Mass Effect Foundations: Weiner Jokes

Okay, here are my life plans:

• An act of Mass Effect
• A DLC
• A piece of media
• Repeat until we run out of Mass Effect acts
• The ending of Mass Effect, may Christ have mercy on all of us

Meaning, we've now reached the "piece of media" portion of my life plans, and now, before we go check on the Normandy, we'll take a brief interlude into the world of Mass Effect Foundations.

... I have no idea why it's called Foundations. I'm not sure why most of the Mass Effect: Subtitles have the subtitles that they do. I'm still mad that Retribution had no retribution in it. I wouldn't know the media apart if I hadn't, oh I don't know, outlined, rewrote and storyboarded every scene from them for my shitty art blog. I don't know how the rest of you handle it.

Foundations takes place in between Mass Effects 1 and 2, and each one focuses on a different Mass Effect 2 character.

I'm willing to take suggestions, by the way, but I'd prefer to stick to the issues that are more relevant to the overall Mass Effect plot. Zaeed and Kasumi are cool but they don't have a lot to do with the final solution to the reapers.

We're starting with Foundations issue #5, published November 27th, 2013, and written by Bioware Poet Laurete Mac Walters. It opens with a Cerberus agent named Rasa talking to Brother TIM, but don't worry about her for the time being. Instead, let us now go to a bar on the Citadel, where we find:

Ta da! Jacob isn't interesting enough to carry his own comic, so the poor bastard has to share a comic with Miranda.

By the way, if you ever get the chance? Look at one of these Foundations comics. Like, an actual copy, not the MSPixel horseshittery. The art's really bad. I mean, I know who I am, I know what I draw, and I'm still saying it, the art's bad. Jacob has some kind of porn goatee or something.

Anyway, Miranda works long and hard to convince Jacob to join Cerberus.

OH WOW OH DAMN

See why I picked this one over some of the others?

Jacob and Miranda go to Miranda's space ship to make some plans.

Does this not drive anyone else bananas? Everyone gets mad that you can see Miranda's breasts, but Jacob's wing wang is just, like, on display.

Miranda and Jacob jet off to the Terminus systems to collect information.

Miranda might be talking about her meeting with Liara in Mass Effect Redemption. Isn't that neat?

Anyway, Miranda and Jacob talk to a kid and get chased by someone, which causes Miranda to realize:

This ... this is not Mac Walter's writing opus.

NEXT TIME: oh no did miranda die how will we ever figure this out

Omega: Finale

Why is Aria so pissed over Diaba? It's a mystery to me too, man, but she bum rushes Afterlife, all throwin' flares everywhere and shit, until:

Okay, so, let's untrap Aria. You've got to go around Afterlife, deactivating her trap in four points. It looks much like this:

WHAT.

Okay fine it's more like this:

I am really bad at this part and die all the time.

Aria's now available to help you fight, for all the good it does.

Hey, it wasn't the Ferros image again.

When you finish:

This is the paragon ending to Omega. The renegade ending to Omega features Aria killing Petrovsky.

It also has an extra scene. Let us now borrow Eusebius Shepard.

"Hey, wait, why'd you borrow Eusebius?" Because the ending is different if your Shepard is a lady Shepard:

Aria likes ladies, what do you do.

Aria also likes rebuilding Omega. As Shepard takes Petrovsky away, Aria gives a speech. It's a nice moment. No music, no glory, just Aria's audio:

fin

Omega: Blue Team Has The Boom

Hey, let's get out of that mine!

My laptop still isn't fixed: the keyboard is utterly shot, but I can still use my drawing tablet. No more crayon for you all, aren't you relieved? My tablet actually has handwriting recognition software, which lets me type dialogue, if you were wondering.

... I'm typing THIS text on Husbando~'s computer, though, because fuck handwriting entire paragraphs.

You know, I didn't notice this when I first played it, but I did when I had to break it down for MSPixel: Omega is a very disjointed story. "Okay so here's some new aliens OH SHIT LET'S REROUTE POWER o no bombs?!????" I'd be curious to know which Bioware staffer wrote this one.

Also, why the hell would Cerberus blow up Omega? They're on Omega. I know Cerberus is kinda dim, but damn.

Sure, nice boss lady.

Let us now travel through the picturesque Omegan landscape:

Make sure you look around here to pick up an easter egg.

Enough hosing around. Aria and Shepard have a planning sesh when they get to the bombs.

Anyway, we have to deactivate all the bombs, it looks something like this:

... what. What. This sequence is just like shooting the Thorian in the nipples back in ME1. Lie to me, say I'm wrong.

Let's call Nyreen, see what's going on there.

Aria shoots out a fan for us to walk through, it's really neat:

We land straight in a lab that apparently was designing adjutants.

There's a terminal that fills you in on the creation of the adjutants. I'll save you a few minutes: the adjutants were designed as sort of a vampire species. They can bite other people and turn them into more adjutants.

Okay, but why? "Well, gee, it's so Cerberus can build an army."

Okay, but why? They can already reaperize people, they did it to Paul Grayson. They make this huge deal over how they totally could have mind controlled Shepard. Why, then, did they need to make a whole other alien that could do exactly what they already had the tech to do?! That has to be the biggest damn waste of resources I've ever heard of.

Fuck Cerberus. Let's keep playing.

Gotcha, Nyreen, catch you later.

Anyway, let us now to the steps of Afterlife.

And we shall continue down this life path on Friday.