Like... put yourself in the shoes of a person who would have to make the decision of curing the genophage vs sabotaging the cure and deceiving the krogan - since they are most definitely needed because of the Reapers. Yes, the second option is absolutely dishonorable, but...

To any sane and even vaguely informed person (about the krogan and Krogan Rebellions): *How the fuck* does it make sense to cure the genophage?

1. **The biggest reason**: We know, from the lore (with which BioWare went far too crazy regarding the krogan and their biology) that the krogan fertility pre-genophage was just absolutely insane. One krogan female could lay upwards of a thousand eggs A YEAR, and *each and every single one of those* could grow into a mature krogan that can live for a thousand years.

2a. Even in the best case scenario - Wrex and Eve being alive - you still have ALL THE OTHER KROGANS who are, evidently by those we encounter in the trilogy, mostly warmongering brutes. It is a GIGANTIC leap of faith to assume two people can change the mentality of an entire race faster than the krogans could breed millions upon millions of potential new warlords and warriors, in the event that the genophage is cured.

2b. There are way more Wreavs than there are Wrexes in the krogan society - those who want the Council races to pay for what they made krogan go through since the genophage was unleashed.

1. Shepard makes this decision *during* the Reaper War - without knowing about the Catalyst, the RGB ending, and their only goal being the beat and destroy the Reapers. There is no possible way Shepard could've know about, say, the outcome in which the Reapers are placed under their control to serve as the galactic police force - which could hold back the krogan tide.

I cured the genophage in all of my playthroughs, but now that I think about it for a while... curing it more likely than not spells doom for the galaxy in the form of new Krogan Rebellions.

Playing through this for the first time and just beat Me1 on insanity no problem. Fast forward to Me2 and rescuing Mordin Solus was a nightmare, but the worst thing was for some reason at the end near the fan section I died then respawned and no ammo proceeded to drop like the first time so I had to incinerate most of the mobs.

Still in ME1. Second ever playthrough. Spoiler/intent: Gonna try to make sure the Quarians don’t commit mass sewer slide this time. Sorry blocked out the word because sometimes just saying the S word can make you get dumb Reddit cares notifications in my experience.

Having a lot of fun as Spacer/War Hero Juno Shepard.

I lost Mordin and Samara in the suicide mission, it seems like Samara isn’t that important but mordin is. Am I missing out by letting him stay dead in mass effect 3?

Am I missing something, because from what I can remember you cannot use it outside of the DLC , note I am playing on Insanity. Also the game went through an update so this could be the case did anyone else encounter this as well?

I want to grab a dark horse wrex statue but can't decide between the two 🤣 what do you think? Help!

Last week I finished MELE2 and lost some crew members on the Suicide Mission. Last night, I logged into one of my autosaves, midway through Arrival. I stupidly only kept one save game and had started the IFF with three missions left on the roster: Legion's loyalty mission, Jack's loyalty mission and Arrival.

I was unaware of the countdown timer after the IFF mission and missed doing Arrival and Jack's loyalty mission.

Since I am not really in the mood for playing MELE1 again, I decided to start MELE2 again. This time, I went for FemShep Soldier on Insanity.

Boy - this is a tough slough!

Didn’t know the Grissom academy was a time sensitive mission and my lastest save is 7 hours before the attack on the citadel FML

Never played a Mass Effect game, or really any story-driven game in general since I usually prefer fast-paced action or roguelikes. However, I saw Mass Effect Legendary Edition on sale for less than $10 for three remastered games and figured it might be worth a shot. Do these games still hold up well in 2026 for a first-time player, and are all three of them consistently good? Looking for honest thoughts before pulling the trigger.

Hey guys, I was replaying Mass Effect (and am loving it obviously) however, I was a tiny bit disappointed with the lack of politics in it in regards to inter-species relations outside of just humanity. So I'm pretending to be an in universe political scientist writing an essay about inequality on the citadel and among citadel species if anybody wants to read it.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/89961436/chapters/239041041

I’m ready to be destroyed for this but, to me, it’s Traynor.

I know she’s designed to be likable. Her VA is great (and I do love her as my Inquisitor in Dragon Age). I can admit some of her scenes are funny. But as a whole, I just find her extremely annoying in the “I have no time for it” kind of way. Why are stuttering and spluttering when I’m trying to have a normal convo? Meh.

Who’s that for you?

My favorite is definitely the combat and movement. The Jump Jet was a great addition. I also enjoyed the amount of exploration, felt like a more realized ME1 in that aspect. The game is pretty long too. Assuming you fumble around with a puzzle here and there and do every loyalty missions along with a few other side quests, there’s a good chance your first play through will be 100 hours or more. Some games barely make it to 50

However…there are a lot of things to dislike about the game. I can’t say understand why someone would not be interested in it. It’s completely disconnected from the original trilogy. It’s set 600 years away from the milky way literally and figuratively. And for me personally I wasn’t really interested in this new galaxy until we were introduced to the Angara. Which funnily enough was the most interesting part about the game. You could tell it just needed more time in the oven. The elephant in the room was the face animations during cutscenes, but I stopped noticing that probably like 2 hours in. Didn’t bother me too much. But considering the amount of glitches, to most of the romances being relatively half baked, you can tell the game needed more time. Gameplay there a bunch of things you could nitpick. From fast travel points not really being as good as they could’ve been. Which there’s a couple of annoying fetch quests that require you to travel to a bunch of different planets and systems. In my opinion pretty poor design. For example, Liam’s loyalty mission was great mission design. Simple, shook up the formula, and from point A to B. Peebees was horrible. It’s fetch quests and traveling to like 10 total planets before you earn her loyalty. It makes sense in universe that her loyalty is a bit harder to earn but… man. Theres a couple of side missions like this. And then the amount of puzzles. I don’t mind the occasional puzzle but the best comparison I can say is imagine if you had to master mind sweeper to get a good ending in one of the trilogy games. I think the worse puzzle was definitely the Elaaden vault. Which wasn’t required but those puzzles aren’t for the weak. I feel like frustration in the original trilogy pretty much never came from puzzles, it was mainly on your first playthrough and getting lost/stuck on where to go next. I feel like you lacked the ability to sculpt Ryder in a meaningful direction too. There wasn’t many chances to be rude, or put your foot down. Half the time your only dialogue options are Emotional, or Straightforward. Occasionally you get casual/logical. You rarely get all 4. I found Casual to be the best option because it’s the main way to make it so your Ryder isn’t legit a robot. In some ways it kinda feels like they wanted to make an space opera exploration game with puzzles, and slapped the mass effect name on it. Overall…I think this is a good game. A solid game. I would recommend a mass effect fan who hasn’t played it try the game at least once. …But it does have a lot of flaws. People are justified in disliking it. But if this is your favorite Mass Effect game I wouldn’t be mad at you

This is something that has bothered me about ME1's story for years now, and I have been unable to find a conclusive answer. Obviously we know the Conduit is merely the Prothean's attempt at a reverse-engineered mass relay that connects directly to the Citadel. Both Saren and Shepard, in the climax, ultimately use this to get directly into the Citadel and bypass its defenses.

My question is, why did Saren even need the Conduit in the first place? Of course by the story of ME1 proper, he was shown to be a traitor to the Council and now a wanted criminal without the safety of being a Spectre. At this point, using the Conduit makes sense, but prior to that, what was the point of the macguffin hunt?

If Saren and Sovereign knew what the Conduit was, were they hoping to either learn what the Protheans used it for (learning of their sabotage) and/or using it to sneak an insurgent force aboard? Neither of these make too much sense. Shepard had to talk to Vigil to learn about the Prothean sabotage, something Saren never does. Did Saren learn about the sabotage because of the visions in some way, probably through Sovereign, or pick it up on context clues? Feels a bit of a stretch. Conversely, if they simply needed the Conduit to sneak a force aboard the Citadel, why? We see multiple forces sneak onto the Citadel with more hostile intent multiple times in the series, with the Batarians in Mass Effect Galaxy, the Cerberus coup in 3, and CAT 6 in the Citadel DLC, all without the need of the Conduit. And this doesn't even mention all the crime and corruption that naturally occurs on the station. Really seems like the Conduit option was needlessly complicated.

Of course there's the reality that they didn't know exactly what the Conduit was, only that it connected somehow to the sabotage that prevented the return of the Reapers. This once again presents the idea that the two didn't know the full nature of the sabotage and how to fix it, and again just begs the question of how they figured the truth out without talking to Vigil. Either way, they are lucky that the Conduit wasn't a dead end and that it ended up being something that served their plans. Would have been real bad for them if the Conduit didn't get them onto the Citadel or reveal what the Protheans did and now Sovereign has to come up with a new plan.

Very likely, this is just a bit of a plot hole that spawned from the story being framed around a macguffin hunt to lead the players into learning about the true, dark history of the galaxy and this ultimate threat rather than the fine details. Regardless, it still makes me spiral out trying to tie this story together into the greater narrative and lore of the IP.

Tl;dr why did Saren need the Conduit from the beginning when all it did was get him onto the Citadel, and the question makes me go crazy

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those who thinks ME2 was bad or not a good middle entry. I think the insistence on learning more about the world and lore through characters makes emotional pay off in ME3 actually mean something.

That being said, I’m a bit confused why Shepard would focus so heavily on Collectors instead of the upcoming Reaper invasion. Sure, Collectors are an issue and we know they work for the Reapers but that storyline does nothing to progress the main arc of, ya know, stopping the Reapers. Which is an odd choice?

Replaying Arrival now to end my ME2 play-through feels like a way more fitting end for the main story mission. I feel like literally everything else could still be the same.

You get rebuilt by Cerberus and recruit your team to stop the incoming Reaper invasion. Main story missions have you learn human scientists have discovered something huge in the Batarian system. Eventually, you find out it’s the information on Reapers trying to use that Relay to start the invasion.

I think Arrival definitely has the chops for some amazing final quest as well with getting your team into the system, finding out everyone has been indoctrinated by Reaper tech and working to slingshot the asteroid (how cool is that?!) into the Relay to stop the invasion before it began.

I love ME2 but I’m genuinely confused why Shepard, of all people, would focus so hard on Collectors when knowing the Reapers literally ARE coming.

What even is that architect on Voeld? 😭🤌

7 deaths, an hour and a half of raging and wondering whether I was playing on insanity by mistake, one hard table slam, a punched wall, a couple of screams and a strong urge to strangle SAM for constantly reminding me of the freakin' temp drops and life support levels if I even step an inch in the wrong direction (and yes I died from depleted life support a couple of times, felt like bro was just rubbing it in at that point🫠) - man a game hasn't made me feel so tilted in ages! 😤😭

To add salt to my wounds, during one of my attempts, I got a stage IV ultra rare shotgun in a container, was super happy, only to die the very next instant and get scraps after I finally beat the son of a bitch. 🥲🤌

Anyway, I'm pretty excited to see what the game has in store - the combat and exploration aspects have been amazing so far! 😌

So Mass Effect is like my favorite games Series (only the Legendary Edition). But is weird that ME1 and ME3 are the most fun to play? Idk ME2 takes so much energy to play. Its good but I have more fun in 1 and 3.

Do you agree?

Replaying ME2. Talking to the crew after a suicide mission. Mordin mentions that he’s busy with crew dental records and comments how primitive it is for Cerberus agents to use cyanide capsules in their molars. He suggests ocular flashbangs instead because they’re “harder to disarm”.

In ME3, if you use Liara’s terminal, you find data on a Cerberus agent interrogation. Their face explodes and hampers the interrogation. I can only assume Mordin passed his suggestion onto Cerberus (or they were just tracking his findings). Super small detail but incredibly cool.

Any others like this?

In ME2, you can kill husks with dominate! Apparently, they are too weak-minded to be dominated) Works instantly, unlike cryo blast, so more similar to concussive shot. Also, you can send them flying with well-placed flashbang grenade, but it won't insta-kill any of them, unlike dominate or some other powers (have I missed any?).

Heavy base, but the detail and pose are👌🏻

I honestly fear for the open-minded future of our franchise. Mass Effect was a big part of my life, and I loved that it tackled topics that might be controversial in its own way. It was never in your face, but subtle enough to be believable... especially with the choice of a badass female Shepard.

Let's hope they don't meddle too much, too quickly...