I found out that what kind of ending you get when you finish the game depends not only on what you do in singleplayer, but also in multiplayer. I had just assumed that the Galaxy At War map in multiplayer was separate from the one in the main game, but apparently not. So I had spent a lot of time playing multiplayer matches and getting the readiness of all the regions to 100% before continuing with the story.
Now that that's done, it's time to visit Dr. Bryson, at last.
Um, looks like you hired an indoctrinated guy if I may hazard a guess, Bryson. Bryson's been shot, C-Sec's got him in custody, and EDI is here to help me try to figure out what happened.
EDI is the one to observe that this resembles indoctrination after Hadley describes what he was thinking and feeling. But indoctrination doesn't tend to turn itself on and off like this from what I've seen, or make its subjects lose consciousness all of a sudden after saying something cryptic.
So, they—and the Reapers—were looking for something that capable of killing Reapers. And we aren't talking about a thresher maw here. In order to find this thing and maybe get it to help us, we need to find the late Dr. Bryson's colleague, Dr. Garneau, who was on its trail.
An experiment on one of the tables here seems to be a husk's head connected to a bunch of wires that comes to life whenever I interact with it. Creepy as fuck. And it keeps its eyes on me as I run around, too.
Among the clues we find is a PDA comparing the Thorian from the first game to Leviathan as far as controlling organics goes. And Hadley did remind me of the people I met under Thorian control.
We figure out Garneau's on some asteroid and, when we get there, Cortez detects lots of Reapers in the area. Shepard says that since they're looking for Leviathan too, Reapers are a good sign, and Cortez echoes my thoughts when he says that isn't something you hear every day.
Two Marauders, two Brutes, and after less than sixty seconds, four corpses. Remember when I thought Brutes were really tough? Ah, it's nice being level 60.
Crap, all of the people inside seem to be mind-controlled. They aren't hostile, for now. Javik observes something is very wrong here.
Heh, some miner NPCs are having a conversation but they all stop and stare at me when I walk up, which is both creepy and realistic; I'm used to just standing next to people and eavesdropping on them without them paying me any mind, but not these guys.
PDA with text about "tests" pushing a subject "past his breaking point", leaving him in a catatonic state. That's ominous. Having these people repeatedly tell me that I should go away in a Creepy Monotone isn't exactly Sweet Dreams Fuel either.
Hmm, the elevator is repaired, but a log of who's used it lists not only Garneau, but also a name from another PDA message, Triffon. Dr. Triffon was told that her appeal was denied, she was being reassigned, and to report to some other guy. And now access to where she was sent has been cut off, with nobody bothering to try and restore it.
Aah! I go into the mineral lab and overhear some doctors talking about testing the pain threshold of turians! This is fucked up! I mean, it's not as fucked up as Sanctuary, but it's still fucked up, I can tell that right now!
EDI observes that these "miners" are doing a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with mining. Yeah, that's right.
Finally we come across a message from Garneau, not sent due to communications being disrupted, in which he includes his location and a passcode to get past any security. An artifact like the one he sent to Bryson (which may have corrupted Hadley) is here on the asteroid. Who knows what kind of shape Garneau will be in when we find him?
Passcode reveals Garneau went into the mines a week ago, apparently had an "altercation" with somebody, and ended up in the med bay afterwards. We need a patient file number to get in, and fortunately we found one of those earlier. So off to the med bay we go.
We see a dead body lying on a gurney through a window. Looking at it, Shepard asks if that's Garneau. Javik doesn't know; dead humans all look alike to him. Then a very much alive Dr. Garneau speaks up from another room, from behind another window. He's okay, he says, but he's trapped in there.
Well, he seemed unusually calm like the other people here, and as soon as he says the same words about "the darkness must not be breached" that Hadley said, we realize he's not himself. Leviathan is speaking to us through him and doesn't want to be found. Garneau incapacitates us for a moment, breaks out of his room, flees, and we chase him.
We have to get to the mines and the artifact he told Bryson about before he got mind-controlled. We need to beat him there, and Reaper forces, which there are a lot more of now.
Garneau seemed to blow himself up (or rather, Leviathan controlling Garneau's body had him do it) to prevent the Reaper forces from getting to that artifact. Also blowing up the artifact, which seems to free everybody from the trance they were in before. And, strangely, we find that the guy we were chasing wasn't the real Dr. Garneau; the real Dr. Garneau's body is lying nearby, very much not-blown-up, and with a PDA that says Dr. Ann Bryson has been trying to get ahold of him.
The miners are unaware of anything that happened for the last ten years. Javik says that learning about what's changed will shock them, and I guess he'd know all about that.
On the shuttle ride back to the Normandy, we find that Garneau discovered a way to block the mind-fuckery of the Leviathan before he was killed. We also realize that a mind-fuckery artifact like the one we discovered is sitting in the Citadel, and that's not good!
Or maybe it's fine, as it turns out that EDI is easily able to shield the artifact from affecting anybody. Now it's time to search the place again.
Hadley's in a likely permanent vegetative state, EDI reports. The miners didn't have that happen to them, but they weren't answering any questions we asked them, so this Leviathan apparently destroyed the guy's mind. Shit, that's disturbing.
Found a message from Ann, who figured out how dangerous the artifacts were and is near another one. Reapers were on their way to her location when it was sent. We figure out where she is, and we're on our way.
Hey, good news everyone! Turns out that in addition to having to worry about artifacts brainwashing people and Reapers attacking, this planet is home to violent vorcha!
But before we run into those, the shuttle is attacked by Harvesters and we have to jump out of it while it's still flying. We weren't able to raise Bryson by radio on the way down, but we did see her.
Damn, the Reaper forces are tearing this place to pieces!
So we finally reach Ann's location, and on the way out with her we see some Reaper guys with the artifact. Ann hasn't spent much time near this thing and has seemed normal until now, when suddenly Leviathan takes control of her body and is about to have her do something suicidal to stop the Reaper forces before Shepard orders the artifact blown up and Leviathan, seeing that the threat has ended, releases its hold on Ann. Apparently any time in the presence of those artifacts is enough to leave you susceptible to Leviathan's influence.
After telling Ann about her father's death, she's understandably upset and wants to go to his office. So that's our destination for the third and, hopefully, last time.
Ann's crying when we get there, but snaps herlsef out of it so that we can track down Leviathan. Observing the piece of Sovereign down in the lab and talking about it, EDI asks if they took appropriate precautions against indoctrination, to which Ann responds they did. And then she bitterly says that now she's indoctrinated anyway, because of the artifact.
Talking to her some more, she compares the way Leviathan controls minds to the way the rachni do so with their drones. Then she moves into another area to look at something else, and James is there for some reason. He says he's interested in this Reaper-killer, although why he would take more of an interest than anybody else on my crew is a mystery to me.
EDI observes that the Reapers were able to apparently use the artifact to track down Leviathan, and Ann says the artifacts usually act strictly as receivers, that the only way for us to use them to trace the origin of the signal (or whatever) is when Leviathan uses them to take control of someone. Technobabble ensues.
Ann actually wants to drop the shield on the artifact here in the lab and let Leviathan take control of her so we can run a trace! It's risky and James points out as much, but it seems to be the only option for now, and Ann won't change her mind. She'd like to kill this thing that killed her father.
After it possesses Ann again and James restrains her from doing anything hostile, Leviathan blames me for leading the Reapers to it and when I tell it that we need it for the war effort is says "There is no war, only the harvest." That's not a nice thought. Neither is what Ann tells me after we've finished the trace: that she thinks Leviathan wants to kill me.
Well, it won't be the first to try! Off into the galaxy again to scan possible Leviathan hiding places! Naturally, there are Reapers in the area who are also looking.
We find the source of the signal on an ocean world, and on the ride down Javik asks what we're going to do once we find it. If it's a Reaper, how can we trust it? Cortez also says that Leviathan appears to be underwater. He's ready to take the shuttle diving into the depths, since apparently it can do that, before we are shot down and Cortez manages to make a good landing. (Defined as "any landing you can walk away from". Shuttle's trashed, though.) We land on the wreck of something else that Leviathan shot down. There are lots of wrecks floating around us.
We find datapads written by survivors of another crash, one of which optimistically predicts that their ship will be able to take off again after a day of repairs, the other of which says that repairs aren't working even though the ship should be able to take off now. Food was limited, and the second guy hadn't seen any fish to catch. There are corpses near that second datapad. Shepard asks if either of his squadmates have an idea how old they are. Javik says they're old enough not to stink.
Oh great, nearby there's another artifact. Maybe the repairs went fine and it just made them think they weren't able to leave. A datapad by the artifact says that it was brought over after a team was sent to explore the other wrecks, and ends with the words "It's getting cold", which victims of Leviathan's mind control felt. They felt cold and surrounded by darkness.
Another artifact has a datapad next to it which says that a guy tried throwing it overboard and was beaten to death for it by other crew members, who were apparently under the influence of Leviathan. The captain, who wrote it, is scared of what's happening to his people.
Oh wonderful, a Reaper attack on our location! We have to fight the mooks off until Cortez gets airborne again, only for him to get shot down again by Leviathan. After killing the last of the Reaper mooks, Cortez says that the defense system Leviathan has in place is gonna keep us from leaving, and if the Normandy tried to get us it would just get shot down too. His plan is to take a Triton, which is like an Atlas except it can dive, and explore the ocean floor with it to see what we can see. As we talk about this, the Reapers drop more husks.
Using the power cells from the shuttle, we power up the cargo doors so they can open and give us access to the Triton, which is useful for shooting Brutes, Cannibals, and Husks. Now Steve will look it over before I go swimming. Or sinking, rather.
Javik says that risk is rarely a hindrance for him, but even he would hesitate to do something like this. But with the only alternatives apparently being "die from dehydration" and "die at the hands of those Reaper fucks", this is our best hope.
As I sink down to the ocean floor, I lose radio contact with Cortez. Of course. I make my way down to the probe I launched before landing, with the pressure gauge climbing ominously into the red zone the further down I go. Once I get to it, the next step is to find Leviathan.
He's BIG. And he is not a Reaper; he existed long before them. Perhaps his being an aquatic life form accounts for the Reapers squiddy appearance, if they were based on his race. The human Reaper from the last game had a human shape, after all.
Then he pulls me into a dreamscape where he speaks to me in the form of Ann Bryson, because of my memories of him speaking through Ann before, evidently. And then he appears as Hadley and Garneau, others he's spoken through.
History lesson time, and wow. Indeed, very much like the Thorian, Leviathan's race used to hold lesser races in thrall. They had enough freedom to create machines, though, which turned out to be a bad idea since A.I. Is a Crapshoot.
So after that, Leviathan's race created an intelligence to figure out how to preserve organic life and keep it from wiping itself out again. In doing so, they made the same mistake as their thrall races, since the intelligence—the Reapers—turned on them after deciding that the best way to preserve organic life was to harvest it. Harbinger, apparently, was the very first Reaper.
The Reapers harvesting civilization after civilization is apparently an effort by them to collect data on organic life in an indefinite quest to figure out how to preserve it. The intelligence behind the Reapers hasn't found the answer yet, and probably won't after this harvest, if it succeeds.
Also of interest is that the Reapers think I am a threat, and Leviathan would like to figure out why.
Whew, Leviathan was going to stay hiding with its other Leviathan friends and keep me here as its mind-controlled servant, but I convinced them to join the fight against the Reapers and let me and my friends go. Escaping the planet was pretty cool, as they mind-controlled a Brute and force it to fight another Brute and other Reaper mooks, and then they shut down a Reaper and caused it to just crash into the ocean. We saw this from the shuttle, which was now allowed to take off without getting shot down.
And here's something cool I just read in the War Assets thingy; teams are being formed to smuggle the Leviathan artifacts behind Reaper lines, which could potentially allow the Leviathans to enslave the Reapers and make them fight one another. Of course, there are only so many artifacts for this job, so it's not a way to destroy the Reapers in and of itself.
I can now check that off the list. Next time in this liveblog, everybody parties! Parties like they might die tomorrow, because fuck, they just might.
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