Draft:Geth (Mass Effect)

Technology

The concept of a physical body holds no intrinsic meaning for the geth. The bipedal or quadrupedal forms commonly perceived as "geth" are merely mobile platforms through which one or more geth programs can operate. Any given platform can host hundreds of programs, none of which are inherently bound to the hardware itself.^[6] An individual geth program possesses minimal processing power, sufficient only for executing motor functions and interpreting sensory inputs. However, the geth have the unique capability to network their processing resources, thereby allocating computational cycles toward higher-order reasoning and enabling the execution of more complex or nuanced tasks.^[7] Rather than experiencing a sense of individuality akin to that of other organic species within the Mass Effect universe, the geth operate within a collective consciousness. Each geth program is capable of sharing data and experiences with others; as a result, the geth function as a singular, unified entity.^[8]

Culture and society

The existence of geth culture remains uncertain, as an individual geth program possesses only a rudimentary, animal-like intelligence. However, when in proximity of other geth programs, their increased processing power allows them to employ advanced behaviors akin to those of biological species, such as tactical planning, stategizing and situational analysis. It is unclear whether this process grants each program an individual personality as observed in biological lifeforms.^[8][9][10]

Geth society is organized around the principle of consensus. Individual programs are in constant communication and decisicions are only reached through unified agreement across the geth network, rather than through individual, independent action.^[10]

History

The geth were created by the quarians approximately 300 years before the events of Mass Effect by the quarians as a tool of labor and war, modelled after their creators. The term "geth" translates to "servant of the people" in Khelish, the quarian native language. Initially the geth were not intended to develop true intelligence, as safeguards had been implemented by the quarians to guarantee their non-sentience. However, as the quarians became more reliant on them, their networked processes made them become exponentially more intelligent, eventually being used as a means to gain self-awareness.^[10][11]

Tensions escalated when the geth began to question their own existence, reaching the point of inquiring whether they possesed a soul or not. The quarians intepreted this behavior as a malfunction and demanded the deactivation of all geth programs.^[11][12] When the geth refused to comply, the quarians initiated hostilities by attacking their creations. The geth, who had intended no initial harm on their creators, fought back in self-defense, triggering a large scale planet-wide conflict. This conflict is known by the geth as "the Morning War" and by the quarians as "the Geth War".^[10][11][12] This war ended with the death of most of the quarian population and drove the surviving quarians off of the surface of their home planet of Rannoch into the Migrant Fleet, a massive flotilla of salvaged second-hand ships of varying sizes and origins that nomadically wanders space.^[11]

Instead of starting a massive attack against the rest of the species in the galaxy as many feared, the geth remained silently on the quarian home world, showing no interest in interacting with other species in the galxy. The development of the geth and the subsequent Morning War caused the Citadel Council, the main governing body in Citadel Space, to enact a series of laws and regulations effectively banning the creation of self-conscious artificial intelligences.^[10][12]

Mass Effect

In the original Mass Effect, the geth are presented as the primary antagonistic force that the player encounters.^[14] The game's narrative begins with a geth attack on the human colony of Eden Prime, where the player first encounters them and Saren Arterius, a rogue turian SPECTRE, an intergalactic intelligence group with almost no limitations imposed on their actions. Influenced by the reaper Sovereign, Saren leads the geth to attack multiple planets. As the story progresses, the player collaborates with the salarian military to prevent Saren and the geth from establishing a large-scale krogan army.^[15][10] The game also allows the player to examine the geth-quarian conflict form a quarian perspective through Tali'Zorah, a squadmate who can acompany the player on missions.^[10]

Mass Effect 2

In Mass Effect 2, the geth secluded themselves in Geth Space, the galactic sector where both them and the quarians originated.^[10] During the final arc of the game, the player is introduced to Legion, a gestalt consciousness composed of a collective of networked artificial intelligences that serve as the series' first geth squadmate if reactivated. It is then revealed that only a subset of the geth, known as "the heretics" had followed Saren Arterius' orders and allied with the Reapers in return for a Reaper body that all geth could upload themselves to. The remainder, known as "the true geth", declined Sovereign's offer, deciding instead to start building a megastructure akin to a dyson sphere.^[10][16] During Legion's loyalty mission, a specialized side-quest that the player has to complete in order to gain each squadmate's loyalty, the player must decide whether to rewrite "the heretics"' code and force them to rejoin the "true geth" or destroy them entirely.^[10][16][17]

In the paid downloadable content Mass Effect 2: Overlord, the human-supremacist group Cerberus experimented with David Archer, an autistic individual, in order to find a way to gain control of the geth. To achieve this this, they connect him to a virtual intelligence, an advanced user interface software designed to simulate natural conversation, which ultimately merges with his consciousness. At the end of the DLC, the player is faced with the decision of freeing David Archer or leaving him with his brother Gavin, who had been the scientist in charge of the experiment.^[18]

Mass Effect 3

In Mass Effect 3, the player is tasked with uniting the galaxy's various species to fight off the ongoing Reaper invasion. During the course of the narrative, the player seeks to recruit the quarians to support the war effort. In spite of the larger threat posed by the Reaper invasion, the quarians launch a full invasion of their homeworld, forcing the geth to ally themselves with the Reapers. While boarding a geth dreadnought, the player either encounters Legion or, if Legion died or was never activated during the events of Mass Effect 2, a replacement geth virtual intelligence program. Whoever the player may encounter then reveals that the Geth code had been modified by the Reapers to make them more intelligent and organic in nature, thus making each geth program an independent consciousness. They will then affirm that the geth had no interest in restarting the geth-quarian conflict and that peace may still be possible. The outcome of this conflict is dependant on player choice regarding decisions involving Tali'Zorah, Legion and the interactions between them and their respective species. The player will ultimately end up supporting the quarians, supporting the geth instead, or brokering a peace deal between the two. If a peace agreement is reached or the player allies with geth, the Reaper upgrades to the geth code are retained while their alliance with them is severed. If the player otherwise decides to support the quarians, the entirety of the geth race is destroyed.^[10][19]

During a side-quest that must be done before the end of the conflict, the player is able to enter the geth consensus and gain an insight into the Morning War and the geth-quarian conflict from the geth point of view, showing that not all quarians had agreed with the start of the conflict.^[10]

Mass Effect: Andromeda

The geth do not make a physical appearance in Mass Effect: Andromeda, but they play an indirect role in its backstory. They are responsible for the discovery of "Golden Worlds", a group of presumably habitable planets within the fictional Heleus Cluster of the Andromeda Galaxy. To achieve this, the geth built a faster-than-light telescope from three mass effect relays, a set of Reaper-built massive space installations that allow spaceships to slingshot themselves from one to another through a corridor of massless space.^[7]

Untitled future Mass Effect game

On November 7th 2021, a date celebrated by BioWare and the Mass Effect fandom as the official Mass Effect day, BioWare released a piece of concept art for the next installment in the series. The image depicted a massive crater whose shape closely resembled that of a geth.^[20]

On the same date in 2022, BioWare released a short video in which Liara T'Soni appears to be engaged in a conversation with a geth.^[21]

Reception

The geth species has been widely praised for their depth and uniqueness within the Mass Effect universe. Shubhankar Parijat of GamingBolt ranked them #3 on his list of the best alien races in the franchise, emphasizing their distinctiveness and the intriguing concept they represent.^[22] Similarly, Sean Murray of TheGamer placed the geth at #4, noting the formidable power and complexity they gain from being a networked artificial intelligence.^[23] The geth were ranked #48 in IGN's list of the 100 best video game villains, noting them as an example of "man's most fearsome technological nightmare" and emphasizing their ambush tactics.^[3] Jakub Mirowski of GamePressure, in his list of enemies he regretted killing, reflected on the emotional impact of fighting the geth, stating that it was difficult to feel satisfaction in defeating them once it became clear they were on the verge of true sentience, capable of noble acts and profound sacrifices. Mirowski also pointed out how the geth’s exploitation by the Reapers, so soon after their struggle for autonomy, evoked a surprising sense of compassion.^[14] Shayna Josi of Game Rant underlined the geth as one of the most interesting AI's in science fiction. Josi argued that the discarded squadmate concept of the 'Geth Frankenstein' could be an interesting one to explore in the next Mass Effect game.^[24] Matthew Byrd of Den of Geek highlighted the parallels between the geth and other synthetic species found in science fiction. He noted that their networked AI "hivemind" is reminiscent of the Borg from Star Trek, while their design and philosophy draw clear comparisons to the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.^[25] Eric Emin Wood invoked the geth in his critique of Hanson Robotics, arguing that when an AI reaches a certain intellectual milestone, it should be considered a new form of life.^[26] Tyler Fischer of ComicBook.com discussed how the geth could play a role in bringing back Commander Shepard in the next Mass Effect game.^[27]

The geth-quarian conflict has also been spotlighted: Carlos Morales of IGN Southeast Asia called it one of the most iconic confrontations in the franchise, essential for inclusion in Amazon's planned TV adaptation,^[28] while András Neltz of Kotaku emphasized it as one of the most significant player decisions in the entire Mass Effect trilogy.^[29]

Analysis

The geth have been analyzed to great depth by multiple sources. In a scholary e-book published by BRILL, Thomas Faller compared the geth to René Descartes' cogito ergo sum, a philosophical notion that once an individual becomes self-conscious, it gains the ability to form connections and affirm its own existence. Faller also compared the geth to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein noting that, as seen in the novel, the quarians "struggle to remain dominant as the creations gain consciousness and self-awareness". Faller also used Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics to highlight how Mass Effect and BioWare use the geth to predict a "more-than-likely future of artificial intelligence in terms of their development as slaves".^[8] David Callahan of the University of Aveiro analyzed the complexity of the decision to rewrite or destroy the geth heretics in Mass Effect 2, drawing an analogy between the choice that the player has to make to alter a species' destiny to "what settler-invader peoples did, and are still doing, to Indigenous peoples".^[31] Kelly I. Aliano drew comparisons between the geth and theories of posthumanism and a potential "robot revolution", arguing that although such a revolution is not imminent, its implications continue to resonate with our increasingly technology-mediated human lives.^[32]

Geth-quarian relationships have also been analyzed by multiple sources. In a scholary e-book published by BRILL, Vanessa Erat analyzed geth-quarian relationships from a post-colonialist and cultural point of view. Erat compared geth-quarian relationships to the writings of MUD's creator Richard Bartle and Cow Clicker's creator and Washington University professor Ian Bogost, reaching the conlusion that "the truly powerful thing that video games can do is to create empathy with the vulnerable".^[11] Kieran Wilson examined their relationships from a narrative perspective, arguing that they exemplify a stratified narrative model of game storytelling.^[33] Olof Persson analyzed quarian and geth relationships, debating wether organic beings should or shouldn't respect the interests of synthetic life, stating that "it could be argued that quarians are indeed entitled to their planet, and possibly even to ownership of the geth". Persson also compared geth-quarian relationships to the philosophical thought of Australian philosopher Peter Singer.^[12] In a scholar paper written for RSIS International, Mohd Hafriz Bin Abdul Hamid and Izlin Binti Mohamad Ghazali of MARA Technological University drew comparisons between the Geth-Quarian conflict and transhumanism to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, suggesting that the geth mirrored certain aspects of Israeli statehood. They also stated that reducing the conflict to a simple analogy in which the geth are portrayed as Israeli and the quarians as Palestinian is an overimplifaction of the conflict. ^[34] Dr. Dries de Groot of Radboud University highlighted the similarities between the geth uprising and concerns regarding the rise of a mechanical force and its plausible effects on the labor force expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto. De Groot also noted the similarities between the initial oppression of the geth and the the treatment of artificial beings as an exploited class in Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.^[10]

The geth have been analyzed from an aspect of philisophy and theology by multiple sources. Jordan Webber and Daniel Griliopoulos analyzed the geth within the context of the philosophy of Hilary Putnam's functionalism, also using them as a warning about the possible dangers of AI.^[16] In Technology and Theology, Erin Archer examines the question of whether the geth posess souls through the philosophical frameworks of Origen of Alexandria and Thomas Aquinas. Archer argues that, according to Origen’s thought, the geth could potentially possess human-like souls, as his philosophy allows for a broader interpretation of spiritual essence. In contrast, Aquinas' framework suggests that the geth could not possess souls unless they had a divine origin, since he ties the soul intrinsically to divine creation. Archer also explores whether the geth exhibit conscious free will, discerning that, unlike HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the geth not only demonstrate conscious free will but may also possess the capacity for a soul.^[30]