Mass Effect quietly showed us Tali without her helmet years ago

Playing through Mass Effect, whether you romanced Tali or not, there’s no denying she sure was enigmatic. The helmet always gave her a sense of mystery, but many fans wondered what she really looked like.

Well, it turns out her face was shown years ago and we all missed it.

For more sci-fi adventures we can look forward to Star Wars Outlaws coming later this year

That’s because it was shown in a companion art book that showcased lots of designs from the game, including a concept piece of Tali without her helmet on.

The artwork appeared on a Reddit thread from over ten years ago, but it’s likely you’ve never seen Tali like this.

She is shown with light grey hair and eyes with light blue, possibly darker grey skin. She has markings on her forehead and under her eyes that look like vertical lines of darker grey, and her lips are a deep shade of purple.

However, if you follow the Mass Effect Reddit post through to IMGUR where the images are hosted, you’ll see she actually went through several versions before becoming the Tali we know.

One made her more unconventionally attractive, with a much more angular face and her hair seems more like waves of flesh, while another had her looking more like an alien drawn in the 1950s with a bald head and large oval eyes.

One Redditor said this of Tali’s appearance, “I would have found the Tali romance angle much more interesting if it had turned out their appearance was very strange and unattractive by normal human standards, especially as contrast to the Asari.”

Another user echoes this and prefers the use of imagination when it comes to Tali, “I think it is better for us to imagine our perfect version of her than see the vision of one person on her. Im glad the helmet never came off.”

It’s unlikely many of us pictured her in this way, but it’s interesting to think that each player probably saw her very differently.