Mass Effect Trilogy Save Editor

You've made a wrong choice in the game and/or haven't saved a game before the point of no return?
This is how to simply fix it.

Intro

If you're like me, you haven't saved the game before the point of no return.


Not quite sure why I haven't made it a habit to make a "big" save in games, probably relying on quicksave too much and this is something that got me in trouble a couple of times.

The last time that happened I was at the end of the Mass Effect 2, naively jumping into a suicide mission without making a save point beforehand. Oh, what a fool I was. Again!

I've made an epic wrong choice and the consequence was devastating. What to do now?
Shall I just give it a rest, and go onward to the ME3 with that horrible mistake, start a new game, or shall I find a solution, if there's any?

Yes, there is a solution. And a very simple one at that.

The f*ck up

Spoiler alert! If it's your first playthrough, please don't continue reading. You have been warned.



What happened was that I chose the wrong Fire Team leader and Tali died. :(

For your Fire Team leader, Garrus, Miranda or Jacob are the best choices. And they need to be loyal. All of my squadmates were loyal, so I didn't get why would Tali die whilst trying to close the jammed door.

The thing is if your Fire Team leader is anyone except Garrus, Miranda, or Jacob, your tech specialist will die. Harsh, ain't it? :(

I had no effing idea that that is so important, 'cause in my first playthrough, nobody died, in the second Jack died (she was my distraction Fire Team leader) and in my third Tali died. That was just unacceptable since my plan was to continue to ME3 with the ME2 save. And I know how important Tali's character to the story is.

On the other hand - I don't google every little thing what to do in a game, 'cause then I feel like a big ol' cheater, but in this case, I needed to right the wrong.

So, it's 2 AM, I don't have a custom save before the suicide mission, and I just got to resolve this. Can't go to sleep without finishing the game, and finishing it with the right choice.

Solution

Behold, the happy end is nigh!


I had no idea that there exists such a thing as a save editor. It has been around for a while now, from the year Mass Effect was first published, and it has gotten pretty sophisticated today.
You can download the save editor from here:
https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectlegendaryedition/mods/20

It works for both the separated trilogy as well as for the Legendary Edition. The only downside is that you need to register to the site for the download (it's completely free) and that it needs Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime to be installed as well to view the editor. It will be required upon opening the editor, so there's no way around it, unfortunately.

Luckily - you can uninstall it after you've made your new save.

Using the editor is very simple - click on the upper left "Open" option,

open your AutoSave file that is located in This PC/Documents/BioWare/Mass Effect 2 (or Mass Effect Legendary Edition)/Save/ name-of-your-character-and-number folder, and check/uncheck what you need to change. You'll need to do this for all the saved files in the folder. Save it, say yes to re-writing and you're done!

As I just wanted to make Miranda my Fire Team leader, I've unchecked Samara as a leader and checked Miranda. Haven't changed anything else, 'cause that would be cheating big time, and I'm not into that.


Make a backup for your old save files just in case something goes wrong.

And there you have it - you can now finish the game with your whole squad alive and go to sleep peacefully. :D

For making sure everyone stays alive and all goes well, here is this awesome chart I've found on Reddit:

Have a great game, guys, hope this helps!

[Ronan Inozuka]

I don't know if you'll respond to this, but I keep getting "invalid value: integer 18, expected variant index 0 <= i < 6" whenever I select "Open". Am I doing something wrong?

[Papa Bear]

Excellent!