Committing genocide against the Kett is a must?

Maybe in the next game, the player plays as a Kett with the capability to wipeout the Milky Way invaders. excellent. Take my money Bioware. hahahahaha

Let them have a word with me. I let the quarians destroy the geth. If I choose the geth, its the geth that destroy the quarians. If the geth make it to the end, its the destroy wave that destroys them.  The rachni? I'm I suppose to care about them?

Play your game however you like, I merely corrected your statement.

Yeah, you can't put the geth or quarians on Shepard. You can't even put the rachni fully on Shepard. The krogan, as a weapon of the Council, exterminated the rachni. Shepard, forced to act on his/her own, can make the choice to kill a single rachni that is presumably the last. Genocide? It's hard to lay the weight of that all on Shepard, though some feelings of guilt might follow him.

Yes, genocide is present in the OT, in the form of ancient history. Idiotic quarian species-suicide isn't quite the same thing, but ends similarly. Genocide is never presented as an option for the player, in the way this silly thread proposes. Of course, we all know this. It's actually amazing that this community keeps turning these ridiculous threads into actual conversations. I like it. This never would've happened in the old, angrier BSN.

I'd argue what you do to the Heretics in Mass Effect 2 counts as Shepard committing genocide. It fits every part of the definition. You are deliberately wiping out a large group of people because of what they are.

I can understand the argument, and I'm not sure where I stand. (I'm way too sleepy to offer a quality conversation, right now.)

The immediate arguments that spring to mind against this being genocide are that:

1) They're software, and some say that you can't commit genocide against software.

2) You're not killing them. You're reprogramming, or reeducating them.

I definitely don't like argument number one. The geth have gone way beyond the point of proving to me that they're "alive".

This brings us to point number two. The rewriting of the heretics feels a lot like Qunari reeducation, to me. I don't feel like I'm killing these geth. That's the other option. The rewrite is the morally questionable option in which you force them to think differently. I typically do rewrite the heretics, but I feel conflicted doing it, like I've done something intrusive and icky that simply had to be done.

I didn't see why it needed to be addressed since in terms of the Geth and Heretics it is irrelevant since they are shown and stated to have those things. 

Um...yes they have. Zevran, Isabela, Anders, and The Iron Bull are a few examples, and you can argue more depending on what you mean by 'pay'. 

In regards to the Rachni, it's quite the double standard that Wrex utilizes when calling for their destruction on Noveria compared to his demanding of a cure for his people. Sure Wrex has his biases, but he can't be that blind to the similarities between the two species. He wants to kill the last surviving Rachni on the grounds of their past history with the rest of society, of the destruction they wrought on the galaxy, but he wants everyone to overlook the Krogan's past with the rest of society, of the (arguably greater) destruction they wrought on the galaxy. What makes the Krogan so much more worthy of sparing compared to the Rachni anyway?

All other things being equal, it was the Rachni queen that actually stayed true to her promise to Shepard, she was raising and army to fight, and then, even after the narrative fiat that had them wiped out off camera she still immediately sent aid to the allied forces once she was freed. Wrex on the other hand goes back on his promise from ME 2, of his guarantee of an army of Krogan at Shepard's back the moment the Reapers arrived. The Rachni queen asks for no favors or special treatment when joining the fight against the invaders nor does she try and start any animosity between her species and others that may have had history with the Rachni. Wrex demands an end to the Genophage, puts the whole war on hold so that the cure can be developed, and all the while he's insulting the Salarians and Turians for their species' collective histories and past injustices to the Krogan. Etc. And on all of that, it wasn't the Genophage that was killing off the Krogan, but their  own fatalism and stupidity.

So, you have on one hand, a species ready and willing to help in the fight, no questions asked. A species that is starting from nothing and working to re-esablish themselves. And on the other you have a species that wants restitutions before any consideration of help is offered. A species that has been slowly killing itself off for the past thousand years.

 

Did we have a choice with Anders? Wasn't that scripted? I guess the others are true enough, they were just so obvious that I didn't fall into them.

The Iron Bull told you all along for whom he works, so it shouldn't be a surprise when he still works for them at the end. I know I wasn't surprised, and I wisely did not have him in the party when he decided his time with us was finished.

Isabela also seemed scripted. I guess you could simply not recruit her. Otherwise, she's going to do what she does, and then come back afterward or not.

I've never been betrayed by Zevran, so I had completely forgotten about him!

Basically, it's nearly impossible to be betrayed by a BioWare squadmate and not see it coming. It's just not in their style. I saw no reason to distrust Legion. The geth seemed to be playing it straight with me.

That option would never of been available had the reapers not interfered. The quarians were defeating the geth fairly easily until the reapers decided to give the geth a helping hand.

Why would I want the geth to upload the reaper code? I have no idea what will happen. The geth were attacking Shepard and the quarians when under control of the reapers. What's to make them not continue attacking the quarians and Shepard once that code is uploaded?
Indirect? Ha. What if instead of Tali standing around doing nothing while the geth uploads the code, she pushes the thing off the edge, shoots the thing or stabs the thing saving her species from being wiped out that ends up causing the geth to be destroyed? Is that genocide for saving her species? I mean if a machine is uploading a code that would end my species, I would destroy the thing.
No its not. Its collateral damage. And if the geth are destroyed by the quarians, would you still say its genocide if the edibot is destroyed?
What your saying is everyone should be choosing the green or blue so the geth aren't wiped out?