also as far as my headcanon is concerned, Fiona Shepard was suffering from bloodloss and head injury and hallucinated the whole decision thing while she was in the process of nearly dying; what really happened is that her super well prepared fleet managed to squeak out a victory over the Reapers and then her friends found her and she spent months in the hospital while people cleaned up and started fixing things and working to bring the Krogans and Rakni and Geth together into the new peaceable future they were all building, because even E-Zero and the Mass Effect aren't anywhere near powerful enough to fuse biological and synthetic beings all across the galaxy, or wipe out all the synthetics in the galaxy but ONLY the synthetics, or any of that. *nods sagely*
So I finally finished my ME1 playthrough with my new Renegade Shep, and now I can post ME2 screenshots! She's so cool. So cool. (ME1 barely runs on my laptop and the graphics are pants. ME2 is a treat to look at, even with my shitty video card.) Spoiler: Kiara Shepard has no time for your shit It took me a while to get used to Vanguard, but now I'm having a great time. And I find it really interesting that I relate to different NPCs depending on how I'm roleplaying the PC.
My first Shep was Lyra Shepard, and teeeeeechnically a dual-character between me and s/o, since they wanted to show off the series. For three days, we were holed up in the living room with pizza and Mass Effect, grinding through all three games with barely any sleep. She was a Sole Survivor and Earthborn, and we played her Paragon with a few Renegade moments (calling out Udina and punching a few people mostly, also tossing that one salarian out of the tower during Thane's recruitment mission.) For her, being polite wasn't noble, it was expected of her as an officer, especially since she'd pretty much clawed her way to that position through grim determination. She romanced Liara in ME1, and when Liara couldn't come back with her to the Normandy, she understood-- and ended up dating Garrus instead. We lost Tali in the suicide run, so that broke her heart. It also fucked up a lot of the ability to resolve the geth/quarian war peacefully, so in the end, Lyra chose the quarians over the geth. And since a vast majority of the geth were already dead, she picked Destory, because fuck the Reapers, and those casualties that came were ones she could live with. (And incidentally, live she did! With horrible trauma and no small amount of bitterness. She and Garrus were angry old war vets by the end of it I think.) Aaaand on that note WHO IS HYPE FOR ANDROMEDA BECAUSE I SURE AM.
okay i know i'm not posting this in the best frame of mind, but i was talking about ME with my brother in law and he was saying that there were rumors that indoctrinated-shep would be a major antagonist in andromeda. they cant do that. they can't ruin shep's story like that. i know the endings were contentious, but i thought the ending was good and sad and could be read in a really meaningful way. also i have cherished postgame headcanons and that would destroy them they can't do this they can't do this to shepard. fuck
I seriously doubt that'll happen. I mean, I could be wrong, but hasn't it been definitively said that A) there was no canon ending to the Shep trilogy, and B) Andromeda would involve no one we'd ever met before? plus, well, I know it's EA, but that seems like far too much of a monumentally massively idiotic move. Also, what a pain in the ass it would be to make trees for every bloody path you could have ended up with so as to import your Shep - OR they have to literally scrap 90% of the trilogy to decide on a canon interpretation. could it happen? I suppose so. But good LORD that would be dumb. I doubt that will be it. also, it's just plain too easy of a choice. (maybe that will assuage your fears slightly?)
yeah, thanks. I was trying to process it while already headed to upset and wayy overstimulated and my poor brain short circuited in panic. i didn't know about those things about the canon ending or andromeda, but they sound like other things i've heard before. it's honestly for the best that way. Now to make my brain focus on something productive: Here's how I want them to do Andromeda. I hope the ship with the Milky Way races on it is a generation ship that went out before the end of the Reaper war. That way, they could have all the familiar races despite how things turned out in Shep's trilogy (whether the quarians or krogan are still around in the Milky Way wouldn't effect their presence on the generation ship for example). Best, they wouldn't know what happened at the end of the war, leaving head canons intact. I would also be really interested to see the conflict (the Milky Way Races coming to Andromeda) and the struggles between them be a refugee conflict. I think it would be particularly timely, given our current state of affairs to basically play a game where you are the refugee struggling to find safety and a new home. There's no way you can go back, so what do you do when the current residents don't want you?
Yeah, Indoctrination Theory is fun to mess around with, but it's definitely not canon, so I doubt that would play any major role in the game. I know there was a Krogan in one of the gameplay commercials (so I've heard) so fingers crossed on that one. There were leaks a week or so back with some of the rough concepts, and one of them was "humans as an invasive species", but I seriously doubt they're going to play that to the T. Refugee generation ship sounds more thematically appropriate, and usually the rough concepts are nothing like the finished product.
The unplayed games in my Steam library clamour for my attention like baby birds. "Play us, Euler! We are inventive and story-rich! Consider all the experiences you have not yet experienced by letting us gather dust like this!" I sheepishly make another Shepard.
@EulersBidentity Still better than me. I just keep playing the same Shepard over and over and over...
Oh god. ME has some things that are occasionally hilariously off model. The boobs in those games are hilariously overdone. i mean, we can talk about how aliens with boobs is :/ but just how many characters have like massive racks just makes me giggle. I wish we saw more Shepard boob though. I really like the love scene from ME1. It was actually tasteful but still really erotic. ME3 (at least Kaidan's romance) had a nice love scene though Shepard's lacey bra and awkward bioware undies (tm) seemed really out of place. I wish we could have had just boobies.
So I always love ensemble scenes, no matter what media. But I got to say, the argument over the reapers in the second council scene in ME1: the music, the voice acting...it's so siiiiick Edit: also Paragon is a lot more fun than I was expecting, thanks to JHale and good dialogue writing.
@EulersBidentity paragon is amazingly fun. I know people like renegade, but the way Jen Hale plays it makes her come across as the most done, frustrated woman who refuses to give up her morals but is really angry about it. She's my babe. She's gonna save your ass, and drag you kicking and screaming to be a better person, but she's not going to do it nicely. She's my favorite example of the Good is Not Nice, Good is Not Dumb, and Knight in Sour Armor ever. I could gush of Paragon Fem!Shep for eternity. She's my favorite character ever, and I can say with no exaggeration that she kept me alive through the worst episodes of suicidal depression. ETA: I never knew ME: The Musical was a thing I needed but now I know. I HAVE A MIGHTY NEED
Honestly, I played Paragon full the first time and then Renegade the second and.... Paragon feels a lot more fun to me! Especially if you have the occasional Renegade moment for max hilarity. Because a lot of the Renegade stuff does feel like someone going off the rails on their own thing, which is fun for some people! But for me the utter exasperation in f!Shep's voice (haven't done an m!shep paragon run yet) is the best thing. It's way more satisfying to hear Shep be utterly done with the Council and Alliance and everyone than to hear them mouthing off, because at least with the first one the righteous anger makes sense. Honestly, I wouldn't listen to a Renegade Shepard either, because a lot of Renegade options would call for a court martial all on their own.
Anderson: "this isn't how I expected my career coming to an end." Oh captain dad you have no idea. @Kittenly yeah, I was expecting more cringey earnestness, honestly! And instead I've got what you described. I don't know if I want to play full paragon throughout - the thing I love most about the series is the freedom of choice in your actions and reactions. And the ability to build a complex character from that. My first (and second) playthrough was Paragade in a very "this is who I believe this character is, now what would she say in this situation based on her own history/her respect for the NPC/her morning so far" way, and I think that's why I found the RP so mindblowingly immersive. (Could be that Shepard is just my kinda character.)
Yeah, My shep had a few renegade moments, though few enough to count on my hand. She punched the reporter in every game (the poor women just kept choosing the WORST times to confront her: After she lost Ash on Virmire, Right after Horizon and the reunion going...poorly, and then right after Kaidan was assaulted on Mars.) She didn't save the council in ME1, and hung up on them. Then she refused to tell that jackass from Overlord DLC whether his brother was okay, causing him to go off himself. But my Shep is also autistic, so she wouldn't forgive him. On the topic of Paragon Shep not being perfect angel and earnest, the PARAGON ending of the Overlord DLC is her pistol whipping someone who was torturing his autistic brother, then getting said brother the hell out of there.
