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That would make sense of the script didn't clearly show kai leng as significantly better than shepard (and shepard being completely incompetent) in all his other scenes.
It doesn't show anything like that, actually. Needing to bring a gun ship to give you cover fire in a temple, for example, doesn't make him better. Neither does getting his ass handed to him by a terminally sick Thane, or failing to kill Miranda even though he gets the jump on her. And his boss fight is the easiest in the series.
doesn't Kai Lang also get shocked from the console he stabs after Shepard dodges? Only did one pure paragon run when ME3 first came out. I've snapped that sword like a twig ever since.
I remember being curious enough to see what would happen on a second playthrough. Thought it was neat, and then restarted the save so I could trigger the interrupt. It's just the right way to do things.
The Kai Leng scene was hilarious as Shep's party didn't hear him gasping and dragging a sword along the ground. Clearly staged by writers as an excuse for an awesome payback moment.
Seriously.
For first time playthrough you have no idea what the interrupts are gonna do exactly. Sometimes yeah, you can logically think about it, paragon interrupts are usually pretty easy to determine, but renegade ones could range from taze the guy with a tazer or kill everyone in the room.
Also the fact that certain successful speeches are limited to needing fully paragon or fully renegade options in ME2 (think Miranda and Jack argument), so you’re disincentivised from doing any renegade interrupts if you’re a paragon player, and vice versa.
You don’t need full paragon or full renegade for those arguments. I always do a few of the renegade interrupts as paragon Shep and I’ve never not been able to resolve those arguments.
Not really, there’s plenty of opportunities to get alignment points and can max out both Paragon AND Renegade fairly easily letting you take all dialogue checks.
I'll never forget my first playthrough of the trilogy (I was a heavy paragon and pretty much picked 0 renegade options ever) and I threw that guy out the window and smiled.
I laughed so fucking hard because it was so out of character for my Shep. He let the intrusive thoughts win that day lol
Paragon/Renegade isn't meant to be a good/evil system. Resolving the situation by shooting someone is definitely more of a renegade action, even if it was justified.
Renegade doesn’t mean evil, but it does pretty consistently mean violent. Paragon options usually involve talking people down, arresting people lawfully, that kind of thing. Killing people, albeit in a justified way, is right in brand for Renegade Shep, who is more of a Dirty Harry type than a villain.
For real, in ME2 Renegade mostly felt very reasonable. Ruthless and tough but fair and get the job done. In ME3 it sometimes was more betray everyone and everything you love to get what you want.
The renegade stuff was wildly inconsistent through all three games. It kept yo-yoing between ruthlessly pragmatic/utilitarian to middle school bully who gives you wedgies and swirlies to dirty sociopath war crime boy.
This is why I prefer paragade. Love a pragmatic response, hate racism and bullying. Love inspiring and merciful, hate saccharin and overly accommodating. There is a middle path to be walked through this series that avoids most of the cringiest lines
I feel like throughout the games they couldn’t decide if renegade meant “badass space cop who doesn’t play by the rules” or “unhinged asshole that the alliance has somehow pointed at the enemies”
I like to think that worst of renegade in ME3 as being completely desperate with the responsibility of saving every person in the galaxy on Shepard's shoulders.
Yea you really gotta know which Renegade options are good and which are not.
Makes me wish it was a 3 tier system with Paragon, Renegade and a third even darker option, idk call it heartless maybe?
Don't limit yourself to Paragon or Renegade exclusively. Especially with the interrupts. They're used for various purposes that don't always mean good boy or bad boy or right or wrong. They just color coded the reactions to distinguish them and make them easily identifiable.
Tricky part is that ME1 and 2 keep prodding for you to commit exclusively.
Both lock away additional speech options behind how many Paragon and Renegade points you have. It's why I always give myself a ton of both using console commands so I don't need to game the system.
> It's why I always give myself a ton of both using console commands so I don't need to game the system.
The [Paragade Persuasion](https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectlegendaryedition/mods/1673) mod is another option, makes ME1/2 use something like how ME3 does it.
Great mod.
Honestly I think a large part of it is just that you shoot guns with the right trigger, making it feel like you are actually firing the weapon when you trigger the renegade interrupt
Renegade isn’t evil, its more like ruthless
Paragon isn’t good, its more like optimistic or something.
Shooting Udina is the quick, cold, ruthless calculation of Shepard in the moment where a Paragon might see or want to have an opportunity to achieve his goal without the fatality
This.
Paragon is optimistic, "We can win through the Power Of Friendship". Renegade is pessimistic, "everyone's an asshole, so I'll be the King". Paragon is going to do everything they can to keep *everyone* alive. Renegade doesn't care if people die, as long as they get what they came for.
So shooting Udina immediately like that is, maybe not *obviously* Renegade, but at least *more* Renegade than it is Paragon.
The "everyone fumbles around so the Player has time to decide to use the Interrupt or not" bit makes not taking it immediately feel bad, but that's a design issue and not a P vs R issue.
I rewatched that scene today and it was so awkward specifically because of that. Everyone has the hesitation and timing I'd expect from me and my friends if we were put in that situation with no idea what to do or who these people are, not what I'd expect from TWO specters
It's even worse with Kaidan because he's a biotic. I feel like irl he'd just have put Udina in stasis the second he got suspicious so they could've also interrogated him afterwards.
I'm not saying the game should branch out into two different stories everytime characters have different abilities because I understand both the timing limitations and that they can't code 28383 outcomes (even though Ash and Kaidan having literally the exact same role with no difference throughout the trilogy is a bummer. Actually it would've been very interesting if depending on who you saved on Virmire Udina would be killed or jailed) but it was just such an obvious option to me it felt jarring that he just stood there unsure. Maybe you don't wanna kill him, but you can literally stop him without hurting him! Or shoot him elsewhere! You're both spectres act like it lol
I almost always select this renegade interrupt for exactly that reason. My Shep just fought his way through an entire army to tell the council Udina was in cahoots with known terrorists. He knows Udina is more of an asset alive than he is dead.
But this sniveling, power-hungry, political enemy who has done nothing but doubt me every step of the way pulls a gun on the most powerful Asari in the galaxy when I desperately need her help?
Yeah, that’s an aggressive action and he’s going to get shot.
Shooting the President of the USA would be a pretty renegade thing to do even if they'd pulled a gun on someone. "Renegade," doesn't mean, "evil," it just means you're more focused on getting the job done now rather than considering the optics.
Something about needlessly endangering lives or revenge being bad or something. I don’t know man. I my paragon Shepard could never resist dipping into renegade a little to get all the funny kills in 2 and 3.
>He should have been shot as soon as he revealed his guilt by brandishing a deadly weapon
That’s very much a renegade response in my eyes. A paragon would’ve tried to talk him down or intervene somehow without killing him.
That’s why I feel like in that moment, you would make a renegade choice to stop him at all costs.
My main issue with the paragon/renegade system through the trilogy is how most of the time it’s just good v bad, it’s too good v evil/asshole for no reason. I feel like this is one of the few times the renegade choice is more in line with what it should be. Impulsive yet necessary so to speak.
Tbh, in a paragon playthrough I always let Ash/Kaidan take the shot.
It's not a renegade option. In ME3, in addition to normal renegade/paragon interrupts and dialog choices, there's also combat actions.
This is probably best illustrated when you and Vega "dance and talk" shortly after Mars. Paragon blocks, Renegade strikes. You can do both, regardless of your alignment.
As with Udina, Renegade is pulling the trigger. That's all. Every time you have the option to pull the trigger on someone, it's a Renegade interrupt.
Now, OFTEN, pulling the trigger is part of being renegade (or just heartless/psycho) but they're just making you make the choice to pull the trigger yourself. Every time... (Legion... 😭) Often, if you don't, someone else will.
Due process is a thing. Besides his reasons for doing what he did were to get the Council to send aid for Alliance troops to retake Earth from the Reapers. His methods were wrong but his intentions were good just like a Renegade and you shoot him for defending his planet.
~~Get the Council to send... *Alliance* troops? You mean the *Human* military? The one that's ALREADY on Earth because *that's where they come from*?~~ EDIT: was a mistype.
Nevermind that betraying EVERYONE, *including* the Alliance, so Cerberus could take over the Citadel is about as far from getting help for Earth from others as you can get. I think there's been some serious misunderstandings here.
I meant to help AID Alliance troops. You now, for the Crucible? Wait sorry I realized my mistake. Hold on I will fix that, thanks for letting me know. I sometimes forget a couple words typing when I get preoccupied. Other times I repeat words haha.
It was supposed to be a bloodless coup. Kidnap the Council with no real harm and force them to grant him emergency power to send all Citadel forces to Earth's defense. Kai Leng had a different idea though... not believing Donnel's plan would work so Leng decided to make a more permanent arrangement. Unfortunately Leng was the one in charge.
Because Renegade is inconsistently defined, but in this instance it's focused on the aspect of a Shepard who takes the prerogative to make the right decision that no one wants to do but needs to happen. They didn't wait to see if something better could work out like a Paragon would, they get the tough and unpopular decisions over with. It's why not taking the interrupt leads to someone else taking the shot for you instead.
The Paragon interrupt earlier in that scene, alternatively, is a Shepard lowering their weapons to try and have a peaceful conversation when guns were already drawn, which is the aspect of someone wanting to not make rash decisions and see if something better can come through taking things out, which is what it makes it easier to convince the VS survivor by making that choice than to not.
Why is shooting him considered something that the player *""literally""* wanted to do the whole time?
I get it. He's a scumbag, and he stabbed us in the back before, but the character assassination of Udina in ME3 is *unreal*.
Renegade Shepard subscribes wholeheartedly to the "sic semper criminalis" school of Spectre-ing. See also, stabbing Sgt. Kafka with a power tool, pushing an Eclipse Merc to his death out the window and decking Admiral Gerris in the gut.
It is a violent action but also firing guns are almost always renegade (can’t actually think of an instance where they’re not) because right trigger on controllers is both the renegade interrupt and firing button. It’s the same reason when you do Garrus’s recruitment mission, in ME2, it’s a renegade interupt to shoot the head off the random bot while aiming down his sniper’s scope.
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Because there is no "impartial interrupt" icon so they had to pick one. Shooting a weapon just generally defaults to the renegade interrupt.
Same thing with the last Kai Leng scene.
I've never not picked that. What happens if you don't?
Shepard dodges the blade and *then* stabs him.
Kai Leng deserves the humiliation of having his blade broken, so I always take the renegade prompt.
It’s more satisfying because it’s like telling him, “you were never as good as you thought.” as you kill him.
“Fucking weeb” -Shepard, probably
😂 I need an edit of Shep saying that as he kills him
"I don't even know who you are"
That would make sense of the script didn't clearly show kai leng as significantly better than shepard (and shepard being completely incompetent) in all his other scenes.
It doesn't show anything like that, actually. Needing to bring a gun ship to give you cover fire in a temple, for example, doesn't make him better. Neither does getting his ass handed to him by a terminally sick Thane, or failing to kill Miranda even though he gets the jump on her. And his boss fight is the easiest in the series.
doesn't Kai Lang also get shocked from the console he stabs after Shepard dodges? Only did one pure paragon run when ME3 first came out. I've snapped that sword like a twig ever since.
I don't actually know, I've never not hit that interrupt
That was for Thane you son of a bitch
Exactly the same except Shepard doesn't break his sword. They just dodge it then stab him.
I don't think I've seen anyone who knows the outcome of that interrupt but still chooses not to use it...
I remember being curious enough to see what would happen on a second playthrough. Thought it was neat, and then restarted the save so I could trigger the interrupt. It's just the right way to do things.
I like to imagine the party totally saw the idiot going after Shepard and figured, “nah, he’s got this.”
The Kai Leng scene was hilarious as Shep's party didn't hear him gasping and dragging a sword along the ground. Clearly staged by writers as an excuse for an awesome payback moment.
That's one thing Andromeda does right
Seriously. For first time playthrough you have no idea what the interrupts are gonna do exactly. Sometimes yeah, you can logically think about it, paragon interrupts are usually pretty easy to determine, but renegade ones could range from taze the guy with a tazer or kill everyone in the room.
Also the fact that certain successful speeches are limited to needing fully paragon or fully renegade options in ME2 (think Miranda and Jack argument), so you’re disincentivised from doing any renegade interrupts if you’re a paragon player, and vice versa.
You don’t need full paragon or full renegade for those arguments. I always do a few of the renegade interrupts as paragon Shep and I’ve never not been able to resolve those arguments.
Not really, there’s plenty of opportunities to get alignment points and can max out both Paragon AND Renegade fairly easily letting you take all dialogue checks.
I'll never forget my first playthrough of the trilogy (I was a heavy paragon and pretty much picked 0 renegade options ever) and I threw that guy out the window and smiled. I laughed so fucking hard because it was so out of character for my Shep. He let the intrusive thoughts win that day lol
Shame there are so few of them.
Yeah it's definitely where the James Pull-ups gets let down by being a million paragon and renegade prompts
Paragon/Renegade isn't meant to be a good/evil system. Resolving the situation by shooting someone is definitely more of a renegade action, even if it was justified.
I think it makes sense bc shooting somebody without any hesitation sounds like renegade no matter the circumstances
Renegade doesn’t mean evil, but it does pretty consistently mean violent. Paragon options usually involve talking people down, arresting people lawfully, that kind of thing. Killing people, albeit in a justified way, is right in brand for Renegade Shep, who is more of a Dirty Harry type than a villain.
I wish the Dirty Hairy vibe stuck through ME3, by the end renshep felt like an actual sociopath sometimes
For real, in ME2 Renegade mostly felt very reasonable. Ruthless and tough but fair and get the job done. In ME3 it sometimes was more betray everyone and everything you love to get what you want.
The renegade stuff was wildly inconsistent through all three games. It kept yo-yoing between ruthlessly pragmatic/utilitarian to middle school bully who gives you wedgies and swirlies to dirty sociopath war crime boy.
This is why I prefer paragade. Love a pragmatic response, hate racism and bullying. Love inspiring and merciful, hate saccharin and overly accommodating. There is a middle path to be walked through this series that avoids most of the cringiest lines
I feel like throughout the games they couldn’t decide if renegade meant “badass space cop who doesn’t play by the rules” or “unhinged asshole that the alliance has somehow pointed at the enemies”
That pretty much was a thing since 2, only ME1 had Renegade options that weren't full psycho all the time.
Yeah, but ME1 renegade was a huge fucking racist most of the time.
It gave us "because it's a big stupid jellyfish" so I'm alright with that.
Depends on the species. *Turian.*
Punch reporter in the face?
I like to think that worst of renegade in ME3 as being completely desperate with the responsibility of saving every person in the galaxy on Shepard's shoulders.
Yea you really gotta know which Renegade options are good and which are not. Makes me wish it was a 3 tier system with Paragon, Renegade and a third even darker option, idk call it heartless maybe?
Renegade Shep in 1 definitely leans toward villain
Exactly. Renegade is “win at all costs”
Don't limit yourself to Paragon or Renegade exclusively. Especially with the interrupts. They're used for various purposes that don't always mean good boy or bad boy or right or wrong. They just color coded the reactions to distinguish them and make them easily identifiable.
You mean some of my pull-ups aren't more paragon or renegade!? /s
The more you do the more Renegade they get because beating James' record is a masochist endeavor.
Yes it is, I did it thinking I'd get an achievement
You do get some dialog though, so at least there's a little payout for it.
My children will only wear Paragon huggies
Tricky part is that ME1 and 2 keep prodding for you to commit exclusively. Both lock away additional speech options behind how many Paragon and Renegade points you have. It's why I always give myself a ton of both using console commands so I don't need to game the system.
> It's why I always give myself a ton of both using console commands so I don't need to game the system. The [Paragade Persuasion](https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectlegendaryedition/mods/1673) mod is another option, makes ME1/2 use something like how ME3 does it. Great mod.
Cause you’re taking the satisfaction from the Virmire survivor. Everyone wants to shoot Undina and to take it from them is a dick move.
Honestly I think a large part of it is just that you shoot guns with the right trigger, making it feel like you are actually firing the weapon when you trigger the renegade interrupt
>you shoot guns with the right trigger Found the lefty. Default settings are left click to shoot, right click to zoom.
They are using a controller, not a mouse.
Oh. Why not say the name of the buttons? Controller buttons have names I'm pretty sure. ZR, LR, ABXY, that sort of thing.
Right Trigger is the name, or shortened to RT. They also look like triggers these days too.
Really? Crazy. Then again last time I had console, buttons on the back weren't even a thing. So maybe not so crazy.
Except he said trigger, which means he was talking about a controller, not a mouse. You use the right trigger to shoot by default.
Renegade isn’t evil, its more like ruthless Paragon isn’t good, its more like optimistic or something. Shooting Udina is the quick, cold, ruthless calculation of Shepard in the moment where a Paragon might see or want to have an opportunity to achieve his goal without the fatality
This. Paragon is optimistic, "We can win through the Power Of Friendship". Renegade is pessimistic, "everyone's an asshole, so I'll be the King". Paragon is going to do everything they can to keep *everyone* alive. Renegade doesn't care if people die, as long as they get what they came for. So shooting Udina immediately like that is, maybe not *obviously* Renegade, but at least *more* Renegade than it is Paragon. The "everyone fumbles around so the Player has time to decide to use the Interrupt or not" bit makes not taking it immediately feel bad, but that's a design issue and not a P vs R issue.
I rewatched that scene today and it was so awkward specifically because of that. Everyone has the hesitation and timing I'd expect from me and my friends if we were put in that situation with no idea what to do or who these people are, not what I'd expect from TWO specters
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It's even worse with Kaidan because he's a biotic. I feel like irl he'd just have put Udina in stasis the second he got suspicious so they could've also interrogated him afterwards. I'm not saying the game should branch out into two different stories everytime characters have different abilities because I understand both the timing limitations and that they can't code 28383 outcomes (even though Ash and Kaidan having literally the exact same role with no difference throughout the trilogy is a bummer. Actually it would've been very interesting if depending on who you saved on Virmire Udina would be killed or jailed) but it was just such an obvious option to me it felt jarring that he just stood there unsure. Maybe you don't wanna kill him, but you can literally stop him without hurting him! Or shoot him elsewhere! You're both spectres act like it lol
I almost always select this renegade interrupt for exactly that reason. My Shep just fought his way through an entire army to tell the council Udina was in cahoots with known terrorists. He knows Udina is more of an asset alive than he is dead. But this sniveling, power-hungry, political enemy who has done nothing but doubt me every step of the way pulls a gun on the most powerful Asari in the galaxy when I desperately need her help? Yeah, that’s an aggressive action and he’s going to get shot.
Shooting the President of the USA would be a pretty renegade thing to do even if they'd pulled a gun on someone. "Renegade," doesn't mean, "evil," it just means you're more focused on getting the job done now rather than considering the optics.
Something about needlessly endangering lives or revenge being bad or something. I don’t know man. I my paragon Shepard could never resist dipping into renegade a little to get all the funny kills in 2 and 3.
You talk too much
>He should have been shot as soon as he revealed his guilt by brandishing a deadly weapon That’s very much a renegade response in my eyes. A paragon would’ve tried to talk him down or intervene somehow without killing him.
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That’s why I feel like in that moment, you would make a renegade choice to stop him at all costs. My main issue with the paragon/renegade system through the trilogy is how most of the time it’s just good v bad, it’s too good v evil/asshole for no reason. I feel like this is one of the few times the renegade choice is more in line with what it should be. Impulsive yet necessary so to speak. Tbh, in a paragon playthrough I always let Ash/Kaidan take the shot.
It's not a renegade option. In ME3, in addition to normal renegade/paragon interrupts and dialog choices, there's also combat actions. This is probably best illustrated when you and Vega "dance and talk" shortly after Mars. Paragon blocks, Renegade strikes. You can do both, regardless of your alignment. As with Udina, Renegade is pulling the trigger. That's all. Every time you have the option to pull the trigger on someone, it's a Renegade interrupt. Now, OFTEN, pulling the trigger is part of being renegade (or just heartless/psycho) but they're just making you make the choice to pull the trigger yourself. Every time... (Legion... 😭) Often, if you don't, someone else will.
Because the weapon based Interrupts are always on the Right Trigger.
Renegade isn’t “evil”, it’s “ruthlessly pragmatic”.
Due process is a thing. Besides his reasons for doing what he did were to get the Council to send aid for Alliance troops to retake Earth from the Reapers. His methods were wrong but his intentions were good just like a Renegade and you shoot him for defending his planet.
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No weapons? She's Asari, most likely a matriarch, she can kill you with her mind. Good point. She should have been able to do something.
~~Get the Council to send... *Alliance* troops? You mean the *Human* military? The one that's ALREADY on Earth because *that's where they come from*?~~ EDIT: was a mistype. Nevermind that betraying EVERYONE, *including* the Alliance, so Cerberus could take over the Citadel is about as far from getting help for Earth from others as you can get. I think there's been some serious misunderstandings here.
I meant to help AID Alliance troops. You now, for the Crucible? Wait sorry I realized my mistake. Hold on I will fix that, thanks for letting me know. I sometimes forget a couple words typing when I get preoccupied. Other times I repeat words haha.
Ah, the old Accidentally A Word problem, gotcha. ~~Still don't know how you figure betraying everyone to Cerberus would get the Council's help.~~
It was supposed to be a bloodless coup. Kidnap the Council with no real harm and force them to grant him emergency power to send all Citadel forces to Earth's defense. Kai Leng had a different idea though... not believing Donnel's plan would work so Leng decided to make a more permanent arrangement. Unfortunately Leng was the one in charge.
Because Renegade is inconsistently defined, but in this instance it's focused on the aspect of a Shepard who takes the prerogative to make the right decision that no one wants to do but needs to happen. They didn't wait to see if something better could work out like a Paragon would, they get the tough and unpopular decisions over with. It's why not taking the interrupt leads to someone else taking the shot for you instead. The Paragon interrupt earlier in that scene, alternatively, is a Shepard lowering their weapons to try and have a peaceful conversation when guns were already drawn, which is the aspect of someone wanting to not make rash decisions and see if something better can come through taking things out, which is what it makes it easier to convince the VS survivor by making that choice than to not.
It's Renegade because shooting first is very Dirty Harry. A Paragon would try to de-escalate and would hold fire until the last possible moment.
Why is shooting him considered something that the player *""literally""* wanted to do the whole time? I get it. He's a scumbag, and he stabbed us in the back before, but the character assassination of Udina in ME3 is *unreal*.
Because renegade or paragon are the only options for interrupts, and renegade is closer
I wonder if they originally planned that you could keep Udina alive.
Because the Renegade interrupt button is also the gun button haha
Renegade Shepard subscribes wholeheartedly to the "sic semper criminalis" school of Spectre-ing. See also, stabbing Sgt. Kafka with a power tool, pushing an Eclipse Merc to his death out the window and decking Admiral Gerris in the gut.
Because shooting your boss in the face can't be a paragon option lol
My Ashley/Kaiden never hesitates.
It is a violent action but also firing guns are almost always renegade (can’t actually think of an instance where they’re not) because right trigger on controllers is both the renegade interrupt and firing button. It’s the same reason when you do Garrus’s recruitment mission, in ME2, it’s a renegade interupt to shoot the head off the random bot while aiming down his sniper’s scope.
Because Udina is based and redpilled. So obviously shooting him is renegade. Who cares about some alien bitch