Today's Notes 7/20/21: Shepherd Synthesizes A Galaxy

Good afternoon everybody,

Last night we wrapped up Mass Effect 3 as apart of the Legendary Edition of the trilogy, and if you can't tell by the title, yes I went with the Synthesis ending... and I'll explain it in three words: EDI and Legion. Throughout the Mass Effect trilogy, Shepard is constantly running into artificial life forms and while they are an enemies for the entire first game with the Geth and the one rouge A.I. on the citadel taking credits from Flux Casino, early in Mass Effect 2 you are introduced to EDI and if you talk with Joker after every mission, you can see her character develop. The same can me said for Legion depending on how soon or how late you pick him up when doing the IFF, and you start getting some background on the Geth, seeing things from their point of view. Mass Effect 3, you basically get the truth regarding what happened with the Quarians and the Geth when you go into the server with Legion explaining key moments of their past, and there are several chances to help EDI discover her own humanity, much in the same way Data's humanity is developed on Star Trek The Next Generation. Since you have the option to make key choices, if you help the Quarians and the Geth resolve their issues, then the Geth get the benefit of becoming fully sentient beings. 

So taking this all into account, for me it's a no hesitation choice to choose the Synthesis ending. Shepard sacrifices themself so that the most people can live, it makes sense. Now as far as the other two endings go, the Control Ending basically just proves The Illusive Man right, and the Destruction ending means Shepard committing genocide on the Geth and killing EDI. Now I may give Shepard a lot of rogue personality quirks, but that was off the table. Yes I know Shepard 'lives' if you have high enough effective military strength, but I always liked the idea of Shepard's story ending in a way that impacted the entire galaxy.

That onto last night, the assault on Cerberus HQ was pretty straight forward, as we saw all the history of the Lazarus Project and EDI's development, and the battle against Kai Leng was very straight forward since the third member of the team was Garrus, so constantly overloading Kai Leng's shields to beat him down in short fashion. Priority Earth starts off in a ruckus because of the Reapers' anti-air weapon placement, every time if fires it shakes the entire screen which makes things a little chaotic.There seem to be more brutes and banshees in it than I remember.

Of course by finishing the game, we did get a few achievements. 

1. Executioner: ME3: Defeat an old adversary
2. Patriot: ME3: Make the final assault
3. Legend: ME3: Mission accomplished
4. Long Service Medal: Finish Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3 with the same character

Overall over the course of Mass Effect Legendary Edition, we earned 110 out of 127 achievements. 1 achievement for Mass Effect 3 requires to start up New Game+ with everything carrying over to upgrade weapons to their maximum level which is a hold over from the original version of the game which had online multi-player where you could upgrade weapons an addition 5 levels.. Another involves slogging ones way through a number of challenges to unlock 'mirror' match in the Silversun Strip arena, several involve using biotic and engineering powers in Mass Effect 1, and 3 involve playing all three games on their hardest difficulty settings. 

Anyway here are the list of some clips from last night.

Twitch Clip: Wrex Gets His Ice Pack

Twitch Clip: Singing Moment: Just Hold On To What We Got

Twitch Clip: I Knew It Was Gonna Come Through The Wall!

Twitch Clip: TIM... Bang... You're Dead

Twitch Clip: EDI Is alive... and is not alone

Today's Fitness Boxing 2 Daily Workout lasted 31 minutes with an estimated calorie burn of 495 kcal. Since this entry is being entered in the afternoon on a Tuesday you can tell this was a work day that turned out not to be a work day. Anyway we didn't do anything extra with today's session. We're now up to 83 out of 100 for the Evan's Best Friend achievement. 

Twitch madea change so that people who are subbed to a channel can earn a sub badge every six months... so I used a lot of the artwork I commissioned from DaemonsW0lf (www.darkwolfcreative.com) to make the new sub badges. So for those who are already subscribed to my channel for over a year here's the list of the new ones.

• 1.5 Years: Moira (Overwatch)
• 2 Years: Wrex (Mass Effect)
• 2.5 Years: Squall (Final Fantasy 8)
• 3 Years: Maleficent (Disney)
• 3.5 Years: Garrus (Mass Effect)
• 4 Years: Tracer (Overwatch)
• 4.5 Years: Tali (Mass Effect)
• 5 Years: Zagreus (Star Trek Online)

For tonight's stream we're continuing God of War, with Mass Effect wrapped up, the adventures of Kratos gets promoted from just Friday nights to being in the prime slots earlier in the week.

And on that note we'll see you later over on twitch.tv/fredcasden!