Part 2 here: ua-cam.com/video/YglRlN6fnLE/v-deo.html There was an upload error I didn't detect until after I set this live. I won't delete and reuploading what is essentially a fun video (not expecting it to get many views). My apologies for the disruption though!
Is almost as if neutral Shepard just wants the Reapers and other galactic threats gone so he could go back to watching footage of cats on the extranet, peacefully and uninterrupted
I think the interesting thing about Neutral Shepard is that he feels like the perfect soldier but the worst leader, at least among the other versions of himself. Absolutely, neutral Shepard should be a spectre, but dear God he shouldn't be allowed to be a commander.
True Neutral: -Mission First -Not a Virgin -Knows Grunt -Alcoholic -Does not care about all the stores equally -Does not like the Sensationalist Press -Pragmatic Mercy -Bores Elias into confession -Wishes to not have strong feelings about Mass Effect 3 -Goodbye
There's actually a neutral option that keeps Tali loyal and prevents her exile. You can "Rally the crowd" if you talk to everyone after the first part of the trail before you retake the Alarai. But doing so requires handing Veetor over to the quarians instead of Cerberus in Freedom's Progress and making sure Kal Reegar survives on Haestrom.
I always liked that neutral option during the trial but to get access to it it does require paragon options to be picked for both Kal and Veetor so it’s not true neutral but a nice option none the less I really like that it in some way helps with Veetor’s recovery by bribing him out of his shell a little
I love picking that option, one of the only times I don't go Paragon. Shep won't always be there for Tali, it's important for her own people to acknowledge what she's done for them and defend her for themselves
Renegade: I lead with fear. Paragon: I lead with fairness. Neutral: I am here. By the looks of it the Garrus Loyalty in ME1 has the appropriate effect in ME2 if you tell him it was a lesson. He doesn't hesitate with Harken or Sidonis. Instead of calling the motherboard Project 0, I'd have customized it to say Project [0]verlord. Opportunity missed.
I always choose the neutral option at the end of Grunt’s mission. Since the day I heard it I’ve never picked anything else. Some of the neutral options in 2 feel more Renegade than the actual Renegade choice.
I've always chosen that option too. I also like choosing the wound the hostage option in lair of the shadow broker, it's definitley funnier and colder than the actual renegade option.
Mass Effect AND Futurama in one video? What a treat! "What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"
I guess "neutral" was more of an out for players who didn't have enough points to go either way. It sure does make Shepherd seem more passive. And as you pointed out, you don't have neutral options in the third game.
Yeah, that's probably the main reason people don't pick it. Like you invest the skill points or effort to get those paragon/renegade options, you're going to use them.
I play paragade. If you deserve a smack in the mouth or an omni-blade to the gut, kill Vigo or even to crap your Eclipse armour with a heavy threat, I'm your guy, if you want me to suffocate a whole deck of civilians, kill Wrex and sabotage the Krogan or let the council die, you need to find a different guy.
"Ah yes, Shepard is completely neutral and can balance the galaxys forces justfully and without strong emotions and attachment to either side. We have dismissed that claim."
I heard the voice director gave Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale very different directions. Mark Meer was told to make paragon and renegade lines believably sound like they come from the same character while Jennifer Hale was told to make them sound like completely different people since everyone sticks with one anyway. Now I'm really curious what neutral femShep sounds like.
I’ve always appreciated that Mass Effect, a game about taking a stand, rewards you whether you stick to being a heroic leader or a gruff one, but it punishes you in a lot of ways for being too wishy-washy or middling.
Colonist, Sole Survivor would have been the "true neutral" option. It gives the same amount into paragon and renegade. Where every other option, either gives: points only into one, or an obtuse amount to both.
I was actually planning on eventually doing a neutral run just to see how different it would be, so this video saved me a ton of time. Fascinating and very thoroughly done; thank you!
I just realised every squadmate got mentioned at least a couple times in this video, except for Jacob, who didn't even get a frame of screentime. This is hilarious as he's known to be the least popular and least interesting squadmate, and this is ironic because it ties back into the video about neutral Shepard, who is in himself the least popular and least interesting version of Shepard
The mark of an amazing game and an amazing developer is putting content in that you're certain 99% of your customers will likely never see. I miss Mass Effect, well...OG Mass Effect.
@@ZehnWaters I think Dantics is implying that he did finish the game. Marauder Shields got Shepard at the end. I have a feeling that he didn't have enough war assets for Synthesis ending (though Refusal would technically be the most neutral).
Yaroslev was supposed to be missing a leg at least according to the script, but it turned out they didn't have the technical ability to display that, which is why that scene ends up so odd. He's intended to be grievously wounded, and that's what he's referring to with his 'but...ehh.'
My favourite Mass Effect run was with Idiot Shepard. He made all the worst decisions, got almost every one killed and made the absolute minimum effort possible to defeat the Reapers. The only character i deliberately kept alive through the ME2 suicide mission were Tali and Mordin, purely so i could betray them in the worst way possible in ME3. Though i accidentally let Garrus and the Merc guy live too, mainly because i left just them behind to hold off the collectors and the pair of them actually did it (fucking hard core 😅 ). In the end, Idiot Shepard saved the day and destroyed the Reapers. And probably half the galaxy in the process. 🤦♂️
Yeah getting the worst possible ending and having everyone die is actually WAAYY harder than keeping everyone alive. . Also I think the whole you leave behind at the end does some sort of base check on total combat strength, which since Tali and Mordin are pure tech, ironically if you'd taken garrus and Zaeed, and left Tali and Mordin, then they would likely have died leaving you with only two which is the deepest ME2 survivors you can have since if your team you bring aren't loyal, they die when the human reaper dies, (which doesn't make any sense) and if either of them do, for some reason you don't make it back to the ship in time , and Shepard dies, ( which also doesn't make much sense) so you have nothing to import to ME3. Thought Tali would normally die on approach to the collector base anyway if you haven't upgraded the ship, unless you bring her to the cargo hold, in which case for some reason Thane is in engineering in her place and dies instead, I don't remember who else does from lack of ship upgrades though
Idiot Shepard is the best Shepard. It's always fun to think that Harbinger is using incredible processing power trying to predict his next move, just to get his plans screwed by the next Shepard's random brainfart.
@regraig6869 yeah, i did my research on the mechanics of the suicide mission, and how to do JUST enough to compete it while killing off as many characters as possible. But leaving Zaeed and Garrus behind was an unintended mistake, and I wasn't willing to play through the first 2/3rds of the mission again just to correct it. I especially would have liked to kill off Garrus, but TBH the image of just those two taking out an entire Collector army was a nice consolation prize!
The credit song for Me1, M4 Part II by Faunts, really caught me off guard the first time I ever heard it. After such a wild sci-fi adventure with a mainly orchestral, lyricless score, M4 part II is the perfect cap for that game.
Grunt doesn't remove the bullets, because bullets have next to no physical size in these games... "Ammo" is basicly a hunk of metal inside the weapon, that has a tiny microscopic fragment shaven off and fired when you pull the trigger. Each piece of metal might be small, but due to the mass effect field in the weapon, even a grain of sand can be accelerated to impact with the force of a nuke. It's the reason weapons don't run out of ammo and just overheat in 1, and only need thermal clips in 2 and 3, as every hunk of metal in a weapon can last nearly it's entire lifecycle of a gun
Glad you enjoyed it! I honestly thought when I uploaded this, after putting 100 hours into the trilogy again and spending a few days editing that I would get a maximum of around 5k views. Since it's so uber niche. Glad to see others enjoying it.
Ah, the Tim Pool Shepard. I was expecting that to be bland, but there was some fun stuff, and the idea of having a dead comrade take the place of Kai Leng is brilliant.
I remember that choice at 0:15 because even when I play renegade Shepard, I'm still nice to my boys. I'm not gonna imply that I own Grunt - he follows me because I lead by brutal example.
I played as a mostly neutral Shepard way back when I first played the game when I was younger because I felt that best reflected my personality and morality 😂 and it fit in most situations in my own mind Plus I guess I was just antisocial when I was younger abs didn’t want to make a fuss or get involved in peoples problems 😂 needless to say I didn’t get massive rewards or massive recognition And often got the most boring or lest profitable situation resolutions 😅
6:30 Yaroslav Tartakovsky was supposed to be missing a leg and have a tourniquet keeping him from bleeding out but engine limits or something along those lines meant Bioware couldn't implement it.
I played mostly neutral until it came time for major decisions, I always figured these games weren't meant to be played "straight paragon, straight neutral or straight renegade but a collection of actions leading to one major decision." What ruined ME 3 for me wasn't it's ending it was the lack of neutral options I never even finished the game because of that. Just seeing you go from me2's 3 options to 2 options in the jack scene is still jarring how they got away with basically gutting half the dialogue options lol. I think one of my favorite scenes is the transition in ME1 if you don't romance anyone like I did in my first playthrough. It's a great transition scene to the big fight.
I LOVE my morally grey characters. I played paragade/grey Shep, grey Sith/Jedi in SWTOR and chaotic neutral in most fantasy/D&D games. I get a bit of flack for being "noncommittal" but it's far more natural, most people aren't true evil or good. Humanity is FULL of shades of grey. I LOVE games that reward playing the desperate middle ground PC who's just trying to plug leaks and stay alive rather than "save/destroy the day"! Unfortunately, being the 'voice of reason' in ME can really screw your outcome in the final game. It's bizarre how many little judgement calls can affect your final alliance strength.
about 6:30, this is a well known development issue on the game, where Yaroslev was supposed to be badly injured during the conversation, but because they didn't have the assets ready (iirc), they just had him sit down, which feels weird.
Being too neutral screwed me over in me3... had no choice but to watch the geth slaughter the quarians then watch tali jump to her death... i stopped playing immediately and have not touched it since.
@@Danticsit’s completely unavoidable unless you save a loyal legion from ME 2 and Tali has to survive too. Even then you can flub it. Most players didn’t get it by official stats
@@BrightstoneGG Well sorry, for being pissed in the moment that i was short 15 or so paragon/renegade points short from stopping a bunch of idiotic zealots from doing a suicidal bum rush. so i decided to take a break play other games eventually forgetting to get back to me3... oh well, since e-peen points mean so much to you you can have mine.
@@Aschera ahh ye old wannabe edgy replies ive missed those you dont get those touching grass .. your statement implied you would not touch the game again because a game about choice and consequence gave you a consequence not because 'trying other games then forgot lol
If I remember right, there's a mod that edits the appearance of the Noveria Hot Labs scientist to make him look more obviously wounded to justify his decision to not move and risk agitating his wounds.
@@Dantics I was 10 back in 2007 and only started playing the game back in 2012. It’s wild to think that’s what the dev initially thought of the future (on an era before Smart Phone) and how they adapted the world building as our own technology and perception of the future shifted. 1st Mass Effect give me more of a “empty galaxy” vibe since we visited rural and remote locations. On locations like cities, it is usually some sort of ancient ruins. It feels like as if it’s our first time in space. Even Normandy feels “vast and empty”. Also since we focused on Shepard’s immediate surrounding and actions only, it felt very small. 2nd & 3rd make the world much alive and settled, with much background story. The vibes are less “discover-y” and more like “who gonna be more influential” with all the politic and the interactions between races, make the world much bigger (and it is since we visited much more planets).
@@AlexS-oj8qf I agree, they also were working with a vastly less powerful engine in ME1, so were very limited in how much they could add to it. I have a feeling they wanted it to feel more alive but simply couldn't. Emotion wise, yes you're meant to feel like a big fish.
It's funny to me how applicable this is to real life. Most people are conditioned to react all the way from very well to very poorly to Paragons of Virtue or absolute sleazeballs, skipping the middle completely grey area. And for those people, neutral conversation can be extremely painful, equivalent to awkward silences, or just ambiguous enough to cause them to lash out. Committing to true neutral / robotic / professional responses is playing life on hard difficulty. I for one prefer this slow burn option.
I'm just surprised to hear most people play full Paragon or full Renegade. I just pick what seems best at the time, and end up with a mix of Paragon and Renegade points. I thought most people played that way.
My best ME1 playthrough was my 4th. I did a paragon engineer, then renegade adept, then neutral soldier, and then a mostly renegade (but wanted to avoid unnecessary deaths, went sole survivor background and my mindset for the character was "never again") infiltrator 4th. That's the character (and mindset) I carried forward into ME2 and ME3. It's a fun one.
It's funny how worried they are about Kelham's lawer arriving when in fact he is the one making him confess 😆. Is there even any way to truly sabotage this mission? It feels a bit on rails.
This vid made me recall how often I took the middle option in the first game before i realised the advantage morality options give you (the dude got erased). I have two gripes eith MEs convo options. Fiest one is that clickable prompts often give you a different feel than what shep actually says afterwards, in some cases its a very distinctive difference (almost night and day). The second one is how comically overdrawn/exaggerated some of the paragon lines/choices are. ME1 - I started neutral then went paragon for better choice of options. ME2 - I chose whatever I liked at a given moment/situation, ended up with full paragon bar and around 1/3 of the renegade bar. ME3- I didn't role play as a good guy but I wanted to save as many as I could and there is no place for reapers in my universe. Heartbreaks inevitable. For me the best option is to play as a guy who knows how to use fear to his advantage and use it, sometimes being an asshole for laughs but still doing the 'right" thing.
I know some of those because i usually role play in my rpgs. Its wild to me that people are convinced that you have to pick full renegade or paragon to enjoy those games. The middle option often feels like the professional option.
![FLARE ] The Keepers & Their Old Gods](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LbUA2BrWg6E/mqdefault.jpg)
![FLARE ] The Keepers & Their Old Gods](/img/tr.png)
Part 2 here: ua-cam.com/video/YglRlN6fnLE/v-deo.html
There was an upload error I didn't detect until after I set this live. I won't delete and reuploading what is essentially a fun video (not expecting it to get many views). My apologies for the disruption though!
How does that happen??
@@YoungMrBlue UA-cam upload error that wasn't reported to me.
lol I assumed it was a joke ending
@@Dantics no enough war recources to finish video
what do you count as many views? heh
I am commander Shepard, and I have no strong feelings about this store.
Tell my wife I said, hello
I'm Commander Shepard, and this is a store on the Citadel.
I am Commander Shepard and this is one of the stores on The Citadel
If I don't buy anything, tell my wife I said Hello
Evil Shepard be like
Is almost as if neutral Shepard just wants the Reapers and other galactic threats gone so he could go back to watching footage of cats on the extranet, peacefully and uninterrupted
Raises a good question, is Shep a cat or dog person? Hmm...
I believe he is actually a varren person, even when he spends a good amount of time killing them. It’s a complicated relationship
Hamster person
It’s almost as if the end of the galaxy is simply an unconvinced for him, rather than a life or death struggle of mythological proportions.
@@user-wx4bw3fs1i "There are no bad varrens, just bad owners"
I think the interesting thing about Neutral Shepard is that he feels like the perfect soldier but the worst leader, at least among the other versions of himself. Absolutely, neutral Shepard should be a spectre, but dear God he shouldn't be allowed to be a commander.
I have to agree with you there. Terrible terrible leader. The Thane scene captures that perfectly.
Almost like real leadership
I’m Commander Shepard. And I have no feelings about establishment whatsoever.
My gut says maybe.
Neutral Shep be like: *I'm a regular alliance commander, and this is regular store in the citadel*
Kasumi just giving up on the heist upon seeing Shepard is pure gold
Would you risk it?
@@Dantics well you know how the song goes : "You can fight like a Krogan, run like a leopard ... " - Hope that answers it lol
If I don't survive, tell Admiral Hackett I said hello.
True Neutral:
-Mission First
-Not a Virgin
-Knows Grunt
-Alcoholic
-Does not care about all the stores equally
-Does not like the Sensationalist Press
-Pragmatic Mercy
-Bores Elias into confession
-Wishes to not have strong feelings about Mass Effect 3
-Goodbye
Hahaha we'll bang maybe
Neutral Shepard actually doesn't care, he just trolls people and gets the job done.
Ends up being both funny and fustrating
ME1 ending should have neutral shep just walk out like, what are you waiting for, shits on fire here get to it
"Saren was my job, call the firemen.
That line is actually cold tho@@MajorJakas
this is one of the funniest things i've ever read from the ME fandom
14:20 your Shepard is such a non entity the game doesn’t even bother to render them.
Neutral Shep: It's about the companions I met along the way :') not me
@@Danticsi just did it, i rendered in. i dont know what you played on, but i was on console. maybe the glitch is fixed there???
There's actually a neutral option that keeps Tali loyal and prevents her exile. You can "Rally the crowd" if you talk to everyone after the first part of the trail before you retake the Alarai. But doing so requires handing Veetor over to the quarians instead of Cerberus in Freedom's Progress and making sure Kal Reegar survives on Haestrom.
I could have but it didn't feel neutral to me. I tried to pick them where possible.
I always liked that neutral option during the trial but to get access to it it does require paragon options to be picked for both Kal and Veetor so it’s not true neutral but a nice option none the less
I really like that it in some way helps with Veetor’s recovery by bribing him out of his shell a little
I love picking that option, one of the only times I don't go Paragon. Shep won't always be there for Tali, it's important for her own people to acknowledge what she's done for them and defend her for themselves
I'm Commander Shepard and this is a store on the Citadel
And this is a video on UA-cam
Renegade: I lead with fear.
Paragon: I lead with fairness.
Neutral: I am here.
By the looks of it the Garrus Loyalty in ME1 has the appropriate effect in ME2 if you tell him it was a lesson. He doesn't hesitate with Harken or Sidonis.
Instead of calling the motherboard Project 0, I'd have customized it to say Project [0]verlord. Opportunity missed.
"Neutral: I am here"
Kind of ironic considering that ME1 ending cutscene. :D
@@Frozen_Death_Knight Well, he was there... somewhere.
Its really funny you can romance Ashley as a neutral
Also romancing her as the neutral option is funny
Yeah she really comes at you aggressively which is hilarious
I always choose the neutral option at the end of Grunt’s mission. Since the day I heard it I’ve never picked anything else. Some of the neutral options in 2 feel more Renegade than the actual Renegade choice.
Now I will be choosing that every time. Agreed on the renegade choice
I've always chosen that option too. I also like choosing the wound the hostage option in lair of the shadow broker, it's definitley funnier and colder than the actual renegade option.
Mass Effect AND Futurama in one video? What a treat!
"What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?"
All I know is my gut says maybe play ME again
you never know where these neutrals stand... its sickens me -Z.Brannigan
All I know is my gut says maybe replay it
It was an ....... Ok experience
Neutral Shepard feels even more NPC than the NPCs
Neutral commander Shepard- "The reapers might be real"
"If I know Grunt, your answer is coming at muzzle velocity" what a line
It's perfect!
I guess "neutral" was more of an out for players who didn't have enough points to go either way. It sure does make Shepherd seem more passive. And as you pointed out, you don't have neutral options in the third game.
But what if you want to be the guy who shows up instead of the leader?
Yeah, that's probably the main reason people don't pick it. Like you invest the skill points or effort to get those paragon/renegade options, you're going to use them.
I like to do what I call an antihero run: renegade dialogue and paragon actions
That's my favourite too.
Save the Council, cure the genophage, unite Geth and Quarians but be a massive ASS***E while doing it lol
I play paragade. If you deserve a smack in the mouth or an omni-blade to the gut, kill Vigo or even to crap your Eclipse armour with a heavy threat, I'm your guy, if you want me to suffocate a whole deck of civilians, kill Wrex and sabotage the Krogan or let the council die, you need to find a different guy.
@@agama5538sabotage the cure is my favorite choice
Do a hypocrite run: paragon dialogue + renegade actions😅
@@angeloalvarez5520 You evil, evil Commander.
I liked picking neutral options here and there, but dang, a true neutral ending bugs out the cutscene? Tsk, tsk, Bioware.
It seems so, though it could have been a rare occurrence
Centrist Shepard be like.
He's swifty moving towards a solution which pleases no-one!
"Ah yes, Shepard is completely neutral and can balance the galaxys forces justfully and without strong emotions and attachment to either side. We have dismissed that claim."
With great power comes great weakness. We'll bang, maybe.
I heard the voice director gave Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale very different directions. Mark Meer was told to make paragon and renegade lines believably sound like they come from the same character while Jennifer Hale was told to make them sound like completely different people since everyone sticks with one anyway. Now I'm really curious what neutral femShep sounds like.
What makes a man turn neutral? Money? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Tell the reapers I said hello
I’ve always appreciated that Mass Effect, a game about taking a stand, rewards you whether you stick to being a heroic leader or a gruff one, but it punishes you in a lot of ways for being too wishy-washy or middling.
For Tali, if both Veetor and Reegar survive, you get the neutral “Rally the Crowd” option which gets the same effect as the paragon/renegade options
Neutral Shepard: *Exists*
*Switzerland wants to know your location*
Part of neutrality, part of the Swiss.
Neutral Shep somehow makes me feel even worse than Renegade Shep.
Colonist, Sole Survivor would have been the "true neutral" option. It gives the same amount into paragon and renegade. Where every other option, either gives: points only into one, or an obtuse amount to both.
Neutral Shepard getting sexually harassed by Ashley. I actually feel bad for him.
I was actually planning on eventually doing a neutral run just to see how different it would be, so this video saved me a ton of time. Fascinating and very thoroughly done; thank you!
Centrist Boring Commander Shepard walked so that Centrist Boring Cop Harry DuBois could Jamrock Shuffle🤣
💯 exactly
I just realised every squadmate got mentioned at least a couple times in this video, except for Jacob, who didn't even get a frame of screentime. This is hilarious as he's known to be the least popular and least interesting squadmate, and this is ironic because it ties back into the video about neutral Shepard, who is in himself the least popular and least interesting version of Shepard
The mark of an amazing game and an amazing developer is putting content in that you're certain 99% of your customers will likely never see. I miss Mass Effect, well...OG Mass Effect.
Couldn't agree more! There needs to be more of this
Hmm.
I think this is one of Mass Effect's weaker halves. Indifference punishes harder than mixing up morality choices.
Yeh there needs to be a reward for mixing it up!
The opposite of good isn't evil, but indifference
@@FLancer218 like saying opposite of caring is not caring
Nice touch at the very end. Forcing us to do the exact same neutral playthrough to see how it all actually ends. 😂
I do finish it off :)
@@Danticslol in another video? Cause the last second cut in this vid is brutal.
@@ZehnWaters I think Dantics is implying that he did finish the game. Marauder Shields got Shepard at the end. I have a feeling that he didn't have enough war assets for Synthesis ending (though Refusal would technically be the most neutral).
I was so confused by this.
Was the video intended to cut off so abruptly at the end? 43:04
That's because he chose the middle option.
Shepard Shepard might be the most perfect name for a full neutral Shep
The only Neutral choice i consistently tend to go for is that i will neither condone nor condemn Mordin's genophage modification.
I never thought of changing the first name to Shepard. A galactic brain worthy of the Reapers.
To summarize Neutral Shepard: Mass Defect
Yaroslev was supposed to be missing a leg at least according to the script, but it turned out they didn't have the technical ability to display that, which is why that scene ends up so odd. He's intended to be grievously wounded, and that's what he's referring to with his 'but...ehh.'
My favourite Mass Effect run was with Idiot Shepard. He made all the worst decisions, got almost every one killed and made the absolute minimum effort possible to defeat the Reapers. The only character i deliberately kept alive through the ME2 suicide mission were Tali and Mordin, purely so i could betray them in the worst way possible in ME3. Though i accidentally let Garrus and the Merc guy live too, mainly because i left just them behind to hold off the collectors and the pair of them actually did it (fucking hard core 😅 ).
In the end, Idiot Shepard saved the day and destroyed the Reapers. And probably half the galaxy in the process. 🤦♂️
Yeah getting the worst possible ending and having everyone die is actually WAAYY harder than keeping everyone alive. . Also I think the whole you leave behind at the end does some sort of base check on total combat strength, which since Tali and Mordin are pure tech, ironically if you'd taken garrus and Zaeed, and left Tali and Mordin, then they would likely have died leaving you with only two which is the deepest ME2 survivors you can have since if your team you bring aren't loyal, they die when the human reaper dies, (which doesn't make any sense) and if either of them do, for some reason you don't make it back to the ship in time , and Shepard dies, ( which also doesn't make much sense) so you have nothing to import to ME3. Thought Tali would normally die on approach to the collector base anyway if you haven't upgraded the ship, unless you bring her to the cargo hold, in which case for some reason Thane is in engineering in her place and dies instead, I don't remember who else does from lack of ship upgrades though
Idiot Shepard is the best Shepard. It's always fun to think that Harbinger is using incredible processing power trying to predict his next move, just to get his plans screwed by the next Shepard's random brainfart.
@regraig6869 yeah, i did my research on the mechanics of the suicide mission, and how to do JUST enough to compete it while killing off as many characters as possible. But leaving Zaeed and Garrus behind was an unintended mistake, and I wasn't willing to play through the first 2/3rds of the mission again just to correct it. I especially would have liked to kill off Garrus, but TBH the image of just those two taking out an entire Collector army was a nice consolation prize!
The credit song for Me1, M4 Part II by Faunts, really caught me off guard the first time I ever heard it. After such a wild sci-fi adventure with a mainly orchestral, lyricless score, M4 part II is the perfect cap for that game.
It really made it feel like an epic movie 🎬
Neutral Shepard stands out so little, he's invisible.
14:10 - the absolutely unwarranted heroic music in this section is great. Just a bunch of people staring intensely at different bits of wreckage.
Grunt doesn't remove the bullets, because bullets have next to no physical size in these games... "Ammo" is basicly a hunk of metal inside the weapon, that has a tiny microscopic fragment shaven off and fired when you pull the trigger. Each piece of metal might be small, but due to the mass effect field in the weapon, even a grain of sand can be accelerated to impact with the force of a nuke.
It's the reason weapons don't run out of ammo and just overheat in 1, and only need thermal clips in 2 and 3, as every hunk of metal in a weapon can last nearly it's entire lifecycle of a gun
i actually have picked a lot of neutral options depending on the moment. It's nice to see this lvl of commitment to being neutral tho XD
It was very hard to stick to. Some choices and habits are hard to break
During Al-Jilani's interview Garrus was "NOPE"
This is quite unique. After all these years of Mass Effect, you had the idea to go completely neutral. Really enjoyed the video!
Glad you enjoyed it! I honestly thought when I uploaded this, after putting 100 hours into the trilogy again and spending a few days editing that I would get a maximum of around 5k views. Since it's so uber niche. Glad to see others enjoying it.
Neutral shepard seems like he's socially awkward or something he seems so oblivious 🤣🤣
Yeah straight up shep-bot.
Ah, the Tim Pool Shepard. I was expecting that to be bland, but there was some fun stuff, and the idea of having a dead comrade take the place of Kai Leng is brilliant.
Roast noted and approved
14:20
No this is a common glitch, they sometimes dont load guys into cutscenes
It happens a lot in the ending bits of ME2
The video just ends mid-sentence? Or maybe my browser is broken
It happens to me too
no outro too
See the pinned comment - Dantics screwed up on uploading
@@cdru515 Thank you! The pinned comment wasn't showing up earlier so I was confused lol
I remember that choice at 0:15 because even when I play renegade Shepard, I'm still nice to my boys. I'm not gonna imply that I own Grunt - he follows me because I lead by brutal example.
It was a shock to hear the man who voices Winnie the Pooh as a Krogan. 👀
Just shows his range !
@@Dantics Absolutly.
33:08 you could’ve rallied the fleet here come on!
Would not have matterd.
I am Commander Shepard, and I have no favorites nor dislikes about this store.
I played as a mostly neutral Shepard way back when I first played the game when I was younger because I felt that best reflected my personality and morality 😂 and it fit in most situations in my own mind
Plus I guess I was just antisocial when I was younger abs didn’t want to make a fuss or get involved in peoples problems 😂
needless to say I didn’t get massive rewards or massive recognition
And often got the most boring or lest profitable situation resolutions 😅
"Call Liara and tell her I said hello"
If I die now, tell my wife I said 'Hello'.
I love the almost childlike glee Shepherd says "This is MY kill Garrus!"
This is the biggest issue with these types of games
The instant win options are the paragon / renegade options
It is disappointing because they make it so you miss out on some much dialog
6:30 Yaroslav Tartakovsky was supposed to be missing a leg and have a tourniquet keeping him from bleeding out but engine limits or something along those lines meant Bioware couldn't implement it.
I played mostly neutral until it came time for major decisions, I always figured these games weren't meant to be played "straight paragon, straight neutral or straight renegade but a collection of actions leading to one major decision." What ruined ME 3 for me wasn't it's ending it was the lack of neutral options I never even finished the game because of that. Just seeing you go from me2's 3 options to 2 options in the jack scene is still jarring how they got away with basically gutting half the dialogue options lol.
I think one of my favorite scenes is the transition in ME1 if you don't romance anyone like I did in my first playthrough. It's a great transition scene to the big fight.
I LOVE my morally grey characters. I played paragade/grey Shep, grey Sith/Jedi in SWTOR and chaotic neutral in most fantasy/D&D games. I get a bit of flack for being "noncommittal" but it's far more natural, most people aren't true evil or good. Humanity is FULL of shades of grey. I LOVE games that reward playing the desperate middle ground PC who's just trying to plug leaks and stay alive rather than "save/destroy the day"!
Unfortunately, being the 'voice of reason' in ME can really screw your outcome in the final game. It's bizarre how many little judgement calls can affect your final alliance strength.
Some of these, especially when talking to Joker on the Normandy in ME2 I usually use to balance my paragon/renegade points.
about 6:30, this is a well known development issue on the game, where Yaroslev was supposed to be badly injured during the conversation, but because they didn't have the assets ready (iirc), they just had him sit down, which feels weird.
End credits song: M4 Part II by the Faunts. I have this song on my favorites playlist to this day.
Being too neutral screwed me over in me3... had no choice but to watch the geth slaughter the quarians then watch tali jump to her death... i stopped playing immediately and have not touched it since.
It's not too difficult to avoid that outcome if you replay! I guess it's a way to punish you for making bad choices lol
@@Danticsit’s completely unavoidable unless you save a loyal legion from ME 2 and Tali has to survive too. Even then you can flub it. Most players didn’t get it by official stats
game hits you with a consequence and so you stop playing completely? lmfao
@@BrightstoneGG Well sorry, for being pissed in the moment that i was short 15 or so paragon/renegade points short from stopping a bunch of idiotic zealots from doing a suicidal bum rush. so i decided to take a break play other games eventually forgetting to get back to me3...
oh well, since e-peen points mean so much to you you can have mine.
@@Aschera ahh ye old wannabe edgy replies ive missed those you dont get those touching grass .. your statement implied you would not touch the game again because a game about choice and consequence gave you a consequence not because 'trying other games then forgot lol
If I die, tell my romance, "Hello"
If I remember right, there's a mod that edits the appearance of the Noveria Hot Labs scientist to make him look more obviously wounded to justify his decision to not move and risk agitating his wounds.
😊The end credits song in the first mass effect since day one has been an all-time favorite song ever!
3:00 ohh Data Disk 😂 It makes ME1 feels so antiquated 😢
Certainly does!
@@Dantics I was 10 back in 2007 and only started playing the game back in 2012.
It’s wild to think that’s what the dev initially thought of the future (on an era before Smart Phone) and how they adapted the world building as our own technology and perception of the future shifted.
1st Mass Effect give me more of a “empty galaxy” vibe since we visited rural and remote locations. On locations like cities, it is usually some sort of ancient ruins. It feels like as if it’s our first time in space. Even Normandy feels “vast and empty”. Also since we focused on Shepard’s immediate surrounding and actions only, it felt very small.
2nd & 3rd make the world much alive and settled, with much background story. The vibes are less “discover-y” and more like “who gonna be more influential” with all the politic and the interactions between races, make the world much bigger (and it is since we visited much more planets).
@@AlexS-oj8qf I agree, they also were working with a vastly less powerful engine in ME1, so were very limited in how much they could add to it. I have a feeling they wanted it to feel more alive but simply couldn't. Emotion wise, yes you're meant to feel like a big fish.
It's funny to me how applicable this is to real life. Most people are conditioned to react all the way from very well to very poorly to Paragons of Virtue or absolute sleazeballs, skipping the middle completely grey area.
And for those people, neutral conversation can be extremely painful, equivalent to awkward silences, or just ambiguous enough to cause them to lash out.
Committing to true neutral / robotic / professional responses is playing life on hard difficulty. I for one prefer this slow burn option.
It really, really was difficult to commit to.
Commander "I just work here" Shepard
Lol, thats the vibe for sure
If I don't survive tell Liara I said Hello.
I use middle options sometimes on renegade runs. It lets you be kind of an arsehole without being outright evil
shepard not being rendered in the final me1 dramatic hero cutscene is so FUCKING funny XDDD
I'm just surprised to hear most people play full Paragon or full Renegade. I just pick what seems best at the time, and end up with a mix of Paragon and Renegade points. I thought most people played that way.
Yes you are definitely a rare one!
After my first few playthroughs I actually started using neutral responses in some situations and some of them were really interesting.
The neutralness edit killed me man. Never thought I'll see Futurama and Mass Effect together, but it works wonders XD
I've done some neutral options in my paragon runs just to see what was there. Neutral-Good is the best Shephard IMO.
Pure renegade has some hilarious moments
My best ME1 playthrough was my 4th. I did a paragon engineer, then renegade adept, then neutral soldier, and then a mostly renegade (but wanted to avoid unnecessary deaths, went sole survivor background and my mindset for the character was "never again") infiltrator 4th. That's the character (and mindset) I carried forward into ME2 and ME3. It's a fun one.
Ashley and neutral Shepard, I ship it.
Neutral could have been an option in ME3 with the reputation system. But like with many problems, ME3 double fixed it by removing Neutral.
I wanted a third “Patsy” option where you just always do what the council tells you and the Reapers take over.
We need another Shepard plays
True. But in due time...
14:19 when you embrace your neutrality so much you vanish from reality
41:54
Holy shit that’s an incredible idea.
It wouldn’t make any damned sense, but neither did Shepherd’s revivify either.
It's funny how worried they are about Kelham's lawer arriving when in fact he is the one making him confess 😆. Is there even any way to truly sabotage this mission? It feels a bit on rails.
From this testing, no. You always succeed it seems BUT you get no paragon or renegade points. Doesn't seem like much of a loss
This vid made me recall how often I took the middle option in the first game before i realised the advantage morality options give you (the dude got erased).
I have two gripes eith MEs convo options. Fiest one is that clickable prompts often give you a different feel than what shep actually says afterwards, in some cases its a very distinctive difference (almost night and day).
The second one is how comically overdrawn/exaggerated some of the paragon lines/choices are.
ME1 - I started neutral then went paragon for better choice of options.
ME2 - I chose whatever I liked at a given moment/situation, ended up with full paragon bar and around 1/3 of the renegade bar.
ME3- I didn't role play as a good guy but I wanted to save as many as I could and there is no place for reapers in my universe.
Heartbreaks inevitable.
For me the best option is to play as a guy who knows how to use fear to his advantage and use it, sometimes being an asshole for laughs but still doing the 'right" thing.
Some of these lines are genuinely iconic and I never would've seen them, incredible.
I wouldn't have either. It is genuinely a shame.
27:38 Now that's a fine discovery
This whole playthrough I was discovering so much
The moral of the story is that video games, in contrast to real life, give a cavalcade of no-lose situations.
I know some of those because i usually role play in my rpgs. Its wild to me that people are convinced that you have to pick full renegade or paragon to enjoy those games.
The middle option often feels like the professional option.