Unpopular opinions

Uhh... Did you forget that Shepard was artificially reconstructed out of a burned corpse? They had to completely rebuild every cells, organs and reattach bones to the way he was in 2183. They're really specific about using the word "reconstruct" and "rebuild".

You want to teach me basic Biology because a CGI montage show that dead cells could be revived and thawed?

Shepard was spaced, deprived of oxygen and burned from atmospheric entry. Actual death, not stasis. Ever heard of programmed cell death? Living cells are complex protein structures and functionally and structurally they're fragile as fuck. They die upon exposure to extreme temperature, pH level, pressure and oxygen deprivation. Its a process called denaturation. Ageing is a gradual functional decline of all organ systems, a physical manifestation caused by an accumulation of free radicals that extend the body's capacity to compensate oxidative stress.

Do you think Cerberus want to simulate free radicals for aging process on a brand new 3D-printed corpse they already have trouble resurrecting? Basic biology also never teach that cells that have undergo complete destruction and apoptosis could magically return back to normal.

Some of us learn don't learn biology from a video game.

The video mention light makeup.




Does these look like LIGHT military makeup to you?

If you keep on saying "personal choice", Ashley isn't a customizable character nor her looks decided by the players. Her makeover wasn't done to make her look more feminine.

And where does this notion that one must wear makeup to feel feminine?

Ashley is already feminine. She's already wearing makeup in ME1 and ME2. She didn't need more glitter, more pigments piled on her face. They're in a war and the first thing Ashley Williams shouldn't worry about was her night makeup supplies.




"The most challenging aspect in the game" for a character artist. Not the monsters. Not the aliens. Not the people populating the goddamn ending. But "everyone have their own idea of beautiful women".

This is not about creating a woman who look realistic or believable. Its about how hard it as to create women that was able to please everyone.

They have a character with a preexisting look for years, who are face scanned and then gave her a layer of shine because she's too 'plain and frumpy' to be visually pleasing as a female soldier.

Ashley didn't get her old look back. She didn't get her cute pink armor back. She couldn't tie her hair back again because that choice taken from her. She couldn't look like she's been through hell and back because the intention isn't to make Ashley look good or feel better for herself but for others to see her as appealing and to compete with other female characters. At what point does "personal choice" of a woman is being considered here?

Kaidan set an impossible standard for male characters?

Wasn't Mark Vanderloo one of the first male supermodel? Not just a fashion model or a struggling model but a frickin supermodel. He's the face of Hugo Boss. He does magazine covers, runways, fashion shows. Ben Stiller made a parody movie on his pout. Mark Vanderloo is hot and pretty but he was chosen for male player to roleplay as the handsome strong and powerful Shepard. He wasn't chosen for women to fantasize humping with.

In fact, male Shepard is very unpopular among female players.

You're insisting that Kaidan is heavily sexualized and objectified for female players almost to an equal to what they did to other female characters for male players because you finally notice he's hot, that he age gracefully, that his muscles are more defined that you can't stop comparing it to yourself, because there are girls like me who talk more about him glowing terms... and somehow that make him effectively sexualized for female audience..... and yet, he's allowed the option to be romanceable by gay male Shepard. So what, Kaidan's masculine attractiveness backfired?

Do you want to know why a woman like me think a man like Kaidan is appealing?

It was his personality, his words and his actions. He's kind, he's unintentionally funny, he's considerate, he's thoughtful, he's emphatic, he's honest but he's also stubborn, quick-tempered and always think good about others even if they absolutely don't deserve it. He's a guy who could say no to someone he loves especially when that someone have ultra-level persuasion skills to pacify or incite a war and could wrap even the most warmongering warlords or shrewd politicians around her pinky. He understood that he have his own personal responsibility for his actions and he tried to be an honorable man even if it meant risking what he loves. He doesn't like taking the easy way out for all of his problems and he doesn't do it by constantly haranguing her for a favor. He doesn't sit around cheering from some dark corner and lamenting how he could've been better when he could prove himself being capable on his own, with or without her encouragement. They're both independent people being in love and support each other's strength and weakness. She kill people with a bullet, he kill people with his mind. She make him feel like he wasn't born a freak, he make her feel strong enough to fight against the impossible. He sacrificed his home and his family for her, she wanted to save the galaxy for him. He made her feel loved and happy, she made him feel alive, literally. For a slice of love story in a video game, that is still freaking romantic.

Kindness, thoughtfulness, honest. A lot of these aren't impossible standards and are genuinely attractive traits in real people, both male and female. 

He's not just a bag of muscles and a dick that I want to hump against. Even if Kaidan doesn't have salt-pepper hair or sexy cleft chin or defined biceps, if Kaidan is less muscular, a tall ginger-haired man with receding hairline, I still would still find him attractive and still hook him up to Shepard  because after everything she's been through, she deserve someone like Kaidan. 

What all the character artist and the writer did to ME3 Ashley wasn't done with the intention to make her be as herself. It was to serve the audience with a version of Ashley Williams who had a complete extreme makeover from her looks down to her personality until she's a pale imitation of Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. She's more subdued because she's now an officer and a Spectre, her granddaddy issues and all the treatment against her family doesn't matter anymore. She no longer say she have a hard time differentiating aliens and animals. Her romance isn't about making her feel like she was worthy to be alive and loved by Shepard, its about how underneath her badassery, she's really really soft and filled with poetry and how everything she felt is too complicated for her and she need help. She didn't even go ballistic against Shepard for cheating on her, (and she's downright aggressive against Liara in ME1) instead she get even by imitating her love rivals. She play hard to get, she try to look adorably drunk, heavier makeup, burkini swimsuit armor and have her own sister as standby to help Shepard feel accomplished at resolving her personal issues.

If Kaidan could occupy her spot and do nothing of above, and still could mature, be independent and be as vibrant like the person he was, why couldn't Ashley be afforded to be a mature, independent and vibrant woman as well? Fyi, this isn't demonizing or setting an impossible standard for her (unless the idea of a mature, independent and vibrant woman is so foreign to you). Her value as a person isn't on how appealing she was to everyone or how low she could get before she need a man to rescue her. Ashley deserve to be a fully flesh out character than as someone filling the quota for the many women Male Shepard could bang. 

I thought they did it to make avatars a bit more realistic, because the female's upper arms were also made thicker, luckily. A lot of games' dolls make arms too ropey. I thought it had to do with graphics. I always liked how in Mass Effect all characters were more realistically proportioned. I have no idea how this is on topic, unless people do not like the avatars because they do not have gigantic upper bodies or boobs.

Fun fact playing as Male or Female Shepard is not the same as finding them physically attractive. Which is the basis of your entire argument that they turned Ash into a sex doll. And all the other female characters are overly sexuallized.

Well I have yet to run into a woman who says "You know what I love about Billy? I love how big is rack is. Oh and his balls OMG they are so massive they could crush a soda can with them. His eyes are little lapis lazuli dipped in little tubs of utterly butterly. His knees are like porpoise's heads. You can hear his thighs chafing from the other room as he walks. At night I enjoy nothing more then slapping his beer gut and watching it jiggle for hours on end"

Yes who would think Ash might get some character development in the several year span that is the game world. The issue with her Grandfather was because he is the only one to surrender to an alien attack. Which effected her family which is directly countered by her being part of the team that stopped Saren and the Geth/Reaper at the Battle of the Citadel. Before she was just a grunt now she is in a position of authority and that changes people.  As well a lot of time on the Normandy working with the different races and getting to know them kind of removes the bigotry build up by ignorance and fear. She has Shepard around when dealing with her sister stuff because even if not romanced they have a bond as fellow soldiers. And having someone around that she feels she can be honest about her feelings and to look for support isn't some terrible idea that shows women are weak emotional things. Because Steve does the exact same thing.  He is struggling with the emotional baggage of losing his husband. And trying to finally let him go because Steve knows he wouldn't want to be a weight around him dragging him down. And Steve reaches out to a male straight Shepard for emotional support to help him deal with it. The same way Shepard helps Ash with her problems.

You are literally citing character growth and development as some how showing regression in who she is because she didn't stay completely static and unchanging. 

I am serious in asking this. Are you an Geth? Because you seem to be failing to understand basic human emotions right now. Or maybe you have just lived a very sheltered life. Because you seem unaware of a lot of stuff going on here.

Clearly I am wasting my time talking about the science since you don't get what I wrote in that last post, I just gave you a Biology and Biochemistry 101 and a short version of free-radical theory of aging and you're still hung up with in-game sources, despite the fact that the game clearly stated that Cerberus use extensive surgery and tissue engineering in Shepard's reconstruction and they only get Shepard's brain functioning a year after they recovered the body. But I'll entertain you this last science-y bit. You don't need to breath air to be alive. You just need to maintain homeostasis within the cells. How do you think unborn babies stay alive in the womb? In fact there are ongoing research about liquid ventilation which have potential application in pediatric cases, diving and potentially space travel. But of course, you can explain it to me again how you don't get it so that you could explain about how basic science work to me.

BTW, this is a sailor reading from a manual about military-approved grooming standards.

"When wearing cosmetics, keep in mind that your natural appearance is the goal. Artificial, exaggerated or fashion cosmetics are not authorized [and shall not be obtained]. For example, fingernails or lipstick colors must be conservative and long false eyelashes cannot be worn while on uniform." "Lipliner, lipstick shall be in the color of natural pink or moderate reds only."

Mass Effect 1 and 2's Ashley Williams battle makeup tutorial

What you need; BB cream in neutral, powder blusher in soft pink, eyeliner in matte brown, mascara in black, moisturizer lip balm in matte pink

1. Start with a fresh face and dot tiny amount of BB cream at four corners or your face and blend well. Done.
2. Stare at the eyebrows, wiggle them and see if there's any stray hair out of place. When was the last time you tweeze? Tweeze them. Ouch. Oh no, there's ugly bald patch. Warm the eyeliner with your fingers and start making even stroke to cover the bald patches. Wiggle them again and see if it look natural or lopsided. Give up, borrow some guy's hair gel (alternative, saliva) and then dab them until all hair stick upward.
3. Warm the eyeliner again and line the eyes and slightly smudge it. Open the mascara, smell them to see if it gone bad. Then aggressively put comb through the eyelashes in zigzag motion until each eyelashes are covered like spider legs.
4. Make pouty face. Streak blusher on the sides of the face. Blend. Rub too hard that it look barely there on the skin. Is it bruising. Meh.
5. Rub lip balm on lips and finish.
6. Gather hair in a bun. Perfect. Let's kick ass.

Mass Effect 3's Ashley Williams "personal choice" battle makeup tutorial.

What you need; Primer. Foundation and concealer in Ivory. Bronzer/Contouring kit. Cream blusher. Face highlighter. Eyebrow kit (brush, eye gel/wax, eyebrowpencil, eyebrow highlighter). Eyeshadow palette. Gel eyeliner and mascara in black.  Lip liner in nude. Lip gloss in ice pink.

1. Moisturize the face and start dotting primer on forehead, cheeks and chin. Blend. Do the same with foundation, blend. Ignore the area near the hairline and neck where the skin don't match with the face.
2. Conceal and contour, blend.

3. Apply cream blusher on cheeks and blend in and area from corner of the nose to the ear. Apply highlight over the cheekbones.
4.  The eyebrows.

5. Apply primer over the eye. Use Taupe over the eyelid and fan it out upward. Use Matte black over the eyelid, silver-gray over the corner of the eye and fan it upward. Use a tapered brush and apply gel eyeliner around the eye and smudge it slightly.

6. Apply foundation over the lip. Outline the upper corner of the lips with the concealer or highlighter and use dark contour underneath the lip, blend. Outline the lips using the liner. Apply gloss and additional shimmer if its not shiny enough.

7. and then an hour later with hair iron and you're done.


Her new look is very impractical for work, even if she's not in the military. Its a party makeup because the only way you can see it look good was when it was at night. It will take me at least two hours just to look that way and it was unlikely to change since there's no in-game codex about drones applying futuristic makeup for futuristic human girls. And you need a lot of products and even touch ups just to maintain that look perfectly, let alone when you're on a military ship or in battlefield. You don't think her eyeliner and clumpy mascara wouldn't melt down eventually?

Of course, it is very practical for her to look hot and sexy in her new get up but it is impractical for Major Kaidan Alenko to look fit, healthy and strong because not like he's a combat biotic and the commanding officer of a special ops biotic division.

Then again, I'm glad you're done explaining how a woman work to me again because, clearly, I have no idea about that, do I?

"I'm bewildered by people reception over Ashley's new look as sexualization and then I pointed out that ME1/2 Ashley as plain, frumpy and butch for a female soldier in active duty military service."

Find the nearest adult woman and repeat the above sentence aloud and show a picture of ME1/2 Ashley and ME3 Ashley to her.

Because clearly




Your words. Not mine.


In a character-driven trilogy where majority of the plot is about NPC's character development. What game are you playing again?

After an expedition sent through the Shanxi-Theta mass relay was wiped out by a turian patrol fleet, a single ship survived and made it back to Shanxi itself. A retaliatory force was sent out by the commander at the colony, and the reinforcements destroyed the turian forces. Events escalated quickly; the turians sent more ships through the relay and captured Shanxi, but not before a message drone was sent out by the defenders, alerting the Alliance forces at Arcturus Station.

The Alliance defenders at Shanxi, besieged by the orbiting turians, were then forced to fight a guerrilla campaign on the ground. The turians, however, slowly squeezed the defenders into submission. Dropping orbiting debris, the turians leveled entire city blocks just to destroy one marine fire team whenever they attempted to procure food and supplies. Eventually, with the troops starving and civilians dying every day, the garrison surrendered and the turians occupied the colony.

However, the turians then faced logistical problems of their own as their unique biology required them to import all of their food. Nevertheless, the turian forces believed they were secure, and that the handful of ships they had defeated represented the bulk of human naval forces. They were unprepared when the Second Fleet under Admiral Kastanie Drescher launched a powerful counteroffensive and evicted them from Shanxi.

In response, the turians began mobilizing for full-scale war. However, after seeing the turians forced off of Shanxi, the Citadel Council realised just how well-trained, equipped and adaptable the Alliance forces were, and understood that a war between the turians and the Alliance could be devastating to the galaxy. They intervened and brokered a truce.

Her grandfather choose to surrender because they're under seige and the turians launch orbital bombardment on his people. He choose not to sacrifice his people and get disgraced for it until his death.



Ashley's family name might have been redeemed publicly but she still blame her grandfather for being weak and set herself a goal that she need to be stronger than him. After what happened to Udina. Kaidan questioned himself whether he's still honorable to his code but Ashley questioned herself about how she was incapable for making her own decisions for herself. But apparently its the final blow for her because her judgement isn't to be trusted anymore that she needed someone who could guide her so she wouldn't screw it up again for making wrong decisions or trusting the wrong people. Because it was really that easy to break a single woman, who survived through years of rigorous military training since she was 16, her unit's massacre, the first geth invasion, Sovereign, Collector's kidnappings, Cerberus and another reaper invasion.


But you just said

So, what? Is this like the first time you talk to a woman who don't fit your idea of how a woman should respond? Not emotional enough for you?

I agree completely.  The statement that got me into this conversation was this one:



followed by this statement:




... and as far as I know, the IRL military does not have a regulation specifically prohibiting the use of the lip gloss.  The regulations are all about color and not using colors that pop... so a dark red matte lipstick would not fly but a more natural pink shade, even it it was somewhat glossy variety, would.  The colors used on Ashley, IMO, were not really out of line with IRL military regs.  The video I posted (and there are several others) shows that some military women do indeed wear lip gloss to work.  It also shows that some military women spend quite a bit of time applying foundations and such to even out their skin coloring and complexions.  They do apply eye shadow, eye liner and mascara.  It also shows that some even darken their eyebrows.  I'm sure there are girls who don't spend as much time applying party makeup as the soldier in the video did applying her everyday face.

I'm not denying that Ashley was made more sexual in ME3... and a lot of people object to that.  IMO, the men were also made more sexual in ME2 and 3 by increasing their biceps and aging them only in ways that are attractive (i.e. salt and pepper hair... not huge gray streaks; the deepening of a chin cleft and not the addition of lots of, say, sagging jowls).

I'm not even saying the amount of the increase in sexuality was precisely equal... I'm just saying that Bioware did not take steps to make either gender "less sexually attractive"... and I'm saying that the quote used does not say that making the women only more sexual was Biowares "priority."

Personally, Ashley's makeup is not something that bothers me since the game also inserts much about relationships that goes a little deeper than looks... and most other games I've played don't do that.  Even with the changes made to Ashley in ME3, the roleplay of a relationship with her can be about so many other things... overcoming past transgressions, for example; equality in career development (how does the player choose to have Shepard react to her becoming a Spectre?), even establishing basis for having a friendly "ex" relationship.  Yes, her dialogue could have been made so much more (the entire game could have been written better)... but there are still opportunities there for a variety of relationships with her... It is probably an unpopular opinion, but my opinion is that she is not portrayed as "just a blow up doll" in any of the three games.

Doesn't it offer the highest Damage Protection value?... and didn't someone on the old BSN run the numbers and determined that the added Damage Proteciton was more than the added shield protection of the Predator LMH armors, allowing the same "soldier" to absorb almost double the damage before dying?... making the Collossus armors the "best" armor (i.e. most protective) armor in the game overall.  In addition, there are enemy attacks in the game that bypass shields, totally negating the added shield protection offered by the Predator LMH armors.

Nice. I never number crunched beyond the stats that were displayed in game, but I remember having Colossus VII or so and it still being better than all the junk Xs I kept finding and melting down. So happy when I finally got my X.

Man that takes me back. Colossus X and Master Spectre Gear. Good times. I kinda want to play Mass Effect again but I got so much other stuff to do, including finishing other playthroughs.

I also miss holstering and drawing my weapons and having my squad do the same.

Ashley/Kaidan should've thrown Liara at evabot like Leng threw the asari at a squadmate on Thessia

since Garrus was an option to be recruited in ME1, he should've been an option in ME2 instead of being mandatory

James should be required for Priority Earth

How come?

Fair enough