Mass Effect (video game)/Characters/Party Members: Difference between revisions

For the pages listing tropes related to NPCs, Antagonists and Party Members who first appeared in other games in the trilogy, see the [[Mass Effect/Characters|Mass Effect Character Index]].

* [[Adrenaline Makeover]]: Compare Liara when you meet her in Mass Effect to Liara by the end of Lair of the Shadow Broker. Though of course whether the getting the guy/gal part gets played straight/averted/subverted/etc depends largely on the player's own choice.

* [[Adventurer Archaeologist]], but not by her own choice. She occasionally makes references to encounters with pirate gangs and hostile wildlife in unexplored systems.

'''Wrex:''' It's good for you. A nice explosion now and then keeps the mind sharp. }}

* [[Aggressive-Submissive]]: "...how many times have you thrown him/her on the bed and peeled him/her out of his/her uniform?" Liara's father asks this about her and Shepard, [[Crowning Moment of Funny|and Liara tries to not make it sound so dirty.]]

* [[Air Vent Escape]]: How she's reintroduced in 3. While being chased by a pair of Cerberus operatives.

* [[All of the Other Reindeer]]: Due to being a "pureblood."

* [[Arbitrary Skepticism]]: {{spoiler|In the third game, Liara seems to be in complete denial when Javik reveals that the Asari goddess Athame and her guide Lucen were actually Protheans. When Liara claims that it is impossible, he snarkily comments that it must be an amazing coincidence that the statues and artwork of their myths just happen to look exactly like ''him''.}}

* [[Attempted Rape]]: Twice in Redemption—a batarian and his cronies attempt to proposition/rape Liara. [[Mugging the Monster|Both times they end up dead.]]

'''Liara:''' You just say these things! }}

** {{spoiler|Her grandfather was a krogan.}}

* [[Beware the Nice Ones]]: Yet again. Liara's a very demure young asari who is entirely capable of turning an entire horde of geth into tinfoil with her brain. Ask {{spoiler|the Shadow Broker}} how seriously crossing her tends to go. {{spoiler|[[You Kill It, You Bought It|Oh wait, you'd just be asking her]].}}

** Doing a quest for her reveals that {{spoiler|one of her assistants is a mole. After informing her of this, the player can go to her office and find out that not only did Liara already kill her assistant, she disposed of her body as well. (This is especially hillarious if Shepard calls her to identify the traitor from just outside her office as it can make it appear that she killed and disposed of her assistant in a matter of seconds).}}

* [[Bizarre Alien Biology]]: Asari reproduce by "melding", where they join their entire nervous system to their partner's and use the electrical impulses to randomize some of their own DNA for the offspring. Galactic science waffles on the subject, but it often turns out [[Lamarck Was Right]] - Aethyta had a krogan father, and notes that she seems to have "a bit of his mouth."

* [[Green-Skinned Space Babe|Blue Skinned Space Babe]]

* [[Break the Cutie]]: {{spoiler|By the time of ''Mass Effect 2'', she's much less innocent and kind as she's had a rough couple of years by then.}}

** {{spoiler|Cranked [[Up to Eleven]] during the Fall of Thessia mission in the third game. She's a complete wreck even during the mission, to say nothing about after.}}

* [[Broken Pedestal]]: {{spoiler|After the fall of Thessia, she angrily calls out Javik for not even caring, that she's spent her entire life studying his people and feels like it was for nothing. He's a ''Prothean''... he was supposed to have all the ''answers''}}.

* [[Came Back Wrong]]: One of Liara's fears regarding {{spoiler|Shepard, after having handed the Commander's corpse over to Cerberus for the Lazarus Project. It also partly explains her initial, somewhat distant attitude on Illium.}}

* [[Captain Obvious]]: During parts of ''Lair of the Shadow Broker.'' Frequently lampshaded by Shepard.

* [[Character Development]]: In the first game, Liara T'Soni is a stuttering, bookish, nerdy girl. {{spoiler|In the sequel she has become a ruthless information trader, but her tough attitude is revealed to be a defense mechanism if you romanced her in the first game.}}

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: In the sequel, where she's somehow become an information broker despite no prior evidence that she had any skills in the field. {{spoiler|If the terminals around the Shadow Broker's ship is any indication, she also doesn't seem to stop some of his business practices.}}

* [[Cutscene Incompetence]] / [[Cutscene Power to the Max]]: A really weird hybrid occurs when you first rescue her in [[Mass Effect 1]]. You're confronted directly by a Krogan Battlemaster and a small squad of Geth Shock Troopers after exiting the room you found her in via an elevator. In the cutscene right before the fight begins, you see her start glowing with a blue aura and balling her fists, which usually means she's about to unleash a biotic attack. Then the gameplay actually starts and she just cowers on the floor while the battlemaster charges you.

** However she had been in a stasis field for a ''while'' by this point, so its possible she flared her biotics in an attempt to fight back but the strain of doing so was simply too exhausting. The Codex and ''3'' mention that biotics require a higher calorie intake to keep their abilities at full strength, whereas Liara can't even ''remember'' the last time she ate. It's safe to say she's not at her full strength during that scene.

* [[Damsel in Distress]]: You recruit her by rescuing her from a horde of bad guys, she doesn't fight once throughout the entire level, and she almost faints even after you've got her on the ship. Add this to her general naivete and she seems like the poster child for this trope. [[Beware the Nice Ones|Then you actually take her into battle,]] and quickly realize that [[Badass in Distress|she can take care of herself.]]

** It should be noted that when you rescue her, she's unarmed and fatigued from being held immobile for goodness knows how long. (If you save that mission for last, she thinks she's hallucinating Shepard's party.)

* {{spoiler|[[Dark Is Not Evil]]: Upon becoming the new Shadow Broker, Liara vows to use her newfound power and influence for the power of good, and to aid Shepard in stopping the Reapers.}}

* [[A Day in the Limelight]]: ''Mass Effect: Redemption'' and ''Lair of the Shadow Broker.''

* [[Double Tap]]: How she finishes off a pair of Cerberus operatives chasing her during her reintroduction in ME 3. [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|After having already trapped them in a singularity and shot them center mass in mid-air.]]

* [[Enemy Mine]]: {{spoiler|With Cerberus, to save Shepard's body from the Shadow Broker and the Collectors. The fact that she beats herself up over handing Shepard's corpse to The Illusive Man explains in part her behavior during the second game.}}

* [[Even Heroes Have Heroes]]: Her reaction to meeting {{spoiler|Javik, a living Prothean, in ''3''}}. Lampshaded by ''everyone'', with Shepard joking that they'll hand over questions to Liara because she looks like she's about to explode.

* [[Failed a Spot Check]]: Notable if you bring {{spoiler|Javik}} to Thessia.

{{spoiler|'''Javik''': [[Deadpan Snarker|Or it could be the Prothean standing right next to you]].}} }}

* [[Fling a Light Into the Future]]: Taking a cue out from the Protheans in ''3'' she plants several time capsules across many worlds to warn future species in the event that the Reapers aren't stopped. She even has a section devoted to the heroics of Shepard, and you can tell her how wish it told.

* [[Guest Star Party Member]]: In Lair of the Shadow Broker.

* [[Has Two Mommies]]: And the other mommy is an asari. [[Fantastic Racism|Which is why she's shunned so much, as asari-asari relationships restrict genetic diversity]] [[Broken Aesop|... and have a higher chance of causing genetic defects like the]] [[Death by Sex|Ardat-Yakshi]].

** As seen in [[Bi the Way]], ambiguously gendered asari are "female" in the eyes of every other race, possessing the same sex organs and characteristics as would be expected for mammalian females, though one asari serves as the "father," and upon meeting her, she doesn't know who her mother Matriarch Benezia's partner was.

** Ultimately averted. Her "father" is {{spoiler|shown in the third game to be Matriarch Aethyta, the bartender from Illium and then the Presidium, assigned to keep an eye on Liara after Benezia went evil}}. Even though Liaria's father is 'female,' she is very adamant that she is Liara's father, not her second mother. When Shepard mentions that humans would call her Liara's "other mother," Liara's father says "Well I'm not human, am I? Anthropocentric bag of dicks."

** In "Lair of the Shadow Broker", it's shown that her apartment is filled with souvenirs of her travels with Shepard from the first game, Prothean relics, a painting of Ilos, fragments of Shepard's N7 armour and a framed picture of the ''Normandy'' on her bedside cabinet.

* [[Hidden Depths]]: "Lair of the Shadow Broker" features this in abundance.

* [[Hot-Blooded]]: Liara definitely comes across as this in the second and third game. {{spoiler|Matriarch Aethyta}}, her father, believes that this is because she's a quarter-krogan.

* [[In-Universe Catharsis]]: "Lair of the Shadow Broker" provides closure for Liara's two years of mourning, grief and pain.

* [[I Shall Taunt You]]: When confronting the Shadow Broker, she {{spoiler|brings up his status as the previous Broker's "pet", triggering his [[Berserk Button]].}} Judging by the files on him, {{spoiler|wherein the previous Broker warned him to watch his temper and that losing it costs him his better judgment, he would have been a far more dangerous opponent in the subsequent battle if Liara hadn't pissed him off.}}

** If you have progressed far enough in the romance with Ashley or Kaidan by the time you get her romance dialogue, she admits she has a huge crush on Shepard but gracefully backs down, saying it is obvious Shepard already has strong feelings for Ashley/Kadian and that she doesn't want to come between them.

* [[Jerkass Facade]]: {{spoiler|She adopts one in the sequel to allow herself to operate in Illium's underworld.}}

* [[Like an Old Married Couple]]: Throughout the duration of "Lair of the Shadow Broker", there is frequent humorous banter and interaction between Shepard and Liara.

* [[Parental Abandonment]]: She never knew her second parent's identity, only her species (another asari—a major social no-no, because asari value genetic diversity {{spoiler|and also because that's where Ardat-Yakshi come from}}) and her relationship with her mother was apparently strained at best. {{spoiler|And that was ''before'' Benezia joined up with Saren and Co.}} In the third game, Shepard can find out that her father is {{spoiler|Matriach Aethyta}}, and encourage Liara to go talk to her.

* [[Plot Armor]]: Liara will survive all the way to the final mission of ''Mass Effect 3'', no matter what you do. [[Anyone Can Die|That's not true of any other character on this page.]] {{spoiler|She can still get blasted by Harbinger during the final push if your EMS is too low.}}

* {{spoiler|[[Redeeming Replacement]]}}: {{spoiler|To the Shadow Broker, though she wasn't interested in redeeming his name so much as she thought that the organization was too useful to let go to waste.}}

* [[Relationship Upgrade]]: Liara can be pursued as a romance in ''3'' even if you previously turned her down in the first game.

** [[Like Father, Like Son|Like Mother, Like Daughter]]: Her mother, Benezia, was an influential asari theologian before her [[Face Heel Turn]].

* [[Required Party Member]]: During "Lair of the Shadow Broker" in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' and twice in ''[[Mass Effect 3]]''. The first is on Eden Prime in the "From Ashes" [[Downloadable Content|DLC]], where you need her knowledge of the Protheans. The second is the mission on {{spoiler|Thessia, Liara's homeworld}}.

* [[Revenge]]: Her primary goal, as of ''Mass Effect 2,'' is to track down and kill {{spoiler|the Shadow Broker}} for trying to {{spoiler|sell Shepard's body to the Collectors.}} The DLC "Lair of the Shadow Broker" lets you achieve that goal in spectacular [[Roaring Rampage of Revenge|Roaring Rampage]] style.

* [[Roaring Rampage of Rescue]]: "Lair of the Shadow Broker" is all about Liara rescuing Feron from the Broker after he was captured at the end of ''Redemption''. {{spoiler|Liara becoming the Shadow Broker is just an added perk.}}

* [[Schrödinger's Gun]]: Regardless of whether the player downloaded the "Lair of the Shadow Broker" DLC, Liara is still {{spoiler|the Shadow Broker}} as of the third game. It's just that how she got there is a bit different: {{spoiler|If Shepard didn't help Liara take down the Broker, Liara hired dozens of mercenaries--all of them the best of the best--and took on the Broker in a [[Zerg Rush]].}}

* {{spoiler|[[Self-Made Orphan]]}}: Potentially, if you make her fight alongside you to take down {{spoiler|her mother}} in the first game. This is actually ''suggested'' by a party member, though, since Liara would know more about {{spoiler|her mother}}, who's causing problems for everyone, than anyone else, and you have to fight {{spoiler|Liara's mother}} one way or another.

* [[She Who Fights Monsters]]: Played with. She becomes incredibly ruthless by the second game in her hunt for the Shadow Broker, even if [[Morality Chain|Paragon!Shep is continuously trying to pull her back.]] {{spoiler|Ultimately subverted, since while she does [[You Kill It, You Bought It|kill and even take the place of the Shadow Broker]], she vows to only use the vast power to help Shepard fight the Reapers.}}

* [[Skilled but Naive]]: At least in the first game. [[Character Development|Not so much]] [[Break the Cutie|in the second game.]]

* [[Slasher Smile]]: In ''Shadow Broker'', she gets off a nasty one after dressing down the Shadow Broker, pressing ''all'' of its [[Berserk Button]]s.

** [[Not So Stoic]]: Still has moments of genuine emotion namely {{spoiler|when she and shepard kill the shadow broker, when she hooks up with you later in the shadow broker DLC, when Thessia is attacked by the Reapers, and during certain romantic scenes in the third game.}}

* [[Survivor Guilt]]: In addition to the guilt she feels for {{spoiler|handing Shepard's body to Cerberus,}} it's heavily implied (especially in a romance) that she felt great guilt for surviving while Shepard was killed.

* [[Took a Level in Badass]]: She starts out as an awkward and bookish archaeologist. In the sequel, {{spoiler|she works as a ruthless information broker and is trying to take down the Shadow Broker. When Shepard meets her again, she is threatening to flay someone alive with her mind.}}

** {{spoiler|Mind you, that was before she chased Vasir by jumping out a window, and dropped plasma on the Shadow Broker.}} Not to mention how many of the Shadow Broker's mooks she tears through.

** What makes that scene even more powerful (and chilling) is that she's {{spoiler|1=practically channeling Benezia at that point. "Have you ever faced an asari commando unit before? Few humans have." Her mother told Shepard the same thing in ME1.}}

** Even before {{spoiler|working to kill the Shadow Broker,}} she displays a lot of determination and ruthlessness in the "Mass Effect: Redemption" comic book. Apparently, working with Shepard was a very significant influence.

** ''Lair of the Shadow Broker'' has her take two giant levels in badass. The first is when we encounter her in the trade center, where she's {{spoiler|chasing down a Spectre and hurling Shadow Broker agents around like toys.}} Let's repeat that for clarification: Liara is making a freaking {{spoiler|'''Spectre'''}} flee from her. The second makes her potentially even more powerful than Shepard.

* [[Undying Loyalty]]: To Shepard, [[Up to Eleven|possibly moreso than anyone else in the series.]] Can also fit with [[Violently Protective Girlfriend]] below.

* [["Well Done, Son" Guy]]: '''[[Running Gag|Yes]]'''. She has more than a little friction with her mother, Matriarch Benezia, and she never knew her "father" either. {{spoiler|Unless you coax the two into talking in the third game.}}

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: Surprisingly absent in the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC- even if you've cheated on her with another squad mate, she doesn't get angry about it.

** She does call you out about hooking up with another love interest - but then immediately apologizes for her outburst.

* [[Woman in White]]: Her preferred outfit in Mass Effect 2 and 3, reflecting her new [[Stoic]], [[Lady of War]] tendencies.

* {{spoiler|[[You Kill It, You Bought It]]: After she and Shepard kill the Shadow Broker, she takes his place. She's at least the third person to hold the title.}}