i still think liara and shiala should have been one character. imagine if liara's own mother betrayed her and gave her over to the thorian.... the drama!!
I had some thoughts on this YEARS ago (according to the timestamp on the post, it was like twelve years ago, dear god, I've been here forever and I'm dissolving to dust...), at least partially because of how improbable Liara comes across in her character development.
As I say in the linked post, Liara's youth is emphasized so heavily in the first game, and it just makes her trajectory so confused - she emphasizes in the first game that her youth is why her theory on the cycle of extinction is not given much credence (which, by the way, also means that she is championing a fringe theory that turns out to be right, so the equivalent to someone roughly considered a grad student has a theory that bucks the accepted theories is able to put together what no one else had - even with the later reveal of the asari government hiding the beacon, it's still something that the scientific community is said to discount, not just the government), yet two years later, she is a respected information broker (a complete change of career from archeologist between those two years), and then the third game features her as a government contact, while trying to hinge that more on her status as an information broker, rather than her as Benezia's daughter.
Plus you can throw in the Paragon Lost movie having the asari, Treeya, claim Liara as having been her mentor before becoming "obsessed" with the Reapers (since it's set shortly before ME3, so before the Reapers become public knowledge), again, despite Liara's youth being emphasized in the first game.
And, as I say in that post, Liara, circa ME1, is not really combat ready. She's an archeologist, and not even the Indiana Jones style, but the kind who just has maybe basic combat training, if that. Realistically, it's a valid question to ask why she joins the Normandy crew, rather than, say, settling in on the Citadel, under guard, particularly in the case of reasonable mistrust that the daughter of Matriarch Benezia is acting to assist her? At least in combining her with Shiala, she has combat training reasonable enough to make her a squad member.
At the time, I didn't even factor in the impact of the idea of Benezia betraying her own daughter by giving her to Saren to dispose of like that, but yeah, that would absolutely be a major source of angst and character conversations - while I tend to think that BioWare "cleans up" Liara's feelings about Benezia for the sake of not having those interfere with the romance, I think that there's A LOT about the use of Benezia as an enemy and Liara as a squadmate that could see further development.
agreed entirely! a combat background for liara is a huge reason why i think this would work. i never understood why a civilian scientist was brought on board and put into some pretty intense and regular combat scenarios. there's no reason why she couldn't be a disciple of her mother/commando AND prothean researcher. and honestly, the prothean expert part of her character has little impact on the game itself or her character going forward. like you said, it's left behind for the shadow broker role. of course, it comes back a bit with javik, but her knowledge of the protheans is still more like adding a bit of flavor rather than something that impacts the plot. it's most important in the first game, like when she helps shepard deduce that ilos is the place to go. that being said, there's a way to make it work if someone was determined to remove the prothean expert trait from our liara/shiala, should someone think it adds unnecessary complexity. it really wouldn't affect the plot much.
if we meet our liara on feros rather than therum, that bypasses some repetitive dialogue with liara. if you go to therum first to pick her up, her dialogue then and her dialogue after getting the cipher are pretty much the same, including her getting woozy and faint. same dialogue if you go check on her, too. having your first meld with liara be when you meet her because she has the cipher streamlines the process.
you also have a reason to mistrust her - not only is she benezia's daughter, she WAS working with benezia. her mother also gave her over to the thorian. it gives liara a reason to want to help shepard, and it gives the player a more difficult choice - to trust her or not. it enhances what was already there with her just being benezia's daughter. mass effect 1 being what it is, i don't know if it would have made her eventual encounter with benezia on noveria any more impactful. it was a scene that really fell flat. but we as fans can imagine what could have been, and the fan reimagining of a betrayed, yet confident and capable liara confronting her indoctrinated mother is quite interesting
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