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And having been in the Navy for 20 years, and around Officers, including SEALs Officers, I can assure you that Mark Meer knocked it out of the park, regardless of what some people think. He was very convincing as a Special Forces Officer.
To be honest, Mass Effect is 3rd person. And apart from that I'd recommend to not project self onto the game character(s) if your goal is immersion.
Not sure who Mark Meer is (was) but I guess it's a hint at certain gender-based difficulties emerging in the military. Which .. is truth - though an "inconvenient" one. To me the male Shepard is just iconic. Mass Effect is the only game where I never changed the default appearance of the character because it's so well-made and so properly fitting the game narraive.
Mark Meer is the voice actor of male Shepard.
My first 4 full play throughs of ME1-3, where:
Since then, I have played nothing but BroShep.
Even though it's 3rd person, because you decide what is to be said, what choices are chosen, and who you romance, etc., it always feels personal. I AM Commander Shepard, if I immerse into the story. This is why I found myself constantly being ripped out of my immersion when I played FemShep, and so, this is why I stopped playing her. I only played the second time, just to see how different it was.
Well, I see this sensibility quite a lot, and so maybe it's a generational thing, but I've been playing RPGs since the mid-1970s--back when PnP was all there was--and I've never felt that way.
I mean..."role-playing." Apparently that means something different than it did back in the day, since I never felt there was anything odd or non-immersive about playing a female character, or--a fortiori--an elf, a dwarf, or what have you. OK...I'm not a woman. Also, I'm not an elf or a dwarf. Is that supposed to alienate me from the character I'm playing?
But I certainly never felt any sense of alienation from characters with whom I didn't share some physical characteristics. When I identify with a character, it's generally on a moral basis, not on the basis of physical resemblance.
But--again--when I was playing PnP DnD I played some characters who were very much "good guys" and others who were anywhere from instrumental to downright nihilistic. Never saw that as an issue: again...that's why it's called "role-playing"...you're playing a role, not trying to be some version of real-world you.
In RPGs, we kill people at the drop of a harsh word. In real life...not so much. Even the most benign and irenic Shepard would be in serious trouble in the Real World for some of the stuff they pull. So how do you reconcile that?
And I don't even get the "de-immersive" part. I mean, when I go to the movies there's always some character--usually the protagonist--whom you're intended to identify with. So--by your reasoning--identifying with Maverick...OK. Identifying with Ellen Ripley...not OK.
So...what exactly is the part that's not working for you? I really am curious to know.
I get that people like the voice acting, and I agree that she did an amazing job, but for realism, Mark Meer somehow knocked that out of the park, once again, coming from a 20 year Navy veteran. He was 100% convincing as a Navy Special Forces Officer.
You aren't playing as her you are watching her story unfold and makin choose your own adventure style decisions. Shepard isn't you. That's generally a helpful way to immerse yourself in stories, that don't immediately have something relatable to you.
I have to ask. Does he really sound convincing to you in ME1? To me Mark Meer's acting in ME1 is so wooden he's barely even a convincing human, would have been a good Elcor though. He improved a lot in the later two games. Mark Meer's voice acting back in 2008 is what originally showed me that playing as female character could be interesting. His voice acting was so robotic and a lot of people recommended switching to Female Shepard because Jennifer Hale was pretty great in comparison, I agree with them.
Other than a few lines, his voice acting was fine. You may not want to hear this, but real life Navy officers talk like Mark Meer, more than Jennifer Hale. So for me, having served for 20 years, and having been around many Officers, I was sold on BroShep.
As for watching? No...I am making the life and death choices, making the decisions on what is said, who is talked to and when, who gets shot, who gets romanced, etc... It's me...I'm the one they are talking to.
If that's not your experience, more power to you. It's your game, you experience how you want. When I play, and immerse into the story, it's me...that's how I experience it. And so, in real life people don't call me Ma'am, and I don't romance dudes. So it rips me out of the immersion. If it doesn't do that for you, more power to you.
Well can't say I have 20 years in the US navy as experience to back up my impressions, but from my short experience, officers tend talk like normal people not including the lingo or more formal settings. Mark Meer talks like a robot in every situation in ME1. Then suddenly In ME2 he's a bit more emotive and in ME3 he emotes a lot. ME1 and ME3 Shepards are basically completely different people in how they speak and carry themselves. Jennifer hale is consistent throughout, but has some issues.
Maybe it's me being used to playing Evil/Renegade (because it's fun) in these types of games so much that it's pretty easy to not project myself into game protagonists. Different ways of immersing yourself into a story, neither is wrong.
I tend to play Paragade with a heavy emphasis on Paragon. And IMHO, this is where BroShep really shines.
I do admit that his voice acting got better with each game, but it was not egregious in ME1. Maybe I am more forgiving because I played ME2 3 times, before playing ME1 or ME3. But the overall impression I get is that he is extremely convincing as an actual Navy Officer. If he wasn't, that would stick out like a sore thumb, and rip me out of immersion...and I would have played this game more times than any game I have ever played. It is in fact, the only game I have played more than once...and I'm sitting at over a dozen play throughs. If he wasn't extremely convincing as an actual Navy Officer, this wouldn't be true. I would have played once...ME2 once, and likely not even have bought ME1 and ME3.
As to why he got better, it's obvious. He was a new voice actor, while Jennifer Hale was already an award winning voice actor. I wouldn't be surprised if she even coached Mark Meer some, to help him improve.
But the real fault for any wooden lines...and FemShep had a few awkward moments also...the fault lies with the Devs. They should be able to detect this as they test it. They should be able to tell that it doesnt quite work...and then articulate to the voice actor what needs to be corrected...and have them redo that line. This is what Rockstar did with Roger Clark, who voice Arthur in RDR2. He spoke about this at one of the many live appearances he made after the game came out.