Mass Effect's Commander Shepard "Originally a Woman"

[Baresark]

I see... Bioware hasn't been in the news lately since DA:I released... so someone has to come forward and say something that sounds really progressive. Eh, each to their own. I'm with some of the other comments on here and feel that "originally" anything is utterly meaningless.

Also, love some of the slams on male Shep here, as if the gender you chose matters one ioto. It does not. The story was the same no matter what.

 

[josemlopes]

And?
Halo was originally PC exclusive.

Actually, it was originally gonna be released exclusively for the Dreamcast, and when the Dreamcast tanked it was going to be released for the PS2, Xbox, and PC. Other than that, your point is entirely correct. :3

Actually it was for Mac, not the Dreamcast.

OT: This would be somewhat worthy of a tweet with so much obvious bragging if they actually made the female character the main one isntead of even by the last game it still being the alternative one that even needs a vote to decide what kind of female character gets to be in the alternative cover because in the end it isnt defined at all.

All it is is them using animations from their last project that had a female character as the lead one.


And then there is this:

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Quick! Somebody post this to dumblr! We've found a manspreader!

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Maybe if they had continued with a female shepard from the start we wouldn't have had that asinine "contest" to design the female Shepard. "OMG SHE'S A BLONDE SHE LOOKS LIKE A BIMBO!" *Changes hair to Red* "OMG I WANNA FUCK HER BEST EVAR!"

Perhaps they could have done a render of a real person's face like they did with Vanderloo for ManShep/Sheploo. The female default for ME3 looks awful with some really weird proportions. Lantern Jaw that would make the Crimson Chin jealous.

 

[Risingblade]

So in other words they decided not to be sexist and let you play as either gender, ok .-.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Totally and completely useless trivia, stuff goes through so much change during development... Shepard was originally going to be called one of 200 names, he was going to be a little shorter, or maybe a little taller. I don't know fellas. Characters have 1,001 iterations before devs decide on one.

 

[Shocksplicer]

I feel sorry for Mark Meer. I mean, having the entire fanbase for your most recognized role constantly say that someone else does it better? The man put as much time and effort into his character as Hale did, it must be a bit rough. Can't think of any other situation where two people played the same role at the same time, I imagine it's a pretty unique form of embarrassment for the man.

 

[AntiChri5]

I feel sorry for Mark Meer. I mean, having the entire fanbase for your most recognized role constantly say that someone else does it better? The man put as much time and effort into his character as Hale did, it must be a bit rough. Can't think of any other situation where two people played the same role at the same time, I imagine it's a pretty unique form of embarrassment for the man.

Nah, Meer is fine. More then 80% of players play MShep. The Femshep fans are just really passionate, and with good reason. Personally, i prefer Hale's Shepard over Meer's but that doesn't mean Meer isn't a good VA. He's excellent.

 

[LazyAza]

Femshep is the only shepard as far as I'm concerned. The 80% who only played male shep played the series wrong.

Especially if they only picked soldier class for all three games. Holy crap talk about the most boring possible experience you could have with a series that features an amazing female lead and bad ass biotic powers that make combat 10 times more fun.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

Femshep is the only shepard as far as I'm concerned. The 80% who only played male shep played the series wrong.

Especially if they only picked soldier class for all three games. Holy crap talk about the most boring possible experience you could have with a series that features an amazing female lead and bad ass biotic powers that make combat 10 times more fun.

Maleshep is the only shepard as far as I'm concerned. The 80% who only played male shep just prove that I am right and that they played the game right.

Especially if they stuck with one class for all three games, something like the soldier class. Holy crap imagine how stupid it would be to not get to play with the awesome guns and buff the awesome characters that this series features. Man, that makes combat 10 times as fun.

...

Da da da dun dun, OPINIONS!

 

[mad825]

Femshep is the only shepard as far as I'm concerned. The 80% who only played male shep played the series wrong.

Especially if they only picked soldier class for all three games. Holy crap talk about the most boring possible experience you could have with a series that features an amazing female lead and bad ass biotic powers that make combat 10 times more fun.

Poe's law

I'm not quite sure if you're being serious because there's no right way to play the game as you play it your way .

 

[james.sponge]

Femshep is the only shepard as far as I'm concerned. The 80% who only played male shep played the series wrong.

Especially if they only picked soldier class for all three games. Holy crap talk about the most boring possible experience you could have with a series that features an amazing female lead and bad ass biotic powers that make combat 10 times more fun.

I don't know man, when I first entered the game as femshep they only thing I could think about was "it that Bastila? nope can't play it like that, gotta delete this character", it's not that she was bad in it, I just played KOTOR so much and associated her voice with this particular character that I couldn't force myself play as her.

As for classes, well ME was never really a tactical experience and wasn't really that difficult, playing as soldier is just the most efficient way to go through the game. There aren't that many abilities that actually make a difference in the game, using biotics looks pretty but it doesn't really accomplish much. If BW wasn't too busy ripping off Gears of War and appealing to blockbuster biodrone crowd they would incorporate systems found in Parasite Eve, Fallout or any other fun game and actually tried to create a complex game in which different team compositions and character builds would allow you to approach problems from different perspectives, making each playthrough different. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe ME even has enemies which are immune to certain types of attacks, throwing different shit does the same thing.

 

[Aaron Sylvester]

Besides the voice acting, if I'm going to be staring at my character's backside for 15+ hours...might as well be a female backside
(don't ask what I get up to in Skyrim ).

 

[Karadalis]

The marketing rests completly on EAs shoulders thought. All Bioware could do was to beg EA to include femshep and show them some numbers.

And even then less then 22%s of Sheps where female.. so i say EA was not off about not making femshep the focus of their marketing campaign. Marketing is hella expensive and sometimes makes up to half the total costs of a game (especially with EA titles)

Wasting it on a barely existing demographic is the epitome of stupid

Also it was the first animation... "was originally a woman" has jack shit to do with anything. A more apropiate title would have been "the first animation for Mass effect was that of a woman"

But i guess thats not clickbaity enough in the current enviroments of minefields that armchair feminism has turned gaming websites into

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Well having default Shep be a man was better for the series. It set a better tone and made the relationships with the companions more meaningful. The brotherhood and camaraderie with Wrex, Garrus et all made it feel like shepard was truly commanding a ragtag, disparate multi-species, elite team against galactic odds. Both voice actors were great in their roles and made role-playing a paragon or renegade equally enjoyable.

 

[DementedSheep]

And yet femshep still ended up being the one with lower resolution textures, using Msheps animations even when it caused floating due to her arms being thinner and only got marketing at all in the 3rd game. You could be forgiven for not even realising you didn't have play default shep before buying the game.

 

[Harry Mason]

What do you mean, "originally a woman?" Commander Shepard is a woman...

Seriously, though, I don't understand how anyone could have possibly played with Dudeshep. Hale's VO was amazing, and the male voice actor sounded like a gym rat on sedatives. His voice was like nails on a chalkboard, I swear...

 

[SmugFrog]

Neat! I kinda wonder what it would have been like had they kept the story linear with Commander Shepard being permanently a female character.

It would've been red blue or green, pretty much the same as it was.

 

[BoredRolePlayer]

What do you mean, "originally a woman?" Commander Shepard is a woman...

Seriously, though, I don't understand how anyone could have possibly played with Dudeshep. Hale's VO was amazing, and the male voice actor sounded like a gym rat on sedatives. His voice was like nails on a chalkboard, I swear...

There is this amazing thing called "People have different tastes". Might help you understand why people like things you don't like.

 

[waj9876]

So does this actually prove anything? All it shows is that one of the first animations made was for femshep.

This is like looking at an interview for the newest Zelda game or something, seeing that the first animation for Link was with the bow instead of the sword, and insisting that proves the game was originally planned to be bow only.

That said, while I do actually prefer femshep's voice actor, I prefer to play as a maleshep.