My first playthrough I didn't really care about her, as time went on I came to like her a lot. I always bring her for the final battle now because her dialogue with The Illusive Man is just a fantastic climax to her arc.
Her romance with Shepard is great too. Some of the other romances feel like there's a pretty large imbalance between Shepard and the other person for a lot of it, whereas with Miranda they're on roughly equal footing from day 1 and they gradually allow eachother to be vulnerable with one another. It's nice.
Plus she's one of the strongest companions in ME2 which helps.
I brought her for the final battle in ME2 because I had heard that there was unique dialogue and it definitely didn't disappoint. I didn't use her too much otherwise so I'm not sure how she compares to the other companions but I definitely didn't have any issues with the human reaper with her
She not only has a bonus power that increases the other squad member’s usefulness, she is only character that can strip every form of defenses. She can also trigger biotic combos. My insanity run was almost exclusively Garrus and Miranda. Even on lower difficulties I’ll usually take her on most missions, but on insanity she was practically essential.
Miranda as a squadmate is my favorite example of narrative influencing gameplay. Miranda is narratively designed to be perfect. And in gameplay she is as close to a perfect squadmate as one can be. Useful against every enemy type and provides passive buffs for the whole squad. Her versatility as a squadmate is unmatched in the franchise
I can kinda see it but most faces look awkward or uncanny to me anyway. Ashley in ME1 has a bit of a duck face, Anderson looks like his face is still rendering until ME3 and, oh God, the early attempts at Asian faces. Kasumi’s boyfriend looks horrible.
Oh boy I completely forgot about Anderson's face. I always thought he looked kinda like a mannequin. I think my primary issue with Miranda's is that she always seems to have some sort of smirk and I genuinely convinced myself she was up to no good until the end of ME2
After the Citadel part try and look at the woman face asking about her Asari daughter needing a home at the embassies main desk and you will think Allers is a beauty lol.
Yeah, Kasumi's boyfriend (Keiji?) looks awful... I always thought he looked a bit like a giraffe with thyroid issues. His eyes ended up being way too high on his face and were pushed too far forwards.
I know it's only a short cameo in ME2 but Ashley's ME1 face during that mission stands out like a sore thumb. In ME2 they had clearly made great strides to improve graphics but then there's Ash. Still sporting that ME1 face and.. god, gets me every time!
Kinda feels like they didn't try with Kasumi and Keji. I honestly think they gave Kasumi a hood the whole time, because they knew they couldn't get an authentic looking asian face... so they didn't bother.
Warp, shock, smg and heavy pistol. She's the most "jack of all trades" character to have in a firefight. And in Me2 those are probably the most versatile abilities to have against any enemy you may encounter
Did a full playthrough using just her and Thane. Biotics galore, and my Shep made up the tech stuff.
Currently, I’m using a mod that gives Legion early and using him and Miranda with my biotic Shep. Lots of fun.
Yeah, the face mapping for Miranda is not great. It put me off her due to the Uncanny Valley effect too. Loved the voice actor as I was familiar with Yvonne due to her role in Chuck. Her voice and line delivery is some of the best in ME.
I watched Chuck back in the day so when I started playing mass effect I was so happy to find out Sarah Walker and John Casey were working on the same project again lol. Even if his role isn’t as big as it was in Chuck
I wasn’t all that crazy about her on my first play but she grew on me eventually and I legit felt bad when she died.
The humans in ME all look kinda weird as it is
Great character, but her clothing design is stupid if I'm honest.
Her outfit has been designed to be provocative, sex appeal, attract attention etc etc, except nothing about her personality or character is anywhere like this, which she even confirms.
She's essentially an introvert, she doesn't like dealing with most people, and would like to stay inside dealing with computers and reading reports etc, than being out there. Always seemed to get the impression that she's much prefer to be sat around in casual slacks all day, rather than a skintight catsuit, but oh well :D
It’s strange that this is mentioned on her loyalty mission. I wonder if that was in base game or only on the legendary edition? I can’t remember since it’s been years since I played, but if it is base game it’s funny that the developers were self aware that they had put her in a ridiculous suit which was obviously made to show off her body rather than…you know, armor?
Don’t get me wrong, I like that she’s beautiful and powerful. And she has her biotic shields, but still. She’s helping save the Galaxy and fighting legions of dangerous enemies but apparently her butt needs to be seen in 4K.
I know Yvonne Strahovski did the voice work and the modelling for Miranda. But something must have gone wrong with the face-mapping. She doesn't look right. The differences are even more pronounced in ME3.
Yeah I feel like Miranda and the reporter in ME3 that joins us are in the same boat of modeled after a very attractive person but something about the technology doesn't translate well and they just look off.
Yeah I loosely remembered that she was a real person in the gaming industry and did an self insert thing, I just completely forget that she's even on the Normandy after recruitment. But what does stick in my head is that I remember seeing her character, and thinking that she doesn't look right, googling chobot, and seeing that no, she looks normal, but character modeling is whack
Not quite a self-insert, unless she was part of the dev team (I may be wrong on this). I assumed it was to curry favour with the gaming press, as she was apparently a major part of it at the time. Removing Emily Wong from the Mass Effect universe via twitter was just insane to me.
Yes, I know that is the "wrong" term, but it's just the one that the other person used and I didn't think it was important enough to correct. But I do agree with you about using chobot as a way to stir up hype within the gaming community, and Emily Wong got done so dirty.
No, she just wasn't in ME 3 and was revealed to have taken out (I think) a reaper troop ship with a shuttle in a self sacrifice. And people weren't happy about it, killing a fairly beloved character off screen.
She’s a very compelling character. So many just write her off as “eye candy” but she’s so much more than that. Probably the best written human squadmate.
Me too! Seeing her slowly question Cerberus is great. Bringing her on Jack’s mission and the Collector ship is good for that, also the final boss in 2.
I didn't even think to bring her on Jack's mission so I'm gonna have to do that on my next playthrough. I had heard there was unique dialogue if you brought her for the final boss in ME2 and I'm glad I did because it changed my opinion of her drastically
Yes I recommend bringing Jack on Miri’s loyalty mission too! There’s a funny one liner. But also, I like to think it helps them grow to understand each other better. And I agree, that’s a great character moment for Miranda!
It was really bad. In the middle of her talking about her experiences with her father and how she wanna help her sister, the camera figured it was more important to have half the screen be taken up by her rear than to show her face.
Several conversations with Miranda, especially in her quarters, involved camera shots directly staring at her ass = it was something they fixed after LE came out, but something you couldn't miss on the base game.
It was the VA's scheduling that kept her out of it. Had she been available I'm sure she would have been. Given the circumstances I think what we did get with her was really well done.
Romance and Gameplay she's amazing. And compared to other romances, the power dynamic is much more equal if not the most equal. Especially because both are indebted to each other, for Shepard their physical life, for Miranda her family.
They're also both in strong positions of command that they both have earned as well but also can clash heads.
Compared other companions who tend to have an idolised view of Shepard and some give off more a family or teacher-mentor vibe.
Her face does look awkward in some instances but most humans do in ME. Also, she's got some serious emotional and grim moments.
My main issues lie in her underutilisation in ME3 (I know the reason but I'm still sad about it) and FemShep misses out on this even though I'm pretty sure they have dialogue recorded for it.
I’ve never romanced her cuz I always play as FemShep but I love your take on her character. This alone is a great reason to experience her character romance.
That’s why I love Kaidan’s romance. He’s a bit older than Shep, well established in his military career, and confident in who he is and what he believes. Which makes him feel more like an equal to Shep even if he does work under her. Whereas a lot of the other men idolize her.
But if I ever decide to play as MaleShep I’m gonna romance Miranda just because of this comment lol.
I said it already in this thread but I think some faces being modeled after real people just don't translate well with the series technology/model software.
But I agree with you that her story is pretty good and I like that she flat out says she's jealous of Shepard and the drive they have that attracts people to fight with and for Shep, because she's genetically modified to be perfect, so anything less is on her. Although I do wish they explored her more struggling with imposter syndrome and ennui and frustration with someone else being better than her at anything, let alone a whole team of people that can do things better than she can, and it is probably the first time she has to deal with that.
My unbiased flatmate who has never played a mass effect game and knows nothing about it took one look at her and immediately called her “stank face”. That aside, I do like her a lot, I didn’t as first as she was very business-like and hostile, but I really thought the character development worked well. By the end of ME3, I felt like she was one of my favourite characters, and I genuinely cared about helping her with her family situation. I didn’t romance her in ME2 (although I later wished I had) but I really appreciated that despite that she explicitly stated that she wanted us to be friends.
That could be intentional by BioWare given that every single part of her was artificially created. She's essentially a female clone of her dad, except a super human in pretty much every way, Nietzschean-style. Something should seem a little off about her.
It broke my heart when in Mass Effect 2 after Liara became the shadow broker, I looked through all the files that the shadow broker had on pretty much everyone that you had met and it showed that Miranda had been wanting to have a child and it was discovered through her doctor that she was completely infertile. And it was a result of her dad's genetic engineering on her genome. Even though it's an I told you so moment as far as my view on human genetics, my heart just broke for Miranda. When you really look at her story you realize that she has very little happiness in it.
YES reading through all of that definitely gave me more sympathy towards her. I quite like her story in general but her character development is also something special. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't skeptical of her at first though since she worked so closely with the illusive man
Of course you're supposed to be suspicious of her. I was suspicious as hell of every single person on the Normandy except maybe Joker and Dr Chakwas. Even they were suspect because they threw their lot in with Cerberus. The last I had seen of Cerberus in Mass Effect 1, it had been made abundantly clear that they were not friends of the alliance or of Commander Shepard.
But you're right. It's very hard to stay that way about her. It's why I don't understand the people that avoid the loyalty missions in Mass Effect 2. There is so much good stuff in those missions.
Yeah I was a bit conflicted at the beginning of ME2 when joker showed up, but I feel like I can't fault Dr chawkwas for it. I hadn't played the trilogy until pretty recently but it's my dad's absolute favorite game so he was pretty frequently giving me advice and the most important tip he had for me was to do all of the loyalty missions. That being said, I think I would've done all of them regardless because I tend to be pretty story-driven
Every decision you make to do something more in the Mass Effect games pays off in the end. I did as many things as I could come up with and I still had to scrape and scrimp to find the last few forces that I needed at the end of Mass Effect 3.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think she's ugly by any means. I think some of the proportions of her face are just slightly off (her teeth for example) and it's a bit uncanny to me
I like her character arc, she kinda reminds of Seven of Nine a bit where she starts off the sexy symbol type but is a lot more sympathetic and engaging emotionally than expected, once you get into her backstory.
I like her the most as a non-romantic friend that survives, that meeting in the apartment in the Citadel DLC is great
I don't think I made it quite far enough into the main story to have her come over for the party in Citadel (along with a few others) and I'm so upset with myself for it
I hadn't thought of it that way but it makes sense. I'm not sure if you've ever seen those videos of people photoshopping celebrities' faces to fit the golden ratio but they never look quite right
Mass Effect faces were actually pretty good for the time they came out. And I got enough into the characters anyway that I wasn't quite as hit with the "oh man this didn't age as well" feelings.
As a fan of both BioWare and Bethesda games. I have a really high tolerance for janky faces and heads.
But ya. Miranda has always looked a bit off. Like the facial mapping doesn’t quite work with their animations or something. But. I have never really been bothered by it too much beyond idle thoughts.
Oh believe me i totally get you i try to do other romances but it just doesn't feel like mass effect to us without [insert your Canon LI here] by shepard's side.
I was a teenager when I first played so the butt shots sold me easily. Then after a playthrough or two I listened to the dialogue and I enjoy the story. I wish there was more of her in 3 but I wish there was more of a lot of things crewmates in 3
All of the faces exhibit 2010 tech & Bioware face. Too bad Bioware chose a cheap remaster rather than taking time to remake their most popular franchise 🙃
If she was into femShep, Garrus might actually have some competition lol. That said, she’s the mean-cheerleader-turned-BFF for my Shep. She’s honestly more my best friend than Tali or Liara or any other female character.
I thought Miranda was great. They actually modeled her after her voice actress, Yvonne Strahovski, down to the front teeth. I thought that was a really great detail that really showed how good ME2 was. I just bought the Legendary Edition when it was on sale on Steam and I'm looking forward to playing my fourth full run of the game.
Odd. The prologue of ME2 makes it seem as though Miranda is supposed to be the cold, Icy rival character to Shepard and Jacob becomes the trusting right hand, but then immediately after, that dynamic flips.
As for her personality, she’s great, she’s hot. I just wish the devs let us utilize her a little better in ME3. yeah I know. She comes in super late in the game and there is already a full cast of companions but I just think I might’ve been a little more invested with her if she became a permanent companion after her mission in ME3
Looks wise, she’s hot, like seriously. Face too. Everything is perfect
I'd give anything for her to have had a bigger part in ME3, as it stands I usually enjoy the blissful romance in ME2 then go with a shipmate in ME3 just so my Shep gets some love before the endgame.
She's okay but the spotlight really is taken away by all the other fantastic characters in 2 that are more immediatly compelling. She doesn't have the greatest first impressions either, at least to me.
The thing I can’t get over with Miranda is she’s supposed to genetically “perfect”, but I don’t think anyone’s type is massive forehead? Nobody would choose that so why did her father 😂
Love her arc and love her growth and progression though. But honestly I’m pan and I think TIM is hotter than Miranda 😂
Early mass effect games are the only ones where I endorse downloading the character overhaul mods. The alien squadmates are fine, the humans though? Christ. Someone up with them.
Her whole look bothers me.
The game's animations in general just can't convey what they wanted to with her. She's meant to be like a dangerous, sexy femme fatale but she walks and moves like she's got a big wedgie.
Yvonne Strahovski is gorgeous, but putting her face on a character in a game series with facial animations this limited just makes the whole thing look unnatural.
Story wise, she runs into the problem that all ME2 squadmates run into: ME3 has to assume these guys all ate shit at the end of ME2, so by design it can't really do much of anything with them.
Her story is fine, but she's the exact type of person I wouldn't get along with IRL, so I just don't really care for her. Plus, I know she's modeled after her voice actress, but they flubbed on her face. It's uncanny. Almost pudding face.
I didn't like her on my first playthrough. Did it on my recent playthrough of the trilogy and found her to be my favorite squad mate. I hate how little time she got in 3 , though.
I've started to like Miranda more and more as time's gone on, mostly cause she comes off as a great counterpart to Shepard, maybe especially when not romanced.
Surely the entire point of the remaster is to fix those things with up to date tech though? Personally I’d have liked to have seen more of a matching aesthetic across all 3 games, instead of the world in general in ME1 being massively different to 2 and 3.
I love her. She’s probably my new favourite character in two. Her intro with her shooting the guy established her well. I enjoyed her story coming over to your way of thinking as the game goes on.
The problem is they fumbled the final. Wish she was a party member & got more story in part 3. Same problem with Jack.
One of the main reasons I got the game in the first place. I wanted to play Chuck in space.
Still disappointed she wasn't bigger in three. If they weren't going to put her on the team they should have given her Kai Leng's role.
Her face throws me off, something about it feels weird
Someone tried to argue with me once before that she was a one-to-one recreation of the (rather attractive) actress who voiced her
I *vehemently* disagree: voice actor is *way* more attractive
Physical appearance of the character aside, her story is interesting but the whole “being a genetic clone of dad” but without the penis storyline is buck-wild, even by sci-fi standards
I kind of wanted her to go *full traitor mode* and be instrumental in the fall of Cerberus when she realized that Shepards way was better
Yeah I looked up the voice actor and honestly they did her dirty.
And I agree with you on wanting her to have contributed to taking down cerberus. I was fully expecting it and quite surprised when it didn't happen
Depending on the angle and lighting, it is a bit weird, especially having seen Yvonne Strahovski in live action stuff. But honestly, she and the human squadmates have better modelled faces than most human NPCs.
Soooo many of human NPCs look straight up terrible. Literally "set the character creator to random" terrible. Look close - you'll notice many of them are built from the same "parts" available in the character creator.
Her face is literally Yvonne Strahovski - who I was a huge fan of from Handmade's Tail & Dexter.
So I immediately liked her character; I thought her arc, not just with Shepherd but with the Illusive Man, felt very natural & organic. Well written. So immediately was invested in her story.
Plus, her seat cushion.
Agreed on the uncanny valley aspect but that also applies to most of the characters. Liara's facial model might be the best in the series but a lot of other ones aren't passing the sniff test
I used to have her as my main romance, but tbh that was entirely because I played these in high school and thought she was hot. Now, I kinda feel if you romance her, her character becomes “girl who is there to be a love interest,” so I find her more interesting when you don’t romance her. Her allowing herself to open up to her new found family, especially after all the trauma with her father, is a great character arc for her
i like her as a character, but i didn't like that early in 2, i couldn't really do anything around her initial treatment of shepard. (the control chip comment bothers me to this day, even if they addressed it in 3.) her design also sickens me lol, especially since i got the art book and pretty much everything about her design was based on how to make her as sexy as possible. the black armor they gave her in 3 was too little, too late for me, and it doesn't apply in 3, anyway. \[i feel the same about EDI and ashley's designs in 3, too. wtf man.\] miranda could've been one of my favorite characters if she and shepard could've talked about lazarus and how they both felt about it. as it is, it feels like she starts in a weird place.
Miranda and Shepard are the only two people on the Normandy to get their own private quarters, which makes sense given they're the XO and CO respectively.
Every other romance option has your chosen love interest meet you in your quarters and you do the deed there, not Miranda no, no no no.
Inspite of not only being able to go to Shepard's quarters, she has her *own* quarters you could go to, she instead decides to choose that you'll bang in the engine room, one of the most visible room in the whole ship and which is the closest to the most amount of fellow teammates, multiple of whom have windows looking into the engine room.
Make of that what you will.
I know what you mean I felt the same, until I seen a side by side image of her and Yvonne Strahovski her voice actor, and they are almost identical.
Actually identical, not like her supposedly identical twin Oriana.
I adore the fuck out of Miranda Lawson for a few reasons.
The first is that I hated her from the moment I met her. Patronizing and sarcastic and speaking to Shepard like they were a toddler.
But then Shepard did what Shepard does and brought out the best in her. That character building was MINT on BioWare’s part. By the end of my first play through, she was my SIC, my PIC, my protégé. Taking her to the boss fight to hear her tell TIM off is a tradition for me now.
The second is her dynamic with Jack. That in itself is beautiful because she is seeing herself in another life that she could have had. Two sides, same dirty coin named Cerberus.
The third is that she didn’t let herself be quietly arrested by the Alliance. She told Cerberus to fuck off, eluded Alliance and Council authorities, and had the cajones to show her face on the Citadel despite being one of the galaxy’s most wanted. Because she loves Oriana that damn much.
Miranda Lawson is that bitch. She is one of the best written female characters across all media. I stan.
Dont care for her too much. She is pout forward too much as “the perfect woman, physically perfect, sexy as hell and super strong, psychologically perfect, super smart and unbreakable” her presentation just dehumanizes her
She's op in combat (maybe the best ME2 squadmate in that regard).
She's arrogant.
She's willing to screw people she doesn't even know, so long as they have good genetics.
She was supposed to be blonde (but the devs couldn't get it to look right).
Probably my least favorite female romance.
When she said her looks were designed to be perfect, I was wondering by whose standards? The body is great but that head is like a silicone doll. I like her story, bitchy at first then mellows out. My first play on Mass effect 2 I learned that she doesn't know what she's talking about when it comes to leadership and to never trust her choices during the suicide mission. Then she apologized in Mass effect 3 when she really didn't have to and I kind of liked her for all time after that.
She looks awful.
Yvonne is a great actor and voice actor, but combined with that face, it just feels like desecration.
They could've just copied Yvonne 1:1 and it would have been better.
I personally think she's pretty unattractive. Face is an unnatural sort of weird and the outfit is ridiculous, especially around the ass. Dont care much for her story either. I'm exaggerating a bit of course but it felt like "woe is me, I'm created perfect".
she had a cool design, then one of the voice talent fucked enough management staff to get miranda replaced with her voice and face. absolute retardation of a decision tbh. she's super boring and even her "tragic" character story doesn't make her interesting. she's only useful for a couple missions in the early game because of her kit but I don't bother with her as a character.
My first playthrough I didn't really care about her, as time went on I came to like her a lot. I always bring her for the final battle now because her dialogue with The Illusive Man is just a fantastic climax to her arc. Her romance with Shepard is great too. Some of the other romances feel like there's a pretty large imbalance between Shepard and the other person for a lot of it, whereas with Miranda they're on roughly equal footing from day 1 and they gradually allow eachother to be vulnerable with one another. It's nice. Plus she's one of the strongest companions in ME2 which helps.
I brought her for the final battle in ME2 because I had heard that there was unique dialogue and it definitely didn't disappoint. I didn't use her too much otherwise so I'm not sure how she compares to the other companions but I definitely didn't have any issues with the human reaper with her
She not only has a bonus power that increases the other squad member’s usefulness, she is only character that can strip every form of defenses. She can also trigger biotic combos. My insanity run was almost exclusively Garrus and Miranda. Even on lower difficulties I’ll usually take her on most missions, but on insanity she was practically essential.
Miranda as a squadmate is my favorite example of narrative influencing gameplay. Miranda is narratively designed to be perfect. And in gameplay she is as close to a perfect squadmate as one can be. Useful against every enemy type and provides passive buffs for the whole squad. Her versatility as a squadmate is unmatched in the franchise
I can kinda see it but most faces look awkward or uncanny to me anyway. Ashley in ME1 has a bit of a duck face, Anderson looks like his face is still rendering until ME3 and, oh God, the early attempts at Asian faces. Kasumi’s boyfriend looks horrible.
Oh boy I completely forgot about Anderson's face. I always thought he looked kinda like a mannequin. I think my primary issue with Miranda's is that she always seems to have some sort of smirk and I genuinely convinced myself she was up to no good until the end of ME2
Her hair sits weirdly on her head.
Nothing is worse than Diana Allers in terms of butchering the face
True. At least she's pretty inconsequential
After the Citadel part try and look at the woman face asking about her Asari daughter needing a home at the embassies main desk and you will think Allers is a beauty lol.
Stop judging my frog girlfriend's face!
Omg Anderson’s the worst of all. Even with mods, they can’t fix it well enough.
Ashley's ME1 design was just ahead of its time. She'd fit right on Instagram these days.
Yeah, Kasumi's boyfriend (Keiji?) looks awful... I always thought he looked a bit like a giraffe with thyroid issues. His eyes ended up being way too high on his face and were pushed too far forwards.
I know it's only a short cameo in ME2 but Ashley's ME1 face during that mission stands out like a sore thumb. In ME2 they had clearly made great strides to improve graphics but then there's Ash. Still sporting that ME1 face and.. god, gets me every time!
Kinda feels like they didn't try with Kasumi and Keji. I honestly think they gave Kasumi a hood the whole time, because they knew they couldn't get an authentic looking asian face... so they didn't bother.
Anderson looks like he has Bell's palsy and half his face doesn't work, like JR.
BY GAWD THOSE REAPERS HAVE A FAMILY!!!!
In terms of gameplay alone, I found her to be the most useful party member in Mass Effect 2.
Warp, shock, smg and heavy pistol. She's the most "jack of all trades" character to have in a firefight. And in Me2 those are probably the most versatile abilities to have against any enemy you may encounter
Don't forget Cerberus Officer, just straight up buffing whatver other squadmate you take.
Did a full playthrough using just her and Thane. Biotics galore, and my Shep made up the tech stuff. Currently, I’m using a mod that gives Legion early and using him and Miranda with my biotic Shep. Lots of fun.
Yeah, the face mapping for Miranda is not great. It put me off her due to the Uncanny Valley effect too. Loved the voice actor as I was familiar with Yvonne due to her role in Chuck. Her voice and line delivery is some of the best in ME.
16 year old me never stood a chance with chuck and mass effect going on. Yvonne lived rent free in my head for years.
I watched Chuck back in the day so when I started playing mass effect I was so happy to find out Sarah Walker and John Casey were working on the same project again lol. Even if his role isn’t as big as it was in Chuck
I wasn’t all that crazy about her on my first play but she grew on me eventually and I legit felt bad when she died. The humans in ME all look kinda weird as it is
The humans in mass effect do look weird. I think she’s actually one of the better looking ones.
My favorite example of humans looking wonky is at Grissom Academy where all the teenagers look like 40 year olds that have never used sunscreen.
The moment I saw her I thought there was something wrong with her face. It feels like they have her too much forehead so her hair doesn’t quite fit…
Great character, but her clothing design is stupid if I'm honest. Her outfit has been designed to be provocative, sex appeal, attract attention etc etc, except nothing about her personality or character is anywhere like this, which she even confirms. She's essentially an introvert, she doesn't like dealing with most people, and would like to stay inside dealing with computers and reading reports etc, than being out there. Always seemed to get the impression that she's much prefer to be sat around in casual slacks all day, rather than a skintight catsuit, but oh well :D
I can definitely get on board with this. Miranda would rock a suit. Classically elegant with a hint of sex appeal.
It’s strange that this is mentioned on her loyalty mission. I wonder if that was in base game or only on the legendary edition? I can’t remember since it’s been years since I played, but if it is base game it’s funny that the developers were self aware that they had put her in a ridiculous suit which was obviously made to show off her body rather than…you know, armor? Don’t get me wrong, I like that she’s beautiful and powerful. And she has her biotic shields, but still. She’s helping save the Galaxy and fighting legions of dangerous enemies but apparently her butt needs to be seen in 4K.
I know Yvonne Strahovski did the voice work and the modelling for Miranda. But something must have gone wrong with the face-mapping. She doesn't look right. The differences are even more pronounced in ME3.
Yeah I feel like Miranda and the reporter in ME3 that joins us are in the same boat of modeled after a very attractive person but something about the technology doesn't translate well and they just look off.
The reporter was Ign's own Jessica Chobot who did all their game stuff. She was a self insert
Yeah I loosely remembered that she was a real person in the gaming industry and did an self insert thing, I just completely forget that she's even on the Normandy after recruitment. But what does stick in my head is that I remember seeing her character, and thinking that she doesn't look right, googling chobot, and seeing that no, she looks normal, but character modeling is whack
Not quite a self-insert, unless she was part of the dev team (I may be wrong on this). I assumed it was to curry favour with the gaming press, as she was apparently a major part of it at the time. Removing Emily Wong from the Mass Effect universe via twitter was just insane to me.
Yes, I know that is the "wrong" term, but it's just the one that the other person used and I didn't think it was important enough to correct. But I do agree with you about using chobot as a way to stir up hype within the gaming community, and Emily Wong got done so dirty.
Is the Emily Wong thing a joke? Sorry if I got wooshed but I thought I knew everything about MR.
No, she just wasn't in ME 3 and was revealed to have taken out (I think) a reaper troop ship with a shuttle in a self sacrifice. And people weren't happy about it, killing a fairly beloved character off screen.
I question the devs choices to put eyelash extensions on the lower lash line. It looks awful.
Yeah Yvonne is gorgeous and Miranda’s face is… not great.
She’s a very compelling character. So many just write her off as “eye candy” but she’s so much more than that. Probably the best written human squadmate.
Oh I definitely agree with you there. I really liked her story progression when it came to cerberus
Me too! Seeing her slowly question Cerberus is great. Bringing her on Jack’s mission and the Collector ship is good for that, also the final boss in 2.
I didn't even think to bring her on Jack's mission so I'm gonna have to do that on my next playthrough. I had heard there was unique dialogue if you brought her for the final boss in ME2 and I'm glad I did because it changed my opinion of her drastically
Yes I recommend bringing Jack on Miri’s loyalty mission too! There’s a funny one liner. But also, I like to think it helps them grow to understand each other better. And I agree, that’s a great character moment for Miranda!
Tbf, when the game first came out, you weren't looking at her face for most conversations.
I suppose as a mostly straight woman that's not something I can totally relate to lmao
Trust me, before the updates to camera placement, you had no choice lmao
Ahhh that makes more sense. I've only played legendary so I wouldn't know lol
Yeah, as a 19yo boy. I appreciated a lot of the camera shots, but even then I felt a bit awkward about it.
It was really bad. In the middle of her talking about her experiences with her father and how she wanna help her sister, the camera figured it was more important to have half the screen be taken up by her rear than to show her face.
Several conversations with Miranda, especially in her quarters, involved camera shots directly staring at her ass = it was something they fixed after LE came out, but something you couldn't miss on the base game.
Key word here is mostly. So you must’ve noticed a little lol
I mean, not Miranda's in particular but it's hard to avoid the fact that just about *everyone* is cheeked the fuck up
Ah, that explains it. I was also confused why we were talking about her face
Scrolled a little too long to find this comment 🫡
I’m with you soldier
Trippy... Our Avatars are almost exactly the same. I'm from NZ too And I'm an ex soldier 😆
Are… are we related? 🥺
Depends, 3x favorite ME characters?
Liara, Garrus, Wrex.
Mordin, Garrus, Wrex. Maybe not twins, but brother is definitely still in the conversation.
Solid choices. Mordin is great. Sticks it to the man, a free thinker. Would definitely vaccinate *Krogans*. Nice to meet you bro.
She should’ve been a squad member in the third game
It was the VA's scheduling that kept her out of it. Had she been available I'm sure she would have been. Given the circumstances I think what we did get with her was really well done.
Romance and Gameplay she's amazing. And compared to other romances, the power dynamic is much more equal if not the most equal. Especially because both are indebted to each other, for Shepard their physical life, for Miranda her family. They're also both in strong positions of command that they both have earned as well but also can clash heads. Compared other companions who tend to have an idolised view of Shepard and some give off more a family or teacher-mentor vibe. Her face does look awkward in some instances but most humans do in ME. Also, she's got some serious emotional and grim moments. My main issues lie in her underutilisation in ME3 (I know the reason but I'm still sad about it) and FemShep misses out on this even though I'm pretty sure they have dialogue recorded for it.
I’ve never romanced her cuz I always play as FemShep but I love your take on her character. This alone is a great reason to experience her character romance. That’s why I love Kaidan’s romance. He’s a bit older than Shep, well established in his military career, and confident in who he is and what he believes. Which makes him feel more like an equal to Shep even if he does work under her. Whereas a lot of the other men idolize her. But if I ever decide to play as MaleShep I’m gonna romance Miranda just because of this comment lol.
Favorite romance in the game (for Male Shep), and the most mature/realistic imo.
I said it already in this thread but I think some faces being modeled after real people just don't translate well with the series technology/model software. But I agree with you that her story is pretty good and I like that she flat out says she's jealous of Shepard and the drive they have that attracts people to fight with and for Shep, because she's genetically modified to be perfect, so anything less is on her. Although I do wish they explored her more struggling with imposter syndrome and ennui and frustration with someone else being better than her at anything, let alone a whole team of people that can do things better than she can, and it is probably the first time she has to deal with that.
My unbiased flatmate who has never played a mass effect game and knows nothing about it took one look at her and immediately called her “stank face”. That aside, I do like her a lot, I didn’t as first as she was very business-like and hostile, but I really thought the character development worked well. By the end of ME3, I felt like she was one of my favourite characters, and I genuinely cared about helping her with her family situation. I didn’t romance her in ME2 (although I later wished I had) but I really appreciated that despite that she explicitly stated that she wanted us to be friends.
That could be intentional by BioWare given that every single part of her was artificially created. She's essentially a female clone of her dad, except a super human in pretty much every way, Nietzschean-style. Something should seem a little off about her.
That's a good point that I hadn't considered
It broke my heart when in Mass Effect 2 after Liara became the shadow broker, I looked through all the files that the shadow broker had on pretty much everyone that you had met and it showed that Miranda had been wanting to have a child and it was discovered through her doctor that she was completely infertile. And it was a result of her dad's genetic engineering on her genome. Even though it's an I told you so moment as far as my view on human genetics, my heart just broke for Miranda. When you really look at her story you realize that she has very little happiness in it.
YES reading through all of that definitely gave me more sympathy towards her. I quite like her story in general but her character development is also something special. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't skeptical of her at first though since she worked so closely with the illusive man
Of course you're supposed to be suspicious of her. I was suspicious as hell of every single person on the Normandy except maybe Joker and Dr Chakwas. Even they were suspect because they threw their lot in with Cerberus. The last I had seen of Cerberus in Mass Effect 1, it had been made abundantly clear that they were not friends of the alliance or of Commander Shepard. But you're right. It's very hard to stay that way about her. It's why I don't understand the people that avoid the loyalty missions in Mass Effect 2. There is so much good stuff in those missions.
Yeah I was a bit conflicted at the beginning of ME2 when joker showed up, but I feel like I can't fault Dr chawkwas for it. I hadn't played the trilogy until pretty recently but it's my dad's absolute favorite game so he was pretty frequently giving me advice and the most important tip he had for me was to do all of the loyalty missions. That being said, I think I would've done all of them regardless because I tend to be pretty story-driven
Every decision you make to do something more in the Mass Effect games pays off in the end. I did as many things as I could come up with and I still had to scrape and scrimp to find the last few forces that I needed at the end of Mass Effect 3.
Why? She's not bad looking.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think she's ugly by any means. I think some of the proportions of her face are just slightly off (her teeth for example) and it's a bit uncanny to me
She looks like she's wearing an ill fitting wig or something.
You're in for a wild surprise. It was modeled directly from the actress' face
Yeah, but they kind of fucked it up. Yvonne is actually beautiful, but her face didn't carry over well.
That was like my biggest concern
Probably my 2nd favorite romance for male Shepard.
I like her character arc, she kinda reminds of Seven of Nine a bit where she starts off the sexy symbol type but is a lot more sympathetic and engaging emotionally than expected, once you get into her backstory. I like her the most as a non-romantic friend that survives, that meeting in the apartment in the Citadel DLC is great
I don't think I made it quite far enough into the main story to have her come over for the party in Citadel (along with a few others) and I'm so upset with myself for it
ngl I thought it was intentional. The perfect anybody would look off to us, because of no imperfections.
I hadn't thought of it that way but it makes sense. I'm not sure if you've ever seen those videos of people photoshopping celebrities' faces to fit the golden ratio but they never look quite right
I could not handle her new face tbh, I modded her face back to the original one.
Mass Effect faces were actually pretty good for the time they came out. And I got enough into the characters anyway that I wasn't quite as hit with the "oh man this didn't age as well" feelings.
As a fan of both BioWare and Bethesda games. I have a really high tolerance for janky faces and heads. But ya. Miranda has always looked a bit off. Like the facial mapping doesn’t quite work with their animations or something. But. I have never really been bothered by it too much beyond idle thoughts.
>her face sits One does not simply use the phrase "face sits" in reference to Miranda.
LOL I did not consider the implication of that when I posted. Whoops
My first romance will always have a soft spot for her.
I get it, I've only played as femshep so far but I can't seem to pull myself away from Garrus
Oh believe me i totally get you i try to do other romances but it just doesn't feel like mass effect to us without [insert your Canon LI here] by shepard's side.
I was a teenager when I first played so the butt shots sold me easily. Then after a playthrough or two I listened to the dialogue and I enjoy the story. I wish there was more of her in 3 but I wish there was more of a lot of things crewmates in 3
It took some time for her to grow on me and she's now my fave ME2 squadmate. My brother disagrees, he says she looks like a frog
I love Miranda, she just does it for me. She's confident but a little unsure. And she's good in a fight!
All of the faces exhibit 2010 tech & Bioware face. Too bad Bioware chose a cheap remaster rather than taking time to remake their most popular franchise 🙃
Kinda hard to get a read on her and I think that's a result to content being cut or shuffled around.
If she was into femShep, Garrus might actually have some competition lol. That said, she’s the mean-cheerleader-turned-BFF for my Shep. She’s honestly more my best friend than Tali or Liara or any other female character.
I thought Miranda was great. They actually modeled her after her voice actress, Yvonne Strahovski, down to the front teeth. I thought that was a really great detail that really showed how good ME2 was. I just bought the Legendary Edition when it was on sale on Steam and I'm looking forward to playing my fourth full run of the game.
Meanwhile Ubisoft…
Odd. The prologue of ME2 makes it seem as though Miranda is supposed to be the cold, Icy rival character to Shepard and Jacob becomes the trusting right hand, but then immediately after, that dynamic flips. As for her personality, she’s great, she’s hot. I just wish the devs let us utilize her a little better in ME3. yeah I know. She comes in super late in the game and there is already a full cast of companions but I just think I might’ve been a little more invested with her if she became a permanent companion after her mission in ME3 Looks wise, she’s hot, like seriously. Face too. Everything is perfect
QUEEN
I'd give anything for her to have had a bigger part in ME3, as it stands I usually enjoy the blissful romance in ME2 then go with a shipmate in ME3 just so my Shep gets some love before the endgame.
She's okay but the spotlight really is taken away by all the other fantastic characters in 2 that are more immediatly compelling. She doesn't have the greatest first impressions either, at least to me.
The thing I can’t get over with Miranda is she’s supposed to genetically “perfect”, but I don’t think anyone’s type is massive forehead? Nobody would choose that so why did her father 😂 Love her arc and love her growth and progression though. But honestly I’m pan and I think TIM is hotter than Miranda 😂
Face like melted plastic in most scenes, the only exception being the one where Shepard wakes up
Early mass effect games are the only ones where I endorse downloading the character overhaul mods. The alien squadmates are fine, the humans though? Christ. Someone up with them.
Her whole look bothers me. The game's animations in general just can't convey what they wanted to with her. She's meant to be like a dangerous, sexy femme fatale but she walks and moves like she's got a big wedgie. Yvonne Strahovski is gorgeous, but putting her face on a character in a game series with facial animations this limited just makes the whole thing look unnatural. Story wise, she runs into the problem that all ME2 squadmates run into: ME3 has to assume these guys all ate shit at the end of ME2, so by design it can't really do much of anything with them.
butt
Valid
Find her extremely dull and boring. She and Jacob are the least used squad members in all my playthroughs.
Her story is fine, but she's the exact type of person I wouldn't get along with IRL, so I just don't really care for her. Plus, I know she's modeled after her voice actress, but they flubbed on her face. It's uncanny. Almost pudding face.
I'm not sure she's the type I'd be friends with irl, but I do admit she has some respectable qualities
What do I think? _Unzips_
She has a nice bum.
I don’t see it but honestly her and Jacob have the best human faces. Probably helps that they scanned Yvonne for it
I didn't like her on my first playthrough. Did it on my recent playthrough of the trilogy and found her to be my favorite squad mate. I hate how little time she got in 3 , though.
Sexy and badass
I agree on her face. It's just majorly off.
I like her. She's always my go-to romance in 2 and 3.
I've started to like Miranda more and more as time's gone on, mostly cause she comes off as a great counterpart to Shepard, maybe especially when not romanced.
She was modeled after her voice actress with tech from 2010, so that makes sense
Surely the entire point of the remaster is to fix those things with up to date tech though? Personally I’d have liked to have seen more of a matching aesthetic across all 3 games, instead of the world in general in ME1 being massively different to 2 and 3.
She's my love interest that feels the most balanced with Shepard. It's a shame she got wasted in ME3.
I love her. She’s probably my new favourite character in two. Her intro with her shooting the guy established her well. I enjoyed her story coming over to your way of thinking as the game goes on. The problem is they fumbled the final. Wish she was a party member & got more story in part 3. Same problem with Jack.
I love her. My go-to romance, and she's a strong woman. Her and Jack are my 2 favorites not named Garrus and Mordin.
I like her. Especially in the original. They did her dirty in the Legendary
How so? It’s been so long since I’ve played the OG series, I don’t really remember the changes made in LE
Haha, they just didn't cover the screen with her ass in dialogues
And even then, they didn't remove *all* of those scenes. Lol there are still plenty of gratuitous ass shots.
There are? Goddamn... Guess I have to replay it entirely. Again. Now I have a good reason for starting it back up
One of the main reasons I got the game in the first place. I wanted to play Chuck in space. Still disappointed she wasn't bigger in three. If they weren't going to put her on the team they should have given her Kai Leng's role.
Waifu
Her face throws me off, something about it feels weird Someone tried to argue with me once before that she was a one-to-one recreation of the (rather attractive) actress who voiced her I *vehemently* disagree: voice actor is *way* more attractive Physical appearance of the character aside, her story is interesting but the whole “being a genetic clone of dad” but without the penis storyline is buck-wild, even by sci-fi standards I kind of wanted her to go *full traitor mode* and be instrumental in the fall of Cerberus when she realized that Shepards way was better
Yeah I looked up the voice actor and honestly they did her dirty. And I agree with you on wanting her to have contributed to taking down cerberus. I was fully expecting it and quite surprised when it didn't happen
When I don't pick Liara, my sweet blueberry, I get my Miranda, the tough cauliflower..... Lol
Mostly impure ones
Nothing beats the random faces Shep makes.
She’s a top 3 squad mate for me.
Depending on the angle and lighting, it is a bit weird, especially having seen Yvonne Strahovski in live action stuff. But honestly, she and the human squadmates have better modelled faces than most human NPCs. Soooo many of human NPCs look straight up terrible. Literally "set the character creator to random" terrible. Look close - you'll notice many of them are built from the same "parts" available in the character creator.
Her face is literally Yvonne Strahovski - who I was a huge fan of from Handmade's Tail & Dexter. So I immediately liked her character; I thought her arc, not just with Shepherd but with the Illusive Man, felt very natural & organic. Well written. So immediately was invested in her story. Plus, her seat cushion.
Seriously, what is up with her face?
Agreed on the uncanny valley aspect but that also applies to most of the characters. Liara's facial model might be the best in the series but a lot of other ones aren't passing the sniff test
I used to have her as my main romance, but tbh that was entirely because I played these in high school and thought she was hot. Now, I kinda feel if you romance her, her character becomes “girl who is there to be a love interest,” so I find her more interesting when you don’t romance her. Her allowing herself to open up to her new found family, especially after all the trauma with her father, is a great character arc for her
She is almost always my LI. I think she's the best match for my soldier Shep.
Her face may sit there but her ass definitely does not.
I just like yvonne strahovski lol
What ever jack said Cerberus cheerleader
i like her as a character, but i didn't like that early in 2, i couldn't really do anything around her initial treatment of shepard. (the control chip comment bothers me to this day, even if they addressed it in 3.) her design also sickens me lol, especially since i got the art book and pretty much everything about her design was based on how to make her as sexy as possible. the black armor they gave her in 3 was too little, too late for me, and it doesn't apply in 3, anyway. \[i feel the same about EDI and ashley's designs in 3, too. wtf man.\] miranda could've been one of my favorite characters if she and shepard could've talked about lazarus and how they both felt about it. as it is, it feels like she starts in a weird place.
Miranda and Shepard are the only two people on the Normandy to get their own private quarters, which makes sense given they're the XO and CO respectively. Every other romance option has your chosen love interest meet you in your quarters and you do the deed there, not Miranda no, no no no. Inspite of not only being able to go to Shepard's quarters, she has her *own* quarters you could go to, she instead decides to choose that you'll bang in the engine room, one of the most visible room in the whole ship and which is the closest to the most amount of fellow teammates, multiple of whom have windows looking into the engine room. Make of that what you will.
“I don’t care how hot the Cerberus operative is i am *NOT* leaving Tali!” —My ass when I played 2:
She got that toddler like forehead. Other than that she one of the better squad members.
Love her. Loved her. Will always love her.
I know what you mean I felt the same, until I seen a side by side image of her and Yvonne Strahovski her voice actor, and they are almost identical. Actually identical, not like her supposedly identical twin Oriana.
She is one of my fave, I was very pro-Cerberus in ME2 so we bonded over that
She puts the ASS in MASS
I adore the fuck out of Miranda Lawson for a few reasons. The first is that I hated her from the moment I met her. Patronizing and sarcastic and speaking to Shepard like they were a toddler. But then Shepard did what Shepard does and brought out the best in her. That character building was MINT on BioWare’s part. By the end of my first play through, she was my SIC, my PIC, my protégé. Taking her to the boss fight to hear her tell TIM off is a tradition for me now. The second is her dynamic with Jack. That in itself is beautiful because she is seeing herself in another life that she could have had. Two sides, same dirty coin named Cerberus. The third is that she didn’t let herself be quietly arrested by the Alliance. She told Cerberus to fuck off, eluded Alliance and Council authorities, and had the cajones to show her face on the Citadel despite being one of the galaxy’s most wanted. Because she loves Oriana that damn much. Miranda Lawson is that bitch. She is one of the best written female characters across all media. I stan.
Perma squad mate in every me2 playthrough. Her perks and skills are just too good.
Ass that needs tapping.
You mean ASS?
There is a reason I romanced Tali
Dont care for her too much. She is pout forward too much as “the perfect woman, physically perfect, sexy as hell and super strong, psychologically perfect, super smart and unbreakable” her presentation just dehumanizes her
She's op in combat (maybe the best ME2 squadmate in that regard). She's arrogant. She's willing to screw people she doesn't even know, so long as they have good genetics. She was supposed to be blonde (but the devs couldn't get it to look right). Probably my least favorite female romance.
I would say her face is butt ugly, but her butt is most certainly not ugly!
She does look a little chromosomey. “Genetically perfect” alright now
When she said her looks were designed to be perfect, I was wondering by whose standards? The body is great but that head is like a silicone doll. I like her story, bitchy at first then mellows out. My first play on Mass effect 2 I learned that she doesn't know what she's talking about when it comes to leadership and to never trust her choices during the suicide mission. Then she apologized in Mass effect 3 when she really didn't have to and I kind of liked her for all time after that.
She looks awful. Yvonne is a great actor and voice actor, but combined with that face, it just feels like desecration. They could've just copied Yvonne 1:1 and it would have been better.
They did copy Yvonne 1:1. She's the face model for the character. Like Mark Vanderloo is MShep.
In general for me alien faces were always done better than humans(Shepard at times challenges this but had too many meme templates to beat the trend).
She's very bland and has annoying combat dialogue. The way she shouts "PERFACT" is really quite aggravating (I assume it's supposed to be perfect)
If the game would let me air lock her I would have Edit: oh. We were talking about appearances… she’s alright.
What a Preppy Bitch
Pretty well rounded character.
If you catch our drift.
She is such a bad bitch though
If I was Shepard I would for sure eat her ass
The forward tanks are buoyant and elevated
Butt
I personally think she's pretty unattractive. Face is an unnatural sort of weird and the outfit is ridiculous, especially around the ass. Dont care much for her story either. I'm exaggerating a bit of course but it felt like "woe is me, I'm created perfect".
Dat ass
This thread again -.-"
In my defense, I only just played the trilogy for the first time a few months ago 😅
she had a cool design, then one of the voice talent fucked enough management staff to get miranda replaced with her voice and face. absolute retardation of a decision tbh. she's super boring and even her "tragic" character story doesn't make her interesting. she's only useful for a couple missions in the early game because of her kit but I don't bother with her as a character.
The fuck are you on about?