Not like the military is any better. It’s just politics with cringe macho discourse and war crimes.
Mass Effect has more icky Military propaganda than actual war games like Call of Duty now that come to think of it.
Well I’m pretty sure his reason was that in the military he felt like he was directly helping more people like how he stays back on earth at the beginning of me3
And yeah sci-fi stuff has lots more military propaganda than stuff that takes place in the modern day. It’s probably cause they don’t need to also address the bad parts of it since it takes place in a theoretical future while stuff like CoD touches the good and the bad of stuff that happens now and already happened in the past.
I love the game but it's true.
Also some weird dodgy politics in about cops, going above or beyond the law, and cutting through red tape :/
Love the game but its politics are Very Post-9/11 USA
the games' politics in general are incoherent i think, probably for the usual reason of the writers not even being aware of how little they know. it kills me that the only future not just humanity but also a gaggle of hyper-advanced aliens could manage is basically 21st century earth capitalism with some of the rough edges filed down, but you could say that's just an extra layer of the 70s space opera authenticity they were going for
also i am honorbound to recommend the revelation space books by alistair reynolds anytime i talk about mass effect. they're so good and mass effect (as well as the expanse) owes them a great debt
what i mean is why would blue aliens that live a thousand years and have innate space magic powers come up with the basically the same way of living that we earthlings did, that's a lack of imagination
Ah okie. Well to be fair paying workers to make stuff then selling those things for profit is pretty common. Cultures on earth did that even without knowing about the others. I'm sure other aliens would do that to. Either better or worse than us
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How is that tankie? jesus fucking christ i wish tankie never entered common parlance outside left-wing circles, now it'a just thrown out by libs whenever somebody says something moderately left wing, and not about a specific kind of leftist.
You people would call MLK a Tankie.
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no it made sense. Anderson even says that Udina knows wayyy more about politics and has much more connections. he even said he didn't like it and wanted out in ME2
So what if he didn’t like it. We chose him because we wanted his style of leadership.
Him on the council shoulda had different consequences for the overall preparedness as opposed to Udina
Both could’ve had pros and cons but they reversed it for basically nothing
exactly, we chose him, he didn't choose it. besides, he tried it and we all know he's a soldier, not a politician. half his ME2 lines were how he hated it, and he felt he could do more in the alliance
Nah, it makes sense to have Anderson back with the Navy, gives him a reason to be on Earth, and to be Shepard's CO again.
Which allows him to reinstate Shepard, and stay behind to lead the resistance.
Shepard was technically grounded, and not active duty, but Anderson and Hackett are the main reason that Shepard was accepted back into the Alliance, after turning over the Normandy and surrendering to them.
After going against the council in ME1 he basically quit on the spot. It was the right call but they couldn’t allow the type of subordination and the council are a bunch of fucking idiots
He doesn't get the position till the very end of ME1. It's the last decision you have in the game, and, IIRC, after the last save point, which is why ME2 starts you off with Miranda and Jacob asking you about what happened in the first game.
That’s correct in the original release, but in the Legendary Edition they move the last save point to after Shepard gives her recommendation so that choice carries over.
That being said, it’s still possible for you to make the choice in ME2 if you say you want to leave politics to the politicians in ME1, which is what I do. It doesn’t make any sense from a story perspective to me that Anderson would quit, and since he doesn’t really do anything in ME2 except reinstate your Spectre status, which he does whether he’s on the Council or not if you saved the council in the first game, I decline to make a choice in the first game and then say Udina was elected in the second to make it seem like it wasn’t my Sheperd’s choice.
It makes sense Anderson would quit. Anderson is a military man at heart and spent decades in the alliance. He’s also an extremely selfless person and the bureaucracy of the council probably made his feel like he wasn’t doing enough to help people as he did in his previous position. Like at the start of me3 he stays back on earth to help as many people as he can even if his experience could be better used elsewhere
What I should have said is that it doesn’t make sense to me that he would have taken the position in the first place. I don’t know how Councilors are chosen/elected, but it makes more sense to me that Udina would have campaigned relentlessly for it and Anderson would have stayed where he thought he would be more useful
In-game: In ME2, Anderson complains that he gets frustrated by the politicians' stubbornness and gives the most difficult tasks to Udina, and in ME3, he took the opportunity to fight for Earth. (Although he doesn't miss the opportunity to remind you that it was your decision to put him there if you give him a renegade answer in one of the CEC conversations you have with him in which you say that politicians are useless pieces of shit xDD)
In the Bioware offices: They wanted to put Udina as an advisor no matter what, and since they didn't want to adapt the decisions of the ME2 players, they did all those things justifying that Anderson's military streak led him to be there, despite the fact that it was said from the beginning that having a former Alliance Admiral on the council could be beneficial if the Reapers end up coming.
I really think that keeping Anderson as an advisor would not only have been a good way to save his life in a Paragon game, but it would have also been more interesting narratively speaking and Udina's coup attempt would have been even better. I don't know what the rest of you think.
>I really think that keeping Anderson as an advisor would not only have been a good way to save his life in a Paragon game, but it would have also been more interesting narratively speaking and Udina's coup attempt would have been even better. I don't know what the rest of you think.
I totally agree.
General problem in Bioware games with branching storylines is that Bioware, whether they say it or not, seem to always have their "canon" plotline mapped out, which can lead to some weird stuff.
There's what you mentioned here, and another example is Morinth. They clearly did not want you to choose her, and barely even gave her voice actress lines if you did. Then you kind of>! unceremoniously kill her in ME3, which you can easily miss in the chaos of that mission.!<
It's less that they have a "canon" route, and more that they LOVE making branching choices... and HATE actually delivering on them in the sequel. It's the classic "This is Future!Me's problem. [Time Skip] Past!Me sucks" situation.
But yeah, it's painfully obvious that making Morinth recruitable was a last minute idea they never intended to actually explore.
Another thing that bothered me. Morinth was a very dangerous whore and serial killer who nobody could trust, but she was interesting. I don't think it was necessary to create a story that affects the main plot, as was done with Samara, that is, she is there, you meet her and you decide whether to help her or send her packing like with Archer, but that wasn't the case. Shame.
It’s more a problem with having alternative options in gaming not just a BioWare issue. To have 2 options you have to do double the work even if both those options are basically the same.
For example let’s say Anderson and Undina had both the exact same story and dialogue depending on who’s councilman. Even when everything is the exact same for both them just different characters you have to do double the VA work just to make those 2 options work. And now because of that neither of their storylines work because they’re separate characters you can’t just have their stories swapped where undina becomes admiral and selflessly stays behind at the start of me3 and Anderson betrays the council and the alliance.
To make them both work as council members they’d have to have entirely different storylines that change how the story plays out massively. At that point they’d just be making an alternate timeline that could be its own separate game.
They’d either have to write out both the characters to have extremely minor roles to make development time and costs minimal, don’t have a choice available at all, or the option they did choose which is make a canonical storyline that the choices you made stick to even if it means going back on them.
I know, but it always feels like Bioware writes the story they want, then start branching it, rather than writing the branches at the same time, you know?
That's the only way to have a chance at creating a 40-hour game in reasonable time. Otherwise, you'd end up with 20 or so years of demos, a 400GB game and a failed studio since the only way to create 40 hours of branching is by huge overlaps between branches, which means there must be a common storyline you can sneakily return to.
I chose her a few times just for shits and don't ever remember seeing her in 3. I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that it was so subtle that I didn't know it happened after multiple playthroughs until I joined this sub. She really deserved to show up in place of Samara.
Remember when you fire a Cain ammo in the Reaper’s gullet on Earth? Then Reaper troops attack you and you need to survive until a shuttle comes to pick you up with Anderson on her board.
If Morinth survived ME2, she’s the Banshee that attacks you before you are picked up there.
You only recognize her because her name is above her life bar, beside that, she’s a Banshee like the rest of them.
I think they needed somebody the player cared about to be on Earth so that we felt like we were fighting for something other than the vague notion of humanity’s homeworld, especially because in many options your Shepard may not even be from there. I don’t disagree with the decision to take Anderson off the Council, but I do think it would have made more sense in hindsight if he had just never been on it in general. Which is why I always give the position to Udina, even though my play throughs are Paragon in every other way
What baffles me is they actually made Udina sympathetic in the beginning of the game just to have him go insane for cheap fan service and then never followed up on it.
> I really think that keeping Anderson as an advisor would not only have been a good way to save his life in a Paragon game, but it would have also been more interesting narratively speaking and Udina's coup attempt would have been even better.
I disagree.
Anderson staying alive would have robbed us paragon players of the "You did good, son" scene, one of the heaviest, most rewarding and emotional moments in the entire series.
Imo Anderson staying on Earth sells the fact that there's a semi-organized resistance able to hold on for weeks/months until the game's climax. His vidcalls with Shep throughout the game provide a solid narrative anchor to the main plot, they're very well written, and wouldn't be the same if Anderson was on the Citadel instead getting distant reports.
But the way I'm putting it, it wouldn't eliminate those things. You can be a mixed-morality Shep or make an exception for Anderson when it comes to choosing an advisor. Doing it like this now, reading me, would feel even more RPG-like.
Anderson leaves the council canonically based on the Mass Effect novels that take place between ME2 and 3, Retribution and Deception. So it's not really a thing about limiting player choice adaption and more about sticking to the events of the series.
And along with what user MiloThe49 answered you below, it should be noted that many players do not read the novels or do not remember them. You just reminded me of this and that just surprised me.
Agreed. The vast majority will never read them, but Bioware has for a lot of their games put context in their supplementary materials and a lot of fans will find the sudden additions jarring. Just look at James, who people hated when ME3 came out but is pretty redeemed now I think in the fanbase, but people would have liked him more I think if people had watched Paragon Lost before jumping into ME3.
They're still doing it too where a lot of the new Dragon Age characters are being introduced in the book Tevinter Nights. I personally am an avid book reader so I enjoy this, but I imagine like 95% of the players will never read the books so I'm not sure it's great overall.
Its revealed in the novel **Mass Effect Retribution** that Anderson is the canonical choice for Counciler but he couldn't go two sentences without insulting another species. Sick of covering his ass, he resigned to help deal with the problem of the novel and remained an Admiral afterwards.
It actually didn't specify whether Anderson was the councilor, just that he had important political responsibilities like a trade negotiation with the Elcor & Volus.
He did walk out to let Udina handle that problem while he went off with Kahlee. But the book *never* explicitly said whether Anderson was the councilor or advisor. Personally, I think the latter job is easier to walk away from.
I’ve started doing this a couple playthroughs ago and I prefer it quite a bit. If you can stomach choosing Udina at the end of ME1 (which is kinda stupid for Shepard to do given all that happens in the climax of ME1), then ME2/ME3 makes a whole lot more sense as far as Udina/Anderson is concerned
In game, I think he just got too frustrated with the politics and resigned to go back to the military. Which makes more sense when you factor in that he knows the Reaper threat is imminent.
I really don't do this, because if it's not in the main story, in this case the games, then it might as well not exist. *But* in one of the novels, he gets screwed out of the Council position by Udina, so that he can help a close friend save a biotic girl from Cerberus.
We never did get a follow-up on Gillian in ME3. All the things referenced from the novels and comics and she's forgotten, never to get revenge on her father's killer.
Basically, he got tired of the Council's shit after they refused to admit the Reapers were real *again*, so he resigned. He and Hacket started making secret preparations for the Reapers under the guise of "getting ready for a war with the Batarians".
Which included Shepard rejoining the Navy, even as a non active officer, after they had finished with the Collectors, and the Alpha Relay incident.
I'm wondering how that went, did Shepard call Hackett and arrange a rendezvous so they could surrender and hand over the Normandy?
Kind of. So Shepard is the one who goes to the Alpha Relay and blows it up. This pissed off the Batarians "because how dare the humans commit the same terrorist attacks on the Righteous Batarian Hegemony the batarians do to the humans!"
Only you know, you succeeded and, to greater effect.
So to placate the Batarians and insure they don't start a war while the Reapers are RIGHT FUCKING THERE, Hackett orders Shepard to return to earth as soon as possible to "stand trial". As a consequence of this, Shepard was quartmarshalled and dishonorably discharge. It was all BS to keep the Batarians from starting shit with the full intention of bringing Shepard back in once the war got going.
If Anderson didn't like politics, he's got no business being in the officer corps of any military, especially one with long and ancient bullshittery like the Navy.
Anderson resign, politics wasn’t for him. Went back into the military to prepare for the reapers arrival.
The Alliance Parliament chose Donnel Udina to replace him on the council. Considering how many friends Udina had in the Parliament not surprise they picked him.
He wasn't cut out for it because of the red tape, having to play nice when really, he wanted to punch through it. Get the job done. Udina is a worm but knows how to do it.
That and I wish ME3 didn't bring back thing like this. Udina being ambassdor again, the Rachini queen being trapped again.
He actually dies between ME2 and ME3. What we're seeing is a different Admiral Anderson. You'll notice very distinct and different facial features from the Anderson you knew in ME1 and ME2 versus the Anderson you meet in ME3.
Although they do have very similar, if not the same voice.
I believe that these two Admiral Anderson's are in fact related. Maybe cousins perhaps.
I think there's a book where he steps down. Or just after he steps down. TIM sends Kai on a mission and Anderson goes head to head with him I think. Takes place between 3 and 2 obviously, but I forget the name.
He's wrong a lot do and a lot don't. They had a very strict development timeline; I think it was less than 2 years, even with a delay. The game is great, you may be seeing discourse over the ending, but a lot of that is actually over the original ending. The ending was fixed a couple months after launch to a point that a lot of players actually like it now.
Absent the tie in media, I like to headcanon that if Anderson is Councilor and Shepard does Arrival, the Batarians throw a massive fit about him being on the Council and they put a politician in his spot instead of a career military man to save face/avoid all out war with the Batarians so close to the Reaper invasion
He quits between 1 and 2 because the council was preventing him from doing more to help or from doing what he wanted with his job
Also him pushing the Reapers down the throats all the time didn't help even though they was looking for answers in secret.
Plus BioWare clearly wanted Udina to be the main choice during development just so he can be the obvious option in 3.
He resigns so he can stay and help the people on Earth at the end of the tutorial mission. I think he later mentions that he didn’t really like the council job anyway, but I don’t remember if his council job comes up at all during the scene where he makes that decision, so I get the confusion.
Unsure, I do know that Anderson stepped down voluntarily because he preferred to be a soldier. Also he was stranded on Earth so even if he was a Council member Udina would have to take his place.
OP you are going to have a bad time if you're going to come to Reddit and ask about everything in the game on a blind run and then get mad at spoilers. Just play the game and enjoy it, ask stuff AFTER if there's plotholes.
He resigned, ended up not liking politics and wanted to get back to the military.
Can't say I blame him...
Not like the military is any better. It’s just politics with cringe macho discourse and war crimes. Mass Effect has more icky Military propaganda than actual war games like Call of Duty now that come to think of it.
Idk what mean though. The council is all about war crimes. I mean Spectres don't really have restrictions.
Its not a war crime if you are legally exempt.
Yeah I’m pretty sure it still is
Well I’m pretty sure his reason was that in the military he felt like he was directly helping more people like how he stays back on earth at the beginning of me3 And yeah sci-fi stuff has lots more military propaganda than stuff that takes place in the modern day. It’s probably cause they don’t need to also address the bad parts of it since it takes place in a theoretical future while stuff like CoD touches the good and the bad of stuff that happens now and already happened in the past.
A lot of military scifi does
I love the game but it's true. Also some weird dodgy politics in about cops, going above or beyond the law, and cutting through red tape :/ Love the game but its politics are Very Post-9/11 USA
As much as we all adore Garrus... guy is kind of a maniac, regardless of his Paragon or Renegade routes.
Garrus is the best, but he also decides to become the space Punisher. He is a great guy, but not a *good* guy.
the games' politics in general are incoherent i think, probably for the usual reason of the writers not even being aware of how little they know. it kills me that the only future not just humanity but also a gaggle of hyper-advanced aliens could manage is basically 21st century earth capitalism with some of the rough edges filed down, but you could say that's just an extra layer of the 70s space opera authenticity they were going for also i am honorbound to recommend the revelation space books by alistair reynolds anytime i talk about mass effect. they're so good and mass effect (as well as the expanse) owes them a great debt
Revelation Space <3 <3
it's so good
Really? How good are his books? Been looking for a good book or two to buy.
they're some of my favorites of the past twentyish years
Capitalist W
it makes no fuckin sense
Sure it does, as much sense as other economic forms which by the way have all failed
what i mean is why would blue aliens that live a thousand years and have innate space magic powers come up with the basically the same way of living that we earthlings did, that's a lack of imagination
Ah okie. Well to be fair paying workers to make stuff then selling those things for profit is pretty common. Cultures on earth did that even without knowing about the others. I'm sure other aliens would do that to. Either better or worse than us
Oh wow...this is why we need service guarantee's citizenship...
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How is that tankie? jesus fucking christ i wish tankie never entered common parlance outside left-wing circles, now it'a just thrown out by libs whenever somebody says something moderately left wing, and not about a specific kind of leftist. You people would call MLK a Tankie.
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Since when does pointing out propaganda make someone a tankie?
Thank you, I always wondered this too
He states this directly when you talk to him. Why this is even a question makes me wonder who plays these games.
Not everyone can remember every dialogue line, especially a 1 off that happens a single time in the trilogy
It shouldn’t have happened tho, it was lazy writing
no it made sense. Anderson even says that Udina knows wayyy more about politics and has much more connections. he even said he didn't like it and wanted out in ME2
So what if he didn’t like it. We chose him because we wanted his style of leadership. Him on the council shoulda had different consequences for the overall preparedness as opposed to Udina Both could’ve had pros and cons but they reversed it for basically nothing
exactly, we chose him, he didn't choose it. besides, he tried it and we all know he's a soldier, not a politician. half his ME2 lines were how he hated it, and he felt he could do more in the alliance
Nah, it makes sense to have Anderson back with the Navy, gives him a reason to be on Earth, and to be Shepard's CO again. Which allows him to reinstate Shepard, and stay behind to lead the resistance. Shepard was technically grounded, and not active duty, but Anderson and Hackett are the main reason that Shepard was accepted back into the Alliance, after turning over the Normandy and surrendering to them.
After going against the council in ME1 he basically quit on the spot. It was the right call but they couldn’t allow the type of subordination and the council are a bunch of fucking idiots
He doesn't get the position till the very end of ME1. It's the last decision you have in the game, and, IIRC, after the last save point, which is why ME2 starts you off with Miranda and Jacob asking you about what happened in the first game.
That’s correct in the original release, but in the Legendary Edition they move the last save point to after Shepard gives her recommendation so that choice carries over. That being said, it’s still possible for you to make the choice in ME2 if you say you want to leave politics to the politicians in ME1, which is what I do. It doesn’t make any sense from a story perspective to me that Anderson would quit, and since he doesn’t really do anything in ME2 except reinstate your Spectre status, which he does whether he’s on the Council or not if you saved the council in the first game, I decline to make a choice in the first game and then say Udina was elected in the second to make it seem like it wasn’t my Sheperd’s choice.
It makes sense Anderson would quit. Anderson is a military man at heart and spent decades in the alliance. He’s also an extremely selfless person and the bureaucracy of the council probably made his feel like he wasn’t doing enough to help people as he did in his previous position. Like at the start of me3 he stays back on earth to help as many people as he can even if his experience could be better used elsewhere
What I should have said is that it doesn’t make sense to me that he would have taken the position in the first place. I don’t know how Councilors are chosen/elected, but it makes more sense to me that Udina would have campaigned relentlessly for it and Anderson would have stayed where he thought he would be more useful
In-game: In ME2, Anderson complains that he gets frustrated by the politicians' stubbornness and gives the most difficult tasks to Udina, and in ME3, he took the opportunity to fight for Earth. (Although he doesn't miss the opportunity to remind you that it was your decision to put him there if you give him a renegade answer in one of the CEC conversations you have with him in which you say that politicians are useless pieces of shit xDD) In the Bioware offices: They wanted to put Udina as an advisor no matter what, and since they didn't want to adapt the decisions of the ME2 players, they did all those things justifying that Anderson's military streak led him to be there, despite the fact that it was said from the beginning that having a former Alliance Admiral on the council could be beneficial if the Reapers end up coming. I really think that keeping Anderson as an advisor would not only have been a good way to save his life in a Paragon game, but it would have also been more interesting narratively speaking and Udina's coup attempt would have been even better. I don't know what the rest of you think.
>I really think that keeping Anderson as an advisor would not only have been a good way to save his life in a Paragon game, but it would have also been more interesting narratively speaking and Udina's coup attempt would have been even better. I don't know what the rest of you think. I totally agree.
General problem in Bioware games with branching storylines is that Bioware, whether they say it or not, seem to always have their "canon" plotline mapped out, which can lead to some weird stuff. There's what you mentioned here, and another example is Morinth. They clearly did not want you to choose her, and barely even gave her voice actress lines if you did. Then you kind of>! unceremoniously kill her in ME3, which you can easily miss in the chaos of that mission.!<
It's less that they have a "canon" route, and more that they LOVE making branching choices... and HATE actually delivering on them in the sequel. It's the classic "This is Future!Me's problem. [Time Skip] Past!Me sucks" situation. But yeah, it's painfully obvious that making Morinth recruitable was a last minute idea they never intended to actually explore.
Another thing that bothered me. Morinth was a very dangerous whore and serial killer who nobody could trust, but she was interesting. I don't think it was necessary to create a story that affects the main plot, as was done with Samara, that is, she is there, you meet her and you decide whether to help her or send her packing like with Archer, but that wasn't the case. Shame.
I also wondered if it would have been interesting to have someone resistant to her mind murder sex techniques or if it would just be a cheap trope
Imagine surviving, only to have her bash your head in with a lamp lmao.
It’s more a problem with having alternative options in gaming not just a BioWare issue. To have 2 options you have to do double the work even if both those options are basically the same. For example let’s say Anderson and Undina had both the exact same story and dialogue depending on who’s councilman. Even when everything is the exact same for both them just different characters you have to do double the VA work just to make those 2 options work. And now because of that neither of their storylines work because they’re separate characters you can’t just have their stories swapped where undina becomes admiral and selflessly stays behind at the start of me3 and Anderson betrays the council and the alliance. To make them both work as council members they’d have to have entirely different storylines that change how the story plays out massively. At that point they’d just be making an alternate timeline that could be its own separate game. They’d either have to write out both the characters to have extremely minor roles to make development time and costs minimal, don’t have a choice available at all, or the option they did choose which is make a canonical storyline that the choices you made stick to even if it means going back on them.
I know, but it always feels like Bioware writes the story they want, then start branching it, rather than writing the branches at the same time, you know?
That's the only way to have a chance at creating a 40-hour game in reasonable time. Otherwise, you'd end up with 20 or so years of demos, a 400GB game and a failed studio since the only way to create 40 hours of branching is by huge overlaps between branches, which means there must be a common storyline you can sneakily return to.
I chose her a few times just for shits and don't ever remember seeing her in 3. I'm not saying it didn't happen, just that it was so subtle that I didn't know it happened after multiple playthroughs until I joined this sub. She really deserved to show up in place of Samara.
I think she's just a named banshee or something.
Yep, I've even looked for it and still missed it
Remember when you fire a Cain ammo in the Reaper’s gullet on Earth? Then Reaper troops attack you and you need to survive until a shuttle comes to pick you up with Anderson on her board. If Morinth survived ME2, she’s the Banshee that attacks you before you are picked up there. You only recognize her because her name is above her life bar, beside that, she’s a Banshee like the rest of them.
And if you screw things up with Jack, she shows up in the Cerberus base.
Yeah she's a random banshee at the final battle, super easy to miss.
I think they needed somebody the player cared about to be on Earth so that we felt like we were fighting for something other than the vague notion of humanity’s homeworld, especially because in many options your Shepard may not even be from there. I don’t disagree with the decision to take Anderson off the Council, but I do think it would have made more sense in hindsight if he had just never been on it in general. Which is why I always give the position to Udina, even though my play throughs are Paragon in every other way
What baffles me is they actually made Udina sympathetic in the beginning of the game just to have him go insane for cheap fan service and then never followed up on it.
> I really think that keeping Anderson as an advisor would not only have been a good way to save his life in a Paragon game, but it would have also been more interesting narratively speaking and Udina's coup attempt would have been even better. I disagree. Anderson staying alive would have robbed us paragon players of the "You did good, son" scene, one of the heaviest, most rewarding and emotional moments in the entire series. Imo Anderson staying on Earth sells the fact that there's a semi-organized resistance able to hold on for weeks/months until the game's climax. His vidcalls with Shep throughout the game provide a solid narrative anchor to the main plot, they're very well written, and wouldn't be the same if Anderson was on the Citadel instead getting distant reports.
But the way I'm putting it, it wouldn't eliminate those things. You can be a mixed-morality Shep or make an exception for Anderson when it comes to choosing an advisor. Doing it like this now, reading me, would feel even more RPG-like.
Anderson leaves the council canonically based on the Mass Effect novels that take place between ME2 and 3, Retribution and Deception. So it's not really a thing about limiting player choice adaption and more about sticking to the events of the series.
And why do you think they had him leave the council in those comics? It was to adapt the events of the series to fit what they wanted in ME3
Probably true.
And along with what user MiloThe49 answered you below, it should be noted that many players do not read the novels or do not remember them. You just reminded me of this and that just surprised me.
Agreed. The vast majority will never read them, but Bioware has for a lot of their games put context in their supplementary materials and a lot of fans will find the sudden additions jarring. Just look at James, who people hated when ME3 came out but is pretty redeemed now I think in the fanbase, but people would have liked him more I think if people had watched Paragon Lost before jumping into ME3. They're still doing it too where a lot of the new Dragon Age characters are being introduced in the book Tevinter Nights. I personally am an avid book reader so I enjoy this, but I imagine like 95% of the players will never read the books so I'm not sure it's great overall.
Its revealed in the novel **Mass Effect Retribution** that Anderson is the canonical choice for Counciler but he couldn't go two sentences without insulting another species. Sick of covering his ass, he resigned to help deal with the problem of the novel and remained an Admiral afterwards.
It actually didn't specify whether Anderson was the councilor, just that he had important political responsibilities like a trade negotiation with the Elcor & Volus. He did walk out to let Udina handle that problem while he went off with Kahlee. But the book *never* explicitly said whether Anderson was the councilor or advisor. Personally, I think the latter job is easier to walk away from.
I stand corrected, it's been a while since Ive read the book.
He choose to step down in ME 2, which I can both understand but kind of hate.
I hate that they mess with Anderson so I always just make Udina the councilor. It’s cleaner
Same. In 1 I just say that the choice isn't mine (no way a paragon Shep would choose Udina) then at the start of 2 say Udina got the position.
That’s the way every time
This is the way
I’ve started doing this a couple playthroughs ago and I prefer it quite a bit. If you can stomach choosing Udina at the end of ME1 (which is kinda stupid for Shepard to do given all that happens in the climax of ME1), then ME2/ME3 makes a whole lot more sense as far as Udina/Anderson is concerned
In game, I think he just got too frustrated with the politics and resigned to go back to the military. Which makes more sense when you factor in that he knows the Reaper threat is imminent. I really don't do this, because if it's not in the main story, in this case the games, then it might as well not exist. *But* in one of the novels, he gets screwed out of the Council position by Udina, so that he can help a close friend save a biotic girl from Cerberus.
We never did get a follow-up on Gillian in ME3. All the things referenced from the novels and comics and she's forgotten, never to get revenge on her father's killer.
Basically, he got tired of the Council's shit after they refused to admit the Reapers were real *again*, so he resigned. He and Hacket started making secret preparations for the Reapers under the guise of "getting ready for a war with the Batarians".
Which included Shepard rejoining the Navy, even as a non active officer, after they had finished with the Collectors, and the Alpha Relay incident. I'm wondering how that went, did Shepard call Hackett and arrange a rendezvous so they could surrender and hand over the Normandy?
Kind of. So Shepard is the one who goes to the Alpha Relay and blows it up. This pissed off the Batarians "because how dare the humans commit the same terrorist attacks on the Righteous Batarian Hegemony the batarians do to the humans!" Only you know, you succeeded and, to greater effect. So to placate the Batarians and insure they don't start a war while the Reapers are RIGHT FUCKING THERE, Hackett orders Shepard to return to earth as soon as possible to "stand trial". As a consequence of this, Shepard was quartmarshalled and dishonorably discharge. It was all BS to keep the Batarians from starting shit with the full intention of bringing Shepard back in once the war got going.
You can actually open the codex in the game and read what happened. He wasn't fired. He just didn't want to do the job anymore.
When you see him in ME2, he's pissed off and doesn't like. Politics isn't for him. He resigns in between 2 and 3 - legend had enough.
If Anderson didn't like politics, he's got no business being in the officer corps of any military, especially one with long and ancient bullshittery like the Navy.
He doesn't like politics
Mate if you think the military, especially at officer level, cannot get political then I have a bridge to sell you.
He leaves the politics to the Ambassador
Anderson resign, politics wasn’t for him. Went back into the military to prepare for the reapers arrival. The Alliance Parliament chose Donnel Udina to replace him on the council. Considering how many friends Udina had in the Parliament not surprise they picked him.
He wasn't cut out for it because of the red tape, having to play nice when really, he wanted to punch through it. Get the job done. Udina is a worm but knows how to do it. That and I wish ME3 didn't bring back thing like this. Udina being ambassdor again, the Rachini queen being trapped again.
He actually dies between ME2 and ME3. What we're seeing is a different Admiral Anderson. You'll notice very distinct and different facial features from the Anderson you knew in ME1 and ME2 versus the Anderson you meet in ME3. Although they do have very similar, if not the same voice. I believe that these two Admiral Anderson's are in fact related. Maybe cousins perhaps.
I think there's a book where he steps down. Or just after he steps down. TIM sends Kai on a mission and Anderson goes head to head with him I think. Takes place between 3 and 2 obviously, but I forget the name.
Alot of choices you make in 1 and 2 end up not mattering in 3
Thanks for spoiling that asshole
You're welcome renegade + 20
He's wrong a lot do and a lot don't. They had a very strict development timeline; I think it was less than 2 years, even with a delay. The game is great, you may be seeing discourse over the ending, but a lot of that is actually over the original ending. The ending was fixed a couple months after launch to a point that a lot of players actually like it now.
Like to think he headbutted Sparatus every time he did something stupid
Absent the tie in media, I like to headcanon that if Anderson is Councilor and Shepard does Arrival, the Batarians throw a massive fit about him being on the Council and they put a politician in his spot instead of a career military man to save face/avoid all out war with the Batarians so close to the Reaper invasion
He stepped back because he didn't feel up to the task and felt like he could do more in the army.
He quits between 1 and 2 because the council was preventing him from doing more to help or from doing what he wanted with his job Also him pushing the Reapers down the throats all the time didn't help even though they was looking for answers in secret. Plus BioWare clearly wanted Udina to be the main choice during development just so he can be the obvious option in 3.
He resigned because he felt like he would be more useful with the alliance, and he was tired of butting heads with that brick wall of a council.
He resigned because he felt he was needed more as an admiral for the coming war.
the explanation is that he stepped down but tbh it was probably a choice made to save for dev time considering how tight a schedule 3 was on
He resigns so he can stay and help the people on Earth at the end of the tutorial mission. I think he later mentions that he didn’t really like the council job anyway, but I don’t remember if his council job comes up at all during the scene where he makes that decision, so I get the confusion.
It was explained in a book that takes place between 2 and 3 he resigned from his position and gave it to udina
Why didn't you just ask anderson?
I didn’t have that dialogue option, I’m on the Normandy and he’s back on earth
Oh, well you will later
Imagine if the choice between Anderson and Hackett had the same impact on ME2&3 as the VS or Wrex
Illusion of choice
Unsure, I do know that Anderson stepped down voluntarily because he preferred to be a soldier. Also he was stranded on Earth so even if he was a Council member Udina would have to take his place.
He stepped down of his own volition and let Udina handle all of the political bullshit.
I don't think council members can get fired. It would lead to the council being too dependent on the politics of their individual species.
I like to think he gave Udina the Councilor position so he could be there for Shepard when they were under house arrest.
OP you are going to have a bad time if you're going to come to Reddit and ask about everything in the game on a blind run and then get mad at spoilers. Just play the game and enjoy it, ask stuff AFTER if there's plotholes.