[HEADING=2]CHAPTER 5, PART 4 (Noveria / Normandy) - The smell of neutron in the morning[/HEADING]
Previously, on Lets Play Mass Effect: we killed Liara's mother. In front of Liara. Because that's how Grunka Shepard rolls with people she plans to get her alien freak on with at a later stage.
After we did that we had to deal with another prickly issue - what to do with the rachni queen? Kill it or let it live? The votes came down in favour of letting it live, so that's what we're doing:
"Um... Shepard? Where exactly did we just let the queen go to?"
"Dunno, that's her problem. I didn't say I'd give her a ride home, just that I'd let her live."
"Indeed. But we are on the side of a mountain, in the middle of a blizzard, and as questionable as the intelligence of the owners of this facility has proven to be, I'm not sure they'd be holding the queen anywhere within walking distance of a rachni-operable spaceship..."
Since starting this LP there have been several plot holes or oddities that I've noticed for the first time. This one struck me as silly the very first time I saw it though - where exactly DOES the rachni queen go? Here's just one theory, I'd love to hear yours:
"Welcome to Port Hanshan Travel, how may we AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! GIANT SPACE LOBSTER!!!"
*incoherent squealing noises, which cause a nearby asari to faint in shock and then stand up again with a glazed look in its eyes*
<font
color="0000BB">"We wish to book passage to the Ninmah Cluster, that we may compose anew the song of our species."
<font
color="0000BB">"Oh. A simple business transaction. No problem. I... I was worried you were going to murder us all with those nasty-looking claws... *laughs nervously and taps away at keyboard* would you like a window or an aisle seat?"
Anywho, the queen is gone. Which just leaves us with the question of what to do with her insane children down in the hot labs. Actually there is no question, even their mother agrees - we've got to kill all the little buggers. To the hot labs!
Grunka needs no subtlety.
Mister sitting around for no apparent reason goes on to explain everything that Benezia explained to us - that Binary Helix found an egg yadda yadda yadda. I'm pretty sure he's only here in case you decide to do the hot labs before the confrontation with Benezia so you don't miss out on any story. If you choose to do the missions in that order, by the way, then the survivors upstairs immediately turn hostile (like they did when we went through the restricted area).
Fortunately he does have one new idea of his own, a way to efficiently kill all of the remaining rachni.
I love how earnest Grunka looks in this shot. "A giant bomb? Gimme gimme gimme!"
One rachni soldier is obviously no match for us at this point, so once it's dead we can somehow get the purge codes from Mister sitting around for no apparent reason's corpse. I guess he had them written on a post-it note or something.
There's a Mira terminal in the next room where we can input them.
That starts a timer - it's also the cue for our minimap to fill up with dozens of angry little red triangles. Sure enough, back in the other room between us and the elevator:
The room has filled with rachni soldiers and workers. Most people's instinct will be to just run for the elevator and while that's a perfectly valid tactic, Grunka is going to demonstrate the alternative, wherein you kill every last one of them by hand just for the lulz (and XP), even though they're going to die in nuclear fire in under two minutes anyway.
Note Grunka's bright white life bar. We're taking full advantage of the Immunity skill here. While it's active it's all but impossible for the rachni to kill us and thanks to various leveling up perks its recharge time is about the same as the effect's duration, so you can use it almost indefinitely.
With all the rachni in the room dead (in about 45 seconds, no less) we can just mosey on up to the elevator. Or at least we could, if the game didn't bug out on this run and refuse to open the door for us.
Kaboom. So much for being clever. We reload and demonstrate the more obvious route - activate Immunity again and just sprint.
It doesn't seem to matter that Liara has been knocked out on the way, because as soon as you hit the elevator button everyone revives right next to you.
You hear a kaboom sound on the way back up and that's that, another main quest world over!
Back to the Normandy for a debrief.
Well that didn't take long. To kill some time Grunka fills the Council in too:
"Is this report accurate, Commander? You found rachni on Noveria?"
"This is no joke, Commander. The rachni were one of the greatest threats the galaxy ever faced."
"Ppft - only because you didn't have us humans around to squash them for you. Seriously, I just killed hundreds of them without even breaking a sweat!"
Incidentally, the Council also get pissy with you if you choose to kill the queen. Is it any wonder people hang up on them so often?
Now let's go do the talking to the crew routine - we've done a major story quest, so they'll all have new stuff to say
"Wow Commander, you're really making it obvious you want to get into her pants, huh..."
"Joker, you'd do well to remember which of us is the cripple and which of us is a highly-trained killing machine..."
"Ahem. Anywho, that is kind of you to say. I appreciate your concern, but I am fine. Benezia chose her path, just as I have chosen mine. I am with you until the end, Shepard."
"<font
color="0000BB">I appreciate that Liara. Now, time for stupid questions. Do you know why Benezia joined up with Saren?"
So... no new information other than what Benezia told us herself right before we killed her. Not really sure what other answer Shepard expected here. Liara finishes up by saying she won't let her grief interfere with the mission and then it's back to, well, trying to get into her pants.
"I know there are some strange beliefs about my people. I am familiar with the legend of asari promiscuity. But those rumors have little basis in fact."
"I dunno if 'rumours' or 'legends' is quite the right word to describe fanfic, but go on..."
She does go on to explain that when an asari "joins" with someone from another species it's a very deep and spiritual union...
"So if we were to 'join' I shouldn't expect to see nightmarish visions of space squids or anything, like I have every other time you've poked about in my mind?"
"Goddess, no! Unless... you're into that kind of thing?"
Grunka channels her inner bloke at this point, because the very next thing she says is:
Kaidan is our next stop.
"I'm sure Dr T'Soni's hurting though. Poor kid. Having to kill her own mom."
"Yeah, that's rough. Mind you, you say that now but if I hadn't have taken her you would have told me to go back and get her... plus a bunch of people in the thread requested we take her. What kind of sick bastards are you all anyway?"
"Off the record? If we'd had the option, I'd as soon have left it to the Council. We weren't out here during the rachni war. I'm not sure we have any business getting involved."
"So when you were pushing for me to open the acid vat above the queen's tank that was your way of... not getting involved?"
"Oh, that. I blame the script, Commander. I was gonna say what was actually on my mind, but it was the first time in about three updates that the writers had given me something more intelligent sounding than 'I think there's snow in my boots' so I just ran with it. Sorry, ma'am."
"Understood Lieutenant. Anything else you want to be all emo about?"
Careful Grunka, you almost said something profound there... and it could've been the basis for an interesting conversation, except Kaidan takes this as his cue to go back to telling his story about his evil Brain Camp instructor.
Long story short, the turian instructor he was complaining about last time broke Kaidan's not-girlfriend's arm over some minor thing, and Kaidan challenged him to fisticuffs to defend her honour. The instructor beat the crap out of Kaidan and waved a knife in his face. So Kaidan gave the guy a biotic kick to the head and killed him. This apparently caused quite a stir and the program was shut down shortly afterwards.
More than anything else this makes me wonder why we don't have the ability to use this one-hit-kill biotic kick in combat. But his big philosophical point here is that yes, he hated that instructor, but...
"If one ass was enough to judge a whole race, I'd hate humans too".
"True. But on the flipside, we could use old vids of Miranda Kerr's ass to bring about galactic peace!"
Touche.
Next Grunka goes for a walk to the engine room to visit Tali.
"Oh I dunno... we've still got this Virmire place to explore, and then there's probably an endgame run after we're done there. That'll be at least 15 hours of gameplay. Or about 15 more months of this LP, at the rate this guy is writing..."
"We couldn't have done this without you, Tali"
"You've been good to me. A lot of people treat quarians like second-class citizens. They just want us to go back to our fleet and disappear. But you've treated me just like everyone else on your crew. Like an equal. That means a lot. And it says something about you."
"It says that... I'm kind of a dick to everyone on the crew?"
I didn't skip anything much there by the way - that was essentially the whole conversation. Seems Tali has run out of stuff to talk about. Wrex, on the other hand...
"Saving the galaxy from certain destruction? No. But I've had my share of adventures. I remember one time I was hired by a volus diplomat. What an ass..."
"How could you tell under the pressure suit?"
"What?!? Oh - you're making the same 'ass' and 'arse' joke twice in one update. Real clever."
*grins* "I live to give."
Wrex goes on to tell us that he was hired by the diplomat to get rid of an "old friend who knew too much". Turns out this "old friend" was an asari commando and she really was an old friend of Wrex's. Naturally that didn't stop Wrex from trying to complete the contract, but as what passes for a krogan gentleman he let her choose the place they'd fight. She chose an old salarian space station that had been taken over by mercs and smugglers. They blew the hell out of the place for two days until finally...
"She'd locked herself in the medlabs. She was trying to patch herself up. Damn tough, that one."
Nice subtle dig at the size of turian testicles there BTW Wrex
"But just as I'm getting ready to leave I get a message from her: 'better luck next time!' Now I'm not superstitious, but if someone can survive that, well, they deserve to live. At least for a bit longer. So I went back to the diplomat and I told him if he wanted to live, he'd need me around to protect him. *laughs* He kept me on as his personal guard until he died. Natural causes. Easiest job I ever had. A little boring, but credits are credits."
Ashley is standing around on the other side of the room.
"They were dangerous, skipper. They proved that two thousand years ago. I think it was a mistake to let them go. But that wasn't my call to make. It was yours. You know, you should really talk to T'Soni about her mom. She has to be hurting. Just saying, skipper."
"You're just saying... that your plan is to fake concern for the alien that we all know you don't like, in the hopes that it'll make me forget the insubordination of the comments that came right before? Pretty good plan actually. Wanna talk about something else?"
"The end of it, yeah. My family always marks it. I'm the only Williams here. I guess you'd be the only other one interested in it."
"Seems like an odd thing to celebrate. That was 26 years ago."
"In our family, it's not really a celebration. More like an obligation."
"There's a reason for the crap assignments..."
"'A Williams has to be better than the best, if only to avoid suspicion'. That's what my Dad told me the night before he retired. It takes a special kind of thickheaded to march into a job where your family's blacklisted. I did it anyway. I'm not going to let our name go down with Arnold and Quisling. Granddad deserved better than that."
Ashley and Grunka go on to discuss exactly why her grandfather surrendered - he'd broken his troops up into guerilla resistance units, but the turians started bombing the planet from orbit and killing civilians indiscriminately along with the human soldiers. Surrender was the only choice he was really left with, but the Alliance still stripped him of his rank after the incident. He ended up working colonial construction jobs for the rest of his life. Ouch.
As discussed previously...
...she doesn't know that her grandfather also played a major role in starting the Cerberus organisation and putting The Illusive Man into power. Imagine how bad she'd feel then!
One last conversation to go, with our bro Garrus.
"Well like I told Tali before, we've gotta be within about 15 gameplay hours of getting our hands on him..."
"I wish I had your confidence and your ability to jump through the fourth wall to find this stuff out. But I just can't stant the thought of him getting away with everything he's done. I know you're doing everything you can. And if anyone can catch him, it's you, but... if there's anything else I can do to help. Anything. Just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it."
"Actually, I think the sights on my rifle got a bit gunked up with rachni blood. Could you recalibrate them for me?"
"Consider it done. Can I ask you something, Commander?"
"Erm... sure. You know romances with alien species other than asari won't be implemented until the next game though, right?"
*raises what passes for an eyebrow* "That's... interesting to note, Commander. But what I was actually going to ask was are you worried that the Council might be protecting Saren?"
That's it both of you, ride that fence!
We'll finish up with a little bit of housekeeping. As of right now, Grunka has a bank balance of 7,449,124 credits and her inventory is full of substandard weapons, armour and upgrades. After selling them all off to the Normandy's quartermaster for a profit just shy of two million credits the game's economy is officially broken and we can take a little trip to our holiday home with its direct link to high-end gun merchants.
We've levelled up a bunch since we were last here, so we now have access to the top tier supplies. The MSV Wallace will sell us the best weapons, armour and upgrades in the game (all Teir X) for 220,000 credits a pop. Like the others though, they just sell us one random item per purchase. So that whole random upgrades thing that people bitched about in the ME3 multiplayer wasn't entirely without precedent.
Anywho, Grunka proceeds to drop over 8.5 MILLION credits on these items, because what else is there to spend the money on, right? Here's what we ended up with:
3 x Geth Pulse Rifle X
3 x Spectre HMWA X assault rifles
4 x Spectre HMWSG X shotguns
1 x Spectre HMWP X pistol
1 x Spectre HMWSR X sniper rifle
2 x Savant X omni tools
2 x Savant X biotic amps
1 x Polaris X biotic amp
3 x Scram Rail X weapon upgrades
3 x Kinetic Coil X weapon upgrades
1 x Frictionless Materials X weapon upgrade
2 x High Explosive Rounds X
5 x Turian Predator M X medium armour sets
2 x Krogan Phoenix M X medium armour sets
2 x Krogan Berzerker H X heavy armour sets
3 x Human Colossus M X medium armour sets
1 x Human Explorer L X light armour set
The Spectre weapons are easily the best in the game, we'll take as many as we can of those. Same goes for the Savant biotic amps and omni tools, though we need less of them. The weapon upgrades are handy, but pretty damn expensive at this price.
The frustrating bit in this particular run was the armour sets. The Turian Predator M set is among the best in the game... but we've only got one Garrus, so there's absolutely no need for us to have five sets of the stuff. Especially since what I'd really like right now is some decent quarian armour for Tali. Anywho, we go back to the Normandy and sell all the useless / extraneous stuff back for just shy of three million credits.
Oh, and that Krogan Berzerker armour? Here's what it looks like on Wrex:
Because every Krogan should also have the right to make themselves look like an extra from Tron.
That's it for the moment - thanks as always for reading. Next time out we'll knock off a few more side quests (and try to get some of the requests in there) and then look into the other DLC pack for the game before getting back to the main story.
The high-end merchant sells Savants? Man, I feel so gypped. You normally only find two-ish over the course of the game, and it's irritating trying to swap them onto the people you're taking on outings. Having one for everyone that can use one is so nice. >:|
Indeed. I can't work out if that's something that was planned, or if it was just something that Mac Walters thought it would be cool to throw into the comic as a fanservice or something. Full plot summary of the comic here (spoilers, obv): http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Mass_Effect:_Evolution
Vuliev said:
The high-end merchant sells Savants? Man, I feel so gypped. You normally only find two-ish over the course of the game, and it's irritating trying to swap them onto the people you're taking on outings. Having one for everyone that can use one is so nice. >:|
Know exactly what you mean. The thing is because it's random you can spend forever trying to get one and still not have one drop - I think I ran super-good to get two of each. Other times I've literally spent upwards of 20 million credits trying to get hold of one (or some other rare item like the Colossus X quarian armour) and come up empty
Speaking of Mass Effect comics, the fact that a Blasto comic actually exists is enough reason to have faith in the Human Race as not entirely worthless.
Yaroslev, No! You were such a deep and interesting character! Man, how could Shepard not have noticed that Rachni behind him? Rachni ain't exactly small.
To be honest, I always thought the council was actually fairly reasonable for most of ME1. Sure, they pull a major dick move in the Endgame, and the Turian councilor is a bit of a an arse, but generally they seemed reasonable to me, especially on my most recent playthrough. I guess their later uselessness in later games is a result of a general Flanderisation that hit the characters with ME2.
And Krogan Berserker armor...my god...I've seen impractical visors in my time, but how can you even SEE out of that thing?
LOL - yeah. Bioware may have had a huge swing and a miss when it came to keeping fans happy with the ending of the trilogy, but when it comes to churning out the little fan services (like the Blasto comic, which I'm looking forward to getting, or the volus multiplayer characters and whatever) they're doing some good stuff.
As for Yaroslev... I just don't get it. Literally the only reason he's there is to give you the code for the purge, and give you all that exposition if you go to the hot labs first. According to the volus we spoke to in the previous update though there was nobody left alive in the hot labs. So what's he doing there?!? Even if the bit we go to is just a control room and not the hot labs proper, why is there just one guy sitting around down there. He's not injured... at least, not before he gets rachni'd in the guts. All the other people, including the people with guns that could protect him, are just an elevator ride away. Why is he there?!?
And I agree absolutely about the Council. Looked at dispassionately, pretty much everything they do in this game makes sense.
As for Yaroslev... I just don't get it. Literally the only reason he's there is to give you the code for the purge, and give you all that exposition if you go to the hot labs first. According to the volus we spoke to in the previous update though there was nobody left alive in the hot labs. So what's he doing there?!? Even if the bit we go to is just a control room and not the hot labs proper, why is there just one guy sitting around down there. He's not injured... at least, not before he gets rachni'd in the guts. All the other people, including the people with guns that could protect him, are just an elevator ride away. Why is he there?!?
I'm mixing up the squadmates on each mission for this playthrough so that we hopefully get to see even amounts of all of them. But in the past I've done playthroughs where I just used the same two squadmates for pretty much the entire game (because among other things there's an achievement for completing the majority of the game with each of them - requires minimum three full playthroughs to get them all). The one I did with Wrex certainly had the most funny lines, especially since from memory I did that run with Liara as well, so he always got to say the badass lines
That said, I don't think I've ever heard the "virtual wench" line either. Bummer!
[HEADING=2]CHAPTER 5, PART 5 (Various) - Grunka, Garrus and Wrex go big buck hunting[/HEADING]
Previously, on Lets Play Mass Effect: we committed rachni genocide, managed to have a relatively civil discussion with the Council and dropped a cool 8.5 million credits gun shopping.
"Speaking of all those shiny new guns Shepard..."
"...Garrus and I are pissed that you took the asari and the weakling to kill all those rachni and not us! What gives?!?"
"Oh c'mon - surely if anyone could appreciate taking a squadmate along specifically so they'll be there when their mother was getting killed it'd be you two?!?"
"Heh. Heh heh heh. Yeah, that was actually pretty brutal. And I guess at least you didn't take the quarian."
*muffled cry from the next room* "Bosh'tet!" *storms into the room, tapping furiously at her omni tool* "I warned you! Don't say I didn't warn you!" *Wrex's omni tool flashes and beeps as Tali spins on her heel and leaves*
"What was that all about?"
"I suspect we'll find out later... anywho, to make up for you two not getting to kill any rachni, how about we take a break to go on a hunting trip?"
"Now you're talking!"
We'll start the trip by having a poke about in the Kepler Verge - to keep the Alliance brass happy though, we'll also look into the reports of missing scientists in the area that we heard about on Noveria. Bishop Hackett feels the need to give us a call and give us the quest when we arrive, even though it's already in our journals.
"I've received some trouble information, Commander. We need your help. Someone is killing former Alliance scientists. There have been four deaths in the past month. All four scientists worked on a classified project on Akuze. There was a brutal massacre there years ago. An entire unit was killed by thresher maws. It was classified as a natural hazard, but the project dates coincide with the attacks."
If we had've chosen the "sole survivor" psychological profile at the start of the game, Grunka would have been there - that thresher maw attack was what she would have been the sole survivor of.
"You think these scientists had something to do with the attack?"
"I'm not certain what I think. But it's worth investigating. There was one other scientist on the project: Dr Wayne. I'm transmitting his last known coordinates. Good luck. Fifth Fleet out."
He directs us to the Newton system, where we find a planet with this interesting little bit of lore:
The planet we actually want is this one though:
That underground facility seems to be where we need to go. Wrex is starting to look a bit antsy, however, so we go to see what local fauna there is to shoot first. Before long we find these giant bug-things:
"Bah - giant bugs?!? No challenge! This one's all yours Shepard."
"Yeah, it's hardly bullseyeing womp rats from a T-16."
"Bullseyeing... what?!? From a what?!?"
"Ancient human history thing, some guy with a neck beard was involved. Never mind. And suit yourselves." *pulls trigger*
"Heh. OK, it's kinda funny the way they explode like that." *pops off a couple more*
A little further along, we come across what seems to be the result of cross-breeding a fox, a cow and a velociraptor. Not even kidding. What's most interesting though is one of them is labelled as "Shifty Looking Cow":
None of the foxcowraptors attack you, and they're otherwise harmless, but as soon as you turn your back on this particular one...
...it starts stealing your money! Naturally Grunka isn't going to stand for this.
"At least the targets are getting bigger."
<a href=http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Shifty_Looking_Cow>The story behind that easter egg is apparently the game's lead designer, Preston Watamaniuk, was creeped out by the cow's design and since it looked shifty, they decided one of them may as well act shifty too. It'll keep respawning if you keep shooting it.
Anywho, back on track. Here's the bunker we're supposed to check out, and there's human mercs outside guarding it. Grunka's squad makes such short work of them I didn't even really have time to get a screengrab.
Inside there's a bunch more mercs to kill in the main room, including a krogan or two.
But as always, what we've really come for is in the back room - we open the back door to be greeted by this scene:
"It's Corporal! Corporal Toombs! You don't get to lie! Not today! Today it all comes out!"
"What all comes out? We better not be talking about bits of your anatomy. Now I'm listening, but I need you to put that gun down."
Turns out Corporal Toombs here was one of the soldiers on Akuze and as we know, Doctor Scientist that he's pointing the gun at was working on a secret project in the same place at the same time. Toombs says he wants justice, but that if he can't get it then he'll settle for killing this guy.
"The thresher maws... the scientists were studying them. They let them hit our unit, just to watch! I woke up in a holding cell. The scientists were delighted I'd survived. Now they had someone to run tests on."
"What kind of tests are we talking about?"
"Ever had thresher maw acid in your veins?"
"Erm... no?"
"Nope."
"Yep. Quit your whining. We use it to bam our curries up a notch on Tuchanka."
Toombs chooses to ignore this point and goes on.
That someone was us, BTW, in the aftermath of Kohoku's death.
...we obviously didn't 'destroy' Cerberus, because they go on to feature prominently in the next two games.
We're presented with a bunch of interesting options here, including shooting Toombs, letting Toombs shoot the scientist, shooting the scientist ourselves or going to the authorities. Having let out a lot of her aggression on bugs, cows and other mercs recently, Grunka tries for a peaceful resolution.
"You're better than this, Toombs. You're not like them."
There's a bug here that makes the conversation proceed as though we were there with Toombs during the attack on Akuze, even though we didn't choose the sole survivor psych profile at the start of the game.
For our next hunt let's go... here:
Surprise surprise, Admiral Hackett has another job for us to do! Apparently the Alliance had a surveillance drone in the area gathering intel on the geth, but it was shot down and they need someone to recover its data module before the geth find it. Here's the planet we need to search:
Seems straightforward, but after driving over to check out the probe, this is the scene that greets us:
"Dammit Shepard, they're only pyjaks and you still started without me."
"Whoa, they were dead like this when we got here!"
"The Commander is right, these creatures died some time ago. My suit systems are working near capacity trying to filter out the smell alone. More importantly... this is the surveilance drone. But where's the data module?"
<font
color="0000BB">"One of the monkeys must have made off with it."
While they're just referred to as "monkey-like creature" or "alien creature" in this game, in Mass Effect 2 we find out Garrus is correct in referring to them as pyjaks. After we inspect the crashed probe, we're given coodinates for four separate pyjak colonies on the surface to go investigate.
That's the pacifist way to look for the module, whereby you walk up to each pyjak and "search" it. I don't really want to think about how exactly Grunka and her squad go about frisking these things... the alternative is to shoot them, but we won't get that drastic yet.
While bumping around the map in the Mako, we find this little bit of installation art:
Since we don't have an inventory for anything other than stuff that we use to kill people, you could be forgiven for not remembering that the Classy Space Hooker Consort even gave us that trinket. Anywho, that's an interesting little bit of lore that'll sort of have a payoff in the sequels. Though its text-only nature suggests it was probably something the developers only remembered to include at the very last second
Grunka dusts herself off and gets back to the exciting business of frisking monkeys, but with no luck. After molesting searching every single pyjak on the surface, we discover that none of them has the data module. One of the colonies is right near a mine though, so let's check that out.
Sure enough there's more pyjaks crawling around in here to Michael Jackson search. And right at the back of the cave...
Note the +6 Paragon points - that's our reward for recovering the module without killing any of the little buggers.
"Job well done people, let's... ugh, what's that red triangle doing on the minimap?!? Casey, have you pulled that lame trick of having enemies spawn in the room behind us again?"
"Erm... yes. But we'll overcompensate for that with one-directional level design so enemies only spawn in front of you in the next game, I promise!"
Sure enough there's geth back out in the main chamber. You all know how this goes by now:
I think it's meant to be implied that the geth were the ones who attached the probe to the monkey to lure us into this clever trap... because it's worked so well every other time before. Soon they're all dead and Grunka waltzes on out the front door. She shoots a monkey on the way down the ramp for good measure.
"Guess the little beast had it coming."
That should max out the morality points from this mission BTW - if you shoot one before you recover the module you get these Renegade points, but not the Paragon bonus. So that's it, back to the Normandy.
"Shepard, Wrex and I were just wondering..."
"...when the hell do we get to actually go hunting?!? Mutant cows and monkeys and giant bugs don't count!"
"It's OK guys, that was just a warm up. I think you're going to like our next stop."
Which is here:
The Normandy receives a distress call as soon as it arrives in system, from a Lieutenant Marie Durand of the Alliance 10th Frontier Division, claiming she's at a listening post that's been overrun by unidentified hostile life forms and that she needs immediate extraction.
Sounds like the kind of world only a krogan could love.
"Wait... does that say 'rachni worker'?!?"
"Seems to. And you tend to find the full sized ones in the same place. I did promise you guys an improvement in hunt quality didn't I?"
"Heh heh heh - last one to a body count of a hundred is a filthy stinking pyjak!"
It might even be plausible to reach that number, because no sooner do we arrive than rachni start pouring out of these holes in the ground.
"Yesterday, these animals started coming out of the ground. No idea where they're from. This is what's left out of 90 men. I'm the ranking officer."
"We do have a ship in orbit. We could bombard them."
<font
color="0000BB">"Whoa Shepard - I'm all for the nuclear option, but they don't all count as your kills just because it's your ship!"
"Wouldn't do much good. They're moving around deep underground. The only time they come near the surface is when they're right on our position. You bombard them, you take us out too."
"The humans don't count as your kills either!"
<font
color="0000BB">"It's OK Wrex - Shepard doesn't need orbital bombardment because she brought us along. Right Shepard?"
<font
color="0000BB">"Right." *turns back to Durand*
"What we just fought was a probe. Our seismic sensors are picking up a crapload more on their way from underground. We've got five minutes, tops. We might be able to hold them off if we were at peak. But you can see the fighting's busted this place up. We used to have a roof. And a jacuzzi."
Turns out 'five minutes tops' is actually more like 45 seconds. There's not much here to prepare though, other than a busted generator:
<font
color="0000BB">"Mako kills don't count!"
That settles that then. Plus fighting this one on foot is actually the superior option, because we can take cover behind the walls. The Mako is just a bigger target that can't take cover. So we hook it up to get the defence towers running, then head back to the wall.
As an aside, Grunka is now using the top of the line HMWA X Spectre assault rifle, with a Scram Rail installed for extra damage (as opposed to a heat sink - we'll get to why in a second). If we just hold the trigger down it takes a full 32 seconds for the gun to overheat. It then only takes two seconds to be back ready to fire again. You can get that firing time stretched out even longer using mods such as Frictionless Materials, but since there's pretty much nothing short of a Geth Colossus in the game that'll take more than 32 seconds of continuous fire to kill anyway I didn't think it was necessary.
While we're talking guns, let's cover off another interesting (or uber-nerdy, your mileage may vary) point - once you get to the high end guns, pistols are technically the best weapons in the game. The math on this relies on using the Marksman skill constantly to increase firing rates and decreases heat generation, but if you do it right a pistol will deliver substantially more damage per second than an assault rifle of the same rank (eg: HMWA X assault rifle vs HMWP X pistol).
*smirks* "Enjoy all that while it lasts kids..."
"Seriously, what is that guy's problem?!?"
"Dunno, but I reckon a sharp kick in the quad would fix it!"
I guess the above could all beg the question "so why do you have Grunka using an assault rifle instead of a pistol?"... to which I can only respond "DPS be damned, I think the assault rifle is more fun". Plus there's the sound, the assault rifle's gawdalmighty roar to the irritating pew-pew-pew of the pistol. And by this stage of the game, they both rip through enemies with disturbing efficiency so we're really only talking about fiddling in the margins here. Derail over
A few waves of rachni later it's all over and we can check in with Durand again. After thanking us for our help (because good manners are drilled into soldiers in the Alliance Navy) she drops this on us:
"That must be where they're coming from. My people aren't in any condition for a clearing operation though. If you want to take a throw at it, we'll give you the coordinates. But it's your call."
"Gentlemen... has anyone reached the hundred mark yet?"
On the way there, there's a few more spots on the surface with sink-holes that rachni jump out of when you drive past.
The encounter ends predictably.
We also come across this abandoned mining station.
Yeah, that doesn't look good. Not much else here though, so we move on to the mine.
The mine's main chamber is full of these Geiger-esque rachni burrows too, and the rachni soldiers only pop out when you're right on top of them. We could just trigger them one at a time, but Grunka has an even better idea:
<font
color="0000BB">"Team huddle everyone - here's the plan. I'm gonna climb that pile of crates over there so I'm safely out of melee distance. Garrus, do whatever. Wrex, you be a good tank and run all over the room triggering the burrows."
<font
color="0000BB">"Do we get to split the kills?"
"Sure, I guess."
"Then deal."
With the main chamber clear we can check the back chambers and find a couple more burrows. In addition to the ordinary soldiers, these burrows also spawn a Rachni Brood Warrior each. They're just bigger soldiers, and they seem to have the same model as the queen.
Wrex and Grunka engage in a pissing contest over who can fight it at closer range...
...and then everyone poses for photos afterwards.
"So... who ended up with the most kills?"
<font
color="0000BB">"Not sure, I lost count. Check the gun cams when we get back?"
"Maybe we should've brought a non-combatant to officiate, like the quarian..." *Wrex's omni tool flashes and plays a sample of a slide whistle as the waist clips on his armour release and his pants fall down*
*raises an eyebrow*
"Erm..." *pulls pants back up, reclips them, the slide whistle plays and they fall straight back down again* "What in the hell?!?"
*voice from Wrex's omni-tool* "Say my name, krogan"
*stifling laughs*
*reclips pants again* "Dammit you two, what is her name?" *pants fall down again*
<font
color="0000BB">"Well if you don't know, I'm certainly not going to tell you. Sisters sticking together or something."
*laughing openly, opens comm to the Normandy* "Tali, I have to congratulate you. You're an evil genius."
"Thank you Garrus - has Wrex learned his lesson yet?"
"Tali... of course. Tali Tali Tali. We'll have words after this..." *pulls pants back up one more time*
*ahem* Moving on, let's follow up that other listening post Durand mentioned.
There's more burrows, even some more Brood Warriors and more photo ops on the surface.
Note the mirrored text on the bulkheads. Proof that the entire series is an indoctrination dream, obviously.
"This one doesn't count either!"
"Erm... you know I didn't kill him, right? He was dead when we got here."
"Oh. Still doesn't count."
This of course doesn't bode well for the health and well being of the other occupants. Naturally the main room is crawling with rachni, which get disposed of in a quick and efficient fashion. These things are in the back room, not really sure what they're supposed to be. Eggs maybe? We never saw them on Noveria.
"Checking. This base is supplied by drone freighters, dispatched at irregular intervals from different depots. To reduce the likelihood of tracking... I have it. This one came from Argos Rho."
So it's off to Argos Rho to wrap up this line of side quests:
Read: we needed to find an excuse for this to be another copy-pasted freighter level because we sure as hell don't have the time or budget to build an actual space station just for a side quest.
The interior is kind of a maze, but we eventually find the forward access door.
"Play the first entry"
"Sigma-23 is almost fully operational. The barracks and storage lockers are complete, and we've begun stocking the munitions. It's highly unlikely the Alliance will patrol in the nebula. I expect our only risk will be from pirates. And who'll believe them? Looks like we'll have space for two reinforced platoons of Cerberus commandos."
*facepalms* "Ex-Alliance black ops organisation gone rogue - we've only come across them half a dozen times so far, keep up Wrex. Play the second entry."
"The package arrived today for field testing. I'm told they're fundamentally similar to the units being developed on Noveria. They promise this batch will be stable. Something about them developing in proximity to the master control unit. We detected some pirates setting up an anchorage in the neighbouring system. I think we'll try deploying them there first."
"I think I know where this is going, but play the last entry."
"They've escaped containment. Clever bastards. We treated them like animals. We should've treated them like POWs. They're spreading. Boarding supply ships and sending them to random destinations. They'll be all over the cluster in a week. General, if you recover this message, my advice is: screw the rachni. They're too smart. Use one of the other projects. Flores, signing off... for the final time."
<font
color="0000BB">"Scientists, Wrex. Scientists are consistently stupid..."
Vague? That doesn't even begin to cover it. Let's take a moment to think about the implications of what we've just read... because it suggests that Saren and Cerberus are working together. How else did Cerberus get access to rachni, let alone the knowledge of how the experiments on Noveria went?
The only way I see it making sense for Saren / the Reapers to be sharing the rachni and their data with Cerberus is if the Illusive Man is already fully indoctrinated and Cerberus is part of the Reaper plan even this early on in the game.
The Illusive Man was first exposed to Reaper tech back in the First Contact War so this seems plausible, even likely. Puts a weird spin on the events of ME2 though, since it'd make no sense for Cerberus / the Reapers to resurrect Shepard and send him/her to war against the Collectors.
Other people's thoughts on this?
Let's wrap this up by nuking the site from orbit, just to be sure.
"Good plan."
Of course, arming the nuke spawns more rachni behind us in the main room.
"Full credit Shepard, that last outing was a real step up from hunting monkeys and cows. Wrex is already making room on the wall to mount that Brood Warrior's head."
<font
color="0000BB">"Yeah - hundred credits says there's no hunting trip in the universe that'll top that one!"
<font
color="0000BB">"Maybe no hunting trip where organics are the target. I'm thinking mounting the head of a Geth Colossus on the wall might go one better though?"
<font
color="0000BB">"Well sure, but where are you gonna find... I should just pay up now, shouldn't I ma'am?"
"Damn straight lieutenant."
One more trip for this update then, to the Armstrong cluster where there's been reports of geth massing together.
The system has this planet in it, with more backgound lore:
But this is the planet we actually want:
We kill a bunch of husks and head to the back, same as always.
Of course, the game pulls the spawning geth behind us trick:
Doubling down on that theme, we clear the room and leave then find this outside:
There's three more systems to go and they're pretty similar to what we've just seen so I'll handle this in highlight-reel fasion:
On the way to the outpost the team stops off for a side hunt... just a lazy little Thresher Maw, nothing serious.
Then on to the outpost:
The layout of these outdoor bases gives us a rare chance to show off the sniper rifle.
The geth ship drops more reinforcements.
This time when the dropship returns, it stays until you blow the crap out of it with the Mako. Which somehow has enough firepower to penetrate the shields of... what, a frigate-sized starship?
On the way to our last outpost we run across this...
Another oddity in lore - as far as I know this one hasn't had a payoff in any other game in the series to date either.
<font
color="0000BB">"Gentlemen, as promised... a Geth Colossus. Have at it!"
Of course, even a Colossus isn't immune to cheapshotting.
"When did you become a tech expert Wrex? You can't even remember our actual tech expert's name! Incredulity aside, it must be a message from the primary geth base. We can use the signal to lock onto its location and take them out."
One more system appears on the Armstrong Nebula map to check out.
It's got another world with some background lore.
But we're actually going to this small moon.
With two Colossus units and not much cover we change tactics for this fight - soften them both up with the Mako, then run and gun on the ground to finish it off.
The sharp-eyed among you might notice we've changed armour for this fight. That's because certain brands of armour (Devlon Industries, in particular) allow you to ignore the environmental hazards that worlds like this one have - it's not explicitly stated though, you're expected to work it out for yourself:
For some reason, this science outpost isn't a science outpost inside.
That fight was, ironically, the easiest one of this whole sequence. In the back there's a geth terminal, which somehow only requires "easy" level decryption to access:
<font
color="0000BB">"That sounds like the kind of thing the... I mean... erm... Tali should have a look at."
Good point Wrex!
"Those files have information that could be vital to our efforts to understand the geth. It could be the key to helping us reclaim our homeworld!"
"If I give you this data, your Pilgrimage is over. You'll go back to your own people."
"Not right away. I'll stay with you as long as it takes to stop Saren. But my people need this!"
"It'll take years to decipher and analyze the data."
"Maybe even decades. But it's worth the time. This information will give us new insight into how the geth have changed and evolved over the past centuries."
So we've got a choice - should we:
- Let Tali copy the data, or
- Insist on following Alliance security protocols and refuse her?
Place bets now!
Next time out we'll tackle the game's other DLC pack, Bring Down The Sky, hopefully the Paragon-specific side quest too, then it's back to the main story for the endgame run.
If anyone has any other favourite side-quests that haven't been covered, let me know and I'll try to squeeze them in too. sorry for the long delay between updates (who knew babies took so much time to look after!) and as always, thanks for reading
I vote to give the data to Tali. As far as I know, it affects maybe two lines in the following game, but It's a better alternative than having our trousers fall down at any possible moment.
The pay-off for the Geth side-quest is...weird. Maybe it's the way it's worded, or maybe it's because I'm a moron, but it's hard to tell exactly what it is. Were the Geth spying on the Quarian's singing in the Migrant Fleet? Doesn't that prove that the Geth know rightly where the Migrant Fleet is, and therefor prove that the Geth aren't hostile by the virtue of them not rolling up and blowing them all to bits? That said, it is pretty cool and interesting nonetheless.
In regards to the Cerberus/Saren thing...
I'm a firm believer that the Illusive Man WASN'T completely indoctrinated during ME2, because that would mean that the entire plot of that game makes no sense. I still think that it was the remains of the Human Reaper (he recovers some of it no matter what you do at the end of ME2) that finished off his indoctrination. It was probably a scientist at Peak 15 who sold some Rachni eggs to Cerberus.
Oh, and yes, the big silver ball of what the hell.
Why did the Protheans have a big ball lying out in the middle of nowhere that showed a human being killed by a Reaper? (that's what I assume is happening, fits the description: big honking noise, read beam of death) Why did the Reapers kill a being that was below their required technological level for their dumb plan? Why did the Consort have the thing that activated it? Did the Reapers make the sphere? If so, that makes even LESS sense! Why did the Reapers create a device that basically PROVES THEIR EXISTENCE? Are the Reapers trolling the galaxy? But, the existence is a remarkably similar Reaper device in the Hammerhead DLC for ME2 seems to confirm that this is, in fact a Reaper device. But why would the Reapers do this?
I'm a firm believer that the Illusive Man WASN'T completely indoctrinated during ME2, because that would mean that the entire plot of that game makes no sense. I still think that it was the remains of the Human Reaper (he recovers some of it no matter what you do at the end of ME2) that finished off his indoctrination. It was probably a scientist at Peak 15 who sold some Rachni eggs to Cerberus.
You should give Tali the data, I don't really see any reason why you wouldn't just kinda seems like a dick move for the sake of a dick move not to give her the data.
Vote to give the data to Tali. Because it's Tali...and stuff.
My personal theory is that Mac Walters sucks at writing. I love ME2, it's one of my favorite games if not my favorite, but the story is complete bonkers and makes no sense in even a fantasy setting like Mass Effect. That tidbit you found completely undermines all of ME2 and the tidbit you found that said you destroyed Ceberus completely undermines the entire fucking series. Sigh, I wish I could go back to March 5th, 2012 so I could still love this series.
Also, thanks for bringing this LP back. I've really enjoyed your stuff especially your fourth wall breaking conversations.
- Let Tali copy the data, or
- Insist on following Alliance security protocols and refuse her?
Place bets now!
Next time out we'll tackle the game's other DLC pack, Bring Down The Sky, hopefully the Paragon-specific side quest too, then it's back to the main story for the endgame run.
If anyone has any other favourite side-quests that haven't been covered, let me know and I'll try to squeeze them in too. sorry for the long delay between updates (who knew babies took so much time to look after!) and as always, thanks for reading
Thanks again for everyone's kind words, much appreciated
It's a landslide for giving Tali the data so far - aren't we all nice people! Will leave open for another day or so, but I'm pretty sure we know where this one is going...
woodaba said:
The pay-off for the Geth side-quest is...weird. Maybe it's the way it's worded, or maybe it's because I'm a moron, but it's hard to tell exactly what it is. Were the Geth spying on the Quarian's singing in the Migrant Fleet? Doesn't that prove that the Geth know rightly where the Migrant Fleet is, and therefor prove that the Geth aren't hostile by the virtue of them not rolling up and blowing them all to bits? That said, it is pretty cool and interesting nonetheless.
No, I think you're right and it's just weird. Maybe it's Drew Karpyshyn extending his "everyone has daddy issues" idea all the way out to the geth in some kind of abstract way.
I definitely get the impression that side quest payoffs (like this one, the big silver ball, etc) were where some corners were cut at the last minute and maybe they just slapped up a text box with the first thing that came to mind, not worrying too much about continuity with the rest of the series.
woodaba said:
In regards to the Cerberus/Saren thing...
I'm a firm believer that the Illusive Man WASN'T completely indoctrinated during ME2, because that would mean that the entire plot of that game makes no sense. I still think that it was the remains of the Human Reaper (he recovers some of it no matter what you do at the end of ME2) that finished off his indoctrination. It was probably a scientist at Peak 15 who sold some Rachni eggs to Cerberus.
I like that theory a lot actually, it probably makes more sense than anything else - infiltrating Saren's operation and stealing rachni eggs seems very much in character with Cerberus.
It doesn't necessarily explain what Cerberus actually wants with an army of rachni, obedient or otherwise, but doing crazy shit for crazy shit's sake seems to be the explanation for most of their other actions too so I guess we can run with that.
As to when exactly the Illusive Man becomes fully indoctrinated, what you're suggesting with the remains of the human reaper makes sense.
We know from the comics his first exposure was in 2157 during the First Contact War, and by or around 2183 (the year this game is set) we know from the novels that Cerberus has begun experiments with Reaper technology and indoctrination on human subjects. Maybe they wanted to see if they could do the same with rachni, who knows?
I think the problem is likely that Indoctrination is a device that's been used throughout the series in a very inconsistent and Magic Plot Fixing Fairy Dust way to solve whatever problems the writers are having at the time. Maybe Drew Karpyshyn had a consistent vision for how it was going to work when he came up with it. The novels suggested he did, and the Illusive Man never turned up on screen until Mac Walters was on board writing. Walters also wrote the Illusive Man's back-story comic. But whatever the process or the intention, indoctrination ended up kind of a mess by the end.
woodaba said:
Oh, and yes, the big silver ball of what the hell.
I always read that bit at the end of the vision as it being a Prothean device returning to the caveman and maybe it was just knocking him out to carry out more tests or something. But...
...the Reaper idea is an interesting one too. Maybe the Reapers were keeping tabs on humanity to see if they were worth, erm, reaping or not? And the Protheans just happened to capture data on the incidents? You've just made me think about that from a whole new perspective. And now my brain is dripping out my ear too... dammit!
I think the giant sphere sitting in the middle of nowhere makes sense from a Prothean perspective, since storing data in big physical objects seemed to be their way of doing things, and plonking it down in some out of the way place would be their way of hoping the next cycle would find it without the Reapers interfering with it (same principle as what Liara prepares to do in ME3). But then it could work equally well from a Reaper trolling perspective...
...or like I said above, maybe this is just some hastily slapped-together bit of text that we're now thinking far too hard about
Joseph Harrison said:
You should give Tali the data, I don't really see any reason why you wouldn't just kinda seems like a dick move for the sake of a dick move not to give her the data.
That's my personal view too (don't let that affect anyone's voting though!). What I find most interesting about this choice is the way it's split on Paragon and Renegade lines. Note that it's the Renegade option that sticks to the rules (Shepard will quote Alliance rules and regs as his justification for not giving Tali the data if that's our choice) while the Paragon choice breaks those rules to give her the data.
Gone Rampant said:
I'd recommend Tali for the DLC- there's supposed to be an armour for her there that makes her damn near indestructible.
And yep, quarian armour is one of the rewards you can choose at the end of the DLC. Exactly what armour you get scales with your level, which is one of the reasons I've left it until now - by this stage we should get Quarian Colossus X armour (easily the best Quarian suit in the game) if that's what we choose. We don't need to actually have Tali with us to claim it, but she hasn't had much screen time lately so it'll be fun to take her along anyway.
Caramel Frappe said:
OT: I've missed your updates, was worried you may of been doing something else. No matter, everyone is happy you're updating again and I learned a lot. Like .. about a cow that steals money from you, that the monkeys are actually in this one rather then ME2 (which surprises me) and the fact you're still in fights with the rachni despite you've spared the Queen and all.
Yeah, the Shifty Cow easter egg is very easy to miss. The second encounter with the rachni is easy to miss too - I'm pretty sure I never found it until my second play through of the game. IIRC there aren't actually any journal quests that refer you to it or anything, the system just appears unannounced on your map after you complete Noveria and you either go to check it out or you don't.
Since the galaxy map doesn't have the "completion percentages" for each system that the later games in the series had it's easy to think it's just a place you've been to before.
I quite enjoyed the pyjak side quest too - I think it shows that even though Bioware was obviously struggling with limited resources in terms of reusing the same four levels for the side quests, they at least tried to do something different with the missions around them them from time to time.
You're right, I think it is possible to get to that point without having encountered Cerberus at any other point - basically you'd have to do the entire Noveria plotline without doing the Kohoku / missing marines missions, or the Colony of the Dead mission on Chasca, or the Corporal Toombs / missing doctors mission we did earlier in this update. So it's possible, but given that missing marines is one of the first side quests you get given, it seems far more likely that you'd have encountered Cerberus than not by this stage.
On top of that it's not like Cerberus is actually a secret organisation at this point in the Mass Effect canon - it's got at least something of a public profile and it's been denounced as a terrorist organisation by both the Systems Alliance and the Council.
On top of THAT our crew aren't exactly clueless civilians, and I would've thought Wrex in particular would have known about them. After all, he's a mercenary who should be used to dealing with the galaxy's seedy underbelly. He already knew who Saren was, for crying out loud, and Saren should be a lot more secretive than Cerberus. I could maybe understand Liara claiming ignorance, but not Wrex.
At the end of the day though it's just a throw away line in a side quest and we probably shouldn't get all Spoony-what's-a-paladin over it
TopazFusion said:
Is ... is this really a thing? I must admit I haven't delved very deeply into the IT. Mainly because I haven't, and never will, accept it as anything close to canon.
But do people really use texture errors to support the indoctrination theory?
Yeah, that was really a thing. People were claiming mirrored textures (exactly the same kind of thing as I showed in this update) on the final Citadel level of ME3 were proof of IT... *sigh*
[HEADING=2]CHAPTER 5, PART 6 (Asteroid X57) - Frak the laws of physics[/HEADING]
Previously, on Lets Play Mass Effect: Grunka took Wrex and Garrus on all over the Attican Traverse on a hunting trip. By happy accident, some side quests got completed along the way.
The last one of those side quests netted us a geth data cache, and Tali has asked to take a copy back to the quarian fleet as her Pilgrimmage gift. Alliance regs say we shouldn't, but there was a unanimous vote to screw the regs, so...
"The only thing I can offer in return is what you already have: my solemn promise to stay with you until Saren and his geth armies are defeated."
"I never wanted anything more."
There we go, +1 Paragon points for breaking the rules. This must be the seventh or eigth time I've played through this game. Despite that, I've only ever been able to bring myself to say no to Tali here once, on a playthrough where I picked Renegade choices exclusively just to see all the extra dialog. It felt pretty awful, a total <a href=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KickTheDog>kick the dog moment.
The series writers seem to be fond of Tali as a target for kick the dog moments, actually. You get the opportunity for another senseless one at the end of her loyalty mission in ME2 (right after she's just been through a major personal trauma to boot), and again in ME3 at the end of the quarian plotline.
They're all optional, but I don't recall any other characters that are singled out for that kind of treatment that many times by a Renegade Shep. Correct me if I'm wrong?
Anywho that's our good deed for the day. In the process of all that side questing last update we've run ourselves up to the 9,999,999 credit cap again, so let's go shopping:
9.9 million credits later we have a few things to show for our efforts, including a set of Colossus X armour for Tali.
In fact, we got three sets of it. As well as a bunch of other duplicate or pointless stuff - I think the only other useful things we got were another Savant X omni-tool and a few more Spectre X guns. So we go sell all the rest of the stuff back to the Normandy requisitions officer for a bit over 7.8 million.
Now off to our main quest for this update - Bring Down the Sky, the game's first DLC pack (which we're playing second). I don't know why, but this DLC (on PC, at least) is actually pretty hard to track down now. You can still download it (AFAIK) from <a href=http://masseffect.bioware.com/me1/galacticcodex/bringdownthesky_pc.html>here, but I don't think the serial key generator works any more and you have to contact EA support to get a key or something. I saved the executable and the key to my hard drive when I first got it (before ME2 was released) so I just reinstall from there any time I need to.
Pinnacle Station, on the other hand, is readily available on Origin. Does this have something to do with the fact that Bring Down the Sky was released free to owners of the PC version and Pinnacle Station was paid? You be the judge
Anywho, the adventure begins in the Exodus cluster, which is also home to Eden Prime (the planet where we started the game). We want the system next door though:
This system is home to Terra Nova...
"Whoah! I thought they just sent us back in time, not across the galaxy!"
"You were an over-budget Avatar clone that got cancelled, so we'll never know for sure."
*pouts*
...and Asteroid X57.
Uh oh. That sounds bad. Better go investigate!
Oh good, more fun in the Mako I hear you all saying
So here we are on the surface of the asteroid. Let's check our map:
Sure enough, three fusion torches. Since we haven't done one for a while, let's do a quick stats check too:
We're all up to level 53 and at this stage we're really just fiddling around the edges - everyone has loads of points in
the key skills I planned for them to have. Note too that we're finally starting to make some progress towards filling one of our morality-meters (Paragon). The whole balanced-playthrough thing hasn't exactly worked out for us (among other things I've missed a bunch of free points, on both sides) but what the hell, we've had some laughs
Anyway, before we investigate the fusion torches there's a marker behind us on the map to look at:
That sounds like something we should investigate when we get a free moment. We also get a good view of the battlefield from up here:
Those are a minor annoyance - they're missle turrets hidden inside bunkers that only open up when you're close to them, meaning we can cheapshot them from a distance. So we need to resort to the other standard missle turret tactic: running around in circles. I'd say cue the Benny Hill music but screenshots don't really do the hilarity justice, so let's cut to the bit after they're destroyed.
So... yeah. The four-eyed blokes are batarians. They're "vile" and "evil" according to the marketing for this pack. Just to jog your memory, they were the bad guys who raided Grunka's childhood home on Mindoir in 2170, killed her parents and enslaved what was left of her colony. Batarians also funded the Skyllian Blitz attack on Elysium in 2176 - Grunka was there too. So you can see why she doesn't like them much.
"Ooh ooh ooh - did you know <a href=https://twitter.com/CaseyDHudson/status/97906675377385472>the initial ME story had batarians instead of geth, and the batarians were small bat-like people?"
Not until I read that. Thanks Casey. Though "small bat-like people" don't exactly sound very threatening, so maybe that's why they were cut. Spoiler alert, this update is the only time you'll see batarians in this game, as one of the DLC's big selling points was their introduction as a new race. The only indication we have of what they would have looked like as "small bat-like people" is the codex image that shows before you install Bring Down the Sky:
Batarian space is also fairly close to human space, and the two species have been competing for colonisation rights on various worlds since humanity took to the stars. The batarians got so pissy about it that in 2171 (14 years after human first contact with aliens, one year after batarians raided Mindoir, and 12 years before the events of this game) they asked the Council to declare the Skyllian Verge a "zone of batarian interest" to keep the humans out. The Council refused, so the batarians threw an epic temper tantrum, chucked all their toys out of their cot and cutting diplomatic ties with the Council races. They've since chosen to spend their time hiding out in their own systems, funding pirates and slavers to do nasty stuff on their behalf.
Anywho, enough made-up history. These batarians have cried harak chekt chekt let slip the varren of war, so we'd better shoot them in their beady four-eyed faces.
This starts out as a reasonably difficult fight, since you get swarmed by varren which hit hard at melee range. Garrus got bitten by one of them and had to have a lie down. The batarians also have engineers with the Sabotage ability to disable our guns... which is annoying when the shoe's on the other foot. Still, Grunka and Kaidan persist and soon all the bad guys are dead. The torch controls are in a back room.
"My name's Kate Bowman. I'm an engineer. I was part of the team assigned to bring this asteroid to Terra Nova.
"I think they know the torch went out."
"I know batarians are pretty gawd-damned stupid, and comically evil too according to the marketing, but why are they doing this?"
"I don't know. But if this asteroid isn't slowed, millions of people on Terra Nova are going to die. If I find out anything I'll... I've got to go. Good luck."
That... wasn't exactly helpful. We've been able to put a name to the voice at least though. On the way out we run into this guy:
He promptly tries to shoot us.
"Sorry. I didn't even realise you were human until... well. Guess I'm not much of a soldier."
"That's what you humans call stating the obvious, right?"
"Exactly right. *turns back to the not-much-of-a-soldier* I know you're scared. But I'm here to help. Commander Shepard, with the Alliance."
"Simon. Simon Atwell. I'm the chief engineer on this rock. We don't have much time. The batarians fired up the fusion torches. You've got to shut them down before we hit Terra Nova!"
"I'm no physicist, but shouldn't we have to do more than just shut the torches down to stop the asteroid hitting the planet? An object once in motion and all that stuff? Don't asteroids that are already moving hit planets all the time without the help of fusion torches?"
"Erm... uuummm... well..."
"What I think the engineer is trying to say, Lieutenant, is that pointing out stuff like that is probably what got you beat up so much in school."
Kaidan does have a point, of course. Simply switching the torches off would do absolutely nothing to stop the asteroid hitting the planet. We'd need to somehow rotate the asteroid and then fire the torches in the opposite direction or something. Rookie error in a sci-fi game IMO, but most people are so busy hating batarians at this stage that the writers pretty much get away with it.
Anywho, Atwell goes on for a bit more about the consequences if the asteroid is allowed to hit the planet. The asteroid is twice as big as the one that probably hit to wipe out Earth's dinosaurs, so if it continues on its current path the planet's four million human inhabitants would be...
"Properfucked?"
...aye, that. For about the next million years. Then there's more discussion about how evil the batarians are, because they're doing this even though asteroid drops are against Citadel Conventions. The scale of reprisal the batarian government could expect from the Citadel races leads Atwell to suggest that this is probably a rogue group acting without the backing of their government. Here's what Grunka thinks of that idea:
Anywho, he tells us the batarians landed at the main facility, which is now locked down and we need their new passcodes to get inside. He heard someone call the leader "Balak". He also points out that he helpfully placed a whole bunch of mines around one of the torch stations we have to shut down, so we have to approach it on foot. And this:
Wow. It's official, the batarians are now basically the Nazis of the Mass Effect universe.
"Katie's alive? She's one of my best engineers. She signed on with her brother. Aaron, I think his name is. He's part of the security detail. I hope they're okay."
"He works security and you only think you remember his name... he doesn't wear red shirts by any chance does he?"
"As a matter of fact yes, he does like wearing red. Why do you ask?"
"Oh, no reason. I'm sure this'll end well for him. I should go."
We hit the road again. On top of a nearby hill there's a damaged transmitter tower. Repairing it adds a bunch of interesting stuff to our map.
Those new points in the corners of the map are the survey stations that Atwell's missing people went to check out. We've already been to the one in the bottom left. On top of another nearby hill we find this.
You can turn the music on and it plays cheesy elevator music... which I think is a disappointing missed opportunity to have AC/DC play as the soundtrack for the rest of this mission, but whatever. Actually it occurs to me that doesn't have to hold us back, so if you're so inclined...
Much better! Next up we check out the survey station at the bottom right of the map.
She's dead too - hands up if you're surprised. Nobody? Thought not. Her logs say the batarians found her hiding inside the hut:
Here's the next torch station - the lights indicate the outer edge of Mr Genius Engineer's minefield, so we get out and proceed on foot.
Basically you've got to weave your way through the minefield without getting too close to any individual mine. Which would be all well and good, except halfway across the field a bunch of batarians (including Rocket Troopers) pile out of the torch station and start shooting at us. This is a job for Immunity and getting to close range ASAP!
Inside is another warehouse type environment filled with batarians and flying drones. This one very kindly gives us a little raised battlement to hide on though, which trivialises most of the fight.
When the torch is shut down, Kate calls us up again.
"Are you there? You've got to hurry. You've really pissed them off. Their leader's setting charges everywhere. I think he's going to blow this whole facility... don't shoot, please!"
Subtitles spoil things again - this is Balak.
Kate refuses to say, so Balak shoots the hostage in the head. They're really laying it on comically thick with this batarians are evil thing - I almost expect Balak to turn around and boot a fluffy kitten across the room at this stage.
Balak cuts the connection, so we're forced to go on to the third torch without our radio buddy.
That's Kaidan getting up after collapsing from a couple of measly direct hits from rockets. Emo.
This station distinguishes itself from the others with its cool nightclub lighting and its U-shaped layout, which forces most of the stupid AI enemies to run down, around the bend and straight into our killbox in small groups without us ever having to leave the entryway.
With the final torch shut down (if you ignore the laws of physics) we've just saved the planet below. Now there's just the remaining batarians to mop up. once again the game pulls its "spawning behind you" trick and we find these guys waiting for us on the way out.
"Oh I don't know about that..."
"We can do this the hard way... or we can end this peacefully."
"N'yeah, you obviously haven't met my friend Commander Shepard - with her, the peaceful way is the hard way..."
"I signed on to make a little profit. A quick slave grab. Nothing more."
I know it pales somewhat in comparison to smashing a giant asteroid into a planet, but I don't see how he thinks telling us that he was 'just' here to enslave a bunch of people for profit is supposed to make us want to shoot him any less. Maybe it's there to give us a bit of insight into the batarian mindset (they're quite big on slavery, and don't see it as the absolute moral evil that decent regular people do).
So it's against her better judgement that Grunka decides to metagame and sacrifice combat XP for Paragon points:
We go with the Paragon/Charm "Forget Balak" option and this is what Grunka decides to go with:
ParagonShep - making deals to help criminals get a promotion instead of shooting them in the face since 2183CE.
Charn gives us the access code to the main facility in return for letting him go, and walks his troops out the door. Fortunately this does pay off with a reasonable haul of Paragon points.
One more survey station to check out on the way to the main base.
We follow the footprints over the hill and find another body. It's been shot by a sniper, apparently.
Nothing left but the main base now. It's protected by a heap of moving turrets, which are taken out with the usual Benny Hill running in circles routine.
Immediately inside the door is the lobby we saw Kate in during the cut scenes earlier. Pretty crap hiding place, if you ask me. An office or a storeroom or an air duct or... basically anywhere else, really, would've been a better choice. No wonder they got found.
Inside is a large multi-level circular room. As an aside, this area was apparently built for an early version of Liara's recruitment mission, which somehow involved a salarian drug lord and this was his hideout or something. That stuff got cut (which is why Therum is shorter than, say, Feros or Noveria) and the level got recycled here instead.
There's a bunch of batarian soldiers running around in here, supported by flying combat drones. Let's get to killing them all!
We even find a rare use for the sniper rifle!
Balak only turns up once you've killed all of his mooks...
"You're almost more trouble than you're worth."
"I can't just let you go, Balak. Not after what happened here. Plus I promised to kill you so that some other shady four-eyed bastard could take over what's left of your gang.
"This is nothing. You humans have done far worse to the batarians. We've been forced into exile. Forced to survive on what we can scrounge up. It's been like that for decades."
"Well why don't you cry about it - with all those eyes, I think you'd be pretty good at it. Otherwise don't make it sound like you're the innocent party here. You brought it upon yourselves."
LOL - Balak managed to blink all four eyes right as I took that screenshot. After building the batarians up as puppy-kicking Nazi puppy-rapists throughout this mission, Bioware decided to shoehorn in a morality element right at the last minute. It doesn't seem to be working on Grunka.
He's really nailing this blinking thing!
"You couldn't possibly understand... actually, you just don't want to understand. And I'm done wasting my breath. Now if you want your friends to live, I suggest you step aside."
At first i thought it was out of character (or a textbook bad villain mistake) that Balak even took hostages, since he just killed everyone else he found outright. But note that he only started taking hostages after he found out there was someone fighting back that he might need leverage over. Clever, I guess.
Anyway, we're presented with two choices - attack Balak, or let him go so we can disarm the bombs and save the hostages. With apologies to anyone who'd like to see Balak die I chose to metagame this one too and save the hostages for the Paragon points. And because it's good to save hostages. But mostly for the Paragon points, in the hope they'll get us back on track to unlocking the Paragon-only side quest.
He blinks all the time on camera, and now his varren is yawning. Nice. Balak runs away, we're left to disarm three bombs in two minutes and he spawned a bunch more drones to hassle us while we're doing it...
...but we got our sweet 24-point Paragon haul, so that's the most important thing, right?
There's a bit of a goof in this too, by the way. We had to run around and disarm three bombs in the main chamber, but if we'd chosen to kill Balak instead, then only one bomb would have gone off, inside the room where hostages are being held, killing them and nobody else. It was obviously done for gameplay reasons (sauntering over to disarm just one bomb wouldn't be very difficult, while letting the main chamber bombs go off after killing Balak would kill Shepard too and wreck the joint for the epilogue) but before we have time to ponder that properly, Atwell the Useless Engineer appears out of nowhere.
"I... there might have been something I could have done to help. I thought I should be here. I know this asteroid better than anyone."
"And I know the business end of a gun better than anyone - everything in its right place, old man."
"Oh. Even so, I thought you'd still like to know..."
"I ran the numbers, Shepard. X57 would have struck near the capital city. The most densely populated region. But that's not going to happen, thanks to you. Is Katie in here? Is she all right? Is her team?"
"Balak was holding them hostage. I let him go to save them."
Atwell offers us a reward for ending the batarian threat and saving his world (he offers it regardless of whether you choose to kill Balak or save the hostages, BTW). Here's our choices:
Part of the reason I've put off doing this DLC until now is the equipment rewards you get here scales with your level, and at high levels he actually gives out some pretty rare stuff. His omni-tool in particular is a really good one. Thing is thanks to the millions of credits we've dropped at the supply ship we're all sorted for omni tools, quarian armour, medium armour and heavy armour. Liara could still use a better set of light armour though, so we go with that. We get a set of Colossus XI, which is pretty sweet.
The same scaling applied with the reward weapon you get for completing the side quest in Pinnacle Station BTW - but the difference there is that regardless of your level, the weapons he gives you are always crap. High level crap, if you wait, but still crap
"Have you found them?"
"Yes, all of them. Their bodies, anyway."
"Oh. I see. Well, then. I guess it's better than not knowing."
That just leaves releasing the hostages - yes, we actually left them locked up while we talked with the doddering old man.
"I half expected you to just let us die. Sacrifice the few for the many."
"Your brother was the one Balak killed?"
"Yes. Aaron."
RIP Private Red Shirt. You red shirted just as hard as you knew how. We finish up some small talk with Kate, and somehow come away from the conversation a bit over 200,000 credits richer.
And that's it, mission over! Tune in next time for... well, for whatever you vote for below!
So what should we do next? We've got one more major quest world to go, Virmire, which is waiting for us to arrive. Here's the thing though: when I started this LP I said I was just going to cherry-pick the best of the side quests. But as it turns out we've done almost all of them and there's only a handfull left. So what would you like to see?
- Get back on track with Virmire, skip the side quests, or
- Finish the side quests first, giving us pretty close to a completionist run?
I'd like to see you get back on track and do Virmire. You've already done the character side missions, and you've essentially done all side missions that even get acknowledged if you do an import into ME2. I think the only ones left are the collection side quests that Conrad Verner gives you more war assets over.
Besides, I'm interested to see what happens after the Virmire mission.
On another note, do you have any plans to do a ME2 run as well?
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