The Mass Effect Series's Renegade Path's Major Failing

RPGs frequently offer the player multiple ways of solving problems, resolving quests, and choosing paths through the plot.  When a choice is story-related, it most often boils down to a matter of ethics, either with choices clearly separated between good and evil, or options that present multiple and different magnitudes of good or bad.  Knights of the Old Republic, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Undertale, The Outer Worlds, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, there's tons of RPGs whose dilemmas are primarily moral ones and which offer you the option (or multiple ones, even) to be a decent human being or an absolutely remorseless piece of shit.  But there's also plenty of cases where a game's dilemmas are more neutral, instances of competing philosophies more than simply the question of doing right or wrong, as with games like Deus Ex, Nier: Automata, Clair Obscure: Expedition 33, and more Shin Megami Tenseis than I'm willing to list off.  There's other RPGs whose significant array of options don't quite fall into either category, of course (I'd have trouble limiting the many choices offered in, say, The Banner Saga, or Disco Elysium, to any easily defined archetype), but Ethics and Philosophy are generally the 2 major categories that an RPG's approach to player choice wind up falling into.  And occasionally, an RPG tries to take a middle road in which there's a clear dichotomy of Good Guy and Jerk Face options, but it's framed in such a way that it also is a split between personal philosophies on approaching problem-solving, such as the Mass Effect series's theme of Paragon vs. Renegade.

Except that Mass Effect kind of sucked at it, because as a rule, there isn't really a reason to choose the Renegade option.

I mean, think about it for a moment.  The Renegade approach in Mass Effect essentially boils down to the short-term viewpoint of solving your problems, here and now, in the most obvious and direct way, even if that means harming others.  The Renegade wants to save the galaxy and ensure human prosperity in the simplest, fastest way possible, and that kind of solution is usually going to involve aggression, force, and violence.  The fastest way to negotiate terms you want is to intimidate someone by pulling a gun, the most reliable way to guarantee humanity's success is to cast other species down below it, the easiest way to end an interview you don't like is to beat the reporter unconscious.  Instilling fear rather than respect in subordinates, opting for the assistance of a serial killer over a warrior because the former has no moral code to hold her back, refusing to cure a genetic plague out of mistrust of its victims even as you use them as your frontline foot soldiers, raising one's species through domination of others rather than cooperation...Renegade is defined by choices that increase the chance of success in the here and now, but limit your options in the future as you burn 1 bridge after another and make the world as a whole a worse place for those who come after.

And certainly, Renegade IS an approach that many--far, far, far too many, frankly--take to life's conflicts.  However, it's only a viable alternative to Paragon, with the latter's more equal-minded and open-armed approach which favors solutions that serve as the framework for long-term cooperation and good will, if Paragon actually DOES only shine at solving problems long-term.

But in Mass Effect, when a quest is over, it's over.  The immediate struggles of each game are all wrapped up, and Shepard's actions rewarded, within that game's events.  Resolving a conflict through Paragon's persuasion, negotiation, and empathy occurs within the same conversation that relying on Renegade's bullying and violence would; the "longer" solution is typically a matter of an extra few minutes at most.  Ignoring the Renegade interrupt impulse means, at most, a few extra enemies to fight in an upcoming battle, but you're controlling Shepard in combat and you're going to make sure that he emerges victorious anyway because that's the game, so there doesn't feel like any real difference in danger.  There's no sidequest I can think of, and certainly there's no main story arc, that can only be resolved fully with a Renegade approach; there's always a neutral and a Paragon way of thoroughly accomplishing what's necessary.

So what's the point of Renegade, then, really?  The lure of the easy, fast solution that comes at the expense of others is hard to see when the solution that's better in the long run is also effective and rewarded to roughly the same degree, in essentially the same timeframe and with the same level of effort.  Mass Effect's Paragon path still solves the problem right in front of it, AND it allows for the benefits that friendship, cooperation, and respect will confer down the road.  There's no tradeoff; be he jerk or bro, Shepard gets done what he needs to.  Yeah, sure, I guess there's some Renegade dialogue and interrupt actions that are funny or badass or whatever,* but as an overall policy, it's kind of superfluous for anyone who doesn't outright just want to be an asshole.

Hell, it's even less legitimate or desirable than it might have been were this the situation for a different RPG.  Because, well, this is Mass Effect!  It's a trilogy that's greatly defined by a cast and a universe that are extremely engaging and easily adored.  A player's natural instinct is to want to preserve, protect, and improve its signature setting and characters, and Paragon is clearly the better option for doing that.  If it were more of a standardly mixed bag of likable and dislikable entities and settings, there might be less of an impetus to do one's best for all you encounter, but come on, who would seriously fuck over Wrex, Garrus, Tali, Legion, Mordin, or practically any of the other memorable personalities of ME without any practical reason to do so?

Mass Effect's certainly not the only RPG that fails to balance moral approaches adequately, of course.  Fallout: New Vegas's Legion, Fallout 4's Institute and Brotherhood of Steel, Fire Emblem 16's Black Eagles, there's plenty of examples of RPGs trying to seriously offer factions/mindsets of competing philosophies, but winding up with completely indefensible positions due to a thorough moral failure that mere practicality doesn't come close to legitimizing.  Still, in most cases, it takes at least a little forward thinking or analysis to realize the shortcomings or ineffectualness of the morally lesser option.  With Mass Effect's Paragon and Renegade approaches both having relatively equal success without much wait time to confirm that fact, though, it becomes clear that, beyond some self-gratifying cool/funny lines and interrupts, Renegade is missing its Machiavellian strength, and that's the only real advantage it could have over Paragon.  Renegade is just a Shepard who lacks the vision and grit that Paragon possesses, not one who's more effective at anything.  He's not an alternative, he's simply lesser.













* Hell, even I think a Paragon playthrough isn't truly complete without punching that dumbass quarian admiral for firing on his own allies.  And can you really call yourself a Mass Effect fan if you don't always, every time, take the opportunity to stab that pathetic little first-year-theater-kid-interpretation-of-an-assassin Kai Leng and avenge Thane?