Liara's Still Nude

You guys, cry, my tablet was acting up while I was drawing this entry. I need to buy, like, a massive pack of batteries.

... what? Of course I draw MSPixel with a tablet.

... stop crying.

Last time we were cooking around Eden Prime, wondering what the fuck with that Prothean stasis pod that Shepard found. We've come across a computer, maybe it's got codes?

So, uh, let's pound randomly on the keyboard.

Shepard's eyes start glowing lime green --

Actually, I've always wondered if the color depends on your Shepard's eye color? Husbando~'s Shepards all have brown eyes, and he says they glow green too, he thinks. I dunno, answer me in the comments.

While Shepard's at the computer, she sees a vision.

Wave hello to the Protheans! The real honest to hell Protheans! Shepard's seeing the last breath of Prothean civilization. She can do that, see, because she got ate up by the beacon in ME1.

Remember that thing? I bet you weren't expecting that to come back.

(Collectors were around in Prothean times. They were like the husks of the Mass Effect 3 times, of course.)

I wonder if our Prothean will look anything like those guys?

So anyway, we got the code, let's go open the stasis pod up and hope that it's actually a Prothean and not some fucked up Lovecraftian horror.

However will we --

don't hate

Baddies dispensed, let's get to the pod!

Before we crack the pod open, the game kindly gives us a vision of what our Prothean was doing before he podded himself.

HOLY SHIT IT WORKED

... it's been a bazillion of years, but for this guy, it's been like a few minutes. What is he gonna do?

NEXT TIME: Maybe I'll tell you his name!

(Or is it a her? You know, the game really never gives us a clear answer on that one.)

From Ashes: Everybody Wants The Blue

ALL RIGHT SPECIAL EDITION BLACK FRIDAY MSPIXEL

I said it last year, but I hate Black Friday. I refuse to buy anything today. I can't even believe we have a holiday dedicated to shooting each other over sales.

I'm going to can pickles, it's going to be great.

Garrus likes to hang out in the main battery, futzing around with the Normandy's gun.

penis joke goes here

The game gives you a choice here -- keep doing your cricket dude? Or break it off?

Each datable character has a moment where their romance 'locks in', meaning the other characters will stop coming on to you. For whatever reason, this isn't Garrus' lock in moment. It sounds like it, doesn't it?

... there's this implication over Mass Effect 2 and 3 that Shepard has a ~thing~ for scars. Yuck.

Bioware figured out how to animate a human-turian kiss! They didn't have that working in 2 if you'll recall, but they had the top Canadian computer scientists working on it to bring it to Mass Effect 3.

... all this cool stuff that they can do now just means I have to figure out how to draw it.

Garrus goes on to talk about a lot of the stuff we already heard on Menae: he's a reaper advisor now, his dad helped him out, he's a good yeller, so on.

Well?

... okay, you caught me, the original was wine. The wine's weird, they both can't drink wine! Leave me to my peanut butter.

We can go right on and go to the summit, but the game has given us the gift of several side missions. We're going to do a DLC called From Ashes first for reasons that will become apparent.

From Ashes was released right at Mass Effect 3's launch for $10, or free with the collector's edition. I'm sorry, I'm still pretty sure that From Ashes was a part of the original game and later extracted so that Bioware could charge us for it. I know they say they didn't, but the original draft of the script had -- you know what, spoiler spoiler spoiler. We'll talk later.

Anyway, From Ashes starts out when Shepard gets word of some funny Cerberus activity on Eden Prime. ... Eden Prime, doesn't that sound familiar?

The art department sent a memo to the script writers: "Fuck y'all, we spent money modeling the fuck out the inside of the new shuttle, you are now required to write all your exposition scenes inside this thing."

... which means I now have to figure out how to draw the inside of that, too.

Aww, I give them hell, I think it's pretty smart, really.

Bioware tried out a lot of new shit in ME3. Aside from kissing space crickets and shuttle guts, Shepard might occasionally say dialogue related to her background. ... very occasionally. I can only remember one other instance, but it's totally in there. I don't think she's said anything about her raisin' since ME1.

DUN DUN DUN

You can imagine, Liara? Liara has a reaction.

"Wow, I'm so glad I waited an extra two days for all of this well-drawn, intelligent analysis and commentary that MSPixel delivers on," and other things you totally said today.

So, while we're going through the colonies, we're going to have to fight through some Cerberus baddies. Cerberus has a new trick this time: meet the combat engineer!

Yeahokayso. Combat engineers set up turrets, and vanguards and turrets don't like each other. Vanguards work by getting close to enemies, but you can't get close to turrets without getting sprayed by bullets.

Put simply, you see a turret? You're about to get your lunch ate.

There's a couple of ways to deal with a turret. There's the method I usually use, which is:

I charge at them. Then I use Nova. Also, I die a lot.

The more effective idea is to find the combat engineer before he can set the turret up.

Garrus has got overload, he can overload turrets for you to make them easier to deal with.

Pfft. Men.

NEXT TIME: more asari tits, that's for sure.