Liara: Terminal Blueness

The game, at this point, is beginning to imply two things. One, that EDI is getting smarter.

Two, that Joker loves porn, porn porn porn, piles of porn, porn for me, porn for you, porn for grandma, porn for the kids, porn for everyone. The extranet is really really great! For porn. There is an ingame conversation where Joker and EDI discuss the terabytes of porn that he downloads, but for an extra treat, if you've got the game, take Shepard and stand her near Joker for a while. Don't start a conversation, just wait patiently and listen.

Uh huh.

MASS EFFECT: The horniest game.

There are two things I want to make sure we get done, one that I feel like is necessary to show off and one that I'm doing just because I like it. We'll do the actual factual important one first. Hey, kids, let's go to Illium!

Liara's Kind Of A Thing now. She's got her own office! With stairs! We should go up those stairs, and then visit her.

... what happened this is not the liara i knew from ME1

A lot happens in two years, I guess?

And then Shepard sits down at Liara's desk and her two squadmates stand behind her awkwardly. I thought we had this problem in ME1 as well? I love how Liara's got a desk and an assistant and all kinds of ritsy shit but can't afford two extra chairs.

Wait, how the hell did she know Shepard was alive?

... why in the hell does Shepard count as a hacking expert? I guess if I was playing engineer, that would make some sense, but I'm not, I'm playing vanguard, also known as God's Class. Seriously, though. If Liara needed an air conditioner fixed, we could do that, but.

See? Tali and Garrus feel me.

Gonna need some medigel for that burn, Shep.

So anyway, Liara gives you a little mini quest that's actually kind of fun so far as quests in this game go: you go out to the shops, find some termninals, and then run around until you find their little counter part.

This has to happen in the Mass Effect universe, deny that it doesn't.

Once all the terminals are hacked, let's go back to Liara.

We dealt with the Shadow Broker super brief in ME1, but real quick: Mr. Shadow Broker knows all of the galaxy's secrets, and he sells them. No one has ever seen nor met this Shadow Broker.

Put simply, The Shadow Broker is the exact same thing as Google.

So, hey, Liara gives us ANOTHER side quest, this time to mine data out of terminals and figure out who this Observer fellow is.

I won't give away the answer to the puzzle, but I do think it's the sort of answer that you'd only see in a Bioware game, and I mean that in the best way possible.

Anyway, once we get it, Shepard has to call Liara back.

Oh shit! Nyxeris is The Observer! She's been feeding information about Liara to the Shadow Broker!

... why the hell is Liara such a target for the Shadow Broker?

Either way, we've got to get back to Liara and make sure she can handle --

Well then!

I actually honestly feel a little bad for keeping that fact from you all, but there it is, Liara did it.

It's a very human story, really. Probably any one of you could think of someone you'd revive, even if it meant working with Cerberus.

What? Garrus and Tali don't owe her shit.

But still, I get the feeling that there's a story in here somewhere!

NEXT TIME: The story in here, somewhere.

Brought To You By The Letter P

Here, let me catch you up on the plot real quick: The Illusive Man tried to get Shepard killed and Harbinger is a creeper in a fedora.

Shepard is much less than paragon about the whole thing.

No, really, Brother Tim sent Shepard on a probably-suicide run because he decided it was easier than encrypting a message to Shepard. The collectors are fucking bugs, they can't interpret messages like that. Hell, he probably could have written it in Futurama alien code or galifreyan or lemon juice or even lip synced it to Shepard, but no, the easier thing was to just march her on to the ship and hoped.

I guess he figures he can just bring her back infinite amount of times?

Cerberus has more resources than brains.

And all he's got for Shepard is a 'lolwhatevs'. She's not happy.

I've never quite figured out why telling Brother Tim to fuck off is the renegade path.

This is what I do with my time, I draw holograms peeing.

(I keep thinking the cerberus operatives aboard the derelict reaper is a comic book, because it sure sounds like one, but apparently it isn't. I'm really surprised by that.)

So anyway, the next scene in the conference room with Miranda, Jacob and Mordin. I will live a million years and not know why Mordin is in this scene. If he's in there, shouldn't the rest of the crew be as well? What happens if you don't recruit Mordin? You can get this far without Mordin, but I bet you knew that.

The conference room has a giant ass table. I tried to draw it.

Somewhere in the background, Carl Sagan is sobbing quietly.

Somewhere in the background, Carl Sagan is wailing loudly while rending his garments.

Oh come on, you didn't for a second think that the plot would actually almost involve a mass effect, did you? This game may as well be called Horse Colon Spelunking Adventure, because there's exactly as many horse anuses as there are mass effects.

The game gives you a choice here. You can, of course, just dive right toward the end of the game, but there's more to do and you'll fuck yourself over grandly for Mass Effect 3. This is MSPixel, I'm trying to show off the damn game some, we need to finish some stuff first.

Shepard keeps saying the phrase "build our team", which is not a hint at all as to the ending.

The Collector's Ship: No, Really, This Can't Get Much Worse

Okay, so when we last left everyone, EDI had attempted to connect to the collector's ship, but found some kind of trap and wound up disconnected.

And sure, she can reconnect, but she needs time, and also Harbinger just rolled up, so we're currently dealing with that.

Life is pretty rad.

EDI can't help us out with the collectors AND connect to the ship, because apparently in the fucking future they still have Out of Memory errors. It's a fucking star ship built by the richest organization in the galaxy, but noooo, an extra gig memory stick, that's too much.

Luckily, EDI gets herself reestablished again.

Hooray! That's what we came for! Surely this won't get any more --

... hmm?

AWW HELL.

Miranda lays in the floor and has kittens if you bring her on this mission, it's pretty great. Jacob might too, but let's be honest, no one ever brings Jacob anywhere.

But, no, that's where we are in the plot: more or less, Brother Tim revived Shepard and tried to get her killed again. He's got reasons, and we'll talk about them later, I promise, but we need to stay that again: Brother Tim revived Shepard and tried to get her killed again. You'll start to quickly see that Cerberus has more resources than common sense.

Just then, Joker calls.

I mean, seriously, The Illusive Man, what if Shepard ate it a second time? Do you think maybe this time it would only take eighteen months because you've got practice or some shit? What do you do in the meantime, just let collectors capture all the humans? Maybe you oughta protect your investments, dog, that's all I'm sayin'.

Never mind the fact that he's an asshat, Shep and crew have to get the hell out before Shepard gets killed. Again. I mean, she's got practice dying and all, but still.

To slow you up, the game throws plenty of collectors at you, and of course, where there are collectors, there is Harbinger.

I always deal with him like any vanguard does.

Fuckin' love vanguard.

Right at the exit, the collectors unleash a praetorian on the crew. Now, this time when I played through, I just got out the collector's particle beam gun and dispensed of his ass in like 90 seconds, but the first time? I wasn't so smart. After five or ten deaths, I devised a very vanguard strategy that I'm still to this day proud of.

See, I'd just sit and take pot shots at him from across the map. But when he comes up close and personal?

I'd charge across the map at a random collector drone, beat the teeth out of the fucker, and enjoy the fact that the praetorian couldn't corner fast enough to come get me.

See, that's important to remember in multiplayer, too, vanguards need to use their extreme mobility to their advantage. But multiplayer's another topic.

Did anyone else notice I forgot Shepard's helmet? I don't want to go back and fix it, it would make the already shitty art even more jacked up. Just ... I don't care, she can breathe because of mass effects now.

Just kidding! No one will ever use the mass effect core for any reason! Because there is none. Because there are no mass effects.

NEXT TIME: Brother Tim's got some 'splainin.