Hi guys,

I've never posted here before, but I thought some of you could help me with something. I am thinking about buying 2 of the games in the current RPG sale, but the last time I bought a game here, I ended up not playing it. (There have been lots of games I have enjoyed, though.) Of course, this is a only my personal opinion, but I opened up Divine Divinity and looked at the available characters and was completely put off. I am female, and all the female characters were dressed in their underwear, and their voice actresses were purring about how they were "better than men."

I would prefer a game with a more realistic or balanced portrayal of female characters. I don't care if the player character is male or female, and I don't care if there are evil female characters, but the blatant sexism and assumption that the player will be ogling the female characters really disturbs me. Does anyone have any suggestions? I don't want to give my money and by implication my approval to games that promote such stereotypes.

Again, I already understand that most people will not care about this aspect of game play, but if you do or if you have some knowledge of the games, I would appreciate your help. Thanks!

--R

TLDR: Any of these RPGs on sale with well-developed female characters?

Welcome to GOG
You can try Neverwinter Nights ;) Also you can give a look on Forgoten Realms: Demon Stone...

First of all: Do not, under any circumstances, play any of The Witcher games.

And now to the games you SHOULD play:
- Fallout 1 and 2 - rarely differenciates between male and female characters, and aside from hookers there are no characters that would be ... Ridiculing females on any levle. You will probably get the opportunity to get trough some situations trough sex with females, but those are purely optional and given the game's setting hardly surprising.

- Arcanum - while I have never played this game as a female, I find it very similar to Fallout games, so I don't think there can be something wrong with it.

- Bloodray ... Oh sorry

- Oh yeah and most D'n'D games aside from PS:T - while Planescape has a very well-drawn female characters, you can't play as one.

Yes, several actually.

The Baldur's Gate series has strong female characters, who still hare human(ish) (i.e. they are not mixing up "strong female character" with "cold and totally without emotions", like some other companies).

Planescape: Torment has two female companions who are both well fleshed out and interesting. The game also makes comments on gender roles in the world that it takes place in (it is not a setting with gender equality). The way females are dressed might be a bit offputting though.

Temple of elemental evil makes no real distinctions between the two genders, for the most part. You create your own party from scratch though, so you insert personalities into your characters.

Icewind dale is similar to ToEE in this regard.

Neverwinter Nights tries to have a strong female lead NPC, but she is just so bland. Not unlike the rest of the game though, the setting, story & characters all feel bland beyond belief in NWN.



As for other CRPGs:
The Fallout games also make a point out of the fact that the world lacks any real gender equality, and that women often are treated worse than men (far more so in Fallout 2 than 1), but the characters themselves feel believable.

Arcanum has several strong female characters. Again though, not a world where gender equality is the norm (not in human society at least). This game was by the way made by some of the same people who made Fallout & Planescape.

The Ultima series paints a brighter picture of things, and Ultima 7 has several important female characters.

I second NWN.

Oh, wow, based on my experience on other gaming forums, I was expecting ridicule. Thanks for being awesome, everyone! I will consider your suggestions carefully.

--R

These games are top down 2D, you can't ogle a female character, you can read a description of her.

Take Planescape Torment, it has best developed and interesting characters of the bunch.
Characters like a succubus vowed to celibacy, an empty armor that keeps itself together by sheer force of will and so on...

Divine Divinty has a picture of what can only be described as a lingerie clad angel on the game page that you would have gone to when making your purchase. That didn't give you an inkling of what to expect?

As has been said, Planescape is awesome, try that. There is an absurdly sexy character called Annah, but she's awesome and probably would be even if she was ugly. There are also lots of mods for it, so maybe you can find a mod to make Annah less attractive if she offends you.

Oooh, so you were expecting ridicule. All right then, you should go to the kitchen you ... feminist ... person! And cook a ... Meal! Or something.

For everyone mentioning Planescape, dont forget Morte in the Mortuary at the beginning with all the female zombies. He keeps making sexist remarks toward these zombies. It depends how the OP feels about things like this.

Granted it is done in an amusing way with Morte being a floating skull but the remarks could upset a feminist.

Baldurs Gate you create a character to your liking, Icewind Dale you create a team. During the creation you will choose voice, stats etc but the character models are quite generic, just different hairstyles and clothing type depending on class.

Neverwinter Nights is superb. You will come across women barmaids in taverns dressed in typical tavern fantasy wear but thats about it. Most the time they just loiter about as something to make the setting better.

Yes, but it's made in a funny way and that's his character which is well developed (more than meets the eye beneath that facade).

Really?.. Annah?... REALLY? :/

Fall from Grace or Deionarra, yeah.... but Annah? REALLY?

I can't stand Sheena Easton's voice work in that game.. it's the only character I actively dislike (see my name).. A Glasgow lass doing a Glasgow voice that is so bloody hideous everyone thinks she's Irish.. including Glasweigians. The mod for her character even has her dressed as a leprechaun for god's sake.

Sad puppy is sad.

@OP.. it's a shame you are being so narrow minded. You're denying yourself some fine gameplay and I'd have thought that was the most important thing when playing a game. Divine Divinity is a fine game indeed.

But whatever floats you boat I suppose.

Most of the games featured in the sale you're probably good to go with.

I'd suggest Neverwinter Nights, firstly because you can create your characters yourself and there is no significant difference between the genders, even the clothing is more or less the same for both.

But also because if you don't like what the original creators did with it (personally I didn't think there were interesting female charaters in the original campaign), you can just skip that part and instead download and play free modules created by other players, among them several female authors.

(Although the most famous female author did a module based on the concept that each and every single character in the game world will constantly ogle at your scantily-clad hero ... *ahem* ... but you can just ignore that if you don't like it and choose another module instead. ;) )

The idea is that NWN is not just a RPG but a tool to create your own RPG campaigns, and if you buy NWN you get access to all the stuff that other people, both men and women, created not to sell it to teenagers but out of creativity and love for telling stories. And you could even learn how to tell your own stories, if you like.

The NWN community is generally a similarily mature and welcoming community as this one (with the age of members reaching from 12 to probably 70, with most of them in their 30s, 40s or 50s, I'd guess), and I know that a lot of women play NWN, write reviews and/or mod for it.

I would recommend listening to Leroux here. You should be able to find some good mods to enjoy.