Kai Leng, The Most Obnoxious Tryhard In The Galaxy (Mass Effect)

Ignore 14:51-14:57 Troy Baker actually sucks :( Here's 15:11 for catharsis

I've seen the problem summed up succinctly as "You're not fighting Kai Leng. You're fighting the writers.".

I kinda love how incompetent he becomes if thane is alive. He goes from, "I just assassinated one of the most important people" to "I failed because a terminally ill dude showed up".

I think you’re all forgetting a very important factor about Kai Leng and one that actually makes him the best character in the entire franchise. . . . . Good. You opened this message. This isn’t actually asari military command. They’re busy tending to what’s left of their planet. So you survived our fight on Thessia. You’re not as weak as I thought. But never forget that your best wasn’t good enough to stop me. Now an entire planet is dying because you lacked the strength to win. The legend of Shepard needs to be re-written. I hope I’m there for the last chapter. It ends with your death. -KL

Imaging him typing up his little death threat to Shepard

There's actually a mod that swaps Kai Leng with some Cerberus soldier (the one with the swords) and cuts all of his dialogue and I think that even something as simple as that is better than what they did with him.

Illusive Man: “Do it because I told you to” Kai Leng: “BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME TO!”

Am I the only one who thinks Kai Leng's role would have been played 1000x better by the Shepard Clone? Like imagine if the Illusive Man had kept the clone for spare parts for the real Sheppard and when Sheppard broke from Cerberus (and stole their best ship and all their top operatives) he just outfitted Clone Sheppard with a control chip and started sending him on his own missions as a counter operative.

Kai Leng is basically already a fanfic character, so it's hard to make him even worse.

To be fair, an injured Bailey is worth 10 Kai Leng, so he was right to get out

Shamus Young has a really good breakdown of why Kai Leng doesn't work. Basically, he's that one asshole who when told that the D&D campaign will be about a grounded realistic world with rare magic and a more deliberate medieval motif, wants to play his half dragon-half-demon-half-elf gun-warlock named Azurel Bloodleaf.

I've never thought of making Kai Leng a squadmate for ME2, but it makes a lot of sense. Especially since it would make an interesting dichotomy with Miranda. The Illusive Man putting both of his top lieutenants on the Normandy SR-2, with one remaining loyal to TIM while Shepard earns the loyalty of the other. Plus, no Jacob is always a good idea!

"What's his motivation for trying to kill the councilor?" TIM offered him a bowl of frosted mini-wheats. "Why does he steal the Prothean VI? " TIM offered him a bowl of Cocoa Puffs. "Why does he desperately want to kill Shepard?" He thinks Shepard's hiding a stash of Fruity Pebbles. My personal joke is that virtually everything he does and all of his motivations revolve around his love for cereal.

He is supposed to be a replacement for Shepard, and is great at portraying just how much the Illusive Man misses the point of what makes Shepard great.

For what it's worth Kai is a good anti-example for teaching story tellers how not to do their villains. Helps me with letting go of my darlings when running RPGs. Before I pull out plot armor for my big evil it helps to ask myself: "Am I creating another Kai Leng here?"

It’s strange how no one brings up the fact that the normal phantoms are more threatening than Kai leng from both a gameplay and visual standpoint. You know why? BECAUSE THEY USE GUNS ALONG WITH THEIR SWORD. Phantoms have deadly precise aiming and their main goal in a combat situation is to close the gap through mechanically augmented gymnastics to elude bullets and by pressuring Shepard with a retaliation of their own bullets to force them into an arguably much deadlier situation of a melee encounter with an agile sword specialist.

At least Sarens Virmire confrontation felt like an equal standoff, he escapes and you lose a squadmember but you still managed to complete your goal and at least you get some insights on the antagonist and the agency to choose who to save

The greatest indictment of Kai Leng as an antagonist: I decided on a whim to beat him to death with my bare hands on Thessia. I was playing an Adept. He lost horribly.

Kai Leng in cutscene: badass and edgy Kai Leng in gameplay: weak and a crybaby

My favorite part is that Anderson's "alarming" back story is basically "Yeah he was a pain in the @$$ but we shot him, so he ran away. But now he's back, so he might be stronger or something."