Rannoch: Ect

Okay, MSPals, today we're going to do a little housekeeping with a few random scenes.

Let's start with the Prime that rolls up to Shepard once the whole Rannoch thing is over.

NEVER GONNA LET IT GO

NEVER GONNA GIVE IT UP

Let's go visit Tali.

She says something about how she has to beat the reapers because they're coming for Rannoch next, but you and I both know it's so she'll stay a squadmate.

Let's visit Tali aboard the Normandy, too.

Really, quarians? Really? Y'all are just, like, cool with geth just uploading themselves into your suits? Holy shit, that's how you lose planets a second time, you assholes.

WELL!?

Okay, when Tali said that, did anyone else hear this?

Bioware, I can't even hate, it would be like if I started drawing square people.

Okay, I've luckily unlocked one conversation that I was hoping to get, so let's do it. At some point in the game, Shepard will find Ashley ... indisposed.

NEXT TIME: Seriously one of my favorite sections of the game. Today's MSPixel Activity Corner is trying to guess what we'll be doing.

Priority Rannoch: In Which I Get Mad At Bioware

Well, hooray, then! Let's land this plane.

By the way, Legion is referring to Carl. Carl was apparently the reaper in charge of the geth. Knock out Carl, no one's controlling the geth.

This whole "oh my the geth are free" plotline works great until the other reapers realize that no one's watching the geth and another reaper just, like, moves in on the territory.

oh gerrel never change

So Legion's just, like, as powerful as Carl now. Sure.

I thought the whole point of this was that the reapers were controlling the geth with upgrades, and that was bad. How the hell is Legion controlling the geth with upgrades any better?

oh ok

But Legion wouldn't ... be giving them free will ... ?

NO OF FUCKING COURSE THIS UNIT DOESN'T HAVE A SOUL, HE'S A FUCKING ROBOT.

A fucking robot who wants to brain wash the other fucking robots. oooo Legion's done so much with his alleged "humanity."

This gets a lot better if you read it as, "Does this unit have soul?" Like soul train.

Besides, Tali's right, the geth could wake up and go, "Welp, time to shoot up some quarians." How is that a better alternative?

I'm going to get the super happy princess ending to this scenario but I'm not going to be happy doing it.

Legion holds that ball and spins it around when he uploads. I don't know either.

Oh my God. I'm serious, this is the thing with the "soul" that people get all amped about: he's willingly mind controlling the geth and is just cool with some quarians dying because of it.

Didn't Shepard say, like, last entry that organics and synthetics don't have to destroy each other? And here Legion's all, "Hate it for you, I'm'a toast them quarians.

Yo, if you've done your homework, Shepard's dialogue wheel will pop up with blue and red options to end the scenario in everyone's favor. I'm pretty sure they both have the same outcome, even if the dialogue might be different.

To get the options, there are some conditions that seem to be pass/fail. Flunk one, and Shepard can't get the special ending. These are:

• Shepard has to have four bars of reputation.
• Tali and Legion both have to be attending, meaning neither one of them can have died in the suicide mission. Apparently this also requires an imported save from Mass Effect 2, because if you start fresh in ME3 Tali won't be an admiral and Legion won't be there at all.
• You have to have done the mission Rannoch: Geth Figher Squadrons. You know, the one where we were in the geth consensus?

We have all that, so we're okay. Let's look at what the game checks on next.

The game wants you to have five points. Points are awarded as follows:

• Destroying the heretic geth on Legion's loyalty mission. I have no idea why it's two points, but it is. Two points.
• Proving Tali's innocent without telling the other admirals that Tali's dad was activating geth parts. Two points.
• Getting Tali and Legion to agree during their fight in ME2. One point.
• Doing the Admiral Korris mission. One point.
• Actually saving Admiral Korris on said mission. One point.

Thanks, Mass Effect Wiki!

Anyway, we've got 100% of all this shit, so we're primed for the good ending.

I think that's why you had to save Korris, for that one line.

(It's so the civilians are behind you and blah dee blah dee blah.)

... so you've probably figured it out, but I've been spoilering out every major death that I can from this series. I mean, I even made this happen, so.

Yeah, but naw, fuck Legion. Can't die if you're not alive.

I mean, this is crazy. This is insulting. If you got sad or cried at this scene, I hate you.

Diaba helped me out some, but Legion didn't sacrifice shit. He just flew off because his planet needs him, if even that.

True story, once I lost my phone in a theater. I was totally sad over it, probably sadder than I should have been -- it was my first smart phone! -- but then I went to the Apple store and bought a new one. I was still bummed until I took it home, plugged it in, and discovered that "restore from backup" made my new phone exactly like my old phone in every way except maybe now the back was flat instead of round.

My phone is backed up to my laptop. My current phone has a battery problem, so sometime in the future, I'm going to go back to the Apple store and get myself a fancy new iPhone 6 with my upgrade that I use once a millenia. Then, I'll bring the phone home, plug it into my laptop again, and it'll be the same phone. My lock screen will still be my bunny, I'll have all the videos of the kids I work with, I'll have my twitter app and my Something Awful app and everything that makes my phone my phone.

That's Legion. That's what Legion is. He says it himself, he's a series of 1,183 processes, just like my phone is 16GB of of apps and pictures and MP3s. That's all he is.

You can't compare him to a person or an animal, that's awful. I'm serious, think about it. Think about the people you know right now. They have a favorite color (Husbando~'s is blue) and a favorite food (my rabbit is partial to lettuce) and a birthday (mine's November 1st.) You can't compare that to my fucking phone. It's a phone. It doesn't sing songs (my rabbit sings, that's a true story!) or make up stories get scared during a thunderstorm or get sick and throw up or any of the cool shit that living beings do. Do you know why? IT'S NOT ALIVE. NEITHER IS LEGION. GET OVER IT.

So no, no, this unit doesn't have a fucking soul. Bioware's presented exactly no evidence other than "we said they have a soul, so heave ho here we go." Meanwhile, you've got characters all around Legion who can drink or get angry or fall in love or do all that cool shit that living things do.

Bioware fucked up big time by not defining "alive" or "soul", which they should have done if they were going to make this argument. If they'd defined their terms, then said that synthetics were alive because they abided by said terms, they could have gone somewhere with this thematic material. As is, they don't prove their own thesis, and they really don't even provide a good reason for having the argument in the story.

I think we're supposed to ultimately decide Legion is alive because he sacrificed himself. But he didn't sacrifice anything. He's just chilling in the geth consensus, which is where he'd be if he wasn't in his body anyway, so who cares? He probably goes there when his unit goes on standby anyway. The only reason we're given for him not being able to restore from backup is "nope, sorry, can't." That's shitty. That's awful writing. Legion could come back if he wanted.

And "sacrificed" himself for what? He was going to kill the quarians! He was going to mind control the other geth! He was cool with that! That's not a sympathetic character!

Since I'm on a tear, we're supposed to begin to believe the same thing about EDI because she falls in love with Joker. How does she fall in love? She's given no autonomy in her own love story. Bioware gave her some tig ol bitties, Joker couldn't roll his damn tongue in his mouth for fifteen minutes, and she asked Shepard if that meant she was supposed to do the sex to him. That's also awful.

Mordin had a line in Mass Effect 2 about the reapers being a load of bullshit because they had no culture, no music, no creativity. That would have been a hell of a way to go for the whole "does this unit have a soul" plot line, and Bioware totally dropped it.

This pisses me off most of all because we have a hundred and fifty characters in the Mass Effect canon who were alive and sacrificed themselves for reasons far more noble than "I'm'a fuck them quarians up" and we're supposed to put Legion on the same pedestal. That's insulting to the other characters, it takes away from what they brought to the story.

God damn it, Bioware, fuck you.

Rannoch: Carl

Okay, so. Our homie Sovereign got an entire entry to himself, probably we should let this reaper have his own entry.

You know what I realized? We never got to have this conversation with Harbinger. This was a big feature in Mass Effect 1, and they're bringing it back for ME3, but ... I dunno, I guess the most Harbinger gets is to perve on Shep?

Also, this reaper, while significant to the plot, has no name. I have named him Carl. Sovereign, Harbinger, Carl. Sounds legit.

Carl was the reaper put specificially in charge of the geth. Since Carl's on his last legs, the geth'll be free as soon as this motherfucker quits soliloquizing.

For the ease of our literary analysis, this is exactly what Carl says in game.

okay except for that

Hay gurl, is Carl busy telling us the reaper's final solution? It's very close.

Don't forget, Sovereign said that the reapers harvest folk at the "apex of their glory," so that matches up.

Wait, but why does Carl think we're all gonna die if we keep on living?

Shep's highlighted something important here: the reapers think they're the good guys, but they don't seem to want to say why.

I love this line, because it matches up so nicely with a line from Mass Effect 1:

I'm being a shit.

There's a weird ... I'm not sure it's a plot hole. Inconsistency? Inconsistency, I guess, anyway, it's in the story, and for whatever reason Bioware addresses it exactly Zero Times. The reapers are all like, "NOPE NOPE ORGANICS AND SYNTHETICS THAT'S NOT HAPPENING" and, you know, we just fixed that. We're about to, like, turbo fix it on Friday.

It'll pop up again, just keep that in your back pocket.

No it doesn't. It's over. We all cool. What the hell, Carl.

Yo, not to stomp all over Carl's dramatic exit, but it's worth mentioning that Carl said nothing of Harbinger's final solution, which was that reapers used organic life to make semen. What, you go back into that entry and you fact check me, that's what they're using us for!

... Harbinger was some kind of crazy off the rails pervert, real talk.