Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

"I... I tried, Shepard" still haunts me.

So, turns out Ashley gets out of her room and interacts with other crew members in 3. All you need to do is wait until AFTER RANNOCH to rescue the Turian platoon in Tuchanka and then defuse the bomb. Ash will then mourn Kaidan, and have a nice conversation with Tali (who, after the rescue mission, has a quite lenghty conversation with EDI).

Limiting party members to the second half of the game is bullshit. Both in 2 and 3 (and Tali isn't a full fledged member of the crew until after Rannoch in 3, with only 2 missions left until the endgame).

In 2's defense, it was done because of the Xbox 360's limited disc space requiring the game to be split into 2 discs, and every platform had to ship the same game

Well, one can always pull the save editor trick to recruit Tali, Samara and Thane before Horizon; only Tali has Horizon dialogue, but even Legion has dialogue for every pre-Horizon mission.

Still, a damn shame.

Howdy, you may remember me as the one who wrote this big long trilogy comparison all those years ago, or not.

I am currently playing through the series with my wife making the decisions. Thus far:

• She hates asari because the Consort came on to us on the Citadel
• We're mostly Paragon because she has a general operating principle of "be nice to you at first, but if you're mean to us we will bite back twice as hard" and thus we tend to use charm options a lot
• We saved all but one of the colonists at Feros (I maintain that they should have made the colonists more dangerous so that it would be an actual choice)
• We left Liara for last because of this
• We killed Balak because damn if we don't take one of the only good Renegade decisions
• We killed the rachni queen, because they are too dangerous to let out and also because Wrex's line about how millions of his ancestors died to put down the rachni threat once

We've just landed on Virmire. Can't wait to see what she picks there.

As for gameplay, I kind of understand a little more the complaints regarding 1's combat, but I still maintain that heat management is unfairly blamed. Rather, I'd have to say that the primary issues is the cover mechanics, where the game can't decide whether you are supposed to be leaning behind it or trying to exit it. Behind that would be the Mako's lack of weight and the many mountains. A distant third would be too many gun models with not enough distinguishing features, as well as the Spectre Master Gear weapons turning everything else into vendor trash as soon as they were acquired.

I find 2's attempts at "fixing" it overcorrected badly.

edited 27th Nov '17 1:06:56 PM by PRC4Eva

Man, looking back at it, that option was a very slow-going Chekhov's Gun. Doesn't fire until the third game

For sure. I think that given the trilogy save file thing actually worked, the way ME 3 handled the rachni queen was probably about as good as we could expect. Gotta admit that I was kinda hoping killing her just meant you didn't have to fight any of the rachni husks in 3, though.

In fairness, there are a few guns that can compete with Spectre VII gear-the rest of the weapons in the game are not complete Vendor Trash until you unlock Spectre X.

Too bad about the Rachni-that payoff in 3 is one of my favorites, right after Wrex & Eve surviving and Geth/Quarian peace. Speaking of, be sure to let us know what she picks as you go on-there are a whole series of gut punches in 3 for going Renegade, and the Geth/Quarian stuff is very easy to mess up without a guide. Oooh and maybe tell us her reaction after finishing and showing her the alternate results of different choices.

BTW, what class?

edited 27th Nov '17 3:21:32 PM by ViperMagnum357

Adept. She liked the idea of having a lot of magic powers.

As for the guns, I kinda wish you only got one set of Spectre Master Gear. I actually kind of liked the mid-game feeling where you're just starting to get a variety of decent guns and constantly deciding who to equip what. Also, I'd rather if it wasn't the case that you have to get all the way up to Rosenkov level 10 before anything competes with Spectre level 7.

Regarding the rachni, in my playthrough, I justified releasing the queen on the basis that any risk she posed is at least mitigable through turians and humans who should be able to at least temporarily stop any renegade rachni until the salarians can whip up another genophage or something. I still left her to die in ME 3 on account of there just being too much risk of letting her out because for all I know she's indoctrinated already and is just whispering sweet nothings into my ear. I think what happens should you release the Reaper-cloned queen proves the point that it's a not unreasonable risk.

As for Renegade gut-punches in 3, I on the whole wasn't fond of Renegade almost always resulting in a worse outcome either in the form of lost content or less assets down the line. There were ways to write such that this was avoidable, but alas writers can't be forced to take a tactics or game theory or get an MBA before they are allowed to become writers. Hell, they even dicked over the one time they got Renegades right by forcing you to work with Balak if you want those batarian war assets.

But yeah. Can't wait to see what happens on Virmire as well as what her end decision is.

x4

And, even when it does fire, its more like one of those guns with the flag that pops out saying 'Bang!'. But that's probably best for another day I guess.

I can see releasing the queen after freeing her in the first game, but I can't imagine saving her after having already killed her once other than to see what happens. She's basically twirling her giant chitinous mustache at you, "You'll never prove a thing, copper, I'm just a part-time electrician"-ing at you the whole time.

That being said, freeing the rachni both times turning out to be a good thing with no strings attached does strike me as a little weak. I really am disappointed that saving the rachni and seeing their rebuilt hive didn't turn out to be a bigger arc. I get why they focused on the krogans and quarians instead, but I was really looking forward to seeing a serious difference based on that original choice back in ME 1.

edited 29th Nov '17 8:50:40 PM by Unsung

They could've been a third faction; added another element to the Krogan or even Turian decision.

I think having them be recaptured was a pain. Having to go find them, a la Leviathan, could've be interesting - and given another dimension to Wrex, or the Council's attitude.

Ultimately, we needed to just kill more Reapers...

Waifu likes taking Garrus a lot because he has a :3 face which is made more adorable when helmets are turned on because now he looks like a cat in a hat.

I gave him my Spectre assault rifle and sniper rifle because it felt right.

Are Tungsten rounds just harder to get later or something? Game insists on giving me craploads of HE, Inferno, and Snowblind rounds.

Waifu also likes Ashley, finds the "space racist" allegations somewhat overblown, although she tends to still get overshadowed by Garrus or Wrex as the latter two can handle tech or biotics in addition to guns.

IIRC Tungsten rounds simply don't exist above VII.

Shredder and tungsten cap at VII and 40%. They can be seen here [1].

Derp. Any idea if they drop from stores? I think I may have gel'ed or sold all of them.

I honestly do not remember-but you can reset the vendors by leaving and coming back. In any case, unless you are putting HE rounds into a sniper rifle, Incendiary/Inferno rounds are where its at, with Polonium VII on the switch for Krogan and Rachni. The rest of the modifiers are interesting, but you can easily finish the game only using those 2 or 3 upgrades.

HE sniper rifle is the best goddamn thing in the first Mass Effect.

EDIT: Wait, no. Hammerhead Shotgun and the Soldier's Immunity ability is better, because it's really, really funny to run around the field on Insanity difficulty giving zero f*cks about enemy shots and chasing their rag-dolls across the room.

edited 28th Nov '17 1:52:24 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

Unforunately as an Adept who took shotgun, I don't have that option.

I did try it in my shotgun and it was hilarious once...and then I decided I'd rather not wait for it to recharge from overheating.

We saved Liara's mission for last because of waifu's aforementioned dislike of asari.

It's pretty great, when the scene that's supposed to be your first introduction to geth armatures hits (right before you enter the mineshaft), and you just have Tali hack it right off the bat for that feeling when the enemy's biggest guy suddenly turns against them.

That One Krogan also gets lifted into the air and thrown against a wall first thing.

Although I've generally had a relatively easy time against him. My own first playthrough, he got stuck in a corner and we shot him to death. My second time Kaidan kinda just picked him up and threw him towards the opposite side of the room. Maybe the PC version is just easier?

You're talking about the Railgun Sniper Rifle build, right?

I loved doing that in ME1

edited 28th Nov '17 6:14:48 PM by BlackSunNocturne

Probably. High explosive rounds on a sniper rifle basically turns it into an RPG with a scope and infinite ammo. It's awesome.

The High Explosive Rounds are hell on your heat, but that doesn't matter on a sniper rifle. There aren't degrees of Overheat. No matter how much you Overheat your weapon by, it's the same cooldown every time. All Overheats are equal to each other.

Since snipers generally only get one shot off and then push the heat meter almost into Overheat anyway, Overheating your gun with every shot isn't really much of a drawback.

edited 28th Nov '17 6:27:06 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

The best part is the wonky game physics that transmitted the damage across the 5m radius through objects-just aim at the cover and knock them out of it. On Normal, with a fully skilled Infiltrator, the Spectre X with HE X and 2 Scram Rail X can kill most of the mooks at full health and shields with a single shot-shooting a barricade and watching a cluster of Geth disintegrate as they go pinwheeling through the air is something special.

edited 28th Nov '17 6:32:35 PM by ViperMagnum357

,Yup. That's what I was talking about. Loved abusing the HE rounds and Scram Rails

Hello portable Magnetic Acceleration Cannon

When I had my infiltrator get the Spectre X Sniper with HE rounds it was a GLORIOUS day for realising I enjoyed broken builds. That thing was a MONSTER and frankly saved me on my NG+ Especially on the larger open maps - just clear those geth bases from far off then waltz in.

Adept was vital on my Insanity run too - just blitzing all over with a crazy shotgun. ME was my first 100% game on X Box too. Man I missed the crazy heat mechanic in the sequels...

I haven't seen any complaints about it. It's a pretty interesting system, IMO better than the bland clip-based system in the later games that makes no sense in the context of the setting's technology and breaks the flow of combat by making you scrounge for ammo.

Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a chore