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[Dean_the_Young]

Disclaimer: TL;DR applies because, holy bat sheets this is a long one.

Grab a snack. I mean it.

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The really short summary:

An ME3 remake/recast in which Cerberus is allied to the Crucible effort, while still a frequent antagonist on missions.


===


Before I go into the big ‘Cerberus is re-rolled’ AU, I think it’s worth starting by recognizing what I believe the role Cerberus actually played in the galaxy of canon was. Accusations of the Sith Empire are frequent, and not entirely unfounded thanks to the effectively unlimited supply of ground forces thanks to implants, but aren’t entirely accurate either.

In truth, Cerberus was actually a minor military power: potent enough to enforce its will on largely defenseless worlds, skilled at surgical strikes and violence of action, but still small enough that occupation was difficult in terms of manpower and resources, and effective defenders could deter and defeat their strike teams. Cerberus operated primarily at the margins of the war, away from the front lines and relying on deception, surprise, and the occasional technological gambit rather than massed forces. Though Cerberus forces were skilled, with implant-troopers canonically being around top-tier Alliance soldier levels in terms of performance, and though implant-indoctrination allowed rapid replacement of losses and great ground forces, the Cerberus war machine was still modest and limited by the ships and vessels it could field. While most of Cerberus’s war materials can be justified by being created by fabricators (particularly small-arms and armors), Cerberus’s force of ships shuttles were the remnants of the pre-ME2 military buildup of Cerberus, the remains of the pre-Lazarus bankruptcy and post-Retribution remnants that evaded the Turian intervention.

Cerberus’s role and behavior was not of a conquering empire, but that of the opportunist. All major Cerberus operations have been various forms of targets of opportunity, almost always taken with a short-term goal in mind. Surkesh was kill the Krogan female, likely to prevent the Turian-Krogan alliance. Eden Prime was taken after Alliance fleets had abandoned the sector to the Reapers, who themselves were preoccupied with Earth. The Turian shipyards of Aephus (the Zaeed cameo mission of ME3) were targeted due to relative defenses, which fore-warned reinforcements were able to supplement and defeat the attackers. The Turian Bomb, Tuchanka Ground Canon, and Thessian Beacon operations were also targets of opportunity, timed for maximum distraction and maximum effect.

The point of this isn’t to critique or criticize the writing, but rather to recognize the actual proportions of Cerberus: a skilled but limited minor military power that relied on strategic initiative and planning to compensate for limited hardware. While Cerberus was able to organize resources for a number of high-profile events, these were always limited in scope and duration, with the longest protracted engagement being the Cerberus occupation of Omega… itself turned into a population-control war of internment camps rather than an occupation-insurgency conflict.

But the point: Cerberus could have a lot of bodies, and a lot of small arms, but it was never a match for the fleets at play by the other main factions, including the Alliance. Its survival always depended on others being either unable to find them, or too busy with the Reapers to try. While it must have a well-hidden industrial base of fabricators and resource suppliers to maintain it, it’s greatest limiting factor is infrastructure-heavy hardware: ships, major bases, and galaxy-integrated logistics hubs that don’t have to smuggle everything.

===

How that Plays In

===

Why do I care about how Cerberus was composed?

Because the Alliance after Earth is almost the opposite: with over 99% of the population stuck on Earth and all the core industry lost with it, the entirety of the Alliance war machine after the Arrival are the fleets Hacket saved and the relatively small colonies to support them. While the Fleets are considerable, the army is not: with all the garrisons and potential recruits of Earth lost, Hackett is limited to the men he carried with him, the garrison posts, and the civilian recruits who will require time and training to become experienced and effective. Hackett and Udina are stewards of a resource-colony system with no homeworld: raw materials, but little processing potential.

The yin-yang should start to be apparent now. The Alliance has few soldiers but plenty of ships and excess civilians: Cerberus has few ships and a way to make special forces-tier soldiers out of civilians. Cerberus has a known base of fabricators that are limited by raw materials and the ability to move them: the Alliance has colonies dedicated to providing raw materials and effective trade routes, but has lost its normal consumer base. An alliance would be sensible: two nominal defenders of Humanity, each with complimentary strengths.

But who would be the leading partner?

This is the question that re-defines the role and friction of Cerberus as a quasi-ally, quasi-antagonist, because the obvious answer is not necessarily the right one.

To most people, the obvious answer would be the Alliance: they have more people, they have more ships, they have more allies because they’re the ones on the Council. Cerberus is that little terrorist group everyone loves to hate, and the Alliance is the fourth superpower of the galaxy. Aliens should naturally prefer them over the human-supremacists, and most humans should have no tolerance for terrorists. There shouldn’t be any comparison, except…

…well, most humans, about 99% of them, were thrown to the Reapers when Hackett retreated, and the colonies have the most reason to harbor resentments for the Alliance’s competence and history. In the last three years the Alliance has consistently and repeatedly been taken by surprise and unawares when it comes to defending Humanity: the Eden Prime War, the Collector Abductions, and now the Armageddon that had already started in the Hegemony weeks earlier. While Hackett has presided over the greatest military defeat in Human history, and while Udina is finding out that the Council really does deserve the bear-and-dog analogy, Cerberus is vindicated once again. The group that actually acted to protect the colonies, the group that stopped the Collectors, the pro-Human extremists are now looking mighty reasonable when they can honestly say that they saw the Council’s abandonment coming and tried to warn people. The Alliance, placid and ineffective, doesn’t have what it takes… and it’s so desperate now that it’s grabbing on the first potential salvation it sees, regardless of the consequences on the galaxy. Why else seek to cure the genophage? And it doesn’t help that Cerberus has its finger on almost every dirty secret of the galactic establishment…

Cerberus is in such a potent political position, and the Alliance so bad, that nearly all the villainy of ME3 of canon could have been solved by a smart word and a gun rather than a curb-stomp.

And this is the heart of the Cerberus reinterpretation, as you shall gradually see.

===

A thousand words in, and we’re just starting the actual AU. Observe the over-thinking that warrants the title ‘TL;DR.’

This is going to describe the changes in depiction and progress of the canon game in a broadly sequential order, with a round-up at the end to emphasize the key plot changes. The point of this is to have minimal gameplay changes to the canon, but rather heavy story changes instead: you still fight Cerberus, frequently, in what is broadly a proxy war over who will actually lead Humanity. The difference is that this is depicted as in-fighting between nominal but untrusting allies, rather than open conflict.

The first of these changes really occurs before the game even starts, in expanded universe content. Cerberus’s trickery and occupation of Omega in Invasion is much the same, but the first real difference begins with a whole new comic of the ‘Homeworlds’ series: not of any species still alive, but of the long-extinct Inusannon…

===

Homeworld: Ilos

A short comic that would be part of the Homeworlds series, a capstone of the pre-release buildup.

Beginning with a description of the world, homeworld for a long extinct species, Ilos would be a reach-back to the great un-answered question of ‘whatever happened to the Conduit after ME1?’

The answer, apparent pretty early on, is that the Council sent the STG and a small science team to secure the Ilos Relay and ruins. Relying more on stealth than size, they were there to investigate Shepard’s claims, looking for the Vigil VI (depicted as having burned out before they arrived) and securing the relay (something too important for the Council to leave to the Terminus).

The Terminus has other ideas, though, and a mercenary task force from the Blue Suns appears to seize the site and the priceless Conduit. There’s fighting, the STG puts up a stiff resistance, but a betrayal by a Turian scientist leads to the mercenaries wiping out the defenders and securing the site. Turian scientist turns out to be a mole, handsomely rewarded, and boards the shuttle tasked with picking up and carrying the Conduit away. The Blue Suns commander greedily anticipates using the Conduit as leverage for promotion, and getting his own pocket Terminus empire.

Expectations are subverted, however, when once inside the shuttle the Turian changes personality and comments that he hates acting the traitor against his species. Exchanging meaningful nods with other members of the crew, including not just Turians but some Batarians and Humans, a number of the crew of multiple species turn around and cut down the rest, taking control of the shuttle. The shuttle soon drops out of communication, rabbits away to FTL, and the Blue Suns commander watches his future fly away at FTL velocity. The comic concludes by saying that no one knows who took the Conduit, or where it ultimately ended up.

The ending of the comic is potent but ambiguous. Who took the Conduit? For what? And what did the Turian mean by ‘his species’, when it was a multi-species back-stab of the Blue Suns that stole it away?

These are just the first hints at what is to come. (Spoiler: Cerberus.)


===

The Pre-Invasion Setting

In the brief prologue we have, the presence of Cerberus is open from the start: Cerberus has been cashing in on their post-Collector popularity, as well as the political backswing that has occurred among the more nativist Humans after Anderson’s actions in Retribution were subsequently followed by most everyone finally accepting the Collector Base evidence as proof of the Reapers. Between a strong PR campaign tying themselves to being the first in the fight against the Collectors and Reapers, and the nativist backlash Anderson sparked by attacking them despite knowing their opposition to the Reapers, Cerberus is reveling in a wave of undeniable popularity support that the Council governments hate but can’t ignore. It doesn’t help that Cerberus is loudest in support for Commander Shepard after Arrival, emphasizing their ties with the First Human Spectre and Hero of the Citadel for legitimacy by association.

Resting both on their recent achievements and their ‘capital’ of Omega in the safety of the Terminus Systems, Cerberus has bounced back from Retribution and achieved a public presence like never before. Between offering pro-Human services in the Terminus from Omega, launching an open secret investment/preparation campaign across the colonies, and doing more to disrupt anti-Human piracy from within the Terminus than the Alliance has managed in years, Cerberus has made an appealing case for itself as a Human advocacy group that more and more accept. Gifts to colonies like small-arms fabricators, technical advice and intelligence sharing, and Cerberus-oriented investments in preparing for the Reapers are too useful to deny… even though they are also accompanied by further infiltration and recruiting efforts by Cerberus.

It’s not like Cerberus evils have disappeared, mind you: there are still assassinations, implicit racism, and evil science. Omega is also not terribly far from canon, except that Humans are treated as first-class citizens in what is otherwise an effective police state station. It’s also still preaching the need for Human self-reliance that borders on xenophobia. But what’s important is that it’s making a strong, strong PR push that it is a legitimate pro-Human group that is for the greater good of Humanity. This is particularly pushed by Cerberus’s undeclared-but-public-secret Ambassador Cerberus, the Petrosky of Cerberus Public Relations if you will.

The tone and style of this push would be visible in pre-release info, codexes, and other medium. In enemy forces profiles, for example, Cerberus Troopers would be noted as being largely composed of volunteers, and that Cerberus conditioning is as notable in how it secures the loyalty of its forces as it is in boosting their abilities. Cerberus Daily News would have a build-up story of Cerberus propaganda drives and defense-related investments in the colonies. Etc.

===

Tutorial: Earth

Cerberus has a modest presence but minor role in the revamped Tutorial. While it starts with the kid with the fighter toy now having Cerberus colors, the tone of the Alliance-Cerberus relationship is really set by Anderson: Cerberus representatives (possibly Jacob or Miranda) were sharing data with the Defense Committee just before Shepard was called, a fact Anderson dislikes but has no choice but to expect. While Anderson has infinite support for Shepard in particular, it’s pretty clear from him and Vega that Shepard is being kept under house arrest as much to distance him from Cerberus as anything Shepard actually did. Anderson more or less establishes that Cerberus has been using Shepard’s name and the Collectors to cover up their true nature, but that they’re doing too many useful things to reject outright.

Shepard goes to the committee, yada yada. The Committee thinks that, thanks to preparations and tech gifts from Cerberus and the Collector Base (debris), the Alliance and galaxy as a whole have a chance to fight off the Reapers: their raising this idea of conventional victory is intended to delegitimize it as half a minute later the Reapers are landing, and the Alliance is clearly getting its butt handed to them. While the resistance is a good deal stiffer if you Kept the Base than if not (the Alliance dreadnaught/cruiser being able to destroy the Reaper with a particle beam, rather than blow off a leg with its canon), Earth is still falling. Anderson and Shepard flee, and talk, and vow to get the Council’s help.

The first direct presence of Cerberus comes at the wounded soldiers/bridge scene: after Shepard would advance over the bridge more Cannibals come out, making the bridge too dangerous to pass again. They are promptly blown away when a Trooper jet-boots down near Shepard and tosses a grenade over the gap. The Trooper identifies itself as Cerberus, here to defend Humanity, and is told by Anderson (who clearly doesn’t trust it) to stay behind and look after the pilots. The trooper obeys, and gives an unsteady Alliance pilot a hand up and talks about falling back to a rendezvous point. If you stay around you might hear the pilot ask how Cerberus knows the Alliance rendezvous point, but the Trooper claims it doesn’t matter.

So goes our benign first impression of Cerberus: a positive one, with Cerberus appearing to come to the rescue. Anderson’s suspicion is present, though, and as they cross the bridge Anderson wonders how many other Cerberus troops are hidden on Earth… and what they’re playing for, since a static defense won’t work. Cerberus can’t hope to keep the planet from falling, but it wouldn’t waste the troops without something to gain from it.

Shepard and Anderson go to the radio, the Normandy comes as the cavalry, and things pretty much go as canon. We might see a few Cerberus troopers helping the Alliance provide covering fire as the shuttles evacuate civilians, but otherwise it’s clear that Earth is falling, Cerberus or no. Anderson stays behind to lead the fight, and figure out what Cerberus intends to do on Earth, as Alliance and Cerberus Kodiak shuttles fly by.

Cue sad music as Earth is fled, left to fall to the Reapers. Passing Mars, though, a call comes in from Hackett…

===

Priority: Mars

The Mars Archive is a war zone, as a Reaper detachment of Harvesters and troops were dropped to take out the archives as the rest of the Reaper forces take Earth. Alliance forces, never terribly large at the start, were mauled… and gratefully accepted the unexpected offer of Cerberus help.

Big mistake, as no sooner were they inside than the Cerberus troops shot their way into the Archive. Mars remains the first place we fight Cerberus, after an initial, external skirmish with the last Reaper forces.

Cerberus antagonism isn’t clear until Liara’s entrance, as the bodies outside are blamed on Reaper troops, though the execution-shots are a sign that all is not right. With Liara’s near-death entry, though, it becomes clear that Cerberus isn’t interested in protecting the base residents as much as it is interesting in seizing the archives for itself. With Liara claiming to know about the Crucible, the race is on.

No major changes are necessary: the reveal of husk-like technology raises questions about the Cerberus forces on Earth, the Virmire Survivor is still suspicious about Shepard’s past ties, and there might be a few more Alliance survivors left alive to recount the betrayal of Cerberus. Otherwise it’s a fight against a determined, merciless defender to the Archive. Things only really change once we get to talk to The Illusive Man.

TIM greets us by revealing that we’re already too late because Cerberus has already finished deleting all the data. Claiming that the betrayal of the Alliance was a necessity because the Alliance wouldn’t have destroyed the Archives, TIM argues that a Reaper capture would have been a disaster had the Reapers determined what was in. Liara is able to only salvage just enough data to show that the Crucible exists… while TIM claims to have all of it. TIM begins to propose a partnership between Cerberus and the Alliance to build the device, a prospect the player can either initially reject (due to the most recent betrayal) or approve of (‘if it really is true, you might be right’), but the discovery of the EDI-bot still in the achives interrupts the discussion and leads to the chase, with the prospect of being able to steal the data out of the robot’s head and not have to strike a devil’s bargain.

Cue the chase, and cue the same general outcome… though TIM orders EDI-bot to not kill the VS. EDI-bot still gets shot, though and by the time Shepard reaches the Citadel, the unfortunate truth is found: they have no plans for the Crucible. Cerberus alone retains them, and that is a Bad Thing.

===

Citadel: The Devil Dog’s Bargain

When Shepard reaches the Citadel, there’s a party waiting for him: Udina wants Shepard, now, and the Council has a very unique applicant: Cerberus, offering a trade for the Crucible blueprints.

It isn’t the Illusive Man himself in the chamber, though he has a hologram projector to participate. The ball holder is the Cerberus Ambassador, who provides a devil’s advocate position throughout the discussion, allowing Cerberus to raise points or counter arguments that the Illusive Man personally doesn’t want to get bogged down in.

Ambassador Cerberus is a cool and clearly intelligent human said to have been a former Human diplomat who, for various reasons, defected to Cerberus. Ambassador Cerberus introduces the idea of the Crucible directly: a Prothean super-weapon of immense power that could transmute e-zero into a worthless lump. This is a ground-breaking claim, contrary to current understandings of Mass Effect physics, the Illusive Man claims that Cerberus has already either established a theoretical understanding of this (if the Base was destroyed), or already proven the concept on a micro-scale (if the Base was kept). If the concept were scaled up, even Reapers would be vulnerable to having their cores destroyed. Cerberus is willing to trade the Crucible plans in exchange for a Grand Alliance.

The Council is more than a little skeptical of this white elephant project: the proposed resources are massive, and they haven’t had time to have their own scientists review or decipher the data. Cerberus is also proposing that all these resources be given to Humanity, which is a massive resource transfer when everyone is concerned with protecting themselves. Still, at this point they don’t have to contribute if they don’t want to, which means it’s a Human problem and not theirs.

The other half of Cerberus’s proposal is far more appealing, though: Cerberus proposes an alliance, in which Cerberus would share information, technology, and commit its resources to the galactic defense. The allure of free mass effect advances derived from the Collector Base (regardless of status), more forces, and common cause is appealing. The Council Races, too busy to want needless fighting with Cerberus is it can be avoided, would be very interested if it weren’t for one thing Cerberus is asking for in return:

Spectre-status for The Illusive Man.

The implications of Spectre status (elaborated via dialogue options) are massive: if the Illusive Man is sanctioned by the Council, the galactic community would effectively not only be legalizing the number one terrorist organization in the galaxy and pardoning all past actions, but legalizing any future abuses as well. Spectre status extends to everyone under a Spectre’s authority, a fact that has worked to Shepard’s favor many times (as Ambassador Cerberus will challenge if you did Garrus’s loyalty mission in ME2) but which would also apply to pretty much everything Cerberus would do and has done in the past. The Illusive Man is also openly admitting that he would use the power to prioritize pro-Human interests: while Ambassador Cerberus will note that plenty of Spectres have put their species first and foremost, most notably Saren, the prospect of Cerberus simply abusing Spectre status with impunity is a tough sell: Spectre status is an easily privilege to abuse, and Cerberus is an abuse-prone organization.

Ultimately, it’s a deal that will be made. Shepard can be grudging for the need for the Crucible or openly supportive, but once Ambassador Cerberus/TIM point out that they would only be keeping it as long as they prove that Cerberus is worth the trouble, and thus unlikely to abuse it too much, the Council relents. The Council gives off a tone that implies that with Cerberus on board it will be up to them to assist the Alliance with the Crucible while the Council races prioritize their own, but Cerberus and the Alliance are effectively wedded.

And just in time, too, because no sooner has TIM closed his hologram and Ambassador Cerberus, the official public face of Cerberus, faces some uneasy stares than Bailly interrupts the Council session to report that Human refugees are flooding the Citadel… through the Conduit.

To which Ambassador Cerberus says they are right on time, clearly expecting this.

As Shepard and the Council overlook the Praesidium from the Council Tower, the Conduit is shown to be flashing, flashing, flashing. Vehicles, Kodiaks painted in Cerberus colors, are flying out of the Conduit. With media-personalities like Al-Jilani watching with cameras rolling, the first shuttles land, doors opening. Cerberus troopers are the first out, and turn to help out clearly dazed and desperate refugees who are led to clearly unprepared C-SEC officers who have been pointing loaded weapons at the new arrivals.

As Shepard, Udina, and the Council turn towards a smug Ambassador Cerberus, he claims that unlike the Alliance which planned to flee Earth, Cerberus planned to stay. Cerberus has hidden the Conduit on Earth, and is using it to evacuate civilians to safety, while Cerberus fights on. The Council is taken aback, afraid that the Reapers will soon follow, but Udina and Hackett realize the real effect: Cerberus is making Earth a high-priority world for the entire galaxy, and using both the PR of refugees on the Citadel and the risk of the Reapers recovering the Conduit to pressure the Council to help Earth. The longer the Council refuses to help, the greater the risk: the sooner they do, the better for Humanity.

Ambassador Cerberus, waving aside fears that the Reapers will find the Conduit, leaves to implement Cerberus’s first Spectre privilege: turning a portion of the Citadel docks into a holding area/refugee area for the incoming Human refugees… and others species too, as an after-thought.

===

With Cerberus setting itself up as a legitimate actor, and having stolen a march on the galactic front pages, it’s a relief to the remaining Alliance leadership to be able to take a breath, regroup, and figure out a way forward. With the loss of Acturius and Anderson on Earth, the leading figures of Humanity are now Hackett and Udina, with Shepard being a fly on the wall as the two talk shop.

Both Hackett and Udina agree that the Crucible is ultimately going to be the real war-winner for Humanity. While Collector technology will help with the resistance and drive up Reaper casualties, the fall of Earth so quickly leaves Humanity in a bad position. Even if, if, the Reapers could be beaten conventionally (something Hacket rejects), it would take so long that Earth would be long-dead by then. Only the Crucible could conceivably even the playing field enough to beat the Reapers. It just is going to cost a lot, possibly more than the Alliance can provide. So in that sense, Cerberus help is great… but neither Hackett or Udina believe relying on Cerberus is a good thing.

Here is where the Turian Councilor comes in. Equally suspicious of Cerberus and their offers, but also needing a favor, he makes the offer of a strengthened Turian-Human alliance in exchange for the rescue of the Primarch. Turian fleets to help retake Earth, and the resources of an empire and all its vassals to support the Crucible, if the Alliance could help keep Palaven from falling as Earth did.

It appears a pretty win-win offer regardless of your take on Cerberus, and one Hackett is fully behind. With the Alliance navy intact but lacking a home, and the Turians the best force to help maintain/supply them, the alliance is a no-brainer means to bolster resistance against the Reapers that would also help guard against Cerberus influence. Go forth, young Shepard, to Palaven.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 10 février 2013 - 05:54 .

[Samtheman63]

nevermind

Modifié par Samtheman63, 10 février 2013 - 05:55 .

[Dean_the_Young]

===

Palaven happens.

Resistance to the Reapers can be stressed as meaningful (not invincible, just really, really tough), but Reapers numbers are likewise emphasized. For every Reaper destroyed, there’s another two. A billion years of cycles to prepare their numbers, and more flying in from Dark Space each day.

The Batarians are still around, we learn from discussion: the first Reaper invasion really was at Earth, the knock-out punch of the war that started a broad offensive. The Turians, better prepared, were just sent sprawling and trying not to lose, hence why the Krogan and Alliance could make a decisive difference in the rate of defeat.

Victus is recruited, and part of his characterization is that he’s an old-hand at fighting Cerberus, having even sent Oleg Petrovsky into retreat. A certified member of the anti-Cerberus faction, check.

Still makes his demand for the Krogan support, though: the Alliance can provide the fleets to support Palaven, but not the armies. But hey, Krogan support is always a good thing… right?

===

The Early Game Context/Eden Prime

While this re-cast focuses on Cerberus most of all, that’s because Cerberus’s role is the primary difference between this and canon. This TL;DR is focusing on the differences, no similarities.

Regardless, Cerberus has a signature on a lot of different things now, which will be reflected in the early setting. In the early game especially, Cerberus is playing a deliberate PR-strategy to integrate themselves into polite society. This includes a lot of helpful, noble things that really shouldn’t be denied, but naturally help obscure the occasional ulterior motive and dirty secret. Some things Cerberus does really are pro-Human for pro-Human’s sake, such as Cerberus medics in the Hospital for Human patients or the entire refugee camp setup, something primarily focused on helping refugees from the Conduit but is also helping aliens. Cerberus-idealists are out in force, and are (wisely) presented as the public face of Cerberus: not necessarily anti-alien, and more or less volunteers and likable.

While the charm offensive is strong early-game trend, it’s not all sunshine. Sometimes help is help, and sometimes it has an ulterior motive: when Cerberus offers to help your computer system, don’t be surprised when you see spyware added as well. There’s also the early introduction of Sanctuary as well: a Cerberus-sponsred secret refuge program in which Human refugees are given shelter in Cerberus-prepared facilities, hidden across the galaxy so that they can wait out the Reaper War. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but right now the flow of the Conduit-fueled refugee camp is frequently those Earth refugees either join the war effort and the Alliance, joins Cerberus in particular, or go to Sanctuary. Win-win-win, with good PR and Human Interests going hand in hand.

The best example of ‘kind word and a gun’ would be the re-interpretation of From the Ashes, and Eden Prime. In canon, Cerberus mercilessly attacked, occupied, and oppressed the defensless colony merely to gain access to Prothean ruins.

A Cerberus that comes in offering to defend and evacuate the colony, even as the Alliance has abandoned it to the Reapers, would be invited in with open arms. And if Cerberus is particularly strict about not letting any Alliance personnel near the dig sites… well, that’s the Alliance’s problem, not the Colony’s. That’s the dynamic we find in From the Ashes, when Shepard is tasked to investigate why Cerberus is interested in Eden Prime, enough to invest significant resources to garrison and evacuate such a large colony: Cerberus is welcomed by the colony, but viewed with suspicion by the Alliance.

Part of that suspicion is because everyone that the Alliance has sent to investigate has turned up dead: while Cerberus is keeping it hushed up, and the Alliance has no interest in publicizing the frictions either, Shepard is sent in to put a boot in the door and find out what’s happening, and not let anyone stop him. Which we do by violence, leading to a conclusion in which the Reapers are finally turning their attention towards Eden Prime.

Eden Prime shows the ‘typical’ Cerberus model of interaction with the human colonies: offering resources to colonial governments to pursue Cerberus-suggested options (evacuate the colonists, defenses, etc), providing Cerberus troops to help maintain order and prepare for a protracted war/insurgency against Reaper invasion, and encouraging voluntary recruiting and propaganda drives to build up human support. Cerberus troopers, always autonomous even under their (unknown) indoctrination, are directed to maintain contact with their former lives and present a facade of normality: a Trooper from Eden Prime goes on a tour, shows off how cool and strong he/she has become, and offers the typical promise of Cerberus recruitment: ‘with implants like Shepard’s, you can fight like Shepard.’

The big difference in the narrative of From the Ashes is the impending threat of Reaper invasion: given Eden Prime’s size and proximity to Earth, everyone knows the Reapers will eventually come to occupy it, and whether Cerberus will stand their ground is a real question. As Shepard fights through Cerberus forces at the dig site, storm clouds gather and the Reapers begin to approach, quickly becoming a race against time to acquire the Prothean before the Reapers land.

The local Face of Cerberus, likely a Centurian repeatedly referenced as the liason with the colony and dealt with over radio/vidcom before, is present at the end to present a Moral Choice: Cerberus had been planning to abandon Eden Prime after the Reaper Invasion in order to conserve resources, a fact Shepard can learn through data logs, but if Shepard hands over Javik the Centurian vows to stay and fight for the Colony, thus giving more chances for refugees to flee and tying down more Reaper forces.

The moral choice, between keeping a squadmate and seeing the colony abandoned to the Reaper, or giving up the Prothean to Cerberus and having Cerberus stand by and defend the colony, also has a third-way option: if you found all the data logs proving that Cerberus was only using Eden Prime as a propaganda piece, intending to abandon it, Liara can user her Shadow Broker contacts to blackmail Cerberus into staying behind even if you do take Javik. Best of both worlds, providing more assets and the companion.

Regardless of what you do, the post-DLC news sees Cerberus try to spin it to their advantage: either Cerberus heroically fights a doomed battle to defend Humanity, or else Cerberus was sabotaged by Alliance forces and regretfully forced to abandon the colony.


As for Javik himself, what the Alliance hoped and Cerberus feared he could do (shed more light on the Crucible) turns out to be wrong. Javik really follows whoever you sent him to: if you don’t recruit him he turns up in the news as a pro-Cerberus spokesman (approving of their no-matter-the-costs attitude), and ultimately turns up as a boss fight addition later on if you didn’t recruit him.


===

Genophage Arc

===

Back to the A Plot, Cerberus actually keeps much of the same role as in canon: it’s really the Salarians who change, as we see the evolution of the Cerberus-Alliance Alliance turn into a question of inter-species alliances.

The Alliance, personified by Hackett, Udina, and Anderson (who, on Earth, is reporting on his attempts to find the Conduit while fighting the war with Cerberus), is suspicious of Cerberus. They share that suspicion with the Turians, for reasons to come clear. The next anti-Cerberus group is… the Krogan, who (rightly) believe that Cerberus fears them as much as the Salarians do.

And it’s the Salarians who become the first of the major powers to have a common interest with Cerberus: less about being pro-Human, and more about being anti-genophage, when their nominal allies bull-rush her into making what she views as the biggest mistake of a millennia, the Dalatrass reaches out to Cerberus to make a deal… and thus the question of how Cerberus knows where to be and why is eventually answered.

The Cerberus attack on Surkesh is the first crisis of the pan-Human alliance, and the first time Cerberus pulls the Spectre-card to justify not being held to account. In an excellent opportunity for a conversation with TIM, or at least Ambassador Cerberus, as Cerberus lays out it’s governing philosophy for the Reaper War: it does not intend to replace one grave threat to Humanity with another, and it considers a cured Krogan species to be an equally grave threat to the galaxy, and Humanity.

The Alliance and Krogan are furious, but initial demands to have Cerberus’s Spectre status revoked are surprisingly rejected by all three members of the Council, even the Turians. Disclaiming the ability to punish Spectres acting within a standing Council mandate, and counseling Shepard that Cerberus is still supplying resources and troops to the Alliance’s own Crucible efforts, the Council more or less says they won’t interfere with this ‘internal Human dispute.’ The Alliance-Cerberus proxy war officially begins, allies on one planet and enemies on the next, with the line between enemy and ally increasingly blurred.

Turning to the Turian Primarch, with Wrex/Wreave and Shepard demanding why the Turian Councilor would tolerate Cerberus actions, Primarch Victus refuses to explain… but does suggest Shepard take a look at the crashed Turian cruiser on Tuchanka. Which starts the Turian Bomb Plot, which actually explains this dynamic.

It turns out that there is something worse than Cerberus using a planet-cracking bomb to devastate the Krogan and start a Turian-Krogan War, and that is using the threat of using a planet-cracking bomb to blackmail the Turian Hierarchy. As long as Cerberus holds this planet-******, the Hierarchy can’t openly move against them: this is why the Turian Councilor accepts Cerberus’s role, despite barely-constrained animosity. Primarch Victus sent the Cruiser and his son in a covert attempt to retake the bomb, but the Reapers used the Ground Canon (change of enemy there) to shoot down the Cruiser and now the effort is stalled.

The Turian Bomb Plot stays mostly the same from there on, but it does introduce a Moral Choice at the end: whether to actually take the bomb from Cerberus, or to leave it with them. Though Cerberus remains largely antagonistic, the end-point decision comes when Ambassador Cerberus (or an equivalent Cerberus figure), via hologram, spells out what Cerberus and Humanity is getting from the blackmail: in addition to political tolerance of the Cerberus-Alliance alliance, by keeping the bomb active and secret Cerberus has compelled the Turian Hierarchy to send forces to defend Human colonies that would otherwise have been defenseless and reaped. Shepard is presented with the choice to allow this blackmail to continue (knowing you’ll have Turian forces out of compulsion, but keeping Human colonies safe), or to stop it (hopefully earning Turian forces out of gratitude and allowing the Hierarchy to be anti-Cerberus, at the cost of Human colonies being destroyed).

Plus, some personal guilt at Primarch Victus’s anger at your possible betrayal, and sorrow for his son. Your Shepard’s relationship with the Turians is going to be determined by this, and even Garrus is a little cross. (Maybe.)


Moving back to the A-plot, the Cerberus anti-cure in-fighting gets amped up when Cerberus takes a role in the Tuchanka mission: now aiming to prevent the genophage from being cured at any cost, even at the cost of the Reaper successfully poisoning the atmosphere, Cerberus is involved in blunting and trying to stop the Krogan convoy: rather than a crashing Turian fighter it would be a Cerberus bombing run while dog-fights occur overhead, and by mission or admission we would learn that Cerberus is able to act so easily because the Dalatrass and the STG is assisting them. The Dalatrass offer to Shepard is coached in terms that she will honor her bargain with Cerberus, of resources for the Crucible and fleets for Earth, if the genophage is stopped or sabotaged. But, she adds, she would much rather be indebted to the Alliance than rely on Cerberus as the only trustworthy partner in Humanity, a foreshadowing of an Important Consequence.

Ideally I’d also like someone, not necessarily Cerberus, to counter Wrex/Eve optimism of Krogan benevolence. Ambassador Cerberus on the Citadel can make a good Devil’s Advocate if you approach him before the mission, challenging the idea that Wrex’s reforms will hold or whether the Krogan can restrain their dissidents. But that would be out of mission, if you went to his office in the Embassies.

The Genophage Arc is pretty awesome as is, and so there’s not much need to change the ending setup of outcomes beyond context: the Salarians are the first species in which turning them pro-Cerberus is a serious possibility. While that mechanic will be discussed later, the Genophage Arc can not only be cast in terms of Krogan/Salarian, but also in terms of whether the Salarians are pro-Alliance or pro-Cerberus, with different flavor outcomes along the lines of who the STG is cooperating with more: new ties with old foes, or enhanced cooperation with the Alliance?

Curing the Genophage also has a separate conditional associated with it: triggering the Turian Bomb. If the genophage is to be cured and the Krogan turned into a galactic threat, Cerberus is going to do its best to mitigate the threat to Humanity as much and as soon as possible. Not only does the bomb wipe out a good number of the adult Krogan, setting back their expansion by some time, but by instigating a Turian-Krogan War (eventually) it commits the Turians to devoting their post-war efforts into containing the problem. As the final cherry on top, Cerberus can anticipate that even if, if, the Krogan learned of Cerberus’s own involvement, they would be far more focused on the Turians and would give Humanity as a whole a pass (thanks to Shepard’s intervention in curing the genophage) and limit their grudge to Cerberus itself. So… lose-lose-win, I suppose.

This is one of those wicked-seeming consequences that is actually pretty-easy to avoid: just do the bomb before Tuchanka and don’t leave it with Cerberus. It’s more of a flavor/completionist mechanic than a major plot-changer, meant to demonstrate the still-real dark side of Cerberus when it doesn’t get its way… and to be honest, people who leave it with Cerberus are probably going to sabotage the cure as well.

Regardless of outcome, the Genophage Arc closes by at least the temporary Krogan-Turian Alliance, the solidifying of the Turian-Alliance Alliance, and a calming of the Cerberus-Alliance infighting as the primary driver of infighting, the genophage, has been irreversibly resolved. The genophage arc itself has three effective endstates: Genophage Sabotaged, Genophaged Cured and Bomb Detonated, or Genophage Cured and Bomb Not Detonated.

With the infighting dying down for the moment, progress can proceed on the Crucible and on a counter-offensive to retake Earth. More is needed, though: more troops to drive the Reapers off of Earth, and more workers and scientists to continue building it. Not needing the Citadel Coup development, two possibilities are raised: reaching out for various assets/assistance to bolster the mission (all of those major side-missions) , or stopping the new flow of Heretic Geth that are fighting for the Reapers across the galaxy.

This is effectively the Middle Game, at which the player can fool around with all those side quests in the context of building up the war effort rather than dilly-dallying at the end of days. Story-wise Rannoch is the next driver, so moving there…

===

Rannoch Arc

What’s there to talk about, honestly? The canon game had a pretty sound basis of carry-over import consequences, and the missions themselves were appropriate and sensible for the setting. I could say that the Geth deserve a bit harder scrutiny for their past, and taken to task for their own needed compromises for peace, but overall it’s a pretty good scenario that doesn’t require much in the way of change.

I suppose the key three differences I would make come into the resolution: the context of Legion’s sacrifice, the fate of the Geth, and the resolutions that don’t require genocide to be one-sided and tragic.

For the first… I thought it was really stupid that Legion died regardless of decision. It was forced, it was arguably unnecessary, and above all it felt incredibly fake: Geth are by lore copy-paste programs, and there not being any copy of Legion to re-load ignores one of the fundamental traits of the Geth.

So as much as I love a good Necessary Sacrifice, Legion should stay. If anything, Legion should be the potential permanent companion: let Tali stay with her people, organizing them, and be a romance on the Citadel sort of NPC.

Legion/Geth VI being a companion depends on being around to do so, and this leads me to my second change: change Geth’s flash-bang to some sort of hacking-control that finally broke the Geth’s resistance to hacking. Still foiled by the Reaper Code, this new weapon fulfills the idea of Xen’s ambitions of returning the Geth back into the tools they once were. It also has the effect that no matter what the outcome, the Geth military strength remains available: either because they are free, or because they are slaves. This works with the greater narrative’s idea that the Reapers, while overwhelming, can be slowed with conventional forces, and the Geth provide a big part of that.

So, being intact no matter what, the Legion shell could be a good default companion character, all the more with differing narrative impacts depending on whether Legion is a shackled AI/VI, or free-willed. Writing heavy, sure, but hey. This is a head-canon scenario in the first place.

But for the last, I think the ending of the arc would have been better if there had been no genocide no matter the choice: not to say there shouldn’t be a faction-decision or unequal outcomes, but rather that outcomes emphasizing that the factions aren’t ready to co-exist as equals, that they learned the wrong lessons, strikes me as a bit more tragic.

For the Quarians, it’s obvious: by following through with Xen’s plan, they never truly accept that their creations became alive. More interested in dominating their creations than understanding them, the Geth are controlled, shackled, and once again the obedient tools they once were. In gratitude/exchange for Shepard’s help, the Quarians join the war with their new army.

For the Geth, it’s less so: more that the Geth still don’t understand their creators, and still haven’t learned to be, well, equal members of society. In this case, Legion’s upload of the Reaper Code will switch the tables: the Geth are now able to take control of the Quarians’ machines, uploading themselves across the Migrant Fleet, and the Quarians are now prisoners of the Geth. The Geth decline genocide, having learned that much… but their efforts to ‘understand’ their Creators take a disturbing turn for the Quarians, as they lose all freedom and all chance for independence on their own homeworld. The Geth are now the dominant aspect of Quarian life, ‘for their own good’, but still haven’t grasped that their own manner of actions is what sparks fear.

For peace, it’s co-existence without domination. Maybe it’s MAD, or maybe it’s because neither can take the other, but the Geth leave the planet to the Quarians, and the Quarians leave the Geth their Dyson Sphere. The Dyson Sphere itself might be the best means of peace: the idea that if preserved (choice-dependent), the Geth could upload themselves into an entity too smart to be controlled by Xen’s weapon. Regardless, uneasy peace that can lead way to co-existence, while both forces submit ships and scientists to the effort. Possibly an opportunity-cost of this would be that this ‘best’ outcome has the fewest immediate rewards/war assets.


In the end, Rannoch ends with the Geth and Quarian fleets unified and offered to the War Effort.

===

N7 Missions

Most of these are side missions that included Cerberus as an enemy in the main game, but in which Cerberus plays a more... well, a role that you can actually side with, and one that collectively plays up the infighting/common cause between Cerberus and the Alliance as they fight for the soul of humanity.

While fighting Cerberus is still possible, or even expected, in these revamped missions, it’s definitely intended to take the tone of a shadow war hidden from the public. Hacket and Petrovsky will share command and influence in the protection of a colony during the day, while sending strike teams against eachother at night. Most of these take place in the context of the N7 missions, and the N7 missions themselves can be thought of as a chain.

The key, nebulous idea when dealing with Cerberus here is the Legitimacy Conflict: between Cerberus and the Alliance, who has the greater claim to being the legitimate guardian of Humanity?

Put in terms of a cumulative point system, one that can also incorporate prior choices by Shepard, the group with more points is generally seen as the more legitimate party. It’s not quite synonymous with popularity, but ultimately it will have end-game consequences.


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N7: Cerberus Recruiting

A re-make of the N7: Cerberus Abductions missions, and the first N7 mission. Though Shepard learned that Cerberus soldiers use husk-like implants on Mars, Cerberus is going public with the existence of the implants in order to bolster its recruiting drive, something it can now do openly thanks to the Spectre deal.

Cerberus is setting up an open recruiting presence on Benning, a major Alliance colony that the Alliance has only a token presence on. Shepard is sent ‘undercover’ (read: in civilian clothes) in order to see what it’s all about, and to try and crack into the Cerberus data base in order to figure out where volunteers go once they sign the contract and are taken away to Cerberus’s secret training camps.

This begins as a no-combat mission, with Shepard going through Firebase Ghost which is a still-civilian area. Through the various buildings you see civilians watching various Cerberus presentations, or listening to recruiters/videos. You’d have Cerberus troopers showing off their skills, a few ‘home town recruits’ come back, and a general propaganda fest along with an admin area (the back building of the courtyard) in which Cerberus sign-in their volunteers.

Shepard hides in the crowds, and the background, with a basic stealth-mechanic. Shepard is tasked with avoiding notice while getting to a few locations and dropping off spy devices: if Shepard is seen, Shepard is put on the ‘divergence’ path, which is to say that Shepard is forced to openly go to the Main Event, but without the chance to drop spyware.

The Main Event, after Shepard drops the devices or is seen, is the explanation of the implants that takes place before a crowd in the alley. Cerberus presents its implants as the key to Human survival: that these implants can make any run-of-the-mill civilian capable of fighting with the best of the Alliance in a matter of days. Listing off a list of ‘upgrades’ the implants allow, an unmasked Cerberus trooper with a sympathetic personality works to assure the crowd that despite the looks, they’re still human. This, they explain, allows them to defend human colonies that the Alliance would abandon, like Benning itself. When some people are still suspicious and doubtful, noting they look like Reaper tech, the Spokesman pulls the trump card: these are perfectly safe implants, because these are the same sort of implants they put in the Great Commander Shepard when Shepard worked with them!

Don’t you want to be more like the Commander?

If the Commander were still hidden, this presents the player with a chance to speak up (Paragon), to stay quiet and hidden (Renegade), or a P/R check to make a speech going ‘bull****.’ Speaking up just reveals your presence in a non-convincing argument, but the P/R makes an inspirational, if not compelling, case that it’s not implants that make the heroes of Humanity, and that anyone really wanting to serve their species should join the Alliance.

Regardless, the recruiting event quickly becomes ruined when gunfire breaks out: a Reaper force has somehow snuck into the city, and is beginning to attack. The Cerberus troops react with clear and vocal orders to protect the crowd, and Shepard is left with a conditional choice: if Shepard was caught/exposed himself, Shepard will end up fighting the Reapers with Cerberus and protecting the civilians, but loses the chance to hack the Cerberus mainframe. If Shepard was still hidden, Shepard can leave Cerberus to handle the Reapers while taking advantage of the chaos to hack the computer as Hackett instructed. After the attack is over, Cerberus initiates a lock-down and Shepard has to leave.

The mission has three effective end-states: Shepard exposed but no persuasion, Shepard exposed but persuasive, and Shepard unexposed. Let’s call them A, B, and C.

In A, the outcome is that Cerberus gains legitimacy for heroically defending the civilians, spurring more recruitment and Cerberus-related War Assets. Between the Alliance’s lack-luster showing and Hackett having to waste more resources on more penetration attempts, the Alliance loses assets and/or 1 legitimacy.

In B, Shepard’s commanding presence, inspirational speech, and role in repelling the attack steals Cerberus’s thunder and drives Alliance recruiting instead. Alliance legitimacy greatly gained (+2), more Alliance assets, and fewer Cerberus assets.

In C, Cerberus gains legitimacy for being the on-the-spot defenders, but loses war assets because a number of their recruits die. The Alliance, successfully penetrating the server and not having to try again, saves war assets.

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N7: Cerberus Lab

The follow-on from Cerberus Recruiting, a look at the more implementation-level aspects of the Cerberus troopers. The Alliance’s ultimate success at penetrating Cerberus recruiting stations leads them to this ‘training camp’, which is actually a Cerberus Lab.

Firebase Glacier is the production-phase of Cerberus troopers, where civilians are given implants and equipment. It doesn’t have the horror of Sanctuary, but it’s definitely meant to shade in the personality changes of indoctrination effects. As Shepard fights his/her way through the lab on section at a time, with doors initially closed, data pads and such offer a chance to see the changes.

First area are the docks, in which Shepard has to secure the LZ from the Cerberus guards. There should be a slight change to allow a clear disembarkment process, such as a new Cerberus recruit might follow. A data pad comments on the new faces of the volunteers, and suggests what a change they’ll be going through.

Second area is the first half of the lab, and particularly the operating table. It’s a respectful operation, and a scientist log talks about how different people respond to varying levels with the implants: some do better, and some do worse. Due to the number of volunteers, the lab suggests either stricter screening or opening up more processing labs.

Third half of the upstairs lab, the area with computer consoles, should clearly be a waiting area for people preparing for treatment: benches, a soda machine, etc. This might be a good place for a new volunteer to talk about how all the unmasked troopers he’s seen are total stoic badasses when they aren’t trying to be nice, and how he doesn’t intend to become like that.

Fourth is the down-stairs area, which is a techie-area where they evaluate how the implants are adjusting to people. This is a good place for a lab techie to have an interview with the previous recruit, in which we can see how indoctrination is changing the personality to a Cerberus-desired viewpoint. Particularly important is a reminder that troopers take deliberate effort to be nice and pleasant to ‘civilians’, and that recruiting duty isn’t for everyone.

Fifth and final is the upstairs control room, which the end-mission ‘surprise’ is that the implants really are derived from Reaper tech, and are being used to teach/train the volunteers their skills and loyalty through indoctrination. Cerberus is finally discovered as using reaper-tech implant-indoctrination on their troops: it’s been incredibly effective in making combat-capable troops, and is also a safeguard to stopping Reaper-indoctrination attempts.

The Moral Choice of this discovery is to either reveal it to the public, making everyone aware of the brainwashing that occurs, or not and letting these practices continue for the greater good. Ideally this is something you can confront Ambassador Cerberus and Udina over, though both cynically suggest that most people won’t care and that volunteers will still sign up.

Exposing the truth certainly does a hit to Cerberus’s legitimacy, but this is also corresponded by a reduction in war assets due to fewer volunteers. The Alliance is better viewed, but there are fewer troops: a news report confirms that Cerberus recruiting continues despite a drop, but a Cerberus-Alliance deal to hand-over convicted criminals is blocked.

Keeping silent rewards you by not hurting you: higher war assets, though this also means higher Cerberus legitimacy. Cerberus recruitment continues, and Cerberus works out a deal with the Alliance to take custody of convicted prisoners and suspected indoctrination victims.

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N7: Communication Hub

The communication arrays are property of Cerberus, and the Alliance suspects that the database has information on a variety of Cerberus projects… including the locations of their Sanctuary Project, an open-secret of secret colonies Cerberus has initiated as a place to hide human refugees. With a Reaper attack imminent, the Alliance has graciously offered assistance to help destroy that data… but Hackett has a scheme to steal it instead.

While you’re nominally fighting Reapers to help Cerberus, complete with background of other com stations also fighting Reapers across the wasteland, in actuality Shepard may be fighting both Reapers and Cerberus. As long as you actually destroy the data at each node, Cerberus will fight the Reapers instead of you. If you pick the button to hack it, however, both Cerberus and the Reapers will attack you. Across the battlefield on other stations, as well as on intercom chatter, there are chatter-reports of increasing Cerberus/Alliance ‘friendly fire’ incidents due to dust storms.

Besides being primarily a ways to allow the player to roleplay Alliance/Cerberus preferences, and to illustrate how tense the alliance can be, the outcome primarily has a legitimacy difference.

If you destroy the data then Cerberus keeps the colonies secret, and everyone credits Cerberus with them. There’s an implied coverup about a Sanctuary world going quiet from Reaper attacks, but Cerberus Ambassador publicly denies it and says that it was a deliberate blackout for security reasons.

If you steal the data, the Alliance steals headlines when it’s able to swoop in and save a Sanctuary that was uncovered by Reapers, and Cerberus ‘graciously’ invites them into the project as a co-guardian. Alliance legitimacy up.

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N7: Fuel Reactor

Not a Cerberus-fighting mission, but a demonstration of the more positive side of the Cerberus-Alliance partnership. This is an Alliance fuel station that has fallen to Reaper infiltration, and Cerberus soldiers sent to help went dark. Because fuel is so vital, Shepard is sent to help out.

Along with the puzzle/exploration factor, a good part of this mission is discovering what had occurred. Some of the nobler aspects of Cerberus and the Troopers are illustrated here through recordings and/or testimony of survivors. Cerberus troopers fought the Reaper infiltrators, and a number of volunteers took certain death in the poisonous chemicles in order to stop a reactor overlord. Possibly also some corpses to suggest that some troops lured strong Reaper troops into the reactor, and then locked themselves inside to certain death. Possibly the toxins were deliberately released because it was realized they stopped husks from sabotaging the reactor.

Picking up on a discarded idea from the leaked script, a fun moral choice of the reactor would have been to possibly use the toxins as a separate War Asset. Choose between fuel or a new bioweapon that works on Husks.

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N7: Fighter Base

Just for ****s and giggles, I’d make this a Geth attack on a fighter facility. The surviving defenders would be holed up in That Room.

More seriously, this N7 mission is a prime candidate for being a lead-in to the Dark Energy Plot (to be mentioned more later).


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Ardat Yakshi Monastary

Simply because it doesn’t fit well anywhere else, a bit of a context change occurs in the set-up for this mission: Liara brings it up because she discovered contacts between the Asari military and Cerberus, which dispatched a significant strike force to the remote AY monastery. Following the trail to see what they were up to, we find signs of the war and plenty of casualties, from Cerberus to Reaper to Asari.

As we investigate, we come across recordings and evidence of a Cerberus massacre of the Ardat Yakshi, even before the Reapers arrived. As we investigate further, we discover that the Cerberus massacre was actually instigated at the request of the Asari: the Asari Government knows that Banshees are made from those with the AY gene, wasn’t going to defend such a remote location from the Reapers, but didn’t want them to take the Ardat Yakshi either. They made a deal with Cerberus, promising support (both political and military) for Humanity and an official cover-up if Cerberus would wipe out the monastery. If the Reapers hadn’t intervened, and if Samara/Morinth hadn’t be in place to interfere, Cerberus would have wiped out the monastery and no one would have ever known.

(Note: if Morinth/Samara survived ME2, there are more AY survivors. If not, Samara’s daughters are the last survivors.)

Samara’s role is a bit different, as is the role of the Code. Basically, while AY must be hunted down and brought to the Monastaries, while within the Monasteries they must be protected. Samara came to protect the AY, and her daughters, from all attackers. Morinth came to free her sisters, and the other AY, after disguising herself as a new enrollee.

Rather than the suicide, the Moral Choice comes down to whether to fulfill the Cerberus job and detonate the bomb, killing all the Banshees and AY (including Samara’s daughters) and gaining Asari support, or letting the surviving AY go. Letting them go free carries risks, though, due to Morinth and Samara’s intent: retribution on Asari High Command for trying to have the AY murdered. Morinth, already a serial killer, promises to teach her sisters/the survivors how to take retribution through the same. Samara, a Justicar, vows to take down the officers responsible, no matter how many soldiers they put in her way. Sparing the innocent, in other words, is accompanied by either letting a Justicar go rampant on the military leaders of the Asari, or letting Morinth make more AY like herself. Even if you don’t have them and only the Daughters or left, you still don’t get assets if you don’t trigger the bomb and leave them behind.

In terms of consequences, triggering the Cerberus bomb gets notable Asari War Assets… but also establishes a working understanding, and blackmail, between the Asari military and Cerberus. Sparing the survivors gives you few/no assets: Morinth gives you a modest net-positive since her retribution is precise, but Samara triggers a news story about wiping out a bunch of corrupt, ‘indoctrinated’, generals which and her war assets barely break even. The daughters alone give no assets.

[Dean_the_Young]

===

Other Major Cerberus sub-arcs/missions

Four of them, really, to work in the context of moral ambiguity and deception. A tie-in to the Homeworld Comic about how they got the Conduit, Jacob’s mission and Project Phoenix, a remake of Omega, and the Earth Arc.

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Side-quest chain one would be the Cerberus Infiltraitors.

http://social.biowar...scussion/18270/

In a phrase: Cerberus-raised aliens who think of themselves as good humans. Very much a Citadel-worthy sidequest chain, a Cerberus spy ring that has infiltrated a number of alien embassies has gotten the Council’s notice, but they can’t find the ones responsible. When it reaches the level of the Volus Ambassador, it’s time for a Spectre.

Honestly, this should be a quest chain that takes multiple trips to the Citadel: maybe starting early, but progressing later on. Obviously tying into the Volus Ambassador as well, but with a trail across the Citadel.

What it really amounts to is the discovery of the Cerberus Alien Infiltraitor program: raising aliens to be good moles for Cerberus, and putting them in positions of access and influence. On the military side, we have alien commandos: Cerberus troops in alien skins, perfectly disguised for false-flag operations.

Reaching into that pre-ME3 homeworld comic of Ilos, you guessed it: an Infiltraitor operation. The Volus Ambassador? He shouldn’t be one himself, but there might be a scheme to get him out so that one of their own can be raised higher.

Whether as a semi-reoccuring character/NPC, or in side material, there should be aliens with personalities and even modest character development. There’s a lot you could do with this, but one idea I have, possibly the tragic flaw that unravels the whole project, is the idea that one of these aliens can’t help but feel the need to go to Earth to fight for ‘their’ homeworld.

Not the most clear idea, mind you, but I’d want it worked in any Cerberus re-interpretation.

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‘Ex-Cerberus’ Faction

Good old Jacob Taylor and the Cerberus Scientists who didn’t want to put up with the Illusive Man.

Well, contexts have changed: TIM isn’t so paranoid or needlessly murderous, and everyone is interested in working with the Crucible… which, of course, Cerberus has the real plans for.

So this defection is placed in different terms: these scientists want to turn over their knowledge for the benefit for everyone (a rising tide lifts all ships), rather than just one species in particular. They think everyone should have the full Crucible plans, and there’s enough support within Cerberus that almost an entire non-indoctrinated project, Project Phoenix, goes with them. The Illusive Man disagrees, and they are a massive security breach… so he tries to silence them. Which gets the Alliance’s attention.

This is another case of the shadow-war between Alliance and Cerberus: Cerberus defectors and Alliance forces fighting Cerberus troopers that are laying siege to a Cerberus facility. Jacob, project leader of Project Phoenix (the Cerberus biotic marine corps, in effect), is leading the defense.


Now here I want to take a step back and note two potential paths: if the Crucible were still the Destroy/Control Crucible, and we had the whole frenemies plot, then this would actually be a defection manufactured by TIM, so that his scientists could be brought onto the project in order to make sure the Control function would be installed. In such a case, I’d probably have those defectors be attacked by Reaper troops, not Cerberus.


But in this Frenemies plot, the Ex-Cerberus faction is pretty much a sub-faction of Cerberus that believes the entirety of the Crucible plans should be shared. They don’t know the full extent of it, but they’re one of our first clues that there’s more to the Crucible than the Illusive Man is letting on… and they are also the first to foreshadow the existence of the Catalyst.


So Cerberus is attacking, and Jacob Taylor is leading the defense. We find that he’s the lead in Project Phoenix, which was basically Cerberus taking the advances of Teltin and using them in non-indoctrinated personnel (because indoctrination limits mental ability to make best use of biotics, or some such). Jacob was the Moral Leader, who Inspired His Men and such so that when he sided with the idealist scientists, most of Project Phoenix jumped ship with him. Throughout the defense, we get a better sense that Teltin provided some pretty powerful gains: biotic lashes and slams that snatch up troopers and throw them to the abyss.

Still, there are endless troopers and the biotics are being run down and exhausted. Cue Shepard, who helps manage the evacuation. Jacob, being the man that he is, leads the defenders and proclaims to be the last one behind. All seems to be going well, almost everyone is out…

…and then, right before the last shuttle leaves, Doctor Cole realizes that the memory core they had put the Crucible plans onto was left behind: some Cerberus die-hard switched it with a different one. The real one must be in the base, and Shepard has to run back into the base, to the computer room, to download a new copy…

…only to find Jacob just finish deleting it. Jacob, the leader of the defense and the moral guy, is the traitor to the traitors to Cerberus. Naturally, guns are drawn and tempers flare.

Jacob doesn’t explain, but rather defends his actions as being the right thing to do. He doesn’t regret or feel guilty about his actions: he helped the scientists because he believed letting them follow their conscience was right, and he led Project Phoenix to be the sort of people who would be willing to follow their convictions. He has no regrets… he just agrees with The Illusive Man about WHY the full Crucible data should be kept a secret.

Jacob, we will come to realize, knows the effects of the Crucible in advance. He just doesn’t share, and won’t no matter what Shepard says. He just asks Shepard to trust his judgement.

Shepard may, or may not. There are four options: to cover it up and let Jacob leave alive (Jacob survives for War Assets: romance can be continued), to let Jacob live but turn him over to the Alliance for interrogation (Jacob, we learn, commits suicide to keep from breaking), to leave Jacob behind to the approaching Cerberus troops (a short scene in which he tells the Centurian that he succeeded in destroying the data: the Centurian thanks him, before Jacob lets himself be shot without resistance), or to shoot Jacob ourselves (dead Jacob is dead).

So, ultimately, two end-states: Jacob is spared, or Jacob is dead. If Jacob was already dead from ME2, the traitor is the new leader of Project Phoenix, with similar outcomes.

Regardless, Doctor Cole is disappointed that she can’t give the data to the Alliance: she confirms there were significant parts that Cerberus has left out. She speculates that there was an additional component that Cerberus is keeping secret, but otherwise says she can’t develop what else there was without the data.

In the end, Shepard wins a battle against Cerberus, which both the Alliance and Cerberus deny has ever happened, and the Alliance gets the services of Project Phoenix.

---

Omega

Still a DLC in its own right, and surprisingly much of the same content: a Cerberus invasion drove Aria out of power, and now a ruthless occupation is destroying the last bits of resistance as Cerberus gathers all the station residents into a series of internment camps. Aria and her former partner Nyreen still seek to liberate Omega for their own views of how it should be.

What changes, as always, is context. Aria isn’t the only one with an interest in seeing her returned to power, Nyreen is a viable alternative candidate, and Cerberus itself can make a claim for being proper authority for Omega.

Since the events of Invasion, Cerberus has been running Omega most like a military garrison than a trading center. Between a naval blockade and absolute control of the docks, no one is allowed in or out with Cerberus permission… and Cerberus permissions tend to require thorough cargo checks, plenty of screening, and a hefty surcharge for any alien interests seeking services on the station. Omega retains a small business district and port for commercial use, but travel into and across the station is strictly limited. While this works fine for those willing to do business and leave, it’s certainly disrupting the old way of trade.

Not, mind you, that that is entirely a bad thing, because along with disrupting Terminus trade Cerberus has also been disrupting Terminus piracy and slavery, particularly those targeting Human Interests. The Terminus Human Colonies, already close to Cerberus since the Collectors, now enjoy even greater protections from Cerberus ships, and their businesses enjoy preferential treatment and access to Omega. Similarly, the disruption of piracy and smuggling has also benefited a number of other colonies once hampered by criminal activity: Cerberus tolls are stiff, but a donation to Humanity can go a long way to doing business. There may not be Rule of Law, given Cerberus’s reputation for cheating, but this area of the Terminus is certainly enjoying a certain sort of Order that has long been absent.

The biggest visual example of the change is Cerberus’s ongoing refurbishment of Omega: old sectors are being torn apart, salvaged for scrap, and used to feed massive fabricators that are recreating the station to Cerberus specifications. Visible along hanging columns of Omega, the dirty disorganized mess is being replaced with a modern, clean structure with the Cerberus logo: when the work is done, the old Omega will be replaced with a new mega-space station of Cerberus design and ascetic.

Of course, all this is benefiting Cerberus most of all, and is increasingly bringing the Terminus colonies firmly in Cerberus’s orbit. Omega is a support base from which to fight the Reapers, target the Alliance, and establish the parallel Cerberus ‘capital’ for its informal empire. Hence why Aria was able to strike a deal with the Alliance. Shepard is asked by concerned interests, including Hackett and Udina, to go with Aria to Omega to determine the truth of the rumored Cerberus Concentration Camps. In truth, Aria and the Alliance are aiming to kick out Cerberus, and hope to get Shepard in on their side. Aria, at least, promises to use Omega to assist the Alliance, both in the war and in re-asserting dominance over the colonies: more support for the Alliance and the war effort than Cerberus, at least.


So Shepard shows up and, totally not to anyone else’s surprise, Cerberus opens fire on Aria’s ship in short order after she announces she and an Alliance representative are here to conduct an inspection. Shepard is dragged into the fight, and ends up being caught in the firefight against Cerberus that follows. Since Cerberus shot first, Shepard is fighting them for the player’s own self-defense as the player fights their way out of the new, clean landing bay of the Cerberus-Omega and back into the dirty depths of Aria’s hide out.

The thin fiction Aria was wearing about wanting what was best for Omega comes off pretty quickly as Aria’s true goal is established: regime change in her favor. It’s actually Nyreen, who stayed behind and has led the resistance, who shows actual concern for the concentration camps and the people of the Omega. The Aria-Nyreen friction carries on much the same, with more emphasis on the fact that Shepard is being sought as a tool to support one over the other.

Shepard is fortunately in time to stop Cerberus from completing the last phase of its crackdown, and between Aria’s army and Nyreen’s militia there’s now a significant anti-Cerberus force on the station: with Aria inciting an uprising in the concentration camps, Cerberus’s grip is more fragile than ever. Cerberus barriers and defenses are still considerable, however, but the big honkin empty section through the center of the station seems a clear cut path to victory. If you don’t get through and lower the barriers, the Cerberus garrison promises to make short work of Aria’s intended uprising in the concentration camps, and if the player tries to reject Nyreen’s moral appeals Aria helpfully explains that if she goes down, she’ll make sure Shepard falls to Cerberus as well. Either willingly or grudgingly, off to the mines we go.

Here’s where Cerberus starts to change, as Petrovsky begins to talk directly to Shepard and makes his case: Aria’s simply selfish, and Nyreen naïve about the nature of Omrga ‘civilins’, but the real crux of Cerberus policy on Omega is the Adjuctant threat. The Adjuctants have been suppressed and contained, but not wiped out: every time Petrovsky’s soldiers think they have, another Adjuctant pops up somewhere else on the station and starts converting more civilians.

That’s the real purpose of the concentration camps, the incineration barriers, and the remake of Omega: Petrovsky is using the barriers to contain the known Adjuctants while Cerberus tears apart the old Omega and leaves the Adjuctants nowhere else to hide. The Concentration Camps, besides getting the inhabitants out of their old homes as the fabricators remake the station, are intended to protect the civilians of Omega from being turned into Adjuctants: they are to keep the Adjuctants out as much as they keep the civilians in. While criminals and insurgents who challenge Cerberus rule are free targets for whatever experiments Cerberus scientists wish, Petrovsky has no malevolent designs for the law-abiding inhabitants.

Petrovsky’s argument against Nyreen and Aria, therefore, takes both a practical and moral tone: Cerberus’s actions are in the greater interests of both humanity and the galaxy, by containing and eliminating the Adjuctant threat. The intended uprising, and the plan of lowering the barriers, would not only leave the Adjuctants free to escape Omega, but put all the civilians at risk.

The Petrovsky reveal, done at the time of the trap, ultimately starts the schism of Aria and Nyreen. While Petrovsky’s attempts at convincing a surrender ultimately fail, it brings out the real difference of opinions between Aria and Nyreen. Nyreen is visibly shaken at the prospect of releasing the Adjuctants on the people, while Aria is clearly more upset at Nyreen’s hesitance and fear of the Adjuctants than she is worried about the public safety. Still, Aria cajoles Nyreen into continuing, if only by appealing to Nyreen’s own convictions that freedom is worth risk and loss: if they can drive out Cerberus they can still use the gangs/mercenaries to contain the Adjuctants. This will mean less support for the Alliance, but it clearly gets Nyreen back on board.

Still, the cracks are showing and Petrovsky asks Shepard the most meaningful question of all: what is Shepard interested in? The player can say that they want Aria’s additional assets for the war effort (pro-Aria), that they want to protect the civilian populace (pro-Nyreen), or that you’re simply against Cerberus (neutral).


The plot divergence comes in when Nyreen breaks from the party in canon: based on whether Shepard has supported Nyreen or Aria more often, Shepard now automatically follows them as they split off. The background radio chatter, ambient context, and a short clip illustrate the differences of these two routes.

You follow Aria if you’ve adopted a Renegade tone, and make for a direct assault on Purgatory even as Cerberus is caught on both ends between the unprepared uprising and a surge of Adjuctants. Nyreen breaks off to try and protect the civilians, but by the radio chatter she’s only able to save some after a Concentration Camp is overrun by Adjuctants. She leads them to the relative safety of Afterlife, where she hopes Cerberus will protect them, but meets her end in as in canon when they close the doors. Aria charges in, and is captured.

You follow Nyreen if you’ve adopted a Paragon tone, and accompany Nyreen as she makes an effort to stop a surge of adjuctants from hitting a concentration camp. You succeed, and hear in the ambient radio chatter that the concentration camps are safe. Aria, though, is successfully defeated in her charge on Afterlife… though in a moment of conscience brought about by Nyreen’s nagging, she dies infront of afterlife destroying some Adjuctants who would have killed some civilians. Nyreen goes into a fury, charges in, and is captured.

---

Omega Endings

---

Before the boss fight, Shepard is faced with Petrovsky with the Big Decision of the DLC: let Petrovsky take Aria/Nyreen as prisoner, allow Cerberus to put down the uprising, allow Cerberus to contain the Adjuctant outbreak, and walk away. Petrovsky will let you go, no questions asked: he’ll even throw in an offer of Omega’s e-zero reserves, as a token offering to the Alliance. He’ll even let you try and convince Aria or Nyreen to order their troops to surrender, and offers to spare them as well. Accepting the offer has the obvious effects. No boss fight, Cerberus will control the station, and with the loss of both its leaders the rebellion is doomed.

If you convince them (if you can convince them) to surrender, you get a surrender speech from them, to a cutscene of the Omega mob running out of momentum and the fighters of Nyreen or Aria’s faction grudgingly throwing down their weapons. Petrovsky honors his deal, and his victory speech speaks of how order, security, and civility will be returned to Omega, while ordering his troops to accept the surrender. Cerberus troops take prisoners at gun point, but alive and unharmed. As the crowd is pushed back into the concentration camps, the camera fades as a Cerberus turrent watches as the barriers are restored and re-raised.

If you couldn’t persuade them, Aria and Nyreen pretend to concede… but use a brief show of biotics to throw back Shepard and Petrovsky and give a speech of defiance instead: either ‘we will be free’ or ‘we are unconquerable.’ Petrosvksy, upset but firm, gives the orders to his troops to wipe out any resistors, sparing only those who offer no resistance. As the mob approaches the gates, Cerberus Centurians shout out warnings and orders for the crowd to stop: when they pass the gates, Cerberus turrets and soldiers open fire, tearing into the crowd. The camera camera fades to the image of a Cerberus turret cooling down, muzzle smoking, as screams sound in the background.


Regardless, Petrovsky sees Shepard off to the docks, where an Alliance shuttle is present to take Shepard back. Petrovsky, pleasant and civil, promises that the Alliance will receive its share of the e-zero shortly, and expresses hope that he and Shepard can meet again under more pleasant circumstances. Petrovsky gives Shepard the chess piece as a token of remembrance, thanks Shepard for doing what’s best for Omega and Humanity, and gives Shepard a solute as the Kodiak lifts off. Shepard can return it, or not, and as the shuttle flies off the camera pans towards the Cerberus-logo fabricators continuing to demolish and rebuild Omega.



Refusing Oleg’s deal leads to the boss fight, the triumph, and the conditional surrender. Oleg accepts that he’s lost, but he’s concerned about the fate of his men: while his troops have orders to fight their way off Omega if they lose control, he offers a bloodless withdrawal and surrendering himself to Shepard in exchange for Aria/Nyreen letting his forces leave in good order and without a fight.

If Petrovsky’s surrender is accepted, he issues the orders to his troops to fall back, and fight only if fired upon. Aria or Nyreen order their forces to allow them to go. As the barriers fall and the mob advances, Cerberus forces turn and flee, but without firing. The mob advances, cheering, and passes the Cerberus turrets which remain still and don’t fire as the camera fades to black.

If Petrovsky’s surrender is refused, he pulls out a flashbang and uses it to stun the victors. Ordering his forces to escape Omega, he tells them to protect themselves and each other at all costs. Nyreen/Aria quickly kill Oleg, but it’s too late: as the mob advances out of the gates, they fire at the retreating Cerberus troops. Cerberus troops go down, but others return fire and pop smoke as they begin to fall back. As the camera fades to black, it focuses on the turrets, which are firing as a firefight continues

Regardless, Aria and Nyreen see Shepard to the Old Omega docks, where an Alliance vessel is waiting. Coming in to the conversation as Aria/Nyreen say they will use the Cerberus fabricators to rebuild Omega for the benefit of the people/Omega , Aria/Nyreen emphasize the direction they intend to take Omega: Aria will make it a profitable, unrestricted port of call for the galaxy, while Nyreen sees a station where people can live free. They promise their support for Shepard’s war assets, and for the effort, before giving Shepard the chess piece from Petrovsky. Aria emphasizes that she’ll fulfill her end of the battle and send ships, troops, and e-zero to the Alliance: Nyreen apologizes to go back on Aria’s promise, but withholds the troops because she needs them to protect against the Adjuctants. Both thank Shepard for putting Omega in their hands, and possibly kiss Shepard depending on alignment. As the shuttle flies out, the camera pans over to one of the spires of Old Omega, while work crews are already scrapping off the Cerberus emblems of the fabricators.

---


The Earth Arc

A hypothetical DLC campaign centered around the multiplayer Earth maps. Sold on a tag-line of ‘help the Earth hold out!’, it explores the ongoing fighting in and around Earth. It serves the purpose of illustrating the greatest benefit and utility of the Cerberus-Alliance alliance, the ‘why do they bother’ despite the infighting. It includes Anderson, Hackett, and various Cerberus VIPs as well.

This DLC really starts in the refugee camps of the Citadel: as more and more refugees come through the Conduit, the tales are more and more frightening. The Reapers are strengthening their hold on the governments of Earth, refugees are being rounded up as obvious bait, and the Reapers are coming closer and closer to finding the Conduit. Both Cerberus and the Alliance agree that Earth needs more help, and are working to put together a joint offensive to help the resistance, Humanity’s very own ‘Miracle of Earth’ as the Reapers move ships elsewhere in the galaxy.

Combining resources, and nearly all the Normandy-class ships in the Alliance and Cerberus fleets, the Earth offensive has three goals: to strike against indoctrinated governments and loosen the Reaper grip on the subjugated governments, to launch a mass rescue of civilians being rounded up for processing, and to help protect the Conduit from discovery.

Vancouver is the mission that targets indoctrinated governments, and this map is an expanded, multi-building fight through the Reaper’s designated Human capital. Cerberus troopers and N7 special forces are attacking the office buildings where the quisling government is operating, and Shepard is part of the fight. You can read from data pads and from battlefield interrogations that some of the humans here are indoctrinated, some are just trying to save their own skin by currying favor with the Reapers, and some are bravely trying to aid the resistance from within the system. As Shepard fights from building to building to reach VIPs through their Reaper bodyguards, you pick up the clues for the final delimma: a series of captured quislings who helped the Reapers. Shepard is asked to determine which is the indoctrinated victim (who will be killed), who is the free-willed quisling (who Cerberus intends to indoctrinated before the Reapers can), and who is the resistance member (who will be spared). Right/wrong answers effect war assets.

London is the mission to help a bunch of internees from a slaughterhouse escape and flee to the underground, where the resistance will take them in. With a different skybox and a much longer street, Shepard is out to help clear the route to help civilians get through to safety. A bit of a precursor for the end-game, the actual level should be touched up as sort of an interim picture between the pristine Earth of the invasion and the wasteland of the ending.

After London and Vancouver, Anderson and his Cerberus counterpart point you towards Rio: it turns out that Cerberus has managed to keep the Conduit hidden for so long on because it was being moved around underwater within a Cerberus submarine. The submarine was damaged by the Reapers, though, and has to hide in a port on Rio while it repairs itself. Detection is almost certain, though, and all available forces on Earth are re-directed to support the submarine until it is repaired.

As Shepard completes Rio, the Submarine is fixed and begins to depart. With the Normandy well out in space, and Reapers too close for a pickup, Shepard orders the Normandy to go back to the Citadel before jumping on the sub. Shepard gets an in-person discussion with Anderson and the Cerberus leader of Earth, who talk about how Shepard brought in a lot of help for the resistance with the soldiers who are satying, and is helping a lot of people escape. Shepard and team gets on a Kodiak with a number of refugees, the submarines does its process for initiating a Mass Relay jump, and Shepard soon finds himself on the Citadel once again.

===

Thessia: Betrayal and Cover Up

===

Back to the storyline. By this time, you should have a good feel for the frenemy status of Cerberus: it helps the war effort and Humanity in some areas, but sabotages/subverts the interests of other species in others. It’s made some enemies, particularly among the Krogan, but it’s also made (or blackmailed) some friends among other species. The ‘are they worth it’ question is escalated on Thessia.

With Thessia in trouble, the Asari are desperate for help, and desperate enough that when Cerberus extends an offer (at the nominal cost of concessions to Human interests) of sending a trooper army to Thessia to help the Asari resistance, the Asari eagerly accept. Still, the Asari Council in particular seeks Shepard and the Alliance out for a specific request, to recover the Prothean Beacon. It could have intact, unaltered data of the Crucible, which is good enough for Shepard to go ‘sure’ without regards to the player’s feelings towards Cerberus.

Thessia mission of canon. Reapers kick Asari ass, but we see a few Cerberus Troopers helping out as well: helping fortify defense positions, giving medigel to wounded Asari, putting Cerberus turrets to cover bridges and wipe them free of husks. Useful things that help alleviate the suspicion of why Cerberus is helping out the Asari. When the Reapers surround the Temple, the Asari begin a counter-offensive to retake it for Shepard. Mission as norm, with more epic.

Cue the Asari temple, same as before. Guards dead, throats slit, Shepard uncovers the beacon, and right when Vendetta is about to reveal the Catalyst and the Consequences of the Crucible it goes silent because indoctrinated presence is detected. Kai Leng, or his less loserly analog we might have already met, comes out, and we have our discussion with TIM.

TIM reveals that he has know about the Asari beacon for some time: in fact, the knowledge of it has helped them blackmail the Asari for years, and is part of the reason the Asari Councilor supported his Spectre Status. As long as the Asari were only able to get fragments of data from the device he was content to let them keep it, but now that Shepard has accessed the Prothean VI the risk is too great. The Illusive Man knows both the Catalyst, the missing piece of the Crucible, but also the effects the Crucible will have. That, he insists, is the real danger, and keeping it a secret is the entire reason Cerberus is on Thessia, as well as why Cerberus has only given enough data about to figure out how to build/use the Crucible, not to know what it does..

Shepard can care/not care about the effects, but Shepard is ultimately more interested in stopping the Reapers immediately, and demands to know what the Catalyst is. TIM refuses, and makes the case that it’s not time yet: the proper preparations for the post-Reaper galaxy aren’t complete. TIM asks you to trust him, that it will be ready soon, but that for the our species now isn’t the time to end the war.

Shepard can either vehemently disagree (Paragon), or if less forceful it will be Liara who demands that, for sake of her species, the war needs to end today. Negotiations break down: the fight is lost: Cerberus gets away with the VI, and Shepard is personally defeated as Thessia falls… and even as it falls, the Asari are calling for more help from Cerberus, not the Alliance or Shepard who they effectively write off.

===

Project Sanctuary: Real Refugees, Real Terrors

Shepard returns from Thessia beaten, and the bad news only gets worse. The Asari Councilor admits to being blackmailed, both by Cerberus’s knowledge of the taboo beacon and by the Asari’s desperate need for the Cerberus troops to stay on Thessia. As long as Cerberus boots are on the ground, the Asari won’t move against Cerberus. Even Ambassador Cerberus has left the Citadel for a time, nominally to meet the Illusive Man and probably to keep from being kidnapped/interrogated.

In come the possible leads: Liara, as the Shadow Broker. Taylor, as system tracker. The N7 missions, if you did them. Miranda, if she’s tracking her sister. All together, you should do a short sidquest/mission to get your lead, and your destination.

Project Sanctuary isn’t just one world, it’s many: various secret Cerberus stations, now opened up for Human refugees, hidden across the galaxy. Secretive, self-sufficient, and well-protected underground, it’s more of a secret colony project than a refugee camp. It’s also tailored almost entirely to Humans, and is the prime destination for the Citadel Refugee Camp refugees to go if they don’t join the Alliance/Cerberus war machines.

The one we go to is known as Sanctuary 0: the processing center for the refugees going to other areas, not an actual Sanctuary... or so we think, until we uncover the entrance. Then the horror starts, as we discover that Sanctuary 0 was the development site for the Cerberus troopers process, where Cerberus found out how to control its own soldier-husks.

Sanctuary is less about ‘for science!’ or ‘control’ as it is stripping away some of the comforting lies about the Troopers that we already suspected were false. Yes, they’re indoctrinated. Yes, those techs are Reaper implants. Yes, they lose free will. Yes, their emotions can be dictated by their controllers, meaning they aren’t sincere… or at least no more sincere than other brainwashed people. Yes, a lot of people died making the process usable.

But Sanctuary isn’t all about the bad, it’s also about the results of the costs, the other sides, the cold hard utility and usefulness, as well as the other factors that, if not mitigating, make it less one-sided. The other sanctuaries are legitimate. The Cerberus troopers really are a cut above in ability, with their statistical improvement surpassing the numbers lost developing. The indoctrination process doesn’t totally destroy natural emotions. Many of the test subjects really were volunteers, including the terminally ill, crippled, or extremely old who volunteered themselves to science. Above all, Cerberus forces really are an indispensible part of the war effort, providing hundreds of thousands/millions of soldiers that wouldn’t otherwise be fielded.

By the time we reach the end, we should have to competing feelings: Sanctuary is terrible, and Sanctuary worked. Whether it was worth it or not… well, that’s where the end-game divergence comes in.

Sanctuary is the straw that breaks the camel’s back: the Alliance decides it has to confront Cerberus now, publicly, and make it account for what it has done. The Council Session is primed for whenever you get there, and it’s going to be one for the history books.

The question is though… will you support the moral superiority of the Alliance, or the practicality of Cerberus?

===

[Dean_the_Young]

===

Divergence Point: Choice vs. Legitimacy

This is the part of the narrative where’s the breakdown of intent and means. There are three competing points here that vie for attention: the legitimacy crisis, Shepard’s choice of a pro/anti Cerberus nature, and the lead-in to Earth.

What this point in the game is supposed to be is the end of the Cerberus-Alliance partnership and the transition to a dominant relationship. Sanctuary is the point of no return, and the Alliance vs. Cerberus should be decided here. The Choice of Sanctuary must advance this.

At the same time, leading into Earth is important, if only as the accepted reference for the end-game. At this point we’re still missing the analog for the Citadel Coup and the Cerberus assault… and while I’ve an intent for how the anti-Cerberus route could be handled, the Citadel Coup doesn’t work as easily, and certainly doesn’t lead in to Earth as the Final Battle.

The final point is the idea that Cerberus and the Alliance are having a struggle that is ultimately coming to a head. I’ve mentioned legitimacy a few times: the idea that the Alliance or Cerberus gain an upper hand over each other if you do this rather than that. While this could simply be flavor of the lore, something not intended to be realized, I would rather that it would be.

Ultimately, here’s the idea of Legitimacy: while Shepard has cumulatively affected who is the more accepted leader of Humanity, at some point Shepard is going to have to deal and live with what he/she set in motion. That’s the resolution, and that happens right after the discovery of Sanctuary.

Whoever wins the Legitimacy contest is going to be the one leading the liberation of Earth, and whoever Earth sees as its savior is going to be the real head of Humanity. Whoever loses, gets subsumed. The execution of this is what’s defying scenario using the canon missions.

The conditionals are easy: Cerberus can get legitimacy from the Terminus colonies if they have Omega, Eden Prime if you convinced them to leave defenders, from Watson if they were credited as protecting the civilians, from the Asari if you destroyed the AY monastery, from the Turians if you let Cerberus keep the bomb, from the Salarians if you angered the Dalatrasses and cured the genophage, and so on. Whether by blackmail, PR, or wheeling and dealing, Cerberus is the real representative of Humanity and Human interests: people might not like them, or everything that they do, but they accept them.

The Alliance is often the inverse: if Cerberus loses Omega, Aria/Nyreen boost the Alliance. If the Alliance hacks the Sanctuary data base and becomes a protector, it gets credit. If Shepard does the right things at Watson, bam. The Asari will support the Alliance if the Cerberus-entangled High Command is removed. The Turians will support the Alliance if you give them back their bomb: the Krogan will support the Alliance if you cured them. I’d even consider both the Geth and the Quarians are separate votes for the Alliance. Etc. Though the Alliance had a rough stop at the beginning of the war, Shepard helped prove that the Alliance was the real heart and soul of Humanity.

Note that these conditionals are not the same as optimal war assets, or ‘best.’ There will be times that Cerberus getting legitimacy also gives the most war assets (Eden Prime): there will be times that it’s the least (Omega). The morally right choice at the moment may not apply to the legitimacy you’d prefer.

Ultimately, with Shepard’s choice at Sanctuary being the last (but perhaps not deciding) factor, a confrontation emerges in which either the Alliance or Cerberus is transparently the one with more backing, and the one calling the shots.

Making Shepard work with that is the harder challenge.

---

If the Alliance Comes Out On Top

---

This one is easy: upon returning to the Citadel where the Big Political **** Storm is brewing, Shepard may or may not reveal the events of Sanctuary but ultimately Udina effectively beats up Cerberus Ambassador. Cerberus, between the genophage arc, Illium, Sanctuary, and other things, is too much trouble: TIM is declared a Rogue Spectre, his status stripped, and Cerberus is criminalized. Time to get back the Prothean VI.

If there was every any analog to the Citadel Coup, this would be the time. I’m not particularly interested or emphathetic on it, though, so we’ll skip to the definite point: the attack on Cerberus station. Maybe Henry Lawson had the data: maybe you got it out of Cerberus Ambassador. Regardless, Shepard goes through the station to get the Prothean VI. Shepard gets the Prothean VI, and is able to find the Catalyst (too late), but also finds that TIM hacked the Consequences out of the VI.

The most important part of Cerberus Station is that TIM’s chair is the command seat for the Cerberus Troopers. All of them. By taking the station, Shepard and the Alliance take direct control of TIM’s implant army: you get to keep those Cerberus-related war assets from earlier, but now under Alliance control.

With Cerberus more or less usurped, the Catalyst identified, everything seems better until you get the bad news: the Reapers on Earth found the Conduit, used it to take over the Citadel, and have sealed the arms, rendering the Crucible unusable. Turns out you’ll need to liberate Earth anyway.



The Alliance, truly accepted and truly in control of Humanity’s defense and future, leads the galactic alliance to Earth.

---

If Cerberus Is The Most Legitimate

---

The start of this is easy: upon returning to the Citadel for the Big Political **** Storm, Shepard may or may not reveal the events of Sanctuary but ultimately Udina, Hackett, and the Alliance are forced to eat Humble Pie when it turns out that Cerberus has more support than they do. It’s not just that the Alliance lost Earth while Cerberus defended the colonies. It’s not just that the Turians and Asari are being blackmailed, and the Salarians more sympathetic to like-minded schemers. It’s not just any one thing.

It’s a bit of everything, and ultimately Cerberus has, by trick and trial, made it in everyone’s interest to accept them as the leader of Humanity, not the Alliance.

There is no single good mission analog for what comes next: what needs to occur is a mission of relative importance, fit for Shepard and the galaxy to be distracted in, during which the Reapers find the Conduit on Earth, take over the Citadel, and force the liberation of Earth.

One possibility is that the Citadel Coup is revamped: instead of a coup, on this path you’re around to witness the actual Reaper take-over of the Citadel, as the Reapers on Earth find the Conduit and use it to invade the Citadel. You spend the mission trying to stop the Reapers from seizing control, and failing that make a narrow escape.

With the galaxy recoiling, the Alliance turned over, and everyone in a panic, Cerberus seizes the initiative and points everyone towards Earth as the only way to save themselves.

===

Earth


Earth is Earth. Let’s pretend more resources can be used to make it more awesome, with war asset/non-party companion cameos, cooler content, and more betterness. Not too much to change here on the fundamental side of things, though: the Reapers are defending, it’s the decisive battle, final good byes are to be had as everyone prepares to fight for the future.


Since I’ve mentioned War Assets before, I figure here’s a good time to sketch out the end-game asset breakdown. Spoiler Alerts.

War assets are still gathered across the game, but are broken into three main categories: land, fleets, and science. All three are necessary to get ‘best’ endings, and to have Shepard survive.

Land assets are your ground forces: Krogan, Cerberus troopers, and so on. Their role in this finale is to make the ground advance go quicker, reflecting how much punishment Shepard takes during the battle. If don’t have enough, Shepard doesn’t survive the Crucible because Shepard is too hurt to escape the Citadel. If you have enough, Shepard isn’t limping at the endgame and can barely make it back to the Conduit in time to return to Earth.

Fleet assets are space forces: ground-strong factions tend to be weak here, and the inverse is true as well. What these amount to is how well your fleets can stop Harbinger when he charges the Citadel to stop you. Not enough, and Shepard is going to get blasted as you try and make it to the Conduit and back to Earth. Enough, and Harbinger is kept at bay.

The science assets are the strength of your Crucible. Scientists, technology, prothean beacons, everything that adds to the Crucible adds to this. The more you have, the better the effects of the Crucible Wave: too low and it will devastate worlds, but the higher it is the less collateral damage. Obviously if it can wreck worlds, it will wreck Shepard as well.

The key gains of all these assets, besides the Science Asset’s direct effects, are twofold: enabling Shepard’s survival, and enabling the Third Way option. Surviving and the Third Way both require high assets in all three categories.

Or that’s the general idea, at least.


===

The Citadel Confrontations and Dark Energy

The Citadel has two key discussions: the finale with TIM, and the finale with the Reapers and their motivations. At this point, though, TIM’s presence isn’t actually required for Cerberus’s position to be explained to the player. Enter Harbinger/the Catalyst, who step in to explain just what the Crucible does. This is stuff I’ve written longer and better before, so really just follow the link.

http://social.biowar...scussion/21379/

In short, the Reaper Cycle is to manage the growth and usage of mass effect fields, which would occur regardless and more inefficiently if they didn’t seed the galaxy with more efficient mass relays. Reapers are intended to preserve species while giving the galaxy time to recover.


How the Dark Energy buildup threat will be conveyed is tricky, but it should definitely be on any Reaper-heavy world or plotline. Rannoch is obvious: the ME2 Haestrum plotline is definitely more relevant, while Exo-Geni and other science groups should also be taking a bigger role in cameo/side-quest land: perhaps the Noveria mission is really a research station looking into the Dark Energy phenomenum with stars. Regardless, there should be hints and clues even before the end-game confrontation that star collapses are accelerating: perhaps even a hint that if the conventional war continues, the galactic war will kick off the collapse before the Reapers can stop us. Sort of a high war assets ‘we’ll go down swinging’ reveal.



The Crucible is in effect a Dark Energy engine that, yes, can destroy all the Reapers in the galaxy by turning all the e-zero in the galaxy into an inert substance. This will save the galaxy from the Dark Energy threat, destroy the Reapers once and for all, and effectively break the galaxy apart because almost all technology is dependent on mass effect fields and both spacecraft and mass relays will go kaput. Technology as we know it will regress hundreds or thousands of years.

This is also the option Cerberus sees as the necessity for salvation: Cerberus acted to obscure this effect because it was convinced the Council and Alliance would never support such an extreme measure. If you kept the Collector Base, though, the Reapers knew enough non-ME technology that Cerberus has the keys to reconnection the galaxy much, much more quickly… albeit at a Human advantage.

The Crucible also has a function to kick off the Dark Energy collapse, dooming the galaxy. This seems counter-intuitive at first but the Reapers, being logical machines, will give up trying to save a doomed galaxy. The galaxy has a centuries to either come up with a solution to this unsolvable problem, or to GTFO and find another galaxy to crash. Worryingly, the Reapers are still out there and might not let us be parasites to another galaxy. The bright side of this, though, is that technology and civilization as we know it are free to continue, and Shepard can live out the rest of their natural life with Love Interest X on planet Y and spawn Z children.

The third option is to basically stare down the Reapers and threaten to kick off the Dark Energy Collapse if they don’t stop right now. If you have high enough war assets, you can tell them that by the time they could defeat us, the Collapse will already occur. If you have a high enough persuasion skill, Shepard can threaten to use the Crucible either way: since either usage ruins the Reapers’ game plans, if you can convince them you’re serious enough to destroy your own galaxy they’ll blink. This ending is the most ambiguous, and the most uncertain. The Reapers have stopped, but are still around, but some are trying to help us solve the Dark Energy problem, while others are trying to seize the Crucible and re-start the Harvest. The Dark Energy problem hasn’t gone away, but we do recognize it, but we need our mass effect fields, but the Reapers may be able to help with non-ME tech, but ME tech is still better. It’s really, really mixed, offering hope but guaranteeing nothing, but it offers a third way for peace without destroying anyone and everything (for the moment).

Ultimately Shepard succeeds, and the Reaper threat is ended. Unless you gave up, but that’s your own fault. Shepard becomes a legend, and the credits roll.

===

And that’s it. I don’t feel describing epilogue slides are necessary past an initial epilogue, but since Frenemies focuses on the relationship between Cerberus and the Alliance, I feel it’s appropriate to leave off with a final point about their different end-states.

The Alliance exists regardless. Cerberus continues regardless. What changes is their relationship to each other.

If the Alliance was dominant, Cerberus remains what it always was: a small, marginal cabal dedicated to advancing Human Interests. It continues to act, and it continues to influence, but it never regains the relative strength or influence it had during the Reaper War. Cerberus might increase its influence via the Collector Base, but it remains a modest organization at best.

The Alliance, in control of itself, is a normal xeno-state. Its leaders are accountable to its people: it mostly follows the rules and treaties it sets for itself and agrees to, and if it isn’t perfect it at least makes an honest effort and it does have lines it won’t cross.

If Cerberus was dominant, Cerberus soon returns to the shadows, claiming its role is fulfilled, but few are fooled. Much of Humanity looks to Cerberus first when times are dark, viewing it like the Asari do their Justicars, and Cerberus never lacks for support or recruits among Humanity. When foreign powers and species make deals with Humanity, they know whose approval really matters.

The Alliance, while still existing, is more of a tool for Cerberus than the actual authority of mankind. Its ranks are infiltrated, its laws rigged, and its relations dictated by the true guardians of Human interests. The Alliance exists as Cerberus wants, because Cerberus wants it to, and simply serves the role of Public Face.


And life goes on… at least till the sequel.


===

Fin

===

[Trentest0]

By God.

When I saw the thread. I almost didn't read it. THen I spent half an hour reading it AND your ending debacle in another post.

I will say just this.

If you had been the lead writer on ME3, it would have been the game of the decade for me.

I can't applaud you enough. Know today that you, sir, are a God of Narrative, and when you die, you will take your place in the Parthenon of Heroes.

Modifié par Trentest0, 10 février 2013 - 08:16 .

[DeathScepter]

i do like it a lot. My inner cerberus bastard loves your ideas for Cerberus.

[Sky651]

That would have been very enjoyable. It would take several playthroughs to see it all.

[DeinonSlayer]

This... this is incredible. It took a long time to read, but this SHOULD have been how Cerberus was handled. I particularly like the reinterpretation of Benning as Shepard infiltrating a Cerberus recruitment drive - that entire chain of missions, in fact. Giving them solid motivations for their actions instead of "lolindoctrinated," and the Legitimacy dynamic untethered to the juvenile Paragon/Renegade system is a nice touch. You already know what I think of your Dark Energy plot. My inner Talimancer rebels against the reduced role there, but I suppose it makes sense given her position (like Liara going on missions instead of shadow-breaking). Fantastic work. Give us this type of moral complexity, Bioware - we can handle it.

[Trentest0]

I'd also like to offer some feedback, having read through again (because its so damn good).

It's all constructive, and more than that, I try to make my feedback to feel more advisory and less 'this would be so much better that what you put'.

1. The plot ties Cerberus in nicely with good explanations. It does get a little complex. so you could streamline some of Cerberus' reasoning.

2. My main point: Though it almost completely fixes Cerberus, your plot does make it very Cerberus heavy. In this document, you involve them in almost every story arc and mission in some way. Whilst your improvements to Cerberus are excellent, Mass Effect 3 is about uniting the galaxy against the Reapers. After two games of build up, the Reapers really do need to have the largest antagonistic role in Mass Effect 3.
They need to be a villain as an entity, as well as having their own individual relatable villains, such as Harbinger.
I think that elevating Cerberus too much makes them too prominent, and leads to confusion. After all the poltical termoil and intrigue with Cerberus, the player may have forgotten about the Reapers entirely. It's kind of like "Oh, don't mind us guys. Keep fighting each other, we'll wrap this up quicker that way."

In summary, Cerberus is fleshed out in your version, but is too prominent in a lot of stuff. Would be nice to get back to old fashioned Us vs Reapers to bring back the reality that the galaxy is at war.

3. I'm probably missing something, but did you leave out the part about the Human-Reaper? Could you incorporate it into your plot? Could it have a central role in your ending scenario? In my own versions, each newly created Reaper at the end of a harvest is the 'Catalyst' of that cycle. All Reapers network their power into the Citadel/Catalyst/Crucible in an attempt to (as of reasons I did not develop) stop Dark Energy destabilisation.
The Human-Reaper was essentially filling that role: Harbinger was organising its creation whilst the Reaper fleet was FTLing to the galaxy, which they'd been doing since the end of ME1.
Of course, maybe it isn't an important element in your plot, and rather the more important element is the Collector Base itself.

That's what I thought of after two reads.

But yeah, you're a God of Story Creation.

[BirdsallSa]

Shouldn't this be in Fan Creations?

[Dean_the_Young]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

This... this is incredible. It took a long time to read, but this SHOULD have been how Cerberus was handled. I particularly like the reinterpretation of Benning as Shepard infiltrating a Cerberus recruitment drive - that entire chain of missions, in fact. Giving them solid motivations for their actions instead of "lolindoctrinated," and the Legitimacy dynamic untethered to the juvenile Paragon/Renegade system is a nice touch.

On that last part, it's kind of funny you say that: while I did make a point of switching up what would end up giving legitimacy or not (sometimes due to unintended circumstances, sometimes obvious consequences), I do imagine that Renegade would have a general, though not absolute, 'pro-Cerberus' thematic slant. Or rather, while there may be Renegade choices that don't favor Cerberus (such as Renegade-persuading Cerberus to give you Javik and stay on Eden Prime), choices that do favor Cerberus would tend to be Renegade (giving up Javik, or remaining hidden on Benning and letting Cerberus play Hero).

I do prefer the ME1 and ME3 ideology-aligned morality systems over ME2's tone-based morality, and in terms of Frenemies Renegade would definitely be 'pro-Human.' In circumstances in which Cerberus is positioning itself as the pro-Human option at the cost of aliens, which is relatively often, that would cause a general correlation. Paragon would definitely favor the aliens in Cerberus-vs-Aliens delimmas... and would probably favor the Alliance as well, given the Alliance's themes of general rule of law, diplomacy, and other Paragon-themed elements.

You could definitely be a Renegade who doesn't side with Cerberus, in other words, but if you side with Cerberus you'd probably be Renegade, if that makes sense. Hope it doesn't disillusion you too much.

You already know what I think of your Dark Energy plot. My inner Talimancer rebels against the reduced role there, but I suppose it makes sense given her position (like Liara going on missions instead of shadow-breaking). Fantastic work. Give us this type of moral complexity, Bioware - we can handle it.

Well, thank you for the compliment.

[Shimmer then Fade]

A very interesting read! I like it.

[Dean_the_Young]

Trentest0 wrote...

I'd also like to offer some feedback, having read through again (because its so damn good).

It's all constructive, and more than that, I try to make my feedback to feel more advisory and less 'this would be so much better that what you put'.

I thank you for it: constructive criticism with poise should always be appreciated.

1. The plot ties Cerberus in nicely with good explanations. It does get a little complex. so you could streamline some of Cerberus' reasoning.

While I can see it in some cases (the Firebase Glacier mission might be asking a bit much for what could actually be done), were there any pieces or trends you are thinking of in particular?

I suppose the Alien Infiltraitors would be a good case: they're a pet project/fascination of mine, I admit. But what were some of the complex points?

2. My main point: Though it almost completely fixes Cerberus, your plot does make it very Cerberus heavy. In this document, you involve them in almost every story arc and mission in some way. Whilst your improvements to Cerberus are excellent, Mass Effect 3 is about uniting the galaxy against the Reapers. After two games of build up, the Reapers really do need to have the largest antagonistic role in Mass Effect 3.
They need to be a villain as an entity, as well as having their own individual relatable villains, such as Harbinger.
I think that elevating Cerberus too much makes them too prominent, and leads to confusion. After all the poltical termoil and intrigue with Cerberus, the player may have forgotten about the Reapers entirely. It's kind of like "Oh, don't mind us guys. Keep fighting each other, we'll wrap this up quicker that way."

In summary, Cerberus is fleshed out in your version, but is too prominent in a lot of stuff. Would be nice to get back to old fashioned Us vs Reapers to bring back the reality that the galaxy is at war.

Guilty as charged, but I'd like to make a few points: first, of course, that I don't really talk about what doesn't change, so the document really understates what would be present in terms of the Reapers.

Second, I tried not to introduce Cerberus too much into things they weren't already tied to: the Monastary backstory was the biggest exception, I think, and it was more to underscore the little-realized fact that Shepard is really sent there to support a genocide attempt. Cerberus made a better candidate than the under-recognized Asari commandoes, and the Legitimacy mechanic really needed an Asari lever that Shepard could influence to win/lose legitimacy with Cerberus. The Asari Beacon was more of blackmail, and really didn't offer much of a choice to the player (unless we introduced an option to reveal it or not). Otherwise, though this piece focused on re-defining what Cerberus was already involved with.

But really, most of all, I view the Reapers more as a framing device than an actual character-involved faction. I will admit that it's understandable to view it differently now that they're here rather than a distant presence, but (thanks in no small part to ME2) the Reapers have always been more of a backdrop to the conflicts between the people who deal with them, rather than the central antagonists themselves. ME1 had Sovereign as the Big Bad, but it was really more of a conflict between Shepard and Saren's competing views of how to address them. ME2 had the Collectors as a framing device, but the real focus was the characters and the characters had barely anything to do with the Collectors.

ME3, in my view, was more about people facing the Reapers, and the conflicts between them, than it was about the Reapers themselves. They're a backdrop, a force of nature, not  faction: while I've certainly done a few musings on how the Reapers could have been more interesting, there's a lot of understandable reasons why they're about as relatable as the Blight. Cerberus (or a similar relatable faction) makes a much better quasi-antagonist for political/character friction, and so I really do think they 'deserve' to be the clearer focus in their own right.

3. I'm probably missing something, but did you leave out the part about the Human-Reaper? Could you incorporate it into your plot? Could it have a central role in your ending scenario? In my own versions, each newly created Reaper at the end of a harvest is the 'Catalyst' of that cycle. All Reapers network their power into the Citadel/Catalyst/Crucible in an attempt to (as of reasons I did not develop) stop Dark Energy destabilisation.
The Human-Reaper was essentially filling that role: Harbinger was organising its creation whilst the Reaper fleet was FTLing to the galaxy, which they'd been doing since the end of ME1.
Of course, maybe it isn't an important element in your plot, and rather the more important element is the Collector Base itself.

Well, honestly... I forgot. Same with the Miranda and Jack plots. They weren't terribly important in canon, and they weren't terribly in this re-cast. No reason I can't elaborate, though.

Starting with Jack, I suppose Grissom Academy might have helped your feelings of Reaper under-utilization because the reboot in mind cast the situation in terms of 'the Reapers are currently attacking. Save the students from the Reapers, and meet Cerberus doing the same.' Basically, Cerberus is responding to a legitimate distress beacon, with selfish reasons in mind as well, but besides the Reaper troubles the students aren't cooperating because the Grissom faculty (Kahlee Sanders, Jack) are vehemently anti-Cerberus and suspect (with reason) that Cerberus has less than selfless motives for saving them. Rather than jump into Cerberus's arms, the students and faculty are holding out for Alliance rescue.

Grissom Academy was to be a place where anti-Cerberus grudges come to the fore: Jack, obviously, but also Kahlee Sanders, Shepard, and even Anderson (post-mission). This is played less than one-sided or nicely: while the past history of Cerberus is brought to air and suspicion warranted, the refusal to trust Cerberus's outreached hand despite imminent danger is pretty close to cutting one's nose to spite your face. Extreme distrust and loathing may seem reasonable for, say, Jack, when it comes at the cost of endangering the children and risking them just to spite Cerberus it becomes a lot less pleasant. The pro-Alliance/anti-Cerberus fervor also gets a bit of a hit when the Cerberus propoganda machine emphasizes how the Alliance screwed up and lost Earth, how Cerberus has been fighting the good fight... and, oh yeah, how Cerberus responded first to the calls for help.

The mission concept in my head was a Reaper-enemy mission in which Shepard de facto cooperated with Cerberus in order to get the students to a point where they could be evacuated... though the ultimate delimma would be whether the students would take a Cerberus evac (and, implicitly, be spirited away by Cerberus to Sanctuary/be recruited/be indoctrinated), or the Alliance evac (the Normandy).

Rather than a single dialogue choice, it would be more akin to an Omega-style 'sum of your conversations', in which the dialogue choices across the mission collectively influence the students and who they'll run to. Shepard's dialogue options, actions within the missions, and companions could influence the score. Jack, in particular, would be a significant 'anti-Cerberus' influence. Ultimately, wheover has the bigger score gets the kids.




Moving on to Miranda... I couldn't really decide on a role that fit her, honestly. She's definitely fit to be a high-level Cerberus administrator if she didn't quit, an Allaince-aligned liason officer if she 'quit', and could easily work on the Citadel to coordinate Alliance/Cerberus efforts regardless of ME2 outcomes, but past that? Nothing plot-critical came to mind. She'd definitely still be Cerberus Cheerleader, since Cerberus is on the 'right side' so to speak.

I did muse on having Miranda in charge of Sanctuary, whether as a whole or Sanctuary 0 in particular. I've even discussed with Ieldra, legendary Miranda fan-champion, about how/if Miranda would run Sanctuary: using volunteers, cripples, the terminally ill and what not for the experiments. Using her skills and nature to make it less horrible. Ultimately, though, I don't think Sanctuary 0 fits her: not after the ME2 Destroy defection, and I don't think the fanbase would tolerate her if she were aware or connected to those experiments.

I suppose if I had to cast her, she'd be involved in Citadel-related cooperation projects, particularly the Conduit and Refugee camps, as well as being tied to Sanctuary's better sides: refugee management, emergency shelters, etc. I could also see her in a character arc in which she has to hunt down potentially Reaper-indoctrinated refugees, to screen them out and keep them from doing harm: throw in a familiy with an Oriana-like dynamic, and you could get some emotionally touching stuff.




Finally, for the Collector Base and Reaper Brain... the Reaper brain itself doesn't have much of a role: at most it's a significant, super-duper Crucible asset that's very, very useful to helping the Crucible not fry the planets (and Shepard). It's the sort of carry-over that could help mitigate the necessity of, say, Salarian Crucible assets and let you feel a bit freer in how you approach the Genophage choice.

The Collector Base, though, is a bit more important in terms of setting the tone. While Implant-Troopers and the Omega events occur regardless of the Base, the Base Kept consequences are two fold: advanced technologies that stiffen the resistance against the Reapers, and the Reaper technology treasure trove.

The first was mentioned briefly in the description of the Earth opening: that the Alliance ship, using a Collector Particle beam, is able to destroy a Reaper if you kept the base. If you don't, the Reaper is merely damaged. That's the sort of difference the game would make at various times: that Collector technology, seeded by Cerberus, are helping prolong the war by dealing greater damage and taking less. It's not enough, mind you, but we're losing more slowly and putting up a better fight. If you kept the Base, Cerberus has a better negotiating card (and, consequently, Legitimacy) because it trades that technology here and there for various results. The war goes better, though Cerberus and Humanity benefit most of all. This 'better resistance' is, on the face of it, overwhelmingly a good thing.

The second is the real catch, because it's this Reaper data cache that provides Cerberus with the greater, and more worrying, long-term influence. The Reapers and Collector Base not only have Mass Effect technologies... they also have non-ME technologies as well, including non-ME space flight and FTL tech. Not as good as the relays, not as good as ME tech, but far better than anything else we have. What this means is that, when the Crucible is used as Cerberus intends (to end the Dark Energy threat, destroy the Reapers, and trigger a galactic dark age as space flight and interstellar travel are lost), Cerberus will already be prepared to step in and start building the post-Relay interstellar order. Those Sanctuary worlds, scattered across the galaxy? They're in what will be strategically located FTL-lanes or worlds once the Relays are gone.

When everyone else is knocked flat by the loss of ME tech, Cerberus will be in a position of unrivabled ability to reconnect the galaxy to its own advantage. That's the Consequence of the Base: the Base makes the galaxy strong, but Cerberus even stronger. If you don't like them, that's a Bad Thing.

Also, in the 'stare down the Reapers' ending, keeping the base also raises the
hope that a scientific answer to the Dark Energy problem can be found: the galaxy is already working with non-e-zero tech, and can better contribute to devising a solutuion.


If it feels that the Base decision is too good for Cerberus, and the 'Destroy e-zero' Renegade-ending, I'd point out that Saving the Council is similarly biased towards the alternative Paragon outcomes. Saving the Council gives the Alliance significant legitimacy, the Council fleets provide significant military assets that would otherwise be lost, and only the Truly United Galaxy (ie, Paragon Council) truly stands a chance at solving the e-zero delimma/organizing an orderly galaxy-wide evacuation of the 'destroy the galaxy' option. In the 'stare down the Reapers' ending, a Paragon Council is also implicitly much more likely to convince everyone to limit their use of e-zero, and thus more time for a Dark Energy solution to be found.

So different biases for different Big Decisions of the previous games.

That's what I thought of after two reads.

But yeah, you're a God of Story Creation.

Well, that's a little tall praise, but thank you. I'll be the first to admit that it would probably need to be pruned a bit before it could 'really' be made into a Bioware-style game.

[Belisarius25]

Annoying gut reaction was; I'd still rather have had less Cerberus than more in the storyline (I'd have liked to see some indoctrinated forces in their place, or possibly clashes with other governments or factions, like rival Krogan clans).

That being said, it was really interesting to read and I liked a lot of your ideas. I've never been a fan of how Cerberus became so important to the plot in ME2 (the sidequests from ME1 kind of soured me on them quickly), but it would have been nice to see some craftier stuff on their end. Alternatively, I wouldn't have minded them keeping the "TIM trying to do his part but is corrupted" angle they had in the game but tempering it by not having Cerberus be as outright "Because we're evil".

Either way, I love reading your posts, even if I don't necessarily agree with your underlying suggestions!

[dirty console peasant]

gorram that was amazing, it even made me accept star jar as a useful character. I honestly think that if this had happened I for one would have probably played the game about 20 times since it launched.
Edit: also a question, I am kinda fuzzy on who you have creating the crucible.  from your comments about the choices it seems like you have it being a Reaper creation.

Modifié par dirty console peasant, 12 février 2013 - 06:26 .

[k.lalh]

Holy...

Wow.

Well done.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

That a good read, Dean!

Admittedly, I skimmed it more than anything, but the ideas I did gather from it are pretty awesome. (I actually remember reading a bunch of these ideas from various posts you've made previously).

[Dean_the_Young]

dirty console peasant wrote...

gorram that was amazing, it even made me accept star jar as a useful character. I honestly think that if this had happened I for one would have probably played the game about 20 times since it launched.
Edit: also a question, I am kinda fuzzy on who you have creating the crucible.  from your comments about the choices it seems like you have it being a Reaper creation.

Hm? Not really: it addresses a Reaper-perceived problem of Dark Energy, but Destroy the Mass Effect isn't something the Reapers want. It would destroy them, and all the civilizations they've 'saved' up to this point.

The Crucible remains what it always was: a device incrimentally advanced over the countless cycles by the various species. It's intended function is just explicit.

[Dean_the_Young]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

That a good read, Dean!

Admittedly, I skimmed it more than anything, but the ideas I did gather from it are pretty awesome. (I actually remember reading a bunch of these ideas from various posts you've made previously).

Tis true: it's as much a massive round up of past ideas as it is a forumlation of the Frenemies idea. Lots of bits and pieces.

Glad you enjoyed it.

[Karlone123]

I hope someone is taking notes from this in order to add complexity rather then makes things too simple and too forward when making a game.

[dirty console peasant]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

dirty console peasant wrote...

gorram that was amazing, it even made me accept star jar as a useful character. I honestly think that if this had happened I for one would have probably played the game about 20 times since it launched.
Edit: also a question, I am kinda fuzzy on who you have creating the crucible.  from your comments about the choices it seems like you have it being a Reaper creation.

Hm? Not really: it addresses a Reaper-perceived problem of Dark Energy, but Destroy the Mass Effect isn't something the Reapers want. It would destroy them, and all the civilizations they've 'saved' up to this point.

The Crucible remains what it always was: a device incrimentally advanced over the countless cycles by the various species. It's intended function is just explicit.

yah, I reread the part about triggering dark energy collapse and it looks like I misinterpereted it.

[CSRB]

Ever heard of the word 'concise'?