While playing through the game, this troper's grandpa would come in and watch the second he heard laser blasts. Near the end where Shepard gives his dramatic speech about taking their own back from the collectors, my grandpa excitedly did a fistpump and shouted: "YEAH GO GET 'EM!" I haven't seen my grandpa this excited about something in years.

I depleted all of the Sol System (beside for any moons, Mars, or Earth). CrowningMomentOfFunny.

I was honestly surprised it wasn't done long before Shepard was ever born.

Well, Uranus was '''probed''' to depletion already.

"Quiet, you fool! Do you want the aliens to probe Uranus?!"

"Maybe..."

"''Really'', Commander?"

I've got to say, being a Vanguard in ME 2? ''Wacky fun.'' The original Vanguard didn't have much going for it, but now? I have at least half of the biotic powers in the game at my disposal. I can wear down enemies with sub-machinegun and handgun fire from a distance, with occasional smatterings of some of the ranged biotic powers. And then, when there's only a few dudes left, I equip the shotgun and charge in, and it's gloriously, messily over.

I thought the Sentinel was really good too. Those annoying YMIR Mechs were as threatening as stuffed animals after a Level 4 Overload followed by a Level 4 Warp. It was awesome!

Word of advice...don't fire the Cain (aka ''mini-nuke launcher'') inside the cargo hold of the Normandy. You get a...rather glitchy game over.

I did fire it. I didn't get a game over. Of course I made sure the eye-thing was across the room and I had cover.

Fair enough. Apparently, when I fired it off, it was close enough and destructive enough to take out not only the Oculus, but ''my entire squad''. Since the Oculus's health was depleted, though, it went ahead to the next mini-cutscene with the Normandy flying through the debris field...and then I got the game over when the ''cutscene'' returned to Shepard. The Cain ''broke the game engine'' to give me a game over.

This troper had a rather heart warming experience on his first playthrough of [=ME2=]. He had spent the game perfecting his squad and himself, (full upgrades, all squad loyalty missions complete) just so that he lost as few people as possible during the last mission. Earlier in the game, he used the games autosave feature to correct mistakes; repairing romances, trying out new interupts, and used it to create the perfect story. During the last mission, he knew he was going to lose Jack and Samara, having failed Samara's mission and agreeing with Miranda during the cat-fight. However, he lost someone he was not prepared to lose: long time friend, sniper partner (to his infiltrator), and repeat squad member, Garrus. He was carried off and killed by the collector swarm, after Thane used his biotic shield to defend them. And this troper finally accepted that his Shepard's story would not be perfect, that things would not allways go according to plan. And it made his RoaringRampageOfRevenge all the more powerful.

This troper romanced Kaidan in the first game, but wasn't particularly impressed. In the sequel I quickly began to appreciate how Garrus had grown as a character. In a galaxy that was so hostile, Garrus was a true friend, and that respect became something much more. It was all very natural, if a bit awkward. Then he died exactly as the previous troper described. It made the experience particularly bitter sweet.

This troper only messed up by agreeing with Miranda, and therefore only lost Jack. Not that I care. She was a crazy annoyance anyhow. I'm glad Tali survived, though. My Shepard is a bit like Kirk. First Romance: Liara. Second Romance: Tali. He likes aliens, alot.

This troper also romanced Liara then Tali. I had intended to stay faithful at the start of the second game, but Liara's nearly total lack of acknowledgment of the relationship left me with no defenses against Tali's adorably awkward show of interest.

This troper intended and did the exact same thing. I was rather annoyed at Liara and Tali was too hard to resist.

She does give you a kiss rather than a hug, that's all.

Same with me. I always liked Tali since the first game, but her being unavailable meant I chose Ashley. Then, in the second game Ashley yelled at me and just left without listening to my explanation of why I was with Cerberus, and Tali joined despite her hatred for them. Hello, Tali!

I had always wanted to romance Tali, but couldn't in [=ME1=], so I romanced Liara instead then Tali in 2. Then in Lair of the Shadow Broker I got in a fight with Liara about how close she was to going over the edge so I appealed to our previous relationship. Her response? "Now you're just itching to get under Tali's helmet!" That was awkward, but then funny when I realized that the other member of my squad at the time was Tali herself. She's just standing off on her own, watching this whole thing go on without saying a word.

Good point with the "Shepard's story can't always be perfect, things don't always go according to plan." On my first crack at the suicide mission, I lost Tali, because I chose Samara to lead the first fire team (They had recommended "experience," and her bio ''said'' experience, but...then again, it's not the leading-a-team kind of experience), and she didn't shout to cover fire when we were closing the first set of doors. When a rocket got through and hit Tali in the face, my heart froze solid. I managed to keep everyone else alive during the rest of the mission, but when I saw the empty space in the Normandy where Tali used to be, it sort of hit me that it made a sick sort of sense -- the optimistic teenager, the youngest and the one who had been through a cold upbringing and was probably the brightest of your crew, would of course be the one most susceptible to die. Sort of like killing off the LittlestCancerPatient to show you the shit has hit the fan. As dramatic as that is from a storytelling perspective, though, I had to reload to save her. It may be less dramatic, but I'm still happy that I managed to get everyone out alive.

No way, EXACT same thing here. Thought process and everything.

whoa did I make a post when I was sleeping?! because this is exactly what happened to me, I got so mad I punched my friend and restarted the mission, I picked Samara because he was talking and i couldn't hear the TV, so i just picked to most experienced person for the job, bad move as I learned later to distressing results...

I chose Garrus because of his past. Leading his little merc band on Omega while I was gone. Also, Tali is either 22 or 24 in MassEffect 2.

Shepard is (technically) 31. Jacob is 28. Miranda is 35. Zaeed is probably well into his fifties. Legion is "not applicable". Samara is nearly 1000, Garrus is probably in his late thirties or even into his forties, given that most turians serve in the military until the age of 30. Thane is 39. Mordin is 48. Jack might be around 20-24. The only one really younger than Tali is Grunt, whose age is measured in weeks, and even before he had a last minute background change, he was 22. So yeah, I'd say she's one of the youngest.

Mordin is 48?! That's weird, because he doesn't look about to die of old age, and Salarians rarely live past 40, I've heard.

He's not 48. He is actually 30 - the salarian equivalent to 48-year-old human.

Turians "serve the state in some capacity" from 15 to 30. Garrus is probably in his twenties, actually.

Except C-Sec isn't part of the Turian Hierarchy. Twenties is patently unrealistic, anyway: the Codex states that applicants usually have years of experience before joining C-Sec, and Garrus was fairly high up in the organisation. Oh, and "serve the state" basically means "was in the military", as it's basically the sole government agency the turians have. It does ''everything'', from transporting goods between worlds to providing fire fighters to acting as police.

It's not unreasonable to think that Garrus is roughly the same age as Shepard. Remember, turians recruit on their fifteenth birthday. He could have easily joined C-Sec in his 20's with plenty of experience under his belt, not to mention the fact that he was so impressive that he was offered Spectre training.

The final mission, GOD. I had no idea it would kick off in the ambush: after going to clean up a merc-infested station I see the whole team loading on the shuttle. Irregular, sure, maybe this mission is just special. Suddenly the Collector ship's there and Joker is running his gimpy ass through the corridors as the crew's being eaten by Collectors. Seeing a big'un in the Core room and hearing Seth Green's ''perfect'' 'Shit shit shit!' was paralyzingly between hilarious and horrifying. Then Shepard's back and the whole crew's gone. I had him walk through the empty ship, weighed my remaining two team members who weren't loyal against the whole crew... and Shepard made the tough call to go in after them. When they split up the teams, getting to dole out who's in charge of what brought tears to my eyes: now we're really in the captain's seat. With Miranda and Jack bickering, there was one clear choice: Garrus spent the two years Shepard went missing not running errands for the Alliance, running errands for the Quarians, setting up a pretty info brokering shop on Illium or breaking faces on Tuchanka (which is pretty much Krogan soccer), but by grabbing a bunch of disgruntled ex-military guys and becoming The Punisher. His sheer aura of badass got the whole squad through, and when he got caught by a bullet my heart froze, then I jumped out of my seat when he pats Shepard on the back and keeps going. Getting Chambers and Chakwas out safe was a CMOH (I checked the wiki to see if there were game effects for delaying... thank God I didn't). Getting them back to the Normandy? That was a tough decision, but in the end I reasoned it had to be a one-man army: Joker and Grunt probably had a hell of a fun time getting them back. Need a superpowerful biotic to hold up a field, but Samara wasn't loyal and didn't have her head on the mission. Miranda goes for those doe eyes (lover and all), but Jack finally gets to use her powers for good: decades later, all Cerberus' monstrosities and filthy money save the galaxy. Had Garrus in my final squad, too. Seeing Shepard dive for and catch him from the sliding platform, then Garrus return the favor on the Normandy were double Crowning Moments of Awesome. God I wish Shepard could go gay...

Well... if you download the savegame editor and toggle the 'gender' button... (Really enjoyed her male!Shepard/Garrus game)

The endgame was, for this troper, one of the most satisfying experiences he's had in his long career as a gamer. This was my first playthrough, and I continued with my "balanced male" Shepard -- whose character could be described as "a peerless friend and leader, but the ''last'' enemy you'll ever make." You can probably imagine his (and my) reaction to the Collectors making off with the ''Normandy's'' crew. As the cutscenes came to a close and I walked out into the CIC, I took a look at my (real-world) clock. It read 2:00 AM. That gave me pause... but then I thought, ''No. No, no, '''no'''. Those insectoid bastards just made this personal. I'll be damned if I let a little thing like the fourth dimension keep me from getting my crew back.'' After that moment, both myself and Shepard were completely resolved. We would hammer our way through that hellish hive, destroy whatever resistance we encountered with extreme prejudice, and we would not stop until everyone, ''everyone,'' got home safe. And that's exactly what we did. No one left behind --and no one left to curse us as we escaped the fireball. Telling the Illusive Man, who had put us all in so much danger, that the ''Normandy'' and her crew were loyal to me now, was just the icing on the cake. And as Shepard looked to the future, at the Reaper fleet poised to annihilate the galaxy, I'm sure our thoughts were the same: ''We've been through all the hell you've thrown at us. It's only made us all the stronger. You call yourselves "infinitely our greater." Well, I can't wait to prove you wrong.''

This troper was heartbroken by Ashley's rejection of Shepard on Horizon. I didn't even romance Ashley (I romanced Liara), but it hurt how she thought I had betrayed her. I never liked Cerberus anyway, but after that scene, I would have been willing to turn my back on them if it meant Ashley would forgive me.

@/JoieDeCombat was similarly heartbroken by Kaidan's "What the hell, Shepard?" Then went back to her quarters on the Normandy and found all her fish belly-up. That was a crappy day all around, apparently.

This troper, in addition to being ripped up and down by Ashley, also got a nasty e-mail from Toombs that basically called me everything but a senile vorcha. After having done everything in my power to get him help in the first game, seeing that message was absolutely demoralizing. And then the next message was ''spam.'' I very much wanted to fly to the Citadel and choke the spammer with his, her or its "reproductive enhancements."

This troper actually had a far different reaction to Ashley. I also romanced Liara and was pure paragon so when Ashley didn't even bother listening to me I got seriously pissed and pretty decided that I should never have let her live through the first game. The bitch deserves a nuke to the face after refusing to give me five minutes to explain the current situation. (The email after apologizing almost made up for it but it was just too little too late. The bridge had been burned.)

The cybernetics damage upgrade allowed @/{{Night}} to set up some ridiculous and ridiculously awesome scenes in the game. Start by punching out Husks, which you shouldn't actually be able to punch out. End by running up to the Geth Prime on the Alarei and ''beating it to death with your rifle butt'' in vengeance for your romance interest of choice's father.

I was a little disappointed when I managed to keep all my companions alive on my first playthrough. It felt too easy. So I reloaded the final mission and made a few different choices. Result: Garrus, Thane and ''Mordin Solus'' all die. Three of my favourite characters. I'm positive the only reason Tali didn't die with them was because I sent her back to the ship. Be careful what you wish for, eh?

Here's a fun thing to do. In the suicide mission, right before the Thanix Cannon fires if you have it, shout, '''"MOONSTONE CANNON, FIRE!"'''

This troper was laughing and cheering at the same time, as the score became Joker 2, Cosmic Horrors 1. "HAHA, PWNED! Who's got the big effin' guns NOW, BITCHES?!"

This troper defies you to NOT be thinking "HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NAO, BEE-OTCH?!" as the Collector ship that Killed you at the start of the game asplodes. This troper has also dubbed the Thanix Cannon the "Armageddon" simply because of how freaking awsome it is. Plus you know saying "ARMAGEDDON, FIRE!" sounds EPIC.

I just loved it , it was like a beam of furious justice from on high. Fought the urge to Snark. Foul beast , The Fallen of the Normandy would have words with you.'

Oh, ''hell'' yes. That cutscene is all kinds of emotional, depending on whether you upgrade or not. If you get all the upgrades, then it's tense, but ultimately badass as the [=SR2=] finally avenges her older sister. If you ''don't'' upgrade... well, let's just say that if you don't research the Multicore Shielding, ''Tali disintegrates''.

This troper just smirks and says "Let's see how you like it." And bye bye Collector ship.

This troper simply thinks of the Thanix Cannon as a cleansing white mist that purifies everything it touches.

This troper got a little choked up right before the suicide mission. Her Shepard just stood in her cabin, looking sadly and longingly at that photo of Liara on her desk, as "Reflections" (the remix of [=ME1's=] love theme) played quietly in the background. No words were spoken, and yet it was perfectly clear just how much they must have loved each other. Combined with the knowledge of the hell Liara had endured in Shepard's absence, I got the sense that Shep had resolved that she couldn't die, because she'd be damned if she would put Liara through that kind of suffering again.

That wordless scene nearly made this editor cry.

This troper ''did'' cry.

This Troper paused when it came to the final choice. Then he thought back to Mordin's and Legion's words. What the last race to be given technology they're not ready for did. What the last one to be promised it did. No way I'm keeping that thing in one piece.

And what if the krogan hadn't been given that technology? The rachni would likely have conquered the galaxy. There's really no happy option (which, incidentally, is why This Troper would like Bioware to get rid of the Paragon/Renegade labels).

Tropers/{{biznizz}}: That... whoa, Skarmory, that was poetic as hell! Makes me wish they could have included that into the actual game itself, as a reason Shepard gives to the Illusive Man should you make that choice.

Tropers/{{ironballs16}}: This troper likes the way Skarmory thinks, but my mindset with that decision was, in essence, the same as scientists and physicians immediately after World War II. The Nazis had made huge strides in terms of understanding the human body - but the methods used to do so were morally bankrupt. So the decision boiled down to this - do you use the technology for the greater good, and help make the deaths of those effected "worthwhile" while selling out every principle you have... or do you reject the technology, with all the benefits it might bring, and stand by your principles? Being the "Lawful Good" sort, I obviously opted for the latter.

Actually, the knowledge gained by Nazi science was preserved, and many Nazi scientists and engineers not (provably) directly involved were hired by the American and Russian governments and excused. Also, you don't have to sell out your principles to make those deaths worthwhile, you only need to have principles that don't forbid it. (Knowledge is not tainted by the method of gaining it, only the method and those that would use it are).

This troper managed to blow the head off a YMIR Mech during the mission to acquire Jack/Subject Zero. I was surprised at first, then i noticed the glow of doom coming from the YMIR shortly before the crazy thing went up in a M-290 Cain-style Nuclear explosion. Freaking Awesome.

On Garrus' mission? With the two mechs? Yeah, I headshot one with my Infiltrator, and the ensuing explosion took out the other. It was awesome.

Grunt's Loyalty mission. Comes down to Adept Shepard vs. Uvenk. Used Pull + Throw to push him out of the (terrestrial) arena. So technically the Krogan Clan Leader was killed by a 4 foot drop.

My female Shepard tried romancing Garrus after being shut down by Kaidan on Horizon. Must have missed a prompt or two, because she failed, and I felt ''really'' sorry for her. Girl's got a horrible love life. ;_;

This Troper took Miranda to fight the Oculus. Prompt Miranda calling herself from the cockpit, telling Shepard and herself to get back up to her. As if two of them weren't already enough.

This troper got the Cain before he went to go get Samara. He then got to a part where a large group of mercenaries was. Anxious to both avoid a big firefight and to test the Cain out, he took it out and (after a few trial-and-error charge ups) fired it. The "HOLY CRAP!" that followed probably echoed. There was NOTHING left.

This troper first used the Cain on a pair of Varren on a side mission. The word 'overkill' doesn't ''quite'' cover what happened. Feel free to imagine my expression afterward.

This Troper's first experience with the Cain was in Grunt's loyalty mission. Cue cries of "Holy shit!" as a massive nuclear fallout decimates the Thresher Maw to %40 of its health. Due to safety and ammo concerns after some tangling with Eclipse mercs however, the Cain was shelved for the rest of the game.

This Troper had a hell of a time fighting the first Praetorian on Horizon, the thing just moved too fast, and finally had to use every last bit of ammo in the Collector Particle Beam to take it down. Next Praetorian encounter on the Collector ship, This Troper sees it coming, pulls out the Cain (first time using it) and thinks "hope this works." One shot. Boom.

I was initially disappointed with the Cain, since I failed to deploy it successfully against that very same praetorian on Horizon; In all the noise - both visual and auditory - I completely missed the charging whine and muzzle glow and didn't hold the trigger long enough to fire it. When I went to recruit Tali, I decided to give it another chance against the colossus that always ducks into cover to self-repair, and this time I got it right. My reaction? "Holy bleepety-bleeping ''bleep''! That thing just ''literally'' vaporized the colossus and killed every single geth in the entire area with one shot! ... I think I love this gun now." -- [=JustTheBast=]

The hands-down best use of the Cain I've ever seen - fighting the Reaper-fetus on Insanity difficulty, so one shot won't be enough. Thankfully, I'd gotten enough of the DLC's and extra research done to allow for ''two'' shots from the Cain. When it popped back up the second time, I let fire... and cue cutscene.

This troper, in Mass Effect 1 before Mass Effect 2 was released, decided to go crazy and face down a Thresher Maw. On foot. On hardcore. With pistols. His friend called him crazy but he killed four of them this way. Then the sequel came. Then came the Thresher Maw, and this troper said "....ohhhhh finally. I've been waiting for this day." Took it down, got the run of dialogue on how "nobody had taken a thresher maw down since Wrex" and he went "BITCH HE WAS MY '''FIFTH''' ONE!"

My Shepard saw her entire home colony, including her parents, destroyed by a Thresher Maw at Cerberus' command. Ramming a couple of nukes down one's throat felt ''good''.

Finished another playthrough. I was fighting the reaper and had it down to about half health. I knew the Cain would take it out. I shot. And the reaper moved. I sat swore for a moment as I watched the explosion go off in the background. I then took cover and pulled out my heavy pistol. Then the reaper came back up. I almost had a cow, my cain had hit the back wall and brought the reaper down to 1 health. I took my shot with the pistol. It died. I killed a reaper with a pistol.

This troper has also dealt the killing shot to the reaper with a pistol(Not the hand cannon pistol, either). Of course, in my case, i had unloaded my entire supply of Heavy Weapon Ammo for the Collector Particle Beam and all my shots for the Vindicator Battle Rifle into the crazy thing in addition to spamming Warp(i was playing a Sentinel) and Zaeed's Inferno Grenade. Shooting it in the eye with a pistol for the kill made me laugh my ass off.

This troper was a Vanguard. The heavy pistol and the Collector Particle Beam were his only ranged damage. The kicker? The pistol did better damage per second to the thing....

This troper finished the Reaper off with the Cain. Complete with a loud "TAKE THIS!" before firing.

And this troper played Infiltrator and killed the thing with a sniper-rifle shot to the eye. On the final crescendo of the battle song. God I love this game.

When I played the first game, I never got over that empty space where Kaiden is supposed to stand. In the second, I never got over the hundreds of empty spaces where everyone was supposed to go... And that one big empty spot where Tali should be. Goddamnit Renegade Shepard, stop killing the only people who give a shit about you.

I play a Renegade, but one moment I remember distinctly is the "I remember me" quest in the first game. I took the game a bit too seriously and really thought about what my character wanted, and what he thought about everything. So he did that quest in the nicest and most peaceful manner. Turns out, Shepard does care about some people.

I was very pissed off by the second game at one point. I let Wrex live, my friend did not. I was happy when I met Wrex again and really glad to see what he was doing with the clans. I was not happy when I found out that in the alternate version, where Wrex is dead, the Urdnot clan loves you anyway. Uuuurgggghhhh.

Given that all of the non-quest-related [=NPCs=] border on making death threats and the quest-related ones are rather moody even with Wrex around, this troper questions the above troper's definition of "love".

this troper thought that they showed respect when they payed attention to me because of the guy who bred grunt sayin the worst thing you could do to an enemy was to ignore them

I was trying to get the pistol achievement for the first game, and my Shepard was badass enough that I could do it on the second hardest difficulty for two achievements in one. Or three. I forget. I was actually having a lot of trouble with it, thinking that maybe this wasn't such a good idea, maybe this difficulty is too much for my Shepard, maybe I should've trained a bit more... Then I got the pistol achievement. I could use my other guns again. EVERYTHING DIED.

This troper nearly died of happiness after (and during) the suicide mission. Because he upgraded the ''Normandy'' and took every precaution to make sure everyone lived, he was thinking "YES, YES, YES!" during the insertion into the Collector station as one CMOA after another appeared. Joker finally showing us ''why'' he was "the best damn pilot in the Alliance fleet", maneuvering through a debris field during a dogfight with several Collector fighters, and finally taking out the massive Collector cruiser that destroyed the first ''Normandy'' in THREE SHOTS. Inside the station (after reloading once because he lost Grunt) and then breaking out of there, saving the galaxy from a Reaper-in-the-making with Garrus and Tali (he thought to himself "Just like old times, huh, guys?") and then running back to the ''Normandy''. They got to the ''Normandy'' and this troper felt like cheering when he saw ''Joker'' of all people on his feet spraying the Collectors with assault rifle fire. Then your two party members help you back on your feet after you miss the jump onto the ship. Then the ''Normandy'' races the Collector station's explosion into FTL, escaping with zero casualties. Then there were two kickers. All throughout the game I'd been grudgingly polite to the Illusive Man. As he tried to give me a HannibalLecture, I picked all of the bottom options, telling him that I didn't work for him anymore, and that compromising my morals while saving the galaxy wasn't the way I did things. Then I gave him a ShutUpHannibal moment by telling Joker to cut the transmission. After this, Shepard walks into the Normandy's cargo bay, sees everyone, and Joker comes up to hand him a clipboard with a picture of a Reaper on it. Shepard nods at him then looks out the window, towards the stars. The view then changes to a Reaper ship with four yellow, glowing eyes floating among blackness that is quickly disappearing as the stars around it become hundreds upon thousands of Reapers that begin moving towards the edge of the Milky Way. Best. Ending. Cutscene. Ever.

This troper had been pretty dead set on romancing Tali when he first heard about it from the net, even though he had romanced Liara in the first. Everything was going according to plan until he got to Illium and saw how much Liara had changed. Though this made it easier for a lot of people, this only made this troper start to feel weird about what he was doing. He grudgingly did the missions she asked him to, out of our history's sake, and upon learning what she had gone through and did for me, I felt kind of bad. However, I still was going for Tali. A few missions later, I decided to renegade flirt with Miranda, just to see those conversations a bit and got to a part where she called my Shepard a perfect human specimen. Remembering Liara calling me an interesting specimen in the first game, memories of what they had been through and what she had to go through on her own finally really dawned on me. I immediately broke off any romantic ties with any of the girls. Though my Shepard was alone the night before the last mission, seeing that he still cared about Liara in the end made it worth it to this Troper.

Protip: Get the "Lair of the Shadowbroker" DLC - it'll make all that pain worthwhile for you.

This troper managed to finish Garrus' loyalty mission in a rather awesome way. When confronted with the two YMIR mechs, I managed to headshot one, whose subsequent nuke-like explosion took out the other.

This troper can top that. Seeing two heavy mechs, I panicked and pulled out the CAIN to finally test it. The resulting explosion vaporized both heavy mechs in a gigantic fireball without managing to hit anyone in my squad

This troper can attest to the power of Bioware's heartstring-grabbing moments in Mass Effect 2. Back in Mass Effect 1, I quickly discovered the specialist party members (Ashley, Liara, Tali) fairly outshined the hybrids through their unique abilities (heavy armor on a human, Singularity and AI Hacking, respectively), to the point where my Soldier never had to take Liara and Tali out of the party except for the character-specific sidequests. Combined with the fact that Kaiden always seemed to rub me the wrong way (made even worse when I discovered that he's much more open about his history with Fem!Shepard), this made my choice on Virmire clear: Kaiden got the boot without much hesitation. I had never used him, even on higher difficulties, and never really missed him. Fast forward to Mass Effect 2, and the DLC Normandy Crash Site mission. I was wandering around, admiring the moody nostalgia Bioware was successfully invoking and trying to decide on a spot for the monument, when I reached Kaiden's spot. Cue the quick flash of his mugshot and I just...stopped. After all this time...I finally felt ''guilty'' about sacrificing him way back then. Sure, he'd pretty much just been a benchwarmer and he'd always been sort of neutral to me, but he was by no means a ''bad'' guy, and he certainly hadn't deserved to get nuked. I immediately put the monument down on that spot, sorely wishing I could add an inscription "For Kaiden" to it. When it came time to make a toast with Dr. Chakwas, my choice was once again clear: "For the friends we lost; for Pressly, for Jenkins...for Kaiden."

I played through [=ME1=] and [=ME2=] as a full renegade soldier who will murder someone as soon as look at them. My background is Spacer (like Tali), and I'm the "Sole Survivor", the guy who does what it takes to get the job done. The only times I picked paragon choices were for Tali, and I would have romanced Tali in [=ME1=] if they gave me the option. My love for her got Thane killed. Tali is the obvious choice to send through the ducts, but there was no way on gods green earth I was risking her, and I ignored my 'mission first' persona. So I sent the Assassin and he got a rocket to the face. I'd sacrifice the entire galaxy to keep her alive. Incidentally, I lost Jack as well, after choosing her to lead a squad because I heard "diversion" and not anything about picking a good leader. It's amazing how even just losing those 2, somewhat minor members (I never used either in actual missions, sticking with Tali/Zaeed/Miranda for pretty much all of them), was directly because of how I'd played the game and how I'd played 'my' Shepard.

I should also mention: I nuked the Geth base AND blew up the Reaper station because Tali believed it was the better course of action.

Likewise this troper. I was during a pure Renegade play-through, with about my only Paragon actions being on Tali's loyalty quest (notably the interrupt) and when talking to my crew. For the entire duration of the game I was intending to hand the Collector base over to Cerberus. And then at the very end, Tali says 'That's not a good idea!', and my Shepard immediately goes '... yes dear.' and tells the Illusive Man to screw. *sighs* We are so whipped.

Just ended my ''first'' run at [=ME2=] with a full Paragon Shepard, destroying the Collector base and an EverybodyLives ending. I feel awesome right now :D.

This Troper did the same on his first [=ME2=] run with a speed-run import character (well, a few Renegade interrupts were taken - the gunship mechanic in Archangel's recruitment mission and the merc standoff in Miranda's loyalty mission). Now to go back to [=ME1=] and do a "perfect" run (I skipped basically everything except story missions with my first import; now to see how much of an effect side-missions had).

This troper was blown away by Tali's loyalty mission. Seeing Tali's reaction to Shepard's suggesting that the Quarians should leave the Geth be, Giving her that hug that everyone with a soul chooses to give, defending her against the Board with magnificent effect (Paragon style), talking to every last Quarian on the ship without betraying Tali's trust, Seeing Veetor and Kal'Reegar alive and well, and even managing to give Jerkass Admiral Koris encouragement regarding his peace talks. My Shepard's made Quarian and Geth peace something of a personal mission.

This Troper has started to develop motherly feelings for Grunt out of all people. There's just something about his dialogue that makes her think of a kid going "Mom, you should be proud of me."

This Troper is glad to know she's not the only one.

Oh thank powers, I thought I was the only one. Maternal feelings? Well, fair enough. Maternal feelings around a krogan? Er...

It's not just the ladies, when Grunt, Tali and my Shepard took the Thresher Maw out with nothing but our regular weapons and four-six grenade rounds on the heavy weapon (don't ask why, I thought the CPB was crap at that point) I actually whispered "I'm proud of you Grunt", like a father. And the best part? Grunt finished the damn thing off.

Finished the game, but lost Thane while doing the Collector base. It hit pretty hard, but the worst moment came at the end, when you get to see the coffins of all those who have fallen. I broke down and cried on seeing Thane's coffin.

@/JoieDeCombat started a replay of the original Mass Effect after completing [=ME2=] and got unexpectedly misty upon triggering the conversation between Shepard, Kaidan, and Ashley at the overlook in the wards (the "oceans, beautiful women, this emotion called love" one). With the Paragon dialogue, it's such a wonderful moment of cameraderie between the three of them... and in a little more than two years, one of them will be dead and the remaining two estranged thanks to Shepard's two-year absence and alliance with Cerberus.

Upon learning that the rouge geth were called Heretics. The Warhammer40K jokes instantly started and pretty much never stopped until the final mission. We're working for a Pro-Human dominance organization under the control of a Primarch. Inquisitor Miranda observes us and keeps us in line. Vindicare assassin Thane, the gentically 'perfect' ork Grunt, psyker Jack, Commissar Jacob (Renegade ending to his mission leaves no doubt), Rouge Trader/Mercenary Zaeed, Eldar Farseer Samara and her Slaanesh corrupted Daughter, loyal Kroot Garrus, Tech Priest Mordin (Weak I know but we had trouble thinking of anything else and we didn't want to make him Tau), Finally, the great Commander Shepard took her most trusted Tech Priest Tali to purge the Heretics with the Machine Spirit Legion! BURN THE COLLECTORS, CLEANSE THE HERETICS, KILL THE REAPERS!

You can even make {{Halo}} jokes. How? Hmmmm, you're sent on a mission to kill a group who have betrayed the rest of their kind, and to top it all of, their side has the same name. Lets just hope the outcome isn't the same...

Not the same, but similar. In both you have to get the spork off the heretic station before it becomes a lot less livable for anything organic.

This troper will get lynched by the male Shepards out there, she knows, but she inevitably ends up minionshipping Tali and Kal'Reegar like whoa. The "notice me!" vibe from Tali in some of their conversations is adorable.

This troper has to agree - even after the mission, 'Reegar still refuses to call her anything but "Ma'am", as if ''he can't bring himself to call her Tali''.

I would just like to point this tidbit out: #QUOTE#Tali: Kal, please -- just call me Tali. #QUOTE#Kal'Reegar: I'll work on that, ma'am. ::She does want to be on a FirstNameBasis with him. IfYouKnowWhatIMean, winkwinknudgenudge!:

Nothing wrong with some PairTheSpares on the side, says SkarmoryThePG.

Something else to note: when you first contact Tali on Haestrom, she asks you to save Kal'Reegar if you can. Not the marines protecting her - ''Reegar''.

In addition, if you do allow Reegar to assist you in taking down the Colossus, he says the usual "Keelah Se'lai", but instead of the usual "Lets kill Geth!" tone its more of a "I'm about to die" tone, then adds "Say hi to Tali for me."

Despite the general feeling of "WTF, Bioware?" that arose from [=ME2's=] handling of the Liara romance, this troper found several hilarious little moments in the game that take on a whole new meaning if you've resolved to stay faithful. Notable examples include:

The Blue Rose of Illium sidequest. "It's not like humans where you just have to stick around for a century or so before they die..." (off Shep's offended look) "Oh, sorry. Not... meaning that personally or anything."

Another Illium sidequest where the little girl lost that locket with the picture of her and her human father, and thinking that could happen to you in a few hundred years.

Several points in Samara's loyalty quest. At one point, she describes the Ardat-Yakshi's method of DeathBySex as being completely different from "the gentle union of two minds that you're used to," and Shep just smiles in reply. Later, if you have a high enough Paragon or Renegade score, you can shrug off one such attempt at mind-rape. Shep's smirk and deadpan "Surprise," and the baddie's resultant OhCrap expression, take on a whole new flavor of "You ain't it, Miss Thing."

This troper had been romancing Tali on his first play through, not really knowing what was going on or what to expect from the rest of the game. This troper had also been going around and talking to his crew, trying to make their lives better and such. One thing this troper had been doing was trying to convince Miranda she wasn't a tool for TIM, that she was her own person, could come out of her shell etc. etc. This troper was trying to compliment her foresight and Miranda blew it off, one of the dialogue tree's summed up this tropers thoughts: 'You're a hard person to compliment', so this troper went with that, Shepard (delightfully) putting this troper's thoughts to Miranda quite eloquently. Que Miranda being pleasantly surprised, posing sexily, and flirting with Shepard. This troper's first thoughts were, in order: ''"Oh SHIT, Tali's gonna kill me"'' and ''"That'' '''really''' ''didn't come out right"''

This Troper had the exact same reaction. Thank goodness you can still abort with the "let's stay professional" line.

...with the original LoveInterest you were flirting with, not with the ones who come up later. As this here MEwiki article shows, for some reason, when you flirt with someone else after "locking in" another interest, the second (or third!) will enter the "challenge" phase and you ''cannot'' express disinterest in them unless you dump the first one first. It's a...little annoying, to be honest. Not helped by the fact that saying anything slightly Paragon to Jack speeds her along the way to romance faster than you can say ThatCameOutWrong...

Gah, I know, I got Jack to the challenge phase and kept thinking ''Damnit woman! I want to be nice to you and help you, not get into your pants! What is so hard about this concept?!'' Which is made doubly irritating because I ''like'' Jack, just nowhere near as much as I like Tali.

So my name is Matt, and the character you create will always have the last name of Shepard, right? Thus I didn't think anything of it at first when I went ahead and named my first character Matt Shepard. Five minutes later, I remembered the play I had been in last year. I sort of went "Well, that's...an unfortunate coincidence..." Not that I regret carrying the guy through the Mass Effect saga so far, it's just a bit awkward when I think about it too much. UnfortunateImplications arise even more when there's no GayOption for male Shepards...

This Troper, whose name is not actually Phil, did the same thing and made the same connection.

During the final cutscene on the Collector base, I was practically on my feet, yelling out encouragment to Shepard and co, cheering when the Normandy rose up into view. Expecting Joker to use the Normandy's cannons to keep the Collectors away, I yelled "Alright, Joker! Gimme some firepower!" Cue the pilot leaning out the airlock with a freakin' assault rifle! I'm glad nobody else was around, cos I practically whooped "Joker, you MagnificentBastard!"

on Horizon, when I saw Ash immbolizied by the swarms, I kinda entered into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, and when I replayed the game, I brought my friend to that mission: Mr. M-76 Reverenant LMG. It was awesome, and especially cool seing how I played a Renegade Male Shep, who was a Ass to all in the first game, save for Ash who he was sweet to almost every time he chatted with her.

This troper was doing Jacob's loyalty mission on an Insanity playthrough. The numerous weak mechs were getting annoying to say the least, at one point, this troper forgot that a number of mechs spawned at a certain point and got ambushed. Shepard's shields plummeted as I hurried towards cover and burnt away the armor on the mechs. Almost dead and with only two mechs left, this troper suddenly remembered that he had Jacob's biotics. So, in a moment of desperation, used Jacob's pull on the furthest mech. Said mech went flying through the air, hitting the other mech and slamming the other mech into a wall, killing it. The explosion of the dying mech killed the pulled mech, leaving this troper speachless as his shields and health regenerated from a sliver. Um... ExactlyWhatIAimedAt?

I have two. One was Legion's loyalty mission, as I ethicly debated with myself what I was going to do, as I had no idea until I thought of what Legion and the actual "Geth" had suffered through from both the Quarians and the heretics. I wasn't going to prolong that so I turned them back to normal. And the second, which was also a CrowningMomentOfSadness for me, was when I faced off against Human-Reaper. After telling TIM to piss off, and an unloyal Miranda agreeing with me, I finally respected her as a valued member of the team. And then, when the collector ship was collapsing after the fight, I paniced when I barely saved Mordin, and then I saw Miranda lying on the ground. I thought 'Well she's a strong lady, she'll make it, right?' The look Mordin and Shepard shared when they confirmed what happened broke my heart. As a result, I'm now doing a second playthrough, mainly so that not one of my team has to die for a mistake I made early on (And to make it just like old times, Garrus and Tali will be my team).

Playing the first Game this Troper made the mistake of thinking the Shadow Broker as some sort of likable rouge. keeping the balance by trading information. Hell , I even gave him the Cerebus files cause I wanted to be on the Brokers good side. [=ME2=] and Redemption not only did he assist the Collectors in trying to get my corpse. The Broker sold info that turned Thane in a widower and basicly turned my shy and naive lover Liara into a hardend survivor out for vengence. Props to Bioware for turning my assumptions on it's ear. I will be willing to pay extra for [=ME3=] if one of the missions include hunting down the little sellout.

Er, you mean Liara, right? And yeah, [=ME2=] turns to the darker side of the Shadow Broker, but this troper believes that there's still more to this entity than meets the eye, and possibly Liara's loyalty mission/whatever in [=ME3=] will give you an option to persuade her to either to carry out her vengeance, or move forward with her life, much like with Garrus in [=ME2=].

In that case going to have to go Renegade. Just to avenge what happened to poor Thane his wife killed and his son left without a mother. Hell I might even provide fire support to Liara if it comes to that.

I'll provide fire support to Liara until we reach the Shadow Broker. Then I'll get out the popcorn I had Gardner pack before the mission, and just watch my girlfriend rip him to shreds with her mind.

Make sure to bring a coffee cup!

This Troper found that he missed the quiet Dignity of Captain Anderson . No matter what he ended up , an Ambassador to an ungrateful council or butt monkey to jerkass Udina. He always seemed to carry himself with purpose and keep doing the best he could. Really , really hoping that either we can have him back on ship or finally get some real recognition. Because as Paragon he's your subsitute father figure , or Renegade one of the few Authority figures you respect.

Upon finishing her first (ridiculously Paragon) playthrough of [=ME2=], this troper realised how much she was looking forward to [=ME3=], simply because the political situation is going to be hilarious. The Alliance and the Council believe you to be a mildly unhinged attention whore who can't stop going on about Reapers, and oh look, here you come again, with yet ''more'' claims that can't be proven. And then there's the matter of your allies. A maverick Spectre backed up by geth? Gee, where have we seen ''that'' before? And that's before getting around to the issue of rachni, quarians and krogan. So tell me again, Shepard, about this huge threat to political stability that isn't...you know...''you''.

That is absolutely hilarious, especially considering that, as Aria's henchman put: ''Things explode around you''. The Council probably thinks that all the destruction following after you is one giant XanatosGambit or some form of XanatosRoulette to try and restructure the galaxy... which it kinda is actually...

{{@/Griffinhart}} again. So, I'm playing on Insanity. Beaten the main story and everything, just getting OneHundredPercentCompletion by doing side missions. I'm on my last one: Smuggled Cargo. On Normal, it was already pretty hard (3 YMIR heavy mechs, destroying 20 crates? FFFUUU). On Insanity? I was dreading this mission. But I steeled my resolve and swore I'd keep all 20 crates from being destroyed. I went into the mission with Garrus (Overload) and Tali (Energy Drain), plus... the Cain. With enough energy for two shots. "Enough for 2 of 3, right?" Well, it turns out that if you continue to hold the trigger for the Cain after firing the first shot, the second shot doesn't have a charge time - which means with some skill, you can actually put out two Cain rounds in about two seconds, after charging the first. It ''also'' turns out that, if you somehow manage to destroy the first two YMIR mechs in Smuggled Cargo fast enough, the third one doesn't spawn. That, or my two ridiculously well-placed Cain shots managed to take out all three mechs about ten seconds after landing on the planet. Insanity, Smuggled Cargo, all 20 crates undamaged. Hell. Yeah.

There are many major moments that are easy to fall in love with within this series. However, I would share two nuances that are examples of how the game keeps your interest well-stoked: When, in [=ME1=], I had foolishly run ahead and was being slaughtered by a krogan berserker, suddenly Kaidan's alarmed voice cried out "Commander!" as he rushed forward to help his lady out. Also, in [=ME2=], when in a confrontation with some uppity Batarians, all I had to do was spout some tough language, and my squad members whip out their guns, ready to back me up to the end. =^_^=

Also: Garrus romance FTW. That is all.

Are you implying that Tali's romance isn't, in fact, FTW? [=ManSheps=] everywhere take offense to that! This Troper hasn't audibly cooed over a fictional character like Tali since... well, this troper hasn't cooed, ever. And then Tali came along.

This Troper completely agrees with the guy who wrote the above. Granted, I've never cooed nor do i even know what that would sound like, but I still agree that Tali's Romance is made of win.

I don't know why but out of any character, Tali is my favourite. Tali and Garrus...I really didn't like anyone in [=ME2=] save for Thane and Legion (Kickass assassin and an interesting insight into the geth side of the war). She's just...awesome. A bit of everything: sarcasm, humour, tiny bit of sass, great hips...

Tropers/{{biznizz}} here. Like many people, I didn't really emote for the fallen Jenkins in the first game, mainly because he literally dies in the first 15 minutes (but I still acted like it was a big deal). But then in ME 2, after I got Mordin and had the drink with Dr. Chakwas and hearing the story with Jenkins and Kaiden's accidental biotic accident (which surprisingly hit hard since the two of them were dead in my Shep's playthrough), I went to get Garrus. As Shepard and team were leaving the recruiting area, some Omega punk tried to get some action with the gangs after you. Normally, you'd expect the scene to end there, but for some reason, Shepard gets a dialogue tree. That's when it hit me: this punk ''was'' Jenkins, a Jenkins who grew up in Omega, instead of Eden Prime and one who had never joined the Alliance. Even though it was ''easy'' to just ignore him, it just didn't seem ''right.'' So when Shepard saved the fool from a near certain death in the cross fire, it literally felt like Shepard had a second chance to do something he had failed to do in the first game: save Jenkins from an untimely death. Whoa.

Dude, you might actually be onto something with that Omega Kid. After reading that, I loaded a save I made before the recruiting to hear the kid's voice, then i booted up [=ME1=] and talked to Jenkins at the start of the game. Holy. Crap. FridgeBrilliance abounded! the Omega Kid has the same voice actor as Jenkins!

Jenkins was ironically named, considering that he died following Shepard's orders and behaving like a regular soldier. That kid on Omega, though, certainly deserves the title. I let him come with me on my (only) Renegade playthrough: Garrus headshots him the second he goes over the barricade. If you break his gun, he later sends you an email thanking you for it. ''That'', ladies and gentlemen, is why Paragon is better than Renegade. :)

You are aware that going down the Paragon or Renegade route doesn't forbid you from taking an action of the other path, right? I've played through [=ME2=] several times now as both a Paragon and Renegade, and taken many Renegade/Paragon interrupts respectively in each. Being a badass AntiHero doesn't preclude you from petting the dog now and then.

I am. That playthrough was more-or-less Shepard the Space Douche, with me taking all the Renegade options.

Ok, this troper can't be the only one who when he heard that Tali and Garrus were the two ME and [=ME2=] party members went back and while on my level 60 do absolutely everything in the game play though pretty much ONLY used Tali and Garrus. In my play though the Trinity of Shepard, Garrus, and Tali was only broken when I had to take someone else on the mission.The three of us have punched out mecha-cluthlu twice together. If they let us us Tali and Garrus in [=ME3=], they should have an achievement for running though all three games with Tali and Garrus as your two primary Squad Members.

They won't. Bioware devs have stated that, due to Microsoft policy regarding achievements, you can't have one that's impossible to get without buying another game. The closest thing you can have are achievements that have multiple paths, like the Long Service Medal (Complete two playthroughs of Mass Effect 2, or complete Mass Effect 2 with an imported character.). Sorry.

I used Tali/Wrex through [=ME1=], and Tali/Zaeed mostly in [=ME2=]. My only real problem with Garrus is he's extremely fragile. He's pretty much a GlassCannon.

This troper was playing through the first game again with a new character to make sure he did ''everything'' possible as well as finished every quest to his satisfaction to import into the second game, having played through the whole game several times and done every mission at least once, this wasn't anything special. This troper had decided to romance Ashley, but (assuming Shepard's logic), send the higher ranking officer with the Salarians on Virmire. When given a choice between love intrest plus already mostly dead marines plus essentially unstoppable nuke versus a biotic engineer ''officer'' and at least one entire team of STG that could cooberate my story with the Council, I had Shepard make the choice of Kaiden over Ashley, the logical choice despite romancing her. I felt nothing when I made the choice because it was just one more time I'd done the mission, just another time I chose one loveable fictional character over another. Then I saw the cutscene where Ashley, ''a solider'', fends off Geth with her ''pistol'' while wounded and propped up against a ''20 megaton nuclear device'' about to go off and watching her only escape, ''the place that had been her home for the past two/three months'', fly off, and then she '''keeps shooting the Geth'''. Then this troper went down to the engineering deck to finish up several small things and change around equipment and saw the empty spot where Ashley had worked the entire game and it really, seriously hit this troper like a brick to the face. She was gone. Dead. Ashley Williams was dead, Shepard would never again hear her voice, would never get to hear her quote poetry to him, never make another snide remark, Shepard would never spout cheesy lines to make her smile or laugh, they'd never even kissed, just flirted and danced around the topic... and she was gone. Anger began to well up in this troper. Then, after going through the entire 'the Normandy is grounded' bullshit with Udina, this troper, who had been paragon through the entire game had seriously felt like putting a round in Udina's back, but the worst part was when, instead of the usual scene, Joker contacted a brooding Shepard leaning up against his locker. This tropers fury as he went through Illos and the assault on the Citadel was righteous in the Biblical sense of the word

I recently finished off my last incomplete playthrough of [=ME1=]. My sister walked in and noticed me importing Analise Shepard - a rutheless, aggressively pro-human, so-renegade-it-hurts hardass bitch - into [=ME2=]. Her reaction - "Oh God, This is going to be bad, isn't it? People are going to die."

This troper while playing as a renegade Shepard got to Ilos, and well, the mako was already a little damaged. After the cutscene, the timer started and escaping the citadel(part of it) started playing. With 10 seconds on the clock, this troper made it through, with the Mako almost destroyed(1 more hit and it would be CMF), on Insanity.

This Troper's 9 year old brother decided he wanted to play Mass Effect after watching me and so bought it for his xbox. The result was horrific. I could tell this wasn't going to be the most glorious playthrough ever when he picked adept for the "cool biotics" and then proceeded to play as though he was a soldier - charging into battle and blindly firing an assault rife. In order to mitigate his very frequent deaths (on the ''easiest difficulty'', no less) he spent his skill points maxing out the "basic armour" skill, at the cost of any charm/intimidate points or any biotic powers whatsoever. But this isn't the worst part, a crappy gimped character, I can live with. What hurt me was his utter ''slaughtering'' of the role-playing element. Despite telling me he wanted to be a "good guy" (which I assume meant Paragon) he lazilly skipped through any dialogue, always picking the neutral option. No paragon points, no renegade points. Half way into the main story and his Shepard is pathetic. A complete tool. The absolute worst part was Feros, though. Accepting the gas grenades to neutralise the colonists he proceed to use all of his grenades knocking out ''two'' colonists. The rest of them he slaughtered. And it wasn't even a solemn "I have no choice" slaughter. He ''laughed''. He ''laughed as he punched an innocent Salarian in the face and unloaded a round into his back''. Not even Renegade Shep is that sadistic.

Not even ''Saren'' is that sadistic. Still, I'm curious how Gimpy Shepard will fare in Mass Effect 2 & 3.

KidsAreCruel. Even through my Renegade playthrough, I didn't threaten Salarians. They look too...fragile. And I refused to hurt citizens. EvenEvilHasStandards.

On my most recent playthrough of [=ME2=] (as a Renegade Inflitrator [=FemShep=]), I whittled down the Human-Reaper to just over half health and then hit it with the Cain, meaning that it had approximately one hitpoint left. I then used the incinerate power on it, which proceeded to arc around and hit it in the eye. That's right. I killed a Mecha-Chthulu with the Incinerate power. Awesome.

This troper played [=ME1=] when [=ME2=] just released, and heard about the trailers saying that Shepard is dead at the beginning of [=ME2=]. As a result, I was sure that Shepard died at the end of the first game. Remember the scene at the end when everyone believes that Shep is dead, complete with sad music ? This troper really believed Shep was gone. Try to imagine my reaction when that was not the case.

This troper had a playthrough that made me personally go through significant character development. I played Mass Effect 1 before [=ME2=] came out and finished it a few days after [=ME2=] was released. Renegade Earthborn Ruthless Vanguard. I was always a renegade for most of the choices, but ended up going paragon for some of the big ones. I saved the rachni, and saved the council. All in all nothing was that big a deal. I sacrificed Ashley because she didn't like aliens and damnit I thought every alien I've met is so cool, from those sweet elcor to the cute little volus who were the second and third aliens Ive seen after the turians. But otherwise for [=ME1=] I killed people who were trying to beg for their life, unless I was really sure they would repent, like the old lady who you see on as a social worker in [=ME2=]. Then I started playing [=ME2=], and really started feeling that my actions had consequences. Again, I was mostly renegade, except for Tali who I romanced, but I started to lean more towards paragon options. I really felt a big sting during Garrus loyalty mission. I let him shoot the guy in the leg, and my first thought wasn't "Awesome Garrus!", it was "Damn, man. He'll be fine I guess." Then when we got to Sidonus, I tried to stop him once but let him shoot him. I felt, really bad. I actually replayed that section just to see how things played out differently, something I never do, and realized that letting him live was better for Garrus. But I stuck with my decision and kept going. The last mission I did was with Zaeed. I wasn't going to download him my first playthough, but I thought "I really will need all the help I can get on this mission." I initially took the paragon option for his quest, since I had a full renegade score but also had 4.2/5 paragon bars filled. They weren't filled enough. I wasn't able to save the people and keep Zaeed loyal. I had no choice, I had to redo the section and kill Vido. The sound of that scientist begging for help. It haunted me. I was all ready to go for the suicide mission, everyone loyal and whatnot, but I thought about fixing my scars. I bought the setup, went down to the medbay, and didn't do it. I just looked at my stats, saw my scars, and how that paragon bar was nearly there but the renegade still overpowered it. I thought to myself. "I'm keeping these scars. I don't want to forget the horrible things I've done." I did the mission, everyone got through alright, but I ended up keeping the Collector base. When I got back, everyone thought I was wrong. I felt so bad, I felt like I didn't earn their trust. I said right there, "Okay you know what? This is my bad playthrough. I'm doing this shit over. I'm sticking to my renegade roots, but damnit this time I'll be Paragon enough to save everyone who needs it and renegade enough to still be a badass. I'm waiting for Kasumi to be released, and then I'll start my playthrough again. I don't know what decisions I'll make differently (I stopped Mordin from killing the salarian and kept the cure, and reprogrammed the geth), but I know it will be for the better, I hope.

This troper found this entire game to be quite enjoyable but the one moment that really sealed the deal was the end speech by Harbinger. It's at this point that I realized that the Reapers are collectively pissed and want Shepard's head on a pike. TakeThat, Reapers! And you said that organics were unworthy of notice.

It's a small thing, but I really enjoyed finding and reading Pressly's journal. The last entry where he mentions being willing to die for any member of the crew, regardless of what world they were born on... It always makes me happy to see that, after how much he disliked the aliens in the beginning.

You know what Mass Effect made me realise about science fiction? For years I've just accepted it as a given that Vulcan or Klingon should be capitalized, and now Mass Effect made me realize that, strictly speaking, they're just species names; no more worthy of capitalization than cow or platypus or human. Now, every other piece of science fiction with alien species just bugs me.

I had that same epiphany before Mass Effect actually came out and went with it, but I've since had another: you have to consider that a lot of sci-fi names are demonyms, which usually ''are'' capitalised. I could say humans are Earthlings, for example, and my meagre Star Trek knowledge tells me that Vulcans are actually from Vulcan, so it applies there. It seems fair to just pick with a system and go with it, since there'd be a mix of both otherwise. Still bugs me in fantasy stories, though, as "Elf" is rarely a demonym...

Note that no species is named after their home world in this setting, so we never actually hear a demonym. Batarians are from Khar'Shan, krogan are from Tuchanka, quarians are from Rannoch, asari are from Thessia, turians are from Palaven. If you want to call them Khar'Shanians, Tuchankans, Rannochians, Thessians, and Palavese, ''then'' it'd be capitalized.

This troper found himself with a crush on Tali while romancing her, mostly due to playing through the first game with her by his side the whole way, and the absolutely adorable babbling and blushing. On top of that, reuniting with Wrex (the other [=ME1=] party member) made him want to high-five the screen in joy at seeing him again. There was also minor heartbreak at the lack of the Mako; This troper LOVED driving it around over hill and dale and crater, with the Conduit being a CMOA due to having wanted to drive the Mako through the Presidium since he first saw the thing.

So I made this armor. And it might just be the most badass armor ever. It's black, like the deep black at the end of the spectrum, and it's shiny. I forget which material shiny, but it's shiny, trust me. It's got green trim and purple stripes on it. I love it because I feel like if I were to walk into a room with a blacklight while wearing it, it would look sweet. It would make looking at your sneakers while walking through the Tunnel of Love look like nothing. It would make looking at your felt unicorn picture under your 3.99 blacklight for the first time feel like looking at a dumpster for the first time.

I've gotta say, after a page of people talking at length about how they played the game slightly differently than everyone else and/or who their space waifu was, this entry about how awesome your custom armor is was a breath of fresh air. Everyone should start talking about their custom armor. Mine's dark purple with green trim, with the Death Mask equipped. Shit's so gaudy, it goes right past awful and right back around to awesome.

I don't know who decided to equip their squad with hot-pink armor, but I just realized anyone who wears hot pink must have no fear at all.

Lets see... In the first Mass Effect I take down Thresher Maws on Insanity with Pistols and no team support, laugh in the face of hordes of husks as I blast them with my boom stick, and fight multiple Geth Primes and Collosi on foot, all the while screaming "Glory to the God Emperor!". I also wear the Light Phoenix armor (the hot pink/white armor) all the time and redub every line Shepard speaks in the game with a slight lisp in my head. THEN the second game rolled around and this troper chose the hot pink armor with purple stripes and proceeded to do another insanity playthrough.

This troper's armour is usually black and blue for paragon characters and black and red for renegade characters. However, upon seeing the squad's new loyalty outfits, this troper decided to change Shepard's armour to black and gold to fit in with the rest of the squad.

This troper's armor starts interstellar wars.

This troper's first playthrough was with the mostly Paragon Earthborn Sole Survivor Sanguinus Shepard, who naturally wore dark red armor with black trim. He also found out that having the Death Mask equipped while armor is red and trim is black results in a Shepard who bears a striking resemblance to Deadpool. His second playthrough, however, was with the Renegade Colonist Ruthless Shayera Shepard, who I played as a "reasonable Renegade" (harsh to enemies and batarians, tough on crime, and always looking for an advantage, but nice to her crew). Upon waking up from the destruction of her ship and the death of (as far as she knew) all her crew, her new armor was the simply all black save for a single stripe of white on the arm in remembrance of everyone who died on the original Normandy (white = mourning in Chinese culture. This troper is Chinese.)

First time I'm playing ME 2, I've avoided all spoilers once the game came out, and was impoarted a [=ME1=] character who was a total renegade to all but Ash. In real life, Ash is very clsoe in terms of personality and appearance to a girl that I really love. So when I got to Horizon and saw Ash being immobilized by the Collector's swarms, my mind went:" Ash+ Collector swarm= Ash death?" because I had avoided all spoilers, I was sure that they would've killed her off as a plot twist, and then I entered a very brief Heroic BSOD, followed up by a Roaring Rampage of Revenge on the Collectors. I then followed up by exterminating the enitre Collector race, just to show that you don't mess with Ash. Tell me that's not love!

First playthrough of [=ME2=], I'm going through the colony getting pillaged by the reapers and trying to boot up the defense towers, I prove that I'm perfectly capable of casual danger dialogue when it's happening in game form. #QUOTE#'''EDI''':''I now have control of the towers'' #QUOTE#'''Me/Shepard'''*while getting shot at from three places, including a Harbinger vessel* : ''How much control do you have, EDI? Because I'm Assuming direct control!''

I'm not even sure that makes sense.

I started up a new ME playthrough a while ago, choosing a custom male character by basically just messing with the sliders until I found something I liked. About a third of the way into the game, my dad pointed out that said character looked almost exactly like Conrad Verner. Somehow this makes Conrad ''even more of a creep than before.'' That's impressive.

I can't second most of the love on this page, but it's precisely ''because'' this game made me care about its characters. I heard that if you didn't import a saved game, major characters like Wrex would be dead. I paid twenty dollars to buy a new copy of the first game (my original was on a computer that is no longer functional due to a virus), and I played all the sidequests and took almost all the paragon choices. Then I heard that in the second game, nobody was quite sure what you had to do to keep your characters alive through the suicide mission, but it involved getting all the ship upgrades and doing all the loyalty missions. I decided to go a few steps further to be absolutely certain to save everyone, so I scanned more planets than I can count to get the resources for all the upgrades of all types, and I played every sidequest until long after they stopped being fun, and I even checked all the planets for those sidequests that only appear if you scan some out-of-the-way, unmarked place. I saw a comment on this wiki that after the suicide mission was unlocked, you could only do two sidequests before "game-changing events," so I did everything I could before I unlocked the mission, but I didn't unlock Legion's loyalty quest until after the suicide mission was unlocked. I figured, "Oh well, they said I have two quests. I'll do this one, and I'll go straight there, and I'll be able to save ''everyone''!" I got there, and I saw that cutscene where the ship's psychiatrist dies horribly and dies screaming, and the ship's doctor called me out for not getting there sooner. I quit the game and have not played it since. Yet the thing is, I have to admit that it's a great game, or else I would have just shrugged it off. Maybe it's because the knowledge that I could have done better, combined with the fact that I did almost everything right when there were so many pitfalls to avoid, gave the experience a feel of "neener-neener-neener" that's lacking in games like ''ValkyrieProfileCovenantOfThePlume'' where every path gets someone killed.

A tip if you ever pick it up again: everything before the IFF, pick up Legion, talk to him immediately and get his loyalty mission, ''do it right away'', then your crew will get abducted. '''Do the suicide mission right away''', otherwise the crew ''will'' die.

In this troper's experience. Going off to mine for hours is okay, but doing missions causes the plot to move on, and thus, the crew to die.

I am planning to play [=ME2=] in a sort of TheChessmaster way: take all of the key personnel on the mission and not even recruit the non-essentials, then see how it goes. I guess playing without Mordin would be an interesting challenge - you could still access upgrades in the Shadow Broker's lair. Though I'm not sure if your teammates would be keen on giving you the upgrades in the first place... But if it works, that means you can still do things like visiting Jack's recruitment mission with Legion.

While everyone agrees that Garrus's and Tali's Loyalty Missions are awesome, This Trooper would like to state that his absolute favourite was Mordin's. I fell in love with the character within minutes of meeting him and spent a great deal of time talking to him and taking him on most missions, I thought he was just ridiculously cool comic relief with a badass edge, and was pleasantly surprised when they managed to pull off such a incredibly deep and well executed story. Maybe it’s because I’m in the medical profession myself, but I found the drama and Mordin’s ethics and code, and his remorse and pain in spite of them immensely compelling. First of all the fact it takes place in an ’AbandonedHospital’, even a Krogan one, is awesome by default. The initial resistance was nothing special, and I was dutifully Charging Vorcha and Varren, when we came across the human corpse. That wouldn’t be anything special in the ME verse with slavers and all, but the fact he had restraint wounds and had been effectively tortured to death with medical experiments was actually jarring, plus the disgust for what had happened in Mordin’s voice was evident (Massive props to Mordin's VA throughout this mission, who manages to not only pull off his usual manic intelligence and subtle bad-assery - as well as give him a awesome singing voice - but that he also takes the character through eleven different kinds of pain and suffering without compromising his's mannerisms or personality as well, especialy given how complex and rapid Mordin's dialogue can be, is nothing short of brilliant). We moved on to the Weyrloc Clanspeaker and his bodyguards, and I was mentally just thinking ‘yeah, yeah, typical Krogan threats, blah blah.’ Then he let out his vicious, ‘piles of children that never lived!’ line, which unnerved the hell out of me. It didn’t help that I came inches away from dying in the following fight. We moved on to the mutilated Urdnot Scout, and seeing how in his desperation to make a difference and save his people he allowed himself to be experimented on, justifying it as a necessary sacrifice to save all Krogan, and how brainwashed and twisted he'd been made was was another slap to the face. I managed to regain some composure by convincing him to leave, (howling in fury all the while - lol), then moved on to the medical records, and the dialogue that ensued. More fascinating insight into the process of the creation and justification of the geneophage, with Mordin pointing out that they could have just as easily killed all the Krogan if they wanted and the amount of effort they took to get the desired result, and his forcefulness that all life is precious. Plus his emphasis that despite knowing for certain that the genophage was necessary how he couldn’t sleep some nights because of it, and drifted to Omega to use his last decade to heal people as some balm to his conscious. Then we hit what in my opinion is the best executed scene in the game outside the Suicide Mission, the dead Krogan female. The way Mordin’s eyes and voice just go dead at the sight of her was a punch to the gut for me. Then his brief prayer was just as shocking in a different way. Plus as I play a near-completely Paragon Shep (With a ‘everybody gets ONE chance mentality which came back to bite me in the ass a several points – but that’s a different story), I felt compelled to ask all the hard questions and felt damn near physically ill at the way Shepard absolutely rails at the devastated Mordin, outright calling him a murderer. The most common response in fiction there would be for the Mordin character to break down and admit he was wrong and immediately announces his attentions to atone, but Bioware are the industry leaders in storytelling for a reason. Cue Mordin fighting back, despite being utterly defeated by the suffering he’s helped to cause, and they way he refuses to be blamed for the brutal nihilism of it all, but not a stereotypical ‘I did the right thing!’ moment, but a genuinely remorseful ‘there was absolutely NO other choice.’ And his haunting, ‘Not guilty. But responsible.’ line, I can’t remember offhand, the last time I was so emotionally effected by a character in a videogame. At the climax, I chose to save Maelon, but after agonising over it for ages, I eventually chose to keep the data. Then we got back to the Normandy and Mordin was fine again. Ugh. But despite this and the one or two other flaws, this was easily my favourite part of the game outside the suicide mission. The atompsphere, the dialogue, the way it finally made the devestation and desperation of the genophage hit home for me, the bland routine combat is the only thing that takes away from it. And I’m praying that Mordin returns [=ME3=] so we can follow the thread to it’s inevitable conclusion.

After discovering the mess that eliminating that accursed Council causes, and the HighOctaneNightmareFuel that results from taking your time about rescuing your crew, I decided I'd run a new game, starting at the original Mass Effect, with a single goal: EverybodyLives. To ensure this, I decided in all interactions I would imitate, as best as possible the only man in the cosmos capable of pulling something like that off in a Crapsack Galaxy like Mass Effect's. I am beginning to wonder if the Doctor was an influence of the Paragon path... insofar as a BadassPacifist ''can'' influence a soldier who, by definition, had to do a lot of killing.

Anybody else jump out of their chair the first time they heard the Overlord VI's shrieks?

I didn't jump... somehow, I understood EXACTLY what the VI was saying. "Oh...no. Oh dear god, please no. Please don't let it be what I'm thinking it is." It was. Punching that bastard Archer at the end was IMMENSELY satisfying.

PistolWhipping him is even better and that's a Paragon response.

I did jump the first time. Then I went to my sound card's audio options and turned on SVM. No more jumping after that!

I was about to be killed by one of the YMIR mechs on Garrus' loyalty mission when he gets a headshot on the one that was about to kill me. I hid, and the resulting explosion destroyed the other as well.

Me and my crew recently pulled a string of funny/awesome moments in a battle in Mordin's loyalty quest. First, I was just walking around randomly, looking for a path, when suddenly three rockets were flying straight towards me. I dodged all of them by randomly zig-zagging between them yelling "wow, wow, wow!" and proceeded to cripple the guy with my SMG. Next, an off-sight Krogan was about to attack me, I noticed him right next to me when Mordin froze him and Grunt tackled him, shattering his body. Finally, when I turned around, I noticed a Varren about to claw me and I punched it in the face before unloading a full clip of locust in his ass. I may suck at FPSes and play in the easiest difficulty because I care more about the dialogues, but I like pulling randomly awesome stunts, especially when my teammates do it with me.

This may be a bit over-the-top, or sound like an exaggeration, but I firmly believe that the romance option between [=MaleShep=] and Tali is the most romantic, and touching in an "aww" way that I've ever seen in a game romance.

No, it isn't. You are absolutely right. It was one of the most heartwarming romances in the game, alongside Thane's.

This troper took one of those "personality tests" based on which character I am like the most, and I got Liara T'Soni. It didn't suprise me in the slightest. Which leads to my next point, why wasn't she made recruitable in ME2?! :( On a more serious note, I managed to save everyone on my 2nd playthrough, but was a little disappointed I took the Renegade path that time. O_O

Simple. They were saving her for DLC. http://masseffect.bioware.com/

Also, Meet Raine, a {{Perky Goth}} {{Pale Skinned Brunette}} Female Paragon Shepard who's an Infiltrator extraordinaire! [[http://www.photoshack.com/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=0&pos=0]]

Another point I really loved was when I went back and completed Mass Effect 1 with a Female Shepard and romanced Liara, and imported that character to Mass Effect 2. I was not expecting her to be on the Normandy at the beginning of the game, and it broke my heart when I realized the poor, sweet Asari just lost the love of her life! T_T Or so everyone thought. It made the reunion with her on Ilium all the more satisfying, as she's trying to avenge her lover by tracking down a sordid broker who tried to sell her corpse!

I can't be the only troper who, when asked to pick a tech specialist to be sent into a tube/pipe, flashed to Bishop's quite CMOA "I'll go" and sent in Legion.

Krogans are one of my favorite races ever. Complete and total badasses who let nothing get in their way of victory. Then I saw the homeworld. A derelict planet where everyone lives underground in camps. This did three things: made me think of the Krogans as even bigger badasses for just surviving, hate the Genophage even more, and at the same time go "My God. War really is hell." Seeing Wrex put down another clan leader pushed the gloomy thought into the back of my head. With Grunt's loyalty mission, I talked to the Shaman like I was supposed to. Up until this point, I had been a complete Paragon, never choosing the Renegade path ever in either game. When the Krogan started talking down to Grunt, I was pissed as hell and hit the Renegade trigger literally screaming '''"SHUT THE''' '''FUCK''' '''UP!"''' It was even more satisfying killing him after Renegading at every chance. Then I used lift and punched him to death. No honor in dying like a crippled child.

Where do I start... 3 agony, 3 ecstasy. Agony #1. The entire opening sequence, watching the SR-1 Normandy (Never forget!) get obliterated by the Collector vessel, and watching the mighty, heroic, symbol of all the races, pride of humanity, Shepard get sucked out and into the vaccum and flay helplessly. Then watching the Collector vessel float away. Agony #2. Running into Old Friends a short while later. Firstly Tali. She was my favorite character and once the shock of seeing the dead back wore off, there was no big "Oh you're alive let's go! Whoo!" but was instead met with a certain degree of hostility. Later Kaiden, for a similar reason. The rejection by an old friend. Agony #3: Part of why I loved Tali was I thought her voice over work was incredible for a game, and the way Liz Sroka voiced Tali after finding her dead father aboard the station was so jarring I -almost- forgot to hug her and get the paragon point. Now... The Ecstasy. Ecstasy #1: Reunions. We got you the best pilot we could find, the reunion between Joker & Shepard.A friend who was 2/3's of the way through the game was at my house "coaching" me through certain parts. I told him in no small terms, "no spoilers." while I was trying to recruit Archangel, I was half-listening to the friend and in question talk about the mission and he goes "That's where you find Garrus" but I only heard "That's where...rrus" so when I ran into the apartment to find Garrus I was ovverjoyed to say the least. Ecstasy #2: First strike against the Collectors, Horizon. I remember cackling hideously, "You thought I was dead didn't ya? Thought you got rid of Shepard didn't ya? It's gonna take more then what you're packing to take me out! Who's ready to die?!? Step right up, got enough bullets for all'ya!". Ecstasy #3 was the entire suicide mission. I had scrounged and saved to make sure the Normandy 2 (I refuse to call it "The Normandy". The Normandy was destroyed by the Collectors, seemed sacrilege to name the new ship after it) was ready to face the bastards. Watching Joker fire up those guns and then turn that Collector ship into a steaming piece of wreckage. It was a tearjerker moment for this troper. The sweet taste of revenge, especially knowing that -they- knew that who it was piloting that ship. They know who was commanding it. And there wasn't a thing they could do to stop it. Giving the crew the assignments and watching it as they got through, but the grand moment was when you get on the platforms taking you to the larvae. It can't be coincidince that my music player landed on Killswitch's Darkness Falls as the battle began, the song just matched the visuals and mood perfectly. The Revenant made quick work of that fiend, but it really came to a couple moments of beauty at the very end cutscene. Watching Shepard slide down a platform to grab Legion's hand was a touching moment given how many Geth Shepard had killed (and the distrust I had shown to Legion over being a Geth who had a negative opinion towards my love interest). Seeing it all work together just made Mass Effect 2 my favorite game in a long, long, time.

My (female) Shepard has always adopted an attitude of making use of anything and anyone who may be of benefit in the eventual fight with the Reapers, thinking that nothing could be worse then having the known galaxy purged of sentient life and tranformed into mechanical abominations. This, unsurprisingly, led to a character with a healthy Renegade streak. By the end of [=ME2=], however, she has now abandoned this attitude, and here is why: throughout the hunt for Saren in the first game, this attitude brought Shepard into conflict with quite a few people, most notably Ashley due to her xenophobia. It didn't help that she shot Wrex on Virmire because I hadn't been able to talk him down (I dislike using time travel to undo mistakes). Shepard then left Ashley to die during the destruction of Saren's base there directly because of this, which was an act of such pettiness I have regretted it ever since. After the original Council had been so obstructive and unhelpful throughout the game, when the time came she left them to die, justifying this on the (perhaps flimsy) grounds that the galaxy stood a better chance against the Reapers without them. Fast-forward to [=ME2=], and this attitude is still in effect. Shepard converts the heretic geth, saves the data from Mordin's loyalty mission, and commits numerous ethically questionable actions in order to give the people of the galaxy the best chance of survival against the Reapers. This cumulates in the decision to give the Collector base to the Illusive Man, the thinking being he can't possibly be worse then the Reapers. Afterwards, however, when Shepard is looking at the coffins of the people who died during the assault (Jacob, Samara, Grunt, Jack, and worst of all Tali), she begins to question her "the ends justify the means" attitude held up to this point. The real epiphany comes when she holds the final conversation with a smug Illusive Man, who claims in response to what has driven Shepard up to this point: "It's not that easy...we need each other." It is this, combined with all that Shepard has lost to get this far, that causes her to realise what kind of creature her beliefs have led her into bed with, and she immediately severs ties with him. I then resolved to play Shepard as a Paragon in future DLC (Overlord being the start), and eventually [=ME3=], marking the shift in both my own opinion and hers: if the galaxy would stoop to doing anything, no matter how heinous, just to keep itself alive, then it ''deserves'' to be wiped out by the Reapers. My Shepard will save the galaxy alright, but she won't become a monster to do it.

After getting thoroughly sick of Harbinger and his posturing and speechifying on Horizon, on later encounters I made sure to use my trusty M-98 Widow sniper rifle to blow the head off any collector drone the very second Harbinger's possession animation started to play, denying him the chance to say even a single word beyond "Assuming Direct Control". It wasn't until later, when I returned to [=TVTropes=] that I realized this was my (and Shepard's) way of saying Shut Up [[ShutUpHannibal Harbinger -- [=JustTheBast=]

Seconded. This is just so, SO satisfying after all those Harbingers put you through at first. Even on some of the harder difficulties, a Harbinger lasts through two squad powers to drain the barrier and one headshot with the Widow. #QUOTE# Harbinger: Assuming Direct--(boom!) #QUOTE# Harbinger: Assuming Dir--(boom!) #QUOTE# Harbinger: STOP TH--(boom!)

This troper is intent on playing through the entire Mass Effect series using the first playthrough from each game only. No knowledge of what will happen that a second playthrough gives you, no doing everything possible to get the happiest ending cuz I saw how to on the internet. I want to ''feel'' and ''think'' like Shepard, with no idea of what the consequences will be, would, and I want the consequences to be the ones that would occur if you are forced to make such split-second decisions. In [=ME1=], Wrex got killed by Ashley, then Ashley (my male Shepard's love interest), dies in that nuke. ''Then'', I choose not to romance Liara, make Anderson human rep. to the council, and make my Shepard the paragon of niceness, not cuz I want to be on the polar end of the good/bad scale, but cuz I did, throughout the game, what I thought was right. Skip the [=ME2=]. I romance Tali, I do all the loyalty mission, upgrade my Normandy, and I do the suicide mission with only Thane and Mordin dying. ''Then'', my paragon character leaves the Reaper base for Cerberus, after Garrus tell me if I blow it up, all the people who died there will have died for nothing, and at least we will get some knowledge from it if we leave it for Cerberus. So, am I an idiot for not goin back, and perfecting and tweaking the game to get the best, happiest ending, or is it a good idea to play through the whole series with my split-second decisions I have made since [=ME1=] affecting the game?

Not in the least bit, sir. My first time around in [=ME1=], I let the council die to take out Sovereign. I have yet to play through with that character. This troper (full of derp that he is) also kind of regrets deleting my first [=ME2=] save, where I spared the collector base (and let just about every member of my crew die). I have a series of "perfect" playthroughs with each gender, but I'm going to make sure that before [=ME3=] roles around that I go back to my first [=ME1=] save, and recreate my first [=ME2=] save to the best of my ability, just to accomplish what you describe.

Exactly what I did, not all the same decisions mind you, but I played the game like a true RPG. The only time where I checked the extranet was the suicide mission, but only for the specialist choices. I didn't know about the final choice or the final boss till I saw them, none of the emotional impact was lost.

I had no idea you could lose your crew if you WAIT to go after the Collectors. Fortunately, I STILL did the Loyalty missions before going after the IFF even on my first playthrough. Sadly, I used Thane for the duct-crawling (hello! ASSASSIN! You'd think he could handle it) so I did manage to lose someone in the suicide mission. The guy who was already dying.

A darkly humorous bit of FridgeLogic from my current "main": I finished the game before any of the post-release DLC came out, and lost Jacob on the collector base. Thus, Kasumi never met Jacob. But the love haiku was still there in the Shadow Broker's files.

You know that boss fight everyone bitches about with Vasir? What with all that use of her Charge ability? I was a Vanguard playing on Hardcore. I'd maxed out that ability. Cue a hilarious five-minute-long biotically-enhanced game of Tag. #QUOTE#'''Me''': ZOOM Tag! ZOOM Tag! ZOOM Tag! You're it!

This troper wrote a backstory for his MassEffect character that was just one big TearJerker. Rejected by her homophobic parents, she was ''forced'' into the Navy to try and straighten her up. The fact that she's a biotic didn't help either. When I was actually playing the game, she suffered from MoodWhiplash and went to save and not Kaiden just so that {{PsychoLesbian she could have Liara.}} However, most of her decisions where paragon, but she focused pwning Sovereign rather than protecting the Council. In MassEffect2, she went full Renegade, and that will hopefully reflect in [=ME3=]. Having played her as a type-V AntiHero, I wrote her [=ME2=] stuff as getting tired of it all. So I hope to get her into the Reapers.

This troper had a really, REALLY interesting experience involving his primary playthrough (A Male Earthborn/War Hero Infiltrator). Throughout both games, I had made decisions that I, myself would have made in any given situation. I did not end up romancing within the first game, because I didn't feel attached to them too much. Had a momentwhen Ashley died. I didn't punch out the reporter, I killed Balak because I was pissed, and other such acts I felt were appropriate to the situation. However, that was small potatoes compared to what I was going to experience between the transition between [=ME1=] and [=ME2=]. During the final battle of the Citadel, when presented with the fateful decision of what to do with the council, I decided that removing any ships from the attack on Sovereign was secondary, since it was the biggest possible threat at the time. (A trillion lives, or then thousand?) So I told them to concentrate on Sovereign, feeling genuine remorse for the sacrifice of the Destiny Ascension, but hoping restoring the council with new, multi-species members would be enough to redeem myself. By the time of the second game, I was awestruck at the number of people ignored the fact that the council was restored, instead of letting the humans take over entirely. Programmer laziness or not, the game told me that it didn't care what I was thinking at the time. People HATED humans for letting the council die, and I was the one who caused it. There was no outlet to tell anyone otherwise, and I felt sorrow for what I had done. The turian at Rodam Expeditions telling me that he didn't approve of my kind made my heart ache for my entire visit to the Citadel. The entire experience had turned Malcolm Shepard, a 85% Paragon/30% Renegade, relatively pleasant man, into The Atoner. I was floored.

During my first playthrough of [=ME2=], my older brother (who had played the game before me) adamantly refused to talk about anything related to it for fear of spoilers. However, right after the crew was captured, he suddenly burst out that I needed to do the suicide mission right now. I was already geared up for a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and didn't need to be told twice, but even so his sudden breech of his no-spoiler policy worried me and I made him promise not to say anything else. Then the suicide mission started and I was faced with the choice of who to send into the vent and who to lead the fire-team. I sat there for a good five minutes before asking if Tali and Jacob would be a good choices. They were, and I kept going. Then the second choice came up. Cue another five minutes of deliberation. Cue another question. Cue another correct selection (Samara). I proposed Garrus lead the fireteam, and my brother responded with an affirmative. Then came the escort choice. I just stared at the screen, unsure what the criteria were, what the consequences would be if I choose incorrectly. After another five minutes my brother chimed in that the remaining members had a chance of dying if their defense was too low. I suggested Jack as the weakest in this respect. He said Mordin. He was right, and knowing how close I came to sending my Crazy Awesome scientist to his death shocked me almost more so than his death would have. I kept going, and at the final choice asked who I should choose to ensure everyone lived. He told me there was no guarantee they would make it. I choose Jack and Tali and prayed my team could hold off the Collectors. After killing the Reaper Larva, my heart skipped a beat and when Jack nearly slid off the platform and just about stopped when Tali didn't move from under the rubble. Then she came to, Joker told me everybody had made it and all was well in the world. For about three seconds anyway. Then the seeker swarms and about 500 Collectors started shooting at me while the timer on the bomb was ticking down. Then the platforms to Normandy got crushed and Shepard jumped, and for those five seconds I thought that even after all the preparation, wise choices and surviving 3 to 4000 odds more times than I could count, John Shepard was going to die. Then he grabbed onto the lip of the airlock, Tali pulled him up and the Normandy engaged its mass effect drive and jumped out of the galactic core, mission accomplished, nobody left behind. Even under the eye of a [=ME2=] veteran coaching me through the choices, the prospect of losing even a single member of my ragtag Band of Brothers no less gripping and terrifying, so massive props to Bioware for that. But props also to my brother, who spared me the anguish of losing the very model of a scientist salarian. Thanks Andy.

This troper always felt wierd at the endings. I played as a Paragade (nice at first but unhesitating to fight) but always chose the renegade endings because they seemed the logical endings. In [=ME1=] I thought "Soverign must die no matter the cost, I don't want that bitch following me to the sequel" and in [=ME2=] "the station might have data on the reapers so we can find weaknesses". Although you can bet I face-palmed when I found out in [=ME2=] the Alliance would have only lost 8 cruisers. I did end up choosing to destroy the collector station on my second playthrough though, after talking with Mordin about the effects of just taking a technology rather than developing it yourself would ultimately destroy you like it did the Krogan. And it had the added bonus of getting Tim to work for me. Really, I agreed with him, but if I wasn't getting access to all of Cerberus' resources (really, you spent billions ressurecting me, it's not gonna bankrupt you to buy me better gear and HIRE someone to spend hours mining you cheap bastard) when I have the goal saving all sentient life in the galaxy... well, lets just say it's time for a change in management.

Being a {{Fire Emblem}} fan, this troper refuses to let a character die during a game, because in FE, you can't bring them back. And then we get to Virmire... and even after being spoiled about it, resolving my decision ahead of time (because I'm one of the few people that actually LIKES Ashley, and her 'racism' is really only because of the stigma attached to her name), it still made me hesitate. It still stuck like hell, and I'm pledging to do everything to not loose anyone in [=ME2=]. Otherwise... I'd feel like I'd failed, really.

Nice to know that at least 1 other person likes Ash. I swear, almost every other [=ME2=] player prefers someone else. High five!

This troper recently had a pretty wacky experience he wishes to share. I had abandoned [=ME2=] for a while. With a little more spare time at my disposal, I started a new game: "Well, it's been a while, The Vanguard really looks interesting, but maybe I should lower the difficulty for a few missions and get used to the gameplay. Insanity would just be frustrating." I was blasting my way through Vorcha and Krogan when my brother put on some music. There was a really, really weird timing. "I'm walking on sun..." ''BIOTIC CHARGE'' "...shiiiiine!" ''BLAM'' "Wo-ho!" "And it does..." ''PUNCH'' "FEEL GOOD!" ''BLAM''. I paused, chuckling, then I decided I would have fought that battle Fort Frolic ({{Bioshock}}) style. It was awesome, dancing around rockets and punching Vorcha in the face following the tempo, although I felt like some sort of psycho (killing other living beings and laughing out loud should never be present in the same sentence). Then, as the smoke cleared, I murmured: "You know what? I'd better raise the difficulty". Cue Shepard on a mountain of bodies, her shotgun still glowing hot, wiping (someone else's) blood from her forehead and thinking: "Next time, eyes closed and hands tied behind my back." I restarted the mission on insanity.

This troper has three Shepards-- two always played neutral, the bastards, so I didn't import my initial [=ME1=] Paragade and was so frustrated with my [=ME2=] Renegon that I had to play again. The first one was male and apparently bi, because he fell hard for Kaidan. I was sure by media osmosis that Kaidan was a Gay Option, and the look on my face when I found out the Media Watchdogs had vetoed that? ''Fury.'' Then my [=ME2=] Shepard went for Tali so no problems there. Now my lesbian player fem!Shep really wants ''Ashley.'' ...Why? Why do you people ''cause me so much pain?''

One of the best things I love about this series is that Shepard is essentially my dream character. The game lets me play on quite a few personal fantasies of mine. I don't normally play {{RPG}}s so I'm probably not the first to feel this way. Coming from a military background (No legacy in real life), he's already got a reputation as both a hero and a {{One Man Army}}, becomes a part of {{The Order}}, is open-minded and hates racism (one of my views), is "conservative." As in the Elcor kind, Shephard likes the established power structure. Beuracracy is a major thorn in his side, but that just means you put the people you want in office and trust them to be responsible (like Anderson), he gets an awesome starship and the freedom to go to other worlds with it,on that ship is his private force of Badass commandos with their own powers and skills to tackle whatever problems he deems worthy of their time, lastly, being a tactical and charismatic leader IS his superpower, beneath all the armor, biotics, gadgets, and weapons; Shepherd's greatest strength is his ability to know how to apply his and his allies capabilities to produce victory.

First, one of the funniest moments I've ever had playing Mass Effect involved Virmire, a Krogan, and Lift. #QUOTE#Me: Wait, where did the charging Krogan go? #QUOTE#Game: Geth communications have been disrupted. #QUOTE#Me: Wait, what? #QUOTE#Krogan: (Falls out of sky, having hit the communications array on his way down.) ::Secondly, I have gotten one of my friends to start playing Mass Effect. Said friend is a VERY thorough gamer- she will talk to EVERYONE and go through all the dialouge trees. She took such a shine to Jenkins, when she talked to him, that I just didn't have the heart to tell her what happens to him. She is also one of the few people I know of who picked "I feel bad about Jenkins" off the dialouge wheel and GENUINELY felt bad about Jenkins.:

I had a dream that I gave Mordin Solus a wedgie. I immeadietly apoligized, and we teamed up to stop the Collectors from blowing up a daycare center. It was fun.

I was confronting the Shadow Broker's assassin in "Lair of the Shadow Broker". Now, she uses something like the Vanguard's Charge ability. The catch? I was ''also'' a Vanguard. We played a game of cat and mouse for a while, her Charging away and me chasing her with another Charge. She has a charge-up attack where she hurls a biotic missile at you, so when I noticed her doing that, I'd wait until she launched it and Charge ''straight through it''. When I got her down to armor, I noticed that punching her was doing more damage than my shotgun, so for I while I'd just Charge after her and punch her in the face. So we'd get stuff like... #QUOTE#'''Assassin:''' (Charge away) This is true bio- #QUOTE#'''Me:''' (Charge up) I punch you in the face! ::I eventually remembered that heavy pistols do good damage to armor, so I whipped that out, but still. ''Best boss fight ever.'':

I was unfortunately led to believe that making squad members loyal would keep them alive during the final mission, and never realized that choosing the right people for the right mission was also important. I got a VERY rude wake up call when the (unupgraded...stupid, stupid, stupid!) Normandy was attacked and first Jack, then Thane, then Tali were brutally killed. Next went Jacob. At that point I was - well, not happy, but I could stand those losses. I was upset about Thane and Tali, but figured the others could make it. Then I took Miranda for the biotics mission and brought Legion and Garrus, who's been my ''favorite'' since the first game, not to mention the guy I chose for the romance, along with me. I start getting worried when Miranda starts failing, reach the end...and then she drops and my Garrus is carried off by the swarms. I literally shouted "NO! No!" at the screen when I saw it, raged that it had to be him and not Miranda, who I never liked, and kept going. I sent Grunt to escort the hostages to safety, so he made it out safe. Samara was next to die and I left Miranda to hold the line, bringing Mordin and Legion to the end. At the point when a teammate starts sliding down the falling platform, I panicked, because Mordin was my second favorite, right after Garrus. Again, I yelled at Shepard(something along the lines of "SAVE HIM, DAMMIT, I ALREADY LOST GARRUS, NOT HIM TOO") and nearly collapsed when Shepard caught him. It was still depressing to see how few people survived to the end. I am, of course, planning a second playthrough to keep everyone. NoOneGetsLeftBehind, dammit. Mass Effect is the first game to get me *this* invested in the characters.

A minor one from my fourth playthrough. With Engineer Shepard on Insanity, I've gotten incredibly used to having to bail out squadmates. On the last portion of Miranda's Loyalty mission, I was pretty much backed into a corner. Kasumi was dead and Enyala was advancing on Miranda. Shep was retreating and managed to finish off a Vanguard with a sliver of health left. After taking cover, I finally noticed that Miranda was still alive. Not only alive, but she had actually managed to knock out Enyala's barrier and half her armor singlehandedly. After finishing off the remaining Mooks, I just decided to watch with pride as Miranda took her down. A major CMOA for Miranda.

In the beginning Mass Effect was never my game, My brother bought it but in the end it didn't quite gel with him so I gave it a shot, I had to restart my Save once, but it was for the better. I was an Infiltrator (I love the Sniper Rifles and tech powers) and I'm primarily a Paragon, I never romanced anyone since Ashley was Xenophobic and well... dead, and Asari just aren't my cup of tea. I was happy with all the choices I had made... but then came the big one, the mother of all choices, do I leave the council to die or do I save them and risk thousands of lives. In the end I chose to kill the council for my own selfish reasons, thinking that they ahd obstructed me way too much and deserved to die. I ended the game, happy with my choice. Then came [=ME2=], I was loving it, it turned an already stellar game into what is now my favourite game ever. It was only when i got into the meat of the game that I felt the repercussions of my actions in the last game, seeing that I had made everyone's life a misery by doing away with the council and making myself seem like a Xenophobic git (Xenophobia being something I have no tolerance for). From that point on I made a solemn vow to always think about the repercussions for other people when making a choice and not make a decision for any selfish reasons. I had prepared the best i could for the Suicide mission, everyone was loyal (minus Zaeed, no way was I going to let those people die for that assholes own personal gain) and I had all of the upgrades necessary to survive. As the Suicide mission wore on, I whooped at the CMOA's that were happening ever 2 seconds and my heartstrings tugged at any moment that might be a characters death (I had become extremely attached to my crew) and to my pleasure, everyone survived. Then came the choice... Keep the Collector Ship or Destroy it... a part of me knew that the technology was wrong and shouldn't be kept but another part of me said that I should keep it fro the greater good. In the end i kept the ship, aware that the Illusive man could turn jackass at any moment and use it for his own goals. The comments from my team hit me hard but I took them with a grain of salt and knew that It was for the greater good... and that if the Illusive man dared to use the tech for the wrong reasons, me and shepard would stop him, because I couldn't live with causing more hurt because of my actions.

I missed the exit to get to my university the other day because I was thinking about MassEffect. Had to go a good five minutes out of my way (on a twenty minute commute) to get back around... but it was totally worth it! Alynnidalar

So, my first time playing the Collector base on [=ME2=], I got through the Reaper with no casualties, purely by using what I thought was the logical choice - For example, I had Mordin escort Dr Chakwas & the other survivors back to the Normandy under the reasoning that ''he's a doctor, he can help Chakwas with the survivors'' - and chose to take Miranda (Who my Shepherd had romanced) & Legion in to face the Reaper. After I managed to put the Reaper down, I decided to blow up the base, because I was pissed that I didn't save all of my crew and I got the satisfaction of seeing Miranda telling TIM where he can stick his job. Then shit went down & the platforms my team had just fought on started falling, with Shepherd saving Miranda from falling off the side. My team survived that, and started running back to the ship. Then I see the Normandy, waiting for my team to get on board... And Joker by the door, taking shots at Collectors. At this point, I just shouted "You wanna come on ''MY'' ship, fuck with ''MY'' crew?! ''FUCK! YOU!'' and had a satisfied smile on my face as I watched Miranda pull Shepherd onto the Normandy. Considering I had to wait a year to get the PS3 version of the game... Worth. The. Wait.

This troper just played through Shepard's reunion with Liara after the Shadow Broker storyline, and it ended well. It was a total CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming.

This troper has a bit of a bad habit regarding his main Shepard character. He's pretty much Paragon through and through... right up until the last mission. In [=ME1=], he figured that it wasn't worth risking Alliance ships rescuing the Destiny Ascension, since they'd be needed to defeat Sovereign. Quasi-renegade ending. In [=ME2=], he really didn't want to give the Collector base to Cerberus, but he just couldn't bring himself to destroy the one bit of Reaper tech the collective organic species had their hands on. If I have to go wipe out Cerberus after the Reaper threat is done, so be it, but Cerberus is a bunch of dudes with guns. The Reapers have wiped out thousands of galactic civilizations. We need any leg up we can get. Renegade ending.

This troper had the same experience acctually. And funilly enough, My renegade Shepard got a PARAGON ENDING in [=ME2=].

This troper loves how Bioware fleshes out the backstory of the characters in [=ME2=] in the Shadow Broker dossiers. Probably the smallest but most meaningful example - it turns out that Legion is quite the avid gamer. Some of this is played for humor, but then you get to one game on the list of games he's purchased: #QUOTE#Geth Attack: Eden Prime (Fundraising Edition) #QUOTE#Donation Level: Ultra Platinum #QUOTE#Player Score: 0 (Purchased but never played)

I have always been more or less immune to all forms of Nightmare Fuel, going through the pages for it doesnt get more then a "Hmm, that's creepy." response from me. But watching Chambers melt down into goo in front of my Shepard's eyes was the first time in over a year that I felt genuine horror at something. But the game wasn't done with me yet, during fight with the larvae, the way it ducks down and peeks over the platform at you struck me as oddly disturbing. -RahalimusPrime

This troper, late to the bandwagon, is most of the way through his first playthrough of the series: Female Paragon Soldier; romanced Liara, kept Wrex, sacrificed Ashley, rescued Council, chose Anderson; currently about to obtain the Reaper IFF. (Kept Samara, but frankly didn't like her ''or'' Morinth.) This troper chose Liara in the first game only because his first choice, Ashley, isn't available to [=FemShep=] (which is also why she had to go on Virmire; when he plays as [=MaleShep=] it'll be Kaidan's turn), and never cared for her or Kaidan one way or the other. Fast forward to Illium, with Liara keeping her brittle silence, and it was like an UnrequitedLoveSwitcheroo. Doesn't help that this troper has always been attracted to the BrokenBird type, almost marrying one IRL. Even better, he chose the JerkAss dialogue options during the ''Normandy'' evac, so Liara's picture isn't on Shepard's desk, even though the "reality" is that Shepard still loves her. Foot, meet gun.

Play ''Lair of the Shadow Broker''. It has really heartwarming moments with Liara that you may appreciate.

Playing with the Colonist backstory, especially when I remembered Talitha, I went into Mass Effect 2 fully intending to have my otherwise ''very'' Paragon Shepard always act Renegade towards any batarians she came across because of what they'd done. But that didn't last long. When I went to recruit Mordin and ran into the batarian near the beginning of the area who was (up until just that moment rightfully) absolutely positive that I'd leave him to die a miserable death because of his species it brought me up short and made me wonder what the hell I thought I was doing. If my ''real life'' family and friends had all been murdered by people who were a different race from myself it wouldn't make me judge every member of that race based on the one group's actions, so what was I doing acting out of FantasticRacism? Moreover, my Shepard had spent the entire time I played her being incredibly accepting of other species and bending over backwards to try and find ways to make peace with her enemies, even Saren, so carrying a massive grudge against the entire batarian species just because what ''they'd'' done was personal was massively hypocritical to her; how could she keep telling everyone else around her not to give into the urge for vengeance when she couldn't let go herself? In the twenty-odd years I've spent gaming I've never had a stronger sense that I was actually role-playing my character instead of just watching what they do than in that moment, when after a long pause Shepard swore to send help and from then on reacted to every other batarian that she met based on their own individual actions instead of what a group of them had done to her years ago. I really felt as if she'd had the same realizations as me and finally let herself start to move on from that long-carried hatred.

My renegade shepard, Alex, since his death, has become even more bitter and moved from "kind of a jerk but good at heart" to "complete selfish bastard who only fights for justice because he wants revenge". But he's going back to his original character after 1- I lost my damn crew to the collectors except for the companions. Tali didn't make it either. And 2- I completed the shadow broker DLC, and when Liara asked to come back onto the normandy, Shepard said no, they should stay professional about this. There's this moment where she walks away, stops, and looks back at him, and shepard quickly looks away. I'm now playing through the rest of the [=DLCs=] with a less assholish perspective. That little glance from Liara was the moment Alex Shepard learned regret, and it took a "no" to a friend to get him to do it.

My paragon shepard, Anne, was initially naive and emotionless, only doing what the council told her. Her epiphany was a lot earlier- When the council ignored the Reaper threat I couldn't bring myself to be calm and understanding, I just yelled at them for being such idiots. She's not renegade, god no, she's still the most paragon thing in space, but she's paying attention to people's flaws instead of just their positives for once.

This troper experienced a personally awkward moment during Mordin's loyalty mission. As the Clan Weyrloc speaker was ranting away about how the krogan were wronged by the genophage, I started half-agreeing with him (I was playing Paragon and valued life in general, so that was expected). I noticed the Renegade interrupt prompt, but decided to leave it just to hear what the speaker had to say. He then mentioned something about defeating human and turian forces - didn't bother me, since krogan are aggressive creatures anyways. He followed up with their intents of enslaving all the asari - I was weirded out now, and was starting to doubt the guy's legitimacy in his efforts of finding a cure for the genophage. The krogan's penultimate statement was claiming to ''eat'' salarian eggs after conquering the galaxy, and at that moment, I decided enough was enough. My Sheperd would draw the line at infanticide. I took the Renegade prompt immediately, and that krogan received a fiery death. It was...oddly satisfying.

One of the things this troper missed most in the initial transition from the first to second game was the loss of biotic asswhupping that is possible as an Adept near the end of the first. Then I got got a new Xbox and ended up playing the first game through again. Favorite part of the final mission: while walking up the side of the Citadel Tower, stepping out of cover to provoke a krogan into a charge, waiting calmly for the right moment, then using Lift and watching him float on by overhead and disappear into the abyss. If I may quote a certain drug-addled volus: "I am a biotic GOD. Fear me!"

This troper somehow played through the second game almost three times without having a YMIR mech go nuclear. Then, I was most of the way through Garrus' loyalty mission, settling down for a long fight with Harkin's twin mechs. I kill one, and am turning to deal with the other when the screen goes red. The smoke clears, and the second mech is GONE. Feel free to imagine my astonished glee.

This troper has since come to ''love'' MassEffect1, but on my first playthrough, the very first planet I landed on after leaving the Citadel was Edolus. No, I hadn't met Admiral Kahoku yet; I was looking for Liara. Hey, there's a distress signal, I'd better investigate -- OhCrap what the hell IS THAT THING!?! The shriek made me ''literally'' jump off the couch. Yes, my ''very first exploration opportunity'' ran me straight into a Thresher Maw. I survived, but only because I followed my first instinct -- I ran my asteroid off. Once I had a better idea of what I was doing, I drove back and blew the thing back to where it came from, but I had tons of respect for SoleSurvivor Shepard after that.

Tropers/JoieDeCombat had the exact same experience. And was playing a Sole Survivor Shepard. It was an incredible OhCrap moment.

This troper had an evil Femshep. While she originally had blue eyes the aforementioned evilness brought on evil glowing red eyes in [=ME2=]. Her eyes look awesome now as the glowing red eyes are bordered in perfect contrast by the original blue eyes.

An evening with a MassEffect random plot generator turned Dr. Chakwas into a MemeticBadass for me. Her exploits against Thresher maws are legendary. Also she smoked cigarettes with Sovereign, sniped Saren, and renegade interrupted Morinth.

This Troper has a few fun little games he likes to play with his Infiltrator Shepard. If the last enemy has gone to cover, I cloak, go around behind them, and shoot them point blank in the head. If I'm feeling mean, I wait for the cloak to end, and shoot them just as the turn. I bring the Avalanche to fight bosses whos charecter ticks me off, wittle them down to just life, and freeze them, then line up the perfect shot with the widow. And then theirs what I call Skeet Shooting. First have a biotic teammate use pull, while shouting "Pull!". Then shoot the airborne foe. I grinned madly when I played Lair Of The Shadowbroker, and saw that Liara's singularity could float multiple enemies. Oddly enough, I play a straight Paragon Shepard, and can't bring myself to do anything too cruel in diolouge.

This troper got the suicide mission on his first try, based on the following rationale: Legion for techie, as he was romancing Tali at the time and didn't want to risk his boo. Garrus for fireteam leader the first time because Jack has issues with Miranda (I was also amused the second time around, when I noticed Garrus shaking his head in the background after Miranda volunteers to lead the fireteam). Samara for biotic, because why use a human when you can use an asari with centuries of training and experience? Miranda for second fireteam leader, because Jack is just going to have to deal with it. Mordin to escort back, because he's a doctor and that might be useful. Tali and Garrus with me for the final round, for old times' sake. Spanked the Collectors and the baby Reaper. Felt good. As a business major, he also likes to think that this is Bioware's attempt to teach the concept of comparative advantage (everyone should specialize in what their best at and trade for other things to maximize total wealth), as he noticed how Thane is a selectable choice for every specialist role (tech, fireteam, biotic), but selecting him always leads to bad things because him being a generalist makes him ill-suited for anything that requires a highly advanced level of skill, and even his bio basically says "he's not the best, but might be able to wing it."

(same as above) This troper also killed off Samara and recruited Morinth for his "reasonable Renegade" Infiltrator and got Dominate as the special ability. He took immense amusement in ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL over Collector drones and using them to fight Harbinger.

I just finished a Paragon Shepard playthrough for carrying over to ME3, and got everyone's loyalty for the first time - I ''always'' lost Jack & only got Zaeed's by playing Renegade. From the start, I played Shepard as being unwilling to kill, unless the person was stupid enough to pull a gun on him, and only took five Renegade interupts the entire game - I killed Elnora, since Pitney mentioned the "Eclipse must kill for their armour" rule, and three of the remaining four interupts were ShutUpHannibal moments for Hokk, Uvenk, the Weyrloc speaker, all of which were deeply satisfying. The last was when I finally caught up to Kenson; once I saw the interupt, I took it & Shepard gunned her down, which I was fully expecting - Not because she deserved it for the 304,942 Batarian she condemed to death when she cut Shepard's attempt at alerting the Batarian colonies, but ''dammit'', no-one deserves indoctrination by the damn Reapers.

I've played through [=ME=] a total of 3 times before [=ME2=] was released. I recognized that Ashley was a pretty decent squadmate, but I was never particularly fond of her specism. Especially after she killed Wrex on one of my play throughs. She also reminded me of radical conservatives, who use their religion as an excuse to inflict their ideas on others. The 3rd time, I happened to let her survive Virmire, took her on the Citadel during lockdown and talked to that Terra Firma guy. And whatdoyouknow, Ash KICKED ASS!! Now she's officially my favorite squadmate in the series. Urgh, I hate what they did to her in [=ME2=]. Can't wait for [=ME3=], though.

This troper did the suicide mission perfectly his first time through sheer bias. I did every loyalty mission and every upgrade, but I knew screwing up could lose me some. First, I decided Tali was the only companion I trusted to go through the ducts and Garrus was the only squadmate who I felt COULD lead. Then, I decided only an Asari matriarch could sustain the barrier needed to hold off the seekers, so Samara got the job. I honestly just wanted Miranda out of the way, so I sent her back to the ship, and had Jacob lead the second firing team because I wanted Garrus with me. And, again, because I wanted Garrus and Tali with me, because they were my game ending squad in ME1, as well. Perfect ending. During my second playthrough, however, I made a different choice. Somehow, playing at 3:00 in the morning made me think Zaeed could actually LEAD. And my loyal friend Tali got blasted by a rocket. I reloaded.

Engage the Relay and jump back to MassEffect.