Ashley was one of the companion characters to be featured in the earliest demo footage for the first Mass Effect game; in a 2006 video, director Casey Hudson drew attention to her fully voiced interactions with Shepard and another squad member, Garrus Vakarian, where she expressed cynicism and exasperation at his alleged ethnic loyalties.

[1] She ties her hair into a bun, and wears a bubblegum pink and marshmallow white battle armor as her default appearance in the first two Mass Effect games.

[5] Another scene cut during development involved Ashley asking whether Shepard has any recollections of experiencing the afterlife following their demise during the destruction of The Normandy and prior to their revival by Cerberus in Mass Effect 2.

[9] She said working on a BioWare video game is intense as there is a lot of depth to the story and its characters, and that it is vocally stressful and more labor-intensive then other media due to the size of the project and its numerous possibilities.

Brooks credited voice director Ginny McSwain, whom she had worked with prior to Mass Effect, for helping her "tap into the character" as a woman soldier who is deeply religious and whose family has a strong military service tradition.

Later in the game, on the planet Virmire, Ashley along with Kaidan will opt to assist a salarian commando unit in their assault on Saren's laboratory complex to destroy data for the genophage cure.

Prior to the assault, Ashley may intervene and fatally shoot krogan squadmate Urdnot Wrex from behind after he draws a gun at Shepard in a confrontation about the genophage cure, if he is not convinced to stand down.

Udina is killed and Cerberus forces led by the Illusive Man's trusted assassin Kai Leng retreat in response, though the salarian councilor as well as Ashley may perish by the conclusion of the event; the outcome is based on the sum total of the player's prior decisions.

[13][failed verification] If Ashley accompanies Shepard on the final mission to the Conduit in London and the player has not accrued enough war asset points, she will die.

[23][13][24] Both Destin Legarie from IGN and Andy Kelly from PC Gamer expressed a personal preference for Kaidan over Ashley when choosing the Virmire Survivor in the first game.

[20][25] Horowitz argued that logically Kaidan should be prioritized over Ashley as the Virmire Survivor since she is "merely a straggler picked up on Eden Prime" while Shepard's history with him "extends far beyond the opening events of the story".

[24] Evan Narcisse, writing for The Atlantic, said her racist attitude "floated around as an annoying buzz in the background" until the scene where she unexpectedly shot and killed Wrex in Virmire, and noted that he did not hesitate to leave Ashley to her fate later on.

[26] Yussef Cole found her views about working with other alien races "troubling" and compared her shooting of Wrex to "faux self-defensive violence that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the way police in America react to black men and women".

[23] Matt Cronn from Geeks Under Grace, a website which covers popular culture topics from a Christian perspective, felt that the original Mass Effect fumbled on the subject of God and religion.

[31] A few PC Gamer staff members, most notably Chris Thursten who emphasized her staunch opposition to pro-human groups like Cerberus and Terra Firma as well as her willingness to question the infallibility of Shepard's decisions, defended and praised the character.