PART TWO- THE REAPER THREAT
In part one of our Mass Effect recap, we took a look at the general lore and backstory of the series. In part two, we will recount the events of the first Mass Effect game, as well as some of the setup for Mass Effect 2.
When Shepard lands on Eden Prime with Kaidan Alenko, one of his squadmates, they meet with Ashley Williams, who informs them that the colony is under attack by an army of geth. Meanwhile, Nihlus encounters fellow turian Spectre Saren Arterius, who, it turns out, has gone rogue and is the one in command of the geth army. He kills Nihlus, activates the beacon, and leaves. When Shepard finally gets to the beacon, he comes in contact with it and receives gruesome visions of war and death, before falling unconscious.
Soon, the Normandy arrives at the Citadel. Commander Shepard debriefs the Council on how the mission went, but when he mentions that Saren has gone rogue and is in control of a geth army, the turian Spectre, who is present via hologram, openly laughs at the suggestions. With little to no evidence to base his accusations on, Shepard fails to convince the Council to revoke Saren’s Spectre status and bring him in for questioning.
During his investigations on the Citadel to uncover more evidence to use against Saren, Shepard enlists the help of Garrus Vakarian, a turian C-Sec (Citadel Security) officer; Urdnot Wrex, a krogan bounty hunter; and quarian Tali’Zorah nar Rayya. The collective evidence gathered with the help of these three reveals the recording of a conversation between Saren and asari Matriarch Benezia. The recording of the conversation proves irrefutably that Saren was indeed behind the attack on Eden Prime, while also hinting that he is looking for something known as the Conduit so that he can use it to bring about the return of the Reapers.
Ah, the Reapers. They’re a terrifying semi-synthetic/semi-organic species that look like giant squid-like spaceships, and eradicate all advanced organic intelligent life once every fifty thousand years, just as they did with the Protheans. They have, however, become more of a ghost story over the millennia, and no one believes they even exist anymore.
Anyway, Shepard brings this evidence forward before the Citadel Council, and while they do not pay much attention to the bit about the Conduit and the Reapers, they cannot deny the fact that Saren has indeed gone rogue and was in charge of the geth attack on Eden Prime. As such, his Spectre status is removed, and in his place, Shepard becomes a Spectre agent, thus becoming the first human ever to do so. His first mission? To track down and defeat Saren.
For reasons of their own, Garrus, Wrex and Tali all join the Normandy crew in order to help Shepard stop Saren, and Captain Anderson relinquishes the ship’s command to Shepard. The Commander is given three solid leads to kick off his mission: geth presence of the planets Noveria and Feros, and the presence of Dr. Liara T’Soni, a Prothean expert and the daughter of Matriarch Benezia – Saren’s ally – on Therum.
On Feros, Shepard learns that Saren’s flagship Sovereign has unique abilities that allow it to control minds. On Noveria, Shepard enters a deserted facility that is overrun by geth and strange creatures that are revealed to be rachni, a species that was believed to be extinct. This facility, owned by Saren and Benezia, discovered the egg of a rachni queen and intended to use it to breed a rachni army, before the queen turned on them. When Shepard runs into Benezia, it is revealed that she and Saren are being mind-controlled by Sovereign. She tries to fight Sovereign’s indoctrination, but ultimately fails, and Shepard has to kill her. Shepard then faces the decision of what to do with the rachni queen, the last of her species- kill her or leave her alive, a decision that comes back into play later on in the series.
On Therum, Shepard finds out that asari biotic Dr. Liara T’Soni, daughter of Benezia, has no affiliation with Saren whatsoever and has no idea what the Conduit might be. However, thanks to her expertise on Prothean technology and history, she joins Shepard’s crew on the Normandy.
Soon, the Council informs Shepard that the location of Saren’s headquarters has been discovered, and thus the Normandy makes it way to the planet of Virmire, where shit monumentally hits the fan. It is revealed that Saren has discovered a cure for the genophage – the biological weapon that virtually destroyed krogan fertility, rendering the race nearly extinct –and that he plans to use this cure to breed an army of krogan for himself. When Urdnot Wrex finds out about this cure and Shepard’s intention to destroy it to stop Saren, the two clash, which is when the player is faced with the first really, really big, pivotal decision of Mass Effect. Shepard has to either kill Wrex, have Ashley Williams kill him, or somehow convince him to stand down (an option that is available only in certain situations, all of which depend on the way you’ve played the game thus far).
Once this situation is dealt with, Shepard helps plant nukes throughout the facility in order to destroy it (as well as the cure for genophage), but he ultimately encounters an undamaged Prothean beacon, and along with that, a hologram of Sovereign.It is confirmed that Sovereign is not just a Reaper flagship, but an actual Reaper itself. Sovereign also reveals that the mass relays were not built by the Protheans, but by the Reapers.The Reapers reside in deep slumber in dark space outside the Milky Way galaxy, waiting for organic life to discover the mass relays and reach their peak, at which point – roughly about once every fifty thousand years – the Reapers enter the galaxy and harvest and wipe out all advanced intelligent organic life.
It is an extinction cycle, and according to Sovereign, it is a cycle that cannot be stopped. Shepard pledges to stop the Reapers, but Sovereign tells him resistance is futile, and the victory of the Reapers is inevitable. “You exist because we allow it,” he says, “and you will end… because we demand it.”
But wait- there’s more! Shepard then receives information that both Kaidan Alenko and Ashley Williams are pinned down at different locations- and he only has time to save one of them. The players get to choose who, many not-so-virtual tears are shed, and as Shepard and whoever he decides to rescue escape aboard the Normandy, the facility on Virmire explodes, killing whoever was left behind.
Thanks to the undamaged Prothean beacon, however, Shepard’s vision from Eden Prime is now complete, and once Liara studies the vision, she realizes that it is leading them to the planet of Ilos. When they get to Ilos, they are encountered by a Prothean VI (virtual intelligence) named Vigil, who reveals some startling revelations. The Citadel is actually a mass relay itself, built by the Reapers along with all the other mass relays, linked to the dark space outside the galaxy where the rest of the Reapers wait. It is also revealed that the Keepers, the species that is in charge of maintenance of the Citadel, were indoctrinated by the Reapers long, long ago (in fact, they were probably one of the first races to have ever been indoctrinated by the Reapers), and have instructions to activate the mass relay inside the Citadel when Sovereign commands them. At the end of the previous extinction cycle, when the Protheans were wiped out, Sovereign was left behind to wait and watch and then ultimately bring about the return of the Reapers, as is done with one Reaper at the end of every cycle.
All is not lost, however, as Vigil reveals that some Protheans at the end of the previous cycle managed to use the Conduit, a Prothean-built small prototype mass relay that connects directly with the Citadel relay, to travel to the Citadel and alter the signal that the Keepers respond to so that they cannot connect the Citadel relay to dark space. Saren arrives on Ilos, uses the Conduit to get to the Citadel, where he intends to undo the sabotage to the Keepers’ signals, thus allowing Sovereign to contact the other Reapers. Shepard and his team follow him through the Conduit and to the Citadel, where a climactic two-layered battle takes place.
While a combined fleet of the Council battles Sovereign in space over the Citadel, Shepard leads a team on the ground to stop Saren and a massive geth army. During the battle, Shepard is asked to make several key decisions, including one regarding a counter-attack on Saren, which will result either in heavy casualties in the counter-attack or in the death of all three members of the Council. Ultimately, Shepard confronts Saren, and the player is given the option to either fight him, or talk him down. If the player convinces Saren to stand down, he overcomes his indoctrination, thanks Shepard, and kills himself. If not, Shepard ends up killing Saren anyway. In the meantime, Sovereign is destroyed by an attack led by the Normandy.
In the aftermath, humanity is given a seat on the Council (at least– in one of the endings, the entire Council can consist solely of humans). However, as it turns out, people still don’t really believe in the Reaper threat, not as Shepard does. They believe that in stopping Sovereign, the have stopped the Reapers for the foreseeable future, and Shepard is assigned to merely seeking out and destroying straggling geth from Saren’s army throughout the galaxy.
And that is where Mass Effect 2 begins. The Normandy is on a routine mission, tracking a geth airship, when it is attacked by an unidentified vessel- and it is not the geth attacking them. It is something completely new, something absolutely terrifying, and something very dangerous. The massive vessel fires laser-like cannons at the Normandy, tearing the ship apart, killing a lot of the crew. Commander Shepard helps Joker (the pilot) escape, but gets caught in a blast at the very last second himself. He is seen floating into space, and as his suit gets punctured, he starts to asphyxiate.
Soon, he dies.
That’s it for part two. In Part three, we will take a look at the events of Mass Effect 2 and Shepard’s suicide mission against the Collectors, along with a small sneak peak of the setup for Mass Effect 3 (and a little bit of Andromeda as well)…
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