Where are the other nali?

When Unreal dropped on store shelves it was a different time. American society wasn't so highly sexualized, AIDS was tearing a hole through the alternative lifestyle community and burning it's way into mainstream sexuality too. Internet porn wasn't yet.

No way were they going to sexualize a four armed female alien, give her boobs you can see, and then make her a character that moves around. It still strikes me as surprising that the stained glass reliefs made it into the stock packages. Just look at the females that did get in: they look more like thin guys in drag than 'I am female, hear me roar' that you see in today's games.

We've become super-liberal and we judge things that way now but 15 years ago there were much more prurient norms.

A four-armed female who can't really speak is valuable to the Skaarj.



Not to make light of the topic. I wrote a whole darn page, hit 'post' and was kicked back to the main page. I am not typing it all again...it took too much time already. Maybe later.

gopostal said:

When Unreal dropped on store shelves it was a different time. American society wasn't so highly sexualized, AIDS was tearing a hole through the alternative lifestyle community and burning it's way into mainstream sexuality too. Internet porn wasn't yet.

No way were they going to sexualize a four armed female alien, give her boobs you can see, and then make her a character that moves around. It still strikes me as surprising that the stained glass reliefs made it into the stock packages. Just look at the females that did get in: they look more like thin guys in drag than 'I am female, hear me roar' that you see in today's games.

We've become super-liberal and we judge things that way now but 15 years ago there were much more prurient norms.

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I'm sorry but I have to disagree here. I spoke to many who downloaded porn back then, just because you or me didn't get exposed to it doesn't mean it wasn't out there back then. Just that it wasn't easy acessible and commercialized in the way it's these days and to be honest about all of today porn is all the same without any feel to it and most of it wonders me how anyone can like it.
To get back on the actual topic, it's not really true. Unreal was largery censored more as the developement went on. Before the final release the game has been made less scary etc and more family friendly. Earlier on Unreal used to have in its config also "nudity" true or false setting, meaning they probably had something more in the store. If you look at many of the old skins, like the old woman skin or few others, they are much more "sexualized" than anything else in the final game. The old darkangel skin is a "bit" erotic too, certainly incorporating ancient art styles to it.

I found NeoNite's post amusing, but yeah the Nali have lack of variety there, but its mostly due to time limits and everything on the game I imagine. Though the books describe the females not being that much different, the huge difference in Vandora an she's not a regular Nali, but a godess probably influenced by the prohetic visions of the nali prophet etcetera, meaning more based on the image of humans who would later come to the planet. That's as far as you can rationalize it I imagine.
But I think the Nali chicks got abducted by some other aliens(who wish to stay hidden) and it keeps happening every six years, unfortunately the player arrived just after this took place.. Stories say that a young tough bitten Nali rebel named Dukali Nukema has set on a mission to give those aliens hard time.

For what we know, maybe the Nalis have a hive-live society too. There is one queen per locality and she has a batch of children every once in a while. Vandora is modeled after one of these queens.

Or indeed, they were abducted for the Kralls. Skaarj don't care for booty, but the Kralls have genitals. Being auxiliaries to the Skaarj mean they are in the military, so the sausage fest might become problematic for them after a while...

The second option is more likely, the first is directly contradicted by backstories/books. There is at least one female nali i believe in the cave of the resistance in those books. In fact the other Nali are surprised why the female human, Zofia, is shy when taking off clothes to take a bath. Somewhere there is also explained that the Nali don't have that much appearance difference between genders anyway.
There's possibility that Skaarj themselves do have genitals, in fact they do, they just can't reproduce as far as we know, only the warlord most probably can with fertilizing the queen.
You are forgetting also that they are lizard like and such don't have genitals on the outside too. Kralls do fall into same cathegory too, see the oldest 97 krall skin or the 96 darkangel skin. There's even a hint of something like lizards have there. Krall's and Gargoyle's feet are bird like too(and of that dog like two legged creature).
But Krall seem to be in line with the usual female/male lizards except females don't seem to enter into military.

Also, while having lizard genitalia they certainly have breasts(like the queen) and nipples, making them in this similar to mammals. The Skaarj seem in the end like combination of insect/mammal/lizard biology.

As I told few people before, it's possible that Skaarj biological evolution was influenced by "something", most likely Jrath, which acording to unreal psx is AI of similar type like the "oracle" aka "guide" from the old official unreal story/and the books which gave the nali prophet the visions of future.
The Jrath and other "forces" might have influenced skaarj developement on their home planet greatly. Those AIs were made by a long dead civilization called Dranoel, who knows perhaps even the Drakk in Unreal 2 are partially their creations.

Ah yes, I forgot about the books. I should reread them, I liked what they did with the Unreal themes and imagery. Good points.

Can we count the books as being part of the official Unreal story?

gopostal said:

When Unreal dropped on store shelves it was a different time. American society wasn't so highly sexualized, AIDS was tearing a hole through the alternative lifestyle community and burning it's way into mainstream sexuality too. Internet porn wasn't yet.

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You mean this Unreal then, because the era described definitely wasn't 1998.

That said, Unreal was released while the same publisher was cranking out crappy Duke Nukem console games that deals with sexuality worse than the game before it. It wouldn't have a problem if Unreal had topless female Nali in distress. It doesn't have a problem with the nude Vandora mural either, and there wasn't a big stink over it, because the game was rated M and doesn't allow the theft of vehicles for running over pedestrians for money or setting marching bands on fire.

There's also the 'memory constraints' reason to consider. This was a 32mb PC market they were gunning to support for where the majority of 3d accelerators were still first generation. Time constraints also can apply, but this is all ignored for alleged sexism these days.

When Unreal dropped on store shelves it was a different time. American society wasn't so highly sexualized,

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This is a page of stats that all begin tracking in 2001 but it's easy to see that sliding back 3 years only reinforces the changes:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/162881/older-americans-moral-attitudes-changing.aspx
The last fifteen years have seen a tectonic shift in morality in America. Kids have sex earlier, more often, and with more partners. Hardcore porn titles are produced at rates that began to skyrocket with the new millennium. The oversexualized portrayal of women in print media is magnitudes more than in 1998. I can fill a page with more examples but you get the idea. Sexuality in 1998 was nothing like today.

AIDS was tearing a hole through the alternative lifestyle community and burning it's way into mainstream sexuality too.

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The state of aids in 1998:
http://data.unaids.org/publications/irc-pub06/epiupdate98_en.pdf
It's not a long read and worth the time. Here's the first paragraph:

By the end of 1998, according to new estimates from the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people living with HIV (the virus that causes AIDS) will have grown to 33.4 million, 10% more than just one year ago. The epidemic has not been overcome anywhere. Virtually every country in the world has seen new infections in 1998 and the epidemic is frankly out of control in many places

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and finally...

Internet porn wasn't yet.

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Here's a great little blurb that puts things in perspective:

Its rival research outfit, Net Ratings , tracks the number of visitors to porn Web sites. It says that in April 2001, there were 22.9 million unique visitors to porn sites. This says nothing about how long each visitor stayed or whether they spent a dime. In any event, the number of visitors is less than the number who visited news sites (41.1 million), finance sites (34.2 million) or greeting card sites (25.5 million). When was the last time you heard anyone talk about how greeting card sites dominate the Net?

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This is taken from a 2001 article: http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html
And this was in 2001. There were over 17 million websites in 2001 but a little more than 2 million in 1998. Most porn was hidden behind paywalls anyway. Oh and don't forget Congress was really involved then too:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act

Can you imagine any of that happening in today's world? That's how much things have changed since 1998. Oh and by many estimates porn makes up as much as 30% of *total* internet traffic now. YouPorn streams six times the bandwidth of Hulu ( http://zeenews.india.com/news/net-n...-data-transferred-across-internet_846638.html ).

OK, I'm done. I'm sorry for the mild hijack but it does go to show how naked female aliens would be thought of in 1998. It's easy to be jaded and forget how fast things have changed in a very short time.

You are also speaking only for the US and especially for the state you grew up in I guess.
I know a bit different world, but I was a shielded off and rather shy kid with over-protective parent. But in general, in our society nudity wasn't frowned upon, even in movies as long as it wasn't sexual. That's a very different approach in general. And tbh noone I know raised a brow for the "nudity" in Unreal as it's just a wall drawing and art. I've seen countless of naked art when I was a kid and sometimes got exposed to sexual stuff too. I think making a big deal of stylized art like the Vandora image is a bit too much. I know that the console versions of UT had the gothic female angel/devil textures censored with underwear on it, but that's for the console market and still think it's a bit too much. Yes porn was ripe in the 90s, especially in stores and such and on tv at night. I never really watched that and couldn't but I know kids who watched it and boasted about it to me. This was really in the 90s still. In fact europe has become less and less liberal instead. Everything is censored, manipulated.
In most states, especially netherlands, "normal" nudity is frowned upon even more and more (it's even illegal to be naked in changing rooms at pool, one is supposed to wash themselves with underwear on). (as long as it isn't the shitty crap they air on german etc tv at night nudity is really frowned upon and not shown, only in "drawings" to children at max) Of course such approach and tight living spaces lead to more secrets and to abuse behind closed doors happening ripe and ripe.
I could go on and on. It frightens and disgusts me how everything is watched and censored and how everyone cheats and is rich and I live in war-like conditions with little to no income and everyone takes a dump on me on top of that or tries to frame me and make me the one that the blame should go to, because my looks speak a lot about me apparently.. yet I am perhaps the least law violating "citizen" around here, and even giving money to the poor when myself have hardly anything, you never see those rich posh people give anything to them when they pass a begger in a bad situation. This is completely off topic of course but I'm just simply replying and expanding on those points.

This is where the game was meant to be a mystery for the player, theres a whole lot not explained, and probably won't, we do plenty of guessing. Skaarj/Krall/Nali are an entirely differrent life forms, the Nali being resident to Na Pali may have a DNA connection to the local Tarydium, being able to do some minor magical things. But not strong enough to fight off Skaarj. The DNA development is differrent yet some similarities to human life work out.

There's reason to believe the Nali aren't as innocent as they appear. Look to the Dark Arena for example...

It is clear Nalis have a violent history and are just pity-inspiring because they've been hit by a much more brutal civilization. Nalis have nice small villages in the mountains and the plains, but also huge warlike castles, arenas and temples to gods who seeom to be quite fearsome. Nalis were clearly living through their middle ages when the Skaarj came down, with all the war and blood it entails.

Leo(T.C.K.) said:

There is at least one female nali i believe in the cave of the resistance in those books. In fact the other Nali are surprised why the female human, Zofia, is shy when taking off clothes to take a bath. Somewhere there is also explained that the Nali don't have that much appearance difference between genders anyway.

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Bumping back this thread. I'm currently rereading the books to kill time and Leo's right: the book explicitely states that Nalis have no secondary sex characteristics. From what is said, they might not even have voice differences between genders. They live in human-families and seem to be mammals.

However how cannon the books are is anyone's guess since it describes stingers are firing non-exploding tarydium shells that blow up after a secondary impact and Nalis as having quite advanced tarydium-based technology when they're stuck in the middle ages with the game.

Regarding the Vandora picture, your guess is as good as mine, but if Nalis do have prophets with visions, I can see how one of them would describing the future coming of a "Nalioid creature with rounded appendages on her chests, hair on the head and pale skin", and then centuries later, Nalis having turn this into a weird goddess. I guess the guy didn't bring up the lack of a second pair of arms.

Yes exactly. The exploding tarydium however used to be a feature in the pre release versions of Unreal and acording to the old design docs. The books were written or even released before Unreal was released, multiple months in fact.

They were directly based on the official story as it was written back then. The prophet story was canon, just the levels featuring and mentioning the prophet got cut later. Though there's alusion of it in skytown church. There was once supposed to be a prophet's tomb in one of the sky islands you were going to visit.
EDIT: Volatile tarydium in form of barrels or waste is still in the game so I wouldn't say it contradicts the game that much anyway. You could explain it away as simply a diferent stinger type, for example.

The Skaarj ate all the females & children. Being a largely asexual species, when the Skaarj Queen needs to breed a Skaarj Berserker who has proven himself is converted into a Warlord so he may breed with the Queen, the concept of a normally 2 gender species was a foreign concept to them.

Naturally, after Na Pali was liberated, with no more females the Nali became a DOOMed species for no longer being able to reproduce.