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[Dean_the_Young]

...of playing a no-import game first.

I don't know if you remember a thread you posted awhile back, suggesting that people make their first playthrough one without carry-over, so that they could have their second game just show the differences by contrast.


That's the short version





A lot of people laughed, but I could see the merit. Even though a no-import is similar to a 'worst' game, given the minimal side quests and various choices assumed in the past, it could set a good baseline. I hemmed and hawed about doing it, but when I realized my Walmart CE edition will be a week late anyway, I bought a standard edition and did it. No import, many casualties.


And it is very, very good. Really good. Something that you might want to consider incorporating further along, even, in some way, because it definitely highlighted ME3's improved carryover aspects in P/R decisions of the past. The mix of P/R can be better than all one or the other, but the natural carry-over impetus for consistency blinds us to that.


The best way I can put it is that with a no-import carry over, there's no feeling of 'failure' on my (Player's) part for not having an 'ideal' galaxy already. In the context of what I've been playing specifically, a Paragon in a mostly-Renegade default setting, that is huge.


The previous two games reinforced Paragon choices through a mixture of positive validation (praise for making sympathetic choices), few to no significant negatives for Paragon choices (until ME3), and even additional content (Paragon-specific cameos), and the output is pretty attractive to most: a Paragon galaxy is one where nice things happen to nice people and sensible (ie sympathetic) people are all on board.

Making Renegade choices, letting crew mates die, or both... it's just not attractive in that scenario. The Paragon morality is a sympathetic, forgiving one, and by and large it plays out. Kindness is consistently rewarded with more kindness. Not doing those kind things and killing people (like the Rachni), or letting squadmates die (something you had to actively work for in ME2, by and large), is counter productive to that tone.

More than counter productive, it has connotations of failure. What's the up-side to killing the Rachni Queen, especially when the Breeder Queen will exist regardless? And the Suicide Mission, which was so geared towards 'success' that deliberate deaths felt like self-sabotage?

Carrying over a 'bad' slate was a file in and of itself. Even I didn't think it would be that good: less content, sub-par outcomes? Having been familiar with the spoilers even before release, I didn’t expect much out of it.

But it works. It works well even, and should even be encouraged in designing those choices. Take two cases in particular: the Hanar Diplomat, and the Breeder Queen.

In the case of the Hanar Diplomat, the end-mission choice is actually a Renegade interrupt, a brilliant choice that removes the pause-dialogue choice, and replaces it with a spur-of-the-moment decision. One particular asset versus a planet: not normally a hard choice, but again the presence of a Renegade interrupt being the deciding factor takes away the consideration point. War Assets vs. public good, all under pressure, using the ME2 only-good interrupt inclination to make a Big Decision.

If you have Kasumi loyal, however, IE did one of the most polished and unique missions of ME2… well, you can get both. And where’s the challenge in that?

Or the Breeder Queen, the Rachni Queen surrogate. While I’ve criticized the presence of the Breeder in the first place, I admit I was expecting a horribly fore-shadowed ‘bad choice’ option, going by the leaked script. Something so unsympathetic, it would feel horribly forced to spare this Reaper creation.

Except… it felt like a legitimately Paragon thing to do. Mercy to someone in pain. Cooperation in the face of the bigger threat. Redeeming someone hurt by the Reapers. That it ultimately failed might be a cautionary tale, but a legitimate outcome and good experience. Sometimes some people bite the hand that feeds them.

And this, too, never would have been and likely never will be experienced by committed carry-over players. Paragons who would save the Breeder are unlikely to have killed the original Rachni Queen in the first place. Renegades who killed the first Queen have even more reason to kill the second.


In both these cases, the carry-over effect hides the drama and opportunity only non-import, or alignment-inconsistent people would get from ‘fail’ playthroughs. Since most players at this point won’t be non-import, while alignment-inconsistency has been structurally discouraged in previous games and remains a sub-par choice now (flipping P and R on an issue tends to backfire), that means fewer people will get these experiences.


Which is a shame, because it’s a greatly missed opportunity. Not just for the experience, but for the contrast: while having Kasumi help for the ‘cake and eat it’ ending for the Hanar diplomat mission will be triumphant in its own right, it wouldn’t have the oomph if I didn’t know the amazingly good ‘bad’ contrast first.

The Carryover doesn’t just disguise the alternatives, after all: it skews the base-line experience the rest of the alternatives are judged by. Because I played the no-import game, I can now look at the carryover alternatives and go ‘I had normal, but this is better.’ Carryover players, however, have it reversed: their good experience is ‘normal’ now, and the normal sub-par, and that’s another reason they’re unlikely to experience a good set up.

In short: no-carryover is doubleplusgood. And it makes carryover doubledoubleplusgood.

And the advantage of a no-import is that you can get those ‘inferior’ choices without having to emotionally sabotage your own experience in getting to the start of ME3. It doesn’t punish inconsistency between games, because it is a virgin experience.


Again, it’s a really good experience. If anything, ‘bad’ carryover contexts should be more common, to appreciate the effects of better import bonuses. The question is how would work best? How could you get Paragon players to play through a ‘Renegade’ setting, or vice versa? How do you avoid Pure Paragon/Renegade runs on those Big Decisions?

One option is to allow the player to disconnect from the narrative, giving them a better chance to mentally ‘re-enter’ the setting. If Mass Effect had been Humanity’s story, not Shepard’s, for example, then this could have been done by having new main characters in the game, like Dragon Age did. There would have been no player inconsistency in shifting from Paragon to Renegade between games, because these are different people.

Say ME1 is about Shepard, the first Human Spectre. ME2 is about (because he was already a player-character once) Taylor, a Cerberus operative, fighting for Humanity in the Terminus. ME3 could have been whoever, maybe Vega, finishing the fight and shaping the Alliance. Maybe your Paragon Shepard saved the Council, while Cerberus Renegade Taylor kept the Collector Base.

Another option, harder, is to better balance the choices in the set-up and obvious effects. ME1 was especially weak in this, since it was basically one case of ‘kill person in an **** manner or not’ after another, with few clear reasons to kill person X. The Council decision was exceptional, but too many choices fumbled between ‘sympathetic, costless A’ versus ‘assholish, negative B’. While this was a failure of the P/R system, having a balanced bipolar morality system can fix it. If both sides have flaws, but both have clear and indisputable virtues, then you could more easily get mixed Big Decisions.

In terms of alignment, an example would be if the Paragon alignment was politically-defined towards the Council, and Paragons balanced being sympathetic, nice, and cooperative xenophiles with, well, being apologists for the Council’s real flaws. The Paragon of the Council, for example, could (regretfully) defend the Genophage as proper and necessary, while the Renegade (defying the Council’s galactic expectations and intents) opposes it. Likewise, the Renegade, while still xenonationalistic and abrasive, could also be the stronger voice in speaking against the Council’s galactic racial caste system of three races dominating the rest. Virtues and flaws that appeal to different people, encouraging a mixture of alignment.

The biggest issue, however, is removing the inclination towards max-alignment involvement. ME3 made a strong lead towards that with the Reputation system, but it should be stressed how much ME2 conditioned players to pick pure P/R over the entire game to make those late-game persuasion checks. And that limited the selection of Big Choices once again.



If these could be consistently implemented, everyone could have that ‘lower’ baseline to appreciate the carryover differences, even with carry over.