Legion

The Geth are initially presented to you as a hive mind of murderous machines hellbent on the destruction of organics. After spending nearly two full games with everyone and their mother telling you to fear these synthetics, by the time Legion, a geth with Shepard’s N7 armor welded onto its chest, shows up, you’re right to be skeptical of its supposed good intentions.

But Legion is a window into one of the people affected by one of the greatest crimes committed in the Mass Effect universe. He is the first person to tell you the Geth’s side of the story in their uprising on Rannoch, the home planet of their Quarian creators. They were once curious gardeners and laborers who just wanted to know more about the world they were created to live in, and that was terrifying enough for their creators to try to wipe them out. After the Geth successfully drove their oppressors from their homeworld, Legion is an avatar of what’s left: an entire synthetic race of people just as complicated and divided as the rest of us.

But he also believes in a brighter future for his people, so much so that he sacrifices himself in Mass Effect 3 to elevate the entire race to a new state of intelligence. Legion dies as he lived: hoping that the Geth could find their place in the galaxy alongside not only their creators but the rest of the galactic community.