So the reason I haven't been updating this blog for half a month is the same reason as why there's a $50 hole in my wallet - Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2. On the suggestion of my best friend, who once a long long time ago wrote for this very blog, I got swept up in this absurdly immersive retro-80s space opera and in the process, I killed Worf, let Oz fly me around the galaxy, took orders from Bishop and the President, gave Six the access codes to my ship's mainframe, and listened while Colonel Tigh made a Hitchhiker's reference. (Oh, and I shot Holtz in the head. Repeatedly.)
Overall, I was disappointed how my ME1 decisions largely resulted in cosmetic changes; it didn't affect gameplay one jot whether Wrex, the rachni, or the Council died, and neither did it matter much who you left on Virmire. Just about the only difference is whether or not you can be reinstated as a spectre, and even that only opens up one dialogue option during an optional sidequest. This may be because they had to keep you on the rails for ME2, but they've been pretty clear about how ME3 is the end of the trilogy, so hopefully the endings can branch out depending on what you've done.
So here's a list of all the choices that you can make in the first two games that I hope have dire consequences in the third.
Killing/sparing the Rachni Queen
I noticed that if you just start a new ME2 game without importing an ME1 character, it assumes you let as many people/races die as possible to generally give you the worst universe. Still, despite the fact that the rachni were part of the most generally frustrating level of ME1, I hope they make a return appearance if you spared them.
Killing/sparing the Council
Again, saving them granted you one extra cutscene in ME2, but you had to go out of your way to get it. Let's have something more substantial next time around.
Killing/sparing Wrex
This was another choice that didn't affect gameplay at all, but it's clear from Wreav's comments that the krogan are headed in a different direction under him. Hopefully this plays out.
How you handled Tali's and Legion's loyalty missions
This is so obviously flagged as a massive choice that it's going to be insulting if it doesn't have a massive effect (yuk yuk) on the third game. If your morality score isn't high enough, you either have to get Tali exiled or balkanize the rag-tag fugitive fleet. And then later on you can either re-write or kill the renegade Dal- er, geth, and then the choices you have as Tali and Legion's conflict play out are clearly going to have consequences. Will the quarians and the geth make peace, or will the quarians have to run off to their mythical thirteenth colony, only to find that it's a nuclear wasteland? (To be fair, I thought the quarians were nuts to be talking about re-taking their homeworld until I learned that, in contrast to Battlestar's 50,293 survivors, the quarian fleet has about 17 million refugees. So yeah, there are some differences.)
Who died
Given that Tali and Garrus are supposed to be squad members in the third game, obviously their deaths at the end of ME2 will affect ME3. The others I'm less sure about. (Hmm... can you get everyone killed except for them?)
Destroying the Collector base
Of my three complete ME2 runthroughs, I've only left the base intact once, and it's pretty clear from the discussion with the Illusive Man that no, this was a bloody stupid thing to do.
Basically what I'm saying is that I want the choices you made in ME2 to have consequences to the story of ME3, rather than just triggering tiny events, like an asari thanking you for sparing the rachni.
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