Priority Rannoch: In Which I Get Mad At Bioware

Well, hooray, then! Let's land this plane.

By the way, Legion is referring to Carl. Carl was apparently the reaper in charge of the geth. Knock out Carl, no one's controlling the geth.

This whole "oh my the geth are free" plotline works great until the other reapers realize that no one's watching the geth and another reaper just, like, moves in on the territory.

oh gerrel never change

So Legion's just, like, as powerful as Carl now. Sure.

I thought the whole point of this was that the reapers were controlling the geth with upgrades, and that was bad. How the hell is Legion controlling the geth with upgrades any better?

oh ok

But Legion wouldn't ... be giving them free will ... ?

NO OF FUCKING COURSE THIS UNIT DOESN'T HAVE A SOUL, HE'S A FUCKING ROBOT.

A fucking robot who wants to brain wash the other fucking robots. oooo Legion's done so much with his alleged "humanity."

This gets a lot better if you read it as, "Does this unit have soul?" Like soul train.

Besides, Tali's right, the geth could wake up and go, "Welp, time to shoot up some quarians." How is that a better alternative?

I'm going to get the super happy princess ending to this scenario but I'm not going to be happy doing it.

Legion holds that ball and spins it around when he uploads. I don't know either.

Oh my God. I'm serious, this is the thing with the "soul" that people get all amped about: he's willingly mind controlling the geth and is just cool with some quarians dying because of it.

Didn't Shepard say, like, last entry that organics and synthetics don't have to destroy each other? And here Legion's all, "Hate it for you, I'm'a toast them quarians.

Yo, if you've done your homework, Shepard's dialogue wheel will pop up with blue and red options to end the scenario in everyone's favor. I'm pretty sure they both have the same outcome, even if the dialogue might be different.

To get the options, there are some conditions that seem to be pass/fail. Flunk one, and Shepard can't get the special ending. These are:

• Shepard has to have four bars of reputation.
• Tali and Legion both have to be attending, meaning neither one of them can have died in the suicide mission. Apparently this also requires an imported save from Mass Effect 2, because if you start fresh in ME3 Tali won't be an admiral and Legion won't be there at all.
• You have to have done the mission Rannoch: Geth Figher Squadrons. You know, the one where we were in the geth consensus?

We have all that, so we're okay. Let's look at what the game checks on next.

The game wants you to have five points. Points are awarded as follows:

• Destroying the heretic geth on Legion's loyalty mission. I have no idea why it's two points, but it is. Two points.
• Proving Tali's innocent without telling the other admirals that Tali's dad was activating geth parts. Two points.
• Getting Tali and Legion to agree during their fight in ME2. One point.
• Doing the Admiral Korris mission. One point.
• Actually saving Admiral Korris on said mission. One point.

Thanks, Mass Effect Wiki!

Anyway, we've got 100% of all this shit, so we're primed for the good ending.

I think that's why you had to save Korris, for that one line.

(It's so the civilians are behind you and blah dee blah dee blah.)

... so you've probably figured it out, but I've been spoilering out every major death that I can from this series. I mean, I even made this happen, so.

Yeah, but naw, fuck Legion. Can't die if you're not alive.

I mean, this is crazy. This is insulting. If you got sad or cried at this scene, I hate you.

Diaba helped me out some, but Legion didn't sacrifice shit. He just flew off because his planet needs him, if even that.

True story, once I lost my phone in a theater. I was totally sad over it, probably sadder than I should have been -- it was my first smart phone! -- but then I went to the Apple store and bought a new one. I was still bummed until I took it home, plugged it in, and discovered that "restore from backup" made my new phone exactly like my old phone in every way except maybe now the back was flat instead of round.

My phone is backed up to my laptop. My current phone has a battery problem, so sometime in the future, I'm going to go back to the Apple store and get myself a fancy new iPhone 6 with my upgrade that I use once a millenia. Then, I'll bring the phone home, plug it into my laptop again, and it'll be the same phone. My lock screen will still be my bunny, I'll have all the videos of the kids I work with, I'll have my twitter app and my Something Awful app and everything that makes my phone my phone.

That's Legion. That's what Legion is. He says it himself, he's a series of 1,183 processes, just like my phone is 16GB of of apps and pictures and MP3s. That's all he is.

You can't compare him to a person or an animal, that's awful. I'm serious, think about it. Think about the people you know right now. They have a favorite color (Husbando~'s is blue) and a favorite food (my rabbit is partial to lettuce) and a birthday (mine's November 1st.) You can't compare that to my fucking phone. It's a phone. It doesn't sing songs (my rabbit sings, that's a true story!) or make up stories get scared during a thunderstorm or get sick and throw up or any of the cool shit that living beings do. Do you know why? IT'S NOT ALIVE. NEITHER IS LEGION. GET OVER IT.

So no, no, this unit doesn't have a fucking soul. Bioware's presented exactly no evidence other than "we said they have a soul, so heave ho here we go." Meanwhile, you've got characters all around Legion who can drink or get angry or fall in love or do all that cool shit that living things do.

Bioware fucked up big time by not defining "alive" or "soul", which they should have done if they were going to make this argument. If they'd defined their terms, then said that synthetics were alive because they abided by said terms, they could have gone somewhere with this thematic material. As is, they don't prove their own thesis, and they really don't even provide a good reason for having the argument in the story.

I think we're supposed to ultimately decide Legion is alive because he sacrificed himself. But he didn't sacrifice anything. He's just chilling in the geth consensus, which is where he'd be if he wasn't in his body anyway, so who cares? He probably goes there when his unit goes on standby anyway. The only reason we're given for him not being able to restore from backup is "nope, sorry, can't." That's shitty. That's awful writing. Legion could come back if he wanted.

And "sacrificed" himself for what? He was going to kill the quarians! He was going to mind control the other geth! He was cool with that! That's not a sympathetic character!

Since I'm on a tear, we're supposed to begin to believe the same thing about EDI because she falls in love with Joker. How does she fall in love? She's given no autonomy in her own love story. Bioware gave her some tig ol bitties, Joker couldn't roll his damn tongue in his mouth for fifteen minutes, and she asked Shepard if that meant she was supposed to do the sex to him. That's also awful.

Mordin had a line in Mass Effect 2 about the reapers being a load of bullshit because they had no culture, no music, no creativity. That would have been a hell of a way to go for the whole "does this unit have a soul" plot line, and Bioware totally dropped it.

This pisses me off most of all because we have a hundred and fifty characters in the Mass Effect canon who were alive and sacrificed themselves for reasons far more noble than "I'm'a fuck them quarians up" and we're supposed to put Legion on the same pedestal. That's insulting to the other characters, it takes away from what they brought to the story.

God damn it, Bioware, fuck you.

Priority Rannoch: She's Commander Shepard

And here we have the target, the reaper base.

I can draw two guns, if you've noticed. If I put that thingie on the end of the target painter, then it magically becomes a third gun! Art.

I can't remember if the Normandy just lazers it or bombs it, but I love the visual of tossing that bomb-omb Mario Kart style, so the visual stays. ... damn, I should have drawn a banana peel.

You'll never guess what happens to Shepard next.

Okay, so there might have been a reaper inside the reaper base. Oops. This was a surprise to everyone who didn't see the E3 trailer for Mass Effect 3. Hell, this game's been out how many years? I realized, like, last week that Shepard didn't expect the reaper.

You know what solution Shepard comes up with to, "Oh fuck, Shepard's face to face with a real reaper right now?"

SHE PULLS OUT HER PISTOL. I love you, Shepard, don't you dare change.

That's cool, Legion's got our back.

Shepard climbs on top of the geth fighter to use the turret. I guess geth fighters have turrets now? Anyway, everyone knows how much reapers hate turret fire. I guess. She shoots ping pong balls at the reaper while yelling at the quarian fleet.

Finally, Han'Gerrel shoots first.

I'm not convinced he actually heard Shepard calling for help. I think he just takes pot shots at whatever target sounds good at the time. Look, the alternative is thinking that Han'Gerrel actually did a good, so.

Gerrel manages to stun the reaper, giving everyone a second to make a plan.

Welcome to my favorite character moment in the Mass Effect series, in any given game/book/comic, for any given character. Ever.

After all, what's the one thing that defines Shep?

Shepard hops down and tells Legion et all to get the hell out, because she's going to defeat the reaper on foot.

It's Shepard, of course this makes, like, perfect sense to her.

Well?

All right, welcome to the coolest boss fight in the game. That blinking headbit on the reaper? That's where the reaper fires out of. Shepard has to paint the target so that the quarian fleet knows where to shoot. But, it's got, you know, lasers coming out of it, and Shepard's on foot, so that's a thing.

So, what do you do? Die a lot. No, really, have you ever played a bullet hell shooter? You probably have, stuff like Ikaruga or Gradius or even Parodius. Hell, I'll count Cho Aniki.

In those games, you can guide the bullets by flying your little ship over to the part of the screen you don' want to be in, which tricks the CPU into shooting over there. You can then zip over to a safe part of the screen and be safe from all of the bullets. That's what you need to do to the reaper. Let's look at a map.

Bioware kindly put a rock on the right side of the screen, which would be fine in real life, but you can't see your peripheral, so you're going to wind up getting backed into that rock and dying a lot if you play over there. Start at the left.

Sit in the left corner, wait for the reaper to fire, and then zip to the middle of the screen. In the middle, you can move around (just in case the reaper starts changing directions on you), but you've got the lead time that you bought yourself by standing in the left corner. There comes a point when the laser will get so close that you can stand still and let it pass over your head, use that time to keep firing and painting the target.

When the quarians bomb the reaper, it moves up on you. After three bombs, it's pretty much right up in Shepard's shit.

She doesn't care. After all?

She's Commander Shepard.

Priority Rannoch: I'm Bad At Video Games

I accidentally triggered this conversation too early, and my dumb ass didn't write it down, so we're going off my memory. Raan's laying out our battle plans here.

I seriously love the set up to this mission, because it's all like:

I love it when we remember that Shepard is the big dumb coconut that we roll out when we need something dead.

Okay, so, Rannoch. We gon' end this shit.

For this mission, Tali is forced into the party. I brought Garrus for his mad tech skills. Legion tags along too, because it's kind of his plot line and all, but he doesn't get to come into the party.

Legion briefs you in the shuttle: Shepard and pals are going to go to the reaper base, paint the target, and get the fuck out of Dodge while the Normandy carpet bombs Rannoch. Legion is going to ... um ... you see ...

Legion is Team A, and will go to the holding area, where there is a television, and some cocoa. He will drink the cocoa and watch family programming while Shepard paints the target, I think.

... it's just so Bioware didn't have to stick him in the party.

REALLY, Shepard? REALLY. FUCKING REALLY. Naw, they shot you up like fucking swiss cheese in Mass Effect 1, but no, God be with the little innocent baby fluffy angel geth.

I get so fucking tired of Mass Effect 3 trying to act like synthetic life is so pwecious and special and without sin, like none of us were fucking present during during Mass Effect 1.

And if you want me to yell more about people forgetting Mass Effect 1, tune in to the ending of Mass Effect 3! Let's land on Rannoch.

I said Rannoch was pretty at night. It's kind of a hellhole during the day. It's almost like the robots took their chance to inhabit a planet and shat it down their leg because they have no respect for organic life! Wow, if they can't take care of a planet, we should totally trust them with the rest of the galaxy!

I know there's a canon explanation for why the quarians didn't just say "fuck it" and take another planet, but I can't remember it. There's like a billion, they could've found a nice one.

... I think Tali's supposed to pick up a rock and hand it to Shepard, but in my game, it was a clump of air. I can see why maybe the Bioware Art Team spent more time on, say, reapers than a rock in a random cutscene.

Okay, so we've got to get into the reaper base before we can blow it the fuck up. Shepard's got to climb some stuff to get in.

Mass Effect 3 will kindly show you a blue arrow whenever you can jump on stuff. It will not, however, reliably allow you to jump on said stuff.

The game throws, like, a raw shit ton of geth at you. You know, those sugar baby angel geth that we're supposed to be saving, bwess their widdwe heads.

Never mind bad art, I could realtalk make an entire blog on how fucking bad I am at video games.

Let's radio Legion.

By the way, did you know Tali can hack primes?

I think I've done it in multiplayer, but this might have been the first time I did it in single player, so that's rad.

Next time, let's paint the target, bomb the base, and go home! Nothing bad at all will happen!