Rambling about Ideas for a 'Combined Background' Commander Shepard
Having recently started a new Mass Effect playthrough, I thought I’d do a bit of discussion regarding my own takes on the concept of a ‘Combined Background’ for Commander Shepard. Of course I’ve seen a number of these from other people over the years, but I’ve got my own thoughts and a few original twists on the formula I figured I’d share.
One of those new twists I’m going to be doing here is not trying to represent ALL of the backgrounds equally. I feel like the norm for a lot of these combined background takes is that people usually try to figure out how all three backgrounds can be crammed together as they are. And personally, I feel like they often come off feeling more than a little cluttered, chaotic and fairly obviously stitched together as a result.
Instead, I’m taking a bit more of a free-form approach to this, tweaking and modifying various parts of each background while keeping to the spirit and essence of them so they all flow together more nicely.
I’ll also be moving a few important dates around, mostly to help space out a few of the ‘stages’ of Shepard’s life. And maybe also implying that a few major events may have happened a bit earlier, ergo; my feelings that First Contact happened WAY too recently in ME’s lore.
Finally I’m going to be using FemShep for this example, though I think this backstory works with a Shepard of any gender.
To whit:
Shepard is born in the year 2154 on Earth. Specifically in New York City, in keeping with the Earthborn background. However, this doesn’t last long, as due to a number of factors, notably Shepard’s mother Hannah having enlisted in the Systems Alliance Navy shortly after Shepard was born and concerns of growing gang violence in NYC, Shepard’s family immigrates offworld to the colony of Mindoir when Shepard is just three years old.
An interesting note to all this is that it is specifically Shepard’s family on her father’s side that immigrate, as Hannah Shepard is an orphan with no siblings or other known family. In fact, at this point ‘Shepard’ is actually using her father’s surname.
Shepard spends the next ten years growing up on the colony of Mindoir with her father and his family, along with semi-regular contact/visits from her mother, who has turned out to have quite the promising career as an Alliance Naval Officer. This, among a few other factors, actually leads to a steadily growing distancing and deterioration of Hannah’s marriage with Shepard’s father. Factors like Hannah never actually settling down, a growing ‘differing viewpoints’ on non-humans between Shepard’s parents, and a few ‘alleged’ flings Hannah may or may not have had. Including at least one with an Asari…
(I will freely admit that this is where my FemShep/Liara bias and HC that Shepard has a crippling weakness for pretty Asari factors in. She very much gets it from her mom XD)
Throughout all of this, and despite being able to meet in person only intermittently, Shepard remains quite close with her mother. Shepard is simply far too awed and amazed by the life of a spacer and fully intends to follow in her mother’s footsteps. Something which ends up starting to cause some friction with her father by the time she’s starting to become a pre-teen.
All in all, by the time she’s 13, Shepard is seeing the writing on the wall and is starting to hate colony life, wishing she could run away from Mindoir to live with her mother.
A wish the universe would grant in a most depressingly ironic fashion…
Because in 2167, the colony of Mindoir is attacked by Batarian Slavers, in keeping with the Colonist background.
Shepard’s father and all of the rest of her family are killed in the raid. Except of course her mother, who is offworld at the time.
This is actually one of those places where two of the backgrounds fit together kind of perfectly, as we know from the Spacer-exclusive quest ‘Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things’ in ME1 that Hannah Shepard was serving on the SSV Einstein, the very ship which responded to the Mindoir raid. And was indeed the very ship which picked up Colonist!Shepard.
So we now have a VERY narratively juicy scenario wherein Hannah Shepard has to deal with being on the ship responding to a raid on the colony where her family is living! And remember that Hannah is almost certainly not a marine and is instead serving on the bridge, meaning she doesn’t get to go down there herself and instead likely has to hear about all the shit going on down there.
Heck, this could make interactions with Lieutenant Zabaleta in the aforementioned ‘Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things’ side-quest WAY more interesting, as he could potentially be one of the marines who found Shepard.
And so, Shepard is picked up by the Einstein and is reunited with and subsequently taken in by her mother, the only family she has left. Thus bringing us into the ‘Spacer’ section of Shepard’s background, where she spends her teenage years into adulthood living on ships and stations and raised by her mother and likewise follows in her mother’s footsteps into the Systems Alliance.
Now while this framework might feel like it more heavily favors the Colonist and Spacer backgrounds while leaving the Earthborn route underdeveloped, I think that in of itself can be rather interesting? In that it can give Shepard some rather complicated feelings towards being an ‘Earthling’. She was born on Earth yes, but it was never really her HOME. In fact, I like to think this version of Shepard has never actually been back to Earth proper her whole life prior to the third game. Which ultimately gives her an interesting perspective when it comes to saving Earth. Plus I feel like there’s some interesting symbolism that can tie into the overall narrative of ME3, ie; this Shepard represents how Earth cannot win the fight alone and must get help from the rest of the galaxy.
As for how this effects the three potential Background-related quests in ME1; obviously the Colonist-Background assignment ‘I Remember Me’ wherein Shepard helps a deeply traumatized girl who was taken in the Mindoir raid can play out completely as-is, and as I mentioned earlier the Spacer-Background assignment ‘Old, Unhappy, Far-Off Things’ can have some additional interesting layers with it also being tied to the Mindoir raid.
Though admittedly with how I’ve set things up, the Earthborn-Background assignment ‘Old Friends’ pretty much can’t work normally, as Shepard can’t exactly have been in a gang at the age of three. However, I think this can actually be used to make this quest more interesting? Rather than a case of Shepard’s past coming back to haunt them, it is instead a mystery of mistaken or even stolen identity as to why this Finch character seems so convinced that Shepard was part of some gang in New York as a teenager. Heck, given a few off-hand comments, perhaps this could even involve an early appearance by one Owen-Armando Bailey.
Now when it comes to Shepard’s service record, while it’s certainly tempting to try and finagle a way that all three options can fit together, I’m once again opting to do something a little different.
You see, each of the ‘War Hero’, ‘Sole Survivor’ and ‘Ruthless’ choices are meant to be this singularly defining moment for Shepard’s character. Something that really helps establish and define who they are going into the first game. So I can’t help but feel that cramming all three onto the same Shepard once again makes them feel rather cluttered as a character. And that’s not even going into how the ‘War Hero’ and ‘Ruthless’ options don’t exactly fit together that well, especially if Shepard is meant to be Paragon-leaning.
Instead, here’s my alternative: Shepard still follows one of the three options as presented, whether they are the Sole Survivor of Akuze, the Hero of Elysium or the Butcher of Torfan. At the same time, while they aren’t central to the events of the other two backgrounds, Shepard is still involved in the events surrounding them. In other words, one event is Shepard’s ‘primary’ background while the other two become ‘secondary’, and wind up playing into and reinforcing the ideology that the ‘primary’ background instills in them.
To whit; my combined Shepard is the Hero of Elysium, the woman who heroically fought off an army of slavers basically single-handedly. She also fought at the Battle of Torfan, though she ISN’T the ‘Butcher’ who sent her entire unit to their deaths in a meatgrinder. Instead, the horror and brutality that Shepard witnessed at Torfan challenged but ultimately reinforced her idealism, further driving her that this isn’t what she wanted to be. Finally, this Shepard was part of the relief force that discovered what happened on Akuze, finding the remains of the Marine unit that was massacred by Thresher Maws. An event which likewise rattled Shepard, but also reinforced her drive to save as many as she can.
And you could just as easily apply this framework to the other ‘primary’ backgrounds: ‘Ruthless’ Shepard witnessed the aftermath of the Skylian Blitz as well as the incident on Akuze, the horrors of both driving them to be all the more ruthless and uncompromising. Meanwhile ‘Sole Survivor’ Shepard could have been likewise a ‘survivor’ of both the Skylian Blitz and the Battle of Torfan.
Basically, I feel like this method just flows a bit better narratively and allows Shepard to have a more consistent character. While also nonetheless giving them a certain perspective on all three major events, even if they are only central to one of them, which for one can play into all of the ‘Service Record’-focused quests of the first game:
It gives War Hero and Sole Survivor Shepards differing perspectives on the Battle of Torfan when dealing with Major Kyle, gives Sole Survivor and Ruthless Shepards differing perspectives on the Skylian Blitz when dealing with Elanos Haliat and gives War Hero and Ruthless Shepards differing perspectives on Akuze when dealing with Corporal Toombs.
Anyway, that’s my perhaps overly-in-depth ramblings on combining all of Shepard’s background options. Maybe it doesn’t exactly fully count as representing all of them as they are, but I think this way makes for a more consistent character and narrative.
