First posted February 2022.

I’ve genuinely played the Mass Effect trilogy so many times I’ve utterly lost count, so anything about this game being new to me is itself a novelty. But I recently picked up the Legendary Edition, which includes all the DLC, some of which I hadn’t previously played. Bring Down the Sky is one of the new missions to me, and it sparked a lot of thought about one of my favourite things about this trilogy, and about Shepard as a character.

Before we talk about Bring Down the Sky, however, I’m going to backtrack a little bit to the story of Doctor Saleon.

In the first Mass Effect game, we meet Garrus Vakarian, a turian C-Sec (Citadel Security) officer, yelling at his supervisor about an investigation of his that’s being shut down. Luckily, Commander Shepard is on the trail of the same investigation, and the two of them are able to join forces in pursuit of rogue Spectre agent and potential assistant to the destruction of the galaxy, Saren.

Aboard the Normandy, Shepard chats occasionally with members of her crew. The krogan mercenary, Urdnot Wrex, has some fun stories about some of his past missions, and asari scientist Dr. Liara T’Soni has a charming journey re-learning how to talk to people rather than just chatting to the rocks at her dig sites. Garrus, the hot-headed relentless pursuer of justice that we met on the Citadel, shows how earned his reputation is, bluntly sharing his opinion that Saren’s apprehension must be achieved at any cost.

He illustrates why he holds this view with a story of one of his past investigations: the case of Doctor Saleon. A salarian geneticist and classic mad scientist, Saleon was caught using his employees as incubators for organs he intended to sell on the black market. When C-Sec went to shut the operation down, they found that Saleon knew he’d been discovered, and had fled the Citadel with all his equipment and employees in tow. Garrus asked Citadel Defense to shoot the doctor’s ship down, but C-Sec countermanded his order due to the hostages present on-board.

Shepard is given at this point, as with countless points in the series, the option to either agree with Garrus or agree with C-Sec. I prefer to play a more Paragon Shepard, for reasons I’ll get to later in this essay, and thus my Shepard agrees with C-Sec. It’s a difficult situation, of course; Garrus argues that the hostages would continue to suffer if Saleon escaped with them, and Shepard won’t discard innocent lives if there’s a possibility that her goal can be accomplished without sacrificing them.

Garrus hasn’t given up on seeing justice done to Saleon, and has in fact tracked his present whereabouts. Shepard takes the crew out to Saleon’s ship, where they find the doctor, now going by the name ‘Heart,’ holed up in one of the rooms off the bridge. And now, finally, with the doctor in his sight, Garrus is going to end this.

Except Shepard tells him to stand down. She insists they arrest Saleon and take him back to C-Sec for questioning, hoping for information that will prevent this from happening again, and potentially help any of his surviving victims, should there be any to find.

Saleon instigates a fight rather than being taken alive, and in the ensuing shoot-out, he dies anyway. Garrus asks what the point of Shepard’s moral declaration was if Saleon was just going to die either way.

In one of my favourite moments of the whole trilogy, Shepard tells him.

“You can’t predict how people will act, Garrus. But you can control how you’ll respond. In the end, that’s what really matters.”

Both Shepard and Garrus want to do the right thing, but what constitutes the right thing is different for each of them at this point. Garrus believes justice is the right thing, while Shepard believes it is mercy. An eye for an eye, as Garrus will thoroughly illustrate later in Mass Effect 2 — ‘and the whole world goes blind,’ Shepard might add.

There was never a guarantee that Saleon would continue his work after leaving the Citadel. There was never a guarantee that the hostages would die in his care. Shepard trusted in hope, in optimism even without grounds to do so, and in her ability to end the situation without innocent casualties if the opportunity was afforded her again. Before this mission, Garrus whole-heartedly believed that the ends always justify the means. When Shepard goes to talk to him again after this mission, he says, “You’ve taught me to look for the right way through, not just the fastest.” She teaches him through the Saleon mission that doing the right thing matters just as much in the process as it does in the end.

Cut back to Bring Down the Sky. A group of batarian terrorists have hijacked an asteroid originally being brought to a human colony for scientific study. Now, the asteroid is bearing down on Terra Nova, threatening thousands of lives. Shepard and her crew land on the asteroid to shut down the propelling torches and save the day.

The mission isn’t over once all the torches have been shut down; Balak, the head of the terrorist group, has captured the human scientists on the asteroid and is holding them hostage. Shepard goes to confront him and finds he has rigged the station so that if he dies, explosives will ensure the hostages die, too.

This is an opportunity for Shepard to put her money where her mouth is after her run-in with Saleon. It’s easy to tell Garrus his desire to eradicate Saleon no matter the cost was wrong; is it as easy to let Balak go?

Ultimately, Paragon Shepard lets Balak leave the asteroid in exchange for the hostages’ lives. Several characters express doubt that Balak should go free, but Shepard confidently claims she knows she hasn’t seen the last of him and that she intends to take care of the situation when it arises again.

And because I’ve played the whole trilogy, I know she does, in fact, see him again. In Mass Effect 3, Balak finds Shepard on the Citadel and holds her at gunpoint. In the intervening time between their meetings, the batarians have lost their homeworld due to the Reapers and their forces dwindle. Balak holds Shepard responsible for the loss of his people and intends to make it right by killing her. The options then facing Shepard are to turn the tables and kill him first, or persuade him to add what remains of the batarian troops to her cause and help her to fight their common enemy: the Reapers. Of course, Paragon Shepard chooses the latter, bolstering her forces for the final battle and inching closer to victory not just for her, but for the whole galaxy.

This is essentially the ideal outcome of the Saleon case. Though it would be a stretch to say Balak himself has changed, there is at least enough good will in him to know what the real fight is (namely, the Reapers, not Shepard) and to be persuaded into being an asset, rather than another corpse in the Citadel’s morgue. Shepard gave him that chance by letting him go on Asteroid X57.

Likewise, Saleon had a chance after Citadel Defense let him go. Shepard was willing to give him the opportunity to prove he had changed, to seek rehabilitation, to contribute to the cause. He wasn’t willing to take it, but that is no reflection on the rightness or wrongness of Shepard’s actions. For my money, I think she did the right thing. It was on Saleon to make the right choice; he didn’t, and Shepard did what had to be done in that situation.

This is why I always come back to playing Paragon. Shepard’s Renegade tendencies are entirely warranted; hell, I’ve wanted to punch that quarian general in the face myself! But what is so immensely satisfying about playing Paragon is that you have the rare opportunity to do the right thing and have it make an observable difference. You clearly see the ripple effects of your actions; even when they feel hollow and insufficient in the moment, somewhere later down the line, you’ll see you made the right choice, and how it mattered. I as the player know what the outcomes of those actions will be, but even so, it feels good to make the right decision for Shepard, who doesn’t know yet whether that action will have been worth it.

Playing Mass Effect during a pandemic, I’m really feeling that last bit in particular. Making the right choice these days is not fun. I don’t have a good time not leaving my flat, not going to art galleries or the ballet, not having birthday and anniversary meals in restaurants, not seeing movies in cinemas and not visiting friends. And it’s hard to see that point up ahead somewhere in the future where this sacrifice will have been worth it. I don’t get to see the people I keep safe by staying home. It’s impossible to tell concretely how many people I’ve kept out of the hospital by not being a conveyance vector. I just have to trust that it matters that I’ve done the right thing for now, and that perhaps someday in the future, I will have given someone the opportunity to make the world a little bit better in one way or another.