Many players have bemoaned the fact that ME2 railroads you into a one-sided Paragon or Renegade game, so that it is, compared with ME1, no longer possible to take just a few Intimidate options here and there where you think it is appropriate or where you just like to, if you're playing a mostly Paragon Shepard, and vice versa. This guide is for those who want to have all persuasion options available, both Charm and Intimidate, everywhere, for the whole game.
This guide consists of several parts:
I. Where this guide will help you
II. Loose guidelines for those who don't want to bother with the details.
III. How the Intimidate/Charm system works.
IV. How to metagame the system
V. Roleplaying aspects.
I. Where this guide will help you.
There are several situations in the game where being unable to choose the persuasion option you prefer has either serious consequences for one of your squadmates, limits the way you want to play your Shepard in an undesirable way, or both. The most important of these situations are:
*Resolving the fight between Jack and Miranda
*Interrogating Elias Kelham on Thane's loyalty mission
*Resisting Morinth on Samara's loyalty mission
*Persuading the Admirals to find Tali not guilty in her trial.
*Resolving the fight between Tali and Legion
*Retaining Zaeed's loyalty if you choose to save the workers in his loyalty mission
With this guide, you will be able to resolve these situations any way you want, mixing Intimidate and Charm options as you prefer. This may require you to choose certain persuasion options in less important situations. Resolving the Legion/Tali conflict against your preferred (higher) alignment will require you to edit your saved game.
II. Loose guidelines (for those who don't want to read the more detailed stuff)
If you follow these guidelines, you will get *most* of the persuasion options enabled. However, since there is a limit to what you can do without knowing how the system works, and without Early Recruitment, it is very possible that your options will be limited in one or two missions you do late.
(1) Import an ME1 game. If your Shepard has at least 50% in both Paragon and Renegade from ME1, you will get a starting bonus of 190 Paragon and Renegade points in ME2.
(2) Develop your class skill fast, and use the specialization that gives you a 100% bonus on Paragon and Renegade points instead of the other which only gives 70%.
(3) When you enter a new hub world (Omega, Illium, Citadel, Tuchanka), do all mini-sidequests and all conversations where you get P/R points as early as possible.
(4) Do the missions with persuasion options (see I. above) as early as possible.
(5) Do the missions with difficult persuasion options before those with less difficult options (see part III for details).
(6) If you have a preferred alignment, do the missions where you want to go against it as early as possible.
(7) Try to keep a mostly balanced Paragon/Renegade score until you have done all missions where you want to go against your preferred alignment.
(8) If you have equipment that gives you a bonus to your Paragon/Renegade points, it will help you if you wear it, but only in situations where you wear non-civilian outfits. I.e. not on the Normandy. For that reason, loyalty conflicts on the Normandy should be triggered early if possible.
III. How the Intimidate / Charm system works (somewhat technical)
(This paragraph is rephrased from a post by Dusty Everman and interpreted somewhat. Details may not be 100% correct, but that doesn't matter for the results)
As opposed to ME1, the Paragon or Renegade score required for a persuasion option to be available (not grayed out) is no longer fixed in ME2. Instead, ratios are used. This works as follows: When you enter a certain area for the first time, the game adds up all the Paragon/Renegade points you can get in this area and adds the sum to a total, summed up over all areas you have already visited at least once, separately for Paragon and Renegade points. These are the maximum attainable P/R scores, and they are stored in your saved game. When you enter a dialogue with persuasion options, the game divides your Paragon or Renegade score by the maximum attainable score and compares the resulting ratio to a required ratio between 0 and 1, which is specific to that dialogue and may be different for Paragon or Renegade. If your ratio is greater than or equal to the required ratio, the option will be enabled.
This has one very important consequence: Requirements tend to become more difficult to meet as the game progresses. There are several reasons for this:
(1) You will almost certainly never be completely one-sided in your conversations. There's always the occasional dialogue where you go against your preferred alignment or choose options where you don't get any points at all. Which means, your score will always rise more slowly than the maximum attainable score, if you play a balanced game, considerably more slowly. Two other factor balance that out for some time:
(2) If you import an ME1 game, you already start with a bonus of 19% (at the max). As long as your maximum attainable scores don't exceed 190, you will automatically meet all requirements. But as the game progresses, this advantage will be eaten up by the effects of (1).
(3) You can double your Paragon/Renegade score by developing your class skill and choosing the specialization that gives you a +100% bonus. If you do this early, you will automatically meet all requirements as long as your maximum attainable score doesn't exceed 380 (double the 190 bonus for an ME1 import). But as the game progresses, this advantage, too, will be eaten up by the effects of (1).
This means, if you play a balanced Shepard - and you will want to do this if you want to have all persuasion options available - not only will requirements become more difficult to meet, but from a certain point in the game onwards, they will become more difficult fast.
IV. How to metagame the system
This is a commentary for some kinds of situations you encounter in the game and how to exploit them to fit your requirements. It is presented here not be followed slavishly, but to illustrate how the systems works and how to use it to your advantage. Before you read further, please take a look at the Morality Guide of the Mass Effect wiki. It lists all Paragon/Renegade points you can get throughout the game, and you can use it to optimize every single conversation. I should mention that I never went to that extreme because it destroys roleplaying, but this guide would not be complete without mentioning it. Also take a look at the "Loose guidelines" above.
Note for XBOX players and those unwilling to edit their saved games:
If you can't or don't want to use Early Recruitment, it is still possible to get all options enabled except for Legion/Tali, but the margin for error is narrow. It may be necessary to use the Mass Effect wiki's Morality guide to maximize your P/R scores, and you won't have the freedom to use the neutral option here and there. To be safe, change the sequence of events in (3) below so that any situation where you don't particularly care about the outcome is moved to the end. For instance, if you don't care about resisting Morinth, either because you don't want her anyway or you can live with not having resisted (I usually can't), then push her loyalty mission to the end of the listed sequence. If you don't want to use the "I'm a spectre. Talk" option to avoid torturing Kelham and still get the "shortest interrogation ever" outcome in Thane's loyalty mission, then push that mission to the end.
(1) How to maintain a balanced P/R score while not compromising roleplaying too much
To have both Paragon and Renegade persuasion options available, you need to maintain a reasonably balanced score. I usually do that by choosing options against my preferred alignment in less important conversations with less drastic consequences. For instance, the Renegade option when speaking with Erinya on Illium is about the mildest you encounter in the game, even a mostly Paragon Shepard would not be offended by it. On the Renegade side, consider the sick Batarian on Omega: even a mostly Renegade Shepard could possibly think "Nobody deserves to die like that" and use the Paragon interrupt. Then there are the merchants. Charming or intimidating them for discounts is more a matter of style than morality (arguably it isn't very Paragon to give an endorsement to all shops on the Citadel).
The second kind of situation to exploit are those with both kinds of interrupts. There are two of those I recall: the encounter with Veetor on Freedom's Progress and the first encounter with Mordin on Omega. In both situations, you are presented with a Renegade interrupt first, and when you don't use it, an option for a Paragon interrupt follows. These, too, express a certain personal style but aren't as character-defining as some others, and thus, are situations where you can go against your preferred alignment without feeling too bad about it.
Third, there are at least two situations (there may be more) where an unused Renegade interrupt is followed by a conversation with two persuasion options: the encounter with Mouse on the Citadel, and the Eclipse mercenary on Thane's recruitment mission. Note that you get the same amount of Renegade points if you don't use the interrupt but choose the Renegade option in the following dialogue. So, for those who don't want to torture Mouse and don't want to throw the merc out of the window, you can play a less callous Renegade and still get the same number of points, while the Paragons will have a chance to get Paragon points. From a metagaming perspective, it's better not to use these interrupts.
Fourth, pay attention to the conversations with your squadmates on the Normandy. There may be some conversations where what exactly you say doesn't seem all that important. Also, do all of these conversations and do them as early as possible.
And lastly, the dialogue wheel often masks the tone of your responses. Some "Renegade" option might not be as bad, and some Paragon option not as naive, as the wheel makes you believe. So save before the conversations come up, explore the possibilities and replay it as you prefer.
These may all seem like little things, but the little things add up to a significant part of your P/R scores over the course of a game.
(2) Enable Early Recruitment
See Ecael's Early Recruitment thread on how to do this. Why is this necessary, you ask? There are two reasons for this (1) *All* main plot missions give you morality points, and add to the attainable scores. Which means, for the purpose of getting all persuasion options, it is advantageous to do certain recruitment and loyalty missions before Horizon (see below). (2) *All* recruitment missions give you morality points, increasing the attainable score, but not all squadmates have a loyalty conflict or a difficult persuasion situation in their missions. Early recruitment makes it possible to recruit Thane, Samara and Tali early - as it happens, all have difficult persuasion situations in their loyalty missions - while leaving Garrus and Grunt to be recruited later, because they don't have such problems.
I do not consider this a cheat, because for the story it doesn't really matter when you recruit your squadmates or do their loyalty missions. Legion is a special case - see below.
(3) A sequence of missions.
This ís an example of a sequence of missions that works. If you maintain a reasonably balanced P/R score until Tali's loyalty mission, do all hub sidequests as early as possible, and use early recruitment, then, using this sequence, you will be almost guaranteed to have all persuasion options in the game available except in the Tali/Legion conflict.
*After Freedom's Progress, enable early recruitment of anyone but Legion. Avoid visiting any hub world until this sequence tells you to. Especially avoid Tuchanka.
*Recruit Mordin - Miranda's or Jacob's loyalty mission will activate.
*On Omega, do all the available sidequests there and persuade all merchants.
*Go to Illium, speak with Liara, do all her quests and all other Illium sidequests. Persuade all merchants.
*Recruit Samara - Jacob's or Miranda's loyalty mission will activate
*Recruit Thane - Mordin's loyalty mission will activate
*Recruit Jack - Samara's loyalty mission will activate
*Recruit Tali - Thane's loyalty mission will activate
*Do Miranda's loyalty mission - Jack's loyalty mission will activate
*Do Samara's loyalty mission - Tali's loyalty mission will activate
*Visit the Citadel. Persuade all merchants and do all hub sidequests there.
*Revisit Omega, do the Patriarch sidequest and finish Ish's sidequest (I assume you picked up the packages on Illium and the Citadel).
*Do Thane's loyalty mission
*Revisit Illium and do the sidequest with the Quarian indentured servant.
*Do Jack's loyalty mission and resolve the loyalty conflict between her and Miranda
*Revisit the Citadel and do the "False Positives" sidequest (you can use persuasion without having the false ID)
*Visit Tuchanka and do all the mini-sidequests there. Speak with everyone, but don't do Mordin's loyalty mission yet. Buy the Death Mask at Ratch's wares. Put it on and use it for the remaining missions in this sequence.
*Do Tali's loyalty mission.
*Recruit Zaeed if you have the DLC. Do his loyalty mission.
*Edit your saved game to re-enable Horizon (see the Early Recruitment thread for details).
After this, play the game as you want (but don't forget you must edit your saved game to enable the Collector Ship after Horizon). Except for the Legion/Tali conflict, there isn't anything any more you can screw up.
(4) Remaining persuasion situations except Legion/Tali
There are a few persuasion options that come up in the remaining missions. Since I have never managed to not have both options available there, for instance in Jacob's loyalty mission, I don't know if there is a sequence of events where there will be problems. For now, I can only assume they're so easy it doesn't matter.
(5) N7 missions
It doesn't matter when you do these, since they don't give you morality points. Only note that using early recruitment, at least five non-DLC full missions of any kind (full missions are missions with a mission end screen) must be left after Horizon for the Collector Ship mission to trigger.
(6) Legion and Tali
Recruiting Legion early and making the necessary reset of the IFF installation can be somewhat tricky (see the Early
Recruitment thread). Because of this, this guide assumes that you will want to resolve the conflict with Tali and Legion using the higher of your P/R scores. To make that choice available, you do not need to recruit Legion early, but it is necessary to select the option for your preferred alignment in many, or even all, situations that come up in the remaining missions after the sequence in (3) above. If you want to use the (more difficult) Renegade option, it may be required that you do Zaeed's loyalty mission as a Renegade as well.
If you want to resolve the Tali/Legion conflict against your preferred alignment, then you must recruit Legion early and insert his loyalty mission into the sequence in (3) above. I'm not exactly sure where, but as usual, the earlier, the better, especially if you want to use the Renegade option. The Death Mask will not help you here, so do it before visiting Tuchanka.
V. Roleplaying aspects.
Here's the big catch when using this guide: "I don't want to compromise my roleplaying just to get all persuasion options." I'm sorry to say, there's no way around that. I've written this guide because I like to play more balanced and less one-sided Shepards. For those who like to play a more pronounced Paragon or Renegade Shepard, the options for going against your preferred alignment will be limited. That's the disadvantage of sticking to an ideology
Note:
This guide was written from the experience of several games, and many situations have been tested. But it's probably not complete. Any comments, additions or corrections of mistakes are welcome.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 29 juin 2010 - 07:33 .
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