Mass Effect 2 Day#13: When in Doubt, Stall…

Day 13 is largely a bunch of side missions while I stall progressing a plot point that I think will bring the game to a close. The first one is good with an interesting choice at the end. The next two are largely frustrating with obscure goals and unclear elements. I end up wasting a lot of time on things I should have been able to figure out very quickly. As a result, it’s a short post. Spoilers within.

I begin by revisiting Thane and I uncover more narrative there about Drell memory, which is apparently perfectly photographic. We have a conversation about his role in assassinations. He sees his body as a vessel like a gun and thus not morally liable. It’s kind of interesting narrative.  I encourage him to talk to the rest of the crew when I depart. I scan a couple of planets, and there’s some missile mission that I didn’t notice before on a planet in this system. I pillage that planet then land. There’s  CS of batarians arming missiles, and the mission itself is a series of battles across the station. The fights are pretty easy. They end when we get to the missile launching terminals. The launch time is too close when I get to the terminal (not that I think I could have prevented that) and I can only stop one of the two missiles they launched. I have to choose between saving a space port or industrial center. I choose to save the port to protect lives rather than protect the Alliance interests by defending the industry, and that’s the mission. I scan some more planets, buy some upgrades, and depart.

I’m kind of stalling going on the IFF mission because I think it’s going to drive me to the end of the game, so I go instead to a random empty galaxy just to see what’s there. I bought some star maps earlier and I should see what they do. I find something on first planet I see and land. It’s an archeological dig site with LOTS of zombies. I fight my way through a cave set to some kind of area in which the zombie husks are being generated. There’s some giant artifact creating them, but I have no idea how to destroy it. I fight and fight and fight until I die because I don’t know how to stop the husks from spawning. I try again, dying cheaply from getting stuck in a corner over and over. Third time,  oh I get it. There are these bombs in the room with the artifact, nowhere near the artifact mind you, that I have to blow up. There’s no instruction and no particular reason why you would blow them up, but if you hit them both, the room with artifact collapses. Well that’s random. Cheap cheap cheap but I win. I  scan two more rich planets for resources, and then go back to Illium for a second to check on that Liara plot. Liara’s dialogue tells me that I guess I didn’t get the observer puzzle right. I wonder if that plot is ever going to move.  Oh well, back to ship.

Again to stall the progress of the plot, I go to rescue a ship that Cerberus says is going down. When I get to the ship, I immediately see this is a different kind of mission. There’s a timer at the very beginning of the mission, and I have to save the ship in that time. Basically, the challenge is that I have to find and power up these stations which take a few seconds of uninterrupted focus to activate, and then I have to throw a switch, all while not being killed by enemies spawning to shoot at us from the other side of the room. The mission is pretty straightforward, but I can’t find one of the two stations and I die a couple times while I look. This has been a frustrating session, so I decide to give up for the night and beat this one tomorrow.