Blonde female Commander Shepard wins BioWare's box art competition

At long last, and after months of heated debate and speculation, BioWare has revealed one of Mass Effect 3's key details: the default color of female Commander Shepard's hair. After tallying the results of itsFacebook fan-poll, the studioannounced via Twitterthat the universe's most rough-and-tumble female space warrior will be blonde; leaving some to wonder what staggering impacts this will have on the fate of the human race, and others to wonder if BioWare is running out of ways to hype its upcoming sequel.

TheFacebook promotion, which ended this week, asked visitors to 'like' their favorite female Commander Shepard character design. Out of the six possible candidates (most of which were near identical save for hair color and style), fans selected the blonde Commander Shepard by a generous margin, winningher the starring role on Mass Effect 3's Collector's Edition box. At last check, the space captain with the golden locks (pictured left) had garnered nearly 25,000 votes, while the retro-Posh Spice (pictured right) version languished in second place with 9,700.

So there it is: gentleman (and gentlewomen, of course) really do prefer blondes ...at least when it comes to those representing mankind's last great hope. Check her out in full below:

The third and final chapter in the Mass Effect trilogy is scheduled to begin on March 6, 2012. In the meantime, check out our most recenthands-on preview for Mass Effect 3from Comic-Con 2011.

Jul 26, 2011

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.