Whoever assassinated Khan also tried to wipe his computer, but EDI manages to recover enough data to ascertain that the Mysterious Figure is headed to the Citadel Archives. The Citadel Archives is one of the most secure places in the galaxy, as many of the Council's dirty secrets are buried within. Naturally, there are no guards. The Archives are massive, so Fail Shep decides to bring everyone on this mission.
"Everyone" consists of Fail Shep, Liara, EDI, James. Cortez and Brooks. Brooks has no combat experience and Cortez hasn't fought on foot for quite a while.
This isn't going to end well.
The squad heads out to stop the Mysterious Figure's mysterious plans of mysteriousness. Once James finishes eating his pizza.
As a Spectre, Fail Shep can simply walk into the Archives' front door. But why walk when you can have James use a bomb to blow a hole in the ceiling? The squad descends into the Archives and come face to face with CAT6. After killing a few waves of Mooks, Brooks gets captured by the Mysterious Figure. This is when things start to get weird / Crazy Awesome.
The Mysterious Figure is actually Fail Shep's Evil Twin, who I have nicknamed Success Shep as per the rules of generic Evil Counterparts names. Success Shep is a clone of Fail Shep created for Project Lazarus, in case Fail Shep needed an organ transplant. Six months ago, Success Shep woke up from the coma he had been in since his creation. Success Shep is disgusted that his twin is fighting to save humans and aliens alike, and so he wants to Kill and Replace Fail Shep so he can be the one to lead the galaxy to victory against the Reapers.
Success Shep demonstrates his failure to live up to his name when he pulls the whole "leave the room while your Mooks execute the heroes" trick. The squad easily dispatches the CAT6 mercs and head into the archives.
For those who haven't played this DLC, you don't actually get command of the entire squad. As usual, you play as Shepard and pick two squadmates to accompany you (in my case, Liara and EDI). The rest of the squad splits into two teams: Mako and Hammerhead.
Team Mako consists of James and Brooks.
Team Hammerhead consists of Cortez. I guess there is an I in team.
Sadly, The Dev Team Did Not Think of Everything this time.
Fail Shep fights his way through the Archives with occasional fire support from Team Mako and Cortez Team Hammerhead. At one point, he finds James and Brooks being overwhelmed by an Atlas Mech. Fail Shep ignores them (mind you, this Atlas blows up if you get far enough away from it without agroing it). Also, a glitch occurs where I see Team Mako on two separate catwalks at the same time.
The Archives contain some interesting information:
- The turians planning on conquering Earth during the First Contact War.
- The Council once had the Spectres commit genocide against a peaceful race of AIs who were petitioning them to be acknowledged as having the same rights as organics.
- The Krogan Rebellions began with a krogan warlord killing the Council.
- The Council knew that Sovereign was a Reaper, but was too lazy to do anything about it.
- The genophage was spread by the turians over the objections of the salarians, who were adamant that it only be used as a bluff.
- The asari have the Ark of the Covenant.
As Fail Shep proceeds deeper into the Archives, he starts losing contact with the other "teams". He eventually comes across Brooks being overwhelmed, but when he moves to assist her, he gets trapped inside a vault.
One of the vault's walls is a transparent forcefield, so Success Shep is able to show up and gloat to his brother about how the rest of his squadmates are also trapped inside vaults. He then introduces Fail Shep to his second in command, former Cerberus Operative Maya Brooks.
Brooks was a particularly xenophobic member of Cerberus who had a falling out with TIM when he insisted on recruiting non-humans for Fail Shep's mission against the Collectors. When TIM started showing signs of indoctrination, she left Cerberus and took Success Shep, who wholeheartedly agrees with her xenophobic views, with her.
The attack on Ryuusei was never meant to kill Fail Shep. Its true purpose was to force him to use his Spectre codes, the one part of Fail Shep's identity that Success Shep was unable to get his hands on, to override the C-SEC lockdown. When Fail Shep managed to survive the subsequent ambush, Brooks used him to help her assassinate Khan. And now she's brought him to the Archives to die.
Success Shep does what he came to the Archives for: replace Fail Shep's biometric data with his own. All that's left now is to steal the Normandy (a job that is made easy since all the people who could tell the difference between the Shepards are either locked in vaults or enjoying shore leave) and he will be the true Shepard. Fail Shep doesn't like this.
- Fail Shep: "The minute - the second, I get out of here, I'm going to take your [Brooks'] head and mount it in the Normandy CIC. Then, I'm going to mount his [Success Shep's] head next to yours. Then, I'm going to take both of your heads, and space them out the airlock."A voice from a stasis pod on Eden Prime: Finally!
Alas, Success Shep is unfazed by this and seals our hero away forever. Or at least until the next update.
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