12 réponses à ce sujet

[andy6915]

I'm not one of those "diversity!" types, but I do like a roughly even number between male and female party members. It just makes the cast feel more fleshed out, I don't want too many of one gender. I haven't played Mass Effect for a number of years, not by choice. My 360 broke 2 years ago, and I only just replaced it with a Slim recently. To celebrate, I'm going to make my fourth male character (I have 7, 4 female and 3 male and all of them are of different classes) and that fourth character is going to be a sentinel since sentinel is the only class that I don't have a Shepard who is that class. Wanting to romance Tali since she's my favorite, and I want this trilogy playthrough to be the best it can be since it's so long since I played it.

 

So how does that all tie together? I really don't like ME3 Ashley much. I really, really, don't. Kaidan is 10 times better than her. He interacts with the crew more, one of his only conversations isn't him being a pathetic drunk on the floor, he's more likable, him being made Spectre makes more sense (not going into this here, I made a big topic on it a few years ago). But if I don't pick Ashley, I'm going to end up with 5 guys and 2 girls (not counting EDI since she's just a robot). If I pick Ashley, I'll end up with 4 to 3, much better. So I'm conflicted. I would prefer Kaidan, especially since I want this playthrough to be as good as it gets. But Ashley would make the cast more even. There's also the problem of me going through ME1 on hardcore or insanity, haven't decided. Losing a heavy hitter like Ashley if I'm a sentinel on hardcore or insanity will... Hurt. Granted I'll still have Wrex, but I don't know if he'll be enough. Whereas Kaidan, when I'm already sentinel anyway, will be rather quite useless from a gameplay perspective in ME1. At least in ME3 his abilities differ from sentinel Shepard enough that it doesn't feel too overlapping, but that isn't true in ME1.

 

There's also the fact that I can't level Ashley's best skill in ME3, marksman. Don't want to get that damn markman glitch where she ends up not being able to shoot for an entire mission. But yeah, I don't know what to do. I appreciate if you read to this moment. If you didn't, here's the quick version "I want the genders somewhat even in number, I'm playing a male sentinel, I dislike ME3 Ashley but Kaidan will be useless in ME1 and he'll significantly uneven the genders out". I'm putting this in this forum since it doesn't mostly have to do with ME3 Ashley, especially since I actually really like ME1 Ashley. I'm of the opinion that she was a good character in ME1 but got ruined in ME3, whereas Kaidan started a good character but actually got better in ME3.

[ImaginaryMatter]

As a fellow Kaidan-over-Ashley-er I say choose Kaidan. I don't think you should have much of a problem in ME1. Squadmates for damage in that game seem to be only good on paper, in practice they shoot at the ground and miss a lot. Kaidan is also better for preventing organic enemies from using Immunity (due to Lift and his other biotic abilities) which I think helps far more to keep battles short than Ashley's weapon skills.

[ArcadiaGrey]

In my current playthru I was going to chose Ashley to make my 4 Sheps even.  Two with Kaidan, two with Ashley.  But after doing an Ash romance in ME3 last time I decided I simply didn't want to.  In my mind she's not as interesting a character and I find Kaidan being a Spectre to be more believable (although honestly neither should be....but this isn't the thread for that).  I enjoyed the Ash romance but I can live without her tbh.

 

I was conflicted, I'd planned on saving Ash, but at the end of the day it's your game and your time.  I believe in 'trying all the things' but then I realised I have, I have Ash in one run as it is.  It's okay to go with Kaidan.

 

Having an even number of genders is honestly something I've never thought of.  It sounds like you'd fix that issue with a femShep, but then of course you couldn't have Tali.  Is it that important?  You could count Traynor as she's an important member of the team if that would help, but personally I wouldn't let that stop me from doing what I really wanted to do.

 

Just start ME1 and play as a sentinel.  Use Ash and Kaidan separately as much as possible to see how they'd fit into your team and leave Virmire till last.  By then you'll have a better understanding of this Shepard and his relationship with them both, and can chose at that point.

 

As for how hard ME1 is, if you've already completed ME1 on insanity then would it really matter to turn down the difficulty after Virmire to accommodate Kaidan?

[congokong]

I agree that Ashley took a 180 and became very boring in ME3 ...and looked more like a transgender. She also treats you worse than Kaidan; never apologizing for the Horizon treatment and not even visiting you in those 6 months on earth.

As for your question, what answer can you expect? You cannot have it both ways, and only you can really decide. There is no secret companion a poster can tip you off about. The obvious consideration would be to play as femshep, yet you want to romance Tali so that is out. And while having Kaidan will give a gender imbalance, it is the military... Far more men serve.

One option is to simply kill the Virmire survivor in ME3.

[andy6915]

As a fellow Kaidan-over-Ashley-er I say choose Kaidan. I don't think you should have much of a problem in ME1. Squadmates for damage in that game seem to be only good on paper, in practice they shoot at the ground and miss a lot. Kaidan is also better for preventing organic enemies from using Immunity (due to Lift and his other biotic abilities) which I think helps far more to keep battles short than Ashley's weapon skills.

 
Well, true, but... Look, I'm having bad flashbacks. My first engineer was a Femshep who (before Citadel DLC came out since I knew I could never do it again without feeling terrible) got Wrex killed in ME1 AND get Ashley killed. On insanity. So I was a squishy engineer stuck doing the final parts of the game with nothing but support characters. It was horrible, it was hard, and I don't want to ever get close to having that happen again.
 
 

In my current playthru I was going to chose Ashley to make my 4 Sheps even.  Two with Kaidan, two with Ashley.  But after doing an Ash romance in ME3 last time I decided I simply didn't want to.  In my mind she's not as interesting a character and I find Kaidan being a Spectre to be more believable (although honestly neither should be....but this isn't the thread for that).  I enjoyed the Ash romance but I can live without her tbh.

Yeah, it isn't the topic for that. I could link to the topic I made, if you want my opinion on that.

http://forum.bioware...ed-is-nonsense/

Having an even number of genders is honestly something I've never thought of.  It sounds like you'd fix that issue with a femShep, but then of course you couldn't have Tali.  Is it that important?  You could count Traynor as she's an important member of the team if that would help, but personally I wouldn't let that stop me from doing what I really wanted to do.

You never thought of it? I didn't think it was that unusual. But yes, that is the problem. Tali. Sort of. You know, Tali was what finally pushed me into making my first male Shepard after a number of playthroughs of only played Femshep. I ended up liking male Shep more than expected, so I ended up making a few more. All my Shepard's have a canon class, though I have... Cheated a bit with bonus powers. I gave my Femshep engineer sniper rifles as a bonus power in ME1, and this lets me turn her into either an infiltrator or engineer in ME2 depending on which I feel like. I gave my male vanguard singularity in ME1 so that I could turn him into a vanguard or adept in ME2 depending on which I felt like. This lets me have some choices in their canon classes.

Just start ME1 and play as a sentinel. Use Ash and Kaidan separately as much as possible to see how they'd fit into your team and leave Virmire till last. By then you'll have a better understanding of this Shepard and his relationship with them both, and can chose at that point.

Not a bad idea.

As for how hard ME1 is, if you've already completed ME1 on insanity then would it really matter to turn down the difficulty after Virmire to accommodate Kaidan?

I'll probably just go with hardcore anyway. Insanity enemies in ME1 take a freaking millennium to kill on insanity with a power based class.

I agree that Ashley took a 180 and became very boring in ME3 ...and looked more like a transgender. She also treats you worse than Kaidan; never apologizing for the Horizon treatment and not even visiting you in those 6 months on earth.

As for your question, what answer can you expect? You cannot have it both ways, and only you can really decide. There is no secret companion a poster can tip you off about. The obvious consideration would be to play as femshep, yet you want to romance Tali so that is out. And while having Kaidan will give a gender imbalance, it is the military... Far more men serve.

One option is to simply kill the Virmire survivor in ME3.

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that Ashley had a changed writer. Funny thing, it took my a good number of playthroughs before I finally started saving Kaidan, it had been Ashley over and over for a good while. When I did pick Kaidan, I was surprised at how much I liked his post-Virmire dialogue. Especially romance version. Come to think of it, I've never romanced Ashley.

You're right that it's my choice. But other opinions can help me form my own, give me points I didn't consider and stuff.

[Prince Enigmatic]

I've never liked Ashley, and never gotten to Mass Effect 2 or 3 with her surviving Virmire. Kaidan is one of my favourite characters in the trilogy, and I agree that, after seeing Ash's handling in ME3, he is handled much better, and develops from Horizon onwards whereas Ash doesn't seem to. Plus in ME3, we have James Vega, so there isn't much need for another soldier. We already have Kaidan, sentinel, Liara, adept, Garrus, infiltrator, Tali, engineer, EDI, also an engineer, but I've seen others say she's sort of a engineer/infiltrator hybrid, which matches her infiltration software from the Eva gynoid, and then Javik, vanguard. Kaidan is more useful, arguably, even if it does mean having another sentinel if your playing as one in this walkthrough.

 

Also, I know EDI is a synthetic, but she is created with a feminine voice, feminine anagram for a name, and female voice actress (the amazing Tricia Helfer). When she takes over the Dr. Eva Core body, she is taking over a gynoid, anything that resembles the female form, which Dr. Eva's body certainly does to the extreme (that bonus Alliance outfit for EDI?) so I don't see why you wouldn't count her as a female member of the squad, since for all intents and purposes she is female. 

 

And while having Kaidan means squad wise there is four men, and three women, its only one more instead of even, plus there is Traynor who proves useful (unlike Kelly), and also, wouldn't it be worth having a squadmate you like and whose presence you enjoy having, over just having another female there to make the squadmates more equal in terms of gender? Also playing as FemShep would even things up. Having Ash there just to fulfill a diversity quota doesn't seem worth the trouble if you ask me. 

[Vazgen]

Ashley is great gameplay-wise. Her Inferno Grenades are pretty much the best anti-armor power in the game and she is a beast with high RoF assault rifles. She also has one of the best detonator powers on squadmates - Concussive Shot with a low cooldown and ability to take the properties of the active ammo power. 

She gets the same number of interactions as Kaidan, if I'm not mistaken, the difference is that Kaidan's interactions are mostly on the ship while Ashley gets the memorial scene and her ship scene is her being drunk. Overall, I prefer Kaidan myself and I don't treat EDI as "she" and don't have any problems with the gender representation on the Normandy  

[andy6915]

I've never liked Ashley, and never gotten to Mass Effect 2 or 3 with her surviving Virmire. Kaidan is one of my favourite characters in the trilogy, and I agree that, after seeing Ash's handling in ME3, he is handled much better, and develops from Horizon onwards whereas Ash doesn't seem to. Plus in ME3, we have James Vega, so there isn't much need for another soldier. We already have Kaidan, sentinel, Liara, adept, Garrus, infiltrator, Tali, engineer, EDI, also an engineer, but I've seen others say she's sort of a engineer/infiltrator hybrid, which matches her infiltration software from the Eva gynoid, and then Javik, vanguard. Kaidan is more useful, arguably, even if it does mean having another sentinel if your playing as one in this walkthrough.

This actually does make it clear that ME3 is strangely lacking in true soldiers. Not that I'm going to let that influence anything, but it's definitely odd.

 

Also, I know EDI is a synthetic, but she is created with a feminine voice, feminine anagram for a name, and female voice actress (the amazing Tricia Helfer). When she takes over the Dr. Eva Core body, she is taking over a gynoid, anything that resembles the female form, which Dr. Eva's body certainly does to the extreme (that bonus Alliance outfit for EDI?) so I don't see why you wouldn't count her as a female member of the squad, since for all intents and purposes she is female.

I don't know, maybe it's because I see her more of a machine than a person? Don't get me wrong, I'm actually pro-AI in this series. But despite that, I just can't see her as being really either gender. Like Legion, I guess.

 

And while having Kaidan means squad wise there is four men, and three women, its only one more instead of even, plus there is Traynor who proves useful (unlike Kelly), and also, wouldn't it be worth having a squadmate you like and whose presence you enjoy having, over just having another female there to make the squadmates more equal in terms of gender? Also playing as FemShep would even things up. Having Ash there just to fulfill a diversity quota doesn't seem worth the trouble if you ask me.

I really wish Tali could romance Femsheps. There are hints and subtle things that seriously leads me to think Tali has a crush on a female Shepard too, like it was planned but then dummied out in development. Really irks me. Still, in this case, I wouldn't have a choice anyway. This sentinel needs to be male, simply because I want another biotic male Shepard and I ALREADY have two biotic Femsheps. I don't need Femshep ending up with a near-monopoly on biotic classes, which will happen if I make my sentinel female (3 to 1).
 

Ashley is great gameplay-wise. Her Inferno Grenades are pretty much the best anti-armor power in the game and she is a beast with high RoF assault rifles. She also has one of the best detonator powers on squadmates - Concussive Shot with a low cooldown and ability to take the properties of the active ammo power.

Yet marksman is broken. I guess that frees up skill points to use in other things, but a glitched skill really knocks her down a notch.
 

She gets the same number of interactions as Kaidan, if I'm not mistaken, the difference is that Kaidan's interactions are mostly on the ship while Ashley gets the memorial scene and her ship scene is her being drunk. Overall, I prefer Kaidan myself and I don't treat EDI as "she" and don't have any problems with the gender representation on the Normandy

This is actually untrue. Bioware said this to try and make it sound less bad than it is, but Ashley flat-out has less interactions. I don't mean with just Shepard though. Kaidan is playing cards with Vega one minute, talking with Liara another minute, I think he hangs out with Garrus at some point. Kaidan really feels like one of the crew, he mingles with everyone else and seems rather social. Ashley, on the other hand, spends almost the entire game in the observation room, barely talks to anyone, barely interacts with anyone, and I think I recall her having less ambient dialogue with Shepard (you know, when they just say something but don't start an actual conversation). She's like a recluse after joining, she doesn't interact with the rest of the crew much at all. Which is really weird since she's supposed be the extroverted party girl with lots of personality and Kaidan is supposed to be the introverted nerd, you'd think he'd be the one who doesn't interact much instead of Ashley.

[congokong]

 
Yeah, it's pretty obvious that Ashley had a changed writer. Funny thing, it took my a good number of playthroughs before I finally started saving Kaidan, it had been Ashley over and over for a good while. When I did pick Kaidan, I was surprised at how much I liked his post-Virmire dialogue. Especially romance version. Come to think of it, I've never romanced Ashley.

You're right that it's my choice. But other opinions can help me form my own, give me points I didn't consider and stuff.

I've romanced Ashley, but solely with the intent for her to die in ME3. And yes, Kaidan has a lot of romance dialogue in ME1; more than Liara and Ashley. I really liked him in ME3 too. I couldn't stay angry at him for the Horizon treatment because of how apologetic and nice he his. Ashley though...

 

"I need to be able to trust you."

 

Really? Shepard hasn't proven herself after stopping the Collectors while Ashley was busy judging? My canon Shepard kept her alive on Virmire just to shoot her in ME3.

 

But I don't think there's anything that can be shared for a question like this besides our personal likes/dislikes for a character. What matters is how you feel about them. I doubt there's anything I can tell you about the two that you don't already know.

[RedCaesar97]

There's also the fact that I can't level Ashley's best skill in ME3, marksman. Don't want to get that damn markman glitch where she ends up not being able to shoot for an entire mission. 

 

Uh what? Marksman is Ashley's worst skill. For the record, it works with the Lancer apparently if you want to try that.

 

But Marksman as her best skill? It was not even her best skill when it used to work! Even if it did work, it's duration is too short and its cooldown too long on Ashley. Squadmate weapon damage is reduced to only 30% of base weapon damage; this becomes their new base weapon damage so any other bonuses they can get only build off the reduced base damage. So that means that even if a squadmate can get +70% weapon damage, they are still dealing less than 100% of base weapon damage; it would be (base_weapon_damage * 0.3) + (1.7 * base_weapon_damage).

 

Squadmates also fire weapons only a certain number of shots at a time; Marksman will not help with some weapons. Single-shot sniper rifles such as the Javelin will not benefit Ashley under Marksman, for example.

 

Disruptor Ammo (priming for tech bursts), Concussive Shot (fire/cryo/tech burst detonator, can also prime when amplified with Incendiary or Cryo ammo), and Inferno Grenade (prime for fire explosion) are all better powers. Concussive Shot can have a cooldown of about 6.5 seconds on Ashley, meaning you can use it a lot more often on her than Marksman and it will benefit Shepard a lot more than Marksman ever could.

 

And as others have pointed out before on these forums, with DLC, you can get access to the Typhoon which is god-like on squadmates. Ashley does not need Marksman at all to make that thing work. It is absolutely broken on squadmates.

[andy6915]

And as others have pointed out before on these forums, with DLC, you can get access to the Typhoon which is god-like on squadmates. Ashley does not need Marksman at all to make that thing work. It is absolutely broken on squadmates.

I have all the DLC, but I've forgotten most of it after all this time. All I remember is the Raptor, because it's the most awesome sniper rifle ever and has become probably one of my go-to weapons in ME3 for the rest of time.

[aoibhealfae]

Not sure about the gender diversity thing... having Ashley around as a token female really doesn't sit well for me and she barely feels alive in ME3. I do think Jay did good with Grunt and even Miranda but he doesn't seem to understand that Ashley is not a soldier version of Miranda. FemShep herself is a token strong female character but as a main character, her characterization was better expanded. Had Ashley shared Vega's narrative rather than Kaidan's, maybe she can be salvageable and even more content available for her.

 

Her Inferno Grenade is great but limited. Her Disruptor ammo ability is redundant since its only very effective against Geth and semi-effective against barriers.  Her Concussive Shot took a lot of CD which made the ability ineffective if you want to spam a lot of combos. I have the Marksman fix and used it myself for my Infiltrator (Tactical Cloak with bonus power evo + Marksman), but again long CD.  Honestly, James is already a better all-rounder tank than Ashley who you often have to wait for HER to be useful to use her powers. I remember this very well during the Geth Dreadnought as I got pinned down by Geth Primes and drones as I wait for her CD to finish... *looooong sigh* 

[Vazgen]

Concussive Shot is one of the fastest squadmate powers. With recharge speed evolution it can be as fast as 6 seconds!