That's the best Captain Bailey I've got. He's a human C-SEC officer. They have human C-SEC officers now because ... I don't know, hush. I've never figured out why he's a fan favorite, because he doesn't do anything, but he is. He pops up in the comics, though!
This doesn't happen in the games, but you promised to stick with me for a second, remember? Let's go find those cosplayers.
I am aware that I am a shit. Hush, we're doing this.
I feel like that if we're going to look this closely at Mass Effect, we're going to have to at least glance at its twin sister, Dragon Age. Bioware has five development studios, and both Mass Effect and Dragon Age were developed in their main studio in Edmonton, Canada, even though different teams worked on different games. They were also released around the same time esque -- Mass Effect started in 2007, but Dragon Age Origins came in 2009, followed closely by ME2 in 2010.
One of the things that I love about Bioware games is that they're all born of a very Biowarian tradition. Mass Effect and Dragon Age are two very different games, but they're still twins, and they've got roots in Jade Empire which is a cousin to KOTOR which still has some very Neverwinterian Nights tones to it which of course hails from Baldur's Gate, you get the idea. ME1 really isn't so far removed from regular old Dungeons and Dragons, if you think about it. You do realize that each time you fire a gun in ME1, whether or not it hits is determined by the engine rolling a dice?
Point being, to understand one, we must understand the other, and that is the task set before us today.
... before we go forward, we're going to need to be honest with each other: I rather hate Dragon Age and didn't finish it. It makes me feel like a bad Bioware fan! I'm told, though, that if I hated Origins, I don't even need to be in the same room as Dragon Age 2, so y'all don't start looking for Hawke too hard.
That being said, out of all the Bioware Standard Male and Female Starting Sidekicks, Alistair and Morrigan are my favorites. They have the most personality. (Miranda and Jacob are good ones, though.)
(Shit, I think that's what my Warden looked like? She had brown hair. I remember giving her brown hair because I seriously never play as a brown haired protagonist. Well, hell, what are you all going to do, fact check me?)
In the world of Dragon Age, if you're a strong and noble warrior, you get a dog Mabari Blood Hound. It's not a dog, okay? It just looks exactly like one.
Speaking of "the world of Dragon Age," are we all aware that Dragon Age takes place in Thedas? And "Thedas" literally means "The Dragon Age System?" Good.
The dog's mabari's canon name is Barkspawn. Bioware chose the name because they loved this Penny Arcade comic so dearly.
All right, so are we all kind of not really caught up on the basic gist of the plot? There's this chick called the Warden, and her and her pals are in the Blight, the time period in Thedas where these guys called darkspawn run all over Thedas and kill and pillage and other fantasy bad guy stuff. The main difference between the darkspawn and the reapers is that the people of Thedas (Thedians?) totally believe in darkspawn and fear them, while the people in Mass Effect think reapers are a myth, despite the fact that the entire populous of the Citadel saw a reaper, like, up close. You know what? Score one for Thedas, let's move on.
In every iteration of Mass Effect, the Citadel has a different bar. Last game we had Chora's Den, now we've got Dark Star.
The Warden is called such because she actually is a grey warden, in this instance defined as 'someone who fights the Blight'. You become a grey warden by completing the joining. More on all that later, but you might start to see why I'd bring that up.
NEXT TIME: We all marvel at the fact that Bioware hasn't sued me blind.
