What? Another Mass Effect character is featured as one of my favourite characters? How shocking(!). Actually this one is rather interesting because a lot of Mass Effect fans are very split on Miranda, some love her, others think she's just another Ashley. Alright, if you don't like her then that's okay, but comparing her to Ashley is just unfair. Ashley is a racist untrusting pretentious narrow minded soldier, Miranda is so much better than that. The two main reasons why people hate Miranda are one: the over sexualization of her...which i'm not gonna deny. Even though she's modelled after her actress Yvonne Strahovski, they have clearly enhanced certain parts of her (Boobs being the most noticeable feature), as well as a lot of unnecessary shots of her ass. I guess the reason why this never bothered me (Apart from being a straight guy) is that i don't mind sexualized characters as long as there is a good personality and character to match it. For example: Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, good character, very sexy. Lucy Heartfelia from Fairy Tail, bad character, very sexy. One of these i'm okay with, the other i'm not. The other problem is that Miranda is very bitchy, and i'll get to that in a minute, for now, let's focus on other aspects of her character.
Miranda was biologically altered to be perfect in everyway. Not only does this make her an incredibly skilled fighter, but she's also highly intelligent, she's always thinking one step ahead, always has an escape route in sight and always has a plan. There's a reason why The Illusive Man put her in charge of Commander Shepard, because she makes a great business woman as well as a badass fighter. However due to her experiences with her father trying to make her into his own personal weapon, this has made her very untrusting and selfish in life, as well as not very caring of other people's feelings, so she's pretty much Mass Effect's version of Catwoman. This leads to most people's problem with her, she's a bitch...Yeah of course she is, she was raised in a manner that made her never get too close to anyone and think the mission is more important than people's feelings. This then leads to her arc over the course of the game, her friendship (And possible relationship) with Shepard leads her to finally able to open up and trust again, then by the end when she quits Cereberus it's because she's chosen her friends and the lives of the innocent over the side of an inhumane and ruthless business. If she started out perfectly neutral then we'd just have another Jacob on our hands. It's a basic character arc, she starts off cold and uninterested in forming relationships, then over the course of the narrative she becomes more open and caring. But, Shepard is mearly the tool to her being more caring, the cause is her little sister Oriana.
Miranda's loyalty mission has her trying to find her sister and save her from being captured by her father and her suffering the same fate as Miranda did. Miranda has quietly watched her sister from the sidelines for years and she has become someone Miranda couldn't. Someone who cares about their family, is very laid back and cares about other people. Miranda sees someone she couldn't be and doesn't want anyone to take that away from her, there is also a maternal aspect to all of this as in Lair of the Shadow Broker it's revealed in unlocked files that she herself is infertile. Should she die in Mass Effect 3, Miranda says that she's happy that Oriana is safe and can go on to have a life of her own.
Miranda is a tough nut to crack, she is cold at the start, but her humanity begins to show more and more as the game goes on, and it's her relationships with Shepard and Oriana that make this happen. She may not have been loyal to a whole lot of people, but for those she was, she would have gone to the end of the galaxy and back to protect them, that is why she's one of my favourite characters.
-Danny
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