Nyreen Aria

warining long long looonnng artist's comment ahead !

Where do I start ?

First of all, you might have recognized Aria T’Loak my favorite asari badass criminal from the Mass Effect saga. With her is the 1rst female turian ever introduced in the games : Nyreen Kandros. I totally ship them guys and I really wanted to draw a couple of lesbian aliens ! (yep, the one on the right is actually female).

I just finished the ME3 DLC : Omega. I found it great (though it’s not worth THAT much money, it was good enough so it’s ok). It took me 4 hrs to complete it and I found myself oddly nostalgic while travelling on Omega. It reminded me of Mass Effect 2. It’s always been my favourite place. The design is so cool. The story is interesting and so are the characters you meet. For once, Shepard is not the center of the action, Aria and Nyreen are doing the show. The choices you make don’t really change the outcome of the story but the changes are more subtle. Whether you play paragon or renegade, the relationship between the characters and the way they react or talk to each other (or to you) varies. So the dialog kinda change depending on your action and so is Aria behaviour (I’ll give details in the spoilerific part of this rant)
... AND YOU TEAM UP WITH ARIA … who am kidding, I would have bought no matter what !

Why am I crazy about those characters ? For Nyreen, I’ll explain it below in the SPOILER section and for Aria, if you’re player and about to play the DLC, I totally advise you to read the « Mass Effect : Invasion » comics which explains how Omega was taken by Cerberus and also the book « Mass Effect : Retribution » because we see a lot of her in it (even if she’s not the center of the story) and it shows how she actually is around her people or while doing business and gives details about her that are very interesting. It so crazy to think that she’s actually around 1000 yrs old and old enough to be a Matriarch (which explains he CRAZY biotics/powers… she’s incredibly powerful).

WARNING SPOILERS : Mass Effect 3 : DLC Omega, novels and comics

Now let’s get into business. Before playing the DLC, I really cut myself from the fandom, at least from any news coming from it so my expectations were not THAT high and I did not know anything about Nyreen and the other things in DLC.
I was happily surprised and being teamed up with Aria was one of the greatest experience in my Mass Effect life. She’s really powerful and I’m glad they did her justice.
The enemies were interesting ; I’m not speaking about the regular Cerberus troops that we’re used to face but the Adjutants in action were challenging and given the fact that Aria already faced them, it’s really cool to see the links and references to the comics. So you get a lot of revelations and I KNEW Cerberus was crazy enough to build those monsters with a freaking reaper-created virus. Those guys are nuts ! ...planning to infect the entire station, they really have a problem (no kidding everybody hates humans ! ... it was to see the mad prophet too !) !
When Nyreen was introduced as the former lover or Aria, I was really surprised ! I didn’t see this one coming but it felt right. I can’t see Aria in a relationship (at least not at this point of the story) because she LOVES Omega, deeply, almost like a lover but it was nice. I really liked the idea especially because lots of people tend to write about Aria as if she was some kind of nymphomaniac or at least a person who collects one night stands which is wrong to me. I never thought it was accurate because in the novel “Mass Effect Retribution” we see that Aria has a daughter called Liselle. If you know about Asari physiology then you’re aware that accidents don’t happened and it means that she was attached enough to someone to have child which gives a more sensible aspect of the character.

Anyway, meeting Nyreen was great and we see that they still care no matter how much different they were and even more when you play as a paragon (I often talk about paragon because it is the way I play, I don’t know much about the renegade outcomes, maybe during my next playthrough). As Aria says, their connection was strong but doomed. Aria’s real love is Omega after all.
Now the end of the DLC ... I saw many people pissed about Nyreen’s death, calling it pointless and as a poor excuse to get Aria angry. They said that Aria would never act like that just because of her death blablabla. And I have to say, I did not like Nyreen’s death, mainly because I liked her but it fit in the story. Aria went full-berserk not only at the sight of her former lover’s death. Try to remember all of what Cerberus took from her... God my feelings *starts crying...AGAIN *

She lost her child that she really cared about, she lost many of her men, she lost her lover and most of all she lost her station to which she’s bounded. It’s the accumulation of all those things that makes her break loose and go all crazy (admit it, she’s so so so so awesome in this scene).

Since I played paragon, she spared Oleg by herself, some of you may complain about her softening but I don’t see it this way. She doesn’t get softer because of Shepard. It’s more like she opens up somehow. This part of her already existed but she has to appear strong and ruthless in front of everyone which is why she forbad her daughter to reveal the link between them. But to me, at this moment she just let go for a second. Then she goes back to her former self as the 1rst sentence of her big reinstatement speech was that her rule was back...don’t fuck with Aria, guys !

Wow, that was a long rant and I’m not even finished, but I’ll stop there, if you want to discuss it further, i’ll be more than happy too. As you can see, I really enjoyed the DLC.


Bye guys ! See you later !


WIP right here :