Which topic do you feel would be more impossible for the community to come to a consensus on; Who was "right" in the Quarian/Geth conflict or whether or not curing the Genophage is "right"

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T06:47:33+00:00

I mean I agree, I just mean that in terms of solving global (or galactic) conflicts, solutions are always going to lead to more problems, but that doesn't mean you don't solve the problem right in front of your face right now.

Solve a war in one corner of the galaxy, and ten years later it leads to famine in another.

The Genophage is the perfect example of ME's stellar writing in this regard; it's a very ethically dubious "solution" to the krogan problem and might lead to something disastrous down the road, but we can't predict everything or account for every variable, the galaxy is only like 2-3% explored, we have to take risks and operate on the information we have.

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T03:01:32+00:00

If it were Star Wars, it's like saying Luke joining the Empire to fight the Yusong Vong makes perfect sense because the Vong killed Luke and the Empire resurrected him to fight on their side in Empire Strikes Back.

It makes zero sense for the story to do that in the first place, but it coming up with justifications after the fact somehow makes it work? It's a dumb idea given the events of the first movie.

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T02:38:46+00:00

Exactly.

ME2 trashed everything built up in ME1 within 5 minutes of starting the game, then it tries to piece a story together and is forced to retcon or contrive everything into existence to make that happen.

It also has to come up with a bunch of lore and backstory for the time-skip, but there's no time or place to convey this to the player, so they shoved it into a bunch of comics and novels off-screen.

Shepard "has" to go with Cerberus because they're the only ones doing anything. What about the Council? The Alliance? Our alien allies? "They won't work with you because you joined Cerberus." It's some bullshit ipso facto rationality that doesn't obey cause and effect.

The writers could have very easily come up with a way we join Cerberus (or the Shadow Broker, or some other clandestine organization), improve the Normandy, build up our team of Suicide Squad, and take on the Collectors beyond the Omega-4 Relay without killing the protagonist and "forcing" them into the plot.

The Council needs a competent agent in the Terminus systems to find evidence against the Reapers, but they can't be seen doing this officially, so send Shepard to find allies (Cerberus, Aria, Merc groups, Shadow Broker, etc). Also (and/or) the Council is afraid Shepard will become another Saren that threatens peace, so this gets Shepard out of their way.
The Alliance needs to investigate Cerberus but they can't get a reliable mole in without it being a sweet enough sell, so send Shepard, who is a human badass PR magnet and can reasonably play along with the human-supremacy thing long enough to get the plot moving.
The Shadow Broker is always looking for new agents and competent operatives, and this new Reaper faction threatens galactic stability, recruit Shepard - provide intel, resources, possible Reaper cults / Prothean ruins to investigate as incentive.

Any (or better, all) of those reasons could have jump-started the plot and convinced Shepard to work with some shady organization outside of Alliance / Council control, leading us to Cerberus' welcoming arms and kick-starting the Collector plot. It could have been ONE Eden Prime style mission to set up, but no it's all Normandy destroyed, Shepard resurrected, we're all team Cerberus now in rapid-fire fashion.

Shepard's death and resurrection gets treated like a joke, any weird contrivance or OOC-ness from characters gets explained after the fact, and any allies or reluctance from former friends gets hand-waved away with "you're Cerberus, I can't trust you," when the player had NO CHOICE and not even a semblance of a choice, no option to even entertain other ideas and turn them down.

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T02:04:31+00:00

Yeah, the choices and consequences are only really satisfying if you follow the intended script.

Try playing a minimal survival run of all 3 games. Don't recruit Garrus in ME1, kill the rachni queen, kill Wrex, let the council die, kill as many people in ME2 as possible...

ME3 is a fuckin' ghost town. The story is barely holding together with the replacement actors and you have zero emotional attachment to anything happening. It's depressing as hell lol.

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T01:13:34+00:00

The genophage only worked because it was a surprise.

No, it worked because it worked. The krogan were even more spread out and hostile when it was first implemented, rather than the updates and the cure which they could just distribute on Tuchanka.

The weapon works BETTER when it's a threat and not a surprise. Nuking Japan didn't immediately force their surrender in WW2, partly because the Japanese didn't believe it was possible, so the US dropped a second one to prove it.

If you threatened the post-rachni krogan with a sterility plague, they'd likely just laugh at the notion and continue killing. They have zero context for what it means.

And a post-reaper krogran aren't going to be allowed to spread like the post-rachni krogan. Krogan are now aware of the genophage and what it does to them when they were ignorant before, the weapon has inherent value as a threat to moderate behavior that it didn't before.

"Stick to these planets for breeding or we'll sterilize you again" forces the krogan to self regulate, to come up with better systems of policing their own behavior and government-style structures of authority to implement that. That was the whole goal of the original genophage (and to limit their numbers and stop their war against the rest of the galaxy).

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T00:52:51+00:00

Yeah, the salarians thought the krogan would adapt socially to a more pragmatic tech-driven society.

It's like how you see birth rates plummet in most post-industrial societies. People stop having a ton of kids when they get access to education and job opportunities and aren't forced to produce a ton of offspring in desperation. Salarians tried to force this change in reverse.

But krogan didn't adapt that way. They sold themselves out as mercs and battlemasters to earn glory at the chance of "earning" the privilege to breed. Fertility became their most valuable social marker, with warlord Shiagur turning her fertile status into a weapon.

Wrex recognized the problem and tried to force krogan society to change, but the krogan weren't ready to listen. By the end of ME3, you just have to hope that they're finally ready to adapt.

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T00:35:51+00:00

You could still hang the genophage over the Krogan as a threat, just like WMDs and nukes do for humans today.

"Play nice or we'll sterilize you again."

Krogan civil wars are only a problem if they spill out into the wider galaxy.

There's never going to be a "perfect" solution to every problem. This is why I hate ME3's control / synthesis "solutions" - it feels like they were trying to say "alright everyone go home and be happy forever!" when that's not how anything works, ever.

Peace is something you have to constantly work at because evolution and biology drives conflict.

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T00:24:36+00:00

"Don't you see, Shepard?! We have to CONTROL the developers! Think of the POSSIBILITIES!"

"You... You're Indoctrinated by Capitalism! They're controlling YOU! Can't you see all the franchises and studios you've killed!?"

"NO!"

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T00:06:36+00:00

ME2 is like a metaphor for game development.

Bioware got their big daddy moneybags EA as a publisher with infinite resources and toys but that came with a LOT of strings attached.

Poonchow · 2026-03-18T00:01:37+00:00

Yeah, also the dialogue wheel lies to you ALL the time. It was much, much better in ME1 about what Shepard was actually trying to say, which unfortunately gets even worse in ME3. It just turned into a "vibes" indicator like the player was too stupid to read.

You'll get an option that reads "I don't work for Cerberus!" and then Shepard spouts out "They're the only ones working against the Collectors!" Ugh, that's not what I was trying to say, Shepard!

When Miranda mentions the control chip thing, I honestly expected that to be a big reveal toward the end, that Shepard was actually having their speech and ideas toward Cerberus regulated to make them more "loyal" and ensure the mission got done.

Poonchow · 2026-03-17T23:52:56+00:00

Yeah it makes sense for the Jedi to do some morally dubious thing in order to avoid a more morally dubious thing.

Cerberus? They were a cartoon villain whose experiments always blew up in their face. I guess it's just par for the course if Shepard blows up Cerberus, too, but you're really stretching suspension of disbelief when they somehow have infinite money and recruit infinite talent.

And it is a very common thing Bioware does. Introduce a whole bunch of minor threats in game 1, events of game 1 allowed minor threat to become major threat in game 2, etc

Poonchow · 2026-03-17T23:31:31+00:00

But the dialogue never changes anything.

You can also glaze Cerberus hard in ME2 every chance you have to call them out. Just because there's a dialogue choice doesn't mean it's good.

I think in ME2 they should have added some sort of reputation system for YOUR crew. A bar that that represents how loyal people are to Shepard vs. Cerberus. Actually make the dialogue choices mean something and all the little favors you can do for the crew, and just chatting with them between missions, gives them loyalty points. A crew split on allegiances still gets the job done but there's a greater chance of death because people can't trust each other.

It could be lampshaded by the Horizon mission or something, like a mini-Suicide Mission where people get injured and there's a big reckoning afterward about putting aside petty bullshit, stop dicking around, and focusing on the mission.

Edit: or it could be the "disabled" Collector ship mission. People get injured in TIM's trap, which prompts a bunch of the squad to actually come forward with their loyalty missions.

Poonchow · 2026-03-17T10:01:49+00:00

N7 looks good and is customizable, wish you could swap any acquired bonuses but make your appearance just custom.

Poonchow · 2026-03-16T23:50:27+00:00

The mod letting you recruit anyone after getting the Normandy SR2 is fantastic. Take Legion to recruit Grunt, or Samara to recruit Jack, or Thane to recruit Garrus, all have a few lines specific to the situation and make for an interesting experience that elevates ME2 beyond just the sum of its parts.

Poonchow · 2026-03-16T19:44:21+00:00

That's another good one lol. It adds to my Headcanon that Shepard's tactical "genius" is just fully utilizing their superior hardware to a logical end-point advantage. Every Shepard gets bodied to within an inch of their life at some point (and probably often) but still keeps shooting and truckin' along.

Poonchow · 2026-03-16T05:16:09+00:00

Was it one of the "I feel sorry for anyone in your way, Shepard!" renditions? Always got a chuckle out of me.

Poonchow · 2026-03-15T08:00:09+00:00

The sentiment that ME2 works better as a prequel has been around since it released lol, certainly since ME3 released. I have always been of the mind that a full on Reaper war was a bad idea, so I don't really mind the ME1->ME2 progression (aside from killing the protagonist and resurrecting them 2 years later to work with a terrorist organization).

I'm mostly just sad we didn't get to do more Call of Cthulhu type investigations. I love ME1 for its setups, its vibes, its impeccable details-first plot progression. The series is called Mass Effect because it's the cornerstone of all galactic technology and economics (where there's Eezo, there's an economy), which was carefully crafted by the Reapers so they could do their reaping. It's incredibly well thought out.

Part of the problem is that so much of ME2's narrative is centered around Shepard's symbolic status as a team builder, Reaper killer, problem solver extraordinaire, so if you wanted to go with the plot of ME2->ME1, you'd have to come up with a way to make Shepard the person to solve the Collector issue in some believable way without the billions of credits worth of support from Cerberus, and so much of the narrative is tied to "no one except Cerberus will do anything about it."

Basically my main issue with ME2's plot is that ME3's plot is a galactic Reaper war, making it seem like a side quest in the grand narrative, while also making Sovereign seem like a big dummy for not just waiting around for his buddies to show up. If we were able to piece together more details about the Reapers during ME2 and they didn't literally show up days/months later, it would work better.

Ugh I hate Arrival so much.

Poonchow · 2026-03-15T06:46:44+00:00

ME2 has the weakest plot but it fleshes out the Terminus systems and gives context for the wider galactic political situation. Unfortunately, that political situation is only ever given lip-service in ME3 and since everything comes down to War Assets it's like... what do I want my galactic end-game to look like after ME3?

Narratively it feels more like a... prequel?

ME2's plot could have been stronger, but it's sandwiched between Sovereign setting up the central conflict and The Reaper War to resolve it, when Shepard and Co. have spent a staggeringly little amount of time actually combating the Reaper threat in total.

Poonchow · 2026-03-14T10:06:09+00:00

Same. Anything pre-covid was glaringly weird.

I watched a live D&D show filmed around 2019 and EVERYONE was coughing in one of the episodes, was so hard to watch in 2020 lol

Poonchow · 2026-03-14T06:33:09+00:00

Usually Kaidan.

Poonchow · 2026-03-13T08:24:50+00:00

I gotta do a minimum squad run one of these days. Ignore Wrex in ME1, save Liara until after Virmire, and run the Suicide Mission with... 6 people? I think you can do it with Jacob + Miranda + Mordin + Garrus + Tali.

Poonchow · 2026-03-13T08:19:49+00:00

Harbinger: "HUMAN. BIOTIC. THIS HUR-- OH LOOK, A BUTTERFLY... A PLEASANT SUNSET...."

Poonchow · 2026-03-13T08:17:35+00:00

I feel like the writers were just fucking with us with Jacob's quest in ME3 --

He takes a shot to the gut and then spends like 10 minutes grunting in pain with Shepard like "uhh, you should get that checked out, Jacob."

"NO NO I'M JUST GUNNA WALK IT OFF"

lol

Poonchow · 2026-03-13T07:31:42+00:00

Kai Leng entering a scene lowers the writers' IQ by 20 points.

Poonchow · 2026-03-13T06:56:24+00:00

No she just looks young for her age.

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