Discussion Characters / MassEffect

I'm going with yes, that would be a bad idea.

I can't think of a single instance in any of the games of anyone referring to or treating the Normandy as a person or a sentient being in its own right (unless you count EDI as the Normany, but she's got her own entry). Neither the games nor the characters within the game anthropomorphize the Normandy in any way - it's a ship, not a character, so there's no reason to treat it as a character.

Check the edit history. Fighteer removed it.

It's getting discussed over in this thread. Opinions would be beneficial.

Edited by Spirit #IceBearForPresident

It's back on the main page. Removing it from the Characters namespace solved the issue.

#IceBearForPresident

Yep. Moving him.

#IceBearForPresident

There's no page for the multiplayer characters at all?

I don't think they qualify. Anderson is an important character, but he's sidelined for much of the series; I wouldn't say his actions drives the plot to nearly the same degree as Shepard. His actions only really have significance in the beginning and end of the first and third games, and some background influence in the second. The Illusive Man has very little impact in the first game, just a few sidequests in which his name isn't even mentioned. He gets a relevance-up in the second game, but has about as much impact on the plot as the Council in the first. In the third game, I might agree with you, but not for the series as a whole.

In the third game, the Illusive Man is very much an antagonist, so he still wouldn't qualify as a Deuteragonist. Anderson is more of a Hero of Another Story.

The trope is built on the literal meaning of protagonist, 'main character.' The deuteragonist is literally just the second most responsible person for developing the plot, so they actually are villains at least somewhat often. But I don't think TIMmy counts for the series.

Edited by Tahaneira

Pretty much, if you can scrounge up enough character-unique tropes for them, feel free to add them. God knows we have plenty of space.

For now...

Edited by Tahaneira

Yes.

Honestly, I'd do it myself if it wasn't for the fact that it's been a while since I've touched ME2.

Edited by umbrellasareawesome 28 Times Supreme Champion of the World Whosball Series

Added Maelon.

I can't even find where the rumor started, just an old entry on the Mass Effect wiki. I call bull. That or an unused file someone dug up.

Dunno. Try asking around in Lost And Found.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Given the evolving roles of all these characters, I get that you want something on the character pages that state what their roles in each game are. That is perfectly understandable. The problem, however, is that it's needlessly overcomplicating these pages since the entire index is organized according to which game these characters first debut in.

Take the Mass Effect 3 party member page, for example. Under your planned proposal, the entire page except for two entries is filled with stubs. That draws attention away from the page's primary purpose of giving you information about new party members because people will have to open multiple folders containing nothing but stubs instead of the information that brought them to the page in the first place. In addition, those stubs also require people to go to an entirely different page if they want further information about party members who, in actuality, showed up in previous games instead of having all that information on one specific page. This becomes a very inconvenient problem when you have a series with 7 (technically 8) different character pages and, given Bio Ware's wish to draw in new players, not everyone will be as familiar with the characters as we are. As things stand right now, that page is telling me to go to the Mass Effect 1 party members page so often, I'm wondering why I just didn't go there in the first place.

And that's not even considering the party members from the second game. Once the third game comes out, your plan will require us to fill the Mass Effect 3 pages with stubs for them as well depending on what role they have, which will only enhance the problems I mentioned above.

I understand what you want to do, I really do, but unfortunately, it's sacrificing function for the sake of the consistency you're looking for.

Edited by RedViking

Alright, fair enough. I still want to do something about the indexing, it's crazy that Tahaneira is running around changing 7 pages every time there's an edit to one of them. I'll try reformatting just that.

And I really do wish we did have some way to deal with the npcs from 1+2 game becoming squad mates in 3, but that can wait.

Yeah, the index changing was quickly getting old.

Even if it's a brief, one sentence summary, I believe some characters might benefit from having something explaining their roles if they appear in multiple games. Or even the fact that they're in multiple games.

open to alternatives. I agree that filling a page with stubs is bad, but just having a text list on the index page to tell someone who's never played 1 and 2 that a player character in 3 is being listed on another non-player character page seems just as problematic.

I don't know, adding the guest party member section just seemed to make everything a lot messier consistency wise.

Edited by ashlay

We could try taking a page from the Mass Effect wiki and turn the main character index page into something similar. It would require a bit of work, but the page is very effective in giving people a brief snapshot of the various roles each character plays in each game.

OK, that sounds like a good solution. do some more formatted lists inside folders with hyperlinks on the character names and it'll keep the index nice and clean too. Will try putting one together sometime this week if no one else wants to.

I'll take a crack at it tomorrow.

EDIT: And I can already tell you, this thing is going to be huge.

EDIT EDIT: All right, I'm trying it the wiki's way, separating by category. Gonna be spoileriffic as hell, but I suppose there's no way to get around it. I'm working on the sandbox.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: And the first draft is done. That's as close as I could tell to what you had in mind. If you wanted to split the NP Cs section so it resembles the pages more, I can do that, but I wanted to start simple.

Somewhat simple.

Edited by Tahaneira

Looks good! Thanks for doing this, Tahaneira. I don't think you have to worry about the list being too long since that's something that is completely unavoidable at this point.

Looks good. few suggestions: 1) Just throw shep and guest party in the party section with some headers, think it'll cleaner. 2) may not need the races list, since that page already stands in for the races in all the games.

Edited by ashlay

And it is up. Thanks guys!

Ashlay, I left the races list in because any other way I toyed with it made it look empty and crowded right next to the game lists. If it bugs you, or if you find a better way to implement it, feel free to change it.

Also, obligatory HOLY $#%@ MASS EFFECT 3 COMES OUT TONIGHT

Edited by Tahaneira

Considering what happened on the Alliance News Net twitter today, should Emily Wong get a character stub? I mean, people who now have a lot less to do with the story have entries.

How about splitting into several pages:

1. NPC party members 2. Other NP Cs (further split by faction/location/game/whatever if needed) 3. Antagonists

"You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed." - Emily Wong.

I agree. In a trilogy like ME, cutting characters from different episodes doesn't really make sense.

It could indeed be made into :

• 1/Party Members

To classify, a chronological order could be used, which would be something like : Shepard - Kaidan - Ashley - Garrus - Wrex - Tali - Liara - Jacob - Miranda - Mordin/Grunt/Jack - Samara/Thane - Morinth/Legion (keeping them in spoilers isn't really useful anymore, especially in Legion's case) - Zaeed/Kasumi - Vega + other ME 3 (if necessary) - Jenkins/Wilson/The guy that will die quickly in ME 3 (if there is a guy like this)

• 2/NP Cs :

Some more classification needed in this case. A possibility would be by first encounter location. The lists below doesn't mean that every single of these characters needs to be put. Some can easily be left aside.

• 2.1/Normandy crew members
  • Joker - Anderson - Chakwas - Pressly - Adams - EDI - Chambers - Donnelly & Daniels - other guys if necessary
• 2.2/Citadel NP Cs
  • Udina - The council members - Pallin - Harkin - Fist - Conrad Verner - Khalisah - Sha'ira - Chloe Michel - Emily Wong - Talitha - Nassana Dantius (not sure, maybe in "Antagonists") - Helena Blake - Bailey - Kolyat - Sidonis (see Nassana)...
• 2.3/Noveria NP Cs
  • Gianna - Anoleis - Stirling & Matsuo - Mira - Ventralis - Cohen - Olar - the Rachni Queen//
• 2.4/Feros NP Cs//
  • The colonists - People from Exo Geni - Shiala...
• 2.5/Virmire NP Cs
  • Kirrahe (and STG) - Rana Thanoptis...
• 2.6/Ilos NP Cs
  • Vigil
• 2.7/Omega NP Cs
  • Aria - Patriarch - Daniel...
• 2.8/Illium NP Cs//
  • Aethyta - Anaya - the great biotic wind volus - Pitne For
• 2.9/Quarian NP Cs
  • Veetor - Reegar - the admiralty board (that should be split, these characters will probably be quite important in 3)
• 2.10/Other NP
  • None comes to mind yet, but probably useful

And for the antagonists, I propose :

• 3/Antagonists
  • 3.1/Reapers (as a whole, and later individually)
    • Sovereign - Harbinger - the human reaper - probably lot more in 3
  • 3.2/Reapers pawns
    • 3.2.1/Saren - Benezia - followers of the previous two - The Thorian - Kenson
    • 3.2.2/Collectors (as a whole) + the collector general (but is it really necessary to split him from his race ?)
    • 3.2.3/Geth (as a whole)
  • 3.3/Cerberus
    • TIM and his pals, both Archer brothers, Kai Leng
  • 3.4/The Shadow Broker, inc.
    • Vasir, The Shadow Broker, maybe Nyxeris
  • 3.5/Various Mercenaries
    • Balak, Eclipse/Blood Pack/Blue Suns leaders, possibly Donovan Hock
  • 3.6/Various others
    • ...again, probably necessary

Edited by Julep

Okay, that could work. I'll make a setup and post it later. As for the characters from the comics and books... should they get separate pages for each medium or have to share? There're so few of them. Well, compared to the games, anyways.

But I definitely think this has to be done before ME3. I have a feeling the page might break on freakin' release day.

Also, I'm putting a note on the other talkpages to come here.

Edited by Tahaneira

Alright, this is how I personally see the main characters page:

Page: Squad Members

Commander Shepard

Folder: Introduced in ME 1

Ashley Williams, Garrus Vakarian, Kaidan Alenko, Liara T’Soni, Richard L. Jenkins, Tali’Zorah nar Rayya vas Neema/Normandy, Urdnot Wrex

Folder: Introduced in ME 2

Urdnot Grunt, Jack, Jacob Taylor, Kasumi Goto, Legion, Miranda Lawson, Mordin Solus, Samara, Thane Krios, Wilson, Zaeed Massani

Morinth (just put her with the rest, spoiler her name, leave some details that those who have already played will recognize, and slap a Walking Spoiler on her introduction to leave the rest of her entry unspoilered)

Folder: Introduced in ME 3

James Vega, whoever else there will be

As for the NP Cs, I have no idea. Personally, I think yours is a bit messy. The problem is that people keep moving around and changing roles between games, so hard and fast classification is difficult. The best idea I can come up with is stick with the Major/Minor setup we’ve got now and segregate them by game, similar to how ME2 is set up. But that would be chaotic too.

Edited by Tahaneira

Good point. There should be one.

"You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed." - Emily Wong.

That's a good question. The thing is, we've gotten reports that says that every squad mate who survived the events of the first two games will be returning in some form for the third game, which means that, they'll all be returning characters, even if they're only a Guest-Star Party Member. This means all of them should be on this page. Problem is, the Mass Effect pages were split in the first place due to their sheer length.

After giving this some thought, we may want to change the wording on the character pages to "debut in" or something like that.

For example, Garrus, Tali and Liara would stay on the Mass Effect Trilogy character page since they are the only three party members who join Shepard's squad in every game throughout the trilogy. (We could debate where Liara goes due to her Guest-Star Party Member status in the second game, but we can get to that later. For now, I'll count it for the purposes of this example.)

Characters like Ashley, Kaiden and Wrex would stay on the Mass Effect 1 character page since they debut in the first game, but didn't join Shepard's squad in at least one game, thus making a distinction between them and Garrus, Tali and Liara.

Characters such as Jack, Legion and Mordin who will, at the very least, make an appearance in the third game, would stay on the Mass Effect 2 character page since they debut in the second game and weren't in the first game which, again, makes a distinction between them and the other characters mentioned above.

Of course, like I've said, doing this will involve a re-write of the existing character pages, but that's my proposal.

What does everyone else think about this?

Edited by RedViking

My idea is this: characters who appear in all three games, no matter how peripheral their involvement, go on the trilogy page. If Harkin shows up for 30 seconds in 3, he goes on the trilogy page. Everyone else goes to the page of the game they debut on. Everyone from 2 stays where they are, and the newbies go to 3.

This has the advantage of minimal changes. At most, a few people might be moved from the trilogy page to 1. And we won't be making any changes until release. Given how many minor types from 1 reappeared in 2, don't be surprised if many of them appear again in 3.

Edited by Meshakhad

Troper Critical Mass. It got so big (like the main Mass Effect page before it) that adding new tropes to it became impossible. So it got divided into a page for recurring characters, a page for characters who are only significant in Mass Effect 1 (including those whose survival into Mass Effect 2 isn't guaranteed, and those who only make peripheral appearances in Mass Effect 2), and a page for characters introduced in Mass Effect 2.

Edited by KillerClowns

Ok, it's been a week with no response, so I'm going to go ahead and move him to the Mass Effect 2 character folder.

I renamed them for the sake of consistency. Antagonist is just a catch-all term for someone who opposes the main character regardless of the reason, which fits every single character in those folders. You're right that the majority of them are villains, but some of them are not. For example, there were some edits going back and forth a while back on whether or not the Thorian was evil or just acting according to its nature. Personally, I don't see the point in classifying something as a villain and then putting a trope like Blue-and-Orange Morality underneath it. It just seems a bit contradictory.

As for removing 'Recruitable' from the 'Party Members' folder, again, it was for consistency and because everyone's on separate pages now. Liara is only recruitable in the first game. She joins you for two missions in Mass Effect 2 as a Guest-Star Party Member and that's it. She doesn't even show up on the party select screen.

As for changing NP Cs to 'Characters', well...you got me there. I'm not quite sure why I did that. I'll think I'll go revert that one back.

I know it seems like semantics. I'm trying to be as specific as possible because we'll most likely have to change things around, again, when the third game comes out. This way, I feel we'll have less to do when the time comes.

Is Covert Pervert really appropriate for Tali's nervestim programs? She's an adult. Adults masturbate. Well, most do.

"It's so hard to be humble, knowing how great I am."

That doesn't really doesn't cancel out the trope, though. The idea behind Covert Pervert is that you wouldn't expect that sort of thing from them. Little ol' Tali definitely fits the bill.

That's pretty temporary. We'd fill up again in a week. I think a page split is in order. Same as with the main page: recurring characters, first game, second game.

I'm splitting the page now. I'm somewhat inexperienced, so I think some cleanup will be in order in a few minutes.

EDIT: 'Tis done.

Edited by Tahaneira

You have a point there—it's just that I never understood why some of those characters were on there in the first place.

But a split is probably a better idea anyway. I just think it could get confusing if done wrongly. Will we organize it (essentially) the same way as before? Shepard, Garrus, Tali, and recurring NP Cs on Mass Effect, ME 1 squadmates/NP Cs on Mass Effect 1, and ME 2 squadmates/NP Cs on Mass Effect 2?

That works well enough if it's on one page, but having, say, Liara on the Mass Effect 1 page because she's only a squadmate in the first game would misrepresent her role in the series as a whole.

(also, I'm supposed to be writing a literature essay right now, so I can't help out at the moment, but later on I'll help clean up if it's needed)

EDIT: Nevermind, I just saw the new pages. No objections. Like I said, I'll clean up when I'm not busy pretending to analyze literature.

Edited by MissMokushiroku

They know he's a character. Remember for the longest time we thought he was going to be an enemy. The knowledge that he's a squad member is more of a Late-Arrival Spoiler by now.

You have my support

I'm gonna have to second that. Tali can be left since the developers severely underestimated her. I'd also suggest keeping Garrus, for his unexpected effect on the fangirls, but I won't defend that to the death.

Tali I think you could keep, but I think you could remove the entry on Garrus. Really the only ones that should have an Ensemble Darkhorse entry are characters like the Matriarch Bartender, Conrad Verner, and, of course, Blasto.

It's not over. Not yet.

Took some initiative and cleansed the dark horse status of all the party members save Tali. Three non-party characters, Parasini, Kal'Reegar, and Urz still carry the title, but I'm pretty sure they fit. Don't expect me to enforce the act, though. I'll modify the pages for Mass Effect, Mass Effect 1, and Mass Effect 2 as well.

Actually axed Tali's bit as well; she's not a minor enough character to qualify.

Edited by KillerClowns

Did some calculations to justify not granting darkhorse status to party members.

Mass Effect 1: Six party members, three of whom are consistently referred to as "darkhorses." (Wrex, Tali, Garrus.)

Mass Effect 2: Eleven NEW characters (I'm counting Morinth as her own character), and four NEW "darkhorses." (Mordin, Thane, Legion, Kasumi).

For both games, that's a grand total of seventeen party members, six of whom are constantly referred to as dark horses. When thirty five percent (specifically, 35.2941176 percent) of the main cast is a "darkhorse," the phrase ceases to have meaning, and no single character is ahead of the pack enough to qualify on their own individual merits.

Edited by KillerClowns

I have to agree. It's sketchy at best.

Just realized now that the entry hadn't been deleted accidentally. Anyway, I was the troper who originally added it, and I added it back a while ago, thinking it had been lost in the shuffle. Here's why. I do realize that Bioware did not develop KOTOR 2. However, they are still involved with the Old Republic setting, and more importantly, a shout out needn't be to a game/series/movie/whatever that was developed by the company making the shout out - and usually isn't. I also know that Goto is a surname as well as a Meaningful Name, as noted in the entry. In KOTOR 2, G0-T0's name was meaningful in exactly the same way (he robbed starships, not individuals, but still, he's a thief). He also had a tendency to communicate via holographic displays. And as difficult as it may be to create varied "woman-in-a-hood" designs, when combined with the above, it seems less likely to be coincidental. It's a minor edit, and I won't re-add it if someone still wants to give it the ax, but we may as well chop half the other shout outs there as well (District 9? Baldur's Gate?), as they're no less "sketchy."

Personally I would prefer "they" as it is technically the most accurate, but I'm not overly fussed either way.

I personally think it's a matter of Blue-and-Orange Morality; it just didn't view most creatures as the same as itself for the longest time. It sees other creatures as being like horses or dogs; animals, useful animals, that it has to 'tame' in order to help it survive. It's not actively malicious; the only reason it's out to kill you is because it made a deal with Saren and Saren broke his word. And tried to kill it. So it now believes that all animals will do the same thing to it if given the chance and it scrambled to defend itself before they could do so. However, there was the whole "Old Growth", "command you to be in awe", "meat is only good to dig or decompose" lines. That's probably what's pushing the evil views. However, Saren just tried to murder it. I think it's got reason to be a little pissed.

My personal thoughts are to put both views up and amend with YMMV.

Maybe, if we can get enough tropes for her. Hell, we have an entry for Balak and he only has one appearance and four tropes. I see no problem with it, provided we make one for Shiala as well, who has just as big a part in both games.

Kay, made entries for Gianna, Shiala, and Chakwas. Trope expansions will be much appreciated.

I have to disagree with removing spoiler tags on trope names. Using a generalized example: Some tropes, like The Hero Dies is, by very definition, a spoiler. Seeing that smack dab right in the example list pretty much tells you that the main character will bite it, even if the specifics of that trope is spoiler tagged.

I don't think it's bad writing at all.

Edited by RedViking

I have to agree with the viking. It's pointless to spoiler, say, Samara's Offing the Offspring section if the trope title is not spoilered as well; it's already been spoiled that Samara either has to kill one of her children or be killed by a parent herself, and considering how old she is, the latter is extremely unlikely. A large part of the impact of her loyalty mission down the drain. Similarly, Saren's One-Winged Angel; the circumstances may be obscured, but the first-time player will go through the game knowing it's going to happen. So, when it does finally occur, the reaction will not be the intended "OH CRAP WHAT THE HELL" but the anticlimactic "Finally. I knew it had to happen soon cuz we're almost at the end." So yeah, I don't think it's bad writing to spoiler the trope names as well; otherwise what's the point of using spoiler tags at all?

So, provided no counter-points are presented and nobody else objects over the next two days, I'll take some time off my shameless entry padding to re-spoiler the tropes.

Okay, getting started. I think that it's acceptable to say Shepard's death and revival at the start of 2 is firmly within You Should Know This Already and shouldn't be spoilered. If anyone disagrees with anything else I'm doing, tell me here.

It's something you could probably *guess* once the game's underway, but to ensure no one gets spoiled, you could just add spoiler tags just to be safe.

Issue: the Council and the Alliance have gone to some lengths to discredit Shepard, downplaying or suppressing anything he's said, and destroying the careers of anyone who either went along with the Normandy hijacking or else who spoke up in support of Shepard. They sound more like obstructive bureaucrats engaged in a Gas Leak Cover-Up than reasonable authority figures who at least pretend to listen to you, then give you perfectly reasonable explanations as to why they're not going along. Captain Anderson is one such - he was willing to get shot by C-Sec or arrested by Udina to help Shepard out because he believed that Shepard may be right about the Reapers.

Edited by Haesslich