Fate of the Council
Saving the Council provides more EMS than letting them die IF you manage to save the Salarian Councillor from Leng. Saving the Councillor requires Thane or Kirrahe to be alive. If one or both of them is / are alive, then he (Thane will do it if both men are alive) will sacrifice himself to protect the Councillor. Since I killed both Thane and Kirrahe off, there was no one to protect poor Valern.
On a side note, the fact that the Council decision at the end of ME1 just affects some flavor dialog is my biggest disappointment with the trilogy. The replacement council you get are just the old ones with different voice actors and slightly different dialog.
The Genophage
To sabotage the genophage cure and retain full krogan support, you have to kill Wrex back on Virmire in ME1. If you do this, Wrex will be replaced by his brother Wreav, who is a huge tool who never realizes that the salarians tricked him.
Mordin / Padok can be saved if you kill Wrex in ME1 and don't save Maelon's cure data in ME2. Failing to save the data prevents the scientist salarian from saving Eve, leaving Wreav as the sole ruler of Clan Urdnot. Since Wreav has made it clear that he intends to declare war on the Salarian Union once the Reapers are defeated, Mordin / Padok can be talked into letting the sabotage be.
I didn't know this at the time, but it was actually impossible for me to kill Wrex on Virmire since I only had four squadmates at the time. Presumably, this is so you wouldn't be stuck with only one squadmate (Tali) during the section at the end where you have to choose whether to save Kaidan or Ashley.
Quarians vs. Geth
There's some dispute over whether this is true, but this is the most accurate rundown of the factors determining whether you can convince the quarians and geth to try peace.
You need a very high reputation, Tali and Legion both must have survived ME2, and you need 5 of 7 points:
- 2 points for completing Tali's loyalty mission without getting her exiled. You get the points even if you do this by exposing her father's crimes.
- 2 points for blowing up the geth heretics.
- 1 point for using persuasion to resolve the argument that Tali and Legion have if both are loyal. Using persuasion on one of them after initially siding with the other doesn't get you this point. This never happened to Fail Shep since he didn't get Tali's loyalty.
- 1 point for saving Admiral Korris in ME3
- 1 point for completing a mission where you have to stop some geth fighters from attacking the Migrant Fleet. Fail Shep never did this.
Fail Shep had four points. Even if Tali and Legion survived the Suicide Mission, one faction was still screwed. I sided with the geth so they would get killed during the ending.
Suicide Mission
I went in with the intent that there would only be two survivors. I chose Jack and Samara, since their deaths in ME3 were disturbing. Tali was a close contender, but I decided against it since (IMO) killing off an ME3 party member before ME3 was even worse / better.
Normally, the Collector Base choice is irrelevant. Saving the base only gives you 10 more points of War Assets than destroying it. But in a low-EMS playthrough, it's the most important choice in the game.
If you have less than 1750 EMS, you only have two choices for the ending. One of them is the Refusal ending, where Shepard refuses to pick one of the other endings and the Reapers win. The second changes depending on the Collector Base choice.
If you destroy the base, you are stuck with the Destroy ending. With Low EMS, this ending fucks over the galaxy to kill the Reapers. If you save the base, you are stuck with the Control ending, where Shepard sacrifices his / herself to take control of the Reapers. With Low EMS, the galaxy is still pretty badly damaged, but Earth is saved and things are pretty hopeful.
I was going to post the final version of the death list, but it's getting late and I was planning on doing something special with it. I'll post it tomorrow.
