Commander Shepard’s Voice Actor Accidentally Immortalized a Mass Effect Race as Steve Buscemi

Mark Meer never set out to save the galaxy. Somehow, that became the job.

Longtime BioWare fans may recognize Meer’s voice from games including Neverwinter Nights and Jade Empire. He is best known as the voice of the male Commander Shepard in Mass Effect, but his relationship with the studio began years before the trilogy.

“I did one line in Baldur’s Gate 2, and then subsequently, BioWare just kept hiring me for every subsequent project leading up to the Mass Effect trilogy,” Meer said.

After EA closed BioWare, dismissed its remaining staff, and canceled Mass Effect: Universe, Polygon spoke with Jennifer Hale and Meer, the actors behind the two versions of Commander Shepard. In addition to sharing their hopes for the future of Mass Effect, they reflected on their earlier work with the studio.

Both actors appeared in BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate games. Meer often played creatures, villains, and other supporting characters. They also worked on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Hale voiced Bastila Shan, while Meer played Carth Onasi in the game’s demo. Raphael Sbarge took over the role for the full release—and later voiced Kaidan Alenko in Mass Effect.

Meer jokes that Sbarge’s casting inspired his decision to kill Kaidan on Virmire: “Because he replaced me, that’s why I killed Kaiden on Virmire.”

Meer’s contribution to Mass Effect began before he was cast as Shepard. During the game’s early development, BioWare asked him to help demonstrate how its alien species might sound. Hale praised the impact of that work, saying Meer was “instrumental in defining the sound of every single species in this game.”

“So what does a typical salarian sound like? What does a typical krogan sound like? That kind of thing,” Meer recalled. “It was nice to see some of the advice that I gave or some of the suggestions I made get implemented.”

He also claims partial credit for the salarians’ distinctive rhythm. “I do take credit for the salarians all having the cadence of Steve Buscemi,” he said with a laugh. His first salarian performance was essentially a Buscemi impression for a demo, and the approach stuck.

While he was recording alien voices, BioWare invited Meer to audition for Shepard. He assumed he had little chance of getting the part and went into the audition without much pressure.

“I thought there was absolutely no way I would get it,” Meer said. “Which is probably good because I was not nervous at all.” He figured that, after the audition, he could simply return to voicing aliens.

He did continue to play a number of aliens, including the vorcha, but Shepard became his defining role. The news was exciting—and surprising. Meer was even more astonished to learn that Hale would voice the same character, comparing the experience to being cast as a film’s lead opposite Meryl Streep, “playing the same character.”

“Getting to be the lead in one of these was really a dream come true.”

Hale said Meer helped establish Shepard’s tone by recording the first sessions. He worked with BioWare in Edmonton while she recorded in Los Angeles. At the beginning, Hale’s team played Meer’s takes for her before she recorded her own lines, giving her a reference for the character. She would try several versions of a line, sometimes echoing Meer’s delivery before shaping it in her own way.

As their recording schedules changed, the actors fell into a rhythm. BioWare did have one important instruction for both: “The one thing that they did really stress was you have to take the exact same amount of time to say the line,” Meer recalled with a laugh.

Hale has joked that she is not much of a gamer—“I suck at it”—while Meer is a fan of role-playing games built around player choice. For him, taking the lead in a major RPG was a long-held ambition.

Because players can customize Shepard and steer the character toward either the Paragon or Renegade path, the actors and directors needed to identify what remained consistent across both interpretations. “So we really had to find the core of Shepard. What is the same between Renegade and Paragon?” Meer said.

Meer described Paragon Shepard as a principled paladin from Dungeons & Dragons. Renegade Shepard, by contrast, is “a sociopath [who’s] still saving the galaxy, but not being polite or empathetic about it in any way whatsoever.” Beneath those differences, the team agreed Shepard was a disciplined military officer, accustomed to giving orders under pressure.

Both paths have their appeal, though the Renegade option seems to hold a special charm for the actors. “I always joke that Paragon’s who I wish I was and Renegade’s what I wish I could say,” Hale said.

“I think we all aspire to be Paragon, but sometimes wish we could be Renegade,” Meer added.

The Paragon–Renegade system is one reason players continue to return to the trilogy, whether they experiment with new decisions or revisit familiar choices. Meer said the series’ lasting popularity still amazes him.

“You know, next year will be the 20th anniversary of the first Mass Effect game,” he said. “The fact that we are still talking about it, that we still have fans that are so passionate about that universe—it is impressive and humbling.”