I have read Mass Effect Redemption and I always hate how it was canonized. I could personally blame Mac Walters for all the plot holes around this to justify Liara's existence in the lore.
Liara isn't a commando, she's just a scientist who happened to be a gifted biotic (I am a trained researcher and yet I don't go around shooting people, I never held a gun in my life!). Then she got a tip about the Shadow Broker selling Shepard's body to the Collectors and instead of calling all her combat-trained friends, she went to Omega alone and try to 'save' Shepard with the help of a double-crossing Drell. She sucked extraordinarily at this, she nearly lost Shepard's body and Feron was captured. Later, she gave Shepard's body to Cerberus to do whatever they do and then went to Ilium to plot against the Shadow Broker. Liara could have told them that she found Shepard's body and the deal she made with Cerberus but no.. she kept it to herself.... and along the way, she got Shepard's armor and dogtags as 'souvenir', because nothing is sweet like a century old Asari putting the items you died in inside some glass case for everyone to see.... While VS lovers got nothing except rumors that Shepard is alive.
I reason somewhere that Hackett and Anderson wanted Liara to keep everything a secret and let the rumors simmer about "Shepard is still alive but working with Cerberus" because that was less ridiculous than "Shepard is really dead and Cerberus is bringing her/him back alive". It made sense why they're way too lenient about their human Spectre working with the terrorists and escape relatively scot-free.
Then again, Shepard don't really need to be dead. I don't get why they even need that as plot-device but I like the idea of CyborgShepard...
Thank you for the information! I haven't read the comic yet. Only Foundation so far.
And, yeah, that's exactly my problem, just as I thought. Why did she have to do it on her own? Why didn't she tell anyone? Seriously. Half of our crew are people with extensive combat experience. I'm not sure they would all care, but I'm pretty sure that selling somebody's body, especially to the enemy, is not exactly an okay thing to do, either. At that point, it's not about Cerberus, it's about getting the corpse back at all and informing people that there's any at all.
I understand if she wasn't exactly sharing about the Cerberus thing. Just as Dantriges demonstrated on the previous page, I would also think she was out of her freaking mind. Cerberus? That Cerberus that murdered Kahoku? That Cerberus that performed inhumane experiments on people? Cerberus that messed with a long extinct race which blew up in their face? That sent my Shepard to the thresher maw nest just to see what happens, causing the death of her entire squad of fifty? (Come to think of it, why can't I get angry with Jacob and Miranda when they bring it up? Say that was Cerberus' fault?) That experimented on Toombs afterwards? Not to mention most of the experiments we've seen were horrible failures. What if they pulled Alien Resurrection? I don't know whether to be happy that Shepard is alive or have her yell at Liara because this is one of the most insane ideas I've seen in the ME universe. (Though we both have a soft spot for Liara, so... yeah. You do not simply yell at Liara.) I still think it's in big part that the writing is simply contrived like that. Having Shepard die just to be forced to join Cerberus is just lazy and Liara falls victim to it.
If Shepard had to really die and then be resurrected (Although doing all that during the first ten minutes takes away from the drama completely. We don't have to deal with the consequences, with what Joker and the rest of the crew felt like, what they did, nothing. It lost its impact in a matter of seconds.), at least it should've been done in some plausible way. Going through atmospheric entry and hitting a planet... that just doesn't work. It doesn't. (Not to mention that Shepard dies because she stops to look at explosions instead of going through the goddamn door.) I don't HATE it, but I do believe it should've been done better or differently.
My issue with Anderson, who is a councillor in my game, not telling anything to Kaidan despite the fact that Shepard visited him and got her Spectre status reinstated in front of him is that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Kaidan was investigating Cerberus on Horizon. So if Anderson knew she was alive and with Cerberus (and possibly a Spectre), why hold that information back? Why have him investigate thinking it's all just a rumour? Why put him through the surprise and shock? It's not about my Shepard getting her boyfriend back, I just don't understand why not explain the situation a little since it's relevant to his goddamn investigation and since Anderson knows damn well the Council and the Alliance didn't move a finger to help with Shepard's task. I don't think it's a particularly good idea to let the whole galaxy know Shepard is with Cerberus because Cerberus is still the enemy. I also totally understand why Anderson wouldn't tell Shepard anything about what Kaidan's up to, where he is, how to contact him, etc. But not telling anything to a high ranking member of the military that was specifically tasked with investigation related to Cerberus... Come on, BioWare.
I didn't really mind the whole ME2 revival thing just find it incredibly iffy how clingy liara became especially if u were mean to her during the whole ME1 and also why didn't she recruit the aid of the VS or the other crew members I mean I'd think they be all gung ho about saving sheps ass... And they could always frame it as the alliance didn't want to waste resources on spending on a dead human spectre so they chose to go to the Cerberus route and things cn go just as they did... But i guess what's done is done... >.> <.< >.<
I understand that. I don't think the revival is a horrible idea exactly, I guess I just don't love the execution of it.
I agree that Liara did become surprisingly clingy. I was nice to her in ME1, my Shepard was her friend, but it was still surprising to learn that she just "couldn't let Shepard go", and I really, really don't understand why not get proper help to get Shepard back, as well.
I'm pretty sure that if the body indeed had been given to the Alliance or Shepard's relatives, if she has any, she would've never got resurrected. The whole galaxy, besides Cerberus, believes that bringing people back from the dead is impossible. There's no reason to try. I can't see them spending resources on an impossible task, either. (I'm not even sure why Cerberus would, either. Shepard is awesome and all, but just as she mentions soon from the start, they could've had an army for what they spent on bringing her back. ME2 really pushes the "Shepard is special" kind of deal.) They would probably bury her and find peace in the fact that at least she has a proper resting place now.
I guess we're just really lucky it worked out so nicely in the end, Shepard's body somehow remained intact, Cerberus somehow turned out to be anti-heroes of sorts for a moment (Though I never felt like I could trust them.) so we didn't get any mutant zombie Shepard or an army of Shepard clones at their disposal or something...