Soooo....Mass Effect 3

[NiteFox]

Also, I completely disagree about seperating yourself from the character is roleplay. Roleplay is putting yourself into the position of the character and thinking as the character would think and doing as the character would do, that is the heart of roleplay. To just blindly choose an option because it's "paragon" or "renegade" is not roleplay at all. Roleplay requires you to think how the character would act given the situation, not because you get points one way or another.

Yes, you are putting yourself into the role of a character, but you must still have a filter between what you would do, as yourself, and what the character would do.

I didn't say you should 'blindly choose' anything. If a Paragon option is inappropriate for my Shepard, I would avoid it. It hasn't happened, but the possibility exists.

I don't think we are really disagreeing, here.

This is actually what's pretty good about the ME series. I'm guessing there are people who just naturally and blindly select the appropriate Paragon/Renegade selection just because they're playing a Paragon/Renegade Shep. My Infiltrator (Who has just been reunited with her M-98 Widow. Yaaaaaay!) is firmly on the Renegade side, but I've also tried to play her pragmatically ruthless or even ruthlessly pragmatic. A fully Renegade Shepard, from the very start of ME1 right up until the end isn't actually a particularly pragmatic person; a "true" Renegade may actually be better off picking the given Paragon choice to further their cause.

Per Jorner got it right in his Fallout 2 walkthrough: "You can always pretend you're role-playing a psychopath who acts nice outwardly because he knows it will suit his purposes, while all the time thinking of new ways to strangle people with their own intestines."

So that's pretty much how my Shepard is. If she doesn't know you, she'll act like a jerk to you, maybe even punch you. If she senses she might be able to get something from you, she'll play nice. She gives her crew hell when they're acting like idiots, but after surviving Torfan she is fiercely determined not to lose anyone if she can help it, and if you threaten anyone who works with or for her, she will murder you. She's a big, fierce mother bear with a headache.

Tuchanka actually changed something in that (And yes, I actually did cry at the end of Priority: Tuchanka. First time I've cried at a video game since Grim Fandango). After that whole mess she softened somewhat. Yeah, she'll still be a jerk if it suits her. She did just recently, quoting Joker, "end a war by yelling" at all involved, but she is far more likely to show genuine kindness than ruthless pragmatism.

Hmm, just noticed that a lot of mediums force character development on the characters but I haven't actually played a game that successfully allowed a player to force their own character development.

And the sideline part of the inevitable Conrad Verner encounter was perfectly satisfactory and made perfect sense. Really.