Many Mass Effect gamers have fond memories of playing as a female Commander Shepard. That's largely due to the vocal work of actress Jennifer Hale. Her performance earned her version of the character the nickname "FemShep."
Yet for all the love FemShep gets, the majority of gamers tend to think of her as secondary to the male version of Shepard (voiced by Mark Meer). It's sacrilege to FemShep players, but everyone else almost considers her an afterthought.
Well not so fast. It turns out, Shepard was designed as a woman first, man second. This anecdote comes from former former BioWare animator Jonathan Cooper, who showed his Twitter followers the very first work he did for Mass Effect. His first job was animating a female wire frame model in a running motion.
Ten years ago this month, my very first anim test for Mass Effect. Yup, Commander Shepard was originally a woman: pic.twitter.com/FhC2E0FSrA
— Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) January 9, 2015
And another one. A parametric incline blend based on checking ground normals. Some games still don't do this. pic.twitter.com/BNwvp1LXDY — Jonathan Cooper (@GameAnim) January 9, 2015
Cooper also explained that his female animation of Shepard was repurposed motion capture from the game Jade Empire.
These days Cooper is working for Naughty Dog, doing animation for Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.
