Noveria: Who You Gonna Call?

So, how are we getting to Peak 15?

MOTHERFUCKING MAKO!

That's the best snow effect MSPaint's got, you all are going to have to deal.

Actually, why in the living hell would you drive the mako around on ice? It sounds like a great way to get yourself killed. The screen shows "Level 1 Hazard" in the bottom corner the entire time, and I've never figured out why. I guess the level 1 hazard is that you got into the mako and tried to pilot it around?

Damn, and you know the entire time, Garrus is just curled around the Mako's heater, like the big six and a half foot tall wiener he is.

So anyway, they reach Peak 15, and right after they resurrect Crono, they're sneaking around, but they don't see any life forms. No guys working the lab, no Benezia, no nothing.

No worries, Mass Effect aims to hit every sci fi trope you can think of. Yes, even the nasty ones.

So there's these giant crawdad things slinking around the lab, and also no humans/turians/asari/otherwise friendly aliens. WHY WHATEVER COULD HAVE CAUSED THIS.

Surprise, Shep and buddies run into the crawdads and shoot the shit out of them. Why, those crawdads, could those possibly be the reason why there's no one else here?

Shepard happens upon a station VI that can hopefully help her out.

Actual line of dialog. Shepard can even respond with, "Crap, a popup." Anyway, Le Shep pumps the VI (named Mira) for information. Benezia's tooling around somewhere, she took the train down to the other part of the lab, but lol, the train's broke. Mira tells you you can get it up and working again, if you do some shit for her, like open the landlines up and reconnect the fuel lines.

Seriously, there are kids born in 2000 that have no idea what a landline is, there's no way Shepard, born in 2154, knows what a landline is. I kind of doubt she's reminiscing for the days of AOL dial up. She probably thinks that electricity travels by blue tooth.

(The game implies, though never directly states, that Garrus is a huge damn nerd really good with technology and shit, so he'd probably be the one to ask out of all of them. Or Tali, I guess.)

So Shepard reconnects the landlines, probably, or maybe Garrus gets pissed and takes it from her, who knows, and then they reconnect the fuel lines, while also not using the power of mass effects.

Then we get to ride on the train!

That's what happens. Exactly.

There's two ways to do the next part. There's the way that everyone else does it, which involves talking to people, and the way that I always wind up doing it, which is wandering around, getting stupidly lost, and then tripping right over Benezia.

I will say that if you talk to people, you get some background on the crawdads: they are called rachni, they are pissed as fuck, and they're what cleared Peak 15 out. Surprise!

So let's say you take my route and just sort of fall over Benezia.

Liara tears her mother a new asshole for, you know, being evil and shit, and then there's a boss fight.

THE SHIT THAT BENEZIA SAYS AFTERWARDS IS REALLY. FUCKING. IMPORTANT. I NOW DEMAND THAT YOU PAY ATTENTION.

Afterwords, Benezia snaps out of it for a second. Saren's been controlling her, see. She describes it as him constantly whispering to her, like she's, I don't know, indoctrinated or something.

She says that wailing on her daughter and her friends isn't her will, go figure. But Saren's got this power, from that ship Sovereign, see, and he can just take over whoever he wants and get what he wants done.

Behind Benezia is the ever-famed rachni queen. If you've ever spoken to a Mass Effect nerd, you probably heard the name.

Apparently Saren is planning something in the Mu Relay, where the Rachni queen is from. But no one knows where the Mu relay is. Well, that's easy enough, Saren's got Benezia. He sent Benezia to vulcan mind meld with the Rachni queen so that she could figure it out and go tell Saren. In her moment of clarity, though, she puts the location on a usb drive and gives it to Shepard, so that maybe Shepard can go fix whatever Saren's got going on.

Saren grabs ahold of Benezia again, so Shepard finishes the job, kablam.

Then shit gets weird. One of Benezia's asari commandos that Shepard kills comes back to life.

(Fuckin' told you all this place was Death Peak.)

The rachni queen picks up an asari through her own sort of vulcan mind meld trick and starts talking to Shepard in shitty music metaphors.

The rachni in the lab were her children, but baby rachni need a mama rachni to develop correctly. Since the baby rachni were taken from her, they went crazy, which is why they're running around the labs eating people's faces off. She asks Shepard to kill them. Which, hey, Shep's a pro, she's got that shit no problem.

Now, then. The rachni queen's stuck in that tank, and she would like out, please.

...

But, see, you could kill her. If you wanted.

...

MASS EFFECT HISTORY TIME: Before humans, the other aliens were booking around the galaxy when they found the rachni. Oh, hey, they said, other aliens! That's rad. That's rad as hell. But the rachni were stupid powerful, and not really up for political debate like the asari liked. They were kind of into eating faces. So what do you do?

The salarians got the idea to "culturally uplift" the krogan. See, during this time, the krogan were just rock stupid turtles who wanted to eat, fuck, and kill, but the salarians put a bit in their mouth and turned them into something presentable. Also, they were strong and they bred like fucking rabbits, because they have four balls, so they made great soldiers. The salarians threw a zillion krogan troops at the rachni and killed them off until they surrendered. Such is the story of the rachni wars. If you're running around the citadel, you can see a statue of a krogan that the council erected in honor of them.

Long point made short, you can be nice and let her go, but she might go around killing everyone. Again. Or, you can just nuke her right there, but she might be a sane rachni, how would you ever know?

I always let her go, myself, you do what you want.

All right, one last thing. Shepard and pals travel down to another area in the lab to take care of those baby rachni like they promised the queen.

Horrifying space bugs are hard to draw, okay?

So anyway, Mira tells you you can activate the neutron purge to clean out the baby rachni. The neutron purge is when Mira fuses scifionium with bullshitium to form unobtainium and that makes, in effect, a tac nuke.

...

WHY IN THE HELL DID THEY NOT JUST USE A MASS EFFECT

I know, I'm only going to bitch about this 134703475 more times, but seriously, they've got this bangin' sci fi technology just lying around, they NAMED THE FUCKING SERIES AFTER IT, and then they just PISS IT DOWN THEIR LEG. It wouldn't be anywhere nearly so bad of a thing IF. THE. FUCKING. SERIES. WASN'T. CALLED. MASS. FUCKING. EFFECT.

So Shepard activates the neutron purge, runs like hell, and then I twitch and sob in a corner.

NEXT TIME: No mass effects, that's for sure.

Noveria: Ice, Ice, Baby

So the council calls up and is like, "Hey, we're picking up some shit from this backwater planet called Virmire, you maybe want to look into that?" but we're doing Noveria first because I'm a maverick renegade.

So. Noveria. Do you remember Hoth? You know, that one planet that Kirk landed on in Star Trek 11 and found Spockimus Prime? It's like the same shit, all icy and snowy and whatever. Mass Effect does love its sci fi roots.

If you land and try to take a party ashore without Liara, one of your party members will bitch at you. I mean, we're going after her mom, right? She might want to be involved. You can actually proceed without her, but ... why?

I like taking Garrus too, mostly because Liara and Garrus are my ME1 Bro Squad, but also because as a turian he grew up on Palaven, the ... uh, turian planet. It's all hot, like Vulcan. You know, the place where the Fire Temple is in Legend of Zelda. (Why yes, I love delicious nerd tears, why do you ask?)

Point being, I imagine this cool little scenario where Garrus is all like, "Oh shit, I've never seen snow before," and maybe they all go make snow angels really quick, I don't know. In reality, if you talk to the bastard, all he does is whine for the entire mission.

So anyway, the Normandy docks, and this lady named Captain Matsuo rolls up and gets all in Shepard's shit because she ... docked and got off the Normandy? I don't know, you'd think that if she was going to get that pissed over it, she wouldn't have cleared the Normandy for landing, but hey. Shep pulls out her Spectre status, and Matsuo has to back down, telling you that Parsini-san is waiting for you.

She really does say "Parsini-san," too. The game alludes to the fact that everyone in the Mass Effect universe, humans, aliens, what-have-you, wear universal translators over one ear. That's why the aliens all magically speak English. I love to think that this is the same universal translator that Hoshi developed. Why wouldn't it be? It even fits in the Star Trek timeline.

Hey, are you paying attention? There's Vulcan, mind melds, and universal translators. People look at me cockeyed when I say that the Star Trek universe and the Mass Effect universe are one and the same, but damnit ~I know it in my heart~.

Point being, the universal translators are fine, but they're not spectacular, and they let words slip through every so often. Matsuo may have legit been speaking total Japanese, and "Parsini-san" just slipped right on through. You'll see a few more words in Mass Effect 2 that the translator can't decipher, quarian ones to be specific, and in Mass Effect 3 we discover that apparently the translator doesn't know much Spanish. (Please tell me at least one of you other nerds was wigging out over that? No one?)

So you're allowed into Noveria's main commerce port, which is really dull looking. Like, seriously, it's a planet made out of concrete. Wouldn't it all freeze and break on an ice planet? Anyway, I know I haven't really been putting in that much effort towards drawing backgrounds, but trust me: on Noveria, you're not missing much.

Right as you come in, Parsini-San, also known as Gianna Parsini, greets you just as a bunch of alarms go off.

(Varren are kind of like dogs in the Mass Effect universe, if dogs were also rats and lizards.)

Shep asks what's good in Noveria, and Parsini tells her that some dame named Benezia was up in here a few days ago. Hey! That sounds relevant! Turns out, Benezia's chilling (har) up at Peak 15.

You guys, wasn't Peak 15 an area in Chrono Trigger? I'm looking that up later, I swear.

Okay, I looked it up. I have Death Peak mixed up with Lab 16, I think. They're both in 2300 AD, can you blame me? It's the future, it's snowy, there's a lab involved, Chrono Trigger and Mass Effect are both great games, I'm just going to run with it. Benezia's up on Death Peak.

To get to Peak 15/Lab 16/Guardia, you've got to drive through the snow, so you've got to go into the garage. Unfortunately, there's a guard in the way, and he can't let you through without a garage pass.

Hey, guard! How do we get a garage pass?

I am not futzing around, that's the actual line from the game.

Oh, Mister Guard, but the gizzard we will polish in Mass effect 2. You wish I was shitting.

There's like a hundred ways to get the garage pass. I know of one.

You wander around Porre until Square makes a better fucking sequel than Chrono Cross what the hell were they thinking you come across a turian sitting at a bar, alone. This is Lorik Qui'in. I have no idea if this is a reference to a lorikeet, which is a kind of bird. It's a big coincidence if it's not.

Lorik used to be in charge of renting office space on Noveria. This is what epic sci fi shooters are made of, are you paying attention? Anyway, a salarian named Anoleis took it over, but he's overcharging people because he's a money grubbing little bastard. Lorik found out, but Anoleis busted into his offices, threw him out on his ... whatever the hell passes for an ear on a turian, and won't let him back in.

I hear that's the plot of Halo 4, by the way. CALL OF DUTY: ADJUSTING RENT RATES.

So anyway, he offers Shep his garage pass if Shepard will break into the offices and upload Lorik's evidence onto a usb drive. The game calls it something else, but let's not shit with each other, it's a usb drive.

Lorik then utters one of the more famous lines in the Mass Effect games:

The story implies that turians are obsessed with human culture. Like, they're some kind of Earth weeaboos or something.

Okay, fine, I have no idea how to draw a united Earth cultural turian. I took a screaming shot at it, though.

Today, my husband will come home from work. "What did you do today?" he'll ask. I will not have the heart to reply, "I drew a turian in a Mickey Mouse hat."

The next part's a little dull: Shep goes into the office, shoots some guys, connects the usb drive, gets the data, and comes back out. The office insides look exactly like the rest of Noveria, which is to say, you're still not missing anything art-wise.

So Giana rolls up just as you exit the office, and she's all, "Hey, what was that noise?"

And Shep's like, "Um, I dunno, snow and shit."

So Giana's like, "Whatever, meet me at the bar BEFORE you talk to Lorik."

So you do, and Giana reintroduces herself as an agent for Noveria Internal Affairs. She's after Anoleis, too! She wants Shep to convince Lorik to testify!

I have no idea why Giana couldn't have just gone to Lorik herself and been like, "We both hate the balls off this guy, let's do this," or why Giana even let Shep go get the data, or even why she wanted Shepard to meet her IN A CROWDED BAR versus an alleyway. Look, the important thing is, we've got to get into that garage so that we can get the jetbike to race Johnny across Lab 32.

So Shep talks Lorik into it. There's actually a [LIE] option on this part of the game, which is very old school Bioware. I appreciated it. I always just take the blue option and convince Lorik that he'll be a hero for testifying.

Shepard goes to see Giana, and Giana's like, "Rad. That is rad as hell. I'm going to go bust Anaoleis now." She actually mutters, "I hate skirts" as she walks off the screen. Any lady in the Mass Effect universe, unless they live on the Normandy, wears these incredibly long skirts so Bioware didn't have to animate their legs. See also: Dragon Age.

So Giana steps off the screen and beats the shit out of Anoleis. Off screen. Whoop dee diddle shit. Before she goes, she tosses Shep a garage pass. Yay, we can go to the garage now! This is the victory music that plays. Okay, maybe not, but I'm on a Chrono roll right now.

Actually, at this point, both Liara and Garrus start bitching about the snow. Hey, hey! Let's not be like that, guys!

So they get to the garage, and just as they're about to load up, they notice these crates.

But that shouldn't be anything, right?

Oh, fuck! Benezia transported geth with her! She must be up to something super bad! We'll have to find out what that is next time.

Next time: MOTHERFUCKING MAKO Y'ALL.