Can SLDs die?, Permanently dead, I mean...

If even the TCTF needed to torture her to get the information out her, it would mean they could not access her data in the usual way. If that is the case, then perhaps information stored in the SLD's 'brains' are not very easily extracted.

But if her data is arranged in an easily readable format, a format that the TCTF has the means to read, then it could be as Virumor said, that only the TCTF has the decryption abilities to read her data. Perhaps only Griffin and higher authority can read these files.

Still, if they could read them then the TCTF probably placed a lot of trust in her since, well, they did not believe Shinatama could lie. Griffin did not suspect the possibility either...

WJTW

I went back and read the terminal on level 13. The fact that Shinatama has reports to falsify means the TCTF get information out of her in a fairly mundane fashion, they don't directly hack her brain or whatever. They couldn't pick up on what Shinatama held back until after she was deconstructed and her engrams examined (whatever the hell that means). I think the conclusion I'd draw is that the TCTF doesn't have terribly good access to her brain if they don't want to harm her. Since I don't feel like letting go of this theory yet, the threat of pain then becomes possible insurance against Shinatama rebelling. If they need to keep tracking Konoko through Shinatama's shared neurolink, they could simply threaten Shinatama with pain and force her to keep them updated. Obviously they miscalculated her capabilites badly, but I think it's in some ways more rational than trying to humanize her. After all Shinatama is a tool for the TCTF, not their pet. It's in keeping with Griffin's manipulative and ruthless character -- storywise I think it works quite well.

The other reason I like this idea is that there's an interesting observation to made about Muro. He didn't think of creating SLD's capable of undergoing torture and he's bemused that the TCTF did. He's the amoral bad guy, and the TCTF one-upped him. It explains his curiosity over Shinatama and adds some depth to his character (though he'd still be a monstrous psychopath). I would love to see a conversation between him and Konoko where he tries to pin some of the blame on the TCTF for intending Shinatama to be tortured in the first place, even only as a contingency.

You mean computers that try to simulate biological thought processes? Oh, I'm an expert. I even read a book on it once when I was trying to avoid cramming for an exam on something else.

Do you really think it's a good idea to build in such a response? I can just imagine my Windows machine switching itself off when I try to download the Firefox installer.

Like virumor says, it seems they wanted her human-like so Konoko could relate to her. Why else would she have emotions? Legs? A sailor suit?

It's tough to come up with rational-sounding explanations for these; I think "to make her human-like" is the best one we've got.

Perhaps we need another thread to discuss "Why does Shinatama need to look different to other computer consoles."

...because that would have required foresight and cunning. And TCTF showed their lack of these attributes when they designed Shinatama with functioning legs.

I figured the reason that she's given a (specific) personality is so she can process Konoko's experience in a similar manner, and then extrapolate Kon's future actions.

Shinatama's given a lot of information: she has Konoko's real identity, knows about the chrysalis and overpower effect, etc. Griffin should have been pretty paranoid about this, right? The TCTF did reserve the right to eliminate Shinatama at any time using that coded self-destruct), but if Muro's comguys etc. could scramble the sequence (which is arguable to explain why the TCTF failed to use the self-destruct before), it would have made a lot of sense to give her some kind of "suicide pill" option to protect what she knows. People have done similar things before; the example I was thinking of was the American U2 spyplane pilot who was shot down over Russia in the cold war. The other option would be to make her resistant to torture, which she isn't. I can believe that it's an oversight on the TCTF's part, but I'd rather see their failings result from something more interesting than bureaucratic stupidity. The off-track terminal in the State Building questioning Griffin's performance kind of makes me want to give the TCTF another chance.

Cool idea: Shinatama has the suicide option herself and could have blown the shit out of Muro all along if she'd wanted to. She's decides not to as she believes that Konoko can rescue her and does not want to die. Major breach of protocol there. Griffin's non-response to her capture could be explained by the fact that he thinks Shinatama's already blown herself to smithereens, while Konoko's unaware of this; he's just waiting for the evening news to report a mysterious explosion. When he later recovers control of the SLD and the Konoko-tracker simultaneously, he'd be very surprised -- Griffin wouldn't be likely to expect anything positive had happened, and then his decision to try and kill them both would make sense by his own paranoid reasoning. It's a little much, but still...

Any other conspiracy-theory explanations we can offer up for Shinatama's peculiar design?

I think she doesn't want to blow herself up -if she's capable of that, which i doubt- because she doesn't want to die before telling Konoko her real name and that's she's not who she thinks she is, hence starting Konoko's quest for her past life.

That's possible, as Griffin didn't understand that Shinatama was almost a person and very dear to Konoko and vice versa... he just saw her as a machine who'd put the TCTF business before anything else.

Your theory stands and falls with the question whether Shinatama is able to kill herself if captured - which i don't think is the case.

Imagine something goes wrong with an SLD, that an SLD goes "rogue" and blows itself up in a shopping mall or in the TCTF building itself... that's why i think only the TCTF can blow her up.

So i think Griffin really wanted to recover Shinatama by sending his strike team, only problem was Konoko got in the way.

Yeah, the reason SLDs are physically similar to children is to reduce the harm they could do if they went rogue. Giving them a suicide option would go against this.

They'd have to trust Shinatama as well to build a feature like that into her, which Griffin has a problem doing. Strange though that they entrust her with so much responsibility and information but seem to have no safeguards at all against her beyond an unreliable self-destruct system. Isn't she networked to pretty much the entire world? I'd be curious to know how she functioned with and how she was regarded by the TCTF staff. You don't see her interact much with them.

I think she spent pretty much all her time on her chair, until Barabas pulled her off... i never pictured her going to the park with Konoko and putting up a kite together.

I think Konoko and Shinatama merely were in contact together via the future version of the Internet, or something. Of course Griffin would never allow Shinatama to leave the building.

This post has been edited by virumor on Jul 20 2005, 07:42 AM

Another reason she did not choose to self-destruct -- assuming she could do so on her own -- might be because she did not want Konoko to get upset over her destruction. It was only when the TCTF themselves sent the command that she, sadly, had to submit...

More later, perhaps...

WJTW

Shinatama's one of the more neglected characters in the game. She doesn't really go beyond a plot device to provoke sympathy and justify Konoko's late-game rampage. The tragic part of Oni's story is that there's such good character designs and archetypes but Bungie never got around to fleshing them out. Trying to reconcile the personal lives, feelings and decisions of all these people in a highly dystopian world, where they're facing an environmental holocaust, species extinction, political meltdown, rampant violence, and unprecedented technological advances is a great base for a story. It's a (sci-fi)writer's dream -- you see political storylines, but not a lot of good character-oriented stuff in video games often and it's too bad Bungie didn't seize it.

I'm pretty sure that Shinatama's got the potential to be more interesting than "ultimate-question-mark" Mukade if written correctly. She's got all the personality that we do but none of the rights, she's functionally enslaved by the TCTF through her very design, her only friend is a neohuman killing machine she's been cloned after, she has the capability to process, navigate and control all sorts of electronic information and defense systems, and she's beginning to think for herself. If she's truly based on Konoko, she's hardly going to quietly submit to all the demands placed on her, but she doesn't have any of the capability she needs to rebel openly. It's quite a setup. In this genre, how much more classic do you want?