There was no hate to be found when it was initially announced that Mass Effect: Andromeda would nix the Renegade and Paragon paths for a more intuitive system. Maybe that's why it's taken so long for the team to offer an explanation, which Bioware's Mac Walters did recently for Official Xbox Magazine...
“What we have now is based more around agreeing and disagreeing. The reason I like that is because in the trilogy it’s like, ‘I’m gonna play Paragon,’ and then you know which way you’re moving the stick on every conversation. You don’t have to think about it, because you’re just going to hit Paragon every time,”
The new system, Walters says, will allow players to take 1 of 4 "tones" when it comes to interacting with NPC's. While Paragon and Renegade are gone, there still will be times where the player will only have 1 of 2 options to pick from. Walters says this new option allows for more freedom and introduces a deeper feeling of "role-playing"
“We’ve added in four tones and we’ll talk a little more in the future, but they basically allow other types of characters to express them[selves] in one of four different ways, and sometimes one of two different ways,” Walters said about the different voice tones. And I think that gets back to that more traditional role-playing sort of feeling which is less about ‘Do I want to be good or bad,’ and more about ‘How do I want to express myself.”
Here's hoping the new system is better than the old, as I felt the old system was restrictive, as I'm sure you did too. Sometimes I made a renegade decision with Paragon in my heart, and as we all know the world is not so black and white as the Mass Effect series has been. Often I would walk the line between and end up never fully aligning with either side and felt as though the game punished me for playing the way I truly wanted to. 4 options may be short of allowing me to say my response aloud and having an NPC respond, but it's definitely better than what we've had.
Mass Effect: Andromeda launches March 21st.
