I'd love to play as a female Witcher. Not sure what the dev's stance on this is. But Geralt...you leave him be. A man among men, that guy.

You must be a lot of fun at parties.

I never said that females in prominent roles is bad. I love the Longest Journey/Dreamfall games, Tomb Raider games and the like. I just personally don't see a need to gender swap existing characters to cater to a specific and limited demographic, or to do it just as a PR move.

Definitely a possibility. Or, she could simply have a major hormone imbalance. Another option is that she was born and lived her entire life as a hermaphrodite. The other ladies get turned on by that which explains why Geralt is popular with the ladies!

I have to completely agree with you on that. Fictional characters have an established identity, whatever it is and that includes their gender. Personally I'd rather see such characters continue to be who they always were from the start than to have their history altered via new fiction that gender swaps them. Create new fiction with different characters instead.

I too play and enjoy games where the protagonist is either gender. Doesn't matter to me as long as the game is a good game whether the main character you play is male or female, so long as the game appeals to a general audience. The Tomb Raider games you cited are probably the best example of this. They're just fantastic games. I can see someone perhaps not going for that type of game, but I would find it odd if someone chose to not play the game just because the main character you control is female. She kicks ass! Same thing with the games X-Blades and Blades of time - female protagonist, great action game.

I get the impression that these companies that want to remake or retell fictional universes by gender swapping the hero - are doing so to generate confusion and controversy as well as curiosity about the end results because they can't think of ways to come up with fresh compelling content perhaps.

There are perhaps some exceptions to this where it was controversial but turned out to be ok in the end in some people's eyes too. Take Battlestar Galactica reimagined series from last decade, who could have ever pictured Starbuck as a woman before that. But the story and series was epic beyond all imagination and the female Starbuck character turned out ok. It only took a few episodes to not even think or care about that as the story, acting and pretty much everything about the show was not only next-level, but the level above that. But IMHO BSG was a special case exception really.

What about Thor? I mean, really? I'd have rather had them make Thor have a secret twin sister or something than to turn Thor female, that's just retarded. So yeah, I'm not a big fan of them gender swapping iconic superheroes or other characters in fiction at all, but I have no problem with there being superheroes, villains or other characters in fiction/games regardless of their gender.

I'd rather see games that want to provide other-gender main characters let you CHOOSE the gender of your character, and if it is a pre-existing fictional character, have multiple to choose from. For example, in the Witcher universe - a new Witcher game could have Ciri as the main character, or Yennefer or Triss, or even Dandelion or Yarpin, etc. etc. etc. But don't change the gender of one of the pre-existing known characters, that's just destructive to fictional canon - unless it is a parody or satire.

Some of the games from this list, like Tomb Raider is on GoG. Like what mk47at said, if you want an easier find, you have to get GoG to fix the custom tag and mix.

If not try searching the developers website, humble bundle, gamer gate for DRM free version.

They didn't. They just had a woman pick up the hammer and get his powers. Thor is still a man, he just became unworthy of wielding Mjolnir for some reason. The only stupid part here is calling the woman wielding the hammer now "Thor" since that's a person's name, not a "superhero mantle" that can be passed on. It's like having Dick Grayson change his name to Bruce Wayne when he took over as Batman for a while. But really, other than that it's really no different than having someone else wear the costume for a while, which happens often with plenty of characters. It's even happened before with different genders. In DC the original Wildcat's granddaughter took over from him for a time. We had a female Robin in Dark Knight Returns.

Not that I care about IGN, but they gave Witcher 3 a 7.0 score? For real? How did they rate the latest Battlefield or Call of Duty games... 9/10?
I dunno... Jet Li?

Shit, you're right. I have been humbled.

I dunno about twin pistols... but... what about shooting multiple arrows at multiple moving targets while jumping in mid air? Or jumping in the air and catching an incoming enemy arrow, then shooting the same arrow with your own bow and hitting another enemy target before your feet hit the ground? Or any number of even crazier gymnastic feats with bow and arrows at the same time...

Behold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk

anime when? h-doujins when?

And then sales tanked...

No, they gave it a 9.3. The 7.0 is more of a joke on how IGN tends to have a monkey fling a dart at a wall to determine the score regardless of the content of their actual review.

I could point out that this particular argument would not actually apply to Link (and other characters from those games). The thing is, Zelda games all have a main character named Link, but (except for the few direct sequels in the series) it's not the same one, so you could have a female Link without disrupting the canon.

Similarly, in the Doctor Who series, there is no rule (to my knowledge) that says the Doctor can't reincarnate as a woman.

The issue I have, actually, is that, considering only games with fixed (not player-created) protagonists, there are far more male protagonists than female characters.

For example, take a look at the protagonists of Nintendo's NES games. We have:
Mario
Link
Samus
Roy
Ninten (from Mother)
Pit
Little Mac

Just from this list of 7, if male and female characters were protagonists equally often, we would expect 3 or 4 of them to be female, but there aren't even 2 female characters! Even worse, if you accept the manuals of the games as fact (ignoring the best ending of Metroid), there aren't *any* female characters! (The English manual for Metroid uses male pronouns for Samus, and it's only when you beat the game that it's revealed that she's female. That should be a selling point, not an ending surprise!)