Arrival, Part The End

BEFORE WE BEGIN TODAY: I am laughing my ass off at the fact that someone got to my site by the keywords "horny things to do on a boat." Some people will be remembered for their good deeds, I will be remembered for rechristening the Normandy.

Okay, so. Weren't we chasing Kenson to Project Base's core?

That trigger's going to blow the whole base sky high!

There's a renegade interrupt here to shoot Kenson. I've done this section both ways, and I seriously don't remember the difference. Anyway, if you let her live, she manages to blow herself up.

And, like, only herself too. Not Project Base, or Shepard, or anything that would, you know, further her goal?

Fuck it, let's motor.

That sounds like a good idea! Shepard runs out to the docks to see if she can get in on some of that.

welp

Shepard's got to fight through some mercs and a mech here. Here's a gameplay tip for you: you played vanguard like I told you to, right?

Because the Shadow Broker gravity trick works here: all you have to do is hit a merc with a dose of pull, and they go flying off into the atmosphere.

(You notice Joker's never answering any of these calls? Bioware didn't want to pay Seth Green.)

Remember, we didn't kill Brother Harbinger at the end of ME2, we just killed his collector husk.

Anyway, Joker comes along and grabs Shepard (wordlessly, of course) right as the asteroid approaches the mass relay.

I love this scene. The mass relay gets confused and tries to zap the asteroid somewhere. The mass relay gets confused.

The mass relay blows apart. It is visually stunning, please accept this shitty MSPaint as a substitute.

Back on the Normandy, Hackett comes aboard and checks with Chakwas to see if Shepard's up and functional.

Um. Okay, so in sick bay:

Nah, I'm shitting. But seriously.

Hackett's all, "I'm ~hinting~ here, Shepard," and I'm glad she gets it, because if it were me? I'd have no idea what I was supposed to do.

This is the real honest actual factual ending of Mass Effect 2: Shepard is arrested and transported to Earth to sit in a brig and await trial.

Which means this is the real honest actual factual ending of MSPixel's Mass Effect 2 offering. But never fear! For we have Mass Effect 3, which I think will take only the rest of my natural life to MSPaint!

Also, don't forget: we've got to get our MEDIA on! Comic books! Novels! Even that novel! We really aren't even saying goodbye to Shepard, she'll pop in once and say hello.

... I'll save that for another entry, though.

NEXT TIME: My least favorite media to date, and I sat through Paragon Lost. Twice. You think about that shit.

Activating Project Base

Waking up on a random surgical table: just another day in the life of Commander Shepard.

Am I fucking around, isn't this how the damn game started?

Man, this is some shit to be in, that is for real. I wonder how Shepard will solve this delicate --

I fuckin' love Shepard.

She punches everyone in the lab, legit. Not a single thing can stop her.

Hmm.

There's a console nearby that lets you control a mech.

Said mech goes through the level until he finds the thing controlling the door's force field.

The mech explodes the thing (what is that, anyway?), thus killing himself and shitting in the face of the thematic material in Mass Effect 3.

punchin and nudity: mass effect 3

Anyway, let's run through this level. But first, the reaper clock has some pertinent information!

Shit! They're coming! In TWO HOURS, the reapers are going to get through the alpha relay and reap us all!

You can actually let this timer run out, it's a neat little Easter egg:

... also, if we use math, we can figure out that they doped Shepard for two days. ... why? Like, first, why'd they knock her out? I guess so they wouldn't get punched, but then, why the hell didn't they toss her out the air lock? If they just fuckin' killed her, she wouldn't wake up, punch them all, blow shit up, and then try to activate the project.

There's some kind of implication that the reapers want Shepard alive, but they never really talk about why. Other than she's the best human, I guess, so they want her in their reaper human fuck juice to make their reaper baby the best reaper baby it can be? I think? I am totally guessing on that one.

But you'd think the Lovecraftian horror boats who've been destroying people for one kajillion years would figure out that they'd be more successful if they either just ate her or killed her? Don't they have experience in this shit?

I'm going to pretend it's because the reapers know that Shepard seems to recover from death pretty well.

... and also, they had her sedated for two days, how'd they fuck it up after all that time of --

I am thinking too hard about this, let's move on. Hey, is that a console? This is a scifi story, that'll surely do something good.

Something that amuses me about Shepard: she sounds like she's talking to Siri half the time, like Jennifer Hale was in the recording booth fucking with her phone or whatever and it just happened to be the best take.

Pfft, it's just batarians.

Kenson pops up and yells.

Wait, couldn't they just use a mass effect to move something around and avoid collision?

bwahahahahhahah yeah right

I liked Arrival until I MSPainted it.

Rho, Rho, Rho Your Boat

Do you like infodump entries? This is an infodump entry.

Hey, Kenson, fill me in on this reaper stuff.

Uh, they don't really explain what the artifact has to do with this story that Kenson relays on the shuttle, but they'll sort of imply it soon enoigh.

Here's the thing about Arrival: the plot's pretty good, until you actually start to ask a few questions. Such as:

Oh man! Destroying the relays, that sure would be a shitty ending for the galaxy!

Moving on.

Oh, Shepard, who are you kidding? Any time anyone says "reapers" you're there with bells on.

So, let's go to this Project Base. Or is it a project base? You know, I don't really know.

See, that would have been a time to shove mass effects into the plot. Did we? Of course not. Object Rho is telling Kenson how long until the reapers arrive because of horse anus spelunking adventures.

Kenson takes Shepard in to see object rho. Wait, is it object rho or Object Rho?

Does that look familiar? It fucking should! Let's go:

• This is the thing that Jack Harper and Desolas fought so hard over.
• Vega and Treeya found one of these things and got in a fight over it.

I suspect, but cannot prove, that this is the same thing that got Kahlee into trouble back with Dr. Quon. I don't know for sure because we don't actually see it because that's how fucking books work.

I don't think these objects ever have an actual name besides Object Rho I guess, but are they all rhos? Like, what's the noun here that I'm referring to? I don't know, and they're never explored much past "big thing with spindly bits that reapers can indoctrinate you with." They actually look different in each incarnation -- notice Vega's thing is green? And Object Rho has more purple than I MSPainted there, because I've got a pallet of like 16 colors damnit. They all have different amounts of spindles, too. Jack and Ben's only had two, but Rho has like a zillion.

They all indoctrinate differently. Vega's was kind of dormant, it didn't do shit besides block some frequencies and get blown up, but Jack's indoctrinated the fuck out of anyone who touched it, turning them into husks full stop. It's sort of implied that Quon may? have gotten a touch of the indoctrination from his, but Kahlee obviously worked with it and came out okay.

Shit, that would be a good Saturday post, to compare the Object Rhos. Remind me to do that. Anyway, the point is, I'm only sort of fucking the art up here. It's interesting to me that these things are a recurring theme, but Bioware didn't seem to have any sort of consistency with them.

... wait, did I say indoctrinate? Like that shit that happened to Saren? HANG ON!

FUCK FUCK FUCK THAT'S HOW BEN HISLOP GOT TURNED INTO A HUSK RUN SHEPARD RUN!

Luckily for Shepard, the team that worked on Evolution didn't confer with the team that worked on Arrival, so it just shows her a vision of reapers floating toward the alpha relay.

Kenson pistol whips Shepard out of this vision because ... fuck it, I don't know.

This part of Arrival starts to get a little, um, thin. Kenson's indoctrinated. Surprise! So she wants to get back to Project Base to stop the reapers. Wait, what? No, hang on, it's totally cool, she wants to stop the project now so that the reapers can come through the alpha relay. But now she's got to stop Shepard. But she brought Shepard onto the base?

... this was hinted at in Mass Effect 1, and we're going to learn this in some extended media coming up, but if I had to explain this away, it would go as such: the reapers aren't actually good at indoctrination. If they totally indoctrinate a soul, they turn into a husk. They don't have any skills any more, they're not very useful. If they indoctrinate someone less, that person/alien retains their skills and can use said skills to help the reapers. The danger there is that that person still retains free will. We saw this with Benezia and Saren. Both characters' final moments had them overthrowing their indoctrination just long enough to give the reapers a middle finger.

So it's possible that Kenson had a moment where she realized she could undo what the reapers were forcing her into by bringing Shepard into Project Base, but that is me pulling that one from the deepest recesses of my ass.

What does Shepard do when she's down?

Punch. Good lady, Shep, good lady.

Thus starts an unwinnable fight with Kenson's henchemen, who bring flame throwers. Try to last as long as you can in this one, if you go long enough, Object Rho will actually talk to you!

NEXT TIME: Hey, that timer will be down about 48 hours! Shit! We'll have to hustle!