A Picspam Recap of Mass Effect (Part 1)
Mar. 19th, 2012 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eponymous_roseHere's a thing I forgot to post this weekend:
After making my last Mass Effect post, I came across Hathur99's YouTube channel, which contains an awesome cinematic plot-based playthrough of all three games (Mass Effect 3 currently in progress) for those who may be interested in the story and fandom but aren't big on the gaming - with most of the battle scenes cut out, the games run much more like a movie or TV show. And as it turns out, the first game doesn't scan so well in this movie format - it's a fun game, but free-form exploratory stuff doesn't keep the plot moving very well. Since ME2 and ME3 do translate extremely well into movie/TV form, I figured I'd do a quick summary of the first game for folks who might want to jump straight into the playthrough for game two, which is essentially set up as a TV show with seventy-four 10-to-20-minute episodes. There are also a lot of familiar voices in ME2 that also might be a bit of a draw for folks - Martin Sheen! Seth Green! Shohreh Aghdashloo! Adam Baldwin! Claudia Black! Tricia Helfer! Carrie-Anne Moss! Michael Dorn! Armin Shimerman! Other folks I am probably forgetting! C'mon, all those exclamation points can't be wrong. And it has a really killer first eight minutes.
This also might be helpful for folks who want to start by playing Mass Effect 2 (either because of easier availability or because of the more streamlined gameplay). Or for folks like me, who kinda forgot the entire plot of the first game for a while, there.
Okay, okay, I'm mostly doing this because I enjoy creating humorous write-ups/picspams to poke fun at my favourite fandoms. In case you, y'know, hadn't noticed that about me. I know I hide that tendency well.
Warning: Each of the following posts contains about 30-40 entertaining screencaps. Abandon hope, all dial-up users who enter here.
First, if you're new to the Mass Effect universe, did you read The Epic Mass Effect Introduction Post? If not, you're such a rebel, and you'll probably be fine with my half-assed explanations here. If you're in it for the whole ass, though, you may want to take a jump over there to catch up. It's okay, I'll wait here.
Done? Great! This material will be on the midterm.
The playthrough from whence I'm grabbing these screenshots is one featuring a female Shepard following the Paragon path.
Shep is entirely customizable - this is the appearance chosen by our gracious (okay, unknowing) host, Hathur99 from YouTube. Staring dramatically into space, however, is non-negotiable.
The story thus far: Shepard is 29 years old, a graduate of the prestigious N7 special ops program, and a Commander in the Earth Alliance military. The choices Hathur99 has made for her backstory are as follows: Shep was born and raised on the colony of Mindoir. When she was sixteen, slavers raided the colony and killed her friends and family. So, uh, she's got some issues there. She was rescued by a passing Alliance patrol, and wound up enlisting soon after. A few years afterwards, a bunch of batarian slavers attacked a colony called Elysium, and this time Shepard was in a position to do something about it: via a combination of cleverness, tactics, and I'm-the-hero-I-can't-possibly-die-ness, Shepard managed to fend off the attack almost single-handed, which cemented her reputation as being Very Good At What She Does.
She's just been assigned as XO (second-in-command) of the SSV Normandy, an experimental stealth frigate built using a combination of human and turian design. It's pretty cool-looking, and as our story opens, it's just in the process of leaving the Sol system to embark on its shakedown run, to a human colony called, fate-temptingly, Eden Prime.
A little-known fact about the Normandy's stealth systems is that they make it kinda tricky to get good establishing shots. True story.
We begin with Shepard overseeing the Normandy's passage through the Charon mass relay orbiting Pluto - it's all very dramatic, there are lots of shots of flashy lights, and everyone runs through a detailed countdown and cross-check that we never really bother with again. Passing through a mass relay is a lot like getting slingshotted through space - it even makes a nifty "ptew!" sound - and our heroes emerge on the other side unscathed by their galaxy-hopping.
PTEW!
Now that all the excitement's over, it's time for a little banter. In the cockpit are Shepard, Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko (...why is he in the cockpit? Because banter, that's why.), Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau, and a turian Spectre - whenever I say "Spectre", you should think "James Bond in space" - named Nihlus.
That's Joker in the foreground and an apparently lost Kaidan in the background.
Joker reports that the jump went well. Nihlus is not terribly impressed and heads off to go look for Captain Anderson.
"Not Terribly Impressed" is his middle name.
Joker gets annoyed at Nihlus's faint praise, Kaidan ribs him for being so defensive about it, and we encounter our very first Epic Exposition Dump, communicating the general sense that the human crew is a little nervous about having a turian Spectre on board. See, things tend to go haywire whenever Spectres are around, and they don't usually hang out to watch routine shakedown runs. Having a Spectre in your vicinity has a similar effect to repeatedly asking, "What could possibly go wrong?", complete with dramatic lightning strike in the background. Shep, handily establishing herself as a character who's more about people than protocol, mentions that she's also got her suspicions. Anderson calls her up to join him and Nihlus in the briefing room, and she heads out, determined to find some answers.
After chatting with a few other crew members (including the exceptionally gung-ho Private Jenkins, Navigator Pressly, and Doctor Chakwas, all of whom bear their very own Epic Exposition Dumps), Shep goes back to the briefing room and finds only Nihlus waiting for her. What with all the mistrust going on, it's easy to think of Nihlus as a somewhat menacing figure, but he's actually quite a nice guy, and he's clearly doing his best to be friendly and personable.
Of course, he's not very good at it, so he sorta winds up making statements about Eden Prime like "How safe is it reeeeally?" that make him sound like a supervillain.
Captain Anderson comes in to break up this awkward little confab, and drops the bomb: turns out this shakedown cruise is more than it seems.
Shep's response is, essentially, "No shit, sir."
Turns out the colonists on Eden Prime have unearthed a Prothean beacon, a piece of technology belonging to a super-advanced race that went extinct 50,000 years ago - as we learned from the Epic Exposition Dump not too long ago, the Protheans built the mass relays as well as the Citadel space station that's essentially the heart of modern galactic civilization, so any surviving artifacts of theirs tend to be a big deal. Nihlus got assigned to join up with the crew of the Normandy to supervise the retrieval of this beacon, but also to keep an eye on Shepard - apparently the Council's well aware of her awesomeness, and Nihlus himself put her name forward as a Spectre candidate. Nihlus and Shep are gonna be cruising around the galaxy on a few missions while he evaluates whether she's worthy of becoming the first human Spectre. And, presumably, while he accidentally makes everything sound like a veiled threat.
"After this mission, how about we go for some ice cream, Shepard? But how safe is the ice cream reeeeally?"
Joker jumps into the midst of this latest Epic Exposition Dump with an urgent transmission being forwarded from Eden Prime. Apparently they're under attack from an unknown force, and are in the process of being wiped out.
By a giant gloved lightning hand, apparently. Those things just never play nice.
It's pretty creepy, and the Normandy's the only Alliance ship in the vicinity, so Anderson orders them in. In part because blundering into an unknown situation is bad, and in part because the game only allows Shepard to have two squadmates at any time, Anderson suggests a small infiltration group to figure out what's going on and try to secure the beacon. Nihlus, being a badass, decides to scout ahead and relay back updates. Shepard picks Kaidan and gung-ho Jenkins for her team, and they land on Eden Prime, where things are looking a little apocalyptic.
Rather predictably, gung-ho Jenkins gets killed in the first couple minutes on the ground by some robotic flying turrets. Alas, poor Jenkins. Killed in the tutorial level! What an indignity. Might as well have been wearing a red shirt. Kaidan and Shep are shaken, but press onwards, where they run into a cutscene featuring another Alliance soldier, Ashley Williams, whose entire unit just got wiped out. She's now on the run from some geth.
In case you were wondering, it's possible to trick out your entire squad in this pink armor at a later point in the game. Wrex in particular looks amazing in it.
A quick history lesson! The geth are synthetic life forms created by the quarians to do a variety of odd jobs, but they accidentally gained sentience. Upon realizing their mistake, the quarians freaked and tried to kill them all, the geth weren't keen on being wiped out, you know how it goes. But ever since they chased the quarians off their homeworld, the geth haven't been seen beyond the Perseus Veil in centuries. Something weird's going on.
And, as Ash watches, the geth pick up human bodies and impale them on giant spikes. It's pretty nasty. So, yeah, weirdness is happening. Shep and Kaidan rescue Ash and invite her along on their little recon mission; Ash is looking for payback and happy to oblige. Shep and Kaidan carefully neglect to mention what happened to the last third wheel in their little squad.
Oh, and those human bodies that the geth have been putting up on spikes? Apparently the spikes turn them into pseudo-machine zombies that'll try to kill you. So that's fun.
Zombies. Why'd it have to be zombies?
After meeting a few survivors who were lucky enough to avoid the destruction, our heroes find the site where the Prothean beacon is supposed to be... and it's gone. An eyewitness mentions that a turian led the attack and had the geth carry off the beacon toward the spaceport. A turian? That's odd. At least Nihlus is beyond reproach, since he was accidentally making threats in the briefing room at the time.
Meanwhile, Nihlus is a few steps ahead, and comes across someone who isn't either a geth or a zombie robot: his old friend and mentor, Saren Arterius. Nihlus starts chatting with Saren, telling him all about the weirdness going on, and then this happens.
Yeah.
So that's the end of Nihlus. I hope I'm not the only one who frantically went through a couple different replays trying to find the version of the game where this doesn't happen, but alas, there's no way around it. No wacky adventures for Nihlus and Shep, except in the realm of fanfiction. And I'm kind of a jerk for setting up Nihlus as one of the leads in the Epic Intro Post, aren't I?
After killing Nihlus, Saren takes off. Our heroes find Nihlus's body and set off in pursuit to the spaceport. Saren, being well-acquainted with various objective-based shooter games, has his geth set up charges all over the spaceport that need to be dismantled, which gives him time to make his getaway in the giant gloved lightning hand, which turns out to be his giant creepy spaceship. Before that, though, he does some mysterious but probably meaningful hovering in front of the Prothean beacon.
As you do.
Saren leaves without the beacon, and our heroes eventually find it. Kaidan wanders over to look at it while Shep reports in, and then starts getting drawn toward it, which is rarely a good sign. Shepard leaps in dramatically, throws him out of the way, and gets sucked toward the beacon instead. A bunch of seriously creepy flashes of images ensue to a soundtrack of mechanical drill sounds and screaming; nightmare stuff, you know. The beacon explodes, and Shepard gets knocked out cold.
And that's the end of the series. Haha, no, just kidding. Wouldn't it be silly to have a game that started with the death of the main character?
We then watch Saren thrashing around and throwing things and generally being incredibly unstable, while a mysterious woman, Matriarch Benezia, watches in an extremely unimpressed manner (voiced by Marina Sirtis, who played Troi in Star Trek!). Saren has figured out that Shep accessed the beacon. He's not happy, and wants her dead. Benezia seems pretty meh about the whole thing.
Counselor Troi has had enough of your bullshit today, Saren.
Meanwhile, Shepard wakes up in sickbay with a splitting headache, but otherwise none the worse for wear, apart from a general sense of confusion (we're with you on that one, Shep). Kaidan is there, and guilts out about how she went through that weirdness to save him until she tells him not to worry about it. He then gives her a distinctly flirty smile. Ohoho, Kaidan's got a crush!
Anderson breaks up the cuteness and Epic Exposition Dumps for a while with Shepard about how Saren is a Spectre, and how this whole thing with the geth and killing Nihlus means he's gone rogue, which, yeah, I can see that. The Normandy's en route to the Citadel to present this evidence to the Council and get Saren's Spectre status revoked.
Surely the Council can't dismiss this overwhelming evidence out of hand, right? Right?
Shep goes around and chats with the crew - Ash is experiencing some survivor's guilt, Kaidan and Shep talk a bit about their families, Chakwas talks about why she became a military doctor, and we join Joker to jump through to the Citadel with a backdrop of dramatic and inspiring music. Our heroes do a bit of ship-spotting, pointing out the Destiny Ascension, the giant ship tasked with protecting the Citadel. Joker gets a little touchy when it's pointed out to him how much smaller the Normandy is.
It's all very pretty.
On the Citadel, we meet Ambassador Udina, who's in the process of chewing out the Council for not helping out with Eden Prime - the Council's official position is that it serves humanity right for settling in such dangerous parts of the galaxy. Udina signs off with them - the main hearing is scheduled for a bit later - and sarcasms our heroes for a while, since they're not exactly making his life easy at the moment. Anderson defends Shepard's actions on Eden Prime, and then sets the kids loose to play on the Citadel until the hearing starts.
Our heroes (Shep, Kaidan, and Ash) do a little exploring, chatting with automated tour guides, meeting the head of Citadel Security, encountering one of the mysterious but benign Keepers that wander around and keep the station operational (presumably left behind by the Protheans to help future races get acclimated), and admiring Prothean modern art.
Today, on the Citadel's Art Crawl, we feature a scale model of a mass relay. Apparently the leading theory behind its creation is "The Protheans wanted everyone to know how awesome they were for creating the mass relays." Ah, art.
Our heroes eventually stop rubbernecking and remember that they have a hearing to attend, and head over to the Citadel Tower to chat with the Council. There, they encounter a turian C-Sec officer arguing with his boss.
The officer introduces himself as Garrus Vakarian, the investigator in charge of bringing Saren to justice. His boss has just pulled him off the case for lack of evidence, and he's not pleased, since he's utterly convinced Saren's no good. He wishes Shep and company good luck in getting the Council to pull Saren's Spectre credentials, and stalks off in a huff.
Garrus is having a no good, very bad day. Shep can relate.
The hearing with the Council does not go well. (You'll... be getting used to that state of affairs in this series.) Saren shows up via hologram to defend himself, the C-Sec investigation didn't turn up anything irregular, and the whole thing boils down to Shepard's word against everyone else's. To make matters worse, Anderson jumps in to defend her, and it's revealed that he has a mysterious history with Saren that makes his judgement suspect. And then Shepard tries to bring up her creepy nightmare vision as evidence, and things kinda... go downhill from there.
"What the hell are these humans smoking?"
Long story short, the Council refuses to withdraw Saren's Spectre status (essentially, he's still free to go anywhere and do anything he wants), and makes it known that Shep's just blown her chance at becoming the first human Spectre.
Hmm, yes, that... could have gone better.
Our heroes formulate a plan of attack to find irrefutable evidence against Saren. Anderson reveals that he was once on a mission with Saren that went badly wrong, but won't say anything more about it. Kaidan brings up that cop-on-the-edge, Garrus, and points out that he might have an idea of where to find evidence against Saren. Anderson also recommends that Shep check in with Barla Von, an agent for the Shadow Broker, a mysterious figure who buys and sells secrets, in case he knows anything about Saren. The mission objectives thus defined, our heroes set out onto the Citadel again
Barla Von is their first stop - he's a volus, part of a race that has a close connection with the turians (the turians offer military support to a race that's never developed a strong military, and the volus offer economic support to a race that's so civic-minded that they kinda suck at capitalism). He mentions that Saren has betrayed the Shadow Broker, which is weird because that basically amounts to suicide, and Saren isn't a stupid guy.
Just for a change, something weird is happening.
The Shadow Broker has hired a krogan mercenary, Urdnot Wrex, to take Saren's associates out. Barla Von gives Shep and company this information gratis, since it's in his best interest to take Saren down ASAP. After that, we have some more sightseeing (where the Epic Exposition Dump delivers a brief history of the krogan - the salarians uplifted them technologically so they could fight the rachni in a war, the krogan wiped out the rachni, the krogan figured they might as well invade all the planets, the Council told them to stop, the krogan were all "haha, no", the salarians developed a bioweapon to take them out, and the turians deployed it, so now the krogan are a dying race), we have a chat with an investigative journalist looking for evidence of corruption on the Citadel, and we meet, no joke, Commander Shepard's biggest fanboy, a guy named Conrad Verner who asks for her autograph and visibly squees when she complies.
That's just a great renegade reply to "Can I have your autograph?" - "What? No."
Next, our heroes go to Chora's Den, a sleazy strip club in the Citadel Wards, and talk to a washed-up and generally awful ex-C-Sec officer named Harkin, who mentions that he saw Garrus poking around a nearby med clinic for some reason. Before Shep can leave, he mentions casually that part of the reason Anderson's so hot on taking down Saren is that Anderson used to be a Spectre, but screwed it up in front of Saren, and there was a huge coverup. Of course, he also says, "Secrets are like herpes; if you got 'em, you might as well spread 'em around", so, er, possibly not the most reliable source. Still, it's a troubling rumor, and Shep's more than a little discomfited.
Shep then wanders into the med clinic where Garrus was last seen, where she stumbles into the middle of a dramatic scene: some thugs are threatening a doctor, and Garrus is in the process of sneaking up on them with a gun.
Yeah, Shep kinda ruins that sneakiness by just strolling through the front door.
Upon noticing the heavily-armed party that's just wandered in, one of the thugs immediately grabs the doctor as a hostage, and Garrus just pops up and shoots said thug between the eyes, no hesitation. After a quick battle, the thugs are taken out, and the hostage, Doctor Michel, is safe. Shep yells at Garrus for taking that risky shot, and he has an entertaining "oh-shit-what-did-i-almost-do" moment, admits he wasn't thinking, then apologizes profusely to Doctor Michel, who is pretty okay with the whole not-being-dead thing. We settle in for a nice long Epic Exposition Dump to clear up all this confusion.
Michel reveals that a quarian came into the clinic a few days ago with a gunshot wound and wouldn't say how she'd been hurt, but she was obviously scared of something. She eventually asked Michel about the Shadow Broker, explaining that she wanted to trade information for protection, so Michel put her in contact with a Shadow Broker agent named Fist. Garrus fills in the blanks: Fist is apparently working for Saren now. Michel remembers that the quarian mentioned the geth - apparently the information she's trying to keep hidden involves them in some way. Shepard visibly perks up at this - it could be the evidence they need to expose Saren. Garrus asks if he can join Shep to take down Saren, she accepts, and he mentions that krogan bounty hunter again, Wrex, as a potential ally.
Apparently if you don't recruit Garrus here, he kind of stands awkwardly by the elevator to the docking bay for the rest of the game and occasionally points out that he kinda did quit his job for this, and would you mind terribly if he came along? Pleeease?
So everyone heads off to go find Wrex, who is busy intimidating the heck out of some C-Sec officers, apparently out of boredom. He's immediately impressed with Shepard - he knows her reputation as a warrior - and takes a general "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach to life, so he's cool with signing on to take down Saren, although his current target is Fist.
Generally a good guy to have on your side.
Everyone (well, actually just Shep, Garrus, and Kaidan - the player selects two squad members to accompany Shepard for each new mission) heads over to Chora's Den, where Fist apparently has an office. The whole place has been taken over by thugs - Fist knows the Shadow Broker's hired someone to take him out - and a big fight ensues. Our heroes manage to get to Fist, and he admits that he lured the quarian into a trap by telling her the Shadow Broker would be willing to meet her in a secluded alleyway. Predictably, he's planted assassins there instead, to kill her and prevent her information from going any further. Our heroes rush to said alleyway, where the quarian is doing fairly well on her own, setting off grenades and such, but they take down the baddies anyway.
And everyone tromps over to Udina's office.
You've gotta admit, Shep's pretty good at getting the job done. Udina is a little startled at this rapid turnaround. Makes you wonder what happens when Shepard goes to pick up pizza or something equally mundane: "Oh, and on the way there I foiled an evil scheme involving anchovy smuggling and discovered the cashier was actually a commando. You had the pepperoni and mushroom, right?"
The quarian, Tali, reveals that she's on her Pilgrimage, her people's rite-of-passage tradition in which young adults go out and find something to bring back to the Flotilla, which is what got her into this whole mess. She plays her evidence, recovered from a geth she'd managed to disable and dissect: a voice recording of Saren incriminating himself that apparently couldn't have been faked. Because of Science? I don't know. Run with it. Saren's apparently looking for something called the Conduit, which sounds ominous and capital-letter-y. There's another voice on the recording, too - Benezia - and there's a very funny moment where there's a dramatic chord when her voice comes on and I half-expect everyone to go "My God, it's Counselor Troi!" But nobody recognizes her voice. They probably only watched the original Star Trek.
Benezia mentions the return of "the Reapers", and Tali reveals that these Reapers were a hyper-advanced machine race that hunted the Protheans to total extinction, and then disappeared. At least, that's what the geth believe - apparently they worship the Reapers as the pinnacle of non-organic life and think of Saren as their Prophet, the one who's going to bring the Reapers back. Shep flashes back to that crazy nightmare-vision and realizes it was showing the death of the Protheans at the hands of the Reapers. Udina, perhaps understandably, thinks that sounds a little crazy. Anderson points out that, Reapers aside, they now have evidence that Saren should probably not be allowed Spectre status. Time to talk to the Council again!
Before they leave, though, Tali asks to tag along with Shep on this mission to see it through. Shepard accepts.
It's hard to go wrong with awesome engineers.
The Council can't deny this new evidence. Because Science, I guess. (Roll with it, remember?) The asari councilor reveals that she recognizes Benezia's voice - the Matriarchs are revered leaders among the asari, so this whole chillin'-with-Saren thing is kinda weird.
Shep brings up the Reapers, and the Council is all "Yeah, no" again, making the salient point that Saren has no reason to want to bring the Reapers back if they're only going to destroy all organic life in the galaxy. The Council concedes that Saren is a bad guy, that he's using the geth to find the Conduit (whatever that is), but they don't agree that he's trying to bring back the Reapers. In fact, they think he's made them up to secure the geth's cooperation, which in itself is enough to strip Saren of his Spectre status.
Udina presses the advantage, arguing that something more needs to be done. The Council disagrees, mainly for political reasons - sending a force after Saren would draw the attention of the Terminus Systems and could even provoke a war. Something smaller-scale is needed. The Council members exchange looks, then appoint Shepard as the first human Spectre on the spot. It's all very inspiring.
Agent double-oh-Shepard?
Some more wandering of the Citadel ensues, including chatting with an Admiral Kahoku, who seems agitated - one of his recon teams was investigating "strange activity" and dropped off the map. Shepard agrees to look into it if she has time. Shep also goes back to that investigative reporter and shares some of Fist's files. She then heads up to the Normandy, where Udina and Anderson are waiting, with some big news:
Anderson is stepping down as captain of the Normandy, so that Shepard can take command of the ship and go after Saren. Shepard is understandably shocked at this, and Anderson explains that he was in her shoes twenty years ago, under consideration for admission to the Spectres. Saren was like Nihlus, there to evaluate his performance, and they went on a mission together that went wrong (Saren killed lots of innocent people to get the job done, and Anderson got left holding the bag). Letting Shepard step in and take command is something of an atonement for him, and also gives him a chance to keep on top of things Citadel-side.
Udina and Anderson give Shepard three starting points. Let's see if I can come up with some HTML for bullet points, here.
Onwards! Shepard gives an inspiring speech to the crew, is assured that they're all right behind her, and they set out. So, with the fate of all organic life in the galaxy at stake, clearly it's time for some random conversations with the crew. Joker reveals that he has a brittle-bone disease that basically strands him in the pilot's seat, and also talks about his time training to be a pilot; Navigator Pressly is not too keen about all these non-humans on the ship; Garrus fanboys how uninhibited the Spectres are... and gets shot down when Shepard reminds him that the rules are generally there for a reason; Wrex talks about the genophage bioweapon the salarians used to slowly kill his people; Ash and Kaidan don't have much to say; Engineer Adams thinks Tali is the greatest; and Tali thinks the Normandy is the greatest.
Having run out of people to talk to, Shepard opts to go check out Liara T'Soni's dig site first.
Ah, the sweet, sweet combination of the Mako's drunken-rhino steering and deadly lava.
There are geth on the planet, and Shepard and her squad (Garrus and Kaidan again) have to fight their way through them to the main dig site, where Liara has managed to switch on an old Prothean barrier to keep the geth from getting to her. Unfortunately, she's also managed to get herself stuck in said barrier. (If you wait long enough before coming to get her, she's been stuck in there so long she thinks you're a hallucination. A hilariously awkward conversation ensues.)
Who, me? Oh, I've just been... hanging around.
Liara protests that she doesn't have a clue why her mother would be working with Saren, that she's not on anybody's side, and that she has no idea why the geth are trying to kill her in the first place. That's good enough for Shep, who finds a clever way to extricate Liara from the barrier. Unfortunately, since Shep's cleverness mostly involves large explosions, the dig site is on the verge of collapse, and they have to get out of there before the ceiling caves in on them. They get interrupted by a krogan and some geth, who have apparently been dispatched by Saren to grab Liara and go. Shepard mentions that Liara's under her protection, which apparently makes an impression on Liara, and then there's a brief fight that ends decisively in our heroes' favor. Everyone manages to make it out before the cave-in, thanks in large part to Joker's fancy flying.
Time for a group meeting!
Everyone expositions for a bit, and Liara gets a little defensive when Shepard starts casually dropping bits of information - about the Reapers and the Protheans, mostly - that Liara hasn't managed to find in fifty years of research (oh yes, Liara's 106 years old, which is barely more than a child by asari standards). Her scientific fascination gets the better of her, though, and she joins in the exposition party with some new info about how, apparently, this whole Reapers-killing-all-organic-life thing has happened before - the Protheans are just the latest in a cycle that goes back millions of years. Things like the mass relays and the Citadel were built based on the technology of races that came before. The meeting breaks up when Liara nearly keels over from exhaustion, and she gets sent to sickbay while Shepard fills in the Council remotely. The Council's a little pissed that the dig site was destroyed, but they acknowledge that the mission should take priority.
Now that we have everyone on board, it's time for another round of chatting with the crew! Joker figures he deserves a medal for pulling their asses out of the fire, until Shep points out that medals usually involve lots of speeches; Kaidan talks about an old flame at biotics school, and he and Shep start pushing the boundaries of the fraternization regs with a little light flirting; Liara shows off her social awkwardness when she accidentally implies she wants to examine Shepard as a scientific specimen; Garrus reveals that his father talked him out of becoming a Spectre since it was against his by-the-book philosophy; Ash doesn't trust the nonhuman members of the crew, and acts evasive when Shep asks her about her family's history in the Alliance; Wrex reveals that he encountered Saren once before during a fairly routine job and got such a bad feeling he left without taking payment (which worked out, since every merc who took that job wound up dead within a week); and Tali is feeling down and homesick in the too-quiet ship.
Our heroes go back to the Citadel (why? because... because subplot, that's why - the Normandy has intercepted a transmission from an ambassador named Nassana Dantius looking for Shepard's help), where they encounter a surprise inspection by a snarky admiral who isn't big on all the alien influences going on here.
I can't remember his name, so we'll call him Snarky McAdmiralson.
Shepard kicks his ass verbally with some speeches about cooperation, and manages to win him over. Go Shep! Before she can get too far onto the Citadel, a Lieutenant Girard calls her up and asks for her help with a... delicate situation. Apparently a young woman from the same colony as Shepard (you know, the one that got raided by slavers where pretty much everyone died) managed to escape the slavers after thirteen years, turned up on the Citadel, and is holed up in the docking bay with a gun. In a really painful and touching scene, Shepard manages to talk the severely traumatized young woman (she was six years old when the slavers took her) into taking a sedative and getting some help, which is probably the deepest glimpse we get into Shepard's backstory.
Anyway. Back to saving the universe? Nah, first Shep gets ambushed by a different reporter and manages to hold her own, then meets up with the mysterious Nassana Dantius, who reveals that her sister was taken prisoner by slavers who're demanding a huge ransom - she asks Shepard to see if she can rescue her. Shepard points out that she does have a galaxy to save somewhere in there, but that she'll see if she has time. Then Shepard checks in with Anderson and Udina, and randomly interferes in the personal affairs of a few passers-by (I guess wandering around with weapons in full armor makes people listen to you?). She also encounters fanboy Conrad Verner again, now in overdrive over the whole Spectre thing, and he takes a picture of her posing with her gun to put up in his living room. Apparently his wife will love it. (...yes, weirdest subplot ever)
Back to the Normandy. Shepard makes a side run to see about saving Nassana Dantius's sister... but whaaaaa, her sister's not a prisoner, she's the one in charge of the band of slavers (which Shep completely obliterates, because that's what Shep does). Turns out Nassana just wanted to get her embarrassing outlaw sister out of the way so she couldn't hurt her political career. Ouch. Talk about your sibling rivalry.
What can I say, Shepard? This is bound to happen when you try to solve everyone's problems.
Now reminded of her other non-galaxy-saving distractions, Shepard decides to try and figure out what happened to Admiral Kahoku's missing recon team. Upon investigating, she discovers an Alliance distress beacon, follows it, and nearly winds up in the same trap as Kahoku's men when a thresher maw jumps up and tries to eat her. Luckily, she manages to blow it up first.
It may be annoying to drive, but when you're facing giant acid-spitting worm things, the Mako is your best friend.
So it's back to the Citadel (racking up those frequent-flyer points) to tell Kahoku what happened to his men. He's upset, and resolves to find out where the heck that distress beacon came from - someone set a trap for his men. So that particular subplot continues subplotting merrily away in the background while Shepard moves on to the next one. And the next. A few minor and less-relevant-later subplots ensue, and then Kahoku calls the Normandy with his new fidings: apparently his men were killed by a group called Cerberus, a top-secret Alliance black-ops organization that went completely rogue, dropped off the map, and started engaging in some really creepy genetic research. Shepard drops in, blows everything up, but she's too late - Cerberus got to Kahoku and murdered him before she showed up.
Man, those Cerberus guys are jerks. Anyway, I'm sure that's the last we'll see of them. Yup. Sure. Cerberus. Just... just making sure you don't forget that name. Cerberus. Cerrrberrrrussss.
On to Part Two (in which the best dialogue wheel of the game is discovered, Shepard has a fan club, and our heroes hold the line)
After making my last Mass Effect post, I came across Hathur99's YouTube channel, which contains an awesome cinematic plot-based playthrough of all three games (Mass Effect 3 currently in progress) for those who may be interested in the story and fandom but aren't big on the gaming - with most of the battle scenes cut out, the games run much more like a movie or TV show. And as it turns out, the first game doesn't scan so well in this movie format - it's a fun game, but free-form exploratory stuff doesn't keep the plot moving very well. Since ME2 and ME3 do translate extremely well into movie/TV form, I figured I'd do a quick summary of the first game for folks who might want to jump straight into the playthrough for game two, which is essentially set up as a TV show with seventy-four 10-to-20-minute episodes. There are also a lot of familiar voices in ME2 that also might be a bit of a draw for folks - Martin Sheen! Seth Green! Shohreh Aghdashloo! Adam Baldwin! Claudia Black! Tricia Helfer! Carrie-Anne Moss! Michael Dorn! Armin Shimerman! Other folks I am probably forgetting! C'mon, all those exclamation points can't be wrong. And it has a really killer first eight minutes.
This also might be helpful for folks who want to start by playing Mass Effect 2 (either because of easier availability or because of the more streamlined gameplay). Or for folks like me, who kinda forgot the entire plot of the first game for a while, there.
Okay, okay, I'm mostly doing this because I enjoy creating humorous write-ups/picspams to poke fun at my favourite fandoms. In case you, y'know, hadn't noticed that about me. I know I hide that tendency well.
Warning: Each of the following posts contains about 30-40 entertaining screencaps. Abandon hope, all dial-up users who enter here.
First, if you're new to the Mass Effect universe, did you read The Epic Mass Effect Introduction Post? If not, you're such a rebel, and you'll probably be fine with my half-assed explanations here. If you're in it for the whole ass, though, you may want to take a jump over there to catch up. It's okay, I'll wait here.
Done? Great! This material will be on the midterm.
The playthrough from whence I'm grabbing these screenshots is one featuring a female Shepard following the Paragon path.
Shep is entirely customizable - this is the appearance chosen by our gracious (okay, unknowing) host, Hathur99 from YouTube. Staring dramatically into space, however, is non-negotiable.
The story thus far: Shepard is 29 years old, a graduate of the prestigious N7 special ops program, and a Commander in the Earth Alliance military. The choices Hathur99 has made for her backstory are as follows: Shep was born and raised on the colony of Mindoir. When she was sixteen, slavers raided the colony and killed her friends and family. So, uh, she's got some issues there. She was rescued by a passing Alliance patrol, and wound up enlisting soon after. A few years afterwards, a bunch of batarian slavers attacked a colony called Elysium, and this time Shepard was in a position to do something about it: via a combination of cleverness, tactics, and I'm-the-hero-I-can't-possibly-die-ness, Shepard managed to fend off the attack almost single-handed, which cemented her reputation as being Very Good At What She Does.
She's just been assigned as XO (second-in-command) of the SSV Normandy, an experimental stealth frigate built using a combination of human and turian design. It's pretty cool-looking, and as our story opens, it's just in the process of leaving the Sol system to embark on its shakedown run, to a human colony called, fate-temptingly, Eden Prime.
A little-known fact about the Normandy's stealth systems is that they make it kinda tricky to get good establishing shots. True story.
We begin with Shepard overseeing the Normandy's passage through the Charon mass relay orbiting Pluto - it's all very dramatic, there are lots of shots of flashy lights, and everyone runs through a detailed countdown and cross-check that we never really bother with again. Passing through a mass relay is a lot like getting slingshotted through space - it even makes a nifty "ptew!" sound - and our heroes emerge on the other side unscathed by their galaxy-hopping.
PTEW!
Now that all the excitement's over, it's time for a little banter. In the cockpit are Shepard, Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko (...why is he in the cockpit? Because banter, that's why.), Flight Lieutenant Jeff "Joker" Moreau, and a turian Spectre - whenever I say "Spectre", you should think "James Bond in space" - named Nihlus.
That's Joker in the foreground and an apparently lost Kaidan in the background.
Joker reports that the jump went well. Nihlus is not terribly impressed and heads off to go look for Captain Anderson.
"Not Terribly Impressed" is his middle name.
Joker gets annoyed at Nihlus's faint praise, Kaidan ribs him for being so defensive about it, and we encounter our very first Epic Exposition Dump, communicating the general sense that the human crew is a little nervous about having a turian Spectre on board. See, things tend to go haywire whenever Spectres are around, and they don't usually hang out to watch routine shakedown runs. Having a Spectre in your vicinity has a similar effect to repeatedly asking, "What could possibly go wrong?", complete with dramatic lightning strike in the background. Shep, handily establishing herself as a character who's more about people than protocol, mentions that she's also got her suspicions. Anderson calls her up to join him and Nihlus in the briefing room, and she heads out, determined to find some answers.
After chatting with a few other crew members (including the exceptionally gung-ho Private Jenkins, Navigator Pressly, and Doctor Chakwas, all of whom bear their very own Epic Exposition Dumps), Shep goes back to the briefing room and finds only Nihlus waiting for her. What with all the mistrust going on, it's easy to think of Nihlus as a somewhat menacing figure, but he's actually quite a nice guy, and he's clearly doing his best to be friendly and personable.
Of course, he's not very good at it, so he sorta winds up making statements about Eden Prime like "How safe is it reeeeally?" that make him sound like a supervillain.
Captain Anderson comes in to break up this awkward little confab, and drops the bomb: turns out this shakedown cruise is more than it seems.
Shep's response is, essentially, "No shit, sir."
Turns out the colonists on Eden Prime have unearthed a Prothean beacon, a piece of technology belonging to a super-advanced race that went extinct 50,000 years ago - as we learned from the Epic Exposition Dump not too long ago, the Protheans built the mass relays as well as the Citadel space station that's essentially the heart of modern galactic civilization, so any surviving artifacts of theirs tend to be a big deal. Nihlus got assigned to join up with the crew of the Normandy to supervise the retrieval of this beacon, but also to keep an eye on Shepard - apparently the Council's well aware of her awesomeness, and Nihlus himself put her name forward as a Spectre candidate. Nihlus and Shep are gonna be cruising around the galaxy on a few missions while he evaluates whether she's worthy of becoming the first human Spectre. And, presumably, while he accidentally makes everything sound like a veiled threat.
"After this mission, how about we go for some ice cream, Shepard? But how safe is the ice cream reeeeally?"
Joker jumps into the midst of this latest Epic Exposition Dump with an urgent transmission being forwarded from Eden Prime. Apparently they're under attack from an unknown force, and are in the process of being wiped out.
By a giant gloved lightning hand, apparently. Those things just never play nice.
It's pretty creepy, and the Normandy's the only Alliance ship in the vicinity, so Anderson orders them in. In part because blundering into an unknown situation is bad, and in part because the game only allows Shepard to have two squadmates at any time, Anderson suggests a small infiltration group to figure out what's going on and try to secure the beacon. Nihlus, being a badass, decides to scout ahead and relay back updates. Shepard picks Kaidan and gung-ho Jenkins for her team, and they land on Eden Prime, where things are looking a little apocalyptic.
Rather predictably, gung-ho Jenkins gets killed in the first couple minutes on the ground by some robotic flying turrets. Alas, poor Jenkins. Killed in the tutorial level! What an indignity. Might as well have been wearing a red shirt. Kaidan and Shep are shaken, but press onwards, where they run into a cutscene featuring another Alliance soldier, Ashley Williams, whose entire unit just got wiped out. She's now on the run from some geth.
In case you were wondering, it's possible to trick out your entire squad in this pink armor at a later point in the game. Wrex in particular looks amazing in it.
A quick history lesson! The geth are synthetic life forms created by the quarians to do a variety of odd jobs, but they accidentally gained sentience. Upon realizing their mistake, the quarians freaked and tried to kill them all, the geth weren't keen on being wiped out, you know how it goes. But ever since they chased the quarians off their homeworld, the geth haven't been seen beyond the Perseus Veil in centuries. Something weird's going on.
And, as Ash watches, the geth pick up human bodies and impale them on giant spikes. It's pretty nasty. So, yeah, weirdness is happening. Shep and Kaidan rescue Ash and invite her along on their little recon mission; Ash is looking for payback and happy to oblige. Shep and Kaidan carefully neglect to mention what happened to the last third wheel in their little squad.
Oh, and those human bodies that the geth have been putting up on spikes? Apparently the spikes turn them into pseudo-machine zombies that'll try to kill you. So that's fun.
Zombies. Why'd it have to be zombies?
After meeting a few survivors who were lucky enough to avoid the destruction, our heroes find the site where the Prothean beacon is supposed to be... and it's gone. An eyewitness mentions that a turian led the attack and had the geth carry off the beacon toward the spaceport. A turian? That's odd. At least Nihlus is beyond reproach, since he was accidentally making threats in the briefing room at the time.
Meanwhile, Nihlus is a few steps ahead, and comes across someone who isn't either a geth or a zombie robot: his old friend and mentor, Saren Arterius. Nihlus starts chatting with Saren, telling him all about the weirdness going on, and then this happens.
Yeah.
So that's the end of Nihlus. I hope I'm not the only one who frantically went through a couple different replays trying to find the version of the game where this doesn't happen, but alas, there's no way around it. No wacky adventures for Nihlus and Shep, except in the realm of fanfiction. And I'm kind of a jerk for setting up Nihlus as one of the leads in the Epic Intro Post, aren't I?
After killing Nihlus, Saren takes off. Our heroes find Nihlus's body and set off in pursuit to the spaceport. Saren, being well-acquainted with various objective-based shooter games, has his geth set up charges all over the spaceport that need to be dismantled, which gives him time to make his getaway in the giant gloved lightning hand, which turns out to be his giant creepy spaceship. Before that, though, he does some mysterious but probably meaningful hovering in front of the Prothean beacon.
As you do.
Saren leaves without the beacon, and our heroes eventually find it. Kaidan wanders over to look at it while Shep reports in, and then starts getting drawn toward it, which is rarely a good sign. Shepard leaps in dramatically, throws him out of the way, and gets sucked toward the beacon instead. A bunch of seriously creepy flashes of images ensue to a soundtrack of mechanical drill sounds and screaming; nightmare stuff, you know. The beacon explodes, and Shepard gets knocked out cold.
And that's the end of the series. Haha, no, just kidding. Wouldn't it be silly to have a game that started with the death of the main character?
We then watch Saren thrashing around and throwing things and generally being incredibly unstable, while a mysterious woman, Matriarch Benezia, watches in an extremely unimpressed manner (voiced by Marina Sirtis, who played Troi in Star Trek!). Saren has figured out that Shep accessed the beacon. He's not happy, and wants her dead. Benezia seems pretty meh about the whole thing.
Counselor Troi has had enough of your bullshit today, Saren.
Meanwhile, Shepard wakes up in sickbay with a splitting headache, but otherwise none the worse for wear, apart from a general sense of confusion (we're with you on that one, Shep). Kaidan is there, and guilts out about how she went through that weirdness to save him until she tells him not to worry about it. He then gives her a distinctly flirty smile. Ohoho, Kaidan's got a crush!
Anderson breaks up the cuteness and Epic Exposition Dumps for a while with Shepard about how Saren is a Spectre, and how this whole thing with the geth and killing Nihlus means he's gone rogue, which, yeah, I can see that. The Normandy's en route to the Citadel to present this evidence to the Council and get Saren's Spectre status revoked.
Surely the Council can't dismiss this overwhelming evidence out of hand, right? Right?
Shep goes around and chats with the crew - Ash is experiencing some survivor's guilt, Kaidan and Shep talk a bit about their families, Chakwas talks about why she became a military doctor, and we join Joker to jump through to the Citadel with a backdrop of dramatic and inspiring music. Our heroes do a bit of ship-spotting, pointing out the Destiny Ascension, the giant ship tasked with protecting the Citadel. Joker gets a little touchy when it's pointed out to him how much smaller the Normandy is.
It's all very pretty.
On the Citadel, we meet Ambassador Udina, who's in the process of chewing out the Council for not helping out with Eden Prime - the Council's official position is that it serves humanity right for settling in such dangerous parts of the galaxy. Udina signs off with them - the main hearing is scheduled for a bit later - and sarcasms our heroes for a while, since they're not exactly making his life easy at the moment. Anderson defends Shepard's actions on Eden Prime, and then sets the kids loose to play on the Citadel until the hearing starts.
Our heroes (Shep, Kaidan, and Ash) do a little exploring, chatting with automated tour guides, meeting the head of Citadel Security, encountering one of the mysterious but benign Keepers that wander around and keep the station operational (presumably left behind by the Protheans to help future races get acclimated), and admiring Prothean modern art.
Today, on the Citadel's Art Crawl, we feature a scale model of a mass relay. Apparently the leading theory behind its creation is "The Protheans wanted everyone to know how awesome they were for creating the mass relays." Ah, art.
Our heroes eventually stop rubbernecking and remember that they have a hearing to attend, and head over to the Citadel Tower to chat with the Council. There, they encounter a turian C-Sec officer arguing with his boss.
The officer introduces himself as Garrus Vakarian, the investigator in charge of bringing Saren to justice. His boss has just pulled him off the case for lack of evidence, and he's not pleased, since he's utterly convinced Saren's no good. He wishes Shep and company good luck in getting the Council to pull Saren's Spectre credentials, and stalks off in a huff.
Garrus is having a no good, very bad day. Shep can relate.
The hearing with the Council does not go well. (You'll... be getting used to that state of affairs in this series.) Saren shows up via hologram to defend himself, the C-Sec investigation didn't turn up anything irregular, and the whole thing boils down to Shepard's word against everyone else's. To make matters worse, Anderson jumps in to defend her, and it's revealed that he has a mysterious history with Saren that makes his judgement suspect. And then Shepard tries to bring up her creepy nightmare vision as evidence, and things kinda... go downhill from there.
"What the hell are these humans smoking?"
Long story short, the Council refuses to withdraw Saren's Spectre status (essentially, he's still free to go anywhere and do anything he wants), and makes it known that Shep's just blown her chance at becoming the first human Spectre.
Hmm, yes, that... could have gone better.
Our heroes formulate a plan of attack to find irrefutable evidence against Saren. Anderson reveals that he was once on a mission with Saren that went badly wrong, but won't say anything more about it. Kaidan brings up that cop-on-the-edge, Garrus, and points out that he might have an idea of where to find evidence against Saren. Anderson also recommends that Shep check in with Barla Von, an agent for the Shadow Broker, a mysterious figure who buys and sells secrets, in case he knows anything about Saren. The mission objectives thus defined, our heroes set out onto the Citadel again
Barla Von is their first stop - he's a volus, part of a race that has a close connection with the turians (the turians offer military support to a race that's never developed a strong military, and the volus offer economic support to a race that's so civic-minded that they kinda suck at capitalism). He mentions that Saren has betrayed the Shadow Broker, which is weird because that basically amounts to suicide, and Saren isn't a stupid guy.
Just for a change, something weird is happening.
The Shadow Broker has hired a krogan mercenary, Urdnot Wrex, to take Saren's associates out. Barla Von gives Shep and company this information gratis, since it's in his best interest to take Saren down ASAP. After that, we have some more sightseeing (where the Epic Exposition Dump delivers a brief history of the krogan - the salarians uplifted them technologically so they could fight the rachni in a war, the krogan wiped out the rachni, the krogan figured they might as well invade all the planets, the Council told them to stop, the krogan were all "haha, no", the salarians developed a bioweapon to take them out, and the turians deployed it, so now the krogan are a dying race), we have a chat with an investigative journalist looking for evidence of corruption on the Citadel, and we meet, no joke, Commander Shepard's biggest fanboy, a guy named Conrad Verner who asks for her autograph and visibly squees when she complies.
That's just a great renegade reply to "Can I have your autograph?" - "What? No."
Next, our heroes go to Chora's Den, a sleazy strip club in the Citadel Wards, and talk to a washed-up and generally awful ex-C-Sec officer named Harkin, who mentions that he saw Garrus poking around a nearby med clinic for some reason. Before Shep can leave, he mentions casually that part of the reason Anderson's so hot on taking down Saren is that Anderson used to be a Spectre, but screwed it up in front of Saren, and there was a huge coverup. Of course, he also says, "Secrets are like herpes; if you got 'em, you might as well spread 'em around", so, er, possibly not the most reliable source. Still, it's a troubling rumor, and Shep's more than a little discomfited.
Shep then wanders into the med clinic where Garrus was last seen, where she stumbles into the middle of a dramatic scene: some thugs are threatening a doctor, and Garrus is in the process of sneaking up on them with a gun.
Yeah, Shep kinda ruins that sneakiness by just strolling through the front door.
Upon noticing the heavily-armed party that's just wandered in, one of the thugs immediately grabs the doctor as a hostage, and Garrus just pops up and shoots said thug between the eyes, no hesitation. After a quick battle, the thugs are taken out, and the hostage, Doctor Michel, is safe. Shep yells at Garrus for taking that risky shot, and he has an entertaining "oh-shit-what-did-i-almost-do" moment, admits he wasn't thinking, then apologizes profusely to Doctor Michel, who is pretty okay with the whole not-being-dead thing. We settle in for a nice long Epic Exposition Dump to clear up all this confusion.
Michel reveals that a quarian came into the clinic a few days ago with a gunshot wound and wouldn't say how she'd been hurt, but she was obviously scared of something. She eventually asked Michel about the Shadow Broker, explaining that she wanted to trade information for protection, so Michel put her in contact with a Shadow Broker agent named Fist. Garrus fills in the blanks: Fist is apparently working for Saren now. Michel remembers that the quarian mentioned the geth - apparently the information she's trying to keep hidden involves them in some way. Shepard visibly perks up at this - it could be the evidence they need to expose Saren. Garrus asks if he can join Shep to take down Saren, she accepts, and he mentions that krogan bounty hunter again, Wrex, as a potential ally.
Apparently if you don't recruit Garrus here, he kind of stands awkwardly by the elevator to the docking bay for the rest of the game and occasionally points out that he kinda did quit his job for this, and would you mind terribly if he came along? Pleeease?
So everyone heads off to go find Wrex, who is busy intimidating the heck out of some C-Sec officers, apparently out of boredom. He's immediately impressed with Shepard - he knows her reputation as a warrior - and takes a general "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach to life, so he's cool with signing on to take down Saren, although his current target is Fist.
Generally a good guy to have on your side.
Everyone (well, actually just Shep, Garrus, and Kaidan - the player selects two squad members to accompany Shepard for each new mission) heads over to Chora's Den, where Fist apparently has an office. The whole place has been taken over by thugs - Fist knows the Shadow Broker's hired someone to take him out - and a big fight ensues. Our heroes manage to get to Fist, and he admits that he lured the quarian into a trap by telling her the Shadow Broker would be willing to meet her in a secluded alleyway. Predictably, he's planted assassins there instead, to kill her and prevent her information from going any further. Our heroes rush to said alleyway, where the quarian is doing fairly well on her own, setting off grenades and such, but they take down the baddies anyway.
And everyone tromps over to Udina's office.
You've gotta admit, Shep's pretty good at getting the job done. Udina is a little startled at this rapid turnaround. Makes you wonder what happens when Shepard goes to pick up pizza or something equally mundane: "Oh, and on the way there I foiled an evil scheme involving anchovy smuggling and discovered the cashier was actually a commando. You had the pepperoni and mushroom, right?"
The quarian, Tali, reveals that she's on her Pilgrimage, her people's rite-of-passage tradition in which young adults go out and find something to bring back to the Flotilla, which is what got her into this whole mess. She plays her evidence, recovered from a geth she'd managed to disable and dissect: a voice recording of Saren incriminating himself that apparently couldn't have been faked. Because of Science? I don't know. Run with it. Saren's apparently looking for something called the Conduit, which sounds ominous and capital-letter-y. There's another voice on the recording, too - Benezia - and there's a very funny moment where there's a dramatic chord when her voice comes on and I half-expect everyone to go "My God, it's Counselor Troi!" But nobody recognizes her voice. They probably only watched the original Star Trek.
Benezia mentions the return of "the Reapers", and Tali reveals that these Reapers were a hyper-advanced machine race that hunted the Protheans to total extinction, and then disappeared. At least, that's what the geth believe - apparently they worship the Reapers as the pinnacle of non-organic life and think of Saren as their Prophet, the one who's going to bring the Reapers back. Shep flashes back to that crazy nightmare-vision and realizes it was showing the death of the Protheans at the hands of the Reapers. Udina, perhaps understandably, thinks that sounds a little crazy. Anderson points out that, Reapers aside, they now have evidence that Saren should probably not be allowed Spectre status. Time to talk to the Council again!
Before they leave, though, Tali asks to tag along with Shep on this mission to see it through. Shepard accepts.
It's hard to go wrong with awesome engineers.
The Council can't deny this new evidence. Because Science, I guess. (Roll with it, remember?) The asari councilor reveals that she recognizes Benezia's voice - the Matriarchs are revered leaders among the asari, so this whole chillin'-with-Saren thing is kinda weird.
Shep brings up the Reapers, and the Council is all "Yeah, no" again, making the salient point that Saren has no reason to want to bring the Reapers back if they're only going to destroy all organic life in the galaxy. The Council concedes that Saren is a bad guy, that he's using the geth to find the Conduit (whatever that is), but they don't agree that he's trying to bring back the Reapers. In fact, they think he's made them up to secure the geth's cooperation, which in itself is enough to strip Saren of his Spectre status.
Udina presses the advantage, arguing that something more needs to be done. The Council disagrees, mainly for political reasons - sending a force after Saren would draw the attention of the Terminus Systems and could even provoke a war. Something smaller-scale is needed. The Council members exchange looks, then appoint Shepard as the first human Spectre on the spot. It's all very inspiring.
Agent double-oh-Shepard?
Some more wandering of the Citadel ensues, including chatting with an Admiral Kahoku, who seems agitated - one of his recon teams was investigating "strange activity" and dropped off the map. Shepard agrees to look into it if she has time. Shep also goes back to that investigative reporter and shares some of Fist's files. She then heads up to the Normandy, where Udina and Anderson are waiting, with some big news:
Anderson is stepping down as captain of the Normandy, so that Shepard can take command of the ship and go after Saren. Shepard is understandably shocked at this, and Anderson explains that he was in her shoes twenty years ago, under consideration for admission to the Spectres. Saren was like Nihlus, there to evaluate his performance, and they went on a mission together that went wrong (Saren killed lots of innocent people to get the job done, and Anderson got left holding the bag). Letting Shepard step in and take command is something of an atonement for him, and also gives him a chance to keep on top of things Citadel-side.
Udina and Anderson give Shepard three starting points. Let's see if I can come up with some HTML for bullet points, here.
- Feros. A human colony; reported a geth presence before going silent.
- Noveria. A corporate planet; there have also been geth sightings nearby.
- Artemis Tau. Matriarch Benezia has a daughter, a Dr. Liara T'Soni, who also happens to be an expert on Protheans and is doing an archeological dig somewhere in this area.
Onwards! Shepard gives an inspiring speech to the crew, is assured that they're all right behind her, and they set out. So, with the fate of all organic life in the galaxy at stake, clearly it's time for some random conversations with the crew. Joker reveals that he has a brittle-bone disease that basically strands him in the pilot's seat, and also talks about his time training to be a pilot; Navigator Pressly is not too keen about all these non-humans on the ship; Garrus fanboys how uninhibited the Spectres are... and gets shot down when Shepard reminds him that the rules are generally there for a reason; Wrex talks about the genophage bioweapon the salarians used to slowly kill his people; Ash and Kaidan don't have much to say; Engineer Adams thinks Tali is the greatest; and Tali thinks the Normandy is the greatest.
Having run out of people to talk to, Shepard opts to go check out Liara T'Soni's dig site first.
Ah, the sweet, sweet combination of the Mako's drunken-rhino steering and deadly lava.
There are geth on the planet, and Shepard and her squad (Garrus and Kaidan again) have to fight their way through them to the main dig site, where Liara has managed to switch on an old Prothean barrier to keep the geth from getting to her. Unfortunately, she's also managed to get herself stuck in said barrier. (If you wait long enough before coming to get her, she's been stuck in there so long she thinks you're a hallucination. A hilariously awkward conversation ensues.)
Who, me? Oh, I've just been... hanging around.
Liara protests that she doesn't have a clue why her mother would be working with Saren, that she's not on anybody's side, and that she has no idea why the geth are trying to kill her in the first place. That's good enough for Shep, who finds a clever way to extricate Liara from the barrier. Unfortunately, since Shep's cleverness mostly involves large explosions, the dig site is on the verge of collapse, and they have to get out of there before the ceiling caves in on them. They get interrupted by a krogan and some geth, who have apparently been dispatched by Saren to grab Liara and go. Shepard mentions that Liara's under her protection, which apparently makes an impression on Liara, and then there's a brief fight that ends decisively in our heroes' favor. Everyone manages to make it out before the cave-in, thanks in large part to Joker's fancy flying.
Time for a group meeting!
Everyone expositions for a bit, and Liara gets a little defensive when Shepard starts casually dropping bits of information - about the Reapers and the Protheans, mostly - that Liara hasn't managed to find in fifty years of research (oh yes, Liara's 106 years old, which is barely more than a child by asari standards). Her scientific fascination gets the better of her, though, and she joins in the exposition party with some new info about how, apparently, this whole Reapers-killing-all-organic-life thing has happened before - the Protheans are just the latest in a cycle that goes back millions of years. Things like the mass relays and the Citadel were built based on the technology of races that came before. The meeting breaks up when Liara nearly keels over from exhaustion, and she gets sent to sickbay while Shepard fills in the Council remotely. The Council's a little pissed that the dig site was destroyed, but they acknowledge that the mission should take priority.
Now that we have everyone on board, it's time for another round of chatting with the crew! Joker figures he deserves a medal for pulling their asses out of the fire, until Shep points out that medals usually involve lots of speeches; Kaidan talks about an old flame at biotics school, and he and Shep start pushing the boundaries of the fraternization regs with a little light flirting; Liara shows off her social awkwardness when she accidentally implies she wants to examine Shepard as a scientific specimen; Garrus reveals that his father talked him out of becoming a Spectre since it was against his by-the-book philosophy; Ash doesn't trust the nonhuman members of the crew, and acts evasive when Shep asks her about her family's history in the Alliance; Wrex reveals that he encountered Saren once before during a fairly routine job and got such a bad feeling he left without taking payment (which worked out, since every merc who took that job wound up dead within a week); and Tali is feeling down and homesick in the too-quiet ship.
Our heroes go back to the Citadel (why? because... because subplot, that's why - the Normandy has intercepted a transmission from an ambassador named Nassana Dantius looking for Shepard's help), where they encounter a surprise inspection by a snarky admiral who isn't big on all the alien influences going on here.
I can't remember his name, so we'll call him Snarky McAdmiralson.
Shepard kicks his ass verbally with some speeches about cooperation, and manages to win him over. Go Shep! Before she can get too far onto the Citadel, a Lieutenant Girard calls her up and asks for her help with a... delicate situation. Apparently a young woman from the same colony as Shepard (you know, the one that got raided by slavers where pretty much everyone died) managed to escape the slavers after thirteen years, turned up on the Citadel, and is holed up in the docking bay with a gun. In a really painful and touching scene, Shepard manages to talk the severely traumatized young woman (she was six years old when the slavers took her) into taking a sedative and getting some help, which is probably the deepest glimpse we get into Shepard's backstory.
Anyway. Back to saving the universe? Nah, first Shep gets ambushed by a different reporter and manages to hold her own, then meets up with the mysterious Nassana Dantius, who reveals that her sister was taken prisoner by slavers who're demanding a huge ransom - she asks Shepard to see if she can rescue her. Shepard points out that she does have a galaxy to save somewhere in there, but that she'll see if she has time. Then Shepard checks in with Anderson and Udina, and randomly interferes in the personal affairs of a few passers-by (I guess wandering around with weapons in full armor makes people listen to you?). She also encounters fanboy Conrad Verner again, now in overdrive over the whole Spectre thing, and he takes a picture of her posing with her gun to put up in his living room. Apparently his wife will love it. (...yes, weirdest subplot ever)
Back to the Normandy. Shepard makes a side run to see about saving Nassana Dantius's sister... but whaaaaa, her sister's not a prisoner, she's the one in charge of the band of slavers (which Shep completely obliterates, because that's what Shep does). Turns out Nassana just wanted to get her embarrassing outlaw sister out of the way so she couldn't hurt her political career. Ouch. Talk about your sibling rivalry.
What can I say, Shepard? This is bound to happen when you try to solve everyone's problems.
Now reminded of her other non-galaxy-saving distractions, Shepard decides to try and figure out what happened to Admiral Kahoku's missing recon team. Upon investigating, she discovers an Alliance distress beacon, follows it, and nearly winds up in the same trap as Kahoku's men when a thresher maw jumps up and tries to eat her. Luckily, she manages to blow it up first.
It may be annoying to drive, but when you're facing giant acid-spitting worm things, the Mako is your best friend.
So it's back to the Citadel (racking up those frequent-flyer points) to tell Kahoku what happened to his men. He's upset, and resolves to find out where the heck that distress beacon came from - someone set a trap for his men. So that particular subplot continues subplotting merrily away in the background while Shepard moves on to the next one. And the next. A few minor and less-relevant-later subplots ensue, and then Kahoku calls the Normandy with his new fidings: apparently his men were killed by a group called Cerberus, a top-secret Alliance black-ops organization that went completely rogue, dropped off the map, and started engaging in some really creepy genetic research. Shepard drops in, blows everything up, but she's too late - Cerberus got to Kahoku and murdered him before she showed up.
Man, those Cerberus guys are jerks. Anyway, I'm sure that's the last we'll see of them. Yup. Sure. Cerberus. Just... just making sure you don't forget that name. Cerberus. Cerrrberrrrussss.
On to Part Two (in which the best dialogue wheel of the game is discovered, Shepard has a fan club, and our heroes hold the line)
