All righty, I took the Illusive Man's call, forgetting that doing so would cause the Normandy to go to the location of the "derelict" Collector ship immediately afterwards, so I had to go through that part of the game before heading to Omega.
(Btw, Illusive Man? There was no good reason not to tell us we were probably going to be walking into a trap, you asshole.)
I'll keep on building my team, both in terms of recruiting and securing loyalty. First step: grab Morinth/ditch Samara. Afterwards, I will (in no particular order) visit Tuchanka for Mordin's and Grunt's loyalty missions, the Migrant Fleet for Tali's mission, Illium again to recruit Thane, the Citadel for Garrus' mission and later Thane's, Kasumi's mission, Zaeed's mission (in which the Renegade choices are really going to be difficult for me to click on because of Video Game Caring Potential and because I can't think of a worse way for anybody to die than by being burned alive), probably gonna do Lair Of The Shadow Broker and romance Liara, and then I'll finally pick up the Reaper IFF and Legion. Then I will do as many missions as the game lets me before the game springs the big Wham Moment on me, which will hopefully include Legion's loyalty mission. (I didn't have time to do that on the first playthrough before going through the Omega 4 Relay, not if I wanted to save everybody in time.)
I anticipate bringing Morinth along on many of those missions, so I'll see how she reacts to things like the genophage and the geth/quarian situation and so on.
Oh hey, in talking with Tali before I have Joker take us to Omega, I'm subjected to the contrast between Samara's brand of justice and the quarian brand she's telling me about, which is exile. I get that the quarians are being pragmatic and that they can be pretty merciless just like Samara in certain circumstances (they sure don't show the geth any mercy, most of 'em), but it just reminds me that there are other viable options for dealing with criminals besides Samara's.
Hit Omega, talked to Aria, talked to Nef's grieving mother, listened to Nef's diary and Morinth's note.
Perhaps I'm reaching the wrong conclusions here, but if all Morinth was interested in was getting another rush from deadly sex, why would she bother sharing interests like vids and art with her victim at all? Is it remotely possible that Morinth, in some strange way, actually cared about Nef, and would have liked to be able to fuck her without killing her? For that matter, why is it important that she have common interests with Shepard, if she sees people as nothing but things to be used for her pleasure?
I don't know, maybe I'm being too charitable. Maybe not. Have to see.
So the next step is to go to the VIP part of Afterlife. And while we're on the subject, why does Samara want to screw around trying to get into her apartment? Wouldn't this
◊ work just as well?
LOL, I just tried to dance with the asari (the one who isn't Morinth) and picked the non-Paragon line. The text is "I'm a good dancer." And Fem!Shep said "Wanna dance? Watch this!" The thing is, both the default male and female Shepards dance in a pretty boring way most of the time, but this time I thought the dancing was kind of good. But the asari was not impressed at all.
So yeah, I'm embarrassed because not only did I make a fool of myself in front of this NPC, but also in front of the serial killer. Thank god for saved games.
Heh heh, speaking of saved games, I'm intentionally fucking up my first conversation with Morinth now and trying to kill the mood. And when I brought up justicars and Fem!Shep talked about how she was fascinated by them, the way Morinth icily bit out the words "I'm not," I just found that funny. Let's see how she reacts to talk of "family"...
That...that wasn't as funny as I thought it'd be. I talked about family, and Morinth said she didn't have any. Which, for most people, would be kind of sad. Then, having run out of lame things to talk to Morinth about, I talked about "travel", and while she was initially interested in my travels I picked another lame conversation option about how the best part was coming home, because you could see your loved ones.
Morinth said that she didn't have any loved ones to go back to.
Sorry for woobie-fying a character that lots of people see as a monster here, but if she's telling even a partial truth here...yeah, I do sort of feel sorry for her.
Anyway, she very transparently ditched me. Let's try that again...
Oh what the shit, Morinth? Okay, here's what happened: we were talking about power, and I asked if this conversation was about power, to which she replied that it was. I didn't have enough Paragon points to say that she was losing the power struggle and there was no Renegade line, so I had to tell her that I wasn't interested in a power struggle, just conversation. She found that boring. Then I scored some points with her by talking about the art, vids, and music she liked, with the conversation then turning to drugs. I could choose to mention that I liked Hallex, but decided to say that I'd try anything.
And that was a deal-breaker, with Morinth ditching me again! Damn it lady, you really make people work for the privilege of dying in bed with you!
Okay, let's try that again...
YES! SHE FINALLY THINKS I'M SEXY ENOUGH TO KILL!
Walking around her apartment, examining various inanimate objects, and I forgot I could scan that assault rifle, so thanks for that Morinth...I admit that the way she talks about how much fun it is to kill people gives me pause. Makes me wonder if I should be woobiefying her. I mean, for all I know if I let her live then she'll get the Nassana Dantius treatment in the third game where they have her Kick the Dog and crank her villainy Up To Eleven to emphasize "THIS PERSON IS EVIL AND YOU SHOULD BE HAPPY ABOUT BAD THINGS HAPPENING TO HER".
It is supremely ironic that Morinth talks about safety being overrated moments before her mother is about to come storming in trying to turn her into a corpse.
Now Samara's in the room and I'm seeing the confrontation between them and, again, I'm feeling sorry for Morinth. Even though she tried to mind-control me moments ago.
I mean, FFS, to know your mother wants to kill you is bad enough, but that she doesn't even consider you a daughter any more and hits you when you call her "mother"? That she tells you "you made your choice" when you feel like you never had a real choice? To have her tell you that you are a "disease to be purged, nothing more"? That's salt in the wound.
So now the game gives me two choices:
KILL SAMARA
or
KILL MORINTH
Like I said in the last installment, I'd prefer to kill neither. Plus, unbeknownst to Morinth but beknownst to me (because I wasn't careful enough about avoiding ME3 spoilers), getting killed by Samara might actually be less painful than what ultimately happens to her if she is left alive.
But I helped Samara kill her daughter with my male Paragon Shep. This time, with Renegade Fem!Shep, sorry Samara, you're out of luck. I'd tell you to "find peace in the embrace of the Goddess", but as it was surely small comfort to the victims of your "justice" I'm sure it'd be small comfort to you. (Plus, the game won't let me say it, so there's that.)
Talk about your dysfunctional families.
What I find interesting here is that Morinth, even after Samara was dead, asked to join my crew. It wasn't "I said during the fight that I'd join you if you helped me, so I guess I have to, oh well," it was "You helped me, now let me help you." Like she really was grateful.
She also got a lot friendlier and, for the moment, more likable.
I gotta say, I do not like her face when she's pretending to be Samara. Contrary to what she says, she isn't a dead ringer for her mother all the time, and her face seems to noticeably change when she slips in and out of Samara-mode. She's more attractive as herself, in my opinion.
