Oops! It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Part of the reason is I’ve been quite busy and haven’t had much time to play. Another reason is that I’ve had trouble deciding what can even follow Mass Effect 3.
I was busy visiting my grandparents in Idaho, so there wasn’t much opportunity for gaming there besides my 3DS and Animal Crossing: New Leaf!
And when I got back from that I went to IndieCade, an independent games convention that was happening not too far from where I live. I was excited to go and meet the woman who founded a blog that I’ve contributed to a few times. She was very cool, and so was the conference. Nobody had any assumptions about why I was there. People would ask me if I was a developer. I felt very welcome and there were all kinds of cool indie game demos to try out. It gives me hope for a future where everybody is welcome in gaming and more people can be represented in games. As I’ve written about before, representation is very important.
The whole experience made me more interested in the possibility of developing games, but I’m still just so intimidated and have no idea where to start. I’m at least so happy that I know this event did inspire others to become developers. I think I’m better off showing my support by buying and playing more indie games. I already have quite a few that I got as part of Humble Bundles and such; perhaps it’s time to actually play them.
I’ve started playing Life is Strange, so I’ll be writing about that. This is just about the first time I’ve been able to play a big game close to the time it actually came out, so that’s kind of exciting. I’ll be writing more soon! Thanks for reading!
So, I finished the game. I’m all done with the Mass Effect trilogy. It was amazing and I loved it so much.
I know when it came out, there was a lot of unhappiness with the ending. I don’t understand why. I loved the ending. It was beautiful and sad and hopeful, all at the same time.
The first step was attacking the Illusive Man’s base. I finally found the room where he was always talking to me in ME2. I also found out what the Catalyst is. It’s the Citadel! Then Kai Leng showed up, and I fought him and finally won. I also got sweet revenge for Thane.
However, the reapers already found out what the catalyst is, and moved the Citadel to the Sol system and have it under heavy guard. So many reapers are guarding it while it’s in space we only have a shot at getting to the Citadel is from the ground, since they handily have a beam that will take us to the Citadel.
There was a lot of fighting on the ground to get to the beam, and in the end only Anderson and I made it. I’m so happy I at least got a chance to say bye to Liara and EDI since they were with me, but got too injured to come with me.
Anderson and I make it up to the Citadel, and find the Illusive Man there. He wants to use the Citadel to control the reapers. I don’t think he can actually do it, and I end up shooting him when he pulled a gun on Anderson.
Anderson is slowly dying from a gunshot wound, and I wasn’t doing to well myself. Anderson gives me a nice little speech about how well I’ve done, and then he dies. I think Shepard was dying too, but comes back a bit once she’s told that the Crucible isn’t doing anything. It was sad how fast she jumped up when she thought she had to do something, even though she was in so much pain.
I don’t manage to do anything though, and I get taken elsewhere in the Citadel to meet an AI. It is the Catalyst, and the Crucible a power source. I learn all about the reapers and their purpose. Organics and synthetics are in conflict, and the reapers end the conflict in every cycle. It is confirmed that the Illusive Man could not control the reapers, since they already control him. Then I have to make a decision. My options: Destruction, Control, or Synthesis?
Destruction will lead to the death of many, both reapers and others who have lots of synthetics like the quarians, asari, and EDI. However, this is only a temporary fix because the cycle will start again. Control would make me into a tyrannical sort of god, who can control the reapers and force them to stop. Synthesis would make everyone into a mixture of organic and synthetic, but I would have to sacrifice myself.
I ended up choosing Synthesis. It did seem like the best way, the only way to bring about peace permanently. I’ve gotten into some interesting conversations with my friends about who chose what and why. I think you can learn a lot about someone by what they choose. I still feel like I made the right decision. It was so sad to leave behind everyone, but really any of the choices would have led to that. I chose the best option for everyone else’s survival even though I had to give myself up.
I really loved the ending too. It was so beautiful and full of hope. Shepard may be gone, but she is not forgotten. And because of her, and of me, everyone can live on in peace. Shepard is gone, but I am not, and I hope I can make as big a difference in real life as Shepard made.
I don’t know what I will play next. What can take the place of such an amazing game?
One thing I have noticed with ME3 is how much darker it is than ME2. It makes sense, during a worsening war things are not going to be very happy. I don’t think a video game has actually made me cry until now. That being said, the Citadel DLC was a much needed break from so much doom and gloom.
I had always heard about the funny parts of this DLC however, so I didn’t expect the first part of it to once again be pretty sinister. You start out meeting Joker for sushi, but someone comes in to warn us that people are trying to kill me. Sure enough, we are ambushed by a mysterious new mercenary group.
Of course, since I’m Shepard, I manage to escape from them and join up with my squad. Then we all go to the archives to figure out what it is they want. And it’s another ambush, led by someone surprising:
It’s me! I thought that voice sounded familiar at first. She is a clone of me, made by Cerberus in case I needed spare parts. That’s disturbing.
There were lots of new enemies to fight, my least favorite being the mercs with glowing shields.They are even more annoying to deal with than the Cerberus guardians.
Of course we end up getting betrayed by Brooks. She was working with my clone all along. And I got locked in the archives with Garrus and EDI, which led to some hilarious conversation.
We manage to get out with help from Glyph however, and go to retake the Normandy. With a toothbrush.
I had to fight my own clone, and watch her commit suicide. That was a little traumatizing. Also sad. She could have been more, and learned more about living. I don’t blame her for betraying me; she knew nothing and never had a chance.
That all felt rather dark, but now I get to the fun part: throwing a party for my squad, with members old and new! It was so nice to see them again and there were so many great moments. I don’t want to put too many but it was all great.
I really felt like I got my money’s worth on this one and I highly recommend it. It’s a very welcome break from the gloom and doom of the rest of the game.
I can’t believe how close I am to the end of the game. I don’t want it to end, but at the same time I need to know what happens next.
I completed my playthrough of the of Omega DLC. The goal is to help Aria T’Loak to retake Omega from Cerberus.
It was pretty straightforward. We had to dock at Omega and join up with some mercenaries who were still putting up a resistance on Omega.
We got to meet a female turian, which was cool. Apparently the female turians have voices just as nice as the male ones. Sadly, she ended up sacrificing herself for Aria and me. This caused Aria to rush in to attack Petrovsky, the leader of Cerberus on Omega. She ran right into a trap, and it was up to me to save her. It got pretty hard, and I almost ran out of time. There were just so many troops coming at me and I was all alone.
I enjoyed this one more than I liked Leviathan, but I still feel like I paid a little too much for it. With all the DLC I bought, I actually spent more on DLC than I did on the entire Mass Effect 3 game. Oh well, I am always happy to play more ME3 because it’s just so much fun.
Like I tend to do, I ended up buying DLC to put off finishing a game. When I enjoy a game as much as I have enjoyed Mass Effect 3, I don’t want it to end but at the same time I want to know the ending. Since that isn’t possible unless I go and spoil the ending, I just put it off with DLC as a compromise.
I bought Leviathan, Omega, and The Citadel DLC. I have played through and completed Leviathan DLC. It wasn’t as short as I was worried it would be. While I still think it was a bit pricey for what I got, it was enjoyable.
In it, you must track down some kind of giant creature that seems to be capable of killing reapers. Since the researchers investigating it were all killed, we don’t know exactly where to look. I had to collect evidence on where they could be. Eventually I found one surviving researcher, because the reapers don’t want them to find the leviathan. On this part of the mission, there is a really annoying glitch where it’s nearly impossible to go down a ladder. After looking up how to get past it, I finally did. It was funny because a lot of people posting about it posted in 2012 and would say “I hope Bioware fixes this soon.” Well, clearly they didn’t ever fix it.
Finally we found the leviathan, deep under the ocean on a recently discovered oceanic planet. I had to dive in a mech to go find it. That was a lot of fun! When I found it, leviathan appeared to be a reaper. I had known that they had similar mind control abilities as reapers. I convinced it to join the fight against the reapers, because the reapers were already trying to track it down and so it was best to turn and fight.
Over all, I don’t quite feel that this one was worth the money but it was also quite fun and you get a lot of interesting backstory on reapers and the history of this universe.
I finished getting the quarians on my side, after destroying the reaper signal coming from the geth dreadnought. For once, I went a bit renegade because I’m quite annoyed at the quarians. They keep attacking the geth and the geth just act in self-defense.
I had to fight a lot of geth on the dreadnought, and I got more kills over cover. That move hasn’t been useful very often, but when it is possible it is so much fun!
After that, I had to find the geth server and destroy the reaper code that was controlling the geth for the reapers. This mission was not what I expected. I had to actually go into the geth server virtually and destroy the reaper code with code that took the form of a gun. It was pretty cool, and looked very neat!
I then went to Rannoch to save Admiral Koris and ended up fighting a reaper! Unfortunately the recording stopped and I didn’t notice, so I don’t have video of it. I also don’t have video of getting the geth and quarians to work together. I was so happy that my paragon score was high enough to do that, because otherwise I don’t know how I would choose whether to save the geth or the quarians! However, the decision to upgrade all geth meant that Legion had to give up itself. So, Legion is dead. I’m not happy about it, but it didn’t affect me as much as Thane’s or Mordin’s deaths.
After all that, I went to Thessia to help the asari and the find an artifact that might tell us what the catalyst is so we can finish the Crucible. We had to find and activate a Prothean beacon that was hidden in an asari temple. Of course, we couldn’t actually get the information. The VI that was in the Prothean beacon was stolen by that jerk Kai Leng. I tried my best to kill him, but as usual he got away. I really want my revenge against him!
It was so sad seeing Thessia fall as well. And now, we have resolved to go find Cerberus and attack them first. I’ll be playing that soon, but first I need to take care of some things at the Citadel.
I went and solved the problem at the Ardat-Yakshi monastery. Samara was there, because two of her daughters are there. One of her daughters was fine, but the other didn’t make it. It was too later for her; the reapers had already started to turn her into a banshee. I loved the design of the banshees. They are awesome and creepy in perfect balance. Once again however, I was almost in tears because of the whole sisters thing. I’ve got four sisters myself, and would be absolutely distraught if anything bad happened to any of them. I also kept Samara from killing herself.
After that, I went and ran around the map finding everything I could that people in the Citadel wanted. It’s funny that someone as important as Shepard would have the time and inclination to run around finding all these things for people, but it was fun. After that, there was lots of bonding with various members of my squad.
I’d always had a soft spot for Liara, but wasn’t sure if I could romance her now because I didn’t romance her in ME1. Turns out I could!
Right after that, I went to talk to Kaidan. I was worried he’d be all mopey because the last time we talked he didn’t seem to be over me, but now he suddenly is! I am quite relieved.
James decided to join the N7 program, so he is getting a tattoo! This is honestly something I’ve considered doing in real life, because this game has been so good for me in healing myself and growing as a person. Still on the fence about it, but I loved this scene.
And last but not least, Garrus challenged me to a shooting competition! I didn’t let him win; it seemed too condescending and I don’t like to downplay my abilities just to protect someone else’s ego!
I already thought the ME series did a great job making characters, but it’s even better in ME3. Everyone seems to have even more personality, and I love to see them move around and talk to each other on the Normandy. They seem to have more of a life outside of what I see.
Trying to catch up on all the games I missed when I was younger!
Shiny New Gamer 