Category: Mass Effect

We’re at the Citadel, rejected once again by the Council. We do the usual — tour the tower, meet some old friends, gather a news person who will travel with us. It’s no surprise. Atmosphere and some fun moments are good content.

When we return to the Normandy we transition into a dream. A foggy, wooded landscape surrounds us. Laughter, and there’s the Boy. We must chase him, moving through molasses. Finally, he stops, looks at us, and dissolves into flames. Waking, Shepard is shaken.

Is Boy a metaphor for Shepard of the suffering on Earth? Perhaps he’s just an avatar, a storytelling way of keeping the invasion in our minds, to keep us connected to the threat of the Reapers. Or, he’s a ghost, a former corporeal being who haunts Shepard. 

This sequence in the middle of a shoot-em-up game is pretty damned annoying, especially if the game glitches and I have to play it again in all its slowness and with no chance to skip. (Yes, that happened.) Boy is still twee, and I still feel frustrated by having to watch him at all. When a developer stops my action to give me feels, they’d better earn it. The ending of ME1 is an example of this done brilliantly. At an early point like this, though, I feel emotionally manipulated. I want to learn fight mechanics and try out my skills. I don’t want an author’s message.

To be continued later, if I’m remembering correctly.

The Prothean archives have been on Mars forever. It’s the first alien ruin humans discovered before joining the galaxy. Now, though, as desperation kicks in, archaeologists, including Liara, give this site another look. Hidden here are plans for a Reaper-defeating weapon. The Protheans were so close to finishing it. We are to join with Liara and get this plan back to Alliance command.

However, Cerberus is after the same thing. They’re dressed as commandos, and they fight us for the Prothean information. When we lift the faceplate on one of the dead, we see he’s part-husk. At this point our old crewmate (Kaidan or Ashley) asks Shepard if she’s just a puppet, too, for Cerberus. They did rebuild Shepard, after all. 

Continue reading “Mars”

The Reapers invade. Since the events of ME2, Shepard has been under house arrest. The Normandy was confiscated and Shepard’s been relieved of duty after she returned the hardware to the Alliance military. 

At least, I think that’s what happened. We only learn this through subtext while Captain Anderson brings Shepard up to speed now that her services are needed again. Her condition and reinstatement could’ve been told more traditionally, but instead we get the bang. As she addresses the Defense Committee, the Reapers arrive at Earth and blow everything to hell. Shepard and Anderson are on their own to — well, have a tutorial, lol — get to a shuttle. The graphics are astonishing. 

Humongous claw ships decimating the world make for emotional footage.

As Shepard follows Anderson through a building, something in the duct work catches her eye. It’s a boy, hiding. When she tries to coax him out, he says, “Everyone’s dying. You can’t help me.” A beat as she looks away, and he’s gone when she turns back. Actually, I’m going to name him Boy. He seems at this point like a twee ploy for feelings, but I remember that he’s more. I remember, honestly, that I hate his role in this story.

After a bit of fighting practice, Shepard arrives at the shuttle. Anderson stays behind to help with the battle for Earth. Shepard is to go on and convince the Council to help defend our homeworld. As the shuttle lifts off Shepard looks down at the other humans loading into other shuttles. There’s Boy, squinting up at her. He climbs aboard, and the two shuttles lift off. 

Shepard watches as both shuttles are cut by a Reaper beam and explode. Boy, assuming he’s a real person rather than a metaphor, is dead. Evocative music plays. (Why it’s the exact chord change as Rammstein’s “Wo bist du”, released years earlier, is a coincidence, I assume. Nice choice, though, if you’re going to accidentally borrow an existing work.)

The majority of gameplay is not story. Interesting, eh? Gathering teammates and achieving their loyalty missions is what clocks the hours. This means lots of fighting, which is good. How much plot is left, though? Let’s see.

LEFTOVER NINE

First of all, Shepard’s dead. How we die and how we’re brought back, at least from Shepard’s perspective, is the end of another tale. Miranda has a movie, let’s say, where she struggles to resurrect a person with no life signs. Waking Shepard is the Eight of that story, but what is it for this story? Is this a Leftover Nine or a One? Is the state of the world at the beginning the fact that Shepard died, or what happens when Shepard’s alive again? Either option has a good argument for it. I’m going to call it a Leftover Nine and see how the story unfolds from there.

ONE

Shepard’s alive. She has no idea what’s happening. Her last memory is of being spaced. The station where she awakes is under attack. Miranda’s voice, a stranger’s voice, tells her where to go (and directs a tutorial). She meets Jacob, who continues the tutorial and leads the escape from the science station. 

TWO

Before they rejoin Miranda and leave this location, Jacob reveals that we’re on a Cerberus facility. Cerberus, a monstrous organization in ME1, has rebuilt Shepard. Working with Cerberus, owing life itself to Cerberus, must be the Trouble.

THREE

So, what happens next? Shepard meets the Illusive Man for the first time. I have a hard time justifying that as a Three, though. The Illusive Man comes In, but he never really goes Out, certainly not at a Six position.

Shepard completes the first mission and the Collectors are revealed, but only on video feed. Veetor the Quarian’s data — Collectors In — is a possible Three.

After Freedom’s Progress Shepard is reunited with Joker and the Normandy, hired and built, respectively, by Cerberus. Like the Illusive Man moment, Joker has an In but not an Out. The ship and the pilot carry through the Eight and Nine.

I’m getting an inkling of an Enneagram problem, lol. It’s possible the Illusive Man is the Six, he’s just in the wrong position. Let’s carry on and see. Whoo, boy, I think I’m right, though. Interesting.

Continue reading “The Story Enneagram of Mass Effect 2”

Through the Omega 4 Relay, our IFF integrated into the Normandy, we go with no expectation of returning. Prior to this each crew member has requested Shepard take them to complete some unfinished business. If the quest is finished to their satisfaction, they become loyal to Shepard. It’s hinted that their loyalty is important, and it is. Crew without the loyalty boost can die. If Shepard ends up with nobody left, she’ll die, too. Of course, on a first playthrough none of this is understood. Endgame in ME2 is gut-wrenching and nerve-wracking. Each phase of the battle through the Collector base has a specific way someone can fail.

When we get to the final battle we face a humongous human skeleton.

It’s a Reaper powered by the humans the Collectors have been juicing here in their base. Some kind of DNA broth mingles with Reaper technology? It’s not quite clear, and, of course, the whole point is to kill the thing. Whatever it is, it will never reach fruition.

And then it’s time to blow the Collector base. (Does that mean the entire race goes extinct? That question — something so vital to deciding the fate of the Rachni — is never raised.) The Illusive Man patches in and argues vociferously to save the base. A radiation pulse will take out all the Collectors, but the technology of this base can be saved. On the one hand, we have paragon Shepard who objects. Human goo powers this place. It’s abhorrent and morally offensive. On the other hand, we have renegade Shepard who can see the logic of the argument. All of this effort has been about eventually facing the Reapers, a super-powered machine race. Any knowledge gleaned from this base may be our only chance to defeat them. Don’t let the human sacrifice have been in vain.

If Shepard says no, the Illusive Man shows a very dark side of himself. He doesn’t just want to defeat the Reapers. He wants the tech in order to super-power humanity. This is our chance to use advanced knowledge to jump start the human race and control the galaxy. Cerberus has always been about improving humanity by any means necessary. For most of the mission he’s played nice, giving Shepard leeway to decide what’s best. If he’s denied this base, he becomes vicious. He’s only virtual, though, and the decision is Shepard’s.

And that’s where we end. Whoever lived is back on the Normandy with Shepard. Whatever the Illusive Man thinks, he says no more in this game. We stopped the harvesting of human colonies and learned a little bit more about the Reapers. Mostly, we made friends.

Integrating the IFF with the Normandy is tricky. Until the job is complete, the team (which means all companions) must travel by shuttle. This is a storytelling way of removing certain people so that the unnamed crew, and some of the background characters, can be captured without changing the gameplay.

While Shepard and the other fighters are away, a Collecter ship attacks.

In the IFF is a virus that even the AI EDI couldn’t detect. She can’t defend the Normandy. It’s up to Joker, the pilot with brittle bone disease, to help. 

It’s a clever sequence, where the player drives Joker with his limp from the bridge to engineering. Around him are Collecters harvesting the rest of the people on board. He’s able to patch EDI back into control. She tells Joker she will seal off his section of engineering and open the rest of the ship to vacuum in order to clear out the Collectors. Joker asks, “What about the other people?” “The crew is gone, Jeff.” The entire ship’s crew — the cook, the yeoman, the cute engineers — has been captured. 

After this, Shepard and our teammates return. We now have a choice: Immediately go through the Omega 4 Relay to rescue our people, or wait in order to strengthen the team. In gameplay terms, this means that two teammates haven’t completed loyalty missions yet and will be vulnerable to dying during endgame. The Normandy attack is automatically triggered when Shepard reaches this point, so it can’t be avoided. If she helps two teammates, the captured crew will not be saved. If she helps one teammate, half the crew will not be saved. It’s a vicious trade-off.

We know the Collectors come from beyond the Omega 4 Relay, a place that leads to the galactic core, all black holes and decaying suns. Anyone transporting in would immediately become sucked into the maelstrom and die. However, the Collectors use an IFF, an Identify Friend/Foe, that creates a safe space for them through the Relay. We need one to continue our mission.

And the Illusive Man knows of one. A derelict Reaper was discovered and a small Cerberus team sent to investigate. Contact with them was lost, and now we’re sent to investigate and pick up the device, a certainty on a Reaper ship. (We don’t ever learn why a Reaper floats dead. Not part of this story, I guess.)

Of course, the ship swarms with husks. On the one hand, this is a straightforward battle to the prize. On the other, though, someone mysterious saves us by sniping husks at a moment when we’re overwhelmed. The someone is a Geth wearing N7 armor. 

It even calls out, “Shepard-Commander.” At the end of the quest, when we’re destroying the ship’s mass effect core to detonate it, the Geth lies unconscious/deactivated at the computer terminal. We take it with us.

Back on the Normandy, we have the decision to reactivate the Geth and learn why it knows us. (Or we could just turn it over to Cerberus for experimentation.) The Geth, whose name becomes “Legion”, explains much. The Geth that attacked us in ME1 are called “Heretics”. They are a sub-branch of Geth who chose subservience to Sovereign — the “Old Machines”. The other Geth, the Legion Geth, disdain them and fight against them. Because Shepard also fights, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Legion joins our team.

The Turians send out a distress call. When we go to help, we find no Turians. It’s a Collector ship, seemingly abandoned. Turns out this is the ship that shot up the Normandy two years ago. The Collectors have a particular interest in Shepard.

We wander through the deserted vessel. A pile of dead human bodies, pods for carrying immobilized people, and evidence of science experiments are gruesome and creepy. At a certain point, though, we see a dead Collector on the lab table. Our Normandy computer is able to access the data. This Collector shares an exact and specific DNA match with the Protheans. 

It’s quite the gobsmack. Apparently the Protheans didn’t go extinct. They were subsumed by the Reapers and modified over time.

Of course when we get to the command center after our trip through the ship we learn it’s all been a trap. The Collectors faked the Turian distress signal. Here comes Harbinger to battle us the entire way back to our shuttle.

And, of course, the Illusive Man knew all along that this was a trap. He’s tired of waiting for random Collector attacks. He’s using us as bait to move the quest along. It’s despicable and untrustworthy, but what are we going to say? Please let another colony be ravaged first? He’s got us over a barrel and he knows it. The mission was a resounding success, and we’d look mighty petulant if we carried on with a grudge.

It’s funny how much gameplay is needed before the story continues. Shepard must assemble the first round of the team. Garrus is back, and many new teammates join.

Eventually, though, the Illusive Man calls with a planet that seems sure to attract the Collectors. Our alive crewmember from ME1 (Kaidan or Ashley) is on Horizon for an Alliance mission. Before we arrive the Collectors descend, their bug swarm immobilizing the colonists. They’re in the process of loading the frozen into their ship when we land and battle them.

On their ship is a leader who directly communicates with an unseen Reaper called Harbinger. 

Continue reading “Horizon”

Mass Effect 2 begins as cinematically as the last one ended. The Normandy is attacked by an unknown vessel. Escape pods jettison, but Joker won’t leave the cockpit even as the ship burns and tears apart. We know from talking to him in ME1 that he suffers from bone brittle disease. It’s up to Shepard, walking through a hull open to space, to find him and carry him to the last pod. Normandy explodes, though. Shepard manages to eject Joker safely before she’s blown free, life support failing.

And then Shepard is in a medical bay. Someone has brought her back from near death and rebuilt her. It is Cerberus.

We meet the Illusive Man, the leader of Cerberus and the one responsible for ordering Shepard’s rescue. His second, Miranda, oversaw the two years of reconstruction necessary to save us. (Both of these characters are voiced by stellar actors who look like themselves thanks to a great animation team. It’s a really fun start to the game.)

Meanwhile, human colonies have been disappearing. Slavers are blamed by the government, which is too busy with diplomacy among the nations to look into this oddity. Only Cerberus pursues answers, and only Cerberus remembers the Reapers and wants to counteract whatever they have planned next. This is the arc of ME2.

Continue reading “The Lazarus Project”