Crash Defect, Part Two: Our Last, Best Hope for RPGs

So Joker says that we get to see "that taxpayer money at work" as the Normandy approaches the Citadel. I assume that he's... joking... because we'll learn that the Keepers maintain the Citadel for us.

Also, the Codex entry for the Citadel states that gravity is achieved through rotation. Wait, this is Mass Effect and we have Element Zero, which does anything we need it to, particularly relating to controlling, um, mass, and thereby gravity. Furthermore we will learn that the Reapers want civilizations to rely on the technology tree they left for them - the Reapers want you to be dependent on Mass Effect technology because they built it and they know how to defeat it. And the Citadel is a key, key part in the entire Reaper plan. So why in the fuck does the Citadel not use Mass Effect technology to simulate gravity? Because a cylindrical space station housing the galaxy's ambassadors isn't enough of a Babylon 5 reference, I guess, they have to go whole hog and make it spin too.

They borrowed so much but couldn't borrow a good ending.

Ambassador Udina of the Wandering Accent is outraged: "The Council would step in if the geth attacked a turian colony." Would it? Would it really? When Mass Effect 3 rolls around, the Reapers make a beeline for the Earth and Palaven, but they don't touch Sur'Kesh or Thessia until much later. And yet the Council does bugger-all while the turian homeworld burns. Udina: wrong about everything since 2183.

(Then again, the asari fleet, "one of the most powerful navies in the galaxy," only has 21 dreadnoughts. This is George Lucas math right here.)

There's going to be a hearing in the Citadel tower, because at some point we finally end the Chinese coronavirus from China and the Zoom calls that went with it, so that's good I guess. However, everybody was just teleconferencing, so why the formal meeting? Saren's not going to show up in person when that happens. I get that the grandeur of Shepard's Spectre induction would be somewhat diminished if it was in Udina's office instead of in the Council Chamber, but this is sloppy, lazy writing to get us there. As far as I can tell, the only reason to split the hearing up into a pre-hearing teleconference and the real deal is so that you can wander around the Presidium for a bit and break up the monotonous interminable cutscenes that permeate the next hour or so of the story. But again, why? This is a video game, not an interactive novel. The second and third games are much worse offenders in this regard, but the obnoxious pattern of dragging me through boring story shit before giving me control of my ship starts here.

At the super serious hearing we learn that the Council has stonewalled C-Sec's investigation into Saren. Then they act like C-Sec not being able to find anything is exculpatory. Ah, democracy in action. There's an unnecessary space in that previous sentence. Captain Anderson tries to introduce Shepard's vision into evidence (despite that having fuck-all to do with Saren), which may explain why he'll be piloting a desk for the rest of the series. Anyway, the Council has found no evidence linking Saren to the geth, mostly because they weren't fucking looking for any evidence. So (get ready, this will become a pattern) Shepard will have to do it himself. There are two leads: Garrus, a C-Sec agent; and Barla Von, an agent of the Shadow Broker. 

I'm Garrus Vakarian, and this is my sexy face.
Seriously, they made me a love interest in the
second game because the fans demanded it.

Garrus is prowling around the med clinic and learns from the local doctor that a quarian has information linking Saren and the geth. Well that's fucking useful! Clearly C-Sec did a bang-up job investigating Saren. Is this where all the taxpayer money Joker mentioned went? Unfortunately when I say "learns from the local doctor," what I mean is "some thugs hired by Fist show up to intimidate the doctor, Shepard spooks them, they take the doctor hostage, Garrus headshots one of the thugs with a pistol despite Garrus not being able to specialize in pistols, Shepard takes down the other thugs, and then the doctor tells you about the quarian." Shepard also has an opportunity to tell off Garrus for pulling a Dirty Harry with his pistol shot that could have hit the doctor, but seriously who takes that? That shot was solid. Siegfried Shepard is already mentally investing in a six-pack of turian beer so he can kick back and enjoy a cold one with his new best friend.

I should point out, Shepard can't enjoy that turian beer himself. Turians (and quarians) have dextro-amino acids so, to quote directly from the Mass Effect Wiki, "the food of humans, asari, or salarians (who evolved in levo-amino acid-based biospheres), will at best pass through turian systems without providing any nutrition. At worst, it will trigger an allergic reaction that can be fatal if not immediately treated." Again, Garrus is a romance option for female Shepards in the second game. 

Fun fact: if he lives through
the third game, Wrex gets
laid more than even Shepard.

We'll need to go get Wrex, but Shepard is arbitrarily limited to only having two squadmates at a time. So he decides (sensibly) to ditch Kaidan. This... is not the smartest move for squad morale. As we'll learn, Ash has a bit of a problem with aliens in generally and turians specifically. She grows out of it, but remember the First Contact War? Humans were messing around with a Mass Relay, the turians showed up and started fighting, and the local human garrison surrendered? Yeah, that garrison was led by Ash's grandfather.

Wrex warns Shepard that he will kill Fist. There's zero consequence to this beyond missing one conversation in the second game (because Shepard can't talk to ghosts until the third), and Shepard, who's kind of had it with Citadel politicking and running around gathering XP by talking to people, says "welcome aboard, big guy." 

Switching out the crew again for the assault on Fist's lair because there are a few crates in it, so we'll actually need Kaidan. We'll take Wrex along too because this can be a tough fight at lower levels and Wrex can tank an obscene number of hits. 

Foregoing the convenient fast-travel system, Our Hero enters the elevators. Ah, the Mass Effect 1 elevators. This time the conversation pertains to biotic implants. Kiddo Aleppo mentions that some L2s are crippled for life by their implants. And you thought Garrus and Wrex were unstable elements on the team.

Fist himself is a unique boss in that, like several other bosses in this game, he has a few flunkies to help him out - in his case, gun turrets - but unlike the other bosses, killing his flunkies counts as defeating him and triggers the next cutscene. And good thing too, because that bastard's wearing Heavy Colossus armor, which is either the best or second-best armor in the game depending on whether you think damage protection or shield capacity is the more important stat. Never in any first-time playthrough have I beaten Fist by shooting him down instead of his turrets. (Once you beat the game, you can send the same Shepard back through a second time. This is so you can actually beat the game on the highest difficulty settings.)

"Don't kill me, I surrender," he said. "I don't know where the quarian is, but I know where you can find her." Pardon? Huh? What? How does that work? She's headed to a back alley meeting, where Fist's men plan on killing her. Boy, it's a good thing this moron decided to betray the Shadow Broker or this plot would probably go nowhere. Tali (the quorian) would disappear into the Shadow Broker's network (as, presumably, would Wrex), Shepard would go back to the Council empty-handed, and the Reapers would win. Still a better ending than Mass Effect 3.

Wrex kills Fist, just like he said he would. Good to know he's a krogan of his word. Now it's a race to the back alley, and the game decides to be really helpful. Just outside of Fist's bar, there's a junction. One way leads to the back alley where the quorian is, while the other leads to the markets. At this point in the game, and only at this point, the door to the markets is locked. This is probably so idiot noobs (as I once was, I freely admit) don't get lost wandering the markets while the absurdly generous timer clicks down to zero.

Pictured: Tali, Tali's shotgun.
One of these is a love interest in the sequel.

Tali the quarian is being felt up by Fist's thugs, so she does the sensible thing: she chucks a grenade at them and then ducks for cover while Shepard and Wrex mop the floor with the bad guys and Kaidan watches and offers moral support. The evidence now in hand, Tali asks to come along. "You saw me in the alley, Commander. You know what I can do." Uh, no, Tali, you cannot, in fact, throw grenades in gameplay and given your insane shields (seriously, max out Tali's Electronics and Quarian Engineer skills, and she can tank everything that doesn't use shield-bypassing toxic attacks... which, oops, feature heavily on two main quests), you rarely need to duck into cover. Shepard lets her tag along anyway, because hey, she can open crates as well as Kaidan can, and she's much tankier (see what I said earlier about her shields). 

Who are the quarians? Well, they created the geth (the robot bastards who attacked Eden Prime and are being set up as the main mooks of the game) and they have ultra-weak immune systems, hence the suits that make these Space Gypsies look like Space Arabs (also, "quarian" -> "quarantine." Get it?). Despite the weak immune system, Tali is also a love interest in the sequel, because aliens are HAWT. Tali, as previously hinted, speaks in a fake Eurotrash accent that no other quarian seems to use. Not that there are other quarians in the first game. See, Tali is on her pilgrimage. Since the geth drove them off their homeworld, the quarians all live in a rag-tag fugitive fleet (never heard that one before). With resources scarce, they can't have any welfare junkies; everyone has to pull their weight, so when a quarian comes of age, they're sent off alone to find something of value and bring it back to the fleet. This is the pilgrimage, and it's what Tali is doing. She hacked a geth (she is very, very good at hacking and generally killing geth, seriously bring this girl everywhere except Feros and Noveria), and that geth's memory core contained a sound recording of Saren and Counselor Troi conspiring together about the attack on Eden Prime (score!) and the return of the Reapers (oooooooh!)

What are the Reapers? According to the geth, the Reapers were a race of sentient machines that wiped out the protheans 50,000 years ago. Now they're back to wipe out all organic life in the galaxy. We'll have to tell the Council. This will require delicate diplomacy. Let's take Wrex and Tali, both of whom come from races the Council doesn't like. I foresee zero problems.