The Dating Game

Before I start up my second playthrough of Mass Effect 2, I’m going through the original Mass Effect again. I pondered whether I wanted to do it for a week or so beforehand. With this maybe being my sixth time round, I worried that I’d lose interest very early on and just dive straight in to the newer, more improved game. I didn’t, I haven’t, I don’t think it’s possible. Mass Effect really is something special, despite its flaws, which are entirely ignorable once a player has become absorbed into the spectacular universe that unfurls around their own, lovingly created, Commander Shepard.

I’m not much of an achievement whore but I will go for the odd few if I think they’re worthy of my time. I’ll have a quick scan down the list, and if anything seems interesting or challenging I’ll go for it. I like to look back on unlocked achievements every now and then, usually noticing more than a few that are kinda special to me. Little gaming memories, that can sometimes evoke as much feeling in me as a screenshot or seeing my gamertag aside a strived for highscore on a leaderboard.

I have a decent score in Mass Effect – eight hundred and something points, and I suppose I’ll get around that sort of amount of gamerpoints from Mass Effect 2, eventually. It is a good thing I’m not a completionist as there is one achievement that I will definitely not be getting from the game, and it’s not cause its difficult, it’s because it just feels wrong.

My Shepard, Petra, is a great catch. She’s successful and independent, a true hero, saviour of the entire galaxy. Commander of a state of the art spaceship provided by an extremely well-funded and resourced organization that spent two years and a hell of a lot of money to bring her back from the dead, unchanged, and who thoroughly support every decision she makes. Life is good for Petra Shepard so I thought it was time she ‘got out there’, made friends with the crew, had a little fun and maybe found someone special.

First option was Jacob, the nice guy… so not really my type, I thought we’d chat for a bit and see how it goes then I’d move on to the next crew member. But BAM, three lines in to the conversation and my Shepard starts getting all girly and flirty and asks if Jacob has any one back on land waiting for him. Sure in the knowledege that I did not intentionally steer the conversation in this direction I put a stop to it as soon as I had a choice. ‘Just friends’ I said to Jacob and called my Shepherd a silly ho under my breath as I promptly marched her out of the room and down to the cargo bay for a chat with Jack. Now Jack may come across as easy and not much of a commitment kinda gal, but apparently she won’t sleep with just anyone, unless they’re a dude. That was her crossed off the list. Garrus was a no-go for me, he’d always been my right-hand man, reliable and wise; things had to stay professional between us. There was Samara, the hot blue alien babe, but I’d done the whole Asari thing before and wanted to experience something new and different, which made me consider Thane, the Drell assassin. Mysterious and dark, a ruthless, efficient killing-machine whose unimposing presence had kept me from realising that he was actually pretty cool.

So I started chatting him up. At first he was preoccupied, uninterested. I loved it. I helped him out with his troubled son, listened to him recount the loss of his wife and the break-down of his family and he started to fall for Shepard. He’d tenderly reach out to hold her hands across the table, gaze into her eyes and call her his ‘Si’ha’ which means ‘darling’ or ‘lover’ or ‘sweetie-pie sexy-arse’, in Drell, I forget, I was too busy making my fake vomiting face. That was it, I gave up. Where are the bad boys in this game!? You got the, no nonense bitch, Miranda, the volatile, near-naked chick, Jack, but where’s the ruggedly handsome, rough, tough, smack-talking marine type? I’d even settle for Zaeed, I guess, the mercenary, if he wasn’t something like eighty-odd years old and it were actually possible to pull him. He’s got a cool story – he’s on a revenge mission, sworn to kill the guy that shot him in the head and left him for dead, like the Bride from Kill Bill only not hawt, unless you like scars… which I do. Well stuff this rubbish achievement! I’m gonna go look up Samara’s serial-killer daughter, Morinth. I won’t get any gamerscore out of our encounter and my Shepard will likely end up dead but at least Morinth’ll show us a good time first.

Logging you out.