I still think your bad Kaidan line is better than 90% of his dialogue.
"That is a bird, commander."
"That is a plane, commander."
"This robot appears to be murdering me, commander."
And, I'm going to controversial, but I say off the Rachni Queen. Yes, I know, in a metagamey way, it's the clear "bad" choice, but I just think it fits more with Grunka as a character. Somehow, I don't think she would entirely buy the queen's testimony that she would just fly off to a random planet and twiddle her thumbs- er, tentacles - for a thousand years. I think she would rather not take the risk. Besides, I think she'd file Liara's dissent under "Scientists are always saying stupid shit."
Interesting thing to note is that, in my experience, one of your party members always voices that they should off the queen, and the other always votes to kill it. This can lead to a situation wherein the mildly-sorta-not-really-no-except-yes racist Ashley votes to save the queen if you bring Wrex, who always says you should kill it.
Interesting thing to note is that, in my experience, one of your party members always voices that they should off the queen, and the other always votes to kill it. This can lead to a situation wherein the mildly-sorta-not-really-no-except-yes racist Ashley votes to save the queen if you bring Wrex, who always says you should kill it.
You're right, whoever you bring with you, someone will always make the case for killing the queen and someone will make the case for saving her and that definitely results in some out-of-character lines depending on the combination of squadmates you have. I tend to think of Kaidan, Liara and Tali as our "paragon" squadmates and Wrex, Garrus and Ashley as the "renegade" ones. Bring two from the same camp (like we have here with Kaidan and Liara) and one of them has to act out of character. I'm 99% sure Kaidan is actually in favour of saving the queen if you have almost anyone else with you.
The same thing happens at other points later, like when when...
...we have to decide whether to save the Council or not
Anywho, we're tied at one vote all so far. Who else wants to have their say?
And yeah, I figure any excuse to work in some SRV is a good excuse Plus I seriously wonder if the writers were making a direct reference to the Hendrix song there - as far as I know there's never any reason given for why Benezia calls Liara that, and it seems like an othewise weird pet name to have plucked out of the air...
[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.
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