Mass Effectannounced a brand-new collectable yesterday, simply labelled the “Shepard’s Death Statue”. For $135, you could immortaliseFemShep’slast moments in space, but given the lack of FemShep merch, selling a statue of her lying dead among the stars immediately proved controversial.
BioWare responded to the backlash by pulling it from sale and rolling out an apology; “Hi all, Earlier today we announced the sale of our latest Mass Effect Shepard statue,“BioWare tweeted. “This statue was intended to be part of a series, commemorating some of the key and most emotional moments in the series. The way we announced it did not convey that properly, nor does it give the moment in the series the credit it deserves.
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“As a result, we’ll be pausing sales on the statue until we can share the larger plan with you […] If you were able to secure a pre order for this, we will unfortunately need to cancel this until the proper launch. The store will automatically refund your card”.
Many in the comments have shared a suggestion for what could serve as a memorial to Shepard and the Normandy crew, something that doesn’t depict FemShep’s corpse -the statue from the Normandy Crash Site DLC.It’s a golden plaque showing the Normandy blasting off into space, and given that it’s in-game like the moment BioWare did choose, it fits the criteria.
“Thank you it was in poor taste” @Kitsune_Reinara replied. “If you want to commemorate, I say a replica of the memorial we place near Normandy Sr. is best”.
It’s not too surprising that sales of the collectable were pulled giving the outpour of backlash to the announcement. Some complained about spoilers (though, for a 11-year-old game, maybe enough time has passed), others were upset that it’s one of the only official pieces of FemShep merch to date, some found it funny and joked about it being a belated April Fool’s Day announcement, while many simply couldn’t believe that it was real.
At least there’s one silver lining to come out of all of this - FemShep is the canon choice, clearly. This is a series set to commemorate the most emotional moments across the Mass Effect trilogy, and kicking it off with FemShep in one of the most important moments of the games shows that yeah, she’s the right pick. If you haven’t played as her yet, go and remedy that.
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