Dark tidings from Camp Bioware, in this seemingly rather ill-judged trailer for the new Mass Effect 2 character Subject Zero. Bitch. Shoots for Strong Vengeful Joss Whedon Villain-Type, but comes off like an insipid, low-rent exploitation movie. Bitch. Hopefully this is simply an unfortunate marketing misfire, as with those very silly Marilyn Manson/low-budget porno trailers for Dragon Age, and not representative of the tone of the game itself. Bitch. But I must say, they’re going to have to fight to win back my anticipation for the game at this stage. Bitch.
“Now who’s the badass biotic, bitch?” Dear God. HK-47 she really ain’t. That said, at least I now know which of my ME2 crew members I’ll be killing first. Bitch.
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My favourite part was when she said “bitch”. That’s when I knew for certain that she was a badass.
Yeh I know! And then she said ‘F**k you!’. HARDCORE.
(*cries*)
He, thanks for the laugh, Ludo! :D
Godawful trailer.
Hey, look on the bright side. You’re supposed to be able to pick who joins your suicide squad. So we probably won’t have to have her on the team. Bitch.
Now this is some good game writing.
And I know who will be in my party in ME2 :)
My… whats with the terrible marketing with Bioware’s games at the moment?
Its like they almost don’t want us to like it…
Yay a psycho. Finally a female party member without mommy issues… or daddy issues…
Usually the psycho part is for the player…
Also, why would you announce very loudly and clearly that you are switching to shotgun? I'm all for fighting fairly (except when I'm not), but I don't see why my enemy should know which weapon I'm using until they eat my white-hot plasma shell. Or whatever.
This is probably one of the worst trailers I’ve ever seen. Utterly classless.
Jeeeeeeeeeeeesus, Bioware need to sack their marketing department. Or, if they’re doing it themselves, find one that knows how to do this stuff properly. I have never seen a string of adverts that do more to cement the idea that videogames are marketed at unintelligent 14 year old boys.
Completely agree. So immature.
What an unsavoury lady.
I like the fact that this trailer ends with the exciting news that a Dragon Age Origins in-game item is available with the purchase of Dragon Age Origins. That will certainly help inform my decision of whether to purchase.
Wow. That was shockingly shit. Bioware are really trying hard to shit on their reputation aren’t they?
Please say Wrex gets to come back and punch her in the face
It’s almost like they have been bought by some other company..
They want to widen their target audience.
This is not the best way to go about it.
Bitch1
Bitch, of course I meant “Bitch!”
Well, I bet there will be a sound file in there called ‘Bitch1.wav’.
I hope there’ll be a file named bitchslap.wav :)
It’s easy to understand. Just imagine the Simpsons’ meeting where the execs decided on what Poochie had to be. Now imagine that meeting continuing and dictating to the video clip makers what they needed to have.
Whedonesque is maybe what they were aiming for, but they missed the key ingredient to Joss Whedon’s formula: You don’t spell out the character in the first 20 seconds — the mystery of the character needs to last one or two seasons, to then mesh with development. On the other hand, here we’ve got: “I’ve been mistreated. I have lots of tattoos that signify how much of a badass I am. I enjoy lots of sex. I wear skimpy clothing. Bitch bitch bitch.”
In a trailer?
There will be no further questions. I await the promise that Ms. Poochie will never come back.
What a lovely balanced young lady or, perhaps, not.
Glad to see Bioware are keeping their one hint at a sex scene per trailer quota going. Really awful trailer, but I showed the Marilyn Mason Dragon Age trailer to a friend of mine and he said it made the game look ‘awesome’.
So I guess the marketing heads know what they are doing – ie, appealing to the lowest common denominator in the hope that they make their games appeal outside the more hardcore RPG circles. Can’t really blame them for doing that, but hopefully this particular party member is optional.
HK-47 should be given his own TV show.
Replacing Cowell on the X-Factor.
I’m interested in the part at 12 seconds when you see there will be 7 more character reveals somewhere between now and release. Or at least the reveal that there will be 10 characters total for you to recruit, barring any surprises.
Well, at least the “kept the haircut” line made me chuckle.
Yeah, it was the sole bit of wit in there. Really scattershot writing there. Feels like they were just throwing stuff out and seeing what stuck.
Quick poll: as depressing as this trailer might be, is there actually anyone here who has been put off to the extent that they won’t purchase Mass Effect 2?
I’m still buying Dragon Age despite “THE NEW SHIT,” if that answers your questions >_>
Sadly, not yet. I’ve been put off by the Dragon Age marketing, but not enough to cancel my preorder. If the game turns out to be shit though, that’s it for ME2. Dragon Age will be my litmus test.
they have both put me off to the extent i will wait until i have a very good idea of how bad they are before i fork a cent for them and they are very likely to get overshadowed by any other good looking game at release time, DA for example has a very good chance to get ignored by me if Borderlands turns out to be any good (the fact that they keep delaying will make it worse)
Just curious. Personally I’m still buying Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2, based on Bioware’s superb pedigree. I think Bioware can afford to put out trailers like this and they’re not likely to lose sales from their fans, so as a marketing exercise it makes sense to try and draw a new crowd.
I just finished KOTOR for the first time, and then I come online and see this trailer and it feels as though Bioware couldn’t possibly have been involved. Hopefully when the games are actually released we’ll see Bioware’s quality. Apparently, early rumours have it that Dragon Age is excellent. If all goes well ME:2 will follow suit.
I think Nerd Rage has the right idea. If I were a big Bioware fan, I don’t think I’d let some bad trailers turn me off. When they actually get around to putting out a bad GAME, that’s when you worry.
Unless it really gets destroyed in the “Wot I Think” I’ll still buy it no matter how bad the marketing gets. It’s just marketing.
I’ve opted out of getting Dragon Age (looks like the worst kind of 70s generic fantasy going) ME2 I’ll probably still get, though I’m not keen on this direction.
I will probably still buy both games. I don’t think that they could so suddenly mess everything up. But I will wait for some reviews first.
I will buy Dragon Age cause I think it looks good, despite the shitty marketing. I will “wait and see” with ME2, cause I considered the first one to be too mediocre in all aspects.
You guys are just terrified of forceful women.
Trust me, I *love* forceful women.
But do you like them bald?
Yes, I’m terrified of any woman who is as likely to cut herself as she is to cut my dick off while I’m sleeping. If you’re not afraid of mentally unstable women with a penchant for violence, you’ve never dated one.
Some look good bald, yes.
That’s why you give them targets, Nerd Rage.
I can with total sincerity say, it ain’t the bald, and it ain’t the forceful.
bald and with her body completely covered with tattoos, you can only tattoo yourself so far before you looking like an idiot, and went past the line and kept going for about 10 light years
I think someone got promoted to head of marketing at EA recently and should be fired this instant.
When she says “I’LL KILL YOU,” at :40 I thought the Geth sounds were her making baby noises.
That is all.
What I found most jarring about that little video is the swearing. They really should have picked different lines for the trailer, because the beeping is just awkward. If it was just cussing, that would have been okay, and it would have been okay without it, but not this clunky middle-ground they’ve got going on.
She’s no Tank Girl, I’ll tell you that much.
Oh, damn you.
“SHE’S JUST THE GIRL
SHE’S JUST THE GIRL
THE GIRL YOU WANT,” is going to be stuck in my head for ages.
Eh. I didn’t mind the trailer.
Me, I like ‘em feisty :p
She’ll probably wind up being the most interesting character in the game.
while i also think she could be interesting (doubt bioware will make her anything more than a cardboard characters like in ME1 tho), putting her in the first “new character” trailer like if they were proud of themselves for creating her gives me a very bad feeling … bitch!
Apparently we are all cognitively challenged 13 yr old sports drink consumers.
Until this post, I’d never thought of the trailer in anything but a positive light. But now that it’s pointed out; yeah, the whole affair does seem a little trite.
Nevertheless, the character seems fun, if not all that interesting. And it’ll give my girlfriend someone to root for instead of the paper dolls included in the first release.
To be honest, though…
If it turns out it was in fact all just about fucking, that would make a pretty hilarious dynamic for a video game.
“I didn’t hire you for your daddy issues, I just like it rough and raw.”
Agreed. Games need more fucked up characters with motives that are entirely their own. Sadly, it seems inevitable that there’s going to be a sidequest where you can turn her to the side of good, respectable boringness through a series of dialogue trees where you have to pick the most understanding and supportive dialogues.
*Sigh* Y’know, I was almost excited about ME2. I even tried very hard to draw a clear distinction in my mind between the sequel to Mass Effect and that other Bioware game which tend to look and sound worse for every new trailer. And then they had to go and do this. Was this really the same company that released Baldur’s Gate?
That…
Was supposed to saw (renegade points gained,) but I used the <'s instead. It thought it was HTML :(
and then you wrote “saw” instead of “say” … i really, reeeeeaaaaalllyyyyy miss the edit button
The only way they can turn this around is for Shepard to have a *Sigh and roll eyes* dialogue option immediately after she says anything.
Gosh. Seems so out of place. Like she was imported from one of those godawful “mature audience” X-men spinoffs (“Subject Zero”?!). Hopefully, we will be able to push her off a ledge in the middle of a conversation.
Oh god, you’re so right. She’s like if Rob Liefeld dropped a character right into the middle of Star Trek. Not nearly enough pouches to be a a Liefeld character, though.
What we do need is a Deadpool-esque character who is completely aware of videogame, sci-fi and fantasy adventure cliches, and tears them apart for you, so long as you have him/her in your party. That’d at least be an interesting take on the comic relief character.
@Dominic White
GOD YES, a Deadpool-esque character would be much welcome from the super-serious-business that even comic relief characters usually have to follow.
Of course, this character would have to be fairly well hidden to counteract the massive nerdrage generated from people who don’t like to be reminded that they are in fact playing a game ;)
This trailer reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMPkVY088VE
It made me think of this:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpMPFGBtE7Q
I really don’t think it’s all that bad. At least she’s not boring or bland like the human chick from the first. Why is everyone hating on Bioware lately? You haven’t even played a damn second of ME2 or Dragon Age and everyone is all up in arms about the “direction” Bioware is taking these two games. Stop being so damn critical and jaded….I’m certain Bioware will pull these two off. As for this jaded gamer, I really don’t think Subject Zero is worth getting upset about. So please stop.
Totatlly agree. That is completely out of sync with what we know the Mass Effect universe to be. The ME unirverse is supposed to have a kind of subtle spacey vibe and this character completely disrupts all of that. I’m all for bitchy characters but there is such a thing as wit and subtlety. Give me a bitch that has clever insults and put-downs not a character that has the personallity of a Rhino.
I didn’t see anything wrong with the trailer. Not every character is going to be well spoken and eloquent, especially given what sort of people you’re recruiting in ME2. Ex-gang member who gets her kicks from hurting things? She’s not exactly going to speak the Queen’s English, is she? The execution of the trailer might be a little off, but this isn’t anything on the level of “That Dragon Age Trailer.”
Bioware has been doing a marvelous job lately of reminding me why I pay no attention whatsoever to pre-release trailers. They usually tell you absolutely nothing about the game in question, either artificially building hype or artificially inducing worry. I’m sure Mass Effect 2 will be at least at the level of the original (which was good, not great). Silly advertising decisions will have no impact on that contention. Similarly, I’m quite certain Dragon Age will be better than its pre-release footage as well. I’ll wait for reviews on both, of course, but the only thing that’s really going to change my mind is someone actually having PLAYED THE GAME.
Uhm, this is the standard stereotype for every female lead character since Lara Croft. Not that there aren’t exceptions, but come on…
Why are we deciding to rejoice in finding that awful just now? Because she actually used dialog that fits that character cliché? I mean, no problem with it, but it’s not like we hadn’t the chance to do so 10 years ago. This is the reason I find gender equality to be horribly… misunderstood… in mainstream (action-)gamedesign.
Plus I like the “Joined a cult, kept the haircut…” line. Yea, kill me.
See, this just goes to prove my theory that marketing will be the downfall of our species. Who’s up for joining my revolution where we shoot all marketers in the face?
…
Bitch!
Every RPG needs its wildcard character and I like the idea of a female Vin Diesel on my team. I was really impressed with some of ME1’s female characters–the girl Shephard especially–and it’s good to see strong women is an element that’s been kept in the sequel.
Sure they’re trying a bit too hard (put on some clothed dammit) but god knows it’s better than yet another orphaned blowup doll who’s in love with the player from scene one.
If you completely ignore the new character, the rest of the trailer is pretty bland, crappy action, crappy effects (the biotic effects look even worse than in me1, uh, why do they have to go into free ragdoll mode ? at least have them flail around and try to shoot back a bit) and i could swear the engine looked a lot better last time i saw it.
What the fuck happened to Bioware.
So let me get this right Bioware, the rest of my crew all have to wear armour, whist Riot Grrl runs around with little more than her tattoos to protect her? Does she not feel the cold perhaps?
Sad, very sad. One can only hope that enough commentators lamenting them for going down this route shames them into changing this before release….
The only positive seems to be that there are 10 character slots for your team, so at least that's an improvement.
Yes You’re right, I’m deliciously evil
Well with many touted opportunities to kill characters I know which save file I’ll be keeping aside when I’m feeling glum.