Mass Effect/Narm

Though normally well acted and interesting, more than a few of the dialogues in Mass Effect can become spectacularly narmtacular depending on what selections you make and what order you select them. The "dialogue wheel" usually gives you a choice between "nice" and "rude" responses (with a few "neutrals" sprinkled among them) to drive the game's paragon/renegade Karma Meter, but if you aren't perfectly consistent in your dialogue choices over the course of the game you can make Commander Shepard seem positively bipolar, oscillating between a principled and compassionate gentleman soldier and a genocidal jerkass who publicly executes unarmed civilians. The single biggest potential narm moment is probably Shepard's speech once s/he gains control of the Normandy, where you can jump between tolerant nice guy and xenophobic human-supremacist in every other sentence.
- Something like half the lines Ashley gives are narm. "Just because I can drill you from a hundred yards between the eyes, doesn't mean I can appreciate poetry!" And the romance storylines, oh my god...
- "By the goddess, Shepard, that was incredible!"
- This trooper found almost every single cutscene in that game narmful. The voice acting is not really the problem, but the character models are unbelievable stiff. I couldn't stop laughing during Benezia's death, and I had Liara with me. Actually, it was probably because I had Liara with me. Her lines had no emotion at all, and her stiff "acting" made it all funnier.
  - This troper had Liara with him and during that scene, and found it tragic enough as she slumped to the floor and gave her tragic last words... as the '80s style electronic music that accompanied the boss fight jumped back up in volume. Mood killed by Soundtrack Dissonance, ouch.
- Pressly's wonderfully rage-tastic lines as the Normandy approaches Ilos. "THERE IS NO OTHER LANDING ZONE!"
- The suicide mission is an incredible achievement in programming and logistics, but it can be prone to a couple of moments that are laugh-out-loud hilarious:
  - It is impossible for Miranda to die until Shepard gives his/her final speech before embarking with a team to the center of the Collector base. Until that point, though, it's possible to put Miranda (even an unloyal one) into hilarious situations. Having her as a support character during the "Long Walk" portion of the mission (with a bad choice made for the person to hold the biotic field) can result in her being dragged off by seeker swarms, then reappearing and almost smiling at the progress of the mission a minute later.
    - That's only possible if you do a bit of modding, though. Normally the other squadmate will get dragged off, usually screaming. Though a few are pretty hilarious.
  - If an unloyal Garrus is picked to lead the second diversion squad, his death scene will be poignant, as he tells Shepard and the gang to go on and "snipe one more" Collector for him...and then his head sags and gets lodged in the damaged section of his neckplate. It kills the mood and looks absolutely hilarious!
    - Also the moment in his loyalty mission that has him moving forward at a crouch...only to look like a mildly pissed-off old tortoise.
  - There's a way to get Zaeed killed by cutscene AFTER completing the main mission of the game. It's all pretty normal, even a little dramatic, until the very end, when he makes a very parody-able frown and yells "SHEPARD!" in a totally laughable way.
    - Or, in the Suicide Mission, if you let Zaeed get killed by seeker swarms, it's kind of hard to take seriously.
- "Oh Captain... my Captain." Seriously, Ashley? WTF? Double the funny for both horrible delivery and a complete lack of understanding of the poem.
  - Which you can call her out on.

Shepard: "As I recall the captain dies in that poem."

- - - And, in fact, he does!
- While her work for the Paragon lines is good, some of Jennifer Hale's Renegade lines are Narm-tastic.
- If Jennifer Hale's voicework is Narm-tastic, what's to say about Mark Meer's completely wooden delivery? Half of his Renegade lines, including the jellyfish one, is hilarious because he's not even trying most of the time.
  - YMMV, as this troper found Meer's "Jellyfish" line to actually be one of the few instances of clear superiority of Meer over Hale. As for the rest, Meer's performance always came off as more professional, who only lets his emotions out during key moments, while Hale's was a lot more emotional and theatrical, which makes sense considering the whole Space Opera feel of the series.
  - This troper, come to think of it, has never actually played a Paragon Fem Shep either in Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2 ...
  - Meer is very well suited to all the Deadpan Snarker and Bond One-Liner scenes that a Renegade has, while Hale is better suited to the emotional Paragaon side of things. People who play the opposite of that setup are usually the ones with the most 'issues' with the voice acting in the game.
- This troper would like to point out that DIRECT INTERVENTION IS NECESSARY to stop him from cracking every time a certain character talked. It was as if Blizzard Entertainment was ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL of that character's writing, and gave BioWare one of their voice contacts. Its really amazing how much THIS HURTS YOU if you don't find his lines narmy.
  - It's important to note however, that the first time you hear some of these lines, the fact that they're so personal is pure Nightmare Fuel, until Harbinger becomes a regular enemy and you realize that he only has about six lines that are repeated over and over again. It goes from terrifying to hilarious over the course of the first mission he's in.
  - Actually, he has about ten minutes worth of different lines, giving treatises on the immune system of quarians, the scarcity of drell, his unhealthy fascination with one very specific human, the future of the council species. He just barely ever says them. Having just faced him on the suicide mission, where he actually opened up and gave his full range of dialogue, he sounded genuinely creepy.
The Illusive Man gives a very creepy grin in one shot.
- John Shepard's rape face.
Jack has a ton. But the absolute crowner has to be her first appearance on the Purgatory, when she realizes a Cerberus ship is coming to pick her up. Her little tamper tantrum is pathetic.

Jack: Cerberus. Arrr. Grrrr.

- Indeed. When this troper first saw that scene, he thought "Wouldn't a 'Goddamnit' suffice? Maybe a bit of window punching?"
  - Jack's narm may be Fridge Brilliance (her "Cerberus" moment aside) when you consider that most of her "macho" identity is an affectation that she puts on in order to conceal how fragile she really is. The reason her dialogue sounds so forced and inauthentic is because it comes from a forced and inauthentic personality.
Saren's enraged reaction to the news of Shepard's use of the Eden Prime beacon becomes a lot harder to take seriously with subtitles turned on.

Saren: Argh! Grr! Rahr!

- It gets funnier. The lighting inside Sovereign turns red and you can subtly hear him in Saren's voice. Yes, thats right! An supposedly all-powerful Reaper is having a tantrum through Saren.
Thane brings us this side-splitter:

Mouse: You gave me chocolate, Krios. Real chocolate.
Thane: I never gave my son chocolate.

I should go.
While fighting Kai Leng near the climax of the game, Shepard can be throwing grenades/shooting/hurting Kai Leng while the two engage in a conversation
The scene at the Shroud is a masterfully executed Tear Jerker, but one moment is hilariously executed. A huge chunk of debris falls, and Shepard yells 'DAYUM!'

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