Mass Effect’s story surrounding the Krogan and the Genophage was the one that moved me the most. The Krogan are a warrior race that had the Genophage, a chemical weapon/disease that renders the Krogans infertile, unleashed on them by the Salarian government. The Krogans have been suffering tremendously because of the Genophage and the Salarian government doesn’t want to help them, seeing them as violent thugs. Depending on your choices in the game, you can either help cure the Genophage or fake the cure to gain the support of the Salarian government, which can drastically affect the fate of the entire Krogan people.
The character I latched onto most relating to this story is arguably the main character of this side story: Urdnot Wrex. You initially find him in the first game as a mercenary who’s given up on his people and is mostly just helping you for the money. Eventually, as you get to know him, you learn about the Genophage and how it’s wreaked havoc on his people. Throughout the game, he goes through this arc where he’s starting to care more and more about the fate of his people until it all culminates in one scene of the game: you’re on a beach with the Salarian military and you’ve just found out that there might be a cure for the Genophage in the building you’re about to raid. Urdnot Wrex pushes to find it and the Salarian general refuses, saying that they “will not repeat the same mistake.” That’s when Wrex gets up in his face, points a finger at him and says, “We are not mistakes.” That scene serves as the catalyst for him to go back to his home planet in order to lead his people towards a better path than the one they’ve known for so long.
This story taught me that no matter what a group of people has said or done, NO ONE deserves to have their ability to reproduce taken away. Moreover, it taught me about institutional prejudice, how it often happens at the highest positions of power and how that prejudice trickles down towards the general population.