RETRO PLAY-THROUGH | 'Mass Effect 2' Part 5
'Mass Effect: Andromeda' is out TODAY, and David Nolan powered up and ready to go! Catch the penultimate play-through of 'Mass Effect 2' here, as Shepard gets a call from the Illusive Man...
After polishing off some side quests, apparently, a turian patrol disabled a Collector cruiser and he has its coordinates. He says that if there’s anywhere that will give you the information needed to attack the Collector homeworld, that’s where it would be. Shepard believes it could be a trap but understands the there are benefits so she orders the Normandy to the coordinates.
As the Normandy pulls up alongside the massive ship, Shepard’s team jumps across and starts searching; this mission is one of the hardest in the game, but it starts off very quiet. It’s an uneasy quiet though, as there isn’t any sign of life. Rather quickly, Shepard comes across a dismembered Collector and discovers a sad truth: the Collectors are Protheans - the former masters of the galaxy, that the Reapers transformed into their biomechanical slaves; an unsettling discovery but one that needs to be put aside for now as there are more immediate concerns.
Players can now pick an extra specialisation for Shepard or unlock the most powerful version of one of the weapon classes already available. The most useful is the sniper Black Widow, the coolest is the shotgun Claymore and there’s also an assault rifle called the Revenant. Since this Shepard is an Infiltrator, the Black Widow seems like an apt choice.
The silence continues through the ship for a ways. Shepard and her team come out into a massive open space filled with pods like the ones they had on Horizon. Clearly the Collectors mean to target Earth and they need to be stopped. Just as they get to the point where EDI can connect to the Collector ship, it’s figured out that it is a trap and the Illusive Man knew it. The Collectors disable the Normandy and start reactivating their ship. Now the real part of the mission begins.
The fighting is intense and the Collectors have positioned themselves to give the best possible attacks on Shepard’s team. The platform they’re on shoots up into the air and other floating platforms swing into place around it. It’s a great visual part of the game and makes the fighting arena one that makes the player adjust on the fly. The enemies themselves aren’t anything we haven’t seen before so making the arena something new is a great design choice.
After some very intense fighting, Shepard is back on the ground and needs to fight their way back off the ship before the Normandy can be destroyed.
There are a couple of very intense fights but one in particular stands out. As the team comes around a corner, a Praetorian lands in front of them as Collector troops start hitting you from all sides; this is probably the single hardest fight in the game and could definitely cause many player deaths. If you’ve developed a strategy and team with the regular use of abilities, then it is beatable.
With one final dramatic run for safety, Shepard and her team make it back to the Normandy and escape. With the information recovered, EDI figures out that the Collector homeworld is somewhere near the galactic core and that the Normandy needs a Reaper IFF to make it there. There’s one available and, after chewing out the Illusive Man for wilfully leading you into a trap, it’s where we’ll head next.
As an aside, this is usually one of the last missions in a 'Mass Effect 2' run as it triggers something major to happen, but for the flow of this retrospective, it is recounted here.
Cerberus has been researching a derelict Reaper in orbit around a brown dwarf for a number of months but the crew there has gone dark. The Normandy needs the IFF that the Reaper contains so Shepard boards the ancient ship. As soon as she does, the Reaper’s shields come back online. Now we’ll need to destroy its power core, and thus the whole thing, to escape.
As Shepard explores, there are clips of the Cerberus researchers slowly becoming indoctrinated by the Reaper. It’s a very creepy set of scenes and utilises the cosmic horror of Lovecraft as a potent reference to the power of the Reapers.
Pretty soon, husks appear and start attacking. It is hinted that these are the former researchers now fully indoctrinated. Soon a sniper starts picking off husks as well and no one is sure who it is.
After some more disturbing images and discoveries, including the machinery that turns people into husks, the mysterious sniper helps Shepard’s team once more. It appears that it is a geth sniper - one who knows who Shepard is. Strange, but there are more enemies to deal with first.
There are a lot of husks in this level, including a few that explode, and for long-range focused PCs it could be a very frustrating section of the game - especially if you came here right after the Collector ship.
This isn’t a particularly long mission; it’s more based around difficult encounters than anything else. The combination of Scions and husks makes it so players need to keep scanning their surroundings to stay alive but they are a fun and challenging pairing, even if they are used a little too often in this mission.
The final section of the level however doesn’t have any Scions. It is just a fight in a small arena where husks are consistently spawning and attacking while the main target occasionally becomes vulnerable. The ship’s core is only vulnerable thanks to the geth sniper and once the core goes critical, Shepard takes the geth with them. The Reaper falls into the planet’s atmosphere but the team has had a successful mission.
Back onboard the Normandy, there is a discussion about whether to bring the geth back online for a chat or to ship it to the Illusive Man for a monetary reward. By this stage, it is difficult to imagine too many players needing that much money anymore, so this might be Bioware trying to ensure that as many players as possible got the geth squad member.
Upon reactivation, the geth explains that the artificial race would like to help fight the Reapers. Shepard is glad for all the help they can get so 'Legion' - as EDI dubs the geth, is welcomed onto the team.
Now, soon after completing the Reaper mission, the Normandy’s crew will start installing the Reaper IFF. When they do, Shepard’s whole team leaves on the shuttle (apparently that thing can fit twelve people in after all!). However, it is a trap and the Collectors soon appear, boarding the ship and taking as many of the crew hostage as they can.
In the only section in the series where you control someone else, Joker has to avoid contact with any of the Collector boarders and give EDI complete control of the Normandy’s systems. He does, and she immediately gets an upgraded personality. The ship makes a dramatic escape from the Collectors but sadly all the crew were taken apart from Joker; this is a great scene as it really ups the stakes right before the climax and gives two supporting characters some time to shine. Plus, it’s a change-up in the gameplay by making the player control a character that cannot fight back. The event starts a countdown timer whereby if you don’t assault the Collector’s main base within a very short time, your crew won’t survive.
While the final mission should be the next covered, there are many side quests in 'Mass Effect 2', including special quests known as 'loyalty missions' based around one of your squad mates.
The next instalment in this play-through series will be an overview of the best and worst elements of the 'Mass Effect 2' side quests and gameplay. From there, we will wrap up the main story with an assault on the Collector base before finishing off this retrospective with a look at the DLC.
Until then, 'Mass Effect: Andromeda' is out now! Grab your copy and let us know what you think!
