So I never really went through all the characters and said what I think of them so I thought I would do that
lots of thoughts and some analysis (and some i think spoiler-free comparisons to characters from Dragon Age, Stormlight Archive, and The Force Awakens) after the cut
Jacob: Jacob is everything Shepard tries to be. He supports humanity but not at the expense of alien life, he has an innate understanding of the Right Thing to Do, he can command, he can lead... He’s also fantastically boring. I mean, I think his interactions with Shepard are fascinating because of how much Janet must look up to Jacob, who is everything she needs to be and he does it completely effortlessly, but he looks up to her so much and doesn’t notice at all how much she wants and relies on his confidence but like 1) that’s all really fanfic material and 2) Shepard cannot help Jacob. Jacob is just so perfect and amazing and beautiful that Shepard is only above him bc she has more experience but there’s nothing really he can learn from her. There’s no room for growth in Jacob’s character. Since the game cannot go into Shepard’s thoughts and feelings, the whole amazing relationship they share is completely passed over. Jacob and Shepard share an amazing relationship shared by no other character pair in any Bioware game I’ve played, but the game cannot investigate that relationship because it’s the wrong way ‘round, and so Jacob is just left seeming flat and boring, and it’s fantastically disappointing.
Miranda: Man, the Vivienne comparisons just got more and more apparent as the game went on. She doesn’t turn down an opportunity for an insult, and her ideas of “good” almost never coincided with mine. Honestly, really she’s just selfish. She’s part of Cerberus because she’s human and cares pretty much exclusively about humans. The reason she got into trouble with Niket is that she cares about her sister and doesn’t want her cloned sister to feel the way she did. It’s 100% not about her sister, it’s about her dad. (Had it been about her sister, someone might have asked her sister. The fact that no one did is the entire reason Niket turned against Miranda in her quest. It doesn’t occur to Miranda to consider other people when she thinks about what needs to be done. But she also tells Jacob about his father. Because Miranda is also fantastically loyal. Miranda’s selfishness is not because she doesn’t care about others; Miranda is selfish because she forgets that there are other options. It’s the most tragic form of selfishness, because both us and her know that Miranda’s selfishness ultimately gets in the way of meaningful relationships, and that it contributes to and is a reaction to her ultimate loneliness. Miranda is a difficult person to deal with, and she is the first person to want that to change, but Miranda is just not sure how.
Mordin: Mordin is actually a lot like Legion in many ways, especially when he first enters the team. He has the Sherlock Holmes attitude, and the game really tricks you into thinking that’s who he is. And to some extent, it is. He honestly looks at life as a list of pros and cons, and picks options in which the list of pros is longer than the list of cons. But he also has trouble sleeping at night. It feels like Mordin developed his attitude as a coping mechanism for what he does. He does research on how to kill people. The look at life as a list of pros and cons was in the end just a way of justifying his actions to himself. He started a hospital, because it was the right thing to do, but also as a way to atone. (ooh look, Anders parallels. Don’t be fooled: the two characters are almost nothing alike.) Mordin appears completely confident that everything he does is the right thing to do, but he has doubts. I think that’s a major reason he works for Shepard: it’s something that, for the most part, doesn’t involve any complex moral decisions. It has all the science and a goal that is truly, 100% good (at least for the most part) and I think Mordin finds that relieving after having to compromise for so long between interesting science and moral security and watching him balance how he’s made that comprimise in the past is just so interesting.
Jack: Jack is honestly just Miranda taken to her logical extreme. Almost all of the analysis I just mentioned about Jack is applicable to Jack, although Jack isn’t loyal (not counting to Shepard herself) at all. But the selfishness stemming from loneliness because of cruel environments growing up (oh i didn’t actually mention that in the Miranda analysis but that’s exactly where it comes from) is exactly the same for both characters. Both decided to overcome their childhoods by retracting from the world around them (both Cerberus and murder are methods of escape for their respective characters). But where Miranda kept herself sane with various morality pets over the years, Jack had no one and nothing. And that’s, I think, what Shepard becomes to her: a morality pet. Someone that gives her a reason to restrain herself, to live. Shepard gave Jack something to live for and someone to be selfless for. Jack doesn’t get as much growth over the game as she really should (maybe I should make a dude!Shep to romance Jack after the dude!Shep who romances Tali) but she obviously learns a lot from everything she does for other people and I’m honestly really glad that I could bring her onto my team and give her this opportunity.
Garrus: I had problems with Garrus’s attitude last game, and those problems were very much compounded in this game. To some extent, Garrus sees himself as another Jacob, especially in this game. He has the command, the confidence, the willingness to do what’s right...And I think Shepard sees this. But Shepard spends so long in ME1 making sure that Garrus is sheltered from the hard decisions of leadership. One of the things I love so much about Janet is that she spends so much time and effort protecting and sheltering her crew from everything that is going on and all the decisions she has to make. But in this case...Garrus sees Shepard’s leadership in game 1 and he’s such an idealistic kid in that game. He believes in doing whatever it takes to go after bad guys because he hasn’t ever had to do “whatever it takes” and he’s just so sweet about it and he just clearly does not understand how hard leadership is. And that’s why it’s so heartbreaking to meet his grizzled self in game 2 when he’s completely lost that beautiful innocence. His “punish the bad guys” feelings push the innocence to the surface in the two years where Shepard is dead, and then Omega burns that innocence away. But he’s still so honest and he still believes the same things and you can see the flowers that are growing from the ashes of his faith and Garrus is just such a strong person. He didn’t get constantly beat down the way Samara, Jack, Miranda, etc did, but he still was hurt many times and every time he shed some more of himself and came out a stronger person. Garrus is amazing in that he manages to only shed that which is unnecessary (and yes, it was helpful and beautiful and nice but nice does not help him punish those who are evil) so even though I very much do not agree with Garrus’s intensity I have so much respect for it.
Tali: Tali is my princess. She always has been and always will be. Unfortunately, she really didn’t get any development this game. She is such an independent, creative character. She sees what is needed and takes action, she listens to what other say while still drawing her own conclusions, she knows when she needs help and when to accept it even if it is unnecessary. Tali’s handling of her father’s actions and death were not quite as casual as Jacob’s, but Jacob’s father had been dead. Tali’s had been a good person and reasonable and existing father, until she found him dead because of experiments that she could not turn a blind eye to. Yes, she sweeps her father’s actions under the carpet, but she did not harm her people. She is capably and fiercely protective of that which is important to her but she has almost none of the selfishness of Jack and Miranda. She’s a lot like Rey: knows what she wants done and how to do it; not the perfect person, but by God she tries to be. And she tries and fails, because that’s how humanity works but Tali will keep trying and working and fighting and it’s absolutely beautiful watching her.
Grunt: Grunt cannot function in society. He fundamentally does not know how. His mother was glass and liquid and his father was the words and information and images of his most brutal forefathers forcefed directly into his mind when he was too young to comprehend any of what was happening to him. And he’s such a child. He reacts to things he doesn’t understand by punching a wall, spiderwebbing the glass. He doesn’t listen to Shepard’s words because he thinks he’s found everything he needs (by the end of the game) but he very clearly has just found a crutch to help him through his days. This seems to be true for many of the Krogan: Wrex is treated as an incredibly wise and understanding leader because Wrex realizes that society needs more than punching things. Wrex realizes that people need depth to their lives and punching things just doesn’t offer that depth, but Grunt was born from the shallowness of a tank and does not have the context to understand that. He also was born with the knowledge that he is the “perfect” krogan, and lives his life with the understanding that people would understand and respect that because Okeer thought that people would understand and respect that. He is wrong. Others see him as a krogan. There is no “perfect” outside the mind of Okeer, and this makes it difficult for Grunt to grow out of his perfectly egocentric bubble that he has encased himself in at the end of the game.
Thane: Thane and Samara are interesting cases because both are at the end of their respective stories. They are not the only ones who have tied up all their loose ends, but they are the ones who are old who have seen enough to want and need the world to be fixed but be too tired to fix it themselves. (note that both of their stories are “errant child” stories and also how much meditating they both do) Thane especially--Thane is dying. That’s one of the first things Thane tells you, and that fact looms over every conversation he has with you. He is only still living to repent for the sins of his body. That body-soul dichtomy is, by the way, 100% a rationalization. Just as Mordin has had to quantize his actions, Thane divorces himself from them. To be frank, it’s complete bs. It’s also how Thane sleeps at night, so who am I to take that from him. And that leads me to what I think is the most interesting part of Thane’s personality: that he will absolve himself of his sins but still believes that he must atone for them. He is completely inconsistent on whether he is a good person or not. Because he doesn’t know. Thane has no idea what he deserves, what he should have done, what his life has come to. Thane doesn’t understand himself. And more than any other character in Mass Effect, Thane understands that. And he accepts it.
Samara: First things first: Samara killing that person in her introduction is probably the most elegant, pretty killing I’ve seen in a video game. So, Samara really doesn’t get the moral complexity of her situation. Her attitude towards reality is “This is what I do. It is the right thing for me to do.” She comes off as wise and all, but really she’s no different from Garrus in her confidence, her convictions, and her sheer wrong-ness. She reminds me a lot of Szeth, actually, from the Stormlight Archive: she obeys her oath without giving a thought to whether that strict obedience is really necessary or right. It’s what she does, and she thinks she has no other options. She also appears wise, but she has spent her entire life as a justicar with one aim, and I’m honestly not clear that she didn’t exacerbate the situation with her constant chase. Morinth was dedicated to freedom; had Samara not been constantly close at her heels, then would Morinth have moved from place to place? But I cannot really answer that question or judge Samara for her quest. I can and will judge her for her refusal to see other methods, though. Samara lets her ideals blind her to reality, and I have very little respect for that. I think it’s not the fact that she’s wrong that makes me so angry with Samara. Garrus has a similar attitude and similar blindness. But Samara is at the end of her story. Garrus is in a position to learn, to grow, to create that which was lost and find a new way to look around at his surroundings. But Samara has inserted herself into a position to teach others, a position in which people look up to her, expect her to do the right thing. And she doesn’t always do the right thing. Samara acts as if she is the absolute embodiment of truth, and she’s not. Samara just is in a position such that she should know better. She’s so elegant and beautiful, but there’s no room for growth. She has crowded out everything that can teach her to be better.
Legion: I really shouldn’t like Legion as much as I do. There’s honestly no reason for the Geth to occupy the Quarian homeworld. The Geth can live on literally any planet and shouldn’t have any kind of attachment to any particular planet, while the quarians most certainly do. They have no reason to leave, but like I honestly have trouble respecting the Geth when “we’re just trying to protect ourselves” is the argument they use trying to justify their occupation of the quarian homeworld and it’s a completely bs argument. I’m also gonna complain that the game said “geth are only smart around other geth” and tali even comments on that in me2 and then they’re just like “yeah legion’s smart deal with it” like no can i please have an explanation? But honestly Legion is just really a fantastic character. I think the most beautiful thing about them is that Legion tries. Legion listens to what Tali says, they respect Tali’s interests, they attempt to perserve non-geth life that does not threaten them (which is probably the most beautiful part of Legion’s character; there is no direct benefit to caring, but they do, and they try to understand those who have real emotions, and try to parse those actions, and Legion has no way of relating to those actions but they still fit in and investigate and mimic those actions and Legion is trying to gain emotions but never will and it’s the most beautiful thing.