I haven’t quite gotten to the point of making this decision again with my Rebel Shepard, but not blowing the base seems tantamount to not learning from History. How many times do you have to hear “I was sure I could control it, but it ended up controlling me”?
I can see I’m fighting a losing battle here. But damn it, I’ll have the last laugh when I’m firing torpedoes into their exhaust ports while you naive paragons are trying to clog up their main guns with wreckage!
I chose both, but only because I want to see what the consequences are for both in ME3. Personally I think keeping the base around is a bad idea for the many reasons stated in this thread.
It’s kinda funny that the Paragon option feels so much more badass than the Renegade one. The Renegade just meekly goes along with TIM while Paragon is all: “Hey, fuck you! I’ll blow this base and you’ll like it.” and Miranda’s all: “I resign. I’m with a real man now. He satisfies me (on the engine room floor) in more ways than you ever could”. Boom goes the base, and Shepard takes the ship because who the fuck’s going to stop him?
Zaeed then takes the entire crew for celebratory drinks to Omega, only he survives.
I’ve got playthroughs doing both (popped it on paragon, kept it on renegade).
In general, the game seems to strongly reward paragon choices from previous games. Characters you saved in ME1 are, at least, available for conversation in ME2. And at best they give you juicy quests/rewards/whatevers. I’d wager that somehow you’re rewarded for killing the collector base.
Need I point out the rachnai fleet that’s assembling and will help you kick some reaper ass in ME3?
On the other hand, my first play through I let it live because it really is an invaluable technological resource. I think people here who are thinking that TIM will make a reaper are missing the point. You’ve got the entire design schematics for reapers, from the ground up. You’ve got a treasure trove of reaper tech, too. You don’t need to build your own reaper. You can, however, figure out how they’re put together and whatever weaknesses they might have. And, of course, collector tech may have beneficial consequences. All in all I’m curious to see how bioware works it.
1.) You’ve got the entire design schematics for Reapers? You don’t have anything. Cerberus has it all.
2.) Just because a Reaper doesn’t need to be built is missing the point. That’s exactly what TIM is going to do.
My problem with letting the base is twofold. First of all, I’m not sure if ANYONE should have the ability to make Reapers. That’s a huge problem that I don’t think anyone can really explain away. But even if you were to somehow convince me that someone needs this capability I would never, ever let Cerberus be the one to have it.
That’s a silly bit of semantics though. If a design flaw/weak spot is found in reaper designs, it does virtually no good unless Cerberus shares it with the races that will be defending the galaxy. At the very least, the Alliance navy would be upgraded, and most likely the council races as well as it’s doubtful that the Alliance could handle all the reapers on its own.
Oh?
Cite where it says that in the game please. I’ve played through several times and the most that happens is that you hear TIM talking about using the station to guarantee humanity’s dominance and looking at the wireframe view of the base. If anybody, at all, says that a reaper is going to be built then please point out where that’s said.
Lacking a textual citation, it not only stands as something that the game doesn’t actually tell us, but something that makes little sense. Exploiting reaper designs for flaws, using reaper tech to upgrade human space ships, creating ‘super soldiers’, etc… all of those make some sort of sense.
I don’t see them sharing that technology.
You’ve just given TIM what is literally a giant factory for constructing a superweapon. He then says that it will guarantee humanity’s dominance. If you can’t put two and two together I don’t know what else I can say. These are the same people who tortured children, fed marines to a thresher maw and toyed with mind control. The idea that they wouldn’t use this facility for its intended purpose is beyond naive.
Obviously if they do not share the technology, then the technology is useless. Cerberus can’t fight a war with the reapers on their own, even if they had all upgraded ships. The only possible use for such a technology would be to disseminate it to at least some of those who’d be on the front lines.
And, noted, no textual citation but that’s your prediction. Fair enough, but I disagree. We’ll see when the third game comes out and I boot up the renegade char I ran through the game with.
Everything we’re saying is speculation. You don’t know that they’ll share the tech. I don’t know that they’ll build a reaper.
So we have to speculate based on what we know.
And even if there was a line of dialog in the game confirming that they’re going to do the obvious thing and use the station in the exact same way they’ve used all their other experimental tech it’s not like I’ve got a Mass Effect 2 script that I can reference.
Ha, I gave the last queen an acid bath. I figured the last thing we needed knocking around before a Reaper invasion was a bunch of fast breeding easily indoctrinated insects. That’ll probably bite me in the ass too, judging by what the asari on Ilium says…
I just love how no matter which choice you take, the Turian on the Council chastises you, either because he doesn’t feel you have the right to decide to obliterate an entire species, or he doesn’t feel you have the right to allow a species that tried to wipe out the Galaxy free reign again.
There’s just no pleasing that guy. Personlly, as Shepard I just wanted smack him anyway.
Interesting, I didn’t even realize that there is an Asari on Illium if you melt the queen. What’s she say?
There isn’t, I meant the one the paragons get who says that they are gearing up to help Shep.
Ahhh, I see.
I don’t remember everything, exactly, but I’m pretty sure that there was at least a quest or two you couldn’t have gotten if you took certain renegade paths in ME1, and that coupled with the revelation about the Rachnai suggests to me, strongly, that there will be significant benefits to making the collector base go kablooie.
To say nothing of having the Geth as your allies if you’ve unified them as a race.
And since the end of ME2 showed that BioWare can and will kill everybody (well, except Seth fucking Green), I wouldn’t put it past them to have the Reapers do some serious damage in ME3 (whoops, the Asari have all been wiped out) or actually exterminate all life in the galaxy if you make some wrong choices.
A full renegade path might simply see the humans as the sole surviving race while TIM strokes a persian cat, but I wouldn’t put it past BioWare to allow you to make the wrong choices required for complete galactic annihilation.