PART FIVE- THE LAST STAND
In part four, we talked about how Shepard was able to enlist the aid of several races. In the fifth and final part of our recap of the Mass Effect trilogy, we will take a look at his assault on Cerberus and the galaxy’s last stand against the Reapers, before moving on to preview the story and setup for the upcoming Mass Effect: Andromeda.
The asari homeworld of Thessia is facing a devastating attack by the Reapers, and it is crumbling. As soon as the Normandy lands on the planet, it becomes apparent to Shepard and his team that there is little they can do to help the asari, and that their only mission here will be to get to the artefact before the Reapers overpower and overwhelm them and all asari resistance.
Fighting through hordes and hordes of Reaper forces and managing to survive against overwhelming odds, they finally arrive at the temple where the artefact is kept- and it turns out that the artefact is actually a Prothean VI named Vendetta. Vendetta reveals that the asari, who were the first of the current batch of alien races to achieve spaceflight and are the most advanced of all them, only progressed as quickly as they did because they were able to find this very Prothean beacon on their planet, around which they built this temple.
As Vendetta is about to reveal the identity of the Catalyst, Kai Leng arrives at the temple. He puts Shepard in touch with the Illusive Man through hologram, and Shepard realizes, after the conversation, that both Kai Leng and the Illusive Man are indoctrinated. All hell breaks loose once again, and Kai Leng, with the help of Cerberus forces to back him up, destroys the temple, steals the Prothean VI and flees from the planet, back to the Illusive Man and Cerberus’ secret hideout.
Fed up of always being one step behind Cerberus, Shepard decides to take the fight to his former employers. With the help of Miranda Lawson (if she survived the suicide mission) or her family (if she didn’t), he is able to identify the location of the Cerberus headquarters. The Alliance launches an all-out assault against Cerberus, while Shepard enters the station to retrieve the Prothean VI Vendetta. After he successfully fights through waves of Cerberus soldiers and makes it to the centre of the headquarters, he finds that the Illusive Man is missing. He does, however, encounter Kai Leng, and after a tense firefight (and a couple of badass cutscenes), Shepard is able to finally kill the assassin.
Shepard retrieves the Prothean VI, who finally reveals to him the identity of the Catalyst- the Citadel itself is the Catalyst, and the Crucible isn’t a Prothean weapon at all. It was a weapon that had first been devised several extinction cycles ago, and none of the races being attacked by the Reapers, the Protheans included, were able to use the Crucible, because they were always missing the crucial component- the Citadel, or the Catalyst. Vendetta tells Shepard that the indoctrinated Illusive Man has informed the Reapers of the fact that Shepard is aware of the Citadel’s importance, and that the Reapers have, consequently, taken over the station and moved it to a secure location in orbit above Earth. All the Reaper forces have gathered around the location. Shepard gathers his team and all the forces and ships he has accrued throughout the events of Mass Effect 3, and together, they all move to Earth, for the final climactic battle and the last stand against the Reapers.
While the combined fleets and forces of the galaxy attack the Reapers head on above Earth in an epic space battle, Shepard leads an attack against the Reaper forces on the ground in London. His objective is get to a beam set up by the Reapers in London that they are using to transport human corpses and living humans to the Citadel for harvesting. Shepard has to get into the Citadel and open the station’s arms so that the Crucible can dock and attach itself to the Catalyst. The ground team being led by Shepard and Anderson sustains heavy losses, and Shepard almost dies himself, but both he and Anderson are separately able to get to the beam and be transported to the Citadel.
In the Citadel, though, Shepard and Anderson run into the Illusive Man, who has now been fully indoctrinated and “upgraded” with Reaper tech. In a tense standoff between the three of them, Anderson is mortally wounded, and Shepard either kills the Illusive Man, or successfully convinces him to break free of his indoctrination long enough for him to kill himself, much like what happened with Saren. Anderson succumbs to his wounds and dies, and Shepard is able to open the Citadel’s arms. When the Crucible docks, though, nothing happens- the weapon does not activate.
Shepard is transported to a higher section of the Citadel, where he meets with an AI that is rather childlike in appearance. The AI identifies itself as the Catalyst, and also as the creator of the Reapers. It is revealed that the purpose of the Reapers is to prevent organic life from destroying itself absolutely and irrevocably by creating synthetic life. That is, in a nutshell, how the Reapers came into existence long, long ago (but we need not go into too much detail about that here). As such, every fifty thousand years, when new lifeforms have advanced enough to be able to create AI and synthetics that can potentially destroy organic life altogether, the Reapers move into the galaxy, harvest the advanced organic lifeforms (thus also making them immortal, in a sense), and leave the galaxy once again, allowing other, less advanced lifeforms to flourish and advance. And this cycle continues, as it has for ages.
The Catalyst understands, though, that with everything that has happened it this cycle, it is no longer possible for this sequence of events to keep on repeating, and gives Shepard three options to end the fight against Reapers- he can either destroy the Reapers (also destroying all synthetic life and AI), control them (taking the Catalyst’s place and lending credence to the Illusive Man’s theories) or synthesize all organic and synthetic life in the entire galaxy so that the two can coexist peacefully.
No matter what choice is made, one way or another, the Reapers’ assault against all advanced organic life in the galaxy comes to an end, as does the extinction cycle, and in all but one of the endings, Commander Shepard dies. The fates of several characters, different races and multiple locations are all determined based on the players’ actions and decisions throughout the course of Mass Effect 3 (and the rest of the trilogy). A long, long time later (possibly millennia, probably centuries), a scene shows an old man with a little child, telling stories of a legendary figure known as “The Shepard.”
And that, people, is the entire saga of the Mass Effect trilogy, from start to finish- at least the most important parts. Of course, we haven’t covered everything that happens in the three games- far from it. There’s so many finer details, personal character stories, isolated epic moments and a lot of rich, deep lore that we haven’t even talked about yet, so it’s best to just play the games if you want to experience all of that (duh, right?). This is, however, the essence of the main narrative of the Mass Effect trilogy.
So where does Mass Effect: Andromeda fit in? First of all, BioWare have confirmed that there is no canonical ending to Mass Effect 3, and that the decisions made by the players at the end of the trilogy won’t have any impact on the story in Andromeda. How the hell does that work, then? Well, the obvious answer is that the game takes place in an entirely different galaxy altogether. There is more to it than that, though.
Remember, how earlier we talked about how, during the events of Mass Effect 2, different races of the galaxy came together to send an expedition into the Andromeda galaxy to find a new home for them? That is going to be the plotline that the next Mass Effect title follows, so that while when the Andromeda Initiative team wakes up from cryo-sleep after arriving in Andromeda, six hundred years have passed, but they are still completely unaware of everything that happens during Mass Effect 3, and just how that conflict ends.
It is, then, highly possible that the threat of the Reapers was a major factor in the decision to send a faction of the Milky Way galaxy’s residents to another galaxy far, far away in order to look for a new home. And given the fact that all the trailers and story tidbits we have seen of Mass Effect: Andromeda have such a human-centric tilt to them, there’s also a huge chance that Cerberus may be involved in some way (we just cannot get rid of these guys, can we?).
There’s so much we don’t know yet, though, which makes the wait for Mass Effect: Andromeda that much more torturous. It’s almost here, though- the game is less than a month away, and we simply cannot wait to get our hands on it. While Commander Shepard and co. will surely be missed, the chance to delve back into this wonderful, rich universe that BioWare have created and the opportunity to fall in love with all new characters is something that surely has us excited for the next instalment in this awesome saga.
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