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What would the Mass Effect Universe look like with a benevolent Skynet AI being part of humanity

no. said:
People got invested into Mass Effect despite the dumb stuff in 2, and then 3 came out and built up and up and up to a horrifically hackneyed anticlimax of an ending that made everything that came before pointless. People want an ending that doesn't feel so cheap.

Unfortunately, they're not very good at thinking outside the box, or thinking like writers, so the only thing they can come up with is "the humans are a hundred times stronger and defeat the Reapers with military brute force".
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The canonical reapers are ridiculously powerful. From what I can tell the only real way to have actually defeat them permanently as a whole is through one of the following
  • Ridiculous wank of canon factions
  • Heavy nerfing of the reapers
  • Contrivances and plot induced stupidity like in canon.
 
MrCogmor said:
The canonical reapers are ridiculously powerful. From what I can tell the only real way to have actually defeat them permanently as a whole is through one of the following
  • Ridiculous wank of canon factions
  • Heavy nerfing of the reapers
  • Contrivances and plot induced stupidity like in canon.
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  • Superman
 
ThePoarter said:
In this case I'm talking about a Terminator and Mass Effect Crossover. However instead of going rogue or trying to annihilate humanity in Sled Defense humanity here rapidly welcomes skynet into their government.

It's not easy and the humans here do admit they are unsure of the future but over a gradual period of a decade Skyler becomes a well like and accepted institutional AI of humanity. For the most part it initially is just a defence platform giving advice to the United States but over the next six or so decades it gradually expands to become humanity's defense AI.

Not everything is easy though. Lots of human groups and terrorists are uncomfortable with Dinner but is is very clear that that the vast majority support it whether they see it as their creation ,with possibly more AIs coming along, or a living thing.

Overtime Skyler becomes the government of humanity but it never really is into total control understanding that it is best to allow humanity to make some mistakes and degree of freedom to choose it's path. It lives to serve and protect humanity after all.

Then the prothean ruins are discovered. What happens here?

Keep in mind in this scenario Skyler hates the reapers.
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There are at least 2 shitty fanfictions on FF with this crap premise. Go read then yourself.
 
MrCogmor said:
The canonical reapers are ridiculously powerful. From what I can tell the only real way to have actually defeat them permanently as a whole is through one of the following
  • Ridiculous wank of canon factions
  • Heavy nerfing of the reapers
  • Contrivances and plot induced stupidity like in canon.
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You could also just... change the story so that a stupid contrivance isn't needed. You don't have to totslly adhere to the weird direction 2 and 3 went in.
 
no. said:
You could also just... change the story so that a stupid contrivance isn't needed. You don't have to totslly adhere to the weird direction 2 and 3 went in.
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While I share your disdain for the direction the franchise was taken starting from ME2 forwards, it was really mostly Mass Effect 1 that had built up the Reapers as that titanic, near unsurmountable threat, though. It took several entire fleets to defeat a single Reaper. In fact, it was Mass Effect 3 (and to a degree already 2) which massively backpedalled from that, because they couldn't think of a creative solution to that conundrum.
 
What they really should have done is have the focus be on stopping the reapers from coming back in the first place, instead trying to bend things so that they could be fought in an actual war.
 
The problem with Mass Effect 2 was that is was all about trying to foil a one off Reaper plot. A Reaper scheme of the week that was really just a vehicle to tell the stories of your crew. Character driven stories are good, but in this case it came at the cost of basically an entire game of spinning wheels that did nothing to build towards a climax in the third game outside of 'there's going to be a big war, I guess?'
 
I think the most obvious solution is:

1. Have ME2 be about Shepard with their unique Prothean decrypting abilities going undercover in the Terminus Systems, Nemian Abyss, and perhaps even Batarian space and parts unknown in search of more information. Undercover because Specters aren't welcome outside of Council space.

2. Sovereign's sleeper agents are trying to stop Shepard. Also the Geth are still under Reaper control. Maybe Harbinger can be acting through them. Maybe they also awaken an old cache of prothean husks (the collectors) to help. The collectors definitely shouldn't be a real military power if they exist though, or Sovereign would have used them in ME1 instead of geth.

3. Shepard eventually learns that the protheans found out about the reapers' origins and how to maybe beat them, but were wiped out before they could. They return to Citadel space with the info, but their activities (and reaper reprisals) have caused a war to break out.

4. Mass Effect 3 is, again, about building a superweapon during a galactic war. This version has the war be between the citadel races and a newborn alliance of batarians, a hypernationalist Turian splinter group, and some new malcontent races introduced in the previous games, with reaper backing.

5. ME3 ends with Shepard and Co completing the weapon, just as a surprise attack from the geth reaches the citadel while the council fleets are busy elsewhere. Shepard finds out from captured geth (maybe with Legion and/or Tali's help) how to open the Citadel Relay into dark space, and does it before the geth can, sending the superweapon through and detonating it in the middle of the reapers' lair.
 
Okay, but what if

The Reapers' weapon is a Super Reaper

It can destroy planets

Then, the Citadel steals its plans and finds out it has a fatal weakness

Shepard destroys the Super Reaper using lost Prothean biotics

... The main Reaper is Shepard's dad
 
This hypothetical humanity sounds a little like the Hegemony of Man from Hyperion. Uncertain who's in control, potential to go very wrong if made unstable.

"THE TECHNOCORE HAS been divided into three groups for as long as the Core has existed," said Johnny. "The Stables are the old-line AIs, some of them dating back to pre-Mistake days; at least one of them gained sentience in the First Information Age. The Stables argue that a certain level of symbiosis is necessary between humanity and the Core. They've promoted the Ultimate Intelligence Project as a way to avoid rash decisions, to delay until all variables can be factored. The Volatiles are the force behind the Secession three centuries ago. The Volatiles have done conclusive studies that show how humankind's usefulness is past and from this point on human beings constitute a threat to the Core. They advocate immediate and total extinction."

"Extinction," I said. After a moment I asked, "Can they do it?"

"Of humans in the Web, yes," said Johnny. "Core intelligences not only create the infrastructure for Hegemony society but are necessary for everything from FORCE deployment to the failsafes on stockpiled nuclear and plasma arsenals."

I haven't read the second book, which I understand brings a lot of the AI ideas in Lamia's tale to a thematic head, but I think it's a sort of dynamic that doesn't have a direct equivalent in ME. I'm not sure if Council politicians would be cautiously interested in this political relationship between human and machine or absolutely batshit terrified of it.
 
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My personal solution for the Mass Effect series would be, honestly, to turn it into a never-ending soap opera. Never arrive at the ending, just keep on pumping character-based games. This is the one case where putting the games on a conveyor line would be an improvement.
 
Yeah, ME2 would have been so much better if it we're done in the style of something more like, say, CoC. Where the issue isn't "the Reapers are coming!" But rather "the cultists and the indoctrinated seek to summon their Dark Masters and Doom us all."
 
ThePoarter said:
Back on topic. Mass effect is bad. We get it.
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I mean the topic is basically trying to mash up two entirely different things and doesn't even consider how this mashup works. The Terminator movies, fundamentally, are horror movies that have sci-fi aesthetics.

Skynet is Satan, the cursed summer camp, the metaphor for humanity's sins that causes the slasher to appear. Skynet exists not to be some extremely well-defined villainous force, but a metaphor. The slasher is the Terminator-a human-seeming, but uncanny being with supernatural powers (superhuman strength, durability, the ability to hunt perfectly in the dark, surprising speed and resourcefulness) that has many of the aesthetics of the living dead. And Sarah Connor or John Connor are the troubled, but resourceful and intelligent, victims of the slasher. Both of them are the Final Girl, in a very real sense.

It's not really a good fit for a space opera because frankly Skynet's abilities, such that they are, are basically irrelevant. They're window dressing for why the slasher has its supernatural powers. Skynet is rarely an important character, and its motivations and actions are always made deliberately opaque. Why does Skynet want to kill humans? What's its reasoning, in-universe? You don't know, because it's not relevant. What is relevant is that Skynet is a metaphor for our own willingness to implement destructive tools long before we consider the human consequences of doing so-like most of the things that empower slashers in horror movies, Skynet is a real-life human sin. Skynet is Facebook abetting the Rohingya genocide. Skynet is the surveillance state reading your emails to friends and lovers. Skynet is Google turning you into a product that's for sale.

You can make this mashup sort of work but that would be in the context of an actual story rather than just a random 'what-if.'
 
Suzu said:
  • Superman
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Good news that Superman is canon to Mass Effect then!
Only survivor of Planet DC1938 said:
"DC1938, a small garden world circling the red supergiant SM2183 Rua, exploded today in a rare phenomenon called core fusion. The planet's uranium core collapsed in on itself, igniting a thermonuclear explosion large enough to rupture the planet into several pieces. The shock wave and loss of atmosphere has reportedly killed more than five billion native inhabitants. There is one known survivor: an infant rocketed from the planet in an FTL escape pod picked up by the human cruiser MSV Kent. The inhabitants of the planet, previously unknown to the galaxy, were a spacefaring race who used crystalline matrices for their computing needs. The infant has been taken to medical facilities in the local cluster, where he is breathing gases in a ratio similar to the atmosphere of his home planet: 65% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 15% krypton."
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The real ending was there all along!
 
Katamariguy said:
This hypothetical humanity sounds a little like the Hegemony of Man from Hyperion. Uncertain who's in control, potential to go very wrong if made unstable.

"THE TECHNOCORE HAS been divided into three groups for as long as the Core has existed," said Johnny. "The Stables are the old-line AIs, some of them dating back to pre-Mistake days; at least one of them gained sentience in the First Information Age. The Stables argue that a certain level of symbiosis is necessary between humanity and the Core. They've promoted the Ultimate Intelligence Project as a way to avoid rash decisions, to delay until all variables can be factored. The Volatiles are the force behind the Secession three centuries ago. The Volatiles have done conclusive studies that show how humankind's usefulness is past and from this point on human beings constitute a threat to the Core. They advocate immediate and total extinction."

"Extinction," I said. After a moment I asked, "Can they do it?"

"Of humans in the Web, yes," said Johnny. "Core intelligences not only create the infrastructure for Hegemony society but are necessary for everything from FORCE deployment to the failsafes on stockpiled nuclear and plasma arsenals."

I haven't read the second book, which I understand brings a lot of the AI ideas in Lamia's tale to a thematic head
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Unfortunately, it's also where the plot becomes completely incoherent.

From what I've heard of Dan Simmons' other works, this is something of an unfortunate tendency when he does sequels.
 
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