Commander Shepard is Female

[Valkaris]

I definitely agree, Bastila and Mission both had much more interesting characters than the other henchmen in KotOR.

 

[ShotgunSmoke]

Shepard is male in trailers simply because it's easier to pick a cannon character for marketing, rather than use multiple Shepards, which would only confuse people. Also, Mark Vanderloo is hawt.

Romance choices for FemShep in ME2 suck. A token black character ("The priiize" *vomits*), a dying fish and Garrus. Don't get me wrong, Garrus is awesomesauce but I can't imagine a romance with him, he's a BFF. Why can't they give us a human male squadmember who isn't bland or a pussy? Zaeed was a step in the right direction, they fucked up by not including him in the original game, not giving him proper dialogues and making him old.

I love Meer's voice. To me, he's much better than Hale.

 

[SultanP]

Shepard will always be male to me. Hale is a great voice actor, wouldn't know about her work as Shepard though. I can't stand playing as a woman, feels like cross-dressing to me, which is why Shepard will always be male to me.

 

[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.

Canon is there is no canon gender or events.

..Okay, Dr. wonderful canon.

Happy? >_>

 

[CitizenV]

Of course, that doesn't mean femshep is a good character. She still represents everything wrong with female characterization, its just shes the rarer form (man with tits).

What do you want? Was Ripley from Alien just a man with tits? Feminists need to decide on an acceptable formula. First the "Bond Babes" were using their sexuality now their chauvinist wet-dreams the first females like Sarah Conner and Ripley were strong female leads not reliant on the trappings of men and now they're woman pretending to be men!?

Make up your fucking minds!

 

[geldonyetich]

Is it really that hard to accept that Commander Shepard's sex is intended to be decided by the individual player? My Commander Shepard is male, your commander Shepard may be female, but these are not truly conflicting things given that we've separate instances of the story.

 

[Valkaris]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think the female Shepard is infinitely more interesting than the male version. I thought the same thing about female Revan in KoToR. It's just so much more compelling to have a strong, yet vulnerable, female character as the hero in an epic adventure, and frankily, I think Bioware writes their women better than their men, for the most part.

Honestly, that is a HUGE compliment to them, and they really ought to take advantage of that more by making some of their default heroes female. But perhaps it would scare off some part of their market, I don't know.

Definitely, in KotOR Bastila and Mission where far more interesting characters than your other henchmen.

 

[Tom Phoenix]

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.

I actually completely agree with you. To me, the male Shephard feels like a generic sci-fi hero, whereas the female Shephard seems to give her character a unique vibe.

Either way, however, I must praise BioWare for making both options viable. As female Shephard, I never felt the character was ever "out of place".

 

[Infernai]

Last i checked, i think Bioware said that Shephards Gender is up to the player and there really isn't a canon one.

On the subject of Femshep being Canon, meh i really don't care either way to be perfectly honest...although on the subject of good female leads, and i think i have to delve into alot of suppressed psyches in order to bring this Information: Apparently the Jedi Exile from Kotor 2 is actually meant to be canonically Female, but again people seem to have supressed that game rather deep for some reason or another *shrug*

 

[austin9993]

Most gamers in the shooter/rpg genre are males. Therefore, the default is male. Simple as that.

Well put.

 

[C95J]

Most gamers in the shooter/rpg genre are males. Therefore, the default is male. Simple as that.

any proof of that?

 

[austin9993]

I loved kotor2 <3

 

[imaloony]

Best voice actor EVER? Well, I don't know about that.

What about Steven Blum? That guy has been in tons of Anime and Games and he has the voice of a god.
Or how about Keith David? He played Captain Anderson in Mass Effect and The Arbiter in Halo, and he's pretty damn good too.
Oddly enough, both of these guys have done work for Bioware (David, as I said, having played Captain Anderson, and Blum having a minor role as a Dwarven Shopkeeper in Dragon Age: Origins as well as Wilson in Mass Effect 2.)

But, she is pretty good. I'm not sure if I prefer her over male Shepard or not (personally, I like them both), but she's definitely good at what she does.

I do have a few female Shepard's, and although I think the hair design for a female Shepard with a ponytail looks fucking stupid because the hair has absolutely no depth, I still enjoy playing as both sides of the sex spectrum.
Wait, that didn't come out right.

 

[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.

Well, Shep saving the galaxy and then not dying is canon, so it could also be said that saving everyone again will be canon. Set it a little less than 400 years later (if you want to do a shout out, 2517) so that it's just the Legend of Shepard and you can find the SR-2.

How does what you just said negate my point about being able to decide the fate of entire species, meaning that there has to be a canon Shepard?

 

[RaziTheRed]

I really like both, this arguement only serves to divide the ME fanbase.

 

[Demongeneral109]

Fem-Shep is far and away better nyoro~!

 

[The Random One]

That is so right. Some time ago I saw a list of 'manliest men in gaming' and Shepard was there. The gal who did the list said she didn't play ME and put him there because the people she interviewed mentioned him a lot, but to me Shepard is and will always be a girl.

In fact, she's the same girl that was my character in Saints' Row 2, Fallout 3 and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4. I'm... having some trouble consolidating her storyline.

 

[zHellas]

FemShep>ManShep.

Fact.

I wouldn't mind seeing alternative box arts, some with ManShep and some with FemShep.

Is that too much to ask?

Spoiler

Spoiler

Hawtness.

The first one looks like an evil doll-version of Dr. Chakwas, but I do like the 2nd one.

OT: Why can't we have Schrödinger's Shepard? Both male AND female!