MSPixel: Wrex: Family Armor

It's implied as the game goes along that every one is making better friends with each other. Sometimes it sticks out when Shepard goes through dialog options with the crew -- for example, I was kind of surprised that Ashley told me to go comfort Liara after I killed Benezia. Wasn't she supposed to be space racist? Oh, right, I talked her down from that.

The vast majority of this delightful character development happens in the ever famous elevator scenes. ME1 didn't have loading screens, it just put elevators between different areas. If you took two squadmates together, you might possibly trigger a conversation between them that plays while you wait for the next area to load.

They all pretty much go like this.

Space racism is a Thing in ME1. You can bring pretty much any two combinations of squadmates (except Kaidan and Ashley, I guess) and get a space racism conversation.

But oho, the conversations you get if you bring Garrus and Wrex.

Turians and krogans get along just about as well as varren and thresher maws! Oho! SPACE HUMOR.

Okay, remember how I told you about those rachni guys? And the krogans defeating them? If you'll recall, one of the reasons the krogans defeated the rachni were because they reproduce so fast. Because they have four balls. They. Have. Four. Balls. Why is this not cross stitched in your home yet?

Krogan reproduction rates are as they are because their homeworld, Tuchanka, ~~has four testicles~~ is almost inhabitable. It's hot, nothing grows, no water, horrifying fauna, so on. But, if the krogan keep fucking, what with their four balls and all, they can sustain their population at a reasonable level. After the rachni wars, the council very dimly gave the krogan nice planets, ones previously inhabited by the rachni. The krogan went there, fucked like krogan, and overblew the shit out of their population. Worse yet, the krogan are still really violent fuckers, so now you've got ... enh, let's just say it's the same thing as having an entire galaxy overrun with Klingons.

The salarians made this thing called the genophage. Pay fucking attention, this is only going to come up like ten million more times. The genophage altered a krogan's genetics so that one in one thousand krogans lived. Ouch. The salarians asked the turians to deploy said genophage, and the turians did it because seriously, they are the patsies of the galaxy.

Soooooo, the short version is that the turans neutered the krogans.

but hey it's okay guys because that's how the turians got a councillor

Yeah, so, hey, that's going on in the Normandy's cargo hold like 25 earth hours an earth day. Tali keeps bitching that the Normandy's too quiet for her to sleep on, and I'm not actually sure why.

If you keep talking to Wrex, he'll eventually tell you about his solution to the genophage: fuck like rabbits. See, because this is Mass Effect, and if the plot can solve something by using alien sex, the plot is going to solve something by using alien sex. But this other dickwad krogan? He was all like, no fucking, fighting! But that's not the Mass Effect way.

So the krogans arranged for a crush --

Err. It's like a krogan meeting. So Wrex is like, "Fuck!" and this other krogan's like, "Fight!" and then they get in a huge thing, and then Wrex stabs the other guy, and PS, that other guy was his dad! Surprise! Twist ending.

Wrex stabbed his man over the ability, nay, right to get his swerve on with a lovely fertile female lay-day. Mass Effect, ladies and gentlemen.

Wrex isn't sad over losing his dad, what with his dad being a giant cockblock and all, but he's kind of emo about losing his grandpa's armor. Some turian took it back when the turians were neutering the krogans, and if Shepard ever wanted to go get it for him --

Okay, gameplay-wise, if Shepard isn't a tech expert (and just trust me here make Shep a biotic it sets you up so much better for ME3 Bean promises), you have to bring someone who knows tech shit just so they can hack into the vault for you. Wrex can't do it alone. Sure, we could bring Tali, but why, when this is so much funnier?

So Joker drops the team, and they're busting along in the Mako on this snowy planet, right?

They find the structure where Wrex's armor is hidden, and fight their way through some pirates.

Finally, they happen upon the safe, and Shepard dispatches whoever the tech expert is you brought to get the safe open.

Should you be successful, you get a text box describing what would be the next cut scene. Wrex takes his armor and probably looks happy, but you can't tell because he's an alien, and also space racism. Ta daa.

That text box is one of those old school Bioware elements that keeps cropping up in Mass Effect 1, but is more or less gone by 2 and 3. Back in the old days, Bioware games (and really, lots of different old games) would tell parts of the story via text box. It always makes me think of Jade Empire, honestly. The ending to that game was nothing but a few pages of text on the screen.

That was the ending.

It sure was a disappointing ending.

I am being a shit. Let's move on.

... except, we're at the end of our tale for today, and the only thing we have now is but to wonder: will Garrus and Wrex ever become best space bros?

...