10 "Mass Effect" Voice Actors That Will Turn You Into A Groupie

Is there anything cooler than a gang of teenagers solving mysteries with the accidental assistance of a talking dog? How about a space marine with more trashy tattoos than brains helping a personality-deficient anti-hero to save the galaxy? What? Both are equally nerdy? Well, that's sort of our point. Freddie may not resemble James much in real life, but then, our idea of Shepard's ideal teammate didn't much resemble a meathead with biceps bigger than his head. But even we had to acknowledge his competence with Prinze Jr. voicing him.

Martin Sheen made the Illusive Man one of the best morally ambiguous anti-tagonists we've ever seen. Yeah, we just made up the term "anti-tagonist". It means "someone so badass you can't even tell if he's an antagonist or a protagonist". Deal with it. His retreat from that gray area into full on bad guy in number three would have been disappointing if it hadn't been for his desperate belief that his course of action was the right one. And Sheen pulled it off perfectly.

Like Baldwin's other roles, the quarian Kal-Reegar turns out to be more than just a guy with a big gun (though that's another thing Jayne, Casey, Animal and Reegar all have in common). As Reegar proves at Tali's trial in ME 2, he's got a brain between those ears. Unlike real-life Adam Baldwin, who by most accounts (and his own Twitter feed) seems to be pretty nuts. Don't get us wrong—we love watching him shoot at shit. We're just a little scared of him.

If Commander Bailey hit the sauce half as hard as Colonel Tighe did in BSG, the Cerberus attack on the Citadel in ME 3 would have probably gone even worse. We couldn't help but imagine Tighe's scruffy beard and signature eye patch on Bailey's ugly mug every time we heard the Colonel's voice coming out of it. Did that make us trust him any less? Nah—actually, it was kind of endearing.

Claudia Black has more nerd cred than we have journalism degrees. Which is to say she has a lot. Well, more than one, at least. How do you measure nerd cred anyway? While we may know her better as the dangerous Morrigan and/or the dangerously sexy Chloe, her roles in Farscape and Stargate have been equally impressive. Her characters in the Mass Effect universe are memorable despite being relatively minor—more proof of her acting prowess.

Aria's as formidable as they come, and she's beyond atypical for an Asari. Unless you're looking for a dominatrix, she's not going to be fulfilling any of your fantasies. She'd rather run an underground crime network than strut around some Citadel watering hole with her tits half out. Carrie-Anne Moss pulled her swagger off so perfectly that we actually started to think of them as the same person in Mass Effect 2 and 3. They even look the same (blue skin and tentacle hair notwithstanding).

Tricia Helfer gained her nerd cred as Six in BSG, but little did we know that the sexiest cylon in the galaxy would also turn out to be the sexiest anthropomorphic cyborg A.I. in the Mass Effect series. Although she's been around since number two, she didn't gain that bangin' metal body until the trilogy's finale. We're pretty sure Joker was in love with her even before that, though.

Seth Green is a bonafide nerd himself, and his status as the creator of Robot Chicken and the voice of Chris Griffin only reaffirm that. As Joker, he's provided the comic relief in more than a few dire moments on the Normandy. He's also shown us that human-on-cyborg love is not only possible; it's downright beautiful! His relationship with EDI was one of the highlights of Mass Effect 3 for us (their couple name is Eder, or Jokdi, or something). Now if only he could actually get with Tricia Helfer…

We've had a big crush on Yvonne since the first time we saw her in Chuck, even if we were unsure whether she was going to try to put a bullet in our favorite erstwhile spy's naive little head. She and Chuck worked it out, of course, and then our love of Sarah Walker transferred directly to Miranda Lawson in Mass Effect 2. We forgot all about Liara's beautiful blue face the second Miranda's spectacular Australian ass filled up two thirds of our screen.

Aldrin is the absolute perfect candidate for a voice acting role in Mass Effect, however brief that role is. Like Shepard, he has a penchant for punching uppity journalists in their stupid faces. And while he may only appear at the game's controversial ending, Buzz is the only celebrity on this list who's actually been to space. We know, right? Fucking nerd.