i pooped that

So, back to Aria's for a planning sesh.

I'm kind of editing this for clarity here, in the game, they just start randomly talking about the force fields. What the hell does anyone care about the force fields? You just said that you've got civilians and Talons getting you to Afterlife, just go with that plot thread!

PS, another question I might have:

Apparently Omega was built on the mining industry? Fuck it, I'm sure as hell not reading the codex.

Nyreen asks to speak to Shepard. Since it's Mass Effect, she says exactly what you think she might.

Uh, also,

Now, let us to the mine, via the dark reactor.

... what the hell killed those guys?

Also, I'm sort of taking liberty with the art here. This is a more accurate description:

see 'cause it's a dark reactor.

"Man, Doom 4 was a great game," and other things Bioware has said.

An adjutant! Let's take care of it in the usual way.

You know, the game builds up adjutants to be these super scary things? But this is such a dissapointing fight. Three charges, two novas, that's it. Nyreen has a line about one adjutant taking out an entire turian regiment, but naw, obviously one vanguard can handle more shit than THE ENTIRE MILITARY.

.... that might actually be true.

After the fight, we go to the mine.

Is there a term for a set dresser in video games? Whoever worked as a set dresser on Mass Effect was really good at their job. The game is littered with shit tons of super cute accesories. The mines have lots of minerals laid out so that you know what they're mines.

You know what they look like, though, legit?

They've got eezo (element zero) laid out too.

Make sure you look to the left as you exit the mine. There's a beautiful shot of a giant eezo mine. Allow me to shit it down my leg for you:

And now, I present a conundrum:

The one negative note I've heard about MSPixel is that I don't take the science of Mass Effect very seriously. (You all seem oddly okay with the fact that I can't draw for shit.) This almost always comes in the form of, "Yes uh huh there are too! mass effects in the Mass Effect series!"

Number one, nuh uh no there aren't. Number two, the argument is that everything in the universe is powered by a mass effect, so that's totally why the series is called Mass Effect. They didn't call it Warp Drive, they called it Star Trek. They didn't call it Nerd Tears, they called it Star Wars. But naw, y'all, Mass Effect is totally a good idea for a name.

Here's my point: mass effects are powered by element zero. WHY. IN. THE. FUCK DIDN'T THEY JUST CALL THE SERIES ELEMENT ZERO, THEN!?

"Wow, Bean, that's a really dumb idea because the series isn't about element zero." Right, and I hear that because the whole plot totally revolves around mass effects OH WAIT.

Recruiting Nyreen

Fun fact: it seriously doesn't come up, like, at all ever again, the fact that Nyreen is Target Alpha.

So we've got to fight through a bunch of Cerberus bros, right? Naturally they drop an atlas on us.

I had a weird glitch happen on me in this section. All of a sudden?

The atlus just disappeared. Fuck it, I'll take it. Let's go to the Talon's hideout.

Adjutants? We've hard that word, haven't we?

Aria calls back to her lair, where her henchmen link her into the, uh, Omegan loudspeaker system.

There's some combat, then Nyreen returns.

The Leader of the Talons

Welcome to MSPixel's 201st post! I blew right past 200.

So Aria and Nyreen, they're getting along great.

Hey, I'm sure we all have that one ex who we wish would hurry up and die. Nyreen scurries off somewhere, and Aria takes us over to her prerequisite science fiction hologram thingie.

That's Omega, by the way.

... why with the force fields, again? They're preventing their own people from moving around the station! They're sucking power away from the Omegan people, so probably they're making them sit around in the dark, I guess? Man, in Mass Effect times, not having power would probably be a life or death thing. So they're just going to kill off Omega folk? ... why the hell do they want this station so bad again?

Ooookay, so Nyreen has been removed from the party.

Aria figures out that the best way to take out the bad guys is finding the Talons, a gang of turians that's currently leading the resistance against Cerberus. So off we go, sans Nyreen, off to find these Talon folk.

Aria, fuck me, there's renegade and there's what you bring to the party.

After some combat, we drop right into the middle of the Talon lair!

So anyway, we found Nyreen, and she's back. That was a stressful ten minutes.

Oh God, and so the game puts you in an elevator after this? But the power gets cut.

I get stuck here every time. You have to do something to that box, right? I always wind up trying, like, everything I know.

... okay so I try other stuff too.

Joke's on you, Nyreen, no one on MSPixel wears pants!

If you were wondering: you have to shoot the latch on the box. It's like two pixels wide, I hope you like zooming in on shit.