February 21, 2025 • 71 mins
Dillin has NEVER played a Mass Effect game, and Robin loves the series! Dillin is playing them for the first time and sharing that experience with his best friend.
Dorkspawn began as a way for Dillin to share her favorite video game series, Dragon Age, with their best friend Robin, and now we're continuing the tradition, book-club style.
- In this first episode we meet our Shepherd's and get a taste of this new universe!
- Play along with us and join in the discussion by using the #Dorkspawn or tagging @PatchworkProds on Twitter.
- Find more from Robin
- Find more from Dillin
- More from Dorkspawn
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
How are you doing?
(00:09):
I am.
How are you doing in space?
I am so far doing great in space.
Yeah, you're enjoying space.
Space is good.
I'm enjoying space.
I am so intrigued.
It's like the first chapter of a new high fantasy novel where there's jargon everywhere
(00:36):
and you're trying to-
And you just don't know what the fuck they're talking about?
And you're like, oh, what's that?
Oh, that's good.
Hi, my name is Dylan.
Yeah, baby.
Hi, my name is Dylan.
I've never played a Mass Effect game.
Hello, my name is Rob and I've played the Mass Effect franchise a million times.
(00:59):
Oh my God.
And I am playing Mass Effect 1 for the first time.
And this is Dorkspawn.
Same name.
It's too good to let go.
Yeah, it's Dorkspawn.
We should probably come up with a Dorkspawn colon, some catchy Mass Effect title.
Oh, I see.
That's fun because I actually spent a little bit trying to think of our new outro and I-
(01:24):
Oh, I'm excited.
I can't think of it.
Don't be excited.
We'll hopefully hit it at some point, but I actually can't think of one because there's
not like- So in this game, specters are a big thing.
Yes, I have that right now.
Specters are the kind of like- Because I was like, okay, so in Dragon Age Origins, we had
(01:47):
the Grey Wardens and they're the group.
So what's the group in Mass Effect?
And the group is specters, but they don't have like a cool catchphrase like the Grey
Wardens do.
I'm pretty sure they don't anyway.
(02:09):
Mass Effect Specter.
Let's do Mass Effect Specter Motto.
See if they have a cool one because I'm pretty sure they don't.
No.
No, they don't have a cool- That's the thing.
That's the dang shame about it.
If they don't have a cool little motto.
(02:30):
So we can't even use that.
So we'll think of one as we talk.
We'll find one, I'm sure.
We'll find one.
So, yeah.
Yeah, this is Mass Effect.
We have now, we've played all of the Dragon Age games and we are now onto our Mass Effect
franchise.
Very stoked about it.
Very excited to talk about this in a conversation with Dragon Age.
(02:56):
I know we spoke about it a little bit last time, but so Mass Effect 1 came out before
Dragon Age Origins and their approaches are, their approaches to role playing in a shared
universe is very different, but also how they do role playing is very different in a way
(03:21):
that I'm excited to talk about.
And we've had a little bit of it so far.
So for example, there is Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, which is a single trilogy that you're
playing the same person throughout this one trilogy event.
Whereas in Dragon Age, you are playing three different people in different parts of the
(03:46):
world, but who you were affects the world state.
A big thing which we fully won't see in this is in Dragon Age Origins, your Grey Warden
can die at the end.
In this, obviously Commander Shepard can't die because you play Commander Shepard in
(04:09):
2 and then 3.
That's not to say your companions can't die, but you got...
No I've heard rumors about that.
Rumors.
The rumors.
Yeah, I like the idea that this is, because this is kind of like, this is the series that
is kind of like, not exactly, but kind of congruent to the Dragon Age series.
(04:34):
This was their, Dragon Age was their fantasy, this is their sci-fi, and they kind of had
a similar progression throughout the years.
In just being in the Dragon Age fandom, I encounter Mass Effect stuff a lot.
A lot of the faces of NPCs are just generally familiar to me.
(04:55):
I know them from the fan arts that I see come across my Tumblr feed, from all my Dragon
Age moots.
So I know, I don't know anything about the story of the game, I know nothing about the
journey of the protagonist.
I really don't know anything about the world, but I do know some of the Blorbo's by Fess.
(05:19):
So that's kind of exciting to put context to all of that.
And yeah, classic style.
We just did a prologue, so we played, we've played very little of Mass Effect 1 so far.
Just really the kind of intro to it.
Yeah.
(05:40):
And I'm so excited.
Love that.
You know what, I think we'll talk about some certain things in terms of like, if we want
to talk about this game's relationship to Dragon Age and its relationship to role playing
and things that we like and don't like, I think we might as well keep that toward the
(06:04):
end and have some mentions.
But I mean, I've already, I don't want to, I'm blue ballsing you now by being like, oh,
I have thoughts on it and I'm not saying it, so I might as well say it now.
This series, Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, works on a Paragon renegade system.
And it's a thing that they were-
Oh, I was going to ask you about that.
(06:24):
Okay, great.
Yeah.
I have that in my notes that like one of the last things to happen was that I got a plus
two to Paragon during a conversation with somebody.
And I didn't know what that meant.
And I, but I wrote it down.
I was like, oh.
Yeah.
So the Paragon renegade system, this is the first game to use the wheel, the little wheel
that Bioware games have.
It's the first game to use that.
(06:46):
The way that conversation and dialogue works in this is something that I personally don't
love.
A lot of this, unlike in like DA2, admittedly DA2 is one, two, three, four games into like Bioware's,
I mean, technically six, if you count Knights of the Old Republic, but four games into like
this current run of role playing.
(07:11):
And in that you have like a blue, red, or purple hawk is what people talk about in Dragon
Age 2.
In Mass Effect, you either have a Paragon or a renegade shepherd.
With the wheel, the top right, the top right answer to every question will give you Paragon
(07:35):
points and the bottom right will give you renegade points.
Renegade being like aggressive, cruel.
Sometimes you can be outright racist to people.
The middle will just give you a neutral option.
As the game progresses, there are going to be things where if you have, just like in
(07:58):
Dragon Age 2, if you have enough in Blue Hawk, you're going to end up getting special dialogue
options because your hawk is a certain way.
In this, the same thing happens.
You're going to end up getting like renegade choices and Paragon choices, depending on
if your guy is more Paragon or renegade.
(08:21):
It's a system that I personally don't like.
I didn't like them.
It's a thing that I really liked about Dragon Age with.
Renegade is counted as the bad option.
Right, it's a little too binary versus like being like a characterization.
It's like, are you going to be a good guy or a bad guy?
(08:42):
Or a bad guy.
It's interesting because there are some choices where they give you an interesting choice
between two things, but because of the way that the game is structured, they have to
label one the negative and one the positive in a thing that I just think is like, it's
(09:03):
not great.
However, it is.
The reason why it's in one, two, and three is because it was in one.
It was a big deal for role playing games and they just kind of kept it.
They like, well, this is Mass Effect.
Mass Effect is Paragon renegade options.
But anyway, that's a thing that we can continue to talk about later.
(09:26):
Yeah, we'll talk about it when we get to it.
So tell me about your Shepard.
Hey, Commander Ani Shepard, she is a soul survivor and she is a sentinel.
Oh, she was a colonist too.
(09:48):
So she has had, I tried to make her have the worst life possible before waking up on this
ship, which is called the...
Normandy.
This is the Normandy.
The Normandy.
The Normandy is the Mass Effect ship.
(10:09):
That's the ship.
Yeah.
It's the ship.
So before she got here, her life terrible.
Her home colony was raided by slavers and there was no one who survived but her.
Her family's all gone.
And then when she joined Starfleet, what is it called?
(10:32):
The Alliance.
The Alliance, thank you.
When she joined the Alliance, she went on this big mission that everybody keeps mentioning
to her, which I think is cool.
And it got her a lot of like...
This mission is the Skyillian...
Oh, the Skyillian something.
(10:55):
It was a war between the slavers of the Batarians, which is a Mass Effect race and you played
a big part in it.
Anyway, sorry.
Please continue.
No.
And in that, I was also the only person to survive that, this mission.
(11:23):
But whatever I did there has gotten me a lot of notoriety and clearly it seems like that's
why...
That might've been why I'm a commander.
And so yeah, she's had just the absolute worst life possible.
And then we are on board this ship and we've got some people.
(11:47):
I wrote right away, I wrote, whoa, Keith David.
And then I wrote, whoa, Seth Green.
Yeah, baby.
What?
Yeah.
Those are my fucking boys.
Holy shit.
And then also, also someone you meet later is also a really interesting voice actress
(12:10):
that I had to look up.
I didn't know her name instantly, but I knew her voice so well.
And she's just in fucking everything.
She's incredible.
What character was she playing?
It's the girl you meet who...
Ashley.
Ashley, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(12:32):
So now we're on the Normandy.
There's not a lot of...
Like in this really beginning part, you get a little quick introduction to Seth Green's
character, it's the Joker.
He's fun already.
(12:53):
I meet him really quickly.
And then we're summoned to go meet the captain, but going to meet the captain, you get back
there, captain's not there yet.
This guy, Nihilus is, who is like alien guy, not human.
(13:15):
So we see the Joker's human.
The captain is human.
Nihilus is a Turian.
Love the look of Turians in this.
Love the look of Turians.
I think they look great.
Yeah, same.
And Nihilus is immediately like a little bit, like just a little bit weird to me.
(13:35):
There's like a little bit of a vibe.
And the captain comes in and we have this whole big talk.
Nihilus is really going to be here.
So first of all, we learn that there's a beacon and that's what we're after.
It's something that's been discovered.
It's some kind of alien tech that is gonna...
(13:58):
Procyon is the name.
It's a Procyon beacon.
That is gonna like, we think is gonna like advance humans to like an nth degree.
And as it turns out, it's also possibly gonna earn us some more respect in space government
(14:20):
because humans are like new to joining like the fray of like the intergalactic politics.
So the mass effect relays, which is what gave us kind of pushing us into...
They're called the mass relays, but mass effect relays put us into like active space travel.
(14:45):
Our first one we found in 2148 and it's now, the current day is 2183.
So humans have only been space traveling for 35 years.
But the first time we had any contact with any race that wasn't us was in 2157.
(15:06):
So it's been under 30 years that we, as humans, have been part of like the galactic makeup
at all.
So everything's very weird.
And turians don't really like us because the first contact war is because we had a manned
mission to one of the relays.
(15:27):
Going toward the relays is a huge no-no in terms of the galactic alliance and a group
of turians and they're kind of...
Turians are like known to be kind of very militaristic and like space cops basically.
They saw an unnamed ship going toward a mass effect relay and they just shot it down.
But there was one person who survived, took it back to Earth and then Earth started a
(15:51):
war with the turians that lasted apparently no time at all because a lot of people died,
but the galactic federation stepped in and was like, oh, hey, yeah, these guys don't
know what they're doing because they've just discovered galactic space flight.
(16:12):
So we are very new to the galaxy.
And we think that finding this beacon is going to get humans maybe...
It's going to get us in the door where we can start having a real say in the intergalactic
government.
And so Nihilus is there to watch us and specifically to watch me because I show some sort of exemplary
(16:39):
promise but he wants to see me in action before vouching for us basically.
And so while we're having this conversation, we get an intercepted message that the Joker
shoots over to us and it's a bunch of our people on the ground on this planet where
(17:03):
we are headed right now to go get the beacon and all our people are getting attacked and
shot down as they're trying to film the distress call.
So it's like, oh, well, this is not going to be just like a search for the beacon kind
of thing.
And this is like a...
This planet we're going to is like a colony.
Like there's...
(17:24):
Yeah, it's a human colony.
Humans live on this planet in like kind of makeshift cities.
So there's civilians down there too.
And so they're like, okay, we're going to send in a small squad.
We're going to go in and obviously stop the killing and then also find and retrieve that
(17:44):
beacon.
I thought it was really interesting.
Nihilus...
I can't remember if it's not...
I wrote this down and I didn't do a good job at writing this down.
Nihilus either makes a comment or somebody makes a comment about the prophet in this
(18:12):
first conversation.
And I was like, oh, what is that?
What is the prophet?
I don't even remember.
And it's in that very first conversation before we ever leave the ship.
Oh, that's fun.
Yeah.
So I clocked that.
And then we immediately hop off.
(18:33):
I still haven't like really met anybody, but now I hop off and I have two people with me.
I should have written down their names, but it is...
You have Jenkins and you have Kaiden Alenko.
Kaiden.
So Jenkins, Kaiden and I hop off and I'm leading them down and now it's combat tutorial.
(18:56):
Here is the thing that I am most nervous about this game.
I am so bad at shooting.
I am so bad at it.
In every video game, I have all the difficulties turned down to nothing.
And still, God, my fine motor control is so stupid.
(19:19):
It's so bad.
But still, it's going fine.
I'm still having a decent time.
I like throwing grenades.
That's fun.
I like the...
The grenades are very floaty in this.
I like them.
They just kind of go in a straight line and then you can...
They do.
And I really like the taking cover and that whole thing is fun.
(19:45):
So we're making our way through right off the bat.
So we then make our way.
We shoot a bunch of these.
I want to say geth.
Yes, geth.
Thank you.
We fight a bunch of geth and then eventually undead space zombies that the geth have made
(20:07):
by like...
Yeah.
So geth were made by a race called the Quarians, Kurians, who we'll meet later.
They're like a hyper technological race.
(20:27):
And they made the geth as laborers and gave them very, very limited AI.
So it turns out one geth on its own can't think, feel, do anything.
It's literally just a computer that is walking around.
But then the more...
Because they were made for labor, the more geth you put next to each other, the smarter
they get.
(20:48):
So a huge group of geth altogether are just...
Every individual is like its own thinking, feeling thing.
And what happened is that they rebelled against the Quarians, and then the Quarians decimated
90% of them.
(21:10):
The geth fled and they haven't been seen in a while and they've come back down.
Those things that they're putting people on, people call them dragon's teeth.
And what they do is they absorb all of the organic material in a person and replace it
with machines.
And that all of the organic matter, no one knows what they do with it.
(21:34):
It just kind of...
They just kind of absorbs it and no one knows where it goes.
And then they're like mostly machines and are just a mindless husks of resembling people.
Love that.
So now fighting these undead space zombies who terrify me by the way, they run.
(21:58):
And I'm so bad at shooting as mentioned seconds ago.
And they move so fast and I don't like it.
Then I have underlined here with several question marks, exclamation marks, the maker.
Yeah, baby.
They say thank the maker in it.
Oh, what's going on?
(22:21):
What's going on here?
Did you also notice a thing which is so small, doesn't matter at all.
I saw nothing about it online, but I know that it's true because I did find something
about it online.
So Jenkins, who is your squad mate who gets shot and killed immediately.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:42):
I was gonna...
He has Sandal's face.
He has Sandal's exact face model.
It's been updated a little bit, but Sandal and him have the same...
The same like...
Holy shit.
No, I didn't notice that.
Oh my God.
Yeah, it's weird.
I saw a thing of someone being like, do we think they're related?
(23:05):
Which is like, no, it was 2007.
They had a pretty detailed face.
And they're like, can we just chuck this on another guy, please?
We're not designing another face.
This guy.
Yeah.
But yeah, it's a fun little thing.
I count it as a Dragon Age reference.
Oh, I do.
Or technically, it's a Mass Effect reference.
It's a Mass Effect reference.
(23:27):
So Jenkins eats shit pretty much right away.
We make our way down.
We then find Ashley.
Ashley is the only survivor of this big attack that just came through.
This geth invasion that has just come through.
Now I meet Ashley and then I meet one other NPC who doesn't seem important because he
(23:50):
immediately runs away.
But those two people both are sole survivors of an attack in whatever area they're in.
And I had a very interesting option that I think is the renegade option that I took.
Yeah.
(24:12):
To chastise them for being the only survivor.
And I think I'm taking a direction with Ani where because she had with Ashley right away
was like, how come you're the only survivor?
(24:34):
Why didn't you protect your squad?
And I did the same to the second guy that I met.
And I think I'm giving that because I think Ani has survivor's guilt and she thinks that
she should have gone down.
Maybe not.
Maybe it wasn't her fault the first time.
(24:56):
Second time?
Yeah, definitely.
So having the option to be a little bit of a piece of shit, but in a way that kind of
makes some character sense and fits within a story.
Big Dragon Age vibes.
(25:16):
Getting big Dragon Age vibes from that.
So then we get a cut scene now.
We're like kind of halfway through this.
Oh, we find a after we get Ashley, we find a like a I want to say it's a trailer, you
know, like a kind of base where we can get supplies.
(25:40):
We find some civilians who've been hiding.
They say that the army saved them by taking fire until they got away.
We get some supplies and stuff.
I learn how to do encryption, which I think is fun.
It took me a second to like a little bit like Frogger.
(26:03):
Yeah, I was like, oh, that's very disorienting.
But I do like it.
I think I think it's it's it's it definitely took me a minute to like figure out what the
goal was.
But I like it.
And but I think it's fun.
And then as we're heading in, we get this cut scene happening in in in the place where
(26:35):
we're headed to, where we think the beacon is.
And we see Nihlus, who's been scouting ahead and who we've been looking for.
And I, you know, who who I seemed suspicious of, like off the bat, but then like everybody's
like, no, Nihlus is great.
(26:55):
Yeah.
Then we see him talk to another.
What are they called again?
Turian Turian.
Yeah.
Talking to another Turian named Saren.
And Nihlus is talking to him like they're old friends.
And Saren immediately looks like a sinister mustache villain.
(27:19):
Like in within the first three seconds, Nihlus is like, how are you doing, old friend?
And I'm like, that's not an old friend.
That guy types of evil.
That guy's got a bottle with a skull and crossbones on it in his pocket.
That's crazy.
So evil.
Right.
Like immediately.
And so obviously, Saren just kills, shoots him in the back of the head.
(27:47):
Right in the back.
Immediately.
So then we get there.
It's too late.
There's no like, there's no like nothing you can do.
We get there.
Not Saren is gone and Nihlus's body is on the floor.
We meet that other NPC who was hiding behind crates.
I chastise him for hiding and being a coward because he should have helped other people
(28:12):
survive.
We also then get this cut scene where we see Saren get to the beacon.
And it looks like it's, it looks like Saren does something to it.
And like activates it, turns it on in some way.
(28:35):
It starts to like, whir.
And then Saren disappears.
He like, he like floats and then bamfs away.
Oh yeah.
He floats.
I don't think he teleports away, but he definitely does float.
(28:55):
He floats and then he leaves.
Oh he might.
Yeah.
He very, very well may.
So then we, so then we get to this, to this site where the beacon is.
And this site is like pretty interesting.
There's like a lot happening here where the geth are one, the geth are get orders from
(29:18):
Saren to make it look like the, the turians were never there.
So the geth have like set up these timed bombs all over this whole site that are going to
go off and flatten the place and, and, and whatever.
There's also like a tram, like this kind of high fantasy tech tram, which is pretty cool.
(29:42):
We get there, we have to fight a shitload of turians.
And then also there are like these drone things that are everywhere.
I don't think I've heard a name for them.
I don't know that they're sentient in any way.
It seems like they're just drones.
They're little drones.
No, they're just drones.
Okay.
And so we kill a million of them.
(30:03):
And as we're killing them, we have to also deactivate all of these bombs so they don't
go off.
Really fun little, fun little mission.
I liked having like a task that I had to do while we were fighting through.
I am also like really, really pleasantly surprised with how often my, my guys do actually shoot
(30:28):
people and succeed.
Yeah.
Because I've had that experience in other shooty games where it's like, it is kind of
just on you.
They're there just to like spray.
No, yeah, they do shit.
And you can also, if you want them to do specific things, there's way there's like, you can
get them to equip specific weapons and also cast specific abilities at things.
(30:52):
I do need to play a little bit more with that part of it.
I haven't really done that.
I actually never really have, but it is a thing that's in the game.
It's similar to how in like, DAO, I guess.
I just never really went to any other character because I was like, yeah, they're fine.
They're killing guys on the road.
Like they don't need me.
(31:12):
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I do it a lot more in Inquisition than I do in Origins is like, is fuck with
the auto commands of other people.
But I do want to give it a shot so that I could like learn how to use it and just at
least give it a test run and see if I care about it.
But we kill our way through here.
(31:34):
We neutralize the threat and then we get to the beacon.
At first, Kaiden approaches it and like starts to get like sucked into it and like floats
and like looks like he's going to die.
And I pull him out and I get sucked in.
(31:59):
And then I black out.
I start having these weird like flashes, these crazy vision.
And then I pass out and then I wake up back on the Normandy.
I'm being quizzed and grilled about what happened.
Dr. Chakwas.
(32:20):
Dr. Chakwas.
Yeah.
And I say that I tell the captain that I had these visions and the captain's like, well,
we got to tell the council or whatever the government is called.
And I'm like, yeah, we're going to tell what because oh, because it turns out that
(32:40):
Saren is a specter that is like really high rank in the government.
So there's only like there's only a handful of specters and they're like galactic wide.
Essentially no law holds them.
Their thing is a way in and out of any building is just saying, oh, I'm a specter.
(33:01):
This is 007 almost like code phrase.
Nihilus and Saren both were them.
There's never been a human specter before.
So that's what Nihilus was testing you for to see if you're going to be the first ever
human specter.
Right, right, right.
That's right.
That's what it was.
And yeah.
So Captain Anderson is really stoked about it because he is like, this is a big opportunity
(33:25):
for us as humans to get like we're not on the council yet.
But if we have a human specter, it shows that we can be trusted in this galactic society
as a whole.
Yes.
And so we talk about that.
Now it's time we're going to go approach the council and we're going to tell them about
(33:48):
Saren.
We're going to tell them what he did.
We're going to tell them that he's gone completely rogue and hope that they believe us.
And then we got a really fun cut scene where it's on Saren's ship.
(34:10):
Yeah.
And we meet the matriarch who's cool as fuck already.
Matriarch is an Asari and they're cool.
Yeah, they're weird.
An Asari you said?
I don't know.
An Asari.
So Asari are interesting because they are all, every single Asari is like female presenting,
(34:32):
but they also like, there's an interesting conversation that happens in one of them where
one of your companions says, oh, that's my dad over there.
That's my like father.
And it's just a female Asari again.
And then she's like, yeah, we don't, we just like, you know, men, women, gender just don't
exist with us.
(34:52):
We're all like, we all look kind of like this and the roles are like, we take them when
we're needed.
So it's got a, they got a fun thing.
Yeah.
So the matriarch is like one of the leader of the Asari.
I believe she might be the leader of the Asari.
(35:12):
Matriarch Benizia is her full name.
She's a spiritual leader.
So she's just called the matriarch.
Yeah.
So she's on this ship with Saren.
Saren finds out that the beacon has been touched or used by a human and becomes completely
(35:36):
outraged and is like, is like straight up like, I'm going to kill that human.
I'm going to kill that human specifically.
We've I find out from the captain that Saren hates humans and like more than anyone else
in more than other Turians hate humans.
(36:01):
He hates humans.
And I also clocked.
Okay.
So there's a, we meet back.
So I have these visions when I touch the beacon, visions of, and then I, the visions are interesting
(36:22):
because like when you are having them in the cut scene where you get sucked into the beacon
and you have them, it just looks like a sort of like random assortment of flashes of images.
I the, I Dylan can't figure out from looking at them what's going on.
Later when I'm telling the captain about them, I have a couple of options, but they all kind
(36:43):
of account that the visions I have are like of our doom, essentially collectively.
And what's interesting is that earlier on, when we found that those survivors, the scientists,
the assistant was also going on about visions he had about our doom and our demise.
(37:09):
And I thought that was interesting.
Yes, yes, yes.
So I wrote that down because I, I don't know if that's a, cause he, when you meet him,
it seems like they're just, he's just cracked a little bit and, and his fellow scientist
kind of brushes it off.
Like, yeah, he's just, he's just a little cracked.
(37:30):
He's a genius and they're all kind of like this.
But he's like, you know, but he's like, no, I've seen the end.
And so I was like, oh, interesting.
During your little, your vision that you have, the vision ends with you're looking at like,
(37:51):
you're looking like the back of a sun or like something.
It's like a weird little black hole.
Then you, the Geth have landed on Eden Prime with a ship that you see that is, it looks
like a big hand that's like coming down onto Eden Prime.
And it is so obnoxiously big, people say that it is ludicrously big.
(38:13):
And they didn't know that Geth could make ships like that.
And then in the vision, the last thing you see is that ship, that ship in this weird
black hole with mothership.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then after all that, I go, I finally get the opportunity to go like chat with everybody,
(38:35):
which I haven't really done yet.
The captain tells me that he's invited Ashley to join us on the Normandy as like a full-time
position now.
And even though I was like mean to her for surviving, I was to the captain, I was like,
yeah, she's a good soldier because she survived.
(39:00):
And that's, and it's, it's only personal when I'm being confronted directly with it.
By your, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's been fun.
So I think that's when I got, I noticed getting myself getting paragon points was when I talked
to Ashley and I then welcomed her board.
(39:21):
Very good.
And then talk to Kaden.
I don't remember anything too significant about that conversation, but, but I like him.
I talked to a couple of people around, I talked to the requisitions officer, which is interesting.
The requisitions officer is like getting you non, non-government supplies.
(39:51):
Like so you could get stuff that's not, that's not like, not totally like kosher and good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is interesting.
Also interesting, you like switch out your, your team's equipment by going to their lockers,
which I do think is fun.
(40:11):
I think it's mechanically a little annoying, but I think it's really great for flavor.
Yeah.
On the field, you can do it just like free form.
You can just kind of do it.
But it is, I do like the locker thing.
Yeah.
You're going around and it's like your shepherd is a micromanager and is like, I'm going to
change your equipment before you leave.
(40:31):
Cause I know better than you.
Could you imagine you just, you just are like, you don't use that gun anymore.
I'm not talking to you about it.
I've just taken it and there's a new one in your locker.
You open your locker and it's like, I guess I'm a big shotgun guy now.
I didn't realize it.
That's a little crazy.
Yeah.
I think that's fun.
(40:52):
I haven't gotten to talk much to the Joker yet.
I really, really want to.
I really like him already.
I want to chat with him more, but we're headed to the council where the Citadel.
Thank you.
And that's where Joker is taking us now.
We're going to make our case about Saren.
(41:15):
We're going to report Nihilus's death and we're going to hopefully make a play for me being
a specter.
And so that's kind of where we stopped and I'm like really excited to go back and play.
No, that's awesome.
I'm fucking stoked about it.
(41:37):
It's a cool opener.
It gives you enough stuff to be like, this is why you're doing this.
It's because you got weird vision touched and it's like, you're like, I guess I have
to fucking figure out what's going on.
Yeah, for sure.
I really like the opening when it refers to you as short as it is.
(42:07):
In the opening, it is Councilor Udina, Admiral Hackett, and then Captain Anderson, three
pretty major characters when it comes to the human.
So the Alliance is a human organization.
They are like the human military are called the Alliance.
(42:29):
And then there is the Galactic Council.
But Udina, Hackett, and Anderson are all pretty big players in it.
And they are all talking about you and the things that you pick as like your backstory.
They're all like, do we really think this person should do it?
So for example, I am a ruthless earthborn.
(42:51):
Oh yeah.
Actually, hang on before you get into that, I, because I, that's very important.
I need you to, I need to hear about your shepherd, like so desperately.
You need to be?
But I, yeah, I have to be.
So just one.
Okay.
Okay.
This is very fucking exciting for me, gang.
(43:19):
So I love Mass Effect.
I really do.
It's a big, it's a big game for me.
I'll actually, I'll talk about how I got into Mass Effect when, when Dil comes back, but
isn't it fun to see them excited and just like not know anything about a game?
You know, they introduced me to Mass Effect and me introducing them.
(43:41):
We had this idea halfway through Origins that it's like after Dragon Age, after the games,
we're going to play the Mass Effect franchise.
And man, it's exciting knowing a lot about it.
And then being able to show Dil this.
Who do we think Dil's going to romance?
(44:02):
In this game, there's not a huge amount of options, but I think, problem is that Garrus
is just the fucking best.
So Garrus is mine.
Spoilers for Mass Effect 2.
But Mass Effect 1, because he's in.
One.
I'm thinking Dil might go Liara.
Because Liara is really good.
(44:25):
Dil might wait till 2 and go Thane.
Can you imagine?
That would be crazy.
That would be really fun.
Oh my god, I'm excited for Mass Effect 2.
I'm so stoked to have Dil just play these games.
I'm excited to see, talking about the, talking about Joker.
About Kaiden, like in Kaiden.
(44:47):
Talking about Anderson.
Oh my god.
That's the thing that I'm excited about.
I can't talk about it.
And we can't talk about it because we need Dil's input on this stuff.
But it's fun, right?
Ugh, and the gaff.
Boys.
(45:07):
People who know Mass Effect, if you don't know Mass Effect, genuinely play with us.
Because this shit fucks.
These games are great.
Specifically 2.
I think that Mass Effect 2 is so uniquely brilliant.
That I'm like, I'm more buzzed than I could possibly comprehend when it comes to playing
(45:33):
this.
I can hear them coming back.
I love this fucking guy, man.
Hey, hero.
Hello.
Okay.
Alright, tell me about your ship.
Alright, so I'm playing Siobhan Shepherd.
Maybe.
(45:56):
So I'm playing Siobhan.
Siobhan is an Earthborn and is classified as ruthless.
They did a-
Can you remind me what Earthborn means again?
I know you told me on the phone, but.
No, no, that's okay.
So Earthborn is actually important to the story.
(46:18):
So also the class I originally picked was Engineer, but then I changed it for Vanguard
and I'll explain why.
So Earthborn is essentially just covered by Megropolis.
It's like a full city.
It's a city of a planet now.
It's very rare to see a green on Earth.
(46:40):
And Earthborn is you ran with petty gangs and criminals for a while and then eventually
you ended up getting out and escaping at 18.
Shepherd for just lore reasons is 29 in Mass Effect 1.
So I think colonists you join at 16 and then I think Earthborn and-
(47:10):
And the one where your parents are military, you join when you're 18.
So you've always been in it for at least a decade.
Ruthless is- there was a mission.
The mission was still the Skylian Blitz is what it is.
(47:31):
That you do with both Ruthless and Soul Survivor.
I think it's the same mission that you go to.
I'm not sure about the third one, but with Ruthless I was so like cold hearted and calculated
that I let most of my team die just so we won.
(47:52):
It's very much a whatever it takes.
It doesn't fucking matter as long as we win.
Did you not say that phrase at me again?
Yeah, baby.
That's why I said it because I was like it's a trigger phrase now.
No.
Whatever it takes, baby.
The reason is because I am playing- Siobhan is- she was born on Earth and literally was
(48:16):
truly like- also Earthborn is specifically your orphan.
You're an orphan kid and you just kind of grew up on the mean streets of a city.
She went through, she did just anything to survive and make money.
And then eventually figured, oh well the way that I can survive and make money is I can
join the military, went into space and then on missions was like- it was true like survivor
(48:43):
instinct.
It's like we can all struggle and might not make it or I can definitely make it.
And that's what her plan was is her being like, I can definitely make it if I make it
on my own.
The thing, the idea that I'm going with is that when it comes down to true stakes like
(49:06):
this is that she's going to Florence Hawke it a little bit and become it's my team.
When numbers start getting so big, it's like the one in five thing where it's like, oh
I have a team of five.
If one in five of us can survive, I'm making sure that I'm the one.
(49:28):
If there is a team of a hundred, my crew are going to be the one that gets through.
And she's going to be so impeccably ride or die for her team.
The reason why I switched classes is because the Mass Effect relays use an element called
(49:49):
element zero and that's what they use to do FTL travel, which is the fast than light.
In Singapore, they brought a bunch of element zero down to figure out how it works.
The element zero started infecting a bunch of people in Singapore where they started
(50:13):
getting these weird mutations and it kind of started spreading across the whole world.
And then a few years later, all of those people infected started getting biotic powers, which
is the magic system and this is biotics.
And the Vanguard has a big biotic side to it.
(50:37):
The Vanguard is like you have a shotgun and biotic powers and the thing is like, okay,
if she's earthborn, I want her to be one of the people infected with this element zero
and then she was like, oh, I have, essentially I have magic now and I'm going to go and join
the Alliance and I'm going to rise up the ranks real fast because I have magic and a
(51:00):
shotgun.
A lot of other, every single species also has biotic things because element zero is
just kind of like we, the galaxy know that, well, you get biotics by enhancing your body
with what in the Dragon Age universe ends up being lyrium.
(51:22):
It's this element zero that it's like you kind of infuse into your body.
And I wanted that for Shiv, Shivorn.
So I had her do that.
So she was pretty angry against a lot of people, but then with her little squad, she was like,
(51:42):
yo, what's up, you're my boy.
We're teammates together.
Okay, like that.
Yeah.
But because this isn't her ship at the minute, this is a ship that she's on, but this isn't
her ship.
So she's fine with a lot of people, is a bit of a dick and is like, why are you talking?
You should be working.
Like Joker in the first bit where Joker is.
Yeah, there were a lot of options like that.
(52:02):
I mean, that's fun.
Because Joker is the pilot and Joker is really excited about the facts.
He actually gets annoyed that I think he gets annoyed that Anderson says, oh, good job.
Because he's like, what I did was fucking excellent.
Actually, it was outstanding, magnificent.
I'm the best pilot that the Alliance has.
(52:25):
How dare you say good at what I did.
And I was like, hey, can you shut the fuck up and stop talking?
Actually, this doesn't matter.
This banter is ridiculous.
And he was like, all right, sorry, Captain.
I was like, yep, sorry, Commander.
I was like, yeah, that's the greatest pilot in the world.
Joker is the greatest pilot in the world.
We love Joker over here.
That's the greatest pilot in the world.
He's the best guy ever.
(52:46):
Yeah.
So I like Ashley.
Ashley is a really interesting, very, very controversial character.
But I think that she's very controversial character.
We'll learn very fast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Of course, I'm excited to find out why.
She's very racist against aliens.
(53:09):
Oh.
So it's interesting.
This is why Mass Effect is a very interesting franchise to talk about.
In things like Dragon Age, character development happens not slowly, but over the course of
a game, where people grow and are different by the end of the game.
Then if they're in another one, Cullen progresses very slowly throughout all three.
(53:31):
In this, people overcome their shit in multiple games time because they have time to grow.
And then it's like in Mass Effect 2, she's pretty fucking racist still.
And then in Mass Effect 3, she starts becoming less racist.
And it's like that's kind of her progression.
It's like it's an interesting one.
(53:53):
It is.
And I'm excited to talk about it.
Yeah, important characters of note that we meet.
Of course, it's Captain Anderson, Joker, Kaiden, Ashley.
Dr. Chakwas is very important.
She just comes up a lot in conversation.
(54:13):
We like her.
Yeah.
So I kind of want to know just like opening like...
Actually, you know what?
Do you mind?
I actually said this whilst you were gone.
I would love to just really quickly talk about how I got into Mass Effect.
Oh, yes.
(54:34):
Because you have an interesting story about getting into Dragon Age.
And I have not as interesting, but kind of weird in the same way.
No, I want to hear it.
I got into Mass Effect really late.
I got into Mass Effect about a year before Mass Effect 3 came out and the trilogy fully
closed up.
The game was announced.
(54:54):
People knew it was coming.
I was big into Rooster Teeth and Red vs. Blue at the time.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Red vs. Blue is a machinima show that is made in Halo.
They're like, you use the game Halo to make this show.
I went to the GameStop that was on my high street and I went in with like the 40 quid
(55:18):
that I had and I was like, hey, can I...
I would like the new...
Because Halo had just been remastered.
Halo 1 had just been remastered.
I was like, I would like this.
This one guy at the store who was working there didn't know him at all.
He was like, why do you want Halo?
I was like, I'm just kind of into Red vs. Blue and it's like, you know, it's a cool sci-fi
(55:40):
adventure.
I would just like one.
He's like, would you mind if I gave my input?
I was like, yeah, what's up?
He's like, don't get Halo.
Don't get the new one.
Have you ever heard of Mass Effect?
I was like, no.
He's like, you should get Mass Effect 1 and 2.
You can get both of them for cheaper than you can the new Halo.
They are way better.
(56:01):
They are so fucking good.
I was like, okay, sure.
That sounds fine.
I don't really like first person shooters, so I was like, that sounds fun and I like
that.
So I got it.
I went home.
I put in Mass Effect 1.
It took me about six, seven months to finish Mass Effect 1.
(56:21):
I hated it.
I hated it so much.
I didn't like the combat.
I didn't like how it looked.
I didn't really get a lot of the things that were going on.
It just super wasn't my thing.
I put it down, got on with my life.
Six, seven months later, I came back to it and I had the penultimate planet, which is
(56:45):
Vermeer and then the last, the end of the game.
And then I did Vermeer.
I was like, oh, that was fucking sick.
And then I did the last mission and I was like, whoa, this is cool as fuck.
I finished the game.
I put in Mass Effect 2 and I finished Mass Effect 2 in a week.
And then like two months later, Mass Effect 3 came out and then I bought it on release
(57:06):
and I played it.
I finished the game.
I started it again.
I finished it.
I started again.
I finished it in a really crazy, like I hated Mass Effect 1.
Mass Effect 2 is one of what I genuinely think is one of the best games ever made.
And Mass Effect 3, I think is fucking awesome.
Whoa.
Crazy.
That's so cool.
And it's just because this one game employee was like, don't get Halo, get these two games
(57:32):
instead.
You can get it for cheaper than you can.
I love that.
That's so.
It's a weird fucking story.
That's such a bold move, too.
A bold move.
And I fucking, the thing is, there is a guy out there who has no memory of this interaction,
has moved on.
And I remember the moment he told me, I remember his face and him handing me Mass Effect 1
(57:56):
and 2 because he's like, I think we have ones in the back.
And then went into the back, picked up Mass Effect 1 and 2 and then brought it through.
I was like, these are some of the best games ever made.
Yeah.
Wow.
Crazy.
And I hated it for ages.
I was cursing his name.
And then after I did the back quarter of Mass Effect 1, I was like, oh, this is fucking
awesome.
Yeah.
(58:16):
Yeah.
So did you, like, playing it now, do you still hate parts of the beginning of it?
No, I think.
So what's interesting about this is I just didn't engage with it how it wanted me to
engage with it.
I got home and I wanted to play Halo.
Like I wanted to play a fast, like, that type of game.
(58:38):
Mass Effect is way slower, especially originally they had.
There's a lot of things like information in codexes that are hidden.
There's a lot of like.
At the time, the game is really slow.
Like combat is is weird because in Mass Effect 1, you don't have ammo for guns.
(59:02):
You have heat sink, which is you just you fire X amount of times and then your gun just
jams and has to cool down.
Or you can just like fire in bursts and then it will keep going down.
And I was a sniper, which is a class that I didn't like playing, which is the engineer,
ironically.
Also, I heard that if a character dies, they permanently die.
(59:24):
I thought that meant in combat.
So I spent the entirety of Mass Effect 1 without having a single squad mate dying in battle,
because whenever a squad mate dies, I would reload the game and I would play it.
I'd like reload the save and I'd play it through again because I thought if they died,
they're just dead and they stay dead.
(59:45):
And I refused to have that happen because I didn't realize it was only in story and
gang people die in this game a lot.
Your squad passes out is fucking Dragon Age.
They pass out.
They get up at the end of battle.
I didn't know that that was the case.
So whenever whenever a squad mate passed out, I revived them.
I remember giving up on that with a character called Liara.
(01:00:10):
She died after a very difficult fight in a planet that will do week after next, I think.
And I was so sick of this boss fight that I was like, just let us stay dead.
And then I finished it and she just stood back up and I was like, oh, fuck.
(01:00:31):
I have spent hours on this game.
And that's a big reason why I hated it, because I was like, if these characters are going
to die, if they like kids here in battle, I wish it was something I could fucking do
about it.
This game is also it's a little older.
It's pretty hard to get through.
Like, it's like originally it was like way harder.
(01:00:53):
Like the combat was more difficult.
It was like obscure with information.
Yeah, and in the beginning, I know it gave me an option to use some of the old.
Like the old leveling system.
Yeah, it goes from the original game goes from one to 60, whereas the legendary goes
(01:01:13):
from one to 30, but has the same point distribution as one to 60.
So instead of getting one point per level, you get three points.
Yeah, instead of getting one or two, you get like three points a level.
And it just kind of like lets you level up way faster.
Speaking of leveling up.
You can spec your character any way you want.
(01:01:35):
I have one request.
You have to.
I mean, have to get either your charm or intimidate skill to max before the planet Vermeyer, which
is the penultimate planet.
There is a huge, huge decision, not a decision.
(01:01:57):
There is a huge conversation in it.
That will only.
A really, really bad thing will happen unless you have one of those two stats max.
And it's the only thing that I think has to be preloaded in like a you have to do this.
(01:02:18):
You have to make sure this thing doesn't happen because it just like if this was a if this
was an origins, I wouldn't tell you it.
And I would just tell you it after it happened.
But because this is a trilogy and the thing comes up constantly, I need you to.
It's the only thing I'm going to manipulate in this is that I need you to get either charm
(01:02:40):
or intimidate to max before Vermeyer.
I did already put something into charm for sure.
Is that a sneezing cat?
My cat just had a fucking big sneeze in for that.
You can baby.
Just sneezing aggressively against the wall.
(01:03:00):
Woke him up.
They were right.
Yeah, you've already put some some some in.
I have.
I have.
I am curious, though.
You'll find in three weeks, you'll find out.
I know.
But maybe it'll be fun to to to lose on purpose.
(01:03:27):
Or is it truly not fun?
The thing the problem is, is normally I would agree.
And that's it's wise like any other decision.
I don't care what you do.
When I'm saying any other decision in the whole franchise, I don't care what you do.
This one, I need I kind of need you to make it.
(01:03:47):
OK, no, I just because it like and it's a thing if you want to lose, then it's like
as long as you know, that's how you get out of it, because you still have the option to
just you can be like, actually, I do want to fail this and then see how what happens
through failing it.
I don't need to get to a thing that's so integral and not have the and not have the option out.
(01:04:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's that's what it is.
And I trust you.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
But yeah, excited about the game.
I'm really excited about the game.
I'm really excited to like meet these like to spend more time with these people.
(01:04:28):
I'm really excited for politics.
I'm really excited for more visions and stuff, because I feel like that's going to be a thing.
See, it seems like that's going to be a thing that happens.
And I'm excited to figure out more about who Ani is.
(01:04:48):
Yeah.
And I'm really jazzed.
I'm jazzed to be in space.
I'm jazzed to have a notebook.
Yeah, it was fun seeing us kind of.
It was fun seeing us shift in what we do, which was you.
It was you explaining going through and explaining what's happening is very exciting.
(01:05:09):
Yeah.
To me.
Yeah, it was cool thing.
So so.
Oh, no, no, you go.
Because I know what's up.
What's up?
No, no, I was going to ask, do we know what our sign off is going to be?
I don't know what I was going to be.
I'm quite nervous about it.
I hopefully we can find it kind of naturally.
Again, there's not like a really cool there's not like a cool, easy thing
(01:05:31):
through this.
That's a bit of a bummer.
There is in two and three.
I think we can just literally use the tagline of the games
because the taglines are pretty neat.
In one, though, there's there's not really.
I'm really excited for next week.
So next week, just to tell everyone where we're going and what we're doing,
(01:05:55):
let me find the.
So next week, we are going to do up to chapter three, which is no various.
So we are going to we're going to do all of the Citadel, which is going to get us most
of our crew.
We're going to pretty much our entire squad in this in the Citadel.
(01:06:18):
We're going to be a lot of fucking a lot of a lot of characters who.
I adore because you spend three full games with them.
And then we're going to afterwards go to do do do do do do.
(01:06:38):
I just want to know what the title of it is, because this game's again interesting
where you kind of get a lot of the missions at the same time and you pick.
I'm just making sure I know what.
OK, so then after we do the Citadel, we're going to go to theorem in the system.
(01:07:01):
And we're going to do we're going to finish theorem.
OK.
And then and then that's when we're going to once we finish there.
And then we're going to.
Yeah.
The exact same rules as as origins and to and Inquisition, I guess.
Yeah.
(01:07:22):
Do as much side content as you can possibly dream about.
That's all fine.
I will also make a nice little graphic like we had for Dragon Age Origins to an Inquisition.
Do as much side content as you want, except for a certain mission that I will put on it.
(01:07:45):
Because that one there's a there's a one DLC we're going to do and there is one specific
mission that we are also going to maybe not have an episode for, but I'm going to say
we're going to do these two these two planets and this mission and then we're going to do
these two planets and this mission.
But yeah, but yes.
I don't know what we want to sign off to be.
(01:08:08):
Do you have any idea, Dylan?
Is there anything calling out to you with what you know so far?
Because I've done Mass Effect kind of catchphrase.
I've also done like specter catchphrases, but there's not, which is upsetting.
Yeah.
We could do a very easy, very easy signing off, but that's kind of dull and too generic.
(01:08:32):
I need a weird one.
Yeah.
And it's a shame because all the really cool villain quotes come toward the end of the
game, unlike in Inquisition where they fucking happen almost immediately.
Okay.
(01:08:53):
If I'm allowed to pull a quote from the end of a quote, which is out of context.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the full quote, I'm not going to say who it's from, but it kind of fills in a Dragon
Age two Dragon Age Inquisition vibe of our sign-offs.
(01:09:14):
The full quote is actually no, I'm not going to do the full quote.
The quote that I'm pulling that I'm going to say that we can use a sign off is you exist
because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.
Oh yeah.
Oh fuck yeah.
Fuck yeah.
So I'm going to write this.
We're going to start off being aggressive to our audience.
(01:09:35):
Yeah.
Hey, listen, back to basics.
This is...
Back to basics.
Love to be antagonistic towards you all.
I love it.
All right.
I'm writing it down.
Okay.
Normandy.
Yeah.
(01:09:56):
Normandy.
You fucking pieces of shit.
You fucking pieces of trash.
You trash motherfuckers.
You stinky, stinky guys who we hate.
I just want to let you all know that you exist because we allow it and you will end because
(01:10:18):
we demand it.
That's pretty good.
I like that one.
That's pretty hot.
That's pretty hot.
That's a good fuck you sign off.
I like it.
Hell yeah.
Oh my God.
We're playing Mass Effect.
I'm so fucking excited.
Holy shit, bud.
Oh, yeah.
(01:10:59):
You
How are you doing?
(00:09):
I am.
How are you doing in space?
I am so far doing great in space.
Yeah, you're enjoying space.
Space is good.
I'm enjoying space.
I am so intrigued.
It's like the first chapter of a new high fantasy novel where there's jargon everywhere
(00:36):
and you're trying to-
And you just don't know what the fuck they're talking about?
And you're like, oh, what's that?
Oh, that's good.
Hi, my name is Dylan.
Yeah, baby.
Hi, my name is Dylan.
I've never played a Mass Effect game.
Hello, my name is Rob and I've played the Mass Effect franchise a million times.
(00:59):
Oh my God.
And I am playing Mass Effect 1 for the first time.
And this is Dorkspawn.
Same name.
It's too good to let go.
Yeah, it's Dorkspawn.
We should probably come up with a Dorkspawn colon, some catchy Mass Effect title.
Oh, I see.
That's fun because I actually spent a little bit trying to think of our new outro and I-
(01:24):
Oh, I'm excited.
I can't think of it.
Don't be excited.
We'll hopefully hit it at some point, but I actually can't think of one because there's
not like- So in this game, specters are a big thing.
Yes, I have that right now.
Specters are the kind of like- Because I was like, okay, so in Dragon Age Origins, we had
(01:47):
the Grey Wardens and they're the group.
So what's the group in Mass Effect?
And the group is specters, but they don't have like a cool catchphrase like the Grey
Wardens do.
I'm pretty sure they don't anyway.
(02:09):
Mass Effect Specter.
Let's do Mass Effect Specter Motto.
See if they have a cool one because I'm pretty sure they don't.
No.
No, they don't have a cool- That's the thing.
That's the dang shame about it.
If they don't have a cool little motto.
(02:30):
So we can't even use that.
So we'll think of one as we talk.
We'll find one, I'm sure.
We'll find one.
So, yeah.
Yeah, this is Mass Effect.
We have now, we've played all of the Dragon Age games and we are now onto our Mass Effect
franchise.
Very stoked about it.
Very excited to talk about this in a conversation with Dragon Age.
(02:56):
I know we spoke about it a little bit last time, but so Mass Effect 1 came out before
Dragon Age Origins and their approaches are, their approaches to role playing in a shared
universe is very different, but also how they do role playing is very different in a way
(03:21):
that I'm excited to talk about.
And we've had a little bit of it so far.
So for example, there is Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, which is a single trilogy that you're
playing the same person throughout this one trilogy event.
Whereas in Dragon Age, you are playing three different people in different parts of the
(03:46):
world, but who you were affects the world state.
A big thing which we fully won't see in this is in Dragon Age Origins, your Grey Warden
can die at the end.
In this, obviously Commander Shepard can't die because you play Commander Shepard in
(04:09):
2 and then 3.
That's not to say your companions can't die, but you got...
No I've heard rumors about that.
Rumors.
The rumors.
Yeah, I like the idea that this is, because this is kind of like, this is the series that
is kind of like, not exactly, but kind of congruent to the Dragon Age series.
(04:34):
This was their, Dragon Age was their fantasy, this is their sci-fi, and they kind of had
a similar progression throughout the years.
In just being in the Dragon Age fandom, I encounter Mass Effect stuff a lot.
A lot of the faces of NPCs are just generally familiar to me.
(04:55):
I know them from the fan arts that I see come across my Tumblr feed, from all my Dragon
Age moots.
So I know, I don't know anything about the story of the game, I know nothing about the
journey of the protagonist.
I really don't know anything about the world, but I do know some of the Blorbo's by Fess.
(05:19):
So that's kind of exciting to put context to all of that.
And yeah, classic style.
We just did a prologue, so we played, we've played very little of Mass Effect 1 so far.
Just really the kind of intro to it.
Yeah.
(05:40):
And I'm so excited.
Love that.
You know what, I think we'll talk about some certain things in terms of like, if we want
to talk about this game's relationship to Dragon Age and its relationship to role playing
and things that we like and don't like, I think we might as well keep that toward the
(06:04):
end and have some mentions.
But I mean, I've already, I don't want to, I'm blue ballsing you now by being like, oh,
I have thoughts on it and I'm not saying it, so I might as well say it now.
This series, Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, works on a Paragon renegade system.
And it's a thing that they were-
Oh, I was going to ask you about that.
(06:24):
Okay, great.
Yeah.
I have that in my notes that like one of the last things to happen was that I got a plus
two to Paragon during a conversation with somebody.
And I didn't know what that meant.
And I, but I wrote it down.
I was like, oh.
Yeah.
So the Paragon renegade system, this is the first game to use the wheel, the little wheel
that Bioware games have.
It's the first game to use that.
(06:46):
The way that conversation and dialogue works in this is something that I personally don't
love.
A lot of this, unlike in like DA2, admittedly DA2 is one, two, three, four games into like Bioware's,
I mean, technically six, if you count Knights of the Old Republic, but four games into like
this current run of role playing.
(07:11):
And in that you have like a blue, red, or purple hawk is what people talk about in Dragon
Age 2.
In Mass Effect, you either have a Paragon or a renegade shepherd.
With the wheel, the top right, the top right answer to every question will give you Paragon
(07:35):
points and the bottom right will give you renegade points.
Renegade being like aggressive, cruel.
Sometimes you can be outright racist to people.
The middle will just give you a neutral option.
As the game progresses, there are going to be things where if you have, just like in
(07:58):
Dragon Age 2, if you have enough in Blue Hawk, you're going to end up getting special dialogue
options because your hawk is a certain way.
In this, the same thing happens.
You're going to end up getting like renegade choices and Paragon choices, depending on
if your guy is more Paragon or renegade.
(08:21):
It's a system that I personally don't like.
I didn't like them.
It's a thing that I really liked about Dragon Age with.
Renegade is counted as the bad option.
Right, it's a little too binary versus like being like a characterization.
It's like, are you going to be a good guy or a bad guy?
(08:42):
Or a bad guy.
It's interesting because there are some choices where they give you an interesting choice
between two things, but because of the way that the game is structured, they have to
label one the negative and one the positive in a thing that I just think is like, it's
(09:03):
not great.
However, it is.
The reason why it's in one, two, and three is because it was in one.
It was a big deal for role playing games and they just kind of kept it.
They like, well, this is Mass Effect.
Mass Effect is Paragon renegade options.
But anyway, that's a thing that we can continue to talk about later.
(09:26):
Yeah, we'll talk about it when we get to it.
So tell me about your Shepard.
Hey, Commander Ani Shepard, she is a soul survivor and she is a sentinel.
Oh, she was a colonist too.
(09:48):
So she has had, I tried to make her have the worst life possible before waking up on this
ship, which is called the...
Normandy.
This is the Normandy.
The Normandy.
The Normandy is the Mass Effect ship.
(10:09):
That's the ship.
Yeah.
It's the ship.
So before she got here, her life terrible.
Her home colony was raided by slavers and there was no one who survived but her.
Her family's all gone.
And then when she joined Starfleet, what is it called?
(10:32):
The Alliance.
The Alliance, thank you.
When she joined the Alliance, she went on this big mission that everybody keeps mentioning
to her, which I think is cool.
And it got her a lot of like...
This mission is the Skyillian...
Oh, the Skyillian something.
(10:55):
It was a war between the slavers of the Batarians, which is a Mass Effect race and you played
a big part in it.
Anyway, sorry.
Please continue.
No.
And in that, I was also the only person to survive that, this mission.
(11:23):
But whatever I did there has gotten me a lot of notoriety and clearly it seems like that's
why...
That might've been why I'm a commander.
And so yeah, she's had just the absolute worst life possible.
And then we are on board this ship and we've got some people.
(11:47):
I wrote right away, I wrote, whoa, Keith David.
And then I wrote, whoa, Seth Green.
Yeah, baby.
What?
Yeah.
Those are my fucking boys.
Holy shit.
And then also, also someone you meet later is also a really interesting voice actress
(12:10):
that I had to look up.
I didn't know her name instantly, but I knew her voice so well.
And she's just in fucking everything.
She's incredible.
What character was she playing?
It's the girl you meet who...
Ashley.
Ashley, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(12:32):
So now we're on the Normandy.
There's not a lot of...
Like in this really beginning part, you get a little quick introduction to Seth Green's
character, it's the Joker.
He's fun already.
(12:53):
I meet him really quickly.
And then we're summoned to go meet the captain, but going to meet the captain, you get back
there, captain's not there yet.
This guy, Nihilus is, who is like alien guy, not human.
(13:15):
So we see the Joker's human.
The captain is human.
Nihilus is a Turian.
Love the look of Turians in this.
Love the look of Turians.
I think they look great.
Yeah, same.
And Nihilus is immediately like a little bit, like just a little bit weird to me.
(13:35):
There's like a little bit of a vibe.
And the captain comes in and we have this whole big talk.
Nihilus is really going to be here.
So first of all, we learn that there's a beacon and that's what we're after.
It's something that's been discovered.
It's some kind of alien tech that is gonna...
(13:58):
Procyon is the name.
It's a Procyon beacon.
That is gonna like, we think is gonna like advance humans to like an nth degree.
And as it turns out, it's also possibly gonna earn us some more respect in space government
(14:20):
because humans are like new to joining like the fray of like the intergalactic politics.
So the mass effect relays, which is what gave us kind of pushing us into...
They're called the mass relays, but mass effect relays put us into like active space travel.
(14:45):
Our first one we found in 2148 and it's now, the current day is 2183.
So humans have only been space traveling for 35 years.
But the first time we had any contact with any race that wasn't us was in 2157.
(15:06):
So it's been under 30 years that we, as humans, have been part of like the galactic makeup
at all.
So everything's very weird.
And turians don't really like us because the first contact war is because we had a manned
mission to one of the relays.
(15:27):
Going toward the relays is a huge no-no in terms of the galactic alliance and a group
of turians and they're kind of...
Turians are like known to be kind of very militaristic and like space cops basically.
They saw an unnamed ship going toward a mass effect relay and they just shot it down.
But there was one person who survived, took it back to Earth and then Earth started a
(15:51):
war with the turians that lasted apparently no time at all because a lot of people died,
but the galactic federation stepped in and was like, oh, hey, yeah, these guys don't
know what they're doing because they've just discovered galactic space flight.
(16:12):
So we are very new to the galaxy.
And we think that finding this beacon is going to get humans maybe...
It's going to get us in the door where we can start having a real say in the intergalactic
government.
And so Nihilus is there to watch us and specifically to watch me because I show some sort of exemplary
(16:39):
promise but he wants to see me in action before vouching for us basically.
And so while we're having this conversation, we get an intercepted message that the Joker
shoots over to us and it's a bunch of our people on the ground on this planet where
(17:03):
we are headed right now to go get the beacon and all our people are getting attacked and
shot down as they're trying to film the distress call.
So it's like, oh, well, this is not going to be just like a search for the beacon kind
of thing.
And this is like a...
This planet we're going to is like a colony.
Like there's...
(17:24):
Yeah, it's a human colony.
Humans live on this planet in like kind of makeshift cities.
So there's civilians down there too.
And so they're like, okay, we're going to send in a small squad.
We're going to go in and obviously stop the killing and then also find and retrieve that
(17:44):
beacon.
I thought it was really interesting.
Nihilus...
I can't remember if it's not...
I wrote this down and I didn't do a good job at writing this down.
Nihilus either makes a comment or somebody makes a comment about the prophet in this
(18:12):
first conversation.
And I was like, oh, what is that?
What is the prophet?
I don't even remember.
And it's in that very first conversation before we ever leave the ship.
Oh, that's fun.
Yeah.
So I clocked that.
And then we immediately hop off.
(18:33):
I still haven't like really met anybody, but now I hop off and I have two people with me.
I should have written down their names, but it is...
You have Jenkins and you have Kaiden Alenko.
Kaiden.
So Jenkins, Kaiden and I hop off and I'm leading them down and now it's combat tutorial.
(18:56):
Here is the thing that I am most nervous about this game.
I am so bad at shooting.
I am so bad at it.
In every video game, I have all the difficulties turned down to nothing.
And still, God, my fine motor control is so stupid.
(19:19):
It's so bad.
But still, it's going fine.
I'm still having a decent time.
I like throwing grenades.
That's fun.
I like the...
The grenades are very floaty in this.
I like them.
They just kind of go in a straight line and then you can...
They do.
And I really like the taking cover and that whole thing is fun.
(19:45):
So we're making our way through right off the bat.
So we then make our way.
We shoot a bunch of these.
I want to say geth.
Yes, geth.
Thank you.
We fight a bunch of geth and then eventually undead space zombies that the geth have made
(20:07):
by like...
Yeah.
So geth were made by a race called the Quarians, Kurians, who we'll meet later.
They're like a hyper technological race.
(20:27):
And they made the geth as laborers and gave them very, very limited AI.
So it turns out one geth on its own can't think, feel, do anything.
It's literally just a computer that is walking around.
But then the more...
Because they were made for labor, the more geth you put next to each other, the smarter
they get.
(20:48):
So a huge group of geth altogether are just...
Every individual is like its own thinking, feeling thing.
And what happened is that they rebelled against the Quarians, and then the Quarians decimated
90% of them.
(21:10):
The geth fled and they haven't been seen in a while and they've come back down.
Those things that they're putting people on, people call them dragon's teeth.
And what they do is they absorb all of the organic material in a person and replace it
with machines.
And that all of the organic matter, no one knows what they do with it.
(21:34):
It just kind of...
They just kind of absorbs it and no one knows where it goes.
And then they're like mostly machines and are just a mindless husks of resembling people.
Love that.
So now fighting these undead space zombies who terrify me by the way, they run.
(21:58):
And I'm so bad at shooting as mentioned seconds ago.
And they move so fast and I don't like it.
Then I have underlined here with several question marks, exclamation marks, the maker.
Yeah, baby.
They say thank the maker in it.
Oh, what's going on?
(22:21):
What's going on here?
Did you also notice a thing which is so small, doesn't matter at all.
I saw nothing about it online, but I know that it's true because I did find something
about it online.
So Jenkins, who is your squad mate who gets shot and killed immediately.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
(22:42):
I was gonna...
He has Sandal's face.
He has Sandal's exact face model.
It's been updated a little bit, but Sandal and him have the same...
The same like...
Holy shit.
No, I didn't notice that.
Oh my God.
Yeah, it's weird.
I saw a thing of someone being like, do we think they're related?
(23:05):
Which is like, no, it was 2007.
They had a pretty detailed face.
And they're like, can we just chuck this on another guy, please?
We're not designing another face.
This guy.
Yeah.
But yeah, it's a fun little thing.
I count it as a Dragon Age reference.
Oh, I do.
Or technically, it's a Mass Effect reference.
It's a Mass Effect reference.
(23:27):
So Jenkins eats shit pretty much right away.
We make our way down.
We then find Ashley.
Ashley is the only survivor of this big attack that just came through.
This geth invasion that has just come through.
Now I meet Ashley and then I meet one other NPC who doesn't seem important because he
(23:50):
immediately runs away.
But those two people both are sole survivors of an attack in whatever area they're in.
And I had a very interesting option that I think is the renegade option that I took.
Yeah.
(24:12):
To chastise them for being the only survivor.
And I think I'm taking a direction with Ani where because she had with Ashley right away
was like, how come you're the only survivor?
(24:34):
Why didn't you protect your squad?
And I did the same to the second guy that I met.
And I think I'm giving that because I think Ani has survivor's guilt and she thinks that
she should have gone down.
Maybe not.
Maybe it wasn't her fault the first time.
(24:56):
Second time?
Yeah, definitely.
So having the option to be a little bit of a piece of shit, but in a way that kind of
makes some character sense and fits within a story.
Big Dragon Age vibes.
(25:16):
Getting big Dragon Age vibes from that.
So then we get a cut scene now.
We're like kind of halfway through this.
Oh, we find a after we get Ashley, we find a like a I want to say it's a trailer, you
know, like a kind of base where we can get supplies.
(25:40):
We find some civilians who've been hiding.
They say that the army saved them by taking fire until they got away.
We get some supplies and stuff.
I learn how to do encryption, which I think is fun.
It took me a second to like a little bit like Frogger.
(26:03):
Yeah, I was like, oh, that's very disorienting.
But I do like it.
I think I think it's it's it's it definitely took me a minute to like figure out what the
goal was.
But I like it.
And but I think it's fun.
And then as we're heading in, we get this cut scene happening in in in the place where
(26:35):
we're headed to, where we think the beacon is.
And we see Nihlus, who's been scouting ahead and who we've been looking for.
And I, you know, who who I seemed suspicious of, like off the bat, but then like everybody's
like, no, Nihlus is great.
(26:55):
Yeah.
Then we see him talk to another.
What are they called again?
Turian Turian.
Yeah.
Talking to another Turian named Saren.
And Nihlus is talking to him like they're old friends.
And Saren immediately looks like a sinister mustache villain.
(27:19):
Like in within the first three seconds, Nihlus is like, how are you doing, old friend?
And I'm like, that's not an old friend.
That guy types of evil.
That guy's got a bottle with a skull and crossbones on it in his pocket.
That's crazy.
So evil.
Right.
Like immediately.
And so obviously, Saren just kills, shoots him in the back of the head.
(27:47):
Right in the back.
Immediately.
So then we get there.
It's too late.
There's no like, there's no like nothing you can do.
We get there.
Not Saren is gone and Nihlus's body is on the floor.
We meet that other NPC who was hiding behind crates.
I chastise him for hiding and being a coward because he should have helped other people
(28:12):
survive.
We also then get this cut scene where we see Saren get to the beacon.
And it looks like it's, it looks like Saren does something to it.
And like activates it, turns it on in some way.
(28:35):
It starts to like, whir.
And then Saren disappears.
He like, he like floats and then bamfs away.
Oh yeah.
He floats.
I don't think he teleports away, but he definitely does float.
(28:55):
He floats and then he leaves.
Oh he might.
Yeah.
He very, very well may.
So then we, so then we get to this, to this site where the beacon is.
And this site is like pretty interesting.
There's like a lot happening here where the geth are one, the geth are get orders from
(29:18):
Saren to make it look like the, the turians were never there.
So the geth have like set up these timed bombs all over this whole site that are going to
go off and flatten the place and, and, and whatever.
There's also like a tram, like this kind of high fantasy tech tram, which is pretty cool.
(29:42):
We get there, we have to fight a shitload of turians.
And then also there are like these drone things that are everywhere.
I don't think I've heard a name for them.
I don't know that they're sentient in any way.
It seems like they're just drones.
They're little drones.
No, they're just drones.
Okay.
And so we kill a million of them.
(30:03):
And as we're killing them, we have to also deactivate all of these bombs so they don't
go off.
Really fun little, fun little mission.
I liked having like a task that I had to do while we were fighting through.
I am also like really, really pleasantly surprised with how often my, my guys do actually shoot
(30:28):
people and succeed.
Yeah.
Because I've had that experience in other shooty games where it's like, it is kind of
just on you.
They're there just to like spray.
No, yeah, they do shit.
And you can also, if you want them to do specific things, there's way there's like, you can
get them to equip specific weapons and also cast specific abilities at things.
(30:52):
I do need to play a little bit more with that part of it.
I haven't really done that.
I actually never really have, but it is a thing that's in the game.
It's similar to how in like, DAO, I guess.
I just never really went to any other character because I was like, yeah, they're fine.
They're killing guys on the road.
Like they don't need me.
(31:12):
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I do it a lot more in Inquisition than I do in Origins is like, is fuck with
the auto commands of other people.
But I do want to give it a shot so that I could like learn how to use it and just at
least give it a test run and see if I care about it.
But we kill our way through here.
(31:34):
We neutralize the threat and then we get to the beacon.
At first, Kaiden approaches it and like starts to get like sucked into it and like floats
and like looks like he's going to die.
And I pull him out and I get sucked in.
(31:59):
And then I black out.
I start having these weird like flashes, these crazy vision.
And then I pass out and then I wake up back on the Normandy.
I'm being quizzed and grilled about what happened.
Dr. Chakwas.
(32:20):
Dr. Chakwas.
Yeah.
And I say that I tell the captain that I had these visions and the captain's like, well,
we got to tell the council or whatever the government is called.
And I'm like, yeah, we're going to tell what because oh, because it turns out that
(32:40):
Saren is a specter that is like really high rank in the government.
So there's only like there's only a handful of specters and they're like galactic wide.
Essentially no law holds them.
Their thing is a way in and out of any building is just saying, oh, I'm a specter.
(33:01):
This is 007 almost like code phrase.
Nihilus and Saren both were them.
There's never been a human specter before.
So that's what Nihilus was testing you for to see if you're going to be the first ever
human specter.
Right, right, right.
That's right.
That's what it was.
And yeah.
So Captain Anderson is really stoked about it because he is like, this is a big opportunity
(33:25):
for us as humans to get like we're not on the council yet.
But if we have a human specter, it shows that we can be trusted in this galactic society
as a whole.
Yes.
And so we talk about that.
Now it's time we're going to go approach the council and we're going to tell them about
(33:48):
Saren.
We're going to tell them what he did.
We're going to tell them that he's gone completely rogue and hope that they believe us.
And then we got a really fun cut scene where it's on Saren's ship.
(34:10):
Yeah.
And we meet the matriarch who's cool as fuck already.
Matriarch is an Asari and they're cool.
Yeah, they're weird.
An Asari you said?
I don't know.
An Asari.
So Asari are interesting because they are all, every single Asari is like female presenting,
(34:32):
but they also like, there's an interesting conversation that happens in one of them where
one of your companions says, oh, that's my dad over there.
That's my like father.
And it's just a female Asari again.
And then she's like, yeah, we don't, we just like, you know, men, women, gender just don't
exist with us.
(34:52):
We're all like, we all look kind of like this and the roles are like, we take them when
we're needed.
So it's got a, they got a fun thing.
Yeah.
So the matriarch is like one of the leader of the Asari.
I believe she might be the leader of the Asari.
(35:12):
Matriarch Benizia is her full name.
She's a spiritual leader.
So she's just called the matriarch.
Yeah.
So she's on this ship with Saren.
Saren finds out that the beacon has been touched or used by a human and becomes completely
(35:36):
outraged and is like, is like straight up like, I'm going to kill that human.
I'm going to kill that human specifically.
We've I find out from the captain that Saren hates humans and like more than anyone else
in more than other Turians hate humans.
(36:01):
He hates humans.
And I also clocked.
Okay.
So there's a, we meet back.
So I have these visions when I touch the beacon, visions of, and then I, the visions are interesting
(36:22):
because like when you are having them in the cut scene where you get sucked into the beacon
and you have them, it just looks like a sort of like random assortment of flashes of images.
I the, I Dylan can't figure out from looking at them what's going on.
Later when I'm telling the captain about them, I have a couple of options, but they all kind
(36:43):
of account that the visions I have are like of our doom, essentially collectively.
And what's interesting is that earlier on, when we found that those survivors, the scientists,
the assistant was also going on about visions he had about our doom and our demise.
(37:09):
And I thought that was interesting.
Yes, yes, yes.
So I wrote that down because I, I don't know if that's a, cause he, when you meet him,
it seems like they're just, he's just cracked a little bit and, and his fellow scientist
kind of brushes it off.
Like, yeah, he's just, he's just a little cracked.
(37:30):
He's a genius and they're all kind of like this.
But he's like, you know, but he's like, no, I've seen the end.
And so I was like, oh, interesting.
During your little, your vision that you have, the vision ends with you're looking at like,
(37:51):
you're looking like the back of a sun or like something.
It's like a weird little black hole.
Then you, the Geth have landed on Eden Prime with a ship that you see that is, it looks
like a big hand that's like coming down onto Eden Prime.
And it is so obnoxiously big, people say that it is ludicrously big.
(38:13):
And they didn't know that Geth could make ships like that.
And then in the vision, the last thing you see is that ship, that ship in this weird
black hole with mothership.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So then after all that, I go, I finally get the opportunity to go like chat with everybody,
(38:35):
which I haven't really done yet.
The captain tells me that he's invited Ashley to join us on the Normandy as like a full-time
position now.
And even though I was like mean to her for surviving, I was to the captain, I was like,
yeah, she's a good soldier because she survived.
(39:00):
And that's, and it's, it's only personal when I'm being confronted directly with it.
By your, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's been fun.
So I think that's when I got, I noticed getting myself getting paragon points was when I talked
to Ashley and I then welcomed her board.
(39:21):
Very good.
And then talk to Kaden.
I don't remember anything too significant about that conversation, but, but I like him.
I talked to a couple of people around, I talked to the requisitions officer, which is interesting.
The requisitions officer is like getting you non, non-government supplies.
(39:51):
Like so you could get stuff that's not, that's not like, not totally like kosher and good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is interesting.
Also interesting, you like switch out your, your team's equipment by going to their lockers,
which I do think is fun.
(40:11):
I think it's mechanically a little annoying, but I think it's really great for flavor.
Yeah.
On the field, you can do it just like free form.
You can just kind of do it.
But it is, I do like the locker thing.
Yeah.
You're going around and it's like your shepherd is a micromanager and is like, I'm going to
change your equipment before you leave.
(40:31):
Cause I know better than you.
Could you imagine you just, you just are like, you don't use that gun anymore.
I'm not talking to you about it.
I've just taken it and there's a new one in your locker.
You open your locker and it's like, I guess I'm a big shotgun guy now.
I didn't realize it.
That's a little crazy.
Yeah.
I think that's fun.
(40:52):
I haven't gotten to talk much to the Joker yet.
I really, really want to.
I really like him already.
I want to chat with him more, but we're headed to the council where the Citadel.
Thank you.
And that's where Joker is taking us now.
We're going to make our case about Saren.
(41:15):
We're going to report Nihilus's death and we're going to hopefully make a play for me being
a specter.
And so that's kind of where we stopped and I'm like really excited to go back and play.
No, that's awesome.
I'm fucking stoked about it.
(41:37):
It's a cool opener.
It gives you enough stuff to be like, this is why you're doing this.
It's because you got weird vision touched and it's like, you're like, I guess I have
to fucking figure out what's going on.
Yeah, for sure.
I really like the opening when it refers to you as short as it is.
(42:07):
In the opening, it is Councilor Udina, Admiral Hackett, and then Captain Anderson, three
pretty major characters when it comes to the human.
So the Alliance is a human organization.
They are like the human military are called the Alliance.
(42:29):
And then there is the Galactic Council.
But Udina, Hackett, and Anderson are all pretty big players in it.
And they are all talking about you and the things that you pick as like your backstory.
They're all like, do we really think this person should do it?
So for example, I am a ruthless earthborn.
(42:51):
Oh yeah.
Actually, hang on before you get into that, I, because I, that's very important.
I need you to, I need to hear about your shepherd, like so desperately.
You need to be?
But I, yeah, I have to be.
So just one.
Okay.
Okay.
This is very fucking exciting for me, gang.
(43:19):
So I love Mass Effect.
I really do.
It's a big, it's a big game for me.
I'll actually, I'll talk about how I got into Mass Effect when, when Dil comes back, but
isn't it fun to see them excited and just like not know anything about a game?
You know, they introduced me to Mass Effect and me introducing them.
(43:41):
We had this idea halfway through Origins that it's like after Dragon Age, after the games,
we're going to play the Mass Effect franchise.
And man, it's exciting knowing a lot about it.
And then being able to show Dil this.
Who do we think Dil's going to romance?
(44:02):
In this game, there's not a huge amount of options, but I think, problem is that Garrus
is just the fucking best.
So Garrus is mine.
Spoilers for Mass Effect 2.
But Mass Effect 1, because he's in.
One.
I'm thinking Dil might go Liara.
Because Liara is really good.
(44:25):
Dil might wait till 2 and go Thane.
Can you imagine?
That would be crazy.
That would be really fun.
Oh my god, I'm excited for Mass Effect 2.
I'm so stoked to have Dil just play these games.
I'm excited to see, talking about the, talking about Joker.
About Kaiden, like in Kaiden.
(44:47):
Talking about Anderson.
Oh my god.
That's the thing that I'm excited about.
I can't talk about it.
And we can't talk about it because we need Dil's input on this stuff.
But it's fun, right?
Ugh, and the gaff.
Boys.
(45:07):
People who know Mass Effect, if you don't know Mass Effect, genuinely play with us.
Because this shit fucks.
These games are great.
Specifically 2.
I think that Mass Effect 2 is so uniquely brilliant.
That I'm like, I'm more buzzed than I could possibly comprehend when it comes to playing
(45:33):
this.
I can hear them coming back.
I love this fucking guy, man.
Hey, hero.
Hello.
Okay.
Alright, tell me about your ship.
Alright, so I'm playing Siobhan Shepherd.
Maybe.
(45:56):
So I'm playing Siobhan.
Siobhan is an Earthborn and is classified as ruthless.
They did a-
Can you remind me what Earthborn means again?
I know you told me on the phone, but.
No, no, that's okay.
So Earthborn is actually important to the story.
(46:18):
So also the class I originally picked was Engineer, but then I changed it for Vanguard
and I'll explain why.
So Earthborn is essentially just covered by Megropolis.
It's like a full city.
It's a city of a planet now.
It's very rare to see a green on Earth.
(46:40):
And Earthborn is you ran with petty gangs and criminals for a while and then eventually
you ended up getting out and escaping at 18.
Shepherd for just lore reasons is 29 in Mass Effect 1.
So I think colonists you join at 16 and then I think Earthborn and-
(47:10):
And the one where your parents are military, you join when you're 18.
So you've always been in it for at least a decade.
Ruthless is- there was a mission.
The mission was still the Skylian Blitz is what it is.
(47:31):
That you do with both Ruthless and Soul Survivor.
I think it's the same mission that you go to.
I'm not sure about the third one, but with Ruthless I was so like cold hearted and calculated
that I let most of my team die just so we won.
(47:52):
It's very much a whatever it takes.
It doesn't fucking matter as long as we win.
Did you not say that phrase at me again?
Yeah, baby.
That's why I said it because I was like it's a trigger phrase now.
No.
Whatever it takes, baby.
The reason is because I am playing- Siobhan is- she was born on Earth and literally was
(48:16):
truly like- also Earthborn is specifically your orphan.
You're an orphan kid and you just kind of grew up on the mean streets of a city.
She went through, she did just anything to survive and make money.
And then eventually figured, oh well the way that I can survive and make money is I can
join the military, went into space and then on missions was like- it was true like survivor
(48:43):
instinct.
It's like we can all struggle and might not make it or I can definitely make it.
And that's what her plan was is her being like, I can definitely make it if I make it
on my own.
The thing, the idea that I'm going with is that when it comes down to true stakes like
(49:06):
this is that she's going to Florence Hawke it a little bit and become it's my team.
When numbers start getting so big, it's like the one in five thing where it's like, oh
I have a team of five.
If one in five of us can survive, I'm making sure that I'm the one.
(49:28):
If there is a team of a hundred, my crew are going to be the one that gets through.
And she's going to be so impeccably ride or die for her team.
The reason why I switched classes is because the Mass Effect relays use an element called
(49:49):
element zero and that's what they use to do FTL travel, which is the fast than light.
In Singapore, they brought a bunch of element zero down to figure out how it works.
The element zero started infecting a bunch of people in Singapore where they started
(50:13):
getting these weird mutations and it kind of started spreading across the whole world.
And then a few years later, all of those people infected started getting biotic powers, which
is the magic system and this is biotics.
And the Vanguard has a big biotic side to it.
(50:37):
The Vanguard is like you have a shotgun and biotic powers and the thing is like, okay,
if she's earthborn, I want her to be one of the people infected with this element zero
and then she was like, oh, I have, essentially I have magic now and I'm going to go and join
the Alliance and I'm going to rise up the ranks real fast because I have magic and a
(51:00):
shotgun.
A lot of other, every single species also has biotic things because element zero is
just kind of like we, the galaxy know that, well, you get biotics by enhancing your body
with what in the Dragon Age universe ends up being lyrium.
(51:22):
It's this element zero that it's like you kind of infuse into your body.
And I wanted that for Shiv, Shivorn.
So I had her do that.
So she was pretty angry against a lot of people, but then with her little squad, she was like,
(51:42):
yo, what's up, you're my boy.
We're teammates together.
Okay, like that.
Yeah.
But because this isn't her ship at the minute, this is a ship that she's on, but this isn't
her ship.
So she's fine with a lot of people, is a bit of a dick and is like, why are you talking?
You should be working.
Like Joker in the first bit where Joker is.
Yeah, there were a lot of options like that.
(52:02):
I mean, that's fun.
Because Joker is the pilot and Joker is really excited about the facts.
He actually gets annoyed that I think he gets annoyed that Anderson says, oh, good job.
Because he's like, what I did was fucking excellent.
Actually, it was outstanding, magnificent.
I'm the best pilot that the Alliance has.
(52:25):
How dare you say good at what I did.
And I was like, hey, can you shut the fuck up and stop talking?
Actually, this doesn't matter.
This banter is ridiculous.
And he was like, all right, sorry, Captain.
I was like, yep, sorry, Commander.
I was like, yeah, that's the greatest pilot in the world.
Joker is the greatest pilot in the world.
We love Joker over here.
That's the greatest pilot in the world.
He's the best guy ever.
(52:46):
Yeah.
So I like Ashley.
Ashley is a really interesting, very, very controversial character.
But I think that she's very controversial character.
We'll learn very fast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Of course, I'm excited to find out why.
She's very racist against aliens.
(53:09):
Oh.
So it's interesting.
This is why Mass Effect is a very interesting franchise to talk about.
In things like Dragon Age, character development happens not slowly, but over the course of
a game, where people grow and are different by the end of the game.
Then if they're in another one, Cullen progresses very slowly throughout all three.
(53:31):
In this, people overcome their shit in multiple games time because they have time to grow.
And then it's like in Mass Effect 2, she's pretty fucking racist still.
And then in Mass Effect 3, she starts becoming less racist.
And it's like that's kind of her progression.
It's like it's an interesting one.
(53:53):
It is.
And I'm excited to talk about it.
Yeah, important characters of note that we meet.
Of course, it's Captain Anderson, Joker, Kaiden, Ashley.
Dr. Chakwas is very important.
She just comes up a lot in conversation.
(54:13):
We like her.
Yeah.
So I kind of want to know just like opening like...
Actually, you know what?
Do you mind?
I actually said this whilst you were gone.
I would love to just really quickly talk about how I got into Mass Effect.
Oh, yes.
(54:34):
Because you have an interesting story about getting into Dragon Age.
And I have not as interesting, but kind of weird in the same way.
No, I want to hear it.
I got into Mass Effect really late.
I got into Mass Effect about a year before Mass Effect 3 came out and the trilogy fully
closed up.
The game was announced.
(54:54):
People knew it was coming.
I was big into Rooster Teeth and Red vs. Blue at the time.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
Red vs. Blue is a machinima show that is made in Halo.
They're like, you use the game Halo to make this show.
I went to the GameStop that was on my high street and I went in with like the 40 quid
(55:18):
that I had and I was like, hey, can I...
I would like the new...
Because Halo had just been remastered.
Halo 1 had just been remastered.
I was like, I would like this.
This one guy at the store who was working there didn't know him at all.
He was like, why do you want Halo?
I was like, I'm just kind of into Red vs. Blue and it's like, you know, it's a cool sci-fi
(55:40):
adventure.
I would just like one.
He's like, would you mind if I gave my input?
I was like, yeah, what's up?
He's like, don't get Halo.
Don't get the new one.
Have you ever heard of Mass Effect?
I was like, no.
He's like, you should get Mass Effect 1 and 2.
You can get both of them for cheaper than you can the new Halo.
They are way better.
(56:01):
They are so fucking good.
I was like, okay, sure.
That sounds fine.
I don't really like first person shooters, so I was like, that sounds fun and I like
that.
So I got it.
I went home.
I put in Mass Effect 1.
It took me about six, seven months to finish Mass Effect 1.
(56:21):
I hated it.
I hated it so much.
I didn't like the combat.
I didn't like how it looked.
I didn't really get a lot of the things that were going on.
It just super wasn't my thing.
I put it down, got on with my life.
Six, seven months later, I came back to it and I had the penultimate planet, which is
(56:45):
Vermeer and then the last, the end of the game.
And then I did Vermeer.
I was like, oh, that was fucking sick.
And then I did the last mission and I was like, whoa, this is cool as fuck.
I finished the game.
I put in Mass Effect 2 and I finished Mass Effect 2 in a week.
And then like two months later, Mass Effect 3 came out and then I bought it on release
(57:06):
and I played it.
I finished the game.
I started it again.
I finished it.
I started again.
I finished it in a really crazy, like I hated Mass Effect 1.
Mass Effect 2 is one of what I genuinely think is one of the best games ever made.
And Mass Effect 3, I think is fucking awesome.
Whoa.
Crazy.
That's so cool.
And it's just because this one game employee was like, don't get Halo, get these two games
(57:32):
instead.
You can get it for cheaper than you can.
I love that.
That's so.
It's a weird fucking story.
That's such a bold move, too.
A bold move.
And I fucking, the thing is, there is a guy out there who has no memory of this interaction,
has moved on.
And I remember the moment he told me, I remember his face and him handing me Mass Effect 1
(57:56):
and 2 because he's like, I think we have ones in the back.
And then went into the back, picked up Mass Effect 1 and 2 and then brought it through.
I was like, these are some of the best games ever made.
Yeah.
Wow.
Crazy.
And I hated it for ages.
I was cursing his name.
And then after I did the back quarter of Mass Effect 1, I was like, oh, this is fucking
awesome.
Yeah.
(58:16):
Yeah.
So did you, like, playing it now, do you still hate parts of the beginning of it?
No, I think.
So what's interesting about this is I just didn't engage with it how it wanted me to
engage with it.
I got home and I wanted to play Halo.
Like I wanted to play a fast, like, that type of game.
(58:38):
Mass Effect is way slower, especially originally they had.
There's a lot of things like information in codexes that are hidden.
There's a lot of like.
At the time, the game is really slow.
Like combat is is weird because in Mass Effect 1, you don't have ammo for guns.
(59:02):
You have heat sink, which is you just you fire X amount of times and then your gun just
jams and has to cool down.
Or you can just like fire in bursts and then it will keep going down.
And I was a sniper, which is a class that I didn't like playing, which is the engineer,
ironically.
Also, I heard that if a character dies, they permanently die.
(59:24):
I thought that meant in combat.
So I spent the entirety of Mass Effect 1 without having a single squad mate dying in battle,
because whenever a squad mate dies, I would reload the game and I would play it.
I'd like reload the save and I'd play it through again because I thought if they died,
they're just dead and they stay dead.
(59:45):
And I refused to have that happen because I didn't realize it was only in story and
gang people die in this game a lot.
Your squad passes out is fucking Dragon Age.
They pass out.
They get up at the end of battle.
I didn't know that that was the case.
So whenever whenever a squad mate passed out, I revived them.
I remember giving up on that with a character called Liara.
(01:00:10):
She died after a very difficult fight in a planet that will do week after next, I think.
And I was so sick of this boss fight that I was like, just let us stay dead.
And then I finished it and she just stood back up and I was like, oh, fuck.
(01:00:31):
I have spent hours on this game.
And that's a big reason why I hated it, because I was like, if these characters are going
to die, if they like kids here in battle, I wish it was something I could fucking do
about it.
This game is also it's a little older.
It's pretty hard to get through.
Like, it's like originally it was like way harder.
(01:00:53):
Like the combat was more difficult.
It was like obscure with information.
Yeah, and in the beginning, I know it gave me an option to use some of the old.
Like the old leveling system.
Yeah, it goes from the original game goes from one to 60, whereas the legendary goes
(01:01:13):
from one to 30, but has the same point distribution as one to 60.
So instead of getting one point per level, you get three points.
Yeah, instead of getting one or two, you get like three points a level.
And it just kind of like lets you level up way faster.
Speaking of leveling up.
You can spec your character any way you want.
(01:01:35):
I have one request.
You have to.
I mean, have to get either your charm or intimidate skill to max before the planet Vermeyer, which
is the penultimate planet.
There is a huge, huge decision, not a decision.
(01:01:57):
There is a huge conversation in it.
That will only.
A really, really bad thing will happen unless you have one of those two stats max.
And it's the only thing that I think has to be preloaded in like a you have to do this.
(01:02:18):
You have to make sure this thing doesn't happen because it just like if this was a if this
was an origins, I wouldn't tell you it.
And I would just tell you it after it happened.
But because this is a trilogy and the thing comes up constantly, I need you to.
It's the only thing I'm going to manipulate in this is that I need you to get either charm
(01:02:40):
or intimidate to max before Vermeyer.
I did already put something into charm for sure.
Is that a sneezing cat?
My cat just had a fucking big sneeze in for that.
You can baby.
Just sneezing aggressively against the wall.
(01:03:00):
Woke him up.
They were right.
Yeah, you've already put some some some in.
I have.
I have.
I am curious, though.
You'll find in three weeks, you'll find out.
I know.
But maybe it'll be fun to to to lose on purpose.
(01:03:27):
Or is it truly not fun?
The thing the problem is, is normally I would agree.
And that's it's wise like any other decision.
I don't care what you do.
When I'm saying any other decision in the whole franchise, I don't care what you do.
This one, I need I kind of need you to make it.
(01:03:47):
OK, no, I just because it like and it's a thing if you want to lose, then it's like
as long as you know, that's how you get out of it, because you still have the option to
just you can be like, actually, I do want to fail this and then see how what happens
through failing it.
I don't need to get to a thing that's so integral and not have the and not have the option out.
(01:04:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's that's what it is.
And I trust you.
Yeah.
OK.
Yeah.
But yeah, excited about the game.
I'm really excited about the game.
I'm really excited to like meet these like to spend more time with these people.
(01:04:28):
I'm really excited for politics.
I'm really excited for more visions and stuff, because I feel like that's going to be a thing.
See, it seems like that's going to be a thing that happens.
And I'm excited to figure out more about who Ani is.
(01:04:48):
Yeah.
And I'm really jazzed.
I'm jazzed to be in space.
I'm jazzed to have a notebook.
Yeah, it was fun seeing us kind of.
It was fun seeing us shift in what we do, which was you.
It was you explaining going through and explaining what's happening is very exciting.
(01:05:09):
Yeah.
To me.
Yeah, it was cool thing.
So so.
Oh, no, no, you go.
Because I know what's up.
What's up?
No, no, I was going to ask, do we know what our sign off is going to be?
I don't know what I was going to be.
I'm quite nervous about it.
I hopefully we can find it kind of naturally.
Again, there's not like a really cool there's not like a cool, easy thing
(01:05:31):
through this.
That's a bit of a bummer.
There is in two and three.
I think we can just literally use the tagline of the games
because the taglines are pretty neat.
In one, though, there's there's not really.
I'm really excited for next week.
So next week, just to tell everyone where we're going and what we're doing,
(01:05:55):
let me find the.
So next week, we are going to do up to chapter three, which is no various.
So we are going to we're going to do all of the Citadel, which is going to get us most
of our crew.
We're going to pretty much our entire squad in this in the Citadel.
(01:06:18):
We're going to be a lot of fucking a lot of a lot of characters who.
I adore because you spend three full games with them.
And then we're going to afterwards go to do do do do do do.
(01:06:38):
I just want to know what the title of it is, because this game's again interesting
where you kind of get a lot of the missions at the same time and you pick.
I'm just making sure I know what.
OK, so then after we do the Citadel, we're going to go to theorem in the system.
(01:07:01):
And we're going to do we're going to finish theorem.
OK.
And then and then that's when we're going to once we finish there.
And then we're going to.
Yeah.
The exact same rules as as origins and to and Inquisition, I guess.
Yeah.
(01:07:22):
Do as much side content as you can possibly dream about.
That's all fine.
I will also make a nice little graphic like we had for Dragon Age Origins to an Inquisition.
Do as much side content as you want, except for a certain mission that I will put on it.
(01:07:45):
Because that one there's a there's a one DLC we're going to do and there is one specific
mission that we are also going to maybe not have an episode for, but I'm going to say
we're going to do these two these two planets and this mission and then we're going to do
these two planets and this mission.
But yeah, but yes.
I don't know what we want to sign off to be.
(01:08:08):
Do you have any idea, Dylan?
Is there anything calling out to you with what you know so far?
Because I've done Mass Effect kind of catchphrase.
I've also done like specter catchphrases, but there's not, which is upsetting.
Yeah.
We could do a very easy, very easy signing off, but that's kind of dull and too generic.
(01:08:32):
I need a weird one.
Yeah.
And it's a shame because all the really cool villain quotes come toward the end of the
game, unlike in Inquisition where they fucking happen almost immediately.
Okay.
(01:08:53):
If I'm allowed to pull a quote from the end of a quote, which is out of context.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the full quote, I'm not going to say who it's from, but it kind of fills in a Dragon
Age two Dragon Age Inquisition vibe of our sign-offs.
(01:09:14):
The full quote is actually no, I'm not going to do the full quote.
The quote that I'm pulling that I'm going to say that we can use a sign off is you exist
because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.
Oh yeah.
Oh fuck yeah.
Fuck yeah.
So I'm going to write this.
We're going to start off being aggressive to our audience.
(01:09:35):
Yeah.
Hey, listen, back to basics.
This is...
Back to basics.
Love to be antagonistic towards you all.
I love it.
All right.
I'm writing it down.
Okay.
Normandy.
Yeah.
(01:09:56):
Normandy.
You fucking pieces of shit.
You fucking pieces of trash.
You trash motherfuckers.
You stinky, stinky guys who we hate.
I just want to let you all know that you exist because we allow it and you will end because
(01:10:18):
we demand it.
That's pretty good.
I like that one.
That's pretty hot.
That's pretty hot.
That's a good fuck you sign off.
I like it.
Hell yeah.
Oh my God.
We're playing Mass Effect.
I'm so fucking excited.
Holy shit, bud.
Oh, yeah.
(01:10:59):
You
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