#Mass effect 1 meuitm female armor buged series#

Though the Mass Effect series features an individual savior - Commander Shepard - it is also about serving a greater purpose, and about sacrificing the individual for the good of the many. These examples are vivid and apt in light of current discourse around immigration policies and the offensive laws being debated and passed in the American Southwest as much as Mass Effect is about civilization-destroying monsters of unimaginable power, it is also about us, as humans, and how our inclinations toward distrust and bias affect our ability to make sound decisions, and to see circumstances as clearly as we might. There are also lots of other examples in Mass Effect of human-alien tension and prejudice, interactions that criticize racism and human nature with a thin veneer of sci-fi narrative over top. If IГўв‚¬в„ўd kept her alive, I imagine her character would have eventually arced in favor of alien acceptance, but I was not down with listening to her alien-bash that long.)

(I am so juvenile, in fact, that I refer to her as Гўв‚¬Е“Ass-leyГўв‚¬Вќ. I could not get rid of Ashley and her offensive comments quickly enough. I know lots of folks have love for Ashley, and to be fair, she represents a more realistic human response to a galaxy in which we are forced to work with often-condescending aliens for the good of all. The first game features a team member named Ashley, a human who is at best suspicious of aliens and at worst openly bigoted.

#Mass effect 1 meuitm female armor buged skin#

No matter ShepardвЂ™s skin tone, the Mass Effect series does a lot with race and racism/xenophobia within its narrative, some of it under the radar, some of it overt. On the other hand, how many big-budget games depict a woman of color as the protagonist? I tried to research this and beyond the obvious ( MirrorвЂ™s Edge, the Portals) the results were too depressingly slim even to report. Who is that guy? WhereГўв‚¬в„ўs Shepard? ShepardГўв‚¬в„ўs not male! Some 80% of players choose the male version of the character, so of course heГўв‚¬в„ўs going to get the marketing spotlight (although this will be changing soon). And it is! The lady version of the character is so memorable and feels such a natural part of the story (thanks in no small part to Jennifer HaleГўв‚¬в„ўs fantastic voice acting) that watching a trailer only to see some dudeish lunkhead come barrelling onscreen is bewildering. I did it because I donГўв‚¬в„ўt see queer women of color as protagonists very often, not in video games, but not anywhere else in media either.ДЇans of Lady Shepard often talk about how jarring it is to see Mass Effect promotional materials showing the default male character instead. The character I impose on the game avatar is multiracial, which is likely to be the norm by the year 2183 when Mass Effect takes place, although thatГўв‚¬в„ўs not why I did it. My Commander Shepard is impatient, impulsive, committed to social justice, a survivor, and a queer woman of color. Players can specify their own Commander ShepardвЂ™s gender and physical appearance with some precision, and even, to a degree, her politics and identity. The Mass Effect series is one such example. Some games even outside the MMO sphere have since taken the extreme character customization route. It occurred to me then that although my ability to change games culture as a monolithic juggernaut was limited, I could at least help reshape the visual landscape to be less uniformly white and conventionally Гўв‚¬Е“prettyГўв‚¬Вќ.

She stood out in a crowd like a brightly-spangled circus pony in a sea of cattle. However, when EverQuest 2 rolled around, I went a different way and impulsively created a heavy-set female-identifying character who was also dark-skinned with a gleaming mane of silver hair. I am not sure why I assume it was aspirational. I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite blog on the internets.Д«ack when I used to play the MMOs, the game characters I created always tended to look the same - pale-skinned, vibrant-haired, brightly-hued eyes.