On the "normal" women issue.

No they are characters from Baldurs Gate 2. Aerie, Viconia and Jaheira. What point he is trying to make on the other hand, i've got no clue.

They are the female love interests from BG2.

This was meant as a sigh of frustration at criticism from people who are either new fans or have short memories. 

Ok I see the OP point. Women were always like that in older Bioware games, but still charming in a way. It was just in ME3 that all of a sudden we had hotties like remade Ashley and Brooks popping up. ME3 had some really good looking women. And Miranda. So the downgrade is still a bit weird, coming from there. I just want Brooks back.

In defense, I gotta say I think I have thing going on already for that redhair on the Tempest, or it could be her accent. Often it's just in the voice, maybe it's the reason why I liked Brooks and Tali so much as well. And we never even saw Tali's face yet she was my favorite LI!

Damn.. where did my rant go towards? What is my purpose in life?

*drops mic*

Yes, but in a camp and self-aware way. Yes? No?

Yes in a self aware way. Still Mass Effect attracted another audience than what Bioware was used to. Many of my friends have no Interest in RPG's, but they all played Mass Effect. There is something about this particular franchise that gels with people.

Ok.

Herp derp.

The thing I noticed recently when I was hitchhiking was that in the current small-town area that I study in there's a lot of average looking people... the same kinds of faces you'd see in DA:I or MEA. They're not totally pretty but they're not ugly either, they just look average and BioWare wants to acknowledge this with their less than idea female characters (from a sexual POV) but as I drove into the big city that is around 50 miles from here it was striking to me how almost every god damn woman between 18-30 years old I saw looked stunning.

This is the thing that gets me, and it's something (CLICHE WARNING!) Witcher 3 gets right (...almost). See, in the Witcher there's a lot of really ugly people out in the farmlands and low-class areas, including the haggy ladies and big-nosed skelligans. You know what I think? It's kinda like back home where I live which incidentally is also not too far away from Poland - there's a lot of farmlands almost dominating the amount of square kilometers available and out there is where, in the past when there was more of a life to be had here, the peasants or the slightly socially reclusive types of people aka "introverts" sought out funny enough not all of them looked super beautiful and it shows in the heritage more often and not (there's the odd smoking hot girl out here every now and then), but in the city is where the life is for people of ages 18-30, maybe 40.

I'd like to think in ME1 and Andromeda that we meet so many diverse people because all sorts of Earthlings from all across the planet have migrated into space colonies and even when this oddysey began Earth was already a much more global place than it was now. In that sense I think it adds up but I do often find displeasure in how BioWare is so focused on not treading on toes that they almost always seem to place black guys next to white guys and then an indian and then less-ideal women next to ideal women or beautiful man-hunks next to the creepiest motherfucker you'd ever seen. It's too diverse to the point where it looses my immersion. Even if the world gets more globalized and we normalize better manners across race and sex in the future, I just don't believe it will work 100% of the time and too rarely do we ever see cliques of stereotypes or "girl's club" or anything resembling what cliques usually are: A socially reserved group of friends that only stick together based on a certain way they relate to each other. I still often see the smartest, prettiest girls hanging out in the top-popular groups. It happens all they way through youths and I believe my friend's mom who is a teacher (50 years old) also has a girl's club clique at her workplace that go to parties together - it's just how it works.

I just hate social justice when it comes to the point that it violates what is true to humanity, and cliques will not stop. I believe it's part of our psychology to be that way. Sorry for getting this deep btw.

While I usually don't agree with her in many things... "feminism is cancer" and all that... Liana K makes some good points.

Pebee is not bland. She is a literal racoon. And she has a belly button.

Meh, so far I like the female companions in this one. Cora is pretty boring and won't shut up about her Asari training, but I'd rather have a bland, no-nonsense professional on my team than a manic pixie dream girl. Vetra is cool because she's an atypical Turian, but we already had that with Garrus' Archangel arc and Nyreen in the ME3: Omega DLC. Peebee seems like a bizarro-world Liara, but I'm hoping there's more to her than that.