Mass Alex: Mass Effect 2 - Part 14

Man, Alex is so uncaring to Tali.

Shohreh Aghdashloo ( Chrisjen Avasarala ) in da house!!

It's a shame alex and vinny seemed to miss vasdefrens/vasectomy joke when talking to the admirals, that's probably my favorite sneaky joke in this game.

For me this mission is one of the high points of ME2, and probably top 5 for the entire series.

I am honestly kinda bummed how with speech checks you can avoid 99 % of the hard choices. I much rather see Alex having to think hard and deep about the pros and cons of both choices instead of just going "lets click the insta win blue response"

@roytheone: It's interesting you point that out. Replaying the game for the first time it came out, I realized I just choose the top right answer regardless of what it says. It makes sense why BioWare included the 'narrative mode' in Mass Effect 3 because of its one or the other selections for dialogue. It probably would have been difficult, but if there were multiple options jumbled, then it would make the points feel earned.

Alex WAS struggling which way he would have chosen regarding Tali's father. At this rate, I don't think he will have any issues for the main suicide mission.

As others have said, it's weird that the game skipped Thane's explanation for his perfect memory and those strange sequences. For the second round of dossiers (Thane/Tali/Samara), the game can just rush you into their loyalty mission dialogue after 1 round of conversation, when it should be two.

As far as the skipped drell lore, they have near perfect memory, such that they can replicate the past in their minds with extreme precision. I think Thane at one point says that it isn't uncommon for drell to spend a night reminiscing on past memories rather than go out and create new ones. Completely unrelated, but drell have 2 sets of eyelids (horizontal and vertical). You can notice him blinking both ways sometimes, haha.

Now that I think about it, Tali never deletes the logs she finds on the Alarei. The admirals could probably just board the ship, look at the logs, and find out what Rael'Zorah has been up to. Hiding the projects that he was working on probably shouldn't accomplish much in the grand scheme of things. That said, telling the admirals the truth prevents Tali from becoming loyal if you can't Paragon/Renegade your way out of that soooo

1:37:46 That "Your ideas are wrong" one should be an internet reaction image.

@imacuriousparty: I see you...

I really disliked how this game kind of forces you to play Renegade or Paragon and punishes you for choosing anything in between. I felt like they had nailed their alignment system with Dragon Age at that point.

Watch the Expanse. If you enjoy Mass Effect then watch the Expanse.

This is one of the best written missions in the game. Like a great Star Trek episode!

Also... Shoulda named it "Alexy Quest". They should listen to Vinny more often.

@xeiphyer said:

You don't even need it. If you helped Veetor and Kal'Reegar and then choose [Rally the crowd] it'll work out the same.

What do you think the odds are that Alex gets the Observer Puzzle solution right? I failed so hard on that one.

Seeing people bummed that Legion wasn't in the party for this one. While it does add a lot of flavor to the mission, I have to say I found it pretty ridiculous that the Quarians would even allow you to board their ship with that particular party member. In game, it just doesn't make sense, they would have opened fire on your squad immediately.

@mrpeatie: It's so crazy to see how differently Alex is playing this game than I did. Wanting to just stand there with a pistol and fire until everything is dead seems like the most boring thing in the world. Every combat I would be using my teammates powers with my own to combo. Also a lot of storming and changing cover and angles. A big part of it seems to be that Alex has no interest in his squadmates, letting them autolevel up and just use whatever gun they happen to have equipped. Maybe he's doing it for the videos to streamline them more, but I feel it would be more entertaining if he actually manually did all that stuff and knew what his squadmates were capable of. Again, the game isn't hard and as he's said they seem to be doing fine. It's just boring to ignore all that stuff imo.

@cyrusraven: Yus. Shohreh Aghdashloo belongs to that special group of actors who are entertaining to watch no matter what they are in. Unfortunately Raan is rather more limited in the costume department than Avasarala.

@lkennedyl:

Space order?

I'll take the space flapjacks and space hashbrowns.

@nightmaresabin:

When I played years ago I had zero interest in my squad mates, their levels, weapons etc. I was so glad there was an auto level. Not my thing to micromanage a squad in this type of game. I'm glad he isn't dedicating time to dealing with that bullshit.

To each their own I suppose.

Thane is such a stupid character

"spin me!" So THAT's how it is in their family...

I remember the internet getting really weird about tali when this first came out.

Admiral Koris' voice actor is Martin Jarvis, who read the Just William audio books when I was a kid. It's hilarious to hear him in this. Love this loyalty mission, definitely one of the highlights of ME2.

Ya'll ever just think about how good Samara's complexion is.

No one may ever see this but the Quarians and Geth are kinda Israelis and Palestinians huh? I guess the Quarians are the Palestinians since they lost their homeland to an invasion. There's more to it than that with the sci-fi-ness, but the parallel is interesting.

@kierkegaard: ?

I saw it and you are 100% right. Makes you think huh?

GOD, I love space politics!

@kierkegaard They're sort of space-Roma crossed with space-Jews. And with how badly both those people are usually represented in hard sci-fi, I find it quite flattering.

@kierkegaard: I also noticed this on my recent Legendary Edition playthrough. However, I see more the Geth as the Palestines in how they were voiceless and treated as second class citizens before they rebelled as the Quarians tried to wipe them out. And how they are viewed as extreme like a Hamas. It's like what if the Palestinians were able to oust the Israelis and the Israelis are trying, fiercely to reclaim (maybe wrongly) their homeworld.

Even this read doesn't map one to one but the similarities are definitely there. There's even question later on if it's possible for the two groups to cohabitate.