Arrival, Part The End

BEFORE WE BEGIN TODAY: I am laughing my ass off at the fact that someone got to my site by the keywords "horny things to do on a boat." Some people will be remembered for their good deeds, I will be remembered for rechristening the Normandy.

Okay, so. Weren't we chasing Kenson to Project Base's core?

That trigger's going to blow the whole base sky high!

There's a renegade interrupt here to shoot Kenson. I've done this section both ways, and I seriously don't remember the difference. Anyway, if you let her live, she manages to blow herself up.

And, like, only herself too. Not Project Base, or Shepard, or anything that would, you know, further her goal?

Fuck it, let's motor.

That sounds like a good idea! Shepard runs out to the docks to see if she can get in on some of that.

welp

Shepard's got to fight through some mercs and a mech here. Here's a gameplay tip for you: you played vanguard like I told you to, right?

Because the Shadow Broker gravity trick works here: all you have to do is hit a merc with a dose of pull, and they go flying off into the atmosphere.

(You notice Joker's never answering any of these calls? Bioware didn't want to pay Seth Green.)

Remember, we didn't kill Brother Harbinger at the end of ME2, we just killed his collector husk.

Anyway, Joker comes along and grabs Shepard (wordlessly, of course) right as the asteroid approaches the mass relay.

I love this scene. The mass relay gets confused and tries to zap the asteroid somewhere. The mass relay gets confused.

The mass relay blows apart. It is visually stunning, please accept this shitty MSPaint as a substitute.

Back on the Normandy, Hackett comes aboard and checks with Chakwas to see if Shepard's up and functional.

Um. Okay, so in sick bay:

Nah, I'm shitting. But seriously.

Hackett's all, "I'm ~hinting~ here, Shepard," and I'm glad she gets it, because if it were me? I'd have no idea what I was supposed to do.

This is the real honest actual factual ending of Mass Effect 2: Shepard is arrested and transported to Earth to sit in a brig and await trial.

Which means this is the real honest actual factual ending of MSPixel's Mass Effect 2 offering. But never fear! For we have Mass Effect 3, which I think will take only the rest of my natural life to MSPaint!

Also, don't forget: we've got to get our MEDIA on! Comic books! Novels! Even that novel! We really aren't even saying goodbye to Shepard, she'll pop in once and say hello.

... I'll save that for another entry, though.

NEXT TIME: My least favorite media to date, and I sat through Paragon Lost. Twice. You think about that shit.

Rho, Rho, Rho Your Boat

Do you like infodump entries? This is an infodump entry.

Hey, Kenson, fill me in on this reaper stuff.

Uh, they don't really explain what the artifact has to do with this story that Kenson relays on the shuttle, but they'll sort of imply it soon enoigh.

Here's the thing about Arrival: the plot's pretty good, until you actually start to ask a few questions. Such as:

Oh man! Destroying the relays, that sure would be a shitty ending for the galaxy!

Moving on.

Oh, Shepard, who are you kidding? Any time anyone says "reapers" you're there with bells on.

So, let's go to this Project Base. Or is it a project base? You know, I don't really know.

See, that would have been a time to shove mass effects into the plot. Did we? Of course not. Object Rho is telling Kenson how long until the reapers arrive because of horse anus spelunking adventures.

Kenson takes Shepard in to see object rho. Wait, is it object rho or Object Rho?

Does that look familiar? It fucking should! Let's go:

• This is the thing that Jack Harper and Desolas fought so hard over.
• Vega and Treeya found one of these things and got in a fight over it.

I suspect, but cannot prove, that this is the same thing that got Kahlee into trouble back with Dr. Quon. I don't know for sure because we don't actually see it because that's how fucking books work.

I don't think these objects ever have an actual name besides Object Rho I guess, but are they all rhos? Like, what's the noun here that I'm referring to? I don't know, and they're never explored much past "big thing with spindly bits that reapers can indoctrinate you with." They actually look different in each incarnation -- notice Vega's thing is green? And Object Rho has more purple than I MSPainted there, because I've got a pallet of like 16 colors damnit. They all have different amounts of spindles, too. Jack and Ben's only had two, but Rho has like a zillion.

They all indoctrinate differently. Vega's was kind of dormant, it didn't do shit besides block some frequencies and get blown up, but Jack's indoctrinated the fuck out of anyone who touched it, turning them into husks full stop. It's sort of implied that Quon may? have gotten a touch of the indoctrination from his, but Kahlee obviously worked with it and came out okay.

Shit, that would be a good Saturday post, to compare the Object Rhos. Remind me to do that. Anyway, the point is, I'm only sort of fucking the art up here. It's interesting to me that these things are a recurring theme, but Bioware didn't seem to have any sort of consistency with them.

... wait, did I say indoctrinate? Like that shit that happened to Saren? HANG ON!

FUCK FUCK FUCK THAT'S HOW BEN HISLOP GOT TURNED INTO A HUSK RUN SHEPARD RUN!

Luckily for Shepard, the team that worked on Evolution didn't confer with the team that worked on Arrival, so it just shows her a vision of reapers floating toward the alpha relay.

Kenson pistol whips Shepard out of this vision because ... fuck it, I don't know.

This part of Arrival starts to get a little, um, thin. Kenson's indoctrinated. Surprise! So she wants to get back to Project Base to stop the reapers. Wait, what? No, hang on, it's totally cool, she wants to stop the project now so that the reapers can come through the alpha relay. But now she's got to stop Shepard. But she brought Shepard onto the base?

... this was hinted at in Mass Effect 1, and we're going to learn this in some extended media coming up, but if I had to explain this away, it would go as such: the reapers aren't actually good at indoctrination. If they totally indoctrinate a soul, they turn into a husk. They don't have any skills any more, they're not very useful. If they indoctrinate someone less, that person/alien retains their skills and can use said skills to help the reapers. The danger there is that that person still retains free will. We saw this with Benezia and Saren. Both characters' final moments had them overthrowing their indoctrination just long enough to give the reapers a middle finger.

So it's possible that Kenson had a moment where she realized she could undo what the reapers were forcing her into by bringing Shepard into Project Base, but that is me pulling that one from the deepest recesses of my ass.

What does Shepard do when she's down?

Punch. Good lady, Shep, good lady.

Thus starts an unwinnable fight with Kenson's henchemen, who bring flame throwers. Try to last as long as you can in this one, if you go long enough, Object Rho will actually talk to you!

NEXT TIME: Hey, that timer will be down about 48 hours! Shit! We'll have to hustle!

The Shepardiest Shepard They Make

That's the best Hawaiian shirt you're getting. No one promised you good art.

... okay, so technically Mass Effect 2 is over and done. However, Bioware has given us the gift of Arrival, the DLC that connects Mass Effect 2 to Mass Effect 3. Personally, I think this makes the beginning of ME3 make sense, so let's do it.

I feel like Arrival gets mixed reviews. I dunno, I like it, if you were going to ask me, I'd say get it.

Let's go into Shepard's cabin and see what Hackett wants.

This is the first time we get to see Admiral Hackett! He was just a disembodied voice in ME1, but Bioware got some extra funding or wrote a grant or something and now we get to see him!

That's the main game mechanic of Arrival: no squadmates. Shepard talks to herself a lot.

I mean, there's good and bad. For example?

When Arrival first game out?

Everyone was gettin' their lunch ate.

The AI for the squadmates is really good, so it's kind of easy to lay back and let them do the heavy lifting. (Sometimes I just run around a level hitting everything that moves with pull and letting Garrus and Miranda shoot them down.) This just means, however, that you notice when they're gone big time.

I'd argue that no one really learned how to play Mass Effect well until multiplayer came out and we all had to learn how to not shit team missions down our legs. So when I played it for MSPixel, I was fine, but the first time? Painful.

(There's no save point either, if you die, the game dumps you at the beginning of the mission!)

But the good? Here, let's take this scenario, where Shepard finds a pipe maze:

So. Huh. I guess Tali or Legion could maybe take the pipes apart for us, but they're not here. Is there any other way to get through this pipe maze without calling on another legendary video game hero?

Yup, Shepard just, like, burns her way through the damn pipe maze. Holy crap, Shepard, I love you.

This is a batarian prison, and as such, Shepard keeps coming up on batarians talking about Hackett's friend, their prisoner. Her name is Dr. Kenson, by the way. But what the hell is all this about destroying a mass relay?

Okay, so here's another moment. Let's say you're Shepard, right?

And you come up on a batarian guard who's torturing the lady you're trying to rescue?

Well, shit. If Jacob were here, he could probably talk him down, or Thane could sneak around and kill him from the vents, or Mordin could use some farm implements, or ...

Or Shepard could just clock him, because Shepard is totally the best.

Shepard, ladies and gentlemen.

Shepard and Kenson go deeper into the prison in order to escape.

Well, Shepard, were you going to hack that terminal?

Finally, they come to a hangar.

You know what? I could make start listing other ways that those lesser squad mates would solve that, but I think we all know what happens.

NEXT TIME: ... amazingly, Arrival doesn't have anything sexy in it. So more violence then!