Mass Effect Codex Trophy

[Tisham Candella]

Whileplaying Mass Effect, you'll naturally uncover new codex entries by examining various things in your surroundings and speaking with your squadmates and other NPCs. Exhausting all dialog options with characters and talking about their history and families is a great way to uncover more codex entries.

In Mass Effect and Mass Effect Legendary Edition, there is an achievement/trophy (Scholar for the original and Archivist for the Legendary Edition) for obtaining all primary alien codex entries. This can be harder to obtain than you might think as one of them appears to be missable, which can potentially lock you out of this accolade if you don't get it. Just below we have a full guide on where to get each codex. You can check your Journal to see which codex entries you have already obtained via the menu.

The Archivist trophy which requires you to find the codex entries of all primary aliens seem to be missable. I followed a guide for the original game (where the trophy/achievement is called Scholar) and can confirm that those still work in this remaster. Fortunately, if you happen to miss it, you can get it within the first three hours of a new game.

Yes. This trophy unlocks in the same way with the same requirements as it was the case for the PS3's ME1 Scholar Trophy.

Just keep in mind to exhaust your conversation options at the beginning, while having the briefing with Anderson and Nihlus:

This is *extremely* missable. You have to exhaust conversation options w/ Anderson before the Eden Prime mission or else you don't get the Prothean codex entry, and there's no other way to get it throughout the game, despite what the trophy guide for the PS3 version says.

First time playing the first Mass Effect (i've only played part of 2 before). I'm glad I got this by just exploring every inch and every path from the start. I'll be doing a second playthrough for insanity anyways, but still.

A decorated war hero, Shepard is a veteran of the Skyllian Blitz and served with distinction which earned him the Alliance's highest award, the Star of Terra, for almost single-handedly repelling an assault from batarian slavers on Elysium long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Following the battle, he is arguably considered one of the Alliance's most famous soldiers. By overcoming great challenges in the line of duty, Shepard has since shown exemplary talent and leadership capabilities which led to him to undergo N7 training in Rio de Janeiro. He later served as Executive Officer (XO) of the SSV Normandy SR-1 under the command of Captain David Anderson.

During the Eden Prime War, he helped expose Saren Arterius for his involvement with the geth attack on Eden Prime. He also became friends with Kaidan Alenko, Ashley Williams, Garrus Vakarian, Urdnot Wrex, Tali'Zorah nar Rayya, and Dr. Liara T'Soni, who helped him uncover the existence of a race of ancient sentient machines known as Reapers. For his efforts, Shepard was appointed the first human Spectre and assumed command of the Normandy when Anderson was forced to step down. After witnessing Kaidan's sacrifice to destroy Saren's research facility during the mission on Virmire, Shepard continued to help lead the war effort against the geth and foil Saren's plans. Not long after, Williams, with whom Shepard had fallen in love, encouraged him to remain vigilant. Not long after, Shepard and his crew participated in the Battle of the Citadel. During the campaign, Saren was killed and the Reaper vanguard, Sovereign, was destroyed. Although widely praised for saving the Citadel from a surprise attack, his theories about the Reapers have caused political controversy and despite calls for him to cease his investigation, he continued to work tirelessly in an attempt to try to find a way to stop the new threat. Shortly thereafter, he was killed in action by the Collectors.

Two years later, he was brought back to life under the Lazarus Project by the pro-human syndicate known as Cerberus. With the assistance of the organization's enigmatic leader, the Illusive Man, Shepard assumed command of the Normandy SR-2 and a crew. With the help of his new teammates, Shepard set out on a mission to stop the Collectors' galaxy-wide campaign of human abductions as they worked in conjunction with the Reapers. Over the course of the journey, Shepard participated in the final assault on the Collectors' main base of operations accessible only through the Omega-4 Relay and managed to destroy their base, thus putting an end to the Collectors once and for all. Soon after the mission was completed, he severed all ties with Cerberus and operated independently over the next year. During this time, he helped Liara defeat the Shadow Broker. Shepard soon fell out of favor with the Alliance when he blew up the Bahak system and killed its 300,000 batarian colonists as collateral damage in an attempt to delay the Reapers from invading. As a consequence, he was relieved of duty and imprisoned at an Alliance military base on Earth to await trial.

Six months later, however, the Reapers returned from dark space and began their next galaxy-wide invasion. Shepard was forced to escape Earth on the Normandy, but not before being re-instated into the Alliance military and being tasked with gathering help from other species to build an ancient superweapon dubbed the "Crucible". During the course, he successfully negotiated an alliance between the turians and krogan upon curing the genophage and ending the three-hundred-year conflict between the quarians and geth. Under Hackett and Shepard's leadership, the combined fleets of all the races of the galaxy launch a massive final attack on the Reapers orbiting Earth and on its surface in a last-ditch effort to retake the Citadel and use it to activate the Crucible. Through many hardships and even sacrifices, Shepard used the Crucible to destroy the Reaper threat and put an end to the 50,000-year cycle of extinction. Following the war, Shepard became a living legend, and was remembered as one of the most powerful soldiers in galactic history. Due to his injuries and plagued by survivor's guilt, Shepard resigned his commission in the Alliance military and withdrew from the public eye, though he would later contribute to the Citadel Council's reorganization into the Interstellar Republic and became one of its prominent leading figures. During this time, Shepard and Williams were married and had four children.

Born on April 11, 2154 in the city of Vancouver on Earth, John Shepard never knew his parents or any of his family that well, having been abandoned by them not long after his latent biotic abilities manifested, feeling that this was the type of punishment from a universe that obviously hated him and anything about him. When he turned six, Shepard found his freedom with the Tenth Street Reds, beginning a life of gang violence and turf wars. He was initiated into the gang and eventually participated in many gang wars and turf wars between rival factions. Despite trying to keep his distance, a gang member attempted to kill him after the violent battle. Finch and Julius Shaw saved him from his execution, with Finch killing the small-time hoodlum. Julius informs the gang that it is time to take the fight to the three rival gangs: Smoking Barrels, Pura Sapiens, and Venom Kick.

For years he pulled off petty crimes, robberies, even holding people at gunpoint. But it wasn't until one fateful night that caused Shepard to begin rethinking his decision: a robbery went wrong when he watched as one of his fellow gang members was gunned down by a store owner. When he fled the scene, he couldn't help but think to himself that could've been him. Shepard's youth was filled with violence and crime but sought a way to clear himself of his vile past and create a new future for himself, since his life in constant violence threatened to consume him.

On his eighteenth birthday, Shepard enlisted in the Alliance Navy and came to celebrate his enrollment more than his birthday. After joining the military, Shepard boarded a shuttle that took him to the Macap Training Camp in Brazil, one of the largest military training centers. There, he began his basic training under some of the toughest and most experienced combat drill instructors, such as Gunnery Chief Ellison. By the end of his basic training, Shepard graduated top of his class from the Alliance Naval Academy and took several weeks off to relax at a military base on Shanxi before boarding a shuttle for shore leave on Arcturus Station.

In 2176, a young 22-year-old Shepard was stationed on Elysium during shore leave alongside a few other marines he graduated with. However, later that night, Shepard was woken up by an unexpected attack when the first wave of the Skyllian Blitz struck. A massive coalition of slavers, crime syndicates and batarian warlords, many of which were under the command of Elanos Haliat, led an attack on the colony in an attempt to gain prestige among the gangs of Omega. Nearly three hours in the structure, they began to make their escape, only to find the entire hotel was crumbling. Surviving the building's collapse, Shepard and other marines he had rounded up to initiate a counterattack against the overwhelming pirate forces.

From courtyards to skyscrapers, Shepard became well-known among the citizenry, marines, and most importantly, the attacking mercenaries. Eventually, Shepard's attacks caught up with him and found himself, several marines and local militia surrounded by enemy forces. Shepard ordered the survivors to evacuate the civilians while preparing for the approaching 10,000 batarians, who easily outgunned and outnumbered him. Using the last supplies of ammunition and grenades, he laid waste to a large number of the enemy forces, but eventually found his weapons empty. In a last-ditch effort, Shepard engaged in hand-to-hand combat to ravage the remaining forces, until eventually the building collapsed; his demise was greatly expected. Astoundingly, he succeeded in eliminating the first wave of enemy troopers before reinforcements arrived.

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