Mass Effect Trilogy - Companions Ranked

[Music] what's going on everybody mortum here this time bringing you all of the mass effect trilogy companions ranked so to kick this off i recently reviewed all three games in the mass effect trilogy via the legendary edition and after the first game i realized that there was too many companions to really talk about them in the reviews themselves so i decided to make this video talking about all the companions and how i felt about them while also ranking them that said with the tiniest bit of awareness i understand that this is a trilogy that has a lot of very impeccably written companions and thus people have a lot of strong opinions about their favorites etc so as i've been working towards this video i've been anticipating some fun discussions in the comments that said the bottom of my list and the top of my list i'm pretty attached to and feel strongly about myself there are a few in the middle that you catch me on one day or another i might move some around but the top and the bottom i'm pretty concrete about and then moving on from there depending on how you count all of the companions you might come up with different numbers there are temporary ones that are only with you for a little while obviously we're not going to be talking about those and then one of the companions can alternate with another companion that looks the same so again depending on how you want to count you might come up with some different numbers usually somewhere between 19 and 22. i'm going with the 19 version myself cutting out the temporary companions and combining the alternative companion if you will into one list but all of that said let's actually kick this thing off and start talking about the companions themselves so first up we have kaden at the very bottom of the list and the number 19 spot if you watch the reviews at all i didn't really care for kaden much i felt like his story in general was kind of generic now it's my understanding that he served with shepard for a decent amount of times before the game actually kicks off however in the first game unless you're playing female chef he just really doesn't get a lot of dialogue at all and what little you do get about him is that he is a biotic who has the older version of the implants which help him use those biotic powers but that was about all i got out of him now obviously he does have more of a backstory than that he trained under a tyrian commander that absolutely hated humans actually or disliked them at the very least and this leads to a pretty rough situation and again he has a backstory but his in-game representation if you're just playing male shep is really boring and i just didn't like the guy then in mass effect 3 if you chose to keep him alive in mass effect 1 he questioned your intentions all the time because you were working with cerberus and mass effect 2 which is fair but as the character i already didn't like i found it incredibly annoying and then there's like an oh we're pals again scene and it's like i never liked you to begin with to be honest so it just kind of felt off for me and as such cadence at the bottom of the list was not a fan in our number 18 spot through no fault of his own actually is james vega now james vega is a companion that is with you in mass effect 3 and as such he really doesn't get a lot of characterization in comparison to all of the other companions for the most part and on top of the fact that as i mentioned in some of the reviews he's another human companion which in the world of mass effect with all these different species some of which are companions the human companions feel a little boring as a result of all that and again he came in super late with the trilogy so he just doesn't feel as compelling as a lot of the other companions do but overall he does actually have a pretty decent backstory i actually liked it a lot but your interactions with him in the games kind of revolves around helping him decide whether or not to join up with the n7 training and overall he was a cool character but again he just didn't get enough screen time to really rank farther up on this list and then in our number 17 spot we have zaid masani we first meet him in mass effect 2 and he is a respected bounty hunter and soldier he's a pretty cool guy in the sort of like rough and tumble bounty hunter type way but he's actually added into the game via a dlc and just like kasumi as a result they both kind of don't get a lot of characterization and you don't have as many conversations with him but well i didn't necessarily dislike zaid it's just that he's kind of a standard archetype if you will for a bounty hunter he's sort of a gruff foul-mouthed kind of guy he has questionable morals it's like i don't know i've met this guy in a hundred different games but nonetheless he's kind of cool in that chummy soldier sort of way once you've hung around him for a while and so who gets number 17. now in the number 16 spot we have javik and this is the prothean companion from mass effect 3 also added with a dlc from the ashes but javik's a pretty interesting character that kind of like james because he's new to the series and mass effect 3 doesn't obviously get a lot of screen time as a result but his backstory is that he's a prothean he was alive during the times that the reapers in the previous cycle were destroying the protheans he was born into war the invasion had already begun when he was born it's all he ever knew and through his story you find out that for him the time was instantaneous he went into a stasis pod and then the next moment you're waking him up so he has a lot of strong opinions about reapers and obviously gives us more information about the protheans he tells us all about their kind of interesting sensory way of dealing with technology and how they can absorb experience and memories through just touching other organic things and it was really cool and interesting to see a prothean be brought into the series again i just wish there had been more time with him which not to say that narratively it would have made sense but it's hard to care much about the character that late into the game again already with all of the other cool companions but nonetheless a cool character who had some interesting insights to give us about the background of the protheans that brings us to number 15 and that is jacob jacob we first meet in mass effect 2 and he is working for cerberus now he's ex-alliance and he's still kind of on the fence about cerberus now i like jacob mostly because he's just a cool guy and i actually kind of like his attitude towards cerberus like he's not completely sold on them he's just working for them after some disillusionment with the alliance military and once he realizes what they are and what they're all about he leaves them and we see that play out in mass effect 3. now interestingly enough if you are femshep and you have romanced him in mass effect 2 he winds up leaving you in mass effect 3 if he's still alive as he sort of begins another relationship with a cerberus scientist or ex-cerbera scientist so kind of a funny way to go there now in the number 14 spot we have ashley ashley is an interesting character especially if she makes it all the way through to the third game now ashley has a pretty interesting backstory as well her grandfather led one of the only human defeats in the galactic community if you will with the first contact war so she's got a bit of a chip on her shoulder about that in the first game she's incredibly distrustful of aliens to the point of kind of being racist about it and in mass effect 1 that's most of her personality and of course she can be romanced if you're male chef she also talks a lot about how the other races will abandon the humans given the chance and i've seen a lot of people as i reviewed the game kind of say well she's proven right and that's what happens in mass effect 3 but i would disagree with that actually because the reason the other aliens don't help you in mass effect 3 is because their planets are also being bombarded and the entire point of the plot of mass effect 3 is giving those guys some relief and help so they can then send their fleets to help you which i simply don't agree with the characterization of people saying that she's proven correct i just disagree with that entirely what i will tell you is that she gets a lot better if you go so if she makes it out of the first game and into the third title you kind of get to see her grow up she has been away from shepherd for a while she's only briefly in mass effect 2 if she lived in mass effect 1 and by the time mass effect 3 rolls around she's seen some promotions and just kind of done a lot of growth as a person she winds up becoming a specter herself obviously kind of in the same way caden does for the most part just kind of like the opposite end of that if you will since they kind of alternate depending on which one lived and by the time again mass effect 3 rolls around it kind of feels like she let go of some of her more deep rooted beliefs about other space races if you will and as a result she becomes a lot more bearable but she is still kind of low on the list for me in that regard and that brings us to number 13 and that is kasumi kasumi is another companion from mass effect 2. she is a thief kind of anti-social type and she has a pretty cool loyalty mission in mass effect 2 actually where you kind of help her with like this little heist thing and it's a lot of fun now her loyalty mission kind of revolves around her chasing down the gray box as it's called of her ex-lover who has passed away which is why it's an x but she's kind of trying to honor his memory and just kind of remember him and retrieve his property basically which held some important information but she has an interesting personality she's kind of quirky again anti-social she likes to stealth around everywhere and just kind of pop in on people's conversations and on top of that in mass effect 2 she was actually one of my favorite people to have in my squad because she's very effective combat wise because she'll do this shadow strike thing that her class gets which was very effective on insanity for me so she wound up being in my party quite a lot she has some cool moments she's kind of an interesting mysterious figure but like a lot of the other kind of lesser companions if you will she doesn't get a ton of time and story development in comparison to a lot of them now for number 12 on our list we have edie edie starts off as the voice of the ship in mass effect 2 and in the third game the ships ai that has kind of been working for you already becomes an actual robot if you will that's capable of going with you but she is still kind of the ship's ai i liked edie a lot just because it was really funny to see her and joker kind of have all these weird scenes where they're kind of in a relationship and she makes a lot of like really creepy jokes about just like typical ai stuff and she made me laugh quite a bit and she gets a decent amount of story actually there are some missions she's required to come in with you and then her interactions with joker who's always a little kind of awkward in and of itself it was just a lot of fun for me to watch and i had a lot of good laughs as a result of edie being around and kind of making these jokes and as her character develops you can kind of help guide her down a path in terms of the lesson she's learning from humans and kind of mold her personality a little bit and overall it was kind of a cool concept for a companion that for me landed pretty well and that brings us to number 11 and that is legion kind of our other robotic companion legion is the geth companion and he's pretty cool so the geth start out as the kind of main antagonist of mass effect 1 that you fight against obviously they're not the literal main antagonist but you fight them a lot so in mass effect 2 they kind of give you legion as a way of kind of fleshing that out a little bit and kind of explaining that there are fractures even among the geth in their way of thinking as the geth are the sentient ai creation of the quarians and as such the geth have all this backstory and lore and legion acts as your geth delegate if you will he kind of clues you in on all this stuff that you might not have known because again they were just kind of presented as an antagonist in the first game and as a result of legions missions and mass effect 3 you kind of get a real sense that the geth just want to be able to live in peace if that makes sense they gained sentience were immediately assaulted by the quarians for it defended themselves and even then didn't want to wipe out the quarry and they were just kind of getting to grips with their existence basically and there's a lot there to sympathize with directly because of legion and all of the interactions they gave him and despite him actually not managing to get that much screen time you get him basically towards the end of mass effect 2 and then a lot of his development is in mass effect 3 where he can quite possibly not live if you allow him to give the geth full sentience if you will and the ability to act as individuals rather than a collective and it was a storyline that just resonated with me so he's actually pretty high up on the list but that brings us to number 10 and that is grunt grunt is a tank bred krogan the krogan are a really cool race that due to some genetic engineering have been unable to properly reproduce basically only like i believe the statistic was one out of a thousand births actually makes it and this is the result of the genophage produced by the solarian specifically to curb the krogan and grunt came about as a result of this in a way so he was genetically engineered by a krogan scientist to make like the perfect krogan not so much to cure the genophage but to rather exist in spite of it and as such grunt is considered like biologically speaking the perfect krogan however he was bred in a tank he was a full-grown krogan as soon as you meet him so you can kind of help him also come to grips with his existence in a similar vein to legion actually in that way and you can kind of just help him figure out who he is and that's a lot of the story that goes in to hanging out with grunt and like basically all of the companions if he lives to see mass effect 3 you can again kind of help him through this and just become the best krogan he can be for lack of a better term and while he doesn't get a ton of character development in that way what they do have again just kind of resonated with me and i liked it a lot and that brings us to number nine on our list and that is miranda so miranda is an interesting case she's one of the humans that i actually managed to like quite a bit which surprised even me because i wasn't expecting to like her very much when i first encountered her in mass effect 2 she kind of came across as just really annoying however you learn from her as the story goes on that she was actually also genetically engineered by her father who controlled her basically her entire life until she managed to break away and all of her loyalty missions and stuff in game kind of revolves around trying to protect her sister which is essentially her twin who was also controlled a great deal by their father and i suppose what i liked about miranda was that while she comes across as haughty and superior in a lot of ways if you get underneath all of that she's genuinely a good person trying to do the right thing in rather extraordinary circumstances or at least that was my read of it and how she interacted with shepard on my run-throughs but on the flip side of that i could also see someone just being like this person is the worst and never wanting to deal with her could go either way but i liked her characterization and especially the way she kept trying to stick up for her sibling when her sibling couldn't stick up for herself and that brings us to number eight samara slash morinth so depending on the choices you make you might end up with samara or morinth samara is an asari justicar which is like a sort of a sorry monk that is someone very dedicated to a code and if they see anybody break this code in front of them they will basically just kill them which is why a lot of them typically don't leave asari space as to avoid incidents as samara herself puts it if your code forces you to kill someone finding out they were actually an amazing father doesn't really help you feel better about it as their code is incredibly strict but she's very powerful as a result now her thing is that she has three daughters all of which are what are known as arda yakshi which are essentially asari whose mating kills people so asari mate with any species via sort of mental melding which allows them to then reproduce another asari with some of the traits of whatever the other species was that they mated with however the ardat yakshi just straight up kill their partner every single time in fact they can't even have kids from this they just kill their mate and absorb their power and they become a bit of a nightmare and as such the asari government tries to keep this hush hush and any discovered ardayakshi are basically told by they're going to kill you or you can live your life in seclusion take your pick samara has had three daughters all of which who are yakshi and as a result one of them morinth decided not to accept this fate and run off and do her own thing and basically be what she is in ardayakshi and go around killing and gaining power this way as apparently the process can be rather addicting now what i like about the samara side of this stuff is that if you go through with it and kill morinth samara actually tells you how very proud she is of morin because while her other daughters chose to live in seclusion and everything which is probably the right moral decision morinth while inarguably a bad person and needing to die as samara even acknowledges was still the only one of her daughters who chose to brazenly be herself at the cost of her life and in that way samara was proud of her and i thought that was a really cool thing but samara is a complicated character like that now on the flip side of that you have morinth warrant is the daughter who looks exactly like samara and during their confrontation via the loyalty mission you can choose to kill samara instead and take morinth with you morinth is kind of her complete opposite personality wise and you can actually even seduce her but if you've been paying attention at all this will kill you so it's very possible to get shepherd killed by mating with morinth if you chose to go that route which i think is hilarious that they let you do that by the way but these two characters along with giving you just all of this asari lore and just kind of having complicated thoughts about complicated things really is why i rank them so highly i enjoyed them a lot but that brings us to number seven on our list and that is thane creos thane is a drell drill are very rare they were almost wiped out they were saved by the hanar which are the weird jellyfish race fane was raised to become an assassin and what i like about thane so much is that a lot of his character development revolves around his own complicated feelings about being a father as he lived his life being an assassin which meant he was away often and he's not exactly proud of what he is and what he does and when his wife passed away leaving his son alone he kind of decided the best thing to do would be to just bail and leave his son to be raised by someone who isn't you know a cold-blooded murderer but drill also have the unique thing of having a photographic memory so he quite literally remembers every wrong thing he's ever done and it haunts him a great deal to add further complication to that pain is also dying he has a disease which is slowly killing him and in mass effect 3 if he's still alive that disease actually does just that he succumbs to it finally and passes away leaving whatever relationship is left with his son which is the crux of his loyalty mission in mass effect 2 and i got to tell you as a father i'm a sucker for any story involving this kind of thing i fully admit that and as a result thane's story to me was deeply moving especially if you're there for the last moments of his life which really got to me honestly but that brings us to number six on our list and it is actually liara another asari companion now i mentioned in my mass effect 1 video that i found her a little boring and i stand by that in mass effect 1 she's a little boring she's kind of this young ancient history researcher and it's just a very kind of awkward and somewhat naive character and she just didn't have a lot going on she has a bit of a touching moment with her mother in one of the missions so it's not like it was all bad but overall i wasn't wild about it now this all changes starting in mass effect 2 because in mass effect 2 she becomes the shadow broker as she has spent the years since your disappearance from mass effect 1 to mass effect 2 it's been a couple years and in that time she becomes an information broker and then through your help via a dlc in mass effect 2 she becomes the shadow broker and she's kind of grown up and become much more cynical as a result and if you pursue a romance with her you kind of really get the feel of this and then by the time mass effect 3 rolls around which she becomes another full-fledged companion and she winds up being a sort of mix of those two things on one hand she's kind of cold and calculated when she needs to be in an effort to save as many lives as possible and kind of do the right thing in her role as a shadow broker but also in some ways there's still this almost wistfulness about her in a way that kind of captures that naivety if you will but in many ways she grows up and becomes more aware of what the world really is as the games go on so while i wasn't impressed with her in mass effect 1 i really liked where they took her story but that brings us to number five and it is none other than morden the salarian scientist also known as the creator of the genophage which is what is crippling the krogan morton is such an incredible character because on one hand he thinks what he had to do to the krogan is what he had to do after the solarians lifted them up to fight a war they basically began rebelling and trying to kill everyone and anything and they very likely could have taken over the galaxy and who knows what else so as a result the genophage was created by morden and then spread to curb their population however throughout the game and his loyalty missions of mass effect 2 and mass effect 3 he can question whether or not that was the right thing or he can feel regrets about it if anything and depending on you know how you play things out and if he lives through the suicide mission of mass effect 2 you can get what i think is his best ending and this is my personal opinion of course but the ending where he dies curing the genophage he goes up the shroud tower to make sure that the cure is delivered properly knowing full well that it'll be what kills him and that with his last act he kind of undid this kind of unimaginable cruelty that was dealt to the krogan so if that story wasn't in and of itself really deep it also helps that morton has a really great personality he talks very quick solarians live only like 40 years so they're very quick about basically everything they do and he also has a couple of songs that he can sing which are absolutely hilarious and i'm so glad they put that in there it makes me chuckle every time as i'm sure it did a lot of people but number four on our list is the psychotic biotic herself jack now jack was my main romance if you will so i ran through each game a few times but jack was the character i was like okay this is the character i'm romancing on my main playthrough if that makes sense because if you've watched this channel for any length of time you might be aware jack is kind of my type beyond that she's also in my opinion the coolest human companion hands down so you start by finding her in a prison where she is set free and then escapes almost immediately in a fit of biotic rage but you eventually manage to recruit her to your team but she hates cerberus because cerberus performed a bunch of experiments on her and made her an incredibly powerful biotic which is like psychic powers and as you talk to her more and more you get the sense that this is just a tragically abused person who has thrown up a very caustic personality as a result you can if she of course lives like all the other companions kind of help her out with that and by the time mass effect 3 rolls around she's found her place in the world by teaching other biotic people who need training how to be better and as she states herself she would defend those kids with her life if only to prevent what was done to her being done to other biotics and it felt like a very appropriate way for her character to go so i liked that a lot and again she was basically the only human companion that i was like this character is awesome especially compared to all of the other alien races we're talking about but that brings us to number three and it is rex the main krogan companion who we meet all the way back in mass effect 1. i really love the characterization of rex because he's a krogan through and through but he's smart enough to know when not to act like a krogan if that makes sense so while other krogan have taken the genophage and just accepted it as a death sentence and do mercenary work etc rex is the only krogan you really run into asking why no one's trying to do anything about it if you talk to him in mass effect 1 he's like do you see any krogan scientists around everyone's just resigned themselves to this and he feels very differently about it and as a result throughout the series again if he lives you see him take up the mantle of krogan leadership he becomes like their main clan leader and he decides he's going to do things differently which in combination with morden's loyalty missions and everything they kind of entangle themselves pretty deeply together the version that i liked the most is where rex takes over if you will for the krogan and ushers in krogan that are less hellbent on war when it doesn't make sense for them and as they put it it has only ever brought the misery and it's time to do something else in combination with morden's sacrifice with his line it was just really deep but i like the characterization of rex he's very clearly trying to elevate his entire race as he puts it whether they like it or not but all in all i would say probably the plot just around the genophage i think was so well done it had a lot of really incredible moments but that said that's number three on the list so for number two on the list we have tally zora tally is a quarian who we also meet all the way back in mass effect 1 which means she gets a huge line of dialogue and questing but the quarians are a really interesting race they of course made the geth cintian ai which sort of pushed them off their home planet and onto the migrant fleet a massive fleet of ships living this way has forced the quarians to wear biosuits which protect them from having their own fragile immune systems basically which gets them sick all the time so tally can kind of clue you in on all of this but more than that she's a fantastic character she has a great personality and she starts mass effect 1 as kind of being this excited and again somewhat naive quarian just excited to see the world as she is out on her pilgrimage which is a sort of coming of age for quarians and you can help her do just that be successful in her pilgrimage and bring the other quarians back something of value which completes her pilgrimage and then as the games progress she eventually becomes an admiral you can help her defend her place among the quarians in mass effect 2 or potentially even get exiled and you're with her in some really touching moments where for instance she finds out her father passes away or has passed away and then depending on your choices with legion as well it's possible to use tally and legion to reconcile the geth and the quarians and make things better for all of them make peace where there was nothing but hatred after a point and that's not even to mention the fact that you can actually romance tally as well which is also very touching and tally is just an impeccably written character she has a great character development arc where you see her start as this kind of naive engineer who becomes a full-blown admiral doing what's best for her people and it's really no surprise that she's a fan favorite romance but that naturally brings us to our number one spot and that is none other than garrus vacarion and i really like garrus because something about a grizzled space cop just really hits this setting perfectly like he could have been the main character without any exaggeration he is really great so in the first game he is working for c sec the sort of space cops on the citadel however he's a little frustrated with their approach so he joins your team to help more and then in mass effect 2 you catch him being a vigilante again kind of disillusioned with c sec and then in the third game after all your encounters with the reapers he's a sort of military advisor on the turian capital of palaven giving what little he does know about the reapers and putting it to use and on top of that he can become really good friends with shepard there's a lot of just fantastic scenes between them you can take them out for drinks and like this awkward wingman thing and then there's a sort of friendly competition where you guys decide who's the best shot at the end of one game and overall it was just really well done in a sort of were best bros kind of way now he is also romanceable if that's your thing if you're finnship but like a lot of the more interesting companions he tells you more about his particular race the turians and their sort of military meritocracy that they live by so he's just got all this really interesting stuff going on that again i think just lands perfectly in the setting that was built and by the end of the trilogy i was just like we're best bros garrus but beyond all that guys that is going to wrap it up and that is our rankings for the mass effect companions broadly speaking regardless of my rankings or anyone else's really i think the writing for the characters and their storylines is really the best of what mass effect has to offer as i've done these reviews and a couple of story thought kind of videos if you will what stood out to me about the mass effect trilogy was the character writing and development and the world building itself so honestly it has been a joy to play through this game and kind of get to know these characters and see all the ins and outs and you know in some cases just whether or not they even live to see the rest of the games but there's a lot here to love so this is kind of a ranking thing where i could see rankings vastly different from mine making perfect sense for somebody else so with all of that said guys i really hope you enjoyed the video i had a lot of fun making it i had a lot of fun playing these games and now i turn it over to you to leave me with the i'm sure complete agreement of my own rankings in the comment section below i'm sure absolutely no one will disagree with me in any fashion as my rankings were amazing on the off chance you decide to tell me how my rankings are all wrong and it's actually this particular way don't forget to like and comment and subscribe while you're at it but regardless truly just thank you so much for watching especially if you've been watching all my mass effect reviews on this subject well i do plan on playing andromeda for the trilogy it's safe to say we're leaving it here for a while until mass effect 4 gets released whenever that happens to be if it actually winds up finishing development we shall see thank you again i truly do appreciate you watching may you wander in wisdom and have an amazing day [Music]

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 16,087

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, mass effect companions ranked, mass effect companions, mass effect 1, mass effect 2, mass effect 3, mass effect legendary edition, mass effect review, mass effect legendary edition review, mass effect best companions

Id: IJRu0duvRqk

Length: 30min 45sec (1845 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022