Virmire: Some Straight Bullshit

So, Joker's got Shepard on the horn, right?

You'd say the same thing, don't even lie.

Philosophical discussions with century old death machine bugs are nice, but there's a tac nuke to worry about, so Shep and Shadow team have to get moving. They hustle out to the bomb site, which is weirdly in the middle of a shallow pool of water? I don't know, I don't usually make tac nukes. Anyway, Ashley set us up the bomb.

There is not a moment of that I made up. The bomb looks like a lady bug, and Saren really does roll in on a magic space skateboard.

The first thing Shepard does is do that standard action hero thing where she empties a clip and a half into Saren with no results whatsoever. He deflects them using his biotics.

shepard honey just quit fucking shooting you might need those bullets one day

So, anyway, Shepard takes cover, and Saren does that standard action bad guy thing where he lays out his entire plan before her. See, the reapers are all going to fuck us in the ass, right? No, see, but it's cool, because Saren's going to help. He's useful. So that means they won't reap him. Right? Right guyse?

Failproof.

I went there! Bought the shirt!

So Saren's like, "Nuh uh, I asked Soveregin, and he said yes, and then he bought me ice cream, and we're totally boyfriend and reaperfriend right now it's true I doodled his name on my notebook," and Shepard's like, "You are too dumb to even argue with, get out of my face," and then the tac nuke's alarm goes off, and that's sort of a thing.

No, seriously, instead of running like hell, Saren decides to pick Shepard up and ... I don't know, play with her? Whatevs, Shep has a plan.

Saren becomes the first in a long list of bitches that Shep cold clocks in the face.

Shepard picks up Ashley for reasons I don't understand, and they high tail it out of there. I feel bad that I left Liara out of the cast photo I did back with Kirrahe, let's see if I can get everyone this time.

Shepard, Ashley, Liara, Garrus, Tali, Wrex, Kirrahe, Kaidan ... yup! That's all of them! Let's go!

So, anyway, you get a touching scene of Shepard looking out the window of the Normandy while boom goes the dynamite.

Afterwards, Liara gets awful interested in Shepard's head again. Did that Prothean beacon Shepard encountered on Virmire add anything to the vision Shepard had?

(Err, by the way, the vision? It's seriously not that important. They'll forget about it in the next two games. The images don't mean much -- Sovereign gave you more relevant information anyway. You can watch it here if you give two shits.)

But, Liara does love a good head fucking.

Liara is like, ooo, oh my, I still can't tell shit from it, and I'm like, well hell, I could have gotten you that far. But then Liara's all, ooo! Ilos! Let's go to Ilos, Saren's there!

I don't ... I guess red blurs mean Ilos.

Right after, Udina calls the Normandy, and he's all, "Good news! Come back to the Citadel! The Council's going to give you some reinforcements!"

NEXT TIME: To the Citadel! For reinforcements! Thanks, Udina!

Virmire: Sovereign

Were Mass Effect a film, or a book, or one of those art forms that was actually, you know, legit in some manner, this would be one of Those Scenes that Professor Bullshit of Fuckstone University would write his dissertation on and present it at The Convention Of Sexually Frustrated Academics to much great applause.

For this is where Shepard meets Saren's magical spaceship, Sovereign.

First off, we need to quit saying "magical spaceship". Sovereign is a reaper. Remember that thing Benezia was talking about in Sarenistotallyguilty100%.mp3? Taa daaaaa.

Reapers are giant space bugs. They're the big fucking spider things we saw all over Eden Prime. During this sequence, just so he can kind of scale down to Shepard, Sovereign appears in a hologram instead of in person. (You later learn that Sovereign is a baby reaper, and they make bigger reapers. Damn!)

This scene is significant because it's the only time in the three games where Shepard and the reapers really get to talk. ... enh, I mean, there's the one in ME2, but he doesn't ... you'll see. This is it for the reapers stepping up and explaining what they're all about, and the only time you'll ever get any direct quotes regarding reaper plans and motivations.

So what's the first thing this super significant space bug has to say to us?

You laugh, this sums up the reapers quite nicely.

So, legit, what does Sovereign say? Here, have a direct quote from the game: "We [the reapers] are eternal. The pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything."

I want you to promise me that you'll remember that come Mass Effect 3, because you'll need that piece of information. Sovereign just told you the reaper's Final Solution, most people just don't realize it because it's under some flowery bullshit.

But, uh, point being, the reapers? Are gonna kill us all dead. Specifically, they do it at the end of their cycles (Liara mentioned this), at "the apex of their glory," 'their' in this case being whatever organic life is chilling around in the galaxy. It used to be the Protheans, now it's the ... uh ... actually, they're after a couple of different races. Humans are on the list, though.

But, to be quite frank, the reapers give no shits, they'll reap everybody just because they forgot to get a mid-morning snack or whatever. NOT EVEN THE ELCOR ARE SAFE YOU GUYS.

The reapers made the Citadel. Oh, and the mass relays, too! They like leaving technology lying around so that organic life develops along the path that the reapers want. This ensures that organic life gets to the point in develop that the reapers need to reap.

"But Bean, what the hell is that point?" -- I love you, but you can never know. Until Mass Effect 3, anyway. But rest assured, the reapers have gotten us right where they want us. YAY.

So, there's another direct quote from Sovereign that always makes me snort:

Bah! No, but really. He goes on:

And here we come to the crux of what makes Commander Shepard tick.

See, you can make Shep a lot of things. Male, female, black, white, gay, straight, theist, atheiest, saint, dick, loves peanut butter, whatever. Anything! But there is one thing that runs common through every Shepard ever imagined by any player:

No reaper tells Shepard what to do and lives through it.

First of all, that's an exact quote. Yes, I died too when I heard it. Holla at, ME3, holla at.

Second: get used to Shepard Getting Mat At Reapers. It will happen only slightly less than the krogans having four balls thing.

You can watch the conversation here, if you want more than the highlight reel I laid out:

Anyway, Sovereign gets pissed and makes some windows explode while cutting off the conversation right as Joker calls.

Virmire: Whoa, Hey, There Was A Plot?

Let me be honest.

I knew when I started this blog that I was going to have to draw some cray shit.

"Is there any way to make Mass Effect less horny?" I asked. Really!

But in the end, there's no way to do that. To perv is to mass effect, such is the essence of the story.

I mean, even though my art is truly, truly shitty, I kind of hope I can work out ways to work in new things, like different poses. Such is a puzzle, but I persevere.

Still, is there a way to avoid being known for drawing anything truly horny?

Or worse, to actually draw something awful?

These are things I worry about. Let's hope I don't resort to shitty Internet memes.

Okay, so the council -- remember those bastards? -- call Le Shep up and they're like, "Hey, we think Saren -- " -- remember that guy? -- " -- is on this backwater shithole called Virmire, go check it out if you want to advance the plot since you already did the Three Bioware Story Worlds (c) (tm)." Right, see, because the game actually does have a little more plot than "krogans have four balls." They have four balls, by the way. Don't make me draw them.

pause

I know some of you haven't played Mass Effect. That's fine. Well, no it isn't, go out and play it! I've been leaving smallish chunks of the game out just so that you'll discover them for yourself and be as delighted as the rest of the Internet was when they first played with Aveena or told off Presley or whatever.

There are three huge spoilers on Virmire. You need to trust me, here: I am leaving all three out.

Yup, even that one. The one you're thinking about.

So, the next blog posts that follow (Virmire will take three) will be ... enh, sort of truthful? Not really, because I'm writing around all these spoilers. If you pick up and play the game after reading this, I'm going to strongly advise you go check a walkthrough and spoil yourself, but hell, it's your choice. I know a lot of people who didn't, though, and were sorely disappointed with how Virmire shook out.

Speaking of: Virmire can end in several different ways, depending. This is one way.

So anyway, the Normandy's supposed to land on Virmire next to a Salarian STG camp. (Salarian STG troops are like spec op groups. They're the dudes that genophaged the krogans.) But, the geth have set up these tower things that are blocking the ... uh ... equipment ... signal ...

Shut up, I didn't pay attention to the science.

So, they're blocking the Normandy's mass effects, maybe, probably not, and so Shep and pals get to drop in the Mako and take the towers out.

Oh, yeah: Virmire is a jungle planet. It's stupid beautiful, but it also means that you're going to be rolling around in water to get to the towers. In the mako. My heart sings with glee.

There's all these geth guys, and you're supposed to shoot them, but ahhahaha guns ahahahah mako, so I just run them all over. This actually happened to me.

They make these big ass geth called geth colossus, right? They look like big fucking spider horse geth guys.

So I went to ram the fucker, you know, like you do, which normally kills them. Instead, the ragdoll physics fucked up somehow, and the body just sort of ... fell on the mako. I drove all around, but I couldn't get the body off. It was wiggling and ...

It just looked unfortunate.

Eventually, you drive up to a structure that looks really familiar if you've played other shooters. Ahem. Shepard and pals get out and run inside to the control room.

I seriously expect to go and blue screen a console every single time I play Virmire. It looks and feels so much like a Halo level, y'all don't even know.

So anyway, the Normandy lands, and Shep goes to talk to the STG leader, Captain Kirrahe. (You can say it "Kir-rah-hee" or "Kir-rah-hay," apparently either is correct?)

See, the salarians discovererd that Saren cured the genophage. Sweet! And he's got a secret krogan breeding facility to breed hundreds of angry, breedable krogan soldiers! Maybe not so sweet! Kirrahe sent a message to the council saying all that, plus the fact that he was bleeding men out the cloaca. Oh, by the way, salarians have a cloaca. The game makes this very clear. That's something you can add to that four ball sampler you're currently cross stitching.

The council got the message, but like it says in those two images I spent hours lovingly rendering, it got garbled, and the only thing the council could make out was "Saren" and "we're fucked". So, instead of the waves and waves of troops Kirrahe needed, he got Shepard. Awkward!

So, Kirrahe sets out his proposal: nuke the facility. Clean, simple, efficient. But, he's losing guys, so, err --

The game gives you a choice between Ashley or Kaidan. I have no idea why you can't send Tali or some shit, but there it is. It really truly doesn't matter who you chose, except for the fact that whoever you send with Kirrahe can't be in the party for storming the Virmire facility. Whatever, I always roll with Garrus and Liara, so I don't really need Ashley or Kaidan avaliable.

You can, naturally, guess who I always send, though.

So then we all gather for an inspirational speech.

If you've ever heard a Mass Effect nerd talk about holding the line? This is the scene. Congratulations, you're a nerd now too.

So the plan is that Kirrahe/Kaidan's team goes in and does, uh, something, and Shep and pals, also called "shadow team" for no real reason, sits in the lounge and enjoys hot cocoa goes in the back and kick's Saren in the nuts.

As you go along, Kaidan will radio Shepard and give these vague little hints. These are sidequests, dumbass! Please trust me on this, you need to do them. Trust. Me.

Most of them involve shooting satellites down off towers. Fuck, I don't know, maybe Kaidan really hates DishTV. Maybe he used to work for Time Warner.

So Shep and buddies bust in the facility, and what do they see?

Oh, hey, rad, some of Kirrahe's old men! I wonder what they're --

Indoctronation? That's probably a word you should remember.

Okay, the game hasn't outright told us yet, but you've got enough pieces to start figuring some shit out. Didn't Benezia say that Saren could control people? Whisper in their mind? Probably, that's what happened to the salarians in the facility, especially since they keep bitching about voices controlling them.

Wasn't Saren controlling them with a magical floating space ship? Shit. Maybe we should find that ship.

Unfortunately, Shepard finds something else instead.

But, can you imagine? The thing that Shepard sees next? Totally beats out some lame beacon.

Gonna save it for another entry, though.

NEXT TIME: Magical space ships.