How Many Shepards Do You Have?

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RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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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. :p

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). :p 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. :p
 

ZehMadScientist

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Oct 29, 2010
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Hmmm, the Shepards I actually completed ME 2 with are Vince (My "canonical" Shepard), Keanu (The paragon), Boromir (The renegade) and Mayushi (Paragon FemShep). And in between are tons of other Shepards I didn't bother completing the game with.

Vince, an Infiltrator, is the Shepard I played through the game with as it were actually me standing in Shepard's shoes. I would respond regardless of paragon/renegade scores, though it could be considered a paragon run. I'm just too nice I guess.

Nice as I may have been, I wanted to be a BAMF too at times, so my paragon meter wasn't fully filled. Apparently you had to be a full saint to achieve that, so I did that with Keanu Shepard, a Sentinel. Though a lot of responses were satisfactory, I couldn't help but feel like a bit of a wuss in certain situations.

Then I decided to check out the dark side mass Effect had to offer: Renegade. This was the hardest playthrough out of all, with my Soldier class guns blazin', Boromir Shepard. I wouldcé liked it more if the renegade responses were more revolving around dark humor, you know, a jerk with a heart of gold. Instead, renegade makes you an utter asshole.

I haven't played Mass effect for a long time since then, and as ME3's realease is nearing, I thought I'd get back into shape, and started a new adventure with my first FemShep, Mayushi Shepard (Tutturu~, Mayushii desu~) *Ahem*, a Vanguard. As I loathed the renegade path for the most part, I decided to be a paragon with his BAMF moments.

Now with which one will I start ME3? I guess it will be... Vince. Yupperdoodles.
 

Screamarie

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Mar 16, 2008
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Well I only have 2 Sheps, but I have LOTS of different playthroughs with them. My Femshep, Faye Shepard and my Maleshep Fain Shepard. I kind of made them to be each other just a different gender and sexuality.

My FemShep is my favorite and I'm working on perfecting her right now. Most of my playthroughs are about the romances rather than the choices as I prefer to go full paragon, not because I'm scared of doing renegae, but simply because I love the image of the paragon Shepard. Yes, you may call me a hopeless romantic...or creepy whichever best applies, but I'm into drama as much as I am action.

So I had started with her in ME1 with Liara, but then in ME2 she met Thane and fell in love with him. But then I heard the news about being in trouble if your Shep had 2 different lovers (worried I'm going to get an ultimatum, save Liara or save Thane an I honestly wouldn't know who to choose) so I went back and started again at ME1, didn't romance Liara, and am now working on getting her through ME2 with Thane as her lover.

But I'll also need to go through and do a run of ME2 with no lover either since the news came out that there will be new love interests in ME3.

EDIT: Also I just had this thought. Isn't it kind of funny how the OP can just say "Shepards" and people know EXACTLY what he or she is talking about? I mean automatically, it's not Mass
Effect playthroughs or ME characters, just "Shepards". Maybe I'm just easily amused, but I just find it gives me a smile.
 

Zydrate

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Apr 1, 2009
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Approximately 4 or 5. But I have one "Main" one that I've done countless playthroughts with; because I can.
 

Worr Monger

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Jan 21, 2008
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I had initially done 4 Shepards through ME1 & ME2 (My main Shep having been played about 3 times... also, I'm currently replaying my main Shep right now in preparation for ME3... gotta get it all right). I haven't played a Sentinal or Engineer yet.

My insane plan is to re-create a Shep for each class.... My Steam account shows about 200 hours worth of ME1... and over 250 hours of ME2.... this number shall grow...

... such is my love of Mass Effect.

EDIT: Also... I may try a couple FemSheps after these... since I've heard a lot of people say how cool she is.... I usually can't roleplay as women... so we'll see.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Screamarie said:
Heh, I hear you loud and clear about the Paragon thing...really from my first playthrough of ME 1, I just couldn't bring myself to be very renegade. I'll make the random renegade decision every now and then, specifically if someone tries to act like a hardass, Kasumi (my FemShep) won't take that and will be more than happy to put the person in their place. But she's not a cold-blooded killer, so she doesn't push the merc out the window or anything like that.

That said, these last playthroughs with her I noticed that I was actually RPing the part. As I mentioned in my "this is my canon" story, she was mostly paragon and kind hearted, wanting to bring an end to suffering...but "evil" science set her off like nothing else and turned made her merciless (i.e. she happily killed the last scientist that worked on the Thresher project that involves her and Tombs). But ME 1 sets you in the lofty, romantic position of being all of humanity's bright, shining glory...a representation of all that man kind stands for on the galactic stage...ALL races have their eyes on you. Saddled with such a position, for the sake of humanity's image I felt compelled to be Paragon. Even in ME 2 which is MUCH more designed to have you go Renegade, my FemShep held true to her morals and stayed good.

As for the relationships, I am interested to see what happens if you fall for Liara in the first game and someone else in the 2nd game. My most recent playthrough, FemShep stayed faithful to her beloved Asari and just couldn't bring herself to get close enough to any of the other squadmates. She was friendly, to be sure, just not flirtaceous. As such in ME 3 my FemShep is all set up to resume her romance with the cute Shadow Broker.

Still gotta playthrough ME 1 and 2 with my renegade MaleShep though...I will say that a lot of your renegade statements are pretty funny...just because they make you think "God damn Shepard...you're really THAT much of a prick?" I have the most trouble picking renegade topics with my squadmates...I prefer to be their friend rather their their dictator. But I must steel myself, becase Xander, my MaleShep, don't take no shit from nobody...even if they're not trying to give him any in the first place. :p
 

AD-Stu

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Oct 13, 2011
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I've probably got about seven now, not including the one I'm doing the Lets Play thread with. There's at least one I've never taken out of ME1 and probably won't bother to (needed a biotic for a couple of specific achievements) and another that I started from scratch in ME2 just to see what happens - again, probably won't bother to continue with that one.

My "canon" one is a Paragon-with-a-helping-of-Renegade Soldier FemShep. She's the only one that let the crew of the Normandy die during the suicide mission (first playthrough, didn't realise it was going to happen) and she stayed faithful to Liara from ME1 to ME2. I'm pretty sure the Council died and Anderson got the Councilor job, Kaidan dead, Wrex alive, saved the rachni, saved the heretics, encouraged the quarians not to go to war.
 

RJ 17

The Sound of Silence
Nov 27, 2011
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Worr Monger said:
My Steam account shows about 200 hours worth of ME1... and over 250 hours of ME2.... this number shall grow...

... such is my love of Mass Effect.
Heh heh, you and me both, my friend. As I've mentioned, I just got done with a straight playthrough of ME 1 and 2....and now I'm about to turn around and do it all over again with my MaleShep. Good god I've spent WAY too much time playing these games!

AD-Stu said:
saved the rachni, saved the heretics, encouraged the quarians not to go to war.
I've gotta say that these are some of the points that I'm REALLY interesed in in ME 3...if you saved the Rachni, will there be a big wave of Rachni helping you out? Same with the Heretics...if you reprogram them, will the Geth come charging in the the calvery (spelling) and join in the fight? For that matter, will there ever be peace between the True Geth and the Quarians? Legion states that the Geth only attacked to preserve their own existence...from the sound of things, the true Geth have no desire for hostilities at all.

God, I can't WAIT to get a hold of this game and answer all these questions!!!
 

Beryl77

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I only have one. Not because I don't want to replay ME 1 and 2 but because I want to experience all three games with the character I've created the first time. The way he looks like, his character, his actions, I want to keep them to one character. That way I can identify much more with him.
I know that if I play multiple times with different characters, I'll lose track of how each character was when I'll play ME3 next month.
However, once I finish ME3, I'll play through the games with new characters but until then, I'll keep the one Shepard I have.
 

Smertnik

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Apr 5, 2010
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I played through both ME and ME2 about three times but every time I made the same looking Shepard and made pretty much the same decisions because it has proven to be too difficult to deviate from my first image of Shepard. So I have basically just one.
 

octafish

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Apr 23, 2010
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I have about a dozen Shepard's that I finished ME with but I only managed drag myself through ME2 twice, and at a hefty cost to my interest in continuing the franchise.
 

C F

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Jan 10, 2012
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One: my Paragon Vanguard.

I was thinking about playing through the games a Renegade over-the-top "Bald of Evil" infiltrator, but whether or not I dedicate my time to doing so remains to be seen.
 

XMark

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Jan 25, 2010
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I got six Shepards in ME1, two of whom have gone all the way through the campaign. My current one is my "canon" Shepard, who's about 8 hours into the game so far. She'll be the first one to go all the way through the trilogy.

I've only got two Shepards for ME2 so far, and only got all the way through with one of them.
 

Shock and Awe

Winter is Coming
Sep 6, 2008
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I actually have two Shepards despite my countless playthroughs, one is a Vanguard Paragon and the other is a Renegade Infiltrator(only in Mass Effect 2)
 

sage42

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Mar 20, 2009
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I have two. One is a Male paragon Infiltrator and the other is a Female Renagade Vanguard.
 

The Wykydtron

"Emotions are very important!"
Sep 23, 2010
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Two primary Sheps (one male mostly Paragon, one female mostly Renegade) and a boatload of other Sheps I may or may not import over to ME3. The canon Renegade choices you're stuck with if you don't import from ME1 turns me off using some of them, since only my two primary Sheps have Wrex and all that.

I'm planning to use a specific Shep for my Insanity ME3 run though. He stuck with me through ME2 on Insanity and dammit he's coming with me on this Insanity run as well!

He's also the only one who has Legion. Got him (and only him) killed in the first playthough, and I accidentally sold him to Cerberus in my second playthrough (was mashing Renegade options without reading them.) Maybe there's gonna be an upgraded Legion boss fight since Cerberus is against you now? Or some Cerberus guys with Geth shield upgrades?

Still don't get how Cerberus is all "LOL we're with teh Reapzors nao" TIM probably has some convoluted "steal Reaper tech, disregard other races" scheme going on... Dumbass, Cerberus? More like Durrrberus amirite!?

[sub]Fuck that's bad[/sub]



I have a load of unfinished Sheps as well, might go and delete them for tidiness' sake. I'm gonna quickly do it now actually and just check my other Sheps have the DLC done and stuff.
 

Smiley Face

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Jan 17, 2012
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I've had more Sheps than I've kept, and I've re-run them all at least once in each game. So far, I've got 3 Shepards, all varying levels of Paragon, 2 male, 1 female. I'm going to make a pure evil run before it comes out.
 

Monkeyman O'Brien

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Jan 27, 2012
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None. I had 1 Shepard for both ME and ME2 but then my HDD died. So yeah, I will wait a while after ME3 comes out and play all 3 back to back.
 

BabyRaptor

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Dec 17, 2010
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Just started the first one for the first time last night.

The first thing that stood out to me was that you can't jump.