Me: So, do you have any idea what the plot of this game is?

Mom: No.

Me: You have no clue about who you’re fighting or what your goals are.

Mom: Well my GOAL is to kill Miranda.

Me: That’s not really what I meant.

Mom: Then no, I haven’t got the slightest clue.

Me: Okay, well the main bad guys are called the Reapers, and—

Mom: Are you really going to waste time telling me?

Me: Well I—

Mom: Because you shouldn’t.

Me: Fine.

Mom plays around on Facebook as the Collectors gather up the colonists, and Harbinger possesses a drone to oversee the operation. We land on the planet and begin battling our way through the Collector troops.

Jack: Die, bitch!

Mom picks her head up from her laptop.

Mom: I just heard someone say “bitch.”

Me: That was the Convict.

Mom: I knew I liked her for some reason.

Me: So, just for the record. How much of this game do you understand so far.

Mom: Absolutely none of it.

Me: That’s kind of what I thought.

Mom: Well, I know that I’m trying to hunt down my boyfriend.

Me: Well you know about how you died and got brought back to life, right?

Mom: Yeah.

Me: The terrorists that brought you back want your help to fight aliens that are kidnapping humans. You’re going around to recruit people to help.

Mom: Really though I’m just going along with it until I find Hotpants again.

At least she’s committed to her character.

We step aboard the Normandy and have a look around. We’re introduced to EDI, the ship’s artifical intelligence. Since mom still doesn’t really understand that most of the villains so far have been AIs this news is not particularly meaningful to her. Shepard makes it clear that she is in charge of this ship and everyone on it, and her orders aren’t to be questioned.

Miranda: Jacob and I will be at our posts if you have any questions for us.

Mom: Yeah I got a question. Where can we drop you off?

Miranda takers her leave. Jacob salutes and follows.

Mom: Um, excuse me? I don’t remember dismissing you. At least Jacob’s got the right idea about how to treat me.

We head into the bunker and speed through the tunnels in the Mako. After a while, we’re stopped by a kinetic barrier. We’re forced to exit the Mako and head through a side room.

Mom: I feel like we’re marching to our death.

Me: Haha, what?

Mom: Well we’re near the end of the game, and this is like a creepy tomb place… it seems like we’re about to die.

We’re not. Instead we end up in a room with a VI. It introduces itself as Vigl, the VI in charge of this facility. It explains that the scientists here went into stasis to outlive the last Reaper attack, and that afterward they got to work developing Mass Relay technology of their own. The Citadel is secretly a relay activated by the Keepers, and the Reapers use it to warp into the galaxy from dark space, slaughter the leaders of the galaxy, and then use the Citadel to shut down all the Mass Relays, isolating planets to make them easier to conquer. The Prothean scientists created a Relay of their own, the Conduit, and linked it to the Citadel. Once they made it there, they reprogrammed the Keepers to stop from activating the Citadel’s relay. Now Sovereign is attempting to use the Conduit to bypass the Citadel’s defenses and activate it manually.

Mom: Wow this is REALLY boring.

Me: What?

Mom: We’re talking to a stupid night-light!

Saren seals himself inside a bunker, leaving us no choice but to scour the planet to find some way to gain access. It’s swarming with Geth. After a massive shootout with a Geth Prime, we find a console to open up the bunker doors. We also accidentally activate a recorded message.

The message is too damaged to make out more than a few words. It seems like it’s a warning about the Reapers. Our squad is shocked we can even understand as much as we do, since the recording is in Prothean.

Mom: I didn’t understand any of that.

Me: You weren’t supposed to. The recording was too garbled to make out.

Mom: Oh, okay. I wasn’t sure because I usually don’t understand it when someone talks for a long time in this game.

We start heading back for the bunker.

Mom: Where’s my boyfriend?

Me: He’s behind us.

Mom: For someone who’s supposedly not interested in me he sure is checking out my ass a lot. Come to think of it so is that lizard guy.

We enter the laboratory where, apparently, Udina and Benezia created Saren, the Thorian, and the Rachni Queen back in college.

There’s a second Prothean Beacon in here, and Shepard is again flooded with visions. Afterward, a large red hologram appears upstairs. It reveals that its Sovereign, Saren’s ship.

Me: So, Saren’s ship is actually alive!

Mom: No way. He’s in there and has a voice thing, like Wizard of Oz.

Sovereign explains that it’s a Reaper, and that its kind wipes out all life every 50,000 years. Shepard tells it that it will fail this time, she’ll make sure of it. It ceases the conversation and the windows are suddenly blown out. Joker calls us and tells us that Saren’s ship suddenly took off and is headed our way.

Mom unsurprisingly has no comment on this part since it’s part of the actual plot.

Mom: Alright, that’s enough playing for now. I’ve got things to do.

Me: What if I told you that an opportunity to kill Ashley is coming up soon?

Mom: …We’ll play for 15 more minutes.

Unfortunately the phone rang, and we had to call it quits anyway.

Back on the Normandy, the crew gathers to discuss its options. Ashley suggests heading for the Mu Relay, but mom tells her that it’s pointless. Not because she thinks it’s a bad idea or because she even understands what Ashley’s talking about. Just because she doesn’t like her.

Garrus suggests heading to Therum to pick up Betty’s daughter, as with her Prothean expertise she might be able to figure out where to go with the Mu Relay. Ashley doesn’t like this idea since Betty was working with Saren, but Tali points out that it was only because Betty was indoctrinated. The two of them continue to argue until mom tells them to shut up and ends the meeting. Joker asks if we’d like to report to the Council, and mom says that she doesn’t want to talk to those guys.

We head down to the second deck to talk with Kaidan.

Mom: [Shepard] needs to wash her face better, she’s shining with grease.

Me: It’s just a really brightly-lit area.

Mom: It makes it look like she’s sweating, and she never sweats.

Kaidan continues to tell us about his backstory, and mom continues to pretend to be interested. He eventually ends the conversation and gets back to work.

Mom: That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. He should be offering to buy me a drink by now.

Me: Well, considering that none of the bars seem to serve alcohol, how could he?

Mom: Good point.

With the Matriarch’s troops defeated, we begin to close in on her. She freaks out, and suddenly tells us that she’s managed to fight off Saren’s indoctrination briefly. Mom, as always, doesn’t care.

Betty goes on to explain that she’s been under the influence of Saren’s ship, Sovereign. She describes the trauma of being trapped in her own mind as her body acted regardless of her own will.

Mom: Oh wah wah wah. What a whiner!

Betty tells us that Saren was looking for the location of the long-lost Mu Relay, and that she was sent here to extract it from the Rachni Queen’s mind. Mom doesn’t have any idea what the Mu Relay is, but she knows that she wants its location. She demands it and Betty is happy to give it to her.

Unfortunately, she loses her ability to fight off the indoctrination, and attacks us. We have no choice but to finish her off.

Mom: It looked like my boyfriend got a few good hits in on her.

Me: Yeah, he did.

Mom: See? He’s falling for me.

As Betty lay on the ground dying, she tells us that we have to stop Saren at any cost.

Shepard: First you betray the Council, now Saren. You’re not loyal to anything, are you?

Benezia: Yes… I suppose that is how history will remember me.

Betty’s eyes roll into her head. She slumps over, and dies.

Mom: Bitch.

Shiala starts giving us some backstory and exposition, which my mom takes as a cue to go back to playing Words With Friends.

She explains that she worked for Matriarch Benezia, and joined Saren when she did. Saren offered Shiala to the Thorian in a trade for the Cipher, the ancestral memories of the Prothean race, which would allow him to better understand the visions he received from the Prothean Beacon. He then turned on the Thorian and told the Geth to destroy it, which angered it. Shiala explains that Saren’s warship, Sovereign, has some kind of mysterious mind-control properties, and that now that she’s been severed from it she no longer wishes to work for Saren. She agrees to use her telepathic powers to give you the Cipher.

At this point, mom looks up from her game. “I don’t like what’s going on here, this weird psychic shit. Something bad’s gonna happen.”

She watches the montage of creepy images about halfway through, and then goes back to her game.