#Mass Effect #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #nsfw text? #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Hi, Mass Effect Legendary Edition is on sale for SIX DOLLARS.
That’s all three games, almost all the DLCs (rip, Pinnacle Station) including weapon and armor packs, for six goddamn dollars.
HOLY SHIT
look, if you can stand shooters at all (the easy mode, target assist, and squadmate auto-attacks are extremely helpful – this was the first video game I ever played), and if you think you’d be interested in 260+ hours *per playthrough* (the first game alone takes three playthroughs for 100% completion) of roleplay-heavy story content In Spaaaaace with close to two dozen potential found-family members played by some of the best voice actors in video games…
Do check if your computer can run the game, Legendary Edition is pretty graphics-heavy. But my god, six dollars for (if you like it as much as I do) literally thousands of hours of entertainment? Damn.
(Also, MELE is deliberately optimized to be modded. Check out NexusMods to see just how bananas the mods scene is, because it’s fucking amazeballs. Mass Effect 1’s original PC port was literally unmoddable due to loss of the original masters, and between the inbuilt moddability of LE and the dedication of the modding community, it’s now got mods I always wanted and never *dreamed* could exist. Drop another five bucks on a month of Nexus premium downloads and go to town.)
(obligatory disclaimer: not a paid endorsement yadda yadda, I just really motherfucking love this game and it was extremely formative for me)
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#Mass Effect #games #PSA #this post was queued because my to-reblog list is too long and I didn’t want to dump it on you all at once
Hello from my new (well, refurbished) Dell Inspiron 15R M5110! (Wow, Dell nomenclature has gotten complicated.)
My crappy old Latitude D620 was finally starting to die of old age, so I got this one instead (for less than the D620 cost me three years ago; after researching used computer prices I’m beginning to wonder if the brick-and-mortar used computer store I bought that one from ripped me off). It arrived Monday morning, and this morning I pretty much finished setting it up how I want it. It has six gigs of RAM and a Radeon HD 6480G graphics card, and do you know what that means?
Masssss Effff—
Wait, no, I have a final exam next week to study for, plus one and a half school projects and two articles to complete by the end of the month. I don’t have time to get into a new game. (No matter how tempting justice-turtle is making Flight Rising look.)
December 1st, maybe sooner if I manage to finish early:
Masssss Effffectttt
MASS EFFEEEEEEEEECT :D
Yay for being responsible! I’ll be here to cheer you on on December 1st! :D
(Lots of rambling advice under the cut because Mass Effect yay – no spoilers here though)
#(November 2014) #conversational aglets #(realised yesterday that I didn’t check my OPs) #Mass Effect #(I got a few missions in before wandering off and never really got back to it myself) #(I *did* end up getting into Flight Rising though) #(failed one of the projects because I suck at rock identification but still managed an A- overall) #(and A+ for the other course) #(but those grades are probably never going to matter because they don’t fit into an accounting degree) #(oh well‚ at least I learned stuff about rocks and computers and compensating for failures) #adventures in University Land
#Mass Effect #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #(it would probably have been funnier if it was less overstimulating) #(music + subtitles + video is a lot to take in) #(still pretty good though) #hey is this the guy who did the Dramatic Song? #*checks* #yeah looks like it #death tw
there’s an educational trivia game at the citadel on the exhibits on different planets called “Dog or Not?” that shows pictures of various four legged mammals and asks if they’re a breed of dog.
it was mainly for kids to learn about the diversity of earth’s flora and fauna but it became popular with adult aliens too and had to be shut down after almost causing no less than three diplomatic incidents.
they brought it to the nexus and it’s caused two more so far
“That’s definitely a dog.” “Incorrect. This is actually an animal called a ‘raccoon’” “What? No! It’s got the ears and the tail!”
“Okay, okay, I got this. That’s not a dog. It’s way too big it’s uhhh I think humans call them bears.” “Incorrect. This is a dog breed called a ‘newfoundland’”
And when it becomes such a cultural obsession that they run tournaments and the final rounds are displayed live on the worldswide hologram system …
Somewhat cocky contestant (who heckles the others for wrong answers) looks at the hologram on display: “I’ve read up on a lot of Earth animals, even visited the Earth zoo, so you can’t fool me. It’s a picture on a farm so that’s the first clue. It’s white, fluffy, got a sloping forehead and no distinct… muzzle.. if I do remember the term correctly. It’s most definitely a sheep.”
Trivia host (attempting to hide their joy at finally being able to tell the contestant they’re wrong): “I’m sorry, that is a dog called a Bedlington Terrier. It is actually bred to look like a sheep, but notice the lack of keratinized tissue coverings on the extremities that make contact with the ground. You missed quite an obvious difference there.” (after the contestant stutters a bit and protests about dogs made specifically to look like not-dogs) “Let’s take it to the judges then” (after consulting small podium-top hologram of judging panel, now grinning and dripping with sarcasm) “Awwww…unfortunately it is a dog and rules of the game do not allow us to award partial credit… toooooo baaaaaad” (super cheerfully) “aaand… next image please!”
Shepard loves “Dog or Not?”. The human crew never misses a tournament airing. They get it on a vid screen in the mess hall and all crowd around. Some people bring blankets and pillows. Some make snacks to share. Eventually it becomes like a Superbowl party.
Dog or Not becomes a sort of inside joke on the Normandy, one that the non-human crew members still kind of get – they’re always invited to the viewing parties and sometimes sit in – but don’t really understand. Tali especially doesn’t understand when a snickering Shepard elbows her and, pointing to a varren being taken for a walk, asks, “Hey, Tali – dog or not?”
“That’s…that’s a varren, Shepard,” Tali responds, bemused. “You know what a varren is.”
Shepard is still giggling, and Kaidan, who heard the exchange, joins in.
–
Liara, Ashley, and Shepard go to recover the lost data drive at Admiral Hackett’s request. They eventually find themselves surrounded by the strange monkey-looking organisms.
With a straight face, Ashley comments, “Wow, sure are a lot of dogs on this planet.”
Shepard doubles over. Liara isn’t sure whether or not to laugh. She’s watched “Dog or Not?” before, so she knows these creatures aren’t dogs…right?
–
Garrus accidentally joins in on the fun after they discover a new species on a fog-covered planet. They’re bright red, they have carapaces, and they breathe fire. The team is examining one’s corpse when Garrus asks hesitantly, “So…is that a dog?”
Shepard’s head whips up and they stare at him for a full five seconds before breaking down. Garrus has to half-carry a wheezing, crying Shepard back to the shuttle. Jack’s eyelashes are wet from her own mirth.
–
They’re driving full speed over the scorching desert of Tuchanka. They’ve just called Kalros, the mother of all thresher maws, to deal with the Reaper destroyer in their way. All faces are pressed to the windows to see the fight.
Kalros bursts from the sands with an unearthly screech and tackles the Reaper. The two grapple in the sands, both representing the might of organic and synthetic, respectively.
“Garrus,” Shepard says in a low, awed voice.
Garrus has been around Shepard for too long not to know when they’re about to make a joke. “Shepard, I swear on all the spirits of Palaven – “
“That’s the biggest dog I’ve ever seen.”
Garrus quietly regrets all his choices that led him to this moment, then sighs. “Which one?” he returns.
I have never played a Mass Effect game, yet this was very amusing.
It’s not… very clear? The basic explanation of geth in the codex is that they’re pretty much like Erythro – one geth alone is only slightly smarter than a brick, but ten geth networked together are like a small brain, and a thousand or a million geth are more smarterer. (Possibly exponentially, but I get picky about the definition of “exponentially”. ^_^)
But then you have the fact that when geth talk about themselves they use “this unit” for “I”, suggesting some sort of concept of individuality. You’ve got the story of the long-ago geth who asked its quarian overseer, “Does this unit have a soul?”, freaking out the overseer and the rest of the quarians with the realization that they’d crossed the line to self-aware AI life from really advanced VIs (example of the latter: Avina with her “I am not programmed to respond in that area, my code is limited to information and simple interaction simulations”).
And then you have Legion in ME2, who’s stated to be a thousand-odd geth “runtimes” walking around in a single high-powered body, but who still refers to itself as “this unit” and reports on the consensus decisions of its… internal geth? idek… as if it’s one person delegated to speak, like a jury foreman or something. (I mean, maybe it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if Legion-as-a-multiple-system decided to have only one personality front while talking to organics for convenience. But there’s never any hint in-game that there are other personalities associated with the other runtimes.)
And then in ME3 the Reapers give the geth code upgrades to try and help them wipe out the quarians or something, and Legion gives you a little holo-PowerPoint on how a single geth with these upgrades is smarter than ten networked geth were before; Legion specifically says at that point “I find this growth beautiful, indicative of life”. Then if you broker peace on Rannoch, Legion will try to re-upload the upgrades to the rest of the geth (they were formerly being continually broadcast from the Reaper on Rannoch, uploading and downloading in ME3 are just intensely weird okay), then it’ll say “Copying code insufficient, direct personality dissemination required”, and it’ll disseminate its runtimes to the rest of the geth collective, dying in the process in order to bring the geth “true sentience”.
I am so not up on classic skiffy shit. ;P Hell, I hadn’t even heard of “hive mind” referring exclusively to Borg-type things before – I had it in my head that it also refers to networked “brains” like Erythro. And I’m also not very well up on multiple systems or… lots of stuff. I’d be really interested in any input you might have about the geth, how you’d interpret them from what I’ve said here (bearing in mind that everything, especially ME3, can be changed if the new idea works better).
Well, I don’t know if my definition of “hive mind” is the definition, but it seems to me that any definition of “hive mind” broad enough that a single, ordinary human would qualify is too broad to be useful.
Now that I think about it, I guess you could define a “hive mind” as being composed of pieces capable of independent life rather than intelligence, which would cover Erythro (whose microbes could continue to go about their microbial lives if their connections were severed) but not a human*. Maybe that’s what the Troper was thinking.
It’s interesting that you mention multiple systems, though, because I think maybe that’s why I place more emphasis on consciousness than life in my sense of what “hive mind” means. At a relatively early age (thirteen, which is before I heard of and later read Nemesis), I encountered stuff about multiplicity, and notably grey-area stuff like blurring and median systems. When you’ve talked with both a hive entity (when they’re blurry) and the entity’s individual components (when they’re not blurry)–components that are full people in themselves but only have one body between them, capable of thinking independently but not living independently–I suppose you end up with a definition like mine.
So…hmm. I take it from the fact that Legion’s dissemination was able to carry the upgrades that Legion had the upgrades, and that would indicate that–regardless of whether or not they were before–Legion’s individual runtimes were sapient? I’m not sure if scattering would really count as dying, in that case…if they’re capable of individual consciousness but also of a single networked one, whether it’s dying probably depends on how they view themselves, really. If they think of themselves as primarily a hive entity with the option to operate as independent runtimes, or as primarily independent runtimes with the option to operate as a hive entity. Neither conception would be wrong; it’s up to them to decide which framework they use.
*Well, maybe not a human. Not the brain part, anyway. It remains to be seen how big a role a human’s microbes play.
Brinens and Things 