On FemShep’s Popularity In Mass Effect

I’m not sure how I feel about the terms “FemShep” and “ManShep/BroShep”, but Gamasutra certainly highlights an underlit subject in an op-ed piece on the popularity of the female Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect series.

With the more general hypothesis out of the way, the second is that people play as the female version precisely because Commander Shepard is male in all other ways. The lines, the character animations and various other tidbits are male-oriented in a way that makes FemShep more than your stereotypical RPG female protagonist. For one, she wears practical armor. Well, mostly, but it is science fiction after all; we can accept floating visors and the like.

Mass Effect is a bit of an odd franchise because while all the official materials that relate to marketing and the like showcase a man, leading many to assume that the canonical Shepard is one, the story within makes every effort to avoid such insinuations. Pronouns are used sparingly and often tend to be gender neutral at best and at worst the (he/she) conversion is integrated smoothly into the dialogue. Even in the Mass Effect: Redemption comic series, they refrain from referring to the Commander as one or the other, going so far as to say that it’s difficult to discern gender from the remains they found.
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But even with these intentionally neutral mechanics, many of the other male characteristics seep into the FemShep gameplay. For example, you can choose to dance at the clubs present in the game, be it Afterlife or the Eternity Bar or what-have-you. Because the option was there and I happened to notice it, I figured I’d go ahead and dance a bit. Never know, right? Dancing could, theoretically, be an important part of the game.

And it was.

But that wasn’t because some quest triggered or an NPC wandered up to offer me a job. This was an important moment in my gameplay because Commander Shepard, my FemShep, was doing the standard animation that all the NPC male dancers perform. She swayed to and fro while the other females cut a proverbial rug.

It the best way to write a convincing “strong woman” to just make a male character and then shove it into a female body? That doesn’t sound right to me, especially not amidst BioWare’s weak gender writing.

The article also doesn’t mention how female Shepard’s voice acting (Jessica Hale) is simply superior to the voice acting of male Shepard (Marc Meer). And not just a little bit, but significantly so. Might be worth a mention, in appreciation to a job well done by Hale.