Mass Effect Is Kind of a Utopia for the Chronically Ill

I had not yet received my double lung transplant when I first played Mass Effect, BioWare's sprawling space opera shooter, in 2007. I had not yet started taking pills to quiet my own immune system when Tali'Zorah nar Rayya first graced my screen. Back then, I didn't think twice about the Quarian engineer in the purple bio-suit, immunocompromised from a lifetime adrift in the stars, making her way through a galaxy teeming with alien bacteria and openly antagonistic to her continued health. Over a decade later, though, things have changed. I am, quite literally, a different person.