Why Kaidan is the Best Love Interest in Mass Effect

What happened?

Um. Soo, that's Kaidan huh? What the heck happened between Mass Effect 1, 2 and 3? I mean sure, he looked odd in ME2 after playing 3 first, but damn. Is he even the same nationality?

Oh? He's concerned about me? Well then. Ahem, that's kinda sweet and wait, was that a flutter in my chest? Hey, do that again. What do you mean he doesn't talk yet? Wait, it's not scripted? Or a cinematic cut scene? Woah, this is cool. Dialogue and depth in a space game? Awesomesauce.

Okay. So anyway I met Kaidan as I was meant to, and the more I talked to him and paid attention to what he was saying, the more I wanted to know. Why did he "eventually" join the Alliance? How bad were these L2 implants? Why did I look forward to hearing what he might say next? How was this going to play out?

Over 30 hours later I reached the end of Mass Effect, and it was damn satisfying (unlike ME3.) I had sacrificed Ashley (even though I didn't know her very well), finally met and got to know Wrex, and saved the Council and the galaxy from Soveriegn. And I wanted to play again. I wanted to know if I'd missed dialogue with Kaidan or anyone else. Yet I still couldn't pin down why or how I'd become so enamoured of a fictional character so fast. I had to know more.

With the title screen loading, I chose a new name and a new class, curious how it might change my experience. One thing I never changed was my psychological profile. I did eventually try each of the three options just to see how the story changed, but only once for each. My canon Shepard's psych profile, whether male or female was and always will be an Earthborn War Hero.

On my second play through, I felt excited and eager to take my time and explore every nook and cranny I could uncover in the game. I wanted to experience everything, I wanted to live there. But most of all, I wanted Kaidan by my side through it all.

In game one, Kaidan was cautious, shy, intelligent, flirtatious and professional. He would sometimes question some of my more radical Renegade actions (like knocking out Manuel), "Say goodnight Manuel,"  but he never made me feel as though he doubted my authority or leadership.

After Liara made an unwarranted pass at me and Kaidan questioned my interests, I appreciated his honesty. I felt empowered. Although it was clear Liara's interest in me bothered him, he was more concerned about the political situation and how he could help me navigate the path ahead.

I don't think I've ever seen this happen in a movie or story and I'd certainly never experienced it in real life. Having been with a suspicious, paranoid person while in a close relationship I wasn't prepared to appreciate it the first time it happened. I was sure it was a writing glitch and Kaidan's character would eventually display patriarchal or domineering qualities. Either he'd call me names or imply I was easy or a tease or whatever. But it never happened.

What did happen was Liara forcing me to shut her down when she refused to accept I wasn't interested in her. Wait a minute. Liara? A woman not taking no for an answer? That's odd and not exactly socially acceptable or common. Typically, a woman who won't take no is portrayed in pop culture as a psychotic stalker or a woman with serious insecurity issues. But in this case, Bioware was portraying her as... innocent? Wth?

Anyway, Liara's arrogance and assumptions contrasted quite a bit with Kaidan's support and concern for my well-being. More points for Kaidan. Let's be clear though. It wasn't Liara being arrogant, it was the writers who'd made her that way and it was them who really, really wanted everyone who played Mass Effect to choose Liara as their love interest.

But I wasn't biting. And the more I played, the less I liked Liara. But more on that later.

So I finished Mass Effect for the second time and now I wanted to see how an import save played out into ME2.

I won't go into my first impressions or even conclusions about ME2, but I was damn disappointed by Kaidan's cameo appearance. I mean really? That's it? That's all? What a glaring, wasted opportunity for character and story development. What were the writers thinking? Never mind what they were thinking, who wrote this awful dialogue?

Seriously, I could write better dialogue in my sleep. Didn't these writers do any research into their own characters' history? Sure as hell didn't sound like it. That was a crap scene. Both for Kaidan and Ashley.

I've no idea what the writers were doing, planning or trying to achieve. But as far as I'm concerned it was crap. Lazy writing that should never have happened. It was a glaring misstep, likely motivated by sales budgets, inaccurate market research and huge assumptions regarding player demographics. (Looking at ypu EA). It should never have been downplayed and could have been used as a creative tool to move the plot forward, rather than as an afterthought and an insulting nod to fans of the first installment.

So ME2 ended and I continued my journey, loading ME3 and watching a.... wait. This entire thing is a cinematic cut-scene? I have no dialogue options? Who the hell is that new default Femshep? Why didn't I notice this before? O.M.G. they dumbed down the game! Oh for crying out loud! Seriously? Right, right. Sales, money, triple A title mentality. Have to "dumb it down" so it can appeal to more people right? So many casual gamers out there might not play if there's too much RPG. Uh huh, right, but at what cost?

Well, ME3's ending did more to damage the trilogy than the changes made to the game, but the cost was high. Lost respect and trust from dedicated fans. Disgust with a publisher who was clearly more interested in sales than customer satisfaction or fan loyalty. But I digress.

Kaidan was hesitant but friendly in ME3 and I couldn't figure out why. It bothered me a lot that so many others just rolled over and kissed Shepard's ass after he or she came back from the dead. Did they know something Kaidan and Ashley didn't? If so what? Why wasn't anyone concerned or surprised about this? It's not like resurrection is commonplace amd especially not done by a known terrorist organization. Who wouldn't be suspicious of that and why was it only the Alliance crew members questioning it? Clearly this was deliberate on Bioware's part.

From a continuity aspect or plot point, it made no sense other than as a cheap developer tool to make players ditch both Kaidan and Ashley as a love interest option. Why would they do that? Well that's easy. If the devs made players hate them, they wouldn't maintain their romance with them and no one would know how little effort and dialogue had been put into ME3 for characters they believed (through faulty market research), weren't popular.

Only the (insert false assumption here), small group of fans who chose Kaidan (and others besides Garrus, Liara or Ashley), would notice how devs dropped the ball on both dialogue and cut scenes for those fan choices.

From an advertising perspective, it was win-win. They would win applause from gamers who loved all the attention their favorite characters got and free advertising from flame-wars over love/hate forum discussions, blog posts and game reviewers. Everyone would have an opinion and everyone who participated would generate free advertising for a game with a controversial ending. Anyone who hadn't yet played might then purchase a copy, just to find out for themselves what all the hype was about.

Righteously armed with faulty market research, the devs of ME3 made clear to any who played that their choices really didn't matter. They were too busy listening to the louder and more vocal fans who loved to hate on Kaidan and Ashley and were demanding more dialogue for Liara and Garrus.

Why do I say faulty? Because I didn't play Mass Effect 3 until months after the fallout of ME3 happened, at which point EA/Bioware had already published a demographic on player choice. A very inaccurate piece of information, considering much of the data gathered came from forums and the first few months of game data generated and gathered through player stats. Stats which could only be gathered by players who had an active EA account which was connected to the Mass Effect online database and multiplayer records.

All that aside, the reality was that EA/Bioware had already made their choice for how they were going to proceed with character development long before I knew Mass Effect existed and the dice had been cast. 

As for Kaidan and why he's better? I'm getting to that. But first I'm going to profile all the other characters who are or can be potential love interests, and how or if they fall apart over the course of the series.