Noveria: Who You Gonna Call?

So, how are we getting to Peak 15?

MOTHERFUCKING MAKO!

That's the best snow effect MSPaint's got, you all are going to have to deal.

Actually, why in the living hell would you drive the mako around on ice? It sounds like a great way to get yourself killed. The screen shows "Level 1 Hazard" in the bottom corner the entire time, and I've never figured out why. I guess the level 1 hazard is that you got into the mako and tried to pilot it around?

Damn, and you know the entire time, Garrus is just curled around the Mako's heater, like the big six and a half foot tall wiener he is.

So anyway, they reach Peak 15, and right after they resurrect Crono, they're sneaking around, but they don't see any life forms. No guys working the lab, no Benezia, no nothing.

No worries, Mass Effect aims to hit every sci fi trope you can think of. Yes, even the nasty ones.

So there's these giant crawdad things slinking around the lab, and also no humans/turians/asari/otherwise friendly aliens. WHY WHATEVER COULD HAVE CAUSED THIS.

Surprise, Shep and buddies run into the crawdads and shoot the shit out of them. Why, those crawdads, could those possibly be the reason why there's no one else here?

Shepard happens upon a station VI that can hopefully help her out.

Actual line of dialog. Shepard can even respond with, "Crap, a popup." Anyway, Le Shep pumps the VI (named Mira) for information. Benezia's tooling around somewhere, she took the train down to the other part of the lab, but lol, the train's broke. Mira tells you you can get it up and working again, if you do some shit for her, like open the landlines up and reconnect the fuel lines.

Seriously, there are kids born in 2000 that have no idea what a landline is, there's no way Shepard, born in 2154, knows what a landline is. I kind of doubt she's reminiscing for the days of AOL dial up. She probably thinks that electricity travels by blue tooth.

(The game implies, though never directly states, that Garrus is a huge damn nerd really good with technology and shit, so he'd probably be the one to ask out of all of them. Or Tali, I guess.)

So Shepard reconnects the landlines, probably, or maybe Garrus gets pissed and takes it from her, who knows, and then they reconnect the fuel lines, while also not using the power of mass effects.

Then we get to ride on the train!

That's what happens. Exactly.

There's two ways to do the next part. There's the way that everyone else does it, which involves talking to people, and the way that I always wind up doing it, which is wandering around, getting stupidly lost, and then tripping right over Benezia.

I will say that if you talk to people, you get some background on the crawdads: they are called rachni, they are pissed as fuck, and they're what cleared Peak 15 out. Surprise!

So let's say you take my route and just sort of fall over Benezia.

Liara tears her mother a new asshole for, you know, being evil and shit, and then there's a boss fight.

THE SHIT THAT BENEZIA SAYS AFTERWARDS IS REALLY. FUCKING. IMPORTANT. I NOW DEMAND THAT YOU PAY ATTENTION.

Afterwords, Benezia snaps out of it for a second. Saren's been controlling her, see. She describes it as him constantly whispering to her, like she's, I don't know, indoctrinated or something.

She says that wailing on her daughter and her friends isn't her will, go figure. But Saren's got this power, from that ship Sovereign, see, and he can just take over whoever he wants and get what he wants done.

Behind Benezia is the ever-famed rachni queen. If you've ever spoken to a Mass Effect nerd, you probably heard the name.

Apparently Saren is planning something in the Mu Relay, where the Rachni queen is from. But no one knows where the Mu relay is. Well, that's easy enough, Saren's got Benezia. He sent Benezia to vulcan mind meld with the Rachni queen so that she could figure it out and go tell Saren. In her moment of clarity, though, she puts the location on a usb drive and gives it to Shepard, so that maybe Shepard can go fix whatever Saren's got going on.

Saren grabs ahold of Benezia again, so Shepard finishes the job, kablam.

Then shit gets weird. One of Benezia's asari commandos that Shepard kills comes back to life.

(Fuckin' told you all this place was Death Peak.)

The rachni queen picks up an asari through her own sort of vulcan mind meld trick and starts talking to Shepard in shitty music metaphors.

The rachni in the lab were her children, but baby rachni need a mama rachni to develop correctly. Since the baby rachni were taken from her, they went crazy, which is why they're running around the labs eating people's faces off. She asks Shepard to kill them. Which, hey, Shep's a pro, she's got that shit no problem.

Now, then. The rachni queen's stuck in that tank, and she would like out, please.

...

But, see, you could kill her. If you wanted.

...

MASS EFFECT HISTORY TIME: Before humans, the other aliens were booking around the galaxy when they found the rachni. Oh, hey, they said, other aliens! That's rad. That's rad as hell. But the rachni were stupid powerful, and not really up for political debate like the asari liked. They were kind of into eating faces. So what do you do?

The salarians got the idea to "culturally uplift" the krogan. See, during this time, the krogan were just rock stupid turtles who wanted to eat, fuck, and kill, but the salarians put a bit in their mouth and turned them into something presentable. Also, they were strong and they bred like fucking rabbits, because they have four balls, so they made great soldiers. The salarians threw a zillion krogan troops at the rachni and killed them off until they surrendered. Such is the story of the rachni wars. If you're running around the citadel, you can see a statue of a krogan that the council erected in honor of them.

Long point made short, you can be nice and let her go, but she might go around killing everyone. Again. Or, you can just nuke her right there, but she might be a sane rachni, how would you ever know?

I always let her go, myself, you do what you want.

All right, one last thing. Shepard and pals travel down to another area in the lab to take care of those baby rachni like they promised the queen.

Horrifying space bugs are hard to draw, okay?

So anyway, Mira tells you you can activate the neutron purge to clean out the baby rachni. The neutron purge is when Mira fuses scifionium with bullshitium to form unobtainium and that makes, in effect, a tac nuke.

...

WHY IN THE HELL DID THEY NOT JUST USE A MASS EFFECT

I know, I'm only going to bitch about this 134703475 more times, but seriously, they've got this bangin' sci fi technology just lying around, they NAMED THE FUCKING SERIES AFTER IT, and then they just PISS IT DOWN THEIR LEG. It wouldn't be anywhere nearly so bad of a thing IF. THE. FUCKING. SERIES. WASN'T. CALLED. MASS. FUCKING. EFFECT.

So Shepard activates the neutron purge, runs like hell, and then I twitch and sob in a corner.

NEXT TIME: No mass effects, that's for sure.