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]

It turns out Benezia was just here! She went up to the research facility and as far as they know she's still there!

Liara is nervous that we might not trust her around Mom, and I reassure her this is not the case. But we need permission from some dude before we actually head up to the research facility, so, okay, let's go talk to the guy.

[sincere]

Another turian up here reminds me why turians are my favorite race. He's irritated to have been kicked out of his office because the crooked landlord (or something) he's trying to report for corruption has reported HIM for corruption and is ransacking his stuff for the evidence about to be used against him.

Can we please kill everyone, or failing that, backup the data before it's erased? And please try not to get blood on the carpets.

[sincere]

Turian Dude: Humans are full of questions. I should write a book about it while I have the time to spare.

[sincere]

Shepard: I should let you go.

Turian Dude: "Let me go"? Do humans consider conversation a form of imprisonment? That would explain why so few are willing to sit and talk.

cracking up

[rainfall]

That Turian has never talked to my mom. Or yours. Or anyone's.

[sincere]

/WANDERS AROUND FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES, AGGRESSIVELY LOOKING FOR ANOLEIS'S OFFICE

I DID ALL THE THINGS TO GET THE PASS

WITHOUT EVER FINDING THE GUY WHO WAS GOING TO TELL ME I WOULD NEED TO GET A PASS FROM SOMEONE ELSE

AND NOW MY PASS IS WAITING FOR ME

IN HIS OFFICE

WHERE IS HE

[sincere]

/immediately

I found him

[sincere]

Okay, now to go to the mountain! They warned of a storm coming in and then Benezia went up with a bunch of crates that were obviously full of geth and were very heavy and obviously full of geth, and then the mountain fell out of contact.

Wheeee.

[sincere]

Oh, and she has some asari commandos with her. Curious about that.

[sincere]

It was full of geth.

But far more offensive, I now have to drive in a Mako. Bitch!

[rainfall]

:|||

How dare she make you resort to that.

[sincere]

Benezia knows my weakness. Miscellaneous side-stuff. The long winding road of artillery cannons and rocket-launching dudes are littered with crates to open and encrypted things to break into!

[sincere]

Anyway I made it up the mountain.

[sincere]

While storming the place we encounter some sort of insectoid monsters. Garrus sounds pretty freaked out about it, and if Garrus is freaked out, I'm worried.

[rainfall]

But also conflicted, because you like when Garrus has reactions to stuff.

[sincere]

Okay, I restarted the VI, blah blah, stuff happened and everything is broken. I'm getting bored so I'll go to bed.

[sincere]

Today sucked a little bit so I'm starting my liveplay early.

Mira the VI is super annoying! I've already fixed one thing but she won't shut up, I know, the tram is disabled, shut up already. I'm working on it.

[rainfall]

/attaches!!!

[sincere]

P.S. The inventory system sucks! At least in this first game! There's no way for me to determine how many items I have at any given point in time, but the game penalizes me if I end up carrying too many things, but it also picks things up without telling me. There's no easy way to sort through the items, either, and there's no "junk" category where I can put my disposable things for easy handling. Every time I open my inventory I have to determine what is worth keeping and what isn't.

[sincere]

Oh, and let's not forget that it's sorted from awesome to least awesome, and when I destroy an item for not being awesome enough while my inventory is overflowing, I get put back up the list

So right now, this is my gameplay:

Me: /chooses ammo upgrades
Game: /tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
Me: /finally reaches the lamest ammo upgrade
Me: /deletes the lamest ammo upgrade
Me: /back at the top
Game: /tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
Me: /sigh

[sincere]

The landlines are up again and the tram is running. I am now going to follow Benezia on the tram. Let's see how many ambushes I can get into on my way!

[sincere]

That's one. Fucking bugthings.

[sincere]

A salarian researcher here killed himself when he realized his bugthings had escaped. Welp.

[rainfall]

At least he took RESPONSIBILITY like a MAN.

[sincere]

My tram has arrived at Rift Station! I find a tiny outpost of surviving security team that's happy to see me -- or, what passes for it.

Captain Ventralis: Huh. Well, I won't look a heavily-armed gift horse in the mouth.

He explains that last week those bugs overran the facility and killed just about everyone. Only one researcher is left alive, a volus. Benezia came in yesterday, claiming to be here to "clean up". (He says he doesn't see how "just one person" could still be alive, but didn't she come up here with a team of asari commandos? What happened to them?)

[sincere]

Me: Hey, an Asari.

She's kind of rude to me, but I have questions for her, so I give no fucks.

Shepard: Do you know anything about Matriarch Benezia?
Asari: Why ask me and not your friend over there?
Liara: I... do not know anything about Matriarch Benezia.
Asari: Then why would I?

Me: Because... you're different people? So maybe you know... different things?

With that said, are you incredibly super obviously one of Benezia's commando spies, or just a huge bitch? :|a

[rainfall]

I enjoy this exchange.

I just want to point that out.

[sincere]

We find the volus researcher survivor, and he is frazzled down to his last nerve. He freely tells us (while other scientists shout at him to be quiet or they'll be killed) that they found a rachni egg. You know, that species that krogans killed to extinction? And they cultivated it.

Researcher: In retrospect. A bad decision.

Yes, sir.

[rainfall]

SLIGHTLY

[sincere]

Just as I'm about to cure some sick scientists, I've learned that the asari bitch is working for Benezia -- in an AMBUSH! Hold on, I need to find where I left my shock now...

Okay, I found it.

GASP!

[rainfall]

X33

[sincere]

I found Benezia! She immediately starts on a menacing monologue about how I don't understand what it is to be a mother and I'm like, oooookay. Apparently she wants the rachni's babies to murder for Saren and she's annoyed I'm interfering with this.

Benezia: I won't be moved by sympathy. No matter who you bring into this confrontation.

I admit I was expecting a little more reaction, but...

Shepard: Liara's here because she wants to be, not because I made her be.

Then Benezia is like "My commandos will fuck your shit up so hard" and I have the option of reminding her that Liara is here. lol. "SHE'S NOT HERE AS A BARGAINING TOOL, BENEZIA. But since she IS here and she IS a bargaining tool, let me just see if harm coming to her is something I can use against you."

[rainfall]

There are no words for this part, man. Seriously. X333

[sincere]

I won a somewhat awkward fight without undue hardship. Benezia is annoyed and claims that Saren is unstoppable. I'm not impressed, and then she turns around and is like,

...OH GOD OKAY A MOMENT OF CLARITY I CAN FIGHT SAREN'S COMPULSION, LISTEN TO ME

[sincere]

She explains to us that Saren is searching for the Mu Relay, which he believes will lead him to the Conduit. Its position was lost a long time ago, but the rachni have racial memory, with each queen inheriting the knowledge and memories of the previous queens, and so Benezia mindraped the new baby queen and found the location of the Mu Relay from her, because the rachni found it first.

She gives us the coordinates, but admits that she already sent them to Saren.

[sincere]

Shepard goes to check out the rachni queen, and is creeper attacked by an animated corpse or something. The corpsey asari is clearly being possessed by the rachni queen.

She wants us to kill her children, because they were taken away before "they could learn to sing", and will only cause harm the way they have grown. The researchers wanted them to be weapons, and they got weapons. The queen can't save them.

So, do we free her, or kill her? Once upon a time the rachni waged a horrible war against our part of the galaxy and the krogan ended up wiping them all out because they couldn't be reasoned with.

[sincere]

The queen claims something was wrong during the war. She says she would just hide away with her young and try to teach them to be harmonious.

If I free you, will you stop possessing people, because the twitching and whispering is really creepy.

[sincere]

So I killed all the rachni just like Mama wanted. When I leave, I'm back on the ship. I feel robbed of a peaceful music montage as we flee the site of the horrors, and drift off to sleep on the tram.

--Or maybe there's still game to play and it's not the end of Jurassic Park.

Back on the Normandy, anyway.

[demiurgic]

Did you kill the rachni queen? :o

[sincere]

Liara and I agree that going to the Mu Relay is pointless, since it'll link to a lot of locations and we don't know which one Saren will be going to. Ashley is snippy at Liara for daring to agree with me. It's good to know that no matter what gender I am, my human companions are annoyed at her kissing my ass. All my human friends are so speciesist, though. Hilarious.

I explain to the Council why it's cool that I saved the rachni queen, and they side-eye me, visibly regretting the decision to give Spectres so much power.

[rainfall]

Snork.

It might hearken back a bit to the Bioware habit of lazy coding leaving remnants of romances in the other gender game. (I've actually heard there are points in ME where bugs cause characters to refer to fem Shep as male.) I distinctly remember my Kaidan-equivalent in a KotOR game getting really bitchy with the bisexual love interest, even though my player character at the time was male.

[sincere]

Time to talk to everyone!

[sincere]

Kaidan is pleased we killed Benezia, although he feels bad for Dr. T'Soni, but he would've preferred to let the council decide what happened to the rachni, since we kind of don't know anything about that, it happened long before humans were even around this part of the galaxy. Valid point, but that's why I'm the Spectre, and you're my monkey. I make decisions and apologize for them after, I don't wait for other people to make decisions for me.

He doesn't seem to have any personal conversation to contribute, though.

[sincere]

I decide to go on a side mission to see what's up with my backstory. I was the sole survivor of a dreadful thresher maw attack on Akuze! The first time humans ever encountered thresher maws. Apparently, scientists somehow connected to Akuze have been dying mysteriously.

I will check it out.

[sincere]

The only surviving scientist is in a facility that, when I bust in, is full of angry armed men and dead researcher bodies. So that's a good sign. But I arrive in the last room to find the scientist at gunpoint by...

By a guy who died on Akuze?!

He claims that the scientists were studying and running tests on the thresher maws. They let the team get attacked, to see them in action.