Noveria: Who You Gonna Call?

So, how are we getting to Peak 15?

MOTHERFUCKING MAKO!

That's the best snow effect MSPaint's got, you all are going to have to deal.

Actually, why in the living hell would you drive the mako around on ice? It sounds like a great way to get yourself killed. The screen shows "Level 1 Hazard" in the bottom corner the entire time, and I've never figured out why. I guess the level 1 hazard is that you got into the mako and tried to pilot it around?

Damn, and you know the entire time, Garrus is just curled around the Mako's heater, like the big six and a half foot tall wiener he is.

So anyway, they reach Peak 15, and right after they resurrect Crono, they're sneaking around, but they don't see any life forms. No guys working the lab, no Benezia, no nothing.

No worries, Mass Effect aims to hit every sci fi trope you can think of. Yes, even the nasty ones.

So there's these giant crawdad things slinking around the lab, and also no humans/turians/asari/otherwise friendly aliens. WHY WHATEVER COULD HAVE CAUSED THIS.

Surprise, Shep and buddies run into the crawdads and shoot the shit out of them. Why, those crawdads, could those possibly be the reason why there's no one else here?

Shepard happens upon a station VI that can hopefully help her out.

Actual line of dialog. Shepard can even respond with, "Crap, a popup." Anyway, Le Shep pumps the VI (named Mira) for information. Benezia's tooling around somewhere, she took the train down to the other part of the lab, but lol, the train's broke. Mira tells you you can get it up and working again, if you do some shit for her, like open the landlines up and reconnect the fuel lines.

Seriously, there are kids born in 2000 that have no idea what a landline is, there's no way Shepard, born in 2154, knows what a landline is. I kind of doubt she's reminiscing for the days of AOL dial up. She probably thinks that electricity travels by blue tooth.

(The game implies, though never directly states, that Garrus is a huge damn nerd really good with technology and shit, so he'd probably be the one to ask out of all of them. Or Tali, I guess.)

So Shepard reconnects the landlines, probably, or maybe Garrus gets pissed and takes it from her, who knows, and then they reconnect the fuel lines, while also not using the power of mass effects.

Then we get to ride on the train!

That's what happens. Exactly.

There's two ways to do the next part. There's the way that everyone else does it, which involves talking to people, and the way that I always wind up doing it, which is wandering around, getting stupidly lost, and then tripping right over Benezia.

I will say that if you talk to people, you get some background on the crawdads: they are called rachni, they are pissed as fuck, and they're what cleared Peak 15 out. Surprise!

So let's say you take my route and just sort of fall over Benezia.

Liara tears her mother a new asshole for, you know, being evil and shit, and then there's a boss fight.

THE SHIT THAT BENEZIA SAYS AFTERWARDS IS REALLY. FUCKING. IMPORTANT. I NOW DEMAND THAT YOU PAY ATTENTION.

Afterwords, Benezia snaps out of it for a second. Saren's been controlling her, see. She describes it as him constantly whispering to her, like she's, I don't know, indoctrinated or something.

She says that wailing on her daughter and her friends isn't her will, go figure. But Saren's got this power, from that ship Sovereign, see, and he can just take over whoever he wants and get what he wants done.

Behind Benezia is the ever-famed rachni queen. If you've ever spoken to a Mass Effect nerd, you probably heard the name.

Apparently Saren is planning something in the Mu Relay, where the Rachni queen is from. But no one knows where the Mu relay is. Well, that's easy enough, Saren's got Benezia. He sent Benezia to vulcan mind meld with the Rachni queen so that she could figure it out and go tell Saren. In her moment of clarity, though, she puts the location on a usb drive and gives it to Shepard, so that maybe Shepard can go fix whatever Saren's got going on.

Saren grabs ahold of Benezia again, so Shepard finishes the job, kablam.

Then shit gets weird. One of Benezia's asari commandos that Shepard kills comes back to life.

(Fuckin' told you all this place was Death Peak.)

The rachni queen picks up an asari through her own sort of vulcan mind meld trick and starts talking to Shepard in shitty music metaphors.

The rachni in the lab were her children, but baby rachni need a mama rachni to develop correctly. Since the baby rachni were taken from her, they went crazy, which is why they're running around the labs eating people's faces off. She asks Shepard to kill them. Which, hey, Shep's a pro, she's got that shit no problem.

Now, then. The rachni queen's stuck in that tank, and she would like out, please.

...

But, see, you could kill her. If you wanted.

...

MASS EFFECT HISTORY TIME: Before humans, the other aliens were booking around the galaxy when they found the rachni. Oh, hey, they said, other aliens! That's rad. That's rad as hell. But the rachni were stupid powerful, and not really up for political debate like the asari liked. They were kind of into eating faces. So what do you do?

The salarians got the idea to "culturally uplift" the krogan. See, during this time, the krogan were just rock stupid turtles who wanted to eat, fuck, and kill, but the salarians put a bit in their mouth and turned them into something presentable. Also, they were strong and they bred like fucking rabbits, because they have four balls, so they made great soldiers. The salarians threw a zillion krogan troops at the rachni and killed them off until they surrendered. Such is the story of the rachni wars. If you're running around the citadel, you can see a statue of a krogan that the council erected in honor of them.

Long point made short, you can be nice and let her go, but she might go around killing everyone. Again. Or, you can just nuke her right there, but she might be a sane rachni, how would you ever know?

I always let her go, myself, you do what you want.

All right, one last thing. Shepard and pals travel down to another area in the lab to take care of those baby rachni like they promised the queen.

Horrifying space bugs are hard to draw, okay?

So anyway, Mira tells you you can activate the neutron purge to clean out the baby rachni. The neutron purge is when Mira fuses scifionium with bullshitium to form unobtainium and that makes, in effect, a tac nuke.

...

WHY IN THE HELL DID THEY NOT JUST USE A MASS EFFECT

I know, I'm only going to bitch about this 134703475 more times, but seriously, they've got this bangin' sci fi technology just lying around, they NAMED THE FUCKING SERIES AFTER IT, and then they just PISS IT DOWN THEIR LEG. It wouldn't be anywhere nearly so bad of a thing IF. THE. FUCKING. SERIES. WASN'T. CALLED. MASS. FUCKING. EFFECT.

So Shepard activates the neutron purge, runs like hell, and then I twitch and sob in a corner.

NEXT TIME: No mass effects, that's for sure.

Noveria: Ice, Ice, Baby

So the council calls up and is like, "Hey, we're picking up some shit from this backwater planet called Virmire, you maybe want to look into that?" but we're doing Noveria first because I'm a maverick renegade.

So. Noveria. Do you remember Hoth? You know, that one planet that Kirk landed on in Star Trek 11 and found Spockimus Prime? It's like the same shit, all icy and snowy and whatever. Mass Effect does love its sci fi roots.

If you land and try to take a party ashore without Liara, one of your party members will bitch at you. I mean, we're going after her mom, right? She might want to be involved. You can actually proceed without her, but ... why?

I like taking Garrus too, mostly because Liara and Garrus are my ME1 Bro Squad, but also because as a turian he grew up on Palaven, the ... uh, turian planet. It's all hot, like Vulcan. You know, the place where the Fire Temple is in Legend of Zelda. (Why yes, I love delicious nerd tears, why do you ask?)

Point being, I imagine this cool little scenario where Garrus is all like, "Oh shit, I've never seen snow before," and maybe they all go make snow angels really quick, I don't know. In reality, if you talk to the bastard, all he does is whine for the entire mission.

So anyway, the Normandy docks, and this lady named Captain Matsuo rolls up and gets all in Shepard's shit because she ... docked and got off the Normandy? I don't know, you'd think that if she was going to get that pissed over it, she wouldn't have cleared the Normandy for landing, but hey. Shep pulls out her Spectre status, and Matsuo has to back down, telling you that Parsini-san is waiting for you.

She really does say "Parsini-san," too. The game alludes to the fact that everyone in the Mass Effect universe, humans, aliens, what-have-you, wear universal translators over one ear. That's why the aliens all magically speak English. I love to think that this is the same universal translator that Hoshi developed. Why wouldn't it be? It even fits in the Star Trek timeline.

Hey, are you paying attention? There's Vulcan, mind melds, and universal translators. People look at me cockeyed when I say that the Star Trek universe and the Mass Effect universe are one and the same, but damnit ~I know it in my heart~.

Point being, the universal translators are fine, but they're not spectacular, and they let words slip through every so often. Matsuo may have legit been speaking total Japanese, and "Parsini-san" just slipped right on through. You'll see a few more words in Mass Effect 2 that the translator can't decipher, quarian ones to be specific, and in Mass Effect 3 we discover that apparently the translator doesn't know much Spanish. (Please tell me at least one of you other nerds was wigging out over that? No one?)

So you're allowed into Noveria's main commerce port, which is really dull looking. Like, seriously, it's a planet made out of concrete. Wouldn't it all freeze and break on an ice planet? Anyway, I know I haven't really been putting in that much effort towards drawing backgrounds, but trust me: on Noveria, you're not missing much.

Right as you come in, Parsini-San, also known as Gianna Parsini, greets you just as a bunch of alarms go off.

(Varren are kind of like dogs in the Mass Effect universe, if dogs were also rats and lizards.)

Shep asks what's good in Noveria, and Parsini tells her that some dame named Benezia was up in here a few days ago. Hey! That sounds relevant! Turns out, Benezia's chilling (har) up at Peak 15.

You guys, wasn't Peak 15 an area in Chrono Trigger? I'm looking that up later, I swear.

Okay, I looked it up. I have Death Peak mixed up with Lab 16, I think. They're both in 2300 AD, can you blame me? It's the future, it's snowy, there's a lab involved, Chrono Trigger and Mass Effect are both great games, I'm just going to run with it. Benezia's up on Death Peak.

To get to Peak 15/Lab 16/Guardia, you've got to drive through the snow, so you've got to go into the garage. Unfortunately, there's a guard in the way, and he can't let you through without a garage pass.

Hey, guard! How do we get a garage pass?

I am not futzing around, that's the actual line from the game.

Oh, Mister Guard, but the gizzard we will polish in Mass effect 2. You wish I was shitting.

There's like a hundred ways to get the garage pass. I know of one.

You wander around Porre until Square makes a better fucking sequel than Chrono Cross what the hell were they thinking you come across a turian sitting at a bar, alone. This is Lorik Qui'in. I have no idea if this is a reference to a lorikeet, which is a kind of bird. It's a big coincidence if it's not.

Lorik used to be in charge of renting office space on Noveria. This is what epic sci fi shooters are made of, are you paying attention? Anyway, a salarian named Anoleis took it over, but he's overcharging people because he's a money grubbing little bastard. Lorik found out, but Anoleis busted into his offices, threw him out on his ... whatever the hell passes for an ear on a turian, and won't let him back in.

I hear that's the plot of Halo 4, by the way. CALL OF DUTY: ADJUSTING RENT RATES.

So anyway, he offers Shep his garage pass if Shepard will break into the offices and upload Lorik's evidence onto a usb drive. The game calls it something else, but let's not shit with each other, it's a usb drive.

Lorik then utters one of the more famous lines in the Mass Effect games:

The story implies that turians are obsessed with human culture. Like, they're some kind of Earth weeaboos or something.

Okay, fine, I have no idea how to draw a united Earth cultural turian. I took a screaming shot at it, though.

Today, my husband will come home from work. "What did you do today?" he'll ask. I will not have the heart to reply, "I drew a turian in a Mickey Mouse hat."

The next part's a little dull: Shep goes into the office, shoots some guys, connects the usb drive, gets the data, and comes back out. The office insides look exactly like the rest of Noveria, which is to say, you're still not missing anything art-wise.

So Giana rolls up just as you exit the office, and she's all, "Hey, what was that noise?"

And Shep's like, "Um, I dunno, snow and shit."

So Giana's like, "Whatever, meet me at the bar BEFORE you talk to Lorik."

So you do, and Giana reintroduces herself as an agent for Noveria Internal Affairs. She's after Anoleis, too! She wants Shep to convince Lorik to testify!

I have no idea why Giana couldn't have just gone to Lorik herself and been like, "We both hate the balls off this guy, let's do this," or why Giana even let Shep go get the data, or even why she wanted Shepard to meet her IN A CROWDED BAR versus an alleyway. Look, the important thing is, we've got to get into that garage so that we can get the jetbike to race Johnny across Lab 32.

So Shep talks Lorik into it. There's actually a [LIE] option on this part of the game, which is very old school Bioware. I appreciated it. I always just take the blue option and convince Lorik that he'll be a hero for testifying.

Shepard goes to see Giana, and Giana's like, "Rad. That is rad as hell. I'm going to go bust Anaoleis now." She actually mutters, "I hate skirts" as she walks off the screen. Any lady in the Mass Effect universe, unless they live on the Normandy, wears these incredibly long skirts so Bioware didn't have to animate their legs. See also: Dragon Age.

So Giana steps off the screen and beats the shit out of Anoleis. Off screen. Whoop dee diddle shit. Before she goes, she tosses Shep a garage pass. Yay, we can go to the garage now! This is the victory music that plays. Okay, maybe not, but I'm on a Chrono roll right now.

Actually, at this point, both Liara and Garrus start bitching about the snow. Hey, hey! Let's not be like that, guys!

So they get to the garage, and just as they're about to load up, they notice these crates.

But that shouldn't be anything, right?

Oh, fuck! Benezia transported geth with her! She must be up to something super bad! We'll have to find out what that is next time.

Next time: MOTHERFUCKING MAKO Y'ALL.

Feros: Eww.

Last time, we threw grenades at colonists to save their lives! Now we venture into the surreal.

Anyway, the crew finds a hole and drops underground and

What in the living hell is that thing? Oh shit, it's all drippy, and huge, and is that slime? Is that it's face or it's ass? Oh eww, and --

WHAT IN THE ACTUAL CAPSLOCKING FUCK IS GOING ON HERE, DID THAT THING JUST PUKE A GREEN ASARI AT ME? OR DOES IT HAVE AN ANUS FOR A FACE? OH MY GOD, I GOT A GREEN ASARI SHIT AT ME. THIS GAME. THIS FUCKING GAME. IT SHITS GREEN FUCKING ALIEN WOMEN AT ME BECAUSE WHAT IN THE HELL.

WHERE THE FUCK IS JIM KIRK WHEN I NEED HIM

I am not even lying, that's what happens. It face shits a green asari at you.

So the green asari, who's a clone of another asari who the thorian ... I don't know, ate, shoved in its ass, it's kind of all the same right now, tells Shep that Saren just blew through here like ten minutes ago, and oh yeah, you're going to be giving up the colonists, and Shepard's like, hey, no, I don't do that for people who were just born anally right in front of me WHAT IN THE FUCK.

You go through a sequence where you shoot the 'neural nodes' of the thorian. Once that's done:

The things I'm having to draw. I'm going to get put on a list.

This is probably one of those things that makes Mass Effect so successful as a sci fi series, though: it's not afraid to do something balls to the wall outlandishly stupid.

So that asari that was caught in the thorians nuts? That was one of Benezia's servants. She explains that Benezia joined Saren to try to get him to "follow a gentler path." Ain't that always the way, dames thinking they can change a man. But, Saren started controlling Benezia. He can do that, see, using the power of his space ship named Sovereign. I promise, that only sounds unbelievably dumb, it'll make more sense later. Saren sacrificed Ms. Testicles here to secure an alliance between himself and the thorian so he could use said thorain to keep the cipher away from Shepard.

See, apparently the thorian was alive when the Protheans were. (Remember, not everyone gets wiped every 50,000 years.) So the thorian sat underground, ate up all the Prothean knowledge there was, and now has the cipher, the thing that'll make the visions Shep got from the beacons make sense.

Asari do this, this thing, see. It's ... it's the vulcan mind meld. It is exactly the same fucking thing. Like, there's going to be some nerd somewhere, and he'll be like, no wait, see, the asari use the power of ~mass effects~, but no, it is the vulcan mind meld. Lady Vas Deferens mind melded with the thorian, nabbed the cipher, and then offers it to Shepard.

Sadly, the alien woman that just exploded out of a sentient plant's testicle and mind melded with Shepard did not manage to make her mystery alien vision that got beamed into her head by a giant beacon make any sense. Mass Effect, ladies and gentlemen, tip your servers.

By the way, the vulcan mind meld is also how the asari have sex. You know. Because this totally wasn't a weird enough sequence.

The cool thing about Mass Effect is that, at least for some people, they wind up filling in some of the blanks that the game leaves.

I mean, it can't possibly answer every question you might have, right? Like, what's Shepard's favorite color? (Green.) Or, is Shep a coffee or tea person? (Coffee.) People wind up thinking about this shit, yo. I suspect they are mostly female, but I can't prove it.

Anyway, I like to pretend that during down time, when the Normandy's flying between planets or whatever, Shepard ferrets herself away in a corner of the mess hall with a jar of peanut butter and a spoon and shakes uncontrollably because seriously, eww, why did that asari have to touch her, mein gott, it just came out of someone's nut.

And, let's say after Feros, Liara rolls up.

(This happened in the game, I'm just adding the peanut butter.)

So anyway, they mind meld, and Liara gets all dizzy and shit. Shepard's the one getting her head fucked around in by every blue dame in the galaxy, and Liara's tired, you guys. Anyway, before she says that she's ~too tired~ and needs to lay down, she says that Shepard's vision is incomplete, or damaged. Helpful! Go wash Shep's spoon, geez.

Let's Get Liara!

After Shepard gets dressed and gets a cold shower or two in, Anderson, Udina, Shepard, Tali, Garrus, Wrex, Ashley and that turd bag Kaidan all rush straight off to the council chambers. Good thing that's too much horse shit for me to paint! Let's pretend that's too much to paint.

So Tali plays Sarenistotally100%guilty.mp3 (in the future they can have symbols in file names, see, 'cause it's the future), and the council's like, "Shit, I guess Saren DID do it!" Don't get used to this, this is like the last time the council backs you up over three games.

They have a quick discussion over what the hell Saren and Benezia are talking about, so let me get you up to speed really quick:

• Benezia is still the same lady as Troi.
• The reapers are giant space bug things that kill people.
• The geth think the reapers are gods.
• Saren and Benezia are after the conduit, but no one knows what it is or what it does.

And then the council's like, "Welp, this reaper stuff is a load of horse shit."

And Shepard's all, "What the hell, I brought you total proof that this reaper stuff is totally not horse shit."

But unfortunately, Tali hasn't synced with iTunes lately, so she doesn't have Thisreaperstuffistotallynothorseshit.mp3 at the ready. She offers to see if she can do a cloud sync, but the council just decides to do this:

Udina bites the head off a cat, eats it, and then demands that the council send in a fleet to the other human colonies to protect, you know, humanity. So the council's all:

And Udina rage humps the railing. The council, for once, actually doesn't have a bad reason: they'd have to send the fleet into the Terminus Systems, which is the Mass Effect universe's own Neutral Zone. It would set off a war. Okay, cool, but there's still humans dying. Is there a good compromise?

They shit a brick, but their hands are tied: the council makes Shepard a grey warden spirit monk jedi spectre, and they hold this little ceremony thing, but there's no punch so who cares.

Speaking of, when I first played the game, I though that "spectre" was the English spelling, and Bioware, being Canadian, which is foreign and all if you're American like me, maybe they use foreign spellings of things? But, my Googlefu tells me that "spectre" is a horse shit spelling, and the actual word is "specter", even if you're in Canada. There's no reason not to call them specters, unless maybe it's a James Bond reference? Why the hell would you be referring to James Bond in your space opera? Fuck it, call them daisy scouts, see if I care.

So you go talk to Anderson, and he's like, "You need a ship. Good news! The Normandy's yours!"

That's really actually what's going on in that conversation, by the way. The story that Anderson keeps dancing around is all in the novel Mass Effect: Revelation. Allow me to summarize it for you: Anderson gets this totally adorable crush on a blonde chick and tries to get his swerve on, but Saren salts his game. If you ever want to turn your brain off and read something a little fanficcy, it's not bad. I'm not going to lie, I read it and was a total girl through the whole thing.

So anyway, Shepard gets the Normandy!

Joker invites Shepard up to the Normandy and tells her to say something to the crew. They make this A Thing through out the games: Shepard is apparently a fantastic motivational speaker?

Motivates me! Let's go!

The game gives you a choice of three areas to go to: Kashyyk, Korriban and Tatooine the various regions of Neverwinter Beregot, Nashkel, and Cloakwood Forrest sorry, you can either go to Ferros and see what's up with the human colonists, you can go to Hoth Noveria and wave hello to Benezia, or you can go to the Artemis Tau cluster and see if you can see what's up with Benezia's kid.

I always do Artemis Tau first, because you get a squadmate. Some people do it last because the dialog changes, but I don't think it's worth it.

So, you roll up to the planet, and Joker drops you off in your little planetside vehicle, the Mako.

Oh, the Mako. We have to stop and discuss the Mako, because the Mako is a piece of shit.

Here are some of the features of the Mako. It can drive up 89 degree inclines!

It will never flip! Ever! Try it! You can't do it.

You know how, in video games, when you have a little car, and you press forward on the sticks, the car goes forward?

You can press forward on those sticks all you want to, champ, but the Mako is way too busy expressing its individuality to take orders from you.

The Mako fucking loves lava. It loves lava more than a lawyer loves ambulances.

The Mako has a gun, but I hope you weren't intending on hitting anything with it.

Seriously, the geth just stand around and laugh at me when I use the Mako's guns.

Anyway, if this is your first time playing, I hope you like the game over sound! I hope you like it a lot! You will be hearing it. Frequently. I seriously nearly quit playing on this mission my first time through.

There's a path you drive along, with geth and everything. You're supposed to shoot them, but, you know, Mako, so I just run them over. It's funny to watch them squish. There's a boss fight, and then you enter a door that I'm pretty sure looks just like a geth's asshole.

Turns out geth keep Prothean ruins in their ass! Why not. So you're in these ruins, and you go down, down, down, down, speaking of very good sci fi, and at the bottom --

-- what the hell, were the Protheans building a pool, what with the white tile?

Oh! The Protheans were building a random asari chick!

Wait, what?

Everyone welcome Liara T'Soni to the stage! She's a graduate student and PHD candidate at Space University. (I love forever that someone's going to know the real name off the top of their heads and call me on it. You nerds.) She was down here, digging around for Prothean shit, when the geth busted in. To protect herself, she activated a Prothean shield, but she got herself stuck and can't get to the controls to get herself out.

She is a PHD candidate.

So Shepard comes up with a safe and sane solution to this.

So Shepard blasts the ground out from under Liara and gets her out that way. Oh, and also, she kind of maybe destroyed the ruin a little bit, so they have to haul ass to escape before they die.

(I always wonder about sequences like this, particularly very early in the series. I mean, Shepard's some sort of hot shot super soldier, so she'd be fine, but her cohorts at this point are a grad student, a mall cop, someone who would die without her hazmat suit, and a guy with four nuts. Don't forget those four nuts, you all. How the hell do they haul ass and keep up with Shepard? Especially with four testicles in the way? I mean, you've got to be in some kind of shape to -- right right, it's just a show, I should really just relax.)

They have a real brief battle with a krogan battlemaster who was sent to capture Liara and drag her to Benezia -- apparently Team Saren thinks that Liara knows what the conduit is? Liara says she doesn't, though. The battle is real damn brief if you took my advice and picked vanguard or adept. Then Joker shows up with the Normandy, and hooray, the day is saved!

There's this room in the Normandy that probably has a real name, but I call it the pow wow room, because that's what it is. Everyone awkwardly sits around in a circle while Shepard stands in the middle.

Liara infodumps for us: she's studying Protheans, and while she doesn't know what the conduit is, and she has no idea what wiped the Protheans out, she does introduce the extremely important concept of cycles. Remember this, because you'll be screaming it come Mass Effect 3: there were guys before the Protheans. We don't know who they are. But, because of ... space magic? ... every 50,000 years, ~something~ comes along and wipes out the dominant species before starting a new cycle.

And Shepard's like, "I bet I know what wiped the Protheans."

So Liara's all, "Nuh uh."

And Shep's like, "Yuh huh."

And Liara's like, "Wull, humans have stinky butts."

Shepard's pretty sure the reapers did it, as per her space dream, but Liara doesn't buy it because Shepard doesn't have a PHD in Space or whatever. Either way, welcome Liara aboard the Normandy! She's our last squadmate until ME2!