Morality System | Mass Effect 1 Wiki

Morality System in Mass Effect is determined by Paragon And Renegade Meters. These meters track your choices throughout gameplay. The Paragon meter increases when your choices are noble, cooperative, or self-sacrificing. Paragons achieve their goals by doing the right thing in the right way. The Renegade meter increases when your choices are aggressive, selfish, or ruthless. Renegades achieve their goals by any means necessary.

Mass Effect Conversation System 

The cinematic, choice-based dialogue in Mass Effect lets you fine-tune your character and story using the conversation wheel at the bottom of the screen. Choices on the wheel's left let you explore a conversation in-depth, while choices on the right tend to move the conversation to completion.

When you spend Talent Points on Charm and Intimidate talents, new options appear on the wheel's left that may help conversation outcomes later. Charm options appear in blue text. Intimidate options appear in red. Select your response to play it in a cinematic style. As soon as the conversation wheel appears, you can select your response. Your character speaks the line at the dramatically appropriate time. Also, you can interrupt or skip a line of dialogue by pressing X button. 

During Character Creation, you must be aware that there are ideal choices depending on whether you prefer to play a “good” Paragon, or a “bad” Renegade.

Use the combinations identified here to dictate your background selection and gain the best possible bonuses for your new character:

• Paragon: A Spacer, War Hero gains the best Paragon point bonus.
• Renegade: An Earthborn, Ruthless background yields the best Renegade point bonus.
• Neutral Mix: Any other combination of Pre-Service History and Psychological Profile provides a neutral point bonus. 

Dialogue options on Mass Effect Missions

In Mass Effect, you interact with a lot of NPCs, Companions or Bosses through dialogue. Such dialogues can be useful sources of information regarding what to do and what is currently going on as well as massive revelations that can shake the foundations of the game. In some dialogues, you can choose mostly between two choices. A good-hearted, cooperative, self-sacrificing choice, nets you Paragon points, while a selfish, evil and violent one rewards you with Renegade points.

These tables reflect the part of the dialogues where you can get either some Paragon or Renegade points during the main Missions of the game.