Mass Effect 2 Final Mission Spoilers

I'm trying to figure out why my Mordin died. I had Tali in the vent, Jacob leading the first squad. Samara as the biotic, Miranda leading the second squad. Thane took everyone back to the ship. Then for the final battle, I had Miranda and Grunt with me. All ship upgrades. What did I do wrong?

Minarchist wrote:

I'm trying to figure out why my Mordin died. I had Tali in the vent, Jacob leading the first squad. Samara as the biotic, Miranda leading the second squad. Thane took everyone back to the ship. Then for the final battle, I had Miranda and Grunt with me. All ship upgrades. What did I do wrong?

Have Mordin bring everyone back to the ship, not Thane.

For the final battle, have Legion, Grunt, and Zaeed stay with the defenders to hold the door, because they are considered to have high "defense" ratings.

Finally got my screenshots uploaded.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qhstone...

IMAGE(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4100/4814396496_4f1e36bdba_b.jpg)

I went back to an earlier save from the IFF mission, got Legion loyal, and finished the game with no crew lost. I also brought the Cain this time and, with the power cells dropped by Harbinger, I was able to fire off two shots at the reapinator.

Was the Game Informer flowchart posted? I'd check but the thread's 31 pages.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I also brought the Cain this time and, with the power cells dropped by Harbinger, I was able to fire off two shots at the reapinator.

Wait, what? I never realised that. I'll have to... uhh... test it out.

SocialChameleon wrote:

Was the Game Informer flowchart posted? I'd check but the thread's 31 pages.

It's in there somewhere.

Scratched wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

I also brought the Cain this time and, with the power cells dropped by Harbinger, I was able to fire off two shots at the reapinator.

Wait, what? I never realised that. I'll have to... uhh... test it out.

I didn't notice it my first time through because the Harbinger tends to be up near the front so generally when he dies you won't see what he dropped. But I'd read on the wiki that he drops power cells and sure enough, he does. Nuke, pot shots at the eyes until I killed the Harbinger a couple times, then nuke again. The fight went much faster.

So I'm on my first runthrough of the final mission and I sent legion through the vents (i already did his loyalty mission) and he still died gah. I guess I'll try sending tali through next time. Does it matter if your 1st fire team leader is loyal because I had Miranda there but she isn't loyal.

bilbodiaz wrote:

Does it matter if your 1st fire team leader is loyal because I had Miranda there but she isn't loyal.

It does matter.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
bilbodiaz wrote:

Does it matter if your 1st fire team leader is loyal because I had Miranda there but she isn't loyal.

It does matter.

K thanks. That would make sense why legion got shot in the face then.

I had a full set of loyalties going in (no DLC characters, though) - Tali made it through the vent; Thane went back with Dr. Chakwas and survived; Grunt led the fire team while Jack held back the swarm; unfortunately, Grunt didn't make it. Finally, Mordin died during the flight back to the ship.

bilbodiaz wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:
bilbodiaz wrote:

Does it matter if your 1st fire team leader is loyal because I had Miranda there but she isn't loyal.

It does matter.

K thanks. That would make sense why legion got shot in the face then.

Yeah, a disloyal character means someone will die. It doesn't always mean they will.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Yeah, a disloyal character means someone will die. It doesn't always mean they will.

Yea i totally understood it as whoever wasn't loyal would die. I should definitely start paying more attention to warnings and suggestions.

The system for the final mission is intentionally designed to be difficult to get the optimal outcome. Once you know how it works it makes some sense, but without that prior knowledge it's easy to get a bunch of squad mates killed. The warnings and suggestions are there, but there's also misinformation that can confuse you.

Personally I don't think it worked too well the way they implemented it, but I think something like this is better than always telegraphing to the player the best possible path.

Finally finished the game off last night, and thought it was great - until the last five minutes when you get back to the normandy. When the Illusive man presented the option to keep the station, I thought it was an interesting little moral dilemma, essentially equivalent to the issue of whether doctors should use any of the findings of the research performed by the nazis in the second world war. I was playing Shepard as a pragmatic Paragon (e.g. paragon maxed but told Mordin to destroy the genophage data), so figured it was only sensible to keep the station given that the reapers were coming and every resource would be necessary to fight them. The station itself had a terrible past, but keeping it could help save the lives of billions.

I had two major problems with what happened next.

1) In the debriefing, the Illusive Man went from being a slightly cold-blooded pragmatist who was ultimately responsible for stopping the collectors to a moustache-twirling caricature of a villain. The earlier conversations with him had given me the impression that he may have been tough and a bit ruthless, but ultimately acting for the greater good, just with a priority on humans. the way that final cutscene plays out makes it seem like he's going to wind up creating an army of reapers under his control and using them to enslave the galaxy or something equally silly. I guess my problem here is that it seemed like the "Cerberus = bad" thing had been mentioned in the form of Tali etc. having reservations about joining the crew, but never really seemed to manifest as more than them being humanocentric. As a result, TIM's sudden metamorphosis seemed really out of character.

2) Everyone in the team disagreed with the decision. Most of the dilemmas in the game seemed to be a choice between two sides that were valid to some extent, and it had seemed to me that the station was another one: distasteful, but pragmatic. I figured that some of the team would agree (it being essentially the same choice that Mordin originally made with the genophage), some would disagree, and the remainder would be neutral. Since it turned out the choice was actually "Do we give the space KKK the greatest technological advance since the mass effect relays?", everyone told me off, even the damn Cerberus people!

As it was, though, I felt like I didn't make a tough decision to resolve a dilemma, I just chose the "wrong" option from the designers POV, which seemed a bit out of tone with the rest of the game. Contrast with the ethical dilemma at the end of Dragon Age:

Spoiler:

Allowing Morrigan to get pregnant is ethically uncertain but has a clear benefit, giving the tech to evil Cerberus smacks of being both unethical and creating a greater threat.

. My understanding is that the Renegade/Paragon thing is meant to get around the normal good/evil silliness in RPGs (I will save the world... for evil!), instead being two methods of being "good". it doesn't seem like even a heavily renegade Shepard would plausibly give the station to Cerberus if he knew what you're apparently meant to have known about them.

Ultimately, I guess my problem comes down to a combination of feeling like I hadn't received the impression of Cerberus that I was meant to get, and the choice about the station seeming badly designed - not really being meant to be a meaningful choice, but one with a correct and incorrect answer.

...not that I'm irritated by it or anything.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I think that those abilities unlock based on profile rather than logical continuity so it shouldn't be a problem. I hope.

Yep, once you've unlocked an ability on a profile, it's yours for any future characters on that profile.

Sonicator wrote:

In the debriefing, the Illusive Man went from being a slightly cold-blooded pragmatist who was ultimately responsible for stopping the collectors to a moustache-twirling caricature of a villain. The earlier conversations with him had given me the impression that he may have been tough and a bit ruthless, but ultimately acting for the greater good, just with a priority on humans. the way that final cutscene plays out makes it seem like he's going to wind up creating an army of reapers under his control and using them to enslave the galaxy or something equally silly. I guess my problem here is that it seemed like the "Cerberus = bad" thing had been mentioned in the form of Tali etc. having reservations about joining the crew, but never really seemed to manifest as more than them being humanocentric. As a result, TIM's sudden metamorphosis seemed really out of character.

Anthropocentric.

By the way, in your spoiler I thought you said "Mordin," which is just kind of gross.

If you look at it the way you are then you're right. Thing is, you're making a lot of assumptions. TIM never said he was going to make a swarm of reapers. Don't you agree that knowing precisely how a reaper is made would be really, really useful? They also aren't the "Space-KKK" as Kelly so helpfully explains, should you ask. I don't think that how TIM acted was really out of character, especially since I never trusted him all along. His usual calm trust could be nothing more than an act of diplomacy since he knows he couldn't control Shepard even if he tried. Then when you either need to completely save or completely destroy something he views as unique and critically important, he isn't necessarily going to trust Shepard's judgment. Especially if he thinks it'll doom humanity.

I don't think it's out of character at all. Instead, it shows that he has some depth other than playing narrator. If he had no strong opinions then he'd just revive you, build you an insanely expensive and advanced ship, and then send you on your merry way with no strings attached (except that you've got to take Miranda off his hands).

If you're worried about continuity then they already completely rewrote Cerberus for ME2. Every time there's some suggestion that Cerberus did something ugly, someone needs to chime in with, "these guys went rogue, they weren't really Cerberus!" You're upset that they went from a neutral organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of humans to wondering if hey, maybe killing millions of people isn't so bad if you get some neat robot spaceships out of it. What about how they went from being a vicious and cruel terrorist cell to said neutral organization?

Maybe I made a different choice but my crew didn't beat me up over my choice very much. I recall some grumblings about what we might have learned or if we might regret it, but in the end everyone seemed to understand why I did what I did.

Sonicator wrote:

2) Everyone in the team disagreed with the decision. Most of the dilemmas in the game seemed to be a choice between two sides that were valid to some extent, and it had seemed to me that the station was another one: distasteful, but pragmatic. I figured that some of the team would agree (it being essentially the same choice that Mordin originally made with the genophage), some would disagree, and the remainder would be neutral. Since it turned out the choice was actually "Do we give the space KKK the greatest technological advance since the mass effect relays?", everyone told me off, even the damn Cerberus people!

It felt to me that even Jacob & Miranda are disillusioned about Cerberus by the end of the story, at least they were in my game. Jacob always seemed to consider them a means to an end. And of course, none of the rest of the crew were all that happy about Cerberus to begin with.

LobsterMobster wrote:

If you look at it the way you are then you're right. Thing is, you're making a lot of assumptions. TIM never said he was going to make a swarm of reapers. Don't you agree that knowing precisely how a reaper is made would be really, really useful? They also aren't the "Space-KKK" as Kelly so helpfully explains, should you ask. I don't think that how TIM acted was really out of character, especially since I never trusted him all along. His usual calm trust could be nothing more than an act of diplomacy since he knows he couldn't control Shepard even if he tried. Then when you either need to completely save or completely destroy something he views as unique and critically important, he isn't necessarily going to trust Shepard's judgment. Especially if he thinks it'll doom humanity.

The main reason that I was irritated is that your explanation was exactly how I was seeing things playing out up until that last conversation with TIM, and then he went all glowing red/evil smirk. I was aware of the risk in retaining the tech given neither TIM nor Cerberus could be entirely trusted, but he seemed to be only one step away from an evil cackle to me.

I don't think it's out of character at all. Instead, it shows that he has some depth other than playing narrator. If he had no strong opinions then he'd just revive you, build you an insanely expensive and advanced ship, and then send you on your merry way with no strings attached (except that you've got to take Miranda off his hands).

Seemed to me that he had been like that in the past. If there was a bit more meaningful argument with him (other than "You're not the boss of me!" posturing by Shepard) over the course of the game, I would've been fine with it.

If you're worried about continuity then they already completely rewrote Cerberus for ME2. Every time there's some suggestion that Cerberus did something ugly, someone needs to chime in with, "these guys went rogue, they weren't really Cerberus!" You're upset that they went from a neutral organization dedicated to the protection and promotion of humans to wondering if hey, maybe killing millions of people isn't so bad if you get some neat robot spaceships out of it. What about how they went from being a vicious and cruel terrorist cell to said neutral organization?

Ha, fair point.

Maybe I made a different choice but my crew didn't beat me up over my choice very much. I recall some grumblings about what we might have learned or if we might regret it, but in the end everyone seemed to understand why I did what I did.
Quintin_Stone wrote:

It felt to me that even Jacob & Miranda are disillusioned about Cerberus by the end of the story, at least they were in my game. Jacob always seemed to consider them a means to an end. And of course, none of the rest of the crew were all that happy about Cerberus to begin with.

You guys are probably right on that front - I was probably just being a bit touchy about it after the conversation with TIM.

It still feels like the game was treating it as the "wrong" choice to make there, though, which doesn't sit well with me. Not Renegade or even Evil, just wrong.

It is wrong, from a strictly pragmatic perspective. Taking anything made with Reaper tech at this point in the game is wrong. As Sovereign himself says, by leaving their technology behind, the Reapers ensure that galactic life grows according to the ways they are familiar with. You cannot beat the Reapers with numbers or with power. It has to be with tech, and you can't do that if you spend your time reverse-engineering tech they already know how to deal with.

In essence, that base is just another Mass Relay, beckoning you to follow the tech path the Reapers already know how to disable.

Destroying the base forces everyone to come up with something else in order to combat the Reapers, and that's a good thing because it's the only chance organic life has got.

That made me do a genuine double-take - I hadn't considered that aspect at all. I only saw the point of the base as trying to understand how the reapers themselves work, but you're right about the tech.

In fact, now that I think about it that was the part of what Legion was getting at after the mission.

My brain must be even more fried than I thought!

There is no future with the Reapers. We must build our own future. The Geth had the right idea from the start.

LarryC wrote:

It is wrong, from a strictly pragmatic perspective. Taking anything made with Reaper tech at this point in the game is wrong. As Sovereign himself says, by leaving their technology behind, the Reapers ensure that galactic life grows according to the ways they are familiar with. You cannot beat the Reapers with numbers or with power. It has to be with tech, and you can't do that if you spend your time reverse-engineering tech they already know how to deal with.

In essence, that base is just another Mass Relay, beckoning you to follow the tech path the Reapers already know how to disable.

Destroying the base forces everyone to come up with something else in order to combat the Reapers, and that's a good thing because it's the only chance organic life has got.

Mind=Blown

Seriously, that's a startling and logical perspective.

That is an interesting option. Assuming Shepard isn't allied with Cerberus in ME3, it gives them two directions to be in opposition. Either they have a grudge because you blew up their station, or they become the ME3 equivalent of Saren and his indoctrinated faction. I like the sound of Cerberus acting as Reaper agents, they're already hated for doing all sorts of bad things in the name of research and keeping themselves secret, and they hate aliens.

I think it's a good set up for being the minor threat of ME3, something of a scale you can relate to before you meet the fleet of Reapers.

LarryC, your theory is certainly food for thought, but if it what you say is true, wouldn't Shepherd be fundamentally wrong for using Mass Relays for his travels? Or using any other technology derived from the Reapers?

I saw no problem in securing the station beyond the possibility it turns Cerberus into a super-powerful organization. Beyond that, I suppose I have no qualms with attempting to use Reaper technology against itself.

Grubber788:

There is a certain amount of risk in continuing to use the Mass Relays, but as long as research is not focused on deciphering their technology, the danger is purely tactical. Given that no other method of travelling great distances is known, it's a danger that needs to be taken.

The problem with securing the base is that just having the base around makes people want to figure out how Reaper technology works, even when you tell them not to do it. The temptation to use Reaper technology against the Reapers is too strong.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what the Reapers are counting on. I have no moral qualms about turning Reaper tech against Reapers. The problem is that you're using the tech Reapers have mastered over millennia when you barely understand it and they're masters of it. There's only one way that can turn out and it won't be good for you.

An analogy would be a primitive tribe of people finding a cache of guns and then trying to reverse-engineer the guns so that they could make more of them natively. Whatever guns they try to create would be inferior and a modern brigade would take them out in conventional warfare, no problem, with or without the guns.

The only hope they have against such an invasion force would be to just chuck the guns completely except for what they could immediately use or salvage, and concentrate research on their native advantages - maybe they know about food or contact poisons that would be unknown to the invaders. It's their only chance.

Sonicator wrote:

The main reason that I was irritated is that your explanation was exactly how I was seeing things playing out up until that last conversation with TIM, and then he went all glowing red/evil smirk. I was aware of the risk in retaining the tech given neither TIM nor Cerberus could be entirely trusted, but he seemed to be only one step away from an evil cackle to me.

I think you're missing my point, then. TIM was all professional and respectful with Shepard because he knew that Shepard would respond well to that, not because he's a nice guy. The urgency and stakes of the situation forced him to abandon that charade in favor of something more direct: you don't tell the guy in the field to use his judgment when you think all life in the universe will be eradicated if he doesn't pick one option over the other, and also there are no do-overs.

TIM is not a supervillain, nor is he a philanthropist who spent billions just because he thinks Shepard really deserves another chance. He's a pragmatist, and he'll do what he must to achieve his goals. Shepard is not a partner, she's an asset. He didn't stick a brain control chip in her head because part of her strength comes from her judgment. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if ME3 revealed some sort of kill switch in there. Maybe Tracer Tong can give you a hand, if you can find him.

Grubber788 wrote:

LarryC, your theory is certainly food for thought, but if it what you say is true, wouldn't Shepherd be fundamentally wrong for using Mass Relays for his travels? Or using any other technology derived from the Reapers?

I saw no problem in securing the station beyond the possibility it turns Cerberus into a super-powerful organization. Beyond that, I suppose I have no qualms with attempting to use Reaper technology against itself.

When the alternative is "develop an alternative system of FTL travel - something no other species has ever done, ever - and do it before the Reapers show up," then I guess you take the bus even if the bad guys own the bus company.

In fact, the more technology they go off and develop on their own, the more the game veers into movie territory. R&D takes longer than that and usually doesn't work for the first couple times. Also, those first couple times come 5-10 years in.

LarryC wrote:

An analogy would be a primitive tribe of people finding a cache of guns and then trying to reverse-engineer the guns so that they could make more of them natively. Whatever guns they try to create would be inferior and a modern brigade would take them out in conventional warfare, no problem, with or without the guns.

The only hope they have against such an invasion force would be to just chuck the guns completely except for what they could immediately use or salvage, and concentrate research on their native advantages - maybe they know about food or contact poisons that would be unknown to the invaders. It's their only chance.

I think a closer analogy would be if you gave the tribe missiles that you could deactivate remotely. Very powerful as long as you allow it, totally useless when you don't.

And you're right, the tribe's only hope would be to go with their own strengths... but at the end of the day, they'd be shooting poisoned arrows and they'd be up against people with machine guns, missiles and armor. It wouldn't end quite as sunshiney as Avatar unless they pulled some BS "spirit of the universe" nonsense.

LobsterMobster wrote:

It wouldn't end quite as sunshiney as Avatar unless they pulled some BS "spirit of the universe" nonsense.

Lobster has discovered the plot of ME3.

LobsterMobster wrote:
Sonicator wrote:

The main reason that I was irritated is that your explanation was exactly how I was seeing things playing out up until that last conversation with TIM, and then he went all glowing red/evil smirk. I was aware of the risk in retaining the tech given neither TIM nor Cerberus could be entirely trusted, but he seemed to be only one step away from an evil cackle to me.

I think you're missing my point, then. TIM was all professional and respectful with Shepard because he knew that Shepard would respond well to that, not because he's a nice guy. The urgency and stakes of the situation forced him to abandon that charade in favor of something more direct: you don't tell the guy in the field to use his judgment when you think all life in the universe will be eradicated if he doesn't pick one option over the other, and also there are no do-overs.

TIM is not a supervillain, nor is he a philanthropist who spent billions just because he thinks Shepard really deserves another chance. He's a pragmatist, and he'll do what he must to achieve his goals. Shepard is not a partner, she's an asset. He didn't stick a brain control chip in her head because part of her strength comes from her judgment. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if ME3 revealed some sort of kill switch in there. Maybe Tracer Tong can give you a hand, if you can find him.

You know, that reading actually makes me feel a lot better about it.

LarryC wrote:

The problem is that you're using the tech Reapers have mastered over millennia when you barely understand it and they're masters of it. There's only one way that can turn out and it won't be good for you.

It also hearkens back to the schism in the Geth - the heretics wanted to use reaper technology to get power faster (and were corrupted by Sovereign as a result), whereas Legion's group didn't want their path to be shaped by it. He/It/They refer back to that specifically if you have a conversation after retaining the base..

Wasn't the citadel meant to be the key to the mass relay network, and that back door was sealed. There's nothing to stop them writing in another vulnerability to how ME galactic society works, but it would seem to be a lame plot if you're just re-enacting the last section of ME1. That said, they do need something high stakes, and also on the human scale that Shepard can get in and sabotage.

Given that Sovereign was a ship that Saren travelled on, and you went aboard a derelict Reaper in ME2, I wouldn't be surprised to board a live hostile Reaper in ME3. Was there ever a way found to protect yourself from indoctrination? Saren was concerned about that in ME1.

I'm still skeptical, if only because of Shepherd's use of Reaper technology against the Reapers and their minions has thus far been quite successful.

I agree with you though about your logic. I don't foresee Mass Effect 3 going into that realm of thought, and as such, I'm anticipating a bit of a hole in logic there. I'm ok with that, because at the end of the day, the hero will find a way that defines logic, so it's probably a moot point anyway