Here's a pic of my ME2 Scanning Map from ~6 years ago. If you pick up all the materials during missions, and scan the planets listed in the pic, you'll have enough resources to buy/upgrade everything in the game. It's still worth checking every other planet, in case there are anomalies and side-missions, but these are the only locations you need to probe to get everything. =]
Before throwing my 2 cents into the great Mass Effect debate, I'd just like to point out how great the series is as a whole. Each has their strong points and none of them are a rehash of what came before. We all win! :D
Gameplay: ME:A, ME2, ME3, ME1
Story: ME1, ME3, ME2, ME:A
Characters: ME2, ME1, ME3, ME:A
Style: ME2, ME:A, ME1, ME3
Stability and lack of bugs: ME3, ME2, ME1, ME:A
DLC: ME3, ME2, ME1, ME:A
Weighted Values: ME1= 14 ME2= 19 ME3= 16 ME:A= 11
The weighting was done by giving 4 points for 1st place per category, 3 for 2nd, 2 for 3rd and 1 for 4th. Stability and bugs are ranked based on my personal playthroughs. ME3 got dinged in style in part because they removed the film grain. ME1 got dinged in style even though it started the whole thing off because of how samey the planets and bunkers were.
If you run into an enemy that you're having trouble killing, try High Explosive Rounds on your shotgun, and use the Carnage ability on top of that. It's very satisfying.
Aside from that, you missed a couple little things here and there but nothing you absolutely need to see. Run a lap around the Presidium if you want to (no rapid transit, as that skips past people), but otherwise head to Virmire with confidence. Doing great! =]
I didn't have a good time with Undertale's gameplay and bounced off after a couple hours. Having such a small window to dodge in while heavily damaging attacks fly in crazy patterns was the main problem that kept me from progressing. Having more of the screen to work with looks much better.
@elliotcm: I was going to suggest that Alex experience the mini games in 2 for like, 3 episodes, then install the No Minigames mod from Nexus. IMHO, you don't need to play those very much after you experience them. They're not compelling, and scanning is THE WORST.
During my first playthrough of ME2, I used a single sheet of notebook paper to list all of the best mining spots I found, resulting in the highest yields. Following just that (relatively short) list of planets and the incidentals earned during missions, I had enough materials to buy every single upgrade on my subsequent playthroughs, ignoring all unnecessary scanning. I can probably dig up and share a pic of that sheet if anyone's interested. It's never worth scanning a planet with lower than "High" resources, and I think that's one of the tedious things people got sick of.
Whenever in doubt as to where you're supposed to go, check your journal. It almost always explicitly says where to go for any given task.
At 49:11, right after Vinny said to check the journal, it said the maintenance area was near the science team quarters and quarantine lab. It looks like you both read half of that sentence, up to the word maintenance, and then bailed out of the menu… immediately followed by Vinny asking "but where is it?" and you saying "that's a good question." >_<
A bit more getting lost that I was expecting, but I'm glad you muscled through. Meeting the colonist in the tunnels was worth it. Also glad you managed to save the colonists, even without melee or biotics. :D
At some point, you'll want to replace that anti-thorian grenade mod, and check out the citadel again and also your journal for side missions picked up from terminals.
Ashley is a great character because she's a racist. If you just blow her off because "she's being shitty" you'll never understand where that comes from or change her mind about it.
I mean, just saying, if you blow people off because they're different than you, or because they think differently than you, are you any better? And what difference will it make by silencing them in your presence because they make you uncomfortable?
People do things for a reason.
Agreed. I feel like there's a lot more nuance to be found in these sci-fi stories if we don't take a scorched earth approach of, "shut up, die in a fire, everyone who likes you must agree with everything you say and are therefore terrible people."
If someone doesn't like her, fine, but trying to tell everyone else that she's irredeemable and we're racist for even giving her the time of day? That's the part I take issue with. I like reading about and talking to flawed characters in my RPGs.
Great episode! I had honestly forgotten the space monkeys, but loved the reactions. xD
In response to the oft-quoted "can't tell the aliens from the animals", I would propose that one way to interpret that would be as a Dan-ism of just blurting out something that seems true in your head without first thinking it through. Imagine for a moment that you met a Hanar for the first time ever, without prior knowledge and without them currently talking to anyone. Would you assume that they were intelligent beings, or would you assume that they were animals? Some of the Mass Effect aliens are obvious, because of their clothing, but if a non-humanoid alien were met naked? What about, later in the game, meeting the Rachni? Before speaking to them or reading the codex, would you assume that they were intelligent?
I'm all for acceptance of alien life if we do stumble across it, but I'm not going to stick my head in the sand and claim that there couldn't be confusion over what is and isn't an animal. Even those space monkeys from this episode could have been sentient, for all we know. Alex may have just (virtually) murdered someone because he didn't know any better.
Bottom line, a lot of us like being challenged by and thinking about our sci-fi. It lets us explore and consider themes and tropes from different angles. Also, as others pointed out, the hypocrisy of giving the other companions free passes to be xenophobic is really tired.
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