Characters / Mass Effect 3 Party Members

Mass Effect Main Character Index
Mass Effect: Commander Shepard | Party Members (Kaidan Alenko | Ashley Williams | Garrus Vakarian | Liara T'Soni | Tali'Zorah | Urdnot Wrex) | Antagonists | NPCs
Mass Effect 2: Early Party Members (Miranda Lawson | Jack) | Late Party Members | Secret Party Members | Main Antagonists | Secondary Antagonists | Normandy Crew | Council Space NPCs | Non-Council Space NPCs
Mass Effect 3: Party Members | Antagonists and NPCs | Multiplayer Characters
Mass Effect: Andromeda: Pathfinder Ryder | Party Members | Crew of the Tempest | The Andromeda Initiative | The Kett | The Angara | Other Characters | Multiplayer Characters

This page is for listing the tropes related to party members who first appeared in the third Mass Effect game.

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Party Members

Lieutenant James Vega

Not supposed to salute you, either.

''Think you can dance and talk at the same time?''

Voiced by: Freddie Prinze Jr.

James Vega is a lieutenant in the Alliance Marines. He stars in the short comic Mass Effect: Conviction, which ends with Anderson appointing him Shepard's guard while they're in the brig post-"Arrival", and is the main character of Mass Effect: Paragon Lost, an animated film set during Mass Effect 2.

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• Abnormal Ammo: One of his powers is Incendiary Ammo.
• Abusive Parents: His father, as seen in the Mass Effect: Homeworlds comic.
• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: James likes to pepper his speech with Gratuitous Spanish, and he always calls Steve Cortez, the shuttle pilot, "Esteban", which is the Spanish equivalent of the name. Only he pronounces that name as Estebán, with the third syllable stressed instead of the second one.
• All for Nothing: Part of his backstory, as elaborated in Paragon Lost. It's clear that during his boxing match with Shepard, he's venting his anger over having sacrificed the colony that he's protecting for the intel on how to bring down the Collectors, only for it to be rendered useless because by the time they came up with a plan, Shepard had already destroyed/disabled the Collector Base.
• Ambiguously Brown: James has a Latino surname and speaks Gratuitous Spanish, but has Maori tattoos and mentions growing up in a Pacific Island.
• Audience Surrogate: Although he's a seasoned soldier, James doesn't know much about galactic politics, Shepard's circle of friends, or the events of the previous games, allowing the other characters to explain bits of backstory to new players.
• Bar Brawl: Ends up getting in a fight with a bunch of batarians in an Omega bar after he breaks a TV because of it playing a news story about the events of the Arrival DLC.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: His DLC outfits (Collector's Edition and From Ashes) don't have helmets — when anyone else is at least wearing a rebreather, he'll just be wearing his suit's eyepiece or headset.
• Beehive Barrier: Has the Fortification ability.
• The Big Guy: More muscular than the other human squad members. He's definitely based more on survivability than Ashley. Hell, he's pretty much a cross between the two krogan squaddies from the other games. Possibly lampshaded by him using the "excited fist pounding" animation otherwise only used for krogan.
• Big Brother Mentor: Shepard acts as this to James, even encouraging him to join the N7 program.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Though he's perhaps a somewhat milder example of this. His first major conversation with Shepard on the Normandy is during an impromptu bare-knuckles boxing match, apparently to size up his new commander and because he thinks it would be fun.
• Boldly Coming: He definitely has a thing for asari. He goes on about "blue babes", pondering if Samara would ever be interested in him, and backs the asari team in a charity match against a human team.
• Call-Back: If you complete the Grissom Academy mission and meet with Kahlee Sanders, James will remark about her and Anderson being a couple.
• Captain Crash: Cortez teases him about the below incident on Mars, though it only seems to have happened that once, or possibly twice if he's with you during the Cerberus invasion of the Citadel.
• Car Fu: On Mars, he prevents Dr. Eva from escaping with the Crucible data by ramming the escaping shuttle with another shuttle.
• Casting Gag: Freddie Prinze, Jr. played an Ace Pilot-cum-Space Marine in the ill-fated Wing Commander film, making the shuttle crash thing even funnier. He's also a damn good Team Chef, no doubt a reference to Prinze's own renown as a celebrity chef.
• Dare to Be Badass: Shepard can convince him to join the N7 Program, the same elite training they had.
• A Day in the Limelight: Mass Effect: Paragon Lost movie and Conviction comic.
• Death Seeker: A mild case. Due to his Shoot the Shaggy Dog moment in his backstory, he doesn't really seem to care if he dies or not, making him incredibly reckless. Shepard can snap him out of this.
• Delinquent Hair: He sports a fauxhawk.
• Disappeared Dad: He's out there, but James is reluctant to call him family anymore. The Homeworlds comic reveals that Joshua turned to using red sand after James's mom died, and even tricked James into helping with a deal so he could threaten him with blackmail.
• Drives Like Crazy: Justified as him crashing into a shuttle stopped it from escaping with vital information. Still, he drives like a SPAZZ!
• 11th-Hour Ranger: He comes across as one if one takes the entire trilogy into account. He's the only character on this page who 1. is introduced in the third game (Exact Words time, since EDI was an NPC in the second game) and 2. doesn't require DLC to recruit.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: He receives an N7 commendation after the Cerberus attack on the Citadel, and Shepard can convince him to accept.
• Entendre Failure: When arguing with Cortez about ground vehicles, he expresses his fondness for one called the Grizzly, prompting Cortez to snark that James would like big grizzly bears. James doesn't get it.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French: Spanish, actually, but same idea. In the Citadel DLC, if you didn't romance Ashley, you can get her to hook up with James. The next time you walk in on them, you can hear James wooing her in Spanish. She keeps asking him to repeat whatever he's saying, and he never does say what it means.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: In 3, he is the Fighter to Liara's Mage and EDI's Thief in the triad of party members you are guaranteed to have.
• Good Counterpart: To Kai Leng.
• Gratuitous Spanish: All over the place.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: To his credit, he appreciates the attention — he just doesn't want to disappoint interested men.
  • In Citadel, if he's taken as Male Shepard's "date" to infiltrate the casino he'll say afterwards:
  James: Hey, I shouldn't read to much into being your "date" tonight right? Because James Vega is all about the ladies.
  • He is also insistent that he would like to try the hot tub... without Cortez.
• He Cleans Up Nicely: According to female Shepard, when James puts on a tuxedo for the Casino Infiltration mission in the Citadel DLC.
• Heroic BSoD: He has one when he visits the ruins of Fehl Prime near the end of Mass Effect: Paragon Lost.
• Hero of Another Story: The main protagonist of Mass Effect: Paragon Lost.
• Hero-Worshipper: Played with: he was one when he only knew Shepard by reputation. Mass Effect: Paragon Lost shows that he used to think Shepard would have handled Fehl Prime better than he did, and he reacts violently to hearing Shepard insulted in Conviction. After they actually meet, he makes a point of saluting even while they're in the brig, but otherwise isn't too awestruck or deferential.
  James: Don't get me wrong, you're good. Probably one of the best. But I know you're human, just like me.
• Hidden Depths:
  • He's not a Genius Bruiser, but it's clear that there is quite a bit more to him than his muscles. Mass Effect: Paragon Lost paints a lot of this which, surprisingly, wasn't shown much in ME3.
  • It makes sense when you realise the last time he made tactical decisions he was forced to make the necessary decision to sacrifice a colony for intelligence. Intelligence that proved worthless in the end. Such a trauma would leave Vega seem more then happy to leave it to someone else to make the hard choices.
• Hopeless with Tech:
  • If you ask him to disable the AA guns while on Rannoch, he will begin kicking the control panel much to Shepard's chagrin.
  • Come Leviathan and Citadel, this has become a bit of a Running Gag for him: bring him as a party to fix anything (may it be control panels to either a bridge or a port airlock door), and he'll just be seen literally kicking the crap out of it.
• Incompatible Orientation: When male Shepard notes that his bed is hard, James will chuckle, raise his hands and say he'll take Shepard's word for it.
• It's All My Fault: He left the Fehl Prime colonists to die in exchange for saving the valuable intel on the Collectors, only for Shepard to destroy their base before it could be used. Even though he denies it, it's clear James deeply blames himself for this.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: He and a female Commander Shepard spar with each in their first major character interaction on the Normandy, while also flirting like all hell.
• In Vino Veritas: Played with, since on the one hand Steve implies it was just the alcohol talking, on the other James really does care about the guy. Obviously, you never get to know what James actually said.
  Cortez: So you do care, Mr. Vega, or is that the cerveza talking again?
• Kill It with Fire: He has Incendiary Ammo and Carnage. Combining them with each other or his Frag Grenades allows him to create his own Fire Explosions relatively frequently.
• Knuckle Cracking: Neck-cracking variant during his first Normandy conversation.
• Latin Lover: If Ashley is the Virmire Survivor, survived the Citadel coup and is un-romanced by Shepard, James may pull out this move set on her late into the party in the Citadel DLC, much to her delight.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: He notes that his father's last name is Sanders, but he's not related to Kahlee. James' original last name was to be Sanders, but BioWare was concerned there would be Fanon that Kahlee and James were somehow related. invoked
• Let's Dance: His character quote.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • Seems to have been intended to replace Jacob as this, given his status as a protein elemental and fondness for working out in ridiculously tight shirts. Unfortunately, unlike Jacob, he's oddly not a romance option for either sex. Though, he can still be in a one-night stand with Fem Shep in Citadel.
    Cortez: I share [armory duty] with our illustrious Mister Vega. (yelling so Vega can hear) Though I believe the only weapon he really cares to maintain is himself!
    Vega:(offscreen doing pull-ups) You know you love the show, Esteban.
  • You can also meet him in the refugee camp on the Citadel having his back tattooed, which of course requires a Shirtless Scene where you can see that BioWare has not forgotten how to do some very pronounced chest muscles. In Citadel, Shepard actually gets to see the tattoo, which of course requires another shirtless scene.
  • He'll also potentially have a push-up contest with fellow Mr. Fanservice Jacob during the Citadel DLC, too. Kaidan can join in too if he survived the first game.
• Mundane Solution: When asked to deactivate a complex electronic device, he'll shrug and just kick it repeatedly.
• Naïve Newcomer: A subversion, as despite his lack of knowledge about galactic politics, Shepard's circle of friends, or the events of the previous games, he's an experienced soldier and doesn't let his teammates' reputations intimidate him. He can be found trying to out-brag Garrus on the Normandy.
• Nice Guy: He's a really affable guy, and makes fast friends with most of the crew.
• The Nicknamer: It's his way of remembering people; he admits to giving people names when he feels their given name "doesn't fit". Calls Male Shepard "Loco"^note  On account of Shepard's sheer awesome tendencies. or Female Shepard "Lola"^note  When he was a kid, his best friend had a sister named Lola. In James' words: "Older sister. Hot. Tough." in their first talk aboard the Normandy; you have the option of whether to allow him to continue using it. Also calls Garrus "Scars", Liara "Doc", Tali "Sparks", and Javik "Buggy".
  • Averted in regards to Cortez, whom he calls "Esteban". Given Cortez' Latino ancestry, Vega just used the Spanish translation to Steve.
• Nightmare Fetishist: In Leviathan, he's fascinated by a severed husk head and encourages Shepard to take it as a cabin decoration after being bitten by it.
• Nom de Mom: The comic Homeworlds shows that Vega is his mother's family name, and his father's is Sanders. Also a Continuity Nod, as Sanders was his originally planned name.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: No one will let James forget his shuttle antics. Becomes a tad bit hypocritical coming from Shepard, since we've seen how well they drive.
• The One Guy: Potentially in Mass Effect 3. In a scenario where Shepard is female, Garrus died in the Collector Mission at the end of Mass Effect 2, Javik was never retrieved in the "From Ashes" DLC, and Kaidan is rendered inaccessible (either due to dying at Virmire, dying during the Citadel Coup, or being turned down on his request to rejoin the Normandy), then it's possible for James to be the only male squadmate on a team that can include Shepard, Liara, Tali, EDI, and Ashley.
• One-Man Army: Checking the leader boards reveals that he has a very high score in the Armax Arsenal Arena, which basically requires him to at least be a One Man Platoon.
• One-Steve Limit: Was originally going to be named Sanders, but changed to avoid rumors of him being related to Kahlee Sanders.
• Percussive Maintenance: If he's sent to go "fix" something, he will walk over, stare hard at the object for a moment or two, then proceed to give it a good, firm kicking. Tech is not his thing. It always seems to do the job, though.
• Platonic Life-Partners: He and Cortez. It would be Heterosexual Life-Partners, except Cortez isn't heterosexual.
• Playing with Fire: Incendiary Ammo.
• Praetorian Guard: Seems to have served as a bodyguard/jailer to Shepard while they were under house arrest.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • When sparring with Shepard he'll assert that he's the only one who gives a fuck about doing what's needed to be done (re: sacrificing the colonists for intel and ramming a Cerberus shuttle).
  • He also thinks the Illusive Man is fucking crazy, near the end, for using human refugees seeking refuge from the war as test subjects to control the Reapers.
• Ramming Always Works: Rams his shuttle at Dr. Eva's shuttle on Mars to prevent her escape.
• Real Men Cook: Vega's time aboard Normandy is spent in one of two places, the gym or the kitchen.
• Revenge Before Reason: During the Reaper invasion of Earth, when the Normandy is ordered to bug out, Vega immediately threatens mutiny and wants to turn the ship around. Shepard furiously retorts that they don't like it either, but they were ordered to go to the Citadel and get reinforcements. Vega begrudgingly agrees to back down and later admits they were right.
• Sadistic Choice: Near the end of Mass Effect: Paragon Lost, Vega is torn between saving the colonists who are on board on the crashing Collector ship and saving the asari Treeya who coincidentally has the intel on the Collectors from being spaced out. He chose the latter. Shepard notes that's probably why James was offered N7 training, because Shepard himself/herself — regardless of background — was forced to make a Sadistic Choice while in command.
• Screw the War, We're Partying:
  • Whilst on the Citadel, Vega prefers spending time playing cards with the refugees in the docks, meeting up with fellow soldiers for drinks in Purgatory and is implied by Steve and Ashley to have set up a still on the Normandy.
  • In Leviathan, he asks Shepard if they think Steve will mind if he sets up a bowling alley in the hangar bay. While playing with the Husk head.
• Semper Fi: Embodies the 21st-century Marine archetype, more than any other major character.
• Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The "manly" to Cortez's sensitive guy.
• Ship Tease:
  • With Female Shepard, although it never goes anywhere. When Shepard asks if he plans to do anything about all this flirting, James freezes up and stutters.
    Shepard: [smirks] Uh-huh. That's what I thought.
  • He has this with Ann Bryson in Leviathan as well as Maya Brooks in Citadel until Brooks turns out to be evil.
  • He and Ashley can hook up near the end of Shepard's party in the Citadel DLC.
  • And if you play your cards right and flirt with him at every opportunity through the Citadel DLC, it is possible for FemShep to wake up with Vega the next morning. The tone of the morning after, however, suggests that he considers it a one-time occurrence.
  • His dialogue with Steve also gets rather flirtatious at times.
• Shipper on Deck: If Shepard romances Cortez, James will remark to Shepard in Citadel that he's glad that the two "found each other."
• Shirtless Scene: When he gets his N7 tattoo and when he shows it to Shepard.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: His backstory featured in Mass Effect: Paragon Lost. He sacrificed the colony to get vital data on the Collectors, but Shepard defeated the Collectors before the Alliance could use the data.
• Space Marine: As a member of the Alliance Military.
• Stone Wall: And built like it, too. In-game, he has high health and possesses the Fortification ability.
• Strong Family Resemblance: To his maternal uncle.
• Survivor Guilt: Suffers this near the end of Mass Effect: Paragon Lost where he lost most of his squadmates and sacrificed the colony while defeating the Collectors.
• Team Chef: "Hope you don't mind, I was craving some of my abuela's huevos rancheros."
• Throw Down the Bomblet: One of his powers is Frag Grenade. It's very useful if you don't have any of your own.
• Underestimating Badassery: During his sparring match with Shepard, he forgets that while physically, he's far more muscular than Shepard, they have numerous implants and genetic modifications that give them enhanced strength and increased stamina. One ending of the fight sees Shepard perform an effortless flip that throws him ass over tea-kettle. Especially astonishing with female Shepard's slim build compared to James.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Say what you will, but serious or not, his banter with Cortez does get pretty flirty pretty often. And not quite in the "I'm being so gay I'm obviously super straight" way, either. Uh.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Cortez. Also with Garrus. They have a scene where they swap old war stories, eventually leading to one where they team up to save the galaxy from the reapers. When Garrus adds "with a little help from their friends", Vega corrects him. "Nah, it was just us. But mostly me."
• The Watson: Mainly during the early missions. For example, on Menae he prompts dialogue on the bare-bones history of the genophage.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Near the end of Mass Effect: Paragon Lost. He gets called out by his remaining squadmate, Milque, for letting the colonists die while choosing to save Treeya with the intel. During Leviathan, he'll chew out Shepard if they let Ann's possession go too far.
• You Are in Command Now: His CO, Captain Toni, was injured during the mission on Fehl Prime, leaving Vega in charge of the squad.

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Javik

I am the anger of a dead people, demanding blood be spilled for the blood we lost.

"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer."

Voiced by: Ike Amadi

A Prothean found in a stasis chamber on Eden Prime. Javik is a veteran of the Protheans' centuries-long war with the Reapers, spending all of his life as a warrior, and was intended to be part of a plan to outlast the Reaper invasion by sealing millions of soldiers and specialists in stasis pods to emerge after the Reapers departed, and rebuild their civilization (needless to say, this didn't work out right). Javik was one of many Prothean "avatars" of various concepts and virtues such as bravery, compassion, and loyalty; in Javik's case, however, that virtue was vengeance, and he joins Shepard's team to enact revenge for the total destruction of his people. Made available in the day-one DLC "From Ashes".

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• Ancient Astronauts: He gets quite frustrated by Liara not noticing how all of the Asari Goddesses resemble Protheans — in fact, many of whom Javik knew personally.
• Anti-Hero: His "virtue" is vengeance, after all, and in all arguments with the rest of the crew, he's always in favor of the most extreme and aggressive solutions.
• The Anti-Nihilist: If you convince him not to reminisce via the Echo Shard, he states that he faces the prospect of outliving his purpose, and he will need to find a new one. He considers either co-writing Liara's book^note provided that you quickly resolve the quarrel between them after the Thessia mission, or live as a king among the Hanar.
• Appeal to Nature: Javik points out that "extinction is the rule of the cosmos", and argues that since this is the order of things in the natural world, civilizations must also enforce this order.
• Armor-Piercing Question: The quote above when he questions Paragon Shepard's insistence on diplomacy and decency against the onslaught of the Reapers. This is one of the few instances when Paragon Shepard has absolutely no rebuttal.^note If Paragon Shepard tries to make the Renegade response, Javik will say his words are hollow.
  Javik: You still have hope that this war will end with your honor intact. Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. (long pause) The silence is your answer.
• Ascended Meme: Fans once proposed calling him invoked"Prothy The Prothean" during the development stages of the third game, when they speculated that a Prothean would be a future squadmate. Come the From Ashes DLC, he lampshades it, and is actually not pleased.
  Javik: Your Joker-pilot insisted I call myself "Prothy the Prothean". I insisted that he allow me to throw him out of the airlock.
• Badass Creed: See introductory quote.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Take him into vacuum and he doesn't even bother with the face-mask other characters put on. Oxygen is for primitives.
• Boldly Coming: In Citadel, it's possible for him to have a one night stand with female Shepard, leading to this hilarious exchange:
  Javik: It turns out there is one thing primitives are good at.
  Shepard: Not a word.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • To Liara. After Thessia falls to the Reapers, she flips out at him because she spent her entire life studying the Protheans and feels like it was all for nothing.
    Liara: You're a Prothean! You were supposed to have all the answers!
  • It's not just the Protheans' impotence that she resents, mind you. It came as a nasty surprise for her to spend most of her life thinking that they were sage, kindly Benevolent Precursors and then be confronted with, well... Javik. An exchange on the topic of the Ardat-Yakshi is particularly telling about how disillusioned she's become. In Javik's defense, he points out that he was one of the Prothean's warriors as opposed to one of their scientists or scholars and, in his own words, is "skilled in only one thing; killing" - but even with that in mind, Javik's stories seem to imply that Protheans as a whole still weren't anywhere near the enlightened and peaceful society Liara thought they were.
    Javik: My people would never have let such monsters survive.
    Liara: They didn't care for the competition?
• Can't Hold His Liquor: He gets drunk very quickly during the party in "Citadel". During the aftermath, he's the only guest (outside of Tali after an energetic party) to be so hungover that he can barely move.
• Character Catchphrase: "In my cycle..."
• Color-Coded Wizardry: Javik's biotic powers are colored green just like Prothean artifacts such as the Beacon instead of the usual blue, possibly signifying that Prothean biotics are different and/or even more advanced than those used by the modern races.
• The Comically Serious: A lot of the comedy surrounding Javik depends on how deadpan he is at all times.
• Commander Contrarian: For every benevolent Paragon decision Shepard makes, Javik has a very well thought out counterpoint to illuminate the flaws in Shepard's idealism. Very often Paragon Shepard can't properly rebut without using vague ideals and platitudes against his logic. This works both ways, especially when the results of that idealism do show themselves. This is primarily the reason Javik eventually ends up having so much respect for a Paragon Shepard.
• Continuity Nod: Many of his features were chosen to mirror those of the Collectors^note Protheans altered by the Reapers. from Mass Effect 2.
• Consummate Professional: Cares only about stopping the Reapers, not making friends with the crew.
• Covert Pervert:
  • If Shepard is romancing Tali, just take a look at the amused grin he's wearing when he comments that no-one knows what the quarians look like... except the Commander. Did we mention that Protheans are capable of viewing a person's memories, again?
  • In the Citadel DLC if certain criteria are met, he and Female Shepard have a one night stand. See quote on Boldly Coming entry...
• Crack Pairing: An in-universe and canonical one at that! Female Shepard and Javik potentially have a one-night stand in Citadel.
• Cultural Posturing: Zigzagged.
  • Bordering on Fantastic Racism (and crossing into it sometimes), he's very quick to remind everyone how asari, humans, and turians were all laughably primitive during his time. He's shocked to learn that the salarians evolved at all, remembering them as the "lizard men" who "used to eat flies". Of course, for him that was minutes before you met him.
  • However, he's the first to admit that the Protheans' monolithic culture was one of the cores of their undoing, and that the fact that this cycle is filled with so many different cultures is one of the very few advantages that we have.
  • He also has very little tolerance for synthetics and A.I. entities. His reaction to Legion is to urge Shepard (repeatedly) to throw it out the airlock, he personally goes into EDI's AI core to argue with her and he finds Glyph annoying.
• Cute Little Fangs: Although you rarely see him stop frowning long enough to see them.
• Damage Over Time: Javik's trademark ability, Dark Channel, is a biotic attack somewhat akin to Warp that hexes a target with a gradual health drain that will leap to a nearby adjacent enemy upon the target's expiration, and will repeat until its timer runs out or there are no enemies in proximity to its current victim. It also acts as a biotic combo primer, and will continue to be so on each subsequent target it hexes. Play biotic combo whack-a-mole to really deal out the hurt.
• Deadpan Snarker: Heavy emphasis on "deadpan." So much that you can't be completely certain whether he's joking, sometimes.
  James: So, how about smoking? You ever do that?
  Javik: Only when my armor became inflamed.
• Death Seeker: If you convince him to re-experience the memories he stored in the Echo Shard, he tells you his plans for the future — to find the graves of his fallen comrades and "put their ghosts to rest", and then to join them himself.
• Defrosting Ice King:
  • Over the course of the game, he gradually warms up, and even starts joking around with other members of your squad. Tali, calling him while drunk after Horizon, can conclude that he acts angry all the time but actually likes and cares about them. If she calls him while sober she says she's sorry that he's seen worse and gotten numb to it, and he tells her that her sympathy is not necessary but it is appreciated.
  • On your first visit to the Citadel with him, if you convince him to change the tone of his motivational speech and have encouraged him with more Paragon choices throughout conversations he will, after spending the entire time referring to the Council races as "primitives," offer this very subtle shift in perspective:
    Javik: Thank you for meeting with me, Commander. I have enjoyed my time here walking among the... young.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Due to being born in an imperialistic society that existed when all other living races were still primitive, Javik will often voice opinions which are normal by his standards but exceedingly weird/brutal/both by ours.
  • Discussed in-universe with Liara. She's shocked by how warlike Javik is and by how imperialistic Prothean civilization was. It becomes clear that she had been viewing them through the lens of her own cultural norms when the reality was much different. Javik admits, eventually, that his views are a product of his time and had he lived in Liara's time, he might have seen the universe in a similar manner. Depending on how you interpret his words and tone, there might even seem to be some regret that he's not the "noble scholar" Liara believed/wanted the Protheans to be.
  • He also thinks things may have been different before the Reapers came; by the time he was born, the war had been going for generations and was long past being obviously lost, and before the Reapers there was also the Metacon Wars. Basically, Prothean history at that point had been bloody struggle for survival against overwhelming foes, so the harsh attitude isn't all that unreasonable.
• Determined Defeatist: He's extremely pessimistic about the chances of Shepard's cycle and has to be loudly reprimanded to offer words of hope, but not even once does he suggest giving up. On Thessia in particular, he's gunning for success.
• Developer's Foresight: You can recruit him before you go on the mission to Palaven. But he can't come along because the events of that mission are a Plot Tailored to the Party. So if you do so, he will be unable to accompany you on missions until you complete the mission on Menae, citing the stasis equivalent of Resurrection Sickness, only to recover just in time for the next mission.
• Doesn't Trust Those Guys: Synthetics in general; partially by virtue that, unlike organics, A.I.s are aware of their creators, flaws and all; and partially because he was born when his race was already at war with the Reapers. Both EDI and Legion are targets of Javik's ideals on the matter.
• Driven to Suicide: If Shepard urges him to open the Memory Shard, he decides to rejoin his fallen crew if he survives the final battle.
• Downloadable Content: Javik does not appear in the vanilla game.
• The Empath: Like all Protheans. Javik is able to determine complex ideas and concepts regarding another through physical contact, and can determine a great deal about another by simply walking through a room where they stayed for some time. In his own words, memory has its own chemical process, and the Protheans had developed their sensory abilities to such a degree that reading others' natures through analyzing their DNA was as simple as breathing.
• Everyone Has Standards: Javik is somber, merciless and somewhat racist (especially against A.I's) and he encourages Shepard to be likewise, but even he finds Kai Leng rather repulsive.
  Javik: If I kill nothing else but him, it will have been worth it!
• Everything's Better with Samurai:
  • His armor needed to have an "ancient" feel while still being high-tech. Pit him against Phantoms or Kai Leng and you have an alien samurai/cyborg ninja deathmatch. Seriously◊.
  • Crosses over into Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot. His armor has a samurai vibe, his accent is African and his people evolved as hunters and eventually developed into space-Rome.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Each of his eyes has two pupils.
• Expy: To Sten of Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins to some degree. Both are Deadpan Snarker Proud Warrior Race Guy soldiers with a heavy dose of Determinator and Implacable Man, while coming from a Social Darwinist empire bent on bending other cultures to their own.
• Extra Eyes: He has four eyes.
  Javik: How do you people see with only two eyes? Evolution has taken a strange turn in this cycle.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • He has an even stronger anti-AI prejudice than Tali: he's quite pleased if you decide to let the quarians kill the geth. He doesn't seem put off by Shepard technically being a cyborg, though probably because they were organic to begin with and though they have synthetic implants, they still possess an organic mind.
  • He also detests the krogan for ravaging Tuchanka without any help from the Reapers. He considers them little more than cannon fodder, argues against curing the genophage, and suggests they be wiped out altogether if they cause future problems.
  • He's contemptuous of pretty much every species of this cycle.
• Fighting Your Friend: This turns out to be a key part of his backstory. He once had his own ship and many friends, but they were captured and indoctrinated. Years later, he cornered the last of them, slit their throats and watched them bleed out to be certain. Shepard, no stranger to tragic pasts, is lost for words. It becomes Foreshadowing if Jack isn't rescued at Grissom Academy.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Bonds with both Shepard and Garrus over mutual respect and experience with the Reapers.
• First Contact: Obviously, as the last living Prothean. Shepard's guards comment that they needed to dust off the regulations regarding protocols for newly-contacted races, which (after the First Contact War) included "assume hostilities".
• Fish out of Temporal Water: He was in stasis for 50,000 years.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He seems to piss off almost everybody in the crew, especially Liara, but they keep him around because he is a useful source of knowledge about the Protheans and an excellent combatant. Eventually they do start getting along a little better when Liara realizes she needs to stop judging him by what she assumed Protheans were like. By Citadel, he's more or less integrated into the group, finding a niche alongside the more bloodthirsty members like Wrex, Grunt and Zaeed.
• Galactic Conqueror: The original plan was to hide a million Protheans in stasis to wait out the harvest, then leave Eden Prime and force the primitives to fight against the Reapers when the time comes. The Reapers screwed that plan up, so he's a conqueror without an army.
• Genius Bruiser: Seems to have been the Protheans' hat. He's very intelligent, and very warlike.
• Glowing Eyes: In the promotional image, at least.
• Genocide Survivor: Javik is the sole surviving Prothean, having been put in stasis back when the Reapers wiped out his civilization.
• Go, Ye Heroes, Go and Die: Gives one of these to various people on the Citadel, apparently in an attempt to scare them shitless to get the seriousness of their situation across. A Paragon interrupt lets you convince him to change it into a Rousing Speech.
• Handshake Refusal: When you first introduce yourself to him on Eden Prime. Gets paid off at the end when he offers his own handshake at London.
• Headbutting Heroes:
  • Gets along poorly with EDI, to the point of believing she should not be active.
  • Occasionally with Shepard, since the Prothean solution to getting help from other races was to force them. He is utterly perplexed why the people in this cycle seem to want to talk about everything, even in the face of possible extinction.
• Human Popsicle: Until he woke up, obviously.
• Hypocritical Humor: In Citadel, he potentially sleeps with female Shepard who hasn't romanced anyone, despite protesting Interspecies Romance as a "pointless exercise" during the Geth Dreadnought mission if he's brought along and male Shepard is romancing Tali. This is also after he stated that Protheans considered primitive quarians attractive and laments that no-one can appreciate that now (except male Shepard if Tali is romanced) ^note  Of course, in that continuity he had never met Mrs. Shepard.
• I'll Kill You!: Javik snarls that if he only gets to kill Kai Leng, then he'll die happy. Let us repeat: Javik has a blood oath to destroy the Reapers, but Kai Leng is the only person he wants to personally murder. That guy gets a rise out of a 50,000-year-old Prothean whose species was not only rendered extinct but turned into Body Horror Slave Mooks.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Back in his day, most of the other (current) sapient species of the galaxy were considered delicacies for the Protheans. He still occasionally threatens to cook and eat people who annoy him, and laments that he isn't able to serve up any expendable crew mates as dinner when drunk.
• I'm Not Here to Make Friends: Bluntly tells Shepard as such after Tuchanka. That said, he manages to strike up a sort-of friendship with Garrus.
• I'm Standing Right Here: If you take him with you to Thessia:
  Liara: [to Shepard] Incredible! The Beacon seems to think you are Prothean, Shepard. It must be from the Cipher you got back on Feros, all those years ago!
  Javik: Or it could be the Prothean standing next to you.
• Ironic Echo: On the receiving end of one from his own VI, Victory. "Their sacrifice will be honored in the coming empire."
• Irony: Javik learns English empathically from Shepard, the only person alive who actually can understand Prothean.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Paragon Shepard (as usual) can nudge him into this.
• Just a Machine
  Javik: [to EDI]: What rights do you have? You are just a tool!
• Kneel Before Zod: Played for laughs after the wild party in Citadel.
  Hungover Javik: Is it time to rule the galaxy now? Kneel before Javik!
• Kubrick Stare: Javik is good at this, most memorably when he states his mission: kill Reapers.
• Last of His Kind: Naturally.
• Living Lie Detector: One of the benefits of his psychometric abilities. Though his wording suggests it's not infallible, but he can't sense any deception in Shepard's words. If Shepard doesn't cure the genophage, and keeps it hidden from Wrex / Wreav, Javik will sense they're hiding something, and quickly figures everything else out from there.
• Living Relic: The only living member of a race that went extinct fifty-thousand years ago.
• Mage Marksman: A biotic who carries an assault rifle.
• Mars Needs Women: At the end of the Citadel DLC, he can have a one-night stand with Female Shepard.
• Mean Boss: After the mission with Primarch Victus' son, Javik states that if one of his men had screwed up as bad as Tarquin, Javik would've given them the Sand Necktie treatment, and left them to die. If they managed to survive that and came back for more, Javik would shoot them between the eyes.
• Might Makes Right: Huge believer in this. He strongly argues against the methods Shepard employs to recruit allies, instead insisting that the best way to do so would be to force them to help. The whole reason he was frozen was to wait until after the harvest and forcibly uplift the remaining races to spend the entire cycle preparing for the next invasion, but his army was wiped out at the last minute and his reanimation equipment was damaged.
• Mercy Kill: When told of the Collectors and their deaths at the hands of Shepard by Liara, Javik's response is that Shepard's actions qualify as this.
• Mind over Matter: A biotic. It is not known how common it was among Protheans.
• Motivational Lie:
  • After the mission on Thessia goes sideways and the planet falls, Liara confronts Javik in his quarters. She angrily blames him for the Protheans not doing more to prepare the cycle for the next Reaper invasion and for shattering her expectations about them. He counters that the Protheans gave the asari their technology and guided their growth in order to prepare them to be the leaders of the next cycle when their own civilization had finally been destroyed. This is enough to calm her down. Afterwards, Shepard asks him if he meant what he said. Javik responds with either "She believes it. So she will keep fighting," or "I will tell you what you want to hear: I meant what I said."
  • On the Citadel, a crowd overhears that Javik is a Prothean. An asari asks him what hope they have to defeat the Reapers if the Protheans failed. Javik will at first give a speech about how they are all doomed, but with a Paragon interrupt, Shepard can convince Javik to give a more uplifting speech. He'll explain how his people knew all the young races, saw how much potential they had, and how far they have come, and that this gives him hope for this cycle, reassuring the crowd. Speaking to Javik regularly makes it clear he doesn't actually believe much of what he actually said, and only said it because Shepard asked him to.
• Mundane Utility: Claims that Protheans used their biotics to clean their teeth.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: A rare example of this trope not being played for laughs. While some instances are played for comedic effect, Javik is uniformly in favor of the most aggressive and violent solutions to problems, including killing enemies.
• My Sensors Indicate You Want to Tap That: He can tell who Shepard's on-ship love interest is by their pheromones.
• Neat Freak: He spends his time aboard the Normandy constantly scrubbing his hands in the fluid-filled basins in his quarters. It makes sense though; considering his touch-based extrasensory ability, residue on the skin is probably a lot more irritating to Javik than it would be to just about anyone else.
• Noodle Incident: Often refers to events that occurred in his own cycle before anyone else was even close to being born, leaving them bewildered.
  • He regrets that modern Thresher Maws are now too big to ride.
  • Also, he remembers that charging headlong at a Reaper Destroyer hurling laser-fire and Brutes at you while trying to crush you with its legs was the easy part.
• No-Sell: In the Citadel DLC, Javik will be amused at Kasumi's cloaking, saying she thinks she's invisible to him.
• No Sense of Humor: Initially. When James asks if Protheans actually tell jokes, he tells one that sounds like a Cryptic Background Reference we just can't understand. He then reveals that he made it up to see if James would buy it (he did), and was, effectively, trolling him. Then he laughs.
• Not So Above It All: Throughout Citadel, especially during the Party.
• Not So Stoic: Occasionally lets his stoic façade drop. He's also taken aback and somewhat amused when Liara corrects him on his belief that salarians are "lizard-men", pointing out that they're clearly amphibians.
  Javik: [Beat] They used to eat flies.
• Odd Friendship:
  • With a Paragon Shepard, due to having radically different approaches to how they should defeat the Reapers. Most of their dialogue shows that Javik is completely perplexed at their way of thinking. One reason for their friendship could be that, while everyone else judges Javik as The Last Prothean, the Enkindler, the Creator, Shepard is the only one who simply accepts Javik for who he is as a person, warts and all. In addition, while a Paragon Shepard may greatly disagree with Javik's proposed methods and lets it be known, Shepard also displays a great deal of empathy for why Javik thinks the way he does.
  • Javik openly likes Zaeed. They discuss conquering the galaxy together. Though Javik doesn't understand why Zaeed is always "damning his God".
  • He also gets along with Garrus, respecting the latter's knowledge of war and history of warfare and in general looks well on the turian militaristic culture as it closely resembles his own. The two trade stories of pointless wars that occurred in their cycle and likely only served to make things easier for the Reapers. He and Garrus basically tutor a young human soldier out of his naivete — Garrus teaching to respect the enemy, Javik teaching he should be hardening himself for what's coming.
  • If he never views the Shard, he admits he actually likes the idea of exploring the galaxy with Liara and helping her with her book.
• One-Man Army: In the Citadel DLC, he boasts that he has more kills than every other member of the squad combined. Considering his background, the length of the Prothean-Reaper War, his skills, and his ruthlessness, this is most likely true.
• Omniglot: His empathic abilities let him learn English in moments by scanning Shepard's memories when they touched his shoulder. Of course, that Shepard already had the Prothean Cipher in their head from the first game probably helped in that regard.
• Optional Party Member: The From Ashes Downloadable Content allows you to recruit him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: According to him, the typical Prothean response to traitors was to slice their limbs off and then make them eat their own limbs. He grumbles that merely shooting Udina was less than they deserved.
• Perpetual Frowner: The picture above shows the expression he's got on almost constantly. It doesn't help that's the natural shape of a Prothean's mouth, making them all Perpetual Frowners. Still, when seeing Vendetta on Thessia, he throws in a smile.
• Pheromones: Can sense them, if this exchange is any indication.
  Javik: You and the human female/human soldier/asari/turian/quarian are... joined?
  Shepard: You could say that.
  Javik: I'm not. Your pheromones are.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: He could give Cerberus a run for their money with some of his views.
• Precision F-Strike: Drops a completely random "Oh Shit!" in Citadel when he sees an Atlas.
• Precursor: The last living member of the current cycle's precursors.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: He was a soldier fighting for the survival and glory of the empire. It turns out the Protheans were a warlike people who elevated and conquered other races into their galactic empire, much to Liara's dismay. Wrex thinks he'd fit right in on Tuchanka. Interestingly, he averts the standard Blood Knight tendencies; when faced with a Reaper on the ground, he notes that his goal is "vengeance, not suicide." And when observing krogan behavior, notes that "war is not a sport. It is a means to an end."
• Refuge in Audacity: In Citadel if he's taken along to infiltrate the casino. One of his lines for distracting a guard is simply "You, human. I require your attention. I am a Prothean. What do you think of that?" The guard says he's the fourth one this week, though he has the best costume. And that's just the most blatant one. He's also the only one who doesn't get a change of clothes — he's still wearing full armor, his rifle and pistol in the middle of the club.
• Revenge: His entire reason for existing now. He is the Prothean Avatar of Vengeance.
• Sealed Badass in a Can: Spent fifty thousand years in a stasis pod before Cerberus found him.
• Serious Business: When prompted, Javik explains that, when the Protheans didn't fight Reapers, they would pass the time by having staring contests that lasted for hours.
• Shadow Archetype: To a Paragon Shepard.
• Sixth Ranger: He doesn't have to be the last teammate to join, but everyone else except James is a veteran squaddie.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He shows shades of this, but it's muted by the memory shard taking away his most vivid memories. Touching the memory shard brings this trope forth fully.
• Shoulders of Doom: His armor sports some enormous shoulder protection.
• Social Darwinist:
  • He explains this was the Prothean mindset. The strong flourish, the weak are doomed. Those who have nothing to offer society die out. Prothean scientists called it "the Cosmic Imperative".
  • He says this also extended to their societal view of caste. Everyone who joined the Protheans would eventually call themselves Prothean, regardless if it was their species or not, because Protheans were the apex of life in the galaxy. Despite still holding onto his latent racism, he also admits this bit them in the ass in the last cycle because the homogeneous culture this mindset enforced crippled their ability to fight the Reapers efficiently.
• Sociopathic Hero: His goal is to avenge his people by destroying the Reapers. There are no limits to how far he is willing to go to see this happen. This can be to his detriment, since he suggests betraying his allies to secure different allies, and suggests they keep the obviously insane Rachni Breeder if you destroyed the Rachni Queen in the first game.
• The Spock: Having the most experience dealing with the Reapers and being a member of the apex species of the previous cycle, Javik is uniquely suited to argue for the cold logic of sheer ruthlessness at all costs against their enemies.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: He has by far the most dialogue during missions. Almost everything of it reveals something from the past. Ergo, players will be encouraged to take him the most.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Javik's a little perturbed by Liara's endless, enthusiastic stream of questions, as well as discovering that the hanar have come to worship the Protheans as their Gods. However, he's mostly overcome this by the end of the game, having agreed to write a book with Liara about the Protheans and joking that after the Reaper War, he could retire to Kahje and "live like a king" among the hanar.
• Stupid Evil: For a definition of "Evil" anyway. He claims that Shepard using diplomacy to gather allies to build the Crucible/take back Earth is a waste of time, and humanity should just force the other races to help Earth. This falls flat when one realizes that Shepard and the Normandy crew is an incredibly efficient use of assets that, when used correctly, solves problems and gains allies with minimal cost, rather than having the Alliance send fleets (fleets that it's desperately short on trying to hold back the Reapers) to fight other governments (like the Turians and Asaris) which are still vastly stronger than the Alliance military in order to force them into submission, which would take a lot more time and cause vastly more loss of material and personnel that NOBODY can afford at this point. He does come to realize how this line of thinking is probably what screwed the Protheans in his cycle, and that the diversity and cooperation of the current cycle is probably their only hope.
• Surrounded by Idiots: He kind of loses it during his encounter with Shepard and the entire cast and crew of Blasto 7:
  (Once Shepard takes the Paragon interrupt on Blasto)
  Shepard: This one is the Hero of the Citadel. I'll handle it.
  Blasto: This one insists.
  Shepard: This one doesn't care.
  Javik: This one... wishes he was still frozen in the refrigerator!
  (Fires a biotic blast at the "Vorcha Councilor")
• That Was Not a Dream: In Citadel, a very hungover Javik complains of the horrible dream he had about waking up, 50,000 years in the future when primitives ruled the galaxy... only to realize that he wasn't dreaming.
• This Is Gonna Suck: His dialogue if your party members are all organic on waking him up is to sneer at how he's surrounded by primitives. If EDI is the third party member, he'll instead grumble that a synthetic's presence isn't a good indication at all.
• Thrown Out the Airlock: Insists on doing this on a few occasions, like when Joker insists on calling him "Prothy the Prothean" or on any synthetic life-form simply for being synthetic. If Javik is in the squad when Shepard goes for the Renegade dialogue, once he or she gets imprisoned during the Citadel DLC main mission (where Shepard ends it with mentioning this trope), he exclaims "Finally!!!"
• To Serve Man:
  • According to him, salarian kidney was a delicacy in his time and hanar were appetizers. He also drunkenly mentions that Prothean food is largely extinct, save for salarians, asari, turians and quarians. He might just be saying things to mess with people, though, since there are amino acid chirality issues with that...
  • Note that at other times he also mentions that quarians were considered attractive in his cycle.
• Token Evil Teammate: His extremism makes Renegade Shepard look like a Paragon. Eventually he gets better and will come to respect our cycle's way of life and even expresses his enjoyment during his tour of the Citadel. And if you convinced him to not relive the memories of his people through his shard, he'll decide to explore the galaxy after the war and experience the different cultures for himself. He explains that much of his extremism comes from his upbringing; he was born after the Reapers arrived, and was raised in the final struggles of the Prothean Empire. All throughout his life, he has never known anything but war. He even speculates a little wistfully that if he had not, he might well have been what Liara expected. His less harsh side is hinted in his discussion of the densorian people of his cycle, who sacrificed their own children to the Reapers in such a manner Javik flat out refuses to elaborate on it any further.
• Tragic Keepsake: The Echo Shard, the small black monolith he keeps in his room. He explains how it contains the memories of the Protheans before him who all passed it one to the next, making it vaguely similar to the greybox which Kasumi holds. It's relinquished to Shepard in London if Javik embraced its memories earlier.
• Troll: His new hobby.
  • If brought in Priority: Sur'Kesh without Liara, he'll respond to Wrex's dab at the Salarians:
    Javik: He [Wrex] is correct. It was a... delicacy in our cycle.
  • Javik tells James a Prothean joke that makes no sense to the current cycle. James laughs in attempt to show that he got it. Turns out, Javik lied and was simply screwing with him, then laughs at him for being so gullible. In the Citadel DLC, we get this:
    Javik: I'll never tire of tricking the primitives. That's a game I enjoy playing.
  • According to Citadel, he told Liara that Protheans invented electricity.
    Javik: Heh heh. Asari will believe anything.
  • In Citadel, it doesn't appear like he'll let Shepard forget that they fell through a fish tank anytime soon.
    Javik: Commander, in my cycle, when we fled combat by falling through tanks containing aquatic animals, we usually... Ooohhh, right. We never did! Hahahahaha! You are a trailblazer!
  • He also has fun with the salarian film crew when he offers his presence for the filming of Blasto 7.
    Actor!Salarian Councilor: O wise, Prothean elder, what wisdom of the ages can you share with us?
    Javik: Salarian kidney is best served at room temperature. It is even better when the salarian is still alive. The fear adds...spice.
    Actor!Vorcha Councilor: Prothean no like you!
    [later, towards "Blasto the Hanar Spectre"]
    Javik: In my cycle, your people were nothing more than appetizers. Would you prefer to be boiled, or fried?
    Actor!Vorcha Councilor: Prothean no like you!
• Tsundere:
  • At least, he is if you ask a drunken Tali.
    Tali: I heard about your talk with Liara. You act so angry, but you really care about us.
  • It's hidden very deep down, but he's actually somewhat fond of Liara. When he wakes up hungover in the Citadel DLC party, and he still thinks he's dreaming, he distinctly remembers her.
• The Unfettered: If anything defines Javik most succinctly, this would be it. To him, everything should be about fighting the Reapers to the exclusion of all else. This can be a bit jarring at times, as he recommends things like saving the Rachni Breeder to use as a weapon despite its obvious insanity and the fact it was made by the Reapers.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Even when discussing matters beneficial to the war against the Reapers, Javik's suggestions are quite brutal and often callous. When discussing the bomb on Tuchanka with Garrus, he suggests the Turians either should've used it as leverage to get the Krogan to help in the war or detonated it just to put an end to the issue altogether. He shares this general outlook on all his enemies; namely that he'll only tolerate the Reapers as an enemy, and everyone else who gets in their way should be destroyed on sight.
• Upbringing Makes the Hero: He's had it rough from day one, his first memory being that of his planet being on fire. This can make him a Foil for Spacer Shepard (who had it pretty good and is Paragon-leaning) or no different from a Colonist or Earthborn Shepard (who are even-split/Renegade-leaning and suffered a traumatic experience as a teenager/also had a rough childhood, if not so dramatic). He himself notes that everyone is a product of their time, and that he might have been the wise scholar Liara expected him to be if he had been born in the present cycle.
• Verbal Tic: He tends to refer to people by name, followed by description. For example: "Joker pilot", "James soldier", "EDI machine", "Mordin salarian" and "Kai Leng enemy". Not "Shepard Commander", though — that's Legion's thing.
• Warrior Poet: He's a taciturn fellow, but when he starts talking, his word choice is exquisite. He admits that he could have been a scholar or a poet like Liara envisioned him to be, if the Reapers had never invaded his people.
• Warrior Therapist:
  • Javik is uncompromising in his beliefs, but he also knows how to deliver a scathing yet inspiring pep-talk to others. Gives a great one to Liara after Thessia falls to the Reapers, and she comes dangerously close to despair. Javik forces her to confront the fact that everything she thinks she knows about Protheans is dangerously wrong, which almost causes her to attack Javik. But then Javik tells her that, whatever else she may think of them, the Protheans gave the beacon found on Thessia (apparently the most complete anywhere, giving the asari a major technological edge) to the asari because they believed them to be the best hope for their cycle. He actually uses her name for extra emphasis, having referred to her simply as "asari" up to that point. It helps her enormously, but when Shepard asks if any of it was true, Javik replies "She believes it, so she will keep fighting," and refuses to speak further on the subject in any way.
    James: You're like Sun Tzu, but with more eyes.
  • On the Citadel, this only applies if you take the Paragon interrupt. Otherwise his "pep-talk" comes off as rather depressing and hopeless.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Gives a major one to the asari, accusing them of squandering their gifts and explaining that the Protheans heavily influenced their early civilization to give them a headstart, intending them to be the ones to lead the next cycle against the Reapers. Instead, it's been left up to the humans to lead the fight against the Reapers.
  • When scanning Shepard's memories to find the Beacon's vision from 1, he angrily asks why didn't the current cycle act on it fast enough?
• While You Were in Diapers: On a galactic level. For one, he praises Shepard, before remarking that's they've done well for a species he last remembered living in caves.
  "Amusing. The asari have finally mastered writing."
  "Did you know that salarians used to lick their own eyes?"
  "Human. I met your ancestors long ago. They were living in caves, throwing rocks at wildlife."
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Javik's frequent suggestions on how to solve problems involve throwing them out the airlock.
• Worthy Opponent: Holds this view of Grunt, or at the very least thinks of him as a Worthy Threat.
• You Are a Credit to Your Race: While he does possess racist views towards the species of the current cycle, he's not above giving certain members praise whenever it's due.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Javik calls Liara by her given name instead of as a generic "asari" when she nears her Despair Event Horizon. Shepard later asks if he meant what he said, Javik tells you either it matters only that Liara believes, or "I will tell you what you want to hear: I meant what I said."
• You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: Alluded to.
  Shepard: I'm just glad he's on our side. You haven't seen him angry.
  Javik: Neither have you, Commander.
• Your Costume Needs Work: Taking Javik to the casino in the Citadel DLC will sometimes result in someone telling him his Prothean costume isn't the first he'd seen that week, though it was the best one.

---

Guest Party Members

David Anderson

David Anderson

See Mass Effect 1 Npcs

Aria T'Loak

Aria T'Loak

See Mass Effect 2 Non-Council Space NPCs.

Nyreen Kandros

Voiced by: Sumalee Montano

A female turian who joins Shepard and Aria in taking back Omega from Cerberus in the Omega DLC. Leader of the Talon mercenary group, and Aria's ex.

---

• Action Girl: And the first female turian we've laid eyes on in the main series.
• All the Other Reindeer: Being a biotic is frowned upon by the Turian military and Turians in general.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: With Aria.
• Black Sheep: As Andromeda mentions, the rest of the Kandros family weren't remotely thrilled by her leaving the military to "play pirate on Omega".
• Bury Your Gays: No matter what choices you make, she's killed off to provide angst for her partner.
• Character Death: Blows up herself along with a group of Adjutants in a contained biotic field.
• Dating Catwoman: Her relationship with Aria has this vibe.
• Distaff Counterpart: Given her location, reputation and modus operandi, she is basically a female Archangel.
• The Dreaded: The Cerberus troops on Omega designated her "Priority Target Alpha".
• Foreshadowing: Shortly before her death at Afterlife (the club), Aria shouts that Nyreen is going on ahead "to Afterlife". Ouch.
• Good Running Evil: The Talons were Omega's most notorious gang before Cerberus invaded. After she took up leadership, she managed to turn the group into a heroic resistance movement.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Shares the role with Aria for the Omega DLC.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Dies after detonating a belt of grenades within her own Biotic Shield to kill a group of Adjutants and save a group of hopelessly outgunned civilians.
• In the Hood: At first. Once she reveals herself as the new leader of the Talons, she spends the rest of the game more practically dressed in armor.
• La Résistance: She leads the Talons on Omega, the only group who are really resisting the Cerberus occupation. Everyone else is either going along with Cerberus or trying not to get killed by Adjutants.
• Last Stand: She went down fighting, that's for sure.
• The McCoy: Serves this role, forming a Power Trio alongside Aria and Shepard.
• Mind over Matter: The only other named turian biotic in the series other than Saren.
• Morality Chain: Serves as this to Aria. Furthermore, when she dies, Aria goes completely ballistic.
• A Mother to Her Men: She cares greatly for the Talons. Part of it is the Turian ideal of justice and hierarchy.
• Non-Mammal Mammaries: Averted. At first it looks like she has these but once she ditches her In the Hood look it's revealed that it was actually the chest plate of her Talon merc armor pressing against the fabric of her disguise.
• The Paragon: Aria describes her this way, claiming she practically "oozes virtue".
• Rebel Leader: She leads the resistance movement on Omega.
• The Red Mage: She's a Sentinel equivalent — Incinerate, Overload, Lift Grenades and a Biotic Protector ability similar to the asari justicar's sphere.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Due to manifesting as a biotic, the prejudice of the turian military towards biotics meant she was reassigned from frontline duty to one of their Cabals. In response, Nyreen simply abandoned military life altogether.
• Shadow Archetype: Interestingly while Nyreen herself is fairly moral and upstanding, her relationship with Aria is very much a dark reflection of Garrus' with Shepard. Like Garrus, Nyreen found herself being something of a Cultural Rebel, in her case being discriminated against for being a Biotic. She was taken under the wing of Aria, in part to build up her own self-esteem and her attraction to Aria but eventually had a falling out because of conflicting morals.
• The So-Called Coward: Aria can get rather callously dismissive of Nyreen over her fear of Adjutants. And all but outright calls her a coward when she makes a comparison that Nyreen needs to learn how to handle herself under pressure like Shepard. This is all despite Nyreen leading the Talons was the only successful resistance force to Cerberus' takeover of Omega.
• Stealth Pun: The leader of the Talons uses a Talon Heavy Pistol just before her Heroic Sacrifice.
• Straight Gay: Was once in a relationship with Aria.
• Token Good Teammate: When paired with Aria and Renegade Shepard.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Adjutants are about the only thing to actually scare her.
• Working with the Ex: With Aria.

Maya Brooks (MASSIVE UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Voiced by: Siobhan Hewlett

A human Alliance officer who assists Shepard throughout the Citadel DLC. Her expertise lies in tracking hacking attempts and monitoring communications of Alliance channels. Of course, that turns out to be a lie-she's really a Cerberus operative who escaped indoctrination and revived a clone of Shepard to help her pursue its original mission of human supremacy.

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• Ambiguously Brown: Maya is East Indian.
• Anti-Mutiny: Is loyal to Cerberus' mission and feels it started going wrong after aliens were brought on board.
• Ax-Crazy: She becomes noticeably more unhinged after The Reveal, and mentions Hearing Voices. Whether she's serious or not is never answered.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Shares this status alongside the Shepard clone in the Citadel DLC.
• Big Bad Friend: Turns out to be one of the main villains of the Citadel DLC.
• Bifauxnen: In the first issue of the Mass Effect Foundation comic, she looked like a boy when she was a kid and was treated as one when she worked as a child laborer. None of the characters or even the readers knew her true gender until she shot the woman who saved her earlier at the back and tells her that she's a girl.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: You thought that she's a dorky, clumsy Alliance officer who rarely went into combat. Then, it turns out that it's just an act.
• Captain Obvious: Warns Shepard that someone wants to kill them. Shepard and Joker's response is a blank stare and a reply that they're generally aware of that. She then clarifies that she means someone new. She also felt the need to point out that it's bad to land troops on a gas giant.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: She overdoses on medi-gel after taking shots. Resulting conversations have her high as a kite. It's an act.
• Dare to Be Badass: Shepard gradually nudges her out of her shell as the mission progresses. Then it turns out that she was perfectly competent all along.
• Death by Irony: She stabs the real Shepard in the back for the cloned one. And if you decide to take the Renegade interrupt, you can pay her back by shooting her in the back as she's running away. Just as Shepard didn't see the betrayal coming, Brooks won't see her death coming.
  Brooks: Admit it, you'll miss me.
  [BANG!]
  Shepard: Not from this distance I won't.
• A Day in the Limelight: She's a major character in the Mass Effect Foundation comic series, where the first issue reveals her backstory. She made recurring appearances in the later issues where she studies the dossiers of Shepard's crew and ends up leaving Cerberus with Shepard's clone to carve identities for the two of them.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her backstory in the comics isn't really pleasant where she was a child laborer. She even shot the woman who saved her because she refused to accompany her. This explains her trust issues.
• The Dragon: To Clone Shepard.
• Dragon-in-Chief: One gets the impression that despite Clone Shepard supposedly being in charge, she's the one really pulling the strings.
• Dragon Their Feet: Brooks did originally fight against Shepard side-by-side with the Commander's Clone, but once Clone Shepard is at risk of falling out of the Normandy, Brooks hangs back rather than risk her life to save her boss.
• Escort Mission: The one time she's a Required Party Member, she's a non-combatant and you have no access to her stats; you're just there to help her accomplish various tasks without arousing suspicion.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Reveals that she left Cerberus because she disapproved of their slide into indoctrinated fanaticism.
  Brooks: The Illusive Man and I no longer see eye to eye. He's a ruthless madman, whereas I'm just ruthless. He's indoctrinated, and I prefer the only voices in my head to be my own.
• Evil All Along: Revealed to have been in league with Clone Shepard the whole time.
• Evil Brit: Her accent, anyway.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Miranda, which Clone Shepard highlights. When she's in her blue Alliance combat armor, she also bears more than a striking resemblance to Ashley. While Miranda and Ashley are more pro-human than anti-alien, Brooks is completely the latter. There's another parallel to Miranda in that she initially plotted to use a Mind Control chip to keep Shepard in line before the Illusive Man overruled her, while Brooks absconded with Clone Shepard to escape his oversight and is strongly implied to have manipulated them into following her own ideology.
  • She's almost a clone to Samantha Traynor, being a cute and dorky Ambiguously Brown Alliance analyst with an English accent — up until she drops the dorky act.
• Fantastic Racism: She's an ex-Cerberus operative who put together the dossiers you used in 2, but disapproved of hiring aliens to help humans. Part of her motive for going after Shepard is that they're spending too much time helping other species rather than their own.
• Femme Fatale: Views herself as one, and dives into the role to the point of Large Ham. While she's right, she's also nowhere near as good as she thinks she is.
• Hate Sink: Once she's revealed her true colors, her smugness and racist attitude makes her a nasty piece of work. Even the Clone Shepard had a tragic element to them, especially once Brooks abandons them. The fact that she has the gall to taunt Shepard even when she's beaten makes you hate her even more.
• Hero-Worshipper: "You're the crew of the Normandy! You're legends to the rest of the Alliance." Subverted — she prefers Clone Shepard to the real one.
• I Have Many Names: "My name doesn't matter. I never keep the same one for more than a few days." Miranda knew her as "Hope Lilium" back when they were in Cerberus. In the Foundation comics, she goes by the name, "Rasa".
• In the Back: If Brooks tries to escape, Shepard has the option of shooting her in the back while she runs. If Shepard doesn't do it, one of their squadmates is more than happy to.
• Intoxication Ensues: Maya notes that she took a little too much medi-gel taking care of a wound, and starts acting like she's stoned off her gourd. Whether she's telling the truth or just pretending, it's unknown.
• Karmic Death: Her origin story in Foundation reveals that she shot the woman who saved her in the back when she attempted to abandon her. Shepard or one of their squadmates will shoot her in the back if she tries to run.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: It takes a little... persuasion from Shepard, but if they let Brooks know that their wanting Brooks to cooperate is not an attempt to save themselves but to save Brooks, she gets the message.
• Last-Second Chance: Paragon Shepard coldly tells her why she shouldn't attempt to escape custody. She takes the hint.
  Brooks: Is the great Commander Shepard pleading for his/her life?
  Shepard: [in a low, menacing tone] I'm pleading for yours.
• Letting Her Hair Down: Initially has her hair in a ponytail. She lets it down from the casino infiltration onwards.
• The Man Behind the Man: To Clone Shepard, whether they realize it or not.
• Mission Control: For the first few missions of the DLC.
• The Mole: She's in league with Clone Shepard, who likens her to Miranda during the events of 2. "Mine has more bite."
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Is far more capable than she lets on.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: This is a pretty tell-tale sign she's not who she says she is.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Nope, she's not indoctrinated, although she's well aware that the Illusive Man is. Taking out Shepard and replacing them with the clone is just the best way to help further humanity's interests.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Borrows the N7 Crusader when she and the clone fight you.
• Smug Snake: Her plan is actually pretty good and her act as a dorky Hero-Worshipper is quite convincing, but once she reveals her true nature, her every word is filled with such raw, unbridled arrogance. She also succumbs to pointless sadism and Bond Villain Stupidity, leaving Shepard and their friends alive in an easily escapable Sealed Room in the Middle of Nowhere instead of just trying to kill all of them when they're at her mercy. Shepard even notes that a bullet would be easier and more reliable before this plan is even carried out. Even when she's captured, she doesn't drop the smug act and has the gall to insinuate that Shepard's threats against her are nothing more than cowardly bluster.
• Spy Catsuit: For the archive mission, she's basically wearing Ashley's "From Ashes" DLC outfit.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: She ends up surviving the final fight, albeit she gets detained. She begins hacking her omni-handcuffs to escape. Note that she's on the Normandy which at this point is still in the air, with at least three armed people on board, each of whom may be among the galaxy's strongest biotics, not to mention an AI that can practically see everything going on inside the ship. And that's not counting the actual Alliance arresting officers.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: She has some similarities to Tela Vasir from the previous game's Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, in that she is initially presented as an ally, but subsequently turns out to be in league with the mission's Big Bad.
• Taking the Bullet: Saves Shepard from a sniper, getting wounded in the process. Given The Reveal, this also doubles as Engineered Heroics.
• Walking Spoiler: Her role in the primary conflict of the Citadel DLC is extremely difficult to talk about without bringing up the fact that she's actually the Dragon-in-Chief to your clone.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: When you first meet her, her accent switches rapidly from American to British to Australian. Turns out she's faking it and her real accent is British.