Returning to the Start

Morning Friends! There is something that you realize really quick when you attempt to go straight from a Mass Effect 3 playthrough into another Mass Effect save… the first game is such a downgrade as compared to the rest of the series. There are a lot of things that they had not quite figured out. Don’t get me wrong… the Legendary edition is so much better than anything that came before it. The controls are mostly standardized with the rest of the series and the models… while significantly lower fidelity still look pretty solid. What is most noticeable however is the dialog and how stiff the delivery is. Additionally there are just other things like the whole loot/encryption/omni-gel thing that doesn’t make a ton of sense… or the wide sweeping scope of the Citadel that serves to trap you there immediately following what is an otherwise action packed first mission.

I would be willing to bet that there are a large number of people who never actually make it off the Citadel. I had the benefit of the layout of everything being fairly fresh in my memory and I still found it a little painful. The best thing to come out of the trip to the Citadel is that you get your first three good crewmates in the form of Tali, Wrex and Garrus… which also means that I never again have to use Kaidan or Ashley. During the last playthrough I absolutely made the wrong choice between the two of them… and I will not be making that mistake this time around. I’ve never romanced Ashley… and I am trying to decide if I can hold my nose and go through with the space racist or not. The game suffers from not exactly having the best options that are not Liara… who disturbingly keeps telling you how young she is in Asari years.

The other thing that you notice is just how shitty the captain’s quarters are on this frigate. Like from the SR2 onwards you get this nice private deck that is exclusive to the commander with lots of cosmetic options and neat things like fish tanks, a stereo and even a display of your medals. In the first game on the SR1 you get a general purpose room that happens to have a bed at the back and you are certain is more conference room than quarters. In the later games this room gets used by Miranda and much later Liara so the layout doesn’t really change much because they all have an office and adjoining bedroom but there is some sort of separation between the two. I guess it really drills home how much of a “military frigate” the first design really was, and how much it became a general purpose exploration vehicle in later games.

I am starting to question if I am going to make it through a second playthrough myself to be honest. Something that completely snuck up on me is the fact that Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis released yesterday. I logged in for a bit last night and was completely confused as to why all of my characters were showing up from baseline PSO2. When they talked about cosmetics carrying over, I did not realize that it actually just meant that your characters from the first game were going to be in the second game. You can change the appearance but I was happy enough with my original CAST design to just keep moving forward with it. I did a bit of the tutorial before logging for the night. I did quickly realize however that the load times mean I really need to free up some space one one of my SSDs for the install.

Saving the Galaxy

Morning Friends! Last night I did in fact finish up my play through of Mass Effect Legendary edition. This morning I am going to try not to talk about anything terribly spoilery, which is sorta hard when most everything about this game series my brain takes for common knowledge. My memories were correct that when I started the mission to attack the enemy base, it was in fact a downward slide to the conclusion of the game. Weirdly in my brain I actually remembered the run up to the end being longer than it actually was last night. Side note, I talked about skipping dialog in my Mass Effect 1 discussion but that became less and less of a thing as I moved into 2 and 3. The dialog is just more compelling once you leave that first game.

I have no clue what the absolute maximum number of War Assets that you can gather are, but I feel like I got pretty close. I had read somewhere that you needed over 7000 to get the best possible endings, but I am not entirely certain what that number is. The problem is all data from before is out the window because the Legendary edition works differently. A decent chunk of your War Asset score comes from having made specific choices in the first and second game to unlock the ability to gain large caches of points in this one. There are a few things I would change but I think I got as close as I have ever gotten to the perfect playthrough… at least for someone like me who is extremely paragon minded.

One of the things that I greatly appreciate about the Mass Effect series is how by the time you reach the third game… you have spent a lot of time “living” in this universe. There are so many games that pull a third act turn that instead of a tightly focused foray, you now have the fate of the world hanging on your actions. The problem with this is that it often doesn’t feel earned… that you sorta step out into the high water and get swept along with the tide of the narrative. Given how much you go through in this series, by the time you reach the third act or third game in this case, it feels like it has earned the stakes that we are playing for. The game shows you from the very start just how overwhelming the odds are and that the only way we make it out of this alive is if we get all of the forces of the galaxy to band together in a tentative unity.

For me the game will always be best however, when I am jetting around the galaxy with my crew and completing little missions. I think this is why the second game in the series resonates so deeply with me because it is almost entirely “away missions”. You feel like you have plenty of time to spend getting to know your crew and shifting around using them for various missions. The problem with both ME2 and ME3 however is that you end up getting back Tali… my FAVORITE crewmember a bit too late in the game for it to feel like she makes a very meaningful impact on the decisions. There are a lot of things that I would change about how I played through Mass Effect 3. Most specifically a character died due to my actions that I would have preferred to have saved… but now I know specifically how to stop that from happening and it doesn’t require too much fiddling.

You might ask what I did last night after seeing the credits roll? Well I rebounded and created a new save as Male Shepard, aka the way I am honestly more comfortable playing the game. I liked playing as the Jennifer Hale voiced female Shepard quite a bit, but I still struggled with the romance options in the end. I also rushed my way through the first game, and I really should have spent more time doing Mako missions because I missed quite a few important sub plots and I am uncertain what influence those have on later missions. Since I am currently in need of good good feelings of nostalgia to get me through the bad bad chaos of my life… I am perfectly fine setting this on repeat for a bit and chilling out. I somehow doubt I will make it all the way through this second playthrough, because I can rarely play the same game twice in a row… but I guess we will see how that goes.

The other small miracle is that you have two blog posts in a row from me. Here is hoping I am “back” for now.

Avoiding Homeward Path

As I alluded to yesterday, I am still struggling pretty hard right now. While I am not putting in near the hours I was at the beginning of this current crisis, the fact that it continues to drag on over a month into it… is just grating. The only word I have to adequately describe where I am mentally is “weary”. Part of what has helped me deal with all of this is the fact that I could come home and spend a few hours running around the galaxy with my cast of “friends” in Mass Effect Legendary edition. Unfortunately that is now coming to its own end as I have reached the point of no return in the third outing. Essentially if I move the story forward at this point I will be on a downhill slide to the end of the game.

I find myself somewhat wistful about this most recent outing in the Mass Effect universe. This was my first time playing a female Shepard and I enjoyed it greatly, apart from the less than awesome romance options. I’ve learned something about my particular brand of “pan” in that I am just not attracted to traditional straight white guys. If I could have romanced Cortez or maybe even Joker… then possibly. Instead I basically clung to Liara like a life raft in that department. Mass Effect Andromeda has a mod that opens up all romances to all genders, and I am hoping eventually someone figures out how to do one for the Legendary edition because Tali and Jack are far better than anything I had open to me apart from the non-paramour characters of Chambers and Traynor.

It is really interesting how different the three games in the series are. Mass Effect 1 is this very tight and focused adventure with extremely sharply focused storytelling. Mass Effect 2 is this big meandering adventure with a truly staggering cast of playable characters. Then Mass Effect 3 narrows the focus once again and makes everything about this driving conflict of the Reapers trying to annihilate all life in the galaxy. I still after all of this time prefer the second game and its pacing, but I prefer the mechanics and visual style of the third game. There are some pretty staggering cinematic moments that feel integral to the story and not just window dressing.

If I get home at a decent hour, I will focus on pushing the game across that finish line. From what I remember once I start the assault on the enemy base, it is a quick slide to the final moments of the game. As it stands right now… I still don’t have a clue how I am going to finish things up. I know I have three decisions before me and I have more than enough war resources to get the best possible endings down each path. The problem with finishing however is this journey will be over… and right now I have been using the nostalgia that it has brought me to prop me up and keep me from collapsing under the weight of stress. If I wrap things up… I am absolutely going to have to find another big sprawling adventure to dive into in order to keep me focused.

In another side notes… I did 182 pull ups last night that took about 15 minutes of real time and got absolutely nothing for it. If you find yourself down this path… abort because it is SO not worth it. In additional side notes… I am going to try and ease back into blogging again because the entire process is therapeutic for me and maybe will help me weather the storm a bit better. I miss these morning one sided conversations. I hope you are all doing well and I hope tomorrow I will come visit with you again.

MixTape Mondays: Hack The Gibson

Hey Friends! It is that time again, time for another mixtape. This seems to be the only thing I can actually manage to do right now on a regular schedule. Over the weekend we once again failed to record AggroChat in part because I just couldn’t handle human interaction. Work is still in a really bad state and I am not handling the chaos terribly well. The grind has been over a month long at this point and I don’t really see an end to it. During this time however, listening to music has acted as a bit of a solace to everything going on. If this is your first MixTape Monday, the idea is that I used to share mixtapes with my friends and since that is no longer terribly practical… I am doing the next best thing by creating some custom curated playlists available through Spotify or YouTube.

Hack The Gibson

I was not terribly certain what I would actually choose this morning, so I rolled a die and it chose for me. I love the movie Hackers. It is this campy vision of computer hackers that came out at exactly the right time for it to gain traction in my brain. I was a wannabe warez and script kiddie at the time… managed to gain some traction but we won’t talk about that right now. Even then I knew everything that was on the movie screen was pure nonsense… but delightful nonsense. The thing that made the movie really stand out however was the soundtrack. While there is very little overlap between my MixTape and the actual soundtrack… it is more crafted to give the same overall feeling of the movie. How do you represent something like this? With Matthew Lillard as the face of Emanuel Goldstein of course!

The challenge however is while I set out with this goal… the MixTape itself developed a life of its own.

  • From Your Mouth – God Lives Underwater
  • 6 Underground – Sneaker Pimps
  • Fools Gold – The Stone Roses
  • Block Rockin’ Beats – The Chemical Brothers
  • Purple Haze – The Cure
  • Your Woman – White Town
  • Ava Adore – The Smashing Pumpkins
  • Numb – Linkin Park
  • Voodoo People – The Prodigy
  • Human Behavior – Bjork
  • Sour Times – Portishead
  • Teardrop – Massive Attack
  • White Flag – Dido

Listen On Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Listen On Tidal

This MixTape is quite a bit different from what I have generally shared, which I guess makes two weeks now in a row where I have popped out of my general traditional comfort zone. Since I now have several of these created, it is starting to get to the point where I really need to collect them all in one place. Over the weekend I did precisely that and now each time I post a new one of these I am going to close things out with a link to the archives. That way if you started this process late and you are so inclined, you can catch up and listen to the entire series.