Mass Alex: Mass Effect 2 - Part 14

This whole space court is out of space order

oh hey I knew I recognized Shala Raan's voice. none other than Shoreh Aghdashloo or Chrisjen Avasarala from Expanse

Garrus: Can it wait for a bit? I’m Turian to work here!

IIRC, Thane does explain his perfect memory stuff it's just that his loyalty mission convo triggered before they got their normally. Sort of silly...

I don't think Koris vas Iktomi would make the cut.

Qwib-Qwib!

@blank: He does and it did! Thane has a whole bunch of real cool Drell Facts™ when you get more time to talk to him, but one of the downsides to getting teammates late is like,

oh, you just dont get to see those now

I'm now wondering which mission he should save for post-IFF...

It's really a shame how the game rushes to trigger the loyalty mission if your renegade/paragon score is high enough. It skips over a lot of important dialogue, like Thane explaining the Drell perfect memory. I guess you can get that dialogue later, but then it's all out of sync.

they got all the good voice actors for the quarians

There's something about Thane's son Kolyat. He's pretty cool- it's just I would not want to play a game thinking I was going to play as Thane only to find out I had to play as Kolyat a few hours in.

Yeah, it sure would be stupid of them to spend all that time setting up that dark energy plotline and not do anything with it, haha.

In contrast to that though, personal stakes court case as a framing device to introduce us to the political effects of the Quarian plight is some fantastic storytelling.

@dregan said:

"vas Deferenz" would also be problematic! Sneaky testicle jokes are the best testicle jokes!

IIRC, the original writer left BioWare and the "ultimate purpose" of the reapers changed. I think the original reveal in ME3 was supposed to be something like that when civilizations started to use eezo more and more, the stars started dying, and the Reapers' ultimate purpose was to prevent that from happening. Like "galaxy-wide global warming" thing, or something. The Haestrom stuff was supposed to hint at that reveal in the next game.

Keelah se'lai

Glad Alex was able to help Tali. I took the same path he did, but didn't quite have enough paragon, so she got exhiled. :(

Let's go Alex and Vinny! Keep that hot Mass Alex served up and ready to go! I switched my meth addiction for a Mass Alex addiction.

Fuck yeah, Claudia Black!

@gkhan: That's MUCH better than what we got.

@vinny@alex

Heads up that data point stuff isn't tied to the DLC and also you don't have all of them. It'll be obvious in your call to Liara when you DO have all of them, as you'll get a new (important) dialogue option.

Also the Thane memory stuff is because the game expects you to have spoken to him a bit more before you get his loyalty mission dialogue. You can get an explanation for it out of him from his other conversations.

Tali's loyalty mission is 100% better when you take Legion.

Vinny yelling to “Get that model!” in the middle of a firefight is the most Vinny thing so far in this series.

I understand why Alex would always go for the blue option when it's available, but if you have both Veetor and Kal'Reegar on your side I find the "Rally the Crowd" option to be much better.

I'm sad they're getting Legion so late :(

This game is obviously great but the way it lets paragon your way out of actually making any choices is lame.

@druv: I took Legion with me on this mission too! Peoples reactions were hilarious, so cool how much effort they put into dialogue for every possible scenario

This is the best Paragon "i'm gonna yell at you about how dumb you are until you stop being dumb" that the series does. Biotics aren't the space magic, Shepard's force of personality is. It's great.

Previously on Law & Order: Migrant Fleet

ashunna na' lai

I'm not Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite series on Giant Bomb.

I didn't need the image of a backed-up Krogan toilet in my mind!

He's Mass Alex.

There are some good god damn characters in this here space universe

Just came to say this. I would've done it on my current playthrough, but the IFF timing is so random that you usually only have time for the Legion loyalty before Kelly bites the dust.

@druv: Tbf there's really not much you can do to avoid getting him late unless you want half the Nomandy's crew turned into minced sludge.

@alex @vinny Admiral Gerrel is voiced by Simon Templeman, an English voice who recurrently voices bad guys in video games like Kain in Legacy of Kain, or the bad guy in Uncharted or Loghain in Dragon Age. Gerrel is surprisingly not that bad of a guy though.

Zaeed’s voice actor is Robin Sachs, who fanously played Ethan Rayne in Buffy, he’s also done recurrent voice work for BioWare’s many games like KOTOR, Mass Effect and Dragon Age. His voice is quite different from Templeman. Sadly, the man passed not too long after the Citadel DLC for ME3 released back in 2013. So Zaeed is basically the last character he ever played.

Fun fact: Until people started mentioning it in the comments for this, I didn't even know it was possible to save those members of the Normandy crew. I always did quests in there without knowing that was what caused it, and assumed that was just how that part of the game went no matter what. Saw other people mentioning the game doesn't do a very good job of letting you know there is actually a timer, which I'd agree with, given how many things are "urgent" but in actuality time doesn't matter in this game.

Oh, man. Alex missed the best line in the entire trilogy.

"With all due respect, Admiral. I didn't represent one of your people. I represented one of mine."

Ya'll been to Nose Astra?

Was that our first power combo/tech explosion at 1:18:30? Looked like Alex's Overload then Tali's Energy Drain. I know Alex is cruising through the combat with those guns and timely uses of Overload and Throw, but hot damn, effectively using all the combos in this game takes the combat to another level. Really wish he could experience some of that.

...Well crap, it was his shield exploding.

Yeah, came to say the same. It's real silly.

The writing is so fucking goooooooooooooooooood.

In every other game that asshole character would have just been an asshole, but he might be the one to agree with out of all of them. Love this damn game.

Partially can't wait for ME3 to see some of Alex's decisions.

Holy shit this game is good. Tali's mission in particular, it even had good random audio logs, lady apologizing to her kid was savage.

I totally forgot about the Qwib-Qwib and the vasectomy jokes in this episode. Mass Effect 2 is the great game.

Get you someone who defends you as fiercely as Commander Shepard does for Tali

Man, this mission is some of the best Mass Effect stuff unrelated to Mordin. But the conclusion of the trial is a great example of why Bioware, I'm guessing, recognized the need to move away from Paragon/Renegade. Tali's trial sets up this great ethical dilemma of whether to respect Tali's wishes and get her exiled, or exonerate her at the cost of her trust. And then you can just... charisma check your way out of it. The third option of throwing the Admirals' political bullshit in their faces is neat, but the way it manifests systemically isn't great.

I never had enough points to help Tali... :(

Probably the best loyalty mission in the game.

So good.