Finally someone remembers Charr in the cave! It's incredible how even a secondary character, an NPC makes us feel that sad. He was a one of a kind krogan
You might want to do some of the citadel fetch quests, alot of them become unable to be completed once a certain event has happened(when you complete the Tuchanka Arc), which is about to soon.
Agreed, just in general in this game you should do all the non-priority quests you can before moving on to the priority missions (with the exception of Andersons Apartment/Citadel DLC, if you see that save it until the end)
I've been enjoying your playthrough so much. Wrex has maybe my favorite arc in the whole trilogy. Even in ME2, he mentions that he really wants to join you again and bust some skulls like the old days, but his work leading the Krogan to a brighter future is too important to abandon. It's such a huge step forward from back in ME1 when he said that he had basically given up on the Krogan. Every time I watch a playthrough, I'm just reminded how much I love these characters and this trilogy.
Great commentary, Chris! And thank you for the 4 hour video. Yes, you can do the Turian Platoon mission without triggering the main Tuchanka story arc. If I recall correctly, you'll be offered two landing zones on Tuchanka.
@ChrisTheNjord Two thoughts: (1) Complete as many of the side-quests as you can, especially the Citadel-related fetch quests. Most of them become unavailable after you complete Priority: Tuchanka. (2) You might want to consider having at least one gun that you don't have to reload after every single shot, for when you are facing swarms of enemies. They may do less damage per shot, but do more damage over time.
No Renegade Shepard quote today. Also recommend you do the Genophage Cure mission last. There's a somewhat kind off time system in ME3 as you progress through the main mission, you'll get locked out of some side missions.
It's always a good day when Chris uploads a new Mass Effect video! I hope someone from new bioware sees your playthrough and your commentary and reactions remind them of what made the trilogy great. The writing!
Yeah Chris I agree with what a few people are saying here. Do the fetch quest as soon as possible. You will lose those quests after you do certain missions. You can't get them back unless you load a save. Just scan all the Planets you can to 100%. Some of the fetch quests are found in missions and others are through scanning Planets. So just do the fetch quests u can find.
2:57:57 I’m so glad you brought up the alien reference because I’m currently working my way through Alien Isolation (and your play through, naturally) and that was my first thought lol.
Great episode, Chris. I have much to say about the genophage (and other conflicts yet to be revealed), but I'll wait until those arcs are completed. Suffice it to say, the quality of the writing certainly dropped in ME3. P. S Anderson is still waiting for you on the vid com 😅
The Reason Grunt literally says "It wasnt easy" Then says he was simply put in charge. Is because he wasn't even meant to be alive ME2's Canon ending deaths are; Kasumi, Zaeed, Grunt, Jack, Thane, Jacob, Samara. Yes, half the team dies. You get crappy replacements for most of them, which also die. All of them die in ME3 aswell if you dont secure loyalty and SOMEHOW get them to live. but when i played i didnt know that Grunt died for me, and for the first time I saw him live when Legendary edition came out. I cried so hard, because i thought he couldnt survive.
The ME3 default start is in no way "canon". If anything, it's a crappy outcome meant to encourage you to play the previous games properly instead of starting from scratch in part 3.
A couple of people have said this already, but just to add my voice to everyone else's, I recommend you clear up as many other quests/ missions as you can BEFORE doing Priority: Tuchanka. After that one or two of them will become unavailable or impossible to complete.
Chris didn’t watch the full thing yet but I see you have your cooldown on -200% if you don’t care about that take the particle rifle with you it has a cooldown no ammo like ME1
On the Diana Allers piece, I get the gut feeling of siding with Terra Nova but in the end I think the only argument that matters is : freedom of speech.
Diana obviously wasn't literally saying that we don't *need* Terra Nova, she was arguing the case of abandoning it in favor of saving more colonies elsewhere. Hackett said we got burned precisely because the Reapers captured the queen you just saved from them. And thus gained a lot or rachni troops.
I know it's weird to suggest replaying the trilogy for romance. There's obviously far much more to offer in another playthrough. But I have to say that although the romance and story is great with liara, I do find it to be one of the ones with less interesting interactions than some others
"You wouldn't believe how many credits Cerberus just leaves out in the open." She is actually making fun of the game trope; whenever you explore an area, you constantly find datapads and credits on every corner (like in the N7: Cerberus Lab you did in this video). In some games you need to break crates to find gold, but why would anyone store their money in a crate? Just like nobody would just leave their credit chits out in the open. That's only in games. So Bioware's actually making fun of the tropes they put into all of their games. *Remote Citadel Access* It usually doesn't really pay off to buy on the ship, because you'll end up going towards the Citadel pretty often (I mean, look at your journal for all the fetch quests and other side quests), so it's actually saving you a ton of money if you don't pay that 10% fee. Most of the shops are in the Commons anyway, so you can just follow the beaten path and hit them up every time you visit that area. *Reaper Alertness* If you want to make it easier on yourself, you may want to explore the _other_ systems first, before you scan the system with the Relay. If you scan the Relay system first and Reapers show up, you'll have to _return_ there after you've explored the other systems because there's only one Relay. Which means you're forced to return there, because you need the Relay to leave this cluster. So in this case at 1:47:00 , scan Decoris first, _then_ Skepsis so you don't have to return to a Reaper-invested system. Something to keep in mind though, is that once you've done a mission (either plot or side-quest) the Reapers will have retreated from all systems they've infested due to your scanning. So you're able to scan those systems again if you hadn't found everything yet. Also, since you can find fuel, it's more efficient to pick up the fuel from the Relay system last, otherwise you pick up the fuel, have to spend the fuel to travel to other systems and then have to _return_ to the Relay system. Leaving the Relay system for last means you can recoup some of the fuel you've used up by travelling to all the other systems. *Fish* You daredevil. Doing the N7: Cerberus Lab and then the Rachni, all without feeding your fish. You really should go to the Citadel to buy the Aquarian VI if you value the life of your fish ... *Charr* Yep, that hits hard, finding him. *Narrow passage* That must be a nod to the Alien movies, because this feels like how the vents they went through. *Ravager* Those are one of the nastiest enemies you can encounter. The long range and the rapid hard-hitting attacks are very difficult to cope with. It only gets worse if they also have foot soldiers like the husks and the swarmers to keep you off-balance. It's a tactical nightmare, really. *Scorpion* Did you notice that the cryo ammo on the Scorpion pistol freezes those Canniabals, then the explosion from the bullets shatters them. Shattering does _so_ much damage that it can just ignore the remaining health. It's an almost unfair advantage ;) *Grunt* Well, Grunt _did_ warn you. "We stay here any longer, Aralakh companies _dies_ " And you needed to stay longer to save the Rachni queen. You chose to save the Rachni queen. *Benning* Yeah. Finding that proof is difficult. It's _somewhere_ on the ground and it has a relatively small area (3 meters or so) when it gets highlighted, so it's very easy to miss it. I believe out of the 15 LPs I've seen, only 4 of them found it. *Tuchanka* You can do both other missions on Tuchanka, in a similar way as how you can dock on the Citadel and get the option to either go to the Citadel, the Docks (for Aria) and Dr. Bryson. *Anderson* Don't forget: Anderson is available on vid-comm. That's where you speak with Hackett. He's waiting for you to pick up.
Have you considered that TIM wanted to capture Eve so he can blackmail the Krogan into doing dirty work for him? Or change her genetics so that future Krogan will be more ... agreeable to his requests. *Wrex* Now, with your mindset that Wrex will keep the Krogan in check, have you considered what would happen if the genophage got cured, but Wrex will die shortly after during the Reaper war? How likely are you going to maintain this mindset? *Reapers & Krogan* Back when the Reapers exterminated the Protheans, the Reapers didn't bother with Humanity, the Asari and the other species. We _know_ (from the mission with the Orb back in ME1) that the Protheans (or the Reapers) already came into contact with the neanderthals, but Humanity wasn't harvested by the Reapers while they wiped out the Protheans. So there's a theory that the Reapers only harvest space-faring species, because Javik told you they already monitored the Asari, Salarians and Turians when they were around - and the Reapers didn't harvest them either. From what we know from ME1, the Krogan were _not_ space-faring during the Rachni war, before the Salarians uplifted them and sent ships to gather Krogan to fight in that war. I'm not entirely sure how well the Krogan were able to build spaceships after the Krogan Rebellion was squashed, but you quite don't see many Krogan spaceships. If you do, they're purchased from other species. And as Wrex _and_ So perhaps the Reapers will leave the Krogan alone, if they're unable to build their own spaceships, just like how they left Humanity alone during the extermination of the Protheans. *Rana* And here you see how 'good deeds' end up biting you, while some 'bad deeds' can actually benefit you. But since it's been 2 games ago, you wouldn't have been able to predict the outcome of letting her go, so you can't really blame yourself. Yet, somehow, it always feels like you do blame yourself. (And I can't ever bring myself to order to kill her, because it feels wrong for Mark Meer to kill his own real wife. That's just so wrong on so many different levels.)
On the topic of Krogans not being space faring race by themselves and as such maybe the reapers will leave them alone : no there is no way the reapers will leave them for the next cycle. The reason being the Krogan know about them and about all their traps like the citadel being a relay to dark space, the mass effect tech and the relays being left for the galaxy to use so that every civilization follows the path the reapers wants them to follow, not only exploration wise but also technology wise. The Reapers only harvest advanced civilizations that's true, but they will not leave a civilization develop for 50000 years when said civilization would be preparing to fight them in the next cycle. they might not harvest them to use to make a new reaper but they would at least destroy them, maybe make them in the new collectors or keepers or just obliterate them.
One of the rare occurrencies of bad writing in this series. I get it, they wanted to raise the stakes (as if they weren't high enough already), but it still bothers me too.
@@lazaruslong697 I see nothing bad in the writing here. The characters inside the story are not omniscient. From their perspective, when Grunt tells you the company will be wiped out, he fully believes just that. You essentially want to be presented with a clear choice with outcomes set in stone *within* the story. That would in fact be very unrealistic since one cannot fully predict the result of a combat situation.
@@hedinsee6830 I do. It creates a false dichotomy for the player, which could and should have been avoided. The decision has nothing to do with Grunts life/death, yet it is presented as if it does. Shepard knows he will order Grunt to fall back when he is making the decision, but the player does not.
@@lazaruslong697 Ordering something during a battle carries no guarantee that the order will be carried out or will even be possible to carry out. So the situation is still perfectly logical from the script perspective. The choice as presented is obviously very intentional regardless. I actually like it. Choices during the endgame should carry weight. And you actually can easily lose Grunt here after all, as you should well know. :)
@@hedinsee6830 No matter how you put it, it is a false choice dilemma and thus from a bad design from the game perspective. Especially given that Grunts survival is entirely dependent on other factors than this decision as you should well know. :) You may like it, but it does not make it good. We are allowed to like bad things and that's ok. I can guarantee you though, most people don't like how this particular decision is presented and structured.
Finally someone remembers Charr in the cave! It's incredible how even a secondary character, an NPC makes us feel that sad. He was a one of a kind krogan
You might want to do some of the citadel fetch quests, alot of them become unable to be completed once a certain event has happened(when you complete the Tuchanka Arc), which is about to soon.
Agreed, just in general in this game you should do all the non-priority quests you can before moving on to the priority missions (with the exception of Andersons Apartment/Citadel DLC, if you see that save it until the end)
I love how it’s always the Krogan companions that are most excited to see Shepard again with Wrex in ME2 and Grunt in ME3
I've been enjoying your playthrough so much. Wrex has maybe my favorite arc in the whole trilogy. Even in ME2, he mentions that he really wants to join you again and bust some skulls like the old days, but his work leading the Krogan to a brighter future is too important to abandon. It's such a huge step forward from back in ME1 when he said that he had basically given up on the Krogan. Every time I watch a playthrough, I'm just reminded how much I love these characters and this trilogy.
Great commentary, Chris! And thank you for the 4 hour video. Yes, you can do the Turian Platoon mission without triggering the main Tuchanka story arc. If I recall correctly, you'll be offered two landing zones on Tuchanka.
@ChrisTheNjord Two thoughts:
(1) Complete as many of the side-quests as you can, especially the Citadel-related fetch quests. Most of them become unavailable after you complete Priority: Tuchanka.
(2) You might want to consider having at least one gun that you don't have to reload after every single shot, for when you are facing swarms of enemies. They may do less damage per shot, but do more damage over time.
No Renegade Shepard quote today.
Also recommend you do the Genophage Cure mission last. There's a somewhat kind off time system in ME3 as you progress through the main mission, you'll get locked out of some side missions.
You forgot: "That's twice I've saved you. You work for me now."
@@Rapunzel879 I’ve never chosen that line I always let the queen go and tell her to leave
@@TaylorPrem I let her go too. But I pick the renegade answer: "You're a puppet."
Holy moly, 4 hours? And I was worried I won't have a plan for a Sunday afternoon. 😂
It's always a good day when Chris uploads a new Mass Effect video!
I hope someone from new bioware sees your playthrough and your commentary and reactions remind them of what made the trilogy great. The writing!
Yeah Chris I agree with what a few people are saying here. Do the fetch quest as soon as possible. You will lose those quests after you do certain missions. You can't get them back unless you load a save. Just scan all the Planets you can to 100%. Some of the fetch quests are found in missions and others are through scanning Planets. So just do the fetch quests u can find.
2:57:57 I’m so glad you brought up the alien reference because I’m currently working my way through Alien Isolation (and your play through, naturally) and that was my first thought lol.
Chris, you really triggered me at the end of the Cerberus Lab mission. I was screaming at the screen, "Just get in the damned shuttle, you schmuck!"
😂same he could’ve also just go invisible but after an hour and half on the Normandy I think he forgot what class he was playing 😂
I always cry with the part of Grunt fighting
Grunt can die there if you didn't have his loyalty from ME2, I've had him die saving the rachni just to see or just left him in the tank for lols.
4+ hours? That's no longer a lets play. That's a marathon!
But as a ME fan i dont mind.
Great episode, Chris. I have much to say about the genophage (and other conflicts yet to be revealed), but I'll wait until those arcs are completed. Suffice it to say, the quality of the writing certainly dropped in ME3.
P. S
Anderson is still waiting for you on the vid com 😅
The Reason Grunt literally says "It wasnt easy" Then says he was simply put in charge. Is because he wasn't even meant to be alive
ME2's Canon ending deaths are; Kasumi, Zaeed, Grunt, Jack, Thane, Jacob, Samara. Yes, half the team dies. You get crappy replacements for most of them, which also die.
All of them die in ME3 aswell if you dont secure loyalty and SOMEHOW get them to live. but when i played i didnt know that
Grunt died for me, and for the first time I saw him live when Legendary edition came out. I cried so hard, because i thought he couldnt survive.
The ME3 default start is in no way "canon". If anything, it's a crappy outcome meant to encourage you to play the previous games properly instead of starting from scratch in part 3.
@@hedinsee6830 I meant canon as in, thats your default, chosen start for ME3 if you do nothing in the other games.
Good thing you did Grunt's loyalty mission in ME2 or he would in fact have died here.
4 hours... it's the dream.
A couple of people have said this already, but just to add my voice to everyone else's, I recommend you clear up as many other quests/ missions as you can BEFORE doing Priority: Tuchanka. After that one or two of them will become unavailable or impossible to complete.
Chris didn’t watch the full thing yet but I see you have your cooldown on -200% if you don’t care about that take the particle rifle with you it has a cooldown no ammo like ME1
3:07:00 This place reminds me the level with ant-lions caves from Half Life 2 Episode 2.
4 hours holy shit
1:17:20 Like a geko!
Try going all the way into the medbay before interacting with anyone for a special surprise or two.
On the Diana Allers piece, I get the gut feeling of siding with Terra Nova but in the end I think the only argument that matters is : freedom of speech.
Oh my goodness FOUR HOURS?! We eating good tonight boyos 🎉 also 69th like nice.
Diana obviously wasn't literally saying that we don't *need* Terra Nova, she was arguing the case of abandoning it in favor of saving more colonies elsewhere.
Hackett said we got burned precisely because the Reapers captured the queen you just saved from them. And thus gained a lot or rachni troops.
I know it's weird to suggest replaying the trilogy for romance. There's obviously far much more to offer in another playthrough. But I have to say that although the romance and story is great with liara, I do find it to be one of the ones with less interesting interactions than some others
Well I replayed it at least 2 times just to have my fix of Garrus Romance so .. :p
"You wouldn't believe how many credits Cerberus just leaves out in the open."
She is actually making fun of the game trope; whenever you explore an area, you constantly find datapads and credits on every corner (like in the N7: Cerberus Lab you did in this video). In some games you need to break crates to find gold, but why would anyone store their money in a crate? Just like nobody would just leave their credit chits out in the open. That's only in games. So Bioware's actually making fun of the tropes they put into all of their games.
*Remote Citadel Access*
It usually doesn't really pay off to buy on the ship, because you'll end up going towards the Citadel pretty often (I mean, look at your journal for all the fetch quests and other side quests), so it's actually saving you a ton of money if you don't pay that 10% fee. Most of the shops are in the Commons anyway, so you can just follow the beaten path and hit them up every time you visit that area.
*Reaper Alertness*
If you want to make it easier on yourself, you may want to explore the _other_ systems first, before you scan the system with the Relay. If you scan the Relay system first and Reapers show up, you'll have to _return_ there after you've explored the other systems because there's only one Relay. Which means you're forced to return there, because you need the Relay to leave this cluster.
So in this case at 1:47:00 , scan Decoris first, _then_ Skepsis so you don't have to return to a Reaper-invested system.
Something to keep in mind though, is that once you've done a mission (either plot or side-quest) the Reapers will have retreated from all systems they've infested due to your scanning. So you're able to scan those systems again if you hadn't found everything yet.
Also, since you can find fuel, it's more efficient to pick up the fuel from the Relay system last, otherwise you pick up the fuel, have to spend the fuel to travel to other systems and then have to _return_ to the Relay system. Leaving the Relay system for last means you can recoup some of the fuel you've used up by travelling to all the other systems.
*Fish*
You daredevil. Doing the N7: Cerberus Lab and then the Rachni, all without feeding your fish. You really should go to the Citadel to buy the Aquarian VI if you value the life of your fish ...
*Charr*
Yep, that hits hard, finding him.
*Narrow passage*
That must be a nod to the Alien movies, because this feels like how the vents they went through.
*Ravager*
Those are one of the nastiest enemies you can encounter. The long range and the rapid hard-hitting attacks are very difficult to cope with. It only gets worse if they also have foot soldiers like the husks and the swarmers to keep you off-balance. It's a tactical nightmare, really.
*Scorpion*
Did you notice that the cryo ammo on the Scorpion pistol freezes those Canniabals, then the explosion from the bullets shatters them. Shattering does _so_ much damage that it can just ignore the remaining health. It's an almost unfair advantage ;)
*Grunt*
Well, Grunt _did_ warn you. "We stay here any longer, Aralakh companies _dies_ " And you needed to stay longer to save the Rachni queen. You chose to save the Rachni queen.
*Benning*
Yeah. Finding that proof is difficult. It's _somewhere_ on the ground and it has a relatively small area (3 meters or so) when it gets highlighted, so it's very easy to miss it. I believe out of the 15 LPs I've seen, only 4 of them found it.
*Tuchanka*
You can do both other missions on Tuchanka, in a similar way as how you can dock on the Citadel and get the option to either go to the Citadel, the Docks (for Aria) and Dr. Bryson.
*Anderson*
Don't forget: Anderson is available on vid-comm. That's where you speak with Hackett. He's waiting for you to pick up.
Have you considered that TIM wanted to capture Eve so he can blackmail the Krogan into doing dirty work for him? Or change her genetics so that future Krogan will be more ... agreeable to his requests.
*Wrex*
Now, with your mindset that Wrex will keep the Krogan in check, have you considered what would happen if the genophage got cured, but Wrex will die shortly after during the Reaper war? How likely are you going to maintain this mindset?
*Reapers & Krogan*
Back when the Reapers exterminated the Protheans, the Reapers didn't bother with Humanity, the Asari and the other species. We _know_ (from the mission with the Orb back in ME1) that the Protheans (or the Reapers) already came into contact with the neanderthals, but Humanity wasn't harvested by the Reapers while they wiped out the Protheans. So there's a theory that the Reapers only harvest space-faring species, because Javik told you they already monitored the Asari, Salarians and Turians when they were around - and the Reapers didn't harvest them either.
From what we know from ME1, the Krogan were _not_ space-faring during the Rachni war, before the Salarians uplifted them and sent ships to gather Krogan to fight in that war. I'm not entirely sure how well the Krogan were able to build spaceships after the Krogan Rebellion was squashed, but you quite don't see many Krogan spaceships. If you do, they're purchased from other species. And as Wrex _and_
So perhaps the Reapers will leave the Krogan alone, if they're unable to build their own spaceships, just like how they left Humanity alone during the extermination of the Protheans.
*Rana*
And here you see how 'good deeds' end up biting you, while some 'bad deeds' can actually benefit you. But since it's been 2 games ago, you wouldn't have been able to predict the outcome of letting her go, so you can't really blame yourself. Yet, somehow, it always feels like you do blame yourself.
(And I can't ever bring myself to order to kill her, because it feels wrong for Mark Meer to kill his own real wife. That's just so wrong on so many different levels.)
On the topic of Krogans not being space faring race by themselves and as such maybe the reapers will leave them alone : no there is no way the reapers will leave them for the next cycle.
The reason being the Krogan know about them and about all their traps like the citadel being a relay to dark space, the mass effect tech and the relays being left for the galaxy to use so that every civilization follows the path the reapers wants them to follow, not only exploration wise but also technology wise.
The Reapers only harvest advanced civilizations that's true, but they will not leave a civilization develop for 50000 years when said civilization would be preparing to fight them in the next cycle.
they might not harvest them to use to make a new reaper but they would at least destroy them, maybe make them in the new collectors or keepers or just obliterate them.
Curious how players get all the way to ME3 and still don't understand how to use the radar. Sigh ...
3:24 I wouldn't be suprised if the Dalatras herself hired Cerberus!!
Radar? What radar? I don't think I've ever used it in all my playthroughs.
@@lazaruslong697 in me1 theres a persistent radar that shows at all times. In me2 and 3 you can see the radar when you use the power or weapon menus
I hate how the choice is presented as 'save the queen or save Grunt'. Theres no indication that Shepard is going to tell Grunt to fall back.
One of the rare occurrencies of bad writing in this series. I get it, they wanted to raise the stakes (as if they weren't high enough already), but it still bothers me too.
@@lazaruslong697 I see nothing bad in the writing here. The characters inside the story are not omniscient. From their perspective, when Grunt tells you the company will be wiped out, he fully believes just that.
You essentially want to be presented with a clear choice with outcomes set in stone *within* the story. That would in fact be very unrealistic since one cannot fully predict the result of a combat situation.
@@hedinsee6830 I do. It creates a false dichotomy for the player, which could and should have been avoided. The decision has nothing to do with Grunts life/death, yet it is presented as if it does. Shepard knows he will order Grunt to fall back when he is making the decision, but the player does not.
@@lazaruslong697 Ordering something during a battle carries no guarantee that the order will be carried out or will even be possible to carry out.
So the situation is still perfectly logical from the script perspective.
The choice as presented is obviously very intentional regardless. I actually like it. Choices during the endgame should carry weight. And you actually can easily lose Grunt here after all, as you should well know. :)
@@hedinsee6830 No matter how you put it, it is a false choice dilemma and thus from a bad design from the game perspective. Especially given that Grunts survival is entirely dependent on other factors than this decision as you should well know. :)
You may like it, but it does not make it good. We are allowed to like bad things and that's ok. I can guarantee you though, most people don't like how this particular decision is presented and structured.