Do missions like Dissension in the Ranks always have opposing opinions from squadmates?

Don't remember who I had with me since I'm usually very random about who I bring with me unless there's some special RP reason for it - or if they're a required squadmate. Personally, I just listened to the offer and made my decision based on what the Primus said. Opinions from squadmates are welcome but they don't necessarily influence me. They only deal I'd ever cut with a Kett is this: you surrender and I won't kill you.

damn it must be my choice of companions

On a slightly different note: is it me, or does the 'speak to old Angara on Aya who remember the arrival of the Kett'-quest tie in into this one, as a warning?

Cora and Drack push for military. Liam, PeeBee, and Vetra push for scientific. It is impossible to have Jaal at the time, so he has no opinion.

Actually, trying to think- are there any other decisions in the game that let both companions take a stance? I think Andromeda usually avoided having companions advocate for Big Decisions.


During the critical arc...

On Voeld when rescuing the Moshae, it's not companion vs companion but Moshae vs. Jaal.

On Kadara, the plot happens mostly in-port and without a companion escorts. No one is there when you choose to save the prisoner or not. Same with Reyes.

On the Archon's ship, there's one really strong opinion about the fate of the Krogan scouts, but I can recall anyone not named Draak having a strong opinion/preference.

There's no Big Decision on the Remnant city.

The Meredian Big Decision about the ambassador is done without companions present.


Even the world plots usually avoid it. Reyes vs. Sloane doesn't involve companion input. Havarl lacks a real choice, same with Voeld. Aya is a hub world, so like the Nexus there's no constant companions (or Big Choices). No one's really involved in the Remnant drive core decision on Elaaden.



...huh. Bioware may have largely moved from that premise of using companions to frame choices.

Hm. I'd agree on the key word of 'emphasizing,' but I also think that's a good, not a bad, thing for roleplaying franchises.

The original trilogy advertising did make a Big Deal about 'galaxy-shaping choices' that would have impact... but the choices we got were consistently badly designed choices, with almost no impact whatsoever. The bigger the choice, the less feasible it was for their divergences to actually be incorporated into the plot, and so you had a lot of choices that were too big to show, and were routinely invalidated as a gameplay impact going forward. Each of the three game's final choices ended up amounting to pretty much nothing for sequential events- the Council didn't matter, the Collector Base didn't matter, and the Crucible choice was so big they went to another galaxy to avoid having to answer it.

The best arc in the trilogy for capturing consequences was the Krogan/Genophage arc, and that worked by relying on choices that weren't set up as galaxy-shaping from the get-go. Killing Wrex or not wasn't an immediate impact on the Krogan. Maleon's data wasn't a genophage cure. By taking small choices, the narrative was able to have a big narrative shift in tone by substituting people- much bigger shifting than was seen in other contexts.

Consider the Geth-Quarian arc, for example. The ME1 Geth data quest was completely irrelevant. The supposedly Big Impact of Tali's loyallty mission, of splitting up the Migrant Fleet if you revealed the truth of treasonous crimes, barely even showed as a war asset modifier. There Heretic virus choice was only an asset modifier.

The only previous choice in the trilogy that significantly altered the narrative tone of Rannoch was whether Legion survived or not- and that's a far smaller 'choice' than the Big Decisions of ME2, like of rewriting all Heretic Geth or the Migrant Fleet politics.



One of the paradoxes of RPGs is that less is often more. A less ambitious scope in choice design- smaller scale, not Huge Societal hanges- are both easier to reflect, and easier to build divergent narrative tones off of. I'd say that MEA has a better ground for that- because its seems a lot of their decisions are designed for rhetorical difference rather than uncapturable Big Changes in the first place.