THIS MAN IS RIGHT, INFACT MALE LEADS ARE ALSO OVERUSED.
ONLY DOLPHINS AS MAIN CHARACTERS FROM NOW ON!
ONLY DOLPHINS AS MAIN CHARACTERS FROM NOW ON!
Poll: Overcritical: Female Leads
- Thread starter NickCaligo42
- Start date
Hmm. Personally haven't played Fallout 3 just yet, and I honestly haven't seen much of Mirror's Edge past the content in the demo. This I'll look into when I'm no longer poor.Cheesus333 said:
I don't like female hard-rock singers. That doesn't mean I don't like the music involved.
female leads aren't the cause of a decline first-hand. I doubt that staring a male lead would have made Mirror's Edge or Tomb Raider any better. Perhaps we haven't caught the right angle of the female protagonist. It seems that female antagonists are uncanny, but the moment we toss a female in the spotlight, the game sucks.
I think it's the angle (whether it be personality or role), not the boobs.
female leads aren't the cause of a decline first-hand. I doubt that staring a male lead would have made Mirror's Edge or Tomb Raider any better. Perhaps we haven't caught the right angle of the female protagonist. It seems that female antagonists are uncanny, but the moment we toss a female in the spotlight, the game sucks.
I think it's the angle (whether it be personality or role), not the boobs.
I'm forced to concur, Faith (at least before you complete the game and realise you just wasted $60 on yet another game manufactured under the Heavenly Sword business model [too high priced for too short a game, that upon release is revealed to be a 'planned trilogy']), is about perfect as a female lead.Vanguard1219 said:
Who cares if she's vaguely Asian?
Who cares if she has too small/large a chest?
I'm more pissed at the idea that a game about Parkour was so damn short.
Yahtzee hit the nail on the head stating that all you need to do is play the demo 3-4times, and make some cutscenes out of cardboard cutouts.
Seriously, we could have much WORSE female leads.. like Alice from the Resident Evil sequels (she was ok in the first movie), or Estelle Getty, or Paris Hilton.
Lets face it; sex sells. If you want to appeal to female gamers, make slightly deeper females, but unfortunately, game developers don't. That said, I don't think that appearance will change anything. I mean really; would you buy a game for the promise of non-skimpily dressed women?
The "I'm sexy, smart, can kick your ass and have no interest in men" stereotype of female leads is a little overplayed. I'm not sure at what point exactly it meant that the only way for a woman to be strong is to be a b**** happened, but it certainly hasn't helped in making characters you can relate to.
I can't say it's a problem only with female leads either. The endless 'roid monkey space marine characters are very tiresome too. James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2 is one of my most liked main characters because his depth of character encompasses the entire human psyche.
I can't say it's a problem only with female leads either. The endless 'roid monkey space marine characters are very tiresome too. James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2 is one of my most liked main characters because his depth of character encompasses the entire human psyche.
Personally I find that when women are incorporated, into a game they are 1 of 4 things, the main heroine because game designers want to give people the choice or Y chromosome or not, a perky or disregarding NPC, someone you must save OR ELSE, or someone in your life that has to die like most good Disney movies. Games always claim they have a gritty realism... So where are the terrified women who are fighting you because all they know is that you are the bad guy? Where are the children who have been raised to hate the characters faction and will fight to the death to kill you? I'm not encouraging the murder of children but it is something that individuals in the REAL military have to face. Like in "Black Hawk Down" or "Tears of the Sun" where one of the main characters has to decide whether or not they must lower they're morals to protect themselves and their team mates. To be honest I was thrilled to see in Fallout 3 that I didn't just have to kill cut and paste male raiders but they throw in some smart mouth ladies sprinting at me with hand-held chain saws. (Although the Super mutants were all guys...) It's my belief that games need to stop with the constant chivaly and put some ladies in the cross-hairs. Women wanted to be allowed to join the military, so why aren't we allowed to take couple of shots at their heart shaped asses?
SadisticSquirl said:
Super Mutants are actually asexual as part of their mutation. If you read the files on the computer in the game, it reveals Fawkes used to be a woman.
This is surprising? IGN is run by idiots who are bending over backwards to please the macho fratboy demographic. Strong female characters make their target audience feel threatened. This is also why half their articles (including this one) are just rickety vehicles for bash-a-thons against those horrible industry-destroying (yeah right) [http://malstrom.50webs.com/birdman.html] "casual games" and Nintendo in particular (again, yeah right [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByPcQBveWOA]).
Interesting bit of trivia: Rouge the Bat is the only female character I can think of whose breasts actually SHRANK in between games.Darth Marsden said:
No argument here. I stopped depending on IGN for my reviews a long time ago.Sylocat said:
Actually it was Yahtzee's recent review of Tomb Raider: Underworld that provoked my posting this thread. I think Tomb Raider is a load of garbage, myself, but I thought it was a bit of a stretch to think that developers are selling games on the promise of breasts alone. I can think of so many better places than games--let alone Tomb Raider as I never found Lara Croft that attractive or even interesting--to look for that sort of thing that I found it downright absurd and needed to take a poll to see how many people agreed with this logic.
That said I'd really love to meet the three people who voted that women don't belong in games. They must be either very interesting or else have a fantastic sense of humor.
Generally speaking the answer is yes, they are misused. Most frequently, female characters are depicted as helpless and they exist for no other reason than to provide a love interest to the player. Most of the time said love interest seems to have just been tacked on and does little to advance the story, provide character motivation or help with any other aspect of fleshing out the characters. Alternately, they are depicted as scantily clad and often exhibit disturbing anatomical trends (Laura Croft must have TERRIBLE back pain, and don't get me started on Ivy from Soul Caliber).
Characters in video games are often shallow cookie cutter knock offs of pre-existing archetypes. From time to time you get a character that seems genuine but rarely is that character a female. The only notable female characters I can recall of late are Alex in HL2 and the later episodes and Ashley Williams from Mass Effect. Both characters have somewhat compelling back stories that provide reasonable motivation for their actions throughout the games. Neither is endowed with unrealistic body proportions (Ashley Williams, however, is pushing the line a bit). While Ashley Williams can be a tacked on love interest, it is not artificially inserted into the game - instead it must be pursued. Alex on the other hand is never pushed directly into the role of love interest for Gordon, but she remains one of the few video game characters I has managed to make me care about her well-being.
Characters in video games are often shallow cookie cutter knock offs of pre-existing archetypes. From time to time you get a character that seems genuine but rarely is that character a female. The only notable female characters I can recall of late are Alex in HL2 and the later episodes and Ashley Williams from Mass Effect. Both characters have somewhat compelling back stories that provide reasonable motivation for their actions throughout the games. Neither is endowed with unrealistic body proportions (Ashley Williams, however, is pushing the line a bit). While Ashley Williams can be a tacked on love interest, it is not artificially inserted into the game - instead it must be pursued. Alex on the other hand is never pushed directly into the role of love interest for Gordon, but she remains one of the few video game characters I has managed to make me care about her well-being.
As much of a Nintendo and Metroid as I am, I only believed that until I saw the unlockable image gallery in Metroid: Zero Mission.Vinculi said:
To me FFX-2 had an excellent battle system, a funny plot, charming characters and some badass minigames. And, yes, I did enjoy completing all the sidequests.ElTigreNegro said:
As for the Blitzball? Play FFX if you want Blitzball, just like you play FFVIII if you want Triple Triad or FFVII for CRAZY MOTORCYCLE! FFX-2 was all about the Sphere Break!
I have to play that game again. I have this urge to repeatedly shout "HENSHIN!" at the TV!
Also: "I don't like your plan. It sucks."
Tell me that ISN'T intentionally funny!
There's a lot of sexist cardboard cut out charcters, but there's plenty of female characters in the same vein as Alyx Vance.
Actually, Lara Croft's breasts are a bit smaller than in previous games. Still oversized and unhealthy, but smaller.Sylocat said:Interesting bit of trivia: Rouge the Bat is the only female character I can think of whose breasts actually SHRANK in between games.
Futhermore I think they changed Rouge's breasts because she was not PG enough.
Some of the given examples of oversexualized female leads are just plain BAD. For example, Faith from Mirror's Edge? Seriously?
I can't think of a worse example than that. She doesn't wear peculiarly revealing clothing; what she wears is practical for athletics. You know, she's dressed for the job. Faith doesn't have needlessly sexualized dialogue, nor actions. If they're thinking about the couple points in cutscenes where she hugs her sister, that's not over-sexing a character, that's displaying human emotion. You know, like she's a person or something.
I can't think of a worse example than that. She doesn't wear peculiarly revealing clothing; what she wears is practical for athletics. You know, she's dressed for the job. Faith doesn't have needlessly sexualized dialogue, nor actions. If they're thinking about the couple points in cutscenes where she hugs her sister, that's not over-sexing a character, that's displaying human emotion. You know, like she's a person or something.