Mass Alex: Mass Effect 3 - Part 09

I'm really more of a chum.

Ah there is an episode this week after all.

@Alex You gotta go to the machine in the medbay and get a new power. Ideally “Flare” it’s perfect for biotic detonations and also you should respect your powers and your teams to better do biotic detonations they really pop.

And what is the deal with all these Rachni, am I right?

Oh right, I forgot about the mislabeled mission names. There’s like 2 or 3 of them.

I'm Commander Sheppard and this is my favourite show on Giant Bomb.

Highlight of the week.

It's been a while, but if I remember right this mission basically plays out nearly identically regardless of your choice in ME1 with the rachni queen. Disappointing.

@alex if you do that mission without having saved the Rachni queen in the previous game, there is a puppet that is not your friend in this game that has the same conversation, but if you save them your war assets decrease due to sabotage

That Liara armor is pretty dope although to this day I really liked how in ME2 all those loyalty Cerberus outfits matched. Made you feel like the X-Men or something.

Oh man, watching this series really makes me want to fire this game back up and do another run. It has some REALLY good parts. Thanks for doing this!

Also, @vinny you guys should really stop and talk to the asari running the cafe over by Liara in the presidium the next time he visits. I don't think it's too late, but once the thing happens on the Citadel I don't she she can be talked to any more.

If you had built a relationship with Kelly in ME2 you would have found her in the refugee camp on the Citadel and she would give you your fish from the last game.

It's probably nothing, but the way they talk about Tuchanka sorta suggests to me that they think it's one long sequence instead of two missions.

Hope they don't skip the Turian ship mission because of it.

Why is Alex confused as to why they game treats the Rachnilike spiders?

He, like, get the reference of arachnid -> arachnid, right?Sure they don't look like cocktail shrimp anymore, but still teh spidery reference still holds.

At a little over an hour a week, this playthrough is going to go so long.

Ahh the episode where Alex learns that sidequests in ME3 are nothing.

Jellyfish? ...who put Blasto in the aquarium?

I was mad at Alex for sacrificing Grunt, but all ended well i guess

'Rachni on Rumspring' is the name of my new ska band

FISH now the game really begins.

LOL @ the fish twist at the end

I know it's unlikely but I wish these were a little longer or posted twice a week. Still, I'll take what I can get!

I think Grunt can die here but i dont remember the conditions that would have caused it?

@seventytwotransformations: Not doing his loyalty mission in 2 will do the trick iirc.

Ah, this series is so good. I hope the rumors of an upcoming Mass Effect Remaster are true.

Finally! Fish!

@seventytwotransformations: Grunt only dies if you save the queen and you didn't do his loyalty mission in ME2. If you abandon the queen he'll always survive.

I don't remember Shepard stomping around this much when i played me3. She is like my upstairs neighbors at 7pm every... fucking.... day....

52:30

If you didn't do the LotSB DLC. Shepard goes "what!?" And EDI goes oops.

Fun little dialogue change.

Rachni over Grunt. Huh.

To answer @alex question about Grunt and such.

If you play ME3 without a previous save, then a generic Korgen is there instead of Grunt. It plays out about the same. They do the dramatic fight with the music and such. But they just end up dead. And as odd as this sounds, it is kind of funny, since its a generic red shirt that you only meet for this mission, and yet they give it the exact same send off, even though, they were only 'on screen' for about 2 minutes.

I find it amazing how little of this game i remember.

The beginning -> Tu'chunka -> the end.

I didn't hate this game when it came out, i just didn't like it as much as ME2. But this series is making me re-evaluate how good this game is. Is ME3 a great game?

<>< One fish to rule them all.

@colmymeh: You're leaving out the whole Quarians attempting to take back their homeworld plot, which is fairly major plot point in the game and has a good amount of emotional resonance as you basically need to decide between Tali and Legion and there's no "everyone wins" option.

ME2 is better, but between Tuchanka, the sequence I describe above, and the ending (which I enjoyed FWIW) ME3 still has a lot to offer IMO.

Vinny,

Going into systems and scanning lets you find assets to use in the war, like the Pillars of Strength this episode. It can also find you more money, fuel, or other items to become war assets and increase your numbers. I'd go through the systems at least once to round up everything, the game will show a percentage for each area once you've found something in that area. If nothing comes up, scan all the planets in that area. If you find nothing there, then the system currently has nothing to find.

When you find something like the Pillars of Strength by scanning a planet or on a mission, the map will indicate who you can turn something into like the "Asari Scientist" listed on the Hospital map this episode. None of this is time sensitive, but will improve Alex's war asset numbers so get them done.

But do pick up everything you can and drop them off before doing the Shroud mission, things will be locked out on the Citadel after you visit the Shroud.

I've been using the galaxy map song ('uncharted worlds') as my night time white noise music going on a decade now and, man, every time they're on the galaxy map my brain twitches a little.

@tds418:

Thank you. You are spot on about that. I made what I still think was the correct and just call,but god damn what happens after that is still burned into my brain. And I only ever played thru ME3 once.

Playing my way thru ME2 right now. With the lockdown I'm sure I'll catch up to Alex soon enough.

You know, this game is a lot cooler and more interesting than i remembered. and i liked it a lot when it came out. Its nice to see when a game holds up separate from the hype.

Watching these again really hammers home how consistently great the last two games were while ME3 was an intense mix of highs with some of the lowest points in the franchise peppered throughout. I will say that I have forgotten how many great moments 3 had because those memories faded away for me because of the bad taste the ending left in my mouth so watching this all again has been fun.

At the same this is also a reminder of how watered down parts of this game ended up being because of EA's push for broad appeal sales. I didn't mind it being way more of a shooter with light RPG mechanics because the gameplay was solid but the stripped down Citadel, dumbass way of picking up side quests by eavesdropping on everyone like some stalker, stripped down conversation options, pointless "War Asset" system, and bad character makeovers/additions like sexbot EDI, Officer Meathead, Kylo Ren Reject, and giving Liara massive breast implants will leave this game at the bottom of the ladder of this franchise for me even if you don't factor in the weak ending that was face lifted by DLC.

(Andromeda doesn't count, it was an ambitious fan-fiction game made by modders and I'll hear nothing to the contrary!)

Riddick is great

Fantastic 4 should be the biggest slamdunk in superhero films, but all the filmmakers/studios (besides Roger Corman, ironically) are too insecure to just say "Doctor Doom, King of Latveria" with a straight-face, so of course concepts like Annihilus are a far cry from being introduced. And they're too self-conscious to go with goofy storylines like the FF going broke.

@colourful_hippie I honestly think ME3 strikes the best balance between the "complex-but-not-deep" gameplay of ME1 and the "intense shooter with light RPG mechanics" of the 2nd one.

It feels like it values your time far more than the first one, but is definitely less focused and paced than the 2nd.