Going around talking to everybody one last time, EDI has no conflicting loyalties, thank god.
Oh man, everybody's telling me that It Has Been an Honor. That doesn't bode well.
Garrus and Tali! Making out! Damn! Well, why should I be the only one who can romance his teammates?
I wish I could take the whole squad down to Earth with me, not just two of them. I want EDI because if she betrays my Renegade because my Renegade is a jerk, I won't be able to take her on that playthrough, I'm guessing. I want James because he took the loss of Earth hard and would like to be one of the people on the ground taking it back, same with Kaidan. I want to take Liara because she lost Thessia, and I want to take Garrus because he lost Palaven. I want to take Javik so I can see his reaction to the Reapers getting beaten.
Back when the game came out I read a blog post on mightygodking.com where Christopher Bird said (among other things) that the whole "only two teammates at a time" thing sucked and that he wished they still made games like Baldurs Gate where you had five people at your back.
I never expected Diana Allers of all people to actually make me almost tear up, but her e-mail to me
did just that. It almost makes me think that if Shepard dies, it won't be such a Downer Ending.
Hackett makes a hell of a Rousing Speech that rivals Kirrahe's in the first game, and then we go over the plan. Citadel's over London, Citadel's arms are closed, AA defenses prevent us being able to get the Crucible into the Citadel without it being shot down, we need to disable those defenses, then we need to take a transport beam onto the Citadel and open up the arms from inside, then the Crucible docks, and we hope for the best.
The assault on Earth is an amazing sight. I can't believe how many ships there are. And even though we saw one of them get blown up, at least we saw one of the Reapers get torn up as well. I guess we've made some advances in the past few years. (I do remember that the upgraded cannon from the SR-2 was based on Sovereign's guns, so perhaps our ships have been similarly upgraded.)
Unfortunately, the shuttles which were supposed to be able to drop everybody into London to disable the Hades Cannons...don't. The guys who were supposed to blow up the cannons get shot down, and it's up to me, Liara, and EDI to get their heavy weapons from the wreck and use those weapons to do what would have been their job.
Fuck, I thought I just saw Steve die! But that Harvester only grazed him, apparently. He's not gonna be able to fly us outta here, though. The only way to leave London alive is by using the Crucible and destroying Reapers everywhere.
Ah, good old Cain is what I use to blow up the Hades Cannon. That felt good.
Actually, we are extracted by Anderson's guys, and now we're on our way with him to get aboard the Citadel.
Wow, with all those shuttles in the air I'm surprised the Reapers on the ground even have to aim to hit one of them. And sure enough, when we land we find out that a lot of the Hammer forces didn't make it.
A Communications Tech can put me in touch with any of my old friends. Just in case. I'll take advantage of this and call all of them, one by one, saving Jack for last.
To Miranda: "This isn't goodbye. You have to believe we're not done yet." I want to believe it. So much.
Jack's audibly trying to keep the emotion out of her voice during our call. This does make me tear up. I don't want the last time I see her to be via holo.
Conversations with all of my current squadmates on my way to see Anderson are varying levels of Tear Jerker.
In order to get to the beam, we need to advance across an area—a "no man's land"—with little cover, to take out a Destroyer. Lots of people are going to die. For this part I'm taking James and Javik. I might end up getting everybody involved in this assault after all.
There was actually more cover than Anderson described. Didn't stop me from dying several times, though.
Nothing is going right, as the Thanix missiles which we were hoping to blow up the Destroyer with are having their guidance fucked up by the beam or something. EDI's going to target the thing with the Normandy's systems as I operate the missile battery itself, and hopefully all of those poor souls firing at the Destroyer and doing no apparent damage will be saved.
Goddamn it! Fired the missiles, and they missed because apparently in order to hit this fucking thing we need to wait for it to get further away from the beam, so we have to wait while it ponderously makes its way closer to us, killing more soldiers with every step! Not that things are so great for us either, as a Brute is dropped literally on top of me, along with several others! AND A HARVESTER ARE YOU SHITTING ME?!! And then a bunch of Banshees and Marauders attack while the Destroyer starts firing its beam at us! FUCK!
FINALLY finished that fight! If the fights against Kai Leng were half as tough as that one, he'd command a lot more respect as a boss. Naturally it gets worse, as a number of Sovereign-type Reapers, including Harbinger (how can they even tell that one apart from the others?) have broken off from the space battle and are headed to the Citadel. The Crucible has been brought onto the field and they're moving it towards the Citadel now...
Shit. Shit. Shit. A mad dash toward the transport beam as the Reapers fire their death-beams at us results in several miraculous cases of not getting hit while others are, and a Mako being flipped over and almost crushing both James and Javik. They both get out of the way in time to avoid getting killed, but they're both hurt, and Shepard calls for an evac. Javik wants to stay and fight, but Shepard tells them to get aboard the Normandy and get out of there...and then the death beam wipes out everybody...
...or seems to. Shepard is in horrible shape, but he can still limp towards the transport beam. My god, how can he even manage to fire a pistol as hurt as he is?!
He gets to the beam and the Crucible continues to be moved closer.
I'm in dimly-lit hallway with a Keeper sorting through many many dead human bodies. Anderson comms me; he's up here too, in another part of the place. It seems they are building a Reaper inside the Citadel.
Oh God, the Illusive Man doesn't look as bad as me, but he still looks like shit because of the spread of Reaper tech over his body. What's he doing here? Did he actually give himself to the Reapers in addition to tipping them off?
The Illusive Man uses whatever power the Reapers imbued him with to force me to shoot Anderson, but it doesn't kill him. Me and Anderson managed to convince him he was indoctrinated and cause him to shoot himself as Saren did when I played the first game with this character. Thankfully there's no boss fight afterwards, since there's no way Shepard could handle it.
The Crucible docks. Me and Anderson sit down and watch it. It looks like Anderson succumbs to the gunshot wound and dies. And then, as if Shepard hasn't been through enough, Hackett comms me and says the Crucible isn't firing. Shepard tries to crawl back to the controls, but loses consciousness before he can, and is lifted up to meet...
...the little kid. A.k.a., the Catalyst. A.k.a., it seems, the intelligence that Leviathan spoke of before.
This is some Insane Troll Logic here. The Catalyst says that organic life always goes extinct when it creates artificial life, which proceeds to wipe it out. So the answer is to "harvest" any civilizations that advance far enough to do that. Killing them before they can create something else that kills them. I know he says that the harvested live on in Reaper form, but what kind of an existence is that?
If I use the Crucible, it'll destroy all synthetic life, not just Reapers. That means geth, probably. It also means me, due to the Lazarus upgrades. I'd rather avoid that, but...
Another option is controlling the Reapers. But that would destroy my body.
Another option is synthesis between organics and synethetics everywhere. Which would also destroy me, and which would change everybody into something other than what they are right now, if I understand this correctly.
All of the choices I've been given so far suck. When the best solution involves killing a certain number of innocents...ugh...
Fuck. Telling the stupid kid that I reject all of those and that I'll find another way just results in the Crucible shutting down and the Reapers continuing to wipe everybody out! And I see a recording of Liara telling some civilization in the future what happened and not to make the same mistakes we made.
A child and a "stargazer", at some undetermined point, talk about how they have peace today because of the efforts of those who came before. So eventually the Reapers were stopped, which is sort of a silver lining, I guess.
Fine, damn it, I'll go back and destroy all the Reapers, and hate myself for any and all collateral damage that results. This requires limping through the Citadel again and talking to the Illusive Man and the Catalyst again and sitting through unskippable cutscenes...
In trying to spacebar through dialogue I accidentally picked the wrong choice when it was time for me to select what to say, which resulted in Anderson getting shot by the Illusive Man and me having to shoot the Illusive Man because I wasn't able to talk him down. So yeah, that sucks. And I can't save the game right before I decide how to use the Crucible or anything. Each time I do this I'll have to watch the same things as before. Big waste of time.
All right, somehow I got locked into the Synthesis ending. Which basically means that all of my surviving friends continue to survive and don't lose their idenitities as a result of the synthesis and EDI tells me how everything is good with the Reapers actually helping organics now and advances being made and so on...but it still ends with all of my surviving friends mourning my loss. I can't even imagine what Jack's feeling.
I do not want my Shepard to die. I'm going to go through this again, and I guess I'll just leave my computer and cook something while it's playing the cutscenes and conversations...
Damn it. There's no way to win without sacrificing somebody, is there? I saw a lot of the same footage as before, but with changes here and there. It was good to see the Reapers getting blown up and the people fighting them celebrate, over a narration by Hackett, but the reason that Hackett was narrating? Is because EDI is dead from the anti-tech wave, as I see her name on the memorial wall in the Normandy as Garrus is about to put my name on it as well. At the end of it, I see Shepard's chest taking a breath underneath some rubble. I guess I eventually got rescued and reunited with Jack, but is it so much to ask that Shepard be able to survive without sacrificing EDI and, I guess, all of the geth too?
It's just very depressing no matter what.
Maybe I'll have more to say later, but I'm done for now.
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