Commander Shepard is the player character in BioWare's Mass Effect game trilogy: Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3. A veteran soldier of the Systems Alliance Navy military and N7-graduate of the Interplanetary Combatives Training (ICT) program, and the first human Citadel Council Spectre, Shepard works to stop "the Reapers", a sentient synthetic-machine race dedicated to wiping out all organic life. Shepard's gender, class, first name and general appearance are chosen and customised by the player. Mark Meer provides the voice for male Shepards, while Jennifer Hale voices females. Since the player can choose the gender of Shepard, much of the dialogue revolving around the character is gender neutral with only a few exceptions. Alan Shepard was the source of the character's name. Shepard's armour developed over the series, and was originally intended to be red-and-white. Though both genders were given equal importance during development, marketing felt there was a need for a ...