In preparation for the upcoming release of Mass Effect 3, I've gone back to ME 1 and picked a character to playthrough a New Game + with so I could carry that character through ME 2...again. The thought behind this is that it's been so long and I've got so many Shepards that I've lost track of all the story paths that I've chosen, so I'm wanting to go through with one of my paragon FemShep's and one of my renegade MaleSheps, this way when ME 3 comes out I can just have those two and know exactly what's going on with them.
However, while deciding on which of my FemSheps that I wanted to use...I noticed why I was in this problem in the first place: I've got 9 frickin' Shepards! Each Shepard has been imported to ME 2, so they're all on both games. Each career has 80+ hours put into it...so yeah, guess I'm a bit of a Mass Effect nut.
So I was wondering, anyone else as crazy as I am when it comes to this? Obviously with 9 Shepards I've got a couple that are even the same class as one another...how about you all, my fellow Escapists? How many Shepards do you have? And what's the average play-time for each one?
And on a side note for another topic I was considering making, what is your "canonical" Shepard? Surely the majority of us have played through multiple times in different ways with different classes and such, but what's your favorite iteration of Shepard's story? (Tl/DR whiners can stop reading here, as it's essentially a mini-narrative of my infiltrator FemShep going through both games as a Paragon).
If you don't feel like getting creative and writing a little story like I did, feel free to just say paragon or renegade, or sum up your "CanonShep"s actions however you like.
Personally my "canon" is that Shepard is a lovely red-headed woman who grew up in the colonies. Her colony was attacked by Batarian slavers and she lost everyone she ever knew and loved. Upon joining the military, she was sent on an operation to the planet Akuze (spelling) where her squad was ambushed by a Thresher Maw and yet again, she was the only survivor. Having lived through such tramatic experiences, she will do anything to prevent the suffering of innocents, and is in general a calm and peaceful individual...however, she does have an instability. She is absolutely utterly unforgiving towards any unethical science due to being told by Tombs that the Akuze ambush was a science experiment. So she'll fly off into a rage if she hears that someone's been doing dirty experiments.
Upon joining the Specters, she immediatey developed a stand-offish position with The Council, very much disliking the fact that they refused to see the truth about Saren and the Reapers. As such she was prone to disconnecting the transmission of her reports to them, much to their chagrin. After saving the Feros colony from the Thorian, she went on to Noveria where she faced down a wayward asari matriarch and, seeing the Rachni Queen as yet another being that was being subjected to cruel experiments, she couldn't bring herself to destroy it. As such she set it free.
On the planet of Virmire, her krogan squadmate got pissed off at the fact that they were trying to cure something that had plagued his kind for centuries, however cooler heads prevailed and the standoff was resolved. Towards the end of the mission, however, Lt. Kaiden Alenko gave his life to protect the nuclear device that was set to destroy Saren's cloning facility.
When Saren invaded the Citidel, she persued him to the council chambers. She convinced Saren to call back the lost honor as a Specter that he had thrown away and as such he killed himself. When given the choice of attacking Soveriegn or saving The Council, she remembered that her duty was to protect the Council and everything it stands for...and so despite never getting along with them, she sacrificed human lives to ensure their safety before going on to kill Soveriegn himself.
After being killed in a Collector ambush, Shepard was ressurected by the rogue human group, Cerberus. Yet not even death could shake Shepard's morals. Despite being told to shove off by the council she saved and just, in general, fighting her way across the ghettoes of the galaxy, she remained a good and honorable person...mostly. She convinced Mordin that his work with the Genophage was horrible...he didn't directly kill millions of Krogan, but no matter how one looks at it his actions caused the deaths of millions of Krogan. So too did she help all her squadmates without compromising her ethics. Such a shining pillar of humanity proved to be well deserving of her squadmates loyalty, and with such an ultimate team working in such smooth cohesion, what was described as a suicide mission in blowing up the Collector's base turned out to be a walk in the park.
However, while deciding on which of my FemSheps that I wanted to use...I noticed why I was in this problem in the first place: I've got 9 frickin' Shepards! Each Shepard has been imported to ME 2, so they're all on both games. Each career has 80+ hours put into it...so yeah, guess I'm a bit of a Mass Effect nut.
So I was wondering, anyone else as crazy as I am when it comes to this? Obviously with 9 Shepards I've got a couple that are even the same class as one another...how about you all, my fellow Escapists? How many Shepards do you have? And what's the average play-time for each one?
And on a side note for another topic I was considering making, what is your "canonical" Shepard? Surely the majority of us have played through multiple times in different ways with different classes and such, but what's your favorite iteration of Shepard's story? (Tl/DR whiners can stop reading here, as it's essentially a mini-narrative of my infiltrator FemShep going through both games as a Paragon).
Personally my "canon" is that Shepard is a lovely red-headed woman who grew up in the colonies. Her colony was attacked by Batarian slavers and she lost everyone she ever knew and loved. Upon joining the military, she was sent on an operation to the planet Akuze (spelling) where her squad was ambushed by a Thresher Maw and yet again, she was the only survivor. Having lived through such tramatic experiences, she will do anything to prevent the suffering of innocents, and is in general a calm and peaceful individual...however, she does have an instability. She is absolutely utterly unforgiving towards any unethical science due to being told by Tombs that the Akuze ambush was a science experiment. So she'll fly off into a rage if she hears that someone's been doing dirty experiments.
Upon joining the Specters, she immediatey developed a stand-offish position with The Council, very much disliking the fact that they refused to see the truth about Saren and the Reapers. As such she was prone to disconnecting the transmission of her reports to them, much to their chagrin. After saving the Feros colony from the Thorian, she went on to Noveria where she faced down a wayward asari matriarch and, seeing the Rachni Queen as yet another being that was being subjected to cruel experiments, she couldn't bring herself to destroy it. As such she set it free.
On the planet of Virmire, her krogan squadmate got pissed off at the fact that they were trying to cure something that had plagued his kind for centuries, however cooler heads prevailed and the standoff was resolved. Towards the end of the mission, however, Lt. Kaiden Alenko gave his life to protect the nuclear device that was set to destroy Saren's cloning facility.
When Saren invaded the Citidel, she persued him to the council chambers. She convinced Saren to call back the lost honor as a Specter that he had thrown away and as such he killed himself. When given the choice of attacking Soveriegn or saving The Council, she remembered that her duty was to protect the Council and everything it stands for...and so despite never getting along with them, she sacrificed human lives to ensure their safety before going on to kill Soveriegn himself.
After being killed in a Collector ambush, Shepard was ressurected by the rogue human group, Cerberus. Yet not even death could shake Shepard's morals. Despite being told to shove off by the council she saved and just, in general, fighting her way across the ghettoes of the galaxy, she remained a good and honorable person...mostly. She convinced Mordin that his work with the Genophage was horrible...he didn't directly kill millions of Krogan, but no matter how one looks at it his actions caused the deaths of millions of Krogan. So too did she help all her squadmates without compromising her ethics. Such a shining pillar of humanity proved to be well deserving of her squadmates loyalty, and with such an ultimate team working in such smooth cohesion, what was described as a suicide mission in blowing up the Collector's base turned out to be a walk in the park.