#in me2 if you rival someone they just die

[baejax-the-great]

Listen op... What about rivalmances á lá Dragon Age 2... But it's Mass Effect instead? How'd you think it'd go?

Ohh, this is an interesting question.

So definitely some of the romantic interests favor a renegade or paragon path, right? Like, Garrus, Ash, and Miranda are arguably renegade choices, Kaidan generally argues in favor of paragon choices. But there's no approval system (beyond some ME1 stuff). Everyone is always willing to bone down if you ask.

The truth is, I didn’t love rivalmances in DA2. It’s an interesting concept, being in a toxic relationship with someone who doesn’t share any of your beliefs and possibly doesn’t believe in your humanity, but I don’t know man. Like Merrill deserves better actually. I’ve never actually seen the Isabela rivalmance but just those words together put a bad taste in my mouth.

While I find it odd sometimes that your decisions in ME don’t affect how your companions respond to you (you can say some seriously anti-alien shit in ME1 for example, with your alien companions standing behind you just shrugging), I think the context for the major decisions is pretty different.

Most of the paragon/renegade decisions early on don’t directly affect your companions. They are frequently ethical, but not political. Killing the rachni queen doesn't invalidate biotics as people or even speak of Shep’s beliefs regarding other species. Everyone agrees the rachni are a dangerous unknown who almost wiped out the other races. Kaidan might disagree with killing her, but if you go against his advice, you aren't indicating you think he should be imprisoned for his abilities (as a templar-aligned Hawke might when making their decisions).

The decisions that I think the companions would have the most emotional response to (the genophage? Rannoch?) occur in ME3, when everyone is at all-out war with the Reapers. And you can, uh, utterly destroy relationships with the people directly involved in those quests. For everyone else, Shepard is making decisions on the fly about how to defeat the Reapers, and frankly any fallout from those decisions would probably happen after the dust had settled.

And honestly, I think some of that would be great to explore. Can Shepard live with themself with the consequences of the destroy ending? With the consequences of their genophage cure? If they side with the geth on Rannoch and then choose destroy? Like... the war was won, but as Kaidan says, you have to live with how it went down. I would not be shocked to find out Shepard and their LI break up in peace time.

At some point in Mass Effect, everyone is just maxed-out emotionwise, and they aren’t in a place to judge wtf Shepard is doing. Companions and other NPCs routinely admit to Shepard they have no idea what they would do in their position. And again, I think the fact that Shepard is a (very successful) leader in a war against a specific enemy vs just some very sexy hick from Lothering fucking up Kirkwall for the hell of it changes how the companions are going to see their decisions. Doing something because it’s strategically the right call in the fate of the galaxy even if it’s fucked up is not the same as dicking around Lowtown trying to scrounge up cash.

For my own personal preference, I’m glad there isn’t a rivalmance, though I think I wouldn’t be opposed to some sort of approval system (some of these thirsty companions come on a LITTLE strong in ME1 like wow cool your jets). The ME romances are built on respect (mostly). In DA2? It's like, okay, your very actions go against my core beliefs as a person and threaten my safety/autonomy, but you're so sexy aha.

But hey that’s just me.

Okay nonnie I wrote this whole thing and then thought about your  actual question-- how would it go?

So now I’m trying to imagine Liara who like, despises Shep but still wants to embrace eternity and like... how does that go? “You’re so stupid, please let me see into your mind. Goddess, it’s so empty, I have never felt such peace.”

It’s harder with Garrus because he is SO amenable to being swayed by paragon Shep. He’s practically begging to be realigned, and we know he likes it when women are a little bit mean to him. I don’t know that it’s possible to rivalmance this cricket.

Kaidan frankly seems like the one most possible to rivalmance. Like, fuck, you go against every moral value I hold, but you are so stupidly sexy and somehow everything always works out anyway and I’m angry about it. Eat this steak you absolute monster.

I have no idea how you would rivalmance Sam without just being mean to her. Hard pass.

I also think rivalmancing Tali would... be ugly. I don’t like the idea. Like getting her to face the very warped history her people taught her, sure, but siding with the Geth every time, or witholding the things she needs to succeed, or breaking her trust on her loyalty mission... idk man. That just seems toxic. And I am pretty sure if you fail Thane’s loyalty mission, you can’t romance him, so I’m guessing that’s true of Tali, too.

The ME2 companions don’t... totally give a shit what you are up to? Like Jack, Jacob and Thane come to mind as not having a very strong stance on most of what you are doing. You’d have to completely retool their characters to suddenly have very strong opinions on a lot of random shit. (and like, why *would* Jack care if you rewrite or destroy the geth hub? Also don’t rivalmance Jack????)

So... I dunno, there is potential there for sure, but I think having so many romanceable characters and a game that doesn’t revolve around a single moral issue makes it harder.

#Nadia would eat Hawke alive #I'm trying to think if there's some horrible choice I've forgotten that would directly threaten a LI who isn't Tali #Having never played as broshep I also feel like I'm missing some context for some of the male-only romances #so many of the worst outcomes can be handwaved away by like #the task was impossible in the first place #like oh you lost half your squad? #guess that's why we called it a suicide mission #now would it be funny if you made a bunch of shit choices and people stopped fawning over you? #a Shepard with fewer war assets is just less sexy #but again I think the hopelessness of the situation just cushions any true blowback #in me2 if you rival someone they just die