#also I only installed two mods to keep thinks standard

[umunschaas]

Random silly Morzan and Galbatorix stuff... in Baldur's gate 3.

Morzan. Asmodeus-Tiefling, Warlock (the great old one), Fighter, Background: Soldier. Draws on paintings, likes to scare others to do what he wants, jumped in a hole once with feather fall and let his companions die, yes that earring is a tiny dagger and he likes it a lot thank you very much.

Galbatorix. Mephistopheles-Tiefling (but with wings lol), Sorcerer (draconic bloodline), Bard, Background: Sage. Almost helped a hag but then she told him to shut up so he got pissed, there's violence in Violin somewhere, no staff because he likes stabbing more, only ever heals himself, very convincing.

[pudding-parade]

Al-Qahira by RI0711

Do you like exploring tombs? Have you done the tombs in the WA worlds approximately 1,571,342 times and you're looking for something new? Or, do you like exploring tombs but not so much doing quests? Well, I have a world for you!

As you can see, this is an Egyptian-themed world. It's an old one, uploaded in 2010, and it might not be much to look at from a distance, but it's chock-full of tombs, about a dozen of them, which I'm sure is why I downloaded the world, whenever I downloaded it. I was figuring on one or two tombs and/or maybe recycled EA ones, but nope! They are all original and they range from small to very, very large.

The world is large, too, 2048x2048, unpopulated, and entirely roadless. Although it's large, it ought to run smoothly on most machines, since it has few lots, only about 35, total. Some of the tombs are far-flung, so it will be a bit of an expedition to get to them, explore them, and then get back to your home lot. Bring snacks, a tent, and maybe a camel horse.

Tombs aside, the world is pretty basic, though it has some nice desert scenery here and there. It might be better to use it as a vacation world via the Traveler mod, though it would be possible to use it as a homeworld, too. However, except for a mausoleum in the graveyard, it has no rabbitholes at all, though there are three empty lots that they could theoretically be added to, especially if you were to use rugs, since they take up less space. There are also none of the "standard" community lots aside from one large and several smaller markets with the WA registers (so you can buy groceries and books, at least) and the afore-mentioned graveyard. You could certainly add some rabbithole rugs to the large market, in particular. You could also add lots for rabbitholes and such, as most of the world is routable, BUT not much of the terrain is flat aside from areas that are already built on. So, you'd have to do some creative construction. Of course, you could have your sims make money in non-rabbithole-career ways, but they'll still be lacking services and entertainment and such, if such things matter to you.

There are about a dozen pre-built houses, concentrated in two small parts of the world. They are mostly small and basic, just simple rectangles or a few rectangles stuck together, much like the houses in Al Simhara. Most of them are just basically furnished with the essentials, but some are empty. Most of them have only one bedroom. So, as-is, between the one-bedroom houses and the lack of a school, it's not really a place for families. That said, the houses are mostly on larger lots with lots of leftover space, and because of the basic-ness of their layouts, they could be expanded/re-built easily if you wanted to play growing families in the world. (Or maybe steal some lots from Rusalem and replace the ones in this world. ;) ) And there's always homeschooling, via mods, if you don't add a school rabbithole. (Boarding schools won't be accessible since the world is roadless.)

The world only requires World Adventures, which I think was the only EP that existed when this world was uploaded. I didn't notice any Store content, and there's no CC. The world has all of the basegame and WA spawners, including dig site spawners. You might need to use the Collection Helper reward to find them because most of them are widely scattered across the world.

As usual, the title of this post is a link to the world's Exchange page. Or, if you don't want to deal with the Exchange/the launcher/sims3packs, I have uploaded a .world file here. If you get that, it goes in your game install files under GameData - Shared - NonPackaged - Worlds.

Note: The creator of the world is a Spanish-speaker, so all of the lot addresses/descriptions as well as things like those little plaques that your sim can read in/outside of tombs that can give you clues are in Spanish. So, if you're not a Spanish-speaker yourself, you might want to keep Google Translate on-hand while you play. :)

More pics and stuff behind the cut!

I usually put Edit Town/map view pics here, but it doesn't seem really necessary for this world, since there are no rabbitholes and the only community lots are either tombs or markets. So, we'll jump right to lot pics. Here are some pics of some of the houses:

As I said, they're very simple and quite similar to the houses in Al Simhara, but as far as I can tell they're all new and only one is duplicated. Because they are simple and placed on larger-size lots, they could be expanded or simply demolished and rebuilt, if you like to build.

Moving on to community lots, here is the graveyard, which is pretty plain but it could certainly be jazzed-up:

Here are some pics of the big, main market, which is actually two lots, basically, one 64x64 and the other smaller with the tower-like building on it.

The tower building in the first pic is dedicated to nectar tasting and sales, but it doesn't have nectar-making machines. The other, main building has some snake charming baskets, chess tables, lots of bookshelves, and the WA registers. The building on the left side of the last pic just has a little pond and some seating in it. If you wanted to add rabbithole rugs to the world, this lot certainly has space to add ones that would make sense, like maybe the business one or even the city hall. It would also make sense to add consignment registers here.

This is one of the smaller markets, which has book and food registers:

And, aside from another even smaller market that is basically just a food stall, the rest of the community lots are tombs. Here are some spoiler-free pics of some of them from the outside:

I don't want to spoil any of the tombs, in case anyone decides to download and play this world, but I will say that I did two of the tombs when I took pics of the world, one fairly short and one very long, and they were both challenging, at least more so than the EA tombs. In the two that I ran through, there were lots of non-obvious traps, many of which couldn't be disarmed, so I had to cross them to advance farther into the tomb. So, Athletic skill is recommended. Also, many of the traps are fire traps with no dive wells to extinguish yourself, so if you don't just cheatily remove the "singed" and "fear" moodlets like I did, bring showers in cans and prepare to wait while moodlets wear off! There were also lots of mummies hiding in sarcophagi, which you have to open because some sarcophagi have switches that you have to "flip" in order to continue. Such sarcophagi are often in rooms with no quick way out, so you might have to fight the mummies (or go to Al Simhara first and stock up on mummy snacks). Also, there were some puzzles that took a bit of thought to solve. Not like RPG game levels of thought or anything, but certainly more thought than the WA tombs. And you won't get rich from tomb-raiding because at least in the two that I did there were no gems or relics, but I did get lots of ancient coins (which are useless in this world, of course, but you can use them in the WA worlds) and a nice little stash of high-quality nectar! The two tombs I did were quite fun, so I'm sure the others are as well.

And that's pretty much all I have to say. We'll finish off with some random scenery pics.

[quanonthecob]

osu! diary, 3rd december 2022

so i've been grinding osu! quite a lot during the past week, when i definitely should have studied more, especially when mid-terms are coming up, in fact, i have one tomorrow morning, but i'm here writing this lol

also i titled this "diary", but this is probably a one-time thing, like yeah yeah, diary in vnese is nhật ký, and nhật (meaning "day") implies the daily aspect of it, but hey, i can't be bothered to write sth daily, not like i have enough ability or linguistic skills to write so much ._.

so yeah, like i've said before, i've been grinding a lot recently. specifically, this is the graph showing the number of plays in the past year

November: 175 plays

December: 59 plays (keep in mind we're only 3 days in)

so yep, the future's not looking so bright LOL

the main reason why im playing so much is because i've got a new laptop, so i'm kinda abusing the storage and specs upgrade from my last laptop

and... on the topic of storage, here we have the amount of storage i've spent for storing the beatmaps

i feel fortunate because i'm currently only into play osu!standard, and not other game modes as well, because god knows how much more storage it's gonna take up

but yeah the first few days when i first installed the game, i mass downloaded the beatmaps. i just looked up some popular artists and download all the beatmaps of the songs that i know. to the point that osu literally temporarily blocked me from downloading any more beatmaps 💀💀💀 they quite literally shouted at my face that i need to stop downloading maps and play more...

of course, after playing for a bit and waited until the next day, i could download more beatmaps again 😈 so as of now, we end up with

...

i have no idea if i'm gonna be able to play all of them. obviously there are also beatmaps from other game modes, and there are 6-star, 7-star beatmaps which i don't think i'm gonna ever have enough skills to play them. i might need to filter them out sometime, for now i can't be bothered to do that, especially when they don't take up that much space in my hard disk.

there's kinda one problem tho, it's when i try to press the Z and X keys on this laptop, but it's a membrane keyboard, and this laptop also happens to be really slim too, so pressing the keys down feels very shallow. i find it really annoying at first typing on this keyboard, still does now, but im more used to the feels. but yeah, it feels kinda weird having to spam these two buttons playing osu!, and since the laptop in general is so fragile, i always feel like i'm damaging the keys somehow. so i might get specialised keycaps just for this game idk (if i do, that would be extremely concerning actually)

~~~~~

and so the grinding starts, i played some maps that i used to love playing on my old laptop, also tried out some new maps, most of them are songs that i'm already familiar with, so i tend to not have a lot of problem with the rhythms

one of the really good songs that i've downloaded and have played recently is lily allen's fuck you. honestly, the song itself is amazing. the beatmap, well, it's a little bit slow, so i had to do put some mods in, specifically HR - hard rock, making the circles smaller and faster and DT - double time, increase the speed of the song and the beatmap by 1.5 times i think (yeah i know it says double but that's how the mod works ig)

honestly that was pretty challenging to me already, especially when the tempo of the song is 1.5 times faster. but it also pays off with a good amount of pp (let me stop you horny mfs right there, it's performance points) and rank, and ofc had quite a bit of fun playing it, and a bunch of adrenaline as well.

another beatmap is sesame street's cookie butter choco cookie, it's basically ppap, but for kids

honestly i'm still wondering how is this a thing, like, look at this

セサミストリート：ピコ太郎、エルモとクッキーモンスターの CBCC （Cookie-Butter-Choco-Cookie) - YouTube

the beatmap was just the first minute when elmo and cookie monster was singing. there are also quite a lot of difficulties to choose from, so i just played a lot of that song, not to mention because i'm also kinda grinding for stats, and i tried a difficulty that's a bit harder for me, so yeah just imagine having elmo and cookie monster "awh" harmoniously in your ear three times each time the song plays and have that repeat for about 15-20 minutes...

truly traumatised

it kinda pays off tho, i got a 2nd highest on my PB leaderboard, and im now in the 600k (ofc, not a lot, but still sth)

i enjoyed it a lot, i've always loved rhythm games, and osu! is an awesome game, despite it's clearly contributing to my highly likely, upcoming dramatic academic downfall, but hey, circle clicking game is fun, you can't blame me alright?

[tau1tvec]

What do you recommend that’s a good base pc to build off of over time, one that’s cost effective but good enough to run ts3 and ts4 simultaneously but I can add better graphics cards and ssds later on?

I think it depends, it's hard to really recommend any specific one bc, I've only ever used one, and they don't manufacture them anymore. I also got my PC to play Fallout 4, bc my old PC crapped out, and I was over sims at the time. Considering its open world, and all the mods I would likely cram into it, I didn't wanna waste money on just anything, so I did some research on gaming PC's ( which I'd never bought until then ) and ended up getting an Acer Predator for about 1299$ at the time.

When I bought it, it had a 1060 GTX, 500GB SSD, 1TB HD and 16GB RAM, dealt with 6 years of my bs with not an issue.

Now the reason I say it depends is bc, many games can run on anything honestly, a lotta them these days want to get in as many hands as possible, so making them work well on lower end systems, esp laptops and consoles, is the best way to do that, since a lot of gamers honestly couldn't give chicken noodle soup about how great a game looks, just that it doesn't lag. However if you plan to play on high to ultra settings, with mods and cc, esp high texture cc, you're going to have to keep some things in mind.

Processor

Intel i5's are pretty powerful for the cost, but I'd recommend an i7 if you can fit the bill. Replacing it shouldn't be too difficult, so long as you find one that's compatible with your motherboard, and they tend to cost a little less, and be more readily available than GPU's for instance.

GPU

I've seen some mid-high gaming rigs run on a 1660 GTX which I hear is a pretty good card, they also run a bit cheaper than the 20 or 30 series RTX, and honestly... you don't need a 20 or 30 series RTX to play The Sims 3 or 4, it doesn't even have any built-in options to utilize a lotta the innovative features these cards have.

I played The Sims 4 on ultra on my 1060 GTX, and it ran and looked fine. Though should you decide to upgrade, understand it might be quite costly, and also a bit difficult to find considering we're still technically in a chip shortage.

Memory

16GB is pretty standard these days, anything more is for those into heavy multi-tasking, however some games are beginning to suggest 32GB.

SSD

Main drive needs to be a 500GB SSD minimum... 250 will absolutely get you nowhere with how Windows updates gobble that shit up. You'll also be storing all your saves, mods, and cc on this main drive, so honestly if you can, go for the 1TB, you won't regret it, especially since upgrading mine to a 1TB was an absolute nightmare.

You'll likely need a second drive as well, and although it's common a second drive will be a regular ol' hard drive ( HD ), which is fine, you've gotta install your Spotify app somewhere, do absolutely consider getting another 500GB or larger SSD installed later, games these days basically start at 80GB install size easy, this doesn't include updates and dlc added later, and a drive doesn't run well when it's almost full.

Brands

I've had my Acer Predator desktop for roughly 7 years now, and it's an absolute champ... my husband's Acer Predator Helios on the other hand... crapped out like two years in, he only ever played Skyrim, and only ran it on medium-high settings. So when it comes to brands it's kinda... eh, I would just try to avoid anything that's like HP or Dell... they're kinda iffy and difficult to upgrade unless you're willing to drop 2k+ on an Alienware, I hear a lotta pretty good things about Lenovo tho, and MSI, if a laptop is more your thing.

Finally, a lotta straight out the box gaming rigs are outfitted with AMD processors and cards these days, and they've come a long way over the years. They're pretty powerful now, almost equal and at times even better than their Intel or Nvidia counterparts, but can be more cost effective if price is a big concern.

[ilikedetectives]

Thanks for saying it. As a trans woman I was side-eyeing that hashtag the moment I read the “movement explained” post last year saying this:

That wording (from the most prominent voice!) directly implies that there’s an acceptable criteria for womanhood and women outside those criteria don’t count. This kind of thinking always ends up targeting gnc cis women too because they’re not the “right” women, no surprise it happened here. (Apparently a gay cis man is more worth defending to them than gnc and sapphic women too?)

Plus a quick google search would easily tell them Kassandra and Eivor were envisioned as “masculine” as they are now even before the male options were designed? Official ACV concept art for Eivor’s character design even states lady Eivor was designed first and that male Eivor was based off of HER. But sure they’re “shells” based on men 🙄

Looks like they’ve chosen to “highlight, appreciate and support” the fact that queer, gnc women aren’t real women because these women are simply men’s “shells” for being masculine and queer.

Oh I’m so glad that you see this and stay tf away. Aren’t these the same breed that were sooooo outraged after reading and citing that Forbes article by Jason Schreier last year, “OMG Kassandra and Aya/Amunet originally were supposed to be the protagonist, I’m so oUTraGEd and feel rOBbeD that Ubisoft took this from us”? You’d think with all the devs that they are good friends with, they should know by now that Kassandra and f!Eivor were designed first in mind, then the male counterparts were added AFTER being forced by higher-ups and marketing. The Montreal writers keep having to reassure people that everything about Eivor is intentional and they have always intended that Eivor is a female. The first name alone, Eivor, is a female name. I think the devs already know they’d have to deal with idiots, so they added Varinsdottir in her last name (dottir means “daughter”), but I think the devs still underestimate their level of stupidity. They sure are attentive to plot details when it involves their brotherhood though, but women? *wheeze* They love AC2 sfm but it didn’t take them until last year to realize how dirty Aya/Amunet treated. Nobody paused when Origins was announced to say, but Amunet statue? Pleaseeee *wheeze* For them to go around saying that Kass and f!Eivor are just “shells” based on men and now, practically calling the devs lazy because making them masculine to save time/effort in development time really shows their true colors. If a woman isn’t slim-af-and-only-attracted-to-cishet men, then they’re not women. gnc, queer, trans women? I don’t need to take a guess to see what they view these women as. These fake feminists don’t find it disrespectful that Kass and f!Eivor are pushed aside for the male shells to take the spotlight, but they find Kass and f!Eivor being masculine and queer disrespectful. Someone please turn on “Send in the Clowns'' for me, I prefer the Judi Dench version.

You know what I find hypocritical about these fake feminist breeds? When they call for more female assassins content, they never once invalidate their beloved male protags, “We’re not here to cancel m!Eivor/Alexios/Bayek/Jacob/Arno, we just want more of f!Eivor/Kassandra/Amunet/Evie/Elise/Aveline”, but now that they have more backers, they immediately turn around and dismiss the only two AAA female protags as women because they’re “too masculine, like men.” That’s right! f!Eivor walking like a man and both Kass and f!Eivor wear male armors and are attracted to women automatically dismiss their existence as gnc, queer women. Being a masculine, queer woman somehow exempt them both from sexism because these two are just “men’s shells”? What kinda Isu drugs are they on? Now I wish f!Eivor had a true buff Viking body in her vanilla state (I know there’s muscles mod by amisthiosintraining and I, but still), because what else are these fake feminists gonna trash her on? f!Eivor is a shell for m!Eivor? *wheeze* What could’ve been said was, “I want a female-protag-only game because then the devs can focus all their time and effort on her story, for her” or “Ubisoft should give the devs more time, resources, and creative freedom to give players more historical context of the struggles the female protags have to deal with, compared to male protags”. For example: a side quest with Aspasia as she deals with how sexist people (surprise, women can be sexist too) were towards her as perhaps the most educated, influential woman in Athens at the time. Or how Kassandra had to fight her way to be allowed to compete in the Olympics. That’s all that’s needed to be said. There’s nothing wrong with asking/wanting a feminine female protag who is gender-conforming, but it says a lot about their true view of women when they drag gnc and queer women down to parade their idea of a superior woman.

But what did these fake feminists choose to “highlight, appreciate and support” instead? Oh that’s right, disregarding both Kassandra and f!Eivor as inferior women, because them fakers don’t deemed masculinity and queerness as the aUThenTIc female experience they want to play as. You know what’s worse? Pitting these female characters together to rate how “feminine” each of them are to deem which ones are more “real” as a woman. Can you imagine them doing that to the male protags? Knowing full well that the devs’ hands were tied when it comes to creative freedom when making Kassandra and f!Eivor, but still go around and shit on the devs for being “lazy”, while dismissing Kassandra f!Eivor experience as women because of their gnc and queerness. What kinda Beta Sigma (BS) is this? Oh I think I know the answer: reinforcing their ideas of what they find acceptable for their version of a woman. Honestly, it’s not the first time gnc, queer women are shit on in AC, remember that cursed DLC from Odyssey? Yea. I expect nothing more from Ubisoft-certified fans. Watch, if we somehow get a female-lead AAA game next installment and she happens to be queer, gnc, and godforbid to their fEMinISt standards, she happens to be trans as well, these fakers would most likely scream, “We support women. We want the REAL woman experience”. But if she happens to conform into their fEMinISt standards, you’ll get to hear how she’s their most favorite protag since Ezio cuz she’s a “real woman”. Again, nothing wrong with gender-conforming, feminine women, but using them as THE superior example, this fuckery/fakery reeks.

One last general tip from Doctor Who, “Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward.” Look closely and you’ll see what those advantages and rewards are. 

p/s: Didn’t Ubisoft CEO just appoint his family member(s) to be in charge, while there were also discussion on how the new directors are no better than the sexist, racist ones that were fired/let-go? Sounds to me like it’s business as usual again. Or us Vietnamese have a saying, “It’s easier for rivers and mountains to change than human’s nature to even budge” (giang sơn dễ đổi, bản tính khó dời). I find it so ironic that “gaslight gatekeep girlboss” is trending on my dash.

[the-trashkin]

Jay’s GPose/Studio Guide

I get asked for this pretty frequently - be it friends and FC mates or randos here.  So here’s a Super Generic Guide for GPose, GShade, and Studios.  This will be a long, image-heavy post.  Venture forward at your own risk!! -- or just, y’know, click Keep Reading below.

First off, I’m not a professional at this.  There are plenty of people who do screenshoting better than I do.  I just think it’s fun and neat.  I have a super brief history/introductory to photography (thanks, art school), so what I know is super basic.  Still, that knowledge can be applied in-game, too.  So lets take a crack at this.

The Studio(s)

My studio is my apartment.  You can find it on Mateus in The Mist; Ward 13, Apartment 41.  I have three set-ups: multi-purpose black background (no lights), multi-purpose white background (optional lights), and a portrait background (optional lights). The apartment is set to 0 Lighting.  Why?  Because this allows me to control the individual lights and adjustments in GPose itself.  Those bright-white background shots are done in this room.  It’s just a simple matter of knowing your lighting (and GShade presets).  We’ll get to that.

The layout:

All three set-ups are here and positioned in such a way to not interfere/bother each other.  Unless you’re intentionally turning your camera in that direction, you should never see the other set-ups.  If you need to turn your camera, consider just ... turning your character.

An example of the Black Background with generic left, center, and right Lighting settings:

Same background, close up, and lights adjusted:

Below is the Multi-Purpose White background with dragon lamps for extra, albeit minimal lighting effects.  This is without any Lighting Settings turned on.

Same picture, but with all Lighting Settings turned on and adjusted:

Now let’s slap a GShade preset on it and change the camera angle.  Voila.  

GShade Presets & You

GShade is a variant of ReShade, much like Stormshade and other post-processing injectors.*  I originally used Stormshade, but moved on to GShade as they constantly update their presets/shaders and the software is easy to install.  And they have loads more presets readily available.

Presets and shaders can be really taxing on your system, so I highly recommend keeping certain shaders to a minimum for gameplay purposes.  For screenshots, go ham -- just make sure your system can handle it.  

For example, I only use Colourfulness.fx and Vibrance.fx for regular gameplay.  This boosts the color quality of the game and removes that dull, muted tone.

For screenshots, I will turn on a variety of shaders or pick one of the many, many presets made by the community.  (I’m a big fan of Espresso Glow and use it pretty frequently.)

Here is a standard picture with Colourfulness and Vibrance turned on.

And here it is without any shaders:

You can find GShade here: https://gposers.com/gshade/

* “Is ReShade/GShade allowed by SE?” Post-processing injectors are NOT considered cheating “software”.  It does NOT give you any advantage over the game none whatsoever.  It simply enhances your graphics.  That’s it.  However, as with all software, install and use at your discretion.  (Also you’re not likely to get picked for any SE screenshot contests due to advantage/unfairness to PS4 users.)

Setting the MOOD

So now that you have a rough idea of what to do and use for your options, here’s some example screenshots taken with and without presets.

Without Espresso Glow - Pastel Cool: (Using the Black Portrait set-up.)

With Espresso Glow - Pastel Cool:

Same emote, same expression, same lighting settings, same preset, closer view and different camera/eye angle:

Now using the Multi-purpose White Background set-up, without Pastel Cool:

With Pastel Cool:

Don’t like studios?  Get creative with the landscape.  There’s plenty of beautiful places to visit over Eorzea to get the perfect background.  Sometimes a lovely landscape can make all the difference in what you want in a screenshot.  Crop, rotate, and adjust for size and angle -- do whatever looks best to you.

Without ArkanaSun:

With ArkanaSun:

Some Q & A (AKA Stuff That People Ask)

Q: What about Mods? A: I like mods, I obviously use them.  However, I won’t go into detail for those.  It’s like opening a can of worms and the last thing I need is to hear: “Well, Jay said to install them!” -- I never did.  I will never tell you to use mods.  Mods can break your game and SE doesn’t support them to begin with.  I’ve had mods brick my game on three occasions now.  It’s very at-your-own-risk.  And just like ACT, you don’t talk about it/them openly, especially in game.

Q: Do you use the CMTool/Screenshot tool? A: I don’t.  Truth be told, I haven’t bothered because I don’t have much time to learn and fiddle with it regularly. Just like how I don’t do my own mods, I simply don’t have the time, much less willpower to commit.  I try to make work with what I got.  Or draw.  Lol.

Q: My screenshots aren’t saving the image as it appears! A: Never use the Print Screen button.  ReShade/GShade has a setting for taking screenshots.  Set a keybinding (not Print Screen!) for it and use that.  Alternatively, use programs like Fraps or whatever.  (I use Fraps because it’s useful for all games and brief recording purposes.)

Q: Do you use post-editing software? A: Yes, I have access to Photoshop.  I can crop, rotate, and color-adjust any picture I need to.  You can do the same with Windows Photos, but the rotation and crop can be a little dense.

Q: Can I use/visit your Studio? A: Absolutely.  There’s just two simple rules: - Be patient if someone else is there. - Don’t be a dick and harass others. If I find someone being an absolute ass, I will lock it down.

Resources

GPOSERS site

Art of Eorzea: GPose Tips without ReShade

Extra Guide: Lighting & Colors (by Jay)

Google lol

I hope this has been of some use.  Feel free to add any tips or tricks in the comments or reblogs.

Peace, love, and applesauce.

[dgcatanisiri]

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway.

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway. And, as I’m not bound by any hardware limitations in terms of crafting ideas, or production cycles dictating when the game’s endpoint is, these can and do go on a great deal longer than the standard lifespan of a game.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

So I HAVE actually been working on my ongoing series of hypothetical DLC to games that I love over the last year (it was the end of January 2020 when my last one of these got posted, this is going up at the beginning of May 2021). Which, yes, some is pandemic related because *screams* but... I was looking over what I’ve been working on, and realized that I was at about the combined length of my first two of these in my present examination, and I was only about a third of the way through the ideas that I had. I could either keep going and do these all at once in a massive post in like another year or two, or I could break it up into chunks.

So instead of waiting, this is going to be Part 1 of (I hope) 3 in an examination at ideas and possibilities of what additional content could have been made for Mass Effect 2, which for some is considered the best of the series. Me, I’m a little more critical of it. To me, this game is a textbook example of bridge syndrome, of the plot spinning its wheels to hold off on the payoff until the third part of the trilogy - the Collectors are, in practice, an entirely separate threat from the Reapers, even acknowledging the connection in the plot. We see this in the impact that the ME2 characters have in the next game - most are in side missions, all perform roles in the plot that literally can have them swapped out, even if it’s to the ultimate detriment of your War Asset count.

So in my mind, there’s a lot of room to make these DLCs, these glimpses into further areas of the world of Mass Effect at large. Because for me, what ME2 SHOULD have been was about making the alliances with the galaxy at large, rather than the big set piece of the Suicide Mission. We got some of this in ME2 proper, but that’s where the core of my focus and attention is with these DLCs.

Admittedly, I am aware of the difficulties of working around ME2 having both optional companions (Thane, Samara, and Tali don’t have to be recruited at all, Zaeed and Kasumi are DLC, many missions are available before you necessarily pick up certain companions...) and the ability to hold off on doing the DLC until after the Suicide Mission, where any or all of your companions may end up dying. However, for simplicity’s sake (because these things are long enough as it is without having a dozen variations apiece), we will assume that all companions are recruited and alive for the sake of plot advancement. Minds greater than mine can figure out how these would work without a given character – me, I tend to clear out the quest log before the Suicide Mission (aside from Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival, both of which are minimal on the squadmates from the rest of the game) and rarely let myself lose someone on the Suicide Mission, and since these are my ideas, we’re working in my framework.

Also, timeline note: Like ME2′s actual DLC, the fact that these would unlock at certain points in the game’s timeline does not necessarily reflect when they would best be played in the in-game timeline. Like Lair of the Shadow Broker and Arrival are (as I mentioned above), at least in my personal timeline, post-Suicide Mision content. BUT, they both become available to play after Horizon. Just because they unlock at certain points in the plot, that doesn’t mean that they best fit the timeline in that point. It was just a convenient way to organize things in my notes. So there will be ones that unlock at plot point A, but probably play best after plot point B. Players would be able to decide where they fit as it works for them.

Ghost of the Machine

A phenomenon is spreading across colonies in Citadel space. Machine cultists are cropping up on planets. Shortly thereafter, these colonies go dead quiet – often overrun by husks. To Admiral Anderson, this sounds like Reaper tech, and there’s only one person who he trusts to investigate the truth of the machine cults...

(Post-Freedom’s Progress)

So back to the machine cultists. In our last installment, there was Evolution, which featured them. Here, though, we’re looking at something that kinda resolves this little storyline. Y’know, since ME3 isn’t really going to have the time for this sort of thing. Which, sure, I’m saying this becomes unlocked before you can unlock this game’s machine cultist sidequest, but shush – just because it unlocks at this point doesn’t mean it has to be played at this point. This time, it’s not just about learning about the problem, but we’re also going to see what we can do to understand it, especially since we’re now acknowledging that this is a recurring problem within the universe and maybe we want to find a proper solution to it before stumbling blindly into it gets more and more people killed.

So this takes Shepard to a planet that’s making its first steps at colonization, yet again (because I am trying to be cognizant of what practical realities exist in the game development, even acknowledging that this is a hypothetical thing anyway – early colonization means limited extras wandering around out in the open and a self-contained area to play around in). Those seem to be the places where these devices mainly get uncovered, so that’s why this is here.

Of course, we have a situation where the devices are known about, so there’s an immediate lockdown, and the reason that Shepard and crew are getting sent out is because Reaper experience is needed – in the event that this colony can have anyone saved, who is it and how do we get them out safely?

I kinda look at this as revealing the process – the previous encounters were the parts that told us the existence of the metaphorical monster of this story, here we’re getting to see the “monster” properly in action. And I feel like this should be about also introducing some of what will become ME3’s foot soldiers among the Reaper armies – we know about the husks from ME1, now we’re going to encounter another for the first time. Probably the marauders. Given that they and the cannibals (who are so numerous in part because of the batarian worlds being first in the invasion path) are the most numerous in ME3 aside from husks, we should at least get to see them be pre-established because of their involvement ahead of time – they don’t get any proper introduction as is in ME3, just accepted as being there.

The honest general idea in this one is tying off this thread that was seemingly built, by way of being a repeated thread in both ME1 and ME2, but goes entirely unmentioned in ME3. Obvious reasons are obvious, but that’s why these hypothetical DLCs “exist,” to address things that the games didn’t have time for. (And that’s a big part of a lot of these, so... buckle up.)

Obviously, we have some of the supplementary material to work off of here – I’m specifically thinking of the Illusive Man’s comic series, Evolution. (Side note, TIM’s involvement there should probably also be part of the reason he’s quick to send Shepard in here – he knows what these artifacts can do.) You can read the wiki page as easily as this, but to quickly detail the important part, we know what these are through them, artifacts meant to ease the way for the eventual arrival of the Reapers by doing the huskifying work ahead of time, without the need for things like the Dragon’s Teeth (which... I want to bring these into this in some fashion, considering they seemed to have importance in ME1, but as the numbers of husks increased in the later games, they fell by the wayside – ME3 claimed that they were basically just to increase a subject’s adrenaline and spread the Reaper tech through the victim’s body quicker from the fear of impalement, and that seems like a lot of effort for little reward, since nothing indicates a way to come back after infection anyway).

So why are these on far-flung colonies, especially when the husks definitely don’t have the mental capacity to control ships and spread out that way?

Since, again, there’s no way to come back after infection anyway, that’s going to be one of the core questions. This seems like a highly inefficient way to set about conquering the galaxy. Why spread this if there’s no reliable method of getting it to go beyond any singular world? (Obviously, the original idea seems to be a) BioWare shock value and b) something to horrify the audience with no reason attached – so it’s time to add that reason). What is the purpose?

So that’s going to be a running thread, probably the major subplot of the story. Obviously, though, the first priority is Shepard trying to escape getting caught up in this colony that is descending into Reaper control. Also, since I said we’re introducing the marauders here, I think we need a turian contact on the ground – I almost said make them a female turian, introduce them to the world of Mass Effect well ahead of the DLC for ME3 (a-HEM!), but I also think that we’ve got another situation of seeing them get infected and die as a result – it IS a consistent point in this series that coming back from Reaper infections Is Not Done. And repeating that here makes it a consistent theme, considering Nyreen.

So while I still say there should be female turians making their appearance among the turians of the colony, our turian buddy is going to be a guy, just for the sake of not stuffing another named female turian in the fridge. I’ll get to a more proper introduction of a female turian later, promise. (And, I like to imagine, with the number of DLCs I’m writing up here, there’s some kind of ability to retroactively introduce female turians into the crowds in the base game as a “patch” through at least one of them, as well as into ME3 proper... Hey, this is all fantasy as it is, let me have that one.)

Anyway, the turian contact is going to be frosty with Shepard – he (I don’t have a name for him at this point) not only doesn’t trust Cerberus, he was also friends with Saren, making him distrust Shepard. While Saren was a traitor, it’s got an element of ‘guilt by association’ to have had close ties to him, so Shepard’s kind of a living embodiment of the hit to his good name. Even if he didn’t do what he did because of Shepard specifically, they’re still associated. But he is still on a mission and Shepard is here and willing to assist him, so...

That said, he’s a Cerberus contact – Cerberus may be human first, but, given the ME2 crew, they can cultivate non-human contacts and aid, and under the circumstances of this colony, being a joint endeavor of humans and turians (probably throw in some callbacks to the last edition of these hypothetical DLCs and mention Ambassador Goyle and the Planet of Peace story). He’s been influenced by Cerberus operatives because hey, it’s good for humanity and turians to make peace if there’s a greater threat, right? Shepard meets with him on the outskirts of the colony proper – in order not to be influenced, they’re acting as much outside of the colony as possible. (Come to think about it, it might be a good idea to make recruiting Mordin a pre-req for this, at least handwave him having come up with a measure meant to protect from Indoctrination and the effects of these artifacts.)

The artifact is already influencing colonists, of course, and our turian friend is ready to write them off immediately – they’ve read the reports, and indoctrination can’t be reversed. I picture a brief discussion about how horrible indoctrination is as a weapon, making the Reapers enemies into their servants, and so warping their minds and perceptions that they’d never be able to trust that any thought they have afterwards is their own, even if they could be saved. Because seriously, that’s one of the most unsettling things for me in this franchise.

The idea is, of course, to get in to where this artifact is and destroy it unseen. That probably means a stealth segment through this colony – honestly, do it like the batarian base in Arrival, I don’t think that it would be so bad. That offered some nice variation, if a little spare on interactable things. Here are going to be some interactable things, things you can get to if you’re good, pay enough attention to the line of sights and such, but will still risk discovery.

Those interactable things are going to be some of the background of the artifact and what’s the whole deal – y’know, codex stuff, things that aren’t essential to the story but good background. Lay some groundwork for the idea of what the Reapers want out of these things being left behind.

Stealth section comes before the inevitable action section, of course. Here, the artifact is in underground caverns (like normal) and our turian buddy sets out to make some quick scans, get the information they need. And, of course, it activates at his approach, zapping him with energy. He tries to shake off any effects but... Well, I already said that he was gonna get infected and die.

So here’s where we start seeing the husks show up. It’d be really nifty if we could get them in varying states of their evolution (or devolution, depending how you look at it), some people just having glowing eyes, others being full on huskified.

And, of course, our turian contact is now in the process of becoming a marauder. I’m thinking we’re having something of the same thing as with Saren here – now that the Reapers made contact with him, they’re framing him as their “herald,” the one who’s going to act as their instrument. Shepard rightly gets to point out the comparison, which does at least get some hesitation – he’s being indoctrinated, is in the process of becoming a pure Reaper tool, but isn’t all the way there yet, the process isn’t 100% immediate.

Also I figure this is a good time to really establish (in terms of ME2’s plot) that the Reapers are so interested in Shepard and why. Like, yeah, sure, we do get Harbinger’s whole thing, but that’s not really a dialogue where we get to ask questions. It’s not even an interrogation where Harbinger demands information. Harbinger just spouts out dialogue of “this hurts you” and such. That’s not really telling us anything. So, yeah, there’s the basic “Shepard defeated a Reaper,” but hey, let’s just get a little more out of it.

I mean, we can intuit what Shepard means for the Reapers, sure, but if it’s important enough to be a major motivation, it’s important enough to say outright, you know? So Shepard is a pinnacle for this cycle – they killed a Reaper, delayed the advancement of the cycle for a few years, that’s a bit of a big deal when it comes before the harvest proper starts up – and the Reapers (like Leviathan will later) want to better understand what makes them tick. If this is unique to Shepard or the human condition, and, if it’s the later, how to break this down to its basic chemical composition and make it their own.

Turian buddy is also here to mouthpiece the explanation for what the Reapers even expect to gain from this. Slaves who can’t operate the mechanisms that they’ll be using are poor servants. I figure it’s as much an intimidation matter as anything – prompt the effective burning of a colony without deeper investigation, sow some fear about the unknown and keep people staying to the comfortable and familiar areas of the space that they live in, corral them in the familiar patterns. It’s a plan with the intent of intimidation – it isn’t until the harvest that they need the servants, so until then, they just want the borders firmly established.

Seems simple enough, sure, but this is still a mystery as far as the game proper is concerned, and I am trying to work within the established structure of the trilogy, rather than come up with some massive reveal that changes our understanding of everything – if I WERE just going to rewrite the franchise, I could do that, instead of writing up synopses of add-ons to the main game, y’know?

Of course Shepard’s gonna get free – I’m thinking that it’s a rescue effort by some of the other crew on the Normandy (because it really bugs me that, when the game is focused around Shepard gathering up the “Dirty Dozen” for their “Suicide Squad” (look, I had to get that out of my system), they only take two members out on missions at a time, so hey, look, they get up to something while Shepard’s busy doing the dirty work. This being ME2, we have to shoot our way out even further to get back to the artifact, which is where our turian ‘friend’ waits.

Paragon/Renegade choice here – do we try and reach out to him, get him to help us blow the artifact to hell, or just jump straight to the boss fight? By this point he has some additional help, by way of our introduction to a harvester – these were dropped into ME3, on Menae, with no exploration, and non-Reaper ones were meant to be enemies during the development of this game, so call this the natural evolution of matters. We’re introducing the marauders and the harvesters ahead of time, explaining the lack of fanfare that these enter the “proper” storyline with. The difference is if our turian friend is aiding us or the harvester, the harvester being our big end boss for this DLC.

The harvester gets killed, the artifact is blown up with the turian (he chooses to remain if Paragoned, a reminder of the permanent effects of the indoctrination process and how this is something that can’t be fixed – hammer home some of the fear and anguish that will be impacting those left behind from the inevitable fighting). Shepard returns to the Normandy for a debrief (I do kinda picture Miranda being involved in that, because, again, squadmates get additional dialogue here, and she IS the ranking Cerberus officer). Also some set up about discussing about Cerberus efforts to better understand indoctrination (foreshadowing for Henry Lawson’s experiments on Horizon next game).

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Indoctrination has seen further study, providing a war asset. Dialogue changes to reference Shepard having encountered marauders and harvesters before.

 Commander Shepard

The Suicide Mission is coming, and the Illusive Man has asked for all of Shepard’s companions to have their heads cleared. Now it’s Shepard’s turn. Their burdens have remained – the loss of the Normandy, the death on Virmire, and their death at the hands of the Collectors. The rest of the team has to clear their heads, and now so must Commander Shepard.

(Post-Horizon)

Yeah, why is it that, while we’re dealing with having to clear the heads of our crew, our PC, who has canonically been killed and resurrected, does NOT have to do this? So, yeah, Shepard needs a good head clearing. (For the record, I have written a fic of this: Lazarus Risen, and that’s effectively where I’m going with this, so if you’re so inclined, check it out instead of reading this, since while the recap is shorter, the fic itself is not too long.)

So, if you don’t want to read that, my idea when I made the fic was to explore both the idea of “Commander Shepard’s loyalty mission,” or the one where Shepard clears their head, AND the thought of just what the heck required Shepard to take all their companions on a mission and leave the Normandy vulnerable to the Collector attack after obtaining the IFF. Now, I’m saying that this mission unlocks after Horizon, but in my mind, that’s when and where this mission takes place. I just don’t know how to implement it within the game design that presently exists, so we’re gonna leave that open to player interpretation.

So the starting point of the fic (and thus, this DLC – like I said, that’s effectively where I’m going with this) is that Kelly Chambers, in her role as the Normandy’s official unofficial counselor/therapist, has recognized that Shepard has a lot of trauma associated with their death and resurrection they have not worked through, and so that’s gone into her reports to the Illusive Man. Mister Illusive contacts the Normandy, declaring that Shepard’s going in to a Cerberus facility, along with their crew, for a full psychiatric workup – the mission is too important to not have all these issues dealt with before going into things.

A bit of fun with this, on the basis of it being why Shepard is taking their whole squad off the ship, is that there’s the opportunity for some banter and genuine crew interaction, something that is sadly missing from the base game itself. Since I’m me, and this is about what I want from these, this is also an opportunity for some character stuff with Shepard, both playing referee (maybe getting a chance to recover some of the loyalty divisions from the confrontations if need be?) and getting to be able to better build and display the growth these characters are going through from seeing their loyalty missions resolved (cuz you DO resolve all the loyalty missions before activating the Reaper IFF, right?). The whole point of doing them was to clear their heads, encourage growth, and the thing is, we don’t get much of that forward arc in ME2, with ME3 just catching us up later. At least half the point of these is some retroactive continuity to smooth out the trilogy’s edges, after all.

Moving on. The arrival at the Cerberus Station (I am assuming this is the same one from the early part of the game, the one Miranda and Jacob take Shepard after they escape the Lazarus facility, though it doesn’t have to be, just a convenient use of model reuse) is uh... complicated. After all, Shepard’s motley crew is not exactly Cerberus approved (even if TIM authorized it – remember how Brooks in Citadel will mention that “Cerberus was a human organization bringing in aliens”?). There is a stir. A handful of situations have to be defused before everything properly gets under way.

This isn’t in my fic because that was focused on the one thing, while, as DLC, this would have to fill out some additional content to justify the time spent and the resultant price tag players spend to buy it, but I kinda figure this is where we can start seeing where the dissent is for Miranda in particular (probably Jacob too), given her Cerberus loyalties. This is a Shepard-focused mission, but I do see Miranda having a relatively decent role in any sidequests, character bits, and dialogue, given that we presently have in her a Cerberus loyalist right up to the point that she sees the human Reaper in the endgame. Especially if she isn’t part of the endgame squad, I feel we should have some material that connects those dots somewhat. I mean, I expect all the characters SHOULD get some, but Miranda in specific is the one with the almost explicit arc of taking her from Cerberus loyalist to her “consider this my resignation” remark to the Illusive Man at the endgame.

The Cerberus station director (my fic said her name is Doctor Nuwali, so we’ll be going with that) tries to organize the chaos that is Shepard’s squad (Shepard being as helpful or obstructionistic as the player chooses to allow, because Cerberus and authorities figures are always fun to poke at, and we’re getting both of those rolled up in one). Building off the above point with Miranda, there’s also clearly tension between her and Nuwali – Nuwali is, in many ways, a reflection of who she was at the start of the game, the pure, uncompromising believer to the cause and the results-driven focus without acknowledging the human cost, while Miranda has been in the position of growing and developing and questioning (Like I said, connective tissue for her character arc).

Nuwali directs Shepard into a private room for their psych evaluation, insisting on the separation of Shepard from the squad. (Just go with it, it’s for plot purposes.) Within is a prothean artifact, and it begins to react at Shepard’s arrival. It flashes-

-and Shepard finds they’re now in the Virmire facility. This is the requisite combat segment stuff that I can brush past during the recapping. The point is that they’re making their way through the geth to the area where the bomb was deployed, to find Ashley or Kaidan, whoever was left behind on Virmire (even if they were left with the distraction team and Shepard didn’t go back for the bomb, Shepard is guaranteed to have been at the bomb site, not the other area, so...).

They assist Shepard in clearing out the geth and then go into confrontation mode – “you’re working with Cerberus now, what the hell?” You know all the fan debates about why is Shepard working with Cerberus, given the horrors they uncover in ME1, especially if you roll a Sole Survivor (and, considering that is the default Shepard background, that’s clearly BioWare’s preference, so it’s not even like this shouldn’t come up – DLC is better than nothing, you know?).

Yes, we’re doing a “defending your life” style thing here. Hey, the game could use that, considering how Cerberus is the bad guy and we’re working with them. We deserve a more critical examination of this concept.

It’s a bit of a verbal joust – Ashley/Kaidan question what Shepard’s doing, their purpose in working with Cerberus, why they aren’t just leaving, how they could have tried to turn them in to the Alliance and the Council after they were given the Normandy and use the information in the ship’s databases as evidence of the Collector threat? There were ways for the story to progress that weren’t this deal with the devil. Shepard gets to acknowledge their points, struggle to justify what they’re doing. Emphasizing that this IS a deal with the devil, and if Shepard doesn’t find a loophole out of it, they’ll be condemned alongside Cerberus as well – not blowing them to hell in the here and now can make them culpable for their future activities, especially if Cerberus tries to bank on the idea of “Commander Shepard worked with us” (like they do with Conrad Verner in ME3).

Call it “preempting the ‘we should have been able to side with Cerberus’ discussion” that cropped up after ME3 – people, we ARE talking about a xenophobic terrorist group, how were they EVER gonna come out of this series looking like the good guys in the final analysis?

The ultimate point is that this is not a good situation – whatever good might come of Cerberus in general, Cerberus cannot be trusted. Ashley/Kaidan point blank ask can Shepard truly justify staying with them, doing the Illusive Man’s bidding, regardless of their good intentions. And I don’t really think there’s a good answer here – again, in my head, this plays as the mission Shepard’s on when the Collectors attack the Normandy, and, because I make sure to do all the loyalty missions before going to the Collector Base, Shepard is about to cut ties with Cerberus by way of a massive explosion (because I’d never trust the Illusive Man with the Collector Base), this is basically laying groundwork for that moment.

If you don’t do things that way... Well, sorry, but this is my hypothetical DLC, so we’re playing things my way.

Anyway, this sends Shepard on their way to the next installment of “defending your life.” Because we’re absolutely following the Rule of Three here, so there’s more than just the one segment. More requisite combat stuff happens, this time fighting through the Citadel tower again. At the end is Saren. Because why wouldn’t we have an encounter with him when Shepard is doing questionable things in the name of defending the galaxy?

He, of course, is rather smug about the fact that Shepard is allying with the devil in the name of fighting the Reapers – to him, it comes across as something of a victory, because here Shepard is, the person who came after him for his alliance with Sovereign, having made his own deal with the devil. If Ashley/Kaidan were the angel on Shepard’s shoulder, the voice of their conscience, telling them that they are making a mistake working with Cerberus, Saren is here to be the devil on the other shoulder, pointing out all the value there is in working with them, in doing whatever the mission calls for to put an end to the Collectors and the Reapers.

One would hope that this kind of rhetoric from the villain of the first game would make it very clear that Cerberus are the bad guys. As if to drive the point home, Saren also brings up that Shepard was rebuilt by them – with what is certainly Reaper tech. Shepard has begun the process of ascending to the Reapers level, what’s some more, melding more with their tech, bringing that melding, that joining, that unification of organic and machine, to the people of the galaxy, of doing the Reapers a favor and acting as their instrument in raising up galactic civilization?

Things of course descend into a firefight (because we’ve got to have our action quota). This time, Shepard gets to pull the trigger and personally kill Saren – sure, I get satisfaction out of persuading him to shoot himself, and I can always take the other options if I’m really pressed to face off against him, but I want the visceral satisfaction of having Shepard standing over Saren themselves and pulling the trigger.

It’s the little things, you know?

Anyway, because Rule of Three, this proceeds Shepard to the third point. They are back on Lazarus Station. No combat this time, just proceeding through the halls until they find themselves in the spot where they met Jacob in the prologue. Here, they see Miranda and Liara, discussing the act of giving Shepard to Cerberus to rebuild. While at first they’re talking to each other (whether or not you want to interpret this as Shepard somehow having heard the conversation or this just being Shepard’s interpretation, that’s up to you – we’re already in the center of Shepard’s mind here, does that really need explaining?), eventually, Shepard gets to speak, raise concerns, raise their voice.

Shepard gets options – do they understand and appreciate what was done to them, the resurrection and effective drafting into Cerberus? Or are they angry and pissed off – they were dead, and then someone else comes along and decides not to let them rest. For me, this has always been an issue of bodily autonomy, where, with Liara using the reasoning, and I quote, that she “couldn’t let [Shepard] go,” SHE is the one deciding what to do with Shepard’s body. Whatever you might say about what that did to make the galaxy a better place... Was it what Shepard would have wanted done with their corpse, to be handed off to a terrorist group culpable in acts of horrific deeds so that they could play Frankenstein with it? This is, in the games proper, just completely ignored – the one option to be angry is about Liara hiding this from them, not about her DOING it, and in ME3, Shepard – without player input – frames Miranda and the Lazarus Project as “giving them back their life.”

Yeah, no. I can forgive Miranda’s actions, given her characterization is actively about her going from looking at Shepard as a resource to be tapped to a friend (or possibly lover). It’s not perfect, but it’s still part of her arc, and she does at least make an apology (even if the writing doesn’t focus on the part I want it to, that ME3 conversation being focused on her wanting to implant Shepard with a control chip).

But I NEED to be able to express anger at Liara in some way just to like her, considering her canonical reason for doing this is all about HER – not that she considered Shepard the only one in the galaxy who could stand against the Reapers, but that SHE couldn’t let Shepard go. When in my games, she has no right to that. She’s not the one my Shepard’s are in a relationship with. So what those who romance her probably see as an act of love and devotion, I, not romancing her, can’t see it as anything but an act of obsession. And, even if I have to limit myself to a mental simulacrum of her, because there’s not a better place to include such a thing in these DLCs, it will help me, because it’s at least acknowledgement that hey, maybe Shepard is kinda pissed about people making decisions about them for them.

*ahem*

Right, so, where were we? Right, the reaction to Miranda and Liara discussing what to do with Shepard’s body. So as Shepard reacts, this prompts appearances from Ashley, Kaidan, and Saren, all of them playing Greek chorus about the decisions made about Shepard and how Shepard is reacting to them all. And yes, now we have both Ashley and Kaidan, regardless of who was left on Virmire, because why not – if we have one of them showing up for this DLC, why NOT include both of them? You’d have both actors in the studio anyway, so... Basically this is the big character confrontation where they all make the points that fans can debate and nitpick over when they bring up this topic, until finally the question gets put as, effectively, “well, however you feel about it, it has been done, so what are you going to do now?”

And to answer that, Shepard has to reenter the room they woke up in. Because we’re not quite done here yet.

Yeah, that whole conversation piece? THAT was the third “fight” or “combat” scene of this sequence, done in dialogue. Think the Atris confrontation in KOTOR 2, a verbal standoff. The actual interaction that Shepard has to face in the operating room... is themselves.

And their mirror image is offering similar questions, now wanting Shepard to respond, rather than having other characters voice opinions for them. How do you play Shepard’s reaction to their death and resurrection? To the fact that they are spending this game working with Cerberus, who is responsible for a traumatic event in roughly one third of all Shepard histories? Who Shepard uncovered multiple instances of their mad science in ME1 that crossed every ethical line? Who have it repeated rather consistently, is a humanity-first organization who will put human interests (and Cerberus interests, claiming they’re the same) ahead of galactic ones? If the Collector Base has (or is) a Reaper weapon, do they legitimately trust the Illusive Man with this power? Does Cerberus or the Illusive Man REALLY deserve any loyalty from Shepard?

Think of this as “stage two” of the verbal boss battle.

So, the confrontation with themselves concludes with, effectively, Shepard making their decision for going forward – the idea is that it has all been a mental debate, Shepard talking to themselves and coming to a conclusion that they needed to make. The general idea probably is one that, if you’re an obsessive fan with a penchant for filling in the gaps of canon (hey how are you?), you may have imagined these kinds of thoughts and discussions and conversations happening, but isn’t it more satisfying to actually have them take place on screen? And two, Shepard confronting themselves is, in and of itself, always a big deal. As I said at the beginning, this is Shepard’s loyalty mission, done to clear their head. How could it not result in Shepard facing themselves and asking themselves these big questions directly?

When Shepard officially makes their decision for the forward march, you know, figuring out how to handle Cerberus from here on in, which basically come to, effectively, use them for their resources and cut them loose at the end of the crisis or cut ties now and let the chips fall – since, after all, aside from Miranda and Jacob, whose loyalties to Cerberus are already wavering, Shepard has a squad full of the most dangerous people in the galaxy, so they could handle a mutiny of any kind (and, on the player end, there’s the knowledge that, while all this is taking place, EDI is getting unshackled and effectively is capable of running the ship) – they’re kicked back to reality.

And yes, those are the only two results of this, because, just to hammer it home, Cerberus is NOT. THE GOOD GUYS. The Illusive Man is not secretly good, he’s just using the “humanity needs protection” line to justify his actions and attitudes that are about seizing power. And anyone who thought that we would, should, or could side with Cerberus come ME3 was kidding themselves.

Granted, with this line of thinking, I’m not sure what the motivation would be to give Cerberus the Collector Base at the endgame (I mean, I never have, so...). Maybe the idea of “indoctrinate yourself, get taken in by the Reapers, you bastard,” but... That doesn’t seem right for Shepard’s characterization. Eh, like I said, much of this is based in how I play in the first place, so if you want to try and figure that out, feel free, but my list, we go by my way of approaching things. Because that’s just how I roll.

So I haven’t explained what, exactly, this prothean artifact is. Well, it’s effectively nothing more than a plot device, but let’s say there’s a note that becomes interactable, that basically talks up the artifact as being what I’ve called it so far, something that is meant to allow the user a chance to directly interact with themselves, face the truths they deny. Again, this really is a plot device meant to allow the circumstances of the plot, and while I could go into the details of how I assume it works, it really just needs to exist, but that’s my handwave excuse to justify how it worked. It works very well, thank you for asking. The reality is the how is less important than what it brings up.

So, Shepard is back in the physical world, and sets about putting the ideas into motion – the Illusive Man wanted them here? Yeah, no. Not doing that anymore. Shepard gets their crew out of there, upsetting doc Nuwali (giving the impression that there were some sketchy ideas in mind for Shepard’s companions when they were alone themselves, invasive procedures that they’d knock them out and see if they could take them apart and put them back together, now loyal to the Cerberus banner that sort of thing) and has a brief chat with Miranda as they fly back to the Normandy.

...You know, which, based on my time table, is currently under Collector attack. Fun times!

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The artifact as a war asset, reports about Nuwali being captured by Alliance officers while in the process of having attempted some of those ‘sketchy ideas’ she’d meant to enact on Shepard’s companions.

The Lights of Klencory

The planet Klencory is rumored to hold secrets regarding ‘the machine devils.’ Admiral Hackett of the Alliance has suspicions these are references to the Reapers, and has been secretly investigating these. Now, a team of Alliance soldiers have vanished out there, and he’s calling in Commander Shepard as a specialist, along with an old friend...

Bonus Companion: Ashley Williams/Kaidan Alenko

(Post-Horizon)

So back on the old days of the BSN, before Arrival came out, the speculation was, after Lair of the Shadow Broker, that the successive DLC would feature Ashley or Kaidan, give them the same treatment Liara got by featuring them in a DLC. One of my favorite ideas featured the concept of the “machine devils” of Klencory. You know, the planet blurb from ME1 where a volus is digging into a planet in search of evidence of “lost crypts of beings of light,” the indication being that he’d had his mind scrambled by a prothean beacon. So, hey, guess where we’re going?

I mean, obviously Illium, duh.

Actually, that’s not a bad starting point. Illium in general seems to be fairly neutral territory – sure, technically a planet in Citadel space, given its an asari world, but with many Citadel laws relaxed, it makes for a place where “an Alliance operative” will meet with Shepard (We’re starting by way of a letter from Hackett, for the record) without it being considered suspicious behavior by those looking in who are not in the know about the tacit support that both Hackett and Anderson are offering Shepard. There’s a lot of questions coming into this on Shepard’s part, given that, at this point in time, they’re not really an Alliance officer, and yet this is apparently something that is getting them called on? Probably means Reapers.

It gets complicated once Shepard arrives for the meeting and finds Ashley/Kaidan is their contact.

So, before we go further, I want to acknowledge, by the nature of having any real contact between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan between the encounter on Horizon and the opening of ME3, I am effectively breaking one of my cardinal rules for these, namely the idea of not screwing with the pre-existing structure of the games’ plots in allowing Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan SOME form of genuine contact and communication, to the point of a chance for a legitimate conversation about things and where they stand with one another (Yes, the previous entry was bending that rule, but this is an outright breaking of it).

Thing is, this is one thing that really SHOULD have existed in the games proper, I shouldn’t have to have built something up to include here, and I will 100% die mad about it. Ashley and Kaidan got shafted by BioWare’s handling of things, and I’m not willing to forgive it (if you follow my liveblogs of replaying the games, you’ll know I frequently complain that Arrival really was gift-wrapped to serve this function, and yet it doesn’t so much as mentioned Ashley/Kaidan). So yeah, we’re having an opportunity to address this stuff right off, it’s taking place in the game “proper” (for a given value, considering all of this is made up, but...). I’ll get into how this will impact their interactions come ME3 in the “Post Game Followups” section, for now, we’re just going with this.

Also on the “to note” element, I am mostly going to refer to Ashley/Kaidan in the sense of swapping them into place for one another, since, obviously, they are mutually exclusive at this point in the trilogy. But I do want it understood that I am not viewing them as interchangeable characters but as individuals. Just... If I stop to explain all the little differences of how they interact with Shepard in this, the variations of what they say and do on the character level, I’d basically be writing this out twice, which this is going to be long enough as it is, you don’t need to read the plot summary twice, and I certainly don’t need to write it twice. Assume that, even if not explicitly indicated, there ARE differences in behavior and dialogue that are reflective of them as separate characters and people, even if the overall plot must go forward regardless of how differently they’d react as individuals.

And you might want to pay close attention, since there will be a lot of use of “they” pronouns ahead, since Ashley/Kaidan is more awkward to write and I make it a point to not address the player character (in this case, Shepard) by one gender or the other in these write-ups, given that that’s variable, so things might get a little confusing if you’re not paying close enough attention to the context.

So... The meeting with Ashley/Kaidan begins... awkwardly. They’re uncertain how to really react to Shepard – sure, the encounter on Horizon means they know that Shepard is back, but now they’re really having to deal with this particular reality. So they’re going to aim to jump to business. Alliance intel has intercepted some messages from mercs hired out near Klencory, which got Admiral Hackett paying attention to things happening out there – like Shepard will acknowledge, between the circumstances of this meeting and the quick summary of the reason for the mercs all being out there, this sounds like it’s connected to the Reapers. Hackett wants to have Shepard as a “special consultant” as the Alliance has someone (re: Ashley/Kaidan) investigate (“consultant” since Shepard may not have had their Spectre status restored, so it gives them legitimacy either way). It could, potentially, just all be a massive coincidence. But since when are things ever “just” a coincidence?

Ashley/Kaidan are willing to use the Normandy as transport – Hackett figured that, between the stealth systems, and the lack of official Alliance authority in the area, the Normandy is the better option for getting there without being told to get lost. The bigger question is how they’ll be received – it’s not like merc gangs take well to outside interference, and the Alliance having any jurisdiction out there is questionable at best. But they should at least TRY to go in with civility. If this volus billionaire spending all this money on this (his name, for the record, is canonically given as Kumun Shol, so hey, less work for me, having to come up with a name!), then if he hears from someone who seems to be taking him seriously, it might get them invited in explicitly.

Obviously, though, if they’re hitching a ride on the Normandy, if things remain unspoken, the trip out there will be very awkward and seem longer than it is. So they have to address Horizon. They’re not going to apologize for not joining Shepard – Shepard is still operating on a ship flying Cerberus colors, even with good intentions, that is a betrayal of their oaths to the Alliance, Cerberus are terrorists and xenophobes, who want to secure human dominance. But they will acknowledge that they reacted to Shepard’s return in a way that wasn’t their best. I am not going all the way to “they admit that they were wrong,” because based solely on the information that they had, they handled things as best as they realistically could. But they will regret that things ended on the terms that they did.

Shepard gets to respond to that – are they accepting that it was a bad reaction to unexpected information, do they still hold a grudge, whatever. The conversation continues to a point of conclusion – Ashley/Kaidan don’t trust Cerberus, they want to trust Shepard, but the connection between the two at the moment makes that difficult, and they don’t know how to bridge that gap as things stand, but they’re going to try this.

We will be coming back to this, never you fear. But, of course, that’s more for the ending than it is the beginning, and this one conversation is far from the end.

Klencory is a world with a toxic atmosphere, so they first have to gain access to a semi-decent landing zone near where Shol has established himself. Because, naturally, he’s not interested in visitors – the brief communication we get with him is him effectively talking himself into the idea that Shepard is “the agent of the machine devils,” which... I mean, considering the prothean beacons and communications with the Reapers, it’s not crazy that he goes there, even if (by the rest of his actions), Shol’s gone a little nuts.

Shooty shooty bang bang, fight through the exterior guards and into the facility proper. Ashley/Kaidan are a little uncomfortable about what’s gone on – this really isn’t how they pictured things going, given the legitimate credentials they were supposed to be coming in with, and they can recognize the fighting is because of Shol not giving them an alternative, but it does still make them feel like they’re acting as little more than the thugs they’re dispatching.

Call this a reaction to the fact that Shepard doesn’t exactly get much of a differentiation in the game themselves. Particularly when they can call out looters on Omega while swiping whatever’s not nailed down.

This is another conversation that’s going to be part of that “coming back to” thing – assume there’s some kind of tracking metric for all of this in the same vein as how ME3 tracked how Ashley/Kaidan responded to Shepard as a lead in to the confrontation during the coup. Just, I’ll get to how that all plays out at the end.

Because a band of mercs aren’t enough to hold off Shepard, Ashley/Kaidan, and the third companion (yay party balance), they reach Shol’s central command. He’s a little batty, but it finally gets through to him that Shepard is not the agent of the machine devils. He is skeptical of Shepard being the savior from them, though. Instead, he wants Shepard and company to do something for him.

There is a vault. A vault none of his men have come back from. Shol declares that, if Shepard can enter, learn its secrets, and survive, then they will have proven themselves to be salvation from the machine devils. Since this is the advancement of the plot, Shepard will have to go ahead with this, even with the natural objections of Ashley/Kaidan (and, probably, Shepard themselves).

Another pause for a dialogue – Ashley/Kaidan are skeptical of Shol’s motives, and believe it may be too dangerous to just do what he says. Especially considering that he’s clearly not entirely stable. This is a situation that really calls for calling for backup. But there’s really not the option of waiting, because if they don’t do as Shol says, he’ll throw all his mercs at Shepard – even if we’re assuming that Shepard versus countless mercs ends well for Shepard (because, after all, it’s Shepard), it’s just a senseless loss of life.

Going in is a set piece of suspense. Think the Peragus mine, with a dash of Korriban for good measure, from KOTOR 2 – lot of littered corpses, this creeping and foreboding unease and feeling of being watched, this overbearing expectation of SOMETHING appearing down every dead end... Build the tension. This is a place that, the littered dead aside, no one has entered in thousands of years, it should absolutely be a place that could chill you to the bone. The examination of anything should feel like it’s disturbing the dead.

You know there’s some ancient security device active, right? I mean, something’s killing the people who trespass here. Obviously, it has to be something that will put up a fight as our end boss, and it needs to be something that is able to last a long time. I’m thinking an ancient robot (my mind is going in the direction of something similar in design to the ancient droids of KOTOR’s Star Forge), a last defense, left behind by a precursor to the protheans.

Yeah, it feels like an underwhelming result to me too, but it makes logical sense all the same – we have some evidence of things from prior cycles, not just the prothean cycle, making it through to the next ones, not the least of which is the plans for the Crucible. Seeing as how that bit of intel is just dropped into our laps come ME3, this is at least making it functionally foreshadowed, if indirectly, by actually showing us ancient technology that is still functional and viable even after more than fifty, a hundred thousand years. Plus the foreshadowing of things surviving to this cycle in the vein of Javik. Things lasting this long in forms beyond just ruins at least makes all of that happening in ME3 at least have some groundwork laid in these prior games – otherwise, we only have a few codex references to ancient civilizations, as opposed to it being an actual component of gameplay, things that the player MUST interact with.

But yeah, the threat may be underwhelming, but the payoff is what it guarded – the last remnants of this ancient culture. The corpses have been preserved, given that it’s a bunker into the planet’s mantle – the toxic nature of the atmosphere now came about because of the Reapers, though, of course, this is only spoken of in the material available as “the machine devils.” There could be a great wealth of information among this stuff.

Thing is, now that the threat’s dealt with, Shol wants his prize. He spent years of his life and a great deal of his money on this, and now he wants to use it – and, because he still is a paranoid bastard, he’s not particularly inclined to uphold his end of the bargain, having expected to have Shepard and the “guardian” of the tomb (for lack of a better term) kill each other. He just wants all of this to increase his own fortune – he’ll sell everything within to the highest bidder and damn what the Alliance, the Citadel, anyone might be able to get from the archives. Giving it to private collectors – like, say, the Illusive Man, or even any interested faction of capital-c Collectors (as in “the enemies we fight throughout ME2”) – will enrich him and it doesn’t matter what that information might do to help make the galaxy ready for war against the Reapers.

Now, normally you would think this would lead to a Paragon/Renegade choice. BUT, instead, we’re going to have a variation moment for Ashley and Kaidan. They’ll deal with Shol, but in unique ways. Ashley, having marine hand to hand combat skills (as she mentions in character discussion during the first game), manages to get close and disable the volus’s suit enough to render him unconscious, while Kaidan uses his biotics to get the same result. So they get to have a moment of protecting Shepard (not necessarily “saving” them, because a volus getting the drop on Shepard would certainly be an embarrassing way to go, but definitely helping them sidestep a situation).

NOW’S the time for the Paragon/Renegade choice, dealing with Shol himself. He is an obstacle, considering that dealing with the legal claim to this cache of information leaves the door open to some sticky situations as a result – the last thing they need is to have anything that might be useful be wrapped up in the legal battle. But he DOES have a valid claim. Just unilaterally taking this place from him is questionable at best – even if Shepard’s still a Spectre, are they REALLY able to just come in and declare the location to no longer be the property of the individual with the legal claim on it? Likewise, there’s a lot of sticky issues with the idea of killing him – after all, as mentioned above, he does have a bunch of trained mercenaries on hand, and it’s reasonable to try and walk out without adding to the bloodshed. But if it’s made clear that his madness has overtaken him (which, I mean... it kinda HAS), then there’s room for the Citadel to be able to legally seize his assets, including his claim on Klencory and its vault. But this still means institutionalizing a person because they’re inconvenient.

That’s the choice – institutionalize Shol and seize his assets, despite the subsequent legal battle that he and his kin can draw everyone in to, or cut through the red tape preemptively, kill him, and claim what amounts to squatter’s rights, since with him dead, no one else is there to take charge of the archive, whatever it contains. Ashley/Kaidan are going to say they have no intention of letting Shepard kill Shol (because that would certainly always be a line for them), but there will be a Renegade interrupt to take that choice out of their hands anyway, and Shepard can make an argument that, if they don’t do SOMETHING, Shol’s men will come in and try to kill them, while if he’s dead, that denies them their paycheck (because for one time ever, can we just have the mercs give up and run off once the source of their paycheck is dead?!). Shol certainly isn’t going to tell them to back down, and “survival instincts” have never been at the top of their hiring priorities.

Ashley/Kaidan will have some words about the decision Shepard is making, but they can be swayed to understand Shepard’s motivations, at least, in the moment, though any disagreements they have are more in the “waiting for a more opportune moment” than “what you say goes, Commander.” More on that shortly. With that matter resolved, Shepard calls for a pickup.

Back on the Normandy, Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan are having an informal debriefing in Shepard’s cabin (save the jokes for the end of the scene everyone, we’ll get to that). They do a brief discussion of what the likely followup will be – the fact is, the Reapers are probably already uncomfortably close at the moment already, so there’s not likely to be much opportunity to examine this place too much before they show. Still, every little bit is going to help.

The big thing is going to be how Shepard’s handled things through to this point. This was an accumulation metric (in the same style as Aria showing mercy on Petrovsky or not during Omega), so the various Paragon/Renegade decisions through to this point will lead to their reaction. Paragon Shepards get Ashley/Kaidan acknowledging that Shepard is still someone they respect, and that perhaps this whole Cerberus alliance was one of necessity. Renegade Shepards are leaving them questioning what Cerberus is doing to them, and are they really the person that they once were.

That leads to the question of where they stand if they’re a romance – like with Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker, this leads to a romance rekindling, but only for Paragon Shepard, because that’s the version that has shown that Shepard is still the person they followed to hell and back, still the person they loved.

Yes, while I try and offer reasonably similar options for both Paragon and Renegade versions of Shepard, this is dependent on that. Because it’s about setting their concerns at ease, about listening to them and allowing them to be angry and upset and come around. Renegade Shepard will have shown they don’t care about that, so why WOULD Ashley/Kaidan take them back?

Anyway, insert “debriefing” joke here.

And, y’know, a reminder that, in these DLCs I’m writing, we’re going with the assumption that Ashley and Kaidan both were bisexual romance options back in the first game, and it’s an option to rekindle for both gendered Shepards.

After the interlude (however it plays out), there’s the discussion of what’s coming next for Ashley/Kaidan. They’re returning to the Alliance, of course – with Shepard’s official ties still in limbo, taking them out of the official chain, Hackett has made them a floating troubleshooter at points where he suspects Reaper involvement in some fashion, be it machine cultists and husks, Collectors, or what have you. However they feel about Shepard, Hackett is still seeming inclined to trust them on this, so they expect that the intel will still reach Shepard as they do their work. They make it clear they expect this to be the calm before the storm, and when the fight starts, they know Shepard will be on the front line. Paragons get them promising to back Shepard up when the time comes, Renegades get them hoping that they’ll still be on the same side when that happens.

Post Game Followups:

So here’s the part where, typically, I’d talk about how this impacts War Assets for ME3. But this is giving the ability to resolve the major Ashley/Kaidan element of ME3 before we even get there (like we should have in the first place...) and that means we have to deal with that. To that end, I obviously have left the door open for the lack of trust by way of Renegade Shepard, and that’ll go through things as they are, the same as if this DLC didn’t exist (I mean, it doesn’t exist anyway, but... You know what I mean!). The alternative for a Paragon completion is that there will be a distinct lessening of the tension between Shepard and Ashley/Kaidan in ME3, leading to some serious dialogue changes on Mars – more of an acceptance, instead of distrust.

I’m also thinking that, with the air cleared, there’s no moment of hesitation among them during the Citadel Coup, that it basically defaults them to trusting Shepard, regardless of how much they interact with them in Huerta and “clear the air” of Horizon. After all, Shepard already allayed their concerns with their practical involvement, gave them the chance to see them as the person they were, rather than the possibility that they were no longer the person they trusted. This changes the dynamics of their earlier interactions, and if you have rekindled the romance during the debriefing (no I’m not going to stop using that gag), then the dialogue will have more romantic undertones, the conversations more focused on matters of both them and the future together, trying to figure out if they even have a future, what with the invasion commencing, let alone where they stand with one another in that future.

I feel like I should have more done here, really, but I am really, genuinely TRYING to remain within the basic structures of the games as they are with this, because I totally could trash them and rebuild them from the start, but that’s defeating the purpose of this as additional material to the games, so that’s the most I’m offering on that. I want to do more, Ashley/Kaidan deserve a bigger and better role in ME3’s plot (which I’ll be trying to address further when we get to the ME3 hypothetical DLC, but that’s not here), but I’m trying not to totally rewrite ME3 as it is, that would probably be its own long involved project, and this is already ongoing. The original version of events can still be involved in the game proper, as the Renegade version, but that won’t be the only version any more.

Oh, and, we’re getting some war assets out of the place we discovered. That feels like an afterthought here, though. This has been about Ashley/Kaidan and their relationship with Shepard, more than anything, and we really did deserve this as much as Lair of the Shadow Broker.

 The Omega Heist

An old contact of Miranda and Jacob’s draws them – and Commander Shepard – back to Omega, where, with the merc bands decimated, an old threat they thought they’d dealt with long ago has reemerged. With Commander Shepard’s help, they must try their utmost to put this genie back in its bottle before it’s unleashed on the whole of Omega – and, potentially, the rest of the galaxy!

(Post-Horizon)

Considering Omega’s status as the dark reflection of the Citadel, the answer to it in the Terminus Systems, I just really want to explore it some more. Tie in to that, Miranda and Jacob have great prominence when they’re literally your only crewmates, but the second you start picking up the rest of the crew, they start falling off the map. Given that they’re our viewpoints into Cerberus as an organization, this feels like a mistake. Cerberus spends both the preceding and following game as enemies, and I think we need to spend some time at exploring why either of them would even fall under Cerberus and the Illusive Man’s sway.

It begins with Miranda asking to speak to Shepard. I’m gonna assume that, considering the unlock pattern of loyalty missions, this is most likely going to be played post-loyalty mission for both of them, since they’re both the first to unlock. Just to firmly establish where the characterization is going in to this. So both of them are at a point where they’re starting to question their loyalty to Cerberus (hence why I’m considering it a default that, in particular, Miranda’s loyalty has been obtained).

She’s heard from a contact on Omega about something that she wants to get Shepard involved in. The meeting moves to her office, where Jacob joins them. This concerns a mission they’d both undertaken shortly after their first mission together (see Mass Effect Galaxy, the mission Jacob talks to Shepard about having lost his faith in the Alliance over). They had an assignment to dispose of a biological sample – their assignment had been not to ‘get curious’ and investigate what it was, just get rid of it. The orders had come directly from the Illusive Man, so they were actually obeyed.

Jacob had been suspicious of the whole thing – when you’re moving something that you’re not supposed to investigate, it’s usually something that could blow up in your face. He opted for a little extra security monitoring, with Miranda agreeing and having kept track of it. That’s why this is now coming to her attention. They still don’t know what this was, but they can’t imagine that it getting let loose where any idiot could stumble across it would be a good thing.

So we’re returning to Omega. Personally, I’m disappointed that there’s no real change in Omega as ME2 carries on, even though you have to both clear out merc gangs and an active plague in the course of the game – recruiting Garrus and Mordin are mandatory quests, after all, so their joining the crew, their recruitment missions, these have to happen regardless of anything else Shepard may decide to do. So we’re getting another hub area on Omega besides Afterlife and the Gozu District market place. If Omega is the Citadel of the lawless Terminus Systems, then it can certainly fit in more of this (plus give more life to this place that, we know, will have people threatened come ME3 and the Omega DLC there).

Our central hub sector will be a safehouse established near the Kenzo District (picked because beyond existing as where Garrus had his run-in with Garm, we know nothing specific about it, so it can be used however the plot needs it to be). Under the circumstances – meaning “since we stored dangerous material on Omega without even speaking with Aria on the subject” – the idea here is stealth. Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob arrived via a transient shuttle rather than via the Normandy, and did so hopefully with some element of stealth. It’s not that Aria is going to be a threat here, just that she wouldn’t be happy learning about this going on under her nose and Cerberus is trying to cultivate some of her resources (sort of tie-in to the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3).

Their contact is my chance to get that female turian I mentioned a ways back into things – a turian trader who I’ll name Naevia (what, I’m a Spartacus fan and the reference makes me smile). The biological sample has fallen into the hands of a gang that’s trying to take up the space left by the biggest gangs of Omega losing their leadership (I’m thinking one of the gangs from our last edition of hypothetical DLCs, from “The Clean-Up,” because continuity!).

It’s around here that Shepard does ask the most important question on the subject that I think we’re all thinking – why the hell was this dangerous and hazardous sample kept rather than destroyed? Naevia admits she thought the same thing, but she was paid enough not to care, just to watch it. Miranda states that there was a possibility of using it for something in the future – this is a sign of her beginning to waver, because she can’t really justify the use of this sample, the fact that, though they’d been told to get rid of it, the “disposal team” had kept it, and were keeping it in a place with a population.

Granted this is a long standing tradition with dangerous science, but still, it needs to be called out.

The important thing is that it’s there, on Omega, and in particular when the station is already in the recovery process of a plague that targeted every race except humanity – there is still a lot of anti-human resentment on Omega, and the last thing that Cerberus should want is a human-spawned crisis breaking out (because no matter where the sample came from, a human organization, known to have a humans-first bent to it, was the group that stashed it here on Omega). Hence our presence.

We’re gonna have plenty of time to talk with Miranda and Jacob, so assume character conversations sprinkled here throughout (much as I cite it as reason that I don’t particularly care for their loyalty missions in comparison to others, that their loyalty missions also only have one ending, that once you start the mission, the only resolution is obtaining their loyalty, makes for a useful method of characterization trajectory here). This is here for the sake of exploring and deepening their character arcs, their division with Cerberus from the endgame, given that they’re both set against Cerberus come ME3, so we’re going with that.

We also get to spend some time with Naevia and getting a new perspective with the turians – she is a free agent, sort of like Vetra ended up being in Andromeda, in the sense that she’s a rebel to the status quo of turian military discipline. She’s looser and less rule-bound. She lives on the fringe of society and that shapes her reactions. She has no need for the turian rules of combat and prefers to take preemptive action – the rules of combat are a great idea in theory, when you have enemies who will respect them. But the Terminus is full of people who won’t. And, while she hasn’t been read into the Reaper matters, she is clearly picking up on the undercurrent between Shepard, Miranda, and Jacob.

Now if you’re assuming that this is leading to Naevia turning out to be involved in matters with this sample... Well, that’s definitely going to be a thing to follow, but let’s just keep going for now.

And yes, I have been cagey about what this sample even is. Remember, that’s because it’s a mystery even to Miranda and Jacob – they were still in a point where they were willing to listen to the Illusive Man’s orders without questioning them. The assumption was that the team they were giving it off to was a proper disposal team, and the failure of either of them to investigate it beyond his word. Y’know, the idea being they’re both starting to push themselves to look beyond the word they’re officially given by their boss and question him.

So… investigative work. We’ve already been over how in these summaries, that’s not where I focus on, not having a layout or anything to work with and such. So I’ve given the core ideas of character work and plot that plays out over the course of things, let’s cut to the climax.

The sample is being held by one of the gangs and a member of the Cerberus disposal squad. Because hey, look at that, a Cerberus agent went rogue and started killing all their guys, Commander Shepard, can you take care of that? He explains just what this sample is – a contaminant that can devastate a planetary atmosphere, hence why it was being kept on Omega, a space station. Of course, the problem with it is that it won’t discriminate and a rapid atmospheric dissolution will kill human lives as well. This is one of those things that it’s actually entirely justifiable that the Illusive Man didn’t want to use... y’know, if it weren’t for the fact that he still kept it, but...

Anyway, here’s where we come to Naevia’s sudden but inevitable betrayal, citing the profit to be earned – it’s easy enough to live on ships instead of a planet, so she’ll come out of this fine. Shepard gets the chance to shoot her with a Renegade interrupt, and look at that! She WASN’T betraying the team, just pretending to in order to slide a knife in the bad guy’s gut. It doesn’t kill him, and it still leads to a fight, but it’s easier if you don’t take the interrupt (because as much as I like the interrupt system, I think there should occasionally be consequences for taking a quick and reflexive response rather than the more considerate and thoughtful and examinative approach to a situation).

A multi-stage boss fight ensues – basic ground troops, interspersed with standard LOKI mechs, a YMIR mech joining the fight with reinforcements, and then a gunship. Maybe the gunship peels off midway and lets in another YMIR mech, just to really hammer the ‘boss fight’ element, or at the least let that be a higher level difficulty challenge. I mean you can only do so much with the mechanics of the game to create boss fights, right?

Anyway, Naevia is either dying, laughing at how her turncoat act was too effective, or she’s made it through with a few scratches and is patching them up as Miranda and Jacob are recovering the sample. Here’s the expected Paragon/Renegade choice of destroying the sample or storing it somewhere else – I can even see a reasoning for keeping in the idea of ‘once knowledge exists, it can’t just be destroyed, we need to study this to be able to devise a countermeasure.’ It’s a sucky one, for the record, but it’s a way to justify the Renegade stance.

This is where you see the culmination of Miranda and Jacob’s development. Jacob is open about wanting to correct their prior mistake of leaving this sample around to be used by anyone who might try to actually use it. No matter what, he sees no possible good coming from it and wants it destroyed. Miranda is conflicted. Her trust in the Illusive Man tells her that it would be right to hold on to this, it’s a weapon that could protect humanity if the aliens were to attack them – which is something that can’t be discounted as a possibility, considering the batarian hostility and the general aggravation of other races like the turians (see the previous Hypothetical DLC entry for more expansion on why I consider that a thing gets brought up). But she also knows that if this exists, then there’s a chance humanity can’t control it. She is looking to Shepard for guidance on this – she’s not turning to the Illusive Man’s standing orders here.

When the group returns to their safehouse, they find Aria there. Because this has been happening on Omega, and it’s her business to be fully aware of what’s happening on Omega. She thanks Shepard for disposing of that little business – if the sample was spared, she does imply that she knows about it, but, so long as it’s leaving Omega, she’s not going to be concerned about it. After all, she only cares about Omega’s interests. But, as a reward for what Shepard’s done for Omega, from the plague to Archangel to this (plus, potentially, dealing with Morinth, given that was the presence of an Ardat-Yakshi on Omega), she is offering a reward for Shepard – a penthouse suite.

Yes, I’m letting Shepard get an Omega apartment. I mean, okay, having one right before the Cerberus takeover of Omega come ME3 is not exactly the most prime real estate, but hey, Shepard deserves a place to relax, right? Plus it also comes with access to a special Omega market, a place where Shepard will be able to purchase any weapons or upgrades they might have been missed in the course of their missions (and any that get added through the DLC, including these). Because really, we should be able to have access to those things somehow, as in the game as is, if you miss it, it’s gone forever.

Anyway, Miranda and Jacob will also have follow up conversations when they return to the Normandy, discuss the way that things have played out and how they’ve evolved as people in the course of the game. Because as I said at the start, the two of them, in terms of their character development, kinda falls off the map in the course of the second half of the game. So they get a little additional content that helps fit them into the big picture of their character arcs.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If Naevia survived, she’s an available war asset in regards to her underworld connections and such to send help Shepard’s way. If it’s kept intact, the sample also has some benefit for Alliance scientists in the study of reversing its effects and how to restore ravaged worlds. Also some additional content in the Omega DLC, though I’m not sure about the details of that right now.

And, y’know, since Naevia’s existence means that we have a female turian model built and developed circa ME2, this SHOULD mean that there are female turians scattered throughout both further DLC (as in ‘assume their existence in further installments, even if it goes unsaid’) and (because now they’d “exist” prior to the release of ME3) there would be numerous turian females in ME3 as assorted extras and such. Should go without saying, but I’m saying it. There will still be a few important female turian NPCs I introduce in further installments, but these are now part the standard background NPC collection.

 Battle Scars

Alliance officers on shore leave have been disappearing from the Citadel with no trace. Ambassador Anderson suspects there’s more to this than the standard dangers of a space station that’s practically its own world. Though Shepard is in a questionable position among the Council, they’re the one person Anderson can trust to solve this.

(Post-Horizon)

The Citadel being so limited a space in ME2 always bothered me. Y’know, I get the thematic idea, that ME2 was about exploring the darker underside of the galaxy at large. But I liked the Citadel. There was a lot about it to explore, all things considered – we’re talking about the galactic hub of politics and commerce. This really should be a major location, no matter the game. And as I’ve said elsewhere, there could be a whole game set on the Citadel with room for more. So yeah, we’re doing this here, exploring an area of the Citadel that we never got to see before.

There are Alliance officers going missing and Anderson gets Shepard involved. Obviously, the synopsis covered that bit. The idea here is that we’re going into areas of the Citadel that normally, Shepard has no business in, and in areas that are more like vacation areas. You know what this means? It means we’re going to have non-combat segments, in the same vein as Kasumi’s mission. There’s gonna be an extended sequence of Shepard out of combat armor in this one, because Shepard is not being called on to be a soldier but to infiltrate and be seen as a civilian more than a combat fighter. (I’m thinking this is going to involve a new casual outfit as well.)

And we’re gonna say that this is happening at an exclusive resort, meant to be a location that’s relaxing – a resort on the Citadel, effectively. It’s primarily a place for Citadel-aligned soldiers (Alliance and other races) to recover after combat, a therapeutic place for soldiers to get treatment for their PTSD (think a place where they’d probably have sent the PTSD asari in ME3 to if there wasn’t an existential war on). It’s why it’s a popular place for these Alliance soldiers to be, and we’re also going to rate it as having the highest success rate as a psychological and therapeutic facility in the known galaxy (because, being on the Citadel, why wouldn’t a place like this have a reputation of being the best, given how the Citadel is effectively the metaphorical center of the galaxy) and it’s a bit of a mixing bowl of Citadel culture, which allows for the rest of the party to come along.

I’m going to stick with mandatory companions here for a handful of reasons – one, Shepard’s got an eclectic band, and I feel like if they walk around a Citadel resort with Grunt and Legion, for example, that’s probably going to blow their cover. For two, I like the idea of mandating some pairings and developing the relationships more. Last entry was about Miranda and Jacob. Here, I’m thinking... For a resort, I honestly lean towards Samara and Kasumi, characters who, respectively, can blend in with “high society” and can pass through unseen by others. Kasumi, of course, does her cloaking to accompany Shepard – she does prefer going unseen. Samara, though, is playing at being a Matriarch – given the setting, let’s say that she’s pretending to be looking for a facility for her rambunctious daughter who is ‘disgracing’ the family name – sort of playing on her own history with Morinth (because Samara’s method that way), while still being a role she plays.

Yes, I’m aware that Kasumi is a DLC character, not everyone necessarily has her, but hey. If you’re playing DLC in the first place, you’ve probably collected other DLC, particularly a new companion, we’re just gonna roll with it, because I’m not going to develop an alternative without her, so consider them connected – I don’t know, say they got packaged in a sale together or something. This is all hypothetical in the first place, remember, does it REALLY matter that she’s not in the base game?

Shepard, of course, is going in as what they’re looking for, an Alliance officer looking for leave. This way there can be a solo segment, and the tension of “will Shepard run into trouble they can’t handle on their own before their companions come to their rescue?” Obviously, there does have to be some addressing of Shepard’s fame and notoriety, but it’s not like Shepard’s not doing other things that are putting their famous mug in places they shouldn’t be, particularly when it comes to involving Kasumi (The Hock heist, anyone? How, exactly, was the most famous human in the galaxy supposed to keep a low profile there?). So we’re just gonna handwave that, like you do.

As always when these are investigative sequences, I’m just gonna gloss over that part for the sake of convenience – the basic facts are that we have a lot of suspects with no clear motive at the outset of things. You know, get your basic archetypes wandering around – look at any show that features a recovery center, you’ll find them, I’m not gonna go into detail on the incidental characters.

The trick is that Shepard is going to be doing their initial investigating solo – they have to get entrenched before their companions show up (given that Samara’s cover is going to have her supposedly only there to look the place over, rather than sign herself in as needing “treatment” and Kasumi is going to be cloaked, searching for the things that Shepard can’t get access to – yes, for the record, I’m setting up for a Big Damn Heroes moment, I would think that would be obvious). They’ll meet with the above mentioned archetypes, learning details.

The details are more for the flavor – how well does Shepard figure out the scheme (which I’m getting to) before the villain shows up to explain in a monologue? Because, y’know, what villain doesn’t love explaining their nefarious deeds with a monologue? Shepard figuring out more and more of the plot before they confront the bad guy will impact the way the end fight goes down – figure it all out, you can sidestep the big final confrontation, figure most of it out, the fight’s significantly easier, stick to the bare minimum, it’s the hardest it can be.

This of course gets Shepard caught by our villain of the piece. So, what’s going on? Well, it’s an attempt by one of the doctors at this facility at cooking up the same shady shit Cerberus has, in the form of cyborg soldiers – the soldiers who have been kidnapped have been converted into these cybernetically enhanced soldiers. Problem is, they’re mindless automatons – higher brain functions didn’t survive the implantation process. So while these six million credit men are superior soldiers for combat, able to shrug off the kind of injuries that would cripple any other organic soldier, probably even have like nano-tech that speeds up any kind of healing and recovery process, they’re ONLY for combat, there is no human mind, no individual still alive in these shells – they’ll do as ordered because of the computer control chips in their heads, but only because those chips fire off the impulses needed.

“No glands, replaced by tech. No digestive system, replaced by tech. No soul. Replaced by tech. Whatever they were, gone forever.”

This is a point that I wanted to bring up in Miranda’s chat about “disposable soldiers” – the concept of soldiers being disposable is the kind of thought that cleans up war, something that the very idea is MEANT to be “dirty.” When you have these disposable soldiers, something that replaces the flesh and blood troops, you’re now in a position where going to war is not a difficult choice – you’re not sacrificing anything in the fight, because your best and brightest are safely out of the line of fire. When you don’t fear war, you’re going to turn to it as the first option, not the last. And, as pointed out by the use of Mordin’s quote above, at some point, your “disposable soldiers” become exactly what the Collectors are, mindless automatons who perform the duties of their masters, and, because of that distance, their masters’ own humanity erodes, because they never have to get their own hands dirty, while their servants are incapable of arguing with the orders.

This is when we get the aforementioned Big Damn Heroes moment, where Samara and Kasumi rejoin the party – since I’m assuming Shepard is being restrained at the moment, we have Kasumi Overload the controls and get them loose while Samara covers her by biotically handling the guards (because there are always guards).

So we get to that ending of how the boss fight can go down – Shepard gets to argue about the whole “disposable soldier” thing, bringing up and expanding on the above argument. If they uncovered all the details of the plot prior to the point they’re found out and taken captive, they can talk the doctor out of the inevitable fight (they still can choose to fight, of course, but the option is there to avoid a fight altogether) and have them shut down the project, effectively take their “prototypes” of these cyborg soldiers off life support and let them all die out (because, again, it’s the cybernetics that are even keeping them alive at this point), they can try and fail because of a lack of information, or they can actually agree with the idea, just that this doctor isn’t the one to be controlling them – it’s a valid choice, after all, to have a viable standing army to face the Reapers with.

I did debate making that last an option, just because I am morally opposed to the idea, but I am trying to respect that the Paragon/Renegade division was meant to be more than “goody-two-shoes versus puppy-kicking-monster,” and approach it from a level of “win with morals versus ends justify the means” – if you’re looking for something that can face the Reapers, like Shepard is aiming for throughout the trilogy, then a pragmatic approach says “we can use this resource, and I’ll deal with the moral weight of it later.”

Thinking about it, this does kinda make a flaw of the Kasumi-Samara team, because I do struggle with seeing how they’d just casually go along with Shepard saying “zombie cyborg army? Sign me up!” But maybe the Justicar code says that, regardless of origin, their existence has purpose and use, while Kasumi is horrified at the idea of using – and defiling – the dead like this. Basically, I want there to be a shoulder angel-devil scenario here, but I may not have selected the right companion pairing for this. Still, I’m not going back and rewriting this to make that work, so we’re just going to acknowledge that and move on – they’re both on the team, and there are other Renegade choices Shepard has available that they both just accept, so we’ll accept that.

And, y’know, I have a personal preference for Paragon at these decision points, and would probably stick to choosing to wipe out the zombie cyborg soldiers myself, and these are my ideas so I roll with what works for my decision making process, so nyah.

This still leads to the question of what, exactly, should be done with this facility – this is the head of the place we’re talking about as being responsible, with them out of commission (either being killed by Shepard or taken into C-Sec custody, depending on your choice), it’s entirely possible the place will be shuttered, or at least in chaos for a time, and that means all of its current residents are going to be kicked out – this is one of those “well intentions doesn’t change negative results” scenarios. Of course, Anderson will try to step in and do something, but... He can only do so much. Especially with having to clear out the devices and secret lab material and such, there’s a lot in this that just... is not going to have this place in a condition to be what it’s meant to be. Especially if things turned into a fight with the doctor and trashed the place.

Shepard themselves can only do so much – they can make a recommendation, but ultimately, there will be a board decision. They can offer a suggestion, a way for the staff to try and focus going forward, but it’s going to mean downsizing their care in some fashion – either they focus only on the immediately at-risk patients, going in the way of ‘if you’re not an active threat to yourself or others, you have to find somewhere else to seek treatment,’ or they limit themselves to just the care of a single species, because the psychological experts for multiple species is a resource drain.

And this one is NOT a Paragon/Renegade choice. It’s player’s best take on the subject, because there is no “right” choice in this scenario. Either way, someone is getting screwed over. You can hope sending the not at-risk patients won’t exacerbate their conditions, but you can’t be sure of that – especially when it comes to people who have been there for some time, PTSD and other conditions won’t just go away, they need to be managed and treated, and if you go from one facility and one medical professional to another, that can throw off your recovery. And you can specialize in the treatment and wellness of a single species, but what about the members of the other species? What about the “melting pot” nature of the Citadel and how, realistically, reinforcing those barriers between species only makes it harder for these species to get along with one another?

It’s a “no good choice” scenario, and I think it’s worth a discussion with Anderson at the end (rather than back on the Normandy with all the companions, just because I don’t think the game can really account for everyone there having an opinion). Though let’s also give a follow-up conversation with Kelly – y’know, the therapist – and let her have more to do in this game.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If the doctor was taken in to custody, they’re among the Cerberus scientists during the mission on Gellix – Mister Illusive stepped in to get their work under his banner, and, like Gavin Archer, Shepard’s involvement eventually made them hesitate to do his bidding. If the cyborgs were kept on, they’re a decent strength war asset.

 The Batarian Connection

A Cerberus vessel goes missing out near the batarian border. While the Collectors are still the first priority for Commander Shepard and company, the Illusive Man is concerned this may be the first stage of a batarian incursion of Alliance space. He tasks Shepard and company with recovering the missing ship. The batarians, however, have other ideas...

(Post-Horizon)

We hear a lot of talk about the batarians making slave grabs throughout the first two games, and the Colonist background has this as a part of the things Shepard has been through. But we don’t actually see it. And we probably can’t manage to see the absolute worst horrors of the batarian slavers, but that’s not the full point of this.

No, the point is to start showing another face to the batarians. See, we’re going in with the idea of the batarians slavers we’re after handing off the captives they take – of various races, though krogan and turian are not likely, given their own, more aggressive nature (maybe useful in gladiatorial rings... We might be coming back to that before these DLC are done), and the quarians aren’t going to be as numerous, that still leaves humans, asari, salarians, and other batarians. And we know from Mass Effect 3, having the Cannibals being introduced in the first segment of the game, the Reapers have access to a lot of batarian genetic material, so they’ve already spent a lot of time developing how they intend to repurpose the batarians into the servants they need to wage war in this cycle.

Codex material speaks of how the Collectors want certain specific types of people to collect, and that is going to be what’s happening here – while the Collectors main focus in the game is to gather up humans to turn into Reaper slurry, we’re also looking at the other races, because there’s a history of the other races being taken by the Collectors for various unknown reasons. It wasn’t clear if there would have been an intent to build additional Reapers out of the other races – an asari Reaper, a turian Reaper, etc. - or if they’d just be left to rot, possibly slurried alongside the humans and just put in the same shell. To build off the idea of “organic preservation” of the species who consist of a cycle, I’m going to assume that they would be fused into a Reaper of their own, though there’s room to argue they were going to just be pulped into the same Reaper or left as the Collectors of the next cycle. But my ideas, my interpretation of things. And if BioWare wants to fight my interpretation, hey, should have included it in the game.

So yeah, the batarian slavers we’re coming across were going to offer the Collectors more of those captives of various races and such. The idea here is to not just have a look at the horrors of batarian slavery, but also an upfront acknowledgment that the batarians do this to their own people as well. The crappy situation for your average batarian is reduced to codex and one-liners, so we don’t actually have this knowledge available for the common players, and this is a thing that needs correcting.

We’re also going to have an encounter with a different Collector ship (just to avoid too much of the whole “small universe syndrome” of the same ship dogging Shepard for two years – it wasn’t until ME3 and James’s backstory that I got the impression that the Collectors had more than the one ship, since they made this one ship out to be this major force). Because, really, if the Collectors taking colonies was something of a plan B when the Citadel didn’t open, then they should be readying themselves for more than just humanity to be taken.

Among the batarians is a sense of distrust – batarian propaganda says the galaxy hates them, and, because we get the slavers and mercs running around in the games, the audience is probably not inclined to disprove that theory (particularly if there’s a Colonist Shepard doing the run – because I say so, there can be plenty of statements from them on the subject that fit the background specifically, because it’s nice that these are all theoretical and I can throw in whatever I like). Still, the general idea is that Shepard does feel a moral responsibility to save them, even if, as in the case of Renegade Shepard, it’s just in the name of preventing the Collectors get their claws on them.

But, thing is, ME2 offers no ship piloting mechanic, and I’m not bringing that in. And, y’know, I still get war flashbacks of getting ambushed by Sith fighters in KOTOR. So that means that the Normandy heads off, Shepard ordering them to find help (we’re gonna say that this is taking place somewhere near the batarian-turian border, so the Normandy can go find a few turian ships – going back to my idea of “shaking up companions” concept, I don’t have any particular choices to go with Shepard this time, but this makes it almost mandatory for a companion other than Garrus to come along, since Garrus can sway the turians to come to the rescue of alien nationals – and this ship ends up crashing, with Shepard and companions still on board – as are the freed slaves.

And we’re not crashing on a habitable planet. Because while there’s the helmets and all, I feel sometimes like the franchise as a whole underplays how much the atmosphere of planets being conducive to life as we know it is kind of rare. So while the cargo hold, settled in the heart of the ship and surrounded by the various additional decks of the ship, makes it through, there are portions of the ship that have been vented into space.

And the Collectors are coming.

Shepard gets to make a Paragon/Renegade “inspiration” speech to the captives, recommending that they get to trying to save themselves. Paragon will get a majority on their side, Renegade only a particularly brave soul. This one would be the Paragon’s contact/coordinator, just so that I can have a clearly identifiable person to turn to. And, yeah, we’re punishing Renegades here, but here’s the thing about this – we have stolen people, taken prisoner, made into slaves, about to be handed off to aliens who are only known to the galaxy as kidnapping and experimenting on people who never return, and then crashed on a deadly planet, with their only shelter pocked with holes letting out the valuable atmosphere that keeps them alive. I’m sorry, but being an asshole to these traumatized people? Even in the name of saving their asses from said kidnapping and experimenting aliens, they are NOT going to be ready to take up arms and fight. Read the room.

So, it becomes a game of causing enough losses to the Collectors for them to retreat for the Normandy to arrive with rescue vessels. Cat and mouse combat, with interspersed dialogue with our batarian coordinator (Making a name up on the spot... Kahvahr). That’s giving the expansion on both him as a character, talking about himself – a political exile, he spoke out against the Hegemony’s attitudes and practices, that they are so isolationistic that the necessary trade with the Citadel races, trade that could reduce their reliance on slavery, is killing them, which led to him attempting to leave, an attempt that ended up putting him into the hands of the slavers he argued against, and he’s certain that the Hegemony’s leaders basically gave him up. Talk about the beauty of Khar’shan, as a planet and place, something more tangible for us the audience of this place that we never get to go – he speaks longingly of these natural wonders he doesn’t expect he’ll ever see again.

The aid of the batarians Kahvahr leads can offer some combat segments getting avoided, but I do want to include some elements of the Collector faction from ME3 in combat segments all the same, the Collector Captain in specific. Because these things never appeared in ME2, so let’s remedy that.

And our end boss is going to be some variant of the Collector drones we see in Paragon Lost, which are these giant sized Collectors. So they get some additional tricks and are a clear case that Shepard is now facing the worst forces the Collectors can throw at them. Because I figure you can give them some interesting additional boss tricks.

The turians arrive and the Collectors withdraw, so Shepard gets to pass on what to do with these batarians – treat them as refugees who are seeking asylum in Citadel space or ship them back to batarian space. Because the thing is... batarians in Citadel space are probably not going to have things pretty well. Like there’s a reason we see batarians on Omega but not the Citadel. And a lot of these batarians still have families in the Hegemony. So there’s a very real argument to the idea that they’d be better off going back. It’s probably bull, considering the Hegemony’s leadership (and definitely bull on the basis of the Reapers being about to steamroll the batarians in between games), but... It can be made.

And it also speaks to how well Shepard is responding to Kahvahr – Kahvahr makes it clear, batarian slaves tend to be those who speak out. How much good can they really do going back to the Hegemony? Sure, you can argue that it’s in the name of encouraging rebellion against the Hegemony’s leadership, but realistically? It’s signing a death warrant – if this attempt at silencing him didn’t work, the Hegemony will likely just go straight to killing him.

And maybe Shepard’s okay with that – the whole reason we’re doing this is because the portrayal of batarians through the rest of the series is almost exclusively them as an always chaotic evil antagonistic force. What do they contribute to the galaxy, right? But this whole thing has been to help paint the batarians in a new light – now, shipping these batarians back to their people isn’t a mercy but a death sentence. What can I say, I like that script-flipping. But, as always, it is a choice for Shepard, for the players. Because apparently, people who play these games like the chance to play the asshole. Fine, you can, but you’re definitely getting judged for it.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: If given asylum, a batarian militia will have formed, both the survivors of the crash and of batarian refugees, wanting to aid the Citadel forces, Kahvahr himself as an asset.

 Shadow Dance

Shepard’s connections to Cerberus have not gone unnoticed. A Spectre – Vexx Liranus – has decided that they are a key component to Cerberus plans (not untrue) and that their capture or death would be useful in combatting Cerberus (definitely untrue). With a fellow Spectre nipping at their heels, Shepard has to face what should be a comrade in arms in a deadly game of cat and mouse!

(Post-Horizon)

We meet three other Spectres in the trilogy, and only one of them, Jondum Bau, in ME3, is actually an ally. This is turning that on its head – all things considered, Vexx Liranus should be an ally. After all, we’re talking about a fellow Spectre, working for the Council, and Cerberus IS using Shepard for their plans, so taking Shepard out would make sense.

It’s just Shepard is a good guy, working with Cerberus as more an alliance of necessity, rather than any ideological alignment. And while I’m sure if you had a chance to sit down and talk to another Spectre, they’d probably eventually come around to the idea, well... Where’s the fun in that.

So Vexx. We had Naevia above in “The Omega Heist” as our “first” female turian for the trilogy, though she does potentially get killed. So we’re gonna have another female turian here, just to really sell the “no fridging female turians” concept. She is a badass turian soldier, like I want a planet with an “r” name to say she had a major incident on so that she can be “the Raptor of [wherever].” Because I love alliteration. I picture her being voiced by Claudia Christian (who was a favorite of mine to voice a female turian back before we knew anything about Mass Effect Andromeda, and while I’m absolutely a fan of Danielle Rayne’s performance as Vetra, I still regret that lack, so I’m making this happen here).

As for the actual plot, we’re gonna start on a small waystation location. It’s a standard resupply place, in the vein of like those Fuel Depots or something, a place like the Citadel but smaller. Because I think that space stations are an underdeveloped aspect of the Mass Effect universe. Like in Star Trek, there are Starbases and Deep Space Stations (such as DS9). Surely the various militaries of the Citadel races are doing the same, building their own stations that act as refuel and resupply, as well as standard rest and relaxation – Spacer Shepard will talk about living on ships, but I don’t see a child actually being raised on military vessels. But a space station that acts as a rallying point and home base for a vessel? That I’ll buy.

So this begins with the Normandy pulling in to one of these types of stations. You know, a little bit of a supply run, something simple. Things do not go according to plan, though, because, y’know, why would they, we wouldn’t have a plot if they did.

It begins simply. They settle in for a resupply, Miranda suggesting that the operational crew get a chance for some break time, Kelly adding that crew like Rolston and Hadley should have an opportunity to contact their families. That’s how we get here. As Shepard proceeds to look through the market, we get other angles of Vexx monitoring and observing Shepard. Shepard will begin to get that feeling of being watched, and that’s when she makes her first strike.

Now, yeah, I say right off in the synopsis that Vexx is a Spectre, but in the story proper? This is going to be kept quiet for a while. Sorta like how Vasir gets this intro that kinda clearly marks her as someone who we’re going to have to fight later, Vexx is getting the appearance of being a straight up antagonist. Because in her mind, she IS an antagonist to Shepard. She just believes that she’s the protagonist of the story, specifically because of Shepard’s ties to Cerberus, coming to this place in a vessel flying Cerberus colors, operating with a Cerberus crew. In her mind, she has discovered a threat to the Citadel and the Council.

While I’m still on the “give the companions more of a role” train, in this case, we’re going to see Shepard cut off from the crew – they come under fire from Vexx, they give the command to evacuate the station, return to the Normandy, and get out until they give the signal. Paragon Shepard wants to minimize casualties, Renegade Shepard wants to handle this themselves – Vexx interrupts their leave? It’s on now.

This leads to a chase through the station, and finding that she’s gotten things pretty well set up for this chase – I figure at some point, Shepard comes across like a secured bunker she’d been using as a command base, finds logs that have been tracking them since they landed on Omega at the start of the game. (Timeline being what it is, meaning as variable as it is, I’m gonna say that this is taking place functionally around, say, the Collector ship mission.)

That discovery is also when her Spectre status is made clear. Now, while there’s a good chance that Shepard’s had their Spectre status reinstated (thank you Dad!miral Anderson), well, we still need a plot here. Vexx doesn’t believe Shepard’s claim to have Council approval – after all, she certainly can’t just casually check this out while on a mission, Spectres are supposed to function independently of the Council. And she’s pretty good with the “better beg forgiveness than to ask permission” approach – Shepard helping Cerberus, even as a double agent, is a threat (for a less competent example of why, see how Shepard helping Cerberus in ME2 leads to Conrad Verner preaching Cerberus values in ME3).

The hunt continues. I’m basically picturing this functionally working a lot like a lower-levelled version of Arrival’s Project Base level, just with like security drones and such, and Vexx popping in and out of combat range. This is a hunting mission, on both sides, and the idea is that Shepard (and, by extension, the player) should feel like Vexx or her drones might show up around any corner. If nothing else, call it useful practice and experience.

Now, I said before I wanted to avoid stuffing our first female turian in the fridge. While Naevia could survive, she also could die. So I want to guarantee that at least one female turian of prominence is introduced without killing her off. That means that we’re going to have to find a peaceful resolution, as well as an alternative that allows the bloodthirsty playerbase to be satisfied.

That means an outside agent, a third party, getting in on this. I’m thinking a krogan merc with a grudge and a krantt and a blood oath against Vexx he’s more than willing to extend to Shepard, the Spectres, and the Council – with Vexx, it’s personal, having tangled with her before, with Shepard, they’re in the way, and with the Spectres, they work for the Council, and the Council gave the go-ahead on the genophage, so hey, it’s a good day to be him.

This eventually leads to, after some three-way combat, Shepard suggesting a truce for the time being – the krogan (Vargan, for want of a name) is a bigger threat to them both at the moment, since he’s distracting them and endangering the station as a whole. Vexx sees the wisdom in this and is willing to work with Shepard.

This gives a little more time to explore her, now that Shepard can talk to her. Vargan’s grudge stems from her disbanding his merc pack a while pack – they had ideas similar to the Blood Pack and Clan Weyrloc (re: Mordin’s loyalty mission), just without the aid of any salarian scientists. Maybe they’d sought out Okeer (possibly part of the reason that Okeer became a “very hated name,” as Wrex puts it? I don’t know, I’m spitballing here). Whatever the goal, however, she managed to put a stop to it, enough that Vargan was stripped of his clan name – given the structure of krogan society, I figure that in doing that, a krogan loses all right to even attempt to mate with the females, a big blow to a proud krogan leader, basically leading him to a voluntary exile from Tuchanka. That he still has a krantt after that still speaks to his skill and prowess, but also makes it clear that these are his only allies in the galaxy.

Shoot-y shoot-y stuff happens, yadda yadda... We’ve been over how writing about combat in these write-ups is boring. End result, we learn more about Vexx, develop and establish her further, give her this likeable air now that we’re on the same side, and get to Vargan, taking out his krantt in the process. Now that he’s alone, he is ready to die. He got everyone loyal to him killed, that means he’ll never regain a clan name now. He wants to die.

Typically, Paragon/Renegade decisions are a clear binary of “good means letting people live, bad means letting people die!” But here, Paragon is understanding the krogan mindset – he wants to die because he will never have a place in krogan society if he lives. He got his krantt killed, so he will never be able to gather a krantt again. He will never have that trust again, and so his death is the only way he can have an honorable ending. Meanwhile, Renegade is saying “no, I’m not going to grant you the mercy of death, live with your failure.” And doing that will likely mean he will strike out and go on some kind of suicide run (indeed, I picture that result being a news announcement overheard on the galactic news points).

Because I like the idea of twisting the Paragon/Renegade assumptions around – the idea behind it is supposed to be more nuanced than “good = blue, bad = red,” but in context, a lot of the use of the system through most of the series is a lot more binary. So this is showing the flip side of both ideas’ general attitudes – you are saving more lives and respecting his attitudes and beliefs by killing him, while knowingly leaving a threat to others that you KNOW he’ll act on by keeping him alive.

Vargan defeated, it comes back to Shepard and Vexx. She’s more impressed by Shepard at this point. Paragon Shepard showed an understanding of non-human mindsets, and that more than anything makes her hesitate to paint them with the same brush as Cerberus. Renegade Shepard showed enough martial skill that she’s concerned that things will only reach the point of a stalemate, and likely do too much damage to the station for it to continue operation.

So she offers Shepard what she’s going to call a deal – keep to the Terminus Systems, like they have been, and she’ll let things stand as they are, with the added note that, if their Council reinstatement is genuine, she’ll also send a letter with a fuller apology after the DLC concludes. Yeah, it’s basically going back to the status quo, but one, I’ve been clear that my goal is to make these slot in comfortably with the existing game, and two, back to the in-universe justifications, it also means that she can prevent other Spectres from coming after Shepard – after all, we learned with Saren, the only real way to respond to a Spectre going rogue is to send another Spectre after them. If Vexx is in Shepard’s corner, it prevents other Spectres from coming after them later.

Probably should lead to a line or two in reference to Vexx from Tela Vasir, depending on when Lair of the Shadow Broker is played – alternatively, I suppose Vexx should have some comments about Vasir’s death as well, but I did say above that I see this functionally being roughly around the point of the Collector Ship in the timeline, and I always view Lair of the Shadow Broker as taking place after the Suicide Mission, and my write-ups, my timeline. Moving on.

Shepard has to agree to this, because see above: not fridging female turians when the trilogy is so bereft of them in the first place. We don’t kill Vexx. Because, really, that would mean that Shepard would have killed three of the four fellow Spectres they encounter in the course of the trilogy, and their numbers are said to only go to about a hundred or so. That’s a three percent fatality rate for the Spectres, and a seventy-five percent fatality rate of meeting Shepard. Someone has to think those numbers look bad. So, in accepting the deal, Vexx walks away and Shepard calls the Normandy for a pick up.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: Vexx has a sidequest on the post-Coup Citadel, regarding her work with the unifying of turian and krogan forces. Given Shepard having contributed, she’s asking them to join in her efforts. Complete that and she gets to be an asset and there’s a boost for both of those groups as well.

 Underworld

Illium is home to many elite in the galaxy. It’s called the gateway to the Terminus Systems. But it’s equally a warning that there is as much danger in Illium’s shadows as on Omega. And now a high-profile Alliance official goes missing there. Ambassador Anderson asks Shepard to investigate as he keeps the disappearance quiet, and Shepard gets drawn into a web of conspiracy...

(Post-Horizon)

Illium seems like it should be a bigger deal, don’t you think? I mean, in ME2 we get three hub worlds in Omega, the Citadel, and Illium, but Illium is introduced after Horizon, being locked to (on console) disc two, and, while Lair of the Shadow Broker gave us more of Illium in general... Hey. Let’s explore more. Cuz now we can open up some new areas that can stick around and still be explorable after the DLC ends.

We open with a message from Anderson – “one of our people went missing out on Illium, I’d like you to look into this as a favor to me,” that sort of thing. This official is an ambassadorial figure from the Alliance to the asari (so, for the sake of a name, I’m in a Power Rangers mood right now, I’m gonna call her Kimberly Hart). She’s been attempting to shore up some diplomatic ties – I’d figure this would include matters like getting stronger ties between the asari in the name of gaining access to teachers for Grissom Academy, better relations in the name of biotic rights, that sort of thing.

Illium, being a free trade world, is a place where these kinds of negotiations take place without government oversight – I figure, based on things like the asari on Noveria in ME1 who wants to protect asari patents by getting Shepard to help her engage in corporate espionage, the asari government is extremely strict about their “secrets” while humans, who are still struggling to get a handle on what to do with first and second gen biotics, are willing to take on free agents more than like the commandos and such. Also, don’t want a repeat of Vyrnnus, so the turians are definitely out. It’s “asari free agents” who they’re looking at bringing on for this.

But with her having gone missing, that’s concerning – again, we have the asari being fiercely protective of what they view as their copyrights (which I do want to have a running theme here surrounding the idea “how do you copyright something that has this melding with the life it is bonded to?” – amps working as they do, mapped to biological systems as they are, this seems like it borders on trying to patent people in the process, since they’ll gain full maps of the people those amps are implanted in). Anderson wants Shepard to go in, since they’re off the official books.

Now we return to that earlier concept of mandatory companions. Because of the matter of biotics, this feels like a mission that Jack pushes her way in to – both because she’s been the subject of biotic experimentation, and she wants to ensure that this doesn’t turn in to the Teltin facility all over again, and to help give some foreshadowing for her becoming one of Grissom Academy’s teachers next game. Additionally, I’ll go with Thane as the other companion for this – he’s done work in Illium’s criminal underworld.

Now then, to our central hub of Illium. We’re on a different city than Nos Astra, but it’s going to have a similar flavor to it, in the same way that Azure still felt like it wasn’t all that out of place alongside the trading center. Nos Vidia, I’ll call it (sounds suitably asari, anyway). It’s not as major a hub of intergalactic trade and commerce, meaning that Shepard and company are going to stand out in the crowd.

This is also one of the more “crime” areas, where the black market has moved in. We have Eclipse symbols on the wall and, while they’re not wearing the uniform, many of the people around here are obviously in the gang. Which also makes Shepard stand out. Thane, however, manages to bring up a former contact, someone who has been able to stay alive this long, meaning they’re skilled enough that they’ve survived.

The contact is an asari I’m gonna call Kassria. Kassria has picked up some Eclipse chatter that references our missing ambassador. That means Eclipse has her, but it’s not clear so much if her being taken is because of her getting in the way of Eclipse as a gang or if the Eclipse are working for some asari company.

We pause for some talk about the various asari copyrights, explore that conversation, with Jack having quite a few words on the subject of trying to make people property. That kind of thinking creates situations that create the same kind of science as Teltin. Thane offers something of the drell perspective – he’s the one who argues that he was raised and trained as a weapon for the hanar, and that he was not responsible for the lives he took. Who owns the abilities, the user or the one calling for their use? (I mean, there’s an obvious answer, but Thane’s bringing up the alternative to this – the people who are broken down and made into weapons at the hands of others.)

Like actually, let’s make that aside a point of having Jack and Thane – in Jack’s eyes, Thane’s attitude towards the people he’s killed is much how Cerberus would have wanted her to have ended up, as a weapon for them to point, pull the trigger, and give no concern for the ways that it impacts the person who acts because of that order.

It’s the same argument that we have with Miranda – the idea of “disposable troops” does not make it a matter of saving lives, just a matter of how war becomes easier, having these weapons to unleash upon others with no risk to the people who are supposedly being protected by them. It’s a way of absolving yourself for creating slaves by giving them some higher purpose.

This really is going to be a turning point with Jack’s arc proper, with how it leads to her being a teacher, because she wants to protect the young biotics. It’s not just about her protecting the kids at the Ascension Project from ending up tortured like the kidnapped victims at the Teltin facility. It’s also about reclaiming and maintaining personhood.

And while it’s hard for me to really give the separation theory Thane speaks of (we ARE going to come back to issues of the drell in general a few DLCs from here, so consider this to be foreshadowing and set up for that bit), I’m going to try and offer his point of view – that of “if you hone someone to only be a weapon, to only look at the world from that perspective, is it really on them as an individual that they proceed to see the world from that viewpoint?”

Of course, yes, I’m aware that the inherent flaw of ALL of this is that we’re not talking about drell youths giving themselves up to the hanar in the fulfillment of the Compact or with “different brain structures” to humans. It’s the tangent that they end up on because they’re along for the ride, and Shepard eventually has to get them back on track – finding Ambassador Hart. Whether or not the asari corporations are intending to use people as weapons, the Eclipse sisters presently have her held captive, and this means staging a rescue operation.

I want to take this chance to get a better idea of Eclipse’s organization (which, by extension, showcases the ideas that are moving the other merc gangs in the series). Like, what goals do they really have – Blood Pack are basically chaotic berserkers who want the world to burn (which, fitting, considering the general krogan mindset following the genophage and the vorcha having a complete lack of survival instincts because they never needed to evolve them), while Blue Suns have the veneer of respectability, acting as private security. But when we meet Jona Sedaris in ME3, she’s a raving psychopath, ready to kill anyone in her way. So what does the Eclipse gang want? I mean, besides the obvious of money.

Kassria is a former Eclipse sister, so she offers this insight – Eclipse doesn’t even really know itself. The non-asari members are almost leaning towards biotic extremism, given how the other races tend to mistreat and look down on the biotics among them, which makes them angry and want to lash out at those who’ve hurt them. Meanwhile, the asari who join in are often driven by other motivations, given that all asari have biotics – some are outcasts (purebloods, in pureblood relationships, or people with the Ardat-Yakshi mutation – let’s just assume Samara will have shared about her loyalty mission by the time this mission is unlocked so we don’t have to have the characters explain this to Shepard), others are maidens looking for glory (think Elnora the mercenary from Samara’s recruitment mission), some are obsessed with killing (like Sedaris), and some are just looking for a purpose.

She suggests that, if given something better, Eclipse might be a valuable asset for Shepard – not just in biotics, but also in their mechs. It’d be something to use when the Reapers come calling, not that she knows about the Reapers, just that she can figure that whatever Shepard’s up to, they’ll want an army at their back (because we’re still ME2 here, so this means we don’t know that Aria will be assembling the merc gangs under her banner).

This leads to an assault on the Eclipse base and trying to reach Hart before anyone proceeds to try and kill her or worse. As we continue, we find out that there is a high-ranking Eclipse member among this group – Jona Sedaris.

Yes, that’s right, we’re going to be responsible for her getting locked up come ME3. Obviously, this does mean she’ll survive the inevitable conflict and boss battle, but hey, we’re gonna have other things to deal with in the final analysis, so hold all questions to the end.

The Eclipse sisters and the techs with their mechs are heavy throughout the place, but eventually, we reach the place they’re holding Hart. She’s been roughed up a bit, but she’s alive. She’d made contact with an asari firm who’d claimed to be willing to trade some “asari patents” in the name of cross-cultural cooperation, but Hart got suspicious of what was happening. Turns out, she was being used – the company (a minor company, not one of our major equipment suppliers from the actual games, that she had gone to them in the name of avoiding those big names) was going to give her access, only to revoke it and claim that she had stolen these patents. That would give them an opening to start consolidating biotic patents in a human market, because humans would now be running amps and implants with copyrighted asari material, and, by extension, that would mean the company would own those human biotics.

That, of course, gets Jack’s ire up, and she’s ready to tear the place apart – people aren’t things to be owned. Even Thane’s ready to join in – even accepting his claims of lacking a responsibility for the lives that his employers hired him to take (again, we’ll be digging deeper into this in the future), this is trying to force people to be under the control of this company – based on his reaction when Shepard suggests that the Compact between the hanar and the drell constitutes slavery, Thane’s definitely not on board with that idea. And even on Illium, a planet with legalized “indentured servitude,” this contract is definitely sketchy – but it would be just legal enough that the company leadership would be able to get their foot in the door, and make it harder for human biotics to be able to exist without “company oversight,” giving them access to the human biotics before they have a chance to stabilize their position in human society.

It’s some further asari haughtiness, the idea of asari like Erinya, the lawyer who holds the contract to the Feros colonists, that the asari are “better” than the other races. The asari in charge of this company are of the belief that only the asari “deserve” biotics, and want to keep all biotics in the galaxy under their control. These asari in particular don’t see any race other than asari as even deserving of evolving out of the primordial muck. Not a mainstream view, but one that we do have foundation for existing in the universe proper, and, let’s be honest, it’s not hard to imagine this being a thing anyway based on our world (We’ll touch on these themes in more detail later). And this idea, especially combined with the asari willingness to indulge in “indentured servitude” on Illium, if no where else, gets taken to its natural endpoint – they see human biotics as little more than pack mules, livestock.

Short step from there to going along with batarian or Collector ideas, but really, it’s not like we don’t know exactly where that endpoint is from our history.

Obviously, Shepard is a walking contradiction to those ideas, so combat is the only way through. Sedaris might be an unrepentant murderer, but we do still have to take her into custody – this is where Kassria comes in, taking her down and intending to hand her over to the authorities in the name of getting a slice of the Eclipse pie with her out of the picture. It won’t be a clean takeover, which will justify why Sayn is running things for Sedaris outside of prison instead of Kassria (who would DEFINITELY just leave Sedaris to rot and probably arrange an ‘accident’ for her), but it’s getting her more power.

As for the company, they’re JUST on the side of legality – the efforts of Eclipse on their behalf were by way of verbal contracts, and no lawyer on Illium is going to take the word of a mercenary over those of these high-ranking business officials. Hart swears that she can make things hell for them, lose them some very lucrative contracts with the Alliance. Thing is, that also makes her job all the more difficult, now that she’s been found out having attempted to make these grey legality ties for the sake of “getting an edge” in the biotics market – they have the resources to make this a fight that, meanwhile, would set the cause of human biotics back. (Which, as we’ve been over in other write-ups, actually is a bit of a thing that has some deeper ties in to the overall universe that the people of this setting are still working on figuring out.)

The Paragon/Renegade choice here becomes the rather obvious “do we take the option that handles this cleanly but lets the bad guys escape responsibility, or the messy alternative that may not even get the result we want?” choice. Because the thing about asari litigation is that they can afford to tie things up for decades without concern for the “short term” consequences. So if this DOES go to courts, they can wrap things up and keep them there for a long time – which will impact how things go for the human biotics, the whole idea of ‘owning’ people because they have these abilities. Because then their legality, their agency, their right to choose for themselves would be being litigated, and being done so in the court of aliens.

It doesn’t feel GOOD to me to have it left like this, honestly, but I don’t really see this as something that is supposed to have a conclusion that feels good – we’re talking about issues of corporate ownership of individuals, and the truth is... that exploitation just goes on, it doesn’t resolve itself with a few showy displays of violence. It gets caught up in red tape and paperwork, and people lose, even as they win. And the point of this has basically been, at its heart, to show that the “underworld” isn’t the black and grey markets that scrounge a semblance of society. It’s the businesses who will crush people underfoot then complain about the mess they stepped in. The design of a lot of the locations introduced in ME2 had this cyberpunk dystopia look to them, but only really focused on the criminal gangs – the core of this is approaching the white collar criminal element that was not shown off as much, how it encourages both further street crime and the depersonalization that comes from treating humans as a commodity.

Jack is pissed either way because this is all kinds of bullshit – it’s Shepard who points out that as angry as Jack defaults to, this is, for once, her being pissed at something beyond herself, where it’s not just that she wants to cause mayhem, but that she wants to make things different for others. To do something to protect future human biotics, kids who are in need. It’s her actively wanting to find a way to make a different, not just chaos.

As for Thane, he is still drell, still a proponent of the Compact (again, we’ll be coming back to this issue), but he does understand how easy it is to see something ostensibly done to the benefit of people turns around and is used by malicious actors to take advantage of them. It’s one of those things that he certainly understood in the abstract, but it’s another thing to see in practice. He leaves it on the note that “this has given me much to consider.”

As for Ambassador Hart, she knows that either way, she’s tanked her chances for getting the instructors that she’d been hoping for. Basically, the diplomatic ties she’d wanted from the asari government are off the table, given the combination of asari tied to the company and just general political embarrassment at the fact that all of this even happened – they want to ignore it, paint things over in pastels, and she is a living embodiment of the event to the asari, able to bring up the reality at a time of her choosing. The asari would rather that this go away, rather than have this constant reminder. Still, she’s grateful for Shepard’s rescue – the Eclipse might not have actively been planning on her death, but it wasn’t a good position. And, at this point, she can at least salvage a career going forward. Maybe not with the asari, but there’s a chance that relations with the turians have thawed out some.

Post Game Followups:

ME3: The fate of the company plays a part in War Assets – being tied up in legal red tape, they’re not able to contribute to the war effort, or, in a magnanimous show of “inter-species cooperation,” they’re sharing some patents with the other races. Additionally, Ambassador Hart shows up for a sidequest after the Cerberus Coup, making another go at the effort, now that Grissom is gone and the human biotics are here – might as well make the effort to get these asari instructors anyway, and she wants Shepard to help her out with smoothing the ruffled feathers (since this would still be in that period of time where the asari are still trying to avoid joining the active war effort).

Also, while this wouldn’t really impact anything via saved game import, I also figure this would at least tie in to Andromeda, that several human biotics joined the Initiative in the name of getting away from the corporations who want to hold them as “patented property” and such. Probably would be a way to help at least make Cora’s arc tighten up a little – it’s not just that she thought she’d only be a “useful freak” as a human biotic, as opposed to an asari commando or an Initiative Pathfinder, but that in getting away from Citadel space, she’d be allowed to just be, to find out who it is that she is beyond her biotics, rather than have to have her biotics “registered” with a corporation who’d exploit them and her. Not sure how to incorporate that into Andromeda proper, but it’s something that would be acknowledged.

End of Part 1, link to Part 2 forthcoming.

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

People might have realized at this point that I’m doing my BIGGEST CONVERSION YET of my skyrim game by finally taking a stab at most of the horny shit I’ve been disdaining till now for the sake of, like... forming an honest opinion over it and also because I’m an ABSOLUTE IDIOT.

Anyway, I’m trying to set up some things right, put Maids 2 on, you know, like a fool, put on Amorous Adventures Plus which SHOULD have fixed all the bugs and made the dialogue less cringy, set up the flower girls framework, set up CBBE and SOS but I specifically got 5 side CBBE mods FOR THE ONLY PURPOSE of making all female NPCs buff as fuck by equating their weight and height stats with their muscles and then cranking it all to max and shit while keeping men virtually untouched, and I’ve decided to finally try some of those same follower mods I’ve always scoffed at.

I’m getting somewhere so stay with me.

Anyway, keeping in mind I’m NOT putting Yuriana the Buxom Tank Wench on because Jesus Christ even I have standards, I have decided to mostly check on  Nachtdaemmerung77, which mostly got to me because they do have some muscle definition at least, and all seem to have a semblance of personality if not an actual one in the case of a couple of them. Anyway, he has a couple followers and all, and among them are two redguards.

Now, standalone Redguard followers with a personality are actually pretty rare believe it or not, even more so than Argonians before Khash, so most of them are technically just... generic followers with a pleasing to the eye form regardless of gender, so when I find out apparently one of the two followers require an entire quest to actually get her as follower and has an actual storyline and personality and shit, I decide to put her on at least for this one playtrhough just to check on her to see what is she all about.

(On a unrelated note I guess Khash will have to sit this one out. I don’t really feel comfortable with having her in my party when I’m doing any of this. I guess I can still keep her in the mod loadout and still have the core gang of her, Inigo, Lucien and Styx the Shadow Dog, BUT the second I start any kind of Amorous Adventures or Maids or any of the other mods out there she’s sent back to Riverwood ASAP where I guess Triss Marigold the Fully Voiced and Completely Lore Friendly Witcher Follower can babysit her).

Anyway, here’s the reason why I made this post.

THIS is Shindara, the more expanded on of the two followers, DEFAULT outfit she comes along with in the mod:

(Listen, i never said those were good or tasteful mods)

Anyway, this is her DEFAULT outfit, the one she is sold on. Very generic as far as female bikini armors go, and she’s supposed to be a fire mage rather than a warrior (That’s Yashira, the other Redguard). You see this, and you see yet another run of the mill Nexus female follower.

But then, right as you install the mod on MO2 and the FOMOD shows up and you check all the things you need to check...

The Mod throws a curve ball at you.

This is the first time you’ll hear me say it, but THANK FUCK Todd decided to be a bitch and make all Alikir Warriors in skyrim men, now their vanilla, traditional clothing doesn’t have a watered down version for female character like stuff like the Forsworn Armor does, so we can get this fucking gem!

LOOK AT THIS. WORDS CAN’T BEGIN TO DESCRIBE HOW PLEASENTLY AMAZED I AM I AM ALLOWED TO HAVE THIS. THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN ADVERTIZED FROM THE START, HELL, THIS SHOULD BE A FEATURE ON EVERY SINGLE FEMALE FOLLOWER ON THE NEXUS, THE SPECIFIC SETTING OF PUTTING THEM IN GENDER NEUTRAL GARB.

I HONESTLY FIND THIS OUTFIT THOUSANDS OF TIMES HOTTER THAN THE ORIGINAL ONE FOR ONE THING, AND FOR ANOTHER IT’S WAY LESS JUVENILE THAN THE PREVIOUS OPTION.

BRAVO TO THE AUTHOR HONESTLY. THE MOD IS PROBABLY STILL NOT AS GOOD AS I THINK IT WILL BE BASED ON THIS ONE OPTION BUT DAMN IF MY EXPECTATION HAVENT BEEN RAISED.

[downloadgtavandroid58]

Grand Theft Auto 5 is re-released on Smart phone, too, such as Android as well as IOS. So GTA 5 Android is precisely comparable to the PC/Consoles variation, and the storyline as well as game mechanics are just made portable with the same gameplay, so it is perfect for the mobile players out there. Basically, the changes that are made in GTA V mobile is simply the control as well as video game device. Riding the automobiles appears rather very easy as a result of the easy control mechanism established by CRAZE especially for smart phones.

After each hazardous battle, gamers can quit anywhere to see the scenery of the city. Each scene in this video game is meticulously polished in regards to the image. So it is not only a disorderly area however also includes much poetic beauty. They once failed, however after that they found each other and also the distinction in their characters is what links them to becoming a team. Since then, they have actually been involved in numerous major objectives, showing resistance to the government and simultaneously damaging other distressing challengers in the underworld. Therefore, if you are a gamer that suches as to discover the criminal world.

Whenever a phone is seen on ads, it constantly has a battery life with one sector missing out on (the battery level appears to be at 69%, an additional reference to the 69 sex setting). However, personality's phones have unlimited battery life. In older versions of the video game, if the gamer has twin handguns possessed as well as gets a call, Carl will take out 2 phones. In the console variations of the video game, the phone can likewise be utilized as a type of "extremely handbrake", to instantly quit any type of vehicle, no matter the rate.

For example, the patrol car chase in the game has actually been completely redone, and also the bank break-in mission. The enhanced version of the video game likewise includes the new moped lorry, which can cross the countryside without excessive trouble. The storyline is based upon the renowned book/poem 'We Are Older' written by William Christner.

As GTA V go back to Xbox's preferred Game Pass from Thursday, it has actually additionally been revealed that the video game will certainly now be playable on mobile phones likewise. Make an entrance directly right into the activity ofGTA 5 Mobileby downloading and install the documents at this moment! You must just get break for Android catch and also you're good to go. Attempt not to waste your time on remote continuous communications or emulators with various layouts.

The video game is currently available for gaming consoles and also Windows COMPUTER. It will be launched for PlayStation 5 and also Xbox Series X in late 2021. There is likewise an on the internet multiplayer mode where up to 30 gamers explore the open world where each player can engage into a participating or affordable interaction between themselves. This game series is extremely well-known by gamers and also reviewers for it having a flexible story as well as loaded with action. This GTA 5 for Android has the very same attribute as the PC variation and also PS3/PS4 variation have. The only thing that differs in this version is you can not play this game on your android tools in the first-person mode. We are still trying to make it feasible on this version.

Bear in mind, you'll be play the preferred game only via Vapor Link, which is the electronic distribution service. Rockstar additionally said that although it may shed some "performance", it will certainly acquire brand-new features also. Rockstar defined it as being a contemporary phone, with Dan Houser saying that the player will certainly use it for things like "accessing the web",.

The various other one is created apples iphone, iPads, and also various iDevices that are fit for boosting the game. GTA BOOM is the initial source for all things Grand Theft Auto. We are the only site devoted to publishing everyday GTA information and also have the biggest collection of GTA game guides readily available anywhere. Using the invincibility cell phone cheat codePlease read our FAQ if you experience any concerns utilizing these cheats, or if you have any type of concerns.

Even more information was launched on the internet site on 24 August, 6 September, as well as 13 September. Superstar Games initially verified the video game's existence on 25 October 2011 in an announcement on its main website and also Twitter feed. Take-Two Interactive's share cost ultimately enhanced by 7 per cent. Journalists said the statement stired up substantial expectancy within the video gaming market, which they owed to the collection' cultural significance. The game did not fulfill its initial forecasted March-- May 2013 release day. By 30 October 2012, marketing posters had spread to the Internet, as well as a listing by the store Game had actually dripped the forecasted release date.

Superstar Games made their ton of money from this highly prominent in addition to debatable franchise. The entire series redefined the standard of open world gaming. Grand Theft Auto V is the current entrance in the schedule, originally introduced on PlayStation 3 and also Xbox 360 in 2013.

If you bought the video game from an additional Store, you would certainly need to add the executable data of the game to Heavy steam. The developer did a wonderful job on their parameters and also images. The programmer attempted to keep all the functions as well as move the video game to Android phones and also tablets without shedding capability. If you have not attempted the video game yet, after that we advise that you do it today. This video game is not a main growth of Superstar Games. The video game is improperly enhanced, so it will certainly be tough to run it on the majority of smart devices.

These two video games are additionally quite prominent till currently in the entire Grand Theft Auto collection due to a range of factors. In this contemporary gaming period, Graphics make a decision how effective any type of game is. There is no comparison in between the graphics of GTA 5 and also GTA San Andreas, GTA 5 functions excellent and top notch graphics that look even more sensible than GTA San Andreas. We understand there is a significant difference between the release day of both of these video games, but to be really honest GTA 5 is a clear winner based upon realities and logic. Hundreds of people are currently able to play this GTA 5 on their Android devices.

If you remember i have published GTA 5 Lite 100MB variation prior to yet this game is various. This video game is developed by MikeGaming who has a working YouTube Network. You will get to play Its GTA5 mod apk Objective with mostly all primary game information on it Grand Theft Auto 5 was released in 2013 as well as is still amongst the most played video games, many thanks to its ever expanding on the internet setting called GTA Online. As well as while the video game doesn't have a mobile variation, it's really feasible to play on your Android phone if you desire. The game first introduced on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, after that made its means to COMPUTER.

We will certainly update new functioning download links immediately. Feel free to ask your any kind of question related to this tutorial via comment section, we will reply you soon. After seeing lots of passion of Android users towards GTA 5, Superstar has actually determined to make this game feasible to operate on Android OS. SO they had developed and launched GTA 5 Apk in beta version.

Superstar in fact made it out of the park from the GTA franchise business. With the arrival of mobile video gaming, they have additionally released many games for Android and also iOS tools. Darrell is a blog owner who likes to stay up to date with the most up to date from the technology and also money globe.

The game welcomes you with wonderful affection to comprehend you for fairly a long time or even months. If you have ever play GTA 5 on your Computer system after that I don't think there is any kind of need to tell you features of this game. Yet you are playing it for the first time then allow you recognize what fantastic functions are included this brand-new game of Superstar Games.

But is is time to take pleasure in GTA V for all Android Gamings fans. One of the most distinguishing characteristic of GTA 5 APK is a revamped story play making up 3 varied protagonists. Michael De Santa, an outlaw that ran away being jailed as well as set himself in a spacious manor where he deals with locating a purposeful lifestyle. That introduction of three separate characters is absolutely something brand-new as we practically have separate storylines as opposed to one extensive plot aimed for one character development. By doing this the gameplay of download GTA 5 is way a lot more interesting.

Considerable adjustments have been made with the increase in the variety of tools modifiers and also the capacity to take turns. Consequently, you can actively switch guns as well as extremely versatile sources whenever you go anywhere. This game's new functions make it much more sensible and also difficult than previous Grand Theft Auto games. And like in various other games of this kind, you will be given numerous alternatives in terms of garments, hairstyles, and also facial expressions.

The storyline teems with twists and turns, and also it's quite remarkable how the entire video game plays out. I never get tired of soaring mobsters, driving about in my individual Lamborghini, and also viewing the property of the abundant as well as famous burn down around you-- all while earning money for it. First COMPUTER variation development started in parallel with PlayStation 3 as well as Xbox 360. COMPUTER growth later paved the way as emphasis shifted to the console releases however ultimately resumed. Since the team had planned a COMPUTER variation from at an early stage, they made technical decisions ahead of time to promote later on growth, like support for 64-bit computer as well as DirectX 11.

The sites asserting to offer you the mobile variation of GTA V are phony. We can only wait for Superstar Gamings to lastly re-release GTA V for mobile devices. Till then, we can take pleasure in the other titles they have currently launched. To get the complete version of the video game, you need to get the OBB documents together with the information documents. The GTA V APK data alone is not enough to permit you to play and also enjoy the premium variation of the video game on your cellphone.

The initial thing that you were going to need to do is confirm that your device hardware is set up as well as powerful sufficient to run the game in the first place. If you 'd enjoy absolutely nothing greater than to have the chance to play this innovative video game on your favorite Android devices, you're going to need to obtain your hands on a proper GTA 5 APK. No, the GTA 5 APK is not created by the main GTA engineer. Some video game designers have actually developed the mobile APK variation.

However, with the increasing interest of players in GTA V, it projects to locate a solution to download and install GTA V on mobile devices. Before downloading as well as mounting, you have to make certain that you have actually totally removed the previous version or cost-free variation of GTA5 from your Android gadget. If you missed this action, your installment will certainly be failed at any time and you will unable to set up and also play the game effectively. Pavlovich discovered that while Rockstar appointed the team objectives to compose songs for, a few of their arbitrary creations influenced various other missions and triggered motivation for further score advancement. He reviewed a "stem-based" system made use of to make music fit vibrant game variables where the group would certainly make up songs to highlight end results players could make quickly after completing objectives.

That song is a simplified variation of the GTA I motif's background songs. It was additionally the pager's ringtone in GTA III, and also remained in the GTA Vice City introductory under the retro Superstar Games logo design. If the gamer changes or fires weapons after a telephone call, the phone will certainly not disappear on CJ's hand. Changing to various other weapons, or entering an auto would certainly then eliminate this technique. If Carl has his phone out and also faces water being sprayed from a Firetruck, possibilities are that if he is just finishing a discussion and also is about to place his phone away, he instead will certainly maintain it in his hand.

[slinkerscribble-blog]

Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition is great because of the multiplayer.

Originally posted  4/25/18 on Kotaku’s community blog “TAY”. Posting it here because of TAY’s uncertain future as a way of preserving some of the stuff I wrote there.

https://tay.kinja.com/neverwinter-nights-enhanced-edition-is-a-great-remaste-1825288724

These days we so often see remasters or other ports of games that people can sometimes question the necessity of releasing them at all. Other than for the cash. At first glance developer Beamdog’s Enhanced Edition of Neverwinter Nights doesn’t really seem that spectacular compared to the cheaper old version available at certain digital stores. Just a few months ago I replayed Neverwinter Nights single player campaign after I got a free copy on GOG, and it worked fine playing on a modern PC. Even if it has always been a unpleasant game to look at.

The Enhanced Edition does little to improve the games graphics other than making it possible to play in higher resolutions. But beyond than that it’s hard to find any differences that stand out. I know I read somewhere the lightning and shadows are much better this time around. But I can’t say I notice this while playing. So if you already have a working copy of the old game I would seriously question why you would need this version.

That’s it, of course, if you are only interested in playing it single player.

What made me instantly buy the new version of the game was the news that the multiplayer will once again fully work and with it any mods and player made levels from the old game. (I suspect this is a big reason why improved graphics are so limited) That means any server still running Neverwinter Nights can become available instantly in this new version.

When the original game came out in 2002, it was originally developed as a toolkit for anyone to create and host their own D&D adventures and then make them available for people to join online, or to write your own single player adventure. The toolkit was rather easy to learn but complex enough that you could recreate Baldur’s gate completely if you wanted to. This spawned a large community of different servers with their own lore, rules and settings. Many of them felt like their own MMORPG where the players base controlled what happened in the world. A large part of these communities were also strict on roleplay, meaning that you have to act your character. While Neverwinter Nights is far from the only game that players have roleplayed in, few other games have successfully grown such a large community around it. Rather, in many games offering the possibility of roleplaying it feels like a minor part of the online community. In Neverwinter Nights it is a huge part of the game’s overall design.

One of the types of servers I enjoyed playing on was Zombie Survival. It turned the D&D-based game into a zombie survival simulator. Deaths were often a permanent affair, meaning that your character, which you might have spent plenty of time creating could disappear instantly. The highest level you could achieve on these servers was often around 5. By D&D standards this meant you would always be a scrub. Besides, reaching the highest level wasn’t an easy task because you could only gather significant experience points by exploring the world and gaining certain items. This was extremely risky, because there were few areas that were safe from the undead and healing yourself was always limited. In many regards these servers were unbalanced and could be extremely hard for new players, but once you learned where to find certain items you could become hard to kill. This also lead to interesting scenarios where players were roleplaying desperate characters of whom a great many died, but a few grew into veteran survivors.

Although as the years went by and the multiplayer communities decreased in player numbers, NWN always managed to keep a dedicated player base and a few strong servers running. Eventually Gamespy, which hosted NWN’s server list, closed down. After that you could only join a server by typing the IP address yourself. Which to many felt like the death of the multiplayer. This is because the lack of a server list made it almost impossible for any new server to make themselves known and even if the game was still being sold, very few of those new players would go through the effort required to find a single active server.

So for me, the old version of Neverwinter Nights being sold today is half a game. Even if you technically could play the online multiplayer, it was so inaccessible it was probably completely unknown to most people.

Which brings me back to me buying the Enhanced edition the day it launched: Even if the game is now 16 years old and considered dead by most, a few servers have stayed alive for all this time. Most of them were instantly accessible to log into from the Enhanced edition’s new server list, though many of them required mods. This was not much of a problem though, as the Developer had made many of those mods easily available with the addition of Steam workshop support. Small things like installing these various mods and packs could be a hassle even at Neverwinter nights’ prime time and doing so has never been as easy as it is now. This has made a lot of old players and servers return to the game, and to my pleasant surprise, among the servers was Zombie survival.

It’s hard to describe how nostalgic all of this has made me feel. Imagine if a game you loved that has been completely unavailable to you for 12 years suddenly came back. When I saw that a Zombie Survival server was available to play I was so excited to experience it again that I instantly gifted a copy of the game to an old friend to join me. A friend I met online 15 years ago in the very same game on a similar server. Once we logged onto the server, we had a discussion about if we should roleplay at all or just try and avoid other players and stick to ourselves. As soon as we were there though, we had automatically slipped into our old comfortable roleplaying habits. One of our first meetings with other players was running into two self appointed “knights” who were a bit too nice. They started by offering us some aid in finding food and asking if we would like to go exploring with them.

“So you guys are friends, huh?” My character asked them.

“We are comrades in arms” One of them replied. We quickly started to suspect they were more than just comrades though, as they kept flattering each other constantly.

Afterwards we met a party consisting of an female Druid, a rogue and a paladin so full of himself that we all secretly hoped the zombies would get him. Together as a big group we came to a particularly dangerous cave unavailable to players most of time as accessing it required a certain rare item. Once inside though, we knew we had a higher chance of grabbing some better items. If we could survive the zombie hordes filled in the tiny hallways of the cave. After we finished looting and were about to get back to a safe location the following discussion broke out:

The Druid started the conversation: “I hope we can get out of here.”

“As long as I am here we’ll be fine.” Harold the paladin answered confidently.

“If you fight like that, you’ll die sooner or later. Probably sooner.” I replied.

Larry the rogue was not having it: “Don’t be so pessimistic lass”

“I’m a realist.” I responded.

Unfortunately for all of us my character’s instincts were right and several of our group died on this adventure.

As I kept playing, I realized how long it has been since I was able to engage in this sort of immersive, in character communication with other random players. For me, it’s less about acting the role of a character and more of a chance to be creative with your writing among other people. While I recognize that this kind of exercise can often end up being silly or immature, few games that I have played make something like this work so well between random players. That was a large part of why I spent so much time playing the original Neverwinter nights, and it is something that I’m so happy to be able to experience once more.

None of that would be possible if Beamdog hadn’t put their effort into creating a new version of the game, complete with a fully functioning multiplayer mode that supports old content from the community. To be honest, I think they could have probably gotten away with not touching the multiplayer at all, and focused solely on providing access to the single player campaigns on modern PCs. Playing this new enhanced edition I realized that the remakes or other forms of rereleasing old games that I feel are the most important, are those of games that isn’t available anymore. Even if Neverwinter Nights has, in some form, been available to play this whole time, it is only now that you can experience the actual full game again.

Thank you for reading! I’m a swedish dude by the name of Joakim Jonsson who enjoy playing and analyzing all sorts of games, but perhaps the most with RPGs. If you wanna read more stuff by me I have an article about Witcher 3, and every Tuesday I host TAY’s Open Forum. If you wanna send me an email go ahead at: Joakimjonsson07@gmail.com

Also a large thanks to Jussi liimatainen who spellchecked and edited this.

The screenshots in this article are slightly modified to make the chat between players more visible.

[blind3dbylight]

Vaping safety with Light: Coils

This post I’m dealing with how to use your coils safely. Some of these will relate to building your own coils, but others can be applied to either prebuilt, disposable coils OR self-built.

Sooooooo yeah.

Prime your coils first

This means to let a fresh coil soak up e-juice when you first install it. Prime times might vary by coil brand and type, but generally you want to let it soak up juice for a good few minutes. This way, you don’t end up getting a dry hit, and possibly burning the cotton within.

Some will need you to put a good drop of juice on all side intakes, and within the coil itself (where the cotton is). Most of the time, you can just get the coil in, fill the tank, and just leave it for a couple minutes. Something I like to do is turn my airflow restrictor to absolute minimum airflow and do a couple good “dry pulls” (which is to inhale it as though you were taking a hit, but don’t actually fire) to ensure enough juice is soaked into the cotton.

If you’re building on a RDA, make sure you saturate the cotton well when you drip. Try not to overdo it though. When you sense things are getting dry, it’s time to drip again.

Prebuilt: Check the wattage rating

Prebuilt coils will usually have their resistance in ohms as well as their rated wattage printed on them. Make sure you stay within the rated range, else you run the risk of burning coils. You obviously don’t want that, because not only is that not safe, you’ll go through coils like crazy.  Some coils, such as Aspire’s Cleito 120 (standard), will say on the box they can handle much higher, but if you are unsure, stay within the rating.

After priming, take a hit or two on the lower side of the rating to get things going.

Check the coils periodically

When vaping regularly for a while, you should check the coils every couple days to see how they’re holding up. Is the cotton burning? Are you getting a bit of a burnt taste sometimes after a while? It’s probably time to replace it. Most prebuilt coils, especially if you’re like me and vape pretty much all the time, will get you a good week of frequent vaping before they start to go.

Building: Know Ohm’s Law and check your resistances

Before you vape on a coil you’ve built yourself, check its resistance first. You can do this with a multimeter, but if you don’t have one (protip: get one, they’re handy to have around anyway) many newer regulated mods can also instantly check and display it when the atomizer is screwed on.

Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the voltage across the two points. As the current is set by the values of the voltage and resistance, if you increase the voltage, the current will increase. The formula is: V = I/R, where V = voltage, I = current, measured in amperes/amps (A), and R = resistance, measured in ohms (Ω). Those three values can be shuffled around the formula, so as long as you know two of the values, you can calculate the rest. To find wattage, you use P = V x I -- P being power, measured in watts (W).

If you don’t care or are just not good at math, Ohm’s law calcuators are plentiful online.

In this case, the voltage and current come from your batteries. Say you have a freshly charged battery at 4.2V and your coil’s resistance is 0.5Ω. So you do it like this:

4.2 / 0.5 = 8.4

4.2 / 8.4 = 35.3

4.2V, 0.5Ω, 8.4A, 35.3W. So if your battery has a 10A limit, you’re well within that limit. But if, say, you’re using a dual mech mod in a series setup, you’ll be doubling your amp draw per battery, and you will want to have higher resistance in your coil setup so as not to overdraw (and cause a battery vent/explosion).

For a more personal example, I’ve got right now a 0.23Ω coil running, and I know my batteries are roughly around 3.6V. So let’s figure this:

3.6 / 0.23 = 18.4

So that’s 18.4A, and my batteries have a 20A limit, so I’m within safe draw levels. (Never mind the fact I’m on a regulated mod, it’s just an example.)

Note that as a battery drains, voltage and current will decrease.

What this all means to you is that if your coil is too low or too high resistance, you are going to fuck something up if you don’t accomodate it. If you are pulling more amps than your batteries are rated for, they can potentially vent or explode. You obviously don’t want that.

I should also note that most of this applies to mechanical mods. If you’re using a regulated mod--and you should be if you’re starting out--it will generally contain protections and do the heavy lifting for you. Don’t get cocky, though, because this is all still good to know.

Building: Choosing wire type

The main three wire types used are kanthal, nichrome, and stainless steel.

Kanthal is a ferritic iron/chromium/aluminum alloy. It’s good for pure wattage vaping, but note that it is NOT usable for tempature control, for those devices that feature it. It also contains no nickel, so if you have even a minor nickel allergy, this is what you’ll want to use. Many prebuilt coils are made with either this or stainless steel, and will usually be labeled as such.

Nichrome is an alloy of nickel and chromium, and may contain other metals such as iron. The most popular “grade” is 80% nickel and 20% chromium. It has a lower resistance and heats faster than kanthal, but also has a lower melting point, so be careful with this--you might burn open your cotton when dry burning. Basically, don’t rush in with max wattage when dry, ya dingus. This is a popular wire type for TC vaping.

As stated above, if you have a nickel allergy, do not use this wire--stick to kanthal.

Stainless steel is a more “all rounded” wire type and can be used reliably for both TC vaping and pure wattage vaping. Composed primarily of chromium, nickel, and carbon, there are various grades of this used for vaping, with SS316L being the most commonly used grade by and large, followed by SS317L. Nickel content is much lower than nichrome, but again, don’t take the risk if you’re at all allergic.

As before, be careful not to dry burn at high wattages. Even if you are just trying to clean the build or check for hotspots, doing so can cause problems, such as burning open cotton or possibly releasing unwanted compounds into the air.

Some vapers have also used pure nickel and even pure titanium wire, but here’s a couple issues.

Pure nickel (Ni200) is, of course, fucking pure nickel. I can’t stress enough not to use if if you’re allergic. It’s soft, and can be hard to work and keep its shape, most noticable during wicking. Additionally, you can’t use this for pure wattage vaping--this wire type is strictly TC only. You WILL burn shit if you try otherwise.

Titanium wire is, as before, a TC-only wire. The major issue with this is that, if heated to a certain point (I think around 1200℉ / 648℃), you run the risk of releasing titanium dioxide--which is rather toxic. A lot of shops won’t even sell this wire because of the liability risks.

Even then, it’s still commonly used for TC vaping as it holds its shape well and is easy to wick, and theoretically, if your TC mod is doing its job, you should not need to worry. Still, if you’re at all unsure, go with stainless steel or nichrome.

[bubonickitten]

oh boy i just had an Adventure(TM) in minecraft 

so, i was exploring the map and i was pretty far away from my home base, basically using a boat to cross deep ocean biomes and investigating islands and smaller landmasses and such 

one of the islands i came across had an ABSURD amount of wolves roaming about. “holy shit,” i thought, “this swamp biome is full of free dogs.” 

so of course i go on a wolf-taming spree. i wasn’t paying attention to how many i was amassing. by the time i’d covered the island, i had a pack of about twenty dogs in my entourage. 

i think, ok, perhaps it’s time to go home, at least so i can leave some of these pups in a safe place while i keep exploring. 

problem: there’s a huge fucking ocean between Dog Island and the continent my home base is on. 

my stubborn ass thinks, “ok. ok. dogs can swim. we’ll FORD this river ocean.” 

this, obviously, did not go well. the dogs are v good swimmers, but also very slow, and if i get too far ahead of them, they don’t catch up, because they can’t teleport to the player if you’re not on land. it took forever to get to the nearest small island, and i’d lost about a third of my dogs. 

“i need a better plan,” i think to myself. i mean, i could abandon this ridiculous ‘transport 20+ dogs at least 5000m across multiple deep ocean biomes to my home base’ idea and find some free dogs closer to home. i mean, they’re not really that hard to find. but these are my dogs. i gave them bones and now they love me. i must not abandon them. 

...and that’s how dog water skiing was born: 

ishouldhavejustdonethisinthefirstfuckingplace.jpg

anyway, by the time i got to the next landmass, i hadn’t lost any more dogs. success!

and not only had i not lost any more dogs, but this new landmass was ALSO full of free dogs. and i still had some stacks of bones, which obviously trumps my own sense of self-control. 

fast forward ten minutes:

look at all these pups! and also a really rude spider.

still more pups!

...oh jeez. 

this is basically Homeward Bound, but instead of two dogs and a cat, it’s just me and like thirty goddamn dogs. they were continuously teleporting in front of me, i was tripping all over them. it was chaos. 

now, i should mention, this was a long-ass trek home.  at some point my sword AND my backup sword broke, because frankly i just was not expecting my expedition to last this long and i did not bring a backup backup sword, so i was flailing at creepers with an axe. i definitely lost some good pups, especially since at least half that travel was at nighttime peak monster spawn time. AND i have the Mo’ Creatures mod installed, so not only do i have to worry about the standard monsters, but also lions, tigers, bears (which are usually pretty chill but apparently can become hostile when thirty dogs suddenly teleport on top of them), manticores, ogres, SPECIAL wolves that instead of being tamable are just Very Angry All The Time, etc. 

but the thing is, i kept finding more free dogs. and, sometimes when i’m walking, two dogs will just breed out of nowhere, so occasionally i’d turn around and there’d be a puppy. who did this. we’re, like, climbing a mountain here. control yourselves  

anyways, by the time i got back to my home base, i counted forty-eight doggos. 

just look at these Good Dogs. i couldn’t get them all to fit in the frame. 

i have nowhere to put them. i feel like Roger and Anita at the end of 101 Dalmatians. 

all i know is i love every single one of them.

[skyrim-se-weather-mod-comkx]

[Top 5] Best Skyrim Weather Mods | GAMERS DECIDE

💾 ►►► DOWNLOAD FILE 🔥🔥🔥 A series of "Weather Mod Comparison" posts would be very cool. Some things would need to be decided on though:. It could easily turn into a very large project. If you are genuinely interested though, feel free to start a separate post and ask for volunteers. Or I can start the post to gauge interest if you'd like? I'd join in for at least one or two weather mod combos. Count me down for at least NAT ;-. Whoever does this would have to be careful to not load from a save between tests and properly disable and remove the mods each time plus the game restart after installing new ones. So long as the weather is not reverted to vanilla, weather mod fragments will remain in your save causing other weather mods to not appear correctly for proper comparison. Regardless, I would love to see something like this, would certainly make for a helpful comparison resource! Do you think it important to remove all prior weather mods, or might disabling be sufficient? If so, some might have room to load up another weather mod or two and contribute a couple more sets of screenshots with minimal fuss? Because of just how dynamic weather mods are, I feel like it might be a good idea to capture a number of different weathers in set locations. Maybe one with mountains, trees and water for LODs and sun reflections. A city like riften, winterhold or elsewhere. Different biomes dry, marsh etc. Different weather types sun, rain, mist, fog. Sunset, mid day, sunrise, night time. Just brainstorming. Well to the best of my abilities that is lol. Keep thinking of great ideas! I might get it posted later today Sounds like a good idea, whenever you have the time for it of course! It specially showcases 11 types of weathers in 11 locations of Skyrim where they are best showcased, highly recommend giving it a look for reference ideas. Of course these types of locations could be increased maybe adding in cities, closer lighting for trees or something like this or decreased in quantity but figured it might help simply the initial brainwork a little. Yes, I think Display Enhancements or Dynamic Display Settings my preferred could be layered on top of the weather mods as part of the combo. However, I would prefer just prefer to get the baseline mods represented first. But if you want to, for instance, take two sets of standardized screenshots, one with Climates of Tamriel, and another with Climates of Tamriel plus your full weather mod combo including Dynamic Display Settings View all comments Show parent comments 2. Some things would need to be decided on though: Standardized locations s? Perhaps Whiterun entrance? Scenic landscape view with a good long-distant LOD? Perhaps viewing over the lake between two of the guardian stones near Riverwood? Tundra view, like the videos already done at Whiterun crossing? A challenge with that though is that you can only post one video in a reddit post. Also, videos are considerably lower res than screenshots on Reddit at least Would any other standardized mods be present besides those from a weather mod combo? All standard vanilla textures OR possibly something of an improved-vanilla like Skyland AiO? Other details like a mountain mod? Exterior lantern mod like Claralux? Are we allowing Display Enhancements or no?

[sheepiling]

I DOWNLOADED MY FIRST MOD AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

So, I was getting really tired of how un-vibrant Sims 4 is. I didn’t really notice it/care at first, but once Sage was born I found myself constantly fighting the lighting in the game and setting up temporary lamps everywhere when I took screenshots just because of how un-flattering the Sims 4 lighting is for sims of color. (I mean I’ve had mixed race couples since gen 1 but the focus was always on the founder/heir so if their partner wasn’t as well lit up as they were I didn’t pay much attention to it, but Sage is the first heir to actually have darker skin genetics passed down to him ‘cuz apparently in sims world recessive and dominant genetic traits are reversed... or at least in this family they are rip) 

But anyways, I don’t want to spend time editing my screenshots so I just got a lighting mod for the game. OwO;; 

I just want to make a post now and tag it with wcif because I really don’t download much and if I ever do get cc in addition to this I’ll just post and wcif tag that too so anyone that’s curious can easily see what I’ve got quickly~ 

I also want to add that I’m going to go very in-depth about the installing process because I am not tech-savvy at all and it took me a whole evening to figure all of this out, so if anyone else is in the same boat as me I hope this helps! XD 

Also before I start explaining things I just want to add that before you start changing things, ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR GAME!! Make a copy of The Sims 4 folder that’s in your documents, AND the one that’s in your Origin Games folder that’s on your C drive (or wherever you installed Sims 4). 

First I downloaded NoBlu and NoGlo 

The links to the page their downloads are located along with information from the creator are right there in that title~ 

Those two mods work together, so I suggest getting them both! The NoBlu removes the blue tint that shows up at night time and indoors too I think, and if I understand things correctly the NoGlo removes that blue tint from your sims themselves so they don’t look blue-ish in contrast to the rest of the world that’s now been stripped of that blue tint. 

Like, the point of the blue tint that’s in the game is to make it so you can see things better in the dark, but from what I can tell it also makes day time seem darker too at certain times of the day. So getting rid of this will make night time darker if no lights are around, but I think it makes day time brighter and the lights at night time is brighter too and your sims just react more naturally to lighting~ 

When downloading NoBlu, just pick one of those three files that are there. I picked NoBluLightingReplacement.package 

For NoGlo, there’s two files there, and I downloaded both of them. They’re the NoGloRemover and the EyeSpecularRemover 

NoGlo and EyeSpecularRemover are applied to each sim in cas just like cc, so I’m not sure if I’ll bother using them. But I haven’t had this NoBlu lighting mod for very long so if I end up noticing my sims glowing in the dark with a blueish light then I’ll probably bother to put that on everyone. Maybe. 

These two mods are really easy to download! It’s just like downloading CC, just get the file and put it in Documents -> Electronic Arts -> The Sims 4 -> Mods 

Then I got ReShade 

This mod took me quite a while to figure out... (I’m just sort of challenged when it comes to things like this which is why I don’t use much mods/cc in the first place)  😓 

So this is a program that you can install into a lot of different games, it’s not made just for sims 4, but it works really well on sims 4! The website to download this is https://reshade.me/ 

Additionally, THIS VIDEO is the most helpful tutorial for installing it that I could find (imo). I also want to add to always read the README text files that come with mods when you download them... I’m sure you probably already do that but I’m an impatient derp that couldn’t figure out some things until I read the readme...  >.>;; 

Also, I had an issue when installing ReShade, and I’m just gonna explain everything I went through in case anyone else is having a hard time too, ‘cuz it took me quite a while to find the info. I needed. I also want to add that I use windows 8.1 (unfortunately that’s the only operating system that’s compatible with my laptop, so no windows 10 or 7 for me, I already tried, rip) so the issue I had could of been caused by 8.1′s wonkyness. But I don’t know for sure. 

After it asked me if I want to download a collection of standard effects, and I clicked yes, it said it failed. The program was properly installed into Sims 4, but I had no effects or textures (which is the whole point of getting this...) 

But! This can be fixed by downloading the effects manually and putting them into your bin folder yourself. THIS FORUM on ReShade’s website has this answer and a link to the download for the effects and textures. The very first answer under the OP’s question is the one with the download~ I’m very thankful to that helpful person. Also, I’m just linking the forum instead of the responder’s link itself b/c once you click on their link it downloads the file. It’s not a link to a file share or anything, it’s just the direct download. The ReShade website probably has these up for download on their website somewhere too... But I’m trash at navigating websites that I’m not used to so I have no idea where... But I would assume it’s there somewhere... 

After you have that file, slap it into your sims 4′s bin folder (tutorial I linked before shows where that is). Now, this alone is not all that you need to do. Now that it’s in the file, you need to go into the game and open the ReShade interface. Then you go over to settings and you need to copy paste the path for the program to find the effects and textures. There’s two separate boxes, one for effects and one for textures. 

To do this, go into the shaders folder that’s in your reshade shaders’ folder in your sims 4′s bin folder. Then in the bar at the top of your file’s window that shows all the files you’ve gone into, click on it and copy it. Then tab back to your sims 4 game and paste that info into ReShade’s effects box. Then go into your textures file and do the same things for the textures box in ReShade. 

When you paste them into the ReShade interface they should look something like this: 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 4\Game\Bin\reshade-shaders\Shaders 

C:\Program Files (x86)\Origin Games\The Sims 4\Game\Bin\reshade-shaders\Textures 

Of course, if you didn’t install this on your C drive it might be a bit different, but you need to find that from wherever you installed Sims 4. 

Once you’ve done all that the issue should be fixed and it’ll now load up all 60 effects and textures that you’ve downloaded every time you start up Sims 4 or tab back into your game after alt tabbing out!!!!! ................. 

So, hooray for it working properly now, BUT GOODNESS DOES THIS ANNOY ME. So like. If you’re going to download a preset from someone else (youtube tutorial I linked already shows how to do that) then I suggest keeping all the files you’ve downloaded. Especially if you’re switching between multiple presets for different occasions. There’s lots of ReShade presets all over tumblr, btw. So have fun looking them up if that’s what you want to do! 

But I’m not doing that. I don’t need all of this. It’s giving me a lag for no reason. SO I DELETED A WHOLE BUNCH OF EFFECTS ‘CUZ FUQ THIS LOADING TIME. 

Be careful not to delete anything important, though. In the shaders folder is the only folder I deleted anything inside of. Anything that was installed in the reshade-shaders folder I left alone. But inside the shaders or textures folder that’s inside of that reshade-shaders folder should be fine to delete things. BUT DON’T DELETE FILES THAT IT NEEDS TO RUN~ 

Anything that is a .fhx file you need to keep. Anything that is a .fx file is simply the effect itself and is safe to delete. I didn’t delete anything in my textures folder because when I downloaded the whole thing from the forum the textures folder didn’t have much in it. This might be different if you were able to install correctly in the first place. 

Anyways! The files I ended up keeping were all the .fhx files and the following effects: Colorfulness.fx, Vibrance.fx, and DPX.fx 

Colorfulness and Vibrance increase the saturation and vibrancy of your game and DPX is one that overall birghtens everything (I think). There’s lots of other effects that do the same things as these but those three are my favorites. Well, I don’t use DPX, it makes it a bit too bright for my eyes, but I decided to keep that one because whenever I’m able to get Seasons, if rainy/snowy days make the game seem way too dark I might want to enable DPX just for those days. 

But for normal sunny days, just checking Colorfulness and Vibrance is enough for me~ I didn’t even mess with the sliders on how much you want it to effect the game because I don’t want to deal with those kind of advanced settings. I just pushed the check mark box on those two and done! 

Now that I only have 3 effects and then the few textures that I never use but aren’t hurting anything by being there, it doesn’t even have a loading time to get ReShade to run properly when starting up my Sims 4 or tabbing back into it. ReShade is just ready to go right away! 

So if you’re wanting to brighten up your game, but have a slower computer and most lighting mods and/or ReShade being the way it normally is lags your game too much, you could consider doing what I did!  :D 

Also, with ReShade, you need to change the way you take screenshots now. Doing it with the C button just takes a picture of your naked game, not the ReShade effects. 

So, ReShade’s default hotkey for taking screenshots is Prt Scrn, so you can use that button now or you can change which button you want to take screenshots in the settings tab of ReShade’s interface. But the point is just pushing C doesn’t capture the ReShade effects so you’ll need a different button! 

Also! In ReShade’s settings tab, you need to change the screenshot format if you want to upload your ReShade screenies to tumblr! Its default is set to Bitmap, which tumblr doesn’t support, so change it so it saves as a PNG file instead!!! 

You can also change the path for where it’s going to drop your screenshots off at. The default is set to Sims 4′s bin folder, so if you want it to drop off screenshots in a different folder that’s dedicated to just screenshots and doesn’t have your game’s other important things in it, you’ll need to change the path for that (it’s the same as when you changed the path for it to find the effects and textures, just copy paste where you want it to go). 

Keep in mind that if you move the folder you told ReShade to dump its screenshots at then you’ll need to update the path in ReShade’s interface or it won’t be able to find the folder and you won’t get your screenies~ 

So yea! That’s all the info. I have!! I hope this helps someone that wants to use ReShade but has been confused about it like I was!! 😂 

Also sorry if my explaining things is long and confusing. This is just how thoughts flow in my brain so.. um... yea.  >.>; 

[loadtheme52]

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[dgcatanisiri]

I said I’d hoped to get this out by the end of the month. FINALLY, the next installment of my series of Hypothetical DLCs. 

Welcome to DG’s Listing of Wish These DLC Existed, where I theorize, speculate, and just kinda generally throw ideas at the wall about DLCs for games I love that never happened and never will happen, but damn, I’d like to see them anyway. 

Because I have ideas, I can’t get them made as mods, I don’t have time to make them into fic, and they’re never going to happen anyway, so why not put them up in a public place? After all, they’re tie ins to games I have no control over anyway, so it’s not like I’ll ever make money off of them anyway. And, as I’m not bound by any hardware limitations in terms of crafting ideas, or production cycles dictating when the game’s endpoint is, these can and do go on a great deal longer than the standard lifespan of a game.

A review of the format: There will be a name for the DLC, a brief synopsis, a reference to when this hypothetical DLC would become available/if and when it becomes unavailable, and then an expansion/write up of the ideas going in to them. Some ideas will have more expansion than others, because I’ve just plainly put more thought into them - in a lot of cases, I wrote them down just on the basis of ‘this idea seems pretty cool,’ and then gave them more context later on.

Feedback is welcome! Like an idea? Don’t like an idea? I welcome conversation and interaction on these ideas. Keep it civil, remember that these are just one person’s ideas, we can discuss them. Perhaps you’ll even help inspire a part two for these write ups! Because I do reserve the right to come up with more ideas in the future - these are the ideas that I’ve had to this point, but the whole reason this series exists is because I come up with new ideas for old stories.

With the KOTOR games both dealt with, we move on to the next category of the BioWare franchises, Mass Effect. This one took a while, considering the much more open-ended aspect of choices within the Mass Effect universe. And ME2′s edition is going to take a good long while as well, considering... Well, I’ll explain that when I get there. 

Anyway. Given the way that Mass Effect carries decisions forward, there is an additional category for the ideas within these editions, where there’s a brief summary of the way they will impact future games - granted, most of these are ME2 letters and ME3 war assets, but it’s still worth making a note of.

Also, given the context of ME1′s rather open-ended structure, where there aren’t really any serious plot breaks or boundaries that prevent advancement too soon, aside from Virmire and Ilos not being unlocked until events in the plot, assume that, unless otherwise noted, these DLCs are all available at any point after Shepard is made a Spectre and given command of the Normandy, and, obviously, must be played before Ilos. 

To business!

First Contact

As a Spectre and Alliance officer, Commander Shepard is called in when an Alliance team goes missing after reporting they had made contact with a new alien species. The Normandy is assigned to recover the team and establish peaceful relations if at all possible – yet there is a mystery here, one that the natives are not happy to welcome meddling in...

So, yeah, the basic idea here is simply that, with the whole Reaper thing, we don’t really get to see much of the more basic ideas of space exploration – big plot trounces little ideas. And first contact is as basic a concept for a scifi series as you can get. In my book, that’s the advantage of DLC in this series, to go for the smaller scale stories.

So let’s go into detail. We’re going to need a character to act as the exposition fairy – I vote that, at least in the briefing, this is coming from Pressley, so we can offer him a little more characterization and involvement (let’s honestly consider “Pressley gives a briefing that offers him more characterization, involvement, and general utilization” a thing for all of these, since he really doesn’t get a lot of usage in ME1, which is probably why he’s not really replaced on the Normandy after this game, and take this opportunity to give his character some expansion so that his death can mean a little more when ME2’s prologue goes down). He’s giving the baseline facts about why the Normandy is going in and handling this situation.

Obviously, the First Contact team has gone out of contact, and the Normandy is tasked to discover what has happened to them and make the best of the situation they end up in. I’m not locking this to after recruiting Liara, but I do picture her, Kaidan, and Ashley getting some fair use in any and all of these (a few in particular – we’ll get there when we get there), both because of their role as love interests and because of their general attitudes and thematic roles – Liara’s the wide-eyed idealist (considering her romanticizing of the protheans – any culture that refers to themselves as an “empire” is not going to be a peaceful collection of philosophers and scientists), Ashley’s the reasoned cynic, and Kaidan is something of the balance between them – cautious optimism and ready for if/when things go to shit.

The arrival finds Shepard and company on our new world (location to be decided – given Citadel rules on activating dormant Relays, it’s probably best that this is a planet within an already existing cluster, and we probably ought to put it somewhere within the boundaries of Alliance space, what with them taking lead on this first contact). The locals seem welcoming and friendly, but there’s a clear air of uncertainty – are they a threat, where’s the Alliance contact team, why are they acting like they know something that Shepard and crew don’t?

I know, we’re running the risk of retreading the ground of Feros and the thorian here, but, one, honestly, I like Feros, so I’m okay with revisiting it as a concept at least, two, it’s not like BioWare doesn’t recycle their own plots all the time anyway, even granting that they usually don’t do it within the same game, and three, I see it ending in a different place, so we’re going with this.

Anyway, investigation, suspicion, blah, blah, blah... I swear, the fun would be in the investigation, the building mystery, so I’m skipping over the work for the sake of a summary. The end result is that of course the natives killed the team, but the reason is because this is a group of descendants of a prothean subject race. They’d engaged in a revolt, adapted/stolen a colony ship, and flew off into the black, and done this right around the time of the initial stages of the Reaper invasion of the prothean empire – the protheans had bigger fish to fry (or be fried by, depending on how you use the metaphor), and given how proud the protheans are, I can see them covering this up in the name of saving face, both of which allowed these people to escape the notice of the Reapers – systematic destruction or not, finding one lone ship in the depths of space isn’t “needle in a haystack,” it’s “needle in the midwest.” It’d have been one thing if they’d found a planet to establish themselves on right away, but they dove into the black without a clear destination – also use this to emphasize WHY most Council explorations tend to stick to familiar clusters with an established Mass Relay nearby, that space is vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big.

As a detail for this race, I’m gonna include one of my headcanons for the protheans, since, hey, my DLC idea – while the protheans developed their technology around the Mass Relays and such, as the Reapers intended, the tech of their own design, without the influence of external powers, would have more of an organic bent to it, that they were more inclined to “grow” their tech than build it. Like they accepted the Mass Effect as a foundation for their tech, the Citadel as a base, but they weren’t all that happy about it, just never quite getting their own designs really match the designs of “inusannon” technology in effectiveness. So in response, this species turned towards cybernetics (maybe they’re members of the zha’til, to connect them having this knowledge with the tidbits Javik offers in ME3? *shrug* I’ll use them as the name for this species for simplicity’s sake, because that’s less awkward than no name at all, but I’m not married to it being them), to not just give them an edge against the protheans when they came after them, but also to serve as a taunt towards them, a statement of “you fear technology, so we’re going to become the personification of your boogeymen.”

So the survival of these zha’til has been their hidden nature, and they have developed into a pure xenophobic society – no aliens are accepted among them, and, with the appearance of Shepard’s team, they are fully of the belief that there will be those who come after. They can recognize that the appearance of outsiders once means it will happen again. And they will be ready – Shepard’s crew is a boon for them, allowing them access to biologies of not just humans, but asari, turian, krogan, and quarian. They’d prepared for the damage the protheans could do upon finding their retreat, spent fifty thousand years becoming something the protheans would have to fear. Of course, Shepard’s gonna have to ruin it. I can see them trying the ‘we’ll erase the coordinates, put up a warning buoy, ensure no one comes here’ argument, but that’s not flying with these guys, since organic nature tends towards curiosity, and just blanking the system would leave a mystery, one that organics would want to solve, and a warning buoy can malfunction or be ignored – they want total isolation, and, even if the odds are like one in trillions, that’s too high for them, so they’d sooner be the only life in the galaxy.

I’m thinking the solution is in their reliance on their tech, having attained this symbiosis with it that they all are implanted – tech can be hacked, it can malfunction, it can be a vulnerability as much as an asset. Going way back to the start of the involvement of Kaidan, Liara, and Ashley, here’s them all getting to voice their solution, with Ashley going the straightforward route of “they’re a threat, they’ll keep being a threat, they don’t want to change and stop being a threat, I don’t want to commit genocide, but I also want to defend the Alliance, and those options look mutually exclusive right now,” Liara is all “think of what they could offer us, their history is invaluable, they were contemporaries of the protheans, what might they know, and even if we have the ability to wipe out an entire species, that’s an action that can never be undone,” and Kaidan is the middle ground of “the leaders and people we’ve spoken to made a threat, but we can’t call the entire population of this planet genocidal maniacs, surely there must be something we can do to find a reasonable solution.”

It basically comes down to Shepard getting to hack the tech, and then faced with the decision – a) wiping them out by way of effectively setting all their implants to electrify themselves – they’ve shown themselves to be a threat, they have violent intentions towards other life in the galaxy, and nothing indicates that there is any dissent among their population, especially if their implants can allow for like planetary consensus or something, b) shutting down the tech, their greatest threat, as a way to keep most of them alive, but reducing their civilization to like Bronze Age – the Citadel races would certainly be willing to help the zha’til recover, but it’s not like they’d be happy to accept it, or c) use this as the way to force them to come to the table and negotiate in good faith, under the threat of destruction as a result of them using this weapon, give them a chance, with the downside being that they have done nothing to indicate that they deserve this chance, or that the second they develop a workaround, they’ll be back to threatening all alien life.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Letter from the head of a Council-approved research team, investigating the planet, with or without inhabitants.

ME3: Assuming the zha’til survive, a representative is on the Citadel, offering their aid. If they were reduced, they are a significantly smaller War Asset.

Investigations

The Citadel’s Wards house people from across the galaxy, and murder is a common occurrence. When the murder victim is a prominent Alliance politician, however, one whose controversial opinions made him a target for non-humans, the Alliance can only trust one person to investigate on the Citadel – the first human Spectre, Commander Shepard. 

Honestly, the Citadel could absolutely support its own game. Just the pieces we get of it from the trilogy and the Citadel DLC tease a massive station that probably has a population higher than some planets. So there’s A LOT to do here (indeed, looking over my notes for this, I have at least one DLC focused entirely on events on the Citadel in each game, and all of them can utilize entirely new areas, so...). And, really, who doesn’t enjoy an old-fashioned ‘whodunnit’ murder mystery?

Obviously, we have more than just the basic mystery happening here, or else we’d just have a standard sidequest, not a full DLC length story. I feel like this needs to go in depth on corruption within Citadel politics – poke around my blog, you’ll find I’m HIGHLY critical of the Council’s handling of the Saren matter, where they appoint a C-Sec officer with a reputation for not playing by the rules as the only investigator of the Eden Prime incident, give him roughly a day to look in to things, (Shepard’s out about sixteen hours, according to Doctor Chakwas, they arrive at the Citadel, get summoned to the Council, and encounter Garrus, at which point the trial is about to start, with no indication that more than hours at most have passed) and then TELL him that his investigation is over, Saren is allowed access to the files of the man he is accused of killing, an eye witness report of Saren’s murder of Nihlus is completely dismissed, while the data file Tali extracts from a geth, which Anderson says upon hearing that he’s never heard of this happening (to say nothing of the quarians’ status among the Citadel races) is deemed “irrefutable evidence”... There’s A LOT that is at best questionable about how the Council handles things. And that’s just sticking with the first game.

So I’d like to pull back some of the veil on Citadel politics, and use that to explore the human-alien friction. Due to Shepard’s rising profile throughout the series, we kinda lose a lot of the big level details of this, and it’s one of those things I like about the Mass Effect universe circa the first game – humanity ISN’T the big kahuna, they’re the latest arrivals, and the rest of the galaxy thinks they’re a bunch of jerks trying to take what they haven’t earned.

Hence where we start – our victim is an Alliance politician, someone who’s got one of those jobs that makes them friends and enemies of the same people. Obviously, this means that there are a lot of people on the Citadel (and outside the Citadel) who would easily be picked up as suspects – again, we’re going an investigative route, to help show off Shepard as a tactician, to show off their brains as well as their brawn.

This is going to lead us first to explore more of the Citadel Tower, the place where the Council and other assorted political figures meet. Udina probably plays a part in things, considering he IS the ambassador at this point, so he’ll probably be talking to Shepard about matters along the way, something of our regular check-in point (plus good to offer him some more characterization and expand him somewhat).

Obviously, with a murder mystery, we investigate through the location, taking us through the Tower and into its deeper structure, to the point that Shepard ends up in the Tower’s basement (or whatever we call the lowest level). Down here, the discovery is that there’s (what else) a conspiracy. Humanity is moving too fast – they’ve only been here for about thirty years and they already have an embassy, are angling for a spot on the Council, how long until they replace all the races who were here first on the Council, make the Citadel humans only?

I feel like we could also get some retroactive elements of Cerberus’s human supremacy in play here, suggest that our victim was being manipulated by them and used to advance their agenda – not just to foreshadow how Cerberus gains prominence in the next game, but also to show that even well-intentioned people are preyed upon by Cerberus’s actions (hello Paragon Shepard). Cerberus didn’t mind using him for their objectives, even if he’s not some pro-human bigot.

Speaking of, let’s tie in Terra Firma a little more into this – they seemed to have some influence in the first game, then drop off the face of the earth, so yeah, let’s throw them in somehow. Like I see that as part of our concluding decision, where the replacement political figure is one of their people, so they seem like the “obvious suspect” red herring – I think by this point we’ve established with these that one of my priorities is worldbuilding, and, again, Terra Firma dropped off the face of the series when it seemed to have developing prominence in the first game.

Anyway, back to the plot. Obviously, Shepard has to do something about this conspiracy. The problem is, of course, while extreme, they represent a dominant view among the Citadel races. And it’s one that has validity to it, humans are demanding more power than any other race in the Citadel’s history (this cycle, anyway, who knows about the previous ones?), and to these races, they are seen as aggressive in that pursuit.

Here’s the thing, and I’ve gone over this in my critiques of the Council before – humans are aggressive about getting more representation because of a handful of things. Number one, humans are out to advance, we recognize that we learn best from making mistakes, while the Citadel races seem to abide by a code of “none shall advance faster than the slowest.” That no advancement is made until all are “capable” of benefiting from it in certain ways, despite how we have the example of multiple species not even being able to compete on a level playing field with races like the asari, the salarians, or the turians – the volus are a client race of the turians, despite having been a part of the galactic community longer. It’s why we see the relative stagnation – the asari discovered the Citadel two thousand years ago, and yet so much of it is still a mystery.

Number two, humans are aggressive because the Citadel races were aggressive to them first. The First Contact War started because Citadel law is that no one shall activate dormant Mass Relays. Thing is, humanity opened Relay-314 at a time that they’d never even heard of the Citadel and its government. So the turians who opened fire first? They were holding humanity to the standards and rules and laws of a governmental body that they didn’t even know existed until the shooting started.

That the turians enforce this law so rigidly, and that the asari and salarians don’t seem to understand how much the asshole it makes them, is the honest source of a lot of the tension between the races in the game.

Like, I vehemently disagree with the racist attitudes of the Terra Firma asshole we meet, but he’s not wrong in pointing out that if you see a kid playing with a matchbook, you take the matches away, but you don’t shoot them for good measure. The turians started the conflict, and you can tell that the Citadel races never acknowledge their responsibility in this – it’s all “humans are so aggressive” without any understanding of why a species whose introduction to the greater galaxy came at a cost of life and involved acts of violence inflicted on them, literally on the basis of information that by definition, they could not have, just MIGHT hold a grudge.

...So, uh, bringing this back around to the topic at hand... This is where we get to the central conflict. Our Terra Firma assholes who are all “Earth first!” have a valid point that the Council and the Citadel races mistreat humanity, and wrap it up in condescending bullshit, so the fact that they’re looking to take some kind of action to do something about this is understandable, even if they’re doing it wrong. The opposition is the conspiracy folks, the ones who murdered the outspoken human, all in the name of protecting their people from perceived human aggression.

And yes, it really does all come down to something that simple, as both sides are right and both sides are wrong, and now someone has to clean up the mess their hostilities have created. I do want this to really come down to something so simple and, on paper, easy to resolve, because when this kind of thing happens in our world, it’s frequently just as on paper simple, but, because of the emotions involved and the personal grudges accumulated, no one is able to take that step back and try to make amends (not saying that as a value judgement, just a fact – sometimes it is appropriate to address the personal grudges, sometimes you need let them go for the greater good).

There’s an interconnectedness to the Citadel races in the course of the series, and this is one of the ways to showcase that, by displaying that both of these peoples need each other in the course of the continuation of this cycle’s civilizations. So Shepard’s ultimate decision is about making a decision, and the hard work is in making them both recognize and acknowledge that they are both wrong – pulling this off right, meaning Shepard found all the ways to make good in-roads with both factions so they’ll listen when they make a big persuasive speech, we have the legitimate grievances acknowledged and at least on course to be redressed (one of the galactic news reports can, if the Alliance fleet is sacrificed to save the Destiny Ascension, say that the turians are considering reparations – maybe with this option, this happens regardless). Pulling it off wrong, Shepard has to side with one faction or the other, leaving tension and hostility remaining unresolved, impacting future relations.

Post Game Followups: 

ME2: Emails from the sided faction, talking about their political advancement.

ME3: Impact on Citadel politics, affecting the attitude of the populace in the Citadel Defense Force

Old Wounds

Shanxi was the site of the First Contact War. Since then, the human colonists have resisted alien interference and involvement on their world. But things become complicated when a turian effort at reparations ends up as a hostage situation. Naturally, the Alliance has one person they want to send in to help smooth things over – Commander Shepard.

An Ashley focus mission, we’re giving her the spotlight here – consider this something of a proto-loyalty mission, since the game itself didn’t have these. Because Shanxi is a place that means a lot to her and her family, so we’re going to say that she is on this mission. That obviously also limits this to a pre-Virmire position in the plot, because she may not make it off of that planet.

Shanxi is talked about, but it’s never even given a flyby in the games proper, and so we head there. And, especially with the context of the last entry in this list, I feel like there should be some effort to acknowledge that there should be reparations to humanity – like I said there, the turians discovered humans on Shanxi and decided to openly attack them, hold them to laws and rules that they had no way of knowing existed, and then decide that humans are the aggressive ones because of how they respond? Yeah, that’s bullshit.

So we have a situation where a group of turians have this realization and are trying to convince the people of Shanxi of their good intentions. Shanxi is, understandably, reluctant to believe it. Shepard is going in to smooth things over, try and ease the tensions that are inevitably flaring up, and Ashley is, ultimately, conflicted about how to feel about this whole matter – this is Shanxi, Williams are not exactly welcome here. But there is still a feeling of responsibility here all the same, because her family impacted this world and now she’s here to help try to build a bridge. The “hostage situation” of the synopsis will actually take place during the course of events – before that happens, we get a chance to explore Shanxi, learn about the history there.

This seems like a point to bring it up: Ashley’s grandfather surrendering Shanxi, in the name of preventing a massacre, and being branded a traitor for it makes little sense to me. Of course, I get that surrendering looks bad, if you’re only looking at the act, and not the motivation. People were losing their lives, he acted to protect them. The Alliance military being unforgiving assholes is not unbelievable, but the general public going along with it, refusing to have his name cleared, even decades later, is.

So we’re going to have to dig into the reasons for this. People on Shanxi will resent the Williams for the surrender – they wanted to fight to the bitter end, and they passed this along to their kids. The “death before dishonor” crowd think it would have been better to have fought to the last – sent a stronger message to the Citadel about the wrongness of that whole “shoot first, ask questions later, blame the victim for everything” approach. They’re the ones who lead the charge against Williams’ actions, saying he was weak for surrendering to the turians. Meanwhile others are aware that he saved lives.

If anything, this makes things difficult for Ashley. As much as she lives under the specter of her family, she is not quite sure about what life would be like if he’s cleared – even knowing that things would be better, her family not getting shit details and crap assignments, it means getting a new perspective on the future that she never expected and needs to process that.

Core plot is still the hostage situation, one that Shepard ends up being involved in. The hostage takers are a group demanding more for the turians in terms of reparations – they can’t bring back the dead, of course, but the turians aren’t giving enough in their eyes. I don’t know, let’s say that it’s coming across as a perfunctory kind of apology, the “We’re sorry you feel we disrespected you” kind of reaction, which... Yeah, I totally see the turians doing that and the humans calling bullshit.

I mean, yeah, you want more to it than just “we’re angry” and such, because that’s a pretty straightforward mission, but the idea here is as much for exploring Ashley’s character and development over just an outright mission story. This is about her, and we’re going to explore her through this as much as the plot, so the plot can get away with being fairly limited in scope or scale, because this is about the character.

And this means that Ashley needs to have the big moment of resolving the crisis, rather than Shepard. Like, RPG, we’ll say Shepard gets the option to decide who gets that moment, but let’s be real, to culminate her arc in this DLC, it should be her. Bookend the portrayal of her grandfather with her – depending on how Shepard’s interacted with her, with how much digging they did into the history of the place, how they’ve interacted with the people, and it leads to Ashley (or Shepard) being able to talk down the hostage takers, defuse the situation, resolve things peacefully. If they can’t, violence ensues.

Resolution-wise, we’d be looking at the turians being upset and nearly starting conflict all over again because “you humans are too damn aggressive,” “the turians aren’t negotiating in good faith and wish they’d blasted humanity back to the stone age,” blah blah blah. Variation is in how the situation was resolved – peaceful resolution leads to the agreement to try this again later, let hostilities die down a little before trying to fix these long-standing grudges, violent is that the turians walk away, the human diplomats basically going “well, we’ll try this again at some point, hopefully.” And, for Ashley, she’s resolved some of her family’s old ghosts – best case scenario, she’s given Shanxi a different memory of the Williams clan, and can walk away with a tangible note on her record that, regardless of how anyone else might try to creatively reinterpret her record, says that her contribution saved lives.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Email from diplomatic representative about the advancement of the talks over the previous two years.

ME3: If peacefully resolved, a joint human-turian task force is a war asset.

Ascension

The Ascension Project is a home for human biotics. Rumors reach Captain Anderson that there is a biotic extremist group attempting to subvert the teaching and draw them towards pro-human interests, and he asks Commander Shepard to investigate what could be a threat to the human-Citadel alliance.

We had Ashley’s loyalty mission, here’s Kaidan’s. The advancement of human biotics was a running thread through the background of ME1, but sort of fell by the wayside as the series expanded its scope in successive games, so this is a chance to explore that further. And we’re going to do so in part by building on the mission in game that involves Chairman Burns, the Alliance Parliament member who is taken captive by L2 biotics seeking reparations.

Obviously, we see Grissom Academy, the site of the Ascension Project, in ME3, but hey, for one, I like the idea that (retroactively, anyway) this means that Shepard is returning there in the course of the third game, and for two, it’s entirely reasonable to make the Academy large enough to house areas that we just didn’t see in the course of the mission there. Plus we’re seeing it (at least to start) in less of a state of chaos as exists in ME3.

Again, we’re starting lowkey. The idea here is more infiltration first – if extremists are trying to coopt kids’ education, odds are sending in soldiers is gonna tip them off quick and easy. So instead this is going to be framed as an “Alliance biotic recruitment” kind of thing – “The Alliance wants you!” and all that sort. That’s the cover as Shepard’s team heads in. The name of the game here is stealth, that we’re not here to set off alarms, just to ensure that there’s no attempt at subversion of the Alliance’s goals of peaceful coexistence with the Citadel races.

As a sidenote, both this and the Ashley DLC are basically me engaging in retroactively applied stories to further justify why it is that Kaidan and Ashley get the Spectre wings come ME3 – as it is, that kinda feels more like a bone being thrown to humanity in the name of appeasing them with Earth captured by the Reapers, as well as Udina wanting a loyal bodyguard, as opposed to something that their skill and ability has earned them the position. I want some exploration of the skill that justifies them getting that position.

So, yeah, we see the Ascension Project in its glory, causing a bit of a stir of memories for Kaidan, aware that this is more like what he should have experienced at BAaT. He’s glad that there are biotics who are getting to learn about their abilities in a safe environment that isn’t going to treat them like trash – whether or not that’s the military boot camp way, these are kids who have been, by a quirk of fate and chance, given these incredible powers without their consent, they deserve sympathy and understanding regarding their lives abruptly turned upside down, not demands that they show the same level of skill as people who train through their lives to be weapons.

Another investigation story, as we look in on the various teachers, learning more about what the state of affairs with regards to biotics are – if Mass Effect Andromeda is going to say that Cora felt outcasted and isolated because of her biotics, lets at least make this have a tangible feeling of what the actual culture and society she left behind is dealing with, considering that this is something that I’ve seen EVERYONE side-eying at best with her. At least offer it some grounding in the universe so it’s not just her, in effect, whining that she felt alone when we have characters like Kaidan, who killed someone with his biotics as a teenager, and Jack, who was tortured from infancy in an attempt to build a better biotic.

Anyway. The idea is to see more about what the biotics go through, and to better explain what biotics even are to the uninitiated (re: the audience). Biotics are just an accepted part of the universe in the games as is, but these are still a relatively recent thing for humanity, and we don’t really know how people are handling it.

Honestly, I’m kinda inclined to fully lean into a “biotics = homosexuality” metaphor. Like, personal stuff here, that’s one of the things that really... bothers me about the way Cora is handled in Andromeda, that she has this very queercoded story in terms of her self-acceptance, to the point of at one point, in reference to her biotics, saying “what if someone had told me ‘that’s okay’?” about herself. And that’s a line that defines queer narratives, but it is coming out of this cis-straight person’s mouth. So yeah, I’m gonna fix that how I can, since canonically, Kaidan is a bisexual man, and he gets the focus here, and we’re gonna take advantage of this. I may have issues with how BioWare handles their not-straight characters, but since they’re not actually making this, I’m gonna take full advantage.

Oh, right. Plot. Something, something... We get to the overall plot. Of course, we can sway a few people over – these biotic extremists are looking for belonging and acceptance above all. We see things like Major Kyle’s biotic cult, biotics are looking for something that gives them a place, beyond just the military stuff – what happens to the biotic who is a pacifist, where do they fit in when the only place that really seems to accept biotics is the Alliance military? Yeah, sure, these extremists would be testing the idea of “pacifism,” but it’s still the general concept we’re going with.

Like with the above Ashley story, it comes down to Kaidan getting the option to take the lead on this. You know how in the situation in the base game with Chairman Burns, Kaidan will interject about being an L2, like those extremists? Last time I played through, I kinda felt like he should have been more in the lead on that mission, that it should have been his answer to Garrus and Doctor Saleon, or Wrex and the family armor, something like that. So we’re going to have a similar situation here. Like with Ashley above, his ability to talk down the leader of this group depends on how well the player investigated – find the details, talk to the right people, that sort of detective stuff (because I like there being more to gaining experience in games that just combat).

That’s especially meaningful because this particular pro-human person, the one leading these biotic extremists? He worked at BAaT, was one of the people supposedly tasked with watching the situations with the turian biotics who had been brought on. He knew Kaidan. Kaidan knew him. In some ways, because of what happened with Kaidan, that’s why he was inspired to this – letting aliens teach biotics to these children, dictate those terms, WAS abuse, and, in his mind, humans can’t let their children be so violently abused by aliens again.

Kaidan says he dealt with his past in the game proper. But this is still an echo of it, someone who he once knew, worse, someone who cites what happened to him as reason for what he’s doing. Which is why it’s important for Kaidan that he be the one to resolve this. As ever, it can be resolved with words or violence, yay Paragon/Renegade system. For Kaidan, though, it’s just important to see this through and make sure that he has this dealt with.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Email from a class of biotics saved.

ME3: Student saved during the Grissom Academy mission is among the students encountered here, their presence gives a boost to the biotic students war asset

Ruins of Preita

An asari colony world has discovered a prothean archive that could rival those on Mars. Due to the concerns of the Reapers, Commander Shepard and crew go to investigate – and find an empty world, the archaeology team missing. Finding the missing team leads into a world lost to the galaxy for over fifty thousand years – and a threat even the protheans locked away!

So, now we have a Liara loyalty mission story. If you’ve paid any serious attention to my blog over the years, you’re probably having a laugh at my expense here – I’m always complaining about an overfocus on Liara, and yet here I am, adding to her content specifically. Hey, I’m at least playing fair and giving her time alongside Ashley and Kaidan. Hell, that’s why I’m doing this. I gave them time in the sun, and it’s fair that I give her the same.

But yes, I want to explore Liara’s character through the lens of her as an archaeologist, which basically gets a little lip service in the games proper, but ultimately means nothing. She is supposed to be an expert on the protheans and an archaeologist of renown, and yet that gets dumped as her actual profession in ME2, so that she can “be a very good information broker,” which... Not to dismiss her in what is meant to be a focus mission for her, but that ends up being told, rather than shown. Let’s let her play to her strengths.

This is a mission about her getting to flex that muscle. She learns about this archive – actually, thinking about it, let’s say that this was a dig that she had the chance to go on instead of the Therum dig, and chose it instead in the name of it being more isolated (more on that later). With the latest report she’s read about it, she thinks it’ll be an assist to Commander Shepard – if nothing else, the fact that Saren was interested in Eden Prime’s prothean beacon means that a new prothean archive might well be a lure for him, and he might well show up, or have Benezia or one of her agents go there in his stead. It could lead them to Saren, is what she’s using as her justification for telling Shepard to go and check this out.

Obviously it won’t, because game mechanics, but it’s a solid enough reason to get us where we’re going, which is an asari planet. Here’s where we get a chance to see Liara in her element AND see this pushback against her theories. It bugs the hell out of me that Liara says that her theory of the cycle of extinction is dismissed by other asari because of her youth – by framing that dismissal of her peers with having to do purely with her age, it says that in the two thousand years since the asari discovered the Citadel, to say nothing of anything that might have been included in the prothean archive in the Temple of Athame, NO ONE ELSE has put forward the idea of the cycles. That Liara is the first to put those pieces together. In more than two thousand years. And, as things turn out, she is 100% correct about there being a constant cycle of civilization and extinction.

My suspension of disbelief breaks at that. That she and she alone has developed this theory – this theory that is absolutely fact – in two thousand years. Bare minimum, I would have said that she was part of a fringe collection of scientists who just don’t have the evidential support to justify this being the mainstream view. But it’s the canon we have to work with, so, fine. But this disagreement when it comes to theories on the extinction of the protheans would be another point of why Liara didn’t go on this excursion, that these other researchers are those who do not share her beliefs, and, as she believes, that would mean they would shun her.

But it’s important that these researchers not just be strawmen – they may have held opposing views to Liara, that doesn’t mean they would dislike her. In point of fact, one of them has to have considered herself a friend to Liara, for reasons I’ll get in to in a bit. But these are going to be people who are all for the most part entirely likeable and reasonable. They just don’t agree with Liara’s stance.

Or at least, the records and logs they’ve left behind make them entirely likable and appear reasonable. Because, of course the research team is missing when Shepard and team arrive – like research teams in these scenarios are ever able to avoid going missing and being presumed dead.

This sparks a conflict with Liara – she’s glad that they’re able to try and find them, maybe even rescue them, but she’s also guilty because she should have been on this expedition, should have been with them. Liara’s got a tendency to put things on her own shoulders (see her reaction after Thessia, assuming you don’t have Javik/don’t take the interrupt to get them to an accord). Hell, ideally, this would be something done after Noveria and her mother’s death to explore that some – I hate how by the time you try to speak with her about it, she’s already pulling that “I choose to remember Benezia as she was” thing, seeming to either be accepting or repressing what happened, when what happened is that, regardless of the why, her mother is dead, and Shepard pulled the trigger.

So yeah, while this is a mission available at any point after doing Therum, in my mind, it’s best to take this after Noveria for the ability for Liara to lash out at Shepard for not being able to rescue her mother, how do they think that they can save these people, one among them a friend of hers, look at that, it’s another situation where Shepard is going to fail to rescue someone who mattered to her!

That is her breaking point, where she can’t bottle this all up anymore. That, for the sake of the mission, for “the greater good,” she’s bottled up her feelings and anger and resentment and fear, and yet, here and now, she can’t help it, she has to address it. She knows it’s unfair to Shepard – she heard about indoctrination, understands that it was something horrible for Benezia, that Benezia accepted no alternative to death, but people she cares about keep getting caught in the line of fire, all in the name of what, exactly? “The greater good”? “The ends justifying the means”? Chance and circumstance?

Hell, include some elements tying her closer to Ashley and Kaidan at this point – it connects the crew together more for when the Virmire decision hits, considering that this game only has banter in the Citadel elevators, which, given fast travel, is heavily skippable, and competes with news reports. There needs to be more development of the character interactions, so let’s do some character interaction here, if nothing else. (And maybe also include a post-Virmire conversation with her about how SHE feels about the loss of Ashley/Kaidan, yes I’m moving out of the scope of this DLC idea, but it’s good for characterization, dammit!)

Investigation happens, records and logs do the ‘ominous mood building’ thing... The end result is that what happened was that this planet once housed a prothean lab. A bio-engineering lab. They were creating something that (stated ambiguously, since Shepard won’t know about the Reapers properly yet at this point in the timeline) was meant to fight the Reapers, be something that could stand against them and protect the protheans. But by the time that it was done, the war was all but over, the protheans having lost. The protheans never got the chance to let it loose, pulling up stakes from the facility before the Reapers hit it. But as time wore away the tech, this thing they created has gotten loose on its own after a few thousand years. This thing is like the rachni on Noveria, having been grown in isolation – there was nothing else on this planet, it was literally the only kind of life around, even before getting to it being engineered as a weapon above all else. It’s too mad to save, must be put down.

Easier said than done, of course. The archaeological team are contained inside of it (I’m thinking held in some kind of crystal-like stasis pods on its back), and is drawing on them for life, sort of in the same way that Malak used the Jedi captives on the Star Forge in KOTOR, where it taps into them and heals itself based on their life force. So the Paragon/Renegade choice in here revolves around how much effort Shepard’s going to put in to saving the captives. Freeing them before they get used as batteries, probably with Liara using her biotics to rescue those who they manage to get loose (meaning she’s unable to act as support in combat because she’s busy focusing her biotics), or just killing them first – with Liara distracted and unable to provide support, that justifies the Renegade stance, because it’s one less source of firepower against the thing as it tries to either kill them or add them to its collection.

That’s important because that aforementioned friend of hers is going to be rescued either way the player chooses – Liara will insist on getting her out alive, even if Shepard foregoes saving the others. Regardless of the player choice, Liara’s friend survives, and, once the creature is dead, she’ll respond to how Shepard chose to resolve the situation, if she’s the sole survivor or if Shepard made an effort to rescue everyone. She’s grateful for her survival either way, but she’s angry about the failure to save the others if they were abandoned.

For Liara, though, the ultimate result is seeing something of the protheans being knocked off their pedestal – regardless of the reason (which, yes, we know to be extinction by Reapers), they abandoned this creature, left it to be consumed by madness. The point here is seeing Liara have a moment where she grows up – she has to acknowledge the protheans she pictured for the last century were flawed (Partially because it bothers me the way she speaks of the protheans with such rose-colored glasses even by ME3, when she says “it’s clear they prized knowledge, growth, and cooperation with the rest of the galaxy,” even before Javik sends that image crashing – a species who form an empire, whose legacy is memorialized as an empire, is not going to be first and foremost wise scholars). She’s realizing that whatever the reasons were for creating this, whatever caused them to leave it behind, they still did this to an innocent being that they were responsible for. It’s something of her “loss of innocence” moment, considering that Benezia’s death currently doesn’t really provide that (though, again, we ARE also addressing that... Details.)

Her friend is also going to get a few moments with Liara, talking about the archaeology team, and commenting about how Liara’s development has gone. This is a moment for Liara, to really help give her a character arc in the game proper – considering that she can be left on Therum until right before Ilos, she kinda doesn’t have much of one as it is. Also, this gives a chance for Liara to exist outside of Shepard’s world, considering how she bubbles herself into it as the trilogy progresses. This is someone who’s only really in Liara’s orbit, not Shepard’s, and it gives her a little more grounding and existence outside of Shepard.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Letter from Liara’s friend, commenting about how she handled Shepard’s death, expressing concern for her losing direction

ME3: The creature’s remains have been examined, providing a War Asset, if the archaeologists were saved, they provide an additional boost, Liara’s friend has a cameo on the Citadel after Thessia

Incursion

An Alliance space station on the fringe of the Terminus system abruptly goes silent. As the Normandy’s stealth systems can get there without letting any invaders know, as well as Commander Shepard’s skill, Captain Anderson sends them to check on the station. The batarians specifically have been known to be in the area, but there remains the possibility that this is something worse...

Okay, out of the loyalty mission structure and direct character work, back to isolated stories in the setting. So, the frontier of space? I say this as a lover of scifi from a young age: It is TERRIFYING. You are on the edge of all that’s known, and any number of things, things you could never conceive of because they are so outside of your frame of reference, could show up and kill you. A flimsy barrier of glass (or transparent aluminum or whatever material they make those big honking windows out of) is all that separates you from a suffocating death.

Yeah, we’re doing a psychological horror story here. I suppose technically AGAIN, considering the stuff around the disappeared archaeologists in the above DLC idea, but that was as much about Liara as the atmosphere. This is pure paranoia and suspicion.

The inspiration I’m going with here is KOTOR 2’s opening on the Peragus mine. Something happened here, and the people are all dead or missing – a handful of corpses, but, yet again, we’ve got logs to find, and they’ll include people who we can’t identify among the dead. Because that gives motivation to stick around and solve things, rather than just blow the place to hell.

The first guess is that there’s a batarian slave raid happening here. There are indications that the Alliance officers here were thinking this at first, that this was some raid in progress – sure, it wasn’t open violence, but maybe they were softening things up, trying to get on board, lower defenses, and then let the slave ships show up and take everyone left. That’s what their last attempt at an outgoing message suggested, it’s what Shepard and company show up expecting.

But that wasn’t the case. The investigation continues through the station, with Shepard searching for signs of anyone still alive. And as they proceed through the station, there’s something that seems to keep just passing out of view. Something else is here with them.

Again, I’m skimping on the exposition here, just because the investigation is the important part, and that’s hard to develop without a layout of the station itself in front of me, and what and how the narrative has to adapt to the environment, but also because this is a very atmospheric style story, where the focus is in the build up, the mystery, the way to get to the big reveal of just what it is that happened here. In a story like this, the tension in this is built with how many times you think you’re going to have an encounter with “the monster” before you actually do.

This particular “monster,” as it turns out, is some kind of energy creature, something that came to the station from the unknown depths of space, drawn by the station’s power core emissions. All indications are that this is simply some space-born lifeform that evolved naturally, and isn’t like some Reaper weapon or anti-Reaper weapon. Just some non-sapient lifeform, drawn in by the power core (maybe it had been specially modified, to further explain why this station and why now), and ending up killing the inhabitants of it.

The thing about this is that I’m going to emphasize here is that I DON’T want this as some kind of creation of the Reapers or their servants OR something that was cooked up to combat them. This thing is entirely independent of anything to do with Reapers. One of the things that I appreciated with ME1 over the later games was the “lived in” nature of the galaxy, where there were a handful of things shown and revealed in the course of the story that just spoke to there being life and civilization wandering through the galaxy for countless millennia. Life is pretty persistent when given the chance, and there’s surely life that exists in the depths of space that is so completely alien to our understanding that we might not even recognize it as such. This creature is one such example of life but not as we know it.

Obviously, there’s a straight up Paragon/Renegade choice of killing or sparing the creature, finding some way to lure it off and away from the station. I’m also inclined for a neutral option of trying to humanely capture it – it’s a creature unlike anything they know, it could show them so many things about the greater universe in the examination – but I’m not sure I feel like there’s enough room in the series for that kind of variation, given the limitations – this IS meant to be DLC, you know? Or at least, hypothetical DLC. Either way, though, the end result is that there is a boss battle, Shepard having to either kill it or weaken it, the station is cleared of the threat and the Alliance gets to have the station back, with talk of it being repurposed into some kind of early warning system regarding threats from outside Alliance/Citadel space (hint hint, nudge nudge).

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Emails from the new station commander, referring to the reopening of the station and the fate of the creature

ME3: Station as a war asset, exo-biologists as a war asset, how they examine space-faring life in the galaxy and if they can be adapted in some way to resist the Reapers

Evolution

A mercenary contacts the Normandy, claiming to have information regarding Saren. Following this lead, however, proves to open a separate can of worms, as the mercenary reveals their connections to a cult of people who view synthetics as the next step in organic evolution, and, knowing of Saren’s ties to the geth, seek to stop Shepard – or convert them.

So the idea here is to give more attention to something that seemed to be a running plot thread during ME1 and ME2 – machine cultists. The ExoGeni survey team on Trebin got huskified by an unknown artifact, and in ME2, there’s the mine on Aequitas. Yes, technically that hasn’t happened yet, shush. But we observe this in action in the games proper, and no one ever actually acknowledges it beyond the simple immediate reaction.

So what we have here is a merc, trying to contact Shepard, claiming they have info on Saren. No one really believes it – if Saren’s working with geth, he would have no need for the liability of organic agents. Yet they also can’t really ignore the idea either because Saren is why they’re out here (I really intend to take advantage of the idea that the whole party cast comes back for these with a full on mission briefing/discussion to kick this off – sounds like some fun opportunities for character dynamics with them debating the validity of this claim).

The result of going in takes Shepard and team to a planet where, initial impression, something is OFF about this place. It’s a prefab colony in early colonization, and something about how the people act just doesn’t seem right. They seem to be in an almost trance-like state that no one can snap them out of, a fact that immediately puts everyone on edge.

The merc is here (let’s say he’s a turian), and keeps things frustratingly vague until the arrival of a leader of the colony. The kicker with him being that he appears partially huskified (sorta like the Cerberus goon on Mars that Ashley/Kaidan find). Yet he still seems to be able to act seemingly independently. Of course, someone this obviously not-right has made himself a target, but all the people in the colony, including the merc, are all on his side.

Shepard can try to fight out of this, but they’re overwhelmed – there IS an entire colony of people, and there’s still the possibility of getting them free, Shepard has a responsibility to not shoot civilians (no matter what trigger-happy Renegades might think), and the team at least is willing to take that stand.

The explanation is that this is a group of wanna-call-themselves “next phase of organic evolution,” people who believe that they are the future. That’s what got their attention about Saren and Shepard, knowing about how he is working with the geth (it was an open session of the Council when they got made Spectre, after all). They look to Shepard as a potential threat.

When we encounter Machine Cultists in the game proper, they’re too far gone to really give any explanation. The comics seemed to draw on this – in Mass Effect Evolution, Saren’s brother uncovered one on Palaven, the Illusive Man was involved, Saren had to nuke from orbit the location of this device and his brother with it. We’re kinda going into the same territory with this, but, you know, Shepard gets to save the day.

So the merc shows up, trying to explain, offer the sales pitch (i.e.: the carrot), try to convince Shepard that their leader has the right idea, that this is a true joining of organic and synthetic, and that it will avert the “coming apocalypse” (just in case the whole ‘Reaper artifact’ element wasn’t certain for anyone playing). Then the cult leader shows up to offer the threat (i.e.: the stick), the warning that whatever Shepard expects to do, they will not be able to succeed.

For pacing reasons, I think of this as a pre-Virmire thing, so there’s not a direct awareness on Shepard’s part that just being around a Reaper artifact is a cause for Indoctrination, leading to a period of wondering how this happened and assuming it comes from direct interface – this is as much an explanation for why, if the implication is that the cult leader got to interface with a prothean beacon of some kind (actually Reaper, in the same manner as the vision that Object Rho offers in Arrival), they don’t have Shepard try to interact with this one, that they’re afraid of Shepard becoming like these people.

Anyway, jailbreak sequence! Because we can do better than just running a game of Simon in order to get Shepard out of their cell. Shepard finagles a way out of the cell block and to the colony’s science lab (it’s a frontier world, they need a science lab just to stay aware of all the new things they discover here). Among the things there is the record of what happened here, and specifically the existence of the artifact. Leads to a simple solution – blow up the artifact, and see what that does.

Of course, the artifact is guarded in the heart of the colony’s main site. We meet up with the merc again, who’s seeming a little uncomfortable – the indoctrination hasn’t completely taken root in him, and so there’s some question of maybe he can be reached. Paragon/Renegade here about dealing with him – kill him or spare him. That sparing will come back in a short while

Because now there’s the colony leader – the cult leader, effectively, at this point – to deal with. He’s angry about the damage Shepard has done to everything, ranting about plans to bring the glory of evolution to the galaxy. Yeah, he’s round the bend, the device effectively having melted his mind (okay, yeah, I’m getting flashes of Kenson here, but hey, same tech, so it’s not ripping off, it’s continuity!)

After dealing with him, the plan is to blow the artifact sky high. Here’s where the merc comes back into play – he says he’s too far gone, and wants to be the one to push the button on this thing, die with it. It’s his way of having a good death after this. Another Paragon/Renegade choice about his fate before blowing the thing sky high – the colony, unfortunately can’t be saved, anyone not killed getting there dies when the device is blown.

There’s an after action briefing, too, where, because, again, the idea here is that this is pre-Virmire, the crew really discuss the horrors of what “these Reaper machines” can do, and what if they’re not some geth red herring or something.

Basically, my idea here is that this is adding to the atmosphere and mystique of the Reapers, in a way that, with the game proper focused on the concept of advancing the plot, doesn’t get a chance. This is a more traditional feature of building up the menace, by showing the insidious nature of things, having the Reapers’ subtle side at play – we see references of Indoctrination, but we don’t really get the horrors outside of some talk – sure, there are the salarians who are in the Virmire facility, and Benezia’s talk, but it’s all second hand. This is a case where we see the effects spread across the entire colony, which, given resources in the game, is all of a planet we get to encounter, and Shepard and company are the only ones who aren’t, and that can go to the paranoia, where the people surrounding them all are giving off the vibes of being a threat, but they’re not doing anything. What can I say, I am a sucker for a good atmospheric story.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Email about the aftermath of the colony’s destruction, and the research done on the corpses on the effects of Indoctrination

ME3: War asset surrounding Indoctrination research, preliminary anti-Indoctrination tech being introduced around the Catalyst facility, if the merc sacrificed himself, his family offers a boost to turian military morale on the basis of how one of their own resisted (pointedly ignoring Saren)

Relativity

The Mass Relays are the ancient devices that allow faster than light travel throughout the galaxy. The Charon Relay specifically was one that opened the way for humanity to join the races of the Citadel. This only makes a sudden distress call from the Relay all the more urgent, and Admiral Hackett believe that of everyone in the Alliance, Commander Shepard is right for the job.

So the Mass Relays are these massive facilities that are a key point throughout the entire trilogy. Why, exactly, do we never see one up close aside from transition screens? We should totally get to explore one! Like, I realize that it’s never explicitly said if there’s any kind of command station, or if “guarding a Mass Relay” was a ship-based action or if there was actual, physical contact with one, but I’m saying that something of the size of the Relays, even if much of it is a solid object, you maintain SOME sort of command structure within it in order to monitor and examine things. Even if the Reapers have some kind of robotic drones or Keeper analogues running around, doing standard maintenance, I cannot be convinced that there is not SOME areas of the actual Mass Relay that house facilities for organic life to work in. Especially considering the design having the light sources along the hull that we traditionally associate with acting as windows on starships and space stations.

So yeah, this is an adventure taking us into the workings of a Mass Relay proper. The general idea is that there’s a distress call from the Charon Relay, which is something that really worries the Alliance – lose the Charon Relay, humanity loses their connection to the galaxy at large. And the Alliance doesn’t want the Citadel to know about this, at least not right away – if something is impacting how the Relays function, the Council is going to demand getting involved, and the Alliance DEFINITELY doesn’t want to give the non-human races a free pass into humanity’s home system, so they’re calling on Shepard.

Also part of the novelty of this is that I kinda want to have the chance to explore what it’s like for those who are not exploring the stars in this setting – the Mass Relay’s crew is alive and intact and interactable. This isn’t one of the many cases of showing up too late to be able to properly save people (I’m looking mostly at ME2 on this count, even before we add in the above and below of my own creation).

Head of the team on the Relay is an engineer, not a soldier (pulling a name out of hat for them in the name of simplicity in this write up... Let’s go with Sarah Manning, just because my Orphan Black DVDs happen to be right next to me as I’m writing this and it offers as good as a placeholder as any – feel free to picture Tatiana Maslany as this character if you so choose, though, by the rules of this series, in an ideal world, this would have been DLC produced for ME1 in 2007, so this character would probably be at least a decade, probably more, older than she would have been at the time, oh no, I’ve gone cross-eyed...). She’s not just concerned about the Council finding out – not that she’s a Terra Firma type, just that she has Earth related pride and considers the Charon Relay humanity’s, and, on a personal level, HERS, given her responsibility for it – but also the lives on board. She wants to protect and preserve as many lives as she can.

The interior of the facility is a mix of reasonably sensical designs, in the areas meant for humanoid habitation, and something far more Eldritch abomination-y when we start moving out of those areas. And, you know, we pretty much HAVE to move out of them as time goes on, since that’s like half of the fun of this concept.

But we start in the more familiar areas, where everything seems normal. Except the people are missing (yes, I know I’m relying on this concept a lot, but it’s good as an in universe mystery and out of universe programming so that the game doesn’t have to account for like a dozen NPCs to fill space). In this instance, the distress signal itself indicates that the Relay’s station commander had ordered their people to a designated safe zone within the Relay’s structure, which is where Shepard will need to head to uncover things. Sarah’s staying in the control area, trying to ensure that nothing else goes wrong.

At some point in the midst of this, I do want the question of if the Relay will be/has to be destroyed to come up, better establish the idea that will come up in Arrival of the destruction of Relay in the game proper.

The exploration takes Shepard into the Eldritch-y areas, which, sadly, because I am a wordsmith and not a picture kind of person, I can really only describe as messing with perception and going all Escher in the design. Basically, the idea is to present the interior and heart of the Relays as being these massively complex and complicated machines that function on a level not really human (or, in the case of the non-human races in the game besides the Reapers, human adjacent). Because, first of all, this is faster than light travel, which means this is this is this franchise’s handwave for how anything happens on multiple planets and is dealt with in (in-universe) real time, and second, Sovereign talked about a level of existence beyond our own and such. This leans into that kind of concept – yeah, sure, we may have the Reapers be shown as effectively fundamentally understandable, but let’s at least justify the hype a little, huh?

The big idea here is that we’re kinda throwing back to the puzzle style of play that you used to see in computer games in like the nineties. That’s why perspective is going to be a part of this. Basically, the engineers on the Relay found something that tripped the security systems, sort of “unhinging” standard reality around them, getting them lost in the various extra layers (dimensions?) that the Relay works in.

I don’t really know if I see any kind of real boss or major decision here, because this is basically about the gimmick over anything else – Mass Effect isn’t a bad place for a gimmicky throwback, right? Maybe... Ah, something’s clicking here for me – the guy responsible for all of this happening in the first place. He was trying to access an archive – he initially thought it was prothean, but he’s been able to realize that this is much older. He wants to get this information, and is the last one we rescue. The issue is that it’s going to be a choice – rescue this guy and lose the archive, or save the archive and he dies. Like, I’m thinking that there’s some kind of rip or maybe a miniature black hole that’s sucking in the both of them and Shepard can only save one. That’s a solid Paragon/Renegade choice, especially since I could see arguments for both.

Anyway, once the crew’s all rescued and the choice made, Manning gets back to Shepard and says that this is about to get slapped with a security clearance so high she’d “probably have to kill [herself] just for remembering [she has] it” (because yes, I want that as an actual quote), and recommends that they get off the Relay before any superior officers show up to rake them over the coals for their involvement – Shepard’s a busy person, doesn’t need to get bogged down in the red tape that’s sure to come.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Email from Manning regarding the Relay’s subsequent stability

ME3: Manning’s team as a war asset/the archive being tapped for Crucible data and information on the Reapers (mutually exclusive – the team will have disbanded after the loss of the one member if the archive was recovered)

Planet of Peace

An attempt at colonizing a planet, with the aid of all Council races, in an effort at fostering galactic peace, sounded great on paper. The diplomats jumped on the opportunity. The reality has been... less than stellar. Considering the first human Spectre a bridge between races, the Council asks Commander Shepard to try and help smooth over relations.

Frankly, while I understand the focus on the threat of the Reapers, honestly, this seems like a legitimate issue that would be an instant demand for the first human Spectre. And, given the tension and hostility between the races (even beyond humanity against everyone else), it seems like a natural fit, in all honesty. Because it does seem like all the canonical colony worlds always start as one species attempting to tame a single world, rather than taking advantage of the unifying effort of the galactic community.

At the forefront of this colony is the retired human ambassador to the Council, Ambassador Goyle (Anderson mentions her when talking about his candidacy for the Spectres and we see her in the first of Alec Ryder’s memories, now we get to make her a character we get to interact with). This was her passion project specifically, thinking that all races had something that they could offer one another and need to come together.

Basically, she’s underscoring what I like to think of as a core concept of the series, being stronger together than separately.

But, of course, there are tensions. I mean, not even just because we wouldn’t have a plot without it. She is concerned that there might be some extremists getting involved – aren’t there always? When things are tense, some idiot’s always going to come along, see the stacks of dynamite, and decide to light a match. She is specifically asking that Shepard come to help resolve some issues, using their symbolism. Her request is fully aware of this being an exercise in flag waving, but it’s an important bit of flag waving – doing this here can make the galactic community a more stable place.

Bringing back in the element of having the cast back for these, I want to include quite a bit of companion content in this one, including something like how Dragon Age 2’s Mark of the Assassin DLC had a short companion quest for everyone. On a planet that’s a melting pot of the various races that make up the Citadel species, there’s going to be something for everyone here somehow. I don’t know what specifically right now – these write ups focus on the main plot, not the sidequests. But these are things that are there.

As for what is happening on the planet, on the small scale, there’s your standard culture clash brushfires, things that seem small and petty, but have accumulated for the people involved because they’re in such close proximity. But there is a strong Terra Firma presence as well, the “Earth for humans!” type, in addition to similar groups among the traditional Citadel races – this is still only a handful of decades past humanity’s entry, and as we’ve discussed before, the arrival of humanity has made things much more chaotic than they were before, and there’s more than a little resentment among the non-human races for humanity’s attitude and approach to things coming across almost as if they’re demanding more, without anyone Citadel side acknowledging that First Contact was a shit show of THEIR making (scroll back up and see Investigations for more on that...)

But the larger scale conflict is a group out to make sure that this planet fails in its mission and goal, drive a wedge between factions. I’m thinking of going the Star Trek VI route on this, that this group is an ironic banding of humans and non-humans, determined to see peace fall apart at the cost of allying with their supposed enemies, and using “look at how easily they turned on their own to stop this!” as a justification for their own hypocrisy.

Going with the Star Trek VI reference, this group is gearing up for an assassination attempt on Ambassador Goyle herself, believing that stopping her will stop the advancement of this idea. Now, Commander Shepard HAS to save her, we’re not doing the question of “can they stop it in time?” but, for all those pro-humanity xenophobic “Cerberus was right all along!” types, the response of Shepard will be to either name the conspirators and why or utilize their designated fall guy.

BUT WAIT! That’s not the end of this one. See, we’re also going to get an aftermath – the results of this will impact how the population react, and there’s a second story mission that requires a plot progression to access.

Returning to this planet (I feel like it would get some ambitious name like “Hope” or something, but I think it’s kinda provincial for the planet to carry a human name, so...), things are even tenser than before. We get to actively see how the fallout is impacting things, with people drawing lines based on the earlier assassination attempt. This is a lot like how the turian weapons merchant on the Citadel in ME2 will respond differently based on how Shepard resolved ME1 – side with one faction in the first part, their supporters approve of you and their opposites are angry with you, and vice versa.

Goyle appreciates Shepard’s return, because she’s seeing the place beginning to collapse. She’s feeling ready to throw in the towel because of how poorly things are going. Still, until the place closes its doors, she’s going to stand up and act like the leader she’s here to be. Shepard saved her life, she’s going to commit it to preserving this colony. But she wants Shepard’s help all the same, because they can leverage that heroism to helping put things here right.

Of course, here’s where we get to the big finale choice – are you going to strengthen this colony or break it? And sure, it seems straightforward on the idea of what’s good and what’s bad, but here’s the thing that the overall narrative develops through investigation – the Alliance and the Citadel need to allocate their resources. Part of the reason that the sanctioned colonies tend to be dominated by one species or another is a matter of need – when you have a primarily human/asari population, you’ll have to import in resources for turians, things like that – even if they’re trying to grow them on their own, they probably need to import like soil for nutrients and such.

And that not only gets costly, that can divert resources that are more greatly in need. In the long term, this could tie up resources that are needed elsewhere. In the short term, if trying to make these disparate races and cultures work together and play nice is taking up this much time and effort, isn’t it possible, isn’t it plausible, that there are better things to be doing with those resources?

So, do we try and heal the divide and potentially tie up resources in what has been an uphill climb from the start, and right before the Reaper War begins (for all you forward thinkers reading this), or do we cut our losses and focus on making these types of cross-species initiatives at a later point in time? That’s the Paragon/Renegade choice here.

The resolution comes and Ambassador Goyle will be either thankful for the effort or resigned that her great initiative isn’t going forward. Regardless of Shepard’s actions, she’s thankful that they at least made an attempt – she isn’t going to see them as failing if they opted to cut the losses, but herself.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Letter either from Ambassador Goyle, reporting on the colony, or a news service announcement of her having further withdrawn from the public eye after the colony’s failure.

ME3: For Paragon choice, there’s a decrease in dextro-food reserves, given the colony’s need, but an increase in interspecies morale, with efforts to incorporate multi-species crews underway, and vice versa for the Renegade

Daedalus Station

A space station on the fringe of Citadel space sends out a distress call. When the Normandy arrives, however, no one there claims responsibility for it. Yet the station is in a spiral, a path that will, slowly but steadily, lead the station directly into a sun. Commander Shepard attempts to save everyone aboard from the inevitable death, and discover why they seem unfazed at the idea.

Okay, let’s just acknowledge first, yes, I’m aware that the synopsis sounds not just like a rip off of the first mission of Leviathan but also “Incursion” above. I’m aware. Look, the synopsis is a short brief, not the full details, okay? Strictly speaking, it’s more in line with the events of Leviathan, certainly, but I want to at least acknowledge that I’m aware that there are similarities. Okay, they’re there, LET’S MOVE ON.

Anyway. Distress call, brings in the Normandy. Station is obviously in a death spiral. The moment that Shepard and company board the station, everyone is going about their routine. Obviously, something’s a touch screwy about this set up. Another investigation must ensue.

Of course, as we’ve established, details of the investigations are not where my expansions really shine – it’s easy to stretch out a discovery of this sort, with development A leading to clue B and making revelation C... Yadda, yadda. I’m about the what of these things, not the how.

The ultimate thing about this is twofold. Part one is that this is basically going to be an introduction to the concept of Indoctrination – someone discovered a Reaper artifact, and is trying to adapt it to their benefit. Because frankly, the idea that someone wouldn’t try and take Indoctrination for themselves... Yeah, let’s be real here. Someone WOULD.

Obviously, since we’re still in game one and the Reapers are still mostly a mystery at this point in time, there’s the question of what this is. But, hey, it’s still something that should have happened, and this is the time when there’s the most mystery and least immediate “oh shit, this will horribly backfire if we don’t just straight up blow this up now” reactions.

So, our villain. They’re gonna spiral into insanity (thematic mirroring – as the station enters the death spiral, they spiral into madness), so we’re not going to push too much on making them seem sympathetic, in the traditional sense. Honestly, in writing this, I’m kinda getting parallels to your average dangerous incel aspiring mass shooter, so we’re gonna go with that, someone who perceived themselves as more isolated and alone than they were – the investigation will have us find private journals from other crew pre-artifact that mention him, usually in the fashion of ‘he doesn’t talk much, but doesn’t seem that bad’ kind of messages. Meanwhile, his own talk about the others has a more downcast approach, that he knows they’re not interested in hearing about him, etc. etc.

You know, this is the kind of person who, upon getting the ability to manipulate minds is basically doing it in an effort to bolster his own self-esteem, turning people who were once a little sharp with him one time into his whipping boys, and making himself the king of this little hill.

The problem of his plan? The mental degradation. The last of those to fall under his sway sent out the automated distress beacon, and knew that there was a danger in this guy leaving – but they also couldn’t be sure that their efforts would be successful. It’s a case of the distress beacon being a double-edged sword – can their rescuers save them, stop this guy, or will they fall under his sway as well? But there’s no other solution. They set the collision course (and yes, I’m aware that this is happening on a space station, hey, the pilot episode of DS9 showed that the station could travel through maneuvering thrusters and such – the idea is that they wanted to find a way to destroy the station), and then destroyed the controls so it couldn’t be undone, and disabled the alerts so that the station wouldn’t alert anyone, setting it up to make it that the station’s sensors all seem to send the green light to the rest of the station – the false data would hopefully prevent the station crew from noticing.

Yes, of course I want there to be an apocalyptic log, why would I deny that BioWare staple?

Another thing that I want to do here is kinda retroactively at least make it a part of the universe that Shepard is resistant to the efforts of Reaper Indoctrination. The idea I’m going with is that some of the scrambling of Shepard’s brain (which, sidenote, I also want to take some time in this and call out the fact that it’s a PLOT POINT that Shepard’s brain gets messed with repeatedly throughout this game and no one thinks that might actually be a questionable matter – if a key point of this DLC is “dude, you’re messing with people’s minds, that’s rather unambiguously Not A Good Thing To Do,” then it’s an elephant in the room to not bring up that this is what’s happening with Shepard) has made them more resistant to these effects, though that probably means justifying this as having a watered down effect so that the companions are feeling the tug to fall under our villain’s thrall.

That’s basically where I picture the boss battle going, that Shepard has to fight against one of their companions, who has been compelled to be this guy’s defender against them. I’d say both companions, but that might be a little much, in particular on lower difficulties. So I’m going to say that Shepard can knock out one of their companions before they fall under the sway of the big bad’s influence, but the other escapes. I feel like there could be ways to offset the difficulties of this by way of like finding objects that counteract the signal or whatever, but the idea is Shepard versus companion. While it obviously has to end non-lethally, I feel like this is the kind of thing that is morbidly fascinating to see in just about everyone’s book. I’d also figure that it would depend on a handful of variables that make them resist more or less (because the game should reward investigation, right?)

When that’s completed (I figure it ends with Shepard destroying the controller artifact), it’s time to deal with the station about to be caught in the sun – the station’s going to be locked in a death spiral, but the people of the station can now evacuate. Which leaves the person responsible. On the Paragon side, Shepard is not judge, jury, and executioner, this guy should be given a fair trial. On the Renegade side, he’s a dick who took over people’s minds with no remorse on the matter. Whatever decision Shepard goes with, the station’s population will abide by – they probably want him dead anyway, right?

Aftermath does come into play, with a conversation with the companion Shepard fought against, because, especially if they’re a romance, that’s gotta mess with their heads. Also some general discussion of the artifact itself – obviously, while I expect a variation in the event this is played after Virmire, my idea of this is that it happens some time before it, so things like Wrex and Ashley/Kaidan’s deaths (or possible death) are variation options, this is basically something that I feel can influence matters – if Shepard and Wrex have already fought, for example, I feel like that would earn them enough influence come Virmire for Wrex to stand down there, it’s got parallels/foreshadowing... That kind of emotional work.

Also there’s some consideration about that artifact – once a technology exists, putting that genie back in the bottle is nigh impossible, so now it’s known that you can use this tech to control minds, someone’s sure to try and take advantage of this tech somewhere down the line – Shepard and company will discuss what kind of precautions can and should be taken about these kinds of developments in the future (hint hint, Cerberus/Illusive Man, hint hint).

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Letter from a station survivor, variation on the matter of how the responsible party was dealt with.

ME3: Efforts have been undertaken to block Indoctrination tech, based on the information that Shepard gathered on the station.

Fleet Crisis

With the concerns of Saren and the geth rising, Admirals Hackett and Anderson want to get a chance to upgrade the defenses at the heart of the Alliance. Arcturus Station, home to the Alliance government, is housing a defense meeting, and Commander Shepard is being recalled to speak at it. The Alliance may be facing another crisis, however...

(Two plot planets completed)

We have very little actual Alliance elements involved in the game, did you ever notice that? Like, there’s Admiral Anderson and Admiral Hackett, and we get the inspection tour thing from Admiral Mikhailovich, but other than that, we really are not given much about the Alliance proper. So the idea here for us to go to Arcturus Station and actually encounter the Alliance government proper. We only ever properly encounter the Citadel Council, not the government that technically, Shepard is under the authority of. The closest we ever come is the (rather useless) Defense Committee at the start of ME3.

So yeah, we’re going to the home of the Alliance proper, and seeing the Fifth Fleet – like my first time playing the game, I had no real concept of the Fifth Fleet until it shows up at the endgame. I kinda would like more foreshadowing, more textual acknowledgement of the fleet that is the reason why we end the game as we do. Like, we get to do a fleet flyby in the process, allowing us to see the size of the fleet and talk about what makes the human fleets different from those of the other races. Although the Citadel races do have their bullshit reasons for distrusting humanity, the fact that humanity has this massive force is a reasonable excuse for the behavior.

I also see this as a very different style DLC. As it is, we got one DLC that was basically a shooting gallery, so here, we’re in the opposite direction, where combat is taking almost a total backseat to dialogue – I mean you have a dialogue system like Mass Effect, where every line gets voiced, you would think that would imply that there’s a lot of faith in the writing, wouldn’t you think? And, the whole beauty of DLC in general usually is the fact that everything’s option – if you’re really all shooty-shooty bang-bang, you don’t HAVE to do this. But the whole series paints Shepard as this inspirational figure, and their oratory skills should be on full display as much as their ability to fire a gun.

I’m also kinda anti-“going to Alliance vessels and the in universe equivalent of the House/Senate halls/White House combined and freely shoot up the place,” just on principle.

Anyway, here we are, visiting the heart of Alliance space. We honestly really should have more of an idea of what humanity has accomplished in the universe. Arcturus Station, the home of Alliance government. This is a big deal for the crew, of course – it’s getting invited to speak at the Senate in Washington DC. For the various non-humans, it’s a big deal as well.

Now, of course, in the heart of Alliance government, the involvement of a bunch of non-humans is going to be considered questionable at best. I won’t go straight to “you can’t use any companions other that Ashley and Kaidan,” but there is going to be more of a sense of observation from the other Alliance officers and officials when the non-humans are in the party.

The first thing to note about this is that Shepard’s position as Spectre has made them a combination of being a political tool for humanity’s better advancement, but (as evidenced by Mikhailovich’s ranting) some are concerned that Shepard may be – intentionally or not – turned into a pure Council flunky and only doing the work that they approve, regardless of acting in humanity’s benefit.

That’s part of the reason Shepard’s even here – their position is getting humanity’s foot in the door with the Spectres, but this is creating a conflict in various corners, wondering about where their allegiance will be if pressed. Admiral Hackett is, of course, speaking in Shepard’s favor, but just because they have the approval of Hackett and Anderson, there’s still concern among the brass.

This is going to start out seeming very low-key – we’re in the heart of Alliance territory, who would be foolish enough to come along and mess with anyone or anything here, right? So a lot of initial tone-setting, discussion and debate – the first half is a debate sequence, with Paragon/Renegade points abound as Shepard discusses with the various Alliance officials what they’re doing as a Spectre. That culminates in Shepard’s oratory really getting to stretch as they approach the seat of governing for the Alliance, and all those earlier discussions start to add up to how their performance is among the bigwigs – if you talked up human dominance in the one-on-ones, then talk peaceful coexistence, for example, you get called on it.

After Shepard’s speech is over, that’s where we start to see the real fractures starting to take place. We’re not quite at ‘military coup’ levels (let’s leave SOME plot elements for the later games, huh?), but there’s clear dissatisfaction, that Shepard’s words have only fanned flames for – regardless of the way their speech went down, there are some among the fleet, admirals and other high ranking officers who were involved in the First Contact War and just don’t like how the Alliance is handling things.

It’s not a coup, but it is, in effect, breaking away from the Alliance to set up an independent nation, separate from both the Alliance and the Citadel. It’s still in its earliest stages, of course, but it’s easy to see how it might well turn hostile to both – it’s got several military figures from the Alliance leaving, meaning a vulnerable gap for the Alliance military, and it’s got lingering hostility for the Citadel races (turians in particular, but let’s also not forget that the asari, the famed diplomats of the Citadel, seem to have never picked up on the fact that the human resentment towards aliens comes from the fact that an alien government came along and tried to impose their rules on an unaligned species as humanity’s introduction to the greater galaxy – they are complicit here).

Shepard’s task becomes trying to prevent this offshoot from happening. These are orders being cut by President Shastri himself (let’s make this major Alliance figure a presence we actually feel in the series, huh?), with Hackett’s blessing – meaning if things devolve into a shoot out (which will be possible), Shepard will not be held liable for the deaths of several Alliance military figures, that the record will show that they were acting in the interests of the Alliance in response to an imminent threat of potential armed conflict, even a human civil war. No one wants it to come to that, but it’s also going to be one of the most likely outcomes in the minds of those involved – even if Shepard weren’t a Spectre, if someone of their rank and stature on the galactic stage gets involved, it’s because diplomacy isn’t working.

So there’s another segment of trying to sway the people involved. Shepard will have the choice of approached armed or unarmed (like I said, I dislike the idea of a shootout, but I feel like Shepard’s in a position both to be legally entitled to wear weapons in this situation AND uncomfortable going in without any weaponry), which will feed into the metric of how well their argument is received. Because it’s a mechanic so good, we’re using it twice! (Okay, really, it’s because “dialogue” is the gimmick of this idea, but shush.)

Anyway, the various ‘points’ accumulate to the ultimate confrontation with the heads of this group planning this splintering. Shepard’s arguments are going to be along the line of (to summarize) “you’ll only weaken the Alliance, that can’t be your goal,” “if you have problems, work within in the systems and listen to both sides of things,” “put this aside or else,” or “I support your efforts, but this isn’t the time.” Yes, I’m going with four paths for this, the dialogue wheel does offer that, and I want Paragon/Renegade options for each of these. Like you basically pick a path at the start and argue from that position. Depending on the “points” accumulated through dialogue (and probably a handful of sidequests) in the lead to this debate), it will come to either a peaceful resolution or Shepard pulling out their gun on a handful of high-ranking Alliance officers, ready and able to pull the trigger.

While shooting them isn’t an ideal solution, it can bring the others back into line. It’s just going to cause resentment within the Alliance itself – threat or no, these were respected figures among the Alliance. Meanwhile, folding them back in is an ideal solution, but it still means the resentment lingers, because Shepard’s only delayed the boiling over, not prevented it. There’s still tension in the Alliance because this was about issues that can’t be solved with a few words, especially when this was about the involvement and actions of the Citadel. Shepard might be a Spectre, but whether or not they’ve affirmed themselves as giving the Alliance its due, they’re now wrapped up in those politics.

The curveball in things is that last one, Shepard suggesting that they should wait on this issue. I think it’s a valid possibility among the various permutations of the decision point, to have Shepard support them, especially given that ME1’s Renegade Shepard could be a pro-human asshole, but, considering that this is DLC, and particularly DLC that, by my self-imposed rule, cannot change the base game’s story (because if I could do that, I might as well be rewriting all the games in this instead of just created additional content, and this is all hypothetical to begin with), we can’t introduce some new faction into the galaxy, especially an optional one. So the idea here is that Shepard is supporting it, but saying that they can’t make this A Thing right now.

There is an aftermath discussion with President Shastri as well, discussing implications for the future. I also figure that the companions should have a lot to offer in both the aftermath and the core interactions – again, I see Ashley and Kaidan as greatly recommended for this story, and the Alliance officers should have a lot to add, including conversations in the midst of the crisis.

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Email from Shastri as an update of the tension in the Alliance – it’s also something that should be impacted by the decision of the Council at the end of ME1

ME3: Tensions between Alliance and Council forces are impacted by the outcome – if they were swayed by persuasion to rejoin the Alliance, there’s actually a bump in assets, as well as the Alliance bigwigs being a tactical resource, while there’s a decrease in cooperation if the bad blood was fostered.

The Clean Up

The Battle of the Citadel is over, but even if the geth and Sovereign have been defeated, there is a lot left for Commander Shepard and the crew of the Normandy to do. Investigating the damage done to the Citadel leads to a possible lead on the Reapers. In the wake of the battle, Commander Shepard and company set out to chase it down...

(Post-Game)

So, as I said in the KOTOR editions, we’re adding a Post-Game to ME1 (since this is all hypothetical to begin with, so we’re going to make that alteration to the mechanics), pretty much solely because I want to do some development of the aftermath of the game, as well as do some retroactive set up for Mass Effect 2. Because I don’t think there was a lot of emotional wrap up to the characters at the time. I will grant that we’ve got an awkward period of time between the games here, but, hey, we’ve got enough wiggle room I think to lead in to the opening of ME2

Basically, we can start in what’s basically the immediate aftermath – Shepard’s now out of their recovery, is looking to get back in the game. But, with the Council either still reacting to the events of the Battle of the Citadel or still needing to be reassembled, there’s really not any particular indication of what to be doing. This is some mood setting, looking at the rebuilding effort, how the Citadel was impacted and seeing the response of people to the attack – some are still shaken, mourning their loved ones lost in the attack, hoping for the lost to be found safe, and all that sort. Others are angry about the attack, and the ultimate approach to it seems to basically be blaming everyone, and Shepard in particular since they’re there, for the failure to protect those on the Citadel – and yes, we absolutely get to call out this bullshit for what it is, because Shepard tried, but the Citadel itself is something of a complacency trap, and even if the politics weren’t a distraction, the fact that the Citadel itself remains aloof is an actual problem

Anderson speaks with Shepard, regarding the geth that are still out there in the Traverse, and the need to deal with them before they put more human colonies in danger. The bigwigs are already trying to downplay the Reapers – Anderson basically tells Shepard that they need to go out, find proof of something that ties back to the Reapers or the Council will likely turn around and make this all about the geth and call it over (uh, yeah, Shepard, about that...).

The lead involved is going to be heading out to the border of geth space, which is also the line of what used to be quarian territory. This is convenient for Tali, who wants to return to the flotilla now that Saren has been dealt with. There’s a trading outpost that will be out there that will give her the opportunity to get a ride back to the Migrant Fleet (because, despite a couple of references, I have never believed that Tali lingered too long on the Normandy – either she has to get her data on the geth back to them, or she has to discover an alternative). Because part of this is also going to be the “characters splitting apart” stuff as set up for ME2. Tali’s going to assist through this branch of the mission, but she will want to come back here before the Normandy returns to Citadel space proper.

The trading outpost is Omega-esque, something of “the poor man’s Omega,” again, setting that up for ME2 (we’re doing a lot of world-building patches here, okay?) The citizens here don’t care about the Alliance and they’re not all that concerned about Spectres, either. This is not a friendly place and will not just accept the appearance of anyone with the supposed authority that Shepard is representing.

This is kind of an introduction to ME2’s merc gangs – ME1 seems to play the systems of the Terminus to have their own government, species not represented among the Citadel races, and just this general atmosphere of the Terminus being more developed than it ends up being when we actually go there (which, yeah, that’s how writing and developing and world-building goes, but we’re here to smooth things over). I’m leaning towards not having the big three on Omega be all that represented here, considering that, lawless border or not, this is not really a place where they care enough to expand their influence. But they should at least be mentioned and referenced as the big dogs of the pack, that the gangs that jockey for power here want to take them on. Probably some poaching of members (through recruitment or snipers) from those gangs that make their numbers never get to where they might pose a threat.

Anyway. What needs to be done here is find out where Saren discovered Sovereign – that’s the idea we’re going with in trying to track down evidence of the Reapers. Sovereign had to be hiding out somewhere, you don’t just stumble across something like that. Considering this is one of the last places you’d expect to be able to find a Spectre, especially a Spectre who is one of the Council’s top operatives, it’s a decent enough starting point for us as the audience – we’ll say that there are records that Saren was out here shortly before the Eden Prime mission and such, explaining why we’re starting here.

Garrus is also going to have a realization about the merc gangs, about the horrible things they’re inflicting on the people who are living here, and being infuriated at the injustice allowed to happen – the effective attitude of the officials here are basically ‘look, unless the merc gangs come after us, we don’t care.’ This is going to dig under his skin (plates... you know what I mean), lead him to why he ultimately breaks with C-Sec, despite Shepard being able to lead him to a better understanding of the rules and regs – he understands the need for them, but sees them being used and abused to allows these injustices to continue, that it becomes a personal mission to see ‘justice’ and ‘law’ be synonymous.

As for the plot, yes, we’re getting there. This does, of course, lead to a shoot-out with a major gang force here, some people who are indoctrinated spies (because, hey, we’re looking for evidence of Reapers). They were left behind as part of Saren’s contingency plans, meant to stop anyone hunting for him – it’s just that the investigation that Shepard went on in the base game didn’t send them here. Even with Saren and Sovereign dead, they’re still here, still indoctrinated – a reminder that this is a permanent thing, a devastating thing, because there’s no way to take the Reaper compulsion away. But this leads to learning about a place that Saren ventured to from here, a place wracked with dangerous phenomenon. The only way to get there is with a crack pilot – which, fortunately, Normandy has.

There’s a brief pause from plot for some further expansion with the others – Wrex has been contemplating the krogan, given what went down on Virmire. His people are dying out, maybe not in the way we traditionally think of it, but still in practice. What is there for the krogan but to be used and abused by the Sarens of the universe, so long as all they care about is getting offworld and fighting and dying, usually being pit against one another as the proxies for stupid, pointless conflicts. It’s not right, and it’s beginning to eat at him.

And then there’s Ashley/Kaidan. Given the events of Virmire, both of them are thinking about the family that was left behind – Ashley’s sisters lost one of their central figures, Kaidan’s family lost their only son. They both are trying to write a letter of condolence to their counterpart’s loved ones (and specifically asking Shepard about the one they should be writing), trying to figure how they can make it better that they were saved at the other’s expense. It’s a complicated matter, and I want to just explore, even retroactively, how these two were friends, were close, potentially (if Shepard shuts down a romance with both of them) starting to come together. Just a bit that not only reestablishes the friendship and emphasizes that the fallen character is not forgotten, plus giving more context to how they’ll say that they and Shepard got through the other’s death together in ME3

This is a point for some romance content, which, I realize I have yet to bring up Liara’s character bit for this – don’t worry, it’s coming. But we do pause for some smoochies.

Anyway. The Normandy arrives in the hazardous area and we get a team meeting – remember how back in the first of these outlines, I brought up wanting to give more for Pressley? I haven’t directly mentioned him much since, but here’s a place to feature him, in the same way that the landing on Ilos does, showing him having a greater involvement in the strategy and such. Team Shepard needs to figure out if there even is a place to investigate within this area. There are sensor ghosts that might be something that they could land on and investigate, though it’s too small for a Mako mission (I may love that tank, but I feel like its final ride being the trip through the Ilos Relay is poetic and I’m not going to mess with that). Joker gets his moment of putting the Normandy through her paces (which is also going to add to the pain of her loss in ME2’s prologue, that she could pull this off, but couldn’t out-fly the Collector ship).

They detect something with a similar energy signature to the prothean beacons on an asteroid large enough to land on, which makes it reasonable for Liara to go with – take the prothean expert to a place that could hold more information on the protheans. She’s nervous because of the confirmation of the Reapers has just made things really real for her – this is facing the same thing that destroyed the protheans, and how can they stand against them, given the protheans’ advanced nature?

Let’s also take a moment and, given the indoctrinated nature of the mercs who attacked back on the outpost, to have some follow-up for Benezia’s death – I may only be speaking for myself, but it has NEVER sat right that Liara’s response to that is to simply go “I choose to remember Benezia as she was,” given that Shepard was, regardless of their reluctance, responsible for the actual bullet that ended her mother’s life. She’s struggling – could the mercs have been saved? Could her mother? Could what they find below offer a way to have saved them, and, if so, would Saren have had it, could he have freed her mother before her death? Did she have to die? Why did her mother have to die? Cue Shepard offering their support for her emotional struggle.

And yes, for Liaramancers, this is where they get their smoochies.

As for what they find... Geth. Plenty of (heretic – though Shepard doesn’t yet know this) geth. They are crawling all over the facility, it’s a firefight all the way to the central database, and, as our big final boss, we deal with a geth augmented with some of Sovereign’s tech, meant to be a Reaper upgrade for the geth. Obviously, this is not going to make it into the geth consensus (heretic or true), and this is effectively the only existing prototype.

The result of this is that they do find an archival interface, the same kind that allowed the communication with Sovereign on Virmire. Unfortunately, it can provide nothing – without Sovereign connected to it, it’s got minimal functionality – something might be recovered, with some time and effort. But the facility is about to move into the areas of this area of space that will fry any systems that get close to it – Sovereign probably had this place selected in the name of being a place where anyone who might stumble upon its hiding place would decide to move on because it’s suicide to remain in the area.

The only choice is to return to the Normandy, without any additional evidence. There are indications of geth vessels having moved out of the area and into other sectors, which could give them something to go on for further investigations. But, with this stage of the mission being a bust, Shepard is going to have the Normandy return to the earlier outpost in the name of allowing all ashore who are going ashore – Tali, Garrus, and Wrex, specifically, but also any other Normandy crew willing to stand down for the time being. Investigating this further is a strictly volunteer mission. This will, of course, lead us to ME2’s prologue...

Post Game Followups:

ME2: Mentions of Shepard’s activities on the outpost while on Omega, a letter from a scientist, passed on by Anderson, about further studies made on indoctrination being done on the sly, considering the lack of approval from the Council.

ME3: Further research has been done on indoctrination, now publicly, and makes for a scientific war asset, the remnants of the merc gang that were indoctrinated have reformed and reassembled as a roving band of resistance fighters against the Reapers.

Miscellaneous 

Bisexual Ashley, Bisexual Kaidan, proper close outs to other romances, romances require proper flirts to start, additional conversations for all characters

Look, no one in space is heterosexual, okay? I don’t make the rule, I just enforce it. Actually, considering the context of these, I DO make the rules, and “no one in space is heterosexual” is one of them, so deal with it. Kaidan is canonically bisexual as of ME3, so there’s no reason he shouldn’t be canonically bisexual in ME1. And we’ll throw Ashley in for good measure, because why not? And we definitely – DEFINITELY – need to do something about the romance mechanic that seems to assume “I would like to get to know you better” means “you, me, my cabin, the way to Ilos, yes/yes?” There needs to be explicit markers for closing out a romance WITHOUT locking you out of conversations with the character in question (particularly considering that now, all of this game’s romances can be options in a given playthrough). And yeah, I think there could stand to be a few extra conversations with the characters, that focus on the characters proper – for most of the crew, they basically end up acting as glorified Wikipedia entries on their species, or, in Kaidan’s case, the plight of human biotics. Let’s give them some more personalized material that lets them tell Shepard something about themselves (and offer Shepard something similar, as character development for the both of them).