November's Character of the Month 2011: Garrus Vakarian

So, we're winding down to the end of the year, and what better way to prepare than eating tons of food? Well, guess what? This character of the Month has nothing to do with that. Enjoy the Alien Renegade Cop himself as I look into...

Garrus Vakarian




History-
Garrus was born and raised like every Turian, with Military backrounds and killing whole species. Fortunately, Garrus joined C-Sec before the Trauma set in, like his father before him (and his father's father). He proceeded to be a combination of Detective Ed Green from Law and Order and Jack Bauer from 24. Well...he WANTS to be Jack Bauer anyway. Unfortunately, the C-Sec's rules seem to harsh his jive, yo. Especially after his attempts to investigate super soldier Saren, who had apparently gone rouge and attacked a human colony, were stopped because the council members are doody heads. Angry and stuff, Garrus goes over and investigates under C-Sec's head and investigate a Clinic to find proof. He manages to catch the doctor of the clinic being threatened by some goons when Main Character Shepard comes along and freezes them into a Dialogue Tree Discussion, allowing Garrus to pop one of them in the face.

After a bro fight, Garrus and Shepard (who can be male or female) talk for a while, and Garrus decides to leave the C-Sec nerds and get with the coolio club on the Normandy. He mostly wants to smack the smug look off of bad guy Saren and SAAAAAVE THE WORRRRRLD. Woo Hoo.

After proving that Saren is indeed "teh badness", Shepard's group goes Star Trekkin' across the universe, stoppin robots, pirates, and various people whose only witty retorts are things like "I WILL DESTROY YOU". It is revealed that Garrus was looked at to become Spectre, which is like a Secret Agent of sorts (like Saren and Shepard), but his father turned it down for him, because he was old fashioned, and listened to old Turian Music while being some some of curmudgeon. Garrus does find the Spectres interesting, which leaves Garrus wanting to be Shepard's disciple and all that (AND MAYBE MORE *WINKWINKNUDGENUDGE*).

Garrus is kind of a hothead, thinking that C-Sec is a bunch of morons that let criminals fall through the cracks because they want to follow regulations. While this sounds like the opinion of an arrogant officer that wants to sound cool to a hardened veteran, it is not without precedence. Garrus tells Shepard about a doctor named Dr. Saleon, who used others as living organ sacs to harvest. It's about as disgusting as you would think. Dr. Saleon gets away and Garrus is ordered not to shoot due to the fact that he had hostages. Shepard eventually finds Saleon and can either kill or arrest him. Arresting him results in Saleon fighting and dieing anyway, but hey in this case he fired first so it's ok (until the HD Version anyway...). Near the end, depending on Shepard's choices, Garrus will either choose to return to C-Sec, or not. Either way, he'll look to getting a Specter Status. Regardless, Saren dies, the robots are gone and everything can return to normal...except Shepard ends up dying afterwards.

Garrus tries to return to life on the Citadel, but he finds it has become infected with...Council Members. They proceed to say "Ah yes, "REAPERS" " over and over again, so Garrus ragequits. He goes to an asteroid called Omega and starts calling himself Archangel (because it's the name he always wanted *sniff*). He starts sabotaging three unimportant mercenary groups so they decide to work together, receiving the appropriate nerfs and buffs to balance it out. Shepard happens across him just in time for a gunship to blow off like half of his face. He was totally all like "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MY FACE" and the gunship was all like "don't be a baby." Garrus is saved from certain death with a quick Model Change and Texture Grafting. He rejoins Shepard's team on what is effectively a suicide mission to stop a new group of robots and stuff. During which, Shepard can gain Garrus's loyalty by finding a guy who sold out his squad, meaning he won't die when you get him to lead your squad.

Opinion-
Garrus is the cop that sees good and evil only. He wants to do anything he can to stop villains, and is actually a contrast to most of the Turian NPCs, who try to do everything by the book (and usually against you). He is the kid with a long line of officer ancestors, and he wants to prove himself, but he doesn't see himself doing any real good. Now, on that note, it is kind of hard to gauge these characters since they change depending on your actions, but for Garrus, he tends to follow a somewhat straight path, trying to stop crime with his own personal style. It's a kind of strange really, since up until this point I had thought Garrus to be more of more, and not a disciple of Shepard. I guess that deserves a bit of respect, don't you?


Rating:

Originality- ****
Personality- ***
Character Arc- ****
Consistency- *****
Real- ****

Final Rating: 4

Garrus is a good character, no doubt. However, he seems especially battle hardened, and he never really shows any emotion towards even things that he seems angry about. He loses half of his face, and the first thing he does on-screen is crack a joke at Shepard's expense. Otherwise he is mostly a snarker and it tends to blend well with the rest of the cast. With this in mind, he does very well at what he is, and being the only Turian is the party so far, it's odd that he goes against their way of thinking in the way of rules (not their genocidal tendencies though.) Still, he manages to bring his own special flair to Mass Effect, and as one that remains with Shepard across games, that would make him a very important character. Too bad there are no more elevators to expand on this :I