Hopefully, when the *next* Mass Effect comes out, they’ll have FemShep as the primary focus of the trailers.

The creators asked on twitter whether fans wanted “FemShep” to get her own trailer, so I pointed them to this article :D

Looks like there’s enough other support out there to have made it happen, brill!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/06/16/bioware-will-give-female-shepard-her-own-trailer-and-place-on-mass-effect-3s-box/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

It stuns me how these games are tight on time and money.

Example: Mass Effect, different classes have different guns, eg: those with biotics only gets a small handguns. So for cut-scenes, Bioware makes everyone pull out a pistol *even if you are a soldier who was going into the boss room with a huge assault rifle*.

Is it really that hard to code “hold whichever gun is currently selected”? Or do 4 versions? They spend so long on dialogue and other aspects, it seems amazing how they skimp on some things. So I can totally believe the bisexuality came in to save time/cost, sadly. Hurrah for that anyway though! At least they’ll see now that 90% of the fans love it.

Stephen – I certainly hope so too. I enjoy the interaction between the two series and I think ME3 will have improved romance options as there are great swathes of forum debates on BioWare’s community site from a wide variety of gamers complaining about ME2’s romantic downfalls.
Russell – I think it still has a vital part to play as a social phenomenon regardless of whether they did it because it was easier or if they listened to fans (then subsequently discovered it was easier and went for it). Hopefully they won’t be too restrictive with ME3 even though they’re taking their time on it.

Stephen – after the ridiculous “scandal” of the homophobe who went after Bioware for making everyone bisexual in DA2, I was surprised to learn that it’s actually easier (and thus cheaper) to make all the characters omnisexual, and that given how quickly DA2 was rushed out this was obviously a factor. I’m not sure whether this diminishes the value of it as a social phenomenon, but it does give everyone the chance to make the CORRECT romantic choice (Merrill).

I think DA and ME are a good influence on each other – in DA1 your character didn’t have a voice (just text) but everyone else did. I didn’t notice it much until I played ME2, where everyone has audio and it’s a much fuller cinematic experience. They then made you fully voiced for DA2. So hopefully ME3 will learn from DA2’s superior romance options!

I’ve heard several people saying they preferred to play a female Shepard based simply on the fact that it’s better acted than the male version (who I’ve heard being described as ‘wooden’ at best). The dialogues being pretty much identical is, as you say, a great feature of the game and the ability to have such a strong female lead is a credit to the series (not to mention all the other kick-ass supporting female characters).

I am really hoping Mass Effect 3 has a more open approach to the Romance aspects, as that was more than a touch aggravating while playing through ME2.

Indeed, I know a lot of gamers, almost all of which are male and almost all of which have elected female characters in their RPGs at some stage. I did try to hint at the fact that it isn’t just female gamers who pick female characters so the archaic advertising is even more ridiculous. I do think that the advertising and marketing elements of these big name distributors tend to stick to what they think is “safe” but in doing so they’re not evolving with the community and are selling their products short.

Yes that is an extra plus point there that I was happy about! I do believe they brought out the different class trailers at different times and I think Demon Hunter was one of the first released. They’re all out now so I can’t remember exactly the order they came out though.

I was quite pleased with DAII’s freeing up of the sexuality for one’s Romance options, especially as the same-sex options in Origins were quite limited and tokenistic/stereotypical. I am hoping that Mass Effect 3 will make some steps to improving their lack of same-sex Romance options (at least, those that you can gain the achievement for) as this is one of the downsides to ME2, so much so I wrote an article about it elsewhere on the web.