Jack: And Boom Goes The Dynamite

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.

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.

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:

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?

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.

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:

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?

Biotics are cool, kids.

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

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

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.

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

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:

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.)

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

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.

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:

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