Yeah, I did this too from time to time. The nice thing about the game is that you have both paragon AND renegade meters. Gaining points in one won't lower your points in the other. For dialog you typically want to choose the choice for your character alignment, but for the extra scenes, it's rare that you can choose either/or, which means you're not losing any points in your chosen alignment by viewing an opposite alignment scene. So long as you're morally ok with what your Shep is doing, all the scenes are fair game.



It is annoying, but you'll get a feel pretty quickly for what works best. There are some definite, clear winners. Nothing (in my opinion) is very situational.



Understandable. I slogged through it my first playthrough, but for the second, I cheated.



Not a spoiler:
Keep in mind that the loyalty of your team affects results in the final area of the game (you'll know when you're going there).

Small spoiler that I suggest you read (but you don't have to) in white text:

At one point, the illusive man will tell you about an important find that his team has made. He wants you to go to the find, and retrieve something. It's one of the only non-party-member-related missions, so you'll know what I'm talking about when you get this. Anyway, I strongly suggest you do all of the missions you're interested in before going to that area. It's not the last area, and you can still do whatever you want after coming back from there, but you'll prefer the story consequences of my suggestion. ;-)


The nice thing about kelly is that, as far as I know, she doesn't interfere with the other interests. That said, I wasn't able to get her final scene without breaking up with Miranda first (post-game). I may have just done something wrong though.