#I think Ash would get a kick out of killing geth with a geth weapon

[death-rebirth-senshi]

What gun to give Ashley the eternal question

[boneconstruct]

Just need to have a bit of a ramble about mass effect 3 after watching some YouTube videos today, sorry this is so long!

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I saw a video on YouTube by Revan 100 showing their mod that replaces Kai Leng with Kaidan/Ashley in mass effect 3. They use whichever one was left on Virmire. I'm gonna refer to the virmire casualty as 'K/A' and the one who didn't get blown up as the virmire survivor/ VS.

K/A are masked up and completely silent at first in the mod, then I think they get unmasked in the Thessia fight and I was like damn, that's actually genius!

On a first playthrough the reveal of the virmire casualty to the player would have been so jaw dropping. In-universe to Shepard it would be an absolute kick in the teeth, another decision that's come back to literally haunt him when they're already having guilt-ridden nightmares about all the people they've lost because of their decisions.

The shock of the unmasking could absolutely give K/A an opening in a cutscene to take down Shepard while they're in shock and that's how they win on Thessia without seeming too plot-armoured.

This is an improvement on Kai Leng in every way, not just in being less annoying in personality, but also thematically. The whole thing with mass effect is that the choices you make have consequences for the characters and the universe.

This decision you made 2 whole games ago has completely changed the course of K/A's life -and their relationship to you - so dramatically. I know it would lose some of its impact after the first playthrough but you'll also have the tragedy in future playthroughs of knowing what could have been. This person who's your most bitter rival and enemy in this playthrough...was your loyal teammate or even lover the last time you played (and they even criticised you for working with Cerberus in ME2 & 3 when they lived! Definitely some fun dramatic irony or meme potential there).

It does seem out of character for Kaidan in particular to join Cerberus, but Miranda talks about wanting in the past to put a control chip in Shepard. We know from me2 Cerberus can rebuild people who are just meat and tubes, and we know from citadel dlc they can clone, so Bioware could have even gone down the route of "they were rebuilt (or cloned from multiple DNA samples on virmire and the SR1 wreckage) and then cerberus had a control chip implanted."

For the illusive man it absolutely makes sense he'd have an ace up his sleeve to drop on you, maybe he'd even originally planned to 'gift' the rebuilt K/A to Shepard for their team in ME2 but they weren't ready yet, or they were too unstable so they had to put in the control chip and TIM was like "yeah they're probably not gonna be cool with us presenting them with a brainwashed clone of their dead friend" or maybe TIM just kept K/A as a secret weapon.

And the drama! Imagine if you'd started romancing Kaidan/Ash before you left them behind on Virmire! Or if earlier in ME3 you had to kill the virmire survivor and K/A had additional dialogue for that! What if you could disable the control chip if you were an Engineer (or fulfilled some very specific requirements - like how you could save Mordin or make peace between geth & quarians, but a little harder to do) and there was a secret alternative where after you beat them at Cerberus HQ you could actually recruit them again as a war asset?

Maybe you could even have them as a teammate??? They'd only need unique dialogue for the earth mission since Cerberus HQ is the lock in point of no return, and their powers and teammate AI are already in the game for if they're the VS and on your team in ME3.

I also think the catalyst should have taken the form of either K/A or whoever you romanced rather than some random kid... but let's not open that can of worms.