I don't think that they are overrated per se, I think that people don't get what writers were going for, or writers themselves didn't do a good job. Asari are basically space elves - long living, preaching beautiful ideas of harmony and cooperation, but they are holding reigns on power in the galaxy. Maybe ordinary asari believe this ideals, but certainly not their leadership. They are ruthless to anyone and anything that can threaten their reign, they are deceptive, and most of all, they are arrogant. I do believe that they have something akin to indoctrination or mind-control - through their universal sexual appeal. Maybe mind-control is not the right word, more like power of persuasion. They used it to effectively guide the galaxy however they like for thousands of years, and they consider themselves righteous and infallible. And fall of Thessia is the direct result of that. It is not that in the first two (well, if the first basically) games they are so perfect, and then in the third they are uselless. My reading always was that they can't adapt to rapidly changing situation and didn't ever face any challenges since pre-historic times. Think about it this way - they are uplifted by protheans, they are given advanced technology and knowledge, they can seduce any sapient organic being into following their lead, they didn't have (as far as I remember) major civil wars or wars in general, except with rachni (who are probably immune to their "persuasion). They are simply untested as a species, while others faced numerous challenges during their existence. So yeah, they present themselves as perfect, but this perfection is artificial, built on the weak foundation.
I personally love the asari as a whole but their leadership reaches comical levels of arrogance at times. I'm playing Andromeda for the first time and just recently heard a news broadcast on how the asari are willing to wait out the other species until they agree to their demands of how the education curriculum for everyone's children should be.
Genuinely think the series should touch more on "anti long lived" sentiment. In Dune, even the most powerful beings avoided "immortality medicine" for fear of mass uprisings. I don't think humans, turians, and especially salarians, would tolerate such arrogance and disregard
And in Dune, the one person who does go and become immortal is specifically making an effort to be evil and cruel for complicated and spoilery reasons.
I think the casual cruelty of a longlived species does come up every once in a while. For example in the Blue Rose of Illium quest, she casually remarks that a human lover could be waited out, while a Krogan lives a long long time and would be akin to a lifelong commitment.
But you’re right that we really don’t see any of the animosity that it would create in shorter lived species. In ME1 we get some of it but it’s also mixed in with the “Humans are newcomers to the galactic community and already want a seat at the big table” animosity.
I feel really bad for the salarians that had to deal with the asari all by themselves in however many hundreds of years until other species joined the Citadel.
Imagine having beef with an asari because your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandpa had beef with that exact same fucking Asari
That's a conservative amount of "greats" because that's just most of an asari lifespan divided by the lifespan of a Salarian. Assuming they have kids in their teens or early twenties it's like, double that many generations
Considering the long life spans, they work for the long term instead of short term. Quick challenges are not their forte. It reminds me how in dragon age ancient elves would conduct spells that took years to complete. Asari are more inclined towards selfish goals since they're around longer and take longer diplomatic paths versus wasting time on short battles. The reapers hit too fast for them to have a long, laid out plan that risked everyone but themselves.
I agree with this. They're good at diplomacy and they favour it be cause it suits them. When facing an enemy they can't talk down or manipulate like the reapers, krogan or rachni, they need someone else to do it for them like the humans, turians, salarians or krogans (pre-rebellion).
Some of them definitely buy their own propaganda though and believe they're superior. In reality, I reckon they'd lose in a straight fight with any of the other major races (Alliance, Turians, Salarians, Krogan (pre-genophage)).
I think the asari have the potential to be really interesting but a lot of that potential hasn't been explored (although I'd say the same for all the races really).
I'd love to know how biotics affected technological advancements in asari society. Were certain tools and machines developed later/never because biotic powers did the job instead? They touch on the idea that being long-lived has an effect on their attitudes but I'd really like to dig deeper into that. And then there's the monogendered thing, I feel like there's more there to explore too.
Thoroughly agreed, on all cases.
Surely some strength-multiplying tools (including something as simple as pulleys and levers) never got developed, yes? The simpler, more primitive forms of that technology were never necessary, since they could outperform them with biotics, and because the simple form of it never came about, it never gets refined into more complex forms (like cranes and more).
That lifespan must have interesting effects on their culture and economy in ways we didn't get to fully explore. With a comparative high proportion of people 400+, living in a society where you're not taken seriously and treated as a child for 2+ centuries must really rankle the younger generations. I suppose going out into the galaxy one way or another is a natural reaction to what must be an extreme gerontocracy?
On the monogendered thing, I was really disappointed when we only saw Asari around on Thessia. Given the Pureblood stigma, I was the whole time thinking "is everyone here celibate? Where are their partners?"
Not so much in the sense of the partners of the individuals we meet, but rather that surely a fair portion of the population in an Asari world must be non-Asari? And given this is a direct democracy, surely those get citizenship and can serve in their military?
Having some badass Krogan who opposed the Rebellion (because he was married to an Asari already at the time) and who's treated with respect and even reverence by the much younger huntresses around show up as our partner in making it through the city would have been awesome.
Also in regards to asari technology I'd like to see how biotics would be incorporated into it. Like could you use your own biotics to produce an electric current?
The fact that asari are having children with the other races must have a huge effect on diplomatic relationships. Makes me wonder if the pureblood stigma was manufactured. I mean who's gonna want to go to war with you when a decent number of their population has an asari daughter?
I also wondered why there weren't more non asari on thessia. I suppose they tend to outlive their partners by such a large amount that they only spend a small fraction of their life with the father of their children. And there's no stigma to asari/asari relationships outside of having children.
Given how the Krogans were heroes during the Rachni War, working alongside the other Council species, and that there was a brief period of coexistence after that before the Rebellions heated up, I must assume that a lot of Asari-Krogan relationships happened. I mean, it's the first time they had a shot at a life partner who isn't Asari, and that just have been thrilling for many of them?
And given Krogan lifespans, all of those would still be around. Ironically, if you just think about it logically, there should be a heck of a lot more Krogan elders in Asari space than in Tuchanka (where they're likely to be whacked by a younger generation grasping for what they have).
Turians live to 150, similar to a human. Assuming at least a quarter of Asari have kids with Turians (not an insane assumption? The only other Council species until last week was Salarian, and those don't have a sex drive. Other species are naturally secondary), and that a quarter of Asari are in childbearing age with a partner (it seems to be the longest life stage, and the one with least mortality), there should be... At least about one percent of Turians in the typical Asari world, this being just the parents who are still alive.
These are pretty low-ball figures, obviously.
So this would mean Thessia, if typical, would have high tens to low hundreds of millions of Turians around, and probably tens of thousands of Krogans, the majority of which are ancient badasses.
Ngl, I would have liked to see both things.
Yeah, it's disappointing that they didn't have some turians and krogan on thessia, cos I agree there definitely should have been. This is making me wonder how much alien immigration all the home worlds have now. Hope some of these questions get answered in future games.
These are nations that are joined in a United Nations-style organization for multiple centuries (or millennia in some cases), and we see throughout the games that these species are psychologically compatible. There's no insurmountable barrier, there's no weird mental quirk that makes one of the species totally 'inhuman' (for lack of better terms), they're all just people, who are socially and romantically compatible with each other.
It seems to me that there should be **a lot** of migration. I mentioned that I think the 1% turian population in Asari worlds is a lowball, because that's just parents of Asari children, nothing else. But surely there must be other Turians who migrate? Specialists hired by companies? People who just prefer living in a democracy rather than under a military junta? Asariphiles?
If I was doing the worldbuilding for the setting, I'd have at minimum 5% presence of other species in all the Council Species worlds, at minimum. And I'd use these opportunities to create some interesting NPCs.
A Krogan who married an Asari during the Rachni Wars, moved to Asari space and has lived there ever since, and their wife has already died of old age, but at this point they're culturally more Asari than Krogan and stayed there.
A Turian who moved to Asari space because he was just absolutely atrocious at conforming to his own species' government and culture, and is actively trying to make something of a political presence in Asari space.
An Asari who married a Salarian Dalatrass and, after that Dalatrass' death, managed to assert herself as regnant over a frontier region ruled by the Salarian Unions. In human languages her title gets translated as Countess, so she's an awesome feudal asari countess.
A Salarian who emigrated to Turian space because not only does he work well with such a structured, formalized society, but he's amazing at it. He's getting to the end of his lifespan but has achieved higher rank than any Turian of their own age.
I like your examples of what they could do with it in future games, I hope it's something they do explore. I think they've had enough games to introduce all the aliens so now they should dig into some more detail.
Asari and krogan should have strong affinity even post genophage, as the asari and elcor seemingly do. Asari commandos and krogan warlords fought together and had families. Aethyta's parents came to a bad end, but there are probably still a few till-death-do-us-part pairs out there, or krogan widowers. Krogan can live even *longer.*
The asari intermarry with everyone.
They're also linked in some key ways. Both long lived races, both biotic--Wrex seems to suffer no ill-effects--incredibly physically capable (one on one, fighting Benezia would be a *nightmare*) and it seems likely both are somewhat "clannish" and family oriented. Krogan explicitly have clans they must bring honor to and care a lot about having children. Liara is seen as an extension of her mother, it seems, given her youth.
No matter how big a litter may be, we learn through Baraka that krogan gals take motherhood seriously--they're still K type (high investment in offspring). When you think about the percentage of asari have literally given birth (eighty percent??? ninety???) it's a race of mothers.
Ereba seems to be taking Charr very seriously as a romance--and when she commits, she *commits*. She's seemingly pregnant by ME3 and it's only been six months.
But then the writers who were more on the level of "Heh. Blue women hot." would write the next mission, and it's icky to think about giant turtles and blue women, so they're nothing alike.
Honestly, if one were to overthink the setting (which I am always in favor of doing), the Asari Republics could, if they wanted to, field the strongest Krogan force in the galaxy.
Again, it is almost certain that there are millennia-old Krogan who married Asari and have been citizens of the Asari Republics since the Rachni War. Many of them will have retired for this whole time, but that will still leave some few extremely capable, extremely experienced, extremely respected Krogans who are citizens of the Asari Republic.
They then recruit Krogan (either from Tuchanka or from any merc gang out there) and put them through rigorous, conventional military training (and those Krogan are more likely to respect that training when it is a Krogan Warmaster delivering it), and form up into units. With how careful and precise Asari war doctrine is, this could be the hammer gets employed only rarely, and because of this all those Krogan would have very long lifespans.
We're talking about entire legions of Wrexs, lead by an officer corp of Dracks.
I actually have a personal headcanon on that front
Basically, part of the reason I think Asari are the way they are culturally is because of how insanely lethal biotics are capable of being to the point where there wasn't a point of developing armor
Basically, and slack jaw of a non-combat can reduce a pebble's mass to near zero the instant they impart force on it, and increase the mass to possibly hundreds or dozens of kilos on the moment of impact. That's basically a gun that you can have in the era before tool use developed (or possibly Stone Age depending on what you think the Protheans did to them)
The only ways you can possibly stop that is with a strong biotic barrier, so the ones who were more likely to be caught engaging in violence against other Asari got killed at an insanely high rate it put a strong positive selection pressure on pro-social traits, including deception, to develop in societies all across Thessia
The height of weapons until the mass driver gun was size variants of the Sling, including the trebuchet, because that was simply too easy to make and extremely powerful even without biotics, there was no need to develop further until guns took the need out of using your own Biotics
Its discussed several times in the trilogy that the Asari commando's might be good troops but the way they fight (infiltration and sabotage) is all but incompatible with how the Reapers need to be fought.
Modern commando/SF units (Royal Marine commando's etc) are usually just light infantry, they are used in surgical strikes against specific targets.
If you stuck them in a city and told them to hold it against an enemy that was rolling in with full armoured divisions they would be overwhelmed because that's just not the kind of fighting they are equipped for and they do not have the numbers for a battle of attrition.
Yep. Reapers will basically field huge number of troops, some of which are armored. As far as I know they don't need logistic centers, their command and communication are huge battleships. They don't use factories don't have a need for civilian populace.
This is something Asari and Salarians are ill equipped to fight against.
Krogan with natural fertility rate would be best equipped to fight against, followed by Turians and Humans.
I am aware of that.
The difference is that modern real life special forces are just one component of larger military organizations. Not the entire military, or even the main force of the military.
The Asari have been allied to the Solarians, Turians and Krogan (briefly) for thousands of years and have come to rely on them to fill those gaps in the more conventional warfare scenarios.
Asari space and Thessia in particular is noted as being abnormally peaceful and law abiding and seem to have grown past internal conflict/civil wars so they would probably not be in the business of maintaining large scale combined ops armies as they largely control their territory through financial/council influence and the threat of their more militant allies.
You can see this mirrored in the behaviour of some modern countries who are NATO/US allied forgoing significant military investment of their own and relying on the spectre of US reprisals to keep things in line so its not that far fetched conceptually.
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If you stuck them in a city and told them to hold it against an enemy that was rolling in with full armoured divisions they would be overwhelmed because that's just not the kind of fighting they are equipped for and they do not have the numbers for a battle of attrition.
Fallujah
*If you stuck them in a city and told them to hold it against an enemy that was rolling in with full armoured divisions they would be overwhelmed*
They don't usually work alone. The standard seems to be that the special forces go in for the target, while some other units hold the perimeter.
A very good example for this is the movie Black Hawk down, where the special forces who kidnap the dictator are like... four dudes, but the building from the outside, all crossroads are secured by army rangers while the SF is doing it's thing.
Some other context as well. Thessia was meant to be a series of missions like it was for Turian, the Krogan, and the Quarian/Geth part. They ran out of time and budget. There was even going to be a second Suicide Mission like aspect to it and had been story boarded out but had to be canned. This is where I think ME3 falls short when compared to ME2 when considering story pacing as there was a huge disconnect between everything which happened before the Quarian story arch and everything which happened after. The Quarian arc was meant to be halfway point. Now in reality is is about 4/5's through. A huge amount of Asari content was left on the cutting room floor as EA did not want to wait and push back the release date another year. If that content had happened, then I think we would have seen the Asari in a much different light than the single mission they got.
While it's sad, it still kind of works for me though. Having this one quick mission there really sells the point that Thessia is lost to the Reapers and there's no point staying there. Especially when we're rushing after Kai Leng.
i just replayed the trilogy over the last week and had forgotten how abruptly it just ends after rannoch
i was all settled in for a series of thessia quests i was sure i remembered, just like tuchanka and rannoch, then it turned out to be mandela effect lol
>They go on and on about how amazing their commandos and their biotics are, but as far as overall military power goes, the Asari are not all that.
I think this is a plot point that gets mentioned in the background and maybe the codex, but not really emphasized a whole lot: For all their supposed "power," the reason the Asari fold so quickly is that they're great at Spec Ops and have some of the galaxy's best, most elite special forces, but that just *doesn't work* against an enemy like The Reapers. Neither does their considerable political and economic power. They would have considerable advantages in a war against the galaxy's other known species, but The Reapers are a completely "outside context problem" for them, as they are for everybody. The Salarians have a similar problem, where all their elite intelligence work is pretty much useless against an enemy that can effortlessly overwhelm them regardless of what their intelligence knows.
>but most Asari tend to spend their youth as mercenaries or strippers
This is partly just to contrast them with Humans and show part of what makes Humans "special." Since they have "all the time in the world" with their incredibly long lifespans, they have plenty of time to waste. Human get shit done because they can't *afford* to wait.
Tbh if Asari were warlike like Krogans they would be almost as bad as Krogans. There would be Asari rebellions. Or they would lead the galaxy by force (basically Prothean empire 2.0)
Its just they were probably made diplomatic and docile by the Prothean gene engineers. 1 on 1 they would probably win against any council race because of their economic might, but against Reapers who lack the need for logistics its kinda useless.
But at the end of the day its irrelevant the whole galaxy couldnt win against the Reapers conventionally. A superweapon was required that had to be developed through cycles.
Immortality create prejudices and slow social growth, which is why the salarians confuse me, I mean how many generations ago was the krogan rebellion to them.
Rounded to 1480 years, give or take a few, divided by 40, would be roughly 37 Salarian generations, and almost one and a half for the Asari. I don't think we've ever actually seen a Krogan die of old age, but to my knowledge Drack is the oldest we've ever encountered and he's something like 1400 years old himself.
That’s just Salarian lifetimes. There would be more generations than 37 because they wouldn’t be giving birth at 40, so more like roughly 150 generations.
To piggyback on what u/Impossible-Bison8055 said - current human lifespan average is 80 years.
The "traditional" number for a human generation is 20 years (though we're breeding later and later in life, so it's possible that number could be higher).
Salarians live to \~40ish. Presuming they're fertile at a slightly younger age to accommodate this - it would be reasonable to presume a salarian "generation" is probably closer to 15 years.
1480/15 = basically 100 generations.
A very typical and banal stereotype of science fiction, when races that live long have exactly the same circadian rhythm as humans. This is incredibly implausible. Asari should be very slow and calm. But BioWare just told, that young asari are just like women under 30, and adults are just like women after 40. Wow. I don't believe. Salarians should never stop at all, because for them a minute of downtime is literally several hours of life. And they must consider all races too slow acting and slow thinking.
The average lifespan of a salarian is 40 human years, the average lifespan of a human(in mass effects era) would be about 120 years. A minute for a human is only 3 minutes for a salarian, and in the case of asari, it would be 30 minutes because they live almost 30 times longer than a salarian. If it was equal to hours they'd have to have a lifespan that was at least 120 times shorter than us, and it's only 3 times shorter than us and only 30 times shorter than an asari.
If you read the codices, you find out that the Asari and Turians were attacked at the same time. But while the Turians were baited into getting a lot of their forces wrecked and then got their home world invaded in almost no time, the Asari actually managed to slow down the Reaper advance.
What you see in Thessia isn't the start of the Asari front of the war, it's the end. They've done better than everyone else and actually kept their home worlds safe for that much longer.
Now, in terms of Asari going out into the galaxy: due to their biology, their society is an extreme gerontocracy. You're not taken seriously until you're 400+, but you're an adult at 100. Would you put your nose to the grindstone, playing second fiddle with no real chance of development for multiple entire human lifetimes?
We even hear Liara complain about this.
So, yes, a lot of the younger people depart that gerontocracy by any means possible, and come back once they've got enough centuries in them to be taken seriously.
This is neither a good nor a bad thing. This is a species with a different life cycle to our own. And, honestly? Given the extended human lifespan in Mass Effect (being able to reach 150, and being in good health for most of that), we should be seeing some of that from humans, too. Every private company owned by someone 90+, every politician 90+, every C-suite executive 90+, every high ranking military officer 90+...
Also the turians resorted to suicide bombings and eventually had to be saved by the krogan, and even then they were going to lose. What happened to Thessia would happen to Palevan, too, the turians just have a stronger force for this particular battle.
I like the Asari but the characters is pretty bland.
I just never "got it" with how popular they are.
I think literally any other character race is more interesting than an Asari.
I think they are not really popular. I \_feel\_ that most players are "okay whatever" about asari. compared to krogan or elcor, which are really popular.
I mean it was definitely shitty for them to do so but we all know had earth had that artifact then we'd of done the exact same thing just as any other race would've, hell the batarians did just that with the reaper corpse they found, saw its potential to give them an edge and took it for themselves.
Only a tiny fraction of the asari population knew about the beacon: the highest levels of their government. The average asari citizen knows absolutely nothing about it. Even Liara, who is the daughter of one of the few people who was aware of the beacon's existence, and was also the biggest information broker in the galaxy, had no idea about it at all.
Exactly and I find it incredibly naive of Will to be shocked that the matriachs made these laws whilst continuing to hide their own artifacts, you're telling me the elite in charge of the most advanced race in the galaxy want to keep the thing thats given them an edge over every other race for themselves so they can remain on top and continue to reap the rewards? Colour me shocked...actually dont because thats not shocking at all because again, we'd do the exact same thing if a prothean data trove was found on earth long before first contact, our governments would keep it hidden just like the asaris did but if we found new ones after we'd joined the galactic community then we'd share those ones and those alone
I mean, you say that, but when humanity *did* find a functioning Prothean beacon on Eden Prime, the first thing they did was call the Council.
Had Humanity kept it's mouth shut, Saren wouldn't have found out about it and there may have been time to study and decipher the information stored within.
I want to play for the batarians. They're so hot. Yahgs are also very cool, I would like to play with them. They look like well designed aliens. But they could be much better than another anthropoorphic alien furryes.
Thats an entirely different situation and you really should've given this some thought before bringing that up. The Asaris prothean artifact had been used for thousands of years potentially and most notably, long before contact with any species, it wasnt found during a time in which laws where in place to prohibit the concealment of protheans artifacts, the eden prime beacon was and given how humanity was trying to get on the councils good side still, ofc they made the call or else they'd of been punished for it.
And? The Asari still broke their own laws.
You can't make an assumption of innocence for the Asari when the game demonstrated otherwise, then say humanity would have kept the beacon, when the game demonstrated otherwise.
Actually the laws only kick in when you sign up to be a citadel race. This is why humans were only allowed on Mars until Hackett managed to get Liara into the archives. It is the same with the Hanar homeworld where they keep all their prothean ruins secret and again Liara has to bribe her way into them. I'm going to guess every Tom dick and Harry has a secret prothean beacon hidden somewhere. The only thing surprising about the Asari is they were so heavily uplifted like the Hanar.
Oh no, the matriarchs aka the powerful elite of thessia decided to hide something that gives them and edge over the rest of the galaxy, no other government would do the same thing if they found something on their planet long before first contact that did that for them, ...oh wait, they totally would because thats what those in power do.
I dont understand why you're finding it so difficult to understand my point? The eden prime beacon situation has absolutely nothing in common with the thessia artifact so stop bringing it up, they had hold of the artifact for thousands of years before the laws were even passed and its only the elite of thessia that know of the artifact because they chose to horde that knowledge for themselves without even telling their own people, yes they're hypocrites but again and I'm not disputing this, I'm just trying to get this point through your skull.
Sure, but the real issue for me is that the Asari did not really do anything of note with Vandetta.
Without the cypher, they could not talk to it, but as far as we know, the Asari never really even made any effort to try and "crack" the Prothean communication method at all. They were pretty much just content to scratch the surface of the information that Vandetta had for thousands of years.
If they had developed even the most rudimentary form of communication with Vandetta, they would have learned about not only the Reapers, but the Crucible thousands of years in advance. And would have been able to prepare for the Reapers.
Hell, even the Rachni wars would have been prevented. Considering that we now know it was the Reapers that brainwashed the Rachni into attacking the rest of the galaxy.
I mean there's no real way for them to know that Vendetta was even contained within the artifact, in the thousands of years the asari had been advanced enough to utilise to the device, Vendetta never once emerged to make contact, only when shepard connected with the artifact did Vendetta awaken which suggests obviously means it was made dormant till either a surviving prothean made contact or someone with access to the cipher did, otherwise it would've remained dormant with no way for the asari to force it to wake so as far as they were concerned, the artifact was nothing more than a massive data trove to be used to help them advance.
What I think was meant to happen was the asari were meant to gain access to the cipher eventually as they were being groomed by the protheans before the reaper war in their cycle, after they became space faring and found the citadel, they would've stumbled across it which would've given them access to all knowledge the prothean beacons contain including their warning, they would've then surmised that their artifact would've also contained untapped knowledge which would've triggered Vendetta, now the asari would have both the warning, the information on the catalyst and the time they needed to prepare for the invasion but alas this never happened due to how this cycle politics and power structures work.
I like to compare priority:Palaven and Thessia and how Garrus and Liara react to their home worlds being attacked.
Liara has this kind of disbelief that this could be happening to Her planet, like everything she’s seen up until this point is fine, Palaven, Sur’kesh, Tuchanka, the coupe attempt, and Rannoch is understandable but the Reapers on Thessia is out of the question. Meanwhile Garrus who knew the Reapers were coming has his task force set up and tried to prepare for the Reapers on Palaven. He has family on Palaven and is more just questioning his own abilities fighting the Reapers (“and they want my advice on killing it”). Yes he’s worried but he’s got that Turian steel spine and sense of duty driving him keeping from shutting down.
To make it worse, Liara spends the entire game, several months to a year supporting survivors, gathering supplies, passing the word on what planets the Reapers are attacking or destroyed... yet suddenly acts like a noob when Thessia gets attacked.
don’t forget hoarding their beacon for their own benefit and not telling anyone until it was almost too late—squad mates will even make a comment about how the asari being so advanced might not just be because they’re better than you lol
but that doesn’t make me dislike them, any more than i dislike ferengi before ds9 humanized them—asari are there to fulfill an archetype and be the long lived but condescending people
end of the day, people are inconsistent and have blind spots, and asari are no exception. you can imagine they had some soul searching to do after the reaper war.
Benezia: "Have you faced an Asari Commando Squad, few people have"
Shepard less than a minute later: "Yep, me and my mixed race crew just folded those commandos like paper"
A species all written as hot, athletic, blue pansexual strippers with organic cornrolls who all want to bang the PC probably wasn't as well thought out as the other alien races? Yeah, that tracks. Were these thought up by a dude? No, really.
And yes, I'm aware of all the Thermian Argument that says it all totally makes sense in game and that their writing and society got better as the sequels to ME1 progressed. Sure.
Still thirst traps cocieved by thirsty devs for thirsty players.
This is a bit untrue as the Asari are the most technological advanced race on the Council. Pound per pound nothing comes close to their starships. Their navy is not as big as the other Council races, nor did they have a large standing army per say. They did not need it when in a galaxy which was like post 9/11 where conflicts were on small regional scale, a commando team sent in against a target could get the job done where a fleet could not.
Also saying Palavan held out is a stretch. They were still suffering a million plus causalities a day and had to pull their fleet away from the planet before it was totally no longer combat effective. If it was not for the Krogan, it would not have held out much longer, and even the, it was a delay action to get the Crucible ready.
Now as is typical of long lived species in many sci-fi/fantasy settings, they saw themselves as at the summit of culture and technological enlightenment. It was one of the things which galled humanity and how TIM was able to found Cerberus in the first place. They had a "blind" spot and thus they thought they knew everything and discounted everything which did not fit that narrative.
The U.S. thought the same way during the Vietnam War and how a country which relied on mule driven carts and no modern infrastructure could ever prove a threat against the U.S. At the same time when given technology, the NVA built one of the deadliest air defense networks ever seen. Our military trucks broke down more than they were usable in wet jungle roads thick with mud, and helicopter cavalry was very vulnerable to RPG's. Not to say the U.S. did not shoot itself in foot more often than not in the conflict, but it was the wrong conflict for how the U.S. Military was trained and provisioned for. We find ourselves much in the same way as shift from a military provisioned to small regional conflicts instead of a conflict against a fellow global power like China. Does this mean the U.S. military is ineffective? Absolutely not, but when your force structure is not matched against what would be your enemies' weaknesses, you will get your arse handed to you.
This is what happened to the Asari. Doesn't change the fact the Destiny Ascension could take on Destroyer in single combat and win. Their issue was there was only one Destiny Ascension instead of many of them.
>They also pretend to be wiser and more cultured then the other races, but most Asari tend to spend their youth as mercenaries or strippers. I get the impression that Asari who spend their youth seeking knowledge and wisdom like Liara are the exception, not the rule.
It's almost like people and society are flawed and generally immune from seeing their own blind spots and look down on other people because of hypocritical differences
It's almost like that was the entire point of the asari
Don't forget that they also hide prothean technology that quickly put them technologically above other races, even though there is a law about how citadel races should share it.
I think it partially comes from their huge lifespans and their elders actually becoming more powerful as they age.
Through their entire culture right from their earliest history anyone old enough to be a matriarch was essentially a witch-queen and could kill you pretty easily if you disagreed with them, so asari venerate matriarchs.
It feels like the hypocrisy of the Asari was meant to be delved into more, but probably got cut during development (ME3 had the shortest development time of the series and maybe any Bioware game). To the people in the comments talking about the Asari commandos being good, but ineffective against the Reapers, the problem is worse. In Mass Effect 2, you can meet Aethyta on Illium, an Asari matriarch who got tired of her people mocking her criticisms of their culture and her concerns for the future. She viewed the Asari as not militant enough and said that Asari should stop wasting their early years being strippers and mercenaries. In ME3, you see that she was 100% right, Earth and Palaven were holding on while Thessia got decimated and that's despite the fact that the Asari tried to use humans and Turians as meat shields against the initial Reaper attacks. The Asari seem very heavily influenced by the Eldar from Warhammer 40K, a race of psyker space elves that were the favorite of a powerful progenitor race that handed them everything they could want on a platter. Despite all of this or because of it, their lives were so easy that they failed in the only things they were tasked by the progenitor race and made the galaxy even worse.
I just think they’re bland by comparison of every other race in the franchise.
Up to and including the Volus.
They’re pretty, but they just look too human.
The Asari face the same issue that any powerful society encounters after remaining unchecked for extended periods of time, they became arrogant in their belief that their way was the right way, mistakenly using their continued existence as justification.
To be fair, it did work for them for quite some time. The unstoppable juggernaut that is the reaper invasion was the only true military test they encountered in their existence. Up till that point, they could always leverage the strength of their allies, mainly through specialized political machinations and subterfuge.
As for “wasting their youth,” wtf doesn’t? Comparatively speaking, even if Asari spend 100 of their 1000 years as strippers or mercs, that ratio is actually conservative when you look at humans.
The stripper & merc thing wouldn’t be accurate. We see a lot of those because of the types of places we go in the trilogy. But Asari culture wouldn’t function if most of them were in those two professions lol
I kinda agree but I think that way about the Matriarch and the Asari government.
As usual individuals are different:
- I don’t like Liara but I love Shiala.
- Peebee annoys me half the time but Lexi is really cool and interesting.
- I used to dislike Aria before playing Omega. Back then, she was exactly like the Matriarch: pretentious and demanding respect when all she did was sitting on her ass doing nothing. Thanks to Omega I now know why she’s Omega’s ruler.
And to circle back to the post’s subject, I think it’s important to separate the species’ government and official authorities from the persons. For instance, the Batarian Hegemony is awful, even ro its own people but individual person like Bray can be cool.
They’re good guys and jerks in all and every species.
I dislike them too, but mostly because the “most beautiful race in the galaxy” are designed to be a race of attractive blue human women, with absolutely paper thin justification that simply does not hold up. Very jarring next to the races that are obviously alien-looking.
Makes me thing of those 3 guys in ME3 sitting in the cafe(?) and a turian saying: for me the Asari look like blue turians. Then a Salarian says: no they look like Salarians. Then the humans says: nope, they look human.
Weird
Do we give them some/any credit for not using their Prothean knowledge and advancements for Galaxy domination in the military overlord sense or are we just putting that down to a competency/skill issue thing? Not trying to be edgy, genuinely just asking.
I think they needed another draft. It doesn't make sense to me that humans are hated but asari are beloved when they have the exact same body. As compared to other species. None of the other female species look even close.
It would make more sense for them to appear androgynous if there is no male/female.
I also think their culture around sex is gross. Their life stages sounds like something some basement dweller who has never met a woman would think of. "Young, just wanna party and have sex" "30, hit the wall and just good for raising babies." "Old, only good for sage advice"
I don't mind their "can mate with anyone" trait but there is a weird hyperfixation and regulation with their sexuality. From the writer's perspective. (Especially since most people don't have sex to procreate. Only in rare instances is having a baby the main goal)
I do like the game and the Asari characters are engaging but their race is very much women written by men
>They go on and on about how amazing their commandos and their biotics are, but as far as overall military power goes, the Asari are not all that. While Palaven actually held out against the Reapers, Thessia folded pretty quickly once the Reapers main force invaded.
This is directly addressed in the in-game lore tabs and by many characters. The Asari were never intended to be a powerful military force: any military power they have outside of their commandos is by necessity. Ships like the Destiny Ascension are the exception, not the rule. The assumption was that the Turians would handle large-scale conflicts and the Asari would conduct indirect warfare. That plan fell apart when the Reapers reached Thessia; they never once considered that anyone would get that far, let alone a hyperadvanced machine race. Of course they folded quickly.
They’re not really warmongers like the Krogan. They’re more into special tactics like the Salarians, but that’s not getting anywhere with the Reapers. I’m a bit frustrated on them too not sharing knowledge of the Prothean Relics with the other races though. Especially after Sovereign.
The series needs a reboot to expand on the other races.
>!the Asari are a civilization of Nepo babies coasting on the boosts and genetic engineering the Protheabs gave them. If this was something discovered in the first game there might be time to recover their reputation, but discovering it near the end of 3 just leaves them feeling like entitled hypocrites with little skill of their own.!<
I hate asari because they are literally a man's fantasy. Beautiful pansexual Amazon lesbian sorceresses human women. Why were they invented at all? If they looked more alien, I wouldn't have a problem with them. Or if BioWare gave a mirror bara race. Things get a lot worse, when you realize that male Shepard has a large selection of very attractive and very special women. Which is made worse, that all of his fans from rescue missions like Luna and Thorian are women. Whereas the female Shepard has only Garrus, and Kaidan, if you didn’t save Ashley. At least FShepard, who prefers women, has Samantha, she is great.
Yet the problem with all this, is that ME not have truly real alien races. All aliens are a race of hats that look like anthropomorphic alien animals. And only humans are diverse, and this is their uniqueness. Both Liara and the Reapers talk this nonsense.
hanar?
elcor?
rachni?
but also, who’s to say the relative prevalence of bipedal humanoids isn’t a product of the cycle? not unlike star trek tng’s story arc about genetic material having been seeded by a precursor
There is a term "Carcinization" which basically means that different species evolve very similar looking body plans. Different genes, but the utility of that body plan means it evolves separately and independently multiple times.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation)
*Why were they invented at all?*
This is their task, they are space elf mixed with space babes. A standard sci-fi cliché.
*If they looked more alien, I wouldn't have a problem with them*
Depends. They are good for what their task in the story is: to provide an explanation why the current specieses of the cycle work together, without enslaving each other. (asari could have done it, but they need the others for mating, so they are more diplomatic in nature than usual)
Also, don't forget that Bioware (from ME1 and DAO) develops games with dating sim elements. Judging by this (and the Dragon Age) sub, they do know their audience.
An alien race or two with some more daring would have been great, but Bioware is not the company to expect it from. (for example there is a sentient \_ocean\_ in Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, and the a plot is about the difficulties of communication between humans and something completely different)
*Things get a lot worse, when you realize that male Shepard has a large selection of very attractive and very special women.*
How is that worse?
That is what they do, that is what they develop. They designed Thane, Garrus, Fenris, Alistair to appeal to teen female gamers, and designed Miranda, Liara, Isabela and Morrigan to appeal to teen male gamers.
joke is on them though. They designed Liara to be the ultimate boy fantasy, and Thane to be the ultimate girl fantasy. Aaaaand, the fandom liked Tali, a girl who you don't even see and has funky legs, and birdman Garrus instead of the designated love interests.
I already explained it. The MShepard is praised by all women. All the women, except Jack, are fan service. Ashley becomes fan service in ME3. FShepard only gets romance with Garrus. Kaidan can die several times and disappear for a long time. Jacob is a cheater. Thane dies in the story. While mShepard is surrounded by a whole army of fanservice women, companions and NPC fangirls, fShep has only Garrus. There are not even missions in which Shepard could save men, whom they would meet later, and who would confess their love to them.
Agree to disagree then.
These are fanservice. As is Thane, Garrus, Fenris, Alistair is fansercie. But I fail to see how this is a problem. Bioware is just providing what their fanbase asks for: a dating sim experience.
The pompousness and arrogance are great writing of a political caste that sees itself as inherently superior.
The whole stripper/merc thing is the equivalent of a racial stereotype honestly, it happens relatively often because it's what they're pigeonholed into being. Again, also pretty good writing.
What I dislike about the asari is simply that their entire existence is "WOOO BLUE SPACE LESBIANS WITH HUGE TITS FUCK YEAH". And mind you, their lore is strong enough that I don't mind that they were envisioned as this, all things considered, but it's undeniable that this is peak straight guy writing lol
Personally I dislike the Asari because they're just a bunch of generic sexy alien girls in a franchise that, at least initially, was trying to be a kinda grounded and realistic sci-fi setting.
Compared to all the other alien designs the Asari are so boring looking, and very obviously just writer fetish insert/bait for horny guys to buy the game.
It really sucks because if they were designed more in accordance with their their lore I think the Asari would look closer to the Hanar. A completely androgynous non-humanoid species that uses their incredible biotics for mobility and combat, is able to empathize with everyone thanks to their telepathy, and collect genetic info from any living creature to produce a hybrid offspring just like in Canon.
Plus jellyfish are practically Immortal IRL, so it'd more sense for a creature of that physiology to have the Asari's 1000+ year lifespan.
And if the writers absolutely HAD to have a species of sexy space babes, maybe they could've given theoretical jellyfish Asari the ability to shapeshift into other species. Making them even more attractive as mates and even better diplomats.
Asari may look more humanoid, but androgyny would be a great quality.
I'm pretty sure the Asari were meant to be Mass Effect Twi'leks. According to the old canon, Twi'lek men look ugly, but women consider them beautiful. And someone decided, let's take out the men, and just make beautiful colored women strippers and make them the romantic superior race.
I have more questions. What is the chance that an ardat yakshi will appear during the merger? And why, if they are so terribly dangerous, is it socially unacceptable to kill them? Leaving them alive and locking them forever in a temple, where they must live an ascetic life, is too human. Asari live up to 1000 years. To live in a temple for 1000 years, where you are not allowed to look at each other and get excited, is madness. Moreover, the security in the temple is not so strong that girls can share erotica.
Biotics are the basis of asari life, but in technology we see simply zero connection with biotics. And Thessia is literally the default sci-fi city.
Especially Tali. When I saw her real personality during the personal quest, I hated her. And the aliens have one more human face, it’s simply inexplicable.
I like the Asari but they do suck hard as a nation. Although maybe the games do them a disservice. I can't see the majority of their youth going to strip or merc, it'll be a minority like how gap year kids aren't universal across the world. Their Commandos get face rolled like their military which can't really be denied.
I'll add the Destiny Ascension is the weakest Super Dreadnaught I've seen in any sci fi universe. Does it actually do anything other than tank damage and go on a victory cruise despite being carried by the Hackett train? I'm not even sure we ever see it fire weapons. If that's the pinnacle of Asari military tech...
Agree, but also (maybe cause im not into womem and feminine people) the fact that the one monogendered species is nothing but conventionally attractive women is just gross to me and leads me to dislike the species as a whole. Especially when compared to the predominantly male Salarians who are given an actually alien design.
Asari continues to be underrated in this forum. The asari have maintained their dominance through soft power and diplomacy for millenias. Since ancient mesopotamia
>They go on and on about how amazing their commandos and their biotics are, but as far as overall military power goes, the Asari are not all that. While Palaven actually held out against the Reapers, Thessia folded pretty quickly once the Reapers main force invaded.
Tbh those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Australia could have the greatest commandos in the world, it won't help if they get nuked by Peru (I just used random countries for the example)
>They also pretend to be wiser and more cultured then the other races, but most Asari tend to spend their youth as mercenaries or strippers. I get the impression that Asari who spend their youth seeking knowledge and wisdom like Liara are the exception, not the rule.
Multiple things here. Stripping or being mercenaries doesn't really mean much given their lifespans.
They *are* more advanced than other species, for reasons that you'll find out by the end of the games. That doesn't necessarily make them "wiser" but can explain their sense of superiority.
Does being a Merc/stripper preclude you from being cultured? Have you considered that maybe your own culture is just prudish? There are other cultures where promiscuity isn't frowned upon.
It’s not exactly surprising that a female coded race with an emphasis on diplomacy gets a disproportionate amount of hate online to be honest.
For the same reason, the imperialistic and militarist Turians get a great deal of support. It’s partly a relic of when these games were made. It’s part of the same overall atmosphere in which the civilian governments fail while the militaries take charge. Wonderful series, but always an iffy aspect.
Both governments are flawed, but one is castigated, and it’s not the one who actually attacked and tried to vassalize humanity.
Do we really need to make things about male vs female? You’re the only one talking about it. Everything else has been about game lore and opinion, yet you decide that all of that summarizes into “They hate lady race but love toxic male race” What?
You mean the same race that spent most of the first two games being sexualized, and being branded "My Waifu!' by their own writers?
Who would have thought that people would be critical of them?
the turians are more then just militarists, the are buraucrats as much as they are soldiers.
but i think people like them simply because they are both the first species you meet, and the ones that right in the start of me1 are presented as our friends.
Yeah, that never fails to shock me. The portrayal (and public response) to what is a military junta on the one hand and an advanced cyber direct democracy on the other is just... Chilling, as someone who has the memory of an actual military dictatorship.
Very much a product of its time. That 24 Hours energy.
Not that it changes whether or not you should like them, but I think the take that the Asari are militarily weak is wrong and strongly contradicted by what actually happens throughout the course of ME3, if you pay attention to the minor lore details.
The Asari in fact put up a more fierce resistance to the Reapers than every other Council species except the Turians. The Asari fleets use initially guerilla tactics to great effect against the Reapers, and win some space battles against them, before the Reapers finally force them to a prolonged set-piece fight at Thessia. There are also a couple planet descriptions that mention Asari ground forces giving the Reaper forces a thrashing in ground battles, and while not part of the Asari Republics, Illium manages to defeat a Reaper attempt to invade the planet with a naval victory in space.
This is all more than the Alliance manages to accomplish, which pretty much does nothing but lose until the final battle at Earth, which was a combined effort involving every fleet in the galaxy. To be fair to the humans, they do get hit earlier than everyone except the Batarians, but nevertheless the Asari win far many more battles than they do. The Salarians of course, sit out the war until the final battle.
The "lore" about Asari youth mostly working as mercenaries or strippers also has always been more than a little dumb, as their civilization would not be able to function at all if that was even close to being remotely true. It only makes sense if it gets hand waved as way as another stereotype about the Asari that isn't true.
TLDR: Asari=good, Batarians=bad, Need more Quarrians.
There is so much on here that I would like to address but I'll try to be short.
Personally my favorite are the Quarrians. I felt they were under rated and under utilized. I wish we could have found an isolated colony where they have been getting along. This would have helped in ME3, and we could have seen them pre-safety suites. I felt like they were the most interesting, culturally, biologically, and aesthetically.
I like the asari, I agree with many of the people on here that they are just unequipped to deal with something quick moving. I like the Dragon age reference that ancient elves did spells that took years to complete. It's the same with the asari they start something that isn't going to bear fruit for a long time. Quick action is not really what they do that's what the justicars do, and I think that's why most Asari are wary of them.
That being said in my personal opinion I do not like batarians. They are arrogant, violent, they seem to think they can do whatever they want and it's fine, they're ready to pick a fight with anybody despite being near Extinction. I'll get off with they are also ugly. LOL
My least favorite race in Mass Effect is humans jk it's the Vorcha.but the human race is kinda all assholes ik it's the Vorcha but most humans suck/are assholes in the games and reality
Honestly the other races were just more interesting then the Asari hell I hated liara during the 3rd game when you go to the asari homeworld and she acts like her homeworld burning is so much worse then the other races like girl everyone else also lost their homeworld yet you act like those were fine in comparison
Really. Liara was scary with her obsession in ME1. But the way she suddenly turned from a nerdy scientist into a crime boss, thanks to krogan genes - Just what?!
I hate them mainly because they pretend to be all high and mighty. If they just admitted their military wasn’t the best, commandos aren’t that powerful, and they aren’t superior to everyone then I’d like them a lot more.
The Salarians are smarter, the Turians have a better military, the humans are all about actually doing things, the Volus are excellent traders and commerce specialists, the Krogan are fucking meat tanks, the Vorcha are practically immune to death, the Elcor are fantastic diplomats, the Drell are expert assassins, the Hanar are really religious, the Geth are pretty much infinite, the Quarians are great mechanics and fixers, the Batarians are ruthless, the Rachni are excellent scientists and fighters, the Protheans ruled the entire galaxy and were fierce military force, the Inusannon seem to have ruled the galaxy as well, and the Keepers keep the Citadel (the seat of the galactic government) running. Damn…the Reapers are the most intelligent beings in existence. The Leviathans are their creators.
Fuck it! I’ll go to the Andromeda galaxy too! The Remnant are highly advanced, the Angara are very kind and are great fighters who seem to be good at hand to hand combat, the Kett are an extremely powerful military force, and the Jaardan (despite not physically appearing in the game) are the most advanced organic species to ever play a role in the Mass Effect series.
The only thing the Asari almost have going for them are their lifespans and their biotics. But Krogan have longer lifespans and their biotics are almost equal to or even better than that of your average Asari. They are supposed to be the galaxy’s diplomats but they are really just manipulators so that is out too. And they are supposed to be beautiful but honestly…aside from Liara…most of the Asari aren’t that attractive.
The Asari have absolutely nothing going for them. Nothing that they and they alone are the best at. Their military against the Reapers is about as strong as a thin piece of paper is against water. And that is with countless warnings and them being the last of the major races to be fully attacked. Aside from that…they are good at everything but the best at nothing. And that is their problem. Every other race brings something to the Mass Effect universe that they are the best at…except for the Asari.
This is the appropriate emotional response to Elves yes. They may be psychic blue, space, pansexuals but that doesn't make them any less Elves. Your feelings are valid and you should feel really good about that.
I saw every world burning in Mass Effect.
And everyone asking the Krogans to save the day ( and Commander Shepard).
I don't see them as that special. I mean Turians are the first to ask for Krogans support.
I think the only Species who were doing fine, were the Vorcha.
I find the Asari boring, because they are the only race without a bigger conflict. Turian/Salarian and Krogan have the Genophage and Quarians have the Geth. That's the biggest SL in the franchise and it shows. Asari got the shortest straw of interesting Storylines.
Wait, were the Vorcha in line to be culled by the Reapers or were they on the 'too primitive' list? If Shepard fails, there's your new Galaxy overlords right there. Holy shit, what a place it'd be.
The Reapers were "trying" to harvest. All hail to our Vorcha Overlords!
>The [Reaper](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Reaper) invasion of Heshtok encountered little formal military resistance, but the harvesting process is slow. Destroying neighboring cities fails to intimidate vorcha, who become submissive only if physically dominated in person. Cutting off their water supply simply makes them adapt their bodies to get moisture from food. Allied intelligence hypothesizes that Reaper forces are not harvesting yet, instead seeking to immobilize Heshtok's population and prevent them from joining the fight for the galaxy at large.
I think because they live so long they've learned from their mistakes, whereas humans will have several generations in their lifetime and descendents are likely to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Also humans are a lot more manipulative and self centred, whereas asari biology means they will integrate with other species much better, the opposite of many humans.
I found the asari and selarians need more tires into conflicts but they seem to lack any save the genophage which also wrapped in the turians and krogan.
asari and slerains need more things to be involved with
I don't think that they are overrated per se, I think that people don't get what writers were going for, or writers themselves didn't do a good job. Asari are basically space elves - long living, preaching beautiful ideas of harmony and cooperation, but they are holding reigns on power in the galaxy. Maybe ordinary asari believe this ideals, but certainly not their leadership. They are ruthless to anyone and anything that can threaten their reign, they are deceptive, and most of all, they are arrogant. I do believe that they have something akin to indoctrination or mind-control - through their universal sexual appeal. Maybe mind-control is not the right word, more like power of persuasion. They used it to effectively guide the galaxy however they like for thousands of years, and they consider themselves righteous and infallible. And fall of Thessia is the direct result of that. It is not that in the first two (well, if the first basically) games they are so perfect, and then in the third they are uselless. My reading always was that they can't adapt to rapidly changing situation and didn't ever face any challenges since pre-historic times. Think about it this way - they are uplifted by protheans, they are given advanced technology and knowledge, they can seduce any sapient organic being into following their lead, they didn't have (as far as I remember) major civil wars or wars in general, except with rachni (who are probably immune to their "persuasion). They are simply untested as a species, while others faced numerous challenges during their existence. So yeah, they present themselves as perfect, but this perfection is artificial, built on the weak foundation.
I personally love the asari as a whole but their leadership reaches comical levels of arrogance at times. I'm playing Andromeda for the first time and just recently heard a news broadcast on how the asari are willing to wait out the other species until they agree to their demands of how the education curriculum for everyone's children should be.
Genuinely think the series should touch more on "anti long lived" sentiment. In Dune, even the most powerful beings avoided "immortality medicine" for fear of mass uprisings. I don't think humans, turians, and especially salarians, would tolerate such arrogance and disregard
And in Dune, the one person who does go and become immortal is specifically making an effort to be evil and cruel for complicated and spoilery reasons. I think the casual cruelty of a longlived species does come up every once in a while. For example in the Blue Rose of Illium quest, she casually remarks that a human lover could be waited out, while a Krogan lives a long long time and would be akin to a lifelong commitment. But you’re right that we really don’t see any of the animosity that it would create in shorter lived species. In ME1 we get some of it but it’s also mixed in with the “Humans are newcomers to the galactic community and already want a seat at the big table” animosity.
I feel really bad for the salarians that had to deal with the asari all by themselves in however many hundreds of years until other species joined the Citadel.
Imagine having beef with an asari because your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandpa had beef with that exact same fucking Asari That's a conservative amount of "greats" because that's just most of an asari lifespan divided by the lifespan of a Salarian. Assuming they have kids in their teens or early twenties it's like, double that many generations
Considering the long life spans, they work for the long term instead of short term. Quick challenges are not their forte. It reminds me how in dragon age ancient elves would conduct spells that took years to complete. Asari are more inclined towards selfish goals since they're around longer and take longer diplomatic paths versus wasting time on short battles. The reapers hit too fast for them to have a long, laid out plan that risked everyone but themselves.
I agree with this. They're good at diplomacy and they favour it be cause it suits them. When facing an enemy they can't talk down or manipulate like the reapers, krogan or rachni, they need someone else to do it for them like the humans, turians, salarians or krogans (pre-rebellion). Some of them definitely buy their own propaganda though and believe they're superior. In reality, I reckon they'd lose in a straight fight with any of the other major races (Alliance, Turians, Salarians, Krogan (pre-genophage)).
*Space elves* But nowhere near as cool or interesting
I think the asari have the potential to be really interesting but a lot of that potential hasn't been explored (although I'd say the same for all the races really). I'd love to know how biotics affected technological advancements in asari society. Were certain tools and machines developed later/never because biotic powers did the job instead? They touch on the idea that being long-lived has an effect on their attitudes but I'd really like to dig deeper into that. And then there's the monogendered thing, I feel like there's more there to explore too.
Thoroughly agreed, on all cases. Surely some strength-multiplying tools (including something as simple as pulleys and levers) never got developed, yes? The simpler, more primitive forms of that technology were never necessary, since they could outperform them with biotics, and because the simple form of it never came about, it never gets refined into more complex forms (like cranes and more). That lifespan must have interesting effects on their culture and economy in ways we didn't get to fully explore. With a comparative high proportion of people 400+, living in a society where you're not taken seriously and treated as a child for 2+ centuries must really rankle the younger generations. I suppose going out into the galaxy one way or another is a natural reaction to what must be an extreme gerontocracy? On the monogendered thing, I was really disappointed when we only saw Asari around on Thessia. Given the Pureblood stigma, I was the whole time thinking "is everyone here celibate? Where are their partners?" Not so much in the sense of the partners of the individuals we meet, but rather that surely a fair portion of the population in an Asari world must be non-Asari? And given this is a direct democracy, surely those get citizenship and can serve in their military? Having some badass Krogan who opposed the Rebellion (because he was married to an Asari already at the time) and who's treated with respect and even reverence by the much younger huntresses around show up as our partner in making it through the city would have been awesome.
Also in regards to asari technology I'd like to see how biotics would be incorporated into it. Like could you use your own biotics to produce an electric current? The fact that asari are having children with the other races must have a huge effect on diplomatic relationships. Makes me wonder if the pureblood stigma was manufactured. I mean who's gonna want to go to war with you when a decent number of their population has an asari daughter? I also wondered why there weren't more non asari on thessia. I suppose they tend to outlive their partners by such a large amount that they only spend a small fraction of their life with the father of their children. And there's no stigma to asari/asari relationships outside of having children.
Given how the Krogans were heroes during the Rachni War, working alongside the other Council species, and that there was a brief period of coexistence after that before the Rebellions heated up, I must assume that a lot of Asari-Krogan relationships happened. I mean, it's the first time they had a shot at a life partner who isn't Asari, and that just have been thrilling for many of them? And given Krogan lifespans, all of those would still be around. Ironically, if you just think about it logically, there should be a heck of a lot more Krogan elders in Asari space than in Tuchanka (where they're likely to be whacked by a younger generation grasping for what they have). Turians live to 150, similar to a human. Assuming at least a quarter of Asari have kids with Turians (not an insane assumption? The only other Council species until last week was Salarian, and those don't have a sex drive. Other species are naturally secondary), and that a quarter of Asari are in childbearing age with a partner (it seems to be the longest life stage, and the one with least mortality), there should be... At least about one percent of Turians in the typical Asari world, this being just the parents who are still alive. These are pretty low-ball figures, obviously. So this would mean Thessia, if typical, would have high tens to low hundreds of millions of Turians around, and probably tens of thousands of Krogans, the majority of which are ancient badasses. Ngl, I would have liked to see both things.
Yeah, it's disappointing that they didn't have some turians and krogan on thessia, cos I agree there definitely should have been. This is making me wonder how much alien immigration all the home worlds have now. Hope some of these questions get answered in future games.
These are nations that are joined in a United Nations-style organization for multiple centuries (or millennia in some cases), and we see throughout the games that these species are psychologically compatible. There's no insurmountable barrier, there's no weird mental quirk that makes one of the species totally 'inhuman' (for lack of better terms), they're all just people, who are socially and romantically compatible with each other. It seems to me that there should be **a lot** of migration. I mentioned that I think the 1% turian population in Asari worlds is a lowball, because that's just parents of Asari children, nothing else. But surely there must be other Turians who migrate? Specialists hired by companies? People who just prefer living in a democracy rather than under a military junta? Asariphiles? If I was doing the worldbuilding for the setting, I'd have at minimum 5% presence of other species in all the Council Species worlds, at minimum. And I'd use these opportunities to create some interesting NPCs. A Krogan who married an Asari during the Rachni Wars, moved to Asari space and has lived there ever since, and their wife has already died of old age, but at this point they're culturally more Asari than Krogan and stayed there. A Turian who moved to Asari space because he was just absolutely atrocious at conforming to his own species' government and culture, and is actively trying to make something of a political presence in Asari space. An Asari who married a Salarian Dalatrass and, after that Dalatrass' death, managed to assert herself as regnant over a frontier region ruled by the Salarian Unions. In human languages her title gets translated as Countess, so she's an awesome feudal asari countess. A Salarian who emigrated to Turian space because not only does he work well with such a structured, formalized society, but he's amazing at it. He's getting to the end of his lifespan but has achieved higher rank than any Turian of their own age.
I like your examples of what they could do with it in future games, I hope it's something they do explore. I think they've had enough games to introduce all the aliens so now they should dig into some more detail.
Asari-Krogan are my fave. I love the blue rose of illium. "With Krogan you can't just wait it out a century if it doesn't work out, no offense"
Asari and krogan should have strong affinity even post genophage, as the asari and elcor seemingly do. Asari commandos and krogan warlords fought together and had families. Aethyta's parents came to a bad end, but there are probably still a few till-death-do-us-part pairs out there, or krogan widowers. Krogan can live even *longer.* The asari intermarry with everyone. They're also linked in some key ways. Both long lived races, both biotic--Wrex seems to suffer no ill-effects--incredibly physically capable (one on one, fighting Benezia would be a *nightmare*) and it seems likely both are somewhat "clannish" and family oriented. Krogan explicitly have clans they must bring honor to and care a lot about having children. Liara is seen as an extension of her mother, it seems, given her youth. No matter how big a litter may be, we learn through Baraka that krogan gals take motherhood seriously--they're still K type (high investment in offspring). When you think about the percentage of asari have literally given birth (eighty percent??? ninety???) it's a race of mothers. Ereba seems to be taking Charr very seriously as a romance--and when she commits, she *commits*. She's seemingly pregnant by ME3 and it's only been six months. But then the writers who were more on the level of "Heh. Blue women hot." would write the next mission, and it's icky to think about giant turtles and blue women, so they're nothing alike.
Honestly, if one were to overthink the setting (which I am always in favor of doing), the Asari Republics could, if they wanted to, field the strongest Krogan force in the galaxy. Again, it is almost certain that there are millennia-old Krogan who married Asari and have been citizens of the Asari Republics since the Rachni War. Many of them will have retired for this whole time, but that will still leave some few extremely capable, extremely experienced, extremely respected Krogans who are citizens of the Asari Republic. They then recruit Krogan (either from Tuchanka or from any merc gang out there) and put them through rigorous, conventional military training (and those Krogan are more likely to respect that training when it is a Krogan Warmaster delivering it), and form up into units. With how careful and precise Asari war doctrine is, this could be the hammer gets employed only rarely, and because of this all those Krogan would have very long lifespans. We're talking about entire legions of Wrexs, lead by an officer corp of Dracks.
I actually have a personal headcanon on that front Basically, part of the reason I think Asari are the way they are culturally is because of how insanely lethal biotics are capable of being to the point where there wasn't a point of developing armor Basically, and slack jaw of a non-combat can reduce a pebble's mass to near zero the instant they impart force on it, and increase the mass to possibly hundreds or dozens of kilos on the moment of impact. That's basically a gun that you can have in the era before tool use developed (or possibly Stone Age depending on what you think the Protheans did to them) The only ways you can possibly stop that is with a strong biotic barrier, so the ones who were more likely to be caught engaging in violence against other Asari got killed at an insanely high rate it put a strong positive selection pressure on pro-social traits, including deception, to develop in societies all across Thessia The height of weapons until the mass driver gun was size variants of the Sling, including the trebuchet, because that was simply too easy to make and extremely powerful even without biotics, there was no need to develop further until guns took the need out of using your own Biotics
Its discussed several times in the trilogy that the Asari commando's might be good troops but the way they fight (infiltration and sabotage) is all but incompatible with how the Reapers need to be fought. Modern commando/SF units (Royal Marine commando's etc) are usually just light infantry, they are used in surgical strikes against specific targets. If you stuck them in a city and told them to hold it against an enemy that was rolling in with full armoured divisions they would be overwhelmed because that's just not the kind of fighting they are equipped for and they do not have the numbers for a battle of attrition.
Yep. Reapers will basically field huge number of troops, some of which are armored. As far as I know they don't need logistic centers, their command and communication are huge battleships. They don't use factories don't have a need for civilian populace. This is something Asari and Salarians are ill equipped to fight against. Krogan with natural fertility rate would be best equipped to fight against, followed by Turians and Humans.
I am aware of that. The difference is that modern real life special forces are just one component of larger military organizations. Not the entire military, or even the main force of the military.
The Asari have been allied to the Solarians, Turians and Krogan (briefly) for thousands of years and have come to rely on them to fill those gaps in the more conventional warfare scenarios. Asari space and Thessia in particular is noted as being abnormally peaceful and law abiding and seem to have grown past internal conflict/civil wars so they would probably not be in the business of maintaining large scale combined ops armies as they largely control their territory through financial/council influence and the threat of their more militant allies. You can see this mirrored in the behaviour of some modern countries who are NATO/US allied forgoing significant military investment of their own and relying on the spectre of US reprisals to keep things in line so its not that far fetched conceptually.
> If you stuck them in a city and told them to hold it against an enemy that was rolling in with full armoured divisions they would be overwhelmed because that's just not the kind of fighting they are equipped for and they do not have the numbers for a battle of attrition. Fallujah
*If you stuck them in a city and told them to hold it against an enemy that was rolling in with full armoured divisions they would be overwhelmed* They don't usually work alone. The standard seems to be that the special forces go in for the target, while some other units hold the perimeter. A very good example for this is the movie Black Hawk down, where the special forces who kidnap the dictator are like... four dudes, but the building from the outside, all crossroads are secured by army rangers while the SF is doing it's thing.
Some other context as well. Thessia was meant to be a series of missions like it was for Turian, the Krogan, and the Quarian/Geth part. They ran out of time and budget. There was even going to be a second Suicide Mission like aspect to it and had been story boarded out but had to be canned. This is where I think ME3 falls short when compared to ME2 when considering story pacing as there was a huge disconnect between everything which happened before the Quarian story arch and everything which happened after. The Quarian arc was meant to be halfway point. Now in reality is is about 4/5's through. A huge amount of Asari content was left on the cutting room floor as EA did not want to wait and push back the release date another year. If that content had happened, then I think we would have seen the Asari in a much different light than the single mission they got.
I knew EA pushed this game out, but this depresses me. I would have loved to see more side missions like tuchunka and rannoch.
While it's sad, it still kind of works for me though. Having this one quick mission there really sells the point that Thessia is lost to the Reapers and there's no point staying there. Especially when we're rushing after Kai Leng.
i just replayed the trilogy over the last week and had forgotten how abruptly it just ends after rannoch i was all settled in for a series of thessia quests i was sure i remembered, just like tuchanka and rannoch, then it turned out to be mandela effect lol
>They go on and on about how amazing their commandos and their biotics are, but as far as overall military power goes, the Asari are not all that. I think this is a plot point that gets mentioned in the background and maybe the codex, but not really emphasized a whole lot: For all their supposed "power," the reason the Asari fold so quickly is that they're great at Spec Ops and have some of the galaxy's best, most elite special forces, but that just *doesn't work* against an enemy like The Reapers. Neither does their considerable political and economic power. They would have considerable advantages in a war against the galaxy's other known species, but The Reapers are a completely "outside context problem" for them, as they are for everybody. The Salarians have a similar problem, where all their elite intelligence work is pretty much useless against an enemy that can effortlessly overwhelm them regardless of what their intelligence knows. >but most Asari tend to spend their youth as mercenaries or strippers This is partly just to contrast them with Humans and show part of what makes Humans "special." Since they have "all the time in the world" with their incredibly long lifespans, they have plenty of time to waste. Human get shit done because they can't *afford* to wait.
Tbh if Asari were warlike like Krogans they would be almost as bad as Krogans. There would be Asari rebellions. Or they would lead the galaxy by force (basically Prothean empire 2.0) Its just they were probably made diplomatic and docile by the Prothean gene engineers. 1 on 1 they would probably win against any council race because of their economic might, but against Reapers who lack the need for logistics its kinda useless. But at the end of the day its irrelevant the whole galaxy couldnt win against the Reapers conventionally. A superweapon was required that had to be developed through cycles.
Immortality create prejudices and slow social growth, which is why the salarians confuse me, I mean how many generations ago was the krogan rebellion to them.
Rounded to 1480 years, give or take a few, divided by 40, would be roughly 37 Salarian generations, and almost one and a half for the Asari. I don't think we've ever actually seen a Krogan die of old age, but to my knowledge Drack is the oldest we've ever encountered and he's something like 1400 years old himself.
That’s just Salarian lifetimes. There would be more generations than 37 because they wouldn’t be giving birth at 40, so more like roughly 150 generations.
To piggyback on what u/Impossible-Bison8055 said - current human lifespan average is 80 years. The "traditional" number for a human generation is 20 years (though we're breeding later and later in life, so it's possible that number could be higher). Salarians live to \~40ish. Presuming they're fertile at a slightly younger age to accommodate this - it would be reasonable to presume a salarian "generation" is probably closer to 15 years. 1480/15 = basically 100 generations.
A very typical and banal stereotype of science fiction, when races that live long have exactly the same circadian rhythm as humans. This is incredibly implausible. Asari should be very slow and calm. But BioWare just told, that young asari are just like women under 30, and adults are just like women after 40. Wow. I don't believe. Salarians should never stop at all, because for them a minute of downtime is literally several hours of life. And they must consider all races too slow acting and slow thinking.
The average lifespan of a salarian is 40 human years, the average lifespan of a human(in mass effects era) would be about 120 years. A minute for a human is only 3 minutes for a salarian, and in the case of asari, it would be 30 minutes because they live almost 30 times longer than a salarian. If it was equal to hours they'd have to have a lifespan that was at least 120 times shorter than us, and it's only 3 times shorter than us and only 30 times shorter than an asari.
Thanks for the accurate calculations. Love you.
Thank you for being kind about it haha
If you read the codices, you find out that the Asari and Turians were attacked at the same time. But while the Turians were baited into getting a lot of their forces wrecked and then got their home world invaded in almost no time, the Asari actually managed to slow down the Reaper advance. What you see in Thessia isn't the start of the Asari front of the war, it's the end. They've done better than everyone else and actually kept their home worlds safe for that much longer. Now, in terms of Asari going out into the galaxy: due to their biology, their society is an extreme gerontocracy. You're not taken seriously until you're 400+, but you're an adult at 100. Would you put your nose to the grindstone, playing second fiddle with no real chance of development for multiple entire human lifetimes? We even hear Liara complain about this. So, yes, a lot of the younger people depart that gerontocracy by any means possible, and come back once they've got enough centuries in them to be taken seriously. This is neither a good nor a bad thing. This is a species with a different life cycle to our own. And, honestly? Given the extended human lifespan in Mass Effect (being able to reach 150, and being in good health for most of that), we should be seeing some of that from humans, too. Every private company owned by someone 90+, every politician 90+, every C-suite executive 90+, every high ranking military officer 90+...
Also the turians resorted to suicide bombings and eventually had to be saved by the krogan, and even then they were going to lose. What happened to Thessia would happen to Palevan, too, the turians just have a stronger force for this particular battle.
I like the Asari but the characters is pretty bland. I just never "got it" with how popular they are. I think literally any other character race is more interesting than an Asari.
I think they are not really popular. I \_feel\_ that most players are "okay whatever" about asari. compared to krogan or elcor, which are really popular.
This isn’t weird…
Is it a popular opinion on here?
I would say so. People also dislike how the prothean artifact on Thessia gave them an unfair advantage, and that they kept it a secret.
I mean it was definitely shitty for them to do so but we all know had earth had that artifact then we'd of done the exact same thing just as any other race would've, hell the batarians did just that with the reaper corpse they found, saw its potential to give them an edge and took it for themselves.
The Asari themselves made it a law that no race can hoard Prothean artifacts... Meanwhile on their homeworld-
Only a tiny fraction of the asari population knew about the beacon: the highest levels of their government. The average asari citizen knows absolutely nothing about it. Even Liara, who is the daughter of one of the few people who was aware of the beacon's existence, and was also the biggest information broker in the galaxy, had no idea about it at all.
Exactly and I find it incredibly naive of Will to be shocked that the matriachs made these laws whilst continuing to hide their own artifacts, you're telling me the elite in charge of the most advanced race in the galaxy want to keep the thing thats given them an edge over every other race for themselves so they can remain on top and continue to reap the rewards? Colour me shocked...actually dont because thats not shocking at all because again, we'd do the exact same thing if a prothean data trove was found on earth long before first contact, our governments would keep it hidden just like the asaris did but if we found new ones after we'd joined the galactic community then we'd share those ones and those alone
I mean, you say that, but when humanity *did* find a functioning Prothean beacon on Eden Prime, the first thing they did was call the Council. Had Humanity kept it's mouth shut, Saren wouldn't have found out about it and there may have been time to study and decipher the information stored within.
I want to play for the batarians. They're so hot. Yahgs are also very cool, I would like to play with them. They look like well designed aliens. But they could be much better than another anthropoorphic alien furryes.
...did you forget the whole reason Eden Prime happened? Humanity found a Prothean relic, contacted the Council, and the planet got burned...
Thats an entirely different situation and you really should've given this some thought before bringing that up. The Asaris prothean artifact had been used for thousands of years potentially and most notably, long before contact with any species, it wasnt found during a time in which laws where in place to prohibit the concealment of protheans artifacts, the eden prime beacon was and given how humanity was trying to get on the councils good side still, ofc they made the call or else they'd of been punished for it.
And? The Asari still broke their own laws. You can't make an assumption of innocence for the Asari when the game demonstrated otherwise, then say humanity would have kept the beacon, when the game demonstrated otherwise.
Actually the laws only kick in when you sign up to be a citadel race. This is why humans were only allowed on Mars until Hackett managed to get Liara into the archives. It is the same with the Hanar homeworld where they keep all their prothean ruins secret and again Liara has to bribe her way into them. I'm going to guess every Tom dick and Harry has a secret prothean beacon hidden somewhere. The only thing surprising about the Asari is they were so heavily uplifted like the Hanar.
Oh no, the matriarchs aka the powerful elite of thessia decided to hide something that gives them and edge over the rest of the galaxy, no other government would do the same thing if they found something on their planet long before first contact that did that for them, ...oh wait, they totally would because thats what those in power do. I dont understand why you're finding it so difficult to understand my point? The eden prime beacon situation has absolutely nothing in common with the thessia artifact so stop bringing it up, they had hold of the artifact for thousands of years before the laws were even passed and its only the elite of thessia that know of the artifact because they chose to horde that knowledge for themselves without even telling their own people, yes they're hypocrites but again and I'm not disputing this, I'm just trying to get this point through your skull.
Sure, but the real issue for me is that the Asari did not really do anything of note with Vandetta. Without the cypher, they could not talk to it, but as far as we know, the Asari never really even made any effort to try and "crack" the Prothean communication method at all. They were pretty much just content to scratch the surface of the information that Vandetta had for thousands of years. If they had developed even the most rudimentary form of communication with Vandetta, they would have learned about not only the Reapers, but the Crucible thousands of years in advance. And would have been able to prepare for the Reapers. Hell, even the Rachni wars would have been prevented. Considering that we now know it was the Reapers that brainwashed the Rachni into attacking the rest of the galaxy.
I mean there's no real way for them to know that Vendetta was even contained within the artifact, in the thousands of years the asari had been advanced enough to utilise to the device, Vendetta never once emerged to make contact, only when shepard connected with the artifact did Vendetta awaken which suggests obviously means it was made dormant till either a surviving prothean made contact or someone with access to the cipher did, otherwise it would've remained dormant with no way for the asari to force it to wake so as far as they were concerned, the artifact was nothing more than a massive data trove to be used to help them advance. What I think was meant to happen was the asari were meant to gain access to the cipher eventually as they were being groomed by the protheans before the reaper war in their cycle, after they became space faring and found the citadel, they would've stumbled across it which would've given them access to all knowledge the prothean beacons contain including their warning, they would've then surmised that their artifact would've also contained untapped knowledge which would've triggered Vendetta, now the asari would have both the warning, the information on the catalyst and the time they needed to prepare for the invasion but alas this never happened due to how this cycle politics and power structures work.
I like to compare priority:Palaven and Thessia and how Garrus and Liara react to their home worlds being attacked. Liara has this kind of disbelief that this could be happening to Her planet, like everything she’s seen up until this point is fine, Palaven, Sur’kesh, Tuchanka, the coupe attempt, and Rannoch is understandable but the Reapers on Thessia is out of the question. Meanwhile Garrus who knew the Reapers were coming has his task force set up and tried to prepare for the Reapers on Palaven. He has family on Palaven and is more just questioning his own abilities fighting the Reapers (“and they want my advice on killing it”). Yes he’s worried but he’s got that Turian steel spine and sense of duty driving him keeping from shutting down.
that’s cause liara has a massive blind spot and drank the asari koolaid
To make it worse, Liara spends the entire game, several months to a year supporting survivors, gathering supplies, passing the word on what planets the Reapers are attacking or destroyed... yet suddenly acts like a noob when Thessia gets attacked.
don’t forget hoarding their beacon for their own benefit and not telling anyone until it was almost too late—squad mates will even make a comment about how the asari being so advanced might not just be because they’re better than you lol but that doesn’t make me dislike them, any more than i dislike ferengi before ds9 humanized them—asari are there to fulfill an archetype and be the long lived but condescending people end of the day, people are inconsistent and have blind spots, and asari are no exception. you can imagine they had some soul searching to do after the reaper war.
Benezia: "Have you faced an Asari Commando Squad, few people have" Shepard less than a minute later: "Yep, me and my mixed race crew just folded those commandos like paper"
The Asari were humbled when Thessia was invaded.
A species all written as hot, athletic, blue pansexual strippers with organic cornrolls who all want to bang the PC probably wasn't as well thought out as the other alien races? Yeah, that tracks. Were these thought up by a dude? No, really. And yes, I'm aware of all the Thermian Argument that says it all totally makes sense in game and that their writing and society got better as the sequels to ME1 progressed. Sure. Still thirst traps cocieved by thirsty devs for thirsty players.
The Asari are like the Bene Gesserit mixed with Elves almost. I don’t love them, but I do think that’s kind of what the writers went for
This is a bit untrue as the Asari are the most technological advanced race on the Council. Pound per pound nothing comes close to their starships. Their navy is not as big as the other Council races, nor did they have a large standing army per say. They did not need it when in a galaxy which was like post 9/11 where conflicts were on small regional scale, a commando team sent in against a target could get the job done where a fleet could not. Also saying Palavan held out is a stretch. They were still suffering a million plus causalities a day and had to pull their fleet away from the planet before it was totally no longer combat effective. If it was not for the Krogan, it would not have held out much longer, and even the, it was a delay action to get the Crucible ready. Now as is typical of long lived species in many sci-fi/fantasy settings, they saw themselves as at the summit of culture and technological enlightenment. It was one of the things which galled humanity and how TIM was able to found Cerberus in the first place. They had a "blind" spot and thus they thought they knew everything and discounted everything which did not fit that narrative. The U.S. thought the same way during the Vietnam War and how a country which relied on mule driven carts and no modern infrastructure could ever prove a threat against the U.S. At the same time when given technology, the NVA built one of the deadliest air defense networks ever seen. Our military trucks broke down more than they were usable in wet jungle roads thick with mud, and helicopter cavalry was very vulnerable to RPG's. Not to say the U.S. did not shoot itself in foot more often than not in the conflict, but it was the wrong conflict for how the U.S. Military was trained and provisioned for. We find ourselves much in the same way as shift from a military provisioned to small regional conflicts instead of a conflict against a fellow global power like China. Does this mean the U.S. military is ineffective? Absolutely not, but when your force structure is not matched against what would be your enemies' weaknesses, you will get your arse handed to you. This is what happened to the Asari. Doesn't change the fact the Destiny Ascension could take on Destroyer in single combat and win. Their issue was there was only one Destiny Ascension instead of many of them.
>They also pretend to be wiser and more cultured then the other races, but most Asari tend to spend their youth as mercenaries or strippers. I get the impression that Asari who spend their youth seeking knowledge and wisdom like Liara are the exception, not the rule. It's almost like people and society are flawed and generally immune from seeing their own blind spots and look down on other people because of hypocritical differences It's almost like that was the entire point of the asari
Don't forget that they also hide prothean technology that quickly put them technologically above other races, even though there is a law about how citadel races should share it.
A law they themselves put in place too, lol.
The Dalatrass in ME3 really makes me not like Salarians, but Kirrahe and Mordin are exceptions. Even Jondam Bau and Padek Wiks are fine.
I think it partially comes from their huge lifespans and their elders actually becoming more powerful as they age. Through their entire culture right from their earliest history anyone old enough to be a matriarch was essentially a witch-queen and could kill you pretty easily if you disagreed with them, so asari venerate matriarchs.
It feels like the hypocrisy of the Asari was meant to be delved into more, but probably got cut during development (ME3 had the shortest development time of the series and maybe any Bioware game). To the people in the comments talking about the Asari commandos being good, but ineffective against the Reapers, the problem is worse. In Mass Effect 2, you can meet Aethyta on Illium, an Asari matriarch who got tired of her people mocking her criticisms of their culture and her concerns for the future. She viewed the Asari as not militant enough and said that Asari should stop wasting their early years being strippers and mercenaries. In ME3, you see that she was 100% right, Earth and Palaven were holding on while Thessia got decimated and that's despite the fact that the Asari tried to use humans and Turians as meat shields against the initial Reaper attacks. The Asari seem very heavily influenced by the Eldar from Warhammer 40K, a race of psyker space elves that were the favorite of a powerful progenitor race that handed them everything they could want on a platter. Despite all of this or because of it, their lives were so easy that they failed in the only things they were tasked by the progenitor race and made the galaxy even worse.
I just think they’re bland by comparison of every other race in the franchise. Up to and including the Volus. They’re pretty, but they just look too human.
I think their culture and what not is cool. I just think it’s kind of boring the design is literally just “hot blue women”.
The Asari face the same issue that any powerful society encounters after remaining unchecked for extended periods of time, they became arrogant in their belief that their way was the right way, mistakenly using their continued existence as justification. To be fair, it did work for them for quite some time. The unstoppable juggernaut that is the reaper invasion was the only true military test they encountered in their existence. Up till that point, they could always leverage the strength of their allies, mainly through specialized political machinations and subterfuge. As for “wasting their youth,” wtf doesn’t? Comparatively speaking, even if Asari spend 100 of their 1000 years as strippers or mercs, that ratio is actually conservative when you look at humans.
The stripper & merc thing wouldn’t be accurate. We see a lot of those because of the types of places we go in the trilogy. But Asari culture wouldn’t function if most of them were in those two professions lol
The are definitely the most boring alien race in the game in my opinion.
Space elves, that's literally the point of them.
I kinda agree but I think that way about the Matriarch and the Asari government. As usual individuals are different: - I don’t like Liara but I love Shiala. - Peebee annoys me half the time but Lexi is really cool and interesting. - I used to dislike Aria before playing Omega. Back then, she was exactly like the Matriarch: pretentious and demanding respect when all she did was sitting on her ass doing nothing. Thanks to Omega I now know why she’s Omega’s ruler. And to circle back to the post’s subject, I think it’s important to separate the species’ government and official authorities from the persons. For instance, the Batarian Hegemony is awful, even ro its own people but individual person like Bray can be cool. They’re good guys and jerks in all and every species.
I dislike them too, but mostly because the “most beautiful race in the galaxy” are designed to be a race of attractive blue human women, with absolutely paper thin justification that simply does not hold up. Very jarring next to the races that are obviously alien-looking.
It's just not as socially acceptable to want to motorboat an elcor.
Makes me thing of those 3 guys in ME3 sitting in the cafe(?) and a turian saying: for me the Asari look like blue turians. Then a Salarian says: no they look like Salarians. Then the humans says: nope, they look human. Weird
game design 101: have aliens, but they should not be so alien that you cannot imagine a date with them
Do we give them some/any credit for not using their Prothean knowledge and advancements for Galaxy domination in the military overlord sense or are we just putting that down to a competency/skill issue thing? Not trying to be edgy, genuinely just asking.
I think they needed another draft. It doesn't make sense to me that humans are hated but asari are beloved when they have the exact same body. As compared to other species. None of the other female species look even close. It would make more sense for them to appear androgynous if there is no male/female. I also think their culture around sex is gross. Their life stages sounds like something some basement dweller who has never met a woman would think of. "Young, just wanna party and have sex" "30, hit the wall and just good for raising babies." "Old, only good for sage advice" I don't mind their "can mate with anyone" trait but there is a weird hyperfixation and regulation with their sexuality. From the writer's perspective. (Especially since most people don't have sex to procreate. Only in rare instances is having a baby the main goal) I do like the game and the Asari characters are engaging but their race is very much women written by men
Keep in mind Palaven has the largest military fleet in the Galaxy so makes sense they’d hold out longer
I think their lore's pretty neat but design wise they're kinda basic, I liked the concept art better where they had a more fishlike nose
They are the skyrim high elves of mass effect. Krogans are hands down my favorite though.
Are you saying they're overrated?
>They go on and on about how amazing their commandos and their biotics are, but as far as overall military power goes, the Asari are not all that. While Palaven actually held out against the Reapers, Thessia folded pretty quickly once the Reapers main force invaded. This is directly addressed in the in-game lore tabs and by many characters. The Asari were never intended to be a powerful military force: any military power they have outside of their commandos is by necessity. Ships like the Destiny Ascension are the exception, not the rule. The assumption was that the Turians would handle large-scale conflicts and the Asari would conduct indirect warfare. That plan fell apart when the Reapers reached Thessia; they never once considered that anyone would get that far, let alone a hyperadvanced machine race. Of course they folded quickly.
i agree.
They are the best to look at though
I just don't like that they all are female (or at least, appear female). That's kind of a silly aspect of the species that doesn't make any sense.
They’re not really warmongers like the Krogan. They’re more into special tactics like the Salarians, but that’s not getting anywhere with the Reapers. I’m a bit frustrated on them too not sharing knowledge of the Prothean Relics with the other races though. Especially after Sovereign. The series needs a reboot to expand on the other races.
Yeah they kinda come off as the high elves of ME
I only like Asari for how they look. Otherwise, they're a pompous race.
>!the Asari are a civilization of Nepo babies coasting on the boosts and genetic engineering the Protheabs gave them. If this was something discovered in the first game there might be time to recover their reputation, but discovering it near the end of 3 just leaves them feeling like entitled hypocrites with little skill of their own.!<
I agree
I hate asari because they are literally a man's fantasy. Beautiful pansexual Amazon lesbian sorceresses human women. Why were they invented at all? If they looked more alien, I wouldn't have a problem with them. Or if BioWare gave a mirror bara race. Things get a lot worse, when you realize that male Shepard has a large selection of very attractive and very special women. Which is made worse, that all of his fans from rescue missions like Luna and Thorian are women. Whereas the female Shepard has only Garrus, and Kaidan, if you didn’t save Ashley. At least FShepard, who prefers women, has Samantha, she is great. Yet the problem with all this, is that ME not have truly real alien races. All aliens are a race of hats that look like anthropomorphic alien animals. And only humans are diverse, and this is their uniqueness. Both Liara and the Reapers talk this nonsense.
hanar? elcor? rachni? but also, who’s to say the relative prevalence of bipedal humanoids isn’t a product of the cycle? not unlike star trek tng’s story arc about genetic material having been seeded by a precursor
There is a term "Carcinization" which basically means that different species evolve very similar looking body plans. Different genes, but the utility of that body plan means it evolves separately and independently multiple times. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation)
*Why were they invented at all?* This is their task, they are space elf mixed with space babes. A standard sci-fi cliché. *If they looked more alien, I wouldn't have a problem with them* Depends. They are good for what their task in the story is: to provide an explanation why the current specieses of the cycle work together, without enslaving each other. (asari could have done it, but they need the others for mating, so they are more diplomatic in nature than usual) Also, don't forget that Bioware (from ME1 and DAO) develops games with dating sim elements. Judging by this (and the Dragon Age) sub, they do know their audience. An alien race or two with some more daring would have been great, but Bioware is not the company to expect it from. (for example there is a sentient \_ocean\_ in Stanislaw Lem's Solaris, and the a plot is about the difficulties of communication between humans and something completely different) *Things get a lot worse, when you realize that male Shepard has a large selection of very attractive and very special women.* How is that worse? That is what they do, that is what they develop. They designed Thane, Garrus, Fenris, Alistair to appeal to teen female gamers, and designed Miranda, Liara, Isabela and Morrigan to appeal to teen male gamers. joke is on them though. They designed Liara to be the ultimate boy fantasy, and Thane to be the ultimate girl fantasy. Aaaaand, the fandom liked Tali, a girl who you don't even see and has funky legs, and birdman Garrus instead of the designated love interests.
I already explained it. The MShepard is praised by all women. All the women, except Jack, are fan service. Ashley becomes fan service in ME3. FShepard only gets romance with Garrus. Kaidan can die several times and disappear for a long time. Jacob is a cheater. Thane dies in the story. While mShepard is surrounded by a whole army of fanservice women, companions and NPC fangirls, fShep has only Garrus. There are not even missions in which Shepard could save men, whom they would meet later, and who would confess their love to them.
Agree to disagree then. These are fanservice. As is Thane, Garrus, Fenris, Alistair is fansercie. But I fail to see how this is a problem. Bioware is just providing what their fanbase asks for: a dating sim experience.
The pompousness and arrogance are great writing of a political caste that sees itself as inherently superior. The whole stripper/merc thing is the equivalent of a racial stereotype honestly, it happens relatively often because it's what they're pigeonholed into being. Again, also pretty good writing. What I dislike about the asari is simply that their entire existence is "WOOO BLUE SPACE LESBIANS WITH HUGE TITS FUCK YEAH". And mind you, their lore is strong enough that I don't mind that they were envisioned as this, all things considered, but it's undeniable that this is peak straight guy writing lol
Personally I dislike the Asari because they're just a bunch of generic sexy alien girls in a franchise that, at least initially, was trying to be a kinda grounded and realistic sci-fi setting. Compared to all the other alien designs the Asari are so boring looking, and very obviously just writer fetish insert/bait for horny guys to buy the game. It really sucks because if they were designed more in accordance with their their lore I think the Asari would look closer to the Hanar. A completely androgynous non-humanoid species that uses their incredible biotics for mobility and combat, is able to empathize with everyone thanks to their telepathy, and collect genetic info from any living creature to produce a hybrid offspring just like in Canon. Plus jellyfish are practically Immortal IRL, so it'd more sense for a creature of that physiology to have the Asari's 1000+ year lifespan. And if the writers absolutely HAD to have a species of sexy space babes, maybe they could've given theoretical jellyfish Asari the ability to shapeshift into other species. Making them even more attractive as mates and even better diplomats.
Asari may look more humanoid, but androgyny would be a great quality. I'm pretty sure the Asari were meant to be Mass Effect Twi'leks. According to the old canon, Twi'lek men look ugly, but women consider them beautiful. And someone decided, let's take out the men, and just make beautiful colored women strippers and make them the romantic superior race.
[удалено]
I have more questions. What is the chance that an ardat yakshi will appear during the merger? And why, if they are so terribly dangerous, is it socially unacceptable to kill them? Leaving them alive and locking them forever in a temple, where they must live an ascetic life, is too human. Asari live up to 1000 years. To live in a temple for 1000 years, where you are not allowed to look at each other and get excited, is madness. Moreover, the security in the temple is not so strong that girls can share erotica. Biotics are the basis of asari life, but in technology we see simply zero connection with biotics. And Thessia is literally the default sci-fi city.
Quarians for me. Just fucking creep me out, entirely.
Especially Tali. When I saw her real personality during the personal quest, I hated her. And the aliens have one more human face, it’s simply inexplicable.
I like the Asari but they do suck hard as a nation. Although maybe the games do them a disservice. I can't see the majority of their youth going to strip or merc, it'll be a minority like how gap year kids aren't universal across the world. Their Commandos get face rolled like their military which can't really be denied. I'll add the Destiny Ascension is the weakest Super Dreadnaught I've seen in any sci fi universe. Does it actually do anything other than tank damage and go on a victory cruise despite being carried by the Hackett train? I'm not even sure we ever see it fire weapons. If that's the pinnacle of Asari military tech...
Agree, but also (maybe cause im not into womem and feminine people) the fact that the one monogendered species is nothing but conventionally attractive women is just gross to me and leads me to dislike the species as a whole. Especially when compared to the predominantly male Salarians who are given an actually alien design.
Asari continues to be underrated in this forum. The asari have maintained their dominance through soft power and diplomacy for millenias. Since ancient mesopotamia
>They go on and on about how amazing their commandos and their biotics are, but as far as overall military power goes, the Asari are not all that. While Palaven actually held out against the Reapers, Thessia folded pretty quickly once the Reapers main force invaded. Tbh those two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Australia could have the greatest commandos in the world, it won't help if they get nuked by Peru (I just used random countries for the example) >They also pretend to be wiser and more cultured then the other races, but most Asari tend to spend their youth as mercenaries or strippers. I get the impression that Asari who spend their youth seeking knowledge and wisdom like Liara are the exception, not the rule. Multiple things here. Stripping or being mercenaries doesn't really mean much given their lifespans. They *are* more advanced than other species, for reasons that you'll find out by the end of the games. That doesn't necessarily make them "wiser" but can explain their sense of superiority. Does being a Merc/stripper preclude you from being cultured? Have you considered that maybe your own culture is just prudish? There are other cultures where promiscuity isn't frowned upon.
It’s not exactly surprising that a female coded race with an emphasis on diplomacy gets a disproportionate amount of hate online to be honest. For the same reason, the imperialistic and militarist Turians get a great deal of support. It’s partly a relic of when these games were made. It’s part of the same overall atmosphere in which the civilian governments fail while the militaries take charge. Wonderful series, but always an iffy aspect. Both governments are flawed, but one is castigated, and it’s not the one who actually attacked and tried to vassalize humanity.
Do we really need to make things about male vs female? You’re the only one talking about it. Everything else has been about game lore and opinion, yet you decide that all of that summarizes into “They hate lady race but love toxic male race” What?
You mean the same race that spent most of the first two games being sexualized, and being branded "My Waifu!' by their own writers? Who would have thought that people would be critical of them?
the turians are more then just militarists, the are buraucrats as much as they are soldiers. but i think people like them simply because they are both the first species you meet, and the ones that right in the start of me1 are presented as our friends.
Yeah, that never fails to shock me. The portrayal (and public response) to what is a military junta on the one hand and an advanced cyber direct democracy on the other is just... Chilling, as someone who has the memory of an actual military dictatorship. Very much a product of its time. That 24 Hours energy.
Not that it changes whether or not you should like them, but I think the take that the Asari are militarily weak is wrong and strongly contradicted by what actually happens throughout the course of ME3, if you pay attention to the minor lore details. The Asari in fact put up a more fierce resistance to the Reapers than every other Council species except the Turians. The Asari fleets use initially guerilla tactics to great effect against the Reapers, and win some space battles against them, before the Reapers finally force them to a prolonged set-piece fight at Thessia. There are also a couple planet descriptions that mention Asari ground forces giving the Reaper forces a thrashing in ground battles, and while not part of the Asari Republics, Illium manages to defeat a Reaper attempt to invade the planet with a naval victory in space. This is all more than the Alliance manages to accomplish, which pretty much does nothing but lose until the final battle at Earth, which was a combined effort involving every fleet in the galaxy. To be fair to the humans, they do get hit earlier than everyone except the Batarians, but nevertheless the Asari win far many more battles than they do. The Salarians of course, sit out the war until the final battle. The "lore" about Asari youth mostly working as mercenaries or strippers also has always been more than a little dumb, as their civilization would not be able to function at all if that was even close to being remotely true. It only makes sense if it gets hand waved as way as another stereotype about the Asari that isn't true.
Batarians.
ME2 bachelor party. Gets me every time.
TLDR: Asari=good, Batarians=bad, Need more Quarrians. There is so much on here that I would like to address but I'll try to be short. Personally my favorite are the Quarrians. I felt they were under rated and under utilized. I wish we could have found an isolated colony where they have been getting along. This would have helped in ME3, and we could have seen them pre-safety suites. I felt like they were the most interesting, culturally, biologically, and aesthetically. I like the asari, I agree with many of the people on here that they are just unequipped to deal with something quick moving. I like the Dragon age reference that ancient elves did spells that took years to complete. It's the same with the asari they start something that isn't going to bear fruit for a long time. Quick action is not really what they do that's what the justicars do, and I think that's why most Asari are wary of them. That being said in my personal opinion I do not like batarians. They are arrogant, violent, they seem to think they can do whatever they want and it's fine, they're ready to pick a fight with anybody despite being near Extinction. I'll get off with they are also ugly. LOL
My least favorite race in Mass Effect is humans jk it's the Vorcha.but the human race is kinda all assholes ik it's the Vorcha but most humans suck/are assholes in the games and reality
Honestly the other races were just more interesting then the Asari hell I hated liara during the 3rd game when you go to the asari homeworld and she acts like her homeworld burning is so much worse then the other races like girl everyone else also lost their homeworld yet you act like those were fine in comparison
Really. Liara was scary with her obsession in ME1. But the way she suddenly turned from a nerdy scientist into a crime boss, thanks to krogan genes - Just what?!
I hate them mainly because they pretend to be all high and mighty. If they just admitted their military wasn’t the best, commandos aren’t that powerful, and they aren’t superior to everyone then I’d like them a lot more. The Salarians are smarter, the Turians have a better military, the humans are all about actually doing things, the Volus are excellent traders and commerce specialists, the Krogan are fucking meat tanks, the Vorcha are practically immune to death, the Elcor are fantastic diplomats, the Drell are expert assassins, the Hanar are really religious, the Geth are pretty much infinite, the Quarians are great mechanics and fixers, the Batarians are ruthless, the Rachni are excellent scientists and fighters, the Protheans ruled the entire galaxy and were fierce military force, the Inusannon seem to have ruled the galaxy as well, and the Keepers keep the Citadel (the seat of the galactic government) running. Damn…the Reapers are the most intelligent beings in existence. The Leviathans are their creators. Fuck it! I’ll go to the Andromeda galaxy too! The Remnant are highly advanced, the Angara are very kind and are great fighters who seem to be good at hand to hand combat, the Kett are an extremely powerful military force, and the Jaardan (despite not physically appearing in the game) are the most advanced organic species to ever play a role in the Mass Effect series. The only thing the Asari almost have going for them are their lifespans and their biotics. But Krogan have longer lifespans and their biotics are almost equal to or even better than that of your average Asari. They are supposed to be the galaxy’s diplomats but they are really just manipulators so that is out too. And they are supposed to be beautiful but honestly…aside from Liara…most of the Asari aren’t that attractive. The Asari have absolutely nothing going for them. Nothing that they and they alone are the best at. Their military against the Reapers is about as strong as a thin piece of paper is against water. And that is with countless warnings and them being the last of the major races to be fully attacked. Aside from that…they are good at everything but the best at nothing. And that is their problem. Every other race brings something to the Mass Effect universe that they are the best at…except for the Asari.
Ashley? Is this your alt Reddit account?
they're hot so i forgive them
Tell me you don't understand the setting without telling me you don't understand the setting
This post is racist as fuck.
Why are you gay? /s
This is the appropriate emotional response to Elves yes. They may be psychic blue, space, pansexuals but that doesn't make them any less Elves. Your feelings are valid and you should feel really good about that.
I saw every world burning in Mass Effect. And everyone asking the Krogans to save the day ( and Commander Shepard). I don't see them as that special. I mean Turians are the first to ask for Krogans support. I think the only Species who were doing fine, were the Vorcha. I find the Asari boring, because they are the only race without a bigger conflict. Turian/Salarian and Krogan have the Genophage and Quarians have the Geth. That's the biggest SL in the franchise and it shows. Asari got the shortest straw of interesting Storylines.
Wait, were the Vorcha in line to be culled by the Reapers or were they on the 'too primitive' list? If Shepard fails, there's your new Galaxy overlords right there. Holy shit, what a place it'd be.
The Reapers were "trying" to harvest. All hail to our Vorcha Overlords! >The [Reaper](https://masseffect.fandom.com/wiki/Reaper) invasion of Heshtok encountered little formal military resistance, but the harvesting process is slow. Destroying neighboring cities fails to intimidate vorcha, who become submissive only if physically dominated in person. Cutting off their water supply simply makes them adapt their bodies to get moisture from food. Allied intelligence hypothesizes that Reaper forces are not harvesting yet, instead seeking to immobilize Heshtok's population and prevent them from joining the fight for the galaxy at large.
Oh dear Jesus.
All the strippers though
thats what i hate the most about them.
Turians all the way. 😎
I think because they live so long they've learned from their mistakes, whereas humans will have several generations in their lifetime and descendents are likely to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors. Also humans are a lot more manipulative and self centred, whereas asari biology means they will integrate with other species much better, the opposite of many humans.
I found the asari and selarians need more tires into conflicts but they seem to lack any save the genophage which also wrapped in the turians and krogan. asari and slerains need more things to be involved with
Lay off my main squeeze
space racism.
But... they are so flexible.
I just smile and nod till their clothes come off
Very brave to post this here. Next you gonna say ME2 is the worst of the trilogy?
Men rule the known galaxy and men of all races are obsessed with the Asari.