14 DAY TRIAL // Video game developer BioWare has announced that the default version for the female side of Commander Shepard will be redheaded, after fans of the series were allowed to choose which version of the characters they preferred.
The Facebook-powered vote saw the redhead get 19,576 votes, while a black-haired female Commander Shepard got 12,838 fans interested, with the brunette taking third place and the blonde-haired female coming in last.
The redhead will be default option for a female character, but players will be able to easily tweak hair color and a number of other features in order to create a player avatar that suits their fantasy image.
The image will also be used on the Collector's Edition for Mass Effect 3.
BioWare revealed game statistics that showed that only a minority of gamers were playing a female character in the first and the second Mass Effect titles, but it seems that fans are still interested in voting for how the character will look.
Fans have said that the voice work that Jennifer Hale has provided for the female Commander Shepard is better than that of the male version of the intergalactic hero.
Mass Effect 3 will end the current trilogy set in the science fiction universe that BioWare has created and will see Commander Shepard work to gather allies among alien species while the mechanical Reapers are assaulting Earth directly.
Initially, BioWare talked about launching Mass Effect 3 during the fall of this year, but the company has since delayed it to the month of March in 2012, giving itself more time to polish the experience and avoiding a clash with the high-profile launches of the coming months.
The developers are also working on Star Wars: The Old Republic, which is an MMO set to be launched before the end of the year, and on Dragon Age III, which has not yet been officially announced.