Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why do men play a female characters?

So the purpose of your thread was to fish for an answer to fit your confirmation bias, despite wording it as a open question?

And what to you mean by every human being having male and female sides? It is certainly true that everyone has different extents of what could be defined as feminine and masculine attributes if that is what you mean. But there are no sides to this, just different people with different personalities. Femininity and masculinity are just labels.



Nobody has a female side buried deep within them, but I assume you mean they have traditionally feminine attributes as part of their personality, which true for basically everyone. That said you seem to suggest there is something wrong with men who are predominantly masculine or like to maintain/focus-on their masculine attributes. Why is that wrong?

I just want to put it out there to everyone that regardless of your gender there is nothing wrong with focusing on your femininity or masculinity or a nice mix of them both. Don't listen to people who try to value some human traits over others or push those values on to you. Be yourself (no matter how cliche it may sound) and never make excuses for it.

Because I am capable of separating the character I am controlling from myself.

I was born male, I identify as male, and I am straight. I feel no different if the avatar I am controlling is male, female, or N/A. I do not want to "bang" the avatar I am controlling even if it is a female.

Honestly I find the entire question "Why do men play a female character" to be bizarre and borderline nonsensical.

Yeah, there are some odd and/or unflattering latent assumptions in the question. I don't see this as any different than enjoying a movie or book where the lead is a female. As a gamer in an RPG, you are participating in the narration of a story. Are men incapable of writing female leads? Why, I'm offended!

Well its roleplaying, so why not try out different roles. I play and run a lot of tabletop games so its not a big deal at all for someone to play a different gender.

O.o Weaker? In what context? Physically? Yes and in fact that's a true statement. But history has plenty of matriarchal societies and females have, historically, always held power in society...in some they were venerated more than men as they were considered indispensable. Common society (common relative to all time) problems have to deal with gender roles.......Just sayin. So I don't think this would have anything to do with anything concerning weakness.

As for men being ashamed? I'd be more inclined to point to the gender expectations and role placed on a guy. It makes sense that some men would feel their masculinity and manhood, a fundamental part of who they are, threatened by a sex change.

As for women being more okay with such, i'd place that more on culture of the times. I'd bet that a woman from history where gender roles were embraced would be just as fearful or maybe even guys would want the sex change given certain societies.

*tilt head* I imagine women have had to get more use to playing as guys in games just as colored people got use to routinely seeing white people in movies? So they might not see playing a different gender that special. On the same hand, when given the option to be a female some guys might see it as an experiment at times to role play and experience a unique view through the game which is generally encouraged in RPGs.

I enjoy another perspective. It's really no more complex than that.

I don't. I just can't. I'm still childish and want to be able to enjoy immersion.

I don't usually play a female character. My first char is normally a male paladin/figher/knight role playing the good guy.

If the game was fun enough to replay, then my second char is generally as different as possible to the first, which normally amounts to a female evil mage or rogue

[incoming pathetic post]

Because we see our characters, not as avatars, but instead as companions sharing this adventure with us, and we may just prefer to have a female companion, even if we're not sexually attracted to her. Working in IT, I'm around almost exclusively guys all the time at work. When I'm home, playing some games, I'd like to change it up a bit.

That said, I play female characters because they're nice to look at. If I'm playing a lizard, though, I couldn't care less if it's male or female (except in cases of limited romance options, in which case I'd play a male).

I actually have tended to choose female characters in games.

Most movies, most games all have male protagonists. It gets a bit old. You rarely have a game where you're forced to be a woman, particularly as the protagonist of an RPG.

I'm also often attracted to games set in a different culture. A good example is Sleeping Dogs. The best GTA-style game I've played.

And to be honest, a female character is nicer to look at.

I'll add though that when there are romance options, it often still feels weird if I try to make the character hit on men, so the characters tend to end up being lesbians when I have a say in it.

This answer may or may not be serious.

If I want to see a dude chiseled like ancient Greek gods I go look in the mirror okay? I finally get my chance to make a beautiful girl on screen and make her do terrible, shameless acts to fulfill my fantasy of an ideal woman and you want to know if I am just coming out of the closet? WTF.

Thanks! That's an interesting point!

No you got me wrong. Its really hard to deliver what I have on my mind in English. But the answers really help to see a bigger picture!

Personally, I play female characters because of the looks as stated by the OP so if I play a lizard I will rather choose a male cause it's not appealing visually to me anyhow.

For many people like myself, genitals are not a significant part of a character.

I dunno. The female lizards may not be sexually attractive but they look pretty cool.

The choice of gender in RPGs generally matters right up until you find the first helmet.

In the old Larian forum, awhile after Divine Divinity was released, there was a topic about games with female main characters. I hadn't really thought about it until then, but given a choice, I generally always went with a male warrior/paladin type character. Playing one of the Final Fantasy (maybe) games when I was in my early teens, there was a warning in the manual that one of the towns would only allow female characters in, so since I was still in character creation, I made the healer female, and left the characters that actually get things done male.

With Beyond Divinity, I deliberately chose a female main character.
For Divinity 2, I didn't really care for any of the male character voices, but one of the female ones was ok.
In D:OS, I saw no reason to change the default male/female characters.
For D:OS 2, gender is a relatively insignificant part of the character origin (at least as far as the choice of character goes).

How does this bigger picture look like now?

Because some people like to look at a pretty body the 40 hours they spend ingame. Me; don't really care, especially not in a game like D:OS2 where you barely see your characters up close anyway.

Mostly I diverse male and female for games that do offer differences for it. Like the Knights of the Old Republic games. If just cosmetic only; eh... don't bother.

It's easy, we secretly all

So my reasons for playing female characters are mostly the same as everyone else:

- I'm creating a character and not an avatar
- It is fun to explore the possibility space
- In some games, like Fallout 2, it leads to different roleplay options (I'm thinking of the porn movie sequence)