Solid Snake's Pseudo-Let's Play: Mass Effect

Solid Snake · 07-20-2008, 05:42 PM

Mass Effect: Chapter Two, Part One
Or, Sexism in the 22nd Century: Check out the Ladies in Pink Uniforms!

When we last left off from our crazy misadventures on Eden Prime, Mr. Jenkins, lacking much to be desired in his INT score, charged blindly at a duo of Level-One robotic scouts, got shot a couple times, and died. I'd make another crack about how ludicrous Jenkins' death scene was if not for the goddamned Husks we're going to meet shortly, who sent me to a Game Over screen far too often for my personal liking.

Anywhoo, Taran and Kaiden have (sort of) Leveled Up!

...and with our skills ever-so-slightly improving, we're now ready to handle the epic challenge of...

Hunting Gasbags.

"Be vewy, vewy quiet..."
Hunting gasbags is the ultimate challenge in Eden Prime. One wrong move and the herds will descend upon you like madmen, tearing your flesh to bits and pieces, screaming and howling like the horrifying monsters they are.

...Okay, not really.
They just sort of explode after a single shot. Kaiden jumps back, shouts a bit, and acts as if attacking a gasbag is equivocal to unleashing armageddon. In reality, these puppies are harmless.
I just feel bad for Mrs. Gasbag, who will now have to raise their children alone. You monster, Taran Shepard. You ungrateful little bastard! Killing a family man in his prime like that!

...So let's continue our capacity to commit atrocities by looting this corpse!
Some credits, a Medigel and a couple minor upgrades later, we decide to march into distinctly unknown territory.

We enter into a forest composed of trees with gigantic trunks...perfect to take cover behind. Of course, not long into our escapades a couple more Geth Drones buzz out and take fire.

We swat them down like flies, no sweat.
So far, I'll also add that Kaiden is proving utterly useless in battle. He does, however, appropriately shout "All clear!" when every enemy is eliminated, which is a fairly ridiculous practice on a battlefield. ("Let's shout blatantly obvious directives to each other and reveal our position to enemies who may be attempting to ambush us!" I mean if you're going to announce your presence to the world, try to do so over an issue critical and subtle enough to be worth the exclamation.)

Having eliminated the bad guys, we now approach an open clearing to the north. We're getting closer to the dig site.

Hey, look! More geth drones!
I wonder what they could be chasing?

It's a three-breasted, two-headed alien chick!! Sweet!!
...Actually, this is just a screenshot error. Ashley Williams is, unfortunately, a human of the two-breasted, one-headed variety. She's also presumably the only survivor yet of her unit on Eden Prime -- you know, the unit that sent the Normandy that lovely broadcast of death and destruction earlier.
I'm still mildly baffled as to what protocol exists in the Systems Alliance that requires women serving in the military, even the Gunnery Chiefs, to wear pink and white. The alternative, I suppose, is that Ashley simply prefers the color pink, but given her personality, I'd highly doubt that one. Is there any tactical advantage whatsoever in enabling your enemy to easily determine the gender of your forces from afar?

We finally see a couple of Geth units that seem distinctly humanoid, or at least bipedal. And these Geth aren't playing around. Look at what they do to Ashley's teammate, who was captured...

...Owch.
There's a lot of issues that are sort of glossed over here, like exactly how an invading force such as the Geth would be capable of constructing and/or transporting Dragon's Teeth (that's literally what those large spikes are called in Mass Effect all this way, or why this kind of death would be even be necessary to pull off -- as opposed to, you know, just the standard "shoot him dead" or "rip his head off" methods. This seems unnecessarily gruesome.
Unfortunately we'll soon get our answer to the second question. It won't be pretty.

...No matter how tough a woman in a videogame supposedly is, she must always be introduced into the narrative in a "damsel-in-distress" situation in which her life is at stake and you, the hero, have the opportunity to rescue her.
So let's leave her for dead, turn around and ignore her plight, shall we?

Ashley is, at this particular point in the game at least, the most capable of all the characters in combat situations. I know this because Kaiden and Taran refused to assist Ashley in her moment of need and she took care of the Geth by herself, apparently. And I racked up the free XP. Delicious, free, unearned XP.

Ashley Williams is a Gunnery Chief and a skilled soldier. I'll give her credit for being absolutely nothing, in terms of demeanor, like Bastila or most other females in RPGs, for that matter. She reminds me most of the Handmaiden for reasons I can't quite fully articulate. At any rate, she's frank, precise, punctual, and barely even seems disturbed at the notion that her entire unit has died painful and gruesome deaths.
Despite being a jerk to most others we'll meet in this game, Taran still appreciates a fine lady when he sees one, and this conversation does absolutely nothing in regards to Paragon/Renegade points anyway, so we'll have him attempt to lift Ashley's spirits. We ask her if she's wounded; she's fine. However, she and her team "walked into an ambush" and she's "the only one left." Ashley does not express any remorse whatsoever during these comments, and doesn't bother to even shed a tear, so this dialogue option we're about to choose seems a little out-of-context:

Maybe we should have named Shepard after Psycho Mantis, because he appears to be reading her mind here. Ashley expresses barely the slightest ounce of regret over the situation -- and isn't even close to experiencing a psychological breakdown -- and yet Shepard's treating her like a fifteen year old girl who needs to be talked down to, under the assumption that she can't handle the pressure of combat.
So in essence, this "Paragon" answer can actually be justified within the context of Shepard's characterization. (It'd be funny to see what the "You abandoned them" option would have led to, but I'm not the least bit interested in any behavior that could ruin his chances of a relationship with Ashley.)

Continuing the long-held RPG tradition that nearly every single female character in a videogame must be very attractive, regardless of her role or her purpose or her background or her personality, Ashley has Angelina-Jolie-esque lips and a petite, pleasant figure. (I was pretty surprised to see makeup among the customizable options for a female Shepard. "Hold up, guys! I need to reapply my blush before we take down this Geth armada!")

Ashley explains that the Geth "haven't been seen outside the Perseus Veil for over 200 years," and later on through our Codex we can learn more information about these pesky robots, including the fact that they were created by a race called the "Quarians" (we haven't seen any of these folks yet, though they might be extinct for all I know) as cheap labor 300-someodd years ago. Following science-fiction cliche #94, the Geth AI soon became self-evolving, developed a sort of pseudo-consciousness, and quickly determined that all organic beings in the galaxy were enemies which needed to be exterminated. The Quarians lost the war against the Geth (no mention as to what happened to the Quarians just yet) but then the Geth just sort of...disappeared. And now they're back. They want the information stored in this Prothean Beacon we're chasing after, and they're willing to burn Eden Prime to the ground to find it.

...I guess we'll never know what would have happened if we had told Ashley to just sit back and stay out here in the wilderness, but I'm frankly desperate to have a soldier who can actually handle weapons other than pistols along with us, so I'm not taking that chance. Taran invites Ashley to join he and Kaiden on a Geth-ass-kicking spree. Ashley accepts, eager to reap vengeance for her fallen allies.

...I still say the Martha Stewart-inspired girl soldier's wardrobe was a mistake, though.

Ashley hands us a pistol that's slightly better than the one we're using (Silly. Are they seriously saying that the Systems Alliance fleet would have given Shepard and Kaiden -- two soldiers sent into hostile territory on a mission vital to the interests of humanity and, indeed, the entire galaxy -- worse equipment then some random grunt can get on Eden Prime?) This prompts an introduction to the "Equipment" screen. In the PC version of Mass Effect you're supposed to double-click on a selected weapon to replace it with the currently-equipped weapon, but in practice this works, like, 20% of the time at most. At least with my laptop, I have to double-click a selected weapon several times before the game seems capable of responding to my request. It's a tad bit annoying, but it's not quite as disruptive to the gameplay as it sounds. After all, it only takes a few seconds to double-click an icon ten times, if necessary.

There's a cache of goods about ten feet from where you and Ashley are standing in which resides a significantly better (and better-looking, too) piece of armor than the standard-issue crap the Alliance Fleet mandates you carry. So, again, random militia groups in Eden Prime have substantially better access to better weapons and armor than the best starships humanity has to offer. I just feel bad for Shepard, who apparently had to go through his brutal experiences in Torfan with a unit equipped with substandard armaments. It's a wonder he survived to earn the ruthless reputation he's garnered.

The reality of the matter is this treasure chest essentially is BioWare's "we just really want to hone in the point that you need to know how to equip items" failsafe. So we throw on the new getup (yes, Taran, let's strip our clothes in the middle of this battlefield -- and in front of Kaiden and Ashley, no less -- so that we can wear better protection) and get ready to charge into the dig site.

Here we go!! (Let's hope we don't get impaled like a kebab!)

Why, there isn't any possibility whatsoever we'll encounter Geth patrols waiting for us at the dig site where the beacon's supposed to be, is there?

Aww, man! So close! (And so predictable!)
As an aside, this is the first of a couple moments in Chapter Two when Kaiden manages to nearly get himself killed while Ashley, meanwhile, takes hardly any damage at all. Seriously, Kaiden is a terrible fighter. He's worse-equipped compared to Ashley, has proficiency with a pistol as opposed to an assault rifle, and yet he frequently weaves his way out of cover and into the open, whereas Ashley, comparatively speaking, is cautious and usually under cover every time.
At least Taran won't legitimately struggle until we meet those forsaken Husks.

There is, apparently, no beacon at the dig site. There's a shocker -- an RPG creates an initial objective for you, and then when you reach that location, you learn that the objective is no longer there! (To be fair, this 'twist' also occurs frequently in FPSes, action-adventure games, and choose-any-random-videogame-genre-to-insert-here.)
Nonetheless, Kaiden, Taran, and Ashley make some time to stand around and chat idly for a few moments as to what to do next. It's not as if the fate of the universe is in serious danger, here. They can afford to take a time-out to fully digest their situation.

It's at this moment that Ashley reveals the earth-shattering revelation that led to the beacon's discovery...Eden Prime...uhh...was trying to improve its public transportation. Yes, if there's a hidden message in Mass Effect, it's that metrorail systems can have dastardly consequences. Contact your elected official today! Support the banning of all rail systems that might inadvertedly discover an ancient relic that leads to an enemy invasion that eradicates everything!
Actually, the beacon is discovered through Eden Prime's version of The Big Dig (anyone here from Boston? You know what I'm talking about, eh?) and, for some esoteric reason this information must be fully disclosed in such a manner that half the known universe, including the damned Geth, seem to all learn about it. Couldn't these guys have taken a tip from Stargate: SG1 and kept the damn thing a secret if it really contained all these vital secrets? And yet Ashley speaks of scientists descending to the dig site like parasites, and it's painfully clear that Eden Prime decided to capitalize off this discovery by marketing it to every corner of the galaxy. Now, of course, there's hardly anything or anyone left of Eden Prime at all. Smart.

Nihlus contacts us via pseudo-codec and informs us that there's a spaceport up ahead. He's going to check it out first, because he works better alone and our presence would just be a hindrance to him. Nonetheless, we're ordered to follow him in. First, though, we'll need to go through an abandoned camp outside the dig site. Hopefully there won't be any new sort of enemy there that actually presents a modicum of difficulty, right?

...right?
If I suck at shooting down Husks before they reach me and attempt to devour my brains, does that mean I suck at Mass Effect?

Anywhoo, one more update for me to type up before y'all get your next salvo of decisions. Part Two of Chapter Two's coming soon.

07-20-2008, 05:42 PM	#10
Solid Snake Erotic Esquire Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 5,563	Mass Effect: Chapter Two, Part One Or, Sexism in the 22nd Century: Check out the Ladies in Pink Uniforms! When we last left off from our crazy misadventures on Eden Prime, Mr. Jenkins, lacking much to be desired in his INT score, charged blindly at a duo of Level-One robotic scouts, got shot a couple times, and died. I'd make another crack about how ludicrous Jenkins' death scene was if not for the goddamned Husks we're going to meet shortly, who sent me to a Game Over screen far too often for my personal liking. Anywhoo, Taran and Kaiden have (sort of) Leveled Up! ...and with our skills ever-so-slightly improving, we're now ready to handle the epic challenge of... *Hunting Gasbags.* "Be vewy, vewy quiet..." Hunting gasbags is the ultimate challenge in Eden Prime. One wrong move and the herds will descend upon you like madmen, tearing your flesh to bits and pieces, screaming and howling like the horrifying monsters they are. ...Okay, not really. They just sort of explode after a single shot. Kaiden jumps back, shouts a bit, and acts as if attacking a gasbag is equivocal to unleashing armageddon. In reality, these puppies are harmless. I just feel bad for Mrs. Gasbag, who will now have to raise their children alone. You monster, Taran Shepard. You ungrateful little bastard! Killing a family man in his prime like that! ...So let's continue our capacity to commit atrocities by looting this corpse! Some credits, a Medigel and a couple minor upgrades later, we decide to march into distinctly unknown territory. We enter into a forest composed of trees with gigantic trunks...perfect to take cover behind. Of course, not long into our escapades a couple more Geth Drones buzz out and take fire. We swat them down like flies, no sweat. So far, I'll also add that Kaiden is proving utterly useless in battle. He does, however, appropriately shout "All clear!" when every enemy is eliminated, which is a fairly ridiculous practice on a battlefield. ("Let's shout blatantly obvious directives to each other and reveal our position to enemies who may be attempting to ambush us!" I mean if you're going to announce your presence to the world, try to do so over an issue critical and subtle enough to be worth the exclamation.) Having eliminated the bad guys, we now approach an open clearing to the north. We're getting closer to the dig site. Hey, look! More geth drones! I wonder what they could be chasing? It's a three-breasted, two-headed alien chick!! Sweet!! ...Actually, this is just a screenshot error. Ashley Williams is, unfortunately, a human of the two-breasted, one-headed variety. She's also presumably the only survivor yet of her unit on Eden Prime -- you know, the unit that sent the Normandy that lovely broadcast of death and destruction earlier. I'm still mildly baffled as to what protocol exists in the Systems Alliance that requires women serving in the military, even the Gunnery Chiefs, to wear pink and white. The alternative, I suppose, is that Ashley simply prefers the color pink, but given her personality, I'd highly doubt that one. Is there any tactical advantage whatsoever in enabling your enemy to easily determine the gender of your forces from afar? We finally see a couple of Geth units that seem distinctly humanoid, or at least bipedal. And these Geth aren't playing around. Look at what they do to Ashley's teammate, who was captured... ...Owch. There's a lot of issues that are sort of glossed over here, like exactly how an invading force such as the Geth would be capable of constructing and/or transporting Dragon's Teeth (that's literally what those large spikes are called in Mass Effect all this way, or why this kind of death would be even be necessary to pull off -- as opposed to, you know, just the standard "shoot him dead" or "rip his head off" methods. This seems unnecessarily gruesome. Unfortunately we'll soon get our answer to the second question. It won't be pretty. ...No matter how tough a woman in a videogame supposedly is, she must always be introduced into the narrative in a "damsel-in-distress" situation in which her life is at stake and you, the hero, have the opportunity to rescue her. So let's leave her for dead, turn around and ignore her plight, shall we? Ashley is, at this particular point in the game at least, the most capable of all the characters in combat situations. I know this because Kaiden and Taran refused to assist Ashley in her moment of need and she took care of the Geth by herself, apparently. And I racked up the free XP. Delicious, free, unearned XP. Ashley Williams is a Gunnery Chief and a skilled soldier. I'll give her credit for being absolutely nothing, in terms of demeanor, like Bastila or most other females in RPGs, for that matter. She reminds me most of the Handmaiden for reasons I can't quite fully articulate. At any rate, she's frank, precise, punctual, and barely even seems disturbed at the notion that her entire unit has died painful and gruesome deaths. Despite being a jerk to most others we'll meet in this game, Taran still appreciates a fine lady when he sees one, and this conversation does absolutely nothing in regards to Paragon/Renegade points anyway, so we'll have him attempt to lift Ashley's spirits. We ask her if she's wounded; she's fine. However, she and her team "walked into an ambush" and she's "the only one left." Ashley does not express any remorse whatsoever during these comments, and doesn't bother to even shed a tear, so this dialogue option we're about to choose seems a little out-of-context: Maybe we should have named Shepard after Psycho Mantis, because he appears to be reading her mind here. Ashley expresses barely the slightest ounce of regret over the situation -- and isn't even close to experiencing a psychological breakdown -- and yet Shepard's treating her like a fifteen year old girl who needs to be talked down to, under the assumption that she can't handle the pressure of combat. So in essence, this "Paragon" answer can actually be justified within the context of Shepard's characterization. (It'd be funny to see what the "You abandoned them" option would have led to, but I'm not the least bit interested in any behavior that could ruin his chances of a relationship with Ashley.) Continuing the long-held RPG tradition that nearly every single female character in a videogame must be very attractive, regardless of her role or her purpose or her background or her personality, Ashley has Angelina-Jolie-esque lips and a petite, pleasant figure. (I was pretty surprised to see makeup among the customizable options for a female Shepard. "Hold up, guys! I need to reapply my blush before we take down this Geth armada!") Ashley explains that the Geth "haven't been seen outside the Perseus Veil for over 200 years," and later on through our Codex we can learn more information about these pesky robots, including the fact that they were created by a race called the "Quarians" (we haven't seen any of these folks yet, though they might be extinct for all I know) as cheap labor 300-someodd years ago. Following science-fiction cliche #94, the Geth AI soon became self-evolving, developed a sort of pseudo-consciousness, and quickly determined that all organic beings in the galaxy were enemies which needed to be exterminated. The Quarians lost the war against the Geth (no mention as to what happened to the Quarians just yet) but then the Geth just sort of...disappeared. And now they're back. They want the information stored in this Prothean Beacon we're chasing after, and they're willing to burn Eden Prime to the ground to find it. ...I guess we'll never know what would have happened if we had told Ashley to just sit back and stay out here in the wilderness, but I'm frankly desperate to have a soldier who can actually handle weapons other than pistols along with us, so I'm not taking that chance. Taran invites Ashley to join he and Kaiden on a Geth-ass-kicking spree. Ashley accepts, eager to reap vengeance for her fallen allies. ...I still say the Martha Stewart-inspired girl soldier's wardrobe was a mistake, though. Ashley hands us a pistol that's slightly better than the one we're using (Silly. Are they seriously saying that the Systems Alliance fleet would have given Shepard and Kaiden -- two soldiers sent into hostile territory on a mission vital to the interests of humanity and, indeed, the entire galaxy -- worse equipment then some random grunt can get on Eden Prime?) This prompts an introduction to the "Equipment" screen. In the PC version of Mass Effect you're supposed to double-click on a selected weapon to replace it with the currently-equipped weapon, but in practice this works, like, 20% of the time at most. At least with my laptop, I have to double-click a selected weapon several times before the game seems capable of responding to my request. It's a tad bit annoying, but it's not quite as disruptive to the gameplay as it sounds. After all, it only takes a few seconds to double-click an icon ten times, if necessary. There's a cache of goods about ten feet from where you and Ashley are standing in which resides a significantly better (and better-looking, too) piece of armor than the standard-issue crap the Alliance Fleet mandates you carry. So, again, random militia groups in Eden Prime have substantially better access to better weapons and armor than the best starships humanity has to offer. I just feel bad for Shepard, who apparently had to go through his brutal experiences in Torfan with a unit equipped with substandard armaments. It's a wonder he survived to earn the ruthless reputation he's garnered. The reality of the matter is this treasure chest essentially is BioWare's "we just really want to hone in the point that you need to know how to equip items" failsafe. So we throw on the new getup (yes, Taran, let's strip our clothes in the middle of this battlefield -- and in front of Kaiden and Ashley, no less -- so that we can wear better protection) and get ready to charge into the dig site. Here we go!! (Let's hope we don't get impaled like a kebab!) Why, there isn't any possibility whatsoever we'll encounter Geth patrols waiting for us at the dig site where the beacon's supposed to be, is there? Aww, man! So close! (And so predictable!) As an aside, this is the first of a couple moments in Chapter Two when Kaiden manages to nearly get himself killed while Ashley, meanwhile, takes hardly any damage at all. Seriously, Kaiden is a terrible fighter. He's worse-equipped compared to Ashley, has proficiency with a pistol as opposed to an assault rifle, and yet he frequently weaves his way out of cover and into the open, whereas Ashley, comparatively speaking, is cautious and usually under cover every time. At least Taran won't legitimately struggle until we meet those forsaken Husks. There is, apparently, no beacon at the dig site. There's a shocker -- an RPG creates an initial objective for you, and then when you reach that location, you learn that the objective is no longer there! (To be fair, this 'twist' also occurs frequently in FPSes, action-adventure games, and choose-any-random-videogame-genre-to-insert-here.) Nonetheless, Kaiden, Taran, and Ashley make some time to stand around and chat idly for a few moments as to what to do next. It's not as if the fate of the universe is in serious danger, here. They can afford to take a time-out to fully digest their situation. It's at this moment that Ashley reveals the earth-shattering revelation that led to the beacon's discovery...Eden Prime...uhh...was trying to improve its public transportation. Yes, if there's a hidden message in Mass Effect, it's that metrorail systems can have dastardly consequences. Contact your elected official today! Support the banning of all rail systems that might inadvertedly discover an ancient relic that leads to an enemy invasion that eradicates everything! Actually, the beacon is discovered through Eden Prime's version of The Big Dig (anyone here from Boston? You know what I'm talking about, eh?) and, for some esoteric reason this information must be fully disclosed in such a manner that half the known universe, including the damned Geth, seem to all learn about it. Couldn't these guys have taken a tip from Stargate: SG1 and kept the damn thing a secret if it really contained all these vital secrets? And yet Ashley speaks of scientists descending to the dig site like parasites, and it's painfully clear that Eden Prime decided to capitalize off this discovery by marketing it to every corner of the galaxy. Now, of course, there's hardly anything or anyone left of Eden Prime at all. Smart. Nihlus contacts us via pseudo-codec and informs us that there's a spaceport up ahead. He's going to check it out first, because he works better alone and our presence would just be a hindrance to him. Nonetheless, we're ordered to follow him in. First, though, we'll need to go through an abandoned camp outside the dig site. Hopefully there won't be any new sort of enemy there that actually presents a modicum of difficulty, right? ...right? If I suck at shooting down Husks before they reach me and attempt to devour my brains, does that mean I suck at Mass Effect? Anywhoo, one more update for me to type up before y'all get your next salvo of decisions. Part Two of Chapter Two's coming soon. __________________ *WARNING:* Snek's all up in this thread. Be prepared to read massive walls of text. Last edited by Solid Snake; 07-20-2008 at 05:45 PM.