The Mass Effect thread

[GreyICE]

Well I just finished a speed run playthrough on Hardcore. I just wanted to see the ending. Because I did virtually no optional missions I'm 99.9% sure that I got all the horrible outcomes. Among them:

Spoiler: Bad Stuff

-Not enough paragon/renegade to save the Quarians and the Geth
-Miranda died
-Jack was assimilated by the Illusive man, killed her as a throwaway enemy during the assault on his base
-The entire hammer force was wiped out
-All of my companions were killed
-Had only two choices for ending (I see people referencing 3)
-The Normandy was destroyed
-Anderson died
-The Illusive man died

I'll be honest, I kind of hated the ending. You create this entire interesting galaxy, with species and interactions, and then at the end you destroy all the mass relays and you're like 'oh ho, so much for that interesting galaxy, or ever finding out how the new genophage free Krogans interact with the rest of the galaxy, or how the Asari survived, or what happened to the Geth, etc.

Finally, wasn't Sovereign trying to destroy the Citadel? And the Citadel was the home of the Catalyst, which was what created and controlled the reapers? So... what?

[GreyICE]

Well, I've started a new playthrough. First annoyance encountered, I can't import my ME3 save. Well, I

can,

it just locks me as Vanguard. Look, my first playthrough is always Vanguard, because I started ME1 that way, but it's been a trap class ever since the Singularity nerf (singularity trivialized all enemies that were capable of being lifted in ME1 which was... pretty much everyone). Shotguns have sucked ever since they removed the sniper-shotgun mode (ME1 you could upgrade a shotgun to the point where all the pellets landed in a tight pattern at ridiculous ranges, meaning it did sniper rifle damage with rapid fire... kinda OP). So, playing through insanity with the 'up close and personal class,' when I'd rather gargle bleach than play 'up close and personal' with banshees, not to mention doing two playthroughs with the same class, all because you didn't put in ONE toggle? Thanks Bioware.

Okay, reloaded ME2 save. Hmmm. Having a brain tells me Infiltrator and Soldier are still going to be the best choices. However, Engineer was the stains in ME2, and I want to see what they did with it. *selects Engineer*

Hmm, nifty Sentry Turret. Oh, the 6th level power REPLACES your gun turret, not upgrades it -_-

Warp ammo is now the utter stains. Max overload and go get Armor Piercing, check. God I need to be on the normady.

I don't think Combat Drone does anything but draw fire. Given that my weapons are a shitpistol and a shitrifle and my shields disappear faster than a stack of $20s at a kleptomaniac convention this is a deceptively useful thing for a skill to do.

*notes to self - get good assault and sniper weapons soon, Insanity bumps the damage ENORMOUSLY

More impressions as I continue.

[GreyICE]

Just finished the

Mars Mission

.

You know when I said turret didn't fire weapons normally? I lied. It splits between normal gun and flamethrower so it can't 'double dip' but it most certainly does NOT lock out the normal gun.

The combination of having 2 squad mates and having Drone/Gun means there's nearly target saturation at times. Singularity remains awesome without being totally OP, thanks to the rebalanced Shield/Health ratio and people actually coming with only health on insanity. This means that I can effectively lock down amazing numbers of troops, either with them attacking my power spawns, or them floating in midair.

Sadly,

Kaiden

added nothing to this basically, besides an assault rifle. Useless git. At least he DOESN'T have a shotgun. I hate people with shotguns on insanity (the AI always decides to use them, then the AI decides to get in close, then my squad mate is down in the middle of Nowhere, Wisconsin, while I try and 2 man the damn thing).

Overall, I need more ammo, I need to upgrade some guns, I need a real sniper rifle, but I think the Engineer is a valid class choice. The first Banshee will tell me if I'm wrong, of course.

[GreyICE]

So I bought the DLC mission and went there first thing. Big mistake. One is not supposed to take down that many enemies at that level with the weapons I had. Horrid abuse of the singularity/overload combo got me through it, but I spent most of the mission running out of ammo, running out of time, and just plain running. The Atlas at the end was a special joy. A full clip did about 1 bar of damage, it has 20 bars, I have 10 clips. Hmmm. The widow and it's 10 shots were... No help. Fortunately I got some cool rewards. By which I mean

The Prothain squad member.

. Because the rifle? Oh dear no. Fully upgraded a full clip nearly took down a husk. I think it would if I hit the head more, but that's hard because a GIANT GREEN BEAM is in the way of my aiming. It takes like 6 seconds to fully discharge, at which point the reload starts. You eject the clip, perform an interpretive dance number, and recite the full text of the constitution. Bring a good book.

Now I know how the Prothians died out. They armed their troops with flashlights. apparently I am supposed to stand there, ass hanging out, while I spray green light at them. In reward for leaving me exposed for 6 seconds on insanity, they let me almost kill a husk, the weakest enemy in the game. Fortunately the reload issue isn't a big deal because if you try that shit in combat you are DEAD. Shields usually vanish in 1-2 seconds. This takes like... 6. NICE GUN, MR ADVANCED CIVILIZATION. I GUESS I KNOW WHY YOU FAILED AGAINST THE REAPERS.

Well if anyone gets the DLC for that piece of junk they're dumb. So much for DLC content making the game "easy mode."

Oh it has unlimited ammo. So you can use it as much as you want. Of course since "never" is the amount you want to use it, that is a poor selling point. It does open up my mass effect absurd mode challenge - if insane is too easy, try to beat it with only that weapon - no damaging powers either.

Me, I'd rather Pure platinum Bayonetta and do a lvl 1 play through of dark souls than try.

Worst. Weapon. Ever.

[GreyICE]

It has unlimited ammo. Maybe you're thinking of a real weapon? Maybe it's acceptable on lower difficulties? I dunno. All I know is husks were running at me, I was beaming them, and then meleeing them to death. Husks. I'd love to try that stuff on a banshee. Yes sir, thank you sir, I'd LOVE to eat another one of those homing missiles. Woo boy that sounds fun.

On a side note, grenades one shot you on insane. That's gonna be fun in the final mission.

[GreyICE]

By "ammo inefficient", I mean that it would use up its clip really quickly. Unless you can just keep beaming after the 100 that it says it has.

It lasts about 6 seconds afaik. Aka about twice the length of time it takes for them to kill you.

If it wasn't for the 1 year reload time that'd be fine. When do you get a chance to shoot for 6 seconds straight in mass effect? Just... It does nothing in that time.

It is goggles.

[GreyICE]

I've been using that beam rifle thingee. Its not that bad, at least at the difficulty level I'm playing. Do you hold it in the whole time or pulse it? Because I'm pretty sure for the 6 seconds it last, the first 3 are weaker then it goes into SUPER FLASHLIGHT MODE and gets a bit stronger.

I think I'm like 8 or 9 hours in now. I think its going to take me longer than 20 to finish. It doesn't feel like i'm close to halfway through. But I'm obsessed with completing all teh missionz, so its ok.

I'm pretty sure that Cortez shuttle pilot guy is flirting with me. Like, this is my super paragon playthrough so I wanna pick the paragon choices, but I don't want to end up having to fuck him to be paragon

Oh, does anyone know what happens if the reapers catch you while you're scanning shit?

Game over, reload.

Also the flashlight MAY be acceptable at difficulties lower than Insanity, but... who cares?

[GreyICE]

Okay, finished the '

Rescue the Primarch

' mission.

Reapers know how to make a rifle. One shot, and nearly does in a brute on insanity. Wonderful stuff. Too bad it's one of those 'pick me up' weapons.

Got a 'rapid fire' sniper rifle too. It fires like 1 shot/2 seconds. Because what I want to do with my time is sit around and wait for my SNIPER RIFLE to fire more shots.

Yeahhhh. Finished the mission with it, but wasn't happy. Hello, Mantis, my old friend. God I love you. I know there's a better one later, but you are so sexy I don't care.

Brutes were surprisingly simple on Insanity. Turret/Drones make short work of them. Thinking the Engineer is definitely viable, although Banshees are still waiting on the 'stress test' field.

[GreyICE]

Got to play with my new squad member. And man, he's hax. The grenades he chucks are insanely powerful, easily tearing apart a HUGE area, even without them being fully loaded. His dark drain is like a good version of Kaiden's ability, doing nice damage and jumping to new targets when the old one dies. Plus he's a beast with an assault rifle. Overall, good stuff.

Grissom Academy and Jack

have been rescued. Now I don't have to

kill her!

Liara remains a total beast with Singularity, and the overload/singularity combo did in almost as many people as the Mantis did. I need a better assault rifle, mine is serviceable but not nearly accurate enough. Something with high damage, low clip size, and short bursts would be perfect. The explosive pistol we picked up is perfect, not because it does great damage (it doesn't) but because she doesn't feel the need to fire it in insane bursts. As long as I convince her to keep the submachine gun away she remains a fine, surviveable mobile Singularity station. I could pretend she's along for other reasons besides her fine blue ass and her singularity, but...

[GreyICE]

Hey greyICE I just did that mission last night. I found it the toughest one yet, and I think I'm on normal difficulty.

In related news, does anyone know the best way to take out those annoying guys that creep up on you with the big metal shield? I usually shoot their foot with infernal ammo, or wait til they get close and slot them, but... both strategies are pretty inefficient.

Singularity, Singularity, Singularity, Singularity, Singularity.

Also I hear Singularity is some good in this game. Liara is your woman.

Alternatively, they're fairly easy to take out with an assault rifle, just spray near the edges and they'll stagger a bit, which opens up all sorts of elbow/knee shots. They're not bad at all. But really? Singularity.

Grenade powers, and lift/pull also work, but are much weaker than singularity.

[GreyICE]

Well I just finished a speed run playthrough on Hardcore. I just wanted to see the ending. Because I did virtually no optional missions I'm 99.9% sure that I got all the horrible outcomes. Among them:
*snip*

Finally, wasn't Sovereign trying to destroy the Citadel? And the Citadel was the home of the Catalyst, which was what created and controlled the reapers? So... what?

It's worse than that. Sovereign was trying to activate the citadel to call the other reapers. The protheans had managed to stop the citadel/keepers from responding to Sovereigns signal. So Sovereign was presumably unable to send a signal to the thing controlling it or something?

Hmmm.

If we assume faster than light travel has a significant time delay, then it's possible each Reaper intelligence is fully aware and capable of carrying out it's duty. In fact it's possible the Catalyst was only broadly aware of what the Reapers were doing, and they managed the day-to-day aspects. If that's the case, suddenly the entire thing makes a lot more sense. The Catalyst only really gets involved with part of the entire thing, and the Reapers, like the Geth, can operate self aware and on their own without connection to the central intelligence.

It still makes a lot of things really questionable, but c'est la vie

[GreyICE]

Best theory I've heard is EA wanted the 'true ending' to be paid DLC, but this has backfired too far for that to be acceptable.

Other theories don't make sense, since they botched the ending so badly, it can't have been planned.

[GreyICE]

I'm assuming there won't be any more Mass Effect games.

I'm not buying them

[GreyICE]

In the middle of another playthrough of the series, wanted to try out a class I haven't used yet (I've previously done an insanity play through with Vanguard and dabbled with engineers).

Adepts are completely hilarious in ME1, I ran a Tali/Liara team and basically every fight was our opponents being juggled in lifts / throw / singularity / sabotage so that they never actually got a chance to shoot back.

Adept is the most gimped class in ME2 I've seen, their entire kit is completely shut down on insanity simply due to the fact that everyone has shield/armor/barrier so you're reduced to spraying SMG shots / tossing warps every 6.5 seconds and wishing you could use actual guns / abilities. The only way I've found to make it work so far is bonus power Warp Ammo (for the +50% weapon dmg) / taking ARifle training on the collector ship and turning myself into a psudo-soldier. Team is Miranda + (Thane/Garrus/Zaheed) depending on what the opponents are for the mission.

ME3 is coming up soon, hopefully adepts work a bit better there.

Oh good, you found how to break both games.

ME 1: Lift/Singularity spam solves 98% of all fights. Including the final boss.
ME 2: Ignore all super powers in favor of any power that involves shooting faster/harder or living longer. Warp Ammo is broken-good, but you can get it on any class (thanks Bioware!) and that means SOLDIER is the god class of ME2.

[GreyICE]

ME 2: Ignore all super powers in favor of any power that involves shooting faster/harder or living longer. Warp Ammo is broken-good, but you can get it on any class (thanks Bioware!) and that means

SOLDIER

Vanguard is the god class of ME2.

Anything a Soldier can do a Vanguard can do and then become invunerable while healing themselves and teleporting around the fight.

I don't think it's all classes having access to Warp Ammo that's the problem, it's that all classes can use ARifles which is the real issue imo.

Nah, it doesn't have nearly the cooldown needed to shine. It's solid, but there's too long of a delay while you're standing there like a dweeb, and that tends to get you iced on Insanity. Vanguard is just not the best choice for your Insanity playthrough.

Soldier has every weapon except one of the crappy pistols, and is basically god-modding. That 'slowtime' buff allows you to actually duck out of cover for more than a few seconds, and is super-strong.

I'm actually fairly certain the Vanguard is the toughest class to do an Insanity playthrough on (although there's some strong competition out there with the Adept sucking like a $3 whore)

[GreyICE]

Oh yeah, I remember. In ME2, Charge didn't have invulnerability. It gave you a shield equal to 50/100% of your maximum shields. The stupid shield lasted 4 seconds and the power had a 6 second recharge time, meaning there was a 2 second interval where you were getting stomped flat. And tearing down 200% maximum shields was... not hard in insanity.

Vanguard was such a dork class.

You are so thinking of Mass Effect THREE here

[GreyICE]

You took the time dilation upgrade and the 100% shield upgrade and used a weapon with knockback / long reload animation (Claymore worked well for animation cancelling), plow through insanity without a worry in the world. Once you got the -20% CDR research the game became hilariously easy barring certain fights (mainly involving scions).

Or you could pick soldier, snipe down groups of 4+ enemies with ease, use Assault rifles if they got close, time dilate to hell and back, and use Reave for shits and giggles.

I mean taking the Claymore means no Assault Rifles/Sniper Rifles. Period. At all. You can't get them. And the claymore has 10-20 rounds in it, MAXIMUM. Ammo starvation happens on insanity.

I mean it works, but you'll be dying and reloading, hording ammo, and using Pistols much more often than you want to be.

[GreyICE]

who the fuck is Kelly?

You took the time dilation upgrade and the 100% shield upgrade and used a weapon with knockback / long reload animation (Claymore worked well for animation cancelling), plow through insanity without a worry in the world. Once you got the -20% CDR research the game became hilariously easy barring certain fights (mainly involving scions).

Or you could pick soldier, snipe down groups of 4+ enemies with ease, use Assault rifles if they got close, time dilate to hell and back, and use Reave for shits and giggles.

I mean taking the Claymore means no Assault Rifles/Sniper Rifles. Period. At all. You can't get them. And the claymore has 10-20 rounds in it, MAXIMUM. Ammo starvation happens on insanity.

I mean it works, but you'll be dying and reloading, hording ammo, and using Pistols much more often than you want to be.

I always start a hard fight with my pistol, switch to charging with shotgun when I start getting flanked. If you run out of ammo, just keep charging and let your squad deal damage, by then there should only be a couple baddies left anyway. Adrenaline Rush isn't nearly as useful as you're making it out to be, except for the Mattock glitch.

Adrenaline rush makes sniping work. +140% boosted damage blows apart anything, and even if you take the health increase (for 25% damage instead of 50%) you still do +100%.

Basically you can stand up, shoot down 2 people, pop down, risk free. It also makes standing up to fire assault rifles much less dangerous. And really, it's how long it's activated. 5 seconds out of every 8 you're ARed, and it does 50%/75% reduced damage and 140%/100% boosted damage. And the other three seconds you can literally drop down behind cover. It's a very safe ability that just makes you better at doing what you do.

I mean honestly, that's the theme of the Soldier. Nothing flashy, nothing spectacular, just better damage, take less damage, have more weapons, have more ammo, etc. And with everything having armor/barriers/etc, it really, really helps to focus on core competence.

[GreyICE]

^ True. I'm not sure that makes the game easier with Soldier though. Hard fights are still hard. Vanguard and Infiltrator can temporarily remove themselves from combat, take down an enemy or just find a better position.

Lemme put it this way.

1) Five people rush into the room. I activate AR, stand up, put one down with the Widow.
2) 3 seconds, reloading. AR/Stand, put one down with the widow.
3) They're getting closer. Stand and tear one's armor down with assault rifle in AR and Tungsten Rounds. Squad Incendiary, means he's no longer a big concern.
4) One of them is getting close. I see armor. AR+Pistol! Pistol tears through armor with Tungsten rounds plus 140% damage boost, and even on Insanity he drops quickly.
5) The fifth is circling. Smack him with an overload off a squad mate to help lower his shields, then AR and Scimitar. Two rounds in him before AR drops, a third and he's dead. My shields are low, but AR is keeping me alive nicely. Drop behind cover when he's down.
6) Let shields come back, finish off the guy on fire from teammate's ammo.

It's like... a gun for every situation. Crowd control for every situation. At max level you can have

- Max AR
- Max Passive
- Heavy Disruptor Ammo
- Tungsten Rounds
- Squad Incendiary Ammo

Miranda/Kasumi and Grunt/Legion forever.

Armor? You can burn it down with 70% boost
Shields/Barrier? Same
Health? They'll be on fire and panicking.

You can take a squad with nothing but damaging skills, and just enjoy the party.

[GreyICE]

until you get knocked out of cover

or some random mook flanks you

Half damage for five seconds and double tap with scimitar. I actually dodged out of cover and back in for all the harbinger shots, which results in zero damage, and that's 90% of what knocks you out of cover.

[GreyICE]

ME3 Vanguard is 1000% percent better, mostly because of 200% power recharge rate.

[GreyICE]

Kai Leng having the functional IQ of a waffle iron can be inferred from the game.

[GreyICE]

Hamburger Hepler

never heard of her, tell me more about this person

Woman responsible for the terrible writing in Dragon Age 2, the Bounty Hunter plotline for The Old Republic (and look how well THAT went) and centre of a "people only hate my writing because I'm a woman" shitstorm AND a "I don't really like games" shitstorm at various times.
Wrote one published TERRIBLE sci-fi book full of xenophobia, subsequently fell back on writing for games because... it's a paycheck, I guess.

No one person could be responsible for the terrible writing of Dragon Age 2. Clearly we're entering the black-and-white mode of thinking where one person the internet hates can be blamed for an entire game (especially when that person is not the owner of the company, or a lead designer, but a goddamn writer). That's not how the real world works.

Individuals can add shit storylines to a good game - my favorite example is Nadia's keep from BG 2 (a generic storyline featuring bland characters, backed by dungeon design that favors mindless trudging over interesting features and challenge). But an entire shit game? Nah, that's done by committee.

[GreyICE]

There have been no mass effect games on site.

[GreyICE]

Seriously? Somebody needs to run one.

NAO

/headdesk

Presented by ReaperCharlie, esuriospiritus, and Umbrage.

The defense rests, your honor.

(You don't even NEED to read the game to know that nuclear apocalypse levels of horror and despair that radiated out from that one)
(Also there was that Tony Montoya game with 16 serial killers or something)
(So yeah, someone should do a Mass Effect game someday)