I'm also for PS:T. The female characters are three dimensional and and not only eye candy for (male adolescent) player like in so many other games. That being said, the game is teeming sexist, necrofiliac jokes. So be prepared.

Additionally, the love story between the main character and one NPC you meet rather soon is the most realistic one I've ever seen in a videogame. I won't spoil it here, but those who played the game know what I mean.

Edit: I am also a member of tha Annah fanclub!

Yes, really, Annah. I think she was an attemt to put an actual personality into the 'sexy thief' stereotype and the more you get to know her, the more you discover she's actually hiding behind that stereotype exterior of hers.

Fallout's not a bad choice. I used a female character for Fallout 1 (Got my ass kicked hard), Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas. For all of them, gender only changes two things: It changes some dialogue options + responses, and it changes several perks slightly (There's a perk that lets you deal extra damage to the opposing gender, I think New Vegas has a perk against the same gender, and I think both might have something that opens up unique dialogue with opposing sexed characters).

Most top-down RPG games you won't need to worry about as much either, since isometric views tend not to not give you much detail to see. Slight exception with Diablo 2 (which isn't on here), specifically the character select screen, but it doesn't do anything more than some.... to put it politely, bouncing, and your character rarely speaks anyway. Others might be a bit worse than others, though most of the time it's because of time period differences more than blatant sexism (Big majority of these games take place in alternate reality Medieval Europe), and only a select few go into talking about sex or "wenches" or whatever. From the screenshots, Sacred might be one of those to avoid anyway.

There is one game I suggest you try very, VERY soon if you haven't already. It's not an RPG, but it's still really good. It's called "Beyond Good and Evil", and for many people represents one of the best characterizations and writing of any female protagonist in a video game, and as a bonus no specific comments about gender or sex or anything. I've heard that Syberia is much the same way with it's protagonists, though I'd double check a bit on that.

Getting away from the RPG games a bit further, there's usually not a whole lot of characters to talk about as far as female characters. Evil Genius for example, there's a female antagonist you can play as. I think she has a larger area of influence which also has larger boosts than the other two characters, but none of them are written out at all to be of much mention..... Although, there's a female protagonist that will attack you every now and then. She shows up in a gold bikini and attacks everyone with knives when they aren't looking. So, that many get at you too.

Hopefully you'll find something.

Hmmm... interesting justification... I still don't buy it though :P

I played through Divine Divinity with the mage/archer woman and didn't think she was that bad (text on the screenshot is in German unfortunately). The other female characters were rubbish regarding the way they were presented (but truth be told I thought the same about the males). ;)

What's a bit odd about Divine Divinity in this regard is that they offered teh same amount of female characters as males, but didn't bother to reflect that in the intro video. It's quite weird if you're playing a woman and the hero in the intro video is a muscly half-naked Conan-type of barbarian and then the game pretends that it was actually you ...


I don't think so, unless you define a feminist as someone who's prudish. There's a difference in talking about sex and being sexist and I don't remember those remarks actually being sexist, a bit immature at worst, but in character. Besides, it's just a stupid skull rattling his bone-box and you can tell him to stop it and act as if you're disgusted by his words. There lies another difference, I think: Characters who act immature don't automatically make a game immature, unless the player is assumed to agree with them.

Okay, I'm going to try Neverwinter Nights and Planescape.

To those wondering about my motivations, sexist or sexy characters are okay. Collecting women like trading cards is an example of what would keep me from buying the game. Such a mechanic makes me think the game designers themselves are sexist or sleazy, or at least that they assume the player is, and I don't want to give them my money!

Before I bought The Witcher, I was fortunate to come across Shamus Young's review, where he mentions this part of gameplay. I didn't see any reviews here that mentioned it. (Perhaps there are some, but I didn't read every review.) And I just didn't want to be surprised again.

Annah.

Yes, and this is probably the reason I can dislike a character so much.. if it was just your typical flat personality affair I probably would care either way.

Yes, yes, a million times, yes.

Ah well, no one's perfect. ;)
That's hardly relevent to the actual game though...It's not as if that portrayal actually appears anywhere, not even in the glossery.

To be fair I have much more experience with the later games than the early games. I haven't found enough time from the University to get really in depth with them, and the one time I did I basically got locked into an impossible-to-escape situation a half-hour in, so I'm up to my 4th restart. F*cking scorpions.

Do note that base NWN game is kind of crap, I can't believe so many people suggested it myself - so only get that if you're feeling massively nerdy and wish to browse for user-made modules (there's an excellent thread on that in the NWN forum on GoG)

Planescape is always an excellent selection, HOWEVER - people don't seem to stress the fact that the game is an interactive book enough. That's not bad mind you, I love the approach, but not everyone does and you will be reading most of the time with this game.

And as for Witcher, it actually has an excellent story, those ... cards kind of feel forced upon and womanizing is generally one of the ... Traits Witcher Geralt (protagonist) is known for. However, most of these interactions are fully optional and don't change the gameplay at all, I do believe it's possible to finish the game without collecting a single card. My point is: Not a really good reason to skip the game altogether, the 'feature' really is optional.

Well, I'm not going to go through the entire game line by line, but it's fairly obvious that Leliana was some sort of homage to Annah's awesomeness, which means other people must think she's as awesome as I do.

If you'd like to get into the games and just don't have time to experiment, PM me - I'll help you figure out a build that'll make the game fairly easy while keeping it enjoyable. It would be a shame to miss it out and it's really not that hard.

Good choice imho. :) Planescape has some of the most interesting, well-designed NPCs I've ever seen. As others have noted, some dialogue/clothing in the game might be offputting, but it's worth a try. Neverwinter Nights is playing it safe - the NPCs aren't spectacular, so it's a good fallback option in case Planescape isn't your cup of tea.

QC, thank you for your suggestions. I loved Beyond Good and Evil! It has a great sneak mechanic. I haven't bought it here because I have it for PS2.

Leroux and Azarr, I will take a look at those mods. I am buying the game, as I said above. Thanks!

AFnord, thank you for commenting on how the game worlds portray gender roles. The fact that the game worlds do touch on these questions makes them more interesting and realistic.

Fenixp, about Bloodrayne. Yeah, when I said "well-developed," I was not talking about their curves. :)P

Spinefarm, thanks for your welcome!

SimonG, your comment makes me want to play Planescape first.

Everyone else, thank you for replying! Just because I didn't reply to you does not mean I did not take your comments into consideration. It means, rather, that I really, really need to get back to the Analysis homework now.