Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

Ugh, I fucked up and now I won't have 4 free Charm points this playthrough even after I saved the council for more Paragon points. Anyway that's it for the Operative Engineer Male Shepard I made, no way could I bother charming Saren at the end. I've spent all day with this character so I'll play anew character tomorrow.

Something really cool actually happened to me yesterday, in regards to my Shepard and the Virmire decision.

Shepard decided to talk to Ashley after having a huge stink over her mistrust of aliens (Ethel grew up with aliens on Earth and experienced the racism they got first-hand, so she's much more sympathetic to them than anyone on the ship really is in ME 1) to try and clear the air and maybe have a working relationship.

Then Ashley started reciting poetry, which bored Ethel, so she asked Ashley if there was something more interesting they could talk about. Then Ashley said, and I quote:

"Not everyone can take down a slaver ring on their first mission, commander! Some of us lead ordinary lives."

For a Gunnery Chief with no special talents to say that to a person who was down-on-her-luck, incapable of eating dinner for years at a time, and then forced to join the military simply because she had biotics? It came off as Ashley saying she had a better life than Ethel, and Ethel was furious. If the option existed, Ethel would have punched her in the face.

And then Ashley had the gall to start talking about the after-life, which to Ethel sounded like Ashley thought the Commander would go to hell for circumstances she cannot control. After that, Ethel refused to take Ashley groundside ever again, and callously threw Ashley to be nuked. When Kaidan asked why he was saved and not Ashley, Ethel spat Ash's words back at him and made it clear that it would be best if the crew forgot Ashley Williams ever existed.

As for Kaidan, I find that the two romance options are perceived much differently by the players depending on what gender they chose. If you're a male Shepard, Kaidan's personality and moral compass discussions are completely unavailable at worst, which means M!Shep only gets the surface details of who Kaidan is. With F!Shep and Ashley, her kindness and romantic side are also completely unavailable at worst, which means a F!Shep is only going to see Ashley at her worst (such as the aforementioned situation with Ethel).

I don't know if that was intentional, for the human LI in ME1 to be completely unappealing to the same gender player, but it's pretty interesting to see how that turned out. The same situation happened with Jack inME2; an entire facet of her character is completely unavailable unless you're paragon romancing her.

I went Kaidan on Virmire, but at the time it wasn't really a big issue. I had a small attachment to Ashley, but I was mid-romance with Kaidan and in the first game I honestly didn't have too much attachment to anyone.

It was a decision I later grew to be thankful for, and it's kind of weird imagining Mass Effect 3 without him. His character gets a bit more depth, bit more development, and he fits in well enough on the crew. He was never a favourite, but I did grow to somewhat like him. Ashley on the other hand stays moreorless the same, and she has less dialogue with the rest of the crew which makes her stand-out a bit awkwardly (even if she does have more dialogue elsewhere).

Also, her redesign always struck me as weird. Kaidan also gets an overhaul, but it's full-blown war with Cosmic Horror entities time, so bulking up makes a degree of sense.

edited 26th Apr '15 5:47:30 PM by Lavaeolus

Ashley on a save, Kaidan in the other. Shame they end up being interchangeable in the sequels, and even more there is no option to save both, the dynamic they had between each other was great.

BTW, Pressly is about as racist as Ashley is. And both of them end up growing out of it. Because distrust of the unknown and strange is a normal reaction, as is it fading once becoming familiar with.

edited 26th Apr '15 8:07:06 PM by Eriorguez

I like Ashley and Kaidan. I think they're both pretty cool characters. Ash has a definite racist streak, but she does grow out of that. And even early on, she's not all bad. She likes Tali, and hopes that the quarians will start getting more respect. By the end of the game, she's very much pro-alien, even chewing out the Terra Firma Party as racist douchebags. Which actually suggests she never really saw herself as racist, and further suggests she was probably never prone to hateful comments. She was simply distrustful. But like I said, she grows past that, too.

Kaidan's actually got a really interesting backstory. He's also usually got some reasonably interesting insights after missions. 3 does a great job fleshing him out even more, while Ashley gets fuck-all, which is a shame.

My next character is a female Infiltrator with the Hacking Bonus power.

A third option on Virmire would have completely negated the Sadistic Choice. The Rannoch situation has a third option, but there is a lot of hoops to jump through (and even then everybody who know what they're doing go for the peace). The first game simply did not have enough time to set up something similar.

The Sadistic Choice element of Virmire is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's a great crisis moment and a difficult decision for anyone to make the first time through. On the other hand, the Virmire Survivor behaves similarly in regards to what the plot dictates regardless of who you save. I think it was a good decision in the long run; if two characters react in the same way to a situation, they should either be merged or one should be removed. It was a good move.

Or they could have Ashley being a jerk in Horizon, and Kaidan becoming a Spectre. They could each be their own character if they didn't have to fill the same role in the sequels.

I don't know, I think it'd be understandable if there were a few situations where two people reacted the same way. It doesn't mean they're exactly alike.

Back then, Bioware was unwilling to make content that players might not see due to an earlier choice, which explains why the Virmire Survivor ended up as a Static Role, Exchangeable Character.

edited 27th Apr '15 6:32:26 AM by VeryMelon

Whereas they are now?

There was a lot of content made for ME3 that would be left unseen by most players, such as what happens if you sabotage the genophage while Wrex is still alive. That trailing subplot is truly a tragic one, and well written in many respects from when you have to shoot Mordin up to Wrex falling down the cliff. And yet, most paragon players will never see it.

Same thing with the quarian/geth conflict. Almost everyone works to get the truce, but the ones that don't lose an entire species and you watch Tali commit suicide/are forced to shoot Legion while still begging to know if it has a soul.

edited 27th Apr '15 6:30:01 AM by CalamityJane

Now? They are starting to avert that tendency of theirs with Dragon Age: Inquisition. Depending on your Dragon Age Keep World State, there will be tons of things you'll never see in that one playthrough unless you make another World State and play thought that. It proves they are moving forward.

Heck, if you don't import a save game, you don't see Garrus and Tali. And Garrus is the squadmate with the largest ammount of dialogue.

And then there's the fact that they may not survive the Suicide Mission anyway.

Ashley and Kaidan both surviving Virmire and then becoming Hero of Another Story until after the Citadel coup would be neat as well.

It would be nice to see Kaidan and Ashley react differently to the situations presented them in-game. As it stands, they're both angry at Shepard on Horizon, they're both reluctant to trust Shepard because of Cerberus, they're both turned into Spectres, etc. I'm glad that they made that decision to kill one of them off, because if this is the way they wanted to go then that means Kaidan and Ashley are essentially the same in the eyes of Bioware and should be treated as interchangeable, right?

Well, except for the fact that Ashley and Kaidan argued at times in the elevators, or that they both have completely different outlooks on life and different backgrounds. Kaidan the optimist who trusts first and doubts later should be different from Ashley the pessimist who doubts first before she even gives anything a chance.

Again, the situation is a mixed blessing. It's good that Bioware merged two similar characters to one for narrative purposes, but it's bad that in doing so, the originally very different personalities of the characters were merged almost to the point of making them the same character.

Except they wouldn't fill the same role by default if both could survive.

Yeah, if Kaidan's the Virmire Survivor, a lot of his plot important actions (distrust of Shepard, mainly) don't make sense.

Which is why I'm gonna nuke him.

Also just bought the series for PC because humble bundle have me 2 and I figured I'c complete the set.

It's so pretty, and the menus in Mass Effect 1 aren't crap.

I find the inventory in 1 is poorly handled regardless of platform, but I do find it more manageable on the Xbox because I can at least tell when I have uninstalled an upgrade completely.

Re: Kaidan v. Ashley, Kaidan's mistrust of Shepard is very sensible if you are an asshole to him, or prove to him in the first game that you're not trustworthy.

edited 27th Apr '15 8:06:55 AM by CalamityJane

The menus in the PS 3 version of ME 1 are the same as in the Xbox version IIRC

Yeah, they are.

I save Kaiden because I go Gay!Shepard and I love the romance in Mass Effect 3, where both Kaidan and Shepard had been attracted to each other but they were almost Star-Crossed Lovers. The entire "it's taken me this long to realize" scene on the Citadel table is just so pitch-perfect.

And the Mako is still shit to drive.

And my faulty spacebar has accidentally killed more than a few conversations.

It's been too long since I've played the first one. It's harder than I remember.

I think last time my PS 3 froze after an extended ME 1 session I accidentally Square buttoned away a characer relationship convo with Tali which I kicked myself foor. At least until I did another sidequest and it reappeared/