That one renegade thing you always do, even as a Paragon (or vice versa)

Choose to concentrate on the reaper. Doing that gives both paragon and renegade points.

There's evidence that she's not innocent. A tablet you can find later has her bragging about the kill she made (a volus, I think) to gain her admission to the Eclipse. She deserved death. It would have been the wrong choice to let her go.

In my opinion this is a renegade choice for the following reason:

In general terms, Shepard and his squad are in a combat situation when exploring this (and other) areas, and are (in general) responding to being shot at. It's a combination of basic self defense and "fair" rules of engagement. 

Shepard even says it himself when confronting Nassana Dantius. I can't remember the exact wording, but she essentially accuses him of being like her, in that he kills people. Shepard (at least the Paragon version) responds to the effect that he only kills when they leave him no other choice, she, by contrast, kills people she feels are beneath her.

The merc by the window presents a different situation. Killing him by pushing him out of the window is very much as 'Shepard shoots first' scenario. The merc is not a current threat to Shepard, in fact he's at Shepard's mercy. Thus killing him is an act of execution rather than an act of engagement. A real soldier in the military who executed an enemy combatant in this manner would probably have a few questions to answer to his superiors if discovered acting in such a manner (without good reason). If you've ever seen the move Apocalypse Now, the irony of this situation is one of the film's central points. In the game context, Shepard is contradicting his own statement about 'being left with no other choice' because he IS given a choice in this instance.

Now of course there's plenty of justifications for killing him. Shepard still has Spectre status for starters, which is enough in itself - and of course that merc still poses a deadly threat if left alive - that and much more.

I merely wanted to explain why it's very much a renegade decision.

Then how would you handle the merc in a way that a) prevents him from following you later and not lugging him around to find a closet while you're being shot at?

As far as Nassana Dantius goes, she's unarmed. Not really a threat AND Shepard watched as Thane jumped down from the ceiling behind her. Shepard may not have directly killed Nassana but did nothing to stop it. I guess that could be Renegade.




Irrelevant, IMO. That he can legally kill pretty much anyone doesn't make it specifically okay or not.

I usually don't push the merc out the window. I much prefer to push him up against the window hard enough to crack the glass and have confidence that he's sufficiently intimidated to not try something dumb like not leaving and following Shepard instead. The "How about goodbye" doesn't amuse me as much as it does others and I like hearing Garrus' compliment when you don't push him right out the window. I reason that Shepard's goal is to still try to get him to talk and killing him outright just doesn't serve that purpose. Shooting out the glass and dangling him (a la Ryder) would have been a better move (IMHO). I always thought Bioware should have made the decision to spare him relevant by having him email Shepard with some crucial information, either later in ME2 or sometime in ME3.

I handle it as the game allows by questioning him and then letting him go. If the game had some mechanism whereby he followed me and attacked I would deal with him as I would any other enemy.




He could have been surprised, taken off guard, or he could have simply made the split-second decision that Thane's wellbeing trumped Nassana's given that Thane was needed to help stop a threat to millions of people and Nassana was just one person, and a cold-blooded killer at that. The game hints that Shepard expected Thane to appear, and was stalling Nassana for that purpose, but nothing explicit is stated to that effect.

We'll never know because we're at the mercy of a cut scene that we have no control over. Any justification of the events is moot, because we have no agency over what occurs. Perhaps if the game had provided a Paragon interrupt that could prevent Thane from fulfilling his mission it could be used.



I'd say it's pretty relevant, given that Spectres, along with Asari Justicars are given the power to execute high justice effectively with impunity. Shepard could conceivably consider his Spectre status gives him all the moral justification he needs for assassination of an enemy.

The only Renegade moments I can think of choosing aren’t really Renegade. So for example head butting Uvenk(I’m respecting their culture) or punching Han’Garel in the gut after he attacked the ship I was still on.

Hmm, for renegade interrupts, I've shot Kenson (Shepard did warn her and that detonator escalated the whole negotiation), shot that gas tank beneath clan Weyrloc's speaker once he goes into the part about threatening the Citadel (Hey, I did try to talk him out of it), I've snapped that Eclipse merc's neck after it was clear that they were done talking and Miranda's sister could have been on a time crunch, always enjoyed shooting that mech's head off in Overlord, I've stabbed the mechanic in the back with no compunction, shot another mech's head off while looking through Garrus' rifle.

As for renegade dialogue, I just can't be polite anymore to Liara. The autodialogue that has Shepard automatically buddy buddy with her just sours any affection. I can't be polite to the Illusive Man after being sent into a trap, most of the renegade dialogue during the third game fit better for the pragmatic paragon.

Need to think more about paragon interrupts and dialogue that are used by the renegade Sheps I made.

I've never kept the truth from Dr. Archer since he left Cerberus. Never saw the need nor hated him enough to do that since he was never going to get in contact with him. But mechs? Ohhhh, I hated mechs enough to shoot them every time.

Come to think of it, every single renegade interrupt and decision in the original trilogy makes a lot more sense in Andromeda. Everything being more delicate and in peril justifies a more highly stressed out and ticked off renegade personality. To be fair, ME3 also made renegade actions a lot more understandable.

Still with ME2 - Does anyone here regularly stop Garrus from shooting Harkin in the leg during 'An Eye for an Eye'?

Even more extreme - How many of you actually stop Garrus from carrying out his assassination by warning Sidonis and then using the Paragon interrupt to stop the shot? I must admit that I've never done this - I've let him die in every single playthrough of Mass Effect 2 so far.

I stop the shot entirely.  It has nothing to do with Sidonis.  I'd personally shoot the guy in the head and be done with it.  It was more about Garrus and helping him put it all behind him. I suppose if I took the more Renegade path (I'm usually do no more than Paragade and it took me many playthroughs before I could choose even a single Renegade option) I'd be happy to let him die, sabotage the genophage (which you should do with Wreav and no Eve), kill the rachni queen and so forth.

I agree that he should never be allowed to be near his brother, I simply can't muster enough anger to care about Gavin himself. He's got problems of his own to worry and I wanted the resources he could bring to the Reaper war. Now the Illusive man is the one whom I tend to feel disgust for, mainly because we're unable to flip him off for his massive hypocrisy after finding out not only does he know about these experiments, he wanted to repeat them. He's contributed nothing of worth, says nothing of worth in the war and does more to threaten all of Shepard's efforts, including getting David back into that situation he escaped.