As we know, I've been in a bit of a Mass Effect mood lately. It all started when I had the urge to dive back into Andromeda, which led to wanting to experience the trilogy once more, which has now led to me obsessively staring at the game at every available chance instead of being a real life human and doing real life human things, like a normal real life human.

Anyone else who's played it understands - you can't just start playing it and NOT finish it. You need to keep going. You've played the story twenty million times and you know all the ins and outs, but you still need to do this! The story won't end until you do. And when it comes, when it's over, you feel empty inside because... well. It's over.

By the time I finish this insanity the new SWTOR expansion should be out. So, with any luck the emptiness won't last too long. 😉

Actually. Ugh. No. I just looked at the website while writing this post and the new release date is October 22. Nooooo. I was looking forward to a September launch.

Sigh.

I guess I'll have to go back to what I'm supposed to be doing -- writing fiction. 😉
 

Anyway -- Mass Effect 2!

I finished it yesterday. No, I don't have a life; yes, I am an adult. But I finished it for the thousandth time... and something horrible happened. Something I didn't expect. Something that made me stare, dully, in shock while I tried to sort it out in my mind.

Tali died.

Never in any of my playthroughs -- except the one where I deliberately tried to get as many people as I could killed -- has anyone died. And it was Tali. TALI. My sweet little Quarian friend has met the great void. Despite doing everything perfectly.

I was shocked. And then I realised... it was Zaeed's fault. For some reason, the Zaeed DLC had an error in the installation and although every other DLC installed fine, that one did not. So I didn't bother with him. If he had been there at the Collector base, my stay-behind-team would've had enough health and firepower to survive. If only I had left Garrus behind and took Tali with me. I wasn't thinking!

But, I guess now I'll get to experience Mass Effect 3 slightly differently, since I simply can't be bothered re-doing it. This Shepard takes what fate gives her.

I'm the type of person who tends to play the exact same way every single time. Hence my annoyance at not being able to find a non-romanced Mass Effect 1 playthrough to my standards. Because I wanted to fling my Shepard at Garrus without any consequences.

But then something made me romance Kaidan, and though it was tempting, I kept Shepard away from Garrus' "reach" and experienced a little tear-filled moment...

My playstyle is typically a Paragon Fem-Shep With a Hint of Badass. Shepard and Vakarian!! And I've done one male playthrough, who was a pure Renegade except for anything that came to Tali. And I swore that I would never play a Renegade again because in Mass Effect 3 I broke my own heart. You know, the whole killing your own friends thing? Bang. Bye Wrex. Bang. Bye Mordin. Didn't like you guys anyway... ~sniffle~ ... at least Tali didn't commit suicide though.

My aforementioned Mass Effect 2 playthrough where I deliberately killed as many people as I could? Never went into #3 with it.

Maybe I will one day.

When I have a harder heart, haha. It won't feel the same, that's for sure.

So, I began Mass Effect 3 last night. And I forgot how much they changed the character models... look what they've done to my Shepard!

I got her to the Citadel before I went to bed last night... and already I want to start again just to fix her face. I -did- change her hairstyle; it's been 6 months since she destroyed Aratoht, she's been under house arrest; her hair grew. But....... maybe it's just the eyebrows. I don't know. She looks okay in some scenes, but most of the time I'm just, "Put your helmet back on, lady!"

We'll see.

We'll seeeeeeeee.

I have time today, and it's only the start of the game... I could totally restart. And probably make her face worse. 😁😆

Anywho, that's enough babblin' for today. If you read all this, kudos to you! 😁 Thanks for stopping by!

 

_{All screenshots in this post taken by me, @kaelci, and are from the game: Mass Effect 2}