Full Renegade: Mass Effect 3
“Expect no mercy. Show no mercy. You fight, or you die.“
Evil “Eva” Shepard has achieved the impossible. She united the galaxy (mostly), saved her friends (some of them), and defeated the Reapers (kinda). Reunited with old faces and new ones after the devastating assault on Earth, the reinstated Alliance commander and Spectre fought the Reapers with a vengeance, and bullied everyone around her into doing the same. This was a long journey, guys. I’m sure glad it’s over.
Curing the Genophage - Kept the secret of the Salarians’ interference until I was alone with Mordin, who figured it out. He could have still fixed it, but I stepped in and stopped him. I had to pull the trigger myself. It was awful. Eve died, Wrex hates me, and the Salarians are happier than ever.
Citadel Attack - Successfully saved the Council by killing Udina. Thankfully, didn’t have to kill Kaidan. Unfortunately, still kicked Kaidan off my ship. And we never saw him again :(
Rannoch - Sided with the Quarians against the Geth. Luckily, Tali and the Quarians survived, but holo-Legion (since the original Legion never got activated) and the Geth were destroyed. I don’t mind this one too much.
Omega - This one isn’t a particularly far-reaching choice, and I mostly play it this way even in my paragon playthroughs, because I don’t like to piss off Aria. The only difference this time is that I let many many civilians die instead of listening to Nyreen. Got that kiss from Aria, though, so there’s a plus.
Miranda - Refused to give Miranda the info she needed to take down her father, for security reasons. I guess that makes sense, although it was pretty heartless and resulted in her death at the hands of Kai Leng.
Endgame Decision - Refusal. I’ll elaborate in a sec.
The main squadmates in this game will follow you no matter what, and there aren’t any changes to their loyalty or perception of you regardless of play style. So instead I’ll talk about some of the fates of former squad members, and squad members I didn’t keep around.
Wrex had by far the worst fate of my former friends, in that I betrayed him, doomed his race, and then killed him. Yup. Wrex was upset with me from the beginning for trashing Maelon’s data, but he seemed to be happy that I was willing to cure the Genophage this time. Unfortunately, I’m a damn liar. Wrex confronted me at the Citadel, and I had to kill him. My treatment of Mordin was similarly awful (betrayal plus killing him point blank while he tries to save the krogan), but at least I wasn’t also killing his entire race in the process. Low bar.
Kaidan survived, and is fine as far as we know. However, I told him I didn’t want him on my ship, and we never saw him again. So who knows? I like to think that he went and became a hero throughout the galaxy as the second human Spectre.
Miranda was killed by Kai Leng, as was Thane. When I stabbed the bastard, I said it was for the both of them.
Morinth was turned into a banshee.
And that’s it. Everyone else turned out the same as always, barring the endgame decision.
Consequences, and Lack Thereof
Here I’ll talk a little about choices from former games coming back in the final installment... or being abandoned entirely. If you’ve read my posts on ME1 and ME2 you’ll know that I was interested in seeing some of the consequences of choices I’d made.
I was disappointed to see that so many of those choices turned out the same way no matter what I chose.
First, here are some that did affect things. By killing the Rachni queen, we instead encountered a Rachni drone, which I also killed. This one was obviously sick, weak, and prone to the Reapers’ control, making it markedly different from the queen. When I ran into Gavin Archer it was revealed that his further experiments caused David’s death.
And, the ones that didn’t change anything. I was so excited to see the all human Council that I’d been promised at the end of ME1. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have lasted at all, possibly not even through ME2, and the Council is just the regular ME3 replacements. The decision at the end of ME2 of whether to give the Human Reaper parts to Cerberus didn’t change anything at all, and Cerberus still ends up with parts (just different ones, not that it matters).
Ok, this decision came from my “pick the bottom option” rule rather than it being technically Renegade. However, I felt it was incredibly fitting for this Shepard. At the end of everything, Shepard is stubborn and making bad decisions, just like always. Shepard dooms everyone and doesn’t care, just like always.
“I’m gonna end this war on my terms.” By... not doing anything and just letting the Reapers win. Nice.
I guess it shows that I didn’t have a great time playing this Renegade playthrough. I hate being mean, guys. It sucks. Next time I’m gonna be everyone’s friend.
