Ah, I tell a lie, there's the news reports too for both the origin and career history.
It's funny though, because if you choose Spacer, you basically had a peaceful upbringing and your mom (or dad?) is an admiral in the fleet. I *think* that comes up in ME3, and you're given an opportunity to ask if they're okay after the attack on Earth, but I could be making that up.
No you're right. At some point later on in the game Hackett mentions she's turned up with her ship. I think there's also mention of her early on when you ask Garrus about his family.
Honestly, I like the little touches like that as it helps to flesh things out a little, informs in how you might characterize them and makes it that much easier to distinguish between one's different Sheps.
For example, my main Shep is an Earthborn Sole Survivour. Now when I picked those I didn't know that it would give a heavy renegade bonus, I just thought they were interesting. She had a rough upbringing, did a lot of stuff she's not proud of to survive (in my mind, she's basically Matilda from Leon...maybe mixed in with a little Bean from Ender's Shadow ;-) ) and enlisted to escape the life. This gives her a very tough outer shell and a very low BS tolerance, but also a deep sense of duty and personal honour. She holds herself to a very high standard, though mostly out of a deep seated sense of inadequacy and fear of letting other people down.
As you can imagine, the dreams fit very well with this character, as did the sort of surrogate father/daughter relationship she had with Anderson.
Conversely, my renegade Shep is a Ruthless Spacer. An arrogant navy brat, almost sociopathic in his lack of empathy and has a very direct, goal oriented view of problems. Not much in the way guile or cunning, but he has a selfish streak a mile wide.
My paragon Shep is a colonist war hero and I played her as a high functioning psychopath and borderline schizophrenic. She's very careful about controlling her impulses and keeping up appearances to such a degree that doing the "right thing" has almost become a reflex action. Not so much a wolf in sheep's clothing as a wolf that's convinced itself it's a sheep.
I pretend that the eavesdropping go-fetch missions don't actually happen in the "real story," they're just a gameplay convention.
Yeh pretty much I kind of think the same and it would be interesting to see the movies if they ever happen what sort of cannon they will pick n choose from.
I think it'd be funny if they just picked *all* of the back story options!
*deep breath*
The child of two career navy officers, born in space but settled on a colony when they mustered out. The colony get wiped out and Shepard, still just a child gets sent back to Earth, but runs away from the orphanage/foster home and ends up on the streets all through adolescence. After enlistment Shepard's entire squad is wiped out by thresher maws. While on convalescent leave on Elysium, Batarian pirates hit the colony and Shepard single handedly holds a gap in the defences, saving thousands and earning a quick promotion and the assignment to lead the counter attack.
Damn, you could almost make a whole movie just about that. They could call it 'Mass Effect Origins: I Hate Space Pirates!'
[EDIT]
Almost forgot. If anyone's interested, you can download the EC soundtrack for free
here, straight from Bioware.
