Urdnot Wrex

Urdnot Wrex
Mass Effect character
Wrex as he appears in Mass Effect 3
First appearance	Mass Effect (2007)
Voiced by	Steven Barr
In-universe information
Race	Krogan
Home	Tuchanka
Class	Battle Master
Skill	Shotguns Biotics

Urdnot Wrex, or Wrex in short, is a fictional character in BioWare's Mass Effect franchise, who serves as a party member (or "squadmate") in the first game of the Mass Effect trilogy. He is a Krogan, an alien race near-sterilized by other galactic races for their violence and high population growth. Introduced as an experienced Krogan mercenary, his role changes in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, where he becomes the leader of an expanding Krogan clan and eventual head of state for the Krogan as a whole. After over 1000 years of aimless apathy, Wrex seeks to bring back hope to his people and reverse their fate by undoing the genophage. He is voiced by Steven Barr.

Wrex was given a "splash" of red color and scars to distinguish him from other individuals of his species and stress his combat experience. The character will appear in the second and third games provided he survives a confrontation with the player character, Commander Shepard. This confrontation was designed to slowly build up tension to keep the player engaged. Wrex's possible death in this confrontation limited Wrex's role in Mass Effect 2, as the narrative team had to write a replacement character with a different background. In the Citadel downloadable content for the third game, he is available as a guest squadmate for the DLC's duration. In addition to the games, he makes an appearance in the Mass Effect: Foundation tie-in comic series. Merchandise of the character has also been made available.

The character was positively received, with praise going to his writing and character evolution. His stand-off with Shepard in the first game and his role in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 drew attention and commentary from video game journalists. Several scholars have analyzed Wrex's role in the Mass Effect trilogy through a racial, cultural and ethical perspective.

To distinguish Wrex from other Krogan, the Mass Effect art team gave his head a "splash" of red color that covered his skull plate in a specific fiery red pattern to create a unique and menacing appearance. The art team further gave Wrex's face abundant scarring, meant to demonstrate his combat experience and survivability.¹² In order to envision how Wrex's facial expressions would look in animation, the art team designed several facial expressions of the character. For Wrex's return in Mass Effect 2, he was envisioned to be the leader of his people. Since the Krogan are consumed by constant internal warfare, they would live in the ruins scattered throughout their home world of Tuchanka, and players would find Wrex sitting on a throne surrounded by the rubble of the Krogan's once-glorious civilization.²

In the first Mass Effect, senior writer Mac Walters was in charge of the character's writing. Walters found a challenge in writing a character that could both stand out individually and serve to give an insight into the Krogan species and its role in the Mass Effect universe.³ Wrex's confrontation late in the game with Commander Shepard was designed to slowly build tension, with Wrex escalating the discussion as the two move closer together, with camera angles emphasizing a struggle for dominance. This was intended to keep the player engaged as the confrontation advanced, as it would ultimately culminate in them making a decision regarding Wrex.⁴

Because Urdnot Wrex may not survive his initial appearance in the first game, the narrative team had limited options for his role in Mass Effect 2. In an interview with Engadget, lead writer Mac Walters stated that the death of Wrex, among others in Mass Effect, meant that a replacement character with their own backstory and role in the game had to be created, so that the said character did not feel like a "Wrex alternate". This ultimately complicated the work of the game's cinematic designers, who had to account for the possibility of two different characters playing the same role in the same scenes.⁵ This same challenge regarding Urdnot Wrex's possible death carried into Mass Effect 3, in which John Dombrow was in charge of Wrex's narrative design.⁶⁷ The narrative and design teams also had to design the quest structures in Mass Effect 3 so that Wrex was present in a way that his role felt significant enough while not being a member of the player's party. The final quest design sees Urdnot Wrex making sporadic appearances throughout the gameplay.⁸ For the character's voice acting, BioWare cast American voice actor Steven Barr.⁹¹⁰

Wrex makes his debut appearance in 2007's Mass Effect, following the completion of an early game mission. Wrex is presented as a bounty hunter hired by the Shadow Broker, a mysterious and highly influential intelligence mob boss, to assassinate Fist, one of the Broker's former agents. It is then that Wrex suggests joining player character and protagonist Commander Shepard on their own endeavor to locate Fist. Should Shepard accept and bring Wrex in their party, this results in Wrex killing Fist once Shepard is given the information they wanted.¹¹¹² Throughout the game, Shepard may engage in multiple conversations with Wrex, in which the player gets an insight into the Krogan species and the genophage, a bioweapon created by the Salarians to alter Krogan fertility rates to keep their populations in check. Should the player engage in these conversations, Wrex eventually opens up and asks Shepard for help in retrieving a piece of armor, a family heirloom, in an optional sidequest.¹³¹⁴

During a mission on the surface of the fictional planet Virmire, Salarian Captain Kirrahe tells Shepard that the game's main villain, Saren Arterius, had designed a cure for the genophage and created a Krogan cloning facility with the end goal of creating a massive Krogan army. When Kirrahe talks of destroying the facility, Wrex vehemently protests. Shepard then confronts Wrex, trying to reason with him that the facility needs to be destroyed. At this point, based on the player's choices, Shepard can attempt to convince Wrex to stand down by either charming him or intimidating him by completing a specific speech-check; or, if unable to pass the speech-check, have Wrex killed either by Shepard themselves or by party member Ashley Williams. If Shepard helped Wrex obtain his family armor prior to the start of the mission, the option to have him survive will always be present.¹³¹⁵

Provided Wrex survives the events of the first Mass Effect, he will make an appearance as the leader of the Krogan species in Mass Effect 2. Wrex is first encountered when Shepard lands on the Krogan home world of Tuchanka to aid one of two squadmates, Grunt or Mordin Solus. Wrex will then aid Shepard in their efforts to help either squadmate, diagnosing Grunt's problem and pointing Shepard to a scout who can further help with Mordin's.¹⁶¹⁴ As a leader, Wrex is depicted as a reformer who wants to change Krogan society both politically and culturally. If Wrex died in the events of the first Mass Effect game, he will be replaced by his brother, Urdnot Wreav, a traditionalist who seeks revenge against the Salarians and the Turians for the creation of the genophage.¹⁴

Mass Effect 3 is set during the Reaper War, an ongoing invasion by a species of gigantic spacefaring sentient machines against the Milky Way races. As part of an effort to stop the war, Shepard attempts to secure an alliance between the Turians, the Salarians and the Krogan, with Wrex playing a role as the leader of the latter. Following the revelation that some genophage-immune Krogan females were being held captive at the Salarian home world of Sur'Kesh, Wrex and Shepard journey to the planet. Upon arrival, they discover that only a single female, "Eve", had survived. Aided by the Salarian Mordin Solus, provided he survived the events of Mass Effect 2, they successfully extract Eve from the planet.¹⁷¹⁸¹⁹

Wrex, Mordin, Eve, and Shepard then return to the Normandy, the game's main spaceship and hub, where Mordin attempts to synthesize a cure for the genophage. Once the cure has been synthesized, they venture to the Krogan home world of Tuchanka to spread the cure throughout the planet. However, before arriving, the Salarian leader suggests Shepard sabotage the distribution of the cure to secure Salarian aid in the Reaper War.¹⁹²⁰ Should Shepard decide to disperse the cure, Wrex and Eve express their gratitude and lament the death of Mordin in the process, promising to name their first child after him. However, if Shepard decides to sabotage the cure instead, Wrex eventually finds out about this and confronts Shepard on the Citadel, forcing Shepard to kill him. If Wrex did not survive the events of the first Mass Effect, he is once again replaced by his more aggressive brother, Urdnot Wreav. Unlike Wrex, Wreav is successfully deceived if Shepard decides to sabotage the cure.¹⁹

In the Citadel downloadable content, Wrex becomes a party member for the DLC's duration, provided he is alive and Shepard chose to cure the genophage. Later, when Shepard meets him at the bar, Wrex expresses exhaustion over being endlessly hounded by hordes of Krogan females.²¹

Urdnot Wrex makes an appearance in the Mass Effect 2 tie-in comic series Mass Effect: Foundation.²²

Prior to the release of the first game, Ray Muzyka, CEO of BioWare at the time, believed that Wrex would prove one of the more popular squadmates.²³ In addition, lead designer Preston Watamaniuk has called him his personal favorite character in the trilogy.²⁴

Wrex has been received well as a party member, earning "Sidekick of the Year" in the Official Xbox Magazine's 2007 Game of the Year Awards.²⁵ Wrex has also ranked highly in multiple "top" character lists,²⁶²⁷²⁸ with writers praising his character evolution and role as a progressive reformer of the Krogan species while criticizing his lesser role in the latter two games of the trilogy. In a list put together by Wes Fenlon of PC Gamer, Christopher Livingston praised Wrex's deep-thinking nature while still remaining "tough-as-nails", expressing disappointment at the fact that Wrex could not be a party member in Mass Effect 2.²⁹ Jhaan Elker, writing for The Washington Post's Launcher, praised Wrex's characterization and character evolution, which serve as an emotional connection to the genophage storyline.³⁰ In an article for Game Informer, Jeff Marchiafava named him the fictional character he would invite to Thanksgiving if he could.³¹ Wrex's mere mention of the protagonist's name, "Shepard", became one of the series' most quoted lines.³²³³

Wrex's confrontation with Commander Shepard in the first Mass Effect has been subject to critical commentary praising its moral complexity and emotional weight. In an article titled "The Toughest Life Or Death Choice In The Gaming Universe", Kotaku's Stephen Totilo called the choice "shocking", noting how there was no obvious right answer to the dilemma.⁴ Pondering the confrontation, Anthony Burch of Destructoid compared his experience with both possible scenarios, expressing sadness and emotional shock at his possible death, while feeling happy but bored by "the ho-hum nature of Wrex's survival". Burch concluded that Wrex's fate had always been well within the player's control, declaring that the more interest the player showed in Wrex, the more likely he would be to survive.³⁴ Evan Narcisse of The Atlantic expressed empathy with Wrex's stance on Saren's genophage cure as a way to give his people a chance to flourish, feeling a personal connection with Wrex's point of view. Narcisse further praised Wrex's characterization, drawing comparisons between Shepard's conversations with Wrex and the situation of the Sioux, Coeur d'Alene and Seminole nations.³⁵

His role in the latter two games of the Mass Effect trilogy has received substantial commentary, with critics praising his characterization and evolution, while some criticized his more minor role in them. Cian Maher of TheGamer highlighted Wrex's characterization as a Krogan who cared for his species, describing Wrex as his favorite character in the Mass Effect trilogy. Maher praised Wrex's character evolution from a "grisly merc" to uniting the Krogan clans under his leadership, declaring that the decision to keep Wrex alive went beyond a personal warmth towards him. Maher depicted Wrex's arc in the latter two games in the trilogy as being among the best in the series.³³³⁶ Christopher Livingston of PC Gamer, who also cited Wrex as his favorite Mass Effect character, criticized how, as a result of his possible death in the original game, Wrex's role in those games was limited to a small one in Mass Effect 2, and to appearing only as a playable squadmate during a paid DLC in Mass Effect 3. Livingston further expressed frustration at Wrex's "unfair" possible death at the hands of Ashley Williams in the first game.³⁷

Scholars have analyzed Urdnot Wrex's role in the Mass Effect trilogy through the themes of race and culture. Christopher B. Patterson claimed Wrex's role in his confrontation with Shepard was not reducible to simply that of a terrorist monster, arguing that Wrex encompassed a much more complex personality. Patterson further argued that Shepard's conversations with Wrex throughout the game mirror "racial authenticity and knowledge in the United States".³⁸ Eamon Reid, drawing on philosopher Tristan Garcia's cultural framework, argued that Wrex's desire to reform Krogan culture reflects a tension between an idealist promise in his leadership and the realist assessment of Krogan culture.¹⁴

Frank G. Bosman discussed Wrex from a moral and ethical perspective. Bosman brought up Wrex's confrontation in the first Mass Effect as an example of a problem that inspires a narratological and ethical behavior on the player but can be resolved easily by exploiting the game's own systems. Bosman argued that the apparent ethical dilemma proposed in it was hindered by the ability to exploit the game's save system.¹⁵³⁹

Dark Horse released several PVC statues of the character, including a 1000 unit limited edition statue featuring a distinct white and pink armor.⁴⁰⁴¹ Wrex is one of the four Mass Effect squadmates featured in the Mass Effect: Board Game – Priority Hagalaz, featuring his own unique set of skills.⁴² Diamond Select Toys released a figurine of Urdnot Wrex as a part of a Mass Effect product line.⁴³ A Mass Effect cosmetic downloadable content featuring a costume of Wrex was released for LittleBigPlanet 2, LittleBigPlanet Karting, and LittleBigPlanet PS Vita.⁴⁴