Souvenirs from the Citadel

Hey folks, I’ve been getting some visitors from outside Tumblr (mainly reddit and twitter) so I’ve decided to create a comprehensive list of my data-mining and cut content posts that can be accessed without using Tumblr’s tag system. 

You can browse everything I’ve posted by clicking on the link above, or by using the sidebar on my blog’s main page. I’ll try to keep it up-to-date as I add more in the future. C:

The year is 2160. When an investigation in lower Tayseri Ward leads him to the opulence of the Presidium, salarian C-Sec constable Vel Selar finds himself drawn into the secrecy and politics surrounding the crisis between humans and batarians in the Skyllian Verge. He also finds himself drawn to Meiko Ogawa, a human diplomat from Tiptree. 

But when his partner, a turian investigator named Beran, is falsely accused of murder, Selar begins to question who he can trust and how many of his partner's crazy conspiracy theories might actually be true.

There was this amazing salarian lore post here on Tumblr that I bookmarked a long time ago, and now that I have time to read it... I can’t find it again. My PC died and the bookmark is gone. I can’t remember the username, just that it was a really impressive gathering of official lore from the codex and books (I think they were also mapping ME’s galaxy using all three games, which was also amazing).

If this rings a bell for anyone, I would be really grateful for a link to it!

During development of Mass Effect 1, Noveria’s Aleutsk Valley had several encounters and enemies that were eventually left on the cutting room floor. Here’s another one where I’ve spliced the leftover audio files together.

After defeating a group of hostile krogan in the valley, Shepard comments on how lethargic they seemed. Wrex explains that krogan feel the cold more intensely than other races, and has a final request to get out of the weather (which is an ambient comment not directly tied to the conversation).

Every squadmate has recorded lines for this encounter. It was probably intended to be a short cut-scene with dialogue options. 

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(Sources: ice25_trig05_chilly_krogan,snd_ice25_exterior, ice25_trig04_open_boathouse.upk, Mass Effect PS3 Edition. Spliced with Audacity, Image by Bioware for Xbox 360 promotional material)

My hard-drive died so I’ve been reinstalling all of my games and mod tools. Thankfully I kept many things on a separate drive, but it’ll be a hot minute before I have any custom ME screenshots for my datamining posts again.

On the bright side, I rediscovered screenshots of an NPC edit of my original character, Vel Selar, in one of my folders. Selar’s appearance is supposed to be “average C-Sec salarian” except he’s bad with numbers so he’s more of a bruiser than a tech guy. 

During development of Mass Effect 1, Noveria’s Aleutsk Valley had several encounters and enemies that were eventually left on the cutting room floor. 

This particular set of leftover dialogue, where Shepard is ambushed in Aleutsk’s tunnels after either a tunnel door or the Mako itself is sabotaged, was probably intended to be a cutscene with a few dialogue choices for the player. The assassins were sent by Saren and Shepard’s renegade responses to them are a highlight.

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(Sources: ice25_trig09_assassin_enc,snd_ice25_tunnels.upk, Mass Effect PS3 Edition. Spliced with Audacity)

The year is 2160. When an investigation in lower Tayseri Ward leads him to the opulence of the Presidium, salarian C-Sec constable Vel Selar finds himself drawn into the secrecy and politics surrounding the crisis between humans and batarians in the Skyllian Verge.

He also finds himself drawn to Meiko Ogawa, a human diplomat from Tiptree. But when his partner, a turian investigator named Beran, is falsely accused of murder, Selar begins to question who he can trust and how many of his partner's crazy conspiracy theories about the investigation might actually be true.

Thank you, I loved writing about Mordin and he’s one of the main reasons I wanted to start learning how to write as a hobby. I'm very happy you enjoyed the fics. :)

Rayla Sanai is an unused asari character from the Pinnacle Station DLC. You can find her name on the station’s scoreboard, but much like Fre Natha you won’t find her lounging around the station. Her character model must be loaded manually with an ini edit. 

Most NPCs in Pinnacle Station were meant to be rivals and quest givers for Shepard, and Rayla’s information suggests that she might have originally been a part of the story-line like Bryant and Vidinos. She is listed as a young asari commando.

(sources: BIOA_PRC2_C.upk, DLC_Vegas_GlobalTlk.upk)

Here is a set of three ambient conversations, all between a salarian and a somewhat distracted volus, that were cut from the final release of Mass Effect. These leftover sound files can still be found inside the Playstation 3 release of the game, and the file paths suggest the player would have encountered the conversations in Chora’s Den.

Each conversation has been transcribed under the cut:

The ME3Tweaks development group has successfully ported Pinnacle Station to the Legendary Edition of Mass Effect. All content from the DLC is included and there are several enhancements such as bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.

Along with the release on the Nexus, Mgamerz has also posted an article detailing how the port was accomplished and explaining the technical difficulties that the team faced during development:

Porting Pinnacle Station forward 11 years

“This has been the most ambitious modding project I’ve taken on before, as it touched pretty much every aspect of design. We had to design multiple new custom classes, code a very complex porting pipeline, improve our tools to find assets easier, invent new debugging tools, and more. “

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If you’re interested in how Mass Effect modding works, it’s a really interesting read.

During an elevator ride, Liara reveals some salarian lore while speaking with Ashley.