ME2 - Should I care About Paragon/Renegade?

[Brownie]

Hi, I've just started playing this game (can't believe I left it so long as it is fantastic!) but the only thing I am struggling with is the Morality Slider of Paragon/Renegade.

I have started by responding to dialogue or prompts based on how I would like to react in real life. So I make a choice one way or the other depending on the situation and my personal feeling. Which has left me with a fairly balanced Paragon/Renegade with a slightly higher value on the Paragon (I know, I am such a softy!)

I see that most people choose to favour one side or the other as this reveals other dialogue and some misions apparently. But I prefer to react as I would expect to rather force reactions based on what I want to happen in the game later. I have never been into RPGs as I could never get into a character in that way but I am feeling it a bit in ME2. Should I continue as I have been or make a shift towards one side or the other?

[RegionalDialect]

Keep doing this would be my advice. Just make the choices you want to make, regardless of the Paragon/Renegade score. This makes for a funner and more rewarding gameplay experience if you ask me.

On another note, you said that you've been making the choices based on what you would choose in real life, and this gave you a fairly balanced score. I do the same, but end up with a considerably higher Paragon score by the end of the game. Are you just a huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in real life???

[T02my]

Short answer: Play as you want.

A bit extented short answer: Play as you want, until you realize that you play for "good" or "bad" character, althrough Paragon is not always "good" and Renegade is not always "evil".

I don't want to confuse you, so I just say -- play as you kept playing reacting on situation as it's real life, it's fine that you have got a slightly higher value on Paragon.

[Brownie]

Originally posted by Mr. McSuave:

Keep doing this would be my advice. Just make the choices you want to make, regardless of the Paragon/Renegade score. This makes for a funner and more rewarding gameplay experience if you ask me.

On another note, you said that you've been making the choices based on what you would choose in real life, and this gave you a fairly balanced score. I do the same, but end up with a considerably higher Paragon score by the end of the game. Are you just a huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in real life???

Ha! Well I am not so far in and the paragon in me is edging it currently. When I wrote that I wondered if someone would take it that way. I suppose I meant if I were Shepard I would probably have less patience than I do when playing my life as Brownieuk7. I rarely throw people off skyscrapers just to see how it makes me feel. Although it is not unheard of.

[SwobyJ]

ME2 is the most polarized morality system of the trilogy.

It isn't so much the colored meters that matter, but an invisible calculation of "How many Paragon/Renegade point DO YOU HAVE OUT OF THE AVAILABLE POINTS YOU COULD HAVE BY THIS POINT IN THE GAME."
So it silently urges you to be a completionist, getting Para/Rene everywhere you can, just in case. And to be safe, you'd want that to be as much Para, or as much Rene as possible.

So you're playing sub-optimally (compared to ME1/ME3) when you deviate at all from a single-minded focus on either Para or Rene.

It can be okay when you make an occasional Rene choice when Paragon, or an occasional Para choice when Renegade. But otherwise, you're missing the assurance that you won't have grayed out options later in the game/in more difficult situations.


So you have to make a choice. Will you play just as you want to, risking that you won't be Persuasive/Intimidating enough to succeed in some situations? Or will you deliberately largely or totally aim towards the top Paragon or Renegade, so you don't end up in situations you don't want to end up in (losing Loyalty, characters dying, whatever)?

The people who do the former may have a more genuine and customized experience, but the people who do the latter may have more ability to metagame the 'perfect' result, going into ME3.

You can always do alternate playthroughs later on, anyway. Bioware games are made to support at least 1-3ish more playthroughs. Heck, you could even, if you had the time and will, do one trilogy playthrough for every class, roleplaying different combinations of choices.

[Brownie]

Originally posted by SwobyJ:

ME2 is the most polarized morality system of the trilogy.

....

So you have to make a choice. Will you play just as you want to, risking that you won't be Persuasive/Intimidating enough to succeed in some situations? Or will you deliberately largely or totally aim towards the top Paragon or Renegade, so you don't end up in situations you don't want to end up in (losing Loyalty, characters dying, whatever)?

.

this is where i am at right now. I think I'm just going to play it as I see fit making choices without worrying about what thatw ill do down the line. I'll still bwe doing the side missions if I fancy helping out these random peeps on the street.

I may pay the price but I think I'll enjoy it more concentrating on the current situation rather than worrying about future ones.

[Guydodge]

play as you are no matter what you do its still the greatest game ever made IMO.i wish i was playing for the first time again.best ride i was ever on.

[Maechen]

It's hard to fully explain without adding spoilers.

The best thing to do is either a) Try and fill one of them,(go all out paragon or renegade and not half-half) or b) play normally and go for a "perfect" playthrough on a second/third/57478th run.

[Verb_๊]

I actually am in the same boat, I just finished ME2 with ME1 before it. ME1 was a bit boring in the beginning and I'm glad some of the game mechanics have been removed in ME2 (constant running from point A to B, extremely slow elevator rides etc). Overall great games.

Now how I'm doing it is this. First playthrough just play how you feel. I mostly choose Paragon with a few Renegade and even though I had a few Renegade options blacked out, I actually wouldn't have used those options even if I had the choice, so it didn't matter at all. Now I'm going to do 2nd playthrough I'll mostly do Renegade just for the fun of it. ME series definitely have some of the best replay value I've seen, so yeah, my advice is just play it through how you like the first time around then play a 2nd playthrough to get what you missed out on.

[Quxudais]

Originally posted by Brownie-UK7:

Hi, I've just started playing this game (can't believe I left it so long as it is fantastic!) but the only thing I am struggling with is the Morality Slider of Paragon/Renegade.

I have started by responding to dialogue or prompts based on how I would like to react in real life. So I make a choice one way or the other depending on the situation and my personal feeling. Which has left me with a fairly balanced Paragon/Renegade with a slightly higher value on the Paragon (I know, I am such a softy!)

I see that most people choose to favour one side or the other as this reveals other dialogue and some misions apparently. But I prefer to react as I would expect to rather force reactions based on what I want to happen in the game later. I have never been into RPGs as I could never get into a character in that way but I am feeling it a bit in ME2. Should I continue as I have been or make a shift towards one side or the other?

My honest recommendation is to cheat and set your paragon/renegade to both be maximum. The silly binary system actively punishes someone for not devoting completely to one side or the other. Just because my character has a solid moral code doesn not mean she can't make hard pragmatic decisions or be intimidating as hell. Morality is not binary and I've always disliked how Bioware tries to to make every moral choice black and white.

So yeah, just max both via save editor or cheat engine or something and then play how you want without worrying about the silly game mechanic restricting you.

[SwobyJ]

The moral choices aren't black and white. However, the effect on Shepard is relatively more black and white in ME2 compared to the other games. You're designing what Shepard you have, (directly or indirectly) going into ME3.