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average-mako-enjoyer · 5 months

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Mass Effect LGBTQ+ representation issues and some headcanons

I've seen a few Mass Effect posts about the sexuality of the trilogy's characters, and I'd like to add my 5 cents, since none of those posts take into account the whole xenophilia aspect of canon relationships. And some of us are here for it. For the aliens. I am here for them. I'm not sorry.

Also, I have to acknowledge the fact that Bioware has made some very questionable choices, and the in-game representation is bad. Like BAD-bad.

I.E.(this list is going to be looong):

All Male Shepard/Kaidan Alenko dialog for ME1 and ME2 was written and fully voiced, but NOT INCLUDED in the final version of the game. And I know that the same thing happened to FemShep/Ashley, but that a bit different because...

The only "gay" romances in ME1 and ME2 are for femShep, and either with a female-representing human-like aliens (who like to dress in tight clothes that emphasize the size of their breasts), or with the equally feminine Kelly Chambers in ME2. Because, you know, guys who buy this game will be more tolerant of two "hot chicks making out" (insert a bunch of mods that make your femShep wear only lingerie and look like a TikTok e-girl) than a more realistic same-sex romance.

Especially when this romance is between two guys. Because ew. Right, Bioware? But you also wanted to sell your games to LGBTQ+ folks, so you installed a…

… so-called "gay button" into your games.

Before ME3, no one except for "hot chicks asari" states their sexuality. You can go through two entire games as a straight character completely surrounded by other completely straight characters. Oh, maybe Kelly likes aliens a little too much, but "who doesn't like asari", right? Even asexual salarians are into them. Sure, a straight woman like femShep…

"Hot chicks making out" really sells those game copies, I guess.

If you think ME3 is better, think again. The only two gay characters in the game are Cortez and Traynor, and they are both supporting characters, who are not even in your squad!

Cortez and his whole "I lost my husband" drama is conveniently placed on the lowest deck of the ship, so if this story offends your bigoted sensibilities, you can just ignore him along with the "dumb jock" Vega who is really unpopular with the players. Is it because he's really friendly with an openly gay character? Oh, who knows?

Meanwhile, Traynor is either mocked (oh, she found EDI voice hot and commented on that! what a shame! awkward lesbians, amirite?) or fetishized (don't get me wrong, Donnelly is funny, but his remarks about Traynor are even more yucky than the way he talks about EDI and lube).

But don't get mad about all this, because all the women in the trilogy are fetishized and heavily sexualized. The best example of this is Samara, whose character design is a war crime.

Bioware made Benezia look horrible (she tried to make Saren change his ways not with her power or wits but with those giant bazooms and the cleavage, I guess), and then they doubled down in ME2 and gave a warrior samurai nun a boob window. A FUCKING BOOB WINDOW. Because boys buy games, and they love boobs, y'know.

Oh, and any inappropriate remarks made by NPCs in the game are directed only at the femShep. Just like the MShenko romance, the male version of the dialog is fully voiced, but conveniently excluded from the game. Because guys can't tell other guys that they look hot in "that soldier getup". That can make bigots uncomfortable.

And let's talk about bi representation, because Bioware apparently hates bisexuals as much as straights and some queers do (trust me, as a bisexual I've experienced both types of hatred, and it's ugly). The only bisexual characters in the game are Kaidan and Diana Allers.

If you're a bigot playing as the maleShep, you can "safely" kill Kaidan on Virmire in the middle of the first game and not have to deal with his uncomfortable love confession at all!

So, yeah, Bigots: 1, Representation: 0. The bisexual is successfully killed, congratulations!

If you play as femShep, you won't even know that Kaidan is/was bi. Because who wants a bisexual guy who is comfortable with his sexuality? You can't sell that kind of romance to the good ladies who buy this game.

Diana Allers romance, meanwhile, is laugh-worthy. If you play as maleShep, you won't even know that she's bi. And if you're femShep, this romance is as insignificant as the one with Kelly, you won't even get an achievement for it! You can also kick her out of your ship without any consequences, so she will be KIA offscreen. You will find about it via fucking email. Bigots: 2, Representation: 0. Both of dirty bisexuals are successfully killed, congratulations!

The bi-xenophile Kelly suffers the same fate: no achievement for her romance, you cannot continue the romance after ME2, and she will either take a poison pill and die or be killed in the Collector's Base/Citadel offscreen in ME3. If she survives both the base and the Cerberus attack, you won't even get to say goodbye to her before the final battle of the game. Bigots: 3, Representation: 0

9. And I almost forgot about Omega DLC that kills the only female turian in the game. Who's also into asari. God, they did her dirty.

"Those were different times," you might say, but all of this could have been fixed in 2019, when the Limited Edition was released. Instead, we just have fellow modders changing the design of Benezia and Samara, restoring MShenko (one of the most healthy, respectful, and mature romances in the entire trilogy) and other gay romances in the game, making all NPCs flirt with your character, adding female turians and krogans to the environment, etc., etc.

Still, I think these games are great. The characters, the cinematics, some aspects of the writing, great! I love that canon. But the LGBTQ+ representation in those games sucks. Big time. But that doesn't stop me from having a bunch of headcanons. For the sake of convenience, I'm going to separate out all the characters for the games in which they debut.

Mass Effect:

MaleShep/FemShep: Both are canonically bi. Both don't mind the alien physiology thing and polyamory. Both are "married to your job" type, so they were okay with casual sex and one-night stands, and only mellowed out while in charge of the Normandy crew. Because of convenience, both had more hetero than same-sex hookups.

Ashley: Straight as a plank and xenophobic, but not homophobic. She's definitely into maleShep, but more into the idea of him as a sole survivor/war hero/butcher of Torfan than an actual person.

Garrus: He likes turian and quarian women. And both fem and maleShep. But with maleShep, he's more busy with the whole "flirt him to death" aspect of their bromance, so there's really no time to get on the floor and get dirty.

I also feel that turian society in the game is very patriarchal, so Garrus has a bias towards femShep and feels less restricted by her rank. With mShep, I think he would have only acted if mShep had specifically pursued that relationship. But mShep is also more interested in just flirting with Garrus.

Kaidan: Canonically bisexual (more into women) and demi. Not into aliens, but not xenophobic. Not a stranger to casual sex, but would really prefer to go steady because #introverted and has enough problems already. "How can you flirt with all these people, Shepard, it's exhausting…"

Liara: She's into both versions of Shepard. And maybe a bit into one drell. Classic demi/asexual. Also, imo, all asari are agender and Liara is not an exception.

Tali: Is a mess and can definitely go cross-species (her romance with Garrus is canon, after all). She's also a massive nerd and a bit kinky. I think she's into human/turian/quarian males, but maybe this femShep really is THAT SPECIAL.

Wrex: Krogan women - that's his sexual orientation. Real bros with mShep, more cautious with femShep because bias. Another "married to his job" character.

Joker: Straight and nerdy. #Irony. Too cool for homophobia.

Chakwas: More married to her job than anyone on this list. Cool lesbian aunt.

And this post is already so long that I'll make a separate one for ME2 and 3.

#mass effect #commander shepard #ashley williams #garrus vakarian #kaidan alenko #liara t'soni #tali'zorah #urdnot wrex #jeff moreau #headcanons #lgbtq headcanons #ranting #fuck bioware #my stuff #my thoughts

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dragonflight203 · 1 month

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Mass Effect 1 replay, Illos:

-You can’t end the Kaidan romance, but you can skip the sex scene. Kaidan takes being told no very well.

-Kaidan if you go paragon: Well, if I didn’t think you were doing the right thing I wouldn’t be here.

This is one of the reasons I really like Kaidan. The man’s made of integrity. He has his values and he won’t abandon them. It’s not that he’s not loyal – as he repeatedly mentions in this meeting, he’s likely to get court-martialed for helping Shepard. It’s that his loyalty is to beliefs he holds greater than an organization or a person.

This line is also an ouch knowing how ME2 goes. He doesn’t think Shepard’s doing the right thing so he doesn’t join up.

-For game purposes it makes sense, but I have to laugh when Joker calls in that the Normandy’s five minutes away from the Mu relay. I suppose I imagined exploring the system before choosing to land on Illos.

-And Joker mentions that stealth system are engaged, so the geth will only see the Normandy if the Normandy gets close enough for a visual.

Except as we learn in ME2 and are reminded in ME3, geth don’t do windows. Those are a structural weakness. :) So a visual was never a concern.

They really need to start adding windows. Not having them is a tactical weakness.

-Why does Saren walk to the conduit? What, was purchasing a mako too expensive? The geth couldn’t jury rig a vehicle?

Just saying, if he had driven instead of walked he could have turned the Citadel over to Sovereign long before Shepard caught up.

-Tali: My people once tried to find this world. We hoped we could settle here.

Logical enough, I suppose, but I have to wonder how serious of an effort they made. The Quarians never did a settle on another world after the geth drove them out. Why would Illos be different?

-It’s strange Liara never returned to Illos. She’s giddy the whole time she’s on the planet, for obvious reasons. I know there was a lot going on between ME1 and ME2 to keep her busy, but Illos feels like a much more logical trajectory for character. Make her the head archaeologist or the like for the planet.

-The statues on Illos are bizarre. As others have mentioned, they look like beings the Reapers might make – the tubes coming out of the faces don’t look natural, and the cord along the back of the neck looks husk like. They look fused to their chairs.

But if these are a species twisted by the Reapers, why are there statues of them? And why are the statues all over the planet?

-I do think the original plan was for the statues to be Protheans (or Protheans twisted by Reapers), and the appearance of Protheans was later retconned in ME2.

However, Prothean or Inusannon or being twisted by the Reapers, that still doesn’t explain why there statues are scattered all over the entrance to a top secret research facility.

-There are geth terminals scattered all over the place, including inside the facility. Why? How long has Saren been here?

The only reason I can think of for there to be so many terminals is if Saren’s been here a while trying to get the door open, so the geth settled in for the long term.

But if that’s the case, why didn’t Saren just blow the door open..?

-Which leads into why there are armature repair stations. How long has Saren been here that the geth are setting up repair stations??? And what is he doing that is causing the armatures to need repairs???

-Notably, the appearance of Vigil isn’t clear. It’s corrupted. While the obvious reason is to indicate how corrupted the VI is, it also left Bioware an easy out to retcon the appearance of the Protheans from the statues scattered all over the place. I don’t think that was an accident.

-Another good example of foreshadowing in ME1: The Keepers have been sketchy since they were introduced. No one knows what they are, no one knows how to communicate them, if you attempt to study them they die, and everyone’s dependent on them to keep the Citadel running. They’re a blackbox.

And Vigil explains that that’s intentional – the Reapers deliberately created the Keepers so organic species can settle in the Citadel without ever studying it closely enough to learn it’s a mass relay.

Very well executed Chekhov’s gun.

-Vigil says Reapers survive in dark space by going inactive. In this state, they’re vulnerable.

When I first heard this, I drew the (I though obvious) conclusion the method to defeat the Reapers would be to kill them while they’re inactive and, y’know, vulnerable.

I’m still disappointed the games didn’t take this route. It would have kept the plot between the three games tighter, and kept the Reapers more threatening – the organics only have a chance against the Reapers when the Reapers can’t fight back. If they wake up, it’s game over.

-Vigil says that the Reapers fought the Protheans by going world by world, system by system. Not all over the galaxy at once, like ME3.

Of course, they could do this because they had captured the Citadel at the start of the Prothean reaping and taken control of the mass relays.

Which would hold up better if they didn’t capture the Citadel near the end of ME3.

Why didn’t they just capture it at the start of ME3 so they could carry on with business as usual? And take control of the mass relays once they did finally capture it so the organics couldn’t, y’know, jump to Earth and attempt to reclaim the Citadel?

It’s possible to make this work by blaming it on hubris, the Reapers thought the organics would be easily crushed and only bothered to capture the Citadel once they realized they could fight back, etc… But since there aren’t any in-game reasons provided it sure feels like a hole.

-Vigil said the Reapers stripped the worlds of resources and technology.

Technology is obvious enough – they want to make it look like the Reapers were never here and control the development of future races.

But why the resources? What do the Reapers need those for?

-The Reapers recruited the geth because the Keepers evolved to only respond to the Citadel, rather than the Reapers. As non-organics the geth are more reliable.

Except, is that true? The geth do evolve – one of the points the game makes early on is that the geth have created new platforms that are more organic like, such as the sappers and hoppers. Tali flat out since they’re evolving on Noveria.

And if you want to incorporate ME2, the Reapers didn’t recruit all the geth. Just the heretics.

I feel like Vigil and Shepard are making an assumption here that doesn’t hold up.

-And on that note: I question how much Vigil knows versus how much he’s hypothesizing.

He knows more than he should – how does he know the details of the invasion? How does he that the records about Illos were destroyed in the initial attack on the Citadel? How does he know that Reapers are patient?

I suspect much of these are conclusions he’s drawn from what information he does have (radio broadcasts, observations based on Reaper behavior, etc.). But he doesn’t know it for a fact.

I’m mostly quibbling here over minor details, but Vigil’s one of the last info dumps of the game and how reliable he is as a source of information hugely influences how much we know of the Protheans end days.

-Does Saren know that the Citadel is a Mass Relay? If so, does he realize that he’s most likely going to die once Sovereign turns it on?

Indoctrination’s one of a hell drug, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t put the pieces together.

However, I think it’s more likely he doesn’t realize that it’s a Mass Relay – on Virmire, he said Sovereign had promised he wouldn’t be indoctrinated if he helped find the Conduit.

I think Saren believes he’s helping Sovereign take control of the Citadel, which will lead to the rest of the Reapers invading (maybe through the primary relay?) and then Saren will be able to help direct the reaping in a way that doesn’t lead to all organics being destroyed.

Bullshit, obviously, but that’s indoctrination for yah.

-Vigil at the start of the conversation: You must understand what’s going so you don’t make the same mistakes we do.

Shepard: So, why are the Reapers destroying organic life every 50,000 years? Vigil: Does it matter? You need to stop them, not understand them.

Mate, you were the one that said I needed to understand all of this.

-Vigil said that when the Citadel was attacked, communications were disrupted.

However, the beacons were the Protheans communication network. Or at least a key component of it. And the surviving Prothean scientists sent out a message when they woke up in case there were any other survivors. That’s the message Shepard and Saren got.

So communications weren’t completely down across the empire. It doesn’t take much to make this work – maybe there was another system as well that went completely offline – but the Protheans could still communicate across worlds and systems.

-Liara: Who knows how much longer Vigil will be here? Even now the signal is weak.

Is it only Liara who says this, or do other characters have variants? I don’t recall anyone else saying something similar.

If not, that’s disappointing – this is great foreshadowing in ME2. I always thought that the Council saying that no one else spoke to Vigil was bullshit on Bioware’s part to discredit Shepard as much as possible so he’s forced to work with Cerberus. This provides justification for it.

-Why didn’t Saren destroy the conduit on the Citadel? He knew Shepard was on his heels – did he even try to destroy it after he came through?

#mass effect #mass effect 1 #mass effect 1 replay

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hawkeharel · 1 year

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Intro post for me and my ocs!!

◇ Me

hi, my name is Tee! im an infp, bi and use she/her pronouns. i have a lot of love for anything fantasy/rpg based, but im mostly obsessed with dragon age, skyrim and mass effect and the ocs ive created for each game! outside of that i really enjoy art in any form; i love listening to music, taking photographs, reading stories and im currently learning to draw digitally! i've been on datwt for a while but am finally making a tumblr to endlessly talk about my ocs over here too!

◇ My OCs

here's a brief intro to my main ocs :)

(i play on console so ill include how they differ to their in-game look too)

Vilde Aeducan

game: dragon age origins

race + class: dwarf, two-handed warrior

pronouns + sexuality: she/her, lesbian

romance: leliana

appearance: vilde looks like the same as she does in-game. not pictured are her long blond plaits that flow down her back and that she is plus-sized and covered with battle-scars.

personality: ambitious, intellectual and intimidating. she is very closed off to those not close to her, strives to be successful and is extremely talented with diplomacy and hiding her easily obtained irraitation towards many people.

more info: carrd included at end of post.

Kyra Hawke

game: dragon age 2

race + class: human, dual-wielding rogue

pronouns + sexuality: she/they, bisexual

romance: isabela + fenris

appearance: kyra looks the same as she does in game, except her eyes are slightly more orange, she is 6 foot tall and more muscular.

personality: fun-loving and spontaneous, kyra is a people person. she is compassionate and generous as well as overly optimistic. but she can also be reckless and impulsive.

more info: carrd included at end of post.

Yenera Lavellan

game: dragon age inquisition

race + class: elf, mage

pronouns + sexuality: they/she/he, unlabelled

romance: solas

appearance: yenera looks the same as they do in game, except she has curly hair (3a/3b). not very visible in this screenshot is also their scar on their forehead, half obscured by his hair. also, they used to have dirthamen's vallaslin in a dark green tone.

personality: extremely curious, he is always seeking out more knowledge no matter the subject. they are very independant and only really open to the small amount of people they're close to. so fond of sleep, she can be found falling asleep on anything and anyone at anytime.

more info: carrd included at end of post.

Lupia Shepard

game(s): mass effect

race + class: human, vanguard

pronouns + sexuality: she/her, straight

romance: kaidan (me1) -> garrus (me2 +me3)

appearance: lupia looks exactly how she does in game.

personality: receptive and reliable. being a sole-survivor before becoming a spectre she tries to do as much to help others in need as she can. while she is a natural leader, she can be slightly idealistic and over-optimistic in her problem-solving.

Margot Mudbug

game: the ender scrolls v: skyrim

race + class: orc, warrior (werewolf)

pronouns + sexuality: she/they, pansexual

romance: marcina (oc below)

appearance: margot looks how they do in game, except taller, more muscular and they have a messy mullet.

personality: warm and loyal, margot wil do anything to help anyone (sometimes when they dont deserve it). she has a tendency to put other people's needs before their own, and can also be seen as too needy. although not great with criticisms, margot is great with people and will be there for anyone - especially those society has turned their back on.

Marcina Sailam

game: the ender scrolls v: skyrim

race + class: dark elf, rogue + magic user (vampire)

pronouns + sexuality: they/them, bisexual

romance: margot (oc above)

appearance: marcina looks the same as they do in game, except their hair is very long and sraggly and their vampire teeth are slightly more prominent.

personality: being so quick-witted and willing to share their negative opinions on anything, marcina is difficult to get along with. they can be insensitive and arguementative and are prone to lying. but in truth they are just lost soul trying to find their place in the world, and trying to get people to see them as more than they think they are.

if you would like to know more about my dragon age ocs please have a look at the carrd i made about them! :)

#oc intro #introducing myself #dragon age #skyrim #mass effect #dragon age origins #dragon age 2 #dragon age inquisition #tes v skyrim #anyway hiiii

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spratwurst · 4 years

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I've been enjoying me3 a lot so far. The mission on Tuchanka was great because I loved seeing the beutiful ancient architecture rather than the rubble from me2 again and Mordin sacrificing his life to cure the genophage felt really satisfying. His character arc was wrapped up nicely I think. Still, his line that was like "would have loved to study seashells" and his little song just before the explosion got me misty eyes a bit ngl. But it did feel like Good Consistent Character Development so I'm happy about that.

Another favorite mission was the one where Shepard enters the geth consensus. It was just really good? Even though it's been hinted at the fact that the geth didn't actually 'rebel' against the quarians since the first game, it was still good to see those memories and man. I'm just really emotional about the geth. They were basically children at that point and they were confused about what they did wrong and ugh. Managed to make peace between them and the quarians and that also felt good, but I wish there was a way to. idk. Challenge the way quarians tell their stories about the geth more directly. I'm sad about Legion also :(

AND THANE. This was definitely expected but it still hurt. I'm glad that he stayed in touched with his son and made amends. Though his prayer for Shepard kind of got me like uhhhh Shepard's not gonna be able to cheat death again huh? ALSO he never explained what 'siha' means smh

In other news, Joker and EDI are together which is?? I should have seen this coming lmao but I'm actually glad for them.

It feels really good to meet all of the companions from the first two games some way. All games should be like this. Making friends and keeping them around.

I love the war assets thing because it feels like even the small fetch quests matters. I hate the galaxy readiness system with the multiplayer though. Absolute bullshit that whether you play multiplayer or not affects the single player mission like that.

#eli plays mass effect #what else uhhh #the kaidan romance is great im living #he did the kissing shepards palm thing and i died #udina wasnt really a surprise never liked that guy #OH JACK #shes a teacher now lmao #im happy for her but i feel like this is the character development that should have #at least partially #been included in me2 #idk idk #all in all im enjoying it #i dont know if im near the end i just finished rannoch #OH ALSO i love all the interactions between the crew #like when theyre just hanging out together on the normandy #chef's kiss #mass effect spoilers #me3 spoilers #just in case

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meggannn · 3 years

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i'm interested in hearing your thoughts on garrus being shoe-horned into the best friend role if you want to talk about it!

I may not be able to talk about it as much as some people who are super Garrus-critical, but yes I can try!

this really becomes a problem in ME3 more than the other games. basically my understanding of Garrus’s writing in ME3 is that they were well aware that of the fact that he was a fan-favorite, and didn’t want to threaten that, so they made it his crux. they took most of the fandom’s feelings for Garrus and decided to reflect that in Shepard’s relationship with Garrus, but by doing this, they basically ended up pretending a relationship had been there throughout ME1-2 that existed in some player’s heads. of course, Mass Effect is an RPG (well, sort of) so in theory... your best friend could be whoever you want to be, so with that in mind, it’s a little strange for a dev team to go “your best friend is this one character and we will write all of his scenes around that assumption.” unless they really want to play up the fanservice, I guess.

when he’s introduced in ME1, people joke about how they would never not recruit him, but it is a possibility—you could run through the entire game having only met Garrus in the Citadel Tower and never spoken to him again—in which case by meeting him again in ME2, it is a little strange to see that guy you barely remember from the Citadel in the last game show up, but not entirely unwelcome, because at least you, like, recognize him. it’s a little odd how you banter like old friends by making fun of his scars, but what is straight-up bizarre is how in the next game, ME3, Garrus talks about how he was there with you fighting Reapers from the beginning. of course, not a lot of people would specifically go out of their way to avoid recruiting Garrus in ME1, and very few people probably naturally avoided him standing by the elevator in ME1 (which is the only way to not recruit him if you don’t find him in Dr. Michele’s clinic), so the odds of someone not recruiting him in ME1 are low unless they intended to, but it’s still possible.

come ME2, I think they chose to forget that. a few lines have changed in 2 if you don’t recruit him in 1, but not many. remember in ME1, Garrus was an optional squaddie, who had an optional side quest, and his relationship with Shepard there was very much superior/subordinate, or as some people interpret it, more mentor-like. the most personal they get is when they talk about their jobs, the difficulties they face making moral choices, a bit about their families, and Spectrehood. it’s a nice introduction to Garrus’s character but the lines are drawn pretty clear between their roles; by the end of ME1, given the canon dialogue, the closest I’m personally willing to believe of their relationship from helping him deal with Saleon is “subordinate I am fond of,” or post-Saren after Garrus leaves the Normandy, “ally I can call on later.”

and then Shepard dies and is gone for two years. by ME2, when you meet up with him again, I actually find this jump from “subordinate” to “ally/friend” works for my Shepard, but it might not for people who never really engaged with Garrus or even liked him on the SR-1, or those who weren’t thrilled with the idea of him... basically running off to kill as many people as he could on Omega after Shepard got themselves spaced. if you don’t romance him in ME2, he has so little content in ME2: his recruitment mission, post-recruitment convo, loyalty convo trigger, loyalty quest, and post-loyalty convo. if you romance him, you get several more scenes, but compared to other romanceable companions like Miranda or Jack—whose attitudes toward you change the more you talk to them—or even Samara, who you can just chat with while looking out at the stars, Garrus’s platonic relationship with Shepard seems to stall after the Sidonis quest: you gain his loyalty for the suicide mission and then you’re assumed to be all cool. realistically, they could’ve given us a lot of reasons why Garrus might not want to talk—he’s probably still reeling from getting his face blown off and confronting his betrayer again, or if you don’t let him kill Sidonis, maybe he could’ve gotten pissed at Shepard and confronted them—but that’s me trying to justify a lack of content. truthfully there’s very little non-romanceable Garrus content in ME2 to build up that “best friends” angle they want to sell in ME3.

in ME3, you DO get more content that shows how naturally “at ease” he feels working with Shepard: his recruitment mission, longer conversation trees when he joins, more banter from squaddies—including Garrus—on missions, him inviting you to go bottle-shooting, a scene with him after every main mission where he asks you how you’re doing, if you miss Ash/Kaidan, mutual struggles over the burden of leadership, worrying over his family, etc. by this point though, if you didn’t romance him, he’s treating you like his best friend even though he basically ignored you all of ME2. again, you could rationalize that time as his social awkwardness on a Cerberus ship, or him dealing with trauma, but in my friend’s words, it’s really more of bioware telling-but-not-showing that they really wanted you to like this guy but waiting until the last game to give him consistent scenes with the player that reflected that closeness.

on paper, Garrus makes a lot of sense to be close to Shepard, because assuming you recruit him in ME1, he’s been fighting Reapers with Shepard in every game, but also... so has Joker or Chakwas or Tali, for the same reason; so does Ash or Kaidan, for being the only Alliance teammate who was there at the beginning and end (assuming they didn’t both die); so does Liara, for being there every game and only abstaining in ME2 because she was still dealing with the fallout of saving your life (there’s lots of criticism of her being “forced” on the player too and while I agree with some of it, that’s a topic for another time lol). Bioware does introduce Garrus early in each game—I don’t know if this was intentional, because they knew he was so popular so they wanted to give him to the player early—but then he has so little to say in ME2, the game about building relationships, that introducing him early just means he stands around for half game talking about calibrations. a lot of fandom, especially shakarian fans, end up filling the gaps of ME2 with their own headcanons, myself included, to make the relationship development feel a little smoother, but the trouble there is when we start treating it like it was always canon for everybody.

I know it seems weird to complain that such a popular character should’ve had even more content—there are lots of other characters just as or more deserving who got really screwed over (coughs Ashley)—but in my ideal world, they all would’ve had more content lmfao.

#deustiel #garrus vakarian

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dgcatanisiri · 3 years

Text

Tried to make a brief summary of the issues of Mass Effect Andromeda’s handling of queer men and how it relates to why we’re (broad use here) upset with the Legendary Edition failing to provide better representation than the originals, and it kinda turned in to what amounts to an open letter for BioWare.

So, what the heck, here it is.

A little personal background. I spent my high school life completely in the closet. After graduating, I had a new computer and the opportunity to play a new game. The game chosen was BioWare’s Jade Empire. Still a fairly recent release, and I was a big fan of Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, also by BioWare. So, being a young gay man, still uncomfortable and uncertain of who I was, I was very excited when I got to play this game that would allow me to play a gay romance, a romance that featured two men. I burned through two playthroughs of the game within less than a week, enjoying that rush of acknowledgement that yes, gay guys could be the hero. It was a massive affirmation for me at the time, something that said that my sexuality was not going to prevent me from being the hero, which legitimately was a message that I felt like most media was giving me to that point, because gay men barely appeared in anything other than guest roles for an episode or two on a TV show, but certainly not in video games. That game, that experience... I’ve said for years that it had cemented me as a BioWare fan for life.

If I say that now, it is a statement with a few caveats.

The history of the failure of Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 to provide any male/male romances is well documented. I was excited, very eager to romance Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect 3. But even then, I noticed that there were things that were lacking in the romance. It was noticeable, for instance, that the basic dialogue between male Shepard and female Shepard was unchanged, if either was starting a new romance with Kaidan. The thing that always felt... WRONG about that was that if I’d had the option to begin a romance with him in the first game, I would have. Yet there’s not even a bit of dialogue that even references that inability, no comment of “I didn’t think you were available,” or anything of the sort, nothing to say that, say, Shepard was interested in Kaidan at the time, but didn’t believe he’d be receptive, didn’t want to damage their friendship, something of the sort. There was even a cut in the romance scene, where female Shepard will sit in Kaidan’s lap before being lifted up and carried to the bed, but with male Shepard and Kaidan, just fades to black. And then in the Citadel DLC, while all the other pairings walked in to the casino arm in arm, male Shepard and Kaidan are leaving plenty of room between them. There’s also the absence of any cuddling as they return to the Normandy.

To say nothing of the lack of Steve Cortez during the story segments of Citadel – he is not part of the big team entrance to the apartment, just spontaneously appears in the lounge room. He doesn’t participate in the briefings, and he is not a casino date, despite being part of the assembled team. Cortez also suffers from the fact that his romance spends so much time on how he needs to move on from the death of his husband, Shepard can come across as predatory towards him, trying to push him out of his grief and his pants. Due to the lateness of his arrival in the story, in game three, as opposed to game one or two, there is significantly less time to establish him as a person – beyond his past as a pilot and the death of his husband, we gain almost no concept of his personality or personal history.

I bring all of this up to help set the stage of what was expected when Mass Effect Andromeda was nearing release. Mass Effect had been full of problems of representation of queer men specifically (not that they were perfect on the count of female/female relationships either, because there’s plenty to talk about there, but as I’m not a lesbian or bisexual woman, I don’t feel comfortable talking about their experiences for them). While there were flaws, Dragon Age, what is often considered Mass Effect’s sister franchise, HAD managed to provide male/male romances in every iteration of that franchise.

In fact, considering that Dragon Age’s most recent installment, Dragon Age Inquisition, had been put out with a lot of fanfare about the first gay male companion, who was considered rather popular in the fandom, and the game itself receiving the Game of the Year award that year, indicating that, if there was any risk in the business sense of providing representation of queer men, it was negligible at most in the bottom line of that game, the attitude of a lot of gay men in the lead up to Andromeda’s release was some variation of “okay, Mass Effect has been flawed, but BioWare’s learned from their past mistakes, and they’re coming off the heels of a hugely successful game that had a gay character whose gayness was front and center in his storyline... We can expect that things will be fine, and we don’t have to worry.” That was the dominant attitude I found in a lot of my queer-oriented spaces.

But we started getting uncomfortable as the developers remained cagey about romance options in Andromeda – there were Twitter responses to “we’re concerned about Mass Effect’s history of gay representation, we would like to know about the options” that came out as “we checked and yep! They’re there!” These responses came across as flippant and even tone-deaf – the reason that the question was being asked was because of prior failures to be included, and not simply a desire to get all the details before launch.

As the trailers started coming out, the questions continued from the fans, and the response from the developers... continued to be uncomfortable. When asked directly for a listing of romances prior to release, the response was that the developers wanted players to learn as they played, that “the fun is in experiencing it!” This was a specific response when it was learned that the romance options could be flirted with regardless of orientation, but they would shut it down. Despite the fact that the trailers DID include content from certain romances – specifically, the male Ryder/Cora and male Ryder/Peebee romances.

This was uncomfortable for a lot of queer players like myself because it spoke to a lack of consideration of what it is like to be queer. In many places, it is a serious question of safety to even put yourself out there to find a partner, to flirt with someone openly unless you are already certain that there is a chance for a positive response. There are places where a queer person flirting with the wrong person can get them harassed, assaulted, even killed for doing so. Even in the safety of a virtual construct of video games, these are honed instincts that queer people have developed. And no matter how many times we would say this to the developers, no one seemed to understand. Likewise, the fact that the trailers felt free to show off heterosexual romances, but not queer ones felt... questionable.

Then, finally, firm details started coming out, and... There were problems. Early data-mining said that there was an even split of romances between orientations. But there was a bit of discomfort around the reveal that the gay characters, Suvi and Gil, were limited to the ship, rather than being companions who would accompany Ryder on missions. There is a history of companions being given more involved storylines and involvement than secondary characters. It also didn’t help the disappointment from queer people who’d been eager for Cora or Liam as romances, who were firmly established as straight (Cora herself had a popular lesbian following).

That discomfort increased when it came out further that, ACTUALLY, Jaal would not be available for Male Ryder. This caused a lot of upset. Now it was a case where there was NO M/M squadmate romance option. This on top of the group of fans who were uncomfortable with the idea that, in a sci-fi series, gay men couldn’t romance an alien, while this had become a staple of the series, considering Liara, the character from a species described as equivalent to Star Trek green-skinned Orion girls, had been available for straight men and lesbian/bi women from ME1, and straight women got in on the act with Garrus and Thane in ME2, on top of straight men also getting Tali.

This got worse when the achievement listing for the game was released and there was an achievement for “romancing three different characters.” Meaning that it was absolutely impossible for a gay man to play the game and get this achievement without playing a sexuality other than his own.

This is why I led with my experience with Jade Empire, why it was so affirming to me. Because to hear all this, ten years later, to see what had been so affirming to me a decade prior be functionally dismissed, be shown to take a secondary position at best... It hurt.

And the game proper did not help that feeling at all.

So first we meet Gil Brodie. Engineer of the Tempest. One of the first things we learn about him is that he has a close friendship with a woman named Jill. And then he immediately tells us that one) she is a fertility specialist, and two) she “says [he’s] part of the problem” because he won’t have kids the natural way. This is immediately setting off red flags to me – I can think of plenty of my friendships where we give one another grief for various things, but I would never think of introducing any of them to someone else with that fact. So my reflexive thought in this situation is “what kind of a friend is this really?”

And then, as the game goes on... This is the only thing that Gil’s conversations involve, the prospect of having kids. We do not learn much more about him, just have him talking about considering the idea. The lock-in for his romance requires Ryder to meet Jill, who Gil again says that she will talk his ear off about his “civic duty” to reproduce, a fact that makes those earlier red flags wave higher and more furiously, because who DOES that to a total stranger? And this is passed off as being “charming.” This leads to the culmination of the romance, where Gil says that Jill has decided she wants to get pregnant and she wants Gil to be the dad.

There’s... A LOT going on here, so let me work through this. First, one of the few things Gil says as a bit of establishing his character is that he is impulsive, that he joined the Andromeda Initiative, the journey from the Milky Way galaxy to the Andromeda galaxy without really thinking through what it would mean, that it was a one-way journey with no way to back out once he’d gotten there. So this is already saying to me that this is not a person who really SHOULD be a parent, at least at this point in his life.

We also get a couple of emails from him in-game that paint him as putting in thirty-six hour workdays into the engines on the Tempest, that he cares about and puts a lot of time into those engines. So when I think about him as a father, I see him having to give up something he’s deeply passionate about to do it, because the Tempest is certainly no place to raise a child – they can’t exactly put a playpen in the cargo hold, for example.

This would be one of the first things that I would think of as a discussion element, but... it’s not there. All that we get is a couple of casual comments about how Gil should know that bringing a child into the world is a big thing, something that shouldn’t be done lightly. But this is framed as Ryder questioning Gil’s fitness to be a parent at all, rather than questioning if he’s thinking this through and having considered this enough to be ready to take on this responsibility, or if it’s even something that he even wants.

Because that’s the other big thing here – this is not Gil’s idea. This is not something that he makes clear is his desire. No, it’s Jill who has decided that she wants to get pregnant and use Gil’s sperm. For all that he matters in this whole thing, he might as well be a turkey baster. He’s basically an accessory in his own story, because he goes in to this with all the passion of a math equation: “The Andromeda Initiative is a colonization effort. Therefore, the idea is to have babies. Therefore, I should find some way to reproduce.” This isn’t him having a passion or desire to have kids, just it being “something you do.”

This is, genuinely, a failure to understand the character who was being written. Gil’s writing reeks of having been written by someone who does not know what they are talking about. There is an element to the gay experience that is not innate but learned. When we realize that having children is not a thing that will just happen, that if we want this to happen, it will require a lot of additional steps, there are many who will simply say “this isn’t for me, this is more work than I’m willing to put in to for this.”

Now, Gil could have been someone who had decided it was worth it, but that butts up against the idea of him being impulsive, that he doesn’t think things through. There is no time given to focusing on the reason he decides this is the right choice for him, to the point that many players felt that this was not Gil’s decision but something that Jill was pushing, that she expected him to jump on her command. Because we have so little of Gil, as a character and an individual, but plenty of him talking up her, this “friendship” feels toxic to many.

Just about everyone I have ever spoken with about Gil is deeply uncomfortable that literally, the only way that he will not have a child at this point is if a romanced Ryder stops him – if I am playing a game where I don’t romance him, I actively just stop interacting with him at a certain point so that this never comes up, because this does not come across as happy. It comes across as forcing a gay man into a heteronormative experience to satisfy some traditional idea of “man and woman, raising kids.”

And, as the cherry on top, if you do tell Gil that you’re not comfortable having kids – a very real thing, whether gay or straight – then, unlike other romances, Gil and Ryder do not share a kiss at the finale of the game. And, during the last conversations on Meridian, the only thing Gil even brings up is Jill being pregnant, whether or not it’s his child.

This is what “representation of gay men” amounted to in Mass Effect Andromeda. A homophobic story that was about a gay experience written by someone who is not a part of this community and does not know or understand the experience personally, going through the motions of development when really, all that is cared about is the end result. To say that most of the gay men I know who have played this game find this homophobic is to undersell the point.

It doesn’t help that, of all the Tempest romances, Gil also clocks in with the least amount of romance exclusive material – a few flirts, the romance lock in and scene, and being able to stop Gil from having kids. Other than that, his friendship and his romance are virtually identical.

Speaking of, the romance scene consists of a make out session that fades to black, before coming back in with Ryder and Gil, shot from about shoulders up, briefly wrapping up their conversation that preceded the fade to black. This is noteworthy when the heterosexual romances between Ryder and their human love interests, as well as Peebee and Jaal, the former having a similar body model to naked human women, just blue, and Jaal, who is naked at other points in the game, have much more involved romance scenes – Cora’s in specific received special attention.

All of this, individually, may have just been reflective of time crunch and other external pressures – we all understand the realities of game development, that for all the ambitions that go in, when the deadlines are nearing, something has to give. But taken collectively... The kindest question is to ask why all of the “give” happened in regards to the gay man?

The end result with Gil honestly feels like he was written in response to the bad faith arguments that had come up in the period after the name for the game was revealed and it was made clear that the game would follow a colonization effort. There were a contingent of people who said that “there shouldn’t be gay people coming along, a colonization effort needs to reproduce.” This is a bad faith argument from homophobes, trying to justify why they don’t want gay people in “their” games. In answering their question, the question they only “ask” in order to explain why they don’t want to have gay people in the game without saying that, it comes across as catering the gay content for a heterosexual audience. It should go without saying that this is a bad position to take.

So, that’s Gil. What about Reyes? Well, Reyes himself is bound to a single planet, which, again, points to a minimizing of how much content he will even get, since his content can only be accessed on this single planet. Likewise, Reyes, as a character, is someone who falls in to several old, tired tropes with regards to bisexual men – he is a shady, untrustworthy character, in this instance literally a criminal, meant to be evocative of the “dashing rogue” archetype. This is a characterization that has often been BioWare’s go-to with regards to bisexual men, because we see this archetype drawn on in Jade Empire’s Sky, Dragon Age Origins’ Zevran, Dragon Age 2’s Anders, and even elements exist in Dragon Age Inquisition’s Dorian (even if he is a gay man). It’s a well that BioWare has frequently tapped when it comes to a romance option for queer men, to the point that it starts to feel like BioWare in general believes that this IS what queer men are.

There’s also the questionable portrayal of Reyes that leads to a description of the trope “the depraved bisexual,” an explicitly bisexual character who uses sex and sexuality as a manipulative tool, that they treat others as simply there to be their toys. Over in Dragon Age Inquisition, one of the romance options was specifically NOT made bisexual in order to avoid this trope, but Reyes himself seems to be a candidate for that trope all the same.

All this, and, again, the romance options for gay men were unequal to those for everyone else. This prompted the campaign #MakeJaalBi – Jaal was, notably, the character initially assumed to be the bisexual male companion, and on release, his romance was heterosexual exclusive. But datamining revealed that there was code for him to be romanced by male Ryder. Indeed, on release, it was noteworthy that Jaal could not even be flirted with by male Ryder. Liam had a distinct turndown for male Ryder, a couple of them, depending on when Ryder flirts with him. Jaal had no such turndown.

And this worked. BioWare released the patch for Andromeda that gave Jaal a bisexual romance. However, this was the only change that Mass Effect Andromeda received in regards to the issues of the romances before support for the game ended. While it was seen as an improvement, it was also questioned why this was the only change, when... Well, I spent the better part of two pages outlining the problems of Gil’s portrayal.

(I feel I would be remiss to not mention there was also a character, Hainley Abrams, who would, upon interacting with her, proceed to deadname herself to Ryder, as if that is the only way to establish that a transgender person is trans. This was also changed in a patch after the trans community complained, and, in conjunction with the above, led more than a few people to wonder if the Andromeda script had been looked over by any queer sensitivity readers, given the earlier issues with Gil. This does go out of the scope of everything else in this discussion, but it is worth mentioning.)

When Mac Walters says players will talk about how Shepard is each of theirs, that every individual player approaches Shepard as being “their” Shepard, he isn’t wrong. He says the characters, and the relationships we have with the characters is the heart and soul of the series, he isn’t wrong. And yet... When I play the trilogy, my heart and soul are being torn apart, because I do not get to see myself in the trilogy. I am not there in this story, at least for two thirds of the way. And in that third that I am there, I feel like I am cared about less than my counterparts who are heterosexual.

The idea that “making” characters available for same sex romance changes them is like saying that there is some inherent difference in a person because of their sexualities. While it’s true that the experiences of queer people does offer different perspectives on matters, it does not fundamentally alter the person, the individual that we are. It does not change our heart and soul. Restoring the bisexuality of characters like Jack, Jacob, Ashley, Thane, or Tali is not changing who they are. Making Kaidan bisexual in ME3 did not change who he was, and restoring a romance between him and male Shepard in ME1 would not change him either.

Every game has some cut content surrounding queer content specifically, and a great deal of that content is specifically for gay players like myself. I said at the beginning that I once thought of myself as a BioWare fan for life, but that now comes with caveats. The caveats are pretty simple – while the games produced by BioWare once felt affirming, now they feel like they’re only grudgingly allowing me to be there. That if I must be there, I should just take the scraps I’m given and be content with that, rather than being treated as an equal.

I like to think that this is not the message that the people at BioWare wish to impart to their players. I like to believe BioWare’s statements of wanting to be an inclusive and welcoming environment for their players, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, orientation, whatever identity and label one chooses. But based on the experience of the last four games, of the Legendary Edition perpetuating the homophobia of over a decade ago... I have a hard time believing that.

BioWare games once made me feel like I was equal to the straight heroes across my media. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that way about their games anymore. Not when, after having the opportunity to restore the bisexuality of Kaidan – of multiple characters, really – in the Legendary Edition, I am still being told that offering representation for people like me is something that only comes grudgingly.

And if that’s what I see now... What does it say about what the future of the franchise will offer? If every game in this series involves fighting for content that, in particular, heterosexual players will see offered as the rule, what motivates me to want to continue to be invested and involved in this franchise?

#bioware critical #dg rants #another angry queer rant #make mass effect inclusive #make mele inclusive #makemeleinclusive

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slothssassin · 3 years

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OC/Shepard as a companion

So ages ago the lovely @alyssalenko tagged me to do this, thank you, and sorry it took so super long! Originally this is a meme for your Shepard, but since I wanted to add a new OC to my Jules Shepard's story, I did it for her. Hope you don't mind!

Tagging @liaorban @starsandskies @playstationmademe and @galacticnug but no pressure of course, and feel free to do this for your Shep and not for an OC!

Picrew is here!

THE BASICS:

Full name: Tori Robin Royle

Class: Engineer

Pre-service history: Enlisted to basic Alliance training when she was 18 in 2175. After she had finished school, she traveled around for a while, performing at different places, planning to start her career as a singer. All in her family are active Alliance soldiers though so Tori felt the pressure to enlist as well.

Psychological profile: Unlike the rest of her family, Tori wasn’t meant to be a soldier. During her basic training, where she also met Commander Shepard and became their protegé, it became clear quickly that she wouldn’t be able to fight at the front line. The Alliance encourages her to improve her tech skills though, and with hard work (and help from Shepard) Tori becomes an Engineer. While she’s not a powerful fighter, Tori can quickly oversee the battlefield in combat and debuff enemies with her tech skills, actually becoming one of the most valued Engineers in her unit. Still, Tori never really felt at home in the military and didn’t stop dreaming of a career as a musician. While Shepard oversees other young soldiers as well, they developed a special connection with Tori, reassuring her to go her own way, even if that meant leaving the Alliance. To her own surprise, Tori gets assigned to a unit that hunts down batarian pirates in 2179. During an attack she gets heavily wounded though and loses her right arm. After she spent months on her recovery, she finally decides to leave the Alliance. Not much is known about her life after that - but she did become rather well known on the Citadel, finally working as the musician she always wanted to be. The Alliance loosely keeps track of her as she’s still in contact with Commander Shepard.

Rest is under the cut :)

MASS EFFECT 1:

When/how are they recruited: She won’t be recruited in ME1. She’s 26 at this time (2183), and left the Alliance in 2180 after she couldn’t get over her accident in 2179. Tori used to play the guitar in a band, but in 2182 she started her solo-career. She’s not really a celebrity but has made a name for herself as a singer, mostly performing at bars. Shepard can meet her at the Flux where she performs on Wednesday nights with her “Oldies” show - heavily influenced by 1950s Earth music.

Where are they on the Normandy: At the Citadel. She can be found at the Flux when she performs or at the Presidium

Are they romanceable: No

Personal quest: If Shepard visits her at the Flux they can talk about their common past. Tori will ask Shepard to check on her parents who she hasn’t heard from in a few months - which is not uncommon, as they aren’t close, but she started to worry. Shepard can then check the last known coordinates for the spaceship Tori’s parents worked on and find out that there was a major technical problem. The crew was trapped on the Carrier with no means to land and no way of contacting anyone. If Shepard does the mission and saves the ship, including Tori’s parents, it will contribute to Tori and her parents getting closer plus you get to see Tori perform. If Shepard doesn’t visit Tori or doesn’t do her quest, a Turian ship will save the Carrier and Shepard will hear about it in an elevator on the Citadel.

Who are their friends: Shepard is her friend, and she would get on especially well with Liara, Joker and Kaidan.

MASS EFFECT 2:

What does their dossier say: Tori Robin Royle, or Robin Royle aka RR when she performs, is a seemingly harmless, popular singer on the Citadel. But, behind the mask of a performer, she’s a retired but very capable Engineer. She has ties to Commander Shepard, could be easily influenced to help the mission, and, as a friend, might improve Shepard’s mood and thoughts about working with Cerberus, if she is recruited.

When/how are they recruited: She can be recruited in Act 2 after Shepard went to Horizon. If Shepard was in a romantic relationship with Ashley or Kaidan, Tori will send a message to Shepard, telling them she heard what happened and is there to talk whenever they want. The Illusive Man will encourage Shepard to visit Tori on the Citadel and ask her to join as she could be a valuable asset - hinting heavily that he has the means to end Tori’s career if Shepard doesn’t ask her.

Where are they on the Normandy: Either in the Mess Hall on Deck 3 or in the Starboard Observation.

Are they romanceable: No. If Shepard doesn’t romance Thane she’ll be in a relationship with him though.

How do they react to the PC returning: She will be incredibly surprised, but happy - after all, they had been friends and Tori had grieved for them. She’d be unsure about their connection to Cerberus though, and worried that Cerberus rebuilding them might have changed them. Tori would ask Shepard some personal questions, but would stop quickly as she’d feel like she’s invading their privacy. Only later on, on the Normandy, they would talk again about how Shepard feels about working with Cerberus, their cybernetics, and their personal history.

Personal quest: Tori approaches Shepard after she gets a call from her parents. If Shepard did Tori’s assignment in ME1, she will tell them that she got a bit closer with her parents, even though they don’t see each other often. If Shepard didn’t do her quest she’ll say that her parents wouldn’t contact her if it’s not important. Tori’s brother Andrew, a rather high-ranking Alliance officer, has gone missing and the Alliance wasn’t able to investigate or didn’t share any information. Shepard and Tori will meet with the Shadow Broker, aka Liara, to get information on Tori’s brother. They will discover that the Alliance did investigate but couldn’t find out what happened to Andrew either, and that his last coordinates are somewhere on a planet in the Horse Head Nebula. After following the coordinates and finding some clues they discover that Andrew had formed a small unit to hunt down a gang of Turian pirates. The pirates got the better of them though and Andrew and his unit died - their bodies can be found inside a factory, seemingly killed in action. Tori will be devastated, even though she wasn’t close with her brother. Shepard can assure her they will hunt down the pirates (which would lead to another side quest) and that they’ll do her best so the Alliance honours his death - this will cheer Tori up a little, but it’s not necessary to gain her loyalty.

Do they fight with any other companions: She has companions she’s not very close with due to them being rather different - like Miranda, Jack or Zaeed. However she rather keeps her distance than to engage in any fights.

What files does the Shadow Broker have on them: Her personal history, information on her family and video material of some of her performances. A list of songs she wants to cover, an extensive shopping list and the history of her watched videos. If Shepard hasn’t romanced Thane, then he and Tori get close - there will also be some files of songs she wrote for him (and changed frequently) and some emails they exchanged.

Can they die in the suicide mission, and how: She can die if she’s left behind as a defender as her combat skills aren’t the best.

MASS EFFECT 3:

When/how are they recruited: After the suicide mission she takes some time off. First, she visits her family and grieves for her brother. Then she goes back to the Citadel, planning to continue working as a singer. If she’s with Thane she spends less time performing and puts all her energy into helping him find a cure. She can then be convinced to come back to the Normandy after Thane dies (or for those like me who refuse to accept that Thane dies: They both come back after the Coup). If she’s not with Thane she will still join the Normandy Crew after the Coup.

Where are they on the Normandy: Mostly in the Starboard Observatory or the Mess Hall, just like in ME2.

Are they romanceable: No. If Shepard didn’t romance Thane she’s with him.

Citadel meetup (during the game, where do you meet them on the Citadel and what do you talk about): She can be found on the Silversun Strip, happy to get the chance to perform again. Other times she’s seen with the refugees, talking to them or playing the guitar for some children. If she’s with Thane, both can also be found at the Presidium. She and Shepard would talk about their past, how things have changed, and their hobbies. If she’s with Thane Shepard can also talk about his sickness (and recovery) and how they spend their time together.

How does the PC relax with them in the Citadel DLC (ie, buying gifts with EDI, watching the game with James and Vega, etc.): Tori would invite Shepard to watch one of her performances. She’d also suggest some firearms training as she feels like she needs it. Alternatively they would go to a bar or a restaurant to talk, or go shopping for supplies (and maybe more fish).

What do they say to the PC before the final battle: “I can’t believe this is it.. I’m scared Shepard, but I’ll do my best to assist you. And please, know that whatever happens - you’ve been a true friend to me, always helpful, always supporting. I’m thankful I met you all those years ago. Now let’s go. We’ll get out of this. We’ll see each other again, I know it.“

#mass effect #mass effect oc #tori robin royle #tagged

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just-another-wasteland-merc · 3 years

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Hi hello I hope you are having a lovely day <3 ALSO I love your ME AU and I'm curious if you're playing Mass Effect Legendary? And if so, what your Shepard is like/who they are romancing? :D

Oh hi Megh!

I am absolutely playing the remaster! Right now, my F!Shep Nina is the star for the first playthrough, and she romances Kaidan. (I made her hair too dark but I'm gonna fix that once I can edit her again in 3)

But the star of the AU, my crown jewel, the bro of bros, and Liara's heartthrob is Stefan, my M!Shep!

Kaidan survives as well, and in the AU, Shepard, Kaidan, Em and Mac are all pretty tight once they're all reunited again on the new Normandy.

Thank you for the AU love! I'm very grateful and happy people, including you, friend, like it so far! I'll drop here that ME2 is going to be a little different for Em and Mac since they don't follow Shepard, but they end up having their own problems and adventure!

Thank you for the ask! :D

#em and mac in outer space #mass effect au #mass effect #Stefan Shepard #nina shepard #rj maccready #robert joseph maccready #maccready #thanks for the ask!#its an aaaaaask!#adventuresofmeghatron #:)

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crqstalite · 3 years

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9, 26, 27, 29, 14, 12 :) <3 and a rose for Kodelyn as well 🌹

So I don't actually know whether you wanted me to answer these questions from the mass effect list or the tumblr headcanon list (since I reblogged them in pretty quick succession). So we're doing all of them because I got bored. Thank you Bry!!

9: What squad member do you bring along the most?

Kaidan. I'd say "that's too easy of an answer!" but he's so versatile! Biotic abilities! Tech abilities! The two things I'm always in need of. There's not a single situation I regret bringing him to game-wise. Take him everywhere in 1, agonize about not having him around in 2, take him everywhere in 3. Except for when I thought him, Liara and my weakling of a infiltrator could take the Luna mission. They could not. Not nearly as easily or without as many deaths as I thought they could.

12: Favorite non-combatant?

Probably Anderson! I love his character, will never not be sad about the ending to three because of it. I just think they did his character really well throughout the trilogy.

Or Chakwas. I love Chakwas a lot because of her personality. She screams space aunt to me.

14: Who did your most recent Shepard romance?

Ceres was the last Shepard I played through ME1 with back in July, so Liara! Honestly I was just curious, I'm slowly working through all the options (though unfortunately, don't have anyone lined up for Thane yet). Not sure about how I like them together just yet.

26: Who do you wish was available as a romance option?

Joker. If you had any idea what my bookmark list looked liked...

27: How many Shepards do you have?

Counting technically Daphne? Nine. Probably too many because I haven't actually written anything with the "B Team" (Nia, Danny, Ceres and AJ) just yet.

Kodelyn - Soldier, Kaidanmancer Citlali - Adept, Jokermancer Brione - Infiltrator, Garrusmancer Annika - Vanguard, Ashleymancer Nia - Sentinel, Kaidan/Ashley-mancer. Daniel - Engineer, Kaidanmancer Ceres - Vanguard, Liaramancer Alexandra June - Sentinel, Mirandamancer Daphne - Engineer

29: If you primarily play Paragon or Renegade, is there a dialogue/interrupt/action of the opposite alignment you always take?

Yes! I always choose the renegade option for the Batarian recruiter in ME2. That and the one on Thane's mission to push one of the mercs out of the window. And the one at the end of three.

9. Makeup?

I think at some point Koda's hands get a little too shaky to apply it correctly herself. It wasn't that big of a deal, after all it'd just take a little longer, but more often than not she'd sweat it off. Typically would go with anything subtle, eyeliner, dark red lipstick and maybe a little concealer for the smaller scars.

12. Favorite book genre?

Romance, as well as anything escapist. The fluffier and more ridiculous, the better. However, she is still a terrible flirt. Rectifying that is not high on her list of priorities. Kaidan still loves her all the same.

14. Physical abnormalities? (Both visible and not, including injuries/disabilities, long-term illnesses, food-intolerances, etc.)

Just one, since I haven't completely ironed them all out yet. Pre-Lazarus resurrection, Kodelyn had some nerve damage from Elysium and other missions that caused her hands and feet to go numb sometimes. It wasn't severe enough to hinder her work, just annoying enough to bother her, and she tended to wear compression gloves. Post-Lazarus, Miranda had managed to mitigate most of it, but she is still subject to tingling extremities every now and then.

26. Do they have any plans for the future? Any contingency plans if things don’t workout?

I'm paraphrasing from an earlier conversation with a mutual, but her and Kaidan settle down in Vancouver after the war. She pretty much skirts around the Councilor position offered to her afterwards, and mostly just...gets a chance to enjoy life with her boyfriend. Visits to the Orchard, visits home to her family, she learns to swim eventually. She's pretty much the "cool" aunt to Esme.

(And honestly, her only aunt.)

27. What is their biggest regret?

I think it's tied between Virmire (knowing she should've been able to save Ashley, and let her personal ties blind her) and Jump Zero (knowing she should've said or done something to prevent what happened to her sister). Koda hates losing people, and she struggles with accepting the fact that sometimes it happens, and there's nothing she can do about it -- no matter how controlling she gets.

29. Reaction to sudden extrapersonal disaster (eg The house is on fire! What do they do?)

Control. Koda wants to control the situation right off the bat. Where is everyone, how can she get them out as quickly and as safely as possible? Then comes gathering everything important, she'll retrieve those things herself. She prefers things to fall to her in the event of a disaster, and make them manageable. It stresses her out though, but if she doesn't have direct control over anything, it also stresses her out. There's no win-win situation here.

#kodelyn shepard #oc #original character

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bardofheartdive · 3 years

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Mass Effect Tag

Tagged by @spaceprincealenko. Tagging @alyssalenko, @bioticfox, @rock-paperback-scissors, and @ronqueesha. Only if you want to of course!

I am a fan since: 10-ish years now...I think?

Favourite game of the series: ME3. (And Citadel DLC if that’s an option)

Mshep or Fshep?: Femshep

Earthborn, Colonist, or Spacer? Colonist

Biotics or Tech? Biotics

Paragon or Renegade? Paragon (with the occasional snark)

Favourite class: Adept. Though I’ve been told I don’t play them right. Also, I’ve never played a vanguard past ME1.

Favourite companion: Kaidan and James (I also have a hard time dealing with shields in 2 and 3 so I usually take someone tech heavy like Garrus or EDI)

Least favourite companion: I like all the companions honestly but I don’t usually take other biotic specialists (Jack, Liara, Samara) because they’re redundant

My squad selection: Kaidan and Ashley, Kaidan and Garrus, Garrus and James, Kaidan and James

Favourite in-game romance: Kaidan

Favourite NPC: Anderson (SPACE DAD!!!)

Favourite Antagonist: Saren and The Illusive Man

Favourite loyalty mission: Garrus, Zaeed, Mordin, Legion

Favourite mission:

ME1: Virmire. (I know the bad thing happens there but I still love it)

Me2: Suicide mission.

Me3: The Citadel Coup, Cerberus base, London

Favourite DLC: Extended Cut Ending (dumb choice, I know, but it is!)

Control, Synthesis or Destroy: Destroy is my (Bard’s favorite) but I have at least one Shepard that’s picked each (including refusal)

Favourite weapon: I usually just use biotics. Weapon wise I usually stick to pistols

Favourite place: Normandy SR-2 in Mass Effect 3 and the Citadel apartment (home)

Favourite Quote: Kirrahe’s “Hold the Line” speech in ME1.

#mass effect #bardic tags #bardic memes

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erubadhriell · 3 years

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Mass Effect meme

Tagged by the amazing @badwolf626. Thank you so much for tagging! <3

I am a fan since: 2016 (Yeah, it took me a long while to come from Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age to Mass Effect)

Favourite game of the series: Mass Effect 1, followed by Mass Effect 2 right behind. I don't know much how to explain, ME1 doesn't have the best gameplay nor the best interactions with the characters, but it has a certain atmosphere that feels like home and yet something exciting like a exploration of a new world. The other two games don't have that, they are amazing, but they somehow lost this atmosphere that only ME1 has. I just love it and I feel like that every time I play the game (no matter how many times I already played it).

Mshep or Fshep? Both? I play with Femshep far more than MShep, that's for sure. Also, my canon and favorite Shep is a Femshep. But I like MShep very much too.

Earthborn, Colonist, or Spacer? I don't have a preference here. My canon Shep is Spacer, because I thought it would be cool to have a character borned and raised in space in a sci-fi game like that. But I really don't have preferences when it comes to the origins.

Biotics or Tech? Biotics.

Paragon or Renegade? Paragon. Although even my Paragon characters always end up with some Renegade points, becoming Paragade.

Favourite class: Adept and Infiltrator.

Favourite companion: Hard thing to choose, I like practically all of them. But some of my faves are Garrus Vakarian, Miranda Lawson, Grunt, Mordin Solus, Urdnot Wrex, Tali'Zorah.

Least favourite companion: Jacob Taylor for sure.

My squad selection: I change a lot the squad through the games depending on the quest I go and also depending on the Shep I'm playing. But for my canon Shep it was mostly: ME1: Garrus and Wrex/Tali; ME2: Garrus and Miranda/Tali; ME3: Garrus and Kaidan/Tali.

Favourite in-game romance: Garrus Vakarian.

Favourite NPC: Many. But if I have to choose, Anderson and Bakara.

Favourite Antagonist: The Illusive Man. I know he's very much annoying and since ME2 my Shep already wanted to kill him, but he's a very well built character. And also Saren.

Favourite loyalty mission: Kasumi’s loyalty mission.

Favourite mission: ME1: Virmire and the last one; ME2: Suicide Mission; ME3: Priority Tuchanka and Citadel DLC.

Favourite DLC: Citadel DLC for sure. I really love what they did with that DLC. It compensates a bit the fact that many of the ME2 characters (including romance ones) are completely put aside in ME3. And it's just so fun. I have lots of fun every time I play this DLC.

Control, Synthesis or Destroy: Destroy.

Favourite weapon: Black Widow.

Favourite place: I don't know. LOL The Normandy? I also liked exploring some of the planets in ME1.

Favourite Quote: “Sometimes the way a thing goes down does matter, Shepard. Later, when you have to live with yourself. Knowing that you acted with integrity—then it matters.”

"You can't predict how people will act, Garrus. But you can control how you'll respond. In the end, that's what really matters."

I'll tag: @djfatchip @leysendris @ratchsellsfornax @westharbor @lonyn (only if they want to) and anyone else who wants to join.

#tagged #mass effect #meme #long post

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tropicalfreckles · 3 years

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i can finally make my ocs again ahhhh

SO top 2 are my shepard siblings

First is Makani Shepard, he is the younger brother, like 26-27 (Adept)

second is Mira Shepard, she is canon shep’s age, 29 (Vanguard)

and third is my oc Rhea Mendoza, she’s the youngest of my ocs at 21-22 at the start of me1 (Engineer). I got two more but I have to get pics of them still

Mira and Kani got the spacer and war hero bgs cause together they stopped the Blitz, while Rhea was born on earth but was raised as a colonist. Her parents were killed when she was a teenager and her and her younger brother were sent back to Earth to be raised by their Aunt and Uncle. She enlisted at 18 for money reasons then I gave her the survivor bg so she has a huge ass hate for Cerberus. me2 was a fun arc for her in my little oc notes lmaaaoo

Mira does most of the shep stuff but her brother gets some of shep’s character arcs as well

Mira however is the one who dies at the beginning of me2 and brought back... man i got like. a lot of notes about that stuff including a lot of ANGST

they ride or die siblings

my other mass effect ocs are actually joint ocs cause I made them with my friend when she wanted to watch a playthrough of both Kaidan and Jack’s romances

twins, Philip and Eric Meyers. I remember Philip is a Sentinel and Eric is just a normal Soldier class

I ALSO STUPIDLY FORGOT TO GIVE MIRA BROWN EYES. pre death her eyes were brown, due to the shit they put in her to bring her back to life, she has some eerie purple eyes going on along with purple glowing scars

I got so used to purple eye mira for me2&me3 i forgot she used to have brown eyes

#me ocs #mass effect ocs #tropi talking

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bisexualgarrus · 3 years

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Op, if you had the chance to dictate what you want to see in a potential new mass effect story, what would you want to include? Exclude? Would you continue Shep's story in any way?

hi nonie! i’m putting all the things that i’m thinking about at the moment, but after i replay the games i might add more lol

non binary shepard option

all characters to be romancable by both fem shep and male shep, except for cortez and traynor of course

remove kaidan and ashley’s whitewashing on me2 and me3

thane not dying at the citadel coup and have him fighting alongside shepard on earth. and if they reeeally need to kill him, at least have him dying protecting shepard and not a council member. and also his whole fight with kai leng to just be more sensible. don’t have shepard and their squad just staring at him while he fights and they’re standing right next to him doing nothing lmao

change jacob’s loyalty mission, as a whole. and also! don’t have him abandon you for a rando on me3? lmao, let shepard continue their romance with him oh my god. that was so cheap

remove all the casual and unecessary misogyny as well as the whole “slavery is allowed between the asari but it’s not that bad if you think about it!” like honestly, what the fuck was that, served no purpose whatsoever

would change most character designs, especially for the women. particularly edi, miranda, jack and samara/morinth. edi’s boobs? gone. and give the women something proper to wear in the middle of a war jesus

the asari to use they/them pronouns or any pronouns interchangebly

more diverse body types, especially among the asari

something that bugs me so much is how little influence the asari have on galactic culture even though they’re the most advanced and powerful civilization? like, walking around the alien cities everything feels so..... human. like the way people act, the overall architecture, the conversations, the jobs, the markets, the way people organize themselves, etc. and it would make sense if humans were the most influential civilization of the galaxy but they aren’t. we’re talking about different alien civilizations with widely different cultures living altogether. i want to see that reflected in game. i don’t know exactly how the writers could pull it off but yeah. maybe i’m expecting too much here lol

if possible, i would like for the characters to just have a little more banter on me1 and me2, because they speak so little compared to me3. but that’s just a little extra

of course, change that mediocre ending. fuck the options, just give me an ending where shepard lives, the reapers are destroyed and all the synthetics live. the ending we deserve. and if they want to make your decisions matter just follow the war assets charts thingy. and i think that after everything the only thing that shepard deserves are a long life vacations along their love interest <3

#thanks for the question!!! hope you have a good day :)#answers #mass effect #martuposting #slavery /

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maskydoolovesmasseffect · 4 years

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How Many Crew Were On The Original Normandy?

Ok ok so I’m in the middle of replaying the original Mass Effect and I’ve run into something totally inconsequential that still bugs the hell out of me: How many people were aboard the original Normandy?

Oh, hear me out. So in Mass Effect 2, you get a mission from Hackett to go collect the dog tags of 20 dead crew members. Ok. So that’s at least how many people did NOT survive the Normandy’s destruction.

Now, at various points in the game, you’re told that most of the crew survived. Joker confirms this, as does Jacob and I believe also TIM (Not sure about that last one.) Ok, so the total number of survivors had to me more than 20.

So, at minimum, we’re looking at 41 crew for ‘most’ of the crew surviving to be true.

Now the problem is this, if you romance Kaidan and also make him anti-alien in Mass Effect 1, when he comes to your quarters after you steal the Normandy and before you get to Ilos, he says this line: “ "fifty thousand years to figure this out and it's down to 25 mutineers. way to go, team milky way.”

25 Mutineers. That’s not many. Assuming we aren’t including the aliens as mutineers and that this only refers to Alliance crew, that still would only bring the total number of people aboard to 29 in all, that’s still not nearly enough to make the 20 dead a minority.

I would say maybe the Normandy picked up more crew after the events of ME2, since in ME1 all the Normandy was supposed to be doing was a shake-down-run which then got out of hand... but the very first scene of the game disproves this. Navigator Pressly calls the shake down run suspicious precisely because it has too many crew on it already, saying a skeleton crew would have been enough. Though I’m not sure this means it necessarily had a full complement either.

It’s also possible some of the marines the Normandy started with died during the course of the events of the first game. Jenkins is a confirmed death, as is whoever is left behind on Virmire. Additionally, it’s possible other Marines died on virmire, as at least one marine is seen staying with either Ashley or Kaidan at the bomb site.

I’m also wondering if, during the theft of the Normandy, a few crew might have ‘noped’ out of the whole treason thing and chosen to remain on the Citadel. After all it wouldn’t make much sense for all of them to risk their careers or even lives based on some dreams their Commander had - they didn’t all see the same evidence and at least some skepticism would be entirely reasonable. A few might even believe Shepard is downright crazy.

So it’s possible the total number of Alliance members aboard the Normandy got whittled down, leaving only 25 remaining by the end, and was replenished to full later.

Note that I’m not really concerned about the total number of crew who can be seen in game aboard the ship. I’m happy to accept that the visible crew in game are only meant to be representative, much like any NPCs anywhere, and I assume the actual populations of anywhere you visit are far greater than what’s seen. Plus we can logic this away as crew working in shifts, and also the possible existence of locations aboard that Shepard never visits as from a gameplay standpoint they wouldn’t matter. As I recall, the first Normandy has no bathrooms but logically there must be some. In addition there is a ‘mess’ (which hardly seems to consist of only one table with 8 chairs, which I take to mean it’s only there to imply a mess for gameplay reasons) so logically there has to be some kind of kitchen somewhere. Point is, I’m happy to disregard the number of crew NPCs you can actually see.

I haven’t seen any official answers for this. If anyone knows of any or just has a good headcanon I’d love to hear it. I know I’m overthinking something that doesn’t really matter, but, that’s kinda what I do.

#Mass Effect #masseffect

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annakie · 4 years

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An Annotated Mass Effect Playthrough, Part One

A lot of these posts are going to be just my impressions, things I love, cool things to point out, I don’t know. Rambles about how much I love this game and everything about it.

To start off I’ll talk about my OC a little bit, and how I got into Mass Effect. Then we dive into the prologue.

List of Posts: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

My OC

So we all have our Main OC Shepards. Mine is Annakie.

Annakie is a name from an MST3k episode that I have loved since the first time I saw it in the early 90′s. I started using the name Annakie in IRC shortly thereafter, specifically in the SciFi channel’s IRC server, which used to be fairly active back in the day. And by the day I literally mean circa 1995. They used to host some pretty cool, especially for 1995, events there, like authors and writers of their shows would come in and do Q&A’s, including Kevin, Mike and Bill from MST3k. Kevin Murphy recognizing where my nick came from immediately was a moment of pride for me.

So I’ve basically always been Annakie online, even after knowing that it’s a real actual name some people have, I’ve still managed to snag it most places on the internet. And most of the time when I play a new game, I start out playing Annakie, or one of two or three other names I regularly use sometimes. But naming my first Shepard Annakie and having her look more or less like this every time I play is just... what I normally do.

Also I normally play goody two-shoes the first time I play through any game with moral decisions. The first time I played through Mass Effect, though, she was an engineer. I think the second time onward she’s always been a vanguard.

She’s a Spacer, because I love having her mom alive and get to talk to her. I like that she didn’t start from trauma. But she’s a sole survivor, because I like how that shows how strong she became. I also like that it gives her extra incentive to hate Cerberus later on.

Discovering Mass Effect

I’ve been gaming since I was seven in 1982 when my parents brought home our first Atari 2600. When RPGs became a thing I liked JRPGs a lot on the family Nintendo and some action RPGish games like Super Metroid, but when Western-Style RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights came out, I found my true video game love.

Before Mass Effect, my favorite game was Knights of the Old Republic. And it’s still way up there in my list of favorite games of all time. And I really loved Carth Onasi. Although I’d loved other video game love interests before him, Arin Gend, Valen Shadowbreath, Celes/Locke... Carth was my favorite. That also inspired me to try my hand at fanfic for the first time. That never saw the light of day and I’m pretty sure I lost it like 3 hard drive crashes ago.

So when I heard that the same company that made KotOR was making a new, non-Star Wars space game, I was excited. Until I went and looked at some of the trailers, gameplay preview videos, etc, and saw no female protagonist option. I must have looked somewhat early on because even on message boards I looked at the answer was “they haven’t said anything” or “I don’t think so”. And I was *crushed*, then stopped paying attention to that video game. After it came out, I heard it was a pretty good game, but if you could only play a guy, I wasn’t that interested.

It wasn’t until 2009 when I finally got an XBox 360 and realized I had no idea what games to play on it that I didn’t already have on PC. I joined a game trading thread on a forum I was on, and bought a few titles, and someone was selling Mass Effect cheap, so I thought... what the hell, I’ll probably like it even if I have to play a dude.

A few nights later I was curled up on my couch with controller in hand and... hmm this music is pretty good. OK New Game... Create Profile... wait what? Custom or default Female character? You can play as a woman?!? WHAT?? Damn, I should have looked at this game more closely. Okay.

So I made my Annakie Engineer... and honestly I don’t remember what origins I picked then... but the game started.

I recognized one of the first two voices I heard but couldn’t place it. And then a third guy was talking over these space scenes and someone walking scenes and... hang on, is that Seth Green?!?! Neat! Real cool space imagery here, great music... and then the intro was over and another guy started talking.

That. Is. Carth. Onasi’s. Voice.

I SCREAMED.

Then I stood up walked into my office, sat down at my PC, googled “Carth Onasi Voice Actor Mass Effect”, found the character’s name, then googled “Kaidan Alenko romance”. Found the wiki page, saw the answer was yes, and screamed again. Really, really mad at myself. This game had been out for two years. A space RPG where you can play as a lady and the same voice actor I already ADORED was in it playing another romanceable character. I knew then, two minutes into the game, that I was going to fucking LOVE THIS GAME and I should have played it TWO YEARS AGO.

I went back, played all night, and for the next several nights until I beat the game. And then joined forums and everything I could get my hands on to find fellow fans, then replayed the game, and played again, and again, and again until I had all the achievements. Then I bought it on PC so I could get all the achievements on PC and be ready to import saves for when Mass Effect 2 came out.

The one good thing about waiting so long to play ME1 was, I only had a year to wait until ME2. That year was basically all about Mass Effect for me.

The Prologue

Anyway, while we’re here, let’s talk about the prologue.

First off, who else, the first time you played, when in character creation you heard the “Profile Corrupted!” message thought you fucked something up or maybe your game disc was bad. Anyone? Not just me, right? I may have restarted my Xbox.

The class descriptions I think are a little wonky. I chose Engineer the first time through because I like utility classes and I like healing. But the classes don’t really... play that way I guess. Hitting F to heal (or whatever it’s mapped to on the controller) doesn’t really matter, and a couple of classes have access to First Aid. Nobody is really a “healer”. Hence switching to Vanguard later.

The prologue itself does a really great job, though, of setting up the game, and the world. It starts with the great move of telling you a little bit about your own character, helping you to understand those choices that you made “Spacer” “Earthborn” “War Hero” “Sole Survivor”, That was a good move. It took me until my second playthrough to connect those two guys talking about me to being Anderson and Udina.

Also, nice that they explained what Mass Effect actually *is* and placed you in a year, so you have an idea how far ahead this game is from our own time.

And then this...

Majestic.

But it’s great how they start with a shot of you, looking at Earth

then you see Jupiter, with an establishing shot of the spaceship you’re in. (OK I didn’t get a great screenshot of this, I’m using gifs that are going in a gifset posting tomorrow)

And then you fly by Neptune

Then... wait what the fuck is this thing?

Along with Seth Green talking to... someone? And the movement through the ship, giving you glimpses of Jenkins, Pressley, crewmates doing their jobs, the camera constantly sweeping, something big is happening! Something exciting! You’re not sure what all of it is but... it sounds cool!

The camera swings around on the person you’ve been following, and you already kinda know it’s your character, but there you are, in a very cool sweeping reveal.

The music swells. Then the big glowy weird scissors thing... eats the spaceship and spits it back out.

It’s all so effective. It’s kind of breathtaking to watch even for what must be like my 30th time, not exaggerating.

And I can never wait to do it again. What a great way to start this game.

#mass effect #annakie's mass effect stuff

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