(Spoiler
Alert for the Mass Effect franchise. If you are touchy about
spoilers, avert your eyes and go back to watching porn.)
Lately
I have getting on my soapbox and writing about a fairly diverse set
of topics and the list of said topics is far from empty. However,
this week I feel like doing something a bit more recreational. Since
my first attempt at something like this was so popular (and is still
getting hits to this day), and it has been a long time, another
character analysis is in order. This time I will be discussing every
Mass Effect
fan's favorite AI companion, Legion. Legion is one of the series most
interesting characters in the franchise, in my honest opinion, and
there are a couple of reasons I have for this.
But
before I get into that, we need to learn about the story of Legion.
Any character, even a synthetic one, is a product of their story. Due
to the nature of the Geth
in the Mass Effect franchise, Legion's tale is the tale of Geth, and
goes back to when the Geth gained sentience. Originally, the Geth
were nothing more than a collection of AI constructs developed by the
Quarian
race to serve them. They were programmed to always find the most
efficient ways to complete tasks assigned to them. It was eventually
realized that when Geth programs come together, they can “think”
and perform tasks better than they could individually. Reaching its
logical conclusion, these programs kept networking until they reached
a point where they gained sentience and could communicate with their
Quarian creators. This unsettled the Quarians to the point where they
started attacking the Geth out of fear. (I suppose that Quarians are
equally as aware of standard
AI horror tropes
as we are.) While some Quarians showed sympathy to the Geth, most of
them displayed only fear. This fear only grew once a Geth platform
asked its creator, “Does this unit have a soul?” Out of sheer
terror was born a war
between the two. Though the conflict was started by the Quarians, the
Geth held their own and forced them off their own home world, leading
the Quarians toward the path of a migrant species.
Shortly
after this victory, the Geth embraced a policy of isolationism
towards organic life. They had no desire to fight or even deal with
other people and just wanted to be left alone, safeguarding the
planet their creators called home. This does not mean that they were
doing nothing. In fact, they were working towards their ultimate
goal. They wished to build a system large enough to house every
single Geth intelligence on one platform, becoming as smart and
capable as they can possibly become. Striving towards their desire
for a very long time, the Geth remained little more than bogeymen to
the galactic races until the Reapers
arrived on scene. When the Reapers approached the Geth, they made
them a huge offer. In exchange for giving the Reapers aid in
furthering their goals (which makes little sense when taken into
context with Mass Effect 3), the Geth were promised to be elevated by
the Reapers and have their goals fulfillled. When trying to reach
consensus on this issue, a small collective of the Geth broke
away to
join the Reapers and were dubbed Heretics
by the many who rejected the Reapers. Then the events of the orignal
Mass
Effect game
occurred, with Commander Shepard going against Saren, the Reaper
Sovereign,
and the Geth who defected. (You know the plot, if not from my
prior articles,
then from your own experiences.) This colored the preception of
organic races towards the Geth and brought credence to the Quarian
race's belief that they were wronged by their synthetic creations.
The
isotionist policy changed once the
Normandy
came under attack by a
mysterious third party
and Commander Shepard was lost, presumed dead. Since the commander
had experience with the Heretics and was instrumental in the defeat
of Sovereign, the Geth decided that it would be prudent to make sure
the Shepard was alive. To successfully traverse the systems that
organic life inhabit, the Geth realized it would be best to send as
few units as possible and lessen their mark on the world. They built
a single platform capable of housing over one thousand individual
Geth AI constructs all networked together. This platform traced
Shepard's footsteps, looking for clues as to where he/she went and
what happened, eventually finding the Normandy's crash site and
salvaging a piece of Shepard's N7 armor, using it to repair itself
after a firefight. After concluding that Shepard died, it stayed
around to investigate another problem it discovered.
The
platform learned of a plan by the Heretics to use a virus, granted to
them by the Reapers, to rewrite the true Geth, making them accept the
Reapers as their leaders. This led the platform to a derilect
Reaper in
order to acquire knowledge on how to counteract this virus. It
encounters Shepard and is surprised to find him/her alive and well.
Seeing the commander in a tight situation, the platform takes aim at
the hoards attacking Shepard, then retreats further in to hack a
terminal and learn about the Reapers and their technology. Once
Shepard and company arrive on scene, they see the platform attacked
by a Reaper husk and disabled. They acquire a Reaper IFF for their
own purposes, collect the platform and leave.
Once
the crew make it back to the new Normandy, there is a debate as to
whether the Commander should activate and interrogate the platform,
sell it to Cerberus, or just leave it be. Since nobody in their right
mind would sell it to Cerberus, the four Shepards I played all
decided to activate and interrogate the platform. The platformed
explained its purpose and why it was sent outside the Perseus Veil,
where the Geth live. For the purpose of communicating with organic
life, the platform accepted the name Legion to distinguish it from
other Geth platforms and agreed to help Shepard fight against the
Collectors. (This is part of Mass
Effect 2's
main plot, which I do not want to get into for various reasons.)
Through several optional conversations, Legion tells Shepard, and the
player by proxy, all about how the Geth work, their “society,”
political beliefs, and the like. Eventually, it gives the player the
optional objective to head to the base of the Herectic Geth and stop
them from using the virus, with the choice to either destroy it,
blowing up the Heretic Base and all the Heretics in it, or repurpose
it to turn the Heretics back into true Geth and force them to
retreat, then destroy it. Since the individual programs inside Legion
were unable to form concensus, they trusted Sheppard to make the
final decision.
If
Legion both survives the events of Mass Effect 2 and was not sold to
Cerberus, he will become a central figure in the events regarding the
Geth/Quarian conflict in the third game. Since the Quarians attempted
to erradicate them, the Geth decided to forge an alliance with the
Reapers out of fear. The deal was that they would gain intelligence
and fighting prowess in exchange for allowing the Reapers to
completely control them. When Shepard arrives on scene to convince
the Quarians to join the war efforts, he/she is briefed on the
situation. The commander, his/her Quarian friend Tali,
and one other person infiltrate a Geth ship sending a broadcast to
all the others in order to figure out exactly why it seems like the
Geth and the Reapers are working together. They encounter Legion, who
tells them that the Reapers are using him to project a signal to all
Geth, ordering them to attack. It asks the team to free it so that it
is no longer a Reaper conduit and can begin aiding in a counterattack
on the Reapers, which Shepard does. As a show of good faith towards
Shepard and as a token of their friendship, Legion orders the ship's
engines and weaponry to be diabled, which the Quarians took as a
queue to attack with full force (despite the fact they know Shepard
is on board). Once everyone is safely back on the Normandy, gives
Shepard an optional side-mission to enter the Geth Consensus and
weaken the Reaper's influence, allowing some of the Geth to join
him/her. Afterwards, the Quarians, Shepard's team, and Legion work
together to destroy the Reaper signal to the Geth by destroying the
source, later revealed to be an actual Reaper. Once Shepard defeats
the Reaper, Legion tells him/her that it can use the Reaper's code to
make the Geth's thought processes more organic in nature, giving them
true individuality and conciousness, whether or not it succeeds is up
to Shepard. It will die regardless and it's story comes to an end
either way (using the code, for some reason, kills Legion and if
Shepard tries to stop it, Legion will fight back and Shepard will
kill him). Should Sheppard allow it, Legion will call itself “I”
instead of “We” in its final moments, showing that the process is
working and demostrating true individuality before passing away.
One
of the things that makes Legion so interesting is that it is the
player's window into Geth culture. While characters like Garrus
and Tali partially serve to further the player's knowledge regarding
how their races work, there are many other people from those races to
interact with to forge a deeper understanding than with those
characters alone. Legion is unique in that it is the one and only way
in which Shepard learns about the Geth because they are isolationists
and they are so closely networked together that talking to one Geth
platform is essentially talking to the Geth as a whole. This makes
conversations with Legion facsinating because prior to Legion's
inclusion, the Geth were always at least somewhat enigmatic. The
player fought against their forces (later revealed to be Heretics) in
the first game, but never understood exactly what caused them to side
with Sovereign. Legion gives the player an opportunity to learn about
the Geth in an interesting and creative way. On the part of the
writers, this was very cleaver.
The
other intelligent decision the writing team made, which further
raises the interest I have towards Legion, is to defy traditional
genre conventions regarding Artificial Intelligence. As I aluded to
earlier, most media that involves an AI growing sentience have it
quickly decide that its creators are too inefficient and immediately
start trying to murder everyone. As other
people on the internet
have already said, this makes very little sense. Why would the
default stance for an AI be “murder the shit out of everyone” the
moment it learns how to think for itself? Bioware knew about this
genre convention and thoughfully decided to avert it. The choice to
do that gave Legion (an other AI characters) the ability to be much
more fleshed out and interesting than similar characters in other
genres, leading into my final point.
Legion is one of the most interesting characters in the Mass Effect
series because of what it represents: The moral quandary of whether
or not sentient machines count as life in the same way that organics
do. They explore every aspect of this question from their ability to
feel emotions to whether or not they have civil rights. The ability
of the Geth to feel emotions is intentionally left up for debate.
When talking with Legion, it will insist that it does not have
emotions and is unable to feel anything. According to it, logic and
rational thinking allow the invividual Geth programs to come together
and build a consensus as to what the next course of action should be.
However, there are times where that can be called into question. For
example, when Shepard sees the N7 armor on Legion and questions it
about it, Legion explains that he used it because there was a hole
and it needed to be prepared. When further pressed to answer why it
used that in particular piece of armor over other parts more redily
available, Legion finally admits that it has no data on that subject
and cannot answer that question. In other words, it does not know for
sure. This indicates that it was a decision influenced by something
more than logic, possibly emotion. There are also other more subtle
cues from Legion in other dialogue scenes in Mass Effect 2 and 3 that
indicate possible sorrow, anger, and other emotions.
The other half of this huge moral dillema is the question of the
civils rights of synthetic beings and their ability to integrate into
society. It is a tough question that does not have a clear answer.
Characters debate this throughout the entire series. Most organic
races, particularly the Quarians, tend to fall on the side of no
rights to synthetic beings. This makes sense since they believe that
the Geth forced them off their world. They believe that it is either
impossible or too impractical to arrange for peace, despite
dissenting opinions. Legion on the other hand, tries its best to be
as considerate as it can be. However, it does not always succeed.
There are time where it says or does otherwise rational things that
can be seen as strange or ruthless to organic beings. During its
optional mission in Mass Effect 2, Legion talks about the possibility
of destroying the Geth Heretics with cold callous, which the player's
other companion comments on with shock. It also states that Shepard
and company should not feel bad about killing the Heretics because
they “do not share your pity, remorse, or fear.” Legion also
expresses a childlike inability to understand human customs, which
Shepard can chose to explain to it, such as the concepts of
cemetaries, religion, and drug use. Since it is an AI, it has trouble
understanding how these things factor into our lives and the
emotional (and physiological in the case of the last one) impact of
these things, calling into question the ability of Legion and the
geth to truly integrate with organics. Through Legion, the game
presents all the relevant information and ultimately allows the
player to decide for themselves the answer these question, adding
depth to its character and making it much more impactful.
Overall
the character of Legion is a great example of Bioware's strength.
They can write interesting and relatable characters and use them to
raise interesting moral questions. Though they have
many
weaknesses
in terms of how they tell stories, especially in recent games,
characterization has always been a strength of their brand. This is
why they were such a strong brand before the issues with Mass Effect
3. If you write good characters, then players will grow attachments
to them and want to play through your game to deepen those bonds.
Take this lesson to heart, game developers.
7 comments:
I'd like to note that as far as I'm aware, it's not the Geth's initial communication with the Quarians that spooked them so much: it's the fact that they were gaining sentience and critical thinking skills. That's why 'does this unit have a soul' caused the stir it did: It revealed the Geth had been thinking, been thinking about thinking, about the nature of life and existence and holy shit, I thought these guys were just networked worker drones, BETTER NUKE THEM TO BE SAFE.
That was all, really.
Because the moment something starts contemplating the nature of existence, they will immediately start wanting to KILL EVERYONE!!!
Aren't horror tropes just grand?
"This fear only grew once a Geth platform asked its creator, “Does this unit[sic - 'Do these units' in the original recording] have a soul?”"
It should technically be noted that the history on this is slightly different - after Legion plays the recording, Shep asks he/it if that was the first time a geth platform had asked that particular question. Legion replies in the negative - it was simply the first time that a quarian had been scared by the question...
(Which could imply lots of things, from the quarian dissidents in the ME3 recordings, to a broader cultural shift towards anti-AI, to a different mindset between the quarians that designed, made, and worked with geth during the early stages and those that dealt with them later.)
The portrayal of the geth in ME1 is also rather discussion worthy. Frankly, it's amazing how that game made me think about and feel for voiceless robots with whom 99% of my interaction was shooting them in the face :]
This is where I'm hampered because I have a PS3 and not a 360. While I've watched playthroughs of the first game and studied the Wiki, I've never actually played it myself.
Yeah, they handled Legion pretty well, all things considered... right up until the moment where they kill him off for no convincing or clearly defined reason.
I could understand if they just didn't want to give D.C. Douglas more lines or something... except those side-characters only have a couple of lines later on at Earth through a hologram anyway. So they weren't exactly saving tons of disc-space or whatever.
I guess what I'm saying is: Bioware sucks at endings.
Yeah. I could just cry when I see things like that. It's like Bioware could be doing so much better than they are now, but they lack the time/resources/ambition to real seal the deal and do amazing things.
They still have moments of sheer brilliance, but it's tempered much more than it ever was by mediocrity.
Basically their reason is the same as the stupid kid. 'GRR SCENE NEED DRAMA AND SAD. NOW IT ART!'
(Also, I say, the double captcha ExtraBlur Edition on this site is annoying....)
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