(sorry if this seems parodical, it is indeed serious, i don't wanna come off troll-y, my sense of humor is rlly weird)/srs
My favorite game to do this is Lunacid. You choose pronouns at the start, including ones like xi/xir and everyone just refers to you by name anyway. Your character's gender is whatever you want and it doesn't impact anything. Apparently the pronouns were put in last second just to dissuade weirdo chuds from playing it lol.
It's also a lovely game made by a cool dev!
I'm still nostalgic for the Saints Row 2 character creator because it was one of the only ones with a gender slider. If there's just two (or even four, see BG3) body types, they're usually still ultra-male and ultra-female in my view. The development of ever more realistic graphics has only served to cement this, I feel.
Saints Row 2 was amazing, the gender slider, that you could pick any voice, wear all clothing, have any hair style/makeup, no gender restrictions, could change gender presentation at any point through plastic surgery, pronouns were simply The Boss.
I really have to wonder if there’s was a trans or NB person involved in the decision process, even if it was an egg going “haha would this be funny right? To give the players full gender options lol”
Also, nobody batted a fucking eye. Everybody just played the damn game and had a good time. We've really slid far and quickly as a society.
I imagine if it was released today it would be like this on social media:
"Saints Row 2: WOKE? It FORCES Gamers to play as TRANS!"
annoying when they're then tied to pronouns and voice options though, like with elden ring. the most annoyed i've been at gender nonsense in games for a while is i checked out Dredge, the fishing game (it's mid) and you can only play as a man despite there being no player model or anything!!!!!
I'm going to have to disagree just slightly about Dredge, because it's not a, I dunno exactly what I want to say here, I'll go with self-insert RPG. Like, the player character in Dredge is a character with a backstory and pre-existing relations with the world around him. I guess I wonder if you're annoyed by a game like Dave the Diver because you have to play as Dave or Doom because you have to play as Doomguy or BioShock because you have to play as, uh, whatever that guy's name is, or (for an example with a female protagonist) Control because you have to play as Jesse Faden.
fair enough in that case, tbh i didn't play enough to realise that because i didn't like the game for other reasons, i think it's boring. no i'm not annoyed by those games lol i just had the wrong impression about dredge i guess. like i said that was far from the main thing that put me off so i won't be revisiting it anyway
That's also fair! Sorry you didn't like it, I thought it was really fun and good, but, you know, not everyone is going to like every game and that's ok! It's definitely a little mini-game heavy, plus the boat is sooooooo slow at the beginning, so I get it!
for sure! i love a good fishing minigame i just found writing wise it felt like a kind of uninspired concept with just-ok execution. like i said, i went off it pretty quick so maybe it would have ended up surprising me. i'm just not the most patient person lol, definitely am quick to judge stuff in this medium especially. glad you had a good time with it, some of my discord buds did too.
Yeah, it's not the most inspired eldritch horror I've ever experienced, it is indeed pretty bog-standard. It's small and (imo) fun and quite decent for what it is, but you're definitely not missing out on a masterpiece or anything. I enjoyed the twist, it took me way longer to figure out than it probably should have, because in retrospect it's pretty obvious, but hey, I got to be surprised by a twist in a videogame, so that was fun.
Being quick to judge videogames definitely seems like a good idea, why waste your time with a game you're not into when there are so many different ones you could play that you'd enjoy more? Every time I've stuck with a game just because people say it's awesome I've really regretted it. (Specifically Ori and the Blind Forest and Soma, I won't rant about them here, but I hate those two games, mostly because I spent so much time on them hoping I'd get into them and never did.)
Being quick to judge videogames definitely seems like a good idea, why waste your time with a game you're not into when there are so many different ones you could play that you'd enjoy more?
yeah i generally agree with this! the one major exception i can think of for me is dark souls, really glad i went back to those and stuck with them lol. they're some of my absolute favourites now and very meaningful to me. struggling to think of a game i played a decent amount of and ultimately hated... i think PUBG probably has the worst ratio there lol. i'm not all that much of a singleplayer gamer so something has to really stand out for me there to commit to it.
Oddly enough, I had the same experience with Dark Souls! It took dozens of hours on both 1 and 3 before it actually finally "clicked" for me, but now I love them (even 2) and do replays not infrequently (thinking of doing another one soon, actually). I am basically entirely a singleplayer gamer, so we have opposite experiences there, I don't think I've ever enjoyed a multiplayer game (well, unless you count Untitled Goose Game which I played through with my sister, you can cause so much extra havoc with two geese! Very fun!)
Fire Emblem does this too. All they did was change the word "Gender" to "Form", but it still changes the pronouns, voice acting, and whether or not you can have a romantic relationship with certain people (not that everyone should be bi, but there's not a lot of same-sex options).
Cyberpunk 2077 also had your pronouns tied to your voice option, like excuse me?
BG3 has really set the new standard. my only criticism of their char creator is it's quite difficult to make a character who isn't conventionally attractive.
I agree this is annoying, but tbh I was also pretty thrilled about the body selection options in that game compared to most I’ve played.
compared to most I’ve played
You're very brave to out yourself as a player of bad games /j /lh
I saw lots of comments like that and got somewhat excited about playing a big fancy game as myself, only to be told by the game that my voice determines my gender, fuck that shit. Psychic damage: internalised
You're very brave to out yourself as a player of bad games
Yeah I probably have pretty low standards when it comes to triple A games tbh. I don’t play them too often though.
