I've been recently reading some stuff about how to create an alien species for a story I'm currently writing and came across
this link which has interesting information and links to other interesting sites. Some of the articles referenced over there that I've actually liked were the two following ones:
- The first one explicitely mentions Mass Effect, so I think it'd be interesting to link it here.
- The other one seems to consider different theories about aliens and if it's possible that they'd be similar to us.
I recently read The Mote in God's Eye and the alien species was without a doubt the best part of it. It was interesting, because the aliens shown there while being bipedal, had a really different mindset, culture and society compared to humanity in the book. Their sexuality is kept as a secret for a long while and when it's finally unveiled it has quite a long standing impact in their history. The author of the blog where the original article links sex (more how the species reproduces than in a more specific way) with a lot of social customs, which honestly makes a lot of sense too.
It's a shame videogames don't explore non-antropomorph alien species more. I get that for some stuff like early Star Wars and Star Trek it may be complicated to go all out due to the need to use costumes and other budget-related concerns. But videogames shouldn't have the same problem. An example that's given in one of those articles is that in a world with much higher gravity than ours, having 2 legs would be impractical.