Commander Shepard is Female

[TheSchizoid]

Due to the flip of the coin, my Shepard started female. I'm safe.

 

[Nimbus]

In the canon, he's male.

Says who?

It's that way by default. All of the trailers and references outside of the game refer to Shepard as male.

Yeah, because trailers are totally canon. Never mind that the books go out of their way to not mention his/her gender, and that you can choose his/her gender in game.

There are no "canon" version of the choices you can make in game. Shepard has no canon team, personality, gender, background, or anything else one can change in-game. (With the one exception that according to canon, he survives ME2.)

I would say that the "canon" would be whatever the default is. If you didn't play Mass Effect 1, then there's a set of choices there made for you Mass Effect 2.

I disagree. Bioware chose those choices because they suck. They probably wanted to discourage going with the default and encourage keeping your save file. Not because it is the official "canon".

 

[TaboriHK]

Who is on the cover of the game is irrelevant. If you made a female Shepard, then in your Mass Effect universe, she is a she. Simple as that.

 

[darthzew]

In the canon, he's male.

Says who?

It's that way by default. All of the trailers and references outside of the game refer to Shepard as male.

Yeah, because trailers are totally canon. Never mind that the books go out of their way to not mention his/her gender, and that you can choose his/her gender in game.

There are no "canon" version of the choices you can make in game. Shepard has no canon team, personality, gender, background, or anything else one can change in-game. (With the one exception that according to canon, he survives ME2.)

I would say that the "canon" would be whatever the default is. If you didn't play Mass Effect 1, then there's a set of choices there made for you Mass Effect 2.

I disagree. Bioware chose those choices because they suck. They probably wanted to discourage going with the default and encourage keeping your save file. Not because it is the official "canon".

Perhaps canon is a wrong word, but if you ask anyone about Shepard, they'll pretty much automatically say "he." My personal Shepard I play with most is female, but I even don't say "she" unless I'm referring specifically to her.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well I am sorry but Shepard is male and female. Shepard is whatever sex you want Shepard to be. Bioware has always been about choice and doing something like forcing the main character to be one sex would alienate its own fanbase which is a bad move. So no Shepard is not male and is only shown as such in trailers as males still make up a bigger portion of their fanbase.

I prefer man Shep, but I feel Meer shouldn't have been used. Who would I suggest? Well, you should read my posts more, it's Nathan Fillion.

That would have been amazing. I'm not he would fit Mark Vanderloo, but that could be fixed but putting Fillion's face in instead.

Either that, or Nolan North would have done well. He seems to have the hero part down, although he may be a little overused.

Perhaps selectable voices like SR2? Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Noland North, Steve Downes, Yahtzee, and Liam Neeson.

See, that would have been amazing with awesome-sauce and a cherry on top. I at least would have liked it if you could choose between accents. You know, Irish or British Shepard anyone?

Aslong as they don't go for the bad steroetypical Irish accent which is just a shit Cork accent.

 

[Cody211282]

I'm rather sure the one they use as cannon is male, what with him being on the box and in the commercials.

 

[Ava Elzbieta]

Or at least should be. Allow me to explain.

Slight spoilers ahead.

The first and most obvious reason I can give, is that Jennifer Hale is a better voice actor than Mark Meer. She can lend a much stronger humanity and flexibility to her portrayal than Meer ever could. Sure, male Shepard sounds great when he's making heroic lines or threatening people, but he just doesn't cut it on the human side of things. Jennifer Hale pulls off both and shines doing it.

She's probably the best voice actor of all time. Look her up if you want to see what all she's done. It's an impressive list.

The second reason is because of the romance with Jacob Taylor in Mass Effect 2. If you get into that, Jacob asks Shepard to share her problems. There are a couple of possible answers, but each of them lend a humanity to the Shepard character that simply isn't present anywhere else. There are other romance plots with emotion, true, but none of them give much of a glimpse into what makes the commander tick.

I think Commander Shepard should have been female from the beginning. Yeah, Mark Vanderloo is a great model for the standard Shep, but what's there is pretty much a standard RPG cutout character.

And on another argument entirely, I feel like Bioware should have given Jennifer Hale the spotlight here. She's done a lot for Bioware. I'm not saying Bioware did anything wrong, just that it would have cool.

And finally, a female protagonist like Shepard would have gone miles for the current big-breasted Lara Croft stereotype prevalent in gaming today. She's exactly what the male character is. It's a powerful argument that video games aren't the sexist things that some people seem to think they are.

I don't want people to think I'm complaining; I'm not. I love Mass Effect. I just think it may have turned out better if they had chosen a female face for the standard Shepard.

Anyway, please, let's discuss this.

This. I'm an obsessive Mass Effect nerd and have clocked considerably more in-game hours than I've done possibly anything else ever. (Ahem.) Also, as a female, it's not only remarkable that games as of late let me immerse myself further into the universe by playing a character of my chromosome set, but that female characters are given novel things like personalities and thoughts.

Your first argument is, by far, the best. After being treated to several runthroughs as female Shepard, I thought I'd see what the male Shepard was like. Five minutes in and his voice acting made my ear drums wish they'd been clogged with scrap metal. Does Mark Meer seem to think a lack of emotion = masculinity? There's more emoting and tone at a sign language convention.

The film route, should it ever materialize (god willing it won't), will most certainly elect to go with a male role. It's only in my fangirl prayers that casting Jennifer Hale would transpire. Still, without depth and heart to the character, the story falls apart, and that holds true no matter what the medium. Or what's in its pants.

 

[Shoes]

Both VA kinda suck. Fem Shep has that lame indifferent to every situation tone going while Male Shep is kinda hit or miss with his lines.

Just face the facts people.....Shepard's voice should have been Garrus's!

Garrus sounds so beautiful when he speaks....such an awesome voice....

 

[MiracleOfSound]

I don't like female Shepard's voice.

She always sounds somewhere between sardonic, snide and bored.

 

[RollForInitiative]

Perhaps selectable voices like SR2? Nathan Fillion, Adam Baldwin, Noland North, Steve Downes, Yahtzee, and Liam Neeson.

While an amusing thought, the raw cost would be prohibitive. Part of the reason Mark Meer was used in the first place was because he was fairly good and, being local talent, we could pull him in to re-voice new/changed lines again and again and again and again and...you get my point.

Dialogue changes frequently. We didn't have Hale do her recording until the dialogue was all but locked.

 

[DoctorObviously]

I wish I could choose my voice in the Mass Effect games. You could do that in Saints Row, and that was awesome. Of course, it would be a little harder...

Basically, I always try to be myself in RPG's, that's why I always choose a male character.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

I can't stand femi sheps voice to me it doesn't sound human...

Whaaaaaat? Did you not play KOTOR?
Bastila fucking Shan.

Not to mention Samus Aran, full stop.

OT: I do prefer fem!Shep's voice and attitude, in both paragon and renegade modes, but I must sadly admit that, as a male gamer, it's easier for me to project onto male!Shep.

Though, if as fem!Shep I could romance Tali, I'd go that route and never look back.

 

[Ava Elzbieta]

While the huge Male/FemShep debate goes on about voice acting and characteriszation of Shepard, the real gems in the Mass Effect series is the side characters. Shepard is a vessel and could be genderless for all I care.

I think this 3.36 scene is far greater performance by a voice actor in comparison to Meer or Hale.

That was an awesome scene. One of the best, me thinks.

 

[gl1koz3]

Hale's voice acting is less "doh, I am reading this text *yap* *yap*"

 

[fluffybunny937]

I guess Shepard could be female since the exile in KOTOR2 is female.

 

[Iceburg116]

I had to stop reading at your first point. But I'm sorry, are you trying to troll?
>Male Shep: "Because, it's a BIG. STOOPID. JELLYFISH." in perfect unison with the hand motion.
>Fem Shep: "Because it'sabigstupidjellyfish." And letting the hand motion go on four and a half seconds later.
I actually had to stop playing my Fem Shep file because I couldn't stand how bland her acting was.
She had one emotion: Emotionless.
"Joker. You better get that ship to ASAP mister." "Why are you collecting humans?" "You're a sentient machine?" ALL said so blandly and without any emotion I thought she was some kind of automaton construct.

But Male Shep? Everything he said seemed to have force or reason behind it. Even the simplest of questions.

 

[Internet Kraken]

Commander Shepard is neither male or female. Despite what BioWare claims there obviously is a canon Shepard, but I doubt that this Shepard has a clearly defined gender.

One of the things BioWare as said repeatedly is that there is no canon Shepard. Now this obviously isn't true though, since a lack of a canon Shepard would make sequels outside of Shepard's story impossible. You can make choices that have a huge impact on the world. If BioWare makes games in the Mass Effect universe, there simply has to be a canon Shepard. The choices Shepard makes are to big to simply ignore. However, there isn't any reason they need to define the gender of the Shepard that made these choices, so they will most likely avoid doing so. Hence while a canon Shepard does exist, it does not have a gender.

Regardless, I don't see the point in even debating this. I think Hale and Meer both did a decent job voice acting Commander Shepard. I don't think any of the romances for one gender are better than those for the other (in that they are all equally terrible). It doesn't really matter what gender the canon Shepard is anyways, so it doesn't matter.

Go before/WAY after Shepard's adventures. Wah la, no Canon-Shep.

Even if you went WAY after Commander Shepard's death I doubt you could get away with a non-cannon Shepard. From the looks of things, you'll be able to decide the fate of entire species in Mass Effect 3. The only way you could avoid mentioning that is if the game was set so long after the events of the first 3 games that it no longer has any resemblance to the Mass Effect universe. And it goes without saying that a prequel would not need a canon Shepard.

 

[Dr. wonderful]

Exile from KOTOR2 is a woman if you wish.

Personally, Shep is who you made him/her out to be.

Even though Canon she is a he.