by Courtney Tuchman
Developer Jonathan Cooper revealed through a tweet that Commander Shepard from BioWare’s Mass Effect was planned to be a woman.
10 years ago in January, Cooper performed the first animation test for the protagonist of the Mass Effect series, he claims. In the 3-second long animation, a woman turns while running forward.
“Yup,” Cooper stated, “Commander Shepard was originally a woman.”
In a follow-up tweet, Cooper said the motion capture in the clip was recycled from BioWare’s Jade Empire. Additionally, he claimed that people were originally going to be able to pick Commander Shepard’s gender in Mass Effect.
Presently, Cooper is working as an animator at Naughty Dog on the game Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. Prior to this, he was employed as the animation director for Assassin’s Creed 3 at Ubisoft Montreal. Before that, he served as the animation lead for Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 at BioWare.
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Source: Polygon
Image: Polygon
