Discussion Characters / MassEffectLiaraTSoni

No she is not. She plays a vital role (i.e. retrieving Shepard's corpse and giving it to the Illusive Man) but you can go through the series without talking to her outside of recruitment missions and it has no real impact on the series. "Has lots of content" doesn't make a deuteragonist.

In all honesty, I don't think the series has a deuteragonist. It's a one-Shepard show.

I agree. The only thing that would possibly push her into deuteragonist territory would be if the player character chose her ending that resulted in her messages helping the next cycle win out.

Really, the closest thing the series has to a deuteragonist would probably be the Illusive Man, but he probably ventures too far into villainous territory to count.

She might work as a "mascot" character, or something along those lines. Although she isn't quite important enough to be considered a Deuteragonist, she was given a LOT of focus...even before the game was released. In terms of promotional material, she was considered the "face" of the Asari, and as well as the various aliens and the romance options. People who've never played Mass Effect typically know it as "Oh that game where you have sex with a blue alien chick."

Mascot is fine, she just has nowhere near enough storyline significance to be the second most important character in the series. Maybe Harbinger holds that title.

Nah Harbinger doesn't fit, either.

Anderson does, though. Especially considering he's a main character in the books (along with Kahlee Sanders, who's the protagonist of the books and thus probably qualifies as Tritagonist of the Milky Way saga overall).

I also disagree on the count of Anderson. He just doesn't drive enough of the plot in the games. Perhaps when viewing the Mass Effect franchise as a whole, but even then, the major events all happen during the games so even then it would be a stretch.

Then maybe there isn't a deuteragonist. I don't think that a story has to have one.

"Driving the plot" isn't a qualification of how we define the Deuteragonist though. We define it as someone who is given almost as much focus as the hero and add that "An important aspect is that we see quite a bit of the story from this character's point of view, and that they get a good amount of screen time/pages."

Anderson more than qualifies here, when the entire franchise is taken into account. The games focus more on Shepard, yes, but Anderson is usually part of important scenes (the second game arguably being the point where he was the LEAST important, and he hated every moment of it).

I'm inclined to agree with Tahaneira - there isn't really a good fit for a deuteragonist. While no, driving the plot isn't explicitly listed, "the second person the show revolves around" is, along with the clarification that "we see quite a bit of the story from this character's point of view, and that they get a good amount of screen time/pages."

I wouldn't say that the games revolve much around Anderson. Of course, the counterargument would be that as a video, of course you can't really have the viewpoint revolve around much more than Shepard, so you have to look at the context of the bigger picture. The problem being that when you look at it from other angles (such as plot progression), Anderson is relegated to a background position for pretty much the entire trilogy, not just the second game. He's yanked out of his position in the first game, he doesn't do much in the second, and in the third the most he does is hold back the Reapers on Earth. While holding them back is important, that is very much in the background. The strongest argument for making him a deuteragonist is at the very end of three, where he's right along with Shepard at the end, making sure his protégé gets the job done. Though the Mentor Archetype is not incompatible with the Deuteragonist, I am tempted to say that much like with TIM and his antagonist tendencies, Anderson's mentor relationship crowds him out of playing a deuteragonist role in the games. While a role to play isn't necessary (much as with the driving of the plot), we still don't see enough of him or his point of view (as indicated by the description) because he has been pushed to the background by someone who is basically his replacement - Shepard. Despite the fact that this doesn't keep Anderson from doing his own part, I feel like this eclipsing by Shepard is another reason that Anderson cannot be a deuteragonist in the games.

As I said, Anderson is one of the main characters of the books, as well as some comics. While the games don't revolve much around his perspective, the books very much do. As I said, he's one of the two protagonists of the novels, along with Kahlee Sanders.

In the games, Anderson gets sidelined, but is still playing a vital role. In the first one, he's the reason you get the Normandy back to go to Ilos, and in the third one, he's one half of the Big Good Diiumvirate with Hackett.

But that's the end of my argument. If we can get a consensus, great. If not, I'm not willing to push this.

Well, we sort of strayed from the original discussion, which is whether or not Liara counted as deuteragonist of the Shepard trilogy, and we all seem to agree she is not. 'Who is, then' is not really a question I think we absolutely must answer at this point, especially since we can't seem to agree on how the term applies in this situation.

But, since I haven't really put in my two cents yet, my feeling is that, disregarding the secondary material, if you strip out all of the optional scenes in the games, skip every conversation with companions and random NP Cs that do not advance the plot in any way, the person who still appears the most is probably the best candidate for deuteragonist. Without actually checking, my gut feeling is that that person is probably either Anderson or TIM, and since he's a main character in two books (three if you include the One That Shall Not Be Named) and appears in like half of the rest of the secondary materials, Anderson would likely get my vote.

Sorry if I offended, Zeal. I was only arguing for classification as per the game trilogy, with which I am most familiar. As far as the books, I've only read one or two, so I would defer to your judgment as far as they are concerned. That being said, from what I've read on Tropes, yes, I would agree that Anderson would qualify for deuteragonist for the franchise as a whole.

I'm not offended. It's just that I've been accused of being "argumentative" on this site before and of not being able to let my side go. So I wanted to make it clear that my stubborness had a limit.

That being said, I'm glad we reached a consensus.