Welcome to the lab today, where Lisa Fox is visiting us again and sharing about her love for Mass Effect

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My Mass Effect Romance

Hi everyone! It’s great to be here again on Silver Phoenix Labs. Thank you for having me over, Sara.

Let me just start this whole thing off by saying two things. One: THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE. Two: If it were possible, Wrex would have been my man in the trilogy. I loved him – LOVED HIM – and given the chance, I would have had many Krogan/Human babies with him.

That said, I liked Kaidan a lot when I first met him in ME1. He was attractive, a bit of a goody-goody, but he had a sense of humor. I liked to take him along on missions and he was often my voice of morality in a lot of ways. When the flirtation options came up, I happily chose them and fully enjoyed the banter.

And then Kaidan opened up to me. We talked, really talked, and I learned about him and his past. I didn’t judge. I wasn’t that kind of paragon. He was an honorable man who made mistakes. I was very taken with him.

Mass Effect ended and I was happy and excited to see where this whole Kaidan thing would go. I started ME2 and promptly died—spaced while saving my crew—and now it was two years later and I was stuck with these people who were part of a shady organization. Life had changed.

I was excited to see Tali when she popped up, even more excited to get Garrus back. And then the moment I had been waiting for arrived.

Kaidan was on Horizon.

When he came around that corner and hugged me, I thought the love was real. But then he started talking. One of the first things he said was that he “loved” me. Past tense. I had just spent the last two years DEAD and he was bitching because I didn’t call him. He told me that he’d moved on, spoke about betrayal.

And then he walked away.

I was hurt and very pissed off. Did he really not know me? Did he really think I was just some mindless pawn? And then I got that email from him, all feeble and full of maybes and I don’t knows. I was mad, but I still reminded loyal, mostly because nobody else really appealed to me all that much. I played the entire game with his picture firmly up on my desk. I looked at it before embarking on the suicide mission.

Then ME3 began and the whole world was at stake. I was still kind of pissed at Kaidan, but I have to be real honest here, that first time I saw him again, I felt a twinge. Seriously. All kidding and role-playing aside, it was good to see him. I was ready to make him mine again.

And then we got to Mars. We had barely begun our mission, and he was all over me about Cerberus, giving my attitude, asking me over and over again if I was involved with them even after I said that I was not. I didn’t like it, but I let it slide. Until we got to the tram station and he found that dead solider and he turned to me and said, “Is this what they did to you?”

Wait, WHAT?

That was the very last straw. He was seriously looking me dead in my face and asking me if I was some kind of Cerberus husk.

No more. Just no more.

I stopped the game right there, put ME2 back in, and played it again. This time I chose Garrus.

Garrus had always been there for me. When I had my little confrontation on Horizon with Kaidan, Garrus had my back. He had my back in every situation, he never hesitated to tell me straight-up just how shit was going, and mostly importantly, he was my friend.

But that was also the problem, the reason why I didn’t choose Garrus when I had the chance the first time around. He was my friend, my brother-in-arms. He was great on the battlefield, my automatic go-to man, but when it came to flirtation, he was shy, hesitant, and that’s not really my type. I was skeptical about my choice even when I set things in motion with him in my replay of ME2. Was Garrus really the one for me?

When he came to my cabin, he was awkward and cute and I was charmed. And then he looked at me and said, “I just want something to go right. Just once…” That’s when I fell totally in love with Garrus Vakarian. Because, really, isn’t that what we all want? For something special to just go right.

And then I got to ME3 again. Again I saw Kaidan, and again I felt a little something. I brushed it aside though because I knew what was coming. Kaidan was the past and this time, I told him so.

When I got to Palaven and got Garrus again, I knew that I had made the right choice. Because Garrus was happy to see me. Our conversation on the Normandy was the polar opposite of my talk with Kaidan. Garrus wanted to continue what we started, he was ready to fight the Reapers, be my ally, and be my lover. With Garrus, I had mutual respect, comfort, safety, and absolute trust. That scene with him on top of the Presidium was so awesome—I even let him think he was a better shot than me. And the Citadel DLC was even more awesome.

I do want to go back into the games to play as Male Shepard and romance Liara. I think that would be a lot of fun. I’d romance Tali too, but I think that she might be too nice for me. As a female I like to play it paragon, but as a man, I’d be renegade all the way.

Who was your love(s) in Mass Effect? Did you stay true or did you move on?