Considering Mordecai not only has his form changed every floor but also his voice, I thought it would make sense to have someone who has a good range when it comes to voices. Enter... Alan Tudyk. Not only is he a great voice actor but he's also a decent comedy actor (just watch him in Resident Alien) and I think he'd make a great Mordecai.
So it's relatively easy to play these games and not give much thought on how Bioware came up with the aliens in them. Like obviously the Asari are a play on the sexy alien women trope, the Salarians are a variation of the Greys trope and the Reapers themselves are inspired by the monsters of Lovecraftian lore. But one thing I want to know is how did Bioware actually make up the names for all their species?
I know that in the Turians case their name is basically just Centurion for short, which fits them well as not only are they militaristic but a lot of their in-game names sound very Latin-ish. But what about the Krogan? Or the Elcor? Quarians? Is there any information on how the creators of ME made them up, whether they're shortened versions of pre-existing words, derived from other languages or literally just made up on the spot?
I've been wondering about this for a while but I can't really find that much information online.
Precursor races are a fairly common trope when it comes to science fiction (and fantasy too) and usually serve as a quick explanation for why certain technologies exist or why that world is the way it is. You have the Forerunners from the *Halo* series, the Engineers from the *Alien* franchise, the Protheans from *Mass Effect*, the Gatebuilders from *The Expanse* and so on. When it comes down to it though, what do you think of them as a plot device or aspect of worldbuilding for a fictional property? A genius idea to enrich the lore within a property or just lazy writing so the writers can skip to what they really want to write about?
To give my take on it, I personally love the precursor trope - more so when they are written well into the story and/or worldbuilding. They can be a quick and easy way to establish why the world is the way it and help handwave over certain trivial bits and get the story going. Mass Effect does it pretty well with the Protheans and the Mass Relays. "Here's this race that ruled the galaxy 50,000 years ago. They made these megastructures that let us travel at FTL speeds all over the place. We use them to travel and colonise the galaxy. Thanks Protheans 👍." Not only that but the writers continue to build upon that seemingly quick-and-easy explanation for FTL travel into the story to shock and entertain the player if they play towards the end.
So yeah, precursor races - yay or nay?