Mass Effect
Mass Effect is an action role playing game produced by Bioware, available for Xbox 360 and PC. The main character, Commander Shepard, can be created as male or female, and is highly customisable, including skin colour. The game is set in the year 2183, where humanity interacts with a variety of alien races. It also manages not to whitewash humanity's future at the same time, and many of the NPCs are people of colour.
Squad members
- Ashley Williams - Ashley is a human soldier. She is a romancable option when you play a male Shepard.
- Kaidan Alenko - Kaidan is a human Sentinel with biotic abilities, which have the side effects of giving him severe migraines. He is a romancable option when you play a female Shepard.
- Liara T'Soni - Liara is an asari scientist, and a romancable option whether Commander Shepard is male or female.
- Tali'Zorah nar Rayya - Tali is a a quarian engineer.
- Garrus Vakarian - Garrus is a turian C-sec officer, the equivalent of the police force
- Urdnot Wrex - Wrex is a krogan mercenary.
Aliens
Several of the races met in the game, going off the voices, we only meet male characters – the turians, krogans and salarians, for example, despite there supposedly being females in these species as well. Bioware has been criticised for not providing female models of these races. [1] Species met in the game include:
Asari
The asari are a humanoid monogendered race that read as female. They are capable of reproducing with other alien species, and have a preference for this, over reproducing with other asari.
Krogans
Krogans are a hardy and warlike race. During the Krogan Rebellions, the krogans were infected by the turians with a biological weapon called the genophage. This affected their ability to reproduce, as it meant most krogans were stillborn, and resultingly the krogan race is nearing extinction. During the game, you discover that Saren has created a cure for the genophage; however, this is destroyed along with his base.