Mass Effect 2 - What Happens If Shepard Dies? (Plus ME3 Consequences) 

Oh Right, The Clone!

That would be an interesting "What if".

That should have been the answer to starting ME3 if he dies in ME2 People would ask the clone about stuff from ME2 and he’d be like “I did that? Uh yeah! I did that!”

I was about to say they could have pulled the clone out of the fridge and make you play as them but they have no recollection of the events of me2 and even does stuff without the player’s choice that be pretty cool

Actually, I think by this point Rasa (Maya Brooks) has already stolen the Shepard clone body from Cerberus. That would be a really cool alternative way to continue the story if the real Shepard dies at the end of ME2 though!

hahaha

Your Shep looks like a weird sci Fi version of Bubbles from trailer park boys

@@MemeticVirus True😂

I think he made his character so terrible looking, just so he didn't feel so bad about killing everyone off (especially this particular dumb ass of a Commander)! 😆

@@VictorythroughUnity59 I would do the same, you get too attached to them (Especially Garrus) to just let them die like that

Her enormous ass held her back ☹

Performance anxiety

I always find that funny, considering her boasting that everything about her was designed to be perfect, including biotics.

@@isaiahgeorge906 Yeah, this is one that I have the least sympathy for people making the "wrong decision", unlike the pipe-infiltration task. There's a lot of discussion about how Jack is an experimental class of super-biotic. And in character class Miranda is a split-class while Jack is a pure biotic. Why wouldn't you pick her?

@@dark7element I always pick Jack on my paragon playthroughs because it have a lot of meaning for Jack to be trusted with the life of others.

ME3 doesn't deserve me playing as well)))

It would been amusing if there was just a hopeless cut scene because Shepard can't save them, woulda cried at first I'm sure but with time

considering I've tried twice and uninstalled that steaming heap twice, I'd say good. If I see another room full of GD CHEST HI WALLS!!!!!

Maybe an Elcor too.

Just a random Hanar... or Blasto?

@@welkingunther5417The Hamlet Elcor.

I'll explain this if anyone is interested, but I wonder if anyone here will recognize this. A hanar gamer with a krogan sized mech suite and "N00B ST0MPER" decalled on the side.

@@nmartinez18 explain please

I wore them joints for like one mission and then took em off 😂

Yeah it shows that Mass effect 3 ending with liara saying "we fought hard but lost"

If Shepard dies I think it should have right at the start cut to Liara's message at the end of ME3 for the refuse option.

I wish ME3 started with the Reapers showing up, Anderson says “Well fuck…” and then just a shot of earth exploding.

It would've been cool to have a "what if" scenario in case you had this ME2 ending... A missed opportunity, i would say

@@UncomfortableShoes Admiral Anderson: "Well, too bad Shepard didn't survive the Collector base." Admiral Hackett: "Yeah. We're fucked. Hackett out."

"...despite his poor taste in eyewear." Shit 🤣🤣🤣

@@mouscedess she's not rude, she's lovely

@@mouscedess she’s only rude if u make her rude 99% of the time she’s such a sweet heart

@@mouscedess hmm well I havnt played ME1 as much as the others currently in a middle of a play through of 1 will have to keep a eye on her. I might just not of noticed

@@mouscedess Thank God, I'm not the only one who felt Tali's demeanor is somewhat rude in ME3 (and also in ME2 but I assumed it's due to the crap she's been going through during that time).

I was thinking the same thing, though I’m surprised he can be standing and talking to Illusive man after losing EVERYONE, especially Shepard. I’d be breaking down somewhere.

I think I got the ending where everyone survived on my first ME2 playthrough (somehow).

@@JustAnotherRandomPersonOnline It took me two playthroughs myself. I take responsibility for losing Tali as I forgot to upgrade the shields but I’m still salty that I lost my engineer because apparently Zaeed, a leader of the Blue Suns, wasn’t a good enough leader in Bioware’s opinion

@@Weirdaljackson if you'd listen to his stories you'd know that noone survives in them except for him

@@Weirdaljackson dudes a survivor not a leader

@@Weirdaljackson the choices are easy, but those damn deaths related to not upgrading the ship always catches you off guard on the first playthrough

he is a guy that listened to Jacob advices.

Literally read this comment when he said it

Sounds like a quote from the Psychopath playthrough.

I caught The Great Muppet Caper vibes from that one :D

Morale can make or break the way a soldier fights. War is just as much psychological as it is physical. War is basically breaking your enemy. Making him not wanna get up and fight you.

"Hey, if being friends in XCOM 2 gives buffs then I don't see why ME 2 can't do the same. Unless, that's just XCOM, baby."

Its a real thing, when you trust and like the person you work under, you'll give everything you got not just for yourself, but them as well. If you work for someone you hate then not only will it be harder to see their bigger picture, you may have second thoughts about working for them in the middle of a job, not something you want happening in a firefight

The real suicide mission is the friendship we made along the way

Motivation.

Garrus "great, now the other side looks like varren food too"

God that's fucked....

@@ethanpotts2915 But funny

Not assuming direct control!

Angel: No, miss, you cant just... Spirit of Jack: HOLD ME, because I will now crawl out of the coffin and launch it at the one who brought me there!

:(

damn, if that isn't a kick while one is down.

That is a very good point.

Bothered me that Shepard drops into to his death in the Collector base and then it blew up but he’s got a coffin. What did they put in there? His fish?

That's cold blooded.

That's just evil man.

I don't like your friend.

I sent thane in on my first run because he seemed to have experience in the whole infiltration thing

The only one that's not obvious is Mordin with the Normandy Escort, and that's because the mechanics of the Hold The Line segment are: 1: Not visible in any way 2: Not relevant before or after the segment 3: Not even set up to be a thing beforehand To elaborate on that third one, what I mean is that there's no indication throughout the mission that there will be a scene where all of your best fighters will lock down a room and hold out for as long as possible. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it'd be pretty unreasonable to know that that's going to happen, but it still contributes to the lack of information available for the decision on who to pick for the Normandy Escort. The problem with the Normandy Escort choice is that the logic of who to pick is essentially the opposite of the logic for every other choice. For every other choice, you are picking the best person for the job (Garrus/Miranda/Zaeed for the diversion teams, Tali/Kasumi/Legion for hacking, Jack/Samara/Morinth for Biotics), and the options are mostly obvious, with a bit of wiggle room here and there for a mistake or two. Maybe you picked Mordin for the vent hack since he's a Salarian and they are the quickest thinkers in the galaxy (not to mention he's ex STG and was mentioned earlier in the game to have wiped out a merc squad with mechs with "a few taps of his omni-tool"), you'd have picked the wrong character but there's definitely logic to pick him, but obviously the team hacker Tali, the literal supercomputer Legion and the master-thief Kasumi are the more logical choices. For the team leaders you have either Garrus or Miranda. I reckon most people will pick Garrus because not only does he have experience leading a team that we hear a lot about during this game, he's also a lot more respected than Miranda, who's known as the cold-blooded Cerberus Cheerleader and as much as she might be competent at leading a team, some members of the team probably don't like the idea of taking orders from her. At least, those were my reasons for choosing Garrus, but I wanted Garrus in my squad later and put Miranda in charge for the second diversion team. For the Biotic segment your choices are Jacob (obviously not, no disrespect to the guy, but c'mon), Thane (same as with Jacob. He's good, but he's nothing special when it comes to Biotics), Samara/Morinth, Jack and Miranda. Samara and Morinth are good choices because they are Asari, and because of the Asari's conscious control of their own nervous systems they are naturally the best Biotics in the galaxy. Then you have Jack (my choice since Miranda was leading the second diversion team, and I was romancing her in the Let's Play), who due to her being a victim of intense abuse and experimentation as a child for the purpose of developing as strong a biotic as possible is the most dangerous human biotic. Miranda was genetically created (not birthed) to be perfect in every way, and so you could naturally assume she's a very strong Biotic. Miranda isn't the best choice for this segment, but given what we know about her, it's reasonable for someone to make the mistake of choosing her, but there's more than enough information in the game to make the right choice. Then you have the Normandy Escort, where apparently any squadmate who is loyal will get through their segment with 0 casualties or errors, in fact the only failure or death that results from this choice is whether or not the squadmate you choose is needed for the Hold The Line segment (again, there's no setup or indication that this segment even exists, but that's not the worst part). The bit that the game doesn't tell you about is that whoever you send to escort the Normandy crew will not return for the rest of the mission, which absolutely changes the choice completely. For this segment, you're not choosing the best person to keep the Normandy crew safe, you're choosing the person most likely to die in the Hold The Line segment, which is Mordin (if he's not in your Squad for the Reaper battle). I chose Grunt as the Normandy escort (my only reservation for this was that he might get lost or hit a dead end or otherwise take too long, but apparently none of that matters) as he is literally the strongest fighter on the team. His whole role is the heavy-hitter, he's the genetically pure Krogan super soldier who was literally created with Collector technology, who's primary advantage is genetic modifaction and experimentation. He has a massive shotgun that is powerful enough to shatter a human arm with its recoil and Edi explains that he has fully-formed primary, secondary and tertiary organs where applicable. I chose Grunt because he was the toughest and most resilient fighter on the team and he was escorting a crew of doctors and engineers who had just been freed from paralysis and had no weapons or armour. You could absolutely write a reason for Mordin (or someone else) to be the better choice, but no such writing or reason exists in this segment. Grunt gets the crew back with no issue, but so does everyone else as far as I'm aware (as long as they're loyal). Even choosing Grunt for the Normandy Escort, I believe it's still possible to salvage the mission and keep everybody alive if you kept everyone loyal and alive until the Hold The Line segment and have 2 squad mates left behind who have a defense stat of 4. In my Let's Play, Garrus and Zaeed would have had to be in the crew holding off the Collectors in order for everyone to survive, but I chose Garrus and Tali for my squad because they're my favourite characters, meaning Zaeed was the only "strong" character left behind, resulting in Mordin dying right before the mission was over (as in, the playable section was over and it was literally just the final cutscene playing, the game really ripped victory from me like that).

Or at the very least Achievement unlocked: “Oops!”

@@UncomfortableShoes No, the achievement name should be “Critical Mission Failure”

@@kaismith9388 No, the achievement name should be "I Should Go"

Just go full troll and call it "kitten is screaming."

Should be "Canon?"

Shepard: I have complete faith in you *Mordin leaves* Shepard:Dibs on his stuff

"Had to be me... someone else might have gotten it right."

The fact that Mordin just stands there really cracks me up xD He really was confused

You have really screwed up when Mordin is speechless.

@@BigDanGaming *lmaooooooo*

They should've had a big crack in Tali's mask.

@@matthewpatrick7263 That would be a grim yet neat detail.

i killed her in the game to, i felt so terrible. She was one of my favorite characters, and she was nice to my character.

I restarted the whole legendary trilogy only to romance Tali because I fucked it up in an earlier playthrough

@@jamiebrinkhuijsen6059 What happened that fucked it up?

It really does take a concentrated effort to be bad.

Or be 12 years old like I was on my first Playthrough and just not understand what I'm suppose to be doing.

@@Fau1ted I believe it. You do certain missions too early which forces the end game so you do that and don't do any companion missions so everybody dies xD

When I got the Insanity trophy for ME 2 back in the day, I tried to be as deliberately bad as possible to minimize the length of the playthrough. I did no loyalty missions, I didn't recruit people, and I went straight through the relay as fast as I could. While I hate playing this badly on purpose, I highly recommend it for such a feat, because you still get the trophy. You don't get bonus points for doing the whole game, and it reduces the amount of stress you have to endure otherwise.

@@Kratosx23 That's not a bad idea. Then there's me who tried to do literally everything while getting the insanity trophy...sigh

Shepard's a cheesy bastard.

i like that Big Dan gaming was picking dialogue choices like "we will honor those who fell" while actively meticulously planning how to get the next batch killed. I guess he didn't want them to know he was purposefully getting them killed 😬 because he felt bad enough about it as it is. Like those movie death scenes where someone comforts a fearful, dying person person saying they feel so cold, by telling them, they're going to be alright, that the wound (which disemboweled them or similar) is nothing but a scratch....

I thought the 60 something year old mercenary veteran would've been a decent pick, but I guess he's not good with leading, just killing.

@@allhandsondik7803 I mean all of his war stories are about leading teams to certain death and being the sole survivor. Make an inference dude!

@@darkchild130 lol, fair. But in ME2 I didn't particularly care for him, I'm a lawful stupid paragon so his first action, being willing to sacrifice dozens of lives for revenge didn't sit well with me, plus he just wasn't that interesting in 2, just an old mercenary, so I didn't pay him much mind. Still didn't want him to die, so I reset the suicide mission, and thank God I did cause hes easily one of my favorites in 3 for how little time you get with him.

@@allhandsondik7803 he’s one of my favourites

Need experience? Time to send in the tank baby

Dude... ROFL I can’t get that image out of my head! Lol

Wilhem scream intensifies

"the icing on this shitpile of a cake sucide run" im fucking wheezing hahahahahahah

Honestly thought he was just gonna not make the jump lol

Laughed my ass off this comment, what an appropriate ending

"You're not Shepard, that might just be a good thing."

Mass Effect III: The Phantom Pain

@@perrytran9504 Perhaps in Mass Effect V

*“Shit, i think that’s a rocket.”*

@@Dementia_Springtrap lmao

He just had PTSD from previous rocket

@@Dementia_Springtrap dude's one of the best fighters on the team and has a horrible reaction time in that moment

Mordin doesn't like holding the line, he prefers get job done and go home.

@@michaeledmunds7056 This! Someone pays attention :D

He specifically mentions that he doesn't like that stuff though, calls Kirahe a cloaca and everything for his "military bravado"

@@allhandsondik7803 forget mordin how is jack the same level as kasumi and tali

@@sumithhebbar Kasumi & Tali weren't fighters per se. while they have no problems holding their own in fights, they're the types who'd rather not due not to personal preferences, but the fact that they don't have both the hardware & software to handle hardcore, full-frontal firefights with the only way out being surviving them. Jack, on the other hand, was the undoubtedly severely damaged, & the most nihilistic one of the bunch. a broken shell of a person who was barely holding together deep down, & wanted little more than to die in a blaze of glory, despite all that talk about living the high life killing & stealing. being that mentally fragile impacts one's performance just as severely as lack of skills & physicality would in such a high-stress situation.

Walks out if the ship with a basket full of panties.

@@mysteryman4915 Mass Effect Generator

If you look in the background to the left when he's on comm with Mordin, you see Kasumi try to cross cover and get fuckin' bushwhacked

Lmaooo that does sound like what Kasumi would do

Sounds like her.

Space hamster only has one conversation choice: “………………… squeak”

"I should squeak"

@@Matt20264 "squeeak aggressively"

Conrad Verner

Go for the eyes!

And I can't stop laughing with these comments. Like with a train wreck... wait no!

Yeah I was thinking the same until I started reading the comments and LMAO!!!!!

No

@@phil0934 No

@@joeydahl9594 No

I dunno, for all the Top Gun talk he had in the first game. He's basically batting 0-2 against the collectors.

I also didn't know about the ship upgrades either

@@bobchipman4473 To be fair, going up against the Collector ship in the SSV Normandy is not all that far from having a ww2 prop plane go against a modern 5th gen jet fighter one on one. without the critical upgrades, even the SR2 would be akin to a 3rd gen going up against a 5th gen.

@@FalconWindblader that‘s why you need a 3.65 gen against a 5 gen with some IKEA modular 2nd gen upgrades then it‘s like a ww3 tesla against a normal hummer

ME TOO! I didn't do any of the upgrades and saw thane and jack and legion die and i was crushed 😭

*Benny Hill theme intensifies*

“It’s Joking time.”

That would be insanity+

"What was I supposed to do? Break my arm at them?"

ME3 would be over in the opening cut scene when the Reapers land and blast the whole Alliance council when normally Shepard gets blasted back against the wall. If it were Joker he's dead right there. Every bone in his body obliterated.

@@billsutherby Joker might not even be there actually. He would probably still be working for the Illusive Man, or maybe he quit and is on the run from Cerberus.

EDI is Joker's Stand?... Alright, I'll go along with this.

@@cha0sxiii63 shouldn't it be EDI ACT II since she want from a holographic ball to a robot lady

Sad plot twist though: Joker is VERY breakable.

@@FantasticDimensions Well, what else can he really do in a fight? Break his arm at the enemy?

Sounds like a porn title lol

I skipped this part, too hard to bear.

It was also hard to see him lose Mordin, Thane, Grunt and best girl Tali.

I had to skip the door closing scene when I saw he chose Garrus for that role

I almost exclusively play female heroes and take the lesbian options when available in games. That said, Garrus is the *only* male character I ever willingly romance. He's just that great. So losing Garrus is *never* an option.

For real, though. Garrus is always my space bro. Doesn't matter if I'm playing paragon or renegade, I take Garrus on every mission and guard him with my life.

As far as I know, if you didn't do any loyalty missions, it's fairly easy to get this. Especially without DLC. Like, 4 or 5 people die before you even let then hold the line. The 2 with you die. Whoever 3 or 4 people you left to defend some will die. And you need at least 2 survivors so I imagine it's hard to avoid unless your aware that using miranda for everything will keep them alive

@@theelderworm9134 it seems so unlikely that someone would play through the entire game but never do a single loyalty mission though.

@@Aplesedjr this is very true. Its extremely rare. I suppose I meant only if you didn't do any missions. If you didn't actively try to do the loyalty missions

Aside from the Normandy upgrades (except the shields I think) Loyal squadmates have the lowest priority of dying in situations like holding the line, the game always go for unloyal ones before the ones who are loyal (but the hold the line segment might sill get you a loyal squadmate dead if the score ecuation is not high enough).

I got it my first run because i was too lazy to do sidequests

I’ve always figured/head canon’d that she gets hit directly by the beam and vaporized. It already looks like it hits her head on if not by inches and even by that merit it wouldn’t matter she’d still get vaporized. I think BioWare just didn’t want to outright vaporize one your teammates which I think is lame. Also to add more on I like how now despite the CIC being thoroughly breached, nothing is getting sucked out the damage into the void, including Jacks non vaporized corpse

Way overpowered

Well, they still have EDI and Liara to drag them down. No Shepherd means no James placed under his command

"I am a great wind, that will sweep all before me like a...... A great wind"

This one will destroy the Reapers solo.

@@jasonitaliano8631 maybe Ash/Kaidan can lead

I could see joker shelling out all of his money for augmentations he could fight without his vrollicks syndrome getting in the way. I want this game now.

They could have made you play as the other gender and changed some dialog. Damn, now I want that.

Mass effect 3 jokers revenge They could do it tbh the missions wouldn't really need to change just dialogue and some explanation about joker having gotten a bunch of augmentation, in order to justify its logic in universe say hes not gonna live long because of how extreme they were but hes determined to take the reapers down with him, would be really cool and then we could bang the normady like we always wanted

Doesn’t Garrus’ Shadow Broker dossier say his potential as a leader is stifled by living in Shep’s shadow? Would’ve been interesting to see him ‘protagonize’ in ME3. Not in the timeline of Dan’s video here, though…

If you kept the base it would be easy to get the bodies. Otherwise, probably empty coffins for ceremonial purposes

@@JohnCena-fd5yw before shipping out: Joker, i need you to order enough coffins for all of us, for uh ceremonial purposes

@@JinKee i dunno man, the navy is weird

@@JinKee DOnt forget that the crew also has a right to coffins and everyone knew it was a suicide mission.

They’re symbolic ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The whole kit is hilariously awful

Not to mention it's in pink!

If you dont have at least 2 other squad mates after the human reaper fight he will but you have to deliberately go for that ending

same

A 1000 years experience of working alone, that is.

i dont think samara is 1000 years old

Having experience isn't equal to experience being a leader though

It's funny how miranda actually compliments your choice if you pick samara

@@n1ghtwalk3r54 She has no idea what she is talking about in this mission. She recommended herself as the biotech specialist when she was far out of her depth.

Now he no longer is a Turian Two-Face

I don’t know what’s worse watching Garrus die or the armor setup for sheperd in this video

tHeY gOt tHanE

Along with when jack dies too "get to medical!" "ooo there's nothing we can do....not with those things after us 😖" (even though Miranda makes it clear she does not like jack)

I mean he is dying anyway…

Btw, there is a mod that allows you to import a save file with everyone dead.

Nah all it should load the save and show the critical mission failed menu.

Same, bro's out here with the goofy ahh Owlman goggles

So did I. To be fair, I used a guide because I wasn't going to risk Tali or Garrus getting vaped, but the choices were pretty much the ones I would have made organically. Except the Hold the Line calculator. That would have probably caused some casualties.

@@PhoenixT70 it's actually not that hard to get everyone alive, I mean, you have an entire game to see what things each character do correctly, you can see Garrus hold a line by himself for days so you know he can hold the line, you are constantly being reminded that tali is an excellent engineer so you know she would be a perfect tech expert. You have to be incredibly negligent to get this ending without deliberately go for it.

@@mgpsuazo It's actually very ironic that the most probable ending is the most difficult to achieve.

I think more people get their casualty from being unable to resolve the Jack/Miranda drama which really requires meta knowledge or dumb luck than making poor choices in the last scene.

I used no cheats. That’s what makes it more special.

I just realized that after you mentioned it. Maybe he just likes the taste.

Some people do that... ^^

He's the galaxy's richest man, he can afford the expensive packs of smokes...

his cigs seem to somehow be completely infinite so wasting one doesn't matter, they last forever. just speak to him between some of the missions and keep asking the same questions and he will keep toking over and over and it will never burn out

But, if you are going for this ending intentionally, wouldn't getting it be a success?

@@ARatherDapperTapir out here asking the real questions

I thought the same, but maybe Kaiden or Ashley instead and put Vega in the hospital maybe.

Ore you play as the Clone but nobody trusts you. Fore example no matter what you do Kaidan ore Ashley will firmly belive youre with Cerberus, you also wont get any sidmissions from Hackett that regard Cerberus and none of the DLCs are playable. Its also impossible to unit Quarians and Geth, in fact you can not even choose to save as tge Quarians do not trust the Geth Legion clone and take him apart so you can only save the Quarians

They barely even accounted for the player's most basic decisions as it is - killed the rachni queen? Don't worry, the reapers made a new one. Saved her? Well, this time they didn't bother and it's really her. Legion survived? Great. Legion didn't? Here's a copy that has most of the same lines. Expecting them to account for the death of the main character in any way they did not account for the death of everyone else is kind of absurd. Best case scenario, you play a character identical to shepard in every meaningful way who people like to call Shepard because you remind them of him.

@@iusethisnameformygoogleacc1013 the Rachni decision in ME1 *does* affect ME3. If you killed the Queen in ME1, then rescuing the Queen in ME3 will be a really bad idea, and vice versa. The Genophage arc is really clever, with multiple different choices from ME1 and ME2 affecting everything. Wrex, Mordin, Maelon's data, Wreav... I was really surprised to play recently and find how different Wrex is in ME3 depending on if you saved Maelon's data in 2 or not. I feel like most dialogue is changed from him being friendly to him being salty about the data. I agree with you about Legion, though; imo it could have worked without any sort of Geth VI, and had it just play out literally as a war with the Geth, with the choice at the end of the arc locked to only saving the Quarians

So basically do what the anime adaptation did?

Joker going into battle with an atlas Mech sounds amazing. Charging the citadel beam with Anderson on earth in huge robot

I don't think you can kill zaeed on his loyalty mission if you have two squadmates alive as you need two squadmates to leave the normandy (which is also why wrex will always stand down on virmire in ms1 if you haven't recruited Liara or Garrus by that point as there'd otherwise be a point where you only have Tali as a squadmate)

@@appelofdoom8211 Someone did this video about how everyone but Zeed and shepherd can die , then killed Zeed post credits to make save file have only Shepard and joker alive for the 3rd game. Whole series done on killing each teammate and crafted so exactly Zeed at the end with shep

I never finished a game and then immediately start a new one. I did with Mass Effect 2. I romanced Jack and didn’t upgrade so she died. At first I thought it happened to whoever you romanced. Found out online that I fucked up and immediately started over.

Gotta scan those planets or pay the price LOL

​@@Black_Aces don't want your dying frog assassin to have his misery ended by a random girder from nowhere, SCAN THE DAMN PLANETS!!

Conrad Verner Protagonism

Clone Shepherd.

I didn't kill my Shepard but most of my followers were loyal and i never upgraded my ship because I didn't know you could.

it wasnt accidental. on release a lot of people hated the new crew. and wanted to kill most of them

Yeah. I've always wondered what the minimum amount of squadmates that you can do The Suicide Mission with and have everyone survive is.

Miranda, Jacob, Garrus, Mordin, Jack and Grunt are all mandatory for sure. The Horizon mission will not appear until you complete the first four Dossier missions. The Collector Ship mission appears after 5 missions are completed after Horizon. This means you can potentially skip Tali, Samara and Thane by not doing their Dossier missions. After the Collector Ship, you instantly have the option to obtain the Reaper IFF. Once you've done that you can choose to either sell off Legion or simply not activate him. Zaeed and Kasumi can be skipped simply by not recruiting them. With this setup, you do not have a tech specialist for the first part of the Collector Base. Tali, Kasumi and Legion fulfill this role so you will need to recruit one of them. Miranda, Garrus and Jacob (I think) are suitable fire team leaders so you're OK there. Jack and Samara are the only suitable biotic specialists, so you'll need to have Jack do this since you don't have Samara. Anyone can escort the crew, though you'd want your weakest squadmate to do it. Mordin is the ideal pick in this case. When you pick your squad for the final battle, you'd want to take Jack for sure due to her low 'hold the line' score. I can't recall the other scores but Grunt is one of the highest. I think Miranda is probably the best other pick here. This would leave Grunt, Garrus, Legion and Jacob to hold the line. Though personally, I don't think that's enough for them all to survive. Maybe if Zaeed was also holding the line, he might tip the scales give he's a top tier defender alongside Grunt. So my guess is at least 8 are required. The mandatory 6 plus Legion and Zaeed. EDIT: I forgot Tali gives one of the essential upgrades so you'd need to recruit her.

He already made this video

@@jordanwilliams676 I'm guessing that the only non-compulsory character you NEED to recruit is Tali for the role of Tech Specialist and the Shielding Upgrade.

@@jakofthefrost really?