[HEADING=2]CHAPTER 1, PART 1 (Normandy) - Introductions, exposition and eau de turian[/HEADING]
Thanks for reading, all comments / feedback / discussion / constructive criticism welcome. Are the subtitles big enough to read on the screenshots? Apologies for the mouse cursor in some of the screenshots BTW, I'm still working out the kinks in the screencap software.
Welcome everyone to the first installment in this Lets Play! Let's get started with some character creation. As discussed, we're eschewing the male model look...
...and going for a FemShep for this playthrough. Here's her default appearance.
And here she is after we make a few minor tweaks. The only major change to the default appearance is the hair, since for some reason most female hair in this game looks even worse than male beards in Dragon Age: Origins.
With cosmetic surgery and background choices completed, here we are: Grunka Shepard. Infiltrator, colonist, war hero and handy with an assault rifle to boot.
Why Grunka? I guess Shepard's parents were fans of either Ikea cutlery or that 21st century TV show Chuck. Plus I'm led to believe that silly character names are traditional when making a Lets Play
So, away we go!
Disembodied Voice 1: "Well, what about Shepard? She grew up in the colonies."
Disembodied Voice 2: "She knows how tough life can be out there. Her parents were killed when slavers attacked Mindoir. She's the only reason Elysium is still standing."
Well blow me down with a feather, our background choices are already having a meaningful effect on gameplay!
Disembodied Voice 1: "We can't question her courage."
Disembodied Voice 2: "Humanity needs a hero. And Shepard's the best we've got."
Disembodied Voice 1: "I'll make the call."
An unspecified period of time later, on the Human Systems Alliance frigate SSV Normandy...
"The Arcturus Prime relay is in range. Initiating transmission sequence. <font color=0000BB>Other serious sounding stuff - I bet I could say we're in the pipe five by five and nobody would notice I was quoting the wrong franchise..."
<font color=0000BB>"Why does the bridge smell like unwashed turian?!?"
<font color=0000BB>"Ludicrous Speed is go!"
Huh. Guess we're off on an adventure! That was a mass relay BTW - a gigantic, ancient piece of technolgy that's been around longer than any know species in the galaxy. A now extinct species, the protheans, is credited with inventing and building them.
They're dotted all around the galaxy and all we really need to know at this point is they allow ships to move instantly from one relay to another, travelling distances that would otherwise take centuries to cover.
Humans found one orbiting Pluto in the year 2149, 34 years before the beginning of this game, opening up the rest of the galaxy.
That patronising thing was a turian. The game's writers/developers generally describe them as having bird-like features, but personally, I think they look like one of those scary deep-sea fish has latched itself onto the face of a malnourished voodoo priest. Nobody else sees that? It's OK, I digress anyway...
<font color=0000BB>"Zipped or unzipped, it'd be even better if you didn't come out with those suspicious splash marks on the front. *sigh*. Men."
<font color=0000BB>"N'yeah... anywho, Spectres are trouble. I don't like having him on board. Call me paranoid."
"You're paranoid..."
<font color=0000BB>"...and you're overly literal, emo boy."
"The Council helped fund this project. They have a right to send someone to keep an eye on their investment."
"Yeah, that's the official story. But only an idiot believes the official story."
"So there's more going on here than the Captain's letting on."
*on comm* "Joker! Status report."
<font color=0000BB>"Hey! It's Disembodied Voice 2 from the intro!"
"Good. Find a comm buoy and link us into the network. I want mission reports relayed back to Alliance brass before we reach Eden Prime."
<font color=0000BB>"...and it smells like he hasn't washed in at least a month."
<font color=0000BB>*stifled gagging noise* "He's already here, Lieutenant. Tell Commander Shepard to meet me in the comm room for a debriefing."
"Pff, don't blame me. The Captain's always in a bad mood <font color=0000BB>and besides, you're not the one that stands to have their leg broken by a smelly turian Spectre later on..."
So after all that scene-setting we're finally in control of Grunka. Note that even though she's on a friendly starship she still carries no less than four loaded weapons on her person. Pays to be prepared, I guess. We can't access anywhere else on the ship at the moment so we might as well do what we're told and head towards our meeting with Captain Anderson in the comm room.
Before we do that though let's assign our initial talent points.
As an Infiltrator we have access to a pretty good mix of combat and tech skills. I chose Assault Rifles as our bonus talent during the character build, so shotguns are the only weapons we can't train in. Infiltrators are mostly about fighting at distance anyway, so we shouldn't miss them.
We started with one point each already assigned to Electronics and Decryption, which is fine as that will let us unlock/bypass "easy" doors, containers and objects as well as use the Overload and Sabotage abilities during combat. Overload damages enemies and shuts down their shields, while Sabotage temporarily overheads their weapons.
We were given three more points to spend, which I've chosen to drop into Pistols (our main weapon early in the game) for damage and accuracy bonuses, and our Infiltrator class talent which gives us a bonus for pistol/sniper rifle cooldown and tech ability explosion damage.
I don't claim to be especially good at character builds, BTW, but Mass Effect is very forgiving in that there aren't really any skill tree dead ends or spots where you'll find yourself irrevocably stuck because you didn't build your character right. That said, some talents are pretty boss - Fitness in particular gives us some very handy perks later on.
I'm planning to just give occasional updates on our talent progression rather than showing every single level up, but if people want to see all of them just let me know and I'll make it so.
Incidentally, I have the achievement unlocked where we can level all the way up to 60 (the first time you play you're capped at level 50 IIRC) but it's a moot point since it's impossible to get to 60 in a single playthrough without cheating anyway. So moving on...
On our way to meet with the Captain we run into Navigator Pressly, who we overhear having a bitching session over the comm with someone in engineering about the ship's turian guest.
<font color=0000BB>"I was just practicing my robot dance ahead of the official welcome function on Eden Prime..."
<font color=0000BB>"...riiiiiiight."
"But you have to admit, something's odd about this mission. The whole crew feels it."
"<font color=0000BB>Everyone sure seems keen to impress upon me that there's more than meets the eye to this mission, don't they. So you think the Alliance brass is holding out on us then?"
"Spectres are elite operatives. Top covert agents. Why send a Spectre - a turian Specture - on a shakedown run? It doesn't add up."
Statement of fact, not a question. Grunka is like a space Sherlock Holmes when it comes to detective work.
Aaahhh, the First Contact War. Most of the game world lore is communicated through codex entries and while I certainly don't plan on covering all of them (you can read all of them verbatim <a href=http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex>here if you're so inclined) I'll give overviews of the more interesting / important ones.
Here's the First Contact War in a nutshell: when humans first discovered mass relays they zipped around the galaxy activating them willy-nilly. Apparently this was a big galactic no-no, as humanity discovered in 2157 when it made first contact with the turian species. The turians got pissy, attacked and briefly occupied the nearest human colony on the world of Shanxi. A three-month long war was fought before the galaxy's ruling body, the Citadel Council, stepped in and negotiated a peace. And that's the story of how humans met aliens for the first time.
Amusingly, turians refuse to acknowledge there was a war at all and instead refer to the conflict as the "Relay 314 Incident".
As an aside, the First Contact War only took place *math math math* 26 years before this game is set. Pressly doesn't exactly look like a spring chicken, so one wonders just how old his grandfather was when he fought in this war. I'm guessing at least 70 and maybe as old as around 100. Anywho, /derail.
"<font color=0000BB>Even for a turian, he has a terrible personal hygiene. Also, we're an Alliance vessel, human military. But Nihlus doesn't answer to the Captain like the rest of us. Spectres operate outside the normal chain of command. And they don't come along just to observe shakedown runs. Nihlus looks like he's expecting some heavy action. I don't like it."
"Do you have a problem with the Captain?"
"No, ma'am! But I can't figure out what he's doing here. Captain Anderson is one of the most decorated Special Forces officers in the service. If he melted down all his medals, he could make a life-sized statue of himself. You don't send a soldier like that on a do-nothing mission. He's treating this shakedown run too seriously. Something big is going on."
Having had about as much exposition on turian-human race relations as she can take, Grunka leaves Pressly to his dance practice.
Incidentally, that thing to Pressly's right is the Normandy's galactic map. With a bunch of disturbing shit seemingly about to go down, let's see if we can use it to plot a course for somewhere with mai-tais and yahtzee instead of this Eden Prime place...
Blast! Oh well, it was worth a try. Back to work.
Just outside the comm room we find a grunt, Corporal Jenkins and the ship medic, Doctor Chakwas.
<font color=0000BB>"What is it with all you clowns doing the robot? Either there's some kind of choreographed dance number scheduled for the Eden Prime welcome mixer, or the guy writing this needs to learn to time his screeshots a little better... and what's with that uniform Jenkins? Isn't your shirt the wrong colour?!?"
<font color=0000BB>*ahem* "Anywho..."
"But this waiting's killing me. I've never been on a mission like this before. Not one with a Spectre on board!"
"Only what I've heard. Spectre agents work directly for the Citadel Council. They usually work alone or in small groups. Spectres don't have any official power, though. Basically, they're a shadow organisation with a mandate to preserve and protect galactic stability."
"Protect it at any cost. Don't forget that part. Spectres operate above the law! Hey, Commander..."
"This is all just wild speculation. The Spectres aren't interested in recruiting humans. No matter how capable."
These two will tell us more about Spectres but I think we've got the gist. Before we ditch them for our important meeting though we'll get a little information on our destination.
"It was gorgeous. But when I got older, I realised it was a little too calm and quiet for me. That's why I joined the Alliance. Even paradise gets boring after a while."
"Any idea why Eden Prime was chosen as our destination?"
"Not really sure, Commander, <font color=0000BB>on account of just being a grunt of questionable breeding and intelligence. But Eden Prime's one of our most stable colonies. Good place to take the Normandy for her shakedown run, I guess. No real danger there. But there's got to be something else going on. We've got a Spectre on board! That's why I'm so wound up. I can't wait for the real mission to start!"
"But but but... this is my big chance. I need to show the brass what I can do!"
"This mission isn't about personal glory, Corporal! <font color=0000BB>Or at least, it's not about yours - nobody steals Grunka Shepard's spotlight! We have a job to do. Don't do anything stupid to mess it up!"
Somehow we got ourselves a couple of paragon points out of that conversation, despite having spent most of it calling Jenkins a bell-end.
That's probably a big enough wall of text for one update - next time, we'll get to have our high-powered executive meeting. How exciting!
...and going for a FemShep for this playthrough. Here's her default appearance.
And here she is after we make a few minor tweaks. The only major change to the default appearance is the hair, since for some reason most female hair in this game looks even worse than male beards in Dragon Age: Origins.
With cosmetic surgery and background choices completed, here we are: Grunka Shepard. Infiltrator, colonist, war hero and handy with an assault rifle to boot.
Why Grunka? I guess Shepard's parents were fans of either Ikea cutlery or that 21st century TV show Chuck. Plus I'm led to believe that silly character names are traditional when making a Lets Play
So, away we go!
Disembodied Voice 1: "Well, what about Shepard? She grew up in the colonies."
Disembodied Voice 2: "She knows how tough life can be out there. Her parents were killed when slavers attacked Mindoir. She's the only reason Elysium is still standing."
Well blow me down with a feather, our background choices are already having a meaningful effect on gameplay!
Disembodied Voice 1: "We can't question her courage."
Disembodied Voice 2: "Humanity needs a hero. And Shepard's the best we've got."
Disembodied Voice 1: "I'll make the call."
An unspecified period of time later, on the Human Systems Alliance frigate SSV Normandy...
Huh. Guess we're off on an adventure! That was a mass relay BTW - a gigantic, ancient piece of technolgy that's been around longer than any know species in the galaxy. A now extinct species, the protheans, is credited with inventing and building them.
They're dotted all around the galaxy and all we really need to know at this point is they allow ships to move instantly from one relay to another, travelling distances that would otherwise take centuries to cover.
Humans found one orbiting Pluto in the year 2149, 34 years before the beginning of this game, opening up the rest of the galaxy.
That patronising thing was a turian. The game's writers/developers generally describe them as having bird-like features, but personally, I think they look like one of those scary deep-sea fish has latched itself onto the face of a malnourished voodoo priest. Nobody else sees that? It's OK, I digress anyway...
So after all that scene-setting we're finally in control of Grunka. Note that even though she's on a friendly starship she still carries no less than four loaded weapons on her person. Pays to be prepared, I guess. We can't access anywhere else on the ship at the moment so we might as well do what we're told and head towards our meeting with Captain Anderson in the comm room.
Before we do that though let's assign our initial talent points.
As an Infiltrator we have access to a pretty good mix of combat and tech skills. I chose Assault Rifles as our bonus talent during the character build, so shotguns are the only weapons we can't train in. Infiltrators are mostly about fighting at distance anyway, so we shouldn't miss them.
We started with one point each already assigned to Electronics and Decryption, which is fine as that will let us unlock/bypass "easy" doors, containers and objects as well as use the Overload and Sabotage abilities during combat. Overload damages enemies and shuts down their shields, while Sabotage temporarily overheads their weapons.
We were given three more points to spend, which I've chosen to drop into Pistols (our main weapon early in the game) for damage and accuracy bonuses, and our Infiltrator class talent which gives us a bonus for pistol/sniper rifle cooldown and tech ability explosion damage.
I don't claim to be especially good at character builds, BTW, but Mass Effect is very forgiving in that there aren't really any skill tree dead ends or spots where you'll find yourself irrevocably stuck because you didn't build your character right. That said, some talents are pretty boss - Fitness in particular gives us some very handy perks later on.
I'm planning to just give occasional updates on our talent progression rather than showing every single level up, but if people want to see all of them just let me know and I'll make it so.
Incidentally, I have the achievement unlocked where we can level all the way up to 60 (the first time you play you're capped at level 50 IIRC) but it's a moot point since it's impossible to get to 60 in a single playthrough without cheating anyway. So moving on...
On our way to meet with the Captain we run into Navigator Pressly, who we overhear having a bitching session over the comm with someone in engineering about the ship's turian guest.
Statement of fact, not a question. Grunka is like a space Sherlock Holmes when it comes to detective work.
Aaahhh, the First Contact War. Most of the game world lore is communicated through codex entries and while I certainly don't plan on covering all of them (you can read all of them verbatim <a href=http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Codex>here if you're so inclined) I'll give overviews of the more interesting / important ones.
Here's the First Contact War in a nutshell: when humans first discovered mass relays they zipped around the galaxy activating them willy-nilly. Apparently this was a big galactic no-no, as humanity discovered in 2157 when it made first contact with the turian species. The turians got pissy, attacked and briefly occupied the nearest human colony on the world of Shanxi. A three-month long war was fought before the galaxy's ruling body, the Citadel Council, stepped in and negotiated a peace. And that's the story of how humans met aliens for the first time.
Amusingly, turians refuse to acknowledge there was a war at all and instead refer to the conflict as the "Relay 314 Incident".
As an aside, the First Contact War only took place *math math math* 26 years before this game is set. Pressly doesn't exactly look like a spring chicken, so one wonders just how old his grandfather was when he fought in this war. I'm guessing at least 70 and maybe as old as around 100. Anywho, /derail.
Having had about as much exposition on turian-human race relations as she can take, Grunka leaves Pressly to his dance practice.
Incidentally, that thing to Pressly's right is the Normandy's galactic map. With a bunch of disturbing shit seemingly about to go down, let's see if we can use it to plot a course for somewhere with mai-tais and yahtzee instead of this Eden Prime place...
Blast! Oh well, it was worth a try. Back to work.
Just outside the comm room we find a grunt, Corporal Jenkins and the ship medic, Doctor Chakwas.
These two will tell us more about Spectres but I think we've got the gist. Before we ditch them for our important meeting though we'll get a little information on our destination.
Somehow we got ourselves a couple of paragon points out of that conversation, despite having spent most of it calling Jenkins a bell-end.
That's probably a big enough wall of text for one update - next time, we'll get to have our high-powered executive meeting. How exciting!
Thanks for reading, all comments / feedback / discussion / constructive criticism welcome. Are the subtitles big enough to read on the screenshots? Apologies for the mouse cursor in some of the screenshots BTW, I'm still working out the kinks in the screencap software.
