Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

If all you care about is the points, then you're probably not super-invested in the choices to begin with.

It's... not, though? The game still gives you paragon or renegade points, like any other choice.

Yeah, it's an actual ethical dilemma. One of the few real ones in the entire trilogy.

Plenty of people do full-Paragon or full-Renegade runs. Having a situation where no matter what you do you get points in the same one isn't a choice, it's just railroading.

Also my mistake on the neutral action thing. I know there's a moment like that in the series somewhere but I apparently don't remember what it is.

I think I saw that video before, but the name escapes me. Could you post a link?

I think it was this one:

Edited by Primis on Jun 15th 2019 at 9:46:48 AM

The EC video doesn't argue they both should have been Renegade, just that it's enough of a moral dilemma that outright calling one side Paragon or Renegade was a bad idea. I'd actually agree with him there, it's best to leave such a dilemma ambiguous.

Having both choices be Renegade kind of defeats the point of the Renegade/Paragon system. Renegade choices need to be contrasted by Paragon-or at least neutral options to be meaningful.

Also, the thing about moral dilemmas is that while they're usually treated as "lose-lose" scenarios, they're actually just as much "win-win" scenarios. They, by definition, have no unambiguously wrong answers. In the specific scenario presented in ME 2, for example, I would argue both decisions are good, the dilemma is which one is better.

He explicitly says both choices should have resulted in Renegade points:

Ah, I must have missed that. In that case I don't agree with it.

I personally think the choice should have just been labeled on the 'Right' and 'Left' sides of the dialogue wheel and not in the 'Up/Paragon v. Down/Renegade' dichotomy we've seen before.

Which is why I think I liked Dragon Age: Origins more. The dialogue choices didn't fit a theme and changed number as needed for valid options in response to whatever the fuck happened. I didn't feel compelled to chose one option over another because of where it was placed and what that meant. I know I totally found myself second guessing some stuff because it was considered 'Renegade' despite how I actually felt in the moment.

I had a conversation with a friend about D&D alignments and we figured an argument that a character could be chaotic evil and actually make choices to free slaves because slavery would be a lawful institution and freeing them would cause chaos.

The alignment shift used in Andromeda was actually quite clever but not really well explained. Every option had four part alignment rather than linear options.

I feel like slavery is more likely to be outlawed than it is to be still a lawful institution in most settings.

*looks at the US Constitution*

Yeah about that...

Edited by TheAirman on Jun 15th 2019 at 8:36:17 AM

You mean the US Constitution whose 13th amendment outlaws slavery? That one?

Indentured servitude is also a thing, officially they are working off a debt or criminal act. Even still there would be a difference between imperial laws and local implementation.

x5

I mean, I've never really liked the idea that alignments had to adhere to strict rules either. The Dn D alignment REALLY should be a guide line to give you character IDEAS and not lines to color within.

Particularly since I've heard dozens of arguments and interpretations on what 'Lawful vs. Chaotic' actually means. Some say Lawful just means YOU personally have a code of values and ethics. Some say that it's instead SOCIETY'S code of laws and that you adhere to them while Chaotic doesn't mean you don't have a code, just that you go against the grain of society's rules, checks, and balances (Vigilante/Batman) Or the Good vs. Evil, does being Good mean you actively have to be pursuing and throwing yourself towards the good, or can you be good as the village kind old lady who bakes cookies for the kids? Or would that kind old lady be Neutral because she isn't throwing herself into the causes of good and evil?

I've heard every argument for why 'x' or 'y' could actually be good/evil/lawful/chaotic/neutral instead of what everyone else thinks it is and none of them are outright wrong, so the scale is really just a guide, not rule book.

There is always a Necessary Weasel involved too, as you could interpret Chaotic Evil as incapable of working with others and will always backstab their allies, but that eliminates the mandatory cooperative element of any D&D session.

Go and actually read the text of the Thirteenth Amendment: it legalized slavery, and went a step farther than before by enshrining it in our Constitution. All it did was add the condition that the people being enslaved had to be convicted of a crime first.

Edited by ViperMagnum357 on Jun 15th 2019 at 10:42:04 AM

Alignment is just a series of tendencies, not a straitjacket. It's a starting point, the sum of character's past history and choices, but they can still change over time — or all at once. A Neutral character can have a streak of mercy and even heroism, and a Lawful character can get a little wild every now and again, and other than demons and angels, and sometimes not even then, nobody is really all good or bad.

Saying it's a guide is right. It's not just what you do, its how you do it and why. Rather than defining a character from the top down, it's more about how they define themselves day by day.

Yeah, anyone who's taken an American History course at a college whose overall culture leans even remotely left will know that slavery isn't actually illegal in the US, we've just restricted it to convicted criminals and made it a government institution rather than a private industry.

Correct. And it's something I wish games like Mass Effect might take better into account. Make things more fluid and less defined. I don't think having a black-white 'This is the Renegade Option and this is the Paragon' option works and is in fact a hindrance a lot of times. Not only is the player now slightly psyched out and second guessing what they want to do because they have a preconceived notion of which side they should be playing more to, regardless of if it even actually matters, it often means the develops have to approach the situation with 'What is the Paragon here? What is the Renegade?' when sometimes the really isn't a clear cut dichotomy there and trying to force one turns into 'Rational Practical choice' vs 'Kick the puppy' when NO ONE would logically kick the puppy.

The key element in all of it is to develop your character's preferences, rather than hold to the arbitrary alignment itself. I do feel that chaotic neutral is the easiest to work with, as you can easily justify almost any action from that standpoint, after all, you're chaotic.

Right, but my point is that the Dialogue Wheel, as simple and easy to read as it is, is to limiting in options (How many dialogues lead to us clicking left 2 or 3 times due to all the options?) and arbitrarily forces two opposing choices rather than trying to have nuance and more of a variety of options that feel natural reactions to whatever is going on (Comfort the victim or punch them in the face).

It's hard to have the nuance created between the vast interpretations of Dn D's alignment chart in a video game if the video game is probably going to, through nature of being a video game and game development, will probably have a strict interpretation of those roles regardless of what the player sees; Similar to how early ME made Renegade feel more pragmatic and 'get the job done' compared to it developing into 'be the asshole' button later.

I wish we had a system that just was more nuanced.

Dragon Age: Origins just listed them rather blandly, but I'd prefer that over the Dialogue Wheel since I never felt like I was overthinking a choice because of where it was listed and I always felt like there were enough fitting options to build a character between choices, even if the difference between two of 6 options was a single line of dialogue or a small character tone difference.

Edited by InkDagger on Jun 15th 2019 at 9:36:00 AM

I just had a moment of Fridge Logic regarding the lore, the turians attacked humanity because they where opening a mass relay and it's against citadel laws but since humans weren't apart of the citadel at the time wouldn't that mean citadel laws won't apply to them?

I'm not sure that explanation is water-tight.

I mean, wasn't that mass relay in Citadel space? At the very least, the next part of the mass relay.

You can't say Citadel law has no power when you're breaking it in Citadel space.

Plus, not being part of the Citadel is not an excuse to break Citadel law in Citadel space.

Edited by fredhot16 on Jun 17th 2019 at 5:01:07 AM

I'm not a lawyer, but a defense of "I'm not [insert citizenship here], so I can break [country of non-citizenship]'s laws" doesn't seem like it'd fly. The Turians were idiots for opening fire instead of approaching the matter diplomatically, but let's be honest, humanity was being a little too cavalier about activating dormant Relays in the first place.

Hard to say it was happening in Citadel Space when we don't know what region of the Milky Way it was happening in. For all we know it was in the Traverse, and if it was in what is currently Alliance territory, humans technically wouldn't have been under Citadel law, though they were still idiots for activating Relays willy-nilly, while the Turians were bigger idiots for firing on them.

Edited by ITNW1989 on Jun 17th 2019 at 5:11:25 AM

And it's important to remember just which law they were breaking. Opening relays willy-nilly is what led to the Rachni Wars.

Dumbass Turans, but yeah.