Quarians vs. Geth [ME3 SPOILERS]

[Xaio30]

I just got to the point where I decide the fate of both Quarians and Geth with the hopes that I could make them join each other.

So when Legion started uploading the reaper data before Tali had a chance to convince the fleet to pull back, I begun to panic.

I told Legion to continue uploading in hope that I would get a Para/Rene test before it was over, but instead I had to see the fleet burning up and Tali killing herself.

I tried the other option, still without a choice to bring them together, so I begun searching online. Apparently, there is a really specific way to bring peace to their conflict that you have to start back in ME2. Bullshit.

What exactly, besides those plot-flags, is stopping Shepard from shouting in the damn radio to make the Quarians withdraw? This makes me feel like my entire playthrough of the second and third game this far has been for nothing as I was hoping to bring them peace from the beginning.

Hell, I even tried to edit my save file to make it work, but to no avail.

[HEADING=2]God fucking damn it.[/HEADING]

/rage

 

[Samiii]

Maybe spoilers?

 

[endtherapture]

Both Legion and Tali have to be loyal, that's the only way I think you can do it. So back to ME2 if you want to work things out.

Quarians will only listen to Tali. You see how much contempt they show to him, so they're not going to listen to him.

 

[Flamezdudes]

Basically there are lots of things which contribute to being able to bring peace to them.

http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Priority:_Rannoch

Detailed at the bottom of the page.

 

[Fuhrlock]

The 'plot flags' as you call them mostly make sense with respect to whether the fleet would actually take on shepherds advice. Firstly if Tali was exiled in ME2 that's one less admiral supporting you, and if you didn't save admiral Zaal'Korris that's the only other admiral who wants peace out of the equation. Stoping the fleet taking losses from the fighters helps remove some of the quarian 'all in' mindset as less ships have been lost while shep gains a greater understanding of the geth and the morning war through entering the consensus.As mentioned before resolving the Tali/legion loyalty conflict with both being loyal essentially is a founding basis for any quarian-geth relationship. Lastly destorying/rewriting the heretics in ME2 further shows that the geth have no desire to be involved with the reapers and giving Shep more negotiating power with respect to pointing out that it was the quarians that were in the wrong.

Getting the peaceful resolution isn't all that difficult if in ME2 you just aimed for the best outcomes to Tali and Legions loyalty missions and loyalty conflicts. As for the influence of the Rannoch side missions the dialogue makes it pretty clear of Zaal'Korris' importance to the civillian fleet and his stance on the war (if somehow you had missed it in ME2).

I found peace easy to obtain on my first playthrough without looking it up, but even if others don't then that's a good thing in my opinion since essentially you're trying to end a 300 year war in the space of about 30 seconds by either charming/intmidating an entire race into the error of their ways.

 

[Xaio30]

Maybe spoilers?

Read the title?

The 'plot flags' as you call them

Well, they are Boolean values that alter the plot. Also, Shepard just had to convince them to stand back for a minute(by lying or persuading or whatever) so the Geth could explain themselves officially. Thanks for the other info though.

 

[RJ 17]

Looks like you've already got your answer so I won't bother repeating it. I will say, though, that I'm on my straight-as-an-arrow Renegade playthrough of ME, just now getting up to

Which takes place on Tuchanka in which you shoot Mordin in the back, betray Wrex - one of the best friends you had in the galaxy - and doom an entire race to extinction.

And besides that, I am NOT looking forward to

Which is, apparently, to pull the Renegade Conversation Trigger like, 4 times in a row to repeatedly shoot Legion over and over until he finally falls over dead.

Seriously...I had a hard enough pulling off

<spoiler=This huge inexplicable betrayal for my pure Renegade playthrough of ME 2>In which you just up and stab Samara just right in her blue back...killing her for absolutely NO reason at all...she even says "I've already pledged myself to your service!" before you make your choice. There is no logical reason to take Morinth over her.......except to unlock Dominate, one of the best abilities in ME2

I am NOT looking forward to becoming a war criminal. But I GOT'S ta do it! Apparently I get to look forward to Wrex hunting my ass down on the Citadel later on.

 

[Ascarus]

I am NOT looking forward to becoming a war criminal. But I GOT'S ta do it! Apparently I get to look forward to Wrex hunting my ass down on the Citadel later on.

i could not bring myself to ..

Spoiler

choosing to destroy the geth.

it just doesn't make any fucking sense in the context of trying to build as massive an armada as possible to confront the reapers with.

and while

Spoiler

shooting mordin

left me feeling pretty hollow, i was surprisingly laughing when i had not one, but three chances to

Spoiler

shoot wrex before he died.

i am not sure why because i really liked that guy.

 

[RJ 17]

I am NOT looking forward to becoming a war criminal. But I GOT'S ta do it! Apparently I get to look forward to Wrex hunting my ass down on the Citadel later on.

i could not bring myself to ..

Spoiler

choosing to destroy the geth.

it just doesn't make any fucking sense in the context of trying to build as massive an armada as possible to confront the reapers with.

With regards to this one, there actually is contextual reason to pick the option you don't understand. Quite simply: Shepard spent the entire first game fighting the Geth. It's really understandable that if given the chance to destroy millions of Geth that are against him - which Legion even says there's no promise that they won't start serving the Reapers again...and as it turns out they do - he'd gladly take that option. It's been a while, so I may be wrong on this, but as I recall the "renegade" (bottom right) option is actually "rewrite" while the "paragon" (top right) is "destroy". Anyways, the rational behind destroying the heretics in ME 2 would be "I'm not adding to my forces, but I sure as hell am taking out a huge chunk of the enemy's."

To me, making that choice is a infinitely more understandable than the event that I mentioned in the final spoiler box in my original response to this topic. THAT just makes absolutely no sense no matter what context you put it in.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I am NOT looking forward to becoming a war criminal. But I GOT'S ta do it! Apparently I get to look forward to Wrex hunting my ass down on the Citadel later on.

i could not bring myself to ..

Spoiler

choosing to destroy the geth.

it just doesn't make any fucking sense in the context of trying to build as massive an armada as possible to confront the reapers with.

With regards to this one, there actually is contextual reason to pick the option you don't understand. Quite simply: Shepard spent the entire first game fighting the Geth. It's really understandable that if given the chance to destroy millions of Geth that are against him - which Legion even says there's no promise that they won't start serving the Reapers again...and as it turns out they do - he'd gladly take that option. It's been a while, so I may be wrong on this, but as I recall the "renegade" (bottom right) option is actually "rewrite" while the "paragon" (top right) is "destroy". Anyways, the rational behind destroying the heretics in ME 2 would be "I'm not adding to my forces, but I sure as hell am taking out a huge chunk of the enemy's."

To me, making that choice is a infinitely more understandable than the event that I mentioned in the final spoiler box in my original response to this topic. THAT just makes absolutely no sense no matter what context you put it in.

Spoiler

Rewriting counts as Paragon and destroying them counts as Renegade.

 

[RJ 17]

I am NOT looking forward to becoming a war criminal. But I GOT'S ta do it! Apparently I get to look forward to Wrex hunting my ass down on the Citadel later on.

i could not bring myself to ..

Spoiler

choosing to destroy the geth.

it just doesn't make any fucking sense in the context of trying to build as massive an armada as possible to confront the reapers with.

With regards to this one, there actually is contextual reason to pick the option you don't understand. Quite simply: Shepard spent the entire first game fighting the Geth. It's really understandable that if given the chance to destroy millions of Geth that are against him - which Legion even says there's no promise that they won't start serving the Reapers again...and as it turns out they do - he'd gladly take that option. It's been a while, so I may be wrong on this, but as I recall the "renegade" (bottom right) option is actually "rewrite" while the "paragon" (top right) is "destroy". Anyways, the rational behind destroying the heretics in ME 2 would be "I'm not adding to my forces, but I sure as hell am taking out a huge chunk of the enemy's."

To me, making that choice is a infinitely more understandable than the event that I mentioned in the final spoiler box in my original response to this topic. THAT just makes absolutely no sense no matter what context you put it in.

Spoiler

Rewriting counts as Paragon and destroying them counts as Renegade.

Ahhhh, so I was mixed up. As I said it's been a while since I played through ME 2 so I couldn't quite recall which way the options were arranged. Fair enough though. The point was that there is justification for the renegade option in that choice...unlike with the conflict between Morinth and Samara. You could say "Well RenegadeShep thought Samara's strict adherence to a code of unquestionable justice would get in the way of his extremely loose interpretations of the law." But even that doesn't work when you consider the fact that the vow of service Samara performs to join Shepard says that she'll set aside her code to serve him. His morals become her morals. His will becomes her code.

There literally is absolutely NO reason to betray her.

 

[Zen Toombs]

i could not bring myself to ..

Spoiler

choosing to destroy the geth.

it just doesn't make any fucking sense in the context of trying to build as massive an armada as possible to confront the reapers with.

With regards to this one, there actually is contextual reason to pick the option you don't understand. Quite simply: Shepard spent the entire first game fighting the Geth. It's really understandable that if given the chance to destroy millions of Geth that are against him - which Legion even says there's no promise that they won't start serving the Reapers again...and as it turns out they do - he'd gladly take that option. It's been a while, so I may be wrong on this, but as I recall the "renegade" (bottom right) option is actually "rewrite" while the "paragon" (top right) is "destroy". Anyways, the rational behind destroying the heretics in ME 2 would be "I'm not adding to my forces, but I sure as hell am taking out a huge chunk of the enemy's."

To me, making that choice is a infinitely more understandable than the event that I mentioned in the final spoiler box in my original response to this topic. THAT just makes absolutely no sense no matter what context you put it in.[/quote]

Spoiler: Actually,

the Renegade option is "destroy" and the paragon option is "rewrite". It's understandable why you're confused though - [Paragon]Shep spends the entire previous part of the mission talking about how the Geth are people too, and rewriting is unethical while [Renegade]Shep goes "eh, who cares if we rewrite? Just robots anyways.". In fact, almost every playthrough I did had Shepard choosing the option that was opposite of normal alignment, because spamming one or the other results in some serious inconsistencies.

EDIT: Ninja'd. However, Comment on Samara:

Spoiler: There is a reason to kill her over Morinth.

If you're a scary ultra-Renegade[Shep], Samara sometimes says that once she is no longer under oath to follow you, she will hunt you down. Morinth is a monster, but she's an easily controlled one. Samara would be the greater threat to Shep, assuming Shep isn't stupid enough to sleep with Morinth.

Note that I totally saved Samara anyways. The above is just for reference.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip

Yeah, and that's actually where my confusion comes from. I remember there being some sort of mix-up during that particular mission, and that's what it was.

And yeah, I remember that as well. In order to play a constistant Shepard on that mission you actually have to pay attention to how the conversation is progressing throughout the mission and pick the right conversation choices accordingly.

 

[Freechoice]

This thread made me think. People just want their idealized conclusions and plot movements. They'll metagame to get it. Is it then not an immersive experience, but something to be reloaded until idealized?

Ending still sucked, but this made me rethink the fans.

 

[Zeraki]

I think you need to save Admiral Koris if you didn't do that. And your reputation needs to be high(it should be almost maxed out by that point in the game if you were doing the side missions and fetch quests). Tali and Legion need to be loyal from Mass Effect 2... and that's all I can think of right now.

 

[Zen Toombs]

This thread made me think. People just want their idealized conclusions and plot movements. They'll metagame to get it. Is it then not an immersive experience, but something to be reloaded until idealized?

Eh, I don't.

Spoiler: I thought I killed

Grunt after I chose to save the Rachni queen again, my pulse was racing throughout the survival mission, I was horrified that saving the council would cost me the game (that one was a bit stupid but still), etc etc.

I don't really care about the Meta, I care about the story.

Snip

Yeah, and that's actually where my confusion comes from. I remember there being some sort of mix-up during that particular mission, and that's what it was.

And yeah, I remember that as well. In order to play a constistant Shepard on that mission you actually have to pay attention to how the conversation is progressing throughout the mission and pick the right conversation choices accordingly.

I will point out that the mix up thing happens often - [Paragon]Shep goes "oh, be nice to cerberus" and then five minutes later says "curse you cerberus, I hate you and don't want to be friends and stuff!". That's why most of my Shep's aren't purely renegade or paragon - they have personalities, and I choose based upon those.

Also take a look at my post, as it contains a response to your Samara predicament.

 

[RJ 17]

I will point out that the mix up thing happens often - [Paragon]Shep goes "oh, be nice to cerberus" and then five minutes later says "curse you cerberus, I hate you and don't want to be friends and stuff!". That's why most of my Shep's aren't purely renegade or paragon - they have personalities, and I choose based upon those.

Also take a look at my post, as it contains a response to your Samara predicament.

Yeah I read it, I was typing up an edit for my own post to comment on it but guessed (correctly) that you'd have a new post for me to respond to anyways. But first, with regards to Shepard's personality, the majority of my Shepards (I've got like, 9...seriously.) are varied. Some might lean Renegade but do a good mix while others lean Paragon but still mix it up. Think I've got one that I play as myself. "If I were in this position, this is what I'd do/say."

However, I wouldn't consider my ME experience complete if I didn't have 1 playthrough that was Jedi Master Paragon (making nothing but blue choices all the way through) and another that is Sith Lord Renegade (making nothing be red choices all the way through).

As for the edit I had mentioned, here it is:

Edit: As for Samara, I can kinda see that point. However I don't think that anything Shepard does in ME 2 could be considered "evil" or "corrupt". There's always a strong justification for what he does and while ReneShep definitely takes an "ends justify the means" approach to things, you really can't question the validity (or sanity ) of the Renegade options he makes...at least not in ME 2. He may freely kill those who do not cooperate with him, but when you first see Samara that's actually exactly what she's in the process of doing, herself.

But that brings up something I've found kinda funny. ReneShep in ME 1 is just kinda a jerk. A strict military officer who doesn't take any BS and expects things to get done. ReneShep in ME 2 is the rogue cop shunned from the law but doing whatever it takes to get the job done and stop the Collectors. Since he's no longer under Council authority, he lets his "wicked" side flourish by pushing uncooperative mercs out of 1K story windows and such. In ME 3, though....like I said in my first response: he's a borderline war criminal who's just an absolutely heartless bastard for doing things like the Renegade resolution for Tuchanka...killing someone that if it weren't for them he could have never even attempted to fight the Collectors. As with the previous games, he's justified in doing it (in that it WILL gain him something very useful), at least...To pull that trigger, kill Mordin, and doom an entire race whose unified leader just happened to be one of your best friends in the galaxy.

 

[Goofguy]

I definitely preferred the morality system of ME3 over ME2. It became apparent about mid-way through ME2 that there would be hard Paragon/Renegade checks; this forced players to have to be full Paragon or Renegade in order to defuse some tense situations. This took a lot of the fun out of playing your Shepard the way you want.

Meanwhile, in my ME3 playthrough, I was about 3/4 Paragon to 1/4 Renegade. The Reputation system works great for providing more options during those pivotal conversations.

OT: No need to go in to the Geth/Quarian conflict resolution means, that's been taken care of. However, I too first shat bricks when I was presented with only the two options. Fortunately, I had done enough of the pre-requisites to enable me to go with the best option.

 

[RJ 17]

Quite simply: Shepard spent the entire first game fighting the Geth. It's really understandable that if given the chance to destroy millions of Geth that are against him - which Legion even says there's no promise that they won't start serving the Reapers again...and as it turns out they do - he'd gladly take that option. It's been a while, so I may be wrong on this, but as I recall the "renegade" (bottom right) option is actually "rewrite" while the "paragon" (top right) is "destroy". Anyways, the rational behind destroying the heretics in ME 2 would be "I'm not adding to my forces, but I sure as hell am taking out a huge chunk of the enemy's."

To me, making that choice is a infinitely more understandable than the event that I mentioned in the final spoiler box in my original response to this topic. THAT just makes absolutely no sense no matter what context you put it in.

I would point out that brainwashing a giant chunk of a population can be considered very evil.

And I would point out what ReneShep points out at the beginning of that mission: you cannot apply human/organic morality to synthetic lifeforms. They are, at their core, nothing but computer programs. Modifying them is no different than modifying any other computer program.

This is actually why, according to organic morality, BOTH choices would be absolutely unthinkable to perform if you were considering doing so on an organic population. This is exactly what the writers were going for. Brainwash millions and FORCE them to believe somemthing that they originally do not, or just straight up commit mass genocide since they disagree with you. Both would be the actions of a ruthless dictator if we were dealing with organics, but we're not. Thus the moral quandry that revolves around that entire mission.