Weekend Reading: Mass Effect 3 and the Female Shepard Debate

For the first time in the Mass Effect series, the developer, BioWare, has decided to officially promote and market to the world a female version of the protagonist, Commander Shepard, alongside the already famous male version.

As you can imagine, given the wide customization options the studio gave to players, there are a huge number of Shepard variations out there, so deciding on an official look is quite hard.

In order to give fans a choice in the matter, last weekend BioWare posted on its Facebook page six different Female Shepard versions, which need to be "Liked" by users of the social network, thus deciding which one of them becomes the official lady Shepard.

As soon as the pixels loaded in the photo album on Facebook, various debates began, over how BioWare forgot about the default preset appearance for Female Shepard from the first two games (my own choice during them) and, as soon as the votes started appearing, why the single blonde choice (number 5) started winning.

While the first matter is entirely up to BioWare, the second thing is quite annoying, especially because of the two main points made by the anti-number 5 people.

First up, they claim that the appearance practically voids any personality that female Shepard might have, seemingly forgetting that it's completely up to the player, and his or her choices, to decide how Shepard acts, no matter the genre of the character.

Mass Effect is about choice and the appearance of the character never changed the way I acted in the game, and it's not going to matter if I might swap my default female with the "official" one.

Secondly, fans of the series claim that BioWare is now just objectifying the female Shepard by giving her the stereotypical blonde with blue eyes look, once again forgetting that the official male Shepard is based on a Dutch model, called Mark Vanderloo.

As such, if the female Shepard will look like a female model, then good for her, because the savior of the Universe isn't rejected because he or she is too pretty and thus distracting.

In the end, no matter the looks, Commander Shepard is who players want him or her to be, so it makes little sense what the "official" version of the hero or heroine looks like. Many loyal players will no doubt carry over their characters from the first two games, while new gamers will be greeted with some good default choices if they don't want to actually customize their own protagonist.

As for my choice, while I would like the default red-headed Shepard from the first two games to be the official Female one, I'm quite pleased with the blonde number 5.

What about you? Share your favorite Commander Shepard version below and don't forget to vote on the Facebook page of Mass Effect.