The turians are a fictional extraterrestrial humanoid sapient species in the Mass Effect multimedia franchise developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts.

The turians originated as a vague idea for a birdlike, proud militaristic race by BioWare's writing department for Mass Effect, which the design team aimed to reflect in their features.

[1] The Bioware team was influenced by the space game Star Control II, with the Turians taking inspiration from an avian warrior race called the Yehat.

[3] The artists originally sketched turians without any clothing in order to explore their alien anatomy, but faced limitations in designing the species' bone structure as all squadmates shared a humanoid skeleton for combat animation purposes.

For popular turian squadmate Garrus Vakarian, he is given a blue visor, and later extensive scarring on the right side of his face from Mass Effect 2 onwards, as distinct visual cues.

[6] According to BioWare Montreal producer Fabrice Condominas, designing Nyreen was challenging as the team had no prior video game reference point during the pack's developmental cycle, and they wanted to ensure that the character's gender marker is unambiguous for her first impression.

Because Palaven's weak magnetic field is a poor shield from its sun, most of the planet's animal life developed metallic carapaces as defenses against solar radiation.

Its photosynthetic life is similarly impressive, shutting down vulnerable metabolic processes during daylight hours and repairing cellular damage at night.

[4] For example, Kirk Hamilton from Kotaku called the turians "talking catfish, with a beetle-like shell and a cat-like way of speaking and acting",[12] while Emma Kidwell from Polygon described them as "parrots with no lips".

[10] Susana Polo, writing for Polygon, drew attention to the turians' clawed digits and tough, metallic carapace as somewhat reptilian characteristics.

[15][13] Turian culture is modeled on that of the ancient Roman civilization, and is fundamentally egalitarian with no apparent definition of specific caste or gender roles: every soldier starts as private or cadet and earns prestige via promotions.

Some, however, abandon the society for various reasons, most commonly acts of lying, cowardice, nepotism, desertion, dishonorable discharge or a simple desire for freedom from the unyielding law and command.

The Hierarchy is considered to be powerful, stable, and proactive in suppressing perceived threats, with each member of the Council of Hierarchs known as "primarchs" in command of an entire star cluster.

[16][17] The turian economy is larger than that of the human Systems Alliance but inferior to the asari Republics in terms of size and power, with the role of business development primarily handled by a client race known as the volus.

[12] Many turians bear distinctive facial markings or tattoos unique to their home colony, considered to be both a badge of honor as well as a cultural relic from a bygone era in which the species as a whole were embroiled in civil war.

The turian fleet is most battle tested in the Milky Way Galaxy, its naval architects and combat systems engineers set the galactic standard for warship design, while its immense military-industrial complex is home to the most advanced defense contractors.

By the novel's ending, Saren discovers a massive starship of unknown origin, which sets into motion the events of the first Mass Effect game which occurs 18 years after Revelation.

The Normandy lands on the human colony of Eden Prime during a routine incursion to investigate an attack by the geth, a synthetic race of artificial intelligences originally created by the quarians who turned on their creators.

During the chaos, Shepard discovers an unearthed artifact of an extinct elder race known as the Protheans and learns about Saren, who murders Nihlus and leads the geth to search for another Prothean artifact known as the Conduit on behalf of the Reapers, a collective of sentient hyper-advanced starships that appear every fifty thousand years to wipe out all organic life in the Milky Way galaxy.

Shepard is tasked by the turian councilor with rescuing Primarch Fedorian from a military base in Menae, a moon orbiting Palaven, but discovers upon arrival that he has died along with the majority of the Hierarchy's leadership during the Reapers' initial assault.

The turian smuggler Vetra Nyx joins the crew of the Andromeda Initiative Survey Ship Tempest as a companion of its commander, the human Pathfinder.

The turians are featured as a themed skin for Anthem player characters, released on November 7, 2019, in commemoration of "N7 Day", an informal celebration of the Mass Effect franchise observed annually.

Presenter Cameron Robinson noted that most of the Mass Effect races physically resemble terrestrial animals in terms of appearance and compared the turians to crabs.

[4] She observed that the presentation of a human-turian romantic relationship as well as its complexities invite "interesting questions about either the potential exacerbation, or the rendering-unintelligible of sexual difference, as well as about cross-species desire and about the ontology of the natural and the artificial".

[25] [26] Zekany noted from her research that Watts’ remarks from an interview with Game Informer prompted backlash among players who "used the incident as an opportunity to criticize the industry’s general unwillingness to invent in diverse nonmale character designs", while others chose to ignore his comments as part of their personal interpretation of the Mass Effect universe.

[14] Mumu Lin from the Daily Californian said BioWare's decision, which she opined is based on "societally ordained concepts" of gender, almost gave the impression that the turians are a mono-gendered species in the same manner as the asari.

Lin argued that this is a result of the writers' anthropocentric view when coming up with a “diverse” world, and that unlike the krogan, there is no excuse for female members of a thriving species like the turians to be excluded from being encountered by the player character in an entire galaxy across three games.

[26] American electronic musician Baths wrote and composed a song called "Turian Courtship", which is included in a B-Side compilation released in 2011.

[27] An internet meme called "Marauder Shields" originated from negative player reception towards a portion of the controversial ending sequence of Mass Effect 3.