#textures were also fucked up in a different way. it was fine after a reload & the second time i played to the ending though

[annakie]

An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part Nine

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Wheren we run out of sidequests, so we head back to the Citadel already.

With the quest log pretty empty, I didn’t feel like flying around the galaxy hoping to bump into something Hackett wanted me to do already, so let’s go finish up some of those loose sidequests and pick up some more!

I didn’t grab a screenshot of this, but one of the mods (faster elevators maybe?  Or MERe?  IDK!) COMPLETELY removes the scanning component from getting on and off the ship.

I don’t remember the exact origins of this, but one tick Annakie Shepard has is... she really really fucking hates being scanned.  And it probably was because of how long the scanning bit of getting on and off the ship here took, but I used to always try to outrun it if possible, or at least put up the effort.  I’m so glad it’s not here at all.

The only acceptable scan is Chakwas scanning her for medical reasons, and even that is just barely ok.

Anyway, here we are, freshly not-scanned, heading right down to C-Sec to... oh no what’s this?

Ah.  Yes.   Mikhailovich.  Here for inspection.

One of the reasons I cheat in Paragon points is that it’s nearly impossible to ever make Mikhailovich happy unless you don’t come back to the Citadel for a very long time.  So maybe I could have gone to Noveria and done the Paragon Point Cheat, but one cheat or another, doesn’t really matter.

The Mikhailovich encounter is another one of those things that didn’t have to be in the game, but is great worldbuilding.  Not everyone agrees with the Normandy being built, or the turian design, etc.   Mikhailovich is right that some of the things we built here could have been tested in a lab, you know.  It was a huge chunk of money, but it’ll be wrong later in thinking it’s a waste.  He also again shows that people aren’t sure that working super close with the turians is a good idea, which, again, he’ll be wrong about, but it’s a good thing to see differing opinions on a lot of things.

Anyway, I like this bit not only for that reason but to see Kaidan’s salute.

Finally, after lingering at the dock for who-knows-how-long while the Admiral inspected our ship, we get down to C-Sec, ready to...

Oh what’s THIS now?

Time for another interview, this one a little more voluntary.  

Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani, Westerlund News.

She’s a character I have very mixed feelings about.

On one hand, well, I used to love to punch her out.  And now I never do.

She’s clearly digging for an angle here in her interviews.  She’s reporting for humanity, not the council races or galaxy as a whole.  But answering her diplomatically here, she’s another character who questions you and what you’re doing, but doesn’t actually step over any lines.  It’s more when you get testy with her here, she gets touchy back.

It would be a shitshow with the fanboys I think if you took out the option to hit here.  But wow that moment... didn’t sit right, especially when it was an MShep doing it but it’s not a great look for Femshep either.  Nobody should hit ANYBODY unless it’s actually necessary.  Getting your feels hurt by a few tough, even unfair questions... does not call for punching.

Especially today when we’re already getting scary close to losing freedom of the press.  Being diplomatic with her really nets the best responses in 2 and 3, as well.

And maybe if we hadn’t just gotten raked over the coals by Mikhailovich it’d be less grating to then get questioned by a reporter.  But I find it interesting how the game keeps pushing and questioning Shepard, and maybe even trying to find holes where maybe Shepard or the Alliance isn’t completely right, or could be questioned.

Damnit, Chorban and Jahleed.  Just kiss, already, neither of you are trying to kill the other!!  

I do love that Chorban figures everything out based on your scans... just like... a couple of years too late.  Anyway, I already finished all the scans, no way I’m not finishing this quest with Chorban for that sweet XP.

And YOU, using a girl with no undercover experience and putting her in Chora’s de-- what’s that?  Conrad dies if I end this quest early?  SIGH.

Also... Gideon Emery.  So you’re fine.  All is forgiven.  I’ll do your dirty work.

Helena Blake!  I DEFINITELY won’t forget to go speak to her, get back on the Normandy, do another planet quest, realize I didn’t speak to her, then go back to the Citadel just to actually pick up this quest, then pretend later on in this update that I remembered to speak to her all along!

I mean, speaking as if I were someone who hasn’t played the next two games, this is DEFINITELY SUSPICIOUS right?

I guess in a way, we did pull our gun on Conrad all along.

Just give me the damn mods.

Honestly, I love this part of the quest because you can COMPLETELY fuck up by being too goody-goody.  I have probably had to reload after mindlessly clicking paragon answers more times than I care to admit.  This time, I remembered to not obey the law.

The second reason I wanted to come back to the Citadel is that after one planetary mission, Morlan’s Iconic Armor shop (which, again, is thanks to ME1Recalibrated) sells special armor for Kaidan, that looks like his ME2 armor, so he has his own unique look.  

A picture from later, once the armor texture is loaded correctly.  (Turns out it required a restart.)

I LOVE IT.  Thank you, MERecalibrated team!  Welcome to Kaidan’s look for the rest of the game.

Let’s head up to the presidium!

Whoops, shoulda brought Ashley along.  I’m sure whatever he wanted to talk about can wait til later.

BTW, that gif isn’t sped up.  

If you don’t have the console enabled and aren’t setting your out of combat runspeed to at least 800 whenever you’re anywhere you have a lot of running to do, then consider doing so.   I’ve found 800 is the perfect amount of fast without leaving me slamming into walls constantly

The annoying thing is that every time you have a major area transition or have to reload the game, you have to do it again, but after the first time it’s 4 keystrokes.

` then up arrow, then [enter], then ` again.

Also your companions may fall behind, but that’s only an issue for the places they have ambient dialog.  So mostly I start using it on the Citadel after going everywhere once, and then most of the time on the Normandy and sidequests.

Oh let’s talk to this nice lady.  Oh no, her sister has been kidnapped, how sad!

Well, the poor woman deserves my help, I’m sure it’s all on the up-and-up.  Sure, I’ll rescue your sister!  I’m glad we have this friendly relationship that will be profitable and non-lethal forever!

You DID know that Anderson and Udina comment on each major mission afterwards, right?  It took me more playthroughs than I care to admit to discover this.

Also, this is a kind of humanizing moment for Udina here.  He tells us how the council isn’t happy that we lost the prothean ruins at Therum, then Anderson stands up for us (we love you, Space Dad), and then he actually really backs off and says in a much softer tone “I know, I know.  But we all get judged on how you behave.”

And again, we’re not meant to love how he says it, but um, Udina is right.  Everything we do has repercussions throughout the Citadel, and sometimes the Galaxy.

Poor Liara, the only one left without an iconic armor in ME1.

Also, like Tali earlier, she hilariously has lines in quests we turn in or make updates to that she has no business knowing about.  I guess she read all the questlogs while traveling back to the Citadel.

While we’re here on the Citadel, let’s take a flycam visit around to the edge of the room, shall we?

So we’re heading out, towards this building, past the Mass Relay sculpture.

What you can see as soon as you’re near it and then over it, is that that building hides the seam where the water meets map.

From just beyond it, there’s the apartment-looking building, for whatever reason you can see through the textures on the other side, leaving just the roofs/floors visible (the slats).

It took quite a while to go this far, but eventually, you can find the invisible wall where the cars spawn from, and not long after, the map ends.  The map is very curved, btw, that’s no illusion.  There’s no chance you could see this far without flycam.

Looking back, you can see the bridges in the distance, but the Relay sculpture and where Shepard is standing is very far away, quite difficult to see even if the full-sized screenshot.

I love how huge these maps are.  It makes the illusions really work and the sense of scale works BECAUSE it is actually just... that big. 

Well, back to smaller issues.

Again, a great quest not only from a memorability perspective, but a worldbuilding one.

How does religion work in this galaxy?  Well, some people still have it.  Enough that there’s laws in governing how people are able to spread that religion.  I think that the council actually enacted a fairly sensible law here -- they cannot allow zealots to take over near the seat of government, but also people should be free to worship as they please.  

I myself am a person of faith who, despite being brought up in a HIGHLY Evangelical movement, now very much believes that people should be able to worship as they choose, (or not at all!) but also that faith is a private matter and shouldn’t be forced on others.  

So yeah, the hanar is being unreasonable, but should still be spoken to with respect.  It’s good that this particular hanar takes it well.

I am honestly dying to know how the hanar deal with the absolute proof that the Enkindlers were just... people.  I mean we saw the one hanar in ME3 react to Javik, but you have to think that the religion as a whole must get shaken up a great deal after the game ends.

Also... seriously read Mass Effect: Annihilation (the quarian ark book).

Anyway, I like resolving this peacefully and getting the hanar to leave peacefully.  Calling someone a big stupid jellyfish is hilarious in the moment, but not so nice once you think about it.  

Ah, Michael and Rebekah.

I love this quest because... it’s not cut and dry.

I don’t think either of them is wrong. I think they’re facing a tough choice and they both have good points.

For a long time, though, my response has been that it’s Rebekah’s body, her choice.  

But the funny thing was, this time when I was playing, I didn’t see this as just an allegory to a woman’s right to choose.  From Michael’s POV, it’s more of an allegory to Anti-Vaxx.  Obviously back in 2007 when the game came out Anti-Vaxx wasn’t nearly as much as a concern as it is now, so I love that this small part of the game actually grew more meaningful over time.  

Yes, there’s a SMALL chance you could hurt the child from the procedure, but a greater chance of harm if you don’t.  I had a harder time choosing this time, like, oh, am I going to lean a bit more towards being pro-choice, or pro-vaxxination?  I’m pro both of those things??

I still sided with Rebekah.  Mostly because I know the kid turns out OK either way.

Well, for a couple of years, at least.

Emily!  You changed your clothes!  What’s that?  You want me to plant bugs?  Won’t someone notice?

Guess not.  Not even this bug.

I’m sad that this is the last we’ll see of Emily Wong face to face.  But hey, a good reporter, and good person.  :salute:

Kahoku... thank you for finding out about Cerberus and telling us.  The first time we hear the word I think, in the game?  

You will be avenged.

Welp time to head up to the ship and go off on some sidequ--

I mean... Uh, time to go talk to Helena Blake, OBVIOUSLY.

(Also Liara you cannot climb that wall, stahp.)

I love them having just a bad bitch like Helena with her sneaky-plan to kill her business partners so totally above the board by Shepard, but hey, she’s just a concerned citizen giving tips to law enforcement, right?  She’s awful, and she knows it, and she’s cool with it.

Well, since Ashley magically appeared in the party without me going to the Normandy AT ALL, as long as we’re here, let’s go talk to Samesh Bhatia

A great moment for Ashley, remembering her friend, and treating her husband with so much care and kindness. OBVIOUSLY we can do this very easy thing for him.

Fuck, this just got a lot more complicated.

I love this quest because it puts you between a rock and a hard place.  Again, neither side is wrong.  Samesh SHOULD have his wife’s body back.  But it IS important research.

For a long time, I didn’t give a shit about the research and would get the body back, no matter what.

But so many more lives are saved with the research.  So this time I ask him to understand, and he does.  But it never sits quite right, either way.  

As my other SciFi favorite franchise* reminds us in one of its most poignant moments...  Sometimes the needs of the many do outweigh the needs of the one.

Okay now we’re heading back to the Normandy for the first time this update, and next time, back out into space!

*Star Wars is a Space Opera, not SciFi.

[grimelords]

The hits just don’t stop coming!

My May playlist is finished and it’s only almost one month late! Everything you want and nothing you don’t from Nicki Minaj, the band that did the OC theme song and Italian Adele. What more could you ask for! 

Listen here!

Curious - Amerie: Amerie, who sang the world's greatest song 1 Thing and unfortunately never had any other good songs, surprise released a 22 minute album called 4AM Mulholland and a companion EP that was 20 minutes long called After 4AM last year. I don't know why she didn't just release one normal length album but anyway, because she's Amerie people weren't exactly eagerly awaiting a surprise release album from her so it came and went pretty quickly. This song though is really very good and sets a really nice midnight smoky tone that the whole rest of the album/EP unfortunately fails to really live up to. I also found out in my research that Amerie is also apparently a semi-influential book vlogger 'BookTuber' and last year edited a book of YA short stories where other BookTubers 'reimagined fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. She's got heaps going on.

Vipers Follow You - Amon Tobin: Amon Tobin has lost his damn mind yet again. His last album was 8 years ago and it sounded like a hardware test for a new kind of million dollar sound system. Every single type of sound and frequency was crammed into it and it felt like a sound sculture that could physically attack you rather than an album that you listened to for fun. Now his new album sounds like the direct opposite. There's no drums on it at all and it's all stripped back thick and smooth acoustic-modelled textures and it's very nice. This song is a good example of the album feel overall: not exactly ambient or laid-back, but definite night music from a guy who has gone all the way from chillout trip-hop to walls of hydraulic noise over his career and it's always such a thrill to hear people pushing forward in their sound 9 albums in.

Do The Panic - Phantom Planet: Phantom Planet who famously did the theme song for The OC have reformed and released their first new song in ten years. This isn't that song but there was a bunch of people in the comments on the Stereogum article about it saying they were and underrated band and their 2008 album Raise The Dead has bangers and guess what: they were right!

Roman Holiday - Nicki Minaj: Roman Holiday reentered the billboard charts last month because it became relevant again via people putting it in memes where they would play a sped up version of the song over sped up videos of.. anything really. It's not a very good meme but I thank god for it because otherwise I would never have learned that it's a very good song. I also think there's a very interesting lesson to be learned here about Nicki Minaj because she premiered this song at the 2012 Grammys before Roman Reloaded came out with an elaborate Exorcist routine and everyone hated this extremely weird song and extremely weird performance so it was scrapped as the first single and they put out Starships instead. Nicki Minaj seem to me like an artist that has always struggled to ride the line between pop marketability and doing their own unique thing in much the same way as Eminem, and just like Eminem she's eventually settled in to a very safe and marketable version of herself. Roman Holiday is a glimpse of the Nicki That Could Have been that just starts singing Come All Ye Faithful in the middle of a song and does the chorus in an extremely dodgy British accent. There's a good bit on the wiki for this song that quotes Jessica Hooper's Spin review that says "the pop tracks are a paying of the piper and the too-perfect, Dr. Luke-produced songs are her penance for sneaking deranged yodeling ode 'Roman Holiday' in there." More deranged yodelling odes please Nicki!

Cousins - Vampire Weekend: I've never gotten into Vampire Weekend for an unknown reason. I like every song I've heard of theirs I've just never properly sat down and listened to an album and appreciated it until Father Of The Bride this year. I have however always loved Cousins. It’s got a completely deranged riff, the drums sound like their going to catch fire and it ends with chiming bells. It’s completely off the rails and I think the video is one of my favourites ever for just simply matching the tone of the song and the performance.

Lost Your Number - Nu Shooz: On the episode of R U Talkin' R.E.M Re: Me? with Ezra Koenig they were talking about grunge and the early 90s and how music that had 'authenticity' suddently became so popular. Scott's reasoning was that by the late 80s pop music had become so incredibly vaccuous and bad that people were yearning for anything with meaning. He said 'pop was so bad, stuff like Nu Shooz' and I immediately remembered how fucking good Nu Shooz are and paused the podcast to listen to them instead. This is an absolutely great song because the lyrics never rise above linear storytelling. 'I lost your number' is not a metaphor for lost contact or leaving someone or anything like that. This whole song is about trying to call someone but you've lost the piece of paper that you wrote their phone number on. She even describes the paper like maybe you the listener have seen it around somewhere, I absolutey love it.

Paper Trail$ - Joey Bada$$: Joey Bada$$ is a goon but he has good songs sometimes. If he wasn't a famous rapper he would be working full time in reddit arguments where people rank members of the Wu-Tang Clan. He's one of these 'real hip hop' 'lyrical miracle' guys and he even goes so far as to rework C.R.E.A.M in this song to say cash RUINS everything around me :O but this beat is nice as hell and I woke up with the bit where says 'shit is really real out here' repeating in my head.

Julien - Carly Rae Jepsen: I'm really loving this new Carly Rae album. It's not as heavy on hits as Emotion obviously but it's more even overall and has a lot more to dig into I think. I just keep listening to it. This song especially is so nice because it's a great example of how you only need two chords to get something extremely funky going.

Rock Non Stop - Cassius: Cassius finally have another great song! The nearly two minute choral intro is such genius because of how suddenly and forcefully it drops you into the middle of the most boneheaded dance song I've heard in a long time. Two different silly voices going back and forth with each other saying 'rock non stop' and 'gimme the good time', who could ask for anything more?

Just as I was about to publish this I saw the news that Phillipe Zdar died which is so sad! Just as they started releasing fantastic new music! So now this song is tinged with that sort of sadness which is unfair because it’s such a fun and silly piece of music, it doesn’t deserve to hold that kind of weight.

DOLO 5 - Dolo Percussion: This Dolo Percussion album absolutely astounded me. No melody! Just drums! For an hour and a half! It's a complete world of its own and you can get totally lost in the depths of it. Every song has a completely unique palette and it never ever feels boring like percussion focused music sometimes can, it's constantly evolving in every track and never settles into anything for too long. Things just come and go so naturally it feels like actually trying to figure out the structure of these songs would be impossible. There's a few moments where there's a hint of a bassline or melody in a some of the later songs and it completely shakes you up, like seeing sunlight again after years of absolutely thriving in the dark.

Song About An Angel - Sunny Day Real Estate: The way he sings 'running behind' in this is maybe one of my favourite pieces of vocal performance ever. He just shouted himself apart. Also the Genius description of this song is one of the best emo sentences I’ve ever seen: "The song is believed to be a conversation between a guy and an angel (possibly a girl)."

This Life - Vampire Weekend: The R U Talkin' R.E.M. Re: Me? episode with Ezra really put this album into a lot more context for me, because he's talking about being influenced by The Grateful Dead - not musically exactly but in the mindset and the idea of being in a guitar band and making guitar music in 2019 which is an interesting thing to think about. Anyway this has such a Dead feel to it and I'm really interested to see what they do live because as I've heard they're really mixing up their reputation of being a band that sounds exactly like the album and really going for it instead and doing absolutely anything which is a lot more fun.

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal - of Montreal: I've been getting heavily into Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer? this month and it's just so incredible. This song especially as the centrepiece of this whole album is amazing. The mindset is so intriguing to me: absolutely going though it in the worst way possible, getting divorced and everything like that but also somehow managing to keep it twee. The sorts of things that influenced this album would turn any normal person to heavier or stranger music but somehow he manages to believe so hard in the power of twee indie pop that he pushed it to the limit and create a masterpiece.

The Cascades - Janice Scroggins: You know that tweet about riding the bus and looking out the window and pretending the music you're listening to is the soundtrack to the movie about you riding the bus? That's me except with Scott Joplin rags and pretending i'm in a silent film where I embarrass myself in front of a society lady.

The Governor - Nicolas Jaar: I think i’ve probably already had this song on a playlist like three times so I’m going to stop talking about it but here’s my favourite thing this time: It could have just ended and been fine but instead it goes to saxophone hell and that’s what makes this a 10/10 song.

The Less I Know The Better - Tame Impala: My peabrain moment this month was suddenly developing a huge obsession with this song for some reason. Have you guys heard of this band ‘Tame Impala’? I really feel like they might blow up! One of my favourite things about this song is that the top youtube comment for a long time was ‘this is like the cuck anthem’. They’re right!

New Town - Life Without Buildings: Life Without Buildings feels like indie rock from another dimension. This came out in 2000 and for some reason I can't reconcile that fact with how it sounds. It sounds like it should have come out at least 5 years later. I cannot imagine this style of vocal ever working so effectively but somehow it just does. I'm hanging on absolutely every word and feeling it so intensely when in reality she sounds like something went wrong with the recording. I just love it.

Bang Bang Bang - Mark Ronson And The Business Intl: This is a hugely underrated song and this era of Mark Ronson seems to have been totally forgotten which is unfortunate. This song, Bad Romance by Lady Gaga and OMG by Usher all came out around the same time in my memory and I remember feeling very optimistic for the direction pop seemed to be heading in. Bombastic and unique and unafraid to be structurally different but then it turned out it wasn’t really a trend at all, it was just three great songs. So who knows.

Back To The Trees - Adele H: I suddenly remembered this song I completely fell in love with last year and remembered as a moderate hit only to find that it has <1000 listens on spotify and 300 on youtube. Simply not good enough, please listen to this song! Support my friend and yours Adele H: ‘The Italian Adelian’

Out There - Studio: What’s so good about Studio is it’s technically an electronic duo but it has the feeling of a jam jam band. Their wiki article is obviously written by their management but it also describes them as an ‘afrobeat-dub-disco-indie-pop adventure’ which is very true. It’s an adventure! It just keeps moving on and on through fifty flavours of groove!

Shut Up Kiss Me - Angel Olsen: This really is maybe the best love song ever written! Because it's about standing firm and not giving up on love! Stop pretending I'm not there when it's clear I'm not going anywhere / If I'm out of sight then take another look around!

Through This Town - Mia Dyson: If you ever need an optimistic song to lay down on the floor to then here's one.

Cry Flames - Rustie: I'm on my usual shit about how good Glass Swords was and how that it's a tragedy that this never coalesced into a major movement like it should have. This is such a good sound that just kind of disappeared because vaporwave and everything overlapped with the boring parts of it and the anime chillout version became popular instead. Sad!

Real Truth (feat. Tkay Maidza) - J-E-T-S, Machinedrum and Jimmy Edgar: I love this beat so much. The sort of beat that sounds like it's playing out of a droid that got shot with a lazer and is malfunctioning.

Aute Cuture - Rosalia: me putting these lyrics through google translate: oh my god she’s right this IS on fire

Self-Immolate - King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard: King Gizz are a metal band now and they're writing the very best kind of metal songs - sci-fi about burning to death in the skies of Venus that's also a climate change parable.

Magic Arrow - Timber Timbre: Timber Timbre feel underrated to me. I never see anyone talking about them but they're one of the most consistently great bands around, I absolutely love them. There's so much space in this song, this whole style of minimal production is underutilised. It feels like if Wicked Game by Chris Isaak was about an 18th century cult leader instead which I think we can all agree is a much improved song.

Kim's Caravan - Courtney Barnett: I love this style of songwriting where you just sit on an extremely heavy bassline the whole time and have no chorus, which affords you the freedom to just get bigger and bigger and smaller as you wish. The Drones cover of River Of Tears works like this too and I think it's just masterful.

When The Movie's Over - Twin Shadow: My belief is Confess is front to back one of the greatest pop albums ever written. Please, please listen to it and be moved.

listen here