I wanna talk about how trash the Assari are. Not in the lore (they are they're as well) but in concept and design.
They made so many cool aliens, but them had to make blue skinned alien who look just like humans.
I would bet at some point of the design phase, some was told to make them "more fuckeable".
There's a sort of throaway bit in Ilium where you hear a Turian and Salarian arguing about what Asari look like and both claim Asari look an awful lot like them, and I think the idea that a naturally biotic race constantly mindwhammies everyone around them to think they're hot would have been a suuuuuper interesting concept to explore instead of just "humans but blue."
It fits with Morinth's little tirade against Samara in ME2 as well. About how Ardat-Yakshi are more common than you'd think and maybe they are the next evolutionary stage of Asari.
It wouldn't fix it because it's just fuckin broken
But ME2 would be better if warlord okeer stuck around on your ship and argued with Mordin all the time
I think this is something that was actually in the game at one point. Mordin and whoever the krogan that was supposed to be on the Normandy at the time (maybe Grunt?) were supposed to have an interaction like the Tali/Legion and Miranda/Jack arguments.
Morinths point never made any sense. Samara even points it out; Ardat-Yakshi can't reproduce so it's impossible for a species to continue. Morinth was just desperate and trying to stay alive at that point.
I mean, just because it's a bad idea and self-perpetuating doesn't mean it's not realistic.
I am reminded of part of the argument that Goldsworthy makes in How Rome Fell, where the emperors started coming from the equestrian class rather than the senators. And they were afraid of being usurped by senators, so they decreased the senatorial armies and divided up the provinces to make the local defense forces smaller. All of which led to more local rebellions and more equestrian usurpers because huge chunks of the empire couldn't effectively defend themselves.
Incarceration is for sure not the way to deal with mages, according to literally every study ever done on incarceration.
Oh for sure, but when every other mage you meet in Dragon Age 2 is exploding in a fountain of blood at the drop of a hat and attempting to murder dozens it feels like the game is going “see!! the Templars have a point too!!”
da2 is desperate to make you think that maybe the drug-addled rapist cops have a point
DA2 is bizarre in that mage player Hawke gets away with a ridiculous amount of stuff, but your mage sister is forced into either the Circle, the Wardens, or death.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
I did not ever find the Templars sympathetic in DA2. They're pretty uniformly painted as out of control monsters except for like, one of them, who you interact with briefly during a side quest. The Grand Cleric is the only reasonable member of the Chantry you deal with on a regular basis and she's continually telling Meredith to sit the fuck down.
That said, the Mages are also painted as pretty amoral themselves and willing to use blood magic the instant they're in trouble, so I can see how that bit of stupid both-sidesism would end up feeling like the game is sympathetic to the Templars in some capacity.
I like the Dragon Age lore (havent gotten around to DAI), but yeah, I could see how "no, these people must be locked away for both the good of society and their own good" to be troublesome to someone.
I recall finding out that Kirkwall is sitting right on a magic leyline or whatever and the magic world is super thin there so demons have lots of influence over mages. Not sure where that came from, if it was a retcon to explain the foolish magery there or what.
You can build it to be decent but it's never a serious single target build like Rogue or mass AoE control/damage like Mage. It's kinda just okay at everything, including offtanking. Warrior brings some really powerful sustain cooldowns though.
If you invest into the Templar tree, yeah. Anti-magic skills are very good in that game. I hate their politics, but like their... action abilities?
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kaceypwe stayed bright as lightningwe sang loud as thunderRegistered Userregular
I love DA2 but I do think the writers really struggled with how to write the Templar/Mage conflict in a way that would make each side appealing in some way.
Like, I suspect that they figured that players would naturally be more drawn to side with the persecuted mages and felt the need to "balance" that, but it's like they didn't know where to stop and just kept piling monsters on both sides. Oops! All Monsters.
I love DA2 but I do think the writers really struggled with how to write the Templar/Mage conflict in a way that would make each side appealing in some way.
Like, I suspect that they figured that players would naturally be more drawn to side with the persecuted mages and felt the need to "balance" that, but it's like they didn't know where to stop and just kept piling monsters on both sides. Oops! All Monsters.
Maybe people should realize that writing a plot where you can 2 opposing sides is going to:
It increase the resources needed to present the game, many of which players then wont see. The. You need to somehow balance them, usually in a way where both sides are terrible.
Thus, you have made you're story worse, for reasons most wont see or experience.
They probably could of railroaded the players in the images and most would care. Like I didnt need to have the option to ally Sovereign in ME1. Sometimes an obvious villain is just better.
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
So I'm getting back into Mass Effect, and I was thinking about my feelings on the Ending of Mass Effect 3 and, more interestingly, what I thought the theme of the series was.
So, a lot of people tend to agree that the "synths vs organics" theme was way out left field and not set up properly at all, but not everyone agrees what the games seemed to be building to before that. For my part, it seemed like the point of the Reapers was that their creators saw that, as more advanced civilizations spread and colonized they eventually, intentionally or not, ended up either enslaving, destroying, or restricting budding civilizations, and that by settling and colonizing worlds they would prevent the evolution and advancement of future potential intelligent lifeforms who were pre-sapient or in the early stages. They created the original AI of the Reapers to try and find a solution to this problem. Their solution, of course, was to destroy the current crop of advanced civilizations, and then harvest them to preserve their culture, history, and genetics, then create the framework to guide future civilizations down a predetermined path where, upon reaching a certain point, they would return and do it again. This is of course similar in overall shape to the plan of the synth thing, but I feel that this theme was much more established and had a lot more lore info behind it myself.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
The rivals system in DA2 was designed so you could dunk on Anders non-stop without losing the only medic in the game, presumably.
Would have loved that mod to run heals on Merrill. My core playthrough was only people I liked in the party, so mostly Isabella + Merrill + Varric (with Aveline as a guest when Isabella runs off all the time). Triple Rogue party is... a tad squishy! We literally could not beat the dragon optional boss, Anders was a requirement.
The rivals system in DA2 was designed so you could dunk on Anders non-stop without losing the only medic in the game, presumably.
Would have loved that mod to run heals on Merrill. My core playthrough was only people I liked in the party, so mostly Isabella + Merrill + Varric (with Aveline as a guest when Isabella runs off all the time). Triple Rogue party is... a tad squishy! We literally could not beat the dragon optional boss, Anders was a requirement.
I've suddenly been reminded that Aveline might legit be the best companion in the entire series.
The rivals system in DA2 was designed so you could dunk on Anders non-stop without losing the only medic in the game, presumably.
Would have loved that mod to run heals on Merrill. My core playthrough was only people I liked in the party, so mostly Isabella + Merrill + Varric (with Aveline as a guest when Isabella runs off all the time). Triple Rogue party is... a tad squishy! We literally could not beat the dragon optional boss, Anders was a requirement.
I've suddenly been reminded that Aveline might legit be the best companion in the entire series.
Aveline was groupMom
She'd get so grumpy anytime you'd do something shady, it was hilarious
Aveline is completely oblivious to any advances made, which only makes her more adorable.
It's a nice night for an evening
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
I guess I didn't need to spoil my previous post, as per the OP
I would love it if we had another Mass Effect game that lets you play as members of alien races, and explores more aspects of their culture and makes them more interesting. Like, the Krogan might not have many scientists, but in universe that could be explained as an aberration due to social pressures external to their civilization, I.E. Krogan aren't necessarily less likely to make scientists, but Krogan society as it existed post genophage might be. That might actually be an interesting way to build on the apparent lack in previous games, exploring how being part of a multi-species interstellar civilization can impose societal pressures to conform to, and fit into a transpeciate societal slot 'appropriate' to them.
Honestly, the Asari is one of the non-human species that seems to have the most range in their displayed cultural tendencies.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
A short play session but a long post. Lots of stuff happening in a short amount of time.
Off we go to the Reaper IFF, literally the only thing in her quest log. We took Garrus and Jack.
First off, I forgot how poorly designed the last half of this mission is. Gah, it's just a slog through narrow passages that are blocked by Scions and on higher difficulties it's just a lot of falling further and further back and dealing with the waves of husks until they finally stop spawning so you can you can work on the Scions while dodging their spam. Then you get to retrace the ground you gave up and do it all again when you go 40 feet further. It's not interesting at all. There's probably interesting ways to make a gauntlet, but this wasn't it.
That said we moved in and all is well and normal. The first sets of husks (and all subsequent actually) are dealt with by using the throw field which is great fun to watch the corpses go flying around the map. At the sniper appearance she happened to see something moving along the catwalk, it's Legion, but she couldn't make out the silhouette as a Geth and guessed it was the sniper and maybe her last squadmember. The logs left behind leave no ambiguity about what's going on. When EDI says we'll have to shutdown the core that keeps the Reaper from falling into the planet and needs to respond to Joker she says "Joker seems to respond best to positive reinforcement, so pick the top choice."
The Legion reveal genuinely surprised her. "A geth!? And it talks? It's my last squadmember!" Then a beat later "Wait, it knows my name?"
She noted it was weird that the super important Reaper IFF component was just sitting on a random console out the in open. It seemed "too convenient" to her.
The gauntlet was dull and uninteresting. Judicious throw field keeps the husks away and the only variation is moving a bit now and then to avoid the Scion spam that drops the shields completely AND has a sizeable stagger to it. Just not a well designed bit of the level. The end fight is better in the is regard and it really doesn't take long to destroy the core.
She was adamant about wanting to take the not-active Legion with her and was mildly worried that wouldn't be the case. In the debrief she rails against Miranda showing up and "acting like she's the boss" during the discussion of Legions fate. She says "I'm totally fixing him" and chooses the "I want to talk to it first" option.
We first check in with Joker to get his assessment, then down to Tali to talk to her but she has nothing to say. Then we go turn Legion on. The Legion conversations are kinda fast paced and she has some trouble following what's going on, but she does click into the "Oh, we're talking about his loyalty mission now" bit. Part of it is that she still isn't 100% and is still not feeling great and still has some brain fog, but it's exacerbated by the fact that, yeah, they suddenly throw a lot of info and exposition at you and if you don't have a math/computing background or have dealt with the idea of a group consciousness like the Geth in other mediums or games that it's kinda hard to wrap your mind around the first time. There was a lot of confusion for her as she had trouble delineating between Heretic Geth, Regular Geth, and Legion. For a while she thought Legion was all of the non-heretic Geth.
I had to walk some delicate lines to answer her questions about what was going on Legion and the Geth and the Heretics in a way she could understand without drawing info from later in the game or from ME3. This is an area where having been through the trilogy so many times is actually a detriment because it's hard to remember where stuff comes up. For instance, I thought the first mention of the Question ("Creator, does this Unit have a Soul?") is in ME2 when Legion very briefly touches on the Morning War or that Tali mentions that the Quarians were spooked when a Geth said or asked something. I knew the actual question didn't come up until 3, but I thought the idea of the question that scared the Quarians came up in one of those convos but it turns out it doesn't.
Anyway, we muddle through those talks with Legion, check in with everybody that isn't Miranda or Jacob and then we're off to take on the Heretics. We take Tali with us. When Legion first mentions potentially rewriting the Heretics she doesn't want to take a stand, so she chooses not to express an opinion in the game on the idea that it should be Legions choice. The next time it comes up though she realizes she'll have to make a choice and starts probing for info. She's still a little fuzzy on the idea of Legion being made up of 1183 individuals. As we progress she says "I feel like this is supposed to be some kind of philosophical or moral choice, but isn't rewriting them no different than doing a factory reset on my phone? Like, why wouldn't we just do that?"
But then Legion talks about the consensus building and the perspective the individual Geth programs contribute to the whole consciousness and knowledge. Then she says, "Oh. It's like resetting my phone, but my phone is self-aware and has memories and a personality. I'm wiping all of that away." Then a bit later it's "Like, if I had an evil twin and I gave them amnesia on purpose and then told them a bunch of lies about their life and changed their personality so they'd be a good twin." She's now truly conflicted since on one hand; Geth believe self-determination is the right of all self-aware things and she wants to respect that, rewriting the Heretics kind of tramples on their self-determination; on the other hand just destroying the Heretics is tantamount to genocide because they have a different belief; on the gripping hand no matter what she chooses the Heretics are essentially dead since their identity is destroyed. Complicating it is the concerns Tali voices about stronger Geth if the Heretics are simply rewritten. One thought she had was "Maybe the Heretics evolve to be different again later? Or all of the Geth?"
So when it's time to make a decision she's not ready. She asks Legion and Legion has not built a consensus and then comes a line where I believe BioWare failed in their writing. Legion says of his 1183 runtimes that "573 favor rewriting, 571 favor destruction." She does not catch that the math doesn't add up to 1183, but focuses on the 573-571 vote and decides that majority rules and rewrites the Heretics. The rest of the mission is uneventful, we blast through the remaining Geth and get out with more than half the timer left. She asked at the end "Did I make an okay choice? Was it wrong?"
On the Normandy we have the Tali-Legion fight. She does not have enough Renegade to choose the red "Cut it Out" option, but she surprisingly has the charm option available to her. She picks that and preserves the loyalty of both Tali and Legion as the two of them decide to find some non-classified data for Legion to send the Geth.
For those looking ahead as I silently am, resolving this argument with the Charm option thus preserving the loyalty of both Tali and Legion still leaves open a very slim chance that she can save both the Geth and the Quarians in ME3. She obviously doesn't know it, but she made it significantly harder by rewriting the Heretics rather than destroying them, BUT by preventing Talis exile without throwing her dad under the bus AND not picking a side in the Legion/Tali argument she managed to leave that avenue open for later. She'll need to have enough reputation in ME3 by the time the choice occurs which probably won't be a problem, but she'll need to do the Admiral Koris side mission AND choose to save Koris rather than his crew and I'm not sure that's the route she'd take. If she saves the crew and leaves Koris to die then she can't achieve peace. She can be rather pragmatic though so it'll be interesting what happens in that side mission.
We talked with Legion afterwards. She enjoyed the "There was a hole" and "Data not found" lines when pressed about wearing her armor. She says "Well he just wanted the best."
All that's left is hitting the Collector base. We make the rounds to do a final check on everybody and buy the last few upgrades for shotguns and Legions new sniper rifle. We trigger the galaxy map, there's no mission to go on, so the squad leaves and the crew does its thing and then OH NO THE COLLECTORS ARE HERE AND ATTACKING. We get to control Joker as he limps through the Normandy. She recognizes names of crewmembers as they are trying to fight off the Collectors. She sees Kelly pulled into the elevator, she's saddest about Gardner the mess sargeant and the engineers though. She knew the "Daisy" reference Joker makes is a reference to something, but she didn't know it was to 2001. She also immediately knew EDI was joking with the humans on their knees crack but wondered if this was the best time for it. She also pointed out that I apparently reference this bit a fair bit myself as I will sometimes say something like "Well don't blame me when you end up having to calculate pi all day because we <whatever decision here>." I did not realize I did that.
The full extent of the attack doesn't hit her until the ship escapes and EDI reports Joker is the only one left. She gets pissed at Miranda for being all high and mighty in the debrief and chooses to give Joker some positive reinforcement, partly because he does better with it and she's not heartless, but also to spite Miranda. We do the rounds to check in with everybody again and she sees how empty the ship is "EVEN DOCTOR CHAKWAS!? NO!" She also points out that Joker is flirting with EDI and generally enjoys that particular conversation.
She suddenly realizes that what removing all of EDIs safeguards and shackles means and wants to talk to EDI on the bridge to see if she'll reveal the restricted information. EDI will now freely share all the things she knows and is pumped for information.
All that's left is the Suicide Mission. She has purchased all the upgrades for the ship and has the loyalty of the entire crew. Not that it matters for this game but she never lost any loyalty at any point. She is resolved to get Miranda killed but is worried it might lead to other deaths. Since there are no missions left she will be able to save the entire crew. We did not start the SM today because she wasn't feeling up to it.
Oh man, the vent and bubble choices are going to be great.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
The question of "who goes back to protect the crew" is surprisingly fraught if you haven't chosen well previously!
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
I sent Grunt on my first playthrough because the notion of sending one person to protect like thirty or whatever is powerfully fuckin' stupid and I figured they'd all be dead if I didn't send the baddest guy around
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I feel like I must have sent Garrus back the first time through. I recall it was a heavy hitter. Still squeaked by without casualties though, probably because I had Zaeed handy.
I sent Jacob back the first time; I'm not entirely sure why, but it probably had to do with his training pre-ME2 and being a good little soldier boy. And then in ME3 his side mission was almost entirely that, so my headcanon jumped on that decision as his character turn for later.
I like Samara as crew escort because she can keep everyone barriered up and her code compels her to be really on her shit in making sure everyone gets through
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Morinths point never made any sense. Samara even points it out; Ardat-Yakshi can't reproduce so it's impossible for a species to continue. Morinth was just desperate and trying to stay alive at that point.
I am reminded of part of the argument that Goldsworthy makes in How Rome Fell, where the emperors started coming from the equestrian class rather than the senators. And they were afraid of being usurped by senators, so they decreased the senatorial armies and divided up the provinces to make the local defense forces smaller. All of which led to more local rebellions and more equestrian usurpers because huge chunks of the empire couldn't effectively defend themselves.
Oh for sure, but when every other mage you meet in Dragon Age 2 is exploding in a fountain of blood at the drop of a hat and attempting to murder dozens it feels like the game is going “see!! the Templars have a point too!!”
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
DA2 is bizarre in that mage player Hawke gets away with a ridiculous amount of stuff, but your mage sister is forced into either the Circle, the Wardens, or death.
That said, the Mages are also painted as pretty amoral themselves and willing to use blood magic the instant they're in trouble, so I can see how that bit of stupid both-sidesism would end up feeling like the game is sympathetic to the Templars in some capacity.
You can build it to be decent but it's never a serious single target build like Rogue or mass AoE control/damage like Mage. It's kinda just okay at everything, including offtanking. Warrior brings some really powerful sustain cooldowns though.
If you invest into the Templar tree, yeah. Anti-magic skills are very good in that game. I hate their politics, but like their... action abilities?
Like, I suspect that they figured that players would naturally be more drawn to side with the persecuted mages and felt the need to "balance" that, but it's like they didn't know where to stop and just kept piling monsters on both sides. Oops! All Monsters.
Maybe people should realize that writing a plot where you can 2 opposing sides is going to:
It increase the resources needed to present the game, many of which players then wont see. The. You need to somehow balance them, usually in a way where both sides are terrible.
Thus, you have made you're story worse, for reasons most wont see or experience.
They probably could of railroaded the players in the images and most would care. Like I didnt need to have the option to ally Sovereign in ME1. Sometimes an obvious villain is just better.
he is my buddy and once after I played through I watched the cutscene that happens when you give him that sword, but if you go rival with him
and I was aghast, he was so furious and unhappy, just generally, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to see this story
Would have loved that mod to run heals on Merrill. My core playthrough was only people I liked in the party, so mostly Isabella + Merrill + Varric (with Aveline as a guest when Isabella runs off all the time). Triple Rogue party is... a tad squishy! We literally could not beat the dragon optional boss, Anders was a requirement.
he's had a hard life... he simply needs a kind friend
I've suddenly been reminded that Aveline might legit be the best companion in the entire series.
Aveline was groupMom
She'd get so grumpy anytime you'd do something shady, it was hilarious
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's a nice night for an evening
I would love it if we had another Mass Effect game that lets you play as members of alien races, and explores more aspects of their culture and makes them more interesting. Like, the Krogan might not have many scientists, but in universe that could be explained as an aberration due to social pressures external to their civilization, I.E. Krogan aren't necessarily less likely to make scientists, but Krogan society as it existed post genophage might be. That might actually be an interesting way to build on the apparent lack in previous games, exploring how being part of a multi-species interstellar civilization can impose societal pressures to conform to, and fit into a transpeciate societal slot 'appropriate' to them.
Honestly, the Asari is one of the non-human species that seems to have the most range in their displayed cultural tendencies.
Off we go to the Reaper IFF, literally the only thing in her quest log. We took Garrus and Jack.
First off, I forgot how poorly designed the last half of this mission is. Gah, it's just a slog through narrow passages that are blocked by Scions and on higher difficulties it's just a lot of falling further and further back and dealing with the waves of husks until they finally stop spawning so you can you can work on the Scions while dodging their spam. Then you get to retrace the ground you gave up and do it all again when you go 40 feet further. It's not interesting at all. There's probably interesting ways to make a gauntlet, but this wasn't it.
That said we moved in and all is well and normal. The first sets of husks (and all subsequent actually) are dealt with by using the throw field which is great fun to watch the corpses go flying around the map. At the sniper appearance she happened to see something moving along the catwalk, it's Legion, but she couldn't make out the silhouette as a Geth and guessed it was the sniper and maybe her last squadmember. The logs left behind leave no ambiguity about what's going on. When EDI says we'll have to shutdown the core that keeps the Reaper from falling into the planet and needs to respond to Joker she says "Joker seems to respond best to positive reinforcement, so pick the top choice."
The Legion reveal genuinely surprised her. "A geth!? And it talks? It's my last squadmember!" Then a beat later "Wait, it knows my name?"
She noted it was weird that the super important Reaper IFF component was just sitting on a random console out the in open. It seemed "too convenient" to her.
The gauntlet was dull and uninteresting. Judicious throw field keeps the husks away and the only variation is moving a bit now and then to avoid the Scion spam that drops the shields completely AND has a sizeable stagger to it. Just not a well designed bit of the level. The end fight is better in the is regard and it really doesn't take long to destroy the core.
She was adamant about wanting to take the not-active Legion with her and was mildly worried that wouldn't be the case. In the debrief she rails against Miranda showing up and "acting like she's the boss" during the discussion of Legions fate. She says "I'm totally fixing him" and chooses the "I want to talk to it first" option.
We first check in with Joker to get his assessment, then down to Tali to talk to her but she has nothing to say. Then we go turn Legion on. The Legion conversations are kinda fast paced and she has some trouble following what's going on, but she does click into the "Oh, we're talking about his loyalty mission now" bit. Part of it is that she still isn't 100% and is still not feeling great and still has some brain fog, but it's exacerbated by the fact that, yeah, they suddenly throw a lot of info and exposition at you and if you don't have a math/computing background or have dealt with the idea of a group consciousness like the Geth in other mediums or games that it's kinda hard to wrap your mind around the first time. There was a lot of confusion for her as she had trouble delineating between Heretic Geth, Regular Geth, and Legion. For a while she thought Legion was all of the non-heretic Geth.
I had to walk some delicate lines to answer her questions about what was going on Legion and the Geth and the Heretics in a way she could understand without drawing info from later in the game or from ME3. This is an area where having been through the trilogy so many times is actually a detriment because it's hard to remember where stuff comes up. For instance, I thought the first mention of the Question ("Creator, does this Unit have a Soul?") is in ME2 when Legion very briefly touches on the Morning War or that Tali mentions that the Quarians were spooked when a Geth said or asked something. I knew the actual question didn't come up until 3, but I thought the idea of the question that scared the Quarians came up in one of those convos but it turns out it doesn't.
Anyway, we muddle through those talks with Legion, check in with everybody that isn't Miranda or Jacob and then we're off to take on the Heretics. We take Tali with us. When Legion first mentions potentially rewriting the Heretics she doesn't want to take a stand, so she chooses not to express an opinion in the game on the idea that it should be Legions choice. The next time it comes up though she realizes she'll have to make a choice and starts probing for info. She's still a little fuzzy on the idea of Legion being made up of 1183 individuals. As we progress she says "I feel like this is supposed to be some kind of philosophical or moral choice, but isn't rewriting them no different than doing a factory reset on my phone? Like, why wouldn't we just do that?"
But then Legion talks about the consensus building and the perspective the individual Geth programs contribute to the whole consciousness and knowledge. Then she says, "Oh. It's like resetting my phone, but my phone is self-aware and has memories and a personality. I'm wiping all of that away." Then a bit later it's "Like, if I had an evil twin and I gave them amnesia on purpose and then told them a bunch of lies about their life and changed their personality so they'd be a good twin." She's now truly conflicted since on one hand; Geth believe self-determination is the right of all self-aware things and she wants to respect that, rewriting the Heretics kind of tramples on their self-determination; on the other hand just destroying the Heretics is tantamount to genocide because they have a different belief; on the gripping hand no matter what she chooses the Heretics are essentially dead since their identity is destroyed. Complicating it is the concerns Tali voices about stronger Geth if the Heretics are simply rewritten. One thought she had was "Maybe the Heretics evolve to be different again later? Or all of the Geth?"
So when it's time to make a decision she's not ready. She asks Legion and Legion has not built a consensus and then comes a line where I believe BioWare failed in their writing. Legion says of his 1183 runtimes that "573 favor rewriting, 571 favor destruction." She does not catch that the math doesn't add up to 1183, but focuses on the 573-571 vote and decides that majority rules and rewrites the Heretics. The rest of the mission is uneventful, we blast through the remaining Geth and get out with more than half the timer left. She asked at the end "Did I make an okay choice? Was it wrong?"
On the Normandy we have the Tali-Legion fight. She does not have enough Renegade to choose the red "Cut it Out" option, but she surprisingly has the charm option available to her. She picks that and preserves the loyalty of both Tali and Legion as the two of them decide to find some non-classified data for Legion to send the Geth.
For those looking ahead as I silently am, resolving this argument with the Charm option thus preserving the loyalty of both Tali and Legion still leaves open a very slim chance that she can save both the Geth and the Quarians in ME3. She obviously doesn't know it, but she made it significantly harder by rewriting the Heretics rather than destroying them, BUT by preventing Talis exile without throwing her dad under the bus AND not picking a side in the Legion/Tali argument she managed to leave that avenue open for later. She'll need to have enough reputation in ME3 by the time the choice occurs which probably won't be a problem, but she'll need to do the Admiral Koris side mission AND choose to save Koris rather than his crew and I'm not sure that's the route she'd take. If she saves the crew and leaves Koris to die then she can't achieve peace. She can be rather pragmatic though so it'll be interesting what happens in that side mission.
We talked with Legion afterwards. She enjoyed the "There was a hole" and "Data not found" lines when pressed about wearing her armor. She says "Well he just wanted the best."
All that's left is hitting the Collector base. We make the rounds to do a final check on everybody and buy the last few upgrades for shotguns and Legions new sniper rifle. We trigger the galaxy map, there's no mission to go on, so the squad leaves and the crew does its thing and then OH NO THE COLLECTORS ARE HERE AND ATTACKING. We get to control Joker as he limps through the Normandy. She recognizes names of crewmembers as they are trying to fight off the Collectors. She sees Kelly pulled into the elevator, she's saddest about Gardner the mess sargeant and the engineers though. She knew the "Daisy" reference Joker makes is a reference to something, but she didn't know it was to 2001. She also immediately knew EDI was joking with the humans on their knees crack but wondered if this was the best time for it. She also pointed out that I apparently reference this bit a fair bit myself as I will sometimes say something like "Well don't blame me when you end up having to calculate pi all day because we <whatever decision here>." I did not realize I did that.
The full extent of the attack doesn't hit her until the ship escapes and EDI reports Joker is the only one left. She gets pissed at Miranda for being all high and mighty in the debrief and chooses to give Joker some positive reinforcement, partly because he does better with it and she's not heartless, but also to spite Miranda. We do the rounds to check in with everybody again and she sees how empty the ship is "EVEN DOCTOR CHAKWAS!? NO!" She also points out that Joker is flirting with EDI and generally enjoys that particular conversation.
She suddenly realizes that what removing all of EDIs safeguards and shackles means and wants to talk to EDI on the bridge to see if she'll reveal the restricted information. EDI will now freely share all the things she knows and is pumped for information.
All that's left is the Suicide Mission. She has purchased all the upgrades for the ship and has the loyalty of the entire crew. Not that it matters for this game but she never lost any loyalty at any point. She is resolved to get Miranda killed but is worried it might lead to other deaths. Since there are no missions left she will be able to save the entire crew. We did not start the SM today because she wasn't feeling up to it.