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AdamWithers — Shepard and Kaidan
Published: 2012-10-01 16:13:28 +0000 UTC; Views: 4039; Favourites: 84; Downloads: 117
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Commission from Dragon*Con 2012; Pencil.This one goes out to all you Lady-Sheps, gettin' yo lovin' on witchyo Kaidan. Awwww yeeeeah.
Seriously, though, while I never understood the Kaidan hate (or the Carth Onasi hate that came before him), the guy definitely got a lot cooler in ME3. Legit badass, as he deserved at last. I only wish he and Ash got as much face time as Garrus, Tali, and Liara did.
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Comments: 40
simple thing: if they sucked less, they would.
fantastic stuff as always, and though it be in type, i hope my sarcasm translates as well as intended.
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I always boot up my sarcasm-detector when you open your mouth. And it always needs tech support by the time you leave, y'sarcastic sunuvagun.
...But thanks. And suck it. Not necessarily in that order.
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That's it, I gotta play the Mass Effect series now. I don't care what people said about the ending, you have finally won me over with this extravagant piece you've made for the series. I'm loving the one dude's fists being on fire or something and the chick here is pretty cool looking to. If I knew more about the series I would make a comment about the pairing here but unfortunately I can't. All I can say is you've shown a mastery for detail with the armor and weapons and the facial features are probably more than just dead on considering how you are always able to make sure your characters look their best! Keep it up man! You rock when it comes to game art!!
P.S. Speaking of games, you and your wife play a lot of fighting games? I ask because I've been playing this one game series called Blazblue for the longest time and I was thinking "Damn, with all the aspects of this game I'm surprised Adam hasn't taken a shot at it in his work; he'd have so much to have fun with here".
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You DO have to play Mass Effect! And bugger the haters! Sure, I have some gripes with the ending, but you know what? It remains my #1 favorite game series ever, and among my very favorite gaming experiences of all time. And go for the DLC if you can (especially Bring Down the Sky for ME1, Lair of the Shadow Broker, Kasumi, and Awakening for ME2, and Leviathan for ME3) they are TOTALLY worth it and add loads to the story.
Armor and weapons are my blessing and curse - I can't help but be super detail-oriented, but it winds up taking forever!
I'm a minor fan of fighting games, but I don't play often because I totally suck. I mean TOTALLY. I really enjoy Street Fighter for nostalgia reasons, and Dead or Alive has my favorite combat system, but I don't usually get into them very often.
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The only reason I never played it was because I didn't know what the story was about. I never saw any really convincing advertisement and thought "Oh, this is probably some sort of water downed bastard child of Gears of War and Halo mixed with some story that someone pulled out of their ass to try and compete with both studios". But then when the other two came out I felt a lot more convinced since sequels don't really come out unless they are worth it to the creators and the fans.
Ya can't rush art. Plus, I believe that art that takes the longest to produce more worthwhile. When the tiniest details add to the beauty of the whole, it can make even a year long wait seem like the greatest reward!
I see. Well please do consider playing Blazblue sometime. Unlike a lot of fighting games, it has a story that actually gets you to think "Wait, how is this happening? What is this? Who's really behind all this?" and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Its one of those rare science-fantasy stories that comes by only once a generation and is actually giving the Street Fighter franchise a run for its money now. Also, you can tell that its made by fans of everything because if you really read into the characters and some of the lines said it makes you say to yourself "Oh my God! I can't believe someone remembered that!"
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I found Kaidan to be, well... boring. Just very dull to talk to. In fact, when I found out he was from Vancouver, I told my wife "aw, jeez, the one Canadian in here and he's the most boring person in the game!" I think it's the voice more than what he talks about, to be honest, though. Of course, I only know him from ME2 and 3. And I have no idea who Carth is.
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That's something I hear, I just never saw it that way. The more I learned about him, the more I liked. Granted, he isn't as charismatic as a lot of the other crew, but he isn't boring either. Not to me, anyway.
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Kaiden, you got SO much better (and hotter!) in ME3.
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I hate Ashley Williams with a passion, so the less I see of her the better. As for Kaidan, he was a jerk in 2 but was better in 3. Generally a nice guy. Definitely better than Ashley, who I only liked in the first game.
Anyway, its a nice picture, though personally I find Male Shepard/Kaidan to be more interesting than Female Shepard/Kaidan, but whatever. Male Shepard/Miranda is better than all of em' though, at least to me.
As for Carth, people hate him because of his "whinyness" and trust issues. They seem to be forgetting that he was betrayed by a man who he looked up to and admired and then said man wound up killing millions of people when he bombed the hell out of his homeworld. Including his wife. Yet apparently its unreasonable to be a little jaded and distrustful after that. Talk about no sympathy.
Eh, I'm a Miranda fan, I should be used to it.
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Miranda deserves no sympathy. She's whiny and stuck-up and Cerberus bites. 
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She is not arrogant. She flat out admits very early on that she is human, not perfect, and makes mistakes like everyone else. Her "arrogance" is just a way of hiding her insecurities.
Put it in perspective: she was "made" by her egotistical bas***d of a father, who you get to meet in 3 and see just how evil he truly is. No mother. Not a natural birth. She was "made". How would you feel if you grew up knowing that? I'd be pretty depressed personally. Said father pressured her all the time and its implied murdered the previous children he "made" just for not living up to his expectations. The guy murdered his own children for not being perfect. When your father is that bad, anyone and anything would seem better. Even a group you know nothing about save for a party-line that is honestly not bad. "Humanity First". Not "Death to all who oppose us". She was like, what, 17? She had no way of knowing how bad Cerberus was, and keep in mind, that was back when they were still an Alliance organization and possibly not as bad.
And either way, Cerberus isn't the root of all evil, and neither is the Illusive Man. Keep in mind, the Alliance created Cerberus and used them for years to do the dirty jobs they never wanted to be seen doing, so everything Cerberus does is on the Alliance's head. They help you in 2, and it may not be for altruistic reasons, but it has weight with me. No, I don't like them or trust them, but I'm willing to work with them against a threat that will kill everyone if not stopped. Especially when my so-called "friends" who I sacrificed human lives to save do nothing.
And hey, we sympathize with Jack, yes? She's someone who hates everyone, is mean to everyone, and enjoys random violence and destruction and is wanted for every crime in the book. Yet we give her a free pass because we feel sorry for her. By this logic, extend the same courtesy to someone who's worst crime was being deluded and falling in with a bad crowd. Basically making a mistake.
She's not a terrible person. She's actually quite polite and friendly to you if you bother to get to know her, and I always felt she defrosted nicely. Just because she wears the Cerberus logo doesn't make her a monster. Not everyone in Cerberus is evil, and the organization as a whole is not the spawn of the Devil.
Finally, there's character development. She becomes noticeably more unpleasant as the game progresses, at least to you anyway. And she defects from Cerberus if you choose the Paragon ending to 2 and she's with you. She even says later that she believes firmly that destroying the base was the right call.
So no, she is not whiny, because I feel bad for her and if I were in her shoes I'd be depressed too, only arrogant to mask her deep insecurities and perceived uselessness, and works for an organization that is A: not the root of all evil and B: does not make her a bad person.
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Wow, dude. I was just pulling your leg. Winkey-winkey-raspberry. Miranda's fine, though I find her to be a very shallow character (as in her story lacks depth, not that she herself is shallow).
On the other hand, if you DON'T find Cerberus to be an abhorrent, blatantly and wholly evil organization, despite being a terrorist organization based on racial supremacy, then I don't know what to say. While some ancillary members might not be all bad, the upper echelons of the organization, and the Illusive Man specifically, are absolutely evil, no questions and no maybes.
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Whoops. There I go misinterpreting again.
I do find Cerberus to be evil, I just don't view them as space Nazis. I see them as an evil organization that does not deserve to be trusted, but they're also the only ones who are helping me and I feel that's worth something. Its kind of like "well, if you didn't want me to work with them you should have helped me instead of ignoring me". And I see the Reapers as a greater evil, so if they're willing to help me, I'm fine with a temporary alliance. Doesn't mean I enjoy it, but I can stand it for the duration so long as I myself don't have to do or condone anything evil.
I also have to say, can you really call Cerberus racist? Yes, they're human-centric, but that's not the same thing. Me and my Shepard are human-centric, but we have no beef with aliens. We just prioritize human lives over alien ones because that's exactly what the other races do concerning their own. Its not selfish, its tribal instinct.
But does Cerberus ever do anything evil to aliens? Because in my playthrough of the whole trilogy I did not see a single shred of evidence to support their supposed xenophobia. All of their deplorable acts were committed on fellow humans. I did not once see them butchering or torturing aliens. It is telling but not showing. I am told they're racist, but I see nothing to support it, save for a mention in ME 2 of them blowing up a Quarian ship, which we get absolutely no context for. I fail to see the xenophobia. Human-centric? Yes. Ruthless? Of course. Evil? Almost certainly. But racist? Ash is more racist then Cerberus is.
Basically, if I had to differentiate them from the Alliance, it would be this: The Alliance is human centric and wants human advancement but not at the cost of others, while Cerberus is more: "Human dominance at any cost. Human or alien."
I think I've rambled on enough by this point.
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Any organization that limits membership by race, is founded to promote one race over all others, believes in the inherent superiority of one race over all others, and sees other races as - at best - disposable "things" whose lives don't count simply because they aren't the same race as you... IS a bigoted organization. When the Illusive Man gets the Collector base and says "this will ensure human dominance in the galaxy," do you think he intends to do that without massive bloodshed? He's talking about butchering millions, maybe billions, of aliens in order to put humanity on top. His race comes first at any cost, and THAT is a bigoted view.
Ash doesn't think aliens deserve to die or are lesser beings for not being human. She just says that, given the chance, she doesn't think they would value her life as much as their own. And if you talk to her enough, that viewpoint changes. She detests the "Human First" Terra Firma party, and she was gung-ho to send in the Alliance fleet to save the alien council members. And she clearly hates the s*** out of Cerberus. She is not racist, and only gets LESS racist as the game goes on.
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I never said Ashley was racist. You misread. When I said "Ash is more racist then Cerberus" that was my way of saying Cerberus is NOT racist. No, I do not believe Ash is racist. Not at all. Just human-centric. Cerberus has a similar view but there's is, shall we say, "corrupted". They advocate human dominance and progression, not putting aliens in gas chambers. Said goal becomes perverted by their megalomania, dominance to the point of oppression, and other things. This is why I view them as evil, just not the spawn of the devil to be hated constantly. But when I am repeatedly told "racist, racist, racist" yet never once see them killing, torturing, or even bullying aliens, merely advocating human dominance, I fail to see their supposed racism. Human-centric to the point of not caring who they hurt in achieving their goals? Absolutely. But there is a difference between that and "aliens suck". I never once hear TIM say a single bad thing about aliens of any race. Doesn't change the fact that he's a manipulative self-absorbed snake, but racist? I don't see it.
And the "they only include humans" argument doesn't work because by that logic, the Alliance is racist too. So are the Asari, Salarian, Turian, and all other alien governments, because they only contain members of those races. Cerberus is a human organization, so they have human members. Promoting one race is not necessarily wrong either, since every race looks after its own. Cerberus' problem is that they take it too far, as opposed to the Alliance who attempt to promote humans but not at the cost of other races.
Again, I'm not saying that they're not evil, or good, because neither thing is true, but by the same token, I don't view them as the worst monsters in the universe. I see them as just another group of bad guys, no better or worse than any of the others. Saren was the same kind of evil, possessing a hatred of humans that drove him to commit mass slaughter of innocent people just to keep humans out of the spectres. He was no better or worse than anyone in Cerberus.
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They don't have to be genocidal to be a racist organization. A group doesn't have to want to start a second holocaust to be deeply anti-semitic. And you can often hear white supremacists talking about how effective and useful other races can be - but when the chips are down, they will absolutely subjugate all others because they simply do not believe that other people have the same value as their own race.
Seriously, go through ME1-3 and any time a Cerberus-related event happens, replace the words "Human" with "White" and "Alien" with "Black" and it's obvious how racist they are. Just because you're talking about whole species doesn't change the facts.
I could raise a lot more points to evidence my stance, and nothing you've brought up is irrefutable, but I think we've gone as far as we need to on this.
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One last thing then before we cease talking completely:
In response to the "chips are down" argument, when a crisis hits, everyone is inclined to look after their own first and maybe everyone else as a distant second. That's not racism, its tribal instinct. Ash claims the Council are like that and she turns out to be absolutely right. In ME 3, there is not a single race that does place theirs above all others when the Reapers show up. They all decide: "We're the most important, our survival comes first, so we won't help you out of the goodness of our hearts. You have to solve our petty problems for us first." By this logic they're all racist. But I don't see it that way. I see it as tribal instinct. Races and groups are allowed to prioritize themselves first when a crisis hits without being bigoted towards the others.
Basically, with all of this don't get the idea that I'm Pro-Cerberus. I just don't see them as the second coming of the Nazis or something. They're bad guys, but ones I'm willing to tolerate for the brief time I have to work with them versus the embodiment of all evil in the universe.
Oh, and, on a completely unrelated and much less serious note, see you at the NYCC!
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Oh, and, incidentally, you just proved I was right about being used to flak for being a Miranda fan.
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The worst part is, most of my friends who hate Kaidan supply me with the reason "because he reminds me of Carth and I hate Carth."
Also this drawing is badass <3 into the favourites you go
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That's what I always hear, too. Sucks, but what can you do? I think Kaidan is the second-most unreasonably disliked character in all of ME, next to Ashley.
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I feel like Ash and Kaidan get bad reps for being the human squadmates in the first game... Why get to know, use, and enjoy the humans when you have all these cool aliens to pick from, right?
That's how I was the first time I played ME1. I dropped Kaidan and Ash like hot potatoes the moment I got Liara and Tali, and then when it came time to sacrifice someone on Virmire, I was like "oh, those guys. Uh... I guess Kaidan idk??"
The second time I played I figured "what the hell, I'll talk to them..." and then I immediately regretted ever ignoring them the first time around. Kaidan's my favorite character now, for pete's sake. :<
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I also think that, because one or the other will be absent in everybody's game, BW didn't put as much push into their storylines. From a development standpoint, it would be a whole lot of work (in money and man-hours) programming character beats that 50% of all players won't see.
That said, I still think they're both great characters, and are two of my favorites in the series. So whatevs - they clearly did enough to get the two of us psyched.
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Yeah, I see what you mean. I've always sort of figured that's the very same reason why we don't get cutscene biotics from Kaidan... I imagine it's hard enough programming two different characters into the same role all while trying to retain their personal quirks, so I imagine deviating them too much from one another would be too much effort. Still kind of sucks, but what can you do!
Definitely agree with you! The hate sucks, but hey, they have dedicated fans like us and that's all that matters. Haters gonna hate.
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I don't know, but many did. Always bugged me, that. I thought he was pretty great.
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from what I understood from the general hate It's more got to do with the VA behind the characters not having a large vocal range so he comes off as a bit 'flat.'
I personally never had a problem with him.Hell I chose him over Ash every single time.
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Bah! I thought male-shep was a little vocally limited, but I love the Kaidan VA! I loved him as Carth in KotOR, and I love him here. Though... I like Ash more. Sorry.
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I think my reasons for disliking Ash stem from her view on aliens in the first game. I live in south LA, I've had more then enough exposure to racial prejudice to not want to see it else where.
And don't get me started on her line about how "it's not really prejudice."
I didn't have a problem with her tough chick routine since you could directly connect the dots between that, her family, and her treatment by the brass.
On the other hand she seemed to play the devil's advocate more then any other character around, I mean I'm struggling to think of a scenario where the side with the paragon choice.
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People play the racist card on her constantly, and it isn't true. I hear that over and over and over, and while she might not trust the governing bodies of alien groups, she's fine with individual people. She likes Garrus, she calls Tali "like a little sister," she encourages you to use Alliance forces to save the council, sending humans to die for aliens. Her not trusting, say, the Turian government to have humanity's best interests at heart is akin to an American in the 80's not being entirely sure we can trust the USSR. Or a Frenchman in the 50's not trusting Germany. It isn't racist - at worst, it's nationalist. But when those different nations happen to be made up of different races, people see it as being racist.
She hates Cerberus, a humanocentric, racist terrorist organization precisely because they are a humanocentric racist terrorist organization. Ditto Terra Firma, another "Paragon Choice" she supports. She's just practical to a fault, and I can think of a lot of valid reasons why anybody would distrust the Krogan or Salarian governments, or why somebody with her family history and military background would have a harder time trusting the Turian government.
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I think the that first conversation you have with her after becoming a specter and leaving the citadel is what gives people that view of her being racist (shouldn't it be like speciesist or something anyway?)
I mean she call attention to the 'fact' that Garrus and Wrex have pretty much free range on the ship.
I'd put this under the they-could-screw-shit-up-since-they-don't-know-jack category since she doesn't have any qualms about tali playing around in engineering.
but then she goes into a tangent about how she feels all aliens are at best fair-weather friends. and its' not just the governments she's talking about since she refers to them on the individual level as well.
What I see with Ashley is ignorance and a predisposition to not trust aliens thanks to the First Contact War.
Unfortunately that's also the general basis for racism so it's not hard for people to jump to her being racist. In her own words she's "no fan of aliens."
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...And if you continue talking with her, that changes. But most people quit on her after one conversation, writing her off completely. She's better than they give her credit for.
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Yeah, one of the things I like in ME 1 was how Shepard influences his/her squad mates. you could push Kaidan, Ashley, and Garrus towards a more renegade or more paragon outlook of the galaxy. Not that you got to see those outlooks transition over to the later games but oh well.
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Actually they kind of do, a bit. At least, I know Garrus comments on it briefly in ME2; while you can make him more paragonish, he got beaten down by the harsh world. And I know Ashley is even more pro-diversity in ME3 than when I left her in ME1. Not sure about Kaidan, because my jerk-Shep who tried to harden him up rarely spoke with him in ME3. Hmmm...
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"Jerk-Shep" lol
My primary reference with this would be Garrus, I pushed him towards paragon in ME1, when 2 rolled around it seemed like he had 'reset' to that middle ground he started at in ME1.
in my primary same (i.e. the only one I ever bothered importing) I had a paragon Femshep and Kaidan was my Virmire Survivor.
So I really couldn't see the effects on the survivor because in 2 they were butthurt for their own scene, and in 3 Kaidan was either standoffish and suspicious of Shep or hitting on shep. and of course Kaidan's initial setting was Paragon so ...yeah.
If it was one thing that annoyed me in mass effect it was the blatant romance option. What I can't hang out with this dude without triggering shameless flirting or being a jerk?
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I know Garrus has one line of dialogue that addresses the change in ME2. It isn't much, and is easy to miss, but it was pointed out to me and is definitely there. As far as romancing people, yeah it was a little frustrating at times. I didn't like that I HAD to romance people to get their full line of character development. Especially Jack, for whom the whole process seemed counter-productive. Why couldn't I become good friends with her and help her with her head stuff UNLESS I also wanted to f*** her?
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going through ME2 as FemShep was probably preferable when it came to Jack and the other maleshep romance options. I got to be friends with those character and sort their problems without any bone jumping involved. win/win.
Now one romance option that made me serious go 'wtf' was Thane. I mean seems half his dialogue is about his dead wife. Smooth man smooth.
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