Paula Deen wrote...
Great blog, except for the "buying equipment" thing. It's a galactic war for survival and there's still a money-based economy? Seriously? And people are selling you stuff ON YOUR OWN SHIP? You, Commander Shepard, widely known as a Reaper killer?
Huh?
I'm kind of surprised to find anyone astonished by this. Mass Effect has made it pretty obvious (at least to me) that the galaxy's economy is largely based on Capitalism. Noveria and Illium in particular are really big clues, as well as the Citadel itself. Not to mention the colony on Feros (and presumably others) was funded by Exo-Geni, a seemingly major corporation. There's even an entire species, the Volus, dedicated to it...
I could go on, there are litterally dozens of corporations mentioned throughout the series, from the heavily regulated Synthetic Insights to Elanus Risk Control Services, a private security firm. Some are portrayed as thoroughly corrupt, others are not (or at the very least they're portrayed in a neutral light).
It took me awhile to get that as non-political as I could... Staying on topic though, I'm impressed with what all was mentioned in this blog, in particular the line about squadmates interacting and the quartermaster. I'm assuming the only reason Kelly Chambers is not mentioned is because, like everyone else, she isn't garaunteed to make it through ME2.