Mass Reflect

We arrive on Ilium, a planet where everyone has a price—quite literally! This of course leads to plenty of discussion of the “indentured servant trade” on Ilium, the shortcomings of science fiction analogies of discrimination, and how Mass Effect’s world building is often at odds with the narrative it tries to tell or the range of choices that are given to the player.

CW: Child Abuse, Sexual Assault, Sexual Harassment, Rape, Ablest Themes, Gender Existentialist Themes.

We continue completing the recruitment and loyalty missions of Mass Effect 2. We meet a guest star in the form Adam Baldwin as we try to save Tali, which is about as cringey as you can expect. But it doesn’t stop there! Then we go do Jack and Jacob’s loyalty missions, where the game decides it really wants to pull some thematic weight it’s not ready for.

Production Note: This was supposed to go up last week, but seemingly due to technical issues did not. The production schedule will continue as normal.

Rob and Betrys lose their hearts to a Starship Trooper as they revisit this 1997 classic!

A colony is being attacked, and it’s up to us to intercept it. It’s time for Mass Effect 2 to start!

While not a lot happens in this section of the game, we still manage to turn a molehill of content into a mountain of conversation as we walk in to a prison and unceremoniously break out with an addition to the crew: Jack. A biotic whose got tatoos so you know she’s bad. Then we go hang out with another eugenicist whose created another super soldier. He doesn’t have any tattoos cause he’s a baby. I don’t have much to say about this episode or the content it covers. Time to finish our plate to get to dessert!

We’ll get to Kasumi and Zaeed’s loyalty mission, but first we need to discuss Rob’s new mission in this series: become Queen of Space. And, if you don’t mind a little spoiler, it’s going great. Then we get to talk about the questionable plotting of these two DLC missions, the strange choices for character accents, and discuss how this game metes out difficulty. Then we wrap up by discussing how this series treats gender at large and women in particular. ”Why Do We Talk About Mass Effect’s Asari as if They Are Women, by Grace Benfell: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4av5mb/why-do-we-talk-about-mass-effects-asari-as-if-they-are-women

We arrive on Omega and get to meet Aria T’Loak, a character who’s main obsession seems to be to impress us. We then join in a group of mercenaries hunting down Archangel, and found out that this mysterious figure might not be as mysterious as we first thought. Then we get a call from Aria telling us how many people she had to deal with today because they decided to mess with her. Then we go into the wards to meet Mordin, a character who’s age of experience could prove useful to us if it wasn’t more likely that he’s actually just our age. Then we have to spend some time reading DMs from Aria about how if we see someone messing with her, we should totally let her know because that’s against the rules on Omega and she’ll totally kill them. Mass Effect is back baby!

Two years ago Commander Shepard went missing. Their ship wiped out. Their crew decimated. Yet nobody really wants to investigate. The uncomfortable conspiracy they were investigating was swept under the table. Yet not even death could keep a good Shepard down. Now it’s time to join a quasi-blacklist/terrorist group, wear casual clothes, and go be Han Solo baby!

CW: Arguing, Harsh Language, Mental Health Institutes, Potentially Ablest Language

Look, it was bound to happen. When you’re two friends who do a podcast that discusses both politics and media that is significant to them, you’re sometimes going to find yourself on two different sides of an issue or two different sides of a read. Unfortunately, in the heat of the moment some language got out there. We don’t censor foul language, but some negative words around mental health got brandied. Furthermore, while we don’t put a limit on swearing, there was definitely an edge to it that hearing might make people uncomfortable. We debated editing it out, but the ultimate conversation that came from it was insightful. While we left the film with different reads as to its message and legacy, it was a more interesting discussion than if we both had simply agreed.

In replaying the first Mass Effect, we came to the conclusion that in order to understand the series we had to go back to one of its major influences: the Terminator franchise. In this episode we find ourselves surprised by the first Terminator film. While the franchise has gone on to more action, the original film feels like a much leaner horror film with perhaps more down to Earth messaging. Next episode we tackle Terminator 2!