52 réponses à ce sujet

[Oldren Shepard]

I agree. But I wouldn't expect too much. Ever notice how the truly non-anthropomorphic aliens in ME were marginalized at best or disappeared altogether?

 

Thorian- dead in ME1, never brought up again (except in passing by Shiala in ME2)

Rachni- we all know full well how much our choice here mattered.

Geth- rather than explore their unique perspective we got the idiot war storyline that ended up with them destroyed or altered.

Keepers- even though they were biological tools, we could've still explored so much more about them. Instead they just walk around ignored like before. Sure we may still need them to keep the Citadel functional. But I can't believe more people wouldn't want to know more about them.

Reapers- reduced to killbots for the sake of "art".

Leviathans- pretty much only there to justify the "art".

Virtual aliens- they were mentioned in a codex entry I think. They're basically living TRON but that's not interesting enough to actually see for some reason...

 

You can hope they do something different this time around but I wouldn't count on it.

"Virtual aliens- they were mentioned in a codex entry I think. They're basically living TRON but that's not interesting enough to actually see for some reason..."

I wish they had explored most of that story also of the Raloi and Kirik, I remember it was an entry in the Cerberus Network 

[Vortex13]

I agree. But I wouldn't expect too much. Ever notice how the truly non-anthropomorphic aliens in ME were marginalized at best or disappeared altogether?

 

Thorian- dead in ME1, never brought up again (except in passing by Shiala in ME2)

Rachni- we all know full well how much our choice here mattered.

Geth- rather than explore their unique perspective we got the idiot war storyline that ended up with them destroyed or altered.

Keepers- even though they were biological tools, we could've still explored so much more about them. Instead they just walk around ignored like before. Sure we may still need them to keep the Citadel functional. But I can't believe more people wouldn't want to know more about them.

Reapers- reduced to killbots for the sake of "art".

Leviathans- pretty much only there to justify the "art".

Virtual aliens- they were mentioned in a codex entry I think. They're basically living TRON but that's not interesting enough to actually see for some reason...

 

You can hope they do something different this time around but I wouldn't count on it.

 

 

Don't remind me, though you should include the Hanar and the Elcor to that list as well. They get marginalized and turned into joke races. 

 

 

I love the setting that BioWare created, but there are times when it seems that I am playing just a different shade of Star Trek, a setting where the entire universe is populated solely by humans, or humans with a piece of rubber glued on their forehead. A setting where the aliens that are non-humanoid or incredibly 'alien' in their outlook are automatically non-sentient or the villains.

[BabyPuncher]

The square-cube law doesn't sit incredibly well with this.

[BabyPuncher]

I love the setting that BioWare created, but there are times when it seems that I am playing just a different shade of Star Trek, a setting where the entire universe is populated solely by humans, or humans with a piece of rubber glued on their forehead. A setting where the aliens that are non-humanoid or incredibly 'alien' in their outlook are automatically non-sentient or the villains.

The whole idea of 'incredibly alien' is rather silly.

Humans are a diverse bunch. You're not going to write any sort of philosophy with even a modicum of sensibility to it that some human somewhere hasn't thought of and written several books on.

So really, the only way you're going to get something 'incredibly alien' is to write nonsense, and make aliens who worship dung beetles as deities and base their entire morality upon how their actions benefit dung beetles or something.

That doesn't even touch the thematic consequences of such a thing. If a writer creates say, a totalitarian society which is more-or-less as successful and whose citizens are more-or-less as happy as humans, the implicit message there is that totalitarianism is equally valid. That's not something writers can ignore.

[God]

Fun's over guys, David's here.

[CrutchCricket]

Don't remind me, though you should include the Hanar and the Elcor to that list as well. They get marginalized and turned into joke races. 

 

 

I love the setting that BioWare created, but there are times when it seems that I am playing just a different shade of Star Trek, a setting where the entire universe is populated solely by humans, or humans with a piece of rubber glued on their forehead. A setting where the aliens that are non-humanoid or incredibly 'alien' in their outlook are automatically non-sentient or the villains.

The hanar maybe, since their method of communication is markedly different. Though using bioluminesce still implies a highly visually-centric perspective.

 

The elcor I wouldn't have considered. At first glance, their main differences are their high gravity world and their speech. But according to the wiki the nuances of their speech are communicated with scent and subtle movements which should indicate a greater non-anthropomorphic perspective. I'm unsure whether simple nuances make enough of a difference, but in general higher communication using scent would indicated a fudamentally vast difference in perspective- perhaps an unbreachable one. The example I always like to use is imagine "smelling" two. Not two things, but the number two, the concept itself. You can't really do it, because we don't formulate concepts that way, let alone communicate them. A creature that "smells two" would see existence itself fundamentally differently that we do and communicating with it in any meaningful way might well be impossible.

 

Though even if they were inclined to explore "more alien" aliens, I doubt any game company would go this far. True non-anthropomorphic creation is impossible anyway, and even if it could be done, the result wouldn't make sense to anyone.

[Vortex13]

The whole idea of 'incredibly alien' is rather silly.

Humans are a diverse bunch. You're not going to write any sort of philosophy with even a modicum of sensibility to it that some human somewhere hasn't thought of and written several books on.

So really, the only way you're going to get something 'incredibly alien' is to write nonsense, and make aliens who worship dung beetles as deities and base their entire morality upon how their actions benefit dung beetles or something.

That doesn't even touch the thematic consequences of such a thing. If a writer creates say, a totalitarian society which is more-or-less as successful and whose citizens are more-or-less as happy as humans, the implicit message there is that totalitarianism is equally valid. That's not something writers can ignore.

 

 

Obviously no human is going to be able to write an alien that is truly 'alien' as it's very definition is something that defies explanation, but creating an alien species that is more than just a slight tweak on one aspect of human culture/society (i.e. the warrior race, the economic/trader race, etc.) wouldn't be outside the realms of possibility, nor would it necessitate the use of nonsense writing. 

 

The ME 2 Geth, and the Rachni are the best examples of this (IMO). They are not unknowable alien minds, but their societal makeup, their perspective on things is a massive change of pace when compared to the Asari, Turians, Quarians, Krogan, etc. who are just minor variations from how humans act and think. Outside of appearances, Wrex, Liara, Tali, and Garus could have been humans and their characters wouldn't have changed.

 

Wrex would still be a grizzled mercenary soldier with daddy issues. Liara would have been an intelligent archeologist/information broker with mommy/daddy issues. Tali would have been a capable mechanic with daddy issues. Etc.

[Vortex13]

The hanar maybe, since their method of communication is markedly different. Though using bioluminesce still implies a highly visually-centric perspective.

 

The elcor I wouldn't have considered. At first glance, their main differences are their high gravity world and their speech. But according to the wiki the nuances of their speech are communicated with scent and subtle movements which should indicate a greater non-anthropomorphic perspective. I'm unsure whether simple nuances make enough of a difference, but in general higher communication using scent would indicated a fudamentally vast difference in perspective- perhaps an unbreachable one. The example I always like to use is imagine "smelling" two. Not two things, but the number two, the concept itself. You can't really do it, because we don't formulate concepts that way, let alone communicate them. A creature that "smells two" would see existence itself fundamentally differently that we do and communicating with it in any meaningful way might well be impossible.

 

 

The Hanar and Elcor are quite unique, its true, but instead of exploring that further, they have become the gag races of the setting. When you look at a Hanar you think of Blasto, an Elcor's speech patterns are used quite frequently as a point to mock someone's intelligence or just to laugh at how funny they sound.

 

That's what I meant by them being marginalized, they are just glorified background props as the games have moved forward.

[CrutchCricket]

The Hanar and Elcor are quite unique, its true, but instead of exploring that further, they have become the gag races of the setting. When you look at a Hanar you think of Blasto, an Elcor's speech patterns are used quite frequently as a point to mock someone's intelligence or just to laugh at how funny they sound.

 

That's what I meant by them being marginalized, they are just glorified background props as the games have moved forward.

I can agree with that. I enjoy the humorous uses they've been put to but a serious look at their culture and perspectives was indeed sorely lacking.

 

Speaking of culture though, even the anthropomorphic races are not exempt from the lack of meaningful exploration of their species. What about the drell? A species that remembers everything perfectly? Surely that would result in a very different perspective from our own. Or the salarians at one end, living for only 40 years compared to the asari living for millennia. The only meaningful exploration of asari culture comes from Samara and the justicars and to a smaller extent the Ardat-yakshi. Even on the main races we have almost nothing different. They're just blue humans or bird humans or frog humans. Quarians are probably the most explored culture of the main races. We get a bit on the krogan in ME2 as well. But not nearly enough.

[Quarian Master Race]

 Wrex, Liara, Tali, and Garus could have been humans and their characters wouldn't have changed.

 

Wrex would still be a grizzled mercenary soldier with daddy issues. Liara would have been an intelligent archeologist/information broker with mommy/daddy issues. Tali would have been a capable mechanic with daddy issues. Etc.

I think that's a bit unfair to Wrex and Tali at least. Issues that were unique to their species and their respective characteristics influenced their perspectives and actions quite a lot. They certainly wouldn't be the same characters if rewritten into humans, though you could write human characters that fit into broadly similar tropes, Zaeed being an example of an older human Merc analogous to Wrex.

Liara's a bit more difficult, because she isn't the same character in any of the games and her being asari only really matters from a narrative perspective in the first one (and not at all if you recruit her late). Garrus is the one of the four whom I think would have worked almost exactly the same as a disgruntled human from C-sec, because turian culture really is essentially Imperial Romans in space.

[Display Name Owner]

Gigantic red breasted robins that pluck Thresher Maws out of the ground and fly off into the cosmos?

[Fiery Phoenix]

If they do include giant animals I hope they are only on planets where it makes sense for it to exist. It will kill suspension of disbelief a bit to land on some Mars-like wasteland and have a space dinosaur lumbering around. Anything that big would need an entire ecosystem to support it. Huge animals need to eat other big animals that eat smaller animals or plants, and so and so forth. I can suspend disbelief for a several ton monster on a garden world where there also large herbivores wandering around, but not the barren and otherwise lifeless worlds.

 

Even Thresher Maws were kind of silly in that respect. You'd run into them on planets that were otherwise completely devoid of life.

This.

 

Only where it makes sense. And not every single planet needs a fight. We could always use completely lifeless worlds.

[Tonymac]

This.

 

Only where it makes sense. And not every single planet needs a fight. We could always use completely lifeless worlds.

 

Well, this is where science and science fiction can fit in rather well.  Thresher maws start out pretty tiny - and are actually much more like a plant than an animal.

 

From the Wikia:

 

Aggressive and highly territorial, thresher maws feed by absorbing significant quantities of solar radiation and survive best on planets, asteroids or moons with little or no atmosphere. They also consume minerals and ores from the ground itself for use in an unusual form of photosynthesis. This metabolic process, utilizing solar radiation and minerals as raw materials, creates the fuel that powers their various biological processes and allows them to move their significant mass with surprising speed.

 

 

In some cases in our own Earth environment predators can be significantly larger than their prey.  Take for instance an anteater, specifically the ones from ancient earth.  They have one on display here in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian.  It's over 8 feet tall with bones nearly as big around as a healthy man's leg.  As far as they can tell, it ate little bitty ants - just insane quantities of them, like say 20-50 pounds per day.

 

In the case of the Thresher Maw, it eats minerals and ores and absorbs cosmic radiation (which is pretty much at full blast on planets with little to no atmosphere).  In the case of the Maw, I find it pretty interesting and plausible.  

 

Some planets will be lifeless, for sure.  However, they might be pretty boring.  Perhaps these planets once supported life, and there is a mystery there or something to make it more fun that walking around on a lifeless, barren and boring world.  Still, it might be amazingly beautiful or something of the like to make it interesting.

[Vortex13]

I can agree with that. I enjoy the humorous uses they've been put to but a serious look at their culture and perspectives was indeed sorely lacking.

 

Speaking of culture though, even the anthropomorphic races are not exempt from the lack of meaningful exploration of their species. What about the drell? A species that remembers everything perfectly? Surely that would result in a very different perspective from our own. Or the salarians at one end, living for only 40 years compared to the asari living for millennia. The only meaningful exploration of asari culture comes from Samara and the justicars and to a smaller extent the Ardat-yakshi. Even on the main races we have almost nothing different. They're just blue humans or bird humans or frog humans. Quarians are probably the most explored culture of the main races. We get a bit on the krogan in ME2 as well. But not nearly enough.

 

 

I think that's a bit unfair to Wrex and Tali at least. Issues that were unique to their species and their respective characteristics influenced their perspectives and actions quite a lot. They certainly wouldn't be the same characters if rewritten into humans, though you could write human characters that fit into broadly similar tropes, Zaeed being an example of an older human Merc analogous to Wrex.

Liara's a bit more difficult, because she isn't the same character in any of the games and her being asari only really matters from a narrative perspective in the first one (and not at all if you recruit her late). Garrus is the one of the four whom I think would have worked almost exactly the same as a disgruntled human from C-sec, because turian culture really is essentially Imperial Romans in space.

 

 

When you get down to it, to plot lines specifically about the Krogan and the Quarians, yes they certainly have elements that make the different from us. When you look at the background lore for the Asari and the Salarians (for example) yes you can start to see the alien qualities start to show through a little bit. But, that isn't really at the forefront of the narrative presentation of the setting.

 

Tali and Wrex's respective species and their issues do help lend the them a modicum of difference to us, but outside of that, when dealing with them in standard conversations, when asking them of what they think of issues that don't pertain to their own race, they are just like us. Wrex is a grumpy old mercenary that winds up being a softy to his friends, Tali will go out shopping and get a tattoo on a drunken bender, etc. When it comes down to face to face interaction the alien squadmates are really just interchangeable with us humans.

 

Not that such things are a bad thing in an of themselves; Garrus and me where best friends; but their anthropomorphism does tend to outshine their more alien qualities, enough that by the end of the trilogy the only aliens that actually had an 'alien' vibe about them where the Rachni and the Leviathans (and only just barley with the Not-Reapers). 

[x Raizer x]

 

Well, this is where science and science fiction can fit in rather well.  Thresher maws start out pretty tiny - and are actually much more like a plant than an animal.

 

From the Wikia:

 

Aggressive and highly territorial, thresher maws feed by absorbing significant quantities of solar radiation and survive best on planets, asteroids or moons with little or no atmosphere. They also consume minerals and ores from the ground itself for use in an unusual form of photosynthesis. This metabolic process, utilizing solar radiation and minerals as raw materials, creates the fuel that powers their various biological processes and allows them to move their significant mass with surprising speed.

 

 

 

This.  As a microbiologist, I immediately called "BS!" on the Thresher Maw's ability to survive on planets where it couldn't have any food to sustain itself, let alone enough food to sustain itself being a giant creature.  Then I read the codex, and meta-gamed by reading up on the Wiki, and felt satisfied with the explanation and logic behind Thresher Maws.

I'd still love to land on a garden or a jungle world, get out of my landing shuttle, and see, far off in the distance, a herd of giant wildlife, standing as tall as small sky scrapers, dotting and moving along the horizon.

Then traveling towards these creatures only to be completely destroyed and eaten alive upon reaching them, being forced to return at a higher level to satisfy my urge for revenge.

/Lands on interesting planets
/Meets never before seen, amazing, gigantic creatures
/Kills them

Exploration!  Seriously though.  Part of exploring new places would be finding new and amazing things, including wildlife.  I don't want to simply discover rabbits with antlers, deer with two heads, or cows with wings.

I want to see stuff that I can't necessarily even begin to describe!

[CrutchCricket]

When you get down to it, to plot lines specifically about the Krogan and the Quarians, yes they certainly have elements that make the different from us. When you look at the background lore for the Asari and the Salarians (for example) yes you can start to see the alien qualities start to show through a little bit. But, that isn't really at the forefront of the narrative presentation of the setting.

The genophage and geth-quarian issue being subplots is probably the only reason we get so much info on their species. I'm not sure I agree that many alien qualities come through from the other species though.

 

Asari- monogendered mind melders. How does this affect how they react? Why do they identify as female? Gender differentiation should be completely bizarre to them. I absolutely hate Aethyta's "father" conversation. As for the mind melding that should definitely change how they act in general and/or react to people who they have melded with. To say nothing of the matter of how er... mating is portrayed.

Salarians: They talk fast. I honestly can't place a single unique thing about them that's not their appearance or their Hat (spies, saboteurs and meddling scientists)

Turians: Same as salarians

Drell: We get some of their religion but not much else and nothing on how their unique memory affects them relative to other species.

 

In some cases there's not much they can do that would be worthwhile. For example, even though I mentioned the turians I'm not exactly sure what their alien qualities would be. It's more in the cases of asari and drell who have abilities that should greatly impact their perspectives or even in terms of lifespan like the salarians where I'd expect to see something different.

[SpacePirateRegis]

I'd love to giant creatures!

I'd be happy with wildlife on appropriate planets.  We almost never landed on garden worlds in the previous Mass Effect games.  And when we did, we weren't fully free to explore.  The amount of wildlife and alien creatures we encountered was minimal at best.

 

If we can have the desist of wildlife for each planet, similar to the different zones of Inquisition, yet improved a bit, then it would be perfect!

[heinoMK2]

Posted this in another thread, should be fine here, too:

 

 

Giant floaty creatures inhabiting gas giants or other planets with dense atmospheres. Not necessarily made of flesh and bones - jellyfish-like translucent gaseous creatures emitting electricity would be pretty cool, too.

[MissMayhem96]

I would love to see something like the huge creatures in the distance in Titanfall on certain maps that had really long legs and large bodies and flying creatures like perodactyl's.

[MissMayhem96]

I would love to see something like the huge creatures in the distance in Titanfall on certain maps that had really long legs and large bodies and flying creatures like perodactyl's.

Edit:Those creatures are called Leviathans, it would be insane to run up on them creatures in ME.

[x Raizer x]

Edit:Those creatures are called Leviathans, it would be insane to run up on them creatures in ME.

 

Anytime I hear "Leviathon" now, I immediately think of the creatures the original Reapers were based off of, i.e. The Leviathon DLC in ME3.

I can almost see a giant creature like that be able to "swim" or float along the gas atmopshere of certain gas giant planets.

[Vortex13]

The genophage and geth-quarian issue being subplots is probably the only reason we get so much info on their species. I'm not sure I agree that many alien qualities come through from the other species though.

 

Asari- monogendered mind melders. How does this affect how they react? Why do they identify as female? Gender differentiation should be completely bizarre to them. I absolutely hate Aethyta's "father" conversation. As for the mind melding that should definitely change how they act in general and/or react to people who they have melded with. To say nothing of the matter of how er... mating is portrayed.

Salarians: They talk fast. I honestly can't place a single unique thing about them that's not their appearance or their Hat (spies, saboteurs and meddling scientists)

Turians: Same as salarians

Drell: We get some of their religion but not much else and nothing on how their unique memory affects them relative to other species.

 

In some cases there's not much they can do that would be worthwhile. For example, even though I mentioned the turians I'm not exactly sure what their alien qualities would be. It's more in the cases of asari and drell who have abilities that should greatly impact their perspectives or even in terms of lifespan like the salarians where I'd expect to see something different.

 

 

Sorry, I meant background lore as in Codex entries and wiki information.

 

You are correct that all the alien elements of races like the Asari and Salarians don't survive contact with the player. Once Shepard starts talking with those races the Asari just become diplomatic politicians, or scheming gang lords; Salarians just become scientists or soldiers that talk slightly faster than us, etc. There is a lot that can still be explored about their decided non-human natures, but after interacting with them especially our companions, for three games I don't think that people would take such a perspective as well as they would would with the more 'alien' aliens like the Rachni.

 

The Asari, the Salrians, the Turians, the Drell, the Krogan, the Quarians they have all been rather 'humanized' over the course of the series. There is an underlying element of the different and unknown about them, but (most) players will just look at them and remember their bro-mance with Garus, or see Tali as the cute girl that likes musicals, etc. 

[MrFob]

Well, bring it on! I like the big guys in ME, especially the more ... unconventional ones, like the Thorian. Happy to see more of it. There was some great stuff in the galaxy map descriptions as well by the way. Anyone remember that gas giant with the artificial structures within that no one could identify? One theory was that it may be a Jupiter Brain. Could be huge AI construct. Stuff like that.

 

@Han shot first: The codex entry on Thresher Maws kinda has an explanation for the fact that they appear on many planets. Something about resilient spores, being dormant until they reach the right conditions, etc.. Granted, it was a bit lame to use only one big alien that we could fight with the MAKO though. If the focus of the next game is to be exploration, I definitely hope for more variety there.

[Vazgen]

I want to face Wraith from Evolve