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 Hi! You more likely than not know what Mass Effect is, and if you don't, this is going to be very confusing. To me, Mass Effect is a series of strangely compelling chapters of a kind of derivative space opera. A universe of mostly hard sci-fi that depends on scientific explanations, but leans heavily on pillars of the fantasy genre – doing almost the opposite of Star Wars, in a way. It's a universe of contrasts. On one hand, its story is poorly thought, and many of its characters are goofy archetypes that largely serve to prop up your Jesus harem anime fantasy, but on the other, its art direction is (often) fantastic, immersing you in a wonderful atmosphere of beautiful vistas, great music and fun interactions with characters that grow on you and are wonderfully brought to life by their voice actors. Ever since the Legendary Edition of the game was released, packaging all three games together and giving them a bit of a glow-up, I've been toying with the idea of doing some kind of Let's Play with it. But I've been wondering how to go about it. For all three of the games, I've done the “play it by ear” playthrough, where I go about the trilogy picking Renegade and Paragon options by whim, and I've done playthroughs of the first two games with one character fully Paragon no matter what, and one character fully Renegade. I've seen other people do an all-neutral playthrough, or for instance striving to get as many characters killed as possible. What's left? But I've been thinking, even in my all-Renegade playthrough of the games, I still strove to cling to as many characters as possible, getting as many interactions as possible. And if I didn't like an outcome, I generally savescummed my way to get optimal results. I don't think I've actually seen what a partial, incomplete playthrough looks like. For that purpose, I created Tammy Shepard.  Tammy is a screw-up, and a xenophobe. She loves her own human kind, but loathes aliens, and will go out of her way to avoid interacting with them. So much for the power of cooperation saving the galaxy. As Tammy, I'll try to judge each dilemma while taking in mind her three priorities:
This might be a terrible idea. I'll be the first to agree with you that the aliens in Mass Effect are way better written and more interesting than the humans. I always shove Ashley and Kaidan on the reserve bench once I've recruited Wrex, Garrus and Tali. And avoiding alien encounters might make this LP comically short. But this isn't a challenge run, I'm just doing a silly gimmick. For instance, off the top of my head, I don't think there's any human vendors for weapons and armor in the game aside from the Alliance Requisitions Officer on the Normandy; I may hold my nose and off screen shop for a few items if things get too dire. My challenge is more to see if I can make this fun to watch. This LP is a bit out of my usual MO, anyway. Normally I try to show as complete a game experience as possible, for the people who are totally unfamiliar with it. In this one, I'm not only going out of my way to avoid content, I'm also editing the videos to trim as much fat as possible (running around, uninteresting conversation bits, inventory and stats management), while still hopefully maintaining a coherent story. You be the judge, I guess.                   
davidspackage fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Mar 25, 2024 |
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Dec 5, 2023 18:55
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 12:42 |
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I've installed a number of mods. Some are for quality of life changes, some are for convenience, some are for cosmetic changes. This will be my first time seeing most of them in action. Mass Effect mods are roughly divided into regular mods and texture mods. Regular mods can be conveniently installed using ME3Tweaks Mod Manager. This robust mod manager lets you make a backup of your game files, allowing you to easily revert to an unmodded state if things go wrong, lets you load in, modify, enable and disable mods, and even keeps track of when mods are updated on the Nexus. While the installation order can matter with some mods, nothing stops you from installing mod 1, finding out when installing mod 2 that you actually needed to install that one first, and then installing mod 1 again after. There is also a great deal of synergy among Mass Effect mod makers: often you'll find that mods have compatibility notes or options with other popular mods. Pure texture mods are a little trickier and less pliant than regular mods. They are installed using a tool called MassEffectModder, and while it's simple to use, the pain is that you need to hold off on texture modding until you've installed all your regular mods. When you start installing texture mods, your game gets a “texture modded” status in ME3Tweaks, and at this point the program recommends you don't install or update regular mods without first reverting the game to a vanilla state, to avoid conflicts. So, that means any change to your mod layout means first reverting, then reinstalling all your regular mods, and finally reinstalling your texture mods, every time. A handful of these weren't installed yet when I started the LP; I added the LE1 Diversification project after the Council meeting, because at the time of recording, it had a conflict with the Saren Stages LE mod, which has since been fixed with updates. I also held off on installing A Lot of Textures/Videos until later videos because those packs are massive and I was a little worried my PC couldn't handle it. Listed in installation order:
Texture mods:
davidspackage fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Feb 5, 2024 |
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Dec 5, 2023 18:55
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I did a space racist Shep about 8 or so years ago. I think I only got halfway through 2 before I realised I was cutting out a LOT of content and wasn't sure if I could even finish the game (before learning that Zaeed can hold the line all his own in the suicide mission) so I gave up. My Shep for that was male, and there was an interesting through-line in Mark Meer's delivery of a lot of the renegade dialogues that actually made the racist aspect come off a little too familiar to people I knew
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Dec 6, 2023 08:57
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Tammy has such pouty lips they look like they're going to fly off. I don't know how far ahead you record but would it be possible to lower the game audio a bit more when you're speaking? It's probably a Me problem but I sometimes can't make our what your saying. (no biggy if thats not possible)
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Dec 8, 2023 02:26
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Aces High posted:I did a space racist Shep about 8 or so years ago. I think I only got halfway through 2 before I realised I was cutting out a LOT of content and wasn't sure if I could even finish the game (before learning that Zaeed can hold the line all his own in the suicide mission) so I gave up. I'm only a little way into ME1 right now, but finding there's not that many opportunities to be spacist in dialogue. I can't even agree with Ashley about her reservations on having aliens onboard! Still, it's kind of funny going around just speeding past most encounters with aliens. I'm not even racking up many renegade points so far. I don't know if I'll make it to ME2, let alone ME3, but I assume I'll eventually have to compromise Tammy's morals to make it through. We'll see. coleman francis posted:Tammy has such pouty lips they look like they're going to fly off. I'll try to watch out for that, thanks. The only other time I've tried recording live commentary while playing was Limbo of the Lost, but sometimes I slip into mumbling a bit, I've found. After recording, I'll add some bit of commentary here and there in post. Me playing an Infiltrator, and the sniper rifle probably being the loudest gun in the game doesn't help keep things audible. Will work on that!
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Dec 8, 2023 19:14
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Aces High posted:I did a space racist Shep about 8 or so years ago. I think I only got halfway through 2 before I realised I was cutting out a LOT of content and wasn't sure if I could even finish the game (before learning that Zaeed can hold the line all his own in the suicide mission) so I gave up. And considering that Meer is a native resident of Alberta, I'd guess he had a lot of experience interacting with or observing really racist people to draw on for some of those lines 
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Dec 8, 2023 19:17
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Well, he had plenty of help from the majority of the Alberta Legislature. Heck, he could've just studied Ralph Klein. I meant more that Meer's said many times that for ME1, his approach to dialogue was to have a more even delivery for paragon, renegade, and neutral responses, believing that it would be better for players to self-identify with the Shepard they spent hours creating. Thus, having lived most of my life in Alberta, that casual and unemotional delivery came across as uncomfortably relatable. Funny how these days, I think the more emotive response would be more accurate (that, and I think he underestimated that the majority of players didn't make a custom Shep and didn't care about verisimilitude)
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Dec 8, 2023 22:53
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Aces High posted:Well, he had plenty of help from the majority of the Alberta Legislature. Heck, he could've just studied Ralph Klein. I meant more that Meer's said many times that for ME1, his approach to dialogue was to have a more even delivery for paragon, renegade, and neutral responses, believing that it would be better for players to self-identify with the Shepard they spent hours creating. Thus, having lived most of my life in Alberta, that casual and unemotional delivery came across as uncomfortably relatable. This was one of the few things Andromeda did right in how it abandoned the Paragon/Renegade/Neutral divide and allowed you to give responses based off emotional tones and mindsets. It made for a greater range of options that made Ryder feel like a more responsive person than Shepard at times. Also having the default names be voiced from time to time was a good choice. One of the things I wished they'd implemented for LE was doing something like that for "John" and "Jane", but it probably would have required getting the cast back and re-recording a bunch of lines. Though I could see some mad fucker doing it themselves eventually with mods and AI eventually.
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Dec 8, 2023 23:10
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That was one thing I liked in Fallout 4. Having a list of 30 names you could choose from for your protagonist so you would hear NPCs actually saying your name. Bioware had good instincts, but it is a shame that they didn't incorporate something similar for LE. I think the only character you wouldn't be able to do any re-recording with is Zaeed, but he doesn't strike me as a first name kinda person
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Dec 9, 2023 05:55
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Aces High posted:That was one thing I liked in Fallout 4. Having a list of 30 names you could choose from for your protagonist so you would hear NPCs actually saying your name. Bioware had good instincts, but it is a shame that they didn't incorporate something similar for LE. I think the only character you wouldn't be able to do any re-recording with is Zaeed, but he doesn't strike me as a first name kinda person He's also got probably the least amount of dialog of the main cast too, so it's not like you'd even notice.
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Dec 9, 2023 06:10
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Tammy has a talk with her crew, meets the 'Bass, Udina, and has an embarassing audience with the council.
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Dec 11, 2023 18:23
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Tammy choosing paragon almost seems the opposite of what I expected. Honestly the whole paragon/renegade thing was such an odd product of its time to see nowadays. Of course it still shows up but it feels tired. Kinda odd to think that back when this was new these binary choices still felt revolutionary and compelling. ME always feels like such a microsm of game design of its time.
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Dec 11, 2023 18:49
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Beatrice posted:Kinda odd to think that back when this was new these binary choices still felt revolutionary and compelling.
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Dec 11, 2023 19:08
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Beatrice posted:Tammy choosing paragon almost seems the opposite of what I expected. This is kind of an issue I ran in when I did a first attempt at recording this LP: I pictured Tammy as a bitchy soccer mom, Home Owners Association, "I am a MOTHER" type, who would only be nice to her own (human) crew members, but that quickly turned into a bog standard all-Renegade playthrough. So, while still trying to make her an unpleasant person, I figure she sucks up to authority, is trying to get into everyone's pants, and is charitable strictly to other humans. anilEhilated posted:They really didn't, though. This is at least the third game in a row where they put them in (fourth if you count KOTOR 2). At this point, they were desperately trying to market paragon/renegade as something completely different to the good/evil choices they had before. It would've been interesting if paragon/renegade had been more about nudging Shepard's decision making between aggression and caution, decisive and deferential. But half the time it still feels like a choice between Kiss Baby and Eat Baby.
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Dec 11, 2023 19:55
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davidspackage posted:Kiss Baby and Eat Baby. If only some game developer had the courage to let you do both.
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Dec 11, 2023 23:48
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Tammy goes down into the Wards to find "Nasty" Harkin, and has her "no aliens on my crew" beliefs severely challenged when Wrex and Tali force themselves on her.
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Dec 18, 2023 20:47
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that facemod for Tali is interesting, it reminds me of the face concepts that got spread around after ME3 and everyone was super mad that bioware just used a stock photo (plus some alien bits) for her face. I actually don't mind the eyes, what looks weird to me is the tube in her nose. It reminds me of the stillsuit designs from David Lynch's Dune and I feel it's kind of unnecessary seeing as the whole point with the quarian suit is that everything, including the masks, is sealed in, making a tube like that redundant.
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Dec 22, 2023 20:46
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Yeah, my initial reaction to seeing the eyes in action was a bit strong, I still rather like the actual alien-ness of the face. But I would like some options to customize the eyes (right now, the mod has four options to make the face shield more opaque or translucent). I don't mind the nose plug, I imagine the suit has to be plugged into the actual Quarian body in a few spots to dispense antibiotics and stuff.
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Dec 23, 2023 23:24
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davidspackage posted:Yeah, my initial reaction to seeing the eyes in action was a bit strong, I still rather like the actual alien-ness of the face. But I would like some options to customize the eyes (right now, the mod has four options to make the face shield more opaque or translucent). The tube could also be a feeding tube. That's usually how they do it in hospitals: nasal insertion. Kinda got first-hand experience with that one once It does look really good though. I just finished a playthrough of ME1 the other week with a bunch of ME3 continuity-based mods, and if this one had the option of having Tali in her ME2/3 armor instead of her ME1 one I'd install it in a heartbeat.
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Dec 24, 2023 05:51
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Merry Christmas LP forum! I had a lovely time getting together with my family, and now I'm chilling at home with rain pattering down the window and me getting a nice buzz on with some wine while watching movies. In today's surplus length episode, Tammy is given the nebulous honor of becoming a Spectre, and starts lording her superiority over others. I finish up the remaining sidequests on the Citadel.
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Dec 25, 2023 21:17
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Off to a great start as a spectre Tammy. Surely the council won't live to regret this. Lol, some of these scenes are so hard to watch. I haaaaaate roleplaying a bad guy 
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Dec 29, 2023 00:41
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coleman francis posted:Off to a great start as a spectre Tammy. Surely the council won't live to regret this. I'm honestly surprised sometimes by how mean some of the Renegade options are for ME1, and then later disappointed when I don't really get any good renegade options. By the way, happy 2024! Finally we are living in the future of flying cars and telekinetic powers. In today's episode, Tammy ticks off a few sidequests and then heads off to the human colony on Feros to see what's up.
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Jan 1, 2024 20:12
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got a good laugh out of the megaphone bit while in the Mako. Also, is the new colour scheme on the Mako a mod? I must've missed if you mentioned that in the video
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Jan 2, 2024 19:03
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Aces High posted:got a good laugh out of the megaphone bit while in the Mako. Also, is the new colour scheme on the Mako a mod? I must've missed if you mentioned that in the video Yeah, I mentioned it briefly, it's a texture mod, Custom Mako. Lets you pick from a few different color schemes.
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Jan 2, 2024 19:09
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Stuck! Won't Budge! Man I wish undying had gotten a sequel.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:36
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Tammy takes the kids for a trip on the Skyway, gives herself a tour around the ExoGeni facility, and has a bit of an altercation with one of the employees!
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Jan 8, 2024 18:29
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Tammy faces a dilemma with the colonists, roots out their problem, and has a delicious vision. As an epilogue, some chatting on the ship. I had a mild bout of covid over the holidays and didn't manage to record anything for a few weeks, which I guess left me a little rusty, as I just finished a two-and-a-half hour recording session where I neglected to hit Start Recording in OBS before starting. loving oops. Guess I'll have to give Noveria another go. 
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Jan 15, 2024 20:40
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Thanks for the vid, really enjoying this series! Wonder if there's any good pizza joints on the Citadel...
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Jan 16, 2024 01:32
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I almost feel like anything could be put into the beacon visions until the conduit is found, everyone loves some 'za
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Jan 16, 2024 10:18
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I think I read somewhere that one of the Mass Effect developers made the goopier bits of the Prothean vision at home with some cheese pizza(s) and computer parts.
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Jan 16, 2024 16:12
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Getting some sidequests out of the way. Tammy fights a computer on the moon, defuses another situation with some violent biotics, sorts out some thieving monkeys, and causes several incidents on the Citadel.
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Jan 22, 2024 20:46
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Shepard, this is Admiral Hackett, I have the munchies something awful. I need you and you're crew to get me some five guys ASAP.
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Jan 22, 2024 23:33
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did Admiral Hackett really hit you consecutively like that? I didn't think you could proc that many sidequests (you need to be level 20 for the Luna mission iirc)
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Jan 23, 2024 00:34
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Aces High posted:did Admiral Hackett really hit you consecutively like that? I didn't think you could proc that many sidequests (you need to be level 20 for the Luna mission iirc) You can rack up like 10 or 20 sidequests just by going around the galaxy map and stopping in every star cluster that's available. Honestly, it's what I do now the second I get access to the Normandy, just go loving everywhere and stack up the calls from Hackett so that the guy's in a holding queue with himself for waiting to talk to Shepard next. The Galaxy Map Trackers mod really helps with that, I find.
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Jan 23, 2024 06:24
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hah, well that makes Joker's "well, well, well, look who's calling you again" line fit a lot better
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Jan 23, 2024 06:52
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I mapped out the available missions prior to recording, so I wouldn't stumble into missions I wanted to avoid, like the one where you find Wrex's family armor, or Nassana Dantius' sister's gang. But when you do it like that, it does start looking like Hacķett's constantly on the phone asking you to pick up milk and eggs while you're out. The Council has to regret their Spectre policy, right? You give a non-Council race one Spectre and their military immediately starts having them serve human interests all over the place.
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Jan 23, 2024 12:48
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davidspackage posted:I mapped out the available missions prior to recording, so I wouldn't stumble into missions I wanted to avoid, like the one where you find Wrex's family armor, or Nassana Dantius' sister's gang. But when you do it like that, it does start looking like Hacķett's constantly on the phone asking you to pick up milk and eggs while you're out. Meanwhile Hackett's like "lol thanks chumps! [orders Shepard to do a bunch of black ops poo poo on the Council's dime]"
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Jan 23, 2024 22:37
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I would love a post-trilogy game (or maybe a game set before Shepard's time) where we get to see that the Turian, Asari, and Salarians are just as bureaucratic and prone to put themselves first as Hackett is doing here. Yes, we kinda get a bit of that with some choices in ME3, but I'd love to see a Mass Effect game where you get to play as Nihlus or some other Spectre and see that the other council races are just as self-centred as we are
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Jan 24, 2024 07:03
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Our lady and Shepard meets an old friend of her mom's, settles up with upstanding citizen Helena Blake, and pursues a few more rumors that lead to defusing a bomb, hunting some straggling plant zombies, and becoming a little more familiar with a shadowy little organization called Cerberus.
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Jan 29, 2024 19:16
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dang, I must've never made a Shepard with the background where your mom's still around, I'm seeing new content for a game I've owned for over a decade
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Jan 30, 2024 08:07
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