Previously, on
Lets Play Mass Effect: We turned up on Feros and discovered geth attacking a bunch of colonists with serious mental problems.
We don't seem to be able to do anything about their mental problems, so for lack of any better ideas Grunka decides to go check out these "tunnels" they've all been talking about and see if she can do anything about their physical problems. There's a staircase that leads down to them inside the tower.
It doesn't take us long to find more geth:
Three flights of stairs later, we open out into this area:
I've never thought about this until it came time to write this LP, but now I just can't help but wonder:
what the hell is this place supposed to be?!? We're in a skyscraper, way up above the clouds, and yet we walk down three flights of stairs and all of a sudden we're in some tunnel system that stretches as far as the eye can see in either direction?!?
The only logical explanation I can come up with is that these tunnels run underneat the skyways that we'll see in a little while, in which case I'm forced to instead wonder why we had to take the Mako out in the open when we could've just walked.
But I digress - we're here to turn the water back on, disable a geth transmitter, and maybe do something about this 'alpha varren' and find a power source too. Those are all side quests, BTW.
A little way in we find geth:
We also find this water valve, which we helpfully turn back on:
<font
color="0000BB">"I'd heard your people were pretty good with engineering, quarian, but with insight like that it seems people might have even been underestimating you!"
*under breath* "He's just trying to get a rise out of you, he knows your name is Tali. He's just trying to get a rise out of you, he knows your name is Tali..."
The engineering genius is right, of course. There's another valve at the other end of the room little further along:
"Now who's the engineering genius, krogan?"
"Knock it off you two - seriously, are you both just going to state the obvious all update?"
"Pretty much, yeah. There's not really a lot to this world so far."
*balls and unballs fists* "Then we have
really got to find something to shoot..."
Fortunately for everyone concerned, a little farther along we find this door, which triggers a brief cutscene:
Those would be varren. They can do an awful lot of damage to us if we let them get to within melee range, and they run fast. Fortunately though, they're not too bright and we don't even need to resort to our usual cheapshotting tactics - we just need to stay put and shoot them from the doorway. For some reason (I think the AI pathfinding is messed up in this whole section - our companions are also more prone to getting stuck behind barriers than normal down here) they never actually run up to attack us. Instead, they just run in circles inside the room.
Having knocked them off, we go inside and sure enough, we find the alpha varren. It dies pretty easy thanks to a combination of Wrex's biotics and a good old fashioned endless stream of assault rifle slugs:
"Heh - varren. My people keep these things as pets back on Tuchanka. Can't believe these colonists couldn't deal with them."
"While I agree with your assessment of how pathetic the colonists are, I think it'd be remiss of me not to point out that your people
are five-hundred pound, armour-plated, four-testicled killing machines, while these colonists are only brain-damaged humans."
In the same room, we find this crashed rover:
Further down the corridoor there's a few more geth to kill before we find another water valve:
"Wait... *looks at watch* You mean we just solved three of the biggest problems the colonists had in under ten minutes?"
"It seems that way, yes. Didn't they mention something about a geth transmitter that needed shutting down too though?"
"Huh - you're right, they did. Shouldn't take longer than a minute or two. Let's go back and check out the one door we didn't open earlier, I bet it's behind there."
"It's a good thing Lieutenant Alenko isn't here - he'd have taken you literally just then and probably lost another hundred credits..."
Before we go open that door though, there's the small matter of the crazy man at the end of the tunnel:
"Are you OK? It looks like you just pooped yourself..."
"Helps remind me I'm still alive."
"Why do I get the feeling that <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.338379.13689452>Varen got to you before I did?"
"You're here for the geth, aren't you? You're not the only one interested in those... things."
"Who else is looking for the geth?"
"Not looking for; looking to get rid of. They're a thorn in the side of the wlaaagh! Agh! Gyahh-ha-ha-ha! Ahahahahaha!" *clutches head seemingly in pain*
I don't think I've ever done this mission with this mix of squadmates (Wrex and Tali) before and I wonder if it's causing some strange responses - the above seems a bit out of character for Tali, but the same sentiment would have been right in character for Wrex. Weird.
"Help me? No. No one can help me now. I would rather die fighting."
Our conversation with the crazy person is interrupted by more geth:
He's still crazy once we've dispatched them...
...so we go looking for that transmitter.
We can't really see it, but there's three krogan in the next room. Just one of them is capable of (how to put this delicately?) fucking our shit up if it gets into close range, let alone three at once, so we try to draw them out individually. It works, mostly.
I did say mostly
Once they're dead, we find this in the room they were guarding:
With that destroyed, we can go back upstairs and tell the disturbed colonists that we've fixed all their problems for them.
Wow, that's some serious loot. 8000 credits along with 8 Paragon points. These are what's known as free Paragon points, by the way, because you don't give up any Renegade points to get them - you either turn the water on and get Paragon points plus money, or you don't and you get nothing. Same goes for the next two people we talk to:
"Fork over the reward so I can get back to more important things."
"Of course. I don't want to delay you any more than I already have."
That just leaves Fai Dan to talk to:
"You've taken a great weight off my shoulders. I just wish I had such good news for every problem."
"There's a guy living down in the tunnels. He seems completely insane, so I figure he's one of yours - sound about right?"
"That would be Ian. He's very sick. He hasn't been the same since the attack. We tried to help him, but he wouldn't listen to us. I can't help my people if they won't listen, Commander."
That's all we can get out of him on the subject, so Grunka goes to do something slightly more interesting: riding an elevator, so we can get back onto the main quest.
It opens out into this garage, where we kill a few Geth drones while listening to more colonists piss and moan...
...before getting into a conveniently-placed Mako and going for a drive along a road with no saftey rails up above the clouds.
"Ugh, as if this wasn't a stupid enough idea already - seriously, we've gotta be a kilometre up and these roads have definitely seen better days. Couldn't we have just flown to the next tower or something?!?"
"And I'm disturbed about what this says about the intelligence of the Protheans. Usually when a civilisation is advanced enough to build an ecumenopolis, they're also advanced enough to build flying transportation that renders skyways such as this one obsolete... what were they thinking?!?"
"You both make excellent points. But I'd like to draw your attention to the walking tanks that just landed, which are shooting at us."
Tali obviously hasn't had enough talking. Regardless, we take care of the armatures the usual way, by hiding behind the abandoned vehicles that litter the skyway and cheapshotting them.
"More chatter, Commander Shepard. I still can't get a fix on the location."
For anyone who needs a better idea of why it's such a spectacularly bad idea to be driving up here:
For some reason, the skyway also has these little hidey-holes in it at various intervals that you have to get out of the Mako to enter. I actually missed them completely the first couple of times I played this game, so here they are for anyone else who fell into the same boat:
Naturally there's some geth in them.
And some loot once you've killed them.
That's it. Back on the road, and eventually we enter what must be another building or some kind of waystation or something. The radio chatter Tali heard before starts up again:
"Whoever that is, they must be close to have seen us."
"Or have surveillance cameras somewhere... but sure, we'll go with your idea."
Of course, Tali turns out to be right because just around the corner we find this.
"And you trust too easily Juliana."
"I thought you said they were all dead?"
"I said they were 'probably' all dead."
"They live, though the geth have decimated their colony."
"We know what that's like. Those damn synthetics are relentless."
"Yeah yeah, they don't eat or sleep and they won't stop until Sarah Connor is dead and Judgment Day is secured. Just tell me where I can find them."
"You see? They're not here to save us. We should wait for company support before we..."
"Ignore him. The geth are up in the ExoGeni headquarters. Just a bit further along the skyway."
"Those headquarters are private property, soldier. Remove the geth and nothing else."
Dick. There's more discussion here, in which we learn that ExoGeni established this colony four years ago for the purposes of treasure hunting researching the Prothean ruins. Turns out they haven't found very much, and the company is losing money as a result.
Oh, and Juliana's daughter Lizbeth is missing, last seem somewhere in the ExoGeni headquarters. Juliana would really like it if we could find her.
This guy is also hanging around down here:
That data is on his computer in the ExoGeni headquarters, plans for some prototype mods. Apparently they don't have wireless broadband here for him to retrieve them himself but he will, of course, pay us for retrieving the data, so Grunka says she'll see what she can do. But she's lazy, so she's going to have a nap right now and do it next update
