Playing as a female character usually annoys me.

[DoakWilder]

I understand ops point, meaning that if a woman in a game is to have the same ability as a man would then it's unrealistic to make her look dainty. However, do check out meisha tate or devon remington and then look over your initial point.

 

[crotchdot]

For third person games, if I'm going to have to spend the entire game with my character's butt in front of me, I'll take a size zero hottie over a soldier-guy any and every day.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Well, realistically Shep (of either gender) would take a stray bullet a couple of missions in, spend a couple months in the hospital and physical therapy, receive an honorable discharge and some medals, and then have trouble re-adjusting to civilian life.

But that wouldn't be an action game. Once we accept that an individual can basically solo hundreds of people/aliens/robots/space-cthulhus without any lasting physical or mental harm, it basically doesn't matter what set of chromosomes that individual has, because feats like that are equally impossible for men, women, or hermaphrodites.

In other words....realism sucks!

...in most cases, some games try to be realistic which is fine, but not all games are trying to and if they aren't then things like this really shouldn't bother you or even matter at all.

In the Dynasty Warriors series there is a female character who wears no armour at all and summons purple orbs of explosive doom from a flute while slapping and kicking enemies to death. If the game was meant to be realistic than that would be a problem, but it isn't so you should just enjoy it for what it is.

 

[Rusman]

Actually me and a friend were sort of discussing this point regarding FemShep the other day, saying that she should have a slightly different body type for each class; e.g making her more muscular (like say female kickboxers) for the soldier class and more lithe and supple (maybe a gymnast size) for infiltrator and to some degree adept classes.

On a personal point of view I ALWAYS play FemShep as Jennifer Hale is awesome and I don't like the look or sound of MaleShep's and I have never once thought "Yeah right as if she could do that" and have my immersion broken, it's called suspension of disbelief. Thought we'd have got some of that whilst we're flying around in a space ship, pew pew pew-ing other, giant living space ships that have come to destroy the galaxy.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

I'm going to ignore most of what you just said because it doesn't deserve a detailed response. I just have a few questions for you- does one really need a lot of upper body strength to fire a gun? Why, in a sci-fi world, would it be ridiculous to think that a woman is not physically impaired compared to a man when it comes to taking the direct approach and wielding an assault rifle? And have you honestly never been intimidated by a woman? Like, really?

 

[Ninjat_126]

I understand where you're coming from. You have a point.

You just worded it terribly. Or maybe there's no good way to word it.

Essentially, a woman who looks like she weighs 40kg should not be able to hit with the same force as a male who looks like he weighs 140kg, assuming most of that weight is muscle.

The thing is, making actual physical differences (eg. Women get +10 agility) can be interpreted as sexist by implying men are always stronger than women.

Personally, I just ignore it. Like someone said above, MShep shouldn't be able to punch out a Krogan either.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'd definantly agree that if the male is large and muscly, an equivalently strong female should be similarly large and muscly.

Um...well, either that or you take the female as default, and not make the guy massively muscled either.

I'd also add that physical size is hardly the be all and end all, whether you are a woman fighting a man, a roman legion fighting a horder of germanic barbarians, or a NLF fighter fighting a US marine.

 

[The_Vigilant]

Why? You're already accepting that the protagonist of a game is exceptional to begin with. If the protagonist is lifting a boulder, why exactly is it such a huge leap to assume that the protagonist is simply a man or woman who is capable of lifting that boulder?

The OP's lack of suspension of disbelief is based on averages, when you're not supposed to be average anyway.

What? No, don't be stupid. The normal distribution is simply shifted. The strongest man in the world is far stronger than the strongest woman. The fastest man in the world is far faster than the fastest woman. In fact, the gender difference tends to be exaggerated on the tail ends, not minimized, because men develop so much more rapidly with intense training and with far greater potential.

Another thing to note is that, in these games, the male is usually buff pent as hell.

The females are wearing a tanktop and have a nice tan going.

Aesthetic choices on the part of designers, and if that were the only thing the OP was complaining about, this whole argument would make a lot more sense (especially all the BS about "male archetypes" being the only ones capable of intimidation). Frankly, the "buff as all hell" thing isn't necessarily accurate, either. The strongest people are typically large, but not necessarily ripped.

Yes, but they're still large. And these female leads aren't. So thank you for reiterating the discussion of 25 posts ago.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Oh you have been digging into them daily sexism dose cornflakes.
No we aren't equal so we do things our own way, but you clearly have some sexism issues to resolve, femshep was about as intimidating as the dude in that Hollywood silly way.
And that is what games do, they do silly shit that barely touches reality, suspense of disbelief is your best friend in any virtual world and suspense of sexism might help aswell.

 

[Vault101]

Admittedly you are not the only one. Only 20% of the playerbase used a female Shephard.

I imagine thats more because of the gamer demographic than people have a problem with femshep herself

 

[The_Vigilant]

And have you honestly never been intimidated by a woman? Like, really?

Not since I was six.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

Yes, that is basically what I'm implying. SteelStallion hit the nail on the head in the post before yours. The problem is that these games are built around a male archetype. The dialogue, especially Renegade/Dark Side/Evil options are derived from macho posturing. There's a reason that in many games your strength score affects your Intimidate odds. A powerfully built man delivering a threat is going to be far scarier than a slim woman echoing the same line an octave higher. It's unnatural and, at times, even laughable to witness.

It's why when I was small and I did something very naughty my mother would usually just say, "wait until your father gets home." She lost her power to really scare me when I turned about six or seven (and she knew it), but he could still scare me shitless.

Okay, that is definately a sexist attitude. I don't care how muscular the guy is, if the lines are read with the same degree of emotion and conviction as Hayden Christiansen reading out his shopping list, then it isn't intimidating. The bad guys are going to pick up just how unconvincing it his and just scoff at MaleShep's claims as they rightly should. Furthermore, intimidation doesn't necessarily have to pertain to the threat of violence. It could be the threat of blackmail, or better yet in police work where the temptation of lightening a sentence could be dangled before the convict for their co-operation. In these situations, physical strength is irrelevant, it's about how the person carries themselves, the ability they have to instill fear in others, exploiting and preying on those qualms until the subject snaps. That is intimidation. I just hope you have the common sense to keep quiet if a women ever holds you at knife/gun point. For the record I also disagree with your stance on the physical strength of women, but there's enough people already disputing you on that.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

I'm going to ignore most of what you just said because it doesn't deserve a detailed response. I just have a few questions for you- does one really need a lot of upper body strength to fire a gun? Why, in a sci-fi world, would it be ridiculous to think that a woman is not physically impaired compared to a man when it comes to taking the direct approach and wielding an assault rifle? And have you honestly never been intimidated by a woman? Like, really?

um, well actually theres recoil to consider which can throw your aim wide if you dont hold your gun steady, and guns arent light either. But these are futuristic space guns not our modern guns so they could easily have gotten rid of these problems. Specially since you see your guy happily carry around 4 of the things.

 

[Vault101]

Let's see...how can I say this without sounding like a troll or a sexist douche? Hmm...

I can't. So I'll just say it: men and women are not the same and when a clear male role is filled identically with a female it becomes stupid. Let me explain. I've played the Mass Effect games a thousand times, always as a male Shepard, and loved them. The dialogue was funny and compelling and while the universe was a fantasy, no absurdities shocked me from immersion.



There - I expressed myself. I'll turtle up until VoD.

well in regards to femshep its because Bioware gives you the option..they cant tailor the role to female too much obviously because it can be eather (and to do that would take time/rescources not possible for ANY game dev)

plus I dont remember too many specific actions that brought this to attention

but I dont care, you wouldnt belive how happy I am I get the choice (and even then It doesnt break my imersion, I mean I imagine femshep is "enhanced" by stuff the alliance gives their solders" and cultrally speaking its not an issue with Aliens, I imagine a krogan doenst think too much about a female or male human trying to fight them...to them its just a "human"

anyway I dont notice this with femshep AS much, a little but I still think she is a more or less belivable charachter

similar thing happens with saints row 2...but thats just enhaces the games hilarity (seeing a skinny white chick going one on one the maero, a big tatooed muscly guy is awsome and hilarious)

I think I do a similar thing where in historical setting I smirk at females "doing things", it doenst btoher me too much though

however in a setting such as mass effect I say equality is very important

 

[Treblaine]

I can see the problems with Mass Effect as the series has clearly been made male focused with the female avatar dropped in at the end there are serious syncing problems, but you go too far.

For example, the notion that one laser sword can obstruct the path of another, or the idea that by magic skeletons can be raised from corpses to serve the caster. What exactly am I supposed to get from Lara Croft roundhouse kicking musclebound fighters twice her size, or Devona beating grawl with a hundred and fifty pound hammer?

Am I stupid or is this stupid?

The former.

You literally spelled our your double-standard, that you will tolerate all sorts of unrealistic impossibilities except for the suggestion that a women roundhouse kicking a man in the face would hurt.

Seriously, you think women are so weak a roundhouse kick would just tickle the nose of a "macho man". Yeah, because testosterone doesn't just make you stronger, it makes your nose as hard as steel [/sarc]

I know all kinds of hard women. My family's full of them: soldiers, construction workers, marathon runners, trainers, etc. I'm stronger and faster than every one of them

How about you repeat your rhetoric to them and see who wins the ensuing fight?

Also do you realise how much of an arrogant prick you are to claim to be AT THE SAME TIME stronger than a constructions worker AND faster than a marathon runner? Just because you are a man? The difference in the sexes is not THAT great!

Pics. Pics or I'll assume you are some tubby insecure dude. I don't care what you say: pics or lies.

 

[NeutralDrow]

A major factor you seem to be forgetting is skill. I don't care what their respective muscle-mass is, if a 200 pound male with basic combat experience goes up against a 100 pound female tenth degree black belt, the male is probably going to go down faster then you can say "suffrage".

But if a male with a tenth degree black belt goes against a female with a tenth degree black belt, the female would go down before you could say "gender equality'.

Lets face it, there's a reason they separate sport tournaments for genders. It isn't sexism, it's fact that males are physically superior. Even trying to prance around that fact is just naive.

My point was that most video games have an unequal level of skill between the protagonist, either male or female, and enemies. If somebody is more well trained, then of course they would be able to beat supposedly psychically superior opponents. It's the same reason that male protagonists win most of their fights- they're generally the most skilled combatant.

But the OP's point is that these limitations for a game where you can play either gender are usually built around a male archetype. If the male main character is just barely able to lift a larger boulder, for exmaple, the female wouldn't even come close.

Why? You're already accepting that the protagonist of a game is exceptional to begin with. If the protagonist is lifting a boulder, why exactly is it such a huge leap to assume that the protagonist is simply a man or woman who is capable of lifting that boulder?

You're getting too specific here, the boulder thing was only an example.

I should have put an emphasis on barely able to lift a boulder. Your character is a muscular champion, I.E the protagonist of many fantasy RPGs, and after a few moments of grunting and intense lifting, is barely able to lift a boulder off the leg of a comrade.

If a male could only barely do it, it is infact a huge leap to assume the female could.

Again, why?

The protagonist is someone who can barely lift a boulder. The protagonist is also badass enough to do so. They are already a very uncommon person. Why are they not simply an uncommonly strong man or a very uncommonly strong woman? Other than the unrealistically-proportioned drawings, the only legitimate objection to the scenario would be if it were literally impossible for a woman to do something a man can. I don't care how anti-PC one is, there is nothing like that that doesn't involve sex organs.

What? No, don't be stupid. The normal distribution is simply shifted.

You're still talking an average, not a specific instance, something that is more-or-less completely irrelevant to fiction, particularly sci fi or fantasy.

The strongest man in the world is far stronger than the strongest woman. The fastest man in the world is far faster than the fastest woman. In fact, the gender difference tends to be exaggerated on the tail ends, not minimized, because men develop so much more rapidly with intense training and with far greater potential.

And yet, the strongest woman in the world is far stronger than most men, and the fastest woman in the world far faster than most men. Those kind of women are video game protagonists.

Pretty sure you have part of that reversed, by the way. Women develop much faster, but plateau earlier.

Another thing to note is that, in these games, the male is usually buff pent as hell.

The females are wearing a tanktop and have a nice tan going.

Aesthetic choices on the part of designers, and if that were the only thing the OP was complaining about, this whole argument would make a lot more sense (especially all the BS about "male archetypes" being the only ones capable of intimidation). Frankly, the "buff as all hell" thing isn't necessarily accurate, either. The strongest people are typically large, but not necessarily ripped.

Yes, but they're still large. And these female leads aren't. So thank you for reiterating the discussion of 25 posts ago.

You're welcome. The sensible arguments are the ones that deserve to be mentioned.

 

[Kahunaburger]

snip

And honestly, who is actually intimidated by physical strength anyway these days? There's this wonderful invention called the gun that basically obsoleted melee combat. And really, that was always true, because strength < ability to harm.

Hey, look, it's a physically weak person using the threat of violence to intimidate a physically strong person. With an Arrested Development caption.

 

[MetalMagpie]

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. As a woman, I DO appreciate having female characters in games that I can relate to. But a woman walking through EXACTLY the same motions as a man is NOT creating a character I can relate to.

The statistics are that men are stronger and faster than women. And women are more dexterous and socially-canny than men. (They also have a greater tolerance for pain, but this is rarely a relevant attribute in a video game.) So female characters in games should play on THOSE strengths.

Watching femshep headbutt Rex is at best bizarre and at worst very off-putting. It certainly breaks immersion, and does nothing to help me accept this character as someone I can relate to as a woman.