exitvoid ➠ so what the hell happened?
One of the most interesting aspects of the Mass Effect series is your ability to make choices that affect the way the story plays out. Someone you choose to let live in the first game might come stab you in the back in the third, or if you'd killed them, it's possible that one of their allies might do the stabbing for them.
However, this makes for an interesting app-writing experience. So I figured I'd make it easier and explain here which path this Shepard's story took, so there's at least a somewhat coherent history section for her somewhere.
HISTORY:
> colonist
She was born on the colonist planet called Mindoir, and spent the first sixteen years of her life living there in safety and happiness. But it wasn't meant to last: A slaver ship run by the race called batarians attacked one day and took the colony by surprise, and within the hour, everyone that Shepard had known or loved was dead. When Alliance soldiers finally arrived, they found her hiding in the corner of a half-broken shipping crate.
(Shepard had always liked to think that she was tougher than the average girl, but the attack on Mindoir proved her just as much a coward as everyone else. Maybe even more so--the only reason she'd survived was because the batarians couldn't find her. She'd hidden, and as soon as the fear wore off, she loathed her decision with every fiber of her being. There was going to be no more running for Shepard. No more weak little girl. She was going to learn to fight, and more than that, she was going to be the best. She'd cowered in a corner while her friends, family, and colony were captured or slaughtered... She refused to be that weak again.)
> sole survivor
During her early years with the Alliance military, a mission you were on went horribly wrong. Her unit was slaughtered by a massive beast called a thresher maw on a mission to a planet called Akuze. Trapped in an extreme survival situation, she had to overcome physical torments and psychological stresses that would have broken most people. She survived while all those around her fell, and now she alone is left to tell the tale... Not that she ever does.
(This time, she didn't run and she didn't hide. But for the second time in her life, she watched everyone she cared about die. Her unit was her family, in a way that she hadn't felt since the attack on Mindoir. It would be the last time she'd make that mistake, though. Because as she was starting to learn, those who get close to her have a tendency to die.)
MASS EFFECT:
> 'mission comes first, no romance'.
Midway through the game there was a conflict of interests. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko had developed feelings for Shepard, but so had the asari archaeologist Liara T'soni. So Kaidan confronted Shepard about it one day. Told her to make a choice: Kaidan or Liara? Shepard, however, had no intention of pursuing a relationship with either of them. Nothing that could distract them from the mission ahead... And besides, by now she'd perfected the art of not getting too close to people.
(By now she's a formidable figure. A Spectre, which allows her to basically break every rule in the galaxy for the greater good. She's respected by almost every single person in Citadel space. She has a crew to top any other, each one loyal and ready to do whatever she commands. But when it comes down to it, she's still alone. And when anyone tries to remedy that, they wind up on the wrong end of her sharp tongue. For their sake, and for hers.)
> killed the rachni queen
At one point in the game, there comes a decision. It turns out that a race called the rachni (who at one point led a war against Citadel space, and are very intelligent and potentially aggressive) isn't as extinct as the Council once believed. Shepard fought her way through Rachni to find the captive queen, fully intent on destroying the aggressive bug-like race altogether. But the queen put out a plea for their lives. She explained that her children only attacked because they were driven mad without her. She promises that if Shepard releases her, they won't wage war on the other races again, but instead find somewhere to live in peace. Shepard couldn't trust this promise. She killed the queen.
(To this day, Shepard wonders if it was the right choice. She wonders if a lot of her choices were the right choice, actually, and the ones she doesn't wonder about are the ones she's pretty sure were the wrong choices. But when it came down to it, the rachni queen could be playing her for a fool, and Shepard wasn't about to release her and her soldiers to kill a million more. It was a risk that she just couldn't take. She was doing her best to do what was right for the galaxy, and if the rachni turned around and attacked, all eyes would fall on her decision, and everything she'd fought so hard for would be nothing.)
> killed wrex
Near the end of the game, krogan squadmate Wrex finds out that Saren has found a way to cure the genophage that has tormented the krogan race for centuries. However, Saren's using it to breed a powerful krogan army, one that might end thousands of innocent lives. Shepard and Co. want to destroy the breeding facility to prevent this from happening... but Wrex is absolutely furious. This is the cure his race has always searched for, how dare they try to destroy it? As loyal as he's been thus far, this is a strong enough motive for Wrex to turn on them, and Shepard's forced to kill him before he hurts anyone.
(In reality, she hated this decision. Wrex had been an incredibly valuable ally, and had honestly not even been too terrible to talk to. But by now she's got it firmly in her head that when in doubt, shoot. She's not going to endanger the mission or her crew because she's too weak to do what has to be done.)
> let kaidan die
Later on the same mission that started with the death of Wrex, Saren interferes and there comes a decision. Both Kaidan and Ashley are in very dangerous spots, and there's only time to rescue one of them before the entire place blows up. She saves Ashley.
(Both of them had been willing to die for the cause, had told her to go save the other, but in the end it was Ashley she chose. Nobody asked her why, which was good because she didn't have an answer she could stand to tell them. The truth was, Kaidan had accepted her decision not to pursue anything romantic, but when it came down to it he always seemed to be waiting for his chance. Like it was inevitable, like Shepard would 'come around' one day and decide to be with him. Kaidan was a valuable squadmate and even almost a friend, but so was Ashley, and when she saw a choice that would let her escape the expectations he was putting on her, she chose it.)
> let the Council die
In the end-game, Shepard has to choose between the lives of the council members (three of them, turian/salarian/asari) and thousands of lives in the Alliance fleet. By now it's obvious that she'd choose the thousands.
(Two things came into play here. One, saving innocent lives was everything she believed in. The lives of thousands vastly outweighed the lives of three, no matter how valuable the three. Secondly and more selfishly, the Council had screwed her over one too many times, doubted her and criticized her, even grounded her and took her ship at one point. The Reaper threat was out there, and Shepard was going to stop it... Was she really going to put up with fighting the Council the whole way?)
MASS EFFECT 2:
There are many more decisions here in Mass Effect 2, but I'll only name the big ones for now.
> doesn't trust Cerberus.
From the moment Cerberus woke her up, Shepard was forced to wonder whether Cerberus was truly trying to help humanity or if the Illusive Man had some sort of hidden agenda. When it came down to it, Shepard decided that she'd cooperate with Cerberus, but on her own terms. There was something she just couldn't bring herself to trust about the Illusive Man, and she definitely wasn't the only one who felt that way.
(This time, her innate defensiveness is for a good cause. The Illusive Man is giving her a ship and a crew, so she goes on his missions and answers his summons, but she makes damn sure he knows she doesn't trust him. By association, this means she doesn't trust Miranda so much either, although the Cerberus rep earns a makeshift sort of trust over the course of the game.)
> be generally a little more Paragon than in ME1.
This isn't an event so much as a gamewide decision. While in ME1 she was overcautious in many ways and had no trouble killing anything that endangered her, her squad, or her mission, now she has experienced death herself, and that's changed her perspective just a little. She's still the Shepard she's always been, but now she actually has a problem with that. She's doing better about her 'shoot first, ask questions later' tendencies, and she might even be opening herself up to some possible friendships, especially with former crew members like Tali and Garrus. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and if you do piss her off she will cut you.
> was reinstated as a Spectre.
Since she put an old ally Anderson in the Council seat in the end of ME1, he got her her old title back now that she's come back to life. This doesn't affect too much, but I felt it was important.
> activate Legion.
Midway through the game, they get ahold of an inactive geth named Legion. Geth are a dangerous race, especially in ME1 where they aided Saren directly, and even now they're still an enemy to the quarian race (which crew-member Tali is one of). However, he could be an asset to the team, and could provide them with insight and technology they'd never have dreamed of before. Unlike with the rachni queen, this time Shepard chose to risk it.
(This may have been because unlike the rachni, who attacked Shepard up until she spoke with the queen, Legion actually saved their asses before he de-activated. So as much of a risk as he was, he deserved a chance. More of a chance than she'd given Wrex, anyway.)
> break up the fight between Miranda and Jack without losing loyalty.
By chewing them both out, actually. The fight was over whether Cerberus had a right to experiment on Jack like they did, basically fucking up her entire life. In-game, it takes a high paragon or renegade score to break up the fight, otherwise you just have to pick a side and lose the other's loyalty.
(While Shepard thought Miranda was displaying unusual stupidity by provoking Jack as she did--Miranda was usually so much better at watching her tongue in tense situations--Jack still needed to quit flying off the handle at every little thing. So she ordered them to stay on separate decks of the ship and gave them permission to tear each other apart after the mission was over. Not that she actually thought they would. By Shepard's guess, there would be at least a grudging respect by the time all of this was over.)
> break up the fight between Tali and Legion without losing loyalty.
Once again, by chewing them out, but not as harshly as she did with Jack and Miranda. After all, this wasn't a petty bitchfight, it was protecting their respective races. Tali had caught Legion scanning her omni-tool to send information about the quarians back to the geth. Tali was upset that he was stealing her classified information and endangering her people, and Legion felt that the Geth should know the quarians were planning an attack.
(Tali was becoming almost like a sister to her, though she's not great with the affection, and Legion really couldn't be held responsible for what he was programmed to do, so she wanted to resolve this as quickly as possible. She made them realize they were just going to have to sit on their racial conflict until the mission was over, because if they were just going to keep fighting they were endangering the mission.)
> romance Garrus... kind of.
She didn't mean to, really. But he was becoming one of her only true friends, and it just kind of... happened. When the time came though, up in her quarters, she waffled. Told him it wasn't a good idea, and that they should just be friends.
(It wasn't that she didn't care about Garrus. She did, as a best friend and who knows, maybe more. But they were heading into a suicide mission, and she couldn't shake the long-standing fact that people close to her always seem to die. So she tried to back out while she still could, for his sake.)
> everyone survived the suicide mission... except Garrus.
She slipped. In this final mission, every step of the way required precise decisions in who was assigned to what task... But at one point, Shepard chose Garrus for a job over squadmates that she trusted less or weren't strong enough to risk sending out alone. It cost her a squadmate, and her best friend.
(She let herself get just a little bit jaded. After everything he'd been through and all he'd survived, she thought Garrus could handle anything thrown at him, and that she was risking fewer lives by entrusting the task to him. But she was wrong, and she paid for it.)
> destroy the Reaper base.
In the endgame, you can choose to either destroy the abandoned enemy base or hand it over to the Illusive Man for research purposes. The Illusive Man demands it--destroying it is basically giving Cerberus the finger and losing all funding and support. But in a culmination of all of her mistrust of him throughout the game, Shepard refuses to hand the Reaper base over, destroying it and severing her connection to Cerberus.
(This is also where Miranda proves herself, giving Cerberus her resignation and sticking with Shepard instead of the man she'd been loyal to for... well, a hell of a long time.)
OTHER:
> loyalty quests.
In ME2, each loyalty quest requires some sort of a decision. I'll make this more complete as I remember more of the choices made, but Shepard gained the loyalty of each crew member one way or another. Off the top of my head, she let Garrus kill Sidonis, the man that betrayed him (as opposed to standing in the way of the shot and trying to save Garrus's conscience), she chewed out the Quarian authorities and let Tali escape exile without revealing what her father had done, and she helped Samara kill Morinth.
> all DLC.
This means that in Shepard's canon, she has Zaeed and Kasumi on the squad, she found and explored the remains of the first Normandy, she helped Liara kill/become the Shadow Broker and read all of the files that gave her access to, she shut down Project Overlord, and she was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of batarians (which, after Mindoir, she's not terribly sad about) in Arrival.
> 'Jane' Shepard.
(This is slipping into headcanon, but it relates to how you can choose Shepard's first name in the game.) She goes by Jane Shepard on all official records, and even then nobody calls her anything but Shepard, like her first name's some sort of line they don't dare breach. But the thing is, it's not even truly her first name. It's the name Alliance gave her when they picked her up from Mindoir, since she was too defensive and traumatized and just plain stubborn to give them her real one. They got 'Shepard' from the tag on her suit, but no first name, and nobody left alive knows who she used to be. Can you try to earn that trust? Definitely. Will she ever reveal it? Probably not.
> Vanguard.
You can choose a class for your Shepard in the beginning of each game. This one's a Vanguard, which is a combination of Soldier (which uses guns and no biotics) and Adept (which uses pistols plus a ton of biotics). Vanguards are the front line of the squad. Their biotic powers focus on combat potential - disabling the enemy, making enemy armor ineffective, and shielding themselves from harm so that they can get close enough to go to work.
However, this makes for an interesting app-writing experience. So I figured I'd make it easier and explain here which path this Shepard's story took, so there's at least a somewhat coherent history section for her somewhere.
HISTORY:
> colonist
She was born on the colonist planet called Mindoir, and spent the first sixteen years of her life living there in safety and happiness. But it wasn't meant to last: A slaver ship run by the race called batarians attacked one day and took the colony by surprise, and within the hour, everyone that Shepard had known or loved was dead. When Alliance soldiers finally arrived, they found her hiding in the corner of a half-broken shipping crate.
(Shepard had always liked to think that she was tougher than the average girl, but the attack on Mindoir proved her just as much a coward as everyone else. Maybe even more so--the only reason she'd survived was because the batarians couldn't find her. She'd hidden, and as soon as the fear wore off, she loathed her decision with every fiber of her being. There was going to be no more running for Shepard. No more weak little girl. She was going to learn to fight, and more than that, she was going to be the best. She'd cowered in a corner while her friends, family, and colony were captured or slaughtered... She refused to be that weak again.)
> sole survivor
During her early years with the Alliance military, a mission you were on went horribly wrong. Her unit was slaughtered by a massive beast called a thresher maw on a mission to a planet called Akuze. Trapped in an extreme survival situation, she had to overcome physical torments and psychological stresses that would have broken most people. She survived while all those around her fell, and now she alone is left to tell the tale... Not that she ever does.
(This time, she didn't run and she didn't hide. But for the second time in her life, she watched everyone she cared about die. Her unit was her family, in a way that she hadn't felt since the attack on Mindoir. It would be the last time she'd make that mistake, though. Because as she was starting to learn, those who get close to her have a tendency to die.)
MASS EFFECT:
> 'mission comes first, no romance'.
Midway through the game there was a conflict of interests. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko had developed feelings for Shepard, but so had the asari archaeologist Liara T'soni. So Kaidan confronted Shepard about it one day. Told her to make a choice: Kaidan or Liara? Shepard, however, had no intention of pursuing a relationship with either of them. Nothing that could distract them from the mission ahead... And besides, by now she'd perfected the art of not getting too close to people.
(By now she's a formidable figure. A Spectre, which allows her to basically break every rule in the galaxy for the greater good. She's respected by almost every single person in Citadel space. She has a crew to top any other, each one loyal and ready to do whatever she commands. But when it comes down to it, she's still alone. And when anyone tries to remedy that, they wind up on the wrong end of her sharp tongue. For their sake, and for hers.)
> killed the rachni queen
At one point in the game, there comes a decision. It turns out that a race called the rachni (who at one point led a war against Citadel space, and are very intelligent and potentially aggressive) isn't as extinct as the Council once believed. Shepard fought her way through Rachni to find the captive queen, fully intent on destroying the aggressive bug-like race altogether. But the queen put out a plea for their lives. She explained that her children only attacked because they were driven mad without her. She promises that if Shepard releases her, they won't wage war on the other races again, but instead find somewhere to live in peace. Shepard couldn't trust this promise. She killed the queen.
(To this day, Shepard wonders if it was the right choice. She wonders if a lot of her choices were the right choice, actually, and the ones she doesn't wonder about are the ones she's pretty sure were the wrong choices. But when it came down to it, the rachni queen could be playing her for a fool, and Shepard wasn't about to release her and her soldiers to kill a million more. It was a risk that she just couldn't take. She was doing her best to do what was right for the galaxy, and if the rachni turned around and attacked, all eyes would fall on her decision, and everything she'd fought so hard for would be nothing.)
> killed wrex
Near the end of the game, krogan squadmate Wrex finds out that Saren has found a way to cure the genophage that has tormented the krogan race for centuries. However, Saren's using it to breed a powerful krogan army, one that might end thousands of innocent lives. Shepard and Co. want to destroy the breeding facility to prevent this from happening... but Wrex is absolutely furious. This is the cure his race has always searched for, how dare they try to destroy it? As loyal as he's been thus far, this is a strong enough motive for Wrex to turn on them, and Shepard's forced to kill him before he hurts anyone.
(In reality, she hated this decision. Wrex had been an incredibly valuable ally, and had honestly not even been too terrible to talk to. But by now she's got it firmly in her head that when in doubt, shoot. She's not going to endanger the mission or her crew because she's too weak to do what has to be done.)
> let kaidan die
Later on the same mission that started with the death of Wrex, Saren interferes and there comes a decision. Both Kaidan and Ashley are in very dangerous spots, and there's only time to rescue one of them before the entire place blows up. She saves Ashley.
(Both of them had been willing to die for the cause, had told her to go save the other, but in the end it was Ashley she chose. Nobody asked her why, which was good because she didn't have an answer she could stand to tell them. The truth was, Kaidan had accepted her decision not to pursue anything romantic, but when it came down to it he always seemed to be waiting for his chance. Like it was inevitable, like Shepard would 'come around' one day and decide to be with him. Kaidan was a valuable squadmate and even almost a friend, but so was Ashley, and when she saw a choice that would let her escape the expectations he was putting on her, she chose it.)
> let the Council die
In the end-game, Shepard has to choose between the lives of the council members (three of them, turian/salarian/asari) and thousands of lives in the Alliance fleet. By now it's obvious that she'd choose the thousands.
(Two things came into play here. One, saving innocent lives was everything she believed in. The lives of thousands vastly outweighed the lives of three, no matter how valuable the three. Secondly and more selfishly, the Council had screwed her over one too many times, doubted her and criticized her, even grounded her and took her ship at one point. The Reaper threat was out there, and Shepard was going to stop it... Was she really going to put up with fighting the Council the whole way?)
MASS EFFECT 2:
There are many more decisions here in Mass Effect 2, but I'll only name the big ones for now.
> doesn't trust Cerberus.
From the moment Cerberus woke her up, Shepard was forced to wonder whether Cerberus was truly trying to help humanity or if the Illusive Man had some sort of hidden agenda. When it came down to it, Shepard decided that she'd cooperate with Cerberus, but on her own terms. There was something she just couldn't bring herself to trust about the Illusive Man, and she definitely wasn't the only one who felt that way.
(This time, her innate defensiveness is for a good cause. The Illusive Man is giving her a ship and a crew, so she goes on his missions and answers his summons, but she makes damn sure he knows she doesn't trust him. By association, this means she doesn't trust Miranda so much either, although the Cerberus rep earns a makeshift sort of trust over the course of the game.)
> be generally a little more Paragon than in ME1.
This isn't an event so much as a gamewide decision. While in ME1 she was overcautious in many ways and had no trouble killing anything that endangered her, her squad, or her mission, now she has experienced death herself, and that's changed her perspective just a little. She's still the Shepard she's always been, but now she actually has a problem with that. She's doing better about her 'shoot first, ask questions later' tendencies, and she might even be opening herself up to some possible friendships, especially with former crew members like Tali and Garrus. But Rome wasn't built in a day, and if you do piss her off she will cut you.
> was reinstated as a Spectre.
Since she put an old ally Anderson in the Council seat in the end of ME1, he got her her old title back now that she's come back to life. This doesn't affect too much, but I felt it was important.
> activate Legion.
Midway through the game, they get ahold of an inactive geth named Legion. Geth are a dangerous race, especially in ME1 where they aided Saren directly, and even now they're still an enemy to the quarian race (which crew-member Tali is one of). However, he could be an asset to the team, and could provide them with insight and technology they'd never have dreamed of before. Unlike with the rachni queen, this time Shepard chose to risk it.
(This may have been because unlike the rachni, who attacked Shepard up until she spoke with the queen, Legion actually saved their asses before he de-activated. So as much of a risk as he was, he deserved a chance. More of a chance than she'd given Wrex, anyway.)
> break up the fight between Miranda and Jack without losing loyalty.
By chewing them both out, actually. The fight was over whether Cerberus had a right to experiment on Jack like they did, basically fucking up her entire life. In-game, it takes a high paragon or renegade score to break up the fight, otherwise you just have to pick a side and lose the other's loyalty.
(While Shepard thought Miranda was displaying unusual stupidity by provoking Jack as she did--Miranda was usually so much better at watching her tongue in tense situations--Jack still needed to quit flying off the handle at every little thing. So she ordered them to stay on separate decks of the ship and gave them permission to tear each other apart after the mission was over. Not that she actually thought they would. By Shepard's guess, there would be at least a grudging respect by the time all of this was over.)
> break up the fight between Tali and Legion without losing loyalty.
Once again, by chewing them out, but not as harshly as she did with Jack and Miranda. After all, this wasn't a petty bitchfight, it was protecting their respective races. Tali had caught Legion scanning her omni-tool to send information about the quarians back to the geth. Tali was upset that he was stealing her classified information and endangering her people, and Legion felt that the Geth should know the quarians were planning an attack.
(Tali was becoming almost like a sister to her, though she's not great with the affection, and Legion really couldn't be held responsible for what he was programmed to do, so she wanted to resolve this as quickly as possible. She made them realize they were just going to have to sit on their racial conflict until the mission was over, because if they were just going to keep fighting they were endangering the mission.)
> romance Garrus... kind of.
She didn't mean to, really. But he was becoming one of her only true friends, and it just kind of... happened. When the time came though, up in her quarters, she waffled. Told him it wasn't a good idea, and that they should just be friends.
(It wasn't that she didn't care about Garrus. She did, as a best friend and who knows, maybe more. But they were heading into a suicide mission, and she couldn't shake the long-standing fact that people close to her always seem to die. So she tried to back out while she still could, for his sake.)
> everyone survived the suicide mission... except Garrus.
She slipped. In this final mission, every step of the way required precise decisions in who was assigned to what task... But at one point, Shepard chose Garrus for a job over squadmates that she trusted less or weren't strong enough to risk sending out alone. It cost her a squadmate, and her best friend.
(She let herself get just a little bit jaded. After everything he'd been through and all he'd survived, she thought Garrus could handle anything thrown at him, and that she was risking fewer lives by entrusting the task to him. But she was wrong, and she paid for it.)
> destroy the Reaper base.
In the endgame, you can choose to either destroy the abandoned enemy base or hand it over to the Illusive Man for research purposes. The Illusive Man demands it--destroying it is basically giving Cerberus the finger and losing all funding and support. But in a culmination of all of her mistrust of him throughout the game, Shepard refuses to hand the Reaper base over, destroying it and severing her connection to Cerberus.
(This is also where Miranda proves herself, giving Cerberus her resignation and sticking with Shepard instead of the man she'd been loyal to for... well, a hell of a long time.)
OTHER:
> loyalty quests.
In ME2, each loyalty quest requires some sort of a decision. I'll make this more complete as I remember more of the choices made, but Shepard gained the loyalty of each crew member one way or another. Off the top of my head, she let Garrus kill Sidonis, the man that betrayed him (as opposed to standing in the way of the shot and trying to save Garrus's conscience), she chewed out the Quarian authorities and let Tali escape exile without revealing what her father had done, and she helped Samara kill Morinth.
> all DLC.
This means that in Shepard's canon, she has Zaeed and Kasumi on the squad, she found and explored the remains of the first Normandy, she helped Liara kill/become the Shadow Broker and read all of the files that gave her access to, she shut down Project Overlord, and she was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of batarians (which, after Mindoir, she's not terribly sad about) in Arrival.
> 'Jane' Shepard.
(This is slipping into headcanon, but it relates to how you can choose Shepard's first name in the game.) She goes by Jane Shepard on all official records, and even then nobody calls her anything but Shepard, like her first name's some sort of line they don't dare breach. But the thing is, it's not even truly her first name. It's the name Alliance gave her when they picked her up from Mindoir, since she was too defensive and traumatized and just plain stubborn to give them her real one. They got 'Shepard' from the tag on her suit, but no first name, and nobody left alive knows who she used to be. Can you try to earn that trust? Definitely. Will she ever reveal it? Probably not.
> Vanguard.
You can choose a class for your Shepard in the beginning of each game. This one's a Vanguard, which is a combination of Soldier (which uses guns and no biotics) and Adept (which uses pistols plus a ton of biotics). Vanguards are the front line of the squad. Their biotic powers focus on combat potential - disabling the enemy, making enemy armor ineffective, and shielding themselves from harm so that they can get close enough to go to work.