User blog comment:BeoW0lfe/Battle For Earth Game/@comment-4721065-20121129101909/@comment-4721065-20121207080659

I don’t really want to colour the “Ryan vs. sibling” decision as Renegade /Paragon, but given that similar decisions throughout the series (Council, Collector base, etc.) are mared the same, this will have to remain so. To be honest, I’m not a fan of the morality systems to begin with, but I guess it is far too prominent in the series to suddenly abandon. One could make a case that the Renegon system only applied to Shepard, but Infiltrator had rendered it impossible.

That said, I still think that Ryan getting pinned down by several Cannibals and husks is just too extreme: they would simply insta-kill him with their exe-puke. Instead, how about this: you get to your house and see a Cannibal going after your sibling. But just then, you hear a crunch-like sound and several husks drop from the ruined house above on to Ryan, and then you make your cutscene choices. It would be both dramatic and realistic. Also, I might not have understood your asset comment, but do you seriously plan for the sibling decision to be only 5 Assets worse than the Ryan one? The children’s charity idea is plainly insulting to the aliens’ intelligence: do they seriously not know that there no children on the humanity’s homeworld - its largest, most prosperous planet without that decision? It is also far too reminiscent of the ME3 prologue child and its overblown importance for Shepard.

Regarding suicide, you’ll have to remember that Shepard and co. are elite and hop from planet to planet for crucial missions, and are not there with the underequipped troops that are fighting the same battle for months on, who have seen many of their loved ones indoctrinated and/or huskified and known only loss coupled with marginal gains. As such, it is now wonder that you don’t see too much suicide: you never see Reaper-harvesting plants in ME3 either, because you’re simply not sent there.

I still think that you provide a very poor excuse for not having starting tech squadmates. You’re essentially locking out one of the integral parts to ME combat for the first few hours at least, unless the player is an infiltrator or engineer and for no gameplay or narrative gain. The only way you could gain from it is if the racist private is a tech specialist and refuses to fight alongside a batarian if you let him in.

On the subject of races, while the first world countries might stay predominantly white, the exact situation would vary from area to area. You will find a lot of African and Arabic people in the downtown Paris for example and nearly every city has a Chinatown now. As such, I still think it would be more than worth it to have many non-white people in the starting squad, especially you really lose nothing from doing so. It would be especially great if there is a Central Asian character, as they completely lack representation in the Western media.

For the eezo, your points are valid and they could also provide a great scope for the Paragon/Renegade decisions. It would be considered mildly Paragon if you and your people ignore the openly dangerous eezo and it would be very paragon if you decide to carry as much of it as you can yourself, but not letting the others suffer the side-effects. It would be mildly Renegade if you and your squad both work on it and very Renegade if your squad transfers most of the collection and handling of the unshielded eezo to children, elderly and others otherwise incapable of fighting.

I have also thought of the other way non-lethal shots would be useful – capturing indoctrinated and those waiting indoctrination for study, extracting at least some information and maybe some other purposes. You could also save those awaiting indoctrination this way (suppose senior staff of the company were captured and indoctrinated, but released by the Reapers to fool their staff into complacency. Those people will probably still resist you out of their free will, tired of uncertainty and preferring their staff over you.)

For further ideas, I think it will be great to include some indoctrinated/partially indoctrinated Sentinels, as there were no enemies of this class in any of the ME games, including the Infiltrator. I also think that there should be variations of class abilities in enemies, so that you would avoid ME2 issue of all Engineers and Vanguards being exactly the same ability-wise. For instance, you could have some engineers using Incinerate and Sabotage, and others with Cryo Blast and Overload.

And as a final note, evacuating people to the middle of Sahara is insane, no matter the year. There is no cover agains the Reapers, but more importantly, the only way you can get lots of water there is by piping it from the ocean to desalination plants, something that is sure to get destroyed early in war. Why don't you consider some mountanious region instead?