Mass Effect 2 Notes

I have to put in a code from the manual to gain access to the Cerberus network.
Then I get to import my character from the first game.
The titles start
We see a planet surface which consists solely of Lava. In orbit above it a space station. Two people stand on an observation platform. A woman and a seated smoking man.
They are discussing the aftermath of the first game. They both agree that Shepherd is important to the future. They seem more concerned with the reapers than the Geth which Shepherd has been sent to chase down.
Both think that Shepherd is the icon that will lead humanity through the coming crisis.

The scene shifts to the Normandy arriving in the terminus system. Almost immediately they come under attack from a large rocky spaceship. The Normandy is no match for it's weapons and is badly damaged.
Liara is tasked with getting the crew evacuated and Shepherd goes to save Joker from the cockpit.
We get control.

We have to run through the broken burning Normandy until we come to an area open to space, then we find Joker. We get him to leave and throw him into an escape pod.
We then get caught in the blast from the enemy ship, the Normandy comes apart and Shepherd is thrown out into space. Her air supply is damaged and we see her hurtling into the atmosphere of the planet. Everything goes black.

We watch as Shepherd is healed using advanced medical technology, implants are put into her. The woman we saw speaking at the start is named Miranda.
Shepherd wakes to find the space station under attack. Miranda is guiding her by voice and tells her to get up and find a pistol which is in a nearby locker. We get control.

Mission 1
Now the tutorial level. We are told to pick up a gun and shown how to get into cover using A.
Camera and movement is the usual analogue sticks.
Holding Left bumper brings up a weapon selection wheel.
We have to fight a few robots. We can see other personnel being slaughtered by mechs.
We meet up with Jacob who is a biotic soldier, we get to add him to our squad and can order him to use his biotic powers.
We get to investigate using the conversation wheel.
seems the Mechs are the stations own security which have been hacked.
We progress until we speak with someone called Wilson on the radio, he is trapped in a server room and we go to save him.
We find him injured and get to pick up some medi-gel which we can use to heal him.
We get to investigate the two about Cerberus, who were enemies in the first game. Seems they have went to enormous trouble and expense to bring Shepherd back from the dead.
I find and hack a data pad, you have to identify text thumbnails as they scroll by and get three correct to progress against a time limit.
We progress through some mech fights then meet up with Miranda. She instantly shoots Wilson and tells us that he was the instigator of the attack.
We get to quiz Miranda about Cerberus and Lazarus.
She takes us to another Cerberus facility where we are to meet the boss, who is named the illusive man.
At the facility we use a holographic vr phone system to speak with the Illusive man.
He tells us that human colonies are under attack. Just like Saren and the Geth did the Reapers work before a new enemy is attacking these colonies.
Illusive man feels that Shepherd is a symbol of fear to the Reapers, she has killed one before they must respect that. This is why he spent so much to get her back from the dead.
Freedoms progress is the name of the latest colony that has come under attack, we have to go there and find a connection between the attackers and the Reapers.
With a grudging truce between Cerberus and Shepherd we agree to go on the mission.
We get to speak with Jacob and Miranda and get a little of their background.

Mission 2
We arrive at freedoms Progress, it is a snowy ghost town.
Again the defense mechs are reprogrammed to attack humans.
We fight through the base until we come to a room filled with Quarians.
Tali is amongst them and she is overjoyed to see us again.
Seems a Quarian named Veetor was on the colony when it was attacked.
Seems he has a damaged suit and is suffering from infected wounds. It was Veetor who programmed the mechs to attack anything that moves.
We make our way through the maze and find some dog like and flying mechs.
We come to a door and are told to send our squad to certain positions, You have Jacob and Miranda's images in the middle of the bottom of your screen, this is mapped to the dpad where pointing at a location and pressing left on the dpad will send the left person to that location. Pressing down on the dpad brings both of them back  to following you.
We find a heavy mech which kills most of the quarian squad in cut scene. We are left to take it down.
We find Veetor in a computer room. He shows us a video of the attack, swarms of bugs and aliens that Miranda recognises and the collectors. A race from far away who are fairly elusive in this part of the galaxy.
Tali wants to take Veetor back to the quarians. Miranda wants to take him to the Illusive man. We have our first major choice.
Ask Tali to join us, tell Miranda that Veetor should go home or tell Tali that we are taking Veetor.
I ask Tali to join us, she tells us that she had a mission and responsibilities that she can't walk away from.
I let Tali take Veetor, however we get his omnitool.

Back at the Illusive man he tells us that he suspected the collectors.
They come from beyond the Omega 4 relay which only lets Collector ships through.
Collectors have previously been interested in rare mutations and certain biological items, they have never taken more that a few dozen people before. Suddenly they are harvesting tens of thousands.
We are to get a team together and with the Help of the Illusive man be ready at the next collector incursion.
He tells us about someone who may be able to help us get an antidote to the reaper swarm paralysing agent.
Joker turns up and gives us a new Normandy.
We get to tour around the new Normandy which is slightly bigger than the last.
In the weapons room Jacob seems to be hanging out.
There is a scientific lab that we need a scientist to get into.
On the crew deck I meet a cook who give me a list of ingredients to get on the citadel.
Dr. Chambers wants a bottle of wine. Wow it's mini-quest city in here.
Miranda has her own office, where we can quiz her about cerebus.
She reveals that she is genetically suped up.
The crew deck has the mess, toilets and bunks. Also life support and the a.i. core.
On the engineering deck some engineers need new couplings.
I go to the star map and find it a little different. You get to drive your ship around the map, which I have to say looks a little silly.
You can also survey planets by running a scanner over them and when it bleeps and rumbles you fire one of your limited amount of probes down. I assume this collects the minerals as well.
The map shows a location named Omega, under it it says i can recruit some people here. This looks like the next mission.
Omega is a hollowed out asteroid and a haven for criminals.

Mission 3
I get to choose my squad, of course only Miranda and Jacob are available.
On  arriving we are met by a Batarian who suggest we go to aria at a place called afterlife and present ourselves.
Inside Afterlife is a huge bar and the first thing to present itself.
A batarian called Kylan nearly starts a fight.
Inside the bar I buy Brandy for the Doctor.
We meet Aria, we ask her about Archangel, who it seems is unpopular.
We are also trying to find Mordin Solus a solarian doctor, Aria tells us that he is in the Quarantine zone.
I go to a Merc recruiter who takes us a blue sun member.
He send us on to the place where Archangel is, seems he is taking on all comers.
Archangel has a base with only one entrance which is across an exposed bridge.
We meet Jaroth a member of Elicpse who are another crime group after Archangel.
We now meet Garn leader of Krogan blood pack who also are after archangel.
I find Cathka a batarian.
Who is doing something with a dropship.
I go to attack archangel and I can't get to him. I blow up a bomb which mercs are working with to see if that does anything and they all turn on me, I shoot them and then can get in to Garrus.
Garrus has been a bit lost without us to give him purpose. He is glad to join up.
We now have to escape this bottleneck.
The Eclipse Mercs attack and we have to hold them off. The robot we hacked earlier is deployed and fights for our side, which is handy.
Garoth comes out and when we kill him the attack is over.
We have to go back to Garrus.
Now the Blood pack merc find a way into the lower levels. We have to leave one of our squad with Garrus. We get to choose, I leave Miranda.
Now we have to go downstairs and close three security shutters that the enemy have opened. We have to clear our way to the shutters and then close them. Rinse and repeat three times and we have to go back to Garrus.
The Krograns arrive in the main area where Garrus is and we have to clear that area as well.
Back to Garrus.
Only the Blue sun are left.
And they use the drop ship to come in through the windows. We have to take out the drop ship as it fires machine gun and rockets at us, also soldiers are deployed on both flanks.
Garrus us wounded and it looks for a second like he might die. The mission ends as Shepherd calls for extraction by the Normandy.

Back on the Normandy Garrus is ok and Joins our team on the forward batteries.
I suppose I have to go back to Omega to look for the scientist.
I go to the marketplace and find a shop.
In the shop are some trinkets I buy a few.
Visor, which improves accuracy.
Capacitor chest plate, which absorbs incoming energy.
Hack module, which doubles the time for hacking attempts.
Stimulator condutis, which make you run faster.
Sniper Rifle damage improves damage from sniper rifles for your whole squad.
Heavy weapon Ammo +15% ammo capacity.
Couplings, for the engineers.
Shotgun damage.

We meet some vorcha, which are a new race I think.
They look like demons and don't seem freindly.
I meet a quarian who is down on his luck and needs 1000 credits to get off Omega.
I give him the money.

Mission 4
I find a guard at the quarantine zone door. He is stopping people getting in andd out.
Some chat later he lets us in without much trouble.
Inside we find Blue sun gang members who are shooting up the place and burning the bodies off the dead.
A batarian plague victim blames humanity for the plague. We help him. He then tells us about Mordin. Seems that Mordin is more than a doctor, example is that he killed blue sun members and displayed their bodies as a warning.
Vorcha have moved in since the plague is killing everyone else.
We come across a pitched battle between Blue sun and Vorcha and it seems the vorcha are winning, it always seems that where you find Vorcha you find Krogan's.
Once the battle is done I find the clinic.
Inside the clinc we find lots of ill people and Mordin.
Mordin will help us but only in return for clearing Vorcha from the environmental control room. Mordin has a cure but it needs distributing.
We also need to find his missing assistant.
I fight my way through the area and come to the assistant who I diplomatically save from Batarians.
We come into another large area where we have to press three switches to inject the cure and turn on the fans.
Back at Mordin he agrees to come with us.

On board Mordin gets to work on the samples taken from Freedoms Progress.
I can now get into the tech lab. Inside here we can research upgrades using raw materials as the money to pay for them.

I go back to Aria and give her some info.
One of Aria's men asks us to help someone called Patriarch, a Krogan.
I find the Krogan, then have to go and kill the thugs who are after him.
I have to go back to the Krogan.
Then back to Aria who gives me the co-ordinates of a cache for our reward.

Back on the Normandy I investigate the map a bit more.
You use fuel up when moving from system to system, in system travel does not use fuel.
You can buy probes and trans system fuel at a refuelling station.

I go to another system and mine a little. On one planet I find an anomaly.
We can go down and investigate.
Here we find a little base on which a cerberus operative has been captured and tortured to death. We have a few little fights, bypass lots of locks and eventually find the data.
We have to option of keeping it to ourselves or sending it to the alliance to Cerberus.
I send it to Cerberus.

Seems time to move on to a new system I go to the mass relay and jump to the system where our mission seems to be to recruit a convict named Jack from a prison ship named Purgatory.

Mission 5
In cut sceen the governor name Kuril tells us about Purgatory. Each cell is a self contained movable unit. The cells can be jettisoned into space in the event of trouble.
We get to wander towards the area where Jack is being thawed out. We get to intervene in a beating scene and I influence the guards to stop the abuse.
Another prisoner wants us to free him until he realises we are going to be taking Jack with us. Seems jack is nuts and very dangerous.
We progress through the base seeing nutty prisoners.
As we get to where we were meant to be going a cell opens for us and Warden Kuril tells us that we have been conned and we are now his prisoners. Of course we now get to fight the guards as they pour in through the doors.
We move through to processing and in cut scene hack a terminal that releases Jack.
Jack turns out to be a skinny tattooed woman. She wakes and immediately attacks huge mechs that are guarding her with furious biotic attacks.
We now have to progress through the prison which in in full riot as we have unlocked all doors not just released Jack. We eventually come to Warden Kuril as a boss. He is protected by loads of guards and is in a shield bubble which needs three towers  shot to open, once done he is easy meat for our sniper rifle.
We meet up with Jack, she will come with us only if we give her full access to cerebrus data. Seems there is history here with cerebrus. Miranda is appalled but allows us to do this.

I go to a planet named Daratar where It says I can secure smuggled cargo.
I find some mechs shooting up the fragile crates, you start with 20 and it rapidly deteriorates.
There are really long loading times when you die which is unforgivable.
I kill all three mechs and have only 8 crates left.

I go to the Imir system where we havve to go to a planet named Korlus to recruit the Krogan.
On the planet we find Blue sun Merc. A wounded one tells us the someone called Jedore is breeding Krogan, however they are all turning out crazy.
The blue sun are using the failed Krogan's for target practice.
One of them talks to us, it's monosyllabic but it seems the Krogan we want is trying to help them.
The krogan lets us into the lab area by moving a huge barrier for us.
We have to fight through a large area filled with blue sun mercs.
Then we come to Rana Thanoptis, we met her in the first game at Saren's biolab. Seems she is up to her old tricks. We let her go last time, should we this time.
Okeer is doing something here with the Krogan, he is not trying to breed lots, or to cure the Krogan genophage.
Okeer seems to be working to make a perfect solider. In history a group of aliens banded together to create a genophage that rendered the Krogan sterile and reduced their numbers.
Okeer seems to have done a deal with the collectors for some tech in the past.
He will tell us what he knows if we stop Jedore from poisoining his new krogan superbreed.
I go and stop Jedore which is a good fight with some Krogan, heavy mechs and Jedore herself. When we get back up to Okeer he is dead and the Super Krogan is safe. Shepherd decides to take him back to the ship.
I don't know if it was just me but the storytelling he was a little unclear.

Back on the ship we have to decide to open the supersoldier or leave him in the box. Since we saw him in our squad in the trailers it's a no brainer.
I find Jack and she is a bit of a twat.
I find the Krogan and open the tank, he shows his teeth but will join us.

I am told by Kelly that the Illusive man wants a word. I go to the briefing room and initiate a holo chat with him.
He tells us that Horizon is about to come under attack.
Also Ashley is there on alliance business.
Mordin has to come up with a protection against the collectors swarm and fast. We go to visit him and he has something.
This is our chance to intervene and stop or at least gather data on the collectors.

In cut scene we see Ashley on Horizon, she is caught in the attack and downed by the swarm. We watch the huge ship that destroyed the original Normandy land and Collectors emerge. They are huge armoured humanoids.
Inside the collector ship a more crab like leader type collector takes control of one of it's soldiers outside the ship for a closer look at the humans.
We land and find that the swarm protection upgrade to our armour works.
We find collectors and engage them.
Humans are inside stasis fields and there are pods lying around everywhere that look organic.
Are the humans being packed into them? Husks from the first game arrive, in the original husks were made from human corpses by the Geth as suicide soldiers.
We fight a few more collectors and witness one being taken over by the leader, however this does not seem to make them that much more effective that the normal soldiers.
We come to a door and hacking it find a personn cowering in a small garage type area. He tells us about guns that were being installed to protect the colony. However the targetting system is offline. We have to go and get it working.
We go through two large areas of colony fighting all the way, larger husk type creatures name Scions arrive, which seem to be a whole bunch of husks jammed together to make one bigger creature.
I swear a saw a flying husk without legs also.
We get the tower online and communicate with the normandy. Edi can get the towers sorted, however they will need to power up which will be easily spotted by the Collectors.
We will have to defend the tower control system while they power up.
We get a two waves of collectors then a boss type collector, a large flying insectoid with a powerful laser blast.
Once it's downed we see the collector ship getting pounded by the guns.
It takes off. Ashley arrives from nowhere. A little suspicious if you ask me.
Is Ashley cross eyed?
Ashley won't join us, good, she was a pain in the ass anyway.

The Illusive man tells us of another bunch of team members to recruit.

I go to the far rim to recruit Tali.
The planet is Haestrom.
I got a please insert disc 2 message here.
This is a Geth planet, the sunlight here is radioactive and will damage our shields. This means we must fight in the shade or take damage.
We encounter Geth and it's just like old time. The quarians have taken a pounding from the Geth and are trapped. we have to get demo charges to blow open a doorway to get them out.
I find a journal from Tali which tells us that the Quarians were studying the sun here, it is dying too quickly.
I blow the pillar only to find no one left alive inside.
Tali talks to us through a comms device. She is nearby.
We have to go to her of course, through loads of Geth.
A large Geth walker appears.
We meet a Quarian commando, he is trying to take down the Collossus but it self repairs.
We stop him from being suicidal and do it ourselves. Getting plenty of paragon points for making it hard for ourself.
I fight the Geth and the collossus, it's a load of fun and not that hard.
Inside we find Tali who does not take much convincing to join us.
She gives the data to the other Quarian that we saved and leaves with us.

Now we are off to the Crescent nebula where we are going to a planet called Illium to recruit the justicar and the assassin.
This is an Asari colony world, though a fringe and slightly lawless one.
We are met by an Asari called Karena. She welcomes us to the city of Nos Astra.
We meet an Asari who gives us a message from the Rachni queen, an entity we saved from extinction in the last game. Seems it might have been the right choice as it pledges help in the coming stuggle.
There are a load of small quests here.
I get a Krogan and an Asari back together?!?!
I find Liara's office and speak with her assistant.
Then Liara herself, who give us a kiss. She is troubled by her job, she wants us to hack something for her. She gives us leads on both of our targets however.
We get an asari trader into trouble for selling other peoples schematics.
We speak to Seryna an Asari about Thane the assassin on the shipping area.
Thane is going to assassinate an Asari named nassanna, who was in the first game.
He if going to gain access to her tower block using a nearby tower which is under construction.
Seryna can take us to the tower.
At the tower we find some workers who have been attacked by Nassana's mechs for no obvious reason.
We find some more workers after a long fight with loads of mercs.
I find the elevator up to the penthouse. There is a nasty surprise of around three heavily armed thugs inside when you open the door, I died the first time here.
Next time I was ready.
We speak to an unwary guard and he tells us that Thane was spotted near the bridge.
So we now are heading for the bridge.
I find some more workers and free them.
The final assault across the bridge is fun.
We get to Nassana's office and whilst we chat with Nassana Thane drops out of the roof and kills her.
Thane is a man of few words but will join us. It said so on the trailers.
Thane reveals he is dying and will join us.

Mordin wants to talk to us. He tells us that he was involved with re-engineering the Krogan genophage. One of his team has been captured and as a personal favour wants us to go and save this team member. Also preventing the Krogan from torturing the fact that Mordin led the team out of the poor captured team member.

Jacob wants us to go and check out his father's crashed ship. He thought everyone on it had died including his father ten years ago. However, the ship has started broadcasting a distress signal.

Jack wants to chat and tells us about being tortured by cerberus to make a stronger biotic. Seems she was treated really badly as a younf girl. She wants to go back to that base and nuke it. I agree.

Garrus wants us to find someone who betrayed him.

Miranda wants us to reloacte her sister who her father is hunting down. Seems their father was fairly abusive.

Back to Nos Astra on Illium, we now have to collect the justicar and help Miranda's sister.

I help a colonist negotiate her way out of a binding medical contract with and Asari. The asari was angry becuase of her daughters dying on the citadel attack.

I find my way to the justicar's location by speaking  to officer Dara in Nos Astra.
When we land in the new part of the city a Volus called Pitne For is being told to stay in the area until the  murder investigation is over. Seems his business partner was murdered. The justicar is here to investiagte.
Pitne tells us that the Justicar is in the area where his partner was killed, we have to speak to a cop called Anaya. She wants Samara out of the way as well and is delighted that we want to recruit her.
We go and find some trouble with Eclipse Merc's at the end of it we find Samara and she is a very powerful biotic.
She needs to do her job and so does Anaya, the only way that the two can be reconciled without a fight is for us to sort out the murder enquiry while Anaya holds Samara in a cell for the night. If we don't solve the mystery in one day Samara will escape and wreck the place.
I go back to Pitne For and threaten him. Seems he and his partner smuggled a bitoic boosting chemical onto Illium, the Eclispe want him dead as a result.
Pitne For will let us into the merc base using a stolen card. Seems we are going to just kill the mercs and the problem will be solved???
We go through an elevator and into the merc base, there are containers of this chhemical called Minogen X, Shooting the containers releases a cloud of gas, standing in the gas makes a level increase, it makes your biotics more powerful, however if thee level reaches the top it will kill you.
We find a cowardly eclipse soldiers in a room hiding, seems they wanted out as they don't like what the eclispe are into, essentially guns and drugs. There is also something called an Ardat Yakshi or demon of the night winds which they have been smuggling.
I let her go.
We fight through some more of the base.
At a terminal I find that Elnara, the Asari I let go was the killer. Doh!
We encounter a gunship.
We find evidence that Pitne For sold drugs to the Eclipse.
I find a volus named Niftu Cal, seems he was part of Pitne For's group, the Eclipse seem to have been mucking him about and filling him full of drugs.
He seems to think he is a god like biotic.
We make sure he lies down.
Wasea isn't that hard of a boss battle. A bunch of merc and a very strong biotic. She is no match for my rapid fire sniper rifle.
I find evidence of the smuggling of the creature.
Time to go back to the spaceport.
I give Pitne For his manifest back which clears him. I get renegade points for this, but what the hell the money is better in my pocket for upgrades than in his for drug money.
The Justicar is satisfied and will join us, Anaya gets rid of her and is happy.
She swears an oath to us and the mission ends.
I go back down to Illium as we have to help Miranda's sister.
I help Ilara by hacking her data. She is after the shadow broker. We can help her again by hacking more data for her. This will help her narrow down a list of suspects.

This seems to be a puzzle. I run around for a while finding the terminals to hack and each contains a small report, piecing it together I guess that the Krogan was the obsevrver, maybe I got it wrong as I don't get any real reward.

I find Miranda's contact, she won't speak to us unless Miranda is in the party.
I go get Miranda and she tells us that Eclipse Mercs are sniffing around.
We decide to send Ariana with a friend of Miranda's named Niket while we go to the spaceport as a diversion for the Mercs. When we get there it's a trap and we are attacked. Seems that the Mercs know of the plan. We kill the mercs then go after Ariana, who may already be in trouble.
When we find Niket it seems he is not working for Miranda's father, he is working for Oriana's best interested, presumably without asking her.
Niket is killed by the eclispe and we have a big fight with them
Then we get to see Oriana with her adopted family.
I persuade Miranda to go speak with her sister.
Mission done.

I help a slave quarian get sold to an asari company.
I return a locket I found during the last mission to and Asari who lost it.
Found a spelling mistake in the text of the game Slave was misspelled Slake.

Back to the Normandy.

I try and get some mining done so I can afford upgrades.
I find another anomaly.
Seems there is some blood pack shenannigans going on down on the planet
I find a mining operation, seems Vorcha were being used as miners. There are insectoid indigenous animals called Klixen which aren't friendly. There is also a larger flying creature which can be seen in the distance. seems the miners were being attacked by these creatures.
We activate a beacon path as we progress.
I come to the main area of this map and find a large blood pack Krogan in charge. Killing him and hacking the beacon finishes the mission.

On the Normandy the illusive man wants a word.
Seems some Turians encountered a collector ship. They managed to disable it before they were destroyed. We are sent to go and investiagte the ship.
We find the ship looking dead, though suspiciously there is little external damage to see.
This ship is the same one from Horizon. It's possible that the guns on Horizon softened it up for the Turians.
Inside the very organic looking ship we find pods and some mutilated bodies.
I find a control node and upload data from it to edi on the Normandy.
It seems that the Collectors have a quad stand genetic structure, which is supposed to only be shared with the Protheans. The Protheans are the ancients who built the Mass relays.
Edi postulates that these Collectors are indeed Protheans and the reapers have turned them into their slaves.
We get a new weapon here of our choice.
I progress deeper into the ship. Joker warns that the data taken from scans of this ship also match data taken from the original Normandy. This is the same ship that attacked it two years ago. It seems there is only one Collector ship.
This is looking more and more like a trap.
Samara notes that there are no Collector bodies.
We find our way out into a huge open space lined with what could be billions of pods.
I come to a control terminal.
Pressing it sets up a data link between the two ships.
As the data flows to the Normandy something happens. It seems that a virus has been sent.
Suddenly the platform that Shepherd is on moves up into the air and another platfrom moves closer.
A few other platforms join it and we suddenly have a mass of collector soldiers to deal with. I manage to deal with them and we have to restart the link.
Edi takes control and moves us away.
Edi manages to get data which will take us to through the Omega 4 Relay.
She also finds that the Illusive man must have known that the Turian distress call was a fake as Edi can easily see that it came from the Collectors themselves.
Seems he knew that the Turian scheme was a lie and that the Collectors wanted Cerberus/Shepherd to come to them.
The Illusive man sent them here into the trap without forewarning them.
We get to run through the ship now filling with Collectors.
Husks also arrive and run at us in larger amounts.
We eventually get back to the shuttle and the Normandy runs for it before the Collector ships weapons power up and blow it to bits.

We speak to the Illusive man
He is unrepentant about sending us in to the trap. He tell us that the stolen data shows that a device on Reaper and collector ships is like a key to the Omega 4 Relay.
The lastest intel he shares with us is that there is a 37 million year old reaper ship stuck in orbit around a Brown Dwarf star. He wants us to go there and get it's key.
Seems that the Collector home is in the Galatic core which seems hard to believe.
The gang postulate that there must be some very advanced technology keeping the homeworld or whatever it is safe inside all the black holes and exploding stars.

Here it seems that we get a choice. To go after the Reaper IFF or continue building our team.
I stick with Team building as in the last game there was a point of no return and it looks like this is it here.

I go and speak to Grunt and he is having blood lust, well more than usual.
Seems we need to go to the Krogan Homeworld to see a Doctor.
Time to mop up side missions and get ourselves levelled up for the big fight.
I go to the Krogan Homeworld as there are two missions to be done there.

The Krogan homeworld is dank and dirty. There is an Asari and a Krogan who are dating trying to get her past immigration.
A blood pack Merc is recruiting.
A Captain tells us that our Krogan needs the rite.
We go into the main area which looks like a bombed out city.
Wrex is here and it seems he is now in charge. Though his more liberal ideas learned from Shepherd are not going down well. Though like Shepherd and his previous lifestyle he is taking no abuses.
A shaman can help us with Grunt's puberty rituals.
Wrex's chief scout can help us with finding Mordin's team member.
The chief scout tells us to go looking in the bloodpacks base.
We take a truck out to the base which is an old hospital.
We fight Vorcha and Krogan, also their lizard like dogs outside the hospital then get inside.
We find a human body, which seems to havve been the victim of horrific experimentation.
We meet clan weyreloc, he is of the revenge for the genephage group and lacks any reason whatsoever.
We end up fighting, inevitably.
We find a dead Krogan, Mordin does not see himself as guilty for creating the Genophage.
Eventually we come to Maelon the Solarian scientist supposedly kidnapped by the Krogan. He is working for them deliberately.
He wishes to cure the Genophage. Which morally is a right thing to do. However the genophage potentially stops the Krogan from overrunning the entire galaxy and killing everyone.
Tough choice.
I stop Mordin from killing Maelon and let him go.
Now we have the choice of what to do with the data.
I let Mordin keep it.

Back to the Shaman for Grunt's rite. Uvenk, the challenger to Wrex is sniffing around causing trouble.
I manage to get the rite started and alienate Uvenk totally.
The rite consists of standing around in an arena while waves of Klixen and Varren arrive for us to kill
A thresher Maw arrives and we have to take it down as well.
Uvenk Arrives and tries to make us accept him as leader. I fight him as well.
grunt gets accepted into the Urdnot clan.
I find a shopkeeper, he has trouble with pyjaks stealing his food. I do a little mini-game where you have to shoot up three waves of pyjaks. I manage it first time and it was fairly easy.
I buy up his upgrades at a cheaper price for helping and feed his Varren. it starts to follow me around.
Back to the ship.

I go to a planet called Pragia on Jack's mission.
We find the facility named Kelton on the jungle planet. It is old and broken down, overgrown with trees and other vegetation.
I find security logs which seem to suggest that Jack wasn't the only one who was tortured here in the quest to unlock biotic powers by any means necessary.
It also appears that the Illusive man might not know about what went on here as it seems the leaders might have not been giving him the full story.
Varren are our only problem until a bunch of bloodpack merc appear.
We find a man named Aresh in Jack's cell, seems he was a child here as well. He has come back to restart the experiments and gain biotic power for himself.
I stop jack from killing him. We take off and watch as the place blows form the shuttle.

Back on the Normandy a cut scene kicks in. Joker tells us of a disturbance. In Miranda's room Jack is hurling the chairs around.
They are arguing about cerberus.
We have to choose between the two of them??
I choose to side with Jack. Miranda now hates our guts.

Garrus has a lead on his traitor, we have to go to the citadel and speak with someone named Thade.

I find Samara in the observation deck.
Turns out that the Ardat Yakshi is Samara's daughter, she must be killed as she is very dangerous.

I speak to Tali, she has been accused of Treason. We have to go to the migrant fleet and see what has happened to bring this about.

Back to Omega to sort out Samara's daughter.
Aria tells us that someone was murdered by the Ardat Yakshi in the appratment.
I head over there and find A human woman named Diana. Turns out she was the mother of the girl who has been killed.
The girl was called Nef, seems she met Morinth in the VIP area of afterlife.
We get the password from her journal.
I go to the vip area and am to go in alone and unarmed as bait.
I am to lure Morinth into a trap.
I chat a bit in the bar and eventually Morinth comes up to me and invites me to her private booth.
We chat a bit and I have to try and fit in with her needs.
She is happy with our responses and takes us home.
He we chat a bit more and she pulls her tricks on us.
Samara comes in and they fight with Samara eventually killing her.
There was a glitch here where the voices dropped out of the cut scene, so I missed what was said.
A Solarian named Ish wants us to bring him packages from the citadel and Eternity on Illium.

I go to Jacobs crashed ship site looking for what happened to his father.

When we get there the beacon has been fixed by someone only recently. There are logs which indicate that the crash was survived by a large proportion of the crew. The food on the planet was toxic however, it didn't kill only damaged neural functioning.
In order to survive the lack of food the survivors had to become idiots.
The captain, Jacob's father kept the officers on the ship and exiled the crew to the land. In the hope that they could be restored to normal functioning later.
This didn't go well and there was a revolution. It seems that the mech's were turned on the surviors. It looks like Taylor has kept his own little empire here in charge of the idiots and most probably getting his wicked way with all the docile females.
The males however have became aggressive and it looks like this had led Taylor to fix the beacon.
We have to plough through the mechs and some more survivors before we get to Taylor
Jacob pours out his scorn and disappointment, and we bring in Cerberus to clean up and send Taylor to jail for a long time.

Time to help Tali, time for a trip to the migrant fleet.
When we ge tto the fleet Captain KarDanna tells us that Tali has smuggled active Geth into the migrant fleet. Tali admits sending Geth parts to the fleet for her father to study but claims they were all inactive before being sent.
We get into the trial and it turns out that the geth have taken the ship her father is working on and the Quarians haven't been able to take it back.
Seems that an admiral called Korlis has a problem with Tali's father's plans for the Geth.
On the captured ship the Geth are fully in control and there are a lot of Quarian bodies lying around. It looks like Tali's father was trying to hack Geth software in the hope of getting a handle on killing or reprogramming them. The Geth were built by the Quarians and they took over their homeworld and cast them out as exiles from their own world. The Quarians have been trying to get it back ever since. Though some are now happy living in the migrant fleet and want to just forget the homeworld and get on with it.
We find Tali's father dead. The remaining Geth we wipe out.
Tali's father was working on live Geth, the evidence is clear. Tali wants us to bury it so that her father is not remembered as a war criminal.
We go back to the trial.
I decide to not give the trial the info and Tali is cleared.

I suppose it's finally time to go back to the citadel and help Garrus.
I think I have been avoiding going here as we spent such a long time there in the last game.
As we go in security scanners tell the guard that we are dead. He asks us too check in with chief Bailey.
We ask him to leave it like that. Death is serving us well.
Fade works in a marketplace.
I wander aorund the citadel, which is all new so far.
I find the place where Thade is and a volus and two Krogan appear.
We ask about Sidonis and have to shoot the Krogan.
The volus tells us that someone called Harkin can help us.
I have to use the transport system to get to the next objective.
I go to the Presidium, I figure I may as well get the annoyance of the council over with.
They think the Geth were controlled by Saren and don't fully believe in Sovereign or the Reapers.
We get reinstated as a spectre.
I go to the factory district looking for Harkin. We are attacked by a lot of blue sun Mercs. seems that Harkin is Thade.
I beat him up a little and he sets up a meeting with Sidonis for us.
Garrus is going to snipe Sidonis from a distance. We are to meet him.
We get a choice moment, Garrus has him in his sights but we are in his line of fire. we either move or warn Sidonis.
I let Garrus shoot him, after all it seems a waste of time to bring him all this way to get revenge on Sidonis and then stop him when he's in Garrus' sights.
We leave the citadel.

I find Thane and speak to him. He is worried about his family, or what is left of it.
His son Kolyat is in trouble. He has taken a job as an assassin, and Thane does not want him to take this path.
Back to the citadel, at least we were in orbit.
I speak to Bailey at CSEC and he tells us to go see Mouse
Mouse is a petty criminal who is the go-between for the bigger fish and Thane's son.
I find Mouse and he gives us a name.
Now we go back to Bailey with the Name Elias Kellham.
Bailey brings Kellham in for questioning. We get to beat a name out of him.
Jorham Taleed is the target, he is an anti-human campaigner. This makes it obvious why Kellham wanted him dead.
We now have to tail Taleed and watch for Kolyat making his move.
We have to wander around in the gantries above one of the citadels corridors and keep up with Talheed while he wanders around talking to people.
Eventually Kolyat makes his rather clumsy assassination attempt.
We intervene and father and son have a heart to heart.

I go to a map marker which says "save crashing ship"
The ship has been taken over by Geth and is being crashed into a colony. We have to go aboard and turn the engines back on. We do this by pressing three switches.
The Geth run interference the whole time.
We only have 5 minutes to complete the mission in.

Annother map marker says "Destroy Blood pack base"
This is a small blood pack base with very little in the way of resistance or challenge. We have to blow up a large device at the end to complete the mission.

That seems to be a good proportion of the side missions done.
Time to get onto the main story again. I go to the system where the dead Reaper is that the Illusive man told us about. The ship is only minimally powered and has large holes blown in it, it is also 37 million years old. It does look dead, I am sure it won't be however.
As we get close it looks like A Geth ship is present.
We dock with the science ship that has been here studying the wreck.
We see logs of the missing crew, they talk of an oppressive atmosphere and strange behaviour of some crew members.
As we get inside the actual wreck barriers come up sealing us inside. We will have to take out the source off the power, however, this will also shut down the fields that hold the wreck in orbit.
Inside is further crew logs showing two crewmen remembering the same memory of their wedding day.
We are attacked by husks en masse.
The logs shows one of the crew talking about the Reaper, calling it a God, a dead God that is dreaming.
We move into a new area through a hacked door and A Geth with a sniper rifle has us in it's sights.
However it shoots husks that are about to attack us rather than us.
It says our name and walks off.
We progress further through the ship under heavy husk and scion attack. The scion attacks really take down your health and with loads of husks running around survival can be a challenge.
We come to a door and hack it. We find the Reaper IFF here. Inside the main room the Geth is manipulating some controls.
A huge glowing core opens up and the geth falls seemingly inert. It seems the only thing to do is shoot the core.
After taking a bit of damage husks arrive in large numbers. We have to kill a wave, shoot the core a bit then another wave, after about three waves the core blows.
We watch in cut scene as the gang decide to take the Geth. The Normandy pulls up to a handy hole in the side of the ship and we throw thee geth and ourselves into the airlock and escape as the Reaper falls into the sun.

back on board the Normandy we are deciding what to do with the Geth. Miranda wants to send it to Cerberus. Jacob thinks we should just destroy it.
What seems outrageously stupid is that they are storing the geth in the a.i. core???
The IFF can be used and linked with the Normandy. Edi urges caution as it is Reaper tech.

I go to the a.i. core and activate the Geth, of course it is in a shield and heavily isolated.
It tells us that it knows of us but has never met us. It also says that Shepherd has never fought the Geth. When we query this it says that there are two factions of Geth. The heretic believe in the old machines and this ones faction believe in making their own future.
This means that we have the same goals. The Geth faction is on our side. It agrees to join us.
The Geth explains that all Geth are copies of the same program. They are networked via FTL conduits.
As such giving one a name is useless as you are talking to all of them.
Edi suggests that we call him Legion, the name sticks.
Legion tells us that the heretics are planning to release a virus that Sovereign gave them. The virus will alter the Good Geth programming to make them the same as the heretics.
We have to stop this.

We go to the Heretic Geth Space station. Using cloaking the Normandy docks. Joker wonders if one of the Geth will just look out of the window and see them. Legion tells him that there are no windows. Legion floods the Geth data networks with random noise, this means that they will have to cut down their networking, making them more vulnerable and the alarm will only spread to the room we are in.
Legion tells us that he can reprogram the virus to do the opposite. To make the heretic Geth into good Geth.
Samara tells us that this is as bad as killing them.
Legion answers that they will have no qualms about killing her.
Inside the geth base we find data paths on the floor that if walked on trigger and alert.
The Geth stand plugged into base stations until we trigger the alarm.
Blowing up the base stations opens the doors out of the rooms.
We come to the main terminal and Legion starts hacking.
We have to survive three waves of heavy Geth attack while the virus works.
We get to decide wether to kill or cure the Geth.
I say cure.
We now have to evacuate the station in three minutes or die in the em pulse of the virus broadcast.
We have to run through some corridors with heavy Geth attack.

Back on the Normandy Tali and Legion are having a spat.
I have enough paragon points to defuse this one properly without alienating one or the other.

The IFF is nearly installed.
We are told to take a shuttle for our next mission. We see a bunch of the gang get into the shuttle and leave the ship. Which is odd because I wasn't planning on going anywhere.
We see the progress on board as the IFF is brought online. Edi warns of  a signal in the static that is broadcasting our location. As if by magic the Collector ship warps in.
The ship is being boarded.
Edi asks Joker to go to the a.i. core and give her full control of the ship.
We go through the ship with Collectors arriving in full force. We see a lot of the crew getting killed.
We get to the core and flip the switch Edi wants.
Then we have to go down to engineering.
More collectors are visible on the way loading the crew into the pods.
We get to engineering and actiavte the console for EDI. She then locks Joker behind a force field and opens all the airlocks and accelerates rapidly away from the collectors.
Joker is concerned for the crew and Edi tells him there are none left.
Shepherd and the gang get back and find the ship empty apart from Joker.
The Iff is working, there are no viruses left. We can go through the Omega 4 relay.
I choose to wait a little.

Time to go, there seems to be no big missions left.
I have to insert disc 1 again.
Miranda has a chat, The Illusive man has a chat. Shepherd goes to her room and looks whistfully at a picture of Liara.
It's time, we see the Normandy approach the relay and go through. On the other side there is a huge debris field, the remains of all the ships that have went through.
Joker has to fly through at speed by the seat of his pants.
A collector ship can be seen in the distance. Shepherd tells Joker to approach. Collector fighters come in behind the normandy and attack. Joker fights back.
One of the ships attatches to the Normandy. We have to go and repel the boarders.
In thhe cargo hold there are huge holes open to space. An orb like robot is in the hold.
We have to take it out.
We approach the huge collector space station.
The ship we have encountered before launches to intercept. We take it on and win.
Thane is injured, possibly killed in the assualt on the Normandy. It ends up crash landing onto the collector space station.
We have to draw up a plan to assault the station. Two teams will assualt in different areas to cause maximum distraction. We have to choose someone to go through a duct to open security doors for us. I choose Mordin, as it's meant to be a suicide mission.
Next we have to choose the leader of the second team. I choose Miranda, she would pout otherwise.
Now we are inside the collector base, much the same interior as their ship.
We have to open heat valves for Mordin as he climbs through the vents.
There are 8 valves to open and we must open them under heavy collector fire.
If we take too long Mordin gets fried and the mission is over I presume.
I manage to do it and we see a cut scene where Mordin opens the doors for us.
As we try and close them under heavy fire Mordin is killed.
We find pods with members of the Normandy crew. We free them, Kelly and the Doctor.
The doctor tells us that the colonist were melted into grey liquid and pumped away.
We now have to get into the main control room. The swarms of seeker drones are too heavy for Mordin's counter measures. Samara thinks a biotic could keep them off a small sqaud.
We have to choose a leader for the diversionary squad and send someone back with the saved crew members. I let Jacob take the crew back to the ship and send Miranda in charge of the diversion squad.
We now have to progress through the area in bubble of biotic energy that Samara is putting out.
We tell her to move on after every firefight.
We get to the door and through after some heavy fighting.
On the other side we let Miranda and her group in.
We have a choice here, to have someone stay and hold the door as a rearguard.
I am assuming the person chosen for this will be a casulty.
I decide to forget it, I might regret this.
Only I am forced to do it anyway.
We have another fight on the moving platforms, which is great fun.
As we reach the end we start a cut scene, or platform moves into a huge chamber.
There is a Reaper being constructed. It seems that the Reaper is a huge human shaped robot. The grey liquid is being used in it's construction.
It appears that a reapers shape is based on the species used to create it.
The reapers are a hybrid of Organic and technology. They use the essence of a species in their creation process.
The collectors appear to be facillitators of the Reaper reproduction process.
Edi speculates that the Proteans were victims of the reapers and that a Prothean Reaper failed in it's birthing process. The Proteans that were left were turned into the collectors.

We are to destroy this embryonic reaper, it will take billions more humans to complete it, something we cannot let happen.
We have to shoot four points on the Reaper's structure where they are pumping in the liquifed human goo.
Collectors run interference.
Once done the Reaper collapses into the pit underneath it and vanishes.
We tell everyone to get ready to go as we are about to overload the core.
The Illusive man comes over the radio and urges us to use a radiation pulse to kill all the collectors rather than destory the station. He thinks the knowledge here is too valuable to blow up.
The Reapers are still out there and they are formidable. If this knowledge can help humanity and all the other races fight them then the Illusive man wants to try.
I tell him to go take a running jump.
I set the bomb and then the Reaper embryo gets back up for a fight.
We have to shoot it in the eye.
Do this a lot and it goes down.
We run from the facility and manage to make it out in the nick of time.
We see the Collector leader having control relinguished by a Reaper, which must have been remotely controlling it.

Back on the badly battered Normandy Shepherd goes to face the Illusive man.
He is angry about us not following his Orders. I tell him that we will save humanity with it's soul intact.
Before the Credits Roll we see a fleet Of Reapers approaching, at least numbering in the hundreds.

Game over.

670 Achievement points for first playthrough.
Roughly 30 hours playtime

Side mission sees us entering a mine where a husk making machine has been dug up. It has turned the miners into husks. We have to shoot two bombs at either side of the machine to blow it up ending the mission.