Poll of the Day > Do you want GTA VI to feature a female protagonist?

(+) Yeah! (+)

i don't really care what gender the main character is.
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See i dont care what the protagonists is
I want to see a full city, with very detailed interiors for buildings and such.

Vegas would be the perfect city to do that (with all the hotels)
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Dikitain posted...

I am usually the kind of person who hates when you create a character in a game just to check off an SJW box, especially when when said character has no defining characteristics other then their gender.

To be fair, most games DON'T add "create-a-character" just to "check off an SJW box", they do it because a significant number of players (whether male or female) may want to play as a character they personally identify with (especially in games that are heavy on attempted immersion, where the character is supposed to be YOU to some degree). Which doesn't just include things like gender, but also things like body type, hairstyle, skin color, and so on. And which can mean anything from playing yourself as closely as possible, to playing a deliberately idealized version of yourself, to roleplaying a specific character you've come up with in your head, or even playing the most ridiculous and over-the-top weirdo you can possibly create (a popular option in Saints Row).

If anything, if a game wanted to "check off an SJW box", they'd force you to play as a handicapped black lesbian and call you scum if you complained.

For what it's worth, BioWare's demographic data for ME suggests that about 20% of players played as femShep and 80% used maleShep. When you consider maleShep is the default option (meaning players who don't care about customizing just pick him without thinking about it), the number of players who want to specifically play as a female versus the number of people who want to specifically play as a male is actually probably closer to 2:1 or so.

There's also a divide when being able to pick different gender has narrative implications. For instance, if you're playing Dragon Age: Origins as a City Elf, playing as a female character makes the intro a hell of a lot more interesting than playing as a male. Male versus female also radically alters the dynamics of a major end-game choice (if you've played it, you should know the one I mean). Meanwhile, Dishonored 2 giving you the choice between Corvo and Emily is basically choosing between two different styles of play, while also changing the character's motivation and experiences to some degree.

The real question is whether or not a developer can tell a powerful story while still allowing the player to be an "Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Culturally Ambiguous Adventure Person" (as Zork jokingly coined the phrase to make fun of political correctness back in 1997), or if locking a player into a specific character (whether that be Michael in GTA, Joel in The Last of Us, Nathan Drake in Uncharted, Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, or even Talion from Shadow of Mordor) is absolutely necessary to tell the strongest, most emotionally moving stories.

It's hard to say, though. Because for every dull, generic story you get like Skyrim or Fallout from being forced to cater to an ambiguous player character, you also get games like Mass Effect or Saints Row, which handle things beautifully. And there IS an argument to be made that some players (for whatever reason) will NEVER identify strongly with a specific main character who is locked into a single personality/appearance/behavior pattern (see also, a large part of why I loathe FFVIII).



Dikitain posted...

You know, that actually makes the most sense. As odd as it sounds given how much content their actually was in the game, it kind of felt like they cheeped out on the GTAV single player.

They were actually planning to release single-player DLC at one point (a la Lost & Damned and Gay Tony for GTA IV), but GTA Online was so damned successful they dropped the single-player DLC idea entirely in favor of devoting more resources to developing more updates and game types for Online.


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