[Official] Mass Effect 2

[Nagisan]

Without cheating, I don't see how it's possible to get enough paragon to max out the meter. On my first run, I had about 25% of each meter filled by the time I finished the game, and zero missions left.

You must make a horrible good guy. :P

I had about 80% paragon by the time I finished and I never did any of the side quests (the ones you can find from scanning every planet available). Oddly enough, even with it that high I was unable to

make Jack loyal again after I sided with Miranda

. That was on my first play-through without using a previous save, which means you start with lower paragon/renegade scores than if you had a save to use. On my second, playing a renegade save, I am already almost up to 80% renegade and I haven't even done the Reaper IFF mission yet (more specifically I just finished the collector ship mission shortly before my last save, where you pick your ultimate weapon).

Not sure what you are doing wrong but its extremely easy to get paragon/renegade points, if you imported a previous save you start off just that much farther. The key is talking to everyone you can and doing their little side quests and picking all the paragon/renegade actions you can when you have the option.

[sanctified Veteran]

Im not even finished with th game and my Paragoun is over 70% :D

[Xerxes]

I've been meaning to mention this for a while now (but never got around to it :P) sorry if this has been pointed out before, can't be bothered reading 44 pages to find out! Does anyone recognize the music in Afterlife on Omega? (the music playing in the part where Aria is). Well it's "Callista" and it was the "showcase" music used for Need for Speed: High Stakes (from way back in 1999), I'm sure nobody cares :P but thought I'd mention that bit of (useless) trivia anyway.

[ContrastDesigns]

i'm not sure how it happened but no one died on my team and i was basically half and half on paragon and renegade actions and i ended up having everyone survive.

I let jacob lead all second squads up til the end where he and miranda were at my side. but i always kept miranda in my parties and samara was amazing with her bioctics.

[sanctified Veteran]

Just taking a break from the game. Thane is the best NPC EVER!!!

[Pajter]

Just taking a break from the game. Thane is the best NPC EVER!!!

Yeah Thane is awesome! Such great character design. :D

[Grex]

I chose to destroy the facility at the end and now the Illusive Man is extremely ****ed. What happens if you save the facility?

i kept the ship. basically everyone questions whether it was the right decision. and the illusive man is happy. for me gaining i hope gaining new tech would come of it.

[SyntaxError]

You must make a horrible good guy. :p

I had about 80% paragon by the time I finished and I never did any of the side quests (the ones you can find from scanning every planet available). Oddly enough, even with it that high I was unable to

make Jack loyal again after I sided with Miranda

. That was on my first play-through without using a previous save, which means you start with lower paragon/renegade scores than if you had a save to use. On my second, playing a renegade save, I am already almost up to 80% renegade and I haven't even done the Reaper IFF mission yet (more specifically I just finished the collector ship mission shortly before my last save, where you pick your ultimate weapon).

Not sure what you are doing wrong but its extremely easy to get paragon/renegade points, if you imported a previous save you start off just that much farther. The key is talking to everyone you can and doing their little side quests and picking all the paragon/renegade actions you can when you have the option.

Even on my second run, with the same character from my first run, I still couldn't get much paragon or renegade. Since most conversations don't give the paragon/renegade choice, I guess missing a couple makes a huge difference.

I might make a horrible good guy, but I seem to make an even worse bad guy. I'm trying to play all renegade now with a new character and the meter just doesn't move much.

From what I've read elsewhere, in order to resolve the Miranda/Jack issue and still maintain the loyalty of both, you must have full paragon.

[LingeringSoul]

I might make a horrible good guy, but I seem to make an even worse bad guy. I'm trying to play all renegade now with a new character and the meter just doesn't move much.

Same here. I just finished Thane's recruitment, and the renegade bar is about 25% of the maximum. My passive skill (Defender, in this case since I'm a sentinel) has only been upgraded twice though, so I still have a little room to get some point bonuses from upgrading that (I believe upgrading it to level three gives you +70% paragon and renegade, and evolving it can give you +100% paragon and renegade). Let's hope that helps a bit.

Playing as a renegade feels really weird for me. I'm purposely going out of my way to get renegade points, and some of the things you have to do made me feel pretty guilty afterwards.

Like punching that Salarian at the Dantius towers. Poor guy.

[Sadelwo]

i kept the ship. basically everyone questions whether it was the right decision. and the illusive man is happy. for me gaining i hope gaining new tech would come of it.

Think of it this way, Shepard was resurrected using reaper tech, EDI was made using reaper tech and the weapons upgrades on the Normandy were made using reaper tech. So heck why not keep the station and get even more reaper tech?

[Nagisan]

From what I've read elsewhere, in order to resolve the Miranda/Jack issue and still maintain the loyalty of both, you must have full paragon.

Full renegade will do it too.....I still haven't recruited Tali or Legion yet in my renegade playthrough (or done Jack's loyalty mission) and I am over 80% renegade......but I imported a ME1 save which had full renegade, so that gave me a major boost.

Same here. I just finished Thane's recruitment, and the renegade bar is about 25% of the maximum. My passive skill (Defender, in this case since I'm a sentinel) has only been upgraded twice though, so I still have a little room to get some point bonuses from upgrading that (I believe upgrading it to level three gives you +70% paragon and renegade, and evolving it can give you +100% paragon and renegade). Let's hope that helps a bit.

I forgot about that....that is usually one of the skills I max out first, mostly for the extra damage which means my boost is only 70%, but even 70% is quite a large boost to the points you get by end game. And yes the fullest upgrade towards that skill is 100% boost.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

[...]

There is no loyalty amount. The NPCs are either loyal or they aren't.

I used loyal Tali as well on my second run and she survived just fine.

I'm starting to wonder if there's some hidden factor that helps the game determine things.

If there isn't, then there has to be a positive/negative loyalty. After all, doing the loyalty missions for your squad mates results in their loyalty (plus a new outfit) which, to my knowledge, you don't lose. You can lose their loyalty (and still have them show as loyal). A good example is

The fight between Miranda and Jack. Siding with one of them without the required Paragon/Renegade points results in the loss of loyalty for the one you didn't side with.

Without cheating, I don't see how it's possible to get enough paragon to max out the meter. On my first run, I had about 25% of each meter filled by the time I finished the game, and zero missions left.

Well, it's definitely possible with a high Paragon/Renegade ME1 save. My brother played as Paragon in ME1 and maxed it out in ME2 about 75% into the game. I, on the other hand, couldn't max out my Renegade for the life of me. It's simply too easy to be the good guy in ME2.

[SyntaxError]

I originally started ME2 with an ME1 save, but I didn't have anywhere near full paragon or renegade in ME1, so I didn't get much of a bonus.

I don't see how anyone is getting high paragon/renegade when the red and blue convo options are greyed out until you get a high enough level of either. Seems like a catch-22.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I originally started ME2 with an ME1 save, but I didn't have anywhere near full paragon or renegade in ME1, so I didn't get much of a bonus.

I don't see how anyone is getting high paragon/renegade when the red and blue convo options are greyed out until you get a high enough level of either. Seems like a catch-22.

It's there for people that have enough Paragon/Renegade points. In ME1, I started seeing more Paragon/Renegade dialogue options on my 2nd playthrough. In my 1st playthrough, I only saw one or two. It sucks for those with 50/50 Paragon/Renegade points.

[Nagisan]

I originally started ME2 with an ME1 save, but I didn't have anywhere near full paragon or renegade in ME1, so I didn't get much of a bonus.

I don't see how anyone is getting high paragon/renegade when the red and blue convo options are greyed out until you get a high enough level of either. Seems like a catch-22.

Its just a matter of picking the right dialogue options.....bottom right typically = renegade (you almost always get renegade points for ending a conversation using the bottom right options), top right typically = paragon.

Also, make sure you take any renegade/paragon option you can during cutscenes, you know, where you can left-click or right-click depending on the GUI images that appear during a cutscene? I just recruited Tali and

decided to save the dude who was still alive by forcing him to sit back while I took care of the Geth

. Just for that one option alone I got 19 paragon points (and thats playing through with an 80%+ renegade character). I honestly have no clue how you are having so much trouble earning paragon/renegade points. Unless you always pick the neutral conversation ending choice (middle-right dialogue conversations = neutral conversation enders, top right and bottom left was described above) and ignore all the paragon/renegade options, or completely ignore the skill that gives you up to 100% extra points that also helps your combat ability.

As for importing a save, it doesn't give you anywhere near max if you import a save....I imported one with max renegade points and it gave me maybe 40% or so. But on my paragon playthrough which was done without a previous save, I still had over 80% end-game without doing any anomaly missions and what not.

Honestly, if you are having trouble filling your paragon/renegade bars, you are either avoiding every paragon/renegade choice you are given, or you are trying to split them evenly.

For my paragon Shep, the only paragon dialogue choices I couldn't do as soon as they appeared were the ones to convince the lady in Illium to hire the Quarian slave, and the one to persuade Jack to become loyal again after I sided with Miranda. Every other paragon dialogue choice in the game was available to me the second I came to it, starting with no previous save file, so starting at 0 paragon points in the beginning.

For my renegade Shep, I have not seen ANY renegade dialogue options unavailable to me as soon as I got to them. I am holding off Jack's mission till I get higher points but still...

[ctebah]

just like in the first mass effect, I first maxed out Shephards ability to use charm in conversations. Not even beating all the side missions in my first run through ME2 i was at 100% paragon and almost half renegade. I figured if I max out paragon first, I can make renegade choices later and not have it affect my choices much.

[spenser.d]

Well over the last three weeks I played through ME1 for the first time and just completed ME2 tonight. I can't imagine a series more worth the money paid for it. I can't wait to do a second playthrough making different choices in both games. That won't be for a while, however, as I have a couple other games to play in my queue, so to speak, and I think I need a while to process everything I just went through :P

Finished at Level 27, slightly more paragon than renegade and

everyone accounted for with the collector colony destroyed

. I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't hit level 30 given the amount of exploring I did but that just goes to show the scope of the game. My next playthrough I'll probably take quite a bit slower anyways.

-Spenser

[sanctified Veteran]

Ok guys, now I just did the IFF Reaper mission, have Legion aboard, all my other team members are loyal to me so I have nothing else but to make Legion loyal, how much time I have to do its loyalty mission before my crew starts dying?

[Draconian Guppy]

Ok guys, now I just did the IFF Reaper mission, have Legion aboard, all my other team members are loyal to me so I have nothing else but to make Legion loyal, how much time I have to do its loyalty mission before my crew starts dying?

Apparently, every minute counts, so get legions loyalty and get to teh mission!

[sanctified Veteran]

Apparently, every minute counts, so get legions loyalty and get to teh mission!

I will save my game in a separate file just in case :p

[Draconian Guppy]

good idea and remember if

Sheppard dies, your pretty much screwed in ME3 :p Though from what i've read it's pretty hard to get sheppard killed

[sanctified Veteran]

I was reading the Mass Effect wikia. It says that your crew lives or dies not depending on time but on how many upgrades you did/did not

[Draconian Guppy]

I was reading the Mass Effect wikia. It says that your crew lives or dies not depending on time but on how many upgrades you did/did not

Hmmm well

I upgraded the normandy almost to everything I was able too (e.g. to the point were there were no more upgrades available) and still half of my crew died, kelly included :no: I was lead ( by this thread) to believe that is was because I took my time exploring/gathering resources/anomalies. So maybe it's a combination of both?

So I don't know, general consensus is time matters, some people suggest going to the IFF mission as soon as you activate it if not, the above happens and if you take too long they're all gone.

Still keep a saved file elsewhere.

[Massiveterra]

I was reading the Mass Effect wikia. It says that your crew lives or dies not depending on time but on how many upgrades you did/did not

I think that means your team. How much time you spend before you start the suicide mission all results in how many non-fighting crew members die

[Draconian Guppy]

I think that means your team. How much time you spend before you start the suicide mission all results in how many non-fighting crew members die

Oh, sanctified are you talking about the crew you can select or the rest of the ship? If it's selectable crew it's loyalty/upgrades/good leadership decisions. If it's the rest of the ship, it's definitely time.