Why are the aliens always humanoid? This is one of those things that bothers me that most people just accept.
Especially since in this day and age we have to tools to model whatever we can imagine with technology... but we're still designing Star Trek extras.
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It's the Star Trek/Star Wars/John Carter/Flash Gordon influence. And that's what most people respond to. It sucks sometimes and you're not the only one who realizes this.
ME1 had the jelly fish aliens
ME1-3's engine was humanoid based
Try to design an alien appendage that isn't a hand, tentacle, or suction cup but could still realistically manipulate tools well enough to develop to a somewhat human society.
Makes it easier for people to fap to them.
But actually, the engine and model problems. They couldn't even make Turians as big as they're supposed to be, which is kinda shitty.
to be fair star trek at least hand waived the reason all aliens look vaguely similar as a progenitor species jizzed in all the primordial soups across the universe
easier to design/animate and also relatability. although non humanoid aliens are cool, it's hard to base a game solely around them because people get more attached to characters that have humanoid features and are aesthetically pleasing, so it's better from a narrative standpoint.
I also think is more unlikely for such beings to develope a complex society. Humans wouldn't be as evolved if they had no hands, like if we were snake people or something. The only thing you can do is adding bodyless species that somehow left their bodies behind long ago and might be able to hijack robot bodies or something, or just normal or robots that can look whatever you want them to. But from a evolutionary standpoint slime balls, snakes or worms are just extremely unlikely to mutate into intelligent self-aware beings.
because it'd cost more effort/money to design/develop nonhumanoid npcs. remember all the mass effect races that weren't humanoid barely had movement in cutscenes.
Explain how this thing could make a wheel, let alone FTL spacecraft
Why does it need to be a human society? Why not something foreign and bizarre? It's science (fiction) so why not take advantage of that?
I like how all the early lewd Turian hetero fanart turned out to be gay years later after Bioware showed us the first female Turian. Early artists gave the females crests too, assuming that both genders had these.
Because that way we can put our peepees in them easier
also look at the dominance humans have over the Earth. Not that hard to assume evolution on other planets might lead to something similar, intelligent bipeds get shit done.
>Why are the aliens always humanoid?
So we know when they are being lewd.
convergent evolution
Creatures that fill the same niches tend to look similar and develop similar features
that's why creatures that evolved millions of years apart on seperate continents and different families of species still end up looking related
so they can use the same mocap recordings for every race
Because that actually requires effort on the writer's parr
An Earth Octopus couldn't, they're too reliant on water (they slowly get crushed under their own bodymass without it), and their brains are goofy and if they got too big would constrict their throats.
A creature with multiple tentacles, however, could. Assume instead of a skeleton it has some flexible yet still supportive cartilage skeleton. Move some of the tentacles around so that they're not all around its face, put its ass at its butt instead of near its mouth.
As for the tentacles, just leave them as they are, or make them like an elephant's trunk: each tentacles is tipped with four appendages allowing it to make a cupping motion. A single tentacle has less dexterity than the human hand, but since it has 8 (4 on each side, effectively) it can use two to make something arguably more dextrous than a hand. It can ambulate with the other four.
Bam, there you go.
Because the more foreign and bizarre you get the more effort you have to go into explaining every minute detail of how such a strange society can perform and function on a galactic intergalactic scale. Otherwise, you're just going to make something that looks cool on the surface but has absolutely no substance and is pure handwaving logic if you delve into it in any degree, which goes against half the point of science fiction.
>Why are the aliens always humanoid?
But they are not.
We have tons of examples. In ME alone, you have the hanar and the Elkor. Or the Rachni. In Half life, the aliens were like worms or something. We have tons of hive-mind arthropods
Other than that, I imagine cause it makes from an evolutionary point of view. You need arms, legs, a head, etc, etc...
Isn't there a reason why most things in the universe end up being spherical? Aka, better to deal with gravity and what not.
So a bubble, a star, a planet, a flying comet... they all end up with a similar shape cause is the most efficient and logical shape.
Yeah I think I would rather want that as single-species game, it's rather distracting and wasted potential as one of many races in a game like ME.
I would want to see a game in which a single human survives some FTL jump or spaceship crash or something and ends up on an foreign as shit alien planet. You just wake up and are baffled and shocked, can't understand anything, and throughout the game you only slowly assume what these aliens do, the meaning of actions and some of these assumptions turn out to be wrong. I don't know, maybe like aliens touching some glowing stone thing in their rooms and you assume it's an idol they adore, when it's really just a form of telepathic communication tool, or that aliens lying around aren't sleeping but doing some lucid dreaming kind of VR games or some shit.
This doesn't account for differing environments/basic biological structure.
Would you fuck all humanoid ME species? Because I would.
>we will never get the chance to fuck things up for those slugs
This concept doesn't work at all if we don't share a common ancestor with the aliens, as well as similar environments to live in.
>tfw we'll never get to follow up on the war with the Skedar.
>they slowly get crushed under their own bodymass without it
No, they do not. They need water to breathe.
>constrict their throats
Also false, but close enough to the truth that it doesn't matter.
Also octopuses do not have tentacles, they have arms.
I mean human level. Having more animal/bacteria-level aliens is great but if you're interacting with them in a very meaningful way you need them to have a human level society. It can still be totally different and not even a little similar, but it has to have things like communication, tool use, etc.
Convergent evolution making medium-sized bipedal endurance-running bodies with probative digits a strong series of assets for developing superspecies intelligence?
If you're too adapted to a single subsistence niche like more specialized limbs would suggest, you'll probably not need to develop tool use. I like how this is implicit in Mass Effect too since the only non-humanoid species in the series needed to be directly uplifted by the Protheans.
Done.
They do have those, but as the badies
If you want a playable character or party member that is an alien then having them be able to equip the same tools as everyone else is only practical
>dude space centaurs lmao
based retard
>two rib cages
Why did angels take human shape instead of being terrible monstrosities?
Why was the goddess Ishtar depicted as an attractive woman?
>human torso, head, arms and hands
this is just various animals mashed together and coloured blue, it's not very alien at all
I gave up on that, people will never let us play as Turians or whatever alien race you might prefer in a game. It's probably some sharia law that forbits multi-species space games to be anything but human centered.
convergent evolution theory or smth like that
Angels are literally described as terrible monstrosities unlike they're trying to blend into human society to act as secret messengers.
Are you retarded? Several animals on earth can use tools without hands.
Teraurge and Monster Girl Quest curbed my enthusiasm for mind-rending horrors, thank you very much.
Will ravens have evolved into Earth Turians in 100 million years from now?
Actually fuck me I forgot the Elcor but so did Bioware when they made the series all about sex scenes and faggotry
>we could’ve had badass dinosauroids
>we got shitty humans instead
what were they thinking?
Skedar are bitches, they die to 9mm.
>well enough to develop to a somewhat human society
Well unlike apes, elephants and orcas they have basically nothing in common with mammals, so we have no idea if this is the full extent of their intelligence or merely just the beginning
The asteroid expansion really fucked everything
I love birds and reptiles, I wish we had evolved from something different than semi-monkeys.
what people don’t realize is that humanoid designs can work, it just needs a good reason as to why it evolved that way. also people need to remember that the human body plan is a PLAN not something to copy and paste onto something else, unless it was actual pure coincidence, humanoid aliens would look as about as humanoid as a penguin does.
pic related.
That dude has a boner.
>dat pic
I actually want this.
You evolved hands to manipulate the complex tool you're sitting in front of that allows you to share your thoughts with the world and here you are, still a retard.
Didn't these guys have a galactic empire in Galactic Civilizations? Weren't they an ancient empire or some shit?
Birds can't carry extra weight around or they can't fly. Unless it's a symbol of their high status, like "our emperor doesn't need to fly because he has others to do it for him"
We shaped the tool to match our hands, not the other way around. You imbecile.
I can live with all aliens having a humanoid shape. You know what I can't live with?
>its an alien race!
>they all wear similar clothing
>they all have the same body type/physique
>they all the same height
>their entire planet is literally 1 biome
generally it's always explained that most of the galaxy was seeded by a humanoid precursor species
then you always have outliers like hanar and tholians
There's actually quite a bit of evidence that our intelligence came about due to being bipedal, at least partially, if true then covergent evolution would mean tha a good amount of sparient, intellegience races would likely be bipedal as well
The forerunner Halo novels do this, actually, pretty much the entire first book is just worldbuilding about their society and technology due to how absurdly alien they are as a result of how advanced their tech is. The writer does a fantastic job making it so that they feel legitmately esoteric and alien and advanced instead of just "human society/technolgy but ADVANCED".
It's called convergent evolution. Look it up, it will answer your questions.
>inb4 believes in evolution
Because humans are the worst motherfucking monsters in existence, and any ayy that can't match our thirst for blood, shameless deception and cruelty will soon find themselves exterminated.
This. That alone was a reason for me wishing for a remake with better engine and programmers back then. It's extremely retarded how all of the aliens wear the same shit regardless of the situation they are in. Shit should have been closer to the concept arts they had. I would kill for these ceremonial clothes for Turians.
Another thing is that they are all the same inner-species race. It's only the colors that are different. But look at humans for example, even here an Asian face looks clearly different from an African or European one. The only exception in these games was Saren. They made him weird to stand out but canon-wise his bunny ears thingies as well as the beaklike face seem to be traits of a different race. Unless he and his brother are suffering from some genetic mutation or something.
The lack of races for aliens is always something that piss me off as much as the lack of bodytypes.
This fucking retarded shit is what always gets my noggings jogging.
>entire alien race only has a single language
Can't those hacks take a fucking look at their own planet?
but user, thats the fot, not the zoq
Starting in 2007 working with human models was more efficient.
Plus, the evolutionary advantage of endurance running like we're based on is theoretically possible across a wide swath, with variations based on planet.
Stand outs like the Hanar, no-suit Volus, and Elcor are more rare because their planets are so drastically different.
>niggers
>gooks
>human
It's pretty racist in some weird way. I hate it too, especially because I am a sucker for alien cultures. Hell did we even learn much about their cultures in ME? Most of the stuff was just flavor text from that journal shit. Fuck this. These games have so much wasted potential it's crazy. We didn't even visit most homeworlds and know basically nothing about religion, rituals, general culture, anything. Every species has just some one-note info about their type, like Turians being military fags, Krogans loving war and so on. Fuck that. I bet even fanfic authors wrote better worldbuilding.
That is probably the most level headed post I've seen in response to a question like this.
And this is coming from a faggot who is getting cucked by the girl of his dreams.
Non humanoid aliens would develop in cognitive direction in a way that would make communication with them impossible.
Because humans are the pinnacle of Gods creation and if any other race would actually evolve as much as humans did in terms of intelligence, they would obviously have evolved into humanoid shapes.
There's literally no reason for any intelligent being to not be humanoid, except for fantasy babble.
The Hanar worship the Protheans for gifting them language, and the Elcor in general point to this desu.
bird claws
Didn't ME do the same thing?
It's the most efficient form for a sapient being.
in the case of Mass Effect that was just pure laziness, they didn't feel like modelling different heights/builds for the ayys so they went with other phenotypes to differentiate them - usually just the color of their bodies and shit. They handwaved the language thing by saying everyone uses a universal translator - they did at least mention that all the races have their own multitude of languages in a codex somewhere iirc.
except for the quarians which are implied to have one universal language by Tali, but if you think about how many generations of quarians have lived on the flotilla, it'd make sense for their individual cultures and languages to eventually just homogenize into one quarian superculture because of close proximity at all times.
>Especially since in this day and age we have to tools to model
The tools exist but the resources don't. Bioware talked about this. It's way too costly for not enough payoff.
Because the average person is a pleb and refuses to play anything that's not a hyperattractive humanoid. Just look at any MMO with multiple races. "Human" and "supermodel race" have the most players, the actually interesting races have the fewest.
if we were dinosauroids there would be a retard on the saurnet that would be saying the same shit but about those weird primates in africa
Somewhat.
Protheans meddled in evolution of other species, but then you need to ask why Protheans are humanoid, though that may be a ME3 retcon/fuck up.
how about a big crap or spider like creature?
still has "hands" to use tools but doesn´t look human at all in shape
maybe, javik implies that the protheans, who were humanoid, were aware of and probably did fuckshit with the primitive ancestors of the species we know today (mainly the asari).
>"Human" and "supermodel race" have the most players
But Elin is neither of those.
>Why are the aliens always humanoid?
because it's a just a game, kid
it isn't hard science. look at the ftl and other handwavium tech.
hee hee
>Why are the aliens always humanoid?
because we don't know how real aliens look like so we can do it however the fuck we want. It's fiction.
Man I hate monkeys so much.
It really sucks indeed. Anyrhing would be better than apes really.
>why are the aliens always humanoid
because you're a closet zoophiliac who wants to fuck something that walks on four legs instead of two
Aside from convenience of making them, it's always the misguided notion that aliens should be relatable. Why? They're aliens. Of course, writing something truly unknown is actually difficult.
I absolutely agree. Which is why I made this thread.
Apes are probably one of the most hated animal types out there. I know a lot of people who like snakes and everything, even spiders, but everyone hates monkeys. They are also ugly as shit.
why don´t we use cool names like "primatnet" or "humamoblie"?
Sounds like you'd like some xenofiction.
what are some comfy games with cosmic horrors
VEINS
Snake are cute. I like spiders too, but not enough to hold one.
>but we're still designing Star Trek extras.
Because Star Trek is peak comfy sci fi, and Mass Effect is largely just Trek with the numbers filed off and different names like "Krogan" instead of "Klingon."
>Why are the aliens always humanoid?
Is cheaper, you don't need multiple animation sets if all races are the same humanoid shape and size.
I only liked the Krogan and Hanar.
>big crap
>"hands"
user, go see a doctor
>tfw you'll never cum in a girly turian twinks genital slit while he moans like a bitch with that phlangy voice
Life is suffering
ARE
Mostly so people can have an easier time breeding and shipping them. My rule is that it needs to be humanoid to not be bestiality.
I would say it's more Babylon 5 than Star Trek.
this
B5 was based as fuck too
>Why are the aliens always humanoid?
"convergent evolution"
the idea that things tend to evolve in a similar direction because it just werks
>but user, that's humanoid!
They're only humanoid because the sangheili prefer them this way as shock troopers, otherwise it's just a bunch of worms.
>They handwaved the language thing by saying everyone uses a universal translator
Ah yes, the Universal Translator able to translate what a giant jelly fish communicating through light waves into modern english, yet totally unable to translate basic spanish words
What bothers me the most is the fact that all of them speak english fluently, even the fucking Reapers.
it's a game
they don't, omni-tools have translators
Considering that they don't have an outside dick it's most likely retracted when you fuck them anyway, so fucking a male Tur is basically the same as fucking a female as long as you ignore the voice.
Oh yeah, like those omni tools the Leviathans were using deep in the ocean, right?
Why are there so many gays and women who who are horny for this race?
jinx.com
Hell even Saren seems to have a shitton of porn art and he's probably the ugliest Turian out there.
Because first off humans aren't the only living creature nor the first bipedal type animal on Earth
On land having arms/legs or a mix works. Eyes to see. Ears to hear. A backbone etc because it works
Yet birds/fish are different because obviously birds dont need hands. Nor do fish.
Why wouldn't a land based alien be mostly "mammal" shape? Or a mix of Reptile/bird/fish. What else would they look like? A fish? Thats dumb. Maybe a giant bird but thats still based on Earth biology
Basically no alien design is original. None. They all are based on some living thing. Even the blob is based on some single cell organism. The xenomorph is obviously based on various bugs/reptiles
So OP. Because nature works unlike your NEET fag ass
God if any series warranted an MMO it'd be Mass Effect
>Humans
>Asari
>Salarians
>Turians
>Krogans
>Volus
>Quarian
>Hanar
>Humans
>Elcor
>Drell
>Vorcha
>Collectors
>Batarians
>Prothean maybe
And then the ones from Andromeda look kinda cool
>Angara
>Kett
just the variety of races alone is nice even if most of them are just humanoid
Back to /pol/
>being anti-human
>/pol/
If anything /pol/ fags are human supremacy fags. I am an alienfucker, humans are 3DPD and shit, and so are /pol/fags.
>tfw batarians did nothing wrong and the (((Council Races))) sabotaged them
Always?
The Prometheans and their rogue AI Reapers were manipulating the evolution and development of intelligent life, yes.
Easier to tell the difference between an NPC and just a space animal.
Keep in mind that Star Trek is one of the first science fiction series on television so its naturally very iconic. Star Trek is the Lord of the Rings of popular SciFi.
>giant, six eyed caterpillars with manipulator tentacles, in green and black
>deformed, insane fleshy blobs that are self inflicted genetic engineering gone wrong
>a three species union of a plant, a spring and a cyclopean radiator
>genetically engineered, terraforming mushrooms that have broken their programming
>cyclopean lumpy potato space merchants that use colour to denote mood
>floating gas bags with their dicks out although they can't see them
>evil, big brained, psychic, mind controlling toads
>edgelord chitinous spider people
>absurdly smart but cowardly green, cyclopean mollusc people with mechanical appendages
>intelligent, talking plants that would totally jerk you off
>some kind of round parrot/fish thinga that are actually the physical manifestation of a singular extradimensional entity
In star trek it seemed to stem from a budgetary restriction, though they tried for non humanoid races more and more when cgi hit came around. At least star trek accounted for the fact that many of the races were humanoid by explaining that the progenitors had seeded many planets with their humanoid DNA.
>not wanting to spend 5 minutes trying to talk to a space dog like it's a quest giver
I don't know, the Supox seem a little too preoccupied with the Utwig. They probably think we're repulsive like the Vux do, but know better than to make a big deal out of it.
>Batarians
user, I...
They only roll with the Utwig because they were the first species they met and they helped out a lot in getting the Supox into space. They just need to branch out, find there are species that wont go into complete depressive shutdown just because someone broke an alien doodad
SEXY
the leviathans were using telepathy to communicate so Shepard wouldve heard their voice in any language he understands and can comprehend
the reapers probably do something similar because uhhh indoctrination shit
1) Popular Sci-Fi from yesteryear did it, so people still do it.
2) Humanoid aliens, even if they don't look human, are easier for general populations to connect with emotionally.
3) In terms of video games, it's easier to just give things a humanoid shape since we already know how those move and look in motion. It also allows for easier visual queues for the player. Imagine Oddworld, but instead of stealthing around and dodging and rolling as humanoid Abe, Abe was instead a tentace blob monster with claws for testicles.
4)For movies, practical effects means that if a human can't squeeze into the suit somehow, it's no longer a practical effect.
5) The humanoid form is fairly efficient biologically. Beliving that there are no other beings in the universe that evolved into a similar form is arguably just as short sighted as thinking the universe would be full of them.
Harder to animate.
Require actual thinking to have tools / vehicles / whatever that make sense with their morphology.
Also surprisingly, tall bipeds make *a lot* of shit easier game-engine wise - for stuff like path-finding, environment interaction and combat AI.
makes it ez to map shit to the same animation rig too even though it never fucking works. I cant count how many times krogans clip into their own body because they're mapped to a regular human rig.
Why do so many fictional aliens have the same kinda platey kinda crustacean-like skin?
It's probably supposed to look different, but it ends up looking generic as fuck because everyone does it, they all look the fucking same.
Bipedal humanoid design is the most efficient. Two limbs for movement, two for manipulation. Perfect form.
Two limbs allow for opposable movement/manipulation. Consumes less energy than hopping and allows handling of multiple items or exceptionally large objects. Extra limbs costs more energy and is less efficient.
We're literally perfect just the way we are.
Alien was a very popular and revolutionary horror film.
Why do boobies need so much blood?
The thorian. Done
>a plant that relied upon spore controlled humanoids to look after itself is an example of an advanced tool manipulating appendage
Imagine if they remade all the CG scenes in Babylon 5 but kept everything else the same.
Whoever did it would probably fuck it up but anything would look better than the original.
Not that guy but how is that a contradiction?
I mean besides the fact it's not what was asked for? How about the fact that the Thorian wasn't using the people it enslaved to create a technologically advanced society, it just sponged off one that already existed to do the bare minimum to keep itself comfortable.
evolution was manipulated by the reapers
bipedal slaves are more eficient