Mass Effect liveplay (complete)

[sincere]

Spent two hours wrestling with my taxes, gave up. I'll have to go to H&R Block next weekend and pay them to take this mess off my hands. Also spent some time looking at apartments/houses?? but it was not fruitful.

Meanwhile, I have been having the random want to replace all my icons with The World Ends With You character poses. Like, FUCK YOU, YURI AND SIF AND DINOSAUR ICONS. I NEED TWENTY ICONS OF SHIKI MAKING FLIPPY HAND GESTURES.



And finally, Mass Effect liveplay, continued from here. Mass Effect, pages 1-8. Mass Effect 2, pages 8-15. Mass Effect 3, pages 15-24.


Latest: ...finished...

Spacer sentinel with traumatic survivor backstory and adorable facial scar! LET'S GO.

Comments

[sincere]

Putting everything on pause because I need to see a man about a house.

[ersatzing]

What.

I require full details when you get back! (I as in Jes. Jes is who I am.)

[sincere]

/complains about why some doors are auto-open and some doors are button-opened, and how it's always the ones that should be button-opened that are auto-open and vice versa, and how it seems insecure and poor planning, like, that poor turian ambassador must get disturbed everytime someone heads to the bar next to his embassy, because he sits six feet in front of his door and stares directly at it and it opens every time someone walks vaguely near it

/has all the minor nitpicks

[sincere]

OKAY I'M ON FEROS

[sincere]

So when we arrive, our welcoming party is immediately shot in the head.

This place is under siege by the geth. They're just straight-up killing everyone and almost the whole settlement is in ruins, there's like nobody left. Sounds like a good time.

[sincere]

I run around killing all the geth near the base camp the survivors have set up. They refuse to leave because there's something ambiguously special about this place, but not so special anyone knows what the hell the geth want.

So they won't leave... It's up to me to get them food and water and safety and keep all their hearts pumping and their lungs breathing oxygen.

No problem. I'm Commander Shepard.

[sincere]

Everyone in this colony describes themselves as having a mystical connection to the colony, it's somehow different than other colonies, they would stay here forever and everything would be rainbows if not for the geth slaughtering everyone. They can't describe it. I should ask Fai Dan about it.

Getting a little creepy, guys.

[sincere]

Okay, their little colony will survive. Assuming I can take out the geth.

Hahaha!

[sincere]

For some reason the Mako is here.

This reduces my confidence in our success. :|a

[slayerofgod]

If only it could teleport like that all the time.

[sincere]

Update: I'm storming ExoGeni headquarters now. This is where the geth have set up camp on this stupid world.

Still no real discussion of brainwashings.

[sincere]

Okay I found a chick. She says the geth are here for the Thorian, an indigenous lifeform that ExoGeni was here studying and that she was reluctant to tell us about.

[sincere]

The Thorian is a "plant being". Scientist chick doesn't know why the geth would be after it, she doesn't think it's "anything special".

Does it have mind control powers idk I would like to get back to that topic plz

[sincere]

YES! I WAS RIGHT. The Thorian is located at Fai Dan's settlement and the spores have infected and controlled all the people there. HUZZAH! ExoGeni's been studying them.

[sincere]

I sent a geth ship crashing satisfyingly to the planet thousands of feet below, it was delicious. Now to go rescue everyone, and--

Damn. 11 out of 12 charm points, and this is a 12 charm point persuade.

Well, I shot a guy in the face who wanted to "purge" the colony.

[sincere]

Holy mother of what now, there is a hideous stitched-together zombie corpse waiting for us back near the infected colonists we're trying to save sldjkflskjg.

[slayerofgod]

There's a reason they have Creeper in their name!

[sincere]

So I have a paralysis agent equipped as a grenade. The Thorian will make all the colonists attack me to defend itself, but I can take out the PEOPLE with the paralysis agent and try to kill as few of them as possible.

So that's fun.

[sincere]

I might have killed two villagers, but the important thing is that the Thorian created a creepy asari clone to creepily command me to worship it, and then sent a thousand more creepers after me. It turns out that it gave Saren what he wanted already (information about "the Old Ones") and is super pissed off that now he's attacking its rightful property, e.g. the colonists.

Denied. We fight with swords guns!

[sincere]

From a creepy bulb on the creepy remains of the creepy plant comes... an asari chick! She's like, "Whew, you saved me!" and I am like, "Who the hell are you?"

She was one of Matriarch Benezia's followers. She says Benezia wanted to guide Saren to a gentler path, but was swept up by him instead. Saren's warship, "Sovereign", can dominate the minds of those around him after a while.

Saren offered her to the Thorian in a trade for its information. Because he's such a nice guy.

[sincere]

So Saren's purpose in attacking this world was to wipe out the Thorian before it could give us the Cipher -- being the Thorian's knowledge of the Protheans. Its knowledge of the Protheans would help us understand the vision we saw from the beacon.

This chick, Shiala, felt the knowledge in the Thorian, but she can't explain it to us, so she's super helpful.

[sincere]

The asari hypnotizes gets in my personal space merges with my mind to give me her understanding.

Her understanding is a bunch of creepy distorted flashes of stillshots and shit, so I'm really glad we did that.

Then... a supernova? Or something? Planets in alignment and a creepy tentacled thing. Yay.

[sincere]

She swears up and down that Saren's ship controls minds and is enormous and charismatic and shit.

But... but how did he get this gigantic all-powerful mind control ship with the charisma of a thousand suns? That's kind of what I want to know.

[sincere]

Okay, way creepier than any of the above:

Liara mind-melding with my brain to try to help me make sense of it. She's all "EMBRACE ETERNITY" and her eyes go black and then there's brain screaming and shit and I'm like holy shit

No one in this game is sexy, sob

[rainfall]

Hey be fair the other Asari chick did it exactly the same way, with EMBRACE ETERNITY and the BLACK EYEBALLS OF DOOM.

I do not know why either of these things are necessary. "Embrace eternity" sure sounds like the windup to a mahou shoujo attack, so maybe that explains that!

[sincere]

Kaidan wants to know if I'm into Liara. I tell him to mind his own business.

[slayerofgod]

LOVE TRIANGLE!

[sincere]

Wrex explains that he became a mercenary because he was trying to help his people as a little chieftain of a little tribe, and he clashed with an old warlord who wanted to continue the war after the genophage -- against the "turians, salarians, each other. It didn't matter who as long as we were fighting."

It pissed Wrex off that he was leading the tribes down this bad road. Forget about war, focus on breeding more, to overcome this.

...But his dad didn't like that Wrex was trying to preach the other way. :(

DUN DUN DUN the warlord was his dad!!!

So Wrex's father tried to assassinate him and Wrex killed him. :( And now he's never going back.

[slayerofgod]

Did you follow up on that by picking the family option on the dialogue wheel? You can get a sidequest for that.

[sincere]

Ashley admires the colonials for soldiering on in their crappy situation on Feros.

Before she cuts off a communication with her sister, her sister tells her that Kaidan is cute, and I'm all, "KAIDAN, HUHHHH?" and Ashley is all "FRATERNIZATION IS AGAINST THE RULES, COMMANDER."

I ask about her family. Ashley is very close to her sisters: Abby, Lynn, and Sarah, all younger. She practically raised them. Her mom was a planetary geologist who gave up her job to be a military wife and raise her kids solo, and her dad was a hard worker who never got any recognition. ("The first thing he did when I made Chief was salute." Awww.) She also tells us an anecdote about how her baby sister had a kind of pushy boyfriend who wanted to go faster than she did, and we bond over girltalk about crappy boyfriends before she tells us how her baby sister beat the shit out of him.

Then she quotes poetry at me!! I get the option of whether or not I recognize the poem, admire her knowledge of poetry, or am a bored philistine, the full range of reactions. When she tells us her dad's dead, but he's with God now, she asks if it's a problem that she's religious, and then we have the full range of options again: I am too, of course I don't mind, it's not my place to judge, are you CRAZY about your beliefs, and just don't talk about it where I can hear it. This is kind of wonderful.

SO CUTE. Man. This is almost unfair.

[rainfall]

X333 My immediate reaction was: Do they hook up (temporarily) if you don't pursue either of them? I know sometimes that happens, vis-a-vis Dragon Age II. :|a


This is all super-cute, though, and god I wish people in real life had that same range of reactions to religion-- /shot

/but seriously, at the very least it's a broader range of reactions than you usually get on TV!


But no, you do not get to romance Ashley. Sorry.

[sincere]

I talk to Garrus about a salarian geneticist he dealt with back at C-Sec, a... "disturbing" case. Garrus was following a recent surge of black market organ sales.

Garrus: We had this one elcor diplomat the first year I was on the job. Hacking people up and selling their organs. Had the station in a bit of a panic. But this one wasn't as clear cut as that one. :|a

.................OH? DO TELL.

[sincere]

Garrus: But when we got to his lab, it was clean. Not one krogan testicle.

Shepard: lol what? Krogan testicles? WHO'D WANT THOSE?

Garrus: Krogans think it might enhance their virility and counteract the effects of the genophage if they undergo testicle transplants.
Garrus: It doesn't work, but that doesn't stop them from trying.
Garrus: They'll pay as much as ten thousand per testicle.
Garrus: That's forty thousand for the whole set.
Garrus: ...Somebody's making a killing out there. :|a

omfg I love him so much

Also, now I know how many testicles a krogan has, and I'm sure that knowledge will come in handy.

[sincere]

Tali tells us about how her father is one of the Admiralty -- 17 million people are under his command, and he's one of the five most important quarians in the fleet, and she's his only child. Big things are expected of her! Heritage is so important! She has to be really careful to bring back something worthwhile and impressive. Just "saved the galaxy" isn't good enough if she can't bring back something cool. :|a

She wants to bring something back that will help them understand the geth. If we can find a few geth, acting independently, maybe... she would like it if Shepard could help her for this. As long as it's not too much trouble! ADORABLE.

[sincere]

She says he was a strict type, demanding excellence in all things from her. Her mother was "overshadowed" by him, so she was never much of a presence in Tali's life, and she died a while back.

She can't remember ever seeing her father smile. I guess they take their head garb off around each other then?? He was always very stressed out and preoccupied with his work. But Tali doesn't resent him for her difficult upbringing: she knows he cared about her, and she respects why he worked her so hard. She respects him.

[sincere]

I'm going to try talking to Kaidan again to see if he has anything more interesting to say than pawing hopefully at my pant leg and giving me puppy eyes.

[rainfall]

PFFF