Space Parenting

Before we traipse on with the plot, we have a few loose ends to tie up.

I can't believe no one called me out on leaving the Krogan bong uncracked.

(Also: today's update brought to you buy Imgur because Photobucket was being a little bitch.)

Of course, it would make sense to crack open Dr. Okeer's project and see what we've got. We could have a pretty powerful squadmate in there! Brother Tim DID want us to build our team!

... but all the Cerberus folk, they say alien technology? No bueno.

I said Cerberus didn't like it.

Hey, EDI, make yourself useful:

Whatevs, let's crack this bitch.

Meet Grunt! He's our very own baby krogan! Shepard hatched him, so obviously she's his mom.

Of course, thanks to Dr. Okeer's tinkering, he's fully grown, but we'll just count that as him saving us the trouble of having to buy krogan onesies.

Grunt is another example of the fact that Bioware has the best art team on the damn planet. This is Wrex, from last game. Look at the picture, not just the MSPixel rendering. I'm pretty sure he's somewhere between six and eight hundred years old. The Bioware art team very smartly was able to take the design of an old Krogan and very perfectly make a very cute widdwe baby krogan.

Grunt also offers up this hilarious line:

Anyway, good on us, we've got Grunt now.

Man, I'll tell you, though, when I had Shepard check her email, and I found a letter from Anderson saying that we had to go to the council chambers to 'explain ourselves?' My tail went inbetween my legs big time.

Let us, then, to the Citadel, and let us then make a beeline for --

The hell?

This is Kasumi Goto, popping up on a Citadel advertisement. Her recruitment mission is like 15 whole seconds: tell her "silence is golden," she says something about Shepard helping her find something she lost, and then she moves aboard the Normandy. Easy. I wish I could dedicate more panels to it, but seriously, that's about it. Anyway, at least we have Kasumi AND Grunt now.

NOW to the council chambers.

Oh! Hell! Anderson! Good to see you man, what's up!

Now that I've played the whole series, been through the books, and a few of the comic books, this scene actually carries some weight for me. But I swear to hell, I'll never forget the first time I came across it. Our living room:

(Not even kidding, this was the first moment I ever even thought about him being black. This is because I am literally very stupid.)

I ... if I had to guess, Bioware decided that they'd have several people of many different races in their game. That's good. They also maybe decided that they'd have these people of color all look different. That's good too, that's very good. So I guess they got Jacob, and they were like, "We'll make him a dark skinned black guy," and they got to Udina, and they were all, "We'll make him a light skinned black guy," and they got to Anderson, and then they just fucking ran out of brown crayons or something, I don't even know. I'm not entirely sure where the logical leap of "We'll make this black guy BRIGHT FUCKING FLORIDA ORANGE" even happens.

Seriously, it's like the one 'ka-thunk' moment the art department has.

He's less orange in ME2, so I'll switch from dark orange to regular orange for now. Thanks, MSPaint! Let's move on:

Now it's the plot's turn to shit itself. I'm not making this next bit up, it's a very famous line from in the game:

... really.

No, see, the council decided that they just don't believe in reapers. Yes, I know we all saw Sovereign last game, yes I know he attacked the Citadel, yes I know the council was fucking there. The in-game explanation is that the council has decided that the geth did it, and Saren led them, and Sovereign is off in Valhalla with Santa Claus and Super Man.

Yes, I know this is dumb as hell. In theory they're denying it because they're anti-human, but ... I mean, come the fuck on.

And poor Anderson is all, "Well, I believe you," and Shepard's like, "Well duh, because IT'S THE FUCKING TRUTH WHAT THE HELL!?"

So the rest of the meeting goes great, let me sum it up pictorially:

The council agrees to reinstate Shepard as a spectre so long as she keeps to the Terminus systems, and Shepard takes it, because why wouldn't you? You'd have to be reaper-denying dumb to turn that down.

This is already long, so I'm going to have to skip over the scene where Udina gets scared to death by Zombie Shepard and Anderson bitches him out, and skip to the end conversation with Anderson and Shepard.

NEXT TIME: We'll deal with less bosh'tets. Wait, what?

Finally, The Finale To Horizon

Okay, in case you can't follow it that well, or you didn't pick it up from my delicate yet detailed artwork in the last post, or possibly you're just stupid (this is me), here's the skinny on what's going down:

Horizon was a colony of feral peasants humans in the terminus systems that was just kind of sitting around doing its colony thing until the Alliance came in, possibly wearing Captain America costumes, and installed a bunch of big ass defense towers. The logic there was that if the collectors came knocking, the colonists could shoot them out of the sky. However, the collectors saw the big ass defense towers, figured the colony was a threat, landed, took out the defense towers, and is currently collecting the shit out of some colonists. Whoops! Oh Alliance, you so cray!

But, if Shepard can get those towers back on line, she can unload a hot load in the collector's ass!

... a hot load of lead.

Why are you looking at me like that?

Look, this is Mass Effect, it's actually quite surprising that the final solution to the collectors isn't having sex with them.

There's some people out there that think Shepard's some kind of technical supergenius; I rather like the idea of her being something of a big dumb coconut.

Oh, but hey, guess who's calling!

saying nothing moving on

Oh, honey. None of us like being creeped on. It's quite surprising that Harbinger isn't rocking a neckbeard and a fedora.

So anyway, we now come to a battle between the speed of the DSL connection on the Normandy and Harbinger trying to keep it in his pants.

Oh, and Harbinger brought his best friend, the praetorian!

Even if Shepard does get Harbinger to fuck off, the collector ship toasts out of there, unharmed and full of colonists. GOOD MISSION EVERYONE, GOOD MISSION.

I'm only being a little bit cute, here. I think the actual in-game line is email, but no, that's what this portion of the game is, it is Spacebook drama.

Shepard says a really important thing here -- you'll notice, she doesn't understand that she was dead. This comes up in ME3.

I like bringing Garrus and Miranda on this mission for a wide variety of reasons, one of which is that you get four totally different viewpoints: Ashley, who's very pro-Alliance, Miranda, who thinks Cerberus is pretty rad and does a lot for humanity, Garrus, who's an alien and isn't going to like Cerberus no matter what they do for him, and Shepard, who wants everyone to shut up long enough for her to kill the reapers.

Right, I know, I could have done the same thing with Mordin and Jacob, but I like drawing Garrus and Miranda better.

(This is one of those fun scenes that can change around depending on how you interpret Shepard. I always thought Shepard wanted back into the Alliance and would leave Miranda cold in a heartbeat if she could, but some people think she's more chill with Cerberus than that.)

So, uh, time to check in with the Illusive Man. Shepard's in a good mood, though, so allow me to sum it up for you pictorially.

Okay, I've never figured this one out, but Brother Tim somehow lets slip that he lured the collectors and the Alliance to Horizon by leaking the fact that Shepard was ressurected. I have no idea how that works. Did the collectors (or the Alliance) think Shepard would specifically hit up Horizon first? I've watched the scene a few times, I've hit a few sources on the Internet, I've asked my husband, I can't figure it out. Either way, it's a good opportunity for Shepard to get pissed, so,

Then, Brother Tim drops an endgame clue.

Oh man! We'd better build our team!

I wonder if we have any extra team members just, you know, lying around?

NEXT TIME: Krogan bongs, which I hear are legal now.

Happy N7 Day!

Bioware declared their own holiday today! Which I think is rad as hell, and I'm not even being sarcastic or ironic. Everybody get excited over N7 Day!

(Get it? Because it's November 7th?)

It's also my friend's birthday, but you all don't know her. Actually, she's pretty awesome, maybe you should get to know her? She likes elcors. But she thinks Dragon Age is better than Mass Effect, so we can assume all her taste is in her mouth and move on.

Okay, point being! Since this is the first ever N7 day, none of us have any idea how the hell to celebrate. Bioware's promised us surprises which I bet will likely manifest in at least some new swag in their store and some multiplayer stuff, but who knows? There might be something else rad. Watch Twitter, I bet at least one person tweets out N7 cupcakes. Or Pinterest. (It is my favorite thing forever that Bioware is on Pinterest.)

I've known for a while that I'm going to have to explain what the hell an N7 is anyway, so today's as good a day as any. So, what is N7?

Besides an arrow pointing to Shepard's crotch?

In the Alliance military, your job is designated by your letter. N is the special forces. In theory, Ashley, Kaidan, Joker, Chawkwas ... hell, even Engineer Adams have their own letter, and it's probably not an N, but I can't tell you what it is because we never actually find out what the other letters are.

The 7 denotes proficiency. If you're a special forces person, you go train in Rio de Janerio for a while to earn your N1. You seriously even have to be a badass to get that far. If your ass is the baddest there is, you can take training for N2 through N6, and if you complete the N6 training especially well (or just kiss up really good I guess), the Alliance bestows upon you the coveted rank of N7.

There's only a few N7s in the Mass Effect world, since it's a fucking hard rank to get. One is Shepard, obviously, since I keep drawing her with that weird scribble on her armor. There's Lee Riley, an officer who enters the story for ten whole seconds, so don't worry about that name. There's a spoiler character who I have to save for later. I bet you can guess the last one on my list.

Yeah, hey, that orange bastard.

You never see Anderson wear N7 armor in the game -- I seriously had no idea he was an N7 until I read it in the wiki a while back. You could figure that he ran around in it in some scenes in Revelation, but that was a book, so we're all just guessing there.

Harbinger, With The Soul Of A Poet

Last time, on MSPixel: We defended a pumpkin!

Ha, no, but really, who else saw that on multiplayer halloween? Was that not adorable? I'm hoping some folk on tumblr screenshotted that. Shit, does that mean it's canon now that there's Halloween in the Mass Effect universe, celebrated globally? I always wish they made a bigger deal out of Janiris, but --

Okay, I'm being way too big a damn nerd. Let's just go back to Horizon.

Oh fuck, are we learning, children? Husks are helping collectors. Husks are reaper products. Do the collectors know the reapers, or do they just like buying reaper shit off of Space Amazon?

Also of note!

Le Team du Shep keeps finding these cocoons everywhere. Maybe the collectors spin them? They've got people inside. Gross.

So, Shepard's cooking through some enemies, as you do --

I'm telling you, give vanguard a go, you won't regret it.

You children savor this moment right here. In the next panel, I'm seriously about to commit Mass Effect sacrilege.

So, um. Yeah, hey.

The entity that keeps possessing random collector bodies is known as Harbinger, because he won't quit screaming about being the harbinger of our something something. It's important to remember that Harbinger isn't a collector, he just borrows random ass collector bodies to do his bidding.

So naturally his bidding is rolling up on Shepard.

Okay, I'm being at least a little cute here, but here's the thing? Not very. Harbinger loves parking directly up Shepard's ass and pestering her. In fact, welcome to our very first Harbinger boss fight!

He's a son of a bitch because he keeps possessing different collectors, but he does go down.

There's a theory that Harbinger is so interested in Shepard specifically because she defeated Sovereign, thus proving herself The Most Threatening Human. The game never really outright gives an explanation for Harbinger's motivations, though, so truthfully, my Tsundere Harbinger is probably just as valid. Or, hell, even more so given that we're playing an alien fucking game.

Everyone winds up ducking into a bunker to get away from Harbinger the Creeplord.

I have no idea why you follow this blog.

NEXT TIME: Perhaps less turian genitalia discussion.