All the best cowboys (and soldiers and engineers and genetically modified women) have daddy issues
Unexpected side effect of owning Mass Effect 2: my room is so cold that when I walk in, I half expect to see icicles hanging from the ceiling. During the winter, my room gets uncomfortably cold enough that I use a space heater to keep the temperature bearable. I learned the hard way, however, that running the heater and the XBox at the same time leads to blown fuses. Since my sister and I have been firing up the XBox pretty much nonstop the past week, that translates to a very chilly room.
Fortunately, the XBox is in the living room, so it's not like I'm spending that much time in my bedroom anyway.
After having completed nearly all of the squadmates' loyalty sidequests in ME 2 (I did nine out of ten), I noticed a recurring theme that essentially picks up where the first game left off: Major Family Issues. In ME 1, all of the squadmates except Kaidan had parental/familial issues or conflict of some kind. In ME 2, half of the squadmate-specific missions deal with strife between family members, and out of those, four of them specifically involve strained father/child relationships. Kind of makes one wonder if maybe the collective BioWare writing team has some daddy issues that need to be worked out. :p
Miranda: The Prodigal - This one was fairly unremarkable, but certainly not bad. I saw Niket's betrayal coming from a mile away, but I think that was the point--to make Miranda's shock over it all the more poignant. The whole quest did a good job at beginning to chip away at Miranda's ice-queen facade, or at least explaining the reasons behind it. I was extraordinarily creeped out by the revelation that her father essentially "grew" her out of his own DNA, and that she wasn't the first attempt. That's...sick. With a past like that, it's no wonder she's a tad frosty.
I guess my prediction that her father was the Illusive Man was wrong, though I am curious as to who her dad actually is. She described him in only the vaguest of terms, which likely means that either there'll be some big revelation about it in ME 3, or that his identity is completely irrelevant. I'm guessing probably the latter.
Jacob: The Gift of Greatness - The most exciting thing about this sidequest was its location. As soon as we landed on the planet, I recognized it as the one from this concept art, which I love. So pretty. The quest itself was ultimately one of the least memorable. I did like the mystery aspect of it, but it didn't really deliver much of a payoff. I kept waiting for some big twist or punch-in-the-gut conclusion, but it never came. On the other hand, maybe that's not a bad thing. Sometimes crappy things just happen, the people you should be able to trust just make horrific decisions, and there's no curveball that comes out of nowhere to make everything all better and tie it up with a nice neat bow. Though I suppose maybe it would have made more of an impact if Jacob's reaction to the whole mess had been slightly stronger than "OMG DAD YOU SUCK."
Garrus: An Eye for an Eye - When I first got the prompt for this mission, I thought it basically just sounded like another rendition of the Dr. Saleon sidequest in the first game; i.e., guy pisses off Garrus, guy escapes Garrus, Garrus enlists Shepard's help to hunt down guy and Kill Him Dead. And that is essentially how it unfolded, but the emotional impact and the implications for character development were much deeper this time around.
From the moment you first meet up with Garrus, you can tell he's changed in the two years since the events of the first game. The fundamentals of his character--the almost obsessive need to fight injustice, the desire to make a difference--are still the same, but he's much more hard-edged and ruthless. His recruitment mission did a fine job of illustrating the good side to that ruthlessness. Like I said in one of my earlier posts, he was essentially the alien version of Batman, taking down criminals, fighting against corruption, and so on. His loyalty sidequest, on the other hand, showed the more negative side.
It wasn't even that his motives were bad. I understood why he was so dead set on taking down Sidonis. Being betrayed by someone you trusted could drive anybody to rage, and I think that for a turian the impact would be even worse, given their huge cultural emphasis on honesty. It was just the sheer intensity of his anger that was unsettling. It reminded me of a certain other turian who had good (or at least mixed) intentions but still ended up committing all sorts of atrocities. The parallels between Garrus and Saren have been there since the first game (particularly when Garrus says of his father, "He's worried I'll turn out just like Saren"), and I think that this sidequest was intended to further them, even though Saren was never explicitly mentioned. I don't believe that Garrus would ever reach the same level of brutality as Saren, but their mindsets still have similarities. It's ironic, given how much Garrus hated Saren in the first game.
I was glad for the conversation in the car, with Shepard voicing her discomfort over the road Garrus was going down. She was saying exactly what I was thinking. (Although, that entire sequence was a little awkward with the second squadmate just sitting silently in the backseat while Shepard and Garrus have it out in the front. It rather made me think of a kid fidgeting and watching Mommy and Daddy fight.) In my first playthrough, I went ahead and let Garrus take the shot, even though I didn't like it. It was mainly because he was so hellbent on ending Sidonis that I was afraid I wouldn't get his loyalty if I didn't let him go through with it. But it definitely didn't sit right with me, so I looked up the more paragon option on YouTube. It has a much more satisfying ending in my book, and you don't lose Garrus's loyalty, either. Now that I know that, I'll definitely be taking that option in my future playthroughs.
In the end, it was definitely a good thought-provoking quest, even if it was similar to the Saleon one. And I'm a sucker for character development, so I am pleased overall.
Tali: Treason - I thought this one was the best, hands down. Not only was it a great emotional sidequest for Tali, it also continued and developed the geth/quarian conflict from the first game, and had some implications that will no doubt make an impact in ME 3. It felt both like a major story mission and a very personal sidequest all at the same time, which had to be hard to pull off.
Easily the most memorable moment for me was the scene where Shepard and Tali find Tali's dead father. Tali's reaction is just heartbreaking. Liz Sroka is so good, seriously. And I absolutely loved that the paragon interrupt was a hug, because that was exactly what I wanted to do at that particular moment.
I was actually really surprised that there was a way to not get Tali exiled from the fleet. When I saw her character preview video months ago, which revealed that she was on trial for treason, it made it sound like she was going to be exiled no matter what. I had actually assumed that she would be exiled first, and then join up with Shepard. I'm very happy to be wrong, though, and I was relieved when she was found not guilty in my game. Of course, had she been exiled she would have been more than welcome to hang out with Shepard on the Normandy for as long as she wanted, but Tali loves her people so much that I'm sure being exiled would devastate her, perhaps irreparably.
Shepard defending Tali during her trial was also awesome--as Tali put it, "it's fun watching you shout!" And dude, the quarian Admiralty Board was one recognizable voice after another. I already knew that one of them was voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo of 24 fame, but I had no idea that two others were voiced by Claudia Black and Simon Templeman! Sitting there listening to Vala Morrigan and Loghain talk about Tali was beyond surreal. Claudia Black's character sounded just like Morrigan, too--major attitude overload and everything. Seriously, why did I not know she was going to be in ME 2 as well as Dragon Age? I can't figure out why her name wasn't on the official list of celebrity voice actors that BioWare released a couple of months ago.
As for the choice between encouraging the quarians to go to war with the geth or advising them against it, I decided not to offer an opinion either way. I probably will in later playthroughs, just to see how it goes (and to see if it has an effect in ME 3), but it didn't really feel right for a human to be sticking her nose into another species' conflict.
Samara: Ardat-Yakshi - This one was... *ahem* interesting. And by "interesting" I mean awkward. Really awkward. That said, I liked that it involved no combat whatsoever. Seeing as though Shepard usually solves problems with a really big gun, it was nice to see her putting some of her other skills to effect. She's not just a mindless soldier grunt, she's got charisma to burn, and this sidequest definitely highlighted that. It was just so very weird to have to pretend to seduce Morinth, though. Not even just because of the whole "I'm straight but another woman is hitting on me" factor (although that was definitely part of it), but more just because of knowing that Morinth is a crazed and incredibly dangerous psycho. I did like the ending when Morinth finds out she's been had. The final scene between Morinth and Samara was pretty epic, and even though I have no particular attachment to Samara, it would be kind of hard not to feel sorry for a woman who's forced to kill her own daughter.
Thane: Sins of the Father - Oh, Thane. Or should I say, "Carth Onasi 2.0." The similarities between those two characters are pretty uncanny. They're both sensitive, emotional dudes whose jobs kept them away from their families for extended periods of time, they both had murdered wives, they both pursued vengeance on their wives' killers, and they both had bratty, resentful sons from whom they were estranged and needed to be reconciled. Oh, and they're both potential love interests who talk about their dead wives incessantly. (Is that supposed to be a turn-on or something? Really?)
Gentle teasing aside, I love Carth, so Thane being the alien version of him isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just a little strange that BioWare ripped itself off so obviously.
As for the sidequest itself, I really liked it in spite of its lack of originality. Like Samara's, it involved no combat at all, which is always a major plus in my book. Playing good cop/bad cop with Thane while trying to get information out of the one potty-mouthed guy was all sorts of fun. I also loved that Michael Hogan's character, Captain Bailey, had a pretty significant role. Most importantly, Thane's regret at his strained relationship with his son was palpable and touching, and I liked that I was able to help him deal with it--although, like Jacob's, I also liked that it wasn't all happily and tidily resolved at the end.
The one thing that I didn't like about it was the part where I had to run around and keep track of the turian assassination target. Dude, that was stressful. It's silly of me because it's really not that hard, but any time a little timer pops up in the corner of the screen, I go into instant panic mode. It was completely not helped by the fact that Thane kept yelling in my ear wanting updates. I just wanted Shepard to go "STFU LIZARD MAN, YOU'RE NOT HELPING THE SITUATION." And, this didn't happen in my game, but apparently if you lose track of the target and don't update Thane in time, you fail the sidequest and don't get Thane's loyalty. Double the pressure.
Legion: A House Divided - I unfortunately had so little time to spend with Legion before embarking on the suicide mission (on which he died, sob) that I really have no handle on his character at all yet. As such, I didn't really have an opinion on this mission at all. From what I've read elsewhere, Legion is actually a pretty awesome character, so I definitely want to spend more time getting to know him in a future playthrough, and hopefully then his sidequest will have a little more impact. As it was, I chose to re-write the "heretic" geth rather than destroying them, so I apparently now have an army of geth at my command? That's certainly something I wasn't expecting going into the game.
Oh, and this doesn't have anything to do with Legion's sidequest, but it's really awesome and loltastic so I'm just going to leave it right here:
Grunt: Rite of Passage - This one was my least favorite, mainly because it was almost all combat and I find Grunt boring as heck. The thing that sticks out about it the most in my mind is that it took me about five tries to kill the freakin' thresher maw, and I was playing on casual. Yikes. I know I've never been ridiculously stellar at combat, but apparently I'm more rusty than I thought I was.
Mordin: Old Blood - Like Tali's, this sidequest essentially tried to be both a personal squadmate sidequest and a mission with actual implications for the overarching story. It was definitely a good quest, but I didn't feel like it achieved the balance quite as well as Tali's. To me it felt more like a mission about the genophage and less about Mordin himself. I suppose that might be in part because salarians just process thoughts and feelings so differently from humans that it didn't have quite the same emotional resonance. That might just be me, though. In any case, the fact that there is research leading to a possible cure for the genophage should have some very interesting implications for ME 3.
Fortunately, the XBox is in the living room, so it's not like I'm spending that much time in my bedroom anyway.
After having completed nearly all of the squadmates' loyalty sidequests in ME 2 (I did nine out of ten), I noticed a recurring theme that essentially picks up where the first game left off: Major Family Issues. In ME 1, all of the squadmates except Kaidan had parental/familial issues or conflict of some kind. In ME 2, half of the squadmate-specific missions deal with strife between family members, and out of those, four of them specifically involve strained father/child relationships. Kind of makes one wonder if maybe the collective BioWare writing team has some daddy issues that need to be worked out. :p
Miranda: The Prodigal - This one was fairly unremarkable, but certainly not bad. I saw Niket's betrayal coming from a mile away, but I think that was the point--to make Miranda's shock over it all the more poignant. The whole quest did a good job at beginning to chip away at Miranda's ice-queen facade, or at least explaining the reasons behind it. I was extraordinarily creeped out by the revelation that her father essentially "grew" her out of his own DNA, and that she wasn't the first attempt. That's...sick. With a past like that, it's no wonder she's a tad frosty.
I guess my prediction that her father was the Illusive Man was wrong, though I am curious as to who her dad actually is. She described him in only the vaguest of terms, which likely means that either there'll be some big revelation about it in ME 3, or that his identity is completely irrelevant. I'm guessing probably the latter.
Jacob: The Gift of Greatness - The most exciting thing about this sidequest was its location. As soon as we landed on the planet, I recognized it as the one from this concept art, which I love. So pretty. The quest itself was ultimately one of the least memorable. I did like the mystery aspect of it, but it didn't really deliver much of a payoff. I kept waiting for some big twist or punch-in-the-gut conclusion, but it never came. On the other hand, maybe that's not a bad thing. Sometimes crappy things just happen, the people you should be able to trust just make horrific decisions, and there's no curveball that comes out of nowhere to make everything all better and tie it up with a nice neat bow. Though I suppose maybe it would have made more of an impact if Jacob's reaction to the whole mess had been slightly stronger than "OMG DAD YOU SUCK."
Garrus: An Eye for an Eye - When I first got the prompt for this mission, I thought it basically just sounded like another rendition of the Dr. Saleon sidequest in the first game; i.e., guy pisses off Garrus, guy escapes Garrus, Garrus enlists Shepard's help to hunt down guy and Kill Him Dead. And that is essentially how it unfolded, but the emotional impact and the implications for character development were much deeper this time around.
From the moment you first meet up with Garrus, you can tell he's changed in the two years since the events of the first game. The fundamentals of his character--the almost obsessive need to fight injustice, the desire to make a difference--are still the same, but he's much more hard-edged and ruthless. His recruitment mission did a fine job of illustrating the good side to that ruthlessness. Like I said in one of my earlier posts, he was essentially the alien version of Batman, taking down criminals, fighting against corruption, and so on. His loyalty sidequest, on the other hand, showed the more negative side.
It wasn't even that his motives were bad. I understood why he was so dead set on taking down Sidonis. Being betrayed by someone you trusted could drive anybody to rage, and I think that for a turian the impact would be even worse, given their huge cultural emphasis on honesty. It was just the sheer intensity of his anger that was unsettling. It reminded me of a certain other turian who had good (or at least mixed) intentions but still ended up committing all sorts of atrocities. The parallels between Garrus and Saren have been there since the first game (particularly when Garrus says of his father, "He's worried I'll turn out just like Saren"), and I think that this sidequest was intended to further them, even though Saren was never explicitly mentioned. I don't believe that Garrus would ever reach the same level of brutality as Saren, but their mindsets still have similarities. It's ironic, given how much Garrus hated Saren in the first game.
I was glad for the conversation in the car, with Shepard voicing her discomfort over the road Garrus was going down. She was saying exactly what I was thinking. (Although, that entire sequence was a little awkward with the second squadmate just sitting silently in the backseat while Shepard and Garrus have it out in the front. It rather made me think of a kid fidgeting and watching Mommy and Daddy fight.) In my first playthrough, I went ahead and let Garrus take the shot, even though I didn't like it. It was mainly because he was so hellbent on ending Sidonis that I was afraid I wouldn't get his loyalty if I didn't let him go through with it. But it definitely didn't sit right with me, so I looked up the more paragon option on YouTube. It has a much more satisfying ending in my book, and you don't lose Garrus's loyalty, either. Now that I know that, I'll definitely be taking that option in my future playthroughs.
In the end, it was definitely a good thought-provoking quest, even if it was similar to the Saleon one. And I'm a sucker for character development, so I am pleased overall.
Tali: Treason - I thought this one was the best, hands down. Not only was it a great emotional sidequest for Tali, it also continued and developed the geth/quarian conflict from the first game, and had some implications that will no doubt make an impact in ME 3. It felt both like a major story mission and a very personal sidequest all at the same time, which had to be hard to pull off.
Easily the most memorable moment for me was the scene where Shepard and Tali find Tali's dead father. Tali's reaction is just heartbreaking. Liz Sroka is so good, seriously. And I absolutely loved that the paragon interrupt was a hug, because that was exactly what I wanted to do at that particular moment.
I was actually really surprised that there was a way to not get Tali exiled from the fleet. When I saw her character preview video months ago, which revealed that she was on trial for treason, it made it sound like she was going to be exiled no matter what. I had actually assumed that she would be exiled first, and then join up with Shepard. I'm very happy to be wrong, though, and I was relieved when she was found not guilty in my game. Of course, had she been exiled she would have been more than welcome to hang out with Shepard on the Normandy for as long as she wanted, but Tali loves her people so much that I'm sure being exiled would devastate her, perhaps irreparably.
Shepard defending Tali during her trial was also awesome--as Tali put it, "it's fun watching you shout!" And dude, the quarian Admiralty Board was one recognizable voice after another. I already knew that one of them was voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo of 24 fame, but I had no idea that two others were voiced by Claudia Black and Simon Templeman! Sitting there listening to Vala Morrigan and Loghain talk about Tali was beyond surreal. Claudia Black's character sounded just like Morrigan, too--major attitude overload and everything. Seriously, why did I not know she was going to be in ME 2 as well as Dragon Age? I can't figure out why her name wasn't on the official list of celebrity voice actors that BioWare released a couple of months ago.
As for the choice between encouraging the quarians to go to war with the geth or advising them against it, I decided not to offer an opinion either way. I probably will in later playthroughs, just to see how it goes (and to see if it has an effect in ME 3), but it didn't really feel right for a human to be sticking her nose into another species' conflict.
Samara: Ardat-Yakshi - This one was... *ahem* interesting. And by "interesting" I mean awkward. Really awkward. That said, I liked that it involved no combat whatsoever. Seeing as though Shepard usually solves problems with a really big gun, it was nice to see her putting some of her other skills to effect. She's not just a mindless soldier grunt, she's got charisma to burn, and this sidequest definitely highlighted that. It was just so very weird to have to pretend to seduce Morinth, though. Not even just because of the whole "I'm straight but another woman is hitting on me" factor (although that was definitely part of it), but more just because of knowing that Morinth is a crazed and incredibly dangerous psycho. I did like the ending when Morinth finds out she's been had. The final scene between Morinth and Samara was pretty epic, and even though I have no particular attachment to Samara, it would be kind of hard not to feel sorry for a woman who's forced to kill her own daughter.
Thane: Sins of the Father - Oh, Thane. Or should I say, "Carth Onasi 2.0." The similarities between those two characters are pretty uncanny. They're both sensitive, emotional dudes whose jobs kept them away from their families for extended periods of time, they both had murdered wives, they both pursued vengeance on their wives' killers, and they both had bratty, resentful sons from whom they were estranged and needed to be reconciled. Oh, and they're both potential love interests who talk about their dead wives incessantly. (Is that supposed to be a turn-on or something? Really?)
Gentle teasing aside, I love Carth, so Thane being the alien version of him isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just a little strange that BioWare ripped itself off so obviously.
As for the sidequest itself, I really liked it in spite of its lack of originality. Like Samara's, it involved no combat at all, which is always a major plus in my book. Playing good cop/bad cop with Thane while trying to get information out of the one potty-mouthed guy was all sorts of fun. I also loved that Michael Hogan's character, Captain Bailey, had a pretty significant role. Most importantly, Thane's regret at his strained relationship with his son was palpable and touching, and I liked that I was able to help him deal with it--although, like Jacob's, I also liked that it wasn't all happily and tidily resolved at the end.
The one thing that I didn't like about it was the part where I had to run around and keep track of the turian assassination target. Dude, that was stressful. It's silly of me because it's really not that hard, but any time a little timer pops up in the corner of the screen, I go into instant panic mode. It was completely not helped by the fact that Thane kept yelling in my ear wanting updates. I just wanted Shepard to go "STFU LIZARD MAN, YOU'RE NOT HELPING THE SITUATION." And, this didn't happen in my game, but apparently if you lose track of the target and don't update Thane in time, you fail the sidequest and don't get Thane's loyalty. Double the pressure.
Legion: A House Divided - I unfortunately had so little time to spend with Legion before embarking on the suicide mission (on which he died, sob) that I really have no handle on his character at all yet. As such, I didn't really have an opinion on this mission at all. From what I've read elsewhere, Legion is actually a pretty awesome character, so I definitely want to spend more time getting to know him in a future playthrough, and hopefully then his sidequest will have a little more impact. As it was, I chose to re-write the "heretic" geth rather than destroying them, so I apparently now have an army of geth at my command? That's certainly something I wasn't expecting going into the game.
Oh, and this doesn't have anything to do with Legion's sidequest, but it's really awesome and loltastic so I'm just going to leave it right here:
Click to viewGrunt: Rite of Passage - This one was my least favorite, mainly because it was almost all combat and I find Grunt boring as heck. The thing that sticks out about it the most in my mind is that it took me about five tries to kill the freakin' thresher maw, and I was playing on casual. Yikes. I know I've never been ridiculously stellar at combat, but apparently I'm more rusty than I thought I was.
Mordin: Old Blood - Like Tali's, this sidequest essentially tried to be both a personal squadmate sidequest and a mission with actual implications for the overarching story. It was definitely a good quest, but I didn't feel like it achieved the balance quite as well as Tali's. To me it felt more like a mission about the genophage and less about Mordin himself. I suppose that might be in part because salarians just process thoughts and feelings so differently from humans that it didn't have quite the same emotional resonance. That might just be me, though. In any case, the fact that there is research leading to a possible cure for the genophage should have some very interesting implications for ME 3.