Unpopular opinions

With your readiness that high, you have to plan what assets you will collect and which ones to avoid. It is doable. Here's a thread that can help get your ems within that range.

Do you want to be mean to Liara? Say you will help her with the hacks and then say that you don´t have time for these bullshit. She freaks out, it's very funny.

 Javik will never hold the nameplate. The other thing is Kaidan misses half the game. Shepard gets to talk with Kaidan twice after he's injured, but not after each mission like Samantha can be talked with. So that would make a difference as well.

As I recall, Ashley held my femshep's name plate at the end of my second playthrough. That implies that a non-romanced Kaidan can too, if you talk to him enough.

Thanks to both you guys for the response. But don't Javik and James technically count because you can sort of romance them in the Citadel DLC? 

But either way, its good to know someone like Garrus or Kaidan can be holding the name plate even if they aren't romanced. Now if we could just get rid of Liara out of that Citadel scene, I'd be set.

Do you not think that the events of ME 1 wouldn't have profound impact on a relatively innocent person? That going from studying artifacts to being shot at and attempted to be killed while trying to save the galaxy from total destruction wouldn't effect someone like Liara? While more of it could have been shown in game  what she became and her role in over all story makes plenty of sense.

Haha, I was going to say, no pun intended.

A. Social skills are more then capable of being developed with a good year or more of interaction with people. Unless you have some sort of mental disability that causes problems anyone can develop social skills when you actually spend time with them. Liara was lacking in social skills because the nature of her job.  Her job which is ferreting out details and information hidden from everyone due to the march of time actually lends it self to the basics of the information broker set up. There are differences but not as much as some might think. There were a dozen graves found in the basement of Ben Franklin's house. Does that automatically mean he was secretly a serial killer? No because the details can't be taken at face value and there are always hidden details we might not know about.

B. You are working under the assumption that personality traits remain constant at all times. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge. Stupidity is having the knowledge but disregarding it because they don't like it. She was at worst ignorant. But the time spend with Shepard and crew would provide the knowledge. Sovereign and Saren were only able to get that far because of the complete lack of main stream information about the Reapers or Saren. The Reapers being the real cause for the Protheans to be wiped from the galaxy would interest her a lot as well. And any information that could be gathered about them would help fight against them when they showed up again as Shepard believed they would.  It isn't a stretch by any imagination.


For the rest well what do you expect? True choice is an impossibility in a video game that goes beyond 1 game. If they applied the same logic you are applying when you booted up ME 2 and choose to import your ME 1 character and it saw that you were a dick to her to the point she wouldn't gain any loyalty to you, and the game told you that you can not import the data because of your choices. How would you react?  On top of that there are many choices in the game that should lead instantly to a critical failure and game over. Yet those choices are never given impacts they should have due to the whole no choice is wrong mentality the game has.  Which is both a strength and weakness.  So you lack true choice but you are also protected from true consequences.

And example that in ME 1's ending by every set up the players are shown choosing to sacrifice the council by the logic shown in game should result in the Council forces being over whelmed and the Geth attacking the Alliance Fleet from behind. Resulting it being wiped out and/or being unable to deliver the killing blow to Sovereign before it recovered.  On top of that the Allinace attack from the rear destroying several Geth ships would allow the Citadel forces a chance to rally and counter attack.  Thus why the Geth fleet would be defeated at the end. Sacrificing the council they are defeated by sheer plot convenience.  So you know mixed results.

I don't know if this is unpopular or not, but lately, I am liking Miranda less and less. I know she's more popular than most of the other human characters, but I think she's one of the weaker ones now.

I remember I was strongly in the camp where I thought she was a really good character that grows nicely by the end of ME3 whether she lives or dies. And she is even better when romanced. But recently, I did a playthrough with Jack romance and Miranda romance. And Miranda is a lot weaker than I remember. Jack was more interesting and a more fun character to boot. Miranda's arc in ME3 just rehashes what she did in ME2 too. Its actually very similar to Ashley's romance. And her sister being a damsel is kind of annoying also. Also, I know where she's coming from, but she is more focused on her sister than the Reapers. Other characters with family don't come off as poorly (Kaidan, Garrus, Ashley).

Her romance is also not as good as I remember. It used to be my favorite, but the distinct lack of emotion Miranda and broshep shows is kind of bad. Even broshep's voice acting in Miranda's romance is weak compared to his other romances. It seems if you break up with her or she dies is there any real emotion. I know Miranda is not as affectionate as other romances, but she does say she's gotten attached to you. So her barely showing much difference from a non romanced Shepard is kind of puzzling. In ME2 her romance arc and dialogue/banter is not as believable as Jack or Tali's is. And both Tali and Jack have nice arcs to finish up ME3. Even with the limited content, Jack still really shines. In ME2, there isn't a whole lot of interesting dialogue leading up to a romance outside of maybe physical attraction with Miranda.

And speaking of that, I don't even think Miranda is all that good looking. She's seen as the sexy and beautiful one. But she often looks awkward and weird in many scenes. And her "asset" isn't attractive either because it looks ridiculous. Oddly, Ashley and Jack both look more feminine and believable than her. Which is a shame because the actress Miranda is based on is very beautiful. It also doesn't hurt that Ashley, Tali, and Jack and broshep interact a lot more interestingly with each other than Miranda and broshep. And his voice acting with them sounds like he actually cares about them as I mentioned before.

So long story short, Miranda's character is not as good as I remembered. Its actually kind of weak. She's only becomes decent with the Citadel DLC. Without it, its very poor.

Aria is fun, but predictable. I like Nyreen more, and wish we had more missions with her.

I don't know if I would call this an unpopular opinion but I liked the more linear and streamlined level design found in ME2/3.