Mass Effect 2 Question: Who did you choose to lead the B-Team? *spoilers*

The Game Room
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And why?

I’ve just finished Mass Effect 2 and the final mission had an interesting twist where Commander Shepard (you) had to make a couple of tricky leadership decisions that had me at least considering team dynamics and personalities when answering them and I was just wondering what decisions other people made and why.

On the Collector base a leader for the second assault team has to be chosen (after Miranda raises it and is brutally shot down, otherwise I would have seriously considered her for the role).

I almost immediately decided on Samara, she has centuries of proven competence, is cool, calm and collected and able to function autonomously (you wouldn’t have to keep an eye on her to see what she’s doing unlike some of the others). In addition the other team members would accept her authority, she isn’t particularly likable but they’d respect her and her authority and she certainly hasn’t given them any reason to dislike her. Also she has enough distance from the others to make difficult and logical decisions if necessary. She just reminds me of someone who would be a good second-in-command if a little too self-contained to be the number one.

The second major decision (I don’t count the first decision on who to send on the suicide mission into the ducts because I imagine everyone chose Tali :wink: ) is who to escort the survivors back to the Normandy (assuming you did choose to send them back!). This was a little tougher but I picked Grunt on the basis that while he’s no deep thinker he is extremely tough, loyal, clan and mission orientated. If he’s ordered to get the survivors back to the Normandy you can be damn sure he’ll get them back…or die in the attempt. I did worry that he might object on the grounds that he’d miss the big climatic battle but was prepared to sweet-talk him if necessary.

btw please don’t give away any spoilers for Mass Effect 3, I haven’t played it yet!

bttw one spoiler would be appreciated, does it have a major impact on Mass Effect 3 if people are killed on the final mission in Mass Effect 2, ie: do their storylines continue in the third game?

I’m playing two Shepard characters at the same time, the first is basically ‘me’, making the choices that I would actually do in a given situation (about 85% Paragon and 15% Renegade though I object to how some of the decisions are classified) and her evil alter-ego ‘Dark Shepard’ where I chose all the Renegade options, which is a lot of fun. For Dark Shepard I sent the Normandy into the final mission with no shield or weapons upgrades and killed off quite a proportion of my team members which is why I’m wondering is it worth restarting from an earlier save and upgrading before running the mission again (I’m still going to kill Tali off though…) :wink:

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It’s been a long time since I played it, but I remember I got everyone through on the first attempt. I think it was Tali in the ducts, Miranda for B team and Jacob to take people back. The second play through, I put the annoying mercenary from one of the expansion packs in charge of B team and he got killed and I was just fine with that, he was a douche.

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I believe everyone from ME2 makes an appearance in ME3 so long as they are still alive. So you want to try and keep at least the ones you like alive in order to see what happens to them.

I believe I had Garus take B-Team. The guy is an experienced commander, used to leading troops. I had Tali in the duct since she was the engineer/tech expert. Jacob escorted the survivors (I don’t think I lost any survivors either). and I chose Samara for the field generation part of the mission since I felt that even though Jack might be possibly more powerful in terms of pure biotics, Samara probably had the discipline required to hold it for such a prolonged amount of time.

Curious: Who did you guys save in ME1? Kaidan or Ashley?

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The basic storylines continue in ME3 if you get someone killed off, but the “replacement” may not be as sympathetic to you as the original might have been. (This may also affect resolution of that ME3 plot.)

Also, it is possible - via Normandy upgrades and careful team picking - to make it through ME2 with your whole team intact.

For the ducts, I don’t recall if I used Tali or (DLC) Kasumi, probably Tali though.

I’m trying to remember who I picked for the second team lead - probably Jacob, because he’s a good leader and is more likely to have people listen without arguing. I sent Mordin to take the others back and they were fine.

Oh yeah, and I chose Jack to do the biotic fields.

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I just finished this game for the first time a few weeks ago. Great game.

I had Miranda command the B-team. First, because I was sleeping with her; and second, because she was, technically, my second in command, and one of the few there with actual leadership experience. Besides, I found her assertiveness sexy.

I sent Tali through the ducts - naturally - and I sent Mordin back with the survivors, because I valued him more as a scientist than as a fighter and wanted to get him away from danger. Besides them, I had Samara (my most reliable biotic) maintain the shield, and brought Garrus and Jack with me for the final showdown, Garrus because I trusted him the most and Jack because I didn’t trust her under Miranda.

Everyone came home.

As you may have noticed, I played the game completely “in character”.

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I set Garrus to lead the second team since he seemed most qualified. I sent Jacob through ducts because, I liked Tali and was afraid she would die. When Jacob got shot and killed later I felt really guilty for days after. It is rare a game effected me like that but that one did.

In ME1 I saved Ash. I didn’t really feel attached to Kaiden. I was also able to to keep Wrex alive and not angry with me.

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Missed Kinthalis’ question re. Virmire and ME1: I saved Kaidan. Female, here, and he’s my usual romance choice. I started doing a ME2 (with Genesis “comic book starter” DLC) playthrough as a male Shep to romance Tali and picked Ashley to have survived that, just to see what she was like in the series, but had a hard time adjusting to the “wrong” voice for Shep after playing as FemShep through the whole series, so I didn’t get far. :wink:

Bonus: ME3’s last DLC, released last week, is their version of the Genesis start-up comic that lets you make choices. However, it makes you choose between fully upgrading the Normandy or going right away for the rescue.

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Fem Shep voice >>>>>>>>>>>>>> Male Shep voice.

I wish someone would mod ME1 and ME2 into the ME3 engine. Would totally play through again. ME2 is kind of too rough around the edges for yet another playthrough.

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Thanks, I’ll probably try to keep everyone alive across both of my ‘Shepards’ to see what happens to them. So looks like Tali may live after all…

I forgot about that part, I chose Samara as well and for the same reasons…that and Jack is a bit of a jerk and potentially unreliable.

In my ‘proper’ playthrough I saved Kaidan as he was my love-interest and he was a nice guy (if a little bland) while Ashley was a lot more interesting. I liked listening to her anti-alien sentiments although I didn’t agree with them.

It really is isn’t it? Good storyline, interesting and sympathetic characters, ‘plausible’ story-universe, some genuinely difficult moral choices.

That’s a good reason, I was concerned though that we’d come up against something on the mission where Mordins scientific expertise would come in handy, and I didn’t think he was hardcore enough to fight his way back by himself.

I joke about Tali but I didn’t really dislike her as a character, just found her uninteresting and overly whiney. Still…

Shepard: “Suicide mission you say? Tali, you’re up”

Tali: “…”

I agree with you about the emotional impact the game had, I even had to reset and rerun the Tali mission because I felt bad about revealing her fathers research to the fleet!

btw I mentioned paragon/renegade decisions I don’t really agree with. In the climatic battle in the first game I sacrificed the Council on the premise that we were up against an apocalyptically powerful hostile being and we don’t know how much firepower would be needed to take it down. It would do the galaxy a lot of good if we temporarily saved the Council only to be quickly overcome by the tide of Reapers that were about to come through if Sovereign wasn’t stopped. But apparently that was the ‘bad/renegade’ choice…meh…

And in Mass Effect 2 I chose to save the Collector station again on the premise that we need as much resources and information as possible to stand up to the Reapers. I was maintaining it for humanity/all sentient life, not for Cerberus or The Illusive Man (who I found somewhat distracting as he looks so much like Martin Sheen, they really should have changed his appearance somewhat) but I’m getting an increasingly sinking feeling when talking to my surviving crew members…

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As I recall, the “correct” choices, to make sure everyone comes out alive, are as follows;

  • Tali or Legion for tech specialist
  • Jacob, Miranda, or Garrus for fire team
  • Samara, Morinth, or Jack for biotic specialist
  • Mordin to escort the crew back to the ship
  • Some combination of Jack, Tali, Kasumi, and Miranda for the final boss fight (since they’re the ones most likely to die while “holding the line”)

As long as you have all the Normandy upgrades and all the specialists you choose are loyal, it’s fairly easy to finish the mission with everyone alive.

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Collector base decision: I love reading datapads, watching the security videos, etc, when I come across them. The ones in the Collector base convinced me that the “nuke it from orbit” choice was the best for me.

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On my first playthrough, I saved Ashley because Kaidan was such a bore. After talking to her more and learning how horribly xenophobic she was, I happily kill Ashley in every playthrough.

You can also use Kasumi for the tech specialist. And apparently when you’re selecting the fire team for the second time (after you select the biotic specialist) you can choose a non-loyal Miranda and she won’t die.

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Jennifer Hale is full of awesome. However, I do have to give Mark Meer (voice of MaleShep) credit for a fabulous cosplay as MaleShep (along with the woman who was the model for Samara) at DragonCon last year. Supposedly more of the voice actors will join in at PAX East next year (last I saw, that included Hale).

Back on ME2 topic, I’m trying again for the MaleShep (or DudeShep as I usually call him) playthrough. :smiley: When I’m given the option to play as a woman and she kicks that much ass, it’s hard to intentionally pick playing as a guy, which is usually the default/only option, or at least had been for so long. ME3’s packaging offers FemShep as available box art, too.

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The very first time I did it I made perfect choices purely out of logical reasoning, except for one I flubbed (thematically) but it turned out okay mechanically.

For my fire team leaders, I always chose Garrus, because, c’mon, it’s Garrus. As noted, he has experience with it.
For my tech specialist, I picked Legion, because who’s a better tech specialist than the AI?
For my biotic specialist, I picked Samara because that was kind of the whole point of recruiting the insane Knight-Templar archetype. Miranda was obviously thinking too highly of herself to me.
The place where I ‘flubbed’ was putting Zaeed in charge of escorting the crewmembers back. While the game has that be a fine success and all, I realized that in-character that was a silly choice to make, because every single one of Zaeed’s stories ends up with him being the only survivor. Putting him in charge of protecting people was, when I think about it, an incredibly stupid idea (that luckily just happened to work out fine).
To hold the line, I put Garrus in charge again, because obviously he’s good at holding a fixed position, as he proved back on Omega.
I honestly don’t recall who I took with me to fight the boss. I think Miranda was with me, and one other.

Since everyone was loyal, and I made logical choices, nobody died at any point, without me ever looking up a guide or anything of that sort.

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Yeah, but even that they screwed up by making her design open to a contest instead of just sticking with her canonical appearance in ME1 and ME2 (which is much better looking, IMO).

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Tech specialist:Legion.
B team leader: Garrus. Good old Garrus.
Biotic specialist: Jack.
My team: Miranda (or Grunt) and Samara.
I sent Mordin back with the crew.

My first time through I didn’t know you could lose teammates.

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What did they say? I usually read all the extra stuff as well but I don’t recall coming across any in the Collector base.

Which makes it so amusing that if you listen to the news broadcast she is hailed as a noble friend to all sapient species because of her sacrifice. :smiley:

The little side-conversations are one of my favourite parts of the series. I especially liked the conversation that ensued if you have Shepard talk to the barman on The Citadel.

“So, whats happening?”

“I’m a barman, I serve drinks, if you want the news log on to the extranet…I don’t know why humans keep asking me that…”

One of those little cultural quirks that would baffle aliens.

I’m really not pleased at the fact you can download extra characters, if you pay full price for a game then you should get the entire frigging game. Extra missions, as long as they don’t impact the main storyline are OK.

Thats actually pretty cool, good to see they have a sense of humour. Although I’m surprised that Samara and her impressive jawline is actually based on a real person!

From googling her pics Jennifer Hale might make a decent Shepard as well if they can convince her to dress up for the role.

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For escorting the crew back I always sent Jacob.

Mainly because he’s pretty much the most useless character in the game. I liked him from a storyline and personality standpoint, but he was pretty useless in combat. But a loyal Jacob will always get the crew back safe and alive because of his military training.

And Jack or Samara/Morinth are both equally effective for the biotic specialist.

Fire team can be led by anyone with leadership qualities: Garrus, Jacob, and Miranda are all equally effective here.

Tech specialist either Tali or Legion will work.

Of course, to guarantee everyone coming out, you must follow the above strategies and everyone must be loyal. You can still get everyone to survive if you make other choices, but there’s no guarantee.

Oh, and I always sent Ashley to her doom in my various playthroughs. You also want to send the person you plan to save as the escort for the Salarians. Because the salarians will die if Shepard doesn’t go to save them. In either case you end up fighting Saren.

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The first time through, I think I used:
-Legion for the ducts
-Garrus for the fire team
-Miranda for the biotic shield (dies)
-Mordin to escort the crew
-Jack and Grunt (?) for the final battle

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I got everyone alive through the final mission without trying (well, I didn’t want anyone to die but I never had to look up a solution - apparently a lot of others had difficulty getting everyone through).

I sent Tali through the ducts. She was my go-to techie and it was actually pretty intense rushing from point to point to keep her from boiling.

Garrus was my bro throughout the trilogy so of course I chose him to lead the second team.

Her biotic powers were the whole reason we broke her ass out of prison so of course we used Jack’s shield.

Sent Tali to escort the crew.

Took Miranda and Mordin with me to the final fight.

I saved Kaidan my first playthrough of ME1, but it was a really hard choice for me. Ultimately I went for him because he was the one at the bomb site and it seemed like the in-universe tactical decision to secure the bomb from enemy tampering before leaving. In hindsight it doesn’t matter because if they had somehow tampered with it and stopped it that just would have given me time to save everyone. But I seriously spent a full minute staring at the screen deciding who to save. I like all the crew members in all three games, from Ashley to Jacob, Mordin to Miranda, with two exceptions: 1.) Thane. I like his story and background but I hate that thing he does when he’s talking where it quick-cuts to a different angle and he starts talking all weird. Seemed like they were trying to give him/his race this cool quirk thing but it just made me hate talking to him. 2.) Javik. In a setting where an intact prothean commode would be a big discovery it seems like finding a living, breathing prothean (regardless of his personal knowledge) would be a big enough thing to base an entire fucking game around, and not a guy whose presence can be effectively handwaved with a brief scene of a half dozen shocked people on the Citadel.