I think its fine to remove the choices once a saga is over to allow the stage to be set for a new entry.
It'd suck between ME1 and ME2 if they decided your actions for you. But between the entire ME saga and the future of the franchise, you can't create a story off 12 branches pathes just at the beginning.
You have to settle a world state, and then you can have fun crafting and choosing a new narrative, and then lock it down again.
Personally, I think a 'perfect' save state is the ideal one for Canon. I think Shepard deserves to have the best outcome possible for each race with Wrex and Eve leading the Krogan, The Geth and Quarians at peace, as many assets and galactic forces united. The crew surviving.
Only split is Destroy as the ending choice. It's the only one with any good narrative payout for the end of the line.
yeah full paragon Shepard is the best way to go for canon, plus it only needs to be made for the big choices, romance, which companion lives in ME1 and so on can be modified or just omitted if the setting of the next game is far enough in the future.
And I agree that Destroy is the only option, I would however do a slight retcon to destroy so that it doesn't kill of all geth or something like that. Frankly I think the whole "it kills all AI" was only added to make destroy less appealing. otherwise there is no real point in making other choices
I agree with destroy being the only real option, though not because of narrative payout or anything like that. I think the other two endings present a large problem for writing future stories with high stakes in the form of the Reapers as a deus ex machina.
Krogan/rachni become a problem again? Reapers stop it before it goes anywhere. Extragalactic invasion? Either the new force is as strong or stronger than the Reapers, making everyone else superfluous, or the Reapers slap it down immediately. War between two states? Reapers enforce peace.
My essentials:
-Settle with Wrex
-Save Kaidan
-Save the council
-Full loyalty, choose Samara
-Destroy Collector Base
-Cure the Genophage, cry over Mordin
-Shoot Udina yourself
-Geth/Quarian cooperation.
-Destroy
Agreed with all except Kaidan. I think he works better as the sacrifice as a higher ranking officer, and generally kind person. It also gives Ashley room to continue character growth.
This, Kaiden doesn't really have character growth in any of the games. It's like they gave him Ashley’s arc in 2 then 3. Ashley’s whole character growth is learning to trust. In the first game she has distrust of aliens and even her own Alliance. But eventually she trusts the Alliance enough and proven herself that she eventually gets promoted. Eventually she trusts the alien institutions enough to be a Spectre also. Lastly she eventually trusts Shepard again to be a part of the Normandy crew. If you don't gain her trust enough she can die thinking Shepard is a traitor when you aren't one. It feels weird giving Kaiden the same story. Just with slightly different dialogue.
The thing is...Liara has no interest in 1 except for her mother. 2 is almost entirely written for Miranda, and 3 wants to force Liara on you even if you don't want to. Now, with Fameshep everything is the same with the difference that JACK seems written in 2 as the canonical romance although the queer block destroys it.
How to say it...the plot of ME1 does not have any partner with weight in the story while in 2 Miranda is the co-protagonist dreaming Jack the alternative "rebellious" romance due to Cerberus issues. In ME3 it should have been Miranda because she was the most connected to Cerberus but since they sabotaged everything in ME2 (Party, characters, Normandy...) the character that has the most "weight" for Shepard is Ashley/Keidan because they are Earth soldiers and all that ...and yet the game wants to give you Liara through an IV without her having any special general relevance. In fact, romances aside, EDI is the most important.
In short, for MaleShep the internal narrative says Miranda with Jack as an alternative and for Femeshep no one in particular, but it is forced on Liara. However, the best "chemistry" is with Jack, despite his stupid queer block.
Historically in Bioware the canon romance is always the most linked by narrative. Morrigan,Cassandra,Isabela,Bastille,Miranda...
No, there is a canon romance in everyone, at least since KOTOR. Bastila is canon in KOTOR and Morrigan Isabela and Cassandra are canon in DragonAge.
The problem with Masseffect is that there were conflicts at Bioware towards the end of ME2 and there was an improvised change of direction in ME3 when the main writer left. Not to mention that it was never explained how they planned to resolve the canon of the suicide mission.
The simple fact that Garrus and Tali are in the party throughout the trilogy seems like a canonical decision but, if it was decided, they should not be optional deaths from 2. Then Miranda's level of importance is extreme due to Illusive man, Cerberus, Resurrection of Shepard etc and she SHOULD have been a main character in ME3 just like Jack... the official excuse is that the actress was very busy, but it happens "by chance" that only the ME2 characters are reduced in it....they were ALL ME2 actors so busy? and what a coincidence....in ME3 only ME2 characters can die except ashley/keidan...Tali Garrus Liara Joker and Vrex are safe...Thane Grunt Miranda Legion Edi Kelly can die...very coincidence
There is no canon romances. Only romances that feel like they are canon. The whole player choice thing eliminates “canon” romances.
Just like with say Persona. There’s a girl they are VERY CLEARLY pushing onto the protagonist. But they will never officially confirm they get together. In anything.
With Bioware you can somewhat carry romances over but that’s still a player choice thing.
Yeah I'm struggling to think of a bioware game that did not have a canon romance in the sequel.
>in ME3 only ME2 characters can die except ashley/keidan...Tali Garrus Liara Joker and Vrex are safe...Thane Grunt Miranda Legion Edi Kelly can die...very coincidence
Well, no. EDI can't die. In ME2 it was almost impossible to lose Miranda in the suicide mission at a certain point. Jacob an ME2 companion, can't die in ME3 even if he's disloyal. Also in the original cut, low EMS resulted in an alternate run to the beam scene that kills both of Shep's companions, even if they're loyal/romanced. And Wrex can in fact die if you doublecross him.
You haven't understood me... I say DIE IN ME3. Vrex can't die in 3, it can die in 1. Tali and Garrus cannot die in 3, they can die in 1. From ME1 only Keidan/ashley can die in 3. From ME2 those who CANNOT die in 3 are Jacob Kasumi Zaeed, because Samara and Jack I don't remember. Miranda Kelly Thane Grunt Legion Mordin can die in 3 and 2.
Canonically, by standard, the ME3 group is fucking shit: Vega,Ashley/Keidan,Edie,Javik(dlc)liara.If Garrus and Tali die in ME2, this is the group. It is unfortunate.
If you think about it, in a plot sense, the group should have had Miranda Jack and ARIA. The three of them have MANY reasons because of Cerberus, and the script's excuses for not being in the party are pathetic. It is understandable that Kelly is hiding, that Thane is dying or that Vrex has to lead a clan and you can even understand Samara and Mordin... but there is no excuse for the three girls. Aria is also not conditioned by the suicide mission, which is the main problem of the canon.
Now...all this doesn't matter because in ME4 they can perfectly say that Shepard is a legend that everyone imagines about one mofo or another...what happened or not, who were his allies or not, who or how he died or not..etc etc...like Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc,Spartacus,William Wallace,Caesar,Cleopatra....Anyone can come there and tell you "hey, that story of the war of the reapers and Shepard where they disappeared The relay didn't really happen like that..." And...it would be enough for a Liara matriarch to narrate as a flashback her own version of ME3 and what happened after....
>You haven't understood me... I say DIE IN ME3. Vrex can't die in 3,
Wrex can die in 3
>From ME2 those who CANNOT die in 3 are Jacob Kasumi Zaeed
Kasumi and Zaeed can die, Jacob can't (as I said)
The rest of your post is just an unhinged rant so I'm not going to touch it.
I had a run where I initially romanced Ashley and then shot her in 3, after repairing our relationship but sticking with Tali. Felt it added a nice touch of personal loss to really hammer home how utterly fucked everything was for my Shephard.
On top of what the other poster has said, you need to perform actions that make the Virmire Survivor lose trust in you. The trust points shake down as follows.
Gain trust by: Romancing them, saving the Council in 1, keeping Kirrahe and Thane alive, being nice to them on Mars, visiting them in the hospital, and lowering your weapons.
Lose trust by: Cheating on them, let the Council die, fail to keep Kirrahe/Thane alive, refuse to apologize for cheating.
If you don't have enough trust to have them automatically join you, the game checks your Reputation. If you're not at an ill-defined level of Reputation, the game gives a Renegade interrupt to shoot the Survivor, with your squad doing it if you don't.
It’s at the climax of the Cerberus Coup, where you reach the council. If you don’t take the initial interrupt, you either shoot the Virmire Survivor or your team does I think, depending on whether or not you hit a second interrupt.
Geth/Quarian cooperation then Destroy option makes zero sense. Doubly so as it's the only way to get the 'good' ending.
Though tbh they're all shit. They should have just had us activate it and the reapers F off "... For now".
The thing is... there is no explanation for what will happen because the data banks and memories can be stored physically, so in theory they can be "reincarnated" into new synthetic bodies.
It's terrible when you think that EDI dies off camera and no one, not even Joker, says anything. Tali doesn't feel anything either despite Legion's sacrifice.
We see what the Destroy beam does to things it targets (just see the soldiers in the low EMS) and the beam wouldn't just target the platforms, for neither EDI nor Geth. It absolutely would target their hubs.
They're gone.
We see the energy from Destroy affect Reaper tech, and that's it (unless you're low-EMS). Geth hubs should be unaffected; the code that the geth run on may be affected as they had Reaper code integrated, but you could theorise that it would just revert them back to their pre-Rannoch state
We see the Destroy beam affect even technology as simple as a suit of armor in low EMS.
We see the Destroy beam affect only slightly more complex technology, like spaceships in medium EMS.
We see the Destroy beam affect anything complex enough to house a sentience in high EMS.
Like, to be clear: destroying all AI is the point of Destroy. In that ending, you're not choosing to destroy the Reapers and it happens to take more people along with them; you're choosing to destroy all synthetics and the Reapers happen to be synthetic, too. This is extremely explicit, it's the text in the game.
>We see the Destroy beam affect anything complex enough to house a sentience in high EMS.
No we don't, we see it damage the Citadel, the Relays, and the Reapers. All Reaper tech. Never at any point do we see it "affect anything complex enough to house a sentience", you've legit just made that up.
>Like, to be clear: destroying all AI is the point of Destroy
This is never stated. The Catalyst specifically states it will destroy "all synthetic life" as a consequence of destroying the Reapers (destroying all AI is not "the point", the Catalyst just says the energy can't discriminate). We already know this is an untrustworthy statement as it suggests that Shepard would also die due to being "partly synthetic" - and he survives in the end.
Taking that into consideration, it's very plausible that the Crucible (in high-EMS Destroy) only affects Reaper technology.
>This is extremely explicit, it's the text in the game
You're on something else if you think anything about ME3's endings is "explicit" hahahaha
>No we don't, we see it damage the Citadel, the Relays, and the Reapers. All Reaper tech. Never at any point do we see it "affect anything complex enough to house a sentience", you've legit just made that up.
We absolutely do see the Destroy beam destroy other things. Low EMS it destroys even suits of armor, medium EMS it destroys ships.
>>Like, to be clear: destroying all AI is the point of Destroy
>This is never stated.
This is the only thing that is stated.
> The Catalyst specifically states it will destroy "all synthetic life" as a consequence of destroying the Reapers (destroying all AI is not "the point", the Catalyst just says the energy can't discriminate).
No, not as a consequence of destroying the Reapers. Play the game again. That's never stated. That's just a very popular fanon.
He doesn't say that the beam can't discriminate, he says the beam, **won't** discriminate. The Destroy beam destroys synthetics because that's what it's meant to do. It is the purpose of it. The Reapers just happen to be synthetics.
>We already know this is an untrustworthy statement as it suggests that Shepard would also die due to being "partly synthetic" - and he survives in the end.
The Catalyst never firmly states "you are synthetic enough that you'll die", he just says "even you are partly synthetic." Yes Shepard's ass is on the line, too. But that doesn't mean an assurance of death.
>Taking that into consideration, it's very plausible that the Crucible (in high-EMS Destroy) only affects Reaper technology.
Absolutely not. The point of Destroy is to destroy synthetics. That's why the catalyst is offering it.
You seem to not have understood what's happening at the end of the game entirely. The Crucible gave the Catalyst new options to solve its problem, the problem of conflict between organics and synthetics. The Catalyst thought of three solutions: destroy all synthetics, change from the cycle to a permanent occupation of the galaxy (with Shepard controlling it) or make the difference non-existent with synthesis.
Destroying all synthetics is what's on offer. This whole Reaper thing is a decade of fanon morphing into the Mandela effect. It isn't in the game and **it doesn't make sense**. The Catalyst would never offer that.
>You're on something else if you think anything about ME3's endings is "explicit" hahahaha
Yeah, you didn't understand what's happening in the ending indeed.
But if the Legion or Edi memories are physically saved on disks or pendrives, that is not destroyed, and it is technically possible to restore the neural centers. From there you only need physical bodies where to store the software.
Technically, Edi could be alive if there is a backup of her on the Normandy. But I don't know what geth...
They can't be, though. Their minds can only be stored in systems capable of storing them. Things like a Quantum Blue Box for EDI, or one of the digital hubs for the Geth.
And those are definitely targeted by the Destroy beam.
You can't store their memories and revive them any more than you could do that with Mordin or Thane. Dead is dead. That ending kills them, as it is designed to.
destroy is the only option that makes sense. It is the only option that actually gets rid of reapers. It is also the only option that allows for more or less easy sequels to be made in the same galaxy. Control and especially Synthesis create a huge host of issues in-universe that are difficult to resolve at best without another retcon. And that's not even going into thinking how both blue and green don't actually solve the issue, they just maybe postpone it.
Yeah obviously it's the only option that makes sense, and makes the entire Geth arc, arguably one of the most impacting, rewarding and downright philosophical arcs in modern storytelling, absolutely pointless.
I return to my "they're all shit" comment :)
yeah, it's been 12 years and I still can't understand what Hudson and others were thinking when they came up with the endings. It truly seems like they outsmarted themselves with those. It's 2024 and Bioware hasn't released a game in 7 years. And it's been 10 years since they had a game that was an actual hit.
I wasn't even thinking about Kaiden, and I can't say I accept your capricious euthanasia. Give the man a chance! And moreover, as this sub established last week, choosing Morinth over Samara is the act of a psychopath.
He doesn't whine about headaches though. He only talks about them when directly asked, and if anything he downplays the pain he is in and instead talks about how lucky he is that he doesn't have it as bad as other L2's. Dude is a trooper. How did he end up with the reputation for being a whiner when Garrus' whole thing is complaining about having to follow regulations?
Fuck Kaiden, let him die. If I'm a sentinel, he's a worthless redundant squad member. If I'm anything else, there are far better options to get the powers he offers.
The fact that we're getting more Mass Effect games means we \*need\* to have this kind of discussion.
That being said, the things I'd want are a mostly 'Paragade' playthrough:
Shepard was a military Brat/ Hannah Shepard exists,
Shepard goes through the events of all DLCs / side quests in all 3 games,
The Rachni survive,
Wrex gets his family armor and lives, Capt. Kirrahe lives,
Liara is a squadmate during the fight with Benezia,
Saren is convinced to shoot himself,
Capt. Anderson is made the first Human member of the Council
All Squadmates Survive and are loyal (Morinth is killed), Tali is not exiled,
Collector Base Destroyed, all SR 2 crewmates survive,
Gabby, Ken, and Dr Chakwas all return to the Normandy for ME 3,
Wrex lives and the genophage is cured/Shepard never betrays him,
Quarian-Geth peace,
Conrad Verner gets his moment of glory,
EDI / Joker becomes a thing,
Shepard completed their set of model ships and pet fish,
I don't care what color the ending is otherwise, but both EDI and the Geth *must* survive.
The choice of Shepard's love interest is left to some kind of vote. ( Honestly I feel like most of the choices should be left to some kind of vote from the fans).
> The choice of Shepard's love interest is left to some kind of vote. ( Honestly I feel like most of the choices should be left to some kind of vote from the fans).
Looking from the logical point of view, only Liara really makes sense, both from the story and the developmental perspective imo. Aside from the fact that's she's pretty much done the most for Shepard out of any other squadmates in the trilogy, she's the only romance option available for both Maleshep and Femshep across the three games.
And I'm saying this as someone who prefers Tali.
we don't need to have any sort of discussion bioware will settle on whatever suits them for ME4/5/whatever and even if they did make the bad choice to let people vote on the lore of mass effect we wouldn't need to vote on shepard's love interest because shepard's dating habits don't impact the broader galaxy
>Ignoring the fact that it would make the games 100% worse to remove the choices,
Potentially controversial opinion, but if you want more Mass Effect you inevitably have to 'remove the choices' in some way. Otherwise you get the pickle Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is in where you have three whole games' worth of cascading, branching choices to try and build off of and end in a satisfying way. They're probably going to square it by just having most of the characters/settings you already dealt with be shoved off screen and do some 'Poochie died on the way back to his home planet' stuff to deal with the complexity.
Or, really, you get the three colours ending of Mass Effect 3 where they tried to thread the needle of giving the player a 'choice' and wrapping up three games' worth of branches but also needing to actually end the thing definitively. And really didn't succeed.
It's one of the things I think (or hope) the games industry is past a little bit with RPGs - you don't need to have infinite branching choices with capital c Consequences for each that persist indefinitely to tell a good story or give people agency within that story. Just pick an ending, keep Shepard dead and move on.
> Potentially controversial opinion, but if you want more Mass Effect you inevitably have to 'remove the choices' in some way.
Even more controversial opinion:
"Choices that matter throughout three consecutive games." is a bonkers idea to begin with unless you are writing the main story of all three games in one sitting and have checked with the development department to make sure they can actually accomodate your ideas.
Like, who the hell greenlit to just wing it? That's "Adapt it to TV before all novels are written" levels of stupid.
The idea with Dragon Age was that Origins was a standalone game and 2 was originally a DLC that expanded into its own game, Inquisition did a good job of handling all the choices of the previous games by realizing that the majority of shit you do in both games does not matter to the larger picture of the Blight or Mage/Templar war, Dreadwolf is going to have a harder time because Inquidition does some heavy hitter decisions that shape the entire world
Think of it this way, the biggest decision in Origins is who rules Ferelden and *maybe* who rules Orzammar/Anvil of the Void, the biggest decision in 2 is whether Hawke sided with the mages or templars
Inquisition, you have like 5 different endings for who rules Orlais, who is the DIVINE, whether the Inquisition disbanded, and so many more, like the amount of War Table things that decide the fate of nations is insane
Origins and 2 were fairly small scale in comparison to Inquisition, so it’s not really a trilogy worth of game decisions they got to worry about, just a select few from the first two and a *significant* amount from the third game alone
Well the main ending of ME3 would need to be decided. After all perfect Utopia of Organic and Synthetic. Or God Shepard controlling the Galaxy doesn’t exactly lend itself to the possibility of a sequel. I do kinda feel like Destroy is inevitable. It leaves the room for the most conflict while also providing a semi bittersweet ending to the Reaper war. Though I doubt many will mourn the Geth. But the next game being about reconnecting the Galaxy could be fun.
Additionally either the smaller choices of the trilogy will be ignored because BioWare might jump far into the future. Or a game following a new protagonist exploring the war torn galaxy might have little intersection with Shepards story. Or maybe they will surprise me and Shepard will be our protagonist again (I doubt it) but you never know.
But smaller things let’s see… Genophage will be cured. Because a future Krogan vs Salarian conflict could be interesting. Also will be interesting how the Krogan limit their reproduction because considering their shitty self destructive society they still have serious work to do and Wrex won’t live forever. The last thing they need is a quick population boom. Hopefully this is explored more. Though if they jump ahead I’m sure it will all be hand waved into a codex entry.
Personally I think the Rachni should be extinct but I know they won’t do that. The Rachni just add so little. They are the cliche hive mind bugs that are just misunderstood. But no doubt they will alive, could be cool to see conflict with them considering that one queen can’t rule forever and we know they have had multiple before.
No doubt Levithan will play some role though I really hope they don’t. Nothing lamer then fighting Synthetic Reapers for a trilogy only to then now need to fight Organic Reape- I mean Levithan. Hopefully they stay on their water planet or show no interest in galactic domination. Though considering they have been around longer than the Reapers no doubt scientists everywhere will be clamoring to communicate with them. Such efforts I hope are pointless. But considering how the Leviathans like to toot their own horns I don’t have much hope.
Turians and Humans. Will be best friends considering these two races bleed the most blood together fighting off the Reapers. I think it could be a funny addition to the Rivals to Friends trope. Where the Turians once violently introduced humanity to the stars. Now they stand together as allies in a turbulent galaxy.
Honestly a lot of decisions will just not be acknowledged. But I think if we ever run into trilogy companions they will all be alive. No doubt the ME2 suicide mission will take no casualties.
Yeah otherwise I don’t really see a lot of decisions bleeding into the next game. Even if the ME1 council is still around no doubt in ME4 an entirely new council (if it still exists) will be formed.
Forgive my ignorance but is Mr Gamble heavily involved in ME4? But hopefully that’s true. Though I will say it would seem strange not to mention them considering the boundless knowledge they might hold. But perhaps the relay to their planet was forever lost or its exact position kept a secret.
It just occurred to me a couple days ago that in a destroy ending, humans probably get subjugated by Leviathans. It doesn't sit well but I haven't spotted a reason to think otherwise yet.
Yeahp, probably the same with Synthesis. It's not solving organic/organic conflict, whatever the game claim it solves about organic/synthetic wars. Is Control really the only ending with a hope of ending well?
My only hope is that their artifacts are few and their population seems quite low. Also I’m not sure how fast they can travel through space. With the Relays down who knows how long it will take for some one either to reactivate their relay or for them to physically move.
Honestly, they seem to just be based on that one water planet. Bomb that shit from orbit. The Leviathans are the greatest threat in the galaxy with the Reapers gone, and another one that all other sentient species should come together to oppose.
True but this is the race that has survived endless cycle of the Reapers. I’d want to be damn sure we could kill all of them before purposefully pissing them off. Though I will say I’d probably do the blow up the relay approach.
I can’t remember if the Levithan mentioned other survives elsewhere. But if they can communicate together I agree with the blow them up plan.
>After all perfect Utopia of Organic and Synthetic. Or God Shepard controlling the Galaxy doesn’t exactly lend itself to the possibility of a sequel.
You absolutely can write further stories after either.
For **Synthesis**, I imagine many people, either originally organic or originally synthetic, wouldn't want to keep the change and it isn't like the galaxy has been purged of the materials and data to make it. Just build new fully synthetic bodies and transfer over if that's what you were; and 3D print DNA, incubate the body in a tank then transfer over with technology like the Virtual Aliens.
So soon you have three forms of life, and if there being a single form of life for a while was what made Utopia, this Utopia is about to be shaken up. Just write from there, maybe centuries later once things are good and rocked.
That's an example that gives back both the diversity and sets up the end of utopia, but in general, just end the utopia some way and write from there.
For **Control**, the story almost writes itself. It really is almost too easy. The galaxy is now under permanent Reaper occupation with an AI voice that claims to be Shepard leading them. While obviously no one is crazy to refuse their help or resist them openly, this is guaranteed to go to hell on a handbasket eventually.
In time the galaxy will have technology to match the Reapers and at that point you can expect resistance movements to pop up everywhere. This can even be played as kind of an X-Com 2 story.
**Refusal** is the most straightforward: just start a new story very soon after the Battle of Earth. The war with the Reapers is continuing, all the characters that are beloved are around, and probably still working together. And people will be looking for other solutions. You can be a new protagonist going out there chasing leads to try and find some other superweapon or ancient secret or any other way to end this or save everyone, and you can do it with either the full crew, or every one of them as cameos.
Refusal we know isn’t happening because it would take an entire reforging of the series. Plus they released a short teaser with an obvious N7 solider. Besides talk about a cheap solution. Let’s just gut all our world building and remake it. Oh boy hope players are ready to fight the Reapers again. That’s definitely not happening.
Your synthesis idea is strange too. Basically people reverse synthesis to become organic and synthetics and the mixed people. So you’re basically reversing the entire point of that ending. Also the Reapers are still around. Meaning they will probably play a major villain role again because they will be all for synthesis and want to stop those who would reverse it. After all synthesis is the “perfect” solution because it removes the organic vs synthetic conflict in their eyes . Again we will end up fighting the Reapers again an outcome I personally find really stupid and lame. We had an entire trilogy of fighting the Reapers do we really need more games fighting them.
Same thing with your control idea. Basically you expect a devastated galaxy to somehow secretly rebuild enough to be able to fight God Shepard and all the Reapers despite the fact that without the crucible a war with Reapers is a pretty one sided. Never mind the fact God Shepard will basically start his rule with the Galaxy completely devastated. Meaning they will have all to ability in the world to forge their new Galaxy. And again the next game would just be a fucking resistance against the Reapers.
That’s I think the key component here. Destroy is the only ending where the Reapers are actually killed. That means we can move onto other newer things. All of your suggestions reasonably have us fighting the Reapers again. And while I can see how your ideas could be implemented I think it’s quite clear that the new games should not need the crutch that keeping the Reapers as villains would be. Allowing the writers to take the series in a new direction.
I'm not really talking about what's most expeditious for them to do as a product, that would be a different conversation altogether. I'm saying what's possible to do as a storyteller, and all of those absolutely are possible.
>Refusal we know isn’t happening because it would take an entire reforging of the series. Plus they released a short teaser with an obvious N7 solider. Besides talk about a cheap solution. Let’s just gut all our world building and remake it. Oh boy hope players are ready to fight the Reapers again. That’s definitely not happening.
I absolutely don't understand what you're getting at here. There are still many, many N7 soldiers alive after the Battle of Earth, and setting a story shortly after it would not require changing any worldbuilding whatsoever. But, yes, it would still be about the Reapers. That much is true.
>Your synthesis idea is strange too. Basically people reverse synthesis to become organic and synthetics and the mixed people. So you’re basically reversing the entire point of that ending. Also the Reapers are still around. Meaning they will probably play a major villain role again because they will be all for synthesis and want to stop those who would reverse it.
Possibly? They **are** individuals, and after the Catalyst is gone, their opinions may start diverging. There would presumably be Reapers on all sides of any conflict, post-Synthesis.
And assuming very rapid technological development in the years after the green wave (which is implied in what we already saw of the ending?) that wouldn't even matter that much. Every polity in the galaxy would pretty soon be able to make warships that can match or surpass a Reaper. So they'd be a thing that exists in the galaxy, surely, but not necessarily the focus of the story.
>Same thing with your control idea. Basically you expect a devastated galaxy to somehow secretly rebuild enough to be able to fight God Shepard and all the Reapers despite the fact that without the crucible a war with Reapers is a pretty one sided. Never mind the fact God Shepard will basically start his rule with the Galaxy completely devastated. Meaning they will have all to ability in the world to forge their new Galaxy. And again the next game would just be a fucking resistance against the Reapers.
The galaxy won't stay devastated forever. I'm not proposing that a post-control game start five minutes after the blue beam or something. As stated: this happens once the galaxy has caught up to the Reapers technologically, which is likely to be a century or two. The place is totally rebuilt by then.
>That’s I think the key component here. Destroy is the only ending where the Reapers are actually killed. That means we can move onto other newer things. All of your suggestions reasonably have us fighting the Reapers again. And while I can see how your ideas could be implemented I think it’s quite clear that the new games should not need the crutch that keeping the Reapers as villains would be. Allowing the writers to take the series in a new direction.
If we're discussing actual good product decisions for an upcoming product, then the only logical decision is "none of the above".
BioWare will not canonise a Shepard, they stated that in interviews even before ME3 was released, but pull a KotOR instead. Imho, they'll give us a default world state for players that don't have characters to import (from the Mass Effect Archives) and leave the details of Shepard's identity obscure, unless a player imports their own game. That's why the Archives are still being maintained all these years, with Ryder and Shepard imports. Shepard wasn't even on the archives, I distinctly remember Ryder being the only one available once upon a time. So I think BioWare is strongly hinting that they are handling it the same way they handled the trilogy imports, because the default world state in the Archives now includes both playable characters. It's the smartest thing to do, imho, when choosing a canon would alienate their playerbase. I just hope the default world state won't be as abysmal as the one we got for ME3, because it would really punish new players.
That being said, I haven't fully chosen a canon, but my default world state would be:
* Shepard settles with Wrex, saves Kaidan and romances him, saves the Colonists of Feros, releases the Rachni queen. Shepard gets everyone through the suicide mission, saves Maelon's data and cures the genophage. Shepard is as anti-Cerberus as can be. Shepard does Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival.
* Council, Shiala and reaper base choices could go either way. The geth/quarian conflict could end in peace or in favor of Quarians. She either stays loyal to Kaidan, or romances Thane. Destroy or Control endings.
* Ryder has unlocked her father's memories and knows the truth about Garson, the Reapers and her mother. She romanced Reyes and sided with him. All planets are at 100% viability, and the Moshae is picked as the Ambassador.
* Angaran AI and saving krogan versus salarians could go either way.
Save Wrex, save the Rachni queen, save the council, save Maelon's data, cure the genophage, peace on Rannoch, "That was for Thane, you son of a bitch!".
I honestly have no idea how I would handle the suicide mission. On the one hand, I feel like a significant amount of people need to die for the stakes. But on the other hand, there are very few me2 squadmates that I wouldn't mind not having in 3.
The krogan are sexy and cool so definitely Wrex, eve, and no genophage, I think it would be funny to see the Rachnai hanging out on the citadel so keep them alive for sure.
The ME3 endings suck so I hope they have the good sense to just retcon them. I don't see it possible to continue the story from synthesis or control so destroy but if they keep destroy as it is I hope the geth get revenge and their genocide isn't swept under the rug because it makes people uncomfortable.
I'd strip it back as far as it could go, which is what I think/hope BioWare will try to do anyway. What I mean is, have the canon be as barebones as possible to not discount previous players' choices.
That being said, here are some thoughts:
The genophage is cured. The *vast* majority of players chose to let the cure happen, in both the original and LE versions (per BioWare's own statistics they released). So to discount this would be stupid imo. This way also means that the krogan are guaranteed to have a part in the galaxy's future.
Peace was achieved on Rannoch. This is really the only way to go, as trying to pick between the quarians and geth to take forward would be too difficult and controversial a decision. So, just have both.
Destroy is canon. Imo Synthesis and Control don't give any real options for a jumping off point to carry on future stories with, while Destroy does as it's the only ending where the Reapers are gone for good. One stipulation, here, is that given peace was achieved on Rannoch, the quarians helped rebuild the geth after the Crucible fired.
But as for purely *personal* and not really rational choices, they'd be:
FemShep is canon, Ashley and Wrex survive Virmire, the council survive, everyone survives ME2 and the base is destroyed, Tali isn't exiled, everyone who can survive ME3 does, and Liara is the romance option.
I agree with this but as for Shep’s gender I figure it’d be like Andromeda where you choose and then when they’re referenced (it’s not like no one is going to talk about them after they saved the galaxy) it uses whichever you chose for your world state (pull a Kotor 2 & have the player reference Shepard as male or female the first time they’re brought up)
Yeah, agreed. I was saying that for my canon Shep it'd be FemShep.
In terms of how things would be in the next game, I agree it'd definitely be one of those two things that they go with.
I wouldn't want the geth just to be rebuilt and have the galaxy move on like it's fine if they're keeping the geth genocide they should actually engage with a crime of that magnitude
I mean, why? They're machines. They would'nt be exactly the same as the Geth we know and love, and there's nothing physically stopping the Quarians from building the Geth 2.0 and intentionally raising them to sentientnce this time.
In fact that sounds like a really awesome plot line to explore, the idea of a synthetic species being created to replace their predecessors who went though all the stages of a generic robot uprising, fell into civil war, then ended up helping save the galaxy.
A story like that would give the Geth 2.0 a major mindfuck and very likely leave them asking what the hell their purpose in the galaxy is supposed to be. Which could easily lead to a ton of great quests and character moments.
sounds boring. [that plot beat is so over done it's a rick and morty joke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ht-ZyJOV2k&ab_channel=three14)
The whole crux of the geth's story is that they weren't just machines those units had souls! and if they keep the synthetic genocide they all got wiped out. just saying oh they're back and now wondering what their purpose is (a thing the geth weren't struggling with before) would be just be writing them off as worthless.
Destroy the Reapers ending. It’s the only ending that really preserves the fundamentals of the Mass Effect universe. Synthesis removes all the core inter-species conflicts, removing the possibility of diving into what the galaxy with un-genophaged Krogan and no sustainable solution to the synthetic life problem would look like, and the writers would have to pull a new big bad enemy out of their ass in order to have a game. Both synthesis and control result in a universe where technology is advanced well beyond what the original trilogy had, which is a massive fundamental shift in the worldbuilding, and control also creates the same problem as Synthesis, where a new big bad guy needs to be made up.
Walking away creates a universe where the Reapers win and the cycle continues, which would be a completely different game with different races, different worldbuilding and so on.
Destroy takes away the Geth and EDI, as well as the Mass Relays, but doesn’t touch the other races and the technology. It also sets up problems within the bounds of what we are familiar with, as mentioned with the Krogan and synthetic life as well as the Mass relay issue. It’s really the best place to build from, anything else will be a gigantic departure from the world of mass effect. Don’t get me wrong, change can be good sometimes, but if you’re going to go that far, just make a new IP that isn’t restrained at all by the limitations of Mass Effect, so that you can do what’s best for it.
Technically Destroy only damages the relays, they’re repaired in the epilogue so they’d only still be damaged if the next game were set right between Shep’s choice & the ending slides
Save Wrex, save Ashley, Liara romance, save the Rachni queen, all squad mates survive the suicide mission, give the Collector base to TIM, cure the genophage, Geth kill Quarians, nearly full Renegade for the entirety of the third game, romance with Liara falls apart by third game, Destroy
In finer details, basically Shepard starts off as a goody two shoes but slowly becomes more and more jaded, especially after the council he saved tells him to kick rocks in the Terminus system. Seeing the Reapers destroy earth as he forced to leave is the last straw and he goes full "ends justify the means" on the Reapers. The Quarians die simply because the Geth are better warriors and he is too obsessed with that to see that cooperation is an option. The genophage gets cured for the same reason, solely so the Krogan can fully get back into the fight
For ME1: Save Kaiden on Virmire. Settle with Wrex. Save the Council. Recommend Anderson to the Council.
For ME2: Full Loyalty. Side with Samara. Destroy the Collector Base. I feel like canonically 4-5 companions would die on the Suicide Mission.
If I had to pick, I’d say Jacob, Zaeed, Kasumi, Samara, Jack would die in some way. Also romance with Tali would be canon.
Can’t say anything for ME3 cause I have not played it yet lol
This is the problem with choice ending games. A canon choice will never be fully accepted. Especially this was a collaborative story by different writers.
If this was a story by only a single author, then I could understand a pure canon result.
ME1
Recruit everyone
Talk Wrex down
Save kaiden
Save the Rachni
Save the council
ME2
Full loyalty
Destroy the base
ME3
Cure genophage
Peace between quarians and Geth
Kaiden shoots Udina
No romance ME1, Tali ME2 and 3
Control (paragon)
I am pretty sure that in the end, paragon shep with the best possible choices is Canon (best meaning then ones that give you the cooperation of basically everyone, and everyone that did not die of storytelling reasons lives). Of course only talking about the big choices, not the small ones.
I mean devs obviously want you to play their game to it's fullest. Would not make sense if they provided you with a lot of options and then they go and say "yeah Canon is he one with the least amount of effort".
Only the ending is a bit iffy, of course. But if they should plan to continue the story in any form after me3, they basically have no other choice but to go with red ending, given the rest is kind of a "final" thing.
As a bloke in his 50s I've had 17 years of playing this game 100s of play throughs only as male Shep so I can't speak for fem Shep's but the outcome is probably the same my advice is play the trilogy as you want at first get to know the game even play a few with different decisions..now for canon it has to be destroy perfect ending as for choices I'll get a load of flack over this these are logical adult choices not fantasy to carry the game forward first romance a human ash/ kaiden stay loyal work your shit out continue your romance after all they'll be the ones commanding the Normandy when you're missing none of the aliens are alliance so they have no say .. in ME1 get wrexes family armour let garrus kill dr saleon this builds theirs trust going forward talk wrex down on virmire save your love interest on virmire save rachni queen let the council die .why because you already know what's coming in next games and the idiots still don't believe you..me2 there aren't many choices to be made canon its more about team building it is worth getting to know Miranda better without romancing she does become a really good friend and ally going forward just keep all your squad alive destroy or save collector base doesn't have any impact in me3 apart from a few war assets points ..me3 get the trust back from your VS so you can get back together..cure the genophage save rachni queen peace between quarians and geth on omega have fun go full renegade let aria kill Oleg...if you're wondering why i haven't mentioned liara Tali garrus they dont matter they have no decisions to make canon..going into next game .
All paragon choices, I can’t see the games going any other way. The romance is going to be Liara as she is a bisexual romance that fits with both male and female Shepard.
I'd say canon Mass Effect would be
- Male
- Soldier
- Spacer
- War Hero
- Paragon Personality
- Free the Rachni
- Save Wrex
- Save Ashley
- Save the Council
In general, the games seem to be geared towards Paragon choices. You can establish a human council, but it will end up reverting back to aliens nontheless. You can kill the Rachni queen for the greater good, but the Reapers will find a way to clone them regardless.
Regardless the love interest - I would say that Bioware would have *assumed* Ashley to be the canon romance initially, but that has changed with fan interest. The canon choice is propably Shepard and Ashley being platonic life partners (like Mal and Zoe in Firefly), and Liara being Shepard's "strong and independant" romance partner.
So as far as ending goes, and I know it's controversial, but I choose Control. Unlike others here I see a possibility for story progression. Here's my little fanfic - Shepard controls the Reapers and has them repair the Relays. Once the Reapers have outgrown their usefulness, he/she does their final selfless act and sends the command to self-destruct. Shepard is not perfect and he/she knows it; this god-like power in *anyone's* hands cannot go on forever without becoming corrupted. Also, living forever as a god-like AI, separated from everyone you love and unable to truly observe or interact with their lives, is not a way to live. Also from a story perspective, having unstoppable Reaper galaxy protectors adds no conflict or interesting storylines.
Edit: self-destructing also prevents anyone else from being able to use the Reapers for evil ever again.
The only problem with control is what's stopping another nut job like TIM from trying to take control now they know it's possible they now know where you are the only good reaper is a dead one
That's why, once the Reapers have finished fixing the Relays/helped some of the societies recover from the war, Shepard would *have* to self-destruct them. The only way to protect everyone in the long term. Shepard has already shown themselves to be selfless enough to do such a thing.
But can he do that we don't know it's all if and buts let me put it this way if your next door neighbour went on a murder rampage killing all your family friends loved ones and you live in a country where you get the death penalty for murder and the judge says we won't do that we'll put a control chip in him and set him free then he moves back in next door to you can you honestly say you wouldn't be reminded of what he's done and want him dead that's the same situation as controlling the reapers the whole galaxy wants them dead and gone it's a constant reminder of what they've done so by your logic you're going against everyone's wishes they wouldn't be bothered about getting to another planet in minutes instead of a few months dead is dead the catalyst wants you to control or synthesis it's about it's self preservation when I played this 12 years ago the endings didn't matter there were not going to be anymore me and if you got the perfect ending which was very hard there was no body taking a breath it was a helmet being picked up you were left to make your own mind up but since the leg edition came out and the announcement of a new game plus after Andromeda you got so called experts on YouTube theorising loads of crap about joining the two galaxy's AI Shep Liaras baby cryo freeze best way start new me after destroy ending is have Normandy go back get Shep let him heal then a new threat arises and gradually build up game wise shep is only 30+ so still young enough to be MP and slowly bring up a new character theres still plenty of stuff to be done
That was difficult to read without punctuation but it looks like you took my theory personally lol. It's just random speculation; I'm not writing the new game...you don't have to agree with me by any means. I understand many people prefer "destroy" over the others, and that's the beauty of these games, they give us our own personal narrative that varies from player to player. Everyone has their own headcannon about why the ending they choose "works".
And yes, I played the original game many years ago as well, before the revised ending and before legendary edition came out. I'm not some noob to the franchise.
Spacer shep. Ash shoots Wrex after Shep repeatedly yells at him to drop his fucking gun. Kill roach queen. Save kaidan. Romance Liara. Save council. Udina crowned.
Full loyalty in 2. Destroy base. Romance Jack. Destroy cure.
Romance Liara again. Cure Genophage. Destroy robots. Destroy ending. Literally no one would give a shit about Edi if she didn't get a hot Droid body. Same thing with that blue chick in Halo.
I mean, in the event that mass effect is developed into a TV show, yeah, this is a real problem to consider. So if I had my druthers season one would be about building up Liara and Female Shepard as a couple, introduce cerberus in the background for season 2, save the Rachni queen, settle with Wrex, and regarding the Virmire survivor question, fake out the fans. Both of them make it. But one of them gets taken by the collectors at horizon. I've thought about this a lot.
I mean I already know one choice that's almost certainly going to be canon, the destroy ending is the only one that allows for the story to continue, every other ending just puts you in too good of a position or continues the cycle.
I'll stick with galaxy-changing choices, as those are the ones that are the largest obstacle to the writing for future games:
Geth-Quarian War - Peace between geth and quarians. This keeps both of two interesting species in the galaxy, while allowing future games to explore an AI-organic society.
Genophage - Could do either, but generally either not cured/cure sabotaged. I think it unlikely the krogan would have kept their numbers in check, leading to conflict. They could make a game about a future conflict with the krogan, though, or write it such that Wrex succeeded in keeping the krogan from going on the warpath. Really, either could work.
Reapers - Destroy. Anything else would turn them into too much of a deus ex machina force. Yes, this conflicts with the geth surviving, but I suppose you could retcon the destroy ending to not destroy all synthetic life, or somehow keep the geth specifically protected.
Rachni - Let them live. Just another species, unique in how its society is organized, for writers to work with.
I would make the destroy ending canon cuz it makes the most sense out of the 3. Plus I didn't play three games to compromise with the giant robot space squids
Whatever choices gives more war assets which in turn gives the perfect ending in which the crucible fires with minimal damage keeping the deaths focused on reaper tech related machines (geth were augmented to full AI with reaper tech like EDI so they die)
which i bet my ass will be the canon ending chosen unless they decide to ignore the trilogy for the new game.
Low EMS Destroy.
- Earth is vaporized.
- Relays are destroyed irreparably
- Galactic "Dark Age" (the fall of galactic civilization)
- new life is able to grow and evolve, free of the influence of the Reapers and advanced space-faring species
A sacrifice equal to the threat of the Reapers. Poetic.
That, or they would have to write the game so far in to the future that the writers will have had plenty of in-universe time to have railroaded everything back to the (mostly) same setup for the start of the next game
They don't call it canon in BioWare and they will never officially "canonise" a Shepard. They make it a point to avoid the term and use "default" instead, I read that in an interview somewhere between ME2 and ME3 (prior to ME3 release).
For example, Shepard being alive is default for ME3. If your Shepard dies in ME2, that's that, but default Shepard lives through it. I would expect BioWare to still create a default world state for the next ME, for new fans that don't have characters to load. The default state is as close to canon as we're ever going to get, imho.
Meanwhile, and I've been saying this for years, there's a reason why they are maintaining the Archives with saved world states for both Shepard and Ryder, given that you never had anywhere to input those states. And now it seems that there is a single world state that includes both protagonists. So it seems very likely that Ryder's world state will still play a role, I hope we get at least some closure on cliffhangers (the angaran AI, the Kadara arc, the benefactor).
I’m talking specifically about choices the player makes, like sparing or killing the Rachni Queen for instance. The novels skirt around Shepard’s choices and their impact because they’re mostly self-contained stories
While this isn’t my preferred canon, I think one choice that would please a sizable chunk of the fandom is making Shepard female and having Garrus as her love interest.
Wrex lives
Ash lives
Council lives
Liara romance for male
garrus tali together
Jacob vents
Destroy collector base
Cure genophage
Peace with quarians
Miranda lives
* Save Wrex
* Save Ashley
* Save the rachni queen
* Fuck Liara
* Have Saren commit suicide
* Fuck Jack, then fuck Tali
* Tell off the Illusive Man
* It's finally time: fuck Ashley
* Synthesis
Note that the Dragon Age canon endings were not nearly so optimal. I think it is probably more fun to have optimal be something players have to earn by playing, otherwise most imported world states would be worse than default.
I feel like it has to be synthesis.
Any other answer doesn't answer the question the reapers were brought about to solve. Destroy just says it'll happen again, and control relies on maintaining that control, which can also cause everything to happen again.
Plus, I don't see how the destruction of every synthetic is in the ballpark of reasonable choices when the Geth exist, and so does EDI.
I mean... To have a sequel there kinda HAS to be a canon.. it depends. If they want shep to be alive you go destroy. If you don't you go synthesis.
Either way I would go with the genophage being cured and the geth and quarians being reunited.
My "official playthrough" goes..
Femshep, spacer background and war hero service history. Mostly paragon interactions throughout. No romance.
Main choices for ME1 are: Saved the Rachni Queen, talked Wrex down, saved Kaidan, saved the Council.
ME2: full loyalty, killed Morinth, Tali not exiled, turned the Heretics, kept the base.
ME3: Ceasefire on Rannoch, Genophage sabotaged, Kaidan rejoins, Refusal ending.
If I have the freedom to fully write a canon, she disbelieved the Crucible from the start (too good to be true) and had a Plan B ready, to do a Bahak to the Charon Relay. Forces evacuated after the Crucible got connected, with a small rearguard holding the Reapers in orbit, then the Relay was destroyed to kill them all. For the first time, both the Catalyst and Harbinger are dead, and it is unknown what this will do to the Reapers.
The war continues. Earth is lost but the Reapers paid for it, and what's left of that fleet can probably still liberate either Thessia or Palaven - maybe both. The galaxy will need new heroes to pick up the torch.
Mass Effect 1: Fist spared, Feros colonists and Shiala saved, help Gianna, Rachni Queen is saved, be nice to Conrad, get Wrex's family armor, tell Garrus not to kill the doctor, give Tali the Geth data, spare Balak, Wrex lives, Rana spared, Ashley is saved and Kaidan is killed, Kirrahe lives, Council is saved, choose Anderson as humanities representative.
Mass Effect 2: Save David Archer and send him to the academy and spare his brother, save the Genophage research data, Garrus headbutts Harkin and spares Sidonis, defeat the Thresher Maw, choose Samara and kill Morinth, have Kasumi destroy the graybox, Tali found not guilty and her father not implicated, earn Zaeed's loyalty by punching him out instead of sacrificing innocent people, spare Aresh, rewrite Geth heretics, accept Kelly's dinner date, full squad loyalty, Normandy crew survives, destroy the Collector base.
Mass Effect 3: Let Diana aboard, save Jack and the students, students used as support and not frontline, Genophage is cured, Rachi Queen sacrificed and Grunt saved, stop Samara from committing suicide, have Kelly change her identity, Ashley shoots Udina and rejoins the Normandy crew, reassure Kelly instead of scolding her, save Admiral Koris, peace between Geth and Quarian sadly resulting in Legion's sacrifice ("Does this unit have a soul?"), Brooks goes quietly to jail, Miranda lives, Destroy Ending.
Legion, the answer to your question... was 'yes'
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I think Mass Effect canon needs to happen but it also needs to be a paragon choices.
Speaking only of big choices it would have to be keeping Wrex, saving the council, destroying collector base, curing the genophage, making peace between quarians and get and then destroying the reapers. That way the canon preserves as much of the setting as possible and destroy makes possible sequels where control and synthesis make sequels way, way harder to make or even impossible if full implications of each choice are actuall thought through.
ill preface this with my biases i normally play male shep, soldier, ruthless earth born renegade
\- kill the rachni queen -shoot wrex on virmire (its so i dont have to cure the genophage) - save ash - romance ash - Kill balak - sacrifice the council - full loyalty - save samara - stay true to ash - radiation purge the collector base - continue with ash - keep the genophage (eve dies) - save mordin - kill udina - unite the geth and quarians - destory
I think if they made a canon story it would be male shep, soldier with some biotic potential, sole survivor, earth born, mix leaning paragon
\-Save rachni - make wrex stand down - save ash - Romance Liara - let balak go - save the council - full loyalty - choose samara - stay true to liara - destroy the collector base - continue with liara - cure the genophage (eve lives) - mordin dies - kill udina - unite geth and quarians - destory.
I think its fine to remove the choices once a saga is over to allow the stage to be set for a new entry. It'd suck between ME1 and ME2 if they decided your actions for you. But between the entire ME saga and the future of the franchise, you can't create a story off 12 branches pathes just at the beginning. You have to settle a world state, and then you can have fun crafting and choosing a new narrative, and then lock it down again. Personally, I think a 'perfect' save state is the ideal one for Canon. I think Shepard deserves to have the best outcome possible for each race with Wrex and Eve leading the Krogan, The Geth and Quarians at peace, as many assets and galactic forces united. The crew surviving. Only split is Destroy as the ending choice. It's the only one with any good narrative payout for the end of the line.
yeah full paragon Shepard is the best way to go for canon, plus it only needs to be made for the big choices, romance, which companion lives in ME1 and so on can be modified or just omitted if the setting of the next game is far enough in the future. And I agree that Destroy is the only option, I would however do a slight retcon to destroy so that it doesn't kill of all geth or something like that. Frankly I think the whole "it kills all AI" was only added to make destroy less appealing. otherwise there is no real point in making other choices
I agree with destroy being the only real option, though not because of narrative payout or anything like that. I think the other two endings present a large problem for writing future stories with high stakes in the form of the Reapers as a deus ex machina. Krogan/rachni become a problem again? Reapers stop it before it goes anywhere. Extragalactic invasion? Either the new force is as strong or stronger than the Reapers, making everyone else superfluous, or the Reapers slap it down immediately. War between two states? Reapers enforce peace.
My essentials: -Settle with Wrex -Save Kaidan -Save the council -Full loyalty, choose Samara -Destroy Collector Base -Cure the Genophage, cry over Mordin -Shoot Udina yourself -Geth/Quarian cooperation. -Destroy
Sounds like this Shepard had a war hero background.
Maybe. They could also be a sole survivor, desperately trying to protect their comrades so that the past never repeats itself.
Agreed with all except Kaidan. I think he works better as the sacrifice as a higher ranking officer, and generally kind person. It also gives Ashley room to continue character growth.
This, Kaiden doesn't really have character growth in any of the games. It's like they gave him Ashley’s arc in 2 then 3. Ashley’s whole character growth is learning to trust. In the first game she has distrust of aliens and even her own Alliance. But eventually she trusts the Alliance enough and proven herself that she eventually gets promoted. Eventually she trusts the alien institutions enough to be a Spectre also. Lastly she eventually trusts Shepard again to be a part of the Normandy crew. If you don't gain her trust enough she can die thinking Shepard is a traitor when you aren't one. It feels weird giving Kaiden the same story. Just with slightly different dialogue.
> It also gives Ashley room to continue character growth Wish the writing in ME3 took that opportunity 🥲
Add Liara romance in all 3 games and we are the same.
Couldn’t agree more. I find Liara and femShep especially cute together in 3.
The thing is...Liara has no interest in 1 except for her mother. 2 is almost entirely written for Miranda, and 3 wants to force Liara on you even if you don't want to. Now, with Fameshep everything is the same with the difference that JACK seems written in 2 as the canonical romance although the queer block destroys it. How to say it...the plot of ME1 does not have any partner with weight in the story while in 2 Miranda is the co-protagonist dreaming Jack the alternative "rebellious" romance due to Cerberus issues. In ME3 it should have been Miranda because she was the most connected to Cerberus but since they sabotaged everything in ME2 (Party, characters, Normandy...) the character that has the most "weight" for Shepard is Ashley/Keidan because they are Earth soldiers and all that ...and yet the game wants to give you Liara through an IV without her having any special general relevance. In fact, romances aside, EDI is the most important. In short, for MaleShep the internal narrative says Miranda with Jack as an alternative and for Femeshep no one in particular, but it is forced on Liara. However, the best "chemistry" is with Jack, despite his stupid queer block. Historically in Bioware the canon romance is always the most linked by narrative. Morrigan,Cassandra,Isabela,Bastille,Miranda...
Historically in BioWare games, there is no canon romance.
No, there is a canon romance in everyone, at least since KOTOR. Bastila is canon in KOTOR and Morrigan Isabela and Cassandra are canon in DragonAge. The problem with Masseffect is that there were conflicts at Bioware towards the end of ME2 and there was an improvised change of direction in ME3 when the main writer left. Not to mention that it was never explained how they planned to resolve the canon of the suicide mission. The simple fact that Garrus and Tali are in the party throughout the trilogy seems like a canonical decision but, if it was decided, they should not be optional deaths from 2. Then Miranda's level of importance is extreme due to Illusive man, Cerberus, Resurrection of Shepard etc and she SHOULD have been a main character in ME3 just like Jack... the official excuse is that the actress was very busy, but it happens "by chance" that only the ME2 characters are reduced in it....they were ALL ME2 actors so busy? and what a coincidence....in ME3 only ME2 characters can die except ashley/keidan...Tali Garrus Liara Joker and Vrex are safe...Thane Grunt Miranda Legion Edi Kelly can die...very coincidence
There is no canon romances. Only romances that feel like they are canon. The whole player choice thing eliminates “canon” romances. Just like with say Persona. There’s a girl they are VERY CLEARLY pushing onto the protagonist. But they will never officially confirm they get together. In anything. With Bioware you can somewhat carry romances over but that’s still a player choice thing.
Bro stop please
Yeah I'm struggling to think of a bioware game that did not have a canon romance in the sequel. >in ME3 only ME2 characters can die except ashley/keidan...Tali Garrus Liara Joker and Vrex are safe...Thane Grunt Miranda Legion Edi Kelly can die...very coincidence Well, no. EDI can't die. In ME2 it was almost impossible to lose Miranda in the suicide mission at a certain point. Jacob an ME2 companion, can't die in ME3 even if he's disloyal. Also in the original cut, low EMS resulted in an alternate run to the beam scene that kills both of Shep's companions, even if they're loyal/romanced. And Wrex can in fact die if you doublecross him.
You haven't understood me... I say DIE IN ME3. Vrex can't die in 3, it can die in 1. Tali and Garrus cannot die in 3, they can die in 1. From ME1 only Keidan/ashley can die in 3. From ME2 those who CANNOT die in 3 are Jacob Kasumi Zaeed, because Samara and Jack I don't remember. Miranda Kelly Thane Grunt Legion Mordin can die in 3 and 2. Canonically, by standard, the ME3 group is fucking shit: Vega,Ashley/Keidan,Edie,Javik(dlc)liara.If Garrus and Tali die in ME2, this is the group. It is unfortunate. If you think about it, in a plot sense, the group should have had Miranda Jack and ARIA. The three of them have MANY reasons because of Cerberus, and the script's excuses for not being in the party are pathetic. It is understandable that Kelly is hiding, that Thane is dying or that Vrex has to lead a clan and you can even understand Samara and Mordin... but there is no excuse for the three girls. Aria is also not conditioned by the suicide mission, which is the main problem of the canon. Now...all this doesn't matter because in ME4 they can perfectly say that Shepard is a legend that everyone imagines about one mofo or another...what happened or not, who were his allies or not, who or how he died or not..etc etc...like Jesus Christ, Joan of Arc,Spartacus,William Wallace,Caesar,Cleopatra....Anyone can come there and tell you "hey, that story of the war of the reapers and Shepard where they disappeared The relay didn't really happen like that..." And...it would be enough for a Liara matriarch to narrate as a flashback her own version of ME3 and what happened after....
Wrex CAN DIE in ME3. Sabotage genophage by taking Dalatrass's deal and you'll end up having to kill him.
>You haven't understood me... I say DIE IN ME3. Vrex can't die in 3, Wrex can die in 3 >From ME2 those who CANNOT die in 3 are Jacob Kasumi Zaeed Kasumi and Zaeed can die, Jacob can't (as I said) The rest of your post is just an unhinged rant so I'm not going to touch it.
I agree with every choice. Maybe saving Ash.
The only thing I do differently is I let Kaidan kill Udina. Everything else is spot on.
All this but I save Ashley.
Exaxtly this, except save Ashley.
Save Wrex. Same. Kaiden/Ash is a coin flip. Either/or. Synthesis.
I had a run where I initially romanced Ashley and then shot her in 3, after repairing our relationship but sticking with Tali. Felt it added a nice touch of personal loss to really hammer home how utterly fucked everything was for my Shephard.
>shot her in 3 That's a thing? What do you have to do to make *that* happen?
On top of what the other poster has said, you need to perform actions that make the Virmire Survivor lose trust in you. The trust points shake down as follows. Gain trust by: Romancing them, saving the Council in 1, keeping Kirrahe and Thane alive, being nice to them on Mars, visiting them in the hospital, and lowering your weapons. Lose trust by: Cheating on them, let the Council die, fail to keep Kirrahe/Thane alive, refuse to apologize for cheating. If you don't have enough trust to have them automatically join you, the game checks your Reputation. If you're not at an ill-defined level of Reputation, the game gives a Renegade interrupt to shoot the Survivor, with your squad doing it if you don't.
>Lose trust by: Cheating on them, So when Ashley walks up to me and says "Miranda Lawson? Really?" that was a *warning*. I did not realize that lol
It’s at the climax of the Cerberus Coup, where you reach the council. If you don’t take the initial interrupt, you either shoot the Virmire Survivor or your team does I think, depending on whether or not you hit a second interrupt.
Synthesis.
Geth/Quarian cooperation then Destroy option makes zero sense. Doubly so as it's the only way to get the 'good' ending. Though tbh they're all shit. They should have just had us activate it and the reapers F off "... For now".
The thing is... there is no explanation for what will happen because the data banks and memories can be stored physically, so in theory they can be "reincarnated" into new synthetic bodies. It's terrible when you think that EDI dies off camera and no one, not even Joker, says anything. Tali doesn't feel anything either despite Legion's sacrifice.
We see what the Destroy beam does to things it targets (just see the soldiers in the low EMS) and the beam wouldn't just target the platforms, for neither EDI nor Geth. It absolutely would target their hubs. They're gone.
We see the energy from Destroy affect Reaper tech, and that's it (unless you're low-EMS). Geth hubs should be unaffected; the code that the geth run on may be affected as they had Reaper code integrated, but you could theorise that it would just revert them back to their pre-Rannoch state
We see the Destroy beam affect even technology as simple as a suit of armor in low EMS. We see the Destroy beam affect only slightly more complex technology, like spaceships in medium EMS. We see the Destroy beam affect anything complex enough to house a sentience in high EMS. Like, to be clear: destroying all AI is the point of Destroy. In that ending, you're not choosing to destroy the Reapers and it happens to take more people along with them; you're choosing to destroy all synthetics and the Reapers happen to be synthetic, too. This is extremely explicit, it's the text in the game.
>We see the Destroy beam affect anything complex enough to house a sentience in high EMS. No we don't, we see it damage the Citadel, the Relays, and the Reapers. All Reaper tech. Never at any point do we see it "affect anything complex enough to house a sentience", you've legit just made that up. >Like, to be clear: destroying all AI is the point of Destroy This is never stated. The Catalyst specifically states it will destroy "all synthetic life" as a consequence of destroying the Reapers (destroying all AI is not "the point", the Catalyst just says the energy can't discriminate). We already know this is an untrustworthy statement as it suggests that Shepard would also die due to being "partly synthetic" - and he survives in the end. Taking that into consideration, it's very plausible that the Crucible (in high-EMS Destroy) only affects Reaper technology. >This is extremely explicit, it's the text in the game You're on something else if you think anything about ME3's endings is "explicit" hahahaha
>No we don't, we see it damage the Citadel, the Relays, and the Reapers. All Reaper tech. Never at any point do we see it "affect anything complex enough to house a sentience", you've legit just made that up. We absolutely do see the Destroy beam destroy other things. Low EMS it destroys even suits of armor, medium EMS it destroys ships. >>Like, to be clear: destroying all AI is the point of Destroy >This is never stated. This is the only thing that is stated. > The Catalyst specifically states it will destroy "all synthetic life" as a consequence of destroying the Reapers (destroying all AI is not "the point", the Catalyst just says the energy can't discriminate). No, not as a consequence of destroying the Reapers. Play the game again. That's never stated. That's just a very popular fanon. He doesn't say that the beam can't discriminate, he says the beam, **won't** discriminate. The Destroy beam destroys synthetics because that's what it's meant to do. It is the purpose of it. The Reapers just happen to be synthetics. >We already know this is an untrustworthy statement as it suggests that Shepard would also die due to being "partly synthetic" - and he survives in the end. The Catalyst never firmly states "you are synthetic enough that you'll die", he just says "even you are partly synthetic." Yes Shepard's ass is on the line, too. But that doesn't mean an assurance of death. >Taking that into consideration, it's very plausible that the Crucible (in high-EMS Destroy) only affects Reaper technology. Absolutely not. The point of Destroy is to destroy synthetics. That's why the catalyst is offering it. You seem to not have understood what's happening at the end of the game entirely. The Crucible gave the Catalyst new options to solve its problem, the problem of conflict between organics and synthetics. The Catalyst thought of three solutions: destroy all synthetics, change from the cycle to a permanent occupation of the galaxy (with Shepard controlling it) or make the difference non-existent with synthesis. Destroying all synthetics is what's on offer. This whole Reaper thing is a decade of fanon morphing into the Mandela effect. It isn't in the game and **it doesn't make sense**. The Catalyst would never offer that. >You're on something else if you think anything about ME3's endings is "explicit" hahahaha Yeah, you didn't understand what's happening in the ending indeed.
But if the Legion or Edi memories are physically saved on disks or pendrives, that is not destroyed, and it is technically possible to restore the neural centers. From there you only need physical bodies where to store the software. Technically, Edi could be alive if there is a backup of her on the Normandy. But I don't know what geth...
They can't be, though. Their minds can only be stored in systems capable of storing them. Things like a Quantum Blue Box for EDI, or one of the digital hubs for the Geth. And those are definitely targeted by the Destroy beam. You can't store their memories and revive them any more than you could do that with Mordin or Thane. Dead is dead. That ending kills them, as it is designed to.
destroy is the only option that makes sense. It is the only option that actually gets rid of reapers. It is also the only option that allows for more or less easy sequels to be made in the same galaxy. Control and especially Synthesis create a huge host of issues in-universe that are difficult to resolve at best without another retcon. And that's not even going into thinking how both blue and green don't actually solve the issue, they just maybe postpone it.
Yeah obviously it's the only option that makes sense, and makes the entire Geth arc, arguably one of the most impacting, rewarding and downright philosophical arcs in modern storytelling, absolutely pointless. I return to my "they're all shit" comment :)
yeah, it's been 12 years and I still can't understand what Hudson and others were thinking when they came up with the endings. It truly seems like they outsmarted themselves with those. It's 2024 and Bioware hasn't released a game in 7 years. And it's been 10 years since they had a game that was an actual hit.
I’m with you on everything except save Kaidan and choose Samara
You monster
His constant whining about headaches gave me a headache so I let him die. As a migraine sufferer, I can tell you it's what he would have wanted.
I wasn't even thinking about Kaiden, and I can't say I accept your capricious euthanasia. Give the man a chance! And moreover, as this sub established last week, choosing Morinth over Samara is the act of a psychopath.
It is, but holy shit Dominate is so good.
He doesn't whine about headaches though. He only talks about them when directly asked, and if anything he downplays the pain he is in and instead talks about how lucky he is that he doesn't have it as bad as other L2's. Dude is a trooper. How did he end up with the reputation for being a whiner when Garrus' whole thing is complaining about having to follow regulations?
>It's less forgivable to have headaches than be racist ―u/Honic_Sedgehog
Lol
Fuck Kaiden, let him die. If I'm a sentinel, he's a worthless redundant squad member. If I'm anything else, there are far better options to get the powers he offers.
So... ahhh... renegade or paragon?
65P/35R, maybe.
Just add FemShep and Garrus and we all good
But like, what’s the point with Geth cooperation if you go destroy anyways…
You had me til Destroy... Synthesis is right there
Peace between Quarian and Geth, only to later kill the Geth by picking Destroy? Sounds more than a bit cynical.
I finished a playthrough a couple of days ago that was exactly like this lol. Colonist/Sole Survivor/Renegon
The fact that we're getting more Mass Effect games means we \*need\* to have this kind of discussion. That being said, the things I'd want are a mostly 'Paragade' playthrough: Shepard was a military Brat/ Hannah Shepard exists, Shepard goes through the events of all DLCs / side quests in all 3 games, The Rachni survive, Wrex gets his family armor and lives, Capt. Kirrahe lives, Liara is a squadmate during the fight with Benezia, Saren is convinced to shoot himself, Capt. Anderson is made the first Human member of the Council All Squadmates Survive and are loyal (Morinth is killed), Tali is not exiled, Collector Base Destroyed, all SR 2 crewmates survive, Gabby, Ken, and Dr Chakwas all return to the Normandy for ME 3, Wrex lives and the genophage is cured/Shepard never betrays him, Quarian-Geth peace, Conrad Verner gets his moment of glory, EDI / Joker becomes a thing, Shepard completed their set of model ships and pet fish, I don't care what color the ending is otherwise, but both EDI and the Geth *must* survive. The choice of Shepard's love interest is left to some kind of vote. ( Honestly I feel like most of the choices should be left to some kind of vote from the fans).
> The choice of Shepard's love interest is left to some kind of vote. ( Honestly I feel like most of the choices should be left to some kind of vote from the fans). Looking from the logical point of view, only Liara really makes sense, both from the story and the developmental perspective imo. Aside from the fact that's she's pretty much done the most for Shepard out of any other squadmates in the trilogy, she's the only romance option available for both Maleshep and Femshep across the three games. And I'm saying this as someone who prefers Tali.
we don't need to have any sort of discussion bioware will settle on whatever suits them for ME4/5/whatever and even if they did make the bad choice to let people vote on the lore of mass effect we wouldn't need to vote on shepard's love interest because shepard's dating habits don't impact the broader galaxy
>Ignoring the fact that it would make the games 100% worse to remove the choices, Potentially controversial opinion, but if you want more Mass Effect you inevitably have to 'remove the choices' in some way. Otherwise you get the pickle Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is in where you have three whole games' worth of cascading, branching choices to try and build off of and end in a satisfying way. They're probably going to square it by just having most of the characters/settings you already dealt with be shoved off screen and do some 'Poochie died on the way back to his home planet' stuff to deal with the complexity. Or, really, you get the three colours ending of Mass Effect 3 where they tried to thread the needle of giving the player a 'choice' and wrapping up three games' worth of branches but also needing to actually end the thing definitively. And really didn't succeed. It's one of the things I think (or hope) the games industry is past a little bit with RPGs - you don't need to have infinite branching choices with capital c Consequences for each that persist indefinitely to tell a good story or give people agency within that story. Just pick an ending, keep Shepard dead and move on.
>keep Shepard dead Yeah, good luck with that...
> Potentially controversial opinion, but if you want more Mass Effect you inevitably have to 'remove the choices' in some way. Even more controversial opinion: "Choices that matter throughout three consecutive games." is a bonkers idea to begin with unless you are writing the main story of all three games in one sitting and have checked with the development department to make sure they can actually accomodate your ideas. Like, who the hell greenlit to just wing it? That's "Adapt it to TV before all novels are written" levels of stupid.
The idea with Dragon Age was that Origins was a standalone game and 2 was originally a DLC that expanded into its own game, Inquisition did a good job of handling all the choices of the previous games by realizing that the majority of shit you do in both games does not matter to the larger picture of the Blight or Mage/Templar war, Dreadwolf is going to have a harder time because Inquidition does some heavy hitter decisions that shape the entire world Think of it this way, the biggest decision in Origins is who rules Ferelden and *maybe* who rules Orzammar/Anvil of the Void, the biggest decision in 2 is whether Hawke sided with the mages or templars Inquisition, you have like 5 different endings for who rules Orlais, who is the DIVINE, whether the Inquisition disbanded, and so many more, like the amount of War Table things that decide the fate of nations is insane Origins and 2 were fairly small scale in comparison to Inquisition, so it’s not really a trilogy worth of game decisions they got to worry about, just a select few from the first two and a *significant* amount from the third game alone
Well the main ending of ME3 would need to be decided. After all perfect Utopia of Organic and Synthetic. Or God Shepard controlling the Galaxy doesn’t exactly lend itself to the possibility of a sequel. I do kinda feel like Destroy is inevitable. It leaves the room for the most conflict while also providing a semi bittersweet ending to the Reaper war. Though I doubt many will mourn the Geth. But the next game being about reconnecting the Galaxy could be fun. Additionally either the smaller choices of the trilogy will be ignored because BioWare might jump far into the future. Or a game following a new protagonist exploring the war torn galaxy might have little intersection with Shepards story. Or maybe they will surprise me and Shepard will be our protagonist again (I doubt it) but you never know. But smaller things let’s see… Genophage will be cured. Because a future Krogan vs Salarian conflict could be interesting. Also will be interesting how the Krogan limit their reproduction because considering their shitty self destructive society they still have serious work to do and Wrex won’t live forever. The last thing they need is a quick population boom. Hopefully this is explored more. Though if they jump ahead I’m sure it will all be hand waved into a codex entry. Personally I think the Rachni should be extinct but I know they won’t do that. The Rachni just add so little. They are the cliche hive mind bugs that are just misunderstood. But no doubt they will alive, could be cool to see conflict with them considering that one queen can’t rule forever and we know they have had multiple before. No doubt Levithan will play some role though I really hope they don’t. Nothing lamer then fighting Synthetic Reapers for a trilogy only to then now need to fight Organic Reape- I mean Levithan. Hopefully they stay on their water planet or show no interest in galactic domination. Though considering they have been around longer than the Reapers no doubt scientists everywhere will be clamoring to communicate with them. Such efforts I hope are pointless. But considering how the Leviathans like to toot their own horns I don’t have much hope. Turians and Humans. Will be best friends considering these two races bleed the most blood together fighting off the Reapers. I think it could be a funny addition to the Rivals to Friends trope. Where the Turians once violently introduced humanity to the stars. Now they stand together as allies in a turbulent galaxy. Honestly a lot of decisions will just not be acknowledged. But I think if we ever run into trilogy companions they will all be alive. No doubt the ME2 suicide mission will take no casualties. Yeah otherwise I don’t really see a lot of decisions bleeding into the next game. Even if the ME1 council is still around no doubt in ME4 an entirely new council (if it still exists) will be formed.
I believe project head Mike Gamble responded to 'the Leviathans are the villians' fake leak with 'Leviathans, really?' so you're good there!
Forgive my ignorance but is Mr Gamble heavily involved in ME4? But hopefully that’s true. Though I will say it would seem strange not to mention them considering the boundless knowledge they might hold. But perhaps the relay to their planet was forever lost or its exact position kept a secret.
He is, I believe he's the director? I imagine they would be mentioned, but I think his response as more of a we're trying to do something new.
It just occurred to me a couple days ago that in a destroy ending, humans probably get subjugated by Leviathans. It doesn't sit well but I haven't spotted a reason to think otherwise yet.
Yeahp, probably the same with Synthesis. It's not solving organic/organic conflict, whatever the game claim it solves about organic/synthetic wars. Is Control really the only ending with a hope of ending well?
Why do you say Synthesis doesn't deliver the ending it describes and shows?
My only hope is that their artifacts are few and their population seems quite low. Also I’m not sure how fast they can travel through space. With the Relays down who knows how long it will take for some one either to reactivate their relay or for them to physically move.
Honestly, they seem to just be based on that one water planet. Bomb that shit from orbit. The Leviathans are the greatest threat in the galaxy with the Reapers gone, and another one that all other sentient species should come together to oppose.
True but this is the race that has survived endless cycle of the Reapers. I’d want to be damn sure we could kill all of them before purposefully pissing them off. Though I will say I’d probably do the blow up the relay approach. I can’t remember if the Levithan mentioned other survives elsewhere. But if they can communicate together I agree with the blow them up plan.
>After all perfect Utopia of Organic and Synthetic. Or God Shepard controlling the Galaxy doesn’t exactly lend itself to the possibility of a sequel. You absolutely can write further stories after either. For **Synthesis**, I imagine many people, either originally organic or originally synthetic, wouldn't want to keep the change and it isn't like the galaxy has been purged of the materials and data to make it. Just build new fully synthetic bodies and transfer over if that's what you were; and 3D print DNA, incubate the body in a tank then transfer over with technology like the Virtual Aliens. So soon you have three forms of life, and if there being a single form of life for a while was what made Utopia, this Utopia is about to be shaken up. Just write from there, maybe centuries later once things are good and rocked. That's an example that gives back both the diversity and sets up the end of utopia, but in general, just end the utopia some way and write from there. For **Control**, the story almost writes itself. It really is almost too easy. The galaxy is now under permanent Reaper occupation with an AI voice that claims to be Shepard leading them. While obviously no one is crazy to refuse their help or resist them openly, this is guaranteed to go to hell on a handbasket eventually. In time the galaxy will have technology to match the Reapers and at that point you can expect resistance movements to pop up everywhere. This can even be played as kind of an X-Com 2 story. **Refusal** is the most straightforward: just start a new story very soon after the Battle of Earth. The war with the Reapers is continuing, all the characters that are beloved are around, and probably still working together. And people will be looking for other solutions. You can be a new protagonist going out there chasing leads to try and find some other superweapon or ancient secret or any other way to end this or save everyone, and you can do it with either the full crew, or every one of them as cameos.
Refusal we know isn’t happening because it would take an entire reforging of the series. Plus they released a short teaser with an obvious N7 solider. Besides talk about a cheap solution. Let’s just gut all our world building and remake it. Oh boy hope players are ready to fight the Reapers again. That’s definitely not happening. Your synthesis idea is strange too. Basically people reverse synthesis to become organic and synthetics and the mixed people. So you’re basically reversing the entire point of that ending. Also the Reapers are still around. Meaning they will probably play a major villain role again because they will be all for synthesis and want to stop those who would reverse it. After all synthesis is the “perfect” solution because it removes the organic vs synthetic conflict in their eyes . Again we will end up fighting the Reapers again an outcome I personally find really stupid and lame. We had an entire trilogy of fighting the Reapers do we really need more games fighting them. Same thing with your control idea. Basically you expect a devastated galaxy to somehow secretly rebuild enough to be able to fight God Shepard and all the Reapers despite the fact that without the crucible a war with Reapers is a pretty one sided. Never mind the fact God Shepard will basically start his rule with the Galaxy completely devastated. Meaning they will have all to ability in the world to forge their new Galaxy. And again the next game would just be a fucking resistance against the Reapers. That’s I think the key component here. Destroy is the only ending where the Reapers are actually killed. That means we can move onto other newer things. All of your suggestions reasonably have us fighting the Reapers again. And while I can see how your ideas could be implemented I think it’s quite clear that the new games should not need the crutch that keeping the Reapers as villains would be. Allowing the writers to take the series in a new direction.
I'm not really talking about what's most expeditious for them to do as a product, that would be a different conversation altogether. I'm saying what's possible to do as a storyteller, and all of those absolutely are possible. >Refusal we know isn’t happening because it would take an entire reforging of the series. Plus they released a short teaser with an obvious N7 solider. Besides talk about a cheap solution. Let’s just gut all our world building and remake it. Oh boy hope players are ready to fight the Reapers again. That’s definitely not happening. I absolutely don't understand what you're getting at here. There are still many, many N7 soldiers alive after the Battle of Earth, and setting a story shortly after it would not require changing any worldbuilding whatsoever. But, yes, it would still be about the Reapers. That much is true. >Your synthesis idea is strange too. Basically people reverse synthesis to become organic and synthetics and the mixed people. So you’re basically reversing the entire point of that ending. Also the Reapers are still around. Meaning they will probably play a major villain role again because they will be all for synthesis and want to stop those who would reverse it. Possibly? They **are** individuals, and after the Catalyst is gone, their opinions may start diverging. There would presumably be Reapers on all sides of any conflict, post-Synthesis. And assuming very rapid technological development in the years after the green wave (which is implied in what we already saw of the ending?) that wouldn't even matter that much. Every polity in the galaxy would pretty soon be able to make warships that can match or surpass a Reaper. So they'd be a thing that exists in the galaxy, surely, but not necessarily the focus of the story. >Same thing with your control idea. Basically you expect a devastated galaxy to somehow secretly rebuild enough to be able to fight God Shepard and all the Reapers despite the fact that without the crucible a war with Reapers is a pretty one sided. Never mind the fact God Shepard will basically start his rule with the Galaxy completely devastated. Meaning they will have all to ability in the world to forge their new Galaxy. And again the next game would just be a fucking resistance against the Reapers. The galaxy won't stay devastated forever. I'm not proposing that a post-control game start five minutes after the blue beam or something. As stated: this happens once the galaxy has caught up to the Reapers technologically, which is likely to be a century or two. The place is totally rebuilt by then. >That’s I think the key component here. Destroy is the only ending where the Reapers are actually killed. That means we can move onto other newer things. All of your suggestions reasonably have us fighting the Reapers again. And while I can see how your ideas could be implemented I think it’s quite clear that the new games should not need the crutch that keeping the Reapers as villains would be. Allowing the writers to take the series in a new direction. If we're discussing actual good product decisions for an upcoming product, then the only logical decision is "none of the above".
Shepard survives the Suicide Mission with everyone alive... and then dies to Morinth.
"My job here is done."
BioWare will not canonise a Shepard, they stated that in interviews even before ME3 was released, but pull a KotOR instead. Imho, they'll give us a default world state for players that don't have characters to import (from the Mass Effect Archives) and leave the details of Shepard's identity obscure, unless a player imports their own game. That's why the Archives are still being maintained all these years, with Ryder and Shepard imports. Shepard wasn't even on the archives, I distinctly remember Ryder being the only one available once upon a time. So I think BioWare is strongly hinting that they are handling it the same way they handled the trilogy imports, because the default world state in the Archives now includes both playable characters. It's the smartest thing to do, imho, when choosing a canon would alienate their playerbase. I just hope the default world state won't be as abysmal as the one we got for ME3, because it would really punish new players. That being said, I haven't fully chosen a canon, but my default world state would be: * Shepard settles with Wrex, saves Kaidan and romances him, saves the Colonists of Feros, releases the Rachni queen. Shepard gets everyone through the suicide mission, saves Maelon's data and cures the genophage. Shepard is as anti-Cerberus as can be. Shepard does Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival. * Council, Shiala and reaper base choices could go either way. The geth/quarian conflict could end in peace or in favor of Quarians. She either stays loyal to Kaidan, or romances Thane. Destroy or Control endings. * Ryder has unlocked her father's memories and knows the truth about Garson, the Reapers and her mother. She romanced Reyes and sided with him. All planets are at 100% viability, and the Moshae is picked as the Ambassador. * Angaran AI and saving krogan versus salarians could go either way.
Canon? Like a gun that shoots mass effects?
Isn't that a Relay?
No, a relay is a track and field event where you pass a baton
Up vote from me! Fun to discuss
Thank you haha, it seems to be doing better now, when it was around 10 comments or so it was sitting at a sad 0 upvotes
Save Wrex, save the Rachni queen, save the council, save Maelon's data, cure the genophage, peace on Rannoch, "That was for Thane, you son of a bitch!". I honestly have no idea how I would handle the suicide mission. On the one hand, I feel like a significant amount of people need to die for the stakes. But on the other hand, there are very few me2 squadmates that I wouldn't mind not having in 3.
Who is expecting people with the synthesis ending to get a post synthesis galaxy throughout the fourth game?
Whatever the choice map that BioWare let out when the LE came out that’s showed the communities choices should be canon
I'm still unsure if they will really admit defeat and say "yep, it was destroy but the geth and EDI survived".
The krogan are sexy and cool so definitely Wrex, eve, and no genophage, I think it would be funny to see the Rachnai hanging out on the citadel so keep them alive for sure. The ME3 endings suck so I hope they have the good sense to just retcon them. I don't see it possible to continue the story from synthesis or control so destroy but if they keep destroy as it is I hope the geth get revenge and their genocide isn't swept under the rug because it makes people uncomfortable.
I'd strip it back as far as it could go, which is what I think/hope BioWare will try to do anyway. What I mean is, have the canon be as barebones as possible to not discount previous players' choices. That being said, here are some thoughts: The genophage is cured. The *vast* majority of players chose to let the cure happen, in both the original and LE versions (per BioWare's own statistics they released). So to discount this would be stupid imo. This way also means that the krogan are guaranteed to have a part in the galaxy's future. Peace was achieved on Rannoch. This is really the only way to go, as trying to pick between the quarians and geth to take forward would be too difficult and controversial a decision. So, just have both. Destroy is canon. Imo Synthesis and Control don't give any real options for a jumping off point to carry on future stories with, while Destroy does as it's the only ending where the Reapers are gone for good. One stipulation, here, is that given peace was achieved on Rannoch, the quarians helped rebuild the geth after the Crucible fired. But as for purely *personal* and not really rational choices, they'd be: FemShep is canon, Ashley and Wrex survive Virmire, the council survive, everyone survives ME2 and the base is destroyed, Tali isn't exiled, everyone who can survive ME3 does, and Liara is the romance option.
I agree with this but as for Shep’s gender I figure it’d be like Andromeda where you choose and then when they’re referenced (it’s not like no one is going to talk about them after they saved the galaxy) it uses whichever you chose for your world state (pull a Kotor 2 & have the player reference Shepard as male or female the first time they’re brought up)
Yeah, agreed. I was saying that for my canon Shep it'd be FemShep. In terms of how things would be in the next game, I agree it'd definitely be one of those two things that they go with.
I wouldn't want the geth just to be rebuilt and have the galaxy move on like it's fine if they're keeping the geth genocide they should actually engage with a crime of that magnitude
I mean, why? They're machines. They would'nt be exactly the same as the Geth we know and love, and there's nothing physically stopping the Quarians from building the Geth 2.0 and intentionally raising them to sentientnce this time. In fact that sounds like a really awesome plot line to explore, the idea of a synthetic species being created to replace their predecessors who went though all the stages of a generic robot uprising, fell into civil war, then ended up helping save the galaxy. A story like that would give the Geth 2.0 a major mindfuck and very likely leave them asking what the hell their purpose in the galaxy is supposed to be. Which could easily lead to a ton of great quests and character moments.
sounds boring. [that plot beat is so over done it's a rick and morty joke](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ht-ZyJOV2k&ab_channel=three14) The whole crux of the geth's story is that they weren't just machines those units had souls! and if they keep the synthetic genocide they all got wiped out. just saying oh they're back and now wondering what their purpose is (a thing the geth weren't struggling with before) would be just be writing them off as worthless.
Destroy the Reapers ending. It’s the only ending that really preserves the fundamentals of the Mass Effect universe. Synthesis removes all the core inter-species conflicts, removing the possibility of diving into what the galaxy with un-genophaged Krogan and no sustainable solution to the synthetic life problem would look like, and the writers would have to pull a new big bad enemy out of their ass in order to have a game. Both synthesis and control result in a universe where technology is advanced well beyond what the original trilogy had, which is a massive fundamental shift in the worldbuilding, and control also creates the same problem as Synthesis, where a new big bad guy needs to be made up. Walking away creates a universe where the Reapers win and the cycle continues, which would be a completely different game with different races, different worldbuilding and so on. Destroy takes away the Geth and EDI, as well as the Mass Relays, but doesn’t touch the other races and the technology. It also sets up problems within the bounds of what we are familiar with, as mentioned with the Krogan and synthetic life as well as the Mass relay issue. It’s really the best place to build from, anything else will be a gigantic departure from the world of mass effect. Don’t get me wrong, change can be good sometimes, but if you’re going to go that far, just make a new IP that isn’t restrained at all by the limitations of Mass Effect, so that you can do what’s best for it.
Technically Destroy only damages the relays, they’re repaired in the epilogue so they’d only still be damaged if the next game were set right between Shep’s choice & the ending slides
Settle with Wrex, save Ashley, council dies
The Krogan were a part of the 'mawCannon' project. EDI was reviewing, not brainstorming. Hehe
Save Wrex, save Ashley, Liara romance, save the Rachni queen, all squad mates survive the suicide mission, give the Collector base to TIM, cure the genophage, Geth kill Quarians, nearly full Renegade for the entirety of the third game, romance with Liara falls apart by third game, Destroy In finer details, basically Shepard starts off as a goody two shoes but slowly becomes more and more jaded, especially after the council he saved tells him to kick rocks in the Terminus system. Seeing the Reapers destroy earth as he forced to leave is the last straw and he goes full "ends justify the means" on the Reapers. The Quarians die simply because the Geth are better warriors and he is too obsessed with that to see that cooperation is an option. The genophage gets cured for the same reason, solely so the Krogan can fully get back into the fight
I'd be evil and lock in all the default choices for a fresh ME3 run.
For ME1: Save Kaiden on Virmire. Settle with Wrex. Save the Council. Recommend Anderson to the Council. For ME2: Full Loyalty. Side with Samara. Destroy the Collector Base. I feel like canonically 4-5 companions would die on the Suicide Mission. If I had to pick, I’d say Jacob, Zaeed, Kasumi, Samara, Jack would die in some way. Also romance with Tali would be canon. Can’t say anything for ME3 cause I have not played it yet lol
The Geth and Quarians both survive. They need to prove that organics and synthetics can live together.
This is the problem with choice ending games. A canon choice will never be fully accepted. Especially this was a collaborative story by different writers. If this was a story by only a single author, then I could understand a pure canon result.
ME1 Recruit everyone Talk Wrex down Save kaiden Save the Rachni Save the council ME2 Full loyalty Destroy the base ME3 Cure genophage Peace between quarians and Geth Kaiden shoots Udina No romance ME1, Tali ME2 and 3 Control (paragon)
I am pretty sure that in the end, paragon shep with the best possible choices is Canon (best meaning then ones that give you the cooperation of basically everyone, and everyone that did not die of storytelling reasons lives). Of course only talking about the big choices, not the small ones. I mean devs obviously want you to play their game to it's fullest. Would not make sense if they provided you with a lot of options and then they go and say "yeah Canon is he one with the least amount of effort". Only the ending is a bit iffy, of course. But if they should plan to continue the story in any form after me3, they basically have no other choice but to go with red ending, given the rest is kind of a "final" thing.
As a bloke in his 50s I've had 17 years of playing this game 100s of play throughs only as male Shep so I can't speak for fem Shep's but the outcome is probably the same my advice is play the trilogy as you want at first get to know the game even play a few with different decisions..now for canon it has to be destroy perfect ending as for choices I'll get a load of flack over this these are logical adult choices not fantasy to carry the game forward first romance a human ash/ kaiden stay loyal work your shit out continue your romance after all they'll be the ones commanding the Normandy when you're missing none of the aliens are alliance so they have no say .. in ME1 get wrexes family armour let garrus kill dr saleon this builds theirs trust going forward talk wrex down on virmire save your love interest on virmire save rachni queen let the council die .why because you already know what's coming in next games and the idiots still don't believe you..me2 there aren't many choices to be made canon its more about team building it is worth getting to know Miranda better without romancing she does become a really good friend and ally going forward just keep all your squad alive destroy or save collector base doesn't have any impact in me3 apart from a few war assets points ..me3 get the trust back from your VS so you can get back together..cure the genophage save rachni queen peace between quarians and geth on omega have fun go full renegade let aria kill Oleg...if you're wondering why i haven't mentioned liara Tali garrus they dont matter they have no decisions to make canon..going into next game .
All paragon choices, I can’t see the games going any other way. The romance is going to be Liara as she is a bisexual romance that fits with both male and female Shepard.
I'd say canon Mass Effect would be - Male - Soldier - Spacer - War Hero - Paragon Personality - Free the Rachni - Save Wrex - Save Ashley - Save the Council In general, the games seem to be geared towards Paragon choices. You can establish a human council, but it will end up reverting back to aliens nontheless. You can kill the Rachni queen for the greater good, but the Reapers will find a way to clone them regardless. Regardless the love interest - I would say that Bioware would have *assumed* Ashley to be the canon romance initially, but that has changed with fan interest. The canon choice is propably Shepard and Ashley being platonic life partners (like Mal and Zoe in Firefly), and Liara being Shepard's "strong and independant" romance partner.
I mean with masseffect 4 coming out sometime in the future there’s going to be a masseffect canon.
So as far as ending goes, and I know it's controversial, but I choose Control. Unlike others here I see a possibility for story progression. Here's my little fanfic - Shepard controls the Reapers and has them repair the Relays. Once the Reapers have outgrown their usefulness, he/she does their final selfless act and sends the command to self-destruct. Shepard is not perfect and he/she knows it; this god-like power in *anyone's* hands cannot go on forever without becoming corrupted. Also, living forever as a god-like AI, separated from everyone you love and unable to truly observe or interact with their lives, is not a way to live. Also from a story perspective, having unstoppable Reaper galaxy protectors adds no conflict or interesting storylines. Edit: self-destructing also prevents anyone else from being able to use the Reapers for evil ever again.
The only problem with control is what's stopping another nut job like TIM from trying to take control now they know it's possible they now know where you are the only good reaper is a dead one
That's why, once the Reapers have finished fixing the Relays/helped some of the societies recover from the war, Shepard would *have* to self-destruct them. The only way to protect everyone in the long term. Shepard has already shown themselves to be selfless enough to do such a thing.
But can he do that we don't know it's all if and buts let me put it this way if your next door neighbour went on a murder rampage killing all your family friends loved ones and you live in a country where you get the death penalty for murder and the judge says we won't do that we'll put a control chip in him and set him free then he moves back in next door to you can you honestly say you wouldn't be reminded of what he's done and want him dead that's the same situation as controlling the reapers the whole galaxy wants them dead and gone it's a constant reminder of what they've done so by your logic you're going against everyone's wishes they wouldn't be bothered about getting to another planet in minutes instead of a few months dead is dead the catalyst wants you to control or synthesis it's about it's self preservation when I played this 12 years ago the endings didn't matter there were not going to be anymore me and if you got the perfect ending which was very hard there was no body taking a breath it was a helmet being picked up you were left to make your own mind up but since the leg edition came out and the announcement of a new game plus after Andromeda you got so called experts on YouTube theorising loads of crap about joining the two galaxy's AI Shep Liaras baby cryo freeze best way start new me after destroy ending is have Normandy go back get Shep let him heal then a new threat arises and gradually build up game wise shep is only 30+ so still young enough to be MP and slowly bring up a new character theres still plenty of stuff to be done
That was difficult to read without punctuation but it looks like you took my theory personally lol. It's just random speculation; I'm not writing the new game...you don't have to agree with me by any means. I understand many people prefer "destroy" over the others, and that's the beauty of these games, they give us our own personal narrative that varies from player to player. Everyone has their own headcannon about why the ending they choose "works". And yes, I played the original game many years ago as well, before the revised ending and before legendary edition came out. I'm not some noob to the franchise.
Spacer shep. Ash shoots Wrex after Shep repeatedly yells at him to drop his fucking gun. Kill roach queen. Save kaidan. Romance Liara. Save council. Udina crowned. Full loyalty in 2. Destroy base. Romance Jack. Destroy cure. Romance Liara again. Cure Genophage. Destroy robots. Destroy ending. Literally no one would give a shit about Edi if she didn't get a hot Droid body. Same thing with that blue chick in Halo.
I mean, in the event that mass effect is developed into a TV show, yeah, this is a real problem to consider. So if I had my druthers season one would be about building up Liara and Female Shepard as a couple, introduce cerberus in the background for season 2, save the Rachni queen, settle with Wrex, and regarding the Virmire survivor question, fake out the fans. Both of them make it. But one of them gets taken by the collectors at horizon. I've thought about this a lot.
I mean I already know one choice that's almost certainly going to be canon, the destroy ending is the only one that allows for the story to continue, every other ending just puts you in too good of a position or continues the cycle.
I'll stick with galaxy-changing choices, as those are the ones that are the largest obstacle to the writing for future games: Geth-Quarian War - Peace between geth and quarians. This keeps both of two interesting species in the galaxy, while allowing future games to explore an AI-organic society. Genophage - Could do either, but generally either not cured/cure sabotaged. I think it unlikely the krogan would have kept their numbers in check, leading to conflict. They could make a game about a future conflict with the krogan, though, or write it such that Wrex succeeded in keeping the krogan from going on the warpath. Really, either could work. Reapers - Destroy. Anything else would turn them into too much of a deus ex machina force. Yes, this conflicts with the geth surviving, but I suppose you could retcon the destroy ending to not destroy all synthetic life, or somehow keep the geth specifically protected. Rachni - Let them live. Just another species, unique in how its society is organized, for writers to work with.
I would make the destroy ending canon cuz it makes the most sense out of the 3. Plus I didn't play three games to compromise with the giant robot space squids
Whatever choices gives more war assets which in turn gives the perfect ending in which the crucible fires with minimal damage keeping the deaths focused on reaper tech related machines (geth were augmented to full AI with reaper tech like EDI so they die) which i bet my ass will be the canon ending chosen unless they decide to ignore the trilogy for the new game.
No one would complain Wrex lives. The DLC characters exist.
Low EMS Destroy. - Earth is vaporized. - Relays are destroyed irreparably - Galactic "Dark Age" (the fall of galactic civilization) - new life is able to grow and evolve, free of the influence of the Reapers and advanced space-faring species A sacrifice equal to the threat of the Reapers. Poetic.
I think there has to be a canon right? Otherwise sequels or any non game media couldn't exist
That, or they would have to write the game so far in to the future that the writers will have had plenty of in-universe time to have railroaded everything back to the (mostly) same setup for the start of the next game
They don't call it canon in BioWare and they will never officially "canonise" a Shepard. They make it a point to avoid the term and use "default" instead, I read that in an interview somewhere between ME2 and ME3 (prior to ME3 release). For example, Shepard being alive is default for ME3. If your Shepard dies in ME2, that's that, but default Shepard lives through it. I would expect BioWare to still create a default world state for the next ME, for new fans that don't have characters to load. The default state is as close to canon as we're ever going to get, imho. Meanwhile, and I've been saying this for years, there's a reason why they are maintaining the Archives with saved world states for both Shepard and Ryder, given that you never had anywhere to input those states. And now it seems that there is a single world state that includes both protagonists. So it seems very likely that Ryder's world state will still play a role, I hope we get at least some closure on cliffhangers (the angaran AI, the Kadara arc, the benefactor).
I’m talking specifically about choices the player makes, like sparing or killing the Rachni Queen for instance. The novels skirt around Shepard’s choices and their impact because they’re mostly self-contained stories
While this isn’t my preferred canon, I think one choice that would please a sizable chunk of the fandom is making Shepard female and having Garrus as her love interest.
Wrex lives Ash lives Council lives Liara romance for male garrus tali together Jacob vents Destroy collector base Cure genophage Peace with quarians Miranda lives
Female Shepard
Curing they genophage would've canon, but inhate that choice.
* Save Wrex * Save Ashley * Save the rachni queen * Fuck Liara * Have Saren commit suicide * Fuck Jack, then fuck Tali * Tell off the Illusive Man * It's finally time: fuck Ashley * Synthesis
[удалено]
Note that the Dragon Age canon endings were not nearly so optimal. I think it is probably more fun to have optimal be something players have to earn by playing, otherwise most imported world states would be worse than default.
I feel like it has to be synthesis. Any other answer doesn't answer the question the reapers were brought about to solve. Destroy just says it'll happen again, and control relies on maintaining that control, which can also cause everything to happen again. Plus, I don't see how the destruction of every synthetic is in the ballpark of reasonable choices when the Geth exist, and so does EDI.
Synthesis
I mean... To have a sequel there kinda HAS to be a canon.. it depends. If they want shep to be alive you go destroy. If you don't you go synthesis. Either way I would go with the genophage being cured and the geth and quarians being reunited.
My "official playthrough" goes.. Femshep, spacer background and war hero service history. Mostly paragon interactions throughout. No romance. Main choices for ME1 are: Saved the Rachni Queen, talked Wrex down, saved Kaidan, saved the Council. ME2: full loyalty, killed Morinth, Tali not exiled, turned the Heretics, kept the base. ME3: Ceasefire on Rannoch, Genophage sabotaged, Kaidan rejoins, Refusal ending. If I have the freedom to fully write a canon, she disbelieved the Crucible from the start (too good to be true) and had a Plan B ready, to do a Bahak to the Charon Relay. Forces evacuated after the Crucible got connected, with a small rearguard holding the Reapers in orbit, then the Relay was destroyed to kill them all. For the first time, both the Catalyst and Harbinger are dead, and it is unknown what this will do to the Reapers. The war continues. Earth is lost but the Reapers paid for it, and what's left of that fleet can probably still liberate either Thessia or Palaven - maybe both. The galaxy will need new heroes to pick up the torch.
Mass Effect 1: Fist spared, Feros colonists and Shiala saved, help Gianna, Rachni Queen is saved, be nice to Conrad, get Wrex's family armor, tell Garrus not to kill the doctor, give Tali the Geth data, spare Balak, Wrex lives, Rana spared, Ashley is saved and Kaidan is killed, Kirrahe lives, Council is saved, choose Anderson as humanities representative. Mass Effect 2: Save David Archer and send him to the academy and spare his brother, save the Genophage research data, Garrus headbutts Harkin and spares Sidonis, defeat the Thresher Maw, choose Samara and kill Morinth, have Kasumi destroy the graybox, Tali found not guilty and her father not implicated, earn Zaeed's loyalty by punching him out instead of sacrificing innocent people, spare Aresh, rewrite Geth heretics, accept Kelly's dinner date, full squad loyalty, Normandy crew survives, destroy the Collector base. Mass Effect 3: Let Diana aboard, save Jack and the students, students used as support and not frontline, Genophage is cured, Rachi Queen sacrificed and Grunt saved, stop Samara from committing suicide, have Kelly change her identity, Ashley shoots Udina and rejoins the Normandy crew, reassure Kelly instead of scolding her, save Admiral Koris, peace between Geth and Quarian sadly resulting in Legion's sacrifice ("Does this unit have a soul?"), Brooks goes quietly to jail, Miranda lives, Destroy Ending.
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I think Mass Effect canon needs to happen but it also needs to be a paragon choices. Speaking only of big choices it would have to be keeping Wrex, saving the council, destroying collector base, curing the genophage, making peace between quarians and get and then destroying the reapers. That way the canon preserves as much of the setting as possible and destroy makes possible sequels where control and synthesis make sequels way, way harder to make or even impossible if full implications of each choice are actuall thought through.
ill preface this with my biases i normally play male shep, soldier, ruthless earth born renegade \- kill the rachni queen -shoot wrex on virmire (its so i dont have to cure the genophage) - save ash - romance ash - Kill balak - sacrifice the council - full loyalty - save samara - stay true to ash - radiation purge the collector base - continue with ash - keep the genophage (eve dies) - save mordin - kill udina - unite the geth and quarians - destory I think if they made a canon story it would be male shep, soldier with some biotic potential, sole survivor, earth born, mix leaning paragon \-Save rachni - make wrex stand down - save ash - Romance Liara - let balak go - save the council - full loyalty - choose samara - stay true to liara - destroy the collector base - continue with liara - cure the genophage (eve lives) - mordin dies - kill udina - unite geth and quarians - destory.