Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

For the life of me, the Cerberus Apologism over on the old Bioware forums never made sense. Like legit, the same people who would swear Ashley was the worst person ever because of prejudice would write essays upon essays over how Cerberus was totally a just cause.

Taking absolutely every renegade option leads to a pretty bizarre character, but there are playthroughs where taking a *mostly* renegade approach can make sense. I think if you choose a motivation and stick with it, it's surprising how much you can veer back and forth between paragon and renegade over one game. For instance, the closest thing I've done to a full-ish renegade playthrough ended up being a misanthropic jerkass engineer who was (somewhat paradoxically) unrepentantly humans-first, which led to him agreeing with TIM a lot in the second game, and ultimately had me siding with the geth on Rannoch, since going along with the pro-genocide quarians when the geth were offering peace was a little much, even for him.

edited 11th Oct '16 9:27:29 PM by Unsung

I think they wanted to try and break out of the morality complex... with Paragon and Renegade

but just ended up writing themselves back into it. Paragon basically comes off as Lawful Good and Renegade is... The DM's favorite... Chaotic Neutral 'The I feel like whatever the **** i want alignment

edited 11th Oct '16 8:47:02 PM by FrozenWolf2

At the end of the day, Paragon is "Save the galaxy" and Renegade is "Stop the Reapers". The Cape versus The Cowl.

I tend to make similar choices when it really matters in different playthroughs, and, in the end, my Paragon does stuff by careful diplomacy and "no one gets left behind", and my Renegade does stuff by going straight after the problem and "keep casualties to a minimum". Oh, and my "Paragade" is pretty much broken inside and tends to go with what their interlocutor would most likely agree with, and just wants people around them to stop dying.

Yep, Spacer War Hero Soldier, Earthborn Ruthless Vanguard, and Colonist Sole Survivor Sentinel really allow you to give a different feeling to the same

'slow and soft'Shepard... I know where you hide your porn!

I love that video. It really makes me wish that the nightmare sequences focused more on the dead squadmates and less on the kid.

Even if the only voices you hear are just four and full of pride at dying the way they are dying, they always got to me.

The kid, well, doesn't just carry the same gravitas. He stands as a symbol of everybody Shepard couldn't save, but I'll keep saying that the Virmire victim would have worked FAR better.

Also, Padok Wiks is an awesome character and should have gotten more screentime even if Mordin survives to 3. And betrayed Wrex hurts to listen to.

edited 20th Oct '16 7:42:17 AM by Eriorguez

Yeah they did do pretty good with Padok. He could have easily just been a Biff The Understudy type that no one could have liked but they actually gave him unique characterization and dialogue so that even if you fucked up and got Mordin killed, you still got someone worth helping you cure the genophage.

I agree with the Virmire Casualty being a better choice than the kid. It's a way better representative of what Shepard's lost to the Reapers, as well as a (for some people) tough choice that we had to make in order to save the galaxy. Sure, an innocent child dying to the Reapers right after having hope of salvation dangled in his face might affect Shepard more, but to us as players it just doesn't have the same impact as someone that we were forced to sacrifice in the name of stopping the Reapers.

The kid just does not work with the tone... cause he is already treated as an abstract, He is a symbol before he is a symbol

Case in point the ethereal treatment, You're telling me a Soldier is looking straight at the kid struggling to get up in the transport in the middle of a battle where they are clearly evacuating civys and nobody sees him

Then the disastrous choice of making THAT the Catalysts chosen form seems to hammer home the kid isn't a character HE'S A SYMBOL.

But as a symbol it doesn't have the desired effect cause its FORCED

Similar to how Kai is really nothing more then a Name strapped to a character model so Shepard can have some form of Physical Antagonist 'He's called Harbinger' and you would have done better just having a nameless silent Boss in Mook's Clothing who gets the better of Shepard

THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN NINE TIMES MORE INTRIGUING THEN WHAT THEY DID WITH KAI.

Wiks is probably one of the better "Substitute" Characters.

edited 20th Oct '16 9:50:18 AM by FrozenWolf2

That would've been pretty damn awesome. Less is more would definitely be in effect there. Instead we got a braggart Nightwing wannabe with a serious case of Plot Armor.

Thats the thing that irritates me more about leng more then anything... He is by definition a case of little effort, Hell alot of his alternate designs are ALOT better then the one they picked

Okay you port him over from the novels... which they don't bother using any of the material from... They mention a few wiki Facts but thats it. They make NO real attempt to connect Leng and Shepard as rivals

How about the fact him and Randal were implanted with Reaper tech like Shepard cause they were both suspected to have the anti indoctrination gene... Meaning Leng follows Tim cause he's a TRUE believer instead of one of countless Cerberus husk troops

NOPE

Not like his novel depiction was any better. The man eats Anderson's cereal, for heaven's sake, because (and I quote Deception here) he's "something of an adrenaline junkie."

I think they're referring to his descriptions of Leng in the previous novels. I don't think I've met a single person who considers Deception to be canon at this point.

I really should get around to reading the other novels (and graphic novels), really; it's a shameful blind spot in my knowledge of ME lore.

The sad thing is Leng's memetic depiction from Deception is probably the more well know characterization...

The fact you are seriously using it as the counterpoint is terrible.

This is the book that implies Autism is just a phase you outgrow and a good dose hormones helps.

This is the book where Aria and Kai leng pretty much act like first year rookies who just wing everything.... and Leng admires Aria's butt 'Leng is an actual Xenophobe'The thing people accuse Ashley of being' that wouldn't be out of place in the Warhammer verse'

The Novels whole purpose seems to be just kill off the novel cast save for Leng and Kahlee since they'll show up in 3 and I guess imply the Grayson clones are TIM's new army.

HE KILLED GILLIAN WITH A TOOTHBRUSH SHEV!

GILLIAN'S BASICALLY JACK 2.0... a BIOTIC GODESS with a TOOTHBRUSH SHEEV!!!

ARGH!!!◊

You are speaking as if that actually happened. Don't worry, it didn't, relax.

edited 20th Oct '16 12:00:08 PM by Eriorguez

The saddest part about Kai Leng is that in Retribution, he's a genuinely threatening and creepy villain.

Well, there is always indoctrination to blame; even Saren ended up resorting to childlike logic.

Unless the villain is gonna join the party BW's villains tend to be really weak

Very good point, actually.

One of Bioware's weaknesses, sadly. It's telling that one of their best villains in all their games in the past decade and a half is Master Li. I'd say Sovereign was close, but even then.

Master Li, I imagine, gets the title because his personal connection to the protagonist, and thus the player, is at the forefront of his motivation and the game's plot. Remember, Bioware is all about character interaction first.

I liked Meredith and the Arishok, but I know I'm not going to get a ton of backup there. And I liked the very end of ME 2, where the Illusive Man reveals how all this was really just a grab for power on his part. And then there are those not-quite-villains in every Bioware game, the Well-Intentioned Extremist spies and assassins, the good-natured but brutal Boisterous Bruiser mercenaries— their most popular characters and the well they keep going back to. Sometimes both at once (Iron Bull).

Bioware is actually pretty good at moral ambiguity, but they're hamstrung by always including good/evil options, and clear-cut villains and good guys.

edited 20th Oct '16 8:27:41 PM by Unsung

Those also happen to be the characters that the player gets to know by talking to them.