What did you do today in ME?

Today I played ME1 for the first time in about 10 years. Masterpiece since the very beginning. I'm of course playing a Renegade Earthborn Ruthless Adept and romancing Ashley

Here's something to try. In ME2, instead of taking the blue or red dialogue, or the top/bottom dialogue on the right, take the middle dialogue on the right. It makes for some interesting results. In particular after releasing Grunt from the tank.

With that imported ME1 game, started a new ME2 playthrough. I have just finished Miranda's loyalty mission and now I'm in the midst of Samara's recruitment mission

Generic Sniper Infiltrator. Completed ME2 and currently around halfway through ME3. I've been playing Sentinel most of the time in the last few years, forgot how busted the Infiltrator is in ME3.

Reave Soldier in both ME2 and ME3. I usually don't like to pick biotic bonus powers for characters who don't have biotics by default, but this combo works well for keeping Shepard alive when he is perforating enemies with the Revenant or Typhoon.

Finished Mass Effect 1 today with a$$hole Shepard. I'm seriously committing to Renegade this time. That means Wrex is dead, Tali didn't get the Geth data, Council is dead, Rachni queen is dead, heck even Chairman Burns and Major Kyle are dead. Made sure I was mean to Conrad too. Gotta say I'm surprised that Shepard can be this much of a jerk. After killing the Rachni queen, the Turian Councilor demands, "Are you humans always this cavalier with genocide?" and Shepard responds, "That depends on the species... Turian" and I was like DAMN HE WENT THERE. Then at the end meeting with Udina and Anderson, Shepard can straight-up say, "The Council was holding us humans back, so I took the opportunity to let them die" and I'm like WTF (Udina approved o/c).

Still so much I haven't seen in this game, and this is playthrough 19.

I did a bunch of that list. Never knew Chorban could die, that's one to remember for the next playthrough. The others I missed were Jax, Toombs (killed Tombs, the scientist lived), Jeong (he survived), and Michel's blackmailer.

Also, after playing as human-centric in ME1, it makes total sense that Cerberus would try to resurrect Shepard in ME2 as an "icon of humanity." Maybe that line "that's what humans do" in the Arrival DLC will finally sound appropriate.

Continuing my Renegade run, completed the Suicide Mission today. Morinth and Legion were the only survivors. Everyone else is dead. Well, except Grunt. I'm leaving him in the tank this run-through. According to my guess-work, his presence (even without his loyalty) on the Suicide Mission would have completely skewed the survival odds in the team's favor.

For those curious, here's what I did (special thanks to themikefest whose posts in these forums gave some good tips):
Grunt - left in the tank
Miranda & Tali - not loyal (easy - just support the opposite side in the arguments)
Everyone else was loyal

No ship upgrades - kills Jack, Kasumi & Thane
Jacob as the vent specialist (kills him)
Miranda as the biotic specialist - took Mordin & Garrus, Garrus is higher on the kill-list, so Garrus died
Zaeed as the Fire Team leader (kills him)
Completed 4+ missions after crew abductions - crew dead except for Chakwas
Didn't send an escort with Chakwas, so she died
Legion, Morinth and Mordin to hold the line (Mordin died)
Took Tali and Miranda to the final boss (both are disloyal, so both die)


Need two squadmates to survive in order for Shepard to survive and import the save to ME3.
Result: Legion and Morinth survive, therefore Shepard survives.

My understanding for the post-game is that Morinth ups and leaves if I visit the Citadel (I haven't chosen her over Samara in years), so I'll just have to skip anything outstanding there. I have not completed the Shadow Broker or Overlord yet, so there's still some stuff to do.

Overall, though, I think I'm going to have a very different ME3 playthrough...

Been working on my long-neglected first Sentinel run, and last series playthrough on the old Xbox 360 before I finally cross over to Legacy. ME2 is a rollercoaster. At first I was planning on downplaying Tech Armor because it seemed immersion-breaking to have it on all the time in gameplay, only to disappear in cutscenes, when enemy sentinels have theirs on in and out.

Then the game got a wee bit too challenging not to take consistent advantage of it. Then I got it to the Power Armor stage and picked up both the Locust and sniper rifle proficiency for the Incisor, and all the Tech, Armor and Biotic research upgrades, and now I'm seriously getting the nigh-invulnerable space marine tactical leader experience. With the cooldown refresh I'm using more squadmate powers than ever before, and absolutely wrecking the opposition with combos and detonations, and either sniping their shields or smashing them head-on at the same time.

Played the Shadow Broker DLC today, and storming the Shadow Broker's ship with Liara and Samara was like leading a squad of Asari Huntresses, even on Insanity. Sentinel Shepard absolutely feels the most like a well-rounded N7 operative who's been trained in every conceivable kind of warfare. Jacob is finally worth a damn, now that I'm packing Warp to detonate anyone he Pulls. Romancing him is also a refreshing experience. If I'd known he was an upfront playboy commitmentphobe in all the other ME2 playthroughs, him starting a family in 3 would actually have felt like the character growth it is, and his betrayal of a romanced Shepard would have sounded more like bad judgement on her part. Unfortunately, you have to personally ask him out to get that single interesting nuance from his personality. He might actually survive the Suicide Mission this run.

You know what this means? The best possible playthrough for Jacob is one where you get into it with him all hot and heavy, and then dump his ass before he can dump yours. Which is exactly what I'm gonna do. Have already had one tender-hearted moment with Thane, whom Shepard feels a certain kinship with given the intimately close proximity death has in both their lives, and how both are passionately trying to make the best of it, and not let one more opportunity to make things right go by them. Also, there's nothing in the world girls dig more than a single dad!


I've been rewatching the Battlestar Galactica remake alongside this playthrough, and it's such a perfect match, visually. You can totally see that the Mass Effect team was inspired by that series even just from the color palette and the scenery. It's a great show for resting your head after a couple of missions, and gearing you up for the next few. Highly recommended.

Absolutely. I also love how each game plays like its own genre, with accompanying themes, and yet they all-together tell a complete and coherent story. First game is classic space fantasy/western, exploring the galaxy and getting your feet wet, learning what's what in a fantastical new world, and fighting evil. Second is a grayer spy thriller/heist/secret agent series, like you say. And third game is a straight-up war epic/disaster movie. And all of them feel totally legit in their own right. And you can easily play the whole series as heroic wish fulfillment, as gritty drama, or as a gut-wrenching tragedy about life brutalizing life just by how you roleplay Shepard.

The most impressive thing to me is how many hard science fiction concepts are credibly woven into all that, though. The Krogan Genophage question is a really stark and engaging example of cultural and biological values clashing and species of disparate levels of technological advancement upraising and suppressing each other, warts and all. The Quarians are in basically the same situation as humanity is in Battlestar Galactica, being refugees in space, forced to improvise their own way of life sans a stable environment, and become the endangered, scrappy underdog of a hostile galaxy, haunted and humbled by their own past hubris. And the Reapers have the Lovecraftian undertones of being eon-old horrors from deep space, while also embodying the question of AI and sentience along with the Geth. The existential idea of fashioning a galaxy-wide union of sentient life vs overpowering, soulless, mechanical destruction on principle, rather than because defeat is ultimately escapable in the long run, is extremely epic, too. And while the concepts behind the Control and Synthesis endings could have been more fleshed out, they're definitely not impotent, either.

It's crazy how much meat there is on the trilogy. And Shepard's choices and attitude completely decides the tone and angle these stories are told with. The only shame, other than the reception to 3's ending, which I never personally had too much of a problem with, is that Andromeda kind of fumbled the different frontier/first contact themes that were supposed to be its big thing, in comparison. It would have been awesome to get that aspect of science fiction worked into the same tapestry as the original trilogy, with the same fearless engagement and passion.

Soldier Shepard held down the trigger on his Geth Plasma SMG for 150 seconds before he was forced to let go.



The idea came to me while bored out of my ass at work. The Geth Plasma SMG has 100 rounds by default. With a Level V Mag Upgrade, it turns into 180. If you add the Heat Sink, then the effective magazine size for the Plasma SMG almost quadruples. Adrenaline Rush reloads the weapon instantly, even while firing, and now you get the idea.

I wanted to take this notion to the extreme in a live-fire setting and chose the Despoina Reaper fight as the beginning part has you in a single area against constantly respawning enemies. Held the trigger down for 150 seconds before the enemies stopped spawning and Shepard was forced to jump to Cortez. It was probably around 100-120 seconds in game time as Adrenaline Rush does slow time down.

Tried this with a few different weapons but so far, only the Geth Plasma SMG can pull this off.