The people are actually quite easy to replace since you can kill them, it forces BioWare to double up on dialogue in case you railroaded some characters straight to the graveyard in ME1. They have to do it anyway in-game (because you kill some characters or take different ones on missions) so that shouldn't be too hard to add a little extra story in case one character is alive or dead.

The council, on the other hand... That changes everything. Maybe if they kept the story stock and just had human models instead of aliens... But that would force every NPC in the game to completely ignore that their gov't just changed. It doesn't make sense.

rocket - IMO, with the New Game + ending, I would think/hope that you could re-use your character with the ending you chose.....Provided they shortly after re-organize the council in whatever way is needed. It'd add some great depth.

Merely because you'd have 3 different openings, depending on what you chose.

fooflexible, you have 4 end-game choices to finish the game with....Heavy spoliers BTW.






#1. Paragon - You signal the Alliance fleet to protect the council's ship that's getting near destroyed by the Geth.

#2. Neutral - You signal the Alliance fleet to focus on the Soverign/Reaper ship, stating that it has to be destroyed as the first priority.

#3. Renegade - You signal to the alliance fleet (which can't contact the alliance vessels, but sent a distress signal to the citadel/you for help) to ignore the Council ship.


Chosing option #1 saves the current council. For the thanks, humans are added to the council.

Chosing #2 or #3 ends with the council (and the largest Asari dreadnaught) being obliterated. After this happens, you, as the uber-specter, get to decide who leads the Citadel in the future. Choosing the human ambassador (whos a complete jerk, as he screws you over near the end) ends up with him choosing a new council of the 3 alien races + humans.

Or, you can choose Capt. Anderson (the only cool human in the game) to lead the Citadel races, as the aliens are so scared of the Reapers, and feel humans are the only spieces to rally the universe against the reapers. I chose this, as Anderson risks his life for Normandy and your character, and he promises (since he's one awesome military genius, and former Spectre candidate) to take the fight to the Reapers, and destroy them before they attack, since an obvious Reaper attack would of annihilated Citadel forces....Heck, the Geth attack nearly did them in.

Also, having the 3 endings of council races could be easy.....

Just have various situations that foster themselves with the various ideas (prev. council, new, and Anderson) get into some sort of Geth/Reaper attack early on, and kill the council...Leaving a power vaccum. Crazy crap like that usually happen in sequel #1.

Tali does actually have a sidequest, of sorts. There are spoilers in this post, of course...


You can get her to discuss her pilgrimage at length and she will eventually reveal that she is the daughter of a member of the Quarrian's elected council. Once she does, she will hint that she needs to bring back something incredible for her pilgrimage and will ask that you let her know if you find anything. If you bring her along during the Geth sidequests (the one where you eliminate the four geth bases, and then follow their signal to a final outpost), you will receive an intelligence disc containing a vast amount of geth information. She will ask for it to bring back to her people -- you have the option of allowing her to make a copy or denying her.

You can also just bring her the disc if you did the mission without her in your party, but that's a bit bland.

--

And yes, the mission with the gang member only shows up if you're an earth-born. You get to talk a crazy young woman down from suicide if you were a colonist.

I ended up taking the OSD to her after the mission.

Well I am on my second playthrough and I have both my renegade and paragon achievements now. Its harder for me to play Renegade. To be honest, I am not a real renegade. I accomplished the same things for the most part I just wasn't nice about it. Somethings I just couldn't make myself do.

SPOILER:

On Noveria you can hack the door to get to Benezia, doing so makes all of the guards aggro to you and you can kill them all. I couldn't do that, so I did the side mission for the cure for the sick patients and got the doctors pass. I coudn't kill the Rachni Queen either. I mean you are on a mission to stop Saren from bring about the genocide of all advanced organic life, it would be hypocritical to do the same to the Rachni.

SPOILER over:

Yeah I really wanted to learn more about Tali as well. I did help her with her pilgrimage but I wanted to actually see what a Quarian looks like out side of the protective mask. If I had my choice, I would have hooked up with Tali, I liked her voice and her intelligence. I ended up picking Ashley on my first play through. It was fun finding out about her past and getting her to stop being so xenophobic about aliens.

SPOILER:

You can actually drag out your choice between Liara and Ashley. If you can tell them both you have have feelings for them. They will both confront you eventually. Thats the route I took in the game. I was trying to get both of them ala Jade Empire plus I was unsure of who I wanted to pick. I thought it was funny to see Ashley fighting over Shepard. Liara is so diplomatic about things but Ashley was pissed off.

SPOILER over:

Bah, I have to get back to work. I can talk about Mass Effect all day.

MASS EFFECT IS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry i'm short of time, so thats all the input I can give atm.

Well I just finished the game last night, man that game is so awesome, like the last 2 hours felt like an awesome summer blockbuster film, the cutscenes rocked. I stayed with Ashley, I also talked her around on the aliens and she defends the council in your quarters and in the end wants you to save the council. I choose for them to focus on the mission and I guess the council dies. I watched the other endings on youtube. and interesting difference I noticed though is that if that council lives and you pick Anderson the Ambessedor gets ticked off, but if they die he's fine with you picking Anderson, maybe the whole council getting wiped out made him think it wasn't worth being on it. I was hoping there would be another Shepard/Ashley cutscene at the end being that she said I want to tell you something and then was like no wait... I'll tell you when this is all over, and then of course we don't talk again. Oh well I'll have to wait till the next game.

I seriously can't wait till the next game, or any extra downloadable content, I'm hoping it comes out soon.

I too think they will only follow up on the main ending, I think it's too much to ask for them to create alternate games for alternate endings of the first and it would ruin the main storyline being made, this isn't Oblivion it does have a very good main story.

I saved the council cause I think humans are lame so I didn't wanna see the ambassador douche ruling.

I've got a female character, and I still don't really know if you can do the love interest with the female characters, but i konw that there is some significant feelings between my character and liara. I just sent kadian off with the commander on virmire, i hope he wasn't my only chance for a love interest, because there was a significant relationship developing that I had noticed....