I haven't mentioned Joker so far, mostly because while he's present in ME1, he doesn't do a whole lot. I can think of maybe one portion of the game where he affects the plot. But he's gonna come in to play in the next two games, so you need to get familiar with him:
Joker is voiced by Seth Green, and also looks just like Seth Green wearing a hat. He's the pilot of the Normandy. He's got Vrolik's syndrome, which is actually a real thing that you can have. It means that his bones are more or less hollow and break easily. That's why Joker never goes with you on missions, and also that's why I had to draw him up there with crutches.
(See, kids with real life brittle bone disease typically die, but this is the future, so Joker's good to go.)
So anyway, you tell Joker to punch it, and he drives the Normandy up into the Citadel.
The game legit goes into some Star Trek 1 The Movie style shit at this point.
"Why the hell did you draw a giant flower?" you ask? Because the Citadel looks like a giant flower, I say, at least in the first shot they show you.
The Citadel is the most important area in all three games. It's a space station, not a planet. It's a giant city where all the races gather, live, and get along about as well as they're going to get. It's also where the Council lives! Hold on to your ass, we're about to infodump.
The game drops you into the following scenario:
Over there on the right, the red guys? They're the council. They rule the universe. Really! All three of them! Bet your ass feels important now, having met them. They're red because we're currently seeing them through holograms, because Mass Effect is once again trying to pretend that all their space future technology shit isn't so great. From left to right, the councilors:
The turian councilor: Is a dick. You already know what turians are, so let's move on.
The asari councilor: Is a bigger dick. People rag on the turian councilor all the time, but I'm sorry, she's a way huger wang noodle. Asari are your ... fourth alien race? I'm starting to lose count. They're blue chicks with head tentacles ... except they're not actually chicks. Asari are genderless beings that can reproduce with either gender of any alien. You heard me. Any. Alien. You can probably smell where this is going. Asari are the dominant species in the galaxy.
The salarian councilor: Never does anything. Ever. I'm not convinced Bioware hired a voice actor for her. Salarians are lizard guys with big ass eyes that live about 30 years. This salarian is a female dalatrass, a very old, powerful female, so she wears that hood thing.
Oh, and on the left, the pissy guy? That's Ambassador Udina! He's the human representative to the council, and he's pretty much always having some kind of cardiac event over some shit.
(Hey, do you notice something? The most powerful races in the galaxy, the turians, the asari and the salarians, have council members. Humans are very new to the galactic scene, and in the Mass Effect universe, they kind of get treated like dog shit. One of the sub plots of the series is trying to get humans some political power. That's why Shepard being a spectre would be such a big deal: she'd be the first human spectre, earn humanity some serious rep points with the council, and maybe get a human council member.)
So Udina is having it out with the council: Udina's pissed that the council won't send any kind of support or investigation or ANYTHING regarding Eden Prime, and the council's all, "Nope, sorry Jack, you said mean things about Saren! We like Saren, he's good people!" Seriously, that's the argument.
You're going to learn really quick that the council's #1 job in live is to give the finger to humanity.
Something neat about this scene: you can tell that they didn't have the pronunciation totally finalized yet. One of the councilors talks about Soren, and someone else says "tor-rian." It may be worth mentioning that Bioware is stationed in Backwater, Canada, too.
So Anderson, Shepard, Kaidan and Ashley roll up, and Udina's all, "Fuck you guys and fuck your mothers, they're having a trial for Saren, be there in ten before I eat your hearts out of your chests." So everyone goes to the council chambers.
This is a long scene, but let me summarize it for you.
Shepard: Saren shot Nihlus!
Council: But we need proof.
Shepard: Here's the report from Eden Prime. We also have an eye witness. Also he's an asshole, you know he is.
Council: But we need proof.
Shepard: I ... I just gave you proof?
Council: But we need proof.
Shepard: What the hell are we doing here?
So. Fuck me. Let's go get evidence.
Anderson gives you a couple of options. There's actually many ways for this part to play out, but for simplicity's sake, we're doing it my way. I always go to Barla Von, first.
Barla Von is a volus that chills in the financial district. He's an agent for the Shadow Broker, some sort of mysteeeeeerious guy who knows everything about everyone. He never deals with people directly, just through agents, and no one ever meets the guy. Shepard's like, "Tell us shit," so he spills: The shadow broker is pissed at Saren. Mr. Broker went ahead and hired a krogan named Urdnot Wrex (Wrex is his given name, Urdnot is the clan name, so Wrex for short) to take Saren out, and Wrex is likely chilling in C-Sec.
Oh boy, Krogans! So many info dumps for you today! Krogans are huge pissy turtle aliens. They are pissed off because the turians neutered them. More on that later.
Krogans have four testicles. The game will bring up this fact every single chance it gets. Four. Balls. Remember it.
You remembering?
Good, let's go to C-Sec, which is short for Citadel Security. That's the police guys. In ME1, C-Sec is almost exclusively a turian unit.
Wrex has all four of his balls in a huge wad (he can do that because he has four balls) at some C-Sec officers, but for some reason they don't cart him off, and also he turns around and talks to Shep like it ain't no thing. Wrex reveals that he was hired to kill a guy named Fist because, are you ready? I had to write this down, I knew I'd never remember it: some random quarian (another kind of alien) got uppity at the shadow broker because she had some evidence proving that Saren was up to no good, that he had started making trouble in his neighborhood. She wanted to meet the broker himself, so Fist offered to arrange it. But, Fist betrayed her, and set her up to meet with Saren's dudes instead, 'cause this quarian chick's got shit on him and Saren wants her dead.
Take a breath. Read it twice.
Wrex suggests that Shepard go talk to this C-Sec officer who'd been hot on Saren's trail; he's pretty sure he saw the guy down around the clinic. Thanks, jackass, because a major space metropolis only has like one of those.
At this point, the game gives you the option of changing party members. Buddy boy howdy, I ripped Kaidan out of my party so fast his faux hawk spun. Ashley and Wrex is an acceptable party, but we're about to go make it better.
So apparently there's only one clinic on the Citadel, what the hell, and when we bust in, we see:
Shit, that's Dr. Michel! She's being held hostage by Fist's thugs, but that's okay, because Garrus Vakarian, that C-Sec officer we were hunting, is a shoot first and ask questions later kind of guy. He shoots Fist's thugs, and Shepard thanks him kindly.
Actually, this might be a good point to mention the paragon/renegade system. Since this is a Bioware game, there's a "good/bad" sort of system, the idea being that the more good you've got the more good things you can do and vice versa. In Mass Effect, "good" is paragon and "bad" is renegade. Technically, 'paragon' is supposed to be the guy that wants to do the right thing by the most people, and 'renegade' is the one that wants the most effective solution, even if it winds up being one that isn't popular. What usually winds up happening is 'paragon' is how normal, sane people would react, and 'paragon' is a huge hyper dick move.
I usually play really super paragon, partly because I have trouble seeing the text on the TV (it's something about the XBox, I have really good vision otherwise) and it's just easier to pick the blue text or the text highest on the screen for me. I also play paragon because I am literally six fucking years old and don't want to see Shepard do anything mean.
I will say, sometimes I pick renegade when I know that the result will be funny, or when I think Shep has every right to be pissed off.
Anyway, if you pick the paragon option, Shepard rips Garrus a new asshole. Cloaca. What the hell do turians shit out of? None of you answer that, I'm happier not knowing.
Y'all go off down through the wards, to this place called Chora's Den, a "gentlemen's cub". It is a stripper bar. Really, go through it sometime when Fist's dudes aren't shooting at you.
Oh, right, Fist's dudes start shooting at you. Anyway, they start shooting at you, and you mow them down and go through the back to find Fist himself. He tells you everything you already knew, and then says the quarian is probably down by the shops.
Remember the paragon/renegade thing I mentioned earlier? The game gives you the option to either kill or spare Fist.
Unless you're a dumbass like me who brought Wrex.
Oh, Shepard! This is going to be a hell of a mission!
So anyway, the game puts a timer on you, but you'll beat it pretty easily. You find yourself in a back alley with a random pervert and a quarian.
Oh, by the way, a quarian? Those are chicken legged space gypsies in hazmat suits. If I'm lying, I'm flying. They always wear these suits with helmets because they've got like no immune system. (Quarian culture is pretty central to the game, and there's a lot of it -- I seriously don't even have the space here. If you read one link I give you, make it that one.)
We learn that the quarian's name is Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, but we can call her Tali for short. Anyway, she offers us the information against Saren, because I guess Shepard kind of looks like the shadow broker or some shit, and we run screaming back to Udina.
Those orange things I keep drawing on their arms? Those are omnitools. They're pretty much futuristic holographic smart phones.
I'm not even being clever, by the way, this really is exactly how Tali implicates Saren.
I'm not even shitting there, either, that's legit Troi.
Anyway, there's some discussion over what the hell a reaper is, and why Councillor Troi is so concerned with them, but overall, they come up with nothing. But, they've got the shit to implicate Saren, so they bust back off to the council.
That was long and texty. The next one hopefully won't be so bad. Til next time!
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