You've probably seen promotional materials relating to Mass Effect -- they only played like 7000 million trillion commercials for Mass Effect 3. So, a great game probably opens with explosions and shit, right? Guns blazing? Women fainting? Men waving penises?
Mass Effect starts with three dudes standing around muttering about some asshole named Shepard. One of these dudes is Admiral Hackett, the highest ranking military officer the story gives a name to. I don't think he ever physically enters the story of ME1, so I'm going to be a shit and not draw him. The other dude talking about you behind your back is Donnel Udina, a human diplomat.
Then there's Captain Anderson!
Who apparently salutes with his left hand! Hush, no one promised you good art.
Oh, Anderson. He's easily one of my favorite characters. He's smart, strong, brave, high ranking, the Captain and commanding officer of the good ship Normandy --
Um, and not the hero of the story, either. Sorry 'bout that.
(This is a true story, when I first played ME1, I had no idea Anderson was supposed to be black. I'm not trying to make some sort of statement on my own color blindness or whatever, I'm trying to say that I am literally so fucking stupid that I thought Anderson was supposed to be a bright orange human. I was halfway through Mass Effect 2 before my husband was like, "You know he's supposed to be black, right?" And I was like, "The hell, when did that happen?" Apparently it happened when they hired Keith David to be his voice actor, who knew. He is pretty fucking orange in Mass Effect 1, though.)
So after that happens, the screen flashes black, and tries to go all Star Wars on your ass by giving you a text dump of some history: in ... some year, you know, that one year, humans made it to Mars, and discovered all this wacky technology that let them use mass effects. The mass effect let them travel way out into space so they could meet all kinds of fucked up aliens.
This is about the only time the story tries to sit down and address what a mass effect is. No, really. I've played all three games, and I can tell you with authority that this whole mass effect thing? It's space magic or some shit. I think it's blue? It rarely comes up. Like, it makes their ships go or some shit, but that's it. It's like taking the movie Thelma and Louise and calling it Gasoline. Nerds have tried to define exactly what a mass effect is, but they are nerds, and should not be entertained. "Blue space magic" is all you need to know.
Okay. Anyway, the game pops you on the bridge of the Normandy, the space ship of the game. Get used to this bitch, you're gonna be living on it for three games. The camera follows behind the shmuck who's second in command, the Spock if you will:
Commander Shepard!
WHOA WHOA HEY QUIT HAVING A FIT HEY HEY HOLD ON
Mass Effect 1 is very very Bioware. As such, you get to make your own Commander Shepard. You can make him a dude, dudette, blonde, black, whatever you can think of. When I first fired up the character creator, I was like, "Hot damn! I'm going to make a black lady Shepard, except she's got green dreadlocks!" Then, I got disappointed that I couldn't make green hair. Then, I got disappointed that I couldn't do dreads. I farted with the character creator forever, trying to make a black Shep, but the best I could do was a white Shep that had a horrible tanning bed accident. That's not the character creator's fault, I'm pretty universally bad with face makers. (Oh Sims 2, the abominations I brought into this world.)
So deprived of my original Shepard plans, I made the snuggly preciousest Shep I could, a teeny little red headed Shep. The idea of something totally pwecious saving the galaxy made me laugh. Actually, I picked the orange hair because it was the same color as one of my pet rabbits. I love that color.
For simplicity's sake, we're all just going to calm the fuck down and use my Shepard. I know, you love your Shep too, but There Can Only Be One. This is Millicent Shepard, Vanguard.
Speaking of. If you didn't have any fun playing Mass Effect, it's because you picked soldier for your class. Don't pick soldier. I'm a big fan of vanguard, but I'll let you get away with picking adept. Engineer is okay. I'm not a big fan of infiltrator or sentinel, but other nerds love them.
So, Shep's rolling up through the Normandy, when she hears that Anderson wants to speak with her, so she goes to hunt him down.
This is when she happens on Nihlus.
Hey, welcome to Mass Effect! You just met your first fucked up alien thing! Get used to it, there's a shit ton more where this came from.
Nihlus is a turian, which is some kind of giant ... space ... cricket ... lizard. Bioware says they're based on birds. Um, sure. They've got big long head spikes (they call it a 'fringe'), and a huge circular neck ... collar bone ... thing. Also! You never see a female one in game, because Bioware was too afraid of putting tits on a turian and calling it a girl turian. To be fair, that's pretty gross.
Nihlus is also a spectre, meaning he's got diplomatic immunity dripping out his cloaca. It's really weird for a spectre and a turian to be aboard a human ship, but there he is.
So him and Shepard chillax for a bit,
Until Anderson rolls in. He's like, hey Shep, don't tell anyone, but:
- We're landing on Eden Prime because we found a Prothean thingie.
- Nihlus here is gonna watch you find and do shit with the Prothean thingie, 'cause we think you might make a decent spectre.
Actually, Shepard takes it quite well, but she shouldn't, because those are two really big bombs to drop. The Prothean thingie? The Protheans were these aliens that lived long ago, but they died out, because, um, old stuff dies. They made the mass effects. The last time the humans found a Prothean artifact, they got enough mass effect power to go out to meet the aliens, so who the hell knows what this could do.
Also, a spectre? Is a hell of a promotion! Shit, Shep might even be in line to get promoted from commander! Wouldn't that be --
The pilot interrupts them with a youtube video.
A transmission comes in from Eden Prime. It's one of those grand moments where there's static everywhere and we're supposed to pretend that the technology isn't that great in the future.
Among the images is a woman in bright pink armor getting shot at.
And hey, what the hell?
Some sort of ... fucked up spider thing?
Congrats, you just met your second Mass Effect alien, but the game's not telling you what it is yet. I guess I'll save it as a surprise for later, too.
This was way, way too info dumpy for my tastes. Let's cut here and land on Eden Prime next time.
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