MASS EFFECT 5 - yes or no

[rusty_shackleford]

Oh god I just realized if there's a Mass Effect 5 they're going to "address" the Asari being intergalactic uber-feminine sluts aren't they? #MeToo coming to Asari Prime.

Its time to uncover the truth about them

Yep.

Well yeah, people think it's this:

But it's actually this:

But hey, probably still would. Look at those tits on the squid.

All of these arguments fall apart when you realize Asari still look the same on billboards, film, etc.,

 

[jackofshadows]

Taking this a step back. Woke, IMO, is when the person/game/movie/book is browbeating the audience with a very blunt message. Like all men are rapists. That's woke. I hope you agree.

Otherwise, there's a lot of woke things in all Bioware games and certainly all Mass Effect games.

I don't see much of actual wokeness (as described above) in MEA, and the solid examples of wokeness in the game are all subtly disruptive of said wokeness.

In other words, the game is misunderstood and definitely misrepresented. It is not DAI, but when people deride it, they describe DAI.

Well, I'm not the right person to give a thorough summary about wokeness and what actually means to be woke but as I see it, it means that you (in this context, as the game publisher but also as the writers themselves) are *aware* of *issues* such racism, some other social problems but also - inequality in general. Obviously, this is where the problems starts because huge fun part of ME setting were about racial differences, race of definitely-not-space-elven-sluts alone might've cause a headache to a writer which was suppose to play it differently somehow (TBF, I was pleasantly suprised by Peebee all things considered, but that's rather an exception).

So no, I don't think wokeness must imply only to extreme cases of inserting messages like "all men are rapists" but basically, to any translation of SJW-related political ideas into cultural product i.e. polluting it. MEA, DA:I - they both had plenty of this shit to spoil someone's experience, can't see a good reason to argue which has more of it :D TOW has set the bar a bit higher though, I agree with DalekFlay here.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

As a sci-fi nut I love the universe and visuals.

An odd statement given that they basically rebooted the universe with 4.

 

[Atlantico]

If I had something meaningful to do I wouldn't be on the Codex in the first place, wouldn't I?

Touché.

You love Andromeda we got that, okay.

Hardly. It is a very flawed game, but at the same time probably Bioware's best game for a decade.

So no, I don't think wokeness must imply only to extreme cases of inserting messages like "all men are rapists" but basically, to any translation of SJW-related political ideas into cultural product i.e. polluting it. MEA, DA:I - they both had plenty of this shit to spoil someone's experience

I have to say, being woke is more than having sensitivity towards social issues, that's way too broad a definition and doesn't even require a word - even though the wiki definition agrees with you, but I think that is not reflecting reality.

I'll explain why I think that way, because by that description, VtMB was actually very woke. Even GTAV is also very woke, if we use that definition. It is very broad. It is too broad. It is deliberately broad, if you ask me, to mask its negative connotations.

Woke is never subtle or aware, and it is without nuance.

All men are rapists, all cops are pigs, all gender is fluid, all refugees are welcome, white privilege is real, ... etc. that is woke. And games that are woke do exist.

Gone Home is woke.

DAI is woke.

I would argue VtMB is not woke, even though it is clearly aware of social and racial justice, and neither is MEA for the same reasons.

MEA has characters that are woke and they are presented as stuck up, pretentious and phony. DAI has characters that are woke and lecture you, unironically, on gender dysphoria and correct pronouns, by a virtuous and flawless character.

One is not like the other.

 

[aweigh]

Andromeda's main subversion is that of the male gaze, how they made character models and facial features ugly on purpose, stripped females of femininity, have characters engage in casual conversation about pronouns, made the majority of ranking officers female or compromised males, denounce male authority as insufficient; even the choice of character's voice-actors and voice-acting itself is weaponized against the player as the first Krogan the player meets in the game is very obviously meant to sound as off-putting and unappealing as possible to the player in order to subvert the prestige afforded to the Krogan characters in the game lore. They process that Krogan's voice to make it sound like an obese unattractive woman and it is done on purpose. Most players will simply think "that Krogan sounds ugly" and think no more of it; it would never occur to them that the casting decision for the voice actor and the direction for the voice was intentional.

It ranges from subtle to pathological, but it is never overt. It is true that there are more outlandish moments of "Ah-hah! That's woke!" in DA: Inquisition than in ME: Andromeda, however structrurally Andromeda is more predisposed towards the dismantling of perceived-patriarchy. Andromeda was engineered with wokeness in its very body therefore it rarely needs to flex its muscles. The fact that the customize character option defaults to a Person-of-Color is not accidental; it's subtle enough that most players would not think anything of it or justify it as the team simply wanting to offer a default option that's different from the canon characters, but make no mistake about the intent.

...but none of that is ME: Andromeda's biggest fault. It could have been explicit about its subversions of the patriarchy and it still wouldn't have wokeness as its main fault. ME: Andromeda's main fault is that it's a very badly written game, with badly written characters doing stupid things in a vaccuum of barren mini-planets that never manage to make the player care about what they're doing or how they're doing it.

EDIT: Also, same as DA: Inquisition there are too many collect-a-thon activities. You collect more shit than in a Mario game for chrissakes.

 

[aweigh]

I'll explain why I think that way, because by that description, VtMB was actually very woke. Even GTAV is also very woke, if we use that definition. It is very broad. It is too broad. It is deliberately broad, if you ask me, to mask its negative connotations.

Actually defining what is "woke" is surprisingly simple, at least in a strict contemporary sense:

- Critical theory: hierarchies are corrupt and need upending or dismantlement, such as the family unit is oppressive, male authority figures are tyrannical, capitalist systems are systemically corrupt and harm society, conventional law and order is there to harm instead of protect.

More strictly speaking that the fundamental relationship between people is that of a power dynamic, and that the historical relationship between men and women is that oppressor and oppressed instead of co-operation.

- Gender theory: That the binary gender structure is fundamentally oppressive to people and systemically harms those who feel differently about their own sexual orientation or sexual personality. You can see the desire to dismantle hierarchies at work here as well. This is also useful to play up grievance grifting between the genders.

- "Cultural Marxism": essentially they replaced the concept of 'class' with 'race and gender'. They realized capitalism has been so good for the human race that nowadays no one cares about class warfare anymore, so they switched it up and instead said it's racial inequality, not economic, that keeps people down. Pretty genius move on their part as well.

Anyway, anything that professes something from that incomplete list can qualify as "woke"; it's by nature incoherent and that's its biggest source of strength. It can't be easily pinned down and it can't be rationalized, it's an incohate ideology driven primarily through emotion and quasi-religious zeal.

Being able to pin something down and define it as "woke" is harder than it seems because you can't just say "oh this is woke because there's a black guy in it", it's a bit more complicated than that because not even the people behind woke decisions are fully aware of their intent. A classic example are the James Cameron movies like T2 or Aliens 2; they feature Strong Female Characters that subvert authority and yet they aren't woke.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I just want to shoot people and bang hot aliens wtf

 

[Atlantico]

Andromeda's main subversion is that of the male gaze, how they made character models and facial features ugly on purpose, stripped females of femininity, have characters engage in casual conversation about pronouns, made the majority of ranking officers female or compromised males, denounce male authority as insufficient; even the choice of character's voice-actors and voice-acting itself is weaponized against the player as the first Krogan the player meets in the game is very obviously meant to sound as off-putting and unappealing as possible to the player in order to subvert the prestige afforded to the Krogan characters in the game lore. They process that Krogan's voice to make it sound like an obese unattractive woman and it is done on purpose. Most players will simply think "that Krogan sounds ugly" and think no more of it; it would never occur to them that the casting decision for the voice actor and the direction for the voice was intentional.

It ranges from subtle to pathological, but it is never overt. It is true that there are more outlandish moments of "Ah-hah! That's woke!" in DA: Inquisition than in ME: Andromeda, however structrurally Andromeda is more predisposed towards the dismantling of perceived-patriarchy. Andromeda was engineered with wokeness in its very body therefore it rarely needs to flex its muscles. The fact that the customize character option defaults to a Person-of-Color is not accidental; it's subtle enough that most players would not think anything of it or justify it as the team simply wanting to offer a default option that's different from the canon characters, but make no mistake about the intent.

...but none of that is ME: Andromeda's biggest fault. It could have been explicit about its subversions of the patriarchy and it still wouldn't have wokeness as its main fault. ME: Andromeda's main fault is that it's a very badly written game, with badly written characters doing stupid things in a vaccuum of barren mini-planets that never manage to make the player care about what they're doing or how they're doing it.

EDIT: Also, same as DA: Inquisition there are too many collect-a-thon activities. You collect more shit than in a Mario game for chrissakes.

Quite. That's a good summation of the narrative.

The only problem is, that it doesn't reflect reality. None of it. Not even the "collect-a-thon" activities alledgedly in MEA. They were in DAI, yes. MEA, no.

It's more akin to wishful thinking or a strawman. After all, who the hell played the game, so who would know if you're just making things up? Right?

This is really tired. I've played the game. It's not like you describe it. It just isn't. It's just bizarre to be arguing with someone that the sky is green, when it in fact is blue. Clearly one of us is not being forthright.

That's all I have to say on the matter.

I didn't play the damn thing until last year because of people who espoused this kind of narrative. I believed them. Then I actually tried the damn game and yeah it's not perfect. But it's also not what you describe it to be either. Not even close.

Being able to pin something down and define it as "woke" is harder than it seems because you can't just say "oh this is woke because there's a black guy in it", it's a bit more complicated than that because not even the people behind woke decisions are fully aware of their intent.

What you're saying is that there's nuance and context to be considered. I agree. So why don't you give MEA the nuance and context it deserves?

The entire Mass Effect series, 1-3, had serious "woke" warning signs as well. Critical theory was represented well in ME1 and ME2, gender theory is represented in all ME games, they're all pretty faggy tbh if you play them that way and the female Asari are the superior race of beings (smash the patriarchy), cultural marxism is very much represented in all ME games.

The Citadel council is led by a female and the males are weak and inconsequential, hierarchies are corrupt and the cultural marxism of the Geth subplot in ME2 and so on and so forth. If you want to present characters and situations as being reflective of the overall politics or narrative, you're no better than people claiming Dungeons and Dragons were demonic, because they had demons in the game.

 

[aweigh]

The entire Mass Effect series, 1-3, had serious "woke" warning signs as well. Critical theory was represented well in ME1 and ME2, gender theory is represented in all ME games, they're all pretty faggy tbh if you play them that way and the female Asari are the superior race of beings (smash the patriarchy), cultural marxism is very much represented in all ME games.

The Citadel council is led by a female and the males are weak and inconsequential, hierarchies are corrupt and the cultural marxism of the Geth subplot in ME2 and so on and so forth.

Sure. As with anything else it comes down to a matter of degrees. Skill and authorial intent matter. Something being "woke" doesn't disqualify it from being good, nor does it make something automatically bad.

One of my favorite things ever is the original Watchmen comic and that thing is as SJW as it comes, however the author's skill makes it good. It's arguably just as "woke" as the subsequent HBO mini-series, however the HBO series was utter dogshit that insults the viewers' intelligence.

Both Watchmen works are equally woke, equally liberal, made by equally zealous SJW authors, yet one of them is REALLY REALLY GOOD and the other one is REALLY BAD.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

No, ME is quite a close rip-off of Babylon 5. I mean there is this big space station (Babylon 5/Citadel) where races meet so they don't fight. Some old race has left artifacts for hyperspace travel all over the galaxy (Jump gates/Mass relays) and another old race in dark biological ships appears every several thousand years and wreaks havoc (Shadows/Reapers). Only that the Babylon 5 ending actually made sense and brought conclusion to the main story!

Mass Effect copied most of its design from somewhere else. There's a ton of Farscape influence in the design of the aliens, especially the Asari. The Quarian-Geth conflict is Battlestar Galactica without the chasing. Starflight did that small bit with the stars going out first, although that likely would have gone in a different direction if they remembered it. Although that shouldn't be a mark against what they took from Babylon 5, they took "inspiration" the most from there.

 

[Ismaul]

Andromeda's main subversion is that of the male gaze

Quite a 180 they did there, when ME1 and ME2 were all about satisfying the male gaze. Those curved form-fitting suits, Miranda's ass close-up, etc.

It's quite sad that now that we have great graphics we no longer get any Male Gaze: The Game titles.

 

[Nano]

Quite a 180 they did there, when ME1 and ME2 were all about satisfying the male gaze. Those curved form-fitting suits, Miranda's ass close-up, etc.

ME3 too. Ashley's redesign, Miranda still has several ass shots, EDI, etc.

 

[Stokowski]

 

[aweigh]

Quite a 180 they did there, when ME1 and ME2 were all about satisfying the male gaze. Those curved form-fitting suits, Miranda's ass close-up, etc.

It's quite sad that now that we have great graphics we no longer get any Male Gaze: The Game titles.

The important thing to remember when talking about how SJWs subvert the male gaze is that there is no such thing as the male gaze. Never let the enemy invent the stakes you're fighting over. There is no such thing as a monolithic "male gaze", and when they subvert that concept they're really aiming at other things (like heterosexuality or the oppressive concept of beauty, etc).

 

[DalekFlay]

Andromeda's main subversion is that of the male gaze, how they made character models and facial features ugly on purpose, stripped females of femininity, have characters engage in casual conversation about pronouns, made the majority of ranking officers female or compromised males, denounce male authority as insufficient; even the choice of character's voice-actors and voice-acting itself is weaponized against the player as the first Krogan the player meets in the game is very obviously meant to sound as off-putting and unappealing as possible to the player in order to subvert the prestige afforded to the Krogan characters in the game lore. They process that Krogan's voice to make it sound like an obese unattractive woman and it is done on purpose. Most players will simply think "that Krogan sounds ugly" and think no more of it; it would never occur to them that the casting decision for the voice actor and the direction for the voice was intentional.

I'm not saying you're wrong, or that this definitely isn't happening, but I tend to err on the side of it being shit game design rather than an agenda. The reason is, in all other media... movies, TV shows, advertisements, etc... femininity is still extremely popular. If anything it seems to be having a peak moment, with fashion trends focusing on very feminine styles for women and many presentations showing men and women as very stereotypical gender types. Even the trans thing falls in with this... short hair? Baggy jeans? Maybe you're really a man! When I was a teen in the 90s half the women I knew dressed like dudes and the overwhelming message I heard was that women could dress and be however they wanted to be. Now the message I mostly hear from media (and my students) is that women are THIS and men are THAT. It's like the race relations melting pot vs. salad bar thing, I think it's impacting gender as well.

Which doesn't mean the California feminists working on these games might not be of a special far-left group that disagrees, maybe they are. Or maybe game developers have less dominating influences from suits in corporate above them, telling them not to get too crazy. I dunno. I'm just more apt to believe the people working on the faces sucked at their jobs, or that because Outer Worlds had no physics at all they decided to limit the helmet hair to short designs that didn't look as obviously fake. But... maybe I'm wrong, who knows.

 

[Narax]

ME3 too. Ashley's redesign, Miranda still has several ass shots, EDI, etc.

They even stated in the concept art (bottom) that Ashley's redesign was meant to give her a "sex appeal". Even in ME:A, nuBioware was still aware of the importance of sex in the marketing, which is why Cora was featured heavily in the trailers (including ass shots).

Spoiler

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Andromeda was made by a completely separate team. The people working on 1-3 were keenly aware of the artistic value of female ass shots and non-ugly women.

 

[aweigh]

I'm not saying you're wrong, or that this definitely isn't happening, but I tend to err on the side of it being shit game design rather than an agenda. The reason is, in all other media... movies, TV shows, advertisements, etc... femininity is still extremely popular. If anything it seems to be having a peak moment, with fashion trends focusing on very feminine styles for women and many presentations showing men and women as very stereotypical gender types. Even the trans thing falls in with this... short hair? Baggy jeans? Maybe you're really a man! When I was a teen in the 90s half the women I knew dressed like dudes and the overwhelming message I heard was that women could dress and be however they wanted to be. Now the message I mostly hear from media (and my students) is that women are THIS and men are THAT. It's like the race relations melting pot vs. salad bar thing, I think it's impacting gender as well.

Which doesn't mean the California feminists working on these games might not be of a special far-left group that disagrees, maybe they are. Or maybe game developers have less dominating influences from suits in corporate above them, telling them not to get too crazy. I dunno. I'm just more apt to believe the people working on the faces sucked at their jobs, or that because Outer Worlds had no physics at all they decided to limit the helmet hair to short designs that didn't look as obviously fake. But... maybe I'm wrong, who knows.

Sure, that's why I made sure to stress that, IMO, Andromeda's reason for failure isn't that it was sabotaged by "wokeness" but rather that it was made ineptly.

I also believe that one should assume incompetence before anything else. That incompentence and wokeness go hand-in-hand isn't coincidence, tho.

 

[Narax]

Which doesn't mean the California feminists working on these games might not be of a special far-left group that disagrees, maybe they are. Or maybe game developers have less dominating influences from suits in corporate above them, telling them not to get too crazy. I dunno. I'm just more apt to believe the people working on the faces sucked at their jobs, or that because Outer Worlds had no physics at all they decided to limit the helmet hair to short designs that didn't look as obviously fake. But... maybe I'm wrong, who knows.

Incompetence was definitely the main reason why the facial animations sucked, the lead designer for the facial animations was a nobody, with ZERO experience in the gaming industry before working on ME:A, which makes me really question the competence of Bioware's HR as a whole.

 

[Wunderbar]

Andromeda was made by a completely separate team. The people working on 1-3 were keenly aware of the artistic value of female ass shots and non-ugly women.

they also made DAI and Sera

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Andromeda was made by a completely separate team. The people working on 1-3 were keenly aware of the artistic value of female ass shots and non-ugly women.

they also made DAI and Sera

Didn't the ME development team get moved to Anthem after ME3 released?

 

[Trotsky]

Surprisingly, EA already swallowed Bioware in 2007/2008, which is actually between Jade Empire and ME1. So at best they were responsible for focussing on the shitbox console.

The two founders however said "Fuck this shit I'm out!" right after the ME3 debacle, so maybe already Inquisishun, but definitely Andromederp happened without their influence.

That's not quite how mergers and acquisitions work. The historical record needs to be clear Bioware was a productive and prosperous company in the 1990s. They became a popular, successful, lucrative, and critically acclaimed company from licensed games backed by big money publishers like Microsoft. Bioware would have been smart to keep things that way instead they opted to go on their own. Jade Empire was a solid game and xbox exclusive it wasn't a hit but as long as Microsoft paid the bills it didn't matter. Mass Effect was another Microsoft and Xbox 360 exclusive. I even bought the otherwise shitty console likely the worst ever made given its failure rate only for Mass Effect. Mass Effect was a massive hit commercially and critically. Bioware was always renegotiating deals with Microsoft and through various types of corporate intrigue got absorbed in a hostile takeover by EA. It was devastating news at the time because everyone knew what that meant. Here is where politics come into play had Al Gore won the disputed 2000 presidential election the anti-trust case against Microsoft would have continued and tech companies put on notice. Instead Dubya cheated his way into the White House because all his daddy's friends on the supreme court voted the right way. Big tech was given free reign and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved EA's takeover which otherwise may not have happened. However the first year after a takeover things are largely the same (2008), the second year is when changes begin but they're small (2009), and by the third year (2010) it's not even the same company anymore. Projects like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 2 were already in the pipeline and not effected by EA. Those were the last real Bioware games made by classic Bioware. Those are widely considered their best games overall and have never been matched in terms of quality, content, polish, and story. The fall of Bioware is a tragic warning.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I don't get why people have any love for Jade Empire. Must be the famous nostalgia goggles.

With its clicky action combat, collecting colorful power ups, silly arcade sections, only 3 stats, no functioning inventory, reducing party size to 2 (PC and one companion) it's a much larger decline than DA2 and ME2. It's a wonder that after JE Bioware returned to creating more complex RPGs.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't get why people have any love for Jade Empire. Must be the famous nostalgia goggles.

With its clicky action combat, collecting colorful power ups, silly arcade sections, only 3 stats, no functioning inventory, reducing party size to 2 (PC and one companion) it's a much larger decline than DA2 and ME2. It's a wonder that after JE Bioware returned to creating more complex RPGs.

It's the one Bioware RPG I've never been able to get into at all. I've heard it praised a few times but it felt like a weird arcade game when I tried to play it.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I don't get why people have any love for Jade Empire. Must be the famous nostalgia goggles.

With its clicky action combat, collecting colorful power ups, silly arcade sections, only 3 stats, no functioning inventory, reducing party size to 2 (PC and one companion) it's a much larger decline than DA2 and ME2. It's a wonder that after JE Bioware returned to creating more complex RPGs.

It's the one Bioware RPG I've never been able to get into at all. I've heard it praised a few times but it felt like a weird arcade game when I tried to play it.

I played it this year to completion, mostly as a curiosity. Parts of the story is ok, but the world is just a bunch of corridor-like locations suited for the consols of old. Much worse that KOTOR which had several bigger sections, like the desert of Tattoine.

It's neither great nor memorable. If you did not get into it, you lost nothing of value.