Ladar scans do not detect any hull breaches on the side facing us. I detect no mass field effect distortions. It appears the drive core is offline.
Wow. This doesn't look like a trap at all. Seriously guys, no combats here!
Never seen a ship like this before.
Looks like a giant insect hive.
Yeah the avatars look funny. Grunt's wearing a full armored mask, Miranda opted for a clear breather mask.
Penetrating scans have detected an access node to uplink with Collector databanks. Marking location to your hardsuit computers.
Maybe the defense towers softened it for the turians.
Maybe the missing humans are on it. Unless they're dead.
Small, like my tank. Bet they begged for mercy.
More horrors.
Lots of dead meat.
They could have been used for testing. If they were a control group, they would have been discarded at the end of the experiment.
They're dead. Nothing we can do. Keep moving.
Huh. Is that a dead Collector?
That's a Collector. Were they experimenting on one of their own?
EDI, I'm uploading the data from this terminal. See if you can figure out what they were up to.
Data received. Analyzing. The Collectors were running baseline genetic comparisons between their species and humanity.
Are they looking for similarities?
I have no hypothesis on their motivations. All I have are the preliminary results. They reveal something remarkable. A quad-strand genetic structure, identical to traces collected from ancient ruins. Only one race is known to have this structure: The Protheans.
That's a big mindfuck. To those who are not in the loop. Protheans are races who fought the geth 50,000 years ago (Or so they say). They lost and left behind beacons for people like Shepard to discover as warnings. It is said they were rendered extinct after many were either killed or enslaved.
The Vigil AI, hidden in Ilos, told Shepard that enslaved Protheans were left to mindless deaths after the Reapers finished stripping the galaxy clean of any resources. With this revelation, however, it is entirely possible that the Reapers had taken a small sample of the Protheans and changed them completely into the Collectors. But 50,000 is a long time, so I don't really know when they started popping out. Bioware's master of smoke and mirrors. Pulling out a huge gap of years, 50,000 years. Huh. Let's leave it at that.
I thought the Protheans vanished 50,000 years ago! I can't believe the species still exist.
These are no longer Protheans, Shepard. Their genes show distinct signs of extensive genetic rewrite. The Reapers have repurposed them to suit their needs.
We can start guessing why they wanted Humans now. Maybe a genetic rewrite, but at a colony-scale abduction? Hmmm. Something bigger perhaps.
You'd think somebody would have picked up on this.
No one has had an opportunity to study a Collector genetic code in this detail. I have already matched two thousands alleles to recorded fragments. This Collector likely descends from a Prothean colony in the Styx Theta Cluster.
I wouldn't want to live as some kind of mutated slave. Killing a Collector is probably doing it a favor.
Much like shooting Saren did.
Whatever they used to be, the Collectors work for the Reapers now. And we still have to stop them.
They're not doing to us what they did to the Protheans.
A stack of arsenal lies nearby, god knows why Shepard decided to take one from it and suddenly gain a weapons expertise he doesn't already have. Swell writing, Bioware. Why can't they have those in Dragon Age, too?
I already have Pistol & SMG. I can unlock either Assault Rifle, Shotgun or Sniper. There's pros and cons to each, but I definitely skip the Shotgun altogether. Despite its devastating power at close range, we're playing in Insanity, the clip size's too small and close range is an undesirable trait.
Sniper Rifle packs a punch when used correctly. 2-3 shots to the head ought to kill most non bosses, however the Assault Rifle trumps this by being the versatile all-rounder. With a 3-shot burst, it provides the Sentinel class with a good medium to long range weapon since the Tempest SMG can be very hard to control at long range engagements.
The heavily upgraded Pistol qualifies as amini-sniper and doesn't have any recoil at all, so it's totally fine to skip the Sniper.
Look--on the ceiling. More of those strange pods.
Hundreds. How many are full?
Too many.
I detected no life signs in the pods, Shepard. It is probably the victims inside died when the ship lost primary power.
Commander. You gotta hear this. On a hunch, I asked EDI to run an analysis on the ship.
I compared the EM Profile against the data recorded by the original Normandy two years ago. They are an exact match.
!!!!!!!!!!!
The same ship dogging me for two years? Way beyond coincidence.
Something doesn't add up, Commander. Watch your back.
We went in further and discovered a huge collection of empty pods.
That's...big.
They could take every human in the Terminus systems and not have enough to fill these pods. They're going to target Earth.
Not it we stop them.
There -- on the platform. Looks like some kind of control panel.
Should be dead Collectors. Something's wrong.
Data mine in progress, Shepard.
I knew it.
What the hell just happened?
Major power surge. Everything went dark, but we're back up now.
Shadows skitter on the topside.
Shepard, it was not a malfunction. :ackbar: This was a trap.
To be continued....
Too bad Male Shep didn't have any male bonding moments.
