Dig it /fap

Mass Effect is a step in the right direction, but by stepping a little to the left you get into an escalator.

Very good point. I think the renegade/paragon, good/evil systems need to die. Developers have demonstrated that they cannot use them correctly. It's the same way with a lot of reward systems. Too many people focus on getting the best ending or the best rewards and not enough on enjoying the experience, and developers are enabling that kind of behavior.

Also, some of the renegade/paragon click events didn't even make sense.
SPOILER

When I was saving Garrus from the gangs of Omega, I got renegade points for killing someone who was fixing a gunship that was going to be used to take out Garrus. I can sort of see the reasoning there, as I don't think he was in a gang, but come on. Was I supposed to let them fix their gunship? And the most bullshit moment was shortly after that when I got renegade points for shooting a droid with a sniper. Why. That was exactly what I was going to do after the cutscene ended, so why the hell did it count as a bad thing. And it was a robot!

Dragon Age does a much better job of giving you the hard choices. I wonder if Bioware feels trapped with the Paragon/Renegade system because it's part of the series' legacy at this point.

I feel like Bioware blinked in this game. They built this whole narrative about sacrifice and loss. But if the player invests enough time and resources, they can get everyone to like them and not lose anything/anyone.

I almost think it would've been better if there wasn't a way to get everyone to like you or to get everyone out alive. But they have to cater to that empowerment fantasy even at the expense of good story telling.

God dammit, Anthony.

I won't be able to write anything about Mass Effect 2 now that you've essentially spoken at length about all the issues I feared would arise and other developing complaints I have with how the story and interaction is handled, without sounding like I'm just retreading all the same steps.

Sometimes I hate agreeing with you.
I guess I'll have to write about something we disagree on, like No More Heroes 2.
Oh. Wait.
HOLMES!!

What happened to your face(beard)?

Other than that, I think the idea is that making the paragon/renegade choice over and over again is not always easy. Yes, it is a way of gaining those eventual charm/intimidate conversation options, but selecting only paragon or renegade options over and over again did not always result in an ideal situation, at least not for me. Whether or not I actually wanted to select them, or whether I was going out of my way for the charm/intimidate options, I was still, not really disappointed, but a little surprised with how some conversations turned out.

I agree that to actually play as an average person you would end up picking from both sides of the coin. However, when I personally think about it in a more roleplaying way, I as a commander and leader may have to think about the good of all, or at least the good of my party and and crew, as well as the mission in some of those situations. Depending on how I've been playing thus far, an extreme paragon/renegade option that would bypass anything negative happening that would affect the mission I'm currently in the middle of pursuing, is something I wouldn't think twice about using.

At the same time, these paragon/renegade options are still just options, they are a reward for playing a certain way, but you are free to pass on it in favor of one that will produce a more dramatic outcome.

ill just assume that this rant will totally ruin mass effect 2 for me so ill go ahead and not watch it. thanks again for the spoiler in the first line yesterday.

I really don't think there is a game that lets you choose whatever and then feel rewarded. Even inFamous had the one concrete plotline, regardless of what your decisions were in the game.

Dude.....shave that thing

If someone is talking critically about a game I don't actually want spoiled...

I probably shouldn't be looking at related coverage.

Just puttin that out there.

The paragon/renegade system has always been Mass Effect's biggest weakness.

Not only does it water down the plot by allowing you to make choices without consequences, it also punishes you for acting like a realistic person whose behavior isn't always perfectly consistent with some moral paradigm.

And if you want to really get down to it, morality meters always strip down a character by denying them of something all real people have: free will. The whole idea that choices get grayed-out, that you cannot choose to be evil in a given context unless you've built up your "evilness" for the past 20 hours, etc, is just plain ridiculous. Why not just give my character free will?

Characters don't die out of "luck" or "multiple choice" in the final mission.

You must have made some bad decisions regarding who was the leader of the other team, the tech expert etc.

I generally agree that charm feels right when its at the expense of other skils.

But I think ME2's system makes alot of sense in terms of defining the operational method of the character. The more Paragon actions you choose, the more "paragon skill" you acquire. Reasonably, its divorced completely (save for the Sentinal skills, at least) from your combat skill progression. It says, "If you walk a paragon path, you can do some amazing pargonish things". That, I think, if pretty reasonable and powerful: You can't be this total paragon, and then flip out and do this exactly opposite, out of character renegade thing.

The way the system is used, however, pushes you into what do amount to narrative cop outs. I kind of would have enjoyed having to choose between crew members in that one conflict, but I'd run such a powerful "Shepard" role up to that point that I was able to resolve it and maintain the squad unit. True enough to the character, but I kind of miss out on some meaty conflict.

Similar to your issue with the final conflict, I feel, the way the game uses the systems it has in place feels a bit lacking. Lacking in regards to narrative punch. A seasoned gamer knows how to game a system, and I think most of us do it easily: what's gonna let me win. As opposed to "What do I actually feel about the situation".

@eduh:
"Two of my crew are dead. I knew that lives would be lost on this mission, but it still came as a surprise to see two of my crew members -- one of whom I especially cared for -- die right in front of me."

That's not a spoiler? I don't recall anyone in game telling me anything like that. And even if it is to be expected, maybe keep that for after the jump.

I agree with this. I also think that the achievements also take away from it. There was an achievement for everyones loyalty. So while going through them i found myself doing what the guy wanted not necessarily what i wanted to do. And like you said even if i kind of went against them, either i did something or their mind set changed into your favor and they became loyal anyway.

Basically, it sounds like Mass Effect 2 could you use 1 or 2 small "mini boss" missions where you have to assign crew roles, to get more mileage out of what seems like a pretty sound crew/ship stat system.

Magnalon:
The choices in inFamous may have been ludicrously cut-and-dry, but at least the Good powers were drastically different than the Evil powers; in choosing to be good, you were giving up the (awfully satisfying) ability to increase the damage radius of all of your attacks, and blow things up more efficiently, and so on. There was some degree of sacrifice and choice involved.

In Mass Effect, nothing about your gameplay changes, and the story loses drama. Not the same thing.

I like having cake and eating it too. They didn't shove the fork in your mouth. You'll play Far Cry 2 with made-up rules but you can't stop yourself from crafting an interesting story for yourself in ME2? Play it again and play it the way you want. Don't get everybody's loyalty. Be morally ambiguous. Ignore the gameplay elements that incentivize Paragonism and do it the way you want. The game you want is in there.

Anthony, more beard please. This is true internet sincerity. I also have to say that it really isn't that easy to be Paragon or Renegade all the time. It all really depends on the situation, or at least it does for me. Just like in Dragon age, I don't want to go around being a dick to everyone. That's not who I am in life, so I wouldn't enjoy playing that way. It's amazing how you can make all the "right" or Paragon choices in Mass Effect, like saving Wrex, the council, etc.. but still be Renegade through conversation alone.

Your third rant of similar topic. I'm gonna paste my replies here.
***Spoilers abound!!***
***
***
I had the same feeling about the ending of ME but in ME2 you find out that a lot of people died at the cost of saving the council and a bunch of people hate you for it. Another great thing is that a lot of situations where even if you choose paragon persuade options you don't always get the expected outcome. For example ***BIGGER SPOILER HERE***
***
You will go to a prison ship. On seeing an inmate being savagely beaten you have the option to stop the guards. If you do you will recieve an email later from the prisoner, detailing his escape, his plans to carve your name into the corpses of people and eventually to come and kill you.

On legion's loyalty mission you get the option to convert the geth or to destroy them. After speaking with geth, neither option is particularly good. Kill millions of sentient creatures or brainwash them?
***
***END 'BIG' SPOILER***
I was constantly surprised at how grey everything became compared to the previous game. There are a lot of tough decisions with hazy outcomes.

Maybe it's a user issue. My perception of decisions or outcomes in certain situations seemed grey. Maybe you're looking for the game to give you more notification of the outcomes of your choices or maybe your set of values just differs from mine. It seems to me more likely to be the former, you're looking for gameplay alterations from your alignment. I was satisfied with just being able to empathise with the characters and feeling for the consequences.

The prison section and the information about saving the council are the ones that stuck out in my mind the most. It didn't change the gameplay but my mercy brought many people's deaths. Sure they weren't real people but I felt bad. I didn't feel like i needed the game to hurt me in any mechanical sense. I really put myself into the game and got a lot of emotional reward back.

I was really impressed with Mass Effect 2's handling of morality and am saddened that other people don't seem to notice it.

@Jumbo
That's true, you don't know it's Garrus, but that doesn't matter. Your stated objective is to get Archangle on your crew, not help the gangs.

The problem with morality systems is without them the character is not you. With them it's not complex enough to be you. If a morality system existed that was so invisable you would not realize it's there existed it would be a great morality system. However the amount of time to develops all these different outcome would take years.

crikky, lay of the speed man. your point goes nowhere when you're flying through a thousand words a second.

either that or calm down man, its just a video game.

Sorry, but the Paragon/Renegade system is the best morality system in gaming. Why? Its not good and evil, its more based on idealism vs cyncism, and both actions to a problem can have negative consquences.

Its well done and players should be rewarded for sticking to their philosophy and not wavering, even when the outcome is not great. Unlike most games with a morality system in which the "good" option is rewarding, its far less so here, and can lead into uncomfortable outcomes. I played a Paragon playthrough and its hard not to go Renegade from time to time. Many decisions are also very gray, in which maybe the Renegade option is more "right" than the Paragon.

Also Paragon is an idealism that puts life and strict code of conduct above all else, regardless of the consquences. A Renegade however believes the ends justify the means and would sacrifice a few to save a hundred without any quelms. Its more of a cynical view based more on rationality and less on morals. This is far from good and evil. For example, in Zaeed's mission you can save the workers or get the bad guy, can't do both. Both choices have nasty consquences.

The problem is not the system, its the player.

It is not self-defeating to allow the player to circumvent those things in the game. I don't understand why you take such a fatalistic stance on these things. Your basically saying that the player should be forced to compromise in those situations where compromise seems inevitable rather than be able to talk their way around it. Why? I played things by ear my first time through Mass Effect 2 and accrued a half and half of paragon and renegade. And because of that I had to make some tough decisions, particularly with Tali. But if you play through the game like a boy-scout and don't ever say anything bad to anyone, in real-life terms that just makes you an ass kisser. And characters respond to that. Just because being the ass-kisser is the path of least resistance doesn't somehow ruin every other path you can take or, more importantly, make the other paths somehow wrong. In my mind, the team at Bioware had a certain degree of faith in their audience with their design choices. I heard you can loose every character in your party if you do it right. That's still a victory condition. As long as you see credits roll then you won. It's your own device if you decide that ending X isn't a real victory condition. You don't have to be the boy-scout and make nice with all your crew. You can just jump in there and kill things and still win the game. So its all up to your personal preference how you play the game since no matter what you can't loose.