This isn't some secret your friend gave you, the fanbase has known this for years.

"An bioware aquantance of mine" Bro we've known this for years

People has known for years, but you literally went "trust me bruh, my dad works at nintendo"

If ME3 had another year to cook it would have been the game of the decade. Still surprised the product we got in the end was still amazing given all the shit they went through

Imagine if they were actually given time

EA has a habit of giving their people impossible deadlines.

The real reason was explained by Patrick Weekes in an interview I did with him. They knew for months it was gonna be a stock photo, they wanted to put resources elsewhere. Since you never actually see her face.

Bro couldn't find the source so he said he had an anonymous friend 💀

It's crazy your inside source told you the same thing that we found out like a few months after release

Should've used a more alien design. All that build up for just another human face.

Mass effect 3 is already a fantastic game. Wish they could go back and finish up the ending and flesh out priority earth.

"You might be skeptical" Well you're actually a liar so yes. Your friend didn't give you that information people have known about this for years.

My biggest problem is that everyone talks about not knowing what they look like, but you can't tell me, with the sci-fi internet access they had, there wouldn't be a photo or anything.

Tbh tho, the legendary edition version of the Tali picture is Chefs kiss

Unpopular opinion(?): I really don't find the version in the legendary edition much of an improvement and I hate that people treat it like one. I mean, HAVE YOU SEEN THE CONCEPT ART, PEOPLE?

dude a ton of people realized that it was a stock photo. its on mass effect iceberg lists, its been mentioned numerous times when people talk about changes in the Legendary edition. Hell, this was known before youtube shorts were a thing 🤣 but ok Mr "I know someone at bioware"

Tali is proof you can fall in love with someone and never see their face until you've fallen head over heels. She's easily one of the best characters in the entire universe.

I really want to see all of the designs that Bioware made for Tali's face before they settled on the photoshopped stock photo.

This is why executives SHOULD NOT be allowed to make art direction decisions. They need to stay in their lane and trust in their designers.

I'm not mad at the photoshopped picture. Was it lazy? Yes. But Tali still looks beautiful and she's definitely the best romance in the series.

Extremely old news this was known probably a week after released on March 6,2012

That last minute photoshop of Tali angered so many people, including me.

In the legendary edition they added a true face to Tali

I’m so glad I’m not the only one that thinks Tali is Best girl of the game

“best girl” I see we are ignoring Wrex. Sure he might not technically be a girl, but he is the cutest member of the Normandy teams. Bioware were just too cowardly to let the player romance him because the sheer passion he wields is enough to destroy worlds.

My biggest gripe in the original was if the Quarians looked EXACTLY like humans how was that never mentioned. I was in complete shock in 2012 when I saw her and no one EVER mentioned or any Quarioan questions how do we look so similar and how is this possible. I mean with the Asari you have the brainwashing theory and the different kinds and tentacle hair but the Quarians also have THE SAME HAIR, SKIN, AND FACE as humans. I was hoping that in the sequel they could have made some something out of it like they were so similar that humans and Quarinas started mixing and having mutant babies or shit like that.

That fanart near the end is horrifying. We don't need uncanny valley Jack in a space suit

Given what we’ve learned about Anthems production. Are we sure BioWare were on a tight deadline?

Never blame the devs. EA and most other big companies are the really enemy

I've never seen people saltier than in a discussion about tali's design human or alien

They had years on end to get what she looked like. This time it is not crunch. It is them just putting it off.

I can't imagine Quarians ever looking close to Drell. They have always been and will always be human approximations and vice versa. When I saw that design, I didn't think of a quarian, I thought of D'Vorah from Mortal Kombat

I loved the stick photo they used it was just alien enough to justify being used and, still human enough to start a family with the Normandy's best girl.

Shepard: Didn’t matter what she looked like well bang ok.

Will say as much as I loved the multiplayer. If they would’ve devoted all their resources to keep it single player it would’ve been better too

I will say, both are pretty even if one was rushed, and I like that she has hair at least visible in the original. Not sure how I feel about a potentially bald tali 💀

I like the more human looking Tali. The Quarians are like Battlestar Galactica, and them being more human makes them more sympathetic with "what if humans had to flee Earth, and what would happen to them?"

Bro REALLY pulled a “My dad works for Nintendo” move 😂

Had they been given just a couple months and some extra wads of cash, it would've been the best trilogy to ever grace the earth so far as 2023.

That ain't tali, that's ventress

She looks like Asajj ventress, fricken amazing design.

I'm so glad they had no time. That concept art they showed would have been like romancing a Turian. No thank you.

I mean we knew this like a week after the game came out. It was a huge talking point around the game.

This was unforgivable for them to do. This was pivotal in many people's experience of Mass Effect and they phoned it in, I don't want to hear any bs excuses.

Wish they take inspiration from Miime ( Space Pirate Captain Harlock ) for Tali. She's a beauty.

“A friend of mine at ID software leaked to me that the Doom Slayer likes to rip and tear!”

Considering the way their limbs look similar to Turians and their amino acid specific physiology I was hoping Tali would look like a much smoother Garrus

They cut a year off the initial schedule deadline which itself was described as optimistic and was expected to be extended. Thanks to that we lost MULTIPLE major quest hubs and some current ones got cut down severely. The asari home sector was supposed to be an extensive quest hub leading to he homeworld scenario we did see. Instead of a DLC, Omega was supposed to be another major questhub with choices which could have lead to you breaking "omega's one rule" in literal and/or metaphorical ways, stationing yourself as a pirate king for the latter. There was supposed to be a quest chain to rescue the elcor with us in a mech to deal with their heavy gravity worlds (a function revived and cobbled together into that reaper origin dlc). Our fave prothean was supposed to be inbuilt into the game with missions of his own. There were plans for a salarian home system questhub which just... never left the drawing board. Earth was meant to be an extensive quest hub introducing Andersons second in command trying to find his sister and going from city to city on earth helping people and seeing your alien allied armies working together to help you depending on your choices. Additionally certain choices could have escalated a subplot involving your squad mates possibly being exposed to indoctrination if you fked up. The ending would have had wildly different concluding scenarios based on your choices.

Marauder Shields remembers

The original concept art version looks scary af imo

when i played the legendary edition and it finally got to the picture part i was freaking out "holy shit they actually made a new picture for her!"

Well both photos are terrible: the first for the reasons stated in the video, the second because you'd expect the photo to be without her helmet (though of course the fan art itself is beautiful, it's clearly not created to fill that role). Also, yes I will blame Casey Hudson, or Bioware in general. They had since ME1 to work out what the quarians looked like, and at least since ME2 they knew Tali was a love interest and would need to show her face. In visual storytelling terms, it's a travesty that there was just a bad photo, and not even a conversation with her without the helmet.

I reject the new picture, OG Tali is the only Tali.

“I’ve got secret, inside information that everybody already knows about” lmfao 😂

the stock image they used back in the day was perfect imo.

Tali? You mean that chick that got pulverized in the Collectors' base vents? :-)

the timeline EA gave them was huge and agreed upon at the start in the contract. Bioware fudged development and kept asking for extensions. EA eventually had to say no as shareholders were getting fed up of Casey Hudson's excuses. I love throwing mud at EA but this one wasn't their fault.

In this edition of ‘No Shit Sherlock’…

Either way, she's still best girl in my eyes. Tali is waifu for life son.

Honestly the picture didn’t bother me, even then. What did is the fact that even in the Legendary Edition, we STILL don’t see her face when she removes her mask on Raanoch. Come on guys!

Oh, no, I completely believe the stuck Tali's stock image face on there last second.

It's actually really funny, I remember seeing that specific art years ago as a kid and thinking how I would've much rather seen that

At least the new face is how I imagined her to be even with the photoshop. Imagination is a wonderful thing.

Even knowing the original picture's origin, I never minded it. I also don't mind the new picture, but I wish our dialogue options could influence which picture showed up. Personally, I would have it influenced by decisions made in Tali & Legion's loyalty missions. Note that these scenarios assume the Quarians survive their war, regardless if the Geth do as well. In the former, the last decision (save for giving the evidence, of course) would be a determining factor. If you picked the above options on the right, you would guarantee Tali's photo result regardless of the end-choice in Legion's loyalty mission: if you select [Rally the Crowd], the photo would have the partially masked Tali since she still feels a massive bond with the Flotilla; if you denied finding evidence, then the photo would show Tali without the mask since she's exiled. Exonerating Tali herself, however, would put Tali's "facial identity" on the fence (until Legion's mission) since she experienced both Shepard's defense and a reminder of her service to the fleet. The end result of Legion's loyalty mission, should you exonerate Tali yourself, would show its effects from which side takes the most hits at first: if you destroy the Heretic Station, the Quarians have the biggest start and, even though she voted against it, Tali wouldn't feel the effects as greatly and her photo would have her half-masked; if you rewrite the Heretics, the Quarians feel the effects of their pre-emptive strike while the Geth benefit, fully proving Tali correct and guaranteeing her photo as fully unmasked. Of course, should you skip Legion's loyalty mission, Tali would be fully unmasked for the reason above.

Tali was bae

I think the weirdest thing about this is that in ME 1 we can barely have anything for Tali, we can grow a friendship and throw in some hints but that's all, so no one actually thought about it... But since ME:2 the quarians got a whole new ideal, we meet their ship, we meet many of them, they noticed many players liked Tali so they made it possible to romance her, they saw thousands and thousands of fanart about how Tali could look like, and all the way to 3 where we actually visit their planet and make it possible for them to live on it, so between Mass Effect 1 to 3 they had 5 years to think about how she would look like inside the mask and they didn't... How hard was it?

They did Matt Rhodes, original designer of Tali's face, so dirty.

I can believe EA put the devs under lots of pressure. But the game was delayed by almost half a year from early Q4 2011 to late Q1 2012. There's an archived IGN podcast where Bioware leads did an interview, and I'm paraphrasing here. They said EA gave them the time to finish the game right, and they got so much time they were basically spinning tires before release. That podcast can be found, it's a little long, but I think Hudson really liked that pic, and wanted Tali to be seen as an exotic beauty. Hudson Found that stock photo and wanted her to be tali.

i'm convinced bro said he has a secret source on this just to farm engagement. because there is no way he could have possibly been serious about that. as far as the photoshop deal, it really never bothered me. they touched it up enough to not be a 1 for 1 of the original image. plus i like to imagine Tali has luscious locks underneath that helmet.

Took my like back after this dude tried saying his friend was an insider 💀

Dude we've known about this for 10 years. 10 YEARS! Someone even found the stock photo before the ending was "fixed", and that was what, 5 months after the game was released?

Wish they kept the mistery, first time i saw her photo in ME3 i was like "that's it? No reptile or fish face? Just a purple human face?" Btw, Bioware acquaintance? This has been known for years🗿

This video is a " my father works at Nintendo or sony" moment lol

everyone since it came out: this seems like a last second photoshop! This guy: believe it or not, i have a source inside bioware (who wasn't even there when me3 was being made since most that staff is gone now) who says this was a last minute photoshop! Dude's just the most amazing guy. did you guys also know his dad works for nintendo?

Man thinks his friend is uncovering MASSIVE news lol

"Trust me bro, my uncle works for SEGA!" This shit was known from launch. Within the week, someone tracked down the _exact_ stock photo, and devs had said for a while things got rushed. The ending was evidence enough of that. And I still hate the new Tali photo. It makes the quarians look too human. Mass Effect alien designs were always better than that. Asari look human enough, and they're a very specific exception.

I feel like the final image was actually pretty good! But I imagine a species that lives their entire lives in enviro-suits and flotilla ship colonies would be....significantly paler. Like "VERY sensitive to solar rays" pale. I feel like even "rubber-forehead aliens" need to make you re-evaluate your definition of "beauty" instead of just presenting "Attractive earth-model, but she's got interesting eyes!" lol Let's be honest, EA execs probably had a "conventionally bangable" quota they were looking for...

"I know a friend" Meanwhile people 2 days after the release : "Hey guys ! Tali's face is a google picture, i saw it, wait i show you" You're basically 10 years late bro.

Deadline stress really suck! 😂

No, it wasn't "literally the last second" It wasn't even "literally the last hour". It was figuratively the last second.

There is a Tali face mod

I’m actually completely ok with the last minute photo shop.

This was an excellent change. If anything they should jokingly make a jab at it in future games.

His influence stopped Kai Leng, and he held the line

That's the most cringey way to share trivia literally everyone knows about. "My friend" lmao

I always imagined her as a purple smoke lady.

I was like, this is a secret? But seriously, the time constraint they had was insane for ME3. To this day I wish they had not rushed it.

I can forgive this, especially with the new look in the Legendary Edition. After all, the Mass Effect trilogy was nothing short of amazing! All the characters, planets, aliens, dialogue, plot lines...the list goes on. It's the kind of game that Star Trek could only hope to ever get!

That first picture is VILE 😭

I'm glad they replaced it. That naff Tali image was one of the big complaints about ME3 when it dropped.

Leaving a huge plot point like this up to a last-minute decision left me frothing mad back when this came out. Tali was my sweetheart, and they did her dirty. I still stand by my old impression even though it's somewhat better now after the patching, DLC and remake. ME3 is one of the greatest games out there. Except for the last 20 minutes of it and some minutes sprinkled in leading up to the endgame phase which is utter garbage and ruins the experience almost completely. I'm somewhat miffed they didn't include the ME3 multiplayer in the remake but I can see why they didn't.

The only character I named one of my cats after. RIP Tali, you were a good kitty

Bro we’ve known this for years. “Inside source that wants to stay anonymous” you just looked at Reddit

The more alien design shown in the video is frankly the best.

I dont care what people say, the white hairless one will always be the canon one for me.

I thought he did fine. The only possible mistake was letting the magic out by telling the story.

Javik days that Quarians were considered attractive, even in his cycle.

Your source is one who have read from freaking wiki, I knew this since I was 12.

No one cares what Tali looks like. It's her personality that makes her attractive, just like in real life.

I think people are missing the point of this. I think they're just shedding light on the fact that they WERE working on models and the picture we got was literally a last minute decision, not necessarily a cop-out. Just extra clarification on the story.