Ashley Williams

If this choice ended up staying in mass effect, how much of the story do you think would change if both were alive?

I'm playing as an infiltrator male Shepard. Should I save Ashley or Kaidan and which one is more useful in the long run?

It was hard but I know what had to be done

I'm sorry little one

In my first playthrough, the total squadmate body count was:

Ashley Williams (I chose Kaidan on Virmire)

Mordin Solus (Died curing the Genophage)

Thane Krios (Mortally wounded saving the Salarian Councilor)

Legion (Died uploading the Reaper Code to all Geth)

Zaeed Massani (Failed to gain his loyalty in ME2 and he died saving the Volus Ambassador.)

Miranda Lawson (sided with Jack during their confrontation ME2 and she died after biotic throwing her dad out the window.)

How would the narrative of the trilogy change?

So I've been doing yet another MELE run and got curious. I always get Ash the Tennyson collection cause it's the obvious option and I saw someone call it the "correct" option digging around the wiki but without detailed explanations. So does it makes any visible difference if you get her anything else? Does it factor into the romance or is it just fluff? I remember buying everything on my first playthrough (yeah really) and the scene still played out like when I gave her Tennyson.

I've seen recently that many people dislike Ashley Williams, which is very understandable and I would say I almost fall under the same banner. It's very rare I save her on Virmire and I particularly never take her out on missions in ME1 (or ME3 if I saved her). Many people have things to say about Ashley, but these are my personal opinions and I wanted to offer my two cents. I'm also curious on others thoughts, anywho here's why I don't use her and why I'm not fond of her.

1. She is known as the "space racist" for a reason, because she's 100% racist towards all other species that aren't human. Even though her reasons are understand I still don't agree with her. Everyone mentions this, but here's the thing I'd be okay with it if she changed or grew as a character later on - denouncing her past beliefs. But no she never really denounces her beliefs and remains a racist pretty consistently, she only ends up tolerating or being somewhat friendly in ME3 mostly. This is disappointing because they set up to be an arc that she could grow from, but it never pays off - speaking of which.

2. She has no real arc. Kaiden Alenko has a good arc, introduced as a biotic with old L2 implant that brings him pain and he's unsure of himself (unlike Ashley though, he believes in cooperation with aliens). Over time though his weakness becomes his strength and he takes command of his own biotic unity helping out other human biotics. He also distrusted Cerberus completely in ME2, but later in ME3 realizes that not all Cerberus is evil people - that there's many good people trapped. Ashley doesn't have the equivalent, just like in ME1 she spends most of her time talking about her family in ME3. It's not bad, but she never grows or changes based on her character given in ME1 - racist doesn't change, attitude mostly same, yeah I can't think of much differences.

3. She's a bitch. Liara and Tali are sweet, and very friendly. While Liara is socially awkward and not experienced with humans in the beginning she grows on you and has major character arcs. Tali is also pleasant and has a very cool arc as well as having the benefit of being one few characters to be in all three games as a main squadmate. Anyways Ashley is not like them, she's generally mean spirited, rude, and not all that funny or charming. She has her moments but is far from being a fan favorite in my opinion. Also, yeah, a space racist.

4. Her design. Kaiden isn't better, but Ashley was never a design I praised, she always looked kind of weird. Miranda and Jack are very cool designs and much better human female characters (they're also prettier). Liara is also much better, Tali, pretty much everyone is more interesting. Idk, she just never stood out to me, even in ME3. Now with MELE, default Femshep is much prettier than her as well. Anyways this is just my opinion here.

5. Her gameplay doesn't work for me. Ashley's a soldier class, and I tend to use soldier myself making Ashley pointless. The soldier class is good for taking damage and dealing out damage, but solider doesn't have particularly good powers of support. This is where my team comes in to do fighting and support while I soak up the damage, I always need tech so Garrus or Tali and I always want biotics so Liara or Wrex. Ashely doesn't benefit me since she pretty is me just less effective - so she only acts as a squadmate that I don't use during combat since she has nothing to offer me. Even Kaiden I use more since he has electronics and he's a biotic.

I want at least one of my Sheps to agree with Ash on religion but I don't want that character to start a relationship with her or make her all jealous in the sequels when I start dating other characters. Any advice?

So, I just Re Downloaded the First Mass Effect game and was wanting to know... Which Teammate was Better in Every Aspect not just for Relationships.