T w e n t y S i d e d

At five minutes into the episode, Josh and I both deliberately keep quiet while an NPC talks? At length? Who are these people? These impostors aren’t the Spoiler Warning crew I know!

This is my favorite part of the game. The meeting with Vigil is pretty much the heart of the Mass Effect 1 experience for me. I think most people cite the meeting with Sovereign as the big turning point in the game, but this meeting with Vigil is the part where the game really hooked me.

What would it be like for a newcomer to play the games in reverse order, I wonder? Both the first and last games have an encounter with an “oracle” of sorts, and both moments use the same musical cues. Here at the end of the reverse-playthrough we have a meeting with Vigil the shapeless construct, missing his Jamaican accent, who doesn’t seem to know anything about the catalyst, and is surrounded by statues of clearly non-Prothean beings. And where the hell is Cerberus? Nobody even mentions TIM at all! Why is Liara such a child all of a sudden? Why don’t my guns need bullets now? THIS GAME SUCKS!

Actually, if the comments I see are any indication, the backwards player won’t ever reach this point: They’ll be driven off by the mushy combat mechanics before they ever assume direct control of the Normandy from Anderson.

Anyway, great moment. Loved the voice work of David Shaughnessy as Vigil.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Warning: This episode contains Mass Effect's infamous XXX hard core pornographic sex simulation*. Viewers strongly cautioned.

* And by “pornography” we mean, “a fleeting side view of a bare female bottom”.

This whole sex scene feels like a thirteen year old trying to seem adult by cussing and spitting on the ground. Look at me! I’m a mature medium with adult themes! I have sexytime scenes just like in the movies. TAKE ME SERIOUSLY!

And as bad as this is, Dragon Age was even worse. The clothed sex scenes were funny, awkward, and embarrassing.

I think Randy’s suggestion about being able to break down doors is actually an interesting idea. Not in a “all games should do this” kind of way, but more like, “What would happen if this was an option?”

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Mass Effect EP18: Bow Chicka Wow Wow”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

See, this is another classic example of how BioWare didn’t plan ahead. In this part of the game we clearly KILLED KAIDEN IN A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION, and yet in the first five minutes of the next game they retcon the whole thing and have him alive again with no explanation. This failure to plan is why the whole thing is such a-

Oh. Right. That was Josh’s fault because he brought Kaiden back to life using a save editor. Um. Yeah. Still, the point stands that Kaiden totally had it coming.

We’re nearing the end of the Mass Effect re-watch. After this we’ll begin reposting the Fallout 3 episodes. I’m really looking forward to that. I haven’t seen those eps since they first aired, and I suspect I’ve forgotten a lot of them.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.