Poll: The heretic Geth, what did you do?

[Erttheking]

One of the ultimate Grey and Gray Morality moments in Mass Effect 2 was when you are given the choice to either kill all of the Heretic Geth or rewrite them. Mass genocide vs mass brainwashing, neither of them are very pleasant options, but you've gotta make a choice. I personally went with rewriting them, but it kinda feels like everyone did that. I want to double check though, what did you do?

Also can we not bring up how it had little effect going into ME3? Let's focus on what you did on ME2 and what you would do in a situation like this.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

Yeah I also rewrote them. I liked the geth more than most of the other races so I didn't want to kill them.

 

[BathorysGraveland]

I believe I re-wrote them, partly because of the urging of Legion, but also because of my racism as a player. I look at machines as tools to be used, and discarded when they're no longer useful. The Geth were still useful, so I re-wrote them and felt no qualm about it.

 

[Keoul]

I re-wrote them, mostly out of pity.
Then again at the time I thought they could be useful in the oncoming reaper war and having mechanical agents would be pretty sweet.

 

[BrotherRool]

I chose rewrite. I ummed and ahhed over this, the correct choice is to ask the heretics which they would prefer, but thats not possible because of the war.

The way I see it, rewriting changes one choice someone made, death changes every choice someone made. Including the one that we rewrite. They chose to serve the Reapers? Well I don't think they can do that dead. Death destroys every dream they had, every hope, every plan, every aspiration. Whatever they wanted to do the next day, is going to be rewritten for them.

There are decisions that people view worth dying over, lots of religious people would rather die than have their faith forcibly taken from them, and history is littered with examples of this. Other people have taken death and torture for their ideals, country or fellow human beings.

But the point is, since we can't talk to the Geth, we can't find out if this is one of those choices. If someone killed me because they assumed I'd rather die than have my dislike of coffee rewritten, I'd be pretty pissed off (and dead). Maybe this was important to them, they left the Geth over it, but they're machines, we don't know if that was just because it was natural for any incompatibility in thought to separate itself out. Maybe it was important to them, but wasn't as important as their dream of becoming a truly unified consciousness or whatever and killing them would prevent that. Better safe than sorry.(incidentally, total BS in ME3 isn't the effect of this choice, but that the heretics split with the Geth specifically because the Geth believed that using Reaper tech(or any alien tech) to become unified was wrong as it limited their ability to self-determinate as a species.)

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I killed them. The Geth seemed particularly vulnerable to Reaper influence, and I did not trust them.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Sentient machines that spent all of Mass Effect trying to shoot me, and worshipping the harbingers of the death of organic life?

Let's just say there weren't enough pieces left to make a toaster. Maybe next time they'll construct a window; structural weakness indeed.

 

[Goofguy]

I rewrote them as the majority were in favour of doing so and back when I played it in 2010, I thought it would help me gain their allegiance and have a big impact when I got to ME3. I was a bit miffed when all it got me were some more points for my EMS.

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Also can we not bring up how it had little effect going into ME3?

Destroying or rewriting can make or break your ability to broker peace between the geth and the quarians if you end up not doing everything perfectly. I read somewhere it also increases the amount of geth you have to fight on the dreadnaught and at Rannoch. Although I haven't gone through on a run where I destroyed them so I can't personally confirm or deny that. It does have more impact than just war assets, though.

It can't really be considered brainwashing with machines, though. They're sentient, sure, but they aren't a true intelligence. Rewriting synthetics isn't really the same thing as brainwashing organics. With an organic being, that'd take extended periods of time's worth of mental conditioning. With a synthetic being it's pretty much just a data replacement.

I rewrote them.

 

[Shikua]

I respected them enough to let them die with their beliefs intact.

 

[Mossberg Shotty]

I killed them. Death is an inevitability, and I was really uncomfortable with the idea of brainwashing. Also I didn't want to lump those "reformed" heretic Geth with the free-thinking ones, the turncoats.

 

[Saviordd1]

It would have been a grey and grey moment...

Except that both choices had an arbitrary red and blue amount labelled to them.

 

[00slash00]

it seemed fucked up to rewrite them. plus my team, including legion, seemed to be in favor of destroying them

 

[j0frenzy]

It would have been a grey and grey moment...

Except that both choices had an arbitrary red and blue amount labelled to them.

That sort of sums up my problem with it as well. Honestly the only moral choice I spent some time thinking about ME2 was the last one at the end of the final mission. The rest of them I went with what would get me my speech points. So that means my first time through I reprogrammed them.
Also, I feel like the writing did not do a good enough job of framing that choice. Every time I think I about that mission it seems a lot deeper then it was when I played the game for the first time. I honestly just kinda sped past that mission the one time I played it.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

I rewrote them everytime, even with my RenegadeSheps!
I did it for the same reason I kept the Rachni alive and urged the quarians to avoid war with the Geth.

That reason was soldiers, ships and technology. Since the first ME was always billed as the start of a trilogy I was planning ahead the entire time. I figured by the end of the first that the third game would feature a massive war with the Reapers and that I'd need a lot of soldiers and ships to win conventionally (silly me once believed a conventional victory would be possible without magic). With that in mind I definitely would want the Geth (the only "species" to develop weapons that bypass kinetic barriers as their main focus) to use their billions or more mobile platforms as very effective soldiers and their massive fleet as a very effective navy. Rewriting would give me more soldiers to throw at the Reapers and a happier and perhaps mroe co-operative Geth.

Turns out it was all for naught anyway but whatever. I had fun while it lasted.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I rewrote them, because I felt it more fitting than wiping out the closest thing to fully sentient AI in the Mass Effect universe (aside from the Reapers I mean). Also, the Geth represent one of the greatest scientific achievements of any of the existing races, even if it bit the Quarians in the ass.