Wait a second, GTA V is by Rock Star I thought, to the best of my knowledge Ubisoft has nothing to do with it in order to be repeating anything.Pogilrup said:Ubisoft had a chance to prove that weren't going to repeat that one mistake with GTA V with its three protagonists, all of whom were male characters.Therumancer said:Snip
Sure that was single player and this is coop, but there was an opportunity in both cases to include a playable female character and unfortunately in both cases the developers wasted that opportunity.
That said, not having a female protagonist, is not a mistake. There is no obligation to create characters of a specific type, it's all up to the creators in what they want to make. It's fine if they choose to create leads who are women, minorities, gays, or whatever, but they don't have to do it, that's what creative freedom is about. Indeed I'm continually surprised at how as a general rule "The Escapist" can be so vehemently against game design by committee and publishers saddling creators with tons of baggage, and then turn around and demand it when it's in the service of political correctness.
It gets well off subject here, but in real world crime syndicates women are looked down on, this includes gangs, organized crime, etc... there have been exceptions but as a general rule they stick out due to being exceptions. As long as Grand Theft Auto keeps up it's intent to be fairly "realistic" it's not likely they are going to have any female leads because the elements they are dealing with (giving missions, etc...) would never deal with a woman. In something like "Saint's Row" the game by it's nature is over the top enough where all realism was ignored, which is why you could get away with a female "boss" and chicks built like models hopping out of clown cars with machine guns. *IF* Grand Theft Auto went back to more of the tone present in "San Andreas" where you might have a jet pack, or go running down the steet in a gimp suit, then yeah... a female character might work, but Rockstar is trying to get more into a pseudo-realistic portrayal of the underworld and low life criminals.
Don't get me wrong, if either Ubisoft or Rock Star want to do a female lead and make it work within the context of the series they are writing in (or start a new one) I'm all for it, if the game is decent I won't mind at all in this case. I just think these arguments are increasingly ridiculous as they come down to the presumption that a game designer does not have the right to create stories specifically for male characters.