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So i just looked through a whole thread on some random forum i found about the import character bug in ME3. Like 80% percent of the posters just used default Shep. What's wrong with kids these days! When a game gives you the option to make your own character, you make your own fething character!

I made my own, looks like Joey from friends.

Its time consuming and doesnt give instant gratification! Thats the answer why most people go for the default! I tried to make me, however after 30mins of tinkering it looked nothing like me. So i just went with it!

Maybe they're not as creative and unique as you are?

Minus the slightly sarcastic overtones, in essence Joey is right. Most folks are just looking to play the game, and want to start going asap. So male default shep and Soldier are miles out in front of the other options according to Biowares readings.

Also seems most folks only play it once. Probably a key reason its gone more shooter with each version. Although I don't mind that, as it has at least kept enough RPG elements to keep me interested, plus I like shooters anyways.

As to the question, aye, partially probably as I wanted a female character on my first playthrough, but on my second I made a custom male.

In these kind of games I want my own name, look etc, especially wih the different class options, and RPG elelments such as Paragon and renegade. Although I still haven't been able to make myself try for the bad ending on ME2.

Have a number of other alts partially though either ME1 or ME2, but only those two I mentioned above are ME2 complete waiting for ME3.

Seems my Collectors ed was despatched today, so with luck I might have it tomorrow.

Wait, so the "failure to import character appearance" thing is a bug? I thought it was a side effect of BioWare having changed most of the character appearance options (for the worse, I might add ). I'm running a custom FemShep, and I was deeply annoyed that I couldn't faithfully recreate her in the new game. Restarted the game 3 times before I finally decided that I had a passable stand-in. In a game like Mass Effect, default character is not for me.

I tried to import my character and got that bug. I was pissed off that i couldn't play my shepard so I went ahead with the default shepard. It was very disappointing.

Is this something that will be fixed soon?

I did at any rate.

Hmm, didn't see about the bug, and no way to track about it as 99% of gaming sites are work blocked. Is it all versions, or limited to one format?

Would also be a bit of a shocking fail really, considering that the whole concept about the game has been carrying over your past decesions.

To be honest as annoying as it'll be, if it happens to me, I'll wait for a fix.

I actually used the default Shep, but only because I just couldn't manage to make a decent looking custom Shep (that and I actually kind of liked the look of default Shep).

I made jean reno in ME 1

I don't fault anyone for skipping the character creation stage.

As MDS mentioned above, I don't think everyone is in this for the roleplaying ... such as it is.

Which brings me to my second point: one thing I noticed back when ME2 released is that there really is only one Shepherd -- a straight-laced and driven soldier who can be compassionate as easily as s/he can be ruthless. "Paragon" and "Renegade" dialog options, even when chosen consistently, don't really represent coherent personalities. Even if they did, you would only end up with "Blue Shepherd" or "Red Shepherd" rather than in any case "My Shepherd." Similarly, there is little to no difference between ManShep and FemShep. Even your background/origin is only referenced in a few scraps of dialog. Character customization is therefore as relevant as changing the color of your uniform.

For ME3, I decided to do an experiment by customizing Shepherd as a black man. To this end, I decided not to import a character and to choose a background I never chose in any of my past ME play-throughs. Right off the bat, I can tell you that I looked at Anderson differently. What had come off to me as a strained relationship in the past suddenly unfolded in my imagination as much closer. My Shepherd (that's right, MY Shepherd) could look at Anderson as a surrogate father in a way that white Shepherd could not. I know that the Mass Effect world is probably beyond intra-human racism but the real world, where I live, is not. I couldn't help but think of My Shepherd in the context of that baggage -- I chose Earthborn, which made me wonder if he had ever known his own father, and War Hero, which made me think he found his place and his family in the service.

So, in other words, I did the very best that I could to invest in a roleplaying experience. But I don't think my efforts have really paid off. I have a hard time seeing how any of the stuff I made up about My Shepherd applies to dialog choices, for example. I find myself just defaulting to the obvious paragon option again and again so as to build up my Blue Score and hopefully open up more effective dialog options more quickly. So much for my reflective roleplaying experience, which would lift me out of my own shoes for a little while and give me the chance to walk in someone else's.

The moral of the story is that roleplaying Mass Effect is not simply a matter of "you get out what you put in." I'm not convinced that putting in fifteen to thirty minutes of character customization has any effect other than keeping you away from the gameplay for fifteen to thirty minutes. Put it another way, you can dig all day in the garden but if the soil is no good then your tomatoes won't grow. The folks who selected the default Shepherd appearance did the sensible thing for 2012: they got in their SUV and popped over to the grocery store for their tomatoes.

Truth be told, I find more personality in the Multiplayer characters I make. My helmeted heroes or bark commands and encourage (berate) their comrades are closer to me imagining my own special ops trooper as I do what I can against the coming Apocalypse.

I'm no Commander Shepard... but I'll be damned if I can't do my part to save this galaxy too!


That being said, I'm probably in the minority there. For the main game, I definitely add my own touches to make my own Shep... and though I imported my ME1/ME2 character over, I still modified his appearance... since there were some new and better looking options in the new system.

As much as I agree with some of the things Manchu said, I feel it's a little off-topic. But I guess it does explain the physical choices reflecting his player choices.

I have to say, once I got past the seemingly endless tutorial (still not as bad as KH2), and the game started allowing me to make decisions again, I was right back in the ME world I love... and I'm enjoying the hell outta this game. I can't wait for work to be over.

I tried to explain why even people interested in roleplaying might not feel that a customized Shepherd was important to their experience. How is that off-topic?

I try, but every time I end up looking Chinese with blond hair....

I just felt it was more a critique on the decision making of the game, less on the actual making of a character. And, I just said a little... wasn't trying to call you out or anything. Sorry if I came off wrong.

I think it's really cool how you decided to make a black Shep to see how it changed your perspective on the game. I've experienced the same thing when making different classes in Elder Scrolls games... but when you choose a race in those games the games themselves adjust to your decision.

I guess when you step out from the galaxy, you just get labeled as Human, and thats how it is.

I don't mind not being able to customize Shepherd's species as that is pretty pivotal to the storyline. My argument is that everything about Shepherd that is pivotal to the storyline also cannot be customized. My further argument is that everything that you get to choose about Shepherd is not really significant to one's experience of the game.* My conclusion is that many people, whether they want to play ME3 as a shooter or as a RPG, will therefore not care about creating a custom Shepherd.

* I recognize that it depends on what you consider significant. If who you romance is considered significant, Shepherd's gender may be important in ME3 as I believe only ManShep can hook up with Cortez and only FemShep can hook up with Traynor.

only FemShep can hook up with Traynor.

I wrote Traynor off as having the hots for EDI and decided to stick to pleasant conversation.

You make some good points chief, not off-topic at all. Sorry about that.

No worries. I was just wondering if I somehow misunderstood the topic.

I like my male Shep default. Voice just matches him perfectly. Besides, he looks cool and I want to play Mass Effect not Dress Up.

I always make custom characters and usually spend upwards of 2 hours on them....

Default Shephard is lame.

Chemical Cutthroat wrote:
That being said, I'm probably in the minority there. For the main game, I definitely add my own touches to make my own Shep... and though I imported my ME1/ME2 character over, I still modified his appearance... since there were some new and better looking options in the new system.

On a very brief side note, I wasn't aware you where able to do that, didn't take the risk with ME2 in case it borked my transfer save. So cheers for the knowledge, might have a brief check wih my alts, just to see if there are any better options.

Yeah, you could do that when you changed from One to Two as well.

Hell, you can adjust everything really. I switched my facial features up a little bit, then went and changed my class as well.

I had played Soldier the first two games. The second game miffed me by removing my purpose for playing a soldier in the first place... giving Heavy Armor to eeeeveryone. So When 3 rolled around I made the jump to engineer... nooo problem.

What is this bug that seems to be going around with the import? I managed to do it just fine, no problems. Is it a PC-only bug? (I play on PS3, so maybe that's why it's not an issue )

I actually didn't do any customization of my Shepard in any of the games. I always just went with the default female Shepard, partly because I was too lazy to mess around with it, and partly because as has been said in the thread, I don't want to spend an hour or two in character creation, I want to spend maybe ten minutes in character creation. I'm not playing this for the deep and intricate character building system, I'm playing this for the engrossing story and RPG shooter combat.

Locclo wrote:I'm not playing this for the deep and intricate character building system ...

Good thing that!

Touching on what Manchu said above, regarding getting what you put into it, this is a very good point. For many I can understand, and have no issue with the idea that they want into the game as soon as possible. The growing the tomatos or going to the store to buy them is a good enough anology, and a fair one. I do remember a lot of femshep fans getting annoyed that so few had not experienced the charms of Jennifer Hales take on the dialogue.
I would in part agree with them, after playing through fully both ME1 and ME2 as femshep and maleshep, I would say her voice work is much better than Mark Meer. However this is stil mostly down to personal preference at the end of the day. These are games that folks want to play through, and selected 'default' Shep is no different than accepting Master Chief is your sole option in Halo, people view the default as the Character Bioware sees as Shepard.

In effect they are correct as talk of the movie and the fact the main character will look like default Shep will sorta prove their point, although it also doesn't make those who do the custom characters choice any less valid either of course. Bioware has been very happy with keeping the custom effects in there for us, which going on the data is a nice thing. I think something like less than 10% of players in ME2 played a femshep, some companies might have taken that as an excuse to remove her, or pull back on options. Thankfully that wasn't even a consideration.

As to my own thoughts on the roleplay aspects connected to my custom Shepards. Having a custom character allowed me to bond more readlily to them, as a tabletop roleplayer, the names and look involved seperate personalites for my Shepards. The main two where slightly influenced by npc characters I run in fantasy games as a GM, Both of the characters have indivualities about them, chosen friends, chosen lovers, although both where with Liara in the first, Leith stayed loyal all the way through ME2, while Lucas was put off by Liara's choices in his period of resurrection, and found himself with Tali by the end of ME2.

The femshep and my first character Leith, is paragon character, she is good hearted, but was never afraid to stand up for others or those she believes in. So even with her taking most Paragon options, she did punch out the reporter for example due to her attitude, but not in ME2.
My thoughts for her as I have played have given me the idea that she has a strong bond with certain characters, she had thought about the idea of settleing down with Liara once the chaos is over, well before the Hale line to that effect in LotSB, in fact I almost spat out my drink when she uttered that line, as it was so close to how I saw Leith and Lairas relationship. She was a Colonist, and a War Hero, and both those choices gave me a insight to her personality that led her to being as deeply Paragon as she was.

Lucas started with scars, and carried them over into the game, he was pure renegade when he started thanks to his Survivor trait. He'd seen enough bad things in the world and it had tainted him, but as I played through, he seemed to take more neutral and then even paragon options, by the end of ME2 he was almost 50-50 on renegade/paragon. This in part started around half way through ME1, through his general actions and the conversations with Garrus. That led to a paragon Garrus, and Lucas closest ally among the companions over both games, pretty much his drinking buddy.
He was much more determined than Leith, often leading combats from the front, even though he was a Infiltrator, and Leith was the Solidier. I seemed to gain a first in, last out mentality with him, once again thanks to Survivor, not wishing to see those close to him lost again and he tore through the ME2 at a much more violent rate than Leith did.

I can also associate with Manchu with the Anderson comment, one of my sub alts, is a Black lady named Shiara, and when I have played her (shes about halfway through ME2, after playing ME1) she did feel a lot closer to Anderson, than Leith or Lucas did. She has also been the only Renegade character I have so far been able to stick with, as my natural instinct is not to play that way, but she is a woman who seems to have enough self belief, mixed with anger to be that Shepard. She close combats all the time, even though ME2 doesn't reward you for that, but damnit she likes to see the fear in their eyes before they go down. She has also never taken up a relationship, although lliked Jacob.

In general, I think the connection you have with a created character is naturally going to be stronger, especially if you put more attention to detail to their thoughts and reactions to their decesions, even if its just something you hold in your head for them.

You've had quite the opposite experience to mine, MDS -- although my black Shepherd, Leonard, is the first I've played while consciously thinking about how effective I could be relative to the role, i.e., I wanted to see if what I put in related to what I got out. When I played Shepherd before, both male and female, I thought about what I had chosen for them in terms of backgrounds when deciding what they wanted out of a given situation and what they were willing to do to get it. For example, my Ruthless FemShep didn't mind stringing along a couple of romance options whereas my Sole Survivor ManShep pined over Tali in ME1 and only went after her in ME2.

So I definitely think you can work with what they give you if you want to but I don't think they give you much. It's about 99% up to the player, out-of-game, to make the customization matter. Which leads me to reiterate/clarify the point I tried to make above: even if you put a lot of effort into this, you're not going to get much out of the game from the game. That is to say, the personality, goals, and values that you develop for your character do not actually affect the options that are open to you. Everyone who plays the game gets to chose from the same options no matter what character they make or how they play her/him. And the way that ME is structured means that Shepherd is not really defined by what s/he choose but what options are open to her/him. This is what I mean by there really only being one Shepherd. I may play a straight black man and you may play a gay Asian lady and almost everyone else might play the default ManShep.

But we're all playing Shepherd.

And it's not because all customization choices are equally valid, although that may be the case. It's because Shepherd is really just one character who cannot be meaningfully modified within the game no matter what kind of character us table top RPG vets might dream up outside of the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also want to note that although I did in one instance play the same character across both ME1 and ME2 it was not at all difficult for me to decide not to play him in ME3. Although I thought a lot about the sort of points MDS mentioned above while playing that character, I never felt very connected to the character. Leonard is my attempt to consciously "bond" with a customized Shepherd given that my unconscious "attempts" in the past have not succeeded. I might report that it is already something of a success because when I consider the option of re-starting the game, I know that I would create another black male character with the same background also called Leonard -- because I am at least attached enough to him to want to see him "in the role of" Shepherd. But, if I'm honest, that may be less about caring about the customized character and more about being fascinated with the experiment itself.

Aye, Its sorta of a I agree on some points, while have my own references on my own experiences.

I am generally quite neutral myself here and can really see why folks would just play default, and I agree, the game does not really cater for my attempts to do this.

Pretty much my experience is not effected by the choices I make in creation. These are things I have put to the character while playing the game.
I've chosen to playing in a certain style, I'm enforcing my own ideals onto the game.

On a complete tangent, but a similar vein, WoW has much the same issue. It is a MMoRPG in name only, the actual ability to chose your path is defined only in superficial choices anyone can make.
Nearly all the dedicated Roleplay stuff is self intiated by RPG players on the RPG servers, the game itself is not much help in that regard.

I find this is the bubble burster for folks who think Skyrim can replace table tops.

Yeah that I fully agree with, Console, PC, MMO style RPGs can be a fun distraction, you can make some good bonds with the characters.
However I have never found a bond with a electronic character that I have found with those I have run via tabletop games for any deccent length of time.

You just aren't in the same mindset, the level of control, the abiliy to do exactly what you want will never be there.