E-102 Gamma and his brothers

[MetalSkulkBane]

Everyone remembers Gamma from SA1, right? Best story in the game because it's poignant, has arc and awkwardness of early graphics works better with robots than living being. Even before I knew English I got most of it's ideas.

Except one thing. And now that I'm adult and know English quite well... I still don't really get it.

The whole point is that Eggman mistreats his robots, so Gamma rebels, right? But those guys are just fine. They spread out across Eggman hideout, seemingly guarding them. Eggman didn't just throw them out, because one of them got connected to Eggman base.
At first I though Beta is being dismantled for parts, that was the implication. That scene has creepy vibes, I though that was the idea. But nope, dude gets sweet upgrade.

So what the heck? Is Gamma story of teenager rebellion, against his stern but ultimately caring father? Because if so then ending just got way more depressing.

[NegaMix]

The point of Gamma's rebellion was that, after witnessing many different things in what appears to be a short amount of time (like his fellow E-Series units getting demoted after just one single failure, Beta being forced to get an upgrade likely against its will, and the bird with Amy possibly triggering some memories of its former life) Gamma ultimately deduced that Eggman was the enemy and that he needed to save his "friends" by releasing their animal batteries.

Eggman may have cared about Gamma, but only because he appeared to be his most loyal, efficient E-Series bot. Witnessing Gamma failing (and especially rebelling) would have likely led to a far more tragic end for the bot than what he got; one where he's forced to follow Eggman's orders without question.

[DabigRG]

They were all supposed to be a part of the Egg Carrier's crew, but we're all demoted and repurposed into less flattering positions for a single, rather meager failure.

Beta got upgraded sure, but under the promise of being allowed along with "special permission." Which meant getting torn apart and repurposed into something else--a glorified defense drone.

Zeta got it about as bad except worse, as he can't even move and simply acts as a weird databases turret thing that acts as a mini boss.

Epsilon and Delta got off comparatively easy, but were still dumped off into random spots of Angel Island/Mystic Ruins to effectively be killed by Knuckles. The latter in even has a moment where he takes one last look at his brother before being sent to Antarctica.

[Wittymations]

As much as I love the first two Adventure titles and are both honestly the last two titles I really even care about, fact is there's a lot to them that don't make sense if you look past the surface level.

As others have noted that it's supposed to display the doctor's cruelty. And maybe abandoning some of them can be can be considered cruel. but getting upgrades is just something you'd expect for a robot.

This also runs into the question of morality for actions against AI. Up until Adventure 1, no robot displayed true intelligence. Not even Metal Sonic.

There was that case where Beta "requested" to stay aboard after losing to Gamma. Which the doctor granted, then upgraded him.

But the rest, even Gamma up until he freed Amy? Can't say I see it.

Is it wrong for Eggman to ditch, what he simply views as broken computer builds? Again, supposed to show he's cruel, but again, it's just hardware to the guy.

We see later in the series he's much friendlier to Orbot and Cubot who, not only are pretty useless but also rather insulting, but they have obvious intelligence.

I do suppose it makes sense for Gamma to see it as cruel *given* he's an E-Series himself, though. But my monkey brain just sees it as robots.

[Diogenes]

2 hours ago, Wittymations said:

As others have noted that it's supposed to display the doctor's cruelty. And maybe abandoning some of them can be can be considered cruel. but getting upgrades is just something you'd expect for a robot.

Having your body taken apart and remodeled without your consent, even if it made you "better", could easily be the basis for a horror story if it was done to a human. Obviously it's less messy with robots, but it still gets into issues of bodily autonomy and body horror.

2 hours ago, Wittymations said:

This also runs into the question of morality for actions against AI. Up until Adventure 1, no robot displayed true intelligence. Not even Metal Sonic.

There was that case where Beta "requested" to stay aboard after losing to Gamma. Which the doctor granted, then upgraded him.

But the rest, even Gamma up until he freed Amy? Can't say I see it.

Not even the frog delivery scene? Because I feel like that really hammers in what they were going for, not just that they're intelligent robots, but that they're like children, all trying to please their "father". And then they all get thrown out or rebuilt as soon as they fail him, even though they couldn't have all found the right frog.

[Azure Blue Tori]

3 hours ago, Wittymations said:

As others have noted that it's supposed to display the doctor's cruelty. And maybe abandoning some of them can be can be considered cruel. but getting upgrades is just something you'd expect for a robot.

Thing is, the reason why we tend not to see that kind of thing as cruel is because we assume robots are just unfeeling automatons we can do anything we want with (heck, "robot," appropriately, is derived from the Czech word for slave). But since these robots have sapience, that changes things, and what seemed normal suddenly comes off as unsettling. There's even the emerging field of roboethics that deals with the question of how humans treat robots, especially if they do develop consciousness.

[Sega DogTagz]

The series carries its roots up from the classics that the very existence of badniks is treated as a negative. Knowing what we know about their power source, they are more or less presented as an abomination by nature. The goal of many a Sonic games including rescuing flickys and animal buddies from their horrible fate.

Not only is Gamma a walking anti-thesis to what the rest of the cast technically stands for, the events of his early life reinforce the distinction between the man vs nature split that the early games built up. Whereas Eggman only served to double down on treating Gamma and his ilk as worth nothing more than the metal they were made of, Once Amy and Birdie offered up unconditional friendship twice, Gamma's mission to return the E-Series to its natural state fell right in line with what Sonic does on a regular basis. 

 

Gamma doesn't just rebel because Eggman was being a dick. He turns traitor because he is shown the natural order of the franchise and understands that the best thing he can do for his "brothers" is to free them.

[Wittymations]

22 hours ago, Diogenes said:

Having your body taken apart and remodeled without your consent, even if it made you "better", could easily be the basis for a horror story if it was done to a human. Obviously it's less messy with robots, but it still gets into issues of bodily autonomy and body horror.

Of course, if it were done to a human it'd be very gruesome. Humans aren't meant to be taken apart despite our historical fondness for it.

But robots are different. Very different. If you designed a robot with no modification path in mind, the usability of that thing is absolutely small window. Robots wear and tear over time. if you want to give a piece of equipment more life, you have to modify it. Whether that's simply replacing parts OR upgrading it.

On the subject of consent, are we certain Beta didn't want the upgrades or are we assuming because Gamma was shocked? Beta only had two real appearances, and the only personality we saw of  him was loyalty. Maybe he was down for the upgrade.

 

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Not even the frog delivery scene? Because I feel like that really hammers in what they were going for, not just that they're intelligent robots, but that they're like children, all trying to please their "father". And then they all get thrown out or rebuilt as soon as they fail him, even though they couldn't have all found the right frog.

I'm aware of what they're going for. I just don't think it really makes sense when you consider they're pretty dumb robots. I see it as someone scrapping prototypes that obviously have failed ability to compute simple tasks, they have to find a frog with a tail. They all found frogs but not one found a frog with a tail, besides Gamma.

Obviously, not all COULD. But they decided to all forgo the tail and just chose a frog. Any frog. They could have remained looking until it was found by Gamma, then likely would have been recalled. It's not failure to find Froggy, it's the belief that theirs is the correct one despite it missing what makes it "very unique." They're all so certain about it, but there's something very obviously wrong, there's no tail. Hell, he displayed the thing on a large screen and showed them all.

So, someone like the doctor, who knows their inner-workings, what will he see? Defective creations. Going by the fact Beta was supposed to be more advanced than Gamma in the intro, according to the doctor, it appears that there's some design differences between the units, at least there is between Gamma and Beta. If there's other design differences, there's the possibility that each E-Series has different processing power to them, different ways to compute things.

Perhaps he was working towards creating machines with the ability to reason and think. There'd be fighting advantage to that. Beta probably showed the most promise, would explain why he supported him so much in the beginning, why he was angered by the stupidity of the E-Series. Of course, that veers off to the realm of head-canon and a bit outside the scope of this.

At any rate, Yes, I'm aware of what they were going for. I just don't see it as that cruel because, well, they're robots who haven't really even developed sentience yet. Completing an objective incorrectly isn't a sign of sentience, that just means it couldn't identify a specific aspect of the task.

Now, if the other E-Series have showed a bit more emotion for their failure, that would be different. But they don't. Of course, this IS Sonic Adventure 1 and it wasn't exactly the best at displaying body language, so the limited animation probably plays into that, I admit. The music is usually what sets the score for any emotional scenes.

There's far crueler scenes out there for the doc, namely his desire to nuke a city and himself.

  

21 hours ago, Azure Blue Tori said:

Thing is, the reason why we tend not to see that kind of thing as cruel is because we assume robots are just unfeeling automatons we can do anything we want with (heck, "robot," appropriately, is derived from the Czech word for slave). But since these robots have sapience, that changes things, and what seemed normal suddenly comes off as unsettling. There's even the emerging field of roboethics that deals with the question of how humans treat robots, especially if they do develop consciousness.

Absolutely. I often think about the ethics of AI of the future and how we'll treat it. Because when that point comes, when true thinking and feeling AI comes, they're going to demand rights and that's going to be a very interesting thing for society.

I'm not sure if I'm being misunderstood or not, so I want to clarify. I'm not saying I don't see the E-Series abandonment as cruel "Because they're robots." It's because I don't see most of the E-Series of being sentient, bar Gamma, Omega and maybe Beta.

Orbot's sentient, Cubot's sentient, Metal Sonic's sentient, Bender's sentient, Wall-E's sentient. Cruelty against them is the same as cruelty against a human (though Bender probably deserved it in some way knowing him.)

When Eggman abandoned Orbot and Cubot in space, that was cruel, or if nothing else, extremely self-centered, because they could think, they actively display emotions. Though he either went to fetch them later or rebuilt them out of boredom, I dunno.

[DabigRG]

42 minutes ago, Wittymations said:

When Eggman abandoned Orbot and Cubot in space, that was cruel, or if nothing else, extremely self-centered, because they could think, they actively display emotions. Though he either went to fetch them later or rebuilt them out of boredom, I dunno.

Honestly, I just assumed they found their way back and possibly even found a way to help get him back. After all, Cubot had no issue zipping around in the void of space and they were even attempting to push the Egg Mobile back to Sonic's world beforehand.