Mass Effect 3: FemShep voting round 2

By Robert Purchese Published 18 August, 2011

Decide on hair colour.

The face-type for the pre-built female Shepard in Mass Effect 3 has been voted and decided on - now BioWare needs your help with hair colour.

The choices are blonde, brown, black and red.

At the time of writing, red hair is head and shoulders above the rest, with 14,457 likes on the official Mass Effect Facebook page.

In second place is black hair with 10,045 likes.

Brown and blonde hair are neck and neck with 4397 and 4198 votes, respectively.

It was blonde hair that helped the new FemShep face to its original victory. And that face-type lead from the off, which suggests red hair will go on to win this time around.

The new pre-built FemShep of Mass Effect 3 will co-exist with the returning pre-built FemShep of Mass Effect 2. You will also be able to customise your own FemShep face.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

You may also like...

Comments (54) Latest comment 9 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • GamesConnoisseur #1 9 months ago

    Will the game have enough timeline to allow RPG gamers to see the consequences of an unprotected sex?

  • GamesProgrammer Verified Games Team Programmer, Eutechnyx Ltd. #2 9 months ago

    Green

  • Spekingur #3 9 months ago

    I am bit miffed that there isn't the option of no hair.

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #4 9 months ago

    I tend to start with the pre-built FemShep face as a foundation and customise from there. Pre-built FemShep always looks better than what I can create - and saves a hell of a lot of time.

  • spekkeh #5 9 months ago

    Pretty nonsensical if we first voted blonde and now red is winnig. They should've done a focusgroup with women, instead of letting droves of nerdy men choose the one they'd like to have sex with.

  • Phantom_Dynamite #6 9 months ago

    How can we be sure the rug matches the drapes.

  • WinterSnowblind #7 9 months ago

    @spekkeh
    I think they're doing this because of the amount of backlash they got when the blonde won. The white skinned, blonde with blue eyes was always going to win that round, it was completely pointless. They never should have made this a fan vote to begin with.

    Pick something that looks good to promote the game with and let us customise her from there. Worked with the male one.

  • TruSmiles #8 9 months ago

    I more or less did the same with Bertie, but gave her short black hair and a scar, cos you know, soldiers have short hair and scars >_>

    As a woman, I can honestly say I don't give a crap what hair style or colour Shepard has. She's there to kick ass, end of.

  • Inmediasress #9 9 months ago

    Well they all looked ugly in the previous ME games I don't even see why they include costumisation when only the preset face is palatable and you can't make anything half human looking with the tools.
    Tough I kind of get what they are trying to do since they are moving away from RPGs with some illusion of choice to the extremely linear games with story and that needs stock characters.

  • Ror1984 #10 9 months ago

    I went with the ginge.

  • Subdominator #11 9 months ago

    Damn, she looks evil.

  • Madder-Max #12 9 months ago

    ME3 really is going to be aimed at idiots isnt it

  • DreadedWalrus #13 9 months ago

    I think this from Richard Cobbett pretty much sums up my views: http://www.richardcobbett.com/journal/sh...

  • RevanNL #14 9 months ago

    Hmm, she's a bit too white for brown or black hair (which would be my choice). She looks like a goth wirh black hair

  • Nevflinn #15 9 months ago

    Round 3: Vote for FemShep Breast Size.

  • ZizouFC #16 9 months ago

    Cup size next?

    Damn you Nev!
    Edited by ZizouFC at 18/08/11 @ 11:54

  • Bullet_Tunnel #17 9 months ago

    make her a somalian woman,with no teeth and a green mohawk. because im sure that unless all humans in the future are genetically created beautiful as standard, the mrs shepard probably wouldnt resemble a porn star. more captain janeway than abella anderson.
    but then if she didnt look hot then no-one would be giving this advertising/awarness exersice a second thought would they?

  • metalangel #18 9 months ago

    After breast size (Gianna Michaels, Katerina Konec or Trinity Post) will come buttock tightness (Dawn French, J-Lo or Keira Knightley) and minge trim (The 1970s, the Hitler or the Glitter's Delight).

  • arcam #19 9 months ago

    This whole scenario is tragically embarrassing. Voting on the girl's hair colour? Jesus.

  • Kanjin #20 9 months ago

    This seems slightly sexist, we didn't do it for the male Shepard after all.

  • nazzyq #21 9 months ago

    Are Bioware fans really this vain?

  • Jay-ITFC #22 9 months ago

    Am I the only one who despite loving the Mass Effect franchise really couldn't give a fook?

  • Pinewood_Groves #23 9 months ago

    I just thought this was just a bit of fun until Kanjin said that apparently this hasn't been done for the male model.

    Now it seems a bit unsavoury.

  • NimbusTLD #24 9 months ago

    Brown!

  • Freek #25 9 months ago

    At the time ME1 was created the whole social media thing wasn't as big as it is now. This is just part of the marketing effort, to make fans feel included in the procces as they ad something new to represet ME.
    Remember Fem Shep was never supposed to be part of the marketing, it was only due to fan demand that she was added to the marketing.
    Makes sense to then also ask the fans what she should look like. That's not sexist since there isn't a "canonical" fem shep design. And asking fans stuff on Facebook is now common place when it comes to marketing. But back when male Shep was invented this sorta thing diden't happen.
    Edited by Freek at 18/08/11 @ 12:20

  • Murton #26 9 months ago

    "ME3 really is going to be aimed at idiots isnt it"

    Did you think it would be otherwise. Idiots are the new target for this entire industry now, core gamers are pretty much taken for granted under the assumption that we'll continue to buy games of the same name and genre even if they bear no resemblance to the established paradigm. Case in point, Dragon Age 2.

  • arcam #27 9 months ago

    @Freek

    I notice they're not asking what enemies or spaceships should like look like. No, instead they put a line-up of pretty girls and ask their fans to choose the hot one.

    It is absolutely sexist, not in an overt, knowing way like Duke Nukem, but a much more insidious, institutionalised form of sexism that is ever-present in the games industry and is capable of much deeper damage.

  • kangarootoo #28 9 months ago

    The redhead, followed by the brunette.

    Than a cup of tea and a nap, followed by the blonde.

    Heeheehee ;)


    Edit: I jest, but of course this latest bit of marketing is sexual. Not condoning it, but not at all surprised.

    The question is, sexual it may be but is it sexist? They aren't the same thing. The core target market for this is (I presume) straight blokes. If the target were straight women (or gay blokes), would we see people being asked to vote on the type of six pack sported by the male Shephard? I suspect so (or something like that).

    Using sex to appeal to your target market isn't necessarily sexist.
    Edited by kangarootoo at 18/08/11 @ 12:33

  • TeeHee #29 9 months ago

    I would gladly kill off everyone who voted on this poll and the person who drempt it up in the first place to get Alpha Protocol 2.

    Also manshep in canon, so the voting is pointless

  • dr_zoidthrob #30 9 months ago

    What? Make your own decisions... you've already made her look like a 16y/o

  • arcam #31 9 months ago

    If the target were straight women (or gay blokes), would we see people being asked to vote on the type of six pack sported by the male Shephard?

    No, we wouldn't, that's the point, unless it was a game about sex/dating. I can't remember anything remotely similar in say Dance Central, or the Sims.
    Edited by arcam at 18/08/11 @ 12:54

  • kangarootoo #32 9 months ago

    @arcam

    Dance Central and The Sims are hardly comparable examples, as they both have a much wider target market than Mass Effect. Try a Sex and the City game, or any woman's magazine out there. I mean, you surely can't be suggesting that ads using sex to sell products to women simply don't exist, so what purpose is there exactly in choosing a couple of poor examples? Strawman, much?

    My point is that sex as a marketing tool is universal, but how it is used depends on the product in question. Diet Coke is a case in point. You might suggest the "hot bloke in a lift" adverts are sexist, but it would make no sense to have a "for the blokes" version of the same ad as the target market of the product is women. Targetted marketing is just that. They could make "for the girls" (or "for the boys" as appropiate) equivalents of such adverts, and it might make us feel better because we would be seeing the sexualisation of consumer products in a more equal manner, but it would simply be a waste of time and money given the reason adverts exist in the first place.

  • arcam #33 9 months ago

    Honestly I just chose those examples because I couldn't think of any other games that were aimed at women, not children. Sex and the City would surely be a game about sex and dating, so I don't think that's a good example either.

    I don't really want to get into an argument about what is and isn't sexist. Especially on EG, which has pretty poor form in this area. I just know that many women (many of whom will play Mass Effect) will be looking at this stunt, shaking their heads. In my opinion, they have every reason to do so.

    Luckily for us, women are used to it when it comes to video games, so there will be no fuss, no sensationalist headlines, just a bunch more names to add to the list of women turned off AA gaming.

  • Bullet_Tunnel #34 9 months ago

    Headline-"Game company understands that nerdy virgins will be aroused by space hottie in marketing ploy disguised as a social experiment in choise"

    its not sexist... its just that we as a species are extremely easy to manipulate, regardless of how strong minded you believe yourself to be, and the reason we have rich people and buisnesses are because they have been exploiting this fact from the point when we all realised that god doesnt exist and they cant use that excuse to take our cash off us anymore. good old cia in the 60's spent lots on working this shit out.

  • Utopolitan #35 9 months ago

    This kind of bullshit should be illegal.

    Pathetic is what this is.

  • Lionheart #36 9 months ago

    They all look f*ckin' disgusting.

  • kangarootoo #37 9 months ago

    @arcam

    Fair enough. I'm not defending the use of sex to sell products btw. I'm just being a pedant for the use of the word sexist.

  • intpleeus #38 9 months ago

    When I played Mass Effect as femshep, I was having trouble designing the right face. I went online to see if anybody had posted instructions or codes for faces they had created. By far the most popular face was <a href="http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x65/FrizFroz/DanielleShepard2.jpg">this one</a href>. She looks a wee bit too young and unscarred to be my perfect femshep, but she is about as good as you'll find. It seems to me that fans are basically voting for this face. In the first round of voting they chose the closest hair but complained that it was the wrong colour. In the second round of voting they have now chosen the right hair colour. What's surprising is that blonde has the least votes so far in the current poll. When artists are shamelessly trying to exploit characters for sex appeal, they normally go for the blonde bombshell look.

    One other thing: the default Male Shepard is actually based on a real-life model. That guy is ridiculously attractive. Is anyone going to complain about Bioware shamelessly appealing to sex-starved nerdy adolescent gamers for that? Why shouldn't the default femshep be about as attractive as her male counterpart? She even looks tomboyish without the long hair: kind of like Milla Jovovich.
    Edited by intpleeus at 18/08/11 @ 13:53

  • metalangel #39 9 months ago

    @intpleeus: That picture on the right-hand side (where she has her head cocked) is DANGEROUSLY sexy. She looks like she's all wet and ready for it.

    (she's also not unlike my Shepard, who is similar but a little older and Oriental)

  • intpleeus #40 9 months ago

    @metalangel

    So what? It's a collection of pictures meant to show off the face from a variety of angles and with different expressions. The default male Shepard is "DANGEROUSLY" sexy most of the time. He's based on a friggin' underwear model and goes around saving the galaxy. I don't think there is anything wrong with femshep being sexy as long as sexy is not all she can be, and I don't think we really have to worry about that. Shepard has generally been well-written in previous games and Jennifer Hale's voice acting has been superb, whether Shepard is being aggressive, compassionate, professional, sexy, or whatever.

    I bet one of the main reasons why only about 1 in 5 play as femshep is because it's so hard to create a natural looking and attractive face using the in-game editor. I don't want my male Shepard to be an ugly fuck either. They both should be attractive and, when appropriate, sexy. It would be incongruous with the story if it were any other way, since they are apparently running around the galaxy getting off with all those other attractive people.

  • Xardan #41 9 months ago

    I am sorry but what is the reason for this again? And where is the manshep option? Is this just for feminists and horny teenagers or something?

  • metalangel #42 9 months ago

    @intpleeus: Whoa whoa whoa, calm the hell down. I love the picture, I think she looks great! Hell, I am seriously considering making a new, 'canon' (for me) character based on her and using THAT for all three games.

    (yes, the in-game editor is very poor... you can't turn your head very far at all to see how the nose looks)

  • Gecks #43 9 months ago

    as far as i'm concerned, there can be only one; HIM NAME JON SHEPORD: http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-a...

  • intpleeus #44 9 months ago

    Xarden,

    The push to have a proper default femshep included in the marketing came from fans. Bioware has previously refused, saying that having two Shepards would sow confusion: customers would mistake them for being two separate characters in the game. Now Bioware are finally giving in and including a proper default femshep who will feature on the special edition boxart for Mass Effect 3. This has always been a fan driven project from the beginning, and so why shouldn't Bioware let the fans decide what femshep should look like?

    People are reading way too much into this. I am not denying that sexism is a problem in the games industry, but this is not about sexism. Even if people choose their favorite femshep partly by which they find the most sexy, then it still doesn't mean anybody is being sexist or juvenile. An appropriate Shepard needs to be somewhat sexy for the purposes of the story (after all, he or she is apparently drawing the affections of other attractive characters), and that is true whether Shepard is male or female.

  • intpleeus #45 9 months ago

    @metalangel

    I didn't mean to come across as angry or upset, because I am not. I apologise.

    I only meant to say that there is nothing dangerous about femshep looking "dangerously sexy." If sex appeal was all that defined her, then we might have a problem, but it doesn't and we don't. What would be more dangerous would be if femshep was incapable of pulling off sexy in particular scenes, because the story implies that she can be.

  • intpleeus #46 9 months ago

    @metalangel

    By the way, <a href"http://www.masseffect2faces.com/index.php?faceID=830">here</a href> are the instructions for that character.

    If you are playing on the Xbox 360, you will need to use a jump drive and save game editor to get the correct hair. I basically used this face but with a few edits. I also added purple versions of the Illusive Man's eyes; they're very cool and actually work for the narrative -- why wouldn't Shepard have funky cyborg eyes after being brought back from the brink of death using advanced technology?

  • metalangel #47 9 months ago

    @intpleeus: When I said 'dangerously' sexy I mean 'almost too sexy, oh man, hold me back'. ME fans all know that she is not just a pretty face, that she's an extremely capable and professional officer and soldier.

    Unfortunately, the link doesn't work, can you just paste the whole thing in or PM it to me please?

    My own Shepard look doesn't quite as I hoped, I had a better one but a save game corruption erased her, and my second attempt (which I ended up sticking with) isn't as nice as the first. Still, she has a mature elegance to her.

    Here she is:

    clicky

    EDITS: damn links!
    Edited by metalangel at 18/08/11 @ 16:41

  • intpleeus #48 9 months ago

    Sorry about the link. I forgot to include the "=" in the tag and it will not let me edit for some reason. In any case, here is the full link:

    [link url=http://www.masseffect2faces.com/index.php?faceID=830
    ]http://www.masseffect2faces.com/index.ph...[/link]

    Here is a thread with more detailed instructions about savegame editing:

    [link url=http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/128/index/2277020
    ]http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/...[/link]

    Custom Shepards on ME1 always look wrong, in my opinion, because the skin shaders are no good compared to ME2.
    Edited by intpleeus at 18/08/11 @ 16:55

  • organica #49 9 months ago

    No deal. FemShep isn't even white, for a start.

    For me, that is. In my head. And on my screen. She's not slinky and pouty, she's a goddamn badass with metaphorical balls of steel. Isn't that sexier anyway?

  • metalangel #50 9 months ago

    @intpleeus: Thanks very much for the links, some of the characters on there (Chani and Raina Shepard especially) are beautiful, while Haley Shepard looks extremely similar to my own character in my link (whose name is Aurora).

    It's all ME2 focused, so I suppose what I could do is just say (when I start ME) that when Shepard was reconstructed, they mixed a bit of Miranda in and... 'improved' her.

    Thanks again for sharing that. I remember they used to do similar things for Oblivion and Fallout, but invariably you can't mash the sliders quite far enough, Oblivion even used FaceGen so you could put photos into it but unfortunately everyone came out with pudgy faces. There were some downright amazing faces for the Sims, including a very realistic Elijah Wood.

  • menage #51 9 months ago

    RED!

  • tyrant1 #52 9 months ago

    I still cannot fathom why they insist on doing this.

    Well, I kinda can. Its cheap marketing I guess. While people are pissing and moaning (something femshep fans do better than any other sect of Biowares fandom) about this stupid vote, its getting people talking about the game.

    Still, the figures dont support this crap. Not only do the vast majority play male, the vast majority regardless of gender customise their character.

    I CANNOT see the point of people "voting" on something that such a small minority will actually play.

    I know Bioware! How about you put it to a vote on "which new customisation feature would you like for Shepards appearance"?

    "What new powers would you like?" "What customisation option do you like best?"

    Something worthwhile. Anything but this vain bullshit.

    Someone at Biowares spent too much time on their forums listening to the vain femshep fans their with their persecution complexes and their need to constantly post pictures of their stupid femsheps "because shes so awesome n cool".

    I used to think Tali was the single worst aspect of Bioware fandom. Now I know its femshep.

  • vertibird-VB02 #53 9 months ago

    Not that I care so much about it, anyway... I play with customised FemShep... But if I did... I would definitely choose black hair. Red hair would be my second choice.
    But... what's the point of having two pre-built FemSheps??

  • ro-kurorai #54 9 months ago

    yay, red-headed femshep on the metal tin =)