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Commander Shepard is the player character in the Mass Effect video game series by BioWare (Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Mass Effect 3).

A veteran soldier of the Systems Alliance Navy, an N7 graduate of the Interplanetary Combatives Training (ICT) military program, and the first human Citadel Council Spectre, Shepard works to stop the Reapers, a sentient machine race dedicated to wiping out all advanced organic life. Shepard is neither a hero, nor a villain; depending upon players' choices and actions, Shepard is the abstaining factor that acts as both on occasion and will take whatever action is deemed necessary when presented with impossible scenarios.

Shepard's gender, class, first name and facial appearance are chosen and customized by the player. The default male Shepard's face and body were modelled after Mark Vanderloo, while Mark Meer provided the voice for the male Shepard. Jennifer Hale voiced the female Shepard. 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. However, in some other Mass Effect media, Shepard is called "he" regardless of player choice for the gender.

The character is inspired by and named after American astronaut Alan Shepard. Shepard's armor developed over the series and was originally intended to be red-and-white. Most promotional material for the series focused on the male Shepard, due to the studio's desire for a single identifiable hero, though both versions of the character were given equal priority during development. Various merchandise has been made, including several figurines. Shepard has made cameo appearances in other Electronic Arts games and is referenced in Mass Effect: Andromeda.

BioWare wanted players to feel special and empowered from the start of the game. Unlike other role-playing game protagonists, they felt Shepard should not be an entirely blank character for the player to create, in order to create a more "intense" experience; with Mass Effect being more cinematic than other BioWare video games, they felt they needed an "extra bit" with a sense of a specific flavor that can be caused by a memorable character, such as Star Trek's Captain Kirk or 24's Jack Bauer.

Developers wanted to at least give Shepard a last name so that other characters could address them. The developers wanted a name that was both "all-American" and common, which led them to start looking at the original seven astronauts. Alan Shepard was chosen due to fitting with the idea of "their" Shepard, being tough and respected, and fitting in with the character being the first human Spectre – Alan Shepard being the first American in space.

During the development of the first game, the female Shepard was given equal importance as the male counterpart; unique lines were written for her as well as a unique romance option. In fact, the early model for animation tests featured a female Shepard. When describing her, Casey Hudson said "[s]he's not a caricature of the idea of role-playing as a female, but instead she's very impressive as a strong female character that's sensitive yet extremely confident and assertive".

Shepard's default armor was originally red-and-white, but this was changed to charcoal grey, with a red-and-white stripe and the N7 logo, as Shepard looked too much like a medic. The red stripe in the N7 logo is said to symbolise the blood the character must sacrifice to save the galaxy. The armor became piece-based in Mass Effect 2 to stress the character's silhouette, as well as making them look "stronger and able to take more punishment". Despite this, the colours, as well as other elements of the armor and the commander's appearance, are customisable in Mass Effect 2.

For the character customisation at the start of the game, they focused on "quality and realism". In order to test out the customisation system, the team made various celebrity look-alikes to ensure it offered a wide enough variety. The default male face, as well as the male body, were based on Dutch model Mark Vanderloo. The default female face changed slightly between the first and second game, but underwent a big redesign for Mass Effect 3. Six different designs for the default female Shepard were hosted online, and fans were told to vote for whichever design they preferred via Facebook; many different designs were made before the vote, but were whittled down to six by BioWare staff. The blonde Shepard with freckles won, though BioWare later decided that the hairstyle may have interfered with the vote, and so made another competition to decide that. The red-haired Shepard won the subsequent competition.

The male and female versions of Shepard were voiced by Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale respectively. Both of them had worked with BioWare many times previously.

Meer had first worked with BioWare during the creation of Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and went on to voice other bit parts in their games. When he was first called in to work on Mass Effect, he expected to voice more bit parts, and was "pleasantly surprised" to get the role of Shepard. Caroline Livingstone gave voice direction during recording, and lead writer Mac Walters would occasionally sit in during recording sessions, allowing lines to be changed quickly.

Hale has said she is very invested in helping to "create" the stories of video games, though she herself is not a gamer. Although Hale does object to certain lines if they seem out-of-character in other works, she prefers not to mess with the words for Shepard and BioWare. That BioWare did not change the words based on gender considerations was one of Hale's favorite aspects of the series.

Shepard serves as the player character of the main Mass Effect game trilogy. The commander is a graduate of the Systems Alliance's – the "galactic face of humanity" – military N7 program, the highest grade of their "Interplanetary Combatives Training" that commands a great deal of respect. Their se