Okay, so this gonna be more of an „What did you do in the ME trilogy last week“ thing, cause I didn’t play much Mass Effect recently, but I finally wanted to write something longer and include a few of my thoughts on the game before I forget everything that happened, so here we go:
First of all: Reyes Shepard met a lot of old faces these past few missions, it’s almost insane when you think about all those weird coincidences…
The first one was Rana Thanoptis, the Asari scientist who survived Virmire where she researched indoctrination and experimented on the captured STG agents. He suddenly turned up in Okeers laboratory, claiming she just wanted to help him save the Krogan race and that she developed the training routine that all of Okeer’s products had to go through before being discarded. She ran off before Shepard could ask any more substantial questions, but she was less tempted to shoot her this time. It turned out that – who would’ve thought? – just as she reached Okeer and got the basic info she needed from him, Jedore decides to destroy his Prototype, leading to the boss battle against her and the Krogans + the mech. I thought this would be more of a problem on Insanity, but I didn’t even die and the game in general seems to be easier then when I last played it on Hardcore. Easy explanation: Fortification. I don’t know why I never chose this bonus talent before, but it makes everything so much easier and basically replaces the missing immunity/shield boost talents from ME1. Also it isn’t lore breaking if I use it with my soldier Shepard, other than every bonus talent except the ammo and grenade stuff.
In the end, Okeer died, apparently by diverting the poisonous gas that was meant to kill Grunt into the room, eventually dying himself. I might have just forgotten, but I think that’s the first time I had Mordin along (who comments on what Okeer did) and realized that Okeer caused his own death instead of being killed by Jedore on purpose. He sacrificed himself to save his son which looked oddly noble to Shepard, but probably it was just his pride and unwillingness to let go of his greatest achievement.
Reyes had been interested in using Grunt against the Collectors the first time Okeer explained what he was and now that he was the only thing to take away from this whole endeavor, she got what she asked for. Of course she didn’t hesitate to actually get her new asset out of the tank on the machine deck, telling EDI to shut the eff up (Reyes is a little prejudiced against KIs and still doesn’t like the idea of having her on board). Of course Grunt attacked and slammed her into the wall, but she didn’t seem to care much, probably due to the kybernetic enhancements given to her by Cerberus. Good thing Shepard is used to dealing with Krogans and quickly convinced Grunt to join the fight against the collectors by offering him the strongest enemy and the best fight he could possibly find. Of course she had a gun aimed at him all along which he seemed to approve of.
And in came a call from the Illusive Man, informing Shepard about an impending Collector attack on a colony called Horizon where Ashley Williams is apparently positioned at the moment. What a strange coincidence…
Anyways, Shepard and crew didn’t lose any time and immediately headed for Horizon and Mordin completed the counter measure against the seeker swarms just in time to test in on Horizon. At the time of Shepard’s arrival, the colony was already under attack and in order to rush through them as quickly as possible and save the colonists, she decided to take her biotic experts along. Jack and Miranda made quick work of most of the collectors if they weren’t currently lying unconscious in some corner without ever being resurrected due to me always trying not to use Medigel so I have some when I need it and to get the +100 Credits from every Medi-Kit… that probably makes me a greedy bastard, but whateffs, the collectors were no match for Shepard on her own either. Jack and Miranda got along surprisingly well, I think Jack only made a remark on the husks being even sicker experiments than what Cerberus did to her or something along those lines, but Miranda gave her the cold shoulder and completely ignored it.
After killing countless collectors and passing by many paralyzed colonists, Shepard and team finally reached the Alliance turrets’ controls and left the technical stuff to EDI, while fighting off countless waves of Collectors. I have to admit that I died on the very first wave of Husks, because I tried to melee them and thought Fortification was ready in case I needed it, but I somehow couldn’t activate it… yeah, that felt a little embarrassing, but I made it on the second try. The collectors left with almost half of the colonists and the mechanic Shepard had met earlier didn’t lose any time accusing Shepard and the alliance for their loss. Shepard dismissed his criticism rather rudely and didn’t let any doubt about herself and the alliance show, eventhough she didn’t feel very proud of her partial failure either. She had joined the alliance and later the mission against the Collectors to protect colonists (like she wished she could have protected her own family back on Mindoir) and make sure, that stuff like this didn’t happen whenever she was there to prevent it. Losing those people on Horizon and meeting the Collectors + Harbinger for the first time made the fight against them a lot more personal to Shepard.
And then there was Ashley of course, who was just as relieved about seeing Shepard as she was at first – Ashley could have been abducted for all that Reyes knew at that point – but quickly changed her attitude towards her old friend when she discovered her connection to Cerberus. They had a rather heated argument over the matter and left on a bitter note, but in the end, Reyes was glad about the chance to check on her and at least have her know what she’s up to with Cerberus. She also mentioned this towards Joker and Kelly back on the Normandy after calling the Illussive man out on his stupid games and not telling her anything about what he’s truly up to with his mission assignments… boy will she be happy after the collector ship.
This post is getting rather lengthy and I don’t have time to go on atm, so I’ll continue another time.
And next time on „What did I do in the ME trilogy last week“:
Getting hot on Haestrom and “My whole team died on me” syndrome spreading among Shepard’s Crew
Hey, Liara! And... Conrad, is that you? Gianna? Shiala…?!
A rather complicated family meeting followed by surprising revelations (and a black Latex suit)
(Dis)Likings for dangerous men and women
And the ultimate embarassment that was the first fight on the collectors' ship.