New member with a question...

[cikrapt]

 Hello everyone,

After lurking around for a couple of months, I decided to come out of the shadows and join. Unfortunately, I am not a talented artist, nor a very skilled writer, so alas, I have little to offer save for a question that has been plaguing me ever since I started Mass Effect:

Just exactly what branch of the military is Shepard in? They

Comments

[cikrapt]

Ah, I see, although in terms of command structure it is separate from the Navy. I asked my friend and he said that Marines are definitely not the same as the Navy, so I guess it depends on how you define it. He did say that the Navy and Marines do do a lot of joint missions though.

[urban_homestead]

I was going to say that, I don't know anything about the U.S. Marines, but in the U.K. both the Marines and the Navy are part of the broader Naval Service. Perhaps in the Mass Effect future, we're all British! ;)

But anyway, people can be tasked to services other than their own. In my Army unit we had a couple of Air Force personnel. So there's no reason to believe Shepard, Ashley and Kaiden are all necessarily in the same service anyway. (Until I read your post, I assumed Ashley was Army from the kind of work she was doing when she was picked up, as she was not tasked to the Normandy initially.)

[sinvraal]

Welcome! We don't bite, and we don't demand offerings in order to participate. ;)

miss_yt's got the right of it, as I understood the Alliance structure from the Codex. The only distinction is that the Marines are the ground teams that actually put on armor and go out to fight in the field, whereas the Navy side (of which Joker is a part) is primarily concerned with ship operations.

[pats_quinade]

Ditto that. As I understand it, the Marines use separate names for low-level enlisted personnel to differentiate their grunts from the Navy grunts, but when you get to officers, I think it's all exclusively Navy.

Shepard is, again going from memory, a former marine who rose through the ranks and has since become an officer (which makes Shepard Navy for purposes of address, although you can bet that Shepard still gets to sit at the Marines-only table at the military bars).

[sinvraal]

Military culture being what it is, I always image the various Navy "jobs" being a little cliquish.

Hey, is it possible that someone in the house of ideas would/could publish a list of the letter designations the Alliance uses (or at the very least, the ones for the characters we know and love)? Either in an in-game codex, or as some kind of web supplement?

We know Shepard is an N (special ops) and Ashley a B (infantry I think?), but what about biotics, engineers or flight personnel?

Those of us who are fanfic writers and all-around worldbuilding nerds would love to know. The letter designation and skill level thing was a really neat idea, then for some reason it was never expanded upon.

[pats_quinade]

I would have sworn that was on this page on the Mass Effect wiki, but evidently not! I'll poke around and see if it's something we have, or if your guess is as good as ours. It's certainly not spoiler info. :)

[cikrapt]

Ah, I see. My friend's dad is a retired Marine, so he was always going on about the different branches of the military, which got me confused when I played Mass Effect. Thanks for clearing it up! :)

[padawanmage]

There's more to offer in this group than just art and fics...=)