Male Character of the Generation: Semifinals Group 1

Garrus. I thought he was a scrub when you met him, but him and Liara grew to become my go-to crew all the way to end.

But Geralt is a beast.

Geralt clearly.

He's a god damn WITCHER!

But is he in space??

Garrus. Hands down, Garrus. Garrus period, actually. Before I even opened this thread, I asked myself: who's the best male character of this generation? Garrus was the first character who sprung to mind.

Runner-ups: Alistair, Nathan Drake, and Joel.

Geralt because he is not a Mass Effect character.

Garrus is cool and all, but I never got a strong sense of personality from him (other than "We should just kill these motherfuckers"). It's easier to imagine how Mordin might react to a given situation, which is a good metric for the quality of a character.

I've only played a few hours of The Witcher, but Geralt doesn't seem incredibly vibrant either.

Geralt. Please.

Geralt easily.

Geralt can make people do stuff with his glowy eyes and has two swords on his back, but of course the Mass Effect character will win.

Giving it to Mordin. His arc was, without exaggeration, the single most impressive part of the entire Mass Effect trilogy.

But I hate myself for betraying my alien bro and my mutant bro.

I wanna give it to Geralt, but I just finished Mass Effect 3 and man I love Garrus.

Let's go!!!!!!!

Oh, come on. We all know how this ends. I mean, a dude with two swords, who is a mutant, and has sex with every attractive woman he meets? Geralt is PURE nerd bait. Dude's straight out of a 15-year old's fan-fiction.

Geralt or Mordin... Not sure. Probably Mordin, only because of the way he ended up in my game. Someone else might have gotten it wrong.

I found Garrus profoundly boring, however.

Listen, he might be cool in the books, but Geralt is a fucking boring character in the games. He's just a generic gruff-voiced badass, occasionally making witty remarks, cutting up dudes and fucking women a bunch. And his hair looks dumb.

And his main love interest is Triss which only makes matters worse. A character so grating that they consistently remove her from large parts of the games because they don't know how to make her interactions with Geralt not completely boring.

Mordin NO DOUBT

ARG! Don't make me choose! Garrus and Mordin were both amazing. One's a showtune singing scientist, the other's a renegade cop with a brilliantly dry sense of humour. In the end, I have to go with Mordin. Geralt's cool and all but for me a little bit lacking when it comes to actual character, although that might be because I've only played Witcher 2.

Mordin wins.

More Mass Effect, huh? We truly have a ton of users from the fanfic section of tumblr as members.

That's why I'm voting for Geralt. You're not getting this one.

Geralt. Just 'cause I despise Mass Effect so much.

(jk lulz, love Mordin...I did vote for Geralt though)

@squirrelgod: It's actually straight out of a 65 year old Polish man's writing.

Giantbomb might as well be a Mass Effect fansite. You're being a dick in the wrong part of town... *cracks knuckles*

Geralt because in The Witcher 3 he looks like Gaben.

The white wolf.

Let's go Geralto of Rivera!

You are soulless if you don't choose Mordin and his beautiful lyrics.

Looks like it's gonna be Garrus vs. York in the finals.

There's still plenty of time for things to change.

The White Wolf of course. But I'm sure Garrus will win. People have a hard on for him for some reason. He was alright, but he ain't no Witcher.

Man, picking between Garrus and Mordin is brutal. Mordin is a stellar character from the beginning while Garrus really evolves over the course of the series into one of Shepards main confidants.

Have never had much fun playing Witcher or Witcher 2, as they are very slow and boring to get into, and lacking in interesting characters as a whole. I'm sure there are great characters, environments, etc. later in the games, but CD Projekt Red does a shitty job of getting you invested in the world quickly and it simply takes too long to develop a connection to the universe.

I think Garrus has to get the nod because he is a key fixture throughout the ME series.

Geralt. Because he's killing monsters.

The fuck is wrong with you people... Yeah, I killed Mordin in ME3 but that was for the good of the motherfucking universe! The dude left me no choice in the matter, and I still feel bad.

Vote Mordin.

Mordin.

Despite playing and liking all the Mass Effect games, I never shared that fan love for Garrus Vakarian.

On the other hand, how many characters host a children science show?

@squirrelgod said:

No, but this is exactly what a 15 year old would think.

Geralt (and the Witcher 2) is better written than Mass Effect by miles and miles and miles. Unlike Schizo-Shepard, Geralt's personality doesn't break when you select different attitudes, and his attitudes are hilarious, awesome and complicated. He's so far and away the best written interactive character it makes me shake my head at how little he is appreciated, though clearly he has some following here. Like in Mass Effect, the sex is optional, but unlike Mass Effect, Geralt actually has some meaningful relationships with women.

But fuck yeah two swords bro! They are pretty cool. I mean, come on, one of them is made of silver and is used only for killing monsters. He has a whole other sword for killing plebs. The way you craft swords and oil them up for fighting is super awesome too.

On the mutant front Geralt borrows more early X-men mutants than say something like Avengers or SHIELD, which is to say that everyone thinks he should just be stepped on, executed and thrown under the rug. Unlike 99% of game heroes who are beloved by everyone ("The hero of Kvatch!!") Geralt is largely detested by everyone. But they fear him or need or want to manipulate him.

In the Witcher 1 there is an early mission where you have to kill monsters in a noble's yard, but when you get there you discover he doesn't trust you. So, as people are wont to do, you begin drinking together and talking. Before you know it Geralt is wasted but it's time to slay monsters! So out you go, totally drunk, to cut up some tentacle demons or whatever's in the yard. How can you not love that?

Just as I feared...

@geraltitude: Garrus is too fresh in my mind and I played The Witcher 2 the year it came out, but you just convinced me that I voted for the wrong person. Still love Garrus though.

A pity he won't win. One of the funniest characters and most developed of this generation.

@video_game_king: Try to catch me, Ashley Riot!

:D Me too! Among the ME allies Garrus is probably my number 1, though I do like "the cool guys" too (Wrex, Thane and that bounty hunter whose name I forget). Turian's are, in general, among the coolest races ever devised for a science fiction. So many of the generals and captains you meet just make you go "Oh man! So cool!"

Part of me feels its unfair to compare PCs and NPCs but it's too late for that talk at this point.

@fredchuckdave:

I still prefer:

Yeah, I got sick of going all the way to the bottom of the ship and hearing:

Not his fault of course, but it tainted our relationship.

(I reply knowing that I will probably lose this argument with someone named 'Geraltitude').

I'd argue that Geralt's interesting when they let him be, but most of the time he doesn't have much of a personality at all. His constant monotone doesn't help, of course, but the majority of his dialogue tends to be 'hey so what happened' 'give me money' 'this is bullshit'.

And while I'd agree that Witcher 2 is probably better written than Mass Effect, it's really not by much - to the point that it's damning with faint praise more than anything else.

How is Mordin not winning this?

I'm not going to throw shade at Witcher 2 but Geralt is a pretty generic, gruff video game dude. I fail to see what could possibly be so interesting about him to make him of the best characters of the generation besides the fact that he's in a really good game.

Garrus is okay, I guess but he was never anywhere close to my favorite Mass Effect character.

wait wait... hold up.

Garrus I understand. But I don't understand how the two other characters are Mordin and Geralt. Makes no sense, man..

• I've beaten all Mass Effect games. Why the hell is the (admittedly funny) lab rat Mordin on this list? I never realized he was so loved, he's just an unusual alien who was really smart and shit. Sure he did what he did in ME3 and it was noble, but so what?
• Geralt is my second favorite protagonist of all time. But most of you people skipped the first Witcher. Personally I think it doesn't make sense to vote Geralt your character of the generation when you've only played the 20-hour war-focused (but evidently excellent) sequel, because that game is barely about Geralt himself. You need the first game to live with Geralt for 50+ hours, see his original environment and home, and get to understand and love him. Most of you haven't, so why would he be so popular around here?

Explanations, I demand them.

marky mark!

The first thing I'd say is that to me the monotome comes across more as sarcastic/sardonic/dead-pan. For example in ME when Shepard gets mad he gets mad. Like fist-shaking, gun-shooting mad. When Geralt gets mad it's like someone closing their eyes and shaking their head followed by an exhale of Fine, so be it. You know what I mean? It's a very different attitude, and I can see how it could come across as flat. I think there's a lot of personality preference here. As you can guess by my name, I tend to be pretty mono-emotion myself.

Where Geralt's writing really shines is the large variety of options you have to deal with all the situations in the game. The fact that you can swing from one end of the option tree to the other and never break the character is both fun and liberating. The fact that the game actually rewards different choices by gating content is another part of what I'd call "Brave Writing". By contrast when you choose a few Renegade options then some Paragon options in ME it's like your playing some kind of binary psychopath. To be fair, Shepard is more a cipher than Geralt and maybe they aren't a 1:1 comparison, but I'm not sure there are other characters like Geralt anyways. Lee Everett and Bigby Wolf maybe.

Finally, on the writing at large: Mass Effect does a lot of world-building that's awesome for any medium (like making up the Turians, Krogans and all the technology stuff) but the words that come out of the character's mouths tend to be very cliche, simple, or emotionally convenient for plot purposes. By contrast The Witcher takes place in a more familiar fantasy world, but it's among the most grounded fantasy worlds I can think of - and I don't mean that to be faint praise. Like Game of Thrones, everyone's motives in the Witcher are far more realistic and human than you usually find in the genre, and the treatment of magic and monsters is really interesting.

@geraltitude:

Just noticed your name Geraltitude

but yeah he has my vote as well.

Holy shit I wish I had the same affection for ME as others, but I just don't. I played through all of 2 + every single piece of dlc and it honestly never really hooked me, despite of a couple of cool moments/locations.

Thank you for this post.