Why No Female Aliens in Mass Effect?

[Ilikemilkshake]

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

So apparently it isn't enough to put human women on a level playing field as men. What NEEDS to happen is that females of EVERY SPECIES need to be treated as equals to their male counterparts.

Wasn't this victory enough? Human men and women are treated as equals in Mass Effect, yet that STILL isn't enough to make everyone shut up for a second and think about those implications.

I swear, if I see another "I'M EXTREMELY OFFENDED. WHY AREN'T XXXXX MORE REPRESENTED IN MY FAVORITE GAME THREAD!?!?!?!?!?!", I'm leaving this goddamned site. I'll give that about 15 minutes or so.

Wow, someones getting a bit worked up about nothing.
last time i looked noone was saying "I'M EXTREMELY OFFENDED. WHY AREN'T XXXXX MORE REPRESENTED IN MY FAVORITE GAME THREAD!?!?!?!?!?!" .. merely pointing out its a bit weird that you travel the galaxy, visiting dozens of planets, yet you never meet females...

 

[FuzzyRaccoon]

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

So apparently it isn't enough to put human women on a level playing field as men. What NEEDS to happen is that females of EVERY SPECIES need to be treated as equals to their male counterparts.

Wasn't this victory enough? Human men and women are treated as equals in Mass Effect, yet that STILL isn't enough to make everyone shut up for a second and think about those implications.

I swear, if I see another "I'M EXTREMELY OFFENDED. WHY AREN'T XXXXX MORE REPRESENTED IN MY FAVORITE GAME THREAD!?!?!?!?!?!", I'm leaving this goddamned site. I'll give that about 15 minutes or so.

Actually, that isn't the one and only reason why people ***** about this kind of stuff. It could be... I don't know, CURIOSITY? Like maybe when I was killing salarian's in full dress I wondered: Hey what do the girls look like? Or when I saw vorcha, I wrinkled my nose envisioning their females. It's just fun to think about parts of their culture or the things that make them different from us.

So you could possibly think a little more about why others whine.

 

[personion]

I don't see why radically different aliens need genders that we can understand, but since they all are humanoid, and for some reason not only have the tongues to speak English but CAN speak, so hey why not. I find the aliens in mass effect are really unoriginal, so if they need genders then why not. I guess Elcor would be asexual, only 10% of salarians are female, so that's explained, I just disgusted myself by thinking about a female batarian, I don't imagine female vorcha going anywhere or doing anything, but besides that I can't think of any excuses.

 

[ThePilgrim101]

Yes yes, ASIDE from the Asari.

EDIT: And Quarians, sorry.

Well then what's the bloody point of saying "no alien females."

I didn't see a single Asari male. Are we even now?

Yes, ME has fewer females of races present than males but it's as mute a point as "there are more white humans in the game than black humans."

 

[JediMB]

Batarian females, do you REALLY want to see them?

Yes.

Because I'm curious about how they're different from Batarian males (and human women).

 

[ThePilgrim101]

So you could possibly think a little more about why others whine.

As long as we're all in agreement that it's just nonconstructive whining.

 

[Delsana]

Batarian females, do you REALLY want to see them?

Yes.

Because I'm curious about how they're different from Batarian males (and human women).

4 vaginas perhaps? Or sex through the eyes? Who knows.

 

[JediMB]

Yes yes, ASIDE from the Asari.

EDIT: And Quarians, sorry.

Well then what's the bloody point of saying "no alien females."

I didn't see a single Asari male. Are we even now?

Yes, ME has fewer females of races present than males but it's as mute a point as "there are more white humans in the game than black humans."

Err... the difference being that Batarians, Salarians, Turians and most of the other species are known to have bot males and females, while the Asari are known to be an all-female species.

It makes sense for Salarians, but not seeing any female Turians is like not seeing any human women, as they're said to have gender equality.

 

[JediMB]

Batarian females, do you REALLY want to see them?

Yes.

Because I'm curious about how they're different from Batarian males (and human women).

4 vaginas perhaps? Or sex through the eyes? Who knows.

We probably won't be seeing any naked Batarians (or Batarian porn), so that's hardly relevant.

 

[Delsana]

Batarian females, do you REALLY want to see them?

Yes.

Because I'm curious about how they're different from Batarian males (and human women).

4 vaginas perhaps? Or sex through the eyes? Who knows.

We probably won't be seeing any naked Batarians (or Batarian porn), so that's hardly relevant.

I honestly thought you were talking about how they were sexually different, not for sake of porn but for sake of curiosity.

 

[VladG]

You do get to see a female krogan in ME2 as well. She's dead, but clearly identified as female (During Mordin Solus' loyalty mission). The lack of different models is down to shortening development time

 

[Stammer]

I've always wondered why not with turians, especially considering how prevalent they are. It's not like they're a society whose females all sit at home. No, they're in combat all the time from what we hear in-game.

No. I think the big problem is that it would require a lot of extra work on the development side. We might see female salarians, turians, krogan, or drell come Mass Effect 3. Hanar, elcor, and vorcha we'll probably never see. Obviously human, quarian, and asari women are going to be present. Not too sure about batarians.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Why would aliens even have genders at all?

And even if they did, the two/three/however many sexes involved would probably not have the bits that we recognise as inherently male/female.
So the question you should be asking is 'why are all the aliens in Mass Effect split into Female/Male? Why aren't they hermaphroditic or something else?'

But to answer your actual question, its probably cos' they couldn't be bothered to have character models for females and males of every single race.


To answer my own question:
because otherwise shephard getting it on with aliens would be even more creepy.

 

[JediMB]

Batarian females, do you REALLY want to see them?

Yes.

Because I'm curious about how they're different from Batarian males (and human women).

4 vaginas perhaps? Or sex through the eyes? Who knows.

We probably won't be seeing any naked Batarians (or Batarian porn), so that's hardly relevant.

I honestly thought you were talking about how they were sexually different, not for sake of porn but for sake of curiosity.

No, not really my thing. I'm more curious about facial features and the general body shape.

 

[ThePilgrim101]

It makes sense for Salarians, but not seeing any female Turians is like not seeing any human women, as they're said to have gender equality.

No, not seeing any human women is like not seeing human women. And gender equality is different from sex equality and neither are specifically relegated to the entire spectrum of species in ME.

And yes, I was aware of the all-female species. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

How does "gender equality" necessarily mean that all sexes from every species must be accounted for? What if the batarians had several different sexes? Do we need to represent hermaphadites too? What about gender-queer individuals? Or quadruple amputees?

There's a difference between equality and playing the representative game. Games like Fallout 3 did a good job in terms of equality; yeah, more men often showed up than women but the women you saw the most (such as the Paladin) actually had interesting personalities and her own character unlike Miranda from ME2 which was just a pair of grapefruit taped to a curvy broom stick.

If you want equality ask for better characterization instead of the default, "Women have tits. Stare at tits. Do fetch quest." Adding more of a particular gender does nothing but make give you even more useless characters.

 

[unoleian]

I see a lot of assumption here that other alien races are automatically predisposed to have two identifiable genders-- one masculine, and another with a higher voice and tits. Way to think outside the box, there, guys. Wonderful application of imagination all around.

Why couldn't a race have female counterparts just as "masculine" as the "males?" Is everything in the universe predisposed to have big beefy males, and slightly smaller, curvier counterparts?

I like the dog analogy from page one. You don't tell a male and female dog apart until you look between the legs.

I appreciate that Bioware haven't taken the lazy way out by simply making curvier male models with tits. Shows quite a bit more vision than some here are letting on.

 

[Stammer]

'why are all the aliens in Mass Effect split into Female/Male? Why aren't they hermaphroditic or something else?'

Not all of them are. But having a male and female in a species is EXTREMELY important for evolution. And it's almost a requirement for the kind of evolution required for a species with cognition and space-faring intelligence.

Asari are hermaphroditic, I can't remember what the codex says about vorcha but I do remember they've long since stopped evolving (so it's possible they've lost the necessity to find a mate to reproduce), and I don't even think I want to know how hanar reproduce lol.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Because modeling is hard.

I can vouch for that. I'll drink to it too.

 

[Phasmal]

I think having a female krogan character would be pretty cool.
But in answer, unnattractive female characters aren't allowed to exsist

 

[JediMB]

It makes sense for Salarians, but not seeing any female Turians is like not seeing any human women, as they're said to have gender equality.

No, not seeing any human women is like not seeing human women. And gender equality is different from sex equality and neither are specifically relegated to the entire spectrum of species in ME.

And yes, I was aware of the all-female species. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

How does "gender equality" necessarily mean that all sexes from every species must be accounted for? What if the batarians had several different sexes? Do we need to represent hermaphadites too? What about gender-queer individuals? Or quadruple amputees?

There's a difference between equality and playing the representative game. Games like Fallout 3 did a good job in terms of equality; yeah, more men often showed up than women but the women you saw the most (such as the Paladin) actually had interesting personalities and her own character unlike Miranda from ME2 which was just a pair of grapefruit taped to a curvy broom stick.

If you want equality ask for better characterization instead of the default, "Women have tits. Stare at tits. Do fetch quest." Adding more of a particular gender does nothing but make give you even more useless characters.

There's this thing called "the point" -- and you missed it.