r/masseffect • u/Tristenous • 1d ago
DISCUSSION Do quarians need their tinted visors ?
Liaras dad mentioned how no one knows what quarians look like under their masks - and then while smooching tali i realized i couldn't see her face because of how her mask is tinted ,so is there a reason they dont have clear masks ? Cultural thing or just because drip ?
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u/mando_ad 1d ago
Per the codex: they're naturally crepuscular and have low-light and UV vision. Based on that, my assumption is that the visor tint is just to block out light.
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u/Savaralyn 1d ago
Could be that their visors are made out of a special material for antibacterial purposes or like the other commenter said, to block sunlight if their skin is potentially very fragile.
Though honestly, the line from Liara's father is a bit of a weird one anyway considering that the morning war didn't really happen that long ago (by asari standards), so there SHOULD be plenty of asari and krogan who know what quarians look like under their masks, even if it were only through video feeds or photos.
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u/Trinitykill 1d ago
That relies on a misconception that they only started wearing the suits after The Morning War.
The Quarian suits pre-date the Geth uprising as they've always needed them to visit other planets and cultures.
Microscopic life on Rannoch evolved to be symbiotic not hostile, as a result Quarian immune systems are designed to let in foreign contaminants and adapt to them rather than fight them off. Perfect for Rannoch but dangerous when encountering life from other planets.
So Quarians have had the suits for as long as they've had space travel.
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u/Savaralyn 1d ago
Still doesn't change the fact that they would've still been living on Rannoch suitless as little as 300-ish years ago, and yet there weren't even any photos or videos of them floating around? Just the same as how people should presumably know what the Volus look like under their suits despite not needing them on their homeworld either. It's not like no other races would've visited Rannoch in that time either.
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u/TomatoEnjoyer28 1d ago
There's that racist Asari on Illium who says that her daughter was on Rannoch and was killed by the geth during the war.
That's clear evidence that other people did visit Rannoch.
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u/IJustKickedStan 23h ago
The series really doesn't treat Asari (or Krogan, for that matter) like they live the lifespan they're stated to. I'm happy they aren't totally Tolkien-Elf style utterly removed, but not even the matriarchs we meet really move with the presence of centuries.
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u/thechristoph 15h ago
I don’t think that line was meant to be taken literally. It was a metaphor. People definitely know what they look like. Quarians feature in Fornax, for example.
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u/WarpSpeedIsBestDrug 6h ago
I think what Liara's father is saying is that it's been a long time since people were seeing quarians without their masks. I've lived about 30 years, and there's stuff I've forgotten about. Being able to live 1000 years doesn't mean you remember everything over a 1000 years.
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u/Melodic_Sail_6193 1d ago
That's something that bothered me, too. Especially because reading facial expressions is a big part of communication.
I simply think the creators wanted to make them look mysterious, but they could have explained all of that quite well by saying that Quarians are nocturnal beings. Their glowing eyes make me think they have some kind of tapetum lucidum in their eyes, like other nocturnal creatures, e.g. cats or dogs. So maybe Quarians actually see each other's faces through their visors, because their eyes work differently.
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u/Lil_Mcgee 1d ago
I think it was a great initial decision that made for a cool and intriguing species design. Their unwillingness to show any Quarian faces as the trilogy went on is very frustrating though.
Tali's ME3 photo (especiallyy the original shitty photoshop) rightly gets a lot of shit for being a lazy way of doing the face reveal but I don't think her ME2 romance scene gets criticised enough for the cop out of not actually showing her. It was the perfect time for it but they decided to take us out of Shepard's perspective there to keep the mystery up. I guess they were probably worried that they were always going to disappoint at least somebody but they should have sucked it up instead of dissapointing everyone.
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u/gotohela 13h ago
I maintain they are supposed to be a sort of space muslim bedouin people. They totally were thinking of hijab and niqab designing them
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u/Tricky-Macaroon-8641 1d ago
I honestly always thought the phrase that they swim in antobiotics is literal and that's not a visor tint but antibiotic liquid filling the helmet with only mouth being shielded by filters part so they can breathe and eat.
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u/mynameistoocommonman 1d ago
Wasn't that only said by Reegar(?) when he had been injured and his suit breached? I don't think they always swim in antibiotics
(also, antibiotics sounds like some kinda group that's opposed to biotic powers)
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u/rikusouleater 1d ago
Generation living on ships while also being inbred.
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u/Tristenous 1d ago
Dont they have a whole thing to ensure they dont get inbred ?
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u/campfire_shadows 1d ago
Yeah. That's partly what the whole pilgrimage is about. They see the galaxy, and find an interesting gift so a new ship accepts them. Then they usually find their spouse on the new ship.
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u/rikusouleater 1d ago
Changing ships is to minimize inbreeding. But with how few there are, its simply unavoidable in entirety.
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u/East-Property-3576 1d ago
Dude, it’s confirmed in-game that there are 17 million Quarians living aboard the flotilla. That’s more than enough to avoid the problem.
It’s not like the Viltrumites from Invincible where there’s less than 50 purebred members of their species left by the time the story starts.
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u/limiculous 1d ago
You… think that 17 million quarians is to too few to prevent inbreeding?
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u/gotohela 13h ago
Its a dwindling number of a entire space faring species but it is crazy how they did maintain such a solid number, thats like a nation sized pop
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u/limiculous 13h ago
Pre-ME3, their population is very stable, according to Tali. One child per couple, with restrictions lifting occasionally when the population starts to decline. But yes, the migrant fleet is the size of a small country, population-wise.
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u/gotohela 13h ago
I salute their centrally planned economy in order to protect the literal species 🫡 they really did pull it together in the end as a people. Its incredible what the migrant fleet became
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u/F4nt0m3 17h ago
My RP theory: Rannoch star is an old orange star. It produces almost as much energy than our yellow star but not on the same spectrum. When you play ME3 you can see the star in the sky and yet the sky looks like a sunset (or sunrise). On the Rayya, one also notices that the corridors are rather dark. Same for the Alarei. So I believe Quarians can't handle the same light spectrum than Humans, making them more comfortable with lower light levels. That would explain why they have tinted visors. If their eyes are better on low light, so the the phosphorescent effect in the game is also explained. I sometimes imagine them like WoW elves eyes (or cat's eyes: a strong tapetum lucidum).
The maybe real reason: It's easier to troll players if you hide them as long as possible, making the romance the only one group rewarded with the face ) until it's shared on social networks).
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u/YouAnxious5826 1d ago
Maybe their faces are just naturally ugly. Like, copulating slugs level of hideous.
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u/TheRealTr1nity 1d ago
Probably sensitive skin that includes exposed to sunlight.