Spoiler Warning: Mass Effect Part 3

By Shamus Posted Thursday Feb 4, 2010

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 53 comments

A really cool feature on Viddler is the ability to comment at individual video timestamps. It’s really cool, although you have to register to do it. It’s kind of interesting, because it allows viewers to sort of build their own commentary track on top of ours. (We should do a let’s play of a Valve game with developer commentary, and comment on their commentary, and then you comment on that, and then get someone at Valve to comment on your comments and make the whole thing collapse into a meta-singularity.)

“Share & enjoy.”

 


From The Archives:
 

53 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning: Mass Effect Part 3

  1. Ross Bearman says:

    The first Mass Effect video you did got me to play it through for the first time, (can’t believe I missed it, new it existed but didn’t realise just how good it was) and I’ve almost finished Mass Effect 2 now, thanks for the tip off.

    I’ve been amazed by just how good both games were, really can’t believe I missed the first for so long.

    1. SatansBestBuddy says:

      Wait, wait… you nearly finished two 50+ hour long games in the space of less than a week?

      … what do you do for a living, cause I want to do that.

      1. Ross Bearman says:

        Freelance user experience designer and student. So yea, I do very little.

        Also, that should have been “knew”.

  2. nilus says:

    I really need to sit down and watch these videos, but man I am to obsessed with Mass Effect 2. Just beat it for the first time yesterday and already imported my other character from ME 1 to play through it again. Also need to keep playing through the suicide mission to find the right selection of team mates so everyone survives.

    Man I liked ME 1 a lot but ME 2 is amazing. Game of the Year in January.

  3. Sheer_Falacy says:

    The Quarians actually do wear their suits while on the flotilla. Their immune systems are that crappy.

    They do overall look like the geth, except where they have a mouthish thing the geth have an eyeish thing. Yeah, they both glow, but still.

    Hah, you totally ignored the guy asking for your attention on the way to the council meeting (16:30ish), thus following real life logic (council is more important) and totally ignoring standard game logic (SIDEQUESTS WHEE).

    1. RariowunIrskand says:

      I’m not sure whether they do or don’t wear suits on the Flotilla, but I know that it wouldn’t make sense if they did. The reason why they’ve got such bad immune systems is because they’ve lived for such a long time in the sterile enviroment of the Flotilla that they’ve adapted to it, and have pretty much lost their immune system. If the Flotilla is sterile and has no microbes (Which is the reason for not having immunity in the first place), why would they need to wear their suits which protect them from them?

  4. Factoid says:

    I so wish I had more free time to play games. I played through mass effect a couple of times. I’m working on ME2 right now. Almost everything about it is an improvement so far.

    My only beef with it is the resource collection. It takes way too long to scan every planet thoroughly for resources, even after the upgrade. It’s tedious and not very fun. The other thing I don’t like as much is actually flying the ship around the game map. It seems a little cheesy to me. I don’t mind that they made the probes and fuel cost credits, but they didn’t make it a meaningful amount. You collect so many credits in this game that they’re basically free.

    Still getting used to the new armor and weapon systems, but overall I think it’s a step up, just as pretty much everything in this game is a step up over the last one. I just wish I had a good 8 or 10 hour block to just lose myself in this game.

    1. neothoron says:

      I believe that in fact, you should stop collecting resources until you want to buy an upgrade – I spent some time fine trimming one third of the galaxy’s resources before stopping, and I was still swimming in resources at the game’s end.

  5. krellen says:

    I have to disagree with the other commenters. The hacking and decrypting mini-games in ME2 are vast improvements over the original, and there are a few clever characters with clever stories, but other than that, ME2 is a failure. Instead of fixing systems that had problems in the first, they removed them outright.

    And your guns need ammo now. Seriously. WTH?

    Instead of a second play of ME2, I decided to go back and replay ME1. So much better.

    1. nilus says:

      They Don’t need ammo, then need cooling rods. But yeah its the same thing. I wasn’t happy with the Ammo thing. That and the last boss fight was a big wacky. But the rest of the game was awesome.

      But I wouldn’t call it a failure. I don’t think I can play ME 1 again after ME 2. I just don’t want to drive the Mako or deal with the awful inventory system.

      I guess its all a matter of taste.

      1. krellen says:

        I never found the Mako that bad – and I definitely preferred free-roaming exploration of often beautiful planetary vistas over the alternative ME2 offers. Never minded the elevators, for that matter: the world feels so much more seamless with the elevators over the loading screens ME2 uses.

        And I liked the inventory. Could’ve used a little less diversity, maybe (taking out the “ranks” would’ve been sufficient), but otherwise it was a lot of fun for me.

        1. Neil Polenske says:

          Inventory is easily the worst aspect of the ME1. No orginization or information whatsoever. Complete chaos and an absolute pain in the ass. There’s simply no excuse for it.

          1. Jabor says:

            The inventory wasn’t too bad. The store interface, though, was a complete abomination.

    2. neothoron says:

      ME2’s mini games have a critical failure compared to PC ME: they never become any harder.

  6. Stellar Duck says:

    Exited exclamation. I call space hookers and elephant people. I really like those elcor.

    On topic though, I am really loving these vids. By coincidence I started replaying Mass Effect the day before the first episode went up in order to have a fresh save tor 2. So I’m having fun playing through my own campaign and watching you guys.

    And Spectres really are an awful organisation. It’s like all the worst of Stasi combined with space travel. Why would an enlightened civilisation ever create an organisation that is so blatantly prone to abuse of power, personal ambition and corruption? Not everything gets better by adding ‘space’ to it, secret agents included.
    Of course as a player it’s great to be space James Bond, but from a rational standpoint it’s just silly of them.

  7. Mad says:

    I only played the beginning but I don’t like it :) It felt so railed while the first one was really open and still simple. Hope it gets better. And the whole combat system has been dumbed down so much.

  8. someboringguy says:

    How do you people finish those games so quickly?
    Don’t you do any sidequests?

    1. nilus says:

      Yep, did them all. Last week was a very slow week at work and I work out of a home office. Needless to say I had a lot of time on my hands to play.

  9. Sheer_Falacy says:

    Mass Effect 2 with all sidequests is something like 30 hours (not counting dying and reloading). It’s not that hard to have finished it by now.

    I consider it a significant improvement, though there are certainly issues. The planet scanning is horrible. Shared ability cooldowns mean you just pick one and use that. But the shooter part is much improved. And Biotic Charge is an incredibly fun ability, even if it does get you killed half the time.

    I don’t really mind the ammo system because it helps force weapon variation.

    As for inventory… ME1s inventory was just horrific. It had to be burned to the ground. ME2 has the upgrades and weapon choices (and no, the choice isn’t just “use the most recent one” – it matters), and that’s enough for me. And you can customize your armor, though it doesn’t matter because the preorder armors are better than any combination you can come up with and don’t allow any choices. Which is dumb.

    1. krellen says:

      I have serious issues with Mass Effect being a “shooter”. I’m really kind of sick of every game having to be a “shooter”, and being praised for it.

      And that’s not even mentioning the story, which barely passes the “basely acceptable” pass for a regular game, let alone a BioWare one.

      1. Sheer_Falacy says:

        Uh… Mass Effect 1 was very much a shooter as well. ME2 is a better shooter, but either way, if you aren’t looking for a shooter this really isn’t the franchise for you.

        And the story is mainly in your companions, since there are only like 5 non-companion main missions. I’d have preferred fewer companions and more main story, since the companion missions really overuse betrayal, but still. The story is sufficient and the gameplay is quite fun.

        1. krellen says:

          Mass Effect was a shooter in that you had to more-or-less be pointing your gun at your target to hit. But even on Insanity difficulty, I’ve noticed several times when I’ve hit a target that was not in my sights and would have been missed in a real shooter – because Mass Effect was an RPG.

          This is not the case in ME2.

          1. Sheer_Falacy says:

            I’m pretty sure that in Mass Effect, the only RPG element in shooting is accuracy. Your bullets go somewhere in the circle of the sight, but you don’t know where. They don’t automatically home on enemies, unless you use the autoaim setting or something. And I don’t think the difficulty setting affects your accuracy.

            Now, biotic and tech abilities will target enemies close to your target. They do this in both games, though ME2 lets you curve some like pull to get around cover.

          2. nilus says:

            I have no problem with ME 2 being a hybrid shooter/RPG. Honestly it makes it more replayable for me.

            One of the best RPGs off all time was a FPS(Deus Ex). Nothing wrong with a little thumb twitching between talking to aliens. At least in my mind.

          3. krellen says:

            Interesting, nilus, because if pressed I would probably compare the Mass Effect franchise to Deus Ex – including the failings of both games’ sequels.

            Mass Effect 2 makes many of the same mistakes Invisible War did.

          4. nilus says:

            I guess we will have to agree to disagree then. I am enjoying ME 2 a lot. More so then I did Dragon Age. I can’t wait for ME 3

          5. krellen says:

            ME2 has moments of greatness, but is not in itself great. Just about everything involving Mordin and Legion are excellent, as is most things Tali and Thane.

            But the good parts are pretty much confined to characters and the stories around those characters, and are wholly divorced from the overall narrative.

          6. Sleeping Dragon says:

            I know this has been stated like a thousand times before but filler, plain and simply filler. The main plot is obviously trying to make a connection between sets of bigger events and reveals a few bits and pieces that are most likely going to be relevant in part 3 where we’ll do a collective “So THAT’S what this was about!” in the meantime distracting us with some nicely designed character stories and personalities. The only way I’m going to give it a nod of approval is if part 3 capitalises on this in some way (I’m actually kind of curious what are they going to do to strip you of all the stuff and staff you earned).

            On the gameplay mechanics side, to me both MEs are RPGs only slightly more than the Diablo games were, they incorporate some stats or skills but the core gameplay comes from an entirely different genre (not to mention that cRPGs are an entirely different thing than the P&P RPGs but that’s an old discussion).

  10. AGrey says:

    You guys need to include a little bit on the skill sets you chose. maybe just edit it out from whenever you did it and stick it at the end of the video, or something.

  11. KnightLight says:

    You only get the conversation with the warehouse workers if you have enough points in Charm or Intimidate. Otherwise they just start shooting.

  12. wtrmute says:

    Just because the Council isn’t elected doesn’t automatically mean that they’re bad news: In Star Wars, the Jedi Council compares immensely favorably with the Galactic Senate; which of the two is an elected body?

    On the other hand, I do agree that this SPECTRE organisation does come off a lot like a Space Gestapo. The fact that they took their name from that international terrorist organisation James Bond kept fighting throughout the Cold War doesn’t help at all

  13. Rick W says:

    Three comments…

    Re: Grenades. The only use I ever found for them was not massacring the innocent colonists on Feros. Aside from that, I ignored them.

    Re: Krogans as the worst enemies. I prefer krogans to some of the nastier forms of geth. And certainly to thresher maws.

    Re: Tali. Tali’s one of my default characters; I unlock the top tiers of Decryption and Electronics with her early on and don’t have to worry about that anymore.

    1. TSED says:

      Krogans vs geth vs thresher maws:

      The worst of the geth or thresher maws only show up when you’re in the mako, and the sort-of-bad geth only show up on foot when Tali’s capable of hacking their AI anyways. Mako fights are ridiculously easy (at least on the PC). Shimmy back and forth, fire guns. Cue victory theme.

      Krogans, however, can run up to you (you get tired running, they don’t) and can ONE SHOT YOU with melee. And if you have any tech guys who shut down their weapons or biotics (or both)…

      I hate fighting krogans.

  14. Martin! says:

    I love this series. but sometimes, the dialogue of the game get’s over the commentaries and we can’t hear them well. If the game sound would be a little louder on the right (or left) and the commentaries louder on the other side, it would be easier to hear both…

    Nice work. Thanks…

  15. Sleeping Dragon says:

    One more general observation, I do realise that this is a relatively quick playthrough but by skipping all the sidequests you not only miss some great (or “great”) scenes, not only limit the exp and loot but also skip a lot of paragon/renegade development which is likely to limit the moral compass magic (blue and red) dialogue options later on in the game. If all else fails maybe it would be possible to work through some of that stuff “offscreen” just enough for it to work with the main campaign?

  16. JoshR says:

    Still picking the good options, which makes me sad.
    The “dick” options are overall way more funny.
    Also most people probably played through doing mostly nice options, and so we’ve all seen those before… We all want to see you take the jerk option!

    1. Rick W says:

      Yeah, I’m currently doing my first mostly-Renegade playthough, and enjoying the Renegade options. Best so far: telling the admiral who wants to inspect the Normandy to piss off.

      I’m mildly annoyed at how many times “Not interested” appears in the Renegade option spot; yeah, it fits, but come on, psycho-Shepard needs XP too.

    2. Randy Johnson says:

      Expect this to change soon >:D

  17. Adam Szazs says:

    The reason you guys didn’t get the dialogue with the workers in Chora’s Den is probably because Conan doesn’t have enough ranks in persuasion. If you don’t have enough persuasion or intimidation to convince the guys not to fight you, the cutscene doesn’t play. (There’d be no point if you couldn’t influence them in some way.)

    Also, keep in mind that the audio file comes from a GETH. It’s reasonable for the Council to assume that Saren is keeping up the fiction of the Reapers to keep the Geth loyal to his cause.

  18. Wayoffbase says:

    “Our presidents a Turion”

    If I had beverage in my mouth, I would have blown it out my nose all over my monitor. I have a feeling not everyone is going to catch that one, classic :)

    1. someboringguy says:

      I don’t get this :(
      I am pretty sure that you could convince those people, that became hostile after you got close to them, not to fight you.Something like “we killed so many of you, how do you think you’ll win?”.
      And there is STILL the problem of the game audio being to loud.could you put it on mute, there are subtitles anyway and most of us have finished the game, otherwise they won’t look because that spoils everything.

      1. Wayoffbase says:

        It’s better if you don’t get it, there is a moment of silence after the comment that makes me think everyone involved probably thought it was best left unsaid :)

        Something I liked about Dragon Age, there were situations where the NPCs gave a proper amount of respect to you after you single handedly slaughter a few small armies. The guard captain who says “I can’t believe people actually voluntarily attack you,” and the werewolf Swiftrunner when he basically acknowledges that he can’t beat you but will still keep trying anyway. It was a small break from the types of NPCs that fight to the death even when they have zero chance of victory (and no real reason to risk their lives against you) and the unattackable ones that keep talking down to you just because you can’t do anything about it.

  19. Zaxares says:

    I was actually really disappointed by the Spectre induction ceremony. The game spends so much of the early hours hyping up Spectres about being this ultra-elite group of people who only make it into their ranks by being the best of the best, but that discussion with the Council makes it seem like Shepard’s only made a Spectre as a means to shut up Udina and the Alliance, to keep them from pestering the Council about Saren anymore. It ruined an otherwise moving and meaningful scene.

    On the difficulty of Krogans in the game: I agree that they are ABSURDLY resilient against damage, especially at higher levels. Between their heavy armor and the Immunity ability, you can be blasting a Krogan Warlord at point blank range with a top-level Spectre Assault Rifle and be dealing NO damage whatsoever. However, there is an insta-kill combo that can be used against Krogans in most maps that aren’t indoors:

    Lift + Throw.

    This combination, on higher skill levels, throws enemies out into SPACE… Whereupon they instantly die.

    And my posts wouldn’t be complete without some fan exposition about game lore. :P Shepard knows about the Reapers because of the vision implanted into his brain back on Eden Prime. He SAW the Reapers in his vision, but didn’t know what they were until Tali mentioned the Protheans being wiped out by them 50,000 years ago. Everything then went “CLICK” in his brain.

    On the “Was ME2 better or worse than ME1?” debate, I think this quote from Chris Remo of Gamasutra’s review of ME2 sums it up perfectly:

    “It depends on what you liked (or didn’t) about the first game. If Mass Effect was a sci-fi shooter saddled with excess RPG micromanagement, Mass Effect 2 is the ideal evolution. If Mass Effect was an RPG that tips its hat to third-person action games, Mass Effect 2 may be less satisfying than expected.”

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      I suppose that’s the dirty reality behind the propaganda, as far as I could tell the CODEX has a tone of “official facts”, information that was filtered by the council, we also generally learn the council races side of the story most of the time, with perhaps the exception of the genophage thing, with the Krogans’ fate being probably the only real moral dilemma I experienced in both games. So, we’ve really only seen like three Spectres (and that’s including Saren and yourself) and two “almost_made_its” in the game. On top of that, as was pointed out, everything a Spectre touches is classified, they have access to resources, nigh-absolute authority in the eyes of law… I wonder what’s the statistic on them going rogue, if on a lesser scale than Saren did, or at least swindling a bit on the side.

      SpoilerSpoilerSpoiler.

      To be honest despite the fact that the game does a bit to cover it when you think about it at length the council isn’t a fair system of rule at all, it would seem that humans mostly got the seat on the “let’s make sure they’re on our side” base and in ME2 we can see that what we got is really more of an access to the council rather than any actual power. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if in ME3 we actually got to do off with the council altogether and worked with the other races. I mean, there’s a lot of disgruntled populace out there: we have friends in high places among the Krogan, there are Volus who are generally fed up with the council and are implied to have great economic power, the “real Geth” who just might get along with the Quarians with a little bit of encouragement on both sides, the Rachni if you gave them a chance (and they threatened to overrun the galaxy once, and then the Krogan did… sure, both would be much fewer in numbers now but still having them on our side, with the Elcor economy, Geth efficiency, Quarian technical ingenuity…), some not very pronounced races like the Elcor… and who knows what else may be lurking out there (like the Drell did before ME2) just waiting to jump out of the box with “Shepard, let us join your new galactic federation thingy”.

  20. Blanko2 says:

    what’s weird is that the geth were created before the quarians lived in the flotilla, so their environment suit usage on it wouldn’t come into question.

    man, you guys are making me notice all the silly dialogue in ME
    can you really put up with the paragon option? i mean, being renegade is being a jerk, but half the time being a paragon is being a pushover!

    1. The more neutral choice is either to the middle left or middle right of the wheel.

      Upper left and upper right is normally Paragon choices.

      Lower left and lower right is normally the Renegade choices.

      The left side of the wheel have optional dialog or Paragon and/or Renegade bonus dialog, or more (neutral) background dialog.

      The right side of the wheel is regular conversation.
      You do not have to use the left side wheel dialog but you miss out on a lot of story stuff if you only use the right side of the wheel.
      The left side of the wheel may open further dialog branching and side quest or sub quest triggers.

      Add to the fact that the dialog choices is recorded in the save game and carried over to ME2 and affect your ME2 personal play through story and… well. The Mass Effect trilogy must surely be the ultimate nightmare for those that write walkthroughs. *laughs*

  21. Sarah says:

    The video refuses to load for me…

    Is it possible to get a youtube version?

  22. Luke Maciak says:

    Just wanted to pop in to tell you how much I am enjoying this. It is not only highly entertaining to hear your thoughts on the game in real time, but it also gives me a chance to see how different choices you are making impact the game without actually replaying it several times myself.

    I hope this will be a permanent, ongoing feature here and that once you are done with Mass Effect you will Spoiler Warning some other game.

    1. Like Mass Effect 2 ? Especially if they carry the play through savegame over to ME2 ;P

  23. Really interesting seeing you guys play though it although it’s kinda rushed through, maybe too much so as you guys keep ignoring the leveling up which will bite you in the ass later. (dying ring a bell? :P

    Then again, since you guys are doing a play through you could cheat *gasp* so you can’t die, which should make the play through smoother.

    I cheated in both ME1 and ME2, I still ended up taking cover etc. I still had a blast, adrenalin still pumped. I just ended up swearing less than I’d do otherwise ;)

    1. Randy Johnson says:

      We have been levelling up off screen, although in later episodes, I try and spend my skill points as quickly as possible, having already decided where I am going to put them, giving everyone a brief moment to look at what I bought.

  24. Zaghadka says:

    Whoa. That was a lot about Marina Sirtis. You guys gonna form a fan club or something?

    Can’t wait for the elephant hookers. ;)

  25. PeterTheGreat says:

    “Share & Enjoy.” I got the HitchHiker’s Guide reference. Thank you Shamus :)

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.