History TearJerker / MassEffect

** Not to make it worse but... [[spoiler: the cutscene actually seems more like Shepard willingly lets go in order to save Joker. At that point, Shepard knows that Joker isn't going to willingly leave him behind but that Joker can't possibly pull him up between Joker's condition and the Collector's firing at the ship. Shepard knows that. So he lets go to give Joker a chance to escape. To -make- him escape so that the message gets out. Redemption (for getting everyone else killed) equals death for a Shepard that doesn't think anyone else is important and that he/she can do it all himself ie doesn't do Loyalty or get Upgrades.]]

* You may be morbidly curious as to how Shepard is able to die, considering how much Bioware played up the AnyoneCanDie angle. Well, [[spoiler:it only happens if you screw up the suicide mission so badly that ''every single one of your squadmates die'']]. Once that's happened, Shepard will [[spoiler:make the final leap to the Normandy, but Joker can't pull him up. Shepard tells Joker to warn everyone else, and despite Joker shouting "''You'' tell them! You're not doing this to me again!", Shepard will lose his grip and fall to his doom.]] The anguish in Joker's voice and his face is palpable in the following ending scenes; [[spoiler:he sounds almost broken when he speaks to the Illusive Man in Shepard's place]]. And for that matter, if you're not shedding a tear at losing your own hand-crafted Commander Shepard, and filled with the urge to go back and do things ''right''...

* This troper had a moment during [[spoiler: Legion's loyalty mission, when Legion realizes the heretics have been spying on the true Geth. He wonders why the heretics have become so different, and then gives one of the saddest lines I have heard in the game (from a supposedly emotionless synthetic, no less)]]:
--> '''[[spoiler: Legion:''']] Where did we go wrong?

[[caption-width:800:"It all seemed harmless..."]]

----

--> '''David:''' Square root of 912.04 is 30.2. It all seemed harmless...Square root of 912.04 is 30.2. It all seemed harmless...Square root of 912.04 is 30.2...it all seemed harmless...

** [[MagnusRyujin This troper]] IS autistic. And pretty good at math. I'm also the younger of two siblings. [[Understatement The end of Overlord hit me pretty hard.]]

** In that loyalty mission there's also a part of the ''Alarei'''s ApocolypticLog that you can find. It's a female quarian who's recording a message as the geth cut into the room she's in. As the video ends, she says (to her own ''kid'') "Be strong for daddy! Mommy loves you very much!" as the geth blast into the room and shoot her.

* For this troper Talitha made me kill the batarian second command in bring down the sky when he said "This was supposed to be a simple slave run" I thought about talitha and decided he had to die. Now should i let balak go kill him or let the alliance torture him....

** This troper didn't fare much better reuniting with Liara. For Shepard, it was only weeks, maybe days ago that they were together...and then you start to realise how much Liara's changed because of interim events. Like with Ashley and Kaidan, it's the whole concept of waking up one day to find that two years have gone by, and the person you loved has moved on without you. That was when it really hit me how much shit Shepard must be going through, even though, being in command, it couldn't be shown.
*** The payoff is that if you remain loyal to your ''Mass Effect 1'' romance, before the Suicide Mission, Shepard picks up the photograph of your loved one and looks at it with a small smile, implying that there will be a bigger payoff in ''Mass Effect 3''.
**** The the reunion scene uses [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7bE3hUwylQ "Vigil"]] from the first game. Thinking about the connotations of the track, even just the ''name'', gives one chills. Such loneliness... *sniff*

-->Tali: Don't need? Shepard, if I don't wear a helmet in my own home, I die! A single kiss could put me in the hospital! Every time you touch a flower with bare fingers, inhale its fragrance without air filters, you are doing I can't!

* Dammit, how has nobody yet mentioned Ashley's/Kaiden's rejection of you on Horizon? Seeing your former girlfriend/boyfriend completely disown you... Even this troper, who can make it through almost every other part of any game or movie without crying, almost completely lost it. Then reading Ashley's email for afters... Christ, that's sad.

* Another one on Tuchanka, a krogan is talking to his companion about a vid about the Citadel, wishing he could see it in person, while the second krogan berates him for looking at it because all he's ever never going to get off his radioactive, warring DeathWorld of a planet..,

** Well, I can't fix the rest of these, but I can fix this one. [[spoiler: If you go straight to the base after your crew get's abducted, the first person you see get...pulped is the only word I can think of, is one of the colonists. Either thay weren't on that ship, or not all of them were. So, you can save some.]]

** A case of [[FridgeHorror Fridge Horror]] when you realize that Legion was [[spoiler:Trying to upload his programs to the rest of the Geth collective; a vain attempt to survive. He cries out "No Carrier" because there aren't any nearby Geth stations or satelites to pick up the programs, so his programs; the very essence of Legion's soul, simply fade away. Legion dies not with a bang, but with a sigh.]]
*** [[spoiler: Note that, to an extent, each of the programs is itself an individual working in tandem and consensus to control the platform. Imagine a group of a thousand, trapped, trying to escape, radioing the only person they know for some confirmation/some rescue attempt. No carrier afterall could also be Legion pleding to Shepard to find a way to save some of his programs.]]

*** This troper noted that salarians are much like humans - relatively fragile and relying on cunning. However, salarians with their short lifespans and even more fragile physiologies -only- do espionage and try not to do direct confrontation in war. So Kirrahe wasn't just throwing his squad (of spies and scouts) into the fire... they were going into a situation that they weren't trained for or accustomed too: make a big noise.

* Samara's mission. [[spoiler: She has to kill her own daughter, because she's an out of control murderer. And that's mostly because of her genes, which are also partly Samara's genes.]] The way she is after it all...