Garrus: What Symbolism?

One of the cool things about MSPixel, I think, is getting to do art of characters that don't usually get drawn by fan artists.

Such as Mr. Taylor here. It's kind of a joke amongst Mass Effect nerds that no one loves Jacob. (How many of you noticed I screwed up and drew his hair wrong last time I drew him? None of you? That's because no one loves Jacob.)

Or Udina. I went looking. This is the only place on the Internet you're going to see drawn pictures of Udina, ladies.

Or Jiro. But he just makes me laugh because he comes early.

Mr. Taylor is a fan of sit ups. Probably left over from PT days in the Alliance.

I think we're all supposed to be swooning now. It's okay if you're not. I still think he's better looking than Kaidan, but I'm just not the kind of creeper who can sit and watch a guy do sit ups for a length of time.

Good thing Kasumi can! Good thing Kasumi also has invisibility cloak! Good thing I have no idea how to draw an invisibility cloak, so I just outlined her in gray!

This series has some kind of preoccupation with older women and younger men. First Kahlee and Jiro, now this. There's someone in the Bioware offices who wishes they were in Cougar Town instead of Edmonton.

Hey, Garrus was asking after Shepard, let's go check that out.

Garrus lives in the main battery, so far as the game implies, mass effecting the day away.

Err ... in our house, "mass effecting" is the term we like to use to describe the fake typing motion the characters make, because holy crap, this game is full of it. Garrus does it a lot, but there's a lot of other characters who are guilty. Joker. There's one spoiler character in ME3 who more or less does nothing BUT mass effect. Or pull ups. Yes, him.

This would be a gif of Garrus mass effecting, if you couldn't tell.

Sidonis! Sidonis, if you'll recall, is the one who betrayed Garrus to the mercs and got his band of 12 men killed. Sidonis is Judas in our little Mass Effectian passion play.

Bioware, honey, we just took our biblical metaphor to a bad place.

I'm going to have to cut the metaphor out right here and now because otherwise The Adventures of Jesus and Batman Jesus are going to get weird. Weirder. Hey, let's go to the Citadel!

Garrus has a tip that a gentleman named Fade makes folks disappear, and he's done the same to Sidonis. Fade was last seen in a warehouse on the Citadel, conveniently labeled for us because this is a video game:

Inside is a volus. We've dealt with voluses, but just barely, so real quick: voluses are moles in bdsm suits little short squat fuckers in life support suits, much like quarians.

They're also big wieners, it's easy to get info out of them.

Garrus' loyalty works differently than some of the other loyalty missions. The other missions are still Shepard's story, with the other character in the background. Garrus' is The Garrus' Show Staring Garrus And Then Also Shepard. Look at that, I was even able to draw a scene up there without Shepard in it!

Shepard's primary function in this story is to play psychologist to Garrus. If you play paragon, this mostly consists of trying to talk him out of shooting Sidonis.

I'm not sure why, since Shepard leaves a trail of dead bodies in her wake no matter where she goes, but that's how it rocks down so that's how we're going to play this.

Eventually, Shepard does find Harkin.

And distracts him long enough for Garrus to pistol whip the FUCK out of him.

I know it's been two years, but damn son, someone got violent.

I have so many images for this entry that I have to continue next time. I'm not entirely sure how Mr. Vakarian has charmed himself into both a loyalty mission and a recruitment mission that take two entries a piece, but he did it.

Anyway, NEXT TIME: Garrus gets to shoot one off.

Redemption: Dead, Yes, But Not Red.

You know, I've never played the game in the title, and I probably should. You know, sometime when I'm not playing Mass Effect. ... or Pokemon Black. Fuck that game, that game is too hard. That's right, I said it.

Last time on MSPixel, we spent some quality time with Liara, and then Liara told us she spent some quality time with Shepard's dead body. Not like that. Probably not like that that.

Mass Effect: Redemption is the most important piece of media outside of the three games, since it directly answers the question, "What the fuck with Shepard's dead body?" It was published in January of 2010, and was written by Bioware Poet Laureate Mac Walters.

Let us start our adventure into Redemption by checking on Liara, who's just chillaxing in Afterlife sometime after Shepard's death, but before her resurrection. During Mass Effect Lent, if you will.

(Liara might have the most costume changes out of all the characters in the series, and I'm counting Shepard in there.)

Sounds like a good idea, let's trail him!

Feron is an alien we haven't encountered yet. Wave hello to the drell, everyone! Bioware made the asari as a parody of the Star Trek green women. To be fair, they then polled several women to try and come up with an alien that straight women would appreciate. I have no clue how the hell they came up with a frog man alien. See, and here's the thing: I'm like the only chick I've ever met that's not like, "Oh, rad, I would do the hell out of a drell." My ovaries are broken, I guess.

Point being, Feron is a super hot frog alien dude.

This took a weird turn. Hey, Feron, what do you know about Shepard?

Well! That's new.

Here's another example of a random ass sniper just chillaxin in the open and no one giving a shit. This is Omega, though, so I guess we get a pass here. This is me making shit up, but I'd love to pretend the sniper that helps Liara out is really Garrus.

Liara and Feron fight them off and run away, and right smack in to:

Miranda! Wow! I'll be honest, I had no idea Miranda was in this comic book, I was all, D: :D when I found her.

Miranda wants Shepard's body too, and would like Liara's help, but first, Liara's going to have to meet someone.

More than a little stoked to draw someone else in The Illusive Man's hologram, gotta be honest.

The Illusive Man goes over what you and I already know: the Shadow Broker has Shepard's body, and is trying to sell it to the collectors. The why is missing, but who cares? Selling dead bodies is gross. The Shadow Broker should not do gross things, it does not befit one who ... brokes shadows. Breaks shadows. Something.

And yeah, we also know what Brother Tim wants with Shepard's body, but Liara doesn't.

So now we've got our task: go after the Shadow Broker, get Shep's body, deliver it to Cerberus.

At this point in the story, Liara somehow figures out that Feron works for the Shadow Broker. If I knew how she came up with that, I'd tell you. She kind of pulls it out of thin air and he agrees with her, so rad, Feron's a Shadow Broker agent.

Since we're on Omega, I think we all know where to go for information. Or dead bodies.

Fun fact: Mass Effect Incursion was written just to explain the one panel where Aria flips over the collectors.

Aria says that Shepard's body is in the lower levels of Omega, guarded by a gaggle of Blue Suns.

Anyway, Liara, being an asari, deals with these sorts of things in the usual way:

Despite her best efforts, the Blue Suns manage to shuttle off with Shepard. Luckily, Feron has a ship that looks legally distinct from the Millennium Falcon, so they dash off Shepard's casket in that.

I have no idea how I've gotten this far without drawing nor discussing a mass relay.

Okay, that big ass blue looking hair pin? If you're a space ship in the Mass Effect universe, that's what you use to zip around the universe. It's ... it's warp drive. See, and those huge ass bastards are supposed to be the reason we're calling the fucking series Mass Effect. I've avoided even talking about them until nearly halfway through the entire damn story and I could have kept going if I damn well felt like it. They're a minor part of the ending. That's it.

I've said this before, and I don't care: they didn't call it "Warp Drive", they called it "Star Trek." They didn't call it "Weird Ass Tubes That We're Only Going To Use In The Pilot," they called it "Futurama." They didn't call it "Nerd Tears," they called it "Star Wars." WHY IN THE HELL are we pretending "Mass Effect" is a good or even okay name?

Horse Anus Spelunking Adventure. I'm just saying. It is exactly as valid a series title.

So anyway, once Feron and Liara are finished using the mass relay horse anus fuck it I don't care, they land at the Shadow Broker's base. Feron is a slick bastard, he tricks the turian guards into letting him past.

There's a neat little sequence in the Shadow Broker base where Liara sees a collector for the first time.

It's not much more than that, even though maybe there's more detail in the art. Maybe.

Anyway, Feron leads Liara to this room in the middle of the base.

(I think this is the only green hologram in the series. I guess you can pony up for that sort of thing when you're the damn Shadow Broker.)

Feron slips off while Liara asks exactly what you and I were wondering.

Liara tears everyone a new asshole, and the Shadow Broker's hologram is destroyed. You can do that with mass effects. I guess. Feron takes her aside.

... a bitch says what?

Aww. Wonder where Bioware's going with this one?

It's Bioware, you think about that.

Feron's got one last trick up his sleeve to get Liara's trust. He tells her to go hide, and rolls right up to where Shepard's body is being sold.

God, okay, and you all wish I was being cute, but Harbinger is legit caressing Shepard's casket in this scene. I'm TRYING to pretend that the Shadow Broker isn't selling Shepard's dead body off as if it were some sort of fucked up sex toy, but how? I fucking hate when I'm right.

The final scene is Liara and Miranda watching Cerberus operate on Shepard.

NEXT TIME: More fucked up alien sex. Because this is Mass Effect.

I love how I just said that and you still have no idea what mission we're doing next time.