What did you do today in ME?

From the Journal of Ioan Shepard:

- Cronos Station (continued): To get out of the shuttle bay, EDI had to override the updated Cerberus protocols. EDI also discovered how TIM managed to get so many shock troopers so quickly: he used Reaper tech to transform them against their will. They had no choice in the matter, which made cutting them down all the worse. Interesting things I learned: I was clinically brain dead when I came to Project Lazarus and only Miranda believed I could be restored; that info made me think I could just be a Shepard VI who didn't know any better, but Kaidan believed in me; and, finally, that TIM had stocked the Normandy with sympathetic faces, from Kelly to Joker, to Daniels and Donnelly, all that I'd never see the Cerberus I had known. Of course, it backfired on him; I succeeded and the entire crew and squad remained loyal to me.
- The rogue VI had been married to Reaper tech to become the Enhanced Defense Intelligence: EDI. Once she had been unshackled, and the Normandy left Cerberus, TIM tried to take control. She fought it off. TIM had doubted her true capabilities, thinking her only a machine. It cost him.
- Found a dossier on Kai Leng but, honestly, I didn't care about that asshole. He was going to die if I saw him again.
- Somehow, Cerberus had made their way through the Omega 4 relay and retrieved remnants of the proto-human Reaper. Must have copied the IFF before we cut ties. He was using thing as a power source. Bet it's the source of his indoctrination. Sitting here on this station with it probably did the trick.
- Last logs found is that TIM had a procedure done on himself similar to what was done to his shock troops. Difference was that it would allow him to control those troops so that they heard his voice rather than those of the Reapers. That explained the Reaper attack on Horizon.
- Found the control center. Same backdrop I'd see when communicating with him from a Cerberus QEC. I went looking for the Prothean VI which was when TIM showed up. He said he had found the Catalyst and he'd be able to use it to control the Reapers. I tried to convince him to hand over the tech to me but he thought the Reapers were too valuable. Of course he did. No indoctrinated agent would choose to destroy them.
- When he departed, we accessed the Prothean VI. It told us that the Catalyst was something the harnessed the entire mass effect relay and was otherwise known to us as the Citadel. I guess that made some sense, since Sovereign had planned to use it to allow the rest of the Reapers into the Milky Way. Of course, the Citadel was built by the Reapers and the Crucible in past cycles. That means races other than the protheans had survived beyond the Reaper invasion and understood the truth. If was looking more and more like the Reapers were much more fallible than we'd ever known for so many cycles to survive the invasion, even if just long enough to pass on the plans to the next cycle. We also learned TIM told the Reapers of our plans - as if to prove he worked for them. And the Citadel had been moved to Earth.
- Kai Leng showed up. That meant TIM saw me as a significant threat. We fought him and his troops but they went down. While I was turning off the Cerberus defenses, Kai Leng rose up and tried to attack. I sensed him, spun around to break his sword and the gutted him with my omni-blade. He wouldn't be getting up again. EMS: 6204.
- Normandy: I found out Bekenstein, the home world of Allers and the place where I helped Kasumi take down Donovan Hock. The Reapers hit it because it had factories...that produced binoculars. The rest of the crew, though, showed singular faith in my ability to defeat the Reapers and spoke of how honored they were to fight by my side. The honor was mine, knowing these people were heading into the heart of danger, not running away.
- Found Tali and Garrus in a rather intimate situation. I don't know if it was serious or just end-of-the-world romance. Not that I was judging. These two had been with me from the start, the only ones who also came with me while I was with Cerberus. I was happy for them. Learned Miranda has been feeding the Alliance all kinds of intel on Cerberus. Not officially sanctioned but more than welcome since it helped avoid ambushes. Fed the fish one last time. Played with my space hamster. Looked at my model ships, my chessboard. Checked my messages and found one from Allers talking about how she was going to film the fall of the Reapers and, if I didn't make it, hold a wake for me that would put all others to shame. Now there was just one place left to go: home.
- Earth: I felt like the boys from Earth would want to be the first to set boots on the ground so I brought Kaidan and James with me. Joker got us in close with the Normandy while Cortez brought us in the rest of the way. There was a squad in another shuttle that was shot down by the Hades Cannon, the very thing they had come to destroy. That left it up to us. As we fought our way there, Cortez used the shuttle to prevent a harvester from dropping more troops on us. The shuttle took a hit. Cortez was fine but we'd be going on foot. Luckily, we were near the crash site of the other shuttle. Picked up an M-920 Cain. Fired it right at the Hades Cannon and blew it to bits. That allowed Hammer team, who would be leading the assault to find a way onto the Crucible, free to land. Then we just had to hold off against an onslaught of Reaper forces until a shuttle came to pick us up. This one had Anderson on board, which I doubt was a coincidence. He personally delivered me to the London Base.
- James was set up with a squad, which made sense. He was a leader. Kaidan had also been reunited with his biotic squad. Not sure I wanted him with them since I intended to bring him with me. I haven't had direct supervision in the field for years but now I all kinds of people around with higher rank, not least of which was Kaidan himself. I ran the Normandy but outside of that command? Technically, he outranked me. In any case, when we talked, he expressed the idea that this was goodbye. I told him I intended to survive and that he'd better be there. When I went to leave he surprised me by pulling me into an embrace and kissing me. Well, at least they weren't going to jail us for fraternization at this stage.
- Made use of QEC to reach out to the my friends who weren't here at the base. Jacob planned to meet at a bar in Rio to compare kill counts. Miranda was offering her services to the Alliance. For once, she made a promise to stay safe. Grunt was somewhere on Earth and thanked me for getting him out of the tank. Jack said...she wouldn't let me down. Never heard anything like that from her. Here, at the end, she dropped all the bullshit defenses and let her true feelings out. Zaeed was also in the fight, even expressing that this war seemed beyond his scope. Cortez was fine but too far away from me to help out. Kasumi promised drinks if we survived. Samara was also somewhere on Earth. She took her debts serious, believing she owed me for saving her daughter and herself on Lesuss.
- Primarch Victus had chosen to join the battle on Earth. That was incredible, given that as the leader of the Turian Hierarchy, his loss would be felt should he die here. Garrus said if we didn't make it, and ended up in the same heaven, he was buying drinks at the bar. I promised to have his back if he made it and I didn't, the way I assumed Ash was looking out for all of us. Also took out some Reaper forces using a gun turret on a walkway.
- Liara was here. She had a gift for me. She'd been in my mind once or twice on the SR1 to help me sort out the images from the prothean beacons. This time, however, it was sharing. We were in head mind, looking out at the galaxy from a distance. She'd made mistakes. We all had. I was glad she was here.
- Javik spoke to me, impressed that I had rally the races together, something his cycle had not been able to do. I expressed being uncertain we would win but he said no one else had ever come this far and that all the dead throughout all the cycles were watching this moment, that I was the exemplar of victory in this cycle as he had been the exemplar of vengeance for his own. He said, if he survived, he was going to write a book with Liara. I do believe this is a hope he's never before had in life. I would have sworn he'd go to his grave but now he wants to live.
- Wrex was giving some rousing speeches to his people, telling them their presence was going to win that war. He's the leader they need. Also mentioned Bakara was pregnant and planning to name the first child "Mordin".
- Tali reminded me that the quarian admirals had named "vas Normandy" on her like a badge of shame, only to have the Normandy help reclaim Rannoch. Without a doubt that name meant something honorable these days. I supposed she might never change it. EDI was displaying what I would suppose was fear when I talked to her. But not the kind of fear that makes her hide away. Instead, the kind that gives her the conviction to continue to fight, to insure that the Reapers never destroyed our civilization. She also told me my influence made her feel alive. That was very touching.
- Then Anderson gave me the mission. The arms of the Citadel were closed but there was a beam that led to it. We had to get there and open those arms to we could attach the Crucible to it. So I gave my people a speech of my own and chose my squad: Kaidan and Javik. Kaidan, because I need him with me, and Javik, so he could help put an end to the war he'd been fighting for 50,000 years.
- To be completed later this evening...

I had about an hour to kill before following my so to bed, so I decided to get another loyalty mission done (Jacob's) and do some short side missions for the credits; I want to buy everything from Citadel, Illium and Omega before heading to Tuchanka and opening the last two shops). I talked to Jack about our relationship, but she still needs more time (I think she will stay like this until I move ahead to the suicide mission).

I ended up on Omega, so Samara's loyalty will be next (hopefully tonight). I will probably do Kasumi's and Zaeed's Loyalty missions before heading to Tuchunka.

I am eager to move the story (and romance) ahead, but I also don't want anybody to die ....

This is the story of Jeph Shepard: Sentinel/Spacer/Butcher of Torfan.

Mission: Eden Prime: Here to be monitored by by Spectre Nihlus Kryik as a potential Spectre candidate. Things went sideways and he went ahead of me and my team of Lt. Kaidan Alenko and Cpl. Richard Jenkins. A flying turret takes out Jenkins. Meet up with Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, only survivor of the 212. Strange tech was turning people into zombies. We later found Nihlus dead. Fought against geth, AI who hadn't been seen in 300 years. All the evidence said Spectre Saren Arterius was behind it all. We found the prothean beacon we had been here to retrieve. It was active, which Williams said was not the case when she'd seen it earlier. As I was calling it in, energy from the beacon grabbed her, causing her to hover in the air. I took action a leapt to free her but ended up taking her place. My head was filled with visions before I passed out. Mission Status: Failure, as beacon was destroyed and accompanying VIP died.



Normandy: I was blamed for the mission failure, including the death of Nihlus, despite him not sticking with the squad. The failure was because a traitorous Spectre killed another Spectre and left me with nothing. Still, I didn't blame Williams, Alenko or even Jenkins for the failure. No, this one was on Saren. Besides, Williams was a pretty little thing though as her superior officer it's probably best she remain off-limits.

So, I am getting ready to start another trilogy playthrough, and I decided to open a text file I have that keeps some information about the various Shepards I have created in the past, mostly their name, gender, background, and reputation. I wanted to make sure that my new Shepard, Ahmed, has a different background and reputation than my most recent Shepards.

That is when I noticed that I had a Shepard named Ali, a female Adept. And for the life of me I could not remember playing her at all. Very strange.
Since I had already popped in the Mass Effect 1 disc, I loaded up her last save and checked her out. I now vaguely recall creating her just to run through ME1 as an Adept solely to see what it was like playing without any points in Armor (and consequently pistols; she was assault rifle only). I don't think I ever put her through the entire trilogy. I do not think I ever planned to put her through the entire trilogy. I guess Liara never bothered to retrieve her body?

Anyway, doubt Ali will ever go through the trilogy. Her story dies after part one. I do plan on playing Ahmed all the way through. It starts tonight!

Yesterday I completed some semi-crucial missions with my renegade Annie Shepard, including saving the Turian team on Tuchanka and dismantling the bomb. I was shocked that if the bomb detonates, the Krogan loses 300 in military strength  It's a lot! Anyway, the missions were intense, and I find myself liking the combat of ME3 the most out all the games in the trilogy. It's a good combination of cover-based shooting and more dynamic carnage. I've grown rather fond of moving around and getting close to enemies, which was pretty much impossible to do in ME2 because it resulted in instant death. My favourite strategy is to paralyze the enemy with concussive shots and other disruptive abilities  and overpower them using aggressive close-range tactics. Playing as Soldier is the best  I do miss the tactical cloak, though.

I also saved the Rachni Queen in Utukku, and I think it's one of my favourite missions. The scene where Grunt stays behind to fight ravagers while you escape, it's so damn epic and badass and emotional, I was almost in tears during my first PT and got chills this time on, as well. And seeing him survive was so great  Krogans are annoying af, but I love their overconfident attitude when it comes to the Reapers. I think the galaxy really needs it.

What's also great, I united Liara and her father. Seeing Matriarch Aethyta again was like   Although it's weird how she looks so different! Maybe some intern was responsible for remodeling her? Her face was so unique and totally perfect for her in ME2, now she looks more generic. Still, she's amazing, talking about Benezia's rack to Liara and teasing the latter about her Krogan heritage  Like a goddamn boss.

Moreover, I think I'm seriously smitten by Traynor - I have no idea what she speaks about and I instantly forget all the tech stuff she says, but her enthusiasm really rubs off on me. I love it when she talks about mundane things like toothbrushes Alix Wilton Regan sounds a lot nicer as Traynor as she does when she voices the Inquisitor. I think she makes her voice go too low and tries to sound a bit too husky as the latter, to me it sounds somewhat unnatural, but it's obviously impossible to know. As Traynor she's so excited and adorable and makes me want to squeeze her, though her accent is so ridiculously posh that it's almost comical. But I guess that's part of her charm. I'm actually trying to avoid the Traynor thread because I don't want any spoilers. Kinda feeling bad for Thane, with my Shep checking other people out as he is suffering  But I make sure to visit him every time I'm in the hospital.

I strongly recommend it. As I've mentioned before, femShep's deadpan style perfectly fits the Renegade path. I guess the romances work as usual, I tend to be more tender with my romantic interests than what I am in general The paragon path feels more consistent with the tone of the non-advancing dialogue options, but if you are not super disturbed by the occasionally abrupt tone changes of the Renegade path then you will be fine.

PS. The Normandy crew is great. I even like James Vega. You can't beat a good chunk of meat in battle.

Today, I got some N7 shorts in the mail! (Tempted to get an Alenko hoodie but I already have a hoodie I'm in love with that I wear whenever possible when the season is right. Maybe a patch for it would work instead.)
RedCaesar97: I like the POV of how Ahmed is feeling about his experiences rather than the play-by-play. Love to see it continue.

Jeph Shepard:

Normandy: Room for five but on this ship we've got only one pilot: Flt. Lt. Jeff "Joker" Moreau. Said to be the best so maybe that's why he's flying solo. I arrived just in time for him to bring us in. Hell of a view. It put humanity's largest station - Gagarin Station - to shame. Then again, this was prothean, created during the height of their civilization. Humanity was just getting started.

Citadel: The Citadel Council are assholes. Didn't believe Saren was at fault, dismissing an eyewitness account naming him. Something to do with bad blood between Captain David Anderson and Saren. Also, Ashley is kind of a racist (not that I entirely blame her) and Kaidan's a bit of a "small town boy goes to big city". Elcor are emotional and volus had a chip on their shoulders (if they had shoulders). Understood, though. They'd been on the Citadel for 2400 years and still had no place on the Council, or even their own office. In less than 30 years humanity did have a private office and were proving ourselves to be very capable. Fact is, only the military-capable races get to rule. Keepers are weird. Seems almost like slave labor.





Mission: Expose Saren: Always time to watch an asari dancer at Chora's Den. Harkin led me to Garrus. Recruited him. Then found Wrex being hassled by C-Sec and recruited him. We got some armor upgrades.



Killed more people, saved a quarian who had audio logs implicating Saren, and recruited her in the fight. Those assholes finally saw reason, stripped Saren of his Spectre status, made me a Spectre and sent me after him.

I don't wanna be the devil's advocate, but since Bioware had the trouble to explain what the Spectres really are in Citadel's Archive if we didn't get the picture in ME1, like Anderson explains, try to thinking in reverse.
If you are the Alliance who would you belive: Shepard making a stateman or a random alien telling he/she is a butcher and a murderer?

Wich he/she are, specially if your background is ruthless ("the butcher of Torfan").
But Spectres are above the law, remember?
So they can do whatever they want if things don't get too ugly and the Council aren't involved.

Just remember when Shepard presents the evidence, even the Turian coucilor don't deny it and agree to destitute Saren from the Spectres.

I think ME1's portraiting the level of attrition between the humans and aliens are not bad or unbelievable and the council have justification to doubt Shepard's claims.

And Ashley IS a racist.

For a 3rd night in a row my wife let me play a bit before bed, so I got to finish both Grunt's and Mordin's loyalty mission done. My goal of creating a 100% paragon Shepard went out the window when a Krogan started dissing Grunt, and that didn't feel right, so I had to show him that if you mess with my crew, you mess with me (felt surprisingly gratifying to headbutt the fool). Also in Mordin's mission the Bloodpack spokesman talk to much so again I had to use the interupt to shut him up.
I enjoyed how Mordin was struggling with his past (not enjoying 'enjoying' but appreciating the doubt and insights gained), great character development.

2 more loyalty missions to go and then I can go and get the IFF (and the final team member).

Some of the Renegade interrupts shouldn't be passed up, even in a Paragon run.  I don't think this should even count as Renegade.  It should just be Shepard's character.  Same with the marine salute/motto on Purgatory in ME3.  And during Thane's loyalty mission there's one thing with a merc that's definitely Renegade, I love doing it (best if someone like Jack is present).

You can talk a lot more with everyone else (though I believe Garrus and Tali have the least dialogues of all unless you romance them). You'll know when you hit a wall and you will get no new dialogue anymore (they start to repeat themselves). There are two instances where you can hit that wall, before you complete their loyalty mission, and of course after you talked with them multiple times after completing their LM. From my experience, Mordin is the one character that still has a lot more to say than others, mostly funny lines on what he's currently doing or what goes on on the ship. Definitely would recommend to talk with characters a lot more. Also would recommend to get Legion early once or keep a few LMs for after the Suicide Mission to hear a lot more interesting dialogue from him

Sooo, continued my own run as well. This is from the last 3 days:
"Hackett had sent me an e-mail to go talk to one Dr. Bryson on the Citadel, so I checked it out. He had a task force that was dedicated to investigating mythical creatures."
"Like the Reapers..."
"Like the Reapers. They tried to get their hands on anything that would tell us more about them. And just when he mentioned a breakthrough they recently had, his assistant went nuts and shot him."
"What?! But why?"
"It was absolutely weird. He couldn't remember he did it. It almost resembled indoctrination. Bryson had mentioned Leviathan before he was shot. When I tried to ask a few more questions about it, the assistent suddenly started speaking in cryptic words. A warning not to pursue it. He was controlled by Leviathan and blacked out after that."
"That's creepy as hell. So it's like mind control?"
"Yes, although we only found out later what Leviathan was truly capable of. EDI and I checked out a transmission between Bryson and Hackett. Bryson called it a Reaper killer."
"That's when you knew you had to go after it."
"Yeah. Anything that could kill a Reaper was worth pursuing. But first we had to track down the field researcher of this task force, Dr. Garneau, as he had talked about Leviathan in a log and was our only lead. Unfortunately we had no location of his whereabouts, so EDI and I had to piece together what information we could find to narrow down the clusters he could be found in. We set out, but there were still two other things I wanted to take care of on the way."
"Ugh, no way you're getting into a different topic now."
"Mom, you already know how Leviathan played out, right?"
"...Sure! But--"
"Fine, I'll make it short. At some point Liara had told me about an asari monastery. Asari commandos had been sent there, but due to Reaper forces arriving and killing everyone, they didn't finish what they came for... blowing up this place."
"Blow up a monastery? But why? Oh wait... didn't you say this Samara had daughters in a monastery?"
"Sharp as always, mom. Yeah, it turned out to be the monastery for Ardat-Yakshi and Samara's daughters were there. And actually, Samara too. We crossed paths with her first and she was there to find her daughers."
"And did she?"
"Yeah. But unfortunately, the Reapers had begun to turn one of them already, so..."
"Oh no. That poor woman."
"Yeah... only one daughter left. But at least she's still doing okay."
"That's good to hear. And what was the other thing you mentioned?"
"Traynor had found a lead on a group of scientists, supposedly ex-Cerberus, that were on the run from Cerberus. I was prepared to face the worst, indoctrinated personnel, a trap, whatever. But then I actually met Jacob among them. He had indeed quit Cerberus, just like Miranda, and was taking care of these people. It was good we went there when we did, because Cerberus was already on the move. They wanted these scientists dead."
"I see. So you got them all out of there?"
"I think most of them, yeah. We kept Cerberus in check until everyone still alive was evacuated, then Jacob and one of the scientists picked us up in a shuttle and we got out of there fast. I requested the help of the scientists for the Crucible, and they agreed to do it, including Jacob."
"I don't think Hackett ever mentioned that. The Leviathan story was what he updated me on. But getting these scientists probably helped speed up the process for building the Crucible considerably."
"I would think so. Alright, now we can get back to Leviathan, eh?"
"I still can't believe how this story is actually true..."
"Yeah, definitely crazy."

Piiiics:


Got through without dying, even though the Ex-Cerberus mission had a few close calls, especially when I went up the roof at the beginning. But the Wraith is pretty cool. I don't know why I never used it so far. I never bought any Spectre weapon so far because I'm just stupid. And tend to forget such things...
Now the hunt for Leviathan is on and I look forward to it, always love playing this DLC for its incredibly good atmosphere

Kathrine took her good friends Liara, Samara and Jack for a little trip around town. Met some cool people, drove around, had some pina colada's and generally a good time.

As for a more detailed update.
After a tour of the collector ship, Kathrine decided it was time to birth a Krogan. Then she had dinner with Kelly and can now start investing in Fishes. She also finished Jacob's dialog track and has now turned her eyes towards Jack. Figure her loyalty mission made Kathrine see her as something else than just a dangerous criminal.

Then Kathrine played lawyer in Tali's loyalty mission. The geth behaved this time around and Kathrine qualified for a paragon speech. Which was nice. Kind of messed up the roleplaying, since Kathrine pretended to care about the geth's well being. Figure she was just irate at having her bun clipping through the helmet. Got chewed off by Tali then hugged it out later.
Back on the ship she decided to make a move on Samara, since you need to flirt with people to start a romance. Weird how that works. Anyways, she got denied.

Then today she did Lair of the Shadow Broker and did fairly decently. She did not qualify for a paragon check this time around, so she had to drop her thermal clips. Not that it makes much of a difference when you have biotics. Hehe.
The final fight was a bit tricky and took a few tries, but managed to trick the big guy to chase Kathrine around the staircase and kill him with bug bites.
Was going to respec for Stasis, but forgot the group version of it isn't until the next game and I dislike using powers to make enemies invulnerable for a time when I could be killing them. Might get barrier but will probably just stick to slam.

Next up is shouting profanities at Thresher Maws but doubt Kathrine can kill it. (Becky got a nice picture of Kathrine over a dead Threshie. Yay). Thinking about skipping recruiting Thane, since I don't wanna climb the tower. Does anyone know if he succeeds in his task if you don't recruit him?

Also two pictures, since the game graced me with a new glitch and the other one just because. 

Hey, if you want to be a Paragon you have to own your choices.

When doing Miranda's loyalty mission on Illium, I didn't used the interrupt when talking to the eclipse engineer at the cargo terminal.
And yes, the battle was more difficult.
Hey, nobody said being a paragon angel is easy, right?


Also, I almost forgot. Since this is a "what you did today in ME", I did this...

- Your people started this war. We will finish it. Forty percent.

I should go.