Mass Effect Races (From Races, Races everywhere)

[Acatalepsy]

...anyway, on the subject of races that I hate from games - okay, it's a video game not a tabletop game, but, uh, I'm ignoring that for now. I'm sure someone has made an ME tabletop game or several by now anyway.

The goddamned Asari. Okay, we have mostly humanoid aliens in the galaxy. Not all of them, but a lot of them - whatever. Chalk it up to convergent evolution (not a great explanation, but in this case, not actually terrible) and the needs of the game. We still get a good deal of variety - in terms of biology, culture, etc. ME's aliens were very well done, by space opera standards.

...then you come to the Asari. A race of green blue/purple skinned space babe bisexuals. Who can breed with every species because [bull**** reasons] and every species thinks is sexy. Who also have natural force powers. Really, Bioware? Just - really?

Also, it's not helpful that your first introduction to the Asari is this:


I rest my case.

...the Vulcans are number two on my hit list, for the entire culture consisting of the writing failing to understand how logic and reason work.

[AgentofHellfire]

...the Vulcans are number two on my hit list, for the entire culture consisting of the writing failing to understand how logic and reason work.

I haven't played ME, so I'm not going to touch on Asari, but you actually bring up a pretty good point with Vulcans. I rather dislike their interpretation of "logic".

[HalfTangible]

...anyway, on the subject of races that I hate from games - okay, it's a video game not a tabletop game, but, uh, I'm ignoring that for now. I'm sure someone has made an ME tabletop game or several by now anyway.

The goddamned Asari. Okay, we have mostly humanoid aliens in the galaxy. Not all of them, but a lot of them - whatever. Chalk it up to convergent evolution (not a great explanation, but in this case, not actually terrible) and the needs of the game. We still get a good deal of variety - in terms of biology, culture, etc. ME's aliens were very well done, by space opera standards.

...then you come to the Asari. A race of green blue/purple skinned space babe bisexuals. Who can breed with every species because [bull**** reasons] and every species thinks is sexy. Who also have natural force powers. Really, Bioware? Just - really?

Also, it's not helpful that your first introduction to the Asari is this:
[IMG]http://honestcake.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/12benezia.jpg[IMG]

I rest my case.

...the Vulcans are number two on my hit list, for the entire culture consisting of the writing failing to understand how logic and reason work.

I (and some others) feel they do a lot better with the Asari in subsequent games. But yeah, the first one kinda dropped the ball big time... though personally I better remember the Asari as the race with the ultra-commandos that (as we find out in 3) are apparently good enough they don't need a regular standing army :I

[The Oni]

I think that's a little unfair to the Asari. First of all, like most of the ME races, they're a deconstruction. Yes, they are blue-skinned space babes, but they're hardly Mary Sues. They're clearly pretty flawed; they're concealing a lot of nasty stuff about their species including the common-ness of Ardat-Yakshi, the Justicar system, and

Spoiler: ME3 Spoilers

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the fact that their seemingly super-awesomely advanced race had a bunch of hands-on help from the Protheans to get started. They're not "just better" like Space Elves tend to be; somebody slipped them a really good hand of cards.

It's also implied in 2 by a certain scene on Ilium that their attractiveness may be totally or partially an illusion - either because their biotics generate a field that causes other races to fixate on whatever they find most attractive about Asari, or that really strong pheromones cause people to not care so much that they're far more alien than players see them as. A common theory is that while humans see an attractive, tentacly blue human, a Krogan sees a comely, skinnier blue Krogan.

If you're just like "Oh look, anything can have sex with it, ugh fanservice" consider that that is an excellent evolutionary strategy, and makes perfect sense for a single-gendered race that can't otherwise acquire greater genetic diversity, especially when the consequence of that genetic bottleneck is more Ardat-Yakshi.

Also Vulcans supposedly feel much stronger emotions than humans, and their Strawman Logic isn't so much an attempt at real logic as a safeguard against society-degrading Vulcan Rage.

[Yora]

Spoiler: ME3 Spoilers

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the fact that their seemingly super-awesomely advanced race had a bunch of hands-on help from the Protheans to get started. They're not "just better" like Space Elves tend to be; somebody slipped them a really good hand of cards.

Spoiler

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They also enforced the law that any species that wants to join the Citadel Space has to share any piece of Prothean technology with the other races or face severe punishment for keeping any find secret. While they have the only existing fully functional Prothean super-computer in the galaxy and used its information to bio-engineer their race off the scale for thousands of years. And of course never told anyone about it.
They not only got a really good hand of cards, they also cheated like there's no tomorrow.

I think to make good new races, they need to be distinctively biologically different. And then you use those differences and try to find some ways in which it would make their society and culture different from human ones.
If it's only culture that ignores the biological differences, then you end up with just pointy eared humans and those usually don't get very great responses from the audience.

[Acatalepsy]

I think that's a little unfair to the Asari. First of all, like most of the ME races, they're a deconstruction. Yes, they are blue-skinned space babes, but they're hardly Mary Sues.

I don't think they're "Mary Sues", and in fact I think that the term "Mary Sue" is a blight upon the internet and all discussion relating to fiction. "Deconstruction" is another term that's mostly been rendered meaningless.

What I do think is that the Asari are a cancer upon the otherwise fairly good worldbuilding of ME, and that it's impossible to take them seriously as an alien species because they're a blatant vehicle for fanservice. Also, I award Bioware zero points for having Asari complain about being stereotyped, or otherwise trying to 'deconstruct' the Green Skinned Space babe...while also milking those stereotypes for all they're worth.

Spoiler: Exhibit B

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Pictured: An elite Asari warrior. Not pictured: High ****ing heels.

It's also implied in 2 by a certain scene on Ilium that their attractiveness may be totally or partially an illusion - either because their biotics generate a field that causes other races to fixate on whatever they find most attractive about Asari, or that really strong pheromones cause people to not care so much that they're far more alien than players see them as. A common theory is that while humans see an attractive, tentacly blue human, a Krogan sees a comely, skinnier blue Krogan.

An easily-missed, overheard side conversation that amounts to several drunk guys speculating. Never mentioned in a Codex entry, nor in any dialog. You never have any option to say to Liara or Samara "hey, don't you have pheromones that are screwing with my head?". Given that the rest of the Codex and dialog conversations goes into detail on everything from the FTL internet to ancient galactic history to how your guns work, that seems like...a bit of an oversight, don't you think?

So, uh, no. I award Bioware zero points. They know how stupid and problematic it is, but they're not willing to come out and have it be anything but a sort of in-joke that everyone already knows about. They get no credit for noticing the problem but doing nothing about it.

If you're just like "Oh look, anything can have sex with it, ugh fanservice" consider that that is an excellent evolutionary strategy, and makes perfect sense for a single-gendered race that can't otherwise acquire greater genetic diversity, especially when the consequence of that genetic bottleneck is more Ardat-Yakshi.

No, it is not an excellent evolutionary strategy. It doesn't make evolutionary sense, or any other kind of sense for that matter; quite the opposite. It's a fractal of biological nonsense - on every level you examine it, it contains the entire assemblage of fail.

I mean, where to even start? How does something like that even evolve? What kind of mechanisms uses a "neural map" to "scramble" the DNA? How does that even make sense in the first place as a thing to do? What possible benefit is there for information on other species nervous systems? Why evolve a system that enables a species to mate with other sentient species, when you don't have any other sentient species on the planet?

Is there any way you can justify this other than "It lets us add literally mindblowing sex with Blue Skinned Space Babes" ?

(No, you cannot invoke the Protheans here. Not only is there no evidence that they engineered this ridiculous biofail contraption, if they did it would be immediately obvious that someone had tampered with the Asari biology. The Prothean involvement was a complete secret - and this was a major plot point - which requires literally every other species to fail at evolutionary biology forever.)

Spoiler: In Summary

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It's not even that they wanted to have a species that every species could have sex with - okay, that's sort of dumb, but there are ways it could be done that make a degree of sense. It's not that they have fanservice (I have separate complaints on that front, but those are, well, separate). It's that, when it came to the Asari, creating a universe filled with verisimilitude - that felt like a real place - came second place to the desire to have Green Blue Skinned Space Babes with prominent boobs, and also to not have to think about it that much.

Also Vulcans supposedly feel much stronger emotions than humans, and their Strawman Logic isn't so much an attempt at real logic as a safeguard against society-degrading Vulcan Rage.

It's just a shame that no one bothered to tell the audience that. Or the writers, for that matter.

[Kalmageddon]

I'm with Acatalepsy on this one, Asari are there just for the fanservice and they detract from the setting with their presence.
Quarian are also guility of this in a minor way, they are fairly alien for the most part, culturally and phyisically, but then you find out that they are basically humans with wierd hands and legs.

Anyway, as you can guess I hate fanservice races as well, I think they are an immature concept designed to lure in teenagers and the like, only that it's even more absurd nowdays when porn is readly available on the Internet for everyone.
We shouldn't need that stuff in our video games/books/movies too.

I also deeply despise any anime-esque race. You know what I'm taling about, a race of catgirls whose only cat-like feature is cat ears and a tail, or a race of demons/angels that just have small, useless wings sprouting out of their back because it's cute or any of that crap.
Luckly not too common in tabletop rpgs.

I also hate D&D (pathfinder, not so much) gnomes. Mostly because I really, really like folklore and the whole concept of feys and gnomes don't do it any justice. I also always found their role reduntant with dwarves.
Aren't dwarves supposed to be the experts when it comes to steam tech, clockwork stuff and other kind of weird inventions? Crafing things is their whole deal after all.
I guess gnomes are more of a "wacky scientist whose invention backfire" kind of thing, which is another reason to despise them because that's a terribly overused trope that needs to die in a fire.

[ShadowFighter15]

Still working away at my own setting but I'm a touch stumped for my reptilian species, the slaraken. Idea is that they evolved on the same continent as elves and, for a while, were indentured servants of the elves. Not slaves, though, and any slaraken will be quick to point out the difference. Got the idea for that bit of them from a side-quest in Mass Effect 2 on Illium, where Shepard helped out an asari slave broker and a quarian who'd willingly entered into an indentured servitude contract. The terms of it all actually sounded reasonable, better than an actual slave but a bit below a normal hired servant, and with various laws to uphold the indentured's rights.

Idea is that the elves initially tried normal slavery but the slaraken rebelled with peaceful methods. They weren't trying to abolish slavery entirely - they were happy to work for the elves and do a lot of the heavy lifting, not even asking for pay, just to have decent living conditions, be treated with respect, be provided decent food or be allowed to grow or catch their own and have a way to obtain their freedom if they desired it. Elves were long-lived enough to look at the long term more seriously than human would and realised trying to force them to continue as slaves was just going to cause problems down the line and that it was easier to concede.

Anyway, I'm trying to work out what these guys would be good at compared to the other species - humans are your normal jack-of-all-trades sort, though I've added that they aren't as affected by radically-different climates as the other species (ie - dwarves are bad with high altitudes since they evolved underground, elves are particularly prone to dehydration and cold temperatures due to their tropical homeland, etc), elves are the masters of magic and research as well as possessing one of the finest navies in the world, dwarves haven't changed much from the fantasy norm save that they aren't notable drinkers and the whole pathological stubbornness I mentioned a few pages back, felinids are either expert wilderness fighters/survivalists or financial wizards*, depending on whether they were raised by a wilderness tribe or one in a city, but I'm stuck on what the slaraken should be good at. All I have so far is that the elven navy uses a lot of slaraken soldiers as amphibious assault teams or aquatic saboteurs as they're able to breathe underwater. Toyed with the idea of making them legal experts as well, a holdover from when they all heavily studied their rights as indentured servants so that they would know just when they could take their employer to court over rights violations.


*Idea there was that felinid like nice things (think your pampered house cat with sentience) and jobs that involve working with a lot of money tend to pay well enough that they can afford those nice things while still leaving them enough free time to enjoy them. So Urbankin felinid actively desire such jobs.

I also hate D&D (pathfinder, not so much) gnomes. Mostly because I really, really like folklore and the whole concept of feys and gnomes don't do it any justice. I also always found their role reduntant with dwarves.

I kind of agree with you about gnomes - they never really seemed to fit in any setting (Eberron had a nice use for their inquisitive natures, though, but didn't really tie into the folklore much), but Golarion put a good spin on them.

For those unfamiliar - Golarion's gnomes are exiles from the First World; the world of the fae and a prototype for the Material Plane. While they've adapted so that they're considered native inhabitants of the Material Plane, they still have some very fae-esque traits. Like how they're effectively immortal as long as they continue to experience new things - a gnome who goes too long without new experiences undergoes the Bleaching, where all the colour slowly drains from their body and they become slow and listless before finally falling dead.

[AgentofHellfire]

What I do think is that the Asari are a cancer upon the otherwise fairly good worldbuilding of ME, and that it's impossible to take them seriously as an alien species because they're a blatant vehicle for fanservice. Also, I award Bioware zero points for having Asari complain about being stereotyped, or otherwise trying to 'deconstruct' the Green Skinned Space babe...while also milking those stereotypes for all they're worth.

I should point out about this complaint specifically that the way a lot of stereotypes originate comes from certain (not all) people of that group justifying it.

Spoiler: Exhibit B

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Pictured: An elite Asari warrior. Not pictured: High ****ing heels.

Are we sure that's the uniform she uses in combat, and not just ceremonial garb?

Especially since "elite warrior", once you get to the Industrial Revolution or beyond, often means you yourself aren't actually in battle?

And that there are plenty of examples of non-vamped up Asari in the images I can find.

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While I admit that the "Everyone's attracted to them"/"can breed with everyone" bit is weird, I don't think all the issues are a big deal.

[AgentofHellfire]

Anyway, as you can guess I hate fanservice races as well, I think they are an immature concept designed to lure in teenagers and the like, only that it's even more absurd nowdays when porn is readly available on the Internet for everyone.
We shouldn't need that stuff in our video games/books/movies too.

While I agree that dedicating an entire race to fanservice is a little overboard, I should point out that fanserviced characters can reflect a preference for sources of arousal that are, you know, humans rather than impersonal things on a screen. Which ain't necessarily immature.

[The Oni]

"Deconstruction" is another term that's mostly been rendered meaningless.

No, it hasn't been rendered meaningless just because some jokers on TVTropes used it in improper context; it's a real literary device and, BTW, BioWare uses it a lot.

You figure a Proud Warrior Race with few diplomacy skills is likely to be as successful as the Klingons are in Star Trek? Hell, no; they're a lot more likely to have the galaxy turn on them, and end up like the Krogans.

What I do think is that the Asari are a cancer upon the otherwise fairly good worldbuilding of ME, and that it's impossible to take them seriously as an alien species because they're a blatant vehicle for fanservice.

I take it that's why Liara ended up being one of the trilogy's most developed characters and a hugely essential plot point. Several times.

Spoiler: Exhibit B

Show

Pictured: An elite Asari warrior. Not pictured: High ****ing heels.

...The high heels are a fair point.

An easily-missed, overheard side conversation that amounts to several drunk guys speculating. Never mentioned in a Codex entry, nor in any dialog. You never have any option to say to Liara or Samara "hey, don't you have pheromones that are screwing with my head?". Given that the rest of the Codex and dialog conversations goes into detail on everything from the FTL internet to ancient galactic history to how your guns work, that seems like...a bit of an oversight, don't you think?

Dude, what kind of logic is that? You want a universe with verisimilitude, but it doesn't count if you didn't read it in a book? The universe feels more real and alive if you experience it organically.

No, it is not an excellent evolutionary strategy. It doesn't make evolutionary sense, or any other kind of sense for that matter; quite the opposite. It's a fractal of biological nonsense - on every level you examine it, it contains the entire assemblage of fail.

I mean, where to even start? How does something like that even evolve? What kind of mechanisms uses a "neural map" to "scramble" the DNA? How does that even make sense in the first place as a thing to do? What possible benefit is there for information on other species nervous systems? Why evolve a system that enables a species to mate with other sentient species, when you don't have any other sentient species on the planet?

Uh, yeah - the planet the Asari originated on is chock so full of eezo they have to purify all the food for visitors or they'll die from it (That IS in a Codex entry, BTW). When the Asari were little blue lizards crawling out of the primordial soup they were already developing natural biotics, and

Spoiler: Mass Effect 3 Spoilers

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They were intelligent humanoids in the last cycle - intelligent enough for the trappings of Prothean religion, at least, but not enough to be considered Reaper-fodder - meaning they've been evolving said powers for several cycles

so it is completely reasonable to think that such a system could have evolved alongside biology as we know it. You realize, of course, that Element Zero itself, and Mass Effect fields, the enabling premise of the entire series, violate the hell out of conventional physics, because it tells conservation of mass to step aside for space-travel - having accepted that, the fact that it allows for cross-species breeding is a minor hurdle at best.

Is there any way you can justify this other than "It lets us add literally mindblowing sex with Blue Skinned Space Babes" ?

How about "If there were an alien race superficially resembling human women with psychic powers this is what they might be like? That their behavior and aesthetics come from being a very long-lived people without a history of gender-based oppression (having no genders to base said oppression off of?)"

If you wanted to get cynical about it, it's ultimately "we ran out of budget and couldn't make an Asari male model to put in our game, so we took the concept and ran with it."

[HalfTangible]

... Am I the only one who didn't find Samara's exposed cleavage even remotely fanservicey? It's hard to go 'woohoo fanservice' when you just watched this woman kill five people, one of whom was flat on their back, openly admitted she would kill any police officers who got in her way, and then later wants you to help murder her daughter (albeit because she was a space succubus - I have to wonder how that came about or how it remains in the genepool anyway)

What I saw was utter confidence in one's biotic barriers and, to be honest, if something could take down her biotic barriers, it would probably shred through armor too. (The high heels, though, WERE incredibly stupid)

[Acatalepsy]

Are we sure that's the uniform she uses in combat, and not just ceremonial garb?

Yes. It's the uniform she uses while fighting a bunch of mercenaries, and the uniform she wears when you bring her along to save the galaxy, exchanging gunfire with the enemy- high heels and all.

What I saw was utter confidence in one's biotic barriers and, to be honest, if something could take down her biotic barriers, it would probably shred through armor too. (The high heels, though, WERE incredibly stupid)

The actual military forces of everyone else in the game has armor, even on shielded or biotic troops. This is for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that ME barriers aren't actually supposed to be magic SF 'shields' - among other things, they don't actually stop energy weapons, heat, pressure, radiation, or toxins.

...what it ultimately came down to was that Samara's character design didn't include space for things like "is at least somewhat practical".

No, it hasn't been rendered meaningless just because some jokers on TVTropes used it in improper context; it's a real literary device and, BTW, BioWare uses it a lot.

You figure a Proud Warrior Race with few diplomacy skills is likely to be as successful as the Klingons are in Star Trek? Hell, no; they're a lot more likely to have the galaxy turn on them, and end up like the Krogans.

Deconstruction in the literary sense has nothing to do with anything discussed here. An author can subvert or play with audience expectations (or start to play with expectations and almost try to challenge the audience, only to ultimately jump back into their little safe space), but that's entirely a different thing from 'deconstruction', which deals with language and how we interpret things to have meaning.

I take it that's why Liara ended up being one of the trilogy's most developed characters and a hugely essential plot point. Several times.

Liara is one of the most developed characters - but that has literally nothing to do with what we're talking about. There's nothing contradictory between "Asari are a cancer upon the otherwise fairly good worldbuilding of ME, and that it's impossible to take them seriously as an alien species because they're a blatant vehicle for fanservice" and "Liara is one of the most well developed, important characters in the series".

I mean, I liked ME. I wouldn't be posting about it if I didn't. Bioware is at its best when doing characters, and in a lot of ways that's the part that matters. That doesn't mean I'm going to just ignore the problems in the construction of their universe and story.

Dude, what kind of logic is that? You want a universe with verisimilitude, but it doesn't count if you didn't read it in a book? The universe feels more real and alive if you experience it organically.

It doesn't count in the sense that Bioware gets no credit for dealing with the problem if the only place where they so much as acknowledge the problem brought up by the Asari is in this one tiny scene. This is not a small bit of trivia that is being used to flesh out the universe (like, say, trivia on how the extranet works, or indentured servitude on Illium) - this is integral to the concept of the Asari.

You cannot point to this seen and say "look, here's where we dealt with the obvious massive implications of an alien species that can appear universally attractive!". It was a lampshade hung on the problem, a winking nod to the 60's scifi tropes that spawned the Asari, without actually coming out and either using the obvious hooks or resolving the obvious problems.

The closest they come in the codex is to point out how much of the characterization of the Asari as 'promiscuous' is the result of wishful thinking, and that humans often don't take them seriously because of human cultural biases. That's all well and good, but it doesn't deal with the problem that having Space Babes as a literal species is problematic (and huge verisimilitude hit) and that the Asari are the ones most closely associated with sex and sexuality throughout the series.

Uh, yeah - the planet the Asari originated on is chock so full of eezo they have to purify all the food for visitors or they'll die from it (That IS in a Codex entry, BTW). When the Asari were little blue lizards crawling out of the primordial soup they were already developing natural biotics, and so it is completely reasonable to think that such a system could have evolved alongside biology as we know it. You realize, of course, that Element Zero itself, and Mass Effect fields, the enabling premise of the entire series, violate the hell out of conventional physics, because it tells conservation of mass to step aside for space-travel - having accepted that, the fact that it allows for cross-species breeding is a minor hurdle at best.

I don't get on ME for having, well, the Mass Effect. It's sort of in the name, it's literally what makes the entire setting work. It's how you can take space opera, and condense the handwavium down to managable chunks, and ME does a damned fine job of it. In narrative terms, it's part of the premise of the story; it does some physically questionable stuff (not quite as questionable as you might imply, actually) but it keeps that stuff consistent, explained.

The mass effect itself is not real or plausible by what we know of physics, but once you grant it, everything else pretty much follows. Shields, FTL, flying cars, etc. Biotics are much more sketchy, but it doesn't actually wreck any part of the setting to suppose that this might be possible.

So ,biotics I can give a pass - but notably, what does not follow from "eezo is a thing" is "oh, by the way, evolution now does bat**** insane stuff like nonsensical brainsex because reasons". There's literally nothing about eezo that makes that 'evolutionary' path work. I don't want to go back to here (I will if you want to go there, but let's not), but suffice it to say that there's no biological justification you can cook up in universe that explains the Asari as they are presented.

And again - even if by some twisted train of logic you can justify it in-universe (I guess by a really perverted Prothean? I don't think anything else will work) what it comes down to is that Bioware decided that they wanted Green Skinned Space Babes, and then not really deal with it.

How about "If there were an alien race superficially resembling human women with psychic powers this is what they might be like? That their behavior and aesthetics come from being a very long-lived people without a history of gender-based oppression (having no genders to base said oppression off of?)"

Yeah, it's funny how that works out to "somehow ends up as if designed by artists to be titillating for heterosexual adolescent males, and an obvious tribute/reference to 60's science fiction tropes (see: Green Skinned Space Babes)".

(Also the psychic powers - not the biotics, that's covered under eezo - but the actual psychic powers - are sort of bull**** and another part of the Asari that needs to go die in a fire.)

If you wanted to get cynical about it, it's ultimately "we ran out of budget and couldn't make an Asari male model to put in our game, so we took the concept and ran with it."

That's fairly obviously not what happened. They didn't have female Turian, Salarian, Batarian or Krogan models, but somehow did not make any of those monogendered races. I don't think they had any male Quarian models in the first game, either, though I could be wrong.

[HalfTangible]

The actual military forces of everyone else in the game has armor, even on shielded or biotic troops. This is for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that ME barriers aren't actually supposed to be magic SF 'shields' - among other things, they don't actually stop energy weapons, heat, pressure, radiation, or toxins.

...what it ultimately came down to was that Samara's character design didn't include space for things like "is at least somewhat practical".

It still didn't feel like fanservice when someone with exposed cleavage says she had no choice but to kill dozens of people.

It doesn't count in the sense that Bioware gets no credit for dealing with the problem if the only place where they so much as acknowledge the problem brought up by the Asari is in this one tiny scene. This is not a small bit of trivia that is being used to flesh out the universe (like, say, trivia on how the extranet works, or indentured servitude on Illium) - this is integral to the concept of the Asari.

Not on its own but when you do scenes like that repeatedly, creating dozens of characters, situations and bits of lore that contradict the 'we exist to be fanservice' crap, you've done all you can =/

-Ardat-Yakshi
-The girl being wooed by a krogan
-The commando lore
-PTSD/therapist Asari in ME3
-Liara
-Samara (with the exception of her outfit)
-Samara's daughters
-The (semi-)drunk twins on the no-fly list
-And others

[Acatalepsy]

Not on its own but when you do scenes like that repeatedly, creating dozens of characters, situations and bits of lore that contradict the 'we exist to be fanservice' crap, you've done all you can =/

You're grossly mischaracterizing my argument. I'm very much not claiming that all Asari characters exist only for the purpose of fanservice; I'm claiming that the overall design of the Asari was mostly there to emulate the "Green Skinned Space Babes", and that the reason that they chose to create the alien race this way was, ultimately, because fanservice.

The decision to emulate the "Green Skin Space Babe" design brings in massive verisimilitude problems and implications in the universe, implications that Bioware essentially glosses over. The Asari are blue-skinned space babes, which is incredibly odd in terms of evolution, biology, etc. My point was that this one scene is literally the only place where this problem is brought up, and it's not explained, or explored, or anything. It's just...brought up, as if to wink at the player, and then dropped.

None of the examples you mentioned address this problem in the slightest.

[The Oni]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...sexual-lizards

Behold - she is the genetic destiny ancestry of the Asari.

[(Un)Inspired]

Wow I started reading this thread curious to find out what odd hatreds people have pent up about varrious obscure fantasy races and it turns out that

A. Everyone just hates elves and

B. Asari need to dress more sensibly, after all, it gets drafty in space

Well I hate elves as much as the next guy and if a buxom blue woman starts rubbing against me I'm more likely to take her to a doctor than to my bedroom.

What I really hate is any race in fantasy that focuses on magical technology. I guess gnomes are often shoehorned into this role but its not uncommon for dwarves either. Why are there incredible overly complicated magical guns instead of just normal guns? Its like the authors desperately wanted to include modern inventions into their work but couldn't just add cars and guns and airplanes to their world. Never mind the fact that actual middle ages knights had guns and shot each other.

[HalfTangible]

You're grossly mischaracterizing my argument. I'm very much not claiming that all Asari characters exist only for the purpose of fanservice; I'm claiming that the overall design of the Asari was mostly there to emulate the "Green Skinned Space Babes", and that the reason that they chose to create the alien race this way was, ultimately, because fanservice.

Yeah. The archetype is created, and then that archetype is turned on its head. That's how a deconstruction works >.>

The decision to emulate the "Green Skin Space Babe" design brings in massive verisimilitude problems and implications in the universe, implications that Bioware essentially glosses over. The Asari are blue-skinned space babes, which is incredibly odd in terms of evolution, biology, etc. My point was that this one scene is literally the only place where this problem is brought up, and it's not explained, or explored, or anything. It's just...brought up, as if to wink at the player, and then dropped.

How is it odd that the Asari are able to mate with pretty much anything and produce more Asari? That's friggen gold for evolution.

None of the examples you mentioned address this problem in the slightest.

Then I have absolutely no idea what you would accept as 'addressing the problem'.

What I really hate is any race in fantasy that focuses on magical technology. I guess gnomes are often shoehorned into this role but its not uncommon for dwarves either. Why are there incredible overly complicated magical guns instead of just normal guns? Its like the authors desperately wanted to include modern inventions into their work but couldn't just add cars and guns and airplanes to their world. Never mind the fact that actual middle ages knights had guns and shot each other.

What's wrong with magitech? Technology with a magical power source, I see no problem with that =/

[Tanuki Tales]

I always find it amazing that I kind of glossed over things like "the Asari don't make sense!" in part because of the otherwise amazing storytelling of the game. That...and you know...my undying hate for Bioware and EA after what they called ME3.

Though this discussion does make it quite interesting that mammalian life seems to have been the least likely to evolve to sapience level in the MEverse. Asari, Krogan, Salarians and Drell are reptilian (probably the Volus and Yahg are too). Protheans look like they have some form of arthropod ancestry (I want to say Batarians do too and Rachni definitely are) and Vorcha are probably descended from some kind of flatworm. Turians are avian in descent, Hanar are jellyfish and we just don't know about Quarians.

[Kalmageddon]

Asari[...] are reptilian

Are they? Because they have pretty prominently displayed mammary glands...

[LibraryOgre]

Though this discussion does make it quite interesting that mammalian life seems to have been the least likely to evolve to sapience level in the MEverse. Asari, Krogan, Salarians and Drell are reptilian (probably the Volus and Yahg are too). Protheans look like they have some form of arthropod ancestry (I want to say Batarians do too and Rachni definitely are) and Vorcha are probably descended from some kind of flatworm. Turians are avian in descent, Hanar are jellyfish and we just don't know about Quarians.

I don't get arthropodoid ancestry for Batarians, nor reptiloid for Asari, or nematodoid for Vorcha. Batarians have a lot of eyes, yes, but that's not terribly unreasonable for something that developed elsewhere.

[Acatalepsy]

~snip~

...rather than try to continue this quote by quote, I'd like to back up a bit and clarify exactly what my points are. There are two of them, and the one builds off of the other.

The first is that the Asari were designed as a fanservice race, a sort of reference or tribute to the Green Skinned Space Babes that James T. Kirk would boldly go into. It isn't debatable that this is what they've done - it's been explicitly acknowledged by Bioware that this is what they set out to do with the Asari. That Bioware didn't use them exclusively for this is entirely besides the point. Leaving aside the misuse of the concept of deconstruction - subverting expectations in a limited way or explicitly acknowledging the absurdity of the conventions you're following is not deconstruction, not even in the bastardized sense that it's used by a certain wiki - it remains that they chose to build their universe so that one of the most prominent alien races you encountered was looked like blue-skinned female humanoids with a cultural imperative to sleep with aliens. (I'd also note that the Asari are also the ones most closely associated with sex and sexuality despite everything else, so even if I was going to accept the premise of them being a 'deconstruction', they're pretty clearly a poor one.)

The second point is that, in their desire to build said Green Skinned Space Babes Race, they were sacrificing verisimilitude and the otherwise relatively hard scifi of ME. It's impossible to look at an Asari and think "wow, that's really an alien" versus "wow, they really wanted to appeal to heterosexual teenage boys" - and I should note that this hit to verisimilitude is mostly independent of whatever in-universe scientific speculation or rationalization Bioware can cook up.

But of course, they don't actually cook up a rationalization. It makes approximately zero sense that not one but multiple alien species, independently evolved across the galaxy, would find them sexually attractive. The "one scene" that we've kept referring back to is on Illium, where a bunch of drunk guys suggest that maybe the Asari appear to be attactive to different species for different reasons, which is...doing very poorly on the "explaining how the hell any of this makes sense" front. There's actually another reference, in a conversation with Mordin, but it's again a single line of dialog that's more or less entirely forgettable (as evidenced by all of us forgetting it). All of this is speculation, not in-universe fact, and from a narrative point of view, it all comes across as a winking nod at the absurdity of it - which if anything makes it worse.

And that's not getting into them being psychic sort of randomly. Points for tying it into their reproduction, no points for said reproduction system being nonsensical in the first place. No, it really doesn't make any evolutionary sense to be able to meld with other sentients, since, uh, other sentient species didn't exist on the Asari homeworld while they were evolving - there literally cannot be any evolutionary advantage. Genetics doesn't allow matings between species with different sets of genes nevermind different biochemistries to work; they handwave this off as using the partner's nervous system to as a "map" to "randomize" parts of their own genome but that doesn't make any sense either. It's literally a fractal of "biology does not that way!"

Thus, the Asari are the weakest part of the ME universe. Many of their traits, on their own, would have been interesting, but taken together it's a melting pot of absurdity held together by a stupid idea from science fiction that's half a century old.

And to clarify further, based on objections that have been raised already: None of this means that there aren't good Asari characters. Bioware does characters awesome (shame about their ability to write plot), so bringing up Asari characters being something other than sex objects is entirely missing the point.

Are they? Because they have pretty prominently displayed mammary glands...

For extra biological WTF factor, they have prominent mammary glands even when they'll be incapable of reproducing for more than a century.

[AgentofHellfire]

Yes. It's the uniform she uses while fighting a bunch of mercenaries, and the uniform she wears when you bring her along to save the galaxy, exchanging gunfire with the enemy- high heels and all.

*nods*

Alright then, second question: Is the normal combat uniform for all (including Asari) races actually meant to be protective, or is it more like Colonial-era military garb?

They didn't have female Turian, Salarian, Batarian or Krogan models, but somehow did not make any of those monogendered races.

*finds that vaguely annoying, actually, but doesn't see what that has to do with Asari*

Yeah, it's funny how that works out to "somehow ends up as if designed by artists to be titillating for heterosexual adolescent males, and an obvious tribute/reference to 60's science fiction tropes (see: Green Skinned Space Babes)".

Just because they added in the titillating elements (which, by the way, aren't only titillating to heterosexual male adolescents) doesn't mean they started there.

To be honest, I think they pretty much solely started from the tribute end of things.

For extra biological WTF factor, they have prominent mammary glands even when they'll be incapable of reproducing for more than a century.

...if they're incapable of reproducing for that long, how do they exist?

[Acatalepsy]

Alright then, second question: Is the normal combat uniform for all (including Asari) races actually meant to be protective, or is it more like Colonial-era military garb?

Yes.

Modern combat hard-suits have a "triple canopy" of protection: shields, armor, and self-repair. The outermost layer is created through kinetic barrier emitters, which detect objects incoming at a high rate of speed and generate deflecting "shields" provided they have enough energy in their power cells.

If a bullet or other incoming object gets past the barrier, it contends with the more traditional body armor. A sealed suit of non-porous ballistic cloth provides kinetic and environmental protection, reinforced by lightweight composite ceramic plates in areas that either don't need to flex or require additional coverage, such as the chest and head. When the armor is hit by directed energy weapons, the plates boil away or ablate rather than burning the wearer.

The last level of protection is provided by the suit's microframe computers, whose input detectors are woven throughout the fabric. These manage the self-healing system, which finds rents in the fabric and, assuming any such tear would wound the flesh underneath, seals the area off with sterile, non-conductive medi-gel. This stanches minor wounds and plugs holes in the suit that could prove fatal in vacuum or toxic environments. Soldiers are not always fond of the "squish skin" that oozes gel on them at a moment's notice, but fatalities have dropped sharply since the system was implemented.

Modern body armor includes powered exoskeleton assist, on board medical assistance, filters, additional layers of shielding, armor plating, stimulants, etc. The Asari tend to favor lighter armor, but they still have some, including the Asari commandos and mercenaries you end up fighting.

For bonus points, there exist ammunition types that can mostly bypass shields, at the cost of significantly reduced effectiveness against armor. Most of the time, it's better to simply power through their shields (or disable them via some other means, like overload grenades), but if for whatever reason your opponent doesn't have any actual armor....

To be honest, I think they pretty much solely started from the tribute end of things.

I agree, but that begs the question of why they thought doing so was a good idea after spending more than ten seconds thinking through the implications.

...if they're incapable of reproducing for that long, how do they exist?

Thousand year life span, they don't become fully sexually mature until 350 or so. You meet an Asari that's a hundred years old, who already has prominent mammary glands.

[Tanuki Tales]

Are they? Because they have pretty prominently displayed mammary glands...

I don't get arthropodoid ancestry for Batarians, nor reptiloid for Asari, or nematodoid for Vorcha. Batarians have a lot of eyes, yes, but that's not terribly unreasonable for something that developed elsewhere.

I thought someone just mentioned in this thread that their codex entries mention a reptilian evolutionary track for Asari. I sure haven't read the codex in a pretty long time to be honest.

A nematodoid ancestry would explain the propensity for Vorcha regeneration and adaptability though.

I'll admit I'm reaching for Batarians though.

My main point is that humans seem to be the only solid and concrete mammalian citadel race.

Edit:

I forget, is the whole "embrace eternity" thing part of their biotics? Because the Protheans did genetically engineer biotics into the Asari.

[Acatalepsy]

My main point is that humans seem to be the only solid and concrete mammalian citadel race.

Well, that's hardly surprising; mammals are a subgroup that arose on earth, but we'd have no particular reason to think that aliens would evolve subgroups of animals analogous to our own.

[Acatalepsy]

I forget, is the whole "embrace eternity" thing part of their biotics? Because the Protheans did genetically engineer biotics into the Asari.

Supposedly the reason that they're so talented at biotics is partially because of their 'unique' method of reproduction (on top of the Prothean engineering, I suppose), but then, it's not at all clear if Bioware actually decided that they'd been engineered in ME1 and 2.

Their psychic powers are tied into the method of reproduction; Liara is sort of having brainsex with Shepard when she does that thing.

(Inclusion of random psychic brainsex powers as part of the bisexual space babe package is another reason that the Asari are a cancer on the setting.)

[LibraryOgre]

I thought someone just mentioned in this thread that their codex entries mention a reptilian evolutionary track for Asari. I sure haven't read the codex in a pretty long time to be honest.

A nematodoid ancestry would explain the propensity for Vorcha regeneration and adaptability though.

I'll admit I'm reaching for Batarians though.

My main point is that humans seem to be the only solid and concrete mammalian citadel race.

The thing is, I think it's irrelevant. While mammalian and so on are useful descriptors on Earth, they're essentially meaningless once you get off. While Rachni share some similarities with Earthly arthropods, the fact is they're not, even less so than a Tasmanian Wolf was related to a grey wolf because they look alike. They're convergent evolution due to some similar circumstances, at the very best.

Vorcha regenerate quickly... but there's nothing else in them to suggest that their more recent ancestors were nematode-like... you could easily point to salamanders, lizards, or their resemblance to naked mole-rats and say that their ancestors were like that. What is given is that their individual evolutionary circumstances supported an adaptive chassis, as it were.

[Tanuki Tales]

The thing is, I think it's irrelevant. While mammalian and so on are useful descriptors on Earth, they're essentially meaningless once you get off. While Rachni share some similarities with Earthly arthropods, the fact is they're not, even less so than a Tasmanian Wolf was related to a grey wolf because they look alike. They're convergent evolution due to some similar circumstances, at the very best.

It's hardly irrelevant since the whole point was, "hey, look, isn't it neat how mammalian evolution doesn't seem to be a thing anywhere but on Earth?"

Vorcha regenerate quickly... but there's nothing else in them to suggest that their more recent ancestors were nematode-like... you could easily point to salamanders, lizards, or their resemblance to naked mole-rats and say that their ancestors were like that. What is given is that their individual evolutionary circumstances supported an adaptive chassis, as it were.

Vorcha are specifically called out to have a biology similar to planarian worms.

@Acatalepsy: Well, Asari were artificially given biotics entirely by the Protheans, so I guess that'd mean that it's plausible that their reproductive method could have been instilled artificially as well. Raises the question of "why" though.

[Acatalepsy]

@Acatalepsy: Well, Asari were artificially given biotics entirely by the Protheans, so I guess that'd mean that it's plausible that their reproductive method could have been instilled artificially as well. Raises the question of "why" though.

See my "somewhat Perverted Promethean" hypothesis.

...and, of course, the in-universe reasons is more or less irrelevant. They could have done better - they didn't, but they could have - but it doesn't matter because the verisimilitude hit comes from the fact that they chose to emulate a stupid, outdate genre convention, not any particular flaw in their in-universe justification.