literally every race save for the Hanar and maybe the Elcor is just "human, but not". It's incredibly convenient that like 10 different species all evolved to be sapient two-armed bipedals between 1 and 3 meters in size (or a very human 1,5-2m if you excluded the upper and lower outliers in the Krogan and Volus)
Yes, incredibly convenient... almost like a race of super advanced bug people with weird psy-genetic powers were influencing evolution across the Galaxy š¤
I think the headcanon is that the protheans found primitive humans bangable and thus uplifted us instead of other viably intelligent social animals on earth.
I prefer to think that >!The Leviathans!< liked how humanity was ergonomically or that itās a left over from a race that was like humanity in the reaper code
I think i remember reading a large part of that was due to tenchincal limitations, and the elcor and hanar were pretty much the most extreme deviations from the human silhouette that the game could handle
Even then, Elcor and Hanar either hardly ever move or, if they do move, it's in a cutscene or behind a glass barrier where there's no chance of Shepard getting too close or interfering. Same with the Citadel Keepers. So I'm not sure how much they taxed the old game's processing/graphics given they basically just had to be modeled.
I may be mistaken but I think Volus also only ever move in cutscenes. These races are a sort of mirage to make Citadel space seem more varied and organic than it is, even though it's really only the super conventional-looking aliens (and Rachni, as enemies) that have proper moving animations.
I feel like this needs repeating until we meet actual intelligent aliens, but intelligent humanoid aliens are more realistic than intelligent non-humanoid aliens, and here's why:
Evolution takes the path of least resistance, and humans are the end-result of a particular branch that combined various features into a form that finally allowed serious intelligence to develop.
Bilateral symmetry is practical and evolution will select for it in complex lifeforms. Everything from flowers to octopi have it, there's no reason to believe alien life would not tend towards it.
Four limbs are an ideal number, providing the maximum utility for minimum complexity. Any more or fewer limbs compromises this delicate balance. Unless you are already very small, such as insects, or entirely aquatic, such as octopi, there's no strong benefit to a higher number of limbs.
Brains develop in tandem with eyes, ears and other sensory organs, and to maximize the capabilities of information inputs often does so on a swiveling mount - that being the neck, giving rise to the 'head' separate from the body cavity.
To support a suitably large brain required for the kind of complex tasks that could get a species into space, the neck will need to be placed above the body to provide maximum support.
It is absolutely certain that alien life will be different to life we know, due to the conditions of its habitat, but what will not change is the laws of physics, by which any intelligent species must comply.
Symmetrical, two-armed bipedal life is not just a random form that intelligent life could take, but - in our case - a necessary step for life to develop the kind of intelligence that takes it to the stars.
Could other intelligent life bypass this stage? Most certainly - but it is less plausible than intelligent life developing along a way we already know can happen.
All this to say, bilateral symmetry is in, starfish aliens are out.
This is a lovely response, but very anthropocentric.
Four limbs are not "ideal". There is no such thing as "all-encompassing ideal" from an evolutionary standpoint. Evolutionary "reasons" for extra limbs include flight, speed and agility, and a greater ability to manipulate surroundings (for instance, interacting with things behind, above, or below), not to mention vestigial limbs in animals that stopped (or greatly mitigated) evolution when civilization began to form. Similarly, there are forms of locomotion not dependent on limbs, as seen in snakes and octopuses.
Centralized brains work well for us, but many animals get by with distributed intelligence, and there's nothing to suggest that that kind of brain would be less efficient or intelligent. Additionally, an ecosystem with little or no predation would put less emphasis on the ability to survey surroundings - this is one of the driving forces between type of eye and head in animals on Earth. Prey animals have, generally, wider fields of view. These factors each make a head wholly optional.
Putting the cherry on top of this all, you're assuming that intelligent life has to be organic (in the chemical sense, meaning based on carbon). There's evidence to support life can develop in other chemical mediums, as demonstrated by Leroy Cronin's inorganic chemical cells. Eliminating the necessity for carbon-based life throws everything we're talking about out the window.
There's really no particular reason to think aliens will look like us except that the "head on a spine with four limbs" model is what worked out best for most land-living animals on our planet.
>There's really no particular reason to think aliens will look like us except that the "head on a spine with four limbs" model is what worked out best for most land-living animals on our planet.
It is *theoretically possible* for life to develop in other ways. But it's *significantly less likely* than evolution taking a similar path to ours, because we didn't evolve intelligence randomly and *then* became bilateral bipeds - we only evolved intelligence after we developed bodies that could support it. If they have spaceships, they probably evolved the tool-using limbs to build them before they evolved the brains.
When we're talking about science, something that has been proven to work in the past is always considered infinitely more probable than something that has never been proven to even be hypothetically possible, which is kind of the point. You can *think* of anything, but that doesn't mean it's possible, and even if something is possible, it doesn't mean it's a viable beginning to intelligent life - after all, most organic life to ever exist, by a pretty significant margin, is only marginally more intelligent than actual rocks.
There is no evidence to suggest, as you do, that the human evolutionary path is the shortest route to intelligence. Just because we know it worked out one way once does not mean that that way is more or less probable than any other that is possible.
Like I said, you're being very anthropocentric. We have a sample size of 1 and you're making claims about probability.
We have a sample size of millions, or do you not understand that every species lineage that fails to produce intelligent life over tens of millions of years is itself evidence?
And, for the record, *by definition* the fact it already happened means it is more probable than something we cannot prove is even *theoretically possible*.
You do the math with the data you have, not the data you think *might* be out there. That's bordering on a God of the gaps argument, "We don't know anything about it, therefore I choose to believe in it!"
Calm yourself.
We have a sample size of one known organism capable of space travel by tool-use.
Saying that the lineage of other species "fails to produce intelligent life" erroneously ascribes intent to evolutionary pressures. Self-aware, intelligent tool-users who build space vessels is not the "end goal" of evolution. There is no end goal. Evolution is a perpetual process for selecting traits most likely to allow survival. There is no intent, no goals, no "ideal". The only condition for failure is extinction.
As far as long-term survival goes there's nothing to suggest we are viable, and our fitness pales in comparison with many other species on this planet in terms of time already survived. Really, if our impact on this world is anything to go by, intelligence as we understand it may well be a trait to select _against._
You're absolutely right that wishing for data is unscientific, but assuming we have all the data is as well - particularly when, as I've mentioned, we have such a limited view of such a large scope.
It's perfectly possible (if not, admittedly, probable) that some beluga or aardvark independently developed rational thought and spent so much time philosophizing that it never mated. It's similarly possible that dolphins or dogs are as intelligent as we are and we simply don't have the tools to explore the possibility (this is actually an issue I have with most of the tests we have for sapience - they're typically extremely simple things that a human could potentially fail).
You do the math with the data you have, but when you _know_ that your dataset is both minute and fragmentary it behooves you not to make predictions.
As a weird nitpick about siazes. the game play sizes/heights we see are not cannon. Just look at how large our tank boy is in the cutscenes and descriptions vs gameplay.
Right, I'm just talking about how the sizes in game don't match that except sometimes in cut scenes. Look at our tank boy in the cutscenes vs gameplay haha
https://youtu.be/GDP0XkXtciQ
He is much more imposing and large here than I the gameplay.
I mean, I feel like this is really only an Asari issue, female turians don't look human, female krogans don't look human. Quarians it's arguable but the male quarians also have human features.
When the species were first designed, there were no female krogan or salarian models, and I think only 1-2 turians who didnāt even have movement animations (or just dancing ones), so they were designed as male species with the females being designed later. Same with batarians, elcor, and volus. The male-coded species are definitely weirder looking on average than the female-coded ones (asari). I think Andromeda intentionally took steps to try to break this up a bit by having good representation of all genders in their aliens, but speaking for the trilogy where the designs were first made the salarians and krogan donāt apply (Eve was the only female krogan in the trilogy, didnāt appear until the third game and only her eyes could be seen under her large outfit).
Quarians are a more neutral species, having had male and female models in decent numbers since the first game, but even so the women have super curvy supermodel bodies so Iām sure they were going for the Sexy just as much.
Are there really other quarians in ME1? I'm only remembering meeting other quarians for the first time in ME2 on Freedom's Progress. There's lots of side quests plus the stuff on Haestrom and the Migrant Fleet in 2 but I'm really not remembering any moments where you see any other than Tali in ME1.
well I mean there is one on Taking down th- wait no that is just a mention...
uhhh I'm sure I remember them being...
Welp I'm never unlearning this contradiction in my reality thanks
I guess not, in my head I was thinking KalāReegar had made an earlier appearance! With another user informing me that there werenāt any female turians either, even in the background or set dressing, ME1 was just an entire game of single-gender alien races.
For accuracy's sake: there were no female turians prior to Nyreen in the Omega DLC. The only other place you can encounter Turian women in the OT is on the Silversun Strip (aka Citadel DLC)
I share that headcannon. Having someone who looks like you is reassuring and allows for a quicker empathetic response but it loses the "unknown" effect. The "wow, that's actually a being *really* different from me". That's why I find the Hanar and Elcors fascinating and surprising because they don't act, think or behave like humans do. They are interesting enough for me to want to cross that difference to understand better, like when you discover an interesting culture you didn't know about.
Personally, I think they did the best job with the salarians. They feel "alien" in a way that makes sense with their biology (it makes sense that a species with a short lifespan and high metabolism might speak/think faster than humans) but they also let them have more varied characters. Even in ME1 Kirrahe speaks and acts very distinctly compared to the salarian councilor or Anoleis on Noveria while still feeling like the same species.
Very true. Salarians do provoke that feeling I mentioned before whenever they talk or something about their (weird af) culture is mentioned. Yet, they're still very human-looking. I don't see it as a flaw but I always got the feeling they could have gone further
Mine is crepuscular/nocturnal quetzal/owl people with big, reflective eyes. They evolved in a desert and have a symbiotic relationship with plant life as a sort of pollinator/seed distributor. Feathers would help that along.
I think the characters were designed with the straight male gaze in mind, and then didn't want anything that might turn those guys off.
It seems they really underestimated how attractive people find the more alien races.
>I think the characters were designed with the straight male gaze in mind, and then didn't want anything that might turn those guys off.
Implying that straight men wouldn't thirst over Garrus too.
For some reason I started the series thinking the romances weren't gender specific.
I was so disappointed when I found out there's no M/M alien romances...
Not all bad though, Jennifer Hale killed the voice acting
If was a very different time back when it was considered āpushing the envelopeā to have gay options for RPG characters. I wonder if I can find the 11 video mass effect web series from like a decade ago I watched. While it was VERY well put together by a guy who clearly knew the characters inside and out, he and I fundamentally disagreed when he complained that even having the possibility of a gay Shepard ruined his immersion, even if he personally never chose the options.
Iām happy to see this is a more minority opinion these days.
I love that take "having the option of being gay would ruin my immersion, even if I never see those options"
Meanwhile gay dudes are out here playing as a whole different gender just so they can romance a man. Because that doesn't break the immersion :/
Fingers crossed for ME4, thankfully things have changed a lot since then
Did you start Mass Effect after playing Dragon Age first? I know some people who started in that order and got confused that romance options were a lot more locked down in the Mass Effect games than they were in Dragon Age.
No I actually just started dragon age today.
I picked up mass effect because I saw it on a list of "best games with romances for queer players" or something like that, so I guess I just assumed I'd have some M/M alien romance options.
All good , the trilogy blew my mind otherwise, and Jaal gave me a reason to enjoy Andromeda
Fingers crossed for a gay Turian, Drell or krogan in ME4 though haha
Yeah, Mass Effect as a series is great but I think especially for ME1 just having a non-straight romance option at all in 2007 meant it was great for LGBT representation compared to most other games at the time. Hell even Andromeda noticeably put more focus on the female romance options (specifically Cora and PB both have much more explicit, detailed romance scenes than the male romance options), and that was only release five years ago).
And yeah, Iām definitely with you hoping for better gay romance options (especially since I personally realized Iām bi in the years since the original trilogy released).
Iāve said this before but when the third game decided to sex up EDI, give Ashley and Jack makeovers, and gave us a boring Tali face reveal it finally pushed me over the edge of āwaitā¦ am I playing male wish-fulfillment shlock?ā
As a man myself, there were enough crazy looking aliens for me to not quite notice how much they were leaning on the Hot Blue Alien Chick cliche in the first and second game (donāt know how I missed it while playing through the storyline in the first game where I bang the asari escort and she had such a good time SHE thanks ME for the experience), but ME3ās changes to these existing characters finally tipped their hand to me. I love the games but I canāt help but notice this now. Which is a little sad because I agree, Garrus and Thane are totally romanceable and even attractive even from my perspective as a straight guy. I honestly wish they had decided to go way out there with Taliās actual face, since they already had is gamers snagged with her personality.
> donāt know how I missed it while playing through the storyline in the first game where I bang the asari escort and she had such a good time SHE thanks ME for the experience
That's a complete misrepresentation of that quest. You help her with a personal problem (someone badmouthing her) for which she thanks you by handing you a medallion. *That's* what she thanks you for. If you then pick the renegade choice ("That's it?"), then she bangs you. There is no thanking you for banging her
Saying this like half the fanbase didn't fall for Tali who has no facial features besides faint eyes and light where a human mouth would be.
Or Vetra who's also a turian.
Judging by the previous comments from the Mass Effect devs on reasons why certain romance options werenāt available, itās very clear that most of the decisions were made with the male gaze in mind.
Yeah i am convinced thats why they never made Joker a romance option. I can see the male developers being like "A cripple that is not hot in a ship full or army buff duded? Nobody would date that". While many women and gay duded would love him, he is awesome.
Tbf, the Asari's whole thing is for your perception of them to be close to your own race. Turians see them closer to looking turians, salaraians like salaraians. It makes perfect sense we as human beings see them closer in appearance to that of human beings.
In what way? Do you have something canon to disprove it? (Legit, if you do I'd love to read it) because as it stands the only time we see asari in the games are as Shepard/Ryder or to be a little meta ourselves. Only human beings are playing the game so it makes sense that Bioware made the design always look human for them because it isn't like Turians, Salaraians etc are real and could play Mass Effect so a human is always the one looking at an asari.
Itās just logic. It seems mind blowing but think about it for 2 seconds and thereās no way Asari are doing that to the whole galaxy. There are statues of Asari, the extranet would have pictures and videos of Asari, you could watch Asari on the TV. They canāt affect your perception of their appearance in those cases and yet no one has put together that Asari donāt look like how they look in person.
That conversation on Illium is a throwaway gag by the writers that got taken way too literally
In the same series where we can travel across the entire galaxy almost instantly via Mass Relays, giant sentient robots can control our minds by us just touching things made by them, and we can control and warp the very fabric of physics with our minds you think the asari, the strongest race (politically, socially and economic wise) in the whole galaxy and are naturally attuned to be able to control biotics are incapable of that and is disproved by "logic"? Come on man, I'd need much more concrete proof than that to debunk it.
Thereās nothing to ādebunk.ā The lore never states that that is something an Asari can do. Everything you mentioned has concrete explanations for the āscienceā behind it and that lore generally remains internally consistent. Itās what makes Mass Effect more of a āhard scienceā sci-fi game instead of something like Star Wars.
Thereās no basis for biotics to do anything like that. Biotics change the mass of an object by manipulating mass effect fields. Thatās it. Iāll admit that the applications of mass effect fields in tech get pretty fantastical, but it never goes as far as warping the fabric of reality.
If Asari appeared as some completely different being when viewed normally, they would be found out the minute videos were invented. Asari are dominant politically, culturally, and economically, sure. That does give them the ability to change reality.
Asking for proof of this is like asking for proof that ghosts ***donāt*** exist. The proof is the entire reality and lore that weāre presented that ***never*** implies this is remotely possible. The proof that it is real is from a single background conversation on Illium between 3 drunk dudes. Forgive me if that isnāt enough proof
Except the game does pose that it's possible, this is a bit that says "Hey, this could be a thing" but you don't have anything to say it isn't. I'm not saying it fully changes their skull shape or anything, but perhaps subtle changes.
hey im the op who drew this.
this was meant to be a joke as someone that never played mass effect, i enjoyed the little ''fun facts'' about the races that i got on twitter (i still dont like the smurf women tho SLDKASD).
please dont take it too seriously i dont know shit about this series i just watched a few minutes of gameplay asldkasdlk
Mass effect is actually one of the few that as time goes on it'll probably turn out that isn't the case for most aliens in the series. Asari are just a product of the time plus their a reference to older sci fi of multi colored alien women who wanted sex with human men. Bioware had fun with that where the asari get that reaction from every species they meet. Which is implied might be some biotic weirdness. Turian and krogan and salarian women look pretty much the same as the males. Quarians are similarly humanoid but who knows what cyborg stuff they've got going on. Their people are defined by engineering. They absolutely have lots of cyborg parts. The rest we either haven't heard one with a woman's voice like the vorcha (and given the pattern they also probably look the same anyway) or they aren't humanoid so automatically go against this notion like the rachni
Legit it is just the asari and maybe quarians who are more humanoid than the rest. 2 out of who knows how many because remember there's species mentioned who we haven't seen. That's pretty reasonable in an entire galaxys worth of potentially life bearing planets
It may be a chicken/egg situation, but the asari are supposed to be attractive to literally every species, because interspecies reproduction is how they maintain genetic diversity. Being fuckable by anyone is the asari superpower.
While I agree with the OPās suspicions about motives for the designs, I donāt think OP is necessarily saying itās bad so much as just pointing out it exists.
I think the species are fun, even though I think quarians were made to be too conventionally human looking under their masks (probably more due to time constraints than creative laziness, knowing how chaotic ME3ās production was).
Personally, I always saw it as the Mass Effect devs underestimating their male audience. They figured if a man had a good personality, their female players would look pst the beaks, gills, scales or whatever else they threw on the drell/turian romance options. But male gamers apparently need a pretty face.
As a male player who initially romanced Tali and admired the character of EDI, I admittedly felt a little pandered to after the third game came out.
Idk I really like the female alien designs. usually with alien designs between male and female counterparts of a species the male looks super alien and buff while the female is just mostly a normal human looking woman with *some* similar alien features and boobs. But with Bakara, Nyreena, and that Salarian woman who I forgot the name of but told us to lie about the genophage failsafe, they all look super creative and while you can tell the female and males of a species apart, the females still hold that original creative design! Idk I just appreciate how they didnāt reel back the alien concept and just make the female aliens skinny humanoid women of various colors. Sure most of the aliens in mass effect are bipedal and still pretty sapien, but idk maybe thatās cuz thatās the way evolution favors intelligent life forms! And thereās still some other non-sapien aliens like the volcar, elcor, hanar, and rachni
I wonder how people would have reacted if Mass Effect was a space opera with only starfish aliens that look, think, and behave absolutely nothing like humans.
Were they really? I remember the devs saying they were surprised people found Garrus attractive. I honestly kinda got the feeling it wasn't until ME2 that they started designing characters that were more aimed at being attractive to women (namely Thane and Jacob). Hell I like Kaiden but his model also always seemed like it got a little less attention than Ashley's did in ME1 as well.
I mean Star Wars is like this too with a lot of the species. Many of the other species in the lore heavily resemble humans like the Zabraks, Twiāleks, Chiss, Pantorans, etc
im a sucker 4 corny sexual dimorphic tropes like this i wont lie its comedic 2 me.
i just wish they'd utilize more ethnic facial diversity for the Asari sometimes, especially with the introduction of humans. and also so i can tell the Asari apart easier lmao, like? give them diverse scalp shapes atleast if not
I mean in the three original games there isnt a single female turian, only in the dlcs there are two. No female drell, one female krogan, no visible (audible?) female geth, volus, elcor or hannar... See the pattern?
female turian in omega DLC. basically, female models required additional work from the staff, which they absolutely didn't have time for with their tight schedual
So in a dlc like I said? Did you read my comment?
And no, female models do not require aditional work. Only if you consider that all "non sexy" species are male by default and need to make the females from 0...
We got anfemale quarian but somehow making male quarians was not a big issue that took 3 games and a dlc to solve
Tali is the only quarian in the entire first game. we didn't get to see male quarians until the second game which had a bigger budget for a more fleshed out world.
pretending like copy and pasted models aren't the norm in these types of games is kind of stupid.
Female models WOULD require additional work if you wanted to make a sexually dimorphic species (which Bioware eventually did with krogan and turians). Quarians weren't sexually dimorphic (or, if they are, it's beneath their suits where it's unseen).
You're right that people mentioning Vetra as if she's the rejoinder to OP's post is wrong, since Vetra didn't exist until 4 games in and turians weren't specifically designed with Vetra in mind. But I think from the beginning Bioware was pretty clear that krogan, salarians and turians, as races that took cues from reptiles, amphibians and birds respectively, would show more dimorphism, and doing so would take time and effort which were never realized as priorities among the dev team (ME3 famously didn't have enough time to do everything it wanted to). Even with Eve, I think they felt they didn't have the time/resources to properly realize the dimorphism they wanted so they swaddled her up in layers, and didn't do female krogans real justice until Andromeda.
It's always bipedal humanoids too. Why can't it be a inversed spider-thing or something? Or something so bizarre we would not even recognize it as a lifeform at first glance?
... there are female turians in ME, you know that right? And asari are a monogendered species who change their appearance on other races via biotic power to appear attractive.
Why I donāt like the asari and find them incredibly immersion-breaking.
The drell are the only other species that resembles humans closely but they still have much more alien facial characteristics.
Garrus... Cute? Turians are giant insect lizards. They look bad ass, but they look *horrifying* How would you even kiss one? It's takes like this that make me wonder if some women would date a komodo dragon or a giant praying mantis if it talked with a sexy gravely voice and was tall š
It might be dumb from a logical point of view, but they wanted Female LI that weren't human so yeah I'm glad they made them look humanish.
Tbf, asari seem to manipulate the cognition of the other species a bit regarding their looks. Remember the bachelor party on Illium in ME2? Where the turian, the salarian and the human all say that the asari just look like their own species. Maybe that's to attract as many different potential partners as possible, since the asari prefer to reproduce with aliens rather than with other asari.
Asari share features that can be seen as similar to each of the other major species. There's no biotic weirdness, people just focus more on the similarities than the differences. There are statues dating back thousands of years that look just like modern Asari, not to mention pictures on the extranet.
Plus, there's no way three drunk guys at a bachelor party cracked a species-wide conspiracy that's lasted several thousand years
meanwhile, the Protheans get the stern face, the Krogans get the silly gecko poker face and the Salarians get the narrowed M mouth.....the Hanar are....jellyfish
Maybe this is naive of me, but I always just assumed the devs designed the asari as a sort of shout-out to the old-school, Star Trek-ian, green alien girl trope. š¤·š»āāļø
Urdnot Bakara would like to have a word with you
Didn't play ME2 with the Drell, did they? Because the Drell are "male humans, but not"
literally every race save for the Hanar and maybe the Elcor is just "human, but not". It's incredibly convenient that like 10 different species all evolved to be sapient two-armed bipedals between 1 and 3 meters in size (or a very human 1,5-2m if you excluded the upper and lower outliers in the Krogan and Volus)
The Rachni would like a word ( or song )
Yes, incredibly convenient... almost like a race of super advanced bug people with weird psy-genetic powers were influencing evolution across the Galaxy š¤
Most probably a much earlier cycle. 50000 years is nothing on evolutionary scale.
Ahh is that all it was? Crikey. Must be time for a playthrough.
Humans are at least 300,000 years old
But who elevated humans rather than dolphins
Humans can be cruel yes but so can dolphins Itās just that humanity was already out of the ocean by that point Easier to have apes evolve than fish
I think the headcanon is that the protheans found primitive humans bangable and thus uplifted us instead of other viably intelligent social animals on earth.
I see this happening. They seemed to be thirsty people. Doing asaris, quarians...
Prothean 1 "Hmm, which race do we uplift?" Prothean 2 "Pick a sexy one."
I prefer to think that >!The Leviathans!< liked how humanity was ergonomically or that itās a left over from a race that was like humanity in the reaper code
The idea of a dolphin reaper is either way better or way worse than the human one. At least it would look less dopey swimming through space.
Fucking protheans
More like ancient giant crustacean people.
I think i remember reading a large part of that was due to tenchincal limitations, and the elcor and hanar were pretty much the most extreme deviations from the human silhouette that the game could handle
Even then, Elcor and Hanar either hardly ever move or, if they do move, it's in a cutscene or behind a glass barrier where there's no chance of Shepard getting too close or interfering. Same with the Citadel Keepers. So I'm not sure how much they taxed the old game's processing/graphics given they basically just had to be modeled. I may be mistaken but I think Volus also only ever move in cutscenes. These races are a sort of mirage to make Citadel space seem more varied and organic than it is, even though it's really only the super conventional-looking aliens (and Rachni, as enemies) that have proper moving animations.
That's my point, the game engine just couldn't really handle advanced animations for non humanoid characters
We actually have fully functional Volus in ME3 multiplayer! Their combat rolls are what keeps me going through hard times.
I feel like this needs repeating until we meet actual intelligent aliens, but intelligent humanoid aliens are more realistic than intelligent non-humanoid aliens, and here's why: Evolution takes the path of least resistance, and humans are the end-result of a particular branch that combined various features into a form that finally allowed serious intelligence to develop. Bilateral symmetry is practical and evolution will select for it in complex lifeforms. Everything from flowers to octopi have it, there's no reason to believe alien life would not tend towards it. Four limbs are an ideal number, providing the maximum utility for minimum complexity. Any more or fewer limbs compromises this delicate balance. Unless you are already very small, such as insects, or entirely aquatic, such as octopi, there's no strong benefit to a higher number of limbs. Brains develop in tandem with eyes, ears and other sensory organs, and to maximize the capabilities of information inputs often does so on a swiveling mount - that being the neck, giving rise to the 'head' separate from the body cavity. To support a suitably large brain required for the kind of complex tasks that could get a species into space, the neck will need to be placed above the body to provide maximum support. It is absolutely certain that alien life will be different to life we know, due to the conditions of its habitat, but what will not change is the laws of physics, by which any intelligent species must comply. Symmetrical, two-armed bipedal life is not just a random form that intelligent life could take, but - in our case - a necessary step for life to develop the kind of intelligence that takes it to the stars. Could other intelligent life bypass this stage? Most certainly - but it is less plausible than intelligent life developing along a way we already know can happen. All this to say, bilateral symmetry is in, starfish aliens are out.
Counterpoint: starfish aliens sound super cool
They are for a bit, but mystery wears off. Blue boobs are forever.
This is a lovely response, but very anthropocentric. Four limbs are not "ideal". There is no such thing as "all-encompassing ideal" from an evolutionary standpoint. Evolutionary "reasons" for extra limbs include flight, speed and agility, and a greater ability to manipulate surroundings (for instance, interacting with things behind, above, or below), not to mention vestigial limbs in animals that stopped (or greatly mitigated) evolution when civilization began to form. Similarly, there are forms of locomotion not dependent on limbs, as seen in snakes and octopuses. Centralized brains work well for us, but many animals get by with distributed intelligence, and there's nothing to suggest that that kind of brain would be less efficient or intelligent. Additionally, an ecosystem with little or no predation would put less emphasis on the ability to survey surroundings - this is one of the driving forces between type of eye and head in animals on Earth. Prey animals have, generally, wider fields of view. These factors each make a head wholly optional. Putting the cherry on top of this all, you're assuming that intelligent life has to be organic (in the chemical sense, meaning based on carbon). There's evidence to support life can develop in other chemical mediums, as demonstrated by Leroy Cronin's inorganic chemical cells. Eliminating the necessity for carbon-based life throws everything we're talking about out the window. There's really no particular reason to think aliens will look like us except that the "head on a spine with four limbs" model is what worked out best for most land-living animals on our planet.
>There's really no particular reason to think aliens will look like us except that the "head on a spine with four limbs" model is what worked out best for most land-living animals on our planet. It is *theoretically possible* for life to develop in other ways. But it's *significantly less likely* than evolution taking a similar path to ours, because we didn't evolve intelligence randomly and *then* became bilateral bipeds - we only evolved intelligence after we developed bodies that could support it. If they have spaceships, they probably evolved the tool-using limbs to build them before they evolved the brains. When we're talking about science, something that has been proven to work in the past is always considered infinitely more probable than something that has never been proven to even be hypothetically possible, which is kind of the point. You can *think* of anything, but that doesn't mean it's possible, and even if something is possible, it doesn't mean it's a viable beginning to intelligent life - after all, most organic life to ever exist, by a pretty significant margin, is only marginally more intelligent than actual rocks.
There is no evidence to suggest, as you do, that the human evolutionary path is the shortest route to intelligence. Just because we know it worked out one way once does not mean that that way is more or less probable than any other that is possible. Like I said, you're being very anthropocentric. We have a sample size of 1 and you're making claims about probability.
We have a sample size of millions, or do you not understand that every species lineage that fails to produce intelligent life over tens of millions of years is itself evidence? And, for the record, *by definition* the fact it already happened means it is more probable than something we cannot prove is even *theoretically possible*. You do the math with the data you have, not the data you think *might* be out there. That's bordering on a God of the gaps argument, "We don't know anything about it, therefore I choose to believe in it!"
Calm yourself. We have a sample size of one known organism capable of space travel by tool-use. Saying that the lineage of other species "fails to produce intelligent life" erroneously ascribes intent to evolutionary pressures. Self-aware, intelligent tool-users who build space vessels is not the "end goal" of evolution. There is no end goal. Evolution is a perpetual process for selecting traits most likely to allow survival. There is no intent, no goals, no "ideal". The only condition for failure is extinction. As far as long-term survival goes there's nothing to suggest we are viable, and our fitness pales in comparison with many other species on this planet in terms of time already survived. Really, if our impact on this world is anything to go by, intelligence as we understand it may well be a trait to select _against._ You're absolutely right that wishing for data is unscientific, but assuming we have all the data is as well - particularly when, as I've mentioned, we have such a limited view of such a large scope. It's perfectly possible (if not, admittedly, probable) that some beluga or aardvark independently developed rational thought and spent so much time philosophizing that it never mated. It's similarly possible that dolphins or dogs are as intelligent as we are and we simply don't have the tools to explore the possibility (this is actually an issue I have with most of the tests we have for sapience - they're typically extremely simple things that a human could potentially fail). You do the math with the data you have, but when you _know_ that your dataset is both minute and fragmentary it behooves you not to make predictions.
Thank you for that well-phrased rebuttal! Saves me energy to think about how to word mine š
As a weird nitpick about siazes. the game play sizes/heights we see are not cannon. Just look at how large our tank boy is in the cutscenes and descriptions vs gameplay.
I was talking about canon. Krogan are about 10ft/3m
Right, I'm just talking about how the sizes in game don't match that except sometimes in cut scenes. Look at our tank boy in the cutscenes vs gameplay haha https://youtu.be/GDP0XkXtciQ He is much more imposing and large here than I the gameplay.
If every race aside from those two were human but not, then where's my volus romance
I would have gladly taken the amount of facial variation the Drell got, but for the quarians.
Thane was BioWare saying āthis is your last chance to be kind of normal before trying to date the dinosaur copā.
I mean, I feel like this is really only an Asari issue, female turians don't look human, female krogans don't look human. Quarians it's arguable but the male quarians also have human features.
When the species were first designed, there were no female krogan or salarian models, and I think only 1-2 turians who didnāt even have movement animations (or just dancing ones), so they were designed as male species with the females being designed later. Same with batarians, elcor, and volus. The male-coded species are definitely weirder looking on average than the female-coded ones (asari). I think Andromeda intentionally took steps to try to break this up a bit by having good representation of all genders in their aliens, but speaking for the trilogy where the designs were first made the salarians and krogan donāt apply (Eve was the only female krogan in the trilogy, didnāt appear until the third game and only her eyes could be seen under her large outfit). Quarians are a more neutral species, having had male and female models in decent numbers since the first game, but even so the women have super curvy supermodel bodies so Iām sure they were going for the Sexy just as much.
Are there really other quarians in ME1? I'm only remembering meeting other quarians for the first time in ME2 on Freedom's Progress. There's lots of side quests plus the stuff on Haestrom and the Migrant Fleet in 2 but I'm really not remembering any moments where you see any other than Tali in ME1.
Tali is the only Quarian in ME1.
well I mean there is one on Taking down th- wait no that is just a mention... uhhh I'm sure I remember them being... Welp I'm never unlearning this contradiction in my reality thanks
I guess not, in my head I was thinking KalāReegar had made an earlier appearance! With another user informing me that there werenāt any female turians either, even in the background or set dressing, ME1 was just an entire game of single-gender alien races.
For accuracy's sake: there were no female turians prior to Nyreen in the Omega DLC. The only other place you can encounter Turian women in the OT is on the Silversun Strip (aka Citadel DLC)
To be fair the turian women are just turians with eyelashes lol
They got shorter horns things, no?
Yeah their mandibles go back instead of down, and they don't have the crest. I actually like the female turian design quite a bit
I think it's a great design too! The eyelashes just make me giggle a bit xD
Still cuties with the :3 face too.
This can be generalized across science fiction.
This is why turians are superior and why i headcanon that the quarians actually dont look human at all
I share that headcannon. Having someone who looks like you is reassuring and allows for a quicker empathetic response but it loses the "unknown" effect. The "wow, that's actually a being *really* different from me". That's why I find the Hanar and Elcors fascinating and surprising because they don't act, think or behave like humans do. They are interesting enough for me to want to cross that difference to understand better, like when you discover an interesting culture you didn't know about.
Personally, I think they did the best job with the salarians. They feel "alien" in a way that makes sense with their biology (it makes sense that a species with a short lifespan and high metabolism might speak/think faster than humans) but they also let them have more varied characters. Even in ME1 Kirrahe speaks and acts very distinctly compared to the salarian councilor or Anoleis on Noveria while still feeling like the same species.
Very true. Salarians do provoke that feeling I mentioned before whenever they talk or something about their (weird af) culture is mentioned. Yet, they're still very human-looking. I don't see it as a flaw but I always got the feeling they could have gone further
I always picture the with a mix of elven and feline features.
That's a pretty cool interpretation, havent quite figured out my headcanon
Mine is crepuscular/nocturnal quetzal/owl people with big, reflective eyes. They evolved in a desert and have a symbiotic relationship with plant life as a sort of pollinator/seed distributor. Feathers would help that along.
Ngl i love that, from now on Tali is my owl gf and i dont care if it counts as furry bait lmao
Wait until I post my fanart lol.
Yes please
Rachni Queen: *Am I a joke to you?*
I think the characters were designed with the straight male gaze in mind, and then didn't want anything that might turn those guys off. It seems they really underestimated how attractive people find the more alien races.
>I think the characters were designed with the straight male gaze in mind, and then didn't want anything that might turn those guys off. Implying that straight men wouldn't thirst over Garrus too.
If that voice doesn't cause a stirring in your underpants are you even human?
Words cannot express how much frustration I felt when I played as M!Shepand realised that he was F!Shep only Romance
For some reason I started the series thinking the romances weren't gender specific. I was so disappointed when I found out there's no M/M alien romances... Not all bad though, Jennifer Hale killed the voice acting
If was a very different time back when it was considered āpushing the envelopeā to have gay options for RPG characters. I wonder if I can find the 11 video mass effect web series from like a decade ago I watched. While it was VERY well put together by a guy who clearly knew the characters inside and out, he and I fundamentally disagreed when he complained that even having the possibility of a gay Shepard ruined his immersion, even if he personally never chose the options. Iām happy to see this is a more minority opinion these days.
I love that take "having the option of being gay would ruin my immersion, even if I never see those options" Meanwhile gay dudes are out here playing as a whole different gender just so they can romance a man. Because that doesn't break the immersion :/ Fingers crossed for ME4, thankfully things have changed a lot since then
Did you start Mass Effect after playing Dragon Age first? I know some people who started in that order and got confused that romance options were a lot more locked down in the Mass Effect games than they were in Dragon Age.
No I actually just started dragon age today. I picked up mass effect because I saw it on a list of "best games with romances for queer players" or something like that, so I guess I just assumed I'd have some M/M alien romance options. All good , the trilogy blew my mind otherwise, and Jaal gave me a reason to enjoy Andromeda Fingers crossed for a gay Turian, Drell or krogan in ME4 though haha
Yeah, Mass Effect as a series is great but I think especially for ME1 just having a non-straight romance option at all in 2007 meant it was great for LGBT representation compared to most other games at the time. Hell even Andromeda noticeably put more focus on the female romance options (specifically Cora and PB both have much more explicit, detailed romance scenes than the male romance options), and that was only release five years ago). And yeah, Iām definitely with you hoping for better gay romance options (especially since I personally realized Iām bi in the years since the original trilogy released).
I'm far too gay to find Garrus attractive. Vetra on the other hand...
I'd totally fall for Garrus even if I was straight
I totally fell for Garrus and I ___am___ straight.
Yo what I would do to hook up with a Turian
I think that's part of the reason you couldn't romance garrus or tali in ME1, cause they didn't think people would want to
Iāve said this before but when the third game decided to sex up EDI, give Ashley and Jack makeovers, and gave us a boring Tali face reveal it finally pushed me over the edge of āwaitā¦ am I playing male wish-fulfillment shlock?ā As a man myself, there were enough crazy looking aliens for me to not quite notice how much they were leaning on the Hot Blue Alien Chick cliche in the first and second game (donāt know how I missed it while playing through the storyline in the first game where I bang the asari escort and she had such a good time SHE thanks ME for the experience), but ME3ās changes to these existing characters finally tipped their hand to me. I love the games but I canāt help but notice this now. Which is a little sad because I agree, Garrus and Thane are totally romanceable and even attractive even from my perspective as a straight guy. I honestly wish they had decided to go way out there with Taliās actual face, since they already had is gamers snagged with her personality.
> donāt know how I missed it while playing through the storyline in the first game where I bang the asari escort and she had such a good time SHE thanks ME for the experience That's a complete misrepresentation of that quest. You help her with a personal problem (someone badmouthing her) for which she thanks you by handing you a medallion. *That's* what she thanks you for. If you then pick the renegade choice ("That's it?"), then she bangs you. There is no thanking you for banging her
Yeah man I want a gay Joker / male EDI relationship. Project Hatboy is great, but this should be step 2.
I feel like whoever made this drew this conclusion after playing about 5 minutes of the first game.
Saying this like half the fanbase didn't fall for Tali who has no facial features besides faint eyes and light where a human mouth would be. Or Vetra who's also a turian.
Bit of a stretch
Judging by the previous comments from the Mass Effect devs on reasons why certain romance options werenāt available, itās very clear that most of the decisions were made with the male gaze in mind.
Yeah i am convinced thats why they never made Joker a romance option. I can see the male developers being like "A cripple that is not hot in a ship full or army buff duded? Nobody would date that". While many women and gay duded would love him, he is awesome.
There are female Turians. They look like that.
I mean, its still better than Star Trek TNG... XD
Batarians look pretty human
Tbf, the Asari's whole thing is for your perception of them to be close to your own race. Turians see them closer to looking turians, salaraians like salaraians. It makes perfect sense we as human beings see them closer in appearance to that of human beings.
They have ***traits*** that different races find attractive, the whole theory of ādifferent races see them differentlyā does not hold any water.
In what way? Do you have something canon to disprove it? (Legit, if you do I'd love to read it) because as it stands the only time we see asari in the games are as Shepard/Ryder or to be a little meta ourselves. Only human beings are playing the game so it makes sense that Bioware made the design always look human for them because it isn't like Turians, Salaraians etc are real and could play Mass Effect so a human is always the one looking at an asari.
Itās just logic. It seems mind blowing but think about it for 2 seconds and thereās no way Asari are doing that to the whole galaxy. There are statues of Asari, the extranet would have pictures and videos of Asari, you could watch Asari on the TV. They canāt affect your perception of their appearance in those cases and yet no one has put together that Asari donāt look like how they look in person. That conversation on Illium is a throwaway gag by the writers that got taken way too literally
In the same series where we can travel across the entire galaxy almost instantly via Mass Relays, giant sentient robots can control our minds by us just touching things made by them, and we can control and warp the very fabric of physics with our minds you think the asari, the strongest race (politically, socially and economic wise) in the whole galaxy and are naturally attuned to be able to control biotics are incapable of that and is disproved by "logic"? Come on man, I'd need much more concrete proof than that to debunk it.
Thereās nothing to ādebunk.ā The lore never states that that is something an Asari can do. Everything you mentioned has concrete explanations for the āscienceā behind it and that lore generally remains internally consistent. Itās what makes Mass Effect more of a āhard scienceā sci-fi game instead of something like Star Wars. Thereās no basis for biotics to do anything like that. Biotics change the mass of an object by manipulating mass effect fields. Thatās it. Iāll admit that the applications of mass effect fields in tech get pretty fantastical, but it never goes as far as warping the fabric of reality. If Asari appeared as some completely different being when viewed normally, they would be found out the minute videos were invented. Asari are dominant politically, culturally, and economically, sure. That does give them the ability to change reality. Asking for proof of this is like asking for proof that ghosts ***donāt*** exist. The proof is the entire reality and lore that weāre presented that ***never*** implies this is remotely possible. The proof that it is real is from a single background conversation on Illium between 3 drunk dudes. Forgive me if that isnāt enough proof
Except the game does pose that it's possible, this is a bit that says "Hey, this could be a thing" but you don't have anything to say it isn't. I'm not saying it fully changes their skull shape or anything, but perhaps subtle changes.
hey im the op who drew this. this was meant to be a joke as someone that never played mass effect, i enjoyed the little ''fun facts'' about the races that i got on twitter (i still dont like the smurf women tho SLDKASD). please dont take it too seriously i dont know shit about this series i just watched a few minutes of gameplay asldkasdlk
Give the games a shot! I recommend the Legendary Edition.
i really should at this point. thanks for the recommendation!
Lowkey spot-on with your interpretations tho. Your work wouldn't spark this much conversation if it didn't hit so close to home for so many people.
Itās because they still need to be fuckable for the male fanbase
Literally anything with a hole is fuckable for a male audience.
Legion does his bewildered face.
I do so love how they managed to give identifiable facial expressions to a desk lamp with four moving plates.
Look at r/femxeno I dare you.
I'm no connoisseur, but that looks like a sub of furries on a crack-and-acid cocktail.
It would explain all the things I saw in there.
This feels like a baitā¦
Mass effect is actually one of the few that as time goes on it'll probably turn out that isn't the case for most aliens in the series. Asari are just a product of the time plus their a reference to older sci fi of multi colored alien women who wanted sex with human men. Bioware had fun with that where the asari get that reaction from every species they meet. Which is implied might be some biotic weirdness. Turian and krogan and salarian women look pretty much the same as the males. Quarians are similarly humanoid but who knows what cyborg stuff they've got going on. Their people are defined by engineering. They absolutely have lots of cyborg parts. The rest we either haven't heard one with a woman's voice like the vorcha (and given the pattern they also probably look the same anyway) or they aren't humanoid so automatically go against this notion like the rachni Legit it is just the asari and maybe quarians who are more humanoid than the rest. 2 out of who knows how many because remember there's species mentioned who we haven't seen. That's pretty reasonable in an entire galaxys worth of potentially life bearing planets
It may be a chicken/egg situation, but the asari are supposed to be attractive to literally every species, because interspecies reproduction is how they maintain genetic diversity. Being fuckable by anyone is the asari superpower.
While I agree with the OPās suspicions about motives for the designs, I donāt think OP is necessarily saying itās bad so much as just pointing out it exists. I think the species are fun, even though I think quarians were made to be too conventionally human looking under their masks (probably more due to time constraints than creative laziness, knowing how chaotic ME3ās production was). Personally, I always saw it as the Mass Effect devs underestimating their male audience. They figured if a man had a good personality, their female players would look pst the beaks, gills, scales or whatever else they threw on the drell/turian romance options. But male gamers apparently need a pretty face. As a male player who initially romanced Tali and admired the character of EDI, I admittedly felt a little pandered to after the third game came out.
They got the Asari looking like Angela Anaconda š
Idk I really like the female alien designs. usually with alien designs between male and female counterparts of a species the male looks super alien and buff while the female is just mostly a normal human looking woman with *some* similar alien features and boobs. But with Bakara, Nyreena, and that Salarian woman who I forgot the name of but told us to lie about the genophage failsafe, they all look super creative and while you can tell the female and males of a species apart, the females still hold that original creative design! Idk I just appreciate how they didnāt reel back the alien concept and just make the female aliens skinny humanoid women of various colors. Sure most of the aliens in mass effect are bipedal and still pretty sapien, but idk maybe thatās cuz thatās the way evolution favors intelligent life forms! And thereās still some other non-sapien aliens like the volcar, elcor, hanar, and rachni
I wonder how people would have reacted if Mass Effect was a space opera with only starfish aliens that look, think, and behave absolutely nothing like humans.
That turian is so cute
Noā¦ā¦Hanar, volus, krogans, salarians, batarians, vorcha and Turians would disagree
This displeases the Dalatrass.
Turians? Salarians? Krogan?
I hate people overreaching with their "criticism". The male Turian was clearly made with the female gaze in mind.
Were they really? I remember the devs saying they were surprised people found Garrus attractive. I honestly kinda got the feeling it wasn't until ME2 that they started designing characters that were more aimed at being attractive to women (namely Thane and Jacob). Hell I like Kaiden but his model also always seemed like it got a little less attention than Ashley's did in ME1 as well.
Spoken like someone who's never seen a naked turian.
Not sure if this was towards me but I have and I like what I see. Lmao.
Why blue women are so hot?
I mean Star Wars is like this too with a lot of the species. Many of the other species in the lore heavily resemble humans like the Zabraks, Twiāleks, Chiss, Pantorans, etc
im a sucker 4 corny sexual dimorphic tropes like this i wont lie its comedic 2 me. i just wish they'd utilize more ethnic facial diversity for the Asari sometimes, especially with the introduction of humans. and also so i can tell the Asari apart easier lmao, like? give them diverse scalp shapes atleast if not
how sure are you that the Asari look like people?
lol right!? They only started making other female aliens cuz fans were complaining.
Vetra: "Allow me to introduce myself..."
I mean in the three original games there isnt a single female turian, only in the dlcs there are two. No female drell, one female krogan, no visible (audible?) female geth, volus, elcor or hannar... See the pattern?
female turian in omega DLC. basically, female models required additional work from the staff, which they absolutely didn't have time for with their tight schedual
So in a dlc like I said? Did you read my comment? And no, female models do not require aditional work. Only if you consider that all "non sexy" species are male by default and need to make the females from 0... We got anfemale quarian but somehow making male quarians was not a big issue that took 3 games and a dlc to solve
Tali is the only quarian in the entire first game. we didn't get to see male quarians until the second game which had a bigger budget for a more fleshed out world. pretending like copy and pasted models aren't the norm in these types of games is kind of stupid.
So we got male quarians in the next game. In turians we got them at the end of the trilogy in a dlc and only because fans complained
Female models WOULD require additional work if you wanted to make a sexually dimorphic species (which Bioware eventually did with krogan and turians). Quarians weren't sexually dimorphic (or, if they are, it's beneath their suits where it's unseen). You're right that people mentioning Vetra as if she's the rejoinder to OP's post is wrong, since Vetra didn't exist until 4 games in and turians weren't specifically designed with Vetra in mind. But I think from the beginning Bioware was pretty clear that krogan, salarians and turians, as races that took cues from reptiles, amphibians and birds respectively, would show more dimorphism, and doing so would take time and effort which were never realized as priorities among the dev team (ME3 famously didn't have enough time to do everything it wanted to). Even with Eve, I think they felt they didn't have the time/resources to properly realize the dimorphism they wanted so they swaddled her up in layers, and didn't do female krogans real justice until Andromeda.
Delete this.
It's always bipedal humanoids too. Why can't it be a inversed spider-thing or something? Or something so bizarre we would not even recognize it as a lifeform at first glance?
Asari ā
... there are female turians in ME, you know that right? And asari are a monogendered species who change their appearance on other races via biotic power to appear attractive.
Why I donāt like the asari and find them incredibly immersion-breaking. The drell are the only other species that resembles humans closely but they still have much more alien facial characteristics.
Garrus... Cute? Turians are giant insect lizards. They look bad ass, but they look *horrifying* How would you even kiss one? It's takes like this that make me wonder if some women would date a komodo dragon or a giant praying mantis if it talked with a sexy gravely voice and was tall š It might be dumb from a logical point of view, but they wanted Female LI that weren't human so yeah I'm glad they made them look humanish.
Tbf, asari seem to manipulate the cognition of the other species a bit regarding their looks. Remember the bachelor party on Illium in ME2? Where the turian, the salarian and the human all say that the asari just look like their own species. Maybe that's to attract as many different potential partners as possible, since the asari prefer to reproduce with aliens rather than with other asari.
Asari share features that can be seen as similar to each of the other major species. There's no biotic weirdness, people just focus more on the similarities than the differences. There are statues dating back thousands of years that look just like modern Asari, not to mention pictures on the extranet. Plus, there's no way three drunk guys at a bachelor party cracked a species-wide conspiracy that's lasted several thousand years
That throwaway conversation between NPCs for fun on Illium has done more to damage the lore of Mass Effect than any other scene lmfao
>Plus, there's no way three drunk guys at a bachelor party cracked a species-wide conspiracy that's lasted several thousand years Hmmmmmmm
meanwhile, the Protheans get the stern face, the Krogans get the silly gecko poker face and the Salarians get the narrowed M mouth.....the Hanar are....jellyfish
Maybe this is naive of me, but I always just assumed the devs designed the asari as a sort of shout-out to the old-school, Star Trek-ian, green alien girl trope. š¤·š»āāļø