What did you do today in ME?

Still slowly winding my way through ME2. I still have half a dozen loyalty quests, the Reaper IFF, and the DLCs to go, so I am coming to the realisation I will not complete this before Veilguard by a long shot. But, what's the rush.

In any case I managed to complete the Arrival DLC, and I do have some really mixed thoughts on this DLC.

On one hand the atmosphere and the art direction was as good as ever. The Bartarian world was as suitably miserable and creepy as I would imagine a Bartarian world to be.

The writing however took a really noticeable nose drive. The quality of the dialogue and some of the voice acting could get quite rough at times. It really reminded me of watching Naruto filler as a kid, and even then noticing the stark difference between the filler and the source material.

This was also the first time ME3 style auto dialogue reared it's head in a big way. Which was a sign of things to come.

It was also clear that the DLC was assembled on a rather shoe string budget. Some random dude announcing the Normandy's arrival instead of Joker or EDI was particularly noticeable.

Saying that, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I do like to think of Arrival as Shepard's loyalty mission. I liked how it put Shepard in a more vulnerable position with it being a solo mission behind enemy lines. I also liked how it demonstrated the insidious nature of Reaper indoctrination with us seeing for the first time it infiltrating senior human leadership.

The combat encounters were also very well done. It was a nice novelty having to solve the problem of not having squadmate powers.

Overall, I did not mean to write an essay on this, but I will say solid DLC 7/10 with interesting ideas.

I would tell Hackett the truth. I killed your friend because she turned into a mindless nutjob who wanted to have the reapers blessing

She can't even fully strip a basic enemy's shields on Insanity. She's useless baggage!

I, I mean, I got all 20 crates on Daratar. Smug.
Also got to get the doctor from the batarians. Always used to do it last, but who knows if I'll survive the omega relay?
Also also, Conrad is missing. Again. After I gave him an autograph, a photograph and some good advice he aint at the Eternity bar trying boost it.

Shepard doesn't leave people behind.
Miranda doesn't make it through Collector base. This is mainly because Shep doesnt want to keep going to the citadel to see her and she says, 'no dont want your help. Need to do this myself.'
Jacob didn't make it because of ME3.
Thane did't make it because he sits around in Huerta and then dies
Jack was a toss up. Again ME3. Don't really feel she's teacher material. Not with young and impressionable people.

But how, how did they get these crew members off the Base and into the Normandy??????

Destroyed the Reapers, saved the galaxy. Fitting that this playthrough concluded on N7 Day.

With so many returning characters dead, I did the Citadel dlc immediately after Priority Rannoch, where it actually fit quite well. I headcanon that the Normandy took some fire dodging Quarian-Geth battles, and needed some refits. With almost all continuing characters dead, the Citadel party was kinda empty: Liara, James, EDI, Javic, Joker, Cortez and Traynor. I screwed up somehow and Ashley survived the Citadel coup, but she was pissed at me and refused to return to the Normandy.

Anyways, even with so many dead, managed to get 7089 war assets. Not enough for the best ending but I think it was the highest I could get, under the circumstances. Kind of funny: in London I went to see the comms officer and there was no one to message.

And I have to ask:

It was different getting all the alternate / backup characters, but I don't think I'll do another playthrough so ruthless as this one. I missed Garrus the most.

I started a Mass Effect playthrough. It's been quite a while since I played the first one. And I never tried to complete as many side quests as possible.

And now I remember why, most side quests in this game suuuck... Literally the same warehouse copied and pasted a million times.

But other than that great fun. The companions are very basic in this one but even so, are still well written. And many of them are deeply flawed which is super interesting.

Finished Mass Effect, a bit cheesy but overall peak game. The second game is so good at the start, but I'm already starting to see some cracks and things that are not as great as I remembered. this game feels extremely limited when it comes to exploration, and I didn't think I'll miss the mako but I do. writing is still peak, might be even better. I also forget how excellent the voice acting is in this one.

btw, some interesting things that happened to me in ME1:

- I couldn't romance anyone, because apparently calling Ashely on her racist bullshit (jeez I honestly didn't notice how racist that conversation was before) locks you out.
- I recruited Liara last, like after Virmire, just to see what would happen, and it was really interesting, she legit thought I'm an imaginary friend or something. but that means I couldn't romance her either.