As a disclaimer, this isn’t a walk-through of the game, or even a lengthy review. It’s basically things I remember and like/dislike.
OKAY! Last time left off with my opinions of the crew/characters in ME1. I won’t be going through my opinions on their personal missions because the ones I cared enough about were mentioned in the character descriptions. So this is going to be biased toward characters I actually enjoyed.
Mass Effect 1 differs from ME2 because it was long. There were a lot of side quests that were really not important other than gaining your Paragon/Renegade points and leveling, but as far as story is concerned it was a lot of fluff. That’s perfectly alright to me. I really like seeing characters interact and stories of different people. But it’s not something worth touching on, in my opinion.
Actually, let’s sum up ME1′s story, shall we?
The beginning: Eden Prime
You choose your back story for your Shepard, and while it doesn’t have a huge impact on the gameplay, it will get mentioned a handful of times. Especially with my Shepard and her background on Akuze and Mindoir. They love bringing that stuff up. The beginning of the game has you dropped off on a human colony, Eden Prime. It’s supposed to be a beacon for humanity in the galaxy, proving that humans can both colonize and survive/defend themselves. And oh-ho! It’s no ordinary mission! Of course not. A turian Spectre, Nihlus, is there with you revealing that the Council has their eye on you as the ‘first’ human Spectre and is there to evaluate you. NO PRESSURE, SHEP. So, you’re there on Eden Prime to recover the ‘beacon’ -old Prothean technology that could change the fate of humanity and the galaxy (for unknown reasons to you at the time. Just do what you’re told, soldier.).
You hop onto the planet with Jenkins and Alenko (yay…) and bump into Ashley Williams (this is starting well) at some point. But more importantly, this:
OH MY GOD WHAT? Those are called ‘dragon’s teeth’ by humans. They’re what the geth use to impale their organic victims and turn them into husks. Really creepy and mostly annoying husks that groan and swipe at you. The picture doesn’t do it justice, though. The actually impaling is spine tingling.
You fight geth, husks, and probably some mechs? Maybe, I don’t remember too terribly well. You also do the usual, find survivors and talk to them to get information and all that RPG’y stuff. Also, you find Nihlus dead. R.I.P. Nihlus:
Who saw that coming? Oh, everyone. Now this may hold no relevance to some people, but this plot device is actually very fantastic. It’s the very beginning of the game. The first non-human you have any contact with who is supportive of you and humanity gets completely murdered within 15 minutes of gameplay. By the ‘main’ bad guy, no less. That’s setting up the tone of the game heavily without throwing away any main characters. It also speaks for humanity’s place in the galaxy before you get very far. At this point, you’re aware that many aliens aren’t incredibly fond of humanity and you know it. And as a shitty side note, it looks like aliens who support humans are on an organized murder list. Okay, maybe not that dramatic, but that’s the way it comes off immediately.
Blah, blah, blah. You talk to some dude behind some crates and he’s seen Saren. You really don’t get much out of him. Then you find the beacon. It’s a metal stick thing. Not very impressive. You get too close and get ALL TO’ UP. It fries you pretty good and infuses you with really strange, incomprehensible visions of something. Looks like sarlacs and Aliens (like the movie). And this?
That’s promising.
Okay! That may be as detailed as I get for something that exact. Let’s sprint through the rest of this story. Saren is after this beacon, cipher, and the conduit.
The rest of the game:
- The Beacon- Held the collective memories and thoughts of the Protheans.
- The Cipher- Used to deCIPHER (Oho) the memories.
- The Conduit- Is a miniature mass relay developed by the Portheans during their research into mass relays. It’s essentially the ‘back door’ to the Citadel.
Both Shepard and Saren use the beacon and cipher. So we’re looking pretty well fucked at this point. Saren has access to the geth AND the Reapers. Oh, the Reapers. As far as you know in ME1, the Reapers are a synthetic race. Every 50,000 years they make a visit to the rest of the galaxy and systematically wipe out all organic life. Sounds cozy, right? Saren’s ship, ‘Sovereign’, is also a Reaper. Well shit.
So your goal at this point is to get to the conduit before Saren does. He plans to use the conduit to open the back door into the Citadel to allow the Reapers passage through to do what they do best -murder all the things. He gets to Ilos (the planet with the conduit) before you, how shocking. So you have to race to find this God damned conduit, but you take your time with this old Prothean techno-dude who explains to you in length why the Reapers must be stopped. Yeah, not a time burner or anything. You get your info and then jet toward the conduit. During this part you’re being shot at by geth things and you’re being timed. So yeah, don’t stop to circle jerk with the geth and just haul ass.
You zoom through the conduit via MAKO (GDI MAKO. Since I didn’t touch on side planet missions, I didn’t get to rage about MAKO.) and everything is… kind of on fire. Thus far, we’ve been doing a swell job of cutting Saren off. So the geth are all up in Citadel space and so is Sovereign and Saren. You face off with Saren, mostly hiding behind a wall and bantering with him to try and convince him it’s not too late to turn back. I’m sure that sounds familiar. Now, at this point, I feel a little bad for the guy. He joined up with the geth and Sovereign at first of his own free will, likely for power. But after learning more, he is sure that he can secure a sort of alliance between the Reapers and organics, instead of being completely wiped out. At this point, Saren is pretty well indoctrinated by Sovereign. He was never a good guy by any means. See; Captain Anderson was actually the first to-be or actual human Spectre but Saren was his partner on a mission and totally screwed him over by exploding some sort of plant that killed quite a few innocent people and pinning it on Anderson. In the end, Saren regrets what he has done involving the Reapers, but is convinced there’s no turning back. So he blasts himself in the head. Yikes.
Then you fight SUPER SAREN. Sovereign pieces him together like some horrible spider turian Transformer and you fight him. It’s mostly a waiting game as you avoid his skittering and heavy attacks. Annoying, but not difficult by any means.
After this encounter, you still have Sovereign to deal with. And let me tell you, it and the geth are fuckin’ ships UP. You can make the order to focus on Sovereign and ignore the ship that’s carrying the Council, or you can save the Council. WELL. In MY mind, it was a good idea to focus on the giant God damn Reaper ship that was tearing everything apart, so that’s what I did. The Council perished. I had Garrus with me (of course) and he said something along the lines of, “I hope you know what you’re doing, human.” WHOAH. WHOAH. My heart shattered then. Human? God, Garrus. Right in my soft spot.
At this point after all the action is over, you can suggest either Udina or Anderson to lead the new human Council. Any sane person chooses Anderson.
Peace,
Ani
Wrex is a pissed off krogan on Virmire. Turns out, Saren created a ‘cure’ for the genophage (the disease all krogans have that decrease fertility to slow their population growth) so he could breed a krogan army to fight for him. Your mission on Virmire is to destroy the facility and the cure within it. Wrex is not at all happy about that. If you don’t have enough Paragon/Renegade points, Wrex ends up dead. Luckily, my Paragon was just fine and I could talk him down. I felt so bad for him. 
Long story short? Captain Kirrahe died. And that’s because my quest didn’t count me destroying the refueling station. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. I now know this decision has relevance in ME3. Fuck my life.
