Poll: Best Mass Effect Moral Conundrum

[Sn1P3r M98]

Killing or saving the council was a pretty big one for me. I ended up sacrificing them though, for the good of the galaxy.

Also, I wish Legion wouldn't have died in the final mission. I want to do his loyalty mission

 

[neil1990]

Whether to dump Liara to do Miranda. Impossible choice...

 

[easternflame]

All of the above but make me pick, and I choose the last one. Destroying or Saving the collector base was hard, I sat down there for like an hour. In front of my tv (true story) its just so hard and engaging

 

[FFHAuthor]

Ashely or Kaiden. Without a doubt, becasue unless you're romancing one of them, you don't really have any reason to chose one over the other besides personal preference.

 

[soren7550]

The only one that made me think was whether or not to re-write the geth or destroy them. (I ended up re-writing them)

 

[The Harkinator]

Destroy or save the collector base, I was a Paragon character but I kept it intact. When evil killers hell bent on destroying you and your species will be coming soon it seems very justified to keep what could be the only possibility of surviving.

Why do I wonder if they are going to kill Anderson in ME3. I don't know anything this is just speculation but he was born in London according to his Bio(Ware XD)graphy so he might return to try and save the city he lived in.

 

[GiantRaven]

I never felt any sort of moral conundrum playing Mass Effect. Your choice is dictated by whether you prefer to pick a blue track of dialogue or a red track, not by what you personally think is the right option.

It boils down to personal choice really. You don't have to be specifically Paragon or Renegade. As a player you can choose the options that you feel suit you best.

There isn't anything wrong with playing either way.

 

[Spacewolf]

genophage maybe but thats only because i couldnt really get the outcome i wanted

 

[TheKruzdawg]

A lot of these made me stop and think about them for a time. The first time I played through both games (which I consider my most authentic experience) I played the game as if I was Shephard, making choices (mostly) as I would have in real life. It was kind of a tie between three of them:

-Saving Ashley or Kaiden. I actually paced back and forth (in game) before running to save Ashley (because she was with the nuke).
-The Geth: For freewill concerns. I chose ultimately chose to "save" the heretics, thinking about the greater good (making the Geth allies)
-Genophage: Choosing whether to continue a genocide was tough, but I think that I chose to destroy the research, as a gigantic force of Krogans roaming the galaxy destroying everything (and each other) didn't sound like a good thing.

 

[Kapol]

While I think the geth and the saving the research would have been the best in the game if they actually were showed to have consequences in-game, they failed in that regard. Until 3 comes out, you can't really say if those were really all that meaningful anyways. It's more like you just had to chose a decision for the sake of getting it done then forgetting about it.

So I'd have to go with Ashley/Kaiden myself. There seems to be a lot more weight when your choice means that one of your party, someone you've met to some degree and has been helping you, and even could be a romance option, is killed by your decision. There is no 'right or wrong' or 'easy option' (though I personally felt Kaiden was the lesser of the two evils to let die due to his problems). You feel the effects of your choice pretty quickly, after all. Though they could have made it better in ME2 by having them pop up for more then one second, perhaps blaming you for the choice you made (I would have rather died then have them die for me mentallity, for example).

 

[Omega07]

The geth mission... i didn`t think about it when i had to choose, but when the mission started, Legion said that there were two options, and i thought about it while going through the mission itself... what frustrated me, was that when i chose to destroy them Shepard said:"we can`t be sure about blah blah blah..." the idea was that they might reach the same conclusions...

but i myself would`ve said that brainwashing them is just pure evil (weird that it gives paragon points though) and Shepard kinda says that you do a favor to them... yeah Hitler and Stalin did a similar favor to all those countries they occupied...

 

[Fr]anc[is]

I'm almost always renegade, so I always pick the renegade option. When my dad was playing Mass Effect I just started saying "DOWN!" to stop him from picking the pus... I mean paragon options. In real life I'm much nicer

I'd have definitely kept the base, but NOT given it to Cerberus. Or if for some dumb reason that wasn't an option, when TIM (not if, when. He's only missing an evil mustache) decides to be an evil git and go power crazy I'd storm his base and kick hiss ass. He should have known better than to resurrect a super soldier and give him a super team, then turn around and be an idiot.

Samara/Morinth wouldn't even be a question. It's just space paladin or space succubus.

I would have kept the data on the genophage, not for any moral reason. Why just throw it all away when some use could come out of it, use it to see the most vulnerable points of the genophage.

I guess the council would be the hardest decision for me. If I didn't already know the outcome would be the same, I don't think I would waste resources saving three people and a shiny ship when a reaper is RIGHT THERE.

 

[Jaime_Wolf]

Ashley/Kaidan was a difficult choice because I didn't honestly know which I wanted to die more - the dangerous xenophobic ***** with guns or the whiny emo idiot with immense psychic power.

 

[Jfswift]

Saving Ashley and Kaidan was by far the easiest choice out of all of them. Kaidan was such a douche. I had no desire to save him, that and Ashley was just more useful all around.

 

[Ace of Spades]

Rewrite or destroy the geth heretics. That was a legitimate moral issue that I had trouble identifying which was paragon and which was renegade before the actual choice.

 

[HandsomeJack]

Rewrite/Destroy Get: I considered neither option a win when I assume the notion of Geth as a truely "alive" being. I had to default to my existing understanding that that no computer program, however complex, is a living being. At which point it just seemed far more useful to have Geth we have the potential to reason with as an ally against the Reapers then to wipe them out to prevent potential future conflicts.

 

[mireko]

I went for the Krogan genophage cure question. There's no reason to believe the Krogan won't just start another massive war if they're cured, but at the same time it's clear that the genophage is pushing their people to become even more warlike and aggressive.

I had to mull it over for a while, and ended up suggesting to Mordin that he could keep the data and decide for himself if he wanted to use it. On one playthrough. On the other I convinced him he'd done the right thing in infecting the Krogan, because fuck those guys for starting an intragalatic war.

The important thing to consider on the Geth mission is that you're not the first to brainwash them. The low-level error introduced by the Reapers is what is causing them to serve the old machines in the first place. Assuming they won't be re-infected, they'll also be very useful in the coming war (maybe that makes me a pragmatist, oh well).

[sub]Samara/Morinth wasn't even a moral question. "Hey, do you want the law-abiding warrior lady who swore an oath to aid you or the PSYCHIC SERIAL KILLER WHO WILL DEVOUR YOUR SOUL?"[/sub]

 

[loc978]

I sat and thought about the Geth mission for awhile, pretty much as described by Extra Credits...
But that decision wasn't half as difficult for me as the Rachni.

 

[Flishiz]

Definitely save or destroy the reaper base for me. Yeah the Geth one was there but in the end I thought it was the rational choice. I wasn't too moved by the genophage decision either, cause I agreed with mordin and thought it would be best for the krogan to be forcefully adapted to an easier environment than their native planet which was nuked out anyway.

 

[Dango]

Definately the Geth mission. You're either killing them or essentially brain-washing them.

Neither of them take the moral high ground.

This.

I didn't play the game, so let me ask:
What was your decision and how long did you ponder on it?

Because I am extremely interested now. xD

I don't consider either more moral, but I chose to brain-wash them. Even if it isn't their choice, they get to live and be happy, and no matter what that's sounds to me like a better alternative than death.

EDIT: It took me around 10 minutes to come to that decision.