Yesterday Aenne and I attempted to play the most sexist and racist playthrough of Mass Effect ever. First, you might want a bit of backstory. Why the hell would we do this?
In Wednesday’s episode of Heroine, we will be focusing on diversity. Bioware was brought up as a great example of a company that does it right. However, we supposed that it would be possible to not have a diverse experience in their games if you simply ignored all side quests, tried to be an asshole to those who were different than you, and played as a white male. Basically, our sexist and racist Mass Effect 2 stream was born, and away to character creation we went. (We tried to make the ugliest Shep ever using no mods – did we succeed?)
Our overall conclusions were:
- We both LOVE Dr. Chakwas, so it was very hard to be mean to her. (If you don’t love her too, here is a great article on The Mary Sue with all the reasons why you should.)
- We both have always hated Miranda and Jacob, so being mean to them was really easy for us.
- Garrus may be an alien, but WHO COULD BE MEAN TO GARRUS? Also, we’re pretty sure he’d be a white bro if he was human, so we have to be nice to him anyway.
- We have to be nice to the Illusive Man. WHYYYY?
- We love Mess Sergeant Gardner, and Mr. Gardner NEEDS a maid uniform mod. Now. Yesterday. Last week.
- Aenne should probably get a controller for her PC 😉
Generally, though, it’s really hard to ACTUALLY be sexist or racist in Mass Effect. Bioware did such a great job at forcing you to talk to your crew and get to know then that it actually is shaping up to be a really difficult task, even with suggestions from our audience in the chat.
We’ll be streaming a part 2 (and 3 and 4 and however many it takes to finish this game) eventually, so keep an eye out for the date and time! Watch part 1 above and let us know what you think.
