From sci-fi references to artistic nods, the Mass Effect series has numerous connections to the real world — this video, narrated by none other than Commander Shepard (or Mark Meer if you will) himself, looks at some of them.
For example, did you know that:
- Mass Effect 2’s Collectors were inspired by real-world insects. OK, that one was pretty obvious.
- But how about the architecture of the alien races? Take the Asari homeworld’s futuristic spires and towers: they were influenced by the work of Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish (you guessed it) neofuturistic architect.
- There’s also the fact that the mysterious precursor race, the Protheans, who scattered their technology around the galaxy for other races to find, could derive their name from the Greek words for “first” and “god” — “proto” and “theos”, respectively — and that their name may also reference the Greek mythological Titan, Prometheus, who gifted the human race fire, thus granting them the gift of civilisation. Clever!
- And the mythological influences don’t end there: the criminal organisation Cerberus, the Shadow Broker, the Charon mass relay, and the planet Elysium all have conceptual roots in Greek mythos.
That, and more interesting bits of trivia await in the video below.
Comments
8 responses to “How Mythology And Pop Culture Influenced Mass Effect”
Pfft, Mark Meer. Also, those bugs are things out nightmares, grossss.
Jennifer Hale is Commander Shepherd 😛
Oorah.
I know you may have done that, but I get kind of tired of it being the in thing to indignantly say “pfffft, oh what? Shepherd is a Woman!” Like it’s obvious and the majority… when the fact is like 80 something percent of the millions of people played Shepherd as a man.
(not saying you’re saying it like that, I’ve just noticed that it’s become the hip thing to say in a lo of cases)
Honestly it’s not a feminist point or anything, it’s also kind of tongue in cheek. (Though it is nice to challenge the idea that male = default)
However it’s because she is a better Shepherd.
As @ctrlsaltdelete mentioned her performance is particularly good. Meers gets a bit too much flack tbh, but he definitely doesn’t have the depth that Hale gives the role.
I first played Femshep on a whim. Planning a maleshep for my second run… I was shocked by how much less I felt for that second toon.
Tldr: They’re both shepherd but I like Hale.
I couldn’t actually believe how much better her voice acting was until I tried to play male shep (man shep? bro shep?). Some of my friends tried to defend his voice acting as funny, or ‘fashionably detatched’ but to me he just sounded confused to the point that I was frustrated every time he talked. Saw an interview with Hale, and she was describing how she was pissing the V.O. crew off because she kept asking for more and more context before agreeing to record her lines, it sounded like she was working (herself and other staff) really hard at it when she probably didn’t need to (as far as getting paid went).
Um, no. The Prothean artefacts are what little was left behind of their galaxy-spanning civilization after the Reapers systematically wiped them out.
That’s what I thought too! Oh well, better go play them all over again to confirm 😉