Okay I know these games are old, and I know the Kaiden discourse is probably so tired, but damn my boy was done dirty by the writing!
He has so many interesting things that come up in his backstory in ME1, and we explore NONE of it! He’s an L2! He has chronic migraines because the tech in his brain is faulty, and he’s one of the lucky ones! How did that impact his military career? Does the stress of saving the galaxy make his flare ups worse? Does the rest of the crew even know what he’s dealing with most of the time?
And, I’m sorry, but his reaction on Horizon is so understandable. If you watched your commanding officer die, you physically watched them get spaced and could do nothing to help them, and then two years later there are rumors that they’re back and they show up LEADING A KNOWN TERRORIST GROUP, you would probably need more than a “you know me” to get past that too. What, to Kaiden Alenko would seem more likely, that you were asleep for the past 2 years and just recently woke up and immediately started working for Cerberus, or that you had been alive this whole time and had just never contacted anyone because you were working with a terrorist organization? What the Lazarus Project achieved had literally never happened before.
It also feels deeply out of character for him to be mad at you for “cheating on him” in ME2, because Kaiden is usually so aware of, and willing to accept, the consequences of his actions. He made a mistake and scared the girl he loved when he was 17, and it impacted all aspects of his behavior for the literal rest of his life. This is a man who is DEEPLY aware of the effects of his words and actions. He knows he ended things with you, he knows that he was the one that walked away. Kaiden Alenko has been observed in one way or another for his entire life, he says as much in ME1. He’s always had to be more careful than other people, better, more loyal, above suspicion. He had to be the perfect soldier to make up for a defect he had no hand in creating. So, of course, when Shepard shows up with Cerberus he does what a good soldier would do, he ends things with the woman he loves and stays loyal to the alliance.
I think if Shepard does move on he would be devastated, but I also think he would take it on the chin. Just another thing he missed out on. Just another thing he doesn’t get to have because he’s Kaiden, and his job is to be a good soldier, to live and die for the greater good. To do anything required of him. To prove he’s more than a faulty product.
