Mass Effect Franchise bitching thread

ME2 has its problems such as a disjointed plot that really doesn't go anywhere unless you get DLC and in-universe inconsistencies (yeah, I'm talking about heatsinks. I don't see why they couldn't have gone with a hybrid system).

And shouldn't people be treating Shepard's resurrection with a bit more... astonishment. She was dead for two years and all she says to people is that "she got better." He's space Jesus!
 
Im_So_Pringles said:
Bioware is shitting all over this franchise. There, I said it.
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These types of drive-by complaints are so insipid. I wont make generalizations about "GAF" as a whole, as some of the people who bitch about ME2 at least take the time to explain the reasoning behind their bitching, but the general Bioware backlash has made so much of the discussion surrounding this franchise dumb. Yes, Dragon Age 2 is not good. Yes, Bioware has put out some shitty marketing material in the past couple of years. Yes, they got rid of the Mako, which almost everybody seemed to hate the first time around but now almost everyone wants back (whatever).

I obviously haven't played ME3, but nothing that has been shown indicates that Bioware will be "shitting all over this franchise." And ME 2 is certainly not a shit game. I, and many others, would argue that it's a great game. It's not flawless, of course, and I would agree with several of the criticisms made against it (the main story thread feeling a little inconsequential, the roster of squadmates being bloated, the goofy final boss design). Despite that, there are just so many things that the game gets right for me.

Mass Effect 2 deserves more credit for being a fun game. Compared to Mass Effect 1, it runs better, the combat feels more strategic and less spammy (thanks in part to the global cooldown on abilities), the classes feel more distinct, and the gunplay feels better. I sincerely enjoy combat in ME2 more than almost any other shooter that I've played because of the array of options available, including the cover system, squadmate positioning, multiple sets of powers, and the weapon options. It also did a good job of supporting multiple playstyles. My time spent with an infiltrator character quite different than my time spent playing a vanguard, yet both felt effective and enjoyable.

Main story quibbles aside, ME2 also continued forward with the thing that I loved the most about ME1, which was presenting a fascinating setting. With its rich history, diverse races, and layered politics, ME2 had me reading almost every codex entry and talking to almost every NPC in sight. In contrast, I almost never felt like reading a tome in Skyrim, despite having a lot of fun wandering around in its terrain and cities. I think that the culture of the Volus alone is more interesting than what is told to me in many other games. I would certainly like to see more quests take design cues from the Samara loyalty mission and mix up what you're doing, as it'd be fun to interact with the world in more ways than shooting it. Unfortunately, that seems to a be a problem with nearly every widely acclaimed RPG; you're also mostly just killing stuff in Chrono Trigger, Xenoblade Chronicles, Final Fantasy Tactics and Diablo II.

ME 2 also benefits from having many great characters, most of which are sharp improvements from those in Mass Effect 1. Almost all of the conversations with non-human crewmates in ME1 resulted in exposition dumps with them acting as de facto embassadors for their race ("Hey Tali, what is a Pilgrimage?"). In ME2, they all had more fully realized personalities and personal agendas. Mordin is still my favorite (non-Wheatley) character of the generation.

I'm starting to ramble, so I should stop. I just wanted to remind people that ME2, and the franchise in general, still has fans on this forum. There's nothing wrong with bitching about something, of course (and this is, after all, a thread made for bitching). It'd just be nice to see better bitching if there has to be so much of it.
 
I'm going to go back and read the thread, but before I do, I'm just going to get my bitching out of the way, and if it turns out that I've made an ass of myself in the context of where the thread currently is at, well then, I've made an ass of myself.

Mass Effect 1 is one of this genre's best games. It has its problems, from being a game on early gen Unreal 3 tech, to the inventory system and the sparse side worlds. Even so, it still ran and looked fantastic in its day, the inventory system was passable enough and while the side planets were very empty, they were so open and fun as fuck to explore. I never had a problem with the Mako.

Mass Effect 1's plot was fantastamazing, probably this generation's single best story, and Saren is one of my favorite "villains" ever.

Mass Effect 2 decided that instead of fixing the first game's problems, it would get rid of them all together, which in turn resulted in a loss of character customization (don't tell me that pitiful armor nonsense in Mass Effect 2 qualifies as character customization) a vastly and unnecesarily downgraded skill system, no exploration on weird side planets whatsoever, and inexplicably went from being an open ended space opera to gears of war with magic. That's not to say it was bad, it just wasn't even nearly as good as the original in terms of raw gameplay, and if they had continued in the direction that game set, and simply fixed the problems from the first game, it would have been the greatest thing that ever existed anywhere at any time ever.

As for the plot, it was an excellent character-driven piece, but it's overarching conflict was mostly forgettable, and I have a hard time remembering just what the ins and outs of that were. I remember the character quests and side stuff vividly, but the main plot is a blur. I remember TIM, Cerberus, the giant space baby Reaper, and the collectors, and Omega, but that's about it. The main Reaper in it, whose name escapes me, was largely forgettable, which I qualify by saying that I can't remember his name or role in the story. That said, much of the overarching story's problems likely stem from the game being the second/middle game in a trilogy, and it shouldn't detract from the game's incredible character stuff.

Mass Effect 3 looks more like it's continuing down 2's path, than recapturing 1's magic, which I can't really blame them for because of how big a critical and financial success 2 was over 1.

Despite my seemingly vitriolic attitude towards 2, I actually did love it. It just wasn't quite what I wanted it to be, and I have a collector's edition of 3 pre ordered. Once I finish my Shepard's arc (which is plane soldier male paragon shep) I will go back and replay all three games in succession in the most different way possible.

It just feels like 1 was a true labor of love that could have been refined into something amazing with a sequel, but instead the sequel was designed-by-committee. I wonder how differently things might have turned out if BioWare had remained independent and the game remained under Microsoft publishing.
 
Jharp said:
Mass Effect 1 is one of this genre's best games. It has its problems, from being a game on early gen Unreal 3 tech, to the inventory system and the sparse side worlds. Even so, it still ran and looked fantastic in its day, the inventory system was passable enough and while the side planets were very empty, they were so open and fun as fuck to explore. I never had a problem with the Mako.
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It had a swath of technical problems on release, some of which were fixed for the PC release, some of which weren't. It was never really a looker although it wasn't horrible either (aside from godawful texture pop-in). The Inventory system was downright terrible, and on no planet was it passable. They couldn't even manage things like preserving your place in the list when you were scrapping items for omnigel.

If you thought the barren side-planets were fun, you should report yourself to the fun-police immediately for enjoying something that is obviously not fun. If you never had problems with the Mako, you are a far better man than I.


Mass Effect 1's plot was fantastamazing, probably this generation's single best story, and Saren is one of my favorite "villains" ever.
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Saren was a good villain, but wouldn't crack a top 25 list of my favorite villains (unless it was a videogame exclusive list). The story of ME1 is competent, but you are over-estimating it's quality somewhat. When you go through the thread from the start (I advise that you do), you'll see after a few pages people start poking holes in it, and it turns out that there are quite a few plot holes or things that are just downright stupid.
 
Nert said:
Mass Effect 2 deserves more credit for being a fun game.
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For some people, perhaps. However, Mass Effect scratched an itch that needed scratching for far too long, and ME2 left me desperately wanting, despite the good things I did enjoy from it. There was much in the presentation and gameplay that I certainly felt were good, but the majority of things I loved in ME1 were either lacking in number or gone.

I would elaborate, but I've done so numerous times in this very thread. I just wanted to say I had more fun with ME1 than ME2, when all was said and done.
 
Jharp said:
Mass Effect 3 looks more like it's continuing down 2's path, than recapturing 1's magic, which I can't really blame them for because of how big a critical and financial success 2 was over 1.
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Actually, prior to the PS3 release (and a little after it as well), Mass Effect 1 had still sold better than ME2, as I recall.

It's part of Bioware's "This doesn't really make business sense" phase. See also: Drastically changing the Dragon Age series for DA2, even after DA1 was its most successful game ever.
 
Foliorum Viridum said:
Oh man, I didn't click that thread because I didn't want to know, but now I'm assuming the worst!
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1 of them is extremely stupid and makes 0 sense in the plot.

The other one isn't so ridiculous, but it's clear they created that character to appeal to their creepy fanbase. It's going to be the lowest point in gaming history if you can sleep with this particular character.
 
shinobi602 said:
How so?
Was it ever confirmed all the Protheans died?
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You don't understand. The
Protheans built the Citadel.
Changing that makes everything inconsistent.

I thought the believability of the characters is backwards. The second one is consistent.
They need a Vigil info-dump on the ship. They have plenty of room to expand what began on, Ilos.
The first one is a stupid leap in tech that makes what happened to Shepard look like child's play.

Then again most of the stuff in here would make Dietz proud.
 
shinobi602 said:
How so?
Was it ever confirmed all the Protheans died?
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Well it was implied and assumed. I mean
50000 years is a long time to stay on the DL when you were once the sole galactic power, though this one was in stasis, but yeah. Ilos only survived because its records were destroyed in the initial attack, whose to say other colonies and outposts didnt also get removed from the records and survived for a time. Though Ill wager this Prothean squadmate will likely be someone very special even among Protheans and not just joe-prothean who got lucky and his stasis pod lasted the longest.

To say he has absolutely zero purpose in the plot is just overreacting, we cant know until we actually play the game and find out how/why he survived and what role he'll play in defeating the Reapers.

As for the other character it may be silly and unnecessary but its just simple fan service, and I would be really surprised if it amounted to anything more than Zaeed or Kasumi level interaction and depth.
 
Mindlog said:
You don't understand. The
Protheans built the Citadel.
Changing that makes everything inconsistent.
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What about that changed?



Mindlog said:
I thought the believability of the characters is backwards. The second one is consistent.
They need a Vigil info-dump on the ship. They have plenty of room to expand what began on, Ilos.
The first one is a stupid leap in tech that makes what happened to Shepard look like child's play.

Then again most of the stuff in here would make Dietz proud
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Really? Seems like the opposite to me.
Is it really so difficult to assume in the ME universe scientists could implement an AI to control a physical mechanical form? It's no different than EDI gaining hold of and controlling the Normandy. The robotic form is on a much smaller scale.
I really don't see anything hard to believe about that. Bringing Shepard back from the dead and from bits and pieces is much harder to swallow in my opinion.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
It had a swath of technical problems on release, some of which were fixed for the PC release, some of which weren't. It was never really a looker although it wasn't horrible either (aside from godawful texture pop-in). The Inventory system was downright terrible, and on no planet was it passable. They couldn't even manage things like preserving your place in the list when you were scrapping items for omnigel.

If you thought the barren side-planets were fun, you should report yourself to the fun-police immediately for enjoying something that is obviously not fun. If you never had problems with the Mako, you are a far better man than I.
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I'm going to have to agree with your mako sentiments. I've always been the biggest Mako supporter I've known; it really adds expansiveness to the game and makes it feel like you are a part of something bigger. But replaying this for my 4th time, the Mako is a disaster. Trying to fight a large group of anything (on harder difficulties) is obnoxious. I think a lot of people forget that where you aim, is not always where you'll shoot. And sometimes its hard to get the Mako going the direction you want... the beauty of having the ability to explore clouded my vision of its terribleness.

But still, if they were to fix all those problems and make Mako V2. And expand on the planets, harboring more content ect. It could have truly added to the experience. It is sad they took the easy way out and scrapped it.

And like I've said, Bring Down the Sky was the best structured mission in Mass Effect. Perfect ratio of exploration, story, on foot combat, big decisions, cinematics, ect. ect. Wish they took that as a model for ME2.
 
shinobi602 said:
How so?
Was it ever confirmed all the Protheans died?
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Not confirmed, since the A.I of Ilos couldn't know, but seeing that Ilos was a very special place (it was a top scret facility, so they wouldn't appear on the records in the citadel) I don't see how any other prothean could have survived hundreds of years of persecution from the most advanced race in the universe.
 
Relaxed Muscle said:
Not confirmed, since the A.I of Ilos couldn't know, but seeing that Ilos was a very special place (it was a top scret facility, so they wouldn't appear on the records in the citadel) I don't see how any other prothean could have survived hundreds of years of persecution from the most advanced race in the universe.
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Ehh
not extreme to think such an advanced race could put themselves into a deep stasis somewhere.
 
shinobi602 said:
Really? Seems like the opposite to me.
Is it really so difficult to assume in the ME universe scientists could implement an AI to control a physical mechanical form? It's no different than EDI gaining hold of and controlling the Normandy. The robotic form is on a much smaller scale.
I really don't see anything hard to believe about that. Bringing Shepard back from the dead and from bits and pieces is much harder to swallow in my opinion.
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The franchise has never established the possibility. It just leaps to that point and maybe it will spackle over it later. It might be ok if
EDI designed itself. If EDI is still on the Normandy I see no reason for an AI to need an 'infiltration unit.' If EDI's blue box is in the body
, put that power source in my gun please.
 
http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=7418

Now we know why every female has big boobs in ME.

In this video, Mass Effect 3′s art director, Derek Watts, talks about how the Turians were created. The relevant part, as regards female Turians comes at about 1 minute in, when he has this to say:

They’re all males in the game. We usually try to avoid the females because what do you do with a female Turian? Do you give her breasts? What do you do? Do you put lipstick on her? There’s actually some of the concept artists will draw lipstick on the male one and they’ll say “Hey, it’s done” and we’ll go “No, can you take this serious?”

What I personally take from this is the message that these artists pretty much think of women as being nothing but breasts and lipstick with no other identifying features, that they have very little idea how nature works (hint: birds don’t have breasts), and that they decided that making female characters was hard, so they’d give up. After all, it’s not as if they’re losing anything by not including female Turians, right?

Compare and contrast this with this article in which Kristen Perry talks about designing the female charr for Guild Wars 2. The entire article is worth reading, but for me, the choice quote is this one:

Well, when I started designing the female charr, I definitely wanted her to feel just as fierce as the male of the race. She had to feel sleek and agile while at the same time have an appearance of strength and power. By thinking in terms of movement, it became clear the answer was in optimizing nuances. Yes, she had to be large and robust like the male, but we could tone down the testosterone by really extending her body lines to gracefully flow from the top of her head to tail tip.

Obviously, it’s notable just how different this approach is from that of the Mass Effect 3 designers.
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But they did design female Turians, they might not be in the game, but theres one or two in the comics. They have simpler face plates and less pointed chins and none of the spikes going out the back of the head.
 
shinobi602 said:
That would be true if weren't for the fact the majority don't.
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Female Asari, Turians and Quarians have human-like breasts, meaning every council race except Salarians (and I don't recall if we've seen female Salarians). Given that most mammals on Earth don't even have human-like breasts despite having breasts, this is exceptionally improbable, and was borne out of a desire for titillation (Asari) or because the artists were idiots (Turians, Quarians). You can make a case for the important races being Bipedal, but you can't for all of the important races having the same sexual dimorphism. From early ME3 footage, it seems as though even the Krogan females have higher pitched voices than the males.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Saren was a good villain, but wouldn't crack a top 25 list of my favorite villains (unless it was a videogame exclusive list). The story of ME1 is competent, but you are over-estimating it's quality somewhat. When you go through the thread from the start (I advise that you do), you'll see after a few pages people start poking holes in it, and it turns out that there are quite a few plot holes or things that are just downright stupid.
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To be a good villain you need a good hero and Shepard is a pretty shitty hero tbh.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Female Asari, Turians and Quarians have human-like breasts, meaning every council race except Salarians (and I don't recall if we've seen female Salarians). Given that most mammals on Earth don't even have human-like breasts despite having breasts, this is exceptionally improbable, and was borne out of a desire for titillation (Asari) or because the artists were idiots (Turians, Quarians). You can make a case for the important races being Bipedal, but you can't for all of the important races having the same sexual dimorphism. From early ME3 footage, it seems as though even the Krogan females have higher pitched voices than the males.
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Good God now you're hating just for the fact of hating. The majority of females you meet, NPCs included, in the Mass Effect games don't have large breasts...

It seems Bioware is held up to a supernatural standard where small design decisions like this are spited for the sake of real science...in a game.
 
Damnit, I lost my saves from 1 and 2. Not being on Steam is kind of a turn off, although I am sure I will have to install Origin at some point. I don't like splitting a franchise across two libraries.
 
Mihos said:
Damnit, I lost my saves from 1 and 2. Not being on Steam is kind of a turn off, although I am sure I will have to install Origin at some point. I don't like splitting a franchise across two libraries.
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http://www.masseffectsaves.com/ is your friend. Both ME and ME2 saves, plus theres Gibbeds save editor so if you find a save thats almost the same as yours or you just wanna change some things you can tweak it to be how you want, altering ME1 choices and history.
 
shinobi602 said:
Good God now you're hating just for the fact of hating. The majority of females you meet, NPCs included, in the Mass Effect games don't have large breasts...
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I'm struggling to recall a flat-chested Asari. Or Quarian female. Or human female for that matter. Nobody said they're all Lara Croft, but these are non-mammalian (reptile-like in the case of Turians) species that have the kind of mammaries a lot of human women would kill for. I mean, if you want to move away from boobs for a second, every Asari we've ever seen has been quite attractive by the standards of modern Earth humans. Not even human-females have attractive facial features and great boobs at the same rate as these Asari, and they're aliens.


It seems Bioware is held up to a supernatural standard where small design decisions like this are spited for the sake of real science...in a game.
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I didn't even bring this up to begin with, but if Bioware wants people to take their SciFi seriously, they should expect to be scrutinized. Nobody is criticizing the science of Duke Nukem or Bulletstorm, but those games didn't include a VA'd codex to explain the science of their universe in detail either. You can't pretend to be Hard SF (complete with a serious attempt at explanation) on one hand, then be trashy Flash Gordon-esque pulp on the other. If the third act of 2001 had blue skinned alien space hookers showing up, people would be rightfully pissed, even though they don't have a problem with that sort of thing in other SF.

If you want to start, I can waffle on for pages about internal inconsistencies and general nonsense in the Mass Effect universe. I know, because I've done it before at various times and places.
 
shinobi602 said:
It seems Bioware is held up to a supernatural standard where small design decisions like this are spited for the sake of real science...in a game.
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Well, these are not only "small design decisions" but I think more of a design guideline at Bioware. They avoid variety in female NPC's (like dwarven or Qunari females on DA) maybe due to time and technical constrains, or maybe because they can't make them look "sexy" enough, or maybe because they feel that audience will be put off the game if you include some unattractive females so they just write them out of the fiction. It's the same reason that all non human races are pretty thin-layered and almost stereotypical beings. Krogan = brutish warriors, Turians = spec ops military dudes, etc. There's not enough exposition to make them as versatile and varied as they do with humans (although I actually applaud they try with others like the Asari).

The thing is that specific quote is very telling:" we can't make them pretty so we don't put them in the game." Plus females don't need to be big boobed to be sexualized, I mean, yeah Jack and Chambers are in the "small boobs" category but they are also very obviously there to elicit a certain response, I mean it is kind of obvious delirium is answering in jest (maybe due to recent news of a certain new companion), not making a statement of fact after he checked every single female character in the game.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
I'm struggling to recall a flat-chested Asari. Or Quarian female. Or human female for that matter. Nobody said they're all Lara Croft, but these are non-mammalian (reptile-like in the case of Turians) species that have the kind of mammaries a lot of human women would kill for. I mean, if you want to move away from boobs for a second, every Asari we've ever seen has been quite attractive by the standards of modern Earth humans. Not even human-females have attractive facial features and great boobs at the same rate as these Asari, and they're aliens.
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Mass Effect Wikia said:
In Mass Effect 2, a conversation occurs between a human, a salarian, and a turian who are watching an asari dancer. The men debate whose species the asari most resembles. Upon each forwarding their own race, the human theorizes that the asari might be using mind control to appear attractive to other species. It is more likely that the three men were merely focusing on characteristics their species shares with the asari (e.g., body shape for humans, skin color for salarians, head fringe for turians). All three men compliment the asari's flexibility and grace. This conversation implies that asari are considered attractive to many species, which would prove useful considering their method of reproduction. Mordin Solus postulates that the asari's cross-species attraction may be neurochemical in nature.
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Whether you consider that a cop out or not is up to you, to me it falls in line with their overall characterization. As well what female Turian have you ever seen and how do you know she has breasts? The only one or two ever seen was in Mass Effect Evolution comic and there were no breasts to be found. Even the codex states that Turian biology doesnt differ much between males and females save for the crests of horns on the head.

Secondly do you really expect Bioware to spend their limited time, effort and resources to create multiple custom character models for humans, asari and quarians just to provide a realistic spectrum of breast sizes? You obviously care far more about NPC breasts than they do. BioWare made a ton of iterations of each species, pick one they found the best, and none of them are unnaturally chesty. Samara and Miranda are exaggerated and purposefully provacative but the average human or asari female in the game is not. They may be idealized but theyre not exaggerated or obscene.
 
You know what sucks about Mass Effect? No mods like the Dragon Age's better sex scenes found at dragon age nexus. It made the game more intimate and meaningful to the player by using role playing elements to depict an aspect of human life thats not been represented well in video games.
 
How Shepard's return from death was received throughout the game killed Mass Effect 2 for me. Everyone you met was like "Sup, oh it's you. Now go fetch this shit for me". It annoyed me so much!
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
If you want to start, I can waffle on for pages about internal inconsistencies and general nonsense in the Mass Effect universe. I know, because I've done it before at various times and places.
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Do it.

RE: Females

Is it not hard to just say that female Turians have longer or smaller head fringes? Krogan females could have smaller heads or something. There's a lot of reference to do these types of things when you look at Earth animals, but maybe they just didn't look at the leg work.

*looks at quote about lipstick on a Turian*

Nevermind, they just want a way to sexualize them.

Sethos said:
How Shepard's return from death was received throughout the game killed Mass Effect 2 for me. Everyone you met was like "Sup, oh it's you. Now go fetch this shit for me". It annoyed me so much!
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Yeah, it was pretty stupid that everyone was lukewarm on his resurrection. It bugged the hell out of me, too.
 
inky said:
Well, these are not only "small design decisions" but I think more of a design guideline at Bioware.
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I'm flashing back to Dragon Age 2 again, somebody rescue me please.


Enduin said:
Whether you consider that a cop out or not is up to you, to me it falls in line with their overall characterization.
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They are morphologically identical to female humans with the exception of head tentacles and blue skin. The idea that they are "causing" humans to see them as human-like when they actually aren't is intrinsically nonsensical because they wear fitted-human armor in ME1, and Asari pornography exists (that is to say, if they looked different in pictures to what people perceived them as in-person, it would be VERY OBVIOUS).

The Asari have Head tentacles reminiscent of Turians, that's true. But the fact that they are 99% human is not possible to dispute. Everything else is the same, waistline, jaw shape, nose shape, eye shape, position of all facial features, breast shape, size and position, the shape of legs, hands and feet, the curves of an idealized feminine figure...

The only one or two ever seen was in Mass Effect Evolution comic and there were no breasts to be found.
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I thought that one did have boobs? If not cross off the Turians, the remaining points stand anyway.


Secondly do you really expect Bioware to spend their limited time, effort and resources to create multiple custom character models for humans, asari and quarians just to provide a realistic spectrum of breast sizes?
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Hogwash. Leaving aside the notion that it's "difficult" to create two or three different bust sizes for NPCs that you can swap out when creating them, the point is that these aliens have no business with boobs to begin with. The strength of having an all-CG cast in a SF work is that you are no-longer limited to using human-actors and practical effects to create your aliens. That means you can make a massive variety of weird and wonderful aliens that don't look out-of-place (like a mesh of CG, puppets and live actors frequently does).

This is why everybody loved and praised Wrex in the first game. He was truly an alien, and he looked stunning when he was talking or doing things. The Turians and Salarians, while more humanoid, still look quite plausibly alien. I can even give the Quarians a pass because they only really have one "definitely human" feature that we know about (boobs). The problem then is that the Asari were designed ground up for sex appeal (because Liara was always designed as a love interest in mind), and we end up with another groan-inducing blue-skinned space babe. This is a failure on the part of the Bioware artists. Singling out Breasts is just a convenient point to touch base on since it's so easy to trash from a science perspective.
 
ThoseDeafMutes said:
They are morphologically identical to female humans with the exception of head tentacles and blue skin. The idea that they are "causing" humans to see them as human-like when they actually aren't is intrinsically nonsensical because they wear fitted-human armor in ME1, and Asari pornography exists (that is to say, if they looked different in pictures to what people perceived them as in-person, it would be VERY OBVIOUS).
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Fair enough, Ill cede that point to you, though its still an interesting concept despite its holes.

The Asari have Head tentacles reminiscent of Turians, that's true. But the fact that they are 99% human is not possible to dispute. Everything else is the same, waistline, jaw shape, nose shape, eye shape, position of all facial features, breast shape, size and position, the shape of legs, hands and feet, the curves of an idealized feminine figure...
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BioWare wanted to created a sensual and attractive alien race, it might not be horribly creative but its kind of hard to make a believe alien race that is supposed to be highly attractive to a human audience and then have them appear to be something completely other than human looking.


Hogwash. Leaving aside the notion that it's "difficult" to create two or three different bust sizes for NPCs that you can swap out when creating them, the point is that these aliens have no business with boobs to begin with. The strength of having an all-CG cast in a SF work is that you are no-longer limited to using human-actors and practical effects to create your aliens. That means you can make a massive variety of weird and wonderful aliens that don't look out-of-place (like a mesh of CG, puppets and live actors frequently does).

This is why everybody loved and praised Wrex in the first game. He was truly an alien, and he looked stunning when he was talking or doing things. The Turians and Salarians, while more humanoid, still look quite plausibly alien. I can even give the Quarians a pass because they only really have one "definitely human" feature that we know about (boobs). The problem then is that the Asari were designed ground up for sex appeal (because Liara was always designed as a love interest in mind), and we end up with another groan-inducing blue-skinned space babe. This is a failure on the part of the Bioware artists. Singling out Breasts is just a convenient point to touch base on since it's so easy to trash from a science perspective.
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You can say hogwash but it is a legitimate point. The limitations in animation and modelling is a major reason why all of the main races are extremely humanoid. They simply couldnt create custom animation rigs for every species and had to use the same human rig for all of them. It does take up a lot of time and effort to create all those variations, because they have to apply to every single piece of clothing, armor, hit boxes and such. Everyone has the same body as everyone else in their race in ME, you had like 5 base body models for all the races, using the same animation rig, with then a bunch of head swaps for variation, they simply couldnt do anything more than that. It was huge in ME2 because Shep and all the squadmates had custom models greatly different form that of a random NPC.

I also still dont understand your assertion that none of the aliens have any business having breasts anyways. Theyre bipedal mammals that originated from Earth type planets. Its not insane to think that they would have mammary glands, and through evolution and selective breading developed, much like humans, ideals of attractiveness that gradually influenced their physical appearance. ME canon already explains the similar morphology due to parallel evolution or convergent evolution. Sure its all again due to development restrictions but its still a feasible scientific theory.
 
Patryn said:
Actually, prior to the PS3 release (and a little after it as well), Mass Effect 1 had still sold better than ME2, as I recall.

It's part of Bioware's "This doesn't really make business sense" phase. See also: Drastically changing the Dragon Age series for DA2, even after DA1 was its most successful game ever.
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I doubt that's the case, do you have any evidence ME1 sold better than ME2?
 
Kurtofan said:
I doubt that's the case, do you have any evidence ME1 sold better than ME2?
Click to expand...

Look here and do the math: Mass Effect sells over 7 million

From that thread:

Nirolak said:
Nope, but between BioWare and Turbine, we know Mass Effect 1 is over 3.2 million copies, but seemingly not over 4.

All in all, the entries seem to have sold quite evenly.
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That thread is from April of last year, 3 months after ME2 was released on the PS3. If we know that ME1 is over 3.2 million (but less than 4), and half of 7 million is 3.5, then you can see how ME1 most likely had to be either above or equal to ME2 prior to the PS3 release. In fact, if it's closer to 4, it's possible that ME1 was still the larger success than ME2 even at that point.

So any argument about how ME2 was a much bigger success is a flawed argument, because it wasn't really. It ended up doing a little bit better than ME1, but it in no way blew away its predecessor, and it was also on an additional platform.

This is all from GAF sources, btw.
 
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