User:Hawki

Intro
I don't know whether it's appropriate or sad that I got into Mass Effect a few months before its release via this actual wiki while tired from admin duties and the YouTube trailer attatched to it. Guess advertising can work after all. As such, got the game for Christmas and played through it in two days (albiet doing the core worlds only with few sidequests).

The "Canon" Shepherd
It's probably a general feature of this site that users advertise their player character(s). As such, who am I to do otherwise?

The thing is though, is that I've always tried to stick to canon, both in wiki editing and fanon writing (see below), is that I've always tried to stick to canon. And while there is definetly no "canon" background for the good Commander, I have a personal idea of what it could be. Note that this is more for personal external reference, so I don't have to make the same argument. BioWare may have perhaps provided the "true" profile as per the defaults (Sole Survivor, Earthborn), but A) that could alternate between game versions for all I know (does it?) and B) could be randomly determined by BioWare rather than a statement of intent.

Considering that the same Shephard has always appeared in promotions and trailers, it seems logical to go with that. Gender is easy to determine, as well as the default name of John. Background and psychology however, are different kettles of fish. However, certain circumstances point to certain inclinations...

The Spacer background seems unlikely for a number of reasons. First, it features Shephard having married parents within the military. While I've come a long way from not knowing the difference between COs and NCOs and thinking that Sergeant was a higher rank than Lieutenant (don't ask ^_^), exactly how likely this could be in real life is outside my realm of knowledge. However, I'm willing to bet that it isn't common and certainly Mass Effect backs this up. It's no easy thing for Shephard to start a relationship between Ashley or Kaiden and there are regs against it. So via all probability, the Spacer background is unlikely.

Another smaller piece of evidence is that the Spacer background features both of Shephard's parents still alive, a trait not shared by either Colonist or Earthborn backgrounds. So if one applies simple statistics, Spacer is phased out via minority status.

Earthborn and Colonist thus remain, with neither particually having more bearing than the other. However, lets look at the psychology options; Sole Survivor, War Hero and Ruthless. It's the third option that I find unlikely in the context of Captain Anderson...

We know a few facts about Anderson; he hates Saren due to his immorality and respects Shephard. However, if Shephard was a ruthless bastard also...doesn't work. If one chooses Ruthless, Anderson is advocating and standing by the very type of person he resents. There are other factors of course, species among them, but at least in Revelations, Anderson never struck me as being particualy racist, even against the turians. Overall, the Ruthless background simply doesn't work.

Now if Shephard can't be Ruthless, he's left with being a War Hero or Sole Survivor. But for now, let's go back to the backgrounds, namely Earthborn, where growing up in the slums gives Shephard a gritty edge to his personality. This seems akin to the Ruthless psychological profile IMO and provides a basis for it. However, Ruthless doesn't work, so therefore the precedent set by Earthborn is gone as well. The Earthborn background thus loses its bearing. As such, we're left with Colonist.

So Shephard may have the Colonist background, but the psychological background still remains. However, Colonist is a balanced background, giving both Paragon and Renegade points. However, while the Sole Survivor profile gives neither bonus, War Hero influences Paragon points. If one chooses the latter, we're thrown out of balance. The background gives equality, while the Psychological Profile goes on a tangent. In the interests of pairing things up, we're left with Sole Survivor, giving Shephard a balanced personality and more of a 3D character rather than a 2D one. The Akuze issue is also far more interesting than the Blitz IMO, but that's irrelevant.

Obviously this argument is opinionated in a sense. It certainly won't be official anytime soon and I have no intentions of preeching it as such. Still, as far as I can tell, this seems to be the most likely background, as outlined above.

As for character class...well, that's generally irrelevant as there's very little in the way of inclination. But anyway, while I'm open to playing other Shephards, I currently see him as;

Name: John Shephard Background: Colonist Profile: Sole Survivor Class: Soldier (personal preferance)