Morality

Paragon Vs. Renegade

The power of persuasion can be an agent’s best friend. Often when dealing with civilians, squad mates, and various NPCs, general dialogue options may not quite get your meaning across.

If your persuasion ability scores are high enough, you can choose extra ways to direct the conversation: through Charm or Intimidation.

The overall results are sometimes similar; it’s more the tools you use to get what you want that make the subtle (and sometimes drastic) differences that much more enjoyable.

Paragons charm people into seeing things their way. Renegades prefer to intimidate to get their point across. The choice is yours, but here is the simplest generalization:

Paragons do the right thing in the right way.

Renegades get the job done by whatever means necessary.

Shepard is ultimately trying to save humanity. Regardless of your actions during the story, that goal stays the same.

The morality system of Paragon and Renegade is the evolution of the typical good versus evil alignment spectrum into two independent scales. Making Paragon choices doesn’t adversely impact future Renegade options.

Essentially, while the goal stays the same, the methods used to reach that goal differ: hence Paragon vs. Renegade.

The tradeoff between the two morality scales is that there are a limited number of opportunities to increase either scale found throughout the story to 100 percent.

The morality-specific choices made during conversations allocate points to either the Paragon or Renegade scales displayed on Shepard’s squad screen.

As each morality scale increases, new options open up in dialogue and various additional subplot assignments occur.

You have several options to divide up the available morality points between the two scales. You might strive to be 100 percent Paragon, 100 percent Renegade or somewhere in between, possibly trying to distribute points equally and achieve a balance.

However, given this relationship (and certain Xbox Live achievements!) you can’t have it all in one career!

Strict Paragon agents won’t access Renegade Intimidation options in dialogue, nor will they trigger Renegade subplot assignments. By the same token, Renegades won’t access Paragon options and assignments.

Agents playing a middle ground and striving for neutrality won’t fill either scale completely and they potentially forgo each morality’s subplot assignments for the sake of having access to both Charm and Intimidation Talent options during conversations and gameplay.

Difficult Choices

The following table summarizes all the opportunities agents have to play the Paragon and Charm the party they’re speaking to, or to be a Renegade and bully the party into submission through Intimidation.

Each Talent point Shepard spends in either Charm or Intimidation raises that Talent score by 1. Shepard’s current talent score determines whether you can Charm or Intimidate the person you’re talking to.

You must have a talent score equal or greater to the difficulty level of the persuasion opportunity.

The numerical scoring system that drives persuasion opportunities is invisible to players, but generally if you see a red or blue option during a conversation, your Charm or Intimidate talents are sufficiently developed.

Alternatively, if you see grayed-out options, that means the persuasion options were too difficult and you must improve your associated talent score from its current level.

Charm and Intimidate Opportunity Summary

Your Moral Rewards

Each moral scale is broken into five segments (these are the above-mentioned progression points). Each of those points on both scales has an associated reward.

At the beginning of a career, Shepard’s Charm and Intimidate Talent bars (in the Squad screen) are short.

Additional spaces for further point allocation are unlocked by filling the Paragon or Renegade bars through your decisions made in conversations. Below is a summary of the bonuses achieved by filling each bar.

Progression Point Reward Summary