One of the best things about the Mass Effect series is how attached we become to the characters. In the case of the first trilogy, you can form a relationship with a squadmate at the beginning of the first game that lasts up until the end of the third. This creates a bond between the player and the supporting character that is rare to find in games in general.
Aside from your affable squadmates, Mass Effect has a reputation for creating quality characters in general, and not all of them are likeable. The team at Bioware have a knack for fostering villains and irksome characters, too. From crooked politicians to merciless killers to doctors who experiment on others, the series is not short on unsympathetic characters who you want to take out with a telekinetic blast.
10 Aria T’Loak
Holding court at the Afterlife nightclub, Shepard must approach her in order to gather information about certain people. She gives him cryptic information, if any, as she often threatens to have him removed.
Aria T’Loak is also the stern leader of Omega, a dangerous space station that has harboured criminals and terrorists for thousands of years. Ruling with an iron fist, she proclaims that she is Omega and will crush anyone who threatens her control over the station or who crosses her in general.
9 Mordin Solus
This is a weird one, because Mordin Solus actually becomes quite a likeable character the more you get to know him. Even still, he is a ruthless scientist that has been known to kill people who interfere with his work.
Notoriously, Mordin was a leading scientist behind the creation of a new strain of the genophage which killed off much of the krogan population, so regardless of how you feel about him personally, it’s hard to sympathize with someone who is clearly a sociopath.
8 Dr. Saleon
Another salarian doctor here, however, unlike Mordin Solus there is nothing redeemable about the good doctor at all. When the sales of body parts were increasing on the Citadel, Garrus Vakarian began investigating Saleon.
After interviewing past employees of the doctor, he discovered that Saleon was using his them as test subjects, cloning their organs, growing them inside them and selling them off. He took advantage of the fact that they were poor and desperate and reaped the rewards from their suffering.
7 Urdnot Wrex
Wrex is similar to Mordin Solus because we can actually develop a relationship with him and grow to like him. However, Wrex is also a mercenary for hire, who kills his targets for business and will gladly eliminate people for the “benefit of the universe.”
A krogan who keeps to himself, there is a moment in the first game where he has a standoff with Shepard. It can escalate to the point where you may have to put him down, further emphasizing the volatility of Wrex.
6 Matriarch Benezia
Matriarch Benezia is an ally of Saren and also Liara T’Soni’s mother. and she plays a pivotal role in the plot of the first Mass Effect game. Her coldness towards Liara — one of the game’s most beloved characters — is enough to earn her the ire of the Mass Effect fan base.
However, when you add this underlying ire to the fact that she is one of the final and toughest hurdles between Shepard and Saren, who Shepard desperately needs to stop, you’re too busy trying to destroy her to feel sympathy for her.
5 Harkin
When one of the game’s most virtuous characters, Captain Anderson, proclaims you a disgrace to humanity, you know you’ve messed up. A former C-Sec officer, Harkin was suspended for drinking on the job, taking bribes, abusing people in custody and just being a less-than-stellar employee.
First introduced to Shepard while intoxicated in Chora’s Den, he is rude and obnoxious and will also harass Shepard if the avatar is female, which doesn’t ingratiate himself any more to Shepard or the player.
4 Kai Leng
Working for Cerberus and the Illusive Man, Kai Leng joined the Alliance Military at an early age, where he displayed his ruthlessness and showed an incredible talent for combat. He was so formidable that he was actually sprung from prison by the Illusive Man and recruited as his most trusted assassin.
Kai leng’s reputation as a skilled hitman as well as his pro-human anti-alien prejudice was part of the reason why Cerberus sent him after Commander Shepard as they felt like he could be the man to take them out.
3 The Illusive Man
Speaking of Cerberus and the Illusive Man, here he is. The leader of Cerberus, The Illusive Man believes that humans are superior to all races, and feels that they should be the sole rulers of the galaxy.
The Illusive Man has a calm demeanour, but don’t let that fool you — that demeanour belies a man with sinister intentions and a messed up ideology. His covertness and unwillingness to get his own hands dirty only adds to the shadiness of his character.
2 Donnel Udina
In many ways, Donnel Udina ticks all the boxes. He’s annoying, he’s sly, he’s ruthless, he’s a human supremacist and is just generally not likeable any way you look at him. Introduced in the first game, Udina acted as a severe roadblock to Shepard.
Wanting desperately to have a human representative in the Spectres, Udina believes that Shepard is the wrong person for the job as their investigations into Saren, who was at one time a Spectre himself, would rock the boat politically. This means that Udina values political positioning over saving the galaxy.
1 Saren
In a lot of ways, Saren is the catalyst for all the negative events in the Mass Effect trilogy. Allying himself with the Reapers, Saren gave himself up to the evil entity and was willing to sacrifice all living life in the entire galaxy to appease them.
Throughout the first game, he attempts to justify his actions to Shepard and to anyone else who’ll listen, while simultaneously eliminating anyone who stands in his way. However, nothing he could say or do could redeem Saren in the eyes of anyone.
NEXT: Mass Effect: 10 Things Worse Than The Reapers
