FoxShadowblade wrote...
As a Garrus fanboy, I commend you for the excellent post.
Garrus is much like a student in the first game, struggling to stay good in a bad galaxy, but frustrated that some people are holding him back. Renegade Shepard is a symbol for him, that having no restrictions and black and white morality is a good thing. Kill the bad guys no matter the cost.
Whereas Paragon Shepard teaches him that not everything is black and white.("Gray...I don't know what to do with gray.") Bad guys are not always purely bad.
In the second game, Garrus has tried to do his best in the bad galaxy, but has become corrupted with vengeance and hatred. In a sense, he has given up living his life, and instead focusing on surviving it. Paragon Shepard can lead him back, not as a teacher, as an equal, even to a point where he can forgive and once again focus on living life, trying to be good. Their relationship can develop from friendship to romance from the strong bond between them from this.
As for Renegade in the second, I cannot speculate. I have yet to play my renegade Shepard(Oops).
As for him killing kids who worked for the merc band, so did Shepard.(Although it never points it out) Even Paragon Shepard, you shoot them in the back when you reveal your not really with them, you can't see under the helmets, they may not be all bad people, but they are trying to kill you.
And Garrus had held that position for over a DAY with a single shot sniper rifle, cut him some slack guys.
I haven't done a renegade through ME2 yet either (gee, thanks, computer issues that lasted nearly two months... and caused me to have to start ME1 over, again), but I do sometimes pick an option other than what my current Shepard would pick, just to see what would happen if I did. Then I go back and reload. Basically, Garrus doesn't say anything to you after you renegade him in ME2. He still seems tightly wound but won't say a word about what he just did--which amounts to cold-blooded murder against a guy who probably wasn't worth the bullet. But I like to think whatshisname can be redeemed (why can't I remember that name???). I think the fact that he closes off like that tells me two things: First, that renegaded, Garrus has a lot of anger boiling under the surface that he's not expressing. Second, Shepard has just led him down the path of vengeance and hatred. He's another step farther from the person he was in the beginning, a little bit more jaded and a lot more unforgiving. I want to think that he'll still keep caring about those who need protection even if you renegade him, but I'm not sure he will. His reactions during Jack's recruitment and your initial return to the Citadel are... interesting, to say the least. It's hard to tell whether he admires or despises the brutality--or is so hardened by his life thus far that he simply doesn't care.
If on the other hand you paragon Garrus, you're teaching him that vengeance isn't going to solve anything, and that there are indeed shades of gray. At the same time, by second-guessing this decision that Garrus has clearly made (even though he seems a bit overly defensive about it to the degree I think he's not as sure about it as he claims to be), you're also undermining him in a way. He says he knows he wants to do this, but you're telling him you don't think he really does, that this isn't really who he is. But who are you to tell him who he is or isn't? I prefer the paragon path here, just because I think the regret of going through with cold-blooded murder against someone who's not trying to kill him at the moment (in fact, who lives in fear of him and guilt for what he's done) would eat Garrus up inside. The guilt brought on by the renegade path might be the thing that turns him from being a good person to being the same kind of monster as Saren. Something about his behavior during his ME2 loyalty mission kept reminding me of Saren. I'm not sure what it was, apart from his general demeanor.
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I'm planning on making one of those. It'll either be really cute or "well, it sort of looks like him."
