chiefohara said:
I'm fairly certain that you're led to belive that his condition is primarily in his legs. Either way, it's reasonable to assume that the weapons fire a sort of caseless ammo that doesn't have any significant recoil.
Any recoil you see from animations are just there for effect and gameplay balance. (Sort of like sounds in space, in Star Wars).
Other explanations would be counteracting gravity devices(such as the ones the Hanar use to float) to compensate or something similar.
That's just my theory though. The technology already exists and would likely see further development for space combat and the like. I mean, a weapon such as the AA-12(a fully automatic shotgun) has very little recoil and has an extremely simple and robust design that rivals all of the AK's. It's not farfetched to assume they'd make something better in the future.
I, too, trust that in the future we can do better than a 24-pound select-fire open-bolt weapon with a maximum effective range of 100 meters... because we already have 8-pound select-fire closed-bolt weapons with maximum effective ranges of 400+ meters. The AK-47 springs to mind....
Further explanation for not-gun people:
The AA-12 is not going anywhere. It's not going to be adopted by anyone. It's not even a new design. It has been around for four decades. The ammunition is heavy and of limited range, even with the FRAG-12 (basically a 12-gauge firecracker). The weapon itself weighs in at 24 pounds. It fires from an open-bolt. In effect, it is a paperweight. It does nothing well, except look good in movies. Why does the AA-12 have "light recoil"? Well, it doesn't. It's just so heavy and the cyclic rate is so low that it has low perceived recoil. It will figure prominently in movies and TV shows, like the Pancor "Jackhammer" once did. But that's it: It is a technological dead-end and everyone knows it. The height of military interest in the AA-12 was during the height of the American counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan and Iraq well before the economy went south.
That being said... the direction of military small arms will be in the "smaller and lighter" direction. The same direction they have been taking since the musket gave way to the rifle. The rifle to the percussion rifle, the percussion rifle to the metallic self-contained cartridge rifle, the bolt action rifle, the short rifle, the semi-automatic battle rifle, the assault rifle, and finally the select-fire carbine (where we are now).
If memory serves, the guns in ME work by accelerating small particles at extremely high velocities, the tracer effect and muzzle flash being results of the air the particle passes through being superheated. Considering this, the weapons themselves need not have much weight to mitigate their recoil combined with the general trend toward lighter weapons means that it would not weigh much at all. In other words, Joker would not have a problem firing a low-recoil weapon system that only weighs a couple of pounds, even if he lacked upper body strength. (That same lack of weight would make it rather difficult to stabilize the weapon, however. Something the cybernetic implants and armor used by the rest of the crew would likely compensate for.) As for why Joker might have had the weapon nearby... well, he was effectively the only person on board the Normandy after Shepherd and his team left to take out the Collector base and the Normandy had already been boarded twice by the Collectors, a third time wouldn't be out of the question.
ETA: Also on the open bolt versus closed bolt in automatic weapons: Open bolt is simpler but causes a drop in accuracy due to the weight of the bolt shifting forward as the trigger is pulled. Commonly used with machine guns because the benes outweight the drawbacks: High precision is not required and the open-bolt allows the barrel and chamber to remain cooler for longer and to cool more quickly than a closed-bolt firearm. And because there is no round in the chamber, it cannot 'cook off'. Closed bolt is preferred for most other weapons. They lock more positively and more consistently, improving precision and accuracy, squeezing the trigger simply drops the hammer onto the firing pin, and the closed bolt operation prevents dirt and debris from entering the weapon's action and barrel. Getting crud in the weapon's action and barrel, especially the chamber, is Not Good - it has a negative impact on the weapon's reliability and can lead to a rather spectacular malfunction... of the sort that involves pressure spikes in the chamber and barrels turning into modern art flower sculptures while handguards splinter into a thousand pieces.
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