[james0246]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

It WOULD get him it trouble, the second he tries to list examples of what he would consider an appropriate "feminine" version of Shepard.

I never said feminine, I said woman. Gender Roles are mostly unimportant to my basic desire for the character to not be gender neutral in all their non-romance scenes.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

Ah, then you want the two Shepards to be different people, then? Then one of them would not be Shepard anymore.

Considering Shepard can both save the galaxy or doom the galaxy, aren't we already dealing with separate characters? Yet both are still Shepard.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

That would mean that the entire story would change depending on the gender, and the audience would get screwed over just because they picked one gender over another.

That is completely missing the point I started with. I said, in not so many words, that the audience, when playing through as a separate gender, shouldn't have to sit through the exact same story. Consequently, I do want 2 stories so that when replaying the game I have some real reason (outside of simply romancing Kaiden or Garrus, etc) to replay the game.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

e,g:
"What did you mean Tali died because I choose the female Shepard?"

Arguably, I can claim that Kaiden died in ME1 partially because I played a male character that romanced Ashley. And the reverse happened when I played as a female character. Either way, my gender identity did impact my decision on who to save and who to let die.

That being said, why is this a bad choice. Who you are intrinsically affects the world around you. Part of who you are is your gender identity. So, wouldn't it be more realistic for situations to arise (sometimes) based on gender identity?

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

So why should gender matter if the player has the final say?

Because the game does reward gender identity, but only in the romances, which I find strange and unrealistic.

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

This is something all game makers realised very quickly. They cannot differentiate between genders for the protagonist, because to do so means forcing the audience to make an uninformed choice about the game.

I understand what you are saying, and I even agree in principle (if nothing else I acknowledge that it would extraordinarily difficult to actually finance the creation of what amounts to two distinct protagonists.), but I’d still like some incentive for replayability. (One need only look at Dragon Age: Origins to see that the different races greatly impacted replayability. If a game can do that based on race, stereotypical or not, why not gender?)

Originally Posted by k//eternal

Considering you're dealing with several other species in this setting, differences between sexes in humans are quite trivial in comparison. I don't think some of the aliens can tell the difference between male and female humans too well and wouldn't treat Shepard any differently. Not to mention that in reality humans are trending toward throwing out traditional gender roles, just look at the history of women's rights.

Considering Miranda's acknowledged in-universe "perfect" butt, the lack of many human females in positions of authority (in the army or otherwise), etc, the world is obviously not as gender neutral as playing Shepard implies.

Additionally, you are dealing with humans at least an equal amount of time to all the aliens, so even if alien races find the matter trivial, it is not quite as realistic of the human race.

Originally Posted by k//eternal

I don't know what the alternative to "treating people asexually" is supposed to be. If you're talking about sexually charged interactions, keep in mind that nobody is actually into everyone of one sex or another. Someone's "type" is a lot more specific than that, and this is just one bullet point on the list.

That's a good point. I fully acknowledge that my desire for differing personalities is somewhat unfeasible (or at least too costly). Ultimately, my argument is more against RPGs and gaming culture in general than simply Mass Effect.

Originally Posted by Irkalla

Lots of sexist comments here today. Fem Shep is a soldier, why the fuck should she behave differently than the male Shep, they come from the exact same background. Gender identities are nurtured, it is not something that comes natural to any of us.

Gender Identities are nurtured and mostly established by the age of 3 or so...which means Shepard would have been a man or a woman before she/he became a soldier (gasp). Shepard wasn't grown in a tank to be a soldier, so arguing that simply because he/she is a soldier now means there is no gender identity, is false (and considering there are romances, each Shep obviously has some form of gender identity (I merely dislike that their separate gender identities in bed are not really shown out of bed)). I know plenty of soldiers that are distinctly female and their breasts or lack thereof is not the main indicators for them being female.

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That being said, I feel I have diverted the discussion and for that I apologize. Please respond (and I might respond via PM in kind), but I will take this off the thread for now.