Spoiler Warning Episode 9

By Shamus Posted Thursday Mar 4, 2010

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 44 comments

Kaiden is so fired for this.

 


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44 thoughts on “Spoiler Warning Episode 9

  1. Psithief says:

    Quick Shamus, cast ‘detect troll’!


    So, no more elevator jokes! We’ve moved onto elevator sarcasm. Woo!

    I just realised that I’m disappointed that it’s not a 16:9 resolution ratio that you’re recording this in.

    1. eri says:

      Mass Effect has a vert- widescreen implementation. You actually see more of the screen if you play in a 4:3 ratio.

  2. krellen says:

    I still prefer elevators to loading screens.

    1. Ringwraith says:

      Unless you have ME2 on a quad core like I do which makes all the ‘elevator’ loading screens end just seconds (or not even a single second in one place) after starting! ;)
      Lifts are still better for longer ones though.

      1. Psithief says:

        Shouldn’t that have more to do with your hard drive read speed?

        1. eri says:

          I find that even though Mass Effect loads just about everything very quickly, it still “rounds up” the time spent on elevator transitions in order to at least keep them justified… it’d make no sense to have an elevator for half a floor, after all, so while you do wind up spending more time, at least it doesn’t take you out of the experience and make you start questioning the consistency of the game universe.

          Then again, the streaming system was also horrible in the first one. Elevators, plus static load screens if you can’t keep up? It it’s just a sloppily-made game overall. That doesn’t excuse the bad design, either. I’d much rather have a hallway to at least walk down than an elevator to stand in, motionless, while listening to muzak.

      2. krellen says:

        I played both games on the 360.

      3. Heron says:

        The between-map loading screens take a long time in ME2, on my machine… except for the ones on the Normandy. (I’ve got a 4 GHz Core i7.)

    2. krellen says:

      Seriously, guys. Enough with the elevators.

      1. Us says:

        Agreed. The elevator joke horse has been beaten to death, butchered, fed to orphans, shat out, put in a paper bag, lit on fire on someone’s porch, stomped on and hosed off their shoe.

        1. ps238principal says:

          But they’re just talkin’ ’bout (elevator) Shaft!

  3. Jeff says:

    That was a hilarious episode. Silly Kaiden, you’ll die too! Explodey neutrons are not your friend. But when it comes to elevators, even neutrons have standards.

    >9*10^3 is what I too thought of immediately when I saw “power level.”

    Then weird stasis bug happened, somehow corrected by taking cover behind a crate. Crates were almost responsible for your death, and were later responsible for your victory. Like some crazy crate-karma.

  4. Raygereio says:

    About Conan falling down; enemies are supposed to have the same biotics you (as a vanguard, adapt or sentinel) have.
    But instead of giving the enemies the abillity to kill you instantly by lifting you into the stratosfeer – or worse, throw you and clip poor Conan’s lower body through a wall; BioWare decided wisely that throw, lift and singularity would just cause you to fall over.

    1. ps238principal says:

      What I hated most about that “falling down” power was that it often made me fall off of the catwalks in the room with Benezia. I’d come to, but apparently the game wasn’t ever told what to do if Shepard falls through the cracks, and I’d be stuck standing on some support structure, unable to move and having to restart the fight.

  5. krellen says:

    The most annoying thing about the Rachni decision is that the Council yells at you no matter which choice you make.

    1. Matt K says:

      I’m honestly surprised Shepard told them. I figured this would be our little secret so when the Counsel commented on it I was like seriously you told them??? Idiot.

    2. Rick W says:

      Just the turian, who also makes snide comments if you save everyone on Feros, just because the colonists were (mostly) human.

      Who later cites your actions on Virmire as proof that you can’t be “discreet,” even though what he’s taking issue with was suggested by Kirrahe, and was essentially the only option other than signalling for help again and hoping the Council knows you’re there.

      The turian Councilor just doesn’t like Shepard, or humans in general, and is willing to twist his/her actions to seem negative to prevent the other two from thinking it’s a good idea to induct more humans into the Spectres.

      He gets a little conciliatory if he’s alive at the end, because he knows he’s alive because of the Alliance and Shepard (and the other two are dead set on making humans a Council race), but he’s back to being a jerk in the sequel.

  6. Heron says:

    You’re in a twisty maze of elevators, all alike…

  7. far_wanderer says:

    I think I spotted one of your major problems during one of those pause screens during the near death fight: both Kaiden and Liara appear to have assault rifles selected, which they have no training in.

    Rachni Queen as a party member is something that really needs to happen in Mass Effect 3.

    1. Veloxyll says:

      With romance option I hope!

      Bioware really need to work on the whole “everyone has assault rifles in the cutscenes” thing. Even in ME2 characters have Assault rifles out, despite half your party not even carrying them!

      1. eri says:

        It essentially becomes four times the amount of work if you account for every weapon the characters are holding. It’s a bit jarring, but it takes a good deal of extra effort to add in entirely new sets of animations. I’d rather take fewer bugs or a new feature.

        1. acronix says:

          Or they could have made the same thing with pistols. Everyone has pistols!

          1. Robyrt says:

            Except for Garrus and Zaeed, who have assault rifle and sniper rifle and that’s it.

            To be fair, it makes a lot more sense for someone to whip out a suboptimal pistol than an assault rifle they shouldn’t even own.

            1. Varil says:

              Aren’t these in-game cutscenes? Can’t they just, I don’t know, call “current weapon” when the game asks which animation to use? This isn’t FF7 here, where most weapons didn’t HAVE a model outside of battle.

      2. far_wanderer says:

        I’ve actually had the opposite problem – being annoyed when my soldier-Shephard pulled out a dinky pistol in the cutscenes rather than his assault rifle.

        But regardless, I wasn’t referring to cutscenes here. I meant that in actual combat Liara and Kaiden had assault rifles out, which is probably when they were dying so often.

  8. Sheer_Falacy says:

    People who killed the Rachni queen would bitch about it. Plus it wouldn’t fit anywhere.

    And a non-queen Rachni wouldn’t really make sense, unless they just said that the queen was speaking through it.

  9. Rick W says:

    Tartakovsky: Apparently, he was supposed to be missing a leg, which explains a couple of his comments, but they couldn’t do the model properly. Even if he could walk, Mira won’t let him (or you) leave while the rachni are rampant in the hot labs.

    Wrex gets a few unique lines regarding blowing up the rachni queen, which makes sense because its his people that killed the rachni in the first place.

    Re: soldiers vs. biotics: Heavier armor has less protection against biotic and tech powers. And soldiers obviously lack the ability to hit their enemies with throw/lift/singularity before their enemies can hit them.

    The rachni choice: If you don’t make a choice there, the asari the queen has control of will free it. If that doesn’t happen, it’s a race to see which will happen first: Binary Helix destroys the queen, Noveria authorities nuke Peak 15, or the Council makes up its mind about what to do about the rachni and gets someone out to do it. So by not deciding there, you’re weakening the Council’s position; they may not agree with your decision, but they stand by it and (if you let the queen go) hope you’re right that without them being indoctrinated by the Reapers, they can coexist with everyone else.

  10. KremlinLaptop says:

    What the heck? I’m fairly certain there were a lot more of those white dot comments on this vid when I watched it a few hours ago and now they all appear to be missing. On top of that going through the older vids where I definitely remember there being a whole dot storm along the track bar there are only a few or no comments on the videos.

    Is there some over-zealous moderator or moderation script that automatically nukes comments on a vid if they come in too fast or too thick? Seems weird either way.

    Edit: Enjoyed the episode.

    1. Volatar says:

      I dunnow. I helped repopulate this episode with sarcastic dots at least :)

    2. krellen says:

      When I got banned from viddler, all my comments got removed.

  11. coarsesand says:

    My first time through Noveria I honestly thought I’d hit a quest bug. Ventralis’ apology for being suspicious of anything getting off the train made me suspect that there was supposed to be a squad of soldiers guarding the tram station and I’d missed a conversation there. Why is the captain of security on the immediate frontline?

    They other confusing thing was that I didn’t realize Ventralis et al were guarding another area, since the door’s controls were red and therefore (to my mind) locked. So, trip to hot labs, blow things up, discover area behind Ventralis, wonder why all this security is here, wind up killing everyone even though I don’t know why, leave planet successful but completely confused and thinking I’d just wandered through bug (the programming kind, not the rachni) city.

    Even on successive playthroughs, it feels like whoever designed the Noveria quest just lost track of its plot right at the end. Doing the questline the “right” way just unlocks an access hatch for you to stumble through, with no indication that you might even possibly be going in the right direction. Bad, weird design that always manages to leave a crappy taste in my mouth.

  12. Anaris says:

    Actually (Spoilers concerning ME1 and ME2): Edit: Spoilers in second paragraph. I don’t really know how to use the html tags. Would be cool if an Admin or something could correct that.

    During the course of both Mass Effect 1 and 2, you seem to start gathering an army against the Reapers. You can let the Queen live at this point, and in ME2 you will get a message from from, and there will be news about Rachni-looking ships sighted in fringe systems. I think the message even said the queen would help. Then in ME2 you can decide to “help” aka integrate the heretic Geth into those Geth who are against the Reapers. I think there are other choices too, but I can’t quite remember them right now. Ah right, you can also help Wrex in ME2 by destroying that other Krogan Clan, and you can influence Mordin to maybe cure the Genophage in the future.

    All added up it looks to me like you’re subtly building up an army.

    1. Heron says:

      One of the loading screens in ME2 states the following:

      “Choices you make in Mass Effect 2 will have a huge impact on how events unfold in Mass Effect 3.”

      Don’t screw up your army in the third game by making bad choices in the first two games ;)

      1. acronix says:

        Seeing how the final choice in ME1 didn´t have any impact on ME2 I´d say you can screw up the army any way you want and you´ll still win. The “huge impact” they speak of is probably three different lines of dialogue somewhere.

        Of course, they could be saving the impacts that should have been in ME2 for ME3.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          Well duh, of course they wouldn’t do something like “hey, remember that guy you chose to shoot in the game from 2 years ago? Yeah? Well you can’t win this game right now cause he was supposed to open the door here for you”.

          On that note, that is exactly my theory about ME3, you finally give the council a finger (or discover they’ve been brainwashed… I mean, they are just so persistent in refusing there’s any threat at all) and start gathering people who are actually concerned. If you play it right you have good chances with “real Geth”, Wrex is slowly becoming the leader of all Krogan, the Rachni swore in their aid (that’s two races that have each threatened to overrun the galaxy by themselves), it’s been implied that Tali has been suggested for the admiralty and there are hints that groups among the Quarians would be ready to negotiate with the Geth, even the colonists (read: outside Alliance humans) actually might have noticed you’ve been going around and saving their sorry assess. And I’m only talking about races who are actually all but half-allied with you by the end of ME2 (again, if played right), I suspect some of the others, like the Volus, wouldn’t really have much against jumping on the bandwagon.

  13. Kristin says:

    How do you know it was Kaidan who dropped the crate there? Why couldn’t it have been Liara? Both of them are biotics.

    1. Andrew B says:

      Because Kaiden isn’t going to put out later?

  14. ps238principal says:

    Mass Effect: The real heir to the classic game, “Elevator Action.”

  15. Zaxares says:

    It’s me again!

    Kaidan moving the block into the way: It could have been Liara; both of them had Throw/Lift, from what I recall. But yeah, on one of my playthroughs, it was Wrex who put it there. “Dammit Wrex!” Fortunately, that type of crate can actually be destroyed by enough damage, so I managed to shoot my way through and escape before the timer ran out.

    I’m impressed, actually. I honestly thought you guys would have lots of trouble escaping that Rachni room, but you got out with only a few scratches.

    “Enemies everywhere!”: Haha, I love that exclamation of his. Here you have a trained soldier/guard/mercenary, hardened, well-armed and equipped and ready to deal some pain and death to his enemies. And his idea of shouting a threatening message to you (or alternatively, some encouraging words to his allies) is “Enemies everywhere!” Yeeeaahh… REAL impressive there, mister. You’re a disappointment to male human guards everywhere.

    Stasis bug: Man, I hate that stasis bug! I’ve gotten it a few times too. Sometimes it will disappear on its own after a while (maybe the duration of stasis runs out?), but other times it will stay forever until you either reload or get into a cutscene.

    On Benezia being tight-lipped about the Reapers: Benezia doesn’t know that much about the Reapers either. Only Saren and his geth know the truth; that Sovereign is an actual Reaper. If you speak to all of Saren’s organic followers, they all seem to be under the impression that Sovereign is just a Reaper ship.

    On the Asari Commandos kicking Conan’s ass: Obviously they heard Conan mouthing off about asari commandos. That’ll teach him. ;)

    On the Rachni Queen: You know, the Rachni Queen is the only big choice I’ve heard you guys actually argue over thus far during this series! It’s a Renegade choice mainly because you’re killing an ‘innocent’ (the Rachni Queen wasn’t even born yet during the Rachni Wars, and thus wasn’t involved in the whole affair), and Renegades are all about letting innocents die for a greater good.

    The conversation with the Rachni Queen actually hints that something ‘influenced’ the Rachni Queens, and made them insanely aggressive and violent. What other force in the galaxy do you know of that makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do, hmm? Course, she could just be lying through her proboscis (or whatever it is she has for a mouth), so the decision is purely up to the players.

    I was actually really impressed with the Rachni Queen choice; it really made a lot of players think about their decision, and there are long threads on the Bioware forums debating the morality and logic behind player’s decision. I do agree, however, that it was a bit of a black or white choice. I personally would have brought the Queen’s tank with me back to the Normandy, then released her onto some uncharted world and tell no one except the Council about what I’ve done. It’s as much for her own safety as that of the galaxy’s; I wouldn’t put it past another amoral corporation to try to capture her and control her.

    But hey, on the bright side, Feros has next to no elevators! :D It’s mostly stairs!

  16. someboringguy says:

    Everytime you say your name it sounds like “Shamus Youn'”

  17. Anon says:

    I’m not so sure it was Kaiden that did that. Check out the casting order. Liara fired, missed, Kaiden fired, missed, then someone fired and hit the crate. By the rhythm, it was Liara who screwed up.

  18. Friend of Dragons says:

    I’ve never been able to kill the Rachni Queen, mostly because the first time I played through this, I had recently read the Ender books, and I was seeing way too many similarities between the buggers and the rachni to kill their last queen.

  19. RCN says:

    My first playthrough was my “reasonable Sheppard” playthrough. I’d choose the dialog options that make sense in the context. One thing I hated about Mass Effect is that the “Paragon/Renegade” system is pretty much to set Sheppard as “Space Jesus Sheppard” or “Get Things Done Sheppard”, but the Paragon Choices always have you being a wide-eyed idealist and have it work out in the end while Renegade choices are always (well, sometimes) accepting certain sacrifices due to uncertain odds and the end result is either the same or worse off than Paragon. For instance, when you have the choice to save the council you’re sparing ships of the fleet, which you’re not even sure is enough to deal with Sovereign (clue, it isn’t) to rescue them. Since you’re the only one defeating sovereign anyway sparing the ships is of no consequence, you could very well say “all ships in the fleet, ignore the Reaper and save the council, for they stand for the galaxy… blah, blah” and it’d only be better as no ship of the alliance fleet would be lost and you’d save the council, while the sensible choice is to spare everything you have at this unkown enemy you have no clue how much firepower will be needed to take down.

    Anyway, my “Reasonable Sheppard” spared the Rachni. At this point I had already figured out the Reapers were coming back and I just figured a plague of Rachni would be a good defense against them, at the very least delaying them a bit. Sure, I didn’t know that the Reapers had controlled the Rachni, if so, I probably would have dealt with it differently.

  20. Justin_Brett says:

    Probably a little late for this to matter, but is letting the guy who makes decisions based on min-maxing play the game really a good idea? At least if you’re gonna show it to the whole internet.

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