Well, I FINALLY finished what is probably the first major "Boss" battle in Mass Effect 1, the battle with Matriarch Benezia.
After loosing count on how many times I had to replay this fight on 'Normal' difficulty (got really tired of hearing her speech before the battle, btw), I reset the options to 'Casual' difficulty, and STILL had to play it over and over before finally beating it, dammit! :-(
After the fight you do learn some interesting things, though, so SPOILERS ahead:
It seems that Benezia wasn't actually the "Evil Queen" she seemed (and looked ^_^) to be; she was under some kind of mind control by Sarin.
I liked how she described the mind control, and the ship of Sarin with its 'strange angles'; very "Lovecraftian" :-)
Made me really feel sorry for her in the end.
Likewise, the suprise with the Rachni. When I first saw them, and in fact this whole 'Hot Labs' situation, my first thought was "Alien/Aliens" ripoff.
Turns out that the Rachni queen was intelligent, and VERY alien; describing communication in terms of "Songs" ( I really liked that touch).
One of my problems playing games with "Good/Bad" meters like "Knights of the Old Republic", and Mass Effect, is that, when I make an attempt to play the Bastard, I still occasionally make decisions that I myself would make, which gains me "Good" points instead.
For example, how could helping put the crooked CEO of Binary Helix (or whatever the company was named) be a good act in the end? I thought I was doing it for the money, and to get access to the Mako to get to Rift 15.
Because of this I have mixed "Paragon/Renegade" points, and, despite my best efforts, Paragon is ahead of Renegade.
This effects game play because, as part of the choices you get in how to respond to people in the game, you can either 'Charm' or 'Intimidate' them, depending on how many "Paragon" or "Renegade" points you have.
I've missed out on several of those choices because neither of my meters is high enough to get them.
Okay, I'm playing a full on Asshole from now on! (I've worked with enough of them long enough that I should know how to do that ^_^)
I also have some thoughts on the Asari race:
According to what you learn from Liara, they have only one gender, and they can mate with either gender from any race to produce a child (which is always Asari, but inherits some of the personality traits from its non-asari parent in some kind of "Mind Meld").
I find it hard to believe that the Asari is only one gender.
First off, they all look basically like blue human female space babes with some strange head tentacles ^_^
In other words, even though we haven't seen the true 'anatomically corrrect' version of an Asari (nude), its obvious that they have Secondary Sex Characteristics (and in the case of the Matriarch, HUGE characteristics! ^_^).
If I were to write the history/biology of the Asari, I would say that they once had both Male and Female genders, but some kind of plague (perhaps connected to the Turians?) wiped out the males, and the surviving Matriarchs used their Biotic abilities to reshape their race, essentially allowing them to clone themselves, but gather memories/experiences from other asari (and other races entirely) to help keep some diversity in their people.
Needless to say, Matriarch Benezia is next on my Mass Effect image list; have to see if I can put together enough stuff to make something close to her outfit (before of course stripping her of it ^_^), and to be true to the character I'll try something to approximate her skin as well (unusual texturing to it).
After loosing count on how many times I had to replay this fight on 'Normal' difficulty (got really tired of hearing her speech before the battle, btw), I reset the options to 'Casual' difficulty, and STILL had to play it over and over before finally beating it, dammit! :-(
After the fight you do learn some interesting things, though, so SPOILERS ahead:
It seems that Benezia wasn't actually the "Evil Queen" she seemed (and looked ^_^) to be; she was under some kind of mind control by Sarin.
I liked how she described the mind control, and the ship of Sarin with its 'strange angles'; very "Lovecraftian" :-)
Made me really feel sorry for her in the end.
Likewise, the suprise with the Rachni. When I first saw them, and in fact this whole 'Hot Labs' situation, my first thought was "Alien/Aliens" ripoff.
Turns out that the Rachni queen was intelligent, and VERY alien; describing communication in terms of "Songs" ( I really liked that touch).
One of my problems playing games with "Good/Bad" meters like "Knights of the Old Republic", and Mass Effect, is that, when I make an attempt to play the Bastard, I still occasionally make decisions that I myself would make, which gains me "Good" points instead.
For example, how could helping put the crooked CEO of Binary Helix (or whatever the company was named) be a good act in the end? I thought I was doing it for the money, and to get access to the Mako to get to Rift 15.
Because of this I have mixed "Paragon/Renegade" points, and, despite my best efforts, Paragon is ahead of Renegade.
This effects game play because, as part of the choices you get in how to respond to people in the game, you can either 'Charm' or 'Intimidate' them, depending on how many "Paragon" or "Renegade" points you have.
I've missed out on several of those choices because neither of my meters is high enough to get them.
Okay, I'm playing a full on Asshole from now on! (I've worked with enough of them long enough that I should know how to do that ^_^)
I also have some thoughts on the Asari race:
According to what you learn from Liara, they have only one gender, and they can mate with either gender from any race to produce a child (which is always Asari, but inherits some of the personality traits from its non-asari parent in some kind of "Mind Meld").
I find it hard to believe that the Asari is only one gender.
First off, they all look basically like blue human female space babes with some strange head tentacles ^_^
In other words, even though we haven't seen the true 'anatomically corrrect' version of an Asari (nude), its obvious that they have Secondary Sex Characteristics (and in the case of the Matriarch, HUGE characteristics! ^_^).
If I were to write the history/biology of the Asari, I would say that they once had both Male and Female genders, but some kind of plague (perhaps connected to the Turians?) wiped out the males, and the surviving Matriarchs used their Biotic abilities to reshape their race, essentially allowing them to clone themselves, but gather memories/experiences from other asari (and other races entirely) to help keep some diversity in their people.
Needless to say, Matriarch Benezia is next on my Mass Effect image list; have to see if I can put together enough stuff to make something close to her outfit (before of course stripping her of it ^_^), and to be true to the character I'll try something to approximate her skin as well (unusual texturing to it).
Comments
I've wanted to play the game ever since I first learned that it was made by Bioware, the same developers of "Knights of the Old Republic" (I think the best RPG I have ever played).
Unfortunately my poor system didn't have the necessary video requirements to play the PC version, and I only just recently was able to pick up a X-Box (just to play this game).
I hope to be able to save up enough to purchase a new system myself by the end of the year at least.
BTW; I'm working on my own version of Matriarch Benezia, so stay tuned ^_^
Myself i finished Mass Effect 1 five times, 3 paragons and 2 renegade. To be honest i prefer being a good guy/girl than a bad guy/girl. I played with 2 males Shepard and 3 females Shepard.
So for this I decided to go "Renegade" first; but it looks like I'm heading down the "Paragon" path despite myself (that meter is higher right now), so I'll just make Paragon decisions from now on, and play it again later on "Renegade"
SPOILERs AHEAD - When you do the 100% renegade part in Mass Effect it end up killing almost every secondary characters-off and when you import your character to Mass Effect 2 you dont have any returning secondary characters, skiping some interesting but not-important side-story/quests for part 2. - SPOILER END