It's weird that your knee-jerk response to a female lead is that it's pandering, but not for a male lead. It seems similar to the view a lot of people hold on characters whose race isn't relevant to the story where casting a black actor is considered lousy, liberal, tokenism while casting them white doesn't warrant a second thought. Why can't people just treat a woman or minority the exact same way they treat the default white man? Until that happens, this stuff will never just fade away.Dragonlayer said:Female Protagonist: Hold off your pitchforks and let me explain. This one doesn't "Kill" my interest in a game so much as it just makes me roll my eyes. On the one hand, I fully understand complaints levelled at the sausage-fest nature of mainstream gaming characters and a game attempting to break that formula has every right to proudly tout its alternative-protagonist as a major selling point. Moreover, I completely empathise with people who want a more immersive game that caters to their personal identity: a lack of character-creation and customization is often a huge turn-off for me personally. But as a cynical bastard, I can't help but feel that Indie developers on Steam cunningly use it as a pre-emptive method of escaping criticism, along such advertising tags as "Atmospheric", "Story-driven" and "Great soundtrack" (mmmm, subjective!). Do I want all games that dare challenge the glorious patriarchy cast into oubliettes for their outrageous independence? Not at all. But it's just a warning sign that I probably won't be interested in a title.