Realism is fine to a point. It's not a simulator, but at the same time it's not an old-timey Rare platformer. Some willing suspension of disbelief, but at the same time not too cartoonishly stupid and unrealistic (like ME3).
Whoever thought up the idea of retractable helmets probably should be wearing an actual padded helmet so they don't accidentally injure themselves. It's literally a dumber idea than a screen door on a submarine in terms of a design decision to build structural failures into a protective device.
Common sense applies of course I don't need a character that flies or anything either.
You mean like Samara?
Flying would be one of the less ridiculous things one could do with mass effect fields in comparison to mind control, life force vampirism and creating singularities out of nothing like the powers we've been given.
You mean like Samara?
Flying would be one of the less ridiculous things one could do with mass effect fields in comparison to mind control, life force vampirism and creating singularities out of nothing like the powers we've been given.
No, I mean spaceships.
My point is just that you're splitting hairs. This isn't meant to be hard sci-fi. It's science fantasy with a lot of technobabble.
Realism is a thing in some excellent sci-fi stories, just not this one. Trying to fit one of the most fantastical space fantasies out there into a more realistic box is a futile effort, and not really worth it, because a lot of the things that are the most fantastical about this franchise are also the most iconic, like biotics, asari, and Mass Effect travel itself.
I'm cool with retractable helmets.
This is an absurd complaint for a setting where very object is an engineering absurdity. Retractable helmets would count as among the least stupid of any proposed technology in the series, including the very design of the ships themselves.
Who said anything about ship design? While the point is valid, it's irrelevant here. Perhaps you should bother to read the thread title/OP?
Anyone who sits down at the drawing board to design a helmet and puts "ability to quickly remove in a cool fashion" far above "protection from impacts and environmental hazards" isn't going to sell any helmets to people working outside of Hollywood. Care to adress this point, or do you simply wish to engage in more indignant ignoratio elenchi? Retractable helmets are as dumb as breather masks.
This is an absurd complaint for a setting where very object is an engineering absurdity. Retractable helmets would count as among the least stupid of any proposed technology in the series, including the very design of the ships themselves.
You are not wrong.
The space ship design is hilarious. The Normandy SR-2 wastes more space on hallways, stairs and simply unused room while the crew still has to share bunkbeds and those absolutely inefficiently designed sleep capsules that take up more space than two normal beds. Don't get me started for real, I won't shut up about ME's failures of science and engineering for hours. 
Helmets with a clear faceplate sounds like the best solution. Which makes it even funnier that the Quarians didn't use them for more than 300 years despite their famed beauty. 
You mean like Samara?
Flying would be one of the less ridiculous things one could do with mass effect fields in comparison to mind control, life force vampirism and creating singularities out of nothing like the powers we've been given.
Retractable helmets are a niche design, they sacrifice protection for being able to store and carry them in a more compact form,
having to carry around a full helmet everywhere is a pita, but on a space ship, especially one that can come under surprise attack at any time, having a helmet at hand ready to put on can be the difference between life and death.
Go ahead, carry a full motorcycle helmet around for an entire day, having it always attached to your person, preform all your daily public errands with it, buy groceries with it, cook with it, tell me it isn't annoying, inconvenient, and a colossal pita. Now imagine everyone on a cramped starship has to also carry one around with them,
In game everyone has to carry a helmet with them where they are going, so the sacrifice of maximum protection in order to actually be able to carry it easily for emergency situations makes sense. If you know you will need a helmet that provides max protection then you can prepare one separately.
Having a basic helmet that can save you if you get spaced and does not interfere with your tasks is more important than a helmet that can withstand a nuke but is the size of a beach ball.
Retractable helmets are a niche design, they sacrifice protection for being able to store and carry them in a more compact form,
having to carry around a full helmet everywhere is a pita, but on a space ship, especially one that can come under surprise attack at any time, having a helmet at hand ready to put on can be the difference between life and death.
Go ahead, carry a full motorcycle helmet around for an entire day, having it always attached to your person, preform all your daily public errands with it, buy groceries with it, cook with it, tell me it isn't annoying, inconvenient, and a colossal pita. Now imagine everyone on a cramped starship has to also carry one around with them,
In game everyone has to carry a helmet with them where they are going, so the sacrifice of maximum protection in order to actually be able to carry it easily for emergency situations makes sense. If you know you will need a helmet that provides max protection then you can prepare one separately.
Having a basic helmet that can save you if you get spaced and does not interfere with your tasks is more important than a helmet that can withstand a nuke but is the size of a beach ball.
Eh... that's still too vulnerable. Plus, what use is a helmet without air to breathe? Do you want to spare the survivors the look of death on your face?
I'm fairly sure space ships would have emergency suits/helmets in every area, as no one would be suited up 24/7.
But if you insist on an emergency measure, then how about a sturdy, clear plastic hood you can pull out of your uniform's collar and which will inflate with breathable air the moment you close it? Sure, it wouldn't look cool... but it's far less likely to fail when you need it most. Plus, you have air for a few minutes which is all you need in case you get spaced. If you don't get rescued quickly, you'll have drifted off too far and will die anyway.
that is the same idea, but a plastic hood like that would provide even less protection than a collapsible rigid helmet. If any sharp debris hits you the hood could rupture.
Likewise a heavy object can more easily smash a jointed helmet than a rigid one,
but the rigid one can't be as easily kept as it takes up more space.
The question is in the trade offs, the less moving pieces the more sturdy and reliable you can make the helmet, but it also limits the ways you can store it. Likewise a helmet built to be super compact and lightweight like a hood would provide minimal protection.
The collapsible helmets make sense if there is a tiny chance of sudden violent rupture of your enclosed environment, like a pirate attack. The hood idea makes sense if there is a chance of being thrown into space with little debris, like a force field wall failing. And the rigid helmets make sense if you know you are going to be under attack and are keeping the helmet on, like a warzone.
If you had to keep your helmet on you all day the collapsible one would be a lot more sensible than just thinking from a getting hit in the head standpoint.
Who said anything about ship design? While the point is valid, it's irrelevant here. Perhaps you should bother to read the thread title/OP?
Anyone who sits down at the drawing board to design a helmet and puts "ability to quickly remove in a cool fashion" far above "protection from impacts and environmental hazards" isn't going to sell any helmets to people working outside of Hollywood. Care to adress this point, or do you simply wish to engage in more indignant ignoratio elenchi? Retractable helmets are as dumb as breather masks.
No. I can't muster an argument now that you've used gratuitous Latin. I need to sit down and breathe for an hour to manage the incredibly profound the insight I've read.
I've already addressed the point - to the extent there even was one. Your point was about verisimilitude. It was a dumb point, because the entire setting is predicated on the opposite. When considered in terms of the actual setting, there's even less merit to it.
The helmets you're talking about are an absurdity. To be useful combat helmets in environmental hazards, they'd have to be made out of indestructible material. A single puncture wound would be fatal and compromise the entire suit. In-setting, helmets like that couldn't co-exist with guns. For bullets to even be effective, the actual helmet itself - as a defensive tool in absence of the space magic shields they plaster over them - wouldn't be anywhere near as useful for personal protection or environmental protection.
As of right now, there isn't even a functional theory of the kind of ways to approach combat in space. We lack the technology for it. And once we enter the real of pure fantasy, the idea of what a helmet "should" do go right out the window, because we're already dealing with space magic materials. BOOM, we have a fantasy material that has no structural weaknesses when made out of infinitesimally small divisible parts.
You'll most likely get your wish:
I think that this is pretty perfect, simply because we get to see the character's expressions while fully helmeted, and potentially gets around the mysterious invisible helmet they walk around with until it's time to put it on their heads.
Retractable helmets are a niche design, they sacrifice protection for being able to store and carry them in a more compact form,
having to carry around a full helmet everywhere is a pita, but on a space ship, especially one that can come under surprise attack at any time, having a helmet at hand ready to put on can be the difference between life and death.
Go ahead, carry a full motorcycle helmet around for an entire day, having it always attached to your person, preform all your daily public errands with it, buy groceries with it, cook with it, tell me it isn't annoying, inconvenient, and a colossal pita. Now imagine everyone on a cramped starship has to also carry one around with them,
In game everyone has to carry a helmet with them where they are going, so the sacrifice of maximum protection in order to actually be able to carry it easily for emergency situations makes sense. If you know you will need a helmet that provides max protection then you can prepare one separately.
Having a basic helmet that can save you if you get spaced and does not interfere with your tasks is more important than a helmet that can withstand a nuke but is the size of a beach ball.
No.
Who says that retractable helmets are a niche design and sacrifice protection?
This is set in the future, with all sorts of new stuff that would make your motorcycle helmet look silly.
Much like taking today's designs there.
Well, the more moving parts there are, the greater the chances of mechanical failure. This would be considered a needless complication, because it offers no real benefits to the wearer, while a solid structure can do the job more efficiently. Way in the future, if people still ride motorcycles, unless those future helmets have crazy dampening systems that create some sort of nigh indestructible fortress for your skull, they won't really change all that much.
I think Having a retractable helmet will be no more different than having your guns compacting down to make them easier to carry. Hey, if Iron Man can have a retractable Helmet....
Bioware Sci-fi and Realism is an oxymoron.
Fixed that for you. Good sci-fi shouldn't fall outside the realm of realism. If it does it's science fantasy (cough, Star Wars, cough).
Fixed that for you. Good sci-fi shouldn't fall outside the realm of realism. If it does it's science fantasy (cough, Star Wars, cough).
Good but would make a really boring game...
... better
I actually like the helmet model in BW's consept art pic because it looks cool and allows you to see your character's face. Now that said... I do hope that helmets will be completely optional, unless the surrounding conditions absolutely requires it. In ME trilogy, I always had the 'Helmet off in cut scenes' -option on. I do accept the helmet in cutscenes if - again - the conditions require it.
What I also really don't wish to see again, is cool premade armors with a helmets permanently attached to them. That's why I never used any of the buyable armors in ME3. I'm also not a fan of those breather masks. They're silly. Also, no matter that I adore Thane to bits, I absolutely hate his helmet wich looks like a black wool sock and those god-awful biker glasses.
Mass Effect is neither hard Sci Fi or space opera, but a mash-up of the two. It has clear influences from both ends of the Sci Fi genre. Andromeda wouldn't feel like a Mass Effect game if the devs pivoted all the way to either hard Sci Fi or to fantasy.
While my personal preference would be for the series to lean a little bit heavier on hard Sci Fi than fantasy, I wouldn't want it to completely drop all space opera influences.
I actually like the helmet model in BW's consept art pic because it looks cool and allows you to see your character's face. Now that said... I do hope that helmets will be completely optional, unless the surrounding conditions absolutely requires it. In ME trilogy, I always had the 'Helmet off in cut scenes' -option on. I do accept the helmet in cutscenes if - again - the conditions require it.
What I also really don't wish to see again, is cool premade armors with a helmets permanently attached to them. That's why I never used any of the buyable armors in ME3. I'm also not a fan of those breather masks. They're silly. Also, no matter that I adore Thane to bits, I absolutely hate his helmet wich looks like a black wool sock and those god-awful biker glasses.
Personally i didn't mind breather masks as i value seeing faces more than the unrealism. The new concept art is seems clearly a means of meeting this desire and meeting the realism of certain environments, which is a win win. Like you i hope helmet off options are there outside of these hostile locations too and like you i never bought armors in ME3 for same reason. Equally i'm not bothered by unrealism of helmets not being stored somewhere whilst not in use.
But if you insist on an emergency measure, then how about a sturdy, clear plastic hood you can pull out of your uniform's collar and which will inflate with breathable air the moment you close it? Sure, it wouldn't look cool... but it's far less likely to fail when you need it most. Plus, you have air for a few minutes which is all you need in case you get spaced. If you don't get rescued quickly, you'll have drifted off too far and will die anyway.
This!
Depending on the design of the collar and helmet, I'd argue that it could still be made to look cool.
I also wouldn't be surprised to see an omni-helmet on a character in Andromeda.
The helmet shown so far looks amazing.
Although I'm not sure if it's Cerberus level of awesome. If I the glass is dark then maybe yes. Or if it changes depending on the situation. Black when you're shooting people in the face and lighter when you are talking with people (and not going all renegade).
... something ...
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