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| “ | By the goddess. | „ |
| ~ Liara |
Dr. Liara T'Soni is the deuteragonist of the original Mass Effect video game trilogy, including the remaster Legendary Edition. She also has a voice cameo in Mass Effect: Andromeda.
She is an asari scientist and Prothean expert, having devoted almost her entire life to studying the Protheans and why they mysteriously vanished fifty thousand years prior to the events of the trilogy. Her research makes her a target of Saren Arterius, which leads to Commander Shepard finding her and making her part of their crew, starting an enduring partnership that proves central to both characters.
She was voiced by Ali Hillis, who also voices Lightning Farron from the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. However, in Mass Effect: Paragon Lost, she was voiced by Jamie Marchi.
Background[]
Liara is a Prothean scientist who was born on Thessia on 2077. After the rescue, she joined the Normandy, and then became a member of Commander Shepard's squad to help fight Saren Arterius. She's a pure-blooded Asari, meaning both of her parents were Asari, which is usually looked at negatively in Asari society because they do not gain any unique traits they would recieve from an alien father, as well as carry the risk of being Ardat-Yakshi. She is the daughter of both Matriarchs Aethyta (father) and Benezia (mother), but grew up not knowing her father, as Benezia abandoned Aethyta before she was born. She is only 106 at the start of the first Mass Effect, hardly an adult by Asari standards, and is 109 by the events of Mass Effect 3. She has a strong grasp of biotics, and is the foremost expert in the Prothean field due to studying them over the years.
Liara is the only squad member who lasts the duration of the trilogy no matter what, and can only die at the end of Mass Effect 3 if too few war assets have been acquired. The player can also pursue a romance with her in all three games regardless of Shepard's chosen gender, provided Mass Effect 2's Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC expansion is played through.
Biography[]
Mass Effect[]
Knowing that Matriarch Benezia has a daughter, Commander Shepard is supposed to find Liara T'Soni to see what she knew about her mother. So he/she goes to the Artemis Tau cluster, then eventually find that she was at a Prothean dig site on Therum. The geth are following Liara in an attempt to either kill her or join Saren. They chase her to a barrier curtain where Shepard first meets her. After getting behind the curtain, Shepard saves Liara, but then they encounter more of Saren's men on their way out of the ruins. Shepard and the squad, including Liara, escape the dig site as it collapses on itself. Liara joins the Normandy, becoming apart of the crew and a squad member.
She is able to intercept Shepard's visions from the beacon and help make sense of them before Saren gets the Conduit, which is later revealed to be a mini-version of the mass relay that can provide backdoor access to the Citadel. She believes the Protheans weren't the only race to have lived before the galaxy came together, and when Shepard tells her about the Reapers, she realizes the truth behind their extinction.
Mass Effect: Redemption[]
Liara attempts to look for Shepard's body in the wake of the Collectors' surprise attack on the Commander and their Alliance ship SSV Normandy in order to deliver it to Cerberus, allowing them to initiate Lazarus Project to rebuild and resurrect them. Despite knowing that Cerberus would use the Commander for their own purposes, Liara still gives their body to them because she cares for Shepard.
Mass Effect: Paragon Lost[]
Treeya Nuwani asks Liara T'Soni for knowledge on a strange artifact found on Fehl Prime. Liara, after analyzing the artifact, tells Treeya it is Reaper technology, and then tells her all about the Reapers, explaining they killed the Protheans. She also says that Sovereign was in fact a Reaper. Although the others have their doubts, they have enough respect towards Liara to take the Reapers seriously.
Mass Effect 2[]
Liara isn't a main squadmate on Mass Effect 2, although Shepard does encounter her on Illium, where she has taken up work as an information broker on Nos Astra. Shepard can ask her for information on the whereabouts of Thane Krios and Samara - essentially she serves the same role on Illium as Aria T'Loak does on Omega. In the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, she has a much larger role; hunting down the Shadow Broker in retaliation for what happened to her friend Feron, who helped Liara two years ago in recovering and protecting Shepard's body from being taken by the Shadow Broker and, in turn, taken to the Collectors.
Shepard can aid Liara in her mission to assault the Shadow Broker's ship, killing the yahg Broker and allowing Liara to become the new Shadow Broker herself, as well as rescuing Feron after she discovers he is still alive.
If Shepard does not take part in the DLC, then Liara will hire a dozen of mercenaries to help her in assaulting the Shadow Broker's HQ. Liara will still be successful in killing the Shadow Broker, but this leads to the death of Feron.
Mass Effect: Homeworlds[]
In the aftermath of the yahg Shadow Broker's defeat, Liara focuses on finding a way to defeat the Reapers and contacts Admiral Hackett of her work. Starting on her homeworld Thessia, she meets up with former colleague, Doctor Passante, at the Prothean archives and is disappointed that how little the archives contain. Her former colleague suggests investigating Kahje, so Liara travels there due to its massive Prothean ruins.
During her investigations, she has run-ins with Cerberus and the Illusive Man. After discovering a possible lead, she informs Admiral Hackett about it and requests the Admiral to provide her full access to a top-secret Alliance base on Mars.
Mass Effect 3[]
Liara comes back as a full-time squad member in Mass Effect 3. She plays a big part in the Crucible Project and documenting it in the event that the Reapers win the war. Shepard can continue their romance with her, after having her on their squad, and if she lives, she continues her work as a Shadow Broker in the resolution.
Mass Effect: Andromeda[]
Liara appears in the form of voice messages sent to the first human Pathfinder and former N7, Alec Ryder, with whom she had corresponded in 2182, a year prior to her encounter with Shepard, and the last message sent on 2186, mentioning about the Reaper War in the Milky Way and the Crucible to turn the tide of the war, as well as asking Alec and his children to not forget the people the Andromeda Initiative volunteers have left behind.
Personality[]
| “ | I spend so much time chasing down knowledge. I forget that there are things you learn by doing nothing... By spending time with the people you care about. | „ |
| ~ Liara T'Soni |
Initially, Liara is very shy, naïve and inexperienced. She often prefers to be alone, which is why she spends much of her time on remote digs, unearthing items. This can be explained by the discrimination she suffers due to being a "pureblood", a racial slur used for children born from two asari.
She is socially awkward and not good with people, a fault she admits and is proven when she makes a fool of herself by telling Shepard that, due to being touched by a Prothean beacon, he/she would make an interesting specimen for an in-depth study, only to realize afterwards how wrong that sounds. She's still beating herself up over this even when Shepard comes to talk to her again, to the point that she's done a background check on Shepard behind his/her back so that she doesn't say something else stupid, though she does apologize for this. After Benezia's death, Liara claims that she is fine, and that she prefers to remember her mother as who she was before she got indoctrinated.
A defining trait of Liara's is her lifelong passion of studying Protheans, describing them as 'wondrous, mysterious creatures'. She speculates that her fascination with the past is due to being a Matriarch's daughter; matriarchs guide their followers into the future and seek the truth of what is yet to come, and so she is more interested in the secrets of the past, though this sounds like she became an archaeologist simply to spite her mother. As a result, she is very excited when she finally gets to meet a Prothean in the form of Javik, only to discover that Protheans are a far cry from the benevolent entities she thought they were, and were in fact very severe and controlling. Occasionally, however, Liara forgets that there are some things she learns simply by spending time with the people she cares about, an example in her case being a song she learned from a friend during one of her first archaeology digs.
When Shepard first reunites with her on Illium, Liara imposes a radically changed personality; she is far more distant and cold, even repeating a line once spoken by her mother ("Have you ever faced an asari commando unit before? Few humans have.") and even threatening to flay a human male alive with her mind, though she insists that it was just a bluff to get him to take her seriously. She also shows a very vengeful side, having devoted the past two years of her life hunting down the Shadow Broker with the intention to kill him, which Shepard can describe as "insane." Regardless, she is delighted to see Shepard alive again, giving him/her a hug upon seeing him/her (or kissing him/her if romanced). Eventually, during the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, this frosty personality is revealed to be little more than a facade, though her increased maturity and cynicism is real. She shows no signs of her former awkwardness and is far more confident in her abilities, describing herself as a "very good information broker" on more than one occasion. Liara also becomes progressively more sarcastic overtime, to the point that by the time she rejoins Shepard during the Reaper invasion in 2186, she is arguably the most sarcastic out of any of Shepard's crew besides Garrus and Joker.
Despite her increased maturity, Liara shows on occasion that she is, in some ways, still the same naive scientist she was when Shepard first met her; not only is she completely shocked to learn what Protheans were really like, but she is also unable to believe that her species were keeping a Prothean beacon hidden for millennia and using the knowledge of it for themselves, even though, as every other squad member points out to her, that's a perfectly logical explanation as to why asari are so advanced. She also occasionally has to be reminded of reality by more world-weary characters; if she is taken on the Ardat-Yakshi Monastery mission alongside Ashley, they get into an argument over the capabilities of a seasoned asari veteran. Liara, having been told that asari commandos are the best soldiers in the galaxy, brags that the asari's centuries worth of experience makes them immune to fear and disorganization. Ashley, using her greater knowledge of military matters, counter-argues that when a mission goes bad, there's no knowing how a soldier might react, and that the asari are no more immune to this than anyone else.
Liara also has a habit of blaming others for problems that stem as a result of her own mistakes. An example of this is when she criticizes the Virmire survivor for their distrust of Shepard, calling them short-sighted. It apparently never occurs to her that the entire conflict could have been avoided if she had simply taken the time to inform them over how she recovered Shepard's body and gave it to Cerberus for repairs (as opposed to being so obsessed with getting revenge on the Shadow Broker), and her decision to not allow the Illusive Man to poison them with false information. This tendency is also shown by her early treatment of Javik, repeatedly criticizing him for not living up to her extremely over-idealized image of Protheans. Eventually, however, she realizes she can't keep judging Javik based on what she thinks Protheans should be like, and that it was childish and naïve for her to think that way in the first place.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Liara's face and body model is portrayed by Jillian Murray.
- Liara also appears in other media of the Mass Effect trilogy, such as Redemption, Paragon Lost, and Homeworlds.
External Links[]
- Liara T'Soni on the Mass Effect Wiki