Comments on: The Mass Effect Petition

By: Max

Max — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:27:30 +0000

Yeah, none of this was likely very helpful to your decision. If there’s one thing you do in Mass Effect, let it be bringing Conrad Verner to tears. (You’ll see…)

By: HM

HM — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:14:35 +0000

In terms of derailing threads, you know you can pretty much do whatever you want on my porch. I’ve never felt the urge to delete any comments here although I imagine that day will come (you suck HM suck suck and all you stoopid fanboys Mass Effect is gr8).

On the other hand, I think there’s nothing I can do with these comments about the Mass Effect alien races! I guess I’ll just see.

For what it’s worth, BSG is still a good time, no matter what you think of its eventual direction and ending.

By: mwm

mwm — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:15:46 +0000

That just sounds like ‘Spaz Wartz’. Oh, wait, tomorrow’s youth? Yeah, that sounds about right.

Please do a ‘Let’s play Left Survivors Dead’, Without the ‘Let’s Play’ part of course.

(Never used the mass to great effect in alien-sex-scenes. Never watched the Battle of Galactic Stars.)

By: BeamSplashX

BeamSplashX — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 03:25:33 +0000

Hey, hey guys…

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

I saw the pilot and that’s about it. I remember thinking you could raise its appeal with today’s youth by calling it Space Wars, or for tomorrow’s youth, ZPAZE WARZ.

By: Jonas

Jonas — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:35:27 +0000

Maybe we should just let HM discover the game for himself…

By: ShaunCG

ShaunCG — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:25:55 +0000

@Max: you’re on the money with the Asari. Their backstory and fluff fits perfectly well but remove that and you have a rather unfortunate Star Trek wank fantasy. I like the Turians better: “there but for the grace of god go a bunch of total arseholes.”

Mind you, the tough Asari matriarchs are intriguing characters, as was the concept of ME2′s Justicar, even if the latter was implemented in a nonsensical way.

I loved Legion. Part of that is because since I was a kid I’ve always been drawn to the idea of “bad guys who turn out good”, probably because of some nascent awareness that ethnic typecasting was total bullshit. ;)

Comment threads exist to be derailed.

…man, I should really do some work.

By: Jonas

Jonas — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:14:48 +0000

I like the asari (and, again, so does my wife). I like that they like to enjoy themselves and are open about it (though they’re never presented as all being the same – Liara being a good example of someone different). I don’t think that makes them typical teenage fantasy material or sexist. I *especially* like the whole pureblood concept.

By: Max

Max — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:04:41 +0000

I just don’t like the asari in general. Of all the aliens that humanity could run into, we find a race of slender, blue-skinned, all-female (oh sorry, asexual) bipedal humanoids whose two predominant lines of work are gun-for-hire and exotic dancer. Right. (I expect no more, mind you- this is still a male-dominated industry.)

Honestly, I’m a big fan of Mass Effect; you just wouldn’t know it by listening to me ramble!

@Shaun, I preferred ME2′s characters to the first’s as well. Listening to Grunt is so much more interesting than hearing Wrex talk about war stories. Already heard ‘em, buddy, you’re just Canderous Ordo 3.0. Also, peeling back the layers of Jack, Samara and Thane reveals some ponderous thoughts on the ME universe. Then there’s Legion; conversation there alters the subtext of the whole series and although brief, that time with Legion was the highlight of the second game for me.

Poor Harbour Master … probably had no idea about the derailment that would grace this topic.

By: ShaunCG

ShaunCG — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:49:54 +0000

I was talking smack too. I’ve not watched BSG in about 3 years and don’t remember it well enough to really get my nerd on. FWIW Steerpike’s defence of BSG is well argued and compelling but it’s not an analysis that gels with what I got from the show. Fair enough really; the author is dead and so are the writing team (the focus group are mostly just undead). But your comment, HM… everything in that gets a resounding yes from me. If I weren’t going to Wild Rumpus tonight I would stick 33 on again.

People cared about the characters in Mass Effect?! Man. If there was ever an instance of an unsexy, dry bunch it would be the characters of Mass Effect. ME2 is an improvement in some regards, a step backwards in others, though at least they tried. The first game for me was all about grand, space operatic sweep and poking around through a comfortable collection of SFnal tropes. The second was about, I don’t know, gratuitous arse shots or something. (Disclaimer: I loved both games. I mean that.)

Once you’ve played ME and ME2 and written about them I will get AR’s Walker to head over here and argue about them. The dude has strong opinions on ME, retconning, character, ethics…

By: Jonas

Jonas — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:45:03 +0000

Can’t say I agree about Liara. Our Shepherd had a beautiful, funny, sexy and very endearing love story with her, and I thought it was lovely that Lair of the Shadow Broker continued that story in such a satisfying way. (My wife agrees.) I don’t think Liara’s a male teen fantasy at all. She and Shepherd feel too much like equals for that to be the case.