Post by Axalon on May 10, 2017 19:11:50 GMT -5
Havarl and the Turians
So we come to the last planet which coincides with finding the trail of bread crumbs that leads to discovering the Turians and also coincidentally marked where I finished up the side arcs with the colonization and jumped into the main quest. This planet IMMEDIATELY gained bonus points from me by sheer virtue of the fact that it's so overgrown with jungles that you can't drive the freaking Nomad around. You MUST go on foot. This is such a relief after the two desert wastelands of Eos and Elaaden, the frozen wasteland of Voeld, and the toxic springs of Kadara. The world has a kind of "Jurassic Park" vibe that the others don't, though peppered with the occasional hostile enemy faction aside from the dinosaurs. Other than that though there isn't too much of note.
All in all most of these planets I feel have been a bust. They're more interesting by default than the generic planets of ME1, but filled with what basically amounts to a LOT of busywork and driving around once you get past the same plot of making each one habitable for Nexus inhabitants. Each one has their own unique storyline set on the planet, which is more or less hit or miss. This finally wraps up all of the colonization stuff though, and lets us dig into the main quest.
So we come to the last planet which coincides with finding the trail of bread crumbs that leads to discovering the Turians and also coincidentally marked where I finished up the side arcs with the colonization and jumped into the main quest. This planet IMMEDIATELY gained bonus points from me by sheer virtue of the fact that it's so overgrown with jungles that you can't drive the freaking Nomad around. You MUST go on foot. This is such a relief after the two desert wastelands of Eos and Elaaden, the frozen wasteland of Voeld, and the toxic springs of Kadara. The world has a kind of "Jurassic Park" vibe that the others don't, though peppered with the occasional hostile enemy faction aside from the dinosaurs. Other than that though there isn't too much of note.
Havarl is the ancient homeworld of the Angarans. Like many planets that they used to own, stuff got real weird real quick when the Scourge decimated their society. Unlike the other planets we've been to though, two of the three monoliths are ALREADY active, which is an AMAZING break in the pattern of driving around and activating these silly things each and every time. Yet for some reason which I still haven't figured out, having only 2/3 of the things on makes life OVERFLOW AND MUTATE instead of barely keeping things together. Activating the third one apparently helps balance the circle of life or something...which honestly I don't understand at all.
I mean, the main problems with planets like Eos were that they were a radioactive desert wasteland, right? Wouldn't it be easier then to just activate 2/3 monoliths there, let the life grow at the accelerated pace, THEN activate the third one to calm it down? Seems like it'd be a great time saver if Havarl is any indication.
Another interesting tidbit you can discover on Havarl is that the Angarans have "genetic memory". If your first thought upon seeing that was Assassin's Creed you're damn right! Because it's literally the same concept, except they don't need a fancy VR interface to do it! They just need an object they owned in their former life! Unfortunately this doesn't get explored any further beyond the one quest to reactivate the third monolith, either by the Angarans, or by the Kett, who incorporate Angaran genetics into their own when uplifting them into Kett, and thus would likely have the SAME THING. Ah well, missed potential.
This brings me to the Turians. Some escape pods from the Turian ark have crashed here and are fending off the Roekaar, which is an extremist version of the Angaran Resistance who are completely xenophobic and hate all aliens. They are basically a much less competent version of Cerberus from the previous games. You help the Turians fend them off and talk to the guy in charge of the group, who turns out to be a former Spectre agent. You agree to work with him to find the Turian ark, which has apparently been zipping around the entire cluster just shedding escape pods on Havarl and debris on Eladden (with NOBODY noticing apparently) before finally coming to a stop where you eventually track it down and board it.
This actually brings me up to another point. Did no one on these silly arks decide to wake up some kind of flight crew or something JUST BEFORE they got into Andromeda? Would've saved every single Ark a LOT of trouble if they actually had pilots who were awake and paying attention so they wouldn't collide with the dark matter of the Scourge and damage their giant lifeboat in space.
Anyhoo, the Turians got really lucky in that their big jaunt through the cluster attracted ZERO attention from anyone. Not the Kett who are trying to conquer the cluster, not Outlaws looking for salvage, not the local Angarans who live here, not the Nexus teams who are hoping to find these silly things, nothing. You fly there, wander the empty ship, and eventually meet at the Turian SAM node. The Turian SAM reveals that the Turian Pathfinder is dead, but his last wish was for your newly acquainted Spectre friend to take up his mantle.
This brings us to the choice of the mission. Convince him to become the new Pathfinder, or don't. If you fail to convince him (which is literally just a binary choice saying either "do it" or "up to you aka don't do it") he becomes a drunk at Kadara. As far as I can tell no replacement is selected for some BIZARRE reason either. Given that so far Ryder as a Pathfinder has basically gotten his way by flying around and just shooting things while letting SAM handle all the sci-fi tech stuff, Mr. Turian Spectre here is more qualified than Ryder himself thanks to actually being part of one of the greatest groups of elite operatives in the Milky Way, as opposed to the generic military experience of the Ryders which consisted of guarding a mass relay and helping look for Prothean technology respectively.
So I easily convince him to become a Pathfinder and he can be found later on in the Pathfinder Hall thingamajig (<---wait, that's a real word? seriously?) if you want to chat him up.
I mean, the main problems with planets like Eos were that they were a radioactive desert wasteland, right? Wouldn't it be easier then to just activate 2/3 monoliths there, let the life grow at the accelerated pace, THEN activate the third one to calm it down? Seems like it'd be a great time saver if Havarl is any indication.
Another interesting tidbit you can discover on Havarl is that the Angarans have "genetic memory". If your first thought upon seeing that was Assassin's Creed you're damn right! Because it's literally the same concept, except they don't need a fancy VR interface to do it! They just need an object they owned in their former life! Unfortunately this doesn't get explored any further beyond the one quest to reactivate the third monolith, either by the Angarans, or by the Kett, who incorporate Angaran genetics into their own when uplifting them into Kett, and thus would likely have the SAME THING. Ah well, missed potential.
This brings me to the Turians. Some escape pods from the Turian ark have crashed here and are fending off the Roekaar, which is an extremist version of the Angaran Resistance who are completely xenophobic and hate all aliens. They are basically a much less competent version of Cerberus from the previous games. You help the Turians fend them off and talk to the guy in charge of the group, who turns out to be a former Spectre agent. You agree to work with him to find the Turian ark, which has apparently been zipping around the entire cluster just shedding escape pods on Havarl and debris on Eladden (with NOBODY noticing apparently) before finally coming to a stop where you eventually track it down and board it.
This actually brings me up to another point. Did no one on these silly arks decide to wake up some kind of flight crew or something JUST BEFORE they got into Andromeda? Would've saved every single Ark a LOT of trouble if they actually had pilots who were awake and paying attention so they wouldn't collide with the dark matter of the Scourge and damage their giant lifeboat in space.
Anyhoo, the Turians got really lucky in that their big jaunt through the cluster attracted ZERO attention from anyone. Not the Kett who are trying to conquer the cluster, not Outlaws looking for salvage, not the local Angarans who live here, not the Nexus teams who are hoping to find these silly things, nothing. You fly there, wander the empty ship, and eventually meet at the Turian SAM node. The Turian SAM reveals that the Turian Pathfinder is dead, but his last wish was for your newly acquainted Spectre friend to take up his mantle.
This brings us to the choice of the mission. Convince him to become the new Pathfinder, or don't. If you fail to convince him (which is literally just a binary choice saying either "do it" or "up to you aka don't do it") he becomes a drunk at Kadara. As far as I can tell no replacement is selected for some BIZARRE reason either. Given that so far Ryder as a Pathfinder has basically gotten his way by flying around and just shooting things while letting SAM handle all the sci-fi tech stuff, Mr. Turian Spectre here is more qualified than Ryder himself thanks to actually being part of one of the greatest groups of elite operatives in the Milky Way, as opposed to the generic military experience of the Ryders which consisted of guarding a mass relay and helping look for Prothean technology respectively.
So I easily convince him to become a Pathfinder and he can be found later on in the Pathfinder Hall thingamajig (<---wait, that's a real word? seriously?) if you want to chat him up.
All in all most of these planets I feel have been a bust. They're more interesting by default than the generic planets of ME1, but filled with what basically amounts to a LOT of busywork and driving around once you get past the same plot of making each one habitable for Nexus inhabitants. Each one has their own unique storyline set on the planet, which is more or less hit or miss. This finally wraps up all of the colonization stuff though, and lets us dig into the main quest.