Mass Alex: Mass Effect 2 - Part 20

I always read the name of this DLC like Vincent Pryce: "Lair.... of the SHADOW BROKER!"

Oh man, can't wait to see that thunderstorm.

All this "batarian" talk keeps making me think of the Obatarian and how you hire her to be a fucking hostess in your cabaret club. Christ...

well last episode was a filler.

time for story mission

Regarding the style of Shadow Broker: this is much closer to how ME3 is written, except for the comedic elements. Cutscenes and dialog are far more cinematic and natural (and well-written!) and the camerawork is far more dynamic. It's not just people staring at each other telling each other about their childhoods. This is why ME3 is the best Mass Effect.

Thank you to GBeast for getting this ready for today.

I love that Alex, in his drive to do exclusively paragon actions, engaged in the slave trade.

@flstyle Hear Hear. Really impressed they got this and Crime Crew out so fast after the hectic last week they've had. Hopefully they get a few days off other than these uploads. That said, I've missed this show.

This DLC was so good. A very high water mark.

Lair of the Shadow Broker is probably still my favorite downloadable content in the history of videogames.

Incredibly well-produced, sharply written yet still concise and not artificially bloated in terms of overall length, it adds content and closure for an important character's primary story arc but its self-contained in a way that its absence doesn't necessarily impact the experience of the main game as a whole.

(I probably mentioned this ages ago but man, I just love the slight tonal shift it takes into going into action-thriller territory compared to the rest of the game. The intro is super strong)

20 episodes in: "I have a melee attack?"

lol

That Vasir fight is SO much fun if you're a Vanguard.

Can't believe you did that to Garrus!

Vinny saying "I DON'T REMEMBER THIS AT ALL" could be attached to literally part of this series.

Ahhh I was wondering if the crash thing would happen to them. I played through this game again recently and kept having it crash in spots on Illium.

Did I miss an episode? They’ve been implying this is the last of the side & dlc stuff before going full steam ahead on main quest line, but I don’t recall Alex playing through the Arrival DLC, which I remember being quite interesting!

@ryvvn: they mention at the end of the episode they're going to 'look at the map' which I assume implies tying up loose ends, of which I'd guess Arrival is one. Although as someone in another comment thread mentioned they should save at least one side mission for after they get the final crew member anyway, since iirc you need to do a side mission to trigger their loyalty mission showing up.

"dinosaurs"

The bit on the ship where Liara tells you about shooting the capacitors is kind of wink to the Arc Projector heavy weapon, which acts in roughly the same way (the chain lightning effect). That was my go-to HW through most of my ME2 playthroughs.

Alex you want to use warp on barriers, not overload.

Is it just me, or is the voice of the VI basically just Neptr from Adventure Time?

As somebody who didn't touch any of the DLCs for this franchise, a lot of the episodes in this ME2 series of Mass Alex have been a bit of a slog, what with focus on loyalty missions for characters I don't give half a shit about and bland collectathons or whatever, but I'm really happy to have finally gotten to experience - however vicariously - Lair of the Shadow Broker. That was very well done and interesting. Having never seen a yahg before, that was fairly shocking and a bit upsetting.

I know a guy in his 50s who was an indentured servant in his teens. His parents basically sold him. In Ireland. In the 80s.

I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

It's being saved for after the main story ends and rightfully so.

god this is really just making me want to replay the whole damn trilogy all over again

the remaster needs to happen, but we're probably not gonna see it until the next consoles come out with how deep we are into this generation

@bludgeonparagon: I would argue both Witcher 3 DLC's are better. But Shadow Broker is up there, thats true for sure.

Make sure to save manually before you re-visit the lair. I had some bug that put me into an endless crash bug. (just in case)

Lair of the Shadow Broker: fuck yeah

I'm not sure why Alex things side missions are all DLC. There's a whole lot of them and even more you missed! Those are just the ones you stumbled into. There's a bunch of otherwise 'empty' planets with signals to investigate, etc.

The design of the Shadow Broker ship is so damn cool. Kind of reminds me a bit of this ship from Homeworld 2.

Overall this was a great DLC. Kind of crazy to think Minervas Den is better but everyone has their own tastes.

Yay! Liara romance best romance!

During the last conversation with Liara, the music gave me super strong Season 1 Twin Peaks James + Donna vibes.

At last, return of the best GB content....

@flstyle: Arrival works near the end of the game and postgame equally. It changes a few cutscenes to reference the collectors which I actually like better.

Love how the game gives Alex a couple of stinging jabs about his poor, dead fish.

Just cuz:

Illium: The trade planet you go to in ME2. Liara there, Thane and Samara found there.

Ilos: The prothean world you go to in ME1.

Ilios: The greek control map you play in Overwatch.

Yes! A 2 hour long Mass Alex!!

Ah, we are finally doing the best part about this game.

Great episode, thanks!

I have good news! Garrus is still DTF! lol

Played Garrus like a fiddle.

Oh man, this is possibly my favorite DLC for any game ever. It's so good it elevates Mass Effect 2 from a 10/10 to an 11/10.

If Alex liked the mission design and pacing of Shadow Broker, Mass Effect 3 is full of cool shit like this. With better combat!

Can't wait til they move onto the game of the generation!

yeah, after playing through mass effect 2 and 3 recently I have to say that I like mass effect 3 the best. Especially the Citadel DLC and the strong start of mass effect 3

God this game is just so good... I really need to go back and play it again.

@csl316: It's pretty subjective but I also really like Lair of the Shadow Broker's music the most out of Mass Effect 2 (barring a few iconic themes by Jack Wall that weren't painfully vague electronica and had actual personality), and I was super excited to see Christopher Lennertz get more billing for Mass Effect 3's music

ME3 is a brilliant game up until the last 15 minutes. If they had ended it at one specific scene it would have been a master piece.

Yeah, I'm super worried they'll miss a lot of cool side quests :(

@furiren: I'll tell y'all what. If there is a specific side quest you would like us to try to go find, we can certainly see about making that happen. I'm not in any particular rush to finish the game, just want to make sure we aren't lingering on side stuff for too long before getting back to the main plot. So if there are any you feel strongly about, just point me in a direction. Don't need to know any details, just where I'd need to point the ship to find 'em.

I was so disappointed when Liara seemed to have moved on from the ME1 relationship my Shepherd had with her. The Shadow Broker saved all of that, and made me so damn happy. This brought back emotions I didn't think were still there from my initial playthrough. Mass Alex might just be my favorite GB playthrough series... and I've been around since day 1!