It always seemed odd to me that the male version of Commander Shepard always was billed as the 'canon" version of Commander Shepard. It was especially curious considering she had her own voice actor that I always felt was superior to the male voice actor. Maybe when the Shepard "arc" of the Mass Effect universe comes to a close they can something like KOTOR vs. KOTOR II when it comes to the main charcter. For those that are unaware Darth Revan from the original Knights of the Old Republic in the Star Wars canon is male but the canon version of The Jedi Exile in Knights of the Old Republic II is female. To me this was always a fun little touch that was interesting for those that care that seriously about the Star Wars mythos. But it would be an interesting twist that isn't that big of a deal but I would at least look forward to it.

Now it's not like I'm going to go on a massive feminist rant. Nor am I going to talk about how the only reason why I care about female Shepard is because she is sexually appealing to me. Instead I always felt like FemShep was a better character especially in Mass Effect 2. When it came to the romance options female Shepard had the better characters I could have a relationships with specifically Garrus and Thane. In Mass Effect 1 however I want the record to state that I think that Kaidan Alenko is one of the most boring characters I have ever seen in a BioWare game and I did not hesitate to cheat on his ass when presented the option. Also worth talking about is how I think her voice actor is much better than the male voice actor for Shepard. For the male version of Shepard he always seemed very serious even when I selected the renegade options during dialogue sessions. With female Shepard she always seemed snarky and self aware which is exactly how I would carry myself if I was motherfucking Commander Shepard, "Savior of the Universe." Also BioWare always had these little genius touches in their NPC's dialogue where you got a faint sense of sexism in characters that would underestimate female Shepard, and that made it all the more gratifying when I kicked their butt.

I also never really have liked the look of the default male Shepard in the Mass Effect series. Something about him feels...off if you will. Yes I know I could have customized the look of him. But the default version of either Shepard are the versions that animate best and look superior to any abominations you can create. I always tune out when BioWare talks about how you can customize your character. Partly because no matter how much I try the only thing I end up creating is space Bruce Willis or an even more ugly version of myself. All I ever did to female Shepard was make her hair the most brightest color of pink I could possibly make to just further establish that this is the future and in the future people have neon colored hair.

So with that I concluded my mixed messaged filled blog about female Shepard. Who in my books at least is the one true Shepard in the Mass Effect universe.

It always seemed odd to me that the male version of Commander Shepard always was billed as the 'canon" version of Commander Shepard. It was especially curious considering she had her own voice actor that I always felt was superior to the male voice actor. Maybe when the Shepard "arc" of the Mass Effect universe comes to a close they can something like KOTOR vs. KOTOR II when it comes to the main charcter. For those that are unaware Darth Revan from the original Knights of the Old Republic in the Star Wars canon is male but the canon version of The Jedi Exile in Knights of the Old Republic II is female. To me this was always a fun little touch that was interesting for those that care that seriously about the Star Wars mythos. But it would be an interesting twist that isn't that big of a deal but I would at least look forward to it.

Now it's not like I'm going to go on a massive feminist rant. Nor am I going to talk about how the only reason why I care about female Shepard is because she is sexually appealing to me. Instead I always felt like FemShep was a better character especially in Mass Effect 2. When it came to the romance options female Shepard had the better characters I could have a relationships with specifically Garrus and Thane. In Mass Effect 1 however I want the record to state that I think that Kaidan Alenko is one of the most boring characters I have ever seen in a BioWare game and I did not hesitate to cheat on his ass when presented the option. Also worth talking about is how I think her voice actor is much better than the male voice actor for Shepard. For the male version of Shepard he always seemed very serious even when I selected the renegade options during dialogue sessions. With female Shepard she always seemed snarky and self aware which is exactly how I would carry myself if I was motherfucking Commander Shepard, "Savior of the Universe." Also BioWare always had these little genius touches in their NPC's dialogue where you got a faint sense of sexism in characters that would underestimate female Shepard, and that made it all the more gratifying when I kicked their butt.

I also never really have liked the look of the default male Shepard in the Mass Effect series. Something about him feels...off if you will. Yes I know I could have customized the look of him. But the default version of either Shepard are the versions that animate best and look superior to any abominations you can create. I always tune out when BioWare talks about how you can customize your character. Partly because no matter how much I try the only thing I end up creating is space Bruce Willis or an even more ugly version of myself. All I ever did to female Shepard was make her hair the most brightest color of pink I could possibly make to just further establish that this is the future and in the future people have neon colored hair.

So with that I concluded my mixed messaged filled blog about female Shepard. Who in my books at least is the one true Shepard in the Mass Effect universe.

Man I think it was a last bombcast where Casey was asked about FemShep and why she's not in more of the advertising and he just said we are sticking to our guns with the advertising and even though we give equal of our attention to FemShep in the game we didn't want to confuse people in the advertising. 
 
I'm a bit pissed they caved in... 
 
It's like if they did advertising with a custom faced male Shepard is just confusing and not right. They pay someone for MaleShep's face for a reason and FemShep doesn't have a face model last time I checked.

I feel the other way around about the voice acting.  
 
Fem Shep sounds too serious and over dramatic at times and Male Shep comes off as a sarcastic, deadpan dick head. 

I like Female Shepard better than her male counterpart, so I'm not one to complain. Not that I would, otherwise.

I read something the Dragon Age guys posted on this topic once.
Basically he said that majority of the player are male and they play a male character so in order to market the game to appeal to the biggest group they choose a male lead. He said that they try their best to release concept art and screen shots of the female lead but don't feature them in trailers.

It's cool they are doing this but the reasons for it are sound

  ManShep has sarcastic snarkyness to him.

Lady Shepard was way too...I'll use 'butch' for lack of a better term, in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. It was just weird. Bioware did a much better job with lady Hawke in Dragon Age 2.

I'm sorry but no, keep the main focus on the male Shepard for this series. If you want to change that for a new IP then please go ahead. (Rant; read at own peril)  I know this is not at all what you are trying to get at, but not everything in society has to be attributed to sexual equality in terms of being politically correct/fair.  Which I believe is the main driving factor behind many similar moves in pop culture. I'm tired of the feminist movement for equal rights being grossly disfigured into some kind of Unisex agenda. (End Rant)
 
I don't want my main character in a war story to be sexually attractive; i want him to be disfigured by the trials of endless conflict emotionally and physically. I want him to be socially inept, as a trained mass killer. People like Shepard don't make relationships during wartime, more so they destroy those relationships. You can read about countless occasions where families of "elite" soldiers fall apart due to the troubles of societal reintegration. That is the story i want to experience.
 
I want the option to kick off a team member that tries to push sexual advances on me, as there is no place for such things in such a squad that Shepard commands. I want to be able to shoot any of the characters if they disobey my commands or break my trust. This isn't degrassi the next generation, worlds are at stake the survival of civilization rests on his shoulders, there's a time and place for courting.
 
This is the main reason i played through mass effect 2 with Grunt and Morinth. They're characters that seem to understand what’s at stake and what needs to be done. I don't want someone with emotional baggage having philosophical dilemma’s mid-life or death situation.
 
There are other action stories where a romantic engagement has a place, but not when its on the scale of the mass effect story line. For instance James Bond is the perfect type of action story for some sexual tension.

DAY ONE PURCHASE.

@Beaudacious: I wasn't aware that including FemShep on the box art of the collector's edition of the third game in a series that many fans have been asking for would in any way destroy your ability to play the game you want to. Especially when there has never been a focus on "male Shepard," since Shepard himself/herself is only a blank slate that the player fleshes out through interactions and decisions in that game.

I also fail to see how a female Shepard couldn't be any of those things that you listed.

who is this ManShep you speak of? it's nice Bioware finally decided to put their protagonist on the front of the gamebox, i always thought it was weird they didn't do that before

But girls don't play games, so who cares?

They need a good looking (as in 'high quality') default Fem Shep first, and she'd better look like a high quality version of my Fem Shep.

So im guessing, she is on the back of this tinbox along with maleshep then?

Edit: Also wtf is that 'robotic dog'?

The male version of Commander Shepard was always shown probably because more male players actually by the game.

Well, that's cool. I guess.

But girls don't play games, so who cares?

@ALIENX said:

The male version of Commander Shepard was always shown probably because more male players actually by the game.

Bioware also quote data that suggests that some obscene amount (like 80%) of people just play the game with default male Shepard. So them catering to the demands of a very minor but very vocal minority of their fan base is pretty rad.

I played as female Shepard, she was alright... put it this way, she didn't annoy me?

Too bad they didn't just release a boxart for both male and female Shep from the very beginning. But that would of then forced them to pay for the permission to use someone else's face, though, and that would of cost money they simply weren't eager to give out, I guess.

@ALIENX said:

The male version of Commander Shepard was always shown probably because more male players actually by the game.

Bioware also quote data that suggests that some obscene amount (like 80%) of people just play the game with default male Shepard. So them catering to the demands of a very minor but very vocal minority of their fan base is pretty rad.

I prefer Jennifer Hale's performance in both games, so I've played as the female Shepard. Though I can't say having the male Shepard on the box has made any real difference to me. What do you do with all the different games that allow you to change the look of your character? It makes a lot of sense to pick one and stick with it. As for "canon" ... I never got the sense that the sex of the character had anything to do with anything. In fact, I'm not even sure you can really even say there is a "canon" Shepard, since your choices carry over from one game to the next and the developers don't force you to start with the decisions they prefer. There certainly is a Shepard they chose to be on the cover, but I'm not sure I'd call it "canon" so much as "default." That was the huge innovation with this series, right? No forced canon-changes in sequels.

Men are better than women

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

Shepard is a dude.

@ALIENX said:

@HubrisRanger said:

@ALIENX said:

The male version of Commander Shepard was always shown probably because more male players actually by the game.

Bioware also quote data that suggests that some obscene amount (like 80%) of people just play the game with default male Shepard. So them catering to the demands of a very minor but very vocal minority of their fan base is pretty rad.

So this CE of the game cover is just signifying that they aren't leaving out the female community of Mass Effect?

Not just the female community, but people who prefer playing FemShep, myself included. Like I said, its a VERY vocal minority; check out the Facebook page for Mass Effect and try to find anything they post that the third or fourth entry isn't someone talking about Jennifer Hale, FemShep or the classic "Who's that bald dude in your trailer?" Its a broad swath of FemSheppers out there, but they're kinda universally adamant about it.

@ALIENX said:

@HubrisRanger said:

@ALIENX said:

The male version of Commander Shepard was always shown probably because more male players actually by the game.

Bioware also quote data that suggests that some obscene amount (like 80%) of people just play the game with default male Shepard. So them catering to the demands of a very minor but very vocal minority of their fan base is pretty rad.

So this CE of the game cover is just signifying that they aren't leaving out the female community of Mass Effect?

Not just the female community, but people who prefer playing FemShep, myself included. Like I said, its a VERY vocal minority; check out the Facebook page for Mass Effect and try to find anything they post that the third or fourth entry isn't someone talking about Jennifer Hale, FemShep or the classic "Who's that bald dude in your trailer?" Its a broad swath of FemSheppers out there, but they're kinda universally adamant about it.

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

@SHADOWINFINITE said:

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

You'd be amazed at the ridiculous amount of bitching I've seen about this.

That's cool I suppose. Default Shepard for life though.

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

@SHADOWINFINITE said:

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

...but they do. The cover can be the difference between someone picking up your game on an impulse and them picking something else.

@SHADOWINFINITE said:

@Pinworm45 said:

@SHADOWINFINITE said:

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game.

You'd be amazed at the ridiculous amount of bitching I've seen about this.

Where? Community chat rooms on the website? Or somewhere else? You got a link.

Well there's this for starters, 1372 pages of crazy-ass FemSheppers.

@Jasta said:

@SHADOWINFINITE said:

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

...but they do. The cover can be the difference between someone picking up your game on an impulse and them picking something else.

Yeah and ladies sell.

@Rufi91 said:

@Jasta said:

@SHADOWINFINITE said:

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

...but they do. The cover can be the difference between someone picking up your game on an impulse and them picking something else.

Yeah and ladies sell.

I'd buy a lady.

Meh, I don't care about the box, and I think female shepard is awful.

I'll stick to male Shepard. He is supposed to be my avatar in a way and I relate better to a male for some reason... oh right cause I am a male.

I wouldn't mind playing as a female character though if I had to.

@Jasta said:

@Rufi91 said:

@Jasta said:

@SHADOWINFINITE said:

I guess that is cool, but I really don't see the point of it. Most people really don't care about the cover of a game. 

...but they do. The cover can be the difference between someone picking up your game on an impulse and them picking something else.

Yeah and ladies sell.

I'd buy a lady.

I'd buy seven.

In all seriousness, I don't like the idea of FemShep being on the cover.

I play Male Shepard and I love the guy, but I have played at least a playthrough of both Mass Effect 1 and Mass 2 as Fem Shep and she's no lightweight for sure! I'm glad that Bioware is giving Fem Shep her due, even if I prefer Male Shepard.

Default Male Shepherd is the only Shepherd as far as I'm concerned.

FemShep fanboys and their ridiculous need to justify her as the "ONE TRUE CANON SHEPARD" are the worst. Seriously, who cares? There is no canon Shepard, only the one they use to advertise the game.

jennifer hale > mark meer. i don't understand how anyone can play through that game with mark meer as shepard. such a bored, bland voice.

I only ever play as female Shepard, myself, so I'm cool with this.