Rebellions, Genophages & In-game Depictions - Krogan Whitewashing 101

It's one of the few times I'm pleased that certain choices can backfire on the player instead of them being able to persuasion check their way out of it. Wrex's responsiveness to Shepard's decisions made him feel more alive. Whether we agree or not, Wrex stayed true to character when he feels betrayed by Shepard. That, I wish we had more of. Like having Tali still grumpy at Shepard for overriding her wishes in the second game instead of saying they were right or Garrus growing cold if he found out Shepard betrayed Wrex. Given that he himself felt betrayal from Sidonis, that should not have flown with Shepard screwing Wrex over.

Given how much complaining there is about companions kissing Shepard's boot, why shouldn't companions express their own opinions? It's not like Shepard is never wrong or gets preachy on both renegade and paragon sides. Tali does get wary of Shepard if she's denied the geth data in the first game so if her feedback about her own people gets ignored, why should she trust Shepard to with the fate of her people? Should Shepard trust Cerberus or the Council to know what's best for humanity?

Not sure how there's much contempt given for decisions made. In fact, there's a surprising amount of crap that Shepard gets away with from insults to flat out screwing other teammates over. Why should loyalty be given without condition if it's not earned? Javik starts right off doubting Shepard on their capability and if Wrex withdraws his troops, Garrus' people suffer even more losses. That's when it should be harder to be supportive of a commander who screwed up.

Succinctly put. BioWare is rather blatant with their preferred moral choices and goes out of their way to condemn players for choosing to go against their 'right decision'. Not sympathizing with the Krogan, or even just expressing worries about their actions both past and present, is abominable in their eyes.

Shepard is free to express disdain for the Salarians, to attack Primarch Victus' character, even condemn the Rachni, Hanar, and/or Eclor to extinction with a quip and a joke. But choosing to sabotage the cure? That's the choice of monsters, and even hardened & heartless Renegades will express sadness over tricking the poor Krogan.

Well, Shepard is not an oracle and can't foresee everything - that Wrex has another mole in STG, that he will withdraw instead of playing it smart, etc. Vakarian also knows that it was the price for Salarian cooperation on the Crucible, the only thing that can possibly save his people [and the rest of the galaxy].
TBH, even on my first playthrough (when the genophage was cured for the first and only time) I found the fact, that galactic superpower has to grovel in order to be "saved" by the infantry from backwater planet, improbable. The Krogan can offer nothing that really matters, their importance is bloated to almost laughable level.
Again, I'm focusing on Paragon Shepard during the Tuchanka storyline specifically. The screaming difference in treatment of Paragon and Renegade Shepards during that particular arc is undeniable.

Because in many cases they are the same person.

The narrative bias would like to gloss over the fact, but there are Krogan still alive in the modern timeline of the trilogy that actively participated in the Rebellions. Drack fought in it, killing several Council Spcetres, Wrex was present during the trailing end of the fighting, Liara's mom mentions how her Krogan father and Asari mother were apart of it before they killed each other. Okeer was a participant in the war too. Heck, the Patriarch on Omega was a veteran of the Rachni Wars as well as the Rebellions. Etc. Being biologically immortal means that 1383 years is a completely different frame of reference for the Krogan and the rest of the galaxy; save maybe the Asari. It might be ancient history for the rest of society, but its still very much a recent event for the Krogan.

And Wrex absolutely tries to absolve the Krogan of guilt from the fighting. To quote his own stated view on the Krogan Rebellions, as well as the Genophage: "To thank us for wiping out the Rachni, the Council neutered us all." No mention of what lead up to the fighting. No touching on Krogan actions during the war. Just the galaxy being racist against his people for precisely zero reasons.

You are right that the Salarians view their uplifting of the Krogan as a mistake, even captain Kirahe says as much in ME 1, to which Wrex angrily responds with: "We are not a mistake." Even so, the Salarians take responsibility for their actions and take care of the Krogan as best as they can. They can't wind back time, and they can't just erase the cultural interactions the Krogan have had with the rest of the galaxy so they make do with things like the Shroud. If the Salarians were really as evil as the slanted narrative makes them out to be, then why would they waste time and resources building a colossal terraforming device specifically designed to help heal Tuchunka from Krogan inflicted nuclear holocaust? Why would they specifically tailor the Genophage to only reduce birthrates and not sterilize their whole population?

Char is an ideal Krogan, you are correct, one who doesn't demand handouts and integrates with the rest of society peacefully. He is an example that the Krogan didn't need the Genophage cure in order to go help fight the Reapers. He and his Asari wife drop everything and immeditly set out to aid the galaxy in whatever way they could. Meanwhile Wrex just sits twiddling his thumbs, all while being a complete prick to his non-Shepard allies.  

Why would I need to mention Drack's granddaughter? She's a good engineer and mechanic... Congratulations and all but that has nothing to do with the Genopahge and the narrative bias surrounding the Krogan. I suppose I could point out how the narrative sets her up as the lone voice of reason against a stereotypically racist Salarian character in the form of Director Tann. Or at how Morda tries to pull the same stunt that Wrex does; and then immeditly thows a temper tantrum when she doesn't get her way; but then what's new there?

The point of discussion was that Krogan who participated in the rebellions are still alive in the modern timeline of the games. As such the Genophage is not some antediluvian curse inflicted for obscure reasons, but rather a consequence for actions committed during the fighting; many of which were supported by said living Krogan.  




And Wrex's warped perspective on the Genophage, and Krogan culpability leading up to it's deployment, is important because he is the game's de facto choice for leader of the Krogan people. This isn't some ramblings of a random pedestrian on the street but rather the stated stance of an individual in charge of an entire species' interaction with the rest of galactic society. This is the equivalent of a Flat Earth-er being appointed as chairman of NASA and then being in charge of all space operations for the rest of the world. The fact that Wrex is entering into negotiations with other species with a pre-established bias is troubling because if he sees the Krogan as doing no wrong, what's to stop him from repeating the same mistakes that lead to the Rebellions in the first place?

A perfect example of this is in the video clip you posted of him and Garus at the Krogan monument. Despite only casually making a comment about how maybe the Krogan share some of the blame Wrex aggressively snaps back at Garus. Like him and his people had just deployed the Genophage. Does that sound like someone that would make for a good choice for negotiations? If he is that belligerent with a lowly C-Sec officer then what is he going to be like with the Primarch? Oh wait, he insults the head of the Turian government in game three too. He practically calls Victus a horrible warmongering racist only moments after the other learning his only son died defending the Krogan population from a Cerberus attack.

And this, the game tells us, is a voice of reason for the Krogan.

Sub-point to that topic, the bias of the games also conveniently skips over the fact that over 10 consecutive Turian lifetimes have passed since the conclusion of the fighting in the Krogan Rebllions; and 32 and a half Salarian lifetimes. 1300 years (rounded down), divided by 120 years (of an assumed standard Turian life span) compared to not even a single Krogan lifetime. Where's the mention of the three garden worlds Krogan dropped asteroids on and rendered uninhabitable, even into the modern timeline? Or at how the Krogan ate captive prisoners alive? What about the numerous planets ecologically devastated by Krogan colonists? No sign, instead Wrex merely generalizes the decedents of the millennia old Turians as the villains in his mind.




And Char's death, while tragic, doesn't mean that all the Krogan would have died out sans cure. ME 2 Wrex was planning on aiding Shepard fight the Reapers even with the Genophage hanging over him and his people. Unless he planned on suiciding everyone there must have been an obvious measure he intended on using to avoid such a scenario. The fact that game three turns around and has him not only renege on his promise, but also have every single member of the Krogan species suddenly die out without the cure speaks to the bias in the narrative.

How long will it take for the krogan species to be wiped out, if the genophage isn't cured?

Can't really disagree. Krogan get major woobification in ME3. Same thing happens with the geth. The game's writing in general suffers from a lack of any sort of nuance that the previous 2 arguably possessed.

Even if one thinks Wrex is "different" and a "mutant" as the story and dialouge seems to imply (i'm not so certain), it's actually pretty dumb to support curing the Genophage given that it directly undermines Wrex's base of power in controlling access to fertile females as was established in ME2.

Cure the genophage and what's to stop the next Warlord Murderface from having his clan's females popping out new warriors around the clock, stomping Clan Urdnot into the dirt and going conquering like in the glory days?

Or, even if Wrex is some godlike universally accepted (among krogan) messiah figure who is unassailable, what happens when he eventually dies of old age and the next generation forgets/rewrites history? The ones in Wrex's time already seemed to suffer from a victimization myth (in reality, the Citadel species could have rendered them extinct, but chose to instead devote considerable effort to engineer a manner in which they could coexist) that an even more imperialistic leader could easily prey upon.

The mathematics of how stupid fast krogan can exponentially grow their population, and how long they can live, only leads to one eventuality, and that is competition for habitable worlds and ultimately resources against the other Levo-protien species (turians are probably in danger too just because of history).

Failing the genophage, only solution I see is Javik's. Albiet one wouldn't have to directly exterminate them oneself.

Confine them to their homeworld, take away spaceflight technology and nature will probably run its course on them (similar to the Drell).

Depends. In the first two games, and in the background lore, the Krogan were a race in decline since the Rebellions, but not in any immediate danger of going extinct. In game three though, not curing the Genophage results in 100% fatalities in the span of a few weeks.

Even accounting for battlefield losses, it seems rather odd that the Krogan loose all of their members at such an accelerated rate. Does the Genophage cure grant them an invulnerability shield during the Reaper war? Does it also increase intelligence as well as fertility rates? Because from what I saw, they approached combat exactly the same, regardless of the choice made by the player. So unless they were also sending their females off as frontline soldiers there is no way that the Krogan numbers should have been that reduced from the fighting so as to render them completely extinct. 

Hell, when sabotaging the cure Wrex even makes mention of pulling support from the war effort and focusing on his own people. Even after killing him, the Krogan withdraw a large portion of their forces. If anything, those actions should result in fewer dead Krogan not more.

I know there were good Germans in Germany during WW2, people who did nothing wrong and were not privy to the atrocities going on. That being said, the resulting destruction visited upon their country was necessary and, innocent civilians or no, said country had to bear the responsibilities for causing hostilities. War sucks, no denying that, but it is important to remember who started the war during the Rebellions. Who was the one to drop asteroids on garden worlds and cannibalize prisoners? Im sure there were Krogan that didn't want to commit those actions, but their collective government did, and by that body's actions all Krogan were guilty. It works the other way too, a person might detest their government but economic stability or prolonged peace is something they can enjoy regardless of their feelings.




So it's okay to dismiss flat out murdering people on the basis of "they deserved it"? You say I am being too harsh by judging the entirety of the Krogan for the Rebellions, and need for the Genophage deployment, yet you are completely willing to categorize all members of two separate species as deserving of death should they be caught simply because of their comparative status in society and/or the outcome of the war? By that logic it would it be okay for a poor person to just go and murder a rich person and their family since they are "better off"? Or, going back to the WW2 analogy you brought up, it would be like saying a survivor of the Holocaust, or one of their decedents, is perfectly justified in killing any German they see, regardless of whether or not they had anything to do with said atrocity, because "they deserved it".

No. The Krogan have, by and large, been a violent and antagonistic people since the Rebellions. That is why they are distrusted by the rest of society in the modern timeline and it's this underlying hatred and bigotry, on behalf of the Krogan, that are keeping them on Tuchunka. There is no galactic law that forbids them from leaving their home planet; all the patrols and security surrounding that star system is to enforce the DMZ. Given Krogan history with access to their own military, as well as their collective actions since the war, I can't really fault the rest of society for remaining leery of them. However, nothing is stopping more Krogan from being like Char or Kesh except their own hostility towards the rest of the galaxy.

Unfortunately, they would rather all stay on Tuchunka, content in their echo chambers of how evil and racist the Council races are, then bother with trying to rebuild and integrate with the rest of civilization. The fact that Wrex seems to be the only Krogan who actually attempts this (given his background from ME 1 and his actions in ME 2) attest to the fact that the vast majority of the species would rather mope around, fantasizing about killing the hated Turians and Salarians and/or waiting for a "deserved" handout rather than taking their own initiative.




Funnily enough, the Quarians actually do suffer from pronounced racism of the rest of the galaxy. Considering how the Council threatened to use military force on the Flotilla, rather than let them colonize an out of the way, and currently uninhabited, planet as well as their complete disbarment of their species from the Council government due to a spontaneous development of AI they had no control over, speaks volumes. The narrative could have easily showcased that mistreatment of a species, but instead it would rather whitewash the Krogan, and then demonize those same Quarians for daring to try and hurt the Geth.

Out of those two races the mistrust visited upon the Krogan is far more justified given their past and present actions than it ever was for the Quarians.




The fact that the game defaults to the Krogan being more important, the choices concerning them more valid, than the Rachni is what I was getting at. Both the Krogan and the Rachni are actually very similar in how they are viewed by the galaxy, and at how much damage and destruction they caused in the past (though the Krogans arguably did more). Yet, out of the two of them, it is the scary space bugs who work to rectify past wrongs and actively work with the rest of the galaxy in the face of the Reaper threat.

The queen was ready to help, ready to die for the cause, no questions asked or restitutions demanded, yet the narrative sweeps her and her species under the rug. It lets Shepard and his/her companions make fun of the Rachni, even express gladness at their participation in making the species extinct, but then forces otherwise pragmatic and heartless Renegades to express sorrow and remorse at lying to the Krogan; a species who was perfectly willing to let the rest of the galaxy burn around them unless their demands were met.