Blue Rose of Ilium

[arrogantcur]

This contains spoilers for Mass Effect 3. So if you're thinking of playing those games and want to know as little as possible going in, stop right here and don't look under the cut.

In Mass Effect 2, when you visit the planet Ilium one of the people you see is a krogan named Charr, who is reciting poetry. Charr's intended audience is his asari girlfriend, because they're having problems in their relationship and he's trying to convince her not to break up with him. This unofficial comic posted on The Escapist is about him and how the events of the third game affect him.









To read the full story, click here.

Comments

[ozaline]

ahhhh no, I totally missed that poem, when I played the game. So sad.

[arrogantcur]

There are a lot of sad moments in the game and this is definitely one of them. As shown, you find it on one of the krogan corpses in the caverns. I'm pretty sure that when you find it the game doesn't tell you who it is, it just says something like "This krogan has recorded a message for his wife. You should bring it to her on the Citadel." So you go and find her, give her the thing, and only then when she plays it do you hear his voice and go "Oh no, that was him?"

[halloweenjack]

The Mass Effect series has taken over as my alpha game from City of Heroes (and Marathon before that), and although the third game has its problems (most notoriously, the ending), there are some really excellent and heartbreaking bits in it. Even wandering around the Citadel (the huge space habitat that is the heart of the galactic civilization), you eavesdrop on conversations that, if you walk past those people repeatedly (sometimes, you have to leave that particular area and come back for further installments of the conversation), a story is revealed that just slays you with the feels. Especially, the asari with PTSD in Huerta Memorial Hospital, once you realize who the farm girl was.

[mrstatham]

I think my major problem with people complaining about the ending was that they treated it like it invalidated getting there, which.. It totally didn't. Could it have had a much stronger ending? Sure. Does it make everything that came before terrible? No. ME wouldn't be the first series to flub it's ending, but that doesn't mean that the destination ruined the journey, so to speak.

[arrogantcur]

I didn't play the game until after the Extended Cut was added, so the ending wasn't as confusing or frustrating for me as it was for people who got the game on release.

That being said...it still sucks. No matter which one you pick, it sucks.

I mean, I felt like I was fighting not just to save the galaxy, but for myself, so that I could finally relax and start enjoying life. With either Jack or Liara, as those were my two romance choices on my playthroughs.

The first time I finished the game, I was involved with Jack. You've probably seen this before, but here.

Goddamn it, I fucking teared up again viewing that. And that's why I hated the ending so goddamn much, because I didn't play the Citadel DLC in which that takes place after the ending, I played through the story in the order it canonically happened. So I knew how much it would hurt Jack if I got killed...but unless you're comfortable with exterminating all of the geth and EDI (and that would have also been cruel to Joker), then you have to sacrifice yourself. Yeah, I know Shepard's just one person whose sacrifice saves countless others--that doesn't make it easier.

Then I played through it with my Renegade Fem!Shep, who was with Liara, and we were talking about what we'd do after it was all over, how we'd have a bunch of little blue children...goddamn it, I knew I was making promises my character wouldn't be able to keep because not even my Renegade Shep who sabotaged the genophage cure and refused to take time to save a factory full of people from burning on Zaeed's loyalty mission in ME2 was willing to kill EDI and all of the geth. But I still had that conversation with her, and it still hurt knowing that it would never happen.

Let's not forget how this would affect Steve Cortez, if you get involved with him. FFS, this is a guy who's in very bad emotional shape when you meet him because he just lost his previous partner. So if you romance him, you'll just end up doubling the pain he's feeling, because you're doomed too.

It's just depressing as hell. I know the game doesn't make you romance anybody, but it's like...in-game romances are there to make things more enjoyable, right? But instead it feels like even though your Shepard will enjoy herself or himself with these people as the story progresses, at the end you basically get punished for getting involved with them, for getting emotionally invested.

[mrstatham]

Well, no-one said saving the galaxy was going to be easy, and I wouldn't look at it so much as punishment rather than consequences. Given the scale of what was going on in the games, I always imagining it was going to be somewhat bittersweet in the end. They definitely could have executed it better, but I think having your cake and eating it, with Shep going home to whoever you've romanced and getting a victory parade.. I don't think that would have been as brave a choice. So.. Yeah. To me, the execution's off, but the concept is solid.

[damar148]

And than everyone dies when the Reapers take over the Citadel.

[arrogantcur]

I forget where I read this so I can't link to anything, but I'm sure I read something about a lot of people managing to evacuate before the Citadel was moved. I really hope so, because too many people have died by the end of the game already without adding people like Bailey, Aethyta, Conrad Verner, Aria, Kolyat Krios, and so many others to the list as well.

[arrogantcur]

I didn't actually realize the connection there until I read about it on, I think, TV Tropes. Because you hear the asari's story in the first act, and by the time you're finished on Thessia and you have that conversation with Joker you have probably forgotten the name of the planet and the name of the girl. I know I did.

Of course there are also fun conversations you can listen in on too, such as Mel, a.k.a. Infiltrator Tits. (I wish I knew somebody like her IRL.)

[shadur]

... Oh, that's great. I mean, it's not like I needed this heart for anything right now, go ahead and rip it out.

*dies of feels*