Player Choice

On Red And Blue

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Blaugust Post #18

I have to give the Mass Effect series credit for being the first series I played where the morality system isn’t choosing between “Be a Good Guy” or “Kick Puppies”. (Neverwinter Nights and other D&D-based games have been really bad about that, as is Knights of the Old Republic) In Mass effect you’re always the good guy, you might just be a bit of an asshole about it. (You might also kick some puppies.) For those unfamiliar, Mass Effect tracks your decisions as either “Paragon” or “Renegade”, where Paragon is “Compassionate and Heroic” and Renegade is “Apathetic and Ruthless”. These aren’t directly opposed, so you can have a high score in both, depending on your actions.

On Red And Blue
The red one has a star, so it must be better.

In Mass Effect 1, these scores determine how many points you can put into Charm/Intimidate, and the resulting value of your Charm/Intimidate skill is what gives you access to particular conversation options. Mass Effect 2 got rid of the Charm/Intimidate skills, in favor of an alternate approach.

The Great Mistake

Mass Effect 2 decided to use your Paragon/Renegade values directly to determine your effective charm/intimidate values. Because Mass Effect 2 is very non-linear, the values required aren’t static. Instead, they’re a percentage of the total number of paragon/renegade points available in the areas you’ve been to. The problem here is that while your scores aren’t mutually exclusive, most of your actions are. Unless you go very hard toward one or the other, you’re likely to find that you can’t pass either Paragon or Renegade checks near the end of the game. (A particularly difficult one is sorting out an argument between two party members, and it’s hard to have this happen any time other than near the very end of the game.)

Playing the game without being entirely dedicated toward either red or blue feels more natural to me, and ME2 punishes you for it. Importing a character from ME1 mitigates this somewhat, as you start with a moderately large bonus to your meters based (roughly) on what they were at the end of ME1. This helps a lot, but isn’t a perfect solution.

On Red And Blue

Building a Reputation

Mass Effect 3 throws a decent chunk of that out. There’s still no individual charm/intimidate skill, but instead a statistic called “reputation”. Paragon and Renegade are tracked on the same bar, and the total is your reputation. There are also completely unaligned “reputation” points that extend the bar, but preserve your paragon/renegade ratio. Your available choices depend on how much reputation you have. I feel like this is a much improved situation compared to ME2, because your ability to impress people depends, more than anything else, on how much you’ve done. Choosing the “nice” options doesn’t later lock you out of the “jerk” options. This is important, because some people are absolutely worth being a jerk to.

On Red And Blue

And what fun is it if you can’t indulge, sometimes?

On Illusion of Choice

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Blaugust Post #15

After writing about the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, I had a strong urge to go back and play Mass Effect 3 all the way through again. Really, what this meant is that I had a strong urge to play the entire Mass Effect trilogy again, because the second and third games make really awkward assumptions if you don’t import a save file. Because I said I hadn’t, I’m playing as a Soldier, but I think I’ll probably play 2 and 3 as an Engineer (which is the other class I’ve never played through any of the games). My only regret so far is that playing as a Soldier makes Wrex largely redundant, and he’s probably my favorite party member.

On Illusion of Choice

A Dirty Trick

I’ve heard it said that Mass Effect 1 is the best RPG in the series (even from people who don’t consider it the best game in the series), and while I don’t really agree, it’s certainly the most traditional. Your conversation options depend on the skill points you spend in Charm/Intimidate (and it’s also traditional enough that investing in both is a trap). Locked items and even how well you can shoot your weapon are also controlled by skill investments. You can equip a weapon that you have no skills for, but don’t expect to hit anything with it. None of this applies to the following games: Mass Effect 2 entirely limited weapons by class, and Mass Effect 3 went with a system where your class just determines how much weight you can carry (but all classes use all weapons equally well).

One of the other things is that Mass Effect 1 gives you the conversation wheel a lot more often than either of the following two games, creating the impression that is has more choices. Realistically, ME1 is playing a grand trick on its players, although you’re really only likely to notice it if you play the game more than once (or specifically replay a scene while giving different answers). In a lot of cases, multiple options on the wheel will lead to the exact same voiced line. It will almost always be a line generic enough to “fit” whatever summary the wheel presented, and the only difference is player interpretation.

On Illusion of Choice

Maybe Not so Dirty

Mass Effect 2 and 3 abandon this idea, in favor of just giving you the line, which generally makes conversations flow better. ME3 goes farther than ME2 in this sense, and also occasionally gives you a line based on your Paragon/Renegade scores. In the end of things, I’m not sure which is better. I personally prefer Mass Effect 2’s approach, where you only get a conversation branch for actual line differences. Appearances are important in games, and maybe some well-placed illusions are called for.