Mass Effect Legendary Edition remaster trilogy

[Lacrymas]

You are surprised that they made the black guy cheat and have an extramarital baby? ;d But yeah, sure, add that one to the huge pile of two things that companions do that somehow aren't convenient to Shep and the narrative.

 

[Caim]

You are surprised that they made the black guy cheat and have an extramarital baby? ;d

Surprised that Bioware of all companies went there, yes.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You mean the black guy with the missing father?

 

[Lacrymas]

The missing father who created a sex colony I might add. Also, if I were the writers, I would've made Jacob dump the pregnant woman to be with Shep again.

 

[Lemming42]

But he's hot and Ashley isn't, so I'd take his droning about protecting the Indian girl or whatever in school over Ashley's droning about being a Christian racist, lol. At the end of the day, both of them are just guys with hair, so the choice on Virmire was never anything other than who you find hotter. Ashley could've been interesting if her racism went somewhere, but Bioware have a tendency of declawing their more extremist characters. It speaks volumes that the most radical thing a companion does in the whole of the ME trilogy is Samara turning down Shep.

You're basically right but I'd still suggest that Kaidan is just a guy with hair while Ashley is a guy with hair who also has the outline of being something more interesting. She shows some cognitive dissonance which is pretty true to life - she's got quasi-racist views, but being basically a decent person (see her elevator conversation with Tali where she criticises human racism against Quarians), she's not prepared to commit to them fully, and when she meets a guy who basically embodies the endpoint of her beliefs, she's revolted by him. Every interaction she personally has with an alien is basically positive because she's interpersonally amiable, but she still inexplicably takes some retarded big picture view about how we shouldn't be working with aliens... while she works with aliens. There's a lot that the writers could have done with that but sadly, as you say, they don't really take it to any kind of satisfying conclusion or explore it in any depth in ME1, and she's totally declawed by ME3 - no doubt this is intended as more of Bioware's trademark "character development", where characters completely change between games and you're meant to just imagine that something happened to them offscreen.

I keep meaning to do a playthrough with Kaiden to see to what, if anything, is different in ME3, and to give the character a chance to grow on me a little since I don't think I've ever kept him alive to the end of ME1 before. But I can't face the thought of just having a guy with hair on my ship, stood there with his hair, doing nothing. Personally I don't think he's hot enough to justify saving his life. He is below the attractiveness threshold and therefore must get a nuke to the face on Virmire.

 

[Lacrymas]

I kind of want to defend Kaidan, but being normal is whole shtick, lol. Maybe I like him because his romance is essentially unproblematic and that's a breath of fresh air when my last two romantic attempts irl are with a suicidal depressive and ...someone else problematic, lol (I don't want to give out more info because they might actually read this). Kaidan is going to cook you dinner, then you watch a movie together with a joint or two and then give you a blowjob or pussy equivalent. That sounds super great to me, not gonna lie. He isn't going to rock your world, though, that's true.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

my last two romantic attempts irl are with a suicidal depressive and ...someone else problematic, lol (I don't want to give out more info because they might actually read this).

 

[Lemming42]

I suppose romantically, Kaidan is a "safe pair of hands" so to speak, but damn he's so uninteresting. Even in the event of a blowjob, I imagine you'd get about two good sucks out of him before he broke off to say "hey, did I ever tell you about this awful teacher I had in the special needs class?" and the room would start to distort and fade as your brain went into survival mode and put you into a coma to protect you from the boredom, and the last thing you'd see before slipping into (blissful) unconsciousness would be his man-with-hair face chattering away about shit that happened to him like 20 years ago.

To be honest I don't like any of the ME characters as romance options, there's something wrong with them all. I wanted Chakwas but the world wasn't ready.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

No ME romance is appealing tbh.

 

[Lemming42]

I hate that you have so little control over whether or not you engage in them too. You like, gently flirt with someone (perhaps even by accident) and the game raises a flag that says you're going to get married now. I remember when I did a playthrough of the full trilogy years ago, I romanced Ashley in Mass Effect 1 by complete accident, probably by picking the top right dialogue option on autopilot, and had to tell her to leave me alone when she came to my quarters before the final big fight. This still didn't work because she gave me the whole "I.... LOVED YOU" spiel in ME2, by which point I'd already inadvertently began a romance arc with Jack by speaking to her, like, four times. Then in ME3 Ashley was giving me hell for cheating on her with Jack, who also regarded me as her boyfriend when I did her mission. This was all news to me because I didn't know I was in a relationship with either of them.

This time around I was femshep who seems to have more luck with avoiding this kind of thing (I accidentally started something with Kaidan while trying to skip his dialogue but luckily he ate a nuke soon after) up until Vega in ME3, where the dialogue wheel will say "Hello" and you click it and Shepard's like "hey james wanna fuck?". Fortunately I avoided further mishaps on that front by just never speaking to Vega ever again.

 

[Yosharian]

Kaidan is going to cook you dinner, then you watch a movie together with a joint or two and then give you a blowjob or pussy equivalent. That sounds super great to me, not gonna lie. He isn't going to rock your world, though, that's true.

I'm really struggling to see the problem here

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Kaidan is going to cook you dinner, then you watch a movie together with a joint or two and then give you a blowjob or pussy equivalent. That sounds super great to me, not gonna lie. He isn't going to rock your world, though, that's true.

I'm really struggling to see the problem here

Lacrymas is probably a romantic and thinks that great relationships should be rooted in perpetual infatuation with one another.

 

[Yosharian]

You mean he's a woman?

 

[Lacrymas]

Kaidan is going to cook you dinner, then you watch a movie together with a joint or two and then give you a blowjob or pussy equivalent. That sounds super great to me, not gonna lie. He isn't going to rock your world, though, that's true.

I'm really struggling to see the problem here

Lacrymas is probably a romantic and thinks that great relationships should be rooted in perpetual infatuation with one another.

I long for a "normal" relationship. I'm just saying that Kaidan isn't going to change the way you see the world or make you cry your eyes out if he decides to end the relationship. After having experienced both of these scenarios, that's a good thing about Kaidan, lol. But yes, after the blowjob he'll tell you about that one time in high school and maybe I will get bored eventually, who knows.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You mean he's a woman?

He's a Bulgarian köçek))

 

[MuffinBun]

That seemed to be a problem with Bioware's "red and blue" morality system in general when they still took that approach. I remember with Jade Empire the red path actually had a philosophy behind it that is explained multiple times in the game. But when your character actually chooses those options in dialogue, 90% of the time it's just you acting like an unhinged madman.

Yeah I'm still not really sure what Paragon and Renegade actually are, especially the latter. In ME1 Paragon seemed to be standing up for the values of the Alliance and doing your job properly (acting professionally, limiting casualties, etc) while Renegade seemed to be trying to get yourself court-martialled (acting like a prick to everyone, reckless endangerment of bystanders, making no attempt to de-escalate situations). But in ME2, Paragon is anything from killing "bad" people to lying to a war crimes tribunal to cover up for Tali's dad (why is this "Paragon"???), and Renegade is anything from being a bit brusque with people to actually executing civilians.

They are... very complicated. In 2 and 3 they boil down to: good guy goes here(top), bad guy goes there(bottom). But in 1 its really interesting because basically, they don't mean much. That game is much closer to older games with dialogue trees, rather than anything that came later. Its just that for console sake all these options from the dialogue tree, which could span over 10-15 lines or more, were segregated and placed on a wheel. So the inquiries were relegated to the separate menu, opened by the left dialogue choice(s), whereas the more constructive options or actions were put to the right. Now, as to those: this is not the professional/rough divide, neither a good/evil one in absolute terms, you may find it hard to determine the principle with that approach, because in that game they're not going for that kind of roleplaying in which there are some predetermined paths that are incompatible, like, the path of the Sith vs Jedi; where you make a decision to be one or the other, and then basically you pick good/evil options consistently. In such games you could probably just have a mode where at the start you pick "i want to be good this playthrough" and then the game would automatically pick your dialogue options and you would loose none of the experience. (ME3 works exactly that way)

But in ME1 it's more about the actual roleplaying: you're put in the place of this space commando officer and you're supposed to just adapt to the situation, and act in the way you think is the most appropriate for that kind of person in that kind of moment. The game presents you with pre-written options, and even sorts them in a way, so that the top right option in the menu is always the most approving one, the softest one, whereas the bottom right is the roughest - in that specific context. But only a moron would pick them consistently, every time - because this is to not understand the game, and the fact that this does not represent two archetypes you can play as(like in later bioware games), but is simply a way all the available options are situationally placed on the wheel, for your convenience.

So, if you would pick for example renegade options consistently, your ME1 Shepard would make no sense.

In conversation about the role of humanity in the galaxy, renegade option will be something like: "We look after ourselves, we're not afraid to expand assertively, whether the Council likes it or not"
And in conversation with Ashley, when she says the famous line about attack dogs, the renegade will tell her to shut up. Whereas it is the paragon who sees the point in her story and appreciates it.

The renegade option is in one case chauvinist, and in the other anti-chauvinist. That makes sense, because renegade is not a personality type, but rather a loosely-approached position on the dialogue menu. The appreciative will always be at the top, but the content of that appreciation may differ from criminal acts to petting bunnies. That makes for very fun roleplaying experience, because you cannot just blindly click the same button, but you have to think about what would make sense in any given moment. There are people deserving of being listened to(top right), others that deserve being put down(bottom right), and in many cases the appropriate option is the middle one - like when you're receiving orders from Hackett or whatever. So thats very cool but they did not replicate it in later games.

It's also the thing that the game itself tricks you into thinking in this binary terms, since higher persuasion skills have alignment requirements. But if I remember right, these requirements are not that high, so that could be interpreted in a way that is not so at odds with the general philosophy of this system.

 

[Lemming42]

Interesting. Yeah, I did find myself picking options from across the wheel a lot more often in ME1, as opposed to the later games where the Renegade option is always retarded and the Paragon option is usually sensible (I notice ME2 and 3 rarely offer neutral middle options). A pretty cool one in ME1 I remember is the news interview - the top-right Paragon option has you reveal Saren's involvement with Eden Prime. When Hackett complains at you afterwards, the Paragon option has you meekly back down while the Renegade option has you defend your decision on moral grounds.

I think there were two occasions when I got caught by dialogue requirements that were too high for me - trying to convince the admiral that the Normandy isn't shit after he conducts an inspection at the Citadel dock, and talking the corporate guy down on Feros (why is this check so high???). It does feel like the devs are judging you when you occasionally get morality points based on dialogue choices, which discourages players from experimenting or responding contextually, since most players (especially first time players who aren't aware that your morality rankings don't really matter) will want to ensure they always pick from the same place on the dialogue wheel so as to invest as much as possible into their chosen route.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

as opposed to the later games where the Renegade option is always retarded and the Paragon option is usually sensible

Renegade is more entertaining tbh. And when you know that the game won't punish you for it, there's really no reason not to act like some cheesy action flick hero.

 

[MuffinBun]

Interesting. Yeah, I did find myself picking options from across the wheel a lot more often in ME1, as opposed to the later games where the Renegade option is always retarded and the Paragon option is usually sensible (I notice ME2 and 3 rarely offer neutral middle options).

I think there were two occasions when I got caught by dialogue requirements that were too high for me - trying to convince the admiral that the Normandy isn't shit after he conducts an inspection at the Citadel dock, and talking the corporate guy down on Feros (why is this check so high???). It does feel like the devs are judging you when you occasionally get morality points based on dialogue choices, which discourages players from experimenting or responding contextually, since most players (especially first time players who aren't aware that your morality rankings don't really matter) will want to ensure they always pick from the same place on the dialogue wheel so as to invest as much as possible into their chosen route.

Yeah, I agree with all of these. Unfortunately later on bioware went in a completely opposite direction, and that solidified the idea about different slots in a wheel being non-relative personality types. Especially in Dragon Age 2, they replaced the middle option with a 'funny man' which underlines that you're not supposed to adapt and think about the context of the conversation, but you simply pick from those 3 pre-defined options, and that's what your Hawke can be. Disappointing.

One thing about later games in ME is that the renegade *interruptions* are never wrong - you always do something helpful and cool by picking them, its a must for all characters. And in the end, since they're not exclusive, you should probably also pick all the paragon ones, since they make you do something cool as opposed to nothing, which rarely represents some quality of its own(in a good game it could, but not here). As far as charisma checks in Me1 go, yeah, they are weird. They probably intend to have the player loose some of them. You have to know the proper order to level up before approaching some conversations. Which again - in a good game, that would be fine, since the high charisma option does not have to be best, necessarily.

 

[Lemming42]

I wonder if it's possible to explain away some of ME2's nonsensicality, and also enjoy the trashy fun of playing as a Renegade character, by just LARPing that Cerberus botched the Shepard revivification project and accidentally rebuilt her as a retarded lunatic. Does the game react in any way if you play full Paragon in ME1, then import the save into ME2 and suddenly turn into a Renegade psycho?

 

[J1M]

Please stop being offensive. Shepard uses he/him pronouns.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

No ME romance is appealing tbh.

Kelly Chambers is my waifu

 

[Nano]

But, uh, renegade isn't really retarded in the later two games. If anything, I'm pretty sure renegade is more aggressive and over the top in ME1.

 

[MuffinBun]

At least Andromeda was jank enough to be funny.

Andromeda I haven't even bothered playing. And not so much due to the absolute jankfest that it is (or was, depending on how much they've fixed of the various glitches), but due to the subpar writing even by ME standards. And also the newly introduced races, particularly the friendly one whose visual design just registered as cartoony to me.

All correct, but... the game can be fun and has some redeeming qualities. The art style is pretty cool and consistent, I think some environments are cool, the music is appropriate and the galaxy map is a joy to look at. It still evokes that kind of awe associated with high sci-fi and exploration of the cosmos. The problem lies primarily in the terrible story, although even that terrible story has a nice little conspiracy in it. The best way to enjoy the game is to make up your own story while playing, paradox games-style. Its a shame, but thats what it is.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The problem lies primarily in the terrible story

I'm too much of a storyfag to get past that tbh.