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I need to confess something because the guilt of it is eating me up inside, like a straight shot of draino. Like many other gamers I played Mass Effect, splendid game, well worth the accolades and all that. The kind of science fiction geeks like me want more of in our games, alien races, action, star ships, gadgets, political machinations. That conversation system, wow, pretty amazing… yeah. Okay, I skipped most of the dialogue in Mass Effect, that's my confession, once I had the gist of a conversation the majority was just so boring. I couldn’t take it, dozens of back and forths for a snippet of information. Just too much talking, and I usually like talking.

But Subject Zero has me clamouring for Mass Effect 2, she’s one of the most interesting female characters I’ve seen in a video game in years.

It's hard to tell, but I think her clothes are comprised of a few belts and lots of tattoos

You can watch her intro video here at Moko’s excellent piece on over doing adult material in video games. It’s appropriate to reference it as Subject Zero is a character based around the gratuitous over use of swearing, violence and sex.

To put it simply, Subject Zero is a rough woman, the kind of girl that, if you were to bring her home, would probably result in your parents organising an intervention. The kind of woman to drag you away for a whirl wind of sex and excess, then steal your wallet and car and leave you naked on the side of the road in the middle of no where.

It’s refreshing seeing a female character that isn't a cardboard cut out heroine in a game. Video game gals fall into a pretty narrow niche from which few escape. Basically they're somewhere on the scale between Lara Croft and Princess Peach. They’re all usually tough and capable with a romantic core, conventionally attractive and likely to do the right thing when the chips are down. When placed in a secondary role from the playable character they almost always end up as a damsel in distress. Or worse, the female characters in Gears of War 2, one shows up long enough to be mercy executed by her husband and the other is onlt a disembodied voice who appears for seconds of footage. In other words, boring.

I honestly can think of no amusing caption for this one, maybe something about robot dancing? Nah

Subject Zero is the opposite of all the common traits, aggressive, volatile, forward, probably psychotic and a damn site more interesting than Lara Croft. I’m not arguing that Subject Zero is a more realistic interpretation of a woman in a game, just that she’s an example that there are different types of women in reality. No question that she’s still a fantasy character, just a masochistic fantasy instead of a conventional one.

There’s been a lot of backlash in talk backs about this character, that she’s ugly or nasty, or pandering to some edgy demographic (do the Suicide Girls play a lot of games?). But for me she’s the first thing that has me genuinely interested in Mass Effect, a character whose sex scene will probably require a quick time button press to survive.

When he wakes up the keys to his space ship will be long gone