Noveria: Ice, Ice, Baby

So the council calls up and is like, "Hey, we're picking up some shit from this backwater planet called Virmire, you maybe want to look into that?" but we're doing Noveria first because I'm a maverick renegade.

So. Noveria. Do you remember Hoth? You know, that one planet that Kirk landed on in Star Trek 11 and found Spockimus Prime? It's like the same shit, all icy and snowy and whatever. Mass Effect does love its sci fi roots.

If you land and try to take a party ashore without Liara, one of your party members will bitch at you. I mean, we're going after her mom, right? She might want to be involved. You can actually proceed without her, but ... why?

I like taking Garrus too, mostly because Liara and Garrus are my ME1 Bro Squad, but also because as a turian he grew up on Palaven, the ... uh, turian planet. It's all hot, like Vulcan. You know, the place where the Fire Temple is in Legend of Zelda. (Why yes, I love delicious nerd tears, why do you ask?)

Point being, I imagine this cool little scenario where Garrus is all like, "Oh shit, I've never seen snow before," and maybe they all go make snow angels really quick, I don't know. In reality, if you talk to the bastard, all he does is whine for the entire mission.

So anyway, the Normandy docks, and this lady named Captain Matsuo rolls up and gets all in Shepard's shit because she ... docked and got off the Normandy? I don't know, you'd think that if she was going to get that pissed over it, she wouldn't have cleared the Normandy for landing, but hey. Shep pulls out her Spectre status, and Matsuo has to back down, telling you that Parsini-san is waiting for you.

She really does say "Parsini-san," too. The game alludes to the fact that everyone in the Mass Effect universe, humans, aliens, what-have-you, wear universal translators over one ear. That's why the aliens all magically speak English. I love to think that this is the same universal translator that Hoshi developed. Why wouldn't it be? It even fits in the Star Trek timeline.

Hey, are you paying attention? There's Vulcan, mind melds, and universal translators. People look at me cockeyed when I say that the Star Trek universe and the Mass Effect universe are one and the same, but damnit ~I know it in my heart~.

Point being, the universal translators are fine, but they're not spectacular, and they let words slip through every so often. Matsuo may have legit been speaking total Japanese, and "Parsini-san" just slipped right on through. You'll see a few more words in Mass Effect 2 that the translator can't decipher, quarian ones to be specific, and in Mass Effect 3 we discover that apparently the translator doesn't know much Spanish. (Please tell me at least one of you other nerds was wigging out over that? No one?)

So you're allowed into Noveria's main commerce port, which is really dull looking. Like, seriously, it's a planet made out of concrete. Wouldn't it all freeze and break on an ice planet? Anyway, I know I haven't really been putting in that much effort towards drawing backgrounds, but trust me: on Noveria, you're not missing much.

Right as you come in, Parsini-San, also known as Gianna Parsini, greets you just as a bunch of alarms go off.

(Varren are kind of like dogs in the Mass Effect universe, if dogs were also rats and lizards.)

Shep asks what's good in Noveria, and Parsini tells her that some dame named Benezia was up in here a few days ago. Hey! That sounds relevant! Turns out, Benezia's chilling (har) up at Peak 15.

You guys, wasn't Peak 15 an area in Chrono Trigger? I'm looking that up later, I swear.

Okay, I looked it up. I have Death Peak mixed up with Lab 16, I think. They're both in 2300 AD, can you blame me? It's the future, it's snowy, there's a lab involved, Chrono Trigger and Mass Effect are both great games, I'm just going to run with it. Benezia's up on Death Peak.

To get to Peak 15/Lab 16/Guardia, you've got to drive through the snow, so you've got to go into the garage. Unfortunately, there's a guard in the way, and he can't let you through without a garage pass.

Hey, guard! How do we get a garage pass?

I am not futzing around, that's the actual line from the game.

Oh, Mister Guard, but the gizzard we will polish in Mass effect 2. You wish I was shitting.

There's like a hundred ways to get the garage pass. I know of one.

You wander around Porre until Square makes a better fucking sequel than Chrono Cross what the hell were they thinking you come across a turian sitting at a bar, alone. This is Lorik Qui'in. I have no idea if this is a reference to a lorikeet, which is a kind of bird. It's a big coincidence if it's not.

Lorik used to be in charge of renting office space on Noveria. This is what epic sci fi shooters are made of, are you paying attention? Anyway, a salarian named Anoleis took it over, but he's overcharging people because he's a money grubbing little bastard. Lorik found out, but Anoleis busted into his offices, threw him out on his ... whatever the hell passes for an ear on a turian, and won't let him back in.

I hear that's the plot of Halo 4, by the way. CALL OF DUTY: ADJUSTING RENT RATES.

So anyway, he offers Shep his garage pass if Shepard will break into the offices and upload Lorik's evidence onto a usb drive. The game calls it something else, but let's not shit with each other, it's a usb drive.

Lorik then utters one of the more famous lines in the Mass Effect games:

The story implies that turians are obsessed with human culture. Like, they're some kind of Earth weeaboos or something.

Okay, fine, I have no idea how to draw a united Earth cultural turian. I took a screaming shot at it, though.

Today, my husband will come home from work. "What did you do today?" he'll ask. I will not have the heart to reply, "I drew a turian in a Mickey Mouse hat."

The next part's a little dull: Shep goes into the office, shoots some guys, connects the usb drive, gets the data, and comes back out. The office insides look exactly like the rest of Noveria, which is to say, you're still not missing anything art-wise.

So Giana rolls up just as you exit the office, and she's all, "Hey, what was that noise?"

And Shep's like, "Um, I dunno, snow and shit."

So Giana's like, "Whatever, meet me at the bar BEFORE you talk to Lorik."

So you do, and Giana reintroduces herself as an agent for Noveria Internal Affairs. She's after Anoleis, too! She wants Shep to convince Lorik to testify!

I have no idea why Giana couldn't have just gone to Lorik herself and been like, "We both hate the balls off this guy, let's do this," or why Giana even let Shep go get the data, or even why she wanted Shepard to meet her IN A CROWDED BAR versus an alleyway. Look, the important thing is, we've got to get into that garage so that we can get the jetbike to race Johnny across Lab 32.

So Shep talks Lorik into it. There's actually a [LIE] option on this part of the game, which is very old school Bioware. I appreciated it. I always just take the blue option and convince Lorik that he'll be a hero for testifying.

Shepard goes to see Giana, and Giana's like, "Rad. That is rad as hell. I'm going to go bust Anaoleis now." She actually mutters, "I hate skirts" as she walks off the screen. Any lady in the Mass Effect universe, unless they live on the Normandy, wears these incredibly long skirts so Bioware didn't have to animate their legs. See also: Dragon Age.

So Giana steps off the screen and beats the shit out of Anoleis. Off screen. Whoop dee diddle shit. Before she goes, she tosses Shep a garage pass. Yay, we can go to the garage now! This is the victory music that plays. Okay, maybe not, but I'm on a Chrono roll right now.

Actually, at this point, both Liara and Garrus start bitching about the snow. Hey, hey! Let's not be like that, guys!

So they get to the garage, and just as they're about to load up, they notice these crates.

But that shouldn't be anything, right?

Oh, fuck! Benezia transported geth with her! She must be up to something super bad! We'll have to find out what that is next time.

Next time: MOTHERFUCKING MAKO Y'ALL.

Feros: Eww.

Last time, we threw grenades at colonists to save their lives! Now we venture into the surreal.

Anyway, the crew finds a hole and drops underground and

What in the living hell is that thing? Oh shit, it's all drippy, and huge, and is that slime? Is that it's face or it's ass? Oh eww, and --

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL CAPSLOCKING FUCK IS GOING ON HERE, DID THAT THING JUST PUKE A GREEN ASARI AT ME? OR DOES IT HAVE AN ANUS FOR A FACE? OH MY GOD, I GOT A GREEN ASARI SHIT AT ME. THIS GAME. THIS FUCKING GAME. IT SHITS GREEN FUCKING ALIEN WOMEN AT ME BECAUSE WHAT IN THE HELL.

WHERE THE FUCK IS JIM KIRK WHEN I NEED HIM

I am not even lying, that's what happens. It face shits a green asari at you.

So the green asari, who's a clone of another asari who the thorian ... I don't know, ate, shoved in its ass, it's kind of all the same right now, tells Shep that Saren just blew through here like ten minutes ago, and oh yeah, you're going to be giving up the colonists, and Shepard's like, hey, no, I don't do that for people who were just born anally right in front of me WHAT IN THE FUCK.

You go through a sequence where you shoot the 'neural nodes' of the thorian. Once that's done:

The things I'm having to draw. I'm going to get put on a list.

This is probably one of those things that makes Mass Effect so successful as a sci fi series, though: it's not afraid to do something balls to the wall outlandishly stupid.

So that asari that was caught in the thorians nuts? That was one of Benezia's servants. She explains that Benezia joined Saren to try to get him to "follow a gentler path." Ain't that always the way, dames thinking they can change a man. But, Saren started controlling Benezia. He can do that, see, using the power of his space ship named Sovereign. I promise, that only sounds unbelievably dumb, it'll make more sense later. Saren sacrificed Ms. Testicles here to secure an alliance between himself and the thorian so he could use said thorain to keep the cipher away from Shepard.

See, apparently the thorian was alive when the Protheans were. (Remember, not everyone gets wiped every 50,000 years.) So the thorian sat underground, ate up all the Prothean knowledge there was, and now has the cipher, the thing that'll make the visions Shep got from the beacons make sense.

Asari do this, this thing, see. It's ... it's the vulcan mind meld. It is exactly the same fucking thing. Like, there's going to be some nerd somewhere, and he'll be like, no wait, see, the asari use the power of ~mass effects~, but no, it is the vulcan mind meld. Lady Vas Deferens mind melded with the thorian, nabbed the cipher, and then offers it to Shepard.

Sadly, the alien woman that just exploded out of a sentient plant's testicle and mind melded with Shepard did not manage to make her mystery alien vision that got beamed into her head by a giant beacon make any sense. Mass Effect, ladies and gentlemen, tip your servers.

By the way, the vulcan mind meld is also how the asari have sex. You know. Because this totally wasn't a weird enough sequence.

The cool thing about Mass Effect is that, at least for some people, they wind up filling in some of the blanks that the game leaves.

I mean, it can't possibly answer every question you might have, right? Like, what's Shepard's favorite color? (Green.) Or, is Shep a coffee or tea person? (Coffee.) People wind up thinking about this shit, yo. I suspect they are mostly female, but I can't prove it.

Anyway, I like to pretend that during down time, when the Normandy's flying between planets or whatever, Shepard ferrets herself away in a corner of the mess hall with a jar of peanut butter and a spoon and shakes uncontrollably because seriously, eww, why did that asari have to touch her, mein gott, it just came out of someone's nut.

And, let's say after Feros, Liara rolls up.

(This happened in the game, I'm just adding the peanut butter.)

So anyway, they mind meld, and Liara gets all dizzy and shit. Shepard's the one getting her head fucked around in by every blue dame in the galaxy, and Liara's tired, you guys. Anyway, before she says that she's ~too tired~ and needs to lay down, she says that Shepard's vision is incomplete, or damaged. Helpful! Go wash Shep's spoon, geez.

Feros: The Foreshadowing Planet

Ugh, you guys. At first I was like, "Ugh, you guys, Feros is the most boringest planet in the game. How am I going to MSPaint it?"

And then I played it, and I was like, "Ugh, YOU GUYS! There's a lot of shit going on during Feros!"

Mass Effect 1 arguably has the best written plot of the three games. (I say arguably because, despite that one little bump in the road that you've surely heard about, ME3 has a hell of an everything going for it.) The plot is, at least, the tightest here. Feros actually uses, like, I don't know, literary devices and shit to set up the plot for the rest of the three games. If you're totally new, you're going to wonder what the fuck, but if you've played Mass Effect before? Hold on to your ass, Fred!

So Shep and crew land on this place called Feros, right? There's a colony called Zhu's Hope. Weird shit's been going on, and Anderson wanted them to check it out. The place is legit crawling with geth. But why geth? What would a geth guy want with some random ass colonists? First, Shepard goes and talks to Fai Dan, the leader of Zhu's Hope, who's all like, "Yup, weird shit."

And Shepard's like, "So, why weird shit?"

And Fai Dain's like, "Don't ask me, jack. If there's anything weird going on, it probably has to do with the ExoGeni corporation."

ExoGeni ... I don't know, I think it's their job to print money or something. They have GAZILLIONS of dollars. They've set up in this tower just outside of Zhu's hope so they can ... I don't know, convert all their money into pennies and swim in it, and if Shep wants answers, she's going to have to cross the skybridge to get there.

And what do we cross bridges in?

~*THE MAKO!*~

Oh, but my loins, they quiver in joy!

So anyway, after driving the mako off the skybridge like six times, you find a hole in the ground, and you get out of the mako and go down it. I think we've learned by now that not everything in this game makes perfect sense, so let's let it be.

Down the hole, there's some ExoGeni guys hiding. They reveal to you that the tower is crawling with geth, but why, they do not know. One is Ethan, and he's ... he's not a balanced guy. He threatens everyone he sees, and insists, nay, demands that Shepard only clear the geth out of the ExoGeni building. There's valuable data there, don't you know! He needs it! That's totally not a hint, kids.

Another lady, Juliana, says her daughter's in the building, and could Shepard please bring her back? Shepard promises to look into it.

Shepard doesn't have to look hard, since she runs smack into Juliana's daughter Lisbeth like, right upon entry. Jesus, couldn't Juliana take care of that one herself?

Lisbeth says that the geth are there after the thorian, a sentient plant native to Theros. Now, everyone hold the fuck up here: can plants be sentient? Like, at what point do we say, "Oh, shit, no, that thing's actually an animal, thanks?" According to WikiAnswers, which should be used to diagnose all scientific questions, of course, if it can think, it's probably an animal. So what the hell, Mass Effect?

It is probably defined as a plant because it has taken root in my back yard and I can't kill it. My weeds suck, you all.

Now, let us take a moment to have some story time with Auntie McBean. I played this game in tandem with my husband. He grew up playing games like Goldeneye and, his forever favorite, Perfect Dark. If you give him guns, his logic is that you want lots of gun power, pow pow pow. As he was making his way through Mass Effect, he first picked soldier Shep, and took Ashley everywhere. I think he took Wrex, too.

I grew up playing Final Fantasies, and my forever favorite, Chrono Trigger. My video game logic is such that you have to bring along different people of different specialties, mostly so that you can be ready for anything you can encounter, and also so that you can level up your guys evenly, so if you need someone later, you're not shot in the foot. (The correct Mass Effect strategy is somewhere in between the two of us.) That's why I initially picked vanguard, actually: blue space magic sounded nice, but I figured I needed some points in the "GUNS" stat that by the way doesn't exist. So, when I formed parties, I'd always try to have one person who was good at tech and one person who was good at biotics. When Liara first came onto the scene, I saw my opportunity to raise my black mage, while he didn't see enough gun power and promptly put her away.

So, the first time I played Feros, I had Liara in my party. (With Garrus. You know, gotta have a tech guy.) As you progress through the ExoGeni tower, you come upon another Krogan Battlemaster.

He starts into, "Oh, man, this guy is hard! Okay, so you get over there, and tell Garrus to take cover over -- "

Then this happened.

No, seriously, I did not lay a finger on the krogan guy. There was just ... blue, and then floating, and then dead.

And now, for your evening's entertainment, an MSPaint version of what happened in our living room right after.

Even the cat was freaked out, you guys.

The krogan was trying to access ExoGeni's resident VI. The Mass Effect universe uses VIs when they don't think the datapads look cool enough. They're computers in the form of holographic people that you can talk to. The VI talks to Shepard because it thinks Shepard is Lisbeth. It reveals that Saren's after the thorian, and that ExoGeni was testing the thorian out on Zhu's Hope without them knowing.

Yeah, fantastic. So, as Shep and Crew fight their way through the tower, they discover that the geth have actually physically anchored a ship through the tower.

What?

Fuck you, that's really hard to draw. Are you really going to ... ?

Fuck. Fine. Okay, look, here's, like ... here's a tower thing ...

And ... I don't know, the geth ship is all cozied up to it, and there's some shit on the side ...

And ... there. This is the anchor.

Anyway, the crew discovers that the geth very politely threw their anchor through a cargo hatch. If they can get the hatch to close on the geth anchor, it'll sever it and the ship will fall off the tower. Shepard does this through a mini game about math.

We did that with math. Those mythbusting bastards don't got shit on Shepard.

By the way, in classic Bioware game form, a small part of the story is told through text. Shepard finds a computer terminal in this part of the game that mentions that ExoGeni is funded by Cerberus. Cerberus?! Why, they must have scads of money to do evil things! Let's hope we never meet those bastards.

Shepard and crew exit the tower, find Lisbeth, and have a spot of tea and a delightful chat.

Let's back the fuck up here. First off, the thorian is totally weed.

Second off, this means that ExoGeni is trying to mind control colonists without their permission. Not cool, ExoGeni! Shit, I wonder what would happen if Cerberus found out? What a dick thing to do to humans! (Remember, in the Mass Effect universe, who you pull shit on is just as significant as what shit you pull.)

Third, HOLY SHIT SAREN WANTS MIND CONTROL WEED. He's probably going to get us all high as balls mind control us! Who knows why, but he's the bad guy, so it's not for good reasons! We need to get back to Zhu's Hope right now!

Halfway back, Lisbeth runs out of the car (oh thanks bitch), and down the hole to the ExoGeni scientists. Remember them? She reunites there with her mom.

Remember the other guy? Ethan? Yeah, he ain't lookin' so hot right now.

He starts talking about doin' shit, man, not good shit, either. The colonists are all infected with the thorian. Purge the colonists! Purge the whole colony!

The game gives you some choices here. The first time I played this moment is going to be stuck in my head for the rest of my life, I swear.

See, I didn't have enough charm points to pick the blue option. (The game sometimes gives dialog options color coded in red or blue, if you've got enough paragon or renegade or charm or intimidate as it were. The red and blue options are usually the best way to get through a scenario.) I very nervously picked the nicest regular option, and:

"Shepard!" I shouted out loud, and totally surprised myself. Holy shit, I sounded like I was five years old, whining at her for shooting a guy.

Also, why the hell was I talking to a TV? Jesus, self, video game.

But, that was when I realized that I was really into this game. It wasn't going to be the sort that I'd put down and walk away from.

I always regretted not saving Ethan, though. I mean, it'd bugged me across three games. So this time, I poured points into charm, and picked the blue option, ready to fix what I broke:

I'm not kidding, the blue option is Shepard discussing all of the marketing that Ethan could do if he kept the colonies around. Yeah, I was pretty too.

I have no idea which option I prefer. I mean ... shit.

Either way, Lisbeth comes up with another idea: they can deal with the colonists that are infected with thorian via gas grenades. Throw a grenade at a colonist, and it makes them pass out.

The game gives you a choice: you can either shoot the colonists or use the grenades. Shooting is the easy way out, but, um, civilians, yo. Using the grenades is hard as nuts, but at least it's nice?

Whatever you do, at the end of it, Fai Dan comes back around. Remember that guy? He rolls up on you and does something that spoils the ending of the game so hard that I'm going to just write over it, just like I'm doing now. Wheeee~~~~

Next time: we find a sentient plant, and then things get weird.