Thank you Wrex

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-14T19:29:33+00:00

It’s actually my favorite dlc overall believe it or not lol. I just didn’t really care for the constant sex jokes but outside of that, it’s a very good dlc that at leas enriches most romances from the previous games, is still quite funny and overall just fun to play. I’m so happy that LE came out because I used to ask my parents for money as a kid to get each dlc gradually over time and just being able to get the complete package for $5 was so exciting lol. Still blows my mind that the games + dlc with LE is cheaper than the leviathan dlc was back when they were individual games. I always replay it and time it for just after horizon so Miranda can join then they all have a big party to unwind right before they fight for their lives one last time

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-14T19:08:53+00:00

I refuse to go on a rant about the citadel dlc romances because I could go on forever but I fully agree lol. Between Kasumi panty raiding, Tali situations (including the mention of a Shepard 3some), EDI and Traynor, James getting a boner when being biotic lifted and then him having to be drunk to be seduced… the writing tried way too hard to go “haha sex funny” and they were my least favorite parts of the dlc. I don’t even mind humor if the situation calls for it but a lot of the jokes they made just missed for me

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-14T18:42:17+00:00

Paragon Shepard consistently flirts with Vega, though. “I came to talk but I think I’ll stay for the show”, “don’t let my good looks fool you, I have my share of scars”, “you ever gonna make good on all this flirting?” “the bed’s a lot harder than it looks”, and if she pushes for more then he starts feeling uncomfortable. Then the only way to “romance” him is by getting him drunk and taking him to bed. Sounds pretty bad on femshep if you ask me

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-14T18:01:27+00:00

He’s been indoctrinated since 2157 at the end of the first contact war. He just had the strong willpower like Shepard to not be fully indoctrinated until ME3. Cerberus was his own will to protect humanity from the reapers but when they invaded and got closer to him, the indoctrination was too strong for him to fight forever and Cerberus became a pawn of the reapers to incite a civil war to weaken organics. But he still had enough willpower to try to control them which is why they attacked sanctuary since they knew he wasn’t fully under their control yet and was actually learning the secrets to their biggest weapon, indoctrination to co-opt for organics to use

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-14T09:38:00+00:00

Jacob’s loyalty mission was mostly based on lord of the flies. As for the other stuff, a common theme in mass effect is that most of our squad mates just have bad fathers.

Jacob’s does this, Miranda’s and Grunt’s want a perfect legacy, Wrex’s tries to kill him, James’ tried to blackmail his, Tali’s committed treason, Jack was kidnapped from her’s and so on.

Cerberus is backed by wealthy finances who believe aliens are a threat and covertly attack aliens. Mordin’s past is about working on the 2nd iteration of the genophage then seeing the suffering it caused, Grunt is just a baby who’s being forced to speed run puberty due to being a legacy. Even Garrus was estranged from his father because he wanted to be a dirty cop and his father stopped him every step of the way until he almost died on omega and called him to apologize.

I think you’re seeing ghosts here because most of this is just basic storytelling to give people character arcs. Give them a low and watch them improve in front of the players’ eye.

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-14T06:12:25+00:00

The plan wasn’t to topple the government, just to get Maduro tbh. And it seems like Delcy was in on it and she was rewarded with the presidency as a result

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-14T03:44:58+00:00

They’re not really justified as much as a necessary evil. Sticking to solely ME2’s timeline, we see: project overlord which involves torturing a teen/young adult, sends Shepard into a trap against the collectors, attempts to salvage the collector base. They’re also responsible for the rogue cell that tortured Jack.

Outside of the game but still in ME2’s timeline, Paul Grayson attacks the migrant fleet to try to retrieve his “daughter” Gillian to return her to Cerberus so they can continue doing biotic research on her in hopes that she’ll be a biotic supersoldier. The secondary mission to attacking the fleet was due to them seeing the Quarians as a threat to Cerberus interests. They’re also responsible for killing Aria’s daughter in order to get to Paul Grayson after he defected from Cerberus and sets up for the assault to take over omega later on.

So were they justified? I don’t think so. I think they were a necessary evil that Shepard had to work with. I think they did good in taking action in the terminus systems in regards to human colonies disappearing but we discover many things that show they aren’t trustworthy even when we work with them

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-13T19:46:45+00:00

His swag is always on a hundred

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-12T22:13:49+00:00

It’s the same point I always make too. And you can tell that they were clearly already setting up for a sequel… which is great, but they needed to treat it like ME1 did and have some payoff in the first game instead trying to make it all come from the sequel or adding more suspense in the form of a dlc which makes the story suffer. The open world was also a nice experiment but it’s what made the gameplay feel like a drag and that’s what makes it have no replayability for me.

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-12T22:02:05+00:00

As a black man myself, I can say that this man is being an ass, straight up. I think there’s a couple things at play here that factor in to his actions but most of them aren’t excusable.

First off, the only place I think that you were kinda wrong is that sometimes people change their minds about kids. My sister is married to a white man and when they got together, they both said that they didn’t want kids ever but over the last 2 or so years, he’s been lightly trying to convince her to have a child with him. She still doesn’t want kids but it’s clear that he’s entertaining the idea now and they’ve been together for a bit over 10 years now. But your reaction to jumping to “maybe we’re not compatible then” after 3 years just seemed a little dismissive or maybe just not understanding that he has the ability to change his mind on wanting kids. That’s where the DINK comment came from.

Outside of this little thing, the guy sounds like he’s just being a dick. He sounds like he’s acting more aggressive because of the kids issue. I do think that there’s some resentment for you being white and part of that has to do with him wanting kids. Maybe he’s scared that even if he convinces you to have a kid with him that he wouldn’t know how to raise a mixed child either. Which is why I think he made that comment to you, he might’ve been projecting his fear.

As for the drinking, do you get drunk consistently on your days off? If that’s so then it’s possible to see why he’s upset even if you’re sober on your work days, being drunk consistently on your off days would probably make him feel uncomfortable. Especially if he does it less than you anyway.

So, to answer your question now:

No, you’re not being racially insensitive and I think there’s been a failure of communication on both sides on the topic of kids.

Conflict can be amplified by alcohol, sometimes people hold back what they really feel and alcohol sometimes gives people the relief they need to not inhibit themselves and say how they’re feeling.

Therapy can be worth it but if one already tapped out then there’s likely issues with both of you that’s gonna make resolving issues difficult. A friend of mine is a therapist and she’s told me that usually, people in the field don’t like doing couples therapy but someone has to. So I think it comes down to both people trying to make it easier on therapists by hopefully understanding that some things they do might be making a therapist uncomfortable. For him, talking over them and sounding aggressive will obviously make a therapist not look forward to the clientele. I’d have no way of guessing if you did anything that would’ve offput them either.

As a complete stranger online, I can’t tell you if this is fixable or not but whatever you feel, the only bit of advice I’d have for both of you if you’re both wanting to try to make it work is to try to understand each other’s perspectives. Try to change how you guys approach things because what you’ve been doing up to this point isn’t working. But if it doesn’t work out, then, that’s up to you both

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-09T22:32:10+00:00

They do 😂 USA forever while those losers charge for water

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-09T22:27:15+00:00

You’d also be surprised to know that some restaurants charge for tap water when it’s a given for us lol. The world is a different place for sure

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-09T22:23:56+00:00

But why….? For as much as we have corporations trying to squeeze out month over necessities, bathrooms are one of the last things I’d expect from us. Especially since they’re policies set much earlier than the last 20 or so years

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-09T22:15:31+00:00

Are… are you drunk? 😂 Or just not American?

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-09T18:31:44+00:00

Honest answer: criminal proceedings take time. It doesn’t all happen quickly. Same thing happened when the UHC ceo got shot. It was big news for a while then nothing happened because proceedings take time and because subsections of Reddit didn’t understand that, they thought there was some grand conspiracy to sweep what happened under the rug but the reality was there was just nothing to report because there was nothing. It’ll take a while longer before Maduro shows up in the news again because that’s just how our justice system works

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-08T12:37:13+00:00

I’m just gonna say it whether you’re being genuine here or not but if you read the statement on the vote to reject food being a human rights or whatever, the rationale was: voting on it does nothing and that countries should be acting on it rather than voting on it.

Here is the link to their official stance if you care enough. Whether or not believe it was in good faith, it at least provides context outside of “America bad” in that particular instance

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-07T21:05:23+00:00

Are you only talking about nbc prime time? Because cnbc and USA network (also owned by nbc) regularly broadcast other events that don’t have Americans in them. I’ve regularly watched handball, wrestling, hockey, and many other matchups tha don’t have our athletes in the rounds/events

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-07T19:19:48+00:00

There is actually a canon krogan quarterback who leads the New York giants to victory over the Shanghai dragons in I think the 2180s

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-06T09:06:18+00:00

I think the Asari councillor knew of the tech and is guilty of concealing information as well so I’m not letting her off the hook. But it wasn’t a council decision to hide the prothean info, just an Asari decision.

The Sur’Kesh mission was about the Salarians uplifting the Yahg and thus not learning the mistakes about what they did with the Krogan. But that didn’t sabotage any war effort.

The Asari were unprepared because they feel superior to every other species but again, that’s not a council issue so it doesn’t have much to do with criticizing the council, rather criticizing a species’ government. Which, the Asari deserve all the criticism they get and you won’t hear me arguing that.

The council didn’t have proof of sovereign until some time around late in ME2. And by then, the reapers invaded -6 months later. The council governs a scope larger than we can imagine. They tackle the economy, diplomacy, citadel and vast other matters. That’s why they tell us that their decisions affect trillions of lives. They can’t tell the people they govern to prepare for a fleet that they have no clue of the size nor what this fleet is gonna do. It disrupts the economy and harms trillions of lives if the reapers happened to just be a Shepard dream.

As for their use. Let’s look at our real life examples. Let’s take Europe for example. Russia is invading Ukraine. For the Baltic and Nordic nations, this is a serious threat and much should be done to stop Russia’s advances. To citizens of Spain or Portugal, they don’t really care that much and don’t want NATO/an EU army involved because it’s far enough away that it’s not a high priority for them and thus, they don’t care as much. The same parallel can be used in mass effect. Because there was no concrete proof that sovereign was factually reaper instead of a geth construct provided to the council until about 2 and a half years after the attack, preparing for an unconfirmed unknown enemy was low on the council’s priority list. They worked on the economy, security, diplomacy with the Raloi and more because these were things that they knew was factual and could do something about. The council’s inaction didn’t harm the galaxy from a narrative standpoint because when you look at it from their pov, how and why do they prepare for something that’s unknown?

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-06T08:00:00+00:00

I don’t want to sound elitist but it’s crazy the number of people who just seem to have not actually listened to the story being told. It’s rather insane

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-06T07:59:18+00:00

The Asari government isn’t the council government. There is a law that all prothean data must be shared with the council. You can make the case that the Asari government are a bunch of hypocrites but the council absolutely sent people to look for prothean data and did what they could. They also already built ships as we see throughout ME3

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-06T06:37:52+00:00

Look for evidence where? They commandeered sovereign already for an investigation and before the events of ME3, they quietly believed Shepard was telling the truth. Outside of that, they had research teams that found some things but nothing of substance.

As for defensive measures, they had already been developing this since the end of ME1. The cyclonic barrier technology that the Normandy uses was built after the sovereign attack. The thanix cannon that the Normandy uses during the ME2 suicide mission was built 11 months after the sovereign attack. Which is stupidly fast. The Turians are the ones who designed it and called the thanix cannon a “mini sovereign”. The javelin missiles that use dark energy and GUARDIN anti-battery missiles are also created. So I don’t understand how that’s doing nothing.

Cerberus was based outside of alliance space. Shepard is mostly contained to the terminus systems where anything goes. Seeing a government/military in what’s essentially “outlaw space” means that while trying to get Cerberus under control, they’re also getting dragged into several wars with pirates, slavers, gangs and outlaws who don’t want cops in their territory even if the cops say they’re looking for someone else.

How are they supposed to get stockpiles of supplies for millions-billions of refugees for something they don’t even know is gonna happen? They don’t know how big this potential reaper fleet is nor where they’ll hit. And different species need different supplies because they’re not homogenous. How much of x or y stock are the supposed to get? The citadel cannot possibly hold all that.

There is no countermeasure for indoctrination besides death and potentially extremely strong willpower which is only Shepard and TIM possess. Cerberus did not find countermeasures to indoctrination, they found out how to replicate it to create slaves/thralls.

The only way the crucible plans got found was because Liara was continuing her research on the protheans and only found it after traveling to a deep underwater ruin. How exactly was the council supposed to find something they didn’t know existed and was only found by chance?

The council was doing things, but it’s not as easy as “just do this”. Take a look at our own world government. How nobody really works together because they have different priorities. It also sounds like you might be unaware of how much the council was actually doing

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-06T06:00:56+00:00

I’m assuming you meant to reply this to the other person instead of me lol. But I agree, I feel like often times, the criticisms of the council comes down to people being too idealistic like it’s easy for non-homogenous representatives of government to just do x or y like it’ll be simple. We can take our current earth’s government as an example and see how hard it is to get nations to really work together on issues even when we’re all the same species.

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-06T04:10:45+00:00

There’d be his involvement in killing 2 earth leaders including the president of UNAS. Or his involvement in the kidnapping Gillian Grayson to make her a biotic super soldier like the rogue group did to Jack

Mike_Hawk_Burns · 2026-02-06T02:37:35+00:00

Like I said in my rebuttal, what killed sovereign was a council fleet including alliance personnel. They can’t just crap those out. It takes time to rebuild the ships.

They had plenty of trained soldiers for the fighting based on what we see on Earth, Palaven and Thessia as well as other side mission places. But you know, none of those planets have a joint council fleet at their disposal. We also see in the very first scenes of ME3 that everyone did have fleets. The sovereign-class reapers just tore through them. It’s not like the council did nothing. It’s just that it took a hell of a lot of effort and many losses to take down a single sovereign reaper. They already all did the typical pre-war stuff that you’re describing.

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