I am totally gobsmacked that the control option would be the supposed “paragon” option. Since when is choosing to become a god a paragon choice? This is the problem with TIM who thinks he can determine what is best for humanity. No one person should control the fate of others. No one is infallible. And just look at what TIM does to advance humanity: creates his own version of Auschwitz.
The only way I could see control being the paragon choice was if Sheppard had demonstrated through her actions that she was determined to preserve life. Not individual lives, obviously, since she kills entire planets worth of people, but life in general. Every sentient species must be allowed to work out its own salvation. Therefore, through the course of the story she would rebel against actions that meant the death or enslavement of a species. Only by demonstrating that this motivation formed the core of her being would the Catalyst offer her the control option. (Here we have to pretend that there is an entire list of requirements needed for the control option to become available.) Thus:
a) The Rachni queen would need to be saved.
The Heretics were a little trickier. To kill them might seem like genocide, but they were only a sub-set of the Geth, not the entire Geth collective. The alternative of rewriting them amounted to enslavement (control), something Mordinia was even more opposed to. So Mordinia would destroy the Heretics. c) Mordinia would not be able to continence the extinction of either the Geth or the Quarians. Thus, peace between them was a must. (This decision was a driving factor behind the decision to destroy the heretics. Again, this story was written backwards, from end to beginning.)
d) The Genophage cure was another tricky situation. The Genophage was not causing the Krogan to die out, the Krogan were doing it to themselves. OTOH, when the Salarians chose to “uplift” the Krogan to fight the Rachni they were playing god (control), and when they developed the Genophage they were playing god again. The best solution would have been to have never intervened in Krogan affairs in the first place, but that is water under the bridge. Failing that, curing the Genophage seemed like a way to ensure the survival of the Krogan as a species despite the threat they pose.
e) When it came to playing the role of judge, jury, and executioner, Sheppard would refuse to become a vigilante. Again, no person should have sole authority to decide the fate of another. There are number of cases where this would come up and I can’t remember them all. As one example, however, Sheppard would let Rana Thanoptis live. As another example, she would let Shiala live. (There was no option, unfortunately, to take her into custody and have her jailed for her crimes.) Jeong, OTOH, would die because he posed a clear a present danger to the colonists of Feros. (And because Sheppard didn’t have 12 charm points.)
Having established the requirements needed before the Catalyst would offer Sheppard the control option it was time to find out why Sheppard would make all these decisions the way she did. Where did she come from? Why was she so opposed to control? Why was she so dedicated to the preservation of life?
The most obvious background was as a colonist who had seen her parents and friends all killed when Batarian slavers invaded Mindoir. This experience would sear into her every fibre the belief that no single individual should have complete control over another.
With that background established, what about her military experience? In this case, the decision was made based on the Cerberus story line. I wanted Mordinia to have a personal connection to Cerberus. This would make her utterly opposed to Cerberus and its methods. She would hate TIM because of his assumption of god-like authority, and because of his obvious lack of scruples. Thus, she would always distrust TIM and assume the worst of him. And not just because of general principles, but because of her own history. So Sheppard would be the sole survivor of a thresher maw attack on Akuze, an attack that Cerberus had arranged.
Finally, Sheppard would be neither paragon nor renegade. Her decisions would be based on the above factors plus her understanding of command and its responsibilities. Sheppard could be a hard ass, but she was fiercely loyal to her crew. Some soldiers might have to die to complete a mission, but this was a decision that Sheppard would never take lightly. She might not like some of her crew mates (like Jack and Zaeed) but she would stand by them in their time of need, as long as they did not endanger the mission or her deeper principles. She was distrustful of Miranda and Jacob at first, because they were with Cerberus, and she let them know it. Over time, however, she came to bond with them, and they with her. Sheppard would never take the renegade path with her crew (although she did enjoy delivering a paragon upper-cut to Zaeed’s jaw).
When it came to her enemies, however, no such restraint applied. Again, she would not assume the role of judge, jury and executioner, but she would never hesitate to annihilate an enemy who posed a clear a present danger to her crew or to innocent bystanders. She absolutely loathed the Reapers (and later the Catalyst) for their assumption of god-like authority. While she might be saddened by the fate of the Protheans, she would not hesitate to destroy the Collectors who were no more than the hollow tools of the Reapers. OTOH, she would allow the merc in Dantius Towers to go after she had obtained the intel she was seeking. And she would not let her crew mates commit murder, both for the sake of their own mental well-being and because of her basic principles. (I guess this was not an absolute rule. Garrus did manage to convince her that his way of dealing with Sidonis was the only way to see justice served. No relevant authority for judging Sidonis existed, so it was up to them or no one.)
This then was the psychological profile of Mordinia Sheppard, a story that started at the end, and worked its way to the beginning. With that profile in mind I was able to listen to Mordinia and make decisions based on where this character was coming from and what made her tick, though there still remained a lot of choices where I had no idea what she might be thinking. “How do you feel Commander?” Well crap, I don’t know how Sheppard feels. Maybe she has a headache, maybe she doesn’t. Was it a vision or a nightmare? How would I know? The xbox controller doesn’t vibrate in any particular way to indicate whether or not Sheppard has a hangover!
I found this exercise to be quite enjoyable in deciding how to play Sheppard.
BTW, in the end, Sheppard chose the destroy option. Even though she had met all of the stated requirements to be offered the control option, she would never accept that anyone, not even herself should presume to play god. (Neither would she chose synthesis because she despised the catalyst and everything it stood for. Its total lack of morality, of a soul, made its claims that synthesis was the highest form of evolution unbelievable. She was not going to let a soulless, amoral AI tell her what was best and believe it. If anything, she would assume this monstrosity was 180 degrees off from the truth.)
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