D.A. fan is back for an ME1 Text Only 'Let's Play' (page 51)

I wanted my Shepard to agree with her and laugh as well. 

Shep to Expat: "Tell me about Feros."
Expat: "Blah blah. hmmmm, I just realized I haven't heard from my contact there in a while *pause* Sure he's fine."

Nothing ominous about that.

Garrus seemed to die all the time on my recent ME1 PT, I just stopped taking him!!!!! 

 I had no idea "the Quarian" with info was Tali. I'm so silly. 

Did you go to the air traffic controllers room for Emily Wong's mission?

Liara is delusional and insanely jealous of Ashley and she comes from a species where gender has no meaning.  I haven't played FemShep enough to know whether there should be a Kaidan line in place of the Williams one; but I'm not particularly fussed if the writers set it up so that Liara only mentions Ashley.  If there is a line about Kaidan instead, then I would agree there is a bug with that (code breaking). 

What I was referring to was about Liara "ninjamancing" Shepard.  I've never had a problem with it.  If I tell her I just want to be friends and don't ask about the Asari again after that point , I have never had the argument scene trigger (i.e. I wound up romancing Ashley only or I wound up romancing no one).  When I have asked about the Asari after telling Liara I wanted to be friends (which leads Liara to reveal a bunch of personal sexual information about being a pureblood and causes her to interpret that Shepard is interested in her after all), it has triggered the argument, but I was able to tell her during the argument that I preferred Ashley.  However, if you also shut down the Ashley romance by telling her she's "Out of Line" when she mentions Garrus and Wrex, you won't have that opportunity since there won't be an argument.

However, I have also successfully angered Liara enough during the conversation at the lockers that she has not shown up in Shepard's cabin.  I did not import that Shepard into ME2, though, so I can't say for sure whether the romance flag was turned off at that point.  I do know if you turn her away in your cabin, the romance flag stays on through ME2 and ME3.

In short, I don't think the "ninjamancing" is caused by a bug, but rather it's caused by the player not being able to identify the very specific lines that the game needs to be said to shut the romance arks down.  Maybe that in itself is considered a bug by some; but I don't because there isn't code breaking there than I can detect.

The writer's aren't obligated to make every NPC likeable to every player.  Liara definitely has some personality traits that, to me at least, are not very likeable.  Ashley certainly as personality traits that aren't likeable, as does Kaidan.  Garrus, Tali and Wrex don't really have any character development at all in ME1.  Overall, character development in ME1 is rather thin... we only get a few lines of dialogue to sort out "who" these people are and their core beliefs.  So, it's not surprising to me that the romances come across as being somewhat hamfisted.

Revised in ME2 as "Aliens and humans, we're all just animals".  Supposedly her famous quote her on the Citadel.

how so, revised?

When I say revised it's more of a joke.  She was misquoted.

I don't think you're alone in that. I seem to recall certain playthroughs where Garrus seemed to be dying all the time - maybe something about the specs that Bioware gave him in ME1. I haven't had the problem too much in my current playthrough, though I've often had him hang back with his sniper rifle while Shepard and the other squadmate handle the close-quarters combat.


I never really understood Jahleed's plan. Why did he think that Shepard would arrest or kill Chorban based simply on hearsay? Granted, Chorban can freak out and order his people to fire on Shepard depending on the dialogue choices, but if you already know him from the keeper-scanning quest, it's easy enough to just talk to Chorban and get him to tell you the whole story.

IIRC, when Liara first confesses her interest in Shepard, she will ask if Shepard is already in a relationship with Ashley if Shepard is male and Kaidan if Shepard is female. I'm not sure what happens if Shepard has already definitively turned down Ashley or Kaidan by then.

I think there is a bug, though, in that if Shepard picks the middle-right "I'm not interested" response, you only get friendship dialogue from Liara after that, but if you pick the bottom-right one, both Liara and Shepard act as if there was a mutual interest expressed and will continue down the path of the romance dialogue. I also recall that for FemShep, at least, the middle-right option is very straightforward and neutrally voiced ("I'm not interested in you in that way, Liara"), whereas the wording and tone of voice for the bottom-right option is comparatively apologetic, which also seems odd. I know I encountered this at least once, and I ended up spacebarring through the romance scenes  and editing the Liara romance variable out with the Gibbed mod when I imported to ME2.