“Indeed, species essentialism is not a problem when it’s stating that all Krogan process sound in the same way. What IS species essentialism is the idea that because you’re a Krogan you’ll want to grow up to be a warrior.”

So you accept that being a Krogan would affect how you process sound, but you don’t accept that being a Krogan would affect your desire to be a warrior? Even within our species, the propensity to violence is strongly correlated with possession of a certain genetic marker (the Y chromosome) – and yet you don’t think that different species might differ in their propensity to violence?

If your criticism was that Mass Effect 2 didn’t reflect a realistic level of intraspecific variation, then as Paolo has pointed out, there was at least an attempt to show that not all members of each species are the same. You could argue that the attempt doesn’t go far enough, but it seems unfair to completely ignore it.

You say: “Secondly, if I run together the idea of racial essentialism with the idea of species essentialism it is because genre depictions of different sentient species do tend to be modeled upon relationships between different races”. So what you’re saying is that because “genre depictions of different sentient species … tend to be modeled upon relationships between different races” it justifies “run[ning] together the idea of racial essentialism with the idea of species essentialism”. That doesn’t follow. You don’t agree with the former idea, so how can it support the latter?

This is not to say that the idea that “genre depictions of different sentient species do tend to be modeled upon relationships between different races” isn’t true. I agree that depictions of differences between species do clearly draw from racial stereotypes. As I said, the problem there is that the differences between species would be *much greater* than the (largely fictional) differences between human races or even the differences between human cultures.

If your argument was just that ME2 lazily draws from racial stereotypes in depicting different species, then I might agree. However, as far as you are making any kind of coherent argument at all, you seem to object to the idea that “being a member of a particular species entails certain physical and psychological facts”. That is only objectionable if you don’t understand the meaning of the word “species”.

Making a distinction between “racial essentialism” and “species essentialism” is at best wishful thinking. Exploring human nature through other “races” is a long-standing trope of science fiction and fantasy, and the Mass Effect series has gone out of its way on multiple occasions to specifically note just how “human” the different alien races are; one character, Kaiden Alenko, even says as much explicitly at one point.

That said, I do think the developers are trying to skirt a line here, and it’s up for debate just how successful they are. I don’t see how you can take Paolo’s examples as evidence in favor of authorial support for racial essentialism. Rather, I see numerous occasions throughout ME2 in particular in which the developers explicitly, if subtly, attempt to critique the practice of racial essentialism in science-fiction themselves. On Illium, for instance, one news organization apologies (via “radio”) for equating assassin Thane Krios’s skill with his drell heritage. At another point on this planet, you encounter a krogan businessman who defies any stereotype of the species, introduced without any option to remark, “Hey, what kind of krogan are you?” I believe the developers are at least attempting to suggest that “racial” essentialism is bunk, but stereotypes are still very present and very powerful in this world. It’s not clear to me how offering numerous exceptions to the stereotype comprise an endorsement of that stereotype.

The main example that you seem hung up on, Jonathan, is that of Grunt, but I find it problematic to see the very existence of his character as an implicit endorsement of the racial essentialism evident among the denizens of this fictional universe. This is somewhat tantamount to implying that the developers implicitly endorse Samara’s Justicar code, or Mordin’s research practices, or Thane’s philosophy behind guilt-free assassination, or Jack’s history of crime. In each of these cases, as with Grunt, you do have the option to tell these characters that their beliefs are misguided (including a fairly in-depth side quest with Mordin that looks like it could possibly result in convincing him to cure the genophage entirely for Mass Effect 3). Even the group that patronizes you, which is nominally aligned to humans, is essentially a terrorist group, which doesn’t exactly reflect well on our “race” either. At the end of the day, this is a story about recruiting people whom you know quite well to be ruthless and dangerous because they seem the most likely to get your job done. It is very much about the moral challenge of sacrificing your principles in order to do something that needs doing.

All of that said, let us not also forget that Mass Effect is a big game, and a product of multiple writers. It does seem plausible that different portions of it might not agree with one another entirely. It would not surprise me to learn that the writers creating non-violent krogan on Illium were working in a different room from those making Grunt’s loyalty quest, centered around a celebration of krogan thirst for blood. I don’t see these plot points as wholly irreconcilable, given that so much of the game thematically hinges upon the influence of culture, but I think it’s fair to recognize that we can’t necessarily say that this game represents a single authorial “vision.”

On your first point, I think that this is an example of the game’s tendency to muddy the waters. Consider transplanting Solus’ methods to our world. Apparently the Apartheid regime was in the process of developing biological weapons that only affected black people. Imagine that that research had reached fruition and the government released the virus in its townships. Suddenly the Black population is reduced to ‘more manageable’ levels.

Now, this isn’t the same as shooting people in the head, but it’s still morally unacceptable. It’s involuntary eugenics on a planetary level. It’s preventing a species from propagating itself because of utterly irrational bigotry.

The fact that the game bends itself in two to make this act of genocide seem morally acceptable says quite a bit about the game’s refusal to confront precisely the essentialist opinions that Mordin holds.

On your second point, I agree that Wrex questions the vision of the Krogan as savages. But they are just words. Wrex was also the greatest Krogan warrior in a generation and while he had a vision for a better society, he accepted the existing social structures of his people. In the second game, Grunt is compared to Wrex precisely because he’s a great warrior who managed to bring down the wormy thing.

A plot that suggests that there can be such a thing as a “Pure Krogan” psychology. That really is just dyed in the wool essentialism and while Grunt does flounder a bit and do a bit of soul searching he only really finds himself once he conforms to that ideal.

I’m hoping that the third Mass Effect game might make some room for these assumptions to be questioned or at least engaged with. One of the series’ major themes has been the idea of human nationalism in a galaxy where humanity is seen as a junior species (Tolkien again via Brin) and I would like to think that the writers have enough creative nous to want to step back from that political narrative and question it.

However, I think the chances of that kind of thing happening are much more likely in the second and third volumes of the Dragon Age series, which has shown a much more aggressively pro-active attitude towards traditional genre tropes (quite possibly because the game’s set dressing is much more reliant upon them).