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[Xilizhra]

Major renegade choices in second game:

 

1) Saving Mealon's data

That's a Paragon choice.

[Jester]

That's a Paragon choice.

After looking around wiki I think it's not classified as either. You don't get points at all, regardless of decision.

 

I assumed it's renegade, because it's using something created via evil means. I was wrong . 

[Ieldra]

But the most important thing to keep in mind is that Bioware is interested in providing a good player experience to the widest possible section of its audience. And it correctly infers that the wider section of its audience does not want to fret and doubt every decision they make in the game. They want the player to be able to decide “right, I’m doing a good-guy playthrough. I am a hero.”, and then they want the player to go ahead and confidently be a hero, with at most a couple of wrinkles along the way.

That's why many decisions are ultimately decisions of preference, where the right or wrong of it lies in the mind of the player and things mostly work out but in different ways. That's very much ok with me.
This becomes problematic, however, if not both forks of the decision are allowed to reap an equal benefit from their own point of view. If that happens, the decision gets weighted by ideological preference, and that's undesirable. If this pitfall is avoided, it gives *everyone* the opportunity to be a hero of their own styling.

So while I would definitely welcome more moral complexity and a dialogue and decision system that didn’t basically make you choose two diametrically opposed solutions to any given problem, this is what they have decided people will enjoy playing the most. And I don’t necessarily think they’re wrong.

I can live with simple, if it's not stupid and one-sided. Omnipresent "feel-good-morality", however, cheapens any story and promotes a "feel, don't think" mindset.

[Ieldra]

After looking around wiki I think it's not classified as either. You don't get points at all, regardless of decision.
 
I assumed it's renegade, because it's using something created via evil means. I was wrong .

http://masseffect.wi...(Mass_Effect_2) :

"15 Paragon for saying "Hold onto the data.""

[Fast Jimmy]

Major renegade choices in the first game:

1) Killing the Rachni Queen
2) Letting the Council die

Major renegade choices in second game:

1) Saving Mealon's data
2) Leaving David Archer with his brother, so the Project Overlord can continue
3) Killing Vido with Zaeed at the cost of allowing people to die in a burning refinery
4) Destroying the Geth heretics

Major renegade choices in third game:

1) Not curing Genophage, tricking both Krogans and Salarians to help Earth
2) Siding with the Geth, sacrificing all Quarians

You are definitely Cherry picking the choices in there. You refer to one companion's loyalty quest, but then ignore the other dozen where the renegade option is to execute or assault people just because you are just so Bad As$. Thane, Garrus (in ME1 AND 2), Jacob, Jack - the only difference in their loyalty or recruitment missions between Renegade or Paragon is the body count or the number of people Shep punches.

[Zu Long]

This seems to come up every game, with a segment of the community who would like to see players occasionally be "punished" for making the "moral" choice.

The main reason I disagree with this is that it doesn't really lend anything to the story, in my opinion. Player agency in a game should be based on predictable
outcomes. Otherwise the choice doesn't have much meaning. Now that doesn't mean you can't have a choice with no good outcome, though IMO those should be few and far between. But having choices that have outcomes you can't predict doesn't prove anything. It's just a coinflip.

[fhs33721]

Major renegade choices in the first game:

 

1) Killing the Rachni Queen

2) Letting the Council die

 

Major renegade choices in second game:

 

1) Saving Mealon's data

2) Leaving David Archer with his brother, so the Project Overlord can continue

3) Killing Vido with Zaeed at the cost of allowing people to die in a burning refinery

4) Destroying the Geth heretics

 

Major renegade choices in third game:

 

1) Not curing Genophage, tricking both Krogans and Salarians to help Earth

2) Siding with the Geth, sacrificing all Quarians 

 

Which one of those are stupid again?

No the stupid-evil renegade descisions are more along the line of:

 

1)Shooting surrendering prisoners in the head, because..... you can!

2)Killing an entire colony of innocent mind controlled-civilians because you couldn't be bothered to use the sleeping gas grenades you had in your inventory.

3) Encouraging a person that has obvious mental problems to kill another defensless mentally troubled person. Apparently purely for the lulz.

4) Dragging Samaras daughter away from an explosion only to personally shoot her in the face afterwards.

5) Yelling at people because they can't sleep.

6)Handing over Reaper technology to a rather unrustworthy extremist whose projects all ended in catastrophe so far.

 

It's baffling how renegade Shepard can get away with acts like these without any sort of serious consequences.

[GregorLightbringer]

100% agree. The only thing I hated in Mass Effect was that the goody nice guy, morally right choice always yielded the best outcomes. I'd like it if sometimes what seems to be the nice guy and most morally right choice, yields the worst outcome.

It'd be awesome  if making the ruthless choice would sometimes be the best thing to do. Like that early demo of DA:I where the Inquisitor chose to save a keep over a town.

 

I think the term you are looking for is "Dark Hero". Somebody who may "save the day" but for their own interests instead of for everybody else. Is that right? I agree if that's the case.

[Fearsome1]

Hell, Bioware did this with Bhelen/Harrowmont.  Bhelen is a sleazy, backstabbing, fratricidal (possibly patricidal), selfish but progressive piece of slime.  Harrowmont, by contrast seems kinder, honorable and and overall nicer candidate (aside from that traditionalist mentality perpetuating a caste system that can only be described as despicable).  The sleazy candidate, overall, is the better choice for Orzammar than the 'nice guy' by far.  While Harrowmont doesn't really have time on the throne to really screw up anything (since he dies not long after taking it) Bhelen actually is supposed to be better for Orzammar, dragging them into a more progressive state.

 

While not an 'evil' choice to put Bhelen on the throne, I still felt horrible the first time I did it and his first action was to kill Harrowmont and wipe out Harrowmont's entire family except for the one cousin/nephew who finds Hawke in Kirkwall. 

 

The fix for this was to side with Harrowmont, then kill Caridin leaving Branka in possession of the Anvil of the Void. King Harrowmont uses the golems she produces to put down the rest of Bhelen' supporters (and if I'm not misremembering) nothing is said in the post game commentary about him closing off the Deep Roads (and he doesn't die). Branka might still later close off her fortress though when the two of them reach an impasse over "volunteers" to become golems, but she raids the surface for subjects instead!

[Fast Jimmy]

This seems to come up every game, with a segment of the community who would like to see players occasionally be "punished" for making the "moral" choice.

The main reason I disagree with this is that it doesn't really lend anything to the story, in my opinion. Player agency in a game should be based on predictable
outcomes. Otherwise the choice doesn't have much meaning. Now that doesn't mean you can't have a choice with no good outcome, though IMO those should be few and far between. But having choices that have outcomes you can't predict doesn't prove anything. It's just a coinflip.

Player agency is about giving the player the ability to make a choice and have that choice actually carried out. It has nothing to do with knowing the ramifications of that choice.

You are given the choice to save the anvil or destroy it - and, regardless of what you choose, that's what your character does. However, you don't make the choice of who you have to kill (Caridain or Branka, respectively) or how the Anvil is later used. Player agency =/= omniscience.

[9TailsFox]

Player agency is about giving the player the ability to make a choice and have that choice actually carried out. It has nothing to do with knowing the ramifications of that choice.

You are given the choice to save the anvil or destroy it - and, regardless of what you choose, that's what your character does. However, you don't make the choice of who you have to kill (Caridain or Branka, respectively) or how the Anvil is later used. Player agency =/= omniscience.

I agree with this. What mater is main character have a choice, consequences is irrelevant, intent what you want to do what is matter.

Like I like to use first bandit encounter in DA:O you have all options you need. You can pleas don't kill me I pay you, or force them to pay you then let them go or kill, and you can arrest them option we see so rarely. Fact you still forced to kill them because they resisted and attacked you is irrelevant. Difference about your character is huge. I disagree consequences should be obvious. Like In DA:2 if you take your sibling in deep roads and don't take Anders s/he will die, a lot cry but i don't like Anders game didn't tell me my sibling will die.

1)Always listen to your mom.

2)For Makers sake you going to home of darkspawn and don't take one available greywarden, you know guys whose job to kill darkspawn.

 

There is evil and there is stupid evil. If you doing this reapers demons deserve to win.

Spoiler

[MissOuJ]

I don't know about you, but I felt like sh*t after killing Mordin while being completely convinced that sabotaging the cure is the only sane and rational way to act. With other Shepards, I actually looked for a way to rationalize the cure so I could make that decision without feeling stupid. I couldn't. Eventually I ignored this problem and chose for the outcome if it felt right for that character, but every single time I resented that Bioware pushed a stupid choice just because it was the intuitively good one.

 

The conflict is ultimately about what you would prefer to work (the cure - who wouldn't want this to work, really. It feels like the right thing to want) against what you rationally evaluate to work (the sabotage). If you tell me you never experienced such a conflict, then I'll voice my suspicion that you've been deceiving yourself. What you feel is about who you are, what you rationally evaluate is how the world is. it is the point of such evaluation to be detached from what you feel as much as you can manage, else there would be no point to it, and thus there is the potential for conflict.

 

Bias comes in when you decide about whether the outcome is worth it. There can be no objective way to decide that, in some way it's always personal. Say you recognize an equal risk of things going wrong or right. Do you take the risk or do you avoid it? That's personal. The evaluation of the risk itself can be done in a reasonably objective way. Many people are biased in that as well because they want their "right" choice also to be the rational one, but more often than not it's easily recognizable as self-deception.

 

Here's another example from DAO: the Anvil of the Void decision: I can strongly suspect someone will abuse it if I save it. Do I think it's worth saving? I know my personal bias tells me to always save it for unrelated reasons, and I often do save it, but I do know quite well there will be very undesirable side effects. That's the result of rationally evaluating the outcome, and to come to a different conclusion and say there will be no abuse means to deny human nature. It's as objective as things can be, and if no abuse materialized, that would be a very big surprise. It's all a matter of going into the decision with open eyes, without attempting to deny things you might not like.

 

Rational evaluation, that means to me that people can as easily recognize the risks inherent in their preferred choices as they can in choices they intuitively reject, and that they can do that regardless of what they feel about them. Nobody's perfect in that, but I think we can aspire and should aspire to become better at it. Personally and with regard to RL, I recognize such aspiration as a moral imperative.

 

I think I see your point - and I agree with you, mostly. I think we might've been talking past each other a bit.

 

My only criticism is that what we consider rational thinking is dependent on how we interpret the information we are provided with, which is never completely independent from personal or societal bias. Like your genophane exaple: there are two base assumptions there: that the Krogan are violent and that this cannot be changed, and that history will repeat itself. These are two non-rational presuppositions that will colour all your deductions. Your prefered solution which is based on your deductions, on the other hand, is born from utilitarianism, which itself is a normative value judgement. In the case of the Anvil, on the other hand, you could reason its morality either way - that the risk of abuse negates its uses, or that its uses negate its risks.

 

But if I understood correcly, one of your points is feeling uneasy about your deductions and feeling they're in conflict with your moral compass? Which is a valid point, and making difficult, uneasy decisions based on very little information is certainly something I think everyone can identify with. But (in my case, at least) many times this has been a question between bad and worse, not moral vs rational. An example: if I came into the conclusion that the Second Krogan Rebellion was inevitable, I would totally sabotage the cure, and feel absolutely s*ite about it. But if I came to this conclusion, it would also mean that if I did nothing, I would be responsible for the death (and possible extinction) of the other galactic civilizations, which would make me feel even worse.

 

This, I think, is mostly because morality is a sliding scale, whereas rationality is a lot more absolute in its nature - I mean that in the sense that you can't look at your rational (biases and all) deductions and go "hmm... let's uphold some of this" whereas morality is usually a group of values, which are often in conflict (ie. freedom and order), and which we're forced to prioritise. So we can take a complex situation, examine it rationally (or as rationally as we're able), and apply rational decisions while using our moral compass to differentiate between the desicions, while acknowleding our base assumptions and biases the best we can.

[ShinsFortress]

To the OP "no".

 

Real life has enough grey for my liking, I am happy for video games to be less 'realistic'.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

To the OP "no".

 

Real life has enough grey for my liking, I am happy for video games to be less 'realistic'.

I don't think that's the point of Dragon Age.

[PsychoBlonde]

Its typical for most RPGs that give you a choice on how to resolve an issue will, in general, present the more "moral" choice as being more beneficiary for everyone (player included), while the "selfish" choice will result in misery for others. Essentially karma exists, "do good and good things happen," but what of the "path to hell laid with good intentions?"

 

One of my favorite quest lines from an RPG is the Tenpenny tower, where an elitist community of, mostly though not all, racists hold up in a luxury hotel and refuse to let Ghouls (mutated humans) into their community. After persuading/threatening the most bigoted members of the tower to leave, and convincing the rest that Ghouls really aren't all monsters, the tower lets the Ghouls in. A few days latter the Ghouls kill every single human in the tower at the behest of their leader.

 

You did the moral thing and the world is a worse place for it.

 

Now I know if every quest line was like this, a game would get awfully depressing really fast, but isn't one or two in a game at least break the monotony of everything going as the player wished? What about the rest of you, is having a few quest lines where cause and effect trump good intentions something you'd like in this game?

 

The Tenpenny Tower situation actually just illustrated a fact that a lot of people fail to grasp--that morality doesn't consist of a series of out-of-context commandments like "don't be racist".  The fact that someone is a racist or bigoted for nonsense reasons does not therefore imply that there's no POSSIBLE reason for doing exactly the same thing that they are doing and therefore that you will be correct just for doing the opposite of whatever they're doing.

 

Yeah, I'd be happy to see similar stuff in Inquisition.  Here we have a mage who's on the run from some Templars, and who has hooked up with some other mages who are allies of yours and who defend him *because he is a mage*.  Only you can discover that he's actually a blood mage who has murdered an entire town full of people.  He says he killed them because it was the only way for him to survive and escape the Templars.  If you turn him over to the Templars (or otherwise bring him to justice) your mage allies will get pissed as all hell--and the Templars may not thank you for it, either, because you still interfered with them.  What do you do?

 

Written well, nothing you could do in this situation would be "right" as in "having a good result".  Turn him over to the Templars or otherwise throw him in jail and you lose mage allies while gaining nothing.  Protect him from the Templars (by killing several Templars) and he corrupts several of your allies before finally going crazy and forcing you to put him, and them, down.

 

I'd love to have situations like this--but I'd also like there to be a difficult-to-discover, complex, time-consuming, and otherwise problematic "third way" where, say, you lie to the Templars about the mage having vanished in the night (to get them off the trail) and then take your mage allies to the site of the murders so they can evaluate with their own eyes whether the renegade mage's story adds up.  They (grudgingly) agree that all this horror show wasn't warranted, so you have the renegade mage executed.  Then you get an angry note from the Templars calling you a lying jerk and demanding to know what you did.  End result: mages AND templars are pissed at you (and should refuse to go along with something else down the line), but at least the renegade mage is out of the picture and nobody ELSE gets killed.

 

Now, I personally would call the third way the correct way.  There could even be other "third" ways, like one where you say "screw you all, do what you like" and you just let the Templars and Mages duke it out, and they cause a big fuss, a few on each side get killed, and the renegade escapes.

I like stuff like that.  Some people may consider the renegade escaping to be the "best" option.  Some people may consider turning the renegade over to the Templars (even though it pisses off mages) to be the best option.  Some may consider defending the renegade and butchering the Templars to be the best option.  But none of the results are just "everybody's happy".  At BEST (if you consider that the best) all you get is "only the mass-murderer died".

[Zu Long]

Player agency is about giving the player the ability to make a choice and have that choice actually carried out. It has nothing to do with knowing the ramifications of that choice.

You are given the choice to save the anvil or destroy it - and, regardless of what you choose, that's what your character does. However, you don't make the choice of who you have to kill (Caridain or Branka, respectively) or how the Anvil is later used. Player agency =/= omniscience.

But you have a way of logically determining what the likely outcomes of the choice are. Caradin destroys the Anvil and Branka is a ruthless, borderline insane person you give the ability to basically create super soldiers. What happens is predictable and meshes with the story.

Compare that to Grace in DA2 whom if you let her go and fool the Templars, she A. immediately gets captured anyway and B. blames Hawke for everything. Many people found Grace's story unsatisfying because it didn't follow a logical flow resulting from your decision--instead it comes off as forced and somewhat ridiculous.

[ShinsFortress]

I don't think that's the point of Dragon Age.

 

I think it is.  Most of Dragon Age has been pretty clear cut.  Logain lives Alistair leaves, it's that simple.  Etc.  So was MEx.  Kayden or Ashley.  Samara XOR Morinth.  Exceptions?  Maybe but rarely.  That'll do.  *shrug*  Anyway, whatever the history, I almost never like games that have good and logical decisions turn out bad.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

I think it is.  Most of Dragon Age has been pretty clear cut.  Logain lives Alistair leaves, it's that simple.  Etc.  So was MEx.  Kayden or Ashley.  Samara XOR Morinth.  Exceptions?  Maybe but rarely.  That'll do.  *shrug*  Anyway, whatever the history, I almost never like games that have good and logical decisions turn out bad.

I though the idea of the OP was that logical decisions turn out good regardless of whether they're moral or immoral. Or was I missing something?

[9TailsFox]

But you have a way of logically determining what the likely outcomes of the choice are. Caradin destroys the Anvil and Branka is a ruthless, borderline insane person you give the ability to basically create super soldiers. What happens is predictable and meshes with the story.

Compare that to Grace in DA2 whom if you let her go and fool the Templars, she A. immediately gets captured anyway and B. blames Hawke for everything. Many people found Grace's story unsatisfying because it didn't follow a logical flow resulting from your decision--instead it comes off as forced and somewhat ridiculous.

 

I do not agree about this. You get consequences you don't like it it means it's bad writing, no it means you get what you did not expect.

In DA:A You can save only Amaranthine or your keep. If you pick save city later find out keep is safe because you upgrade it. You would cry about your choices don't mater. I don't think so you will be have your keep is safe.

Or Flemeth I don't see people crying about Flemeth alive. But I killed Flemeth.

And Grace is crazy and you can't argue with crazy people

 

[MissOuJ]

I though the idea of the OP was that logical decisions turn out good regardless of whether they're moral or immoral. Or was I missing something?

 

I think their point was closer to "actions which are coded 'good' shouldn't always have beneficial results when compared with decisions which are coded 'practical/logical'", meaning that a saint-playthrough shouldn't be the "Instant access / I win" -button in terms of rewards and content.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

I think their point was closer to "actions which are coded 'good' shouldn't always have beneficial results when compared with decisions which are coded 'practical/logical'", meaning that a saint-playthrough shouldn't be the "Instant access / I win" -button in terms of rewards and content.

That's what I was trying to say. (Thank you.)

[RobRam10]

Let no Evil deed go unrewarded, friends.

[Zu Long]

I do not agree about this. You get consequences you don't like it it means it's bad writing, no it means you get what you did not expect.
In DA:A You can save only Amaranthine or your keep. If you pick save city later find out keep is safe because you upgrade it. You would cry about your choices don't mater. I don't think so you will be have your keep is safe.
Or Flemeth I don't see people crying about Flemeth alive. But I killed Flemeth.
And Grace is crazy and you can't argue with crazy people

I really liked the amaranthine choice, precisely because it was predictable. I spent the whole game building up my fortress and when the choice came down I went to Amaranthine, logically concluding that my superfortress could take it. I was not disappointed.

You bring up Flemeth, but she was always a pretty mysterious character, and most people didn't have a problem with her resurrection. Compare to Lelianna, whom people cry about all the time. They're upset because, again, it lacks a logical flow and ends up feeling like a forced outcome.

[AlanC9]

I really liked the amaranthine choice, precisely because it was predictable. I spent the whole game building up my fortress and when the choice came down I went to Amaranthine, logically concluding that my superfortress could take it. I was not disappointed.
 

 

Well, that's nice. But are you saying that all choices should be like that?

[9TailsFox]

I really liked the amaranthine choice, precisely because it was predictable. I spent the whole game building up my fortress and when the choice came down I went to Amaranthine, logically concluding that my superfortress could take it. I was not disappointed.

You bring up Flemeth, but she was always a pretty mysterious character, and most people didn't have a problem with her resurrection. Compare to Lelianna, whom people cry about all the time. They're upset because, again, it lacks a logical flow and ends up feeling like a forced outcome.

This is my point Leliana is same easy to bring back from dead as Flemeth.

1)Ashes

2)Room full of magic/lyrium

3)Immortal guardian spirit

4)Second wife of the maker

5)Flemeth

6)Same as Wynne was broth from dead random spirit of Faith #26

7)I can do this all day

 

People don't like what writer did so it means writers don't recognize our choices.