If You Had To Cut 3 Squadmates from ME2...

Jacob, Zaeed and Legion. I'd still have Legion in the game but not as a squadmate, or maybe only as a temporary squadmate. I really don't care much for Jacob. He didn't like Alliance red tape so his solution was to join a terrorist organization. Brilliant. Zaeed because I'm not sure what he really brings to the table that Garrus doesn't, and Garrus is way more trustworthy. Garrus would sacrifice people who were already going to die to get their killer whereas Zaeed would kill healthy people so long as he got revenge. I'm not saying I hate Zaeed but I'd take Garrus over him any day. Also, fewer humans can't hurt.

I picked Jacob, Samara, and Zaeed


Jacob grew on me, but I could do without him. It's enough to know Gabby and Ken and other minor crew to get a feel that there are good people in Cerberus. I don't need a full squadmate to tell me that. Squadmate wise, it's more fun to have the Cheerleader and Jack butting heads and not worrying about some grey area. Too extremes, two unique stories, not easily filled by anyone else.

I like Samara too, but if they can't commit to Morinth equally or flesh out the Ardat Yakshi, then to hell with it.

After thinking about it, I voted Legion, Grunt, and Thane.

As I wrote earlier, I prefer Geth as antagonists throughout the series. Removing Legion would have left a little more room for Geth in ME2 as an enemy faction. He is pretty much Tali except with a worse bonus power. The Widow is decent on him, but... eh.

Grunt because I think he is the most useless squadmate in the game, and I do not want a 'typical Krogan' on the team. Tali and Legion are niche, and Grunt is not even good enough to be niche. He even sucks at his own loyalty mission.

Thane because we did not need the Drell in Mass Effect. I think the Drell history is interesting, but we only meet Thane and his son in ME2 (and ME3 only if Thane survives ME2) and no other Drell ever again in the trilogy campaign. I would miss his Warp with Pull/Slam/Singularity, but I would maybe put it on Jack instead because Shockwave is terrible.

Your attack is an insult. You think the bannu is your ally, but you merely adopted the banhammer. I was born under it. Molded by it. I didn't see a solid week of posting without hearing the ding dong until I had already completed my Pilgrimage, and by then it was nothing to me but boring.

anyway, let us count the offenses you mention where the characters are rescued from certain death/nonfunctionality (assuming recruitment and survival to the end of respective character arcs)

Tali: 2 once on the Citadel and once on Haestrom, though it must be noted in both instances she is helping to save herself the whole time(via bullets and explosions)and is never incapacitated. It's really more like two seperate -0.5s ,so -1


Tali rescues Shepard from such by default two times, both on the Dreadnought. Once from the sealed operations center (she hacks it open), and once from the destroyed, falling elevator (catches and hefts Shep up onto the platform). Optionally, she can also rescue Shep from the murderous geth unit after doubts about the Reaper code are expressed. If you really want to get technical, she also saves Shep along with billions of other denizens of the Milky Way galaxy with her hacking abilities vis a vis Saren's audio file, but I suppose they're even on that one given that she'd have no way to use it without Shep due to casual racism. +3 (tho its  like +100000000000000 if we count everyone in the galaxy so you're welcome racists)

Score +2 (or 1000000000000000 or whatever).....in Tali's favour

By contrast, Lets count them for

Legion: 2, once on the Reaper and once from the signal booster on the Geth dreadnought (to which it equally owes either Tali or Xen for getting Shep there). Both times it is completely inoperable and assists in no way with its own rescue. Keeping in mind both of these are over a 6 month rather than 3 year period as with the former. -2

Legion arguably rescues Shep from a husk (which can be wrestled to the ground by an MP volus, so that krogan or geth you're mentioning must simply have sucked), though I'm not so certain the threat was all that imminent given how easily s/he shrugs them off in most circumstances, but we'll go with it because being afflicted with cutscene incompetence is among the deadliest events in the Mass Effect series. We'll also give it credit for saving Shep from their own self inflicted idiocy on the Dreadnought (In perhaps the dumbest line short of asking if asari need other species to reproduce, the commander seriously asks about escape pods.....on a geth ship. Clearly, Shep read the script or something and knew s/he was supposed to get butthurt at Gerrel, because there was never any predetermined plan to exfiltrate from the enemy vessel in the first place). Also pays back the quarian here, as well. Never saves the galaxy so only +2

Optionally, Legion attempts to brutally murder the commander in cold.....lubricant (?) because s/he has the guile to suggest that maybe the geth shouldn't just haphazardly graft on every bit Reaper tech it comes across like some sort of insane robo TIM. I'm subtracting a point for this treachery. -1

Score -1 against Legion

The quarian's rescue and rescuee chops are both superior, evidence of superior combat skill in my completely objective and in no way biased or irrelevant rating system. This is typical. The geth are ultimately so useless and pathetic that they end up reliant on the quarians and our glorious Fleet to rescue them from their own unbelievably stupid choice to become Reaper slaves (via our heroic killing of said Reaper).

As an aside, I don't know where you sourced your assertions on glorious hand to hand combat from, but the totally not fragile quarian (don't ask me, resident tough guy expert Grunt says so) would definitely beat that toaster to a pulp according to the stats given in the (canon) ME3MP, where the geth are physically the 2nd most pathetic "race" (after the volus) in terms of physical fortitude (health) and melee damage (that wussy shield pulse garbage don't count. Elbows, fists and foreheads or GTFO toasters), while the 3rd hardest (and hardest without a weapon) hitting melee attack in the game belongs to.....the Quarian Female Infiltrator (Not a joke, 6b Sabotage and 5b Cloak buffed quarian heavy melee is 3rd only to Warlord hammer and N7 Shadow at just over 6000 damage). I guess this difference is why Tali carries a melee weapon and a shotgun and prefers to bludgeon through enemies at close range, while toaster hides in the back with its stolen quarian sniper rifle, hoping noone will find it and damage its fragile 72% polymer exterior shell.




Honestly? Don't underestimate me. I was supposed to hack the entire Citadel in a sidequest, a feat no individual had accomplished across countless cycles over billions of years
forum.bioware.com/topic/334066-daroxen-the-geth-and-the-citadel-an-apparently-cut-quest/
or, alternatively I would singlehandedly destroy half of the toasters in the galaxy were it ignored, but salty biower devs deleted it because they refuse to acknowledge my unparalleled greatness. That I would have alone broken their idiot plot relating to the Citadel, and all the imbeciles inhabiting it without bothering to study it, probably didn't help. Still, think of the possiblities had I  discovered the glowbrat, instead.

Funny, for supposedly not infiltrating the toaster has a rather suspicious class name and penchant for misinformation/subterfuge. I'm sure it felt no fear at Tali's threats. Fear is a function of emotion, which only real people possess. Nonetheless, it was in grave danger. Nevermind the firearm, Tali still had her toothpick as a backup (which we know gives automatic critical hits on toasters), neither of which would have been necessary assuming the thing is susceptible to all the same vulnerabilities as every other toaster in being effortlessly turned into a laughable puppet by glorious quarian hax (there's not much to suggest this isn't the case). No, the quarian was showing restraint, loyalty and respect for a valued ally. Geth do not understand respect, nor restraint, nor loyalty or allies (unless they are Reapers, they obviously are pretty loyal to those), so that isn't possible.

I don't care about excuses for the toaster's performance. The fact is that it being an equal, better or worse hacker than Tali or Kasumi rests upon the respective resolution of daddy/boyfriend issues, ergo, within the margin of error and certainly not enough to declare it superior. Moreover, it can't come up with shield upgrades for the Normandy, and its abilities are just trash versions of Tali's (drone is plain instead of magenta and doesn't even have a clever name, no witty AI hacking dialouge, and GSB (one of the most worthless powers in the game) lacks ED's AOE and offensive abilites. Toaster tech skills are technically inferior to glorious meatbag Master Race in the context of ME2.




Sure you do. I had to rescue Kasumi from her own self pity in ME3. Seriously, I think she wins the award of having literally the worst plan of any single person for dealing with the Reapers in the known galaxy. I mean other than maybe the geth becoming their best buddies, obviously, but they don't count as people so it's not really the same.

Please, judging by the dialogue, we both know who got to hold the whip in Talibrations, and it wasn't Vakarian unless he was given permission. You're at least right that Garrus is a Shep wanabe and total beta who can't pick up chicks to save his life unless they wanna make him into a loyal sub or second string . Even still, he learns to embrace quarian greatness (in more was than one) and could probably still kick the arse of that lame graybox guy or Jacob boringshit, the latter of whom, by contrast, lame Kasumi couldn't even manage to whip anyway (credit to Jacob that he stayed in character as the most boring person in history, ignoring Kasumi's priiiize to run off and knock up the much superior fogettable NPC #35786).

Wouldn't care. Would scarcely be different from any other cutscene involving Miranda, and that console was already full of thousands of zetabytes worth of porn anyway, so a little more won't hurt. What can I say, I like the Nervestim almost as much as I like constructing hubris filled, bombastically verbose supremacist shitposts and getting banned for delivering the pure, unadulterated #truth to the sniveling masses whom refuse to embrace their naturally ordained place in the universe as a servant of their glorious Quarian Masters. 

So much hate for Jacob.

You're in ME2 where a crazy megalomaniac billionaire resurrect a dead soldier to help out getting more reaper tech for his terrorist organization. Jacob is a former Alliance soldier who believe in Cerberus ideals and its people including the whole package of suicide pill and bomb implanted inside the head. He's more a Cerberus cheerleader than Miranda. What ME3 missed was Cerberus putting implant on him and turn him into villain which make more sense than Kai-effing-Leng.

And if you axe out his character and left with Miranda, you'll realize she's an idiot who think she's smart because she ran away from her dad and didn't realize that she's working for her dad's boss the entire time. She's not even a true believer like Jacob.. who the last time I check, hooked up with another Cerberus science officer and holed inside a Cerberus facilities with a bunch other Cerberus personnel and their families. 

- Cut out

Garrus - Not sure why he's a prime example of leadership capabilities when all the drama about his war with the Omega merc gangs was the result of his failure in leadership. He got his ENTIRE team killed and rather than feeling responsible for their deaths, he shift the blame entirely on his friend who got kidnapped and tortured by the people who he spend MONTHS trying to have them and their families killed. And you're supposed to sympathise with a trigger-happy former-cop-turned-vigilante because everyone he killed deserve the bullet and not due process because paperwork is so dumb that they give him brain damage and paper cut. They should have put him on Captain Bailey's chair and make him useful and relevant but nope...

Samara - another attempt at creating a sexy Asari version of Pa'u Zotoh Zhaan. 

Thane - a character with entire arc based on Carth Onasi and yet nobody complain about....

I did that once. I prefer going toe-to-bolt with them.

 I voted:

1) Jacob -- need I say more?
2) Grunt -- so he can tank, so what? You can count on one hand how many enemies charge your position in this game. As a character he is pretty much just the stereotypical krogan. And there are no interesting dynamics to his relationship with Shepard -- it plays out the same however you approach him.
3) Thane -- it was between him and Samara/Morinth for me, because Thane and Samara are pretty redundant "warrior monk" characters. Ultimately, I cut out Thane, with the idea adding that quantity content into Morinth and making her a more fleshed-out character.

I kind of screwed over FemSheps, lol, taking away 2 of the 3 potential LIs. 

Your words are as empty as your future here. The bannu will darken the posts of every thread. There is no escape.

But yes, let us count. Especially since you fail so completely at it. No wonder your creations go from peace with all meatbags to kill all meatbags because of a decimal point.

How quaint. Omission and misdirection. On the Citadel she's dumb enough to trust a guy named Fist and blunders into an ambush. Without Shepard she would've been toast. Next game, you of course forget Freedom's Progress where Shepard and Cerberus of all people had to save your dumb asses twice, from yourselves. One when that coward Veetor turned on the mechs and again when the idiot Praza rushed them. So I think you'll find the count is 3 so far and we're not even half way through.

Then we get to Haestrom where an entire squad of your sickly suit rats were getting their asses handed to them by the geth so hard, not even Adam Baldwin could save you. Shepard had to pull Tali's ass out of the sunfire again, and no, hiding behind a blast door does not count as "helping". 4

Then of course there's the loyalty mission where we had to waste time to save Tali's reputation because her dumbass father doesn't know what air-gapping means, save the ship he lost and shout your Admiralty down from going full retard (unfortunately that only delayed them because once you decide to go full retard, there's no stopping you). So 5.

Then of course in ME3 we have to save the lot of you again because of the aforementioned full retard. So 6x however many useless quarians there are - Xen (I'll give you her because Arc Pistol) and Zal'Koris because he was trying to stop the rest of you morons leaves... well I don't think the exact number matters at this point, with all those zeroes behind it.

Fine, I don't even need to argue this with you being so behind in the count.

Hey speaking of racists, remember Ashley? Without her blundering near the beacon prompting Shepard to push her out of the way and get zapped, none of this would matter (and Shepard might not even have been on the Citadel at the right time to save her). So, sorry, all those trillions of people are busy paying allegiance to blind dumb human luck.

Again, I needn't even bother arguing this, Tali is still way ahead in the count. To be fair, I'll include Legion's loyalty mission as well since if the heretics had deployed that virus it would've got him too. So 3-6. Sorry, 4(x number of geth remaining which may be significantly smaller than the quarians by the time the decision is made) since we'll count saving the geth from their stupidity also. Legion still wins.

The MP vol clan are biotic gods (even the engineer) so this is useless.

Good. You're learning. Cutscene incompetence can account for the husk sucker-punch then. Unless you want to claim you were indeed driven off your world by tissue paper robots. Which is nonsensical of course, as I'll demonstrate below.

Any proactivity you may have had in your hilarious flailing is negated by the fact that you were hoisted by your own petard. Every single time. For that reason alone the geth should be picked over you. Why interfere with evolution? You obviously have an extinction wish, you're trying so hard to kill yourselves off. Should we do a count for that?

Quarians: every single thing we've seen them do.
Geth: building a Dyson sphere (presumably with a bull's eye painted on in) so that they have to surrender to the Reapers and ultimately have their fate decided by an outsider.

I don't know, maybe the part where Saren grafts a geth arm to himself and picks Shepard up like a teddy bear with it? Or where in every single game, geth air drops look like this:







And don't confuse stupidly bashing things like primitives for prowess in battle. Geth fight efficiently, with superior shields and firepower. They invented thermal clips which, while we the players hate them, are an improvement lorewise. You stupid suit rats probably thought you were krogan during the uprising and guns were meant for hitting. Geth superior stunlock showed you the error of your ways and is probably the reason you lost your planet. You know, in addition to your shoddy immune systems. Be happy they were skittish about wiping you out and never invested in biological warfare, or hell toxic ammo mods.

Or, they realized, you know, how dumb that sounded. Especially since the Citadel was still under naptime for the holokid.

Notice how they said "experimented on". Running ls (or dir if you're a fan of structural weaknesses) could be considered experimentation. And is this how you really wanted to go out? A mad scientist gunned down while frothing at the mouth? Even if I were to agree to your goals, this is a pispoor way of achieving them.

And done what exactly? Without the stupid space rattle to pacify it, it probably would've thrown a tantrum and opened the relay to dark space or shut down the network- which it should've done already, but I guess Spongebob was on.

You know the Spy will eventually get around to asking for it back.

And emotion (and by extension real people) are overrated. Fear is the reason the giant space squids started all this bullshit to begin with, fear is why the Council won't do shit with Reapers knocking on their viewports and fear is why the suit rats started flailing pathetically against their creations instead of taking the next logical step: robo-banging. You deny it, but you know what I'm talking about. All that wanting to enslave synthetics and have legions of servants- how was your relationship with your father?

Remind me again, how many geth you hacked? Oh that's right zero. Cerberus and an autistic kid beat you to the punch.

There is no argument here. AI reaction times> meatbag reaction times and the AI with the most processing power wins. Forced game mechanics won't save you.

Typical suit rat, zero forethought. Destroy the graybox and there is no self-pity.

Garrus has reach. Your argument is invalid. And yeah, maybe he would beat Keiji- unless he's blindsided and stabbed in the back. Or takes a rocket to the face.

Jacob sucks, Kasumi just wanted his priize because she was bored. And probably hadn't gotten some in some time. No more needs to be said.

And forgettable though Brynn might be, she is still voiced by Jo Wyatt. I will hear no dissent on her glorious vocals.


...who'll be dead in a few days due to the common cold. Or inventing something else that drives them from their planet.

And in true space gypsy fashion you are creating the very source of your banishment.

I approve, Morinth is a great waste of potential. The concept of a serial killing hedonist that turns into an unlikely heroine against the reapers out pure self-preservation and out of a desire to continue her murderous and debaucherous lifestyle is ace.

They should've went with more of a Mother/Father and son dynamic between Shep and Grunt.

What in the reaper-loving hell is wrong with you people.

You don't like drell.

You don't like Thane.

(ノ ゜Д゜)ノ ︵ ┻━┻

Bah!

Thane is my bad-ass, go-to brother-in-arms, so screw you guys.

--

Anyway, I wouldn't want to cut any of them. I like all of them. That said...

Jacob -- because I never use him.
Morinth -- not Samara. I like and use Samara. I have never recruited Morinth and don't want to.

I, again, use my 3rd vote to save a drell, Thane.