User blog comment:Diyartifact/Shepard's adversaries/@comment-4986377-20120404052031/@comment-1388547-20120404060123

I'm thinking of Harbinger as first appearing when he possesses a Collector for the first time (in Shepard's presence, anyway) at Horizon. He doesn't have much to say, other than his standard battle taunts, but I find those fairly effective.

You make a good point about not defeating Harbinger in ME2, although I'd say wiping out a whole slave race and a larval Reaper deserves to be called more than just an "inconvenience." :-) Also a good point on the comparison to Dragon Age, and the lack of a well-defined antagonist.  Loghain is a major antagonist, but only for one plot thread, and he's dealt with before the endgame.  The darkspawn have more personality than the Reapers, though, at least from my perspective, so maybe that helps things out -- they seem to have a definite sadistic streak, not to mention some of the darkspawn atrocities the player is shown (Broodmothers, ugh...), so it's more satisfying to defeat them, even if there aren't really any fleshed-out darkspawn villains.  Harbinger helps bring personality to the Collectors, too, while the Reapers in ME3 are, I think, purposely left faceless and incomprehensible to emphasize how different they are from us.