Ryder is definitely less stupid than Shepard

Hah, yeah that initial dialogue is pretty goofy. Thankfully, it's only that one instance and it doesn't happen again, though Kallo has to live through more flirting on the bridge again in the post-campaign dialogue.

Kallo: "Must I be here for this?"

Ryder: "It's a rough life, buddy."

Kallo: "Go….pathfind."

If I remember correctly, there's two options there when SAM mentions their QE connection, where you can choose "Quantum what?" or "That's useful". I didn't know the former had that response XD. If it was autodialogue, I would definitely have been bothered. It's why I don't really knock Shepard for the asari mating thing in ME1, because it's pretty clear from the paraphrase it's gon' be dumb. 

Ryder is not a teenager, and if you're Sara Ryder you've been around and seen some combat.  The Ryder's are what in their low 20s, 22-23?

You can avoid that, however. You couldn't avoid Shepard's post-Thessia -100 IQ drop.

Bad writing is still bad writing, but yeah, definitely won't pick that one again

This is the exact reason why I hate him. Most of the shite he spouts sounds like it comes straight from some faffy fanfiction. 

Sweet Ieldra I disagree with you I felt that Ryder was very immature in her behavior while Shepard was more mature. The whole crew in mea felt very teenage like to me compared to the other Mass Effect games.

It's funny... people complain about the steady stream of ego-stroking and deference directed at the PC/player, and then when the writers back that down a few notches, other people complain that their character is dissed.  The writers can't win.

Shepard was a mid-level military officer, an N7, who had earned a reputation as the go-to person when you really need to get something done.  She had the full faith and backing of the entire Alliance military (and allies) as well as galactic-wide authority conferred by the Council in her role as a Spectre.  Even so, she was expected to obey orders from the military hierarchy (Hackett, Anderson) and did her share of yessiring and saluting.  And let's not forget that neither the Alliance Parliament nor the Council exactly bowed at her feet and went along with her ideas - they denied the reapers until they couldn't deny them any more.  She was so very special that TIM spent 4 billion credits to revive her corpse, and she took plenty of crap from a variety of sources about her stint working with Cerberus.  Her journey was bookended by Udina grounding her and the Normandy in ME1, and starting out grounded and decommissioned in ME3.

Ryder was a complete unknown - an unproven substitute for the Pathfinder they'd expected to be serving in that role.  She was leading not a military organization, but a rag-tag group of misfits ala DA2's Hawke, any of whom could have bailed at any time.  Cora and Liam were the only original members of the Pathfinder team who stuck around; the other survivors of their initial outing bailed.  The only real authority she had was that conferred by the Nexus leadership, who had plenty of problems of their own.



It does at least in the context of the remainder of a particular interaction.  Beyond that, I can't say.



I've been pleasantly surprised by some of the "emotional" dialogue choices.  I've avoided them, expecting something along the lines of "I won't let fear compromise who I am", but they're usually pretty sensible with a serving of hopeful optimism and/or designed to be comforting in some way.

Yanno...

I've reloaded a few saves just to see the different responses. And I just don't get the "4 ways to say the same thing."

Quite often, the responses Ryder can give can vary quite drastically. OUTCOMES may not change too much, 'cept for a line or two here and there, but you can definitely shape Ryder more than people seem to think you can. You can be hopeful and optimistic, professional and almost reluctant, a Malcolm Reynolds type using quips and one-liners to try and walk your way through Andromeda...

I played a (mostly) emotional Sara Ryder with a decent amount of Logical responses, very rarely Casual or Professional (unless those were the only two options available)...and Scott so far I'm playing more Logical with some smart-ass Casual picks...and they feel pretty darned different as characters to me.

Not as huge of a difference as between Paragon or Renegade Shepard, but still different in quite a few important ways.

I certainly wouldn't argue against having more forceful options in any potential sequel, having a few "Hey, I'm the pathfinder, stop giving me shit" lines, even if your crew ignored it, wouldn't be a bad thing, but I'm not gonna complain about what we got. I think it worked quite well, and I'm liking it over the P/R dichotomy we had in the OT.

Even a failed witty response is better then no witty response. I give credit to people who try to be funny as opposed to dullards who have to have a serious face 24/7.

Well depends if you find it witty or not doesn't it? Humour is very subjective.