It’s the mission where you decide whether or not to shoot Wrex! I’d forgotten!
Obviously more happens than that, but what a moment. In my first playthrough, and I was a huge Wrex fan, the tension was devastating. Luckily I had enough paragon points to save him.
So, why is this even in contention? The research facility at Virmire, now run by Saren, has developed a cure for the Krogan genophage. This challenges Wrex’s loyalties.
This is also the mission where I must choose whether Kaidan or Ashley dies. Dang! So huge! The stakes are critical and the role-playing is intense.
Virmire is beautiful, a lagoon site with serene views. A small team of Salarian spies is stuck here after discovering Saren’s base of operations. Basically, most of them won’t survive and they know it. We have a few tricks — sabotage a satellite uplink and a refueling station — that give them better odds, but this is a grim mission.
One of my people, Kaidan or Ashley, must be sent with the Salarian team to help. We fight our way in, delivering a modified nuke, in order to destroy the lab. Our ship, the Normandy, will evac any who make it through to the end.
Along the way we discover one of Saren’s secrets: another Beacon. When I access it, something astonishing happens: I conduct a conversation with a Reaper, one of the alien, sentient, mind-controlling ships. It’s not pretty. We’re at a technological disadvantage, to say the least. The Reapers have been harvesting mature civilizations since the beginning of time, apparently. Their mass effect relays have been directing chaotic, organic life into the ordered development they like, and when we’re ripe they come in and wipe us out. (Why? Dunno. Because they can, I guess.)
Knowing that the Reapers also exert a subtle but inexorable mind control, Saren uses this place to research the extent of the Reapers’ power by turning captured Salarians into indoctrinated slaves. He knows that his ship Sovereign (which we now learn is a Reaper) works on his own mind. However, the more the Reapers remove free will, the less effective the being becomes. Saren banks on that fact to persuade himself that he’s still free. (He’s not.)
He tries to convince us to join him. The Reapers will destroy all life, and there’s no escape. But if an organic can be useful to the machines, then maybe they’ll let it live. Like all well-written villains, Saren believes he’s helping, this time by saving the galaxy from extinction. A little light slavery, a removal of free will, but we’ll survive!
I confront Saren in an epic battle until he’s damaged enough for us to leave the planet. We’ve saved some Salarians, including Captain Kirrahe, and lost a crewmate. From the Beacon vision we can now decipher the next location in our pursuit to stop Saren.