Question with 1 note
todd360 asked: Just curious, what made you peg Control as renegade rather than Destroy? I thought it was a sly twist at the end that what you assumed through the game was suddenly turned on its head in the final moments. Ironically Control saves lives and offers guardianship (with paragon) rather than the dictatorship you get with renegade Control (thin line I know) and Destroy requires the sacrifice of a synthetic race you helped gain full sentience to kill another fully sentient machine race. Just wondering.
Hey, Todd! Thanks for reading. That’s an interesting question and a great perspective on the ending that I hadn’t considered. It gives me more hope that the endings can adhere to different playthroughs.
I will say that the game itself presents Destroy as more of a Paragon action and Control as more of a Renegade action. Why? Because Anderson is used as the mascot in favor of Destroy and The Illusive Man is used as the mascot in favor of Control. In the Extended Cut, they even feature, being shown taking each action as it is explained to you. The message here is pretty clear: Anderson, who has been the stalwart ally of Shepherd throughout three games and is a hero of the galaxy, favors Destroying the Reapers. And The Illusive Man, who has been an enemy of Shepherd for the entire third game and a very devious ally in ME2, favors Control. Because they set it up in this way, it is hard to think of Destroy as anything other than the “good guy” option, and Control as the “bad guy” option.
On a personal note, for my Shepherd, who was a full-out Paragon, destroying the Reapers felt like the SAFEST bet. My Shepherd had been lied to by pretty much everyone over the course of the series, from Udina to The Illusive Man, and now she was supposed to trust a Construct which essentially tells you it’s protecting the Reapers? She couldn’t buy that. She did what she came to do and what the game told her Anderson clearly would have wanted: she destroyed the Reapers.
