Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 21 – Collector Base END GAME

After roughly 51 hours working towards a 100% run of Mass Effect 2, this was finally the night we reached the end. Every main mission and DLC assignment was complete, the Normandy had been upgraded, and all that remained was the point of no return: the Omega-4 Relay and the Collector Base.

Of course, before taking on a suicide mission we still had time to discuss whether French toast is really just eggy bread, wander through another fish-and-chips conversation, inspect the Normandy one last time and make absolutely certain there was no crew dialogue hiding somewhere. It was still mandatory Mass Effect Friday, after all.

🌌 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 following Commander Shepard and the Normandy crew as the threat from the Collectors develops into something much larger. By this point we had assembled the team, completed their missions and prepared the Normandy as thoroughly as possible. This episode was where all of those choices finally had to prove themselves.

🚀 Where We Are in the Journey

This was Episode 21 and the end of our Mass Effect 2 playthrough. I had already cleared the main missions, DLC and side content, so there was very little left to hide behind. The Reaper IFF was ready, the Normandy was prepared and crossing the Omega-4 Relay would commit us to the final sequence.

The aim was not simply to finish the game. After putting this much time into the run, I wanted everybody to survive. Unfortunately, it had also been years since I last played through this part of Mass Effect 2, so while I remembered the general shape of the suicide mission, I was not completely certain about every assignment. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

🔥 What Happens in This Episode

Before committing to the Omega-4 Relay, there was still one important job left: one last sweep of the Normandy. After roughly 51 hours working toward a 100% run, every main mission and DLC assignment was already complete, but that was no reason to risk leaving a stray conversation behind. So we worked our way through the ship checking in with the crew, making sure every available dialogue tree had been exhausted and generally delaying the suicide mission in the most thorough way possible.

That final tour quickly settled into the usual balance of Mass Effect lore and chat distraction. Garrus delivered his wonderfully awkward attempt at preparing for a possible cross-species romance, complete with talk of doing some “research” to work out exactly how everything was supposed to function. Elsewhere, Samara and photo mode became the centre of a completely innocent discussion about “the boots,” although chat made it increasingly clear that not everybody was concentrating on the footwear. Somewhere between that, conversations about fish and chips, eggs and the assorted important subjects that always seem to appear on Mass Effect Friday, the supposed quick trip around the Normandy took rather longer than planned.

Eventually, the Reaper IFF was ready — or at least ready enough to cause trouble. Shepard left the Normandy aboard the shuttle, and almost immediately the IFF revealed the nasty surprise hidden inside it. A Collector signal compromised the ship, systems began failing and the Collectors boarded while most of the combat crew were away.

That gave us the unusual section where Joker becomes the playable character. What should have been a nerve-racking crawl through a ship full of Collectors instead became a mixture of genuine danger and concern that EDI was one step away from becoming Skynet. Joker followed the emergency floor lighting — rapidly renamed the “disco lights” — through maintenance shafts while EDI guided him toward the AI core and engineering. There was even time to wonder whether this was the moment humanity would eventually be sentenced to spend eternity computing pi for its new machine overlords.

Dawdling around to see exactly how much danger Joker was in proved that the section could indeed kill us, adding another entry to the evening’s death-loop count. On the successful attempt, Joker managed to unshackle EDI, restore control of the Normandy and purge the remaining Collectors from the ship. The victory did not feel particularly victorious for long. The Normandy was empty. The Collectors had taken the crew.

When Shepard returned, the rows of empty stations made the situation clear: there was no reason to wait any longer. EDI and Joker had saved the Normandy, the Reaper IFF was operational, and the Omega-4 Relay was waiting. A few extra saves were made before leaving — partly because this was the endgame and partly because reminding me to save had apparently become Frodo’s official position within the crew. Frodo’s advice did occasionally alternate between “don’t save” and “save,” but consistency has never been a requirement for the role.

Chat had also gained its own Mass Effect tactical officer in stillkicking, who casually revealed having completed the trilogy more than 35 times. That led into an ongoing discussion about squad AI, because throughout the playthrough the companions had shown a remarkable ability to stand near a firefight without becoming unnecessarily involved in it. Comparisons were made with the original versions of the game, squad power settings were discussed, and the general conclusion remained that our Normandy crew were occasionally more enthusiastic about being shot than returning fire.

Before crossing the relay, Garrus and Shepard finally had their pre-mission romance scene. Garrus approached the entire situation with exactly the sort of smooth confidence you would expect from somebody discussing interspecies compatibility like a weapons-calibration problem. Chat responded appropriately, including Gary announcing that he had paid €4.99 for the scene. With that important business complete, the Normandy committed to the Omega-4 Relay.

The other side was hardly welcoming. The Normandy emerged into a lethal debris field around the Collector Base and was immediately attacked. All those ship upgrades collected during the playthrough finally earned their keep as the Normandy survived impacts and enemy fire that could otherwise have cost crew members before we even reached the station. Shepard headed into the cargo hold with Miranda and Grunt to deal with an intruder while Joker tried to keep the ship in one piece.

That fight also brought the questionable squad AI back into focus. Grunt in particular seemed reluctant to become too heavily involved, even when an enormous Collector creature was making itself extremely difficult to ignore. We eventually brought it down, the Normandy punched through the remaining defences, and the upgraded main gun helped settle the score with the attacking Collector ship.

The landing itself was considerably less elegant. The Normandy crashed onto the Collector Base, systems went offline and Joker reported that he may have broken a rib — or possibly all of them. With the ship damaged and the way home uncertain, the real suicide mission began.

This was where old Mass Effect knowledge suddenly mattered. It had been years since I had last played through the finale, and while I remembered the general shape of the mission, every correct specialist assignment was not sitting neatly at the front of my mind. The aim was simple: everybody survives. Achieving that meant choosing the right people for jobs where the wrong decision could quietly kill somebody later.

Tali was sent into the ventilation shaft as our tech specialist, while Garrus took command of the second fire team. Chat helpfully balanced useful discussion of the correct choices with stories about playthroughs deliberately engineered to kill absolutely everybody, Shepard included. Nothing calms the nerves before a suicide mission quite like hearing how much planning it takes to produce no survivors.

Tali made it through the vents and the teams successfully regrouped. Pushing deeper into the base eventually brought us to the captured Normandy crew, still alive but surrounded by evidence of what the Collectors had been doing to the human colonists. With the rescued crew needing somebody to guide them back toward the Normandy, Mordin was sent with them while the rest of the squad continued toward the heart of the station.

The next stage meant crossing an area filled with Seeker Swarms, so Samara was chosen to maintain the biotic field while Garrus once again led the other team. The assignments continued to work, but the actual fighting was becoming considerably less tidy. Legion went down during one stretch, both active squadmates were flattened in another, and one of the larger enemies very nearly turned the whole section into the death loop we had been expecting all evening.

We survived it, although not gracefully. After a particularly rough fight the only reasonable response was essentially, “Could that have gone any worse?” followed immediately by another save. stillkicking continued supplying genuinely useful information between the chaos, including squad suggestions and the reminder that Harbinger drops power cells during the final sections, which would become increasingly important once ammunition started disappearing.

Chat provided its own variety of tactical assistance. We had “run Forrest run” during one of the sprints through the base, Joker was nominated for vent duty because “he loves vents,” and Frodo’s announcement that he was on hold with the government somehow became evidence that he had been raiding police stations again. None of this helped defeat the Collectors, but morale is important.

The deeper we went, the worse the ammunition situation became. Grunt came along for the final push partly because he had already spent a suspicious amount of the mission being knocked down, and enemies kept arriving faster than the ammunition pickups did. Squadmates continued showing varying degrees of interest in helping, while every remaining round started to matter.

Then came the reason for the entire Collector operation. Deep inside the base, EDI identified the enormous structure they were building: a Reaper shaped from processed human material. Tens of thousands of abducted humans had already been used, with many more required to finish it. It was one of the darkest reveals in the game, although chat still found enough room in the moment to debate whether the unfinished Human-Reaper actually possessed the relevant anatomy for one suggested method of attack.

The fight against the Human-Reaper brought together almost every problem we had been dealing with all night. The exposed injection tubes had to be destroyed while Collectors and Harbinger kept interfering, heavy ammunition was precious, Miranda appeared capable of missing almost everything, and Grunt at one point looked as though he had decided observation was a perfectly valid combat role. Chat confirmed that the tubes could be destroyed with ordinary gunfire, which at least stopped us wasting the remaining heavy weapon rounds.

By the later stages, ammunition had become the real boss. Weapons were running nearly dry and there seemed to be remarkably little lying around to replace it. stillkicking reminded us about the power cells dropped by Harbinger and the search for anything shootable became almost as important as the enormous Reaper attempting to kill us. Somehow, despite the shortages and the questionable assistance from the squad, the thing finally went down.

That left one last decision. The Illusive Man wanted the Collector Base preserved. His argument was that the technology inside could be turned against the Reapers and used to strengthen humanity. After seeing what had happened there, however, keeping the base was never seriously on the cards. We were blowing it up.

The Illusive Man even tried ordering Miranda to stop Shepard, only for Miranda to effectively resign instead. The base was set to overload, the surviving squad escaped back to the Normandy and the entire Collector operation disappeared behind us. Back aboard the ship, Shepard made it clear that things would be done her way from now on before Joker cut the Illusive Man’s transmission.

Then came the achievement we had been hoping to see: No One Left Behind. The Normandy crew had been rescued, every squadmate survived the suicide mission, the Collector Base was destroyed and the 100% Mass Effect 2 run was complete.

As the credits rolled, the stream returned to its normal state of organised disorder. justanatomy gifted subscriptions, chat celebrated the finish, and discussion immediately returned to the strange squad AI, the almost complete lack of ammunition during the final battle and the growing suspicion that Dr Ravenholm might simply be another AI working under AIDA. The long-running threat of a full Mass Effect exam also survived the finale, with everyone apparently expected to remember all of this by the time we eventually reach the end of Andromeda.

There was also the unresolved matter of Frodo’s promised singing. He had spent part of the evening insisting his singing was terrible, only to reach the end of the stream and celebrate that he had successfully escaped without performing anything. That side mission remains incomplete.

With Mass Effect 2 finally finished, we wrapped up by looking ahead to a brief break from the series. The following Friday would be a board-game night, with Beacon Patrol and a possible Labyrinth RPG session discussed, before “mandatory Mass Effect Friday” returns two weeks later with Mass Effect 3. Then, with the Collector Base destroyed and the entire crew safely home, we sent the Chicken Coop onward with a raid into mayhem_bedlamite.

🎬 Watch the Episode

If you want to see the Normandy attack, Joker’s escape, the Omega-4 Relay, the full suicide mission and our increasingly desperate search for ammunition during the Human-Reaper fight, you can watch the complete episode here:

Watch Mass Effect Legendary Edition: ME2 Ep 21 – Collector Base END GAME

You can continue through the full series in the Mass Effect Legendary Edition playlist and find more videos on the Dr Ravenholm YouTube channel. If you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave a like, let me know your favourite moment in the comments and subscribe for the rest of the journey.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

The Collector Base may be gone, but Mass Effect Friday is not finished yet. Come and join us live on Twitch or YouTube and become part of the chat that provides strategy, save reminders and occasional completely unrelated investigations into footwear.

We also regularly finish by sending the community onward to another streamer. This time the raid headed into mayhem_bedlamite, bringing the evening to a close before the next part of the journey.

🛰️ Community & Links

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

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🏆 No One Left Behind

That is Mass Effect 2 complete: the Normandy crew rescued, the Collector Base destroyed and everyone surviving the suicide mission. Considering the squad AI, the disappearing ammunition and how close a few of those fights became, I am quite happy to take that result.

Mass Effect gets a short break next Friday for a board-game night, with Beacon Patrol and a possible Labyrinth RPG session discussed, before mandatory Mass Effect Friday returns two weeks later with Mass Effect 3. Frodo may also want to enjoy the break while he can, because I have not forgotten about the singing.

— Dr Ravenholm