Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 12 – Garrus: Eye for an Eye and N7 Assignments

The plan for this Mass Effect 2 stream was fairly straightforward: head toward Ilium, work through some side content and possibly tackle Miranda’s loyalty mission. That plan changed once I looked at our Paragon points and decided they were not quite where I wanted them to be for what comes afterward.

So Miranda could wait. Instead, the evening became a mixture of N7 assignments, planetary exploration, resource hunting, questionable squad AI, chat distractions and, eventually, Garrus asking Shepard to help settle some very personal unfinished business.

🌌 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 extras, all remastered and optimised for 4K Ultra HD.

For this playthrough we are firmly into Mass Effect 2, following Commander Shepard around the galaxy aboard the Normandy. Combat and exploration are only part of it; the crew, their loyalty and the decisions we make around them are increasingly important, which becomes particularly obvious once Garrus takes centre stage in this episode.

🧭 Where We Are in the Journey

We have reached the point where the Normandy’s growing collection of recruitment and loyalty missions is starting to compete for attention. Ilium is waiting, Miranda has personal business that still needs dealing with, and Tali has not yet joined the crew.

Rather than rush Miranda’s mission without the Paragon options I wanted, I decided to spend this episode clearing more N7 assignments and gathering resources. That eventually gave us time to deal properly with Garrus and his hunt for Sidonis, while still leaving several major jobs ready for future streams.

⚠️ What Happens in This Episode

We opened with Ilium technically sitting on the agenda, but Miranda’s loyalty mission immediately became a question mark. The Paragon score was looking a little lower than expected, and with the possibility of needing enough points to keep everyone calm after the mission, there was no sense walking into that particular problem too early. Miranda could wait. Instead, we turned toward the collection of N7 assignments and unfinished business already scattered across the galaxy.

The first stop continued the multi-part archaeology-related mission chain that had begun almost accidentally during the previous stream. Miranda and Grunt came along, although “came along” occasionally felt generous given the enthusiasm of the squad AI. Rooms had to be searched, terminals checked, and every suspicious doorway investigated because apparently walking past one unopened door is how you end up restarting the entire game in pursuit of the mythical 100 percent completion.

At one point the squad simply refused to follow properly into a room unless they were individually ordered forward, which did little to improve confidence in the team. Shepard was increasingly doing the work while the rest of the squad offered moral support from somewhere behind the nearest doorway. “Shields up!” also started establishing itself as the phrase of the evening whenever things became lively.

Chat, meanwhile, was operating on a completely different mission. Gary arrived for his “mandatory Mass Effect” attendance with the important announcement that his Frozen dress was ready just in case, quickly earning the inevitable Princess Gary treatment. Mr Smith’s mango returned, JD was dragged into challenges, and conversations wandered through midsummer, Newgrange, Paris catacombs, hunting games, films and the experiment currently attempting to vent hot PC air out of the window. Mass Effect remained the main event, but staying entirely on-topic was never really an option.

Once that assignment was dealt with, planetary exploration took over. We needed resources for upgrades — particularly Palladium — so the Normandy began hopping between systems while planets were scanned and progressively converted into pin cushions by probes. There was the usual debate over whether a deposit was worth spending a probe on, followed by the discovery that the resource total could actually keep climbing beyond the limit I thought I remembered.

That was useful information, although it also raised the uncomfortable possibility that we had abandoned quite a lot of perfectly good resources in earlier episodes for absolutely no reason.

The scanning eventually paid for another upgrade and, back aboard the Normandy, enough resources were available to visit the medical bay and permanently heal Shepard’s facial scars. With Shepard looking slightly less battle-worn, we returned to exploring — and soon found something considerably less relaxing.

N7: Javelin Missiles Launched introduced a countdown almost immediately, which is always a wonderful way to improve my mood. Timed missions are not exactly high on the list of favourite game mechanics, and this one added enemies capable of tearing Shepard’s shields apart alarmingly quickly. Miranda received several increasingly direct suggestions that now might be an excellent time to start contributing.

The mission became a scramble through enemies and objectives while the timer continued dropping. There was confusion over exactly where we needed to go, plenty of shield emergencies and very little opportunity to stop and admire the scenery. At the end, there were not enough kill-switch codes to save both missile targets. The choice was between the populated area and the industrial zone, so we stopped the missile threatening the civilians. Hundreds of lives were saved, but the industrial area was destroyed and the colony would ultimately have to be evacuated.

From there, more planetary scanning eventually led us into N7: Blue Suns Base, where the squad AI decided it had not yet done enough to become part of the episode’s story.

The facility turned into a string of ambushes, heavy enemies and increasingly awkward fights. Ammunition became scarce, shields disappeared almost instantly whenever Shepard stepped into the wrong position, and both squad-mates spent enough time incapacitated that the commander was effectively running a solo operation. Gary even pointed out the “warrior hiding behind you,” which was difficult to argue with when the supposed backup appeared quite happy to take cover somewhere safely out of the battle.

Chat’s JD’s Death Loop Incorporated joke became increasingly appropriate: low health, low ammunition, repeated danger and the possibility of doing the same section again if things went badly. “Shields up!” had now moved beyond a tactical instruction and become something close to a survival mantra.

After several N7 assignments and a considerable amount of bouncing between the Normandy, planetary exploration and missions, we finally turned toward the main event of the episode: Garrus: Eye for an Eye.

Garrus wanted Sidonis, the former member of his Omega team whose betrayal had led to everyone else being killed. The search took us back to the Citadel, where C-Sec helped point us toward Fade, a forger with connections to the Blue Suns. Fade turned out not to be the mysterious figure Garrus was expecting, and the trail instead led to Harkin — the former C-Sec officer we had encountered much earlier in the series.

Reaching him meant fighting through another heavily defended area full of Blue Suns and mechs. There were failed bypass attempts, wrong-button moments, more shield emergencies and several reminders from chat that saving the game occasionally might be considered a sensible idea. Gary eventually resorted to simply typing SAVE, while Frodo’s later arrival prompted the accusation that this was supposed to be his job.

Responsibility for everything else remained wonderfully unclear. #BlameChrissy, #BlameFrodo and #BlameAida all appeared at various points, ensuring that whatever went wrong, somebody else was available to take responsibility for it.

When we finally reached Harkin, Garrus was in no mood for diplomacy. He wanted Sidonis and was prepared to hurt Harkin to get the information, while Shepard repeatedly tried to keep the situation from going too far. Eventually Harkin arranged the meeting Garrus wanted, setting up the much quieter but far more important final confrontation.

Shepard met Sidonis in the open while Garrus waited at a distance with his sniper rifle trained on him. The intention going in was already clear: Garrus was not going to get his revenge if we could stop it.

That meant keeping Shepard directly between Garrus and his target while Sidonis talked. Eventually the full weight of what had happened came out. Sidonis admitted betraying Garrus’s team after being threatened and made it painfully clear that surviving had not exactly allowed him to escape what he had done. The guilt had followed him ever since.

Garrus still wanted justice, but Shepard kept pushing back. Killing Sidonis would not bring the team back, and revenge was not going to undo what had happened on Omega. Eventually Garrus lowered the rifle and allowed Sidonis to walk away.

Back on the Normandy, Garrus was still not entirely convinced that sparing him had been the right choice, but he also recognised that there had been something left in Sidonis worth saving. The loyalty mission was complete, Garrus had a new outfit, and one of the more personal threads in the current playthrough had reached its conclusion without a bullet ending the conversation.

The post-mission chat with Garrus then took the relationship in another direction entirely. A conversation about dangerous missions and turian ways of relieving stress eventually led Shepard toward a rather obvious “tiebreaker” suggestion, nudging things firmly into flirtation territory.

Then came the Normandy’s truly critical maintenance procedure: feeding the fish. Given what happened to the previous batch when that responsibility was forgotten, this was arguably one of the more important objectives completed all evening.

Just after Garrus’s mission, a raid of 26 viewers arrived, bringing another burst of energy into the final stretch. We took a moment to welcome everyone and look back over just how much ground had actually been covered: several N7 assignments, a small mountain of resources, healed facial scars, one saved civilian population, Garrus’s loyalty and considerably more squad-AI frustration than anyone had requested.

There was enough time to consider squeezing in something else, but the room was becoming unbearably hot despite the earlier PC ventilation experiment, and this already felt like a natural stopping point. Miranda’s loyalty mission remained deliberately postponed, Ilium was still waiting, and Tali had yet to join the Normandy crew, leaving plenty of unfinished business for the next Mass Effect night.

With the fish fed and the Normandy safely parked, we wrapped things up and sent the community onward with a raid into TheEar5000. Several missions had been crossed off the list, Garrus had stepped back from revenge, and somehow everyone had survived another evening of questionable squad support, disappearing shields and chat assigning blame to anyone within reach.

🎬 Watch the Episode

If you want to see the timed missile panic, the squad AI doing its best to become an additional difficulty setting, Garrus’s confrontation with Sidonis and everything chat managed to fit around it, the full episode is available here:

Watch Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 12 on YouTube

You can continue the playthrough through the Mass Effect Legendary Edition playlist and find more videos on Dr Ravenholm on YouTube. If you enjoy the episode, leave a like, let me know your thoughts in the comments and subscribe so you do not miss the next part.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The recorded episode has the missions, but live is where chat starts assigning blame, somebody reminds me to save, and a perfectly sensible plan somehow turns into planetary scanning and squad AI problems.

Come and join us live on Twitch or YouTube. The raid gave this stream a great final boost, and there is always room for a few more people aboard for whatever happens next.

🛰️ Community & Links

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

Live — Be there when the next plan starts going off course:
Twitch | YouTube

Community — Keep the conversation going between streams:
Discord

Socials — Follow the signal across the rest of the network:
TikTok | Bluesky | Instagram | Facebook | Threads | X

Music — When you want something to listen to away from the stream:
Spotify | Apple Music

Support — If you would like to help support what I create:
Fourthwall | Teespring | Streamlabs

More — For the other projects and work happening beyond gaming:
Business Centre | Download the Brochure | About Me | Blog

🐟 Garrus Is Loyal and the Fish Are Still Alive

We ended with several N7 assignments completed, Shepard’s scars healed, a civilian population saved, Garrus stepping away from revenge and the Normandy’s fish successfully surviving another episode.

Next time, Miranda, Ilium and Tali are still waiting for us. Hopefully the Paragon points cooperate, the squad remembers how doors work, and somebody reminds me to feed the fish again.

— Dr Ravenholm