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[Han Shot First]

The trilogy did a poor job of portraying the Batarians as a whole until ME 3 IMO. All of the players' interaction with them, all of the lore and references to them (outside of that one Batarian that helped Garrus/Archangel) paints them as nothing but an entire species of racist xenophobes that are stupid evil. The Reapers had a method to their madness, but the Batarians were evil for the sake of being evil.

 

I'm hoping we'll see another side to them in ME: Next. The Batarians need their own version of Legion, basically. Before Legion the Geth were just allies of Saren and xenophobic machines that killed all organics that came close to their space.

[MrFob]

I'm hoping we'll see another side to them in ME: Next. The Batarians need their own version of Legion, basically. Before Legion the Geth were just allies of Saren and xenophobic machines that killed all organics that came close to their space.

 

Yes but at least, with the geth, I could sort of understand them, what with the quarians trying to wipe them out as soon as they realized that the geth achieved sentience and all. Even before Legion, they were pretty cool because they were this unknown alien menace.

 

The Batarians on the other hand are not very alien at all, they are all too human and a cliche representation of everything that we are probably not very proud of.

 

The original concept for the Batarians wasn't even that bad, IMO. I think they were supposed to be the guys who actually got trampled on by the insanely fast expanding humans. They were supposed to be the mirror for what could have just as well happened to us. They didn't want to make them too sympathetic because they didn't just want to make them innocent victims but rather, the loosing side of a war between two underdogs that are both trying with all their might to earn the power to play in the big leagues of interstellar politics. They were supposed to be the obstacle, the inconvenient competitor that we had to trample down in order to achieve our goals. In that way, they were supposed to make us question our own methods even while we stood on the winning side.

 

The concept is brilliant IMO but unfortunately, it very much failed in the execution stage. The problem was that the Batarians were put into the role of the aggressor too often and the fact, that they were as well victims of humanities relentless push was not shown enough. Oh, we get told this a couple of times and it is hinted at in many planetary descriptions (especially in ME1) but it is never actually shown.

IMO, it was a good move not to make them too sympathetic and innocent but the writers went over the top (especially starting with BDtS). They showed them as the constant aggressors and therefore gave humanity too much of a moral high ground for the original premise of their narrative role to work.

 

And that's a shame because the original concept for the Batarians could have made for some superb story telling. I fear, even if they add a couple of "cool Batarians" now, it is too late to pick up that string and make it work. At best, we can now hope for a bit more nuance but I wouldn't expect them to salvage the original premise.

[MrFob]

Yeah, they didn't have to make them so aggressive. The fact that they're slavers is bad enough.

 

And that they're so unrepentant about it is enough to kick their asses. Some of the news bulletins in ME2 crack me up. Like the newscaster on Omega, whining about how everyone is oppressing their traditions and that the Council doesn't have "cultural sensitivity". Heh

 

Yea, I am not sure if that news caster was meant as a joke but it certainly was ridiculous.

 

I don't have so much a problem with slavery being a part of batarian culture but again, ther was a problem with how they showed it. IIRC, the codex says that most of the slaves are actually batarians themselves. The could have put a whole new layer to the entire issue. If we could have seen batarian slaves, seen that there is a tension in their own society because of it (sort of make it a mirror image of human society in some ways), than that would have given it much more nuance.

 

BTW, that's why I said that I liked the portrayal of the batarians in Revelations. On the surface, they are just the same a**holes as in the game. but if you look a bit closer, there is more to it For example, there is this one merc who goes into a brothel and "orders" a human girl, fully intending to do her harm. So he is just a massive jerk and a criminal but as the scene is written from his perspective, you get an insight of what brought him to be like that. He sees the decline of his own race around him and it's all because the humans push in, take the resources on worlds, the batarians wanted to colonize, bully them out, etc. Whether it is objectively true or not, it is the situation from his perspective. As a lowly merc, he is powerless to do anything about it, so the only form of retaliation he can take is abusing a human prostitute. It is horrible and disgusting. You get to hate this guy but at the same time, it is so petty that you can almost pity him (well, the fact that his plan also massively backfires adds to that effect as well). That twisted, shady and conflicted view of the batarians, that's what I was hoping to see more of.

Unfortunately, we got rather one-dimensional goons and bad guys instead.

[bunch1]

Don't the Volus practice slavery to?  I thought I remembered the ambassador telling me they bought and sold clan-mates all the time.  We do know that the Asari at least have a history of indentured servitude that they've been practicing on Illium for however long.  In that regard I don't hate all batarians because of slavery, unless I'm playing a colonist, but I hate the slavers themselves.  The few batarians we meet in the games outside of the Hegomany are not that bad, outside the 1 bartender who tried to poison me they all seem just like everyone else if a little more bitter and aggressive, kind of like the Krogan.

 

All that said I don't feel guilty about the deaths, I generally try to warn them but their is simply no other viable option and as callus as it is I don't know them or ever see them so it's easier for my Shep to compartmentalize their deaths as apposed to the boy dieing on Earth, his/her own people being slaughtered.  I'm reminded of a quote from Stalin on issues like this, "One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic", meaning it's just hard to care about that many people you don't know and you become numb in a way trying to think about it.

[MrFob]

I think when the volus say, that they barter clan members, it's more like kingdoms in our middle ages that used to inter marry children of noble families of different countries. I always thought it was implied to be more a social exchange than actual trade with people that are actually owned. But IIRC, it is never entirely explained so I may be wrong.

[KaiserShep]

Yeah, they didn't have to make them so aggressive. The fact that they're slavers is bad enough.

 

And that they're so unrepentant about it is enough to kick their asses. Some of the news bulletins in ME2 crack me up. Like the newscaster on Omega, whining about how everyone is oppressing their traditions and that the Council doesn't have "cultural sensitivity". Heh

 

That newscaster on Omega was a trip. It was funny when his response to the human colonies being taken was to tell whoever did it "Well done".

[Helios969]

As far as the Batarians go there is enough shown in ME3 to make the player recognize there is more to them than what has been portrayed through the previous 2 games.  If you execute Balak in ME1 you end up with an alternate Batarian who instead of randomly killing Alliance personnel is stealing food for his people.  EDI makes a comment about Batarians being much more amenable without the Hegemony watching over them.  In Omega DLC you see Batarians helping wounded non-Batarians.  The Human-Batarian conflict is about expansion into the Terminus system.  That the Batarians utilize slaves makes it easy for the player character to be "in conflict" with their race.  You can bet the average Batarian has the same hopes and dreams and flaws as the average human...and are just as susceptible to propaganda campaigns as their human counterparts.  Shepard killing 300K would do nothing to alleviate Batarian fear and suspicion of human motives that their military state has undoubtedly conditioned into them.  My Shep knows this and even when he/she is particularly ruthless the inclination is to be remorseful and show the Batarian patient mercy.

[Daemul]

Meh, I've never had an issue with the Batarians, Bioware tried to paint them in the worst possible light in the first two games, but meh, I'm completely indifferent to them. 

[AlanC9]

Why shouldn't an alien culture look outright offensive or even stupid to us?

[Kabooooom]

The OP sure has an interesting perspective on the value of lives, lol.

[Kabooooom]

I don't even see a "culture". I just see Bioware taking the worst aspects of ourselves and embodying it in the Batarians....in a very cartoony manner. Namely, terrorism and slavery. That's not "culture". It's an ethical matter. Or at least, I say it's ethics. Postmodernists would say those things could be cultural too, but fuckem.

I'll give Bioware credit though for making it kind of funny (funny in the way the Batarians are so smug and make no apologies).

I took a slightly different interpretation of it all. Bioware frequently presented them somewhat tongue-in-cheek, yes, but the underlying message was how much culture influences morality, and with morality being subjective (which it is) how valid is culture as an excuse for actions that others disagree with?

For example, many other cultures do things that I find distasteful or ethically dubious. Is it my place to judge them? Can one create an ethics based solely on humanistic ideals, in an attempt to objectify morality as much as possible? And if so, is THAT, in itself ethical?

If a society posits that slavery, or oppressing women, or child labor is a part of their culture and thus should be upheld - are they correct? Does the rest of the world rule the morality debate by majority?

That was the underlying message of the Batarians that I think Bioware attempted to get across. Morality is even more gray when dealing with alien cultures than it is when dealing with our own. It was a good attempt at addressing a concept like that intellectually, but I think they ultimately failed at it and the Batarians were almost caricatures.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

I killed Balak in ME1.

 

But, I agree that the reapers moved at the speed of plot. EDI said that the destruction of the relay bought us two years. She was wrong. It bought us six months. The reason she said two years is that you got the mission immediately after Horizon. ME2 supposedly takes 18 months. You could have done Arrival immediately. The time for ME3 start had not quite yet been decided.

[Kabooooom]

I killed Balak in ME1.

But, I agree that the reapers moved at the speed of plot. EDI said that the destruction of the relay bought us two years. She was wrong. It bought us six months. The reason she said two years is that you got the mission immediately after Horizon. ME2 supposedly takes 18 months. You could have done Arrival immediately. The time for ME3 start had not quite yet been decided.

When did EDI say this? I forget. If it was at the end of Arrival, the statement makes little sense to me. Apparently Bahak's relay was about 5,500 light years away from the nearest primary relay. This is slightly longer than the average distance between primary relays of "several thousand light years" according to the lore, probably because of the system's distance out on that galactic arm.

Even at the speed of conventional FTL ships, it would have taken them only 1 year to reach the nearest relay, and obviously the Reapers would be faster than that.

[Seyd71]

I don't use Arrival in my playthroughs.

I'm not playing my Shepard as a mass murderer. The random Alliance team carries out the mission and takes the blame in all of my imported saves.

 You know this damages an Alliance Asset in ME3 right?

[Seyd71]

I think's funny, giving what the Alliance did to John S-117 Shepard* (the kidnapping, hacking him up to place the cybernics in his body, making sure he can't have any kids of his own, and lest of all making him into a unthinking killing machine with no morals what so ever). That the Alliance has the spine to charge him with that.

 

(*this my Shepard's name in case you were wondering. With a backstory on him coming soon! )

 

"hacking him up to place the cybernics in his body"

 

actually looking at the talent selection screen, that's pretty much what they did.

 

I mean when he was 14 years old. He was once in a progamme called the "Defenders" before the Alliance shut it down.

 

I wont go into details because I have not finshed his backstory yet.

 

Well it's not like people can really laugh at that considering it's a non-canon story you came up with where you're trying to mix the Master Chief's origin story with a default Commander Shepard.

[Dunmer of Redoran]

 You know this damages an Alliance Asset in ME3 right?

 

Doesn't matter to me. I still got the best ending with no difficulty.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

The other point

 

When did EDI say this? I forget. If it was at the end of Arrival, the statement makes little sense to me. Apparently Bahak's relay was about 5,500 light years away from the nearest primary relay. This is slightly longer than the average distance between primary relays of "several thousand light years" according to the lore, probably because of the system's distance out on that galactic arm.

Even at the speed of conventional FTL ships, it would have taken them only 1 year to reach the nearest relay, and obviously the Reapers would be faster than that.

 

The other point about Arrival is that it never should have happened then. Why?

 

See this post.

[Iakus]

Yea, I am not sure if that news caster was meant as a joke but it certainly was ridiculous.

 

I don't have so much a problem with slavery being a part of batarian culture but again, ther was a problem with how they showed it. IIRC, the codex says that most of the slaves are actually batarians themselves. The could have put a whole new layer to the entire issue. If we could have seen batarian slaves, seen that there is a tension in their own society because of it (sort of make it a mirror image of human society in some ways), than that would have given it much more nuance.

 

I Remember Me also shows just how badly human slaves are treated.

[KaiserShep]

 You know this damages an Alliance Asset in ME3 right?

 

Far less than saving the Council, I imagine.

[dorktainian]

who saves the council?