Kotaku:

When I started Mass Effect 2, I had Shepard wear a helmet. I wanted the statistical advantages that came with any one of them. That’s a choice of math over aesthetics, of course, my standard priorities while playing a game. That’s a sound strategy for success in a virtual world: Be better at something; don’t care how you look doing it.

But not seeing Shepard’s face bothered me more with each muffled conversation. I realized that I valued emotional expression in Mass Effect 2 over a 5% health bonus.

Reminds me of the travesty that was Sly Stallone’s Judge Dredd, where he spent lost of the movie helmetless despite one of the key JD themes being he never never never removed his helm.