Should a romanced character be different or similar to your Shepard's?

Also, off topic, but can I change theme? And page size, for that matter? This board doesn't fit my screen, I'm having to scroll left and right just to see the entire post box for typing a new message.

Well that's the thing, they both interest me. If this wasn't the case, the choice would be easy. Like Tali, she's my favorite romance. Her being my favorite is why my male Shep sentinel doesn't have any doubt about it, there's no contest between her romance and anyone else's for a male Shepard. But between Garrus and Liara, neither stand out as strongly as Tali's.

I am. I know what romances I like, and Garrus and Liara are basically it for female. Jacob's craps on you, Thane's is an afterthought in ME3, Kaidan's is too lacking, and non-party ones like Traynor bore me. But I am doing something different, my female vanguard is going to be my first renegade. Ever. Out of probably 20 playthroughs. That's as mixing up as it gets.

Thane's romance made a perfect story for ME3 for me. It neatly tied off every possible private thread for her. She was after all a dead woman walking, so she loved a dead man walking. This relationship could never be about personal future. It is about daring to love while knowing that your life is sworn to the larger cause. Thane's final sacrifice made the ME3 a story of a personal revenge against the Doomsday background (that "it's for Thane, SoB!" Renegade option was great!), and then Shepard's final step into the heart of the Catalyst, again, echoed Thane's death. The imagery really worked well with Thane's blessing and farewell letter. Only by letting go off the personal agenda, Shepard could clearly made it to the end of the ME3. The consciousness lived in the renewed world. It's so darn perfect, no other romance fits the story better. Well, imo.

Yeah I usually like to pair up characters that are complementary somehow. They don't have to be complete opposites, and it can be based around anything like class, or personality, or background. I like the idea of pairing Earth born Shep up with an alien LI for example.

My Garrusmance was with an Earth born Vanguard, and they were both sort of paragade alignment I guess, but I liked the idea of an ex gang member soldier pairing up with an ex cop to save the world. The class combo worked out well.

I do like the idea of Liara with a more renegade Shep too. Although I always feel like Liara is just kind of attracted to Shepard no matter what.

So... this is about class?

Garrus is a range-damager and his main weapon is sniper rifle. So you have to depend on him making the kill shot from a far although the AI is very unreliable in ME1 and ME2 (sometimes he shoot at the wall, stay in cover too long). I rather choose him for his assault rifle but he's the most squishiest of all squadmates which make him very unsuitable for and mid-range and close fights. His armor is limited to medium in ME1, he hardly have any defensive in ME2, only in ME3 did he get shield bonus. If you want him exclusively in the trilogy, you play as a vanguard or a soldier on anything but Insanity difficulty. You can but you'll have to micromanage his actions. There's a lot of situation where he simply keel over and die particularly in harder fights like ME1's Geth Colossus, Derelict Reaper, Horizon, that annoying Praetorian. ME3 Insanity is manageable since tech combo work fairly effective on everything.

Liara is a caster. She's useful as crowd control and biotic are fairly OP in ME1. But I hardly use her in ME1 because the game bug out frequently, sometimes Singularity throw everyone behind the wall or inside the ceiling or underneath the floor. In Shadow Broker, she is useful against Barrier and Armor, but not much against Shield which is a cumbersome in the final fight. In ME3, I find her to be the least useful when paired with an Adept. Shepard's powers tend to be stronger then all of squadmates so except for Warp, all her powers became redundant. She matched with Sentinel Shepard and Vanguard (particularly useful to use Singularity as primer for combo) but also Soldier if you want a Soldier-Engineer-Adept setup.

as for how you RP... that's up to you.

May this will help:

For combat, I prefer taking squad mates with different skills than my own rather than those that have the same ones since this gives me a greater range of possibilities... so I would tend to go with Garrus for your vanguard and Liara for your infiltrator.  You can always use the second squad mate to bring in specific skills for specific missions.

However, in ME1, the infiltrator has decryption... and Liara just has electronics, so if you're romancing her and taking her one every mission, you can take Wrex or Ashley (who don't have either decryption or electronics) along as a second squad mate when you want their skills and you still don't have to worry that you'll encounter something you won't be able to open. 

Conversely, the vanguard has neither decryption or electronics (of course, unless you select decryption as your bonus power), so to open everything, you pretty much need to take either Garrus, Kaidan, or Tali along on every mission anyways.  If your Vanguard is going to be romancing Garrus in ME2 and you want to take him on every mission in ME1 anyways, this frees up the second squad mate to again fill in whatever other skills you want.  If your Vanguard is romancing Liara and you want to take her on every mission, you'll lose out on anything that requires decryption if you want to use either Ashley or Wrex as your second squad mate.

As I said before, some of there dialogue will change as Shepard uses more renegade options when talking with them.  The difference is not huge, but enough that Liara won't appear to be quite so good two shoes as she does with a paragon Shepard.  Another way to make Liara appear less like a schoolgirl with a crush is to forego romancing her in ME1 by recruiting her late (i.e. by doing Therum after either Noveria or Feros or even after Virmire).  You can then sort of see some interest develop in Shepard during LotSB (depending on what dialogues you select) and you'll be able to form the actual romance during ME3.  You can also go the route of romancing Liara in ME1, doing LotSB as earlier as possible in ME2 (before Garrus' loyalty mission), and agreeing with her to break off the relationship during LotSB... and then go on to romance Garrus through to the end of ME3 (without cheating).

Sorry, about my mistake on Infiltrator in ME1... it's been a long time since I've played one.  I knew they had decryption, but I honestly thought electronics was not part of their basic repertoire.

I'm not trying to change your mind about anything.  Just putting ideas out there.  Ultimately, you'll play however you want to.  Personally, I hardly ever play a FemShep and Garrus doesn't really turn my crank when I do.   Liara doesn't really either... I'm into humans not aliens.  As a result, FemShep really only has one long-term romance option for me... that's Kaidan.  BroShep has a few more.

Sorry... yeah, I frequently edit... I tend to get interrupted here a lot, so my posts are often unfinished and I have to go back to finish them later.  I could not post them and start over each time... but... editing is easier for me.

Agree... FemShep got a raw deal in the romance department.  BroShep's possibilities are both more numerous and more interesting in a lot of ways.  I have romanced Garrus (once) but I find he makes a great friend anyways.  IMO, the romance doesn't really add that much.  If I keep him as a male BFF or even a pseudo-brother for both FemShep and BroShep, it just steers me clear of any of the romantic awkwardness.  I usually do the same with Liara (and recruiting her late makes it a lot easier to do as well)... although, if Shepard cheats, seeing her get angry/jealous in LotSB is quite fun.

Nice Renegade (Renegon) or Dark Paragon (Paragade) is always good in order to make the character more grey   (i.e. I like to make Paragade a character with Torfan's background because people look at her as she is a kind of war criminal or a psycopath but at the same time it gives me space to re-imagine what really happenned in there. The same with a Renegon with Hero background: everyone is expecting a type of Shepard who is nice and very diplomatic when that's not her style and maybe she did some questionable things during the Blitz Attack...)

Engineer is one of my favourite class ever. In terms of roleplaying, your Shepard can be the witty and methodical nerd girl. Also, an engineer can have interesting backgrounds depending on the combination: maybe an Earthborn has learnt to be a mechanical genius by herself; maybe with Colonist background her father, her mother or other relative taught her the most advanced engineering shit; with a Spacer... maybe she is the human equivalent of Tali, very interested in ships, machinery etc. because ships is where she and her mother live (someone has pointed out something like this before, maybe you?).

About combos, that's up to you. Try to remember what did you love the most in other playtroughs (explode things with Singularity + warp; more about electrical shocks plus biotics; etc.) and choose depending what will be more fun for you. You can adapt your romance to that. 


I agree if you want to romance Liara is better to do it all the three games. Altough reserving her for the last games it seems to me like they have evolved: maybe Shepard was not interested in Liara in ME1 but after reuniting with her in ME2, the tension and new attraction during the LoTSB... could lead her to fell in love with Liara. At the same time, Liara has a crush on Shep in ME1, but then after she died that infatuation evolves to definitely love. Also, this time Liara gives Shepard space until in ME3 when they came together (however, it's really sad to loose so much content in ME1 and 2 so I understand you probably prefer to avoid that). There is a way you can break up with Liara and meet someone else in ME2: my Paragade Shep wasn't very happy with the new Liara of ME2. However, she wanted to give the relationship a chance. But in the ship when they talk, Shepard choose the most pessimistic responses about dying during the Suicide Mission so Liara leaves and you have Shepard alone looking at the glasses full of wine, sad. So if you like the drama you can try that.

About a Shep cheater, it's an interesting character flaw you can exploit: she always cheats? is it something she has done before or someone cheated on her and so on she doesn't really trust anyone in relationship? it's all about sex? Or maybe...



I personally prefer not to romance Kaidan in ME1 if I'm going to fall for a Garrus romance, basically because I really like Kaidan as FemShep's friend especially in ME3 when he is more relaxed and fun. However, I appreciate drama in videogames above all things so if you want to break some hearts, crush them hard!!!   About Garrus romance: you can play the xenophilia thing if you want, but only with that I don't see why your Shepard should stay with him in ME3. 



Sah291
I love the ex gang and ex cop dynamic A LOT. I use a lot of that in ME1 (when Garrus is not romanceable): Shepard doesn't trust him because he was a cop and she didn't get along with cops for obvious reasons (especially in her home city where the cops where very crooked). So ME1 is like a Sci-Fi buddy-cops from the nineties in Space (especially if I play with a Paragon Shep):

About engineer and about her: I actually have a massive backstory about her, she's literally a genius. As in 175 or 180  IQ, built her own omni-tool on Earth when she was only about 7 to 9 years old. She's capable of making an omni-tool of such power as an adult that it's superior to Savant X, she has the best built omni-tool in the Milky Way. If you're interested, I wrote her backstory to a pastebin not long ago (just a few days ago when I made this character). Shared it with a friend who said my prose wasn't the best and that they'd prefer the age she made her first omni-tool at to be 2 or 3 years older. Not sure if I agree, but it's why I gave an age range here instead of a specific age. Anyway, read if you're interested and don't mind apparently-mediocre prose.

pastebin.com/WZQ8K4Ez

Anyway, she's a genius as tactics too. This is why infiltrator is being considered, Liara in ME3 says Shepard of that class is the tactical one. She's supposed to be a tactical and tech genius, so I'm torn between infiltrator for that Liara dialogue during the time capsule scene and the Omega scene where you instantly hack Omega's control in seconds with an interrupt, since both are in character for her.

Male sentinel Tali romancer for next playthrough will be the one who is like Tali, in that he also grew up on ships and is pretty good at tech. Not Tali-good, but good enough to be a sentinel. Only reason he isn't as good at tech is his training was split between biotic and tech training, which meant he wasn't as specialized in tech as she was. Had he not been a biotic, he likely would have ended up en engineer himself. But if you got biotics, why let them go to waste by not training them? So yeah, he'll be a techy like her... But not to the same extent. Also, going with the "versatile and jack of all trades" thing sentinels have going, I'm tempted to give him carnage as a combat bonus power in ME3 so I can do every single type of combo in the game (since carnage lights enemies on fire which can be exploded with overload). That way he'll be part tech, combat, and biotic, all at once. Not as great as a specialist at any one thing like Tali is with tech, but good enough at all types of combat to be able to handle anything. Either that or incendiary grenade, but I NEVER use grenades in ME3. Usually leave them totally unleveled, because I just hate limited ammo powers. So I think I'll take carnage for the fire combos, over the grenades. Still not fully decided though, but it's a long way off. But I really can't think of a better idea for a bonus power in ME3.

No, the cheating would simply be out of... Grief, I guess? Kaidan, the person she thought loved her, utterly shot her down and basically told her he was done with her. After that, she's emotionally distraught and not doing so well for a while. Then while talking to Garrus and realizing they have a strong relationship already, she gets it into her head to get sexual with him after his story about sex used as a tension release. He's literally just her rebound (I assume you know what that is), he's just someone she emotionally and sexually latches onto after Kaidan's rejection of her. And then afterward, the simple fling actually starts getting serious. By ME3, they're a full on couple and it he isn't just her rebound anymore. By that point, it's an actual loving relationship. She's really apologetic when Kaidan asks about it, but basically asks what he expected after how he treated her on Horizon. Kaidan being Kaidan, accepts that he's partially to blame and lets the matter drop. I know all this because I've actually done this before, and quite liked how it worked from a narrative and story standpoint. So I wanted to do it again, but am not/was not sure which character to do it with. So I already know how it goes and my Shepard's thoughts about it, and I want to repeat it. So no, she isn't a cheater. The way she saw it, Kaidan broke up with her. There was no one to cheat on when she went to Garrus as a rebound, she thought the relationship was over. You can't cheat if you're single, which she considered herself after Horizon. It was only after, with the mail from Kaidan and the stuff he says in the hospital in ME3, that she realized he didn't actually mean to break it all off with her. But by then, her and Garrus were an item. No going back, Kaidan had to live with the fact that he lost Shepard as a lover because of his own words and actions. I mean, really, how can you take Horizon as anything but a break up conversation?

edit: Just realized you can 'like' posts on this board just like the old BSN. Interesting. I guess I just kept missing the button? I noticed because I apparently got 2 likes, so I went looking for the button. I have some really selective viewing sometimes.

No, you don't get it. Take a human heavy armor, glitch it onto Garrus, and how he's in heavy armor. I can put my Shepard into heavy krogan Onyx armor, and it will just look like the human heavy version. The point is that Garrus' model was designed with heavy armors in mind, it looks like this. Low quality, but here.



See? He has actual, MODELED, heavy armor. Glitch a heavy onto him, and it looks normal and doesn't screw his model up at all since he was designed with a heavy model that was never used. And yes, different heavy armors do have different looks to them. They aren't just all the same exact model, colossus armor for example looks like colossus armor on him. Predator H heavy looks like predator H. And so on.

Here's how you do it.



"This glitch results in equipping any armor you have on any character in the party, regardless of restrictions. In the equipment menu, on armor selection, find the armor you wish to equip (greyed out or not). Count from that armor down to the bottom of the list of armor. Press X to enter upgrade selection. Select any upgrade, and hit Y to convert to Omnigel, but almost simultaneously press and hold A, and don't release. Once the prompt to confirm conversion to Omnigel appears, release A and press B. The selection screen will appear different - as if selecting armor, but with upgrades in the selection list, and the Icons describing the selection will appear strange (1 icon, then 3 other repeating icons) if done correctly. Scroll to the bottom of the list of upgrades, then scroll up the number you previously counted down from armors. Equip the 'upgrade', and the armor you previously picked will be equipped instead."