Lurker > Evillordexdeath

Gall posted...

I've culled my list down to series where the story is (in my view at least) important enough to matter. Use it as you will.

Starcraft 1
Fallout 2
Dead Space 1
Portal 1
Arkham Asylum
999
Bioshock 1
Danganronpa 1
Dragon Age 1 and 2
Witcher 1 and 2
MGS 3, Peace Walker, and Ground Zeroes
Trails 1
Uncharted 1-3
Kingsglaive FFXV
Nier 1
Ys 1-5
God of War full series
Kingdom Hearts full series

After looking over the full list of games, I think this is more or less accurate. Ultimately my goal is to avoid dragging on the project for even longer than it already will be. So for starters, I think I'll eliminate any games I've played before, as long as I feel I know enough about them to understand the later games:

Starcraft
Fallout 2 (last game I played before starting this project)
Arkham Asylum
999
Bioshock
MGS3 & Peace Walker
Kingdom Hearts 1 & 2, Chain of Memories, Days (also watched Ventus' story from Birth by Sleep on Youtube.)

I'll also remove any that are really long, or really numerous:

Witcher 1 & 2
YS 1-5
Remaining Kingdom Hearts games

Then I'll get rid of a couple that I just honestly don't want to play:

Dead Space
Uncharted 1-3

And lastly, I'll ask for some clarification on a few remaining ones:

• Kingsglaive FFXV: Isn't there a summary of this film at the start of FFXV? How necessary is it, in light of that?
• God of War 1-3: Is the 2018 game something of a soft reboot? How often does it rely on the stories of the previous games?
• Nier: There has already been some dispute on this one. I had the impression that Automata was set in the same world, but so far in the future compared to the first game that their overarching stories weren't very connected. Are there enough references to the original that I'll be missing out if I skip it?

After all that, we're left with these:

Portal
Danganronpa
Dragon Age 1 & 2
Trials in the Sky
Ground Zeroes

Just to quickly go over these individually:

Portal: I was thinking of "sneaking in" this game without posting about it, but if there's any interest among you guys in reading about my playthrough, I can do it for the topic.

Danganronpa: I guess I'll just play this game itself rather than resorting to a synopsis. It looks like the earliest American release for both Danganronpa games was on the Vita in 2014, so I'll play it once the topic reaches that point.

Dragon Age: I've played part of the first one, but never really liked it enough to finish. I don't mind the thought of revisiting it, though, so I'll at least do that if people here are interested in it.

Trails in the Sky: I'll probably play the first one when the topic is in 2011, after thinking about it more. I think it will be nice to have some space between the parts.

Ground Zeroes: Should be a nice quick one.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

I guess I can see why you'd think that. Mordin's apparent conflicted feelings on whether adapting the genophage was right could look like a kind of hypocrisy. I think there's a distinction between the krogan uniting akin to what Wrex is doing in this game and curing the genophage, which Mordin assumes will cause galactic expansion from the Krogan. I think he's consistent on that matter, saying that it would lead to more suffering than the genophage itself would cause.

It should be remembered, though, that the whole idea that curing the genophage = new Krogan rebellion goes against the central themes of the series and is essentially disproved by Shepard in the third game.

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Today I only had time to run through Grunt's loyalty mission, which he told me about after I had left Tuchanka and returned to the Normandy, so that I had to immediately go back to do it. Grunt was feeling a kind of directionless anger and was worried something was wrong with him, so we asked Wrex who said that it was essentially normal Krogan adolescence, but that we might be able to sort him out by going through a Krogan coming-of-age ritual. The resulting mission was a survival battle in a single small area against waves of Tuchanka wildlife and eventually a Thresher Maw, which was another tank enemy in ME1. You only have to survive for 5 minutes against the Thresher Maw and killing it is an optional objective, but it's very easy to do because the cover mechanics make the Maw far from deadly. It just shoots some caustic spittle at you once in a while and then burrows into the ground so your shields can come back.

Grunt is now an accepted member of the Urdnot clan, which apparently satisfies him.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Pokemon

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

ZenOfThunder posted...

I've done a run where I brought Legion to Tali's recruitment

the fact that it's possible with its own dialogue is a testament to how well thought out the game is

Yeah, that's really cool. I wish I had thought to do that!

Gall posted...

I love the krogan. They're cliche, but it's a good cliche.

I think that for me, the most interesting part of the Krogan is the genophage and how it changed the rest of the galaxy. I definitely agree that their general attitude is pretty familiar from other sci-fi, but that part isn't so cliche! Well, at least not that I know of. I'm not the biggest sci-fi conosseur there is, admittedly.

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All that was really left of Tali's recruitment mission was a longer fight against a Geth Colossus, which is one of the enemies we would have fought in the Mako in ME1. That was definitely the toughest shooting section so far, and I died thrice. The colossus itself wasn't so much the problem as finding a good chance to target him, with all his buddies popping up to support him. He will also regenerate all his shields and armor if left alone, which was rather galling but only happened the once for me. Losing in this fight was a bit of a test of patience because it meant working my way through several waves of geth to get another shot at him.

Now Tali is on our crew, and both Joker and the squad shrink are happy to have her! I look forward to bringing her along for some missions myself. There hasn't been much time for catching up, so far - she's mostly talked about how she distrusts Cerberus, who wronged the Quarians in the past.

Mordin's loyalty mission became avaliable after that, and I decided to clear it right away because it was on the Krogan homeworld of Tuchanka, which I was interested in visiting. Naturally, I brought Grunt along with me beside Mordin. He didn't seem to impressed with the place.

The most immediately appealing thing to do on Tuchanka is catch up with Wrex, who has become the planet's ruler since the old days. He's trying to push some less militaristic reforms on the Krogan, emphasizing agricultural research for example, where the curmudgeonly lead scientist would prefer to study weapons. What I like about this section is that even though Wrex is trying to soften things up in a way, there are still a lot of details about the brutal ways he has to go about that task, to get anything done among Krogan.

I would say that Mordin's loyalty mission is the highlight of the game so far. The purposes of these missions is to characterize the individual squad members, and Mordin's does a wonderful job revealing him to be both a complex and sympathetic character. The crux of it is that Mordin was part of a team that modified the Krogan Genophage because the species was naturally adapting to it, and though he still believes this was the right call to prevent even greater amounts of death through war, he's troubled by the ethics of the project and the consequences it has on the species. The mix of tough pragmatism and honest concern for life that he shows is really compelling. The icing on the cake is that his feelings on the matter are complicated further by pride for the technical scientific achievement that modifying the genophage represented. An important part of the mission is his conflict with a former student of his who now opposes his ideals, but for me what really made it great were the scenes where Shepard just listened to what Mordin had to say.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

GROUP 7
0-- Resident Evil 2
5-- Persona 5

0-- Super Mario 3D World
5-- Dark Souls

GROUP 8
0-- Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
5-- Sonic Mania

3-- Sid Meier's Civilization V
2-- Bloodborne

GROUP 9
0-- DOOM
5-- Rayman Legends

0-- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
5-- South Park: The Stick of Truth

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Finished up recruiting Tali and then played Mordin's loyalty mission. That was really great! So great I got caught up in finishing it and now have to run to work. I'll post a more substantive update in the morning.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

BetrayedTangy posted...

First time actually! I finally got around to playing ME1 last year and it was way better than I expected so I'm looking forward to what's supposed to be the best one

LOL my bad. Apparently the idea of someone who hasn't played ME2 yet just doesn't compute with me.

pezzicle posted...

Hope your sleep gets better

Thanks. I got up at a more reasonable time today so let's hope that turns into a trend.

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Jacob's loyalty mission turns out to be something of a Apocalypse Now situation with his dad as Kurtz. Ten years before ME2, Jacob's dad and his crew crash landed on a hostile planet where the only food causes impaired brain functionality. As an emergency member, the rations on their ship were made exclusive to the captain and a few officers while they repaired an beacon to ask for help, but eventually these higher-ups started abusing the now addled crew, with direct references to sexual abuse in the dialog. Jacob understandably finds this deeply disillusioning and is violently enraged toward his dad by the time you finally meet him. His dad doesn't quite have Marlon Brando's charisma though, and meekly accepts that what he did was wrong when confronted. Shepard decides to bring him into an alliance court and high tails it out of there once the authorities are alerted. As a result, Jacob is our first fully loyal crew member, and gained a new move that will probably go unused as I leave him on the bench for the rest of the game.

After that, Jack asked me to go on her loyalty mission to blow up some abandoned Cerberus base that she was tortured in growing up, as an experiment to turn her into a super-biotic. Her reasoning is purely for closure. That's going on the back burner for the time being, since it lacks the urgency of some other missions.

While in the neighbourhood I checked in on Grunt, who shared a memory about a naked turian from his pod dreams. Specifically, he has decided that he hates Turians for what they did to his species and was delighted in seeing this particular individual get killed and then mutilated. I don't think we can call this progress!

I started Tali's recruitment mission. I got to the point where we make contact with Tail herself before I had to call it a night.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

0-- Horizon Zero Dawn
5-- Cuphead

5-- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
0-- Hollow Knight

GROUP 5
2-- Xenoblade Chronicles
3-- Mass Effect 2

5-- NieR: Automata
0-- Ori and the Blind Forest

GROUP 6
0-- Super Mario Maker 2
5-- Shovel Knight

3-- Super Mario Odyssey
2-- The Witcher 3

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

wallmasterz posted...

I love Bayonetta. Not a lot of time to play yet but I finished chapter 2 last night. I should be able to play a ton this weekend.

That's great! Feel free to post some thoughts in here once you've played a little more!
BetrayedTangy posted...

Ah thank you, I just forgot to delete the original. And yeah no problem dude.

I actually gotta jump in and get some Mass Effect 2 playtime in.

Nice. Is this your second time playing it, or have you played it multiple times before?

ZenOfThunder posted...

exdeath if you finish this topic series and this site is still here i am going to send you another shirt

Damn, I can't imagine a better motivation boost than that!

Gall posted...

Question: have you decided which "additional" games (like Mass Effect 1 and Trails 1) you are going to play? Because I've been trying to compile a list, but it kept getting longer and more ridiculous. Like apparently all 7 Tekken games are part of a linear, continuous storyline.

Not fully. I'll make that a task for this weekend. I will do Trails 1 and I'll probably have to do something with Danganronpa 1, even if it's watching the anime or just reading a plot synopsis. I'm definitely not playing all 7 Tekken games though, or any extra Mortal Kombats. I guess part of the difference is that I wouldn't see those two franchises as ones where the story is especially important to the overall experience.

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I didn't have a ton of time to play today. I've been having trouble getting to sleep lately, followed by trouble getting out of bed. I talked to the crew around the Normandy and gained access to both Jacob's and Miranda's loyalty missions. This was also my first chance to get to know Grunt and Jack a little better, of which Grunt came off as the considerably more sane. He was only 'raised' to kill and is now looking for some kind of meaning in life, where Jack is mostly concerned with revenge and killing. She says that for every person she kills, her chance of survival increases. I can think of a few problems with that idea!

I started Jacob's loyalty mission but didn't have the time to finish it up. No combat so far, just the beginnings of learning about the general situation, which I like. I'll have to talk about it in more detail tomorrow.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

I know that's an option in the game's settings. If you open your main menu and go into settings you can find it. Unfortunately I can tell you exactly what the option is called or which tab it's under.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

There's no way to get Kaidan or Ashley to join your squad in Mass Effect 2. My bad, I can see where that joke about Kaidan sleeping on the couch would've led to that impression.

They will join your squad in Mass Effect 3 though! Interestingly Kaidan also becomes bisexual in the third game, which makes me curious to know what kind of experiences he must have had between then and ME1.

Yeah, I agree that the idea behind Harbinger is kind of cool. I guess to improve the implementation it would be nice if the power-up was more significant, since the Drones he possesses usually aren't much more threatening than the regular ones.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Should've just conquered Bratislava IMO.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

I got up a little late today and only had time to finish the mission on Horizon. It's the first proper encounter with the Collectors and the first time I fought enemies who mainly use biotic barriers. I used Grunt and Garrus, but if I remember who counters what correctly Jack might have been the most efficient choice. The Husks returned, confirming the Collectors' reaper affiliation, but in gameplay terms they basically do the same thing as the robot dogs we encountered on the very first mission: try to run up and flush you out of cover. More threatening were the enhanced Scions, who have a cheap homing attack that does a ton of damage if you're out of cover, but are otherwise just big damage sponges.

A fellow named Harbinger periodically empowers and takes control of single Collector soldiers. He's quite the chatterbox when in combat, which I eventually found annoying enough that it made me prioritize him as a target. It might have been wise to reduce the voice clip frequency just a little.

There was also a boss in the form of some giant flying bug. I hadn't found much need for heavy weapon ammo for a while so I mostly just unloaded on him with my newly acquired Collector Particle Beam. He could regenerate his barrier quite a lot, though, which was a pain.

Shepard reunited with her Kaidan on this planet, and they had a bit of a lovers' quarrel over her working with Cerberus. I guess Kaidan will be sleeping on the couch for a while. Incidentally, this is exactly the same thing Ashley does in this game if you kept her alive instead.

This is a sort of unofficial halfway point in the game, and we now have access to the recruitment missions for a lot of new characters, including Tali!

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

wallmasterz posted...

I hadnt played video games in a few months but this thread inspired me to play Bayonetta which Im enjoying so far

This is really encouraging to hear, by the way, so thanks for posting! I hope you like Bayonetta!

BetrayedTangy posted...

My bad here's a new link

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gkGULHXG4fDkeOzVPjzMzuzsBRCRZDmIYTtfN30H5Cg/edit?usp=drivesdk

Thanks for posting this. The only correction I notice is that Binding of Isaac was in the contest under the Rebirth remake's title, so I have it in 2014. You posting that also made me realize that I had Persona 4 Golden listed under its Japanese release date on my own list, so that has been corrected.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

I made a list like that as a text file on my computer before I started, but I hadn't thought to share it. I guess tangy has rendered such an effort redundant now though.

I played for a little longer than usual today, rounding up some minor sidequests and doing the recruitment missions for Kasumi, Grunt, and Jack. Incidentally, my plot mission in the journal was "build a team" until I finished Jack's mission, and only after that was I allowed to go on to the mission where you stop the Collectors as they attack that colony Kaidan is on. So it seems like you have to at least recruit Jack, and possibly Garrus as well. I assume you also have to do the mission for Grunt but you can leave him in his tank if you want.

Kasumi's recruitment was super fast and basically just involved talking to her on the Citadel. It looks like we can go do her loyalty mission right away, much faster than we can earn the loyalty of anyone else. She lacks any dialog trees on the Normandy, but will talk to you if you examine certain items in her room, which I don't mind as a storytelling device. She does feel kind of under-implemented as a DLC character though. While I was in the neighborhood I met with Anderson and got Shepard's Spectre status reinstated, as well as doing some minor quests on the Citadel, most notably endorsing all the shops for discounts. Since it's a charm option, you get Paragon points for doing it, which meant going out of my way to endorse every single shop to farm up that precious resource.

Grunt's and Jack's missions make nice parallels with one another because they both involve shooting a bunch of guys in blue armor while a megalomanical idiot yells over a comm system, and then fighting said idiot as the boss. The idiot in Jack's mission was particularly noteworthy. He operated a private prison in outer space, which really emphasized the game's dystopian side, and decided to imprison Shepard to sell her off as a slave, since her fame would make her valuable. He picked this unwinnable fight when Shepard was extremely close to a big button that releases Jack, who started ripping the entire station to shreds with her all-powerful biotics. Just to top it off, when he actually confronted Shepard he sat behind a big barrier while his minions fought her, isolating himself from the fight until he was the only guy left and Shepard's squad could easily defeat him. Another parallel is that both of these squad mates are so mentally unstable that one questions the wisdom of recruiting them in the first place, but Shepard's people skills prevail and both of them will work for her without any real problems.

I guess that the most interesting part of what I played today was encountering the Krogan scientist who created Grunt and hearing him discuss his philosophy. I also brought Mordin on that mission since he's heavily involved with the Krogan and I did like the commentary he brought to events. I re-encountered an Asari scientist I met on Virmire in Mass Effect 1 here, and she was working for another insane project, which really seemed like a refusal to learn from past mistakes.

Although I was disappointed by how little of the Citadel we get to explore this time, I do think the dialog writing of minor NPCs in there is quite good, particularly one character bringing up the concept of a drunk Elcor singing karaoke, which was funny.

For all the complaints I had about the Mako, I'm starting to understand why Bioware felt it was necessary, because it broke up all the shooting galleries with something else. I find each mission gets a little boring before the end when it's only shooting. I'm considering bumping up the difficulty once again to see if the challenge makes it a little more fun, but I have my doubts and I don't want to die a lot and deal with more loading screens.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Death Note

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Lucas came to mind first, but I think there are probably several weaker than him.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

ZenOfThunder posted...

I can't even imagine Shepard doing the suicide mission planning scene with just those three in the room, that's nuts. Jacob would have to lead the fire team I guess. I think Mordin and Miranda die regardless if you do their loyalty missions if you put them on hacking/barrier because they are not suited for those tasks. not 100% sure on that one though

Yeah, that's right. Miranda's biotics aren't powerful enough for her to succeed at the barrier part. I'm not certain about Mordin but that would make sense given that he's more specialized to the medicine end of tech. If we follow my analysis on the themes of Mass Effect, I would say that's a good thing since it means the mission gets compromised when Shepard is unwilling to build alliances with the other species.

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I wanted to give the game's sidequests a shot, so I did one mission about finding a missing Cerberus agent, which was just a single shootout really, and then the Overlord DLC. The DLC was more extensive with some exclusive mechanics, notably an open-ended area and a vehicle section, which I'm a little bit surprised Bioware had the guts to include after the Mako was so poorly received. The basic mechanics of this glider thing are definitely better than the Mako's, but I wouldn't say I was particularly impressed with it. The more open area also feels like something of a wasted effort since nothing goes on there and you only commute to three different places through it. Otherwise it's just more shooting. There is a section in a virtual space near the end that has some neat visuals, especially "corrupted" versions of effects like the door icons, but it doesn't change the game mechanics. Most of the enemies here are Geth which gave me a nice chance to try out Shepard's AI hacking skill, which turns one enemy on the others for a few seconds. Usually this led to the turned enemy immediately getting mowed down by multiple guys at once, but it was still kind of funny. Higher ranks cause it to give the hacked enemy a shield, which is kind of odd because the fact that the others will kill it isn't strictly a bad thing.

The story for Overlord appears to be another take on the rogue AI concept at first but turns out to be about abuse of people with disabilities (though that isn't the most accurate term,) when we learn that the Overlord project's director forced his autistic brother David to fuse with AI. This understandably caused the poor guy to go berserk and hack the automation of the facility to kill the other workers. Shepard has to slowly fight her way to David and when we finally do meet him he's naked and hooked up to a machine that deliberately looks like a torture device, with tons of needles in his skin and his eyes forced open Clockwork Orange-style. They definitely did a good job making that horrific, but then oddly the give you the option to leave him like that! Because it was part of an effort to develop technology that would avoid war with the Geth, I guess the question it poses is whether torturing someone can be ethical if it saves more lives in the end, but I don't think anyone I know would choose that and I would probably distrust anyone who confessed that he did. You can also have Shepard ice David's brother, which I admit I was tempted to do, but the call of Paragon points prevailed in the end.

On a lighter note, I had some chats with Jacob and Mordin. Jacob seemed to think I was flirting with him but I tried to steer the dialog options away from that, because I have my eye on someone else already. Mordin shared a bit of his past working with the Salarian Special Forces team to modify the Krogan Genophage as the Krogan were evolving enough to render the original disease ineffective. This of course led to some disagreement between him and goody two-shoes Shepard, but Mordin stuck to his guns at least for now.

You get a lot of resources at the start of any given file if you've beaten the game before, which is nice because it reduces the need for the very tedious planet scanning minigame that you have to do for upgrades. Nonetheless, I did a bit of planet scanning in the systems I had to travel to for a mission, and it was boring as ever. I doubled my stores of Platinum and Palladium, so I can probably leave off on it for a while. I think I'll recruit Grunt next time I play.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

2 DS lites. Third one is mostly broken with the buttons being worn out and the top screen non-functional.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

+10 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
+9 Super Mario Galaxy 2
+8 Red Dead Redemption 2
+7 Super Mario Maker 2
+6 Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
+5 Mario Kart 8
+4 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Spirit of Justice
+3 Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies
+2 Grand Theft Auto V
+1 A Hat in Time

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

+10 Fallout: New Vegas
+9 Shovel Knight
+8 Nier
+7 DOOM
+6 Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker
+5 Yoshi's Crafted World
+4 Super Smash Bros. For 3DS/Wii U
+3 Horizon Zero Dawn
+2 Tales of Berseria
+1 Jackbox Party Pack 3

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Legend of the Galactic Heroes

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

First thought was Witcher 3

Correct answer is Pokemon

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Yeah, the game is really open-ended, probably even more so than the first! I don't have anything against a more linear experience personally, but I do think that works, and makes sense, for a game like this one.

Of course, if you really hated a character you could also make a point of recruiting him but then skip his loyalty mission so that he would die during the suicide mission.

The idea of a xenophobic loner Shepard is interesting because I've always felt that the need for acceptance of different peoples and the value of team-work were major themes of Mass Effect and that Shepard being good at making friends was the most fixed part of her identity. How badly would the suicide mission go with just Shepard, Jacob, Miranda, and Mordin? You could have Mordin do the hacking in the vents successfully and Miranda could provide the psychic barrier, right?

Thinking of that brings to mind how people will sometimes complete Final Fantasy VI with only Celes, Edgar, and Setzer. That game won't kill off your characters as punishment for insufficient sidequest completion, but I imagine going through the final dungeon with three teams of one is still really hard.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Before starting the mission to recruit Mordin, I had another chance to talk to my three squad mates. Garrus caught me up on what he had been doing for the past two years - he formed a merc squad to hunt down some of the criminal elements on Omega, but eventually fell for the betrayal of one of the group and got them all killed. It's a showcase of the game's writing at its best. The way Garrus talks about his fallen comrades conveys the genuine affection he had for them, which strengthens the feelings of guilt he has for losing them. It definitely makes you feel for the guy.

So far what I find most interesting about Miranda is watching her relationship with Shepard develop. Miranda is cold and aloof, especially at first, but by taking the time to try and understand her as a person, Shepard is slowly earning her respect.

Mordin's recruitment mission is about a rapidly-spreading airborne virus causing quarantines, so it perhaps hits a little close to home these days. In gameplay terms it mostly means slowly marching through a quarantine zone shooting the dudes as they pop up. I'm definitely finding the shooting monotonous so far. The enemies don't stand stock-still any more but it's still pretty easy to line up headshots. They mostly waddle. I think the cover mechanics and regenerating health serve to make the game a lot easier. The sniper rifle is still really good. One major change to the mechanics that I haven't mentioned yet is that using any given ability puts all your abilities on cooldown, but the cooldown is very short in comparison to ME1. I've mostly been using Incinerate frequently as a way of saving ammo. Of all the upgrades I can imagine, I think the one I would want most is increased ammo gain upon picking up a thermal clip.

Upon meeting Mordin I was immediately reminded of why I liked him so much. I find his rapid-fire speech pattern amusing and it's a good depiction of the fast-thinking nature of his species. What's especially cool about the character is the juxtaposition between his pragmatic and ethical sides. He shows no remorse for killing the raiders who attacked his clinic but he makes a concerted effort to cure the plague in the quarantine zone and shows a lot of concern for the people working under him, including asking Shepard to save his protege, who is being held up by some batarians. Shepard Paragons her way through that situation with no problem and saves the kid, and there was also a memorable encounter with a sick batarian near the start of the area, who she helped against his expectations.

My overall impression of the game so far is that its strengths and flaws line up similarly to the first game: the dialog and characterization are good but I'm generally bored by the gameplay.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Fools

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Didn't play too long today. I toured the new Normandy to familiarize myself with the layout (it's significantly different from the original I would say) and then talked to my crew members. Jacob and Miranda didn't have much to add, but I got to know some minor characters in EDI and the ship's cook.

When Shepard arrived on Omega the asteroid-borne colony where Mordin was supposed to be, a greeter insisted that she go see an Asari named Aria, who is supposed to be the big cheese of the area. Not wanting to make enemies, Shepard obliged, but Aria didn't seem to want anything in particular from her, and (while insisting that information was power and she didn't give it away lightly) she instead filled Shepard in on the locations of Mordin and another potential squad mate called Archangel. I decided to recruit Archangel first because I remembered that he's Garrus.

Garrus' recruitment mission really just involves hunkering down in a small area holding off several waves of enemy mercenaries, who had all become irate enough at the actions of his Archangel persona to gang up and try to kill him. The mission gets a bit boring by the end due to only really involving combat, which creates a certain sense of monotony. It was a nice chance to learn about some of the new mechanics relating to the different types of shields and armor and which skills are best against them. It turns out the Infiltrator's main fire-based combat skill melts armor. This also means that, unlike the first game, there's a very direct reason to balance out your squad.

It was definitely nice to see Garrus again and have him trading jokes with Shepard like old friends, and I imagine I'll have him accompany me on most of the next few missions.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Wow, that's a Hell of a prize! Definitely not what I expected. I'll send that PM.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Definitely a worthy winner and a good contest.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Okay, it's time to get started on the next chapter in the life of Agrafena Shepard.

Toby Fox's Deltarune begins by having you go through a mock character-creation system, and then elaborately destroying your creation and forcing you to play the default character. Bioware beat Toby to this idea in a way with the intro to Mass Effect 2, where the Commander Shepard you spent so much time following in the first game dies a hideous death through exposure to the void of space, all in the name of saving Joker (a character so dynamic and fascinating that I forgot to mention him in either of the character round-ups I wrote for the first game.)

This is where the previously-enigmatic Cerberus Group takes center stage. They perform a technological resurrection of Commander Shepard at the cost of billions of dollars. Apparently this is because Shepard is a symbol of humanity's importance to the galaxy, but it's also because she has one of the rarest and most valuable skills there is: the ability to make friends.

A traitor infiltrates the facility where the so-called Lazarus Project is held and the newly-reborn and still disoriented Shepard has to make her way through a tutorial level to escape. The controls and core gameplay have been revamped a great deal since the last game: you now press X to get into cover, instead of the left analog stick, thank God, and equally welcome is a dedicated melee button. Health and shields both regenerate instead of only shields and medi-gel is now exclusively used to revive fallen teammates, and the whole weapon overheating thing has been done away with in favor of a standard ammo system. Headshots are also a new feature, unless I'm mistaken and they were in the first game, and most debuffs only work on enemies once their shields have been lowered. I will say that I definitely prefer this control scheme.

The Lazarus Project begs a question: are we still playing as Commander Shepard, or are we playing as some construct of meat and metal that merely thinks it is Commander Shepard? Accordingly, we have the option to change our physical appearance and class specialization at the start of this game. Against my better judgement, I chose to go with Infiltrator again. I was curious to see if the tech abilities were revamped to be more fun in the way I remember the biotic moves were, and I also wanted to find out if a Sniper Rifle specialization would be as overpowering in this game. Each class now has an exclusive special ability, and appropriately enough, the Infiltrator gets temporary invisibility. You also get an extra ability for importing from the first game, but they don't tell you what each one does on the selection screen. I chose the Geth Shield boost because it was one of the only moves that I still found useful by the end of the last game and I knew what it would do.

To reinforce those doubts about the new Shepard, I toyed with the idea of switching to renegade this time around, but the game gave me a bunch of Paragon points for importing my character, which was enough to dissuade me.

Once we're out of the tutorial, we meet Jacob and Miranda, our two human squad mates for this game, who parallel Kaidan and Ashley: the more specialized girl and multi-talented boy, the girl cynical and the boy more idealistic, and both of them unpopular among the fanbase. We don't know much else about them so far, but the game will explore their characters quite extensively as time goes by.

We also meet the appropriately-named Illusive Man, Cerberus' leader. He fills us in on the reasoning for Shepard's resurrection and the developments in the universe over the two years we've been dead: all our former squad mates have scattered, the council and alliance still deny the reaper threat, and some mysterious bug-like aliens called the Collectors are now abducting humans en masse in fringe worlds. It's this last issue that he wants Shepard to investigate and for this reason we go on our first mission to a deserted colony, where we encounter Tali for a second time. This theoretically demonstrates why Shepard in particular is so valuable, because she is able to broker some co-operation with Tali, who is hostile to Cerberus, because they know each other. But really, the odds of an encounter like this in such a massive universe are infinitesimal and it's just a storytelling device. Tail doesn't join up just yet, sadly, so we're stuck with Jacob and Miranda as our squad for now.

We also fight our first little mini-boss in the form of a big mech, which I found pretty easy. I mostly just circled around a stack of crates shooting at him until he went down. The Sniper Rifle still one-shots all regular enemies so far, but ammo limits seem more relevant to it than most guns. I'm playing on Veteran from the start this time, by the way.

I stopped shortly after this, when we meet Joker again and gain access to the refurbished Normandy. All the characters suggested I immediately go recruit Mordin next time I play, which sounds just fine to me since he was one of my favorite characters.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

ZenOfThunder posted...

Do you have all the DLC

Dont do zaeeds loyalty mission until you max our paragon or renegade

I wont give any other advice

I think I do. I have the 'collection' on PS3 that comes with the whole trilogy, which I know includes a lot of the DLC for 2. I did the Shadow Broker DLC and recruited Kasumi last time I played.

Do you have any recommendations about which DLC and which non-loyalty mission sidequests are worth it?

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Ex-BioWare staff have complained about the planning stages for their games consistently being a jumbled mess from what I've heard. They attribute their older games being so well-received to some kind of "BioWare magic" where everything just comes together late in production, which obviously hasn't been kicking in as of late. So apparently it's not ALL EA's fault.

I can believe that, honestly. Admittedly I didn't do a lot of research on that ME2 post.

pezzicle posted...

They def haven't made a good game in a long time tho

Yeah, probably not since ME3 or DA:I. You could go back even further if you don't like either of those, which isn't a particularly uncommon opinion.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Unfortunately, I've let time get ahead of me to the point where I don't have time to get through ME2's intro and initial cut-scenes tonight, so I'll just play some Pokemon today, and we'll get to that game when the time comes.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2
Release Date: January 26, 2010
I will be playing on: Playstation 3

Previous Experience with ME2: One complete Playthrough
Expectations for ME2: ME1 but more polished

One theme that I noticed looking over the early games of this project was "fallen giants." Bioware is the first example we come to. At the start of the decade they released this 1-seeded division winner, yet by the end they were putting out mediocre sludge like ME:A and Anthem, the latter of which they will be chained to for a long time, trying to slowly fix it No Man's Sky style.

Perhaps we can say that Bioware made a deal with the devil, since they sold themselves out to EA around the time of ME1's release. The extra funds from such a large-scale company may have helped create a game like ME2, but eventually the devil must have his due, and Bioware has given up its soul by now.

I remember think 2 was the overall best game in the Mass Effect series, mainly due to lacking the major flaws of the others. I'll be glad to have the first game's inventory management and vehicle sections behind me, and I'm looking forward to catching up with old friends like Garrus and Mordin.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

"Immortal Machine" -SHODAN

Good final.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

ZenOfThunder posted...

I need squad mate tier list

Okay, I'll oblige. I wanted to talk about the principle characters again in any case:

Top Tier:
Garrus

High Tier:
Wrex
Liara

Mid Tier:
Tali
Ashley

Low Tier:
Kaidan

Garrus: By far the guy I brought along the most. I remember liking Garrus a lot as a Renegade, but the contrast between him and a Paragon Shepard was especially fun. I liked seeing him grow to respect Shepard, and her way of doing things, over the course of the game. It really built a sense of having a relationship with his character.

Wrex: Another character built on contrast, Wrex's distrust and cynicism made his dialog with Garrus a lot of fun. Wrex feels a lot more fleshed-out than the majority of other squadmates, in part due to a sidequest revolving around him that feels like a sort of proof-of-concept for ME2's loyalty missions. Slowly winning the trust of a curmudgeonly character like this guy felt rewarding, and helped sell the impressive charisma that most characters see in Shepard.

Krogans were usually the most dangerous enemy type, and gameplay-wise Wrex might be the best squad mate you get. There were times when he would tank up absurd amount of enemy ammunition, leaving me free to bring the enemies down as he did.

Liara: The naive scientist type. Her good-natured party dialog can play off against the others well - I like how she admonished me for running over a monkey in that one stupid sidequest. Liara benefits a lot from three games worth of character development, but in the first game is particularly held up by the stakes she has in the story, particularly her encounter with her indoctrinated mother on Noveria.

Tali: Placing this character so low, and especially in the same tier as Ashley, is probably the most controversial part of my list. I'm just not sure that Tali is all that great in this game specifically. There was even a point after one mission where everyone but her unlocked new dialog. I mostly left her in the engine room, and she just felt a little like a hanger-on - but at the same time, her role in this trilogy is only just beginning.

Ashley: I remember Ashley being a reviled character when this game was younger, so I was surprised to find myself kind of liking her this time around. At least, I think she's good enough from a narrative standpoint. I can understand why some players were impatient with her human-centric attitude, but I found it understandable for a story where humanity is still coming to grips with other sentient races - and is still reeling from a brutal war against the Turians.

If we return to the idea of contrast, what's interesting about Ashley is that she opposes what I would consider the general theme of the series, which is the need for co-operation between different peoples. A more developed Ashley could have made an enjoyable intellectual sparring partner for Commander Shepard.

Kaidan: This guy was a kept man in my playthrough; I never brought him along on missions. Really, he's not so bad - his backstory develops the lore and relates to those human/turian conflicts again - but he's ultimately the biggest bore of the squad. He's developed as a contrast to Ashley, which makes him totally non-challenging to Shepard and her views. Perhaps relatedly, I have to say he made a deeply unsexy love interest, quickly following up any would-be romantic dialog by whinging about how the army has regulations against fraternization.

Other character I liked: Captain Anderson
Characters I was let down by: Sovereign, Benezia, Saren (to a lesser extent)
Characters who only exist to be disliked: Council, Ambassador Udina

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

Final Analysis: Mass Effect

What I thought of Mass Effect: A decidedly mixed experience
Would I play Mass Effect again? Twice was enough.
Did it deserve to lose in Round 3 (and 2?) Earlier, if anything.

Mass Effect is not that old. Try going back and playing Super Mario Galaxy, which came out the same year. Apart from readjusting to the motion controls, you'll probably find it to be a tightly designed, deeply payable, even good-looking game. If it came out today, it would still earn review scores of mostly 9 and above.

The same definitely cannot be said of the first Mass Effect. This game is janky, stiff, and frequently annoying. In many ways, a game like Halo: Combat Evolved, which came out six years earlier, was much more advanced.

As a shooter, Mass Effect is repetitive and unengaging. Even on a tuned-up difficulty setting, the enemies largely stand still and slowly fire, allowing the player to line up easy shots in quick succession. With a pistol, it was usually sufficient to stand still, hold down the fire button, and duck into cover when my gun started overheating. With the sniper rifle, what changed was that I pressed the button only once. As the game progressed, the majority of enemies became so nonthreatening that I could stand still and tank their shots without risking death. What challenge there was mostly came from instant-kill rockets and the occasional charging Krogan, and with the long load times, lackluster autosave system, and repetitive combat dying once in ME was more frustrating than a hundred deaths in VVVVVV.

The vehicle sections in the mako are so commonly complained-about that Bioware had a character joke about it in the second game. As poorly designed as the tank's core mechanics are, an even deeper problem is that there's nothing interesting to actually do in the Mako. Mass Effect's sidequests feel like they were made by a poorly-programmed level generator for a one-man indie game. They mostly consist of rolling around endless empty terrain doing completely inane tasks, usually a crappy version of Simon that doesn't even test memory skills. Truth be told, even just pressing a button and having Shepard do whatever hacking or scavenging task was at hand would be preferable to this!

Equally as uninspiring are the rewards for these quests. Mass Effect has my least favorite type of inventory management in an RPG, where all equipment is found randomly, the vast majority of it is worthless, and as much time is spent exchanging it for materials or money as using it. This kind of system does not add more depth of choice to equipping your squad. It merely adds more tedium as you're forced to sort through each new load of worthless guns in case you miss the rare good ones. There was a point when I just gave up, decided my equipment was good enough, and never bothered picking up new items until the game ended. My pistol at the time was called Raikou, and for the rest of the playthrough served as a grim reminded of an obligation ahead of me in this project.

As an RPG, it's one of the more shallow games I've played, with non-combat solutions to problems being rare, a dialog system that makes you guess how Shepard will interpret your choices (and most choices being controlled by the Paragon/Renegade meters anyway,) and a level-up system that feels unimpactful most of the time. In what I fear will become a recurring theme of this decade-long retrospective, the much-touted story choices don't amount to much difference either.

I found a lot to complain about in the first Mass Effect, and going over it all like that, ripping the game half to shreds, was definitely a cathartic feeling. But here's the point where I start feeling a little bad and patch it back up: Mass Effect might have the most interesting universe and lore of any game I've ever played. Its various species and factions have long histories and complex politics. Reading about conflicts like the Skyllian Blitz or the Krogan Rebellions made me wish I were playing a game set in those stories instead - or at least that one existed. Likewise, the characters and dialog were largely dynamic and compelling enough that my favorite part of the game was wandering around the Normandy and talking to the crew.

Mass Effect has the distinction of being the game of this project that I played the longest in a single session. I spent a Sunday night and much of a Monday morning playing almost half the game at once, and that's definitely a testament to how it does some things right. For all the tedium and drudgery of the gameplay, I never felt tempted to give up. The depth of the worldbuilding and characterization was enough to keep me pushing on.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

"Friends" -GLaDOS

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

+10 Portal 2
+9 Sid Meier's Civilization V
+8 Disco Elysium
+7 Super Mario Odyssey
+6 The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
+5 Celeste
+4 Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze
+3 Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep
+2 Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
+1 Splatoon

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

The point I stopped at last night was the beginning of the last stretch of the game, and now I've finished Mass Effect!

All that was left to do on Ilos was drive down a long hall and get stopped at one point to talk to an ancient Prothean VI, which tells us about the history of the planet and gives us the last tools we need to stop Sovereign. It's an effectively harrowing story, really: the last surviving Protheans going into Cryonic sleep to hide, power slowly failing, and the life support systems being shot down one by one, until, when they finally emerge, it is too late for their species. I also like the idea of the Citadel being a trap. I thought that was kind of clever.

The last gameplay sequence is on the Citadel itself, and was kind of long and tedious. It's an area where the game's autosave system can really let you down, and two of my deaths resulted in a lot of lost time playing the same dull shootouts again. I had to resort to manual saves, but found that the area was so full of enemies that finding a time when the game relented to save, given that it won't let you do so in combat, was a struggle.

Bioware's main trick for ramping things up for the final area is to re-purpose enemies they designed for mako combat for the purpose of fights on foot. The main source of potential frustration is the Geth Heavy Turrets near the end, which quickly launch rockets that would kill me from full health and shields, and had enough armor of their own to survive being pumped full of laser. The solution I found was to duck behind cover in the right place, so that they would uselessly fire their rockets against the terrain, and then slowly snipe them down from long range.

Once that was finally out of the way, we had our final confrontation with Saren, and in standard WRPG tradition we talked him into suicide. Interestingly, you get Paragon points for doing that! I admit I miss the old days of 'social boss' encounters where you had to try and figure out the right dialog options logically instead of just immediately picking the ones that are highlighted in blue.

Not so standard is the fact that you have to fight him anyway, as a sort of husk that plays a little like the Geth Stalkers. Hey Bioware, I invested all those points into Charm because I wanted to skip the combat! He reminds me a bit of Infermon from the Digimon movie in this form. At least I can say this boss fight took a reasonable number of hits to go down. He also pulls the very cheap move of making us watch a cutscene mid-battle, so that his shields can regenerate over how much time it takes.

In case you're curious, I chose to save the council. It's a fairly political move, and they rewarded humanity accordingly by letting Shepard appoint a human councilor. I picked Anderson mostly on the basis that Udina is a dick. Shepard vows to continue fighting the reapers, and that's where the game ends.

I admit I'm looking forward to moving onto the second game. Hopefully it will be a little more engaging on the gameplay front.

Commander Shepard will return tomorrow, and so will I.


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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect 2

+10 Dark Souls
+9 The Witcher 3
+8 South Park: The Stick of Truth
+7 Persona 4 Golden
+6 Life is Strange
+5 Tomb World
+4 Super Mario 3D World
+3 Super Mario 3D Land
+2 Pokemon Black/White
+1 Pokemon HG/SS

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect

Leonhart4 posted...

Victoria is one of the most unlikable characters represented though

Well, if that qualifies a character we could've had some Chloe quotes too!

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect

The AI gets bonuses to things like food and production on higher difficulties, which can cause it to really snowball sometimes. It can definitely be important to react to that as soon as possible by destroying whoever is in the lead. I think one way to tell who is getting ahead is to find out who got the important early wonders.

It's also more important to know about the 'metagame' and common exploits, so here are a few general tips:

• It's often worth it to spend a few turns to move your capital at the start of the game, especially to somewhere that gives you a lot of production. Placing your capital directly on top of a luxury resource gets you that resource right away. The ideal start is usually to land on a resource like gold or silver.
• Tradition is almost always the best first policy choice, with a good exclusive wonder and policies that help you grow four really big cities. If you prefer to pick Liberty, it's pretty good too.
• At the start of the game, when city states have workers but few (if any troops,) you can declare war on them, capture their worker, and then immediately make peace. They will be mad at you for a while, but the free worker is more than worth it.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect

I had to vote no. Can't argue with the flowchart.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect

"Heart" -GLaDOS

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect

I slept in way too late today, which left me with about 25 minutes to squeeze in a short session on ME. After dying once to a Geth Armature, one of the enemies who can 1-hit KO you in this game, I only had enough time to make my way to the security station on Ilos and listen to an old Prothean recording about their civilization getting reaped.

Last night I neglected to mention that Saren was developing a cure for the Genophage on Virmire, which we destroyed. Wrex was understandably upset about this, but you can talk him down. I think this is usually one of the primary reasons to farm Paragon/Renegade points in this game, along with one other dialog option yet to come. If you can't talk him down, you'll be forced to kill him instead. As a somewhat lame form of branching storytelling, in the next two games he'll be replaced by his brother who does most of the same things he would, but I think it locks you out of some of the 'best' options for resolving the situation with the Krogan.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect

E.T. (atari)

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect

After the Noveria mission, Kaidan confronted me for hitting on both him and Liara, forcing me to choose then and there between seeing his fat ass and getting some nice girl-on-girl action with Liara.

So I picked Kaidan. This choice was mainly decided by the fact that I romanced Liara last time around. What I do find kind of funny is that this potentially comes up before the mission on Virmire, so you can lock yourself into romancing Kaidan and then choose to get him killed to keep Ashley alive. At times like this you wish there was a better female equivalent to the phrase "bros before hoes."

Virmire is probably the shortest world yet, and definitely the most focused. There are no real sidequests or hidden areas, it's all just about one high-octane mission to take down Saren's base.

We find another Prothean beacon, and with its help we know enough to speak to Saren's ship, which as is well known online these days turns out to be a living reaper. It turns out he's kind of a bore. He just drones on about how superior he is for a little while and then we hang up on him.

This is where the choice between Kaidan and Ashley comes up. Only one of them can make it off Virmire alive. As with most of my choices in this playthrough, I chose to save Kaidan because I picked Ashley last time.

You know, now that we're looking back on her, I actually thought Ashley was a pretty good character this time around. She had a lot of different subjects to talk about and her whole beef with aliens wasn't as over-emphasized as I had remembered. I would say I at least like her better than Kaidan, but I don't like her so much that I'd save her again and deny myself the chance to see what kind of difference it makes.

We have our first proper encounter with Saren, who tells us that his whole scheme is to submit to the reapers as organic life's only chance of survival. He's clearly indoctrinated, because placation has never worked in politics and even I know that. There's a parallel between himself and Benezia in that they both sign on with a greater villain to try and reform him a little but get consumed by his influence. I don't think there's any way to talk him out of a boss fight on Virmire, and in contrast to Benezia he took 3 shots to bring down! Then he escapes as we nuke the base, and we return to the citadel to give a report, whereupon the council locks us down and we have to mutiny to get back to chasing Saren. This is another cathartic moment because we get to watch Ambassador Udina, who has spent the whole game being a dick, get clocked.

Before our last big mission on Ilos, the planet where the all-important Conduit turns out to be, we get our 3-second sex scene with Kaidan. It's not especially titillating. You get to see the side of one of Shepard's butt cheeks. More interesting than that was our last on-ship chat with Garrus, where he talked about coming over to Shepard's paragon ways over the course of our journey and even brought up that sidequest I did for him. That was a nice touch, and made the previous conversations I'd had with him feel impactful.

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I'm playing every game from GotD 2020! Games Completed: 3/129
Currently Playing: Mass Effect