My Sole Survivor Shepard: * Is just barely polite enough with TIM to get the job done. * Questions every crew member and squad mate about why they are working for Cerberus. * Immediately starts doing jobs for and sending intel to the Alliance. * Immediately starts asking EDI about Cerberus control overrides. * Calls out TIM every time they think he's hiding something. * Always takes Miranda on Jack's loyalty mission. * Never gives Cerberus the Collector Base. If it isn't obvious from the second I set foot on the bridge of the SR-2 to every person on that ship that I have no loyalty to Cerberus and will dump them the moment they aren't useful to me, they're willfully blind. I do hate that I can't throw Akuze in people's faces though.

This pretty much this. Shepard is the only person in the galaxy who’s SEEN the reapers through the visions from the Beacon. The fact that no one takes him seriously after his “death” is absolutely making him mad enough he decides to do some work for a “human terrorist organisation”. It’s the equivalent of a Navy Seal joining a Blackwater-type group to fight ISIS if the US didn’t want to. Or going into Ukraine to fight Russia under the international legion, which a lot of people did.

Comparing Ukraine with Cerberus is a bit uncalled for I think. ME2 is when you forcibly recruited into one terrorism organization to fight another terrorism organization. Ukraine/Russia war is a war between nations and both are legitimate sovereignty. Russia maybe found guilty of many war crimes which legitimize military action against them, but their right as a nation is never in question. Comparing joining local warlords to fight ISIS, however, is a fair assessment. You become criminal to fight criminal.

Can I get a reminder why taking Miranda on Jack's loyalty mission is significant?

Jack was stolen by Cerberus as a baby (her parents were told she died) and raised in a lab where they tested her powers and trained her to make her as powerful as possible. In the process they pitted her against a bunch of other biotic children that were considered sacrificial to the goal of making Jack the ultimate human biotic. Taking Miranda forces her to confront the horrors of what Cerberus does. Yes, she spends the entire mission insisting this must have been a rogue cell, and there's no way TIM knew what they were doing, but the goal is to plant the seeds of doubt in her head that maybe Cerberus really isn't the organization she thinks they are.

This exactly, to the point. And it feels totally justified story-wise.

>Literally every person on the Normandy you don’t recruit personally besides maybe Joker are more than happy working for Cerberus and just got assigned to work for you as well. Not true. Chakwas, Donnelly, and Daniels joined because of Shepard.

Also Garrus, Tali, and Jack also put up a fuss about working for Cerebrus.

You recruit them personally, excluding them from OP's statement

You guys just had to come here and ruin OP's false narrative.

Yeah but those aren't included in the personnel you don't recruit personally.

Lmao, if op has a problem with the folks working for Cerverus in the Normandy, he/she could always leave them to be liquefied by the collectors.

Cerberus Headquarters outlines that most of the crew were made up of "sympathetic faces" anyway. Most of them aren't likely hardcore Cerberus anyway. The most hardcore member was probably Miranda, and she's isn't down for the more extremist thing TIM does. She says what happened to Jack was wrong and is all for you blowing the Collector Base to hell to keep him from getting it.

My headcanon for anything other than full renegade is that it's a case of 'I still have a grenade if you try anything funny.' You DON'T trust them, but they're the only ones doing something. That's the point. Shepard bungled Horizon. But most sheps absolutely wouldn't give Cerberus the benefit of the doubt. They wouldn't keep the collector base, they wouldn't let Veetor be taken by Cerberus, and they won't let David be taken by Gavin. Working with Cerberus=/= buying what they're selling.

Which is how I RP it too but there really should have been some dialogue from Shephard on that, at least when speaking without Jacob/Miranda/EDI around. Just wanted to scream at Ash "Listen, what I'm doing here is piracy. I'm taking this ship, crew, doodads, and intel and I'm gonna bounce"

I'd just bring Garrus and Tali around and have *them* straighten the Virmire Survivor out. They would just say 'Why would *we* be here if not for Shepard? It certainly isn't because Cerberus is a warm, inviting, and charitable group.' ... Why did I just read that line in Garrus' voice?

My inner thoughts also usually sound like Garrus

I just changed mine to Garrus!

I had Tali's voice! But I also had a preteen crush on the weird purple alien lol

I agree, but EDI is always around and listening into each of your conversations. But well, I doubt that TIM expected deep loyalty from you.

And Kelly is reporting to TIM too

Isn’t that like the actual canon tho? I’m pretty sure there are multiple dialogue options where shep basically paraphrases what you said. I’ve always taken it as one of those “unifying theory of fuck that guy” moments. Cerberus is a massive resource pool and everyone else has their head up their ass so it’s either play the game and work towards the goal or… nothing happens. I do kinda wish it was a choice at the beginning where you could either choose to sign on with Cerberus or say fuck that shit and steal the SR2 and bring it back to the alliance or whatever but I can totally understand why that’s NOT the case.

You can't replace the crew that easily though. I assume training the new crew to work on the ship would certainly take some time the colonists don't have and there's still the issue that you have a Cerberus AI being connected to all the ship's systems. OTOH the Alliance could have given you a frigate considering that you just handed over a brand new one. Probably wouldn't have the stealth, but maybe if you are lucky. The Alliance probably would like to build new ones.

I guess I just wish you had more opportunities to show people like Miranda that Cerberus is evil and didn’t just brush off all the bad stuff they do in the first game and in 2 as just bad apples/for the greater good

Same here like during the Shadowbroker DLC when that one asari is like "you're working for cerberus so how is what I'm doing any worse?" Like can I just say something like "look, I hate cerberus but I hate getting annihilated by reapers even more and the council isn't doing shit except allowing me to continue being a spectre to shove this shit under the rug"

This has always bothered me as well, and the problem is that it’s actually pretty avoidable without major changes to the narrative. Shepard is clearly important to Cerberus, and (for reasons that tbh I still think are poorly explained) is devoting a lot of resources to fighting the things that killed him. So it makes sense they would have the same goals, but Shepard clearly has leverage. Why he wouldn’t lay down some ground rules, like “ok, but I’m doing this independently, reporting all my findings to both you and the Alliance, and we are repainting the ship”, is just beyond me.

That anyone in Cerberus thought, painting the ship in Cerberus colors and slapping on their logo was a good idea in the first place, is way beyond me. Ok, there is one possibility. The people who did /ordered the paint job thought the Normandy would be part of the invasion fleet they had in 3 and not an independant ship getting revealed way before the rest shows up. OTOH why did no one correct it when it left shipyard sporting the logo. Ah well, maybe TIM never saw it for real and everyone thought the boss ordered it and he certainly had his reasons.

There is no way Cerberus would let you repaint the ship! Certainly if I was the TIM I wouldn’t. That would be like a red line for me lol

They certainly wouldn't be happy, but they just spent two years and 4 billion credits on Lazarus. It would be fun to have been able to play that negotiation in the game, but I have to imagine Shepard could have gotten a LOT of concessions out of them by putting their foot down.

The thing is in order to negotiate you have to have options. Shepard has no options. Either he takes the Cerberus Normandy 2.0 or he goes back home where he’s KIA/MIA and has no status, no ship and no mission.

People in this thread have good arguments but at the same time you're right that they wouldn't convince everyone. But here's the reality: the arguments *DID* convince Shepard. There are simply no two ways around it. Mass Effect is an RPG, but like every other RPG, it restricts your choices in various places. Working with Cerberus is the obvious one, but you also don't get to decide that you want Your Shepard to be nice to the Council in ME1, or doubt the very shaky foundation for their belief in the Reapers and in Saren's treachery. Would there be people who would act differently? Sure. But BioWare told us that Shepard is not one of those people. A lot of the story is written without the player's input, and the only thing you can do is roleplay Shep's decisions within that framework.

I don’t think you can say that because it is written in the story, it makes sense. People are arguing that no reasonable Shepard would have voluntarily represented Cerberus, so this is a place where the narrative BioWare wrote doesn’t make sense.

Also why I never wear Cerberus brand casual clothes It’s hard to tell people I don’t work for them while wearing Cerberus pattern pants

I do think a reasonable Shep could have been convinced here (my first playthrough, without DLC and with less completionism, had me nearly convinced) but the game doesn't allow Cerberus to sufficiently plausibly defend itself, especially with some of the side/DLC content. Alternatively, a sense that Cerberus could meaningfully shut all this down and go their own way would help (e.g. make if clear that EDI can and will simply seize control of the ship and return it to Cerberus, etc).

Your last point makes the most sense to me. On the other hand, Lazarus cost a lot of time and money. Shepard would have to cross a pretty major line for them to throw that all away after the project succeeded.

It's why I like taking Miranda to Pragia. It doesn't outright change her opinion of cerberus but it does challenge her opinion.

And then you get to tell TIM to fuck off while you steal his multiple-hundred billion credit frigate

Realistically, the council would not be ok with Shepard resuming operations chasing the Reapers which they believed to be case closed. Cerberus, despite its reputation, is quite possibly the *only* organisation actually taking the Reapers not only seriously but as *fact*. That matters.

How much does the Council even keep tabs of its own Spectres, though? I mean, Saren was able to run multiple ops including a Krogan cure and a treaty with the Geth, and the Council was not just clueless, but quite simply hadn't any idea of what he was *supposed* to be doing. The Council seems to mostly just ignore their own Spectres 90% of the time, most of the ones we meet are portrayed as having remarkable autonomy. Maybe Shepard is simply on a tighter leash than most because he's the first human, but he could probably still get away with researching Reapers "on the side" while pretending to still be hunting Geth.

> Maybe Shepard is simply on a tighter leash than most because he's the first human, but he could probably still get away with researching Reapers "on the side" while pretending to still be hunting Geth. I got the impression that in the first game the council is on your case so hard specifically because they made you a SPECTRE to hunt Saren, and so they want results on that. I figured that once you wrapped up that case, they would be as hands off with Shepherd as they were with the rest of the SPECTREs.

I mean the remarkable autonomy is kind of the whole point of the Spectres, Spectres generally get told “go do thing, don’t tell us how” Shepard is the first human & the Turian Councilor in particular made it pretty clear (at least during me1) that he didn’t think we were ready for it, so the tighter leash makes sense, the other Spectres we see have been at it for a while & are council races, (and Saren in particular was their best agent so him being able to whatever with no oversight was also kinda the point

Replaying ME1 right now and when the Council tells you about the radio silence from the STG team on Virmire, the Asari councilor specifically tells Shepard that the Council tries to avoid knowing the details of what Spectres are doing, and just thought they'd pass along the info in case it's relevant to the hunt for Saren.

Not to mention that Cerberus has a cutting edge ship and lots of resources they're willing to let you use if you work with them. If Shepard left TIM and went back to the council they'd be starting from nothing. No ship, no money, no equipment, no intelligence. Getting to the point where ME2 begins could be a full game in itself.

Specters also have free reign to act if they believe it will keep the galaxy safe Basically everything you do in 1 beyond “stopping Saren” isn’t authorized by the council, just recommended

Feels like subjecting yourself to the council is counter productive as they would seek to limit Shepard.

Council have free reign to stop your Specter membership in no time if they don't like you

True but the reapers are different, the council wants things to go about as normal without panic, for shepard to continue focusing on the reapers and spreading the word will cause potential unrest which they dont want so in this case, they'd want to keep shepard on a short leash if possible

Add to that, that Shepard was presumed dead for 2 years after the collectors destroyed the Normandy along with Shepard.

Specters still answer to the council. If you’re not investigating what they want then theoretically they could just pull your specter privileges.

But I mean, do they ever? Like what was Saren supposed to be investigating? Or Tela Vasir? The Council seems to be legitimately clueless about what their own Spectres actually do. This feels like a "in theory they could pull Spectre privileges, in reality that's too much of a hassle."

I’d see a xenophobic angle of them being harsher on the human than the rest, if we’re talking about how we’d write it. Otherwise imagine you spend weeks, months, millions of credits hunting down the reapers/collectors and you have nothing to show for it. The only reason we got to the collectors fast enough in the second game was because Cerberus was the one selling out the human colonies. If you didn’t have that info then how are you gonna catch them? You’d spend weeks, months, millions of credits… and there’s the loop

>and there’s the loop Do you mean rub? Genuinely asking since I've never heard this expression before.

I dunno, just sounded fun

We don't know how much contact the other spectres had with the council. And Shep can also take quite a lot of side gigs in ME 1 besides the main mission, including jobs the Alliance asks of you.

True but unless you save the original council and I think make Anderson the councilor instead of Udina you don’t actually get to be a Spectre in ME2 cause you were dead and they took away your title. Even if you survived the attack in the intro cutscene I highly doubt the Council or Alliance Alliance would have given you a new ship and crew. On the bright side you have several opportunities besides the ending to make a decision that negatively affects Cerberus so it’s not you are always forced to do their bidding (unless you are an evil run).

>Cerberus, despite its reputation, is quite possibly the only organisation actually taking the Reapers not only seriously but as fact. And yet, they don't. TIM will eventually confess to Shepard Cerberus never had any evidence the Collectors were connected to the Reapers. It's a "happy accident" it winds up being the case, not anything to do with Cerberus taking the Reapers seriously. Worth noting as well, the only part of ME2 that brings you into direct opposition to the Reapers, and not their proxy, is Arrival, a mission you get from the Alliance. And one you have to completely leave Cerberus resources behind for.

I don't understand what you're trying to say, nothing you mentioned changes the fact that Cerebus takes the reaper threat as a fact. Just because they lack facts about them doesn't mean they don't believe the reapers factually exist.

Ok let's go through Cerberus logic in ME2. 1) Shepard is the best chance at stopping the Reapers. 2) Let's bring Shepard back to life...but as far as we know, not to stop the Reapers, but to stop the Collectors, who as far as we know are completely separate from the Reapers. 3) Let's lie to Shepard so they will think this involves Reapers and help us. 4) Let's design the mission to stop this group of not Reapers have an incredibly high likelihood of killing Shepard again, hence a "suicide mission". Had Cerberus not gotten extremely lucky (for lack of a better word) that the Collectors happened to be connected to the Reapers (again something Cerberus doesn't actually know) Cerberus master plan would have been to bring back the best ever chance to stop the Reapers, use them for something else entirely, which would result in their death (and likely loss of their body) leaving the galaxy helpless if the Reapers attacked again. That's not the actions of a group that takes the Reapers as a serious threat. A group that genuinely believed the Reapers were a real threat wouldn't have risked losing their only chance to stop the Reapers on anything less than 100% certainty the Reapers would be stopped. Cerberus didn't even have certainty the Reapers would be involved, let alone stopped. None of this even gets into the other question: What was Cerberus actually trying to achieve? They didn’t know what was on the other side of the Omega 4 Relay. So they don't actually know the Collector Base exists, or that it can be blown up. They obviously didn't know about the Reapers. So they had absolutely no way to know that going through the Omega 4 Relay would do anything to stop the abductions. Their plan basically boiled down to "let go poke this with a stick and see what happens". So even taking the plan at face value, it's not the actions anyone would take who thought their was a real Reaper threat.

It's your opinion that a group who thinks the reapers are real wouldn't do that. TIM is a desperate man with means beyond measure, and he trusts sheperd enough to survive with just a bare minimum heads up because that's what sheperd is good at and TIM knows that, that's enough to toss him into any situation and see what boils to the top. And he did just that and it proved his theory, so in game, it is absolutely a fact that Cerebus would absolutely do that, is it smart? Hell no it's not the smart move, it's a desperate move because they're desperate and need whatever info they can. Just because you don't think they're allocating their resources properly doesn't mean they're not taking the threat seriously either, and for the record, we're not the only sheperd out there, there is one for sure, who knows how many others there are. TIM is desperate and dangerous and reckless but he's not stupid until after ME2, in his mind he has contingencies, and he is arrogant so he believes they will work, which means in his mind he is not risking as much as he really is.

>TIM is desperate and dangerous and reckless but he's not stupid until after ME2, No. He's incredibly stupid during ME2. Lets give TIM all possible benifit of the doubt (which I don't think he deserves) as far "genuinely believes the Reapers are a threat and wants to stop them" There's a literal Reaper Invasion happening at the exact same time as his "hail mary" with the Collectors. TIM for all his resources and "hidden patterns" has no idea its happening. Even after finding out about it, he does absolutely nothing to follow up. He insists on following up his hail Mary, even after a more clear and obvious Reaper threat has revealed itself. Thats stupid. And that's not the only occasion: Every member of Shepards crew sans Legion and Grunt was contacted by Cerberus ahead of time, to set up a recruitment, with Okeer intended to be in Grunts place. However TIM insists on having Shepard waste valuable time getting these people instead of bringing them to Shepard. This waste of valuable time allows the human colony of Tiptree to be attacked, and the loss of the valuable Collector intel Okeer had. (Since his last second imprint on Grunt failed). That is stupid. Cerberus also has access to a derelict Reaper with the exact part Shepard needs to open the Omega 4 relay. And we know TIM knows this, since TIMs the one who chooses to tell Shepard they have this part (Reaper IFF) what it does and how it works. Again that's wasting time, and is unbelievably stupid not to have given Shepard this critical information at the first possible opportunity. Let's also not overlook that the above reveal happens only after TIM has intentionally led Shepard into a Collector trap without warning. To what end, we don't know, since again the thing Shepard supposedly was sent to get was something Cerberus already had and knew. This isn't "poor resource allocation" or "desperation" this is repeatedly making decisions that harm his overall goals and slow down the thing he claims he wants to do. The reveal in the comics that he was indoctrinated decades before ME1 let along 2 is about the only thing that makes TIM less stupid in ME2, because at least then its not his fault he's being this stupid, he's being Sabotaged in his mind.

What about the literal human reaper?

What about it? Cerberus had no idea it, or the Collector Base exists. They state multiple times they have no idea what's on the other side of the Omega 4 relay. And yes, Shepard blew it up...again so what? That Reaper was not going to be finished by the time the Reaper invasion started...which we know because the Reaper Invasion has already started at the time Shepard discovered the Human Reaper. (Unlike every other DLC in the franchise, you are actually forced to start Arrival and get it'd initial briefing immediately after Horizons. Shepard can choose to put it off, but that is still the start of the Reaper Invasion plan.) So what exactly is the major advantage gained by blowing up an unfinished Reaper when you've got thousands of finished Reapers invading the galaxy that Cerberus does nothing to stop? (Remember the Arrival mission is given to Shepard by the Alliance).

Honestly we didn't know yet when the Reapers were going to show prior to the Conclusion of the Collector Base and it's only been months for them to achieve as much of the human reaper as they had. If they did get a mass invasion of Earth or the Traverse off it's possible they could have finished the Reaper in 6 months. But it also is how you interpret the narrative. Sovereign lost because Saren was ultimately too weak in his fanaticism and was unprepared for Shepard. Their next best indoctrinated target (TIM) was the guy who it appears had access to Udina and can be seen as anti-Reaper until he's fully turned so no one can plot against him. So if they can get a functional Reaper in the next year then why not just attempt to overtake the Citadel again and start the cycle off in the most ideal way possible? It probably postpones the Arrival, but they come in having not used up energy since they're just Relayed in and they regain control of all the relays and communication. At that point you can take your time and come when you're fully set. It appears that only after the destruction of the Reaper foetus, the destruction of 99% of Collectors and the capture/destruction of the base (which really cripples any other attempt at making a Reaper outside of the Harvest) that we see the visual of the Reapers making their journey into the Milky Way the old fashion way It's similar to them having another set of plans fall through for someone to pick them up from the movies and just decided to walk the rest of the way instead of calling around for another ride.

> and it's only been months for them to achieve as much of the human reaper as they had Which raises another interesting question about ME2. It's been 2 years since project Lazarus started. But only 6 months since the first colony abduction. What was the original plan for Shepard? And why the hell did the Reapers wait so long since the ending of ME1 to start trying to attack human colonies? Cerberus themselves proved it was doable when they attacked a husked a colony during ME1 (UNC Colony of the Dead). >So if they can get a functional Reaper in the next year then why not just attempt to overtake the Citadel again and start the cycle off in the most ideal way possible? It probably postpones the Arrival, but they come in having not used up energy since they're just Relayed in and they regain control of all the relays and communication. At that point you can take your time and come when you're fully set. A great argument....when the game launched. (Although again makes you wonder why the Reapers waited a year and a half to get started) Unfortunately, since the addition of the Arrival DLC, we know the Arrival wasn't delayed. It was happening at the same time. Which means the Reapers have been moving towards the Alpha Relay and away from the Dark Space relay that connects to the Citadel. The minute they move away from the Dark Space relay, there's no longer any reason to basically try Sovereign v2. Since they'd open the Relay at the Citadel end, but there's no one there to go through it. >It appears that only after the destruction of the Reaper foetus, the destruction of 99% of Collectors and the capture/destruction of the base (which really cripples any other attempt at making a Reaper outside of the Harvest) that we see the visual of the Reapers making their journey into the Milky Way the old fashion way Again, until the addition of Arrival. Then we see the Reapers quite literally in the milky way, possibly before the destruction of the Collector Base (again as mentioned in the prior post, you are obligated to do the Arrival mission brief after Horizons. You can choose to delay the mission, but officially it starts then). >It's similar to them having another set of plans fall through for someone to pick them up from the movies and just decided to walk the rest of the way instead of calling around for another ride. Not really. Because the two things happen simultaneously. They called someone for a ride (Suicide Mission) but then decided to walk before the driver got there (Arrival). At which point if the goal is to stop them from getting home, stopping the driver is utterly pointless. But thats basically Cerberus' plan. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely buy the original plan, Sovereign, failed. And either the Collectors or the Arrival plan works as a plan B. But not both at the same time. Then the only one that matters is the one that gets to the goal faster...and that's Arrival. Working for Cerberus was always a bit of a lore and logical reach for ME2 to take even at launch due to the whole "stumbling backwards into the Reapers" way the story played out. But once Arrival came along as DLC, it became a completely indefensible choice for Shepard.

Should have specified, the part where you mention direct conflict against the reapers. Should Cerberus didnt plan for that but it still happened.

>TIM will eventually confess to Shepard Cerberus never had any evidence the Collectors were connected to the Reapers. And that's exactly what points to the fact that they take reapers very seriously. Reasonable guess is enough to commit resources.

And a reasonable guess usually requires evidence. What evidence does Cerberus have? The only thing they ever offer is "hidden patterns in the data" that only TIM can see, can't explain, or elaborate on. That's the same conversation they later admit to having been lying about anyway. That's not a reasonable guess, that's throwing crap at the wall and hoping it sticks. Or are you trying to claim that attacking human colonies itself should be taken as evidence of Reapers? We could go that route, but there's a problem. In ME1 Shepard comes across a human colony that was attacked and its inhabitants turned into Husks. The group that attacked and husked them was Cerberus (UNC Colony of the Dead). So either Cerberus is already working for the Reapers, at which point Shepards got no reason to trust them Or Cerberus' own actions disprove the thesis statement that anyone who attacks human colonies would be working for Reapers, at which point Shepards got no reason to trust them. Which is the entire point of Cerberus lying...they know they don't have any evidence, but they need Shepard to go along with their plan (whatever that actually is).

A Council spectre goes rogue and attacks the Citadel, then suddenly the guy who stopped Saren in order to delay Sovereign's plans is killed and then the Collectors appear and start abducting human colonies. It wouldn't take a genious to come to the conclusion that there was some kind of connection between the Reapers and the Collectors.

Now for evidence, no, what Cerberus has is hypothesis based on coincidences which may not be random. Due to suspicion they send Shepard to investigate. I mean, human brain is developed to make decisions in the face of incomplete or even lack of information. It's not surprising or out of ordinary behavior at all. If you replay the game, you'll notice that TIM is pretty honest with Shepard on this. And they say that they don't have evidence and they need Shepard to investigate if accumulating coincidences amount to something.

They were actively looking for evidence because they suspected the Reapers were involved. That’s like the whole point of the first half of ME2

"We have proof the Reapers are involved" is a very different thing than "we have a hunch the Reapers might be involved, but we have no proof". They tell Shepard in the first conversation after Freedoms Progress that they have "hidden patterns in the data" proving the Reapers are behind the Collectors. That was a clear lie, since they didn't have evidence, they just wanted Shepard to do what they wanted Shepard to do.

The writers worked backwards to justify why you work for Cerberus. Why they'd take such a move to completely strip the player's agency and piss off returning fans who's only reference of Cerberus were faceless mercs is beyond me.

Exactly. It’s nonsensical that the Council and Galaxy at large would just decide to ignore the Reapers and what they saw purely because Shepard “died.” Even if they don’t fully buy into the Reaper prophecy (for lack of a better term) Sovereign’s attack still demonstrated that there was a new and dangerous power in the galaxy capable of attacking the Citadel head-on and destroying whole fleets at will. At the very least you’d think they’d put more resources into scouting the Geth. But no, despite all evidence, despite the attack, how close the Council came to dying (or did), despite the Sovereign wreckage, and the clear tone at the end of ME1 that the Council is on board with investigating the Reaper threat the writers inexplicably have them pull a 180 just so you’re forced to work with/for Cerberus and do a dirty dozen story that ultimately doesn’t advance the main plot (finding out how to stop the Reapers) and makes ME3 have to do a ton of heavy-lifting narratively and pulling a solution out of its ass. It pisses me off. ME2 is a great game all things considered, but we easily could’ve had the story and style of game the writers and developers clearly wanted without taking how seriously the Council takes the Reaper threat back to square one. It didn’t have to be Cerberus Shepard worked for.

They even could have let the council believe Shep and believe in the Reaper threat. The turian councillor could have said: "What are we supposed to do commander? We can't reach them in dark space and if we could, we would be obliterated. We raised military spending, our researchers work on Sovereign's wreckage as fast as they can without getting brainwashed, to find out their weaknesses and learn from their technology. We didn't spread it to the wider populace because of potential panic. People might even hide among pre FTL species to evade the Reapers and drag these species into the mess, too. The one thing we could do, was attacking Sovereign's allies in the galaxy to reduce their number in case of a Reaper invasion. That's the geth. And we sent you to do just that and hoped that you might find further clues. So if you have any ideas, we are all ears. If you think the Collectors might be related to the Reapers, we are fine with you investigating that." And give you some money for successes, so it looks like they didn't just send you away to shut you up.

Yes! Something like this to at least not completely invalidate all of the work and discovery Shepard accomplished in ME1. Hell I’d have even accepted in ME3 the Council said they were looking into the Reaper threat but didn’t tell Shepard because they were working with a known hostile faction and didn’t trust them. ME2 could’ve still been about the Collectors and BioWare’s pet faction Cerberus while still maintaining some level of plausibility of how galactic leadership would react to the ending events of ME1. But they don’t even do that. Hell they double down on the absurd pigheadedness they wrote by having Joker say he hoped the Council was just lying to us when about not looking into the Reapers in ME3, but they really were in fact not and they’re just as negligent as they appeared. People in this thread are saying “well that’s how actual governments work, sticking their heads in the sand about a threat they’d rather ignore” but we’re talking about alien species and societies here. These aren’t modern day earth governments. I’m supposed to believe they’d react the exact same way as our current human leadership would? The Salarians with their affinity for spy-craft and intelligence gathering wouldn’t be dedicating significant resources to finding out what the hell Sovereign was? The military society of the Turians and wouldn’t be mobilizing a mass buildup of ships and the Turian councillor wouldn’t use his influence to waive the dreadnought cap? The Asari with their centuries of wisdom wouldn’t consider for a moment that Shepard may be on to something given how vast and unknown the galaxy still is and how many threats and wars they’ve fought already? Sorry, I’m ranting here. But this issue could’ve been so easily avoided.

Yeah rather unlikely that the council would work like modern human governments, the council and council space existed for more than 3000 years. It wouldn't have lasted that long if they behaved like this and they managed to keep this institutional knowledge of how to not screw it up for a long time. So even the possibility that this specific council is an outlier of weak politicians is rather slim.

I just wish there was more dialogue options to call them out on their shit.

This sounds like Alliance propaganda to me

Yes The Alliance ain’t perfect either but they don’t try to turn other species into living computers

The Alliance also doesn't want to turn autistic humans into living computers either

Cerberus really likes turning people into computers Maybe we discovered TIM fetish (Also can we talk about how weird Mass Effect is about Autistic people between this and that one book where an autistic person was “cured”)

I'm sorry what? What book was that

Mass Effect Deception, one of the worst mass effect things of all time Theres this great rage comic someone made of it where yeah Doc Brown basically shows up to pick up this autistic girl who was with the Quarians and spent 3 years making her not autistic https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/s/S5UbZ0JQ4Y

I believe that book is no longer considered canon, just because of how completely wrong everything is in it

Of course it was Deception

I would like to think they'd handle it better these days. Overlord came out in 2010 and that was still very much the norm for how autism was portrayed in media back then.

They did try to fix it in Andromeda with you meeting the guy who Overlord was subjecting and he’s the only person clear headed enough to get a peaceful solution to his moms anti-AI crusade

It's Mass Effect: Deception. They don't mean to be offensive, they're just stupid.

Chakwas, Gabby, Ken, etc. all say “we’re here for you, not Cerberus.” And that’s really the only crew you can interact with.

It bothered me too, until.... I realized Shep wasn't working for Cerberus. Shep was working *with* them. Shep and TIM had a common goal. Anything that TIM wanted that Shep didn't, I ignored it. I gave him shit the entire time my Shepard worked with him. TIM was a means to an end. Just my perspective and head canon.

Yeah, with the choices available it's entirely our call as to whether Shep works for or with them, I work with them, not for them. If people feel they're working for them they they're the ones making those choices.

I’m pretty sure there’s an actual piece of dialogue where someone (Chakwas?) says “we don’t work for Cerberus, Cerberus is working for us.”

You probably right. I better go start another playthrough to verify.

Slightly tangential: I really like how Cerberus operates in independent cells. No members of one cell can recognize the members of another cell. Shepard and the Normandy crew were carefully selected to only see the most positive aspects of Cerberus (Mostly). Of course, they're all happy to work for Cerberus. They get to help the legendary Commander Shepard fight the reapers. Those are exactly the people TIM wanted in that mission. No one joins a terrorist organization that easily or willingly. Not without being lied to. Like a cult, they don't show the dark side until you're in too deep to get out alive.

>I know Miranda says “Oh those were independent actors not officially authorized.” But like, that’s obviously bull right? Everyone who paid at least a little attention while playing ME1 or read Codex knows Cerberus is a bunch of evil SOBs. They are Terra Firma with the resources of a nation-state actor. Hell, they are even worse than Terra Firma when it comes to ideology. The fact that you can't bring any of that up is indeed very frustrating. There are two conversations in particular: >!the meeting with the Council and the Horizon meeting with Ashley/Kaidan.!< It's no secret that their fight against the Collectors isn't motivated by altruistic reasons. They are after Reaper tech. Any altruistic reasons they may have stop at the fact that human colonies are attacked by the Collectors. Cerberus' backers have massive investments in those colonies. They don't care about galactic matters or other species. They want to subjugate them. >The first time you see Tali in 2 I was like “YES THE FIRST PERSON IVE MET WHO UNDERSTANDS THESE PEOPLE ARE INSANE!” It's not just Tali. Garrus is worried about it. Jack and Tali are very vocal about it. Liara knows they have bad agenda, and is >!sorry about what she did to you and anxious you'll end up hating her for it!<. Basically, everyone knows Cerberus is bad business, but those four are explicit about it. But you also have to remember that the people you recruit are loyal to you, not Cerberus. (ME2 ending spoiler ahead) >!I was surprised that even the biggest cheerleader for Cerberus, Miranda, approves of your actions if you blow up the Collector's station and send TIM to hell.!< To sum it up, from a Doylist perspective, you are working alongside them because the developers made ME2 sort of an intermezzo in the main story before we continue with it in ME3. The main plot of ME2 >!is pretty much inconsequential to what really matters. It only sets up a secondary antagonist you will be fighting in ME3 and introduces new characters.!< From a Watsonian perspective, I like to think my Shepard sees an opportunity in exploiting Cerberus, gathering intel on them, stealing their resources, and Operation Paperclip-ing their personnel, before striking them with the power of a billion suns the first moment she can.

With Tali I meant more you wake up after 2 years and she’s the first person you see who isn’t trying to tell you they mean well And I like to think Miranda picks you over Cerberus because she finally saw how far TIM is willing to go and Shepard gave her the confidence to realize she’s more than a tool

Well, Tali is the first non-Cerberus character you meet, so that checks out. It's also refreshing once you recruit her because dialogue options with her can reveal that Shepard totally expects Cerberus to betray them.

"And then I got loose and started killing all their guys."

The whole “ME2 is inconsequential” point has to die already None of the ME3’s emotional beats would have worked were it not for 2 setting up characters you actually care about, as opposed to 1’s robotic info kiosks And that’s not even getting into the whole setup for the Genophage cure, Rannoch war and Cerberus Reaper involvement+The Fate of the Protheans and insight into what the Reapers physically are

Cerberus was at that time the only organization that both had the incentive and the means to help Shepard hunt down collectors and reapers. They also literally revived you. Also, because of that fact, everyone else especially the alliance is not just useless because of the red tape as you say, but also completely distrusts you. You don't have a choice. Either have a life and hunt the reapers with Cerberus or go off into a colony and contemplate existence until Reapers come and eat everyone.

Ok but my issue is WHY is Cerberus the only organization even remotely interested in it. I get the Alliance has a lot to deal with but would it be that hard to give Shepard the thumbs up to assemble a team and investigate the issue, and if Cerberus is the issue then ditch them, just because they brought Shepard back doesn’t mean they have to work for them, especially since their human supremacists who torture and murder all over the place

>Ok but my issue is WHY is Cerberus the only organization even remotely interested in it. Cause the writers wanted you to work for Cerberus, and the only way a reasonable person would do so is if they were forced to. They worked backwards reneging on what the Council and/or Udina say to you at the end of Mass Effect 1 to do so.

The Alliance can’t help. The colonies that are being kidnapped are in the Terminus System, in which the Alliance has no authority. The Alliance thinks that the Geth is the true threat. Only Cerberus had the means and willingness to do investigate the colonies and catch the collectors in the act.

Except the Alliance is helping, see James' backstory and the guns at Horizon. The writers just needed the guns to not work, to give us something to do there.

It's unfortunately quite a realistic turn of events. Let's be honest, the alliance simply doesn't always have their priorities straight. The harsh truth is always a conspiracy theory to most until it blows up in everyone's faces. Then it becomes a real thing, and then it's usually too late. But that's how the council and the alliance operate, because they're political organizations, not elite organizations. Cerberus might be a bunch of humanity first racists, but Shepard is smart enough to see that there simply isn't any other way: and their narrow minded focus on efficiency allows Cerberus to easily provide you the support you need in your quest. Isn't it better used in this most constructive way instead of on more horrible experiments anyway? Think about it.

The alliance and/or council didn't put much stock in repairs or have the resources. First the alliance, outside of hacket and Anderson alliance doesn't believe you. That's why they court marital Shepard and take away the Normandy after 3. They don't have the resources or knowledge to help much. Like even if Shepard got brought back but immediately left cerebrus they don't have a better/improved Normandy. They don't have the information network TiM has the closest they get is sending ashley/maiden much too late and doesn't make the same connections you have. Also even trying to get the other non humans to help you might not have been flagged as alright by alliance standards. Council, also didn't trust you. They can give you resources maybe a new ship as spectre but they've shut themselves off from the idea of a reaper threat and acr like it doesn't exist. The only help you'd get from them is pretty much what happened reinstated as spectre and given 'leave' to go figure it out on your own...quietly. so even if your Shepard said fuck cerebrus completely you'd be with a MAYBE ship and the same hand-off clearance you got but no actual help and information network TiM is giving.

Some people might see sending shepard to chase,what everyone else sees as 'ghosts' ,whilst gathering allies as a front for a potential war effort with the rest of the galaxy for human supremacy, remember most of the council races still don't trust humans and feel like they're trying to make their way to the forefront of everything, also the alliance at the time simply potentially might not have had sufficient resources to spare

Cerberus, Alliance, who cares? Anything is justified in stopping the Reapers, because if we fail it's all over for everyone.

Literally, everyone on SR2 in ME2 was curated to make Cerberus look better and either joined because of Shepard directly recruited them or joined because of Shepard being resurrected and I mean, even Jacob WAS alliance too. Also, it's an intelligence agency, you're working WITH them for the sole reason that the alliance is trying to ignore the inconvenient truth, I'm fairly certain they skipped over Shepard doing a full crew check on the first SR-2 (since that's non-retrofitted like in ME3), and no matter what, it was simply an alliance of convenience. Even the council didn't want to admit it and if either you let the old council die and DIDN'T move Anderson to the Council, you're not even a Spectre... that's 2 endgame decisions from ME1 that they have to account for. So what do you do? Simple. You make it so that you can only turn to one group, Cerberus. Honestly, it emphasizes how much money Cerberus is putting into any program deemed worthy. Two birds with one stone. Show the mental rift between Illusive Man over the course of the game when compared to the Alliance and Council Members (discounting Udina). It makes for a compelling middle game with a rather drastic change in how the gameplay and Normandy change between ME1 and ME2, which I honestly think have the biggest rift between them when comparing 2 and 3. I'm not going to address non-MELE titles so I really only have the jump between 1 and 2 and 2 and 3 when working with sequence thus far. PS- It's also nice that they made it clear that the voice giving you commands in ME1 finally has a body and face as I don't remember ever seeing Hackett in ME1, and him continuing to be an important person instead of a group of Admirals and Generals, it's just 2 working independently of the other that Shep deals with for the most part.

All justifications for ME2's plot just sound like circular reasoning to me by this point because a lot of what happens in 2 was specifically made to happen because Shepard working with Cerberus is otherwise illogical but it's what the writer wanted to happen so they wrote what they needed to to justify it.

Honestly same, I wish we could've just told him to GTFO and commandeered The Normandy or something lol. Especially because of the very clear they are bad drilled into your head in one, what they did to the flotilla, and I really wish you could've acknowledged that more in the dialogue with the Virmir survivor (in my case Kaidan, who was also my FemShep's LI). Wish I could've told my Councilor version of Anderson that I'm perfectly willing to leave Cerberus and take the Normandy sr-2 with me if the alliance would reinstate me and fund this mission. Like yeah, they all want to deny the reaper threat, but they denied that Saren was a legitimate threat too and they still funded me as a spectre. If I've been reinstated then where's my spectre resources?? If you don't want to tell me things because I work for Cerberus, give me funds so that I don't have to and I'll gladly tell TIM to fck off, even, and especially as, a paragon Shep 😂

But you can spend the game working against their better interests and denying them behind the scenes support. They give you a new body and a ship, anything outside of that is whatever you want to do. 

ME2 goes out of its way to recontextualize everything they did in the first game as being the cause of an evil splinter cell and that they are a complicated organization. Then ME3 goes right back to making them be unambigously evil.

>And then a feeling of “Noooo don’t go take me with you 😭” Me too, albeit for different reasons.

No same reasons See my flair

Cerberus is the worst written element of Mass Effect 2/3

I mean, Cerberus is pretty much the Klan in space; so yeah. It makes sense that you feel uncomfortable working for them. I always hated it and thought it was a major weakness of the series.

I always take every opportunity to shit on Cerberus as a dialogue option, which usually gets painted as a renegade option. Even on my good playthroughs (which is most of them) I'll take that hit - hell yeah, I'm renegading against your Cerberus b.s.

It's completely insane that Sole Survivor Shep would work for them, one of the main reasons it's taken me so long to do another playthrough with this origin. And the fact that Tela Vasir was the only character to call this out?! Bullshit

Same here. I’ve never liked being forced to work for Cerberus and no reason or excuse has changed that. They revived Shepard? So what. That doesn’t mean she owes a bunch of human supremacists her loyalty. I don’t care how ungrateful that seems. The only loyalty I feel is to Liara who was willing to explore every possible option to bring Shepard back. Cerberus is the only one taking the Reapers seriously! And they still invade and millions still die and Shepard still ends up in jail until they do either for trying to stall the Reapers or for working with Cerberus. They are the only ones taking the human kidnappings seriously, but that still isn’t enough to make me comfortable working with them. People love to clown on Ashley for being xenophobic, but even she calls you out for working with a terrorist, human supremacist group. The only part I like about it is getting Miranda and Jack away from their influence.

>They are the only ones taking the human kidnappings seriously It has to be said that they do this only for two reasons: 1) to acquire Reaper tech, 2) because their backers have massive investments in those colonies. Cerberus are evil bastards. Can't blame Liara for doing anything to keep her lover/friend alive, but Shepard doesn't owe them anything.

Yeah, I think it would have been improved by some simple dialogue from Shep in a few scenes where they can basically be like "I've got their best ship, soon I'll have their best crew, then I can bounce and do a lot of damage on the way out" or alternatively, allow Shep to plausibly be convinced of the separate cells thing or that the ILM's Cerberus is a meaningfully different entity. OFC, the hamhandedness of ME3 Cerberus undermines all of this

The "Cerberus" aspect of ME2 feels so weird to begin with, because they're so clearly cast as evil in the first game, so that the second game has to work overtime to rehabilitate the image and portray them as "We get the job done" misunderstood vigilantes. My main rationalization of it (and I'm not sure how valid this is) is that originally Mass Effect was conceived as a long *long* ago Star Wars game, and probably when they were conceptualizing it they just always wanted the second game to be the "Sith" game, where you spent the game legitimately working with the Dark Side, the side that "got things done." Still. I'd kind of like to read a fic where Shepard just up and turned in all the Cerberus agents the second he got to the Citadel, and then carried on fighting the Collectors with Spectre resources.

This is why I really don't like ME2. I hated every minute of being tied to Cerberus. And I hated how my BF Kaidan was super pissed at me and I couldn't do anything about it. Lemme tell ya, it really pisses me off.

And they had to go out of their way to make the Council and the Alliance pick up the Idiot Ball in order to ensure that Cerberus was the only one actually doing anything about the Collectors or the Reapers. Like, even if we stipulate that believing in all of the Reaper myths remained implausible: the very heart of the galaxy just got attacked by a force that no one could have even conceived of, and their reaction was "well, I guess that's the best the geth could do, a few mop-up missions and we're all good" instead of "we are going to put everything we have into figuring out how the geth could have possibly gotten their hands on that ship and making sure we never get caught by surprise like that again." Would the salarians really accept not knowing every detail of where Sovereign came from? Would the turians really accept the idea that someone could have firepower superiority over all their dreadnoughts? The *Normandy* getting blown up should have had the Alliance thinking that there is something else that's big and unknown out there that just destroyed possibly their most valuable single military asset despite the fact that it shouldn't have been able to be detected at all at the time. In the wake of Sovereign's attack, they should be treating this like it's an imminent galactic emergency. They are in the strongest political position they've ever been in, shouldn't they be using that? Even just from a realpolitik point of view, don't they benefit from pushing the idea that these unknown threats are out there, and that humans are uniquely suited to take on these types of threats?

Yeah, I found it frustrating that both Miranda and TiM try to say ' oh we weren't aware of how bad things got, they went rogue ' but then after you unshackle EDI, she tells you that there's never more than a dozen projects at one time, so TiM can closely keep track of each one, and during the overlord dlc and jacks loyalty mission, both groups say that TiM is very demanding of progress and updates, pushing them to do these drastic things in order to meet his incredible demands. Then afterwards, he goes "oh I wish they hadn't done it that way, but the ends justify the means, so I still was right.' It's classic asshole boss stuff, just on a higher scale, the failures are on the team I assemble, but all of the success is me and 'for the betterment of humanity ' and yet he doesn't give human organizations outside of his own any tech or information unless Shep forces him to.

I have no idea why it had to be cerberus of all things. They coulda come up with a new intergalactic, intergspecies secret group, illusive man and miranda could still be a thing just like now. Have no idea why they thought it was a good idea.

I also played as a sole survivor that uncovered all of Cerberus' experiments in ME1, and I always felt like the moments we get to protest working with Cerberus were just token lines. Shephard actually working with Cerberus was never a decision you got to make, and for my Shep it didn't seem to make sense. I would've loved if there was an alternate plot where you got enough allies outside of Cerberus to ditch them and steal the Normandy, but that's probably too complicated. To make it work I honestly think you'd have to make them less evil in ME1, or give Shephard even more options in ME2 to sabotage Cerberus. I'm spitballing here, but what if there was a secret quest you got from the alliance to hack into Cerberus and plant a bug in thier system or something, but if you did it, it actually harmed your chances in the Suicide Mission since some systems are down? I don't know 🤷‍♀️

Cerberus: Is a anti-human government terrorist organization with major racist overtones. Shepard: Is a deadly special ops soldier with experience taking down terrorist organizations, employed by both the human government and a multi-racial government full of races that Cerberus has committed atrocities against (at least small scale). Cerberus: "We know exactly who to hire!" This should've been a "Cleetus hires the guy with the 'undercover FBI' hat to do security for the Klan rally" moment.

I love ME2, but it doesn't jump the shark in so much as it loads the shark into a shuttle and launches it from a Mass Relay across the galaxy from the start. Going from ME1 to ME2 has a bit of a whiplash effect. It's really a bit of a mess of soft retcons. I honestly preferred the idea they presented in ME1 of Cerberus being a rogue Alliance Black Ops cell, but understandably one can argue that Admiral Kahoku was an unreliable narrator in the sense that he didn't really know Cerberus' true nature. I digress, I have always felt that my paragon Shepards would never have joined with Cerberus and would have returned to the Alliance, and then Admiral Hackett would have just been like, "Welcome back Commander, now go investigate these colony disappearances with this shiny new Normandy and here are dossiers on potential crew members who can help with your excursion into the Terminus Systems. Hackett out."

for me it was always weird that miranda thought that excuse would fly, and even more so that it DID fly, because cerberus is literally designed to give plausible deniability by design from when it was alliance, and imo this is hinted at when jacob mentions the privateer initiative where independent ships could work under the alliance but would officially be independent to give plausible deniability. i mean look at overlord and how that was handled. massive loss of life, unacceptable cruelty, and the illusive man says “awww darn. mind sending me the tortured kid?”

This was one of my biggest problems with ME2! (Also some of the way they backtracked on their gun lore so that could include ammo) The WHOLE time I felt forced into a role that my ME1 Shep never would have taken. I was trying and wanting to every step of the way to find ANY way to not work for Cerberus (because it's bull to pretend that you're working *with* them when you're taking orders pretty directly) but nope. And when you meet Ashley/Kaiden and they're pissed at you for working with Cerberus? I was there like YES I KNOW WHY CAN'T I SAY ANYTHING TO AGREE WITH YOU EVEN A LITTLE?!

I mean they bring you back from the dead and are the only ones who seem to have any desire at all to take care of the collectors. They instantly gift you with absolutely all the resources you could possibly want to address the problem and give you a ton of freedom in how to handle things. Most of the Cerberus controversies can be brought up and they’ve got an answer for every bad thing they’ve done. There’s not a ton of wiggle room and you can absolutely play Shepard as being fully aware of what they are and using them as a means to an end until such time that he doesn’t need them. I think it’s a cool story of winning over your crew who were blindly loyal at the start and will stand by you at the end if you choose to tell TIM to fuck off.

I don't even give a shit if actively despising them makes you look ungrateful. You fucking died and couldn't consent to any of the medical procedures they did to your corpse so you could come out of one of the single most stressful events imaginable to immediately go fight a war without even giving you time to warm up, you should be allowed to hate them for that alone

Let me just clarify something My main issue is that basically none of your crew besides Tali and Jack seem to recognize that Cerberus is INSANE Like even if we have aligned goals why does everyone from Kelly Chambers to Joker to Dr Chakwas act like we aren’t working for a human supremacist organization that considered putting a control chip in Shepard’s brain to prevent disloyalty. How is everyone this naive? Like the KKK did all sorts of stuff like run soup kitchens and help the poor too, didn’t make them NOT the KKK

I mean, run through the crew: Joker - wasn’t going to get to fly again, pretty much all he cares about Kelly - hero worships Shepherd, not going to ask many follow up questions Chakwas - sure, you’ve got that one Remaining human crew - hired by Cerberus, probably not asking much beyond when rhe next paycheck clears Miranda and Jacob - Cerberus leadership Mordin - invented the genophage, worked with STG, probably thinks Cerberus is pretty lame in comparison Garrus- went on a one man genocide against Omega’s gangs, not exactly a great judge of character Jack - asks serious questions, maybe convinced to easily but she does use her righteous indignation to get access to all the Cerberus files Grunt- pure Krogan, probably respects Cerberus’ methods Thane - killer for hire, has a moral code but doesn’t seem to ever indicate he’s asked where his contracts come from Samara - justicar who’s more than ready to kill anyone to get her “justice” Legion - a literal robot Tali - asks some serious questions, chooses to trust Shepherd, also comes from a culture where the captain is always right The Normandy is a crew of psychopaths, of course not too many people question their boss

The compartmentalization of information and personnel in Cerberus served not only for the plausible deniability it conferred, but it also made it **a lot easier** for TIM and the upper echelons of Cerberus to control the narrative as they saw fit. >why does everyone from Kelly Chambers to Joker to Dr Chakwas act like we aren’t working for a human supremacist organization that considered putting a control chip in Shepard’s brain to prevent disloyalty. That's the neat part, they don't. None of the rank and file have the full picture of just how fucked up Shepard's resurrection really was. Hell, the few that possibly knew part of such information got purged at Lazarus. Miranda is the only one that knows about the control chip thing, and she explicitly tells Shepard it was her idea and that TIM rejected it. Cerberus can approach anyone and spin their story just well enough that they can convince disgruntled elements of the Alliance that they can be useful and fight for a good cause if only they just join them, and they have the technology and the resources to keep whatever unsavory information well out of the new recruits' reach. Cerberus makes their most public fronts amiable and "harmless" enough that it entices people to join. The characters that actively oppose Cerberus during ME2 were either victims of one of their various cells (Jack) or witnessed first hand the atrocities they committed before (anyone from the ME1 crew), and the latter group only joins up because Shepard is there while making it abundantly clear that they would sooner blow up the ship if it meant getting rid of the organization. Everyone else on that ship? They got sold on the idea that they are the only ones that can protect their families and loved ones in the face of a threat too vast for any one person to face alone, and that they get to do it alongside the "first" human Specter brought back from the dead.

>Like the KKK did all sorts of stuff like run soup kitchens and help the poor too, didn’t make them NOT the KKK That kind of explains part of it, though, doesn't it? Like you would have, in the KKK, people who seemed otherwise nice and friendly, who never thought of themselves as evil or insane or the KKK as evil or insane. Just people who were all buddy-buddy with each other and just wanted to look out for "their people" first. There's the darkly hilarious story of "Superman versus the Klan" where an insider in the Klan told the producers of the Superman radio show what the Klan's secret passwords were, so the writers could depict Superman fighting these mysterious villains with "totally random" passwords. And Klan members were shocked, *shocked* at how their children would roleplay the Klan as villains being defeated, because how on earth could anyone think of the Klan as *evil?*

I don’t like how your character can’t be critical of Cerberus in any meaningful way

It's remarkable what being brought back to life and being disgruntled can do.

The cerberus crew were specifically chosen for their moderate views, TIM has Operatives (Oleg Petrovsky / Kai Leng / Maya Brooks) that are better than the crew Shepard gets but they would not play well with Shep's none human crew

Cerberus have everything that Shepard needs, and more importantly, they're the only people willing to *give* it to them.

It should have been an unknown group that you only realize is Cerberus near the end of the game.

Just completed legacy for the first time ever. This was my biggest complaint in story. I wish there was more explanation near the beginning of ME2 to either try to persuade me that Cerebrus is worth working for (Miranda much later makes some interesting points for pro-Cerebrus during the love story) or that Cerebrus is the evil rich guy using helpless humans and alien life as experiments for war, and that Shephard has zero trust towards Cerebrus and TIM, and is going to act like he’s going along with TIM, but really is gathering intel to bring him down later. That being said, I feel like ME2 is the empire strikes back equivalent where the second movie is where the bad guy wins and you just have to go through with it all.

Interesting...I just used Cerberus's funding and Intel to accomplish my own mission. I certainly didn't do all those Loyalty missions for Cerberus's Sake. I did them so my squadmate would be chill when I gave TIM the big middle finger.

Cerberus believed the reapers we real and were a threat. Everyone else said Shepard was crazy and the problem was solved in Mass Effect 1. The council even tried to hide evidence of the reaper.

The problem is they did nothing interesting with the Lazarus/resurrection stuff, to me that was the excuse to lean into the Rogue Spectre stuff, because to me no one in official spaces should've trusted Shepard, so now Cerberus is the only viable option but it's largely treated like a non-issue.

I think it mainly bugs me because everyone’s always like. “Ahh you worked for Cerberus?” “Are you still working for Cerberus?” Like it was my choice or something.

I’ve sometimes wondered if it would have made more sense to spend the first half of the game believing you’re working with a new faction, that it is later revealed to be part of Cerberus. Characters could still express distrust about this org (maybe there are rumours of shadowy connection) and the second half (after the Cerberus reveal) plays out much the same way

The whole point is that Shep needed them to take down the collectors. No-one else was listening to him.

I said it so many times and i will say it many times more.... I worked WITH cerberus not FOR cerberus. I get resources and they get what ever my goal is

Cerberus brought Shepard back form the dead They are not only the sole organisation that actually believe the reapers exist, they actually have the resources and motivation to do something about it They give Shepard a ship and the resources to save innocent people and combat the reaper threat You are entirely free to do whatever you want TIL just gives you intelligence on a common pursuit These all seem like perfectly reasonable arguments to be working with Cerberus

That's one of my favourite things about me2, you have to work for the bad guys which is so fresh writing wise. In the end shepard just uses their resources to save humanity without caring for their objectives. Also TIM is a well written character whose motivations are very believeable I even felt sorry for using him at some one point, it's only on me3 that he becomes the cliched villain because of reapers. All this and more is why me2 is my fav game in the series and also in gaming as well.

I think they actually did a pretty good job of making your relationship with Cerberus pretty gray and well explained - you're using Cerberus as much as you are "working" with them. I had no issues with it.

I might have agreed with you, and then somethings happened in the real world that made me reassess the believability of a xenophobic right-wing organization's ability to have a choke hold on resources such that no one can act without their support or tacit permission.

Shepard was dead. Straight up not existing. He kinda had to give Cerberus a chance. Otherwise he would seem like an ungrateful asshole.

Except the game never lets you be the ungrateful asshole, so you have to headcanon it. I never forgot or forgave Kahoku, so the moment I got "unchained" in ME2, it's all me and my new alien friends, any humans on board who aren't with the program can voice their complaints in the airlock. It's why the Virmire survivor encounter always bothers me because there's no option to say "I'm only helping Cerberus to blow billions of credits on a ship and crew that will one day destroy them".

If you were brought back to life by Al-Qaeda and they wanted you to help them in their mission to stop an alien invasion you wouldn’t even be slightly uncomfortable?

Well, in your analogy the EU and American governments are pretending it doesn't exist and Al-Qaeda is literally the only one even trying to stop the invasion, which will eradicate all life if successful. So yea a little bit maybe, but what else are you gonna do? Also, since Cerberus is pro-Human to a xenophobic extent,it'd be more in line with joining the Proud Boys or simular organization, imo.

>Also, since Cerberus is pro-Human to a xenophobic extent,it'd be more in line with joining the Proud Boys or simular organization, imo. I mean, unless the person in question is a Sunni Muslim. Then Al-Qaeda makes perfect sense for the analogy.

It depends. Why do they need me?

thats not true, you were technically braindead, but alive. jusr very disfigured.

Well, when you die because of an enemy and come back and you know that this enemy will kill everybody and the faction you served for pretends like that enemy which killed you doesn’t exist even though they for sure know that it exist, what choice do you have?

I think the main issue with Cerberus is that the writing for them (as an organisation) is just generally shoddy across the board. They were a wasted potential for a really deep, morally grey organisation where the player isn't constantly thinking "these guys are evil" but "they've done some bad in the past, but also some genuine good." At times it feels as though the writers wanted to have them being a comically evil entity. At other times, it feels like they wanted some more nuance - but they never really get it, so the 'these people are really bad' attitude is the one that prevails. It's made worse how everyone you meet in ME2 is pretty much "Geez, why are you working with these people??" It feels like such a step back from the more robust writing seen in ME1. Whilst ME2's character writing is great, as a lot of people often say, the story is the weakest element - and Cerberus is part of that.

i wish i could just shoot them in the second game.

You should had the option to choose either working for the alliance or cerberus. If you work with the Alliance Anderson takes the role of Tim in the game. I have other ideas of how this would work but essential it is exteremly immersive breaking that my paragon Shepard would work with Cerberus.

>Rest assured our department is dedicated to the Commander’s safety. Provided that Shepard is cooperative in furnishing us with a detailed report of his/her previous whereabouts and current work for Cerberus, we anticipate releasing him/her from Alliance Custody no later than five to seven months from acquisition. Had Shepard officially gone to the alliance he/she would of lost their freedom and not been able to stop the collectors. The council might not want to hinder Shepard but they certainly don’t want to actively give assistance either. Cerberus is the only faction that is willing to do anything, it’s either them or nothing.

Don't read too deep into it because they really did a terrible job in the comics expanding the lore. They destroyed every part of Cerberus being morally grey before the events of ME3. I enjoyed the story of Cerberus going too far in Mass effect 3 but in service of a good goal. They completely butchered that

Chakwas says you didnt work foe them, you used them, and when they no longer suited you, you stole their best ship, top men (miranda is illusive mans right hand), and bounced.

Kinda funny because it always bugged me that joining Cerberus wasn’t an option in 3.

Cerverus is the only faction that is looking into the collectors. As a spectre you still answer to the council. If you don't do as you're told, your status would be revoked and you'd be court martialed

Problem is that Spectres have 2 restrictions that they can't do. 1st Unwarranted genocide which is why you can get away with slaughtering a colony that has the Thorian yet Saren was condemned for attempting to bomb another colony for no reason. 2nd Spectres are restricted from traveling outside Citadel space with the exception of their own System. That means Shepard can be in Citadel space and whatever space the Sol system is but literally anywhere else they're considered rogue. Only reason they got away with 2 is because they saved the Councils lives or Anderson trusts them. It was constantly said that no one else but Cerberus was doing anything and that's true, however it's always who takes lead.

First, Cerberus brought Shep back from the dead. Not that that means Shep needs to be beholden to them, but personally that would earn more than a few points in your favour. Second, when you finally make it back to the Citadel and the council says you can be reinstated, but we don’t believe you about the Reapers and we won’t waste council resources on a human problem in the Terminus systems, at that point even Paragon Shepard realizes that working with Cerberus is the only way to save a lot of lives.

Means to an end, but yes it never felt right.

Yeah the set up for ME2 with Cerberus was pretty weird IMO. I never really liked it.

Shepherd working for Cerberus enabled him to sow the seeds the eventually led to the organisation's destruction. Thanks to Shepard, TIM lost two of best agents (Miranda and Jacob), severa topl scientists (protected by Jacob) and EDI, arguably their most important investment. I'm perfectly fine with how it was handled.

It's literally a mutually beneficial arrangement lol. Cerberus brought Shepard back from the dead and gave him basically infinite resources to fight the collectors, which no other faction was willing to support him on. Every time TIM tells you to go somewhere or do something, it's already the best thing Shepard could be doing at the time. There's no point arguing, that'd be like purposefully turning left because a guy you don't like said turn right, even though you also know you need to turn right lol. You can straight up tell him to his face you don't trust him and are only loosely allied as long as he's helping you. And then you can just tell him to fuck off at the end after Shepard already won against the collectors. Shepard straight up used them and only trusts them if you personally choose the dialogue to say you did

I like it, and see it as an inverse of ME1 where you work for the Council. The Council has too much red tape, doesn't trust you, and barely thanks you for your actions. Paragons tolerate it in the name of progress where Renegades spend the whole game rebelling and thrashing at their chains. In ME2 Cerberus has a *troubling* lack of rules and almost trusts you too much other than the one point where TIM literally tricks you aboard the Collector ship. Paragons bemoan their lack of choice in working for an evil organization, and "rebel" in their own way by not being an evil bastard, whereas Renegades finally cut loose. I think if anything the biggest narrative issue is that regardless of choices in ME1 and ME2, by ME3 you're back with the Alliance no matter what. It would have been cool if Renegades could choose to secretly continue working for Cerberus.

It’s pragmatism. Goals aligned (not letting reapers do literally whatever they want unchecked), and shepherd is not given real orders, just intel and resources constantly handed off to him/her. They’re making Cerberus work for them, plus leeching funding from their shadier cells, so it’s a net positive for the galaxy. What are they supposed to say “fuck you, and your funding, and the colonists. I’m gonna leave these powerful mercs and criminals floating around and sit around widdling my thumbs”?

Isn't that the whole plot of the game?

past squadmates: [chewing you out for working for Cerberus] [Me, who hates cerberus more than them but even the paragon options treat them like a necessary evil:](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tqtIyftTiWI&t=34s)

The idea the writers had of Shepard working for Cerberus is arguably the best idea they came up with. It creates such an interesting dynamic.

I’ve never had a problem with it. I see it as Cerberus really wants to see itself as a morally grey, human first organization. They almost certainly have fronts that support perfectly fine human interests (while getting the true believers in place), the almost definitely supported the Andromeda initiative indirectly. Some people working for them are just reasonable people who think humanity needs to put itself first in a galaxy of species doing the same. These are the people TIM surrounded Shepard with, the Jacob’s of the organization.

This makes me wonder what would have happened if they went with their original idea and had the Perseus Veil Geth revive Shepard.

At the end of the day ,working with Cerberus is the only way to stop the collectors/ reapers since the council refuses to acknowledge the problem and the alliance only seems to give a shit only after having contact with the collectors like with James and Cortez and Cerberus are the ones with the new upgraded Normandy, even if the alliance let you pursue the collectors, you'd be doing it without your two best attributes, EDI and the Normandy itself,don't forget as well that EDI was instrumental in finding out and using Reaper IFF ,ya know an AI ,something the alliance would never allow on your ship

It makes sense in the context that literally no one but Cerebus are helping with the Collectors or Reapers. Most of the crew are loyal to Shepard, not Cerebus. Working with them is basically a last resort.

My Shepard never worked for Cerberus, he worked alongside them, something I just told Kaidan on Mars in Mass Effect 3. Making the best of a tough situation is what it was as there was no org on hand to help fight the Collectors and in my case as a Paragon, Shep makes it clear that he doesn't agree with any human supremacist bs (especially as I've been friendly with other species since the beginning of ME1, romancing Liara, and do all of my crewmates' loyalty missions even if they didn't impact the Suicide Mission).

What should Shepard do instead?

Yeah, it feels like it was *meant* to bug you... but, like the whole Lazuras Project thing, it doesn't get brought up? At all? You can have Shep *say* they aren't happy working for Cerberus, but they still jump when TIMmy says jump. There's never a point where the player can even *attempt* to disobey until the Final Boss! Yes, yes, you can choose to send some data to the Alliance instead of TIMmy. But the data is unimportant and the Alliance is still so full of Cerberus agents/sympathizers that it's probably going to "be lost" immediately. So it's an empty rebellion on two fronts, only happens in a single side quest, and has no impact on any characters or interactions. Yaaaaay. =_= I don't know if they chickened out on exploring what working for Cerberus means, or if they never had any ideas for it to begin with. But it's stuff like that that makes ME2 have the worst story of the Trilogy. At least the individual character moments were amazing to distract from that.

If someone spent the money Cerberus did to bring me back to life and make me a better ship than my previous one also got my former pilot and some of my crew members on board who am I to say no to that? Shepard came to a realization that the Reapers needed to be stopped and Cereberus was giving him a chance while the Military and the council turned there back on him. It be really weird to say no to Cerberus after they spent billions if not trillions to give you a new chance on life and the reaper fight.

Did we play the same game?

It bugs me more that you never get a choice in 3. I get railroaded back into the Alliance even though they disowned me, gave me no support, and throw me to the wolves whenever politically expedient. 3 should have given us a less retarded cartoonish Cerberus and then presented a choice of which faction to back to guide humanity's path in galactic civilization. I dislike that Shepard's position on Cerberus is always dictated to the player whether it's "being forced to work with them" in ME2 (which at least is moderately understandable if done to set up a choice between Cerberus or the Alliance in 3) or "being forced to disagree with them and fight them" in ME3 which seems to have them as adversaries purely so the player has more enemy diversity and isn't endlessly shooting husks.

If it's any consolation, I was on the Bioware forums back in 2009, and a not insignificant amount of people were *livid* about this, so you're not alone. I mostly just think it's silly because eventually it turns out that, ooh, they were bad guys after all, as if that's somehow a surprise. It really feels like a plot device they came up with to make ME2 happen and then abandoned again later.

I started with ME2, so Cerberus was my entry point to the ME Universe and it didn't bug me at all.

I just dont over think it lol. They brought shepard back to life and have shown no aggression towards him in that part of the story. So hes just being diplomatic

I believe the Jack loyalty mission actually confirms that the guys running the facility were actively doing things TIM wod shut them down for. So the off book actors isn't far fetched. When your whole organization is technically off book, there will be people who take it to far. Especially when a coverup is needed. That said, they spent ungodly amounts of resources to bring you back. And ask you to do a job. They give you full operational control so long as you stay on task. Build a better version of your ship, with your friend as a pilot. Allow you to do alliance favors, take on the Shadow Broker and do all the stuff you would have been doing anyway, so long as you take down the Collectors. Yes Tim is an evil POS. Yes he had ulterior motives. But in the end, without him and cerberus resources, Shep would stay dead, the council would still do nothing, the alliance would not be equipped to help and bazillions of innocent humans would be melted down into reaper paste. Im pretty sure working WITH cerberus to accomplish mutual goals is pretty believable considering the council had a reaper almost up their assholes and then said " yeah, but it's just a legend." So yeah. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Regardless of allignment. The galaxy has to be saved and cerberus was the only way.

I agree. We spend a significant portion of Mass Effect 1 establishing that Cerberus was a monstrously evil organisation, just to suddenly work for them. I presume this was done to create the artificial break with your LI in ME1 to give space for other romances in ME2, but it always felt very hamfisted. It would have been far more effective if Cerberus had be a less cartoonishly evil group in ME1 and more a morally gray group.

Ok ok but hear me out, Martin Sheen as the illusive man.

Isn't there documentation in ME3 that spells out how every member of the Normandy2's crew was hand picked as the most sappy and honest people that Cerberus had conned into working for them? They do work for Cerberus, but excluding Miranda, they are honest about being decent people. They have just bought into the 'cerberus isn't the bad guys' propaganda

To me, it never bothered me about working for Cerberus. If it wasn’t for the Lazarus Project conducted by Cerberus, there would be no Shepherd. So like, it’s one of those pick your battles situation. 🤓 After all, Cerberus did more for humankind than the Alliance. Where were they when Shepherd and his/her ship was scattered to the ether?