Zaeed: That's A Lot Of Guddamn Fire

Here is how much I love all of you: I am walking to Wal-Mart later (or possibly Best Buy, I need to check and see what I've got gift cards for) and I am buying Paragon Lost, and I am watching it this evening.

And my husband's like, "Why the hell would you do that? It's going to be bad, you know it is."

And my one word reply of "MSPixel" was all he needed to know, solid proof that I'd lost my mind.

Speaking of shitty things, let's get to today's MSPixel! I get to be late today, because Christmas. That's all you need to know.

Hey, Dr. Chawkwas! I bet you have a great Christmas cookie recipe, care to tell us?

Some nerd out there's going to be all, "NUH UH IT'S BRANDY." Hush, you. In this house, it is bourbon.

The only real personal detail we ever learn about Dr. Chawkwas is that the lady is a champion drinker. I would be too if I had to sew Garrus' face on and ... I mean, hell. Tali. How would you even doctor on her?

So Zaeed needs some help, let's do that. Before he was hired by Cerberus, he was hired to go liberate an oil refinery. Okay, rad, let's land on that planet and --

Zaeed recognizes the voice.

because hahahahaha fuck batarians

I LOVE bringing Garrus on this mission specifically for this next part.

Anyway, let's roll up the oil refinery. Hey, Zaeed, see anyone you know?

Zaeed shoots some tanks behind the Blue Suns and causes an explosion. I'm pretty sure science doesn't work like that, but we're also pretending there are blue ladies and mass effects running around, so maybe we won't worry about hard science right now.

Then, he starts wailing on one of the pipes:

Hey, Zaeed, why are you doing that?

... I ... I don't think pipes do that, honey.

Well, let's see, there's a paragon interrupt right here, maybe Shepard will close off --

OR THAT GOD DAMN.

I know 'paragon' isn't always 'good', but I'm not sure it's 'face punching' either.

Uh, so let's go deeper into the refinery, after the Blue Suns.

You can choose to help Zaeed and go after his buddy, but the workers will die. I'm trying to run a theme here, so I always help the workers ... besides, why would you let them immolate? Seems kind of mean. ... this is why I've never played through as a renegade.

To help the workers, Shepard has to go through the refinery and activate some consoles so that the sprinkler system will trip and put the fire out. Not sure why it doesn't trip when, you know, THERE'S A DAMN FIRE, and why we're squirting water on an oil fire, but no one asked me.

Anyway, once that's over, we get to the helipad and --

Oops. Can't have it both ways, I guess.

That would be a hot clip falling from Zaeed's gun. I bet that has no repercussions whatsoever in the middle of a big oily building.

A beam falls on Zaeed. Sorry, he's stuck, and will very likely die there.

... unless, like me, you've got your paragon jacked super high from all that Miranda/Jack nonsense, then you can just blue option him out.

PS, Bioware, what a bitch move, letting a $10 DLC character die like that! I like it!

Girlfran been doin' her deadlifts. Good on you. Good on you.

Hey! Pretentious asshole analysis moment: Zaeed and Garrus' missions are both similar (hey let's go kill this guy/nooooo i'm a paragon). Garrus is meant to represent this idea of a renegade who's not a bad guy, just ... we'll say efficient. If you'll remember, Scout Master Mac Walters wanted to replace Garrus with Zaeed, because Mr. Walters is very pro human, so it makes sense that Zaeed's story mirrors Garrus'. The only difference is that you can argue that Zaeed doesn't always make a moral choice (he would have let the workers die, for example). Garrus can make moral choices, but he doesn't weigh out the cost/benefits like a paragon would. (He would have caught and killed Dr. Saleon, for example, but would have killed civilians to do it.)

It's also worth noting that in both stories, the idea of a paragon and renegade are in total opposition to each other. There's probably a story in Mass Effect where they're not, but I can't think of it off the top of my head.

I don't think they went this far with Tali, who's technically Garrus' opposite. They certainly didn't go this far with Kasumi, who's arguably a renegade, since she's a 'master thief'. (Fastest route to get what she wants, damn the concequences of whoever she stole it from.)

Ballsack. Enough of this. NEXT TIME: Let's go back to alien sex.