Any Mass Effect players? [Discuss]

[Chickpea Sarada]

Last year, I bought the Mass Effect trilogy for the PS3.  I initially started with the name Sheila Shepard and kept dying and dying on the first mission.  Which would make one wonder how she was a War Hero.

Now I've picked up the game again and started over as Sigourney Shepard, an Adept.  I'm currently at the point where she just became a Spectre and is about to go out to the other planets.

Anyone interested in talking about the Mass Effect games?  This thread can be for pretty much anything; sharing their own Shepards, class comparisons, favorite companions, Paragon vs. Renegade, jokes, advice, romance, questions, rants etc.

[nearly_takuan]

It struck me as a bit strange that the Council was willing to accept a voice recording as evidence given that we can synthesize voices well enough with current technology that voice-mimicking software is a pretty common and plausible technology in near-future sci-fi.

[Chickpea Sarada]

^ I was too busy going, "Finally!" to think about it, but yeah you have a point. If an eyewitness account wasn't good enough for them, you'd think they'd want something less easy to fabricate.

Question: How do you earn enough credits to afford anything the vendors sell to you? Even doing side quests for people all over the Citadel only gives you so much. And unlike in other games, the enemies you kill don't drop money.

[nearly_takuan]

(I own the PC versions of these games, so there might be slight differences...)

You automatically loot enemies for weapons and mods, 90% of which you'll never use and can sell for credits. IIRC the items you've collected don't actually go into your inventory until you look at your inventory screen, though.

You can also land on and "explore" a bunch of planets that aren't even associated with sidequests or anything; they're just...there. Every planet contains exactly three resource deposits, and occasionally there are enemy outposts, crashed satellites, etc. that you can loot for credits.

Depending on your class, the weapons you find are generally better than what you can buy from vendors until you have access to "Spectre"-tier gear anyway. Also, saving up enough credits to unlock the "Rich" achievement gets you a bonus when you import your save in Mass Effect 2. (Doesn't matter if you still have that number of credits at the end of your playthrough; the achievement state is all it cares about.)

On character creation: for some reason, whenever I make a Shepard without deliberately trying to make it look like anything, he/she resembles a younger version of one of my Japanese grandparents. Adding facial hair and attempting to get the face to look "right" after that yields a Chinese dude.

[Chickpea Sarada]

On character creation: for some reason, whenever I make a Shepard without deliberately trying to make it look like anything, he/she resembles a younger version of one of my Japanese grandparents. Adding facial hair and attempting to get the face to look "right" after that yields a Chinese dude.

I tried to make my Shepard look like me, but once the game actually started she looked...not so similar anymore. At least she still looks Asian, though.

On glitches: Sometimes a character doesn't say his or her line. Thank goodness for subtitles. Sometimes after the character has said the line, the sound from the sentence repeats. I'm also keeping a save file that starts up where the team is positioned so that Wrex looks like he's hopping up and down on one leg

[Conreezy]

Depending on your class, the weapons you find are generally better than what you can buy from vendors until you have access to "Spectre"-tier gear anyway. Also, saving up enough credits to unlock the "Rich" achievement gets you a bonus when you import your save in Mass Effect 2. (Doesn't matter if you still have that number of credits at the end of your playthrough; the achievement state is all it cares about.

I only ever bothered with Spectre gear, and only one type of weapon (assault rifle or shotgun). Most everything else seemed pretty useless, at least in the first one. In number 2, I use the sniper rifle with cloak.

[InkAndComb]

Currently replaying the trilogy as a vanguard! I have no idea why I played as a soldier. I also promised myself to use more than just Garrus and Wrex (this is pretty impossible, Garrus is almost always my first pick in game 1).

I found it weird how your 3 main missions can be done in pretty much any order and the council still complains at you the same.Also, the thorian mission! Never in a game have I wanted to befriend/mind meld with all the aliens and yet I am constantly being treated like an alien murderbomb who destroys antiques while laughing maniacally at the culture damage.
Paragade for rational reasons, mind you.
Kaidan and Ashley never get any action. Hope they like the podbay.

[nearly_takuan]

Kaidan and Ashley never get any action. Hope they like the podbay.

ME3: The Citadel DLC was amazing. Just saying.

I keep starting Vanguard or Soldier playthroughs but I never finish them. I seem to favor the Engineer and related classes. Solidarity, I suppose.

And yeah, I also have a hard time role-playing through decisions I can't on at least some level agree with. I always end up having a smattering of Renegade points and what is for all intents and purposes maximum Paragon, just because. I always choose Galaxia. (watched the other endings on YouTube)

And my Hawke is Diplomatic.

[Conreezy]

I seem to favor the Engineer and related classes.

I absolutely love the vanilla Human engineer class in 3's multiplayer.

Anyone still play that, by the way?

[nearly_takuan]

I do! Though right now DA: I's multiplayer has a hold on my available online gaming time.

Also IIRC the multiplayer is segregated per console; I'm exclusively on the PC version.

[Chickpea Sarada]

So I'm currently on the mission to recruit Liara, dying/MAKO-flipping for the umpteenth time.  Even on the Casual difficulty setting I'm not very good at this.  

In between playing sessions, I've lately been imagining silly what-ifs and headcanons.  We already know the other species have been exposed to human art and entertainment, such as Shakespeare (Elcor version of "Hamlet") and Gilbert and Sullivan ("I Am the Very Model of a Scientist Salarian").  Can you imagine how they would react to something like Star Trek or Futurama?

[nearly_takuan]

Or Mass Effect?

[Chickpea Sarada]

Or Mass Effect?

Uhh.......

[nearly_takuan]

Look, sometimes you prove Minesweeper is Turing-complete and can therefore simulate a game of Minesweeper.

[Spiffo]

Mass Effect is good stuff, I've gone through the trilogy twice and had a blast both times.

The first game is poorly designed in a lot of ways though. Especially early on. Very poor checkpointing, a store that's nearly useless until late-game, repetitive gameplay. Writing's still good though.

Some tips:
- Turn off auto-leveling, for every character. Level them up manually.
- Marksman is a really good ability for Shepard. Leveled up all the way, it practically doubles your rate-of-fire and you'll almost never overheat.
- Tali and Liara are the best allies
---Tali: Electronics, Decryption, and Hacking are good skills. Overload is overpowered because it nukes enemy shields, and also does health damage to machines (geth being the biggest threats in the game, as well as the vast majority of them)
---Liara: First Aid is helpful, Singularity is broken. Level up singularity and she'll shut down entire encounters. The enemies ragdoll when they're pushed or floating through the air, so they're completely helpless.
- Good weapons are almost never worth the cost. You'll basically find good weapons as you go, so just use those. When your inventory gets full, equip everybody with what you want, then sell everything. The inventory isn't worth managing.
- Exception to the cost rule: armor. Specifically non-humanshape armor (such as what Tali or Wrex would wear). You pretty much have to buy better armor from them, so check all the shops (including the fancy ones on the presidium)
- Abuse your abilities to make the game easier. Time is frozen while the ability wheel is up, but you can still aim. Bring up the wheel, point to who you want to target, and blast them with abilities. Special mentions: overload and singularity (although since they recharge separately, you can pop all of 'em)
- Manual save often. The game is poorly checkpointed, and I've found myself accidentally having to re-do entire levels because there were no checkpoints anywhere.

So I'm currently on the mission to recruit Liara, dying/MAKO-flipping for the umpteenth time.  Even on the Casual difficulty setting I'm not very good at this.  

This one's rough. If you die in the fight at the end of the MAKO section, you have to start all over. Manual save, and do it often. The fight's incredibly tough too, I could only get through it by abusing abilities and even then, I could only beat the last ones by abusing the cover and whittling them down. The boss at the end is rough too but it's easier to get through when you unload all your abilities at once.

I wrote more than I thought I would...

[Chickpea Sarada]

Just today, I wanted to try and see what some of the more Renegade dialogue options sounded like and what Shepard with a different hairstyle would look like.  So I started a new game intending to delete it afterwards and then return to my current run.  But then when trying to delete that new file, I ended up accidentally deleting EVERYTHING, including the one I wanted to continue.  So I'm starting all over again!

On the bright side, though, I went through the Eden Prime mission much faster this time around.  Thank you, Spiffo, for the advice on spamming the Ability wheel and its "time freeze + aim" feature.  That got me an achievement and a head start on leveling up!

[Chickpea Sarada]

Well, I finally caught up and recruited Liara.  Time-freezing Ability Wheel, I lurrrve you!  Too bad you can't save in between the boss battle and cut scenes in order to explore the dialogue options when you speak to the council.

---

I chose the Colonist background because I wanted the "I Remember Me" assignment.  And it was more painful than I expected.  I remember having to care for a patient who also had a history of abuse and referred to herself in the third person like Talitha.  She wasn't as panicked as the game character, but we (the nurses) did have to be as non-threatening to her as possible when explaining and giving any treatments.

To anyone who may still be interested in this thread, what background did you pick?  What did you think of the associated assignments?

[nearly_takuan]

I eventually went through all of them, but the one that hit me hardest was the Earthborn assignment, Old Friends. While I had no directly analogous experience (thank goodness), it did stir up memories of when a certain Facebook/gaming friend from the town I grew up in told me he'd been selling a certain very illegal substance to make ends meet. While we'd never really been close, I knew him well enough to know this had definitely not been his plan when we graduated high school.

Well, of course the fantasy version was much cooler and involved making dramatic Hard Choices about whether to show solidarity and loyalty to your bros from Earth, or act out of self-preservation, or do the Right Thing in the eyes of the law and the public, or try to make everyone happy (which with the magic of RPG persuasion tactics can actually work).

The real life version was just me sitting at a computer frantically running Web searches on whether he'd already given me "too much" information (not in the slightest, but it scared me), whether there were safe ways to help him, whether there were unsafe ways to help, and so forth. I still don't know why he dropped that on me; my best guess is he felt a need to tell someone who wasn't complicit. But as a direct result, we haven't had any interactions since.

Um... sorry if that was too heavy.

[Gentleman Johnny]

I was quite disappointed because I played 1 on the 360. Took the extra risk to save the council, didn't kick them to the curb later, installed my human ally on the council instead of the one Earth wanted. . . then when I went to play on PS3, it turned out that the interactive comic that would let me port those choices was DLC, free for new game purchases but $15 for used. That annoyed me so much that I never did play 3.

[Chickpea Sarada]

Finished the game!  I can't wait to continue into Mass Effect 2.

What was everyone's favorite and least favorite mission?  I thought Virmire was the most fun, even though it was sad to lose Kaiden.  A lot of players seem to prefer him over Ashley, but I couldn't bear to have her die because she bears a resemblance to one of my little cousins.  

My least favorite was Noveria because the part where you are running around the corporate cesspool of an office was so unpleasant.  Sure that was probably the intention since it's supposed to be a place dripping with corruption.  But I was so glad to finally be out of there and back to shooting robots.

Second least favorite was the sidequest where you have to get a data module from a monkey.  I was trying to get it the paragon way, and it was so easy to accidentally run over and kill a monkey.

Also, Who did you choose to romance, if anyone? Kaiden bored me (which is why I didn't save him on Virmire), and I tried romancing Liara but her flat voice acting bored me too. So I rejected her at the end, and maybe I'll try for Thane or Garrus in ME2.

[Gman]

What was everyone's favorite and least favorite mission?

My favorite mission was from the ME2 DLC "Overlord" where (SPOILER ALERT) you get to go into the mind of a disabled person who causes the machines to go corrupt. That epic ending was just insane. The music there during the combat was the best combat music in the entire franchise, in my opinion.

My least favorite mission... have to say I'll go with the one in ME1 was also Noveria, because I sucked really bad in combat during my first run and this part was just a pain in the ass to get through, especially the boss there. Second run was a whole lot easier (after I also learned how to properly play and swap ammo/gear as needed, too), but still the bad taste of the first time never went away.

Rumor has it also that they are thinking about remastering the 3 games for the new consoles...... that would be cool :-)

I think that I am so confident about the new mass effect game that they are working on hard right now, that I think I'm going to pre-order it, despite all the recent mega failures of releasing barley functioning beta versions of games and asking full retail price on them (Halo MCC, Assasains Creed Unity, DriveClub)

[The Wisp]

The suicide mission in ME2 is freaking amazing! (Though, admittedly, the giant Terminator clone human reaper at the end was a little weird, it didnt bother me too much) Deginitely my favorite.

[nearly_takuan]

Ahhh it's so hard to choose! Overlord was poignant, but Omega and Citadel were both zany Adam West campy fun, especially as Engineer Shepard. I always liked the way Jack's loyalty mission was set up, too.

The rogue VI mission on Luna in ME1 might be one of my least favorites. It felt clunky and repetitive with the force fields that had to be (slowly, for my class) gunned down, which is unfortunate because it ends up being somewhat important story-wise later. I also didn't much like the part in the Feros sequence where you have to use a limited supply of nonlethal grenades to get past the colonists without compromising, because ME1 grenade physics are counter-intuitive and I had no reason to learn to use grenades before that point.

[Chickpea Sarada]

Oh yeah, the rogue AI on Earth's moon. Now I remember that one. After the enemies had already been cleared out, those barriers blocking you constantly became so tedious.

I tried to start Mass Effect 2, but it seems like the information from the first game didn't carry over to the second. I had the Council saved, but the game started off thinking I let them die. Maybe it was because I turned the system off just as the credits finished and I was supposed to save the playthrough info or something...

[Chickpea Sarada]

^ Excuse me, rogue VI. The game made a point of distinguishing the two.

[whine]

Anyway, it looks like I need to connect the PS3 to the Internet, but the password to the router is not working. My brother is coming home soon, and the system is his, so maybe he'll be able to figure out how to import from the previous game. Hopefully, I'll be able to. I tried starting anew as Shinobu Shepard, but it just didn't feel right. Kaidan died, not Ashley. And the original council is supposed to be alive (yes, even the turian jerk). Did Wrex survive? I don't know!

[/whine]

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