BioWare Adding Female Shepard to Mass Effect 3 Marketing

[SinorKirby]

Well, to be pedantic, Liara is from a single gender species, meaning that she isn't strictly female. That's splitting hairs though.

The Asari are a monogendered species, much like the New Mexico Whiptail. They have one gender (sex), and it is female.

Something Liara isn't, though, is a woman. A woman is a human female.

Thank you finally for other people remembering this.

Anyways, how is it that the series has a set canon for Commander Shepard when in the games the commander is in fact not a set character? They are who you make them to be, regardless of what their sex is.

EDIT: Wow, like 5 people in a row just said the exact same thing about female Shepard. Awesome!

 

[Choppaduel]

There's a male Shepard too? Huh, who knew?

lol, I know, right? Jennifer Hale ftw

 

[Akytalusia]

only 1/5 use femshep? i'm surprised. i thought her VA was more popular, so i thought she would have been too. guess not.

 

[Metalrocks]

always play as a female. but i do have a male shep who i tried to look like my self and make decisions how i would make them.
then i got my bad femshep. who i tried to make her look like rayne from the bloodrayne games.
weird it took bioware to create a femshp trailer but well. its about time.

 

[Dhatz]

you know what would work? if the cover had sideview of both genders standing back to back.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Personally, I have never seen what makes people think Hale's performance is better than Meer's. While Hale certainly has the better credentials for the job, she never really sold me on her performance in any respect. I honestly cannot complete a female Shepard playthrough because I find the performance so very grating.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Where do people keep getting the idea that maleshep is canon? There is no canon Shepard, only the default Shep they use on the box art (which understandably ticked off the people for whom the box art didn't match their own personal idea of the Commander).

How is any such rage (if it indeed exists) even remotely justified? There are untold thousands (if not millions) of possible Shepard appearances. Unless Bioware let fans order a custom printed box (at a hefty fee) how would you actually expect them to produce a cover that happened to have your interpretation of the character plastered on the cover?

 

[Dr Snakeman]

Cool. It's nice to see a bit of two-way recognition.

Now, I'm gonna bail before this thread gets nasty.

But before I do, I'll just leave this here:

(Huge spoilers within.)

You know, I had a thought: This video is of a playthrough of the game on the PC, right? Well, I have it for the 360. In this video, FemShep sounds a hell of a lot better than I remember her. When I played as her, Hale sounded as though she felt that this role was the most boring thing she had ever done in her life.

Do you think it's possible that they held different recording sessions for the Xbox and PC versions of the game? Because given the large PC gamer population of this site, it would explain why most people here prefer FemShep, while I couldn't bear to listen to her.

Edit:

Personally, I have never seen what makes people think Hale's performance is better than Meer's. While Hale certainly has the better credentials for the job, she never really sold me on her performance in any respect. I honestly cannot complete a female Shepard playthrough because I find the performance so very grating.

Oh good. Now we get a trailer ruined by FemShep's monotone robot voice. Beep boop.

This seems like more evidence for my theory. I checked out both of your profiles, and you both play the 360, and dislike FemShep's voice.

There has to be something to this. Does anyone know how to find out? It would explain so much. Maybe when they recorded for the 360, Hale had a cold or something. It would certainly clear up some confusion, as she has a reputation for being an amazing voice actress, but sounds horrible in my limited experience.

 

[Zhukov]

Do you think it's possible that they held different recording sessions for the Xbox and PC versions of the game? Because given the large PC gamer population of this site, it would explain why most people here prefer FemShep, while I couldn't bear to listen to her.

It seems unlikely.

I just don't see any reason for it. Why re-record a crap ton of dialogue when you already have all the audio good to go?

 

[infohippie]

Btw anyone get the feeling the choice system of Bioware is actually exceptionally silly and shallow after playing The Witcher?Anyone?I mean I always favoured Bioware for it's choices but it doesn't have the same drastic change as one would expect.I really hope ME3 changes that.

Oh yes, very much so. Although I felt choice and consequences in TW2 was simplified a bit over the first game. Both are definitely big improvements over Bioware's decision mechanics, though.

 

[Sacman]

They better fix the female hair... it always makes them look like Mrs. Potato heads...<.<

 

[Ian Caronia]

Bets on her cup size being at least an E, and generally fulfilling the 36-24-36 image?

XD Nice

So, wait, Bioware is going to market FemShep too? You mean, the marketing department is going to finally do what it should've done FROM THE FIRST GAME?
Congrats on catching up with the theme of your games ("you choose", with male or female being one of the first choices) so very late into the series.

*clap*
*clap*
...Huh? Oh, I think I left my baked GLaDOS-tato on...

 

[Hristo Tzonkov]

Btw anyone get the feeling the choice system of Bioware is actually exceptionally silly and shallow after playing The Witcher?Anyone?I mean I always favoured Bioware for it's choices but it doesn't have the same drastic change as one would expect.I really hope ME3 changes that.

Oh yes, very much so. Although I felt choice and consequences in TW2 was simplified a bit over the first game. Both are definitely big improvements over Bioware's decision mechanics, though.

The first one didn't have much an impact on the gameplay.But you still felt you were doing wrong choices.Infact I finished the game and felt "What did I do wrong?I thought I was fighting for ideals".Why did everyone just die...

 

[Snotnarok]

Makes me want to photoshop her onto the cover of the next game...if I wasn't getting that metal tin I would anyway.

 

[blankedboy]

Female Shepard is noncanon?

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS

 

[Xaositect]

Im not interested really, since femshep is too cliche "kickass chick" for my tastes, she looks boring, and Mark Meer just does an all round better performance. Hales performance, though she is a fantastic voice actress for other characters, just sounds emotionless and a fake attempt at sounding tough when she does Shepard.

(Most of that is opinion, but since femshep fans love to insecurely spout opinion as fact, I thought what the hell, I would give it a try too.)

 

[jackanderson]

Thank holy Christ! I played the demo for Mass Effect 2 twice (because I'm a PS3 bastard), once with Male Shep and once with Female Shep. And Jennifer Hale just blew Mark Meer out of the galaxy. Meer sounded more like he was reading the phone book to himself in a library when he was under fire in combat. Hale sounded like a gorram space marine. I wish no offence against Meer (the guy's pretty damn good elsewhere) but it's Hale for me every time. And that is not just my favouritism for Hale kicking in either (seriously, she's been involved in loads of my favourite cartoons as a kid. e.g. She was Numbah 86 in Codename: Kids Next Door!)

Actually, the marketing Shepard isn't even canon...

So why do they insist on going with the most generic grizzled space marine they could come up with? It just makes the game look generic. Especially to Joe Average who has never heard of Mass Effect.

Edit:

FemShep is canon. All others are non-believers.

You're damn skippy!

My Shepard looks like a cross between Stana Katic and Lara Croft, so obviously she's the best looking, and the perfect choice for the boxart.

Remove the Lara Croft section and you already have the perfect choice for the box art! One of the top 3 reasons I watch Castle; along with Nathan Fillion and just the show generally being awesome.

 

[TimeLord]

I don't like this, because it seems like a pointless thing. The gender of Shepard should not matter. By making trailers for both genders there putting a lot more importance on gender than I think they should be. I know it's just for publicity, since apparently some people can't tolerate anything with male Shepard for some reason, but I still don't like it.

Bets on her cup size being at least an E, and generally fulfilling the 36-24-36 image?

Come on, we know Bioware treats all their female characters with enough respect to not sexualize them. I mean just look at Miranda!

In all seriousness that's one of the things that always struck me as odd about Mass Effect 2. Bioware doesn't seem to sexualize women but Miranda is handled horribly in that regard.

I think the sexualisation of Miranda was to balance her as an apology for her being a complete *****! xD