Five Reasons to Hate Mass Effect

Games Radar editorializes on “one of the greatest series of this console generation”, enumerating a total of five noticeable weaknesses in Mass Effect 1 and 2, including one that always kind of bugged me.

5. Only girls can be gay in space?

Yeah, yeah, asaris are technically mono-gendered, but let’s be real anatomically speaking, they’re indistinguishable from blue-skinned human women except for their tentacle-esque hair. Even the Galactic Codex: Essentials Edition 2183 (included with the collector’s edition of Mass Effect) states that “while asari have only one gender, they are not asexual like single-celled life all asari are sexually female.”

Even in Mass Effect 2’s expanded smorgasbord of intergalactic romance options, which includes no less than three girl-on-girl options, there isn’t a single option for male Shepard to romance another dude. And even then, it’s still a step back from the first game, because all three girl-girl hook-ups are confined to side romances all six main romance options are hetero, whereas at least in one you could have a main girl-girl romance with Liara. Despite the tastefulness of each romance’s presentation, the one-sidedness of boy-girl or girl-girl only options makes it feel suspiciously like a skeevy attempt to titillate straight male gamers as opposed to actually being inclusive to girls who like girls. Why even include girl-girl options if you’re not going to include boy-boy options too?

It’s easy to read too much into sensitive issues like this, but I always felt like the game implied that it’s “ok” for their female heroine to be lesbian, but a male hero to be gay would tarnish how cool the character is. That seems weird.