The Project Director of Mass Effect 5 and executive producer at BioWare, Mike Gamble recently took to X/Twitter to answer and discuss several questions from the fans based on the original trilogy’s Paragon/ Renegade system and the necessity of providing both extremes in morality, even though most gamers have played more Paragon than Renegade.
Gamble pointed out that “it would have been meaningless if Renegade had not existed.” The developer also added that “The ability to choose is stronger than the number of people playing any option, in my opinion.”
The Mass Effect trilogy lets you make tons of moral choices throughout it’s critically acclaimed, epic story that spans across all three games and categorizes your choices on a Paragon/ Renegade spectrum where the dialogue options corresponding on the Paragon side caters to the Good and heroic ways while the Renegade choices leads to evil and darker actions from your character. A unique spin on the classic Good/ Evil decision making process, this layered and nuanced morality system in it’s story is a huge reason for many incredibly memorable and satisfying moments of the trilogy.
Also, this aspect of storytelling adds to the overall Role playing element of the games tremendously, and provides tons of replay value to each of the games. And even though most players stick to a generalized direction, the fact that both extremes exist in the games makes their narrative experience a lot richer and worth revisiting.
This complex moral aspect is almost entirely absent in Bioware’s latest RPG, Dragon Age: The Veilguard and a majority of the fanbase continue to criticize the game and the developer for the severe lack of choices that can affect the game’s storyline in crucial ways and have huge ramifications. Also, the last game in Mass Effect, titled Mass Effect Andromeda was also heavily criticized for doing away with the trilogy’s signature morality system. But based on the developer’s post, the classic Paragon/ Renegade is on it’s way to return in Mass Effect 5, which is currently in the early stages in development.
