We continue our Mass Effect 1 discussion, running down characters and races, then tread briefly into the second game’s more advanced storyline. Also, we run down the week in geek, including an analysis of the latest super-awesome Avengers trailer and Black Widow’s bring-a-gun-to-a-God-fight, um, participation.
Hey, don’t be talking bad about superheroes whose power is screaming. Black Canary is a badass (and needs to be played by Yvonne Strahovski if they ever do a Justice League movie). And Morena Baccarin does an awesome job voicing her in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon.
Also, for how deep Batman’s planning goes, check out the Tower of Babel TPB or the new Justice League: Doom movie.
Think I’m out of the news now. I’ll probably have more comments when I get into the ME discussion.
Only character I talked to Jacob after his loyalty mission on was my “Sam Carter” playthrough where Sheppard romanced Kaiden and Jacob, then they both died before the end of their respective games. 
All the Ashley talk is weird to me because I played through the game quite a while ago and don’t really remember her racism. Maybe I skipped through some of her dialog, I’m not sure. Anyway, I did end up romancing her in the first game and saving her instead of Kaiden. I’m just now getting through ME2 though and when I ran into her again, she wasn’t a b**ch to me. I told her she should come help fight the collectors because we could use someone like her. She replied that she wouldn’t get involved with Cerberus because “I may not be a fan of aliens, but Cerberus takes it way over the line” or something to that effect. I was like wait, you’re “not a fan” of aliens? Is that like a “the alliance can’t trust the council” thing, or a, “I don’t like their skin color” thing? I still couldn’t remember because I only played ME1 once, and it was a long time ago. Then I felt weird because whatever prejudice she had, she apparently thought I’d gone way further by taking up with Cerberus.
She wasn’t terrible about it, but it did go beyond “look after your own” kind of racism. 50 years from now, when her kids’ kids are over for Space Thanksgiving, she’ll be the one who says something about “those aliens” and makes the whole table go silent.
The racism doesn’t ever come up in-game, IIRC. You have to go down to the bottom deck of the Normandy and talk to her a half-dozen times (throughout the course of the game. Essentially, talk to her after every large, story-driven mission) to hear them all. If you agree with her, she goes off on aliens. I you don’t, she clams up but holds firm.
Yes it was me that sent in the white gloves. I fully expect a picture of everyone wearing their white jazz hands gloves during the meetup GWC live cast. Is there enough for everyone?
Not that you get your hopes up to high. Leonard Nimoy will lend his voice for The Big Bang Theory episode so we won’t see him.
You kept referring to your red-shirted ally on Eden Prime as “Williams”
Williams was actually Ashley’s last name. and she wore pink, not red 
The poor guy who had to die so Ashley could join your team? His name was Jenkins.
5th–thanks! I knew that felt wrong. Oh Jenkins… We remember ye, um, not at all.
I hate to correct you guys on your own show (who am I kidding, I love it! 
) but the Genophage was not genocide. It only affects fertility rates, does not kill anyone. The Krogan will not go extinct form it. It was a way to allow the Krogan species to survive without wiping them out. If they were left to breed at their pre-Genophage rate there would be so many of them so fast, they would cause massive interstellar conflict.
Not saying it was the right thing to do, but it was a calculated decision by the council as a way to let them survive, and let the rest of the species of the galaxy survive. There is no elegant solution, as Mordin says in ME2, “Hard to see big picture behind pile of corpses.”
You know I’m starting to think I should listen to these at home so I can make notes because I can never remember half the things I think to say when I am listening, but to what I can remember.
First to the mars Pluto thing I belive you are technically both right and wrong in that it was an observation base on mars that lead to the discovery of a mass relay around Pluto which was Charon.
To Ashley I’ll start with the grandfather he was the commander on the ground at Shanxi or however it is spelt which was the place the first contact war happened and surrendered to the Taurians when there much larger force started orbitaly bombarding civilian areas that had his forces in them earning himself the title of only human commander to ever surrender to aliens. To the racism angle since humans and aliens are in no way related (to my knowledge) you would need to alter that to speciesist which to my mind seems a rather reasonable and logical position since one would generally care for ones own kith and kin more then others so why would you not put your own species above an alien one just ask if you had to choose between the death of all humanity or the death of all solarians asari taurians korogan etc would you really choose death of humanity? and do you think they would? of course it can go to far as cerberus shows in which the major problem is that you screw then alien over so much in taking the me first path that you no longer have the strength to stop a greater threat which is a place I don’t think Ashley falls into she just doesn’t trust them as much as humans because she knows that valuing your own is a perfectly natural and widespread mindset that is a requirement for the survival of any social species and so belies that they might come into conflict with the interests of humanity and so doesn’t want to trust them implicitly, I also found it ironic after the Ashley talk there was the Miranda bit because you know Cerberus is well known for their alien love.
Humm I wrote a bit more in that section then I thought so I’ll highlight, don’t bash Ashley she is actually a pretty reasonable person and besides I like Ashley. 
To Wrex he has to be my favourite character and on my first play he went with me everywhere once I got him mostly with Tali until I discovered what Liara could do. And when I found out that the base character bit on mass effect 2 had Wrex dead I had to go and play all of ME1 again since my save had been lost because that is just not right. I have to say to grunt I didn’t really like him he seems a bit to krogan smash to me and besides what kind of crazy scientists make the perfect krogen a non biotic.
And that seem to be all I can remember for now except I have to ask does anyone know who assigns crew quarters in ME2 and why so often they put people where they can do the most damage, the psychotic biotic in breakable engine room, the assassin in life support, the geth in the A.I core. perhaps they go for the stick a gun in some ones hand and turn your back method of discovering trustworthily people.
Great stuff, +1 for “Mr. Boombastic” reference
Agree on ME1. I recently loaded it up for the first time and am savoring the content.
Playing ME2 without ME1 back story is like watching Aliens without having seen Alien. Still, good but better together (so far at least).
OB
To the racism angle since humans and aliens are in no way related (to my knowledge) you would need to alter that to speciesist which to my mind seems a rather reasonable and logical position since one would generally care for ones own kith and kin more then others so why would you not put your own species above an alien one just ask if you had to choose between the death of all humanity or the death of all solarians asari taurians korogan etc would you really choose death of humanity?
One of the points of Mass Effect is that while different species have their differences, an enemy like the Reapers don’t see it that way. They see all organic life as a genetic mutation. To legitimately stand a chance against the Reapers, all organics (and maybe some synthetics) are going to have to stand up to them as one. I forget who said it in ME1, but when the Protheans tried to fight the Reapers, the Protheans were the only intelligent species using the Mass Relays. This time round it is different in that several species have developed space travel around the same time (within a few thousand years of each other). That is the key idea of the first game.
On the other hand, I don’t think Ashley was quite as bad as the crew made it out to be, but that’s just like… my opinion man.
Also, without giving away anything in the second game, just wait until you start questioning the rights of the Geth…
I havent listened that far into the cast yet, but in a way, yey are both right and this is actually one thing that ticks me off about this series. In ME1, Wrex claims that ‘thousands of babies are stillborn, and most don’t make it that far’ or something to that effect, but in 2, Mordin says it only effects fertility and nothing else. Its possible that Wrex is lying, or Mordin is wrong but I really wish they’d make it clear. It’s like they changed their mind about how they felt about the Genophage and had a mini retcon.
Audra,
In the cast you asked a question about when can genocide possibly be justified?
I respectfully suggest that you ask The Doctor to answer that question. He might have a thing or two to say about that.
~Shooter Out
In ME1, Wrex claims that ‘thousands of babies are stillborn, and most don’t make it that far’ or something to that effect, but in 2, Mordin says it only effects fertility and nothing else. Its possible that Wrex is lying, or Mordin is wrong but I really wish they’d make it clear. It’s like they changed their mind about how they felt about the Genophage and had a mini retcon.
I think you might be right about that. I do remember a line about “fighting over fertile females”, not sure what that means. I guess it could be a combination of unable to conceive and unable to carry to term. In any case, it’s not genocide, and Mordin makes a pretty good case for it. I was almost convinced… almost.
I just thought the fertility thing was just Mordin rationalising and putting nicer words since fertility it seems is a measure of live births of if you make more stillborn babies you are in effect reducing fertility and that sounds better then killing thousands of babies. the fertile females thing could either been simply indicating females of child bearing years or since most krogan aren’t scientists those who they belive to be fertile because they have had live births. Of course retcon or forgetting is possible but it doesn’t take much to make it work even without the fact that what any character may say may not be lies but doesn’t have to be truth since they can just be wrong.
I was just going to post the same thing
Looking back over the scenes, Mordin seems to be saying only 1 in a thousand mothers are fertile and capable of concieving children (hence the protectiveness of fertile females on the Krogan planet, and why the sterile Krogan woman went for the tests), while Wrex is claiming only one in a few thousand children survive childbirth. Neither Mordin or Wrex strikes me as being likely to lie about this, or of not knowing what the geneophage does. I’d like to see what the ME menu logs say in each game, but i’m still leaning towards retcon.
I played through Mass Effect 2 on the PS3 so I got to do the background comic that allowed me to make the important choices from ME1 and start the game that way. The nice thing about that was that I could save Wrex without having maxed out any reputation. I just recently started my second playthrough as an Adept after the crew talked them up so much. Can’t wait for my preorder copy of ME3 to show up in the mail. Lovin’ this arc a whole lot. Thanks gang!