Mass Effect EP15: Art Collectors and AA Guns

By Shamus Posted Saturday Dec 8, 2012

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 47 comments


Link (YouTube)

ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE! ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE! GO GO GO! ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE! HOLD THE LINE! ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE! ENEMY IS EVERYWHERE! GO GO GO!

A bit of Spoiler Warning housekeeping: I’ve updated the Spoiler Warning page and created a playlist for Mass Effect 3. You know, just in case you wanted to torture someone with a continuous trickle of complaining and you don’t want to have to click on the videos manually.

Also, I remember at some point people mentioned that other bits were missing from the Spoiler Warning page, but now I’ve forgotten what they are. Let me know in the comments if anything is missing, broken, or invalidates all the choices you made to establish a pretentious and nonsensical ending that conflicts with established themes.

 


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47 thoughts on “Mass Effect EP15: Art Collectors and AA Guns

  1. McNutcase says:

    Links for episodes 9-15 (and counting) of the Mass Effect 1 rerun are missing.

    Extra colons in post titles are causing breakage, still.

    1. Hydralysk says:

      Don’t mind me, just correcting a stupid mistake caused by not reading thoroughly.

    2. Torsten says:

      Would it be a good idea to add the notes for missing episodes to these couple first comments? It’s ok, I’ll do it anyway.

      The final episode of Half-Life 2 season is missing.

  2. Tony says:

    Alan Wake episode 4 is still down due to music issues.

    And Mumbles is listed on the current season of Spoiler Warning; I hope that’s true but I’m betting it isn’t.

    Oh, and under Special Episode, 8 by Zombies says “Part 1,” which implies the existance of other parts.

    1. meyerkev says:

      I think that The 8 By Zombies bit is due to Josh being lazy/busy, and never making parts more than 1, not Shamus losing links.

      /I might be wrong though.

      1. McNutcase says:

        Yeah, Josh briefly showed us the work-in-progress for 8 By Zombies part 2 on a stream. And then the stream went bad and I think his computer caught fire. Even his insane space-magic rig is groaning under the strain of editing that; he might need to borrow a render farm from Pixar or something…

        1. meyerkev says:

          Out of curiosity, what IS Josh’s super space-magic rig?

          Because at this point, an i7 Desktop with 32GB of RAM is about $1000 (Assuming you already have a monitor, you cheap out on the case, go low-end graphics card, and you make it yourself). Getting a high-end graphics card and reasonably sized SSD can make that maybe $1500 (And then beyond there, your performance/extra dollar goes WAY down unless you’re throwing in extra hard drives). A similarly specced laptop is maybe $2200.

          So if that’s high-end, but not ridiculously so, what’s super space-magic? Dual Xeons? Multiple Terabytes of SSD’s stuck into a RAID partition? Or is this like my father (on his P4 desktop with a half-gig of RAM) being stunned that my computer boots up in under 5 minutes, and opening a tab on my internet browser happens in less than 30 seconds?

          1. Viktor says:

            Able to play relatively recent games on moderate settings, record those games in 1080p, while simultaneously compressing the game video and broadcasting it. Josh hasn’t posted his build here, but it’s got to have some muscle to it.

            1. ENC says:

              The CPU’s at least i5 or i7; my intel core 2 Q(uad)9550 can record games at 40+ FPS like Hitman: Absolution or the likes, and to stream at the same time would bring my rig to its knees.

              That being said, using something like ffsource to record and stream simultaneously wouldn’t be TOO taxing on my rig if I overclock it and only play lighter CPU games like TWD and not PS2 (which I can surprisingly record in fraps at 40FPS or higher).

              I’d imagine there’s a very good possibility it’s overclocked too, and that he has a lot of space (thinking a TB HDD solely for SW if he also keeps all the old episodes).

          2. Bubble181 says:

            A) if you can build a computer with 32GB RAM and an i7, with motherboard etc etc, for $1000 and have a high-end graphics card AND an SSD for $500, I want to know where you shop. A high-end graphics card alone will set you back €500 or so; a 256GB SSD is easily €250.
            B) It’s probably more exageration than anything else; I’m sure he has a nice and beefy gaming rig with probably some extra memory and perhaps a graphics card adapted to rendering but nothing more out of this world than that.

            1. Shamus says:

              Yes. I don’t know the specs of his machine, but I’m sure they’re not anything really outrageous. It’s just a good gaming rig.

  3. Hitchmeister says:

    “The Protheans are Freemasons. That’ll be the big reveal of Mass Effect 3.” No, that’s like 10 times more awesome and logical than any of the reveals in Mass Effect 3. I love hearing the predictions about Mass Effect 3 (jokey or serious) during this series. 2010 was a looong time ago.

    1. scowdich says:

      It’s a little disappointing, hearing the predictions made for the trilogy during Mass Effect 1. Especially because some of the most off-the-wall silly stuff is right on the money, and the more serious predictions are so much better than what actually happened.

  4. Yeti says:

    So apparently Bioware pitched a spy game in 2009. It would be Bond/Bourne like and it seemed like the team was really excited. EA shot it down however. A shame, because I liked the different settings Bioware games would take place in.

    On a different note does anyone here play Dota2? I took a break but want to get back in.

    1. Aldowyn says:

      So basically Alpha Protocol? TBH Bioware might have done a better job with the gameplay at least :P

      1. Gruhunchously says:

        I dunno, I’d figure that Bioware would just strip it down to a barebones third person shooter with barely any RPG progression, and then still make it horribly unbalanced in favor of stealth. And also bind every goshdarn thing to the same key. (I’m still bitter about how Mass Effect 2 turned out, gameplay wise)

        But still, seeing as how the main pull of Alpha Protocol has always been the dialogue and choice and consequence, maybe making the combat bland but inoffensive might ultimately be a good thing.

  5. KremlinLaptop says:

    So Shamus mentioned on his twitter that Tiny Tina reminds him of Mumbles. For the sake of reference here is a video of Tiny Tina highlights.

    …Yup, we’re just a few dozen nuclear ‘splosions away from this being Mumbles.

    1. crossbraindedfool says:

      But where’s the cannibalism?

      1. Tohron says:

        She did threaten to eat all your babies.

    2. Gruhunchously says:

      Who is this ‘Sir Reginald’ she speaks of. A familiar face?

      1. anaphysik says:

        Sir Reginald is Tina’s date, a tiny bug-in-a-jar, who you have to ‘rescue’ from a varkid hive.

        If I had to guess, I’d say that he has feelers in the shape of mutton-chops, though. Not that Borderlands2 is hurting for them: http://images.wikia.com/borderlands/images/9/98/Hammerlock.jpg

        1. el_b says:

          damn, cuftbert gets EVERYWHERE!

    3. MrGuy says:

      I may now have to play Borderlands 2 (despite not liking the original) just to meet this character.

      And…there goes my weekend.

    4. MrGuy says:

      Also, I’m both giggling and terrified by the idea of what Mumbles’ conception of the Best Tea Party Ever might involve…

      1. avpix says:

        Good music and BBBEEEEEEEESSS!!!

        1. KremlinLaptop says:

          Cannibalism, cannibalism, cannibalissssm…

    5. LunaticFringe says:

      Honestly, never got the connection because Tina reminded way too much of Ashly Burch (not much of a surprise there, considering she’s the voice actor).

      1. KremlinLaptop says:

        OH HOLY WHAT. I didn’t REALIZE that it was HAWP at all. I did think the voice was striking familiar but couldn’t figure out quite why.

        …Well that explains it. I left a comment on one of the Fallout: NV episodes iirc saying how Mumbles “Reminds me of the girls from HAWP.”

        Because Mumbles and demented violence.

  6. MrGuy says:

    Sweet 360 shove it to boneless!

  7. anaphysik says:

    As I said in the youtube comments:
    “I actually went out of my way to avoid hitting the cute crab-monster-things. Randy is evil, though, so what else can we expect…”

    Also, the space monkeys on Eletania? Unhurt. Nor did I ever do the ‘shoot the pyjaks’ sidequest in ME2. I liked Urz, but not that much.

  8. Wedge says:

    This is one of the parts that reminds me just how disappointed I was in ME1. There is a really interesting setup to this mission: Wrex (a character you care about) wants to recover a stolen heirloom of his family. There’s a lot of cool things they could have done with this, including delving into Wrex’s backstory, expounding on the Krogan’s history, etc. But instead, you land on a planet that’s exactly the same as every other planet, shoot dudes that are exactly the same as every other dude in a base that’s exactly the same as every other base in this game, and what do you get? One line. One generic line from Wrex that does absolutely nothing to differentiate this quest from the dozen others that take place in bases that are literally identical to this one.

    Sometimes it’s easy to forget in comparison to the shitshow that was ME3, but ME1 wasn’t THAT great a game to begin with.

    1. Thomas says:

      The ME1 loyalty missions were probably the greatest waste in the game. At least they gameplay balanced Wrex perfectly to reveal his character instead. Whereas Garrus feels a bit underpowered and Tali is way too tanky

    2. MrGuy says:

      Yeah. If you’re not one of those 100% completists, I don’t really see the point of bothering with these missions. Which is really a shame.

      At the point of heresy, I sometimes think people fawn all over Bioware as world builders a little in excess of their deserving. People who defend ME3 claim that BioWare was forced to rush the game out before it was done and it doesn’t reflect their true genius. ME1 gets none of that excuse – it’s supposedly the original vision, lovingly crafted. And don’t get me wrong – there’s a lot to like. The Mass Relays are a not-as-terrible-as-some space jump mechanic, there are some interesting characters and concepts, and they put some thought and attention into the world’s backstory. But there’s also a bunch of stuff that doesn’t make a lot of sense and/or feels like padding, like the loyalty missions. They’re supposed to make the world feel big, but they end up making it feel small. I can get behind having multiple missions on the same world (hey, building planets is expensive), but throwing on another mission that has little point or flavor isn’t a clever re-use of assets. It’s pointless padding.

      1. Amnestic says:

        Calling them “loyalty missions” is a bit excessive. With the exception of Wrex, the missions don’t have any bearing on the game whatsoever beyond a few lines of dialogue. There’s no influence system (either as binary as ME2 or more like NWN2/Dragon Age). The one change is that if you find Wrex’s armour, you can talk him down on Virmire without Charm/Intimidate.

        1. Thomas says:

          They were clearly meant to be along that line though. The way they’re set up is identical to the way they were in ME2. Each character talks to you, always hinting around a particular issue, after a certain length of time they will then stop talking to you and ask you to do something big and personal for them. You then do said task and they love and will complete your conversation.

          The reason they have no consequence is just that ME1 is very consequence light, they load pretty much everything onto the sequels. It’s nice that they even included one consequence with Wrex. Balanced out by Wrex having the worst mission, should have been way more important than it was. At least Garrus has some dialogue lines and learns something from it

      2. Wedge says:

        Depends what you mean by “world-building.” From a writing perspective, I think ME’s world-building is brilliant. It’s not always executed well in-game, but the writing is well thought out. Unfortunately, that was really the only thing that I felt was brilliant about ME1 (well, except the music, but that’s neither here nor there.)

        That’s why, for all its faults, ME2 is still my favorite in the series. It tightened up the combat to the point that it was a lot of fun instead of a tedious grind, and it had plenty of level variety instead of the same three bases repeated endlessly. It was just as long as ME1 without feeling padded.

        To be fair, the criticism of ME2 is totally legitimate: they did change the tone from hard sci-fi to a more Micheal Bay-ish action, and the plot was entirely superfluous and poorly written. But you don’t spend most of the game on the plot, you spend most of the game interacting with really well-written, interesting, likable characters (except Miranda) in a pretty-fun shooty game. Which is what I wanted the first game to be, but ME1 really failed at the whole “being fun” part for me.

        ME3 was really the worst of both worlds though. They somehow managed to make ME2’s much improved combat as dull and tedious as ME1’s (or worse); you got all of the shitty writing with none of the good characters, and Kai Leng to boot. Truly shameful.

  9. Daemian Lucifer says:

    You forgot I WILL DESTROY YOU!

    1. swenson says:

      Jack yelling that is about the best part of ME2. The first time I heard her do it, I was like, Jack? Did you really just say what I thought you said?!

  10. Indy says:

    The Art Collector stole the ending! That’s what it must be! He saw Mass Effect 3’s real ending, decided it was so full of both art AND integrity and he took it for himself. Hudson’s defense of the ending makes sense then: he made a good one and put it in the game and doesn’t understand the Collector stole his. And that explosion must be the new ending’s first little test fire to see if it’d work (I bet it utterly destroyed all synthetic life in its little radius). It all makes so much sense…

    1. MrGuy says:

      My god.
      It all makes sense!
      I CAN SEE THE MUSIC!
      (Head Explodes)

  11. Spammy says:

    I miss the combat taunts. Sure, they scream them all the time, but I mean, they’ve got a silly kind of charm, and I love how panicked the guy is.

    1. swenson says:

      On the other hand, when you get into ME2, you can get the endlessly screaming mercs glitch, which is also endlessly hilarious. Ever run into that one? Sometimes they’ll get stuck, not sure if it thinks they’re on fire or falling or what, and they’ll just stand in one place screaming horrifically until you kill them.

      1. Gruhunchously says:

        OOAHHOAAHAH! HOOAUGHHAHHGAHH! AUGHH! OHOAUGHHHGH! UAUGHHAHUGHUHG!

        On a different note, it seems like they took all the crazy, constantly repeated combat taunts from the random mooks, and gave them to the main antagonist instead. That was a smart idea.

        ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL. I WILL SHOW YOU TRUE POWER. FACE YOUR ANNIHILATION. YOU CANNOT RESIST. THIS HURTS YOU. MY ATTACKS WILL TEAR YOU APART. YOU CANNOT RESIST. THIS IS WHAT YOU FACE. WE ARE YOUR GENETIC DESTINY. YOU WILL KNOW PAIN SHEPARD. repeat ad infinitum

        1. Spammy says:

          You forgot the best one! THIS HURTS YOU!

  12. Dave B. says:

    I remember the first time I played the Half Life 2: the Lost Coast, and being blown away by how awesome the water looked. That game/tech demo was impressive in a lot of ways, but the water is what really stood out to me.

    So water effects, like the ones on Virmire, kind of turned into my personal benchmark for “visually impressive” in a game.

  13. GeekKnowledgeFailure says:

    On the subject of playlist housekeeping, would you be so kind as to make a playlist for the stand-alone and special episodes? The only way to find them right now is to either bring up the Spoiler Warning page or dig through youtube; which is not easily done on something other then a computer.
    Yes, I watch youtube on my xbox, deal with it.

  14. IronCore says:

    Shamus, just a bit of site feedback here. For me the site is still running very sluggishly. It can take upwards of a full minute to load a page at times.

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