Liara: Terminal Blueness

The game, at this point, is beginning to imply two things. One, that EDI is getting smarter.

Two, that Joker loves porn, porn porn porn, piles of porn, porn for me, porn for you, porn for grandma, porn for the kids, porn for everyone. The extranet is really really great! For porn. There is an ingame conversation where Joker and EDI discuss the terabytes of porn that he downloads, but for an extra treat, if you've got the game, take Shepard and stand her near Joker for a while. Don't start a conversation, just wait patiently and listen.

Uh huh.

MASS EFFECT: The horniest game.

There are two things I want to make sure we get done, one that I feel like is necessary to show off and one that I'm doing just because I like it. We'll do the actual factual important one first. Hey, kids, let's go to Illium!

Liara's Kind Of A Thing now. She's got her own office! With stairs! We should go up those stairs, and then visit her.

... what happened this is not the liara i knew from ME1

A lot happens in two years, I guess?

And then Shepard sits down at Liara's desk and her two squadmates stand behind her awkwardly. I thought we had this problem in ME1 as well? I love how Liara's got a desk and an assistant and all kinds of ritsy shit but can't afford two extra chairs.

Wait, how the hell did she know Shepard was alive?

... why in the hell does Shepard count as a hacking expert? I guess if I was playing engineer, that would make some sense, but I'm not, I'm playing vanguard, also known as God's Class. Seriously, though. If Liara needed an air conditioner fixed, we could do that, but.

See? Tali and Garrus feel me.

Gonna need some medigel for that burn, Shep.

So anyway, Liara gives you a little mini quest that's actually kind of fun so far as quests in this game go: you go out to the shops, find some termninals, and then run around until you find their little counter part.

This has to happen in the Mass Effect universe, deny that it doesn't.

Once all the terminals are hacked, let's go back to Liara.

We dealt with the Shadow Broker super brief in ME1, but real quick: Mr. Shadow Broker knows all of the galaxy's secrets, and he sells them. No one has ever seen nor met this Shadow Broker.

Put simply, The Shadow Broker is the exact same thing as Google.

So, hey, Liara gives us ANOTHER side quest, this time to mine data out of terminals and figure out who this Observer fellow is.

I won't give away the answer to the puzzle, but I do think it's the sort of answer that you'd only see in a Bioware game, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Anyway, once we get it, Shepard has to call Liara back.

Oh shit! Nyxeris is The Observer! She's been feeding information about Liara to the Shadow Broker!

... why the hell is Liara such a target for the Shadow Broker?

Either way, we've got to get back to Liara and make sure she can handle --

Well then!

I actually honestly feel a little bad for keeping that fact from you all, but there it is, Liara did it.

It's a very human story, really. Probably any one of you could think of someone you'd revive, even if it meant working with Cerberus.

What? Garrus and Tali don't owe her shit.

But still, I get the feeling that there's a story in here somewhere!

NEXT TIME: The story in here, somewhere.