LogFAQs > #940730821

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