SPOILERS. SPOILY MCSPOIL OF NORTH SPOILTON LIVES HERE, OR AT LEAST HAS A SUMMER HOME HERE. Read no further if you haven’t played Mass Effect 3: Connecting to EA Servers yet and don’t want it spoiled for you. I’ve detailed below what I found to be the toughest narrative calls in the latest installment in a series famous for forcing difficult moral choices on the player. There was less of Miranda’s ass in this one so I found it easier to concentrate on the plot.
3. Cure the Krogan genophage… OR… betray the Krogans and sabotage the cure
The first real head-scratcher I ran into was on Tuchanka, the Krogan homeworld. The Krogans quite reasonably refuse to assist in the war against the Reapers until their species-neutering illness, the “genophage”, is cured by the Salarians. Shepard arranges this, but the Salarian government secretly issues Shepard with an ultimatum ‒ either he/she deceives the Krogans and sabotages the genophage cure, or he/she must face the Reapers without the help of the Salarians.
In itself, that’s a pretty easy decision. The Krogans are essentially an army of fearless giant crocodiles with shotguns, where as the Salarians are salamander scientist fannies.
The might of a traitorous salamander army is easily dismissed, yet I was tempted to screw over the Krogans. It’s fun to kick them when they’re down. The whole galaxy does it. I even came up with this brilliant joke:
A Krogan’s momma is so fat, when she goes to bed her ass Wrex the bed. They also Grunt.
I still decided to cure the Krogans in the end, though. The Salarians changed their minds and sent military support about 30 seconds after the mission ended anyway. Salarians are a tiresome, moist people.
2. Make the Geth fully self-aware… OR… allow the Quarian fleet to destroy them
The Quarians, a race of tech-experts, created the sapient artificial intelligence known as the Geth. However, the Quarians were simply too good at robots and ended up creating a near-unstoppable force of angry death-bots. Events can conspire in Mass Effect 3: Connecting to EA Servers to force you into a choice between saving either of the two races. Initially I decided to save the Quarian fleet ‒ the Geth weren’t yet sentient, so I could justify saving the sentient Quarians over them. Trouble is, when I made that decision Legion (Shepard’s special Geth friend) then asked me again, looking all sad and stuff. This made me change my weak mind. As a result, the Geth destroyed the entire Quarian civilization, which regrettably made Shepard’s Quarian buddy Tali kill herself out of sheer sorrow.
1. The final choice – Destruction, Control, Merge or Boobs? Not Boobs.
The final portion of Mass Effect 3: Connecting to EA Servers takes place on Earth, in London specifically, as the Reapers desperately attempt to find a parking space for the Citadel within the congestion zone. In the ensuing confusion, Shepard’s assembled galactic alliance connect the Crucible superweapon to the Citadel, much to the Reapers’ apparent chagrin. Said chagrin causes them to shoot Shepard and his/her ground forces square in the face with a giant laser as they charge the Citadel entry beam.
Regardless, he/she manages to board the Citadel anyway, and eventually comes face to face with the Catalyst. The Catalyst is undeniably a creepy ghost boy, who may or may not be Milo. He nonchalantly reveals what no-one was expecting all along – that the cycle of Reaper attacks every 50,000 years is an effort to prevent synthetic life from entirely eradicating organic life (by almost entirely eradicating all organic life). He gives you a choice. The first option is to destroy the Reapers and all synthetic life, the second is to take control of the Reapers yourself, and the third option is to merge synthetic and organic life.
The fourth option is to whinge on the internet about the ending not making any sense, or giving any closure, and no free blowjobs from Bioware, and so on.
I don’t care about blowjobs (I do) and so decided fairly quickly to kill all synthetic life, thus ridding the galaxy of the Reaper threat. Firstly, I did this because the little boy seemed to be trying to manipulate me into one of the other options, the spoiled ghost-brat. I bet he lives it up in his giant space castle, incessantly commanding those little Citadel crab creatures to make him Mass Effect milkshakes and build Mass Effect Scalextric courses for him.
Secondly, I did it to see the look on the poor Geth’s faces, as their brief sentient existence was torn from their desperate, clasping cybernetic claws.
You can follow Simon (@MrCuddleswick) on Twitter here and also slowly by car if you want.
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