Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 02 – Dossier: The Professor – Mordin

Part two of our 100% Mass Effect 2 playthrough started with the sort of problem Commander Shepard probably never had to deal with: my spreadsheet had gone wrong and AIDA seemed to have developed ideas of her own. Once everything was back where it belonged, we could finally get on with the actual plan.

That plan took us to Omega in search of Professor Mordin Solus. What followed involved a plague, an increasingly questionable supply of ammunition, squadmates spending far too much time on the floor, several detours around Omega and the usual amount of chaos coming from chat in the background.

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🌌 About the Game

Mass Effect Legendary Edition brings together the single-player content from Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, along with more than 40 DLC packs, promotional weapons, armour and other content, all remastered and optimised for 4K Ultra HD.

In Mass Effect 2, we are back with Commander Shepard and rebuilding a crew for the dangerous mission ahead. Recruitment is a major part of these early stages, and this episode was all about adding one particularly useful salarian scientist to the Normandy.

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🛰️ Where We Are in the Journey

This is episode two of our 100% Mass Effect 2 run. We had already completed the opening section of the game, explored the Normandy, spoken to the crew currently aboard and visited the Normandy crash site.

Our next major destination was Omega. Mordin was the priority, although Archangel was also sitting on the mission list if time allowed. As usual with a 100% playthrough, getting to the objective was never going to mean simply following the marker and ignoring everything else along the way.

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🔥 What Happens in This Episode

Omega wasted very little time reminding us what sort of place we had arrived in. Shortly after stepping onto the station, Shepard met Zaeed Massani, the veteran mercenary Cerberus had already arranged to join the mission. Zaeed was exactly as subtle as expected, joining the crew before immediately mentioning some unfinished business of his own involving the Blue Suns and an occupied refinery. That particular problem could wait, though. Tonight’s priority was Professor Mordin Solus.

The first proper stop was Afterlife, Omega’s enormous nightclub and the centre of Aria T’Loak’s little empire. Aria quickly established the most important rule on the station—do not cross Aria—and gave Shepard the information needed to continue both of the major recruitment leads waiting on Omega. Archangel had managed to unite the station’s major mercenary groups against him and was currently surrounded, while Mordin had set up a clinic inside a quarantine zone where a deadly plague was tearing through the population.

Naturally, knowing exactly where Mordin was did not mean we were going straight there. This is a 100% playthrough, which means every corridor, conversation, shop and suspicious-looking corner has to be investigated before the mission marker gets any attention.

That wandering turned up several familiar faces and bits of Omega history. Helena Blake, last seen involved in organised crime back in the original Mass Effect, had apparently reinvented herself as a social worker. The Patriarch offered a rather less cheerful story, explaining how Aria had taken Omega from him, beaten him almost to death and then deliberately kept him around as both an adviser and a living reminder of what happened to people who challenged her.

The markets got the full completionist treatment as well. Shepard picked up ship models, bought an expensive hacking upgrade and found the FBA couplings needed by the Normandy’s engineers. One of the more memorable encounters involved a young quarian whose pilgrimage had gone badly wrong. With her money stolen and another 1,000 credits standing between her and a ticket away from Omega, Shepard simply covered the cost so she could continue her journey.

There was also an unsuccessful attempt to get into Afterlife’s VIP area. The bouncer was having none of it, although chat quickly developed its own theories about how access might be negotiated. Given the amount of Jaffa Cake-based diplomacy taking place elsewhere that evening, bribery through baked goods was apparently still considered a viable strategy.

Chat, meanwhile, had effectively started an entirely separate campaign. Asmith501 and RAF Holday Cover spent large portions of the evening challenging each other to fights, trading victories and arguing over who could or could not see whom. Asmith’s increasingly concerning “trophy cabinet” for defeated opponents became a running theme, while Jaffa Cakes somehow became both snacks and potential currency.

Erris87 arrived after a trip to the pub and contributed the story of having an argument with a door, which quickly became another recurring conversation. Elsewhere there were hot-tub problems, debates over cheese, snacks and pizza, plus the ongoing suspicion that certain people’s keyboards developed unusual spelling problems whenever SnowRunner came up. A Stargate rescue mission broke out in chat, followed later by the Hunger Games, so while Shepard was navigating Omega’s criminal underworld, everyone else appeared to be conducting several completely unrelated wars at once.

Eventually we did make our way into the quarantine zone with Miranda and Jacob. Humans were immune to the plague, but almost every other species in the district was at risk, and the whole area had descended into a mixture of disease, abandoned homes, mercenary fighting and vorcha occupation.

One of the first survivors Shepard encountered was a badly ill batarian who was convinced humanity had created the plague. From his perspective, humans being unaffected while other species died made the conclusion obvious. Despite the hostility, Shepard used medi-gel to help stabilise him and promised that if Mordin had a cure, somebody would get it back to him.

From there, the mission became increasingly tense. The streets were full of Blue Suns and vorcha, but the biggest enemy sometimes seemed to be our own equipment. Ammunition disappeared rapidly, the weapons did not feel particularly cooperative, and Miranda and Jacob developed an impressive habit of collapsing whenever a firefight became inconvenient.

At one point both squadmates were down and Unity had to be used to drag the situation back under control. Later encounters saw ammunition dropping into single figures, forcing plenty of weapon swapping, scavenging and tactical retreating. Jacob in particular earned repeated accusations of “having a nap” while Shepard tried to deal with everything still shooting at us.

Reaching Mordin’s clinic finally gave us the breakthrough we needed. Mordin was immediately Mordin: brilliant, incredibly fast-talking and capable of switching between medical treatment and discussions about efficiently killing hostile mercenaries without appearing to notice the difference.

The good news was that he had already developed a cure. The bad news was that the vorcha had shut down the district’s environmental systems, meaning there was no way to distribute it. Shepard agreed to carry the cure into environmental control and restart the ventilation fans. Before leaving, Mordin also asked us to look for his missing assistant, Daniel, who had gone into dangerous territory to help victims and had not returned.

Daniel turned up alive, although several frightened batarians were holding him at gunpoint because they believed he was responsible for spreading the plague. Shepard managed to talk them down, pointing out that deliberately entering vorcha territory to spread a disease to a species immune to it would make very little sense. Once they agreed to release Daniel, Shepard also kept the promise to let them leave rather than turning the situation into another firefight.

Mordin later made it fairly clear that he would not necessarily have made the same decision. He considered letting potentially dangerous people walk away a risk and admitted he might simply have killed them. It was a small moment, but a useful introduction to the difference between Shepard’s approach and Mordin’s much more clinical view of solving problems.

Environmental control was where everything properly came apart.

The vorcha came in waves, rocket troops made every exposed position dangerous, ammunition continued disappearing and squad commands seemed to become increasingly optional. Getting the cure distributed meant activating two separate fans, with each section turning into another scramble between pushing forward, falling back, reviving squadmates and hunting for anything containing bullets.

The second fan was particularly messy. Orders were issued, squadmates found creative ways not to follow them, Jacob continued his apparent commitment to spending major firefights horizontally, and Shepard was left doing a considerable amount of the heavy lifting.

Somehow, it worked.

Both fans came online, the cure spread through the district and the plague finally began to collapse. Viral levels dropped, patients started recovering and the remaining vorcha pulled back. With the immediate crisis under control, Mordin agreed to join Shepard’s mission and returned with us to the Normandy.

His arrival also opened up the ship’s previously inaccessible tech lab and introduced the research system, giving us access to another layer of upgrades and preparation for what is coming later. After the fairly relentless quarantine-zone fighting, the pace slowed down as we made another proper circuit of the Normandy to see what new conversations and opportunities had appeared.

Jacob discussed potential ship upgrades, EDI had more information about the Normandy’s systems and Miranda opened up about her past. She explained that her father had genetically engineered her as part of his plans for a dynasty and that she eventually escaped to Cerberus because they were powerful enough to protect her. Shepard pushed back against Miranda’s belief that everything impressive about her came from genetic design, arguing that who she had become mattered just as much.

There were a few lighter jobs around the ship too. The brandy picked up on Omega finally made its way to the doctor, leading almost immediately to a drink and a toast to members of the original Normandy crew who had been lost. Down in engineering, those FBA couplings we bought earlier earned Shepard an invitation to a card game, which promptly resulted in losing 500 credits.

Zaeed also had time to show off some of the trophies and stories he had collected over his career, which felt particularly appropriate after chat had spent most of the evening developing its own increasingly elaborate trophy-cabinet mythology.

Later in the stream, we were raided bringing another burst of activity into chat. The raiders even influenced Shepard’s wardrobe, with the armour being given bright red highlights in their honour. The new colours stayed when we headed back to Omega with Zaeed and Miranda for one final wander.

There was time to revisit the shops, have a drink and check in with Aria, but we deliberately stopped short of beginning the next major operation. Archangel is still out there, surrounded by mercenaries and waiting for Shepard to make an entrance.

So we finished the night with Mordin safely aboard the Normandy, the Omega plague under control, the research lab open and several smaller ship jobs finally cleared from the list. Between the ammunition shortages, unreliable squadmates, Jaffa Cake diplomacy, SnowRunner conspiracies and a surprisingly dangerous card game, it had been a productive evening—even if the next visit to Omega is probably going to involve considerably more gunfire.

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🎥 Watch the Episode

You can watch the complete episode here: Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 02 – Dossier: The Professor – Mordin.

If you enjoy the playthrough, you can follow the full series through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition Playlist and subscribe to Dr Ravenholm on YouTube. Likes, comments and subscriptions all help, and I always enjoy hearing how everybody else approached these missions.

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🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The stream is where all the extra chaos happens. A raid arrived, chat spent the evening fighting over trophy cabinets and Jaffa Cakes, and somehow SnowRunner still managed to become part of a Mass Effect conversation.

You can join us live on Twitch or YouTube. At the end of this stream, we passed things on by raiding Captain_Crooked.

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🛸 Community & Links

There is plenty happening beyond the Normandy as well. If you want to keep up with future streams, videos, music and everything else, these are the places to find me.

Live — Join us when the next stream gets underway:
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Music — You can also find my music here:
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Support — If you would like to support the channel:
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More — For my other projects, services and posts:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog

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💊 Mordin Is Aboard — Now About Archangel

We achieved what we came to Omega to do. Mordin is on the Normandy, the tech lab is open and the quarantine-zone plague has been brought under control, even if getting there involved rather less ammunition and rather more time reviving squadmates than I would have preferred.

Archangel is still waiting, so the next trip onto Omega should give us another major recruitment job to deal with. Hopefully Jacob can stay awake for that one.

— Dr Ravenholm