Lair of the Shadow Broker
OK, this is a pretty hefty mission so I'll try to keep my usual waffle to a minimum. I can't promise though because this was easily my favourite mission so far!
Last mission before we start heading down the final stretch! We blast over to Illium and talk once again with the lovely Liara. I'm not sure what she's going to make of my imminent romance with young Jack... I decide to get straight down to business when I get there to avoid any awkwardness. Let's go get the Shadow Broker!
Liara's reaction to me agreeing to help her was to... go back to her apartment. OK. Apparently when the going gets tough, the tough...go home. It turns out she's just getting herself prepared so we jump in a cab and swing by Liara's apartment. I have a slight moment of panic when we arrive though as her apartment was the scene of a crime! Someone has been shooting through Liara's window and there is no sign of her. There will be hell to pay if anyone has hurt my lady!
There is an Asari Spectre here by the name of Tele Vision. She is clearly terrible at her job as she's happy for us to snoop around Liara's apartment even though it's a crime scene. Liara being the awesome person that she is, left me clues to her whereabouts around her apartment. Don't worry, my dear. I'm on my way!
We team up with Tele and head to some offices. This building is clearly intimidated by Shepard's presence as it explodes as soon as we get there. We decide to head in the ground-floor whilst Tele flew herself up to the roof. Maybe I'm being overly paranoid but I don't trust her at this point. She's a bit smug and she walks weird. We'll see how that plays out.
Heading up a couple of floors and we are introduced to our first wave of enemies. Introductions followed the usual tradition of them firing stuff at our faces. They were smurfing annoying actually as they kept throwing these flashy grenades that meant I couldn't see anything. Kind of like a more annoying version of the squid ink power-up in Mario Kart. We eventually blue-shelled these f**kers to oblivion.
Shepard was fortunate enough in his youth to complete an under-18 apprenticeship on cooling systems. I assume this was the case anyway as he was able to use one of these systems to put out a nasty fire blocking our path. A man of many talents!
After steam-rollering some more mercs we make our way into an office where Tele had just killed Liara's contact! She's a big, fat liar though as she told us it was the mercs that did it. We're on to you! It was this point that Liara burst in and confirmed that Tele was the one who tried to assassinate her. Bitch!
It turns out that Tele is a bit of a bio... err hazard. She biotic-breaks the window and legs it with Liara in hot pursuit. Wait for me, my love! As this mission has progressed I've been thinking that I may have been too hasty in disregarding my relationship with Liara. I do like Jack though... oh man! What to do?!
I eventually realised that the first thing I should do is follow Liara rather than just stand here contemplating who I might have sex with. We had to fight through a couple more waves of mercs before OH! OH MY WORD! This bit was amazing! A chase through the airborne streets of Illium in a flying taxicab! It was like that scene from Star Wars: Episode 2 - Attack of the Clones... you know, if that film existed which it clearly doesn't. None of the prequels do. Prequels? What am I talking about?
As it turns out, I wasn't very good at this flying car malarkey. I kept losing Tele's car and having to restart. I eventually worked out that, much like real driving, keeping the accelerator pressed down and hoping for the best yields the most effective results.
We eventually reach a point where Tele carelessly crashes her car onto the roof of a building. We obviously land there ourselves to finish the job. My new team is Shepard, Tali and Liara! Just like old times in ME1! It wasn't the most pleasant reunion though as mercs kept dropping from all sides and flanking us. I was hoping to be the dashing hero in front of my beloved Liara but I was unceremoniously killed within about 15 seconds. Smooth, Shepard. Smooth.
Once we finally dealt with these pricks (and my pride had recovered) we round the corner of the rooftop to stop Tele. She does the whole cliche-baddie move of grabbing a hostage. Shepard immediately puts the hostage's mind at ease by saying "I'll shoot if I have to". What?! This was my paragon option?! Anyway, it works and the hostage is released and we start duking it out!
This was a lonnnnnnnng fight. Have you ever seen the film Jumper? It was basically like fighting one of those teleporting twats from that. There a few other mugs that showed up mid-fight too which complicated matters. We eventually wore her down though and recovered her datapad. This gave us the location of the Shadow Broker!
A little downtime before the final assault and Liara and I had a little alone time (Bom chika wow wow!) but... no! I've blown it! I gave her the old 'suggestive eyes' and she was having none of it! She basically accused me of having my head turned by a "tattoed girl with anger management issues". WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!!!
Can Shepard repair the damage and win back his dear Liara? Final part to follow very shortly.