Bioware’s epic sci fi rpg-shooter Mass Effect was at the centre of some controversy when it was released in 2007 due to the possibility of player choices leading to the main female character becoming involved in a “lesbian” sub plot. Why the inverted commas? Bioware were quick to point out that one of the characters in the scene was actually a member of a “mono-gendered” alien race called the Asari. The scene can’t be a lesbian one, then, because the Asari in question, Liara T’Soni, is not a woman in the traditional sense. The confusion arises from the fact that Liara presents as female in every way, refers to herself and her species with female pronouns and is voiced by a female voice actor. In fact the in-game Codex entry for the Asari refers to them as an “all-female” race. While I would never presume to assign someone a gender identity, the fact that Liara has no problem being referred to as “female” or presenting her gender in that way suggests that she is happy to have a female gender identity and happy to be read this way by other species.
To further complicate matters, the Asari are capable of reproducing with any other species and gender. There are no Asari “males” (that is, Asari who present as “male”) and though two Asari are capable of reproducing it is generally frowned upon as the Asari believe it produces genetically inferior offspring. Liara herself is a “pureblood” Asari and this is the only context in which an Asari is ever referred to as male: Liara refers to her “father” on more than one occasion.
Now this could be explained via the old sci fi cliché of the translator microbes being unable to translate the Asari’s concept of gender into English. Since there is no word for the Asari’s gender in English, the translation device finds the closest translation and comes up with “female.” Fine. But to a modern audience, the Asari still present as female in every way apart from their insistence that they are mono-gendered. In fact, all of the alien races in Mass Effect conform to a binary gender system. The game also emphasises the male members of alien races and frequently misses the opportunity to present different notions of femininity in the less humanoid races such as the Krogen or Volus. The only female aliens we see, when we see them at all, are all humanoid, thin, and conventionally attractive.
Liara herself falls into this category, and the situation is exacerbated by the optional subplot in which she becomes a love interest for the player character, Commander Shepard, whose gender the player chooses at the start of the game. Like the majority of things in Mass Effect, the romance plot involves a choice on the part of the player; firstly whether or not to participate in the sub-plot and secondly which of two crew members your character wants to woo. If you are playing as a male character you can choose to romance Liara, or Ashley Williams, a human female. If you are playing as a female character you can choose to romance Liara or Kaiden Alenko, a human male. For a male character, the choice is a very heterosexual one; you can either romance the human action girl or the blue skinned space babe. For a female main character the choice is less heterosexual; despite what the game devs want the player to think, a female Shepard has the choice between a male human and (what appears to be) a female alien. Anyone who saw a scene between a female Shepard and Liara would assume that Liara was female if they had no prior knowledge of the game, so why did the devs continually deny the existence of a lesbian relationship?
While I’m asking hypothetical questions, why couldn’t a female Shepard romance Ashley Williams, or a male Shepard romance Kaiden Alenko? Mass Effect is a game about choice – the player’s choices affect the main plotline in very real ways, and can result in three different endings, and countless different sub-plots along the way. Despite this emphasis on choice, the player’s (particularly the LGBT player’s) romantic choice is severely limited. Some modders of the PC version discovered that the game disc actually contains the dialogue for these pairings, but the content never made it into the game. In this case, Bioware’s choice was to remove the choice of the LGBT gamer.
In a medium where LGBT people are severely under-represented, homophobia is rife and all gamers are assumed to be male, Bioware had the chance to stand up and claim the relationship between Liara and a female Shepard as a lesbian one. Instead they chose to hide behind words and force the characters into the closet. The relationships become a product of homophobic male-orientated gamer culture in the same way that Liara’s gender representation is a product of deeply entrenched social binary concepts of gender; a binary system where “mono-gendered” doesn’t mean a new, third gender presentation but simply a species that only has one of the two available options. Until devs like Bioware are willing to stand up for choice – in all areas of their games – LGBT gamers will continue to be ignored.
Being included only to be told you’re not is worse than not being included at all and insulting to the lesbian gaming community’s intelligence. Being included to act as titillation for fifteen year old boys is even worse. I still think that Mass Effect is one of the best games of this generation. It offers a mature, interesting story, engaging characters and great game play. I just wish that in a game world where choice is valued above all else mine wasn’t taken away.
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