I'd go so far as to say that the material at the heart of the series — not the execution, mind you, or the specific plot elements, but the story in broad strokes and the universe (setting, characters, alien races, etc.) — is on par with that of the great sci-fi franchises, and I'm including "Star Wars," for which I have undying devotion. Obviously, the emotional impact of a video game doesn't touch that of a movie; my point is that "Mass Effect" starts with a pretty killer hand.
What follows is a list, in ascending order, of the best characters in the series. (I've excluded Shepard, partly because of the variability in the character depending on the player's choices and partly because it struck me as difficult to compare the protagonist and role characters with varying amounts of screen time.)
Note that spoilers may follow.
- Donnel Udina
- Early in the trilogy, Udina is interesting, if not especially likable or memorable, as the counterpoint to Anderson. If nothing else, it's useful for exposition purposes to have that archetypal politician, willing to do anything to get ahead, because he helps illuminate the relationships (and tensions) among the races and among specific characters. All that said, one of my greatest pet peeves in narrative art forms is when characters turn evil for no discernible reason. Udina had been established as calculating; there was no calculation, and no justification other than that it provided an action sequence, in his character's turn. He just became bad.
- Engineer Adams
- Bland as they come. I didn't understand why he came back in the third installment. And when he reminisced with Shepard about their adventures in the first game, I had to look him up because I didn't remember he existed.
- Admiral Hackett
- Sure, he's more a plot device than a character — a way of giving you instructions — but in the only moments where he's not totally bland, he's a dick.
- Kaidan Alenko
- I killed him off early, so I don't have much to say. His dialogue never engaged me much.
- Jacob Taylor
- I wanted to like you, Jacob. You were just so boring (and mostly useless in action sequences).
- Kelly Chambers
- She's a peppier Hackett.
- Zaeed Massani
- People on the Internet seem to love this guy, but I'm not sure why. There wasn't much nuance to the character.
- Diana Allers
- She didn't have much to offer (other than a dent in the reputation of journalists).
- Aria T'Loak
- It didn't totally come together, but there were the makings of something here, especially in her dealings with Patriarch, which was a clever conceit.
- Illusive Man
- Almost everything I wrote about Udina applies here, with the caveat that there is a (poor) explanation for his change. And I don't want to get into the trilogy's ending (that's been written about ad nauseum), but the fact that he is proved right makes little sense, both in terms of the narrative arc and in terms of the facts of the game's universe.
- Liara T'Soni
- She was my love interest in the first game but not in the others, and I didn't much regret that decision: her dialogue was dull, and the voice acting was poor. And not only was her change in personality in the second game out of nowhere, in the third game she was more or less the same character from the first. The asari — the species, as a concept — are more interesting.
- Miranda Lawson
- The "perfect woman" angle provided a solid back story, I thought, but the character and the interactions with her weren't especially dynamic.
- Grunt
- The premise of the character was more interesting than he was. Any interest I had in him was primarily due to my affinity for the krogan.
- James Vega
- After a strong opening, the third game takes a bit to reestablish its footing, so I initially had a distaste for Vega (who for some reason was the Hispanic version of a "Jersey Shore" character). His place in the plot also isn't totally consistent (conversations early on make it seem that he knows Shepard fairly well, yet later Shepard knows almost nothing about him). But he has more of the typical arc of growth you expect out of a film character than most of the others in this series.
- Steve Cortez
- Cortez wasn't the most exciting character, but he was likable, and the story of his husband was mostly well done. I would have commended BioWare for including a gay character without hitting you over the head about the inclusion of a gay character ... if not for the conversation you have with Cortez in Purgatory, when, if you don't want to pursue a relationship with him, Shepard chooses not to tactfully reveal he is straight but to launch into some macho posturing.
- Ashley Williams
- She's more or less unbearable early in the first game (there's no fresh take on the racism thing, and the conversations about her family aren't especially interesting), but she improves throughout the series. I may have put her higher if the plot line in which she doesn't trust Shepard didn't stretch out for so long in the third game.
- Samara
- Like Spock, she doesn't show much emotion, but it somehow makes her more interesting.
- Samantha Traynor
- The Kelly-to-Samantha upgrade is the best switch of characters in the series.
- Engineers Donnelly and Daniels
- Donnelly had some of the best lines in the trilogy. Daniels is more or less a noncharacter, just teeing things up for Donnelly to swing at, so I included them as a joint entity in this list.
- Jack
- I know she's taken some flak online, but I thought she was one of the best characters in "Mass Effect 2." She grows in a fairly realistic, if compressed, way, and her romance scenes are far more moving than the others'.
- Thane Krios
- The drell were an interesting addition in the series, and Thane was mostly great as the principled assassin. I couldn't stand the flashback sequences, but that was due to a combination of the way they were animated and the patter of the script. (I found the fragments ineffective and distracting.)
- Dr. Chakwas
- Her voice sounds like Helen Mirren's, and she is as lovely. I would have a glass of brandy with her anytime.
- Legion
- Anything technical in his dialogue ends up sounding like mumbo-jumbo, so there's a fair amount of suspension of disbelief required. But he far surpassed what I expected out of the character, and the explanation of the anatomy of the Geth was among the game's most interesting conversations.
- Tali'Zorah vas Neema/Normandy
- I couldn't stand her in the first game (her dialogue didn't interest me, and the Quarians didn't really either), so I wrote her off as a romance option in the second game. When I interacted with her more, though, I found her to be a charming character. And when I gave the Quarians a chance, they impressed me, too.
- Captain Anderson
- Keith David is the greatest.
- EDI
- Some of EDI's lines in the third game were among the best of the series.
- Mordin Solus
- His dialogue was always interesting, and the moral conundrum he faces was well handled. And the "Pirates of Penzance" nod was brilliant.
- Joker
- I loved every moment that Joker was on screen.
- Urdnot Wrex
- Wrex was quietly the funniest character of the trilogy.
- Garrus Vakarian
- I feel somewhat bad for liking him as much as I did because I think in some ways the character was playing off the "black best friend" trope. That said, he changes in realistic ways, his dialogue is typically above average, he lands a few solid jokes (including some suddenly self-aware lines about his "calibrations" in the third game), and the shooting cans scene on the Citadel was one of my favorites.
I also left out some characters, like Kai Leng, whose places in the plot seemed to outstrip the attention given to those characters. At the end of the series, all you're able to say about Kai Leng, really, is that he's good with a sword for some reason (even though he's in space and fighting people with guns — I'll buy a light saber, but c'mon).
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