This coming off the 'type 1 type 2' bs from Oblivion but I've noticed this as I am currently playing both Fallout 4 and Skyrim Aniversary edition on and off.
In Fallout 4 I have a female character, because it doesn't really affect the game, I don't care about the companions beyond perks they give and mostly play it to create the ultimate settlements/skyscraper fortresses.
In Skyrim, no matter what race I pick, Dunmer, Redguard, Breton (though fuck being a High Elf) my character is always male, since I enjoy the story and quests and even the Harthfire marriage and kids aspect of it.
I started applying this to older games with player created characters, was ALWAYS a Male Shep in ME, ALWAYS Male in Fallout NV and 3, was always male in Dragon Age EXCEPT DA inquisition but that also dropped massively in writing quality.
Maybe I'm over thinking it, but I'm wondering if subconsciously this 'type 1/2' bs is also indicating how shit the writing and world building is since as players, the more invested we are in the world, the more we want to create a character like us in the game to play as including gender, just at peak performance lol.
No. White Human Male Fighter gang always.
This was how I started on Skyrim and that first playthrough remains the one I was most invested in, even after putting a thousand hours into that game.
I used to be exclusively male in actual RPGs, ~50:50 ambivalent male/female for sandboxes and sims.
But now I'm all male PCs all the time, I'm so fucking sick of girlbosses. Same for recruiting NPC companions, it's a boy's club now, class balance be damned. Unless I can just dump them in base to do the cooking and dancing (thanks Conan Exiles!)
Same boat here. If a video game doesn’t give me, at minimum, the flexibility to avoid all girl boss (and gay boss) party characters, then I would rather be doing almost anything else. Nothing else in my life revolves around insufferable cunts or degenerate homos, so why should my video games? My real life friend group isn’t a color wheel taped to a Kinsey scale, so why should I pay for entertainment that goes out of its way to shit on my chosen lifestyle?
Based fellow harem merchant
Depends on how attractive the females ass is and how slutty the armor can be. I like to objectify my video game women
If the game makes significant changes to the story or gameplay/task completion is different by being a female character I will usually do a second run through.
The first dragon age game is a good example. First two runs were male characters then I wanted to find out if you can get Alister to knock up Morgana then marry him yourself to become queen, you can.
I feel the fallout games were a bad choice for your example as there are perks you can only gain by being a female character. I think one was called black widow. These perks could change dialog options and how you kill NPCs.
They were kind of weeded out from Fallout New Vegas onwards if I remember right.
In Fallout New Vegas, you could CHOOSE a perk that meant you could get those options but effectively pick if you wanted to be gay, straight or bi. I can't remember in Fallout 4 if that was still the case.
I think the perks (lady killer/black widow) were tied to sex again in fallout 4, but they were also just stat boosts against the opposite sex. I think exclusive dialogue options for the perk were non-existent or practically almost so.
Yeah, I grew up on fallout 2, I played 3 and NV but when I think back on fallout I always remember 2.
I like how Fallout 3 had "sexy sleepwear / naughty nightwear" options that increased charisma for both males and females. As if women are going to fawn over an idiot walking around the wasteland in silk pajamas.
I mean it is the wasteland, how common is silk? /s
It's like plumage on tropical birds, if you can afford to look ridiculous then you're capable of providing far more than just the basics of survival.
Gold-digging. Gold-digging never changes.
Amusing how dragon ages fan base deny sexual dimorphism now
I always choose the women, because they're prettier and get the better looking outfits.
Or at least they used to.
Yeah, if you want sexy armour, got to go to Asia now..
And if they don't get the good outfits, there's almost always a mod for that
Doesn’t really matter. I want to play as the White European Knight/Warrior just about all the time.
I tend to self insert when doing roleplay/customized characters, unless I've got a specific 'type' of character I want to play. For instance, Skyrim/Morrowind always had me playing as Dunmer, cause Dunmer are fucking awesome. Otherwise, I just play a Nord.
I never play as a female, unless the game doesn't have an option otherwise.
Agreed, Dunmer are awesome, my usual go to picks on playthroughs.
I value representation in media, so I always strive to make sure that the rarest character archetype in 2025 - the competent and masculine heterosexual white male - is strongly represented in all my games regardless of quality.
I also want to see my own lived experiences reflected back at me on the screen constantly, so I seek out media that exclusively depicts my carefully curated personal reality (which features organic racial homogeneity as well as virtually no feminists, Marxists, or lgbtq).
Representation matters.
Not sure how much a character needs to be like me but I do usually play male if I can create a character, the only exception it was in WoW.
Type 1/2 takes me out of any game not just because is woke indoctrination meant to normalize evil but it's also the equivalent of having a crystal ball being referred to as an iPhone.
Even if the attempted erasure of biological sex from our media was a small thing - and it’s not - I would still hate it for shattering immersion as you describe.
I seem to be in a weird position with this, as I will often give my name to characters whose shoes I love would walk a mile in (Like in SMT or pokemon), but for characters in less glamorous or high-class games, not so much, if ever.
In XCOM or games like that where you're meant to be the commander of the units, I don't do it.
Played Chrono Trigger once, and I noticed that almost every playable character's name can be chosen by the player. Has anyone actually put odd names in there? I certainly didn't.
Also played Baldur's gate 3 once, and made a stock human fighter since I just couldn't decide what I wanted to play. Might have made a Dragon born paladin if I decided to go back and do it again.
Makes me curious what kind of character I will want to make should I buy Pathfinder: The Dragon's Demand.
Biggest factor is perspective: May make more sense to create a hot woman in third-person games since you will be seeing the character model the whole time.
Similar journey here. I used to be some white male fantasy-spinoff version of myself all the time in customisable games. It definitely was a function of how invested I wanted to get in the world of the game. The woke culture warriors love to latch onto this as an example of how representation matters, except that those games also always allowed you to create women and blacks. In that era I had no problem playing as a fixed character that might be a black man (TWD) or a woman (as recently as Thronebreaker, 2018), in a story-centric game.
In the past few years I've pretty much written off the storytelling potential of newer games, so my investment on that level is zero. So in Nioh 2 recently I just made some redhaired, white woman eye candy, rather than a character with a more plausible aesthetic, as I would have done before. She functions just fine for the stilted cutscenes and text dumps of that non-story. Hand in hand with that, I now steer more or less totally clear of any game with a female or negro fixed MC, because I have no interest in propaganda which hates me.
I’m fully non-buynary these days. I straight up won’t buy games with unsexualized female protagonists or non-white/gay protagonists. Firstly, because this strategy is the only way to guarantee that my media isn’t leftist trash. Secondly, because I want to contribute to the lack of sales that might eventually result in either a return to sanity or an industry collapse. I prefer oblivion to gay black communism.
I often take a female character, unless there's a better male one.
The reason? If I'm going to be staring at someone (often at their butt) for 6 hours at a time? I'd prefer it be a cute girl, if possible. 😜
I usually play as a chick cause they look better. The exception is dragon age where I usually play male human or dwarf and dragon age 2 where I’m always a male as well. Mass effect I don’t like male sheps voice, but sometimes play as him too.
I played Male Shep mostly because having Garrus as my bro and Tali as partner was the best combo lol.
Tali shouldn’t have been fuckable it goes against her entire story and her becoming immune to all of your germs including future germs due to a cum exchange is nonsense. May as well have given her a full body condom as that would make more sense and something humans would do for some wide hip alien pussy.
Sorry, from 2 onwards she was flirting with me TOO much and had such NICE hips all the reasons why this shouldn't work lore wise went out the air lock lol.
that is how they should've done it, a female condom thru an access port, or something like a thinner suit and friction based intimacy and handjobs. But no, she just says she's gonna be sick for a week but it's worth it. Stupid lazy writing.
Awww but saying "I'd rather risk death than not have your raw, unfiltered dicking at least once" is romantic. That's the kind of dedication that says she's a keeper.
hot characters, i play female. ugly characters, i play male. easy as.
Male experience exclusively in all form of media. I do not give a shit about a women's perspective unless it benefits the men. That is all, love from Kazakhstan.
I'm trying to remember the last time I played a girl as the main character. I've played something that regularly takes on Cthulhu, can eat a car, and is incredibly cute way more recently.
Chun Li is my girl. Spam those head stomps and lightning kicks.
I don't get a lot of time to play nowadays and the games tend to be fairly easy, unless it's Bloodborne. Giant Open world games wise I can't think of a single game where the girl is the main character.