Tali

Tali is one of the two constants in your party throughout the Mass Effect trilogy, and she absolutely makes the most of all that time. Tali starts out as a nomad who just happens to stumble into the beginnings of a galactic invasion, bringing evidence of the incoming Reaper invasion to Shepard. Throughout the rest of the first game, she’s mostly a representative of the Quarian people, as she’s the only person of the suit-wearing alien race to appear through Shepard’s first adventure. You get a sense that she’s a very important person to her people, but it’s not until Mass Effect 2 that it becomes clear that she’s in the thick of some of the Quarian’s vitriolic, divided politics.

Tali finds herself caught between everything she’s ever been taught about her people’s history, all her conflicted feelings of resentment and admiration for her father, and the pressures of being a notable figure within her community that gives her a sense of responsibility to her people. She’s the girl who feels pressure from every angle while she’s struggling to even find out who she is and what she wants in the process.

In Mass Effect 3, Tali has reached the other side of a suicide mission and knows who she is, knows the truth of what happened between the Quarians and the Geth, and is ready to try and usher her people into a new era, should you be able to facilitate that through your choices, at least. In a series where characters like Ashley start out with prejudiced beliefs and more or less just drop them like an old toy they got bored of playing with, Tali is one of Mass Effect’s most effective characters in terms of watching someone slowly but surely suck out the poison of everything they’ve been taught. She’s a changed woman by the end of Mass Effect 3, and the ending in which she’s able to see Quarians and Geth living side by side in Rannoch is one of the most rewarding conclusions in the trilogy.