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Soylent Pudding posted:I think I keep Ashley around for about two thirds of my playthroughs because to me she's a more interesting character than Kaiden. This is distinct from Kaiden being a better person in ME1. Yeah Ashley feels like how an actual US Space Marine only a couple decades into making contact with wider galactic civilization would act and behave. I considered her and to a lesser extent Pressley to be stand ins for the wider belief amongst the Alliance that humans rule and Aliens drool, and they're all just trying to keep us down. Part of being Paragon Shepard is actively disproving that mode of thinking, and being Renegade Shep culminates in affirming it. Ashley is a good character but not particularly likable, which is a difficult needle to thread.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:14
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MH Knights posted:Elder Scrolls Online was like this for the three player faction leads. They had Kate Beckinsale (Queen Ayrenn), Peter Storemare (Jorunn the Skald King), and Bill Nighy (High King Emeric). This is the performances are so bland a lot of players don't realize who was playing the characters. Another fun consequence of using higher profile actors is when you can't afford to get them back! One of ESO's major expansions had you adventuring around the High Eleven homeland but Queen Ayrenn was nowhere to be seen, even when the villains were about to blow the place up. As soon as I read Kate Beckinsale I knew what problem they would run into. Why the hell would they do something so stupid in a game that is designed to get new content for potentially decades? Let's cast an in demand actress and surely years later she isn't going to leave our calls unanswered.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:20
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Sydin posted:Yeah Ashley feels like how an actual US Space Marine only a couple decades into making contact with wider galactic civilization would act and behave. I considered her and to a lesser extent Pressley to be stand ins for the wider belief amongst the Alliance that humans rule and Aliens drool, and they're all just trying to keep us down. Part of being Paragon Shepard is actively disproving that mode of thinking, and being Renegade Shep culminates in affirming it. You can absolutely be full renegade without being anti-alien. While the anti-alien comments Shep makes are renegade, there’s still more than enough points to go renegade and not be an alien-hater. I’d consider them separate things at that point.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:24
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Ashley isn't even a space marine. She's just a dead-end grunt sent out to guard a boring research colony in the rear end-end of nowhere on a colony planet. Probably for being a massive racist.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:35
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Rynoto posted:Ashley isn't even a space marine. She's just a dead-end grunt sent out to guard a boring research colony in the rear end-end of nowhere on a colony planet. Probably for being a massive racist. She literally is a space marine though? edit : wait I completely forgot the opening of ME 1. You’re right she’s space army, Shepard and Kaiden are space marines. hobbesmaster fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 03:38
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i believe they call them adeptus astartes now or something
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Feb 18, 2021 03:42
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chaosapiant posted:You can absolutely be full renegade without being anti-alien. While the anti-alien comments Shep makes are renegade, there’s still more than enough points to go renegade and not be an alien-hater. I’d consider them separate things at that point. You can unlock all the red conversation options without touching the space racist stuff, but Sydin is right that the "arc" of Renegade Shepard in ME1 culminates in letting the Council die and installing humans in their place. A bunch of renegade options in ME1 just have random anti-turian sentiment appended to whatever gritty, pragmatic thing you were trying to make Shepard say. Human supremacy is definitely one of the core themes of ME1 era Renegade Shepard before ME2 realises that sucks and turns them into an action hero who doesn't play by the rules. Almost no-one remembers this because basically no-one does it, but in parallel to the Paragon route with Ashley where you persuade her to be less racist, there's a Renegade path with Kaidan where you can persuade him that his rear end in a top hat turian biotics instructor was representative of the entire turian species and encourage him to embrace human supremacy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo7B5O_dg1s The Renegade option on the first choice is literally "all turians are the same", it's in retrospect funny how much scope there was in ME1 to make Shepard an absolute monster. Not even the cool, "makes hard choices" kind of monster, you could literally just romp around being extremely bigoted.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:45
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Yeah the Renegade path is definitely "humanity first" - even if you shy away from some of the more explicitly racist choices - unless you back out at the last minute and save the council.
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Feb 18, 2021 03:52
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MH Knights posted:Elder Scrolls Online was like this for the three player faction leads. They had Kate Beckinsale (Queen Ayrenn), Peter Storemare (Jorunn the Skald King), and Bill Nighy (High King Emeric). This is the performances are so bland a lot of players don't realize who was playing the characters. Another fun consequence of using higher profile actors is when you can't afford to get them back! One of ESO's major expansions had you adventuring around the High Eleven homeland but Queen Ayrenn was nowhere to be seen, even when the villains were about to blow the place up. Malcom McDowell is great in most games he is in. Sydin posted:Yeah Ashley feels like how an actual US Space Marine only a couple decades into making contact with wider galactic civilization would act and behave. I considered her and to a lesser extent Pressley to be stand ins for the wider belief amongst the Alliance that humans rule and Aliens drool, and they're all just trying to keep us down. Part of being Paragon Shepard is actively disproving that mode of thinking, and being Renegade Shep culminates in affirming it. yeah. its like 56 years since first contact war and alot of the vets and shits are still alive and poo poo. on your other point i like how each game pushes that theme forward either way. 1 is everyone first meeting and you see how a group like that can work and you can either prove humanities value or opportunistically push for more power for humans. 2 is all about introducing new factors, and getting more into the bigger conflicts. either you gently caress people over for the "greater good" and help TIM or you make poo poo mostly better. 3 is basicaly all that poo poo to ahead. you can either help heal scars from the past and unite all the folks against the reapers and probably lead to a more peaceful galaxy in the long term OR you basicaly gently caress over various folks or put in dumb assholes who will ruin peace/make poo poo worse if you kill the reapers.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:00
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I will say though, even though the space racist dialogue options in ME1 are wildly unappealing, I can see what they were going for. Some of the key questions the game asks are like, "what is humanity's place in galactic society?" and "can humans and aliens be political equals?". There are a bunch of quests built around those themes and it makes sense that the writers wanted to give the player the choice of coming down on either side. It's clumsy because "racist or not racist" isn't a compelling choice, but they're at least giving the player multiple ways of engaging with the game's themes. One thing that really bothered me about Andromeda was that Ryder is pre-written to come down on essentially the same side of all the game's (loose, unsatisfying) problems. They like the angara, they hate the kett, they embrace the mission statement of the Initiative, they're friends with Cora and Liam and Peebee, etc. Your dialogue choices are just how enthusiastic you are about following the script, or whether you want to say something motivational or analytical in support of your pre-chosen decision. It's nearly impossible to have a negative interaction, barring the one decision point where you can let the krogan scouts die and annoy Drack and Kesh. I'd prefer an ME1 style series of options to be an idiot monster to that bland, cheerful linearity.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:03
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Android Blues posted:You can unlock all the red conversation options without touching the space racist stuff, but Sydin is right that the "arc" of Renegade Shepard in ME1 culminates in letting the Council die and installing humans in their place. A bunch of renegade options in ME1 just have random anti-turian sentiment appended to whatever gritty, pragmatic thing you were trying to make Shepard say. Human supremacy is definitely one of the core themes of ME1 era Renegade Shepard before ME2 realises that sucks and turns them into an action hero who doesn't play by the rules. Holy poo poo, you can make poor, pure, innocent, boring Kaidan into an even worse space racist than Ashley 
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Feb 18, 2021 04:08
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nine-gear crow posted:Holy poo poo, you can make poor, pure, innocent, boring Kaidan into an even worse space racist than Ashley hahaha, loving screaming space red pill poo poo at kaidan until his tiny mind snaps.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:10
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nine-gear crow posted:Holy poo poo, you can make poor, pure, innocent, boring Kaidan into an even worse space racist than Ashley Yep! It directly parallels the Ashley arc, but instead of a redemption it's a fall from grace. That bit at the end where he rants about how you can't waste human lives on saving the Council? I'm pretty sure if you Paragon path Ashley, that's the bit where she's like, "this is a necessary sacrifice for galactic harmony", it's a direct mirror. It feels like a weird remnant from KotOR-era Bioware story design, where having options to corrupt your companions was commonplace. It's probably indicative of how deeply unpopular the space racist dialogue options were that almost no-one knows about or remembers the Racist Kaidan route.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:14
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Kaidan's enough of a void blank slate that you should've been able to convince him of literally any opinion.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:18
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Android Blues posted:Yep! It directly parallels the Ashley arc, but instead of a redemption it's a fall from grace. That bit at the end where he rants about how you can't waste human lives on saving the Council? I'm pretty sure if you Paragon path Ashley, that's the bit where she's like, "this is a necessary sacrifice for galactic harmony", it's a direct mirror. Yeah that tracks. People were like "uugh, I don't like Ashley, she's such a space racist" and I was like "what do you mean? I yelled at her in ME1 to quit her bullshit and she got over it by like Ferros". I couldn't even fathom going the opposite direction on Kaidan.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:24
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You know who loving sucks? The guy who shows up to "inspect" the Normandy in ME1. That dude is such a perfect distillation of so many fuckhead officers and senior NCOs I dealt with in the military. Like, no dude, you don't get to do a no-notice white glove of my ship just because you lost out. Go pound sand motherfucker. Although it is fun sometimes to let him do it and then convince him he's wrong about it. And even if you do that he still says the report "won't be as bad". gently caress you, man. Julius CSAR fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 04:27
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Julius CSAR posted:You know who loving sucks?  Commander, I am not happy... Sounds like a fairly common situation.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:31
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Oh and speaking of great voice acting, Lance Henriksen just crushes it as Admiral Hackett for all three games.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:31
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Julius CSAR posted:Oh and speaking of great voice acting, Lance Henriksen just crushes it as Admiral Hackett for all three games. Though there is that one line in 3 that's "Okay good job Shepard reportinlaterIhavethingstodobye *disconnect*" that always makes me laugh.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:34
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ooooh man admiral hackett rules. i forget if he actually shows up in game or if he is fotever just a voice on the comm
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Feb 18, 2021 04:34
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Lol it's not even space "racisim" from Ashley. She just believes that when push come to shove the various species will look after their own instead of truly helping each other out. And guess what! ME3 proves her right, espically with asari secretly hiding prothean artifacts to get a leg up instead of sharing the knowledge.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:35
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Sally posted:ooooh man admiral hackett rules. i forget if he actually shows up in game or if he is fotever just a voice on the comm In 1 and 2 he's just a voice and he gets a hologram model in ME3 but doesn't show up in person iirc.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:39
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Sally posted:ooooh man admiral hackett rules. i forget if he actually shows up in game or if he is fotever just a voice on the comm He shows up at the end of Arrival, the bookend DLC for 2. He's the reason you're on desk duty and not in jail.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:40
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Can't argue with that. That must have been one massive ME:A she was taking.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:43
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denimgorilla posted:Can't argue with that. That must have been one massive ME:A she was taking. When you already detonated a biotic combo but they keep priming
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Feb 18, 2021 04:49
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BexGu posted:Lol it's not even space "racisim" from Ashley. She just believes that when push come to shove the various species will look after their own instead of truly helping each other out. And guess what! ME3 proves her right, espically with asari secretly hiding prothean artifacts to get a leg up instead of sharing the knowledge. The asari hosed everything up majorly. The Protheans covertly slingshot Asari development and leave behind even more resources to jumpstart their development. It works and the Asari end up the most advanced race in the galaxy, and then they just stagnate. By the end of their cycle the Protheans built a working mass relay that works well enough to slingshot a Mako halfway across the galaxy 50,000 years later. Meanwhile Liara's dad gets laughed out for suggesting the Asari figure out how to forge their own relays. Their head start was squandered. Though there was the whole creepy Protheans apparently treating them the way Star Trek fans treat Thailand thing. I've always wondered how much of the Asari proclivity for interspecies reproduction is a result of a different kind of Prothean grooming.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:56
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WrightOfWay posted:In 1 and 2 he's just a voice and he gets a hologram model in ME3 but doesn't show up in person iirc. He comes aboard the Normandy just before Earth in ME3 to give a speech.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:57
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BexGu posted:Lol it's not even space "racisim" from Ashley. She just believes that when push come to shove the various species will look after their own instead of truly helping each other out. And guess what! ME3 proves her right, espically with asari secretly hiding prothean artifacts to get a leg up instead of sharing the knowledge. She also openly respects the Salarians from like her first scene and likes Quarians because she finds them relatable and thinks their treatment proves her mistrust of the greater powers. Calling her a 'racist' has always been super reductive.
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Feb 18, 2021 04:57
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The racist part also stems from one of her Citadel hub lines, where she was supposed to comment on the Keepers “really hard to separate the aliens from the animals” but people misconstrued it with all the alien races
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Feb 18, 2021 05:04
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Julius CSAR posted:He shows up at the end of Arrival, the bookend DLC for 2. ah man forgot about that!
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Feb 18, 2021 05:05
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denimgorilla posted:Can't argue with that. That must have been one massive ME:A she was taking. lol
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Feb 18, 2021 05:07
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Soylent Pudding posted:By the end of their cycle the Protheans built a working mass relay that works well enough to slingshot a Mako halfway across the galaxy That's nothing special; Shepard can do the same thing with a medium-sized rock and 1/4 mile's worth of momentum.
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Feb 18, 2021 05:21
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The only quest I remember from the snow planet in Andromeda is the one where you decide if they should kill the whales or not.
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Feb 18, 2021 05:27
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Ashley is also in a backwater unit specifically because of her family getting blackballed due to her grandfather surrendering to the Turians.
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Feb 18, 2021 05:34
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Lmao, what a chump
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Feb 18, 2021 05:36
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BexGu posted:Lol it's not even space "racisim" from Ashley. She just believes that when push come to shove the various species will look after their own instead of truly helping each other out. And guess what! ME3 proves her right, espically with asari secretly hiding prothean artifacts to get a leg up instead of sharing the knowledge. It's honestly the best joke of the series. But even as far back as ME1, Ashley has a point. The history of the Citadel species is rife with that 'throw the dog to the bear' logic she talks about and Avina flat out calls the species that are not on the Council 'lesser.' Ashley's biggest crime is being a 'serious' sci-fi soldier in a story that doesn't really fit her. She's an interesting character. A really good example of a RPG character who feels like they had a life before they ended up in the protagonist's sphere of influence. Unfortunately, Bioware listened to the people who said 'racist racist racist' until they passed out because of that bugged (lol) line about the Keepers and stopped creating characters who were anything but Best Friends 4eva. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Feb 18, 2021 |
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Feb 18, 2021 05:54
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Seemlar posted:She also openly respects the Salarians from like her first scene and likes Quarians because she finds them relatable and thinks their treatment proves her mistrust of the greater powers. Indeed, her opinions are more a reflexive action in response to a sort of familial PTSD from what happened to her grandfather both militarily and politically. So her resentment is 100% believable. “Space racist” is just a reductive meme, one that even Kimberly Brooks, Ash’s voice actor, has even acknowledged from time to time. Like I said, between the two of them I think Ash is the far and away the better human party member from ME1 and her arc across the first game is SO much better than Kaidan’s. Well, Kaidan on his own, romanced Kaidan is kinda worth it.
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Feb 18, 2021 05:57
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Kaidan doesn't appear to understand that if he were to not stand under the bright light for hours at a time then he wouldn't need to keep wiping the sweat from his brow.
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Feb 18, 2021 05:59
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:Kaidan doesn't appear to understand that if he were to not stand under the bright light for hours at a time then he wouldn't need to keep wiping the sweat from his brow. It's how he keeps his figure trim.
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Feb 18, 2021 06:03
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Trashley
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Feb 18, 2021 06:22
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