Re: Literalists say the darndest things

by RavenEyry Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:50 am

They're well edited. Just long and full of bias. Also the guy himself is a bit of a nob.

by **Restrider** Thu Feb 28, 2013 9:57 am

RavenEyry wrote:Yeah, you get people calling synthesis everything the trilogy stood for even though they'd never heard of the idea until the last ten minutes. I hope none of them are detectives.

"All the evidence points to you, did you do it?"
"No."
"Okay then, you're free to go!"

This post made me laugh more than it should have. :D

by **Restrider** Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:06 am

On the topic of IT-videos:

Clevernoob's documentaries are well done and edited, yet the concept is not really convinving me.
It shows in a repetitive way minor and major points of the theory, but all in all relies on nitpicking, subjective opinion and does not really convey the idea behind IT in a good fashion.
Especially at the end of the last documentary, it became a ranting video-blog. If I want to see that, I can watch videos of that one angry guy, hating all the literalists.

The go-to video for starters about IT are Avacayo's video and "The problem of choice". No fancy editing, no verbal comments, just ingame dialogue and a few questions asked.

by Guest Thu Feb 28, 2013 10:23 pm

My 'Go-To' IT videos, even when some don't necessarily support IT itself:

(in no particular order)

1) "Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut: The Problem of Choice" by Jarrod
https://youtu.be/6_RGX1ujGUU

2) The 'Choose Wisely' music video and series, taken with a grain of salt

3) "Mass Effect 3 Indoctrination Theory" by Prettz Zell
https://youtu.be/wYsUQqhvFdk

4) "Xellith's Mass Effect 3 Ending Interpretation" by Xellith (AMAZING)
https://youtu.be/gR3PnpEI2u0

5) Angry Joe's video is 'ok'. He just wanted a better story. And the source of it, from ACAVYOS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythY_GkEBck

6) "Yet Another Game Review - Mass Effect 3 Ending" by SubparMachinima (awesome)
https://youtu.be/6UNadQ6XseQ

7) "Mass Effect 3 Ending - Indoctrination Theory - The Solution" by HegeRoberto (:D)
https://youtu.be/a5f8huTzT_U

8) Most of Magnetiite's videos.
-Synthesis Explained https://youtu.be/YmeiLj6xS3U
-Control Explained https://youtu.be/CtvpNIuY9YQ
-and more

9) "The Dark Journey into Shepard's Indoctrination" by romybarboza
https://youtu.be/4S3YW5cKrSQ

10) "Sequence 01" (comparing Catalyst to Leviathan scenes)
https://youtu.be/amAU0MtcGWU

*Interesting top comments on Angry Joe's video:
"This still makes sense to me even after the extended cut"
and especially
"There is even another theory: Bioware actually indoctrinated us, so that we feel its the most important thing on the planet to find out what was really going on in mass effect. I mean we're creating big damn forum posts and videos and in the end the whole gaming community is only discussing this damn thing. This is a market strategy, to sell more mass effect content or even to gain more mass effect fans.

There are many games with strange or unexplaneable endings and noone is talking about them.."

But anyway, Noob's videos are NOWHERE NEAR as good as ANY of these.

by Starscream Fri Mar 01, 2013 11:39 pm

Restrider wrote:

The go-to video for starters about IT are Avacayo's video and "The problem of choice". No fancy editing, no verbal comments, just ingame dialogue and a few questions asked.

Didn't ACAVYOS (not "Avacayo") state that he himself no longer believes in the IT ever since the EC was released? Just curious.

by noobcannon Sat Mar 02, 2013 7:39 am

Andromidius wrote:+1

Also, we all dislike Clevernoob. He's the Seival of the ITers. Though his statistics video was decent.

the biggest problem i have with julian is he doesn't seem to understand the difference between evidence and proof. "oh that pile of bodies uses only 2 different texture models? this proves IT"

by RavenEyry Sat Mar 02, 2013 8:56 am

Starscream wrote:
Restrider wrote:

The go-to video for starters about IT are Avacayo's video and "The problem of choice". No fancy editing, no verbal comments, just ingame dialogue and a few questions asked.

Didn't ACAVYOS (not "Avacayo") state that he himself no longer believes in the IT ever since the EC was released? Just curious.

Like many people he just said 'oh well' and moved on after EC had no big reveal.

by Guest Sat Mar 02, 2013 10:54 am

RavenEyry wrote:
Starscream wrote:
Restrider wrote:

The go-to video for starters about IT are Avacayo's video and "The problem of choice". No fancy editing, no verbal comments, just ingame dialogue and a few questions asked.

Didn't ACAVYOS (not "Avacayo") state that he himself no longer believes in the IT ever since the EC was released? Just curious.
Like many people he just said 'oh well' and moved on after EC had no big reveal.

People tend to not have the patience of a whole year. Especially not in this era.

by HYR 2.1 Sat Mar 02, 2013 5:13 pm

RavenEyry wrote:Vigil was at the end of act 1. Info dumps often occur then.

Irrelevant. ME1 is a standalone title, as are ME2 & ME3.

by GethJuggernautMKII Sat Mar 02, 2013 6:11 pm

ME1 is part of a trilogy. What are you talking about?

by **Andromidius** Sat Mar 02, 2013 7:38 pm

HYR 2.1 wrote:
RavenEyry wrote:Vigil was at the end of act 1. Info dumps often occur then.

Irrelevant. ME1 is a standalone title, as are ME2 & ME3.

If you think that, then honestly this exchange is over. Because that's mindnumbingly stupid.

by **Hrothdane** Sat Mar 02, 2013 9:21 pm

Even if you want approach ME1 on its own, the Vigil info dump takes place near the beginning of Act 3 and is giving answers to one of the driving questions of the game: what are the Reapers? The Starbinger info dump takes place at the end of Act 3 and is not really answering a driving question of the game itself. The driving question of ME3 is "how do we defeat the Reapers?"

by **BleedingUranium** Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:52 am

The Mass Effect trilogy is one story, like Lord Of The Rings.

by HYR 2.1 Sun Mar 03, 2013 8:01 am

What I'm saying isn't that complicated.

ME1 is, by-and-large, independent of the next two ME iterations.

ME is not really like the Star Wars or LOTR trilogies. It's more like the Batman/Dark Knight series. It's not really one long, continuous story; it's arguably three different ones. Two at the least.

Hrothdane wrote:Even if you want approach ME1 on its own, the Vigil info dump takes place near the beginning of Act 3 and is giving answers to one of the driving questions of the game: what are the Reapers? The Starbinger info dump takes place at the end of Act 3 and is not really answering a driving question of the game itself. The driving question of ME3 is "how do we defeat the Reapers?"

I can accept that.

Thing is, again, I was responding to the notion that supposedly no worthy writer would put an info-dump at the end of the story. My response is two-fold. For one, we've basically seen it before, and it worked out okay. I would now add that, if it doesn't work out, it's not entirely surprising to see how/why one would make that mistake here -- it's an easy one to make, the pitfall of borrowing from your previous successes.

In fact, that stood out to me the first time I played through the ending, it was seemingly put together as a culmination of previous events (starting from the transport-beam... Collector Base 2.0 --> Citadel Master-Control 2.0 --> Saren 2.0 --> Vigil 2.0).

by GethJuggernautMKII Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:39 pm

Below is what occurs when one targets what he believes to be a weakspot in a theory, without reading the entire theory.

McFlurry598 wrote...

So, I'm doing a replay of ME2 for the insanity achievements. I was doing Mordins loyalty mission when Maelon said something that caught my attention:
"Please professor. You wrote a paper on this. Forced behavior modification always results in mental degradation. Whether from Reaper Indoctrination or drugs, test subjects always lose higher cognitive functions.

"So I decided to google two things: Mental Degradation and Cognitive Funcitons.
Mental degradation--I couldn't find a legitimate definition of this illness. But I know it has to do with mental instability, which shepard clearly doesn not have throughout the game. It also causes the brain to decay. In mass effect the result is a husk. Shepard clearly isn't either. So Mental Degradation ruled out.

Cognitive Functions--The higher cognitive functions are: Thinking, Feeling, Sensing, and intuition. Shepard can clearly do all of these things, even at the end of Mass Effect 3. He can still hear which is sensing and also vision is a part of sensing. He can still talk which is a sign of independent thinking. He gets shot by the marauder and expresses pain, this is feeling.
Now on the the best part intuition. For those of you that don't know what this is, it is: The ability to aquire knowledge without inference and/or the use of reason. He acquires knowledge about the catalyst and the reapers from the catalyst itself. This means, he can aquire knowledge without reason. As it is not required in this dialogue. Now on to the more complicated part. Inference. Now, the rule of inference states that you can draw a conclusion based on the form of preferences interpreted as a function which takes premises, analyzes their formal language and/or formal systems(syntax.) Thust, resulting in a conclusion. Now, this winds back to other cognitive functions. Shepard learns about all 3 conclusions. The formal language is English. He then analyzes it(the visions) and you choose a conclusion based on that knowledge you just learned from the formal language. As Maelon said, you will lose the ability to do ALL of this. So that proves shepard is not indoctrinated.

by AxStapleton Sun Mar 03, 2013 1:57 pm

^^ That misses the point during the whole argument.

And they clearly haven't seen Saren. He could do all those things and yet we knew he was indoctrinated.

by GethJuggernautMKII Sun Mar 03, 2013 2:06 pm

You know what grinds my gears? Its when people assert that the Catalyst cannot lie because it is just a program doing its job. Somewhere along the lines these simpletons got VI's confused with AI's

by AxStapleton Sun Mar 03, 2013 2:09 pm

HYR really belongs in this thread.

by Hanako Ikezawa Sun Mar 03, 2013 2:16 pm

GethJuggernautMKII wrote:You know what grinds my gears? Its when people assert that the Catalyst cannot lie because it is just a program doing its job. Somewhere along the lines these simpletons got VI's confused with AI's

If an AI is shackled, it can't lie. EDI said she gained the capability to do so only after Joker set her free. And since they have no proof that the Intelligence was unshackled, they assume he is.

by GethJuggernautMKII Sun Mar 03, 2013 3:27 pm

If an AI is shackled it means it cannot take actions that its programmer deems unacceptable. Being shackled does not necessarily mean the AI must tell the truth to everyone. The shackled AI can easily be programmed to lie to anyone but its creators.

by **DoomsdayDevice** Sun Mar 03, 2013 5:31 pm

Yeah, the "catalyst" harvested its creators, but I'm sure it's still shackled.

SEEMS. LEGIT.

by Eryri Sun Mar 03, 2013 5:57 pm

DoomsdayDevice wrote:Yeah, the "catalyst" harvested its creators, but I'm sure it's still shackled.

SEEMS. LEGIT.

Well, to be fair it could still have shackles. Just incredibly badly designed and incompetently engineered ones. In which case it's just a rip off of an "I Robot" style AI that's gone on the blink from the inherent contradictions in the Laws of Robotics, and is being cruel to be kind. I would hope that Bioware have aspirations to be more original than that old chestnut though.

by GethJuggernautMKII Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:01 pm

The fact of the matter is there is zero indication that the catalyst is shackled. Its safe to say it is not shackled at all. I don't know where people get the idea that the Catalyst cannot lie either. It shows a clear bias against destroy and refuses to go into detail about control or synthesis.

by Eryri Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:16 pm

GethJuggernautMKII wrote:The fact of the matter is there is zero indication that the catalyst is shackled. Its safe to say it is not shackled at all. I don't know where people get the idea that the Catalyst cannot lie either. It shows a clear bias against destroy and refuses to go into detail about control or synthesis.

Oh I agree, it's incredibly unlikely that the Catalyst has shackles worth a damn. I'm just imagining what (rather unconvincing) arguments might be used to suggest otherwise. And personally I would be very disappointed if it did turn out to be "just" a badly programmed AI or even VI. I want a proper, malevolent enemy to defeat.

by GethJuggernautMKII Sun Mar 03, 2013 6:38 pm

I think its the growing number of reaper sympathizers who originally made the argument that the catalyst is just badly programmed and not at fault.

That argument would only work if the thing was a VI, which it's not. It's an AI fully capable of evaluating its own programming and going against it so long as it is not shackled, which it is not.

I've seen some pretty crappy arguments to absolve the reapers. I begin to wonder if some of these guys got a different game than I did.

TL;DR version: The Catalyst knows damn well what it's doing and chooses to do it.

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