A Deep Dive on the BATARIAN HEGEMONY: Mass Effect’s Most Vilified Alien Race

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Big Dan Gaming

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Published on October 18, 2021 12:00:23 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITk2t7j1oR0

Game:

Mass Effect (2007)

Duration: 11:31

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In this video, we’re going to do a deep dive on the Batarians - Mass Effect’s most aggressive and despised alien race. We’ll be taking a look at their history, government and relations with the Council races.

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0:00 Introduction
1:29 Early Days of Batarians in Council Space
3:09 Humans Become a Target for Batarian Hegemony
5:45 The Batarians Retreat After Torfan
7:13 Batarian Technological Advancement
8:52 The Fall of the Batarians in Mass Effect 3
10:00 Will the Batarians Return in the Next Mass Effect?

MASS EFFECT 2 ARRIVAL - CAN YOU SAVE THE BATARIANS?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPZqQ2gEioA

THE MOST HEARTBREAKING QUEST IN MASS EFFECT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1wxrW7aKu4

BRING DOWN THE SKY - ALL CHOICES AND ENDINGS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKcMeMQMnvE

The Batarians are first introduced to us in Mass Effect 1 but we don’t actually ever meet one of them during the base game. We hear conversations about Batarian pirate gangs, slavers, the Skyllian Blitz and the attack on Mindoir, but we never get a Batarian perspective on these events.

The first time we do meet the four-eyed aliens, they’re committing a terrorist attack by trying to ram an asteroid into a human colony during the Bring Down the Sky DLC. So by the end of Mass Effect 1, our perception of the Batarians is that they’re either slavers, pirates or terrorists. Not exactly a good look.

In order to understand why the Batarians became the bad boys of the galaxy, it’s important to learn about their early days of Council relations. Much like humanity, the Batarians gained access to Faster-than-light travel via discovery of a Prothean ruins. In their case, they discovered a badly damaged Prothean site on Bira - a moon of the planet Verush. According to the planet description in Mass Effect 3, it is a point of pride amongst the Batarians that they were able to develop FTL technology while having access to only limited Prothean data when compared to other council races. This is because Bira was badly damaged by an earthquake, causing some of the Prothean archives to be lost prior to Batarian discovery.

Once the Batarians could travel long distances through space it wasn’t long before they made first contact with the Council races. While we don’t have exact dates for this, it was likely around the 1500s or 1600s - centuries before humanity would come onto the scene.

Roughly one century after first contact, the Council granted Batarians diplomatic representation on the Citadel. They didn’t have a seat on the Council, but their status was similar to that of the volus and elcor. They had an embassy on the Citadel and diplomatic relations with the rest of the galactic community.

Nonetheless the Batarians had no problem being openly aggressive and imperialistic, even to the point of attacking their supposed allies. This led to several diplomatic crises with the Council races. In 1785, Batarian ships bombed the Salarian colony world of Mannovai. Side note - Kirrahe gives one of his units the codename Mannovai during the Virmire mission in Mass Effect 1.

In 1913, the Batarians annexed an independent Asari colony of Esan. They even came into open conflict with Citadel forces on the planet Enael in 2115. So even before humanity’s introduction to the wider galactic community, the Batarians were the bad boys of the galaxy.

Tensions would only heighten after humanity joined the fray, with colonial expansion being a major point of contention. As the Alliance began establishing its own colonies in places like the Skyllian Verge, the Batarians petitioned the council to grant them exclusive colonial rights in the region.

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