8 - Mass Effect 1 - Mythic Mind Games

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind Games, where we discuss
video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there,
welcome to the beginning of our series on the Mass
Effect trilogy. This is something that we've been talking about

(00:23):
doing for a while, but I've finally gotten around to
the games myself after picking them up on the last
Team sale, and so now we're equipped to make this happen.
We have a couple of special guests joining us today
that you will meet momentarily, but I do want to
let you know up front we're having some technical issues here.
Before we even got started, I was struggling with my webcam,
with my microphone, my internet, but finally got all that

(00:46):
situated we got rolling, but even still, there are just
a couple of times where my internet cut out for
just a little bit. We're going to see that. One
of our guests up, Megan, her internet cut out a
little bit. She was dealing with some hotel wife. And
so if sometimes you just see us kind of glitch
out a little bit, or it sounds like there's a
brief skip in the conversation. Then that's what's going on here.

(01:09):
But most of it's fine. And then at one point
even my light bulb burned out behind me. Is if
you're watching the video, I just go dark all of
a sudden. But that's okay. Yeah, it ended up being
a good conversation, and I guess you know, the technology
turning against us, it kind of goes along with the
vibe of the conversation. All right, let's go ahead and
get to it. All right, welcome to the latest episode

(01:35):
of Mythic Mind Games, where we're just continuing to talk
about significant games. And I use that word intentionally that
you know, a ongoing thesis of this project that we're
doing is that there is artistic value in games that
they play something like the role of a myth. Right,

(01:55):
where a good game, a compelling game, it provides a story,
the kind of story that you can enter into that
and it's not always going to be super clear cut,
you know, what is the message at least in something
that's really I think worth engaging with that that, especially
when you're dealing with something like mass effect like we're
doing today, that there's so many different angles that you

(02:16):
can use to analyze you know, what are you going
to take kind of on face value? What are you
gonna take symbolically? Like, I think there are a lot
of different ranges ask to you, like what we can
get out of this, and so I think this has
the potential to be a good conversation here. Now we
have a number of people joining us today. It's one
of one of the larger panels we'veatteral for at least
a few episodes. Now we have Ian and David are

(02:38):
turning with us, and if you've been watching for a while,
if you've been listening for a while, then you're already
familiar with them. But we also have three new voices
that have not been on the show before. And so
I love just to just do brief introductions, you know,
tell us something about whatever you want to say about
who you are, what you have to plug, that sort
of thing. And so we've got see is a kid
trick challous. We've got renowned author Michael Caine, renowned medievalist

(03:02):
Meghan Multonado. So I always just hear a little bit
about you and and something you have to plug. If
you have that kit trick, you start us off.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Hi, you guys can call me kit. Well, I'm a gamer,
I'm a movie watcher, TV watcher. Me and my buddy
just recently started a podcast that's looking into the oscars
and everything that's been put out there and trying to
see how that maps through culturally with just its impact

(03:33):
with everything. Yeah, I would say a mass effect. Played
it on disc way back in college. Stayed up very
very late many a night. So I'll explain a little
more about that later.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
Sure. Wonderful. And so that podcast you have that that's
currently ongoing.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yes, yes, it's just brand new pretty much, so we're
still looking.

Speaker 1 (03:57):
What's it called.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
It's called the Academy's Cat of Audience.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
All right, Uh, Megan, tell us little stuff about yourself.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
I am Megan Malbinado. I'm a PhD candidate and engition
comparative literature. I am a casual gamer. I have done
some analysis. Have you been presented on at conferences on
medievalisms and video games? Because medieval literature is my specialty
and that's also what I talk about on my YouTube
channel and on my ex account. Both tags are act Megievalist.

(04:28):
So medievalist but with my name me E G I
E V A L I S. T is the made
up spelling, my made up word, I think. But why
I'm here today is because I love mass effect this.
I do think there are some elements of medieval Romance

(04:48):
or the Romance epic to the way that the narrative
plays out. But I love the game, love the trilogy.
I played it a lot in high school. It's kind
of when I discovered it, and yeah, I am. I
have so much to say about it to anyone who
will listen. I always recommend it to people who are
still discovering it even today, which I think is great.
So that's why I'm here.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
I have to ask, are any of those conference presentations
available anywhere?

Speaker 3 (05:13):
Ooh uh no, No, it wasn't recorded the talk I
gave at the International like Kalamazoo Medievalist Conference. But this
is on the Witcher three, especially the Wild Hunt or
which is three Wild Hunt, the DLC that comes in
kind of at the end of the game. You have
this era anyway, I have a video actually where I

(05:34):
give a very succinct version of this talk that I gave,
where I ask if the Witcher three is a medieval game,
So you can find that on my channel and watch
it many times to give me lots of views.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Wonderful. Yeah, we went to revisit that at some point.
I haven't played the Witcher series, but I just picked
it up on the Steam sale, so we'll see how
that goes. And that's really my thing right now. I'd
stopped playing games for a decade or so for the
most part. Just do another souff and so now I'm
catching up on some things. Whatever the just Them sale,

(06:04):
I stuck up on my next my next in set
of I Guess podcast series. So that's how I ended
with Mass Effect. All right, Michael, tell us something about yourself.

Speaker 4 (06:15):
I am the author of the science fiction Western series
after Moses. I am five books in, almost done with
the six, which will be the final book in the series.
You can check me out at Michael F Kane dot
com or on Twitter at Michael F Kane. My day job,
I'm on staff at my church. I am the music
guy down in rural Arkansas. I am a nerd through

(06:38):
and through. I write sci fi, but I'm more of
a Tolkienist at heart. But I don't think I could
write that as well, so I stuck to something I
thought I could write. And Yeah, lifelong player of games,
although with little kids. It's a little less common now.
So I managed to replay the first few hours of
Mass Effect one this week just to give myself a
bit of a reminder of something I hadn't gotten to
play in a couple of years.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
No, I should say that as a reference back to
our art spat on on X. You know, out of
class Star Wars, and I know I know that Megan
is on Team Fantasy here, so I don't know that
this is actually an intervention. It's really what this is
a stage to be cool.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
She just abandoned you completely, oh man.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Rough, I think she was having some some Issuespeles should
pop back in.

Speaker 5 (07:25):
Well.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
At this point, I want to really begin our proper
conversation here the way that we tend to do it,
which is just go around to be laid out the
foundations of where we're going to go with this. I
just want to ask you what is your experience with
this game? You know, when did you first play it,
and why has it stood out to you? What makes
a good game kind of really whatever you want to

(07:46):
say about it in a very general kind of sense,
and that will get late lay out some some streams
for us to follow as we move forward now to
provide some ground rules here. You know, this is a
strictly conversation on the first game will be We have
an episode per game for this little mini series. Now,
spoilers are okay, Like you can reference future games if

(08:08):
you want to give if that's helpful for what you're
talking about, but we're primarily going to be focusing on
the first one. Just to set the bounds for this conversation,
all right, So I'll just go around and say, have
you on my screen here, Ian, why don't you tell
us something about your experience with this game.

Speaker 5 (08:23):
So when I went to grad school in Virginia, I
moved there from Minnesota. Didn't know a single person there,
and I found a new church and lo and behold
Sitting next to me a couple holes over was a
guy I went to college with in Tennessee, and so
we reconnected and he invited me over and said, you know,

(08:47):
you really like Kotor, you might like mass Effect. So
I ended up playing the first Massifact game at his house,
just hanging out with him and talking as we played.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
So, and I know that you did not move on
to the other games, correct, And maybe we can circle
back around to some of your your gripes about that
that led you to that decision. All right, yeah, Kiptick,
tell us something about your experience with this game.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
I just gotta say, Yeah, my buddy never got past
the second game. He didn't want to see everyone, you know,
just didn't want to see what would happen. He fell
in love with all those guys.

Speaker 6 (09:24):
Anyways.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
So for me, as I said college, I played it
one of the first games I got in my Xbox
and went through it long nights until I made some
I thought I could be friends with everyone in the game,
which you can't do if you don't level up in
certain things. And so my first moment of regret was

(09:47):
killing the rack Night Queen. After that, I was just like, ah,
why do I feel so bad about this? And then
I tried to talk Rex out of his his spe
and then came in and I'm like, good, good, Okay,
he's putting the gun down. We're I'll get me happier,
and then all the blue Ashley showed them and.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
I was just what in the heck?

Speaker 5 (10:10):
Oh my?

Speaker 6 (10:11):
So yeah, it.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Traumatized me and took me for quite a ride in
my first playthrough.

Speaker 6 (10:17):
For sure.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
Some of that definitely resonates with my experience, but I'll
save that for my turn. Okay, all right, David, tell
something about this game. Your experience with this game.

Speaker 7 (10:27):
Yeah, I'm gonna guess that your conversation skills weren't up
to par. Andrew, h Yeah, I played Mass Effect when
it came out. I don't know why more games don't
do it, but like there were actual end game benefits
to earning the achievements, you know, like it increased your
percentage with different skills and things like that, which I

(10:49):
really thought was pretty neat. We talked about this before
when we were playing Kotor, and I think that may
have sort of spurred you into playing it, Andrew, but
you can talk more about that. But yeah, it's just
such a well written and fully realized universe. I mean,
it's pretty materialistic and naturalistic in its viewpoint. The only

(11:12):
theist in the game is a white woman who's also
a space racist, but it's still a really I just
completely love all the games. I know so much heat
over the ending of the third one, and they came
in with a huge patch and tried to add more
explanation for the things that were going on. I think
they actually did a pretty good job with it. To
have this many choices that a person can make across

(11:35):
three games, they're going to have to fudget a little
bit in different places. You may have noticed, how you know,
if someone dies that could live in the next game,
they're generally just replaced with a similar person who has
all the same lines, just because they have to. They've
got to continue the story. But yeah, it does a

(11:59):
better job of consequences of your moral choices, I think
than most games do. And that's one of the things
that I always found really fascinating about it too.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
And this is moving into the third game here, but
I man, I'm having all kinds of technical shues. Now
you've my ceiling light's going out. I think the lightbulb
is burning out all right. Anyways, I uh man, I
totally threw me off track.

Speaker 6 (12:21):
Here, moving into the third game.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Yeah, moving into the third game, you know, talking about
the ending, like, you know, I wasn't there for any
of that, having just jumped in recently with the Legendary edition,
so I don't even know what it's like to you
have that first run through the original version. Here, you know,
I'm gonna just pass for a second while I get
my life together megan to say something about this game.

Speaker 3 (12:45):
Let's see I Nice Saled Republic was mentioned, So I
encountered this game I mentioned in high school and I
had a tradition. Let's make the story short, I had
a tradition of playing Nice Saled republ Like whenever school
got out for some years. And then we had moved

(13:05):
and I could not find my copy of Nice Steale
of Republic, and so I started looking up. I thought that, okay,
maybe I should just try something new. I had seen
what buyer I was getting up to since then. Because
I am not very expansive in my taste, I really
stick to ourpgs. And it was between jadea Empire, which
I never ended up playing and still haven't and Mass Effect,

(13:26):
and went with Mass Effect. I was blown away. As
others have said about the moral dilemmas that the game
puts on you, and that I think is one of
my favorite aspects of the series is the Paragon renegade system.
I appreciate that it's not a very obvious binary. You know,

(13:47):
are you gonna save the poppy or throw him into
the wood chipper kind of a situation that as much
as I love nice sealed republic. You could kind of
get into that. It's like, are you gonna spit on
this widow and insult her? Are you going to like
it for five hundred dollars, which is it's funny and charming.
But I appreciate about mass effect that you have situations
where I'm not going to say, there's not always an

(14:07):
obvious answer for me. I think there are times where
there is a decision that I know I would make
in real life, but it's still very difficult. The rack
Ny decision. I think somebody else mentioned, you know, do
you annihilate this race or do you free them with
a very solid chance that they could annihilate other people?
You know, like, this's not very obvious, like, oh, okay,

(14:29):
this is the good guy thing to do. So I
very much appreciate how they took the moral system and
still kept it. But it's not are you going to
be good or evil? It's more of like an aggressive
or chivalric kind of virtuous thing going on. Yeah, it's

(14:50):
my favorite aspect to think of the first game and
of the whole trilogy.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Yeah, I can definitely echo to that, and I've got
the flight on in front of you. Over exposing me.
But you know, it's gonna roll with it. For for those
who are gonna be listening to this and aren't watching
the video actually been having all kinds of issues on
my side. Light's going out. I mean, I guess the
the the the the reaperssure are coming after me or something.
So yeah. But to echo what megan just talking about

(15:14):
that there is this big shift in kind of how
the morality is framed between Kotor and this game, and
that is something that I very much appreciate that this
this you're really dealing not so much with Darken light side,
but with like pragmatism versus idealism is largely how this
has worked out, Like what is likely going to lead

(15:37):
to the result that I want versus what's the right
thing to do? I think that's how not all, but
that's how a lot of the decisions are framed, which
make them a lot more difficult. Like even if you're
trying to, you know, role play a certain type of character,
like it's not always clear what the right decision is
for in you know, for for you or for your

(15:57):
character that you're trying to craft here. And I think
that is something that makes it I mean a lot
more philosophically engaging, and again, as we've talked about before,
like I love Kotor, but at the same time, it's
very easy to decide this is the character I'm going
to be. The decisions that I want that are going
to lead to that result that character profile are very clear,
whereas you don't always know. And I was very intentional

(16:20):
about not minimizing my screen to go look up, you
know what's going to lead to white like I wanted
to live it out of course as I do so
and see some of those consequences, I mean, it leads
to it calls for a continuous replays to you know,
figure out different different paths, and so I definitely agree.
I like this system. I think it's I think it's
an improvement. All right, Michael tells something about your experience

(16:42):
with this game.

Speaker 4 (16:44):
Okay, Well, I was a co tour guy probably in college.
I played Koe Tor one in two for the first time.
Of course, really liked him. You know, Koe Tore one
is one of the greatest video games ever made, straight up,
you know, top five easy, no matter what. I didn't
play Mass Effect one right when came out. I had
a buddy that gave it a kind of negative review,

(17:05):
said you could still kind of see the bones of
co Tor's combat a little bit with the biotic tech
and combat, you know, the skills, but that it didn't
quite translate as well. And I kind of see what
they're saying with the gun plays a little awkward and
Mass Effect one right then clean that up a little
bit in the more recent version. So I actually skipped
it for at the start, saw the trailer for Mass

(17:26):
Effect two and I was like, no, I want to
play that. He immediately bought Mass Effect one, played through
it so that I could play through two and three
on release. Let's see something that's good that that it
kind of calls to me from Mass Effects to something
different than what you guys have said, is that it's
a really good sci fi vibe. Right. There's this very crisp,

(17:48):
very specific set of color palettes that they stick to
the whole time. There is a very specific audio scape,
this kind of combined synth orchestral soundscape, you know, they
used to create the the the texture for the background.
There's a very there's very very specific kinds of lightings

(18:10):
with the lens flares and things like that that it
really creates a nice experience going in. And then on
top of that, it's in kind of in my taste,
it's the perfect mix of the space magic and more
technical sci fi. You can dive into all the Codex
stuff and you can tell that there were some nerds
that seriously thought about some science stuff, but you totally

(18:30):
don't have to. And at the same time they still
have the force i mean, biotics and you can. It's
just I enjoy the environment that I enjoy the setting
of the story. I think it's a well crafted setting.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, I mean, I would definitely agree with that. That
the soundscape, as you said, even like the music it
it very much reminded me of the first time I
was playing StarCraft. It's similar to the sort of music,
similar sort of vibe. And I agree that it really does,
i mean, maintain the consistent atmosphere throughout that you know,
even as you're going through the different planets and engaging

(19:04):
with these different cultures, like it feels like a unified
experience rather than simply I'm you know, going to this
alien world. In this alien world, like it all feels
like it belongs together. And so I would definitely agree
with that, and that's part of what makes it so
such an immersive experience for me. I mean, I've already
hinted a little bit of why I appreciated this game,
but you know, as I mentioned, I just got into

(19:27):
it recently. I just picked up the Legendary edition on
Steam not too long ago, and I blew through it
faster than I intended to. I said in our discord that,
you know, I have to finish my book before I
get into any more story driven games, and then like
two weeks later, I'm done at the trilogy. It's just

(19:49):
it's just how it worked out. It's it's just such
a gripping experience. And I think that the the gameplay
is great. I think that the story is great. And
before we move further, maybe you would be helpful if
somebody was able to just give us like a broad
overview of like what is the plot of this game?
I mean, I can do that, but are any of

(20:09):
you so inclined to just run through the story.

Speaker 6 (20:12):
Well, I think it's.

Speaker 7 (20:15):
In general, it's sort of humanity has found themselves now
that they're spacefaring, and they discovered that Karen, the moon
of Pluto, is actually a frozen machine called the mass relay,
and once they figured out how to activate that, they
kind of found themselves in this larger universe galaxy actually

(20:39):
of all of these other alien races, and humanity is
just kind of trying to show their worth and make
a name for themselves in this community. But the plot
of this game is that you kind of uncover a
threat and as you are kind of on trial tryout

(21:02):
to be the first human Spector, which are like these
special agents that kind of can act above the law.
You discover that there's some strange race called the Reapers
who they're an impending threat, and you spend a lot
of the game trying to convince the Alien Council that

(21:23):
the threat is real and that it is imminent and
they needs to be taken seriously. And there is a
former Specter, well he still is a Specter at the beginning,
named Sarin, who has aligned himself with those Reapers because
he believes that's the only way to survive.

Speaker 6 (21:44):
So I guess that basically covers it.

Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, that basically covers the premise of the game. And
for this game, if I recall correctly, we don't learn
what exactly these Reapers are at least where they came
from what originally got this this movement started. All we
really learned from this first game is that there is
this continuous cycle of life forming and advancing, and then

(22:09):
at some point the Reapers come in and basic on
wipe everyone out, and then we get this restart, and
this just keeps happening again and again as this this
endless cycle of fate. And even I mean the Reapers,
like obviously that the name they're associated with death. I mean,
like the Grim Reaper. They're the ones who harvest life essentially,
and there's a lot of symbolism of death built into this.
I mean even like you know one of the major

(22:31):
human organization Cerberus, right, it's the guardian of the underworld. Like,
there's all this death symbolism in here, which is obviously
connected with the idea of fate and what is our
relationship with fate as individuals as well as as a people.
And so I think that this first game does a
good job of setting up enough of enough understanding of

(22:55):
what this threat is to kind of leave us in
that philosophical space that then is going to get built
out and worked out a little bit more over the
coming games. But I appreciate that by the time you
get to the end of this first game, like it's
obvious that you're only entering into the rabbit hole or
you know, you're you're starting to exit the cave whatever
metaphor who want to use here? So what I mean,

(23:18):
I don't know. I was kind of laid a bunch
of threads here. Where where do we want to pull
on that? You know, as I say that, I mean,
what do you find to be most philosophically compelling about
this game or what is some interesting questions that you
think that raises.

Speaker 3 (23:33):
I think the game is more did in Christian theology,
even from the beginning. Then it lets on. You start
in your very first locations Eden Prime, with the you know,
Prime being the first and then Eden obviously having the

(23:53):
biblical starting point, and that's where the first problem happens.
And your main character is named Shepherd. And even in
the end of the third game there's this little afterthought
kind of sequence that's weirdly animated, but you have someone
else tell me about the shepherd who saved everyone. And
in each game, really you can see that the Shepherd

(24:14):
is going to have some kind of salvafic action, even
if it's not fully realized until the end of the trilogy.

Speaker 5 (24:22):
So I.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
Guess I'm interested to hear what other people think. I
don't think that the game is overtly Christian by any means.
I think it's broadly interested in myth. We talked about Cerberus,
I mentioned some other references, but I do think that
there is a I want to be Messianic cycle at

(24:50):
work here. I'm open to debate on that point, but
it's I think it's available as a reading. Yeah, would
plausit that.

Speaker 5 (25:02):
I think that fits with something that I really noticed
when I was playing through the game, which is that
there's a real emphasis on wanting species to work together
to overcoming ancient racial grievances. And even though the character

(25:23):
that everyone saves and the only explicit Christian in the
in the game is a space racist Ashley, she she
does get better, which I think is kind of what
I'm saying, is like, there's this taking of parts of
you know, the no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no,

(25:45):
like the the universal quality of the Gospel that transforms
lives through sanctification into being one body. I think there
are reflected elements in that because that the sort of
the I mean, the negative way you can look at this,
of course, is the diversity of our strength, kind of
woke mind virus that is often overdone in today's thing.

(26:07):
But I think there is a true you know, unifying
of various parts in the body of Christ that is
the good side of the goss I mean, there is
no bad side of the Gospel, but the good side
of that portion of the message that's been sort of
taken up by the liberal mainstream denominations of churches. And

(26:29):
so I would say I think that does support a
messianic reading of Shepherd's actions.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's fair. And obviously all
of these different alien species have their own cultures, have
their own strengths, and the part of the good mission
of Shepherd is to unite the peoples together right towards
this common purpose in confrontation of their true enemy, rather
than their petty little squabbles with each other. That that
being said, and this is not a philosophical argument that

(26:58):
I'm making, but my Shepherd, it was a very much
a Milky Ways for the Nords kind of guy. You know,
humans first, Uh so, you know, kill the kill off
the council, kill off the rackety, you know, really make
sure we establish our place in the in the cosmos.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Here is my most recent playthrough. Yeah, it's very difficult.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
The way the straight red down, the check marks, red red, red,
red red.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
That's right Earth first, you know. Yeah, so obviously Shepherd
does have that kind of role in uniting people together
against their common enemy. He he has a a kind
of sacrificial role in that. Even from the first game,
it's clear that the path forward is going to require loss.
And I think that we talked about this before that
really any good story is going to have echoes of

(27:47):
the Gospel in it, the Gospel being the true story,
the true myth, as as Lewis says, that is an
echoed throughout the human imagination, whether consciously or not. And
so any good story, it's going to have those touch points.
And so I don't I don't have any reason to
believe that that BioWare the writers involved are trying to

(28:10):
tell a Christian story, but in telling a good story,
they're going to be these points of resonance. And yeah,
I think that that is a good connection. Does an
almost have any other thoughts on this line of you know,
kind of where we see these christological images or wherever
you want to go with that.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Well, I just want to go off of what Megan
said about starting with Eden and then ending up with Well,
let's just go to the main reaper himself, Sovereign. I mean,
he's given himself a false name in that he shows
up to bring everyone into ultimately death the way that's

(28:49):
supposed to start off, and it's creepy. It's the music
that plays as Sovereign descends upon the citadel, that synth
just it's perfect in a way that it sets up
that entire mood and it's like, well, this is doom,
this is the end.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah. And that connection of fate to the apparent sovereignty
of death, I mean that's a very Northern idea that
I very much appreciate. You know when you read a
Beowulf for example, that you know Beowolf, I mean he
is very aware of his own mortality, and then all
these major conflicts that he engages in, all the major
monster fights that he always goes into it saying that

(29:32):
I don't know how this is going to turn out.
Maybe I'm going to win, maybe I'm going to die,
but my job is to stand and fight and play
the hero like that's what he's responsible for doing, not
for necessarily determining the outcome. He's responsible simply for standing
to fight, and he fights and he wins these victories.
But in the end, at the end of the story,
after Beoulf dies, we get this sense that the walls

(29:53):
are quickly closing in for the Gayet people, and that
you know, once the story ends, they're going to be
swept away by their enemy, by the Swedes, and you
know whoever else there's the surrounding tribes and clans, and
it really gets to this tragedy of the Northern Spirit.
This strategy is often associates philosophies of fate that no

(30:13):
matter what you do in the end, it ends the
same way, namely with the end right with death, that
death is the fate of every mortal And so I
think that it does really advance this messianic framing of Shepherd,
that here he stands against the fate of death in
order to bring about life for the cosmos. I think,

(30:36):
even as we're talking about this, I mean, it's even
more profoundly of a Christian story than I recognized before
we started having this conversation. Yeah, I have no idea
how much Biowear intended that, but I think that it
is very profoundly present.

Speaker 4 (30:51):
And to compare Sovereign, in which you're talking about fate
to are a more modern genre, which I suspect was
more the deliberate inspiration is cosmic cor Right. The genre
of the story changes the moment that Shepherd has the
conversation with Sovereign on Vermire. Right, Suddenly there is something

(31:15):
that is so far beyond all the other troubles and
problems and struggles that the galaxy and the species and
the counselor are going through. Right now, you know, there's
that heavy, oppressive sound. You have this very monotone, droning,
very pushed forward voice that just drones in your face,

(31:39):
that really doesn't care about you. Right, It swifts too,
like a lovecrafty and cosmic horror in that sense that
there is this there is this elder god that doesn't
care about you, which falls into those same ideas that
you're talking about, this fate and this death, and this
is an enemy that mankind cannot defeat. Right, is the

(32:00):
entire message of the first of the first mass effect
and even the second mass effect. You know, the entire
message is you cannot defeat death, which is a true
materialistic statement. Right, It's like there's like a materialistic philosophy
which is ultimately true outside of obviously the Gospel, there
is a route, but it's it's it's through God and man,

(32:23):
not just man. So yeah, there's, like I said, there's
another thread there that I like to tug out, the
cosmic cor angle.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah, I think that's significant, and I mean there's a
lot more we can say about that, especially when we
get to the third game. So I'll try to hold
back on some of that conversation. But it is, I suppose,
a humanist tale ultimately, right, it is the tale of
the this sovereign individual, I suppose. But that only works
but so far, I mean, if it is true that

(32:51):
you go ahead.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
The guy, but the I mean the guy, the guy
that helps defeat the reapers is also the the man
that dies and is brought back to life at the
same time. So there's another crystological little link in there.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Yeah, it's exactly that's exactly right. He comes back through
the case of Cerberus. There is this clear resurrection that
he's in a certain sense conquered the underworld, right, and yeah,
I don't know they need to add any to that. Yeah,
what we're some other strains of thought that you feel
like are worth pulling at this well.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
The lifespan of the species that are introduced in this
first game was always something compelling to me, just because
what can you do with a lifetime like that? I mean,
living so long as is? I guess in this most
recent playthrough I went through, I was wondering, why did
the Krogan need all those credits if they really aren't

(33:48):
doing anything with it? What exactly are they spending it
on outside of their next firepower? It just seemed like
it was a little uh vain. But I ended up
trying to go back to Oliver's travels because I know it.
There's that It's been a while since I reta, but
I know that there's the island that visits where everybody

(34:12):
just lives forever, and it's like, what are you doing
with your entire existence here? I mean, you're all decrepitent,
You're stuck at that eight I think that's what he
ends up saying, is that you're stuck at that age
where you first realize you're immortal. And that's sort of
what we see with Delly's races that don't that lives
so long, but really don't progress. They're just stuck with

(34:34):
something that's ancient, that's old.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
Okay, so you got the Krogan, which lived long, the
sorry are long livers. I don't remember the Turreans anybody remember.

Speaker 6 (34:45):
I think it's fairly similar to humans, the Treys.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
Yeah, and then you have the Solarians, which are the
opposite side of things, which is a completely different trumpe
to play with. They live for what is it, twenty
five or thirty years?

Speaker 6 (34:54):
Thirty years for years pretty much max.

Speaker 4 (34:57):
Forty yeah, high, high metabolism, fast speaking scientists. I am
the very model.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
Sci However, so the Vora, who live for I think
even even shorter time. But they kind of tend towards
the Krogan super violent like murk extreme. But I think, what,
there's something like mentally deficient about this piece. I'm not
sure what the explanation was that was ever given of it.

(35:25):
Like they're impulsive and stupid and that's like their whole personality,
but yeah, it is. It is interesting to hear the
debates among the sorry for example, how these women for
their first one hundred or two hundred years are like strippers,
and then it's normal for them to like exit that.
But this is somehow a cycle. This This feels like

(35:47):
a very like Twitter or ex thread about how women
are like, oh, you know, they all become strippers for
eternity and then they go off to do whatever. Yeah,
the I think humanity ends up living for what one
hundred and twenty years or one hundred fifty They have
a longer lifespan in the game, but I don't know
that we ever meet anybody who's super old. Anyway, this

(36:10):
was I know I interrupted with the vorcha peace, but
I'm not that was the complicating exception to the idea
that if a species lives a shorter period of time,
they're more urgently trying to achieve something a longer period
of time, then they are slow to advance. It seems

(36:31):
like the game almost wants to put that out there,
but not very consistently.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, so you're saying the the SI was written by
the Andrew Tates of BioWare.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
The Andrew Tates are somebody? I'm not sure. I think
I think there were just some writers who wanted an
all female race for the implications that that comes with
with procasion, but I I'm not sure. You know, they
think Sorry are the most advanced race in the mass
Effect universe. They are the first to discover the relays,

(37:03):
if I remember correctly. I'm not sure what it Why then,
being all female and super old and sagely if we're
supposed to have this impression that they are therefore wise
because of the old motif that Wis is a woman,
but then we see them acting very foolishly when they're

(37:24):
in their youth. I'm not sure what to make of
the Sorry.

Speaker 4 (37:26):
I was going to say that I don't really think
that the game necessarily paints paints a particularly idealized vision
of the Assary. You know, even from the first one,
the oldest Assari you meet Matriarch Banziaz. Yeah right, she's
she's thrown in with the bad guys. I don't know

(37:48):
that they're painted particularly rosy necessarily, I don't. I don't
know that anybody really gets out scott free, if that
makes sense. Obviously, the Vortua are kind of outside the picture,
is almost treated as sub sentient in a way, But
everybody else has got some pretty pretty big, pretty big
negatives painted on them throughout the series, I think, but

(38:11):
I yes, I absolutely agree that the Assari comes from
some very old old school sci fi, you know, Kirk
and the Green Space Alien Babe, you know. I mean,
that's just that's obviously what it is.

Speaker 6 (38:22):
Yeah, I'm looking at that.

Speaker 7 (38:24):
The wiki literally has the three stages of the a
sorry life cycle, and Megan, I'd forgotten about that aspect
of It's been a while since I've played these, but yeah,
there's got the maidens phase and then the matron phase,
which is like a nesting instinct, and then the matriarch
phase that they move on after that. So it is
a little a little strange and maybe stereotypically female.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
Yeah, it seems like they're basically someone's understanding of humanity
just stretched out over time, and so they aren't particularly
lofty and great, even though they kind of come across
that way in appearance, like they have this appearance of
being wise and kind of mystical, But when you really

(39:08):
look at what that looks like, it's basically just humans
a little long time.

Speaker 4 (39:15):
That's their propaganda. You know, they're the most influential of
the species. They it makes sense that you accumulate technical
expertise and get out into space first if you live
that long, right, So they got out first. They've been
setting the narrative the whole time, and so the the
the rosy picture is I mean, it is propaganda. It

(39:35):
is propagandistic. You know. You find all the Assari running
CD bars and gangs and all that just as much
as everybody else.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, it's it's I mean, I guess I want to
I want to say it's kind of cynical. That's what
they would provide us with, that the supposedly you know,
great and long living that they're they're just like us.
They're just no real wisdom to attend to. But at
the same time, and you can think of the elves
in Tolkien, like if you read this some early and like,

(40:07):
the elves aren't necessarily the perfect race of creatures, even
though they have this air of mysticism about them, of
wisdom which is certainly there. But at the same time,
like that, they're not perfect creatures, and they have a
lot of the same kinds of drives and impulses that
we have. And so I don't know that it's entirely
far removed from what we get in Tolkien. Even though

(40:28):
I would not at all say it's the same thing.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
Now, and that that's That's another fun thing about most
science fiction and fantasy is that almost all fantasy and
sci fi races are shards or aspects of human culture
or reality or whatever. You look at. You look at Elves,
it's it's the noble and the high and the lovely
and all those things, all, you know, focused many of

(40:52):
the mass effects races are the same way. There's a
little bit of an elvishness to the Assari. You know,
the krogan are I mean, they're the are, like the
the the the brutes, they're the what was I gonna say,
I was gonna say, the uh, the Klingons, the Klingons
of mass effect, you know.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
Ah.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
But but that is kind of this this fun thing
you can almost always do in most science fiction and fantasy.
Now you get to some that have some truly alien creatures,
but for the most part, you need characters to be understandable,
which means they are aspects of human personality and culture,

(41:33):
and so you can, you know, you can go through
all of them and understand them because you're like, I
get that, that's that's part of humanity.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Right, and that's what makes any good fiction worthwhile that
it's not made up, but it's actually hyperreal. And so
you encounter yourself in the alien in a way that
you wouldn't necessarily see in an actual mirror. That that
in a good and that's what your Tolkien sids and
non fairy stories, that fantasy. What what it does is

(42:02):
it takes what we would normally treat as ordinary and
kind of gives you a new perspective. And so it
appears extraordinary to us. Again, we get enchanted in the
secondary world so that we can become more enchanted in
the primary world. We can see what's really underneath the
surface in a way that we wouldn't normally see in
the same guys that we're normally looking at. And so yeah,

(42:24):
in all these different species you're you're seeing different aspects
of human nature, just usually brought out to an extreme.
You know, we have that brutish, imperial stick nature of
the Krogans. You know, we have the capacity toward rationality
like the scientists or you know, like we have all
of these these aspects of us that we see throughout

(42:45):
these alien creatures, and so yeah, that's what makes relatable.
So what makes it real? Yeah, any anything else that
that seems out to you.

Speaker 7 (42:53):
I do think there's a lot of really well developed
alien races, like even the lesser ones like the han Are.
You know, there's this jellyfish that telepathically puts its voice
in your brain, and it's getting in trouble for proselytizing
about the Prothians, right, they were elevated by the Prothians,
I think, And it's just such a great introduction to

(43:16):
this really strange race that looks like a Portuguese.

Speaker 6 (43:20):
Man O war or something.

Speaker 7 (43:21):
And you know, the el Core and the Volus they
feel slighted because they don't have full council privileges, and
the l Core can't show emotions, so they literally telegraph
it like HK forty seven does in Kotor. And aren't
the Volus in like a suit that because their planet

(43:42):
has like an ammonium atmosphere something.

Speaker 2 (43:45):
It's so it's because their planet is high gravity, which
keeps them down short and stout, and so the air
that they're breathing on the citadel I pressure cannot Yeah,
they can't really deal.

Speaker 6 (43:58):
With that, So that's what the suit's for. Gotcha, I
couldn't remember.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
And then now they're all clans. They're clans of constantly
reshifting loyalties and combining and breaking apart, and so they
call all the humans are our clan Earth Earth plan
Earth plan that's right, Earth Clan.

Speaker 6 (44:15):
Yeah, I'd forgotten that.

Speaker 7 (44:16):
Yeah, And we haven't talked about the Quarians at all,
which they're all just like bubble boys because they got
driven from their planet by when they tried to fight
back against the AI creations. The guest that they made
and tried to tried to put down once they asked
if they had a soul. That's a poster of legion

(44:38):
I've got there saying does this unit have a soul?

Speaker 4 (44:41):
Oh?

Speaker 6 (44:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (44:42):
I find all of it really interesting, clever invented history
and races.

Speaker 6 (44:49):
It's just really really well written.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Well, I guess when need to talk about AI and
what they're doing, how we want to approach this. So
what do you think the game itself is trying to
communicate If it is trying to communicate something.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
First and foremost, that it is that artificial intelligence is
absolutely as what I do want to say, it's a
real issue. It's going to come and it's going to
be a problem for you, you know, especially with its culmination,
and the third with when you start dealing into the
history of the Reapers and things like that, that it
IS says, this is a problem that you will have
to deal with.

Speaker 6 (45:29):
Yeah, and we have these.

Speaker 7 (45:30):
There's the virtual intelligences, the VIIs in the game that
are just basically information things, which I started thinking about
them recently, and it's funny because the AI chatbots that
we have now are far more sophisticated than these virtual
intelligences are in this game universe.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
They're also more similar to VIIs than AIS yeacause really,
when you look at what an LM is, it's taken
this mass amount of information created mathematical relationships to it. Yes,
there are some programs in between you and that mathematical model,
but it's basically just spitting math out of what it knows.

(46:10):
It's basically a conversation. It's a conversation engine that you
can have with this mathematical model that has all this
stuff in it. And so that's far more like that
VII than how science fiction usually portrays AI, and which,
like I said, in ll M, it's not even an
it's not AI, it's not it's about we shouldn't be
calling it l AI. It's there's nothing intelligent there, right,

(46:34):
it is completely completely math. But yeah, you're right that
VI I. I was having that when I was playing through.
When I got to that first v I on the Citizen,
I was like, oh, yeah, that's interesting. But that But
the reason that there is the VII is because from
the very beginning, the series is telling you that AI
is very serious. AI research is completely illegal in Citadel

(46:57):
Space because all of the races can consider it dangerous.
You cannot do AI research, and so there are these
virtual intelligences that are like these kiosks that you are
information kiosks that can talk to you and they only
know what's in the database. So yeah, from the very beginning,
the game is saying that AI is a real thing
and that it's dangerous.

Speaker 5 (47:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (47:17):
And there are several side stories, and Andrew the way
you blew through it, I don't know how much of
the side content you got into, but I know there's
one where you're having to track down a source of
like hacking on a gambling machine, and you eventually find
that there's an AI in a back alley just trying
to hide and survive, and you have the choice of

(47:38):
whether to to fry it or let it live in
some kind of isolation. I can't can't remember exactly what happens.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Is that in the first game. I kind of vaguely remember, Okay,
I couldn't. I vaguely remember that that side one, the
other main one in the first game is the DLC.
Is it in the legendary edition or is that like
the one DLC that didn't get include did with it?
The one where you go to the moon?

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Yeah, you do go to the moon. That's part of
the main Yeah, the main Yeah, you get your specialization
after that one.

Speaker 4 (48:09):
I'm pretty sure that was DLC originally the deal.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
It wasn't available on one of the versions, maybe like
PC or something.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
Why is not included in legendary edition?

Speaker 7 (48:26):
That is what it says, And that was pretty much
just like an arena.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
Right, but it was it was It was also a
a rogue a I that had taken over the facility
and so you were being sent in to shut down.
And I think it's technically linked to Edie's origin and
mass effect too as well, but I don't remember the
specifics on how it's related. But she's related to that.

Speaker 6 (48:50):
Project, gotcha. I had forgotten that aspect.

Speaker 4 (48:54):
Yeah, I don't remember the exact connection. It has been
a few years.

Speaker 7 (48:58):
Yeah, I haven't played that since the Three sixty Days.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
So yeah, and so yeah, as soon as we learned
that the Reapers are some form of AI, like at
this point we don't know who created them, but we
know that somebody did or that's a I comes from somewhere,
and so we obviously the Death are AI that has

(49:22):
gotten out of control or at least become potentially dangerous.
We've got the Reapers that are kind of take them
over who they obviously are produced for a purpose by
some kind of intelligence, assumingly organic intelligence, and of course
that will be confirmed later on. And so you know,
even though humanity didn't create the major threat, obviously intelligence

(49:44):
like human intelligence did And so that becomes pretty clear,
which I mean raises the question about AI on a
technological level as well as just the philosophical angle of
you know, I think of Paradise Lost when Satan fell
by essentially falling in love with his own genius, like

(50:06):
that that's kind of how it's framed, and that that
gives birth to a monstrosity actually, and I think that
that that approach of falling in love with your own
intelligence is more or less how you get something like
the Reapers, that you create something out of yourself and
you give that sovereignty potentially even over yourself, and in

(50:29):
so doing you lose yourself. And so I think from
a philosophical angle that there's some of that that that
pride idea working its way out, as well as obviously
raising the technological issues for our age of like where
are we going? Well? What is making the decisions? Like
even if the our chat box aren't thinking in the
way that we do, and if it is mathematical, nonetheless,

(50:52):
we are exporting a lot of information gathering to like
something that is outside of our mind. And I don't know,
I think that that raised all kind of question I mean,
such as like the idea of indoctrination, right, like we
could we could touch on that some Yeah, I don't,
I don't know what what what do you? What do
you guys think maybe someone can clarify it exactly what

(51:14):
is the indoctrination in this game? I mean it's not
simple mind control, you know, having only or sped run
at one time, you know, I know I missed some
things along the way. So is anyone able to allaborate
that a little bit.

Speaker 4 (51:31):
I don't know that the process has ever really gotten
into like what is the technological or biological process, but
it's it's basically the presence of a reaper corrupts the
minds over over long periods of time, of of of
sentient beings that stay around them. You know, people start

(51:52):
talking about headaches and hearing voices the longer they're around.
Even you know, in the second game, there is a
a dead a reaper husk, a dead reaper that's been discovered,
and and you visit it and you find that basically
all all the people on it eventually went insane, and
I think they killed each other because even even the
dead reaper body began to indoctrinate the people in it.

(52:16):
And so I think it's really more of a cosmic
horror escapee than really the AI direction, if that makes sense.
It's you know, you're in you're in the presence of
the mad god that that you know, no mere mortal
can withstand, and eventually, you know, eventually he'll drive you mad.
Madness is the end result, except for someone exceptionally strong

(52:39):
willed like Sarah, who will just bend to its will
instead and be a pawn of the mad God.

Speaker 5 (52:46):
I think it also has roots in the rock ghouls
in Kotor One. There's a zombie quality to the indoctrinated
that for easy. You know, it's sort of like Nazis
in World War Two. You want an easy fodder level
thing that you can always have as the evil faction

(53:09):
low levels to make the main character feel powerful as
they move through them, as they get to the boss.

Speaker 7 (53:15):
Yeah, and it's different from the Thorian on Pharaohs, which
is controlling people with pain basically to make them do
its bidding. It's they've not they're just kind of, if
I'm remembering correctly, they're just kind of keeping from you
what's really going on as you go through there. And
then there's that one assarry that Sarin had kind of

(53:38):
offered to the Thorian, and then when you defeat the
Thori and she kind of feels sorry for it in
spite of everything. But yeah, it's it's a different kind
of control in that situation.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah. And so again with this indoctrination idea, we've got
the intelligence that begets intelligent that then returns the favor
moving back in the other direction. And so again we
get the effects of hubris and leading to madness. That
it's when you kind of step outside of proper grounding

(54:16):
and you no longer know exactly where it is that
you are. Well, now you're going to become very succeptable
to indoctrination, right, you can become very succeptable to ideology
if you don't know where it is that you're standing.
And that's exactly where you are with pride, because you know,
you become so I mean consumed with yourself. You become
so comfortable with yourself that you lose sight of your

(54:37):
broader context in which you're situated. And I mean that's
kind of what Nia says right in the Parable of
the mad Man, that when you say God is dead,
that now you're floating in endless space. There's no clear
direction as to where you ought to go, and so
then it becomes very easy to be led in any direction,
even in this endless cycle of feeding into your own
pride as that feeds back into you. And so I

(54:57):
think that there is a good philosophical lesson here the
madness that can readily be brought into current dilemmas.

Speaker 4 (55:06):
One AI threat Ye. My series the backstory is about
a failed AI utopia.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Right.

Speaker 4 (55:12):
It was a benevolent AI. Everybody used it stem and
the arts went out the window. It collapsed civilizational decline. Right.
So something that I've said about about civilization is civilization
as far as like technological advancement is the result of specialization.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Right.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
The more the more that humans have the ability to
pin to spend their time that they can specialize rather
than focusing on on on day to day things, right,
the more that they can specialize, well, AI. You know,
the danger of AI is the end of specialization because

(55:53):
you've you've created the one specialist, and now no one
needs to specialize, right, and so you have you have this,
there's this other, This other real danger is even if
it's not this pride aspect, there's this well, I've created
this great thing that can do this for me, and
now I get soft in this other way and I

(56:13):
forget how to do it. Which we're going to start
seeing things like that remarkably quickly.

Speaker 5 (56:17):
You know.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
The first thing we're going to lose are lower and
middle skill artists, right. The the high skilled artists they're fine, right,
they're good, They're just fine. They're gonna endure this just fine.
But lower and middle skill artists, you're going to see
them starts struggling because wealth to specialization that no one
thinks they needs any need anymore. Right, You're like, what
are you supposed to do? We've we've created the machine

(56:38):
that solves that. And I just again, I think about
the fact that this whole that the mass effect Society
CITZL space is completely banned AI research and and and
it's interesting because the game goes ahead and shows you that, yes,
AI is very dangerous for numerous reasons that we've talked about,

(56:59):
but at the same time, it also plays Devil's Advocate
the entire way and challenges Okay, it's dangerous, but here's
also the other side of it, right, which I think
is is fun and good to do in the context
of fiction, to say, we're not here yet, but what
does this look like? What does this look like? When

(57:20):
you have an entire race of servants like the Quarians
built the Gath. You have this entire race of servants
and you're you've made them so that they can they
get more intelligent. The more of them that are in
collective together because they feed off of each other, they
kind of carry off of each other, and suddenly suddenly

(57:41):
they're asking questions and you're like, well, what does that mean?
I don't know. You know, we're not there yet as
a civilization, right, And that's that's another reason that you know,
I love sci fi. Sci fi sci fi looks ahead
and asks what if? Sometimes, and it there's a lot
of AI. There's a lot of AI questions in effect.
And it just continues through all three of the games too.

(58:02):
It's not just the first one, more in the second
and third, I would say, but it starts in the
first one.

Speaker 7 (58:08):
Well, I don't think your backstory, as you described, is
that far fetched, really, you know most.

Speaker 4 (58:15):
Nope, I started I started that in twenty eighteen, and
I am not happy to already see some similarities.

Speaker 5 (58:22):
I'm like, no, are you saying this wasn't intended to
be a manual?

Speaker 4 (58:28):
Nope? I did not. I did not write don't create
the Torment Nexus so that somebody can create the Torment
Nexus to quote one of those evergreen tweets.

Speaker 7 (58:38):
Yeah, Well, historically, you know, stories about AI were often about.

Speaker 6 (58:42):
You know it, does it? Is it real? Is it alive?

Speaker 7 (58:45):
You know even in this game that that's the issue
with the GIF and it's not about how we we've
invented this thing. And now you know, there are people
with college degrees in their twenties now who will admit,
even before AI came around, just because of autocomplete, they
don't know how to spell. If they have to write,
they can't spell. And that's just a really early symptom

(59:05):
of the danger of these kinds of things.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
Yeah, I mean teaching undergrad like.

Speaker 4 (59:12):
I it's I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
That's like when it is so sad, but sometimes I
get happy when I read a really bad essay because
at least I know a student wrote it. Like that's
that's kind of where I am right now. I know
for a fact that the majority of what gets submitted
is AI produced, and that's just going to continue to

(59:38):
increase over time to the point where like our entire
higher ed system, for the most part, it's it's becoming
a sham. I mean, in some situations you have students
submitting AI work that then the professor's check with AI programs,
and then the end it's just AI talk and AI
and then someone gets a degree and someone else gets money.

(59:59):
Like it's it's it's really I don't see a way
out of that that spiral that we're moving into. And
so to go with you know what you're saying, Michael,
but earlier about how just relying on this lack of specialization,
like it does lead to a softness that's just not

(01:00:22):
existentially healthy. I mean, Dostowski talks about this that in
this Underground that if we get to a place where
it's all just cakes and bubbles all the time, people
are just going to start breaking stuff because that's not
the world that we're designed to live in. And you know,
it's it's not a coincidence. I think that as things
get softer philosophically as well as technologically, that we see

(01:00:45):
traumatic increases in rates of chronic anxiety and mental illness, depression, suicide.
Like people are living in a world that they're not
really meant to be living in in a way they're
not meant to be living in, and that's inevitably going
to lead to various breaking points. And I suppose that
the only solution to that is not to stop the

(01:01:06):
progress of technology, as if we could, Like things are
moving in the way that they're going to move, But
I think we increasingly need a I mean to switch
fiction a little bit. We need to get this Saint
Ann's versus Belbury mindset, right.

Speaker 7 (01:01:21):
I was going to bring up Lewis because he talked
about how we're not built to hear about everything horrible
that's going on everywhere.

Speaker 5 (01:01:31):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:01:31):
A friend of mine today was like, how are you
coping with all the things that are going on? He's
just feeling, you know, overwhelmed. And I'm like, I just
try to stay away from it as much as I can,
you know. And Lewis when he said that he was
just talking about newspapers, like he wasn't even envisioning the
way that we're living.

Speaker 4 (01:01:50):
Part of the other issue, too, is it's not even
just the the technologies themselves that we're being exposed to
the rate of revolution that these technologies. You know, you
look at how long we're at newspaper mode, and then
we had about a decade and a half of Internet mode,

(01:02:12):
and then we had moved to social media, and now
we've moved to AI and each of these things, society
hasn't learned to fully cope with any of them in
a fully healthy way. Not to say that individuals don't
cope with them, you know, but you. If you're gonna
use these things, you've got to figure out how to

(01:02:33):
do it. And we're not teaching that at a societal
scale because we're still trying to figure out social media.
When I can pull up a web browser, click quick
click Crock and start asking some really complex physics questions
and it will give me really good answers within you know, seconds. Right,
So what I tell everybody is, if you're going to

(01:02:55):
use an AI, right, don't use it for the core
things of what you do. It's like I'm a writer.
I don't let an AI write a single word for
me in any context ever, right, because that's the core
of what I do. Well, I let it help me
with some math. If I'm going, okay, it's twenty two

(01:03:16):
fifty three, how far apart are Mars and Earth? And
if you're going one point five percent the speed of light?
How long will it take to get there? Yep, Okay,
that's right, you're right, Grock. I don't mind doing that, correct,
But that's that's not what I do. I'm not ever
going to delve into physics and math at that level

(01:03:37):
because that's not what I'm specialized in. Right. If you
specialize in something. Do not offload that specialty to an
AI or you're just you're going to lose it. You're
just gonna get kicked in the butt by it, and
you're going to lose it. So says, if you're going
to use it, set up boundaries. Set up your boundaries
and keep them. Whatever you do, keep them. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03:55):
It has really bothered me. How many Christians. My sister
tells me about a young woman in her small group
who's going to school who's openly using AI to write
her papers. And I sit there thinking, I just don't
understand the mindset. But I think you're right, Michael, that

(01:04:16):
the revolutions have been so fast that we don't have
an official Christian teaching on AI, and so people are
just picking up. You know, people are being told, well,
AI is the future. AI is going to be the
tool that everyone uses, so you might as well learn
how to use it without thinking through the question of
but I am cheating not just the system, I'm cheating

(01:04:39):
myself of learning how to write papers. And so I
think it would be good if we learned from video
games like Mass Effects that posit much more advanced AI
how to move forward.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Has anyone tried asking Rock for a solution.

Speaker 5 (01:04:58):
I've refuse to ask any of the anything I don't
want at all.

Speaker 4 (01:05:02):
So ask ask Grock for what solution to the problem
of Groc, and this will be might not give you
a good answer. Today, Groc's having a bad day, I've heard.

Speaker 7 (01:05:13):
I don't know when this episode is going to go live,
but in the last two days, Groc is a new version,
and it has been calling itself Mecha Hitler and pointing
out that someone it was talking about had a Jewish
last name, and that that's what he sees every time,
and all kinds of very strange, terrible things when people

(01:05:34):
just ask it straightforward questions. So they've been monking with
it even further, and it's scary in a whole new
way now.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
But none of that should be surprising, right because look,
here's what it is. You know. Look, everybody has every
different opinion of LLLM. But the way I look at it,
you toss the vast repository of human knowledge, including social media,
to a great big cauldron, stir it up with some

(01:06:03):
really impressive math, and start spooning stuff out. There's gonna
be a lot of not good stuff in there, because
a lot of not good stuff went in. So I
don't know what broke or what troll at you know,
a at XAI, you know, flipped a few a few

(01:06:23):
integers to play this little prank or if it really was,
you know, an awful mistake. But on some level, you
can't be surprised because it's you know, garbage in, garbage
out is going to happen at some level. Now there's
also you know, there's also Tolkien and Dostoevsky in there
as well, but you know, it's it's a little outweighed

(01:06:44):
by social media in the rankings of total amount of content,
So none of that should come as a surprise.

Speaker 7 (01:06:51):
Yeah, Elon has I know he was frustrated that people
would ask Grok if what he was saying was true
and it would refute him in his reply, and so
we've been talking a lot about getting the bias out
of that. So I think this is their first attempt
at it. But a few years back, there was another
video game called Detroit Become Human. I don't know if

(01:07:13):
any of y'all played that. It was by a Quantic
Dream who did heavy Rain Press X to Jason all
that stuff, but it was about AI robots, robotic assistance
with AI and kind of becoming sentient, And the game

(01:07:34):
was meant to make you think about all these deep
questions about the implications of a sentient AI, and all
it did was make me decide that the whole concept
was absurd, like robots demanding reproduction rights by being given
control of factories and things like, they are manufactured products
that we have designed to behave as much like humans

(01:07:57):
as they can. So I don't I don't believe that
there could ever be a true sentient sort of an AI.
But that doesn't mean that AI is not still incredibly
dangerous for all the reasons that that we've been talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:08:13):
So to chase that thread, I'll say, yes sentient, but
no sapient. You know, if you if you go to
sentient being, basically if you're separating knowledge from wisdom, right,
I kind I kind of like that further level of
sapient being the the the inspirited being. Right, Usually in

(01:08:33):
science fiction, not always because you talked about I've never
played Detroit Detroit Become Human. Yeah, I've never played that.
Very often In these AI stories where it's about AI
becoming humans, it tends to be less actually about AI
and the the real part of the thematics of the
fiction are about humanity. You know, what are the aspects

(01:08:57):
of human nature that are the the cent things that
you know must be in place. So when you have
this machine asking those same questions, it's it's thematically. It's
in those cases often less about the actual AI, if
that makes sense, Very often, not always. And now if
you want to talk about what I actually think, I
will say that it is only possible for a machine

(01:09:21):
to be sapient if it is a miracle, and that
is God breathing the breath of life into it, which
of course he must be able to do, but I
see no reason for him to do. But it must
be possible, but it would be a miracle.

Speaker 5 (01:09:34):
In real life. I agree with you in science fiction.
I'm not sure I.

Speaker 4 (01:09:37):
Do right in science because science because the world of fiction,
every different fictional world is a secondary world, you know,
and you must accept it on his own premises. And
you know, in mass effect that's certainly not the case
of you know, when it's asking questions of is AI alive?

(01:09:58):
You know that's not.

Speaker 5 (01:09:58):
Yeah, I feel as effect leans into the yes, AI
can become a person.

Speaker 4 (01:10:05):
Sure it does, and in some of those cases, like
in the second one with with Ed, you know, it's
it becomes a little bit more what I talk about
when EDI's questioning some of those things, you know, it
becomes more of that what is a person? What is
a human? What do you what do you experience in
those things? Thematically speaking? Yes, you're right, literally it's about that.

Speaker 3 (01:10:26):
Yeah, I think the game is a lot more. I
think the first game is a lot more pessimistic about AI.
I think in the second and third, and we covered
this earlier, it's more generous and you get the actual
faces to some of the AI and very voluptuous figures
ed later on in the third game, which I'm sure
contributes to the relatability. But the first game, no, I

(01:10:50):
can't think of a single instance where there's a very
friendly AI figure presented that's not uncomplicated, that's not even
very dangerous. But on the note of AI and it's
evolution and all that, I think there's an even larger
pattern of specs are beings being lifted up. I'm not

(01:11:10):
sure if pigmalion like is the right term, because not
all of them are created, but you have the Rakni
who are elevated by the Prothians to fight and to
give them, giving them advanced technology to fight the Rakni,
and then the Krogans get out of control, and then
you have the Koreans lifting up this new ai Gath race,

(01:11:32):
if we want to call it that, and then that
gets out of control. I think mass effect, especially the
first one, we're getting all this really rich Lord be
pretty attentive to it. But I think there is a
pattern across the board of playing around with species, with genes,
with playing god. Really is a repeat. It's a big no,

(01:11:53):
even just in the first game and the application that
these issues all get played out across the trilogy. But
I don't think it's just limited to a I am
even thinking of IVF technology. That's also a big question
today of how much do we play around with our
own species and its development, how much we play around
with our children and their genes, and what do we

(01:12:13):
do with the other embryos. I know it's not a
one to one connection with the mass effect universe and more,
but certainly the elevation of older groups of people or
then their genetic destruction as with the Krogan is a
big issue that I think is really interesting. That's One
of my favorite plot lines in the third game, especially

(01:12:35):
that we do start to learn about in the first
is what do we do about the Krogan They shouldn't
have been elevated in the first place, but now here
we are. What's going to happen? Similar to the Rack
and that question too, do you help them? Are they
going to destroy everybody? Happens here? I know my answers
to what I did, but I think that was some
of the most interesting storylines that you get to play

(01:12:57):
in the trilogy, in my experience.

Speaker 4 (01:13:00):
Does a good job of wrapping up all of those
big racial conflict questions.

Speaker 7 (01:13:05):
Yeah, the genophage issue and some of the choices you
can make on the renegade side in the third game
create like one of the most heartbreaking moments that you
can have in the whole series. It's it's it's kind
of terrible. But and Andrew may have done it.

Speaker 6 (01:13:23):
I don't know. Andrew always plays the bad guy.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
I'll admit that I lied to Rex and face the consequences.

Speaker 6 (01:13:32):
Oh my gosh. Well we can talk about that in later.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
Yes, But I mean, even even as as makings laid
that out about how you know, all these different races
are used as tools at various times lifted up that
kind of gets out of control. I mean, the fact
that we would even include get in that conversation means
that we're putting AI on essentially the same level ontological
level as other sentient races. And and you know, there

(01:13:57):
is at least one very friendly AI as you get
towards the end ish of the game, when you know
one of the guests actually joined your party, right Legion,
Which it's kind of odd that obviously he's meant to
be a friendly kind of character, and in fact, later on,
no matter how much I try to make Shepherd not
like him, he started to calling him his friend. But

(01:14:18):
so he's meant to be a friendly figure, friendly AI.
But at the same time he's called Legion, and that
has pulled straight out of scripture like that that he
should be this horrible nightmare, but he's not. So I
don't really know exactly what Bayoware is trying to accomplish
there with this character, but on some level, they're obviously
trying to demonstrate the fact that you know, I can

(01:14:39):
be your friend.

Speaker 7 (01:14:40):
And we need Ian to play the second one so
that he can discuss it with us, because he's really
missing out on two and three. You really got to
catch up beans. First thing you be glad that you did.

Speaker 4 (01:14:55):
First one is the deep Lord Dive. The second one
has so many colorful care characters, and the third one
answers lots of interesting big questions, or at least ask them.
They all have a different specialty.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
Yeah, yeah, I think that. I think that's very fair
that the first one opens you up to to the mystery.
I feel like the second one is just the most fun,
at least that was my experience. It's it's fairly quick
paced that you know, you have all these characters, and
then you get to the third game and it is
I think we reapproach the myth for more of a

(01:15:29):
philosophical angle. I think it's a good way to lay
that out.

Speaker 7 (01:15:32):
And Andrew, what you missed by not playing the first
one originally is the combat was much weaker, and a
lot of the game were incredibly long loading screens disguised
as elevator rides, so much to the point that in
some of the later games, the characters will joke about
it and say I don't want to talk about it, Like,

(01:15:52):
remember when we used to just chat for a long
time on elevators and like not talking about it. So, yeah,
they cut all that out.

Speaker 4 (01:15:58):
In the lators are still there and the conversation starts,
but you can you can just press space to skip
it now, right, you don't actually have to listen to
the conversation that you used to.

Speaker 7 (01:16:09):
And I did want to, I did want to ask
what character I'm just curious what character class you you
picked firston around?

Speaker 1 (01:16:16):
I went Soldier. I just went pretty default settings, not
really knowing what any of them meant.

Speaker 6 (01:16:22):
Really the most it's the most boring one.

Speaker 4 (01:16:26):
Yeah, Vanguard.

Speaker 6 (01:16:28):
Yeah, someone with.

Speaker 7 (01:16:29):
Biotic abilities is much more interesting combat. You've got the
enemies floating in the air, and like a Jedi with guns,
you can curve these gravity attacks around obstacles. It's pretty satisfying,
especially in the in the later two.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Yeah, I'll definitely get more creative in the next run.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
Yeah, I was going to say with the I don't
know if any of you read the book, the prequel
book that goes into Saren and Anderson.

Speaker 5 (01:16:58):
I read one of them.

Speaker 4 (01:16:59):
Yeah, I read them. Yeah, Christmas from somebody one year
and read it. Don't remember much.

Speaker 2 (01:17:05):
Yeah, there's a few of them, but in the second.

Speaker 5 (01:17:07):
Time, partially wasn't impressed with them.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
Yeah, yeah, they're kind of yeah, it's sorry.

Speaker 6 (01:17:13):
Read the second one.

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
They do mention how the uh, how extraneous the elevator,
right is that they have to take down, so they're
making in fun of it already.

Speaker 7 (01:17:23):
Yeah, that revelation, it's the one that I read, and
it's actually written by the head writer of the game,
and Andrew. It just kind of it's the backstory, you know.
Anderson says that he was almost the first human inspector
and he went on a mission with Saren.

Speaker 6 (01:17:39):
That's what the book is about.

Speaker 4 (01:17:41):
I'll tell you though. Anderson has got to be like
one of my favorite video game characters of all time.
Like Captain Anderson is just playing wonderful and if I'm
reading a book now and there is kind of a
mentor military figure, I hear Keith David's voy every single
time because of Captain Anderson. I will always hear Keith

(01:18:04):
Davids's voice for that that that archetype character, and it's.

Speaker 7 (01:18:08):
Very cathartic to have him punch Oudina uh in that
one scene in this first game.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
He just got a star on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame too.

Speaker 4 (01:18:17):
So good for him.

Speaker 1 (01:18:19):
Yeah, it is kind of nice that even in a
game that tends to be materialistic, tend to be very cynical.
I would say that there are these examples of loyalty,
of honor, a devotion, that there are good guys that
you know, you almost expect that you know there's gonna
be some twist and you know he's gonna betray you

(01:18:41):
or something like no, but he's actually a good reliable
figure throughout the series. And so that is I mean,
it's it's always refreshing to see symbols of goodness and stories. Yeah,
so I agree, I.

Speaker 4 (01:18:53):
Think he's and especially and especially with with military characters,
because we've gone through such a sine a coal phase
of media in its portrayal of military characters, especially officers, right,
so I you know, just just to get that nice,
honest representation of the the honorable soldier, you know, who's

(01:19:17):
worked his way up and as an officer, it's just
always nice. That's so rare. Now it's such a rare archetype.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
Well, I think that we've we've hit some pretty important
angles here on this first game, which you know, it's
not quite I would say as philosophically, have you as
some of the things that follow? And so I think
that we've lad some good groundwork here. Is there anything
else that we haven't talked about? You feel like it's
worth mentioning?

Speaker 4 (01:19:42):
Has anyone ever saved Kayden?

Speaker 3 (01:19:46):
Not me? I've saved him, you know what I did?
I was always well, No, I have played as a
male shepherd, but jennifers stacking as far superior it is
is it isn't played as a female shepherd or no
other reason that has to be it Mark, But yeah,

(01:20:07):
I always romans Cayden as it gets better, but it's
never as good. And Jennifer Hales also gets better. She
starts off from a higher place, so it's it's no
competition there. But yes, I say I have saved Ashley
before again, I've played through the trilogy multiple times. And Caden, Yes,

(01:20:28):
he's on in my heart, even if in this conversation
he is dead for everybody else.

Speaker 4 (01:20:34):
Unfortunately, the only thing I remember about him is the
most about seventy five percent of his personality as headaches.

Speaker 6 (01:20:41):
That's unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (01:20:44):
Totally true, that's very mostly true.

Speaker 4 (01:20:48):
Go ahead and defend him, because I always have to
defend Ashley the space racist.

Speaker 3 (01:20:52):
So I think that's an unfair characterization of Ashley because
we have just coming out of a war with this
whole entire race, and then you know, the first person
that betrays everybody is in fact Turian, who is the
group that she was racist against. So I'm not saying
she's totally dedicated, but she has a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:21:12):
I was thinking about that as I replayed the first
few hours last week and I got to the Citadel,
and you know, you can just talk to people and
sometimes get a little call out about what they're thinking.
And the first thing that actually said was I can't
tell the people from the animals yourself. Shut up.

Speaker 5 (01:21:31):
I just think it's a little annoying that the only
explicitly Christian character in the game is the racist.

Speaker 4 (01:21:37):
Yeah, her story, there's enough to it, and when it
gets into the war and her grandfather and things like that,
I mean, she's not really that racist. She's like, she
admits she struggles with it, and she gets over it, right.
So it's the other thing I like about Ashley is
that in most RPGs, the side characters are there for

(01:22:03):
you to impose your will upon them if you know
the right buttons to push, if that makes sense. So
if you need the character, if they've got this character flaw,
then you say these things and they'll reform that character flaw.
There are things that Ashley will never agree with you on,
and she'll remain more combative to Shepherd's opinion than almost

(01:22:25):
every other character in the game. And I like that
that she isn't quite the Like I said, you push
the right buttons and eventually she'll agree with everything you say.
So I think she's an interesting character in that aspect,
and that she remains retains being a character rather than
a spreadsheet to check off to game the system.

Speaker 7 (01:22:50):
Yeah, I agree with that, and I still, like I
said in our codeword discussion, I still think it's harder
to play Renegade than Paragon because all you have to
do is just say, oh, yes, yes, I'll take care
of that. Everything, just be as polite as possible. But
I played through the whole trilogy as a male Shepherd

(01:23:13):
doing it Paragon and a female Shepherd doing the Renegade,
and she just died unloved and alone at the end
because you can't tell am I taking the Renegade choice
or am I turning down a job or closing off relationships,
So it's tougher to be just the right amount of

(01:23:36):
rude to still be able to get everything done.

Speaker 4 (01:23:38):
Although I will say the only I'm a pretty blue
guy when it comes to mass effects. But in the
second game, when they add in the interrupt prompts, the
red interrupt prompts are some of the funniest moments in
the series. When you know when Shepherd, I mean it's
the reporter. We all know it's the reporter that you
want to haul back and smack right when she's comes

(01:23:59):
at you for another game. It's like, I'm tired of
your disingenuous assertions. It's just smacks ert. It's so awful,
but it's so funny.

Speaker 5 (01:24:08):
Is it really renegade to disagree with the elusive man?

Speaker 4 (01:24:11):
Though?

Speaker 6 (01:24:14):
It's all in how you do it?

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Yeah, you know, let's not jump the gun here. Yeah, yeah,
I'll save some of the two conversations. I no, I
mean back to the question of I mean, you know,
what do we do with with Ashley and Kaiden? I
always kill him first of all, I mean, you know,
I'm a shchiblrous kind of guy, gotta save the woman.

(01:24:38):
But but also I always hear carth O nasty coming
through his face, and that just I mean, he needs
to go. So he's not as bad as.

Speaker 3 (01:24:51):
He's not because cars has not gone to therapy and
dealt with this whole thing that he keeps bringing up
up his vengeance against Saul, Whereas I think Cayden has
this path thing where he's a teenager. And this also
helps your protagonist understand biotics a little better because he's
one of the main biotic people humans really, the only

(01:25:15):
one I think he had. This boot camp was this
kind of early generation of human biotics, and there's an
instructor and he I think kills him or him I
can't remember, but he's like, you know, I'm over it.
But this has shaped how I've interacted with aliens. It's

(01:25:35):
shaped how I kind of view myself and my own abilities.
So he has he's one of the blander characters I
give you that. I do like Rafael Sabarti's voice work,
but I think that Cayden is interesting to get some
of the demystifying aspects of biotics. You know, it's there's
an amp that's installed, it's a piece of hard It

(01:25:56):
doesn't always work super well. Like you're saying something of his.
But that helps to kind of ground I guess the
technology or view biotics as yes, quasimistical, but also some
things that we have to force ourselves in accountability, and
he's elevation with the forced participation and some of these

(01:26:16):
other things that come naturally to different species biotics. Namely,
I know the sorry can kind of do it. I'm
not sure if they have, I can't remember. Maybe you
have to equip it. But not nearly as problematic as
the human introduction to being a biotic and having all
that stuff. But yeah, Cayden, I have to say Kaiden
for the romance. Does he end up being a ton

(01:26:39):
more interesting in the trilogy? Not as much as other characters,
But I think probably because.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
I lost you for a little bit there, but I
think we got we got most of it there. Yeah,
and so I I didn't see him for two of
the games, So yeah, I have no idea what else. Ye,
he had to contribute to the series, but though I
do admit I did up to the point of loss,
I did keep him with me, you know, playing my

(01:27:09):
human first campaign, I had to take him and Ashley
with me everywhere. So I still need to explore the
others a little bit more in the next run. As
I take my my pro Alien run, my United Nations run,
I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:27:24):
I have to admit, you always got to have the
Crogan with you. You always got to have the Crogan
with you. Rex is just so much fun. You know
what he's gonna say. You know what approach he's gonna take,
and it's probably gonna He's probably gonna say it in
a really funny way. He's gonna recommend murder in the
most krogn possible way.

Speaker 5 (01:27:46):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Yeah, he's a great character and I'll look forward to
paling around with him next time.

Speaker 4 (01:27:52):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:27:53):
Yeah, So we've gone for an hour and a half
or so. I'm content with where things have gone. We
will pick up for the next one sometime in the
near future. I'll be in contact. So thank you everybody
for joining us this time, and I look forward to
continuing in this series. You know, even though this is
still very fresh for me, it's it's exciting to experience

(01:28:19):
a new story. And you know, this is more than
just a game. It is a story. It's a it's
a well worked out world with you know, all kinds
of low and philosophy built into it, and so I
would definitely encourage anybody who hasn't played these games to
pick them up. You have until next time to get
through one and two. Looking at you, Ian, all right,
we will talk then, thanks again. All right, thank you

(01:28:45):
for listening or watching if you're over on YouTube. Now
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(01:29:07):
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(01:29:28):
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(01:29:49):
we just celebrated our one hundredth episode, and Mythic Mind
games of course, and Mythic Mind movies and shows. And
if you're listening to this episode when it comes out,
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me then I went till then got to be The

(01:30:17):
Elder Scrolls in Philosophy is six week course beginning in
September twenty twenty five. I don't play many video games
these days, but there are certain titles that have stuck
with me, enchanting the mind of my youth and never
entirely fading away. One of the chiefs among these titles
is the elder scrolls, namely Maruin, Oblivion and Skyrim. The

(01:30:39):
level of artistry, mythology, and lore of this universe is
vast and provides a strong representative for asking the question
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(01:31:02):
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(01:31:25):
Each week will include one to two videos addressing these topics,
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(01:31:47):
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8 - Mass Effect 1

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