Canadian Delicacy - The Kaidan Alenko Thread

I have read every single post on this thread, and I do mean all of them.
Kinda sad that I missed out on so many good discussions because I was late to the Kaidan Alenko fandom.

I came here to this positive environment because I could find nothing but hatred for the guy, and I did not understand why. All the same topics have been brought up here at some point, and it was the exact same things I could find no matter where I looked.

On youtube or forums I could find nothing but the exact same words brought up over and over again, he is boring, whiny, and distrustful.
I have seen the romance and non-romance conversations on youtube over and over, and I do not understand where they are pulling out these arguments from.

He has the most interesting background, killing a Senior Turrian Commander with (flawed) L2 implants at the age of 17, losing the girl he loved, and almost single-handedly closing down an entire company in the process. He is a powerful Biotic using old hardware, suffers from Migraines, but does not let it interfere with his performance. This he brings up once in a conversation but just as quickly brushes it off, saying it’s nothing more than a headache, and not the debilitating condition that it is.
He has his life together and he does not need Shepard to make a name for himself or push himself to get ahead in life like other characters i can mention *cough* Garrus *cough*.

The whole Horizon debacle I understand can rub people the wrong way, but people are looking at the whole thing with a mindset that all people can use to look at a conversation after the fact and know exactly what to say to get the best outcome, it even has a word, it’s called hindsight.
I have had arguments/fights with my boyfriend, and in the heat of the moment have had no idea what to say and even say the wrong things. I think it’s rare for anyone to know exactly what to say or do when you are angry, only to figure it out hours later when it’s all cooled down.
Many arguments always started with, Shepard should have said this or Shepard should have done that, and they are correct, but Shepard cannot see the future, and in hindsight, we can all be clever about a conversation and roll our eyes at the outcome.

As for the voice actor and Carth Onasi, I have read all about that too, many people hating on Kaidan because he also voiced Carth, or to project that character on to Kaidan is just petty in my opinion. Carth may be whining (not a word I like to use) but if they actually played the game and listened to his story they would understand why. His wife literally died in his arms and he lost his son because a man he respected betrayed him. If you are not allowed to be distrustful or complain a bit about it, what kind of soulless individuals are these people? If someone I loved died in my arms I would be sad/angry about it too.

I love Gabriel Sbarge's voice acting, it’s very unique. To have the ability to make a raspy voice sound so natural. One youtube comment I found said the voice was monotone, I was seriously considering telling that person to look up the word in a dictionary.

I hear inflections, emotions and at one point he even does voice acting, within voice acting, with the line “I was at the helm of the dreadnought that killed your father”.

Regarding Horizon, large parts of the fandom suffer from a bad case of Fourth Wall Myopia. It's honestly astonishing sometimes how many players can't wrap their heads around the fact that from what Kaidan, and Ashley for that matter, could see is that Shepard wasn't killed and brought back. Shepard's death was faked, so they seemingly endured two years of heartbreak for nothing. All of the information that might have convinced them that Shepard could still be trusted was being actively withheld from them.

Hell, immediately after leaving Horizon the Illusive Man admits that he was purposefully leaking information about Shepard's survival to the Alliance and the Council. I highly doubt those leaks made Shepard look loyal.

Just popping in to say that Kaidan has always been one of my favorite squadmates of the series. He's been on my mind lately, because I have been tinkering with my canon Shepard.

I decided to make her bisexual, due to the allowance of passage of time, spread out over the course of three games. My Shepard was originally straight with a Kaidan to Garrus arc (I have always liked Kaidan's interaction and romance with a mostly-renegade character in ME1), so I orchestrated soulmate-Garrus' tragic death on the Suicide Mission to open up a slot. After trying out Liara and Traynor in the third, I decided to swap it around: utilize Liara in the first (my least favorite of the options in ME1, but it flows well with the console bug during the ME2 prologue, and Liara's continuing spotlight throughout the series), and closing the series with a pair of well-suited Sentinels.

I mean, it seemed criminal to not romance Kaidan, especially as I already dedicated a permanent slot in the squad to him. And, it turns out that Kaidan works really well as new romance in ME3 too.

I was always under the impression that Vyrnnus had it out for Kaidan specifically, but that didn't mean he would have been any less harsh toward the other students. Even his own men apparently didn't like him, since they delayed getting him treatment after his confrontation with Kaidan; he likely would have survived if he had been treated right away.

On the subject of Foundation, there are a lot of things throughout that series that contradict how events were described in-game. The general sequence of events is probably true, but I think a lot of things are either exaggerated or imagined by Brooks as she's reading over the files.

Yes please, I was so hoping we would get to see some ME1 Kaidan in the trailer, but we only get the ME3 model for about 0.7 seconds. And that is even for a shot where he replaced someone else. He is in a shot with the new ME1 female Shepard pointing her gun at the screen, but only a bit of the side, the face not even visible...

I'm really hoping that Legendary Edition will revitalize this community and we'll be able to discuss Kaidan some more. There probably won't be anything new to discuss since it'll still be the same scenes, but maybe some fresh faces will discover Mass Effect for the first time and find their ways here.

Yes! Always lather on the artwork. Few things make me more happy than (m)Shenko art.