Mass Effect Trilogy - Companions Ranked 

A little correction. Mordin didn't create the original genophage. That was hundreds of years earlier. Mordin was part of the team that created the modified version of genophage because krogans started to develop a resistance against it.

Joker’s almost a companion too. He’s there the whole time, has plenty of dialogue and even briefly playable.

“Had to be me. Someone else might’ve gotten it wrong.” Place them in whatever order you like, that’s the best line/moment in the series.

This is the first time I've seen Jacob ranked so high He's such a throwaway character that only does negative things, makes bad calls and his development seems to go backwards

Mordin's death was the first time I wept at something in a game, just rewatching that stupid tower in this video gave me tears. Mordin was such a good character

Shooting Mordin outside of the tower and later killing Wrex after he learns of your betrayal has to be one of the most cutting, villainous acts you can do as an 'evil' protagonist in rpg's history. And it is so precisely because the characters work so well

Let's be honest. Your best companion is the M7 Lancer. She even left the team during Mass Effect 2 like some of the other but she came back in 3 like the loyal friend she is.

I love Mordin's character and story arc so much. He is an amazingly written character. Even though he knows his actions were drastic and their consequences severe, he still believes his actions were justified, he has the arguments and the logic to back them up. The more the game progresses though, the more you can see that the ethical implications of his actions start to matter more and more to him. To the point that he is willing to sacrifice himself to cure the genophage, as it "had to be me! Someone else could have gotten it wrong". Best character arc ever.

For me it’s always mordin. He’s just so cool and he reminds me of Spock in a lot of ways. Super intelligent and pragmatic but also able to empathize more than you would think. Garrus is just great but he’s on the top of everybody’s list.

I’m still shocked they made something as big as a living Prothean just a DLC. Javik should have almost been central to the plot

The best moment in the games is finding out who Archangel is and Shepard's reaction.

I think ME1s characters would have benefitted a lot from loyalty missions. The issue with Kaiden is that we are only TOLD that he has issues with his implants, not shown it in any meaningful way. That's where the Loyalty missions shine in my opinion.

“Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.” ― Javik

When you make it to the Citadel DLC in ME3 and have all the characters at your place drinking and having fun for once, it really feels like you are meeting your friends for the last time ever. Not many games have been able to leave that impression. I am not very optimistic, but still keep a bit of hope that there will be a fourth entry where Shepard gets to reunite with his friends. It would be cool to have a game where you go around the galaxy finding them one by one and helping them fix whatever crap has gone down.

Garrus has always been my favorite. Other companions may have more emotional character arcs, others with bigger impact on the galaxy, but Garrus is your bro throughout. He will always have your back.

Im shocked to see Jakob this high on the list. To be clear, i do not dislike any character from these games, but he certainly belongs to bottom 3 in my list.

Nice to see Jack so up high. I've always thought she was a bit underrated by the fanbase

"We're best bros, Garrus" pretty much spot on. Agreed on almost all of the place, having top 3 from all the way 1 to 3 shows, how well they are written, and how much screen time helps to develop their stories. Seeing Tali from her inexperienced youngling to accepting Geth, witnessing the progress of Garrus from a cop to a literal badass... great memories.

Tali and Garrus are my favorites, popular opinion! I even made a playthrough where I always picked them as my squad (as soon as they were available). Not surprised about Kaidan, you didn't like him since the beginning. However, I'm surprised about Javik's rank and Jacob being ranked higher than him. Javik is in my opinion one of the most interesting companions, we learn more about Protheans and the way he talks with some characters (and about their species) is quite funny, plus his overall attitude is understandable, him being the last survivor and all of that. As for Kaidan, I would rank him above Jacob and James, he was still more interesting than them, imo. Mordin is arguably the most interesting from the companions introduced in ME2, his personality, interesting background and involvement in some important events. I also liked Zaeed and Kasumi, despite their limited involvement, given they were dlc characters.

It's a pretty solid list. I do think Joker deserves to be included (and high up) in the rankings. He gets lots of screen time, has interesting characters arcs, and his personal mission is a welcome change of pace and perspective. But most importantly... he's GENUINALLY FUNNY thanks to the talent of Seth Green. This is a rare find in video games, where the "funny" character is often just Jar Jar style comic relief.

I ve been playing games on different platforms for more than 30 years. More than 20 years on pc, playsations of different generations. Played many games that I loved and enjoyed deeply. Like Baldurs Gate games, Pillars of Eternity, Planescape Torments, Bishock games etc. But with Mass Effect games such a world building, such great companions that you want to do extra missions for them not just because for the experience or loot but you actually care about them, curious about their story, wanting to learn more about their past. I've haven't had such a gaming experience in no other game. For me it was like reading a good sci fi novel, playing a great game and watching an epic space opera movie all together. Mass Effect is one of a kind a such a uniq experience and I am glad to see this channel appricate the game espically companions. One thing I should mention I would rank Mordin at least in top three. His people story, his sacrifice, his character they are all perfect combination for a sci fi game. And I belive he kind of looks like Clint Eastwood. 🙂 By the way although he was not a companion Illusive Man deserved a honorobel mention. His absence was a big negative impact in the last game. Finally the game has a great soundtrack perfect fit for an epic sfi game. Enjoyed your videos about Mass effect , thank you 👍

Garrus and Tali were my only squadmates for the entirety of the trilogy.

Your companions and getting invested in their stories and plot arcs over the course of 3 games is definitely the best part of these games. It's really satisfying seeing how the characters change, grow, and deal with various consequences of their/your actions, and seeing how you're able to help them along the way.

Great video as always, Mortym. I wondered where you would put Garrus, and no surprise, he was your number one. He's my favorite companion as well. Throughout all three games he was always in my party. Keep up the excellent content, and I'm sure it won't be long before you hit 100k.

Thanks for the awesome video. Everyone was pretty on point in this ranking.

Romanced Jack? Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well.

Can't argue with the list. Another great video. You should do that for every game you enjoy😊

This video really reminds me how astoundingly great mass effect really is. Shame there are no games since it that rival it. As in no game has companions as deep or as human as this.

Loved your ranking of the ME companions. I'd be so interested to hear your take on the recurring characters of the franchishe like Joker, Anderson, Udina, and also the minor ones like Kelly Chambers, Cortez, Samantha Traynor, Conrad Verner. Or perhaps even a tier list of the antagonists like Saren Arterius, Matriach Benezia, Balak, The Illusive Man. In any case, awesome video. Keep up the good work!

I love finding out how different players react to the gameplay, characters and choices. My list would be pretty different, but it’s been fun hear about yours. And my list changed a lot as I played through, with new characters coming in and older characters changing and evolving.

Great summary for the companions. Probably the best I've seen.

Checked in to make sure you got #1 right and you did! Garrus is second only to Eder in recent RPGs at being a good, relatable friend to your character.

You got the top 3 right, no question at all. I am glad you went through this series, I hope you are too. It's been fun watching your experiences

Pretty much nailed it right on the head. Glad you got to play the series and that you had enjoyment out of it.

I like Ashley’s story arc. She really goes through a lot and grows and changes. But Tali will always be numba one

Thane is a very interesting character. He is my favorite romance too;.there's a very touching moment after the citadel party. Garrus is also one of my favorites too.

I was really hoping that was the number one pick, I absolutely love that character. I think that agree with your top picks completely, this have given me an urge to play the legendary edition. When they came out, I played each several times, so I remember most of this quite well.

Having played the trilogy 7 times or so now, I must say it's a great list. Totally agree with top 3 and most of the bottom ranks. Would have Liara and Mordin as 5 and 4, but very good. Jacob last thou. What a tool :D But hard to rank some of the best companions in all of gaming. Really where the games shine.

Ashley is quite a good character, she has more nuance then people give her credit, I like how she is sceptical of aliens on a 'racial' level, yet the first one to tell you to check on Liara after Benezia dies. It cracks me up when you team her up with Wrex in ME1, He calls her out for being racist, next interaction she flips it around and calls him out for being sexest. The way they respond to each other a sign of intelligence and humility shown by both.

Excellent comment about Garrus and how it could have been his story too. Great list and great breakdown of their stories.

Great job!

As a scientist myself I love Mordin and Liara so much. So refreshing to have scientist characters in sci fi aren’t just evil or dumb.

You got everything perfectly fine, exactly how I'd put it, its a question of nuance and interest and in my case, and for the reasons you state Tali and Liara are my favorites followed by Legion and EDI.

I can understand the hate for Kaidan, especially if you play male Shepard. But as a romance option for female Shepard he's my favorite character. I would never want to be in a relationship with someone who blindly follows without question, and I understand his point of view regarding Shepard and Cerberus. He grows a lot throughout the game, at least when you have access to the extra content that comes with the romance. Regardless, I could never save Ashley. She just grates on me. To each his (or her) own!

Decent list. Best Bro, Space Wife and 2nd Best Bro as the top 3. Though I'd have Liara ranked higher given her arc is far more involved than Jack's. I'd say that Thane vaults up a few spots if you romance him as FemShep - it's probably the most heartbreaking storyline in ME.

Your top and bottom rankings are spot on. Garrus is such a bro.

Best thing about ME companions for me is that, while sometimes uneven, it shows the complexity of people, where you can find something to like or dislike in the most unlikely of places. There's not a lot of games that manage that without having it being really arbitrary or in your face about it. For instance, with Mordin, not only does he embody this, but his arc is such that the one you could normally see as the "best one" is in fact probably his worst nightmare from his perspective. The companions and the setting are the best parts of ME for me.

I have the same top 3, but Tali Wrex and Garrus in that order, but all 3 are among the best companion arcs in gaming, full stop. Very solid ranking that I cannot disagree anyones place on.

What is the ETA on the video for Traynor vs Chambers?

Jacob is a character I cannot believe how the writers handled. I feel so bad for the female Shepherd players who romanced him, only for the writer to shoehorn in a stereotypical cheating baby’s mama plot line. The hell were they even thinking?

Very good video 👍🏼

Dude, just gotta say: I've watched all your Mass Effect vids and they are outstanding. But dang, bro... your Shepherd has a face only a mother could love! And even she'd have some serious issues 😆

Perfect list!

Hi, I really enjoyed your videos regarding Mass effect. So much so that I bought the legendary edition and replayed all three games as a full Renegade. Some choices were incredibly hard but I think that the hardest was at the end where you can choose to shoot Mordin. He falls in the elevator and goes up to the the tower. He then drags himself to the console but he dies before regulating the temperature of the device and so the genophage was never cured. That moment hurt me like a ton of brick. Oh and by the way, during the third game, Wrex finds out what you did and you have to kill him if you are Renegade

How dare they make me like Moridin so much, his sacrifice ending caps one of the best written companions in gaming. Not my favorite companion, but given the atrocities he committed and that I consider Ashley the "bad companion" says a lot.

I agree with you about Ash, of course any species worth its salt will place itself as a priority in terms of intergalactic survival. However, as you mentioned, the main objective is to unite everyone against the greater evil. Wrex is the one Barbarian who rolled the dice and got (str/dex/con/int/wis/cha) 20/20/20/18/18/18. Mordin, I also thought the sacrifice's end was fair, but I cried a lot. In short, few games have made me care about characters the way the ME series did.

Jacob has a side game have you tried it?

Very good rankings.

*checking where the two best friend are placed* Good, very good.

Solid list. Would move a few a couple of spots either direction but no hard disagreements.

Really great list, Mort! I know you were insinuating that a lot of people would disagree with you in the comments, but I have to say, your list is almost the exact same as mine - the only main difference - Mordin is Top 3 for me. What a deeply complex character. He starts off as a fast-talking (and slightly annoying, to me), Spock kind of character - very pragmatic, utilitarian even. But as the story progresses, he begins to show more empathy & heart. He ultimately comes down to the realization that his greatest work (scientifically) - the Genophage - was morally wrong. He doesn't go out shooting a rifle, or blasting someone with biotic powers - he goes out hacking into a computer! The most Mordin-fitting death. He dies reversing the Genophage, so that the next generation of Krogan have a chance at the life he denied them. Shephard: I'm sorry Mordin: I'm not; had to be me. *elevator glass closes* Mordin: Someone else, might have gotten it wrong. I LOVE this line of dialogue. Mordin got to choose his own death, and be a little witty/snarky doing it. Also love when Mordin pauses in thought and goes, "... would have liked to work on the seashells." Him and Shepard talked about what Mordin would do in retirement, and he said he'd retire to somewhere by the sea. Shepard said he'd get bored in an hour, and Mordin admitted he might run tests on the seashells at the beach.

I was so excited for your list. I will say, you made me reevaluate some of the characters and made me take a second look at some of them. I think the DLC characters are the ones I kind of don't resonate with the most because I played this game in my early twenties. I am replaying it again, and having a blast. I think I will still romantically are on because she is best bae. But considering how much you like Jack I definitely think I will go down that route to. I just didn't like that she was so angry and I'm like why do you have to be so mean granted I was in my early twenties.

I completely agree with your rankings.

Holy shit, a tier list after my own heart. With the exception of romancing Jack on my "main playthru" (I'm a sucker for Tali) I feel damn near identically about each of these explanations for these characters.

Great tier list. As I was listening I was noticed that the most interesting and best developed characters were all kind of outsider/rebel types to their race who could could fully understand and explain their culture while also being willing to go beyond the social constraints of their culture towards a universal or collective morality. Which makes sense because Sheppard's teams were kind of multicultural black ops teams working to save the various cultures from their inability to work together. This is probably what makes Jack the most interesting human as she is such an outsider that has suffered the failings of human culture and is much more relatable than Kaida n and Ashely who embody the failings of human culture.

mordin tali garrus wrex thane are my top 5. no joker was surprising... but understandable. really great reviews!

Good list. There are choices I disagree with (of course), but I respect the thought and attention you gave to justifying your choices. As always, thanks for sharing. Curious, though: given your #1, are you a big fan of Nick Valentine in FO4? Seems like some overlap there.

As a fellow Jack enjoyer I have to say that you have a very fine taste, good sir.

As a Tali lover, I agreed with this list. My first playthrough I choose Liara on my first playthrough and it was great, but the relationship that we got with Tali is on another level. I wish that we have more time with some companions like James and Legion, but the fact of the game got rushed really brought a lot of problems.

Happy to see Jack high up on the list - you've got good taste.

Thane would be my favorite. Also it's cool you showed my favorite cut scene where he takes on the other assassin Kai Leng, and gives him a run for his credits.

This is one of the few gaming series that I will replay specifically for the companions.

I mostly agree with that ranking. And this almost motivates me to get and play that legendary edition with watered down expectations, enjoying ME for what it is instead of deploring the lack of RPG. Just to see all those character arcs wrap up in ME3, that's telling how well written they are :)

Good show sir

Grunt has the most hilarious cutscene in the entire trilogy in the Citadel DLC. "...from the explosion. keep up Shepard"

Can this ranking wait? I've got some calibrations to make.

I always felt like Maleshep-Garrus-Zaeed had somewhat of a triangle going. When you played a paragon male Shepard, Garrus sometimes could feel like a watered down version of yourself and Zaeed embodied what Shepard would be if he went renegade. Sadly this meant that Garrus rarely added something to my roleplay experience, because I am paragon for life. But I think he has a super different meaning if you are/play as Femshep and thats awesome! And Zaeed is one of my favorites and I really liked butting heads with him, he really reminded me of options/consequences that exist in my actions and it felt good to have differing opinions in the squad. Unrelated to all this: Samara became one of my favorite "romance" options due to the citadel dlc. This small moment with her had such a strong impact on how I felt about her and how I saw her as a crew member. In ME2 I was just very indifferent about her, I guess she felt a bit behind, when the other strong biotic in the team has such a strong presence, haha. But really, seeing here open up just for a minute was one of my highlights in ME3!

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), my top 3 exactly match yours. Other than that, I was a fan of Legion and Thane, those two were amazing for the amount of the screentime they've got.

When you got to the top 5 i knew who would be in the Top 3 because they are my favorites as well.

At the start of every mission the question is always "So who's going with Garus and I?"

I agree with both the general thrust of your list and your top 10, though I would quibble about the specifics of some of the later. Just goes to show how well written most of the characters are that it comes down to personal preference rather than writing. Why they added James always mystified me. Got nothing against him, really, but never understood what he added to the experience. At least Javek had many interesting things to tell and a unique perspective. Anyway, entertaining video!

I guessed the bottom 2, I also guessed the order for humans that's scored high, I am surprised about Miranda's placement because I feel like a lot of fans don't think highly of her, but I definitely do, solid list

Please make a video on your Favorite/Iconic moments in the Mass Effect Trilogy

There are many whom we'd swap for our bottom 5 or the mid-section, but we can ALL agree that Garrus is "our favorite turian on the Citadel."

i thought that mordin created adaptive modification for genophage that prevented krogans from further development of natural immunity for it and not the genophage itself

Samara is probably my favorite character from the entire trilogy. She was wise and noble but also struggle with balancing her code and her love for her daughters. Also she’s incredibly powerful even amongst asari. I took her on most missions in ME2

Before watching the video I ranked them all to see how we would stack up. I was disagreeing with most of your placements, then our top 5 were the same albeit in a slightly different order.

Pretty good list. I can't hate. Personally I would switch places for Kasumi and Jack, and put Miranda higher on the list a few spots.

I loved Zaeed, he was basically my favorite character from 2.

An interesting fact about the famous Scientist Salarian song that Mordin sings: it is actually a "re-arrangement" of the very famous (and exceptional) aria "I am the very model of a modern Major General" from Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance". Look it up, it's hilarious!

My personal favorite would be grunt. His "parent" died before he was even cognizant of him, leaving behind this impossible legacy of becoming the ultimate Krogan. He is basically a child who was forced to be an adult "Perfect Krogan" without knowing what it means to even be a Krogan and throughout the series you are placed into the position of being his surrogate parent, guiding him by example and teaching him what it means to be an independent person. You even help him pass his rite to adulthood and find his place in his ppl.

raceyvick said some things in his video about how certain characters like zaed could've had great content with him like the dude is the founder if one of the biggest crime gangs in the galaxy and all we do is help him get revenge? talk about dropping the ball

Tali definitely n°1 for me. But i can totally understand your ranking.

I kept expecting you to say Jacob, I'd have put him last easily. 🤣

Garrus and Tali on the #1 and #2 as IT should always be. Best friends of Shepard

Garrus is not just my favorite companion in this game but a real contender for best companion in any game I've played. I feel his frustration with bureaucracy & corruption & adore how he grows throughout the games. He was also my chosen romance & was an absolute sweetheart. I won't lie I even cried upon beating 3 for the first time & seeing his grief over FemShep's death. Close to him is Tali & Mordin. Tali is just infectiously cute & I love her voice. Though yes Jack is much more my type also, Tali just has more going for story wise. Mordin however is one of the most compelling characters in any game I have ever played & is the first thing I think of when I think Mass Effect 2.

Only going to disagree about Kaiden and Grunt - I’d put Kaiden in the upper 3rd and Grunt right near the bottom, if not last. Kaiden is a subtle character with a tragic backstory who isn’t afraid to question Shepard; I always appreciated that. Grunt is a fairly one-dimensional, forgettable character who simply provides muscle/firepower to the team. Man, looking through the comments, I had no clue Jacob was such a controversial character! I’ve played through the trilogy three times and never had a problem with him. Sure, he’s fairly run-of-the-mill, but I loved his loyalty mission (confronting his f’d up father, who’s been playing ‘god’) and found him a fairly realistic, grounded presence.

Well written and acted companions are what made the Mass Effect series such memorable games for me. Also, totally agree with Garrus being #1.

had to play through the trilogy twice! because wrex got killed in my first playthrough of the first game and I didnt know there was a way to keep him alive...

Galaxy map theme. Best companion *chefs kiss*