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Neruz posted:The difference between Data and EDI really highlights the difference in cognitive abilities of a VI and an AI, it also explains why everyone is so frightened of AI's because to be perfectly honest EDI is a little scary sometimes even though she is one of the most reliable characters in the story.
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Aug 3, 2014 12:59
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Sombrerotron posted:I don't think it's accurate to qualify Data as a VI, though, because VIs (by Mass Effect's definition, anyway) are not self-aware. TNG often stresses the point that Data is self-aware - hence, also, his wish to become more human. There probably isn't a fundamental difference in scariness between one type of AI and another based exclusively on rationality vs. emotionality, either. Both can conceivably be either extremely friendly or extremely hostile to humans in general. The real scariness comes from an AI's capabilities, because even the friendliest of AI might eventually completely overpower all human civilisation, and earnestly govern humanity like a Platonic philosopher king/enlightened despot, but not in a way that all humans would agree with. "The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect" is a good (if kind of hard to get into) short story about such a scenario. I was always working under the assumption that Data was a VI that Liara has been tinkering with so now he's sort of a VI+, possibly even in the process of becoming a true AI as the game never explains what is actually done to make a true AI that I remember hence his sort of 'childish' attitude as he sort of goes through the AI version of puberty. EDI on the other hand is a fully realized AI and more important than that she is a fully realized AI with real-world experience and practice. She knows what she is and what she can do and she knows she is really good at it which is why she comes across as a little scary sometimes; she is in fact smarter than everyone else on the ship, she knows that she is smarter than everyone else on the ship and deep down everyone else knows this as well.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:08
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You people are crazy, EDI is kickin' rad. It's always good to have a robotic alternative to those outdated sacks of meat known as 'organic life'. We just need Legion back and we can have the perfect robot/cyborg team.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:09
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FullLeatherJacket posted:Yeah, the whole subject pretty much invites ten pages of inane bickering, and a lot of that is that there's now this brand of "video game feminism" which begins with, "fe fi fo fum, someone somewhere is having fun". I mean, yes, you could put everyone in the game into three inches of football armour and that would be more realistic conceptually, but at some point you have to admit that you're just taking a hammer to the idea of people having nice things in their messianic James Bond space opera. ME1 allowed its women to wear actual protective armor in combat situations, and I don't remember anyone ever complaining about that. How many people seriously thought ME2 was improved by letting them admire Miranda's asscrack in the middle of an intense firefight? Would it really have ruined the game if Jack had covered a little more skin in the presence of bullets and shrapnel? Of course not. Flytrap posted:You people are crazy, EDI is kickin' rad. It's always good to have a robotic alternative to those outdated sacks of meat known as 'organic life'. We just need Legion back and we can have the perfect robot/cyborg team.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:16
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The weird part is that at first it seems like Bioware decided to get it right this time. Ashley's armour in the Mars mission looks completely kickass, and Liara's combat lab coat is still one of my favourite pieces of costume design in the series. Then... EDI shows up.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:18
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Soricidus posted:Where "people" is defined as "a vocal minority consisting almost entirely of men" and "nice things" is defined as "gratuitous T&A all the time". As the article I linked suggests, on the one hand Miranda, literally an engineered perfect woman, is a very appropriate statement on how men (Miranda's father) want women to be and appear; on the other, CAMERA ANGLE: BUTTSHOT. Do we need it/her to be rubbed that closely into our faces? I vaguely remember an anecdote from a games developer about constantly getting sexualised female character designs back from the art department regardless of feedback, and how they got into a protracted debate with the lead artist who just really really really wanted the female lead to have big T&A. I don't think we should smother all artistic expression under layers of 'practical' armour, but there's always a line between meaningful costuming and titillation. e: Jacob wears a similarly impractical outfit to Miranda, but you don't notice because the camera focuses on his face and he's not quite so disproportionate with his body shape. Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 13:35
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Neruz posted:EDI on the other hand is a fully realized AI and more important than that she is a fully realized AI with real-world experience and practice. She knows what she is and what she can do and she knows she is really good at it which is why she comes across as a little scary sometimes; she is in fact smarter than everyone else on the ship, she knows that she is smarter than everyone else on the ship and deep down everyone else knows this as well. SirSamVimes posted:The weird part is that at first it seems like Bioware decided to get it right this time. Ashley's armour in the Mars mission looks completely kickass, and Liara's combat lab coat is still one of my favourite pieces of costume design in the series. Then... EDI shows up.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:40
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Lt. Danger posted:I don't think we should smother all artistic expression under layers of 'practical' armour, but there's always a line between meaningful costuming and titillation. I believe the standard argument against this is that having characters always look exactly the same is necessary for players to recognise them. But, really, the playable cast isn't that large, and most of the characters have easily distinguished body shapes even within armor, and if your artists can't figure out a way to make a character be recognisable as Miranda without the buttcrack then maybe you need better artists.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:49
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Alternately give players colour control over the armor of squadmates like you have for Shepard; the player knows that the person in the purple armor is Miranda because he made Miranda's armor purple.
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Aug 3, 2014 14:00
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The article about the creator's dismay at Faith being sexualized by a fan amuses me faintly. One would think that he'd understand, it doesn't matter what a female character looks like in a game. It will be sexualized by someone. Even cartoons with a distinctly deformed and even unappealing art style spawn such things. It's the nature of things and will always be done by someone. Honestly? I'm one of those who is all for pixel romance. I honestly approach it from the perspective of the same in any other form of media. Except in this case you get a bit of interaction. I wont' say you get control because you're still stuck within the constraints of the writer's flowchart of events. It doesn't spur any real life feelings per se, but it does invest me more into a character in some respects. Or at least provides, in games like ME and Dragon Age, a bit of RP fix.
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Aug 3, 2014 14:32
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While I have nothing against pixel romance it does annoy me when writers replace important and interesting potential story threads with poorly written pixel romance. The romance plot between EDI and Joker is almost physically painful to witness even for me.
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Aug 3, 2014 14:49
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Soricidus posted:Where "people" is defined as "a vocal minority consisting almost entirely of men" and "nice things" is defined as "gratuitous T&A all the time". Miranda is overdone, of course she is, but if the alternative suggestion is returning to ME1-style 'multicoloured combat onesies', then I don't think that does the game or the characterisation any favours at all. That seems like a sop to a genuinely tiny, genuinely loud minority, half of whom won't actually play the game, that someone might be objectifying a fictional woman and that it must be put a stop to immediately under the guise of "realism". If nothing else, that's not good business sense for Bioware. Note for balance that ME2 also includes Thane Krios, who I've never been able to see as anything other than a Mills & Boon transplant. He's absolutely written with the fangirls in mind. Breathy voice, visible pecs, assassin-with-a-heart-of-gold, slowly dying of an incurable disease, who'll launch into a soliloquy at the drop of a hat about his dead wife and retard son (so deep, so mysterious) and whose complex emotional problems can only be resolved with the vigorous application of your dusty vagine. But at some point it's a work of fiction and fantasy, and one which includes a race of space hippos that exclusively speak in a deadpan monotone doing a performance of Hamlet. Maybe if it plays to the audience a little, it's not too big a deal.
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Aug 3, 2014 14:56
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MidnightVulpine posted:The article about the creator's dismay at Faith being sexualized by a fan amuses me faintly.
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Aug 3, 2014 15:00
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I think a big part of this argument stems from some people who feel that characters in fiction should represent reality and others who feel that because it is fiction the characters should be 'fantasies' because that is literally the point of fiction. I doubt that these two groups will ever reconcile these disparate viewpoints which does make me wonder if this argument will ever end.
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Aug 3, 2014 15:15
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Neruz posted:I think a big part of this argument stems from some people who feel that characters in fiction should represent reality and others who feel that because it is fiction the characters should be 'fantasies' because that is literally the point of fiction. I've wondered about this too. The way I understand it is that it comes down to an issue of feedback loops: the stories we tell modify our understanding of lived reality which in turn modifies the stories we tell. Those who believe fiction should be representative of a normative reality are often more concerned with the feedback loops than they are with any one individual story. The downside to their approach is that it can only be verified in the historical aggregate, making criticisms of any one particular media representation inefficient; and if it is about any current fashion, somewhat dour. We can only know the extent of the good or bad done in this process after the cycle has already lapsed. Personally, I cannot really hold Mass Effect at fault for its somewhat-off representations. Despite the sometimes interesting writing, it rarely develops its own ideas and themes, borrowing only from the long and previous legacy of science fiction, updating them when necessary to modern standards. EDI's design might look oversexualized compared to the original Maria of the film Metropolis which she references, but that film was made in 1927 and the culture has shifted since then. Exploring EDI as a sexless figure like Lieutenant Danger mentioned in the video would have indeed been interesting, but Mass Effect is incapable of that since that theme is not common enough to the trough at which it feeds. If, however, Mass Effect developed its own thematic ideas instead of just borrowing them from older sources, then the bad representations it has would be definitely much more threatening if ever looked at in a larger scope.
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Aug 3, 2014 16:45
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I think the fact that female Shepard has never been overly sexualised (in game, don't go looking elsewhere), depicted very closely to the physique of a soldier is somewhat telling. She is a cipher for the player, but doesn't undergo the same visual treatment as the other female characters, despite being the literal avatar and on-screen >90% of playtime.
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Aug 3, 2014 20:24
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Teledahn posted:I think the fact that female Shepard has never been overly sexualised (in game, don't go looking elsewhere), depicted very closely to the physique of a soldier is somewhat telling. Oh and sometimes the games just can't help themselves and things accidentally (maybe) get inappropriate, as evidenced below (linked for minor/medium ME2 and ME3 spoilers). http://i.imgur.com/vy8r2zV.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JZEv75z.jpg http://i.imgur.com/upParzg.jpg http://i.imgur.com/PfQpMyW.jpg http://i.imgur.com/VK6poLW.jpg http://i.imgur.com/stFKVFV.jpg http://i.imgur.com/3DkiSTG.jpg
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Aug 3, 2014 21:02
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Teledahn posted:I think the fact that female Shepard has never been overly sexualised (in game, don't go looking elsewhere), depicted very closely to the physique of a soldier is somewhat telling. That's not exactly true, though. Yes, the game never shows off FShep's arse, but her design is kind of at odds with what she's supposed to be re: "physique of a soldier". Remember that on top of being soldiers that undergo heavy training, Alliance marines recieve mandatory gene therapy to enhance, amongst other things, their physical strength. No matter your aesthetic preferences, more strength = more muscle mass; you don't need sheer sculpted bulk that Vega is hauling around, but FShep is just ridiculously thin for what she's supposed to be. Body models for both genders were probably built off swim-suit models, but MShep body can be perceived as that of a trained fighter, while FShep is build very obviously on the idea of female "in shape" looks, and not those of an actual, you know, female fighter. At the very least she should have way more in terms of (non-existent) shoulder muscles.
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Aug 3, 2014 21:34
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Sombrerotron posted:Oh and sometimes the games just can't help themselves and things accidentally (maybe) get inappropriate, as evidenced below (linked for minor/medium ME2 and ME3 spoilers).
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Aug 3, 2014 21:35
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Sombrerotron posted:Weeeeeeell, there is the black lingerie. Also, I recall a picture of side views of FemShep's model throughout the series that demonstrated how Shepard's bust size has increased notably since ME1. And remember https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=KN9oSuw-LaU#t=578 (spoilers if you haven't played ME2, I guess)? While some might be accidental there aint nothing accidental about that second one. Goddamnit I bet the guy who did that laughed for hours.
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Aug 3, 2014 21:36
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The same group of posters spitballing for pages and pages about the specific force disposition of a spacefleet of colossal immortal cybernetic cuttlefish with death lasers in the opening moves of an apocalyptic galactic war is invited to talk about the measurable sexualization of women over the course of a series' run and goes "welp, its a made up fantasy reality nothing about it has to make sense, dudes will be dudes right?" That's a very sad kind of funny. Not as much as the attempts at deflection subsequent to this post, but pretty funny.
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Aug 3, 2014 22:06
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It is very important to talk about how many robot squid monsters are on the make believe planet of warrior birdmen who look like lizards with insect jaws and facial tats. We've really got to hammer out the specifics of how, in-universe, X number of mechanical sea monsters can turn humans on a hypothetical Earth 150+ years from now into a red paste for their component genetic material versus how fast they could simply vaporize a spacefleet of birdmen with their death lasers. We need to establish this or else the story will make no sense. Female bodies, on the other hand, can be treated however because its a fantastic universe where the rules do not apply. I will now make a 500+ word post deploying the full extent of my vocabulary in High Serious Dialect to distract from the fact that in my zeal to establish internal consistency in a fictional universe I overlooked this glaring inconsistency in my thoughts in the actual world that exists, and what that could mean. Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 22:13
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Sombrerotron posted:things accidentally (maybe) get inappropriate Arguably neglect is just as responsible as actual pandering. FemShep has a number of animations that don't look right because she's using the ManShep skeleton rig - thinking in particular of her sitting animation when wearing the dress from the Kasumi mission. Oof. That's almost definitely non intentional, but it's still bad, just like how female Shepards had to make do with a generic facemorph until ME3. And who knows if that was only because Marketing thought it'd be a good idea? quote:The same group of posters spitballing for pages and pages about the specific force disposition of a spacefleet of colossal immortal cybernetic cuttlefish with death lasers in the opening moves of an apocalyptic galactic war is invited to talk about the measurable sexualization of women over the course of a series' run and goes "welp, its a made up fantasy reality nothing about it has to make sense, dudes will be dudes right?" Maybe they're feminist allies who are very keenly aware that they can only experience this issues from a position of privilege and don't want to be accidentally insensitive. That's plausible.
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Aug 3, 2014 22:21
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Actually, would like to highlight that point you made about the sexualisation getting noticeably worse as the series goes on. All right, so ME1 had asari strippers, but ME2 has that and a space blouse and space lingerie and an adjutant that strips off for you if you have dinner with her, and ME3 has all the above plus the sexbot. Normally I disagree with people saying ME got 'CODified' to appeal to mainstream audiences more as time went on, but maybe here they have a point.
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Aug 3, 2014 22:29
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Lt. Danger posted:Actually, would like to highlight that point you made about the sexualisation getting noticeably worse as the series goes on. All right, so ME1 had asari strippers, but ME2 has that and a space blouse and space lingerie and an adjutant that strips off for you if you have dinner with her, and ME3 has all the above plus the sexbot. A sexbot voiced by nerd fantasy girl Tricia Helfer.
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Aug 3, 2014 22:36
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I have the most amazingly relevant quote for this discussion, but I'm saving it for a later video.
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Aug 3, 2014 22:38
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Since Bioware Romance(tm) got brought up in video and is tangentially related: What's up with every last character of the opposite gender demanding romance as a be all end all? As a person that
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Aug 3, 2014 22:39
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Lt. Danger posted:Arguably neglect is just as responsible as actual pandering. Calling it now: Pretty much every subtopic in this thread is going to devolve into an ourobouros of wondering whether XYZ in ME3 was the result of pandering or neglect or pandering or neglect or.
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Aug 3, 2014 22:52
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Lokapala posted:That's not exactly true, though. Yes, the game never shows off FShep's arse, but her design is kind of at odds with what she's supposed to be re: "physique of a soldier". That's a problem with all female characters in video games and it drives me up the wall. Worst story-ingame model discrepancy was probably Bulletstorm. I love that game to tears, but the (only) female character in that game had a very bad case of this issue. She'd go around kicking/punching down doors, beating the crap out of mooks in over the top violent ways ... while having arms the size of a twig and generally a very small bodymass. Her model really should have been a lot more bulkier than it was. FoolyCharged posted:Since Bioware Romance(tm) got brought up in video and is tangentially related: it's standard bioware "fill up the friendship meter and get rewarded with sex" romance. That's been their deal since KOTOR at least. Probably also Baldur's gate but I never played it so can't comment. I know for a fact that it's the case in all mass effect games, jade empire, aforementioned kotor and Dragon Age origins. double nine fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 23:13
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FoolyCharged posted:What's up with every last character of the opposite gender demanding romance as a be all end all? As a person that I haven't played ME3, so I can't speak for it, but I found it particularly frustrating in ME2 when any sort of ongoing dialogue that might be developing between Shepard and a romanceable NPC abruptly cuts off if you don't want to have sex them. It's also pretty odd that if you were playing the 'wrong' gender you missed out on a lot of interaction with some of them (for instance, maleShep only has three or so conversations with Garrus during ME2 which aren't during a mission).
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Aug 3, 2014 23:16
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double nine posted:it's standard bioware "fill up the friendship meter and get rewarded with sex" romance. That's been their deal since KOTOR at least. Probably also Baldur's gate but I never played it so can't comment. I know for a fact that it's the case in all mass effect games, jade empire, aforementioned kotor and Dragon Age origins. Nah back in Baldurs Gate they had surprisingly complex dialogue trees and you actually had to work at it if you wanted to get into most characters pants.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:19
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double nine posted:it's standard bioware "fill up the friendship meter and get rewarded with sex" romance. That's been their deal since KOTOR at least. Probably also Baldur's gate but I never played it so can't comment. I know for a fact that it's the case in all mass effect games, jade empire, aforementioned kotor and Dragon Age origins.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:25
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In BG2 you could have had a baby with your boo and I don't mean the space hamster. It took up inventory space and accompanied you on your way to slaughter demiliches and extraplanar petitioners for godhood. e; actually that was just Aerie, but the other arcs were kinda neat too. Jaheira's only procced after a certain amount of real-time since the gist of it was "we've spent so much Actual Time adventuring together I'm closer to you than I was with my late husband whose death still haunts me BTW so be mindful of that or I'll cut you". Willie Tomg fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 23:26
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double nine posted:it's standard bioware "fill up the friendship meter and get rewarded with sex" romance. That's been their deal since KOTOR at least. Probably also Baldur's gate but I never played it so can't comment. I know for a fact that it's the case in all mass effect games, jade empire, aforementioned kotor and Dragon Age origins. I only ever played through the Jaheira romance (neutral elf, very much concerned with balance and therefore with the PC being a child of the god of murder), which is undeniably a BioWare romance, but at least took some time to actually develop and did so in a more natural way than modern "reach plot point X and/or X friendship points to proceed" BioWare romances. Willie Tomg posted:In BG2 you could have had a baby with your boo and I don't mean the space hamster. It took up inventory space and accompanied you on your way to slaughter demiliches and extraplanar petitioners for godhood.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:29
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Willie Tomg posted:The same group of posters spitballing for pages and pages about the specific force disposition of a spacefleet of colossal immortal cybernetic cuttlefish with death lasers in the opening moves of an apocalyptic galactic war is invited to talk about the measurable sexualization of women over the course of a series' run and goes "welp, its a made up fantasy reality nothing about it has to make sense, dudes will be dudes right?" I would suggest that there's a difference between complaining that something isn't internally consistent or that it fails to accomplish what it sets out to achieve, and standing up and saying, "well, if space wizards did exist, they certainly wouldn't wear that". You can allow for the fact that James Bond never files any paperwork while still thinking it's absurd for him to sneak up on a bad guy by hiding behind an invisible car. Hence why there's a complaint about EDI where there wasn't particularly with Jack or Miranda. The art design should fit with the character that's being portrayed, as a minimum. Everything beyond that becomes increasingly silly posturing. Lt. Danger posted:That's almost definitely non intentional, but it's still bad, just like how female Shepards had to make do with a generic facemorph until ME3. And who knows if that was only because Marketing thought it'd be a good idea? Changing the female model for ME3 actually annoyed me. You had a FemShep for the first two games that looked about appropriate for the age she was supposed to be, which meant that it was time for the art team to step up and repackage her as nineteen and Irish for all the FemShep boxart that they were going to make. You also got to vote on Facebook as to what colour her hair should be, which meant that we could quite easily have got this as default Shepard. The actual in-game version isn't quite as blatant, but she's still younger looking having died and been court-martialed than she was in ME1.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:34
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In the video you make a comment that I've thought about so, so often: what if EDI didn't take over the body of... well, a "sexbot" as certain people (and the game itself, if I'm remembering correctly) describe it and instead a YMIR, or hell just... anything else? There are a lot of things that I want to like about EDI, and there are some that I still do like about her as a character, but there are a number of decisions made either in writing, character design, or otherwise, that just make it difficult to. Let's take EDI's status as the Normandy's AI for example. She still inhabits/"is" the Normandy, but has taken control of the Eva Core body as an auxiliary, basically putting it on the comparative level of Engineer to Drone. Yet people start addressing her as if she's the body vs. she's still the ship. EDI comments on this and finds it somewhat odd herself, but as the game progresses it comes to be recognized as some sort of "progression" in terms of EDI's character when it really isn't. On a completely different scale, let's talk about what-ifs and combat and how they could help to rectify this disparity between EDI "the mech" and EDI the ship's AI a bit. What if the Eva Core body wasn't the only one she could "possess," and you'd get an option of it and say, a LOKI/Rampart, geth Trooper, and something else one as "costume" options in combat, each with a bit of a different set of bonuses like the other characters' costumes? What if one of EDI's in-combat powers (or at the very least situational cutscene/event things) would be her painting a target for a Normandy airstrike? Especially since, mechanically, that kind of thing is in the game. As far as the suggested topic of the portrayal of women in videogames goes (hoo boy is that ever a topic), I'm only going to make a few comments about this: videogames can portray them in a positive manner. It's sadly rarer than it could be but it's something that isn't impossible to do. A problem that I think comes up people get caught up on what to emphasize about the character; should focus be on the character-as-female, female-character-as-a-character, or something inbetween? Perhaps an example of this contrast is Samus Aran in most of the Metroid series vs. the Samus Aran of Other M. Samus' gender in most of Metroid is a non-issue; she's female, yes, but that's not what's important about her. She is the last of the Chozo, the Hunter that scares the Space Pirates shitless, the being that's blown up two planets, an entire alternate dimension, and actually killed a planet in the process of keeping the galaxy at peace, along with a hint of Space Batman, that is what's important about her. That is Samus Aran, the female-character-as-a-character. Other M is the polar opposite. Other M's Samus Aran is written with a character-as-female in mind, and it shows. When the game focuses on its story, it's all about either Samus the woman concerned about "the baby" and motherhood or Samus the "rebellious teenage daughter" of Adam Malkovich. Metal Gear's Boss is probably a good example of it being somewhere inbetween, because her character has a number of layers of complexity to her and a part of it is the theme of her being the sort of "mother" of Snake/Big Boss (as well as being the actual mom of a different character). As far as Mass Effect goes, Femshep is most certainly written with female-character-as-a-character in mind, which is probably a given. Shepard no matter the gender is Commander Shepard first and foremost, and while people probably have their preferences as far as actors and physical features go, there's very little difference in terms of writing. The biggest writing differences are honestly in terms of romance options, and... well, yeah. Hoo that's a lot... I'll probably have something to say in regards to the krogan, Wrex, Wreav, the Genophage cure, Eve, and a little thing that bugs me about how choices work in Mass Effect and the knowledge of their consequences can affect them later on.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:40
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I don't think you'll have much to talk about Wrex since hes dead because Lt. Danger is terrible at Mass Effect.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:48
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FoolyCharged posted:Since Bioware Romance(tm) got brought up in video and is tangentially related: Probably the fault of the morality system as a whole, really, or at least the specific choice to make the Paragon options also the romance ones. I'm not sure it would have killed them to put in both "Paragon - Flirty" and "Paragon - No Romance Overtones" options. Although having one member of the team constantly misinterpreting your friendliness might be amusing. Like the Conrad Verner of romance options. I didn't actually know FemShep uses ManShep's riggings, I just thought they were bad at capturing how humans move. Though I have never played ManShep in a single playthrough of any ME game ever and do not intend to. I played around with his character generation but couldn't get him to look like anything other than a square-jawed grunting blokeybloke typical (space) marine. Which is a character archetype that I have no interest in at all (and consequentially why I don't play a lot of shooters). Re: Jack I always thought her lack of armour was basically her way of saying she was so confident in her absolute biotic power that she wasn't worried about getting shot in the slightest because biotic barriers. I did like the idea of all characters having combat and non-combat costumes like Shepard, though. I mean, there's your precedent, it's Shepard. You'd maybe expect Quarians to wear something heavier too, given their weaknesses. I also like how someone commented on Jacob's physique being slightly implausible too, but I'd argue Vega's "I am smuggling watermelons beneath my skin" one is even worse. Dude is so top heavy I have to wonder how he gets through doorways. While on character designs, wasn't Eva Core literally supposed to be a replacement EDI? I could see EDI wanting to smug it up and take over her replacement for herself just to get at the Illusive Man. Finally, there was an argument about people spending so much time on Reaperchat but dismissing the msot recent conversational prompt out of hand; I'd argue there's a difference between arguing over the internal consistency of a story and arguing over a story's connection to reality. I mean, suspension of disbelief is definitely a thing, but it won't help you if a story breaks its own rules.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:50
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FullLeatherJacket posted:Hence why there's a complaint about EDI where there wasn't particularly with Jack or Miranda. The art design should fit with the character that's being portrayed, as a minimum. Everything beyond that becomes increasingly silly posturing. This is true. The looks fit the characterization. Miranda was created by her father with "genetic perfection" in mind both physically and mentally, so it makes sense that she would ooze sexuality while being the brains of the group. It's right out of a Michael Bay movie, but it more or less works. Same with Jack. She's a gal who flaunts her sexuality in a way that makes her feel powerful, and the backstory and romance go into why that is. Again, not the best writing but it gives a reason for it. With EDI, there is no reason. The Illusive Man could have made a robot of anything, but he chose a woman. Okay, fine. But then once the Terminator skin comes off of it, it's some inexplicably overly sexualized robot underneath. Okay...whatevs. And then it just happens to be that EDI chooses to jump into it. It's way too convenient, and the whole thing reeks of nothing other than being an excuse to have a sexy robot in the game for more T & A. As for the FemShep redesign, I'm not a fan either. Like the EDI design it feels too much like it's catering to fanboys who wanted to see a "cuter" FemShep rather than a more realistic one. "Realism" here being completely subjective, but you know what I mean.
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Aug 3, 2014 23:51
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Neruz posted:I don't think you'll have much to talk about Wrex since hes dead because Lt. Danger is terrible at Mass Effect. That's actually WHY I have something to talk about concerning him. 
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Aug 3, 2014 23:58
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