What did you do today in ME?

I am still lurking in these forums. I just wanted to write and say to dmc1001 that I really enjoyed reading your last few write-ups about Ioan Shepard.

I still have not played Mass Effect: Andromeda (my current PC cannot run it and I have been rather busy the past few months with real life work). I actually have been playing some Jade Empire; I had played it on the original Xbox years ago and I had downloaded the PC edition when it was free on Origin.

But most importantly: I am getting the Mass Effect trilogy itch. I actually want to replay my ME3-version of the Claymore Soldier again. But more urgently, I am getting the urge to play a ME3MP Drell Adept-style Shepard in ME3 (Pull, Reave, and Cluster Grenades). I can always play a NG+ with one of my current Adepts, but I think I want to play a full trilogy playthrough since I have never played an ME2 Adept with Warp Ammo. Of course if I play ME2 with an Adept I will want to start back in ME1 so I have an import which means I want to complete an entire trilogy playthrough with a new Shepard.

Why does this series continue to drag me back in when I want to go play other games?

Hi olnorton!  Do you prefer MET or the DA trilogy overall?  It's a pity that none of the games in the ME series are as mod-able as Origins. 

ME2 Import: Ioan Shepard (Earthborn/War Hero/Vanguard/Slam bonus power):

- We're out hunting geth. Waste of time. They're not even much of a threat these days, not without Sovereign around to lead them. Problem, though, is that we come under attack from an unknown ship. Does some serious damage to the Normandy. I tell Kaidan the Alliance won't abandon us. Then I hear Joker refuses to abandon ship. I have to go after him. Kaidan wants to come with me but I can't take that chance. I want him to survive. More importantly, I need him to direct the crew to escape pods. Reluctantly, he obeys. Then I head off to find Joker and convince him it's not worth dying for a ship that's destroyed. I get him to an escape pod just as the enemy ship is coming around for another shot. There's no time to get into the pod myself. I manage to shut the hatch to save Joker as I drift away. Worse, my suit has a leak and I'm falling into Alchera's atmosphere. Then everything went black.
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Genesis goes right up until the romance choice. It breaks thanks to the Same Sex Romance mod that let me romance Kaidan.
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- I woke up in pain. A woman with an Australian accent named Miranda spoke over me to a man named Wilson. She made him sedate me because I was dying from pain. Or was that a nightmare?
- Woke up again to Miranda's voice. This time she was telling me to wake up, grab a gun from a locker and move. There's was also Onyx armor inside, complete with the N7 logo. But this didn't look like an Alliance facility. Miranda told me the facility was under attack and, even though my scars weren't healed, I had to move. She wasn't kidding. Mechs came in on the attack. Guns changed. No more heat sinks. Now it was thermal clips. That was good and bad. My shotgun wouldn't overheat after one shot anymore but the gun wouldn't work at all without thermal clips. Miranda was tracking me because she always knew where I was, at least until her comms went down. A log suggested that I'm no longer entirely organic, them having used synthetic parts to rebuild me. Another said the cost of fixing me was over four billion credits. No way in hell it was the Alliance. No matter how good I was, they just couldn't afford to spend that kind of money.
- Ran into a guy named Jacob Taylor. For some reason he thought I had any idea why I was up and running. Didn't even know where I was. He did confirm it wasn't an Alliance facility but wouldn't say more. And it was no nightmare that the Normandy had been destroyed. Two years ago. I was out for two years. Jesus. He said all the non-Alliance crew survived and most of the Alliance crew. Only Pressly and some lower deck crewmen died. That meant Kaidan was okay. Damn. He believed I've been dead for two years. Probably moved on...
- Wilson came over the radio, saying he'd been injured. He was one I remembered from the first time I woke up. Seemed shady. Even Jacob thought so, pointing out that a guy from medical should have access to mechs. That was a security issue. Then Jacob dropped the bigger bomb. They were Cerberus. Terrorists. I remember that horrific things they'd done, experiments with rachni, thresher maws, thorian creepers and husks. In all of that they must have found something that could revive me. I remember what happened. No way I survived. I didn't have much choice at the moment since my survival was at stake.
We made for a shuttle out. No one else was there. Then we opened there door. There stood a dark haired woman in a cat suit with a gun in hand - which she used on Wilson. Then we left for another Cerberus facility.
- Met with the Illusive Man (TIM), not so much face-to-face as hologram-to-hologram. He told me he brought be back because aliens called the Collectors were abducting entire human colonies and that he believed they worked for the Reapers. More than that, the Alliance and the Council were doing very little about it. He thought I might be able to change things since they stopped believing in the Reapers as soon as I was declared deceased. The thing that sucked was that my old crew was unavailable and Kaidan was on a classified mission. I meant I had to work with Cerberus. He also thought I stood as a symbol of a Reaper defeat with Sovereign. He sent me to see the proof of abductions with my own eyes - if these eyes were my own and not some synthetic replacements.
Freedom's Progress: It was oddly empty. There was still food and drink on tables, as though someone had commanded them to leave the premises. Like the Thorian could do...or a Reaper. Then we came upon mechs that were fighting us. This reminded me of the geth and I wondered if Reapers hadn't somehow given these mechs sentience and sent them on a mission to destroy organics.
- Then I did find someone alive: a group of quarians. And this has got to be the most insane coincidence but they're being led by Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. She was sure a sight for sore eyes. But they recognized us as being with Cerberus. It had to be the logo those two were wearing. Must have become popular in the last two years because it sure wasn't around when I was fighting them. Wish it had been. Would've made my job easier. They were looking for a quarian named Veetor who was there on pilgrimage. Tali agreed to draw the fire of the mechs while we went for Veetor. Of course, those idiots (except Tali) ran ahead to grab Veetor before we got there. They paid for what they did in blood when an Atlas mech tore into them. Found Veetor in front of a display screen. Had to shut those down to get his attention. He mentioned swarms taking people away. On video, we saw bat-sized flying creatures and Collectors hauling people away in some kind of organic pods. He'd also taken readings of what was going on. He said there was dark energy. Miranda wanted to take him to TIM but I was with Tali - we only needed his data, not Veetor himself. I wanted Tali to come with me. I don't think she knew how badly I needed someone to trust. But she had a mission of her own.
- TIM: He was okay with my decisions. Not that it mattered. He already suspected the Collectors but didn't have proof until now. I understood the threat was real so I said I'd do his mission. Here's what he said of my old team: Garrus was missing, Kaidan was promoted and his file was classified, Wrex was on Tuchanka, he didn't trust Tali yet, and he thought Liara might be working for the Shadow Broker. He also thought the Council might not believe in me after two years. Thinks just sucked all around. Looked like I was going with his suggested team. Then he did shock me with my new pilot: Joker. He'd been grounded by the Alliance and when Cerberus said they'd saved me and rebuilt a bigger and better Normandy, he joined up. I at least felt like I wasn't completely alone. Joker could be an ass, but he was an ass I could trust. It was a start.
Normandy SR2: Miranda was my XO, which didn't appeal to me, but there it was. Jacob was weapons. Kelly Chambers was a yeoman who flagged my messages. And....EDI was the ship's AI. Dammit all! First thing I did was ditch the Cerberus uniform and dress myself up like an Alliance man. Couldn't have it any other way. My cabin, though. It was huge. Private bath, comfortable bed, a freaking wall-length fish tank! It also had a picture of Kaidan on the desk which I found curious. Two ex-Alliance engineers who left over what they considered whitewashing of my old mission were on the lower decks. Not Adams but still. And Dr. Chakwas was in the med bay which was astounding. She was there for me. Miranda seemed less bitchy here and Jacob more agreeable. Joker loved the ship but hated the AI. Understood that.

That does happen. The reapers should be destroying the fleets very easily regardless of ems

Here's what happens when heading to Earth if ems is too low and on the beam run and when on the Citadel

There was a thread on the old BSN mentioning if ems was too low, the game would end with a critical mission failure screen before starting Cronos.

It would be interesting if that did happen. How low would ems have to be causing Shepard not to make it to the beam? Or another way is the crucible won't fire. Maybe instead of not firing, it explodes.

MET may not be as moddable as DAO but what it did mod transferred into the next game. For example, if I did the gender swap console and romanced an otherwise romanceable character, ME2 and ME3 acknowledged the romance, even though ME1 didn't allow it. But if I use the Bi Alistair mod in DAO, Dragon Age Keep will simply say it's impossible. I felt, generally speaking, that any modifications you did to DAO would not transfer over in any way. So while there may have been more mods they had limited use for a trilogy of games.

So, I remember TIM will send Shep to a supposedly derelict Collector ship after three missions, after the event of Horizon. I can't recall if side quests counted.

Landed on a toxic planet where a bloodpack signal was picked up. Garrus is in full combat suit. Katsumi. *shrug*

Found a mercenary base. Was surprised to find that they escorted civilians to safety. Maybe it's not a honorable gesture on their part, those civilians probably are worth some credits to them. Thing is, Shep never found out.

Landed on Illium where Shep was reunited with Liara. Felt kind of cold after the kiss. Business as usual. Next stop. Samara.

Some in here have already said something about the grand coalition, but I also wanted to add that it's very likely that the Citadel wouldn't have been moved to Earth hadn't Shepard chased down TIM and the Prothean VI Vendetta. I think it was Vendetta that told Shepard TIM got to the Citadel to tell the Reapers about Shepard's plan to destroy them (at that time anyway), so they moved the Citadel to Earth to protect it with their forces there.
And it's also correct that the Crucible is less damaged at the end if there's more fleets/EMS for Shepard available, as some have said.
The execution of the ending is something that was heavily debated for years, and actually still is. People have good points when they say they would've liked to have their assets shown during the end run. That would've been really cool. But I also think there was really not enough time to implement everything, I think the devs only had around 16 months to make ME3 and had to cut a lot (someone correct me if I'm wrong)?

When Shepard shows up, Liara says I discovered plans for a device, one that could destroy the reapers. For her to say that, she had to have seen the plans. Why didn't she send a copy to Hackett right away? Unless she never found them, but was just getting her hopes up. It ended up being she only found clues and never actually found the plans even though she had access to the archives.

If Shepard never showed up, Cerberus would have caught up to her and killed her. They would be the ones with the plans to the device.

That's true. Though you can do 6 if the player has completed 4 missions and chooses to go to Tuchanka to complete Grunt's and Mordin's loyalty mission. Once one is completed, don't go back to the Normandy. Complete the other mission. I've done that numerous times.  Another way is to complete 4 missions, then complete Miranda's loyalty mission. Shepard stays on Illium. Go recruit Thane or Samara.

Another way to complete as many missions as possible is to not have 8 squadmates recruited. If 8 aren't recruited, the collector ship mission will never happen

Just a short lifesign from me. I haven't played ME2 any further (so still on that archangel mission), because I don't play games, I don't know, when I can't concentrate on them properly and the last and the next two week are very stressy at work, so I won't play much and Garrus will have to wait a bit longer to be rescued. For the time being, I'm replaying games, I already know, mostly DA all parts and ME1 as a Sentinel - great class. I don't know, how I ended up with Vanguard, but in retrospect, I think a friend told me, that playing a Vanguard the first time would make the game easier. But since I never played warrior classes ever in DA, BG, KOTOR or other games, I think, I'm better off with the Sentinel or maybe the adept. Both classes look very promising. So I'm fiddling with the Sentinel a bit and am having fun on Citadel station.
And I think, I might have a problem with my ME2 installation. I did buy the edition with the DLCs, but I can't choose one of them. Or can you only play the dlcs in some parts of the game (like returing to Ostagar or Trespasser or so)? Not that I want to play the dlcs that soon (I have to master the controls in the main game first), but I'm getting a little paranoid with Bioware and their dlcs, because I can't get them to work anymore in DAO and I had a lot of problems, installing Jaws of Hakkon in DAI.

Ah ok, I'll have to check my journal. Thank you

^^^ I forgot to confess my deaths on the Collector ship. The initial ambush on the moving platforms took three or four goes, as did the Praetorian. I avoided deaths everywhere else, though my progress was very slow and cautious.