Regarding the What-Does-Tali-Look-Like situation...

[Michael Hirst]

Tali represents the love interest based on personality and not appearance, if they revealed her face and she was stunningly beautiful it would undo the whole point of the romance and reward the player with a hot woman. They should keep it a mystery, it's that kind of thing that keeps people interested.

So yeah we're supposed to like the character not her body, that's what Miranda is for (and failed at...god that face :s) also being a videogame it's best to work in extremes usually so keep her mask on Bioware!

 

[Zeraiya]

This is my position on the matter, and I think it's pretty damn diplomatic

I would like to see how Quarians look, but not how Tali looks. I think how Tali looks should remain a mystery because it's some of her charm. In my opinion the main reason as to why everyone wants to see how Tali looks is just to make sure that they haven't been romancing a Cthulhu lookalike.

For example, if we get given medical journals with pictures, or medical data or maybe even see some dead Quarians (because I can't imagine seeing a live Quarian with their helmet off) I would be happy. I just want to know how their species looks because I am actually generally fascinated.

But I don't think Tali should be put under the harsh spotlight of criticism because I can guarutee if they reveal her you are going to have almost a 50/50 split of people who love it and people who have fire-spitting hatred of it. And they will never let that hatred go.

Having expressed my opinion, I do pose one question... How come the Quarians couldn't make their mask-windows transparent? And don't tell me 'to protect them from the sun', even in this day and age we can create transparent glass that shields us from UV rays.

 

[badgersprite]

The reason anything should be kept in suspense, especially in a story heavy game, because the players want to impose their own imagination onto it. Whatever they made Tali look like, it could never be as beautiful, hideous, normal or slightly uncanny as what the player can conjure in his own head.

Exactly. It's not that it's a mystery. Any given asari or krogan older than 320 years would know what a quarian looks like, and presumably everyone on the Normandy knows what Tali looks like to some degree, and if you romanced her M!Shep definitely does. It's just that at this point, for the audience, revealing it to the audience is going to detract from the "magic" of cinema (despite it being a game and not a movie, but whatever I'm making a point here).

Put it this way. It's like with sex scenes in movies or like the monster in a horror movie. You could show everything to the audience without any shadow or concealment, but at the same time, less is more. If you show everything about a monster, it stops being scary and removes all the tension, and often just becomes comical. Same with a sex scene. Show every single thing and it stops being romantic, and it just becomes silly and laughable. Likewise, if you reveal what quarians look like to the audience, then a) they become a lot less special because this is essentially the key thing that makes them different from any other species, and b) it removes a lot of the tragedy of their situation. The whole being trapped in their suits and never able to come out thing loses a lot of weight if you suddenly have them removing their masks all the time in the third game to show the camera what they look like. I actually didn't even like the way the romance was handled in 2 in this respect, but, hey, no big deal.

Personally, I think they can hint at what they look like, maybe like by showing a quarian husk or a decayed corpse of a quarian, but I don't actually want to see it, because I think it would detract from the execution of the story, and wouldn't add anything at all.

Having expressed my opinion, I do pose one question... How come the Quarians couldn't make their mask-windows transparent? And don't tell me 'to protect them from the sun', even in this day and age we can create transparent glass that shields us from UV rays.

Would you really want everyone seeing you with helmet hair all the time, every single day of your life?

 

[TheTim]

I bet shes some kind of disgusting little gross insect that eats faces and sees shepherd's as the ultimate prize

 

[blind_dead_mcjones]

here we go again, one camp wants to see her face, the other doesn't, to quote tony stark on the matter

is it too much to ask for both?

just have it in there as an option, much like how bioware deals with most characterisation issue such as this, that way those that want to know what her face looks like can find out and those that don't can choose not to, simple.

in any case bioware has already made up their mind about it anyway

Having expressed my opinion, I do pose one question... How come the Quarians couldn't make their mask-windows transparent? And don't tell me 'to protect them from the sun', even in this day and age we can create transparent glass that shields us from UV rays.

artistic licence, a.k.a because it looks cool, in universe explanation, probably because they like personalising their suits so you can tell them apart at a glance and because they don't really have muchin the way of physical possessions

btw the mask is transparent to a degree as you can see the outline of their face structure excluding the mouth, ears, and whether or not they have any hair. and going from that its safe to say they more closely resemble a human, asari or drell than a turian or salarian