When people think ‘Mass Effect’ and ‘controversy’, the first thing that typically comes to mind is the commotion around the endings, but that wasn’t the only thing fans took issue with. Remember the whole thing around Tali’Zorah’s romance? (NSFW and spoiler warning.)
Tali is a romance able squadmate who, throughout the entirety of the saga, never outright reveals her face. Lore-wise, the idea is that Tali hails from the Quarian race, a faction that is known for weak immune systems that they protect with full-body suits.
Of course, if you happen to seduce Tali, she has to take the suit off. The player never really sees much beyond a ~tasteful fade to black~, though. After the end of the romance route in Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard starts displaying a picture in his living quarters purporting to show Tali’s real face. While sweet in theory, players discovered that Tali’s face was based on a modified version of a stock image, and that caused a lot of rage back in the day:
Fast-forward a few years, and it seems that some people are still kind of hung up on how that storyline unfolded, whether it’s because of how Bioware handled Tali’s looks, or the specifics of how the scene happened. A SFM version of the sex scene created by sovereign Studio has started circulating among hardcore Mass Effect fans recently, and it takes another crack at Tali’s sex scene (NSFW warning, obviously!)
Aside from the VERY DISTRACTING HAIR, you’ll note a few things about this redone scene. First, the model is based on Tali’s picture. Second, there’s nudity. Third, although still awkward in its attempt, the scene tries to show a bit more intimacy between the characters… or at least, as much as can be done through character models that now kind of look like plastic Barbie dolls.
While I don’t think this scene holds a candle to, say, The Witcher 3’s sex scenes, it’s amazing to me that people still care about this detail in 2016. Then again, I didn’t romance Tali in 2012, so maybe I don’t feel as burned as other people do. I just loaded a video showcasing every Mass Effect sex scene, and the top comment is literally, “I like tali but she has the shittiest scene.” Meanwhile, the reaction to this video is more positive than that:
At the very least, I’m hopeful for the future of Bioware sex scenes — if Dragon Age: Inquisition is any indication, we’re probably in for a treat come Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Comments
19 responses to “Four Years Later, Mass Effect Fans Are Still Trying To ‘Fix’ Tali’s Sex Scene [NSFW]”
Who cares about Tali, what about Garrus?? The only good thing about romancing Garrus was the conversation with Mordin beforehand!
… and after all that talk of ingestion, all Garrus gets is a headbutt. Not even a cuddle.
So she looks human? Whoopdee doo
Still, it’s following the rules. All alien females must at least partially resemble sexy human females, and all alien males must at least partially resemble wild beasts.
I liked the octopus things, why doesn’t he fuck an octopus? Racist
Now THAT would be kinky 🙂
All those suckers & tentacles, a little beak action.
Still to this day absolutely hate that picture of Tali.
What quarians look like under the suits was a mystery set up in the first game and despite having close to a dozen existing concept art designs that actually look alien they spent a couple hours photoshopping a stock photo. It’s like they gave it to an intern to spend an aftrernoon doing while they put infinitely more hours and effort into modelling Jessica Chobot into the game.
I would honestly rather they had left it a mystery.
What Tali looked like became such a big deal that they had to provide an answer by the end of the trilogy. Anything they did was going to generate a negative response because it wouldn’t line up with the type of image people had built up in their heads (although I admit that using a stock photo was one of the worst routes they could have gone).
What always got me about Tali’s appearance was her long hair. Quarians live their whole lives in space suits, wouldn’t long hair be a massive irritant because of that?
Yeah. long or any hair at all would be both incredibly impractical and totally pointless.
What’s the point of growing hair not even you yourself are going to see 99% of the time and that will most likely get caught in knots inside your suit?
Again, it was lazy work that showed little actual thought or care at all.
Couldn’t agree more with this, I didn’t really feel cheated with the lack of a sex scene, but that bloody photo pissed me off big time. Plus ChoBOT was one of the worst looking character models in the game, almost like a fan mod.
Fucking Chobot. Why the HELL was she included in the game in the first place? She cannot act for shit. Her voice performance in ME3 was the worst in the whole series by a long way.
I figured she would’ve just taken off her glass mask and opened a port hole on the suit, not take the whole thing off. She’d die!
Eh, maybe not if both the entire room and Shepherd had been totally sterilized before she took the suit off but even then she’d probably have like a whole body allergic reaction to him.
Yeah, his saliva, skin oils and semen would no doubt cause her to have an anaphylactic reaction, unless she took months being exposed to small doses in an effort to build up a tolerance to it… Takes foreplay to a whole new level… O.o
or maybe shepherd’s wearing like a full body clear condom?
Yes!
It’s been a while, but from what I remember right before you both do the mattress mambo, she tells you she’s all hepped up on immune boosting drugs.
I believe if you talk to her afterwards, she sounds congested and tells you something about her nose won’t stop leaking, but that she is happy anyway.
Tali was my choice when I played the series, and I never pictured her as both human-looking and human-coloured.
It didn’t bother me then that we didn’t see anything and I’d pretty much prefer to keep it that way. As far as I’m concerned that was a photo of someone else.
Precisely.
Sooooooooooooooo……..nobody wants to mention how frikkin huge Shepard’s hands were while running his hands up Tali’s body?? Either Tali is tiny or Shepard has something wrong proportionally with those hands!! 😛