Things that don't make sense (v2)

Yes, yes, we've heard how you'd do it before.  In the end, Bioware did it how they did it.  All authors "play favorites" with certain characters.  You certainly have favorites and pet peeves.  A question though, iIf you really don't like how Bioware wrote the MET why do you want it remastered at all?

I'm not sure I'm getting the bolded part.  Isn't possible to not recruit Tali and survive the SM with all other (9 or 11 NPCs) you recruited surviving... or is it that she is needed for the "No One Left Behind" achievement to unlock?

People around here like to accuse me of being upset... I've never upset.  (If I actually got upset, it would probably kill me outright.)  I like Andromeda, but I have criticized some things about it and do criticize it still.  I like the Trilogy, and I also criticize that... I don't have as strong a "dislike" for specific characters in either series as you obviously do.  My beef is that people continually say they want a remaster of the Trilogy when what they've been lobbying for is a rewrite and my other beef is that they insist the ME:A has to be thrown away in it's entirety and made totally nonexistent for the ME franchise to recover.  I disagree with that because that's just adding another "wrong" into the mix.

Even if the Trilogy were rewritten, it probably would still "play favorites" with some of the characters.  Even if a new story were to be written, they would almost invariably "play favorites" with certain characters.  A fact of any story is that there are characters that are more major and others that are more minor.  In that the MET was continuing on from one game to the next, they needed some characters who could continue on from one game to the next.  They mishandled that "pool" of characters in ME2 and had to work something out for ME3.  They opted not to run with all the variable of being able to recruit any 2 of the ME2's surviving cast.  I don't have a problem with that.  I don't have a problem with Liara either.

I think the fact that you CAN get Tali and Garrus killed in ME2 makes their very central and thought out appearance in ME3 all the more impressive. This to me was always one example where BW really showed their dedication to make consequences of your actions really tangible in ME3 and IMO they did a great job there, I applaud the effort.

As for "playing favorites" I am with UpUp on this one. Of course there will be more central characters in the plot. In this case, it happen to be Liara, Joker, EDI and to some extent Garrus and Tali. And of course they had to keep some characters alive because they couldn't write every single dialogue line 15 times. I am really sorry for the people who happen not to like those characters that much but demanding that everyone should have "an equal chance to get killed" is a bit childish IMO (and I am not sure why it would be in this thread).

Oh, and btw, the fact that Garrus is a mandatory recruitment in ME2 is only because the order of missions in ME2 had to be structured a little more late in development, mostly to allow for proper disc usage on the consoles. On PC, you can actually mod/cheat the game to unlock this restriction. AFAIK this was not a narrative decision but just a technical requirement and Garrus happened to be one of those characters that fell into the pre-Horizon category.

Anyway. looking at it from a coding and resource perspective, BW gave players a lot of freedom with the characters already, way more than pretty much any other game out there does. Getting hung up on the few remaining restrictions is kind of a weird thing to do IMO.

It's in this thread I think because it was part of an evolving discussion that did work here. Now it's off the rails. Still, Liara was pushed on us in all three games. Not so of anyone else. I'd rather no one be forced on us than just one character, one also known to ninjamance you if you're not careful (the only instance of that AFAIK).

I'm really not sure how you managed to be ninjamanced by Jack.  That really doesn't make sense to me.  The responses that you need to get to that point include "I want you" followed by something like "I can wait" (if you don't tell her that, you wind up having casual sex and locking out the romance).  You can also go in anytime after that conversation, select "I want to talk about us." and tell her "You're taking too long." (which breaks it off without being super mean).  If, in the meantime, you've picked up interest in someone else, you can tell her as much and she'll even tell you that she said she doesn't care where you play.

ETA:  I'm going to correct myself here - I now think that you can tell her your "Not interested" in that second conversation and still wind up romancing her.  Still, though, you do have every opportunity to start the "I want to talk about us" bit and break it off before she winds up in your cabin.  Even in the Murtock conversation about her ex, there is an option at the end to tell her "This was a bad idea.  Goodbye."  In the conversation before that, when she asks if you're interested in her, there is a "No." option. Another way to make sure a romance can't happen is to side with Miranda during their spat and then get Jack's loyalty back by talking to her afterwards (using either P/R option).  This locks out the romance.

I know I'm not alone in thinking Liara should have stayed on the ship while Shiala was a squadmate. As you say, Shiala could have proved Shepard was telling the truth. OTOH, it may have required a Prothean beacon. The ones on Eden Prime and Virmire didn't survive. It wasn't until the Firewalker missions in ME2 that another beacon was found and I think this one survived. Would have been the perfect time to prove Shepard's case.

That's one thing I mentioned about Garrus, give Shepard the option to bring him on the SR2 or have him stay on Manae. Garrus will say without Victus, the moon might be lost, but Garrus is willing to leave to help Shepard instead of staying behind to help his fellow soldiers.

To my recollection, he ended up doing a lot tactical decisions with Turian forces in coordination with Victus when on the Normandy vs when he was in the field on Menae, keeping Reaper forces at bay. Either way can work, I was thinking that his presence as someone who's had experience with Reapers to the rest of the Turian troops would have helped morale after seeing Victus leave.

Meh, hindsight is 20/20 in those instances but Garrus' mention about how it'd be hard to watch Victus leave provides a good excuse gameplaywise to give other teammates a chance to add others to the roster. He is trusted enough by Victus to handle keeping other turian troops alive so it's a convenient plot excuse in getting players to make choices.

You can say the same for a good number of people in the game.  Ash or even Kaiden goes from another nameless cannon fodder army grunt to highly trained special ops able to lead high risk missions against the Reaper invasion (assuming you didn't recruit them again). Tali goes from first time away from home geek to a bad ass highly trained warrior who goes on high risk missions to Geth space. Garrus equally goes from beat cop with at best basic military training to covert ops cell operated with no funding or support in the heart of enemy territory while dealing enough damage and death to unite the rival factions against them. And even then able to single handily holding off those united gangs for a while by himself armed with only a sniper. Wrex goes from a jaded battle hardened Krogan with big ideas but no way to bring them about to uniting a large portion of the Krogan clans in a semi peaceful (for them anyways) alliance and establishing himself as the almost defacto leader of the Krogan home world.

Information Broker =/= master spy. Not necessarily again I point to Barla Von. Feron and Cerberus (at least indirectly) helped Liara rescue Shepard. In ME 2 she is an information broker meaning she buys and sells secrets. Doesn't mean she goes spying on her own only that she made the right contacts with people who will sell information for the right price. Case in point when she is shown for the first time in ME 2 she is simply threatening to torture someone with her biotic capabilities if they don't hand over the details she wants. That isn't spying in the traditional sense. Least not the CIA hidden mole in a group of bad guys sense.

I don't have to know about the person I have to see the actions and words chosen.  I have already fully admitted that racism isn't the ideal word given it is only against a single individual but it is the closes and best analogy for the mentality shown. But given the mentality of everything is wrong simply because it is Liara combined with the fact there are a couple of characters with equally ridiculous character arcs that are unrealistic given the time frame. Yet the issue with them is reduced to minor annoyance while Liara is screaming at the top of the lungs an issue. This is another thing indicative of racist mentality. The Incel or what ever that group of moronic guys who think sex is owed to them simply because they exist if another good example of that mentality at play. Browsing r/all on reddit one bored night I cam across a post from their sub reddit. It was something from the UN about 19% of all front line reporters killed last year were female and that it should be reduced. The scorn they had for posting that complaining about how it isn't fair they don't care about the 81% of men being killed was staggering just browsing the comments.  Which again the hate is similar to how Themikefest reacts to Liara. She exists as a character and isn't exactly how he wants and so he hates her beyond reason and seeks any and all no matter how thin or unsupported reasons to continue the hate and dislike.

The parallels are to many and to great for me to ignore though I do agree word choice isn't highly accurate giving the individual person hatred. If you know a better word then I to describe the unreasonable hatred for an individual I will instead use that word.

To be fair though, Liara is not "just" an archiologist in the sense we humans would understand it. She is an asari and for them with their long lifespans, occupations are not as often a lifetime dedication as it is for humans. Now, Liara is a young asari but even she is over 100 years old. Enough time to learn skills that go beyond sitting in a dusty room, cataloguing artifacts.

For physical skills, despite her nerdy and cute act in ME1, she does seem to be more of an Indiana Jones type of archeologist anyway, crawling through unexplored dig sites (complete with getting caught in ancient traps ). While she never really goes into it, she does mention at some occasions how she did have a rather adventurous past, running into dangers on uncharted worlds and having to defend herself. Combine that with her being a naturally strong biotic (I know, wroter's favorite, deal with it) and I don't think her combat skills are a big deal. After all, her strength in combat is biotics more than anything else.

As for her success as a Shadow Broker, I don't see it as too much of a stretch either. Mind you, the real power of the Shadow Broker lies in the infrastructure of the network. If a Yahg could take over only shortly after being introduced to the wider galactic civilization, why not an asari that has an education and a talent for sifting through and cross-linking information in the first place. More than that, Liara is the daughter of a powerful Matriarch and a very central figure in asari society. You'd imagine that before their falling out, some of Benezia's political aptitude might have rubbed off on her daughter. At the very least, Liara would have been exposed to the world of large scale politics from a very young age and thus might have learned a thing or two on how to manipulate the right people and pull the right strings to get along in this world.

So yea, I get that some players may not like her, that's fine. I also get that she is one of the more central characters in the trilogy (probably the most important one of the side characters) and that the people who don't like her resent that. What I find a bit childish though is that people seem to try over and over again to explain their personal resentments in terms of some constructed logical errors in the story. Liara is who she is. Get over it.

In ME1, she tells you that occasionaly, she would "run afoul" of preditory life forms or bandit groups during her travels for example. Granted, it's never really talked about in much detail but given the long time she's been at this, it's not out of the question that she gained a certain level of experience, how to handle herself.


I am not so sure. Remember, as the Shadow Broker, she doesn't need to be a great spy. There are others already in place who do the spying and provide the information. That's the cool thing about taking over the established network. Liara says this herself if you get back to the ship after LotSB. She explains that it's not about getting the information but rather cataloging it and making the right connections. This to me does sound like a skill set that she would have trained during her years, especially while she tried to prove her reaper theory, trying to cross-link obscure clues spread out over the entire galaxy.


That, I can agree with. The Thessia debacle was definitely on whoever made the decision to keep the beacon secret, even after the reaper invasion began and after Shepard already came to the council with the crucible plans. As far as I can see, there is no good excuse for it, it was a screw-up, plain and simple.