First time playing a fem shep

Romance Samantha for some interesting dialogue.

When talking to the batarian to be a freelancer, he will have a line of dialogue that will give you a renegade interrupt.

Harkin will  have a line for femshep, in ME1 when asking about Garrus, that makes you want to drop-kick him to the next planet

Eve will have a line of dialogue when talking with her in the medbay

Good to know hunter, thanks for that spoiler tagged hint.



I'm already noticing some differences in the first Eden Prime cut scene, and the aftermath on the Normandy.

Also playing "My first FemShep", and a romanced Kaidan in 1, but switched to Garrus in 2. At the start of 3 I was very torn between the two, Kaidan's warmer than Ashley (my choice for my previous ManShep runs), but Garrus also greeted me with open arms. Finally decided on Garrus (I've been told he'll take me dancing) but I can seen the Kaidan attraction. I fear my FemShep is in an even more troublesome love triangle than my Sheploo was with Ash and Miranda.

Kaidan doesn't seem to demand you openly chose between him and your new fella. I've only assumed his romance locks in at a similar place and time to Ash's and Garrus' "Do you love me?" came up first. This is very different to Ash, you asks you to chose between her and Miranda quite openly and straightforwardly (that's our Ash for you). Bonus is, nobody appears to be heartbroken or cries when you tell them it's all over, or die because of it, I hope. One drawback is that FemShep doesn't look half as awesome slinging Kaidan over her shoulder on Mars as ManShep does cradling Ashley in his arms. But i'm a silly romantic fool, possibly with a crush on ManShep.

There's nothing wrong with Jennifer Hale's voice performance, but personally I prefer Mark Meer. There are times when having a bit of emotional depth has payed off, but I've found that Meer's cool, calm, collected, professional voice, "Don't worry folks, Commander Shepard's here, I've got this." fits the bill for the experienced, highly trained, professional soldier guy i'm playing as. I think I could see the mask start to crack in ME3, he's tired, he's starting to doubt himself, he's starting to lose hope, where as my FemShep is the same girl she always was. Nothing really seems to affect her, but maybe that's because i haven't gotten to Rannoch yet. Then again, part of the thing I appear to have for ManShep is his voice.

You should've done what I did and kill him during the Cerb Coup, although I did as a femshep who 'manced him in ME1(and later banged Jacob in ME2), kek. I then had her end up with Traynor, where i ended up imprompto LARPing that femshep was fed up with her misfortunes with men and wanted to try out a woman instead.

Modded 1 (used Gibbed to edit the details) - Played through 2.

You could just start playing ME1 at Virmire and
 

 That way you don't have to play the whole thing.

I think Mark Meer's more "deadpan' delivery allows for more interpretation variation by the player.  With Jennifer Hale's increased emotion, there is less room to interpret her lines in different ways.  The best example is the her line in ME2 to Jacob:  "I'm just interested in talking for a bit."  There's nothing wrong with the words in the line, but the way Hale delivers the line leaves no doubt that it's a come on.  Well, what if I don't want my Shepard coming on to Jacob?  The line hardly suits a player characterization of a tough female commander who follows regs to the letter and romances no one on their crew.  I can more easily "imagine" a subtle indication of interest in Mark Meer's voice, say, when he talks to Tali and keeps asking her more and more questions about her pilgrimage, etc.... but I can't easily "turn off" Hale's "come hither" voice inflection when she just doesn't want to start a romance with Jacob.  While a lot of people like that FemShep can definitively outsass cold-hearted mercs... I does make it more difficult to characterize her as the sort of girl who just lets flirtations slide (if that's an alternate character trait the player would like to build into their personal FemShep).  Mark Meer's more neutral delivery is more flexible that way.

As for the comedic relief in the game... the role of Shepard is really written to be the straight man... particularly in ME1 where it's Joker and Wrex who are really the designated comedians of the game.  In ME2, there are more lines given to Shepard that are intentional comedy... and Meer, IMO, delivers them just fine... a bit of gangsta accent in "You're workin' too hard."  Just the right amount of cold intimidation in "Drink it, or I'll blind you one eye at a time."  Nothing overdone.  In ME3... he does a lot of lines just waay better than Hale.  "The best" at the end of the Citadel DLC was, for example, delivered perfectly by Meer.  He sounds absolutely sincere.  Hale's voice inflection there sounds more "trite" to me.

Most Bioware protagonists are written as a gender-neutral. Shepard doesn't have canon gender or canon sexuality.

Maybe the "interpretation variation" suits most player RP-ing themselves as MaleShep but really, all he does was imitating a cardboard; bland, absent, emotionless, soulless and constipated. It really make no difference if the character is voiced since he tried his best to act like he's a voiced silent protagonist. And apparently, it took two installments for an actor to be allowed to emote and magically he's not "too emotional" if he does it?

There are a lot of voice male protagonists since Meer; Nicholas Boulton, Nolan North, David Hayter, Brian Bloom, etc and they're all experienced professional actors and they do keep up with their female counterparts. There's exactly zero flame wars between Jennifer Hale and Brian Bloom despite being the same special ops military character because they complement each other. That's what it should've been for either Shepard. I don't need to make excuses for someone's acting because he identified himself with the players' desire to self-insert more than he does with the character he's playing. This is why Meer is the first and last time Bioware hire an amateur to lead their franchise.

Honestly I always find it much eeasier to headcannon when a character has a more defined voice then a less defined voice. Probably the second leading cause of my headcanons and my preferebility to certain characters.