Poll: Question for all the Mass Effect players out there

[SlumlordThanatos]

I've played both, but my default Shepard is a female Infiltrator, and I'm a guy.

Why? I'm not entirely sure. Partly because badass women saving the world/galaxy is awesome, partly because I want my player character to be something nice to look at.

Also because I enjoy listening to Jennifer Hale's voice.

 

[She-Pudding]

I'm female, and have played both. Female more often- I mean, I've played as some male most of my life anyway- but I almost felt obligated to play as a male. Same with the other bioware games. And... it's not too terribly different. If he was highly customisable and had his own branching paths, then I might be tempted to play more often, but... meh.

And I agree with the Datasnake:

... the male voice actor just doesn't sound right to me.

At least not untill the 3rd game.

 

[Magix]

Male here playing female shepard. For me games like RPG's aren't about finding the perfect representation of myself, because I'm boring. So I would rather go the direct opposite route, or at least try to find something more interesting. There tend to be more male protagonists, so a female one has the potential to interest me more because it's different. Also, they sound and look better. You know. Because I'm a straight male. But I'm not sure if someone will actually trace my IP and shoot down my house with RPG's for saying that because it might make me sexist or something. I haven't really been paying attention to the drama so not sure where the internet stands at this point

 

[PG]

I've played a male Shepard who kinda looked like Ben Kingsley but I find Femshep to be a more interesting, nuanced character. Male Shepard just grumbles a lot.

 

[giles]

Played both, but given the option I chose the standard male dude with standard face and all. I don't care that much because both voice actors are fine (male shep is better at delivering the awkward, corny lines though), but this being a Bioware game I wanted to start with a male because I didn't want to get hit on by all the dudes on my ship (fuck you, Anders) and it turns out the most boring character ever is the female romance option in the first game. No regrets there.
On a side note, Kaidan has yet to survive a single playthrough, because while Ashley is a religitarded, pseudo-poetic racist, at least she's interesting because I have something to disagree with. Kaidan's conversations are like a fist full of valium.

I know a few guys who play females all the time whenever they have the option, and mostly they give the butt reason, but I don't really buy it- if you're just staring at your character's butt all the time you're probably playing the game wrong.

This always bugs me. I mean I assume they don't actually stare at that polygon ass shaking for hours on end or I would have to question their sanity. Then are they actually insecure about their gender? Do they think everyone would point and laugh and go "haha you play as a girl, that's what gay people do"? I mean who gives a rat's ass which gender button they clicked, why even give a reason in the first place.

 

[Asclepion]

Femshep is far superior, especially modded Femsheps with custom appearance and loadout.

 

[Olas]

So this thread is only about gender in Mass Effect?

Well, I've said how I feel about playing as females before and the feeling still applies today.

It depends a little bit on how much that character's gender affects the game.

For example Metroid is my favorite series, and it obviously has a female protagonist, but the fact that Samus is a woman is barely relevant in any of the games. [sub]Other M? What's that? I have no idea what you're talking about.[/sub]

But when it comes to games where you choose gender I always go with male, it just feels more appropriate. Plus I can't think of a non-pervy reason why I'd prefer my character to be female.

So there, my character was a male infiltrator. A white strait cis male infiltrator for that matter. I'm not sure how the whole 'heterosexual' thing works though since I romanced an alien, who by all measure would likely lack any of the biological distinctions that humans associate with 'male' and 'female' but for convenience's sake was made out to be physiologically identical to a human female.

Seriously, that's something worthy of a discussion right there I think, how is having sex with something not even of this solar system even remotely plausible?

 

[The Goat Tsar]

I played Male Shep even though I mainly prefer to play female characters (I'm a guy). I guess I just preferred Male Shep's voice actor.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I'm a guy and have played the games in the series multiple times as both male and female PC, both paragon and renegade and I romanced multiple crew members. The only constant was that I always played Vanguard (I tried ME2 as an Infiltrator once, bloody boring. Whack-a-Mole was fun when I was 10. Gave up on him around Thane's recruitment mission). No option available for me above.

I know a few guys who play females all the time whenever they have the option, and mostly they give the butt reason, but I don't really buy it- if you're just staring at your character's butt all the time you're probably playing the game wrong.

This always bugs me. I mean I assume they don't actually stare at that polygon ass shaking for hours on end or I would have to question their sanity. Then are they actually insecure about their gender? Do they think everyone would point and laugh and go "haha you play as a girl, that's what gay people do"? I mean who gives a rat's ass which gender button they clicked, why even give a reason in the first place.

None of those things. Females are simply nicer to look at than males.

 

[DirgeNovak]

I'm male, and my first Shepard was a male.
But I have played throught the series four times now, alternating male-female-male-female. I've had Lewis, Kate, Ethan and Heather Shepard.

 

[Punkster]

Interesting discussion.

I personally played as FemShep (I'm male), not for my own titillation or anything but because through all the games my daughters watched and played throughout everything (excluding DLC) with me.

I bring up the titillation because when I was asked a similar question, while in a party as I was playing GTAV Online last year, my friends and friends of friends all thought I was doing it for cheap thrills. When in actual fact I was doing it for my kids.

My daughters rarely get to see any female characters in gaming, so when one comes along and it has the option to do so... I do it and if the game has customization, then I let them design her as they wish. Even though my girls do not get to watch me play GTA V, I feel that if enough people create a female character in their games, then just perhaps more games will come along with this option as standard.

In other games with these male/female options, for me the same applies.

Games such as these, have all been played by me with female characters...

Dragon Age 1 & 2
TES V: Skyrim
Saints Row Series
Fallout 3
Dragon's Dogma
Kingdoms of Amular
Tomb Raider
and
Watch Dogs

Oh that's right, Aidan is meant to be a bloke. lol. (sorry bad joke, I'll get my coat.)

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

I honestly do not understand why everyone loves Femshep. Her voice sounds so... Apathetic.

Granted, I've only played as Paragon MShep, and watched other people play Femshep, but still.

Honestly i find i prefer ManShep for paragon runs and FemShep for renegade runs. I guess it's just because one of my first encounters with Jennifer Hale was in Avatar: The Last Airbender as June (a "villain") so i got more used to her bad voice.

As an aside from all this; Does anyone have any thoughts on what the best class is for beating ME2 on Insanity? 'Cause i've been wondering about doing a run like that.

 

[TheIceQueen]

It's interesting to see how split people are. Some people consider Meer to be superior. Some consider Hale to be superior.

I'm in the latter camp, myself. Meer always came across as flat and monotone. Whilst appropriate in some situations, it bored me to death. Hale, meanwhile, has a tendency to overact, and the occasional line actually comes across bad because of this, but overall, I'll take someone who overacts rather than someone who doesn't.

The whole 'playing as yourself' bit is more complex with me, though. I can easily map myself onto both genders. I'm very fluid like that. However, when given the choice, I almost always choose female. It can be an interesting departure from the usual fare of games.

 

[Cidward]

My first playthrough - and primary go-to - is FemShep and I'm a female player.

That said, like a lot of folks who liked the series enough to do multiple playthroughs, I've also done MaleShep to get the different dialogue and romance options, and other minor story tweaks. I've played as various classes for the same reason, even though the one I most enjoy and consider my 'main' Shep is the Infiltrator.

I did the same with Dragon Age, and if I'm going to replay a game with various class/gender/alignment options, I try and do as many different ones as I can while I'm still finding it entertaining.

As an aside, yes, I definitely prefer the Femshep voice actor to the dude.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

I'm male and I played through as both. I did my first playthroughs with a male shep but had more fun with fem-shep.

 

[Johnny Impact]

-Guy here
-Played guy
-Went Soldier because I wanted to be a vanilla human in a universe full of weird, using buckets of skill to compete with everyone else's goofy magic powers
-On the scale of morality I pretended I was Captain Kirk. Ended ME3 with about 2/3 renegade, 1/3 paragon
-My Shepard was straight, I pursued Liara the whole time because, you know, Captain Kirk + blue-skinned space babe = boning
-Side note, I did make Shepard deliberately ugly. He had a chinless, simian appearance and looked much older than I think he's supposed to be

Generally if there's a choice I do roughly half guy, half girl. In Skyrim I had one of each, for example. If I play ME again it will be as FemShep.