Focus Friday | Evolution of LIs in Mass Effect, Part II

This Focus Friday we continue our discussion on the evolution of Love Interest dynamics in Mass Effect.  Last week we saw that Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 shared similar mechanics for the implementation of romances.  In addition, we also saw that FemShep and MaleShep were treated relatively equally in the amount and quality of Love Interests available.  The main disparity was in the lack of a same-sex romance option for a male Commander Shepard.  This week we take a look at Mass Effect 3. Note: this post has been updated to properly reflect Kelly Chambers’ paramour status in ME3.

Mass Effect 3 changed up the romance mechanic quite a bit from ME1 and ME2.  Two of the main aspects that changed were the “lock-in” mechanic and the increase in auto-dialogue.  Keep in mind during our discussion that if a player was attempting to stay innocent of ME3 spoilers, they would not have been aware of these changes in mechanics until during their ME3 playthrough.

Lock-In Mechanics

In ME1 and ME2, Shepard’s dialogue choices with one Love Interest affected the storyline and interactions with other potential LIs. However, in ME3, Shepard had the ability to choose any conversation option with a LI, without affecting the potential romance with any of them.  Essentially, you could romance as many LIs as you wanted, until you were presented with the “lock in” dialogue for one of them.  This dialogue occurred during a specific scene at a specific location.  After this, all other dialogue options with any other potential LI would be affected; the game would do a “check,” see Shepard had already locked in a romance, and then proceed to remove all romantic dialogue choices from all other LIs.  All “lock in” scenes occurred off the Normandy, with the exception of Sam Traynor’s romance, and specifics on them can be viewed in this entry on the Mass Effect Wiki webpage.  While I suspect that BioWare implemented this mechanism in an attempt to make it clearer to the player that this was “the moment” with that LI (certainly a good thing), it actually succeeded in having many repercussions that both frustrated players and reduced their immersion in the game.  These included:

Focus Friday | Evolution of LIs in Mass Effect, Part I

We have a special Focus Friday in store for the community today — the first in a 3-part series.  We’re taking a break from interpreting our survey results (which can be tedious, I know, lol) to talk about something else just as interesting and important: how romance dynamics in Mass Effect have evolved over the course of the series, from the original Mass Effect to the conclusion of Mass Effect 3.

Let’s start our journey with the original, and arguably best installment in the trilogy:  Mass Effect.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect set the stage for how romantic relationships between characters were to be handled in the series.  Romantic interactions took place via cut-scene conversations between Commander Shepard and certain squadmembers.  During these conversations, the player would select various positive/reinforcing options on the dialogue wheel — generally, paragon options.  As Shepard continued conversing with these squadmembers and proceeding through the storyline, new conversations opened up, and events relative to the relationship unfolded.  At a certain point, the player had the opportunity to “lock in” the romance via the dialogue wheel.  Locking in a romance then had implications on certain cutscences/events throughout the remainder of the game.  If a player attempted to romance and “lock in” more than one squadmember, a love-triangle and confrontation would eventually ensue, where Commander Shepard would have to make a permanent choice. This resulted in the end of the relationship with one of the romantic interests.  Romances culminated in a final “love scene”  between Shepard and the LI while en route to Ilos prior to the final confrontation with Saren.

Focus Friday | Samatha Traynor

This week we’re excited to discuss one of the newly introduced characters in Mass Effect 3, namely, the results pertaining to the lovely, Samantha Traynor.   Sidebar:  Some of my relatives are watching Law and Order SVU with Adam Baldwin in the other room right now, and all I can keep thinking is….”It’s Kal’Reegar omg!” 

Anyway…back on topic.

Samantha is the only known lesbian in the trilogy, and is a bit of a replacement for Kelly Chambers’ character in ME3, serving as Commander Shepard’s Communications Specialist.  According to the survey, she is one of the lesser romanced characters in the game, attracting only 11% of respondents.  Despite this, many players had positive things to say about Sam, and compared to her male counterpart (Steve Cortez), she was romanced by more than twice as many people.

While I couldn’t find a “tribute” video for Sam similar to the others posted, I did find a nice video of the Memorial Wall Scene that does feature her.  If any of our readers decide they want to make a tribute video for Sam, similar to the others we’ve featured on the blog, just let us know, and we’ll gladly replace the video linked below :]

Bester76 (BSN/HTL) was awesome enough to put together a tribute video for Sam, so as promised, we’ve swapped it out with the video below!