Mass Effect General Discussion (spoilers)

I've never not had Kasumi helping with that sidequest, so I don't think I even got the interrupt.

yeah this is one the quests that actually encourages you to have done the previous games to perfection... and they still waste Kasumi.

Until the Citadel DLC where she just creeps on Jacob. That's funny. #stalkingisfunpsa

LADY, guy's got a wife! And a kid! Stop being a creeper!

Edited by JerekLaz on Aug 6th 2019 at 3:48:09 AM

Well there's also the part where she eggs on Jack and Miranda to deal with their "Unresolved Sexual Tension" and offers to sell the recordings on the extra-net.

Kasumi died on the Suicide Mission and I never noticed. I don't even know why. I barely remember her Loyalty Mission... Wasn't the final c hoice about opening or not opening something...? Whatever it entailed, I feel like I chose the no option...?

You might remember I documented my ME 2 run here (and elsewhere) but some help 2015 me was. All I said was "Did Kasumi's assignment already. It was okay. She's okay too. Nothing special"

No wonder I never noticed she died.

You fucked up.◊

Most of the decisions are pretty simple IMO. I sent Legion in the vents, I had Jack do the Biotic Bubble and I had Garrus lead the B-Teams.

The kicker was I sent Grunt back with the crew. My thinking was - these are a bunch of scared, helpless people in hostile enemy territory. Who better to shield and protect them than a tank/meat shield? That tripped me up but come on. I think my logic was sound.

Yeah, the "hold the line" bit is done on a points system, so sending Grunt back really reduces your total there, making the lower grade team members more vulnerable. As mentioned before, there's whole areas where some logical choices don't make sense, because clearly the writers have done a thread and not re-checked with fresh eyes on how else - they've seen the narrative with all their background knowledge and not been able to step away.

Though I was really hoping the final bit of ME 3 was going to involve a similar mechanic to the suicide mission, with all those choices suddenly paying off....

Yeah, I think the escort decision was the most counterintuitive of the Suicide Mission choices. Like, you're sending one squadmate to escort a bunch of weakened, terrified, and unarmed crew members. So who would be the best squad members to send there? Obviously Tali, Kasumi, Mordin or Jack, the squishiest squaddies! Duh.

As for Kasumi, it's not possible for her to be the first to die in holding the line, though; both Mordin and Tali have to die first before she dies in holding the line. The only way for her to die first in the Suicide Mission if she's loyal is if you haven't upgraded the Normandy's shields and she isn't in your squad when defending the Normandy from the Oculi.

It's a bit of a shame that how the Suicide Mission's set out makes Kasumi pretty irrelevant. She's the third of three obvious tech experts, and once you get to the Hold the Line bit, even a loyal Kasumi makes it a tad more likely someone will die.

Thane also suffers a bit in feeling a little irrelevant, though he doesn't set you back: the attack on the Collector Base is ultimately something of an assault, which makes our decision to bring along a stealthy assassin a little weird.

For what it's worth, I imagine Nik had Mordin in the party, had a low enough Hold the Line to get two people killed, and thus lost Tali then Kasumi. Though you never know. Maybe the next post might be, 'Wait a minute — Garrus is in ME3?!'

and

Tali died on me because I didn't have her Loyalty. I gave u p the info on what her father had done because fuck that guy. Don't be torturing my bros the Geth. That's why I flatly refused to do Destroy. The geth are my friends and I love them.

Admittedly when I first played ME 2 I somewhat misunderstood the political situation behind Tali's trial. I figured the guy unjustly prosecuting her was the villain and the others on her side were the good guys. Might have misjudged there which I realized when I replayed the game and actually talked to people.

But yeah I only lost Tali and Kasumi. Considering I never bought Javik, my ME 3 squad was even smaller than it could have been. But my bro Garrus was with me till the end.

Oh and my squad for the final fight was Zaeed and Miranda because they were my favorites and my Shep felt the most kinship with them.

EDIT:

I had a pretty great idea when looking at the best squadmates to protect the Normandy crew. What if you recruited Morinth and had her guide these poor fools to safety? I am fairly certain nothing actually happens but it's still wonderfully perverse to contemplate Shepard assigning the serial killer to lead these defenseless people to safety. I think that be more of a WHAT WERE YOU THINKING moment than almost anything else Shep can do.

Edited by Nikkolas on Aug 6th 2019 at 10:13:51 AM

So if I'm reading that Suicide Mission flowchart right, even if you only have either Grunt, Garrus, or Zaeed being the only one to hold the line, and even if disloyal, they will successfully do so. Alternately, a loyal Thane, Legion, Samara, Morinth, Jacob, or Miranda will also successfully hold the line by themselves.

Meanwhile, a loyal Grunt with non-loyal Jack will still hold the line, ditto non-loyal Grunt with loyal Jack. However, even if everyone is loyal, Grunt plus three of the squishy squadmates will still result in someone dying, but Grunt plus two is fine.

Interesting to ponder. For all its faults, Mass Effect 2's final mission was a thing of beauty.

I still find it pretty funny when Jacob just, completely impulsively, volunteers for the tech specialist role despite having absolutely no technical abilities. Yeah, sure, go ahead. Or you can send Mordin! We recruited him for his hacking ability, right?

Edited by Lavaeolus on Aug 6th 2019 at 8:01:15 PM

The tech savvy of Jacob, the leadership skills of Jack and the Biotic power of Thane. The Collectors don't stand a chance.

Has anybody here made All the Wrong Choices for curiosity's sake? As you not ed ,Jacob's volunteering for that job is so random and Miranda will second guess him. And Jack questions Miranda being the second team leader. What happens if you do select Jack as a B-team leader or some other equally dumb choice? Anybody pipe up?

While the Geth are great, I've got to say I do think they get a bit of a handwave for the whole "mass genocide" thing.

They're Cylons who feel really bad about it.

YES!

Killing 99% of a space-faring civilization is never justified. I'm not advocating killing them, but, they fucking genocided their creators.

They aren't innocent.

It is impossible for them to be innocent given two ironclad and undisputable facts we know about them: virtually 99% of the quarians were killed in the Morning War, and no ship ever comes back alive from the Perseus Veil.

Pretty sure writers were hoping you'd forget about the second and let the geth memories from ME 3 override the first.

The Geth were never meant to be innocent pure babbies until Mass Effect 3 had them perform the most reluctant genocide in history. Legion was a creepy bastard in 2 and it was meant to be that way.

Unfortunately(?) Legion ended up too well written and everyone latched onto it for being one of the best squadmates in a game full of top tier characters and Jacob.

The 99% genocide could have theoretically not been the geth's fault. Mention is made of quarians siding with the geth, and other quarians killing them. So I could see the quarians dropping some sort of bio-engineered plague on themselves, and then the survivors flee and tell everyone it was the geth. It would be a retcon, but not a terrible one.

I can't think of an excuse for killing every ship that crossed the Veil. I'll accept that a lot of those ships were hostile and the geth had to defend themselves. But I refuse to believe that in hundreds of years, every single ship was hostile. There had to have been space hippies who didn't believe the geth were bad, rich idiots who decide to take a vacation in the most dangerous part of the galaxy, and even random travelers who wander that way on accident and have no reason to expect trouble. If the geth really were innocent, someone would have survived contact with them sooner or later.

That's a clear retcon, and the games want us to forget about it, but even if we pretend it didn't happen it leaves the question of why no one was able to contact the geth peacefully in hundreds of years.

I think you could make handwaves for why the Geth are completely innocent and it's all the mean bigoted Quarians but...why would you?

We already know a good chunk of their race decided to go #Team Reaper.

Apparently not via indoctrination either.

Frankly, isn't it a better story if both races are morally compromised?

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 6th 2019 at 5:48:46 AM

Sure, I agree. But I was kinda working backwards from the way the species ended up in 3, where all their crimes were swept under the rug and they were treated as completely innocent victims.

But you're right, I do prefer stories where genuine crimes were committed, either for good or bad reasons, and ultimately the perpetrators are forgiven. Too often, forgiveness in fiction comes in two forms: Either "you never did anything wrong, it was all a misunderstanding, and this is probably a retcon because we didn't want you to be villains any more" or "we're going to forgive you even though you are currently, actively committing crimes and being detrimental to the health and safety of everyone around you."

The geth are an example of the first one. For the second... I can't think of anyone in Mass Effect who counts (maybe Zaeed, but if he goes too far off the rails he does get killed), but Malcolm Merlyn in Arrow is the first one that pops into my head. Everyone wants him dead for his many crimes, both past and present, but Oliver refuses to allow it.

It's such a shame that Bio Ware wanted to turn the geth into sweet innocent babbies who never did anything wrong and needed to be protected, because it made them a lot less interesting. Them being ruthless isolationists who wanted nothing at all to do with organics was cool. Make it so most of them didn't care one way or the other about the quarians, for good or ill, and just wanted to be left alone. They started off wanting to serve the quarians, the quarians tried to kill them, so the geth decided organics just weren't worth the bother and started killing everything until the organics fled. Once they were gone, that was that, continuing the war was a pointless waste of resources better spent on other pursuits.

Then Sovereign's return split geth opinions. Some decided to serve the Old Machines, some wanted to remain in isolation, some felt the only hope to avoid enslavement by the Reapers was to work with organics. So you get three factions, each pursuing their own goals. Hell, you could make it so Legion was pretty much the entirety of the third faction, all the runtimes who opted for cooperating with organics.

But, instead, we got the geth as poor woobies waiting for the quarians to come back.

And then how they got portrayed in game felt weird as the writers decided they were only "real" if they got upgraded into individuals with single bodies.

ME is quite... anti Transhuman / Singularity when you actually look at it. Very much about the preservation of the status quo, especially towards the end.

I always got the feeling that they were really big Cerberus fanboys on the writers team as the Reapers were just.... too hard to write? That's just my take on it though.

I think it's more that they wanted more than zombies to shoot.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Aug 7th 2019 at 1:44:20 AM

I wonder, does being opposed to transhumanism count as humility or arrogance?

Many people feel - with good reason - that ME Humanity is wanked. You guys just talked about it. On the other hand, I've always interpreted being op posed to transhumanism as saying humans aren't so special. How dare we, in our arrogance, modify the natural order of things? All we're doing is giving a bunch of uppity murder happy monkeys superpowers. I'ts not only wrong, it will surely end in disaster.

Others really hard disagree. I've been meaning to get into the Shadowrun games for along time now but on another forum I frequent they were very critical of its message about Cybernetics Eat Your Soul. Lots of bad political implications apparently. I'd have to read more myself to give an opinion but I do like the idea of Essence and what cyberware does to it.

It depends how you define transhumanism.

Medicine, by strict definition, is transhumanist.

They use cybernetics, genetic engineering, and make people into biotics in ME.