Mass Alex: Mass Effect 3 - Part 17

First! My favourite series on the site!

Shep Shep is going to wake up and all the Tali Scenes were just a dream.

Highlight of the week!

This series has a soul

My is name is PRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME

This mission has really good music

Edit: Actually, everything about this mission is good!

I never knew that you could save both the geth and quarians.

Still I think tali's death scene is the most memorable part of this game for me.

And watching this series made me realise that the way Tali falls off the cliff exactly copies the way legion jumped from the shuttle in the last episode.

I've never seen anyone have as much trouble with the lazer syncing as Alex. He's just shuffling to the side or trying to dodge when he should be using the run button. I wonder how many times it'll take him to figure it out

Hackett has new dialogue in the investigate section on those calls.

Shepards with a Spacer background has a mother who is still alive. You missed the sidequest in the first game where you actually get to talk to her.

"Is your mom a War Asset?"

You should do some multiplayer or mod that out or something to get your effective military strength up. The EFFECTIVE score is what matters.

I love the sound design on the synthetics. All sorts of cool ass sounds happening during this mission.

"The Geth are software, not hardware" is kind of a mind-blowing concept for an alien race. Something primarily digital. Mass Effect was so good.

I just watched friend of the site Nina Freeman stream the Reaper fight on Rannoch last week, and knew there was going to be an "It's afraid. IT'S AFRAID!" reference here. Vinny & Alex never disappoint.

I’m kinda hoping Alex accidentally kills Talia again...also I feel like this is the episode he gets Flare and starts doing Biotic Detonations I can feel it.

"Please don't make this seem like Detroit"

David Cage wishes he could make a game as good as Mass Effect 3, honestly.

(Also, the scene with Shepard and Tali sitting in front of the sunset and Tali taking her mask off is my favorite scene in the whole game.)

GOOD VIBES

Alex shouting COWARDS! when Tail takes the mask off is A+++.

Yay for Cryo! I loved the Cryo ammo

wow, this is exactly like Detroit!

Cowards.

Was it a glitch in the conversation with legion in the shuttle? I feel like both conversation paths were taken (regarding the reaper code)

@lucidquasar said:

Yeah, I don't know why they keep skipping that. Poor Hackett.

@vinny please make sure Alex does the "Leviathan" dlc, it has essential story content. also the "Citadel" dlc is a nice light-hearted bit of side content that lets you hang out with your crew and i think Alex would enjoy it.

See you next year on Maaaaaaaaaaaass Alexonmeda! You got this.

@wiseblood: THANK YOU, I was hoping someone made this comment

I dislike the idea that singular personalities are "more alive" than a networked intelligences.

@heatdrive88: Yeah, but then you get into the weeds of all the shitfighting about what quarians actually look like, and that's a rabbit hole you probably don't wanna go down.

Yeah I'd say you are far enough along to start tackling the rest of the DLC before you get too much further in the main story.

I was really worried that this decision would turn out wrong, I'm glad it didn't.

Quarians suck. Should've let the geth wipe them out

Like 2 years later and I've finally caught up.

I remember in ME2, Alex was shocked by hearing a news announcement regarding Shep Shep’s mom. With whatever option they picked in ME1, Shep Mom is a thing (although I don’t believe it is in the other backstories)

Wow. I beat the reaper on the second try. You wait before starting to dodge, as dodging slows the target designation. Also, aiming at the laser speeds it up.

So many enemies clustered together, not a single grenade thrown.

As someone who played through this game as a Soldier-class character, I feel obligated to warn people that time dilation (E.G. Adrenaline Rush) does NOT slow down the oncoming Reaper in the Hammer of Dawn sequence, but it DOES slow down your targeting laser. Don't do it - it's a death trap.

This also applies to just about every time-critical set-piece in the game, such as the bit on Mars where the Fem-Bot that EDI later commandeers is rushing you. Bioware has... never been very good about polish.

@warmonked: My attitude going into this dilemma was, "I'm going to try to save both of you... but if I can only save one species, I'm saving the Geth."

I think the first time I played 3, I made the same choices as Alex here but I didn't have enough rep for The Blue Option so Tali did what she does and I immediately deleted the save and started all over again, because fuck that.

Fair, but I think the point is that the reaper upgrades are sufficient to give each Geth unit a similar level intelligence to what they had as a collective before (though I don't think that's explicitly stated, so I might be making it up a bit). Each unit also still contains many "programs", so they aren't just a single consciousness/personality.

Damn. I was hoping Alex had the same ending I had. Imagine his little face having to watch Tali suicide in front of him after all the effort resurrecting her after the last game.

@superjoe said:

I loved when the Geth started singing Hold on

I feel like Legion calling Tali just "Tali" and not "Creator" didn't get enough attention :)

@vinny (Hope I did that tag right)

Before you return to the good 'ol Citadel, might I highly recommend your next mission be

"Arrae: Ex-Cerberus Scientists"

It's a larger, fairly important side-mission similar to the ones featuring Samara and Jack. Love you guys!

That happy ending is weak.

Yes! I've been wanting to get to this part so bad. I love Legion, and his sacrifice legit makes me cry. How it starts saying "I" instead of "we" right at the end gets me every time.

I like this mission better when you actually have to make a choice. The "one paragon/renegade check and everybody lives happily ever after" cop-out is weaksauce. For all the shitting on Dayvid Cayge in here, Detroit actually does the whole choice and branching narrative thing better than any Bioware game ever has. It's a pity it's trapped in a non-game and wasted on a story not worth telling.

The Mother stuff is actually a small thing you missed from the first game. You picked the spacer origin (Not the war orphan, you might be thinking of your service record, sole survivor) so theres actually a quest in ME1 where you talk to your mother over a comm channel and have a kind of reunion. This was following up on that.

@flstyle: This was one of the gameplay sections of ME3 that I can remember really clearly 8-ish years after playing it, and I remember dying multiple times there too. Once it clicked what I had to do (and that the laser sighting was cumulative and doesn't all have to be done in one hit) I got it pretty quick, but as awesome a moment as this is (facing off with a Reaper, the music, the build-up to what is clearly supposed to be a resolution of the Quarian/Geth story etc) the actual boss-fight part didn't feel very well designed.

For the people unsatisfied with the Rannoch ending, it's not just a reputation check; there's several quests around Tali/Legion in ME2 that you have to resolve the right way to get the option to spare both races in ME3.

If Tali is dead, it can't be done at all even if you've done everything right- That's a big part of why some people wanted Alex to bring Tali back. The way she died in his play-through, as a completely unforeseeable result of a choice that was very poorly communicated by the game, would've invalidated all of his other progress, where he -did- make the right choices when given the option. Given that Alex has been playing as exactly the kind of character this ending was meant for, losing access to the only path for a co-operative resolution of the Geth/Quarian conflict through no fault of his own would have really sucked, and I know if it happened to me on my what was ostensibly my singular playthrough of the series it'd sour some otherwise good memories.

Renegade: Javik, Ashley (rip), James, Garrus
Paragon: Liara, Tali, Kaiden
Neutral: EDI