Friday, July 22, 2016

Out of the Box: Titan Vinyl's Mass Effect Mystery Minis

L-R: Wrex, Kaidan, Liara
A year after unboxing Titan's Dragon Age Mystery Minis,  I'm looking at some Titan minis from another Bioware franchise, Mass Effect.  The figures I'll be looking this time are my favourites from the original game: Liara, Wrex and Kaidan (although he's called "Kaiden" on the packaging).

Having learned from all the duplicates in my Game of Thrones blind box collection (all of which have now been sold, luckily), I decided to trade the element of surprise for the certainty of character and picked up these three pre-opened on eBay.

As with all Titan Vinyl mini figures, these three have simple bodies with three points of articulation (head and shoulders), and very detailed head sculpts.  While I'm not sure about the series as a whole, it was interesting to me that all three of these came with a unique accessory (in each case a gun), since only one of the four that I own from the Dragon Age line did.
Rear view. L-R: Kaidan, Wrex, Liara

Wrex is the most distinct of the three, with his massive Krogan head and his larger-than standard body.  Given the size of the head I was worried about his ability to stay upright, but as it turns out he's quite steady despite a shape that looks like it should be top heavy.
Wrex: Side view.
Wrex's accessory is a shotgun.
Kaidan is the figure that is most similar to the other Titan figures I own, but still stands out with his distinct face sculpt.
Kaidan's accessory is an assault rifle.
He seems to have a very similar (although possibly slimmer?) body sculpt to the Dragon Age Fenris figure, although his head sculpt makes him quite a bit taller. His skin colour is fairly close to Fenris' as well, which is a medium tone (darker than DA's Anders and Morrigan, lighter than Isabela).
Body comparison L-R: Fenris, Kaidan, Anders.
And finally we have everyone's favourite blue alien girlfriend, Liara.  Her head sculpt is nicely done and the shade of blue is not quite the shade I expected, but one that definitely suits the character.
Liara's accessory is a handgun.

Liara seems to have a very similar (although again perhaps slimmer?) body to Morrigan's - she definitely doesn't have Isabela's larger chest!
Body comparison L-R: Morrigan, Liara, Isabela

One note on the character options, I was a little surprised by line-up. While I was thrilled that Wrex and Kaidan were included considering how many players who picked up the series with ME2 or ME3 never met them (ME spoilers: both characters could die in ME1, and one set of stats I saw for ME2 indicated that only 17% of players had Kaidan alive and only 10% had Wrex). But by the same token I was surprised that fan favourites like Tali were left out.  But then again that leaves us someone for a second figure series, which I'm hoping we'll see.

The full line-up.

Overall, I have to say that I'm very pleased with these figures. While they won't be for everyone (the people who said the Dragon Age figures looked like trolls aren't going to be any happier with these ones), but if you are a fan of this kind of stylized figure, I think you'll enjoy them as well.  And I know I may try to pick a few more figures from the line (maybe Garrus, Jack, and Legion).

A parting glance.




8 comments:

  1. Hi JS,
    You have so many different figures, many that I have never heard of. But seeing as I am not a gamer, it's probably no surprise. :) These are quite unusal having heads as big as their bodies, leads me to believe the designer of them has a very huge imagination.
    Hugs,
    X

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    1. Yeah, before the Funko figures took off those giant heads definitely a style that's more common for bobble heads than for actual figures - I think it's a style that grows on you though. Or at least it certainly has for me! ;)

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  2. I think stylized can be interesting and I like the stylized style of these. The blue alien lady one reminds me a little of that character from Farscape, the Blue alien lady, a combination of her and the character from Fifth Element, the singer lady.

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    1. Heh, I've never watched Farscape so I googled for images and I can see the resemblance! And the 5th Element one too - I guess blue alien ladies are just a standard sci-fi trope at this point! ;)

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  3. These are real cool figures. I hope you are able to get all of them.

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  4. wish their heads were coffee mugs!!!

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