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Lets talk about [Mass Effect] while my girlfriend plays for the first time
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Silly GooseRegistered User regular
Silly GooseRegistered User regular
She's completely unspoiled and has never really played vidya games beyond Super Mario or Tetris or some old classic arcade games.
Having finished watching all of the X-Files together and looking for something new to watch together in this new world she expressed an interest in Mass Effect since the series is rather dear to me. Unfortunately, it was a rather daunting thing for her, since a previous attempt at Gone Home had her frustrated with trying to handle the Xbox controller.
Did I also mention that she has trouble making decisions sometimes in real life?
So we are going with the solution that she designed her character and makes all the dialogue or other choices, including major mission order and which squad members come on missions, I'll handle that pesky walking and combat.
There will be spoilers in this thread, obviously. Given that the trilogy is 13, 10, and 8 years old I don't plan to cover these unless requested. We haven't decided if we'll play Andromeda yet; not because boo Andromeda (I like it) it's just that Andromeda is just so much bigger I don't know how feasible it is.
Where we're at so far: Almost done with ME1. Have completed Liara, Feros, Noveria, Virmire, and all sidequests to that point including Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station.
We have Bree Shepard, a Sentinel/Bastion, Sole-Survivor Spacer that is mostly Paragon with some healthy Renegade tendencies. Her favorite squad people have been Kaiden, Garrus, and Wrex. She thinks Tali is an annoying child and Ashley is a bitchy racist, but softened on Ash after learning about her family and assignment history. Joker is too cocky. She didn't trust Anderson for a long time but likes Udina even less. Not a fan of the Council but hasn't hung up on them. She thinks Hanar and Elcor are awesome and I super can't wait for her to be exposed to Blasto and the all-elcor Hamlet.
She thought becoming a Spectre was rather exciting.
(Accidentally) romancing Kaiden, having rebuffed Liara rather hard. She didn't want to romance anybody because she though it was improper to fraternize within the chain of command. She totally (accidentally) banged the Consort though. She's glad she doesn't have to drive the Mako as it looks very frustrating.
Recap of major decisions:
Took Wrex to see Fist. Not major but funny.
Saved all the colonists on Feros, but did not have enough points to persuade the corporate Bean Counter and thus ended up shooting him. Spared the green Asari lady.
Spared the Rachni Queen on Noveria; this wasn't a difficult choice for her at all. She also helped Parsini arrest Anoleis and was about to shoot the cops that wanted to take her gun.
Virmire was last night. I have a couple pictures and some low quality videos, but I'll ask her permission before putting any of that up.
The conversation with Wrex was pretty tense for her. She didn't realize he might die until they had pulled guns on each other. Luckily she had done his family armor quest so that was resolved and he lived.
She sent Ashley to work with Kirrahe.
The Reveal: right after sending the Asari researcher running because she was going to nuke the place, she said "I bet Sovereign is from the Prothean time, or maybe even was a Prothean ship or something."
Her reaction to talking with Sovereign right after that.
The Decision:
There was a lot of "WHAT?! WHAT!? NO!" going on here. There was anger. There was questioning how she got in this position. There was demanding reloads of old saves to try and not get to this point. There weren't tears but it was close and there was definite sadness.
20 minutes of anguish and her going back and forth with herself and she made her choice. She tried to tell Kaiden to hold on just a bit longer and part of her was still hoping she could save both, but his response killed the rest of that hope. Ashley survives Virmire.
And that's where we left off last night. She talked with the Council and we called it a night.
Damn, I really wish I could experience this series for the first time again, but watching her experience it is almost as good.
Having finished watching all of the X-Files together and looking for something new to watch together in this new world she expressed an interest in Mass Effect since the series is rather dear to me. Unfortunately, it was a rather daunting thing for her, since a previous attempt at Gone Home had her frustrated with trying to handle the Xbox controller.
Did I also mention that she has trouble making decisions sometimes in real life?
So we are going with the solution that she designed her character and makes all the dialogue or other choices, including major mission order and which squad members come on missions, I'll handle that pesky walking and combat.
There will be spoilers in this thread, obviously. Given that the trilogy is 13, 10, and 8 years old I don't plan to cover these unless requested. We haven't decided if we'll play Andromeda yet; not because boo Andromeda (I like it) it's just that Andromeda is just so much bigger I don't know how feasible it is.
Where we're at so far: Almost done with ME1. Have completed Liara, Feros, Noveria, Virmire, and all sidequests to that point including Bring Down the Sky and Pinnacle Station.
We have Bree Shepard, a Sentinel/Bastion, Sole-Survivor Spacer that is mostly Paragon with some healthy Renegade tendencies. Her favorite squad people have been Kaiden, Garrus, and Wrex. She thinks Tali is an annoying child and Ashley is a bitchy racist, but softened on Ash after learning about her family and assignment history. Joker is too cocky. She didn't trust Anderson for a long time but likes Udina even less. Not a fan of the Council but hasn't hung up on them. She thinks Hanar and Elcor are awesome and I super can't wait for her to be exposed to Blasto and the all-elcor Hamlet.
She thought becoming a Spectre was rather exciting.
(Accidentally) romancing Kaiden, having rebuffed Liara rather hard. She didn't want to romance anybody because she though it was improper to fraternize within the chain of command. She totally (accidentally) banged the Consort though. She's glad she doesn't have to drive the Mako as it looks very frustrating.
Recap of major decisions:
Took Wrex to see Fist. Not major but funny.
Saved all the colonists on Feros, but did not have enough points to persuade the corporate Bean Counter and thus ended up shooting him. Spared the green Asari lady.
Spared the Rachni Queen on Noveria; this wasn't a difficult choice for her at all. She also helped Parsini arrest Anoleis and was about to shoot the cops that wanted to take her gun.
Virmire was last night. I have a couple pictures and some low quality videos, but I'll ask her permission before putting any of that up.
The conversation with Wrex was pretty tense for her. She didn't realize he might die until they had pulled guns on each other. Luckily she had done his family armor quest so that was resolved and he lived.
She sent Ashley to work with Kirrahe.
The Reveal: right after sending the Asari researcher running because she was going to nuke the place, she said "I bet Sovereign is from the Prothean time, or maybe even was a Prothean ship or something."
Her reaction to talking with Sovereign right after that.
The Decision:
There was a lot of "WHAT?! WHAT!? NO!" going on here. There was anger. There was questioning how she got in this position. There was demanding reloads of old saves to try and not get to this point. There weren't tears but it was close and there was definite sadness.
20 minutes of anguish and her going back and forth with herself and she made her choice. She tried to tell Kaiden to hold on just a bit longer and part of her was still hoping she could save both, but his response killed the rest of that hope. Ashley survives Virmire.
And that's where we left off last night. She talked with the Council and we called it a night.
Damn, I really wish I could experience this series for the first time again, but watching her experience it is almost as good.
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Just have her yell "DO IT"
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Which I'll admit isn't a terrible option, maybe terrible for my productivity though.
She lives in Canada so you've probably never met her.
Yes! But she also has to use her fist to accentuate it just like Udina does.
She also convinced Saren to shoot himself and put Anderson on the council.
Starting ME2 was rough for her. The intro sequence had her cursing Joker because she wouldn't be spaced if it weren't for going back for him, and she didn't even really like him that much anyway, and was there an option to leave him?
She also reacted exactly the way I bet the writers wanted for the first bit. "I've been dead for two years? TWO YEARS?" What about my crew?" and "I have implants? Am I even a real human anymore?"
Lots and lots of "I want my crew back. Where's Garrus and Wrex? And I was just starting to like Ashley" Which is enlightening to me. I remember thinking Garrus was a whiny pushover in ME1 when I first played. Wrex was cool, but I really did not like Garrus. I thought everybody was misremembering how Garrus was in 1 because they loved him 2 and 3, but now I guess I'm the weird one.
She was also beyond thrilled to get a grenade launcher. She complained a bunch in ME1 about the enemies having rockets but she didn't.
As of now she has recruited Kasumi, Zaeed, and Mordin. She despises Miranda and keeps trying to "put her in her place" in conversations and is annoyed when it doesn't work out. She has skewed hard toward Renegade so far, mostly because she bristles at Cerberus. Joker is growing on her a lot more than he did before, and she no longer talks to Jacob because instead of Shepard just talking like a normal person it immediately becomes over-the-top flirting with no way to stop it.
She had her Spectre status reinstated, which was the only reason she was nice to the Council in that conversation.
Does anybody know how the class skill bonuses to Paragon/Renegade work? Each rank gives like a 20/70/100% bonus to the reputation points, but the internet seems pretty split on whether it's purely retroactive or applies to points awarded going forward too and is there for a proportional wash. Given that the Charm/Intimidate dialogue system in Pants-on-Head in ME2, I'm trying to figure out if she'll be in the better position to get those bonuses asap as she levels or wait a bit for best effect.
There's no not saving Joker, it has to happen.
and don't let anyone take yer fuckin guns
“Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps.”
--Mordin Solus
It got worse the more I thought of it
the fans and the ending made it really hard for me to continue enjoying the rest
kai leng?
You can absolutely trash Kai Leng in the fight against him, but you still lose through the most egregious deus ex machina I've ever seen because that's how they wanted the story to go. Insanely frustrating. Just have him have beat us there or something, don't let us win the fight and then go NO SHEPARD LOST AND IS SAD NOW.
like, he gets clowned on a lot and other characters in the game even say how much he sucks, but he still succeeds for most of the game for no reason except that it needs him to
what a villain
He's obviously the pet antagonist of a weeb DM; it explains everything.
KL was also supposed to have "metal legs" in his concept stage.
Steam ID XBL: JohnnyChopsocky PSN:Stud_Beefpile WiiU:JohnnyChopsocky
But nothing can fix Kai Leng.
Absolutely, I have them all, and like you said, Citadel is the best.
In Bring Down the Sky she actually spent a fair bit of time deciding about the hostages. She ended up saving them because she wanted Kate Bowman on her crew and she figured if she went after Balak he'd just escape anyway.
We even did Pinnacle Station because she wanted everybody to know her Shepard is the best.
Arrival makes a great transition from ME2 to ME3. Kasumi is worth it just for the Renegade Interrupt in the vault of her loyalty mission and we both enjoy heist movies so she'll get a kick out of the whole thing.
Discussions of it being Day-1 DLC aside, Javik is the best and taking him to Thessia with Liara is hilarious.
oh right
I thought because you separated Kai Leng and Thessia there was something else about Thessia.
Yeah that fight is all kinds of bullshit and dissonance between cutscene and gameplay.
I'll report back once I start
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
Just proving how much of a badass he is by breaking into someone's apartment and eating their cereal
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Do you know some French already? Because that sounds awesome.
And slightly unrelated, I wonder what it would end up looking like if I did a trilogy run in a language I didn't understand at all. I've played enough times to be able to suss out most of it by memory...
I think there's also some bit about him pissing in their plants instead of using their toilet for... reasons??
I'm working on it! Studying it through a local college's online program, but in Ontario everyone learns it in elementary and some of high school, so I have a base to go on. I know most of the script pretty damn well so hopefully I'll get a lot of the translation through context!
3DS Friend Code: 0216-0898-6512
Switch Friend Code: SW-7437-1538-7786
I've always considered him an effectively hateable character for those reasons, and have never taken truck with the idea that the game wanted you to consider him a genuinely cool badass.
thems good video games
The two lead in books suggest he's dangerous and designed by Illusive Man to be an anti-Shepard counter. Then in your first two encounters with him, Shepard is cutscene forced to come out the worse in both battles. The real annoying part is that the Vanguard you fight in Lair of the Shadow Broker comes off as MUCH more capable and dangerous than he ever does...
once it gives you the choice of the three ending options, the friend just quit out of the game and uninstalled it
Like, nope, done here, don't need to see any of those!
Kai Lang acts like a twelve year old boy turned into a ninja because he is literally a twelve year old boy. That is my headcanon.