What type of alien race should we meet next?

It's because it's the optimal shape for a living being to harness the spiral power, duh. 

Didn't you ever watch Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann?

Eh, Mass Effect already has enough space magic already thanks. 😄

Ok, so I finally have some time to kill to bang out a few thoughts on this.

First, I think it's more productive to stick to either a two legged, bilaterally symetric design (for animation ease) or something that avoids the pitfalls of not doing so (more on that later). This is to discuss designs that BioWare might be more likely to adopt because it'd fit easier into the existing animation framework and thus make more NPCs capable of doing anything the current models do, or even become player controlled classes in MP or SP (if they ever let us play an alien as a main character).

So with that in mind, here are my ideas.

Option 1- Bilateral symmetry =/= humanoid: ME suffers more and more from Rubber Forehead Alien syndrome the more aliens it adds that are just humans with weird head things. The angara are of course the latest example and they look like someone just copied all of the "tentacle head" aliens from Star Wars and stuck'em in a blender. Pity since there's much better alien designs in Star Wars they could've used. Instead of ripping off Twi'Leks and Togruta, why not try an Ithorian or Dug?

  

The former shows you can still do bilateral "near humanoid" that can fulfill just about every NPC action you require of it but with a far more alien design in the upper body. The latter offers another possibility for variation: body posture. I made a post in the very excellent "Visual Critique of Aliens in Andromeda" thread discussing krogan design. Now the krogan design got the alien upper body alright. But I argue they could've benefitted from a posture change as well. We love krogan as the shotgun toting space dinosaurs yes? Well why not give them a more theropod shape? Pitch them forward, extend their tails and necks and voila. More "alien" alien, and it makes more sense to boot. Now granted that is pushing the limits of staying within the animation framework but I don't believe it breaks them.

Another option is playing around with upper body limbs. Who says they have to have just two arms coming out of shoulders with one elbow joint? Play around with multiple limbs, limbs in odd places, stalk eyes. The opportunities are endless. You might not win any SETI awards but you'll definitely have the requisite variety while still sticking to what's easy to animate.

Option 2- Design around the animation constraints: this is both the more interesting and in my opinion more creative option. The goal is to design an alien that's really different that what's come before but without having to build a crazy model with ridiculous animations. While these options may not show up in multiplayer necessarily, they can still be really sweet.

-the floating/flying/hovering alien: we sort of already have this with the Hanar, being suspended in mass effect fields while out of water. BioWare cheats further by never really having them move, but I don't think anyone would've been terribly against seeing them just float from place to place. Obviously it would be amazing to see them in action in the water, though I suspect stuff like that would be limited only to certain prescripted sequences (i.e cutscenes). Another example would be Watto from Star Wars. Again there you play with size, proportions but the flight still enables him to do what you need him to do.

-The Parasite: If you have parasitic aliens, they're usually the bad guy (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Faculty, Animorphs). But if you think about it, that'd still be a really clever way of introducing an alien species while actually doing nearly fuck all in terms of visual design or new animation. The parasite also comes built in with a few different perspectives and issues you could explore: the morality of taking hosts, the question of voluntary hosts, how they view us, a possible move/search for symbiosis.

-The Encounter Suit: simply put, an alien that's in a suit because it can't survive in our atmosphere without it. As a result you don't have to do any desiging beyond the suit itself and can cheat on a bunch of requirements. Again we have these in ME, three of them no less but arguably only one actually does it right. The hanar kind of count, except we know what they look like. Next up the quarians who mostly squander this because a) they're humanoid anyway and they're basically just bubble boys. And finally the volus. The volus are still bilaterally symmetric, so points off but on the other hand, we have no freakin idea what they look like under those suits. They could be anything (that's bilaterally symmetric). In terms of behavior this is ultimately squandered as well as the volus are just another Planet of Hats, but the physical design should still be noted. Now let's look at this concept done right:



For those that don't know, this is Ambassador Kosh. He's a Vorlon. Now go and watch Babyon 5 because you're really missing out (and if you like the ME Trilogy you'll really love B5). I'll wait. Back? Good. Now there are other reasons why Kosh is impressive but for the purposes of this discussion the best thing about him is his simplicity and how sometimes not overdesigning yields the best results. As you can tell this is just a weird frame over some dude's shoulders and a curtain to cover it up. It was a show in the 90s, they couldn't do crazy aliens either. In fact with this particular alien, they couldn't even get it through the doors right- they made the suit too wide, and thus any time they need to get him in a room he actually comes in sideways. No, really. Anyway, the point is the limitations of the medium and the time forced them to go this route and also to use him sparingly. The result was one of the most "alien" aliens I've ever seen. You can't really relate to or call familiar any part of him. He just comes in (whether he rolls, lumbers, walks or glides is just as much a mystery as anything else about him), says his pieces and scurries off again. Yes, the applicable tropes and characterizations of doing an alien like this aren't as broad as some of the other choices. You pretty much have to use him as the incomprehensible, weird, possibly wise thing you only see occasionally and little else. But you can make a more demystified version that could fill the role the elcor or hanar have thus far- strange beings that stand around at random places and communicate with you sometimes but otherwise just go about their own affairs.

-The Hidden/Taking a Form You're Familiar With: these are again usually reserved for more fantastical sci-fi settings where telepathy and possibly other perception or even reality warping powers are in effect. They're like the Encounter Suit aliens above but skip the suit in favor of projecting (or perhaps even shapeshifting) as an existing, more mundane species. Applications of this could vary from a concept like what the asari were thought to be, where they appear to take on attractive characteristics of whatever species is perceiving them, to of course seemingly godlike beings like the GMan in Half Life (Mass Effect hasn't really tread near the latter end of the spectrum, but you never know). Another interesting option is if the projection is physical, if the alien assimilates other races and then creates duplicates of them to interact. An example would be the Thing though of course it needn't be as random, or aggressive. The thorian could also count I suppose.


Anyway, just some ideas for how you could inject some variety and interesting designs into the next game while either still working within the constraints or avoiding them. Now there is another constraint, unique to this series (or rather this company), namely "can you bang it". Though some of these could work in some romantic capacity, that's not what I was going for at all, and frankly I think the xenobanging's gotten a little out of hand. The obvious Star Trek rip-off homage space babe race, sure. But exoskeletal birds, fundamentally differently DNA'd bubble people, lizard people and now beings from an entirely different galaxy can all get it on together? That's really stretching it...err, phrasing? Anyway the only other thing I could say on the note of alien romances is I think they should do one where the parties are explicitly not sexually compatible and explore how their romance can overcome that (if it can). That's more interesting than "welp there go the clothes- well the human ones anyway because we're not quite crazy enough to do freaky birdman nudes just yet".

And finally a short list of aliens I'd like to see using some of the ideas above:
-A bilaterally symmetrical alien with stalk eyes and extra arms.
-A theropod alien. Either this one or the one above should explicity see in a different wavelength/additional wavelengths of light.
-A parasitic/symbiotic alien.
-An encounter suit alien. Not necessarily because I want a mysterious Kosh ripoff but because I want to see aliens that require entirely different atmospheres and there are areas of the ship/station/whatever that explicity cater to said atmospheres (a mention or two is fine, or a sealed off area that says "Caution Alien Atmosphere")
- A Hidden/Weird alien that explicity has a different, almost incomprehensible perception, whether it's because it preceives space and time differently or because it primarily uses non-visual perception to perceive its environment and/or communicate. I don't expect a lot of content for this one, just that it's there and there's a few mentions/ bit of lore about it.

I'd like a species that predominantly lives underwater, and isn't humanoid. It would be great if BioWare were inspired by deep water marine animals that rarely encounter people, like Angler Fish.



The Hanar are going to need a world that adheres to their needs, and I want them to encounter a species that makes them feel uneasy.

well....

Space centaurs might be nice. Lol for the inevitable calls for love interests, but if Harry Potter can get away with it...



More seriously- I always thought a symbiotic/'piloted beast' race would be interesting. Thing of it as a biological piloted mech- except instead of giant robot, something like a (biological) 'dog' from Half-life 2, piloted by a symbiotic midget-alien hiding inside.

So, for gameplay purposes, the alien you see/interact with is the 'dog'- a larger, stronger, but ultimately not intelligent creature that serves the 'pilot' alien in a sort of symbiotic master-pet relationship. The 'pilot' can get out- even control other 'dogs'- and that's who you have the 'real' interpersonal relationship with. But the 'dog' is, well, like a dog, and so could play a good ol' yeller, on top of other things.

I think it'd be grounds for a fascinating take on alien biology and symbiotic development of culture. The 'pilot' needs the 'dog' to be more than a walking brain, but the it's intrensically not an equal relationship. Other parts of the series- such as the idea of using an AI to 'uplift' dogs and rendering the 'pilots' obsolete- could be good plot fodder, feeding into the use of 'wild dogs' as a reoccuring enemy type that ranges between ranged weapons (when piloted) and melee (when not).

Then, start looking at the sort of societies that might arise from such a symbiosis- where the idea of 'animal cruelty' and 'slavery' might not make sense as we know it, or where the difference between states is primarily how they approach/treat/take advantage of their dogs, from animal cruelty to breeding...


It could be interesting.

The Rachni, just so I could sit back and watch people completely flip the fuck out. It'd be amazing.

Well as I have said in other threads, the Rachni showing up in Andromeda would certainly make more sense than some of the other lore choices BioWare has made. Like say not putting the two dextro species on the same ark, and then having the later species have to share their limited crew space with aliens that can't even eat the same food they can, one of which is an aquatic based life form. 

They should have put the queen in charge of things; nobody does organization and efficiency like the Rachni can. You had mentally stunted Rachni newborns in ME 1 going out and establishing proto-colonies on several different planets, with completely different atmospheric conditions, and even engaging a modern day military unit with guerrilla tactics using nothing but tooth and claw; all the while completely on their own and without any additional supplies.

The Andromeda Initiative runs into a little snag upon arrival and suddenly they fall apart and accomplish absolutely nothing in 14 months except splintering into factions and waiting for the end to come.



Plus from a narrative standpoint, I'm kinda tired of hearing the same old plot lines again and again. Oh no, the Krogan are being mistreated again, and blah blah Genophage blah blah. Even if BioWare was to rehash the Rachni's narrative on whether they as a species could be trusted it would still be fresh considering about five minutes was devoted to that particular plot line in a 100(+) hour trilogy.

I like the idea of a symbiotic/parasitic species, wherein the actual intelligence is the smaller organism. Knowing BioWare though, they would have to have this creature be a mindless villain and/or evil manipulator; see the Thorian for an example. 


It would be really fascinating if they instead cast such a species in a neutral, unbiased light, and let the players decide for themselves what they think of such an alien. It could offer some really compelling story lines about the innate 'alienness' of the universe as opposed to just having another rubber fore-headed human for us to bang.

I know the Turian are kind of already like bird-people, but I'd like to see something like Metroid's Chozo.