#i hope my rambling about default shepherd and names made sense :D

[o-wyrmlight]

Hello. Me again.

I wanna do a bunch of comics as I replay the games so I won't answer everything XD but to answer a basic question;

You can play as a male or female Shepard, but Bioware intended the main character to be female. But because video games they were afraid dudebros wouldn't want to play a female lead so they just gave you a choice. Both are called "Shepard" because it's the last name. (Femshep's first name is Jane).

There is also character creation. So you can create a Shepard OC. but Shepard is one of the weirdest main characters I've ever seen, because as the years have gone on... instead of people leaning more into the self insert style of mass Effect, default Jane Shepard has become more and more popular. So these days most art and fanfic will write her as a default instead of a player/reader insert. it's fucking wild!

Also I am still in ME1 so she's still in uniform, but uh... that doesn't last.

........also yes I own the hoodie....

As for everything else... I selfishly don't want to spoil?? Even tho you can literally google it?? 😂 Because I wanna draw it because who boy.... do my babies have a storm coming....

I see! That is super cool, though--I like that female Shepard was intended to be the more canonical between the selectable characters. I wasn't 100% sure about it because I do remember seeing a mention or two about an option between male and female, but I've really only ever seen concept of female Shepard.

And I also think that it's super neat that Shepard's default is so popular! It's sort of a double-reverse of what you'd expect, and people are so baller for that, to be honest.

It sort of reminds me of how--when I play a Legend of Zelda game--I'll usually default to the names I can chose as being the canonical names. Link as Link, Epona as Epona, etc... same with the Pokemon games.

I think part of the reason for that might also be due to consistency. It seems like Mass Effect is a chronological series that takes place over the course of a period of time that features the same characters, so it'd make sense for the main character to remain the same over time.

You look at game series like Fallout, customization is much easier to get a hold of because each game (if I'm correct) features a new main character. It allows for more customization of the experience to fit around the character, but since Mass Effect is in that chronological story that follows the same or a similar cast, it's easier to have an agreed-upon default than it is to have a thousand or so different Shepherds, especially since they all end up sharing the same name (which takes away a part of that customization process).

It could also be that, as Shepard is the name given to the character, it feels ingenuine to a lot of people to have them deviate from their default--as if it's changing their identity. Already having the name implies that the character doesn't exist in a vacuum--they already existed before in the context of the game.

I! Am! Rambling! But I do find it super interesting to think about this!