FINISHED

[trinityvixen]

Well, not really. There's much more to do. I need to play all over again as evil (and coincidentally male) Shepard. And seduce either Miranda or Samara. I must be able to get Miranda, but Samara came on strong at the end there. I'd do her. (And I will, too.)

I should really celebrate by going to bed early. Instead, I'm starting the game from the save right before the last boss to get an achievement I missed. Because I'm awesome that way.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I played through Mass Effect at least four times, and I still need to finish there with the fourth character. I was really annoyed at the structure of the achievements there such that unless you had a plan for how you'd game, you had to play through four times (as opposed to three) in order to get all the achievements. This is something that Mass Effect 2 greatly improved upon. If I chose to do side-quests enough (which I always do, even on replays), I could get most, if not all, the achievements. (And about the only one I didn't get was the one for playing on insanity difficulty. I'll do that one later. When I've had time to sleep and do other things for a while.)

(I'm playing through my first run as a vanguard according to my own personality, which is essentially "impatient paragon").

I would love to do this. But as a I mentioned, I feel incredibly guilty unless I'm the paragon of paragons the first time through. I hit that guy in Omega who wanted to sign up as a merc because he was annoying and then fretted about it for an age. Playing a renegade is the hardest part about playing the game, but I do look forward to not wincing every time I misbehave.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I was quite happy to snatch the idiot kid's gun, which was a paragon action. The only times I've been taking renegade actions are when dumb henchmen are trying to intimidate and I don't see much need to keep them alive. Like zapping the merc leader at the start of the Garrus/Archangel mission. Also I tend to take neutral positions on the more controversial options, like most of the dialogue on the genophage.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I hope I can still be suitably renegade in order to have those conversation options despite the fact that I won't be doing anything mean to any of my team members. I can't do that. I just can't.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I maxed out paragon by going for the level 4 Assault Mastery that includes the bonus paragon points, but I definitely had a good quarter of the renegade bar as well. Sometimes it just made more sense. The only time I was renegade when I didn't want to be was Zaeed's (the DLC guy) loyalty mission. Unless you're swimming in paragon points, you pretty much need to go renegade or it's an instant loss, and I did it really early in the game so it was the only option.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Really? I did the mission pretty early (I had only gotten Miranda, Jacob, Garrus, Zaeed, and Mordin, and it was the first loyalty mission I tried), went with the main paragon option (saving the people instead of going after the villain), and did just fine. Or are you referring to a different decision?

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

No, that's the one. I saved the peoples and the bad guy escaped. After that there was a greyed out paragon option that I couldn't select and no combination of the regular choices seemed to make him loyal. He was less pissed in some of them than others, but no inferno grenade.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

Odd. I did that pretty early, first loyalty mission, I don't think I'd even picked up any other characters, and I got the Paragon option (of course, the "paragon" option is to put a gun to his head and lecture him about who's in charge...).
Then again, I do tend to go bananas being a nice guy, so I must have been a bit ahead of the curse :).
I did feel a bit bad that the guy escaped, but if he hadn't tried to burn down the facility, we so would have got the guy >