Recently while going through my yearly playthrough of the trilogy (as usual I stick to my favourite of Talimancer or Shakarian in terms of romance) I couldn't help but notice the finer details of Liara's character and the fact that she seems to be placed quite prominently by the developers to be the 'canon' romance option, here are a few examples of reasons why this seems to be the case:
- 1. While I never personally experienced this as I never romanced her it's generally seen that she has the most 'risque' and lengthy romance scenes in the games, plus the largest amount of scenes available.
- 2. She is the only character you can romance in all 3 games and as both genders in each game as well.
- 3. There doesn't seem to be a single opportunity to kill her except for the endings where everyone dies in ME3 or the final charge in the Extended Cut, unlike all the others who can die at various points in the trilogy.
- 4. The game seems to actively try to dissuade you from the Virmire Survivor in ME2 by making them give you the 'Horizon Treatment' in the fact they act like complete tools, while Liara, though cold, is given justification and is given redemption through LotSB DLC. The prickish behaviour from the VS continues in ME3 where half of their dialogue in the games seems to be designed to make you hate them with their constant questioning of your loyalties.
- 5. She is also the only romance option in ME3 that is available in the first half of the game (bar Garrus) as all the others are locked off or given extremely small amounts of screen time (VS gets hospitalised, Tali is locked out till Rannoch, you barely even see any of those characters first seen in ME2).
Overall I think this may have been done to allow further spin offs to have a constant narrative to tie alongside with but I can't help but think it had a detrimental effect on other romance options as more time was spent trying to diver the attention to Liara.
What do you guys think regarding her possibly being set up as the 'canon' romance option and do you think this had a noticeable effect on the quality of the others? --Apache287 (talk) 03:23, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
Liara's always been my favorite. She's has scenes with Shepard in every game and she strikes me as more balanced than the rest. By the way, you forgot to sign.--Mike Gilbert 03:21, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
Di you, I always found her to be the opposite in that she comes off as flip flopping in her personality, especially during ME2, where she makes a number of bizarre choices, the main one coming to mind where she leaves you lying on the ground to chase the rogue Spectre without checking you despite the fact you had to do the exact opposite for her throughout ME1.
Also thanks for pointing out the missing signature --Apache287 (talk) 03:25, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
Well, she was having some internal problems at the time. When I meant by balanced, I meant that she's not too young than Shepard and, as I said before, she has the most intimate scenes with them.--Mike Gilbert 04:01, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
Fair enough. I still prefer Tali as my favourite though mainly due to the fact you see her more clearly grow as a character through the series and have a more clear goal at the end of it compared to the others. Also it doesn't hurt that she's as cute as hell. --Apache287 (talk) 04:26, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
I guess, but they never truly showed off her face and I wouldn't want to mess up this thing she has with Garrus at the end. Even if it is too small for my taste.--Mike Gilbert 13:13, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
In my personal opinion it points to a larger problem with ME3 romances. My romance picks were Jack and Tali and prior to the Citadel DLC, all you did with Jack was dance. It seems like they put all their resources into making one romance feeling authentic,and then, either didn't have the time, resources, or just didn't care to make the others feel whole. For example if you romance Traynor, they shower together with their clothes on. Can soneone explain where they do that at?Forever224 (talk) 16:23, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
My Shepard romanced her once, but as Apache287 in point 5 she appears more often than rest of the romance options. Even if Virmire Survivor is the worst because of different and worse writters I don't like that other romances don't have so much scenes like her nor that she shows less flaws that can be ignored. It's hard to like Virmire Survivor after all those accusations for half of the game, Thane dies, Jacob found someone new, Miranda has own private self-given mission more important to her than anything, Jack has bigger sense of duty and young biotics to look after, Tali appears very late and became childish, when Garrus isn't as cool as in ME1 and ME2, he no longer rebels against anything, because criminals join the war, all politicians are active, nobody doubts in existence of the reapers.FirstDrellSpectre (talk) 17:29, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
In response to Forever224 they kept underwear on for all romances (apart from Liara yet again) due to the fact that when they were naked (but nothing was shown explicitly) in ME1 Fox News and the rest of America's conservative media, despite never playing the games, went nuclear over it being pornographic and indecent.
In Response to FirstDrell I didn't find Tali that childish, sure she was still a bit naive in ME2 but she was more insecure than childish due to the fact that she'd gotten her friends killed on Freedom's Progress and Haestrom, after which the Admiralty tried to drag her name through the dirt as a way to further their sides in the idea of retaking Rannoch. Also Liara in ME2 was a lot like what they did with Miranda in ME3 but while they just left Miranda alone they added more content for Liara in the form of LotSB. --Apache287 (talk) 17:39, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
In Response to Apache287. I find Tali childish only in ME3, because in Citadel DLC she bahaved immature, she pretended a Normandy like a child pretends a train, she also got a tatoo, way she teased Javik about Liara wasn't very mature also. You don't have to agree with me, I just wanted you to understand what made me think Tali got childish.FirstDrellSpectre (talk) 17:53, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
FirstDrell while some of her behaviour was childish you have to remember she was drunk at the time (Quarians have a low tolerance to alcohol). Also she wasn't pretending to be the Normandy, she was attempting to mimic and explain the difference between the engines of the SR-1 and SR-2 (she's an engineer and a Quarian after all). If she had been doing these things sober I'd agree with you but that wasn't the case. --Apache287 (talk) 18:08, August 19, 2014 (UTC)
I know about the Fox news controversy,and I would be inclined to agree with you, but then, as you yourself pointed out, why would they only make liara's the only one to show too much skin then? If they wanted to play it so safe then why would you even want to take a chance on showing skin on even one character? It comes across as very lazy on multiple levels. It makes it seem like like liara is the the "canon" romance, when in-fact it appears to be the one they put the most effort into.Forever224 (talk) 19:59, August 19, 2014 (UTC) P.S. when the media become offended by this [1] I think it's about time we started ignoring them.
Yes, Liara is considered as canon romance because she always involve on every storyline than other characters like Leliana in DA who are both Creator's Pet.122.54.218.77 05:05, August 20, 2014 (UTC)
Pretty sure it was Morrigan who was the 'canon' choice in DA: Origins seeing as she got the post main game DLC.
In response to Forever I think they kept Liara naked due to her being the 'canon' partner and the fact they only showed other character romance scenes in the trailers which was what Fox originally only looked at when they first did the controversy. It also gives more of an incentive for some players to pick Liara as her scene is made more unique --Apache287 (talk) 22:31, August 20, 2014 (UTC)
And considering that we don't know a lot about asari clothing habits, it's possible asari don't use bras. Or maybe since Liara was chaste when she met Shepard, she's more eager to participate in intimacy than most of the romances.--Mike Gilbert 23:16, August 20, 2014 (UTC)
Forgive me for not expressing this adequately enough, but I wasn't debating whether liara was the canon romance or not, but rather, whether there should be a cannon romance at all. In my stern opinion, they should all be made equal as so no one should get special treatment. In terms of the trailors they could have marketed the game without the romance sections or without the explicit parts. Let's look at it this way, they're all still more believable than those "sex scenes" in Ride to Hell: Retribution. Response to Mike Gilbert, Now I don't mean to sound rood, but Jack wears less clothes than anyone...Forever224 (talk) 10:27, August 21, 2014 (UTC)
(Shrugs) She gets better over time. Besides, I said most.--Mike Gilbert 11:57, August 21, 2014 (UTC)
Forever don't get me wrong, I agree with you that there shouldn't be a 'canon' romance in the games, and even if there was it shouldn't be at such a detriment to the others plus Liara would be my last choice as a romance. Also I don't think it's down to sheer laziness on the part of the developers, but was done deliberately seeing as many of the companions, Tali in particular, had dialogue written for earlier parts of the game (and was recorded) before they were made inaccessible, while others were meant to be bisexual but were later closed off, as was the case with Ashley. It seems bizarre they'd do all this work and then chuck it out without an ulterior motive.
In particular my biggest point of contention was the fact they had some brilliant concept art for an in game Tali model (this being my favourite: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NoFXqnh0T2I/Ue6k4fgODZI/AAAAAAAAA_M/Rv_gU-Ch2Ng/s1600/tali_portrait02.jpg) but then suddenly decided to go for a piss-poor photoshop attempt. --Apache287 (talk) 13:50, August 21, 2014 (UTC)