in Mass Effect, Cerberus is an extremist organization focused upon the idea that humans are the superior race. they put their prejudices into action, spreading bigotry, attempting to enslave other races, working to maintain a 1,000-year-long act of genocide, etc.

as the series goes on, Cerberus becomes more and more overtly horrific and violent, luring humans and aliens alike to a place called Sanctuary, which they say is a safe haven for war refugees. everyone who arrives there finds labs rather than shelters. they’re experimented upon, either dying or being transformed into monsters. Cerberus describes this as a means to an end (they hope to learn information from their tests that they can use in their idea of the “war effort”)

in the Mass Effect: Citadel DLC, you can play a televised virtual reality game where your characters goes up against any enemy of your choosing in an arena for fun. you get e-mails from fans and critics, and one of them is titled “the wrong side of history” and in it a human writes:

I thought you had a good sense of what humanity needs, but I guess that just isn’t the case. I’m not a racist, but I think it’s pretty clear Cerberus has been singled out as the whipping boy for everyone in the galaxy. Seriously, they televise matches where people shoot them like dogs, but I bet it’ll be a cold day in hell when they let you shoot Council races or Alliance soldiers. That’s what you get when arena management answers to the turians, I guess.

essentially: “i’m not racist, but i think that other races have no right to be angry over systematic violence. how come no one criticizes the oppressed races? it’s because that wouldn’t be PC1!1!”

one of the main themes of the Mass Effect franchise is that of oppression and racism and horrors such things bring, and, yet, i have seen many “fans” of the series angrily complaining the game is “too diverse” in terms of human races (even though, if humans were to go to space with the whole world involved, there’d be more people of color than white people), sexuality, disability, etc. they mourn the fact that the series is built heavily upon parallels to real-life harmful stereotypes, hate crimes, eugenics, genocide, slavery, etc.

and are literally so ignorant that Bioware can put in an e-mail blatantly mocking those with that ideology and they won’t get it.

i’m telling you, it’s because marketing decided to use the white male version of Shepard as the face of the series. it tricked ignorant gamers into thinking “YEAH THIS IS THE GAME FOR ME”