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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Female Leads In Games

Roronaa_chan on 29 June 2015
the-pi-guy said:
Samus Aran said:
Horizon felt forced indeed.

During pre-history females usually collected fruit, vegetables, etc. while the men hunted.

It's not prehistoric at all though...  

It's 1000+ years in the future.


I dunno. Dinos were pre historic, I don't think they're coming back



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cheshirescat on 29 June 2015
the-pi-guy said:
Samus Aran said:
Horizon felt forced indeed.

During pre-history females usually collected fruit, vegetables, etc. while the men hunted.

It's not prehistoric at all though...  

It's 1000+ years in the future.


It's more of a barbarians overtaking the romans and living in the shadow of their empire during the dark ages sort of setting, but with robot dinosaurs.



Augen on 29 June 2015
Esiar said:
Augen said:
In part maybe, but then again any game that does not adhere to rigid formula can be accused of doing so in order to be unique. Is it really a bad thing that they say "Hey, let's make the main character stand out from other ones"?

It's fine, but I don't think it would make sense to do it if it isn't their vision for the game. I'd want to make what I want to make, I wouldn't like to change something because people might not like that one aspect.

Horizon is a brand new IP so I had no expecations.  The main character being a certain age/race/gender/etc. had zero effect on me.  I am curious as to the rest of the cast and how humanity would change in a long rebuilding age after civilization falls.



Esiar on 29 June 2015
mornelithe said:
Fucking hilarious, even when they do have female protags, it's not good enough. Absolutely hysterical. And yeah, I guess I'll be the only one to point out that the female protag that's supposedly been shoe horned in, is White and a Red Head. Absolutely the minority female anyone wanting to cash in on this 'controversy' would pick, right?

I don't care whether there's a male character or not, as long as the game is actually good. It's just a feeling I have, that it seems like it is shoehorned in there. But the game looks awesome, and I could be completely wrong.



Can't wait for The Zelder Scrolls 3: Breath of The Wild Hunt!

Esiar on 29 June 2015
Hiku said:
Esiar said:

I feel like some games have female leads for the sake of having female leads, and not because they think that should be the direction of the game. Not Tomb Raider, but perhaps something like that Dinosaur Robot game  that was announced at E3. Like to make it more "unique", and like it is breaking gender stererotypes like guys being the hero.

I dunno, it just seems like that to me.

This is rather backwards.
I dunno if you were around when the original Tomb Raider games came out, but back then Lara looked like this.




As for Horizon, it seems the idea was to have her be female from the start, but they were worried it might not be recieved well, and considered changing her to male:

"She’s a female lead character. That has always been the vision by the team, but we had a discussion. Is it risky to do a female character?

The concern came after the game was in development. We started to show it to many more people internally and they had questions about it. So we worked with our marketing groups to do this focus testing.

Looking at our press conference and other’s press conferences, many teams our doing it now. Like there is a new lead in Assassin’s Creed, and Mirror’s Edge is back. I feel great that there is more diversity in the kind of worlds and kind of characters that we are making as an industry."

For Tomb Raider, I wasn't alive when it came out, but I was thinking of the older games when I made this thread.

And for Horizon, though the vision has always been for a female lead, I think it is possible that they wanted to make a female lead before the concept, and worked around that. But I do think the female lead in the game is fitting.



Can't wait for The Zelder Scrolls 3: Breath of The Wild Hunt!

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Mystro-Sama on 29 June 2015

Honestly I don't even notice it unless someone points it out.



Porcupine_I on 29 June 2015

I remember femshep sometimes moving awkwardly male like in her dress



“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”

- George Orwell, ‘1984’

melbye on 29 June 2015

It actually didn't register with me that the characters in Horizon and ReCore was female. Frankly i don't care. Male or female, game-developers should be able to make whatever protagonist they want to without having to justify it. There are bigger problems



mornelithe on 29 June 2015
Esiar said:
mornelithe said:
Fucking hilarious, even when they do have female protags, it's not good enough. Absolutely hysterical. And yeah, I guess I'll be the only one to point out that the female protag that's supposedly been shoe horned in, is White and a Red Head. Absolutely the minority female anyone wanting to cash in on this 'controversy' would pick, right?

I don't care whether there's a male character or not, as long as the game is actually good. It's just a feeling I have, that it seems like it is shoehorned in there. But the game looks awesome, and I could be completely wrong.

As I said, even when they have female protags, it's just not enough.  Apparently, they need to release notorized transcripts from design phase that proves yes, in fact the character was female from the get-go.  Frankly, it's about as logical as attempting to disprove a negative.  Sorry, but, I think it's preposterous.



Esiar on 29 June 2015
mornelithe said:
Esiar said:

I don't care whether there's a male character or not, as long as the game is actually good. It's just a feeling I have, that it seems like it is shoehorned in there. But the game looks awesome, and I could be completely wrong.

As I said, even when they have female protags, it's just not enough.  Apparently, they need to release notorized transcripts from design phase that proves yes, in fact the character was female from the get-go.  Frankly, it's about as logical as attempting to disprove a negative.  Sorry, but, I think it's preposterous.

Negatives can be disproven in some cases, though.



Can't wait for The Zelder Scrolls 3: Breath of The Wild Hunt!