MASS EFFECT FRANCHISE CATCH-ALL THREAD

[AxB]

Feros and Noveria done, gone to Virmire and managed to Intimidate Wrex into standing down. So Trophy-wise all I need to do for the Plat is complete the game and use Neural Shock a whole bunch of times.

[J.T.]

Fuck.  Totally forgot about the million billion challenges you have to complete in the combat sim arena before you get Spectre level enemies and that the game that Traynor and the Asari play at the arcade is actually a James Bond reference.

Thank God there are no achievements for beating the arcade games.   Shattered Eezo and Relay Defense are soooo frustrating now that I am out of practice and have forgotten the gimp tricks.  At least I won a Plush Volus and some party tracks for the apartment's sound system at the Claw Game..

I also got to laugh at Tech Armor Turian again after all these years and as well as the meta jokes about ME3 Multiplayer from random conversations.

I'm pretty good at Quasar, so may go make some side credits in the Casino to make up for the cash I spent on apartment upgrades.

My daughter and I had a blast watching The Suicide Squad last night.  Weather is rainy and shitty today so no yardwork.  I think we may bounce to Best Buy to shop for a headphone / mic set and a removable DVD drive for her school laptop.  It's supposed to get here by 15 August.

Edited August 7, 2021 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

I loved that scene in NEVER. 

[RIPPA]

I just saw a thing that on the EA earnings call this week, they said that sales of the LE way exceeded their expectations

Hopefully that means they might bring back multiplayer but we shall see

[J.T.]

Poor Barla Von.  Wrex, Grunt, and I broke the scoreboard at the Armax Arsenal Arena.

The old exploit of unlocking The One & Only still works, thank God.  Set the fight for Mirror Match and the set the game difficulty to Narrative and keep it there until you only have two or three enemies left in the last round.  Set the difficulty back to Normal before you kill the last SimShep.

Now I can finally throw THE PARTY OF THE CENTURY~!! and maybe beat this game before the weekend is out so that I can get to being a Creole crime boss in Louisiana.

Edited August 7, 2021 by J.T.

[J.T.]

12 hours ago, odessasteps said:

I loved that scene in NEVER. 

The Asari war master's name is a tribute to Hungarian American chess grandmaster and World Champion, Zsusza Polgar.

I did the super drunk party end in my original playthrough, so I opted for the dance party instead and was not disappointed.  Joker is lucky I didn't punch him in the pancreas for laughing at my dancing.

Shit.  Only I could find the super depressing ending after throwing the epic party.  I was good with listening to Mordin's datapad (I smiled at the Neuromancer paraphrase in his detective noir story) but then he started singing Amazing Grace and then I was fucking done.

I will go and kill Kai Leng sometime tomorrow.

Edited August 8, 2021 by J.T.

[RIPPA]

God I hate how much bouncing back and forth you have to do during Leviathan

 

[J.T.]

Well, I was going to murder Kai Leng right quick but the game decided to screw me out of the Paramour III achievement so now I am pissed and am going to take my kid to Waffle House for a morale boosting Pecan Waffle and Hash Browns, scattered smothered covered.

I will kill that bastard later on today.

[Raziel]

18 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I just saw a thing that on the EA earnings call this week, they said that sales of the LE way exceeded their expectations

Hopefully that means they might bring back multiplayer but we shall see

Is it too much to hope for Andromeda 2?

[RIPPA]

27 minutes ago, Raziel said:

Is it too much to hope for Andromeda 2?

Yes, yes it is

Side note - I finally read what the plot of the Quarian Ark DLC was and now I am happy I never played it

Okay - that might be a little harsh but boy the Quarians sure love to fucking piss me off

[Gonzo]

5 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Yes, yes it is

Side note - I finally read what the plot of the Quarian Ark DLC was and now I am happy I never played it

Okay - that might be a little harsh but boy the Quarians sure love to fucking piss me off

Where did you find this at? Most of what I've found on a Google search is hypotheticals.

[odessasteps]

I was tempted to restart and finally play as Renegade MaleShep buy decided to wait a little longer before jumping back in. Maybe after vacation in a couple weeks. 

[Gonzo]

2 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

I was tempted to restart and finally play as Renegade MaleShep buy decided to wait a little longer before jumping back in. Maybe after vacation in a couple weeks. 

Same. Gonna take a break for a while and come back for another playthrough, I think.

It would basically be a "Costanza" playthrough for me. . .think about whatever you would do in a particular situation, and then do the exact opposite.

Don't think I've ever gone full Renegade before, but it might be fun.

[RIPPA]

52 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

Don't think I've ever gone full Renegade before, but it might be fun.

Note that unlike the Paragon side - doing a true full Renegade run makes the game a lot harder (in that you have less squadmates, less assets for your War Score in ME3, etc). So even a true Renegade run should sprinkle in some paragon (or at least neutral) choices

[RIPPA]

1 hour ago, Gonzo said:

Where did you find this at? Most of what I've found on a Google search is hypotheticals.

The Wiki page for the Quarian Ark ship Keelah Si'yah recaps the book (and obviously clicking on the stubs provides more details)

https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Keelah_Si'yah

So while it doesn't explain what would happen during the actual DLC it sets up the environment you are playing in.

I guess I am just irritated that the Quarians managed to select the most unreliable captain ever

Quick summary

Spoiler

Captain Qetsi'Olam vas Keelah Si'yah is the captain of the "Quarian" Ark. The Ark also contains Volus, Hannar, Eklor, Drell and Batarians. Basically all the "minor" races (aka the non-Council races and no Krogan)

Keelah Si'yah creates a plaque that is intended to only infect council races - using Drell as the carrier (since they were the most social species). The goal is that in Andromeda, the plague would lessen the Council races populations so much that all the minor races would get more power (ideally with Quarians at the top)

Long story short - during the 600 year trip, the virus mutates and the Drell carrier infects all the species on board killing 1000s. 

The security team awoken to figure out what happened. Figures out what happened. Keelah Si'yah then basically sacrifices herself to provide the cure for everyone on board as she fears that her actions will permanently brand the Quarians as no good.

At the end of the book - there are two people alive who know exactly what happened

Theoretically one or both of those characters at the end would have been who you meet if playing the DLC

The signal discovered in the game is actually decades after the events of the book. It is unclear if that means something else is afoot or just the signal was really delayed

[J.T.]

All done.  Chose Destroy because Fuck Reapers and I wanted to see my Shep take in that I'm Still Alive inhale.,,

I'll probably start another game much later to see how I managed not to unlock Paramour III and also unlock the fucking Gunsmith achievement.

Now it's time to build my 1960's multi-ethnic criminal enterprise.  I have already fed a dead body to a gator and shot three racist policemen.

Edited August 9, 2021 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

2 minutes ago, J.T. said:

All done.  Chose Destroy because Fuck Reapers and I wanted to see my Shep take in that I'm Still Alive inhale.,,

I'll probably start another game much later to see how I managed not to unlock Paramour III and also unlock the fucking Gunsmith achievement.

Now it's time to build my 1960's multi-ethnic criminal enterprise.  I have already fed a dead body to a gator and shot three racist policemen.

JT as Mr. Big 

[J.T.]

I cannot allow The Man to keep us down.  I want to play Mafia 3 like GTA4, but the cops in this game will bust you for traffic violations.  I nearly failed the entry mission after running a red light in front of a policeman.

Edited August 9, 2021 by J.T.

[RIPPA]

Not to relitigate the endings again but it annoys me that the internet consider the “best”* ending the Destroy one just because Shepard possibly lives

* - this is based on if you Google “me3 best ending” that is what all the “guides” point too. Thankfully there are folks pushing back against that

[odessasteps]

That's just crazy talk 

[Eivion]

19 hours ago, Raziel said:

Is it too much to hope for Andromeda 2?

Whatever the next game is seemingly will have some Andromeda connection. I don't think we ever get a full blown continuation.

19 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Yes, yes it is

Side note - I finally read what the plot of the Quarian Ark DLC was and now I am happy I never played it

Okay - that might be a little harsh but boy the Quarians sure love to fucking piss me off

Technically the book plot wasn't whatever the DLC would have been. I don't think we will ever hear what the actual plan was as I'm guessing concrete plans were never made.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Eivion

[J.T.]

19 hours ago, RIPPA said:

Not to relitigate the endings again but it annoys me that the internet consider the “best”* ending the Destroy one just because Shepard possibly lives

* - this is based on if you Google “me3 best ending” that is what all the “guides” point too. Thankfully there are folks pushing back against that

Over the years, I have grown rather fond of the Synthesis and Control endings.  Yeah, I am bummed that Shep dies in the Control ending, but "he" also forces the Reapers to help rebuild galactic society, including the mass relays that were damaged when the Crucible fired.

The Synthesis ending is kinda nice because of the galaxy wide kumbaya moment, but it still feels like a lazy blow-off ending.

The Destroy ending isn't really the best, but it is arguably one of the more satisfying endings.  After all they put you through, the sight of Reapers burning as they re-enter the atmosphere is pretty awesome.... until it dawns on you that you have also killed EDI after she just saved your ass and have also wiped out the Geth just as they were helping the Quarians to rebuild.

Edited August 9, 2021 by J.T.

[Craig H]

Man, the ending run to ME2 was super unique. I wasn't quite sure how the suicide mission would play out, but it was cool for how it went down. Since I enjoy seeing you guys make the yikes face at what would happen with some of my decisions, after getting Legion's loyalty, I chose to not kill all of the heretics and let the virus reintegrate them to Geth, uh, society. And once the suicide mission was done, I told the Illusive Man to kiss my ass and blew up the Collector base.

Somehow I made it through the suicide mission with zero casualties. I'm not sure what was supposed to happen with Tali since she was my only crewmate whose loyalty I didn't get, but she didn't die. Nothing happened with her at all actually. I don't even recall her having any lines during the suicide mission. I went with Legion for the hacking expert, Garrus was my boy to run the alternate team both times, Samara was my biotic pick, Mordin ran the escort stuff since I figured he would be the squishiest, and I left all of the big beef behind and took Jack and Kasumi with me for the final part. Jack already buffed everyone and Kasumi's blinking in to attack someone and then blinking out is really OP. Kasumi wound up being someone I took with me on most missions just because of that. I rarely used her much until I saw how powerful she was on her loyalty mission.

Right now I'm just trying to 100% the galaxy. I'm down to 3 more systems to clear out and then I'll move on to ME3. 

[RIPPA]

During the hold the line part of the Suicide Mission - the game does a background check assigning points to various things (including how many members aren't loyal, who you select for the different parts)

If your score hadn't been high enough, Tali would have died first since she wasn't loyal.

She also would have died if you had brought her on the final mission (any non-loyal squad mates died if you bring them with you at the end)

Basically the game chooses non-loyal over loyal first (thus why Tali would have gotten it first over Mordin - who is indeed ranked the most squishy)

[Craig H]

That is really cool. When I'm all finished up with ME3, or maybe now, I'll have to search YouTube to see if Bioware did any kind of post mortem videos to discuss their decision making or the inner workings of these games. I don't think I've ever played a series as unique as this and I'm surprised no one else has tried doing the same because these games were really popular and sold well. And while the board probably isn't best barometer of what is good in terms of wrestling, I do trust opinions on here more than anywhere else and you guys have been crazy about these games for years now. I'm trying to think of another single topic that received as much discussion on here as Mass Effect and the only thing I can think of is maybe Destiny, but that seems to be mostly a few people.

Without looking, I'm hoping that noclip did something for it, but I doubt it. At the very least, I don't remember Danny O'Dwyer ever talking about one or promoting one.