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Submit Your Comment On Mass Effect 1 For The Deepest Dive (Patreon)

Published:
2021-05-31 15:15:01
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

We're creating the best, most thorough discussion about Mass Effect 1 on the internet and we need your help! The panelists are Ben Hanson, voice actor Sarah Elmaleh, former Game Informer Joe Juba, and Leo Vader!

You can unlock the podcast version of the first discussion by supporting MinnMax at the $5 tier, or you can watch the YouTube version here - https://youtu.be/hDpNBd9mfO0

For this week's discussion, we're covering the middle of Mass Effect 1. We're talking Artemis Tau, Feros, Noveria, and the side-quests. Basically everything before Virmire. Please do not spoil anything beyond that point.

Submit a comment below and please get specific. Don't write a long review, please keep your one comment to around the length of a tweet. We want to get to as many comments as possible. Let's get specific, submit a comment about your favorite character moment, hallway, combat ability. The more specific you are, the higher the odds of us reading your comment during the discussion. We'll finish collecting comments on Tuesday morning.

For your own reference, here's the schedule for the rest of The Deepest Dive...

June 7th - Virmire/Finale

You can watch us record The Deepest Dive live on Tuesday evening at 5pm Central if you're at the $10 Backstage Pass tier on Patreon. The link will be in the Backstage Pass tier on the Discord. Thanks for your support.

Files

Comments

TommenDotGif

Did anyone else get offended that the hanar on Noveria only offers you 250 credits to smuggle something for them, even though I just bought a gun for 400,000? Capitalism, ugh, am I right?

Joe Kafchinski

I drive to my third monkey colony, chasing down some USB stick that I'm sure Admiral Hackett explained was very important, but I can't for the life of me remeber why. As I exit the Mako, I accidentally hit the button to draw my weapons. In the best random combat bark in videogame history, Garrus exclaims, "kill 'em all!" You have no idea how much I want to, Garrus.

Isaac Cynova

Exploring the worlds in the Mako is what I love about ME1. I remember in the past looking at points on the map and thinking “Nope. That’s going to be too hard and long of a drive to find a way to that little waypoint. Screw it.” Now, with the booster it’s so much easier to just jet around, climb, and really see what these maps have to offer. I love the skylines in some of the planets, and even though it’s 2007 empty video game exploration, it really succeeds in making the game feel “Big.”

Shameless Twitch

I spent an embarassing amount of time (by which I mean >0) one night seeing if I could get the Mako to land upside down and stay that way. The closest I got was about a ten second long upside down skid down mountain and across a flat basin before the little guy flipped itself right side up again. Also, all I can think of when driving the Mako around a new planet is that it's basically just a 3d version of Moon Patrol from the 80s.

Isaac Cynova

Trying to fight multiple Krogan at once can be the most frustrating thing on the harder difficulty levels. They hit like a truck, and they survive my sniper rifle shots. How rude!

Emo Seal

Does anyone else feel like the romance stuff is a bit rushed? This is my first playthrough, and 2-3 conversations in with both Kaiden and Liara, they wanted to confess their feelings for me. Kaiden even told me I'd given him mixed signals! I'm not sure if the game expects you to check in with people less often or not exhaust dialogue options every time you get the chance, but I didn't feel like I'd bonded with either of them enough to put up with awkward dating or sex scenes, so I ended up turning them both down. Maybe I'm just overthinking it, but I'm good with being a strong independent single Shepard who doesn't hook up with her crew mates.

Isaac Cynova

I love the “hard” sci fi storytelling in ME1. Like the short side missions where the crew or a space cruiser got killed, and you have to find out why, or the colony turns into zombies. Even the horror elements of the Geth turning people into zombies or the Thorian are so cool and unique experiences in the Mass Effect universe. I’m really glad to have the opportunity to play them all again.

Shameless Twitch

This is my first time playing Mass Effect and am absolutely loving the legendary edition. I recently played Outer Worlds and am enjoying this so much more. The one thing I do not get, particularly from a game design perspective, is how a player is to know which weapons to use other than using the roman numeral beside it and how much damage per second it does as guidance. I get there is also heat and accuracy but I haven't found that to be significant and can't tell if there is anything else I'm missing about it.

Denham Harry

I've played ME1 maybe 5 times before but I had never found the Prothean Neanderthal ball before! Insane! I'm also interested to know if anyone else annihilated those ugly alien monkeys on Eletania, just to ease my conscience.

Nic Fontaine

One of the many great nuggets of Mass Effect 1 is the hidden dialogue and minor changes you can stumble upon when you do certain quests later on in the game. Specifically, if you were to go to Therum in the Artemis Tau cluster to find Liara T'soni AFTER completing both Feros and Noveria, by the time you get to her she believes Shepard to be a hallucination since she had apparently been trapped for a longer period of time. I love hidden nuggets like this and found myself replaying the game (when it first released in 2007) just to see if I could find other fun hidden stuff. Any hidden moments that you've found that stuck with you?

G-Max Thoeren

The first time you go to that world map, and it takes like 4 or 5 zoom-outs to see the entire galaxy is *chef's kiss.* Was a little annoyed by how long the load times still are for traveling between systems - but I think it's totally worth it for the sense of scale the game creates. Even though it's only a few seconds, it sort of creates the feeling of going to another place, like "oh, let me just scan these last couple planets while I'm in this system." Also have enjoyed reading through the descriptions of planets, stuff like the capital of the moon being called "Armstrong" makes for an interesting tidbit.

Geoff Enright

Hello Delvers! Playing on PS3 port, I finished the last half and most of combat for the Noveria main quest completely shorthanded because of some sort of glitch! My renegade FemShep decided to enter the restricted area and triggered an adversarial reaction, so I had to fight my way to Matriarch Benezia through the private security. The glitch happened as soon as I opened the locked door with two auto turrets and somehow Wrex was gone! In the weapon/skill radial menus he showed as "blocked" the entire rest of the mission! I did find Wrex eventually though, the lazy bastard was waiting for me back on the Normandy.

The Pattycake (Patrick H.)

People really threw too much shade at the Mako back in the day. Even with the OG controls I enjoyed exploring different worlds, and each world felt visually distinct. Now the worlds look screenshot-worthy thanks to the remaster. Bring back the Mako!

Joshua Stidger

This is now my eighth time playing Mass Effect 1, the first four times I played alone and this is the fourth time that I'm playing with my Wife, in which she makes all of the critical decisions in the story and I'm still loving this game! Anyways this time she wanted me to do the money exploit and the Renegade/Paragon exploit to max out on both and get the best equipment possible before leaving the Citadel and they where both worth doing, it's made the game a lot more of a relaxing run not having to worry about getting to certain levels in Renegade or Paragon to have your options open to you and having the best gear makes it so I am in my inventory the least I ever have been in any playthrough of Mass Effect 1, so definitely worth it. A couple of glitches I hit that I didn't remember from my other runs and possibly it has to do with the Legendary Edition. One was that Wrex completely disappeared from my party for the final battle in the Asteroid X57 side mission, so it was just Shepard and Tali against the world at that point, but they made it through. The second was where Shepard would get stuck facing forward, this happened in the Benezia fight and a couple other times, each time it seemed to fix itself after about five seconds, but still a pretty strange glitch. The last thing I want to mention is the addition of the Mako booster on the back end makes a world of difference. On the geometry of those planets you could easily get slowed down to a crawl as you try to make it over a mountain and now the booster makes it easily 10 times faster traversing that horrible geometry. So definitely a good thing they added that in and pretty wild to think that they could have easily had that in back in 2007 but just didn't think about it. Thanks for doing this Deepest Dive, looking forward to the next part!

Isaac Cynova

Was there any reason in particular they took out “jumping” in combat? I don’t miss it really, I just notice not having to climb around looking for loot anymore really. Also, anybody else miss flying around the solar systems in the dumb little ship icon? Or just me?

Joshua Duperoy

Was anyone else bummed out with the way the side mission with Garrus and Dr. Saleon played out? I decided to let him live telling Garrus that it was important to bring him in to question him about his recent activities to which Garrus eventually agrees is the right choice. However, as soon as the dialog cutscene ended the good doctor immediately turned around and started running prompting my squad, and I amidst the confusion, to shoot and kill him. Garrus laments that he dies anyways to which Shepard merely responds that we can’t control what people do after we’ve made our decision or something like that.

SpaceTowel

Ontarom has “shifty looking cows” - that’s it, that’s the comment

Jon G

I love the detail that whenever Shepard leaves the Normandy there is a voice message stating Pressly is in command…just a small detail that makes the world feel more lived in.

BeatenDownBrian

So this is my first time playing, and I'm curious if the speech you give before first heading out the Normandy was a stand out point back in the day? Admittedly, it's a little cornball, but I'd also be lying if I said it didn't totally work on me. After the somewhat slow start of the Citadel, it made me feel like my adventure was truly starting in ernest.

Troy Ellison

On thing I liked about this section was the citadel newscast. Any time I returned to the citadel the elevator newscast would occasionally report on my actions in the game. I did a sidequest involving taking down a cult led by a former alliance officer, and the next time I visited I heard a report about the aftermath of that mission. I felt it was a good world building technique to see my actions kinda ripple back to other parts of the galaxy

ProcyonNumber6

Hey Deepest Divers, Do you think if Mass Effect would have beat Halo out the gate we would all be die hard fans of the Mako instead of the Warthog? I figured I had let social media and the internet ruin my memory of the Mako but nope, it's really that bad to drive. Also shout out to the Kaidan Alenko gang, best dialogue in this section was when he compares the Prothean Ruins to the tile floor in a bathroom!

Josh64

Hey all! I really appreciate how BioWare took narrative when considering some of the enemy encounters. For example, the side mission “Asari Diplomacy” has you go on a mission for a Asari politician to rescue her sister from a space pirate slave ring. When you get to the pirate base, there’s a wide variety of enemies, a few humans, Turians, salarains, and one Asari who’s name reads as “Asari Slaver” with no other Asari in sight. It’s in this moment you realize that the politician lied to you to get you to kill her sister because she was being blackmailed and feared for her status on the Citadel. I wasn’t sure if there was more stuff like that, but I thought that little touch was super cool.

Sandshrewd

This stretch is where it went from a solid game to an all time great for me. When I landed on my first side mission world, all I could think about was how cool it would be if there were aggressive native species we had to fight. Cue to 10 minutes later when a Thresher Maw burst out of the ground (scaring the hell out of me), and slaughtered my team. I know the worlds are mostly barren rocky hellscapes, but this little experience blew my mind back in 2007.

Knobby Buckles (Dave)

Who the $#@& is Banes?! Did I miss a whole side quest about this dude? So driving the Mako is more fun than I expected. I felt like I was riding a horse in Skyrim trying to scale some of those cliffs - if you boost for just a second at a time, it feels like you get more momentum than holding it until it runs out Holy crap the first Thresher Maw scared the BEEJESUS out of me! It was late, I was playing in the dark, and I was getting sleepy, then BAM! Giant space lizard/worm thing utterly destroys me. Fighting them wasn't very fun, but that first appearance was great. I think I missed the Mako at one point on Feros... I had to fight some of the large Geth Armitures on foot, while "running" about ten miles down a highway. Once I got to the end, a cutscene starts with me jumping out of the Mako... Oops. I couldn't bring myself to kill the rachni queen, but I don't think I should have had to let it go. That should have been a decision for the council, not a single Spectre.

Taylor Hemphill

When making choices are you guys thinking about the trilogy as a whole and what effect they will have? Like with the Rachni Queen i remembered what happens in Mass Effect 3 with her and on Feros I remember a side quest in Mass Effect 2 that has to do with Feros. What choices did you make on Feros with the Asari after you killed the Thorian and what did you do with the Rachni Queen?

Mitchy

After spending my first couple of hours having no idea why everyone hated Ashley so much, I now know why... Holy cow, what an a-hole

Avo_Cadeo

The Paragon line to Joker to be evacuated from Therum, "On the double, mister!" Sounds super out of place compared to basically every other line of dialogue in the game, especially when dealing with other Alliance personnel. Also I forgot how short these planets really are. It felt like there was maybe one opportunity for a choice-driven sidequests on each planet, but other than that they were basically a straight path to the end.

Kate Bishop

The Thorian mission is always one of my least favorite missions every time I play this game and it all comes down to the part where you have to use the nerve grenades on the colonists. Even if you've gotten the grenade upgrades to max your capacity, you still have to aim and detonate them at the exact perfect spot in order to knock out the colonists and if you miss or run out, you're forced to kill them, even if you've run right past them. It always frustrates me so I try to get that mission out of the way asap.

Erin T.

Hey Nor-Minn-dy-Max...ers? So...how did the Mako end up in the garage on Noveria? And furthermore, why does Shepard - a Spectre, who can go anywhere, do anything, or shoot anyone who gets in the way - go through all the trouble of getting involved with shady locals to obtain a garage pass when the Normandy could just fly right over the building and drop the Mako directly onto the road outside of the garage? Hell, why not just drop the Mako at the front door of the Peak 15 facility? C'mon Shepard, act like a dang Spectre!

Tommy Carver-Chaplin

Although so many of the other world side quests are mostly forgettable, and the Mako navigation absolutely sucks on planets that are especially mountainous, I loved exploring the different planets purely because some of the skies were beautiful. Different colours, suns and the thought put into each planet made me just spend a lot of time looking up.

Jalopy Slow

When first set loose on the galaxy we’re introduced to an excellent piece of game design; the galaxy map. What could have been a flat drawing or a boring menu of missions is instead a layered and interactive expanse that increases the games’ sense of scale enormously. Then there’s the satisfying process of reading your quest to see what cluster and system you need to go to as the relays fling you across the Milky Way towards planets that each have their own identity. It goes a long way to make the player feel like they’re in the boots of Commander Shepard and in control of The Normandy. I don’t think I even need to mention the map music cuz it’s playing in your head right now.

Interrotta

I really love Feros. I think the way BioWare slowly reveals the Thorian to you is brilliant. You land on the planet, and after talking to a few people, they act kinda odd but that could be just cause they’re under a lot of stress. Then you uncover more and find out that the colonists don’t realize what’s going on, but that some company is using them as guinea pigs to see the effects of this alien creature on humans and realize why the colonists might’ve been acting so odd.

infinitesoup

I am the only one thinking I'm doing the side Mako sections wrong? I feel like I have to Skyrim my way up mountains to get to some of these question marks.

Maniac

I love how when scanning seemingly random planets there is a surprising amount of lore. One has a Bermuda triangle esque reputation with rumors of nanobot swarms destroying ships and probes that enter its atmosphere. Another, Klendagon, has a rift valley covering half a hemisphere, and scans indicate a "glancing blow" from a mass accelerator round 37 million years prior. When landing on the moon you can look up and see the gouge. Lore like that, with no game consequences, just add to how this universe is massive and ancient. Existing long before any of the citadel races, protheans or even the reapers.

Clemens Zobel

your squad mates exist on a paragon / renegade scale, which affects their dialogue during paragon / renegade choices. the squad mate with the higher paragon score will advocate for the paragon choice, and vice versa with the more renegade mate. from most paragon to most renegade, i believe the scale is kaidan, liara, tali, garrus, ashley, wrex. this can lead to some interesting scenarios, like space racist ashley advocating for sparing the rachni queen if wrex is in party. kaidan, ashley and garrus can move around on the scale depending on dialogue choices. i had a playthrough where liara was more paragon than kaidan cause kaidan ninja romanced me and was jealous i was romancing liara. i set things straight and i guess that bumped him back up cause later liara had some pretty ruthless things to say on a quest decision i've even heard tale of making ashley / kaidan more renegade than wrex, can you imagine wrex dialogue advocating for paragon choices?

Shawn Mills

My favorite part of Mass Effect is talking with the crew in between missions. I especially enjoyed Joker's back story and the reveal that he has a rare condition called Vrolik's Syndrome that makes it so his bone structure is hollow and brittle. There's something interesting about the idea of an ace pilot who can't physically move his legs. Of course my renegade Shephard immediately warned him not to infect the rest of the crew when he confessed his condition to me.

David Dillinger (yojimbodjd)

First time playing and I was surprised to get romance dialog from Liara right after her mother’s death. I’m curious who everyone will pursue as a love interest or will you remain a bachelor/bachelorette?

Downtown

Anyone notice how much darker the Feros colony seems in the Legendary Edition compared to the original? It think it was the only visual update I wasn't thrilled with.

RiskyChrisP

Did anyone else think it was weird that you have the option to agree to not be let out of that containment zone in Noveria when you go to make the cure if you come back with an anomaly? I know it would never actually happen, but it’s odd that the “good” dialogue choice in that scenario could have led to Shephard condemning himself and his team to just rot away in that cell.

ComplementaryWater

I can't stand Noveria and Feros BOTH ending with a big, nasty alien using telekinesis to speak to Shepard through an Asari commando that worked for Matriarch Benezia. There's "technically a reason for this" explained later, but c'mon Bioware: how many more big psychic bugs are out there waiting to use me like a megaphone? And why can I save the Rachni but not the Thorian?

Zephyr

Just writing in to say Ben and the other cohorts on this Deepest Dive should do a little show-and-tell of their custom Shepards! The agency they give you with character customization and choice is such a unique, special thing with this series, we want to see what you came up with!

wawa

This is my first time playing Mass Effect. The galaxy map is super cool. I really enjoyed reading about each planet and trying to imagine what they are like. One that stood out to me described the planet being made of mostly water and being similar to the hanar homeworld. I thought that was really cool and made a lot of sense. Reading about the planets reminded me a lot of the astronomy class I took during college and I thought, "Wow, it would be so awesome if they had our own solar system and planets!" I told my boyfriend and he said, "Just wait and see."

MouseRat

I just want you to know that because of the Deepest Dive I can't look at Garrus anymore without thinking of the phrase "Cricket Dick"

Yarrow

Last time you guys talked about cool spinoff Mass Effect games, and after reading some of the codex entries on the Salarian Special Task Group, they would make a cool Splinter Cell style stealth game. They discuss carrying out missions on "shoestring resources" so having that element of a trying to get by with little and infiltrating rogue operations could make for an interesting game!

Taylor Owens

I had ordered the squad not to hurt the brainwashed colonists on Feros, but Ashley shot a man to death as he lay helpless on the ground anyway. I think one of my stray bullets hit him while he was swirling with some enemies in a singularity, and apparently that told the squadmates he was a target. So Ashley finished him off before he could get back up - as I looked on in horror.

Zach E

On Noveria, I went directly to the Hot Labs after talking with Captain Ventralis. Turns out, if you go to the Hot Labs first, Ventralis becomes hostile and you don't have the option to talk with the survivors in the Mess Hall. While I feel like I missed out, I also think this kind of branching gameplay rewards multiple playthroughs.

The Diddler

Are you actually making choices or are you just making choices based on your paragon / renegade points? I think that is the biggest flaw of the game. I'm not even looking at the options.

Mike Po

One of my favorite ways to play Mass Effect 1 is to use as many biotic powers as possible. When they're all fully leveled and you can fire off Lift, Throw, Singularity, and Warp back to back, together with Liara's versions of those abilities, enemies just fly all over the place. The tech abilities pale in comparison. Why sabotage when you can Lift?!

Luca Rescigno

The combat barks in this game are just horrific. "Enemies everywhere" "I will destroy you" "You must die" "Go go go" nonstop in every encounter.

Jacob Schmidt

On Noveria I helped Parasini (the undercover agent) to arrest Anoleis. She apparently spent years undercover, but after she puts Anoleis in handcuffs, she throws everything away by not properly reading his miranda rights! Instead opting for the sick burn of "You have the right to remain silent, and right now I wish you would use it."