Mass Effect 2 Final Mission Spoilers

muttonchop wrote:

If they're building the human Reaper because they view humans as some sort of unique threat, then that's just plain silly. The only reason Shepard was able to stop Sovereign in ME1 was due to Prothean technology, and the only reason the Protheans were able to come up with that solution was because the Keepers had evolved over time and no longer responded to Reaper control. Both Shepard's team and the fleet that destroyed Sovereign included a variety of races, so humanity can't take all the credit for killing a Reaper, and the derelict Reaper in ME2 was destroyed by some other race so it's not like this is the first time a Reaper has been killed.

I suspect that the decision to make a human Reaper was largely opportunistic: a lot of humans were colonizing the Terminus systems, which are well outside Council jurisdiction. This allowed them to collect a lot of genetic material from one of the races responsible for stopping Sovereign without directly provoking the Council, which had proven itself to be a serious threat. Of course, that still doesn't explain why Soylent Galactus was human-shaped.

I suspect they're just after humans because they happened to be the only race compatible with their conversion process (it mentions early on that the Collectors have been around for ages collecting small samples of items or people from all kinds of different species, for a then unknown purpose - most likely testing compatibility with their grey goo machine).

Rat Boy wrote:

All of whom have daddy/mommy issues, if Bioware keeps its current streak going. Jeez, would it kill them to create a love interest who isn't angry at one parent/parent figure?

You mean like Ash?

On the human reaper thing and why they would pick humans instead of another race: There was enough dropping of the whole "humans are incredibly diverse genetically" thing in this game that I bet they're going to tie it in to that (assuming they tie it in to anything and don't just leave that thread hanging). Cheesy, yes. But the whole setup is cheesy as far as that goes.

Just as long as we don't get a human-reaper and a reaper-human ala Alien Resurrection...

Bioware generally has immaturity issues in their games. Half of the time their characters speak I want to slap them silly for being so damn immature. Hissy fits. Tantrums. Pouting lips. Another half of the time they keep applying some sort of a distilled early 21st century North American morality and ethics onto the whole universe.

As for the final mission, I picked Legion to go into the shaft and Samara to lead the other team. Miranda approved of my choice, but Legion ended up getting killed when trying to close the door. Then, I picked Samara to lead the second group, and she got offed. I picked Jacob to lead the survivors back to the ship, and Mordin ended up dead at the end. I took Garrus and Thane with me to the end.

Everybody had their loyalty maxed. I never revived Grunt.

During the cinematic following the defeat of the Larva, Grunt (he and Thane were my usual party) was sliding off a platform. I thought to myself, "sh*t, no way FemShep can keep a krogan from going over the edge." She did, despite the lack of plausibility. Blame it on the cybernetics, said the ME2 writer.

Legion was my Engineer, Jacob was the first Fireteam leader, and Garrus brought the survivors back. Samara was my force shield, and Miranda was the second Fireteam leader.

Everyone was loyal and everyone survived, though I lost half my crew because I did some missions before I entered the relay.

Re: Why the Collectors were targeting humans

The Reapers probably made themselves out of the strongest species in the universe every 50,000 years. That explains why the co-opted the Protheans for their own purposes, after failing to make a Prothean reaper. Also, humans are the relative new kids on the block in the ME universe, but are already the strongest species out there, and were growing awfully fast even before Shepard did her thing. So, it makes sense that the Reapers would want to use humans.

That also explains why Saren was researching a cure for the genophage. If the Krogans could expand their population, then they'd kick some human ass across the universe and back again.

The previous experiments with other races have probably been going on since before humans entered the scene.

The Asari bartender on Ilium makes some side comment that she'd been a courtesan back in the days before people forgot what Quarians look like... I don't remember the exact language, but the implication is that they are not pretty people.

re:Reapers... several times in ME2, you hear that humans are unique for their genetic variability, and the Reapers might be particularly interested in humans for that reason. Hypatian doesn't seem impressed with that idea, but it seems reasonable to me.

Besides, you're the Big Damn Hero, and you're human, so they'd probably want to figure out why you're so annoyingly successful. They're not aware of the power of infinite game reloading.

I'm not 100% sure why they picked humans, but there is one thing that is apparent to me about the choice to build another Reaper:

Their gatekeeper was destroyed.

Maybe it's as simple as deciding that Humans were "good enough" to try building another Reaper (obviously it's not a perfect scientific process, otherwise the Prothean Reaper would either have not failed or not even been tried), and it was worth the risk because they needed another Reaper to open the citadel mass relay.

Considering that it didn't seem to have taken them too long to make what they had of the Human Reaper, assuming the colony attacks had been happening for the two years Shepard was out of it, I'm betting their plan would've been to leave the Prothean Reaper behind to activate the Citadel, but it was a failure before the Reapers returned to dark space, and Sovereign remained instead.

Harbinger is slightly different from Reaper, but not dramatically.

Harbinger is a Reaper. At least, I think it is... It was controlling that Prothean overlord thingy. We see a picture of Harbinger at the end of the game.

Yeh, in the end we clearly see that there was no Reaper on the Collector`s ship - the head Collector was simply a shell taken over by Reaper remotely. Thus the "Releasing control" in the very end.

Nobody is mentioning the fact that Protheans and Humans are supposed to have the same DNA. You got that tidbit of information during the first mission on the collector ship (right before choosing your weapon specialization). I thought Bioware would use that information as a hint that the Reapers are trying to turn humans into Collectors Mk2. But instead they concoct the... ah, whatever.

But if Prothean DNA failed to make a Reaper, and humans have the same DNA as Protheans, why the frig would you be making your new Reaper from Human DNA then?

MoonDragon wrote:

Nobody is mentioning the fact that Protheans and Humans are supposed to have the same DNA. You got that tidbit of information during the first mission on the collector ship (right before choosing your weapon specialization). I thought Bioware would use that information as a hint that the Reapers are trying to turn humans into Collectors Mk2. But instead they concoct the... ah, whatever.

But if Prothean DNA failed to make a Reaper, and humans have the same DNA as Protheans, why the frig would you be making your new Reaper from Human DNA then?

You misunderstood that. Protheans and Collectors have the same DNA. The Collectors are the Protheans enslaved.

NSMike wrote:
Harbinger is slightly different from Reaper, but not dramatically.

Harbinger is a Reaper. At least, I think it is... It was controlling that Prothean overlord thingy. We see a picture of Harbinger at the end of the game.

I meant slightly different from Sovereign. Brain fart.

stevenmack wrote:

I suspect they're just after humans because they happened to be the only race compatible with their conversion process (it mentions early on that the Collectors have been around for ages collecting small samples of items or people from all kinds of different species, for a then unknown purpose - most likely testing compatibility with their grey goo machine).

Hypatian wrote:

On the human reaper thing and why they would pick humans instead of another race: There was enough dropping of the whole "humans are incredibly diverse genetically" thing in this game that I bet they're going to tie it in to that (assuming they tie it in to anything and don't just leave that thread hanging). Cheesy, yes. But the whole setup is cheesy as far as that goes.

Hypatian's angle is pretty well supported. Someone (maybe TIM?) even says that the "samples" the Collectors were after were individuals with genetic abnormalities.

NSMike wrote:

Considering that it didn't seem to have taken them too long to make what they had of the Human Reaper, assuming the colony attacks had been happening for the two years Shepard was out of it, I'm betting their plan would've been to leave the Prothean Reaper behind to activate the Citadel, but it was a failure before the Reapers returned to dark space, and Sovereign remained instead.

I think you're reading too far into things again. There's nothing to suggest they would have preferred any other Reaper besides Sovereign (except perhaps his lack of glowing eyes ). Harbinger is slightly different from Sovereign, but not dramatically. It's kind of hard to say which one came from which species and I don't know if you can extrapolate that from whichever race they were in contact with. After all, Sovereign was definitely not a turian-based Reaper.

As for the human Reaper, you say it didn't take them too long to make what they had. That may be so, but they didn't actually have much. EDI said it was in a very early stage of development, and it looked like it was about the size of the Normandy at best. That would be... maybe about the size of the tip of one of Sovereign's legs?

Malor wrote:

The Asari bartender on Ilium makes some side comment that she'd been a courtesan back in the days before people forgot what Quarians look like... I don't remember the exact language, but the implication is that they are not pretty people.

I didn't take it that way. I thought it was a wink and nudge to the player, who doesn't know what they look like either. It's not like she's saying, "people only like Quarians because they forgot how ugly they are."

NSMike wrote:

You misunderstood that. Protheans and Collectors have the same DNA. The Collectors are the Protheans enslaved.

I'm pretty sure that the first conclusion right off the bat was that Collectors are Protheans. But if you recall, they were doing genetic tests on both humans and Collectors, side by side. And if I remember correctly, after some analysis EDI tells you that Protheans and Humans have very similar DNA.

But then again it wouldn't be the first time my memory was faulty.

MoonDragon wrote:

I'm pretty sure that the first conclusion right off the bat was that Collectors are Protheans. But if you recall, they were doing genetic tests on both humans and Collectors, side by side. And if I remember correctly, after some analysis EDI tells you that Protheans and Humans have very similar DNA.

But then again it wouldn't be the first time my memory was faulty.

They definitely showed human and Collector DNA having similarities. What I read into that was that there is a certain type of genetic architecture that the Reapers look for in potential Reaper-conversion races and that humans fit that template.

Hypatian wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:

All of whom have daddy/mommy issues, if Bioware keeps its current streak going. Jeez, would it kill them to create a love interest who isn't angry at one parent/parent figure?

You mean like Ash?

Ash and Liara from the first game, definitely; Kaiden had issues with authority figures during biotic camp. This game, though, it seems like everybody's got problems. Miranda hates her clone-daddy (and let's face it, she's her dad's clone), Jacob hates his daddy, Jack hates the only "parents" she knows, Tali's got issues with her dad both dying and experimenting on the geth, and Grunt doesn't exactly like Dr. Okeer. Then there's Thane and Samara*, who have issues with their kids, and Legion having issues with the heretic geth. Then there's Mordin and what's up with his former protege, Zaeed and his former partner in the Blue Suns, and Garrus and the traitor from his merc company. And if Kelly lives through the end game, you'll find out that maybe she's got some issues going. My Shepard and Joker seemed to be the only level-headed people on the ship.

* = Anyone off Samara and take Morinth instead? My audio cut out during the fight between them so I didn't know what was up and went with Samara.

NSMike wrote:

I'm not 100% sure why they picked humans, but there is one thing that is apparent to me about the choice to build another Reaper:

Their gatekeeper was destroyed.

That was my conclusion as well. They were building Terminator (my pet named for the Human Reaper) to attack the Citadel again and open the mass relay to dark space. With the Collectors dead and the heretics (assuming you went through with it) re-assimilated by the rest of the geth, the Reapers are running out of allies. As to why the Collectors were grabbing humans, we saw the heretics turning humans into husks during ME1. Obviously the Reapers think humanity's special or at least better suited to indoctrination and conversion and that Shepard's the greatest threat to their plans. Once Shepard was declared dead, the Collectors started grabbing colonists to build Terminator. Just wish Bioware hadn't made Terminator look exactly like a human skeleton; looked kind of silly.

Sorry if I'm rehashing what's been said already, but as for getting through the suicide mission with the squad and crew surviving (or getting everyone killed), the Mass Effect Wikia says that the first thing to do in order to ensure survival is to upgrade the Normandy's weapons, shields, and armor. If you don't, you'll lose party members during the flight to the Collector base. Second is to do all the loyalty missions you can before trying to obtain the Reaper IFF; as mentioned, grabbing the IFF will start a countdown to the attack on the Normandy and Joker hobbling through the ship muttering "sh*t" left and right. If you don't immediately go through the Omega IV relay after the attack, you'll lose Kelly and a bunch of the crew and from what I've read, Kelly's definitely worth keeping around. Take care of the loyalty missions (yes, even Zaeed's), grab the IFF, do Legion's loyalty mission, try to land somewhere else, save the Normandy, head to the relay. If you don't do all of the loyalty missions, it'll result in people dying during the suicide mission. I botched Thane's loyalty mission and he ended up dead trying to guard the door.

The following isn't a 100% verified by the ME wiki people, but based on what I saw during my playthrough, it's probably true. Here's the ideal assignments during the suicide mission:

Duct infiltration: Legion or Tali will work; Jacob, Mordin, or Garrus won't (the last I can verify).
Fire team leader: Garrus, Miranda, or Jacob will work; anyone else won't at least according to the wiki.

Biotic barrier person: Samara/Morinth or Jack will work; Miranda, Thane, or Jacob won't. I used Miranda and her barrier failed just before we reached the door, resulting in Legion getting killed.
Fire team leader: Garrus, Miranda, or Jacob. You're probably better off using the person who led the first team unless you need to change up your squad.

Final squad: Loyal party members. Normal ones will get killed by the falling debris.
Escort for Normandy crew: A loyal party member. Anyone else will result in the crew getting killed.
The rest: Don't have any choice here, though as I said, it appears that non-loyal party members die trying to hold the line.

Now, if you don't do any of the above, all your party members die, leaving Joker being the only one to try to catch Shepard after he jumps. Joker can't hold on and Shepard plunges to his death. Again, sorry if I'm skimming.

I'm eager to fire this up again (moreso to get the squad through the endgame alive and to get into Miranda's space suit), but I can't decide if I want to reuse my soldier or import my infiltrator from ME1. IIRC, the infiltrator had almost exactly the opposite choices that my soldier had save for shacking up with Liara. I did read somewhere that supposedly "cheating" on your ME1 significant other with someone else could have an impact on ME3 and considering what a psycho Liara's turned into, things could get ugly.

Finished last night and lost one of my squad, but no crew. I didn't catch the line of dialog for choosing the second fire time, saw the word "diversion" on the screen for it when selecting its leader and thought a big tough Grunt was what was called for. Yeah, he didn't make it.

I used Garrus for the first fire team, Legion for tech, Samara as bioshield, Jacob to lead the crew back to the Normandy, and had Tali and Miranda with me for the final assault. No one else (including Mordin) died.

Rat Boy wrote:

Anyone off Samara and take Morinth instead? My audio cut out during the fight between them so I didn't know what was up and went with Samara.

I'm trying a quick playthrough to get the Geth Pulse Rifle and some other stuff. I'm going to try to get Morinth to unlock her special ability, then I'll do a THIRD playthrough (for keeps!).

Well, it seems that Garrus is the one that most people pick for the fire teams. Makes sense, considering how well he was doing on Omega before he was betrayed. It was a logical choice. Actually, that goes for most of the choices, which I liked. It was like the game was making sure you paid attention while you were playing... I can guess that those who don't really care for the backstories will lose a lot of people. Aside from the escort decision, that one wasn't quite as clear. I had to think that one out a bit more, but I figured having an extra doctor with the crew might be beneficial.

MoonDragon wrote:

As for the final mission, I picked Legion to go into the shaft and Samara to lead the other team. Miranda approved of my choice, but Legion ended up getting killed when trying to close the door. Then, I picked Samara to lead the second group, and she got offed. I picked Jacob to lead the survivors back to the ship, and Mordin ended up dead at the end. I took Garrus and Thane with me to the end.

Yeah, Samara is a poor choice for squad leader. That's why both Legion and Mordin died. I *almost* went with her for squad leader before deciding she was probably a bad choice simply because she's been essentially working alone for hundreds of years

Fxeni wrote:

Well, it seems that Garrus is the one that most people pick for the fire teams. Makes sense, considering how well he was doing on Omega before he was betrayed. It was a logical choice. Actually, that goes for most of the choices, which I liked. It was like the game was making sure you paid attention while you were playing... I can guess that those who don't really care for the backstories will lose a lot of people. Aside from the escort decision, that one wasn't quite as clear. I had to think that one out a bit more, but I figured having an extra doctor with the crew might be beneficial.

The only problem I had with that was picking the person to go into the ventilation shaft. I picked Thane, thinking, you know, that he'd be able to actually get through the shaft, where as Tali or Legion would have problems. I understand that Thane lacks the tech ability to close the door quickly enough, but felt like they ignored the first part of the mission.

I'm surprised that nobody else seemed to have chosen Miranda as the fire team leader. To me it seemed an obvious choice considering that her specialty skill was as a Cerberus officer and she had group bonuses. I sent Legion up the tube, had Garrus escort the rescued crew, used Jack as the biotic shield, and kept Grunt and Samara with me for the final fight.

Everything went fine except that Morinth managed to get himself killed somehow. Everyone was loyal, and no obvious mistakes. I'm gathering from other reading that Morinth is somewhat of a weak link and the only good ways to guarantee his survival are to send him back with the abductees or keep him with you at all times.

Having Grunt along when the platforms collapse is amusing, he ends up being the one that slides off and needs to be rescued. Shepard's bionic implants must be really good to pull a Krogan up with one arm!

Elycion wrote:

Everything went fine except that Morinth managed to get himself killed somehow. Everyone was loyal, and no obvious mistakes. I'm gathering from other reading that Morinth is somewhat of a weak link and the only good ways to guarantee his survival are to send him back with the abductees or keep him with you at all times.

I think you mean Mordin, since Morinth is female. But I don't get the weak link talk. I've run the endgame three times now and he's been fine every time as long as I pick a good squad leader. I haven't had him die yet and I still haven't sent him out with the crew.

Elycion wrote:

I'm surprised that nobody else seemed to have chosen Miranda as the fire team leader. To me it seemed an obvious choice considering that her specialty skill was as a Cerberus officer and she had group bonuses.

I liked keeping her with me because she had abilities that worked against both Shields and Armor or Biotic barriers. She's not really the strongest of any of the characters, but she's fairly versatile. And I liked having those group bonuses with me.

I'm surprised that nobody else seemed to have chosen Miranda as the fire team leader. To me it seemed an obvious choice considering that her specialty skill was as a Cerberus officer and she had group bonuses. I sent Legion up the tube, had Garrus escort the rescued crew, used Jack as the biotic shield, and kept Grunt and Samara with me for the final fight.

I picked her both times they needed a leader. Everyone lived.

Thin_J wrote:
Elycion wrote:

I'm surprised that nobody else seemed to have chosen Miranda as the fire team leader. To me it seemed an obvious choice considering that her specialty skill was as a Cerberus officer and she had group bonuses.

I liked keeping her with me because she had abilities that worked against both Shields and Armor or Biotic barriers. She's not really the strongest of any of the characters, but she's fairly versatile. And I liked having those group bonuses with me.

Apart from when she led the two other teams on the Collector Base I took her everywhere for that very reason and based on the radio chatter they were kicking arse with no casualties. She's not going to defeat the reapers on her own but I like the way she makes the team stronger. Her Warp skill is a great damage booster, particularly when you use it to detonate another biotic's Pull or Singularity. Also, she wears lingerie. And it's magnificent. If Mordin survives and you choose to continue the game, you and he have an interesting talk about your relationship with Miranda. I won't say any more than that because even in a spoiler thread some things shouldn't be spoiled.

Lastly, she's voiced by an Australian actress using her native accent on the international stage, which is so very rare that I feel almost compelled to use her. North Americans might not truly appreciate this but it was a great surprise when I first heard her and even now a continuing pleasure. I know it sounds silly but it's true none the less.

spankyboy wrote:

Lastly, she's voiced by an Australian actress using her native accent on the international stage, which is so very rare that I feel almost compelled to use her. North Americans might not truly appreciate this but it was a great surprise when I first heard her and even now a continuing pleasure. I know it sounds silly but it's true none the less.

She's one of those actresses who sounds sexier in her native accent than the forced American one on TV. Anna Torv of Fringe is another good example.

Elycion wrote:

I'm surprised that nobody else seemed to have chosen Miranda as the fire team leader. To me it seemed an obvious choice considering that her specialty skill was as a Cerberus officer and she had group bonuses. I sent Legion up the tube, had Garrus escort the rescued crew, used Jack as the biotic shield, and kept Grunt and Samara with me for the final fight.

I picked her both times I needed a leader for the other team. I almost didn't, because I liked having her in my group, but she did seem like the logical choice to lead the other teams. I really liked that about the end mission, it forced you to look at your team objectively and know what roles would be best for them. I didn't really want to send Tali into the the shaft because I didn't want to lose her, but at the same time, she was the logical person to send in. Used Samara as my biotic shield, since it called for a powerful biotic user and I had sent Jack back with the survivors. I kept Miranda and Mordin with me for the final fight, just because they had been my go to team the whole game. The combination of Warp, Overload, and Incinerate is great.

The whole end sequence was great, I'm curious to see how they will expand on that idea in ME3. Maybe with more choices early on and throughout the game that determine who ultimately survives at the end. It would also be interesting if you could lose people at any time and not just at the end, keep you on your toes throughout the whole game.

Kosars wrote:

The whole end sequence was great, I'm curious to see how they will expand on that idea in ME3. Maybe with more choices early on and throughout the game that determine who ultimately survives at the end. It would also be interesting if you could lose people at any time and not just at the end, keep you on your toes throughout the whole game.

I'm wondering what they'll do with the DLC aside from the forthcoming Hammerhead vehicle. Revisit places from ME1 like Noveria and Feros? Take part in quests with old companions like Wrex, Liara, and Ashley/Kaidan? Oh, and when I started over with my Infiltrator Shepard, apparently I sacrificed Ash on Virmire. Guess I only did her during my very first playthrough and never gave her a second thought. Oh well; I'm hoping for a Miranda/Liara catfight (and according to the recent comic book, they know each other) in either the DLC or ME3.

I know Miranda's a great and useful character. I still can't stand her. Can't stand her smug, weird-lookin' face.

By the way, check this out:

IMAGE(http://firsthour.net/screenshots/mass-effect-galaxy/mass-effect-galaxy-jacob-miranda-conversation.jpg)

That's Jacob and Miranda from Mass Effect Galaxy. Now I know the cartoon style wouldn't translate perfectly, but how come we couldn't get the same DESIGN for those two?