Don't get me wrong, I'm all about women's rights. In fact, I'm such a strong supporter of equality that I don't even open doors for women (okay, I do - but you get the point). Is that box too heavy? Go lift some weights - that's what I do. The way I look at it is like this: if everyone wants to be treated equally, I'm going to treat them equally. No special treatment.
Which leads me to the point of this article. In the collector's edition of the upcoming Bioware release,
Mass Effect 3, the box art is going to portray both a male and a female version of Commander Shepherd, despite the fact that both
Mass Effect and
Mass Effect 2 are littered with the male portrayal of Shepherd. This is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion, and to be brutally honest is changing the way I look at the franchise as a whole.
I understand that one has the ability to create a female version of the main character. Thing is, for the last four years, both gamers and the media have widely portrayed Shepherd as male. A badass, intergalactic male Commander whose sole purpose in life is to stop the world from being destroyed. Just because one may imagine Shepherd as a female in their minds, doesn't mean the trilogy and the story were built around this ideal. Everything from game trailers to gameplay videos, from posters to desktop wallpapers, to the character's default first name - John - clearly define the protagonist as a man. And a manly man at that.
When I think of the
Mass Effect trilogy I think of Commander John Shepherd. A 6 foot 2 inch tall, dark haired male with 22 inch biceps. I simply don't think of Commander Josephine Shepherd, a 5 foot 6 inch red head with a 36 inch waist line. As I mentioned before, this has nothing to do with me viewing women as an unequal sex. It's simply due to the fact that I have been brainwashed into believing Commander Shepherd is a male (which he technically is by default), and Bioware is now deciding to change it. On their final installment of this epic trilogy.
Do I think this is going to ruin the game? Absolutely not. Does it slightly change the way I view the trilogy as a whole? I'm going to go with a solid 'maybe'. You can't just change the sex of the main character on the box art and get away with it. I have the option of creating a female Hawke from
Dragon Age 2, but I guarantee they won't be releasing
Dragon Age 3 with Hawke portrayed as a female. Commander Shepherd by default is male and the story behaves as if this is true - there is no real room for change.
Bottom line is this: Commander Shepherd's default name is John. The two percent female gamer population should just have to deal with it.
