pablodomi wrote...
I'll be the devil's advocate here. Ash and Alenko in Mars were written by MW, Jay Watamaniuk handled Ashley Williams (and other characters) after Priority Mars and I think he did a very decent job. The number of lines (word count) and the number of instances where the characters 'speak' (cutscenes, Normandy and mission banter, etc...) is imposed on the staff writers. I would have liked to see more Ash and not acting out of character at times, but let's not blame it all on Jay W. There are impositions and budget contraints on the writing team coming from above.
Edit: I just wanted to add I'm a huge fan of everything Chris L'Étoile did for ME 1 & 2. The ME 1 codex and pretty much the whole Noveria story arc were also part of his work
I think Ash became more similar to Alenko (or in Udina's words, it was Officer training that changed her attitude). Maybe it wasn't Watamaniuk decision, but something decided by the whole team. I don't know. In any case, she wasn't the sassy/polarizing chick she used to be. I guess they felt bad about L'toile's writing, where Ash was more controversial, but to me that made her more interesting. Even if they wanted to tone down her human centric views, they went further and just made her less talkative, more emotional and serious. She wasn't as funny. She was better as one of those love or hate characters (ME doesn't have many to begin with, I think. There's Jack and Javik... and maybe EDI? I don't know).