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.
