I’m going to give Bioware a ton of credit here. They’re incredibly consistent in creating games where gender* doesn’t significantly change things beyond dialogue. Besides giving FemShep breasts, the developers don’t have her hips sway more when she walks or have said breasts jiggle every which way, which is honestly probably more of a time- and money-saving choice than anything else, considering how much time they spend on making Liara as girly as possible (not that there’s anything wrong with that – I’m just saying that, if they really wanted to, they could do it).

All of that said, though, I have to admit that I prefer FemShep, and not just because I’m a woman. I mean, that is a part of it, of course; there’s something so cathartic about seeing a woman shoot a gun like a man in a video game (see also: when Rey first grabbed Luke’s lightsaber). I have played as BroShep and found the game just as enjoyable – in particular, the relationship with Tali because it was so freaking cute, as I’ve stated before – but I just connected more strongly with FemShep. Jennifer Hale’s performance was such a huge part of this, too; she just blows anything Mark Meer (BroShep) does out of the water, although he does improve by ME3.

I’ll just leave you guys here with this as just an example of why Jennifer’s performance just made the character for me:

Art Credit: eTeknix

* One of the major issues recently is how to approach a game with nonbinary genders, and I think that Bioware has a long way to go here, as is true of most entertainment media, but that’s another discussion.