User blog comment:StagedDom19/Missing the Main Problem/@comment-2256917-20120710190737

(sorry if this post duplicates). Nice blog, and interesting analysis. To match your own universal frankness, however, I think you're confusing "character" with "plot." You also seem to be confusing irrelevant spectacle (such as thermal clips vs. the impossible-by-nature perpetual-motion guns) with plot. Similarly, your (justifiable) anger over the irrelevance of several large choices throughout the games seems to be coloring your analysis of things like plot.

To answer your question: Tali and Liara are the only characters in Mass Effect (the first game) that have any bearing on the plot (which is hunting down the rogue special agent, discovering & thwarting his plans on galactic domination): Tali when you first meet her, which is very necessary (but after which, none, except as "background", I.e. as a quarian); Liara throughout, but her insights into your visions are so vapid & useless (as she virtually admits) that even she is in truth irrelevant to the plot. Basically, the first game's plot is simple but excellent, but your critiques of ME2's character-plot relations are at least as applicable to ME (notwithstanding Tali's ten seconds of fame).

In ME2, the plot is the rogue-human group's investigation into & eventual thwarting of mass human-nappings. Miranda's & Jacob's plot relevance is somewhat comparable to Tali's in game 1. I agree, Samara was underused. But Jack--being the most inveterate opponent of your new roguish allies--produces an interesting tension. Still, the tension, or Jack's/Samara's/Morinth's need (the biotic shield at the end) could've been made properly integral to the plot, as was Mordin. ME2 Grunt is really relevant to ME3's plot, but be's obviously central to the Tuchanka subplot.

I really think the third game's plot is the lamest (building alliances and providing supplies to build a big gun): these are not proper parts of a solid action, and the game fails to live up to the would-be plot implied in its subtitle. If the overarching action of the game really was taking back earth, it would be an excellent plot. Nonetheless, team-mate's characters are much more integral to this quasi-plot than in any of the other games (especially Liara & Garrus, EDI of course, Tali & Javikk less so, & Ashley is, 'once again, underused, save her ten seconds of fame in the prologue: no Virmire Survivore, then no Normandy).