Day 8 is a short session with a long major plot mission. It’s quite good — it’s a creepy scene with some good fights and the politics of the game get more complicated in a good way. I also do more talking with my team, which is half and half between good dialog and formulaic structure. I’m in the calm before the plot resolution now — the clean-up of all the side plots to make me more powerful. It’s predictable but fun. Spoilers within.
I begin again on the Collector ship. It’s the same ship that attacked the Horizon colony earlier. It’s a creepy hive like ship with these pod things on the ceiling. In fact, Bioware has done a good job making this scene scary. I find empty pods and piles of dead bodies that the team thinks are leftover from experimentation — that’s not good. I find a terminal near a dead Collector, and when I patch Edie (the ship AI) tells me that the genes of Collectors are related to old Prothean (ancient race) genes. It seems the Collectors are modified Protheans used as servants by the Reapers. I get some Collector weapon. There are lots more pods on ceiling but Edie says there’s no life — they probably died when ship’s power failed. Edie also reveals that this is the same ship that attacked the Normandy at the start of ME2, so there seems to be a deeper plot here. There are also no collector bodies around, which itself is suspicious. The team thinks the Collectors are going to go after Earth given how many humans this ship could hold. I find the control center and hook Edie in. There’s a CS of her getting the data but then she’s interrupted — I kind of saw that coming. It”s some kind of trap. There’s a CS of our platform being raised and another platform coming into sight, and the other platform has enemies. I die once in the fight because I can’t tell enemies from allies, but then I win. I finish the connection, and Edie figures out the Ellusive man knew the distress signal wasn’t real. I have the choice to accuse him on the spot, but I say that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Joker says the Collector ship powering back up and we have to go.
We start running out and win a couple of fights on the way. We have to find a door but the instructions from the AI are weird. I die once when reaching the door from an attack when I thought I was under cover. Oh it’s a proximity attack — I remember these enemies from before. I die twice more figuring it but then kill it. I keep running and fight more. I die about four times on way out because I misjudge when I’m behind cover (wish that was clearer). This gets really annoying because there’s some big bad that keeps possessing the Collectors, and while he’s clearly a major nemesis, he say the same catch phrases over and over during the fight and it gets really old. I mean, seriously, I get it, It Will Hurt Me. Once I through that battle, I then fight a rush of zombie things, and that’s fun. I get to the ship, and the Collector ship chases after us. Edie and Joker mass relay us away when Joker CS says to go anywhere that’s not here, and out.
Back on the ship, I have a conversation with the Elusive man. I’m very aggressive with him about lying to me and tell him to never do that again — he tries to play it off like it was necessary to lie to me to complete the mission, but I don’t buy it. He has some information about the things we got. I totally don’t follow, but it seems there’s some lab where the staff disappeared where we have to go to get something important. That’s the end of that conversation, and I’m then talking to the crew. I affirm my distrust of Elusive man to them when I have the choice to defend him or not. Edie tells us where the Collectors are, and their home world in the Omega-4 relay is in midst of black holes. I decide to keep building the team before going for the IFF the Elusive Man mentioned. I talk to Jacob — he’s totally cool with me. I talk to Miranda; she realizes she’s not a leader the way I am. We flirt heavily but she’s cautious and wants to think. I flirt with Kelly too; I’ve decided Shepherd is a ladies’ man. Samara has a loyalty mission (surprise, surprise). Her daughter is a black widow killer. She doesn’t want pity. She needs to kill her daughter and I agree. And it’s time to go on some loyalty missions.
I scan a planet to get more resources (so SUCK). I go back to Illium to complete the Liara thing. A random person is thankful for me helping stop bad shipping. I do the data run for Liara — I basically have to find a security terminal, hack it, and then run to another terminal before time runs out. I get them in basically one go. I go back to Liara and she tells me she’s hunting the Shadow Broker because she says someone she worked with was betrayed by him. I don’t trust it, but I tell her I’m willing to help her later. The disc fails as I leave the planet, and that’s my night.
Just to clarify the mission the Illusive Man wants you to do: Cereberus (or however you spell it) found a “derelict” Reaper; dead, basically, and sent a team to investigate. After a while, communications with them stopped. The point of going in is not to rescue them or find out what happened, per se, but to get the IFF that the team was looking for, which is a protocol that “should” allow you to use the Omega 4 relay. As you recall, no ship aside from the Collectors have ever been through the Omega 4 rely and survived. The theory is that you have to have the right IFF to be able to be placed in the right spot on the other side, or the surrounding black holes will rip your ship apart.
Oh, and the cover issue can get frustrating, definitely; I have been playing on Hardcore level recently, and cripes, does it punish you if you happen to be out of cover for long. Which happens far more often than I want, as somethings Shepard just pops up over the cover for no apparent reason to say something like, “Hey, need help hitting me in the head? It’s right here — fire away!”