MSPixel: Tali: Dem Geth

~INFO DUMP!~

So, remember when I linked you to that quarian article, a long time ago, and told you to read it, and then you didn't? Quit lying, you know you didn't. It was pretty good times.

Real damn quick: the quarians made the geth. Yeah, really, it's THEIR fault for all those plastic robots you keep fighting.

At first, the geth were just regular robot guys, doing robot shit, helping the quarians out with manual labor, and then one geth was like, "Does this unit have a soul?"

So the quarians shit bricks -- they could do that back then, they weren't wearing the suits -- and tried to take all the geth apart. The geth rebelled so hard that they threw the quarians off their own homeworld.

And the council was like, "You fucknuts. No galactic political power for you!" which is why the quarians have no councilor. If you were wondering.

So anyway, thrown off their own planet, with their tails between their legs, (quarians might actually have tails, who knows?) they wander around the galaxy in these big ass ships called the flotilla. When a young quarian is of age, that is, 18ish, they leave their ship, go off on a pilgramidge to see the rest of the galaxy, and bring something back to a new ship, where they'll spend the rest of their lives. Their offering could be anything, really -- supplies, food, information, anything useful.

And now that I've retold the entire story of Battlestar Galactica, let us back to the Normandy.

Should you talk to Tali enough, she more or less infodumps on you just like I did. This time, you've got to get the mission from Admiral Hackett. He'll call Shep up while she's using the galaxy map, a bigass hologram on the Normandy that Shepard uses to naviage the universe. It has railings. I drew them. I'm proud, shut your ass.

Seriously, look at that. The level of art is upping, yo.

I just realized I keep flipping Tali's color scheme. So much for that 'good art' bullshit.

Since I brought up alien sex anyway (sorry 'bout that), I feel like we can't go on much farther without actually discussing Tali.

Is it fair to say I know a thing or two about Bioware games? I think we can go that far. The game I'm most familiar with, other than Le Effect du Mass itself, is Jade Empire. I know, that's like saying, "Man, I love the Beatles! George was my favorite," but there it is.

Jade Empire had two female characters: Dawn Star, the studious, quiet sort of lady, and Silk Fox, this super dark super secret assassin. I suspect that Tali was supposed to be Silk Fox initially, and Liara was to be Dawn Star. I mean, in Tali's intro cutscene, she very nearly takes care of Saren's men herself before Shepard comes in and fucks it up for her.

Tali and Liara gradually swap places as the series goes on. Did you notice that you can bang Liara, but not Tali? Bioware probably meant for Liara to be your blushing space waifu. I mean, for fuck's sake, she's 102, which is like "barely legal" for asari. That's the kind of shit that comes up in hentai games.

But if you play guy Shepard, you can (eventually) get with Tali in a pretty hilarious sequence.

Why?

The Internet happened.

People are going to get up my ass, and I'm going to say it anyway: there are guys on the Internet who are fucking creepy about Tali. Save your sanity, never ever ever google "tali sweat". Shit, never GIS Tali. Ever.

There's another (male) character that got the same treatment by female fans, but first of all it was on a much smaller, less creepy scale, and second of all, this is Tali's show, let's not take the spotlight off her.

But seriously. I have one guy friend who played as a girl Shepard, he gets a pass. EVERY OTHER MAN I HAVE KNOWN, brothers, friends, other lady's husbands, my own husband (who gets shit like every day over this), this is how they play Mass Effect:

"Hey," he'll ask, "what did you do today?"

"I didn't draw you on the Internet with a stick erection over a video game space lady, that's for sure," is probably how I'll reply.

Yeah, so, back to the mission, Hackett mentioned those four geth outposts? We're going to rock and roll up to those and kick some geth ASS.

There's lots of different planets! Like the red planet.

Or this one 'pre-garden' planet. I think that's an actual space thing. There's lots of actual space things in Mass Effect, I just don't know enough space to help you out. I'm still waiting for, you know, the mass effect to happen.

This is a true story: the pre-garden planet has these really steep hills, and, well, mako. I was trying to find a place to park, but the mako won't let Shep and pals out unless it's on a good surface, and, well, there were none. I finally got to one. The game deposited Shepard next to the mako, and Tali and Garrus outside the mako on to thin air.

I'm not even kidding, they fell straight off, Bugs Bunny style.

Oh, and then you visit this planet with a thresher maw.

What's a thresher maw, you ask?

A thresher maw is a big giant fuck you from nature.

So, that was a fun game over for me. Moving on, you finally get inside this one geth base, and, I shit you not, quarian opera is playing. I've been through this series ... I don't know, too many times, and I can not even begin to tell you why the hell quarian opera.