Mass Effect 2 player choice statistics are surprising

We got a little factsheet card in the mail today titled "Fun Facts About Mass Effect 2". Surprisingly enough, it states that only 18% of all players chose a female Shepard while 82% played as a male Shepard. It didn't say whether or not that includes multiple playthroughs.

But even if it does, that's still a very small percentage of people who got to hear Jennifer Hale's (best) version of Commander Shepard. I guess a lot of Mass Effect 2 players are male and don't want to play as a woman. Or perhaps they never even bothered to do a second playthrough as a completely different character. How many of you chose a female redhead Renegade Shepard on their second run?

83% of players created their own face for Shepard. A whopping 65% of Mass Effect 2 players chose the Soldier class for our hero with the many favorite stores on the Citadel. I made some minor edits in the full list for those of you who are still waiting for the PS3 release.

• 83% of players created their own face for Shepard
• 82% play as male Shepard, 18% as female Shepard
• The Soldier class is far and away the most popular class at 65%
• <Archangel> was among the most popular squad members selected for missions
• 10% of players never let <The Krogan> out of <his/her thing>
• Only 50% of players have fully upgraded the <Ship> by the end of the game
• 14% of squad members die in the end-game, on average
• 36% of players chose the <Renegade choice> in the end-game

Mass Effect producer Casey Hudson spoke with IGN in September and mentiond that most of the data is gathered from "events" (player choices and actions). Here is a list of statistics that were released back then.

While some of this data will be used to change things like the difficulty -- which might lead to slight changes for the upcoming PS3 release -- other data may impact core design choices for Mass Effect 3. Here's an idea: don't make the skip conversation button the same button as the one you use to select the next conversation option. And if PS3 players get a slightly easier Horizon end-battle on Insanity, that probably wouldn't be a bad thing either.

Anyone planning to finish Mass Effect 3 30 times just to be "that guy"?