The Kett (Game Informer Video)

Nov 15, 2016 14:47:41 GMT shechinah said:

Nov 15, 2016 10:31:29 GMT hammerstorm said:

I don't care if they look like human, bug or some plant. I'm more interested in that they have a alien culture, society and how they thinking. For me it is what matters to me when I think alien.

I agree. There's times where I've come across aliens that look nothing like humans yet whose behavior and culture is very human. Similarly, I've come across human-looking aliens that act very alien. 

What determines wherever an alien feels alien to me is how they act, think and behave: I like aliens that has a sense of feeling alien. If an alien has the most alien design but still acts mostly or entirely human then dosen't matter how alien it looks to me: it'd still feel like a human except in a bizarre suit.

Note: I don't necessarily need an alien to be a case of the Blue and Orange Morality trope for them to seem alien, I just prefer that they don't exhibit human cultural traits if it dosen't seem to make sense that they would develope those traits given their background.

Just adding my two cents to an interesting discussion.

I'll use the Rachni as an example because I love the Rachni: The Rachni looked like bugs but what moved them to alien bugs for me and made me love them was the way they thought and behaved. Take the way they spoke in the description they used. It showed what seemed like an alien way of percieving things. Yet how alien they were did not mean you were unable to understand them or empathise with them. You might not be fully able to comprehend something but you could still understand what it was about to a degree.

Example: the Rachni's song and its significance. The Rachni encountered in the facility are aggressive because they're basically like children who've been raised in a closet in complete isolation and silence. You can feel pity and sympathy for these Rachni because they basically went insane from unintended torture from infancy and now nothing can be done for them than to give them a merciful death.

That's why I'm not that upset about the design of the Khett because again, what will determine how alien I think they seem is how they think, act and behave. I've seen eldritch horror-styled aliens that think and behave human and I've seen human-like aliens that behave, well, alien so I don't consider appearance to be an indication of how alien or human something might be including in terms of culture. I'm content to wait and see how this will play out.

The Hanar design basically look like a floating jellyfish but before they became a joke race, they felt alien because of, again, how they thought and behaved. The Khett can look humanoidish and still prove to be one of the most alien races we've yet seen in Mass Effect.

Note: What is also interesting about the Rachni is that their verbal description bore similarities to synesthesia, a human condition. It's a form of perception that is alien to most people. It's an example of how you can use real world aspects as inspiration for fictional ones.