930 réponses à ce sujet

[MrFob]

In that sense they do count.

But it's because it generally appears that the intent is for 22nd century society to be equal that I think it makes sense to request more women leaders. I don't wish to constrain their artistic vision, but to encourage them to express it more consistently, rather than allowing subconscious 21st century expectations to compromise that expression.

There's nothing wrong with depicting an unequal society if you know that's what you're doing. But I don't believe that is Biowares intent.

I should also acknowledge that the current depiction isn't really incompatible with an equal society yet. The sample size is low, it could just be a matter of chance that these people are men. But that will become less plausible if such a trend continues.

 

I think we have a pretty small sample size to make an actual issue out of this. We don't even know who the alliance leadership was before the reapers attacked or who is in charge of all the other nation states on earth (I am sure Angela Merkel will still rule Germany in 2283 for example ).

Yes, some of te more powerful people in the ME games are men but there are 3, maybe 4 of hem, 2 of which are council ambassadors/members, which we already know could as well be female (as the previous ambassador was female). So again, I don't really see where there is an issue here.

[Panda]

They forgot to model them when it came to these races, which was stupid considering the turians are probably the second most numerous species in the galaxy. They also made a few boneheaded comments related to the absence of female alien models, but thankfully they've disavowed and tried to correct it. I would hope they don't make the mistake in MEA and beyond.

 

There are lore reasons that cover the scarcity of krogan and salarian women (even if their total absence till the end of the trilogy is eye rolling), but the absence of turian women was mind-boggling.

 

Yep it was very weird to see Turian woman only in DLC. It should not have been too hard to add some Turian girls around for Bioware, but for some reason it was. I can get thing with Krogan and Salarian- actually the original council had female Salarian- cause there is lore explanation that makes sense (though lore is also Bioware's decision to make).

 

I feel like BW did lot of mistakes and boneheaded comments during ME1-3, but at least they did try to correct them towards end so I guess that's what is important. I hope there won't be alien races whose women you can't see at all cause "x"-reason in ME:A anymore.

[BabyPuncher]

The simple reality is that making female turians are other aliens is a very significant amount of work.

 

Whining "BioWare is stupid for not just working harder and giving me everything I want." is a great way to make yourself look like a complete clown.

[Nomen Mendax]

I hardly ever saw high-ranking female officers when I was in the military. And when do you ever see prominent female Pentagon officials and the like? It's a sausage party because it's a sausage party. Isn't tossing in female characters for the sake of tossing in female characters just as offensive as not having the female characters? If it's done out of pity or to fill a quota instead of being an organic part of the character creation process it's meaningless.

The first female West Point cadets were accepted in 1976 (according to Wikipedia) which really wasn't that long ago so I'd expect the number of female senior officers to slowly increase. There are now many prominent female CEOs and political leaders compared to a number approaching zero when I was younger (Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandi being the obvious exceptions). Given the future that ME is trying to present, having more visible high ranking women seems like a perfectly sensible request.

[Wulfram]

It's weird, but I just think let them write as things come out, naturally. Shoving a specific race or gender for the purpose of shoving a specific race or gender into it really stands out as "that's what they're doing." It becomes less about telling a good story with interesting characters as much as t becomes about showcasing an element "because."
 
Just let it play out naturally.

If you just let them come out naturally, then the odds are that they will reflect our current society, rather than that of the 22nd century. Writing a different culture to your own requires conscious effort to reflect their norms rather than your own.

It's just like if you were writing a historical medieval setting, you would have to bear in mind that the society you're dealing with is supposed to be much more sexist than modern western society.

[MrFob]

Yep it was very weird to see Turian woman only in DLC. It should not have been too hard to add some Turian girls around for Bioware, but for some reason it was. I can get thing with Krogan and Salarian- actually the original council had female Salarian- cause there is lore explanation that makes sense (though lore is also Bioware's decision to make).

 

I feel like BW did lot of mistakes and boneheaded comments during ME1-3, but at least they did try to correct them towards end so I guess that's what is important. I hope there won't be alien races whose women you can't see at all cause "x"-reason in ME:A anymore.

 

Not sure if this is what you meant but in fact, it would have been hard to add turian females to levels of the original game through DLC. Basically, they would have had to re-include the entire level file. This would mean at least a two figure number of MBs, just to add some background model (we are not talking ambient dialogue or animation yet). Also, most levels are already designed, so that they utilize the entire memory that is available on the consoles. It's not necessarily trivial to just add a model to it, you'd probably have to take something else out in order to keep the game from crashing.

[Panda]

The simple reality is that making female turians are other aliens is a very significant amount of work.

 

Whining "BioWare is stupid for not just working harder and giving me everything I want." is a great way to make yourself look like a complete clown.

 

It's work, but it's also completely necessary. I'd rather them to leave races out than bring races to game and then show only male's from those species that makes no sense. There is no lore-explanation why we won't see any female Turian in the game, there is Turians everywhere, but they are all male?

 

Seriously making female characters should already be norm in the industry not something that is thought as extra work.

[United Servo Academy Choir]

The simple reality is that making female turians are other aliens is a very significant amount of work.

 

Whining "BioWare is stupid for not just working harder and giving me everything I want." is a great way to make yourself look like a complete clown.

 

So is everything else in the game, David. This particular issue harmed the coherence of the setting, and was something that tons of players noticed and complained about. And then they joked it off with a some offensive comments. It was stupid.

[God]

It doesn't matter if it made no sense within the universe, at the end of the day Williams got promoted. The OP wanted more Human women of equal or higher rank than Shepard, and Ashley is one of those in Mass Effect 3. Plenty of stuff in Mass Effect isn't consistent, that doesn't mean none of it happened.

 

Realism isn't actually that big of a thing in Mass Effect. It's not hard sci-fi, and most of our stuff works because "space magic".

 

It actually does rather matter. I would like to see things staying realistic within their own context and rules of lore. 

 

It bothers me that BW actually doesn't contribute to their internal consistency for games, just as it bothers me that someone, like you, thinks that it's ok because "it's not hard sci-fi, and it's space magic."

 

That is just a terrible justification for things in the story. I wish to see the story take a more internally consistent approach, not have things or events happen arbitrarily because the writers need them to happen.

[Panda]

Not sure if this is what you meant but in fact, it would have been hard to add turian females to levels of the original game through DLC. Basically, they would have had to re-include the entire level file. This would mean at least a two figure number of MBs, just to add some background model (we are not talking ambient dialogue or animation yet). Also, most levels are already designed, so that they utilize the entire memory that is available on the consoles. It's not necessarily trivial to just add a model to it, you'd probably have to take something else out in order to keep the game from crashing.

 

Ah no, I didn't meant that. I meant that only time where we saw female Turian was in DLC. For some reason Nyreen Kandros was only female Turian that existed in the ME universe.

[Quarian Master Race]

There's a short elevator conversation in ME1 between Ashley and Tali on the issue of sexism. Tali asks about women in the Alliance Military and Ashley seems to indicate that combat troops at least are relatively recent development, with a quote something along the lines of "it took a long time before people were willing to think ladies could handle a shotgun". Tali then responds that sexism is a luxury the quarians don't have, because due to resources they can't afford to bar the best people from whatever positions they are most suited for (this is evidenced by more than half of the Admiralty Board eventually being made up of females).

Judging by Ashley's dialouge, it's entirely possible that the large number of Alliance Military women we see in game is a recent development, and they haven't had time for as many to be promoted to higher echelons. After all, the first US four star female General (Dunwoody) first achieved that rank in 2008, and she took 33 years of service to get there. Humans haven't even been part of the galactic community for that long in the MEverse. There's also the fact that even in the relatively egalitarian modern world women tend to join militaries in much smaller numbers than males across the board, and of those there are fewer who become career officers, so the pool of potential candidates is much, much smaller.

[MrFob]

Ah no, I didn't meant that. I meant that only time where we saw female Turian was in DLC. For some reason Nyreen Kandros was only female Turian that existed in the ME universe.

 

Ah, ok, sorry. Misunderstood you there. I thought you meant that you wanted them to retroactively add females into the rest of the game.

I do agree that they took their sweet time to get around and design the female turians.

Incidentally though, I think that the fact that additional female models would have taken up more memory was probably the primary reason for only showing only one gender per species in ME1-3.

[United Servo Academy Choir]

Ah, ok, sorry. Misunderstood you there. I thought you meant that you wanted them to retroactively add females into the rest of the game.

I do agree that they took their sweet time to get around and design the female turians.

Incidentally though, I think that the fact that additional female models would have taken up more memory was probably the primary reason for only showing only one gender per species in ME1-3.

 

I don't think I buy that. I think it was just a matter of questionable priorities. They somehow managed to introduce dude quarians in ME2 and Eve in ME3.

 

They just didn't bother to design one for ME1 (or 2, or 3 until the DLC). If they had, I don't think that memory limitations would have prevented them from peppering them around as static NPCs or switching out a few of the named speaking role turians. They're probably the most widespread after the asari and they didn't even bother to conjure up a lore justification for it. It was a dumb oversight and a disappointing setting of priorities.

[WittyUsername]

If you just let them come out naturally, then the odds are that they will reflect our current society, rather than that of the 22nd century. Writing a different culture to your own requires conscious effort to reflect their norms rather than your own.

I wasn't aware you knew what the 22nd century had in store.

[Panda]

Ah, ok, sorry. Misunderstood you there. I thought you meant that you wanted them to retroactively add females into the rest of the game.

I do agree that they took their sweet time to get around and design the female turians.

Incidentally though, I think that the fact that additional female models would have taken up more memory was probably the primary reason for only showing only one gender per species in ME1-3.

 

In that case I think the memory should have cut out elsewhere since having 5-8 alien races (Turian, Salarian (there was one though), Krogan, Volus, Batarian, Drell, Vorcha and Elcor) with only males around was bit too much and it didn't even fit to lore. Only 3 races; Humans, Asari, Quarians had women in the games (more than one or two). So umm.. there is huge gap between gender distribution in aliens that makes no sense except for two races it was explained for Salarian and Krogan- and oddly enough we did see couple of females of these species around, but not any of Turians (1 in DLC), Volus, Batarian, Drell, Vorcha and Elcor. It makes no sense to me.

[Fixers0]

Yep it was very weird to see Turian woman only in DLC. It should not have been too hard to add some Turian girls around for Bioware, but for some reason it was. I can get thing with Krogan and Salarian- actually the original council had female Salarian- cause there is lore explanation that makes sense (though lore is also Bioware's decision to make).

 

Valern is quite evidetly a male salarian, for one he is voiced by a male voice actor and both Udina and Bailley refer to Valern with male pronouns.

[CuriousArtemis]

The significant admirals, the ambassadors, the possible councillors, pretty much any human who Shepard might be expected to treat as a superior or an equal have almost all been men.  This bugs me, can we have it be different in ME:A please?  Or if the intent is for this to be a reflection that human society is still sexist in the 22nd century, which would be depressing but plausible, then it would be nice if this was acknowledged in universe.

 

Exceptions I can think of are Spacer Shepard's mother and one of the 3 admirals who get blown up at the start of ME3.  And I gather there was a woman Ambassador in the books?  But that's still pretty minor compared to people such as Udina, Hackett, Anderson and TIM, as well as the more minor but still high ranking figures like President Huerta, Admiral Mikhailovich and Ambassador Osoba

 

Nothing else to say, just nodding in agreement. And still with the utmost respect to BioWare; it can be easy to do something like cast mostly men in high power positions and not realize it. 

[BabyPuncher]

It's work, but it's also completely necessary. I'd rather them to leave races out than bring races to game and then show only male's from those species that makes no sense. There is no lore-explanation why we won't see any female Turian in the game, there is Turians everywhere, but they are all male?

 

Seriously making female characters should already be norm in the industry not something that is thought as extra work.

 

Gee, let's just make a list of all of things that are 'completely necessary.' 'Completely necessary.' If a developer doesn't have them when they should have them, they're just stupid and lazy because they're 'completely necessary.'

 

Having a city full of varied people walking, talking, working and so forth like Assassin's Creed. Completely necessary.

Having each and every combat cutscene properly incorporate the player character's weapons, class, learned skills, and squadmates. Completely necessary.

Two romances each for every possible orientation and morality, from evil straight sexual male to good gay asexual female. Completely necessary.

A character creator that has dynamic hair, different body shapes, muscle tones. Obviously all of these variables are flawlessly integrated into cutscenes and animation. Completely necessary.

Three or more different dialogue options at every prompt. Obviously this includes dialogue for divergent content. Completely necessary.

Squadmates that play a heavy role in the story, are reactive to the players choices and dialogue, influence outcomes on missions, and of course are able to promptly be dismissed or murdered whenever the player desires. Completely necessary.

 

And on and on and on...

 

You really don't grasp how completely amateurish this sort of attitude is?

[CuriousArtemis]

In that case I think the memory should have cut out elsewhere since having 5-8 alien races (Turian, Salarian (there was one though), Krogan, Volus, Batarian, Drell, Vorcha and Elcor) with only males around was bit too much and it didn't even fit to lore. Only 3 races; Humans, Asari, Quarians had women in the games (more than one or two). So umm.. there is huge gap between gender distribution in aliens that makes no sense except for two races it was explained for Salarian and Krogan- and oddly enough we did see couple of females of these species around, but not any of Turians (1 in DLC), Volus, Batarian, Drell, Vorcha and Elcor. It makes no sense to me.

 

It's an old problem in gaming -- when the budget runs short (as it always does), male is default, white is default, straight is default. So we end up seeing excuses like "the engine couldn't handle dark skin" and "we didn't have enough time to make this character bisexual so they're just straight."

 

But if anyone can rise above that, it's BioWare. Here's hoping. We expect so much from them because we love them so

[Panda]

Valern is quite evidetly a male salarian, for one he is voiced by a male voice actor and both Udina and Bailley refer to Valern with male pronouns.

 

Hmm I wonder if I'm mistaken then, I was under impression that s/he indeed is female Salarian, but I guess not?

 

No female Salarians in the game then. Another race without any girls in it.

 

Seriously this have never bothered me so much until I started count all the races that have no girls in the game. Wtf Bioware.

[Panda]

You really don't grasp how completely amateurish this sort of attitude is?

 

Umm.. you are aware that half of human population indeed is women? Women aren't something out of ordinary, they are complete normal to see around. It baffles me that it's not norm that alien races have both and developers need to do both sexes in  the game- or then make mono-gendered races like Asari or non-gendered races or even races that switch gender. But not two-gendered races where you can only see another gender that makes absolutely no sense.

[Aimi]

Ashley is actually of equal rank to Shep in Mass Effect 3 if she survives Virmire and even becomes a spectre.
 
Plus if you want to be technical, Chakwas probably has the highest authority of anybody on the Normandy given that she's the medical officer.

Actually, Ashley holds the same grade as Shepard, not rank. Shepard outranks her due to date of rank; Ashley didn't become a lieutenant commander until at least three years after Shep did.

More importantly, rank and grade are usually not referenced unless there's no clear command relationship. If an officer of lower rank commands an officer of higher rank, the officer of lower rank is the commander, and that's it. Admittedly, that almost never happens in many militaries (such as the Canadian one on which the Alliance's system was loosely based) and usually an officer's rank and grade will be taken into account when assigning him or her to a position of command.

But this is just window dressing. When Kaidan and Ashley say that Shepard is their commander in ME3, it's not that important whether they mean in an official sense of formal command relationship, or whether they mean it in a reference to Shepard's rank and grade instead. The sense that matters is the metaphorical sense: Shepard is the person in charge.

It actually does rather matter. I would like to see things staying realistic within their own context and rules of lore. 
 
It bothers me that BW actually doesn't contribute to their internal consistency for games, just as it bothers me that someone, like you, thinks that it's ok because "it's not hard sci-fi, and it's space magic."
 
That is just a terrible justification for things in the story. I wish to see the story take a more internally consistent approach, not have things or events happen arbitrarily because the writers need them to happen.

The primary purpose of telling a story is the telling of the story. Fundamentally, lore is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Hyper-consistency and realism are frills. They're frills that can add a great deal of value to a story or setting for people like you or me, but they ultimately mean less to the creator than the story itself.

BioWare settings are generally meh to poor on realism and plausibility in things like warfare. I agree that this is not as good as I'd like. But frankly, most fiction of any kind is meh to poor on that sort of thing. So, while I agree with you, I don't think it will make a difference.

[BabyPuncher]

Umm.. you are aware that half of human population indeed is women? Women aren't something out of ordinary, they are complete normal to see around. It baffles me that it's not norm that alien races have both and developers need to do both sexes in  the game- or then make mono-gendered races like Asari or non-gendered races or even races that switch gender. But not two-gendered races where you can only see another gender that makes absolutely no sense.

 

Oh, hey, are you aware bustling capital cities aren't generally filled with a few people who stand still forever?

 

Oh, hey, are you aware rifles and shotguns don't magically turn into pistols during dramatic moments?

[Panda]

It's an old problem in gaming -- when the budget runs short (as it always does), male is default, white is default, straight is default. So we end up seeing excuses like "the engine couldn't handle dark skin" and "we didn't have enough time to make this character bisexual so they're just straight."

 

But if anyone can rise above that, it's BioWare. Here's hoping. We expect so much from them because we love them so

 

Yep I know this is the origin of the problem. I just hope BW would cut somewhere else, making 6 or more alien races where we see no females although we know they exist and only 3 races where we do see females is just too much.

 

I'm expecting to see female Turians, Drells, Krogans, Humans and female whatever aliens BW brings to Andromeda and if I don't I'll call them out of it. Since that isn't okay. I can get two races as exception, but not 6 like its' something completely normal.

 

EDIT: I'm getting kinda worked up about this right now, but I didn't actually realise how big the problem was before, after counting some races I'm just dumbfounded. Though that has happened a lot of Bioware lately. I guess it has been like crumbling glass castle for me with BW, I have personally excepted from them too much I think ^^;

[United Servo Academy Choir]

Umm.. you are aware that half of human population indeed is women? Women aren't something out of ordinary, they are complete normal to see around. It baffles me that it's not norm that alien races have both and developers need to do both sexes in  the game- or then make mono-gendered races like Asari or non-gendered races or even races that switch gender. But not two-gendered races where you can only see another gender that makes absolutely no sense.

 

And again, to repeat and to add onto this - they're the second race that went galactic in this cycle after the asari. They've had hundreds and hundreds of years to proliferate. They don't have any sort of hackneyed lore justification keeping women on their homeworld. And yet, we don't see a single one on the citadel, the hub of galactic civilization? Or anywhere else, including their homeworld?

 

Most of what he lists in the post you quote are just grandstanding hyperboles at odds with his inscrutable notions about game design. A coherent setting though? Pretty goddamn necessary.