List of Mass Effect characters

Two posters illustrating some of the major characters of the Mass Effect trilogy, which are nearly identical except for the lead character's gender. Top row, from left to right: Saren, Illusive Man. Next row: Garrus, Commander Shepard (default male and female appearance), Wrex. Last row: Thane, James, Tali, Kaidan, Ashley, Liara, Miranda, Mordin, Legion, Javik, Jack. Bottom icons: Samara, Kasumi, Jacob, Joker, EDI, Grunt, Zaeed

The Mass Effect series, a military science fiction media franchise developed by Canadian video game developer BioWare and owned by American publisher Electronic Arts, features an extensive cast of characters. It is primarily based on a series of third-person role-playing shooter video games which currently consists of four mainline instalments and two spin-off mobile games. The first three Mass Effect games takes place in the Milky Way Galaxy during the 22nd century and revolves around a space navy soldier named Commander Shepard. The fourth Mass Effect game is a standalone sequel to the original trilogy but set in a different galaxy, Andromeda, and focuses on the Andromeda Initiative and the Ryder family. The spin-off games, Mass Effect Galaxy and Mass Effect Infiltrator, feature different protagonists.

This article describes characters, which includes a diverse cast of alien, human and synthetic beings, that appear in video games set in the Mass Effect universe.^[1] This list only includes player characters, squad members, major antagonists, and other notable characters that appear in the games. Certain characters have names chosen by the player; these characters are designated the name they are addressed by in-game. The appearance and story arcs of certain characters in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 are conditional upon decisions from prior Mass Effect titles being carried over via an imported save file.^[2]