The iconic voice behind Commander Shepard, Jennifer Hale, hasn’t been asked to return for Mass Effect 5, but “would be there before they finish the sentence” if asked.
Hale, the actress who gave life to “FemShep,” the protagonist of the Mass Effect trilogy, spoke to IGN recently and expressed her desire to return to perhaps her most beloved character.
But, it turns out, it wouldn’t even need to be the temptation of reprising her role as Commander Shepard that would lure her back to the series, but just being able to step back into that world once again in any form.
When we asked, “Would it have to be Shepard, or would you play anyone?” Hale replied: “Anyone. I love that universe. I’m ready. Anytime”. Krogan? Salarian? Turian? The possibilities are endless.
As mentioned, developer BioWare has yet to pick up the phone and call on Hale to return for Mass Effect 5, but that doesn’t mean we should give up hope. Hale pleaded with fans to let BioWare know that you’d love to see Shepard return somehow — the developers could find a way to make the hundreds of years gap work, I’m sure. Or, perhaps more likely, pop Commander Shepard in the game as a holographic display in some future museum.
“Everyone out there, the more you tell them what you want, maybe the likelier it is that it’ll happen,” Hale said. And who are we to disregard the orders of our Commander?
Of course, all of this was said amid a turbulent time for both BioWare and its parent company, EA. Earlier this year, it was reported that the studio had been entirely restructured, following the disappointment of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, to focus entirely on Mass Effect.
More recently, EA was acquired and made private by an investor group composed of the Saudi Arabian PIF, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners in an eye-watering $55 billion deal. It’s currently unclear how this change in ownership has affected projects in development, such as the new Mass Effect.
Details may be very thin as to what we can expect next from BioWare’s landmark sci-fi RPG series, but fear not, one returning feature has been confirmed by the game’s director, Michael Gamble: excessive lens flare. And let’s not forget Amazon plans to film its Mass Effect TV series at the end of 2026.
Over the years, BioWare has issued repeated teasers, including artwork stuffed full of Easter eggs and secrets hinting at Mass Effect 5’s eventual story. BioWare has suggested that the game will be set hundreds of years after the original Mass Effect trilogy, with a story that spans the events of both the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy featured in the series’ fourth main game.
Would you like to see Jennifer Hale and Commander Shepard return in the next chapter of Mass Effect alongside that lens flare? Let us know in the comments below.
Simon Cardy is a Senior Editor at IGN who can mainly be found skulking around open world games, indulging in Korean cinema, or despairing at the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.