HOLY SHIT

I JUST FOUND OUT WHAT BIOWARE'S APRIL FOOL'S PRANK WAS

HOLY SHIT YOU GLORIOUS CANADIAN BASTARDS

HOLY SHIT

There Are No Mass Effects

Do you know how emosad I am each year when April Fools doesn't fall on a Wednesday or a Friday? I think you all'd get wise to me if I posted on a Tuesday or something.

Let's finish up Citadel.

Mass Effects 1 and 2 were more or less flat horny. Mass Effect 3 likes oscillating between "unbelievably horny" and "OH CANADA!"

So given that, let's go see Ashley at the docks.

She's busy looking sadly at the Normandy. Can you guess where this is going to go?

Daww. You can actually refuse Ashley here, but I don't see why not.

So Ashley's back! That's good times. She's our second-to-last squadmate that we'll pick up, and if you can't guess the last one, you probably have brain damage.

Oh shit, wait, the mads are calling. Sirs?

That's right, admiral, because they read the MSPixel treatments instead.

This comment is confusing to me: which Grayson? Does he mean Paul, who got reaper ate, or Gillian? Is he really that afraid that Cerberus is going to shank us all with a fucking toothbrush?

And why is he sad over what they did to Shepard? OH NO THEY BROUGHT HER BACK TO LIFE AND SHE'S PRETTY HEALTHY NOW WE'RE ALL FUCKED.

The asari are on board now because they don't want to get shot at again.

Right now, the only thing you need to know about the catalyst is:

• It is the catalyst.
• It is a noun. (Meaning, it's not the power of love or some shit.)
• You will be fucking screaming that name later, so remember it.

Don't worry about too much else.

NEXT TIME: There are no mass effects.

Citadel: Climax

Hi, there's a spoiler in this post. I didn't write around it.

Did you ever doubt that Shepard was a badass?

Naw, see, because she gets out of the car, stands on it, and then shoots at Kai Leng. I mean, he barriers her, but shit on my chest, she just climbs on the damn car.

But, brother Leng still manages to get away.

... don't worry about Shepard. If death didn't stop her, explosions aren't going to do shit.

Shep et all fight their way to the elevators.

Luckily, Liara and Garrus find a second elevator, and get in. They all climb on top of the elevator. Bailey helps us out:

Which is all well and good, but?

Vanguard don't shoot. I've spent three games not shooting at anything, I can't hit the broad side of a barn. I almost failed out of this section the first time I played. But hey! Want to know a cool trick?

Pull will also take out the elevators. Probably, there's other powers that work on them too?

To finish this section, Shepard and company jump on the elevator that holds Ashley and the Citadel council.

Want a hint? Udina's crooked, remember? He knows the elevator's full of Cerberus guys, and he knows they're all about to get killed.

We don't know all the deets yet, but you can start putting some stuff together: Udina is the human councilor, Cerberus is a pro-human group ...

Oh yeah, and if you're not quick on the paragon interrupt, another squadmate (Garrus in my game) will totally waste Ashley. I saved her. You can probably figure out why it's more advantageous to keep her alive.

The game goes through a check here: if you're nice to Ashley, you get one scene. If you weren't, you get another. Interestingly enough, I was nice to Ashley but not SUPER nice to Ashley (I visited her in the hospital and wasn't a dick to her on Mars, but we didn't fuck her in ME1 so that's a thing). Luckily, the game also factors in your reputation score, and I did a bunch of sidequests off-camera to pop that up way high. So, we'll be getting the nice scene, which is:

*cough*

Kay, so, Udina gets shot. You can't get around it if you save Ashley. There's a renegade interrupt here, if you take it, Shepard takes the shot, otherwise, Ashley will do it. I usually let Ashley take the shot, but this time I got spooked on my interrupts and Shepard took it.

I considered lying and showing Ashley taking the shot, but that's not the sort of hard hitting journalism you've come to expect from your serious art blog over the years.

The Stabbity Man

Welcome back, everyone, please enjoy our murder in progress.

The salarian councillor, out in the open? Looks like bait to me.

Aww hell.

In case you live under a rock, that's brother Kai Leng, from Retribution and both parts of Deception. He shows up in the game too, by the way. I know, it's like Christmas.

So what does Shepard do? She acts like a total badass.

Ahem, cough, the next portion of the game is a massive spoiler, one of the few that I'd like to cover up.

So just pretend really hard that this happens.

Shit! We've got to go after Kai Leng! Shepard finds a space car and goes after him.

If you got that, we could party.