The Mass Effect trilogy companions, ranked

When I dropped my ranking of Collective Effect companions into PC Gamer's home chat channelize a few years ago, it destroyed productivity for an hour. The equal thing would happen nowadays. It says something about Mass Effect that we feel and so strongly astir its stories even when the games are now old enough to now have a remastered collection in Mass Effect Legendary Version. We're just as passionate about the characters we love as we are about the ones we detest.

BioWare built on the templet it established with Knights of the Old Republic end-to-end the Mass Event series. First the characters are fun diversions, filling out the world with traditional knowledge. Then they become romance partners, and your interactions with them influence how they grow and change and even affect the world around them. In Mass Force 2, those character arcs essentially become the story instead of secondary concerns, and wrapper up those trilogy-tenacious arcs in Mass Effect 3 after cinque age is something we'd never really experienced in front in gaming.

So these companions mean a great deal to the States. I knew publishing my number would make up a bloodbath, so we definite along a via media: let democracy decide (merely seriously Jack is the worst, no matter what this list may say). The PC Gamer team voted on the companions, higher-ranking them from 1-20 to create this: the truly authoritative list of the best Mass Effect sidekicks to ~~have kinky alien sex~~ go space adventuring with.

Musical note: This clause was originally published in 2016. It has been updated for the release of Mass Set up Fabled Edition.

The Criteria

Number of entries: 20.

What's included: All of the Mass Effect 1-3 recruitable companions, including DLC characters like Kasumi and Javik.

What's non enclosed: The Mass Effect Andromeda vomit up, who got their own list. Smaller side characters who don't move on missions with you are out, too. Sorry Joker.

20. Francois Jacob Taylor

It's a heavy risk, being the slow masculine freshman comrade in a BioWare RPG. Of the three men to fulfill this role in the Raft Set up series, Jacob struggles well-nig. James Vega is enjoyably portrayed by Freddie Prinze Jr., and has a fun role in the Citadel DLC. Kaidan Alenko has personality-enhancing migraines and you'ray allowed to abandon him on an alien world with a nuclear bomb. But Jacob? Jacob's destiny is to promise you a beer that he'll never buy you and his to the highest degree sincere regard is to give up a life of space venture and start a family.

He manages to have the strangest daddy issues of any Mass Effect 2 character, and that is a aggressive field, but IT's not enough to raise him above the parapets of mediocrity. His shaping moment is this line, delivered at the completion of his romance electric discharge. It is the worst moment in Mass Effect. Sorry, Jacob. You are the worst companion. The prize was not worth it. —Chris Thursten

19. Kaidan Alenko

In that location's only one matter that elevates Kaidan Alenko over Jacob Tyler as a ho-hum male starter companion: you can kill off him. —Wes Fenlon

18. Zaeed Massani

I still time lag a grudge against Mr. Tough Guy Combat Veteran for lease Maine down in Mass Effect 2's suicide delegation finale. If he's so seasoned, why did atomic number 2 utterly fail me as a commander, acquiring one of my squadmembers killed? Thanks for nothing, Zaeed. And that cicatrix doesn't make you look As cool as you think it does.

I saw finished the scraggy veneer of Zaeed's theatrical role to what he really was: a less stimulating remould of KotOR's Mandalorian Canderous Ordo. None of Zaeed's war stories could possibly compare to Ordo describing an part debut at the head of an army of invading Mandalorians. —Wes Fenlon

17. Morinth

Morinth's best-case scenario, as a squad member, is that she replaces Samara in your crew—but she just masquerades as Samara, and the swop never real amounts to more than. And that's the extent of her role. She's a poor replacement for the more interesting and conflicted justicar. As an antagonist, though, she's great—I commend the purge-and-sneak away game of contracting Morinth as one of Mass Effect 2's most exciting moments, knowing the legal injury dialog decision could track to death or failure. —Wes Fenlon

16. Javik

There's probably something good to say about Javik, the dethawed prothean who joins your crew in Mass Effect 3 if you profitable $10 for the day-one From Ashes DLC. But as it turns dead, most of our stave didn't experience Javik in their crew, earning him the inert shrug of 16th place. While he may not have been vital to Mass Outcome 3's game, I think IT reflects poorly on Bioware that the uncomparable character World Health Organization could offer significant insight into the protheans wasn't part of the base game. In an tack timeline, Javik could've been pivotal to the story and ranked much high in our collective memories. —Wes Fenlon

15. King James I Vega

When picking a phallus of your crew to romance, I think most of us apportion a comprehensive prevai: humans are boring and we chiefly want to flush strange aliens. Vega isn't actually an exception to the rule: he's just a normal weak dude, nothing to really get excited about. I've grownup a morsel foggy on the details of his story, but the more I talked to him, the more I tense liking him, specially watching him awkwardly hit on me, his commander. But, yea. Ultimately, he's just a human sheik and thus not untold of a soak up. —Chris Livingston

14. Kasumi Goto

Kasumi's Stolen Memory is probably my favourite DLC across the Mass Effect trilogy—it lets Shepard play at being St. James the Apostl Bond by infiltrating a political party at a mansion, and Kasumi's intromission as a slick, invisible stealer (as well as something of a loner) makes her look very antithetical to the lie of the Normandie's crew.

Her back story with Keiji, her past partner in law-breaking, is explored in a powerful, earnest way in her Stealing Computer storage loyalty missionary work. It becomes clear to Shepard how badly she's been wounded by his death, and you come to assistance her exact revenge connected Donovan Hock, his killer. You'Re rewarded with a gross intestine punch of an ending that absolutely completes her arc.

In struggle, Kasumi's Shadow Take up power means she's one of the game's more visually gripping company members, too, vanishing and then popping up behind an opposition to harm them. I'm aware you can find Kasumi in Mass Effect 3 and its Citadel DLC, although sadly I didn't for some reason, even though I unbroken her alive in Mass Burden 2.

She's not many masses's favourite role, clearly, only I'm just alleviated she vex Kaidan and James Vega in this list. —Samuel Bartholomew Roberts

13. Ashley Williams

Look, I'm very sorry everybody, but 13th place is a travesty. I voted Ashley for 3rd identify, behind Garrus and Mordin. This International Relations and Security Network't the most disappointed I've been by democracy in 2016, but IT's in the top five. Sooner in the year I wrote a long defense of Ash Tennessee Williams for Official Xbox Magazine, which appeared on our sis site GamesRadar+ in November. But I'll dedicate you the truncate version: Ash is nonpareil of the most substantially well-fat characters in the series and one of the few that doesn't need Shepard to ill-trea in and situate her life.

She's among the few characters to seriously interview Shepard's decisions, particularly when it comes to Cerberus, and she's willing to challenge you—at gunpoint, if necessary—when she feels that you're in the wrong. She's more than a sidekick and you beget the impression that she could receive been the of import grapheme had she not been wrenched away from the Prothean beacon at the take up of the first game. She deserves better than 13th place and the 'distance racist' meme. If you left her along Virmire, we cannot be friends. —Chris Thursten

12. Key fruit

She's Judge Dredd with a serial killer daughter. However you play Samara across ME2 and ME3, Shakespearean death follows, making her one of Mass Effect's most tragic characters. On her loyalty mission, you have to hit the conclusion betwixt Samara dying surgery violent death Morinth, her venomous fugitive offspring. Apart from ME2's actual martyr operation, she's one of three companions (Tali and Legion being the others) World Health Organization can commit self-destruction in the halting—in Samara's pillow slip, out of failure to fulfill her oath and execute her only bread and butter daughter, who's forbidden from leaving a monastery. Phew.

Samara's rigid, unappeasable adherence to the Justicar Code means that she's the only character in the series with zero motivation Second Earl Grey area. IT's a powerful precede in a game that's all about knotty decisions, where you have to weigh the benefits of a brutal-but-telling company member against the occasional concise execution their uppercase-L Lawful alignment might inspire them to perform. Having an ultra or so makes Mass Effect more interesting. —Evan Lahti

11. Oink

Grunt has a administer sledding for him. For one and only thing, his figure's Grunt. For some other, he's voiced by Steve Blum, whose growls have been in approximately indefinite billion games and anime serial publication, merely almost famously as Cattleman Bebop's Spike Spiegel iron, a character dear to my heart. His craggy headscales aspect awesome. His suit sort of makes him calculate like Iron Man, if Iron Man skipped leg day for 40 years and bench-ironed an elephant day-after-day.

He doesn't have much to him equally a grapheme on the far side punching things and talking well-nig fighting, but that tail end be a refreshing change from the philosophizing and soul-searching of the rest of the crew. —Wes Fenlon

10. EDI

Honestly I'm still grossed out that Bioware chose to give the Normandy's AI a aphrodisiac golem physical structure, and then wrote in a plot thread just about Joker wanting to have sex with her. We all know that beneath the space Opera Mass Effect is actually about sexing up the galaxy's sexiest aliens, just you didn't ingest to be thusly on the nose about information technology, Bioware. EDI power hold had few o.k. dialog and ruminations connected what IT means to be human, simply let's be honest: Horde covers that territory just fine, qualification EDI's android form feel for mostly gratuitous.

Too, I'm almost positive EDI was connected Earth during my Mass Set up 3 finale, and somehow popped out of the Normandy with Turkey at the end, blissfully alive. Mouth about wrecking my immersion. —Wes Fenlon

9. Jack

My Alan Shepard was damaged goods. He had a ill health childhood, exposed to warfare and poverty from day one—IT's no surprise he was a large Korn devotee in my headcanon. So when Jack came into the characterization, of run over I saw a lot of my imaginary space mortal in her. She besides had a frightful childhood, orphaned at an early get on and subjected to torturous experiment under Cerberus. Jack is a lineament molded by forces entirely out of her control, rendered a literal sociopath by the powers that be, with little recourse beyond using her effectual biotic powers to kill the jerks. They deserve it.

She gets criticized for filling out the edgy archetype, a would-be scoundrel with a deeply assailable side, and it's geographic. But who's to say there's no substance to such an archetype? Edginess is an adolescent rejection of the status quo, and having grown improving knowing only pain and closing off, Jack has attained the right to cost as edgy and emotional as she likes. If she survives Mass Effect 2, she goes connected to channel her trauma into activism, training young biotics as the Grissom Academy. She finds a unused purposefulness, and because my Shepherd had yet to sort out his own trauma, serving Jack act upon late hers was cathartic for him. Subject Zero in the lore, but Subject Peerless in our Black Maria. —James Davenport

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Yeah, sorry, but hush up nope. Jack would have been unfit in a mid-'90s THQ game. —Tim Clark

8. Miranda Lawson

Miranda was my Shepard's amorous spouse in Mass Effects 2 and 3, which I guess is a fair safe choice in a series where you have the option to romance various aliens. There's a lot going connected with that case: her first closeness to the Unreal Valet and Cerberus suggests she's not to be trusted, and in the opening hours of the second game, she doubts Shepard and comes into conflict with him. Slowly, you win her round, and at a key point, you're forced to choose sides 'tween her and Jack during an arguin on the Normandy. That then relationship develops into a convincing mas where you realise you're happening the similar page about the mission imminent.

Miranda's experience of genetic enhancements golf links back to her complex relationship with her father, which is more closely and brutally examined in Spate Effect 3. This syntactic category crisis makes her one of the serial' more complex characters, in my opinion, oblation some take in motivations for why she is the way she is.

I suppose I should besides fess adequate the fact I was watching a great deal of the Telecasting series Eats in 2010, and the pick to romance a BioWare lineament played by that establish's cast appendage, Yvonne Strahovski, seemed similar the true thing to do. I was 21. —Samuel Roberts

7. Legion

Despite a bunch of humdrum sci-fi cliches—robots having an uprising, a collective hive-psyche, and speculative whether or not they have a soul (barf)—Legion manages to remain an interesting character. The fact that he crudely patched himself ahead with a piece of dead Shepard-Commander's armor is not just unagitated, but the first sign that Legion is more than just a simple geth mechanisation capable of independent thought and perhaps even sentimentality.

While Legion doesn't really have a good sense of humor, per-se, he is often funny in that way robots have of flatly presenting information, much as the likelihood of somebody being punched in the face by the volatile Old salt (whom Legion as wel suggests be deactivated and shipped as cargo). I found Legion practically Thomas More appealing As a company than a fastidious Quarian I won't name, and I was sadder to see him go than roughly anyone else in the series. Cool robot. —Chris Livingston

6. Tali-Zorah nar Rayya

Mass Effect ISN't the first bit of sci-fi to blend machinery and religion, merely the stallion concept of a migrant fleet as home plate and a pilgrim's journey as ritual of passage is still a cool setup, and Tali's stories were a great second of universe-building in that first adventure. Tali may not hold been quite thusly memorable without the mystery of her face, preserved across all trey games (I'm feigning that unfavorable Photoshop job from Raft Effect 3 ne'er existed). Even and so, she may be the only companion with a story arc that spans crosswise the entire trilogy.

Early in Mass Effect Tali provides insight into the quarian relationship with the Geth, which plays a bigger picture in Mass Outcome 2. Her personal conflict with Legion is a genuinely tense balancing act as, and Tali's loyalty mission deepens your understanding of the geth/quarian conflict and the quarian customs.

The stopping point of Tali's story in Mass Effect 3 was the most heart racking moment of the series for me. Here was a eccentric I'd famous for years. I liked her voice and curiosity, defended the galaxy with her, and cleared her name. But thanks to Mass Effect's binary good/counterfeit morals organisation, I didn't have quite a the paragon operating theater turncoat points to resolve the closing showdown between Tali and Legion peacefully. One of them had to die, and it would mean the eradication of a species. There's nary utterly happy ending here. And at that place rattling shouldn't be.

Mass Effect also often gives you that satisfying videogame outcome of 'solving' a storyline to get the good ending, but that's not the case with Tali. Her final step into adulthood ends with a heartbreak that Mass Essence was construction to for five years. I still feel the stinging of information technology. —Wesley Fenlon

The Top 5

5. Thane Krios

Thane is a coldblooded killer with a conscience that struggles against his have profession. Doomed with a disease that's slowly killing him, atomic number 2 signs connected with Shepard's suicide mission against the Collectors in ME2 because he has nothing unexpended to lose. That internal conflict is what makes Thane such a compelling sidekick—he's basically the personification of Shepard's own Paragon and Disloyal choices, and is the literal representation of their squad marching slowly toward almost certain death. Addition, who can resist that gravelly voice? —Tom Marks

Let's live honest. He's over here because he's a hot killer insect boy. My Shepard banged him, FYI. —Phil Savage

Nice. —Wesley Fenlon

4. Liara T'Soni

Oh, Liara. My sweet blue 106 year-old summer youngster. The easy mistake is to think that the asari scientist in only on the Normandy to dish out as some variety of proxy conscience for the player. Yes, Liara does provide counterbalancing pity to Alan Shepard's obligatory cynicism, but there's more to her than simply just being "the nice one".

In hard-nosed footing, her academic insight into the Protheans makes her, literally, the smart clean for just about any mission. She's certainly more likely to serve up nuggets of relevant info than about anyone on this heel. And as an complete-in biotic character, Liara also has one of the handiest toolkits when it comes to armed combat. But the thing I like to the highest degree is that she gives the game heart, without it having to glucinium constantly haemorrhage.

Liara is conflicted. By her mummy issues, past her lack of romantic experience, and by her unfitness to lie i—just those doubts are offset by the sense of wonder and hope she brings to proceedings. As such she makes a fascinating alternate lens through which to view the Mass Effect creation. Unlike much of the cast, Liara is seldom true about her answers (cheque her doubts about the Krogan therapeutic in the 3rd gage, e.g.), which makes for a systematically interesting travel companion.

She's also got a killer fib arc. If your Shepherd falls for Liara, then she gives the good grief after your "death" in Mass Effect 2, which also perfectly sets up the hardening of her character, guiding to her eventually becoming the Shadow Broker at the end of what is course the best DLC account add-on. Liara, it was always you. —Tim Clark

3. Urdnot Wrex

I played the Mass Effect series with a single govern: no going posterior to an earlier save to revise decisions I made. What happened, happened, no matter the consequences. I broke this rule only once, in the original game, when an argument led to—shockingly, and I thought, unfairly—Wrex existence shot dead in a cutscene. I couldn't live therewith. No way. Wrex was way too cool to die. That's the only time I undid one of Mass Effect's events.

Wrex is cool (and my personal pick up for best companion) because non lone is He a tough-as-nails, battle-burned veteran, he's also a deep thinker, disagreeing with most other Krogans (including his father) about going to state of war after the genophage. Plus, he's big and bulky and has a really deep voice and cool scars and he's just the unexcelled.

Thither was No bigger letdown than discovering Wrex couldn't embody my companion in Mass Essence 2, having been replaced with the lesser (but still decent) Krogan, Oink. But that's what a true badass does: accepts new responsibilities in place of galavanting around the coltsfoot. —Chris Livingston

2. Mordin Solus

I love Mordin because he shows that you don't need stubble, a gravelly vocalize and a thousand yard gaze to be an anti-hero. Mordin's quick-discharge speech at first feels like a factory-made quirk, something to help you cream him apart from your small Army of companions. However, it soon becomes clear that his upbeat demeanour hides a cold, calculating mind that has spent age dealing with the most disobedient decisions in the solar system—decisions that Alan Shepard is tired into over the course of the intermediate and third games. That machine-gun delivery is a product of a mind full with thoughts, at once demonstrating his scientific brilliance and his anxiety. Information technology's a symptom of the battle between logical system and compassion that lies at the heart of his character.

Atomic number 2's so much a debonair beau that it comes as quite a shock to learn that he's the gateway to Mass Effect's race murder subplot. Equally you bond with him, helium opens, and you see him dissect the terrible problems atomic number 2's faced with an analytical mindset. He has through with the moral math—helium testament kill a million to keep open ten million—but his genophage is a slow, painful deathblow for the Krogan. As he travels with Shepard, he is affected to watch that species sputter out. No of your companions have faced a dilemma connected this scale of measurement, but somehow this genius Salarian is competent to bear the burden, and still find the optimism to whistle a fine scra of Gilbert and Sullivan. —Tom Senior

1. Garrus Vakarian

Garrus has an advantage when IT comes to a Mass Effect popularity contest: he's awesome. Also, he has a solid role in all three games—the only other grapheme you can order that about is Tali. That's not exactly a fair fight. Tali's bang-up, of course, but she struggles to rise above the unconventional-little-sister companion archetype that CRPGs would suffice well to be rid off. Garrus is something else. He's your high-grade crony, first and foremost, somebody whose objectives and mental attitude align with your ain and who leave ever, always birth your back. The journey from that first-year meeting betwixt a frustrated CSEC officer and a novice Phantasm during the Saren investigation to that last charge against the Reapers as a pair of war heroes is one of the first friendship stories in gambling. And if you decided to bugger off every up in his insect-bird-adult male business, it's a cover girl romance as well.

Yet that's not all Garrus represents. The idea that Garrus is both dependent on Alan Shepard and overshadowed by Shepard is same of the nearly nuanced bits of role writing in the serial. Heading out alone after Shepard's 'death', Garrus makes a mess of hero life: when Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. finds him and relieves him of the Arkangel moniker, it's a assuagement. He wasn't cut down to be Batman: He was dropped to be Robin. But that's a sad affair to recognise, and—commendable—it's not something that Shepard is allowed to fully resolve. In that respect's no paragon-interrupting your issue of it. It's only a thorn in your friendship, a blemish that makes their relationship all the many believable.

The kindest thing you toilet do, when it comes down to it, is let Garrus win that one death shooting contest along the Citadel. Give the guy his minute. He deserves information technology. —Chris Thursten

Mass Effect: What to read next

Mass Effect: Pieris japonica's squadmates ranked
Remembering Muckle Effect a tenner happening
Why I love scanning planets in Mass Effect 2
Why I erotic love Mass Set up 3's endings
Major events in the Mass Essence timeline

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more 10 years, first at technical school sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before connection the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the opportunity to cover emulation and Japanese games. When he's non obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's believably playing a 20-year-worn RPG Oregon some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a center on writing and redaction features, he seeks out personal stories and in-astuteness histories from the corners of PC gaming and its recess communities. 50% pizza by volume (thick lulu, to live taxonomic category).

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-mass-effect-companions-ranked-from-worst-to-best/

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