Bubba's Mass Effect Adventures

[Bubba]

The Citadel

Now this I've been really looking forward to! The graphics have stepped up a notch again from ME2 so I couldn't wait to see this beast in all its glory. I was not disappointed. Sooooo pretty!

Liara: "Erm... Shepard? The view is lovely and all but... your friend is dying. Maybe put the camera away until he's in the hospital?"

After nearly allowing his friend to die, Shepard ships Kaidan off to the hospital wing and starts exploring the new shiny Citadel. There wasn't much NPC action in the dock's waiting area though I did speak to someone called Diana Allers. She's err... perky. She informs me that she's a reporter and asks if she can join the Normandy to document our journey. Rather than study her resume and take her through a three-stage interview process... Shepard decides she's hot and immediately agrees, the pervert. "Wait, you're the one controlling him, Bubba". Shhhhhhh voice-in-head, shhhhhhh.

I felt guilty about Kaidan so decided to check and see if he'd died yet. I clearly didn't feel that guilty because I ran into Dr Chaka Khan on the way and stopped for a chin wag. It seems she's been at a bit of a loose end since our ship was grounded six months ago. This was a no-brainer. Get yourself back in the Normandy medi-lab young lady! I'll pick us up a bottle of brandy.

Kaidan looked like he'd had a few bottles of brandy to himself. He looked rough. Though this was the first time I'd seen him topless and I couldn't help but be a little aroused. The guy is ripped! He was out cold but Shepard spoke to him anyway. It was along the lines of "The Normandy needs you, I need you". I may have put a little too much emphasis on the "I" but hey ho... he's unconscious anyway.

We then headed over to Udina's office for a meeting with the council to try and convince them to help Earth. Shepard lays it on thick. "Come on, guys! We need to work together against the reapers! I love every species and I love the council!" They then bring up the fact that I sacrificed the original council at the end of ME1... *shuffles feet awkwardly and stares at the floor*. "Uh... yeah, my bad."

Unsurprisingly, the council decides not to help us. Smurf you, then. Just you wait till my renegade FemShep turns up on my next play through. We'll have you all in cages, you freaks. Where's Ashley when I need her?! They are all animals!! VOTE TRUMP!! DisclaimerThis is not my actual opinion

Moving on, we pay Commander Bailey a quick visit and he's in mid-argument with a lady called Khaleesi, Reporter of News, First of her Name. She ends up storming off, cursing in Dothraki. The chat with Bailey was brief. He expressed sadness that he may never be able to return to Earth. Shepard rubs his back and whispers softly "I know, man. I know..."

We run into Khaleesi, The Unwed, Breaker of News near the elevator. She was proper arsey so I nearly chose the renegade interrupt that flashed up. Luckily, I waited and a Paragon one appeared. She has now been added to my team of contacts. Lovely stuff!

My final action on the Citadel was to chat to James who was stood nearby looking wistfully out of a window. Now that I know it's Freddie Prince Jr it's slightly off-putting. I keep imagining FPJ with his chin to his chest putting on a really deep voice. Anyway, we chat briefly and he invites me to join him down in the wards sometime with the grunts. I say "Yeah man, we'll do that" in the kind of way that means I'll never actually do that. I'm a Spectre, man. I don't rub shoulders with the hoi polloi.

With that, Shepard decides to head back to the Normandy to see what new gadgets he has access to this time around! Next update coming later today!

[Formalhaut]

If you never punch Khaleesi in the face across all three games, picking the paragon interrupt will make her a war asset. Neat!

Also yeah, sacrificing the War Council in one has an impact on how pleased they are to see you. In ME:2, the new council refuses to give you spectre status unless you have Anderson on the council, who grants it to you.

So Bubba: Liara or Kaiden? I see you getting flustered every time he's mentioned.

[Bubba]

So Bubba: Liara or Kaiden? I see you getting flustered every time he's mentioned.

Now Liara is back on the Normandy, I only have eyes for her Though the new PA girl in the Normandy did give me some second thoughts as you'll find out!

I'll definitely be getting down with Kaidan in subsequent playthroughs though

[Bubba]

The Normandy

Da fuk? I was expecting a few changes on board but not this much. The inside of the Normandy was now a huge, slow-motion forest with a weird little boy running around. Ahh, it's a dream. Yeah, I knew that Shepard is clearly still traumatised by the death of that child back on Earth. I reckon that section will become rather irksome when you get to it on subsequent playthroughs.

Dream sequence over, we have a little cut-scene with the lovely Liara. She has Miranda's old quarters now which makes sense with her being the new Shadow Broker and all. She is then interrupted by the new Comms Specialist and oh man... can I not have an ugly crew member please, game?! You are severely testing my loyalty to Liara with this young, English filly. Finally we have a comms chat with Admiral Hackett which was just a "Grrr! shakes-fist-at-council!" session.

OK! Exploration time! The first thing I spot is this new War Terminal. It gives me a list of all my assets which includes lots of things and yey! Bonuses from ME2! All those damn minerals I collected actually paid off. Plus, it looks like I've kept all the Normandy upgrades that I picked up last time too. Nice!

The rest of the floor looked pretty much the same. The galaxy map, my messages, Joker up front. It's good to be home! My cabin hadn't experienced any drastic alterations which I'm fine with. I should probably let Liara know that she has a free pass here whenever she likes

Crew deck next. Dr Chaka Khan had settled in fine so let's check on my lady. Liara had certainly jazzed up Miranda's old quarters! She had all her screens set up for her erm... brokering work. She also had a cool little VI called Glyph. I liked him, he was cute! We had a generic catch up and then... the mood changed She came in closer and... dammit! She brought up Jack! "I know you two were close". You don't understand! I thought you'd gone off with Conrad Verner and had blue babies! I assured her that I am now a one-woman-man... a one-bluewoman-man... (oh wait, she's both isn't she?) a one-bluewoman/man-man. Whatever... we're a couple. We arrange a nice session at a later date and I carry on with my tour.

Engineering next where we find our new reporter Diana Allers. She kind of reminds me of someone... She's like a cross between Alyson Hannigan and Jewel Staite. Anyway, I am officially off the market so she'll have to get her kicks somewhere else. Engineer Adams from ME1 also made a welcome return. Good to see you back, pal!

Finally, we hit the Shuttle Bay. James was in here being all pull-uppy and "Oooohh, look at my mussssssssssels!" I don't like him. Even more so when I realised that he can't hold a conversation with someone without being in a fight with them. F***s sake, man. I rushed through our conversation picking all the paragon choices then left him to his pull-ups. Lieutenant Cortez was our resident shop and seemed pleasant enough. He mentioned he used to have a husband so I presume he's also a romanceable character. It was so refreshing to see an openly gay character in a video game! Can FemShep romance Cortez as well or is he strictly men-only?

Anyway, that was my tour over! I headed up to the galaxy map and saved. Here beginneth my adventures in space!

[Freya]

Diana Allers! Aka Jessica Chobot! She was an IGN Reporter and the fan base got ridiculously angry with her inclusion. It was seen as just a throw to IGN. Fans were not happy and in came the precursor to the whole "Ethics in Gaming Journalism" fiasco that happened later with #gamergate

She now works for Nerdist, if you're curious.




I just realized I know far too much about this series.

[Skyblade]

Diana Allers! Aka Jessica Chobot! She was an IGN Reporter and the fan base got ridiculously angry with her inclusion. It was seen as just a throw to IGN. Fans were not happy and in came the precursor to the whole "Ethics in Gaming Journalism" fiasco that happened later with #gamergate

She now works for Nerdist, if you're curious.




I just realized I know far too much about this series.

One of the other big problems that people have with her is that she has one of the flattest, most monotonous deliveries of any voice acted character I've ever heard. There is maybe one line of dialogue in the entire game in which she puts ANY inflection on her speaking at all. And even then it would be incredibly understated. Which, given that they threw a one-off quickie romance in there, and there's STILL not really any emotion in her voice.

Voice acting is not her true calling.

[Formalhaut]

Yeah, as much as I found the fiasco really off-putting, I do have to agree with Skyblade: Diana Allers is an astoundingly boring character. For a reporter, she does have a one-note delivery that never changes throughout the game.

[Freya]

Well yeah it's not her true calling! She was terrible. She was only added in because of them trying to win IGN over, or so most believe.

It was one of the legit "ethics in gaming journalism" things that gamergate should have actually focused on instead of a developers issues with her boyfriend.

[Formalhaut]

Oh, to answer your questions, Bubba: Samantha Traynor with the ludicrously British voice is lesbian, Fem!Shep only. Cortez is gay and is M!Shep only. And I agree: after so much drudgery it was so appealing seeing openly gay or lesbian characters in ME:3.

When Dragon Age: Inquisition introduced Krem, a trans man, into the game, I died.

[theundeadhero]

It's too bad you're maleshep. Traynor is my favorite romance option in all three games.

[Bubba]

Palaven

So... looking round the galaxy map is pretty depressing. Most of the systems are being attacked by reapers. Not cool. As I have no fear, I decided to jump to these systems first. I was able to scan a few planets to pick up some war assets before... SH*TE!! The reapers found me and were chasing me around the system! I just about managed to evade them and decided not to visit that system for a while.

I scanned quite a lot of the available systems before finally heading to Garrus' home planet of Palaven. Before we even landed though we were being targeted by those pesky husks. I took a couple out before we even touched down because I am a f***ing legend. We jump out then deal with the rest. I've actually been utilising the shotgun for these guys and I'm quite enjoying it! I think I've used all my gun types fairly equally on ME3 so far.

We head for the Turian base and they kindly open the front door for us. Holy Treasure Trove, Batman! I must have picked up about 10-15 items in this compound. Cheers bros! He have a chat with General Corinthians and unfortunately, the dude we're here to extract is deader than a Saturday night in Salt Lake City. We'll have to pick up the next Turian in the chain of command.

General Corinthians says we won't be able to contact our man until the comms tower nearby is fixed. Mate, I can fix anything! Except maybe the United States after the next four years. We leave the compound and make our way to the tower. The Turians haven't been able to get near it as it's swarming with husks. The annoying twats were no match for my shotgun though. We cleared a path to the tower.

I now had to choose either Liara or James to climb the tower and fix the problem. I weighed up the pros and cons for them both and eventually decided... that Liara's arse would look great climbing a ladder. Lots and lots of husks decided to greet me and James with a bite to the face. We made reasonably quick work and Liara had successfully fixed the comms tower!

We return to camp and YES! My main man Garrus is there looking and sounding awesome. He took the place of Liara who headed back to the Normandy as Joker was having problems with EDI. Oh well, at least she'll (hopefully) be safe.

Time to partake in some senseless violence! We leave the compound again and encounter a new enemy. Marauders! They had pesky shields but two sniper shots were enough to take the bastards down. There were husks here as well but they were easy pickings for a highly-trained spectre like me.

Back in the compound and we're directed to a huge turret on the upper level. This thing was cool but it was slow as hell to move around. That being the case, I allowed a sh*tload of husks to climb onto the compound. I still managed to get rid of them all but yeah... it wasn't the greatest defence of a base.

Crapola. Shepard falls from the top of the compound and has to face something called a Brute. This thing is deadly. And when I say deadly I mean deadly. It killed me. One swipe from this dude and that's your shield gone for a burton. He actually got me trapped up against a rock and I couldn't move. Deaded. We took him out eventually with the help of a few grenades and an overload. Take that, sucker!

We push on to try and find this General Victus. On route, Garrus tells us all about his home world in that sexy voice of his. We eventually reach the General and he agrees to come with us. It clearly was not going to be that straight-forward though as we had one final hellish battle to get through!

This. Was. Horrible. I think I died a total of five times during this onslaught. There were three of those bastard brutes along with Cannibals and Marauders. I employed the sensible tactic of hiding behind a rock but it still didn't make a huge amount of difference. My team mates were suffering too and I had to revive them a few times. Eventually, after using grenades, overload and Garrus' proximity mines, we finally cleared the field and triggered the end cut scene. Phew!

The mission yielded a decent amount of credits and I intended to go and chat with my two new additions. Unfortunately, time got the better of me and I had to leave it there for the evening.

Tune in next time when Shepard issues James with a certificate commemorating the first recital of his five times tables.

[Freya]

Brutes! Yeah those suckers are mean. Best to keep your distance and pew pew them from afar! KEEP MOVING!

[theundeadhero]

More than ever your abilities mean something against enemies with barriers, armor, and shields. They're far more useful than gun type, but sniper rifles are super effective against armor. I try to have a least one person on the team with incinerate and overload. Garrus' grenade launcher is useful against groups too, like husks.

[Fox]

There are only two abilities you need to know about: Charge and Nova. I forget which class you are but if you're a Vanguard then Charge + Nova = mega win.

I don't even care if it's not the most effective it is so god damn fun.

[Formalhaut]

Brutes are deadly, intimidating and bloody scary. They are one of the enemies in this game that have dreaded insta-kill abilities, though their regular attacks are bad enough.

Best thing is to keep distance. As a sniper, that's easy enough, but they're really annoying as a Vanguard. If it charges, rush to the sides using combat rolls and the like to stay out of its attack range.