Legion (Mass Effect)

The geth were created by the quarians, a species of humanoid extraterrestrials known for their skills with technology and synthetic intelligence, to be "servants of the people" as their labor force.[2][3] The geth do not share the concept of individuality, and think in terms of the entire consensus.[4] A single geth program has enough processing power for its motor functions and sensory input, and is essentially a simple software program housed within "mobile platforms" made from flexible synthetic material.[5]. When more than one geth are brought together, they could network their processing power; while not quite a hive mind, they form a system which consists of the coordination of multiple simple programs akin to swarm robotics, freeing up cycles for more advanced forms of reasoning, and making them capable of more complicated or nuanced tasks.[6] Eric Emin Wood from ITBusiness.ca explained the nature of the geth by illustrating the following example, "imagine the Geth mothership as a cloud server, each Geth unit as a computer, and each Geth as a file".[7]

Through their ubiquitous integration within quarian society, a desired collective behavior slowly emerged from the interactions between the geth and interactions of the geth with their environment, growing to the point where the geth network formed an emergent artificial intelligence — the geth achieving sentience and consciousness. Fearing revolt after the geth achieved sentience centuries before the events of the Mass Effect series, the quarians began destroying their creations, which leds to the very revolution they feared.[8] A protracted war began between the two biological and technological races, that ultimately ended with the geth seizing control of their homeworld Rannoch, and the surviving quarians fleeing their homeworld in what is now known as the Migrant Fleet, wandering the galaxy constantly seeking resources.[6] The former quarian territories became occupied by the isolationist geth; any encroaching starship is immediately destroyed.[6] Because of the geth, most true artificial intelligence in the Milky Way has been deemed illegal, and most organic races hold a deep distrust of synthetic intelligence.[2]

Legion is the first representative from the true Geth Consensus encountered by Shepard, as the geth enemies from the first Mass Effect are members of a splinter heretic faction who worshiped Sovereign as a god and followed the Reaper to war with all other sentient life.[9] Mass Effect writer Patrick Weekes noted that Legion's platform is meant to contain a host number of "core Geth intelligences" in a single mobile unit, and is thus able to handle "the equivalent of offline mode".[5] According to writer Sylvia Feketekuty, Legion could connect back to the other geth clusters at will, though the gestalt intelligence ultimately is an "anonymous collective going out on its own".[5]

Legion looks much like other geth, but he is capable of independent thought and demonstrates emotional attachment. He develops a unique fascination with the player character, whom he refers to as "Shepard-Commander". Legion's backstory involves him retracing the worlds Shepard had visited in the first Mass Effect, searching for the human who managed to defeat Sovereign and the geth heretic faction.[9] Eventually he found the SSV Normandy's wreckage on the planet Alchera and learns of Shepard's death, but kept a piece of the Commander's torn off N7 armor and attached it to his own body.

The geth are the most common recurring antagonists in the first Mass Effect, varying in size and power from little bi-pedal, gun toting robots all of the way up to a massive walker known as Colossus.[9] The geth are meant to represent an example of the dangers of artificial intelligence, and the conflict between organic and synthetic intelligence, which are some of the series' overarching themes.[5] The geth were intended to be "pushed the side" after the first Mass Effect, and Legion was not originally supposed to be made a squadmember.[10][11] However, overall fan response to the geth was positive, so their role was expanded for the remainder of the original trilogy. This had the side effect of lessening focus on other minor plot lines, including that of the insectoid rachni.[10]

The geth were first envisioned as organic beings with synthetic fluid flowing through their veins, comparable to Bishop from Aliens.[11] The design team disclosed that the geth took one of the longest times to finalize, as they wanted to make them stand out from enemies in other science fiction universes. The geth were designed to resemble their creators; their hands, head shape and legs in particular are similar to the quarians. Most geth share a similar head design, which was initially finished for the geth armature, one specific geth enemy from the first game.[12]

The design team's initial approach to Legion's concept was to distinguish him from other geth.[12] Sketches of Legion with various different head shapes or two or more glowing photo-receptors in lieu of a single bright "flashlight head" were featured in The Art of the Mass Effect Universe, which were ultimately not chosen as the team changed direction and applied restraint.[12] Legion's final design incorporates a ripped off section of Shepard's armor from the first game, which he chose to cover the battle damage in his chest.[12]

In a behind-the-scenes video uploaded by Game Informer in April 2011, Mass Effect 3's audio lead Rob Blake explained the "arduous" process of morphing the spoken dialogue by Legion's actor D.C. Douglas into the desired voice for the character. His goal was to retain the signature granular, "clicky" sound effects of a typical geth unit without compromising the intonation of the actor's performance.[13]

Legion first appears in Mass Effect 2 as an unidentified geth unit onboard a derelict Reaper, where he assisted Shepard's squad from attacking husks with a sniper rifle. He is disabled by a husk while opening the way for the squad to reach the ship's core. Shepard decides to take the disabled geth back to the Normandy at the conclusion of the mission. The geth unit can be sold to Cerberus for research, or kept stored under guard in the AI Core of the Normandy. If reactivated for Shepard to interrogate, he will be named by EDI and agrees to join Shepard's suicide mission against the Collectors.[5] To gain Legion's loyalty, Shepard must travel to a heretic geth station and either choose to destroy all heretic geth or to reprogram their own mind-altering virus so that the they will rejoin the true geth.[5] After completing the mission, Legion will become loyal to Shepard and will eventually reveal that the heretics decided to help Sovereign in the original Mass Effect in return for a Reaper body so that all geth could upload themselves and join together into a single consciousness.[5] The true Geth Consensus declined to advance Sovereign's agenda and believe that all life have a right to self-determination; Legion reveals that the geth intend to do this by building a massive structure similar to a dyson sphere, which could house every single geth program.[5] If Shepard asks Legion why he repaired himself from damage sustained on Eden Prime with pieces of Shepard's old N7 armour from the Normandy's crash site, Legion becomes evasive in his replies.[14]

Legion returns in Mass Effect 3 if he survived the suicide mission from the previous game.[15] After defeating the Collectors, Legion returned to the Geth Consensus in the Perseus Veil.[15] Regardless of whether the heretics were rewritten or destroyed, the quarians, in an attempt to retake Rannoch, their homeworld, attacked first.[15] They destroyed the mega-structure, which was still under construction and had a significant number of geth programs already installed. With their intelligence dimmed and survival taking precedence among the geth, they choose to make a deal with the Reapers, allowing themselves to be controlled with Reaper code to grant them greater intelligence and fighting ability, believing the cost of their free will an acceptable price to avoid extinction.[15] Legion is then captured by the heretics, who used him to broadcast the Reaper signal to all geth from a dreadnought, even to those beyond the Veil. Shepard rescues Legion, who assists Shepard by using an improved organic-machine interface, which allows Shepard to enter the geth collective and sever their connection to the Reapers, throwing their fleet into disarray.

Prior to attacking the geth base on Rannoch, Legion reveals that the Reaper code is contained within his platform. After assisting Shepard in destroying the Reaper leading the attack on the Rannoch, Legion attempts to upload the Reaper upgrades to the geth to give them true intelligence and consciousness, but with free will.[7] The code is incomplete, forcing Legion to upload and disperse his own code throughout the collective, effectively deactivating the gestalt consciousness residing within the platform.[15] Shepard will have to choose between allowing Legion to upload the code and allow the geth to wipe out the quarians, or stopping Legion and allow the quarians to wipe out the geth.[7] Alternatively, if multiple conditions are met in both Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 depending on the player's choices, Shepard and Tali could convince the quarians that the geth do not seek to harm them and to break off their attack. If the player passes this check, Legion’s geth programs are transferred from the platform to the geth mothership, ensuring the geth consensus has attained free will; their first act is to reinforce the quarians' immune systems by reprogramming their suits.[15] Legion, in his final moments, refers to himself as "I" and not "we", signifying that he has become a true individual rather than a gestalt intellect.[7] Tali tells Legion that the answer to the question the geth asked centuries ago, if they had souls, was "yes".[7] Regardless of how the situation between the quarians and the geth is resolved, Legion's name is engraved on the memorial wall on the Normandy.

If a new game is started for Mass Effect 3 or if the player imports a saved game where Legion cannot appear in Mass Effect 3, Legion's role in the narrative will be replaced by a "Geth VI" constructed in Legion's likeness, with the non-standard elements like the section of N7 armor and the hole in its torso recreated via hologram. It has no memory of the events after Saren's attack on Eden Prime, and it will not be possible for the player to broker a ceasefire between the geth and the quarians.

If the player imports a saved game where Legion was given to Cerberus in Mass Effect 2, he will appear as an enemy unit when Shepard raids the Cerberus Cronos Station in Mass Effect 3.[16]

A fan dressed as Legion at PAX Prime 2013

Legion is one of the most popular and recognizable characters from the Mass Effect series. Steven Hopper of IGN listed the character as the fifth-best Mass Effect teammate for Mass Effect 2, looking forward to seeing how he would develop in the then-upcoming Mass Effect 3 and calling his recruitment "an awesome twist".[17] GamesRadar's Jordan Baughman cited Legion as an example of BioWare's "Kickass Robot" character archetype, following on from Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47 and Dragon Age's Shale.[18] Legion is ranked as the seventh best Mass Effect companion by PC Gamer; staff member Chris Livingstone called Legion "an interesting character" in spite of what he considers to be humdrum sci-fi cliches present in Mass Effect's narrative, commenting the fact that "he crudely patched himself up with a piece of dead Shepard-Commander’s armor is not just cool, but the first sign that Legion is more than just a simple geth automation capable of independent thought and perhaps even sentimentality".[4] Green Man Gaming included Legion in their top 5 list of the best characters from the Mass Effect franchise.[19]

Outside of the Mass Effect series, Legion was an honourable mention in a list of top AI characters of the 2000s decade published by Game Informer.[20] GamesRadar also called him one of the best new characters of 2010, praising his "clinical and decidedly mechanical delivery" and intriguing dialogue.[21] Casey Lynch, again from IGN, believed Legion to have one of gaming's best "first encounters" with a character, thanking his musical theme and its "rousing crescendo".[22] A reader's poll published by IGN in December 2014 for their top ultimate RPG party choices placed Legion at #18 under the reserves section.[23]

The character continues to be referenced in other media after the conclusion of the original Mass Effect trilogy. In early 2018, some media outlets drew attention to the many visual similarities between reimagining of the 1965 series Lost in Space to the Mass Effect series, particular the redesigned Robot character's resemblance to the geth characters of Mass Effect.[24][25][26] In February 2019, Comicbook.com covered a story noting the trending number of Apex Legends players requesting for a Mass Effect Legion skin for the Pathfinder character.[27]

Legion's quote, "Does this unit have a soul?" was selected by Gamesradar as one of the best video game quotes of all time.[28] Legion's quote has been referenced by the Universal Life Church in a blog post on its official website[29], and by Amazon's Echo device.[30] BioWare acknowledged the Amazon Echo easter egg and responded with a pop culture reference of their own.[31]

Various sources have referred to Legion and the geth in their discussions about artificial intelligence in fiction. In his essay "We Are Legion: Artificial Intelligence in BioWare’s Mass Effect" published in Levelling Up: The Cultural Impact of Contemporary Videogames, Thomas Faller compared the geth narrative of becoming self-conscious about its situation to René Descartes' philosophical proposition cogito, ergo sum and the right to be accepted as individual. He notes that the Mass Effect universe "does not only provide us with classical themes such as a distinct breach of Asimov’s ‘Three Laws of Robotics,’ but also gives us the opportunity to experience those issues in a more immersive way".[32] The authors of the 2017 book Ten Things Video Games Can Teach Us: (about life, philosophy and everything), discussed the nature of Legion and the geth, and specifically whether the manner in which their intelligence is manifested fits into American philosopher Hilary Putnam's theory of functionalism.[5] Wood from ITBusiness.ca argued that one of the most dominant themes presented in the Mass Effect series is that "any groundbreaking creation will be accompanied by consequences both good and bad, and which it will be is often outside its creators’ control", noting that the series persuasively articulated that any AI advanced enough is essentially a new form of life better than an actual AI developer.[7]

Like other characters in the franchise, Legion has been subject to various merchandise, which includes a 13” tall action figure ThreeZero was first revealed in June 2015[33], and a collector’s item canvased print that parodies the Barack Obama "Hope" poster.[34]

• BLOG: Does This Unit Have a Soul? on the Official BioWare Blog.
• Mass Effect 2 Teaser on the Official Mass Effect YouTube channel.
• Mass Effect 2 Enemies on the Official Mass Effect YouTube channel.