The Sexiest Boat I Know

...

The hell?

You guys, shit, I think the game glitched out. I think we're in Dragon Age now.

Wasn't that Vancouver Kid?

Oh! Oh good, it was just a dream! I'm glad we won't run into Alistair. ... again.

I apologize for my absence last week, the only thing I was able to do was lie on my side and cough up lung butter.

Hey, is someone knocking on Shepard's cabin door?

Hey, everyone, wave hello to Samantha Traynor! She's one of the new Mass Effect 3 people.

... that happened, ps, Joker had EDI fake being a VI to make sure that no one uninstalled her. We're all going to get real glad later that EDI was safe, we are.

Hi everyone! Just in case you forgot, this is the single horniest game ever made!

One of the criticisms of Mass Effects 1 and 2 was that Shepard couldn't really have any gay relationships. Lady Shepard could do Liara, but Liara doesn't have a gender technically, so does that count? I ask that honestly, because I don't know.

"Sure," said Bioware, "we heard that," and gave us the gift of Samantha Traynor (and a couple others, we'll get to them). Holy crap, you all, had she been in ME1? I would have wrecked that shit. I'm still mad I couldn't lady do Ashley. Anyway, if it's cool with you all, we might just dance with the terrifying alien cricket we came with. If we ever find him.

Anyway, let's poke about the Normandy! We've seen the Space Skype room, but Hackett's calling, so let's go see what he needs.

If you haven't figured it out, Hackett's telling you how to get the good ending. I mean, it's Mass Effect 3, so really it's more like the "good" ending, but.

What's Hackett talking about? Here, let's go find out. The Normandy has a new room, the war room.

Of course it's got a holographic dick right in the middle, because this is Mass Effect.

In the war room, you can check on your war assets, also known as the "supplies" Hackett wants. If you go to the holographic penis and press A (really), you can get to your war assets screen:

... really truly, Diana Allers is worth 5 war assets. Go fact check me if you don't believe. I think she boosts the other war assets, but if you do all the sidequests and shit, I don't think she'll be the difference between the "good" ending and the other endings.

... I have totally forgotten how many war assets you need for what ending. I think the "good" ending used to be 4000, but Bioware lowered the requirements and patched the game. I think the new requirement is 3100. Don't go quoting me on that. Since we're going through and doing all the DLC, we'll probably wind up blowing this number out of the water anyway.

The readiness rating has to do with multiplayer. I'll have to do a Margo Monday on how the percentage is calculated, but the percentage works as a multiplier. If I'm at 50% readiness and 1000 war assets, my EMS (or effective military strength) then comes in at 500.

The EMS system is a little more complex than that, but that's really all you need to know about it. Let's go see the rest of --

Um, so, the Normandy has a security checkpoint now. Does it not drive anyone nuts that Shepard doesn't have enough security clearance to walk around her own ship?

Really it's a loading screen. I refuse to believe the war room and the Space Skype room are that memory intensive, but whatever. Hey, what's Liara up to?

She built her own mobile Shadow Broker base! Man, she could probably achieve the same with an iPad and a decent RSS app, but whatevs.

Glyph's also up and running! He gets to ride with us now.

Wave hello to Cortez, everybody! He'll be driving the shuttle for the duration. He's also the "requisitions officer", but you never see him requisition anything. If you need to order anything, you just use the little console next to him.

He's got some convoluted explanation as to why he does both jobs, but it probably boils down to "It was cheaper than hiring another voice actor."

Him and Vega are also besties. Honestly? I'm pretty sure Vega wants to pilot his shuttle into Cortez, ifyouknowwhatImean.

Speaking of gay sex, Cortez is our gay option for dude Shepards. You know? When I heard they were going to put a gay option for gay Shepards in the game, I was sure, 200% sure, flat sure that it was going to be Joker. Why not? No one would have had to model a new character, you just use the guy that's already there, right?

I won't spoil it, but the direction they went with Joker is pretty awful. See, my idea was a good idea.

I like Steve because he's (ironically) the straight man on the Normandy. He's not a crazy alien, he's not an unshackled AI that's going to kill us as we sleep, he's not some supermuscled superbro, he's not horny or drunk, he's just Steve, The Guy Who Drives The Shuttle And Sometimes Fixes It.

Anyway, let's go talk to Vega, just 'cause we can.

(True story, I played this right as I was learning how to do pull ups. That was exciting.)

Hey, I promised you all I'd tell you why I hated Vega so dearly, right? Today's the day.

So in Mass Effect 1, I didn't like Kaidan because he couldn't say two words to Shepard without creeping on her.

So they made a bigger, creepier son of a bitch, gave him a mohawkier mohawk and a stupider stubble beard, and expected me to SOMEHOW BE OKAY WITH THIS. No, you fuckwits, I didn't like Kaidan, I'm not going to take kindly to Super Kaidan!

I like to pretend Shepard knows as much Spanish as I do, which is "enough to ream the other Spanish speaker in her household a new one, but not much actual functional Spanish."

Shepard and Vega get into a fistfight. Good. Punch him in the smug ass face, Shep. Do it.

True fact, you can take renegade interrupts and ruin Vega's shit here, and I consider it each time, but I don't. I want to.

And yeah, Vega retells Paragon Lost here.

... yeah, so me and Vega are best friends.

Anyway, next ti --

Yeah, real conversation in our living room. Let's just pretend that they don't have Spanish up in Canada.