What did you do today in ME?

*slow clapping* That's impressive.

Yah! I try Soldier on all my insanity runs, because it can basically counter everything without relying that much on squadmates. Swarmed by Husks? Area Concussive Shot. Have a Scion? Incendiary Ammo. Enemy with shields/Mechs? Disruptor Ammo. Headshot something? Adrenaline Rush. Plus, you get the Revenant on the Collector Ship. That gun rocks.

But TBH, I did finish a playthrough with an Adept, and it rocks. There's no better feeling than throwing your enemies off ledge when you're making your way to the other tower to recruit Thane, or removing an enemy from cover. 

All in all, soldier makes my Insanity runs easier, but Adept has more fun in it.

Owen Shepard:

Back to Eden Prime. Even if I wasn't bringing him everywhere, I knew Kaidan would want to come. I knew he had been there with Faith, plus he told me the first time we dated. Also brought Liara along. She didn't know everything I knew from the Prothean beacon I'd found while with Cerberus combined with Samara "embracing eternity" with me to help unlock what was lurking inside. (Unlike Faith, who had first come across a damaged beacon, the one I found was intact.)

We were looking for a Prothean artifact but what we found was an actual living Prothean. Unlike all the Protheans who were dead on Ilos due to power loss to their stasis pods, this pod was still functional. We just had to figure out how to unlock it and open it, which seemed to be two separate procedures. Fortunately, Cerberus was already trying to decipher what was going on but couldn't understand it. Liara said, to her, it was only static. For me, I saw 50,000 years into the past as the Reapers attacked the Protheans. I also saw that the losses were considerable. More than the, even back then, many Protheans had been turned into Collectors. I wondered if I'd encountered those self-same Collectors or if the Reapers somehow managed to reproduce new ones over time. In any case, I learned how to open the pod.
[No screenshots because GeForce Experience stopped taking screenshots, even those it says it's happening. I uninstalled it and am about to reinstall it.]

That's how I always feel about it.  One reason I love this DLC.  Giving Harbinger the finger is worth it.  Kind of do the same on the Beam Run because you escape to the Citadel.

I had exactly the same problem with my ME2 male Shepard 

Same here. Though I wish there was disconnect option.

"Shep---" *disconnects*

For me as well.  Still, I remember creating a really great ME1 Shepard with cc and having him look more and more different as I went along.  He started as a redhead but his hair turned more brown.  Plus, the scruff tended toward black in ME2 and ME3, something I didn't care for at all.

On the flip side, I created a Shepard with cc for ME3 and he looks great.  Wish I could bring that to ME1 but I'm not sure the cc is the same between games.

cc is a friggin lottery.

i think i've made something decent, and pretty sure of myself i click accept and start...
... *looks of bewilderment and disgust*

Owen Shepard:

Now that I knew how to unlock the pod, I needed to learn how to bring the Prothean out of stasis. As we moved through buildings I saw dead soldiers everywhere. Don't know why they were all wearing armor but they were gunned down while relaxing and watching a game. Cerberus no longer cared who they hurt to get what they wanted - if they ever did.


Found another lab containing "static" that to me made sense. I saw more Reaper attacks on Eden Prime, which looked a lot like what I'd seen on Earth before we left. Also saw a Prothean again and talk of honoring the sacrifices of others in "the coming empire". Did they expect to wake up and rule the galaxy? I did get the needed command to undo the stasis so we were going back to the pod.


We activated the pod but it was going to take some time. Meanwhile, Cerberus really went after us. Three biotics make a seriously good team. Singularity, pull and an AR courtesy of the geth really did the trick. Finally, the stasis mode was deactivated and I could now open the pod. I don't know what I was expecting - I mean, I had "what it means to be a Prothean" on the brain - but this was unexpected. Maybe because I was seeing a warrior rather than an average member of Prothean society but I was beginning to think the Prothean beacons were designed to put their "best foot forward", so to speak, so that we'd all be unprepared when they awakened and took control. Things didn't go as planned.

The Prothean leaped out of the pod and hit us with a shockwave that knocked us all down. When I touched him I got a flash of his last moments before stasis. He'd thought he would be one of a few hundred left but instead it was likely there was be even less. The pod was also damaged so that it wouldn't automatically awaken him. Discovery by another culture was the only way he'd awaken. He was, simultaneously, "reading" me so that he could understand and speak my language. I wondered if that was a biotic ability we hadn't yet discovered or was something specific to Protheans. I feel like I should have had this knowledge but it wasn't there. Maybe Faith's connection to the Thorian would have been more helpful but I didn't have the outside perspective that the Thorian did. Javik, the Prothean in question, agreed to help us fight the Reapers but he was not very happy. I understood that, from the loss of my own colony, but magnified it by a trillion times by the loss of his entire species.


Hackett wanted answers. He wanted to know if Javik could help with the Catalyst but I doubted it. Javik was a soldier not a scientist. The scientists were probably all "triaged" to death. Liara then called me down to the cargo hold to deal with a problem concerning Javik. A bunch of my crew were keeping him in captivity with guns. They said they had to "dust of the regs" to find out that, when dealing with a new species, to "assume hostility". They also wouldn't let Liara talk to him. The crew was doing their jobs but they were idiots. Javik hadn't just randomly walked onto the Normandy. I brought him there. Even so, I doubt they could have held Javik if he didn't allow it.


We talked about the mission. From touching me, he learned that I had obtained information from the beacons and wondered why the warning wasn't heeded. It was, of course, but the "elite" decided not to believe. Besides which, none of it was clear to us since it was designed for a Prothean mind. He did say that his mission would not be complete until the last Reaper was dead. I was on board with that one. He didn't know much about the Crucible, just rumors that it was a weapon that could destroy the Reapers. Also learned that the Protheans dominated the galaxy and forced all other races to become a part of them or die. The reason, though, wasn't simple conquest. Instead, it was to fight off synthetic beings that were rising up against them. They decided that they only way to win was with a united front by all organic races rather than picking them off one at a time.

I had noticed Prothean ruins all over the galaxy and asked if we were being studied by them. He said they were "cultivating" races they thought they could use against the Reapers - humans, asari, salarians, turians - maybe even krogan and quarians. I don't know that it meant they had modified us, enhanced traits we already existed or simply watched and intervened at times. The plan, though, was to incorporate us into their new empire when they arose. However, once the Reapers arrived they stopped whatever they were doing so that the Reapers would see us as too primitive to harvest. He did say that their conquest, their singular doctrine and strategy, had proved to be a weakness. Once the Reapers figured out their strategies it was all over. No one could adapt. Our differing but largely cooperative races might have been able to adapt.