People who call Ashley a racist or a xenophobe are ignoring the larger context within the game. Humanity is but a child exploring the vast confines of the Galaxy while trying to form relations with completely foreign races that have proven to be hostile in the past.

Dammit, that's frightening.

There's an understandable amount of anxiety felt by a character like Ashley. Her own personal family history gives her a lot of reason to feel bitter and wary of alien races. Your character can help her adjust to working with aliens. If she was truly some kind of xenophobe, she'd have nothing to do with the Normandy.

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"Humanity is but a child exploring the vast confines of the Galaxy while trying to form relations with completely foreign races that have proven to be hostile in the past."

Well said and absolutely correct, Ashley's character feels anxiety over current events, and it manifests itself as fearful xenophobia. It wasn't clear from my post but I feel this adds to the story. I can dislike a character but appreciate what it means to the larger context to have her feel that way. Is she as bad as the Earth-firster's you meet on the Citadel, no, but certainly she feels more disdain than Navigator Presley for them. These three examples show varying levels of xenophobia for the other races, which is really a shades of grey argument not an absolute. The larger context of humanities role here is also fleshed out with the ambassadors lust for power, and Captain Andersen's tempered idealism. Not to mention the countless NPC's that show the best and worst of humanity.

I don't think we necessarily disagree, at least, I appreciate what your saying about the larger context.

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-- Al Green

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In any case, yeah. Kaidan was kinda weird because of how Carth-y he was. And the female characters were just as bad.

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want to see pointless sex? god of war. it wasn't even sex at that point, it was more of a fart joke.

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@ithyphallus of his own will recommends Kotaco! [twitter.com]: Clearly we're not playing the same games here. I guess I'm not much of a sci-fi nerd though, as having sex with an alien that is not only not human, but not actually female is just very, very creepy to me. So not only was she ugly and inhuman, but she was annoying as hell.

Here's the trick. Western RPGs can have good characters, and so can Japanese RPGs. Mass Effect just didn't. At least, not the ones that you had the option (or would ever want to) have sex with. Wrex is the man.

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That's because it is a big deal. If you, or the person you're with at the time thinks it isn't, you're doing it wrong.

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But then again, that's our culture. We treat sex as a crazy taboo, and thus it becomes more risque.

It is worth a chuckle when they overplay the ecstasy.

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