BioWare can't afford to let any squadmates die.

Yep! We talked about this too at the old board. I saw her each time, warned her about Leng, trusted her with the info and she still died. I had some sort of flagging issue probably.

This is why I'm glad MEA won't have this. It's gets so stupid by the next game if things don't carry over properly.

The reason Kaidan received such excellent treatment in ME3 was his very devoted and passionate fan base. We were constantly interacting with the devs on Twitter and had extremely active discussions on the forums that devs visited as well. Many of us were also huge Cullen fans, and look what happened with Cullen's character in DAI. Never underestimate what polite, respectful, and exceedingly devoted fans can encourage devs to do with a character!


By comparison, Ashley's fans were scarcely a whisper compared to Kaidan fans roar lol. She may have had more people keep her alive, but the Kaidan crew were tireless activists. I have no doubt that Kaidan's outcome would have been very different otherwise.

I kind of feel like most gamers don't understand how difficult it is to add meaningful player choice in games, where your actions cause differing outcomes (including the death of a squadmate).

Just one two-choice decision means you now have to write two storylines. Two means four storylines. Three means eight, and so on. It gets even more complicated when there's more than three choices. Obviously they don't have the resources to write thousands of storylines based on cumulative player choice, so they get around that by making storylines with common elements. For instance, whether you choose Kaidan or Ashley, they play largely the same role in ME3. However, using these common elements introduces its own challenges, and it becomes imperative to suss out conflicts in the story that don't make narrative sense, otherwise it breaks immersion.

So meaningful player choice is both expensive and risky, and often hurts the narrative.

This, more than anything else, having a squadmate die only to have a random NPC fulfilling his role is the cheapest, least interesting consequence a choice can have, IMO, only better than having no consequence at all Also, the more people die, the less impact it has. I don't mind a mandatory death once in a while if it has some true dramatic or narrative impact, but I rather have squadmates more central to the plot and less linear relationships, that's far more interesting for me. A dead squadmate is simply replaced with a less fleshed out character most times, and I feel very much "meh" about that.

I can't be bothered that they won't die and I'm kinda glad they won't. I'd prefer it if they just left or something based on a decision I made rather than dying. Call me a weenie, if you like. *shrug*
There are plenty of other ways to introduce drama and tension. You don't have to kill off anybody to get it.

Tali calls Miranda a bitch if she lives too lol. As for the DA2 cast, they were easily the most fun and had some of the best personal quests, I thought. 

I'm fine with this - if my squadmates can't die from a shotgun blast to the face in combat they shouldn't have special mortality in cutscenes.

That doesn't mean Sara, Alec, or Scott won't die by the end of the game. You don't need to kill off squad mates if they can kill your own family.

Personally, I agree that killing off squad mates is a cheap thrill tactic, but at the same time, I like the unexpected deaths if it's done in a way similar to Game of Thrones.

I haven't been keeping up with much MEA news before this week, but even I knew none of them could die what seems like months ago. I remember everyone being upset about it being revealed back then, too.

That falls in with what I said about "deliberately not using one of the two persuasion options available"  In other words, I've never had that conversation go in a direction I did not intend it to take in all the times I've done it in different ways.  I can't honestly see any sort of "bug" in how the game is flagging what one does with Miranda.  It's been completely in line with what "should" happen... every single time and in every different way I've tried to make it happen.  Now, 30 odd plays of it certainly isn't a definitive QC bug test; but I think it's enough to say that I think a flagging but is unlikely.

When saying that, it could mean you avoid the blue or red option, which is two persuasion options, right? An interrupt is not a persuasion.