Welcome to the SSV Normandy

Welcome back, Commander. Though it may not know it yet, the galaxy's under threat, and to combat this threat, two idiots must ride the slowest elevators in the galaxy. The game is Mass Effect and this is the N7 project. So welcome to the N7 project. This is a Mass Effect replay podcast where myself and my co host Zach are going to be replaying Mass Effect 1 through 3 and then I guess, maybe possibly Andromeda. I don't know, we'll see if we get that far how we feel. There's also associated media, we may get to that, but we're going to start just with the core trilogy of games. And the structure is that before each recording, Zach and I have gone back to fresh save files that we've, you know, starting straight from the beginning and have played just a little section of the game. So I'm going to include in the show notes a sort of a roadmap of how these things are going to go out so that you can play along with us, although you don't feel necessary to. You can just listen to us ramble if you just like the sound of our voices.

We do have very nice voices. So we've been told.

So we've been told. So who are we? I am Scott Paladin and my co host here is Zach Jakeways. Zach, why don't you tell the. Why don't you tell the class a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, yeah. As Scott mentioned, I am Zach Jakeways. I am a game developer by day and an RPG enthusiast pretty much all the time. I am the co host of Monster Mechanics with Scott here. You've probably heard our voices if you're listening to this before. Yeah, we talk about monsters, how they can be improved, the things we like and don't like about them. And Scott does all the work on that, so it works out great for me. Yeah.

And I am Scott Paladin. I'm one of those people who acquires skills obsessively. So I could, I could declare myself to be lots of things, but primarily lately I've been a podcaster on the. In the Internet space, I've been a podcaster and writer. Obviously. I work on Monster Mechanics with Zach. And you might also know me from Breathing Space, Fading Frontier, where I'm one of the primary writers, directors, editors, voice actors. I do graphic design for them. I'm also now learning blender to make spaceships. I do every. I try to do everything. I'm one of those. Do all of the things people like. I desperately want to do them all.

You may have noticed a running theme here is Scott does all the work.

I'm very extra about these things. I just want to make cool stuff. That's my whole gag. I want to make cool stuff. So that's who we are. If you want to check out our other work, like I said, there's. There's muscle mechanics and breathing space. But if you want to just confine yourself to N7, then we're happy to have you. And let's get straight into Status report. Status report. Status Report is the section of the podcast where we are going to get all of our life news and events and discussion out of the way before we get into the important stuff, which is talking about video games. Very specifically, one video game.

Yes.

So how are things going with you, Zach?

Things are going pretty well. We're winding down the end of the year. I am looking forward to a nice 10 day vacation coming up.

So that's lovely.

Very excited about that.

I am in the middle of, I wanted to say recording hell, but it's not hell. It's been joyful because we're going through breathing space Season 2 recordings right now and it's been a whirlwind. It took us like two months to do season one, and within two weeks I think we got 50% of season two done. It was just been like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

Yeah, that's amazing.

And working with people who are good at what they do is super fun. The quality of talent that we've gotten for the show overall has been amazing.

Yeah. Breathing Space Fading Frontier has attracted a lot of just S class talent. It's been just like I've only had a chance to record with a few of them, but the experience has been delightful.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm impressed. If I wasn't a writer and able to just like cast myself, like write parts for myself and cast myself in them before anyone else gets a chance, then I probably wouldn't be in season two. Just. Yeah, like, we've got some amazing people. So that is where my life is at right now, is deep into that. And then also teaching myself Blender, which is just like. I mean, you're very familiar with 3D programs. I've bounced off of it a couple of times before. It's a matter of finding one of those. The right tutorial to be like, yeah.

Blender is actually one of those tools that I'm very eager to teach myself. Just because I've been using the same copy of 3D Studio Max for the last decade and Blender has Far outstripped it at this point. And it's free. So, I mean, there's literally no downside to switching over at this point.

I know, man. Like, the fact that such a powerful tool is just available for anybody to grab is fricking bonkers.

Yeah. Hard agree.

Yeah. Yeah. Although it has led me to try to buy a GPU in 2021, which was just, oh, no, that's a disaster waiting to happen. They're just nowhere to be had. Really sad.

Yeah. On my end, like, I've started leaning more towards the programming side of things. Like, I'm starting to try to teach Myself C&HLSL, CG shaders, like, a lot of technical art, and basically shader programming is. That's sort of where my interests have led me lately.

Okay. With that, we are going to get into mission debrief. Mission debrief. So for mission debrief, this is where we're going to talk about the section that we played for the episode. In this case, we're only covering just the minor little section at the very beginning. Literally, like, show up and on the Normandy, and you talk to some people, and then we move on. So that's all we're covering today. But first off, I have the most important question of all. On a scale of 1 to Iphigenia, how tragic is Joker's beard?

Oh, it needs some work. I know they modeled it after Seth Green, but his.

It gets better. In Mass Effect 3, I remember, like, they. They give him the mustache back in, but, like that early Joker model for. For the skin that they've got for where it's like, it's very much a chinstrap, but, like, also not a deliberate chin strap. You can see that he's trying to grow it in, and it just isn't quite making it. And I. I feel his. I feel Joker's pain so much because I've got, like. I got the little spot between right under my nose that, like, never quite. Never quite matches up, you know, I mean, I'm.

I'm the last person who could ever throw stones about growing a beard.

So Amanda works for you. I think you would look weird with a beard at this point.

Yeah, probably. I think that's, like. I've always wondered, but, like, all I get is a little chin scruff and a fairly full mustache, which is, in my opinion, not a great look. So.

So what happened in this section? Shefford has been assigned to the SSV Normandy, an experimental frigate designed by humanity in cooperation with their former enemies, the Turians There is a Citadel Specter aboard, which seems fishy. And it's revealed that this is actually all an elaborate job interview to see if Shepard should be recruited. And actually they are there to retrieve a valuable artifact from a human colony, Eden Prime. But wait. A distress signal comes in from the planet. Robot aliens and zombies are attacking. And a big squid ship. Shepard. The Specter Nihilus and their team prepare to drop to the planet.

So to kick things off, do you want to talk a little bit about your Shepard?

Oh, yeah. I did want to have us to introduce our shepherds. Yeah. So in this case we're. I have Jet shepherd who is a. Can't remember which class I chose, but I went a little bit. Like I was. I was going through the. The Mass Effect Legendary Edition mods because I. I knew I was going to have to. I was going to need a same sex romance mod. And once I was like, well, if I'm modding then I guess I might as well also get some custom hair and like do a custom head morph. And so I ended up with Mass Effect. Mass Effect 1. Shepherds are always a little bit off, but I. She looks pretty good. And I. Because I almost always. I always, always go super Boy Scout paragon with my shepherd, I. This time around, I'm going full renegade, full asshole shepherd.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, Fem Shep. For me, it's always Fem Shap. There is no male Shep in my. In my universe.

What backgrounds did you pick?

I chose. I think it was Earthborne and I definitely chose Ruthless. Ruthless was the one for that sounded. I'm like, that sounds renegadey. And I don't think I've seen the Ruthless path before. I know I've seen the other two.

Sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So full renegade femshep with some custom head morph stuff. There'll be a link in our show notes to my tweet thread or a picture of my head morph. So, Zach, introduce us to your shepherd.

So this time around, I am playing alongside my wife. She has never played the Mass Effect games and is pretty much unfamiliar with the series as a whole. So this is kind of her first look at the series. She knows how much I love the series, so she was delighted to be part of this. I'll be sort of helming the gameplay and she'll be doing sort of the decision making and the RPG choices.

Yeah, yeah. Calling the shots.

So to make things super confusing, we'll be playing Jess Shepard, who is also an infiltrator and. But she is playing the spacer background, which means her character was born in space and she is the survivor.

Oh, cool. Cool. Yeah, those are both good. We'll have to talk about the implications of those in the later spoilery section because there is. There is some stuff that that is for that.

There is even a little bit of that comes up in the. The non spoiler spoilery part when talking with some of the NPCs aboard this first segment.

Oh, okay, I missed that. Yeah. So this first section of gameplay is pretty light. It's mostly just walking around, like walking from a direct line from the cockpit down to the ready room. And you get to talk to some people. You get to meet Navigator Presley, you get to meet Richard Jenkins and Dr. Chakwas, and you get to talk to Captain Anderson and Nihilus who are like, man, we're gonna. I mean, Nihilus has just got a cool character design, man, that like the black Turian with the white face paint and like such a cool.

It is. It was a really good choice to introduce that as your. Your first exposure to the tan race. Like, you just look at this guy and like, man, that's a badass. I need to know more about this guy.

Yeah. And we get briefly introduced to Kaden Alenko, who is, I think a lieutenant. He's our biotic specialist. And then we get to meet Jenkins with his huge ears. Yes. Who is like the brash young rookie go getter of like, I want to get down there and get some action. And then we've got Chakwas who will. Man, like, Chakwas is a milf. Right. Like, I'm like looking through my notes and that's the very first thing is Chakwaas is a milf. I don't know something about her. Like, she's very confident and very like, I am good at my job and I like what I do. And that's just kind of a fun character to have show up. Very.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. With no spoilers involved. I am always delighted to see her show up at various points in the plot.

Yeah. And then the discussion with Nihilus and Shepard and Anderson is kind of interesting because you find out that Nihilus was the one who chose Shepherd, I guess, which is kind of cool. I would love to have seen more information about why exactly to pull in some of that background about what I mean, in my case, Nila saw the actions on. I forget the name of the planet, but it was the one where Shepard had become ruthless and done what needed doing. But I would actually kind of like to. That would have been cool to be able to pick his brain more and have them make more of a connection really.

Yeah. One of the interesting things is like you get a little bit of taste of the tensions between humans and Turians early on when you're talking with Exo. Presley impression immediately that he does not like Turians.

Yeah.

As I say, they bring up the First Contact war a little bit which is apparently humanity's first interaction with an alien species. And it did not go well.

Although it didn't go. I mean it went badly. It led into a war but like we kind of held our own, which was surprising. Which is why humanity advanced as quickly as it did on the galactic stage. Which has like caused trouble because we're like a relative newcomer to what had been a stable power structure before and it's causing all of these tensions. But yeah, the aspect of humanity versus all of these other species was like they, they come right out of the gate with that. With everybody like being like, I don't know about these aliens man. Maybe humanity should be out for themselves. Yes. It's interesting because we won't go into. Well, we'll have to save a little bit of that analysis for the spoilery section. But like that was. That was very obviously a theme that they were just running with immediately. That's kind of cool.

Yeah, I think so. I think there's. There's a lot to. A lot to kind of dissect there. Especially with like, if you're talking with Chakwas and the. And Jenkins a little bit, there's definitely like a sense of like feeling the odd men out with the council races which at the moment all we know is that the Turians are on the council races. I don't think the other ones have really been mentioned at this point. But like there's. There's that sort of that feeling like the odd man out and you know, humanity really needs to look out for themselves.

Yeah. Yeah. So and then we get to the section where we get the emergency transmission from Eden prime saying that things have been going to shit there. All of a sudden get our. A glimpse of a wicked looking ship with its tentacle like arms like latching onto a building and stuff.

My very first playthrough, I thought that was a giant hand reaching out of the sky.

I mean that's the visual. It's honestly a good looking design. And then we get. I forget if the. We actually see the gu or not, but we get introduced to the Idea of the Gu. Who are at this point in the story revealed only as like their AI from beyond the Terminus systems. They're like out in the Outer Rim and we haven't heard from them or it's called the Veil. That's right, they have. They've been beyond the veil for like 200 years and we've never seen them before.

I think at this point they deliberately hide like what they're fighting. You just see, you get a brief glimpse of character named Ashley firing at something and requesting help. But there's something. Something has gone down and we see that giant ship coming in out of the clouds.

We see the ship. They do reveal it's the Geth. Because I remember talking to either Nihilus or Anderson about the Geth at that point, I'm pretty sure. So yeah, they get the explanation. Hey, what are these things? They're evil AI, which is cool. The idea of this mysterious force that is coming out of nowhere, you know, raises the mysteries, I gotta say. Obviously we're both nihilist stands. The dude jumps, as far as I could tell, jumps out of the Normandy while it's still flying. Like, dude, like grabs his shotgun and is like, dude, do, do. And then just like fucking beefs it out of the build out of the ship and like, apparently is fine. How. How rad is that, man?

Like, they definitely introduced the concept of the Specters being total badasses in a really cool way with Nihilus.

Yeah, I love the fact that he's like, I'll be faster on my own and then just jumps out of the ship.

Okay, you're suiting up to go out with Caden and Jenkins.

Yeah, yeah. I have to question. This is a memory thing because we're both playing the Legendary Edition. Was Shepard's original suit like Spandex? Like, I seem to remember the first shepherd suit being a little bit more armored plated, but at least in the Legendary Edition, it's just like a body suit. Like.

No, I think, I think it was the limitations of that first PS1 area is like they basically changed a lot of textures but not a lot of. Okay, not a lot of model detail in it. So like that first one was pretty sleek looking, if I recall.

I just remembered it having more definition. And it's been a while since, I mean, well, I played the PC versions most recently. But yeah, it could just be like memory like, you know, I'm thinking about that Xbox. I think it was Xbox One era, maybe PS3.

I think so.

And because it was 2007 was when this came out and they're all, I.

Think it was for Xbox360 because I think they managed to get the trilogy.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's, that's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm thinking, I'm thinking 360. Yeah, yeah. And there are all kinds of limitations. Like the fact is that like we only see a certain number of body types in the game because like they just, they didn't have the resources, I'm assuming to like make a bunch of things. So I mean, one of the themes of the show is going to be that Mass Effect is a kind of horny game. But like everybody's fucking stacked in this game. Like, oh yeah, like all of the dudes are beefcakes and all of the women are like very curvy. Like we just do not get a broad spectrum of body types here. Which maybe, maybe, maybe that's an implication of how cheap like cosmetic surgery and genetic modifications are early in the game. But like it is very funny actually. Well, we'll have to talk. I have a thing for next episode. I was just thinking about a thing I read off the wiki, but. Okay, so, but I think we're, we've exhausted how far we can talk about this without getting into spoiler territory. So we're going to break into the Shadow Broker files.

All right.

Shadow Broker files. So this is the point where we blow out our non spoilery information. So if you are playing the game along with us and you do not want to be spoiled about information, this is your first fresh time through. Bye bye. You should stop listening now. From here to the end of the episode, we are off the chain. We can talk about anything and everything and we will probably ruin something for you if that's the kind of thing you care about. So goodbye and join us next episode. We'll have another little section just for you at the beginning of next episode. For everybody else, this is where we start talking about things like foreshadowing and you know, characters that might die or ones that will show up in the future. And yeah, so this is us to our opportunity to sort of get a little more depth into like the structure of what's going on here.

Yeah.

So in this case it's the tragedy of like how they're wasting Nihilus, you know.

Yes.

We spent the whole non spoiler section talking about how much we love him and it's like our good, our good, our good boy is just going to die immediately.

Yeah, like I think you And I were talking earlier, like, it does feel like. Like a waste of a design of such a good Turian. Like.

Yeah, yeah.

And you never see any other Turian who looks quite that cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Even. Even Saren, who has his own kind of coolness to him, is not as good.

Yeah.

But yeah, yeah. Like, and the fact that he's just super, like, the. The voice actor did a good job of just being, like, super cool and confident and, like, playing that. Playing that character out. I also have to say I'd forgotten about Navigator Presley, but, like, the whole human versus alien tension thing, I think it kind of works, but it is a little bit aged now because the allegory is so easily applicable to race. It's pretty easy to walk up to that dude and be like, oh, you're a space racist. Oh, okay.

That was, in fact, the exact words my wife used when our first interaction is like, this dude's a space racist.

Yeah. And if I recall correctly, and mind you, I don't remember his dialogue choices from one specifically, but he does get a little bit better once under the influence, once he's, like, seen people around. But they mostly, I think, like, mostly get that work done post hoc after he's dead. When you read his journals in Mass Effect 2, where, like, yeah, you find this thing and it's like, oh, oh, look, he was redeemed. But, like, that feels a little bit like whitewashing or. Yeah, yeah. A little bit of a retcon where they're like, oh, we didn't do this work in Mass Effect 1. Let's. Let's go back. Let's backtrack and make sure it's clear that this is actually a good dude.

Yeah. I think by the end of Mass Effect 1, like, EXO, Presley has, like, a grudging respect for the aliens on board the ship. And that's. That's about as far as he goes.

One thing, I mean, like, on the one hand, that theme. I mean, like I said, it does sour some of those characters. I know that Ashley's gonna suffer from it, too, when we get to her. Cause she's got some of that same sort of, like, humanity first thing, but it does one. One theme of. Of the series overall is that those people can change. Like, they, like, obviously, they try to do it with Presley.

They do.

I think they do it much more successfully with. With Ash. But, like, the idea that, like, not everybody who holds bigoted views is stuck in them forever will be something that I think does come up. But, yeah, it does it definitely does sour your initial impression of, of the, of those characters.

Yeah. And I think with, with Ashley, like her family is directly impacted by that First Contact war and. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like, and her, her, her hate is obviously misplaced, but yeah, it's at least interesting that they try to give it a little more nuance than just, oh, Tuck, I hate them.

Yeah, yeah. And they definitely do throw the reverse in as well. In later examples, we'll get to more characters who are just like, they hate humans, you know, and like, yeah, that's just a thing that is true. And so like it's not, it's not all one sided, you know, it's a, it's a big tension thing. I think that if I was going back and rebooting this series now, I think I might deemphasize that a little bit. Mostly just to let give room in the, in the narrative for some other stuff to happen. Because that, that story is interesting, but I think it follows the Turian conflict more directly and we don't see enough of that. Exactly. I don't know, it would be interesting to kind of re. Approach that as a, as a writer and that. Which they're going to do apparently.

So I think I would have liked like, I'm okay with like them showcasing that there is some racism because that is unfortunately a part of our world. But I would have liked to have seen it follow an arc a little bit more, I think.

Yeah, yeah. And definitely the. Yeah, maybe there needed to be or yeah, maybe the, maybe the other answer is to highlight it more and give us, give us the arc. Like you're talking about where as we, you know, because you know, we're in spoiler territory now. So when the reapers come and like become a big threat and everybody has to band together and, and face off against them showing that like, I don't know, maybe that's actually a worse session. Like people can only get together if they, if they like are if the world is going to end and they have an. A common enemy to fight against. I don't know. But like, yeah, being able to, I.

Think would have liked them to have like taken that. That idea of the racism and shown specifically that it's bad and like it's not an okay thing.

Yeah, yeah. And like, I think they're trying to do that. I just don't think they successfully land the, the thing. And like really the, the way to do it would just be to. Because the way that as far as I know, mind you, this is. This is two white Guys talking about race. So, yeah, take everything that we're saying.

In choppy territory or.

Yeah, well, I mean, just take everything we're providing our viewpoint, but our viewpoint is not all viewpoints. But, like, the way that I've seen people who have bigoted views get over them is always by, like, individual exposure to individuals that, like, can. That they. Once they can humanize a single person, then they become that, like, that's when things get to change, you know, and it's about making connections, and all you have to do is really show that happening. You know, if. If we see navigator Presley talking to Garrus or something like that later on and just overhear the conversation, and then, like, over the course of a game, find him, like, talking to that character more and more. And then, like, you could, like, you could actually show a pretty realistic way about how somebody might overcome a flaw like that.

Yeah. I think one of the interesting things is they're not really good. At least in the first game. They're not really good at showing side conversations with.

Yeah, they hadn't figured that out yet.

And they do get a lot better at that later on.

Yeah. The only way they. The only place they get to do it is elevators.

Yeah, elevators and intercoms.

Yeah.

And I think, like, Chakwas and Jenkins talking early on, but it's just like. It's a very, like, cut from one character to the other kind of thing. Like. Yeah, there's very little interaction there.

Yeah. That is something they get better at. And maybe even go a little bit too far with the overhearing conversations in Mass Effect 3. We'll get to that in, like, 50 episodes. Yeah. So we also get our first view of the Reapers. This is that the tentacles ship that I couldn't name in the non spoiler section is. Oh, crap. What's the first one's name? It's not Harbinger.

It's Sovereign.

Sovereign. Yeah.

Yes.

And you even hear the. The noise, which is associated with indoctrination and stuff. It's. It's cool. I really do actually really like the design of the Reaper ships. I do kind of wish that that was just Sovereign and that, like, when you see them later, they look a little bit more individual. I understand why that's not the case, but they are. They are a cool design. And we'll talk a little bit more about them and their technology in the next episode because we're going to be covering Eden prime then. But it is nice to see they show you immediately what you're going to Be facing off against, but then don't give you enough information to. Enough to be worried, but not enough to go, oh, yeah, I understand the threat. You're just going to get a glimpse of it and. Oh, shit, that thing makes a scary noise and it's definitely fucking things up. And it's a big ship. That's a nice little moment. I like that.

Yeah, I like that. Like, at the start of it, you're like, oh, that's a Geth ship.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

You have no reason what you think.

Yeah. And it. And it definitely follows, like, some of their design language that we'll see later on. And I'm going to assume that that is because the Geth kind of picked up some stuff from the Reapers more than anything else. Yeah, but, yeah, definitely. It definitely fits in their visual aesthetic pretty well.

And so we also get, like, a. We get our first glimpse of. Of Ashley. Yeah.

Who we'll talk. We'll talk Ashley more next episode.

Sure, sure.

Yeah. Because, like, she shows up, so we're going to be able to actually talk about her. Cool. So I think we. We've covered. Unless there's something else you want to specifically talk about, like, overall thing of the series, you know, like, is there anything you want to talk about before we. We move on?

No, Like, I think this is, like, this. This intro. Like, my first time I played through, like, this intro just really grabbed me and got me excited to play.

Like, yeah, this is. I remember it being the very first time I felt like a game had become cinematic. Right.

Yes.

Like, you. You walk into that, you know, you get dumped into the cockpit, and there's a conversation going on, and it feels like a movie. And then also, you can make your own responses. And there are lots of things to criticize about the conversation system in Mass Effect, but, like, the fact that you can get a pretty good idea of what you're going to say, say it, and it doesn't break the flow of the conversation. That was freaking revolutionary at the time. That was amazing.

Like, at this point, like, I can't remember, Dragon Age Origins had come out at this point, hadn't it?

I believe Origins had come out the very first one. Yeah.

And this was, I think, probably piggybacking a little bit on that tech.

Oh, no, it's Origins is two years after. Oh, okay.

Well, then. Yeah, well, never mind then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that Origins was. Was piggybacking off of Mass Effect. You can definitely see some of their. Like, because this is Bioware, like, they're they're pulling some of like their Black Isle heritage and their, you know, a little bit of the, like, they're, they're, they were until quite recently, like the rpg, like the Western RPG company, the ones who did the big story games. That was them.

And that, that, that was what got me into Mass Effect in the first place. Like, oh man. Black or Black Isle bioware is making a new rpg. I, I'm on board, like sight unseen.

Yeah, yeah. And I remember seeing the trailers, it was like, oh my God, what is going on here? Like this is this. It was a real leap forward at the time. Yeah.

I, they have unfortunately burned through a lot of that goodwill with some of their recent releases.

But yeah, man, that's, I think really comes down to the fact that like making big, not big story games, but like the kind of big story game that they were making may just not be very profitable. It requires so much work.

Yeah. I think they also made some, some questionable choices about gameplay that just were a little more profit driven than anything else.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, all right, well, we'll certainly have opportunity to talk more about this in future episodes. Now there will be one more segment in future episodes where we're going to do a character bracket, but we're going to cover that next episode. So on that note, see you guys next time.

Until next time.

Thank you for listening to the N7 project. If you would like to read the upcoming Playthrough Roadmap, there is a link in the show notes below. We can be found on Twitter as Seven Project at our website Mass Effect or via our Discord. Scottpaladin.com Discord if you'd like to support the podcast, honestly, the easiest way to be to write us a review on Apple podcasts, Podchaser or your podcaster of choice, reread every one of those and it gives us a real boost every time and it helps people find the podcast. Or if you want to give monetary support, all funds to our Patreon. Patreon.com MonsterPod will also go to supporting this podcast. Mass Effect is associated characters, sound, plot points, whatever, are copyright by some giant faceless corporation. The N7 project was produced and edited by me, Scott Paladin, and hosted by myself and my best friend Zach jaques. Audio is copywritten 2022 Scott Paladin this has been a library of cursed knowledge production.