Mass Effect 2 Day#12: Hard and Not-so-Hard Choices

Day 12 and it’s two more loyalty missions and one eh random mission on a random planet.  The loyalty missions are quite good with the alien culture stuff remaining cool and some interesting interaction, although I have one great moral quandary undermined by the paragon/renegade stuff. This is made up for by a very, very interesting romantic interaction on the ship where I am very much forced to roleplay and actually feel something about it. Spoiler within.

My first loyalty mission of the day goes to help Tali. I  go to the migrant fleet that is the quarian home. CS Tali gives code word and says ship must be cleaned before we can enter the fleet. We board the ship and meet some quarian friend of Tali. Tali’s in trouble because she sent geth pieces back to the Fleet for her father’s research. She claims they were safe to send, but if they weren’t, this could be a big deal. We talk to an admiral who tells me that because I’m Tali’s captain, I have to speak for her at the trial. We enter the trial and it begins with a kind of cheesy accusation scene complete with murmuring crowds. The geth took over the lab ship where Tali sent the geth pieces and where her father worked. We have to take down the geth there to help Tali’s case. We talk to the admirals more to get more info about the ship, and along the way see the politics of the quarian elite. Boy, all this quarian plot is solid — it’s a rich myth of believable motivations.

We leave the trial and get to the lab ship. There are hard geth fights as the starting battles — quite fun.  We find a video of Tali’s father (?) saying they didn’t follow security protocols. We also find a geth part and Tali explains how she salvages gear, she believes safely. There are more fights with the geth.  Once past those fights, Tali checks a console and learns they were performing experiments on geth systems in not-so-cool ways. We find her father dead and she mourns quite believably. We fight on in a final room and there’s bullet proof glass that surprises me and causes me to die once when I misjudge being protected. There’s a big robot to kill, and it’s quite fun to do it. I find a central data hub. It turns out Tali’s father was building geth to figure out how to infect their virtual intelligence and that means bring geth back to life, a very big bad for a quarian.  Wow this leads to a hard decision — I need to decide whether to tell the truth and condemn Tali’s father to infamy, or lie and have Tali exiled as Tali begs me to do.  We cut back to the fleet and we break in on the resumed treason trial in session. It’s time for me to choose which way I’m going to go and, ah, there’s a cheap paragon escape where I get to make a speech rather than picking a side. I don’t know how I feel about that — it’s nice to get everything I want with my earned skills, but that was an interestingly tough decision I would like to have made. Tali is exonerated and I give them a final wish of luck in taking back their home world from the geth (throwing my lot in with one side of the political debate).  There’s a CS conversation with tali — very nice bonding moment — and it’s back to the Normandy.

I finally have enough resources to build a machine to heal my scars and I do. I talk to Tali (she may become admiral in place of her father). I do some more mining and then head back to Omega for Samara’s quest. I  talk to Aria (Omega’s big boss) about Samara’s daughter and she gives me a location. When I go there, I find a mother of victim of Samara’s daughter. I talk to the mother and do a paragon qte to comfort her. She reveals that she wants justice for her daughter, and I make an oath to avenge her. The mother lets us look around and I watch the daughter’s diary to learn that Samara’s daughter is in the VIP selection of the club here. We have to lure her out so Samara can take her down. I get into the VIP area (where she hunts) with a password we found in the diary.  The plan is I’m going to lure daughter out unarmed by impressing her with my creativity and ability to defend myself. I try to insult a krogan to start a fight but don’t go renegade enough and get laughed at. I dance on the floor for a bit. I save a reporter from a gang at request of another guy by saying terminal and eternity in that order amidst my conversation with her. I convince the bartender to give the bar a round of drinks, and right after that, I get called over by the daughter. Not sure how the drinks but me over the top, but I’m not complaining. Once the daughter and I sit, there’s a conversation game that I win handily with the info I got wandering around the bar. She invites me back to her apartment, and when we cut to there,  we talk and this time I think I blow it a bit. She then seduces me with spell and I can’t resist. Samara breaks in, and they CS fight. When they stalemate, they both make a case to have me hire them. I thought that would be a choice, but I was wrong;  I CS  stop the daughter and Samara kills her. With that, we out.

Back to normandy,  I do some upgrading and talk to Samara. She talks lots about fate and how upset she is about her daughter’s death. I talk to Tali and do a little seduction there too.  Next up was a short clean-up mission for Cerebrus. Not much to say here. Cerebrus needs a lost payload. I fight Blue Suns mercs and it’s very easy. I have to bypass security to unlock doors and there’s lots of ambushes. The ambushes are interesting combat scenes. I find the payload and that’s the filler mission.

Back to the ship around. I do some upgrades first, and then talk to Tali again. She wants to be close to me, but  she wants exclusivity. My ladies’ man doesn’t.  She tells me she doesn’t need to possess me, but asks me to keep it honest (one girl at a time) and politely walks away. I scan a new planet and find a base. I am jumped just after I land but I dispatch our assailants easy-peasy. I defeat Blue Suns and destroy the signal it was emitting to other ships after killing two big robots.  I go back to the Normandy, and stumble into a funny conversation with Mordin about getting sex stuff such as condoms. Where’s the game going to go from there? Let’s call it a night.