Mass Effect Thread: Leviathan is out, buy it, it's great

[lestatdark]

Khuutra said:
Man, I just finished Lair of the Shadow Broker. THat's still the best series of missions in the series so far, and anyone who argues otherwise is wrong.

It wasn't on this playthrough, but one of my favorite things about playing through LotSB so many times (and I've done it a lot) was with a particular Shepard - my only full Renegade Shepard, a hard-assed son of a bitch who looks like Clint Eastwood got in a fight with a flamethrower.

When you invite Liara back to the Normandy, you have a long conversation with her, and it's one of the purest role-playing experiences in the Mass Effect series, where Liara lets you make Shepard vent according to your own perspective on the mission. It's great, and it establishes that, even though all Shepards have certain things in common, that Shepard can also be reflective of the player in ways that matter.

On that particular playthrough, my Asshole Shep went off the deep-end, ranting about the Collectors and that bitch Ashley and all sorts of other things. And Liara talks him through the whole thing, and there's this sense, through Liara, that some part of the quest, of the world of Mass Effect, is still behind you. She's the perfect sympathetic ear, the only one to reach through to this complete asshole in front of her and see that, in spite of everything, he's trying to be a big guddam hero.

That moment that I liked best was right at the end, when she says that it's been good talking to Shepard, and that they should do it again. And Shepard is sitting on the bed, watching her leave, and when the door shuts behind her:

"Come back soon."

Meer delivers that line perfectly, the words of a lonely man intensely in need of companionship, in spite of how much of an island he is normally.

I love these games, you guys

I don't know if I've conveyed it

Let me just say this:

If anyone hasn't done the final fight of LoTSB with an Adept Shepard on Insanity, you haven't seen what real difficulty is on any ME game