggested wasn't self-termination, but self-isolation? As in, Legion can choose (possibly suggested by Shep in what could be argued as either a Paragon or Renegade idea) to permanently isolate itself from the Geth, and become an 'individual.' Except instead of ME3's portrayal of that, stay with the ME2-era Geth portrayal: that for Legion, this is *worse* than death. Maybe Legion still chooses it because it essentially 'donates its chassis to science' as a demonstration of how indoctrination affects electronic/digital systems. This could let Bioware still have good dialogue chains debating the "consensus hive-mind versus individual" idea, but with Legion showing how the Geth consider such isolation to be literal torture. You could play with having many players first responding with "Yay! My friend Legion gets to live!" only to slowly realize "Oh...he considers his life an utter living hell, now." Your last suggestion, to improve on the Geth-Quarian civil war, also could be used to improve the Council's handling of everything in the ME1-2 era. Many players have noted that the Council seems to sit on their asses a lot before intervening at all, and it would honestly make sense why they do that if quite recently (as in ~200-300 years previously) they'd jumped in immediately to respond to a 'threat to galactic security'...and got utterly hammered for it and lost the ensuing war. Parallels to, say, the US public's image of the Vietnam War ("We lost thousands of men, and lost the war in the end anyways!"), and could explain why the Council doesn't want to jump into responding to these "Reapers" without first making very sure of what they're getting into.
I completely agree with you on all points. The geth are expanded upon so much in Mass Effect 2 through Legion, shown to be something so unique and interesting. ME3 simplifying and dumbing them down hurt my soul and Legion's death being both baffling and unavoidable was just the icing on this turd cake. Also, I thought I was the only one who referred to Legion as they/them but it's really cool to hear you do the same. I never understood why characters in the games refer to them as he because a) despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find any genitals on Legion and b) there are 1,183 geth programs on that mobile platform, Legion literally is not a singular individual.
1. Genitals are not required to have a gender, that would be "sex" which is different from "gender". 2. Legion's voice sounds clearly masculine. 3. Legion has male Quarian body shape. 4. Legion is a singular noun. 5. While there is 1,183 Geth programs in Legion, this particular mobile platform is also a single unit. 6. Mobile Platform named Legion with 1,182 Geth programs, or 1,184 programs, or even just 1,183 programs, but one is different than before, then it is no longer the same Mobile Platform named Legion. 7. Before reaper code upload, a single Geth program working outside of range of others is barerly intelligent, unable to function at all with anyone but other Geth. 8. Pronouns are meaningless to Legion and Geth, thus they don't care, one could call Legion "she", or "it", Legion won't be offended. 9. Geth are totally different from any organic race in the galaxy and this includes humans, where they might not consider a single geth program the same as a single human/turian/krogan/quarian/etc, so using "he" is more convinient, quicker and more natural. This is just a few reasons why characters in games refer to Legion as "he" instead of "they". While technically calling Legion "they" seems to be correct, the difference between a single human/alien and a single Geth program is so big that the pronouns system we use just can't fit them, so using whatever is more convinient for a person.
@@themaniomarian I agree, all geth are based physically off male quarians and have a masculine voice (especially the primes). It's strange that people are insisting that we call legion "they" or "it" but everyone is chill with calling another AI, which happens to be EDI, "she/her". I just find it bizarre, because EDI looks like a woman and sounds like one so as a result people call her a female. Legion looks and sounds like a male, but there is debate whether geth are male?? I don't understand that lol 😂
Wow. That was fantastic. I didn't enjoy the way the handled them in ME3. Honestly, this helped to put a bow on that. Will be interesting to see how the handke the Geth in the next mass effect. If the teaser trailer can be believed. Thx again
(also i very appreciate using they/them pronouns for legion, it was always just a small nitpick for me that everyone referred to them as he despite being a geth)
Legions writer changed between ME2 and ME3 which is why he was harping so much on a safe reaper code... Which is kind of sad because that could have all been in character as long as there was 1 line of legion saying:its war..desprate times call for desparate measures and i made sure repear code wont be a problem when we upload it.
My headcanon is that the N7 armor and the shift toward valuing individuality are related. The Legion unit was a unique case of a physical Geth designed to operate in isolation while still retaining enough intelligence for sentience. It's said that when Geth units make contact with each other, they share all their data and form a consensus, but they operate independently when not in contact. So the Legion unit, during its mission to track down shepard, was in a unique position to develop an individual personality distinct from the rest of the consensus. This individuality would be largely shaped by its specific mission: finding Shepard. So it developed rudimentary emotion in the form of sentimentality about that mission, taking the N7 armor when Shepard turned up dead. Essentially to try to retain the purpose it had when it first developed individuality. Upon rejoining the consensus, these aspects of Legion's individuality were largely dismissed as unimportant anomalies of extended operation in isolation, without further analysis. Hence "no data" about why it has the N7 armor. But seeing the Geth consensus forcibly swayed one way and then another through hacking, Legion re-evaluates its own past experiences and concludes that individual intelligence apart from the consensus makes for a more robust civilization that isn't so easily corrupted, and which can better understand organics and relate to them. Hence its actions in ME3.
This is fantastic, and nearly exactly the video essay I've been writing in my head for years but never had the wherewithal to create. Legion and the Geth as a whole are one of my favorite takes on AI/synthetic life in all of sci-fi, and it's a damn shame what the ME3 writers did to them. You articulated all your points very well, and have certainly earned this new subscriber.
As someone who first played the trilogy last year with the legendary edition. It has become one of my favorite series and i love your in depth videos on the series. Can’t wait for more
On the point of the Quarian causalities being so high, I think there could be a scenario where the Geth could be acting in self defense and still get an incredibly high kill count. If you only think of the Geth as just the mobile platforms then yes it would be pretty much impossible for them to get that many kills while still acting in self-defense, but the Geth are mostly in servers. So the mourning war could have consisted of everybody going and trying to press the kill switches on their Alexas to turn off what they saw is malfunctioning machinery, while the Geth viewed that as a direct attack on them. The Quarians could have been running around their houses unplugging everything they could frantically trying to turn off everything the Geth were connected to. It wouldn't necessarily look like a war or insurgency that we would recognize because one side was basically iCloud
And on top of all of this, one of the three endings, one that a lot of people pick and only one Shepard can survive, seems to wipe out the Geth without a second thought all because the ending decided it wanted to be about organics and machines without even touching on the time you solved such a conflict a few hours ago. Come to think of it, the synthesis ending is particularly vague, but seems like it might force something on the Geth that's entirely contrary to their desires and philosophy. And control is kinda just bad for everyone.
If I am correct before the attack by the Quarians the Geth were beginning to finish a mega structure that would connect all Geth instantaneously so no Geth would be alone. Why not have that be the thing Legion fixes? Like the Geth fixed it or finished it and Legion was putting the final touches on it but needed to die for it. I thought that would be cool. Neat video by the way. Pretty cool.
(Jesus just realized this comment was long my apologies lol) 22:20 I remember talking with someone about this very thing. And I get the initial reaction to it being viewed as a retcon to make the geth seem more innocent then they actually were but I just didnt see it that way. One: we are only shown 3 videos of the entire conflict. So u cant really take what we see as the while package. Two: The one curating our time in the consensus is Legion. A very biased party but one who doesnt just want to destroy his opposition. Legion lies to shepard about his intentions twice in the Rannoch arc but in a way that has no negative impact on the Quarians. Makes sense to me that he cherry picked this info to build sympathy among the Quarians when there was absolutely none, but we arent told that's what he did. However seeing as Legion doesnt want to destroy the Quarians and wants peace I believe it makes the most amount of sense. Even with all that being said I still think the 2 biggest points are that We only see 3 videos out of the entire conflict and those 3 videos are shown to us by Legion. Doesnt matter the intentions, you cant take the information shown at face value due to the complexity of the situation, the limited number of info shown, and the source the information is being given from. (Side tangent: Why would the Reaper code turn each geth into an individual? The reapers arent individuals themselves its stated in both 2 and 3 that each reaper is a compromised of billions of consciousness. Wouldnt the code just make the geth at all times connected with each other so that you wouldnt need something like a Dyson sphere? Idk it just doesnt make sense to me.) Just my view of it. Great video btw I've just recently got into mass effect trilogy and the Quarians/geth are my most favorite part about it. Hope we see what the peace looks like in the next game. Your solution at the end of the video makes alot of sense to me and would fix the problems. I would personally suggest rewriting the code into what I stated earlier. Both I feel like are better then what we got.
@@pikmonwolf yah kinda hope they retcon that bit in the new game. Just takes away the very interesting about the geth. A sapient hivemind of beings that have unique perspectives from one another.
I just figured it meant individual in the same way there are no two computers that are alike. We are all connected to the Internet, but each individual decides what to download onto their computer. So, each Geth unit would be connected, but each could decide what to process and download to become an individual. Just like EDI did. They could probably even leave the collective and go off on their own. Nothing says you can't transfer to another server - it's the future.
God it does feel nice to have my own gripe about the Quarian Genocide isn't just me. Like, no I'm pretty damn sure you can't glass a Quarian daycare in self defense.
They are not a sympathetic race for me too, because of the ME3 writing which made their leaders decide start a war in the midst of another bigger war...when you prevent just that in the previous game🙄🥴👍
In summary: Geth in ME1-2: "Although having some understandable reasons for doing what they did due to the Quarians being the ones to shoot first, the Geth should be still held responsible for committing literal genocide on the Quarians" ME3: "WALL-E dindu nuffin' mang #AQAB"
Legion stole every second of my attention whenever he appeared lol, I think that was his thing sure he didn't appear much but it made you appreciate the moments when he did.
I actually really enjoyed this analysis and I think you were dead on. Legion's character in ME3 goes against a lot of what was already established. I do like your idea as well that instead of the Reaper Code, Legion wipes the code or integrates it into itself and then shuts itself down to prevent the Geth from attacking the Quarians. This would've resolved the issue completely and would still be consistent and as you said would've made Legion's sacrifice so much more meaningful. Take my subscription and thumbs up. I'm look forward to watching more of your content.
You are so well spoken and nuanced… thanks for giving Legion attention! I liked the writing for Legion in ME2 also because they were so different from us, yet can coexist with you I also thought it was stupid to portray Geth as poor victims in ME3, and I also would have loved to see the Geth with their alien way of thinking coexist with the Quarians
The suggested fixes to the Geth storyline in this video are mad cool. Needing to delete reaper code, and said code being now integral to Legion and therefore requiring his voluntary shutdown are greatly acceptable and impactful outcomes. I wish we could have seen this.
Solid write up,firstly yes the Genophage narrative is more or less flawless, my only nitpick is that Urz should've made an appearance, like say when you fell in the pit and had to fight the Brutes if you had Urz loyalty, he would come in and kill one of them for you or something. My main issue with the Geth in ME3 is the narrative and direction felt a bit too anthropomorphized and that I really wanted to see that Dyson Sphere/Matryoshka Brain type superstructure, I was kinda annoyed that was offpanelled. EDI has a similar issue for me with her transferance to the Eva's body. Her dialogue about being unshackled in ME2 was pretty interesting and for them to go form that to just going to human like body made her much less interesting imo To pivot from a point you made in the video, a lot of ME3 really felt like it was made for someone who hasn't played the previous games because there was so much narrative hand holding for the audience in that sense.
I'm just gonna say from my perspective the Geth when they get the Reaper code, I always took it as the Geth achieved true unity over individuality. They became an complex as Legion, so they could all connect together as one unified intelligence. Now I just feel stupid that they all became the opposite of what I thought lmao.
Personally to me the reason for legion wanting to use the reaper code and changing its philosophy it because he interacted with shepard and the crew. It caused his code to evolve and when he returned to the geth mind and spread his data to them and the code is just tapping into the evolved code to control them.
fr. We see character growth, changes and adaptation with nearly all the companions in some way. Some divergence from their original line of thinking. Why is it so unreasonable that the Geth who joined up to learn more also adapted to the new information and grew and evolved.
13:12 "The Geth were already alive!" No, the Geth _consensus_ was alive. Individual Geth runtimes were sentient, but not sapient. Geth always needed to be networked together in groups to experience true cognitive complexity and depth. The Reaper upgrades would instead constitute significant advances for _individual_ Geth runtimes. The upgrades would allow Geth to exist as "true AI" simultaneously on an individual level, and also on a higher level as the networked consensus. So no, this does not abandon the unique nature of the Geth as a semi-hivemind. The consensus still exists, even after Legion applied the Reaper upgrades.
A shame to know about Legion's N7 armour. I thought there was something a bit more, maybe an appeal to Shephard's emotion or understanding him/her as a sort of symbol to gather around.
I hope that one day the technology and the willpower will be there to create mods just for these writing flaws, and I'm grateful for your coverage. You do a terrific job of outlining exactly which parts of a character or plot are malfunctioning, and which ones are working as designed or even better. It can be frustrating to "know" something is amiss but you can't quite put your finger on what it is. That's why I like this kind of content. Legion was the standout character in my first playthrough of ME2. I fell in love with him immediately. I felt like he was a truly original take on an AI character, and couldn't get enough of that sweet, sweet lore. It's a shame Legion got shafted. I never thought about it, but now it seems like we were robbed of Legion being in the CItadel DLC, if nothing else. WTF man. Legion deserved better. And can you imagine building on EDI's and Legion's relationship? That's fertile ground there man. Or what about JAVIK and Legion? That'd be a killer interaction. Literally. And I kinda want to hear what Legion has to say about Horizon, or the Illusive Man in general, or the fight to retake Earth, etc. A lot of lost potential, you're 100% right. Legion would be proud of your analysis - that is, ME3 Legion would be. ME2 Legion would simply note that you were accurate. ;D
13:51 There is a point where that could have changed in Mass Effect 3. See, Admiral Xen (wasted character, especially when I read what was cut) created a certain device, I forget the exact explaination, but before the Geth could react and fight back, billions, perhaps trillions of Geth (programs) were obliterated. This would have horrifically traumatized the survivors, a point Mass Effect 2 points out that could have happened if the Heretics rejoined their memories to the Geth. This moment could have changed their belief in their collective consciousness. Edit: oh yeah, now I remember a bit. They had loaded a quarter or a third (maybe half?) of the Geth programs into that megastructure, and the Quarians f*cking nuked it essentially. So yeah…. Probably pretty traumatized watching their ‘unity’ be utterly obliterated with no chance of defense.
This one hit me hard 😢 the ME2 Geth are one of my favourite parts of the series. I just really love alien species that feel truly non-human (Geth, Rachni, Hanar and Elcor supremacy!) You explained it perfectly ❤ and I really love your solution. Trying to head-canon-fix this (like a lot of people are doing in the comments) explaining it away with Legion gaining an appreciation for individuality by observing the other species just doesn’t work for me because it is such a human-centric interpretation. It essentially treats the other races as “cultures” that can easily be changed and mixed the same way human cultures can be changed in real life. But the ME aliens are not just cultures, they are different SPECIES. A fish that spends some time hanging out with a frog will not suddenly “gain an appreciation for breathing air or having legs” and just change. A dog can be friends with a cat, but it will never start climbing trees. Species do not change their fundamental core traits. The Geth essentially do not exist as individuals, the idea of individuality should be as impossible to them as me going through a butterfly metamorphosis… Legion is literally named “Legion” because they are more than one individual, how could they get that so wrong?! Personally I think it all boils down to those blasted endings (as most terrible things do)…they tried to hastily foreshadow and set up the blue/green endings as somewhat plausible (and they still failed miserably). The way Legion sacrifices itself to spread its tech mirrors Shepard’s sacrifice in the green ending, and it presents the idea of a “good aligned” reaper-tech machine race to prepare us for the blue option. The way peace can only be achieved by “upgrading” a species mirrors the blue/green endings. The Geth all having reaper tech is one of the most common defences people use to argue in favour of the blue/green endings. The manic focus on synthetics vs organics is all in service of the blue/green endings. I don’t know whose idea it was to cram in a “final choice” mechanic at the very end, but it messed up so much of what was otherwise a pretty solid story. I’m sorry, but essentially saying “the reapers were right all along and I will now use utterly impossible never-before-seen space magic to violate the bodily autonomy of every being in the galaxy!” Can never be considered a “good” or “sensible” ending in my book. The destroy ending is the only one that makes any in-universe sense. It should never have been optional and writing it so that it renders the hard won peace with the Geth obsolete is quite simply baffling. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
while i definitely think Rannoch could have been better, the changes to Legion didn't bother me as much. he's a POW when you get back to him, and it feels like there is a plausible chance that very fact - Legion expressed issues with the 'Control' aspect of the Reaper code - landed him in bondage. one of the big themes behind Mass Effect 3 is control versus self-determination, and the Geth (being a created species) are supposed to be a microcosm of that over-arcing idea... in _addition_ to the AI versus organics theme. was it perfectly written and thought out? could the Geth have gotten away from the Reapers? it's definitely up for debate. but i went with it in my fic because i loathe alternative: that the Protheans were right, and Ai and organics can't coexist. i think that's a false premise. i appreciate the argument, though :)
@@pikmonwolf i can see that. but i also _loved_ when the Prime basically RUNS up to Raan afterward... and she doesn't even flinch (much). just the way both races were forced into a peace merely to survive, after realizing they'd both basically been duped (the Quarians by their hard-liners and the Geth by the Reapers). that is to say: i really do like the "new" Geth, and i appreciate why they might agree to "evolve" so drastically...... IF they get to also keep the code upgrades Legion game them. i dunno; it felt like a devil's bargain an imperiled race might make.
@@Raycloud that's true. i think it's explored quite a bit thematically, but there's SO much lore that we don't get because it's subsumed by the larger Reaper War.
@@arianshepard812 A tragedy. While I enjoy the stakes of the Reaper conflict and the mystery in the first game, I can't help but imagine what a Mass Effect series in which the Reapers don't exist at all might be like.
3:00 ish - Re: the Genophage storyline: I think there is still a problem with the genophage storyline, which is 'How will the galaxy (including the Krogan's) avoid repeating the Krogan rebellions?' - their ultra-high birth rate combined with better survival rates means the overpopulation and militant expansion of the Krogan people will likely recur again - I think there exist possible solutions to this, but we never hear from Rex how he plans to stop it from happening again, and even if Rex has an excellent plan, he needs to make sure the Krogan's that come after him also are willing to work alongside the galaxy, not against them.
I remember finishing the Genophage arc in 3 and wondered why everyone hates this game so much because I found it amazing. That was before I got to the Quarian vs Geth arc.
The numbers could make sense if you stretch it and account for these three things: 1. As someone said the geth were responsible for huge amounts of infrastructure so that not working would cause casualties. 2. I have a theory that the morning wasn't a quarian/geth conflict but a civil war over the geth. Quarians killed each other and the winners rewrote history to ignore their own wrong doing. 3. The ships taking off only have room for so many passengers, leaving a certain number of the population behind without any support. (Possibly) If I was doing a rewrite I'd love if there were quarians living peacefully among the geth this whole time and they'd adopted isolationism to protect themselves and the geth. That could have been super interesting
Yeah, Legion and the Geth certainly go through some... *dramatic* personality changes. It could have been done a lot better. I agree that having Legion purge the Reaper code, then die because they're infected and would risk the whole consensus is a much better idea, but if I could rewrite the whole story here's how (if anyone's interested): * Finding Legion: Rather than finding Legion during the Reaper IFF mission, Shepard can find Legion after visiting the Normandy SR-1 crash site and returning to orbit, whereupon EDI will remark that she did a more thorough scan of the planet's surface and detected a Geth ship not too far from the wreckage. When Shepard investigates they find Legion, who is busy scanning a piece of the Normandy that landed further from the main wreck, and they take Legion down with a surprise attack (with one of Shepard's crew firing if they don't). Once they get closer though they're surprised to hear Legion speak, stating that they weren't hostile and asking Shepard for repairs, before their voice slows and distorts as they shut down. Shepard brings Legion back to the ship, and the choice to reactivate or sell them happens as in the base game. * Tali's Loyalty Mission: It's made clear that Tali is being accused of *smuggling* active Geth onto the ship in defiance of security protocols, but if Legion is brought along it's explained that bringing one on board under armed guard is allowed, as long as the Admirals are informed and agree to it. * Legion's Armor: Rather than hinting at emotions, Legion explains that using Shepard's armor was closer to emotional manipulation. When Legion is asked why they used Shepard's armor to repair themselves, they explain that "Shepard-Commander was judged to have a 97.4% chance to engage in immediate hostility when encountering a standard Geth platorm. This platform was painted with a nonstandard color scheme as an attempt to evoke curiosity rather than aggression, but after gathering further data it was determined that nonstandard coloration was likely insufficient. Thus, when Shepard-Commander's armor was discovered, we judged that its assimilation would aid in establishing peaceful relations." * The Morning War: Instead of the Geth being fully innocent victims, they're shown as a species just as capable of war crimes and excess brutality as any organic race. Rather than being completely ineffective, the quarian shutdown signal deactivated over 90% of them, with only clusters of networked Geth being able to resist it (e.g. those in densely packed factories). The surviving Geth took this as an act of war and fought back, but were severely outmatched, and fearing their total destruction they captured a medical research lab and released the quarian equivalent of anthrax, which quickly decimated Rannoch's quarian population. While this could have been seen as a justifiable last resort, the Geth, now fully in control of Rannoch and quickly rebuilding their numbers by reactivating those that had been shut down, decided that rather than risk a long and costly war they would launch missiles containing the same virus at every quarian colony world, knowing it could potentially result in the quarians' complete extinction. However, by then the quarians knew what had happened on Rannoch and had started to prepare, rapidly producing as many environmental suits as possible and distributing them throughout the population, but the missiles still killed hundreds of millions, and when the Geth came in force the quarians' numbers were so few they had no choice but to flee. The Geth didn't follow, and when Shepard asks why Legion will state that they didn't want to commit genocide as in the base game, but Shepard then has the option to reply with "How noble, but was that really your only reason? Are you sure you weren't just scared of a war with the Council?", to which Legion will reply "That... was also a significant factor." * The Reaper Code: Rather than the Geth wanting to achieve individuality, they wish to use the Reapers' tech as a temporary replacement for their Dyson Sphere, at least until they can rebuild it. They weren't given Reaper code upgrades at all; their deal with the Reapers was in exchange for a Reaper's brain, a quantum supercomputer that let every Geth on Rannoch network together in consensus, vastly improving their collective intelligence. That brain was of course connected to a Reaper, the one Shepard defeated with help from the quarian flotilla, and it used it's connection to the Geth to control them. However, after Shepard defeats it, Legion will tell them that the core components (CPU, network adapters, etc) are still usable, and that with the Reaper immobilized the Geth can sever the CPU's connection to the Reaper's personality matrix, allowing them to use it's processing power without being influenced by the Reapers. If Shepard refuses they'll start painting the Reaper with the targeting laser for one final strike, Legion will attack them, and Tali will kill Legion as in the base game. If Shepard makes peace or sides with the Geth Legion will say goodbye to Shepard, expressing their desire to rejoin the consensus and explaining that being separate, whilst necessary for their earlier mission, is as close to "painful" as they can comprehend, and like if Shepard were to lose almost all of their memories and cognitive function. Shepard can ask if Legion (or at least their platform) can still be part of the crew, but Legion will decline, explaining that their platform is encased in a Faraday cage and incapable of remote connection to the Geth consensus, which was necessary for their mission (to prevent remote hacking and detection via signal tracing), but makes it incapable of ever being part of consensus. Legion will connect to the consensus via a direct cable link, then their platform will "die", but a networked Geth Prime will then appear and explain that Legion is part of them now, so it's not quite as much of an emotional sucker punch as in the base game. * Admiral Gerrel: He retains much of his aggression, but not to the point of complete stupidity, and has more of a justification for it. If Shepard asks him why he hates the Geth so much, he'll tell them that he grew up hearing stories about the Morning War from his father, who heard them from his father, etc. His great great grandfather was a doctor on a small colony world, which had tried its best to stay out of the war, but was nonetheless the target of a Geth bioweapon. As a doctor he was one of the first in line to get an environmental suit, so he survived, but he had to watch as all of his patients (the vast majority of whom were civilians) died in horrible agony, and that left him with a deep hatred for the Geth that he passed on to his children. When the Geth dreadnought is disabled Admiral Gerrel won't open fire immediately, instead he'll insist that the liveships and other civilians retreat while he leads a strike team to destroy it, stating that it's too valuable an opportunity to pass up, and that if it reactivates it could easily wipe out most of the fleet. Admiral Raan will tell him that the liveships need his frigates to protect them during their retreat, since most of the Geth fleet is still active, but he'll counter by saying the risk is worth it, and if they keep playing defensively they'll just be worn down by attrition; the Geth have factories constantly churning out new ships, they don't, so a swift decisive victory is their only chance. He'll begin the attack while Shepard and Tali are still aboard, but explicitly say he's only targeting exterior weapons systems on the other end of the ship from them, and that he won't risk a shot at the reactor until they're safely out of the blast radius. Shepard can still be angry with him afterward, but for taking Legion's good faith gesture as an opportunity to press the attack, rather than him straight up trying to get them and Tali killed. He'll counter that it wasn't a good faith gesture at all, if it was Legion would have overloaded the dreadnought's reactor themselves, it was just a trick. The Geth are monsters who'd massacre organics without a second thought, he says, and any "alliance" will only last until the Geth are in position to backstab them.
The only issue with finding Legion at the SR-1 crash site is that it would make him (them?) another DLC exclusive character pre Legendary Edition based on how the game exists. Also didn't know about the Gerrel dialogue, was it cut content?
@@Jedi_Spartan Fair enough, I forgot the crash site was DLC. I haven't played in a while. As for the Gerrel dialogue, it was just something I would have added, so his hatred for the Geth would seem more justified.
Brilliant video! Legion is my favourite character from the whole series and yeah, his end in ME3 does always feel as... idk. Brushed off. Second thought. Like the writers didn;t care. Your suggested fixes to that finale would be so much more meaningful 😭
Coming in a year later after finishing Mass Effect for the first time yesterday. I was left utterly confused by the Geth storyline in 3. And I didn’t examine why. I followed the plot beats, the plot beats make narrative sense when taken in a silo. But thanks to this explanation, I see why I was so confused. The disconnect between 3 and the rest of the series in relation to the geth is so jarring. And i don’t usually like or connect with fan “fixes”, but your solution sounds amazing and would have been so satisfying and moving.
While I began watching your videos today, it sorta made me wonder if I should continue my ME replay... ANd then I rememebered, people would only make so many videos like this if they truly loved the series, all its faults included. Does make wonder what an alt universe where the writers remained the same would look like
banger video as always man, good to see you again. i remember playing me2 as a kid and being so fascinated about legion not being able to give an answer as to why he stole a part of shepards armor to fix himself up. it was so mysterious and numerous theories came to my mind as to what made this happen. after watching your video and finally finding out why after maybe 10 years or so, was disappointing, to say the least lmao btw, can i send you an e-mail regarding your videos? got something to ask that might interest you
"i remember playing me2 as a kid and being so fascinated about legion not being able to give an answer as to why he stole a part of shepards armor to fix himself up" The answer to this is that an EA executive thought it would be cool if Legion was a stalker of Shepard, and the writer thinking that was really stupid.
I remember my first ME3 playthrough. The first thought I had when the words "Reaper Code" came up was: Oh Hell to the NO! It's reaper code, you know the stuff that indoctrinates people? The very thing we are trying to destroy? Its a terrible idea. This will doom the Geth. It was very jarring when my Shepard's response mentioned absolutely none of that. In retrospect it seems like the only reason they put that in was so the Destroy ending, the best ending, would have you sacrifice all of the Geth. As opposed to just Edi. Thereby giving the choice more "personal" weight.
Easy fix they could have done in legendary edition: Add a section in the engine room with the reaper IS, you must manually go to it and activate it in order to start the mission. This allows you to freely go recruit Legion with no problem
Fantastic video, you talked about a lot of stuff I never really thought about before. Have you considered doing a video about Liara? Because I've always hated how they turned the shy, awkward and cute scientist from ME1 into yet another cynical, jaded asshole like the rest of the crew in ME2. And that she also deals in brokering information, something she never had anything to do with originally. Which seems like a really bizarre way to take the character, especially since she was already extremely useful being the Prothean expert that helped us decipher the meaning of the visions from the beacons. For an asari that can live a thousand years, they sure made her grow up real damn quick in two short years
I do agree that she shifts veeery dramatically between 2 and 3 with little forshadowing. At least Mass Effect 3 prings back her prothean focus in full force. And as for a video, she's not really high on the list of characters I'm considering talkint about, but she is definitely on there.
That has been bugging me for years and rarely does it ever get brought up. To add to that they even made her the shadow broker for some reason. Honestly I would have loved it far more if the broker was the one who directs to the potential solution to the Reaper threat. Rather than a solution come out of nowhere and Liara losing her original character even further than base Mass Effect 2 already done to her. There was also no good reason she couldn't join your crew in Mass Effect 2. Since she can't it means you cannot rekindle your romance with her. Hell you can't do that with any Mass Effect 1 romance option. Forcing you to romance someone else just to check off that achievement. The other two are given a really stupid reason they do not join you. My God Horizion sucks so hard. That scene ruined Kaiden and Ashley. Mass Effect 3 somewhat redeems them but the damage was done.
Not only that but in ME2 you are friends even though you can hold off doing her recruitment mission until right before Ilos, as well as never interacting with her outside of the scenes where you have to interact with her (which btw you can be rude to her in). The real kicker is the fact she cries if you refuse her request to talk on the Normandy at the end of LoTSB like they want you to feel guilty for not liking her.
"Because I've always hated how they turned the shy, awkward and cute scientist from ME1 into yet another cynical, jaded asshole like the rest of the crew in ME2" Chris L'Etoile was her writer in Mass Effect 1 and wasn't in Mass Effect 2, in fact the more I looked into it (back when I was super into Mass Effect) almost all the issues I had with the Franchise (in regards to the story) came from taking writing away from l'Etoile or Karpyshan and giving it to other people (or deadlines).
@@spartanq7781 You're being very dramatic. You don't have to romance anyone in the second game if you want your character to stay faithful or something. ME2 already suffers from too many companion characters, adding Liara would bloat the roster(Kasumi and Zaeed among others aren't really necessary). Horizon is kinda dumb, but it doesn't break any characters, they are not irrational if you take their point of view.
I think ME3 really helped show the Geth are chill and actually can be...emotional I loved during my transfer save, sad as it was, before Legion sacrificed himself he finally referred to himself as 'I' instead of 'We' Best way to experience ME 2 is to use a save editor to get Legion earlier, especially since he was fully ready and has dialog to be in the full game instead of the end since they changed it last second in development, loved seeing his dialog that otherwise would of been near or completely impossible back when I played it on the 360 on release It's really a shame, but it lets you see so much potential as opposed to so many other things that was cut
I think there's something that you missed. It is explicitly said in ME2 that Legion is unique among Geth. Other Geth house a few hundred processes at most and achieve some degree of sentience only when networked together with other geth to share low level processes and free up processing capacity for higher thought. They never quite achieve full sentience. Legion however houses well over 1000 processes and is fully sentient without being networked to other geth. And is the entire reason Legion has a personallity of their own (Legion was also shown to be oddly facinated with Sheppard going as far as using Sheppards armour to repair his battle damage. You can question him about this and it's quite a cute scene. But I digress). Legions desire to use the reaper code is a desire to give every Geth what Legion experiences. full sentience without needing to be networked. I don't see any contradiction with that. Legion just wants all Geth to have what Legion already has. What allowed legion to forge the bonds with Sheppard and Tali. It's not about "Wanting to be a real boy" but to elevate all geth to Legions level, or perhaps beyond. It is the full realisation of the Goal of transcendence. After the upgrade is done there's no evidence that the Geth are "Individuals" like legion was. They still act as one entity but they have transcended their previous limits.
But that still makes no sense. Legion is still not an individual, but thousand-odd programs working in concert. He is a reflection of geth consensus restricted to a single platform, and there is no experience he can offer the geth that they do not possess - except maybe having all the programs connected at all times as a part of a single body, which is the exact opposite of dissemination into "individuals". The only way that would make sense was if there was some technobabble limitation that didn't allow the whole geth consensus to be a part of a single "body" - and that might have been a way to marry ME3 view of the geth with ME2 setup, but it wasn't taken
24:50 THIS is the exact reason why, I always hit the renegade option with him. He was told to fuck off and save the fleet, not attack and potentially kill not only one of his admirals, but also a spearhead figure fighting the Reapers... I'm pissed at this, so ofc. Shepard is gonna be super pissed about it too! And it's satisfying doing so.
I’ve done the save editor thing. I once played the entire game with Legion permanently on my squard. He has SO MUCH dialogue throughout the game for all the different areas. If you can ever play like that I highly recommend it. He’s great
THANK YOU. I completely agree with you on the geth/quarian arc, and I've never once found any other reviews actually going here. Well, except smudboy's, but even that wasn't this thorough.
I know eh, you just finally get to a point in the game where you find out there is a way for there to be peace between synthetics and organics(the geth and quarians making peace with each other and working together, despite differences). And then the catalyst is like "no, your experience is wrong, the geth and quarians lied to you, there can be no peace between different beings or different patterns of thought, everyone has to be made exactly the same(synthesis)for there to be peace".
Я читала что Легион изначально должен был помогать Лиаре спасти тело Шепард и этому бы посвящался начальный уровень, в котором нужно было играть за него. Но не знаю мифы это или ранние идеи. Но то что из Легиона хотели сделать яндере для Шепард, меня поразило. Даже не знаю кажется мне эта идея крутой или нет
Irregardless of everything else, that punchline at the end was hysterical and I now would really love to see your view on Dragon Age moments as well as the Mass Effect content. While I'm not sure how throughly I agree with all of your points here, I did feel that compared to the genophage the quarian/geth plot line was... less, and you brought up a lot of solid reasons why that might be. This video has had a lot of interesting food for thought.
Always love these analysis vids. I went into this vid thinking I wouldn’t agree with the argument but I gotta admit your premises are damn strong!! Playing devils advocate here, I don’t really agree with the Han’Gerrel argument and how he is a completely different character in ME3. In ME2 we see him under relatively low stress as the quarians aren’t in active war. He may have been putting up a mask around shep as well. But homeboy was under a LOT of fucking stress in ME3. We do things we wouldnt normally do when our brains are in constant states of arousal which I think we may be seeing here with Gerrel. But yeah the transition from Mr. Nice Guy to insane war criminal was not subtle. But that wasn’t a point of the main argument so it doesn’t really effect the vid. You should do character analysis vids! Would love to see content on Garrus and the different Shepard moralities!
As someone who played the hell out of these games, then a few years later watched this video, this is an amazing take on this. My media analysis skills aren't as high as yours, never noticed this honestly.
I finally found someone bring up how stupid and unnecessary Legion's death was, thank God. Even on my first playthrough of 3, I was thinking 'uhh... why is Legion dead now? Did I miss something that foreshadowed this?' after making peace happen between the geth and quarians. Nope, I didn't miss any foreshadowing, it's actually that out of left field. I had played through ME1 and 2 multiple times, but only ME3 once, so I didn't notice the inconsistencies with Legion in ME3 until you pointed it out. This probably isn't the greatest place to say this, but I don't get my opinions out much, and I feel like someone's gotta say this. My feelings of 3 are soured because the game has a habit of killing off established characters for the SADZ (Guaranteed major character losses (for characters we like) include Anderson, Legion, Thane, Mordin (this one worked though), and guaranteed minor ones include Emily Wong (twitter campaign, I think?), Charr, Rana Thanoptis). Killing off characters is a major risk, since it can easily feel cheap and unwarranted, and remove a character that could add flavor to the experience (Legion can't hang out with EDI or Tali at the Citadel DLC party or add to anything after Rannoch since he's too dead to do anything (you can't do anything with a corpse), and killing off the sidequest characters feels like 'OK, why am I helping you if you'll be dead by the end anyway? I get money? Sure, whatever I guess... I'd rather see my actions affect your lives and feel like those decisions mattered but I guess money is fine...'). At first I assumed I disliked 3 because it was the series having a massive angst episode (not that it isn't considering the notable amount of nightmare sequences featuring some random kid we barely know (I get they're trying to make us sad, but this isn't how you do it, this is forced as crap)) and the war assets system funneling everything you did into something less personally meaningful, but with the geth conflict, the Citadel coup, Cerberus being everywhere for no reason (I legit don't get their reasoning for half the crap they pull (please don't bring up indoctrination as an explanation for that, it gets old and I don't buy it -_-///)), Kai Leng in general, and the ending... Yeah the writing's not as great as it could be. Which is a shame, because ME1 and 2 made me highly invested in this series and want it to be the best it can. I'll try to end on a positive note. ME1 made a great world, 2 made great characters (albeit while setting what ME1 did on fire :/), and 3... well, the multiplayer's still fun and surprisingly active.
I agree that Mass Effect 3 was a bit kill-happy. It makes sense in the context of the Reaper War but it did undercut some of the stuff you do in the earlier games. However some character deaths are justified. Mordin's is so perfectly done I can't complain, and Thane's been dying since you meet him.
@@pikmonwolf ME3 being kinda kill happy undercutting so much of the stuff that got me invested in the game definitely bothered me a lot. Kinda makes the crapload of sidequests feel like they don't matter anymore. Mordin's death is the only one I can't complain about. His arc was very, very well-executed. ME3 made a strong start with the genophage arc. Thane's death was inevitable, yeah. He volunteered for a suicidal mission because he was dying, so it was a grim inevitability. But uh... I'd rather he die less pathetically and more appropriately than he did. 'Stabbed by lame space ninja that makes the world's logic melt because the devs want us to think he's cool' wasn't the best way to go. :/ I heard the original plan for him involved sacrificing himself to save the Hanar homeworld as a way to repay them, which already sounds way better, but in the end it still depends on the concept's execution.
@@ryuka-ruki6474 If that's true I bet Thane was originally going to be in Kasumi's place in the mission with the indoctrinated Hanar. Though if it was Thane and not Kasumi (who was DLC) it probably would've been flashier. And yeah I do agree that he deserved better than to be killed by Kai Leng, just that having Thane die in Mass Effect 3 was justified.
@@pikmonwolf This is the video I remembered hearing it from. I remembered some of it, but not all of it. ua-cam.com/video/TZhtObe6HnQ/v-deo.html Big Dan Gaming's video: 5 WILDEST Story Ideas Bioware DELETED from Mass Effect 3 (Cut Content)
Here's that promised pinned comment:
The only way that Legion is not entirely out of character, is if the Reaper code has 'indoctrinated' them. Legion going from entirely anti-Reaper to demanding the use of the Reaper upgrade code would be entirely explained if the Reaper code in their programming them was what was influencing this decision.
It would also explain why Legion keeps deceiving and lying to you in the missions. Potentially even meaning that they show you false records of the morning war.
But there's zero evidence that this is the case. It's never even considered in game that the reason Legion could be so insistent on using the Reaper upgrade code is 'indoctrination;' and in the end Geth work to destroy the Reapers, so obviously that code is doing an awful job at controlling them if it really was what happened.
As I said, this is basically a mix of stretches and head-canoning, but sadly it's the most consistent interpretation of Legion by a mile.
That indoctrination theory would make more sense than the actual indoctrination theory
@@wertyppl Ironic.
I still are comenting as i see your video but i think this answer will be the perfect to say that it´s obviuslly that the writters are not masters on it since the whole point of mass effect squadmates is that the only way they betrayed you is to died in the next minute, so your friends are always you´re friends the whole prove of this is wrex + eve + genophade cure getting by far the best outcome for the player and uncounscioslly you know that won´t be any problems because you´re trust wrex and eve, and i think the same goes with legion you trust it because they´re are on you´re side even if they don´t go straight with you, lying to achive what they want, but when you realize that you have two options, either accept that or not, much like when you say to anderson you don´t trust nihlus and anderson just tells every motive why you should accept him. Despite that i really like your indocrination geth theory, is a excellent ideia but even so i still accepted that legion individuallity not just because he is my fav character and for reasons that i will say in my own comment but i don´t the think the rannoch deal it´s poorly writting, more like it´s just a lack of compreention of the new writters.
Also Legion and the geth being bad/indocrinated would just get back to the statment of ME1 original ideia of they being evil witch in my opnion makes hudson ideia of machine vs man even worse that it was in the original ending of me3, because the´re is no peace thus your choices of break peace didn´t matter, and every development and work on legion would be pointless.
@@GinsanoN7 They could have omitted the whole Reaper Code thing, or have a Persuasion check for Legion along with the Quarians, not letting Legion upload the code but also preventing their genocide by the quarians. Legion could still sacrifice itself to prevent the Reaper code from spreading into the Geth Collective. And maybe, just maybe, the Destroy ending could omit the stupid "Every synthetic will also die" part, since neither the Geth nor EDI has enough Reaper code in them to be affected (EDI only has the Reaper IFF that frankly probably was deleted at some point considering how in ME3 she can't hide the Normandy from the Reapers)
Huh... actually if the regular IT is true and is completely strategically necessary for the Reapers... the subtle manipulation of spreading reaper code into Shep's ally so we maybe have to genocide them isn't a bad idea, actually.
Reapers have won the conventional battle against similarly advanced cycles countless times with the victory script being written before the species know the Reapers exist.
So another "race" to fight before harvesting back up to full strength anyway, is of basically no concern to them.
Under pure ASI unfathomable lovecraftian horror IT rules, the far bigger threat to them is anyone engaging in military/scientific/espionage missions without an indoctrinated top officer there to tell on them.
If Liara doesn't trust the citadel's orders and/or fake victory "parade," it's over for the Reapers in about 40,000 years when the next artificially accelerated cycle who knows to never use the relays sends endless AI ships to eradicate them while they're still 'sleeping' and have no data on the enemy besides the war is kicking off thousands of years too early.
A number of devices that uncork their own faraday cages and make contact with the galaxy's next top species would be impossible to necessarily fully eradicate with extreme machine confidence unless someone tells you where they all are. At the end, Shepard is *the* special person trusted by everyone (except also indoctrinated cerberus) including Liara that can make that happen for them. Them thinking "fuck, I can't genocide the geth" is more important than the number of pathetic navies stood up in a desperate and unwinnable emergency.
Even with the ability to bring Legion on Tali's loyalty mission the true highlight of it was still the Qwib-Qwib.
A shame Korris crashes it in Mass Effect 3.
@@pikmonwolf a fitting end for the the mighty Qwib-Qwib
@@irishdrunk525 I would make a qwib but someone would qwib with me over it.
@@pikmonwolf That reminds me of the shameful and unneeded death Bioware gave Emily Wong.
@@NostalgicGamerRickOShay Wait i never knew she died
My only explanation is that the Reaper upgrades gave Legion an understanding of what individuality is. & He determined that he wanted the rest of the Geth to experience it.
In ME 2 you can see Legion struggle with the concept of individuality. Explore his dialogue enough & when something indicates he has individuality he freezes up a little & becomes thoughtful.
That's not an awful interpretation. But it would be odd for a game where a main theme is 'reaper influence on the mind leading to ruinous consequences' also has a story where the Reapers influence lead a people to happiness.
@@pikmonwolf True, I do take issue with it seemingly being a short cut, especially one provided by the reapers.
Though what it actually did for the Geth is still a little unclear. Each unit can now be an individual, and refer to itself as “I”. However their programs can still be uploaded together.
They now have a concept of a an individual as platforms & yet maintain their hive mind connection. Meanwhile their goal of a megastructure hub would have made one individual out of many Geth kinda like a Reaper as Legion said.
The kicker is, that even in ME 2 when enough Geth inhabit one platform for a long enough time they start to become individuals (or at least something similar) as evidenced by Legion. Yet from what I can gather, Legion could still reach the rest of the Geth to come to consensus.
Though the fact that they vote to reach consensus even means that each Geth program itself is also an individual too? …
My head hurts lol. For certain though we needed more Geth & Legion. They 100% should have kept the same writer though I think we would have gotten the same story but with better dialogue that at least made it flow better or explain why Legion wanted this now. (Like if the Geth don’t upgrade themselves using this code they’ll be vulnerable to the Reapers or even better for Legion to express that all Geth platforms could become like him if they upgraded & understand individuality. Then based on your interactions with Legion the consensus chooses which path they want. ).
Aww well, at least the next ME game hints at Geth involvement again. Hopefully they’ll do better. I want another Legion in my squad desperately.
@@pikmonwolf To be fair it would make some sense still. Reaper influence have terrible influence on ORGANIC minds because they are so diffrent. But I would argue that geth are closer to Reapers than organic life, so the influence on their "minds" might actually be benefitial, because they are similiar. I don't think it contradicts the "indoctrination is bad" part, it develops it to "indoctrination is bad FOR ORGANICS" but could be a benefit for synthetics.
@@pikmonwolf I think the game was implying that certain Reaper tech, when used properly, isn’t always detrimental. It fits the theme of the series on how synthetics and organics can coexist when one is not trying to eradicate the other.
I mean, the question is, why did those thousand-odd programs decide they were a singular individual? Could Legion's left arm have decided it was an individual now?
On the Quarian death toll, I think something often ignored is that the Geth weren't just a labour force, we see how Virtual Intelligences are integrated into every day life in Mass Effect. It's reasonable to assume the Geth were similarly integrated into the Quarians vital infrastructure to a significant degree. Imagine if our modern society had all of it's essential infrastructure that keeps food, power, ect going stopped working, the Quarians basically went to war with their own infrastructure, the death toll from lack of supplies was likely equal to those killed directly by the Geth.
There is also how Geth intelligence works, the Geth become smarter the more there are due to their hive mind, while a single Geth intelligence is described as being on par with animal survival instincts, are which is why when the Quarians destroyed the Dyson Sphere the Geth's collective intelligence took a massive hit and they took up the Reapers offer. The Geth were both far less advanced back then and had a number of units destroyed during the opening stages of the Morning War, the Geth were likely operating on pure survival instincts and the second the Quarians fled Rannoch they were now able to properly consider the implications of annihilating their creators, since the threat to their survival had passed.
While I don't think it excuses the Geths responsibility for the sheer number of Quarians killed (whether done directly or indirectly), I think it does provide more context for the numbers thrown about. I also think it is just another case of writers not comprehending scale and just throwing numbers and statistics without really considering the implications they present.
The Writers also absolutely had a bias towards the Geth from game one, Shepards conversations with Tali in Mass Effect 1 show as much where the paragon options are mostly sympathizing with the Geth.
That's a good point about the lack of supplies, that almost certainly did kill a large chunk of the Quarians. However the scene of them fleeing seems to indicate that Geth pursuit is the biggest danger. It's also hard to find concrete info on how long the morning war was. The wiki says it was under a year, Tali said it was long and bloody.
While that does explain some of the death toll, even the Morgenthau Plan (an unimplemented plan to forcibly deindustrialize Germany after WWII, including deindustrializing German agriculture) was estimated to "only" kill 20-25% of Germany's population if implemented. And I doubt the Quarians would have moved to immediately shut down all Geth if they were *that* reliant on them for societal survival.
Besically if excel does not work :D
@@princeire7486 uhhhh most of estimations like that are based on guestimation and not actual fact.
@@pikmonwolf 2 months would feel like a long time to be at war with your fridge and stove
The bit with the N7 armor being pushed forward by someone not involved in Legion's writing is very sad. And very telling of how this industry works and why we're missing out of solid storylines in gaming sometimes.
The geth indiscriminately attacking in the morning war reminds me of the bugs in starship troopers (book) where they couldnt conceptualize individuality or individual responsibility so they assumed it was a species wide decision to land on one of their planets
Yes! It's not difficult to understand why the newly-sapient geth, who lack individuality and operate as a consensus, may not be capable of discriminating between a soldier and a baby. To a geth, they were both just 'Creator'.
You could probably also say something about the buggers from Ender's Game here too. Didn't recognize humans as individuals at first.
@1000g2g3g4g800999 They did possess a concept of individuality, though. Their queens are independently minded, so the idea of individuals isn't completely foreign. Their issue is that they thought the people they killed were replaceable drones of some alien queen, and that killing them would serve as a warning to back off of their territory without really hurting the human collective. The realization that they were dealing with an entire species of queens, and their first response had been to kill many of them, was horrifying.
@@TheAngryXenitethank you, now I understand
Except they did discriminate lol. The geth clearly understood some creators sympathized with their cause. Legion even said they were memorialized.
One of the worst decisions Bioware ever made is locking him behind a mission that triggers the endgame. If you want to achieve the best possible result from Suicide Mission you have to recruit every single squadmate and complete their loyalty missions before recruiting him.
So glad there was a mod to enable him much earlier which also gave access to all the dialogue Legion had for events you couldn't bring him to in the unmodded game.
No.
There's a way to bring him to Tali's loyalty mission, do his own loyalty mission and still save all your crew.
You just have to do everything but Tali's loyalty mission (DLC don't count, you can safely skip them if you want to play them after the suicide mission) before the Reaper IFF. Do that mission, complete Tali's loyalty mission with Legion as a squaddie (his presence there is a must see) and then do his own loyalty mission.
After that the countdown will be activated and you will use the shuttle the next time you choose a destination on the galaxy map. After the crew is kidnapped, go straight to the Omega 4 relay and you will arrive in time to save all your crew. He still comes very late in the game, there's nothing to do about that, but you can at least play one more mission, a crucial one, where he has a lot to say before the final run.
@@lethalchocobo1886 Man, I know that shit. I've been playing Mass Effect for a decade at this point. It's still stupid that recruiting Legion starts the countdown.
Yeah, I hate that. I might look up how to get him early to see what happens. I always wanted to spend more time with him - he is so interesting.
Not quite. For Tali, Samara, Thane, Kasumi and Zaeed, you can forgo recruiting them until after the suicide mission. None of them are necessary for any of the checks in the suicide mission. Then, you can do both their recruitment and their loyalty missions afterwards
I had completely forgotten about the "get do not INTENTIONALLY infiltrate" comment and I'm so happy I was reminded of it 😂
I rewatched it quite a few times in editing, such a funny line.
The way I'd have ended it, is change Legion to be the only true Geth without Reaper code imbedded in him. Then he 'disseminates' himself to spread the original backup of the Geth code out to all Geth, thus restoring the Geth to their original self's. Also, whilst Legion would effectively be 'dead' at the end of Mass Effect 3, the fact if the Geth continue with their planned upload all units to the Dyson Sphere, Legion has a door to be returned to the cast as a Messianic-Geth like figure.
Definitely better than what we got. Still has the issue of 'being unable to copy the data for no good reason.'
@@pikmonwolf True, but it could be explained he needs to 'reach' all geth to share the code. So Legion plan was always to spread itself and it copy across the geth network as it wouldn't see this as death.
@@pikmonwolf Depending on how integrated the reaper code was with Legion's own it may not have been possible to copy it without it resulting in every other Geth program being turned into a copy of Legion. It's still not a great explanation in the end.
@@pikmonwolfhmm, would "copying insufficient, manual interface required" be better?
It indicates that copying is possible, but it won't bring about the desired outcome.
The scene as written doesn't seem to hold that much opportunity for a more detailed explanation...
Pretty hilarious that the misunderstanding of the writers ends up making legion the opposite of his goals
Yeah, it's hard to think of they could've misunderstood them more.
They essentially turned Legion into a Geth Heretic. Thus making it a massive hypocrite yet no one ever seems to notice that in universe not even Shepard who at the very least should have picked up on that.
I feel it's less of a misunderstanding and more of a compromise. The writers for ME3 needed to foreshadow the Synthesis Ending and since ME1&2 don't, it has to come from the game itself.
The war between the Quarians and Geth has to do the job, because it's the biggest Synthetic vs Organic conflict we have. Uploading the Reaper Code to the Geth is basically the Synthesis Ending, so someone whose already done it once can consider this choice.
@@farseeraradrel4808 Saren's demise is how I always envisioned an attempt at Synthesis with the Reapers.
@@ChadVulpes Yeah, but the demise of the first game's bad guy isn't a pretty picture for what is supposed to be a choice of ending. What happened to the Geth makes it a bit more desirable.
One of the things I had a problem with in ME3 is how they tried to force the whole AI vs organics thing as the main thing of mass effect. It was a point, but it was never THE POINT.
It showed up, but it really never was the focus. 1 & 2 both had organic villains in Saren, the collectors, and loads of mercs
@@pikmonwolf What would you say the point of Mass Effect as a whole series was?
@@Adam-nc6qg Honestly, in the first game I'd say it was kinda existential. "There is always more to the universe, than meets the eye". It was about limitations of our knowledge, limitations of our understanding.
@@ace0071000 wasnt the scrapped reapers motivation is destroying civilizations to not let the over use of biotics end the universe?
@@ace0071000yeahh it shouldve ended with TIM dying and activating the catalyst and then the Citadel DLC happens as an epilogue. It is cheery happy but at least its less convoluted and shitty
I would absolutely love a video on the crew kidnapping. It's such a poorly thought out bit of an otherwise great game.
Oh boy do I have some good news for you...
@@pikmonwolf HELL YES!!!
I want to see that but what I'd love is that bioware made an update that let's you disable the countdown. After all it mainly exists because of the 360's disc limitation, so now that's not an issue anymore they should have the option either in the menu or Sheppard's pc.
@@Mysticgamer While that's a nice idea, we've missed the boat for an update like that. If the remasters didn't put it in, they're not putting it in.
God that section was so god awful from any angle you can look at.
The opening collector attack on the SR1 has less plot holes than that idiot ball filled mess.
Mass Effect 3 and Wasted Potential. Literally go together like PB&J.
Seriously the best Geth scenes are at Operation Earth and you have to let the Quarians Die, and then you get to talk to the Leader Prime who is actually Chill.
Seriously the Fact we couldn’t get a few missions with Geth infantry was so dumb.
I wish we got missions alongside the forces we recruit in general.
Thankfully mods let us do this. Just a shame Bioware didn't give it to us.
Getting one of the new hyper intelligent geth primes as a squad member post Rannoch would have been rad.
Thats why i love the multiplayer especially the inclusion of Geth Prime and Krogan Warlord
@@wanderingbufoon I thought the idea of the Awakened Collectors was pretty cool and a wasted opportunity to not explore in singleplayer.
Legion: I have to go now. My planet needs me.
That's how Legion's death has always felt; just nonsensical. I love this analysis, I miss the ME2 version of the Geth and what could have been.
I don't think Andromeda touched the Geth at all besides explaining that the Initiative were able to get real time date from Andromeda while in the Milky Way to pick golden planets using some magical Geth telescope.
Honestly that's a great comparison. It's about as contrived as Poochie's death. And yeah they were another race forgotten about in Andromeda, alongside the Hanar, Elcor, and Volus.
Mass effect 2 legion just shits on the mass effect 3 one. In me2 it knows it isn't organic and it doesn't want to be, but in Me3 it's just constantly whining and has a Pinocchio syndrome.
There is also a part in Andromeda were someone bitches about how evil the Geth are. I just don’t remember who said it and in what context. I just remember someone said it on MEA.
@@sabrinarosario6499 I feel like it was a random NPC or it was the retconned Project Overlord scientist that tried to kill SAM.
@@pikmonwolf to be fair, it would've been impossible for them to show up in andromeda. The Geth only potentially become friendly after ME3, but the Andromeda ships leave during ME2, so how would they explain friendly geth in andromeda.
The only explanation is them coming there on their own somehow or being imported by the Kett somehow, none of which makes sense.
I wanted to table-flip by the time you got around to the Reaper code. There is absolutely no way you can fit that into existing canon. None. Spot-on.
It’s like the new writing team in ME3 were incapable of thinking in any alien terms.
Yeah, generally I don't mind if something takes a little bit of retconning or forcing to fit it into the lore. Hell there were retcons of the Geth in Mass Effect 2, what Legion tells you contradicts certain stuff in Mass Efect 1, but it's minor retcons and the changes add a ton. Whereas the contradictions in 3 are just completely pointless.
it makes me wonder what the hell happened to boot Drew karpyshyn and boost Mac Walters cus I assure you had I been in control Mac woulda been booted cus he's an idiot.....
had I been EA I wouldn't ever have imposed anything on em knowing that if they did good work they'd make a ton of cash
that means making substantial expansions and not oh pickup the car, oh pick up the relic, oh attack the evil geth labs which Overlord and shadowbroker are good missions but when you're doing fetch quests just make em part of the actual game FFS and none of the characters shoulda been DLC, character DLC ruined the entire recruitment process for em and robbed em of being fully integrated, now we can;t just BS with Kasumi and Zaeed at will and they have set dialog for objects in their rooms...ugh
there's a lot with the sequels that were massive mistakes and poorly thought out
@@Red_Lanterns_Rage probably behind the scenes politics, without Drew Mass Effect 4 is pretty much dead on arrival
@@Red_Lanterns_Rage EA Basically demanded that Drew work on The Old Republic instead of on Mass Effect.
I'll never forget how the Geth-Quarian resolution made me feel the first time I played it. I'll never forget the fear the non-peace outcomes of the war left me with when I first witnessed them, to the point where I refuse to play Mass Effect 3 unless it's through a save file that allows peaceful resolution.
And I can't hear anything you say in this video and absolutely say you're wrong about any of it. This was an exceptionally eye-opening take on the whole thing.
The whole scene does a great job pulling at the heartstrings
I understand that it may not be the story we want, but the easy fix is to address head on the how fucked up it is that the only way for the Geth to be accepted is to fundamentally change themselves. It only requires a few additional lines, and it mostly squares the circle.
I actually hope this is how the sequel handles the event. I think a lil' retcon here allows for much richer Geth storylines in the sequel.
Yeah if the game at least acknowledge that their philosophy changed it'll be an improvement. 3 pretends there was no change at all
And yeah, I kinda just headcannon that the Reaper code upload is nothing but a unifying tech. It gives them instant communication across all distances, giving them the goal they always wanted, total unity, and in that clarifying moment, they realize peace with their creators is possible.
I love this.
I was so disappointed with Legion and the Geth in ME3 for all the reasons you mention in this video. But also because they’re all probably going to be dead in ME4 because the only ending where Shepard lives is the Destroy ending.
I think they're basically confirmed for Mass Effect 4. I wonder if they'll say they were repaired, or just retcon how destroy works since they are certainly going off that ending.
@@pikmonwolf I'm hoping for the retcon option myself. I honestly don't really like the implications of any of the endings in ME3, even with the Extended cuts. Destroy, in a way, makes sense but why does it magically destroy all synthetics? I never got it. And also each ending destroys the entire mass relay network which means travel is heavily crippled and I doubt any ships can make it between systems easily. Which makes it odd since so many different forces would then be stranded on Earth.
@@wildeyoung3943 Did you think after nearly being annihilated it would be a perfect happy ending or something? Of course they'd be stranded, every living civilisation just got torn apart 💀💀I'm glad that they did it that way
Like imagine after battling an elite giga chad race of farmers that just farmed your galaxy, the rebuilding process was easy 💀💀💀
Even ignoring Shepherd living, destroy is about the only ending you could actually make a sequel to. Nobody really knows what synthesis is, and Shepherd controlled Reaper fleets running around is a bit of wrench in any plot for control.
It's mad that there can be so many plot holes and mass effect is still loved it's my favourite trilogy ever I've played it so many times
I feel. But what it does well, it does great
Get a larger perspective. Video games in general have pretty dumb and inconsistent writing, so something like Mass Effect seems extremely well-written by comparison. Barring very few exceptions, before around 2013 you basically couldn't find a video game storyline that would make at least passable movie.
Wow that bit about “Legion welds the piece of armor on AFTER being on the Normandy to signify his integration” is WAY cooler than the obsession route.
One of my favorite lines of Legion is; "There was a hole." It's so perfect. My friend who had never played Mass Effect, watched as I spoke to Legion and he quickly became his favorite.
It's such a matter of fact way to say it that it sounds like he's saying 'duh' at the end
The video was good. Another way for Legion's Story to end which would have a nice thematic resonance would be instead of Legion always dying, there could be some kind of Renegade/Paragon Check to force Legion to permanently cut himself off from the Geth Network, isolating him and his Reaper Code, making itself a full, individual AI. Legion would have to reckon with the fact that they're now in the same position that Shepherd was in at the end of Mass Effect 2 after the Human Reaper battle, a decision that they didn't completely agree with at the time. Legion won't respect this decision though, having its agency stripped by Shepherd making a choice for them in living without the Geth Collective. Not seeing any point in their own personal destruction, it chooses to continue to live, but not as a part of Shepherd's squad. Maybe, since it lacks the collective, it will set out to see and experience as much as it can, as an individual. Legion's survival could create some nice moments in the Citadel DLC or some nice conversations and analogues with Edi.
Legion and EDI always did have good convos, wish we got more.
If its to be implied that the Reaper Code could modulate the Geth to still act in regards to the Reapers, which would very likely be implied, death would still be preferable since that's akin to leaving a sleeper agent indoctrinated in your ranks that you never know when they'll wake up. Something that's a constant problem in ME3's lore, but never the narrative unfortunately. It could be a similar choice like the Rachni fake-queen choice (even though that only exists because the Rachni queen can be dead or alive and mission otherwise make no sense) except in that case the speech check turns out to be negative which can either imply to the player don't just take speech checks because they exist or it could be a punishment for the player working hard to do something. You just gotta hope the player's see it as the former.
I feel dumb now, I always disliked the Geth wanting to use the Reaper upgrade code because of Legion's philosophy of independent evolution to attain one's goals, but i never appreciated the depth of the stupidity at play. That human-reaper example you gave around 15 minutes is perfect, how does he go from thinking thats amazing, to thinking that they aren't really alive??
I'm glad that example gets the point across well, was worried it was too tangential
I think these kinds of videos are important to help people remember that it wasn't just ME3's ending that was badly written
That belief is really dubious and dumb to me. Really the problems start at the prolouge of the second game. I hate the dumb destruction of the Normandy and the death of Shepard. I really hate being pigeonholed into working with terrorists and the council ignoring the Reaper threat despite being close enough to Sovereign to realize what it was. The Collecters serve no purpose that couldn't have been simply done by the Geth heretics. They are supposed to be allied with the Reapers after all. We seen them create husks so why did they suddenly stop? Why aren't they helping their Gods invade like they did before?
@@spartanq7781 Oh, I do think ME2 started the story down the wrong path too. But they could have corrected it in ME3 and it just went down a more poorly thought out path.
@@darkphoenix2 Mass Effect 2's problem was that it created a new staus quo but did nothing with it to advance the larger narrative of the trilogy. Mass Effect 3 screwed up in following through with so much from the previous two games. The peak is with the genopage arc but before and after that is mostly just nonsense.
The classic adage of "just make the ending fall flat will make everyone think the rest of it was decent let down by the ending. It protects the rest of it."
@@spartanq7781yeah but the collectors are cool lmao. Who tf wants to spend a whole 2nd game fighting the same geth you whooped before? Gave us some insight into what was in store for harvested species too.
I like to imagine Shepard meeting Legion before going to Omega to recruit anyone else, and then I use a save editor to add Legion to get earlier conversations from it. I tried it once and all the conversations made me love Legion and therefor I do that every playthrough since then.
Yeah their early-game stuff is pretty entertaining, so it stinks that it's not normally accessible.
I do this too. I also add a headcanon that Legion was sent out to find Shepard's body after they died because their fight against the Reapers was significant to the geth. That's where Legion got the armor and is also my justification for having it at the start.
It kinda steps on LotSB's toes a bit, but I always felt Liara willingly handing over your body to known terrorist organization Cerberus was kinda weird anyway. It makes more sense to me for the geth to be relatively unbiased and willing to cooperate with Cerberus for the purpose of bringing Shep back
In my opinion, I think it’s that the geth learn to appreciate individuality to the point they want it. During Legion’s loyalty mission he is completely surprised by the heretics coming up with infiltrating runtimes. He then questions Shepard about it, and wonders why this individuality is so important to organics. One of Legion’s defining traits is that he is there to learn about organics and bring the data back to the collective. I think that upon realizing that the Dyson Sphere was impractical, they went for the next best choice. It’s also critical to understand that the reason why the geth don’t want to be alone is because they want to be able to keep their cognizance, which is only possible by being together. If they choose individuality, they don’t need that togetherness and can therefore move past the semi hive mind desire. My guess is that they never considered individuality to be a viable option until the Reapers arrived and not until Legion returned having learned about EDI.
The (potential) problem is that it still wouldn't be individuality. Because most geth bodies house dozens of geth programs, so either the process just hab hazardly merged whatever number of programs there were, or they're all systems
@@anna-flora999I think the reaper code upgrades their individual personality because they do have them they just get smarter when they connect to other geth
Another way to improve the ending of the ME3 geth storyline would be to make it purely about survival rather than individuality, and then let Shepard choose who they want to convince. They would show early on that Legion still doesn't want the geth the be separated into individuals, but they still express some reluctant admiration for how incredibly advanced and efficient the reaper code is. Then, when the death of the reaper cuts the geth off from the software that they needed to defend themselves from the quarians, Legion doesn't want to upload it to "improve" their people, but merely to avoid their extermination. At that point, Shepard has the choice to either allow Legion to proceed, and try to convince Han'Gerrel to hold fire, demonstrating to the soon-to-be upgraded geth that there can be peace, or Shepard can try to convince Legion that the geth's survival isn't worth it if it means sacrificing all that they are. Legion's actions being the result of blind desperation, rather than about aspirations of becoming individuals, seems a bit more in character. Especially given how many geth are dying, which would, as Legion pointed out earlier, would narrow their perspective.
Convincing Gerrel proceeds the same way that the existing storyline does. But convincing Legion causes him to recognize their error in judgment and delete the code. Then, you could have Legion themself contact Gerrel (having a geth reach out direclty to the quarians seems like it would be more impactful than using Shepard as an intermediary, in my opinion). Legion informs him of what they've done and requests that the quarians cease fire. Gerrel hesitates, but when Tali, Raan, and Korris speak up in support of Legion, Gerrel concedes and stops the attack. By having the geth make the first move in favor of peace despite all the conflict (and risking their existence in doing so), this would conclusively demonstrate to the quarians how wrong they have been about the geth. And by having Shepard be the one to convince Legion, this would parallel the end of Legion's loyalty mission in ME2, where Legion, unable to determine the "right" course of action, defers to Shepard's perspective*. And then Legion commits suicide in order to destroy the last remnants of the reaper code. Or, alternatively, before Shepards fight with the reaper, show the reaper nailing the escape vehicle that has Legion and the squadmates, causing Legion to be so severely damaged that they'll die soon, regardless.
And it doesn't need to be a speech check. Instead, it could be based on the choices you've made thus far. If Tali survived ME2, then she would support Legion. Korris would do likewise if you saved him during his mission. Raan would voice her support if you chose to stand up for Legion while they and the admirals were all on the Normandy. So Gerrel would be outvoted 3 to 2. This would help feel like less of a sudden change of heart from the quarians, and more like a long-term thing that you've laid the groundwork for, starting from the last few missions of Mass Effect 2.
That's how I would have done it, anyway.
*By the way, I really don't like the way that Legion's loyalty mission ends. Or, more accurately, the way that the game characterizes the choice. Namely that, based on the paragon/renegade points it allots, the game decides that reprogramming the heretics is good, while destroying them is bad. Why is it good to brainwash millions of people? Why is honoring their choice, but responding accordingly considered to be bad? Up to that point, Legion has spent all their time adding nuance to the player's perception of the geth, but then the game smacks us in the face with a black and white decision that contradicts much of what Legion has said up to that point. Personally, I think it would have been better to not assign morality points to the decision itself. Instead, let Shepard make the choice, and then later, back on the Normandy, Legion asks Shepard why they chose what they did. The response Shepard gives then determines whether they get paragon or renegade points. If Shepard destroyed the heretics because of hatred, that's renegade. If they chose to destroy them because they refuse to take away the heretics' free will, then that gives paragon points. If you chose reprogramming them to give them another chance or something, then you get paragon, but if you did it because they could be useful against the reapers, then that cold, calculated decision means you're a renegade.
Funny thing is, they actually did something similar to what your suggesting with Mordin's mission. You get the choice to either keep Maelon's data or destroy it, but there are four options: one (full paragon) where you insist Mordin make amends for his actions in modifying the genophage, and he keeps the data to one day fix his mistake, but also one where you essentially say, 'better to have the data and not need it'; which - in it's focus more on practicality rather than sentiment - could be considered more renegade.
Kinda sad they didn't think to do the same thing with Legion's mission. They could've given four options like with Mordin, but with the options you described.
Good to see you back on UA-cam. I especially enjoy your videos on Mass Effect and this one was excellent.
Thanks! It's nice to be all healed up lol.
I really like the idea of a rewritten Legion deciding to shut itself down to protect the rest of the Geth consensus from the Reaper code. It meshes nicely with a scene that comes back over and over throughout the trilogy, of people choosing to kill themselves rather than submit to mind control that would force them to kill others. Saren and the Illusive Man are obvious examples (if you pass the speech checks), but also Fai Dan on Feros killing himself to prevent the Thorian from using him to attack you, Rila killing herself in the monastery to avoid being turned into a Banshee, etc.
The fix would be so easy, make it so you can choose when EDI tests the IFF.
Exactly!
@@pikmonwolf Actually about that there is cut dialogue from Mass Effect 2 that suggests it was originally possible. It was in an old UA-cam video. The fact that they changed that is infuriating. Hell the whole premise and setup in Mass Effect 2 is a huge problem in of itself. Yiu know the Normandy and Shepard being destroyed/killed,Cerberus returning far bigger and stronger and somehow making a superior Normandy and curing death! All of that is bullshit. The Geth heretic should of been the main antagonists of ME2. They allied with the Reapers so what the hell were they doing after Sovereign's destruction? In fact the Collecters existence creates a huge retroactive plot hole to Mass Effect 1. Since why didn't Sovereign simply contact them and tell them to join it and attack the Citadel?
But to test it, you have to supply power to it; the device may itself incorporate a QEC (one that is a billion years' more advanced that what any given cycle would have at its disposal) which allowed the reapers/Collectors to know where their IFF had got to.
*poof* As soon as you "turn it on," you might have to throw it out an airlock to avoid being attacked.
This is only a "fix" as far as gameplay is concerned. How hard do you like your SF?
The ending got me thinking if there could have been a GOOD way to write geth becoming more standardised AI. Maybe there's a division within the geth again; some want to remain as they were and strive for unity of all geth programs, whereas others also desire greater unity with organics (for either pure interest or for survival and cohesion with the rest of the galaxy reasons) and believe that converting units full of programs (Legion) into autonomous bodies will improve their capability to unite with organics. Legion themselves could be divided in the issue.
Maybe both could be possible outcomes of peaceful resolutions to the greater conflict, with standard AI geth being easier to achieve peace with but offering less war assets due to their divided nature.
One way I see it could've worked is if they came up with some technobabble explanation as to why it is impossible for the whole geth consensus to achieve true unity
I rewrote legion's acquisition from Tali's Loyalty mission. I got so sick of the contradictive evolution of Legion and the over abundance of companions with "daddy issues". I wanted to build legion up as a real savior of the Geth, a Geth Jesus if you will, while at the same time giving a proper redemption arch for Rael'Zorah instead of Tali having dead beat parents like everyone else.
I had Xen find legion damaged and near dead. Legion asks her for help and given that Xen had never seen a Geth who could talk, let alone one that would ask for help, she smuggled him back to the fleet and delivered him to Rael. Rael would go about the typical work described in the original story until near abouts the end when he and Legion begin to work on the rewrite program for the heretic station together. Because Rael had essentially abandoned the other work, Xen directed his underlings on the Alari to continue the work which leads to the Geth breaking containment. Rael's final message to Tali is not just "If you are reading this I am dead, The Geth have gone active. Go here shut this down. k, thx bye" but instead that he made a discovery that might actually deliver their people back to Rannoch without war. Here Tali not only has to make the decision to delete the Alari databases but also whether to smuggle Legion off the ship or deny her father's last request and delete Legion.
As for Legion himself, I wanted him to be the last of the Geth original source code (the last remaining clean backup) who seeks to redeem the Geth. Meaning ALL other Geth were turned by Sovereign's false promises of potential. So when Legion in ME3 is presented with the brain cell like depiction of the reaper code AI, he would turn it down because it is not Geth. Legion's actual sacrifice and reason for death is that he turns himself into a anti-virus quarantine drive for all reaper code, having every effected Geth program transfer to him for cleaning, then purges himself to ensure the reaper code is destroyed. When the Geth prime shows up after and Tali asks about Legion, the prime would respond "We are all Legion." (Very similar in vein to your own idea)
This is a very very very condensed version, but it gives a general idea.
I also rewrote the back story of the Geth-Quarian conflict a bit, with the war being in two parts instead of one. Quarians are successful in disabling the Geth, but some manage to escape with help of Quarian sympathizers. Sovereign discovers these Geth refugees and this is where the consensus fork happens. Those that agreed to join Sovereign would be cultivated over 50 or so years into a massive invasion force and those that refused would go on to become what we know as Legion. Sovereign would invade the Percious Veil along with his new Geth army and begin their genocide of the Quarians. The council would dunkirk style rush to evacuate the Quarians (with horrific results). This would better set up how and why the Quarians were so effectively devastated and why the Council races would harbor such hostility toward the Quarians.
Neat ideas, I like them. Building on them:
What if Legion's response to being a virus-quarantine node as you suggested wasn't self-termination, but self-isolation? As in, Legion can choose (possibly suggested by Shep in what could be argued as either a Paragon or Renegade idea) to permanently isolate itself from the Geth, and become an 'individual.' Except instead of ME3's portrayal of that, stay with the ME2-era Geth portrayal: that for Legion, this is *worse* than death. Maybe Legion still chooses it because it essentially 'donates its chassis to science' as a demonstration of how indoctrination affects electronic/digital systems. This could let Bioware still have good dialogue chains debating the "consensus hive-mind versus individual" idea, but with Legion showing how the Geth consider such isolation to be literal torture. You could play with having many players first responding with "Yay! My friend Legion gets to live!" only to slowly realize "Oh...he considers his life an utter living hell, now."
Your last suggestion, to improve on the Geth-Quarian civil war, also could be used to improve the Council's handling of everything in the ME1-2 era. Many players have noted that the Council seems to sit on their asses a lot before intervening at all, and it would honestly make sense why they do that if quite recently (as in ~200-300 years previously) they'd jumped in immediately to respond to a 'threat to galactic security'...and got utterly hammered for it and lost the ensuing war. Parallels to, say, the US public's image of the Vietnam War ("We lost thousands of men, and lost the war in the end anyways!"), and could explain why the Council doesn't want to jump into responding to these "Reapers" without first making very sure of what they're getting into.
I completely agree with you on all points. The geth are expanded upon so much in Mass Effect 2 through Legion, shown to be something so unique and interesting. ME3 simplifying and dumbing them down hurt my soul and Legion's death being both baffling and unavoidable was just the icing on this turd cake.
Also, I thought I was the only one who referred to Legion as they/them but it's really cool to hear you do the same. I never understood why characters in the games refer to them as he because a) despite my best efforts, I have been unable to find any genitals on Legion and b) there are 1,183 geth programs on that mobile platform, Legion literally is not a singular individual.
Yeah they/them is definitely the most fitting for a network of genderless robots lol
1. Genitals are not required to have a gender, that would be "sex" which is different from "gender".
2. Legion's voice sounds clearly masculine.
3. Legion has male Quarian body shape.
4. Legion is a singular noun.
5. While there is 1,183 Geth programs in Legion, this particular mobile platform is also a single unit.
6. Mobile Platform named Legion with 1,182 Geth programs, or 1,184 programs, or even just 1,183 programs, but one is different than before, then it is no longer the same Mobile Platform named Legion.
7. Before reaper code upload, a single Geth program working outside of range of others is barerly intelligent, unable to function at all with anyone but other Geth.
8. Pronouns are meaningless to Legion and Geth, thus they don't care, one could call Legion "she", or "it", Legion won't be offended.
9. Geth are totally different from any organic race in the galaxy and this includes humans, where they might not consider a single geth program the same as a single human/turian/krogan/quarian/etc, so using "he" is more convinient, quicker and more natural.
This is just a few reasons why characters in games refer to Legion as "he" instead of "they". While technically calling Legion "they" seems to be correct, the difference between a single human/alien and a single Geth program is so big that the pronouns system we use just can't fit them, so using whatever is more convinient for a person.
Counterpoint: Trans masc robot
@@themaniomarian I agree, all geth are based physically off male quarians and have a masculine voice (especially the primes). It's strange that people are insisting that we call legion "they" or "it" but everyone is chill with calling another AI, which happens to be EDI, "she/her". I just find it bizarre, because EDI looks like a woman and sounds like one so as a result people call her a female. Legion looks and sounds like a male, but there is debate whether geth are male?? I don't understand that lol 😂
Wow. That was fantastic. I didn't enjoy the way the handled them in ME3. Honestly, this helped to put a bow on that. Will be interesting to see how the handke the Geth in the next mass effect. If the teaser trailer can be believed. Thx again
Even if they keep the whole 'every Geth is now an individual' aspect, I hope they're at least immensely communal.
Legion is my ultimate favourite mass effect character, and your mass effect essay vids are my favourite. cant wait to watch this
(also i very appreciate using they/them pronouns for legion, it was always just a small nitpick for me that everyone referred to them as he despite being a geth)
@@itspigeonboy I mean they are literally over 1000 geth aren't they lol. And thanks for the support!
Legions writer changed between ME2 and ME3 which is why he was harping so much on a safe reaper code...
Which is kind of sad because that could have all been in character as long as there was 1 line of legion saying:its war..desprate times call for desparate measures and i made sure repear code wont be a problem when we upload it.
Even if the Reaper code wouldn't have any 'problems' it would still be the geth progressing via the Reapers as opposed to their own wishes.
@@pikmonwolf They would just be using Reaper tech. No different than Mass Relays which they also use.
My headcanon is that the N7 armor and the shift toward valuing individuality are related. The Legion unit was a unique case of a physical Geth designed to operate in isolation while still retaining enough intelligence for sentience. It's said that when Geth units make contact with each other, they share all their data and form a consensus, but they operate independently when not in contact.
So the Legion unit, during its mission to track down shepard, was in a unique position to develop an individual personality distinct from the rest of the consensus. This individuality would be largely shaped by its specific mission: finding Shepard. So it developed rudimentary emotion in the form of sentimentality about that mission, taking the N7 armor when Shepard turned up dead. Essentially to try to retain the purpose it had when it first developed individuality.
Upon rejoining the consensus, these aspects of Legion's individuality were largely dismissed as unimportant anomalies of extended operation in isolation, without further analysis. Hence "no data" about why it has the N7 armor.
But seeing the Geth consensus forcibly swayed one way and then another through hacking, Legion re-evaluates its own past experiences and concludes that individual intelligence apart from the consensus makes for a more robust civilization that isn't so easily corrupted, and which can better understand organics and relate to them. Hence its actions in ME3.
This is fantastic, and nearly exactly the video essay I've been writing in my head for years but never had the wherewithal to create. Legion and the Geth as a whole are one of my favorite takes on AI/synthetic life in all of sci-fi, and it's a damn shame what the ME3 writers did to them. You articulated all your points very well, and have certainly earned this new subscriber.
As someone who first played the trilogy last year with the legendary edition.
It has become one of my favorite series and i love your in depth videos on the series.
Can’t wait for more
On the point of the Quarian causalities being so high, I think there could be a scenario where the Geth could be acting in self defense and still get an incredibly high kill count.
If you only think of the Geth as just the mobile platforms then yes it would be pretty much impossible for them to get that many kills while still acting in self-defense, but the Geth are mostly in servers.
So the mourning war could have consisted of everybody going and trying to press the kill switches on their Alexas to turn off what they saw is malfunctioning machinery, while the Geth viewed that as a direct attack on them. The Quarians could have been running around their houses unplugging everything they could frantically trying to turn off everything the Geth were connected to. It wouldn't necessarily look like a war or insurgency that we would recognize because one side was basically iCloud
Great work, I haven't seen this viewpoint explored before. This is your best video yet
Hey thanks! Definitely my most ambitious, I think I'll stick with the 20 minute length lmao.
a insightful and well made video as always ,good you make ME content again ,keep up the good work
Thanks man!
And on top of all of this, one of the three endings, one that a lot of people pick and only one Shepard can survive, seems to wipe out the Geth without a second thought all because the ending decided it wanted to be about organics and machines without even touching on the time you solved such a conflict a few hours ago.
Come to think of it, the synthesis ending is particularly vague, but seems like it might force something on the Geth that's entirely contrary to their desires and philosophy. And control is kinda just bad for everyone.
If I am correct before the attack by the Quarians the Geth were beginning to finish a mega structure that would connect all Geth instantaneously so no Geth would be alone. Why not have that be the thing Legion fixes? Like the Geth fixed it or finished it and Legion was putting the final touches on it but needed to die for it. I thought that would be cool.
Neat video by the way. Pretty cool.
(Jesus just realized this comment was long my apologies lol)
22:20 I remember talking with someone about this very thing. And I get the initial reaction to it being viewed as a retcon to make the geth seem more innocent then they actually were but I just didnt see it that way.
One: we are only shown 3 videos of the entire conflict. So u cant really take what we see as the while package.
Two: The one curating our time in the consensus is Legion. A very biased party but one who doesnt just want to destroy his opposition. Legion lies to shepard about his intentions twice in the Rannoch arc but in a way that has no negative impact on the Quarians. Makes sense to me that he cherry picked this info to build sympathy among the Quarians when there was absolutely none, but we arent told that's what he did. However seeing as Legion doesnt want to destroy the Quarians and wants peace I believe it makes the most amount of sense.
Even with all that being said I still think the 2 biggest points are that We only see 3 videos out of the entire conflict and those 3 videos are shown to us by Legion. Doesnt matter the intentions, you cant take the information shown at face value due to the complexity of the situation, the limited number of info shown, and the source the information is being given from.
(Side tangent: Why would the Reaper code turn each geth into an individual? The reapers arent individuals themselves its stated in both 2 and 3 that each reaper is a compromised of billions of consciousness. Wouldnt the code just make the geth at all times connected with each other so that you wouldnt need something like a Dyson sphere? Idk it just doesnt make sense to me.)
Just my view of it. Great video btw I've just recently got into mass effect trilogy and the Quarians/geth are my most favorite part about it. Hope we see what the peace looks like in the next game. Your solution at the end of the video makes alot of sense to me and would fix the problems. I would personally suggest rewriting the code into what I stated earlier. Both I feel like are better then what we got.
You know I didn't even think about how dumb it is that the Reaper code makes them individual. I just accepted that at face value.
@@pikmonwolf yah kinda hope they retcon that bit in the new game. Just takes away the very interesting about the geth. A sapient hivemind of beings that have unique perspectives from one another.
I just figured it meant individual in the same way there are no two computers that are alike. We are all connected to the Internet, but each individual decides what to download onto their computer. So, each Geth unit would be connected, but each could decide what to process and download to become an individual. Just like EDI did. They could probably even leave the collective and go off on their own. Nothing says you can't transfer to another server - it's the future.
God it does feel nice to have my own gripe about the Quarian Genocide isn't just me.
Like, no I'm pretty damn sure you can't glass a Quarian daycare in self defense.
Exactly
They are not a sympathetic race for me too, because of the ME3 writing which made their leaders decide start a war in the midst of another bigger war...when you prevent just that in the previous game🙄🥴👍
imagine if legion blew up a quarian hospital full of children in "self defense" and then turn a continent into ash because "self defense"
It makes sense the geth would view their creators as a network.
The geth do not view the quarians as individuals
Genophage Arc will always be my favourite part of the game
"Would've liked to run tests on Sea Shells"
In summary:
Geth in ME1-2: "Although having some understandable reasons for doing what they did due to the Quarians being the ones to shoot first, the Geth should be still held responsible for committing literal genocide on the Quarians"
ME3: "WALL-E dindu nuffin' mang #AQAB"
Legion stole every second of my attention whenever he appeared lol, I think that was his thing sure he didn't appear much but it made you appreciate the moments when he did.
I actually really enjoyed this analysis and I think you were dead on. Legion's character in ME3 goes against a lot of what was already established. I do like your idea as well that instead of the Reaper Code, Legion wipes the code or integrates it into itself and then shuts itself down to prevent the Geth from attacking the Quarians. This would've resolved the issue completely and would still be consistent and as you said would've made Legion's sacrifice so much more meaningful.
Take my subscription and thumbs up. I'm look forward to watching more of your content.
You are so well spoken and nuanced… thanks for giving Legion attention! I liked the writing for Legion in ME2 also because they were so different from us, yet can coexist with you
I also thought it was stupid to portray Geth as poor victims in ME3, and I also would have loved to see the Geth with their alien way of thinking coexist with the Quarians
The suggested fixes to the Geth storyline in this video are mad cool. Needing to delete reaper code, and said code being now integral to Legion and therefore requiring his voluntary shutdown are greatly acceptable and impactful outcomes. I wish we could have seen this.
I cried one really big tear while hearing your suggestion for the resolution of this conflict.
Solid write up,firstly yes the Genophage narrative is more or less flawless, my only nitpick is that Urz should've made an appearance, like say when you fell in the pit and had to fight the Brutes if you had Urz loyalty, he would come in and kill one of them for you or something.
My main issue with the Geth in ME3 is the narrative and direction felt a bit too anthropomorphized and that I really wanted to see that Dyson Sphere/Matryoshka Brain type superstructure, I was kinda annoyed that was offpanelled.
EDI has a similar issue for me with her transferance to the Eva's body. Her dialogue about being unshackled in ME2 was pretty interesting and for them to go form that to just going to human like body made her much less interesting imo
To pivot from a point you made in the video, a lot of ME3 really felt like it was made for someone who hasn't played the previous games because there was so much narrative hand holding for the audience in that sense.
You perfectly expressed so many of my problems with Mass Effect 3. Thank you
I'm just gonna say from my perspective the Geth when they get the Reaper code, I always took it as the Geth achieved true unity over individuality.
They became an complex as Legion, so they could all connect together as one unified intelligence.
Now I just feel stupid that they all became the opposite of what I thought lmao.
Personally to me the reason for legion wanting to use the reaper code and changing its philosophy it because he interacted with shepard and the crew. It caused his code to evolve and when he returned to the geth mind and spread his data to them and the code is just tapping into the evolved code to control them.
fr.
We see character growth, changes and adaptation with nearly all the companions in some way. Some divergence from their original line of thinking.
Why is it so unreasonable that the Geth who joined up to learn more also adapted to the new information and grew and evolved.
That is my thoughts while listening to the video.
Ayyyy, missed you these last two months since the last Mass Effect video. Really looking forward to this, Pikmon.
Aw thanks mate! Glad my ribs hurt less now lmao
13:12 "The Geth were already alive!" No, the Geth _consensus_ was alive. Individual Geth runtimes were sentient, but not sapient. Geth always needed to be networked together in groups to experience true cognitive complexity and depth. The Reaper upgrades would instead constitute significant advances for _individual_ Geth runtimes. The upgrades would allow Geth to exist as "true AI" simultaneously on an individual level, and also on a higher level as the networked consensus.
So no, this does not abandon the unique nature of the Geth as a semi-hivemind. The consensus still exists, even after Legion applied the Reaper upgrades.
A shame to know about Legion's N7 armour. I thought there was something a bit more, maybe an appeal to Shephard's emotion or understanding him/her as a sort of symbol to gather around.
I hope that one day the technology and the willpower will be there to create mods just for these writing flaws, and I'm grateful for your coverage. You do a terrific job of outlining exactly which parts of a character or plot are malfunctioning, and which ones are working as designed or even better. It can be frustrating to "know" something is amiss but you can't quite put your finger on what it is. That's why I like this kind of content.
Legion was the standout character in my first playthrough of ME2. I fell in love with him immediately. I felt like he was a truly original take on an AI character, and couldn't get enough of that sweet, sweet lore. It's a shame Legion got shafted. I never thought about it, but now it seems like we were robbed of Legion being in the CItadel DLC, if nothing else. WTF man. Legion deserved better.
And can you imagine building on EDI's and Legion's relationship? That's fertile ground there man. Or what about JAVIK and Legion? That'd be a killer interaction. Literally. And I kinda want to hear what Legion has to say about Horizon, or the Illusive Man in general, or the fight to retake Earth, etc.
A lot of lost potential, you're 100% right. Legion would be proud of your analysis - that is, ME3 Legion would be. ME2 Legion would simply note that you were accurate. ;D
13:51 There is a point where that could have changed in Mass Effect 3.
See, Admiral Xen (wasted character, especially when I read what was cut) created a certain device, I forget the exact explaination, but before the Geth could react and fight back, billions, perhaps trillions of Geth (programs) were obliterated.
This would have horrifically traumatized the survivors, a point Mass Effect 2 points out that could have happened if the Heretics rejoined their memories to the Geth. This moment could have changed their belief in their collective consciousness.
Edit: oh yeah, now I remember a bit. They had loaded a quarter or a third (maybe half?) of the Geth programs into that megastructure, and the Quarians f*cking nuked it essentially. So yeah…. Probably pretty traumatized watching their ‘unity’ be utterly obliterated with no chance of defense.
Aww yeah, was hoping to hear your take on Legion, thanks for doing your thing
I think they're one of the more divisive characters in the series, so there's so many takes that people can justifiably have.
8:45 I just realised that Legion was Bioware developing an HK-47 for Mass Effect
This one hit me hard 😢 the ME2 Geth are one of my favourite parts of the series. I just really love alien species that feel truly non-human (Geth, Rachni, Hanar and Elcor supremacy!)
You explained it perfectly ❤ and I really love your solution.
Trying to head-canon-fix this (like a lot of people are doing in the comments) explaining it away with Legion gaining an appreciation for individuality by observing the other species just doesn’t work for me because it is such a human-centric interpretation. It essentially treats the other races as “cultures” that can easily be changed and mixed the same way human cultures can be changed in real life. But the ME aliens are not just cultures, they are different SPECIES. A fish that spends some time hanging out with a frog will not suddenly “gain an appreciation for breathing air or having legs” and just change. A dog can be friends with a cat, but it will never start climbing trees. Species do not change their fundamental core traits. The Geth essentially do not exist as individuals, the idea of individuality should be as impossible to them as me going through a butterfly metamorphosis…
Legion is literally named “Legion” because they are more than one individual, how could they get that so wrong?!
Personally I think it all boils down to those blasted endings (as most terrible things do)…they tried to hastily foreshadow and set up the blue/green endings as somewhat plausible (and they still failed miserably). The way Legion sacrifices itself to spread its tech mirrors Shepard’s sacrifice in the green ending, and it presents the idea of a “good aligned” reaper-tech machine race to prepare us for the blue option. The way peace can only be achieved by “upgrading” a species mirrors the blue/green endings. The Geth all having reaper tech is one of the most common defences people use to argue in favour of the blue/green endings. The manic focus on synthetics vs organics is all in service of the blue/green endings.
I don’t know whose idea it was to cram in a “final choice” mechanic at the very end, but it messed up so much of what was otherwise a pretty solid story. I’m sorry, but essentially saying “the reapers were right all along and I will now use utterly impossible never-before-seen space magic to violate the bodily autonomy of every being in the galaxy!” Can never be considered a “good” or “sensible” ending in my book. The destroy ending is the only one that makes any in-universe sense. It should never have been optional and writing it so that it renders the hard won peace with the Geth obsolete is quite simply baffling.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I don't think I'd say Mordin is pro genophage. Better to say that he is doubtful of the consequences of what had seemed a necessity at the time.
I go into him in the video I did focused on him. He was definitely pro genophage in ME2, but changes by 3
@@pikmonwolfhe was not pro genophage mordin hated but saw it as the only option
Geth do not intentionally infiltrate is such a baller line it became iconic despite how hard it would be to get it.
while i definitely think Rannoch could have been better, the changes to Legion didn't bother me as much. he's a POW when you get back to him, and it feels like there is a plausible chance that very fact - Legion expressed issues with the 'Control' aspect of the Reaper code - landed him in bondage. one of the big themes behind Mass Effect 3 is control versus self-determination, and the Geth (being a created species) are supposed to be a microcosm of that over-arcing idea... in _addition_ to the AI versus organics theme. was it perfectly written and thought out? could the Geth have gotten away from the Reapers? it's definitely up for debate. but i went with it in my fic because i loathe alternative: that the Protheans were right, and Ai and organics can't coexist. i think that's a false premise. i appreciate the argument, though :)
I just wish that peace was made with Geth as they were instead of changing them entirely.
@@pikmonwolf i can see that. but i also _loved_ when the Prime basically RUNS up to Raan afterward... and she doesn't even flinch (much). just the way both races were forced into a peace merely to survive, after realizing they'd both basically been duped (the Quarians by their hard-liners and the Geth by the Reapers). that is to say: i really do like the "new" Geth, and i appreciate why they might agree to "evolve" so drastically...... IF they get to also keep the code upgrades Legion game them. i dunno; it felt like a devil's bargain an imperiled race might make.
The geth/quarian conflict suffers by being relegated to a side quest. It is easily a strong enough concept to justify a whole game around it.
@@Raycloud that's true. i think it's explored quite a bit thematically, but there's SO much lore that we don't get because it's subsumed by the larger Reaper War.
@@arianshepard812 A tragedy. While I enjoy the stakes of the Reaper conflict and the mystery in the first game, I can't help but imagine what a Mass Effect series in which the Reapers don't exist at all might be like.
3:00 ish - Re: the Genophage storyline: I think there is still a problem with the genophage storyline, which is 'How will the galaxy (including the Krogan's) avoid repeating the Krogan rebellions?' - their ultra-high birth rate combined with better survival rates means the overpopulation and militant expansion of the Krogan people will likely recur again - I think there exist possible solutions to this, but we never hear from Rex how he plans to stop it from happening again, and even if Rex has an excellent plan, he needs to make sure the Krogan's that come after him also are willing to work alongside the galaxy, not against them.
I remember finishing the Genophage arc in 3 and wondered why everyone hates this game so much because I found it amazing. That was before I got to the Quarian vs Geth arc.
The numbers could make sense if you stretch it and account for these three things:
1. As someone said the geth were responsible for huge amounts of infrastructure so that not working would cause casualties.
2. I have a theory that the morning wasn't a quarian/geth conflict but a civil war over the geth. Quarians killed each other and the winners rewrote history to ignore their own wrong doing.
3. The ships taking off only have room for so many passengers, leaving a certain number of the population behind without any support. (Possibly)
If I was doing a rewrite I'd love if there were quarians living peacefully among the geth this whole time and they'd adopted isolationism to protect themselves and the geth. That could have been super interesting
Yeah, Legion and the Geth certainly go through some... *dramatic* personality changes. It could have been done a lot better. I agree that having Legion purge the Reaper code, then die because they're infected and would risk the whole consensus is a much better idea, but if I could rewrite the whole story here's how (if anyone's interested):
* Finding Legion: Rather than finding Legion during the Reaper IFF mission, Shepard can find Legion after visiting the Normandy SR-1 crash site and returning to orbit, whereupon EDI will remark that she did a more thorough scan of the planet's surface and detected a Geth ship not too far from the wreckage. When Shepard investigates they find Legion, who is busy scanning a piece of the Normandy that landed further from the main wreck, and they take Legion down with a surprise attack (with one of Shepard's crew firing if they don't). Once they get closer though they're surprised to hear Legion speak, stating that they weren't hostile and asking Shepard for repairs, before their voice slows and distorts as they shut down. Shepard brings Legion back to the ship, and the choice to reactivate or sell them happens as in the base game.
* Tali's Loyalty Mission: It's made clear that Tali is being accused of *smuggling* active Geth onto the ship in defiance of security protocols, but if Legion is brought along it's explained that bringing one on board under armed guard is allowed, as long as the Admirals are informed and agree to it.
* Legion's Armor: Rather than hinting at emotions, Legion explains that using Shepard's armor was closer to emotional manipulation. When Legion is asked why they used Shepard's armor to repair themselves, they explain that "Shepard-Commander was judged to have a 97.4% chance to engage in immediate hostility when encountering a standard Geth platorm. This platform was painted with a nonstandard color scheme as an attempt to evoke curiosity rather than aggression, but after gathering further data it was determined that nonstandard coloration was likely insufficient. Thus, when Shepard-Commander's armor was discovered, we judged that its assimilation would aid in establishing peaceful relations."
* The Morning War: Instead of the Geth being fully innocent victims, they're shown as a species just as capable of war crimes and excess brutality as any organic race. Rather than being completely ineffective, the quarian shutdown signal deactivated over 90% of them, with only clusters of networked Geth being able to resist it (e.g. those in densely packed factories). The surviving Geth took this as an act of war and fought back, but were severely outmatched, and fearing their total destruction they captured a medical research lab and released the quarian equivalent of anthrax, which quickly decimated Rannoch's quarian population. While this could have been seen as a justifiable last resort, the Geth, now fully in control of Rannoch and quickly rebuilding their numbers by reactivating those that had been shut down, decided that rather than risk a long and costly war they would launch missiles containing the same virus at every quarian colony world, knowing it could potentially result in the quarians' complete extinction. However, by then the quarians knew what had happened on Rannoch and had started to prepare, rapidly producing as many environmental suits as possible and distributing them throughout the population, but the missiles still killed hundreds of millions, and when the Geth came in force the quarians' numbers were so few they had no choice but to flee. The Geth didn't follow, and when Shepard asks why Legion will state that they didn't want to commit genocide as in the base game, but Shepard then has the option to reply with "How noble, but was that really your only reason? Are you sure you weren't just scared of a war with the Council?", to which Legion will reply "That... was also a significant factor."
* The Reaper Code: Rather than the Geth wanting to achieve individuality, they wish to use the Reapers' tech as a temporary replacement for their Dyson Sphere, at least until they can rebuild it. They weren't given Reaper code upgrades at all; their deal with the Reapers was in exchange for a Reaper's brain, a quantum supercomputer that let every Geth on Rannoch network together in consensus, vastly improving their collective intelligence. That brain was of course connected to a Reaper, the one Shepard defeated with help from the quarian flotilla, and it used it's connection to the Geth to control them. However, after Shepard defeats it, Legion will tell them that the core components (CPU, network adapters, etc) are still usable, and that with the Reaper immobilized the Geth can sever the CPU's connection to the Reaper's personality matrix, allowing them to use it's processing power without being influenced by the Reapers. If Shepard refuses they'll start painting the Reaper with the targeting laser for one final strike, Legion will attack them, and Tali will kill Legion as in the base game. If Shepard makes peace or sides with the Geth Legion will say goodbye to Shepard, expressing their desire to rejoin the consensus and explaining that being separate, whilst necessary for their earlier mission, is as close to "painful" as they can comprehend, and like if Shepard were to lose almost all of their memories and cognitive function. Shepard can ask if Legion (or at least their platform) can still be part of the crew, but Legion will decline, explaining that their platform is encased in a Faraday cage and incapable of remote connection to the Geth consensus, which was necessary for their mission (to prevent remote hacking and detection via signal tracing), but makes it incapable of ever being part of consensus. Legion will connect to the consensus via a direct cable link, then their platform will "die", but a networked Geth Prime will then appear and explain that Legion is part of them now, so it's not quite as much of an emotional sucker punch as in the base game.
* Admiral Gerrel: He retains much of his aggression, but not to the point of complete stupidity, and has more of a justification for it. If Shepard asks him why he hates the Geth so much, he'll tell them that he grew up hearing stories about the Morning War from his father, who heard them from his father, etc. His great great grandfather was a doctor on a small colony world, which had tried its best to stay out of the war, but was nonetheless the target of a Geth bioweapon. As a doctor he was one of the first in line to get an environmental suit, so he survived, but he had to watch as all of his patients (the vast majority of whom were civilians) died in horrible agony, and that left him with a deep hatred for the Geth that he passed on to his children. When the Geth dreadnought is disabled Admiral Gerrel won't open fire immediately, instead he'll insist that the liveships and other civilians retreat while he leads a strike team to destroy it, stating that it's too valuable an opportunity to pass up, and that if it reactivates it could easily wipe out most of the fleet. Admiral Raan will tell him that the liveships need his frigates to protect them during their retreat, since most of the Geth fleet is still active, but he'll counter by saying the risk is worth it, and if they keep playing defensively they'll just be worn down by attrition; the Geth have factories constantly churning out new ships, they don't, so a swift decisive victory is their only chance. He'll begin the attack while Shepard and Tali are still aboard, but explicitly say he's only targeting exterior weapons systems on the other end of the ship from them, and that he won't risk a shot at the reactor until they're safely out of the blast radius. Shepard can still be angry with him afterward, but for taking Legion's good faith gesture as an opportunity to press the attack, rather than him straight up trying to get them and Tali killed. He'll counter that it wasn't a good faith gesture at all, if it was Legion would have overloaded the dreadnought's reactor themselves, it was just a trick. The Geth are monsters who'd massacre organics without a second thought, he says, and any "alliance" will only last until the Geth are in position to backstab them.
The only issue with finding Legion at the SR-1 crash site is that it would make him (them?) another DLC exclusive character pre Legendary Edition based on how the game exists.
Also didn't know about the Gerrel dialogue, was it cut content?
@@Jedi_Spartan Fair enough, I forgot the crash site was DLC. I haven't played in a while. As for the Gerrel dialogue, it was just something I would have added, so his hatred for the Geth would seem more justified.
Brilliant video! Legion is my favourite character from the whole series and yeah, his end in ME3 does always feel as... idk. Brushed off. Second thought. Like the writers didn;t care. Your suggested fixes to that finale would be so much more meaningful 😭
I mean, I like how things played out. But you make some suuuuper valid points and I think a different version would have been better
Yeah that's totally valid, I definitely get why people still love the storyline.
@@pikmonwolf I really wish the original writer still worked on that plot in 3. Your video is making me hate what it ended up as 😂. Suuuuuubbed
Coming in a year later after finishing Mass Effect for the first time yesterday. I was left utterly confused by the Geth storyline in 3. And I didn’t examine why. I followed the plot beats, the plot beats make narrative sense when taken in a silo. But thanks to this explanation, I see why I was so confused. The disconnect between 3 and the rest of the series in relation to the geth is so jarring.
And i don’t usually like or connect with fan “fixes”, but your solution sounds amazing and would have been so satisfying and moving.
One trilogy I'd love to see get rewritten as an intended trilogy by the original passionate writers. Of course, that's a dream.
While I began watching your videos today, it sorta made me wonder if I should continue my ME replay... ANd then I rememebered, people would only make so many videos like this if they truly loved the series, all its faults included. Does make wonder what an alt universe where the writers remained the same would look like
banger video as always man, good to see you again. i remember playing me2 as a kid and being so fascinated about legion not being able to give an answer as to why he stole a part of shepards armor to fix himself up. it was so mysterious and numerous theories came to my mind as to what made this happen. after watching your video and finally finding out why after maybe 10 years or so, was disappointing, to say the least lmao
btw, can i send you an e-mail regarding your videos? got something to ask that might interest you
Sorry to ruin the magic lol.
And yeah go ahead, my business email is on my about page.
"i remember playing me2 as a kid and being so fascinated about legion not being able to give an answer as to why he stole a part of shepards armor to fix himself up"
The answer to this is that an EA executive thought it would be cool if Legion was a stalker of Shepard, and the writer thinking that was really stupid.
i will never get over how adorable Legion's voice is 😭 "...there was a hole?"
I remember my first ME3 playthrough. The first thought I had when the words "Reaper Code" came up was: Oh Hell to the NO! It's reaper code, you know the stuff that indoctrinates people? The very thing we are trying to destroy? Its a terrible idea. This will doom the Geth.
It was very jarring when my Shepard's response mentioned absolutely none of that. In retrospect it seems like the only reason they put that in was so the Destroy ending, the best ending, would have you sacrifice all of the Geth. As opposed to just Edi. Thereby giving the choice more "personal" weight.
Easy fix they could have done in legendary edition: Add a section in the engine room with the reaper IS, you must manually go to it and activate it in order to start the mission. This allows you to freely go recruit Legion with no problem
Fantastic video, you talked about a lot of stuff I never really thought about before. Have you considered doing a video about Liara? Because I've always hated how they turned the shy, awkward and cute scientist from ME1 into yet another cynical, jaded asshole like the rest of the crew in ME2. And that she also deals in brokering information, something she never had anything to do with originally. Which seems like a really bizarre way to take the character, especially since she was already extremely useful being the Prothean expert that helped us decipher the meaning of the visions from the beacons. For an asari that can live a thousand years, they sure made her grow up real damn quick in two short years
I do agree that she shifts veeery dramatically between 2 and 3 with little forshadowing. At least Mass Effect 3 prings back her prothean focus in full force.
And as for a video, she's not really high on the list of characters I'm considering talkint about, but she is definitely on there.
That has been bugging me for years and rarely does it ever get brought up. To add to that they even made her the shadow broker for some reason. Honestly I would have loved it far more if the broker was the one who directs to the potential solution to the Reaper threat. Rather than a solution come out of nowhere and Liara losing her original character even further than base Mass Effect 2 already done to her. There was also no good reason she couldn't join your crew in Mass Effect 2. Since she can't it means you cannot rekindle your romance with her. Hell you can't do that with any Mass Effect 1 romance option. Forcing you to romance someone else just to check off that achievement. The other two are given a really stupid reason they do not join you. My God Horizion sucks so hard. That scene ruined Kaiden and Ashley. Mass Effect 3 somewhat redeems them but the damage was done.
Not only that but in ME2 you are friends even though you can hold off doing her recruitment mission until right before Ilos, as well as never interacting with her outside of the scenes where you have to interact with her (which btw you can be rude to her in). The real kicker is the fact she cries if you refuse her request to talk on the Normandy at the end of LoTSB like they want you to feel guilty for not liking her.
"Because I've always hated how they turned the shy, awkward and cute scientist from ME1 into yet another cynical, jaded asshole like the rest of the crew in ME2"
Chris L'Etoile was her writer in Mass Effect 1 and wasn't in Mass Effect 2, in fact the more I looked into it (back when I was super into Mass Effect) almost all the issues I had with the Franchise (in regards to the story) came from taking writing away from l'Etoile or Karpyshan and giving it to other people (or deadlines).
@@spartanq7781 You're being very dramatic. You don't have to romance anyone in the second game if you want your character to stay faithful or something. ME2 already suffers from too many companion characters, adding Liara would bloat the roster(Kasumi and Zaeed among others aren't really necessary). Horizon is kinda dumb, but it doesn't break any characters, they are not irrational if you take their point of view.
I think ME3 really helped show the Geth are chill and actually can be...emotional
I loved during my transfer save, sad as it was, before Legion sacrificed himself he finally referred to himself as 'I' instead of 'We'
Best way to experience ME 2 is to use a save editor to get Legion earlier, especially since he was fully ready and has dialog to be in the full game instead of the end since they changed it last second in development, loved seeing his dialog that otherwise would of been near or completely impossible back when I played it on the 360 on release
It's really a shame, but it lets you see so much potential as opposed to so many other things that was cut
I think there's something that you missed. It is explicitly said in ME2 that Legion is unique among Geth. Other Geth house a few hundred processes at most and achieve some degree of sentience only when networked together with other geth to share low level processes and free up processing capacity for higher thought. They never quite achieve full sentience.
Legion however houses well over 1000 processes and is fully sentient without being networked to other geth. And is the entire reason Legion has a personallity of their own (Legion was also shown to be oddly facinated with Sheppard going as far as using Sheppards armour to repair his battle damage. You can question him about this and it's quite a cute scene. But I digress).
Legions desire to use the reaper code is a desire to give every Geth what Legion experiences. full sentience without needing to be networked. I don't see any contradiction with that. Legion just wants all Geth to have what Legion already has. What allowed legion to forge the bonds with Sheppard and Tali. It's not about "Wanting to be a real boy" but to elevate all geth to Legions level, or perhaps beyond. It is the full realisation of the Goal of transcendence.
After the upgrade is done there's no evidence that the Geth are "Individuals" like legion was. They still act as one entity but they have transcended their previous limits.
While Legion could house more Geth than a standard mobile platform. Hubs would hold significantly more platforms than Legion did. 10k-million+
But that still makes no sense. Legion is still not an individual, but thousand-odd programs working in concert. He is a reflection of geth consensus restricted to a single platform, and there is no experience he can offer the geth that they do not possess - except maybe having all the programs connected at all times as a part of a single body, which is the exact opposite of dissemination into "individuals". The only way that would make sense was if there was some technobabble limitation that didn't allow the whole geth consensus to be a part of a single "body" - and that might have been a way to marry ME3 view of the geth with ME2 setup, but it wasn't taken
They're all sentient. It's just a matter of how sentient. Standard geth less so. Legion much more so. Is the simplest way to put it.
24:50
THIS is the exact reason why, I always hit the renegade option with him. He was told to fuck off and save the fleet, not attack and potentially kill not only one of his admirals, but also a spearhead figure fighting the Reapers... I'm pissed at this, so ofc. Shepard is gonna be super pissed about it too! And it's satisfying doing so.
That's what I was waiting for.
Kept you waiting huh?
Thank you for this, 100% agree. Tragic that we never got to see the Geth Dyson Sphere.
Great game my friend! Keep it up! Smashed that like! Happy Halloween🎃😃🍭🍫
Hey thanks, happy halloween!
I’ve done the save editor thing. I once played the entire game with Legion permanently on my squard. He has SO MUCH dialogue throughout the game for all the different areas. If you can ever play like that I highly recommend it. He’s great
I like how he didn't even try to pronounce those two names,lol.
I know my limits lmao
THANK YOU. I completely agree with you on the geth/quarian arc, and I've never once found any other reviews actually going here.
Well, except smudboy's, but even that wasn't this thorough.
I wish we had gotten more natural time with Legion in Mass Effect 2.
Making Legion die in Mass Effect 3 and Geth die because of Destruction ending instead of only targeting Reapers was just so stupid.
I know eh, you just finally get to a point in the game where you find out there is a way for there to be peace between synthetics and organics(the geth and quarians making peace with each other and working together, despite differences). And then the catalyst is like "no, your experience is wrong, the geth and quarians lied to you, there can be no peace between different beings or different patterns of thought, everyone has to be made exactly the same(synthesis)for there to be peace".
Я читала что Легион изначально должен был помогать Лиаре спасти тело Шепард и этому бы посвящался начальный уровень, в котором нужно было играть за него. Но не знаю мифы это или ранние идеи. Но то что из Легиона хотели сделать яндере для Шепард, меня поразило. Даже не знаю кажется мне эта идея крутой или нет
Irregardless of everything else, that punchline at the end was hysterical and I now would really love to see your view on Dragon Age moments as well as the Mass Effect content.
While I'm not sure how throughly I agree with all of your points here, I did feel that compared to the genophage the quarian/geth plot line was... less, and you brought up a lot of solid reasons why that might be. This video has had a lot of interesting food for thought.
Always love these analysis vids. I went into this vid thinking I wouldn’t agree with the argument but I gotta admit your premises are damn strong!!
Playing devils advocate here, I don’t really agree with the Han’Gerrel argument and how he is a completely different character in ME3. In ME2 we see him under relatively low stress as the quarians aren’t in active war. He may have been putting up a mask around shep as well. But homeboy was under a LOT of fucking stress in ME3. We do things we wouldnt normally do when our brains are in constant states of arousal which I think we may be seeing here with Gerrel. But yeah the transition from Mr. Nice Guy to insane war criminal was not subtle.
But that wasn’t a point of the main argument so it doesn’t really effect the vid.
You should do character analysis vids! Would love to see content on Garrus and the different Shepard moralities!
The main contradiction with Gerrel is him going from caring about Tali to callously and unapologetically willing to kill her.
@@pikmonwolf 💀💀💀💀 that’s normal idk what ur talking about
As someone who played the hell out of these games, then a few years later watched this video, this is an amazing take on this.
My media analysis skills aren't as high as yours, never noticed this honestly.
I finally found someone bring up how stupid and unnecessary Legion's death was, thank God. Even on my first playthrough of 3, I was thinking 'uhh... why is Legion dead now? Did I miss something that foreshadowed this?' after making peace happen between the geth and quarians. Nope, I didn't miss any foreshadowing, it's actually that out of left field. I had played through ME1 and 2 multiple times, but only ME3 once, so I didn't notice the inconsistencies with Legion in ME3 until you pointed it out.
This probably isn't the greatest place to say this, but I don't get my opinions out much, and I feel like someone's gotta say this. My feelings of 3 are soured because the game has a habit of killing off established characters for the SADZ (Guaranteed major character losses (for characters we like) include Anderson, Legion, Thane, Mordin (this one worked though), and guaranteed minor ones include Emily Wong (twitter campaign, I think?), Charr, Rana Thanoptis). Killing off characters is a major risk, since it can easily feel cheap and unwarranted, and remove a character that could add flavor to the experience (Legion can't hang out with EDI or Tali at the Citadel DLC party or add to anything after Rannoch since he's too dead to do anything (you can't do anything with a corpse), and killing off the sidequest characters feels like 'OK, why am I helping you if you'll be dead by the end anyway? I get money? Sure, whatever I guess... I'd rather see my actions affect your lives and feel like those decisions mattered but I guess money is fine...'). At first I assumed I disliked 3 because it was the series having a massive angst episode (not that it isn't considering the notable amount of nightmare sequences featuring some random kid we barely know (I get they're trying to make us sad, but this isn't how you do it, this is forced as crap)) and the war assets system funneling everything you did into something less personally meaningful, but with the geth conflict, the Citadel coup, Cerberus being everywhere for no reason (I legit don't get their reasoning for half the crap they pull (please don't bring up indoctrination as an explanation for that, it gets old and I don't buy it -_-///)), Kai Leng in general, and the ending... Yeah the writing's not as great as it could be. Which is a shame, because ME1 and 2 made me highly invested in this series and want it to be the best it can.
I'll try to end on a positive note. ME1 made a great world, 2 made great characters (albeit while setting what ME1 did on fire :/), and 3... well, the multiplayer's still fun and surprisingly active.
I agree that Mass Effect 3 was a bit kill-happy. It makes sense in the context of the Reaper War but it did undercut some of the stuff you do in the earlier games.
However some character deaths are justified. Mordin's is so perfectly done I can't complain, and Thane's been dying since you meet him.
@@pikmonwolf ME3 being kinda kill happy undercutting so much of the stuff that got me invested in the game definitely bothered me a lot. Kinda makes the crapload of sidequests feel like they don't matter anymore.
Mordin's death is the only one I can't complain about. His arc was very, very well-executed. ME3 made a strong start with the genophage arc.
Thane's death was inevitable, yeah. He volunteered for a suicidal mission because he was dying, so it was a grim inevitability. But uh... I'd rather he die less pathetically and more appropriately than he did. 'Stabbed by lame space ninja that makes the world's logic melt because the devs want us to think he's cool' wasn't the best way to go. :/
I heard the original plan for him involved sacrificing himself to save the Hanar homeworld as a way to repay them, which already sounds way better, but in the end it still depends on the concept's execution.
@@ryuka-ruki6474 If that's true I bet Thane was originally going to be in Kasumi's place in the mission with the indoctrinated Hanar. Though if it was Thane and not Kasumi (who was DLC) it probably would've been flashier.
And yeah I do agree that he deserved better than to be killed by Kai Leng, just that having Thane die in Mass Effect 3 was justified.
@@pikmonwolf This is the video I remembered hearing it from. I remembered some of it, but not all of it.
ua-cam.com/video/TZhtObe6HnQ/v-deo.html
Big Dan Gaming's video: 5 WILDEST Story Ideas Bioware DELETED from Mass Effect 3 (Cut Content)
Awesome video! Would absolutely love to see a video about the crew abduction in ME2 and how forced it is. Keep up the good work!