I just want to give my two cents on something.
I've played through as a fem!shep from start to finish, primarily paragon and reluctant renegade when her options are limited. I finished ME2 yesterday and started ME3 right away because I couldn't wait.
The opening to that game was actually so good? Especially the scene with the kid in the vents - I tried desperately to convince the kid to come with me, not wanting to leave him behind on a burning planet that was being savaged by Reapers.
Of course, you can't save him.
All I could think of was how Mallory (my fem!shep) was stood in the Normandy, leaving behind one of her most trusted, Anderson, watching as the little kid climbed into a shuttle, only for that shuttle to be shot out of the sky. It's a great bit of story telling in my opinion, you can see how it has affected her.
For the first time ever, I felt a powerlessness to Shepard. Like, no matter what she wanted to do, what she wanted to happen, there was nothing logistically that she could have done to save anyone.
THEN to have you follow up with a dream sequence where you are trying to reach out for the kid, only to watch them burn. Like, after everything that Shepard has been through, it would hardly be surprising to find that she has PTSD. I think that would be par for the course, you know? But I feel like this is the first time we've ever seen anything in-game to reflect just how much of a toll all of this is taking on her.
Because I don't know about anyone else's Shepard, but mine would definitely be heavily affected by that; every night is the same dream, same outcome, same feeling of powerlessness and she hates it. All the times where she'd lost people before, they were her choices, at least she had one, but this time?
No, she had to watch as the most innocent phase of life was snuffed out in an instant and all she could do was stand and stare.
IDK this scene just really stuck with me, made me tear up, and made me realise that, for all the things that Shepard has done to raise themselves to a legend... she is still just a human at the end of it all.













