Citadel: The Bitch Stare

All right, then, all's well that ends --

OKAY SO I GUESS WE'RE HAVING A PARTY.

You are sent to go buy party supplies.

I'm not even being clever, that's how this goes down. They cost a hundred credits!

I have never figured out what the actual party supplies are. You get them from a bar, so maybe they're liquor, but they only cost a hundred credits, so that's some cheap fucking liquor. Besides, this is an M rated video game, Joker could have just said, "Yo Shep, go buy the shit to make us some Flaming Moes" and it would have been fine.

I first thought they were decorations, but Shepard doesn't wind up decorating the apartment, so.

We can, of course, go straight to the party, but some crew mates offer to hang out with us. If we go hang with them, we get various cute scenes involving the Normandy crew.

Some of these scenes I plan to go pretty quickly through, some of them I'm going to take my time on. Some are just more meaty than others! At first I was really worried about booking through these scenes as quickly as possible, but gee whiz now that I know Mass Effect Andromeda isn't coming until late next year, I think I'll take all the time I want!

The first one you unlock is one of the beefier ones. Let's go wait at the bar for Garrus.

Stranger, what the fuck?

Oh my GOD they're ROLE PLAYING. What THE FUCK. This is nasty. I don't want to see this.

There's a lady turian checking Garrus out, but:

I am actually in love with the fact that Shepard has a bitch stare.

Garrus is so shitty at romancing ladies.

Actually, true story, if you and Garrus aren't together, this whole sequence is you trying to get Garrus and the lady turian laid.

THAT'S the best introduction Shepard has? Christ, woman, talk yourself up a little bit. Something like:

You've probably seen this, this is the famous Mass Effect tango sequence. It was used in the Citadel trailer and everything. It's actually not too bad. At least it's better than watching the sex scenes, animation-wise.

Here's the space tango music. They did a good job of making it sound like a space tango.

Vega comes around creeping for some reason, but you know what?

aww yiss BITCH STARE

GRAB YOUR HAT, PAUL, VIDEO GAMES EUROVISION IS NIGH.

Today's the day that I overheat my tablet trying to draw all of the conferences today! As a reminder, you can keep up with me at @MSPixelBlog on Twitter. Tweet to me! I love attention.

First up today was the Microsoft conference! It wasn't much, though. There were a hell of a lot of prerendered trailers of games that I can't tell you anything about because I only saw a fucking cut scene.

I would be totally bad at my job if I didn't mention all the Mass Effect at the Microsoft conference.

Syke. Sort of.

It's badass, and I'd use it (if I had an XBone), but there's only one feature I'd really want.

Did ... did anyone notice something about the Microsoft conference?

They spent a butt ton of time on EA, Bethesda and Ubisoft, who fucking have their own conferences. I think maybe they didn't have that much to show.

They showed off some neat AR tech with the Occulus Rift, and somehow justified the damn thing for something other than porn.

They showed it off with Minecraft, which was cool, but I don't think the intersection of "people hella into Minecraft" and "people who will drop $300+ on an Occulus Rift" isn't as big as I think they're hoping.

They also showed off Gears of War.

I was glad when the rest of the Internet also thought the aliens in Gears of War looked like Krogans.

ANYWAY EVERYONE HAS TO SHUT UP BECAUSE EA CONFERENCE.

They started with this:

Does that look ... ?

HOLY HELL

You want to see the trailer? It was super short, I've pretty much MSPainted all of it, but you can still see it here:

So! More! More, more! Give me more, EA!

Oh my GOD, that was the theme of the EA Conference. "EA: We're not saying dick about New Mass Effect."

Which, PS, is now called Mass Effect: Andromeda.

They had a dancing fucking zombie on stage.

And a guy who was about to have a stroke over yarn, poor bastard.

And I don't even know what the fuck else.

They were killing me. I didn't care about Pele, I didn't care about Star Wars, I just wanted MORE. MASS. EFFECT.

So, naturally:

...

Okay, so. They obviously didn't show anything at the EA conference so that they can show up to the Nintendo Direct tomorrow and announce Mass Effect Andromeda for WiiU. With amiibos.

You would knife someone for Andromeda with amiibos, don't lie.

Let's begin the Sony conference.

Okay, so I know I'm your local cynical parodist, but the Sony conference? Was amazing. Highlights include No Man's Sky, which Husbando~ is so excited for that he starts to vibrate when you mention it.

I have forgotten his name, but the needlessly swearing Sony executive is my new best friend.

... wait a second.

YOU GUYS

Husbando~ doesn't get it, he has terrible tastes in games he didn't play RPGs back in the day and also he has no appreciation for video game history.

But Square, for years, was like, "Naw, see, we're not making FF7. You guys are nerds."

And then, they're all, "NAW SYKE WE'RE DOIN THIS SHIT awww had you goin"

I can't wait. INEEDIT. I wonder how true to the original it will be? I wonder if they'll put in some of the old cut content? One of my favorite old rumors was that they cut a playable character named Boxer the Goblin, it would be hilarious if he was back in.

Oh, and also, this begs the question:

Go look it up, that happens. I think a lot of people were too young to really understand how totally filthy that scene was. It would make a Bioware staff member blush.

Speaking of video game history, how cool is the Shenmue kick starter? Finish it! Finish the series!

It's very late here on the East coast. I'll set this to post early tomorrow morning. See you all for the Nintendo Direct tomorrow, and the Square conference!

I wasn't before, but now I am SO AMPED for that Square conference.

Citadel: Holy Crap, Are We Actually Done!?

Hi! This is another reminder to follow @MSPixelBlog on Twitter to meet me for E3 antics.

Last time, on MSPixel:

Yes, yes, of course, the implication is that Shepard is rad because she has rad friends, whereas all Clone Shepard has is Brooks, and Brooks sucks.

I'd like to extrapolate this out to a bigger metaphor: Bioware is rad not because they made Shepard, but because they made a whole incredible Mass Effect cast.

Either way, Garrus pulls Shepard up.

Enh, you can opt to leave her dangle, but what the hell.

Holy hell, I guess that's one way to take care of Clone Shepard!

Back in the cargo bay of the Normandy, we tie up some loose ends.

I don't even know what this is. "Oh yeah, I mean, you waged a full scale battle down here for at least a half hour, but naw, stuff's just a little dusty."

Surprise, Brooks is going to jail.

And such, the plot of the Citadel DLC comes to a close. There's still --

...

Okay, you know what? Something always bothered me about the end of this story.

Shepard died, and then her body survived reentry and planet fall. Then she was resurrected! Given all that, why do we assume that Clone Shepard died? She was a clone, right? She should be made of the same stuff.

If nothing else, surely she survived a drop of a few miles.

That's better.