User blog comment:Ygrain/Between the Past and the Future 4: What Do You Want?/@comment-4220180-20121106162622/@comment-4950455-20121107085652

Personally, I think Dark And Troubled Pasts are much more "generic and trite" than heroics these days. I'm not dissing the other backgrounds - I've had Shepards with all three - but I appreciate War Hero because it's a bit... simpler? less dramatic? ...or something like that. Sometimes you just want to have a psychologically normal protagonist.

...Which is probably the same reason I actually more-or-less liked Jacob.

(And it also, IMO, makes the most sense as a reason for Shepard to be picked as a Spectre candidate).