Witcher 3 - Play as Triss, Yennefer, or Others

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you can sure bet they arent going to cater a massive budget to a relatively small group that will.. in all honesty.. buy their AAA title anyway!

Which group is that, Wisdom?
 
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You're a woman with strong opinions. :) Nothing makes these threads explode - and brings users with like seven posts out of the woodwork - like an opinionated woman. ;)

1- You are an opinionated (in a nicest possible way) woman Aubrielle. How many times threads exploded because of that?
2- Threads do explode when an opinionated PERSON happens to be wrong or when his/her opinions are baseless or based on a whim. Happens to men (do I have to name names?) and happens to women. Equal opportunity can be a bitch! :lol:
 
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Thank you, Celtic, for editing my post! You sifted opinion from fact very nicely. :)

Would you mind if I did likewise for you in the future? Oh, and may I keep this post to be quoted later too? :D

You can keep it if you like, I meant no disrespect. I personally don't find that to be the most important part of a RPG game.

If in the future I do state something as fact instead of my feelings on something, feel free to bring this up :).
 
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Well I hope I don't blow too many minds, but did you know that language itself is sexist?

We can argue like melons day and night about whether product A is bad for having a male/female lead, but it's a forever circular debate until at some point you rationalise that the separation of male/female is entirely a construct of language, to which almost every case of sexism is born… and bred.

Imagine you are going to write a book. You want your book to appeal to as many people as possible, it's for the money, you want to pay your mortgage and people have told you that you're a great pulp writer. First blank page: who's your 'protagonist'? What are your options?

Male
Female
and…
Neutral protagonist…?

OMG, we have no word for neutral protagonist. And then, if you do decide to try and hide your protagonist's gender, throughout the entire book you have to then try and avoid any use of he or she - because OMG, we have no neutral form of she/he. In order to achieve this feat you now make your book almost entirely unreadable. Please, try it.

Once you have made a choice about male or female you then run the risk of not portraying your characters correctly, you run the risk of offending the opposing gender, by writing schlocky men as a female writer or schlocky women as a male writer. Moreover, if a reader simply sees a male or female name as the writer of a book they will automatically make inbred assumptions about this and about the contents. At least with this last apsect authors have learnt to use nomes-de-plume.

Computer games are no different, but slightly easier if you have less 'reality' NPC interaction. Simply by having both a male and female option and a desire to keep the NPCs coherent you already have to make sure every single conversation adhere's to the he/she, his/her etc constraints and complications of basic language. You might even have to complicate this further by making certain NPCs bahave completely differently to different sexes. So, a desire to keep things as simple as possible is an indirect and unintentional casue of sexism that is purely the fault of language, for not providing us with neutral terminology (which some languages do, in fact, have, though I've forgotten which - it's a forum post dammit).

Computer games then suffer the same fate as books in that you will have to choose between a male and a female writer. You could try both, but then, by the neutral laws of too many cooks, you're already confusing and complicating the writing process. Choose a female and you might lose connectivity with males, choose a male and you might lose connectivity with females - why? because of in-bred sexism and naturally occurring stereotypes that have evolved from centuries of language-based separation.

When we find debates like this, it's like attacking the result instead of tackling the root cause, like trying to weed your garden by just mowing the tops off weeds every week. Until you actually have a language which supports the concept of neutral descriptors then nothing neutral can follow and you will always be trying to make some kind of irrational reason why the separation exists so starkly, even though others cannot perceive it.

If I was a militant feminist, or militant manist, I wouldn't be wasting my debating time on game boards, or even book boards or movie boards, or any such else, I'd be concentrating on those language forums ;)
 
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Yes. Let's make this about gender. Strong opinions are what make threads explode. I should know, I've been the cause of many. But my gender has nothing to do with it. Aside from one person, the forum doesn't don't know if I'm yellow black red or white. Male female or confused. Straight, gay, asexual. The gender issue only seems to arise when its convienient.

I always pictured you more like a re-spawning bear haunting Joxer's dreams.

But you are right, I don't know what any of you look like or gender nor could careless.
 
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I have to admit, Lackblogger, you do bring up an interesting point. I have a number of friends who are gender-nonconforming in some way, including quite a few who aren't comfortable with identifying (or being identified) as male or female. They're genderqueer, or agender, or genderfluid...there's a ton of names, but the point is still that everyone wants to enjoy a story that they can relate to. There's games - and plenty of books - with protagonists (and authors) that fall into these categories. The key is to generate more discussion and use these words more so that people can become comfortable with them. ^.^
 
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Read my post again, please. I never sad you went into bashing developers.
Is this not it?
building SJW case against CDPR

About these:

---Quote (Originally by Elel)---
I can't remember … saying I dislike playing as male characters.
---End Quote---
---Quote (Originally by Elel)---
mean, you can't really self-insert if you aren't allowed to even play your own gender. God knows how I'm sick of that and how I want character creator options in the games…
---End Quote---

I cannot see how the second statement proves the falsity of the first statement.

Specifically, I said I'm sick of not being able to play self-inserts (which requires my own gender) and want character creation options. I never said I was sick playing of male characters per se and they should disappear forever. That is a big difference. Of course, if you assume that I somehow inherently hate playing as male characters as you did and am building some kind of case against CDPR, then it's easy to interprete my words based on the false assumption. However, what I explicitly said was not that. The whole thing started with my happiness about a mod I've been waiting for, b/c I want to have more open-world games playable as a female character and now I can add W3, miraculously, to that roster. But it definitely didn't start with me saying "Hohoho, I never played as Geralt, because he's a dude, but now I can finally play this game!"

That aside, the whole argument baffles me. It's not even about male or female characters, it's about whether I dislike playing as male characters. So imagine for a minute that I would actually dislike that. So what? There are people who can't play as male or female characters. They're rare, but that happens, I know people of both genders like that. They don't buy games if the character is not to their preference. Having apparently assumed that this is a case for me, you react as if it's the greatest crime in the world.
 
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You're a woman with strong opinions. :) Nothing makes these threads explode - and brings users with like seven posts out of the woodwork - like an opinionated woman. ;)
Then I guess that Star Wars test posted here was right. It said that I have opinions on every subject. :)

Beware, people, by taking the test and posting your results you reveal your secrets to everyone!
 
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I agree, but those are appalling descriptors. :D

How so?

Oh god, sorry. If you're gender-nonconforming, I apologize if I said something offensive. :-/ What terms would you prefer?
 
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Ah, now it seems you don't even fully understand my point, because it's actually extremely difficult to imagine a language with neutral descriptors. I'm not talking about neutral sexuality, but simply neutral descriptors, I'll provide a link.

A snippet from the link:

During the 1970s, feminists Casey Miller and Kate Swift created a manual, The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing, on gender neutral language that was set to reform the existing sexist language that was said to exclude and dehumanize women.[20] In the 1980s, many feminist efforts were made to reform the androcentric language.

Here's a link of examples of existing global languages that have neutral language, the ones I couldn't remember earlier. An example from this link is:

As an Austronesian language, Malay is fundamentally gender-neutral. The third-person singular pronoun dia can mean 'she', 'he' or sometimes 'it', and the object/possessive suffix -nya can mean 'her/her', 'him/his' or 'it/its'. For example, dia mencintainya means 'she/he loves her/him/it'.
 
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Ah, now it seems you don't even fully understand my point, because it's actually extremely difficult to imagine a language with neutral descriptors. I'm not talking about neutral sexuality, but simply neutral descriptors, I'll provide a link.

A snippet from the link:

All I was saying was that the queer community was on the job, though a really popular descriptor hasn't caught on. I think the reason for this is the wide spectrum of individual identity among gender-nonconforming people. And because gender-conforming people (traditional male and female) don't see a reason for it…because of privilege. (i.e. most people can't see outside themselves/don't care about "the other")
 
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If, as a woman, you're exasperated at the sheer quantity of RPGs which give only male leads as options then I'm at a loss as to what RPGs you're playing.
3 Gothic games (+ Arkania), 3 Risen games, 3 Witcher games, 2 Deus Ex games. I've played all of those. All good games, except Arkania. Interestingly, all are action CRPGs, the first three franchises even quite similar in combat and spirit. What else? Alpha Protocol, PS:T, Ultima games, Jagged Alliance, System Shock games, Anachronox (worshipped at Codex, as I noticed).

There are more "limited" RPGs than you might imagine among good CRPGs. And more coming out.

And if you start to actually narrow down preferences… Like, I really find it hard to play in post-apocaliptic, sci-fi, or cyberpunk settings. I liked the first Fallout, but not better than, say, Gothic games and am not even getting F4. Suddenly my list is thinned down a lot, with Fallouts, Shadowruns and Wastelands out.

A more drastic example, which unfortunately is my conundrum now: Both open-world CRPGs currently in development won't give you a gender choice. Reasons cited: too much resources in one case, realism in another. For me the fact is: I want an open world CRPG other than Skyrim and Inquisition (which is not even good as far as open-world is concerned, everyone knows!), but noone is going to make one that allows for a self-insert. And I kinda wanted a self-insert, otherwise, what's the point of playing an open-world CRPG in particular? I don't want a predefined character in an RPG like this, I already made an exception for Geralt, but I want something else now, a real character of my own.

So, theoretically you're right. But once you start to narrow down what you want you might come up with zero upcoming games and only a couple of current games to your liking released. One of which is such failure as far as your desires are concerned that in reality you've got only one game to play that suits your desires…

Guys, I really do envy you, in a good way. You never have such problems. I think it's paradise to never have to worry about stuff like that. You just don't know how lucky you are. Treasure it :)
 
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I always pictured you more like a re-spawning bear haunting Joxer's dreams.

But you are right, I don't know what any of you look like or gender nor could careless.
Don't you look at the avatars of people ? I have pretty good mental portraits for everyone here ;) which I'm sure are pretty accurate
 
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3 Gothic games (+ Arkania), 3 Risen games, 3 Witcher games, 2 Deus Ex games. I've played all of those. All good games, except Arkania. Interestingly, all are action CRPGs, the first three franchises even quite similar in combat and spirit. What else? Alpha Protocol, PS:T, Ultima games, Jagged Alliance, System Shock games, Anachronox (worshipped at Codex, as I noticed).

Nope, played barely any of those. Barely any are what I'd describe as classical RPG, you seem to have got addicted to a weird (in my world) niche of games. Joxer likely thinks they're all the best RPGs EVAAAAR, so I'll now run and hide before he smokes all over me :)
 
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Pheeeew…
Took me a lot of time to read this HOT TOPIC!

Just my two cents:
I'm a boy, and I'm really not attracted by the Witcher series, because of Geralt. He just doesn't look like a character I'd like to play, and I'm really sad they did not allow the player to customise the protagonist instead of having this "strong alpha male". :-/

And now for something completely different: as a french, I must tell you lackblogger that you made a typo, it's "noms-de-plume", not "nomes" ;)

EDIT: too many posts coming, did'nt have time to read the new ones while I was writing :S
Elel >> You should try "Xenoblade Chronicles X" if you have a Wii U, it's a real open world where you can customise your character (their all ugly, but you can even choose to have blue/green/pink skin color if you want :D)
 
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Guys, I really do envy you, in a good way. You never have such problems. I think it's paradise to never have to worry about stuff like that. You just don't know how lucky you are. Treasure it :)

It's true.

It's SO true.
 
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Just my two cents:
I'm a boy, and I'm really not attracted by the Witcher series, because of Geralt. He just doesn't look like a character I'd like to play, and I'm really sad they did not allow the player to customise the protagonist instead of having this "strong alpha male". :-/
The cool thing to do would be to allow the player to create Geralt's looks, starting from the first game… But then again, here CDPR has a claim they took him out of the book. It's true, they didn't create him out of thin air.

However, what I want to say is that it's generally quite a good idea to give more power to the players in terms of looks. Some movies we can dislike if we dislike an actor. And games are interactive, so why not give us power over characters in role-playing games? It's kind of a no-brainer. As for genders, I'm pretty sure it's not difficult at all to create a game with a good plot and two gender choices. It just means you need to do more work (alternative armors, voice overs), and at this point of time some companies aren't willing to do that.

Elel >> You should try "Xenoblade Chronicles X" if you have a Wii U, it's a real open world where you can customise you're character (their all ugly, but you can even choose to have blue/green/pink skin color if you want :D)
Thanks. I heard about this, yep, but unfortunately Wii U isn't a console I've got.
 
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I don't think neutral language is desirable. I like the differences between people of different gender/culture etc or just difference in general. Difference should be celebrated not avoided in language or otherwise for fear of upsetting people who are different in other ways. Its like the whole controversy over Christmas in some places. I wouldn't take down christmas decorations for fear of upsetting Muslims, in fact many different cultures want to learn about other cultural traditions. Bottom line, never apologise for who you are because if that offends someone then that is that persons problem.
 
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Gee, this thread got really heated. I tend to agree and disagree with both sides (if I look at it from male vs female perspective in this thread).

I think playing The Witcher as any other character other than Geralt, especially as a female, doesn't make sense and breaks the immersion. At the same time I do wish I can play as a female, especially the story driven RPGs. I would love to play DE:HR, PS:T, The Witcher series as a female (as in, not just the shell, but with proper story and all as a chosen protagonist for the game). Some people told me I'm not open minded enough or learn to LP, but I just cannot really play the game in male's perspective. It's just too bad all these fantastic RPGs are using male protagonist. And hence I do feel envious to all the male gamers out there :)

Yes, we need more diversity to satisfy some of the minority in RPG market. I hope it will happen one day, a story driven RPG with a female protagonist in mind :)

While I'm dreaming, I would like to add, I wish the game will be easily mod-able like Skyrim to add cosmetics or comes with lots of options to add vanity stuff (prettier face, hair, armour etc) dohoho :) why? Because I'm a girl and I can be vain and I want my chracter to reflect my personality a little more in games ;)
 
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