Mass Effect General Discussion

[jms493]

:ohwell:

To get streaming again I need to acquire a desk for my gaming room, another PC or one to replace the one in the study of which my wife uses, and a HD PVR.

Ideally I should just get a cheap desktop for her for the downstairs study....but at the same time she is done with school in 3 months. After that she wont use it.

I wonder if I can stream using my Dell Laptop?

[Swarley]

]I wonder if I can stream using my Dell Laptop?

That's what I'm using atm.

[jms493]

That's what I'm using atm.

I just checked out the El Gato and that seems to be the better unit. No AC adapter! I think I will order one very soon. I want to get back to at least streaming my NCAA games.

[Swarley]

I just checked out the El Gato and that seems to be the better unit. No AC adapter! I think I will order one very soon. I want to get back to at least streaming my NCAA games.

You wont be streaming from your laptop with that thing. I've had both that and the HD PVR2 now, and the PVR needs much less computer to stream. Personally, I'm much happier with the PVR2.

[JayDizzle]

Better Pack a Sweater...

 

After falling victim to the number one flaw in all female video game character romances, Cdr. Jay Shepard's next mission was to go to Noveria.

AKA The Space Umbrella Corporation Planet that also serves as the Universe's Largest Ice Cream Freezer.



While you could play the entire game either as a pure Paragon (shop discounts ahoy) or a royal asshole Renegade, this is the one place that I've seen that requires you to play a shade of gray.

Everyone wanted something, whether it was smuggling illegal goods or steal information or even old-fashioned coercion... it came down to the man in the Spectre Uni to get things done.

As it turns out, I managed to get a top employee that was in the process of being prosecuted by his boss to snitch on said boss for skimming off the top.

In return, his testimony and the info I got for him (as well as the corrupt off-duty space cops I annihilated along the way) led to the conviction a local I.A. needed.

Free garage pass for me in the end and a pat on the back for my troubles.

Still, the place reeks of corruption and evil that isn't going to go away anytime soon and the Normandy doesn't (or won't until ME2) have the payload to glass the planet so no one can continue their secret experiments, etc.

Fortunately, I know a guy who knows a guy who can get me an orbital strike from the Space Umbrella Corporation just in case I need it.

Which might be soon.

[JayDizzle]

Alien vs. Shepard

 

Peak 15.

Whereas Noveria is ground zero for the Space Umbrella Corporation, Peak 15 would basically be the lab in which they pervert the laws of nature to their will.

And then the by-product of this gets away and murders the fuck out of them.

As part of the big picture mission for Cdr. Shepard, Azure Philly Liara and Captain of the Starship Bro-lactica Garrus, our intrepid adventurers still needed to find the advisor to Saren.

For those who haven't played this far yet, Saren's the asshole that I volunteered to stop in order to save the galaxy from certain doom.

His advisor is the one and only Matriarch Benezia AKA Liara's Mom.

You can see where some issues may arise later on...

Moving on with the campaign, Shepard and Co. meet up with the surviving members of the science team and the skeleton crew of security forces still alive to protect them.

Everyone's on edge except for a lone asari who mentions that she's just "meditating" so she doesn't flip the fuck out over the horrors she's been privy to.

The guard's have been on caffeine, cigarettes and stimpacks for DAYS before I showed up so they're either planning to dip out, kill the science team for playing God or both.

The Science Team's basically there to either die, get somebody killed (especially one particular Volus who let a co-worker die like a coward and was forced to watch as she was split in two) or both.

And here I was, to do side-quests for these stupid assholes; I suppose I should have been kinder due to the traumatic experience everyone faced as the project they had under the microscope had now sprung from the petri dish and eating every motherfucker in the same room alive...

What awaits for you in Noveria...

 

...so I did what every hard-bitten Space Marine-turned-Space Cop does.

I gathered my team and we squished us some bugs.

A LOT OF BUGS.

You will also find THIS in Noveria.

 

...after most of the wall-protruding menace was defeated, the away team of the S.S. Normandy set out to find Matriarch Benezia for information as well as a potential prisoner.

Because who doesn't like chips they can trade in for better stuff later on? It's the American Way.

After going through a mountain of dialogue that amounted to, "You assholes brought my daughter to the gun fight to watch me die?"

I politely mentioned that the clingiest Blue Alien in all of the Milky Way volunteered to come watch me kill Benezia and thus it was on...

Or rather, I took out two Asari Commandos, a fleet of Geth and didn't even get to merk Liara's Mommy as Liara went down like a ton of bricks while Garrus took the kill shot when I wasn't looking.

Suppose I should blame myself for buying him the best Spectre Sniper Rifle money could buy on the first Playthrough but I need to finish this game before I go on to ME2...

So there's that.

After the gunfire subsided, Benezia and Liara shared their last moments together and I got the coordinates to a lost jump gate.

Of which I won't go to yet because I'm still cleaning the bug guts from my gear and there's the little issue of Virmire to attend to first...

Oh, and may have unleashed the Queen of the bug-freak monsters I've slayed upon the universe again.

That won't come up later, I'm sure of it.

[jms493]

Mass Effect 3 has been initiated

[killgod]

24 hours, level 50. FemShep Infiltrator is moving on to ME2.

[JayDizzle]

24 hours, level 50. FemShep Infiltrator is moving on to ME2.

At 44 right now on playthrough 1.

I need like 1 more hard metal to collect and to finish Virmire and Iios.

I'd do more but you can't do certain missions if you're mostly Paragon or Renegade only.

[JayDizzle]

Cdr. Strangelove... :

 

Virmire.

Lovely place to run a secret lab that clones Krogan and do some fishing afterward.

So as we return to the exploits of Shepard and his motley crew (more specifically Space-Bro Garrus and Shepard's Old Lady Liara), it was now time to saddle up and move in on Saren...

Upon landing in the Mako, our group easily traverses the beachfront terrain, annihilating Geth troopers and mobile platforms along the way to meeting with a Salarian STG unit embedded in the area.

The leader of the unit? None other than Mr. "Hold that motherfuckin' line, you bitches!" Samuel L. Jackson Kirrahe, himself.

Dude's seen more action that your mom at Spring Break in Cabo and here he is, down to a handful of troopers.

Now the Council sent me out to investigate Virmire when they heard some shit was going down but nothing to the extent of what Kirrahe tells me...

Saren's here.

And he's bring back the Krogan.

The same group that Kirrahe's boys put down after they pumped them up with promises of mass orgies, gold and planets to conquer in exchange for murdering the Rachni the fuck dead.

And what's worse? I have an agitated sonuvabitch named Wrex who only sees things in black, white and blood red on a good day.

----------------------------------------------------

A few days earlier...

On one of the many planetside treks in search of Space Aztec Gold and Gun Parts, Wrex volunteers to go in the place of Liara.

No rhyme, no reason, just the instinctual need to stretch out ones legs.

Who was I to say no to the big angry space frog and so we went...

It was like magic, I tell ya because I'd only seen what would happen when Garrus was gunning down pirates with his sniper rifle while Liara lifted them up like living skeet to shoot.

Now here comes Wrex, with the ability to do most if not all of those things all by himself.

So after a small backstory on how some old Turian shitbird stole his family's armor (before, the game characterizes Mr. Angry Frog as a dude who's running away from the genocide of his people via selling himself out for money) and now he wants it back...

Because A) "Fuck that Turian shitbird, he deserves it; and B) Because while it's a shitty piece of armor he won't even wear and you'll never hear about again, it's essential in the plot later on so... FUCK YOU, JUST GET THE FUCKING ARMOR GODDAMNIT!

...and again, I'm not one to argue with the Angry Frog Man.

The kicker is, all the shit-talking that the hundreds of characters in the game do about the Turians as a race around me, ALSO is being heard by Garrus.

The guy's a trooper because had he had been the main character, he'd gone full Renegade and there'd be a whole lot less people talking shit in the Universe.


A few minutes later (like two, tops), one dead shitbird Turian and the PLOT DEVICE is in Wrex's froggy hands.

------------------------------

Back on Virmire...

Wrex is starting to feel antsy as he's heard that Saren's figured out how to clone members of his own race and now we're the ones who are going to shut that little operation down.

Not a good time had by all.

Luckily, through the magic of metagaming, the PLOT DEVICE saved my bacon and the mission's bacon when ol' Froggy drew down on me.

Had this'd been a Renegade playthrough, Wrex would be pinned to the front of the Mako and/or Normandy as a warning to all those who'd fuck with the main objective.

Paragon runthrough dictates I can't so I just talk him down and away we go to put Saren out of business and hopefully out of commission.

[JayDizzle]

or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Leave ------ With the Bomb:

 

So this thing with Saren seemed to be coming to a head.

Shepard, Garrus, Liara are on their way to shut Saren's gig down and put two in his computer for what he did on Eden Prime.

Hell, even Tali, Wrex, Ashley and milquetoast Kaiden were boots on the ground to provide support.

What could go wrong?

The plan was from my main group to sneak around the base in search of Saren and stop anything weird he might be doing behind closed doors.

Easy-peasy as Captain Samuel L. Jackson Kirrahe had Ashley in tow to help out the rest of the STG squad with distracting most of the Geth running around the area.

...which is what I would have said, if it weren't for the complete ineptness of said STG squad needing my help so most of them would live to see another day.

Laziness, being terrible with any firearm whatsoever, or just not being me... whatever the reason being, it was up to me to take out the Geth on my way to taking out Saren because Salarians are pussies.

Skipping ahead (a LOT of people died... learned a lot more about Indoctrination and that ANYONE could get got, even Saren) and now it's down to just setting up the bomb to blow this base sky high and we're out of here.

Right?

As it turns out, Kirrahe's dudes got overwhelmed and now I had to leave Kaidan of all people with the bomb in order to save Ashley and whoever was left of the STG because Kirrahe, while still alive, was terrible as shit with keeping his squad's numbers up.

Half-way there, and the Geth come through the backdoor (odd considering that with portable spaceships that can operate in the sky versus being stuck on the ground like myself... ) to jump Kaidan.

Dude says he's got it so I leave to take care of Ashley.

And bump into Saren.

Oh boy.

[JayDizzle]

Capped at 50 (for now but... I'm not feeling like doing EVERYTHING again to get that Level 60 trophy anytime soon) with 54 hours and counting in.

Also on Ilos and looking forward to being done with the game.

[JayDizzle]

Bringing Down The House:

 

Meer minutes away before the Virmire facility would be reduced to a pile of ash and now Saren of all people was staring me right in the face.

This son of a bitch had murdered countless nameless faces across the galaxy that wouldn't join him in his quest to bring about the invasion of the Reapers.

Giant Robotic God Machines from the Deepest Pits of Space come to annihilate all life like some cosmic reset button and Saren has it in his head that if all life taps out to them, they'll be spared.

Yeah right; I've seen this movie and it doesn't end well for anyone who brings flowers and candy to Cthulu.

So it came down to this, gun to gun versus the rogue spectre in hopes of getting him down long enough to save Ashley, Kirrahe and hopefully somebody from the STG on the planet.

...

As it turns out, Saren's a little bit meaner than I first suspected as by the end of all this, he had me hanging over the ledge of a concrete bunker by my neck, Suge Knight-style.

Lucky for me, I have a mean right hook as whatever caught Saren's attention at the time gave me the time I needed to punch that Turian fuck right in his metal jaw.

...

Like all semi-cliche villains, he immediately leaves knowing that he can be touched and with little time to argue about it, I grab everybody but Kaidan and dip out off Virmire.

Can't say I'll miss Kaidan, even though before the game started, he served under my command before I even got the Normandy.

I will say, he made an excellent red-shirt though and for that, I'll be thankful.

[Maynard]

i was about to start ME3 today to finally finish the series and see what all the hoopla was about for how this game ended. But once i started i realized it wouldnt be the same with out a ME1 and ME2 import...so i am about to start from the very beginning.

[Maynard]

im through the first portion - meaning i am now off to visit noveria and feros