Soviet Heavy:
Liara fucking T'Soni. Ooh look at me I'm a wilting flower nerd sexual fantasy come save me with your penis but I'm also a lesbian too!

She contributes nothing to the plot, bitches at you if you do her mission last in ME1 and complete the whole game without her, does nothing in ME2 until she stumbles into being the Shadow Broker, then goes back to doing nothing but being proto girlfriend "I made a time capsule! Aren't I perfect?" in ME3 again.

Nothing she does has any impact on ANYTHING, apart from her being Marina Sirtis (Benezia) daughter. And you can do that mission without her, so she's totally irrelevant there as well. Pretty much all she does is read your mind and translate texts for you. That's it. Anything else, she's just sort of "there" while being forced as this super duper important character you totally need to care about.

Fuck that, I'm brofisting it with Garrus and Wrex.

While I voted for Ashley, mainly since I didn't really think about the 'other' option and rarely ever do, I'll have to agree with this one to an extent.

Really, Liara, and Shepard's relationship with her, romantic or otherwise, is shoved in the players face at any given moment when it can be shoehorned in, and that bugs me. Especially since both of my Shepard's would consider her just a rather minor friend.

However, I have to say that Ashley takes the cake. The fact that she's even mildly racist irritates me to no end, and through both Mass Effect 2 and 3, she doesn't let you live down the fact that you had ties to Cerberus, and there isn't a chance to just punch her and set the record straight.

Though, in all honesty, I liked most if not all of the alien squad-mates Shepard had, simply because they weren't human.

I vote for Jack (pre-ME3 character development): annoying as all hell; refusal to shut the f&*k up about her tragic backstory, then acting like everyone owes her their ears, hearts & creds put her on my s$#tlist from the day I starting my first playthrough of ME2.

OpticalJunction:
The reporter from Mass effect 3, I don't recall her name. I liked the idea of a reporter on board, it had potential, however they ruined it by giving her that slutty dress and having her be voiced by an amateur.

That'll be Diana Allers, sir. Voiced by stupid Jessica Chobot, of IGN Strategize & Weekly Wood fame. Yep the dress was nothing but cheesecakey fanservice, but I (tried to) enjoy that for what was. I wasn't happy about how it took me out of game sometimes, tho'. (`j`)

Can't say I reviled any squad mates. I suppose the closest that would come to that would be Jacob who was fairly uninteresting. I guess mileage kinda varies, because Ashley was my favorite human squad mate (Kasumi was a close second). She has non-PC opinions, but does not let her personal prejudices get in the way of her duty. She was trying to reclaim the honor that her family had lost in the First-Contact War, and I thought that was interesting. To each their own, I suppose.

All the humans in the franchise are rather bland, now that I really think about it.
I didn't particularly despise any singular individual, but there were a few that I basically forgot existed.
This was largely due to their special abilities being shared with more useful squadmates (alongside myself) and them not being able to tank hits that well.

In Mass Effect it was Kaidan, in Mass Effect 2 it was Jacob/Miranda and in Mass Effect 3 it was Ashley.

For me, they might as well just have renamed the franchise "The exciting space adventures of Shepard and Wrex (feat. Garrus) with special appearances made by Mordin, Tali, Liara and Legion".

Jacob, EDI, Vega, Cortez and Allers.

Jacob, damn but they tried so hard to make the most boring feth wipe they could imagine. I couldn't find one likeable quality about him other than he fucks off and does something else instead of cluttering up the ship in ME3.

EDI. She was okay as the ships AI in the second game. Why the fuck did someone feel the need to add her as companion? Why oh why oh why? I didn't want nor need her as a companion and she added nothing to the game other than "i'm going to be jokers love doll".

Vega. The thing that pissed me off with Vega is they added him in the 3rd game and took away characters I actually liked. My Shep was romancing Jack but she only gets a 2 minute cameo, I liked Miranda but she only pops up for a brief moment, Samara gets another 2 minute pop in, Thane gets 2 minutes including a sword to the gut by god plot armour Leng and Mordin gets 2 minutes and then gets killed saving the Krogan. But this fucker gets to stay the entire game and no-one has any idea who the hell he is. You can't just be adding new people to the last game and expect us to care while removing characters we actually like.

Cortez. Granted he's not a companion but he was that boring I only ever spoke to him once on my first playthrough and never bothered again. In fact, he's that memorable I had to google him because I didn't know his name.

Diana Allers. Know what the very definition of a stupid as feth idea is? Making a character and getting someone from IGN, a person a few of us had never heard of before, with no voice acting talent whatsoever to do her lines. We'd spent 2 games and a short scene in the 3rd butting heads with another reporter, one that would have done a damn sight better job, but no ... let's throw in this talentless monotone lass with cringe worthy voice acting to do it because .. who the hell knows why.

I know 2 of those aren't companions, and there a hell of a lot more that were just as bad but if I get started I won't stop, and they needed to be brought up.

I found Tali's awkwardness incredibly irritating when I was doing a play through of the series as Male Sheppard. I never got why everyone was gushing all over her.

I... I really liked Vega. Sure he looks like a dudebro meathead asshole, but there's a lot more to him than that. He's dealing with survivor's guilt from his own version of the suicide mission, but he generally handles it well. I gave him advice and handed his ass to him in the fistfight, and he took both like a champ. I thought the nicknames were cute and was totally down with being called Lola. Flirting with him was harmless fun, listening to him bro out with Cortez over tanks was great, and when he came to me about joining N7, I was kinda surprised and kinda proud that he looked up to me as a mentor like that.

Maybe it's just me, or maybe a lot of people didn't give him a chance, but yeah. I thought Vega was great.

Anyway, not a squad member, but Diana Allers was god awful. I let her on my ship and immediately regretted it. What I wouldn't have given to have Emily Wong on my ship (though she did go out like a badass.)

Ashley got on my nerves a lot, from the space racism and "Don't judge me just because I love God" in 1 to the "How can I trust you how can I trust you how can I trust you" in 3. I mellowed to her when she believed me about Udina (that whole time she was pointing her gun at me though, I was just thinking, "Don't you dare. Bitch, I will end you.") She grew on me a little by the end.

Jacob was boring and annoying (and I am not the goddamn "priiiiiiize.")

Mr Jacob Taylor by a nose, just in front of vega. Both were equally boring muscly cliches, Vega is only better because his weapons and power set are relatively much much better than Jacobs, therefore being more useful in combat.

Either has to be Miranda or Ashley. If forced to choose, I'd definitely choose Miranda. Smug, whiny, spoilt brat who kidnapped her baby sister and ran away from home just because her dad was a bit distant or something. Also, the fact the camera kept on shoving her butt in my face made me really uncomfortable... Although, admittedly, it is nicer than her face.

Kaiden.

I wanted to like the guy, I really did but he just bores the crap out of me.

James Vega. He just felt out of place and pointless. It's like they had a squadmate exchange program with Gears of War.
He's just a stereotypical macho guy. Compared to the other, more well-rounded squadmates, he just seemed like a caricature.

I thought that like in the previous games, I might have to sacrifice a character, so I thought he'd be at least useful for that.

I guess that they just figured that if certain characters died in ME2 and you didn't save Ashley, you'd have no solider squadmates, so they added him. I think that it would've been much better if they just made Javik a part of the core game (as he was probably planned in the first place) so that they wouldn't have had to make James.

Jack. Initially we get the picture of this powerful, renegade lonewolf that goes where she pleases and does what she pleases. A powerful woman looking out for herself and not taking any shit. But of course she is only powerful and cool (in a over the top caricature way, because whoever wrote Jack had no idea how to scale things)like that because she is really a very broken bird. And the only way for her to stop being a broken bird is for FemShep to be her BFF or for ManShep to totally not be a player but show his love for her before bedding her.

I am equally pissed that Jack is just an all-around quite badly written character and that what could have been a nuanced, interesting female characters ends up being a standard broken bird with a tough facade to hide trauma. Because everyone knows that a hard-as-nails girl without trauma just doesn't fly...

I'm confused about a couple of things. Why is Jack not included when shes clearly the worst character? And why is everyone voting against James Vega? Did no one take him along on any missions? I found him a lot more likeable and interesting than any of the other characters listed in the poll.

Soviet Heavy:
bitches at you if you do her mission last in ME1 and complete the whole game without her

You mean if you leave her trapped in a crumbling ruin, surrounded by Geth, starving for several weeks if not a month she is angry at you? Yeah that's totally unfair of her.

Soviet Heavy:
does nothing in ME2 until she stumbles into being the Shadow Broker

She doesn't stumble into being the shadow broker so much as she and Shepard murder the shadow broker. And even then Shepard's intel only becomes actionable because Liara has a pretty big information network. Which is the opposite of stumbling onto something. That's gathering a ton of intelligence info, using it to locate the Shadow Broker's hidden operation center, then assaulting it successfully and killing off the Shadow Broker before stealing all his information. Play LotSB.

Soviet Heavy:

She contributes nothing to the plot

Nothing she does has any impact on ANYTHING, apart from her being Marina Sirtis (Benezia) daughter.

Anything else, she's just sort of "there" while being forced as this super duper important character you totally need to care about.

She is the most integral character of the entire Mass Effect series. Without her the galaxy would have been assuredly doomed. Her impact shapes the entire story and is one of a few reasons why there was even a second or 3rd game to it. And all characters are forced into their roles. That's why they are characters, they aren't real, they are inventions of someones mind. You can dislike the character and say you didn't like her being so important, but arguing that she contributed nothing is silly.

Commander Shepard is a grunt. He might be a particularly skilled grunt, but that's all he is. Liara is by far the most important character in the series, even more so than Shepard is.

First, there are three factors required for Shepard to chase Saren to Ilos. One is the Prothean beacon that Shepard saved. The other two required someone with enough experience dealing with Prothean ruins to be able to recognize and name one based on sight alone, and someone with the ability to transfer memories. Which means an Asari and one who was an archaeologist who specialized in Prothean ruins. Which presumably there aren't a whole fucking lot of. This makes Liara crucial to stopping the first invasion, which if Liara hadn't been there to direct them to Ilos, the galaxy would have been taken unawares and had their entire cross species leadership obliterated before being immediately thrown into a war they were completely and utterly unprepared for. Liara bought them a lot of time.

Second Liara recovered Shepard's body, kept it from the collectors, and gave it to Cerberus. Which is the only reason Shepard was brought back from death.

Third Liara became an information dealer, gathering information that with Shepard's help: was directly responsible for taking down the galaxies foremost information dealer.

Fourth while Shepard is sitting on his/her ass awaiting trial. The characters all head out on their own and:

Fifth, besides being the only person with a plausible plan to stop the reapers in the current war, she was also the only person with any backup plan for future generations to defeat them eventually. As an archaeologist, and the shadow broker with a gigantic amount of information she was the only person with enough expertise to set up time capsules that would withstand the test of time and would have enough information to allow a future society to defeat the reapers in a conventional war. Every other attempt by previous societies were met with failure, but with foresight and the aid of training by the Archaelogical department of the University of Thessia, Liara is able to do it.

Liara is the actual hero of the Mass Effect series. Your saying that 'she contributes nothing to the plot' Is patently silly; because she contributes more than any other character directly to the plot.

This was a close one between Jacob and Kaidan, but Kaidan had roundabout 30 more hours per playthrough to annoy me, so there you go. Plus, at least Jacob didn't come on to me, not even when I was playing FemShep, whereas Kaidan... oh well.

Ashley Williams. I didn't hate her, but she had the most limited moveset in both ME1 and ME3. I never used her after getting Garrus and Wrex on my team.

Jack.
"BOOOHOOO I HAVE ISSUES CERBERUS WAS MEAN TO ME AND I CAN'T PUT MY EMO ON HOLD TO HELP SAVE THE FUCKING GALAXY"
Goddamnit I wanted to kick her out the nearest airlock.
I mean, James Vega was a million times better than her.

bananafishtoday:
Snip

It's funny, you've basically said what I was going to say.
I actually liked Vega, although I rarely used him as a party member because I preferred using the others. And while I didn't mind the flirting it was a bit weird because I would always trigger it accidentally. I'd want to give a friendly response but it would end up mega flirty instead. I just pretended it was an In-joke between Vega and Shep.

Allers was annoying.. I didn't mind the voice acting but she had no character and she looked really fucking weird, super uncanny valley. It would've been cool to have Wong who my Shep had been cool with throughout the series, or even Khalisah al-Jilani just so we'd have more chances to punch her.

I didn't actually mind Ashley on my first playthrough, being religious and racist really made her stand out. Given that her beliefs completely contradict my own I found it interesting to have that difference. I find both her and Kaiden annoying in the 2nd and 3rd games acting like they can't trust you though.. Maybe if they had any reason to not trust you but they never let you explain.

And finally Jacob was really boring even though his loyalty mission was pretty cool. I imagine anyone who romanced him would be pissed off aswell given what happens in 3... although i suppose that can be said for almost all the characters you can romance.

Ashley and Miranda are the worst. Miranda is one of the ugliest attempts at creating a "pretty" human being that I've ever seen. Her features are bizarre, and it's very disconcerting to look at her. Ashley (and to a less degree, Liara), forces you into a romance, even if you never speak to her once. Classic BioWare garbage.

Miranda drove me up the wall with her Queen Bee mentality in ME2 and her "woe is me, I'm perfect" persistent whining. It's as though she was the concept of First World Problems compressed into an actual sentient being.

Everyone else I was able to like in some way or another but Miranda hit all the wrong buttons. Maybe it was also her accent, being a New Zealander we have a genetic hatred of Australians - especially those who complain about how hard their life is. You're Australians, damnit! Your country is quite literally a gold, diamond, and uranium mine. Our primary export is milk. MILK DAMN YOU! WE ARE A COUNTRY BASED ON FRIGGING COW JUICE!

Liara: Because the game forces me to be her "BFF", despite the fact i find her annoying as hell. Beyond being the daughter of an old enemy she has little value until the third game, where upon she still sucks in combat. Just... No.

I really disliked Ashley (killed her off in ME1)but she wasn't uninteresting. Zaeed could have been interesting but he was a half done character with limited dialogue options, and reporter girl was even worse, but i guess those two were secondary characters in a way. Among the "main characters" Samara seemed very one dimensional, she have to be my pick, i just never cared one bit about her one way or the other.

Kaiden. It really didn't help that ME1 had incredibly bad party interaction and developed no-one. When I had to choose between Kaiden and Ashley there was absolutely nothing to decide so bland was he. In the end it was only Ashley's stuff that helped at all (for the record, at first I was going to let Ashley live because she seemed so young and inexperience and needed time to grow, but then I found at she was religious so I figure either she's right and she's got less to lose from dying than Kaiden, or she's wrong and it ultimately doesn't matter)

Then Liara because also, boring as. They tried to compensate for the fact that she was bland and mindrapey with a forced romance in ME1 by going to far the other way in ME2. And then they went back to bland and mindrapey for ME3. It's a testament to how bland Kaiden is that Liara has all this actively bad stuff about her and she's still better than Kaiden.

After that it drops off. Maybe EDI. But I liked Jacob he was boring, but in a much more secure and sincere way than Kaiden and I loved that without even being told you could work out that TIM had picked Jacob purely because he would stabilise and persuade Shepard. And I really enjoyed Vegas because lots of ME players would probably have a natural grudge against him for his particular social position and inclination but he actually had a really interesting backstory and was a good guy.

I knew lots of people in Vegas' social group with his sort of mentality and some of them were amazingly kind hearted people and I liked that Mass Effect understood that you could be a jock and a soldier and do weights and still not naturally be morally inferior to someone who plays computer games. Rich and clever people have no monopoly on kindness although it's natural for most people to believe that their social group is the most good.

I got on with Miranda (although her character design was awful. Was reading the devs describe her and it just wasn't matching what you saw. Everyone else you can understand on first glance. With Miranda they were using words like 'sultry' which made no sense to me) and her sex scene was good in that it shows completely the type of person she is with her control desire/insecurities. I can understand why people don't like her though.

Abomination:
Miranda drove me up the wall with her Queen Bee mentality in ME2 and her "woe is me, I'm perfect" persistent whining. It's as though she was the concept of First World Problems compressed into an actual sentient being.

Everyone else I was able to like in some way or another but Miranda hit all the wrong buttons. Maybe it was also her accent, being a New Zealander we have a genetic hatred of Australians - especially those who complain about how hard their life is. You're Australians, damnit! Your country is quite literally a gold, diamond, and uranium mine. Our primary export is milk. MILK DAMN YOU! WE ARE A COUNTRY BASED ON FRIGGING COW JUICE!

But I'm Australian and I love Milk more than Gold, Diamonds, Uranium or Coal...

OT: Ashley, she just seemed to disagree with everything I said, unless it was along the lines of 'HUMANITY!' (said similarily to 'MURRICA!'), plus she was just a plain soldier, her abilities didn't help me out at all, Wrex seemed to do everything better AND he's a bro.

James Vega was pretty much the only squad mate I disliked in the whole trilogy.
He felt out of place in the Mass Effect universe- he was just big and dopey, and really not at all interesting to me. I eventually gave up on trying to get to know him when I realised that he scarcely had any character.

Picked Miranda, simply because I forgot that Ashley existed at all. Well in my ME-universe she technically didn't after ME 1.

"Hey Ashley, would you kindly hold that bomb for a second? Yeah. Gotta go. Bye."

No more Ashley. Christ, was she annoying.

I actually liked James Vega, but I felt that given the options between Space Racist and Space Jerk, it was a lose-lose situation. So I dumped Kaiden and Ashley like a bad habit.

Wrex. Fuck that guy. :|

...

XD No, no, I can't do it! Right, I'll be serious. A lot of characters could be said to not be great, if you were deliberately nitpicking (Liara, Jack, Grunt, Samara, etc.) But I'm not going to do that. I loved basically every alien squadmate. Also liked Kasumi, even though she got very little exposure compared to the rest. I thought Morinth could have been one of the more interesting ones too, if they'd given her more thatn that one scene's worth of dialogue. Might have helped if they'd bothered to give Renegade Shepard even a flimsy reason to betray Samara besides 'I'm EVIIILLL!'. But anyway, to the topic at hand.

Of the people on that list, I expected to hate James Vega the most, looking like a Jersey Shore lad equipped to fight the Locust from GoW as he did. But in the end, I kind of liked him. His story was decent, and it was easy to sympathise with him for it. Made me think about how Shepard's constant heroism made it difficult for other humans to measure up, and how some of her/his more reckless actions could even lead to harm for them. His personality was likeable enough, like he was just a normal human when he was off duty. In the nightclub, or when he was hanging around with Garrus, Javik or Kaidan. A lad no doubt, but he never came across as a douchebag. So, one of the better human characters.

Kaidan on the other hand... I get what they were trying to do with him. He was supposed to be a completely noble, honourable example of a soldier. The best that humanity had to offer. But Shepard already filled that role, and always had better dialogue. Kaidan was just boring, in the end. He only survived one or two of my campaigns, and never did anything interesting in any of them. Even Miranda inspired more emotion in me, even if it was just irritation 90% of the time.

Samara: I hate Samara, and I hate her code. If there is a go-to boring character for me, its Samara, even her Loyalty Mission in ME2 was pretty "eh."

James Vega easily and the funny thing was that he actually had some pretty good characterisation in the beginning IMO.
Then the ME3 idle style dialog took over and he dropped of the face of the earth for the last 90% of the game I think if they ditched the steroid sandwich body and had conversations as extensive as ME1 and 2 he could have been a great squad mate but alas it's the stuff that only exists in my dreams forever haunting me till the day I die.

Zhukov:
Zaeed Messani.

He's the only one that I can say I didn't like without qualification. There were a couple that I am indifferent towards (Jacob, Kaiden) but didn't particularly dislike. There were others that irritated me in some way (Miranda, Thane) but they all had some redeeming attributes or good moments.

Except Zaeed.

They just tried so painfully hard to make him a badass that it came off as silly. And it's not like there was any other attributes to his character.

"Then I murdered a whole prison colony of Batarians all by myself. And then I beat a Krogan with my bare hands!

Also, his mission was corny as fuck.

PS. Also, the fans have kind of made me dislike Tali, even though from ME2 onwards she was actually a decent character.

Yeah, that was pretty goddamn ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as getting revived after having your goddamn ship blow up and hitting a planet with only infantry-grade armour protecting you, then gunning down a thousand goddamn mercenaries and collecters and punching out a goddamn Yahg.

As for the mission, well, just let me kill Vido and it'll be over and done before you know it.

Anyway, to get back on topic, I didn't much like that meathead Vega, though luckily I wasn't around him for any great period of time. Of the ones I actually worked with... Well, I mostly steered clear of Samara whenever I could,never know when she might flip out and randomly decide to kill you for breaking some thousand year old Asari law that she won't tell you about beforehand.

Jack was okay, despite what she siad she kept herself in check and only ever used her biotics on the enemy (and occasionally Miranda).

Miranda struck me as a bit arrogant, but she was the one responsible for paying me, so I can't complain all that much.

I don't recall ever working with a "Jacob", though. Did he join after I left?

I didn't really hate anyone. Most of the people I didn't like at first though. Like, I thought Liara was really boring and needy at first but then in ME 2 Liara actually gets a little interesting. And I thought James was a douche-bag for most of the game but he turned out alright with me. However, let's just say I always left Ashley to guard the bomb in ME 1.

Jack.

She's just so ugly.
I don't just mean unattractive.
I mean nauseatingly offensive to the eyes.

Followed closely by every other human other than James.
He's pretty.