In a galaxy where Commander Shepard does everything they can to find the best and the brightest to save humanity and everything in between — it’s no wonder we love the Mass Effect series. Full of daring characters and personal moments, it’s a much loved game with some of the best writing in decades. I promise not to make this trivia all about m’sweet boy Wrex.
1. The original game takes place in 2183. Just far enough away that we can’t even remotely try to argue with the science of the future! Clever.
2. Commander Shepard doesn’t only exist within the Mass Effect worlds! You can find Shep in EA’s My Sims title. Yeah, you heard me right.
3. While the first two in the series were widely loved, fans were quite fussy over the ending to the third that closed off the Commander Shepard story. Why? Because they felt that the game’s consistent choice options ultimately didn’t offer them a way to change the ending as only one true ending existed. However, they tried to make it all come together with more closure by releasing DLC that would offer more explanation to help those players come to terms with the finale.
(EA, Bioware)
4. A fun idle animation happens when your Commander Shepard halts near Legion for longer than a minute that makes him do, wait for it, The Robot dance. Pretty great, right?
5. There is a hamster that, if you chase it around The Normandy (your ship) – you can actually keep it in a little cage in your quarters. Everyone needs a pet, even the coolest Commander on the Citadel!
6. Speaking of The Citadel, it’s nearly 50 kilometers in length. Meaning, there’s a reason it gets obnoxious to run around that godforsaken place to get to quests and NPCs. I was not sad that I didn’t have to mess around too much with that later on in the series…
(EA, Bioware)
7. We know everyone is happy to hate Cerberus but can we try to remember that Mass Effect wouldn’t have continued if Cerberus hadn’t brought Commander Shepard back from the dead? Yeah, guess they’re not the worst after all.
8. Despite what you may hear, not all gamers are violence-hungry! 64% of players of Mass Effect were ones who stuck to Paragon (Good) choices in the game rather than Renegade (Bad) ones. This means that there were an awful lot of delightful and honorable Shepards saving the galaxy!
9. Same-sex relationships became available as of Mass Effect 3, opening up far more romantic options to your Commander Shepard which was an inclusive addition that fans were very ready for.
(EA, Bioware)
10. EA and Bioware offered fans the option to help choose the default face of their female form of Commander Shepard. With a quick dye-job to change the fan-chosen image’s hair from silver to red, the new default ‘FemShep‘ was chosen!
