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I decided to play through “Mass Effect” a second time when the new downloadable content, “Bring Down The Sky“, was released by Bioware.  Gavin was born shortly after that, so I wasn’t able to continue the game past the intro.  Now that Gavin is a four months old and sleeping more, I’ve gotten a chance to play Mass Effect again.  The expansion pack was an interesting diversion, since the majority of the game was pretty much the same as the first time that I played it, with the exception of a few alignment-based choices that only affected the ending of the game.

I planned to play as a “Paragon” (good guy) this time, since I was despicably evil the first time that I finished the game.  There are some deep decisions to make at the end of the main storyline, like which of your party members, Ashley or Kaiden, to sacrifice while you pull your team out from the planet Vermire (so as not to be toasted by the nuke that they just planted in Saren’s base).  I left Kaiden behind to die last time, but my female lead has a thing for him, so I chose Ashley to die this time, despite the fact that I had her in my party the entire game.

The last moral dilemma of the game is whether to save the Galactic Council members from certain death during the final battle with Sovereign at the Citadel.  I ordered the Alliance fleet to rescue their flagship from the Geth armada.  This got me the “good” ending, in which the Council, now more appreciative of humans, agrees to create a new seat on their governing body for the Alliance.  I nominated my mentor, Captain Anderson, since he’s a good man.  The “evil” ending was less satisfying: after allowing the Geth to destroy the Council members, I only served to help the smarmy Ambassador Udina into power (slightly akin to promoting Senator Palpatine into Supreme Chancellor-hood).

Making the virtuous decisions during the game this time helped to change things up a bit, even though it was hard to stomach sometimes.  I was just a little too virtuous for my tastes.  I often had the same feeling about playing as a Renegade, though (except for the opposite reason).  I didn’t want to go the neutral route, even though the conversation trees allow for that.  I’m not sure if there is a “neutral” ending, but it’s probably boring if it exists.  I’m happy enough with the two that I’ve already seen.  I guess that I’m done with Mass Effect until Bioware releases more downloadable content!

“Bring Down The Sky“, the expansion content for Mass Effect, was good for a few hours of new gameplay.  It starts as soon as you get aboard the Normandy and head out into space from the “Citadel”.  Once you investigate a new asteroid on the “Stellar Map”, you are treated to a nice cutscene (one of many in the new content) of the rock hurtling towards Terra Nova, and its millions of human citizens, powered by three huge thrusters.  The antagonists, Batarians, are evil slavers that kill people for fun and profit.  It might have been wiser to hold off on this mission until I had built up some experience and better gear, but I dove straight in anyway.

It turns out that there are human survivors from the science team on the asteroid.  One of them talks me through the mission by radio, until the Batarians find her hiding spot.  There is plenty to do on the asteroid, but I got saving people to do!  The bulk of the new content is driving the Mako to each of the three thrusters and disabling them.  The installations are the same throughout the galaxy, so nothing new there.  At the last thruster, I am confronted by the Batarian lieutenant.  I used the “Charm” skill on him to negotiate rather than killing him outright because I’m playing a good guy.  It was surprisingly easy to convince to give up his superior to save his own butt.

The problem with playing as a “Paragon” is that sometimes you would rather knock off the bad guy.  He’s really really evil; he deserves it!  Batarians suck, and they sick Varren monster-dogs on you!  But because my character is “Lawful Good”, I let the lieutenant and his two sidekicks go, with his blessing to kill his boss.  Once I catch up to the Boss, after killing countless Batarians in his base, he wants to talk.  Of course. It seems that he has planted bombs all over the place, right near his human hostages.  Mass Effect is all about moral crossroads: I can kill him (let the scientists die) or let him go (run to defuse the bombs).  Good guys defuse bombs.

I’d like to know what happens when you decide to chase after the Batarian leader instead.  But in this case, since they all lived to talk about the event, one of the hostages gives me a choice of rewards: light/medium/heavy human armor, Quarian armor, or a tech tool.  I’m playing a tech/soldier, so I chose the tech tool, and it’s easily the best one in the game (and I got it right in the beginning!).  Overall, “Bring Down The Sky” is pretty nice for a freebie.  Although a goodly chunk of it is “more of the same”, Bioware managed to introduce a new race, provide more rich background story, and provide a good couple of hours of new gameplay.

I just finished Mass Effect, playing as a “Vanguard” on the “normal” difficulty setting.  I went the “Renegade” route, which means that I chose the “evil” responses in most of the conversation trees.  This would often make the game more difficult, since Renegades tend to end conversations with battles (”Oh yeah! Well take that!”) rather than negotiation (”Maybe we can work this out amicably?”).  I’m not sure how this affected the ending cinematics, but I’m interested in playing it again to see the alternative ending.

You get the other ending if you play as a “Paragon”, a good guy.  I’d like to try again as an “Engineer” and build up my “Charm” skill.  As a renegade, I worked on my “Intimidation” skill instead.  This made it easier to persuade some people, but I definitely came across as a badass.  As an evil character, I made some unsavory decisions that had consequences in the game, such as allowing the Galactic Council members to die rather than assign resources to protect them in the final battle.  I’m sure that the ending would be much different if my team had saved them from the Geth main assault.

I also found out that Bioware has released some downloadable content for free.  ”Bring Down The Sky“ seems to be a short side quest, but it’s nice that Bioware is still supporting the game.  I think that I’ll try this out when I play the second time. I hope they bring out more downloadable content; the game needs more beef since the main storyline was pretty short. However, Mass Effect is only the first in a planned trilogy of games.  I’m looking forward to the sequel, but I hope that they add more planetary exploration (one planet per system doesn’t quite cut it, I’m afraid).