What are your too ***SPICY*** to handle hot takes of the trilogy?

You aren't even playing Ryder really. Ryder's motor functions are shot due brain damage and SAM is piloting Ryder's body. Its part of the reason why I lean towards male Ryder as canon along with the Cora romance. In one of the MEA prequel books Cora and SAM start flirting inside her head. The player as SAM "helps" Ryder make the decision to pursue a romance with her since SAM now has a body and can better experience the emotions he/it started to feel in the novel  .

Nope, Aria never tells me to get out of her face and then my character slinks away like a cuck. Aria is in fact entirely helpful, serving as useful intel source and eventually powerful ally in the Reaper war. Sloane is nothing but an obstruction that extorts the Nexus if I dont remove her (or rather watch someone else remove her, because Ryder is too chickenshit). We have no reason not to put a bullet in her ugly mug when we take that gun from her pathetic goon, save that Ryder has no balls.

Further, Aria controls the Terminus i.e. about half of the MW galaxy, and thus significant forces that could complicate Shepard's mission. She is a relative equal to Shepard that is worthy of respect and for whom opposing gains nothing.

Sloane is a degenerate gang leader that has no influence outside of 1 little port, and barely even that with the Collective able to undermine her even there. That smug Eclipse merc whom my Shepard broke the neck of as an afterthought commands more respect.

No, lil' Ryder is as their name suggests, nothing but a sub who takes, rather than dishes out.

No reason not to work with TIM. He's the only galactic power player doing anything about Reapers at that point in the story. I guess you can headcanon going to Anderscum and the lolCouncil after Freedoms Progress, then put your controller down and let the Reapers win when those useless clowns decide to do nothing.

I have no defense of Shepards cutscene incompetence vis a vis Leng, save that it was a product of ME3, and ME3 is mostly bad GoW clone shlock, where every character gets ruined to a degree, not just Shep (still not anywhere near Ryder bad tho).

At least Leng still gets fucked in the end, unlike that random nobody looter NPC that told my Ryder to fuck off and got away scot free.

So... this is what we're going to be doing until MELE actually releases?

PeeBee is the one who upset me the most by launching a life pod with Ryder and crew into an active volcano. At no point could I slap her, or at the very least yell at her. Ryder just makes a joke out of it. Even as something as small as an argument between crew mates. Shep can tell them basically to shut the fuck up and deal with it. Ryder on the other hand does nothing, or jokes are made when the player wants to be serious.

Ryder has the I don't care attitude. 

As far as the peepee asari goes, forgetting about the other crap involving her, she tells Ryder she prefers working alone. For me, that's a no go to be on the roster. If you can't be a team player, I have no use for you. Ryder should know that being in the Alliance. Then again, it appears whatever little Ryder learned in the Alliance went in one ear and out the other. 

My biggest issue with ME has to be the dubious continuity of ME2 and the way Sheperd literally throws away his whole life on a vague tip from a known terrorist. Over a decade of loyal service, friends, comrades, everything. Just to chase the possibility of the Reapers being involved and ignoring all his actual responsibilities to the Alliance and Spectres. The fact that its never built up as any kind of big deal emotionally or that he doesn't feel *any* trepidation flying the colours of such an infamous group made it impossible to view Sheperd as an actual person anymore. From then on, Sheperd just seemed like John Hero: Space Adventurer!

The galaxy also feels like its moved forward culturally waaaay too far in just 2 years. ME1 established that because of the First Contact War and the generally different more full throttle approach to life than the unhurried pace of the galactic community, it was still very early days in terms of human integration in the galaxy. Vets like Sheperd and Kaiden hadn't even visited the Citadel ever before ME1 due to only recently thawing tensions with the Alliance military and the Council races. Yet in ME2 after just 2 years all of that tension and slow path to coexistence has completely evaporated.  

Yes there would be progress and its not like its all peace and harmony but it feels like warp speed change even in human years - 2 years is a blink of the eye culturally but to long lived aliens used to a galaxy with minimal contact with and understanding of humans? There's no way it would happen so fast.  The perceived time gap in terms of cultural integration looks closer to 10 years than the 2 which is stated. And such a time skip would sell the whole premise far better IMO. It would lend more credence to TIM's pitch if he could say 'That life has passed you by, there's no career to go back to after a decade and in all that time they've done jack about the Reapers'.

And people wanting to play as an explicit racist is deeply concerning.

You need to shorten that to one paragraph because I am a primitive, knuckle dragging, alpha male and have a relatively short attention span unless it is involves a female.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that true. In all seriousness though I agree with most of your previous points. ME2's strength lies in its characters, and how your actions/choices determine the outcome. In my first play of ME2 when Garrus died, I was shocked and wondered wtf did I do to screw that up. As much as I love ME1 you didn't feel the weight of all the choices you made at the end of that game. Most didn't pay off till 3, and many of those fell flat. Looking at you Virmire...

Nobody said anything about "alpha" or "male", so if you're ascribing strength of character to those types of things (and by extension weakness to the opposite) well....more a projection of your own problems.

I dont actually care if someone desires to play a weak, incompetent and feckless character in a leadership position. It doesn't make much sense based on the rules of our world, but then this is just an escapist fantasy. You do you.

Problem is that for Shepard that personality type was one of many options, for Ryder it's the only option. This is regression from a roleplay perspective. Bio needs to do better.

If you choose the more serious, logical dialogue choices (which sounds better on Lady Ryder imo, as Male Ryder sounds better as sarcastic), they kind of do (or blatantly do).


Now could they have took things further, like space Liam out the airlock?  Certainly!  But to say its not there at all...