While BioWare has confirmed that it has been working on a new game in the Mass Effect series, the studio has stayed quiet about what we might actually see in the next entry. Voice actor Jennifer Hale has now also confirmed that she doesn’t know if Commander Shepard will return in the next Mass Effect. In an interview with Behind The Voice, Hale—who has played the female version of protagonist Commander Shepard since the original Mass Effect—said that fans of the series should ask BioWare directly if they want to see the character return.
“I have no idea. I have no idea,” said Hale when asked whether Shepard would return in the new title. “This is what I say to fans: look, if you want Shepard in the next game, please, email [BioWare] and tell them, because maybe they’ll respond to that. I literally don’t know. I would love it.”
Throughout the interview, Hale also shared other aspects of her time with BioWare on the Mass Effect franchise. One of these moments was when Mass Effect 3 had the female Commander Shepard on its cover. Discussing the time when fans of Mass Effect started referring to the female version of the protagonist as “FemShep”, Hale noted it as happening around the same time as the Mass Effect 3 cover reveal. “I don’t know when that started,” she said. “I love it though.”
“I’ll never forget the first time I saw that cover,” Hale continued. “‘Cause the third one was where they made the cover reversible, which was really something. I was at GameStop at midnight… I was joyfully there because we were promoting the release of 3.”
“[Mass Effect 3 director] Casey Hudson is a very calm, quiet, humble guy. He’s not a man who calls for the spotlight ever. And somebody dropped [the reversible Mass Effect 3 cover] in front of me to sign, and I almost burst into tears on the spot. So I got up, and I stood on top of either my chair or the table, and I held it over my hands, and I said, ‘CASEY HUDSON! THANK YOU!'”
Hale also recalled seeing the trailer for Mass Effect Legendary Edition, which featured FemShep for the first time in the original trilogy’s history.
“I think it was pandemic times, I want to say it was 2021 or 22 when they released [Mass Effect Legendary Edition],” she recalled. “The trailer for Legendary featured FemShep. And there had never been a trailer that featured FemShep. And I was stunned, and I started crying. For some reason, I grabbed my phone because I just wanted to talk to everybody in that moment, and I recorded it, and I was like, ‘I just watched this, and this is amazing.’ I just wanted to talk to everyone at once in that moment.”
As for Mass Effect 5, BioWare had featured teases for the game back in November 2025 during N7 Day through, among other things, the release of hidden art work depicting the Krogan Civil War, and footage of a Mass Relay. Along with this, executive producer Mike Gamble had also taken to social media to tell fans that “everything you’ve seen – from all N7 days – will connect.”
