Hey guys, been lurking for a bit, but the thread is huge and it's hard to find a decent starting place, so I'm just gonna start here, hope no one minds. Just gonna
out a bit here, so if you're tl;dr feel free to skip. It's hard to find worthwhile discussion though, so hoping to find it here, though, so I'm going to write a lot in hopes of sparking up some more in depth discussion and thought.
I guess I'll start with a question - why exactly do people here
like Liara? Go ahead and give me your reasons - and I'm curious how many people carry that over to liking the Asari, too. And which came first - liking Liara, or liking the Asari?
I'll answer my own questions for my personal preferences, and if anyone feels like, they can give their own reasons and answers, too. I am interested to hear others opinions, I'm not just here to preach my own tastes - but given that I can assume most of us here actually like Liara, it's interesting to go deeper into
why, and find out still how we differ and how we don't. I'll go in depth in the hopes of providing an example and getting similar responses from other people, finding out how many people agree or disagree with my experiences and thoughts.
For me, I grew to like Liara because of the Asari. Personally, I didn't like Liara
or the Asari when I first started ME1. The Asari really came off as a shallow race existing to be little more than fanservice characters very similar to Kirk's green space babes - and I was more interested in the reptilian alien races anyway. The Krogan caught my eye more than anything, starting out, as did Wrex. And Liara? Well, I already wasn't interested in the Asari from first impressions, and she gives off a
very weak one on Therum, too. You rescue her, and she spends an entire fight cowering in a corner not helping. She just came across like the epitome of a "Damsel In Distress" and I hate that character type. Granted, the other extreme of Femme Fatales is terrible, too, but she seemed like she couldn't stand for herself at all.
Now given that I've just written a paragraph about how much I disliked the Asari and Liara, why am I here? Well, I should say that right now, Liara is
by far my favorite character, and the Asari are also my favorite race. This is an opinion I grew into even in ME1, even with that terrible first impression, so why?
Well, for me, it's because of the way Liara explained the Asari and their culture. The reason ME1 captivated me at first glance anyway was because of how it was handling aliens - it's done aliens and their culture even better than Star Wars and Star Trek - and it actually took them seriously, and gave them fully fleshed out cultures. So I did want to learn about the alien races - and when I explored the Normandy and talked to Liara, she completely subverted my initial impressions of the Asari race. She even
mentioned the exact impression I had made - that they were a shallow race, and said that wasn't really true, and went on to talk about exactly how being a mono-gendered race had impacted their culture and dealings with other races. That the writers had actually bothered to go into the consequences of being a mono-gendered race instead of just mentioning that they were and not thinking about what that would really mean for their mentalities and perspectives was something I wasn't expecting, and it was impressive.
Liara even covered how Asari have natural biotics, and how that had an impact on their culture and such too. Every unique part of the Asari was mentioned and a note was made of how it shaped their general culture instead of just being a flavor to take for granted, it all made sense, too. Really drew me in, too. Beyond all of that, though, it was how all of this together made the Asari stand out as really being
alien, and not
just blue human women like I originally took them for - because of the way Asari culture was actually different from human culture.
So for me - Liara got me interested in the Asari, and then I switched her into my active party and grew to like her as a character too - and not just because she was an Asari. As I talked to her more, and used her more, she showed some actual strength and independence, and you learn about her life and history and find out she's not nearly as weak as she seemed on Therum. She's fully capable of holding her own, and has been independent for quite a while - yet she didn't overdo it and become a femme fatale. It also helps that I find biotics really interesting, and it was biotics that made ME stand out at first glance to me, compared to other sci-fi.
I imagine I'm not alone in saying I was really impressed by the romance, too. Alien characters in other media are
never taken so seriously that a real, emotional romance is ever tried, especially not with a main human character. More over, I felt there was some actual chemistry between Shepard and Liara, and it actually felt like an equal relationship, rather than how in most videogames, where it just seems like a fling or one taking advantage of the other. Of course, this particular aspect got vastly improved on when LotSB and ME3 came out, and the improvements to Liara's character those have made are are primary reasons that I hold those in such high regards. Ending chat aside. I could say plenty more on the subject of Liara and her character and improvements in LotSB and ME3, but I could literally double the length of my post doing so - I may cover that later, but for now I just want to go into basic thoughts on Liara and the Asari and why people like them. I feel an entire separate post would need to be devoted to talking specifically about the way things are handled in LotSB and ME3.
I would easily say that, of all the media I've actually
personally experienced, Liara is not only the most well done alien character I've seen, she's also the best romance I've seen in a video game. I want to clarify I've never been a huge sci-fi fan OR a romance fan, because when it comes to sci-fi, most are entirely too human-centric and the aliens are either joke characters, one note/shallow characters, or they are basically monsters. They are almost never fully fleshed out - even Star Wars did this. For as cool as Chewie is, he couldn't stand on his own separate from Han Solo, and it's plenty obvious that many aliens exist there just to be something to look at and have no real culture of their own. As for romances - in pretty much every other game I've played, romances just feel forced and you don't see any real chemistry or reason other than "hey the writers wanted a romance." I've literally never been invested in a videogame romance before Liara's - in games where it was forced as part of the story I zoned out and mashed A to get through it as fast as possible, because it just never seemed natural. Shep/Liara was
different, and it's hard to say why, other than how it's approached and how collected Liara can be about it. I think it mostly comes down to how equal the relationship feels, which is a rarity - hell, it's rare even in Mass Effect. Plenty of other romances throughout the games feel terrible, awkward, have no chemistry, and are little more than Shepard taking advantage of the other - so to see it done right really gripped me.
Well, that's the basics of what interested me about Liara and the Asari from back in ME1 - still applies. Certainly applies after all the improvements she's got - for as much as I liked Liara in ME1, the improvements LotSB and ME3 gave to her were
massive. All of those positives to her character and romance got magnified tenfold.
So yes, I could say more, but I think this covers the basics so, if you've read this far, please do me the favor of giving me your own thoughts and experiences - do you agree with my takes? Do you disagree on any? I really would like to hear some in depth answers on just what people see in Liara and the Asari in comparison to me, rather than assuming my own tastes are the same as everyone elses just because, at the very base level, we all like Liara. I can't actually make those assumptions so I don't want to.
Edit - Oh, a forums question I meant to ask - I notice some people have avatars that are of their own design. How would I get that, myself? I didn't notice a way to pick an avatar that wasn't from a preselected list.
Modifié par Aristobulus500, 15 avril 2012 - 08:38 .
Retour en haut
I just meant that it's sad because... it's sad. I always had a gut feeling that the hero would die in the end so... no?
