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

[Mr.Bookworm]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

I have to hit Ctrl to take screenshots, which is why in gameplay shots Taran is crouched more often than not. =)

Just crouch first, and then take the picture. Problem solved.

[Azisien]

Skill-wise I guess the other things peeps have suggested is fine. It's hard to really go astray at this point. I usually use Assault Rifles on Ashley but I'm pretty certain she would be the most effective squadmate if you trained her in Two-by-Four-with-Nail weapon skill. However, I think you WANT to put a point or two in Soldier right off the bat. Having some regeneration is step numero uno in making her invincible.

[Yumil]

Taran: armor->pistols
Kaiden: Decryption->Electronics
Ashley:Assault Rifles...you wont want to fill it, but to get to snipers. The party members are insanely accurate with the Sniper and honestly, I prefer her to go Assault/Sniper when I use her. Theres another party member I used for shottys:o.

Anywho, the xbox 360 had a simon says mini game for basically any hacking(save one computer).

Oh, and get used to dying to husks. On the hardest difficulty level they are basically invincible, it literally takes you 5 minutes to kill one.

[Krylo]

It takes you 5 minutes to kill one if you're silly about it. They group up and charge, so you can overload/warp them quickly, then attack with shotties/pistols/assault rifles followed by singularity as soon as it's available again, then lift them all when singularity wears off, etc. They go down quick thanks to the lack of shields and 75% defense reduction. Granted, they're still more annoying than ranged combatants who hide from you and shit, but less annoying than the acid spitting thorian creepers.

Also, Ashley's the best member for shotguns due to the fact that shotguns require you to be up close and personal and Ashley's the most invincible due to fitness (immunity + health), soldier (regen + health), and heavy armor. Not that Wrex is a bad choice, just not as invincible as Ashley.

If you want a sniper party member, I suggest Garrus, but even when they're ridiculously accurate with the sniper rifles, I find them to still be less useful than having them with almost any other weapon, as that they aren't smart enough to find good sniping positions.

But then, this is coming from a guy who doesn't even kill turrets or armatures or whatever else in the mako if at all possible to avoid it. I just find a nice rocky out cropping and snipe them for a few minutes. Double EXP, and zero risk.

[Azisien]

Haha, you hide from them?

Teehee, haha, hoho! Whoever said husks are hard sucks at Mass Effect.

[Krylo]

Well, I have done it with circle strafing and stuff, but that's less effective with three or more of them shooting rockets at you (which happens in certain places relatively frequently), especially when you're on a new game so you don't have all the dope ass armor and shit that lets you take more than one rocket, even as a soldier, on hardcore or insanity.

Also I'm lazy, and sitting there quietly shooting the turrets in the head from behind an out cropping while their missiles explode harmlessly against it makes me smile.

Same goes for armatures/collosi and their energy blasts, though you never really see more than one or two at a time, and near the end you kinda have to actually fight them proper like.

[Solid Snake]

No, haven't forgotten about the thread. I just haven't had the time to play through Mass Effect on a daily basis. I will be playing through most (if not all, I'm not exactly sure how much is left) the rest of Eden Prime tonight though whether I'll have time to handle the writeups and post the screenshots online before I hit the sack is debatable.

However, based on your inputs I've decided the following:
Taran: I'll be pumping two talent points into basic armor to unlock pistols, and then the remaining point will get pistols skill started.
Kaiden: Unlocking electronics, and then pooling every remaining point into electronics.
Ashley: I'll follow the general advice for a shotgun-build with her by pumping as many points into pistols as needed to unlock shotguns. That'll be four of her six points, I believe. Then I'll split the remaining two points between shotguns and the soldier skill (just to, as Azisien alluded to, get a regen bonus started.)

So, that's that, update will be soon, like tonight or tomorrow, assuming disaster does not strike.
Now it's time to see poor Nihlus regret his wishes to go to the spaceport alone...

[01d55]

Thanks in part to this thread, I bought the game.

You can, in fact, get 2 paragon points out of the conversation with the scientists. It's easy to miss, since you have to first clock Manuel and earn 9 renegade points, but saying that he's better off is worth something. Only renegade points I've earned so far, since I'm playing paragon and not obsessively re-playing every damn conversation to squeeze every point I can get.

[Solid Snake]

So, last time in Solid Snake's Mass Effect Pseudo-Let's Play:




...There was this crazy spike monster of mechanized doom rolling straight towards us! Fortunately, we jumped out of harm's way just in time, but we subsequently had to jump back and forth between vines hanging from platforms in order to advance to the next boss!

...Okay, no, that's the wrong game.
What really happened the last time in Solid Snake's Mass Effect Pseudo-Let's Play:




HOLY SHIT this crazy guy named the Joker terrorized Gotham! It was unbelievably awesome!!!

...That didn't happen either.

However, playing I Want to Be the Guy and watching The Dark Knight (twice!) does explain why this update has taken so long to arrive at your doorstep. You see, my beloved readers, I have been possessed by "I Must Be The Guy Disease" (even if the 1,000 attempts with subsequent deaths after three-second gameplay intervals kill me) and I'm also suffering a bout with "Must Repeatedly Watch Heath Ledger Earn Himself A Posthumous Oscar for Awesome Joker Portrayal Syndrome."

So I'd apologize for the late update but it'd be a little disingenuous. In the immortal words of the amazing Joker: Why so serious?

But anyway...

Mass Effect: Chapter Three, Part One
Why Yes, I do Threaten to Kill Everyone I Meet...

First, let's give you a few screenshots of our newly upgraded characters...











...You'll notice a couple significant changes between my earlier statements regarding my plans with talent points and how they were actually spent. Ashley essentially looks exactly as I had predicted, with the increases to her Soldier, Pistol and Shotgun talents. With Kaiden, I've unlocked Electronics, but I was only able to increase the Electronics value to 1, despite having more than enough available talent points to theoretically boost it further. So I've saved those points for future expenditures.

Taran's story is a little more complicated. I'm not yet able to increase his Basic Armor value to the point where Pistols would be unlocked as a skill, so instead, I increased his Basic Armor as far as I could, and also gave him a third point in Intimidate.
...Why'd I do that, you ask? Well, actually, during my first playthrough of this section of the game, I didn't toy with Intimidate at all, and saved two talent points for Taran instead of just one. Then, I reached a conversation later in this plotline where a renegade dialogue option I desperately wanted to choose was greyed out.
This, of course, was absolutely unacceptable. So I just went back to my previous save, added a single Intimidate point, redid the whole process to get to that conversation with Powell again, and this time, I was able to threaten him into giving me...a special grenade.
Well, okay, so that wasn't totally worth it, but I'm not going to play through all that a third time, so we're stuck with the extra point of Intimidate assigned. At least we got some intriguing dialogue to cover in this Chapter. This will be the first couple times in Mass Effect where Taran will be able to use locked conversation responses -- we've unlocked these bloody-red glories of fury by garnering a tad of Renegade street cred.

Every screenshot in this Chapter is from my second playthrough with a couple exceptions. (See if you can find them!)

Anyway, where did we leave off in our gallant quest to save whatever we can salvage of Eden Prime?





Ahh, yes. We've just had some fun taunting a couple of scientists, including one we've knocked into next Thursday. And now it's time for us to approach a train station and garner us a free ride to the local spaceport, in the painstaking attempt to rescue the Prothean Beacon from the sinister Geth...





...Hey, it's Nihlus! I was wondering what he's been up to. It looks like he's doing just fine and dandy. In fact, he's only a couple minutes ahead of us. I bet we could say hi to him if we displayed any sense of critical urgency whatsoever!
...Nah, let's just sit back and stand in one place for the next five minutes while Nihlus goes in and checks this out.





Nihlus means business. Man, a character this badass is sure to have a long, vibrant career as a SPECTRE operative.





Apparently, Nihlus isn't the only Turian in town! Could this be the aforementioned "prophet" Manuel was ranting and raving about? Is it possible Manuel wasn't an absolutely clinically insane lunatic?

This charming silver-hued Turian is named Saren, and he's apparently also a SPECTRE agent, based off Nihlus' surprised yet amicable reaction to his presence. Nihlus seems slightly puzzled (and rightfully so) as to why SPECTRE would send a second agent to Eden Prime -- and why the first agent wouldn't be informed of such a development. Saren, for his part, rambles off a few pleasant-sounding lies about the Council authorizing backup. Nihlus seems to accept this explanation, as he subsequently wastes no time in informing Saren of the details: "The Geth are everywhere. The situation is bad."





...Unfortunately, Nihlus, it's about to get a lot worse.
As it turns out, "The situation is bad" happen to be Nihlus' last words. Nihlus makes the rather critical mistake of turning his back to Saren (I'm not really sure why Nihlus does this, either.) Saren responds by telling Nihlus in an all-too-ominous tone of villiany: "Don't worry. I've got it under control."
BAM. The perspective changes back to Shepard just in time to hear the gunshot (though why we couldn't see the death actually occur in an 'M' rated game is beyond me. Honestly, Nihlus deserved a better death scene.)




Nihlus' last message to us indicated that he wanted to check out a spaceport. Unfortunately, he didn't quite make it there. We're still attempting to renedevous with Nihlus at a nearby train station, though. The train station was the site of Nihlus' death, so it'd make sense for Nihlus to have cleared the area out, but apparently in only two minutes, the place is going to swarm with Geth and Husks again. Hey, free XP for us.





...Nice ride. Say, is the Master Hand ripoff we saw in the Eden Prime orientation video earlier? ...Nah, doesn't look quite the same. Nonetheless, this is presumably Saren's starship (or something. We're not quite sure what it is just yet.) Kaiden makes a "Whoa!" comment that reminds me a little too much of the sheer number of times Carth said "Whoa!" or a similar variant in KOTOR. The spaceship makes a rather annoying throbbing noise as it moves about, and then it vanishes. Here's another, better shot of the spaceship-in-question:





I suppose the bottom of the spaceship resembles the hand we witnessed earlier.
Hey, did I mention how much Ashley with a skill in shotgun helps fend off Husks?
Well, let me put it this way:





When Ashley has some degree of shotgun proficiency and when she has shotguns equipped, the Husks fall like flies.
Admittingly the tradeoff is that while Husks are easier with a shotgun-equipped Ashley, the loss of a decent long-range shooter results in Taran being almost single-handedily responsible for taking down the Geth Troopers who shoot from afar. Fortunately I'm not a terribly bad shot. Throw also helps a bit here. Note to self: I really need to get a screenshot of Throw in action.

The handful of Geth and Husk fall like gnats in my first playthrough of this area, and now it's time to collect goodies.





There's a better shotgun in there that we'll equip Ashley with. If I remember correctly it's called something like a "Hurricane 2," but I could be wrong, as I don't have a screenshot of the weapon acquisition. We also recieve a sniper rifle, but it's the same standard sniper rifle that all three characters come into the fray with. Best to convert that into omnigel.
(I'm not exactly sure how this would work in the 'real world,' but apparently in Mass Effect you can convert any object you acquire into some sort of omnigel substance that you can use to...break into security systems? Whaaaa?)





There's also this delightful little trailer tucked away on the right side of the map. It, of course, is locked to prevent entry, which means we're stuck with the same nonsensical method of hacking into the security system:





Let's all hear it for the blue triangle as it unlocks the door for us, everyone!
Go, triangle, go! You only have twelve seconds! Hurry! Avoid the red and orange rectangles of doom!






Let's just stand out in the open like sitting ducks and greet these fine, friendly people in the middle of a battlefield while the Geth are certainly aware of our presence, shall we?
I hear no objections!




With the door unlocked, the farmers hurry out to greet us. Exactly why they'd wait until we unlocked the door manually to exit the confines of their trailer is beyond me. If they saw us out there, why not just open the door and say hello? If they didn't see us at all, why were they so eager to charge out into a possible Geth ambush?
At any rate, the "farmers" include two men and one very annoying woman with a voice made from the sound of breaking glass. And other painful concoctions designed to infiltrate the dark, desolate corners of your ears and burn your senses with unfathomable pain.
The men are slightly more tolerable. Slightly.





Taran learned an important lesson from his foster family: we do not trust strangers.
Particularly strangers who somehow survived a Geth attack by remaining in a trailer that the Geth inexplicably did not bother to check, or even slightly damage in their rampage. Good going, Geth AI. You set the standard for artifical intelligence everywhere.





The farmers are quick to remind us that they're on our side. Taran, for one, lambasts them for being cowards who crawled away into a trailer while the rest of the world around them burned to ashes. The farmers (this one is named Cole, and he's apparently their leader) are quick to point out that they don't know how to do much more than handle a scythe on some crops. Taran, you're such a pain in the ass sometimes. Give these poor, pathetic civilians a break.
...Instead, Taran grills them over the standard Eden Prime questionaire. ("Do you know anything about the Beacon? Have you seen a Turian SPECTRE running around? Where were you before the attack?") Shepard finally asks something new regarding the starship that just took off, and one of the farmer's crew mentions an "awful noise" emitting from the ship that sounded like a "shriek of the damned." Awfully poetic for simple farmers, eh?

Shepard's finally heard enough, and he says goodbye...but here's a shocking twist! The conversation isn't over quite yet!

The male sidekick of the farmer's crew, Blake, tells Cole: "Maybe we should give them the stuff." This certainly perks Taran's interest.
Turns out the farmers "found a pistol" (exactly how, we're about to find out) and, in fact, were in the process of attempting to procure the pistol when they wandered near the warehouse next to the train station. Sounds reasonable enough, right? When Geth attack, you want to have access to some form of weapon.
But wait...how exactly did they know where to find this particular pistol? And this pistol is an even better mark than the standard Normandy-crew's fare. It's not exactly the kind of low-tech gadget you'd expect a poor farmer to run amok with. Exactly how did Cole manage to acquire this?





Apparently, Taran shares my suspicions.
This is the first moment in the game when actually having put a few points into Intimidate (or Charm, if you prefer the brighter alternative course of events) makes a substantial difference in your gameplay experience. In this case, the font for an "Intimidate-skill-unlocked" dialogue prompt is a bloody red pigment that makes it almost impossible not to select. Once we get off Eden Prime and the game becomes slightly less linear, we'll actually confront a few situations in which choosing the Intimidate options may not be an ideal course of action. Here, we either choose the Intimidate option or the conversation simply ends...not exactly the best time to stop the flow of gameplay and ask you guys to contribute, as you'd all have to be pretty drunk tonight if you'd prefer not to get the extra weapons modifications we're about to get by learning more about the true nature of these "farmers."





The other benefit of this course of action is seeing Taran lift his pistol and point it straight at Cole's head.
Taran's dialogue here: "I'm only gonna ask this once. Think long and hard before you lie to me again."

You see, Cole's story about acquiring that pistol just for the sake of defending against the Geth incursions isn't entirely true. Cole reveals to us that he and his compatriots are, in fact, greedy bastards who had gotten involved in a smuggling ring. I presume the "crops" they were supposedly "harvesting" were actually drugs? At any rate, this development does not sit well with Ashley, who immediately demands to know who their contact at the warehouse is because she's hellbent at blowing out some smuggler's heads.

This leads to a new question branch in which having two points in Intimidate opens an additional blood-red dialogue option. We're going to use whatever means necessary to ensure we learn the name of this contact (though exactly why it matters anymore, particularly given that this person is almost certainly now a corpse in the Eden Prime massacre, is a rather pertinant thought.)

Taran has another great Renegade line here: "Would you rather be a snitch or a corpse?" He presses his gun a little closer to poor Cole's head.

Cole, of course, would rather be a snitch. He reveals the name to be "Powell" and says, "Let's try to keep things friendly."
And that's the end of the conversation.





...Here's what we're given for our efforts.





And here's a moment of gameplay when I'm desperately trying to find a way to blow the chick with the annoying voice to smithereens.
Seriously. Anyone here played Mass Effect and remember this girl? Her voice sounds like the howls of a thousand dying wolves, condensed into a few seconds of pure nihilistic torture.

It's time to find Nihlus...or whatever's left of him.





...This can't be a good sign.





He's a goner. (The black blood is a sweet touch. I wonder if that's consistent for every Turian we'll meet.)
Anyone expecting any sort of cutscene here whatsoever with the traditional sad music grieving the loss of Nihlus will be awfully surprised upon "inspecting" Nihlus' remains, because not a single second of cutscene actually involves Nihlus' death or his body. The fact that Ashley doesn't show any sorrow towards a complete stranger as her world burns doesn't surprise me, but Kaiden's complete lack of shock or dismay does. He just says "Commander, it's Nihlus." That's it. Taran has no comment whatsoever on the situation. There is no beautiful memorial to Nihlus' life here. Admittingly, this is partially because Ashley has found a potential enemy hiding behind crates in this pseudo-warehouse the moment we arrive on the scene.


Next Up in Part II of Chapter Three:
We "interrogate" Powell (by threatening to kill him, isn't that Taran's preferred method with everyone these days?) Oh, and we also kill some baddies in the first genuinely intriguing scripted fight sequence in the game.

[Solid Snake]

Mass Effect: Part II of Chapter 3
(Something tells me Han Solo and Taran Shepard wouldn't exactly get along...)

This is one of my favorite screenshots of Taran so far.
The being in question is, in fact, human, and his name is Powell (hmm, what a coincidence. Of the thousands of people on Eden Prime the one survivor here happens to be a name we've already heard.) Powell is going to very quickly giving away his real name offhandedily like that. He should have said something like "I'm Mr. Jones," that probably would have washed down better.

Our "You're a coward!" response to this situation (jeez, will Taran ever lighten up?) results in another classic gem of a line from Taran: "I like the way you hid behind those crates while we got shot at." (For the record, this sarcastic line is yet another example of a line female-Shepard delivers in a far superior manner compared to her male counterpart.)

Powell expresses disbelief at the very notion that he could ever be considered useful at anything, noting that he's just a civilian who's never operated a gun before in his life, and (perhaps correctly) stating that he'd have just gotten killed if he escaped the safe confines of his...crates. (Powell has apparently played too much MGS. He feels safe surrounded by cardboard boxes?)
We ask Powell a couple introductory questions that are, in reality, the same goddamn questions we've asked everyone so far on Eden Prime. Yes, he knows what the beacon is, but it's on another platform, take the train to the spaceport to find it, everything's gone to hell since the beacon was found, the Geth attacked, Powell was a coward and he was asleep behind some boxes when the Geth attacked, Ashley is disgusted at the notion that Powell survived the attacks just because he's a coward, etc. etc.
Finally, Taran decides to get at the heart of the matter. He asks about the identity of Nihlus' shooter. Powell, almost too conveniently, overheard everything that happened between Nihlus and Saren. (I "like" the concept that Taran distrusts Powell regarding nearly everything else, and knows that Powell's a slimeball smuggler's contact, but nonetheless trusts Powell's word regarding the identity of Nihlus' attacker with absolute conviction.)

This is Powell, for the record:





I'll hand it to Bioware. He does look like the "lazy, untrustworthy asshole" type of guy.





Well crap, Taran. The world's falling apart at its seams and a beacon that contains precious secrets may be overtaken in mere seconds and you're bringing up this bullshit. Why you gotta be like that?
Of course Taran's strict anti-smuggling stance is about to result in a bit of a quarrel.





Powell very briefly considers denying it, but then rightfully strikes the aforementioned tone of questioning the relevance of his past activities given the state of Eden Prime. Aren't there more important things Taran could be accomplishing then making this guy feel bad for breaking Systems Alliance protocol once or twice to make a quick buck?
...Kaiden, at least, seems to agree with Powell on this one. Throughout the "smuggling" portion of the interrogation there's a couple brief segments where you witness Kaiden pacing back and forth, generally looking peeved at the notion of picking on Powell when there are bigger fish to fry. Ashley, for her part, is absolutely enraptured with the notion of nailing this bastard.
"You greedy son of a bitch!" (~ Ashley.)

For the record, this seems to be as appropriate a moment as any to strongly imply that this is who I believe Ashley Williams' voice reminds me of:





...Just my personal opinion. She doesn't quite share Mila Kunis' upper register, but there are several moments of Ashley dialogue that just scream "Jackie from That 70's Show" to me. I'm not the biggest fan of the show (it overstayed its welcome by at least a couple years, but was pretty darn good in its heyday.) Her best performance so far was undoubtedly in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Anyway, back to Mass Effect:





I mentioned somewhere in the first part of Chapter Three that I actually played through this segment of the game twice, right?
You see, the first time I was one level of Intimidate too short to be able to ride the "threaten Powell's life" ride.
Since that was absolutely unacceptable, I just replayed the entire sequence of events and made sure to give Taran that third talent point into Intimidate this time around. From a sheer Let's Play perspective, the most important thing is to see as many crazy Renegade stunts as possible. Who cares about the extra points into Throw or Warp? Let's bash some goddamn heads in during cutscenes!





This is much better...





...As it leads to this badass screenshot.
Is that our shotgun or our assault rifle, by the way? And doesn't Taran suck at this point with every weapon but a pistol? You think he'd be embarassed if Powell forced his hand, and Taran shot a few bullets in his general direction, only to miss horribly. Because that's what would happen if this were a gameplay segment and I wasn't using a pistol right now. Damn Adepts and their complete uselessness with the cool weapons.
Hopefully we'll someday be able to threaten someone by casting Throw at their sorry ass.

I wish I could say replaying this whole section was worth it. It probably wasn't. Out of the whole ordeal, I got to see Powell nearly piss his pants, and implore us that his smuggling days "were over." (Ashley doesn't believe that line at all, and suspects he'll just go right back into the biz once he escapes this interrogation.) Nonetheless, by threatening Powell's existence we gain a few goodies: grenades and a grenade upgrade (not that I understand how any of that works...I haven't even thrown a single grenade in battle yet.) This is supposedly "experimental technology...top of the line" that Powell's handing over to me. Whatever. I'm sure the next world's standard items to be purchased will overshadow anything we get at Eden Prime anyway. Isn't that the (extraordinarily unrealistic) way that every RPG works?

Anywhoo, we're about to hijack a cargo train to take us to our destination. Unfortunately, just as Powell scampers away and begs for mercy, we find ourselves surrounded by Geth vermin:





Poor Nihlus. We still haven't given him a proper farewell speech.





So even after using a medigel, Kaiden falls in like three seconds while Ashley remains virtually untouched, and she and I have to do all the fighting on our own. This is seriously the story for every serious battle we've faced so far.
Fortunately, Ashley kicks ass. Unfortunately, I made the very stupid mistake during this particular fight of not switching Ashley off shotguns. This is a rather long-distance affair in which I used a pistol from long-range to take down nearly every enemy. Using an assault rifle or a pistol with Ashley probably would have been the smarter tactic.
(Also, I never used any biotics in this fight. Really didn't have to. This brawl at the train station was actually a fairly exciting standoff by the standards of previous encounters, but I didn't feel terribly pressured at any moment to use Throw, so I kept saving the power until no one was left to kill.)





There's a handful of Geth Troopers and two significantly tougher, new enemies called Geth Destroyers (close range brawlers with heavy shields and generally great defenses. Think Team Fortress 2's Heavies.) Fortunately, one tactic I employed proved rather effective and it involved just "sniping" overhead with a pistol. There's a ramp you're supposed to walk down to get to the cargo train, but you can get a pretty clear view from the action over the railing. Just lean up against it and take your shots. Taran took a small amount of damage during the action, but I used commands to basically set up the Regen-equipped Ashley for a pseudo-suicide (not really a suicide at all, as she easily regained her health in no time.) I sent her into the thick of the brawl for a brief bit on the train while I just plugged away from the security of my perch. Kaiden, meanwhile, was still dead. (Thanks Carth! I think whenever I want to insult Kaiden, I'll just keep calling him that.)





Here's another screenshot detailing my "strategy," if you could call it that.
Also, at one point or another Kaiden rose from the dead and decided to rejoin the chaos, even though I hadn't used a medigel or anything on him. He was still mostly worthless, at any rate.





We're on the train, but the strategy stays the same. Hide under cover, wait for appropriate shots, plug away with pistols, send Ashley (and Kaiden, too, I guess) further up to soak more damage.
Ashley's too far to really see in that screenshot but I do think you can (just barely) make Kaiden out in the distance. Really, Ashley borderline breaks this fight because I could just sit back, send her out, and have her reap the XP for me. The "Soldier" ability has proven awfully useful here.





We're only a few XPs short of Level Four by the time we destroy all opposition and reach the "controls" for the train. (Is that what we're trying to reach, here? Seriously? Because this doesn't look like much of a "train" at all to me.)
This is it for me and Chapter Three. Chapter Four should detail us reaching Level Four as well as allow us to (finally!) finish up the Eden Prime mission. (I'm pretty sure all we have left is the spaceport.)
We've also officially reached the point that's the furthest I've ever gotten in any previous "playthrough" I briefly experienced during my earlier days of toying with different characters and Mass Effect. Everything from this point will be an entirely new experience for me. I literally have no clue what to expect. (I did barely enough research to determine I was, at least, reaching the end of Eden Prime. And I have heard, though I may be wrong, that the game will soon become a sufficiently more non-linear experience and opportunities to dictate the course of the game will soon arise for you all. We'll see about that. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.)

So that's that. I don't even have any choices for you all. Comments and criticisms are lovely as always, though the classic "you're such a late/sporadic updater" criticism won't be met by much more than a simple "God forbid I have a life" retort. Other valid criticisms are perfectly acceptable and even encouraged, however. I do prefer praise, though. Praise is always delicious.

Here's a question to keep this topic movin' along: What were your Shepard builds like? What did they look like, which gender did you choose, which options did you choose for their backgrounds / personalities, and what kinds of decisions did you make on Eden Prime? (Limit your answers to events we've already seen on Eden Prime only, please. Or just use spoiler-text for any additional comments I don't want to hear.) Which skills did you find particularly useful? Which skills for your character's class type were particularly useless? And, did your Kaiden die as much as mine did?

(I really need to get a life and do something more exciting on Friday nights.)