History section for LifeAftr app!

[tenthstreetbred]

For ease of seeing this Shepard's choices without having to read the detailed history, please see This post.

Canon History: Due to being a Bioware protagonist, not much detail is given to Shepard’s past in-game due to having multiple different backgrounds and abilities as choices to play. My specific Shepard is an Earthborn War Hero Vanguard. To break that down into more understandable terms, she was born April 11th, 2154 and grew up an orphan on the streets of one of the biggest megacities on Earth. At the age of 18 she left the life of petty crime and gang warfare by enlisting in the Alliance military. After being recruited for N1 training and returning for subsequent classes, she eventually earned her iconic N7 designation after almost single-handedly repelling an enemy force of batarian slavers on the Alliance colony of Elysium referred to in the future as the Skyllian Blitz. Her class of abilities of biotics and shotgun proficiency makes her a Vanguard, something I will go into greater detail about in the powers section. These are the facts in game about this particular Shepard’s history pre Mass Effect 1.

As for my headcanon of Shepard’s childhood on earth, she was an orphan who was recruited by the Tenth Street Reds and worked with them for many years, committing many petty crimes and murder for their cause. Eventually her biotic ability gained her the attention of a one Lieutenant Anderson, who offered her a place in the Alliance military if she ever wanted something more out of her life. She didn’t really consider the offer as legitimate until defying the Reds almost cost her life and on her 18th birthday she went to the Alliance recruitment center and signed up. With Anderson’s good word and her exemplary biotic capabilities, she was accepted into the Alliance ranks.

From there she went through typical boot camp, specializing in biotics and shotguns. She became classed as a Vanguard, a frontline soldier that was best in a high-risk high reward battle strategy. Her natural fighting ability and ingrained tactical genius earned an invitation to the exclusive Alliance Interplanetary Combatives Training school where she gained the internal designation of N1. She returned to this school multiple times throughout the years to complete training up to class N6. Due to the graduation of N6 training requiring actual combat experience in conflict zones throughout the galaxy, Shepard did not earn her N7 rank until 2176 when pirates, slavers and Batarian warlords attacked the human colony of Elysium while she and various other Alliance marines were on shore leave.

Shepard rallied the colonists and her fellow marines to fight back against the oncoming hostile force, her childhood knowledge of urban warfare and her N6 training helping her direct her “troops” into advantageous positions around the battlefield. Despite her best planning however the enemy still managed to breach their defenses and in a bid to give the rest of her people time to recuperate and time for the Alliance to send backup, she singlehandedly defended the breach. She held that position for hours, shooting until her gun was too overheated to shoot anymore and all she had were her biotics and sheer grit. After this grueling amount of time working herself to the point of almost complete exhaustion, she finally closed the breach entirely.
When backup arrived she was greeted with cheers and commendations for her actions, not only earning the much prized N7 title but also the Star of Terra and solidifying a reputation throughout the Alliance and the colony for being a true hero. This reputation served her well in the years afterwards, jumping from mission to mission wherever the Alliance thought her best suited to be. This leads us into the events of Mass Effect 1.

In 2183 she is approached by her old mentor and friend (now Captain) David Anderson who enlists her as his XO for the secret and sensitive first shakedown run of the SSV Normandy, a prototype frigate developed with both Turian and Human technology. Along on this mission is one of the Citadel Council’s Spectres named Nihlus Kryik who was instructed to accompany them on this mission because Shepard was being considered for Spectre status and this was to be the first of many excursions until he could make an adequate judgment on her abilities. The purpose of the shakedown in the first place was a covert recovery operation of a rare Prothean artifact from the human colony of Eden Prime. Upon arrival at Eden Prime is it immediately apparent that something is terribly wrong; The Normandy receives footage of a strange and alien spacecraft attacking the colony and the marines planetside being slaughtered.

Anderson sends Shepard and a small strike team consisting of Staff Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko and Corporal Richard L. Jenkins down to Eden Prime, with Nihlus running solo to retrieve the Prothean beacon safely from the mysterious hostile forces. Within moments of beginning their trek through the colony, Jenkins is killed by Geth Drones, leading Shepard and Kaidan to find one of the only surviving marines from the troop stationed on Eden Prime, Ashley Williams. She joins their party and helps in fighting back against the Geth, a sentient race of A.I. that were thought extinct, and the three of them make their way to the digsite where they think beacon is located. Upon arrival they realize it has been moved; whether by friend or foe is anyone’s guess and they decide to rendezvous with Nihlus at the research camp nearby.

Nihlus arrives at the research camp first where he finds another Turian spectre and a good friend of his, Saren Arterius. They speak to each other, Nihlus expressing how odd this situation is and, when his back is turned, Saren shoots him, killing him instantly. Saren flees the scene and Shepard and company arrive at the research camp and find Nihlus’s body. After speaking to one of the dock workers who witnessed the murder, Shepard gives chase across the docks in an attempt to apprehend Saren.

Unfortunately they just miss him and Saren escapes in the mysterious ship that was seen assaulting the colony. He leaves the beacon behind and attempts to blow up the colony to leave no evidence but Shepard quickly deactivates the bombs. Shepard then calls the Normandy for a pickup, informing them that the beacon is secure. As she radios however, Kaidan approaches the artifact and becomes pulled into an odd gravitational beam from it. Shepard rushes forward and throws him out of the way but becomes trapped herself and the beacon imprints a hideous vision of mass destruction and extinction into her mind. She is knocked unconscious and the beacon explodes.

When Shepard comes to, she is in the Normandy medbay and after a medical checkup from the resident doctor Chakwas, she is informed by Anderson that they are en route to the Citadel to inform the Council of the status of the beacon, the death of Nihlus, the vision the beacon gave her, and Saren’s betrayal. Also in the medbay is Kaidan, who apologizes for putting Shepard into such danger. She reassures him that he couldn’t possibly have known what would happen and they share a small moment of friendship before getting back to business.

They arrive on the Citadel and speak to the Ambassador of Humanity, Donnel Udina, who secured a meeting with the Council for a hearing of evidence against Saren in the Presidium Tower. The council, of course, has no desire to believe Shepard’s charges against Saren because he is their top Spectre. The C-SEC (Citadel Security, essentially the Citadel’s police force) investigation into Saren turns up dry and when Shepard arrives at the tower to attend the hearing, she runs into Garrus Vakarian, the C-SEC officer put in charge of the investigation arguing for more time from his superior. His superior refuses, and Garrus tells Shepard that he hopes that the council will believe her. When she finds Anderson he informs her that the hearing has already started and it is not looking good for their side of the story.

As expected, the Council has no intention of believing Udina’s arguments or anything that Shepard says. They unequivocally side with Saren and when they dismiss Shepard, Anderson and Udina charge her and her team with the task of finding evidence against Saren. She follows the leads given to her by Anderson and while following them meets a Krogan mercenary named Wrex and ends up rescuing a Quarian named Tali, who possessed a recording of Saren speaking to an Asari Matriarch named Benezia. The recording consisted of Saren and Benezia bragging about their victory on Eden Prime and their desires to find an artifact called the Conduit to help in the return of a mysterious race called the Reapers, beings that existed 50,000 years ago and hunted the Protheans to extinction.

Tali’s evidence is brought to the Council and they finally cannot deny the truth any longer. They revoke Saren’s Spectre status and then bestow the title of Spectre upon Shepard, making her the first human ever to earn such a weighty title. She is tasked with hunting Saren down and bringing him to justice and figuring out his plans. Upon returning to the Normandy, Anderson reveals that he is stepping down as the ship’s captain and handing control of it to Shepard. She brings Tali, Garrus, and Wrex with her onto the Normandy, and through the leads given to her from Udina and Anderson, Shepard sets out into the galaxy to hunt down Saren.

Shepard ends up traveling all over the galaxy during this galactic manhunt, but the biggest places of note are Therum, Feros, Noveria and Virmire. The first planet she goes to is Therum, a hot, volcanic planet that reports of Geth activity and the location of Matriach Benezia’s daughter, Liara T’Soni, an archaeologist who has devoted over 50 years of her life to studying the Protheans and why they went extinct. After fighting through various Prothean ruins and fighting many Geth (and Krogan, to this player’s huge dismay), Shepard rescues Liara and brings her back to the Normandy. Liara’s mind melding powers, a natural gift due to her being an Asari, allows her to access the vision that Shepard gained from the beacon and begin to piece together the clues hidden inside it.

The next planet they head to is Noveria, where once again bureaucracy rears its ugly head and Shepard and company are immediately accosted by Noveria security and accused of lying about their status. Of course once they check their goddamn systems they relent and Shepard is allowed to explore the planet after learning for certain that Matriarch Benezia is there. After some shady backroom deals with various powers on the planet (something completely in theme with this place, I assure you) Shepard is able to drive out to Peak 15, the location of Benezia’s experiments and where, apparently, she’s been hiding a lot of geth inside boxes.
As she fights her way through she puts the pieces together that Benezia had hired scientists to illegally experiment on a species of alien thought dead called the Rachni, insectoid aliens that were fought and unceremoniously destroyed after attempting to take over the galaxy 2,000 years ago. Somehow the scientists had gotten a hold of an egg that hatched into a Rachni queen and used her spawn to try and make shock soldiers for Saren and Benezia’s army. In one of the secret labs hidden in the facility Shepard and crew find Benezia and a vicious fight between them and Benezia’s commandos breaks loose. After her commandos are defeated, Benezia appears disoriented and confused, and it soon becomes apparent that the matriarch is not in possession of all her mental faculties. After some probing it is revealed that Matriarch Benezia is being mind controlled, and she tells them that Saren is not the true threat to watch out for. She describes how the ship that Saren uses, Sovereign, somehow influences the will of those on it; she and her followers all fell victim to its mind manipulating abilities.

Benezia then reveals that there was another reason that Saren wanted to use the Rachni. The genetic memory inherent to the species, passed down from Queen to Queen, carried information for a long-lost mass effect relay that when found could lead to the location of the Conduit. In one of her last few moments of clarity she gives the coordinates to Shepard after warning her that Saren already has this information, having beamed it to him before she arrived. Benezia gives her farewell to Liara and slips back into the indoctrination, forcing Shepard and the others to kill her. With Benezia dead all that is left to take care of is the Rachni Queen which was locked up in a container next to them. The Rachni queen uses its ability to reach out to other minds and with the body of a slowly dying Asari, begins to communicate with Shepard. The queen begs the commander to kill the drones created by Benezia and Saren, saying that they are lost to her and will only cause more destruction if left behind. When the question of what to do with her is brought up the Rachni queen asks for another chance to raise her people right and away from those who could corrupt them. Ultimately Shepard decides that she cannot be responsible for the second genocide of a species and released the queen. The queen vows to remember her forgiveness and exits, leaving Shepard to find the codes to purge the entire facility. After purging the facility of the remaining Rachni Shepard returns to the main bases of Noveria and subsequently leaves the planet.

As Shepard travels to these different planets in search of Saren and his plans, she finds herself doing many things for various people and visiting the Citadel for supplies. One notable instance lead to Shepard being approached by a man named Finch who reveals himself as a member of the Tenth Street Reds, the gang that Shepard was a part of in her youth. He coerces her to attempt to release another one of their members in exchange for not revealing to the world her unsightly past. Shepard investigates to see what, exactly, put this so-called “colleague” of hers into the brig and learns from the turian on guard that they were caught trying to poison medical supplies to a turian colony, potentially killing millions of people. In the years that Shepard has been absent, the Tenth Street Reds have become an extreme anti-alien group and terrorists. Disgusted by this information Shepard refuses to release the criminal, and Finch once again threatens to reveal to the public her ties to the Reds and make her complicit in their ideology. Filled with both rage and fear at being potentially exposed, Shepard executes Finch in cold blood, impressing the guard and filling Shepard with a regret that would sit with her for years to come.

The next location on the roster of things connected to Saren is the Zhu’s Hope colony on Feros (founded by a company named ExoGeni that has been studying the Prothean ruins that the colony is built by) and Shepard heads there promptly. Upon arrival she learns that the colony is under attack by Geth and that all of their communication has been jammed by one of their devices somewhere deep in the nearby Prothean ruins. She and her team clear out the tunnels filled with geth and while doing so help to get the colony access to food, water, and power which was lost after the geth invaded. Despite her help the leader of the colony, Fai Dan, seems oddly unwilling to talk about anything personal or give any more information about the colony; this suspicion is not helped by how none of the other colonists, upon speaking, have anything to say to Shepard other than “speak to Fai Dan.” Only one colonist has anything else to say, and that colonist, in pain and wandering the tunnels, raises Shepard’s suspicions of something being wrong.

She decides to head to the ExoGeni HQ, the main base of the geth invasion to get more information on why the geth would be attacking the colony. On her way there she finds a group of ExoGeni employees hiding out and they confirm that the geth are holed up in the main ExoGeni building. After learning more about ExoGeni’s very suspicious business practices, Shepard heads out again and finally reaches the headquarters where, through various fights and meeting with other surprise survivors, learns about the Thorian.

The Thorian was an indigenous lifeform to Feros. A giant plant-like alien, it apparently had been releasing mind-controlling spores into the air that had been infecting the colonists and making them its thralls. ExoGeni had been extremely aware of this situation and instead of attempting to extract the colonists decided to study them and the Thorian’s affects without the colonists’ knowledge. The geth and Saren, for some odd reason, seem to be after this creature, so after dispatching the geth ships on the headquarters and getting into contact with the Normandy, Shepard learns that the colonists are attacking her ship.

With this information she returns to the employees who had been hiding out before who reveal that they, too, knew of the unethical experimentation on the colonists of Zhu’s Hope. Using her powers of, ah, “persuasion”, she convinces their scientists to give her a non-lethal way of dealing with the colonists since they can’t help being aggressive towards her. They give her a modified nerve gas meant to paralyze and with that in tow she returns to the colony where immediately every colonist there attempts to kill her and her crew. With the successful deployment of the nerve gas Shepard manages to incapacitate almost every single one except Fai Dan who, in fighting the Thorian’s thrall, shoots himself to allow her to get down into the lower reaches of the colony.

There they find the Thorian in all its glory, reeking of plant matter and surrounding itself with humanoid plant matter troops. In a surprise move the Thorian keeps with the theme of using Asari to communicate with Shepard and creates an asari clone. Through this clone it is revealed that Saren had found the Thorian of interest to his plans because the Thorian, being as ancient as it is, had actually lived through the rise and fall of the Prothean empire and through its interactions with the Protheans had learned its culture, effectively creating a cipher that would allow any organic being with that information to be able to understand the vision the Prothean beacon had given out. Unfortunately the Thorian, after being betrayed by Saren thanks to Saren attempting to kill it so that its information couldn’t get to Shepard, does not listen to reason and attacks Shepard, forcing her to kill its many neural modules and send it plummeting to its death.

When this is done the real asari, Shiala, that the Thorian had captive is released and she, now free of its influence, expands on the information given from before and further cements that Matriarch Benezia was manipulated and controlled by Saren through the means of that ship Sovereign. Shiala also warns Shepard that Saren thinks she is after the Conduit as much as he is and that he will stop at nothing to kill her. She mind melds with Shepard and gives her the Cipher and, with Shepard’s help, Shiala agrees to help the colony re-establish life in Zhu’s Hope and the colony is saved.

When Shepard returns to the Normandy Liara attempts to help Shepard make sense of the Cipher and the vision she has and they too mind meld. Liara is surprised and fascinated by what she sees there, commenting on Shepard’s strong mind to be able to handle all of this information. Alas, even with her years of dedicated research and the Cipher filling in some of the gaps, there is still some important information missing from the vision that needs to be found before they can truly understand what it means. After the mission debriefing the Council contacts Shepard with a new bit of information on Saren’s whereabouts and doing: Virmire, a tropical planet mostly untouched by any civilization, had connections to Saren. The Council had sent a small Salarian infiltration team to attempt to find this information but nothing had been heard from them other than a garbled distress signal. Due to Shepard being in charge of bringing Saren to justice the Council decided that sending Shepard to follow this lead was the best idea they had.

Over the course of this entire story, Shepard had been becoming closer and friendlier with her team despite her initial aloofness to them and had gotten especially close to one in particular: Kaidan Alenko, a human biotic like her who had suffered through his own tragic past but had done his best to come to peace with it. His attraction to her had been obvious from the moment she joined the ship, with him awkwardly stumbling over his words and his warm demeanor towards her. Shepard did not really know what to do about this in the beginning. Her experience with love in any capacity was stunted, let alone any experience with romance, but over time his gentle nature and sweet words connected with her in a way she didn’t know she craved. Their discussions around the Normandy and their discussions after missions had become important to her and while she didn’t have the words to truly explain how she felt, Kaidan eventually asked about this budding relationship between them and asked her if she wanted whatever this was. After a moment’s hesitation she said yes. And he promised that they would talk more about this and where they would go after their next mission. Which brings us now to Virmire.

Upon approaching the planet it becomes apparent that Saren has built quite the massive base of operations here, with giant defense towers guarding the world. This prompts Shepard and her crew to be dropped down into the planet to take them out before the Normandy can land and allow them to really investigate what is going on. When the geth are defeated and the towers defense systems shut down, the Normandy is able to land and Shepard makes contact with the missing Salarian infiltration team. The salarian captain named Kirrahe explains that thanks to the Normandy arriving, every AAA tower (essentially gigantic defense turrets that could destroy any military-grade ship) are trained on their location and ready to fire once they lift off again, keeping the Normandy grounded.

The captain continues to explain that this base of Saren’s is a research facility heavily guarded by the Geth and the research was a cure for the krogan genophage, a biological weapon inflicted upon the krogan many years ago during a previous war by the salarians which rendered most of the species infertile. Saren’s plan was to breed these krogan into an unstoppable army alongside the geth he already has on his side. Kirrahe opts to destroy all of this research into the cure so as to stop Saren as well as make sure the krogan don’t have access to it; Understandably, Wrex, Shepard’s krogan squadmate, disagrees vehemently, saying that this cure could save his people from extinction. After an intense discussion between the two of them, Shepard implores Wrex to think of what this cure really is: a means to control and use these krogan Saren has created as a weapon and to be tossed aside when they are no longer useful. It is painful for him, but his trust in Shepard convinces him to lower his weapons and he agrees to go along with Shepard’s plan on the caveat that he gets Saren’s head.

Shepard returns to Kirrahe, who thanks her for calming Wrex and then gives her his plan for destroying the base. He plans to convert one of his ship’s drive cores into essentially a nuclear warhead to explode the facility from the inside. However due to casualties among his team, he doesn’t have as many soldiers back him up as he used to. Therefore, he’s splitting his people into three teams to assault from the front and then with Shepard’s help her team can come up through to disable the AA towers and give them time to plant the bomb. However due to this split, Kirrahe requests a member of Shepard’s squad to accompany him and both Kaidan and Ashley volunteer. Due to Kaidan’s tech prowess and Ashley’s experience as a ground soldier, Shepard sends Kaidan with the bomb set up and Ashley with the salarian soldiers to hold the front lines.
Thus they are off, setting the plan in motion and it is successful; Shepard and her shadow team as they are called manage to infiltrate Saren’s facility, where Shepard finds that not only was Saren breeding krogan but also researching the effects of indoctrination, the odd ability that his ship Sovereign has to control people to his will. As she continues to push into the base she finds another Prothean beacon. Upon activating it Shepard is given the same vision she got on Eden Prime, only now with the Cipher and from a beacon that is not partially damaged, she gets the full vision, even if she can’t completely parse the information there. She walks away from the beacon, a bit disoriented but more stable than the last time she was hit with something like this but on another platform she happens upon a hologram of the ship Sovereign. When she and her crew approach, the hologram speaks and it is with horror that it is revealed that Sovereign isn’t merely a ship at all, but an actual Reaper itself.

Despite being a terrifying artificial intelligence with complete disregard for organic life, Sovereign is surprisingly chatty and reveals that the Protheans were not the first to be extinguished, nor would they be the last. The cycle, as Sovereign refers to it, has been going on for countless years. As organic civilizations rise and reach their apex, the Reapers arrive to strike them down. All of the technology that these civilizations use (mass effect fields, the mass relays, the Citadel itself) was created by the Reapers to guide civilizations along the path of growth most conducive to the Reapers’ harvests every 50,000 years.
After it reveals this, the hologram dissipates and Shepard begins to flee the facility to set up the nuke and have the Normandy pick them up before Sovereign arrives to kill her. After clearing the area, the Normandy arrives and delivers the bomb, with Kaidan helping to arm it. As he does however Shepard receives a distress signal from Ashley, indicating that she and the salarians are pinned down by the geth and won’t be able to evacuate under their current circumstances. Shepard leaves to relieve Ashley while Kaidan stays behind to arm it properly. As Shepard makes her way to Ashley however, another geth ship comes in, delivering more geth troops to pin Ashley down as well as unleash troops into the bomb site where Kaidan is. Shepard tells Kaidan to hang on and that she’ll head back to him but Kaidan, seeing the amount of geth he and his few fellows need to fight, decides to activate the nuke instead so that it goes off no matter the cost. He then asks Shepard to go back and get Ashley, while Ashley argues for Shepard to go back and get Kaidan. Realizing she has no other options and that the bomb must go off no matter what, Shepard chooses to go back for Ashley and the salarian team, leaving Kaidan to defend the bomb with his life.

As she heads to retrieve Ashley, Shepard runs into Saren, who immediately attacks her. Shepard attempts to appeal to Saren’s better nature and convince him that he is indoctrinated, but Saren won’t hear it. “Is submission not preferable to extinction?” Saren asks, asserting that perhaps if they work with the Reapers they will be spared and Shepard essentially replies “That’s a load of horseshit!” Saren reveals that the reason the geth follow Sovereign is because they revere Sovereign like a god, the pinnacle of their artificial evolution. After unsuccessfully trying to convince Saren to work with her, they fight and just before either of them can kill the other, the Normandy arrives and Saren flees. Shepard takes Ashley and the salarian troops onto the ship having been unable to go back for Kaidan. As the Normandy flies away from Virmire, Shepard stands by and silently watches the bomb detonate from orbit; giving one last look to the man she might have loved and had left behind.

On the Normandy, Liara steps forward and mind melds with Shepard again in an attempt to make sense of the now complete vision she has. Liara realizes that the Conduit that Saren and Sovereign are searching for is located on a planet called Ilos, and there they may find the way to stop the Reapers from invading. Right then however they receive a call from the Council. They tell her that they think that Saren is merely playing her and using these so-called “Reapers” as a way to distract her from Saren’s true intentions. Later on Shepard receives word that the Citadel is amassing a multi-species fleet to deal with Saren and his geth and Ambassador Udina is calling for Shepard to return to the Citadel and Shepard obliges.

When she gets there however she soon learns that the Council would rather play defense than offense, refusing to go after Saren and setting up a blockade around the Citadel in their attempts to stop him. Shepard argues against this course of action, noting that the longer they sit around, the closer Saren gets to finding the Conduit and allowing the Reapers to invade. Seeing how Shepard will not let the idea of the Reapers go, Udina reveals that upon entering the Citadel that the Alliance has put the Normandy on lock down so that they cannot leave. Disgusted, Shepard leaves and returns to the Normandy with no idea as to what to do next. Luckily Anderson has some ideas and upon meeting up with him on the Citadel, he helps Shepard get the unlock codes for the ship and Shepard and crew speed away to stop Saren on Ilos.

When they reach the planet they realize that they’re gonna need to be up close and personal to get to Saren in time so Joker drops Shepard and crew basically right on top of Saren’s butt in their tank (the Mako) and that’s what they do, somehow surviving that drop. After overcoming the many geth in their path along with the security measures inherent to the planet itself, she manages to get inside the Prothean Archives, where a barrier suddenly arises and stops her in her tracks. Upon investigating Shepard finds an old Prothean virtual intelligence named Vigil, who had sensed that Shepard was not indoctrinated and sought her out to speak to. Vigil pleas with Shepard to break the Reaper’s cycle, giving her information so that she would not end up making the same mistakes that the Protheans did in their time. Vigil reveals that the Citadel itself is a Mass Relay, connected to the void of dark space where the rest of the Reapers reside, waiting for it to be activated so that they may pour through and destroy civilization. The VI also reveals that the Conduit is not a weapon at all but a secret small Mass Relay that leads directly to the Citadel itself. Saren needed the Conduit so that he could override the Citadel defense systems and hand control of it back over to the Reapers so that they could activate the relay. Vigil then gives Shepard the means to hack into the main control of the Citadel so that she can alter the code and prevent the Citadel from being taken.
Shepard returns to her desperate chase, racing against time to get to the Conduit and the Citadel before Saren can destroy it and trap them on Ilos. After a harrowing battle with many geth (and horrible tank driving skills) Shepard and her crew manage to get through the Conduit and fight their way through the Citadel. As she goes she activates the Citadel defenses, as the Council’s fleet fights the army of geth warships and Sovereign out in the space around it.

Finally she makes her way into the main Citadel chambers (after literally walking up the Citadel Tower in zero gravity in a spacesuit) and finds Saren at the main controls. Saren attempts to convince Shepard to his side and once more Shepard rebuffs him, especially with the knowledge that Saren has now been outfitted with implants from Sovereign and is completely under its control. She tries once more to appeal to Saren but once again he doesn’t listen, resulting in a fight between them that Shepard wins rather easily. She kills him, or so she thinks, and in that moment she gains access to the main control panel where the data file from Vigil works and Shepard is in full control of the Citadel. At that point she is given three choices: Save the council, who was evacuated and is under heavy fire, let the council die and save human lives, or tell the Alliance fleet that is trying to make its way in to focus on Sovereign. Shepard chooses to save the council, and the Alliance fleet breaks into Citadel space, rescuing the Destiny Ascension (the ship that the council is on.) With that move, the fleet then moves in to attack Sovereign.

Shepard then takes the opportunity to check on Saren’s body and make sure he is dead. Just when she thinks it is safe to turn around however the skeletal implants that were embedded into his body spring to life and, controlled by Sovereign, attack Shepard and her team. After another brutal battle they finally manage to kill the skeleton and, weakened and near death, Sovereign falls away from the Citadel, allowing the Normandy to fire on it. The resulting debris crashing into the Citadel chambers and Shepard is struck and is knocked unconscious. When she comes to she finds that Anderson and other Alliance personnel have made their way into the tower to look for them and she stands on top of the remains of Sovereign badly injured but triumphant.
Afterwards Shepard once again speaks to the Council, who express their gratitude for Shepard sacrificing countless human lives to save them. In honor of such doing, they offer humanity a place on the Council and ask Shepard for her input as to who should be promoted as such, Anderson or Ambassador Udina. Her loyalty to her Captain and informal father figure remains strong and she immediately chooses Anderson as the one to represent humanity over Udina, much to Udina’s chagrin. Once that is settled Shepard reminds everyone that despite this victory, the Reapers are still out there and that she won’t rest until their threat is wiped out of existence. She walks away from the meeting, determined to get things done.

Thus we reach the end of Mass Effect 1. A satisfying ending, all things considered! But we’re not done yet and neither is Shepard. So unto Mass Effect 2!

As soon as she is cleared of all injuries and seen fit to return to duty, Shepard goes back to the Normandy with her crew. Unfortunately once more the Council and Alliance take the stand that the Reapers are not real and that the threat is over. For a month after the devastating attack on the Citadel, Shepard is sent around the galaxy taking out the last few pockets of geth leftover from Saren’s uprising; an obvious attempt at giving her busy work so she doesn’t cause trouble.
During one of these scouting missions the Normandy is sent to a sector of the galaxy that has reported a few lost ships with unknown causes. Suspecting geth or possibly slavers, the Normandy investigates but as they do a mysterious ship of unknown power and origin locks onto them, opening fire and tearing the Normandy into shreds.

The Normandy crew suffers heavy casualties but Shepard orders her team to evacuate everyone to the escape pods. Joker, the Normandy’s pilot, refuses to leave the cockpit because he believes he can still save the Normandy from total destruction. Shepard makes her way across the ruined ship in her Alliance hard suit and reaches him as the cockpit burns; she convinces him that going down with the ship is foolish. He finally agrees to leave and she helps him into a nearby escape pod but before she can get in herself the ship cracks apart and she is flung away from the pod. The pod doors were still open however and with a quick decision (and Joker’s pained yelling) Shepard activates the door controls and shuts it, saving Joker’s life as the Normandy explodes more and sends her reeling into space. Debris from the ship cuts her air tube and, choking and gasping for air, Shepard suffocates as her body is pulled into the atmosphere of a nearby planet.
Now, usually when someone dies there isn’t really a time after to speak of (at least not one us here in the realm of the living can factually say) but for Shepard she miraculously comes back to consciousness in a mysterious laboratory as a voice over the loud speakers implores her to get up despite her scars not being fully healed because this facility, whatever it is, is under attack. There’s no rest for the weary so Shepard complies, getting up and after retrieving some armor and weapons fights through the facility as it becomes clear someone is hacking the security to try and kill her. Eventually she finds someone else who is alive by the name of Jacob Taylor, a security officer who explains what happened: after she died her body was taken and then re-constructed over two years of work and effort by a pro-human organization called Cerberus, whose scientists were working for something called Project Lazarus. They outfitted her with a cybernetic skeleton and biotic amp upgrades, giving her access to abilities she never had before.

She’s not given much time to think this over before she and Jacob end up having to fight through more of the facility with the help of a member of the top medical staff. Just before they reach the shuttles a woman appears and shoots the staff member dead, revealing that he was the one who hacked the security to try and kill Shepard. She introduces herself as Miranda Lawson, the one in charge of the Lazarus project and responsible for bringing Shepard back to life. They get off the station and Miranda takes Shepard to see her boss, a human known only as The Illusive Man.

Upon meeting him, (well, the holographic version of him) the Illusive Man explains that he paid for her to be revived so that she could save humanity once more. It seems that hundreds of thousands of human colonists have gone missing over the last two years and no one but Cerberus believes that this is happening; a sentiment that Shepard understands. The Illusive Man believes that the reason for the disappearances is because something is working for the Reapers and he wants Shepard’s help in taking them down. Shepard, despite her reservations against working for a terrorist organization, agrees to help.

The Illusive Man sends her to the place of the most recent abductions, a colony called Freedom’s Progress. There Shepard looks for any evidence as to what is taking these people and why. As she’s exploring and fighting more mechs, she runs into an old friend: Tali’Zorah, the quarian from the first Normandy. She explains that she is there to retrieve another quarian on their pilgrimage, a coming of age journey that all quarians go through before returning to their home in the Migrant Fleet. She expresses her surprise at Shepard being alive but refuses to join her due to Shepard now being affiliated with Cerberus. With time both Tali and Shepard are able to find the quarian named Veetor, who is the only survivor of the colony’s abduction. Veetor shows them security footage that places the blame on an elusive species of aliens called the Collectors, beings that exist somewhere beyond the Omega 4 Relay from which no other ships return. Despite Miranda’s reasonings, Shepard sends Veetor back with Tali, armed with new information as to the Collector’s method of kidnapping.

Upon returning to the base, the Illusive Man praises Shepard for her good work and gives her a list of dossiers of important and powerful people for Shepard to recruit in her new mission. Shepard initially turns him down, opting to search for her old team, but the Illusive Man reminds her that it has been two years and that it is highly unlikely that anyone from her team against Saren is still around and willing to join her. Despite such glum news, The Illusive Man assures her that he got her a pilot that she’d like and trust and after cutting off communication, it is to Shepard’s immense joy that she sees Joker. He tells her that after her death everything fell apart and he was grounded, so he joined Cerberus to try and fly again. Then they both see that Cerberus not only rebuilt Shepard but rebuilt their ship: the Normandy SR2, a beautiful girl with greater advancements than the first Normandy with an onboard AI named EDI who controls the ship from her AI core inside the medical bay.

On the Illusive Man’s recommendation, Shepard’s first stop is to a station called Omega located in the Terminus Systems, which is a portion of the galaxy that is not under the Citadel Council’s control. The local ruler of the station, Aria T’Loak, points her in the right direction of a few new squadmates: a salarian doctor named Mordin Solus whose genius could help stop the Collector’s ability to immobilize and kidnap the colonists and an enigmatic figure named Archangel, a vigilante working tirelessly to bring justice to an unjust world on Omega. To her immense surprise and delight, she discovers that Archangel is none other than Garrus Vakarian, another old friend from the Normandy two years prior. After saving his life from a bunch of mercenaries (despite almost losing him to a rocket to the face) and curing a plague that Mordin had been trying to quell on Omega, both join her crew happily.

This sets the stage for many more recruitments and over time Shepard acquires Zaeed Massani, a human bounty hunter, Kasumi Goto, the best (and most unknown) thief in the galaxy, Subject Zero also know as Jack, considered one of the strongest biotics in the galaxy, and Grunt, a tank grown Krogan designed to be the epitome of krogan perfection. Of course, with all of these new people they all come with their own histories and baggage and as they arrive they give Shepard what the game calls loyalty missions to help solve their various problems. I won’t go into detail for every single one of them, but from here on out you can assume that she did all of them for every member she recruits.

Somewhere in between biotically Charging enemies to oblivion, Shepard makes her way back to the Citadel after receiving an invitation from her old captain, Anderson, to meet him. Being the councilor to humanity hasn’t been easy, but Anderson is glad to see Shepard again and persuades the rest of the Citadel Council to meet with Shepard and re-instate her Spectre status. She accepts this with all the grace of a woman who wants to punch every single one of the council’s mouths for once again denying the existence of the Reapers. It seems that Anderson, despite being mistrustful of whom Shepard is now working for, is the only one who still believes that the Reapers were the real threat.

After the various missions and the recruitments, the Illusive Man contacts Shepard again, informing her that a human colony on the planet Horizon has gone completely silent, implying that the Collectors are attacking it. He also informs her that her fellow Alliance marine, Ashley Williams, was stationed there. Mordin luckily has perfected a way to stop the Collector’s from freezing and capturing the Normandy crew, so Shepard races to the colony to try and rescue the colonists and Ashley before it is too late.
As they fight their way through the colony, Shepard meets the main antagonist of this installment: Harbinger, a force that possesses Collector grunts on the field and is personally invested in harming Shepard. After re-arming the colony’s defenses Shepard is able to save half the colony, the remaining half unfortunately being taken by the Collectors as they retreat. Just as this sort of victory is setting in, Ashley confronts Shepard and despite initial relief at seeing Shepard alive, is deeply mistrustful of her former commander and thinks she is being controlled by Cerberus. She reveals that the reason she was present on the colony at all is that she was investigating a tip that it was Cerberus stealing the people from the colonies and seeing Shepard here under a Cerberus banner is damning. No matter what Shepard says in defense of herself, Ashley leaves. Gutted by her friend’s anger, Shepard returns to the Normandy determined to stop the Collectors as soon as possible.

When she speaks to the Illusive Man again, she learns that it was the Illusive Man who let it slip that not only was Shepard alive but working with Cerberus in an attempt to lure the Collectors into attacking the colony. Shepard is enraged by the Illusive Man’s cold calculus, but he insists that it was a necessary risk to discover that the Collectors are seeking her and people connected to her out. The Illusive Man continues on, telling her that the only way to truly stop the Collectors is to hit them where they live, meaning that Shepard will need to take her crew through the Omega 4 Relay and attack them on their homeworld. To do this they will need information as to how the Collectors can safely pass through the relay and not other ships. The Illusive Man says he will work on finding this information but in the meantime Shepard needs to continue collecting people for her mission. He sends her more dossiers and Shepard leaves the discussion angry but with no other choice but to comply.

Thus Shepard recruits more members to her crew: Samara, an asari Justicar which are basically warrior monks of the asari people, Tali who, having now been rescued by Shepard twice, believes that Shepard is only working with Cerberus because she has to, and Thane Krios, a drell assassin. As her crew grows larger and larger, she makes a point to talk to them all and get to know them and going out of her way to travel the galaxy and solve their problems.

As she’s doing this however the Illusive Man comes calling again, this time with a tip from a turian patrol that they attacked and disabled a Collector ship, giving Shepard the opportunity to board and investigate what the Collectors plans are. Things don’t add up but Shepard risks it, taking her squad with her into supposedly inactive ship. As they begin their exploration, EDI tells Shepard that by a strange twist of fate this ship is the same Collector ship that she encountered on Horizon. This only raises Shepard’s suspicions but she presses on, hoping that maybe they’ll find the colonists still alive on board.

What she finds instead of the colonists is information that explains the actual origins of the Collectors. It seems that not only did the Reapers hunt the Protheans to extinction, but they also experimented on them heavily and turned them into their mindless slaves now known as The Collectors. The Collectors have also been running experiments in comparing the genetic makeup of themselves to humans, but the reasoning as to why they are doing this is still unknown. Once more EDI pops up with more disturbing news: this ship, the one that hit the Horizon colony, is also the same ship that destroyed the Normandy SR-1 over two years ago. This doesn’t bode well for Shepard and she connects EDI to one of the consoles inside the ship to datamine anything useful out of it. Thus the trap is finally sprung; the Collectors attempt to override and destroy the Normandy’s systems and attack Shepard and her crew, resulting in a long fight as EDI attempts to regain control over the Normandy and rescue Shepard. EDI manages to get important information out of this fight, but not before finding out that the Illusive Man had to have known that this was a trap all along due to the “distress call” matching Cerberus detection protocols, which the Illusive Man wrote into EDI himself.

Angry and betrayed, Shepard and her crew race to get out of the Collector ship before it comes back online and destroys the Normandy once again. The Illusive Man touches base with her once they are safe and angrily she confronts him on her betrayal. Once again the disgusting excuse for a person defends himself, saying that he needed to make sure that the Collectors thought they had the upper hand on her completely, and that the information pulled from this was worth it. EDI’s information confirms the existence of a Reaper Identification Friend or Foe (or IFF) that allows Collector ships to pass safely through the Omega 4 Relay which apparently leads to the center of the goddamn galaxy. You know the place with all of those big black holes? Yeah. There.

There’s one place the Illusive Man knows of where Shepard can get a hold of this crucial bit of data: a derelict reaper, left over from a battle many many years ago that has been drifting in the orbit of a brown dwarf star. He’s sent his people to gather information and technology from it, but he lost contact with them rather quickly after getting them there. Cerberus likes to comply with OSHA standards, obviously.
With this information in mind, Shepard decides to tend to other things for awhile since it is becoming increasingly clear that this mission is, for lack of any better terms, a suicide run. If you’re going to your potential second grave in under a year, perhaps taking the time to resolve some things might be good. Shepard then travels to Illium where she picked up some of her squadmates and where she heard that one of her old crew, Liara T’Soni, is now working as an information broker. She discovers there that Liara is actually the reason that Cerberus got her body to reconstruct in the first place; her body had been up for sale by a mysterious person called the Shadow Broker and Liara had tricked her way into getting it back but lost her ally and friend Feron along the way. Cerberus had promised that it would try to achieve the unthinkable in bringing Shepard back to life and Liara, desperate and full of grief for her dead friend, accepted and handed it over.

Liara asks Shepard to help her find Feron and retrieve him from the Shadow Broker’s clutches and Shepard accepts readily, causing massive property damage throughout Illium until eventually they venture off world and find the Shadow Broker’s base. There they find Feron, free him, and kill the Shadow Broker, leaving his entire web of information floundering for a leader. Liara, after a moment’s deliberation, steps forward to take the Shadow Broker’s place. While she can no longer join Shepard’s squad she vows to use this mass array of information at her disposal to help Shepard in her fight against the Reapers.

Shepard returns to what she is good at: getting herself mixed up in everyone’s business but as the time passes she once more finds herself becoming close to one particular member of her crew in a manner different than the deep friendship she has been fostering with the others. Both Shepard and Garrus had gone through some terrible things over the course of their friendship, both of them losing people important to them. It made their friendship and trust in each other that much more vital and knowing that they could both easily die when this was over, Shepard suggests that they relieve some tension over their circumstances with each other in the bedroom and Garrus, initially surprised, agrees. There’s no one he respects more in this galaxy than Shepard and though their discussions are a bit awkward on the subject, both of them strive to make sure the other is comfortable with where they are going. There’s no discussion of any real romantic attachment here; if either of them feel the beginnings of such feelings, they don’t admit it to themselves or each other. They decide to save this special night they’re planning for right before they hit the Omega 4 Relay; in Garrus’s words “[…] take that last chance to find some calm just before the storm.”

Moving outwardly from Shepard’s personal life and back to the greater space opera at hand, Shepard eventually makes her way over to the derelict Reaper, running into some pretty bad turbulence thanks to the mass effect field around the Reaper still being in place despite the Reaper being dead. As they approach they notice a geth ship parked nearby and suspect they know what the Cerberus scientist’s stopped communicating. Once inside the kinetic barriers of the Reaper suddenly come on and through watching the records left by the scientists, it becomes clear that while the Reaper may not be fully operational, its effects of indoctrination still work and the Cerberus scientists quickly fell prey to it. Shepard and her team make their way through the Reaper fighting many husks and other horrifying creatures created from the scientists in an attempt to take the kinetic barriers down so that they may escape. Deep in the labs built inside the Reaper, Shepard finds the IFF she was looking for and takes it, making her way to the mass effect core of the ship. As they go along however it is clear they are not alone; someone seems to be following them and sniping their enemies. When Shepard reaches the mass effect core it becomes clear who their mysterious friend is; a geth unit with N7 armor welded to its body. Before Shepard has a chance to talk to them, a wave of Reaper enemies swarm into the room and attack them, rendering them unconscious so to speak and a fight to destroy the core while hordes of enemies attack begins. When they are all dispatched, Shepard opts to take the shut down geth with them off the ship. It’s another rush against time as the Reaper begins to lose altitude and start to crash into the star below, but Shepard and her team manage to throw the geth and themselves into the Normandy and speed away before the Reaper crashes into the star.

EDI begins to integrate the Reaper IFF into the Normandy’s systems and despite all warnings contrary, Shepard goes to where they stored the geth in the AI core and re-activates it to speak to it. Through their talk the geth takes the name of Legion and decides to join Shepard in her fight against the Reapers. All in all Legion is a surprising squadmate but a welcome one.

After a period of time EDI announces that the integration of the Reaper IFF into the Normandy’s systems is complete and that if Shepard wishes to continue embarking on missions, she should take her crew in a separate shuttle rather than use the Normandy itself so that the ship may continue running its testing uninterrupted. Shepard leaves, taking her squad with her. When she returns she finds with horror that while she was gone the Collectors attacked the Normandy and kidnapped her entire crew except for Joker, who managed to escape their clutches by getting to the AI core and unshackling EDI, who upon realizing that there were no other life forms on board other than the Collectors, sealed Joker in the engine room and purged the ship.

The loss of her crew, her people, is a big blow to Shepard and without further ado she makes the jump to the Omega 4 Relay, determined to get them all back. The jump through the relay is difficult but due to the upgrades suggested by her crew, the Normandy manages to get past the defenses set in place by the Collectors and despite a heavy crash landing, the ship is intact. However due to the overloading of their systems, it will take time for the Normandy to get back in working order, so Shepard sets out in her final assault on the Collectors with her team in tow.

To cover more ground and keep the Collectors on their toes, Shepard divides her crew into two teams with her leading one and Garrus leading the other. Meanwhile Shepard directs Legion to crawl through the ventilation shaft to disable the doors cutting the two groups off from the main chambers of the station. Somehow Shepard manages to pull everyone out of the fire and they all end up in the main central chamber. There they find thousands and thousands of pods attached to the walls and inside some of them Shepard can see people. Inside one in particular is one of the colonists from Horizon who, after a moment, is “processed” horrifically into a grey sludge and Shepard and her team race to open the other pods in time before her other crewmates who are trapped are killed. She succeeds and the rescued crew explains that the humans would be processed into this sludge that is then piped through to something in the next room over. Why the Collectors need this genetic material no one knows, so Shepard sends Mordin back with the crew to assess their injuries and keep them safe.

They push through to the next room thanks to a biotic barrier erected by Jack to protect them from the Seeker swarms and they make plans to break through to the core but before they can, Joker announces that the Collectors are catching up to them. Shepard splits the team once more, leaving a rear guard and taking Tali and Garrus with her into the final assault on the Collector base. Shepard and her team follow the tubes and fight their way into wherever they lead and find the true purpose of the Collector’s using human genetic code.

Before them stands a Reaper, but unlike the Reapers that Shepard has seen before, this one is young and shaped like a human. The Collectors have been pumping hundreds of thousands of humans into this embryonic Reaper with the intention of creating a new one; whether it is part of the Reaper’s natural reproduction or needed for another purpose entirely is unknown. EDI points out the weaknesses in the structure and Shepard opens fire on the injection tubes holding it up. The Collectors come out in droves to protect their project but Shepard prevails and the baby Reaper falls down a deep chasm.

Victorious, Shepard prepares to overload the main core but before she can a message from the Illusive Man comes in. He offers an alternative to the original destructive plan; if she sets off a timed radiation bomb, it will kill the remaining Collectors but keep the technologies intact, allowing Cerberus to harvest the information to make weapons against the Reapers. Shepard refuses to listen and sets the overload but just then the human Reaper crawls its way back onto the platform Shepard and her team are on and it attacks. After another harrowing battle the human Reaper is destroyed but debris from its falling body knock Shepard and her squad off the platform and temporarily unconscious. When she comes to, Joker informs her that the other team made it back safely to the Normandy and that they’re all waiting on her. She and her team book it, tearing across the Collector base as the countdown to the explosion goes and with a death defying leap into the Normandy’s airlock, Joker manages to speed them all away just in time so that they are not consumed by the blast.

With the Normandy in shambles Shepard has one last talk with the Illusive Man who is furious with her decision to destroy the base. He attempts to convince her that turning her back on him will only hurt humanity’s chances but with her loyal crew behind her Shepard doesn’t pay him any mind. She paid her dues to Cerberus and now they have no hold on her. She cuts off the connection and makes off with the Normandy and her crew, knowing that they will follow her more than they ever would the Illusive Man. She returns to her original mission of trying to destroy the Reapers. Meanwhile out in dark space, the Reapers begin to make their slow way into the galaxy, bent on harvesting and destroying all organic life.
Now we have reached the end of Mass Effect 2, but before we go into Mass Effect 3, there is one intermediary DLC that must be talked about before we proceed.

In the time between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, Admiral Hackett of the Alliance contacts Shepard privately. He asks her to find a human named Dr. Kenson, a deep cover spy assigned to live in Batarian space who found evidence of an imminent Reaper invasion. Before she could get back to the Alliance however she was arrested by the batarians for terrorism and locked away. As a favor to him Hackett asks Shepard to go in alone. Shepard agrees and travels to the batarian world of Aratoht where she infiltrates the facility Dr. Kenson is being kept in. She manages to find Kenson just before she is brutally tortured for information and helps release her from the prison with the help of Kenson’s tech knowledge allowing them to steal a shuttle to get off world.

While sailing to away from the planet, she explains that the reason she was being tried for terrorism was because she had plans to blow up the mass relay in that batarian system. Shepard is surprised that the batarian’s claims against her were true but Kenson states that it’s only half the story. She and her people had been investigating rumors of Reaper tech in this system and had found evidence of the Reapers planning to get to this system and use the Alpha Relay to launch themselves into the rest of the galaxy with ease. Therefore their plan was to send a nearby asteroid into the relay and destroy it, thus stopping the Reapers from being able to use it and potentially adding months or years to them being able to find another one to spread. Unfortunately the resulting explosion from actions like these would result in the destruction of the entire system and the deaths of over 300,000 batarians.

Shepard expresses skepticism over how Kenson and the others figured out about this potential invasion and Kenson reveals that how they discovered this information was because of a giant Reaper artifact that they refer to as Rho giving them the information through visions. This is not a good sign at all but Kenson assures Shepard that her team dealt with the threat of indoctrination carefully. Shepard still does not believe her, citing that to think of blowing up an entire star system and killing hundreds of thousands of people means that she needs to see their proof. Kenson agrees to show her and radios to the Project base that she’s bringing a guest.

When they get there, Shepard steps out of the shuttle to see a large countdown on display; Kenson explains that the countdown is until the Reaper’s arrival, which places it at a little over two days before they come. Shepard questions whether the countdown is accurate and Kenson assures her that it is; Rho, the Reaper artifact, has been giving off more intense pulses the closer the time comes for the Reapers to arrive. Shepard realizes with horror that they are running out of time and Kenson leads her into the central lab area to show her the evidence she needs. As they walk, Kenson explains that everything with the Project is set in place; all that was holding them back was whether they should do it or not. The Reapers will reach this system regardless, but the destruction of the Alpha Relay would delay the rest of the invasion by months.

Finally they make it to the central lab where Kenson shows Shepard object Rho sitting out there in the open with no precautions around it. Shepard is wary of this but Kenson tells her to wait; Rho will show her the same vision that it showed her. And Rho does not disappoint: after a few seconds Shepard is hit with a wave of dark energy off the object, seeing in her mind the vision of the Reapers using the Alpha Relay. Overwhelmed by the sudden hit to her systems Shepard collapses and when she attempts to stand back up, Kenson points a gun to her head. The doctor tells Shepard that she can’t let her stop the arrival and Shepard’s fears of the entire base being indoctrinated are confirmed. She disarms Kenson but just then the entire security force of the base comes down on her and Shepard attempts to fight her way past them all. As she does she hears the voice of Harbinger speaking to her through the artifact, telling her that there is no use in fighting. The Reapers are at her galaxy’s door step and soon will destroy them all. She fights for awhile but eventually the artifact releases a wave of energy that knocks her unconscious and Shepard falls, defeated. Just before she slips away Kenson walks to her and orders her people to take her to the medbay to patch her up; she and the Reapers want Shepard alive.

Shepard awakens sometime later in the medbay as one of the doctors remarks on a potential glitch in the system that is saying that Shepard is waking up. She realizes very quickly that it is no glitch and Shepard takes out the guards around her quickly, though the doctor soon locks her in. Shepard then hacks a security mech and kills her, destroying the barrier keeping her in the medbay and after finding her armor and weapons she spies the countdown; less than two hours remain until the Reapers reach the system and access the relay. With so little time until the invasion, Shepard has no choice but to set the Project in motion and stop the Reapers in their tracks.

Shepard fights her way through the base and makes her way to Project Control. There she attempts to activate it and is warned that if she does 304,942 batarians will perish. With only an hour and 40 something minutes to go, Shepard hesitates but ultimately activates it, the engines on the asteroid flaring to life and beginning to make its course towards the relay. She tries to send out a transmission to the batarians in the system to evacuate but is interrupted by Dr. Kenson, who reveals that she is going to blow up the core of the facility so that the asteroid is destroyed and the Project cannot be completed. Shepard then makes her way to the core and confronts Kenson, telling her that she’s only wasting time and that if they leave now, they both can survive. Kenson of course is completely off her rocker at this point so she runs off and Shepard is left to tend to the core and re-stabilize it.

Finally they meet again and this time Shepard shoots her, knowing she has no hope of getting through to her. This unfortunately sets off the bomb that Kenson had strapped to her body and knocks Shepard unconscious once more from the blast. When Shepard comes to there is less than half an hour left until the asteroid makes collision and once she finds that communications are still offline and she can’t radio the Normandy she makes her way to the escape shuttles to turn on the communications tower. When she gets to the upper levels in the sky she can see the relay growing closer and closer as time passes and she fights desperately against the remaining people on the base to get to an escape shuttle in time before impact. She gets the communications tower up and immediately attempts to radio the Normandy. However once again she is interrupted only this time by a hologram of Harbinger, the Reaper that had possessed the Collectors. Harbinger attempts to psych Shepard out but she hears none of it; she asserts that no matter what she has to do, she will defeat the Reapers one way or another. Harbinger disappears and right then the Normandy comes swooping in and Shepard leaps into the airlock. They use the mass relay just in time, transporting themselves out of the system just before the asteroid hits and Shepard watches on a computer simulation as it explodes, wiping out the entire system.

Shepard takes some time to recuperate in the medbay but to her surprise Admiral Hackett arrives, wanting to debrief her personally. He is, understandably, confused as to why a simple rescue mission ended with an entire star system being obliterated. Shepard explains her side of the story and Hackett understands but warns her that the batarians will want blood and the Alliance does not want a war with them. Therefore eventually she will need to stand trial for her crimes on Earth. While Hackett personally believes she did the right thing, he can’t stop the trial from happening, though he will do his best to delay it. He thanks her for her work and leaves and Shepard decides to turn herself in to the Alliance, making sure her Cerberus crew has enough time to escape and hide and the other members of her crew are dropped off wherever they wish to go.

Now that Shepard was forced to commit genocide, we come to Mass Effect 3. Hang on dear reader, we’re almost to the end. As they say, there’s no rest for the weary.

The only thing that kept Shepard from being immediately court marshaled and thrown into the brig was the knowledge that Shepard did what she did to keep the galaxy safe, along with Anderson’s good word. After a couple of months of being in the lockup, Shepard is let out by a soldier named James Vega, who tells her that the defense committee in charge of her trial wants to see her, immediately. As she makes her way to the meeting she runs into Admiral Anderson, who gives her the rundown as to why things are suddenly so hectic. Admiral Hackett has mobilized the Alliance fleets as Alliance deep space ports have gone dark under mysterious circumstances. Shepard knows this means that the Reapers are here and when they reach the defense committee she attempts to convince them of this just as they receive word that all communications from their moon base have gone dead. Within minutes they see a Reaper come down from the sky and it uses a laser to cut a straight line through the room, killing almost everyone inside.

Anderson digs Shepard out of the rubble and together they make their way to the spaceport. As they fight Reaper-created monsters and climb over rubble, Shepard attempts to help a small child escape who had locked himself inside one of the vents; the child, however, tells her that she can’t help him. No one can. And so the boy runs off. Anderson gets her back on the move and they make it to the spaceport for pickup from the Normandy, which has been upgraded to be a ship for the Alliance with new colors, new tech, and a (mostly) new crew. Anderson gets Shepard on the ship but refuses to follow after; the two argue but Anderson insists that he will stay behind and help lead the resistance on Earth while Shepard must go to the Citadel and convince the other species to ban together and save them. She’s the only one they will trust and listen to. Reluctantly Shepard agrees and the Normandy takes off without Anderson. As they go Shepard watches the child from before get onto a shuttle and fly away… before a Reaper slices it in half with one of its beams. Heartbroken on a number of levels, Shepard watches Earth burn as the Normandy speeds away into space.

Once onboard Shepard receives a message from Admiral Hackett, asking her to go to Mars and meet up with one Liara T’Soni, who apparently has uncovered something that can help them in the war against the Reapers. She obliges, taking James Vega and her old friend Ashley Williams with her, who was on the Normandy when she came back. They reach Mars and find it under attack by Cerberus forces for some reason and push in, determined to find Liara. When they find her she tells them that her research here uncovered plans from the Protheans for a device to be used against the Reapers. It’s not built but it’s better than nothing and the blueprints are deep in the archives, where Cerberus is attempting to steal them for themselves. Shepard and her crew make their way over and Liara tells them more about this device she found; it’s called the Crucible and the Protheans had been working on building it but couldn’t finish due to the extermination of their race. If Shepard can get the Citadel Council and other alien races to help build it, it could stop the Reapers forever. Through security footage they discover that one of the scientists on the base, Dr. Eva Corre, is actually working for Cerberus and is the reason that Cerberus was able to get inside. She is also a highly advanced AI inside a robotic body. They also discover while looking at one of the bodies of the people of Cerberus that they humans inside almost look like husks; it seems that Cerberus has been messing around with Reaper tech and embedding them inside their soldier’s bodies.

When they reach the archives and start to get the Crucible data, they get a transmission from The Illusive Man, who tells Shepard about his plans to not destroy the Reapers but control them. He plans on using the Crucible for this purpose. And he will stop at nothing to make sure Shepard does not succeed. As they talk, Dr. Eva has been siphoning the Crucible plans from the archives and runs off with it, resulting in Shepard and her crew giving chase. They confront her outside and just as she’s about to get away on a shuttle, Vega comes crashing into her with his own. Just when they think they’ve killed the doctor however she emerges from the wreckage and Ashley attempts to subdue her. This results in her being almost killed as the robot slams her body into the shuttle repeatedly and Shepard manages to kill her. With Ashley in critical condition, Shepard takes her and the now defunct robot body onto the Normandy and they race to the Citadel to get her medical attention.

Ashley is rushed to Huerta Memorial Hospital and while she is being attended to, Shepard is waylaid by pretty much everyone on the station for meetings and updates on the Reaper threat. Finally she gets a meeting with the Council and they are as useless as they always are. They refuse to help her or Earth, due to their own worlds being under siege. After this meeting however the Turian councilor contacts her privately and asks her to go to Palaven, the Turian homeworld, and if she saves their Primarch then they will provide help for saving Earth. Shepard agrees and sets out for Palaven, but not before checking in on Ashley, who while alive, is in a medically induced coma as she is treated for her injuries.

As the commander makes her way to Palaven, she is haunted by a dream of a forest and fire, and the child that she couldn’t save. These dreams will occur throughout her final journey and battle against the Reapers.
The Normandy drops Shepard and her crew off on Palaven’s moon and she fights her way to the turian stronghold to find the Primarch. There she finds a pleasant surprise; her best friend Garrus Vakarian is there and was promoted to being the top head Reaper advisor due to his experience with Shepard. He unfortunately has bad news for her: The turian Primarch is already dead and due to laws of succession the title falls to a turian named General Victus whose current whereabouts are unknown. Having fought alongside him earlier Garrus volunteers to lead Shepard to his last known position and after fighting many Reaper forces they find Victus. It takes a bit of convincing but Victus agrees to send a fleet under one condition: get the Krogan to help relieve the pressure on Palaven and it will free him up to send his men. The game of wartime telephone afoot, Shepard agrees and Victus leaves with them and takes a place on the Normandy. Garrus then joins Shepard, determined to be by her side through this war and they return to the Normandy to find it has apparently been malfunctioning. Shepard goes to the AI core where the robotic body was stored and finds a massive fire; EDI suddenly emerges, having possessed the robotic body and now offers herself as a squadmate on the field. Surprised, a little impressed, and also mildly disturbed, Shepard welcomes EDI’s new physical presence to the team.

With Garrus on board he and Shepard get the chance to talk for the first time since the suicide mission. Garrus wonders if Shepard still has the same interest in him that she did back then and after the two talk she confirms that she does. She gives him a small kiss and tells him that she missed him. She can’t promise anything thanks to the war, but she’s still willing to try. Garrus, relieved, voices his desire to not let the Reapers get in their way, and with that their romance is locked into place.

It’s at this point that Shepard receives intel about another Prothean artifact located on Eden Prime, which once more is under attack though this time by Cerberus. When she gets there, fighting her way through the colony and past Cerberus forces, she discovers that the artifact in question is actually one of the last few life pods left over from the Protheans and there is one still alive inside. She awakens him and he introduces himself as Javik, the last military commander of his people and he agrees to help Shepard in her fight against the Reapers.

With all of this new information she returns to the Citadel to find that the Council has finally agreed to help in building the Crucible but she is tasked with finding the Catalyst; an odd item mentioned in the blueprints that is the only thing that will make the Crucible complete. While on the station Shepard visits Ashley and finds that she is awake. The two talk about their tumultuous relationship with each other and Ashley apologizes for her treatment of her on Horizon and their brief time on the Normandy when Ashley openly questioned her and her motives. Shepard tells her it’s all water under the bridge and Ashley informs her that Udina, who in Anderson’s absence has been instated as the new Human Councilor on the Citadel Council, has offered her Spectre status once she is back up and running. Shepard is delighted at this news that her friend will be the second ever human Spectre and she congratulates her. She invites her to the Normandy crew but Ashley declines, deciding to take care of some business on her own before she comes back. Shepard accepts this and goes to leave the hospital when to her surprise she finds her friend Thane Krios in the lobby.

The drell has moved in permanently to the hospital due to the chronic disease he has advancing to the point where he needs to be under constant medical care. He agrees to watch over Ashley while she is in the hospital however and if Shepard needs anything on the Citadel, he will be there for her. She accepts this gratefully even as she is worried about him physically. She also runs into Kasumi Goto and Zaeed Masani, helping them out of their respective pickles and they join the war effort, using their skills to help build the Crucible. She also runs into Miranda Lawson and they touch base, her having defected from Cerberus and Shepard’s dealings with the Alliance. All in all it’s good to see her friends again (especially alive) and Shepard sets back out to get more people to help Earth.

Primarch Victus and the turian councilor stage a war summit and Shepard oversees it to hopefully stop any potential wars between the Salarian Dalatrass (the leader of the Salarian people), the Primarch, and the representative of the Krogan, her old friend Urdnot Wrex. Before he will assist the turians Wrex demands a cure for the genophage, something the dalatrass refuses to give. Wrex reveals that he has been leaked footage of some krogans on the salarian planet of Sur’Kesh that have been cured of the genophage and he wishes to give this to his people. Shepard demands that the Dalatrass release these krogan and the Dalatrass relents with great hesitation.

They go to Sur’Kesh and after a rather explosive entrance thanks in part to Wrex’s recklessness, Shepard finds her old crewmate and friend Mordin Solus who has been helping synthesize the genophage cure from the data leftover from an old student of his named Maelon, someone Shepard helped take care of during the fight against the Collectors. Thanks to the brutality of this initial research by Maelon, only one krogan is left alive: a female who calls herself Eve. Just as Shepard is getting ready to escort her off Sur’Kesh, the proximity alarms on the base go off and Wrex contacts her, telling her that Cerberus is here and attacking.
Mordin takes the female krogan in the quarantine pod she is in due to her weakened immune system and Shepard follows after but it soon becomes apparent that the reason Cerberus is here is to capture the krogan. She fights her way through Cerberus troops to the pod and manages to safely escort Eve onto the Normandy along with Mordin and Wrex. Mordin insists that he can synthesize a cure for the genophage from Eve’s tissue but she will need to heal and he needs time. In that interim, both Victus and Wrex have things they need from Shepard before things can continue.

With Victus, Shepard helps disable a secret bomb hidden on the krogan world of Tuchanka by the turians back during the Rachni wars and with Wrex she finds another old friend from the fight with the Collectors: Grunt, the krogan tankborn who now is the leader of his own platoon. With him she discovers the fate of the Rachni queen she released back on Noveria. Said queen had been hiding out with her people but the Reapers found her and corrupted her children into their mindless slaves. Shepard save hers but not without great cost to Grunt’s team, with Grunt being the only survivor of the fight. The Rachni queen joins forces with those on the Crucible and her children greatly help construction.

After helping out another former squadmate of hers rescue a group of student biotics, Mordin tells Shepard that the cure is ready and that Eve is finally strong enough to go with them, so they set out for Tuchanka. Mordin plans to dispense this cure quickly to every krogan on Tuchanka through use of a tower called the Shroud, a building that the salarians built when originally uplifting the krogan to repair their atmosphere. It was also used by the turians to dispense the genophage in the first place. With its morally dubious qualifications in check, Shepard agrees to help get Mordin and the others to the Shroud. However complications arise when a Reaper lands nearby, resulting in a big change of plans. Victus sets the turians up to fight the Reaper from the air and Wrex sends his krogan in tanks to fight the Reaper from the ground so that they can distract it long enough for Shepard and her team to get to the Shroud and upload the cure.
Just before Shepard can set foot on Tuchanka however she receives a message from the Salarian Dalatrass, who offers her a deal: years ago the salarians sabotaged the Shroud specifically to curb this potentiality from happening. If Shepard lets the sabotage stand and stops Mordin from trying to fix it when he inevitably finds out about it, the Dalatrass will give her the entire Salarian fleet and their top scientists to help work on the Crucible. Of course, this will require the krogans to not know of the deception and have them think that they have been cured when really the sabotage will have altered the cure just so that no one will realize what happened. The Dalatrass tells her to think about it and cuts off the connection.

Shepard of course has no desire to betray one of her greatest friends and attempts to tell Wrex and the others about the sabotage, but before she can the Reapers send their forces in hard and she has to fight to get through to the meeting grounds. Finally after another long battle and as they are in transit to the Shroud, Shepard brings up the deceit once again and Mordin assures them all that since he is familiar with the processes needed to sabotage it that he can fix it. As they are moving in however the Reaper attacks, sending Shepard’s team crashing down inside an old krogan ruin. Navigating the labyrinth of the ancient krogan city is difficult but in comparison to everything else this woman has been through, it’s mostly a piece of cake. Though the constant rumblings in the ground are certainly a cause for concern, and their origin is even more so: Tuchanka is home to thresher maws, giant carnivorous worm-like beasts that burrow through the ground and apparently the mother of them all named Kalros lives in this area.

Once Shepard reunites with Wrex and the others, Wrex offers Shepard a pretty wild plan involving some “maw hammers” as the krogan call it and summoning Kalros to attack the Reaper. Wild is pretty much Shepard’s modus operandi at this point so she agrees to go out and fight to get the maw hammers up and running. She runs the gauntlet to get to the hammers, fighting Reaper forces and avoiding the attacks of the Reaper itself and activates them, which strike the ground and summon Kalros, who tears her way out of the ground and attacks the Reaper, wrapping its gargantuan body around the thing and crushing it in her fury and dragging it down with her into hell (aka underground). With Kalros’s wrath sated, Shepard sends her team to Wrex and runs to the Shroud to meet up with Mordin.

She finds him there, having just successfully synthesized the cure and also finds that the destruction caused by the Reaper to the Shroud is massive. Mordin informs her that thanks to the salarian’s sabotage that remote activation of the Shroud and remote uploading won’t work. He will need to venture to the main control room to set everything up himself; a death sentence to be sure since the entire building will soon collapse and explode. Shepard cries out that there has to be another way but Mordin is resolute. He knew what the stakes were going into this. Shepard walks away and Mordin dies saving the krogan people from extinction.

With the genophage well and truly cured, Wrex promises Shepard the soldiers she needs and vows that when she is ready to take Earth back he will be there by her side. Victus also upholds his end of the bargain, promising turian soldiers to the eventual fight to take back Earth and turian dreadnoughts to the building of the Crucible. Shepard has a few moments alone on the Normandy after this, her dreams once more being haunted by fire and death, and Liara comes to her with news from the Salarian councilor. Apparently Councilor Udina has been acting strangely and the councilor wants Shepard to come and investigate. She agrees and once she is there she finds the Citadel is under attack by Cerberus forces. Thane and Ashley are both on the move down there and Shepard hastens to join them, fighting through waves and waves of Cerberus troops to try and get a hold of the Council.

After a lot of fighting and exploration, Shepard finally finds the salarian councilor as he is being menaced by someone that Shepard has never seen before. In a rush, the councilor tells Shepard that Udina is staging a coup and has the other councilors hostage to hand them over to Cerberus. The mysterious assassin who has been threatening the councilor attempts to kill him but before he can Thane gets the drop on him and they fight, allowing Shepard time to pull the councilor away. Unfortunately in the fight the man stabs Thane through with a sword (because despite the fact that we’re in a sci fi game you gotta have swords I guess) and runs, leaving Shepard to rush to Thane’s side and stabilize him. He tells her to go after the man, saying that he still has time and reluctantly Shepard goes.

She chases the assassin through the Citadel in a bloody game of cat and mouse and eventually finds Ashley with the council. Udina tells Ashley that Shepard is working with Cerberus and Shepard tells Ashley about Udina’s plot. Uncertain of who to trust but wanting to believe, Ashley turns on Udina and Udina attempts to kill the asari councilor and is shot and killed. With the council safe Shepard rushes to the hospital where Thane is but hopes of recovery are fleeting; his injuries are too severe coupled with his illness and Thane passes in the presence of his son and Shepard after he says his last good byes and prayers for Shepard’s soul. Ashley asks to join Shepard’s crew at this point and solemnly Shepard accepts, not wanting to lose any more friends.

Shepard helps out other squadmates in the interim after this, helping Samara protect her daughter from Reaper forces, as well as helping Aria T’Loak recapture Omega from Cerberus in a bloody coup. After all this Hackett contacts Shepard and informs her that the Quarians wish to offer their help and Shepard makes her way over to the Perseus Veil where they are located to meet with them. When they board her ship the quarians reveal that while they wish to help Shepard, they have big problems of their own. Mere weeks ago the quarians began to wage war on the geth in an attempt to seize control of their homeworld but as they drove them back the Reapers let out a signal that began to control them, thus leading to the geth being far more effective and deadly than before. The quarians are getting wiped out and they need Shepard to take out the Reaper command signal. She agrees and Tali, who has now been promoted to being an Admiral of the Migrant Fleet, joins her in assaulting the geth dreadnought that seems to be harboring the Reaper signal.
They sneak their way onto the vessel, fighting their way through until they find the source of the signal: a geth unit they are all very familiar with named Legion, who was held against their will. They rescue them in short order and return to the Normandy, where Legion informs Shepard that the signal in the long term was disabled, but a short range one was put in place by the Reapers and will be activated soon. One such place that can affect geth fighters is a remote server that Legion takes Shepard to. There she essentially uploads her consciousness into the server, helping Legion destroy the Reaper code embedded in there and learns the true origins of the original geth and quarian war.

After this she makes her way down to Rannoch, the long abandoned quarian homeworld with her team to take out the Reaper base that is sending out the short range signal. Once there she, Tali and Legion all fight their way across the planet, facing geth and Reaper force alike. Shepard infiltrates the base to destroy it only to find that it isn’t some extra base erected by the Reapers at all but an actual Reaper itself. It attacks Shepard and she has no choice but to hop into a tank and engage it and when that doesn’t kill it, attacks the damn thing on foot and gives the Normandy and Migrant Fleet accurate directions to hit it in its one weak spot. The Reaper collapses and near death it talks to Shepard, telling her that the cycle of killing and harvesting organic life is to their salvation. When Shepard asks for clarification it doesn’t deign to give it, merely warning that all organic and synthetic life is destined to kill each other.

The Reaper kicks the bucket and all that remains is the leftover Reaper code that Legion, seeing an opportunity, wants to upload to the geth at large to give every unit true sentience. Tali rallies against this action, stating that doing this will make the geth as smart as they were when under the Reaper’s control and due to her people already attacking the weakened geth, would wipe out her people entirely. Shepard in a moment of turmoil tells Legion to upload the code as Tali desperately tries to get the other Admirals to stop fighting. They initially resist but then Shepard jumps on the line, and with an impassioned speech, manages to convince the fleet to back down, allowing peace to be established between the geth and the quarians. However while uploading Legion runs into an error and realizes a direct uplink of their personality is required to fully give sentience to their people. Legion, with the full knowledge that they have a soul, uploads itself to the geth at large and its consciousness is gone, leaving only the robotic form in its wake. The geth and quarians, now free of their strife, both offer their support to Shepard and Shepard accepts it with a heavy heart over the loss of her friend.

Having done what was previously thought impossible, Shepard is contacted by the asari councilor and told that she needs her help, but that it is so private a matter that she must meet with her in person on the Citadel. Shepard goes to the Citadel as bade and there the councilor points her to the asari homeworld of Thessia and a Prothean artifact located there that could assist Shepard in finding the Catalyst. While there Shepard also meets up with a Dr. Bryson who has some startling new information about the Reapers that could turn the tide of the war.

She decides to meet up with the scientist first before following up with the asari councilor and her meeting with him is rather short lived, thanks to his indoctrinated assistant shooting him dead. Before Dr. Bryson’s untimely demise Shepard learns about these mysterious beings called “Leviathans” which potentially might be what the Reapers came from and have the potential to kill them. Shepard searches through the lab for clues and finds the location of a distant asteroid with the rest of Bryson’s team located on it. She travels there and throughout her exploration finds that the crew seems to be under some kind of control, both threatening her and chanting ominous words like “the darkness cannot be breached” and other clearly friendly things like that. She finds the leader of the old mining base and tries to confront him as to what is going on but he bolts and ultimately blows up himself and a mysterious artifact that was next to him at the time. Once it is destroyed the workers seem to wake up and are convinced it is a date ten years prior to the actual date.
Shepard recognizes the artifact as something she saw in Bryson’s lab and races back to the Citadel to contain it and from there looks for Dr. Ann Bryson, Dr. Bryson’s daughter to find some more information on this artifact and its connection to Leviathan. Shepard manages to piece together her location and sails out there, eventually finding Ann after fighting through the Reaper forces that were attempting to find her. When she is found however she too appears to be under the same trance as the miners on the asteroid and it is only after Shepard destroys the artifact that Ann uncovered that the scientist comes back to consciousness. She has no recollection as to being controlled but once they return to her father’s lab she offers to let herself be possessed again to help Shepard find the location of the Leviathan.

The location leads to an ocean planet and Shepard makes her way over but they experience a crash landing into another downed ship thanks to a sudden EMP pulse released into the air that disables their shuttle’s systems. After some investigation (and more fights with Reaper forces) they determine that the energy signature of Leviathan is coming from the bottom of the ocean and Shepard gets into a deep diving suit and goes down, losing contact with the rest of her team halfway through.

Dark, darker, yet darker still, the darkness keeps growing and the darkness is breached. Her every step a transgression, Shepard’s presence brings the Leviathan up from the depths, an alien of gargantuan proportions who, in their image, created something called The Intelligence. Through this creation they indirectly caused the creation of the Reapers who turned on them and attempted to hunt them to extinction, leading to them hiding themselves deep within the fathoms of this world. Shepard manages to convince them to help her fight the Reapers and they help propel her back to the surface, though the change in depth plus the fact that they were communicating with her through her mind results in her fainting once she breaks the surface. As her crew speeds her away, a Reaper attempts to attack the planet but Leviathan kills it with one pulse and they get away safely.

Shepard doesn’t have long to recover before she’s back out to Thessia. When she arrives it is already under attack by Reapers and the scientists she was supposed to meet are all missing. With the help of the asari commandos Shepard makes her way to the Temple of Athame, the location of this artifact that the asari councilor wanted her to see. Once inside she finds the scientists with their throats slit; the Reapers weren’t the ones who killed them. The giant statue to Athame draws Shepard in and she realizes that the artifact must be a Prothean beacon. The beacon responds to the cipher inside of her thinking that she is Prothean and activates, revealing a VI named Vendetta. Vendetta gives forth a wealth of information about the Crucible and its origins, though it is not optimistic about this cycle’s chances in winning the war against the Reapers. Before the VI can go into more detail about the Catalyst, the assassin from the Citadel who Shepard now knows as Kai Leng arrives and the VI shuts down in the presence of an indoctrinated creature.

It’s an easy connection to make between the guy who fights with swords and the way that the scientists died, so Shepard knows immediately that it was Kai Leng who killed them. Kai Leng opens a connection with The Illusive Man and Shepard and her old boss have a “friendly” chat. In this chat The Illusive Man fully reveals his desire to control the Reapers and that he intends to use this VI as a way to do so. He tells Kai Leng to get the VI from him and the assassin obliges, fighting Shepard in a bitter battle inside the temple. Unfortunately he cheats and brings out a gunship, shooting the floor out from under her. By the time she manages to climb back out to relative safety Kai Leng has already taken the VI and absconded with it, leaving Thessia in ruins and Shepard a failure.

Shepard returns to the Normandy and the asari councilor calls. The truth is a hard thing to swallow and even harder to tell, and the asari councilor cuts off the connection before Shepard can tell her she’s sorry. Tired of being surprised by Cerberus again and again, one of Shepard’s crew mentions that she was able to track Kai Leng’s shuttle to a system of the galaxy that holds a place called Sanctuary, a so-called safe haven for war refugees. As it stands, Sanctuary is located on the Horizon colony, a place that Shepard knows all too well from when she fought the Collectors.

When she arrives at Sanctuary Shepard very quickly discovers that the place was a trap all along to lure unsuspecting people in so Cerberus could run experiments on them with Reaper tech in attempts to find out how the Reapers communicate and how to control them. As it stands, Miranda’s sister Oriana is the one who initially discovered Sanctuary’s true purpose and was kidnapped to keep from talking. Therefore, Miranda is somewhere inside the facility and Shepard fights her way through as she listens to the clues Miranda left behind. Eventually she finds Miranda’s father, Henry Lawson, holding Oriana hostage and Miranda severely wounded. Shepard convinces Henry to let Oriana go in exchange for his life, but the moment his guard is down Miranda biotically throws him through a window and to his death. While Kai Leng is long gone from the facility as it turns out Miranda slipped a tracking device on him and if she moves quickly, Shepard should be able to follow him directly to the Illusive Man and his base. Finally Shepard will be able to kick the man’s ass in person and get back the information that Kai Leng stole on Thessia.

As she’s prepping to go after Cerberus Headquarters however she receives a message from Hackett who tells her that the Normandy is due on the Citadel for some upgrades and adjustments before taking on Cerberus and that she and her crew have earned a bit of a break. He also tells her to go to Anderson’s apartment that he has there, saying that it’s worth seeing because it is really nice. So Shepard, despite wanting to bite the bullet and get out there to fight, obliges and lets her crew disembark on the Citadel and she heads to Anderson’s apartment. When she gets there she sees that Hackett wasn’t joking; it’s a big and beautiful place and just as she steps in she gets a message from Anderson saying that now that she’s here, he wants her to have it. She needs a place to re-charge, a safe haven from the horrors of the war, and while this place was originally for him and someone he cared about to settle down, the longer he’s on Earth, the more he thinks that he won’t ever leave. Therefore he wants to tie up all loose ends. Shepard, baffled by the generosity, accepts and explores her new apartment.

After a bit of time there she receives a message from Joker asking her out to a local fancy sushi restaurant and like the disaster she is she shows up to this nice expensive place in her casual hoodie and jeans. They still let her in anyway because she’s Commander Shepard but it’s still a bit of a surprise. As she and Joker talk however they both soon realize that neither of them sent messages to each other to meet there and just then a woman named Maya Brooks, an Alliance Staff Analyst, rushes to their table, telling Shepard that there are people here to kill her specifically and have been hacking into her personal record and communication channels. Of course as Brooks tells them this, mercenaries attack the restaurant and after a confrontation the mercenaries end up shooting the glass floor below Shepard and send her falling down into the maintenance shafts. Down there she runs into more mercenaries and starts running out of bullets, relying heavily on her biotics to get her through. Eventually Garrus gets through to her after Joker filled him in on what happened and she meets up with him at a local car park. A shuttle arrives but it’s full of mercenaries rather than their ticket out, but before they are turning into swiss cheese Wrex comes jumping down from a platform above and destroys the shuttle, throwing Shepard an extra gun and Wrex, Shepard and Garrus all fight their way through the mercs to the shuttle that Joker has sent over and everyone gets on and out of there.
They all meet back up at Shepard’s apartment and there Brooks explains that someone had hacked into Shepard’s personal files and was attempting to gain access to her military passcodes. This would mean that these people want her dead so that she can’t interfere with their doings until it is too late. Luckily the gun that Wrex gave her can be traced to a local casino run by a man named Elijah Khan and getting to him might explain what is going on.

Thus these hooligans put on their best clothes (Shepard finally getting with the program) and they infiltrate the casino during its black tie event, making their way through mostly undetected and breaking into Khan’s office to find the man dead. Despite Khan’s untimely end, Brooks and EDI are able to pull information out of his records to find out that he did in fact hire the mercenaries- but only after being paid handsomely from an outside source. They return to the apartment to discuss this new development but right then Glyph, Liara’s personal VI, tells everyone that someone is using Shepard’s Spectre access code right now to get into the Citadel Archives, a top secret place that no ordinary person can get into. The entire team goes down there, with a few of Shepard’s crew on point with her and everyone else split into two support teams, and once they are in they discover that the leader of the mercs is none other than… Shepard?
Surprise surprise! It turns out that Cerberus, during the Lazarus project, grew a clone of Shepard so that if the real Commander needed any extra organs or limbs, the clone could be harvested. But once it became apparent that the real Shepard was gonna pull through, the Illusive Man abandoned the project. So now the clone is attempting to kill the real one to take over her life. Of course this leads into another big fight as the clone races into the Citadel archives to erase Shepard’s fingerprints and replace them with her own, but Shepard manages to pin her down. However before she can do anything more permanent, Brooks reveals herself a traitor who has been working for the clone and locks Shepard up inside of the archives and leaves her and her team for dead. Of course no one, not even another Shepard, should count the Commander out and she finds a way to get her and her team out, just in time to find that her clone is attempting to steal the Normandy and with the help of one of her disgruntled crew who the clone tried to fire, they break into the Normandy and fight. As they duke it out in the Normandy’s shuttle bay, both Shepards end up almost falling off the Normandy and hang onto the bay doors for dear life. Garrus and Liara rush to Shepard’s side, helping pull her up, but when the clone looks to Brooks for help she turns away. It’s then that the clone realizes what makes the real Shepard so special and despite the Commander trying to help her up and save her life, the clone states that she has nothing to live for and lets go of the door, falling miles and miles to her death below. With that resolved, Shepard arrests Brooks and she and her crew are able to get back to the shore leave that was promised.

And man, is it good. Shepard spends her time with her crew and gets to play games, dance on the Citadel, and she even gets some private moments with Garrus, meeting up with him at a bar and playfully roleplaying a first date. When Garrus starts to bungle up his lines he surprises his girlfriend with the knowledge that he’s been taking dance lessons on the side and the two tango across the dance floor to the delight of the patrons of the bar. The only way to top all of this personal happiness for her is to throw a huge party in her brand new apartment for all her friends; which is exactly what she does, living it up with her crew and enjoying those last few moments of calm and camaraderie before the storm.

All good things must come to an end however and the war isn’t over, so once she is rested Shepard gets ready to go to the Illusive Man’s base. Hackett contacts her and tells her that the Alliance is ready to commit but when they do, the Reapers will surely take notice and the Crucible will be vulnerable. This is the beginning of the final assault against Cerberus and the Reapers and with all of this in mind, Shepard says she is ready. As they make their way to the base, she and Garrus share one last night together but as she sleeps she dreams of the forest again and of the child along with the voices and shadows of those she couldn’t save. This dream, however, ends differently than the others: while the end was always the child dissolving into flame, this time she sees herself burning along with him.

The Alliance fleet gets a foothold in the system against Cerberus forces and Shepard and her crew are able to get inside, disabling Cerberus protocols and stopping them from venting the ship hangar and killing them all. With that secure, Shepard hacks a fighter and literally shoots a hole to let her get deeper into the compound. Thanks to EDI’s knowledge of Cerberus, she is able to tell Shepard that the location of the VI is within the central lab of the station, the most highly guarded area. As they make their way through, Shepard uncovers multiple consoles that reveal more information into Project Lazarus, the Cerberus project that revived her, as well as the Illusive Man’s descent into madness with implanting not only his troops with Reaper implants, but himself as well. She also discovers the prototype human Reaper that she killed back on the Collector Base; it seems that Cerberus managed to salvage it from the ruined remains of the base.
At long last, Shepard gets to the internal lab and the Illusive Man’s office, but when she arrives she finds that the man himself is nowhere to be found. He appears rather quickly though in the form of a holographic transmission and Shepard angrily interrogates him about the Catalyst and what it is. He refuses to tell her, stating that he is “done helping her” and once more Shepard tries to appeal to him and say that they need to work together to stop the Reapers. Once more the Illusive Man is not swayed and says that destroying the Reapers would be the worst mistake humanity has ever made. He asserts that once more Control is the only way to truly stop the Reapers and he cuts the connection, allowing EDI to access the Prothean VI.

Once Vendetta is summoned, very quickly it reveals that the Catalyst that Shepard has been searching for to activate the Crucible is actually the Citadel itself; someone way back in the many extinction cycles that have passed altered the Citadel so as to use the Reaper tech against them. With this new knowledge Shepard readies herself to run to the Citadel but Vendetta warns her that due to the Illusive Man fleeing to the Citadel, the Reapers now know their intentions and captured the Citadel, moving it to the one system they have almost complete control over: Sol, where Earth is located. Shepard tells EDI to send a message to Hackett to move their fleets to Earth, but just then Kai Leng shows up and he and Shepard battle bitterly. She defeats him but he attempts one last sneaky blow on her and she stabs him through, telling him that strike was for Thane. He dies and Shepard begins to make her way to the place of the final assault and her home: Earth.

She gets a message from Anderson and Shepard explains the situation. With this information Anderson now knows why the Reapers were preparing for something big in London where he is currently located, and Shepard agrees to meet him there to attempt to gain access to the Citadel and set off the Crucible to destroy the Reapers once and for all. Admiral Hackett gives out the order for all fleets to move in on Earth, and all of Shepard’s hard work has paid off: the turians, asari, krogan, geth and quarians, hell even the salarians have all come together with the Alliance fleet to make one last grand assault on the Reapers. They attack the Reapers in space to give those on Earth some measure to breathe to do something about the Citadel.
The Reapers closed the Citadel arms and made it impossible for the Crucible to dock, so Shepard has to make her way through London to this odd structure that the Reapers built that releases a beam that directly transports whatever is in it to the Citadel. Once inside she and whoever else makes it with her will need to access the Citadel controls and open the arms; once they are open, the Alliance will move the Crucible in to dock and they can wipe out the Reapers. To get this started however Shepard needs to take out the Reaper AA canons they have set up so that her forces can move in. It’s another long and brutal fight through the rubbles of London but she tears herself through the Reaper troops on the ground and explodes the AA guns, cutting a swath through the enemies to get out of there.

Upon extraction, Shepard finally runs into Anderson again and they share a brief hug at the reunion. The two discuss their chances and Anderson tells Shepard that they’re holding on but barely. There’s only one more forward base left of the Resistance and the Reapers are hitting it with everything they’ve got. Anderson then tells Shepard that he knows it was hard for her to leave, but there was no one else in the entire galaxy that could do what she did in bringing all of the species together to fight. Shepard says that it is good to be home, and they arrive at the forward base.

It’s another moment of calm and Shepard spends it talking to her teammates and sending messages to the crew that couldn’t come with her personally, checking in on them and saying her good byes. All of them wish her luck and Garrus in particular talks about them surviving the war and retiring somewhere nice and tropical. He grows more somber however and gives her an order: stay alive. They share a small kiss and Shepard promises him that if she goes first that she’ll always be watching over him.

Shepard makes her way over to Anderson and there she informs him that it’s time to attack. Anderson agrees and he goes over the plan once more; get through the heart of Reaper defense and Reaper controlled territory and get to the beam that will take them to the Citadel. What they need to do is get their tanks to take out the Destroyer Reaper that is guarding the beam since they can’t depend on any air support due to the Reapers jamming signals. Anderson tells Shepard that he is deploying her with the main bulk of the Resistance and to stay alive so that she can be part of the final push to the beam. He leaves her then to speak to her squad. She gives a rousing speech of their odds and their friendships and their bonds, and her team leaves inspired. Shepard and the crew she takes with her dive into hell once more.

It’s another brutal battle, one that takes Shepard through the sprawling ruins of London and fighting hundreds upon hundreds of enemies. But it works. She fights tooth and nail and the Destroyer is, for lack of a better term, destroyed, and she and her people get ready to make the final run to the beam. Unfortunately this attracts the attention of a few of the Reapers including Harbinger and they make their way towards Earth. Hackett moves the Crucible in place while the Reapers move, taking advantage of the opening, and Shepard makes her way over in a tank to get to the beam. The Reapers manage to stop her tank in its tracks however and so she and Anderson along with Garrus and Tali who she took with her are forced to run towards the beam on foot along with the other soldiers that have made it this far.

It’s a massacre. The Reaper beams lay waste to the oncoming tanks and obliterate any organic person they catch in their sights. As Shepard and her team gets close, the Reaper beams knock a tank into Garrus and Tali, injuring them severely. Shepard runs back for them, calling the Normandy for evacuation. The Normandy makes its way in and Shepard forces her squad onto the ship, even as Garrus struggles to stay behind. “We’re in this until the end!” he says and Shepard tells him that “[…] no matter what happens here, you know I will always love you.” After a moment’s hesitation he tells her that he loves her too and allows himself to be taken onto the Normandy. Shepard then returns to running to the beam alone as the Normandy barely avoids getting lacerated by the Reaper’s attacks. Shepard, on the other hand, gets hit and knocked unconscious.
There’s no way to tell how long she is out after this hit. But when she wakes her armor has been burnt off her body, her weapons are gone, and her senses are dulled. All she has is a spare pistol she picks up from one of the numerous dead bodies lying around her. Vaguely she can hear the distant sounds of Alliance command calling for a retreat but, bloody, limping and stumbling, she pushes on towards the beam and takes out the husks and other Reaper enemies blocking her way. She makes it.

The beam takes her to the Citadel as it was supposed to, but the Citadel is a grisly sight; everyone who had been on board when the Reaper took it have been slaughtered, their bodies piled around the place as the Keepers, the aliens who tend to the station, attempt to clean up. Anderson contacts her over a personal comm and informs Shepard that he followed her up, though they didn’t land in the same place inside the Citadel. They both get moving, Shepard making her way through the destroyed Citadel and trying to find Anderson. It seems that they are the only two that made it this far. This section of the Citadel they are in is unlike anything they have seen before and Anderson pushes ahead when he sees some kind of control panel. When he does however his communication cuts off and Shepard makes her way to wherever his last location was.
She finds him at the control panel he spoke of but something is terribly wrong. His movements are stilted and he grits out that he can’t fight. Right then from behind her the Illusive Man walks up, finally in person, his face corrupted and overrun with Reaper tech. The Illusive Man tells Shepard that he warned her, that Control was the only way to survival, and that he’ll control her if he has to, to ensure it. His Reaper tech lets him exert control over Shepard and Anderson, freezing them both in their tracks as they desperately try to fight it off. The Illusive Man forces Shepard to raise her gun at Anderson and Shepard, for the last time, tries to convince him that he has been indoctrinated and that his plans are all for naught. Anderson backs her up, saying that there is always another way and that the only salvation there is to be had is in Destroying the Reapers once and for all. The Illusive Man flexes his powers to demonstrate the power of the Reapers and forces Shepard to shoot Anderson in the chest. Shepard tells the Illusive Man that he’s lying to himself; that he could never control the Reapers because the Reapers are already controlling him. The Illusive Man’s resolve begins to crack and Shepard tells him that it’s not too late. If he lets them go, she and Anderson can do what must be done. He rails against them, attempting to convince himself that he isn’t the Reaper’s pawn but her words get through to him. There is only one way for him to break free of the Reaper’s hold and he takes it; he removes the gun from Anderson’s belt and shoots himself in the head and falls down dead.

Without the Illusive Man’s control holding him up Anderson collapses and Shepard limps to the control panel and opens the arms of the Citadel, allowing the Crucible to dock. Her job finally done, she sits down next to Anderson and they look out over Earth. The two tired and dying soldiers talk. What else is there to do when the job is done? Anderson tells her that she did good. That he’s proud of her. She thanks him but when she looks over to him… he’s gone. Bleeding out with no hope of getting off the station for medical help, Shepard sits back and waits for death to take her.

But death never comes easy for a woman like her and Hackett’s voice comes clear and true through the control panel. Shepard immediately pulls herself up and Hackett informs her that the Crucible isn’t firing. Whatever is wrong with it seems to be on her end. She crawls her way to the console, unsure of what is causing the problem and then faints from the exertion.

When she wakes, she is in a completely new area of the Citadel, a place with a giant green beam and two giant energy pylons, one red, one blue. Energy in the shape of the child that she has been dreaming about appears to her and tells her that this place is its home. It reveals itself as the Catalyst, the thing that Shepard has been seeking all this time. In continuing to talk to it, the Catalyst reveals itself as The Intelligence that the Leviathans made many eons ago. The Reapers are its creation and its solution to the problem of synthetic life always wiping out organic life. The harvest is to preserve advanced organic life and turn it into a Reaper, leaving the younger, more primitive organic life to grow. And so on and so forth. But Shepard’s presence here, the first organic to ever make it this far, means that its solution will no longer work.

So it presents Shepard with three choices: She can Destroy the Reapers and wipe out all synthetic life in the galaxy, including the geth and her squadmate EDI. It will end the war but the Catalyst warns her that all this will do is delay the inevitable; her species’ children will one day build synthetic life and that synthetic life will rebel and kill its creators, just like it always has in the past. She can also attempt to control the Reapers, seizing Control of their processes and moving them to her will. This action will kill her, uploading her consciousness into a Reaper and she will not be herself anymore. The final solution that the Catalyst offers her is one called Synthesis; If Shepard adds her energy to the Crucible, everything that she is will be absorbed and then sent out into the galaxy, combining all synthetic and organic life into a new stage of life and evolution. This will bring peace to the galaxy and end the cycle, but at the cost of her life and it would be fundamentally changing everything in the galaxy forever.

It’s a tough choice to make. The Catalyst steps away and lets her choose. And while she feels that the Reapers deserve to die for what they have done, if it means the eventual destruction of life again, she can’t go through with it. She also knows that she can’t be trusted with the ultimate power of controlling the Reapers. Therefore, she chooses the only option she has left; Synthesis. With the last of her strength, Shepard runs towards the beam, throwing herself into the energy of the Crucible and is absorbed, her essence spread across the galaxy and her story finally over.

At least, that’s what she thought, until she woke up again on the beaches of a mysterious world, a life after death waiting for her…