Mass Effect / Tropes M to P

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The rest of the list found here:

• Tropes A to D
• Tropes E to H
• Tropes I to L
• Tropes Q to T
• Tropes U to Z

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M

• Macguffin: Shall we count them?
  • From 1:
    • The Prothean Beacon on Eden Prime
    • Liara T'Soni, Prothean expert on Therum
    • The location of the Mu Relay, from the Rachni Queen on Noveria
    • The Prothean Cipher, from a Thorian thrall on Feros
    • The krogan cloning facility on Virmire
    • The Conduit on Ilos
    • The Citadel
  • From 2:
    • The Reaper IFF
    • The opposite end of the Omega-4 Relay, the location of the Collector base
    • The human-Reaper larva
    • Maelon's research
  • From 3:
    • The Crucible and the Catalyst
    • Eve, the last surviving female krogan immune to the genophage
    • The Council
    • Rannoch
    • The Prothean Beacon on Thessia and Vendetta, the AI with knowledge of the Catalyst
  • From Andromeda:
    • Meridian
    • The Remnant Drive Core, on Elaaden
• Mage Marksman: Biotics invariably enter combat armed with some form of gun in addition to their powers.
• Magic Is Feminine: The asari are another science fiction variant. They are a feminine One-Gender Race and the only species in the setting in which all members are biotics while members of other species only have biotic powers due to being exposed to elements zero in utero.
• Magic from Technology: Biotics look like magic, feel like magic, follow the same arbitrary restrictions as traditional RPG magic, and take more handwaving to explain than the rest of the series' technology combined. In-universe, however, they're considered a very thoroughly understood field of science in everything but implementation, as it is impossible to reliably grant biotic potential to an individual.
  • The third option ending of the third game really pushes this trope to its breaking point.
• Magical Gesture: Most biotics make excessive hand and arm motions when using biotic powers; this is justified in-universe by saying the motions really do help make the instinctive connection between firing the right nerve endings and making stuff fly into space.
• Magic Tool: The aptly-named omni-tool. There isn't much that it isn't used for in the Mass Effect universe. Some of the applications include:
  • Precision manufacturing of any small parts (which, of course, can be combined into larger items) from a commonly available plastic/silicone/metal mix named "omni-gel". This includes EXPLOSIVES.
  • Hacking locks and remotely controlling drones.
  • Discharging EMP.
  • Medical diagnosis and field treatment.
  • Sensor data acquisition and communications.
  • Browsing the extranet and portable gaming.
  • Flashlight.
  • As of Mass Effect 3, a Laser Blade. ^note Apparently, it is not a true Laser Blade. Fluff states that the omni-tool basically flash-forges a super-heated piece of molten metal and projects it in a mass-effect field, complete with glowing "Danger, Fire: Hot" holograms around it. The end result is a highly-penetrative, laser-looking wrist dagger that you can stick in your target and, you know, leave there.
    • That one alone sees an incredible array of uses, especially in Multiplayer. Sure the end result is mostly the same, but a lot of the playable classes have their own version of Omnitool blades which alter the behaviour of their melee attacks.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Inverted with the asari, who don't like to see members of their own species get together, and prefer that asari get together with members of other species.
• Manual Leader, A.I. Party: The series had this in all four installments: you can decide on their armor and weapons loadout and give them orders in combat but only ever directly control Shepard and Ryder.
• Massive Race Selection: Averted in the single player campaign, where you can only be Shepard or Ryder, a human. Played straight in the multiplayer mode of Mass Effect 3 which lets you play as asari, batarians, Collectors, drell, geth, humans, krogan, quarians, salarians, turians, vorcha, and volus.
• Mauve Shirt: The first game has Jeff "Joker" Moreau, Doctor Chakwas, Richard Jenkins, Navigator Pressly and Engineer Adams. Each has a name, some personality and a bit of a background, but Jenkins dies in your first mission, while Pressly gets killed in the opening cutscene of the second game. By contrast, Adams chose to retire after the Collectors destroyed the Normandy and returns for the third game, while Chakwas and Joker tagged along in the second Normandy and will serve with you until the end assuming you save Chakwas in Mass Effect 2 and then recruit her again in 3.
  • The second game introduces Kelly Chambers, Kenneth Donnelly, Gabriella Daniels, Rupert Gardner, Hawthorne, Patel, Rolston, Goldstein, Hadley and Matthews. All of them can die in the Suicide Mission, if you don't go into the Omega-4 Relay quick enough.
  • The third installment features Steve Cortez and Samantha Traynor and to a lesser degree Privates Westmoreland and Campbell.
  • Nihlus Kryik gets a fairly interesting backstory, a collected disposition and an Informed Ability, just before he gets killed in the second scene of ME1. He gets a little more backstory from having previously encountered one of your ME2 squadmates, Samara.
• Mayfly–December Romance: Any asari relationship with anyone but a krogan or their own species. Sort of Nightmare Fuel, when you consider the fact that asari children are therefore all but guaranteed to lose their alien parent during adolescence or earlier.
  • And krogan aren't even a safe bet. Unless they happen to be a very patient krogan, odds are that the krogan parent will have either left and/or gotten themselves killed in one fight or another.
  • Or, as one asari mentions in the second game, their relative long lives means that it's possible for veterans of galactic wars separated by centuries to still meet up and get it on. In said asari's case, her father (a krogan) was a veteran of the Rachni Wars while her mother was a veteran of the Krogan Rebellions. When this is discovered by the two parents... well... it doesn't end well.
    Aethyta: They called me, told me they were going to have it out, and I was to love whichever of them survived. Turned out to be damned easy, since neither of them did.
  • Also in the second game, you can overhear a conversation between a young asari and her salarian step-father, where this is brought up. The salarian is having a tough time buying a souvenir, to the exasperation of his daughter. If you listen to it all the way through, the salarian admits he's worried that his MUCH longer lived step-daughter won't remember him, and wants to buy something special for her mother so she won't forget either, as he asks her whether she remembers her father. Even worse: he's thirty-five at that time, and his species isn't expected to live much past 40. Tick tock...
  • In fact, its brought up all the time when talking to or overhearing asari speak about their relationships or parents. Two asari are discussing their prejudice against "purebloods" and one is far more vehement than the other. Her companion wonders whether its a response to the fact that she "barely knew" her salarian father.
  • On Illium an asari woman is inverting this with regard to her krogan boyfriend (with whom she is going through a rough patch.) She finds humans easier to date, because she only has to stick around for a century or so and the human eventually drops dead, allowing her to amicably part from them. (This admission does not amuse Shepard.) However, krogan can potentially live as long as asari, and thus are a potentially much bigger commitment, with the attendant restrictions that implies.
  • Of course, this wouldn't be Mass Effect if it didn't also have every interspecies relationship trope Played for Laughs. A certain couple on the Citadel give us this gem:
    Asari: We need a souvenir. How about a fish?
    Turian: Fish have nothing to do with the Citadel. Besides, it'll be dead in a couple of years.
    Asari: The important thing is to enjoy the time you spend with the fish.
    Turian: Is this the life span talk? I'm not having the lifespan talk.
  • In the third game, a human woman and her asari lover are talking about the best way to break the news to the human's husband that she wants to leave him. If you listen to the whole conversation, it eventually becomes apparent that the asari is not thinking of the relationship as long-term like the human woman is...
  • In Mass Effect 3, asari-vorcha couples get mentioned (their offspring are apparently allergic to dairy) - vorcha have a life expectancy of 20 years.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Commander Shepard is a given.
  • Vigil, whose name comes from Latin for "Keep Watch". Note, that one particular usage of that word involves keeping watch over the body of the deceased before burial.
  • Legion, a collective consciousness of over a thousand individual programs residing in a single body. Named as such by another AI, no less.
  • Harbinger, along with being the Big Bad of the second game, he is also the Reaper who personally boasts to Shepard that the Reapers will soon be upon the galaxy, not long before the invasion proper begins. Even more meaningful as of the Leviathan DLC: he is revealed to be the very first Reaper ever created, made out of the Leviathans themselves.
  • The Normandy SR-1 and SR-2 are named for a decisive battle of a far-reaching conflict, in which a massive coalition of allied powers (the like of which had never before been attempted) set aside their differences and pooled their wits and their strength in a desperate gambit to rid the world of the greatest evil it had ever faced. Sound familiar?
  • Ryder's ship is the Tempest, after Shakespeare's play ("oh brave new world" and all that). And the Ryders themselves, taking their name from astronaut Sally Ride.
  • The first planet the Andromeda Initiative colonized is named Eos, after the ancient Greek personification of dawn, since it is the metaphorical new dawn for the Milky Way species.
  • The race known as turian. It comes from the word "centurion," a professional officer of the Roman army. It probably explains the reason for all of the Roman/Roman-sounding names (Actus, Nihlus, Victus, Tarquin, Arterius, etc).
• Mechanical Abomination: The Reapers.
  • One out of the way uncharted planet named Klencory mentions an eccentric Volus billionaire had a vision from a higher being leading him to dig the planet's surface looking for "lost crypts of beings of light" created at the dawn of time to protect organic life from "machine devils". It's never brought up again beyond the planet's description being updated by ME3.
• Mechanical Evolution: The geth.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: The geth, the Reapers, EDI.
• MegaCorp: Most of the businesses in the game, honestly. Granted, though, if you're gonna supply a galaxy, you gotta be pretty huge.
  • One in particular stands out: Elkoss Combine. The running gag on advertisements is ending with "A division of Elkoss Combine". In Mass Effect 3, Elkoss Combine's sales kiosk on the Citadel has the motto "Elkoss Combine: If it exists, we carry it." You even may pass by the owner, the volus Rupe Elkoss, having an idle chat about business practices.
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Averted and played straight by the races to varying degrees. There is a strong Gender Rarity Value going on for the ones who do.
  • The salarians keep their rare females as safe as possible (though one of the two you meet can be killed if you don't play your cards right).
  • You hear about how protective the krogan are of their rare fertile females (at least of their own clans), only to find out they use their non-fertile ones as decoys. Also, the fertile female you meet can die.
• Mental Affair: Pretty much the whole way the asari work, though they can get physical as well.
• Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication: Zig-zagged constantly by the various species, although we rarely see their female members, some of them play this trope straight.
  • Notable are the krogan, to the point that it's emphasized and lampshaded by Wrex and Eve.
  • Humans and quarians, on the other hand, are subject to Gender Is No Object more so than this trope.
  • The asari zig-zag it all on their own—they're the only monogendered race (looking and being described as all-female) in the series, and they're shown to be capable warriors and diplomats. However, they're also the only species whose Hat is being stereotyped as an Obstructive Bureaucrat.
• Mercy Kill: What Shepard and Co. consider killing off any victim of Reaper Indoctrination to be. Knowing how horrible the process is, it's hard to disagree with that assessment.
• Mercy Rewarded: Something of the point of going along the Paragon path. Paragon can actually net you more money, and gives you a significant discount at stores in the first game.
  • If you've been merciful throughout the series, it pays off big-time in the third game.
• The Metric System Is Here to Stay: The Normandy uses Earth-based time units. It's completely justified, given that you're human and serving on a human vessel.
  • The Citadel actually has 20 hour days, divided into 100 minutes which are divided into 100-seconds (so a kind of metric time), each second being roughly half of our second. Which amounts to approximately 28 Earth Hours.
• Mexican Standoff: Numerous. How many of them ends with a Blast Out is up to the player.
• Mildly Military: While the Alliance and even Cerberus crews of the first two games are fairly spit-and-polish, the majority of Commander Shepard's squadmembers are anything but formal. This is called attention to by various crew members. Largely averted in the third game, where Liara is the only squadmate without formal military experience. Which does not detract one bit from how badass she really is, considering her alter-ego, the Shadow Broker.
• Mile-Long Ship: Sovereign-class Reapers are approximately two kilometers long, while Citadel dreadnoughts average one kilometer. Justified with warships since a longer ship means the spinal mass accelerator can be longer, meaning it can accelerate its slugs to a higher speed and they will therefore strike with greater force.
• Military Science Fiction
• The Milky Way Is the Only Way: Mass effect drives are amazingly fast (twelve light years per day or 4383 times lightspeed), but Bioware has an amazing sense of scale, meaning the mass relays are the only reasonable means to travel between star clusters. Mass relays only exist within the galaxy except for whatever connecting point outside the Milky Way the Reapers hide at.
  • They may be fast but there's one major restriction. Using the low estimate of the diameter of the Milky Way (100k LY), it would take over 22 years to get from one side to the other at that speed. However, drive cores acquire charge as they're used for FTL (roughly 50 hours, depending on size of the core) before they get saturated by charge to the point where they have to discharge it somewhere or else the crew turns extra crispy. Depending on the size of the core and the method of discharge (smaller ships that can hit a planet's escape velocity can use grounding facilities on that planet, larger ships that wouldn't be able to make escape velocity use planetary magnetic fields), discharging a drive core can take hours (releasing it to a gas giant's magnetic field) or days (discharging to a moon's field). Secondly, the relays allow practically instantaneous transport between two points, so instead of having to take 22+ years to go cross galaxy, one could plot a relay course that takes them there in a day.
  • Averted, as the name suggests, with Andromeda, but due to the vast space between two galaxies, it becomes Andromeda is the Only Way. The colonists can't exactly turn around and go home when that would take six hundred years. The games' codex goes into some explanation of how the Initiative managed to get around the difficulty of getting to another galaxy using the tech they had.
• Mind Hive: The geth. An individual geth "terminal" can potentially contain thousands of geth programs. Some or all of those programs can later be uploaded to a hub and then downloaded to a different terminal. Geth programs running on the same hardware will disseminate information and reach a consensus, but each individual terminal has a unique perspective, which will cause the programs to reach different conclusions, until they re-interface with a hub and share any new data.
  • The Reapers as well seem to be a case of this. This is corroborated by Legion, explaining that this was part of why the geth heretics identified so closely with the "Old Machines", citing Sovereign's "we are each a nation" speech to Shepard's team during the first game as being an indication of this. He claims that the Reapers have many minds, but one will, their indivisibility being their strength, while the geth are interdependent, not yet capable of fully integrating with each other, and thus must build consensus.
• Mindlink Mates: Again, the asari and whoever they mate with.
• Mind over Matter: Biotics, people with Element Zero in their bodies, can manipulate gravity (or create miniature black holes) with a gesture.
  • Asari commandos get bonus points for saying "Mind over Matter!" verbatim.
• Mind Rape: This combined with brainwashing is how the Reapers indoctrinate organic species.
• Mini-Game: Pretty much anything that involves unlocking, decrypting, or resource gathering in the first two games.
  • And in Mass Effect 3 you get to play cat 'n' mouse with the Reapers on the galaxy map, which is... interesting.
• Minovsky Physics: Element Zero, required for the eponymous mass effect, which in turn is necessary for almost all of the technology obtained from the Protheans.
  • In fact, Element Zero's description fits the one of Exotic Matter.
• Miranda Rights: Yup, they're still there.
  Gianna Parasini: You have the right to remain silent. I wish to God you'd exercise it!
• Mirror Chemistry: Turians and quarians.
• Modern Stasis: The technology of Citadel Space is definitely more advanced than that of modern Earth (mass effect technology, holographic technology, AI technology, omni-tool fabrication, medi-gel), but let's consider that the Council races have been on the Citadel for millennia. And culturally, an early 21st century observer would still feel very much at home in Citadel space.
• Mook Maker: Geth spaceships.
  • Reapers, too, apparently.
  • And the harvester creatures in the 2nd game drop klixen.
  • Remnant Assemblers can create smaller Remnant 'bots (which is why Peebee gave them that name). Remnant Architects can do the same, just bigger and quicker.
• More Diverse Sequel: Features in the main trilogy with Commander Shepard's love interests.
  • The first game shows two heterosexual love interests (a human male and a human female with light or brown-ish skin tones) and one bisexual/pansexual one (a monogendered alien with feminine appearance).
  • The next installment partially inverts this by keeping all six main love interests heterosexual, but plays it straight(?) by making half of them aliens (and making the sole human male love interest black). However, there are a few secret love interests that are available for both male and female Shepard (but they don't grant the love interest achievement, and all of them are either female or feminine-looking).
  • The third game uses this trope again by giving a variety of love interests of different species, genders, and sexual orientations. Also the male love interest from the first game becomes also available to the male Shepard. It also features exclusively gay characters. Notably, this is the first game where a male Shepard is able to have a male/masculine love interest.
  • The sequels also feature many more alien species on their roster. In particular, the second game's Party of Representatives kept all the species represented in the first game's (human, asari, turian, quarian, and krogan), and added a salarian, a drell, and even a geth, as well as expanding the human representation from a single class (military, essentially), to also include career criminals, mercenaries, and genetic experiments, all of whom contributed new and unique perspectives on the story and the world of the games.
• Mr. Exposition: Absolutely everyone you meet with a speaking role. Everyone. Though they'll only Infodump on you if you ask for details.
• Mr. Fanservice: As per usual in a Bioware game, there are the popular female romances, and very often shipped thoroughly and discussed adoringly on the forums of said company. In Mass Effect the most popular for female Shepard (and only male) was Kaidan. Of course, Garrus was very popular too, but he wasn't romanceable then. The sequel brought a whole multitude of new choices which included making Garrus romaceable and adding noble assassin Thane and Jacob, a Cerebus member who is one of the only crew members with a lack of brooding angst.
  • Vega in the third game, who, unfortunately, is not a romance option, except for the option of a one-night stand in the Citadel DLC.
  • Andromeda has Liam, who frequently goes shirtless (well, twice on-screen, not counting the sex), and the very smoothly voiced Jaal, who Liam persuades to join him in nakedness at one point.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • The asari. All of them. Even in-universe; young males of every race tend to be fascinated with them. Lampshaded on Illium if you listen in on the salarian's "bachelor" party. The same conversation implies its deliberate on the part of the asari. The guys in the party disagree on the defining features of the asari 'dancer'.
  • Miranda. Skin-tight clothing, genetically-enhanced body, plenty of lingering shots of her... assets. Again lampshaded in-game, especially in a conversation between Ken and Gabby. Not to mention being voiced by and modeled after Yvonne Strahovski.
    Enyala: I was just waiting for you to get dressed. Or does Cerberus really let you whore around in that outfit?
  • And then there's EDI's new body in the third game.
  • Diana Allers. Suffice it to say that the camera rarely focuses on her face.
  • Every romanceable female NPC has at least one moment that qualifies them.
• Multicultural Alien Planet: Though most members of a race are more similar than not, there is noticeable cultural diversity. Most present amongst the quarians. Many quarian ships have existed longer than some countries on Earth.
• Multiple Government Polity: The Citadel is essentially a Fictional United Nations, with the ruling Citadel Council, composed of representatives of the asari, turians, and salarians (and later the humans), given close to absolute power in mediating disputes between members. Member states vary in governance: the Asari Republics are a confederation of e-democracies (with considerable variation between them), the Turian Hierarchy is a meritocratic military dictatorship, the Salarian Union is a feudal state, and the human Systems Alliance is a federation of Earth nation-states and colonies.
• Multiple Life Bars: The first game just has health and shields, but the second implements a much more complicated version. The standard rule is that enemies will have one bar of health, "protected" by a bar of armor, shields, or barriers, with each affected by different offensive abilities. Unusual enemies will have more than two bars, and some have no health at all (making them completely immune to abilities that only work on foes with exposed health bars.) This also applies to Shepard and Co. as well. Expanded in the third game, where aside from shields, Shepard's health is divided into five segments; damage within one segment regenerates over time, but to heal other segments, medi-gel must be used.
• Multiple Persuasion Modes: Throughout the series, the Paragon/Renegade dialogue options double as persuasion attempts. Paragon options generally fall under the Convincing sub-types (emotional or rational), while Renegade ones are either Browbeating or outright Threats, depending on the target.
• My Greatest Failure: Almost every major character has one, if not two, or three, or several...

N

• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • Cerberus, the Blood Pack mercenaries, Spectre, the Reapers as a species or individuals.
  • Why would anyone want to poke a stick at something known as The Leviathan of Dis?
  • Remnant Destroyers, as named by Pelessaria B'Sayle after her first encounter with one.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: Cerberus has shades of this all throughout the first two games, but they are definitely this in 3, in which they relentlessly Sigil Spam their three-headed dog logo, openly start war with the rest of the galaxy, take their Fantastic Racism doctrine up to eleven, and are revealed to run concentration camps (albeit their inmates have no knowledge of this until its too late) where they conduct brutal experiments on sapient life.
• Neon City: Certain areas of visited across the series have a more than a touch of neon to them, in keeping with the inspiration the series takes from 1980s-ish science fiction. In some places (e.g. the Citadel), all the signage helps establish the place as a galactic crossroads; in others (e.g. Omega), it helps establish the place as a den of vice.
• Never My Fault
  • Many krogan have this attitude about the genophage. They blame the Citadel races exclusively for them being effectively neutered into neutral population growth even after helping defeat the rachni, despite the fact that the krogan were aggressively expanding, overrunning the galaxy, and eventually started to "colonize" worlds that were already under the ownerships of other species. Some however, like Wrex and Eve, do acknowledge that their actions were partly to blame for what happened, even though they're not happy about what was done to them. If they both survive and you help cure the genophage, they lead the krogan into being more constructive and helpful.
  • Many quarians likewise have this attitude toward the geth rebellion. They castigate the geth and hope to eventually exterminate them entirely for driving the quarians from the homeworld despite being a matter of historical record that the quarians attacked the geth first and that the geth reacted in self-defense. The only way for the quarians and the geth to both survive the Battle of Rannoch during the Reaper War is to finally get the quarians to see that the geth have never wanted to fight them.
• Newcomer Saves the Day: Happened twice on the galactic scale in the backstory: during the Rachni Wars, the krogan, who have only recently joined the galactic spaceflight club, save the Council Space from the Rachni. Later on, when the krogan themselves go rogue, the turians, also newcomers on the galactic arena, hold them off, earning themselves a permanent place on the Council. In the series proper, humans are also the newcomers on the historical time scale, but end up rallying the rest of the galaxy to beat back the Reapers.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: The Reapers. They can be killed but it takes an ENORMOUS amount of effort. At the end of the first game it took two whole fleets to bring down just ONE, and only when it was focusing its energy on fighting Shepard. Some sight-seeing locations imply that a dedicated anti-Reaper weapon was used to fight a previous, ancient invasion, and it took its target down — but the shot glanced off the target and devastated an entire planet.
• No Biochemical Barriers: Averted. Turians and quarians are based on dextro-amino acids, unlike the rest of the galaxy. They need their own food (with some exceptions), because ours can cause anaphylactic shock.
  • Actually a minor plot point in ME2. If you pursue a romance with Garrus, the issue of... ingestion comes up. This also applies to Tali, as the quarians have severe allergic reaction to foreign organisms; she explains this when Shepard asks about it during the romance arc.
  • There's also the volus, who must live in high-pressure, toxic environments - or environmental suits.
  • Played straight with the angara, who apparently have no problem fornicating with Milky Way species. Meanwhile, a running gag through Andromeda is Dr Suvi Anwar repeatedly sampling Andromeda flora to see if it's edible. For Science!.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Paragon Shepard (Noble Male) versus Renegade Shepard (Roguish Male). Paragon Shepard also has this dynamic going with Garrus to the point it resembles a Buddy Cop Show.
  • A bit of this with Cortez (noble) and Vega (roguish) in the third game, who can usually be found together in the shuttle bay.
• Noisy Guns: Justified in that weapons within the universe are collapsible which reassemble and expand themselves when they're drawn.
• Non-Combat EXP: The series, despite relying heavily on combat, did away with XP-for-kills starting with part two, instead handing it out for quests and some item pickups. Even in Mass Effect, some XP was gained upon unlocking each Codex entry, i.e. from simple exploration and interacting with the environment.
• Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Asari "maidens" (young adults) are known for going a little wild for their first couple centuries of life, which often includes dyeing their skin or their scalp to colors other than its natural pale blue. Ereba, an asari you meet in Mass Effect 2, discusses this in the context of her relationship with her krogan boyfriend Charr who's trying to get her to marry him.
  Ereba: It's fun to join a mercenary guild or dance at bars for a few centuries, but eventually you hit the matron stage, you know? Then you get your back tattoo removed, let your scalp go back to its natural blue, and settle down with someone dependable.
• No-Paper Future: Averted. You never personally use paper, either for money or for information, but it still exists; you can even see it if you look closely enough. It's just that paper money is almost exclusively used for illegal purposes due to being less efficient and harder to trace than electronic transfers, and, well, a military ship needs the space too much to store a printer and paper supplies. Datapads work just fine.
  • Books also still exist, but they are not as popular as digital media. Doctor Chakwas seems to have several books and binders in her lab, Kasumi has quite a few in her observation deck home. Donovan Hock has several shelves of books in his manor and one can purchase books themselves in Mass Effect 3.
• No Points for Neutrality: Played straight in the first two games. You get no benefits whatsoever for doing so in the first game, and in the second game this can actually cause you harm.
  • BioWare took pains to avert this in the third game, turning the Karma Meter into a reputation system. Shepard's ability to sway other powers depends on his or her reputation, whether that reputation is for even-handedness or ruthlessness. However, much also depends simply on general reputation, with Paragon or Renegade opening new options or influencing the outcome. Many actions build reputation but are morally neutral, causing both Paragon and Renegade values to rise at the same time, but keep the same ratio with regard to each other as they do.
• No Scope: Possible to do with sniper rifles, but so difficult it's more effort than it's worth. And even if the enemy is close enough for it to work, well, you have a shotgun (or, at the very least, a heavy pistol).
• No Such Thing as Alien Pop Culture: Averted; a few alien films are mentioned in the games proper (such as the asari film Vaenia and the turian/quarian film Fleet and Flotilla), and even more tidbits of pop culture in Cerberus Daily News (such as a volus comedienne who hosts a late-night talk show). The most notable one is Blasto, the hanar Spectre.
• Notice This: By putting symbols over important items, per BioWare standards. In 3, important places on the galaxy map flash, while in Andromeda, they pulse.
• No Transhumanism Allowed:
  • In-universe, by human law. Fears of humanity losing its genetic uniqueness led to strict genetic-engineering laws. Enhancing naturally-occurring human abilities is allowed, but adding completely new abilities is prohibited. We get to see a few examples in all three games, though, almost all of them related to Cerberus.
  • Including Shepard by the time of the second game, which is practically taken to Samus-esque levels where it is questionable just how human Shepard is anymore, particularly if you buy all the upgrades that involve screwing with your biology (namely your bones, skin, and muscles) in fairly major ways. Hammered home when it is revealed that Shepard is apparently mechanical enough to be hacked in the Overlord DLC.
    • This becomes a minor point of angst for Shepard during a couple of moments in the third game. In a conversation with EDI, Shepard is mildly disturbed by the implication, but EDI reassuringly says Shepard's brain is organic and thus they aren't a true transhuman, despite their multitude of cybernetic implants. A brief existential crisis can also occur during the raid on Cerberus HQ, if Shepard views footage from the Lazarus Project.
  • Can be forcibly averted for all organic life in the galaxy in one ending to the third game.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: The asari are a One-Gender Race of blue-skinned women who all seem to be pansexual. Because of their biology, they can reproduce with anyone, of any gender and any race (though the child will always be an asari), and their relationship to other women is pretty normal. Even among humans, homophobia seems to be a thing of the past as well.
• Not Quite Dead:
  • The Human-Reaper in Mass Effect 2
  • And the Prothean species, as luck would have it.
  • Also the Leviathan of Dis, as the batarians learned to their sorrow.
• Not Worth Killing: This is the ultimate insult a krogan can give an enemy. As a Proud Warrior Race, krogan status is determined by who one's enemies are. This extends to other races as well; the Mass Effect Rogues Gallery is exactly why most krogan see Shepard as the most badass creature in the galaxy.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: In-universe; the term 'robot' and 'artificial lifeform' have been legally changed to 'synthetic'. Also, despite running into husks and Thorian creepers, no one takes the opportunity to shout the Z-word. It's only mentioned once in the game, during a conversation.
• Now, Where Was I Going Again?: As usual for a Bioware game, you have a journal which lists all of your quests, where you currently are in terms of progress, and what you need to do next. It even separates main story quests from sidequests. Although 3 has certain issues where this is involved; the journal doesn't keep track of whether you've already retrieved Item X from Planet Y on behalf of Person Z and just need to deliver it, or if it's still on Planet Y and you have to go and get it, and just for additional hilarity several of them either don't tell you where to go, or tell you which planet it's on but not where that planet is.
• Numerical Hard: Borderline between aversion and playing it straight. Most of the changes in difficulty do just change how long it takes to shoot the enemies to death, but there are behavior modifications as well.
  • Fully averted in the 3rd game. Especially the multiplayer mode.
• Oddly Small Organization: Apparently, Cerberus, despite being so shadowy and influential, only has about a hundred and fifty actual members. In an organization that spans half the galaxy and has enough resources to build a supremely advanced frigate and bring Shepard back from the dead.
  • In the third game, they get a fleet of capital ships and an endless supply of mooks. The game actually goes to some trouble to justify both.

O

• Oh, Crap!:
  • A villain gets a particularly satisfying one. After being one step behind him for the entire game, watching and hearing Saren lose his cool for the second time time when the Mako comes flying out of the sky like a goddamned missile on Ilos is nothing short of delicious. ^note  The first was after Eden Prime; when you use the beacon, he has a BIG temper tantrum.
  • The first half hour or so of Mass Effect 3 is pretty much one continuous Oh, Crap!.
  • The ending of ME2: The Reapers are coming - THE ENTIRE ARMADA!
  • During Miranda's loyalty mission, a Renegade interrupt results in a hilarious example, as you take out four out of five mercs aiming at you in a matter of seconds. You can almost hear the fifth one saying it.
  • During Thane's loyalty mission, when Mouse turns around to see Thane and Shepard standing behind him. "Be still, Mouse. You can change your pants later."
  • When Shepard wakes up during the Arrival DLC, the Project scientist looking after them has a very satisfying one.
    • Prior to that, during the stand-off against waves of Project security near the Reaper device, you can hear them growing more and more upset that Shepard just won't stop.
  • Garrus responds this way to awkward surprises such as bombs or EDI passing out.
• Oh, My Gods!:
  • Since the denizens of the galaxy practise diverse faiths in this future, various deities of various species are invoked on a fairly regular basis. Liara's catchphrase, in particular, is "By the goddess." Just "goddess" if she's in a hurry.
  • The phrase "Oh my gods" is actually uttered verbatim during Thane's loyalty mission, when facing down Kolyat; during the hostage situation, the Renegade option is to shoot the hostage yourself, prompting said phrase from Kolyat, and Shepard claiming "Hostages only work when your enemy cares if they live or not."
• Older Than They Look: Any asari you run into is apt to be old enough to be your great-great-grandmother, at a minimum. Considering that the average asari lifespan runs around a millennium, this also skirts the edges of Really 700 Years Old.
  • Humans, thanks to better medical science. One of the characters in the Expanded Universe is in her forties, but looks like she's in her twenties. Miranda Lawson is thirty-five, though you wouldn't know it by looking at her. While Miranda explicitly mentions she was genetically engineered for superior longevity among other things, normal humans enjoy benefits of advanced medical science as well. Dr. Chakwas says she's lived a full life and certainly comes across as grandmotherly, but doesn't look it quite so much. She was with the Alliance during the First Contact War. In ME1, she says she joined "right out of medical school". The First Contact War was about 30 years prior to the game, so depending on how long it took her to graduate med school and how long she served before the War, Dr. Chakwas is either in her late 60s or early 70s.
  • It's been explicitly stated average human lifespan has increased to roughly 150 years, barring unnatural causes. This may be in part due to sheer ubiquity of grafts and cybernetic augmentation, which implies everyone with a medical insurance is likely to have at least a few organs replaced during their lifetime.
• Old Save Bonus:
  • The series is probably qualifying for the Trope Codifier on this, and popularised the idea of continuing branching narratives between instalments by uploading an old save file. While other series have doubtlessly used the concept before, few, if any, have paid so much attention to continuity being maintained throughout the franchise as a result of using it. Decisions you've made have an impact throughout the entire trilogy. Even if it's just an e-mail from someone you helped saying how they're doing or an incidental news report, most actions are at least referenced. Bigger decisions have much larger impacts, such as dead characters remaining dead and relationships being carried over between games.
  • On a mechanics note, you can also receive in-game bonuses like starting with a higher level and extra money if you imported a rich, high-level character; and on a meta note, you can get the "Long Service" achievement after playing through Mass Effect 2 once if you import a character from the previous game, rather than two playthroughs with new characters. The same achievement is also in the third game, and is achieved the same way.
• Old-School Dogfight: Theoretically averted in the Codex. Ships are mentioned to engage each other over humongous distances. However, played notoriously straight in every space combat cutscene actually shown. Justified because these situations are not waged under typical circumstances and engagement at unusually close range is a part of the strategy specifically to confuse and outmaneuver the enemy.
  • Fighter-to-fighter combat specifically is rare; their purpose is more to harass larger ships and overload their missile-defense systems.
  • Well, the codex does mention a specific class of fighters, called "interceptors".
  • They act more like Skirmishers, drawing fire so that Point Defense lasers will overheat, letting the bombers do their thing.
• Omniscient Morality License:
  • The Illusive Man and Cerberus as a whole seem to think they hold one; they constantly spout off about saving the human race and helping them to get ahead, despite committing atrocities against human worlds on par with batarian pirates and, if in-game events are anything to go by, being responsible for more Alliance casualties than the First Contact War. And let's not forget Jack ("This is a bad place."). Registration for these licenses is also pretty much fifty percent of Spectrehood.
  • The Catalyst puts all of the above to shame.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • The galactic community in Citadel Space still looks down on the quarians, usually manifesting as racial bigotry, for creating the geth. This is despite the fact that it occurred over two hundred years ago and, as Tali points out, billions of quarians were killed and they lost their homeworld; combined with the economic sanctions the Council imposed on the quarians as punishment for breaking interstellar law regarding AI's, one can easily say the quarians have paid for their mistakes. However this gets subverted when records of the original geth-quarian war reveal that it was mostly a war between pro-geth quarians and anti-geth quarians... then swings right back when one remembers the quarians alive today are not the same quarians who fought in that initial war and that some are open peace with the geth, or at least don't want to fight them.
  • The Systems Alliance really hold it against the Williams family for General Williams surrendering Shanxi to the turian forces, disregarding the fact he did it to save lives, given the turians were bombing supply teams from orbit. It takes his granddaughter helping save the galaxy from Saren to lift the stigma. ... doesn't do anything for the man's cooking skills, though, which are remembered in song.
• Once is Not Enough: Krogan. Unless you have some kind of regeneration-killing ammo equipped, don't be fooled when they fall. Keep shooting until the bodies dissolve.
• One-Gender Race: The asari, who default to the "child-bearing sex" (i.e., female) as they are biologically monogendered.
• One-Federation Limit: One Alliance, one Republic(s), one Hierarchy, one Union, one Hegemony, one Flotilla, one Collective...
  • On closer examination, this is likely averted because of the turian foreign policy: There are stated to be more 'client races' besides the volus. So, more than one Protectorate.
• One Nation Under Copyright: Noveria and Illium are entire planets controlled entirely by corporations.
• One Riot, One Ranger: Spectres. Each must prove themselves to be an omni-competent badass just to be worthy of consideration. They have virtually unlimited authority to complete their missions and answer only to the Council directly. It's mentioned that the Council sending in a Spectre is just one step below sending in a full blown war fleet.
• Onesie Armor:
  • Armor works like this in the first game. The second game introduced the option to customize Shepard's armor by swapping out pieces of the default N7 armor for pieces purchased from merchants. However, some specialized suits of armor (such as the Collector Armor, Blood Dragon Armor, and Cerberus Assault Armor) still come in a single piece (including a helmet covering Shepard's head at all times).
  • The third game carries on the second game's system, but adds a greater variety of both individual armor pieces and single-piece outfits (not to mention also the option to remove the helmet during cutscenes regardless of which outfit Shepard is wearing).
• One-Steve Limit:
  • Averted. There are four Jacobs. The guy on the MSV Worthington, the deceased husband in the sidequest Family Matter, the previous guy's son and the party member in Mass Effect 2.
  • There's also Jack Harper, also known as The Illusive Man. No relation to Andromeda's Cora Harper.
  • The main characters of Mass Effect 2's Overlord DLC share names with other characters; Gavin Archer with Feros researcher Gavin Hossle, and David Archer with Captain/Councilor/Admiral David Anderson.
  • There are also two characters named Delan: A hanar merchant on the Citadel in the first game (short for Delanynder in this case), and a human mechanic on Horizon in the second.
  • The Cerberus Daily News for May 7th, 2010 quotes a turian relief worker named Saren.
  • There's even multiple Steves; Lieutenant Steve Cortez, Admiral Steven Hackett, and an asari's deceased bondmate mentioned as part of a sidequest in Mass Effect 2.
  • Also possible for Shepard, depending on the first name you decide to give them. This is, of course, never said in dialogue.
  • The trope is however Invoked where it comes to James Vega, whose surname was intended to be Sanders before Kahlee Sanders was added to the game.
• One World Order: Subverted. The Council presides over most of the galaxy, but is more like a more influential United Nations than anything else, and most species have a single government that rules them. Subverted in that there is definitely separation, though, and few species seem to answer entirely to one government. Even the Alliance is only the group elected to represent humanity to the Citadel.
  • Especially highlighted in ME2 where Shepard spends most of the game in the rather extensive Terminus Systems and interacts heavy with other non-Citadel, non-Terminus cultures.
  • Humanity itself is mentioned as comprised of distinct countries and politics.
  • The third game repeatedly emphasizes that the asari aren't remotely united - their government is the Asari Republics, and their fleets operate largely independently. This... does not serve them well, compared to more organized species.
• Only a Flesh Wound: In the games, shooting a breathing enemy in the legs will slow them down. That's it. No bleeding, no breaking, nothing. They just stumble for a moment and then keep going. This is definitely at odds with the flesh-pulping, bone-pulverizing properties of mass effect weaponry described in the books. Averted with husks and their relatives, abominations. They will die if you hit them in the legs, regardless of actual damage done.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • Mark Meer (the male Shepard) has a noticeable Canadian accent in some lines. Then there's Donovan Hock, whose accent starts at Afrikaans and mutates into something completely incomprehensible.
  • Done deliberately with Brooks in the Citadel DLC, whose accent hits virtually every English-speaking country at one point, but rather than being Australiamericanadienglish, she has a fairly straightforward English accent and is just not as good at faking an accent as she thought she was.
• Opening Scroll: Used to bring the audience up to speed in 2, 3 and Andromeda.
• Opening the Sandbox: All four let you loose after a few hours of tutorial.
• Optional Character Scene: Aaaaaaaaaaall over the place. The second game even has optional character missions... well, optional in that they aren't needed to finish the game. If you want a better outcome, however...
• Orbital Bombardment: Using kinetic weapon strikes for the most part. The first game mentions that during the turian occupation of Shanxi the turians were more than happy to demolish away city blocks from orbit to take out single squads of human soldiers. During a sidequest, Shepard offers to have the Normandy hit a rachni hive from orbit. In Mass Effect 3 one of Diana Allers's news stories mentions that the Reapers blew away Adelaide, Australia with an orbital strike. And then of course there's the battle with the landed Reaper destroyer on Rannoch, which Shepard takes out by painting its weak point as a target for the Normandy and the entire quarian fleet. Last but not least, the fluff mentions that during the Krogan Rebellions the krogan reacted to turian attacks by aiming asteroids at turian colonies, which just pissed the turians off even more.
• The Order: The Spectres fit the bill, even thought they're sci-fi as opposed to fantasy.
• Organic Technology: Present in pretty much everything of the Collectors.
• Our Elves Are Different:
  • From the way asari are described in the Codex—the first race to discover the Citadel, having some of the greatest political influence in the galaxy, perfect democracy, long lives, great technology, universally strong biotic abilities and producing some of the best warriors of any race—you'd think this trope would be played straight. But in-game asari as a whole are treated with no more or less respect than most other races, and the entire superiority attitude is completely deconstructed by an asari in the second game. Then completely deconstructed in the third game: it turns out that all the advantages the asari had were given by the Protheans, including, among other advancements, altering their genes to make them innate biotics.
  • The quarians get a bit of this in the third game, specifically as space wood elves. If Tali is any indication, they even look the part.
  • Even the Protheans seem to be this before being deconstructed. Like everyone else, they acquired technology from previous cycles — in their case, from the Inusannon, who are actually the ones depicted in the statues on Ilos.
• Our Weapons Will Be Boxy in the Future: Most of the weapons in Mass Effect 2 follow this trope, particularly the krogan Claymore shotgun, the design of which resembles a cinder block with a trigger.
  • Though averted in Mass Effect 3 with weapons from other alien cultures: the Quarian Arc Pistol, the Salarian Scorpion, the Asari Disciple shotgun, the geth pulse rifle, sniper rifle and plasma shotgun are all fairly sleek. Some human weapons are sleek too: the M-8 Avenger and N7 Valkyrie being prominent exceptions.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Husks. Victims of Reaper indoctrination or defeat at the hands of minions of the Reapers. Skewered on special spike machines and slowly turned into cybernetic zombies. In the first game, there's just your basic Husk. The sequel introduces Abominations, Scions and Praetorians.
  • And in the third game there are huskified batarians, turians, asari (Ardat-Yakshi specifically), krogan/turian hybrids, harvesters and rachni.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: An interesting take on the subject, but not played anviliciously straight. The Codex offers details on the religions and cultures of the major races (for example: it turns out that Confucianism and Zen Buddhism have found a niche among the turians) but religion doesn't have a large part in the actual game.
  • One of the conversation possibilities with Ashley reveals that she is religious and that this is considered unusual. Shepard can also proclaim that they're religious. Legion and EDI reference the Christian Bible when coming up with his name.
  • Mordin also claims he studied religions "looking for answers." Justified in his case.
  • Even the geth are religious; Legion states that this is because they're synthetic life forms.
  • The Shadow Broker's file on Cerberus states it arranged the assassination of the Pope so that a new one with militaristic beliefs and an attitude of forgiveness towards the salarians (apparently this was to improve relations with the turians since they both were responsible for the genophage... it's not very clearly explained) would take power. The Catholic Church is clearly still a major political power.
  • In a bitter irony, one of the Mass Effect 3 live action trailers features a church scene.
• Overheating:
  • In the first game's background, all guns had ammunition stores that would number into the thousands (the "mass-accelerator" technology allowed the guns to shear off a small piece from a block of metal inside the gun and accelerate it to ridiculous speeds, allowing small arms to be very deadly and be capable of shooting thousands of shots with one block), therefore ammunition stores are non-problematic for a single engagement and don't show up in-game. However, the guns still gave off heat, so a gun that fires too often overheats and must wait for it to cool down to fire again.
  • The second game, however, went for reloading. What is reloaded, however, is the "thermal clip" heat sinks for the gun — as opposed to a magazine being depleted to be reloaded, the number of shots you may fire before reloading represents how many shots the gun fires before a new heat sink must be inserted due to the old one being overheated; the magazines of the guns are still capable of holding thousands of shots. While a player technically should be able to wait for their heat sinks to cool down and fire later instead of being forced to eject them after too many shots, the game no longer gives that option. There are also a few other nitpicks about the new system.
  • As a minor point: if the heat dispersion mechanism is chemical in nature (i.e. heat is absorbed to convert the sink material from a high energy to a low energy state), they would be unusable after being depleted and no amount of waiting would reverse that. Even if was just a mechanical "dump this heat into a metal or other material as quickly as possible," most metals with high melting points and high thermal conductivity would also take an eternity to cool down on their own in a normal atmosphere, and ejecting them would be the only practical way to use them. Of course, then there's the issue of ejecting near-molten metal tubes through the air in cramped quarters during a firefight...
  • Continued in the third game, with at least one exception: a Particle Rifle, a weapon made by the Protheans.
  • The Citadel DLC lets you pick up an M-7 Lancer from the first game. It also overheats and cools down, and if you top off the heat sink, there's an animation of Shepard shielding their face from the hot air being vented by the rifle.
• Overly Long Name: Ask a salarian for his full name. Better, don't.
  • There is one point on Noveria where you can overhear a salarian businessman trying to dig up some dirt on the administrator of the facility, asking his brother if he is ready before reading off the full name: "Rannadril Ghan Swa Fulsoom Karaten Narr Eadi Bel Anoleis." A (different) salarian on Feros will give you an explanation of what each of his names mean.
  • Arguably qualified as an example of this trope: Tali'Zorah vas Neema nar Rayya, which literally translates as "Tali of the clan Zorah, crew of the Neema, child of the Rayya," the Rayya being the ship she was born on. Fittingly, it is only used once in a highly official context, otherwise being shortened to different lengths.
  • The soul names of hanar also qualify apparently. One name that Thane mentions in the second game is "Illuminates the Folly of the Dancers." Another that turns up in the third game is "Regards the Works of the Enkindlers in Despair."

P

• Painfully Slow Projectile: In the first game, anything of heavier caliber than small arms moved slowly enough to simply be sidestepped. Still largely the case in the second game, but now the vast majority of those attacks are also seeking.
• Painted-On Pants: In all three games, most humanoid characters wear pants so tight that you could swipe a credit card between their cheeks. Even while wearing combat armor, and especially if they're female.
• Pamphlet Shelf: The Codex. You don't have to read it, but it helps a lot of things make more sense.
• Paradise Planet:
  • The human colony of Eden Prime was one of these, a peaceable Arcadia where nothing much happened until a Prothean beacon was unearthed by an archaeological dig. By the time you get there, it's been attacked and ruined by Saren.
  • The same goes for Elysium, being described as an "alpine paradise" perfect for humans. Unfortunately, it's also seen its share of pirate attacks over the years and can actually form the basis of Commander Shepard's past if the "War Hero" backstory is chosen.
  • Bekenstein, a human colony in a more established region of Citadel Space; known for its pleasant climate, good weather and panoramic vistas, it rose to prominence as a manufacturer for the luxury goods market, and since then has become the planetary equivalent of a gated community: exclusive, expensive, and very, very white collar. It's also extremely ruthless as well, and some of the billionaires that live here are engaged in some rather shady business.
  • Horizon, yet another human colony world, features verdant forests, benign microorganisms, abundant water, and fertile soil - making it very attractive for pioneers hoping to escape from the strictures of Citadel Space. Unfortunately, it's exposed to the same dangers as every other human colony outside Citadel governance.
• Paranormal Gambling Advantage: It's mentioned in the Codex that biotics sometimes abuse their powers, such as cheating at roulette.
• Pardon My Klingon:
  • Quarians have "Bosh'tet", a term meaning "faulty tech" in their native language which is often used in the same context as "son of a bitch". There is also "Keelah", a contraction of "Keelah Selai" ("by the homeworld I hope to one day see"), making it analogous to "By God".
  • Mordin once referred to Captain Kirrahe as "a bit of a cloaca". A cloaca is an organ found in amphibians and some species of bird that is the equivalent of other animals' genitals and anuses: Mordin essentially called Kirrahe a "dick" and an "asshole" simultaneously.
  • Krogan have "quad", a slang term for male genitals (krogan organ redundancy means they have double of most organs, testicles included). A krogan telling someone "You have a quad" is like being told "You've got balls".
  • Angara have a fondness for "skutt", which fills the general role of our "shit".
• Parental Abandonment:
  • Two out of three of Shepard's origin stories, and approximately half of the crew.
  • Averted with Ryder and most of their team, except Vetra, whose mother walked out on her husband and children when Vetra was little. Father Nyx went missing a few years later. And technically, Drack, whose momma was assassinated by turians, but he wasn't a kid when it happened.
• Pausable Realtime: Two radial menus allow the player to swap weapons and use powers.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Certain characters, such as Renegade Shepard, Garrus, and Samara prescribe to this philosophy.
• People Farms:
  • In a large-scale and disturbingly literal scenario, the Reapers treat the entire galaxy as one big People Farm, coming through every once in a while to harvest their crop and seed the next one.
  • In the third game, Cerberus opens one of these on Horizon to study Reaper tech.
• The Philosopher: This game is swimming in them. Sure, there are certain characters who consistently fit this trope, like Wrex or Mordin or Thane, but every character gets their introspective moments.
• Photographic Memory:
  • Both the salarians and the drell have perfect recall. The salarians have control over the process, whereas drell... don't. Whether this is Cursed with Awesome or Blessed with Suck depends on the memory.
  • Humans can pick up this ability, as well, via a cybernetic implant called a greybox. Kasumi Goto has one, and even suggests that Shepard should get one, as well. Kasumi's late partner, Keiji, also had one, which becomes the focus of her loyalty mission when it ends up in the wrong hands.
• Photo Mode: Legendary Edition adds a Photo Mode to all games, letting you take cinematic shots of Shepard and their companions wherever they are.
• Physical, Mystical, Technological: The three main skill sets for Shepard and Ryder to develop are combat, tech, and biotics. Combat skills revolve around using common weapons more efficiently while taking more punishment than a normal person could; tech is all about hacking and building multi-purpose drones; and biotics are essentially space magic. This is particularly noticeable in the first Mass Effect, where each player class and each companion have a rating in each each of these three parameters, visible on the party selection screen.
• Plant Aliens: The Thorian. Also, any drones it creates.
• Planet of Hats: Often Discussed and Played With. Stereotypes exist, and to some extent they're culturally and/or biologically supported, but it's also made clear that they're just that; stereotypes. Many individuals of various species are happy to go hatless. Kaiden at one point notes that he finds jerks and saints within other races, and "They're like us."
  • The turian hat is being a Proud Soldier Race, but you'll also meet turian shopkeepers, politicians, and at least one dancing turian. And a heck of a lot of turian gangsters.
  • Asari are Blue-Skinned Space Elves known for diplomacy and Boldly Coming. After the events of the first game, Matriarch Aethyta suggested the asari make an effort to take the hat off and prepare for the war that's pretty obviously on the horizon (They "laughed the blue off [her] ass", but points for trying).
  • Krogan are a Proud Warrior Race who'll fight anything, and are all thumbs with anything not related to guns and explosions. Non-combatant krogan do pop up more as the series goes on, and Charr gets special mention for being a romantic krogan.
  • Quarians really get the short end of the stick; they're stereotyped as being vagrants, scavengers, and outright thieves, and they still catch crap from other races about creating the geth.
  • Batarians are pirates, slavers, and terrorists. Later games reveal that their totalitarian government is pretty much solely to blame, as they both sponsored pirate raids and restricted travel into Citadel space, so very few people have actually met normal batarian civilians (who are themselves fed propaganda about how the Citadel government is to blame for all their problems).
  • The volus are a Proud Merchant Race.
  • The hanar are the excessively polite jellyfish.
  • Note that many alien races see humanity in this way, too: both determined and relentless. A Paragon Shepard will actually surprise some alien characters by being considerate instead of rude and bullying, while a Renegade Shepard will live down to the stereotype. No matter what, Shepard will play The Determinator hat straight. There's a pointed conversation between the Warrior Race member Wrex and an Alliance officer (Kaidan or Ashley). Officer remarks that Wrex isn't what he expected.
    Wrex: Yes, because you humans have a wide range of cultures and attitudes, but krogan all think and act exactly alike.
  • As far as humans go, it's somewhat intentional as mentioned in the backstory. The Systems Alliance is the official face of humanity in space, but Earth itself is still split along political and national lines. It was only after first contact with the turians that the Systems Alliance was able to establish itself as the galactic face of humanity. Thus, other aliens may very well believe that the Alliance is the only facet of human culture that exists - which would explain why many aliens with less contact with humans believe that Humans Are Special at war on par with the turians. The Alliance has parlayed its single military engagement with a dominant species into political power and prestige.
  • The second game subverts this even more especially with the krogan. It gets to the point that as you interact with Grunt, a krogan tank-bred by another krogan, you realize that Grunt is no more a 'true' krogan than Saren's were. And this unconscious realization is precisely why he's a little angsty.
  • Even with the subversion, the other races are still more prone to wearing "hats" than humanity. A conversation with Mordin on Tuchanka has him pointing out that humans are more biologically diverse than any other sapient species. According to Mordin — you can roughly judge an asari, turian or krogan's capabilities and intelligence at a glance, but humans just vary too widely for that to be effective.
  • Samara makes a similar (though affectionate) statement about human variation:
    Samara: You are more individualistic than any other species I have ever encountered. If there are three humans in a room, there will be six opinions. I like your species. I am curious to see what you will do.
  • In the first game a number of alien characters will mention that humans have a reputation for asking random people lots of questions about their race and culture.
  • Averted with the angara in Andromeda: they're shown to have a diverse culture without any obvious stereotypical qualities.
• Player Character Calculus:
  • In ME1, you have six characters, each embodying one of the six classes descending from the Physical, Mystical, Technological specializations available in the game: Soldier Ashley Williams (Physical x2), Sentinel Kaidan Alenko (Mystical x Tech), Infiltrator Garrus Vakarian (Physical x Tech), Engineer Tali'Zorah nar Rayya (double Tech), Adept Liara T'Soni (double Mystical), and Vanguard Urdnot Wrex (Mystical x Physical). Since Cmdr. Shepard also takes on one of these classes, you'll have a double. However, the party doesn't stay intact long; a mandatory Plotline Death forces you to sacrifice either Ashley or Kaidan, and an avoidable one can cost you Wrex.
  • In ME2, there are a maximum of 12 party characters, two of whom are DLC exclusives, and only two of which were in the previous game (Garrus and Tali). Most of them conform to one of the six basic classes — Samara and Jack are straight Adepts, for instance — but BioWare loosened the design criteria of party characters significantly, leading to others not fitting in. Particularly hard-hit are the half-and-half characters: the Vanguard's Signature Move is a Foe-Tossing Charge, but the closest thing to an NPC Vanguard, Thane, does not have it; the Infiltrator's hallmarks are an Invisibility Cloak and a Sniper Rifle, but neither Garrus nor Kasumi has both; and forget about the Sentinel's Tech Armor ability!
  • ME3 has to incorporate the fact that every party character in ME2 can get Killed Off for Real, including Garrus and Tali, and work in a new DLC-only character. At absolute minimum, the playable party can be as few as three characters: Liara, a Soldier named James and an Engineer named EDI, both of whom are new to the playable roster. (The optional characters include Garrus, Tali, whichever-between-Ashley-and-Kaidan-survived-the-first-game, and the DLC character, who is identified as an Adept despite having certain Physical powers that Adepts typically do not).
  • Andromeda once more mixes things up. Despite giving you six party members again, there is no straightforward Adept or Engineer unless your Ryder takes that role; instead you're furnished with an Infiltrator (Jaal), two Soldiers (Vetra and Drack), a Vanguard (Cora), a Sentinel (Peebee), and Liam, who takes the same Fragile Speedster spin on the Infiltrator as Kasumi. Cora at least gets the foe-tossing Charge move, the first allied NPC to do so.
• Platonic Prostitution: Sha'ira, the asari Consort, rarely grants sexual services to her clients personally... much to the frustration of some of her more enamored admirers.
• Player Headquarters:
  • The Citadel in the first and third games is the focal point of most every event. It's where the majority of side quests are received and completed, it's one of the most consistent sources of supplies, and it's mandatory to visit at least three times. Somewhat unusual in that it's the second location you visit immediately after the First Town.
  • In the second game, the Citadel is no more important or central to the game (and perhaps even less so) than Omega, the Wretched Hive Outlaw Space Station.
  • The Normandy serves this purpose in every game, though the second one is far more tricked out in this regard than the first. The refitted Normandy in the third game even more so.
  • The Tempest, for Ryder in Andromeda.
• Playing with Syringes: There's more secret evil experiments going on in this series than you can shake a stick at.
• Plot Lock: Found throughout the games are doors that, mysteriously, neither you nor your more tech-savvy companions can hack your way through. They will inevitably open later in the mission. The second game goes as far as to conveniently mark such doors with a red lock.
• Poke in the Third Eye: A good sign of something generating a strong enough mass effect field is that nearby biotics will notice it, usually by making their teeth ache. Like that statue of a mass relay on the Citadel...
• Population Control: Quarians have a one-child limit due to limited resources and space (they live on a fleet of spacecraft), but if their population gets too small then extra children may even be encouraged. The salarians enforce this on themselves with carefully planned breeding to avoid overpopulation problems.
  • The salarians forced this on the krogan via the genophage.
  • A salarian's sex is determined by whether or not the egg was fertilized: an unfertilized egg produces a male and a fertilized egg produces a female. Because females lay eggs at set intervals, salarian law only allows ten percent of eggs to be fertilized.
• Portal Network: The Abusive Precursors built "mass relays" that allow almost-instantaneous transportation between star clusters. "Conventional" (IE ship-board) FTL exists and is used to travel to systems near those containing a mass relay, but is obviously less efficient than something that can send you a tenth of the way across the Milky Way in mere moments.
• Possession Implies Mastery:
  • Subverted. Apparently, the mass relays are simplicity itself to use; a few years of study and humanity was zipping all over the galaxy with them. But no amount of study has been able to crack how they actually work yet, to the point where the galactic community at large has stopped trying. The Protheans, apparently, were able to at least begin to understand how the mass relays worked and even built a couple of scale models, but it's implied that they were at it longer and were also more diligent.
  • Averted in the first game with respect to your weapons. Everyone carries all four weapons everywhere but starts out with nothing more than basic training in any of them, resulting in poor accuracy and damage. This is especially noticeable with the sniper rifle, with which it's almost impossible to hit anything without a fair amount of training because of how much the targeting reticule drifts while aiming.
  • The second game also brings up a point about the mass relays being rather inaccurate when used like this. Though that is only a problem concerning the Omega-4 relay, since its end point is surrounded by the wreckage of thousands of ships, and is located in the galactic core.
  • Averted with the angara and the Remnant tech. They've been sitting on the stuff, sometimes almost literally, for four hundred years and barely ever get it working. Curiously enough, one human characters note that in actuality, the remtech is actually less mechanically sophisticated than all that Prothean tech.
• Post-Processing Video Effects: A 'film grain' effect added to the games, particularly noticeable in the cutscenes. It can be turned off.
• P.O.V. Sequel: What became Mass Effect: Andromeda was first announced as being one of these to the original Mass Effect, with neither Commander Shepard nor the crew of the Normandy making an appearance. In the end, no character from the original trilogy appeared in Andromeda whatsoever, though one makes a voice cameo and a couple others are referenced in dialogue.
• Powered Armor: Seems to actually be introduced incrementally as the series progressed.
  • In Mass Effect, the armor looks like flexible suits of riot gear with built in life support and provides Deflector Shields. It may include an exoskeleton upgrade, but this is optional and only useful for increasing melee damage.
  • In Mass Effect 2, most of Shepard's armor are hardsuits with exoskeletal joints and spine. Some types of armor by default increase movement speed and physical strength by a small amount, but not to the same extent as most entries in the trope. They also aid in combat by making the user's aim more accurate.
  • In Mass Effect 3, Cerberus soldiers wear much bulkier armor than regular mercenaries. It features such novelties as thrusters for shock drops, full servo systems for lifting heavy objects, and of course there are the ATLAS mechs. Not to mention that the troops are cyborgs themselves, augmented with Reaper technology.
• Power Glows: Biotics, full stop. They even get an aura when they're preparing to throw people around. The primary weapons of Reapers also glow brightly before firing.
• Power Perversion Potential: Biotic powers to be precise, according to Mordin.
• Pre-Climax Climax: The culmination of the romance paths (should you choose to follow one) in the first two games, right before the final mission. The third game also has a romance scene before the final two missions, but depending on which romance you're pursuing, it may or may not be the culmination of the romance.
• Precursors:
  • The Protheans, replete with Lost Technology. The Protheans themselves had Precursors. All of it turns out to be a massive sucker trap laid by the Reapers, who were created by an older intelligence still that determined the only way to prevent the complete annihilation of all life was to control the inevitable organic vs. synthetic conflict by killing off any civilization that progressed far enough to create true Artificial Intelligences.
  • Andromeda has the Remnant builders, also known as the Jardaan. In a twist, they're much more recent than the average Precursor. They were still around when the Initiative left the Milky Way, but in the intervening time an unidentified adversary of theirs drove them out of the Heleus Cluster.
• Precursor Killers: The very premise of the games comes down to the revelation that the Protheans were killed off by The Reapers, the TRUE precursors who have repeated the pattern for reasons unknown and they've wiped out at least two thousand generations of precursors beforehand.
• Precursor Worship: The hanar consider the Protheans to be essentially gods. Javik is not amused.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Some characters have these.
  Samara: Find peace in the embrace of the goddess.
• Prestige Class: Used in both games, though implemented differently. The first game has a standard "advance to level twenty, then choose a prestige after a special mission." The second game gives each individual ability a prestige class; when you max it out, you can choose between one of two uber-effects, usually in the neighborhood of more power or wider area of effect. The third game expands on this; abilities can now reach up to level 6, and every level from 4 and up allows you to choose from two possible upgrades of the ability.
• Privateer: The Corsairs, a secret branch of Alliance Marines who act as independent groups outside of Alliance space. While not exactly pirates, their duties may include piracy, in addition to other black ops, and the Alliance can disavow any knowledge of them if they are caught. Jacob Taylor from the second game is an ex-Corsair.
• Projected Man: A standard way for V.I. programs to manifest throughout both games. EDI gets in on the action in the second game as well, even though she doesn't take an anthropomorphic form. She no longer bothers with it once she gains a body in the third game.
• Protagonist Power-Up Privileges: It's Commander Shepard, and later Pathfinder Ryder, who gets all the cutting-edge upgrades, weapons, and technologies while their squad is mostly restricted to perfecting their confined areas of expertise.
• Proud Merchant Race: In terms of combat ability, the volus suck. Since they're so horrible at fighting, they gravitated to the turians (who were the undisputed champions of combat at the time) for protection. Pretty much the entire volus race is now involved in trade of one form or another.
  • That said, they do bring two sizable War Assets to the table in Mass Effect 3: A fleet of frigates designed for aerial bombardment, and, judging by the description, one of the single most powerful dreadnoughts in Council Space. Turns out when you do as much commerce as the volus do, you can afford to spend a lot of money on the occasional warship. And considering how the Treaty of Farixen limits the number of dreadnoughts among non-council races to one for every turian five, one can see why the volus would want to really make their limited number of ships count.
  • Also in the third game, volus are playable in the multiplayer. They absolutely suck at combat, but are phenomenal in a support role.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Now in two flavors! Get your brutal krogan and disciplined turians while supplies last! The krogan are a particularly brutal Deconstructed Trope example; the trope is then reconstructed in Mass Effect 2, at least to some extent. Oh, and the newest player on the scene, humans, are regarded as these too, making the more peaceful races justifiably fearful of trope overdose.
• Pstandard Psychic Pstance: The exaggerated motions the biotics make when using their powers, or simply charging up to use them. Justified, in that they use their powers by firing certain nerves which correspond with muscle groups, so the easiest way to make things happen is to wave their arms and hands.
• Psychic Powers: Only technically psychic, and telekinesis only. The asari can read and transfer thoughts and knowledge, but that's more because of physiological quirks than mental abilities.
• Pun-Based Title: Mass Effect and each of your choices has a massive effect on the narrative.
• Punch-Clock Villain: The various mercenaries fought throughout the first two games. Rana Thanoptis, Saren's pet neurobiologist on Virmire, arguably also fits the trope. Until it turns out she was indoctrinated before you even reached her.
• Puny Earthlings: Averted, thanks to some help from Humans Are Average. Every other race in the galaxy has at least one advantage over humans, but humans generally make up for it with fewer weaknesses. They have the greatest cultural and genetic diversity of any race in the galaxy, making humanity very versatile and hard to predict. Asari live longer and are natural biotics, but are physically less imposing and are less driven/motivated overall as a species. Krogan are much hardier and live longer, but are stricken with the genophage and are slowly exterminating themselves due to their aggressive tendencies. Turians have a stronger and more numerous military, but the humans showed their ability to hold up militarily in the First Contact War thanks to their versatility and creativity. (And that is with only 3% of humanity serving in the military, while every turian of military age serves.) Their immune systems are stronger than the quarians, they have a greater population than the drell, and are more capable outside of the environment of their homeworld than the volus, hanar, and elcor as well. However, this trope is still played straight when humanity (or any other race) is compared to the Reapers. And also, the galaxy's most badass individual is a human, so...
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Somewhat. What gender you pick chooses most of Shepard and Ryder's love interests, as well as the voice actor and, well, appearance, but otherwise nothing really changes. No exclusive sidequests for certain genders or different paths along some quests. Just some dialogue shuffling.
  • Well, mostly. There's a couple of moments of unique dialogue, at least in the second game, a completely hilarious Renegade Interrupt at the beginning of Archangel's recruitment mission if you play as a female Shepard, and another amusing scene in Samara's loyalty mission when female Shepard gets hit on by a turian who won't take no for an answer. But there's no impact on gameplay or the overarching story.
• Put Down Your Gun and Step Away: Shows up a couple of times throughout the games. The example from the first game ends with the hostage safe and the hostage takers dead/surrendered no matter what, but the situation in the second game is a little different as you're there for the taker in the first place. You can even shoot the hostage yourself. And not feel any particular remorse for this course of action.
  • Lair of the Shadow Broker has a somewhat similar situation, where you're told to drop your thermal clips.
  • In the third game, the hostage taker can actually be talked out of it and get away with his life. Unless Miranda is alive.
  • During Vetra's loyalty mission, the villain does this, then pulls out a grenade... only for it to take so long to go off that Ryder's team can grab their weapons and get the hostage to safety before it goes off. Things do not improve for the villain after that.

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