Mass Effect General Thread

[Fig Kommandant]

Is Andromeda worth a shit at 5$ and modded to shit after all these years?

Haven't played it modded, they have fixed pretty much all the bugs since then, the gameplay is as sleak as ME3, it focuses more on exploration, but the setting and story are so bland. A lot of the appeal for me is the setting, but they go for super generic sci-fi ancient advanced aliens and clichés, it's so boring. If you have no good games left, it's alright for 5 bucks, but I wouldn't care to replay it.

 

[alphabetnigger]

I remember the crowbcat video as well as the pic of the dev holding a mug with "white tears" on it and the cancelled DLC, but I have to ask:

Is Andromeda worth a shit at 5$ and modded to shit after all these years?

Is it atleast on par with ME3?

This is hard to answer. For five dollars? Sure. But it's a bad Mass Effect game, and the more you enjoyed the original trilogy the more disdain you'll have for the directions they took. Combat isn't bad though.

 

[ZMOT]

The arrival doesn't retcon anything, it was an attempt to bridge the end of ME2 with how Shepard inexplicably has gone back to the Alliance Navy and handed over everything (ship, crew, data, resources). There never was a genuine intention to hold a direct continuity between the games, the priority was always going to be "get to this location with your dudes and shoot the endless waves of cerberus troops, because Action Game".

I was talking about "the citadel is super important and crucial for the reapers to get there in time" in me1 to a m2 dlc apparently explaining that it was wasn't the case for some reason, even tho there's a whole ass game about it.

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

I was talking about "the citadel is super important and crucial for the reapers to get there in time" in me1 to a m2 dlc apparently explaining that it was wasn't the case for some reason, even tho there's a whole ass game about it.

There's a pretty solid breakdown in the Veilguard thread about this. If you go up the chain they talk about how the Reaper invasion in ME3 was suboptimal due to Sovereign's failure in ME1. Basically, they weren't supposed to trickle in, they were supposed to explode through the relay system and enact a rapid coup de grâce rather quickly.

Of course, that in and of itself is its own asspull writing, but it holds internally consistent in some sense.

The Reapers were never that powerful. The whole conceit of the series is that they have developed a complicated trap to ensure their victory. A trap that is thousands of years late, and now the galaxy has a dead Reaper to study. The capabilities they display in Mass Effect 3, by flying in from dark space and reaching every homeworld in the space of a few hours, essentially renders that trap pointless. The lore in the codex even provides reasons that could set up the Reapers being vulnerable, such as the need to discharge drive cores because they're still just big starships (which is the first thing we see Sovereign do in the series) but Mass Effect 3 handwaves all of that, too. Mass Effect 2 is basically about Harbinger deciding that it's more efficient to try and build a new Reaper from scratch and go after the Citadel plan again rather than fly in from the edge of the galaxy.

I think what Bioware should have done was a Mass Effect where the Reapers have arrived but they're drastically reduced in numbers or power due to the flight from dark space, so they're desperate, but they can be defeated. But they're still strong enough that it could be mutual annihilation if Shepard/the player doesn't get enough war score. Elements like that are why Mass Effect 3 is more of a failure than just the ending, but are the errors that players can easily overlook. The ending being a ghost kid telling you to pick a color situation less so.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

That incredibly stupid reddit ass looking cyber ninja Long Dong or whatever was the most offensive thing in ME3 to me.

He looked like an Overwatch character many years before Overwatch existed.

He also does that thing I fucking hate multiple times where you kick his ass in actual gameplay but then he beats you in a post fight cutscene because he's just so badass and cool.

I still don't get why he was put in and I know for a fact it wasn't Jennifer Hepler this time. Tbh I don't blame her leaving after she got death threats for how she wrote Anders. Genocidal mage = fuck you white bitch im mailing bombs to your home bc my precious husbando mage and kitty cat. Anders wasn't cool to begin with I'm sorry.

I still have no idea what they can do for 5.

 

[Anon88]

I just finished the Citadel DLC for the first time the clone Shepard side quest was a little too silly for my liking also I really hated Brooks so glad I got to kill her at the end. However the combat and the party part were pretty fun so I still ended up liking it overall even if the whole thing does feel kind of out of place. They even referenced that horrible Tali sweat post which I was not expecting. Got a cheap laugh out of me.

 

[Miller]

I just finished the Citadel DLC for the first time the clone Shepard side quest was a little too silly for my liking also I really hated Brooks so glad I got to kill her at the end. However the combat and the party part were pretty fun so I still ended up liking it overall even if the whole thing does feel kind of out of place. They even referenced that horrible Tali sweat post which I was not expecting. Got a cheap laugh out of me.

Don't forget that you get to unlock the Avenger assault rifle from ME1.

 

[Anon88]

Don't forget that you get to unlock the Avenger assault rifle from ME1.

Yes I love that gun. It's such a fun throwback and it's so nice to not have to use ammo. Makes you wish all the guns in ME2/3 were like that. I've been using it as my main gun ever since I got it.

 

[Snekposter]

Yes I love that gun. It's such a fun throwback and it's so nice to not have to use ammo. Makes you wish all the guns in ME2/3 were like that. I've been using it as my main gun ever since I got it.

Don't forget that due to the high RoF it loves proccing ammo effects. Combine it with EXPLOSIONS evolution for incendiary ammo and anything that isn't a Banshee just dies.

(Seriously, fuck Banshees, all my homies hate Banshees.)

 

[Chunky Salsa]

Prothean particle beam rifle was my favourite.

 

[Abradolfus_Linclerson]

I gotta disagree about 'the Reapers weren't that powerful.' Go watch the ending cinematics for the Battle of the Citadel in ME1 again. Watch as Sovereign face tanks the combined fire of three fleets of Alliance ships, and when he decides he's had enough of the flies buzzing and shitting on him, he obliterates something like half a dozen big (cruiser or larger class) ships in about 30 seconds. Literally the only reason Sovereign failed was Shepard murking his direct control meat puppet of whatever was left of Saren's corpse. It's only after you kill Saren the second time that apparently Sovereign has a brain aneurysm and strokes out, enabling what's left of the Alliance fleets to kill him.

The Citadel, in addition to being the capital of the 'united' galactic government, also is the master control for the entire mass relay system. Vigil talks about how the Reapers nuked their leadership, decimated their fleets, and then isolated every star cluster from the others when you chat him up on Ilos. The Alpha Relay you blow up in Batarian space is their emergency backup plan. They have to enact it to do the harvest this time around because the Protheans gene edited the Keepers into ignoring Sovereign's signal, and then Sovereign screwed up in his efforts to bring his pals in through the front door. Literally the only reason the galaxy can resist is because the Reapers don't have control of the mass relays. This cycle is still utterly fucked because it took literal fleets to bring Sovereign down, but I can accept that's the result of him playing turtle while glomped onto the Citadel Tower and Reaper shields aren't that strong when they have to maneuver and all that jazz. This is likely the closest the Reapers have come to a near-peer conflict in their history (fuck the Leviathan DLC, it doesn't exist) in that they don't have automatic strategic control of the galaxy, 'just' overwhelming firepower.

Is the Crucible an ass-pull? Absofuckinglutely. I just don't see how the fuck they could have resolved the conflict without some colossal bit of asspulling, however, given how even that destroyer-class Reaper on Rannoch repeatedly "lol nope'd" at the combined fire of the entire Quarian fleet before finally deciding to fall over and die. I just wish it had been a better bit of asspulling.

 

[Quintex96]

Something that always bothered me about "The Citadel is a giant mass relay that sovereign needs to turn on" is that it doesn't really make much sense when you sit down to think about it. The way mass relays work is that they supe up your eezo core and that propells you from point A to Point B. They don't suck you in from elsewhere in the Galaxy. So if the citadel is a giant mass relay, that infers the existence of a relay in dark space which is what the reapers use when it's activated to warp to the citadel-relay. If that is the case then why is the 'on' switch on the Citadel side instead of the dark space side?

On a related note, if capturing the Citadel is the goal to begin the invasion, why do the reapers wait until the end of the game to capture it? Like they somehow get to Thessia and Palaven before the reach the citadel and i'm fairly certain the relay network takes you through the relay next to the citadel to reach one of them.

 

[Abradolfus_Linclerson]

Something that always bothered me about "The Citadel is a giant mass relay that sovereign needs to turn on" is that it doesn't really make much sense when you sit down to think about it. The way mass relays work is that they supe up your eezo core and that propells you from point A to Point B. They don't suck you in from elsewhere in the Galaxy. So if the citadel is a giant mass relay, that infers the existence of a relay in dark space which is what the reapers use when it's activated to warp to the citadel-relay. If that is the case then why is the 'on' switch on the Citadel side instead of the dark space side?

On a related note, if capturing the Citadel is the goal to begin the invasion, why do the reapers wait until the end of the game to capture it? Like they somehow get to Thessia and Palaven before the reach the citadel and i'm fairly certain the relay network takes you through the relay next to the citadel to reach one of them.

The first question is explained in the codex: FTL comms exist courtesy of a network of FTL comm buoys daisy-chained together via line-of-sight lasers with a range of 150k km. The chains only go to settled systems that have been established for long enough to justify the cost and expense of building up the network. Even if you're Reapers and your line-of-sight laser comms can go 1,000,000km between relays, you'd still need 16,000 of them to cross just our solar system (diameter 16 trillion km). You're not going to be able to hide a daisy chain of those from Dark Space to the Citadel, even if you do hijack primitives' comm buoys to help you cross that distance. Any other signal you send from Dark Space will be subjected to light speed lag and the journey will take centuries or millennia, hence the need for Sovereign/some other Reaper to serve as sentry and alert the rest of them when to roll in and start reaping.

The second question is more head-canon-y so ignore me if you want, 's fine: there are only so many Reapers. Between the Citadel's own defenses and the fleets of the allied species, going straight for the Citadel when the entire galaxy can still unite against you is going to be cost-prohibitive. Better to whittle your far more numerous opposition down by stomping them into the dirt across the galaxy first and then go for the throat when the hammer they can bring to bear against you is a ball-peen instead of a 10lb sledge.

 

[capitalBBustard]

gotta disagree about 'the Reapers weren't that powerful.' Go watch the ending cinematics for the Battle of the Citadel in ME1 again.

You should rewatch it yourself. Sovereign shitstomps because it has way too advanced shields that can't be penetrated. When its shields went out, it got shitstompted back by conventional firepower just fine.

To dumb it down as much as possible: Sovereign did the equivalent of attacking a bunch of people still using bows and arrows with an assault rifle. After Sovereign is killed, the people can figure out how to make assault rifles themselves, neutering that specific advantage that allowed Sovereign to shitstomp them.

The solution to the Reaper "problem" is so simple, you just need a brain that's not stuck on epic retarded macguffin logic. Reapers can no longer rely on their shields making them "invincible" post ME1, the technological gap has narrowed (of course you'd need a longer timeskip instead of the dumb 2 year rushjob) thanks to Sovereign providing the galaxy with the most advanced piece of military technology anyone has ever seen.

They'd still be huge threat as a giant fleet of the most advanced combat ships in the galaxy anyway, so the odds are still incredibly poor for the people of the galaxy.

going straight for the Citadel when the entire galaxy can still unite against you is going to be cost-prohibitive.

>going for the instawin is cost-prohibitive
lol the real answer is that ME3 is shite written by a guy that doesn't know the plot of the 1st game (despite working on it)

 

[Abradolfus_Linclerson]

Stupid me, thinking there was room for being civil in an internet discussion. Fine then, fucktard.

I'm a dumbass and think Thanix cannons are an "I win" button for the good guys.

Even if you upgrade the Normandy's combat capabilities entirely with the shiny new gun, spiffy armor, and neato shields, she still gets shot up good in the firefight with the Collector cruiser, because the Thanix is a weak-as-fuck knockoff of the genuine article.

The fucking codex entries state Thanix cannons were adopted across the assorted fleets in the years between Mass Effect and Mass Effect 3 and you know what happened? Hackett got his ass kicked so hard he sacrificed an entire fleet to let the remnants of two more escape the debacle at Arcturus; minus some stragglers that escaped or were on detached duty, one of the Alliance's two home fleets was reduced to spreading debris around Pluto, and the other one burned up in Earth's atmosphere. The turians sacrificed several fleets to retake Taetrus, failing miserably in the process, and eventually were forced into saving everything they had left for delivering the MacGuffin. You see Thanix shots fired by the leading elements of the fleets in the opening volley of the Battle of Earth and the Reapers that get hit aren't even scratched. Not only are they not even scratched, the only Reaper casualty I remember seeing was that one Reaper getting a few legs shot off in the Second Battle of Earth cinematic because I got the 'maximum war assets' version of the cinematic. That's fucking it. That's all the good your "reverse engineered weaponry" did the Citadel Races. You have a weak-as-fuck knockoff gun, mounted on hulls protected by the same shitty armor and weak-ass kinetic barriers that couldn't protect the various fleets from geth weaponry, going up against Eldritch Abomination Machine-Gods.

The Citadel Races are spear-chucking savages compared to the Protheans, and the Protheans were spear-chucking primitives next to the Reapers. End of story.

 

[capitalBBustard]

Stupid me

I concur. Sorry you're upset by a very simple bit of logic that wouldn't have necessitated asspull McGuffins. Is your first name Mac, btw?

 

[Abradolfus_Linclerson]

I’m just gonna ignore the lore and insult you cuz I’m an assmad tapioca-brained retard with nothing resembling an actual counter argument.

FTFY.

 

[Miller]

Is it possible to do a ME2(LE) Insanity run with a new character?
I'm asking this because I think I'm stuck with the vanguard Shepard, making the insanity run a real pain in the ass and the game doesn't allow you to change class in a New Game+.

 

[Fig Kommandant]

the game doesn't allow you to change class in a New Game+.

You can always just use a save editor.

 

[Jesus Swept]

I'm playing through the trilogy start to finish and I made the genius decision to play the OG version of all three games and not the Legendary Edition.

I still like Mass Effect 1, but the game barely works. The companion AI is retarded, Wrex has negative IQ and doesn't know what a melee attack is, the game's stuck in 60fps, and worst of all, it keeps deleting my save files for some reason.

But at least I still have the Miranda butt cutscenes.