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.

Mixtape Mondays: Thinly Veiled Crisis

Hey Friends! It seems that I have gone from being one of the most prolific bloggers to one of the least prolific in record time. I am still more or less trudging through hell on the work front, and as a result it has sapped any energy that I once had for creative endeavors. I miss you all greatly and this time I carved out of my life to talk to you. I need to figure out a way to return to some semblance of normality and maybe attempting to blog again is a good method to get there. The prolific era of this blog was actually spawned as a counter reaction to one of the worst periods of my life up to that point. Part of me is hoping that after I get on the far side of this current phase… I will have a similar upwelling of creative desires.

For those who are not used to this construct, the idea is simple. I create a mixtape and share it with you. For me however the act of creating a mixtape is way more than just throwing a bunch of songs together. I am old school in that nature in that I am trying to build an experience that is enjoyable to listen to in its whole. Back in the day I used to refer to albums that were built in this manner as “listen throughs” which I admit isn’t terribly creative, but they were albums I could just throw on and let play without feeling the desire to skip tracks. My goal with this project is to share with you tiny bits of myself in musical form. I was a creator of mixtapes then and I find the process more or less translates smoothly to an online playlist.

Thinly Veiled Crisis

A lot of the tracks that I have been sharing with you are fairly old at this point dating from the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. With Thinly Veiled Crisis I am cherry picking from some of my favorites in modern rotation but even then there is a bit of a theme. A lot of these tracks remind me of an earlier era, namely in many cases they have this throwback flair to the “New Wave” era of the 80s. Others just sorta felt like they fit into missing pieces. I have been working on this list for a month, adding and removing songs here and there until it reached a point where I thought it was ready for listening.

  • Hard Times – Paramore
  • Once in a Lifetime – All Time Low
  • Blinding Lights – The Weeknd
  • Such Great Heights – The Postal Service
  • Oh My My – Blue October
  • Comeback Kid – Sleigh Bells
  • Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked – Cage the Elephant
  • Kiss This – The Struts
  • Deadline – Grouplove
  • Level of Concern – Twenty One Pilots
  • Serotonin – Girl in Red
  • Soul Meets Body – Death Cab for Cutie
  • Are You Bored Yet? – Wallows feat. Clairo

Listen on Spotify

Listen On YouTube

Listen On Tidal

This one is a bit different than most of what I have been sharing, but still very much represents a slice of my musical tastes. I have to admit one of my favorite parts of this experiment has been the comments I have received. Even if I can’t do other posts right now, I am hoping to keep this going because I enjoy the process greatly.