The Evolution of Ashley Williams

In the first Mass Effect, your options for romance were rather limited. I chose Ashley Williams since romance with a psychic blue alien with tentacles for hair didn’t seem all that appealing. But Ashley was BORING. Her character design was bland, with molded white armor, and her hair put up in a bun, and no distinguishing features. Her personality was just as bad. She came from a military family that was on a perceived shit list for something on of her ancestors did in the First Contact War many decades ago. As such, she was kind of a racist (against aliens). That was about it. She quoted Tennyson poetry.

Quoted. Poetry. Quoting poetry is what writers do for characters they know are uninteresting and shallow when they want to make them look deep. Its character writing hand waving. “ooo…you read poetry? That automatically makes you so much deeper and mysterious.” Gag.

Ashley Williams, Mass Effect 1

Fast forward to Mass Effect 2, you meet Ashley long enough for her to rage against you for working with the only, albeit shady, organization that took your apocalyptic warnings seriously, then she unceremoniously cut all ties. Her actions free you from any feelings of guilt from pursuing a new character (Miranda in my case, because come on, Yvonne Strahovski).

In Mass Effect 3, Ashley returns, vastly improved. Her character model has been redone, she wears her hair down, giving her face some personality. Her armor has been redone in blue with a better combat aesthetic. She’s made Lt. Commander in the interim and in doing so moved beyond her fixation on her family’s poor treatment in the military. In fact, she’s in consideration for Spectre status, only the second human to ever do so, after the main character. Time is spent during the first half of the game hashing out the their respective hang-ups. In fact, it was the only time I can remember choosing an answer that was clearly “renegade” was one of those conversations. She accused me of wrongdoing by moving on to the next girl, and I angrily reminded her that she abruptly cut ties from me first. It was an honest emotional conversation between former lovers.

Mass Effect 3 Character Design

In a tense scene during an attempted coup you’re trying to thwart, she’s forced to confront her conflicting feelings for Shepard, she trusted him throughout the first adventure, but doubt lingers that he’s been influenced by the organization in the second game, or worse, that he’s still working for them. Genuine, understandable personal conflict.

The relationship turned on one pointed comment she made; “I’m a real person, Shepard, flaws and all. I wear body armor into battle, not a swimsuit,” The writers were poking fun at themselves for Miranda’s skintight wetsuit character design. But it made sense when thinking about it, Miranda was genetically engineered to be the way she was, and very clearly manipulated people using these “perfect genes.” In that one statement, Ashley showed insecurity when she compared herself to Miranda, and also mocked Shepard for pursuing someone so clearly fake – engineered to be perfect. Ashley’s character had transformed from bland to flawed, but heartfelt.

Of course Bioware has to turn around and ruin the credit they had earned by having one of Ashley’s alternate outfits in combat being a miniskirt and thigh high boots. /facepalm.