262 réponses à ce sujet

[MrDavid]

Honestly, I can't think of any conceivable reason for picking Morinth other than "This is my A-Hole Shepard!" The way I see it, don't expect to be rewarded for making a ****ty decision.

[spirosz]

NYG1991 wrote...

The same thing happens to jack. She becomes a phantom

So sad... it happens when you don't reach Grissom in time.  Yet, Shepard has the same reaction even if she is an LI or not, weird - he doesn't get sad or anything; aka me nitpicking, lol.  

[Zix13]

VirtualSoldier27 wrote...

Zix13 wrote...

FOZ289 wrote...

And never mind that she still has no problem killing Shepard if you actually try to romance her, pretty much proving she's still a deceitful sociopath who gets what was coming to her in ME3.

Holy ****. Someone dangerous on your ship? No way. Samara? She never said she would kill you or anything.... oh wait. 

Samara says she will only try to kill shepard if he does evil things, Morinth would kill Shepard reguardless, thats the difference

If you're renegade, she tells you she will try to kill you if you meet again after the suicide mission. Morinth you can just laugh at and be on your merry way. Samara.... well. If bioware weren't lazy, she would have tried to kill you in ME3. 

[FOZ289]

Zix13 wrote...

Holy ****. Someone dangerous on your ship? No way.  I mean Samara never said she would kill you or anything.... oh wait. I mean, Jack totally isn't dangerous. And Grunt? No way was he even THINKING about killing you when you opened that tank. Miranda totally didn't want to get some mind control **** going on with you.

Seriously though, sneaky vampire chick is hardly the most dangerous person(to you) in your crew. Besides, that sneakiness was entertaining. 

I didn't say the problem is that Morinth is "dangerous."  I said the problem is that she wants to kill Shepard just for kicks, and has already tried to do so (Shepard quite easily countered Grunt just by sticking a gun to him, plus he's a krogan made to fight, so Shepard should have been expecting it anyway).  The rest of the crew are loyal to Shepard after their first meeting.  Morinth doesn't give a damn.

[Zix13]

FOZ289 wrote...

Zix13 wrote...

Holy ****. Someone dangerous on your ship? No way.  I mean Samara never said she would kill you or anything.... oh wait. I mean, Jack totally isn't dangerous. And Grunt? No way was he even THINKING about killing you when you opened that tank. Miranda totally didn't want to get some mind control **** going on with you.

Seriously though, sneaky vampire chick is hardly the most dangerous person(to you) in your crew. Besides, that sneakiness was entertaining. 

I didn't say the problem is that Morinth is "dangerous."  I said the problem is that she wants to kill Shepard just for kicks, and has already tried to do so (Shepard quite easily countered Grunt just by sticking a gun to him, plus he's a krogan made to fight, so Shepard should have been expecting it anyway).  The rest of the crew are loyal to Shepard after their first meeting.  Morinth doesn't give a damn.

No, most of your crew is there for mutual interest. The only difference is that Morinth is there for fun. That's why you had those loyalty missions.

[Eromenos]

The Angry One wrote...

Eromenos wrote...

I lump Emily Wong in with Morinth, Kelly Chambers, and Sha'ira because Wong has no function except to push the same buttons for dudebros like those other 3 do. She wears about as much as Sha'ira does, and exhibits zero people skills that fall outside of "I'm super femme!" She's on the ASB team, not a galactic reporter. Witness all the slavering reactions to her.  They are identical to Tali's, except that Tali is a fully-realized character instead of a half-baked side character whose lines are coquettish first, relevant...second? Last?

Oh so she's a reporter in a somewhat revealing dress. No really, let's inform the U.N.
Also, I find a lot of her popularity comes from her role in Mass Effect 2, as the Citadel news reporter on the screens, and people find her replacement in ME3 - Stuffy McBoring - to be inadequate.
Unless you're telling me "dudebros" get titilation from a talking head.

The issues with Wong are worse than simply her aesthetics. I also have problems with similar (hetero)male-gaze aesthetics pasted onto Miranda, Samara, EDI, and (ME3)Ashley, yet those female toons are 3-dimensional enough in every other way. Their outfits are arguably more ridiculous than hers, but I respect them even as I harbor contempt for BioWare's dudebros in marketing. So compared to those four NPCs, the only thing Wong has is perky too-friendliness in an unnecessary tertiary role, the dim purpose of which I've stated before. Wong's personality and her appearance combined were a waste. Morinth is the same BS, albeit substitute perky for gothy. Both of them were unneccessary exploitation.

I do like Wong's male replacement in ME3 because he tells it like it is without overplaying it. Unpleasant news on looped broadcast comes across better for me without Wong's idiotic demeanor, given the stakes in ME. As a reminder, if Wong were to present the news in ME3 it wouldn't be a scoop that she can try to "own" the same way she did regarding Fist. And where would that leave her? A fish out of water would be a "nice" way to put it. Which is actually what happened in ME2.

Angry One, you remind of Hudson when he was grasping "asari are mono-gendered, therefore not female, therefore no same-sex romances exist in ME." The problem for him and you is that at least one person who plays ME doesn't actually live in a nerd-vacuum. ME1 and ME2's refusal to depict 3-dimensional queer humans for queer gamers while persisting in uber-femme asari F/F for dudebros is where the harm was. ME2 used dudebros' "ideal woman" fantasies on blue space-elf-chicks and Kelly Chambers the Human Screensaver to exploit F/F titillation not even for actual queer females, but for dudebros first. This is why I'm happy those blow-up dolls are either absent or nothing more than dead stains in ME3.

No, I'm saying that Morinth is not a particularily bad portrayal of a bisexual character because her sexuality is never connected to what she does.
Is Liara now 2 dimensional too? Yes some characters are shallow and exploitative, but that isn't reserved to women exclusively. Jacob, a heterosexual male, is often reduced to a slab of meat for inspection and has a couple of gratuitous butt shots, with an equally skin tight outfit as Miranda's. Was he made by the "dudebros" too?

Wrong. Morinth's sexuality is connected to what she does because Morinth and Kelly Chambers were the two of the three prominent, exclusive, and negative representations of queer sexuality in ME2. All of them relegated to females so dudebros wouldn't rage. Morinth can always be summed up as, "BioWare Does Basic Instinct." The asari widow on Ilium is unflattering as well because she played into the dead-queer-partner trope, and cotinued to function as a way for BioWare to sidestep any human representation. She was a token and tertiary vessel for pity.

Liara can factor into this as well, but her role in ME1 was the same as Morinth/Kelly had in ME2. And Liara in ME2 did nothing to offset the harm created by those two because the game continued to push her at us. So what were we left with? ME2 had no Samantha or Steve. No diversity of queer representation, just the kind that dudebros demand, the kind that can be boiled down to bisexual ****** accessible for them. Liara was still nothing more than a hyper-femme bisexual stalker chick made for hetero nerds.

In ME3 I'm able to have provisional respect for Liara because the devs finally made her become less preoccupied with those of us who keep her at arms-length. She's fail dudebro fodder in ME1 and ME2. I appreciate her improvement in ME3. Same with Morinth, I like her much better as she is in ME3.

I have no respect for Jacob of ME2. And yeah...ME2's entire team were dudebros and thusly, everything to do with Jacob's "exploitation" did come from dudebros who thought they're being clever, but like almost everything about ME2 they had no actual material. The irony is that you and they ineptly assume people are dumb enough to hold his depiction at an equal level as BioWare's worse-exploitation of bimbo and/or catsuited women. /facepalm at people always whining about "reverse-sexism" while they try to maintain unequal gender-role segregation. Jacob wears flat-shoes and he covers his chest. He brings "some" muscle into dangerous situations. Miranda's butt-shots outnumber his by far, and certainly she has more that frame her cheeks as the main attraction than he does. Jacob was exploited, but it's a joke to try and compare him to Miranda and claim that he(or any male character in ME) actually got it as bad as the female characters did.

Modifié par Eromenos, 08 mai 2012 - 08:06 .

[cogsandcurls]

MrDavid wrote...

Honestly, I can't think of any conceivable reason for picking Morinth other than "This is my A-Hole Shepard!" The way I see it, don't expect to be rewarded for making a ****ty decision.

Can't speak for anyone else but I'm actually planning to do a (ME1 and 2 only) run specifically to get Morinth at some point. This is for a meta reason, sure - she might be horrible but she's still INTERESTING. I want to see how the game plays out with here around instead of Samara. It's not about liking her, it's about finding her engaging and wanting the experience of spending time with a whole new character in a future run-through. Have no idea how I'm going to rationalise it in an IC-way yet, but I'm sure I'll find an excuse.

[nategator]

MrDavid wrote...

Honestly, I can't think of any conceivable reason for picking Morinth other than "This is my A-Hole Shepard!" The way I see it, don't expect to be rewarded for making a ****ty decision.

You get the domination power unlock as well, which can quite useful. 

[nategator]

Miranda's butt-shots outnumber his by far, and certainly she has more that frame her cheeks as the main attraction than he does. Jacob was exploited, but it's a joke to try and compare him to Miranda and claim that he(or any male character in ME) actually got it as bad as the female characters did.

Sigh, not more of this nonsense.

The majority of the gaming audience that actually drops $60 for new copies of ME3 are younger hererosexual males.  Bioware, to its credit, tries to broaden its appeal to non-mainstream buyers.  But it must please its core fan base or it won't recoup its development costs.

Arguing for changes for political correctness needs or trying to engage in a bogus wanabe intellectual critique is futile and a waste of energy.

Here's an analogy, I started watching some anime just to see what the fuss was about.  I never liked the obvious harem romance structures, the Japanese-style fan service, or the weird descents into metaphysical spiruality that seem to captivate Japanese audiences.  But I pulled from the stories and art the stuff I did like and trained my brain to ignore the stuff I didn't.  I think I was the better for that decision.

What I did not try to do, however, was go onto some Japanese otaku forums and argue with them that the anime programs were bad because they included stuff the otaku seemed to like. 

Making entertainment for everyone is just another way of making bland entertainment.  

[Eromenos]

nategator wrote...

Miranda's butt-shots outnumber his by far, and certainly she has more that frame her cheeks as the main attraction than he does. Jacob was exploited, but it's a joke to try and compare him to Miranda and claim that he(or any male character in ME) actually got it as bad as the female characters did.

Sigh, not more of this nonsense.

The majority of the gaming audience that actually drops $60 for new copies of ME3 are younger hererosexual males.  Bioware, to its credit, tries to broaden its appeal to non-mainstream buyers.  But it must please its core fan base or it won't recoup its development costs.

Arguing for changes for political correctness needs or trying to engage in a bogus wanabe intellectual critique is futile and a waste of energy.

Here's an analogy, I started watching some anime just to see what the fuss was about.  I never liked the obvious harem romance structures, the Japanese-style fan service, or the weird descents into metaphysical spiruality that seem to captivate Japanese audiences.  But I pulled from the stories and art the stuff I did like and trained my brain to ignore the stuff I didn't.  I think I was the better for that decision.

What I did not try to do, however, was go onto some Japanese otaku forums and argue with them that the anime programs were bad because they included stuff the otaku seemed to like. 

Making entertainment for everyone is just another way of making bland entertainment.  

Hmmm. Do I actually care about the wants of stereotypical young male hetero gamers? Certainly not, they have a surplus of wants and needs that get catered to in a way that freezes other people out. Do I care about BioWare's survival or longevity? Definitely not, because they are at best producers for my consumption, not some bastion institution that I delegate my life to. They're also strangers, a distant entity to me, and their handling of queer-related topics in these forums is best-described as placating not only for the openly homophobic types, but also for liberal straights who want to make queerness all about themselves by trying to inject their own control over the "right way" of ushering in queerness. In that sense, your call for "school spirit" makes for bad reading.

Lest I forget, you said something that equates to you wanting to believe BioWare is very put-upon and that they should be congratulated for their mercy at allowing teh queers in, whenever such secondary goals can be fit in. The part you forgot is, "and also whenever they can make this awesome for dudebros first." DA2 and ME3 moved past that, but whereas you would try to characterize it as BioWare being heroes and paragons that queers "need", I can just refer you to political and market trends. BioWare delayed and delayed, but they had no choice but to force themselves to jump on now, given the continuing political realities of the populace. It is about money, as you put it.  You'd just rather not want to contemplate the influences of queer politics and money affecting whatever you wish would belong to you exclusively and first.

 While I'm on the topic of straights who want to make queer representation all about how it affects straights...this bit about your experiences with anime happens to be very engrossing etc. etc., but you're also again confusing the value of your good times with a matter that has always been bigger, more impactful, and unrelated to your personal growth. I have no regrets about crossing the ones that pretend their good times don't actually come at the expense of historically ill-represented people. It's more of a joke than anything when the privileged groups clutch their pearls when their customary services get called out. It's even better when they clutch their pearls whenever their customary service gets denied.

I think I'll return the favor you offered me. Try this, you'll feel so much better: Morinth was always a stain even before she became a literal stain. There's no more content for her because ME3's team realized the bisexual blow-up doll concept was unworthy of dignifying or revisiting. BioWare's marketing disagreed, but alas, they were forced to content themselves with Chobot and catsuits for EDI and Williams. Didn't you say unfamiliar territory changed you? Well, who knows if magic can happen twice.

Modifié par Eromenos, 08 mai 2012 - 10:10 .

[Dendio1]

Morinth is a more interesting character than Samara. I was happy to kill the overzealous Justicar.

Modifié par Dendio1, 08 mai 2012 - 09:38 .

[Xeranx]

razor150 wrote...

From your explaination I don't think I misunderstood you as much as you think I did. Bascially you are saying that Nef can't be as innocent as people think she is because Morinth targetted her, even though Samara says she is attracted to artists, to those born with a spark and not just to darkness and violence. Nef's art is also shown to be in game to be fresh and worth more than a year's salary for her mother. Nef can be considered an artist of exceptional talent, as an up and comer, and if Morinth is attracted to artists Nef would fit the bill quite easily. We really have no reason to believe Morinth wanted her for anything more than her artistic talent. The dancer wouldn't fit even though dance itself is an art form, I doubt anybody would consider an average stripper an exceptional artist. 

Samara also explains that Shepard is an artist himself on the battlefield, and to attract Morinth you needn't do anything violent to attract her. 

Our misunderstanding only comes from me taking what you said to mean you viewed her as less of a victim because of that. It still comes acrossed as you blaming her in part for her demise.

Personally I have no problem with people picking Morinth, if you like the character better than Samara have at it and enjoy. I do have a problem with justifying it by trying to say Samara, Thane and others are just as bad as her. I just find that patently absurd because it draws parallels without context. I won't defend the others and really don't want to get into the comparisons, but their evils pale incomparison to Morinth's. Jack is the only one that even comes close, and personally I am not a big fan of her either. Both are tragic figures and only one of them can be saved (not referring to ME3 here).

Don't know if you're around to read this, but I wanted to responde to it.

Implying that Nef isn't as innocent as people think wasn't in my mind in the least when I wrote what I did.  I have implied that she could be less innocent than people think to show how open the whole thing was.  It does something that some might feel is disingenuous, but my implications have been that everything concerning Morinth was shoddy.  

There's nothing concrete that says anything about Morinth being a serial killer.  Samara says that Ardat Yakshi are driven to mate after the first time it occurs.  People have suggested that Morinth actually takes her time which implies that she could go for periods without actually joining with someone.  The way the condition was described implies an insatiable hunger and people on this board have written their own stories depicting it that way yet Samara recounts a village of Asari that were said to be in Morinth's thrall.  She didn't kill all of them when her condition renders her insatiable?  So that throws up one flag.

Nef being a victim, I am (but apparently unsuccessfully) trying to say that Nef should never have been killed.  I don't blame Nef for what happened to her.  I'm actually calling the writers out on using an innocent girl to pull on people's heart strings.  Morinth's own account of what she's into doesn't render Nef a factor in anything concerning her [Morinth].  So the idea that Nef was a victim pulls me out.  As I said, she's on the same level as the guy we meet going into the VIP section.

Also, to attempt to establish Nef as a victim we'd have to know how Morinth thought to approach her considering what I said about Nef and the loser guy at the door.  I said it before as well.  Did Morinth go to a gallery showing and see Nef's work to pick Nef out and pass on the password so Nef could go to the VIP section of Afterlife?  There's nothing in the game stipulating this, but I or we are supposed to buy that Nef makes absolute sense as a victim?  Again, how did she end up in a section she'd normally have no access to especially if she's the slightest bit reclusive?  Keep in mind that this series of events unfolds in such a way that we can't really make heads or tails of it, yet Shepard is able to say that an investigation will be done despite none taking place.

Samara's statement on Shepard being an artist on the battlefield is so hackneyed and clumsy that I'm surprised it made it in.  It induced such an eye-roll from me.  I knew and I know, that I or anyone can write better than that.  It was pandering on such a scale that if there were an option for Shepard to say, "Are you being up front about this because you're going out of your way to butter me up" I would take it every single time.

Frankly I wanted them to do something good with Morinth.  Either maker her the evil person people expect or make her the individual who isn't black, but gray in terms of her morality.  They eluded to Morinth being more than some sadistic individual in ME3 for those who don't know it which reinforces (a miniscule bit) the ability to choose Morinth over Samara in ME2.  Whether they did it as a result or they had it planned, I don't know.  But they should have done more for her considering that people were actually going to have saves with Morinth alive even if it was just to see how the story turned out.  In this case, the decision doesn't matter.  I'm starting to feel like the "renegade" players who felt stiffed on their choices not mattering while going through the games.

Just want to note that I'm primarily a paragon player though most of my saves are edited so that I can be more balanced.  I've always hated the all of one or all of the other since KOTOR.  I'd prefer a mixture of both.