Do you think Commander Shepard is not a well written character?

[Engarde]

Simple as the title says.

The idea behind this is that most people agree characters in bioware games like mass effect and dragon age have interesting, well written stories. Personally, I agree on MOST counts, though I always found Commander Shepard to be bland and average.

You tend to be shoehorned towards huge poles of morality, as hitting a balance or whatever else will result in you being less effective in game.

Not to mention the infamous 'dialogue wheel misinterpretation effect'. I am sure those who have played mass effect may have experienced this at some point.

Which brings me to my next point, to be fair, all interactions with Shepard's story are limited by gameplay and keeping the gameplay open requires some leniency. As such, it may be fair enough to just say, yes, he is average, but he is the character you control and your options need to be limited so the game can progess.

In summary, I found shepard to be an average 'stuck at the tips of morality' character. Do you agree?

Disclaimer : Please refrain from flaming. I liked the mass effect games, I love all the other characters in it, just did not like shepard so much.

EDIT : I played him as a male, though I am not sure if sex changes the lines, or just the reader.

 

[Monkfish Acc.]

Well, maleShep (PORTMANTEAU I AM OFFICIALLY PART OF THE FANDOM) is kind of bland, unless you play him Renegade.
Mark Meer gives him a very military voice, which I can see the logic behind, but it's pretty dull. The sheer ridiculous hardboiled badassery of the Renegade is the only thing that makes him stand out in any way.

FemShep is more interesting. Jennifer Hale gives her actual, you know, quirks.
Or so I have been led to believe. I never got around to playing female.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

FemShep is more interesting. Jennifer Hale gives her actual, you know, quirks.
Or so I have been led to believe. I never got around to playing female.

And you can actually pick your class in a greater amount of detail. As for being well written, I wouldn't know. I didn't stick with the game long enough, just wasn't my thing.

 

[waive]

I liked the character of Shep, although I havn't played the male sheperd, so many Monkish is right with the voice acting have a lot to do with it.

Still like Revan more though. Really though the Side characters and over all plot to there games tend to be awsome, while the main character has always seemed a little meh, good, just not great.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Commander Shepard is more interesting and well written than, oh, say, nerd-jesus Gordon Freeman, that guy from bioshock and 99% of the space marines/chosen ones out there, so no, not really. And I love both MaleShep and FemShep's voice actors and think they give very good performances. I do hate the dialogue wheel not directly corresponding to what shep says, though, like in Dragon Age, especially when it leads to huge misunderstandings. But the paragon, renegade and neutral-ish paths felt, to me, rather natural and well-written for their purposes.

 

[DuctTapeJedi]

I sort of thought that Shepard was intentionally bland so that the players could project themselves onto him/her, and so the companion stories wouldn't be overshadowed.

 

[Engarde]

I sort of thought that Shepard was intentionally bland so that the players could project themselves onto him/her, and so the companion stories wouldn't be overshadowed.

Yes, that is a good point, and that is kind of what I tried to say in the text. But I never really thought about it that way, thank you for opening mine eyes.

 

[PurePareidolia]

I think it's intentional so not to overshadow the intent of the player - they don't want to write Shepard as having any character traits a player wouldn't, so he gets several sets of 6 lines, all covering a set number of opinions he/she could have, making it really hard to create an interesting character unless you actively try to roleplay one. Of course the fact that all-paragon or all-renegade are objectively advantageous prevents this, meaning shepard will always come across as somewhat one-noted, otherwise you can't secure teammate loyalty or something.

 

[CleverCover]

I thought the point was to make Shepard anyway you want, with you technically calling the shots and whatnot from inside this person. If you want to make it an exciting story, you can twist it to make it exciting and epic. If you just want to be the average person that's been given this overflowing plate of things to do, you can play it that way too. If you want to be an Ultra Mary Sue/Gary Stu, you can do that too.

I made four Shepards and they each have their own way and reason for doing things, based off the backgrounds and choices made. I like it like that.

Sort of what Twilight wanted to do I think...but way way way way way...
'three days later' way way way way way WAY better.

Now if you want an epic character made for you, there are other good games that can do that.

 

[Scarecrow]

Not really.

She's okay, I guess.

I have being meaning to ask you...Where is you avatar from? It's so cute!

 

[Lance Arrow]

I sort of thought that Shepard was intentionally bland so that the players could project themselves onto him/her, and so the companion stories wouldn't be overshadowed.

Exactly that.

Though I gotta say what annoyed me about Mass Effect 2 was the fact that the amount of paragon/renegade points you have was linked directly to whether or not you could choose that paragon/renegade persuasion option in several conversations and events.

Why? Because it basically forces you to be either one thing or the complete opposite of that if you want to experience any kind of success in that game. It doesn't give that feel of 'Hey, I've been to hell and back, literally. Shouldn't I be better at this? Oh wait, I haven't paid that quarian's passage off of Omega yet. Dangit.'

But that's just my completely-unrelated-to-the-topic $0,02.

 

[Vault101]

I wouldnt say not well written, shepard charachter isnt really "set" thats up to you as the player

PC's in general tend to be less defined as you help define then

 

[Superior Mind]

You forget to recognise that Shepard is the player character in an RPG game, therefore the character is restricted to the decisions the player makes. Not saying that Shepard's poorly written because you're playing makes him poorly written I'm just saying that Shephard has restictions which means he can't be as fully written as someone like, for example, Garrus can.

So yes, Shepard isn't well writeen as some of the other characters per se but there's an understandable reason for that.

 

[Serenegoose]

Nah, it's not Shepard that's well written - Shepard is competently written and nothing more. It's the other characters. Garrus, Wrex, Legion, Jack, Tali, and let's not forget Mordin. They're the well written characters. Unfortunately, despite the average quality of the dialogue, the lack of actual roleplaying is what lets the game down, with being shoehorned into one of two paths pretty forcefully, because if you don't go down them completely, you miss out bonuses that can give you bad endings.

 

[manythings]

Shepard isn't one character. The lead character in a JRPG is one character, Shepard is a lot of characters and you make decisions on your own to decide what that character is like.

See this is what i hate about people and their perception of morality in games, everyone says the exact same thing "You have to jesus or satan but nothing in between." This is true of some games (inFamous, Fable) but in Every BioWare game you never HAD to be super good or super evil. Being neutral or a little to one side doesn't make you "Less Effective" it just means you don't have the bigger options, the game doesn't suddenly end and eat your save if you don't have a high enough stat.

Nah, it's not Shepard that's well written - Shepard is competently written and nothing more. It's the other characters. Garrus, Wrex, Legion, Jack, Tali, and let's not forget Mordin. They're the well written characters. Unfortunately, despite the average quality of the dialogue, the lack of actual roleplaying is what lets the game down, with being shoehorned into one of two paths pretty forcefully, because if you don't go down them completely, you miss out bonuses that can give you bad endings.

You're not given a "bad ending", you're given the ending that Shepard would get. If you can't convince someone in real life to do something for you guess what THEY DON'T do it, this is how the universe works.

 

[Zhukov]

Commander Shepard is supposed to be bland and average.

Umm... well, sort of. Let me explain.

The developers clearly wanted a customizable character that the player could project onto. Think Gordon Freeman with a voice and the face of your choice. Whether or not they did a good job of it is debatable. It always worked fairly well for me, but I can see why some people wouldn't like it.

However, I fully agree with you regarding the paragon/renegade morality system. It basically just rewards consistency. If you try to walk both sides of the line you'll end up being cut out from the more beneficial conversation options. It's not a good system and I wish they would drop it.

PS. In my opinion, the female Shepard is characterised slightly better. The male voice actor isn't bad by any stretch of the term, he can certainly do a decent renegade get-the-fuck-out-of-my-way voice, but whenever he tries to express an emotion other then "grrr" it often comes across as kinda flat. The female voice actor is significantly more nuanced.

 

[Cazza]

Yes Shepard was poorly made. I had too many situations where I wanted to make one choice but took the other one to give me the bonus.

The idea of a character meant to be bland to let the player add themslef into the character doesn't work. Everyone always ends up the one extreme. Other then the moral system Shepard is just a generic shooter character.

 

[Doinstuffman38]

Contrary to what people have been saying, I actually found the female Shepard to be slightly (bland is too strong a word, so I'm gonna go with) less colorfull than the male Shepard. I still think Hale did a great job voicing, but I enjoyed the humorous dialogue and epic speeches more when Mark Meer was saying them.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Shepard isn't nearly as well written as the rest of the cast.

The acting is fine, even if Hale's turn as FemShep is vastly superior to Meer's ManShep.

But ManShep isn't that bad. He's just so weak compared to the rest of the cast.

But Shepard's writing leaves a lot to be desired. He/She has no mannerisms or quirks, as a blank slate for the player to project themselves onto.