Almost Nobody Played A Bad Guy In Mass Effect

One of the key appeals of playing the Mass Effect series at its time of release was the way, like BioWare’s older games, your in-game decisions and actions would propel you towards the ends of a binary good/evil scale, potentially changing the game’s story. Turns out BioWare almost needn’t have bothered, since so few players went to the dark side.

[FallenAngel1984]

Being a villain is always fun. I always go bad in games with morality choices on my second playthrough

[medman]

I usually start out with that same intention on second or third playthroughs, but I never truly go fully evil.....I find I loved certain members of my Mass Effect party too much to mistreat them. Liara especially.

[aaronaton]

The cringe.....

[Gaming101]

I played as a total bad guy just to see what would happen out of sheer morbid curiousity. For both ME2 and ME3.
The problem sometimes is you become more of a cartoon bad guy with motives that make little to no sense, where you don't gain anything by being a dick.
I wish the writing was better for bad guy decisions, since it's sometimes a choice between being a goody two shoes and being the worst human being on Earth.

[rainslacker]

I played the evil side for the trophy. But, the overall story still plays out like you're a good guy, so the actual choices involved in renegade tree were pretty pointless. Very few things were affected by one's choice of good vs. evil. Just some initial reactions, and a few instances where meaningless people wouldn't help you with something meaningless later.

[AspiringProGenji]

Whatever path you choose:

Screw the council or go home

[lellkay]

Always did a Paragon Male and a Renegade Fem Shep

[Andy_Dee]

Amen brother!

Did the sam! :D

Fem Shep is so bad ass! I love the voice acting, really had way more impact than the male version imo!

[lellkay]

Absolutely!! renegade FemShep is legit bad ass

[dreamoner]

Fuck this article. If there is no "bad guy" choice playing the "good guy" isn't as meaning. And I'm saying this despite that I almost always play the bad guy after my goody two shoes canon playthroughs.

[TK-66]

It didn't say theres no bad guy choice... its saying less people picked it. Personally I think it's because Shepard with the red scars looks fucked up and dumb rather than becaus people didn't want to make renegade decisions.

[carcarias]

I'm not sure 'evil' or 'bad guy' is the right way of describing it. It was called Renegade for a reason.

It was more of a ruthless, harsh and rebellious Shepard, rather than an 'evil/bad guy' one. And I played that version plenty of times ;)

[franwex]

A lot of times the game kinda wants you to play good.

[anonymousfan]

I looooved mass effect but I feel the Witcher games do the morality part better by making player choices far more ambiguous

[franwex]

Yeah, I like how sometimes you think you are being good in the Witcher, but end up causing even more damage due to your actions, lol! Woops!

[AspiringProGenji]

That’s what I feel as well. A lot of the renegade choices are there just for display. Also ME3 ending and some of the plot made the regenage choices in Previous games obsolete:

-Killed Wrex? Another wrex-like krogan takes over
-Killed the Rachni queen? It gets magically resurrected in ME3
-one of the key members die in the suicide mission? Another similar character takes over in ME3
- Not destroying the collector ship so the Illussive man savages the human reaper and everything? Same plot and reaction as if you just destroyed tue ship in ME3

The only renegade option I feel it made the most impact was letting the counsil die in the Sovereign attack, which consequences actually carry over later and changes a few things up

[FITSniper]

I think it was partly because choices mattered. And if you went the dark side, it was a lot harder to end with a good outcome. So unless you just wanted to say screw the galaxy and end poorly, you tended to play with a better attitude in game.

[BlackRaven85_1]

I, as well as others, did played renegade more than once. Didn't matter about choices or "good" outcome. Playing the straight and narrow character gets boring after awhile. 😏

[The_Sage]

I played through the entire trilogy multiple times. I did a full paragon passthrough once. It was fun. Everyone was afraid of my Shepard.

[ifrit_caress]

The Mass Effect trilogy is an experience I will take with me for the rest of my life. I had fun playing the paragon on ME and ME3 and the renegade on ME2.

[ZeekQuattro]

I played both. Renegade options often times lead to funny outcomes. Well indirectly funny anyway. My renegade path was none other than Samuel L. Shepard. Good times.

[MadLad]

I did a full playthrough as a complete dick. It was a blast.
I typically played the game making decisions close to how real me would handle it though.

[rainslacker]

Yeah, my own morality and general preference to not be a jack ass tended to rule my decisions. I did the renegade path for trophies, but once I got the trophy, I tended to just pick the one's that were more in line with my own personality.

[AK91]

Because your not really being a villain in those games just a jerk, in KOTOR you could straight up become a Sith Lord and conquer the galaxy (well that 2nd part is only implied) whilst ME you do the exact same thing in a good playthrough just you look like a melting zombie and your just a plain dick.

[chrono1205]

Mass effect was the only series I played as evil.

[TheProfessional]

The first Fable had a good morality system, you could literally sacrifice people at the temple of skorm, citizens would fear you in villages and you looked menacing.

[Tross]

And being good somehow makes you more physically attractive. My cousin and I had a good laugh at that...and that time we managed to get the protagonist to grow tiny horns as a kid.