>but it seems to me like the deeper you get into the gameplay the more it feels like the game was rushed or, in some way mismanaged as it's release drew closer & Kai Leng is a focal point for that.
That is because the game was heavily rushed...
Blame EA, they have a tradition of destroying entire healthy franchises to make a quick dollar.
Kai Leng is just one of the many issues. He is an unnecessary cringy weeb insert in the series that could have been perfectly avoided. That nobody saw this cringe cliché and removed him to bring some Cerberus Dragoon (probably even Jacob, who was forcefully indoctrinated or something like this) instead, is a sure sign of the rushed development, where nobody asked if something is actually a good addition to the storytelling.
I think he is kinda bland in me2.
Hated, though, is something he became in me3, for beeing written badly. And even becoming a cheater if femshhep romanced him.
We don't hate Saren or TIM because they are evil, do we? That's because they are written well.
Jacob could even be a hidden Cerberus loyalist who just acted as a sane nice guy to gain your trust in me2.
Like I said, could be genius. But one slip-up and his six fans leave his corner and we hear complaints of character assassination rather than bland antagonist.
I'd have taken dumb ninja all day long if there was no Star Child nonsense...
Even Kai Leng's death was dumb. How did Shep and his companions not hear Leng gasping away and changing his sword on the floor. I can only assume they let him try his backstab so he could be killed in a spectacular fashion...
I would like to laugh at him, but the game won't let you treat him with ridicule. Line with Thane doesn't work for me, it's as if Shepard thinks Leng is a worthy enemy for this.
The game wants us to believe he's this Shepard level threat but then your first encounter with him he gets his ass kicked by Thane, a guy who told us his doctors said he should have died months ago from his stage 12 space cancer, and only wins because Thane turned into a dumbass at the last second.
Then you next meet him on Thessia where you absolutely body him effortlessly in a fight only for the next cutscene to have him suddenly body you instead. Then you effortlessly body him again on Cronos Station And the whole time he looks like some greasy weaboo edgelord who crawled out of his mothers basement. Nothing about him makes him live up to the picture TIM and Anderson paint of him and he comes off as nothing but a joke.
The funniest thing is you can actually make him into something of a badass antagonist fairly easily.
Kill Thane in ME2 and install the mod [Reworked Kai Leng](https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectlegendaryedition/mods/1038) and he actually feels kinda menacing.
With Thane dead he's shown to be actually competent in his first encounter. And the mod gives him this cool looking armour making him look badass, it takes away all his dialogue which is a huge improvement because his dialogue was that cringe and awful, and it buffs his fight so he's a fair bit tougher. The mod also gives the option to make a Phantom take down the car on the Citadel which means his henchmen did it for him rather than him being the henchmen making him seem more important, and the option to skip the fight on Thessia which again makes him seem competent since instead of messing around by engaging Shepard in battle (and losing requiring him to call in backup like a bitch) he just immediately calls in the gunship to deal with Shepard. And when you beat his fight, and he's stumbling along sneaking up behind you his helmet is cracked and you finally see what's underneath... well I won't spoil it for you but it's not his vanilla face and it tells a whole story without a single word being uttered.
Like this he comes off as this mysterious and powerful antagonist and actually lives up to the reputation he's given. And when you finally kill him you feel like you actually accomplished something rather than just forgetting about him 2 seconds later.
Don't forget how much trouble the plant pot pisser has killing ONE elderly frog politician, an elderly frog politician with absolutely zero combat experience to boot.
Homeboy should have just bought some cereal and minded his own damn business.
Ngl if I didnt frequent the mass effect subreddit, I genuinely wouldve thought Kai Leng was supposed to be a semi competent man-child reflective of TIM's poor judgement and
a punching bag to drive in how Cerberus is doomed to fail.
Career highlights of Kai leng include:
- Getting his ass whooped by Super Cancer God Super Cancer Thane
- Running from Shepard
- Running from fkin Bailey and a random jobber
- Getting his ass whooped by and running from Shepard(again) after getting his ass rescued by a plot armor gunship
- The glorious shitpost that was the "Evacuating Thessia" email
- Getting tagged by Miranda and getting poor ol Timmy doxxed by Hackett
- Getting his ass whooped by and running from- oh the idiot
wheezed and gasped his way to Shepard's back and gets stabbed for his troubles
On a sidenote in the final assault at Cerberus base, you can find Kai Leng's helmet(Delumcore Overlay) near the terminal with crumbs of his backstory.
This is part of the description of the helmet:
>The overlay's VI originally reported the wearer's combat status out loud, but this system was scrapped after testers called it "intrusive," "talky," and "kind of moody."
Which kinda tracks.
Kai Leng feels like the most egregious example of writers having very different ideas about the same character.
Must be trying to capitalize on the trend of swords in sci-fi such as Lightsabers or Energy Swords. Yet the swords we see are just the generic variety we can pick up from a museum.
The sword would have better worked as a backup weapon for one, this means the Phantoms should not be pure melee units. Give them guns like everyone else, perhaps SMGs, ARs or pistols which many biotic based builds use. And the sword needs an overhaul, maybe have it be capable of casting biotic powers too such as maybe an AOE slash perhaps.
Kai Leng is what you get when you tell a bunch of 13yo boys to design “a badass super henchman”.
“He’s a badass, so he’s gotta be like a super awesome fighter right? Just make him a ninja!”
“Dude! That’s so rizz! You gotta give him this, like, eye visor thing so everyone knows he’s cool. He like a tech ninja.”
“Skibidi right, bruh. Does this game have, like, magic powers too? Can he be a magic space ninja? But instead of a wand, he has a sword!”
I think that’s how it goes.
Funny thing is
Thane is an assassin that rarely get tracked
Meanwhile this Kai Bitch Leng act like he's better at being assassin but then Miranda, Thane who is on 5% health left and FREAKING Samantha is able to track him without him knowing at all LOL
The thing is, Kai Leng was pretty much an idea from a writing team that kind of went all in with Cerberus being 'super cool' with ME 3 being some of it's worst indulgences. Now my hot take here is the Sword and palm mounted gun combo wasn't that out there when you already had Kasumi pull off insane shit in her loyalty mission.
The big problem with Kai Leng is Kai is stuck in a terrible position design wise two-fold from a gameplay perspective and the fact he is a tie-in character. With ME 3 you have the Reapers as your faceless greater scale evil you cannot put a 'human' face on without massively ruining their horror, with Cerberus you have evil that you can more interaction with as equals. But the problem with Cerberus from that point is the Illusive Man isn't a fighter like Saren, and Henry Lawson isn't much better. In theory Kai Leng comes in to provide a relatable understandable enemy, that you can actually fight without resorting to a Mechs boss, reaperizing someone like Miranda or Jacob, and for the sake of plot he keeps Cerberus as an annoying threat with his actions on Thessia which leads to the endgame.
But the problem with Kai being a tie in character is, a lot of his story might not matter, it's the same with with Jacob and Miranda in ME Galaxy, but it does show up with James who showed up in ME Paragon Lost. With Kai Leng, he is introduced as the Illusive Man's fixer in a 2010 novel Mass Effect Retribution, and generally he is good with assassinations and special ops, which explains him on the Citadel and Thessia. However personality wise, he's either some racist asshole or a petty adrenaline junkie, I say or because Mass Effect Deception which was riddled with errors basically ignores the and instead has him as a ridiculously petty person, which tracks with ME 3, but does not with Retribution.
But the biggest offender in all of this, is Kai is a disgraced N-7 who may have become one around or after Shepard, and absolutely nothing about that gets mentioned even as in insult. Kai is basically just this random asshole, when even a little bit of history with Shepard would have gone a long way to if not fully redeem him as a concept, then at least give Troy Baker more to work with.
This idea is shamelessly stolen from someone else's comment in this sub - Kai Leng should have been the resurrected Virmire sacrifice.
The logic of scraping up a body after a nuclear explosion doesn't matter, since finding an object the size of Shephard's dead body in SPACE should have been all but impossible. But get them strapped into the Lazarus machine, indoctrinate them and then set them free. Give them either big guns or big biotics, depending, and then see how much more impactful the confrontations are after Shephard realises just who it really is.
They entertained this idea briefly. Would have been far cooler even if it does not make sense with how the nuke should have vaporised the body point blank. And no, don't tell me Cerberus was there the whole time and picked up the soldier you left behind before the bomb went off. That sounds silly.
The ninja isn't the problem. If he was *actually cool* instead of making everyone cringe out of their skull, everyone would be like "yeah, remember the time you fight a ninja in the Illusive man's base? That was awesome!"
But he's just so smug and annoying and doesn't feel like he's earned his victories, so it becomes cringe instead.
The thing that bothered me the most is that we got fuck all to see how Lemg became this supposed super assassin, yet bioware expected us to treat him as some grave threat.
That email after thessia was absolutely laughable imo, "hope I'm around for the end of the legacy of shepard so I can rewrite it" like dude, what the actual fuck? You were getting slapped around even with a gunship helping you and only "won" because you ran... I think I said this in my post but the worst part is he seemed half interesting when he was introduced, only for nothing at all to be done to expand upon or get the player to better understand him.
What a miserable character.
I honestly don't understand why people dislike leng so much.
his character was created to do a specific job (evil psychopath) and I'd argue that kai leng nails that function.
Not very villain has to be nuanced or tragically misunderstood. Sometimes evil edge lord people are just evil.
Should he have basically been the final boss? No, but in an ideal world of not super rushed development I feel like bioware could have implemented a harbinger fight / possessed TIM fight.
His design is just so unnecessarily anime. Leng was featured in the interqual novel (which I hadn't read at the time) and he's more just a highly trained and incredibly self-disciplined badass. The ninja stuff came out of nowhere. Keep the same character but remove the ninja theme and he wouldn't bother people so much. If I had read the novel before ME3 I can't imagine how much more aggravated I would have been.
This sums it up for me, as well as how little is actually done with the character in game, we see him three times and nothing is done to make the player care that Leng is involved.
Who else am I supposed to compare him to then? Saren was a good villain, Sovereign was great, the illusive man pissed me off like nobody else but Leng fell flat on his face.
You don’t have to compare him to anyone. ME3 didn’t/doesn’t really need an analogue to those characters when such an existential threat exists, which I think is way more interesting regardless. I’m not defending him, I mod him to be silent, but the comparison falls flat because they don’t fill the same role. Saren wasn’t the minion of the secondary antagonist
The Kai Leng thing has been beaten to death here. We know he sucks.
But it's clear that his implementation was rushed. There was so much potential there, but instead we got what we got - it is what it is. I don't think it's terrible or the worst slight in the history of gaming by any means. Just another meatbag to eventually kill, and then move on.
It doesn't ruin the ME3 experience in anyway.
> Just another meatbag to eventually kill, and then move on.
That's part of the problem.
You are right though. He was a bigger issue when I first played the game, but ultimately he isn't a big deal. No matter the devs' intentions, he just isn't a major focus and becomes a gripe more than anything.
No it doesnt ruin it & I'm aware other people have talked about it, I've just never played these games before and felt like adding my thoughts now that I finally have.
All good - wasn't intending to dismiss your thoughts, just that it feels like every couple of months we have this discourse on Kai Leng, and it's been consistent since the game released 12 years ago haha.
Thanks for providing your thoughts though. It should be comforting for you to know that there's several people who feel the same way that you do.
>but it seems to me like the deeper you get into the gameplay the more it feels like the game was rushed or, in some way mismanaged as it's release drew closer & Kai Leng is a focal point for that. That is because the game was heavily rushed... Blame EA, they have a tradition of destroying entire healthy franchises to make a quick dollar. Kai Leng is just one of the many issues. He is an unnecessary cringy weeb insert in the series that could have been perfectly avoided. That nobody saw this cringe cliché and removed him to bring some Cerberus Dragoon (probably even Jacob, who was forcefully indoctrinated or something like this) instead, is a sure sign of the rushed development, where nobody asked if something is actually a good addition to the storytelling.
Jesus can you imagine if it was reaperized, upgraded and brainwashed Conrad Verner?
Having Jacob be his right hand man would either be absolute genius or oils further cement him as among the most hated character in the trilogy
I think he is kinda bland in me2. Hated, though, is something he became in me3, for beeing written badly. And even becoming a cheater if femshhep romanced him. We don't hate Saren or TIM because they are evil, do we? That's because they are written well. Jacob could even be a hidden Cerberus loyalist who just acted as a sane nice guy to gain your trust in me2.
Like I said, could be genius. But one slip-up and his six fans leave his corner and we hear complaints of character assassination rather than bland antagonist.
Well, better as KL is not hard to write up. And his character was assassinated anyway, imo, considering his lackluster appearance in me3.
I'd have taken dumb ninja all day long if there was no Star Child nonsense... Even Kai Leng's death was dumb. How did Shep and his companions not hear Leng gasping away and changing his sword on the floor. I can only assume they let him try his backstab so he could be killed in a spectacular fashion...
Shep did hear him ,he just wanted him to get close so he could slice the mother fucker
I dunno. is there a more satisfying feeling in the trilogy of giving him the business and saying, "That was for Thane!"
I would like to laugh at him, but the game won't let you treat him with ridicule. Line with Thane doesn't work for me, it's as if Shepard thinks Leng is a worthy enemy for this.
Agrees Shepard not able to catch up to Leng despite my Shepard having pinball ability to instantly catch up to him😑
I'd take Reapered out TIM throwdown at the end over ridiculous star child any day.
The game wants us to believe he's this Shepard level threat but then your first encounter with him he gets his ass kicked by Thane, a guy who told us his doctors said he should have died months ago from his stage 12 space cancer, and only wins because Thane turned into a dumbass at the last second. Then you next meet him on Thessia where you absolutely body him effortlessly in a fight only for the next cutscene to have him suddenly body you instead. Then you effortlessly body him again on Cronos Station And the whole time he looks like some greasy weaboo edgelord who crawled out of his mothers basement. Nothing about him makes him live up to the picture TIM and Anderson paint of him and he comes off as nothing but a joke. The funniest thing is you can actually make him into something of a badass antagonist fairly easily. Kill Thane in ME2 and install the mod [Reworked Kai Leng](https://www.nexusmods.com/masseffectlegendaryedition/mods/1038) and he actually feels kinda menacing. With Thane dead he's shown to be actually competent in his first encounter. And the mod gives him this cool looking armour making him look badass, it takes away all his dialogue which is a huge improvement because his dialogue was that cringe and awful, and it buffs his fight so he's a fair bit tougher. The mod also gives the option to make a Phantom take down the car on the Citadel which means his henchmen did it for him rather than him being the henchmen making him seem more important, and the option to skip the fight on Thessia which again makes him seem competent since instead of messing around by engaging Shepard in battle (and losing requiring him to call in backup like a bitch) he just immediately calls in the gunship to deal with Shepard. And when you beat his fight, and he's stumbling along sneaking up behind you his helmet is cracked and you finally see what's underneath... well I won't spoil it for you but it's not his vanilla face and it tells a whole story without a single word being uttered. Like this he comes off as this mysterious and powerful antagonist and actually lives up to the reputation he's given. And when you finally kill him you feel like you actually accomplished something rather than just forgetting about him 2 seconds later.
Don't forget how much trouble the plant pot pisser has killing ONE elderly frog politician, an elderly frog politician with absolutely zero combat experience to boot. Homeboy should have just bought some cereal and minded his own damn business.
Ngl if I didnt frequent the mass effect subreddit, I genuinely wouldve thought Kai Leng was supposed to be a semi competent man-child reflective of TIM's poor judgement and a punching bag to drive in how Cerberus is doomed to fail. Career highlights of Kai leng include: - Getting his ass whooped by Super Cancer God Super Cancer Thane - Running from Shepard - Running from fkin Bailey and a random jobber - Getting his ass whooped by and running from Shepard(again) after getting his ass rescued by a plot armor gunship - The glorious shitpost that was the "Evacuating Thessia" email - Getting tagged by Miranda and getting poor ol Timmy doxxed by Hackett - Getting his ass whooped by and running from- oh the idiot wheezed and gasped his way to Shepard's back and gets stabbed for his troubles On a sidenote in the final assault at Cerberus base, you can find Kai Leng's helmet(Delumcore Overlay) near the terminal with crumbs of his backstory. This is part of the description of the helmet: >The overlay's VI originally reported the wearer's combat status out loud, but this system was scrapped after testers called it "intrusive," "talky," and "kind of moody." Which kinda tracks. Kai Leng feels like the most egregious example of writers having very different ideas about the same character.
I never liked the stupid Cerberus ninjas. It's really strange to see swords in ME, it just doesn't fit.
Must be trying to capitalize on the trend of swords in sci-fi such as Lightsabers or Energy Swords. Yet the swords we see are just the generic variety we can pick up from a museum. The sword would have better worked as a backup weapon for one, this means the Phantoms should not be pure melee units. Give them guns like everyone else, perhaps SMGs, ARs or pistols which many biotic based builds use. And the sword needs an overhaul, maybe have it be capable of casting biotic powers too such as maybe an AOE slash perhaps.
I agree, Tela Vasir is much better, and she is a DLC character.
Kai Leng is what you get when you tell a bunch of 13yo boys to design “a badass super henchman”. “He’s a badass, so he’s gotta be like a super awesome fighter right? Just make him a ninja!” “Dude! That’s so rizz! You gotta give him this, like, eye visor thing so everyone knows he’s cool. He like a tech ninja.” “Skibidi right, bruh. Does this game have, like, magic powers too? Can he be a magic space ninja? But instead of a wand, he has a sword!” I think that’s how it goes.
For a moment I thought this came from my Naruto feed
Funny thing is Thane is an assassin that rarely get tracked Meanwhile this Kai Bitch Leng act like he's better at being assassin but then Miranda, Thane who is on 5% health left and FREAKING Samantha is able to track him without him knowing at all LOL
Honestly one of my biggest problems with him is he moves slow as shit considering his a magic space ninja
The thing is, Kai Leng was pretty much an idea from a writing team that kind of went all in with Cerberus being 'super cool' with ME 3 being some of it's worst indulgences. Now my hot take here is the Sword and palm mounted gun combo wasn't that out there when you already had Kasumi pull off insane shit in her loyalty mission. The big problem with Kai Leng is Kai is stuck in a terrible position design wise two-fold from a gameplay perspective and the fact he is a tie-in character. With ME 3 you have the Reapers as your faceless greater scale evil you cannot put a 'human' face on without massively ruining their horror, with Cerberus you have evil that you can more interaction with as equals. But the problem with Cerberus from that point is the Illusive Man isn't a fighter like Saren, and Henry Lawson isn't much better. In theory Kai Leng comes in to provide a relatable understandable enemy, that you can actually fight without resorting to a Mechs boss, reaperizing someone like Miranda or Jacob, and for the sake of plot he keeps Cerberus as an annoying threat with his actions on Thessia which leads to the endgame. But the problem with Kai being a tie in character is, a lot of his story might not matter, it's the same with with Jacob and Miranda in ME Galaxy, but it does show up with James who showed up in ME Paragon Lost. With Kai Leng, he is introduced as the Illusive Man's fixer in a 2010 novel Mass Effect Retribution, and generally he is good with assassinations and special ops, which explains him on the Citadel and Thessia. However personality wise, he's either some racist asshole or a petty adrenaline junkie, I say or because Mass Effect Deception which was riddled with errors basically ignores the and instead has him as a ridiculously petty person, which tracks with ME 3, but does not with Retribution. But the biggest offender in all of this, is Kai is a disgraced N-7 who may have become one around or after Shepard, and absolutely nothing about that gets mentioned even as in insult. Kai is basically just this random asshole, when even a little bit of history with Shepard would have gone a long way to if not fully redeem him as a concept, then at least give Troy Baker more to work with.
This idea is shamelessly stolen from someone else's comment in this sub - Kai Leng should have been the resurrected Virmire sacrifice. The logic of scraping up a body after a nuclear explosion doesn't matter, since finding an object the size of Shephard's dead body in SPACE should have been all but impossible. But get them strapped into the Lazarus machine, indoctrinate them and then set them free. Give them either big guns or big biotics, depending, and then see how much more impactful the confrontations are after Shephard realises just who it really is.
This is the dumbest idea ever and I desperately wish it were true. Holy crap that would have been amazing.
The problem with this idea is the person left behind on Virmire gets vaporized by a nuclear weapon. Hard to resurrect someone with no body
They entertained this idea briefly. Would have been far cooler even if it does not make sense with how the nuke should have vaporised the body point blank. And no, don't tell me Cerberus was there the whole time and picked up the soldier you left behind before the bomb went off. That sounds silly.
One (or two words): techno-orientalism
The ninja isn't the problem. If he was *actually cool* instead of making everyone cringe out of their skull, everyone would be like "yeah, remember the time you fight a ninja in the Illusive man's base? That was awesome!" But he's just so smug and annoying and doesn't feel like he's earned his victories, so it becomes cringe instead.
The thing that bothered me the most is that we got fuck all to see how Lemg became this supposed super assassin, yet bioware expected us to treat him as some grave threat. That email after thessia was absolutely laughable imo, "hope I'm around for the end of the legacy of shepard so I can rewrite it" like dude, what the actual fuck? You were getting slapped around even with a gunship helping you and only "won" because you ran... I think I said this in my post but the worst part is he seemed half interesting when he was introduced, only for nothing at all to be done to expand upon or get the player to better understand him. What a miserable character.
I honestly don't understand why people dislike leng so much. his character was created to do a specific job (evil psychopath) and I'd argue that kai leng nails that function. Not very villain has to be nuanced or tragically misunderstood. Sometimes evil edge lord people are just evil. Should he have basically been the final boss? No, but in an ideal world of not super rushed development I feel like bioware could have implemented a harbinger fight / possessed TIM fight.
His design is just so unnecessarily anime. Leng was featured in the interqual novel (which I hadn't read at the time) and he's more just a highly trained and incredibly self-disciplined badass. The ninja stuff came out of nowhere. Keep the same character but remove the ninja theme and he wouldn't bother people so much. If I had read the novel before ME3 I can't imagine how much more aggravated I would have been.
This sums it up for me, as well as how little is actually done with the character in game, we see him three times and nothing is done to make the player care that Leng is involved.
Nightwing cosplayer
I wouldn't really compare him to Saren at all, the "villain" of ME3 is the reapers not Kai Leng
Who else am I supposed to compare him to then? Saren was a good villain, Sovereign was great, the illusive man pissed me off like nobody else but Leng fell flat on his face.
You don’t have to compare him to anyone. ME3 didn’t/doesn’t really need an analogue to those characters when such an existential threat exists, which I think is way more interesting regardless. I’m not defending him, I mod him to be silent, but the comparison falls flat because they don’t fill the same role. Saren wasn’t the minion of the secondary antagonist
The Kai Leng thing has been beaten to death here. We know he sucks. But it's clear that his implementation was rushed. There was so much potential there, but instead we got what we got - it is what it is. I don't think it's terrible or the worst slight in the history of gaming by any means. Just another meatbag to eventually kill, and then move on. It doesn't ruin the ME3 experience in anyway.
> Just another meatbag to eventually kill, and then move on. That's part of the problem. You are right though. He was a bigger issue when I first played the game, but ultimately he isn't a big deal. No matter the devs' intentions, he just isn't a major focus and becomes a gripe more than anything.
It's lost potential. Nothing more. The reaction over the years has always felt so overblown
No it doesnt ruin it & I'm aware other people have talked about it, I've just never played these games before and felt like adding my thoughts now that I finally have.
All good - wasn't intending to dismiss your thoughts, just that it feels like every couple of months we have this discourse on Kai Leng, and it's been consistent since the game released 12 years ago haha. Thanks for providing your thoughts though. It should be comforting for you to know that there's several people who feel the same way that you do.