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extrapenguinI have recently played through the Mass Effect trilogy. The first game was amazing, the second was eh, and the third one was a movie. Spoilers abound for the whole series.
One of the first characters we're introduced to in Mass Effect 2 is Miranda Lawson. There are a lot of things wrong with her visual character design, as with all the non-Tali female squadmates in ME2, but I'll stick to talking about her character.
Miranda was designed by her father to be genetically smart, beautiful, and in all ways better than your average human. This is told to the player, not shown. In fact, nearly everything Miranda says is either irrelevant to the mission on hand or "Shepard, don't do (thing that has to be done to complete the mission)". The narrative actively undermines Miranda's competence at every step. As a result, she comes across as smug and incompetent. Miranda is the Cerberus character that is constantly wrong so that Shepard can be right.
For the purposes of characterization, it would be better to have Jacob being the character who says things like "I wouldn't take that krogan out of the tank, he might be dangerous. Your decision, though." It would establish Jacob as a cautious character (which is the vibe I got from him) and wouldn't undermine Miranda.
In Mass Effect 3, Miranda is largely absent, though you can talk to her and even meet her in person once. (Tip: talk to her about Kai Leng so she survives Sanctuary.) She's working to bring down her father, and comes across as much more likeable now that she doesn't have to constantly be wrong so that Shepard could be right.
On the whole "genetically engineered to be beautiful" thing, I just wished that Bioware had left that out. People's standards of beauty are varying, so people will probably be disappointed (or have their suspension of disbelief jarred) upon being told that Miranda's appearance is "perfect". I didn't find Miranda's facial features particularly appealing, and I'm sure others didn't as well. A better approach would have been to just remove all mentions of Miranda having a "perfect appearance" and just have her be genetically engineered to be smart, strong and capable.
One of the first characters we're introduced to in Mass Effect 2 is Miranda Lawson. There are a lot of things wrong with her visual character design, as with all the non-Tali female squadmates in ME2, but I'll stick to talking about her character.
Miranda was designed by her father to be genetically smart, beautiful, and in all ways better than your average human. This is told to the player, not shown. In fact, nearly everything Miranda says is either irrelevant to the mission on hand or "Shepard, don't do (thing that has to be done to complete the mission)". The narrative actively undermines Miranda's competence at every step. As a result, she comes across as smug and incompetent. Miranda is the Cerberus character that is constantly wrong so that Shepard can be right.
For the purposes of characterization, it would be better to have Jacob being the character who says things like "I wouldn't take that krogan out of the tank, he might be dangerous. Your decision, though." It would establish Jacob as a cautious character (which is the vibe I got from him) and wouldn't undermine Miranda.
In Mass Effect 3, Miranda is largely absent, though you can talk to her and even meet her in person once. (Tip: talk to her about Kai Leng so she survives Sanctuary.) She's working to bring down her father, and comes across as much more likeable now that she doesn't have to constantly be wrong so that Shepard could be right.
On the whole "genetically engineered to be beautiful" thing, I just wished that Bioware had left that out. People's standards of beauty are varying, so people will probably be disappointed (or have their suspension of disbelief jarred) upon being told that Miranda's appearance is "perfect". I didn't find Miranda's facial features particularly appealing, and I'm sure others didn't as well. A better approach would have been to just remove all mentions of Miranda having a "perfect appearance" and just have her be genetically engineered to be smart, strong and capable.