Today, partly in jest, I made a comment about replaying the entire Mass Effect trilogy again. I found myself this afternoon reading posts in a topic about the ending of Mass Effect 3. At first I was surprised at how heated the conversations about this still are. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. I, like many others truly love this trilogy. Maybe we all don't love the third game. But a lot of us love the other two. And we like the third. I personally love everything about it. The characters. The universe and lore. The art style. The game play. It is also one of those rare type of games for me, that I can find myself actually replaying the game more than one or twice. I love all three games. I have gripes myself about some things. But the good vastly out weighs the bad.

So without getting too much into all that, I found myself sitting here tonight starting a new play-through of the first Mass Effect. And I figured I would post a blog about it. Because why not.

This whole idea got into my head based on a couple of things. One, I never played any of the games as a renegade. I found myself always playing as the paragon. Or trying to find the middle ground in most situations. And I would like to see the games from the other side of the coin. What things change and how the interactions might play out differently if Shepard is just a total asshole every chance he gets. The second was I never played the last two DLC for Mass Effect 3. So this is a perfect excuse to buy those when I get to that game. And third, trophy clean ups. Since I bought the trilogy for PS3 and never really played anything past the first games single play-through.

So with that, I sat down at my PS3 and loaded up the game. The first thing I decided was that I was not going to use the character I used the first time I played through. I was going to make a fresh one. After picking a silly name, Englebert, I then picked the Colony background. I figured since I am going to intentionally be a dick, this was the best background for that. Trying to give him reasons as to why he is such a bastard. He watched his entire family and friends be murdered, and those who survived get hauled off by slavers. Only to then be picked up by the military, who he later joins. And in my mind he joins because it gives him power. It makes him stronger. So one day he can get revenge. Then I chose ruthless. Because that just makes sense. Being a war hero was out. I thought about being a sole survivor instead of ruthless. But choosing the sole survivor means you almost mentally broke. And I think that would come with some baggage of being on the brink of insanity. And the game just doesn't ever give you situations or choices (dialog) that would justify that in my opinion (at least I've never seen them). So ruthless it was.

Then I sat for a good while thinking about the class. And after much internal debate I went with Sentinel. A good mix of powers and tech. I've never played a tech class in any of the Mass Effect games. I always played as a Solider or an adept/vanguard. I was almost just a straight up Engineer, but thought that might get kinda boring. So I chose the Sentinel. I also pulled up the wiki and looked at the classes spreed over the three games. And what each class turns into in the other games. And Sentinel just seemed like the best fit for this angry commander. And I also just went with the plain and simple default Shepard. Which I kinda regretted after starting playing. But I already played for a few hours. And kinda don't really want to start over again. I should have chosen Female Shepard also. As I have never completed a play-through with her. So Maybe I will start over. Hmm.

So I get all that out of the way and I actually get to the game! First thing I do is be a dick to joker, right out the gate. And it just doesn't feel right. I didn't like it. Because I like joker. Hes a cool character. And that first scene where they through you in the cockpit of the Normandy with him and Kaiden you get some really bad choices for dialog. They all seem like rude responses. But the bottom ones are just harsh. And that is what I want to go for. But man. Right out of the gate I felt icky doing it. But then as it went on I didn't feel so bad. I also decided to not be a jerk to Ashely. As she will be the love interest. I will be all for her alien prejudice and be mean as hell to everyone else.

Also after Eden Prime it was kinda of funny how everyone kept giving me dialog options about the recruit who died. I just kept saying the renegade response of "who cares, soldiers die, move on". And everyone would say things like, I expected that type of response from you, after what you did to your troops on [some random planet]. I never saw or heard those back and forths before, so this should be interesting.

And while looking for images for this, and seeing the images of the second and third game. I can not wait to get past the first one. Don't get me wrong. I love the first game. But after seeing what those looked like and remembering moments from those games. I am just way more excited to play the second game now. So I might end up rushing through this one a little. Probably wont do everything. But you never know. Once I get into it, past becoming a specter and all that. I might just get hooked back in and do everything again. But also the renegade facial degradation in the second. Never got to see that as it doesn't happen for the paragon. So I am excited to see that.

And now I am off to ponder if I am going to restart as Fem-Shep and play that first few hours over again. You know, the tough choices in life. I will post an update or new blog post every so often as the play through each game progress. Mainly just posting my thoughts on playing as a renegade, and things I notice that are not the same. Hope you enjoy reading about it as much as I will playing it. I probably wont post until much later this week. And probably wont play anymore until later this week. Because, you know. Holidays. Family. All that good stuff.

Merry Christmas everyone. Or Happy Holidays. What ever offends you the most!

P.S. Never type up something like this on a tablet. Holy crap. After sitting down at my PC to re read over it, many o' changes and corrections have been made.