The Geth Dreadnaught: Big Balls

FIRST THING'S FIRST: Dear friend of MSPixel, MSPal Scott Foss has decided to argue my anti-AI stance with this piece of fan art.

Thank you, Mr. Foss, you have changed many a heart today. (No, seriously, thank you, I love it when you guys do crazy stuff for me!)

Okay, so last time we were running away furiously, right? Quick! Everyone to the elevator!

Oh hush, Camp Chrono is nigh upon us and y'all goin' have to get used to some Chrono Trigger around here.

Story time? Story time. I seem to remember a ton of these jrpg "get in the elevator and fight the guys!" sequences from the SNES era. In an effort to spare y'all more Chrono Trigger, I went looking for a screenshot of the one from Final Fantasy 3. 6. Whatever makes you yell at me less. Am I making that up? I thought there was one! I couldn't find it, though, so I typed in "chrono trigger elevator." GIS spit out a screenshot of the elevators in Mass Effect 1.

Sunrise, sunset, children.

The point I'm trying to make is, we're in an elevator, this is ... not quite an RPG, but it's grandaddy was one, so we should know what comes next.

Yeah, yeah, naw, she can save the whole citadel, bring down an entire hive of collectors, but naw I totes believe a wayward shot from some punk robot tipped Commander Vertigo Shepard over the edge of a jrpg elevator.

Probably thrown in there for the talimancers. Gross. Let's continue on. Shepard eventually comes up on some bigass ball.

Since this is a jrpg it's probably mako naw, but freal, let's see:

I'm sorry, I've laughed about Dashcon for days.

Okay, but freals:

So before we help Legion down, let's talk it to death!

Tali has a damn point, Legion is right there at the epicenter of the broadcast. But naw, Shepard trusts him because ... um ... I don't know, I guess once a man wears your titty, you have an unbreakable bond.

Obviously Shepard took one look at Scott Foss' fanart and was convinced.

Legion is retelling the Morning War very quickly, of course. Remember, "creators" is the geth word for "quarians" and "old machines" are "reapers."

And we'll go into it more later, but the geth gained sentience, the quarians flipped the hell out, war war war, and we then come to the events of the Mass Effect series.

Hold on. Old machines and geth together. Didn't we already do a mission like this? Does that mean ... ?

Okay, so, uh, Legion's loyalty mission was bullshit. That's always a good feeling.

Like Legion says, you can undo it on the far side of the room.

Wow! That sure is violent! Luckily next time we won't have any violence or shooting or anything!

NEXT TIME: I am a liar.

Surprise!

BEAN THIS IS NOT WEDNESDAY OR FRIDAY WHAT THE HELL

Patience comes to those who wait.

(Husbando~ and I like to make very bad religion jokes to each other. I drew this one just for him. You can view this panel if you don't think it will make you mad.)

Oh, man, though, you can't really refuse The Literal Jesus Christ, can you? We'd better do what He says!

Does anyone remember Earthbound Funktastic Gameplay? DAMN did I love that program. The idea was that everyone would play a small chunk of Earthbound every day together. Let's do that with Chrono Trigger! We'll call it Camp Chrono! Or Camp Crono if you're a stickler.

Here's the idea: starting next week, every Monday through Friday, I'll post a small chunk of Chrono Trigger for us all to play through together. I'll make the chunks small enough to be manageable, I promise. You can catch up on the weekends if you get behind.

In addition, you'll get a short, poorly drawn comic with each chunk! How can you go wrong!?

(Don't worry, your regularly scheduled Mass Effect will still go on! Think of it as getting double MSPixel.)

I'm telling you now so you can get yourself a copy of Chrono Trigger to play with. Chrono Trigger has been released in many different formats over the years:

• The original SNES version, of course. If you don't already own this, you're going to have to borrow from a friend or go to eBay. It's hella expensive there.
• The original DS (not the 3DS) has a version. This version has a totally different translation, though. (They messed up Frog!) It is, however, cheaper and easier to get ahold of. It should also run on a 2DS/3DS.
• The PSX has a version, but the code is borky and runs really slow. This is actually the version I've beaten the most, though, so I don't think it's as bad as everyone says.
• The Wii Virtual Console has a version. I'm assuming it's also on WiiU, but I don't have a WiiU and can't verify that for you. Honest to hell, if I didn't have any other version, this is the way I would go.
• Chrono Trigger is also out for iOS and Android if you're a mobile person.

There are also less-than-legal ways for you to play Chrono Trigger, but none of you would ever do that, would you.

I haven't decided if I'm playing old translation or new translation yet. TOO EXCITED.

ONE MORE THING: If any of you have any Chrono fan work you'd like me to post, send it to me! I'll put it with the appropriate section.

Anyway, HELL YES. Let's play!

SATURDAY POST: You're getting a present!

Hello, readers!

Did you know that you're all wonderful readers, and that I love each and every one of you?

That's why I've been working hard to prepare a surprise for you this summer! Because I love you.

I'll let you know more in a few days, but I will say that it has to do with the eight most famous clack-clack noises in video game history.

What, you don't know what I'm talking about?

I mean these clack-clacks:

Yeahuhhuh. See you in a few days.

Onboard The Geth Dreadnaught: I Told You So!

Hey, good news MSPixel MSPals, Chiktika's back!

Also she's mean as hell.

I had Chiktika set up for distance? She was rocketing dudes from across the map, it was nuts.

We gots to do mission stuff.

By the way, Tali has a rad new ability. Or maybe it's not new, I don't give a shit.

AI hacking! Tali can take over a geth and make it a temporary fourth squadmate.

Until that bullshit happens.

Once the room is clear, Shepard and Tali go to shut the signal off.

... do you know how long I worked to make that hologram not look like a penis? Much longer than you think. Holy shit. I am so sorry.

Now the penis has veins. This is all on my bad art skills, this isn't in the game.

Did nobody seem to remember that the battery is the shootey part? Won't there be ... whatever it is that geth shoot going THROUGH the battery!?

All right, fine, let's go up the damn battery even though this is dumb as hell.

OH GEE WHAT DID I JUST SAY

So anyway, fuck this part. You can avoid the blasts if you take cover, of course.

Except there's still geth all over.

It works out for both of them just as well as you'd expect.

The Docking Tube

Strap in, kids, we've got a geth dreadnaught to roll up to.

I'm being a little cute: husbando~ tweeted me something that I didn't know before.

So Shepard's there to, uh, look good, I guess.

Anyway, let's hop in the mass relay and see what's going on around the Perseus Veil. (Which, by the way, is the correct answer to last entry's question.)

Dang, gurl, it's a rare day when the Normandy rolls up to a big ass space battle like that.

The game insists upon Tali, so we get to bring one other squadmate. It's a good idea to bring a tech person to deal with robots, so Garrus or EDI are good pics. ... damn, I wonder if EDI had any good dialogue on the geth ship?

Fuck her, let's pick the character that isn't an abomination unto our lord. Shepard et all stand in ... I think it's supposed to be the Normandy airlock? We haven't seen that since Mass Effect 1. Remember when they actually used to decontaminate people? Now they're just all like, "WHAT THE HELL EVER SPACE HERPES COME ON IN".

This actually happens in the game, ps.

Why do the geth have docking tubes? What would they need to dock with? Other ships? Why do the geth need ships? They're fucking robots, the vacuum of space isn't going to bother them. What are they going to do, suffocate?

And why did the geth secure all but one tube? Did they just forget about that tube? They're robots, how do they forget anything ever?

Shepard borrows a pair of magnetic boots from Spike Spiegel and heads out into the docking tube to ... secure it. Whatever that means. I thought it meant "shoot up all the enemies," but there's no enemies in this section. My second guess was "tie it to the Normandy using duct tape and bungie cords," but she doesn't do that either, so I have no idea what we're securing.

Of course I'm from the south, why are you asking?

The docking tube is visually stunning, allow me to shit it down my leg. It's mostly made of debris. Why is it made of debris? Did the geth cobble it together out of some bullshit? Is it derelict? Are they shitty at construction? If they're this shitty at construction, how'd they build a whole dreadnaught?

The logical leap from there would be, "And then how did they overthrow the quarians?" but I think anyone with a couple of toothpicks and a hard sneeze could take care of that.

Toward the end of the tube, the docking tube breaks off the dreadnought.

So Shepard goes inside and discovers that --

Why do the geth need gravity?!

Anyway, she's able to open up the tube and get everyone in.

And so we enter a combat section.

There's an easter egg in this part of the game. Let's pretend you played as dude Shepard. You're going to have to pretend real hard, because with the helmet on it's hard to tell them apart.

Let's also pretend you did the do with Tali.

"God damn it, Bean, that's nasty." I know! It gets better!

EDI will come over the loud speaker. EDI WILL COME OVER THE LOUDSPEAKER.

I don't like Vega much, but I do like that he's the only character that has the correct reaction to alien sex. (Javik will say that two different species copulating is pointless, but he lacks the "aww hell that shit is gross" that Vega brings to the table.)

Point being, this game is fucking horny.