From one bunch of biotic crazies to another, let's go to the Hawking Eta cluster and look into this Major Kyle fellow.
"Message coming in, Commander. Big surprise - the Alliance needs you again."
Joker doesn't play a particularly large role in this game - while all your squadmates get story arcs and multiple unique dialog sequences, Joker just gets the one on-board conversation, same as Engineer Adams, Dr Chakwas or Navigator Pressley. And his is mostly about his obscure brittle bone disease, he doesn't even really impart that much interesting lore. Even so, I think they managed to characterise his snarky side quite nicely with lines like this.
Anywho, the call is Admiral Hackett giving us a bit more detail on the mission:
"An Alliance officer named Major Kyle has set up a small compound in the Hawking Eta cluster. He's attracted a number of followers. Mostly biotics. He's become an outspoken critic of the Alliance, and we believe he's mentally unstable."
Turns out the Alliance sent a couple of negotiators to try to talk Kyle down and they were never heard from again, assumed dead. The group has turned into a cult, with the biotics calling their leader 'Father Kyle'.
"He used to be a model soldier. So graceful, in any outfit. He could even turn left. But something happened to him at Torfan. Too many Alliance soldiers died under his command. He couldn't cope with the guilt."
Torfan is a small moon that was used as a hideout by batarian terrorists. In retaliation for the Skyllian Blitz attacks of 2178, the Alliance raided Torfan and a bloodbath ensued. Major Kyle was in charge of that mission. There's some additional background here for a Shepard with the "Ruthless" background - if we'd chosen that background then Shepard would have been on the mission under Kyle's command, and it would've been Shepard that gave the order to pursue and kill all the batarians, even those who surrendered, even at the cost of additional human lives.
Hackett goes on to tell us that Torfan broke Major Kyle mentally so they gave him an honourable discharge and psychiatric help. Apparently it didn't work though because he's ended up leading a biotic cult, even though he's not a biotic himself.
"We don't want this to turn into a massacre, Commander. Kyle is dangerous. I trust you to use your judgment. Hackett out."
Because I can't help myself at this point, Kyle's base is on a moon orbiting this planet / piece of background lore:
Cliffnotes: The planet was shot by a great big gun 37 million years ago. We land on its moon to go look for Kyle.
In a nice touch, the art department ensured that the Great Rift Valley is facing the moon while we're there:
Here's Kyle's compound. He's got a warehouse
and a science bunker, the lucky duck! Most side quests only get one or the other.
The science bunker is locked, so we go to the door of the warehouse.
"This is a private sanctuary. Outsiders are not welcome here."
"Oh. But I heard this place was a refuge for downtrodden biotics, so we've brought our wimpy biotic friend here *shoves Kaidan in front of the camera* to sign up"
"Both you and your friend are clearly from the Alliance - plus we know who you are, Commander Shepard. We've all seen that 'marine punches reporter' vid on the extranet."
"Dammit, thwarted by my own fame again. Well in that case..."
"Father Kyle wants nothing more to do with the Alliance."
"The Alliance wants someone to pay for those murders. Let me speak to Major Kyle and maybe I can find some way to help you all get out of this alive."
Huh. That was actually pretty easy. The door to the science bunker is now open.
Inside we find "biotic cultists" walking around with guns in their hands. They say sane-sounding stuff like this:
None of them challenge us though, so we're free to walk all the way to the back room (because it's
always the back room) to find Major Kyle himself.
"They wanted to take me away from here! They wanted me to abandon this place. Turn my back on my family. They spoke blasphemy! I did what I could to make their end quick and painless. I had no other choice. It was necessary to protect my children. Only I can keep them safe."
*mutters under breath* "Coming right out and admitting he killed the Alliance negotiators is an... interesting tactic. I mean Hackett only
suspected they were killed."
"The Allilance sent me to bring you in, Major. Can't you see this has gotten out of hand? Don't you understand you're endangering your followers?"
We're presented with a range of options at the bottom here - there's the unsubtle "enough crazy talk" option or the ruthless "surrender or they all die!" but since we
still haven't managed to metagame enough Paragon points for our final side quest yet, Grunka chooses the Charm/Paragon "you can't help them now" option:
"Erm, Shepard? I thought we were going to take the peaceful stance on this one?"
"We are Tali - I'm saying to the gentleman here that if he doesn't comply then my buddies from the Alliance will bomb him and all his 'children' into dust from orbit.
We, on the other hand, won't get involved and will remain perfectly peaceful."
"Keelah... and the universe holds a grudge against
us for creating the geth?!? You humans are crazy."
Crazy or not, and questions over whether threatening people with third-party violence is really more Paragon than just growing a quad and threatening them with first-party violence aside, the gambit works and Major Kyle agrees to give himself up.
We net 8 Paragon points, and we're now free to search the compound for loot. I didn't bother to do it this time, but I believe we're also able to enter the warehouse compound and loot it at this point too.
That was the pacifist way to complete this quest BTW - as mentioned, I'm really scavenging for any final Paragon points to get us over the line on the morality side quest at this stage... and that last haul will have just done the trick. But the quest can also be resolved as a straight-up shootout - in fact I think if you don't pass the (relatively low) Charm/Intimidate skill check at the first door then you're required to shoot your way through both buildings. That makes this just like every other side quest though, which I don't think is as fun or interesting.
To wrap up, let's head back to the Hades Gamma cluster:
As soon as we arrive Admiral Hackett contacts us.
"Commander, I'm glad you were in the area. We've got an emergency situation, and you're the only one I can trust to get the job done. Biotic fanatics have hit a medical research station with a psychotropic drug. The drugs have temporarily driven the researchers crazy, and the biotics are effectively using them as human shields."
This is one of the two alignment-based side quests in the game, and it only cues when your Paragon points meter reaches 80% completion - the Major Kyle quest helped us just fall over the line with that.
I also find it interesting that it's biotic terrorists
again. It's kind of a quirk in the order I did the side quests that we ended up with so many biotic missions in the final bunch here but at this rate I think we've ended up doing almost as many quests against "biotic terorrists" as we have against Cerberus. Dunno what's up with that, "biotic terrorists" as a concept isn't really something that shows up ever again in the sequels. I suspect they were chosen for this particular mission because they're among the most difficult enemies to face in the game.
But enough digression, Grunka immediately picks up on the finer points of this mission in her own special way:
"Exactly. A normal team could handle the biotics, but a lot of innocent researchers would die during the operation. And despite the logs that show you recently spent a week running all over the galaxy shooting innocent wildlife, that's why I contacted you. I'm hoping you can keep the casualties to a minimum."
Shoot the biotic fruitloops, don't shoot the drugged up fruitloops. Seems straightforward. The mission takes place in one of two new systems that have popped up in Hades Gamma:
A short drive later across a clean, blue landscape and we're there.
The game reminds us one last time that we're not supposed to shoot the civilians:
Incidentally, if we were close to getting our Renegade meter high enough to trigger the other alignment side quest then we might actually WANT to shoot the researchers here. But we're not even in the ballpark, so let's play this straight and try to save everyone.
The drugged-up scientists are incredibly fragile - you can even kill them with the area of effect fallout from using tech skills. So ideally you want to either lure the terrorists away from the civilians, or shoot very precisely.
Unfortunately squadmate AI makes our companions useless at either of the above things, so we're going to order them to stay put in the lobby, way out of the way.
The we're free to try to lure the terrorists out one by one.
Massive abuse of Immunity, Damping, Overload and Sabotage follows until they're basically all gone. The leader keeps hiding inside though, and we have to go in after them. I make Tali and Kaidan continue to wait in the lobby.
Indeed, all the scientists are safe now and we're free to check on how they're doing...
"Should we do something to help them?"
"Nah, seems like they're having the time of their lives!"
Mission over and that's pretty much everything. Just for the sake of completeness though, let's check out the other system that just popped up in Hades Gamma - it's easy to miss because the quest journal never prompts us to go there:
It's home to this planet:
This is where the Renegade mission would have taken place if we were able to cue it. Note the contrast to the airy blue world that the Paragon mission took place on - this place is dark, is about the only place I can remember other than Liara's recruitment mission to feature actual
lava and has not just one but two Thresher Maws to kill if you're so inclined.
There's also this scene:
Here we go, big lakes of lava - it's insta-death if you drive into it, or even too close to it:
And here's the outpost where the Renegade mission would have taken place:
Unfortunately since we don't have a high enough Renegade score to trigger it (you need 90% Renegade once you've triggered the Paragon quest, or just 80% Renegade if you do this first) the door remains locked and we can't go inside.
The premise for the Renegade quest is Hackett asks Shepard to come here and negotiate a treaty with a bloke called Darius for mining rights on an asteroid rich in element zero. You learn that the Alliance actually set Darius up but he's since gone rogue and started calling himself 'Lord Darius'.
It's possible to navigate the conversation with him so that you can secure peace and the mining rights... or you can just kill him and all his buddies in a great big fight.
Interestingly if you
do resolve the situation peacefully, Hackett expresses surprise that you managed to do so, and it turns out he chose Shepard as the negotiator specifically
because he though it'd end in Shepard killing Darius - he effectively wanted an assassination with plausible deniability.
