#i feel like the me1 citadel feels more multicultural than it does in the later games somehow...

[c-rowlesdraws]

if you could have made changes to how ME showed the volus (and if you have any other ideas for other species) what would you have added/changed/taken away?

honestly, I CRAVE more of the "weird" aliens, all of them, not just the volus. All of Shepard's bestest friends in the series were fairly humanoid aliens-- and from a gameplay/technical perspective, that makes sense, since it's much more convenient to build every character who has to hold various weapons and run around and do all these different animations all with the same rig. But as a consequence, the characters who we got to know the best as people, and who could give us the most well-rounded perspectives on their own cultures, were all humanoid. And as the series went on, the non-humanoid species (and the batarians, humanoid but minor) got kind of treated increasingly like curiosities, running jokes, and/or cannon fodder (#JusticeForTheVorcha), rather than having their cultures elaborated on in the same way.

Closer relationships with other, weirder aliens like the elcor, hanar, and volus would have helped the player experience Shepard's journey as a person that much more strongly, moving with Shep from a position of relative ignorance about the galaxy to having a real sense of community and deeper understanding. The climax of ME3, with the entire galaxy overcoming their differences and conflicts to collaborate together and unite against a great common threat, would have felt so much cooler if we'd already gone through that process on a personal level: getting to know and befriend more members of alien species that at first seemed too funny or strange or unsettling to see as people as easily as more humanoid aliens.

They wouldn't even have to be selectable mission companions or whatever; even just a few really good recurring NPCs would do. Each "species representative" character having a distinctive individual personality, conforming to some known stereotypes about their species and defying others, putting a face to their people (even people without conventional faces, like the hanar)-- that's what I would have liked to see.

#mass effect #catie talks #ask #there were just so many gosh darn humans in the later games #i feel like the me1 citadel feels more multicultural than it does in the later games somehow...