User blog comment:AdmMiller/What's so great about Tali? And why do most dislike Miranda?/@comment-1691295-20100713132823

I wasn't doing full Renegade, my Shepard (Drake, on my user page) has a mix of Paragon/Renegade opinions/method (usually Paragon worldview, Renegade methods). The main thing in this case is the way I play it Shepard opposes war with the geth, so on Tali's loyalty mission (on which I took Legion) I did what I could to stop the quarians attacking them, which involved handing over the evidence, hopefully discrediting the pro-war faction (Gerrel was p***ed because he thought I'd done so).

Anyway, that meant Tali was upset and not loyal. In the final mission I chose her for the vents. I kind of expected her to die, because even though I didn't read guides I knew that there would be casualties and that they were tied to loyalty, but I asked myself 'if I actually were Shepard, and not aware of the game mechanics, what would I do?' and chose Tali, because she was right for the job. Then she got shot in the head. Everyone else survived though, although Zaeed wasn't loyal either.

That Shepard never really got along with Tali, since I didn't hand over the geth data, and isn't generally a fan of the quarians because of their stance on the geth. Got along with Qwid Qwib though, obviously.

So no, I wasn't trying to keep everyone alive. At least not by paying attention to the game mechanics. I wasn't interested in the achievement or anything, I just wanted the story to play out the way it would If I just played it the way I wanted.