Renegade options in video games tend to come back to bite you later – particularly in games that are part of a series, rather than a stand-alone title. However, not all games are like this – some actively encourage renegade behaviour!
Life isn’t black and white – as much as we may like to believe otherwise. Mass Effect highlights this numerous times throughout the series, showing that – regardless of how highly you regard virtuous behaviour – there are some occasions where being evil is actually the right thing to do.
Killing Elnora
Mass Effect 2 sees Commander Shepard assembling a team for what is basically a suicide mission. You have to leap through the Omega 4 Relay and destroy the Collector Base. It’s the only way to stop them from attacking human colonies and abducting the people living there. We’re not going to reveal why they do this – but it’s not a pleasant discovery.
While you’re recruiting Samara to join your team, you’ll run into an Elnora, an Asari wearing an Eclipse mercenary uniform. She’ll try to shoot you, but your armour will absorb the shot. After this, Elnora will try to bargain for her life. She’ll claim she’s not actually a member of the group yet, and got caught up in the idea of being “Elnora the mercenary”.
However, this turns out to be a lie, as she’ll use the distraction to try and draw her gun. Here you have the option to kill her outright or let her live. Although you might be in favour of giving her a second chance, the Renegade option is the best choice here. It later turns out Elnora is both a liar and a murderer, taking sadistic pleasure in her first kill to become a full-fledged member of Eclipse.
Sometimes an eye for an eye is the best revenge, and it’s certainly warranted here.
Destroying the Mercenary Gunship
This one occurs at the beginning of the game, during a mission to recruit The Archangel. When you head to Omega, you’ll be told to speak with crime lord Aria T’Loak. She’ll tell you that Archangel has been killing Omega’s vast array of criminals. Unfortunately, he’s now crossed the line. It speaks volumes that all three mercenary groups – Eclipse, The Blue Suns and The Blood Pack – want his head on a spike!
Needless to say, it’s only a matter of time until Archangel’s luck runs out. He may be a lethal shot, but at some point, he’s going to be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers. So the only way to get to him before the mercenaries do is to sign up as a freelancer, and then turn on the mercenary groups once the battle starts.
When you head to sign up as a ‘mercenary’, you’ll get the option for an extra Renegade boost – provided your character is female. The recruiter behaves in a predictably condescending way to her, but you can choose the interrupt to set him straight.
Also, side note – who on earth thinks 500 credits is worth throwing their life away? Looks like brain cells are in short supply on Omega!
Once you get to the mercenary base, you’ll have the option to make your life easier by doing some pre-emptive sabotage. Overriding the Friend or Foe ID system of the YMIR Mech will cause it to later turn on the mercenary groups. You can also take it further by sabotaging the Gunship that’s currently being repaired – and earn yourself some nice Renegade points in the process. Simply use the Renegade prompt to zap Seargeant Cathka and put a stop to the repairs. This will make your life much easier later on, as the gunship will show up with only half its health.
Of course, the mission ends with you saving Archangel. It’s just as well – he turns out to be your old friend Garrus Vakarian!
Destroy the Geth Heretics
The Geth and the Quarians hate each other in Mass Effect 2, and it’s not hard to see why. After all, the Quarians created the Geth, who later turned on them – resulting in the bloody and violent ongoing war between the two throughout the series.
Not only that, but the game sets you up to favour the Quarians over the Geth right from the start. Not only is your friend Tali a Quarian, but the first Mass Effect game sees you almost exclusively fighting Geth.
This begins to change in Mass Effect 2. To survive long enough to pass through the Omega 4 Relay, you’ll need to install a Reaper IFF. While looking for this, you’ll encounter Legion – a Geth who saves your life.
As a result of rescuing Legion, Shepard learns that there are Geth who are actually apathetic towards organics. The Geth ‘Heretics’ that are fighting organics are not doing so of their own free will – they have been infected by the Reapers.
Legion asks Shepard to help him free the Heretics, but you also have the Renegade option to destroy them instead. While freeing the Geth may seem like the moral choice here, it’s actually better to destroy them.
There’s no way of knowing that the Reapers wouldn’t simply find a way to overpower your re-write. Plus, destroying the Geth brings their numbers into parity with the Quarians. This is one of the key points that can help you broker peace between the Geth and the Quarians in Mass Effect 3 – and end their conflict once and for all.
Honourable Mention: Making the Batarian bartender drink his own poison
You might have guessed by now – Omega is full of evil people. One of them happens to be a Batarian bartender in Afterlife who HATES humans. So much so that he’ll poison any human who orders a drink from him.
No wonder there’s a rule saying not to drink on Omega if you’re human.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work on Shepard. And now’s he annoyed. REALLY annoyed. And we can’t say we blame him, either. Shepard has the option to confront the bartender in one of two ways. Choosing the Paragon option will see Shepard call the bartender out for everyone to hear, and a Turian will step in and finish the job.
But if you REALLY want to deliver some much-deserved karma, choosing the Renegade option will force the Batarian to drink his own concoction. You’ll need a significant amount of Renegade points to unlock this option, but we’d be lying if we said we didn’t find it extremely satisfying.
It’s always nice when villains get their just desserts.
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