Interview with Brian Kindregan (Jack, Samara ME2) about ME2's story development

Major Kyle was ex-Alliance and it was believed he was suffering from some kind of mental disorder.  The chairman had to be picked up regardless so grabbing the biotics at the same time isn't a stretch of resources.  Jacob's father was getting picked up regardless along with all the others stranded there.  ME may be inconsistent but I'm not sure these particular examples hold up.

EDIT: Oh, sorry, mixed something up. Never mind my previous post here.

You are correct, Forgot about the fact that they were first and foremost rescuing the other guys in the case of Jacob's father. Still, it seems possible for the them to do it. And anyway, I've been saying for a long time, the Normandy should really have a brig.

Ah, wait, there is a way to avoid killing anyone on Kyle's mission, you're right. It still doesn't change that paragon Shepards cannot avoid killing people in every encounter. Having a reputation as a Spectre does not help either no matter how benevolent one is as well.

The other side of refusing to take on assignments like that isn't really taking a moral high ground though. Refusing to take action means letting more harm be inflicted by those who are guilty.

Shepard does arrive in time to witness the last merc with a weapon pointed at Samara, making her an active threat so it's not like it was an action without provocation. Letting her live is an argument for another day but my point was that the mercenary was most definitely not helpless before being killed.

Our Justice system is...pretty screwed up to be honest. Between usage of solitary confinement as a punishment that has no long term benefits and in fact does permanent psychological damage, to real life cases where people in the right place can actually call in favors with the police for unauthorized executions, to overcrowding of the public defender's systems to the point clients are getting consultation that can total in less than an hour, there's something iffy about putting faith into a system that's just as messed up while condemning another's methods.

The Code DID go through adjustments through the Oath of Subsumation, something that Samara could invoke if need be with detective Anaya, in acknowledgment of controversial situations too complex for the Code to handle. However, we do learn from detective Anaya that Samara was suspiciously detained. So far, I don't see anything where Samara is doing such damage that she is any worse than any other special forces agent.

Welp, that's what you get when you have 6 writers and one of them is assigned to penning the codex while another is assigned to pen the story. Chris Hepler took over all new codex and planetary descriptions for ME2 and he's a fair bit stupider than L'Etoile and it shows in both ME2 and 3 in several places when it comes to being factual and lining up with what is depicted in the game itself.

Not Kindregan's fault though. Not his fault Sylvia came up with the idea of Ardat Yakshi monestaries in ME3 either, but I agree, top-level view, it's not consistent as a piece of fiction.

Not really, I don't consider Samara beyond reproach, but the information we have about her without metagaming gives us no reason to distrust her. The justification used to give Morinth the benefit of a doubt requires metagaming because even without it, she is forcibly attempting a form of mental coercion on Shepard without consent. To doubt Samara, you have to employ information that's outside of Shepard's awareness.

Picking and choosing which authority figures are legitimate casts doubt on the point of due process. If you can't trust what Asari acknowledge as a valid verdict, how can anyone trust any other judge's verdict?

So, reading the damn codex is metagaming now.  Bye

Where within ME2 does it say that all 3 of Samara's children have killed when mating.  Morinth has, but there is no mention of whether or not Falere and Rila have killed anyone.  Even with the "lethal" version being rarer... the Codex certainly implies more than 3 known to be in existence because it implies both "sanitaria AND prisons" as well as a plural amount (more than one) being on the execution lists (again plural) of justicars.  1% of 11+ billion Asari is a large number of people. even 1% of that 1% are still a significant number of people.  Samara's statement that only 3 are known to exist is false.  The woman can be interpreted as lying.  It's a valid way to interpret the scenario within the game world.  How the player applies that interpretation is their own choice.  I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong in killing Morinth and siding with Samara.  How you interpret the scenario is fine with me.  Why isn't my alternate interpetation of the same scenario fine with you?  Why is it that you insist on telling me that "I'm misunderstanding the character" when I'm merely presenting an alternate way to understand the character?

... to the point now that I'm being accused of metagaming for reading the damn codex. (not by you, but by another here).  Why all the peer pressure on this site to only interpret these situation in one way when the game is expressly designed to present moral dilemmas and offer player choices... not present pat moral solutions and not to present a singular linear story direction.  Why do people here want to undermine the RPGness of an RPG game?  I don't understand it.

Because we're all convinced our own interpretation is the way it was designed to be seen as, and because people care. You can see the same kinds of vehement discussions over the ending to The Last of Us in the IGN spoiler video.

Any story-arc whether it's in an RPG or not is to some extent supposed to present a singular linear story direction, especially in Mass Effect. There're moments when they've deliberately tried to make it open to the player's assessment of morally bad/good/whatever but for the most part Paragon and Renegade governs all and the fact that it's a Hero's Journey and not a study like, say, Planescape Torment means there's a certain bias to it that it can't escape from despite being an RPG with player-choice.

I for one agree with you but I'll admit I was too lazy to look up the codex, but I don't remember it stating her daughters are all killers either, only that they're dangerous maybe and that Morinth is clearly the "problem-child" that Samara has caught up with and now has to kill because she's a Justicar so she's literally obligated to it, and otherwise I'm sure she wouldn't have let her daughter be a mass-murderer on her conscience either.

Regarding what it says in the codex all I distinctly remember it stating is that 1% develop psychopathy (like Morinth) because of the way they adapt socially when they're born with a genetic impairment that interferes with how they can/cannot interact with others. But as for the codex being metagaming or not, my stance is that it isn't but you can't see it as some kind of resource Shepard has, word for word. It is strictly designed to the player and not the character in the way it's designed and written but the lore is accounted for (or meant to) so that it never spoils the future events and matches up with what Shepard is indeed supposed to know as a character inside the canon the codex describes.

I disagree  (oops misread your post, apologize and damn these eyes of mine - I agree to a point).  I think it is meant to be more non-linear that people usually give it credit for being.  Sure, Bioware wasn't successful in removing all their biases from the game... that's different though than "preaching" a pat moral solution to a problem.

For example, they sow the seeds of Shepard questioning the all-empowering authority of Spectres (conversation with Executor Palin in ME1).  If Shepard sees Samara as a person using a black and white code to facilitate her own ends, that can be used to shape a very different Shepard who could have a reason other than the "council being idiots" for turning down spectre re-instatement in ME2 (a renegade option) and for telling Aaron Sommers in ME3 that it's worthwhile to trust the chain of command (which is a paragon option in that game).

... and that's fair.  As I said, I'm not trying to convince anyone else that their interpretation is incorrect.

Yea, there are many disorders in the real world, psychological issues that can be diagnosed and treated, which people who don't know any better readily misinterpret as malevolence. And given that we have just begun the investigation of these kinds of diseases at a neuroscientific level less than 100 years ago, I expect we'll see much more progress in the near future.
My mother is a pediatrician and she could tell dozens of stories like the one of your son and also sadly a dozen more where due to unfortunate circumstances, children did not get the help they need to develop properly and turn into psychologically challenged, often violent adults. Often, misunderstanding and ignorance about the nature of those disorders cause a lot of those unnecessary problems.I am glad of course things worked out for your son.

To my mind as well, AY is first and foremost a disorder, that would need to be studied and a treatment devised. Even in my first playthrough, by the end of the LM, I pitied Morinth more than I despised her. Yes, Morinth is dangerous but unly as long as she is free and in hiding and as long as she can manipulate unsuspecting people. I got the impression that once found and apprehended, locked up and under guard by either multiple people whom she cannot all mind control at once or even a VI system when that is necessary, she would no longer be a threat. On the other hand, Morinth's extreme case could have been a very valuable subject of stdy of the disease. Today, for drug addiction, it's important to study non-user, early users and advanced users to compare brain activity for example. Given that AY is also addictive, this would be valuable information as well.
Once Samara has beaten her daughter with Shepard's help, there was a chance to apprehend her (just like btw there was the chance to apprehend the merc in the recruitment mission). In both cases, Samara chose to kill, willfully and unnecessarily. Where I come from, this is actually called murder. Now, Samara may have been in her perfect legal right to act as she did but in my mind, morally as well as logically, she was anything but. Unfortunately, my Shepard cannot really say that.

When I am paragon, I am always Samara's friend, while when renegade, I am her enemy. I think this should be the other way round. Renegade is actually perfectly aligned with her. A renegade Shepard follows a just cause and will kill without remorse anyone who stands in the way. And since in ME2 we pretty much exclusively deal with scumbags and criminals, not really any innocent comes to harm there. I never quite understood why Samara scolds renegade Shepards that much while paragon Shepards have no dialogue in the game to scold here a whole lot (I think you can question her morality once but she just brushes you off and that's that).