Part 20: Tuchanka. Doom. Krogan planet.
Tuchanka. Doom. Krogan planet.In today's episode the goal is to cure the genophage, NBD. At some point a reaper has shown up (you'd think that even with their crappy infrastructure somebody would've gotten a message to Wrex, but whatevs). On our way out the door the pissy Salarian old lady tries to talk us into sabotaging everything. We're absolutely not fucking going to do that, but there is a case for it which I will explain shortly.
Upon landing there's immediately some shit going down Krogan style, with Wrex's half brother making an appearance. If Wrex doesn't survive 1 he's the fill-in for Wrex in 2 and 3 here. He's aggressive and fairly stupid, not someone you would want to have in charge if you're actually planning on curing the genophage as he would absolutely seek revenge and basically make all the shitty things people say about the Krogan be correct. Between us, Wrex, and Eve however we get everyone placated and ready to do what needs to be done. On the way over there's a literal speedbump and so we have to come up with an alternate plan. Also we end up in a combination of ancient Egypt and Mayan culture, apparently how baller the Krogan were until they fucked it up.
All this activity has pissed off a local resident. Kalros, "The mother of all thresher maws." Eve has a completely insane plan to take care of the reaper, involving summoning
And let's talk about this setpiece, shall we? I'm a big ol' Dune nerd and while thresher maws have always kinda been a sandworm knockoff, they drop the pretense here and go full on Herbert with it. And it's awesome. Watching Kalros fuck up that dumb babby reaper for the first time was pretty jaw-dropping. Take that, inscrutable immortal machine! I just hope she doesn't have too much trouble passing it
The collision does damage to the Shroud and Mordin will have to go up there to fix it. He knows it's a one-way trip and gladly goes anyway. Now if you are a terrible, terrible person and decide to fuck the Krogan, you will have to shoot him to stop him. His VA does an excellent job, I suggest watching it on YT. I said that there's a case for it, and this would be the circumstance: if Wreav is the guy in charge and you didn't save Maelon's cure, then Eve dies during the synthesis. There's nobody around to put the brakes on Wreav doing stupid shit and you can convince Mordin that having fertile resentful Krogan running around would be the destruction of their species so he goes along with it. If Wrex is around and you fuck it up, he does find out later and it doesn't go over well to say the least.
I'm a jaded bitter asshole, but I cried when I first played this. Mordin's little song being cut off, then the cure dispersing to the original theme was a real gut punch. Whatever problems ME3 has Patrick Weekes fucking nailed the writing on this arc.
Then we gotta sit through another stupid dream sequence, but at least the addition of dead crew voices lends it some weight. Kid can still eat shit. Afterwards we hear from the Salarian Councilor that Udina is up to some weird shit so we'll have to go meet him at the Citadel to see what's up.