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[Shepard-Tali]

Honestly, I don't care what she looks like under the mask, I liked her personality and her lovely voice. I mean, looking at those concept pictures, they're not grotesque or anything, it would have taken something incredibly horrendous for me to be like "Damn, better start romancing Liara." I've played around 6 playthroughs of the trilogy and I've only romanced Tali

[EarthInhabitant]

Enjoyed that post on the backstory to designing Tali and the themes they wanted to test on the player with her reveal. Definitely a missed opportunity. If they decide to show demasked Quarians in NME, I'm all for Bioware making slight alterations to the now established facial features. They have already decided on a look with the picture but they can make an effort to make the Quarians look more alien.

[katamuro]

Also the whole thing with dextro making us sick is not right, mint has dextro amino acids and we can eat it fine. And we even have some dextro stuff ourselves, mainly d-serine and d-aspartate. So there wouldnt be any allergic reaction just because its dextro or the opposite. And just because both quarians and turians are dextro does not mean that they have to be similar. Sure they share the legs to some extent and 3 fingers but so do the krogans and salarians. They evolved on different planets and unlike Palaven Rannoch has an active magnetosphere so no need to evolve natural radiation protection. 

 

So quarians could look like anything at all but considering the temperature of the planet, their peculiar biosphere and their role as pollinators I would think that they would have at least as much hair as humans if not more, the body shape suggests that they have evolved along the similar lines as humans, hunting, gathering. They could look a bit more alien but considering all the alien bits they have already its fine with them having human hair,nose and lips. 

 

As for the concept art, I am not sure I would have liked it but Tali would have been worth it. Well anyway there is always headcanon and right now I am liking it more than what we got so far.

[Han Shot First]

I don't remember if Turians are strictly carnivores, but somewhere in the lore it was stated that the Quarians are vegans. I don't believe that was always the case, but they switched to a vegan diet after the Morning War because it was more efficient. Livestock would take up more space on their ships than veggies, and consume more resources.

 

Regarding what the Quarian's faces should have looked like...

 

Maybe they should have recycled one of the discarded concepts for the Drell that Matt Rhodes came up with. That would be in keeping with the humanoid faces we can make out through the face masks, and with the vague description of humanoid features (two eyes with eyelids, a nose, a mouth, ect) given for an unmasked Quarian in the books.

 

 

It would however make the Quarians seem slightly more alien in appearance than the stock photo used for Tali's reveal, without tipping the scales so far in that direction that it runs counter to what the books describe or could be seen in game, and without sending the average Talimancer running away screaming.

 

Of course any of the above, if recycled for the Quarians, would be for a male. 

 

On that note I wouldn't mind the ME:Next team slipping in one of the above for Quarians, if they return in some unmasked form. The second one is probably my favorite.

[Altair_ShepardN7]

I'm surpirsed no one has posted this picture yet. It is in one of the endings (Geth + Quarians and Synthesis iirc). I would like something slightly more alien, but not like a salarian or predator. The human likeness doesn't really bothers me, astrobiology, sci-fi and a little speculation on the lore can easily explain it. 

I expected quarians to have a pale skin due to the arid environment in which they evolved and the high temperature of their homeworld, they could have had a dark skin originally, but lost their pigment (or whatever they call it) due to living on spaceships. They can't be covered in hair, again this is due to the arid and hot environment in which they evolved.

[katamuro]

What makes turians carnivores is the way their mouth, jaws and teeth are. They are made for tearing flesh not grinding down plant fibre. We have both because we are omnivores but some omnivores(bears for example) do not necessary have the same structure. Another part of that is that on Palaven probably not just turians evolved that metallic exoskeleton. Plants could have similar, tougher exteriors. And quarians probably would only be able to drink turian drinks or eat the nutri-paste mentioned. If even that. After all turians probably need a different set of vitamins, micro-elements and nutritional values than quarians or humans, they dont just glue the metalic plates on themselves, they have to grow, hence they require a lot more of metallic elements than us. 

 

As for quarians considering their symbiotic relationship with plants I would think that they would eat plants mostly, but eating meat is quite an important jump in evolution. Because of its much higher nutritional value and requires less time to digest it frees up time to "think" if you will. More nutrients=bigger brain=probable sentience. 

Also considering the different species a lot of them seem to have compatible or at least similar enough "equipment". Salarians and krogan seem to be the only truly lizard-like with their egg-laying. Drell seem to be basically the lizard-like humans. 

Anyway quarians have enough differences already. Maybe all they need is a slight adjustment.

[Han Shot First]

There is a theory that any species that could eventually masters space flight, would probably have evolved as either a carnivore or an omnivore. Big brains require more energy consumption which probably means that at least part of the diet would have come from eating other animals. Also if we look at Earth most of the more intelligent animals in any ecosystem are the predators. While there are some exceptions (like elephants or gorillas), usually the predators are more intelligent animals than the herbivores. This makes sense when you consider that obtaining food as a predator is often a more difficult and complex a task than obtaining grass or shrubs to graze, and requires some degree of cunning on the part of the predator. Predators often have to use their wits to survive. 

[Altair_ShepardN7]

Quarians eat meat, it says so in the codex or somewhere ingame (don't remember where). They just stopped producing it because it is much more efficient (in resources and space required) to grow crops rather than animals. I remember reading that every once in a while some ships arrived to the flotilla with shipments of meat and that quarians would go crazy trying to purchase them. 

[katamuro]

Yeah, hanar were uplifted by protheans. And elcor while they do have advanced tech they are not exactly active members of the galactic community. 

[Han Shot First]

Quarians eat meat, it says so in the codex or somewhere ingame (don't remember where). They just stopped producing it because it is much more efficient (in resources and space required) to grow crops rather than animals. I remember reading that every once in a while some ships arrived to the flotilla with shipments of meat and that quarians would go crazy trying to purchase them. 

 

They are primarily vegan. I think it was said that some members while on pilgrimage or while in port cities, purchase meat pastes made for Quarian consumption. But the Migrant Fleet itself only produces vegetarian fare.

[Display Name Owner]

I vaguely remember one of the novels apparently described Quarians saying something along the lines of "they have lips, teeth, two eyes, a nose and something resembling ears". Should have realised they were literally just describing a human head.

 

I hope to god they alter Quarians from that stock photo shambles.

[KaiserShep]

I vaguely remember one of the novels apparently described Quarians saying something along the lines of "they have lips, teeth, two eyes, a nose and something resembling ears". Should have realised they were literally just describing a human head.

 

I hope to god they alter Quarians from that stock photo shambles.

 

I can't help but feel that any changes they make would be subtle, like the proportions will be a little different from a human's, but the basic features will remain. For better or worse, I think it's much too late to go full retcon and make them bald and lipless or something.

[Quarian Master Race]

I vaguely remember one of the novels apparently described Quarians saying something along the lines of "they have lips, teeth, two eyes, a nose and something resembling ears". Should have realised they were literally just describing a human head.

 

I hope to god they alter Quarians from that stock photo shambles.

It was Ascension when describing the quarian who had been tortured. Mammalian humanoid appearance had been established before ME2 even came out (as if you thought any different looking at Tali's face's structural features under the mask in ME1 and the fact that her physiology otherwise obviously resembles a bipedal mammal).

I still don't get what the big deal is about mammalian humanoids looking like other mammalian humanoids. My first thought when I played original ME wasn't outrage at the implausibility of the fact that asari could wear human armor and had the same reproductive structures despite a vastly different process. 

The dislike for the laziness of the manner in which stock photo-shop was done is understandable, though.

 

 For better or worse, I think it's much too late to go full retcon and make them bald and lipless or something.

How would that make the species any more interesting other than being different for the sake of being different, especially if they are still confined to suits (for cultural reasons or otherwise) in any future apperances? At least to be worth retconning not only the photo, but also any other literature on their apperance and likely the humanlike voices (not having lips or hair, for example isn't very orthodox by mammalian standards, and would result in their language being basically unpronounceable for humans, which clearly was never the case seeing as there are more instances of pronounceable Khelish words getting through the translator than any other alien language).

[katamuro]

Yeah making someone alien just so that they seem alien rather than from any kind of character development or sense is not good. Character appearance is quite important for the character development, its the first thing we know about them, it is what tells us if the character is badass like Wrex or Zaeed, crazy like Jack, calm, agile and stealthy like Thane or Kasumi. 

[Han Shot First]

I vaguely remember one of the novels apparently described Quarians saying something along the lines of "they have lips, teeth, two eyes, a nose and something resembling ears". Should have realised they were literally just describing a human head.

 

 

Before Mass Effect 3 released in the multiple threads where people bickered about what Tali should look like, the fans of this this fanart used to put that passage forward as 'evidence' that the Quarians looked just like humans. 

 

The problem with that argument then is that the passage itself is extremely vague and can also be used to describe a number of other species in the Mass Effect universe that other than having a humanoid shape, look very different than humans. The passage for example, if not used for a Quarian, could also have been used to describe Thane or Liara. And while Thane and Liara might be humanoid aliens, no one would mistake either for a human.

 

Fast forwarding to the present, we now know that internal concepts for the Quarians were for the most part more alien initially than what we eventually got with the Tali reveal. Also there were still a few different official concepts still in circulation at the time the passage in the book was written. So besides the passage being vague enough that it could also be used to describe any other humanoid alien species in the series, it appears it was deliberately so. At the time the passage was written Bioware had not let locked in on single concept for them.

 

In short the fans of that fan art were at the time engaging in wishful thinking, and misinterpreting that passage to suit their wishes. They ultimately got their wish (unfortumately, IMO) but that was by no means certain at the time.

 

On that note I also blame that fan art for the disappointing Tali reveal. I think it's popularity ruined the Quarians.

[katamuro]

 

Before Mass Effect 3 released in the multiple threads where people bickered about what Tali should look like, the fans of this this fanart used to put that passage forward as 'evidence' that the Quarians looked just like humans. 

 

The problem with that argument then is that the passage itself is extremely vague and can also be used to describe a number of other species in the Mass Effect universe that other than having a humanoid shape, look very different than humans. The passage for example, if not used for a Quarian, could also have been used to describe Thane or Liara. And while Thane and Liara might be humanoid aliens, no one would mistake either for a human.

 

Fast forwarding to the present, we now know that internal concepts for the Quarians were for the most part more alien initially than what we eventually got with the Tali reveal. Also there were still a few different official concepts still in circulation at the time the passage in the book was written. So besides the passage being vague enough that it could also be used to describe any other humanoid alien species in the series, it appears it was deliberately so. At the time the passage was written Bioware had not let locked in on single concept for them.

 

In short the fans of that fan art were at the time engaging in wishful thinking, and misinterpreting that passage to suit their wishes. They ultimately got their wish (unfortumately, IMO) but that was by no means certain at the time.

 

On that note I also blame that fan art for the disappointing Tali reveal. I think it's popularity ruined the Quarians.

 

Honestly I dont mind quarians looking very human. And the disappointing part is the method of the reveal along with the shoddy job they did. If they actually modeled her face in game, on that cliff when she takes off her mask, just showing her face, it really would have been so much better.

[KaiserShep]

How would that make the species any more interesting other than being different for the sake of being different, especially if they are still confined to suits (for cultural reasons or otherwise) in any future apperances? At least to be worth retconning not only the photo, but also any other literature on their apperance and likely the humanlike voices (not having lips or hair, for example isn't very orthodox by mammalian standards, and would result in their language being basically unpronounceable for humans, which clearly was never the case seeing as there are more instances of pronounceable Khelish words getting through the translator than any other alien language).

 

I never really said that it would. All I'm saying is that what the quarians should look like in the franchise from now on should no longer be up in the air, since we got our answer, even if it wasn't conveyed in the best possible way.

 

To be honest, I'm perfectly fine with the reveal that the quarians look very much like humans, hair and all. After growing up on Star Trek, this just isn't something I can really find myself being concerned with, especially since Mass Effect also has the asari.

[Display Name Owner]

It was Ascension when describing the quarian who had been tortured. Mammalian humanoid appearance had been established before ME2 even came out (as if you thought any different looking at Tali's face's structural features under the mask in ME1 and the fact that her physiology otherwise obviously resembles a bipedal mammal).

I still don't get what the big deal is about mammalian humanoids looking like other mammalian humanoids. My first thought when I played original ME wasn't outrage at the implausibility of the fact that asari could wear human armor and had the same reproductive structures despite a vastly different process. 

The dislike for the laziness of the manner in which stock photo-shop was done is understandable, though.

 

I'm not bemoaning the generally humanoid mammalian thing, I've got no problems with Asari or Drell, and we could always make out a somewhat humanoid face behind Tali's mask. I'm not saying every alien species has to be massively freaky, but Tali's photo is literally a human with tiger stripes. There's a line between humanoid and human, I guess is my point.

 

 

Before Mass Effect 3 released in the multiple threads where people bickered about what Tali should look like, the fans of this this fanart used to put that passage forward as 'evidence' that the Quarians looked just like humans. 

 

The problem with that argument then is that the passage itself is extremely vague and can also be used to describe a number of other species in the Mass Effect universe that other than having a humanoid shape, look very different than humans. The passage for example, if not used for a Quarian, could also have been used to describe Thane or Liara. And while Thane and Liara might be humanoid aliens, no one would mistake either for a human.

 

Fast forwarding to the present, we now know that internal concepts for the Quarians were for the most part more alien initially than what we eventually got with the Tali reveal. Also there were still a few different official concepts still in circulation at the time the passage in the book was written. So besides the passage being vague enough that it could also be used to describe any other humanoid alien species in the series, it appears it was deliberately so. At the time the passage was written Bioware had not let locked in on single concept for them.

 

In short the fans of that fan art were at the time engaging in wishful thinking, and misinterpreting that passage to suit their wishes. They ultimately got their wish (unfortumately, IMO) but that was by no means certain at the time.

 

On that note I also blame that fan art for the disappointing Tali reveal. I think it's popularity ruined the Quarians.

 

Yeah, I never liked that fanart. I mean, it's very nicely made, I just really don't like the concept of Tali looking like your average human girl. I can even imagine the artist thought of her as having blonde hair under there...

 

But I kind of wonder why Bioware even included that Tali photo, it seems like it was cobbled together in such a rush they can't have really been happy with it, surely. Maybe they just felt the need to reveal Tali since many people were hoping for it. I wouldn't have been surprised if they abandoned it as some kind of easter egg or something, except a lot of people seem to have accepted it so it might not be feasible for Bioware to alter the design majorly, which does annoy me if true.

[Display Name Owner]

I can't help but feel that any changes they make would be subtle, like the proportions will be a little different from a human's, but the basic features will remain. For better or worse, I think it's much too late to go full retcon and make them bald and lipless or something.

 

I guess the Quarian faces you can see in the post-ending slides are more along the lines of what we'll see in future, which are essentially just purple humans. Still, I think that at this point they might still have room to tweak the designs, give them a certain nose shape for example. That might be enough.

 

Oddly enough I've always been against the notion of them having hair. Hair is kind of humanity's thing, like blue is the Asari's and 4 eyes is the Batarians'. But yeah, guess we'll see.

[katamuro]

I guess the Quarian faces you can see in the post-ending slides are more along the lines of what we'll see in future, which are essentially just purple humans. Still, I think that at this point they might still have room to tweak the designs, give them a certain nose shape for example. That might be enough.

 

Oddly enough I've always been against the notion of them having hair. Hair is kind of humanity's thing, like blue is the Asari's and 4 eyes is the Batarians'. But yeah, guess we'll see.

 

Hair is quite natural, a lot of different animals have hair, its not really a "human" thing. Long hair under the helmet is a bit of a strange thing but hair on its own, no.

[Will-o'-wisp]

Batarians always looked kinda hairy to me as well... and weren't there Volus without helmets in one of the comics as well? Didn't they have fur?
 
Concerning the quarians: I hate that they're basically just purple humans with glowing eyes. It's boring, uncreative and I was really disappointed when I saw that picture of Tali and I'm not even a Talimancer. I'm seriously hoping that they get a good redesign in ME:N cause I actually liked the species and the current look kinda cheapens them. It's nothing unique, it doesn't feel like they put any thought in it besides "better make those Talimancers happy by giving the another pretty human girl, cause that's what people want, right?"
 
Imo this fanart would have been the perfect design for the quarians. It looks abolutely beautiful, yet exotic and contains elements from both the humans' and turians' designs that would make them look attractive to both species.

Spoiler

[Quarian Master Race]

On that note I also blame that fan art for the disappointing Tali reveal. I think it's popularity ruined the Quarians.

Strong words considering that the appearance under the suits is probably the least important thing about the quarians as a concept. I think the ability for them to do things outside of the suit as extreme as having sexual relationships with completely different species, via simple methods such as taking a few off the shelf antibiotics "ruined" them far more, if anything.
 

 

I'm not bemoaning the generally humanoid mammalian thing, I've got no problems with Asari or Drell, and we could always make out a somewhat humanoid face behind Tali's mask. I'm not saying every alien species has to be massively freaky, but Tali's photo is literally a human with tiger stripes. There's a line between humanoid and human, I guess is my point.

 

But I kind of wonder why Bioware even included that Tali photo, it seems like it was cobbled together in such a rush they can't have really been happy with it, surely.

At what point do quarians cross said line and, say asari (as the other obviously humanlike in apperance species) don't? Just going by from the neck up the differences from humans that we can see are....

asari: Blue skin, lack of ears, lack of hair, scalp tentacles 
quarian: Purple skin, lack of ears, lack of pupils

So quarians are slightly more humanlike on about 10% of the body but have a different bone structure and physiology, while asari are basically a recoloured photoshop from the forehead to the toes (which is intentional, indeed "The Art of Mass Effect" companion book from the original game states the design inspiration as the Orion dancer girls from Star Trek) to the point where they don't even have separate armor designs from humans. If one crosses the line, the other should as well by any logical standard

As for the drell, subjectively I think they are even more egregious than either asari or quarians. The latter two are at least mammals and so I can make convergent evolution hypothesies for their features in relation to humans, but drell are reptillian. The humanlike face juxtaposed to the otherwise reptilian features looks like a copypasta and quite unnatural. The aesthetic design of the species reeks of a compromise between female fanservice and still having reptillian features, but it's just my opinion and our knowledge of the drell is even less than pretty much any other humanoid species except....

the batarians, whose design looks like someone just drew a generically strange "alien" head on a human body during a coffee break, though this is in line with the the whole species being really an afterthought of every unseemly idea that the creators could seemingly come up with for a species of glorified stock villians.

Note that I'm not actually really dissatisfied with any of these, because I don't find coming up with aesthetic designs for aliens to be particularly interesting unless they are coupled with a physiological reasoning for such design features. Since we have no idea as to the complex evolutionary, geological and climate history (no, current day climate or 1 defining biosphere factor is not really relevant) variables that determine how most of the species in the ME universe evolved, I can't really be dissatisfied with any of them on "aesthetic" grounds

Now there are plenty of evolutionary derps that I am dissatisfied with, such as krogan birthrate. That makes literally no sense from an evolutionary r/K selection theory standpoint, but I don't have any similar things to say about quarians or their physiology. Indeed, I think (as if one couldn't tell) they are the most interesting in this regard. Pretty much all humanoid appearance ideas have  been done somewhere in another scifi universe as is, so no I don't think making them look like the Rattataki (as those concept photos) would have been particularly interesting or innovative. Less explored cultural and physiological quirks are much more interesting.

I agree with your last line though, and as iterated earlier I think that no reveal would have been the best, but simultaneously don't understand why it is of so much importance that it blew up the internet and still rustles the fanbase 3 years later. 

[Han Shot First]

Strong words considering that the appearance under the suits is probably the least important thing about the quarians as a concept. I think the ability for them to do things outside of the suit as extreme as having sexual relationships with completely different species, via simple methods such as taking a few off the shelf antibiotics "ruined" them far more, if anything.
 

 

Ruined is perhaps a little strong. But I just don't see the point in creating alien species if you're going to make them look almost entirely like humans. 

 

 

At what point do quarians cross said line and, say asari (as the other obviously humanlike in apperance species) don't? Just going by from the neck up the differences from humans that we can see are....

asari: Blue skin, lack of ears, lack of hair, scalp tentacles 
quarian: Purple skin, lack of ears, lack of pupils

 

The Quarians have similar skin tones to humans, at least if the Tali reveal is anything to go by.  The purple bits look more like a lighting effect than a color of her skin tone.

 

 

On the other hand one of the slides from the Extended Cut synthesis endings appears to show an unmasked Quarian with purple skin, so who knows.