Why No Female Aliens in Mass Effect?

[Kakashi on crack]

Because modeling is hard.

This, this, and MORE OF THIS!!!

I've tried modeling for a 2d game, not even 3d, and it was extremely hard. Add in the third dimension and it becomes very difficult to make a decent-looking female. No offense, but men are generally easy to model in a game because you don't have the... Well features to add in and such.

I also think it probably clashed with the engine somewhat probably.


Though, on the note of for instance Turians, what's to say you haven't? I mean, the majority of Turians have a militaristic outlook, and generally, a buff woman's features don't stand out nearly as much. With this in mind, a female Turian could look extremely similar to a male turian.

There's no way to tell if there is more than one race of Hanar, they could easily be Asexual.

Volus are covered by a suit, again, no way to tell if there's been a female one or not

Elcor... They speak in monotone voices, what's to say that a female Elcor doesn't look like a regular elcor?


I think for the most part there's no easy way to tell, for the majority of species, if there has been more than one gender seen. Those with obvious physical differences though, are likely due to modeling restraints.

 

[General Tharivol]

Well, with female Turians, we know that they are flexible, and likely have shorter reach than their male counterparts.

 

[xPixelatedx]

This has to do with most of the other races being non-mammals, the developers didn't want to make them because it brought up the question of should the have mammary glans

Because it brought up the question? Is there something wrong with that question? I am disappointed in them if that is the case. Just make female aliens with a different body shape, you don't have to add boobs. Not everyone is so hopelessly retarded they need a giant neon sign saying 'This is a female'. I would hope the audience for a game like this would be a bit sharper.

 

[robomonk]

Humans - who aliens consider aliens, actually have i think more females than males.
Turians - hey. you got unlucky with one species that you actually see very little of, when you think about it. Big deal.
Asari - all female,
Salarians - 90% male and hoard their females, not letting any of the other ugly people get their slow, grubby hands on them,
There's a dead female krogan in ME2, and they live in special camps and aren't aloud to leave unless it's to make unsuccessful babies,
Drell - You see 3 in the game. it's a 1/8 chance that they're all male. Besides, you hear about a female.
Elcor - they could all be female for all you know.
Hanar - see above
Keepers - They don't have genders.
Volus - read: elcor and hanar
Batarian - they probably all live in the terminus systems. They're probably a bit sexist, those batarians.
Collectors - They're bug people. Who's to say they're not both male and female?
Protheans - Read: collectors
Geth - robots. next!
Quarian - you see an even split, is not more females.
Reaper - See: geth.
Vorcha - All you see are a few on omega. And the random grunts - come of them might be women.
Yahg - What, you expect that one yahg that was in that one DLC to just HAPPEN to be a female? It's pretty obvious they would have selected a man for study, as it can truly show how a race treats it's females, but abducting a woman can't.
Rachni - Rachni queen. The end.

Next issue with mass effect please!

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

There's a covered dead female krogan on the operating table used for genophage research. Mordin makes mention to her about how she volunteered herself to the research.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Maybe there aren't any differences between genders for the Turians.
Or humans can't tell the difference.
You could have been offing them all along and never realized it.

I refer you to this, which is based on the codex entries from the game: http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/Turian#Biology

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that not all animals have mammal's sex distinctions? Have you seen lizards with boobs and wide hips? Snakes with boobs? Fish with boobs? Birds with boobs? Jellyfish with boobs?

 

[someonehairy-ish]

Well a hermaphroditic race could evolve at the same rate as one with gender pairs, because even though each individual has all the sets of sexual organs they can still ah... get it on... with each other and therefore variation, deviation and the like can still happen.

Right, but from an evolutionary point of view, that's a heck of a lot harder for the animal to produce. Cognitive beings spend a lot of their energy in production producing the brain. If they spent it creating two sets of functional sex organs it would either use up a lot more energy to create, or would replace the advanced brain.

What?

The animal doesn't intentionally expend energy trying to produce anything. Evolution happens via mutation and natural selection. Its not like spore where you only have so much of a resource and you can either buy the extra sex organs or a more complex brain. It takes more energy to actually keep a complex brain and extra sex organs and the like running, but as long as food supplies are enough to keep that up it doesn't matter.

The only real problem with hermaphroditic creatures from an evolutionary standpoint is that traits which aren't beneficial to the species would tend to die out a lot slower. Another possible one is that they are less likely to become a 'social' race which is vital for language to develop.
Even so, I still think that that is more likely than another species from another planet which has recognisable male and female members.

 

[Sariteiya]

A lot of people are saying, "Maybe you already have met female Turians/Elcor/Whatever." My question is, why wouldn't Bioware have slipped in some small piece of dialogue to let us know they were female? Or a feminine voice actor? It seems strange they'd expect us to assume Turians all look alike and sound like men, especially considering how much effort they take to educate players about interesting Alien biologies and such.

Also, I'm aware of the female Krogan you "see" in 2, but you don't actually see her, just a body bag that Mordin examines.

However it is interesting to me to hear about the difficulties in modeling new body types.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I'm wondering why we don't see more quadrupedal species. There are millions of different species of them on earth, with very few bipeds in comparison. What makes two legged animals so much better? The Elcor get along fine walking four legged, but nobody else.

 

[the_dancy_vagrant]

I'm wondering why we don't see more quadrupedal species. There are millions of different species of them on earth, with very few bipeds in comparison. What makes two legged animals so much better? The Elcor get along fine walking four legged, but nobody else.

Check out the smartest animals on Earth. Hominids are all semi-bipedal with the exception of humans. And even then, there's that first year where we are technically quadrupeds. Corvids and parrots are bipeds. The only crafty/clever animals that aren't bipedal all live in the ocean.

 

[Animyr]

They were too lazy/busy. Simple.

Reports of the presence of female turians and salarians in ME3 is conflicted. Some Devs have said no, others maybe, I heard one person say it was confirmed in a closed-doors presentation. As they're going to the homeworlds, I hardly see how they can avoid putting them in in ME3.

 

[Redem]

We did a salarian females

however it was in DAO and it was called a broodmother

 

[Helscreama]

On the Krogan homeworld you do see a single female emissary from a clan.
Its not much, but its something, right?

Isn't that a male Krogan?

I'm almost 100% sure it was male

 

[Farther than stars]

Don't you think it's possible that there are women walking around but you just can't distinguish them from the males?
I mean, take the elcor. I wouldn't even know where to begin looking for whatever indication of sexuality. And the volus are even all cooped up in suits. I mean, it's like bees or snakes. You'd have to be a real expert to figure out what's what.

 

[Kathinka]

i actually read the answer to that a while back in an interview with the devs.

as for so many bad things that happen with gaming, we have consoles to thank for that (engage glorious pc gaming master race mode!)

it was a resource problem. they had complete models for females of most races by the time, but had to ditch them during developement because of the very limited memory and outdated hardware of the current consoles. that's what i read anyways..

 

[Farther than stars]

I'm wondering why we don't see more quadrupedal species. There are millions of different species of them on earth, with very few bipeds in comparison. What makes two legged animals so much better? The Elcor get along fine walking four legged, but nobody else.

Check out the smartest animals on Earth. Hominids are all semi-bipedal with the exception of humans. And even then, there's that first year where we are technically quadrupeds. Corvids and parrots are bipeds. The only crafty/clever animals that aren't bipedal all live in the ocean.

Well, it is sort of explained with an indication that the Reapers are responsible for evolution taking place along similar lines. And I suppose theoretically having one's arms free to undertake more complex tasks is a sign of being further along the evolutionary scale.
But in the end, it's all just sci-fi and there are going to be come inconsistencies here and there. Admittedly the Mass Effect universe is very well engineered to deal with most of those, which is why it's so much harder to swallow that all of the alien races speak English and it never goes explained. Our English, or in the case of the Mass Effect universe, English that's 100 years old. I mean, even here on Earth dialects and accents vary from nation to nation.

 

[Stammer]

What?

The animal doesn't intentionally expend energy trying to produce anything. Evolution happens via mutation and natural selection. Its not like spore where you only have so much of a resource and you can either buy the extra sex organs or a more complex brain. It takes more energy to actually keep a complex brain and extra sex organs and the like running, but as long as food supplies are enough to keep that up it doesn't matter.

It isn't intentional, it's just what's given to us. Human beings, for example, only spend about 9 months in the womb. There's only so much production that can go on in that time. Between time and food energy, the unborn child only has so many resources to put towards certain things. And evolution asks "what does this individual need more of".

That little extra brain power comes at the cost of physical strength and reproduction. We are arguably one of the worst reproducers in the entire world. And as we've evolved we've needed less and less physical strength.

The ability for the asari to reproduce with virtually any species of any gender is likely a cause of them spending their first 350 years of life in prepubescence. That's a LOT of time their bodies can finish growing and working out the kinks.

 

[ThePilgrim101]

There's this thing called "the point" -- and you missed it.

I saw your point. It was just a really crappy point.

Next time, when you don't have an actual comeback, try falling on your sword. It's much less stupid.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

What?

The animal doesn't intentionally expend energy trying to produce anything. Snip

It isn't intentional, it's just what's given to us. Human beings, for example, only spend about 9 months in the womb. There's only so much production that can go on in that time. Between time and food energy, the unborn child only has so many resources to put towards certain things. And evolution asks "what does this individual need more of".

That little extra brain power comes at the cost of physical strength and reproduction. We are arguably one of the worst reproducers in the entire world. And as we've evolved we've needed less and less physical strength.

The ability for the asari to reproduce with virtually any species of any gender is likely a cause of them spending their first 350 years of life in prepubescence. That's a LOT of time their bodies can finish growing and working out the kinks.

The reason that humans have less physical strength than say, an ape, is because it became unneccessary as we began to develop tools and more complex language that allowed us to work as a hunting group that could take down pretty much any predator out there. The strength was uneccessary and thus died out, it wasn't 'sacrificed' in order for us to have more brain power.
Before we (human beings) came along there were other intelligent hominid species that likely also had the beginnings of culture, abstract thought, tool making and language and ALSO retained the strength of their ape-like ancestors.. However, we managed to wipe them out by pretty much being able to out-produce them and also by living in massive social groups rather than tiny family groups. But their existence shows that it is more than possible for a being to be both extremely strong and intelligent. Evolution gives what is needed and takes what isn't used, it doesn't give one beneficial thing but only at the cost of another beneficial thing as though it is trying to maintain a status quo.


The fact that Asari can reproduce with anything would have to mean that they are somehow sexually compatible with species that has evolved millions upon millions of miles away (lolwhut) or they perhaps have a system that merges alien DNA with their own to produce offspring like alien, which would likely result in a monstrosity that barely resembles either parent species. So really the only reason they can reproduce with any species is because Bioware thought it would be cool and bullshitted an explanation for it.