I, for most, prefer playing a female lead character, but for the sake of giving the Male Hawke appreciation he is due for the voice acting, I am now giving it a first ever play through as male as Male. I have to say the voice acting is very good for both.

What bugs me personally the most is that the Default Male Hawke has an interesting (and as such attractive) face with wrinkles and moles, looking maybe 40, whereas the Default Female Hawke looks 20 years tops, being the "big sis" to 18 year olds.

Besides, Varric is "old" and Anders is "old" and even Fenris is wrinkeled with his eternal frown - but the only female to suggest any age besides teens is Isabela.

Hollywood syndrome? I think so! What do you think?

If you have also played both genders, what do you find well or poorly done, or just sinply interestingly different between the lad and the lass Hawke?

story is not epic, as the trailer would have had you believed, but for some reason i like this game and played it twice. I played it as male as he was the original poster character, like male shepard. Later 2nd time played as the female and played as a bad moral character. Was mean to everyone except hawke's family and really found the female character to be more entertaining and felt more in place with the story then the male character

I only played it once, for reasons that have been mentioned a million times already across the net.

I played as a male that I created myself, the premade male Hawke looked butt ugly IMO.

Never played the game. Just from looking at the characters, both seem awfully out of place in what is ostensibly a "gritty, medieval" world.

But I guess that's part of the trashy, camp charm that made the po-faced setting somewhat bearable for me in Origins.

I played it through as a female Hawke, which I made myself. Unfortunately even though I love BioWare's games, this is the only one I have no desire to play again. So there will be no male Hawke.

Sexism!!!!

Quick! Someone call Rock Paper Shotgun!

I do find it somewhat sexist, in fact. Not that I could not live with it, but then again, I find it also quite unnecessary, somehow, for a developer of BioWare's standing.

Bethany and Carver do stack as twins, but Female and Male Hawke do not as first-borns that the mere gender separates.

On it. And I'll have them assign Anita Sarkeesian as studio lead in the gender equality R&D dept. just to ensure everyone gets equal romance options.

I honestly think it's just the beard. He'd get carded if he ever shaved.

Male Hawke always. He looks really bad ass and he looks kind of like me so that is another plus from my point of view.

I created an older male character and ended up with a mother that looked like my daughter.

Sorry to say, your mission shall go off the mark, as the point was not about romance but rather about the fact that all females of note are young and all males of note are old, give or take - even should they be in theory the same person.

As to romances, I actually have come to think in case of DAII that Male Hawke / Anders romance is the sweetest. Not my cup of tea maybe, but a very fine darjeeling nonetheless. Yet that everyone can romance anyone indiscriminately is more about the quite possibly way too efficient recycling in this game.

Edit / spelling.

All the proof you need for that is to look at Flemeth's change from Origins to DA II. It is a rather jarring contrast in my opinion, even if it technically makes sense because she could have changed form as a shapeshifter.
http://a.imageshack.us/img30/9452/flemethcomparison.jpg

At least it isn't Voyager slashfic, I've had to picture Kate Mulgrew in much worse!