DISCLAIMER: I tend to be a Paragon player, so I probably tend to notice pro-Renegade bias in DLCs a little more.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to examine the more story-oriented DLCs for how friendly they are to Paragon and Renegade approaches. My own sense has been that they tend to favor Renegades a bit, so I'm curious to see if that's actually true if I try to evaluate them objectively. So I'm trying to evaluate each DLC on four elements - premise, Shepard's dialogue, Shepard's actions, and squadmate behavior (insofar as it reflects on Shepard) - on a simple 1-5 scale, with 1 being heavily Renegade and 5 heavily Paragon.
I'll do ME1/2 first, then continue with ME3 if anybody's interested. Comments welcome, obviously (even those who think I'm just hopelessly biased here!).
Bring Down the Sky (Total Score: 13, Leaning Slightly Paragon)
Premise: 4. This has nothing to do with Saren, so diverting would have to be mainly for altruistic reasons of wanting to save the colony. However, given the sheer scale of the threat, many Renegades still wouldn't likely ignore imminent death for millions of people.
Shepard's Dialogue: 3. Plausible choices throughout. The one exception might be upon discovering Charn, where the Paragon choice ("I didn't think you batarians knew the meaning of the word [peace]") sounds a little bit racist, while the Renegade choice ("I have nothing to say to a batarian terrorist") is standoffish but could at least be interpreted without racial implications. Still, that's not enough to knock it down to 2.
Shepard's Actions: 3. Again, plausible options for dealing with Charn and Balak, though there's also some slight bass-ackwardness with Charn here too. To me, scaring him off (and perhaps planting the idea in his head that he should give up slaving) is more Paragon than convincing him that he'd do better as an independent criminal not taking orders from Balak.
Squadmate Behavior: 3. They don't really react to anything Shepard does, so no difference.
Overlord (Total Score: 12, Neutral)
Premise: 4. Another example of a relatively altruistic diversion, but Cerberus experiments getting out of control have proven to be a big enough problem that many Renegades would probably still investigate.
Shepard's Dialogue: 2. Most of the wheels give you sufficient choices for both approaches, but the end has a couple odd bits. Shepard threatening to kill Archer if he comes after David is a bit over the top, in that even a kidnapping attempt could probably be stopped through non-lethal means, and the Paragon interrupt leads to Shepard pistol-whipping Archer.
Shepard's Actions: 3. No real choices until the end. At first, I thought that shooting up the geth when they first land is a bit Renegade since they don't yet know what's happening, but I suppose they know there's a VI breakout and can probably tell that the geth are under the VI 's control.
Squadmate Behavior: 3. Again, the squadmates don't really do anything other than shoot things and use powers. The only difference is whether Shepard or a squadmate kills the armless mech, and I don't count that either way since mechs don't appear to be AIs.
Lair of the Shadow Broker (Total Score: 7, Renegade)
Premise: 3. Not really more of a "diversion" than any of the loyalty missions, and Renegades don't have to be opposed to helping friends and crew members.
Shepard's Dialogue: 2. While Shepard can sometimes question Liara's more hard-nosed attitude, the lack of actual choices to follow those dialogue options weakens their impact, and the Paragon dialogue choice to bluff Vasir still comes out sounding pretty ruthless even if it's just a ruse. Also, only minimal opportunities to urge Liara to take a different approach as the new Broker, and no Paragon dialogue option for explaining Shepard's working with Cerberus.
Shepard's Actions: 1. Several actions in this one really don't make much sense for Paragons - (1) walking right past a bunch of wounded people calling for help after the explosion; (2) conducting a car chase through a crowded area; (3) not trying to go help Illium security when Liara reports that they're being shot up by the Broker's mercs. I definitely have to rationalize explanations for this stuff with Paragon Shepards (maybe the cars are unmanned, maybe the squad are radioing medics with their omnitools, etc.).
Squadmate Behavior: 1. Hoo boy. Do I really have to list all the examples of Liara's Renegade behavior here? Granted, Liara has her own agenda, but it seems like there's enough history between the two that Shepard could have argued with her more effectively.
Arrival (Total Score: 9, Leaning Renegade)
Premise: 3. Plenty of motivation for either alignment once the words "imminent Reaper invasion" come out of Hackett's mouth.
Shepard's Dialogue: 3, though barely escaping being a 2. Much of the dialogue in this one consists of the more "investigate"-oriented choices, but the options with Harbinger and Hackett at the end are reasonably balanced. One gripe, however - the Paragon response to Harbinger should *not* have ended with "That's what humans do," as something invoking the galaxy's collective strength would have much more preferable.
Shepard's Actions: 1. I actually think destroying the relay *can* be justified for Paragons if the assumption is that some real preparation and planning will be done in the time bought by stalling the Reapers - in that sense ME3 is more at fault for not clearly following up on that point. However, allowing some sort of choice still would have been preferable (admittedly, I don't know what it would be - doing nothing means the war starts before ME3 and obviously BW couldn't do that). On the other hand, Shepard doesn't make another attempt to warn anybody after reactivating the comm tower, and setting the batarians on fire when the shuttle launches is at best bizarrely careless and at worst horrifically sadistic. (It's not like they were about to shoot the shuttle down.)
Squadmate Behavior: 2. Tough to judge Kenson since she's indoctrinated and doesn't know Shepard, but she does stomp on that batarian guard's head, and her "Die, batarian!" battle cry suggests a touch of racism that's unrelated to indoctrination. Shepard isn't given an opportunity to react to this or question the asteroid plan.
Modifié par FlyingSquirrel, 09 mars 2013 - 09:58 .
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