BioWare gives fans character creation powers (not really)

by Steven Mostyn - Aug 18 2011, 20:40

Reaching a new high (or low) in the pursuit of meaningless pedantry, Canadian videogame developer BioWare is offering fans of sci-fi epic Mass Effect the chance to decide the hair colour of Mass Effect 3’s core female heroine.

As avid fans of the RPG series, we here at Tech Herald Towers duly thank BioWare for trusting us with such influential input. It’s an absolute honour to help decide an utterly trivial detail that can be effortlessly altered via the game’s character editing suite.

In order to let the great unwashed decide the future look of the female Commander Shepard, BioWare has opened “round two of FemShep voting” and has urged fans not to miss out on playing a part in the character’s aesthetic development.

The opening round of voting initially narrowed down the hairstyle and placed a sassy new blonde Shepard at the head of the pack. However, the developer decided to re-open the process after a number of fans slammed the blonde hair-do as promoting a “bimbo” image.

Speaking during this week’s Gamescom trade show in Germany, BioWare marketing director David Silverman also explained that a great many fans voted for the blonde Shepard based on style as opposed to colour.

Therefore the decision was made to place the preferred style before the masses with a selection of different colour options.

So while the ruffled shoulder-length mop remains, the conventional flame-haired Shepard from Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 is presently round two’s frontrunner (by around 6,000 votes), while a dark brunette iteration is sitting in second.

Round one’s crisp blonde look (a la Metroid Prime’s iconic Samus Aran) has fallen to a distant third and an (even more) unpalatable dirty blonde is propping up the list.

Yawn. Mass Effect 3 will be released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on March 06, 2012.

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