LogFAQs > #940339008

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