MASS EFFECT TWO: GIVE GARRUS A HUG

[BitVyper]

The "half-half" Shepard kind of gets screwed.

Which completely defeats the purpose of measuring them separately in the first place. Also it takes away the player's ability to control their own character, because if you want to take one renegade option that's more in the "badass commander" vein, you have to go off and take a bunch of options that are more in the "space Hitler" vein in order to do it, at the same time eschewing things that your character would actually do.

It's like a shitty DM trying to force you to play your alignment to the letter. It's just annoying.

Kill the last rachni--while it is basically promising it will be good and begging for forgiveness/life, and after it has been explained that the creatures you'd been killing were retard evil rachni created because the scientists fucked up their ability to develop.

To be fair, this is a species that waged a bloody, vicious war on the entire galaxy and nearly won. I personally would let it go, yeah, but I could see why someone might not trust the psychic space monster when it says it'll totally be good. Especially when there would be not too much stopping it if it decided to turn around and eat them as soon as it got out. Killing it might not be a good thing, but I don't think I'd count that as one of the space Hitler options.

Otherwise, I'm mostly on board with ME2's options being a bit better rounded. There was really no good reason to push that guy out a window though. He probably deserved it, but he could have just as easily been knocked out or otherwise disabled. Same with killing the Eclipse chick - granted you found out that she was full of shit later, but she came across pretty sincere when you found her. Even if you thought she was lying, you were acting as judge, jury, and executioner (which, to be fair, is technically a Spectre's job, but you know, with great power comes something something).

Anyway, I just hope ME3 handles the options a different way. 2 wasn't so bad the first time through - occasionally annoying, but I was usually able to do everything I wanted to. I actually stopped my second play through though, because I just got fed up with having all my options greyed out.

[Dauntasa]

Shepard really can't kill anyone who doesn't deserve it, though. I mean, other than the Zhu's Hope colonists and Parasini. And killing the colonists has some justification and Parasini was sort of an accident. Everyone else is either a threat or a complete bastard. Like that guy he pushed out a window. He was trying to kill Shepard and all the innocent workers. He might not have been a threat right then, but if Shep had knocked him out he could have woken up and killed someone. Killing him was the pragmatic solution. And that's really all Renegade Shepard is; a pragmatist. It's just that when you're saving the galaxy sometimes pragmatism means pushing someone out a window.

[BitVyper]

You can potentially leave Zaeed to die. Granted, he's not the nicest guy, and he did unintentionally endanger innocent bystanders, but he didn't deserve to die. Especially since he did end up going along with Shepard if you chose to save the workers, so whether or not they get saved is really on Shepard's shoulders.

[Yumil]

Originally Posted by BitVyper

Otherwise, I'm mostly on board with ME2's options being a bit better rounded. There was really no good reason to push that guy out a window though. He probably deserved it, but he could have just as easily been knocked out or otherwise disabled. Same with killing the Eclipse chick - granted you found out that she was full of shit later, but she came across pretty sincere when you found her. Even if you thought she was lying, you were acting as judge, jury, and executioner (which, to be fair, is technically a Spectre's job, but you know, with great power comes something something).

Anyway, I just hope ME3 handles the options a different way. 2 wasn't so bad the first time through - occasionally annoying, but I was usually able to do everything I wanted to. I actually stopped my second play through though, because I just got fed up with having all my options greyed out.

To be honest, you absolutely know the eclipse chick was lying as she had to kill to join eclipse. She didn't act to get in, she had to kill.

[Aerozord]

I think the biggest problem is that the best way to get paragon/renegade points is to go with the paragon/renegade options and interupts. I choose them mostly to get the points then because I liked them. Though I could never bring myself to be a jerk to Tali. Found Jack to be more interesting with paragon options as she seems to have some character development

But how do you get the succubus on your team? I never got that option. Though I did enjoy talking to Joker about it "You did good. I mean who wants some death obsessed seductress, walking around all dark... and sexy... actually nevermind"

FYI Rachni was being honest and looks like they will be allies in ME3 if you saved her

[stefan]

Originally Posted by CABAL49

I got to the Praetorian on the Collector ship. I am honestly thinking about just forgetting about getting the Insanity Achievement because it is just not fun anymore.

I know exactly what you're talking about and that fucking praetorian is every reason to try and get the Cain early. That section pissed me off so much in my first playthrough, so when I went through again I resolved to have the Cain charged up and ready to take the fucker down in one go.

killed most of the husks and collectors in that room too, so it was worth mining all that iridium.

Originally Posted by Aerozord

But how do you get the succubus on your team? I never got that option. Though I did enjoy talking to Joker about it "You did good. I mean who wants some death obsessed seductress, walking around all dark... and sexy... actually nevermind"

I think it has to do with the dialog choices you make leading up to her, 'cause I got both options even though I was 90% paragon and less than 20% renegade at the time.

[Dauntasa]

Originally Posted by stefan

I think it has to do with the dialog choices you make leading up to her, 'cause I got both options even though I was 90% paragon and less than 20% renegade at the time.

You've got have a lot of Renegade points or a lot of Paragon points. Either one will do, or both. You always get Renegade points for choosing her though, so I don't know if letting you do it with high Paragon is a glitch or something.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Aerozord

FYI Rachni was being honest and looks like they will be allies in ME3 if you saved her

Oh, I know. In my case I just could understand the logic behind Shepard deciding for killing the rachni queen in ME1. The fact that sparing the queen happened to work out in ME2 is awesome, but you can't expect Shepard to have had forward knowledge of the outcome at the time he/she needed to decide.

Here's a new question for everyone to ponder: If you were working for Bioware, what would you want to accomplish for ME3? What kinds of ideas would you attempt to incorporate to improve the game substantially, or what kind of story concepts would you put forward?

I was thinking about my "dream version" of ME3 and I came to the conclusion that I'd enjoy a cold open with Shepard defending a devastated Earth from a reaper attack, and with several alien factions (if you're paragon) or cerberus (if you're renegade) assisting Shepard in defending other human cities. I'm not sure whether even a relatively brief jaunt on future-Earth would serve the Mass Effect "setting" (even though Earth clearly exists, and it's a clear first choice for a Reaper target assuming they know Shepard's species.) It'd be an intriguing way to immediately thrust the player into heavy-stakes action and a great way to immediately re-introduce tons of supporting characters who survived ME1 and ME2, though not as squadmates: if you played paragon, you could hear radio chatter about Clan Urdnot showing up and defending Beijing while a Geth task force led by Legion defended Cairo and Salarian special task forces were staving off the enemy in Paris while Ashley/Kaiden and Alliance forces were protecting the United Nations building in New York. The payoff of actually seeing the alien races you've helped assisting humanity would be freakin' sweet, and the intensity of listening to the radio chatter from tons of forces battling all throughout the planet we know and love would match the kind of intensity we saw in the microwave scene in MGS4.

And I'd actually prefer if the game skipped ahead and started there, with an initial Reaper invasion of Earth or something as the first target. You'd immediately be confronted with tough choices -- if you have squadmates from ME1 and ME2 who survived the suicide mission, one idea is you'd have to choose via radio communication (as Shepard would be the leader of the entire operation) whether to have some squadmates sacrifice themselves to destroy invading forces. Do you sacrifice their lives to protect cities and nations on Earth, or do you keep as many former squadmates and alien forces alive as possible, while potentially sacrificing Earth's habitability and turning humanity into a spacefaring race separated from a destroyed homeworld, like the Quarians?

(And how many characters survived the suicide mission could influence your available options, too. Entire cities that could be battlegrounds if some characters are kept alive could be sacrificed to the Reaper invasion if those characters were dead. Example: if Wrex survived ME1 he's alive and Clan Urdnot shows up with a Krogan task force to defend Beijing. If not, a Reaper succeeds in destroying Beijing and there's nothing you can do about it, at least one major city on Earth is out of the picture.)

And then you can get the Normandy 3 (Normandy 2 would be destroyed while attacking the invading Reaper at Earth or something) and the game would actually begin...

</my crappy two cents>

EDIT: Spoiler Text'd everything just in case someone here hasn't beaten ME2.

[BitVyper]

To be honest, you absolutely know the eclipse chick was lying as she had to kill to join eclipse.

You don't absolutely know shit, largely because the renegade option has you shoot her without even bothering to ask questions. However, she never really denies having killed anyone, she just says she thought she'd be "shooting bad guys," instead of selling red sand and helping Ardat Yakshi. She plays the stupid kid in over her head pretty well. Not believing her is entirely justifiable, but shooting her when she's not even remotely a threat to you is not. She doesn't actually shoot at you until you pretty much say you're going to kill her, and she puts down her gun if you don't. Not that one random dumbass with a gun is any threat to three commandos with personal force fields, which the scene shows.

And even knowing that she's committed at least one murder - information which, as I recall, came from a lying, thieving smuggler who had a vested interest in getting you to kill all of the Eclipse - that's not a justifiable reason to just shoot her on sight.

Edit: Looking at it the other way though, you could take Shepard calling bullshit on her as a test to see what she'd do, since he doesn't shoot until after she drops the facade. Still not a good justification, but then, it's not like I'm saying which option you should take, just that ME2 does allow you to do some pretty nasty things as well.

[Solid Snake]

I didn't actually have a problem with the renegade interrupt for the Eclipse murderer (compared, at least, to my issues with shoving the poor merc from the building or even killing that mechanic everyone seems to hate) because it was a neat twist that played on the cliche that the paragon option of letting the "poor, helpless woman caught in circumstances over her head" live was always the 'morally righteous' or 'correct' thing to do. This was a rare case where playing the paragon role was actually naive and it bit you in the ass -- but that didn't stop mercy from being the appropriate paragon action.

It's sort of similar to how I would have enjoyed seeing the decision to keep the rachni alive in ME1 come back to bite Shepard in the ass -- if the rachni queen was lying, it'd still be a noble paragon action to have believed her and let her live, but congratulations, being a naive paragon has just unleashed a terrifying menace onto the galaxy.