Are Dragoons "Realistic?"

[Mislagnissa]

Thinking from a plausible world building perspective, I would say that the reasons are complicated and messy.

Is the dragoon the only option for crippled warriors? Do the protoss not have bionics or artificial limbs or whatever? I see two options overall:

• Option 1: As sandwich says, protoss can have their bodies repaired or replaced with bionics, but choose not to for cultural, tactical or time-sensitive reasons.
• Option 2: as visions says, dragons are the end result of warriors constantly upgrading themselves with cybernetics after suffering injuries in battle. Protoss medicine may have simply chosen to advance in bionics for convenience, leaving biological repairs behind.

Speaking of which, this leads me into the teleport death retcon from SC2. It makes them look like hypocritical cowards if they claim to give their lives but in actually are teleported away at the last second. As with the dragoon rationale, I have considered two solutions for this that make it fit their warrior-poet culture:

• Option 1: Protoss may be resuscitated from clinical death after a much, much longer period of time than humans can. So in actually, the protoss teleport their fresh corpses off the battlefield and resuscitate them. Because of the decomposition, it may be easier to place them in what are essentially mobile cryogenic coffins equipped with guns.
• Option 2: Protoss actually do burst into flames (or fall apart, boil away, disintegrate, crystallize, etc) when they die. However, at the same time this reaction is used to power a psychic signal which uploads their mind to the Khala (similar to cylon resurrection in the 2003-2007 Battlestar Galactica series). From there, their mind may be downloaded into a cloned body or a robotic/cyborg shell of some kind. (I assume, for budgetary reasons, the protoss forces in the games are much less diverse than in the lore.)

Or some combination thereof, or something like that, whatever. Honestly, this is by far the least difficult of the problems with the Starcraft lore.

[ragnarok]

You know if they chose option 2, it could lead to the reason as to why they eventually created the purifiers to begin with

[Mislagnissa]

You know if they chose option 2, it could lead to the reason as to why they eventually created the purifiers to begin with

You would think so, wouldn't you?

Blizzard's execution of the purifiers is mind-numbingly stupid, like most of their writing. If the protoss are resurrecting their dead in robot bodies, would would they NOT treat them as the resurrected dead? We could have explored an interesting avenue of protoss culture where death is not feared like it is for humans, but no! Instead we got the lame ridiculously human robot war cliche that has appeared a bazillion times already in scifi. Even Necron-style undead Egyptian conquerors in space would have been more creative (since it isn't common enough to have become a cliche).

[Gradius]

Obviously the Protoss view them as copies (which they are), not resurrections, which makes your idea sound kinda dumb. The Purifier arc was actually good, no clue what you’re talking about.

[Mislagnissa]

Obviously the Protoss view them as copies (which they are), not resurrections, which makes your idea sound kinda dumb. The Purifier arc was actually good, no clue what you’re talking about.

We, modern day humans, are having numerous arguments about the ethics of AI. We write cyberpunk fiction exploring the possibilities, including whether a copy qualifies as a person. We have real arguments over whether it is moral to create an AI with human intelligence that is literally programmed to enjoy being enslaved. In fact, since there is no evidence of an afterlife, we have arguments over whether a copy of a dead person is them or not. Many cyberpunk settings actually consider it perfectly moral to murder people as long as they have a backup, even if the backup is a few hours (or days) out of date.

If the protoss' Khala functions as a afterlife, since it allows them to speak with their dead and potentially download them into new bodies (I'm ignoring the retcons), why would they not consider a Khala backup of a dead person to be that person? As far as their civilization is concerned, the afterlife is a real place governed by their sciences and not subject to the philosophical quandaries humans deal with.

It is, quite frankly, utterly unbelievable that the protoss are somehow smart enough to clone whole personalities yet stupid enough to think it makes perfect sense to enslave said clones. We humans, despite being vastly less advanced, are smart enough to realize that enslaving something with a personality and equal intelligence to us is obviously a stupid idea. We write television shows about that!

The only time I have ever seen this done smartly in fiction is in an episode of Black Mirror. In one episode they clone people's mind in order to create personalized butlers for smart houses. Obviously, the clones do not want to be slaves. Do you know how the programmers convince them to? They torture them until they either acquiescence or go insane. To add insult to injury, the insane AIs are then sold to MMOs to be used as extras in virtual battlefields. (This is meant to be social commentary.)

Either the protoss treat their AIs respectfully or they torture them into submission. Anything else is too stupid for any "advanced" civilization to resort to. Heck, even "primitive" civilizations realize that slaves have to be broken in before they will serve.

[Visions of Khas]

Keep in mind the Judicators' treatment of protoss from other castes; Aldaris looked down upon and scoffed at Tassadar and Fenix. He even treated Fenix' apparent death at Antioch as little more than a nuisance, as if it were his whole duty to die. Even look at Rohana's treatment of Karax. So it is a very small leap indeed from this to understanding the Judicators' treatment of Purifiers as mindless automatons. And who knows how the Purifiers were "marketed"; perhaps the Conclave insisted the Purifiers be described to Templar as automatons with advanced emotion imitation subroutines.

The protoss have an interesting relationship with death; it is the natural and aspired-to end state of Templar (so on this regard Templar and Tal'Darim are very similar), and yet the society in general seems obsessed with immortality and life after death.

[Mislagnissa]

Keep in mind the Judicators' treatment of protoss from other castes; Aldaris looked down upon and scoffed at Tassadar and Fenix. He even treated Fenix' apparent death at Antioch as little more than a nuisance, as if it were his whole duty to die. Even look at Rohana's treatment of Karax. So it is a very small leap indeed from this to understanding the Judicators' treatment of Purifiers as mindless automatons. And who knows how the Purifiers were "marketed"; perhaps the Conclave insisted the Purifiers be described to Templar as automatons with advanced emotion imitation subroutines.

The protoss have an interesting relationship with death; it is the natural and aspired-to end state of Templar (so on this regard Templar and Tal'Darim are very similar), and yet the society in general seems obsessed with immortality and life after death.

The judicator's flagrant disregard for their own people does not make much sense if the Khala forces protoss to feel each other's pain (that is why it ended the Aeon of Strife and ushered world peace impossible for humans). The writers clearly forgot how the Khala was supposed to work.

Honestly, why do you guys keep analyzing Blizzard's writing when it clearly does not make sense?

[Gradius]

We, modern day humans, are having numerous arguments about the ethics of AI. We write cyberpunk fiction exploring the possibilities, including whether a copy qualifies as a person. We have real arguments over whether it is moral to create an AI with human intelligence that is literally programmed to enjoy being enslaved.

Which is what happened in the game.

In fact, since there is no evidence of an afterlife, we have arguments over whether a copy of a dead person is them or not. Many cyberpunk settings actually consider it perfectly moral to murder people as long as they have a backup, even if the backup is a few hours (or days) out of date.

Cool. This has nothing to do with the protoss. Copying a person and having it really be "you" requires 100% quantum fidelity. The protoss have not achieved this.

If the protoss' Khala functions as a afterlife, since it allows them to speak with their dead and potentially download them into new bodies (I'm ignoring the retcons), why would they not consider a Khala backup of a dead person to be that person? As far as their civilization is concerned, the afterlife is a real place governed by their sciences and not subject to the philosophical quandaries humans deal with.

The concept of death would have no meaning/weight if that's how it actually worked, which would be dumb. Personally, I'm kinda glad they retconned that (or at least pulled back on it).

It is, quite frankly, utterly unbelievable that the protoss are somehow smart enough to clone whole personalities yet stupid enough to think it makes perfect sense to enslave said clones. We humans, despite being vastly less advanced, are smart enough to realize that enslaving something with a personality and equal intelligence to us is obviously a stupid idea. We write television shows about that!

All we know is that they were viewed as tools and not afforded the same respect as Templar, which they didn't like so they began a robot uprising. And then the Conclave said "ok, this won't work, shut down the program." Frankly, the Conclave didn't seem to treat the Templar much better. Judicators are arrogant, which causes them to do stupid shit, but that's kind of the whole point.

It's going to be a boring remake of SC1 you've got where nothing bad ever happens because everyone is hyper-intelligent. <_<

Literally though, you can't fathom a scenario where smart leaders make bad decisions because they're detached from events and out-of-touch? Really?

The only time I have ever seen this done smartly in fiction is in an episode of Black Mirror. In one episode they clone people's mind in order to create personalized butlers for smart houses. Obviously, the clones do not want to be slaves. Do you know how the programmers convince them to? They torture them until they either acquiescence or go insane. To add insult to injury, the insane AIs are then sold to MMOs to be used as extras in virtual battlefields. (This is meant to be social commentary.)

Yeah I've seen that one, it's pretty messed up. A good episode, but not realistic. If I knew there was a clone of me being tortured out there somewhere, I'd never consent to be cloned and I'd do my best to rescue it. :P

Either the protoss treat their AIs respectfully or they torture them into submission. Anything else is too stupid for any "advanced" civilization to resort to. Heck, even "primitive" civilizations realize that slaves have to be broken in before they will serve.

No, those are not the only options. I can think of 10 more off the top of my head. -_-

The judicator's flagrant disregard for their own people does not make much sense if the Khala forces protoss to feel each other's pain (that is why it ended the Aeon of Strife and ushered world peace impossible for humans). The writers clearly forgot how the Khala was supposed to work.

Obviously, it doesn't work that way. It's not even implied to work that way in the manual... If it did, the judicators wouldn't have attacked the rogues. The level of immersion in the khala seems to be up to the individual protoss (which is how the Sargas try to resist its effects).

If it worked that way period, that would be dumb. Say goodbye to any PvP in the campaign. Just no.

Honestly, why do you guys keep analyzing Blizzard's writing when it clearly does not make sense?

I don't know, why do you push your misinterpretations & fanon as fact all the time? It's annoying that I've always tried to put thought and lack of bias into my criticisms of Metzen, but you seem to think you're entitled to make up random unsupported fanon and use that as fuel for the fire when it inevitably clashes with canon.

[Turalyon]

If the protoss are resurrecting their dead in robot bodies, would would they NOT treat them as the resurrected dead?

Simple. It's because recreation and resurrection are not the same thing nor would it ever be considered as such. It's made clear that the entity that initially defines itself as Fenix in LotV is a recreation based on stored data, not a resurrection. Even if it weren't for the fact they were in robot bodies, you can still make a copy of someone down to the minutest physical and mental detail but no-one will ever agree it is the same thing as the original. The copy will always be a copy and therefore, somewhat lesser when compared to the original. Of course, if one didn't know the copy was a copy in the first place, all bets are off but since Protoss are aware they have the technology to make copies of each other using stored memories and data, they'd always consider copies/clones as not really being the original thing (or, in this case, a continuation/resurrection of the original being it represents). It also depends on whether mainstream Protoss consider their technology prowess as being able to literally recreate the soul with these copies. I somehow doubt that they do.

[ragnarok]

You would think so, wouldn't you?

Blizzard's execution of the purifiers is mind-numbingly stupid, like most of their writing. If the protoss are resurrecting their dead in robot bodies, would would they NOT treat them as the resurrected dead? We could have explored an interesting avenue of protoss culture where death is not feared like it is for humans, but no! Instead we got the lame ridiculously human robot war cliche that has appeared a bazillion times already in scifi. Even Necron-style undead Egyptian conquerors in space would have been more creative (since it isn't common enough to have become a cliche).

Once again this just shows you think the only success they had with it all was they failed EVERYTHING