User blog comment:The Milkman/The Shepard Fan Club/@comment-24174486-20120720200952

I disagree a bit on not starting at the bottom with Mass Effect. I've always found ME1 to suffer a bit from Early Game Hell: while the enemies you encounter early on are weak, Shepard and his squad have basically bottom-line equipment, little skill with their weapons, and few points to invest in powers. Your shields fall after a second or two of continuous fire, your weapons overheat quickly and have accuracy issues (one of the reasons why I never use assault rifles in ME1 is because their recoil takes forever to go down and it takes a long time before you get an AR with an accuracy higher than "1"), and the few powers you have take a long time to cool down. Shepard's persuasive abilities also follow, since you need to have enough Paragon or Renegade points to advance your Charm and Intimidate talents. Going to Therum right after the Citadel on my first run through made that only too clear, and now my new Sheps do a few sidequests before getting Liara.

As for personality, I've always found Shepard to be an interesting character, although when it comes to me and RPGs, I sometimes blur the lines between the personality the game establishes and how I imagine the character thinks. :3