Simon Atwell, the chief engineer on Asteroid X57, was originally in charge of bringing the asteroid across the Asgard system to Terra Nova, where he lives with his family and grandchildren in Aronas. Simon has a fairly open mind dealing with alien races: he knows batarians aren't all genocidal madmen, he likes and respects quarian workers, having hired quarian specialists in the past for mining jobs, and he despises Terra Firma's humanocentric values.
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“This mission just got a lot more complicated.” — Spoilers for Mass Effect follow. |
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When the asteroid is attacked by batarian extremists, Simon manages to escape and hide on X57's surface, eavesdropping on the batarians. He later sneaks into one of the fusion torch stations, presumably to try and disable the torch, but only succeeds in accidentally shooting Commander Shepard. Luckily, Shepard's shields absorb the hit.
Simon is then able to provide Shepard with background information on the situation, painting a dire picture of what happens if X57 hits Terra Nova. He knows little about enemy numbers, only that they're enough to give the Commander a challenge, and he has overheard the batarians fearfully taking orders from one they call Balak. Since asteroid drops are banned under Citadel Conventions, Simon thinks the batarians on X57 must be working without sanction from their government.
Simon's team rigged blasting caps around one of the fusion torches for excavating the asteroid. When the batarians arrived he improvised turning them into proximity-based explosives, and managed to snag some of the invaders by suprise. He can warn Shepard about this or answer their question about it following their encounter with the caps.
Simon is also concerned about three missing engineers and Kate Bowman. He witnessed the batarians' ruthlessness in action—breaking faceplates to expose hapless humans to vacuum and letting their varren eat victims alive—and he doesn't want such fates befalling his crew. He wants Shepard to look for them, though he understands if they're low on the Commander's priority list. He goes off to hide once Shepard learns what they could from him.
After Balak is dealt with, Simon reappears, having returned to the main facility to help. Shepard can justify the decision to kill or release Balak, and Simon explains that Shepard's actions have saved Terra Nova. He offers equipment as a reward. Shepard can pick from light, medium or heavy human armor, a rare set of quarian armor (left behind by Simon's former quarian colleagues) and an advanced omni-tool.
Trivia[]
- The voice actor for Simon, Brian Bloom, also provides the voice for Varric Tethras in Dragon Age II, as well as Leske, Dwyn, and Jerrik Dace in Dragon Age: Origins. He also voices Keiji Okuda in Mass Effect 2.
- One of the responses Shepard may give to Simon — "Two eyes, human. Four eyes, batarian." − may be an inverted reference to a similar quote from Animal Farm: "Four legs good, two legs bad."
- When Simon asks Shepard to look out for one of his crews, Shepard may mention a "tired platitude about the needs of many versus few". This is likely a reference to a line uttered by the character Spock in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.