And we're back in space, with the ambient music that stereotypically is assosciated with this kind of thing
I am a geek. I wear glasses, don't care too much about personal hygiene. I'm skinny, I have gadgets filling up my bedroom (which is where I live, and which is a mess). Oh, and I like sci-fi books, films, games, models and have a lifetime ambition to set foot on Mars.
Casually like.
Hence, when Mass Effect came out, I squealed like a little girl and went and got it. Not quite literally, but you get my point.
My getting it coincided with one of my then friends getting it for his 360. I am forever grateful I got it on the PC, where things kinda make more sense.
This is my guy
He's one of the presets, I never really care what my male characters look like. I wanted him to look a lil bit righteous, he's called Gawain. Yes, that's one of the Arthurian names; yes, I'm aware of it; yes, it's deliberate. He's a PARAGON. The guy who we assosciate with the stereotypical heroes. Maiden in distress? He's your man. Hostage situation? He'll negotiate his way through it.
I hate him already.
This is, however, a necessary evil. I accidentally deleted all my Mass Effect saved games. Mass Effect 2 saved games only have the primary story triggers set if you start them afresh, and everything I've read about Mass Effect 3 says that all those secondary triggers from Mass Effect 1 are going to have omgwtfthisisgonnabehuge effects on things that happen then.
Hence, I have to get the completionist achievement.... 3 times.. with 3 characters.
A soldier, a biotic and a vanguard. That's someone who blows things up with weapons, someone who does it with psi powers and someone who has a lil bit of both.
It will take me about 50-60 hours to do it 3 times, maybe a little more. By the end of it, I'm going to be sick of all of it. I know I am.
The cutscene that starts this game off (congratulations Bioware on making kickass cutscenes by the way, some of the ones in Mass Effect are amazing, and only get better throughout the series so far) continues with a shot of our pilot, Joker
And a named character with a very short lifespan, Nihlus the Turian Spectre
The two really don't get on that well, and after a merry bit of slagging him off, we finally get to see a bit of the ship we're flying. We walk from the cockpit into the comms room, for a meeting with our captain (and we get to control this bit. Mass Effect is more like an interactive DVD than a game at times)
Here's a bit of the ship.
And our meeting with Nihlus and Captain Anderson (surprisingly, he's the captain of the ship. Never guessed that one from his name)
Mission isn't routine, it's all just a sham so that we can pick up some ancient alien artefact. Blah blah blah. Oh look. Aliens trying to kill the people guarding the ancient artefact.
Oh wow, atsmospheric shots of the of the planet as our stealthed ship heads towards the dropzone. Never saw that coming.
Yeah. It's stereotypical. I love it all really though.
We come under attack
We lose a squadmate, only for his replacement to turn up practically instantly in the form of Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. Who is running away from the enemy. Stupid bitch, guns don't fire over your shoulder do they?
We see the aliens, which we now discover are robots (called Geth, incidentally, which gets explained straight away. Or at least, we're told that's what they're called. Not really an explanation is it?). And look! Torture of innocent civilians! Could we have guessed that such a catastrophe would happen?
We fight off the rest of the Geth with Ashley, recruit her, then continue our path along the road.
We find out just what those Geth were doing - turns out the spike turns them into zombies, which have a nasty EMP attack that eats shields. Not brains, shields. Bioware game designers decided that instead of brains, their players would have shields. Or something.
Blue zombies. Smurf zombies maybe?
Kill those, find a doctor, hiding in a room with her (paranoid, very shaky, deserving to die - if only I wasn't a pargaon eh?) assisstant.
Nihlus gets shot, by one of his 'close friends'
Big scary alien spaceship takes off
We fight our way through, get to the beacon - which we were supposed to be fetching off of the planet - which has miraculously been activated. Gawain ends up flying through the air, but it's all fine, cus the beacon explodes.
Ashley goes to tend to him as he flies across the plateu they're on. Note how Kaiden (my other squadmate) mysteriously disappears here. It's a known glitch, but I personally thing that it's just a case of Ashley dispatching him to have a bit of one-to-one time with the captain, who she reckons is cute.
We find this out later, but hey? Who cares? We get to have sex with her, and in a game rated 12, that's not bad!
Er, I mean... video game sex is overrated, and in no way should contribute to what games are top sellers, nor is video game sex the reason why 'The Witcher' enjoys such rabid enjoyment from it's hardcore fans who complained that pressing a mere 4 keys simultaneously was dumbing down the game.
Not forgetting the thousands of submenus, none of which actually seem to mean anything.
I should really get around to learning how to play the Witcher... properly that is, rather than just keyboard mashing and hoping I hit the wtfpwn set of keys that I presume exists somewhere.
The tutorial over, we head back to 'The Citadel' which is this pretty amazing spacestation
With a huge fucking spaceship parked outside
Joker isn't impressed, reckons that size isn't everything. I suspect that this is probably compensation for something, but as I'm straight, I'm not overly curious as to how true that is.
We get a couple of nice views of the Citadel after we dock
Nice fake clouds. Nice city too. Pity that it's full of people trying to kill me, or who hate soldiers, or who just hate humans. It's funny how that works in video games. Everyone hates you, then you do some meaningless, entirely pointless task for them (like killing their sister) and suddenly they're your best friend.
Seriously though... who does favours for people who hate them? What kind of naive twat is my character? I don't like to ask too much. It makes me want to jump him off of a cliff. Repeaetedly.
We meet with the council, who refuse to believe that Saren - the guy who murdered Nihlus - commited the crime. Saren implicates Gawain in the murder of Saren (seriously? Gawain wouldn't hurt anyone unless he had a good reason, like.. say.. they had guns and were shooting at him!). We have to prove Saren's guilt.
All so stereotypical, but that's what I love about these games. No surprises at the beginning, so you can skip the dialogue. Mostly.
We then get to the one bit of Mass Effect that was knocked in every review. The goddamn lifts. These things take up more time than the running about, than the missions in the citadel. They take up more time than conventional loading screens. I have no bloody idea why they were included, and think that they're a piece of shit.
Whatever happened to continuous gameplay with stairs? Or something slightly better than a lift... Although at least we get the banter between squadmates to distract us, and the promise of a Shakespeare play on at a local theatre, run by the slow-talking emotionless aliens. It says that it's only a 40 hour performance.
That's longer than most BBC TV dramas feel. I feel sorry for alien races with attention spans that long.
Maybe the 40 hours include naptime though? That would be acceptable. Ish.
Here's a picture of one of the lifts. I'll try not to fill up this blog with them. They would dominate it.
We head down to the stripclub in this part of town, brush off an assassination attempt and meet with our contact. Who, honestly, had nowhere better to be than a stripclub. Honest. He tells us about Garrus, who we met briefly before. Garrus was the Turian in charge of investigating Sarren.
The contact, whilst being generallly unpleasant, tells us to head off to find him at such and such a place. Sure enough, we find Garrus about to interupt an extortion racket run by Fist. He tells us that Fist has the evidence we need to prove that Saren was responsible, so we go and shoot our way to Fist - through his armed guards, and the nightclub our contact was at shortly before. Fist tells us that the evidence is in the hands of a Quarian named Tali, who he had ordered killed, and who was meeting someone in the back alley of such and such a place.
We go there, shoot a few more aliens in the head, rescue Tali who immediately produces the evidence she was trying to sell to someone about thirty seconds ago. Blodoy stupid Quarian. I would have paid her for that.
The ambassador isn't too happy about all of this and says so
It appears that the ambassador of the humans to the aliens is a xenophobe. Typical or what?
We head up to the council anyway with the evidence where Ambassador Udina gives a very compelling speech
All of this kerfuffle out of the way, the council declare Saren a rogue and immediately discuss who to replace him with. Sure enough, Gawain is the number one candidate for becoming a Spectre.
Cue awe-inspiring speech.
"It is the decision of the Council that you be granted all the powers and privileges of the Special Tactics and Reconnaissance branch of the Citadel."
"Spectres are not trained, but chosen. Individuals forged in the fire of service and battle; those whose actions elevate them above the rank and file."
"Spectres are an ideal, a symbol. The embodiment of courage, determination, and self-reliance. They are the right-hand of the Council, instruments of our will."
"Spectres bear a great burden. They are protectors of galactic peace, both our first and last line of defense. The safety of the galaxy is theirs to uphold."
"You are the first human Spectre, Commander. This is a great accomplishment for you and your entire species."
My first act? Recruit Garrus, a non-human into my team.
Second act? Pick up an assassin-for-hire who wants some work. Also a non-human. So far, so good. Really plumbing the role for proving human supremacy here.
I head back to the Normandy, where I discover the ship is now mine to do with what I want, so I prepare for more journeys into the unknown to track down Saren.
Next time? Follow Gawain as he seeks the perfect girl to make Ashley jealous, as to further his and her relationship together!
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