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[Darius M.]

I just ran through the campaign again, and just got done with Priority: Thessia. Does this segment of the campaign really tick anybody else off?! Let's forget for the moment about needing to recharge and the adamantine gunship. We could all write pages on that... but I can't stand how your Shepard is forced into being this broody mess after the mission!  Do these same issues bug you guys?

 

1. Why wasn't losing Thessia in the playbook? Earth is ravaged, Palaven is ravaged, Irune is "bogged down in a nasty ground war," Tuchanka is ravaged, Dekunna is ravaged, but "OHHHH No! Not Thessia! Not the mighty Asari!!!!!" Seriously, it's like we're supposed to cry over this planet while almost every other race's is burning. 

 

2. The Asari knew about "A KEY COMPONENT" of the Crucible, and withheld it until this late in the war?!?! Add to that the hypocrisy: EDI mentions that "The penalties for hoarding Prothean Technology are among the harshest in council space..." Really? So they passed that law while studying and hiding a top  secret Prothean Beacon?! And I'm supposed to feel bad for them? Come on...

 

3. The Asari explicitly denied having anything to do with you when you were assembling your summit. It's CLEARLY been established (and pounded into our heads) that no one can beat the reapers alone... The mighty Turian Military is losing badly, but the Asari and their few commandoes are going to stop them? Come on, they have some skilled commandoes, but I don't remember hearing ANYWHERE about any sort of real army! (they don't even wear the same uniforms!!!!) They give you almost NO tactical time, window, or way to win that battle, yet you're supposed to feel bad for failing? The whole thing felt like "Why didn't Shepard save our planet? S/he must not have wanted to bad enough..."

 

I could go on for a while, but I'll just focus it on these three. What do you guys think of the Thessia part and just after? What issues (if any) do you have?

[Excella Gionne]

'Cause if you spoil everything at the beginning, what would be the fun in that? What's more important is that the Reapers didn't take back the Citadel at beginning of the invasion.

[Mister J]

Yeah I did find it odd that the destruction of Thessia was made out to be to much worse than that of all other planets... If I were a radical feminist my head would explode because of the game treating Thessia as a planet full of precious little Princesses that must be protected.

 

Luckily I am no such thing...

[Darius M.]

Excella Gionne: That's a good point. I mean, I (kinda) get why they had to expose the last ingredient later in the story, but come on... are you saying you have NO problems with how it was executed? or the post-mission attitude?

[Althix]

Liara to Shepard:

- if you lose Thessia - no sex for a month

Thessia aftermath. Shepard:

- NOOOOOOOO.

 

But seriously though, after speech of Garrus about turian casualties, to see such reaction from Shepard about just another planet in a galactic genocidal war was very strange if not stupid.

[DuskWanderer]

I've complained about this for a long time. I can only come to the following conclusion: Bioware wanted us to care more about the asari than the other races. It's quite clear that they are the pets of the franchise and supposedly "deserve" the sympathy. We see it on the krogan to a lesser extent, but yeah, for those reasons I don't care much for Thessia or everyone's reactions (not to mention all the pouting everyone does after the fact)

[Barquiel]

um... really? This again? But let's see...

1) If you listened to the dialog as Shepard and our squaddies fought their way to the temple, you can feel the excitement. They are counting the war all but won, and thinking "the nightmare almost over". The idea was to get the catalyst -> activate the crucible -> destroy the reapers > start rebuilding Thessia (as Shepard tells Liara during the mission). But then the rug gets ripped out from under them. Of course they took it hard...and the scenes afterwards were beautifully done and some of the best moments of the game in my opinion. Shepard lost and in that brief moment the war efforts had been for nothing (Shep has no clue where Kai Leng went). Without the Crucible, the galactic community might as well just put their weapons down and give in to harvesting (-> "Thessia is lost"). Shepard is a winner and Thessia was the one time that she lost and when she did, she lost big. Add to this that Thessia reminded her of what happened to Earth and how the war was already grinding on her mind (dreams)...I think it's pretty easy to see how you'd feel absolutely hopeless.

Not to mention that Shepard spends the entire game moping about Earth. Thessia gets its 15 minutes of fame, three conversations and then you hear nothing about the situation there (unless you play the AY monastery post-Thessia, then you get an extra line from Tevos about the evacuation efforts). But Shepard trying to convince everyone that retaking earth is much more important than defending Thessia or Palaven is ok?

And no where after Thessia is Shep crying about the planet. Shep is upset she lost the Catalyst. She says: "It's my job to be prepared-- no matter what. And now Thessia is lost, as is the Catalyst." And that's all she says about Thessia itself. The entire rest of the conversation is about how she failed to stop Cerberus, and failed to get the Catalyst. Shepards reaction would have been the same if Palavan or Sur'kesh would have been the third homeworld to fall, with the final component needed for the Crucible stolen by Cerberus on one of those two worlds. But Shepard certainly isn't mourning the Asari more than her own people or the Turians.

2) By that logic you could also ask why we are supposed to feel bad for Earth (cerberus, udina,...). The "Asari" didn't knew about "A KEY COMPONENT" of the Crucible. Only a very small handful of matriarchs knew about the beacon, which they couldn't properly activate (no cipher). Vendetta also flat out tells you that it was programmed to withhold the relevant information for fear of the Reapers learning of the Catalyst's intended use before the Crucible was completed, so revealing the beacon earlier wouldn't have changed a thing. The people who are fighting on Thessia didn't knew anything. The commandos who died buying Shep some time didn't knew anything. etc.

 

3) While I agree that the Asari not joining the summit is weird...who cares? The whole point of the war summit was to cure the krogan, or not. The summit was doomed to fail, and it did fail. Victus wants some cannon fodder for Palavan. The krogan want a cure. The dalatrass wants to sabotage these efforts. These are all demands the asari couldn't influence. They didn't really coordinate the war effort or something during the summit. The asari joined after the Cerberus coup, so virtually the same time as anyone else does (...and they contribute more war assets than the Turians or the Salarians, who sent someone to the summit). They simply didn't get some shiny "recruitment" mission like the turians/krogan and the geth/quarians or ask for something in return like the salarians (they are basically the only race to join the war effort without a quid pro quo).
And we know the asari helped the alliance even before they 'officially" joined the alliance (Tiptree for example). As far as we know, the asari were the only ones helping the Alliance colonies evacuate at the beginning of the invasion.

 

As for the mission itself, given how important the asari are to the game universe Thessia deserved a more thoughtful treatment imo. It seems to me that by the time they got to Thessia the writers ceased to care or were strapped by an arbitrary deadline and couldn't do better.

[Grieving Natashina]

This was going through my head during Thessia:

 

[Althix]

 If you listened to the dialog as Shepard and our squaddies fought their way to the temple, you can feel the excitement. They are counting the war all but won

*sigh* now Shepard is a soldier, at least he/she was a soldier in ME1. Which means, for him war is over when it's actually over.

[themikefest]

Let's not forget that it was the asari that failed to reveal the artifact until the reapers were at their door. Only then, crying like little babies, that they decide it would be a good  idea to reveal the artifact. Idiots. But of course my femshep has to mope for these idiots for their own stupidity.

 

Doesn't matter if the Catalyst would be revealed at Chronos.. If Cerberus was able to break through to know what the Catalyst is, the Alliance could've done the same thing. It could've been revealed earlier if the idiots revealed the thing earlier. Again, because of the asari being idots,  it cost a lot of  lives that could've/would've been saved.

 

So its ok that they don't show up to the summit? Really? That tells me they didn't care about the other species and didn't want to make any effort to ally with as many species as possible to help stop the reapers. Idiots. They only cared about one thing. Staying number 1 in the galaxy. Even the idiot asari councilor says it. They don't want to interfere with the balance of power. What a dumba**. 

[DeinonSlayer]

I think this is the thread where Barquiel, Von Uber, Livi14, Shotgun Julia and Xilizhra defend the Asari's actions, the first and last defending the forced sadness for them, while themikefest, Steelcan, Duskwanderer, Ryzaki and myself tear into them. Or, wait, am I in the wrong place?

[Xilizhra]

I just ran through the campaign again, and just got done with Priority: Thessia. Does this segment of the campaign really tick anybody else off?! Let's forget for the moment about needing to recharge and the adamantine gunship. We could all write pages on that... but I can't stand how your Shepard is forced into being this broody mess after the mission!  Do these same issues bug you guys?

 

1. Why wasn't losing Thessia in the playbook? Earth is ravaged, Palaven is ravaged, Irune is "bogged down in a nasty ground war," Tuchanka is ravaged, Dekunna is ravaged, but "OHHHH No! Not Thessia! Not the mighty Asari!!!!!" Seriously, it's like we're supposed to cry over this planet while almost every other race's is burning. 

 

2. The Asari knew about "A KEY COMPONENT" of the Crucible, and withheld it until this late in the war?!?! Add to that the hypocrisy: EDI mentions that "The penalties for hoarding Prothean Technology are among the harshest in council space..." Really? So they passed that law while studying and hiding a top  secret Prothean Beacon?! And I'm supposed to feel bad for them? Come on...

 

3. The Asari explicitly denied having anything to do with you when you were assembling your summit. It's CLEARLY been established (and pounded into our heads) that no one can beat the reapers alone... The mighty Turian Military is losing badly, but the Asari and their few commandoes are going to stop them? Come on, they have some skilled commandoes, but I don't remember hearing ANYWHERE about any sort of real army! (they don't even wear the same uniforms!!!!) They give you almost NO tactical time, window, or way to win that battle, yet you're supposed to feel bad for failing? The whole thing felt like "Why didn't Shepard save our planet? S/he must not have wanted to bad enough..."

 

I could go on for a while, but I'll just focus it on these three. What do you guys think of the Thessia part and just after? What issues (if any) do you have?

1. The point is that the Thessia mission, unlike everything else you mentioned, actually failed (though it can be made up for by chasing Kai Leng to Horizon).

 

2. Not done by the asari population as a whole, or even, in all likelihood, the Councilor.

 

3. It was only that summit that they missed, and they join your coalition after the Citadel coup.

 

 

I think this is the thread where Barquiel, Von Uber, Shotgun Julia and Xilizhra defend the Asari's actions, the first and last defending the forced sadness for them, while themikefest, Steelcan, Duskwanderer, Ryzaki and myself tear into them. Or, wait, am I in the wrong place?

What actions of "the asari?" Or do you mean the actions of the conspiracy? Because I'm not all that interested in defending them, I just don't want people blaming the entire species for their actions.

[Livi14]

The mission on Thessia was crap, but the aftermath was really well done. For me, it was more emotionally charged than any other part of the game.

 

And I've never hated a people because of the actions of its government, with maybe the quarians as the only exception because they knew exactly what their government was up to.

[ImaginaryMatter]

The part of the mission that bothered me -- outside of the Kai Leng encounter, sigh... -- Is the sudden importance of the Catalyst. After going through most of the game with the Crucible entirely in the background, Shepard and friends are suddenly invested in some unknown artifact that connects, somehow, to a device who's function and technology is entirely unknown and which has never worked.

 

As for the aftermath, I think the remorse over the loss to Cerberus can only be extended so far. The game acknowledges that the Asari hid the existence of the Beacon for purely political, self-interest reasons. Add onto that, that Shepard can snub entire species while choosing the option to drive them into extinction and the forced apology feels entirely railroaded and out of character for a large portion of the audience. At this point of the game I feel anger (although to be fair, mostly at the developers), not self pity. While Shepard's unjustified obsession with Earth is also contemptible it doesn't excuse another layer of hamfisted pathos.

 

Ultimately. The end of this mission should have been handled a lot better.

[herkles]

The Mission could have been handled better if we had more missions with the Asari. 

 

There are only two misisons with the asari In the game IIRC.

The first is a side mission dealing with an Ardat-Yakshi Monastary and the other is priority Thessia. 

 

Compare that to either the Turian/Krogan and the Quarian/Geth missions.

 

Turian/Krogan

• priority palavan
• priority Tuchuka
• the bomb mission
• Grunt's mission
• priority Sur'kesh

Geth/Quarian

• priority Persus Veil
• Priority Geth Dreadnaught
• Rannoch: Admiral Koris
• Rannoch: Geth Fighter Squadrons
• Priority Rannoch

 

What I would have done is add a few other missions to the Thessia plot that allows one to see more of asari culture and help impact the war; not to mention change the Kai-leng fight as well. 

[von uber]

I think this is the thread where Barquiel, Von Uber, Shotgun Julia and Xilizhra defend the Asari's actions, the first and last defending the forced sadness for them, while themikefest, Steelcan, Duskwanderer, Ryzaki and myself tear into them. Or, wait, am I in the wrong place?

I wouldn't say defending their actions, more that the criticism is overdone and largely tied up with the dislike of liara as a character.

For reference, compare criticism of the inactivity of the salarians who by and large sit back and watch the galaxy burn with that of the asari.

[Kabooooom]

'Cause if you spoil everything at the beginning, what would be the fun in that? What's more important is that the Reapers didn't take back the Citadel at beginning of the invasion.

People always say this, but it makes no sense to me for two reasons, which become evident if you pay attention to some smaller details of the story:

1) travel across the relay network is not fast. Between relays it is instantaneous, but travelling from relay to relay within a star system takes a nonzero amount of time - and that adds up. The network itself is shown to contain only a handful of relays in the game for gameplay and simplicity sake. But from the lore, there must be millions of linked relays. It took the Normandy 12-15 hours to reach the Citadel from Eden Prime.

Why is this important? For strategic reasons, the Citadel would have advanced warning of a coming invasion force. This is one of the reasons why fleets are stationed near all relays that bottleneck into the Serpent Nebula when they are concerned about Saren sending an invasion fleet of Geth. They would literally have at least several hours of foreknowledge before the Reapers reached the Serpent Nebula, and close the Citadel arms in the meantime.

The ONLY reason why the Battle of the Citadel was feasible in ME1 is because a surprise attack occurred from INSIDE the Presidium and the arms were forcefully kept open.

So, while taking the Citadel early in the war would strategically be ideal, it is likely impossible without the element of surprise. Which the Reapers would lose immediately. The only reason why Kar'shan and Earth were taken by surprise was because of the blitz nature of the attack. But still, Earth knew of the coming threat for some time before they arrived. Same concept, except the Citadel is impenetrable while closed.

2) Javik mentions that a recurring strategy of the Reapers is to allow refugee camps to exist in order to sneak indoctrinated servants into them. In ME3, the Citadel is the penultimate refugee camp. Inhabitants of every besieged world in the galaxy naturally flee to the Citadel. I imagine this played into their plan, for when they finally did decide to take the Citadel, indoctrinated refugees could potentially mount an attack from inside the Presidium. Although this isn't shown, it is logical, and Javik supports that this is the Reaper M.O. in these sort of situations.

These explanations require the Catalyst to be incapable of controlling the Citadel arms - which is supported by the story, despite how stupid that is.

[Excella Gionne]

Not really. If Reapers came full force and took their Citadel, they would have won without a doubt. I mean, they did come and take the Citadel at the end of ME3. It wouldn't really matter when they come. If the Reapers did lose while coming to get their Citadel, that would be lore breaking of how strong they are. Together, they can destroy the Citadel fleets since the fleets would be at a disarray.

[Xilizhra]

Not really. If Reapers came full force and took their Citadel, they would have won without a doubt. I mean, they did come and take the Citadel at the end of ME3. It wouldn't really matter when they come. If the Reapers did lose while coming to get their Citadel, that would be lore breaking of how strong they are. Together, they can destroy the Citadel fleets since the fleets would be at a disarray.

No one can get inside the Citadel once it's sealed; they only made it on at the end because TIM snuck inside. It's like the ending of ME1 with Shepard not being there.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

I blame the Protheans.

 

Why didn't the Protheans put anything warning us about the Reapers in the Mars Archives?

 

I mean they went to all the trouble of putting plans for the Crucible in there. That means they knew about the Reapers at the time. If, when we discovered the Mars Archives were told about the Reapers we could have used the technology we found and prepared for them so we didn't meet the same fate. And they put something in the Mars Archives telling about the existence and location of the Thessia Archives and what was in them - That's how The Illusive Man found them - or did our Shadow Broker miss that one? Or did EDI miss that one?

 

And here's the kicker. They put another piece of the Crucible puzzle in the Archives on Thessia, which means they knew about the Reapers when they built the Thessia Archives, too. If they had put a warning about the Reapers in there, and plans for the Crucible, the Asari could have built the Crucible 2000 years ago.

 

Why were the Crucible plans only in the Mars Archives?

 

Also the Protheans sent out a signal all over the galaxy to the beacons after they were certain that the Reapers had returned to dark space telling of Ilos to give hope to any survivors, even though they were certain that the Reapers were absolutely thorough. This was to give them hope, and to give someone like Saren a way of getting onto the Citadel so that Sovereign could unlock the relay to dark space and let the reapers in. 50,000 years later, Shepard had to clean up that mess.

 

Conclusion: The Protheans were stupid idiots.

 

The reason they didn't is that it would have been a very short game, or Drew Karpyshyn would have had to write the story about something other than Reapers.

[themikefest]

I believe plans for the crucible were already at Thessia. Vendetta mentions  "if you followed the plans this far I will interact with your systems". It had no reason to mention the plans when Shepard mentioned them to the VI. Its hard to believe that the beacon only contained just the VI. That's a lot of beacon for a VI. Of course the same could be said about the Mars archives. Its possible that it contains a Vi and just hasn't been activated yet, and the only thing found were the plans.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

But what I find hilarious is that there is no mention about the Reapers in any of the archives until after the Reapers arrive. That's just when you need to know about them. AFTER! So you can prepare! One would think that in 2000 years that the Asari, and that in 1500 years the Salarians and that in 1300 years the Turians would have found something about the Reapers or the Crucible in their vast Archives. But no! It took Saren and Commander Shepard the magic of the lone Prothean Beacon on Eden Prime to discover the Reapers!!

 

The Crucible magically pops up after the reapers arrive. This is quality writing at its best. I'm not even defending the actions of any of the races anymore. The plot makes no sense at all.

 

It's a video game. Shoot the bad guys and be the big hero. Don't think about the plot. You're supposed to have fun. It's a game. If there was any story in the RPG it was about the characters. That was the only thing that mattered - the characters.

[themikefest]

You can also add that it took a human colony to find the Thorian and then have Shiala give the cipher to Shepard

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

Exactly. Enjoy the characters and the environments. Shoot the bad guys. Bang. Bang. The plot and whether or not anything about it makes any sense is secondary. if the environments are decent, and there's good interaction with the characters, the characters are well developed, a lot of inadequacies in the story can be forgiven.

 

Mass Effect - a great universe with a story built on a bad premise.

[Darius M.]

Let's not forget that it was the asari that failed to reveal the artifact until the reapers were at their door. Only then, crying like little babies, that they decide it would be a good  idea to reveal the artifact. Idiots. But of course my femshep has to mope for these idiots for their own stupidity.

 

Doesn't matter if the Catalyst would be revealed at Chronos.. If Cerberus was able to break through to know what the Catalyst is, the Alliance could've done the same thing. It could've been revealed earlier if the idiots revealed the thing earlier. Again, because of the asari being idots,  it cost a lot of  lives that could've/would've been saved.

 

So its ok that they don't show up to the summit? Really? That tells me they didn't care about the other species and didn't want to make any effort to ally with as many species as possible to help stop the reapers. Idiots. They only cared about one thing. Staying nuly mber 1 in the galaxy. Even the idiot asari councilor says it. They don't want to interfere with the balance of power. What a dumba**. 

These were a couple other areas I was going to mention, but I wanted to keep it at a reasonable length, and give others a chance to give their points of view. That being said, I think this is one of the better points of the argument. Even if I only got ONE factor, it's got to be this: that completely self-serving attitude that we see from Asari (leadership? high command? matriarchs?...whoever the hell runs their government throughout ME3). They seem to ONLY give that info as a bargaining chip for saving their world now that the reapers are there. When that councillor gave that speech about preserving the balance of power I wanted a renegade option for some sort of altercation... She knew what we were building, EXACTLY what we needed, where it was, and it had high level clearance, but you don't reveal it until now. Really???

 

Also, I hadn't considered that second area.... Look how fast Cerberus broke through Vandetta!!!!! I get that they probably had reaper augmentation, but during however many thousands of years the Asari had to study this beacon, they NEVER figured it out? For that matter, ANYTHING about the reapers? Yet Cerberus gets it all in like a week?

 

Lol I need to stop. Look, I'm deeply sorry if I've offended anyone who loves this part of the game, that's not my intention.  I just wanted other points of view. This whole section of the campaign makes me go crazy... The rest of this game is more or less amazing, but this part just grinds my gears