"That site" is perfectly legit and safe. Or am I missing something?

"That site" supports DRM and explicitly provides DRM; I would prefer not to support it by following a link to it.

I have a strict no-DRM policy when it comes to digital downloads; I don't even have a steam account, and I avoid links to the site (I'll occasionally look at forum threads, but generally only through Google's cache and not directly, and only when the inforamtion isn't found elsewhere).

Incidentally, I actually go as far as to avoid Windows, because of DRM in the OS and other reasons; I run exclusively Linux on the computers I own.

I don't see the logic behind denying yourself access to information, but OK.
Your policy, your rules.

I still don't see how checking out a link on Steam helps them.
They don't make money form just people visiting their site. Or do they?

Thanks for replying.

It depends for me, too.

For instance, a game I adore - Independence War 2 - has a male lead alongside male and female cohorts. Does the gender / sex / whatever they call it these days matter at all to the story? Not a bit. Could it have been written with a female lead? Sure, and would be the same game. So why isn't the option available? I suspect time and cost came into it. All the characters are voice acted, which costs money and time, and the game was cut short from its originally-planned scope, according to a former team member who posted in the forum.

For games that give the option, I will often play as a female. This is usually done to see if the game changes at all. For example, Mount and Blade: Warband treats women a bit differently, but I think you eventually work your way to having the same options as male characters; the prime difference seems to be in marriage options, but those open up once you've made a name for yourself. Some options early on go differently but the game doesn't really treat female characters as lesser or handicapped in any way that I noticed - in combat, there seems to be no difference. I don't recall the personal stories of your followers being gender-specific.

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General comment, not directed to Wolfy:

Maybe as a guy I'm less sensitive to the stuff. But I'm also completely willing to play either a male or female lead if a game offers the choice, especially if the story changes a bit to match. I mean, why limit your options? "I won't play if it doesn't have this gender." Suit yourself. I'm going to play, and enjoy the experience. Maybe see some new things along the way. Does a game need to include every possible combination of gender / sex / sexuality? Heavens no! A game that clumsily includes many options is probably worse than one that sticks to one or two options and does them well.

I completely agree with your view and thanks for sharing. :)


I do rember some of the Dragon Age games made your companions unique also in the aspect of sexuality.
Some characters were even gey or lesbian in Inquisition and even in Origins some characters were bisexual and some straight.

Having a male or female PC had no real impact on the story (I haven't played any of the games besides DA Origins).


There was only one game where I did encounter a difference in attributes and not just apperance between male and female characters: Dungeon Lords.

You could pick male/female elf, male/female human and a bunch of demon races that were only male.
Story-wise your selection made no difference whatsoever.

I rember female has somewaht lower strength compare to males, but higher in some magic related attribute.
Still given that female also had acess to an exclusive guild and thus class options, it wasn't such a bad trade-off.

If ound it intresting how my reaction to the two characters was diffrent.

The female elf looked fragile so it made it harder to play against some unded enemies (the graphics are fairly cartoonish, but I've always had a fear of the undead in video games).
While the male character happened to be a member of some half hyena demon race and looked more viscious with fangs and claws, plus he had the signature hyena grin.

In the end I solved my problem be muting the audio of the game in areas with scary enemies and picked my own music in an external prgram. XD That and by picking a mage, with that class the game lets your freeze your foes and then burn them to a crisp. ;)


P.S. What does <snip> stand for/mean?

It's for brevity. I snipped out the content but left the quote tags intact to make it easier to follow the conversation without repeating all of the text.

Thank you for explaning. :)

A difference in attributes used to be very common way back in the day, and it wasn't really controversial. For instance, in the old dnd games(and I think in dnd itself, though at the time I wasn't playing it so I can't say for sure) women had a bonus to constitution, being better built to withstand pain than men, and men had a bonus to strength, being better built to build up strength than women. In my opinion it made things more interesting in how to build characters. Also while women did have a lower top strength than men, female fighters could still be considerably stronger than male non-fighters. It made character creation a little more interesting.

As for the gender swap thing, in my opinion is it's not necessary. The witcher games would not have worked better if you had the option to make geralt a female. Tomb raider would not have worked better if you had the option to make lara a male.

I agree with the part about the gender swap and thanks for sheading more light on that on attribute differences (though as I've only encountered it once I don't have a solid opinion of it yet).