Though John Jackson Miller was brought back due to his work on the Knights of the Old Republic comics, his role was to adapt Mass Effect 2’s co-narrative lead Mac Walters’ story to a comic script. Like the Normandy SR-2, everyone had a role to play and knew what needed to be done. How did they pull this off? Coordination. Plus, on the off-chance you haven’t played Mass Effect 2 yet, Redemption serves as a primer for one of the game’s new primary locations - the sprawling criminal underworld station of Omega. You’re free to engage with Mass Effect at whatever level you’re most interested, with payoff for those who delve deepest. If you neither read the comic nor play the DLC, Mass Effect 3 pivots to account for this.

If you don’t read it, it’s not impossible to follow the DLC’s plot, but it is that much less emotionally engaging. Redemption is not only key to understanding the greater story of Mass Effect, particularly the second entry, but also Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker, one of the best-received DLC expansions in BioWare’s history. It delivers worthwhile storytelling that knows how to build a universe. The four-issue comic Mass Effect: Redemption, on the other hand, is arguably the strongest franchise tie-in. Reading Deception doesn’t bring you closer to its world. It had lore inconsistencies, weird narrative decisions, and barely achieved actually tying itself into the greater story. Last time on The Stuff of Legends, we explored the worst Mass Effect tie-in novel, Mass Effect: Deception.

Mass effect redemption part 1