"Kiss your plot goodbye. Here's loyalty quests and non-important companions!" paraphrased: Mike Gamb

OOooohhh, shiver me timbers. A direct reply from Ian on this one. I am glad at his response.

I'm sorry I called you Michael Bay-esque, Andromeda. Perhaps I will be proven wrong after all.

of course joking. I just wanted him to feel awkward. For old time sake

Thank God characters won't die just because Ryder didn't earn their loyalty. I like when the fate of Companions and NPCs isn't totally dependent on the player's choices or on how much they like or care about them.

Some level of dependency is acceptable - after all, players want Companions to respond and interact with their PC; that's the whole point of video games -, but I much prefer the idea that Companion X, whom you not only didn't help, but whose trust you betrayed (even with the best of intentions) ends up teaching you a lesson about how wrong you were, how much of a poor leader you are or how bad you are at decision-making.

An example of how well it was done is Tali's mission in ME2. She rightfully complains about your revelation of her father's illegal research to the Admiralty Board and about your disregard to the consequences she must face from that day onwards because of Shepard's stubborn, unilateral decision.

Most people prefer to be loved by everyone, but IMO, it's characters like Balak, disgruntled Tali and confrontational Wrex that add an extra special replay value to the trilogy. For they're not just characters designed to pander to the player's ego. They have personality. And they're not afraid to go against the player's interests to show it. 

Companions in all BioWare games tend to have a stake in the main plot, regardless of whether or not they have a personal quest that's relevant to it. 

My name is Zeta Ryder, and this is my favourite response on the Nexus.

I think that ME2 handled loyalty rather poorly. It was really an arbitrary mechanic where a companion simply lives or dies despite the event that kills them being precisely the same as if they were to survive. Where the suicide mission shined was where choosing the wrong people for certain tasks had consequences. The rest felt rather pointless, especially considering that gaining loyalty was a simple matter of completing a mission (with the exception of Zaeed, but then that nonsense carried over to ME3). But then, Mass Effect has typically been weak when it comes to companion reactivity when compares to its quasi-medieval counterpart. 

To be fair, they said only squadmates won't die. We have no clue if there are some time critical missions, or not.

Things like that are very cool.


I dislike race-against-time main plots, like in ME1, though. I mean, assuming  loyalty missions and side-quests are interesting. I find it very immersion breaking, it's not that I don't want to help every single person I meet, run errands for everyone or chime into every private conversation it's taking place in the citadel, but wasn't I supposed to be in charge of saving the galaxy? Even Alliance stuff... Surely there must be someone else who can do all those things for you, Hacket. In ME1 it was ok for me, because I didn't think most side missions were actually interesting, so straight to main missions felt right, But it would have been a shame in ME2. Yes, you can always headcanon that for some reason you can't actually go on with your mission yet, but...


On the other hand, when you're in a playthtough where you don't actually feel like going through the loyalty missions or even recruiting all the squadmates (I've done a few like that), it's kind of annoying having to wait for the next main mission to unlock. After DAI I'm never complaining about ME2 for that again, tough. At least side missions in ME2 were fun. DA2 was perfect for me in this regard.

Samara has hunted Morinth for the last centuries, and was her primary focus. She was hunting Morinth when she was recruited by Shepard. It she doesn't go after Morinth on Omega, there's the chance she'd lose her again for a long period of time, with the latter killing many people in the process. 
It's not far fetched or ridicolus she'd ask Shepard to help killing her. Killing Morinth isn't simply a family matter.

Look at Garrus. He's been in the turian military and worked for C-sec. He, of all the squadmates, would know that thinking about issues he has no control over shouldn't effect his performance. But it does for him as well as the others. Its very surprising he isn't able to put aside his problem and focus on the mission and doing what he can to survive.

Even in ME3, loyalty missions that aren't completed, effect the outcome of the ME2 characters. Grunt, Kasumi, Zaeed and Miranda all die if their loyalty mission isn't completed no matter what. Legion and Thane die regardless if loyal or not. The rest can live depending on the playthrough.

Only if the player chooses not to complete the mission. I'm saying, if Shepard encounters all of them in ME3, and all ME2 squadmates are not loyal, Miranda, Grunt, Kasumi and Zaeed die no matter what, if their loyalty mission wasn't completed in ME2

I've been saying that for however long. Never agreed that the loyalty missions should be a deciding factor in whether the squadmate lives or dies.