Characters are the foundation of any stories, they are the pillars that support both dialogue and story telling. Suprisingly so, we encounter different casts of characters intentionaly de-humanized in order to shake down our standards. Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 is no exception to that matter with it’s fantastic cast of teammates upon which you must embark them into a perilious mission off whom many of them might not survive. Due to the vast selection of squad members present, I have decided to expose one of my favorite peer and have a little bit of fun combining the Star Trek and the Mass Effect lore with his story.



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I played Mass Effect 2 without having the certitude that a recruitable Geth would be present in the game. Be my avoidance of the massive publicity surronding the game or my conservative character to avoid spoilerific content I went in semi-ignorant. Let’s just say that when the first contact occured with Legion I had a huge grin on my face all along it’s introductary mission. The trekkie in me then proceeded into a burst of joy when I finally activated him in the I.A. core of the Normandy.



This scene alone made me drool entirely on the awesomeness that was Legion, let me explain; If you are a savvied Star Trek fan like me, you would know that this portion of Legion’s character development is directly inspired from the episode “I, Borg” off the 5th season of Star Trek The Next Generation. During that episode , the crew of the Enterprise comes in contact with an injured Borg and after threating is fatal wounds befriend him due to it’s unusual adaptative behavior and understanding of individuality and friendship. As off the Next Generation universe , the Borg are the ultimate enemy of the federation , an unstoppable force of nature. In some ways , the Geth collective takes it's foundation into the Borg collective.

Mass Effect 2 however exposes a suprising revalation about the race of cybernetic machines. Legion is part of the True-Geth basictly meaning that the other Geth off which we fought in the first one was a renegade faction of the collective.


There is also a very interesting similitude between the Quarians and the El-Aurians common fate.

Legion represents the perfect reference to Star Trek in all of Mass Effect's lore. This is without a doubt a straight hommage to the episode and the arch enemies of Captain Picard. So much so that without knowing the script of both Shepard and Legion I was able to anticipate the lines of dialogue present in the video with a huge feel of reward. Fortunately enough Legion plays a huge role on the battlefield by having the most powerful sniper rifle in the entire game and being an excellent asset to my Vanguard. The only thing I disliked about him was that I didn’t had the opportunity to recruit him earlier. Along side Jack , they were my bone-crushing team until the very end of the mission.

Seeing that Hugh (the rescued Borg) was basicly took away from Star Trek and put into Mass Effect 2 only now he was called Legion and was a robot, I thought it would be cool to look into the future of the trilogy and have some fun with the story.



Let’s pretend for a second that after introducing the virus into the heretic Geths something similar to the Star Trek two parter episode Descent reflected itself on the Mass Effect universe. Of course the True-Geth would not be affected since they have come to a universal ethos that the old machines (The Reapers) are irrelevant to their evolution and place in the universe. The problems lies however in the regenade faction of the Geth affected by the reprogramming virus.

Following this trail , let’s speculate that Bioware was clever enough to put a android character into the storyline of the 3rd game. Let’s name it Lore; Now Lore is a fully realised cybernetic lifeform capable of individual thoughts and emotions. Since the reformated Geth would be utterly lost in their galactic calling and isolated from the Reapers servitude. The heretic Geth could become a plausible threat to Shepard’s quest to bring peace to the galaxy. A highly influenciable group of cybernetic beings looking for a calling and praising what they would consider as the perfect lifeform. Also , what if the virus you’ve implemented was fatal to the collective and destroyed the entire Geth. There is an interesting tangent to be had with genocide much like with the Rachni’s fate of the first Mass Effect.

Here’s an opportunity for Bioware to create an excellent bridge between it’s prequels. Should you have decided to sell the body of Legion to Cerberus or kept it in the Normandy I.A. core and acvitated it, there would be a dramatic change of the opposing forces in the galaxy for Mass Effect 3. A Geth collective still controlled by the Reapers or a renegade faction capable of choosing it’s own path. You would ultimetly have to deal with this android lifeform and decide if it’s a threat or an asset to your endavors.