Mass Effect has two leads, Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, but you’ll only hear one of them as Commander Shepard per playthrough. According to player stats, most people play as a guy, meaning Mark Meer is their Shepard throughout the trilogy.
However, Meer encourages players to give FemShep a go - purely so they can enjoy the performance of his co-star, Hale. Speaking with PC Gamer, Meer says that he’s a huge fan of her work, and doesn’t have any problem with players choosing to only play as FemShep because of her performance.
Dude, this is Shepard for me. I didn’t even think about playing as a male Shepard mainly because he looks like a giant douche. Like, the standard white guy. No front to anyone enjoying a male Shepard, but not really for me. Her performance is stellar indeed, though
I’ve done playthroughs as both. I think they both have excellent voice acting. But I think the character of Shepard as Earth’s military golden boy/girl works better with the standard military jarhead looking guy. IMO he embodies the generic “John Masseffect” energy better.
It’s funny because the games do let you customize the appearance, race, and hairstyle of Shephard, but to me he will always be that default settings buzzcut guy with a fivehead and big jaw.
I was showing my girlfriend the game a little and she said that the default male Shepard looked like an asshole. Shaved head no facial hair looks like a skinhead, I guess.
For the record… if your shep isn’t occasionally an asshole…. You’re playing it wrong.
(Like on the starter mission, knocking out the researcher. Or the fanboi on citadel.)
You know you can change his appearance right
I have, conservatively, two dozen playthroughs under my belt at this point, including the original trilogy and remastered versions. If I had to guess, I’d say im about an 85/15 split FemShep over MaleShep. Apparently I’m in the minority, but I much prefer Hale’s performance.
I’m curious as to the paragon vs renegade percentages for each character type. As in, do more people play FemShep as paragon or renegade? Same for MaleShep.
FemShep is the best way imo.
I’ve heard the weirdest excuses for why not though, worst ones were “why would I want to play as a woman, I’m a man”. Now, on your first playthrough absolutely but after that?
Why is that a bad reason?
Not a bad reason to want to play as yourself at all, but after the first playthrough or so then it’s time to start experimenting. One of the great things about RPGs is that you can be someone else entirely, and I think it opens us up to other ways of thinking. Playing as female shepard is at times a completely different experience, and you just want to explore it. It’s the guys who are afraid of playing as a woman, who think it’s not masculine or something weird like that. That’s not okay, drop the masculinity, be the awesome femshep bitch you were born to be. Plus to them, I like to say, “Why would I want to stare at a guy’s ass for 100+ hours?” Usually fucks with their masculinity a bit
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Did you reply to the wrong comment?
Lol I did, whoops.
I usually play as FemShep, but when I do play BroShep, he’s usually a Paragon, because dude just sounds like a Goodie Two Shoes Boy Scout. Plus Renegade BroShep gave off serious roid rage vibes to me in a way Renegade FemShep didn’t.
FemShep’s voice actingis so good, everyone should give it a try
Like. Yeah.
Absolutely.
Especially compared to games of the era.
The only negative aspect of FemShep is that she can’t romance Tali.
I finally finished the third game after all these years. New playthrough of the legendary edition. Femme Shep, but not the new default skin. Something about the face shape looks weird to me.
Also, I’d avoided spoilers all these years. The ending was as bad as everyone said. I’m late to the party , I know.
FemShep was in game sculpted until the third game, which is why it looks weird and changes so much from game to game. BroShep on the other hand was a 3d scan of Mark Vanderloo I believe.
I like how part of Meer’s logic is that he’s basically inescapable in the franchise otherwise, since he voices so many NPCs as well as BroShep. He boils it down to listening to him some of the time or all of the time.
Last year, I did another trilogy playthrough as FemShep while I also happened to be playing Guild Wars 2 as a Sylvari woman. My double take when I realized was pretty funny. Jennifer Hale is supremely talented and she lends an air of gravitas without getting into comical over-acting. She just has a perfect voice for a badass!
Yeah but only male shep says
I always tend to think in rpgs what gender seems to fit the kind of a playthrough I’m going for. For some reason if I do something like wood elf ranger it would def be a female. Bulky warrior with a 2h axe? Guy. 1h shield paladin who smites the unjust? Guy. Someone with keen knowledge of the arcane that freezes everything? Female. Cloak and dagger assassin? Female. Pyromancer? Guy. Witch? Female.
Sometimes I mix things up, like the paladin one. And sure, I also take personality into account which can switch it up.
Haven’t played mass effect so no idea about rhe “classes” in it.
I don’t even remember there being a femshep 😅, but now I have a good excuse to do a play through!
If I have the option to play as a woman in an rpg, I almost always take it. Not really sure why.
Not tabletop though. Not really sure why.
When I play RPGs, I don’t make myself. I don’t see the character as an extension of myself. I’d much rather watch a woman do cool stuff than some dude. So I usually make women characters. Maybe some part of my brain sees some cool dude doing cool stuff and goes “great. Now I’m competing with him” and is stressed.
One of my friends would always try to make himself in games. Skinny white guy with short hair and minimal facial hair. He saw himself in the game and liked it. I don’t really want to see myself get blown up or stabbed or eaten by a demon, but to each their own
In multiplayer games where other people might see it as an extension of real me, I more often play male characters. In tabletop, I’ve never played a woman PC. None of the reasons I do so in a video game really apply. (I’ve played plenty of woman NPCs, but that’s different)
Maleshep is objectively the wrong way to play mass effect
