Ranking Every Mass Effect Squadmate Ever

The winner (loser?) of the three way race to the bottom, Kaiden completes the unholy trinity of boring human male squadmates. At least Zaeed and James managed to sidestep that pit.

While BioWare has never released the stats on how many players chose Kaiden or Ashley on Virmire, the stats from Mass Effect 3 paint a damning picture of how many Sheps left Kaiden to die way back in the first game. In only 17% of playthroughs did Kaiden make it to the end of the trilogy, compared with 53% for Ashley.

The idea was that Ashley and Kaiden represented a sort of duality between Renegade and Paragon; the mechanic Shepard uses when making decisions deemed to be either bad or good, or sometimes more nuanced to be selfish or selfless. The problem is that while Commander Shepard is usually pretty interesting regardless of what path they take, Kaiden’s goody two shoes nature just reads as boring.

The majority of the original Mass Effect crew feature much higher. Though ME2 perfected the formula, the first game laid the groundwork superbly, both for the narrative and the level of characters involved. Kaiden, unfortunately, just wasn’t up to scratch.