FINISHED

[trinityvixen]

Well, not really. There's much more to do. I need to play all over again as evil (and coincidentally male) Shepard. And seduce either Miranda or Samara. I must be able to get Miranda, but Samara came on strong at the end there. I'd do her. (And I will, too.)

I should really celebrate by going to bed early. Instead, I'm starting the game from the save right before the last boss to get an achievement I missed. Because I'm awesome that way.

Comments

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

Wow, you went through that quick.
I haven't even assembled all the party members yet (haven't got Tali yet), do everyone's loyalty quests, etc.

You can definitely get Miranda (at least judging by what's happening in my playthrough so far).

It's clearly rotting my brain though ><
Last night, when half fried because of all the work I've been doing, I was MSN chatting in Mordin-speak

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I played 40 hours of this game in a week. I'm clearly insane. That's about six hours a day. I don't even...it's best I don't think about it.

I'm pretty sure about Miranda, she seems the type. What surprises me? Is how hard Tali was coming onto my female Shepard. What the...?

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

Thats interesting, but in keeping with Bio's recent changes to romances (such as Dragon Age).

On a semi-related note, I do love how ME2 really plays up the trouble that differences in DNA cause, unlike the vast majority of games that assume all species can eat the same stuff.

Were you as sorry as I was about the Krogan who wanted fish? I told him there were no fish in the ponds because I didn't want to extort the poor guy out of his gun-fund, but then afterwards he keeps dejectedly saying things like "Do you think there's anywhere that sells fish on the Citadel?" to his mate, and I'm there going "Dude, the pet shop just down the street.. here, I've got a fish in my bag, cost me two credits, it's yours.. damn you stupid game why won't you let me give the Krogran a fish??!!" =(

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I love that all the aliens, preposterous as some of them are biologically, are credibly alien. And yes, I love that they're so different that you can't just treat them all the same. (Except the Asari, sort of, since they're the most malleable of the races.)

Oh my goodness, that poor Krogan! I totally wanted to give him a fishy. Or tell him he could just go buy one at the damn store if he wanted. Man, don't get me started on the animals in this game. Have you done Grunt's loyalty story? Because, yeah, animals there, too, that likewise broke my heart a little.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

Hrm... I don't remember any animals in Grunt's loyalty quest, and I just finished that one.

There were the waves you killed as part of the.. well, killing rite, and the food thieves, can't remember any others.

I did like the comments about how "Special" humans are Mordin's quest, how Humans have such more genetic variance than other species we're perfect for testing biological and genetic weapons/viruses/cures/whatever on because there's such a range of possible effects.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

If you buy food for one of the varren in the Urdnot camp and give it to it, it will follow you around. I wanted it to come back onto the Normandy with me. Alas!

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

My favorite line of the game so far comes from Mordin's quest: "Never test on species capable of calculus. Simple rule. Never broken it."

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Mordin is clearly the wit in this game, just as Wrex was in the last. His comments to me as I romanced Garrus were priceless.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

My standard character in these games is a guy who is on the good/order/paragon side of things, making the second play through the evil/renegade girl. Then I feel guilty about it. There's a feminist argument in here somewhere.

I think Tali just has a damsel in distress crush on any Shepherd, but only gets into the real hitting on if you're a guy. After you beat the game you can call her into your cabin for snuggling. Adorable! Out of the available girls she's so clearly the paragon option.

I don't think you can sleep with Samara. She shoots you down pretty hard and if you play through her loyalty quest I think it's pretty apparent why. Judging by the options I got during that thing, I'm pretty sure you can get a substitute for her on the ship and sleeping with that thing is definitely a non-standard game over.

The only thing I really didn't like was the stupid mining minigame. I have a button on my mouse that lets me up the movement speed temporarily (logitech g5 gaming mouse. neeeerrd) which helps a lot, but it was still dull. About halfway through the game I realized I don't need to deplete every single planet and I stopped mining totally and I still had a good 200k of all the minerals left over. Whoops!

As to Mordin being the wit.. did you get him to sing?

There are so many possible selections in the end scenario that it really boggles my mind. I managed to get everyone through it okay but internet scuttlebutt seems to imply that I chose wisely. I especially wonder because it seemed like there was some special dialogue for having Miranda with me, I wonder what that was all about... or what would have happened if she hadn't been loyal at the time.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

My standard character in these games is a guy who is on the good/order/paragon side of things, making the second play through the evil/renegade girl. Then I feel guilty about it. There's a feminist argument in here somewhere.

Far more likely? There's an argument about our morality in there. It's more interesting to me to see what morality people choose first than it is which sex they choose. Because I can guess that 90% of people make a Shepard that is the same sex as they are, but who chooses to do which alignment is always different. I choose good/paragon first because I would feel too guilty being evil straight out of the box. Once I've proven I can be good, then I have some fun being evil. The voice actor who does male Shepard said he always plays evil first so he can then atone as a paragon in his second play. Everyone does it differently.

Paragon seems to leave more options open for things from the previous game to influence the future. I admit, however, to wanting to be a renegade in about 3 out of 10 interactions where people are just being stupid, or when I sympathize with someone to a degree that I don't care if what they do is "right." (Like Jack's backstory.)

The mining is better than the last game, and certainly more useful (finding ores actually helps you build shit as opposed to just getting you an achievement). It's still too slow, but so is the loading between stages.

Mordin is a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan! I knew I liked him. I'm saddened about not being able to seduce Samara, though I do understand why. I suppose if she's totally out, I can try for Miranda. Or maybe Tali. She was awfully cute flirting with me so nervously. (What is it with aliens being afraid to flirt with me?)

The ending scenario I picked ended poorly the first time through, but I understood why my choices went the way they did. So I redid it, and I got the achievement for keeping everyone alive. (I confess I checked with the internet just to be sure because I wasn't playing an hour of game over again just to mess it up. Turned out I was right anyway.) What's most interesting to me, though, is seeing how either ending--where people died or where they all lived--will affect the sequel play.

Another interesting thing I'm going to be learning: the default assumptions about the last game if you start with a new character. Thus far, the game assumes, if I don't have a previous save to base anything off of, that I didn't save the Council. (I think, even as a renegade, I saved them.) Wonder what else changes...

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I'm doing the same thing oblvndrgn did, but I never finished my second playthrough of ME1--I expect for this one, I'll go back and finish her up (renegade soldier) and then play through ME2 as an engineer or sentinel (I'm playing through my first run as a vanguard according to my own personality, which is essentially "impatient paragon").

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I played through Mass Effect at least four times, and I still need to finish there with the fourth character. I was really annoyed at the structure of the achievements there such that unless you had a plan for how you'd game, you had to play through four times (as opposed to three) in order to get all the achievements. This is something that Mass Effect 2 greatly improved upon. If I chose to do side-quests enough (which I always do, even on replays), I could get most, if not all, the achievements. (And about the only one I didn't get was the one for playing on insanity difficulty. I'll do that one later. When I've had time to sleep and do other things for a while.)

(I'm playing through my first run as a vanguard according to my own personality, which is essentially "impatient paragon").

I would love to do this. But as a I mentioned, I feel incredibly guilty unless I'm the paragon of paragons the first time through. I hit that guy in Omega who wanted to sign up as a merc because he was annoying and then fretted about it for an age. Playing a renegade is the hardest part about playing the game, but I do look forward to not wincing every time I misbehave.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I was quite happy to snatch the idiot kid's gun, which was a paragon action. The only times I've been taking renegade actions are when dumb henchmen are trying to intimidate and I don't see much need to keep them alive. Like zapping the merc leader at the start of the Garrus/Archangel mission. Also I tend to take neutral positions on the more controversial options, like most of the dialogue on the genophage.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I hope I can still be suitably renegade in order to have those conversation options despite the fact that I won't be doing anything mean to any of my team members. I can't do that. I just can't.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I maxed out paragon by going for the level 4 Assault Mastery that includes the bonus paragon points, but I definitely had a good quarter of the renegade bar as well. Sometimes it just made more sense. The only time I was renegade when I didn't want to be was Zaeed's (the DLC guy) loyalty mission. Unless you're swimming in paragon points, you pretty much need to go renegade or it's an instant loss, and I did it really early in the game so it was the only option.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Really? I did the mission pretty early (I had only gotten Miranda, Jacob, Garrus, Zaeed, and Mordin, and it was the first loyalty mission I tried), went with the main paragon option (saving the people instead of going after the villain), and did just fine. Or are you referring to a different decision?

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

No, that's the one. I saved the peoples and the bad guy escaped. After that there was a greyed out paragon option that I couldn't select and no combination of the regular choices seemed to make him loyal. He was less pissed in some of them than others, but no inferno grenade.

[neo-leviathan.livejournal.com]

Odd. I did that pretty early, first loyalty mission, I don't think I'd even picked up any other characters, and I got the Paragon option (of course, the "paragon" option is to put a gun to his head and lecture him about who's in charge...).
Then again, I do tend to go bananas being a nice guy, so I must have been a bit ahead of the curse :).
I did feel a bit bad that the guy escaped, but if he hadn't tried to burn down the facility, we so would have got the guy >

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

Just finished. A few notes:

1. How'd you lose a crew member? My instincts proved correct, getting the achievement on the first try :)

2. You can seduce Tali! (and I did.) The Mass Effect wiki says that Samara actually isn't an option until after the final mission. And hm, it also says that Kelly is an option for both genders. Wonder how the controversy folks missed the human lesbian sex this time around...

2B. Apparently if you continue into the endgame after romancing Tali, Mordin gives you a safe sex lecture.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

1. It's easy to lose a team member or seven or apparently even Shepard. It just depends on your choices. The first time through, I wasn't even thinking and sent Thane through the ducts. (What? He spent a lot of time in ducts! I thought it meant he could handle it!) If you pick the wrong leader for the other team, you can lose people. If you don't fully upgrade the Normandy or secure loyalty for folks, you can lose them. Do a bad enough job, Shepard dies, but you have to be really trying to kill him/her to get that ending, apparently.

2. I did end up seducing Tali. I also happened to get lucky with Jack way earlier in the game and I tried and tried to seduce Chambers the entire time before Tali so I could pull off a hat trick but it was nothing doing. But now that you say Samara is available after the final mission, I'm going to have to go check that out. Damn it, I was supposed to be done!

As for Chambers: I was reading about how people were disappointed that there was no lesbian option this time. I dunno about them, but even not knowing that Chambers would do female Shepard, I was pretty sure that Tali would. I got the same flirting prompts for her as both Shepards. Didn't take the hint as female Shepard because I had Garrus and he was, if anything, even more adorably dorky about it.

2b. Mordin is hilarious. He gave me a little talking to about not "ingesting" Turian fluids because of our inability to digest their "proteins." Now there is an argument for spitting if ever there was one.