Mass Alex: Mass Effect 2 - Part 05

There was a hot second where I thought Alex would change his helmet... The bun clipping really irks me.

Also, Hok's accent is South African. Space Scottish Dracula sounds cool too, though.

@alex No need to apologize or feel like you need to rush with exploring and talking to people! I think most of us enjoy those parts the most. Take your time and listen to all the background dialogue!

Also, I might be not remembering correctly, but I think you can talk to EDI next to Joker and there may be some dialogue there over time.

(And please take off the helmet so we can see facial expressions better...)

Double confirm on that one. Trying to be Afrikaans SA, but being weird about it. Still, 200 years in the future, out in space - it's believable.

Alex,

Now that you've discovered, and had time to enjoy, the scanning in ME 2; I feel it's time to share the song about it: https://youtu.be/WvbmKWMhjb0

Enjoy

Sincere Endorsement. This is my favorite series on Giant Bomb.

Ok, I don't know who these "people" are, but the Zaeed mission is great and I would wait for more paragon/renegade points before trying that loyalty mission ?

Who are the people who said to do the Zaeed mission quickly? Because there's nothing special about it that says it needs to be done soon.

That black hole shot on the final boss ship was pretty incredible ^^

Those fights would have gone easier if you put a point in the other ability. Also it would help if you use your skill and teammates skills more.

sayeed = every generic grizzled veteran game character. not interesting

This is my favorite series you guys are running and look forward to every Tuesday to see more of it! I love you guys, keep it up!

That is a bad South African accent.

The reason for doing the Zaeed mission early is really only an issue for Paragon Shepards. You have to have a pretty high percent of available Paragon points to secure his loyalty going pure Paragon. It's (supposedly) easier to meet this Paragon morality check if you've had less opportunity to obtain morality points.

But that's just what I read. I went Renegade so it didnt matter in my playthrough. I am glad that he did the Kasumi mission early though. As a Sentinel, that Locust will serve him well!

Haha it's impossible to know whether Alex is actually enjoying this game or not. He gives absolutely nothing away.

Even at the end when Vinny was setting him up to say, "Oh man wasn't that a cool mission", he's just like..."so we'll just wrap it up for this week...".

I guess from some of his comments on the beastcast he enjoys it to some extent, but how far that extent goes I have no idea.

@hostyl1 said:

I was one of the people who recommended it, and yeah if you make certain paragon choices during that mission there is a paragon check at the end which is much harder to pass late in the game. And if you don't pass it, Zaeed can never become loyal.

I made basically 90% paragon choices in my recent playthrough, and could not pass the check when I played Zaeed's mission at the end of the game. Early on, with an imported ME1 paragon save, you have a massive Paragon:Renegade ratio and thus can pass almost any alignment check. This becomes a big problem later in the game, especially settling the arguments between crew members (but also in Zaeed's mission).

@kmfrob: I literally said at the end of last week's episode that I am "enraptured" with the story so far and I'm totally having fun with it. I don't think I'm being particularly opaque about my feelings here.

@alex: haha fair enough. Glad to hear it anyway!

Kasumi's my favorite, used her throughout the whole game.

Watching this and then seeing what Anthem is, it's really sad to see how deep they've fallen.

I literally never knew that there was a unique conversation from drinking multiple times at the Dark Star Lounge. You learn something new every day. I like the Kasumi mission. It's fun and different and ends in that great room with the Statue of Liberty's head and other priceless artefacts.

...when was the last time Alex leveled up?

Donovan Hock is the Meshuggah of accents.

I assume if you play Shepard as a man, this shot is framed with his crotch filling the screen, right?

@nasher27: I'm seeing a lot of people had trouble with maxing paragon or renegade. Because the story and those options meant a lot to me in my play throughs, I always leveled up the class option that gave my shepherd a paragon/renegade boost. I hope Alex doesn't miss that.

Man the puritanical reactions to the breasts made me cringe.

Alex should really max out the "game salesman" dialogue.

WE CAN USE THIS!

Oh wow. Alex using the black hole gun on the boss and lifting up all those mercs.... what a glorious shot.

I really wish he would have experimented more with shotguns and sniper rifles more. With switches in ammo, so many of those regular enemies are "one shot one kill" with those weapons, and even the harder enemies can a breeze with good timing and positioning. Still, glad he is switching it up from "use just the pistol and nothing else" from the first game.

this is going to sound really silly but there are times when the miranda voice sounds more like "american impression of australian accent" more than it does "australian accent". silly because the voice actor actually is australian. but it still feels very played up and always sticks out to me.

I sincerely hope Alex gets all the ship upgrades eventually. They're quite useful. I would say get that scanner upgrade early to get even more resources to get all the other ship upgrades.

Also, it pains me to see Alex buying all these armor pieces without paying attention to what bonuses they offer, then he doesn't even wear any of it :(

"Also, we do Hawaii now."

That was the most MST3K line I have ever heard come out of Alix's mouth and it made me smile like a kid. Sometime the riffs are just perfect.

I am going to start racking up beers I owe this guy.

There tends to also be a lot of really creepy Miranda shots as well.

If there is one hint that I think Vinny shoudl give Alex, is that they bring the most 'interactive' partners on each mission. I need to hear those quips between the characters! It is a small thing, but there is enough humor to be savored from well chosen sidekicks to make it something Vinny recommends. Alex has not done anything wrong, but I think the interactions with teh right group was worth it.

The biggest issue i have with this game is the normal difficulty doesn't really require you to internalize how the different shield, armor, barrier systems work that make the player use a wider variety of their abilities. Hoping vinny pushes him into the whole combo thing.

@bloody_skirmish: I mean, it's a weird bit of camera placement, but I have a sneaking suspicion that being DLC they maybe didn't test that shot with both femshep and manshep, rather than some cutscene director going "dude we need to focus some attention on these HD boobs"

@raldamoore: Yeah I think the morality system of ME2 is the biggest flaw of an otherwise great game. Fortunately it doesn't cause problems often, but the few times it does cause a problem are at really impactful segments.

@nasher27: oh no, I think the trilogy is perfect. ?

I have no complaints on the paragon/renegade storyline and how they chose to handle building each one.

I just know many people don't want to play to one or the other and that's when they run into a problem maxing out one or the other.

@raldamoore:It's always an issue for me in ME2, because I think the Renegade dialogue options are handled much better than 1. And I think a 'gray' Shepard makes more sense in the setting of the lawless Terminus systems in 2. It's just a bummer that the system punishes you for playing like that.

@lemmox: Considering how often the camera in Miranda's cutscenes focuses on her HD boobs/ass, I would probably disagree that it's unintentional. I've never played Femshep though, so never noticed the camera in this DLC.

To answer Alex's question on what accent that is...I'm sure it's South African, it shares a lot of similarities with Blisk from Titanfall 2, although lacks the same voice actor credit.

@nasher27: Those are two separate issues. Miranda's backstory is someone who was genetically engineering against their will to be the peak of human perfection, mentally, physically, sexually, etc. etc. and she is keenly aware of that and has chosen to make the most of it. We could argue forever about whether that's a remotely interesting story, whether the "camera's" treatment of her is acceptable, but it's a huge leap from "let's do some sexy camera pans of this super sexy character " to "let's do a closeup, weirdly framed shot of Femsheps boobs with her head chopped off", not least because they literally have no way of knowing that you'll necessarily be playing femshep there.

Why did Alex randomly break kayfabe and have his Shepard lie to the Krogan :-/

Also Kasumi >> Zaeed and it's not very close.

@lemmox: And I feel that's okay.

@bloody_skirmish: You feel what is okay?

@lemmox: FemShep having boobs, them being nice, and seeing them sometimes without pearl clutching.

@nasher27: Shepherd should not be a gray character. She can be, but it doesn't provide the satisfaction that choosing all paragon or all renegade In a playthrough can bring. She's heroic and heroes are determined and confident in their abilities and motivations, not all wishy washy ?.

I've played this game every way possible and I've found it's just so satisfying to know Kitiara is my renegade soldier and Ofelia is my Paragon sniper. I play this game annually. It's sad how in love I am with this game... So what I've noticed, in all my obsession, is you just don't get the most out of it when you want to bounce between renegade and paragon or even just choose the middle options(there's some fun stuff the middle options can take you to though, and I appreciate that). Now I've absolutely chosen middle options as opposed to straight renegade throughout, and that helps level out some of the conversations so you're not a total jerk. Playing two playthroughs gives you two different experiences and I think you'd feel differently because you know you'll choose that option for your other Shep, you won't "miss out".

Also I loved KOTOR and that had the same good or bad thing going on. So I had already been trained to choose one or the other and then go back and see what I missed by playing the other storyline.

I was curious so I just watched that same clip with a male Shep and the shot is identical. I think it's meant to focus on the outfit Shep is wearing, while keeping the camera looking at Kasumi while she's talking. It's just bad camera placement.

Yeahhh, its really becoming a thing with Mass Alex 2 that he just goes straight to the objective and doesn't take a look around.

Does Garrus ever talk to you in ME2? When I played through, I don't think I ever got him to say anything other than he was busy with calibrations. I think it was the same way with Miranda. I was male Shep if that matters.

Yeah, the initimate team moments, the one's I enjoyed in previous Mass Effect games, was so cringe worthy in Andromeda. I got about 3/4 through the game and just stopped, because I had stopped caring.

I'm SO happy Vinny made Alex get smashed in the bar; I've never seen that happen before, such a treat to behold!