What Video Game are you Currently Playing?

[A_Train]

I've always thought games that offered you choices that were all blatantly good or blatantly bad were not very interesting. If someone is playing a good guy, and they pick all the good guy choices, because they need to retain points, then there's not really much actual choosing going on. I think ME does this much better. I do lean toward the renegade most of the time, but it doesn't prevent me from doing good guy things, and I'm often rude about it. That's just the way I like Sheppard played out.

So if the romance options don't really affect ME2, I won't bother going back. I was just trying to get the confrontation I had heard about, and actually kinda dislike Liara (too wholesome and annoying), so I didn't want Sheppard going on with relations with her in the future.

[jschild]

Originally Posted by A_Train

I've always thought games that offered you choices that were all blatantly good or blatantly bad were not very interesting. If someone is playing a good guy, and they pick all the good guy choices, because they need to retain points, then there's not really much actual choosing going on. I think ME does this much better. I do lean toward the renegade most of the time, but it doesn't prevent me from doing good guy things, and I'm often rude about it. That's just the way I like Sheppard played out.

So if the romance options don't really affect ME2, I won't bother going back. I was just trying to get the confrontation I had heard about, and actually kinda dislike Liara (too wholesome and annoying), so I didn't want Sheppard going on with relations with her in the future.

Yeah, I like that it isn't Good vs. Evil, your character is a hero - it's just a matter how how cutthroat he is to achieve his goals.

See, I can never pick Ashley because of how racist (in the anti-alien sense) she is.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by A_Train

So if the romance options don't really affect ME2, I won't bother going back. I was just trying to get the confrontation I had heard about, and actually kinda dislike Liara (too wholesome and annoying), so I didn't want Sheppard going on with relations with her in the future.

FWIW, Liara becomes a FAR better character in ME2 than Ashley does anyway, particularly if you pick up the DLC. I ran into the same problem; got Liara by accident, considered replaying it but decided to just run with it. In general, I've found I'm happiest with Mass Effect when I just live with whatever choices I make rather than replay to find out what could have been. In particular, ME2 has a LOT of grey choices that you can spend forever second guessing. I'm more interested in seeing where they lead in ME3 than anything.

[A_Train]

Originally Posted by jschild

See, I can never pick Ashley because of how racist (in the anti-alien sense) she is.

Heh, that's funny because I try to play Sheppard with a bit of an anti-alien or at least pro-human stance. (Even so, I still save the council, I just feel that's the right choice, and I will do it again on this play through).

FWIW, Liara becomes a FAR better character in ME2 than Ashley does anyway, particularly if you pick up the DLC. I ran into the same problem; got Liara by accident, considered replaying it but decided to just run with it. In general, I've found I'm happiest with Mass Effect when I just live with whatever choices I make rather than replay to find out what could have been. In particular, ME2 has a LOT of grey choices that you can spend forever second guessing. I'm more interested in seeing where they lead in ME3 than anything.

Yeah, I really skipped alot of stuff on my first playthrough so that was my main reason for making a second run (though I'm thinking it's been a good idea, to familiarize myself with the details even better). I've actually been following pretty much the same path as my first play (though I'm a soldier instead of a Vanguard). It's not about remaking choices, its about making many, many MORE choices. However, I did opt to save Wrex, when on my first play Ashley had killed him. I had considered playing it out the same, because on my first play through that was a big scene for me, I did everything to try to save Wrex who had been one of my favorite companions (with me on nearly every mission). I talked him down with little effort this time, as I had completed his Armour mission.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by A_Train

Heh, that's funny because I try to play Sheppard with a bit of an anti-alien or at least pro-human stance. (Even so, I still save the council, I just feel that's the right choice, and I will do it again on this play through).

Oddly, despite playing a pretty straight Paragon role, I let the Ascension fall myself. It really had nothing to do with pro-human/alien or anything like that. It just seems like taking down Sovereign is far more important than anyone or anything else, and jeopardizing the galaxy to save the Council would be putting far more innocents in harms way than I could personally justify. This is a situation though were I wish there were actually some "wrong" (aka Game Over) choices you could make. The stakes they raise at the end of the first game are a little cheapened knowing that none of them will actually result in Sovereign successfully contacting the Reapers.

[A_Train]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

Oddly, despite playing a pretty straight Paragon role, I let the Ascension fall myself. It really had nothing to do with pro-human/alien or anything like that. It just seems like taking down Sovereign is far more important than anyone or anything else, and jeopardizing the galaxy to save the Council would be putting far more innocents in harms way than I could personally justify. This is a situation though were I wish there were actually some "wrong" (aka Game Over) choices you could make. The stakes they raise at the end of the first game are a little cheapened knowing that none of them will actually result in Sovereign successfully contacting the Reapers.

Maybe its the lack of a 'wrong' option that makes me do it. Basically you have the choice of saving three people that are on screen a fair amount during the game, or saving many faceless soldiers that you don't see die, (and many of them will be dying in the battle anyway).
Saving the council was saving lives you could see, while allowing them to perish doesn't save anyone (at least as far as I saw it).

[Mombo101]

Originally Posted by Eclipse

Oddly, despite playing a pretty straight Paragon role, I let the Ascension fall myself. It really had nothing to do with pro-human/alien or anything like that. It just seems like taking down Sovereign is far more important than anyone or anything else, and jeopardizing the galaxy to save the Council would be putting far more innocents in harms way than I could personally justify. This is a situation though were I wish there were actually some "wrong" (aka Game Over) choices you could make. The stakes they raise at the end of the first game are a little cheapened knowing that none of them will actually result in Sovereign successfully contacting the Reapers.

I did the same thing. I also saved the Rakni queen, and the scene in Mass Effect 2 was very interesting. I'm really curious about how it all plays out in Mass Effect 3.

[jschild]

Originally Posted by A_Train

Maybe its the lack of a 'wrong' option that makes me do it. Basically you have the choice of saving three people that are on screen a fair amount during the game, or saving many faceless soldiers that you don't see die, (and many of them will be dying in the battle anyway).
Saving the council was saving lives you could see, while allowing them to perish doesn't save anyone (at least as far as I saw it).

What's nice is that if you let them die, you can still reform the Council in the same way - so you can do the prudent thing during a war, and still keep the same structure intact.

[Altron_ZERO]

RIDICULOUS steam sale going on , I might get the Deus Ex collection, only 3 bucks.

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by A_Train

I've always thought games that offered you choices that were all blatantly good or blatantly bad were not very interesting. If someone is playing a good guy, and they pick all the good guy choices, because they need to retain points, then there's not really much actual choosing going on. I think ME does this much better. I do lean toward the renegade most of the time, but it doesn't prevent me from doing good guy things, and I'm often rude about it. That's just the way I like Sheppard played out.

Honestly, it has little to do with retaining points. The real problem is that most of the time, the choices are so far away from each other, its not really a choice at all.

Choice 1: Save the orphanage or sell them into slavery
Choice 2: Diffuse the bomb or nuke the town

These aren't really choices in the sense that you can choose one and the second still carries any weight. I'm sure someone out there roleplays that they sold the orphans to get them out of town just in case the bomb exploded (which assumes you know choice 2 when you make choice 1), but realistically, choice 1 pretty much predetermines all the choices that follow it, simply because option B goes down a road much too far away from where your character's journey has gone thus far. Mass Effect gets away with it by making option A and B sit in fairly morally grey territory so that its pretty easy to cross the line at any juncture.

[jschild]

Yeah, one of my favorites is in the first DLC for ME.

Spoiler Alert!

Where you can either not let the terrorist go, but all the hostages die, or you can save them, but a man willing to kill millions gets to go free. In both cases, there were real consequences to your actions

[Eclipse]

Originally Posted by jschild

Yeah, one of my favorites is in the first DLC for ME.

Spoiler Alert!

Where you can either not let the terrorist go, but all the hostages die, or you can save them, but a man willing to kill millions gets to go free. In both cases, there were real consequences to your actions

ME2 in general has a lot more of these moments. The one thing I find too bad about it is that the Up/Down nature of the game's dialog system makes it feel like their is a good/bad choice here when its really just a straight judgement call. There's several choices in ME2 I'd have loved to be given in a randomly determined Left/Right set of options just to make it clear there's no right or wrong, just consequences.

Personally, I don't mind the idea that games let you become the bad guy in the end, but in general, I think if you're going to allow it, there needs to be some granularity to it. Ideally, there's be 7 or more tiers of good/evil:

Saint
Hero
Good
Neutral
Bad
Villain
Demon

but at most, only three choices would still be available at any one time based on your current standing. That way, a Saint would still have a viable choice of saving the guy, but choosing not to give him a puppy, but wouldn't be given the "scorch the world in flames" option unless they really worked at their negative karma first. ME does this to a degree, but its generally more about being mean than actually evil. ME probably only has the Hero-Bad band covered, IMO.