RK47 said:
Heh. I duno. It was one those rare 'hard decisions' I had to make in ME. If only Shepard had a prior encounter before Noveria where Rachni are really an active menace than a mindless bio-tools of mass destruction, then MAYBE it would a much harder decision to make. But in the Noveria labs, it's not hard to sympathize with the Rachni since she's pretty much used as a tool and had her kids taken away from her. Killing her seems really wrong.
I chose to do it for a potential ally against the Geth and because I didn't give a flying crap about Council law. Of course, the game gave me Paragon points for it anyway, as if I did it out of the goodness of my own heart and due to a deep and abiding love of all of nature's children, or some such nonsense.
And, if ME2 doesn't take save info from the first game into account, it's a moot point anyway, since the Rachni never came back into play later on...
Letting the council die or not wasn't that big of a deal. They were being a jerk all along and expect me to be their dog. If I hadn't done anything and follow them, we'd be doomed; so I'll be stupid to risk the success for a bunch of useless cunts who are more worried about their own control than the fate of the galaxy. Ashley was right on that Hunter's Dog analogy too.
This may have been the only point in the game where the reasoning behind my decision was actually reflected by the game. The Council wasn't just worthless, they were actually harmful to the combined sentient races of the galaxy. Wiping out that pack of imbeciles so that humanity could fill the power vacuum was clearly the smartest choice that would lead to the greater good of all.
Once again, though... If ME2 doesn't take the savegame into account, then it's still an effectively worthless decision.
The Feros 'save the infested colonist or kill them all' was okay. But lack any sort of 'pull'. You've met these guys for barely 15 mins, I'm not about to risk my missions for a bunch of 'infesteds'. I chose to just blew them all to hell. If the lead scientist can't be persuaded to cooperate, then too bad. A hole on the head for him. There was no choice.
Let's not even call the 'execute the asarian commando who is freed of mind control' choice an evil one. It was just being ruthlessly stupid. I wanted to take her into custody and interrogate her, not shoot her at the back of the head. But Bioware thought everyone wanted to be THAT sort of badass. A Stupid Badass.
This was another situation where the "Paragon" path was simply the "Moron" path.
1) There was no evidence at all that the infection of the colonists was reversible.
2) The only alternative to killing them was to saturate the area with jury-rigged nerve toxin grenades, in the hope that the imprecisely-measured aerosol toxin would only paralyze everyone instead of simply killing them. And of course, neither I nor anyone on my team had environmentally-sealed armor, thus making the risk enormous for a potential benefit that was incredibly unlikely.
Since I felt that my character would have an IQ at least marginally above the single-digit range, I chose to simply kill them.
It was also annoying that the bone-crushingly idiotic and cliched plot of "Greedy Evil Corporation illegally experiments with bioweapons at the expense of innocent civilians" showed up not once, which would have been bad enough, but
twice. It's like the game was intentionally trying to commit genocide upon my brain cells. "Aliens" came out in 1986. I've been pretty much done with that plot since.
There were too many situations in the game where one path, either Gud or Eevul, was just incredibly stupid. There were also a few situations where
every option available was stupid, such as when you rescue the Blue Girl from the Big Plant Monster, and find out she's been aboard Saren's ship. The only smart decision would have been to bring her back and interrogate her, because she clearly has intelligence that's vital to your mission. Instead you get to choose between "I lets you go nice lady" and "GRR KILL".
Things became frustrating rather quickly for me.
At least I was able to avoid having Shepard hump anyone.
I don't have any particular axe to grind with Bioware, they've made some games I've enjoyed in the past, but I was disappointed with ME.
However, if the writing improves (more intelligent dialogue options available, glaring plot holes filled in), and if the choices made in part 1 effect events in part 2, and if the combat/AI is tweaked to be more enjoyable, I may give the sequel a chance. If not, I'll have to give it a pass.
Guess I'm kind of drifting from the topic of intelligent, non-moustache-twirling evil, though.
