It’s funny how much gameplay is needed before the story continues. Shepard must assemble the first round of the team. Garrus is back, and many new teammates join.
Eventually, though, the Illusive Man calls with a planet that seems sure to attract the Collectors. Our alive crewmember from ME1 (Kaidan or Ashley) is on Horizon for an Alliance mission. Before we arrive the Collectors descend, their bug swarm immobilizing the colonists. They’re in the process of loading the frozen into their ship when we land and battle them.
On their ship is a leader who directly communicates with an unseen Reaper called Harbinger.
“We are the harbinger of their perfection. Prepare these humans for ascension.”Continue reading “Horizon”
Mass Effect 2 begins as cinematically as the last one ended. The Normandy is attacked by an unknown vessel. Escape pods jettison, but Joker won’t leave the cockpit even as the ship burns and tears apart. We know from talking to him in ME1 that he suffers from bone brittle disease. It’s up to Shepard, walking through a hull open to space, to find him and carry him to the last pod. Normandy explodes, though. Shepard manages to eject Joker safely before she’s blown free, life support failing.
And then Shepard is in a medical bay. Someone has brought her back from near death and rebuilt her. It is Cerberus.
We meet the Illusive Man, the leader of Cerberus and the one responsible for ordering Shepard’s rescue. His second, Miranda, oversaw the two years of reconstruction necessary to save us. (Both of these characters are voiced by stellar actors who look like themselves thanks to a great animation team. It’s a really fun start to the game.)
Meanwhile, human colonies have been disappearing. Slavers are blamed by the government, which is too busy with diplomacy among the nations to look into this oddity. Only Cerberus pursues answers, and only Cerberus remembers the Reapers and wants to counteract whatever they have planned next. This is the arc of ME2.
In 2007 Bioware swung for the fences: our Shepard avatar vs. the villainous Saren, organic life vs. machines, upstart humans vs. an unfathomably old cycle of destruction. These are the themes of the first Mass Effect game.
ONE
Humans are only one sentient species among many. We’re actually a fresh addition to the activity of the galaxy. We’re ambitious, though. Shepard, one of the best humanity has to offer in terms of fighting ability and determination, has a chance to become the first human Spectre, a special forces rank. On a routine mission to show what she can do, Shepard faces an unknown problem.
TWO
The Turian Spectre set to judge Shepard is surprised by another Spectre, Saren, who shoots him in the back. It’s a stark moment. The Geth are a shocking enemy, something humanity has never seen and other races haven’t seen in centuries. They’re minions, though, and Saren is their leader. His presence here is obviously the Trouble that’s resolved at the endgame battle. The Reapers are the overarching villain, but in this story the specific antagonist is Saren.
THREE
This really isn’t a story about humanity fitting into an established galaxy. This is war with the unknown — with history, actually. Shepard interacts with a Prothean Beacon, an artifact, that implants a confusing vision in her consciousness. What does it mean? Why is the rogue Spectre after the same information? Can humanity have a place in how the galaxy answers these questions?
It’s hard to find a more epic end to a game than this one. The fight up the outside of the Citadel tower is exciting, Geth Destroyers and Krogan Warlords everywhere. Meanwhile, the Reaper ship Sovereign makes it inside the Citadel’s arms before they can close and attaches itself to the station. Like a creepy cockroach it suctions onto the point of the Citadel Tower. We must climb the exterior, coming ever closer to its massive wiggling arms.
We sneak through the Mu Relay to stop Saren in his quest for the Conduit. After fighting his Geth we follow him into an ancient Prothean facility. Although the battles are juicy, the main purpose of this mission is for exposition. We encounter a VI, Vigil, who tells us much.
The Reapers spend their down time in Dark Space until a civilization is ripe. Then they activate a mass relay hidden in plain sight on the Citadel — it’s that silly statue that hums in the water feature — and enter the governing heart of the galaxy. From their they control everything and decimate at their leisure.
It’s the mission where you decide whether or not to shoot Wrex! I’d forgotten!
Obviously more happens than that, but what a moment. In my first playthrough, and I was a huge Wrex fan, the tension was devastating. Luckily I had enough paragon points to save him.
So, why is this even in contention? The research facility at Virmire, now run by Saren, has developed a cure for the Krogan genophage. This challenges Wrex’s loyalties.
This is also the mission where I must choose whether Kaidan or Ashley dies. Dang! So huge! The stakes are critical and the role-playing is intense.
Our first mention of the mysterious Cerberus — a corporation? a research laboratory? — comes from an odd report included in a data dump at Feros. Cerberus has requested and received samples of the Thorian, it appears. When we check out the clue, an entire small colony has been turned into husks. Zombies, basically. They’re not much different from the Thorian Creepers that ExoGeni made.
Then Admiral Kahoku sends us to look for his missing soldiers. We find them dead on a planet. Someone set a beacon as a trap on top of a Thresher Maw nest. The giant sand worm, spitting acid, almost kills us in the Mako as we try to investigate the site. Cerberus, Kahoku angrily informs us, is an Alliance black ops organization. Did the soldiers get too close? Did Cerberus try to use them as experiments? It’s hard to tell. No one is held accountable, but Kahoku will pursue them anyway.
After a desperate message from Kahoku, we go looking for him throughout three Cerberus research facilities on an isolated planet. The first holds Thorian Creepers. The second holds a swarm of just-hatched small Rachni. The third holds an adult Rachni standing over the dead body of Kahoku. When we kill it and attend to Kahoku’s corpse, we see that he hasn’t been mauled. Needle tracks line his arms. Because of his investigation they turned him into another Cerberus experiment, an attempt to fuse alien DNA with a human to create a super soldier. What a way to go.
Eventually we end up at a Cerberus facility with a data terminal. After we clear the bunker and leave, I’m contacted by an agent for the Shadow Broker, an information dealer. Kahoku had a deal with them; that’s how he found the Cerberus research base. Now the Shadow Broker would like the information I discovered. At this point there seems to be nothing in it for me. Maybe there will be a turnaround later. I give them the data, though, because Kahoku was a very sympathetic story.
(By the way, this is Ace Shepard. I created another biotic for a better run-n-gun style. Like Athena, she’s also a paragon.)
A corporate world where anyone can do as they please as long as no other business is impeded, Noveria is Matriarch Benezia’s current location. She landed with heavy crates and a phalanx of Asari Commandos, and headed for a remote research site.
After negotiating the politics of the docking station, we finally get a garage pass and take the Mako out onto the mountain road. It’s a snowy planet under blizzard conditions, but the real danger is that Peak 15, Benezia’s destination, is under lockdown because of a biohazard containment breach.
Of course we must fight Geth. Benezia brought them in those mysterious crates. The surprise is what else we find: Rachni. This is a species thought extinct that now infests Peak 15. They’re a kind of giant scorpion thing with an alleged intelligence. Before we can confront the Matriarch, we must deal with the Rachni.
From a gameplay perspective, this mission has always been confusing. If I go into the hot labs too soon (which is what I mistakenly did with Tag) I lose a lot of side quests. If I meet Benezia first it’s easy to miss killing the Rachni in the hot lab. Ideally, I will settle with Benezia, kill the Rachni horde, and help the medical team as a side quest. The game doesn’t always help with getting me to every mission.
First, Benezia. She attacks us with her Asari Commandos and Geth, but when we defeat them we see that she resists Saren’s mind control. For a moment she has clarity and is repentant. From the Rachni (a species from another part of the galaxy) Saren has learned about the Mu Relay, a space location related to his pursuit of the Reapers. The Matriarch also gives us the coordinates, but where within the Relay we need to go is still a mystery.
Then Benezia, her control failing, attacks us and we must kill her. Tag didn’t take the daughter, but when Ace does we get a tiny, tender reunion. As Benezia dies she calls Liara “Little Wing”.
As we prepare to leave, a dead Asari on the ground rises up and starts to talk, mind-controlled by the Rachni queen in her glass cage. The queen argues gracefully that we should let her go. She is a sentient being, and who are we to commit genocide?
Well, this is Tag the renegade. She injects an acid bath into the box and kills the queen. It was quite easy for me to role play a disgust of mind-controlling beings (again) and their wants.
But, in wonderful replay-ability, I also took the chance to let Ace release the queen. Her talk of singing, of the color of sound the Rachni use to communicate, is beautifully written (even for a bug). It’s really a masterful scene of characters speaking of a history that we in this time barely know.
Regardless of decisions, either way Saren and Shepard now have the same information, and both of them seek specific coordinates within the Mu Relay to further their pursuit of the Conduit.
Rescuing Liara is designed as our first mission. It’s easy and short. After that we have our choice of two other missions, each much more complicated. I choose Feros, a human colony barely surviving under Geth assault. (We’ll take Noveria, the third mission, last.)
The colonists all work for the corporation ExoGeni. After we clear out the Geth in the residential section, we head across the skybridge to the work environment. It all seems straightforward, except some of the colonists act weird. They’re secretive and a little cult-like. Also, why are the Geth here? Something over at ExoGeni has attracted their (meaning, Saren’s) interest.
It doesn’t take long to get the story. ExoGeni is here to study an indigenous life form, the Thorian. It’s an immense, brain-controlling plant. (Gross.) The colonists have been unknowingly infected, living right on top of it. ExoGeni considers them guinea pigs, basically. Evil corporation, human lab experiments, the usual villainous plotline.
Remember, I have two Shepards, the renegade Tag and the paragon Athena. Tag wipes out all the colonists and double-taps the Asari mystic aligned with the Thorian. Athena is a more forgiving sort.
Before passing judgment on the Asari Shiala, though, we receive her information, the ultimate purpose of this location. She is an associate of Matriarch Benezia, following her into Saren’s service. The Asari thought to soften Saren, but instead he persuaded them to go against their nature. He has an enormous alien warship, Sovereign, that exerts a subtle but all-consuming mind control. Benezia no longer acts independently.
Meat with a gun, baby.
Shiala merged with the Thorian so Saren could communicate with it. Apparently, the Thorian predates the Protheans, so knowledge of them is stored in its memory. In order to understand the vision of the Beacon, Saren (and Shepard) need to think like a Prothean. Shiala’s biotic/magical connection allows that memory to be transferred. She did it for Saren, and she does it for Shepard, imparting another dream sequence of orange apocalyptic destruction.
It’s mission-critical, so we can’t say no. “Embrace eternity!” Shiala calls out before she invades our physical and mental space. This game really has a problem with personal boundaries.
I and my two away team members are dropped on a planet. We drive and fight our way into an archaeological dig site, a Prothean ruin. Here we’ll find Liara — Matriarch Benezia’s daughter who is a scientist and an Asari biotic (which is Mass Effect’s version of magical powers). Geth swarm the ruin, looking for her. Saren, for some reason, wants her. Is it because of her mother? Or is it her expertise in Prothean technology and history? We can only guess.
After rescuing her and bringing her to our ship, we tell Liara about the Beacon and its vision. Her research shows that the Protheans were just another in a line of races who inhabit the galaxy and then disappear. We introduce her to the idea of the Reapers, the ones who extinguished the Protheans. She’s never heard of them or the Conduit, but she believes her knowledge can help us as we search. Our team is now complete.
Liara is very impressed with Shepard’s strong will. She, like most every other NPC in the game, will eventually invade our personal space and suggest a hook up.
