I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel.
I finished playing Mass Effect 2 today.
I'm re-playing ME1 and ME2 (well, finishing 2 for the first time) on PC in preparation for ME3 and because my saves were previously played on consoles. I installed BootCamp, Windows, and all the appropriate drivers without using OS disks. It made me feel like a boss.
ME3 is out now, waiting to be played, and I still intend on going through with it despite the huge outpouring of fan hate. I think, from friends' reactions and non-spoilery articles, that the anger is almost entirely at the ending, and after speaking with a reputable source (read: Hyde), I think it'll sit just fine with me. Also, he confirmed some of my Hero's Journey suspicions about plot bits. =)
I've started to get re-invested in my Shepard. As I was chatting with elenuial about it when he came home from work, the way I've decided to play her has actually become really fun, and turned out differently than I would've expected.
Spoilers for ME1 and ME2 below. No spoilers for ME3, as I haven't played. =)
My Shepard is military, through-and-through. I chose the Alliance background; her parents were military, she grew up in military bases, and she enlisted when she was old enough. She had the "War Hero" record - she thought fast and dug her heels in for the long haul. And as a vanguard, she knew enough to utilize biotics, but still wiped the floor with every weapon class. She was an Alliance poster child.
She was also very much anti-xenophobe. She didn't tolerate any of that anti-alien bullshit in her crew (sorry, Ashley, but keep your trap shut about the nonhumans who are going to be watching your back in a firefight), as she'd spent her whole life in space and knew that it was an awfully big place to try to stand alone.
Her decisions mostly followed the Paragon path. Got to know all her crew, saved innocents, pulled guns away from the terrified-and-confused or the murderously insane, talked people down from killing sprees.
She wins many victories for the Alliance. They fuck her over.
She saves the Council from the Reaper and Geth attack. They fuck her over.
She is saved from death by Cerberus, who had questionable morals. Reminds them as often as possible that she hates their guts and is only working with them for the greater good.
She saves Kaidan on Virmire, starts falling for him. Soldier down to his core, like her. Finds him again after she's resurrected, he also dismisses her completely.
Cerberus is a dick. Again.
Alliance scientists start a project researching the Reapers, but become indoctrinated and fight Shepard when she tries to destroy the Reaper relay. They also keep her from warning the Batarians on the colony below. She's forced to kill 300 thousand Batarians to prevent the Reaper surge, and even though Alliance people were the ones who prevented evacuation, Shepard is told that she will be the one taking the hit when it comes to trial. More Alliance bullshit.
Liara becomes the new head of something resembling a crime syndicate. Is one of the only people from her first crew to be completely supportive, doing everything she can to help the galaxy's cause.
So today, when it came time to decide what would happen to the collector's base, there was this moment of "Well, now what?" Shepard could destroy the base, counting on the strength of humanity and the entire galaxy to band together, or she could hand it over to Cerberus, who might have terrible moral compasses but loved humanity enough to make it useful.
She'd been dicked over by every organization that claimed to be for the good of the galaxy, and seen that there was no way in fucking fuck that these useless bureaucrats or aggressively purist forces were going to get anything done on their own. And she had Garrus now, who'd stuck by her through everything.
So, when it came down to it, Shepard took the least Paragon option and neutralized the base for Cerberus. It might not have been the safe choice, nor the one that the Alliance or Council wanted her to make, but it was the one that had the best chance of actually doing something rather than sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that the Reaper threat didn't exist. It will probably mean she has to forcibly take it back later. But she has priorities now. Galaxy. Garrus. Squad. The list goes on, and somewhere distantly below "feed space hamster" and "clip toenails" is where "bend over again for any authorities, alien or human" has been relegated to.
So, yeah. Definitely not the choice I was expecting to make there, but it made sense the more I thought about it.
I like my Shepard. She's like what would result if Batman had sex with a Jedi and enlisted the kid in the marines.
Good thing Garrus has that exoskeleton. He's going to need it.
I'm re-playing ME1 and ME2 (well, finishing 2 for the first time) on PC in preparation for ME3 and because my saves were previously played on consoles. I installed BootCamp, Windows, and all the appropriate drivers without using OS disks. It made me feel like a boss.
ME3 is out now, waiting to be played, and I still intend on going through with it despite the huge outpouring of fan hate. I think, from friends' reactions and non-spoilery articles, that the anger is almost entirely at the ending, and after speaking with a reputable source (read: Hyde), I think it'll sit just fine with me. Also, he confirmed some of my Hero's Journey suspicions about plot bits. =)
I've started to get re-invested in my Shepard. As I was chatting with elenuial about it when he came home from work, the way I've decided to play her has actually become really fun, and turned out differently than I would've expected.
Spoilers for ME1 and ME2 below. No spoilers for ME3, as I haven't played. =)
My Shepard is military, through-and-through. I chose the Alliance background; her parents were military, she grew up in military bases, and she enlisted when she was old enough. She had the "War Hero" record - she thought fast and dug her heels in for the long haul. And as a vanguard, she knew enough to utilize biotics, but still wiped the floor with every weapon class. She was an Alliance poster child.
She was also very much anti-xenophobe. She didn't tolerate any of that anti-alien bullshit in her crew (sorry, Ashley, but keep your trap shut about the nonhumans who are going to be watching your back in a firefight), as she'd spent her whole life in space and knew that it was an awfully big place to try to stand alone.
Her decisions mostly followed the Paragon path. Got to know all her crew, saved innocents, pulled guns away from the terrified-and-confused or the murderously insane, talked people down from killing sprees.
She wins many victories for the Alliance. They fuck her over.
She saves the Council from the Reaper and Geth attack. They fuck her over.
She is saved from death by Cerberus, who had questionable morals. Reminds them as often as possible that she hates their guts and is only working with them for the greater good.
She saves Kaidan on Virmire, starts falling for him. Soldier down to his core, like her. Finds him again after she's resurrected, he also dismisses her completely.
Cerberus is a dick. Again.
Alliance scientists start a project researching the Reapers, but become indoctrinated and fight Shepard when she tries to destroy the Reaper relay. They also keep her from warning the Batarians on the colony below. She's forced to kill 300 thousand Batarians to prevent the Reaper surge, and even though Alliance people were the ones who prevented evacuation, Shepard is told that she will be the one taking the hit when it comes to trial. More Alliance bullshit.
Liara becomes the new head of something resembling a crime syndicate. Is one of the only people from her first crew to be completely supportive, doing everything she can to help the galaxy's cause.
So today, when it came time to decide what would happen to the collector's base, there was this moment of "Well, now what?" Shepard could destroy the base, counting on the strength of humanity and the entire galaxy to band together, or she could hand it over to Cerberus, who might have terrible moral compasses but loved humanity enough to make it useful.
She'd been dicked over by every organization that claimed to be for the good of the galaxy, and seen that there was no way in fucking fuck that these useless bureaucrats or aggressively purist forces were going to get anything done on their own. And she had Garrus now, who'd stuck by her through everything.
So, when it came down to it, Shepard took the least Paragon option and neutralized the base for Cerberus. It might not have been the safe choice, nor the one that the Alliance or Council wanted her to make, but it was the one that had the best chance of actually doing something rather than sticking their heads in the sand and pretending that the Reaper threat didn't exist. It will probably mean she has to forcibly take it back later. But she has priorities now. Galaxy. Garrus. Squad. The list goes on, and somewhere distantly below "feed space hamster" and "clip toenails" is where "bend over again for any authorities, alien or human" has been relegated to.
So, yeah. Definitely not the choice I was expecting to make there, but it made sense the more I thought about it.
I like my Shepard. She's like what would result if Batman had sex with a Jedi and enlisted the kid in the marines.
Good thing Garrus has that exoskeleton. He's going to need it.