#314: Mass Effect 1/2

One of the most surprisingly heartwarming bits of incidental dialog in ME2 is two Krogans discussing a child that one of them thinks is his.

On the other end of the spectrum is the the Turian “best friend” trying to pick up a Quarian who was on the rebound at the bar on Illium.

Both those scenes were awesome. I’m also partial to the human/turian/salarien batchelor party

I knew Williams was wrong, but I too did not remember Jenkins’ name until they mentioned him in a throwaway line early on in the 3rd game (which is AWESOME by the way). I happened to hear your show on the same day that I heard that line in the game, else I’d have probably forgotten it again :slight_smile:

From the video in ME1:
“Thousands die in stillbirth. Most never get that far.” -Wrex

Sounds like it’s a combination of both. Ugg, enough about dead Krogan kids.

I had put lots of points in charisma when I got to virmire in ME1. I didn’t even know Wrex dying was a possibility, but I just talked him down no problem. Then my xbox died and I started ME2 without a save so the Krogans told me I’d killed him anyway. :eyebrow:

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Personally I don’t know if I’d call Ashley outright ‘racist’; maybe ‘intolerant’ is a better term (and yes, there is a difference, IMO). I thought her ‘mistrust of aliens/take care of humanity first’ attitude was understandable given her personality and family history, and to be fair, there were alot of humans in the first game who shared that kind of sentiment (Navigator Pressly, for example). Keep in mind that Ashley is probably one of the most anti-Cerberus characters in the 2nd and 3rd games - if she was genuinely ‘pro-human, anti-alien’ I think she’d be more sympathetic to them. Her adamant opposition to all things Cerberus is actually the reason for her ‘acting like such a dick’ to Shepard when she meets him/her on Horizon and the tension in the beginning of Mass Effect 3.

In alot of ways I think the 1st game is about proving the value of humans to the other Citadel races (don’t forget that there’s alot of aliens who feel the same way about humans that Ashley and Pressly feel about aliens). If you have Shepard follow the Paragon route and emphasize the need for humans to work alongside the rest of the galactic community, then at least a few other humans (at least those on the Normandy) start to change their minds a bit. This is exemplified when reading Pressly’s fragmented log entries at the Normandy crash site in Mass Effect 2 - he starts off pretty well prejudiced against aliens, but by the time they launch the attack on Ilos, Shepard has more or less convinced him of the value of getting along with aliens.

Garrus is definitely my favorite character out of all three games, and Thane was one of my two favorite characters in the second game. They’re both total badasses, but they’re also very complex, compelling, deep characters. The notion of Garrus as an almost ‘rogue Turian’ who does what’s right rather than what’s expected makes him very appealing, I think, because turians in general tend to be hard for players to relate to because they’re so rigid. And I think the dichotomy of Thane as a very spiritual man whose job it is to kill was fascinating; particularly the way he thinks about what he does (his spirit being independent and his body, which does the killing, as nothing more than a tool).

I also loved Mordin as a character. I know he’s controversial to alot of people because of his outlook on science, medicine, and the genophage; personally I thought that added alot of realism to him as a person. The whole genophage issue and his attitude towards it just really made me think about it from all angles, and realize that it’s not a simple, black-and-white, one-sided issue. And he IS conflicted about it and has alot of trouble dealing with it, even though he believes that it was justified; the beauty of the type of game that Mass Effect 2 is is that it lets you decide to call him on it or agree with it while at the same time learning about it and understanding it.