Mass Effect Playthrough: Part Three

I have been continuing my Mass Effect playthrough and discovered something: it’s not as much fun to poke fun of this game as it is other games.  As such, I’ve been a little light on updates of late.  Then Dan had the nerve to call me out on Facebook, so now you’re stuck here listening to me for a brief period of time.

Some spoilers from Mass Effect below:

I finished off the Mass Effect one game and there were, as far as I could tell, five major choices I had to make:

Who to mack on

Well, I was playing female Shepherd (her voice is so much better than male Shepherd’s) so I had only two choices.  Kaiden and Liara.  My wife thinks it’s hilarious that video games let you play lesbians all the time.  I managed to convince her that she was like Liara, she finally agreed, and then I had to choose Liara.  Besides, Kaiden was a whiny bitch.  So that was easy.

Who should die

Going back to the above issue, Kaiden is a whiny bitch.  That was no contest.  Let him die.

What to do with Rachnai

As I was playing through the Rachnai mission, I had full intention to kill off the Rachnai queen if I ever found her.  I mean, how could I let her live after all this.  But when I got to the end, I had an Ender moment and couldn’t quite pull the trigger and wipe out a whole race (yeah, not sure how I’ll deal with ME3 at this point).  I let her go, but reasoned that if she ever went crazy, I would hunt her down and kill her.

What to do with Urdnot Wrex

I saved him.  This was mostly an “on a whim” choice.  I wasn’t going to let the genophage get cured no matter what.  I was fine killing him to make sure of that.  I didn’t have to, so I kept him alive.  It was fun seeing how he talks to me more like a respected enemy in the other two now though.  I found I liked the character more after I “betrayed” him than before.

How to deal with the Council and who to put as the Human Representative

I wanted to save the Council, but in the end, I didn’t feel their lives were worth possibly failing to stop Sovereign.  I would have liked to keep them around, but they hadn’t done much to endear themselves to me, and in the end, they drew the short straw.  As for who to put on the council, there was never any question.  Anderson was a far better choice.  Udina was a weasel.

So with those choices in tow, I headed on to ME2.  I didn’t really get a chance to deal with Liara much, just on the Shadow Broker extra stuff.  I could tell that overall the choices I made has some impact on the second game, but not a tremendous amount.  Whoever I let live between Kaiden and Ashley would end up mad at me for being with Cerberus.  Urdnot Wrex had some fun conversation options since he was still alive.  Anderson being the Councilor did not seem to do a whole lot.  And the Rachnai were mentioned briefly, but they didn’t matter too much.

I did manage to get a whole new set of choices in the second game that got carried on to the third.

Who to mack on

This time I went with Garrus.  The romance scenes with him were comic gold.  Besides, he seems like he’d be cool enough if we don’t stick together in the third one.  Liara’s my girl.

Maelon’s Genophage data

Oh, I wiped that.  I wiped it right out.  Having seen how easy it was with Urdnot Wrex to have an ally in the Krogan turn enemy, I wanted no chance of another Krogan Rebellion.

Tell the Quarians what happened with Tali’s father

I wanted to tell them.  Only my loyalty to Tali kept me silent about her father.  I didn’t want her to end up in trouble, but her preference was to be exiled over having her father exposed, so I honored those wishes.  Fortunately I’m the mack-daddy at making people realize how dumb they are when I speak, so I convinced them to leave Tali alone and let her remain in the fleet.

I didn’t end up weighing in on the war effort, though.  I had my own problems to deal with.  I wasn’t going to get myself into their mess too.

What to do with the Geth Heretics

I decided they were too dangerous to let live.  I didn’t want them coming back and screwing with Geth programming again, so I opted to wipe them out.

Save or Destroy the Collector Base

I destroyed it.  That Illusive Man is pretty untrustworthy, regardless of whether he sounds like he’d make an awesome President.  I swear, the first time I heard him talking, it took me a while to not see him as President Bartlet and automatically assume he was wise beyond his years.  I think by about the third or fourth time he strung me out to die, I was ready to do whatever it took to piss him off.  If it destroyed a huge base in the process, so much better.

Did anyone die

I really worked hard at it and managed to keep everyone alive.  I had them all loyal until Tali went all buck-wild after she found out Legion was sending information about the Migrant Fleet back to the Geth.  I sided with Legion, saying that she was doing the same thing that he was, so let it be, but she evidently wanted me to side with her regardless of how much she was trying to screw over the Geth.  Unreasonable woman.

So with all those choices in tow, I have fired up Mass Effect 3.  I’m already about 15 hours through it, having made my first really tough decision (I like to think that if I was going to shoot Mordin in the back, I’d at least have the decency to shoot him in the head so he wouldn’t suffer – he was a great singer!) but I simply refuse to risk another Krogan Rebellion, especially with Eve, a stabilizing voice, having died.  The fact that only she and Wrex were able to put the Krogan in place implies to me that once both of them are gone, the race will descend back into chaos.  I’m not ready to risk that, especially when I can gain their support against the Reapers without worrying about it.

Anywho, with that, I’ll be heading back to Mass Effect 3 and trying to save the galaxy.

All this does make me want to run a sci fi roleplaying game though.  Dan told me I’m not allowed to stop running Legend of the Five Rings.  Jerk.