So last we left Miranda, Jacob and the Shep, they were on their way to a remote Cerberus space station. Miranda directs Shepard to go talk to The Illusive Man. Also known as Jack Harper. We're clear on that now, right? Good, I'd like to stop saying it.
No one ever speaks to Brother Tim directly, though, so Shepard has to be body scanned. She appears in his chambers as a hologram.
... *cough* For whatever reason, The Illusive Man has full color holograms, but I'm using MSPaint here, and MSPaint doesn't have any kind of filter to make a color picture look like a hologram, so you're just going to have to handle Mass Effect 1 style holograms for these scenes.
Also, how the hell did I make The Illusive Man look like a priest? There is shitty art and there's what you all see on this blog, you guys, I swear to hell.
Oh, hey, those eyes? They really glow blue in the game. You can guess why, right? Seriously, I figured it out in like ten minutes. I can't say exactly why right now, though, without spoiling the shit out of the next game.
Enough jibbering. I play paragon, so my conversations between TIM and Shepard always shake out like so:
shepard honey you're going to wear that finger out
So anyway, Shepard's like, "Go fuck yourself." And Tim's all, "Whoa, hey, hey, slow your roll, we're on the same side. The council thinks the reaper threat ended with Sovereign, but you and I, we know better."
And Shepard's all, "Go fuck yourself."
And Tim's like, "Okay, you know what? There's this human colony called Freedom's Progress. Go on a fact finding trip, see what you see there, come back, tell me what you think."
And Shepard's like, "Sure, but go fuck yourself."
So Shepard, Miranda and Jacob all blow off to ... where the hell was it? Fingle's Quarry. Yes.
Fuck! Robot guys! We should take care of them!
Hey, I promised I'd tell you why Miranda was my best Huggy Uggy Mass Effect 2 Friend 5ever, right? Most people don't like her because she has a fantastic ass. Look, I don't know, nerds are weird people. I don't hold her ass against her. Instead --
Okay. You know how I keep saying you need to play vanguard? Here's why. Gimmie a sec, we'll get back to Miranda. When you're a vanguard, all you do is pick a guy out on the map,
And then you hit Y on the controller.
And then Shepard, not shitting, DIVES ACROSS THE FUCKING MAP AND HEADBUTTS THE GUY IN A GIANT BIOTIC BLUR. You name me a bigger badass in science fiction history! You can't! You fucking can't! Jim Kirk comes close with his Polish hammer technique, but damn. She HEADBUTTS. HER. WAY. through the game.
If the guy doesn't go down after a headbutt? God gave you fists, child, use them. I'm serious, I spend the entire game headbutting and punching bad guys. I don't use guns. I don't even know the names of any of them. Why would I? Shepard has two guns, they're called her arms, for which she uses for punching.
This works great if the guy has a red health bar, but sometimes they've got a yellow or a purple health bar or something. This means they've got some kind of shield, and a headbutt won't do. You almost have to use finesse.
Call Miranda. She's got a bunch of abilities tailored to stripping shields. Like overload! It works great on machines, such as hacked security mechs.
And once Miranda does her thing?
Miranda lets me headbutt things more. I don't care if she has a fantastic ass, I don't care if she works for Cerberus, I don't even care if she comes in my house and shits in the oven. We make things go boom. I love Miranda. I always take her and SpoilerCharacter everywhere in the game.
So Shepard and pals headbutt their way through ... where the fuck was it? Flannigan's Valley until they come across --
Oh, no way! Hey Tali! I like your new outfit. Good to see you've changed clothes at least once in two years!
This scene brings up something weird about Mass Effect 2: no one seems to give a shit that Shepard came the fuck back to life. Think about it. If your dead relatives or friends or pets or whatever just sort of rolled up and was like, hey, you're looking well, how's stuff at work? You wouldn't be like, oh, hey, my manager sucks but what do you do, you'd be like, "THE EVER LIVING FUCK I BURIED YOUR ASS."
Tali probably has the strongest reaction out of all the ME1 cast, and she's more or less, "Hey, you're alive? That's weird. So, how's kicks?"
Tali brought a small quarian squad to investigate the same shit Shepard's there for. There was a quarian named Veetor who was on pilgrimage on ... fuck ... Fliddle's Backside? Yes, Fliddle's Backside. When the humans disappeared, did Veetor disappear too? Hell, I don't know. But Tali and Shepard can team up and find out!
no worries miranda you'll always have me
Hey, here's a fun Easter egg for you: if you have Shepard ask the other quarians why they hate Cerberus, one of them will make a reference to Ascension, specifically one of the scenes I left out because I'm a lazy piece of shit I didn't want to spoil it. Rad!
Tali and Shepard agree to split up to see who can find Veetor. When Shepard gets about ten steps away from Tali, Tali radios in to say that her crew went on ahead without her in an attempt to keep Veetor from Shepard. Uh, sure, howdy do to you bastards too.
Unfortunately, Tali's rogue squad runs straight into a big ass security robot. This all happens off camera over the space of like five seconds, there's very little if anything to draw. Tali manages to reroute the mech over to Shepard, so that maybe she can take care of it.
Of course, Shepard's a vanguard, so this is nothing.
What? Of course I charged the mech. I play vanguard. Go big or go home.
A few steps away from there (Flipper's Nipple is not very big), we come across Veetor.
Veetor's a quarian with a few social problems. Crowds scare him, people scare him, and after the shit he's seen, he is not well.
He's in a dark room alone staring at some screens while twitching. Oh man, Bioware successfully predicted bronies!
Shepard spooks him, and Veetor manages to give up what he was working on: piecing together the security footage of what happened to Fuddie's Duddy.
The game is a little bit round about with this information, so let me spell it out for you: remember the collectors, those slavers we read about back in Ascension? They cook around the Terminus systems (Mass Effect's own Neutral Zone) and find human colonies. The little flies you see on Veetor's screen? Those seekers run around and paralyze people, and then the collectors, those pointy headed dudes Miranda's all freaked out about, pick the humans up and cart them off somewhere past something called The Omega 4 Relay.
Why? Fuck, I don't know, we're probably going to have to play the damn game longer than twenty minutes to find that out.
A better question: why don't the collectors kill the humans when they pick them up? They must be using them, but for what?
And then, why aren't they using other aliens? The Terminus systems have a zillion different alien species. Hell, the place is crawling with batarians, they could start with those guys. Hell, they could have even grabbed Veetor there, but they didn't. It must be something unique to humans, but what the hell would that be? Hair?
Tali comes in and gets in a slap fight with Miranda over what to do with Veetor: Miranda wants Cerberus to study him, but Tali wants Veetor to get medical attention back at the fleet. Shepard can pick who gets Veetor. I always send him with Tali.
So then, we must report back to the Illusive Man.
Welp. Brother Tim then makes A Deal about how Shepard will need people.
Um ... but ... sorry Shepard, they're gone.
You can go over this with The Illusive Man if you don't buy it, but we'll run down it real quick:
Tali refused to leave Freewater Sleuce with Shepard, because, you know, Cerberus. She said she had her own mission to finish. Hmm, I bet that won't come up again.
No one can find Garrus. He disappeared after Shepard's death and kept himself quite hidden. He may not even still be alive.
Ashley is working with the Alliance. She got promoted, so that's good news, but the Alliance and Cerberus don't really get along, so that's a Thing.
Wrex went back to Tuchanka. He's working to unite the krogan clans to fix this genophage bullshit. Uniting krogans for the purpose of fucking is a full time gross job.
Kaidan is a turd sack.
Liara is working with the Shadow Broker. We dealt with him really briefly in Mass Effect 1 -- he knows all the shit in the universe, and he sells information to other people.
So anyway, TIM disconnects from the call.
those are the best cerberus fatigues you're getting
no one promised you good art
So, uh. Since the last game, Joker's come down with a case of looking really Amish walk. I mean, he limps pretty bad, but he's mobile, which we were told was not possible for Mr. Moreau.
There's a fan theory that Cerberus fixed Joker up in exchange for his piloting services. But Cerberus brought Shepard back from the dead, don't you think they could fix him up to where he didn't limp? Come on. Personally, my guess is that Bioware didn't want to render crutches. It makes sense when you consider the spoiler spoiler spoiler later.
Anyway, Joker leads Shepard over to a window to show off this new ship that Cerberus built in a stunning Star Trek 1 style sequence. Hmm, it seems oddly familiar --
NEXT TIME: adventures on the sex boat
what
that's what they call it
the sex boat
