And They All Lived Happily Ever After Until Mass Effect 3

Okay! The giant reaper fuckbaby has been vanquished twice, we gotta book.

... ruh roh.

Everyone lands in some debris. If we had unloyal squadmates, we would have seen some casualties here.

As is, we're only left with one essential question:

Oh, right.

Look, as much as I hate it, Tsundere MRA Harbinger explains a whole lot about this game.

The base is about to blow. Please imagine this song playing in the background as we run:

Now what? We're ~taking control~

Joker has brittle bone disease and can barely walk which is exactly why he's standing outside the Normandy blaring an assault rifle into waves of collectors.

(You see Joker in a lot of these hard-coded cut scenes because from this point forward he's the only character Bioware can reliably say isn't dead/pissed at Shepard/the Shadow Broker. He'll crop up in ME3 plenty for the exact same reason.)

Kasumi and Jack load safely.

You knew Shepard can die right here, right?

But I've got a terrible art blog to continue, so let's get her out alive.

(Bioware originally planned to let you import a save with a dead Shepard into ME3 as an Easter egg, but I don't think they went through with it. I'm sure it would have just been a cut scene anyway.)

Mission accomplished!

Now begins the ending events to ME2:

So Brother Tim isn't too happy with Shepard, but fuck 'em, because it's the end of the game and we don't have to deal with his ass for a while.

There's some repairs on the Normandy to make!

I seriously don't get this. Like ... I'm pretty sure Shepard knows what a reaper looks like, and understands that yes actually they're coming to reap us?

Either way, the last scene is her looking out a Normandy window.

Huh, another short Bioware ending, surely such a tradition won't bite them in the -- all right, I'm shutting up.

I have no idea where all these reapers came from, and they go away like ten seconds later, so, uh. Actually, canonically the reapers aren't even through the mass relay connecting our galaxies to dark space yet, so ... I guess someone put a bunch of reaper decals on the hull to be a dick.

There's no dialog, but we all know what the last line really is.

That's it? No celebration, no nothing?

We can do better than that.

Good idea, Miranda, but I'm thinking there's only one person on the Normandy that really knows how to party.

fin.

Okay! There's actually more Mass Effect 2, if that doesn't chap your ass: there's a mission that bridges 2 and 3 that we'll need to do.

But next time, I'm thinking? I'm thinking a palette cleanser. I'm thinking one of my favorite Mass Effect medias.

NEXT TIME: Vamos a ver señor Vega protagonizar un choque de trenes!