You're standing on a cold, sterile deck in the middle of a galaxy that doesn't want you there. The hum of the Tempest is the only thing keeping the silence of the Heleus Cluster at bay. Then you find it. A small console. A list of names. It’s the "Naming the Dead" quest, and honestly, it’s one of the most polarizing, quiet, and weirdly essential moments in Mass Effect: Andromeda.
Some people call it a "fetch quest." They aren't technically wrong. You go to a nav point, you scan a body, you move on. But if you look at me andromeda naming the dead as just a checklist item, you're missing the entire point of why BioWare put it there. It’s about the cost of colonial ambition. It’s about the fact that every single person who signed up for the Andromeda Initiative was a dreamer who, more often than not, ended up as a frozen corpse on a planet that couldn't support life.
It’s grim. It's tedious. It's exactly what being a Pathfinder actually feels like when the heroics stop.
What is Naming the Dead actually about?
Let's get the logistics out of the way first. You pick up this task on Eos, the first "real" planet you try to settle. It’s a radiation-soaked dust ball when you arrive. You meet a woman named Kiryl—she’s a medic, or what passes for one in a failing colony—and she gives you a simple, heartbreaking job. People are missing. They went out into the wastes of Site 1 and Site 2 and they never came back. She needs you to find them. Not to save them—they're long gone—but to log their deaths so their families back on the Nexus can stop wondering.
Scanning those bodies isn't just about getting XP. Every time you pull out your scanner, you see a name. You see a cause of death. Usually, it's Kett-related, or sometimes it's just the environment being cruel.
The quest is a reality check. Up until this point, the game tries to sell you on the "golden worlds" and the wonder of discovery. Me andromeda naming the dead forces you to look at the failure of that dream. These weren't soldiers. They were technicians, botanists, and families. They died terrified and alone, millions of light-years from the Milky Way.
Why the community still debates this quest
If you spend five minutes on the Mass Effect subreddits, you’ll see the divide. One side hates these "task" quests. They argue that the Pathfinder—the most important person in the galaxy—shouldn't be playing space-detective for missing bodies. They want high-stakes politics and exploding ships.
The other side? They get the atmosphere.
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BioWare has always been good at "environmental storytelling," even when the main plot gets a bit shaky. Naming the Dead is the epitome of that. It’s a slow-burn narrative. You’re literally piecing together the final moments of the first wave of settlers. When you find a body tucked behind a rock, you realize they were hiding. They were trying to survive just one more hour. It adds a layer of weight to the game that the flashy combat misses. Honestly, the game needed more of this. It needed more reminders that the Initiative was a desperate, borderline-suicidal gamble.
The mechanics of the search
You aren't given map markers for the bodies right away. You have to actually explore.
- Location 1: Near the first settlement attempts (Site 1: Promise).
- Location 2: Scattered around the research stations.
- The Reward: It's mostly narrative. You get some Andromeda Viability Points (AVP), which helps wake people up from cryo, and a bit of closure for the NPCs.
It’s worth noting that the quest is somewhat buggy for some players. Sometimes the scan doesn't "take," or the body is clipped into the terrain. If that happens, you basically have to reload or leave the planet and come back. It's frustrating, sure, but in a weird way, the jankiness fits the desperate vibe of Eos.
The thematic connection to the wider Mass Effect lore
Think back to the original trilogy. In the first Mass Effect, you spent a lot of time reading text logs on desolate moons. It was lonely. It was eerie. Andromeda tried to recapture that, but with a more modern, open-world lens.
When you engage with me andromeda naming the dead, you’re engaging with the central theme of the franchise: sacrifice. In the Milky Way, people died fighting Reapers—a clear, existential threat. In Andromeda, people die because they ran out of water or because a Kett patrol saw them moving. It’s a much more grounded, almost pathetic kind of death. It makes your job as Pathfinder feel less like a "chosen one" journey and more like a janitorial duty for a failing species.
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Is it worth doing in 2026?
If you're jumping back into the Legendary Edition or playing Andromeda on a modern rig, you might be tempted to skip the "Tasks" category in your journal. Don't.
Naming the Dead is the glue that makes Eos feel like a place instead of just a level. Without it, the planet is just a playground for your Nomad. With it, it’s a graveyard that you’re trying to turn into a home. That’s a powerful shift in perspective. You stop seeing the Kett as just "the bad guys" and start seeing them as the predators who hunted the people you're currently scanning.
Moving beyond the scanner
Once you finish Naming the Dead, the game doesn't give you a trophy or a parade. Kiryl thanks you. That's it.
But that lack of fanfare is the point. You're not doing it for glory; you're doing it because it's the right thing to do. It’s one of the few moments in the game where Ryder feels like a real leader rather than just an action hero.
If you want to maximize your impact on Eos, don't just stop at the bodies. Follow the trail to the "Ghost of Promise" quest or the recordings left behind by the various researchers. They all interweave. You’ll start to recognize names from the "Naming the Dead" list in the journals you find later. It’s a surprisingly deep web of lore for a quest that most people dismiss as filler.
Actionable steps for your next playthrough
To get the most out of this experience without getting frustrated by the "fetch" nature of the task, follow this approach:
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- Don't rush it. Don't try to find all the bodies at once. Pick them up naturally as you clear out the Kett outposts and settle the outposts.
- Read the UI. When you scan, actually read the name. Sometimes the game provides a tiny snippet of who they were. It changes the context from "object" to "person."
- Check the Nexus afterward. Talk to the NPCs in the docking bay and the common areas. The game doesn't always "ping" you to do this, but the dialogue often changes once you've made progress on Eos.
- Listen to your squad. Characters like Drack and Jaal have specific lines when you find these sites. Their perspective on death—one from a long-lived mercenary and one from a native of the galaxy—adds a lot of flavor to the somber task.
The "Naming the Dead" quest is a microcosm of Mass Effect: Andromeda itself: it's a bit messy, it requires some patience, but if you look past the surface, there's a lot of heart buried in the sand.