Mass Effect has two leads, Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale, but you’ll only hear one of them as Commander Shepard per playthrough. According to player stats, most people play as a guy, meaning Mark Meer is their Shepard throughout the trilogy.
However, Meer encourages players to give FemShep a go - purely so they can enjoy the performance of his co-star, Hale. Speaking with PC Gamer, Meer says that he’s a huge fan of her work, and doesn’t have any problem with players choosing to only play as FemShep because of her performance.
I have, conservatively, two dozen playthroughs under my belt at this point, including the original trilogy and remastered versions. If I had to guess, I’d say im about an 85/15 split FemShep over MaleShep. Apparently I’m in the minority, but I much prefer Hale’s performance.
I’m curious as to the paragon vs renegade percentages for each character type. As in, do more people play FemShep as paragon or renegade? Same for MaleShep.
I usually play as FemShep, but when I do play BroShep, he’s usually a Paragon, because dude just sounds like a Goodie Two Shoes Boy Scout. Plus Renegade BroShep gave off serious roid rage vibes to me in a way Renegade FemShep didn’t.
FemShep’s voice actingis so good, everyone should give it a try
Like. Yeah.
Absolutely.
Especially compared to games of the era.
The only negative aspect of FemShep is that she can’t romance Tali.
I like how part of Meer’s logic is that he’s basically inescapable in the franchise otherwise, since he voices so many NPCs as well as BroShep. He boils it down to listening to him some of the time or all of the time.
I finally finished the third game after all these years. New playthrough of the legendary edition. Femme Shep, but not the new default skin. Something about the face shape looks weird to me.
Also, I’d avoided spoilers all these years. The ending was as bad as everyone said. I’m late to the party , I know.
Last year, I did another trilogy playthrough as FemShep while I also happened to be playing Guild Wars 2 as a Sylvari woman. My double take when I realized was pretty funny. Jennifer Hale is supremely talented and she lends an air of gravitas without getting into comical over-acting. She just has a perfect voice for a badass!
If I have the option to play as a woman in an rpg, I almost always take it. Not really sure why.
Not tabletop though. Not really sure why.
When I play RPGs, I don’t make myself. I don’t see the character as an extension of myself. I’d much rather watch a woman do cool stuff than some dude. So I usually make women characters. Maybe some part of my brain sees some cool dude doing cool stuff and goes “great. Now I’m competing with him” and is stressed.
One of my friends would always try to make himself in games. Skinny white guy with short hair and minimal facial hair. He saw himself in the game and liked it. I don’t really want to see myself get blown up or stabbed or eaten by a demon, but to each their own
In multiplayer games where other people might see it as an extension of real me, I more often play male characters. In tabletop, I’ve never played a woman PC. None of the reasons I do so in a video game really apply. (I’ve played plenty of woman NPCs, but that’s different)
