Friday, November 30, 2012

The Collector's Ship: Gross

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I get Ilos and Illium mixed up and I'm too lazy to go edit the image. Just pretend there's a damn Quik-E-Mart out in the Prothean ruins.

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Speaking of, I suspect? that Brother Tim is calling us early, we've still got a SHIT. TON. of missions to go through. I'm hoping the game isn't futzing out on me. Surely to hell not.

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The Illusive Man has discovered an abandoned collector ship. Or rather, he's discovered that a turian patrol unit discovered a collector ship and took it out.

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Feh, details! The point is, before anyone else can get close to it, Shep and the Shepettes can step in, grab data, and zip on out and then roll up to Ilos for peanut butter. Wait, Illium. I may have stopped caring.

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How indeed. Wouldn't they have to, you know, shoot at the damn ship? Curiouser and curiouser.

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The collector's ship has very little oxygen, so everyone has to wear helmets. For reasons I don't understand, some characters don't have helmets -- they just have these little breather units that cover their mouth and nose. Miranda's one of them. You want to trip hard? Bring Jack. Shepard (a human!) is standing there in heavy armor and a helmet and she wears a breather mask and a tit strap. Sci fi playing fast and loose with the rules of science? I never!

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The collector's ship inside is like a giant bee hive or some shit. It's grosser than that one level in Super Mario Land 2. If you automatically filled in "six golden coins", we could party.

Point being, remember all those pods we found on Horizon? The collectors brought them back here and were fucking gross ass bugs about it. Some of them are empty. Did the collectors suck their guts out or .... ?

Oh, hey, Siri's calling.

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This ship is fucking dogging Shepard! That's not cool.

The collectors don't clean house very well, either.

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The crew rolls up to some sort of dead collector hooked up to a computer.

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By the way, watch this scene close -- Shepard turns on her omni tool. Usually characters just sort of stick out their arm and it appears. I swear I think it's the only instance in the Mass Effect universe when a character does that. I can't decide if that would resolve the nerd fights I've overheard about how omni tools work or just make more of them.

Hey, EDI, what's going on with that dead collector?

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SAY WHAT

The collectors are Protheans?! Not really. EDI suggests that they used to be, but the reapers altered their genetic code so that they'd be more ... useful. The Protheans didn't die out, they just got conquered and taken over in a terrifying example of body horror!

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Anyway, we came to hook EDI up to the collector's ship, so let's get that done.

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NEXT TIME: Assuming direct control ~of your heart~

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Jack: And Boom Goes The Dynamite

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I bet Kelly takes on the task of doing all the little social things on the Normandy. You know, she's the one who circulates the card for everyone to sign if someone's sick or has a baby or whatever. I bet she tries to play with Grunt a lot too.

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Because they have four balls. Four.

Speaking of, I think Jack's requesting Shepard's presence on the lower decks.

See, she's been looking through those files Shepard let her access, and she's discovered that Cerberus raised her in a facility on Pragia. She was tortured and drugged so that Cerberus could research her biotic abilities. (I have no idea how she finds this out if you don't let her have the files, maybe she steals them? Maybe EDI tells her? Who knows.)

Point being, the fact that this place is still standing, it tasks her, and she wants to blow it up. Well hell, why not?

Pragia is a dark rainy jungle planet. It's actually fun to walk through, Bioware did all these rain effects and you can see the water catch in Shepard's hair and stuff.

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It looks better than that.

Hey, watch Shepard when you walk into the facility, you can watch her drip dry.

Anyway, right away when you get into the facility, you come across some crates:

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Annnnnnnnnnnnd that's the only Pragia joke I have. Seriously, this is a story line about torturing children, there's no funny there.

Speaking of, apparently other kids lived in the Pragia facility. But this place is totally empty now, what happened?

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Shepard and Jack come across some old hologram recordings that start to paint a picture. Two different versions of the story develop: the holograms imply that the Pragia unit was a rogue Cerberus cell that kidnapped and experimented on other biotic children so they'd know whether or not they could do something to Jack, since she was the most valuable subject. Jack is sure that the cell wasn't rogue, and that she got the worst of the torture. She doesn't believe that the scientists were trying to 'protect' her by experimenting on the other kids.

Like all things in life, the real answer is probably somewhere down the center: whether nor not the facility went rogue, it probably wasn't operating totally on the level, otherwise The Illusive Man wouldn't be up their ass. There's holograms that directly state that the scientists try things on the other kids first before Jack, but they probably didn't do it out of any kind of love, just out of wanting to keep their subject up and running.

There's two stories of the downfall of Pragia, too: one is that the other kids started some chaos, Jack busted out, and killed everyone she could get to to escape, the other is that Jack snapped and started the riot herself. I don't have an answer for you there.

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Hey! They're talking about Ascension again! I'm convinced at this point that Ascension should be required reading for Mass Effect 2. Actually, the guy in the hologram is more or less describing exactly what Paul and Jiro tried to do to Gillian.

As they go along in this totally empty facility:

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shittt

So there's some krogan mercs here because fuck it, I don't know, but it lets me make a four ball joke in the same sentence as a Jack doesn't wear a shirt joke. Effort. This really is the horniest damn game.

We've got to dispose of them. Hey, isn't Jack a biotic?

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Biotics are cool, kids.

Jack wants to set us up the bomb in her old cell. However, once we roll in there:

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Damn! One of the other subjects from the facility! What could he possibly want?

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His argument is that he wants all the torture to be worth SOMETHING, and he wants to find out what, but ... legit, how weird do you have to be? Then again, it's not like he had a normal upbringing, so.

Shepard steps in.

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They convince the guy to run. Shepard and Jack set up the bomb, and, well,

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You know? That would be believable as an NES screenshot. Almost. Hush, I'm going to be proud of my art.

Which would all make for a very boring entry until we get to this cut scene, when Shepard gets a call from Joker:

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Actual dialogue. MASS EFFECT: The Horniest Game.

This happens from time to time when you complete two character's loyalty missions, they get in a fight and Shepard has to go solve it. You probably figured out I was trying to trigger this one when you saw that today was Jack's mission. There's one other. (Fun fact: Mordin and Grunt were supposed to have one, but it was cut from the final game.)

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So, two chicks fighting with magic. One's wearing a cat suit and the other's half naked. Uh huh.

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Welcome to the most frustrating dialogue choice of the game!

Those paragon and renegade points we've been collecting? The game sometimes does paragon/renegade checks. If either value is high enough, you can use a special paragon or renegade dialogue option.

It's extra important here because otherwise, Shepard has to chose a side, and whoever she doesn't pick, you lose that person's loyalty. I won't spoil it, but this is badbadbad. This argument right here is an easy renegade check, but it's the highest paragon check in any of the three games, and fuck me it's HARD to get. The very first time I played, I chose Jack. Nearly everyone I've ever talked to picks Jack. I mean, Miranda and me are BFFs, but damn lady, you don't go around calling folks mistakes and all. I had to go back through and do all the sidequests they make to get my paragon score high enough to get her loyalty back, it SUCKED.

So this time for MSPixel, I was trying to bust through and pass the check so that I wouldn't have to grovel to Miranda. The first time I got here, I couldn't pass the check. Fuck. So I reloaded, did all the sidequests open to me to boost my paragon, and STILL couldn't pass the fucking check. SO I RELOADED A THIRD TIME, respecc'd Shepard so that I could pick a passive ability that offered a paragon/renegade boost, AND THEN I PASSED THE FUCKING CHECK.

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I want it on the record that I did Jack's loyalty mission three times for MSPixel.

That's the weirdest most rickytick bullshit I've seen in a modern game. How would you know to do that? That makes me think of this brief era in the Playstation days when they would put really obtuse shit in games to make you buy the player's guide. Shit, Final Fantasy VIII's sidequests were nuts. If you did stumble on them by accident, you probably didn't even believe what you saw, you'd probably think you were kite-style high. And Valkarye Proflie, did anyone get the A ending without going to GameFAQs? Hell no, every one of you marched straight into that lily field without a second thought.

Our living room:

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Seriously, what the hell kind of choices was he making to get both high enough to do that? Talk about a schizophrenic Shepard.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Miranda: The Pig Test

The title doesn't mean what you think it means.

A PSA before we start: please tell me none of you all went out on Black Friday. I don't want any of you getting shot, or supporting retailers that are cool with you getting shot.

Now, on with the show.

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Who noticed that I drew the CIC wrong last update? None of you? I have no idea how you'd even tell, but I did.

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This is a true story, when I first fired up Mass Effect, I thought the different classes referred to how many points you got in what stat. Why the hell wouldn't it? It's a damn RPG, isn't it? I picked vanguard because I figured having a few points in the Gun stat (which only exists in my head) was probably a good thing for a shooter. Tali is an enginner, meaning her specialty is tech stuff. Garrus is an infiltrator, meaning he's got some tech stuff, but in this example, would have sacrificed tech stat points for gun stat points, if that makes any sense.

I never understood, in short, why the hell they didn't make Tali calibrate that damn gun.

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I think I throw overload around more in MSPixel comics than in the actual game.

Okay, so I alluded to the idea that ME2 has three basic missions: recruitment, Brother Tim's missions, and the third type that we'll look at today, loyalty missions. Loyalty missions are totally optional, you can complete ME2 without them just fine, but ... don't do that. Trust me. Do them all. They unlock in a specific order as you run around doing other shit, and Kelly will tell you when a certain character's opens up. Miranda and Jacob's are open right at the start, as well as Kasumi and Zaeed's. We're going to start with Miranda today.

When you get to Miranda's quarters, she tells you about her father, who created Miranda to be a perfect genetic copy of him. That's why she's with Cerberus, she traded her services for protection from the guy. She has a twin sister who Cerberus has been protecting from her dad as well, but her dad's awfully close to figuring out where her twin (named Oriana) is hidden, and wants Shepard's help in relocating her.

Then Bioware gives us a gratuitous ass shot.

I'm not fucking drawing it! If you don't believe me, look there. That's Miranda's ass. I told you people this game was fucking horny.

Cerberus is relocating Oriana on a planet called Illium, which is more or less Omega with asari. Miranda's old friend Niket is going to escort her. However, Miranda's dad has hired the Eclipse mercs to intercept them and grab Oriana, so Shepard and Miranda are going to run around and draw fire.

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do you not just love that tech armor get proud of me

Hmm, Eclipse mercs, that's a funny thing to say about Miranda's oldest and bestest friend! Why would you say such a thing?

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That's something I love about Mass Effect, there's not a single character that understands stealth. "Oh, man, time to sneak into this place? Better shoot down as many guys as possible while making a shit ton of noise and wearing my iconic N7 armor!"

Miranda takes this opportunity to reveal that Oriana's her genetic twin. She's 19, but she's got the exact same DNA, so 'twin' is kind of the best word the universal translator has. Actually, it's kind of important that Oriana is 19. Do you notice we haven't run in to any kids yet? There is only one child in the Mass Effect games, and -- ahahahahahahhahahahhaha the nerd tears, oh the nerd tears. I'll leave it for another day, though.

Oh, and this Niket guy. What was that merc talking about, Niket not helping us?

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...

I've got this little test I do when I read/watch/play stories.

You see, I am tragically dumb and buy in to anything any story tells me. Who remembers the ending to Final Fantasy IX? I won't spoil it, but I had no idea who was under the black cloak in the ending play. I am that dense.

A better example: have you seen Spirited Away? You should watch it if you haven't. One of the ending scenes involves a witch leading the heroine over to a pen of pigs. The witch says that two of the pigs are the girl's parents.

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I love that there's at least one person out there who just scrolls through and looks at the pictures, and is tragically lost right now.

Anyway, any idiot can come up with what happens next: the kid picks the pigs, they turn back into their parents, and everyone's happy. Any idiot can figure that out except ME, I was totally overwrought in the theater at the thought that she'd NEVER pick out the pigs and her parents would be pigs FOREVER oh no oh no oh no!

Which leads me to the pig test: if even my dumb ass can figure out what's going to happen next, the foreshadowing is too shitty.

Oh, hey, guess what happens next. As Shepard and Miranda are riding in an elevator:

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I know we're all looking at this from the outside in -- it's not OUR buddy that's betraying us. If Garrus or Wrex or something sold us out to the collectors, we'd be having the same melt down. But shit, Miranda, how did you not see this one coming?

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This is actually factually what happens, Miranda and Niket get into a bitch fight and then the Eclipse captain makes catty remarks about Miranda's outfit.

Niket can't believe that Miranda kept Oriana from him, he thinks her father should be able to raise her because he's got mad cashmoneyrecords and can give her lots of opportunities. Miranda's like, aw hell naw, my dad's crazy, quit being a little bitch.

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... that's supposed to be a paragon symbol. I was trying to draw Shepard paragon interrupting. Hush.

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And so ends such a Mass Effectian tale, with a shit ton of bloodshed. As Shepard and Miranda are walking off:

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Pigs and assholes, that's what y'all visit MSPixel for.