Don't if this is worst. The worst would would probably be ones I don't really remember so I'll just go with ones that annoy me.
Longing said:
ANOMEN!!!!!!!!!ARGH!!!!!
ahem, sorry, I have a lot of feelings about him. Baldur's Gate II being one of my favourite game of all time and me being generally fond of Bioware romances, it pisses me off to no end that female pc were stuck with that holier than thou self-centered asshole. thank fucking god for the modding community! speaking of BG II, Nalia was also pretty unlikeable and entered my party a grand total of 1 time. Then I just learned to sprint past her.
Argh fucking Anomen. Who on earth though a lying Braggart with a holier than thou stick up their ass and who blames you for everything was attractive? The only reason to bring him is because everyone else mocking him is hilarious. I've seen the argument that he is well written and yeah I guess he is but a well written character I hate is still a character I hate.
I'm also not fond of Aerie. Her "oh so innocent and tortured" thing gets old fast and her timid shaky voice is annoying.
DA1 Oghren. Ewww. Has some funny lines but still...ew. Also fuck him for abandoning his kid though at least he take criticism for that.
DA2 Fenris and Anders. BOOOOORRRIIINGG broody assholes and they seem like their more there for the sake of being mouth pieces in the mage vs tempar thing.
I'm also not fond of Garrus in ME1 (don't shoot me), his voice is awesome but I don't like his attitude. Though he has a bro thing going on in ME2. Liara was a bit annoying to.
Jacob in ME2 but part of that is conversations with him are cringe worthy due to 'sexual harassment Shepard' so I didn't pay much attention. Thane and Samara bore me and I don't usually like your 'badass' killers who are centred around a code.
yes on topic. the evil ranger guy in neverwinter nights who you couldnt get rid of, murder or stick his ass in a dungeon cell and was so obviously going to betray you from the second you met him it was stupid
Bishop. His name was Bishop and I absolutely agree with you 1000%. Neverwinter 2 would have been so much better if the player had been given the opportunity to impale Bishop on a pike - or at least hang his severed head over the gate of your keep.
Definitely honorable mentions to Mass Effect's Jacob and Vega too. Jacob's the most boring but Vega's the most annoying. If I could change only one thing about ME1 it would be to make one or both of them available for "the choice" at Virmire.
No sir you are not. I'm quite a fan of them myself.
I like Jacob because out of all the crazy kooks on the Normandy, he was by far the most reasonable and down to earth member on it. He had his flaws, and he certainly had to do some crazy things, but out of all of them he seemed to react to the insanity going on in a manner that most real people would, despite never really losing his cool (barring his Loyalty mission). Dude was a genuinely relaxing part of the crew to talk to, and I honestly would have taken him along on every mission if it weren't for the fact that his skills didn't match my preferred play style.
He also gets major brownie points for being one of the few people who progresses in life whilst everyone else is still freaking out about the End Times. If not romanced, in ME3 he gets into a relationship, and even has a kid on the way. Talk about an optimistic view of the situation. While everyone else thinks the galaxy is going to end, he's trusting that Commander Shepard will be able to solve it. Gotta appreciate that level of trust.
James on the other hand has both fluff and crunch on his side.
Everybody usually just sees him as another jarhead, but the dude's way smarter than he seems and simply has a straightforward way of looking at the world. Add to that the survivor's guilt of losing his team, the negative feelings of against Shepard for making that loss mean nothing conflicting with his respect for the chain of command, and the slow refinement of his character as he earns his N7 rating (which we as the player can help him with which I always liked) and you get a pretty interesting character to have around.
Not to mention the dude is a BEAST in combat. Fortification combined with his stupid amounts of health lets him tank rocket salvos without flinching, Carnage and Frag Grenades let him shred anything that looks at you funny, and he's got both Assault Rifles and Shotguns as his weapon proficiencies, giving him a lot of firepower and variety when it comes to adapting to the mission. In short, he's an archetypal lightning bruiser, and I pretty much used him on every mission where there wasn't a narrative reason to use other characters.
OT:
Have only really played the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series of Bioware to any detailed degree, so that's what I'll cover
ME1: No real issues here.
Yes Kaidan was dull and Ashley got a little preachy here and there, but it wasn't ad nauseum and they were generally well rounded.
ME2: Jack, Miranda, Samara, and whichever of Ashley/Kaiden I had let live in the playthrough.
Miranda: because she's a frigid ice queen who (Prior to the DLC) I romanced for no other reason than to mellow her the fuck out. Seriously, she pretty much pissed in the cornflakes of everyone on the ship. I know first officers have to be a little harsh, but she went to almost Nazi-ish levels of rigidity.
Jack:
Though ME3 really mellowed her out too now that she had effectively resolved her past and something to protect (not to mention she got a bitchin' new hairdo)
Kaishley: Though they only get a short cameo, their reaction to the whole "Cerberus thing" was so overblown and black and white that I wanted my Shepard to take off their helmet and beat the whiner over the head with it. Seriously, it's a bullshit reaction and it's a big example of a "narrative drive-by" because it's over before you have a chance to go "WTF?" and it pretty much ruins your day.
Samara: Two words. Lawful Good. She's pretty much the posterwoman for the sterotypical paladin that you always hate to see in RPGs. There's no wiggle room with her, she's all serious all the time, and while there are a lot of cool ideas with her, they all get crushed under the treads of "the Code".
Dishonourable mention goes to Tali as well. While there's nothing wrong with her per se, I was a little worried about how her arc was going given the things we were learning about the geth in the game, as well as her "Oh she was in love with you from the last game, but she might die if you ever make love!" waifu-ish theme that the game was starting to wind up to. Fortunately, the series didn't push that anywhere near where I'd feared it could have gone.
ME3: EDI and Javik.
EDI: Just a lazy way to get a character in the roster whilst simultaneously giving one of the closest legal "nude" character fanservices I've ever seen. Seriously, unless her boobs have machine guns in them there is no reason why she should still have a pair after she got control of her new body because they are nothing but a giant shot trap, and I honestly would have considered it pretty cool if EDI had a combat spec where her usual body to upgraded with armor plating and extra guns and widgets, because as it stands she's likely the squishiest of the whole team from a visual design perspective.
But that's not all; I could also make the argument that her being on a mission is a major liability fluff-wise. Not only could one of my team members simply drop "dead" at any moment due to a weak signal (ie: active jamming or just too much crud between her avatar and the ship), but there is the chance that she can get hacked, which at the very least means one of my team members is now shooting at me. At the very worst, my enemies now potentially have a direct line to the Normandy, so I could spontaneously have my ship drop from the sky or get knocked out in some other crucial manner, and suddenly I'm stranded where ever I am with all the biggest baddies of the universe.
"But wait!" I hear you cry "She's cutting edge tech, and if Legion can go out with no major trouble surely she would be fine!"
I have two responses to that:
A) She's going up against both Cerberus, the Geth, and the Reapers. The former know her inside and out and given the level of the Illusive Man's crazy preparedness, they very well could have a back door or kill switch that could take her out. The middle are an electronic hive mind with exponentially more computing power than her. The latter are high tech and overpowered to point where they can reprogram living creatures. If they can do that I wouldn't be remotely surprised if hacking a computer would be child's play to them.
B)That's why I never took Legion out to play either. If I can hack geth, so could the other side, though this never actually happened in gameplay (not that I got many opportunities to use him given where he joins the crew in the story)
Javik: Buzz-kill. I like the whole shift of our views on the Protheans that we get with him, as it's a neat little show of our perceptions colouring the truth, but the dude is just no fun to be around. No matter where he goes, he's always moping about or poking holes in other cultures and the galactic response to the Reapers. I don't need to be reminded how fucked things are, I've been dealing with that for the entire series, so having someone verbally beat me over the head with that is not a pleasant experience
DAO: Some of the same basic minor quibbles as ME1.
Sten is a bit boring, Leliana is a bit preachy, and Zevran just rustles my jimmies. Not in the sexual way mind you, but rather because he's an assassin who was hired to kill you, and likely to do so again given the chance. In fact if you don't get his approval rating high enough, he does try it again. Not exactly a dude I'd reasonably want to have around, so shoving him into the story is a bit weak to me.
However, there's one character in the game that just pissed me off, and for one reason:
Every. Damn. Time.
Every time I try and do something, if I'm not doing it EXACTLY the way she'd want it done, she bitches about it. I know she's unused to living in civilization so she's got different values. I know her snarkiness is her reflex to situations, just like Allistair's wit is his, but to quote Krillin from DBZ Abridged"
"Seriously, five ancient sages of ***** gathered atop the peaks of Mt. ***** to proclaim your birth, and 100 years later, when all the ***** stars had aligned, you were born and made everyone's life around you a living hell, because you are SUCH a *****!"
That is what I think of her. And much like Miranda, I romanced her just to get her to mellow out, although the potentially significant plot threads were also a major reason why I made my characters have strong ties with her.
DA2: My opinions on the cast of DA2 are mixed, just like my views on the game.
On one hand we have:
- Merrill, the naive elf girl who personifies the adage of "Those least touched by darkness are those most susceptible to it" which has always been a theme I've liked
- Avaline, the straighforward thinking, down to business, genuinely strong female character who never loses her feminity despite the fact that her face was modeled after a brick
- Isabella, pretty much Zevran done right (ie. isn't an assassin who you took along for the ride), who's presence is not only plot significant, but makes her (proverbial) backstab and her potential change of heart comeback actually interesting
and
- Varric Tethras, who is wisecracking, smooth-talking, Bianca-wielding, Sean Connery-chest-impersonating, ideal-level-of-gray-area AWESOME
On the other hand we've got:
Carver: a whiny ***** whose entire character arc can be summed up with "I feel inferior to the main character, WAAAAH!!!" which only gets more annoying if he joins up with the Templars, as it means he pretty much hates you, your sister (who's his TWIN) and his father because you happen to be mages, despite him living with all of you for the majority of his life and knowing you're not all bad people. So he's there pretty much to piss the player off.
Sebastian: the "So holy it hurts" character. Look, I'm perfectly fine with faith being an integral part of a person's character. It is an important part of many peoples lives, and I'd never want to impune someone's beliefs simply because my own don't align with theirs, but Sebastian does it so wrong. He's incredibly preachy, in some cases giving me the feeling he's holding his faith over everyone else, despite actual members of the Chantry aka people whose faith is their entire way of life being less preachy than him (barring Beatrice). He's all the fanaticism, none of the wisdom that comes from truly trying to understand one's faith.
Add to that his whole schpiel of "If you don't immediately kill Anders, I'm out and I'm taking over Starkhaven so I can come back and destroy Kirkwall" bombshell he drops at the end of the game with absolutely no room for the potential trust I've built up with him (and might I add, is at odds with what Grand Cleric Elthina tells him about how he's supposed to act). The fact that his arc doesn't really start until halfway through the game included, it all makes me wonder why they put him here other than to complicate matter more.
Fenris: I know he's had a really fucked up life, and If I had a life like his I wouldn't come out smelling like the proverbial rose, but I do wish he'd dial down the angst. It's pretty much all he talks about. He almost never does anything else. No warming up to other people, no trying to get on with his life, and he just doesn't seem to have any motivation beyond killing his master. It's just one note and tedious. I'd literally shell out money for the ability to sit him down and tell him in character:
"Look, you've had a very bad life. You were a slave since childhood, both in mind and in the legal sense. You've been belittled and tortured and those scars are never going to go away. I understand that. But let me tell you about something about my life.
"My father died just before the Blight overran our town. I lost my brother to the Darkspawn because I wasn't strong enough to protect him. My sister was taken from me because it was the only way to save her life, and I doubt I'll ever see her again. My mother was butchered by a love-crazed serial killer I hadn't caught in time and she died in my arms with her head stitched on to another woman's body. I am fighting an effectively one man battle against slavers, cartels, gangs, religious and philosophical fanatics and a frankly anomalous number of blood mages and demons in this fucked up city.
"So let me ask you a question: Have you ever seen me ***** about it? No? Then kindly shut the fuck up. Everyone's got a shit life in Kirkwall. We don't need to be reminded of it every day"
But if there's one Bioware character I hate more than any other, it's
*drumroll*
Anders
.........HAAAAAAAAAAAAATE
I specifically refer to his DA2 version, as his Awakening version was downright reasonable. He had a good sense of humour, was useful, and he treated in ways that made sense. All in all, a nice guy to hang out with.
Then Vengeance happened, and suddenly we have a character to emo and whiny that his very tears make men impotent and kittens get cancer.
I'll put it simply: if it wasn't for the fact that he's a plot critical character and that he's the only healer the the game (if I don't want to take the boring healer role AND deal with Carver to boot) I would sooner get raped by a dragon with AIDS than go anywhere near that sonofabitch.
He's whiny, he's preachy, he has absolutely no perspective on the events around him, he turns all glowy and ragey if something so much as ticks him off causing him to go on a killing rampage that puts even thew people he wants to protect in harms way, and if your character is male and tries to be nice to him, he immediately assumes you want to jump his bones and is offended if you don't happen to agree with that notion to the point where you actually lose approval with him even if you were nice for the rest oft he conversation.
And to top off this rancid pile of awful, he is a mass-murderer. He blows up a whole bunch of innocent people (many of which sympathized with his side and some of which were trying to help mages) and let them burn to death in a fiery conflagration just so people will take action on the Templar/Mage issue. That action is purging the city of all mages (blood or no) and all people who try and defend them, effectively starting a world-wide holy war.
Now after all this, the game does give me the option to kill him, and yet I don't take it. Oh no, I'm not giving that bastard the easy way out. He's going to help save Kirkwall, then he's going to help me solve this "little" holy war problem he started, and then and only then am I going to kill him.
I'm going to kill him by taking him back to Kirkwall. I'm going to drag him to the rubble of the Chantry. I'm going to crucify him on one of the ruined walls there, and then I'm going to shoot arrows covered in pure Capsaicin hot sauce into him until he slowly bleeds to death.
Now this is hyperbole of course. He's a fictional character, he's more balanced than I give credit for here and I wouldn't ever do this to anyone, but that's the sort of feelings that this bastard inspires in me. DA2 Anders stands as not only my most hated Bioware character, but amongst my most-hated characters of all time.
EDIT: Was curious about how long this post really is, so I copy-pasted it into OpenOffice. At Times New Roman size 12, single space, I just wrote 5 full pages of text in the span of a few hours, aka a full university essay.
Why is it that I could never write this well when I was ACTUALLY writing my essays?
Zaeed's the worst for me by a pretty long margin. Absolutely no redeeming qualities, and on top of that he's boring. He's DLC, though, so I only sort of count him.
What was done with Anders in DA2 was pretty awful, but I put that on a bad story choice more than a bad character. He's also a great deal of fun in Awakening, so there's enough positive I get out of him to balance it.
Velanna from DA: Awakening I found incredibly grating. She was the only one of the Awakening companions I didn't want more interaction with.
Anomen from BG2 : Unlikable prick who forces you to follow a whiny quest for revenge. Male chars get Viconia/Jaheira and this is what the ladies get? He's not the worst character in BG2 though, sadly.
Aerie: My first run, I grabbed her and finished her romance...And realized in the expansion that she's a cold-hearted monster.
Hero: What happens if you die when you are carrying the child?
Aerie: Totes fine, it'll resurrect with me!
Me:...You are an awful person.
Cernd: Ugh, grow a spine and take some damn responsibility, you dipshit.
I want to say Haer'Dalis, but I sort of like him. He's kind of the character you'd get from That Guy in your tabletop group who makes a character that clearly doesn't fit.
Sharwyn: Neverwinter Nights: Oh, nice! A Bard! That could be...Oh, you died again...And again...And Again?
Annoying and a pain in the ass to have around. Yay...
Jack: Mass Effect 2-: Yes, I get it. You're a female Riddick with less clothes...Still annoying, rude to everyone, and with a sense of martyrdom. A warning example why making a tortured character can really backfire.
Khalid. You have to take him as well if you want Jaheira, but unlike Jaheira, his stats are meh and he's annoying. In one playthrough, I sent him alone to the woods to get killed by hobgoblins so that I could just have Jaheira.
Another thing that I would like to point out is that whilst I liked Zaeed and Kasumi, it did feel quite cheap to have to pay for them, and then just have them sat in the ship spouting the same few lines of dialogue over and over. Sure, they do interact with you during missions, but I found it to be a bit of a pisstake. At least Javik from Mass Effect 3 (yes, I bought him with real money), Shale from Dragon Age: Origins and Sebastian from Dragon Age 2 didn't have this problem.
If you bought a character, at least give them some animations and interesting dialouge that goes beyond their own DLC mission.
But I suppose they believe since you got an extra mission and a few items from buying Kasumi and Zaeed, they felt you got your money's worth!
Probably had to charge because of paying for the voice over work and having to add mission content into the existing game itself --- blah blah blah --- usual suspects and all.
However, the target for his piss-and-dragonspit bomb is THE CHANTRY? Why not an orphanage, or a retirement home, or a kitten refuge??
Because his goal by the end of the game is to eliminate the moderating faction: at this point he's become convinced that open genocidal conflict between Mages and Templars will happen no matter what and that people like Elthina are merely delaying the inevitable. To you it's madness, to him, it's merely pushing away the good-willing but ineffective doctor and bursting the abscess.
To him, simply killing the fanatic and corrupt templars won't suffice, that even if you replace all of them with honest, good-willing people you'll end up in the same situation a generation later because the templar system is too attractive for power-hungry bastards and religious zealots eager to demonstrate their devotion by shedding someone else's blood. The worst part is that he's probably right about all this, and the Templars are so intrenched within the Chantry that there's no hope for a top-down reformation of the institution.
***
EDIT: Quick question; Varric is apparently a very popular companion among the fans, but I've never found him to be particularly appealing. Anyone feel like explaining why he's so great?
Because he's a successful story-teller, and it resonates with the fantasy that many RPG gamers have, deep down. Also he's the companion whose opinions and sensibilities are closest to those commonly held by modern-day middle-class-and-above city-dwellers, therefore, many players will see themselves in him more easily than in any other companion.
Actually, Zaeed (just went ahead and fixed it for ya btw) has plenty of reason to be a violent prick. Keep in mind, he that partly founded the Blue Suns (a group that was always known for doing less than reputable things) so he's not exactly a nice guy to begin with. Plus, his former partner literally shot him in the face (hence the fucked up looking scar) and left him for dead after Zaeed refused to get involved with the Batarian slave trade. After that, he had to start from scratch as a mercenary so he was fairly pissed at being betrayed and constantly thought about revenge.
I'm aware of his backstory, but simply having a potential reason to be a prick doesn't explain it. Garrus has similar problems and he's nowhere near as selfish or violent.
So he's a Blue Sun; how does this give his character depth? Is this fact meant to make the reasons for his behavior obvious? Are all Blue Suns just angry maniacs? If I heard that explanation for a crime in real life, I would dismiss it as reductionist, simple minded, and silly; almost no "everyone who is part of social group X must have characteristic Y" statement ever holds water.
The reasons for a character to accepts the social standards applied to them allows for, and requires, just as much characterization as the reasons to reject them.
As for getting shot in the face; a character is defined by actions, not things that happen to them. I know that if I got stabbed in the back by my friend I wouldn't resolve to murder as many innocent people as necessary to get back at him.
This backstory kind of creates a catch 22; is this backstory meant to explain Zaeed's behavior? It doesn't; is it meant to give context to his character? It doesn't do that either because now I must assume he was simply always like this, which, again, explains nothing.
But let's assume for a moment that all this does form the entirety of Zaeed's characterization; so what? I still wouldn't call the complete picture an interesting or complex figure. What frustrates me is that Bioware could have created an interesting personality here.
Throughout the Mass Effect series, few groups are as simplistically characterized as the gangsters you mow down in droves; Zaeed offered a unique opportunity to see the criminal underbelly of the Mass Effect universe in a different light.
Maybe things aren't clear cut as Garrus would make them out to be; maybe these people have their own values to follow; maybe they have paragons and renegades of their own; maybe to them people like Shepard and Garrus are the violent thugs with no principals.
Maybe all of us, to some degree, see the world as we wish it was.
I only played the Mass Effect series enough to really get a good idea, and I'd say the worst might be Jacob. He bores me. There really isn't much else to it. Everyone else typically has something interesting, Jacob doesn't.
OpticalJunction said:
Never understood the appeal of Garrus, I thought he had a boring voice actor and very predictable motivations.
The worst part is his Awakening persona is actually quite fun! Then they go and turn him into a whiny, moody, terrorist. I shanked him with glee and never progressed past DAII beyond that point, it was the last straw, though Merill helped along with that too.
God I hate DAII so much, and its why DAI is on thin ice with me, if the game forces Anders to be alive no matter my choices I will lose my shit.
He was like my space best friend. The dialogue between Shepard and Garrus really reinforced that, or at least tried to, and he just ended up being a character that I really cared about. But yeah, his story was fairly hit-and-miss, although I really did like his ME2 recruitment mission.
All of the companions in NWN: Shadows of Undrentide.
Yup, all of them. I left the whole crew in that frozen shithole village.
Xanos is half orc sorcerer barbarian. There is no synergy in these classes and his A.I. only aggravates the problem. He usually stands out of the way and casts ineffective spells before running in to get slaughtered. And he's the good one.
Next is Dorna, the rogue/cleric. Same problem as above. At my work there used to be a broom that was tied to a dustpan, but the cord wasn't long enough to use both at the same time so it was actually terrible at being a broom OR a dustpan. That broom/dustpan is like Dorna.
And then there's Deekin. He's a kobold, which is kind of like saying he's an annoying toddler. Want an annoying toddler companion? You don't? Shocking...
To be fair you get the feeling they kind of rushed out SOU. There's another character who clearly should have been a companion but just wasn't finished and there's a huge amount of backtracking in the first act to pad out the length. Probably the weakest of the series.
Anomen from BG2 : Unlikable prick who forces you to follow a whiny quest for revenge. Male chars get Viconia/Jaheira and this is what the ladies get? He's not the worst character in BG2 though, sadly.
Aerie: My first run, I grabbed her and finished her romance...And realized in the expansion that she's a cold-hearted monster.
Hero: What happens if you die when you are carrying the child?
Aerie: Totes fine, it'll resurrect with me!
Me:...You are an awful person.
Cernd: Ugh, grow a spine and take some damn responsibility, you dipshit.
Oh I forgot about him. You would have thought he would have learnt his lesson but no, he dumps his kid again after his quest and in the epilogue his kid grows up evil and he has to kill him *sigh*.
NortherWolf said:
I want to say Haer'Dalis, but I sort of like him. He's kind of the character you'd get from That Guy in your tabletop group who makes a character that clearly doesn't fit.
To be fair he is a teifling from the planes and a Doomgaurd (the guys who believe total entropy is inevitable and a good thing) which is in lore so it makes sense for him to be weird and not fit. It's kinda dickish that he knows Yoshimo is lying and doesn't like him but doesn't mention this to you at all though I guess that dose make sense aswell since he seems to be in it for the ride and doesn't care if everyone dies.
Fuck him for being able to break the class rules (2 points in short swords) when my character can't though! Companions should not be outclassing the PC.
I'm replaying Mass effect(because I'm playing the trilogy straight through, so I can finally stop avoiding the ME3 ending spoilers).
I almost never use Kaidan or Ashley when I play. Kaidan just seems really....dull and Ashely kind of annoys me. The low grade racism is only part of it, frankly. (which is why I usually let her die when given the choice). I usually use Liara, Wrex or Tali for the missons and let the humans babysit the Normandy.
The only time I ever regularly used Ashley was my Incompetent Racist Asshole playthrough... hampered somewhat by them abandoning the Humanity First bit after the first game. She was about the only one who made it out of ME2 alive.
And I still save her over Aiden every single time because he's even less interesting.
I'd also throw Jacob on the list. I can't even remember his character hook.
Actually, Zaeed (just went ahead and fixed it for ya btw) has plenty of reason to be a violent prick. Keep in mind, he that partly founded the Blue Suns (a group that was always known for doing less than reputable things) so he's not exactly a nice guy to begin with. Plus, his former partner literally shot him in the face (hence the fucked up looking scar) and left him for dead after Zaeed refused to get involved with the Batarian slave trade. After that, he had to start from scratch as a mercenary so he was fairly pissed at being betrayed and constantly thought about revenge.
I'm aware of his backstory, but simply having a potential reason to be a prick doesn't explain it. Garrus has similar problems and he's nowhere near as selfish or violent.
So he's a Blue Sun; how does this give his character depth? Is this fact meant to make the reasons for his behavior obvious? Are all Blue Suns just angry maniacs? If I heard that explanation for a crime in real life, I would dismiss it as reductionist, simple minded, and silly; almost no "everyone who is part of social group X must have characteristic Y" statement ever holds water.
The reasons for a character to accepts the social standards applied to them allows for, and requires, just as much characterization as the reasons to reject them.
As for getting shot in the face; a character is defined by actions, not things that happen to them. I know that if I got stabbed in the back by my friend I wouldn't resolve to murder as many innocent people as necessary to get back at him.
This backstory kind of creates a catch 22; is this backstory meant to explain Zaeed's behavior? It doesn't; is it meant to give context to his character? It doesn't do that either because now I must assume he was simply always like this, which, again, explains nothing.
But let's assume for a moment that all this does form the entirety of Zaeed's characterization; so what? I still wouldn't call the complete picture an interesting or complex figure. What frustrates me is that Bioware could have created an interesting personality here.
Throughout the Mass Effect series, few groups are as simplistically characterized as the gangsters you mow down in droves; Zaeed offered a unique opportunity to see the criminal underbelly of the Mass Effect universe in a different light.
Maybe things aren't clear cut as Garrus would make them out to be; maybe these people have their own values to follow; maybe they have paragons and renegades of their own; maybe to them people like Shepard and Garrus are the violent thugs with no principals.
Maybe all of us, to some degree, see the world as we wish it was.
I don't see why he needs a particular reason to have a negative character trait. I'm all for character conflict and everything but good character writing does not necessarily mean you have to create a backstory that explains all their motivations. I mean, if you're going to give the player a character that allows them to "see the criminal underbelly of the Mass Effect universe in a different light" why would you have him be fundamentally different from any other mercenaries? Mercenaries, by their very are supposed to be people with questionable morals, people who are willing to get their hands dirty in order to get the job done. If he wasn't that, he wouldn't exactly be an effective mercenary, let alone one of the best in the galaxy, now would he? He's not even that big of a dick to be honest, especially compared to all the other mercenaries you come across in the game. You need to keep in mind that he's a mercenary, not an assassin. He's not going to wantonly kill a bunch of innocents for fun or anything, he just won't go out of his way to make sure they're fine if it effects the mission he's being hired for. The worst he's done honestly was be willing to not save the innocent workers but that was because he wasn't willing to give up the only chance he had at killing Vido in years. At worst, he's a little gruff whose loyalties are his own. He's not a particularly complex character, but he's nowhere near as bland as Jacob/Kaiden or just plain annoying/insulting like Miranda.
How do we know how similar or different he is from other mercenaries if he's the only one we have a real relationship with? I never said he needed a backstory, I said the backstory doesn't help to flesh out a one dimensional character. The presence or absence of a backstory does not a character make; a hypothetically more interesting version of Zaeed may not even have one.
What is necessary for a good character is motivation; actions cannot define a character if those actions are taken without rhyme or reason.
"Willing to get their hands dirty in order to get the job done" is the character trait most often associated with the renegade Commander Shepard. Zaeed doesn't have to abandon this idea in order to be interesting or to have values of his own; this line of logic is not inherently incomparable with honor. The problem is that it's never clear why Zaeed does what he does.
"I'm out for myself" is not any more complex an ethos than "Always do the right thing". Jacob is not bland because he's nice; he's bland because he lacks any human motivation for his behavior. In real life, being constantly brave and heroic is not an easy thing to do, nor is it common. Yet in heroic fiction it's seemingly a default character trait, to be maintained until specifically stated otherwise.
It's so common that writers forget that it requires the same justification as any other character trait, and thus it becomes a cliche. As a result, audience members tend to inherently associate heroic character traits with bland and uninteresting characters.
But it doesn't matter how much of a prick Zaeed or anyone else is or isn't; I say that Zaeed and Jacob are similar because they have the same creative spark (Or lack-there-of) behind their characters.
You said yourself that Zaeed is not a complex character; if that's the case, what makes him any more interesting than Jacob?
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