Who is the real Commander Shepard?

[FrosTytheNoob]

I started playing this game with Mass Effect 3 but I started with Female Shepard because something tells me that she is the right protagonist in the game. Then now starting my playthrough with Mass Effect 1 since I abandoned 3 to better understand the game.

I came across this article stating that the real Commander intended by Bioware was indeed Jane Shepard:

http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/9/7520965/mass-effect-commander-shepard-woman-animation

[Dorvrith]

Shepard is whoever you want him/her to be. So who cares what they say, its your character.

[CJHRRIHRH]

That was retextured from their last game jade empire. They already had some of the assets from that game so they did female first.

You could argue that, as male shep features on all the advertisements, box art etc that he would be canon.

I assume it would be one of the directors, producers or writers, not some dev who coded animation, who made the decision on who is canon.

The point is that YOUR shepard is the real shepard. There is no canon gender shepard and it's supposed to be like that. It's like arguing that Red's canon first pokemon is bulbasaur.

[SwobyJ]

There is no canon Shepard, as far as the story considers. Even when the developers don't highly reflect your decisions, that's more to do with limited resources and time for them to work with - not an intentional slight on your decisions.

The FemShep article there was just that they reused assets from Jade Empire when starting to work on Mass Effect. From the start (or near start), they intended on gender selection.

The MaleDefaultShep focus in marketing for ME1 and especially ME2 was likely due more to trying to establish a brand that people, largely straight-white-shooter-players, could identify with.

ME1 - MaleHero ('Shepard' wasn't a big deal until the end of ME1 and into ME2)
ME2 - MaleHero + Shepard (Male focus, Shepard became a big deal)
ME3 - Shepard + N7 (FemShep became more welcome as Shepard, N7 brought into prominence)
'ME4'? - N7 + ??? (Bioware has been talking about N7 and what it means to players, but also moving away from at least a Shepard focus since that trilogy is over)

As things move away from the more male default and even Shepard marketing, we'll see greater acknowledgement of both gender choices, just as ME3 finally had FemShep exclusive trailers but possibly even more than that.

But the original conception of Shepard was, at least mostly, with both genders in mind. The whole 'Shepard was originally female' thing was a joke tweet, and a mostly joke article by Polygon, for the clicks ;)

You mightttt say that the original modelling for Shepard was female, but the original writing for Shepard was male (given that Bioware was trying to recall real astronauts like Alan Shepard). But even that would only be partially correct.

[SwobyJ]

Basically, in so many ways (including gender), Shepard is whatever you choose Shepard to be. The story may form around a Male-Soldier-DefaultFace-ParagadeOrRenegon-RomancingAshleyOrKaidanOrLiara-etc skeleton, but it isn't a definite thing. You could be Female and be largely catered to. You could be other classes and still have it work. You could make a custom face that looks in some ways even better than the default. You could go whatever moral alignment and be rewarded for it in different ways (especially in ME1 and ME3; ME2 is more of a strict Paragon or Renegade). You could romance out of several characters and if you have Citadel DLC, it'll be reflected enough for a full enough story.

Who is the real Shepard? That's up to you.

I mean, I have some crazy personal theories that involve there being a 'real' Shepard that is utterly detached from a purgatory dream trilogy (again, I'm crazyyyy), but that Shepard wouldn't even be our Shepard, so whatever. Our Shepard is whatever we choose, and that was always decided to be either male or female.

[T02my]

Personally, I prefer female Shepard over male Shepard, simply because of the voice of female Shepard. Just listen the dialog on Illium when you encounter Conrad causing troubles at the bar. Jennifer Hale's voice is really amazing and fits on 100%, but I can't say the same to Mark Meer. I don't wanna insult him and his voice, but it just sounds so... normal, like we talk in real life and, but even heartless, soulless. So it does not really fits to be the voice of Commander Shepard. Sometimes I wish I could just cut the audio, like in KoTOR 1-2 or just replace his voice with Russian locale (sadly it's too sucks, but the voice actor makes emotions at least) or even replace it with Microsoft standart speech voice like in Windows XP, heh. Damn, I think even Joker or Jacob could fit better to be the voice of Male Shepard, but the best could be Carth Onasi :D

(Yeah, I know that the same actor voiced Kaidan in ME, but just listen how he voiced Carth Onasi. It fits better to Male Shepard, is not it?)

The only one good thing in Mark Meer's voice, that you don't really care about what Shepard says, I'm more concentrating on other's characters dialogs.

And heading back to the topic, I think that there's no canon gender of Shepard and I can't say which gender was more preferable by creators of Mass Effect. They both same the same lines over the whole trilogy and other characters very rarely refer to Commander Shepard's gender, if compared to KoTOR. Sha'ila, Harkin, crew members and saying s/he, him/her, his/her in some dialogs. Only in Citadel DLC femshep got more unique replies and comments from other characters. In KoTOR I remember you needed to ask some drunked guy at the bar and if you play for female Jedi he would say some insults in your adress or the mission where "fat worm" (forgot his race's name) asks you to get stripper women to him, if you play for female Exiled you can be that stripper.

First Shepard's name can't be canon too, (SPOILER!!!) in the ending if Shepard dies his/her crew puts "Commander Shepard" sign on the Memorial. And again compared to KoTOR, you can read nowhere your first name during Mass Effect Trilogy, while in KoTOR your first name can be seen during a few dialogs or mini-games. Correct me please, if I'm wrong, even in e-mails you never get called by your first name. Shepard gets angry on it in Citadel DLC like "hey, why don't you call me by my first name? Sometime? Anyone?". And fun-fact, if your Shepard pre-service history was Spacer, even his/her mother have a name and she was not refered as Shepard's mother :D

(And if someone think that John or Jane Shepard are canon names, they are wrong. Devs replied somewhere that they just used the most famous name and Jane is female variant of John)

(Spoiler!!!)Well, I don't think that there in future will be released a book or game (maybe only movie, but movie is already can be counted as non-canon compared to original Trilogy) where Shepard will get canon's past/gender/name, like it happened with KoTOR. But damn, I would like to see a save-transfer bonus in next ME's game where you can see your Shepard studying students in some Alliance or Spectre Academy or big Statue on Citadel, depends on your ME 3's ending. And, yeah, cut off Syntesis ending like Shepard's death on Suicide Mission in ME 2 was not canon.

[Shepard]

I'm the real Shepard

[Rise Kujikawa]

Originally posted by Commander Shepard:

I'm the real Shepard

Confirmed.