John Shepard:
- Survivor of the Mindoir Colony Raid
- Sole Survivor of the Akuz Incident
- Ruthless Operations Officer who killed hundreds at Torfan to get the job done
Now we just start off with these basics, not even taking into account his birth place and upbringing, these three starting character points paint a man who has become a soldier and has deep scars marring his psychology. How he would deal with them is a matter of theory crafting though because John Shepard is quite possibly the most well balanced person in the history of video games regardless of these three formational trauma's that "build" his "character".
To steal a line from the "Ah yes....Reapers" thread....I will have to say here "Ah yes....character".
John Shepard has no character. Throughout all his interactions, whether Paragon or Renegade his depth, even with his face fully exposed is so shallow and unexpressive that you could almost say that Master Chief from the Halo franchise had more character depth and Master Chief was more or less just a walking suit of armor toting a gun.
So we go on, John Shepard also continues in his journey to add the following psychologically transformational events to his resume:
- Rescues the Colony of Eden Prime from a Geth Invasion led by Saren Arturius
- Becomes imprinted by a Prothean Beacon
- Fights the Council for the disbarrment of Saren Arturius from the Spectres
- Exposes the treachery of Saren Arturius to the Council and becomes a Spectre
- Saves/Destroys the colony on Feros while investigating a Geth attack
- Becomes imprinted with the Prothean Cipher
- Frees/Kills Shiala
- Frees/Kills the Rachnai Queen at Noveria
- Frees/Kills the Mining Operations Team at Asteroid X57
- Saves/Kills Wrex at Virmire
- Is imprinted again by a Prothean Beacon at Virmire
- Speaks to Sovereign(Nazara) at Virmire
- Sacrifices Kaiden or Ashley at Virmire
- Drives a Mako through a Mass Relay at Ilos traveling thousands of light years across the galaxy in a ground vehicle
- Defeats Saren Arturius at the Citadel Tower/Defeats Saren-Soveriegn at the Citadel Tower
- Saves/Sacrifices the Council of the Citadel
- Dies approximately two months and four weeks after the events of the Battle of the Citadel to decompression and re-entry trauma.
Now, wow, you add that list of stuff to the starting three and you get a pretty complex and deep guy, or so you'd think. But...no, not really, John gets revived by the Lazarus project, quite literally coming back from death and other than some unhealed scarring, hes as well balanced as ever, right on point....give him a gun and get back to fixing the galaxy.
On the Paragon side of things, John is so untraumatized by everything hes experienced up to this point that he could literally be called delusional or insane. Sitting around on the Citadel making jokes about software with a sales rep, giving endorsements....and largely completely non-plussed, psychologically, from everything hes experienced. Even on the Renegade side of actions, he shows very little depth, his level of malice is petty annoyance, the only place he really shows ANY emotion at all is telling off the C-Sec officer and the Volus for harassing the Quarian girl in the Credit Chit side mission....and thats a Paragon action.
The game, and characters often make references to how strong willed John Shepard must be, but this really goes beyond that to the point of nearly unbelievable. There is some CGI art of Shepard which made me consider that the depth behind the character is completely missing in the experience of playing the character himself.
This image here shows more depth in its CGI rendering, to the John Shepard character, than the character itself does anywhere in Mass Effect or Mass Effect 2, and given Mark Meer's rather bland, generic male voice acting, the character itself completely falls flat on its face in comparison to the absolute bouquet of varieties of personality that John Shepard's companions bring to the table.
Mark Meer's VO work on this project has been substantial, its not something that can be changed, but I can say, without a doubt, that given the pull BioWare has had of late pulling in substantially good voice actors, while it makes sense to carry him over for the continuity, it did the character no favors at all.
Shepard as presented and voiced by Mark Meer, in comparison to his companions and even non-companion characters in Mass Effect/Mass Effect 2, is like....putting Mark Meer next to....Al Pacino, the personalities and depths of Shepards companions are so loud and powerful and compelling, and Shepard is their "leader" but comes off, really, as the wall flower of the entire bunch.
Now I'm not asking for BioWare to switch voice actors mid stream, that would hardly do the game any justice, and I'm not saying that I want an emo/grief ridden Shepard trying to save the universe in between sessions with his therapist.
But, given the Commanders resume up to this point, I'd expect more than a robot, or a guy that seems to be on a really good Prozac dosage. He should have scars, he should have depths....and I just see none.
Jennifer Hale puts more into Commander Shepard than Mark Meer does, as far as voice acting goes, but is limited, again, by the scripting and writing and fails to display, effectively, the traumatized psychology, the malice and ruthlessness, the pain and anger, that the person that Commander Shepard really would display, given their life history to this point.
So with that said, I now introduce my official signature, doesn't stop Mass Effect from being a great franchise and a great game....cause it is quite epic as games go, but, as main character heroes go....Commander John Shepard has to go down in gaming history as the least believable protaganist in the history of all writing ever. Everything that has happened to him just runs right through his head and leaves no marks at all.
It is, really, rather unbelievable, when it comes down to it.
EDIT: Fixing horrible formatting problems...my bad...I think.
Modifié par SLPr0, 07 mars 2010 - 02:41 .
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Master Chief! A true hero.
