Picking a Virmire survivor in the first Mass Effect is the first of many brutal decisions Shepard has to make in the fight against the Reapers. Choosing between two of your squadmates - the two that have been with you since the beginning - is the perfect way to gear you up for the emotional rollercoaster you'll get in future games, with there not always being a correct answer. Except here it's Kaidan, obviously. But never mind that.
It's a tough decision, and one that's been debated for years. However, those of us playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition on PC can now skip it altogether. Thanks to a new mod from NexusMods user Vegz, both Ashley and Kaidan can survive the Virmire mission. They will both even appear in the sequels, sticking with Shepard until the end.
The mod works by using cut dialogue from the first Mass Effect, in which both Ashley and Kaidan make it to the end-mission briefing after Virmire. In this cut conversation, the pair praise Shepard for saving them both, not able to believe that anyone could pull that off. Check it out below if you haven't heard it before, it's pretty surreal.
Of course, this only makes one part of the mod possible. After that, Vegz also has to get all the Kaidan and Ashley scenes to play out in 2 and 3.
An Alpha build of the mod is available to download now. It'll get the job done, albeit with a few technical hiccups, such as Ashely struggling to sit on her seat, and Kaidan not looking at Shepard when they're talking. It will also default to Ashley being saved at the end in order to make the save file compatible with Mass Effect 2, but this will be fixed in a future build.
Vegz is still working on getting the mod working with the sequels, but it should carry over in the future. This will likely mean giving one of the Virmire survivors priority for certain scenes (such as meeting them on Horizon), possibly based on whoever Shepard was closest to. But for now, it's the perfect way to have a less stressful start to your adventures in the Milky Way.