PART THREE- THE SUICIDE MISSION
In part two, we recapped the events of Mass Effect 1. In part three, we will talk about the suicide mission, which was the focal point of the narrative in Mass Effect 2, and do a bit of groundwork for the recap of Mass Effect 3 as well.
Yes, Commander Shepard dies within the very first minutes of Mass Effect 2. Well, technically, he does.
He wakes up two years later in an unknown, mysterious facility being run by Cerberus, an extremist pro-human organization (pro-human almost to the point of being racist, and extremist almost to the point of being terrorists)run by a mysterious, enigmatic figure known only as the Illusive Man, who is as calculating and shrewd as he is untrustworthy. The main function of the facility is to work on Project Lazarus. What is Project Lazarus? To recover the remains of the dead Commander Shepard and bring him back to life in order to fight against the threat of the Reapers and another new threat that may have something to do with them. After two years of research, medical work and spending billions of bucks, Project Lazarus turns out to be a success.
The facility Shepard wakes up in has been overrun by hacked security mechs, and with the help of Jacob Taylor and high-ranking Cerberus operative Miranda Lawson, Shepard escapes the facility. The two of them later bring him to another space station, where he meets the Illusive Man through a hologram. The Illusive Man tells him that entire human colonies are simply disappearing, and sends him on a mission with Jacob and Miranda to the colony of Freedom’s Progress, which recently went dark as well. During the mission, Shepard finds out that the Reapers are behind the disappearance of the human colonies and are working through an insectoid species known as the Collectors.
The Illusive Man informs Shepard that the base of the Collectors is beyond the Omega-4 Relay, and that no ship that has ever tried to travel through the relay has ever returned. He presents Shepard with the Normandy SR-2, which is essentially a bigger and better Normandy, and also features a couple of familiar faces, including Joker. The Normandy SR-2, in fact, also comes equipped with the AI known simply as EDI. Shepard’s mission this time is to assemble a team of the most skilled and able operatives and travel through the Omega-4 Relay. It is, essentially, a suicide mission.
Shepard begins recruiting people for this mission anyway. Mordin Solus is a salarian professor, scientist and former special agent. He is cold, calculating, yet oddly quirky and endearing. The vigilante known as Archangel turns out to be Shepard’s old pal Garrus. Grunt is the perfect krogan, bred in a tank by a krogan warlord. Jack is a fascinating woman- a former convict and an extremely powerful biotic, with an incredible ability to fly off the handle. Samara is an asari Justicar, another powerful biotic. Thane Krios is a drell assassin, a thoughtful, intelligent character who’s dying of an unstoppable sickness. Along the way, Shepard even recruits Tali once again.
Shepard and his team then receive information over the course of another mission that the Collectors are actually the last remnants of the Protheans- mutated and enslaved by the Reapers.EDI also discovers that there is an IFF transponder aboard a derelict Reaper that can help the Normandy travel through the Omega-4 Relay undetected and, hopefully, safely. However, the Collectors track Shepard, and it turns out that they had laid a trap for him, which, it turns out the Illusive Man knew about. After escaping the trap, Shepard confronts him, tensions run high between the two, and the Illusive Man defends his actions, saying that he did not want to alert the Collectors to the fact that their trap may have been compromised. Eventually, Shepard takes a team aboard the derelict Reaper to acquire the IFF, where he encounters a disabled geth unit who, upon activation, voluntarily joins Shepard’s team and names itself Legion.
The focal point of Mass Effect2 is the recruitment of this team, however, the heart of the game is the loyalty missions, which not only have drastic and significant impacts on how the game ends and who survives and who doesn’t, but also help flesh out the characters in the most excellent way possible. And while most of these are largely personal stories, some of these loyalty missions actually have elements that have a bearing on the overall story in the series. For instance, Mordin’s loyalty mission sees you faced with a decision on whether or not to preserve new information on a possible cure for the genophage (something that comes into play in Mass Effect 3), while Legion’s mission has a bearing on the fate of the geth in the future.
Once all of this is done, though, and Shepard ultimately acquires and activates the IFF transponder aboard the derelict Reaper, EDI discovers that it’s another trap. The transponder is activating a signal which pinpoints the Normandy’s exact location to the Collectors. While Shepard and his entire team of recruits are off the ship, the Collectors board the Normandy and abduct the entire crew. However, Joker and EDI are together able to take back control of the ship and fly it away from the Collectors.
Shepard ultimately travels through the Omega-4 Relay to finally undertake the suicide mission. Throughout the mission, from navigating past debris fields in space past the relay to ground attacks when they land on the Collector base, everything you’ve done so far in the game determine who lives and who dies. If you take your sweet time after the Collectors abduct your crew to travel through the Omega-4 Relay, you will find all of them dead.If you hadn’t upgraded your ship with certain parts, people will die. If you pick the wrong people to do the wrong job during the suicide mission, they will perish. If you did not do the loyalty missions and as a result any of your teammates were not loyal to you, chances are, they won’t make it. Hell, there’s even an ending where, if all of Shepard’s recruits die, he dies too. But let’s not talk about that specific ending here.
In the Collector base, Shepard and his team finally discover just what the Collectors have been doing with all the human colonists they have abducted. They have been using their genetic material and fusing it with advanced Reaper technology to make a massive Human-Reaper hybrid. Shepard fights and ultimately destroys the Human-Reaper, and just as he is about to destroy the Collector base itself, he is interrupted by the Illusive Man via – surprise! – a hologram. He tells him to not destroy the base, rather to use a radiation pulse to kill all the Collectors but to leave the base intact and thus allow Cerberus to study Reaper technology. What happens next is entirely up to the players.
Either way, as it turns out, as a result of Shepard’s attack on the Collector base, the human race now has the full attention of the Reapers, who have now awakened in dark space outside the Milky Way and are moving toward the galaxy.
While Shepard is working with Cerberus on the suicide mission, humanity and all the major alien races of the galaxy come together for a giant initiative like never before, combining and pooling some of their best people from every field and sending them all the way over to the Andromeda galaxy in order to find a new home for them. Is this because of the Reaper threat? Possibly. But we’ll talk more about this later.
Shortly after the attack on the Collector base (or before, depending on how you play Mass Effect 2) Commander Shepard was on a mission during which he had to take certain steps to postpone the imminent arrival of the Reapers, and these actions directly resulted in the destruction of the entire Bahak system and the death of three hundred thousand batarians. And now, six months later, at the beginning of Mass Effect 3, Shepard is back on Earth, grounded, suspended, with his ship taken away from him, facing imminent trial for his actions. Shepard has, by this point, cut all ties with Cerberus and voluntarily rejoined the Alliance.
However, as it turns out, there’s more pressing matters bothering the Alliance and members of the humanity leadership than Shepard’s trial- Alliance outposts within and without the solar system have begun to go dark, and members of the Alliance leadership- including Admiral Hackett and Captain Anderson (now Admiral Anderson) have begun preparing for an imminent Reaper invasion. And lo and behold, before someone can say “calibrations”, the Reapers descend on Earth and begin their assault. Millions of lives are immediately lost, there is carnage everywhere, and Shepard witnesses horrific scenes of death and destruction.
The Reapers are here in full force, and the galaxy is far, far from being prepared.
Let’s end part three here! Cliffhangers, right? In part four, we will take a look at Mass Effect 3, and how Shepard attempts to rally different alien races of the galaxy to come together to fight back against the Reapers.
Share Your Thoughts Below (Always follow our comments policy!)