Re: A Year Later, Whats the General Opinion on ME:A?

@TeahouseFox

I will be honest....I wouldn't have given the idea the time of day, that they would intentionally make female characters not as pretty, EXCEPT for one simple fact.  They obviously based Scott Ryder off his male voice actor....no it isn't perfect and yeah, he still has some funny quirks due to the AI facial controls, but he is CLOSE.  Then you take Sara Ryder, and you look at her, then go find a picture of her voice actress.....NOT EVEN CLOSE.  IF the art department quirked it up this bad that they were TRYING to make Sara look close to here voice Actress and got what they produced.....then yeah, they deserved to be fired.  Then after I started looking into some of this and hearing some stories about how Bioware was leaning toward catering to that crowd, and I found the Day one patch changes to Sara's face.  The changes weren't from making her bad to better, it was actually reverse....they actually made Sara look WORSE after the day one patch and they never reverted her back to the Day one look that I am aware.  So you combine the hair styles chosen for women, the horrible creator choices for women, where you work to make a good looking character, and the obvious close resemblance of Scott Ryder and I came to the conclusion that it is a definite probability they actually didn't want women to be really pretty in MEA, and a more "Girl next door" look

And as an example of them NOT looking at total game when it comes to characters story and plot, I give you Liam and Vetra.  IF you think about the back story and jobs of those two characters, their personalities are reversed.  It is like somewhere in the production they had to reverse them(SJW, plot points, romance, Mars was in the wrong quadrant of Jupiter....I don't know) and no one ever went back and looked how it didn't make sense with their backstories and jobs.  Liam isn't in any way shape form or fashion, suited to be either Security head OR from Crisis Response....think about how he acts....is he REALLY who you would want to be first in during a crisis??  Is he who you would want to set up your security and run a team??  Now think of Vetra, calm cool, collected, SHE is who you would want on a crises team...., but as a character I think she would have been better to have more of Liam's lines, and vice versa.

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@mcsupersport wrote:

... Now think of Vetra, calm cool, collected, SHE is who you would want on a crises team...

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Oh so true!  I hadn't thought of the disconnect between roles and personalities, but you're right. Too bad she didn't get the attention (from the writers) she deserved. 😞

@mcsupersport

They neither of them were based on the voice actor.  Each had face models. Steven Brewis and Jayde Rossi. To my eye, they both look like the model, but the texture from the Brewis scan was reworked from the original to work in the ingame environment. A straight scan is always going to look like a death mask once you hang it on a mesh and subject it to in game scaling and lighting. For whatever reason, the Rossi texture wasn't processed properly in some of the images that were released early on, but were never actually in the game. Still they made it into the memes.  I never use the default character and roll my own, but default Sarah is pretty.

Animations are still sometimes weird. The facial tracking seemed broken, and the shading non existent, at least until the patch, making your character look like a muppet in several scenes. For sure, it doesn't look right.  Even my custom Ryder, I still can't wait to get past the first scenes and off the ark... I don't know what's going on there, but even with a custom Ryder and the improved shading, there is something wrong with the eyes and animation.  I've played too many games where the character creator gave you too few options to work with, and you had to spend some time at it. Pre-Frostbite BW games just plain did that better. And most all of those aforementioned games had community mods that made custom characters look like models.  For whatever reason, nobody cried SJW over those games, and I can't really see the difference between this custom creator and Skyrim's as far as putting together a face I could like seeing in cutscenes for the next 60 or more hours. Either game, I spent the first two evenings just creating my character.

FemShep runs like a cowboy, and SisRyder suffers from the same gait. I'm not sure if that was a technical limitation or a design flaw, but I wouldn't throw a SJW/IMD (or whatever the opposite is) warning banner on it and run it up the flagpole. It just looks wrong.

I don't see a SJW conspiracy under the bed here, just a game that had five years of effort go in, and disappointment pop out the other side. If Liam bugs you now, imagine playing SisRyder  and knowing he's meant to be appealing to the player as a romance option. Like Peebee, he is immature, yet occasionally funny to me, but spends most of his time cooling his heels back on the Tempest in my game. Gil plays for another team, so Jaal suddenly becomes the only interesting guy on the ship. However, I do not take away from it that this production decision is anything except a disappointing production decision.

Conspiracy theories on the Internet are like skin pores - everyone has a billion, and on examination never look up close the way they do from a distance.

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@mcsupersport wrote:

I will be honest....I wouldn't have given the idea the time of day, that they would intentionally make female characters not as pretty, EXCEPT for one simple fact.  They obviously based Scott Ryder off his male voice actor....no it isn't perfect and yeah, he still has some funny quirks due to the AI facial controls, but he is CLOSE.  Then you take Sara Ryder, and you look at her, then go find a picture of her voice actress.....NOT EVEN CLOSE.

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They're supposedly based on the models (Steven Brewis and Jayde Rossi), not on the voice actors (Tom Taylorson and Fryda Wolff). (Edit: Posted above. I took so long to type this that I missed the previous reply.)

Many of BioWare's characters are modeled after someone and it's spot on (e.g. Shepard / Mark Vanderloo, Liara / Jillian Murray, Illusive Man / Jon Briddell). In more rare occasions, they look nothing like the model at all (Leliana / Alleykatze). (Tip: Don't google Alleykatze at work with the safe search off.)

My theory is that they prioritized Scott Ryder's appearance because more players pick male protagonists when given the choice, and because he was featured in earlier game demos. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't base Sara on any model at all and only claimed she was based on one so that there couldn't be claims that the two default appearances weren't treated equally (like in Mass Effect 1 and 2). To go back to the example of Dragon Age: Alleykatze and Victorria Johnson (Morrigan) were used in promotional material (a news post and a cinematic trailer), but not in the game, so I suspect it's more of a marketing thing.

I honestly don't see anything wrong with default Sara's appearance other than the goofy facial animations. Same with Cora or Cassandra Penthagast, who received similar criticisms. Appearances are subjective, of course, but I think think the outrage is spectacularly overblown. If all the men in this game looked like Liam Hemsworth and all the women looked like the witches of Crookback Bog, then I'd believe it were intentional.

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@mcsupersport wrote:

they actually made Sara look WORSE after the day one patch

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I strongly disagree, but again, it's subjective.

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@Fred_vdp wrote:

@mcsupersport wrote:

they actually made Sara look WORSE after the day one patch

I strongly disagree, but again, it's subjective.

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mcsupersport; I believe the expression you meant to use was, "... made Sara look less classically beautiful..."  😉

And as Fred_vdp said, "beauty = beholder". :eahigh_file:

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@Fred_vdp wrote:

My theory is that they prioritized Scott Ryder's appearance because more players pick male protagonists when given the choice, and because he was featured in earlier game demos. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't base Sara on any model at all and only claimed she was based on one so that there couldn't be claims that the two default appearances weren't treated equally (like in Mass Effect 1 and 2). To go back to the example of Dragon Age: Alleykatze and Victorria Johnson (Morrigan) were used in promotional material (a news post and a cinematic trailer), but not in the game, so I suspect it's more of a marketing thing.

I honestly don't see anything wrong with default Sara's appearance other than the goofy facial animations. Same with Cora or Cassandra Penthagast, who received similar criticisms. Appearances are subjective, of course, but I think think the outrage is spectacularly overblown. If all the men in this game looked like Liam Hemsworth and all the women looked like the witches of Crookback Bog, then I'd believe it were intentional.

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Well, I did have in mind when i was writing the response you reference how default FemShep looked. She looked like a character generated pudding in the first two games, and in the third was dev created, based on fan voting, but to my knowledge not a face model, unless I missed that.

I tried her in one play through, and didn't like the results. Again, a collection of little issues that made her look not quite right in the game to me, and it looked weird. Some of the only images of her that I liked it turned out were fan art of default FemShep so good that BW made them available for download.

Of course, my custom FemShep, canon in all my games, became my standard and all others lack the same value to me. But that's my headcanon, and there was never a model-sourced FemShep default to compare her to. I also assumed that they spent more time and care on the target demographic appearance, which actually didn't bother me since I don't ever use the provided default and create my own. To my mind, they could save some money and skip the default actor-scanned appearances and I'd miss nothing. Players who want a fast start can hit random in the custom appearance screens a few times until they wind up with something not too bad and click Start.

I bypassed a lot of the online frenzy by not taking part in any pre-release speculation. My pre-Andromeda existence was so spoiler free that my buddies online would poke fun at me for it. I've muted people in Teamspeak for even hinting at dropping information. I saw nothing, and I mean nothing, of the game until the day it dropped, and that was by my choice.  So I never got worked into a state by the various rumors making their way through the fan base - I just wanted to take the game on face value without all the freaking out in the online forums. When I came out of my Andromeda isolation the first thing I heard was that the animations were awful, and the female characters ugly-on-purpose. What I saw was a game that wasn't done cooking and could have spent another year in the oven.

I am not in the stereotyped industry target demographic. I've been a gamer a long time. Do I think the character creator lacked options? Yes, absolutely. Do I think it was because of SJW engineering? No. Do I think that the lack of it in previous games was due to chauvinistic, sexist or racist developers? No. I've played a great many games which lacked any real choice at all in character appearance, so yes, its hard for me to get excited (or even raise an eyebrow) on this topic without substantial reason to do so. I just haven't heard any.

I really don't know if it was a lack of skill, lack of time, lack of polish, SJW values, art direction, desire to appeal more to women, or just a bad game engine when dealing with faces, but the sad fact is MOST characters have a mediocre to odd appearance, to ME.  Some make sense, others are just head scratchers...changes in Krogan faces and accents, watching the Alpha build of saving the Krogan colony ending, and then seeing the final release....Sara looking so different than her model, compared to Scott's looking close to his, ALL the Asari having same faces, lack of facial markings on Turians, Peebee raccoon swipe(reminded me of a DA2 reference), All these just made me wonder what happened....  We will probably never know as Bioware will not say, and EA closed the doors of the studio....so maybe that WAS explanation....lol.

Personally, Cassandra from DAI, is one of my favorite characters from that game.  She is tough, good to have in the party, loved the story behind her, her soft spot for smutty romance, and after seeing her in game for a short while, I really liked the Face and model used.  When playing a male Inquisitor, she is my romance character.  The thing is, her facial scaring, and personality all match her story and character.  You really shouldn't expect a front line character, who has fought dragons, templars, demons, and a whole host of other things to come out without some scars and the shorter hair means it fits under helms and can't be grabbed in a melee. 

I think the biggest issue I have is, I can overlook some "marginal design choices" if the story and characters are good enough.  I am not a fan of Sera's looks in DAI, but I like her character because she is interesting and different, but in MEA, they couldn't or didn't pull off the it's ok to be mediocre if you are interesting trick, for me at least.  Liam, I wanted to air lock him, PeeBee was ok but looked too young I guess, and acted more like her father should have been a Salarian instead of a Elcor.  Suvi was one of my favorites of the crew, along with the Dr Lexi, Vetra, Cora, Jaal and Drak....the rest I would have been happy to NOT be there or have radical changes.

Rewrites I would make.......

Liam....you meet him on the Nexus, he is supply officer..aka Vetra's job.  You keep his loyalty mission, cause it makes sense that he was working the system and gave out data he shouldn't trying to finesse the system.   You keep his actions to try and get you to scan the market and even trade with Jaal naked, these would then all fit his personality better and job description.

Vetra...oddity is she is on the Human vessel, BECAUSE Alec required it.  While he wasn't a fan of non-humans, he saw the usefulness of Vetra when she saved him, and her background of Crisis response and security made her too good to pass up.  As a favor to her to get her on board, her sister is brought along as part of a special patherfinder liason.  After docking with Nexus, Vetra helps set up better security on the Nexus and her sister stays behind as a tech to help.  Most of her loyalty mission can remain the same, with some dialog tweeks to make it work.

Swap the models and characters between Peebee and Lexi.  Peebee then becomes the Dr. on board the ship...not sure she wants to be there, because she never planned on it, and not sure she wants the danger or upheaval.  Lexi then becomes the smart researcher studying the Remenant, calm cool and collected.  Lexi then becomes the love interest and takes over the science hall instead of Jaal.

ODD TANGENT----

What is Bioware trying to say about men in the game??  Take on these ideas and say "WHAT??" 

1)  Liam, straight love interest....basically an idiot and totally doesn't make sense based on his history or jobs.

2)  Drak...Man's Man character..raised his grand-daughter, but is a relic of the past and will soon die.

3)  Hark...krogan scientist, incredibly smart, but can't fight, isn't tough..aka would be called a wimp...gets the girl in the end, and is called the Future of Krogan.

4)  Spender....human weasel...just a low life piece of self serving trash...

5)  Number 8.....incompetent and while in charge isn't someone you trust.

6)  Jaal...good fighter, smart, tough but always talking about feelings, opposite of Drak in he is fairly young and has a future.

7)  Alec....ruthless, caring...DIES...

8)  Gil...homosexual romance....smart, not a planner, effective in keeping the ship going.

Now look at the women....

8)  Cora....male love interest....effective, trained, good looking, powerful, SHOULD have been pathfinder.

9)  Lexi...smart, good looking, trained, educated, effective, doctor who keeps you all alive.

10)  Vetra..smart, trained, effective, supplies trip and gets troubles out of your way.

11)  Peebee...love interest....young, smartest in the room on Remanent, effective, powerful.

12) Kesh...smart, effective, tough, respected, keeps station alive.

13)  Suvi....smart, absent minded but that is because of her extreme intelligence, educated, and effective as science officer.

So what patterns do you see, and what can you take from it???

Me, it seems like someone is trying to say something.....but you decide.  HMMMMM???

Yeah I wasn't impressed with the Sara Ryder default especially since she was supposedly based on Jayde Rossi I couldn't quite understand how she ended up looking like she did. The goofiness is not just the animations but also that the face looks more cartoony than a real person. 

There are modders who actually created faces that are quite pretty using the settings that exist but it's a lot of work to get it right. As much as I like character creation options, I tend to like to be done in 30 mins and not spend hours tweaking it. All the customizable options look weird or off in some way.

Now I am reminded of the other Frostbite game where characters also look very iffy called Dragon Age Inquisition...so I think it's a valid question to ask if this an engine issue or the result of Social Injustice Warrior influence. (Since they don't seem to look for justice but just swinging the pendulum to another group I cannot call them SJWs), but then I see what some people do that have the patience to play around for hours and I think, well, it's possible in Frostbite after all.

Then again, what we've seen from Anthem, which isn't that much yet, it seems that we won't really get to see our characters unless suited up in full coverage javelin mech suits. So that makes me wonder if that's their way of stepping away from character customization in Frostbite altogether.

I dunno. ME:A is what it is now. Clearly they are no longer going to put any effort into it. I can only hope that they revisit Mass Effect in the not to far future with either a reboot of the originals or something new again. I really am no longer interested in finding out what happens to Ryder next. 

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@mcsupersport wrote:

What is Bioware trying to say about men in the game??  Take on these ideas and say "WHAT??" 

1)  Liam, straight love interest....basically an idiot and totally doesn't make sense based on his history or jobs.

2)  Drak...Man's Man character..raised his grand-daughter, but is a relic of the past and will soon die.

3)  Hark...krogan scientist, incredibly smart, but can't fight, isn't tough..aka would be called a wimp...gets the girl in the end, and is called the Future of Krogan.

4)  Spender....human weasel...just a low life piece of self serving trash...

5)  Number 8.....incompetent and while in charge isn't someone you trust.

6)  Jaal...good fighter, smart, tough but always talking about feelings, opposite of Drak in he is fairly young and has a future.

7)  Alec....ruthless, caring...DIES...

8)  Gil...homosexual romance....smart, not a planner, effective in keeping the ship going.

Now look at the women....

8)  Cora....male love interest....effective, trained, good looking, powerful, SHOULD have been pathfinder.

9)  Lexi...smart, good looking, trained, educated, effective, doctor who keeps you all alive.

10)  Vetra..smart, trained, effective, supplies trip and gets troubles out of your way.

11)  Peebee...love interest....young, smartest in the room on Remanent, effective, powerful.

12) Kesh...smart, effective, tough, respected, keeps station alive.

13)  Suvi....smart, absent minded but that is because of her extreme intelligence, educated, and effective as science officer.

So what patterns do you see, and what can you take from it???

Me, it seems like someone is trying to say something.....but you decide.  HMMMMM???

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Well, I decided that you picked and interpreted the things that you felt supported your theory, some of which didn't make any sense to me. You also presume that what you are interpreting are things that you think women like, which therefore means it's SJW...which is, in both aspects...well, presumptuous, don't you think? Your opinion is your own, of course, and everyone interprets things as they like. 

Liam: Not my cuppa tea, but different and funny. I didn't have too much of a problem with him until his loyalty mission. The security officer engaged in a massive breach of security. In my book that made him reckless and irresponsible. Really couldn't look at him as anything else after that. The mission itself was funny though.

Drack: What's wrong with him? He's wise as krogan go, and funny. I enjoyed listening to him banter with Vetra. Unless you wanna interpret old as bad and only SJWs would like crusty old people. Maybe don't watch Logan's Run.  I wonder why that was never remade... they remade just about everything else from the 70's.

Hark: took me a good five minutes to even remember who that was, but if hyper aggression brought the krogan to the brink of annihilation multiple times, a less aggressive one by definition will be the future of their people.

Spender: Yup. He's a racist weasel.

Tann: Yup. He's a political weasel.

Jaal: I guess I figured he wasn't talking about his feelings unless you were playing SisRyder. I did like the character's openness - the anti-Alenko. 

Alec: I'm more of the opinion that Ryder Sr. died because he was an N7 - symbolically killed off by the writers in the beginning of a new series to make way for the new protagonist. No more N7 for you, fans! Wish they hadn't done that. I'd have had more fun playing a DadRyder or MomRyder I think.

Gil, the anti-Kallo: He's a bit shortsighted and impulsive, really

Kallo, the anti-Gil: He's a bit too rigid, really

But I like them both - funny, talented engineers keeping the ship in one piece.

Cora: I like Cora, but she's a follower, and has never taken her own initiative and been a leader.  That's why DadRyder passed her over - she wasn't ready. She spends the entire game telling you about how she needs to look to somebody else's guidance or opinion, or strategies. 

Lexi: It's hard to think of Lexi as pretty since the devs made her appearance so completely interchangeable. Looks like every other asari except Peebee. She's a bit awkward, but I like her.

Vetra: Yup. FemGarrus. Well, softened up a bit by a kid sister. 

Peebee: FemLiam. Also cooled her heels in my games. I wanted to cycle the airlock in the escape pod she was blocking, really, but there was no option to space her. I will say I got a mod that removed that ridiculous raccoon mask, and I am no longer annoyed as much. 

Kesh: I like her. There was a severe shortage of krogan females, or any krogans portrayed as smart in the series. 

Suvi: You forgot to mention she is a homosexual romance option as well. Also a likeable sort, sciencing the snot out of things for the team. I like the conversations with her, but otherwise *shrug*

Other forgotten honorable mentions: 

Addison: She's a mean spirited bureaucrat who didn't appeal any more than Tann. Her face is tired...I was tired of the character a good 15 seconds after I encountered her, but antagonists are there to be interesting foils in character interactions. 

Sloan: Arrogant, tyrannical, evil/brutal weasel. I'm told that in the books, her character's motivations make her a lot more sympathetic, but I will probably never read them and would space her too, given the option. She reminds me of Aria, and she needed spacing a few games ago. 

Reyes: Dishonest, self-serving untrustworthy weasel someone thought would be charming. And, stuck me with the bill. Still, I think he's likely to be better for Kadara in power. Just don't trust him not to shoot you in the head if it serves his purpose.

Kandros: Wish we could take him on the mission squads, but we only hear him in MP. When it's not bugged out.

@TeahouseFox

"Drack: What's wrong with him? He's wise as krogan go, and funny. I enjoyed listening to him banter with Vetra. Unless you wanna interpret old as bad and only SJWs would like crusty old people. Maybe don't watch Logan's Run.  I wonder why that was never remade... they remade just about everything else from the 70's."

Oh, not a darn thing wrong with him, other than they make it plain he is a relic of times past and that he is going to die soon....well soon for Krogan lifetimes anyway.  The point I was trying and it seems failing to make with him, is they make sure, you KNOW he is a relic and thus something from times past who is past due on checking out.  I love Drak the character, he was in my team like 90% of the time my first play and still creeps back in more than he should when I am trying to use different characters for each play.  I would both hate and like to see a new Logan's Run....like because I think they could do so much with it....hate it cause some snot of a director in Hollywood would just "KNOW" how to make it better and likely mess it up, and ruin the message it gave.

Yeah, forgot Suvi romance....

The one thing that really sold me on Sloan, was she was all up front on what she was doing.  If she didn't like you, you knew it, and you knew her rules because they were out there and known.  Sloan also was pretty happy with Kadara and keeping "Her" people alive and while her methods were brutal, they were effective.  Many people have/had an issue with the idea of protection money to be paid, but I can understand it, as that is a fairly primitive form of taxation, which works, but there are better ways.  Reyes....sigh, he wants to be great, and I could easily see him causing major issues for the Nexus in a few years as he expands his network and interests well beyond Kadara.  Reyes is also a two faced snake, and I will NEVER side with him in any of my games, even if you see in the end it is better seemingly for Kadara if you do, as a more open and free port......I just always wonder what he is going to go for next?  I could easily see him as Shadowbroker 2.0.

Please don't get me started on Addison...Honestly, the first time she and Tann said ANYTHING bad to me after Eos, I would have been on the coms working to have them replaced by any means necessary, as pathfinder prerogative, for the good of the Initiative.

Liam...the issue I had with him was he was supposed to be a Crisis response recruit, ex-cop and security expert.  This was his background.  Crisis response SHOULD have meant he was calm, logical, efficient, adaptable, and Ex-cop and security expert should have meant he was all those things along with a bit cynical, and cautious with information.  Now in game, as I am sure you are aware, he was erratic, prone to losing his temper and not thinking situations through, yeah, massive security breach on a whim, caused Ryder to try to commit intellectual property theft on a alien world who allowed them there on a trial basis which is incredibly reckless.  I know Liam is part of the pathfinder team, but what the heck is a SECURITY team member doing trying to handle trade of technology and with Jaal cultural integration??  He should be concentrating on basic needs of planets, such as water, food, and medical distribution, not stealing stuff from neighbors which could cause a diplomatic nightmare and shut off access to a valuable ally and their planet of supplies.  He should be designing safety measures for colonies, and action plans for them, not giving out free access to Nexus systems for some nebulous good will.  Basically his character didn't make ANY sense to me in his actions throughout the game based off his history given and supposed job description.  That is why I think he and Vetra should have swapped positions and let him be the supply person and Vetra be the crisis response and security person.  Also the shirtless scenes both with Jaal and later just seemed to be an obvious ploy to cater to women gamers, as they really didn't make sense to me in the story context.  I am hetro-male, so I can't offer a decent critique of how it looked, but it almost seemed to me as a make-up for the Miranda Butt scene from ME2....but I think Miranda's butt is better...lol.

Main point I was trying to show with the list is a bit how they wrote male versus female characters, while seemingly trying to cater to women gamers, and possibly wider interests.  Aggressive hyper capable men are relics, or in Jaals case really in touch with emotional side.  Men are generally shown in a worse light, versus how they portray women.  As it seems they go to greater lengths to NOT have a barbie doll character that is beautiful and dumb woman category.....ie they really don't have a female Liam(if you find him attractive, I know they wanted him to be).   This may just be how the story shakes out, or it may be an effort.....I like the debate. 

 As to why this part of my post....it is fun, both to see what others think, to show patterns of people's actions, which may or may not be intended.  It is also a way to also show and highlight how different people think and spark debate.  Healthy debate enriches and enlightens all who participate....emphasis on HEALTHY debate.

So have fun....continue or not, but enjoy it either way.

I think the disconnect is primarily how things get interpreted, and perspective.

I didn't get any sense that Drak or DadRyder were symbolic of manly-men being put out to pasture, or taken out back to be put down like Old Yeller. I saw nothing of a conspiracy for both the female characters to not be attractive enough, and the male characters to be attractive, therefore, SJW. I don't see Barbie's Dream Ark, here... just a game in a top tier franchise that was treated negligently by the developer.

I thought the scan/graphic fails were almost universal, except for some key skins. Like so many other games before, there are mods to prettify characters more to your liking, and cover up/expose bits that you are troubled by. Trust me, I frequent the Nexus Mods site, and I know there are a great many mods to change character appearances and clothing levels more to a gamer's liking. I infer nothing about the nature of the majority of those mod changes to female characters, nor automatically equate those who use them with people who see the SJW boogeyman under the bed everywhere. But I will say the irony is not lost on me.

There were indeed strong female characters, but there were in the previous installations as well, which like charcter creator fails have never been identified as part of the grand conspiracy. If people were going to freak out over the potential elimination of the "man's man", the concept of asari should have done it ten years ago. BioWare writers made it clear that in their future the most advanced race in the galaxy found men to be utterly unnecessary. I don't recall anyone getting so upset about the asari. Perhaps it's ok since they're attractive? People freaked out more over the side-nudity in the before-Ilos romance (which, again ironically, probably did more to sell the game).

I am still amused that some feel that there needs to be an apology or explanation of any sort for strong female characters. Is it troubling enough that we need to do a gender headcount and role interpretation to see if the split is something more than 50/50? If it is, the humor of that irony is not lost on me either.

If it is really troubling, I can recommend what I've done since I first picked up a game controller - vote with your wallet. Since the Commodore64, if there was a game that I found annoying or offensive, whatever the reason - I just didn't buy it.  If the game had neither sexist, nor racist undertones, but just lacked normal female characters, well, hell... I've played a lot of those.  If you feel your gender in some way has been habitually portrayed as weak, inferior, secondary, overly sexualized or dependent on others, the old fashioned term is "sexist".  And with the span of video games I have seen or played over the decades as the backdrop to my perspective as a straight female gamer - I didn't see it here.

PS: When I reached the armor swap scene in the game I started to lmao.  Because it was just funny.

Maybe I am sensitive to it, maybe I am just tired of hearing about people wanting equality or any of the other bs things running around the political sphere.  I do vote with my wallet on most things, but for Bioware, in the last 10 years plus, have been a buy and don't bother checking out much before, list inhabitant.  Bioware has generally speaking put out game of a high enough quality that I didn't bat a eye at pre-orders and NOT looking at stuff until after release.  They have messed up in the past, but generally speaking their games are still worth the money even when they mess them up....DA2 and MEA as examples gave me hundreds of hours playing time even though they aren't the best Bioware has offered and I even bought the DLC for DA2 when they released and not as a bundle later.  Maybe it is the reviewers I have listened too after the poostorm that MEA became due to the graphical choices and such on release. 

I personally just get tired of hearing the talking heads talk about how games "objectify" women and are sexist, and yet they have no issue with a scene such as trading armors, or when the big tough warrior is dumb as a stump and can only say..."Wraaa, KILL!!"  Somehow the warrior is OK, cause it doesn't harm men, yet a shot of Mirranda's butt is a travesty and hurts all women making them all be exploited.  I just hate the hypocrisy of certain people who say "this is bad, EXCEPT for when it goes the other way...." 

Personally I could easily see it as a combination in MEA, both a desire to attract more women gamers by not making it a Barbie Doll ship, and a total FUBAR of the art and graphical department.  It may only be 2% of the first and 98% of the latter and at this point it really doesn't matter.  Like I said though, it is fun to get others perceptions and insights to broaden horizons, mine in particular.

Personally I love strong female characters, and as a quirk of my nature, I love playing Female leads.  Tomb Raider reboot, Female Shepards, Female Skyrim characters, and Female Ryders, just to name a few.  If they offer a female option for a game, I am often choosing it and many times it is my first option to run through a game.  I love Samara, Cassandra, Miranda, later Liara, Cora, and generally speaking rebooted LCroft.   Whiny females in real life and in games often get on my last nerve, with me wanting to tell them to grow the heck up. 

LOL, I remember the hoopla over the side nudity in ME1, it brought the game to my attention, and when I realized it was Bioware who had made Jade Empire and other games I loved, I bought it as soon as I could on PC.  I still have to laugh over the idea that they thought only kids played video games, and since I was 36 at the time it was going down, I couldn't figure out why they should care what I played.  It had a mature rating on the box IIRC so, what was the issue, lol, man that helped their sales though....I also loved the easter egg in the Asteroid DLC that you could find that referred to that whole hoopla.

On ME series, I don't usually mod them, but I have modded extensively my Skyrim game, and while I went through a phase not too long after I started modding it of boob armor, and such, I fairly quickly grew tired of about 99% of it and removed it to a more classical and accurate version of armor for females.  I do like the characters to be good looking in general....that is why I play video games and watch movies, not to see reality most times but fantasy lives...but they don't have to be supersexoutcrazybusty mode, they just really should be better than what we got with tired faced MEA.

Last point of the night before bed...

One reason the SJW line is so easy to say and is in fact the low hanging fruit line, is from past games to now, it seems to be a trend in Bioware games, of the women getting less classically pretty while the men often trend towards the better looking.  Along with not having "objectifying women" scenes, while often having scenes that if women were involved would raise eyebrows.  This is most likely a desire to cater to more women gamers, and simply bringing in a balance to the games between women and men. It is only when you add the horrible graphics choices for character creator and female faces throughout MEA, that it becomes easy in the Political Correct world we are living in, to stand up and say it is SJW's fault and Bioware is "caving" to those "World Wrecking Fiends!!!""  DUNDUNDUUUUUUUU!!!!  I just hope for the future, Bioware goes back to putting the effort into their games that brought them to my "BUY NOW" list and all this goes away because they make such fantastic games. 

The SJW issue is often explained in too simplistic an approach and additionally there is the mixing of issues or groups that aren't necessarily in full agreement with each other.

Someone just mentioned the idea of objectifying women. Well, I have some gay people in my direct vicinity and they tell me that objectifying men is definitely a thing in the gay community and there is a lot of stuff going on with eating disorders and such as a consequence. I cannot judge this and I'll have to take their word for it, but I also hear from women that they look at guys also when it comes to their physique so there as soon as we're talking about sexual interest, it seems pretty common across all groups that there is some level of objectification going on.

So what that would mean to me is that for example gay or lesbian players would also like love interests that are good looking and fit as the term goes.

Then there is the issue of emphasizing those physical elements that are sexually attractive itself. But that's another element than LGBTQ issues. There are women that hate "perfect" looking characters for whatever reasons and they put that under the header of objectification and submissiveness alike. I'm not sure how others feel about Miranda for example but she's hardly a push over in my book and aside from her genetically engineered body, she actually did have character and struggles on a personal level so I don't think even there she was just about objectification.

I also found the concept of EDI walking around in Dr Coré's body an interesting idea that touched on topics about AI and robots in our society which is becoming a reality quickly. So I find it a shame that characters like that are so easily dismissed as negative.

There is of course a lot of diversity out there in the real world and I think it's difficult for a game maker to match that diversity and still create characters that appeal to a larger player base...they do want to sell games in the end. What i mean is that probably 70-80% of the players are straight and most of them probably want "hot" companions and well that also means human males or females as companions that fit that bill. However, there are also other players that need to be considered and BioWare has done that increasingly with Mass Effect and Dragon Age.

The problem, in my view, starts when all those groups are seen as equal size groups. There is of course a limited group of love interests and they have expanded beyond the actual companions to meet some of these interests. There is male, female, androgynous (for lack of a better term). There is straight and non straight. There is human and alien and even within the human group there is the colour issue that is also a factor. Then there is the issue on how good looking they are "allowed" to be.

That's a LOT of factors to try to manage and the problem is that you have a very limited group of npc characters to work with. And I think with all their best of intentions, they can't really win this. I think ME3 worked best because it had a lot of variations in there that appealed to the vast majority of the player base.

And in Andromeda they did create a lot of diversity but it didn't appeal to a lot of the player base because like it or not, most players and I should say people are straight and also I believe that most players straight or not, still like the idea of good-looking companions.

So it really is a great challenge for them to get the mix right and still have enough of an appeal for most players in there. I suspect (but we'll find out soon enough) that for example Anthem may not have love interests. Not even sure if we'll have companions at all. And part of the reason might be because it's such an impossible thing to get right.

I think it's fantastic that BioWare tries to recognize diversity where it can, but I also know that they struggle because it makes it extremely difficult to still keep the largest part of their player base happy when trying to cater to too many splinter wishes. It'd be nice if they could but I don't think that's realistic for them to do because there is that same reality that the majority of paying customers are straight males and you can't blame them for what they are either.

And where it's politically correct to take everybody into account, financially it's not possible. So unless they find some clever way to increase the diversity without alienating their majority of players, I fear that BioWare will likely avoid the whole thing but it garners them more complaints no matter what they do. It may not make me popular but I think there is wisdom in looking at the larger picture and not just at what I want and what offends me. As stated, I think ME3 had the best mix so far, since it also introduced male on male romance but with more recent games I think they missed the mark because they went too far in trying to please too many splinter groups at the same time. They do need to make money in the end and I for one believe that BioWare is a company that had already gone out of their way to  embrace diversity but that it shouldn't come at the cost of their ability to make money or they will no longer be able to make any games at all. 

So we'll see, but I'm very interested to see how they deal with love interests in Anthem because I have this feeling that may simply not be part of that game. Guess we may find out at EA Play in a few weeks.

But anyone who cries diversity and objectification should take care not to cry too easily and to realise that even though a minority voice should be heard, they shouldn't lose track of the bigger picture that means catering to other groups as well that are bigger and therefore are important as customers. I personally feel that BioWare either forgot or incorrectly hoped that it would work.

I just think that if there are only two female human love interests one of which is straight only and the other lesbian only then I think you missed the mark for the majority of players. And that's just one element. I saw a poll of around 1500 people on reddit that is quite interesting to see  https://www.reddit.com/r/masseffect/comments/668o0r/mea_spoilers_mass_effect_andromeda_romance_survey/

Bottom line is that I support diversity but not when it's done disproportionally and I think that everybody who's had a look at it can see that in Andromeda it's disproportionate to what people are generally interested in. The interesting thing is that it probably wouldn't have taken much to rebalance it.

Oh well, it's just my views and people can agree or disagree but I think that BioWare will have to do something different in future games or it will remain an incessant stream of criticism of unhappy players and might lead to more people avoiding the whole romance thing...and then it might not be worth it to them to do it at all.

@EgoMania

Well thought out, and I loved the thread you listed and the data contained once you opened the spoiler section at the top. 

There is a whole lot of data collected by that thread on love interests and who was popular.  I know EA/Bioware should have this kind of info from data collected in game but even still, I would hope they at least glance at this thread when they look into their next love interest for games.

One of my takes on the linked thread was how much a disappointment Liam was as a romance character considering his screen time and obvious push towards Ryder.  Liam's highest percentage of romancing among all groups, was 9.6% with Hetero and Bi-sexual females.  This group WAS the one they were looking to have him romance and he only managed to bring in a little under one in ten women.  This to me is a writing issue along with maybe an art issue as it showed Bioware didn't create a character people wanted to romance.   Since they did better with Peebee and Cora on the male side, I have to wonder if they either didn't consult enough with women in what they wanted or consulted the wrong ones(too agenda driven or biased) to get information to appeal to the majority(Or maybe he was written by a straight guy who has no clue what women actually want.....).  They did manage to get it right seemingly with Reyes romance for Hetero females, but he falls to Peebee for Bi-sexual females....which makes me wonder if hetero females "settled" for him or if he was that good an option for them.

I also wonder if Bioware in Anthem is going to have any romance....but then I also wonder how much story they are going to have in Anthem as well.  Story takes time, effort and for a game like they are leaking Anthem to be, continued effort in creating ongoing story.....and I don't know if they will bother and instead just make it more combat/exploration/event driven game.  I know it would drive me crazy to have to balance all the different groups and people to try and make them happy so they don't savage my games and still make most gamers happy enough to buy my current game and future games.  According to surveys, LGBTQ people survey out to be 3-5% of the population, and I don't know the % of them as gamers.  Female gamers  in games like ME and DA are usually around 30% of the gamer population BUT Bioware usually pulls a higher percentage(DAI pulled almost 50% women) and more women are gaming now than ever before.  Historically males were 90% plus, but that has changed over the years, and now depending on the type of game women can make anywhere between 5% and 70% of the games player base.  I don't think I could balance and keep happy the mix of gamers that Bioware draws....I would end up ticking a group or three off and causing bankruptcy if I was in charge of it.

I think the biggest issues come when agendas override the story content.  By this I mean, you design a game to cater to a certain agenda instead of making a great story and if it also furthers your agenda that is ok, but not the point.  I watched a video recently on some of this and they used Dorian from DAI as one example, and Steve Cortez from ME3 as the other.  They basically said, Steve Cortez was obviously written as a Gay love interest character that had a minimal story and Dorian was an interesting character, with a deep character who just happened to be gay.  The team of ME3 "needed" a gay character so they cobbled together Steve Cortez, while the DAI team wrote an interesting character and backstory for someone who just also happened to be gay.  The point in DAI was the story, and the point in ME3 was the character.   This idea is one I can fully understand and after looking at both, I can agree on.  I know I have often complained about doing thing "just because" in games and how it hurts the story....whether it is sex, sex scenes, violence, blood, or language used, don't do it unless it makes sense for the story.  In previous threads I had complained about the ME2,3 love scenes because Bioware seemed to want mature content, then chickened out in the end and threw underwear on, which didn't make sense in the story.  I said you should either show what you made, ie people in bed without underwear, people taking showers naked, OR fade to black and just imply what happened, because the half measure hurt the story.  They(BIoware) actually did both in MEA.....and people still complained, so lose lose for them.......and I really liked that they in the end chose to honor their story. 

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me of Dorian. Even though I'm not generally interested in gay male love interests myself, I have to agree that he's probably the most interesting out of all the new companions in DA:I. Since I only played it through on a mage, he wasn't the ideal companion for me to bring along but yeah, now that you mention it, I do remember him being the only one that really had an interesting personality at least from my point of view.

I think I was also really disappointed that Leliana was there but no longer a companion and not romanceable either but anyways.

I dunno, I have a lot of criticism but really I just want to love these games and it's just disappointing when things get botched up in unnecessary ways. Also like you said it feels like they are more doing it for out of game purposes (agenda) than in game purposes.

Overall I have this feeling that Anthem will not really be in the line of Mass Effect so Andromeda is not exactly ending on a high note. I haven't given up hope on Mass Effect coming back at some point but in the meantime, yeh, there are a few things that could've made Andromeda a whole lot better and I guess I wished they hadn't gotten the game in the development hell it ended up in.

@voteDCI hear ya. I did last a lot longer but I pretty much agree with all your points. Once I figured out my sniper build, which ruled, I never felt like playing anything else to be honest so I just stuck with that. So I didn't get the replay value from trying different classes cause when I did my second playthrough and tried something else it was just easier to go back to sniping and sod the rest. 

It seems that Anthem will be the next evolution of ME combat. Instead of jump jets you get flight jets and you can also switch classes/javelins on your character. So not sure that game will hold my attention for that long. Probably will wait with buying it and see what people think first cause after Andromeda and seeing where Anthem is going I've become rather wary of what BioWare is doing.

And right there, you nailed it! Bioware obviously put all of their major resources and muscle on Anthem. ME Andromeda played to me like a game with a lot of promise. But completely under performed because the devs were forced to cut too many corners. Based on what I have seen of Anthem so far, That game could suffer a similar fate. Because it doesn't seem to have an anchor story that will generate interest in sequels. Maybe Anthem should have been ME-A Anthem. And connected back to exploration and settling of a new Galaxy. IMO ME-A drifted all over the place because Bioware was drifting all over the place. There were many things I liked about ME-A, that have already been stated by others. I was disappointed by too much repetition in combat and discovery. A strong sequel could easily fix this franchise. Just like ME2 improved ME1. 

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@TeahouseFox wrote:

Liam: Not my cuppa tea, but different and funny. I didn't have too much of a problem with him until his loyalty mission. The security officer engaged in a massive breach of security. In my book that made him reckless and irresponsible. Really couldn't look at him as anything else after that. The mission itself was funny though.

Drack: What's wrong with him? He's wise as krogan go, and funny. I enjoyed listening to him banter with Vetra. Unless you wanna interpret old as bad and only SJWs would like crusty old people. Maybe don't watch Logan's Run.  I wonder why that was never remade... they remade just about everything else from the 70's.

Hark: took me a good five minutes to even remember who that was, but if hyper aggression brought the krogan to the brink of annihilation multiple times, a less aggressive one by definition will be the future of their people.

Alec: I'm more of the opinion that Ryder Sr. died because he was an N7 - symbolically killed off by the writers in the beginning of a new series to make way for the new protagonist. No more N7 for you, fans! Wish they hadn't done that. I'd have had more fun playing a DadRyder or MomRyder I think.

  

Lexi: It's hard to think of Lexi as pretty since the devs made her appearance so completely interchangeable. Looks like every other asari except Peebee. She's a bit awkward, but I like her.

Kesh: I like her. There was a severe shortage of krogan females, or any krogans portrayed as smart in the series. 

Sloan: Arrogant, tyrannical, evil/brutal weasel. I'm told that in the books, her character's motivations make her a lot more sympathetic, but I will probably never read them and would space her too, given the option. She reminds me of Aria, and she needed spacing a few games ago. 

Reyes: Dishonest, self-serving untrustworthy weasel someone thought would be charming. And, stuck me with the bill. Still, I think he's likely to be better for Kadara in power. Just don't trust him not to shoot you in the head if it serves his purpose.

Kandros: Wish we could take him on the mission squads, but we only hear him in MP. When it's not bugged out.

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Oh, Teahouse, you can't go dissing Aria, she's awesome, if grouchy at times. She's even on the Benefactor list.

Anyway, you should probably read Nexus Uprising. Good story, although it took me about 3 pages to figure out that Sloane was always meant to be a patsy, and another 3 to seriously question what sort of organization has the second in command accountant outrank the chiefs of security, engineering, colonial development, and possibly maintenance. All I can figure is that some kind of disaster was going to happen, Scourge or no Scourge, thanks Benefactor (probably). But if you like a good Sloane vs Reyes debate there is a nice thread you should dig into.

As I recall, you only meet 3 female Krogan in the series, and they're all pretty good, even Morda, as long as you don't have to deal with her in person (making the Krogan learn new mating rituals by watching rom-coms)

Liam wasn't my favorite character, but he’s nice enough. In a lot of ways he’s sort of another Sloane, idealistic, impulsive, has an iffy background, and perfectly placed to take the blame. That could easily be the start of the next MEA, disaster on the Tempest, or the Nexus, or Meridian, or all of the above, Pathfinder Rider and some of the other crew missing, and Liam left holding the bag.

Hark seems almost seems to be based on Hiccup from How To Train Your Dragon, which goes a long way to explaining so much.

Lexi, all I can say is “* YOU, DOCTOR-PATIENT ETHICS!”

And Alec, the master of wheels within wheels ad infinitum, who we can’t play because we would then have to know what is in all those wheels, plus he may still be alive.

Of course, if MEA actually gets sequels it may change our view of the character. For instance, ME1 Ashley was one of my favorite characters in the game, while ME3 Ashley was basically her evil clone, except the only evil clone we’ve met in the series is much more enjoyable.

I overall liked the game, although I face a few of the same issues people have brought up: the unfinished stories, dialog system that does nothing, and the general feel that your actions don't have much effect. That's one of the things I liked about DAI, as you take territory/bases you occupy it and even get missions from some of your occupied positions.

I have enjoyed MEA right from the start. Even prerelease patch. Every playthrough have been a very exciting ride. Of course combat is an improvement of the older games. There are things that could have been made better and I am somewhat disappointed that they didn't put in the time and effort to iron out some more of the games issues. Mostly in animation department and some broken quests. What we have with patch 1.10 is for the most past great though. But compared to the ****show of Kai Lame those were minor gripes. 😃 

I will keep playing MEA for a long time every now and then. Warts and all. But on the other hand it isn't as though its predecessors didn't have their fair share of warts as well. 😛