So, Do you play FO4 as a male or female?

[tartarsauce2]

I'm just mad at everything right now so take this with a pinch of salt

Memories of that overzealous English teacher, who forced you to accept that every character, every scene and every action had a deep inner meaninghttp://static.mediatropes.info/pmwiki/pub/external_link.gif have led to widespread fear on the part of readers and viewers everywhere that every tale secretly contains some other story being told in subtext. The end result of this is a state of mind that interprets every plot as an allegory for the rebuilding of one's soul, every setting as a manifestation of purgatory, and every protagonist as a stand-in for the Christ: Everyone Is Jesus In Purgatory!

Rampant paranoia results from this state; one cannot look at anything without being suspicious that this is some kind of allegory brainwashing you into learning An Aesop against your will. Is that box of Corntos one character is handing another a mere confection or is it a blessing from On High, manna sent from a merciful God? Or wait... it could be a Deal with the Devil; short-term pleasure resulting in permanent bodily ruination! What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? Thus the Epileptic Trees are planted.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory

to contrast, some games do have "inner meanings" and they're designed specifically with those in mind, what's my state of mind killing everyone I see?
POINT. SHOOT. LOOT.
what's your state of mind for playing fallout 4, what does it mean that you're attracted to a game where everyone's out to kill and steal from everyone else? are you secretly a psychopath?!
the answer is YES! we are ALL psychopaths, WOE BE ME!

okay but no, with a proper RPG, there are in fact reflections on personal character/tastes of the player, but one of the issues with fallout 4 is that it doesn't have these, it has illusions of these, I've been playing bioshock 2 lately haveing just finished bioshock 1 and I can say that the ammo types (.45 for the tommy gun, .38 for the pistol, the quickloot system, weapons modification system, the weapon bash and plasmids being a different thing from other weapons and useable at the same time thing - imagine instead of lightning plasma you throw a pulse grenade, instead of weapon bashing with the mouse 3 button like I have in bioshock you just click the grenade throw button instead of holding it)

Rampant paranoia results from this state; one cannot look at anything without being suspicious that this is some kind of allegory brainwashing you into learning An Aesop against your will. Is that box of Corntos one character is handing another a mere confection or is it a blessing from On High, manna sent from a merciful God? Or wait... it could be a Deal with the Devil; short-term pleasure resulting in permanent bodily ruination! What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic? Thus the Epileptic Trees are planted.

[tartarsauce2]

oh and I wrote a whole section explaining that bioshock series was written specifically for allegory but that got deleted from the post somehow... damnit.
the entire system AND bio shock series are written with a tension between individual and collective elements in the human condition
shock series is cyberpunk predominantly, written before the politicization of our society had really started, the bioshock series written as it was starting, BS1 is about individualism ruining society, BS2 is about collectivism ruining society, and infinite is about how them tearing at each other with reckless abandon (individualism being represented as a theocratic fascism right of center, and predominantly male - and collectivism being represented as atheistic communism left of center, and predominantly female)

I'd RATHER not get into this further, even though I jumped right in (whoops) because I come from the before times and think it's kind of getting stupid and that it's the equivalent of two 5 year olds arguing over who which one of each other is responsible for starting world war 1 and recounting their days as veterans in the trenches. I just, wanna barf right now at it, hence why I'm mad at everyone. (and yes I know more than everyone else on this topic because I was autistically studying imperialism as a child from the ancient mesopotamians to victorian/elizabethean pirate stories like treasure island and robinson crusoe, to world war 1 and 2 and even was aware of what the CIA were doing and I loved me some very heavy political treatises on actual warfare concepts not the 4kidz youtuber variations) and was like this for the 90's, and never stopped. JUST SAYING.

before all of this, things like fallout were just kind of, commentaries on the american experience, but they were also... like, fun, like they weren't made to be allegories, they were fun, I can do numerous different stupid little thing and something interesting will come out as a result in the original 2, you can be good, you can be evil, something will happen, and you might do multiple playthroughs because you want to see the various things because *something interesting will happen either way, something different than if you took the other path*
baldur's gate 1 and 2 are *excellent examples of this kind of game design that is kind of lacking these days
and yes, there's gender oriented things, things beyond the MMO argument about man vs woman butt as you stare at your character on the screen

SO I PLAY BOTH FEMALE AND MALE BECAUSE I LIKE THE MALE'S GO GET THEM TIGER ATTITUDE WHEN TAKING PSYCHO AND I LIKE THE FEMALE'S SNARK WHEN I SPAM SARCASTIC RESPONSES.
everything else is a theme park thing, and I point. shoot. loot.

also, this is about nuclear war, it inspired fallout if you can tell by the style of the music video and fallout's panache

brotherhood of steel, and another group, which I won't spoil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

also have a map of new vegas (just kidding it's texarkana but I mean, look at it!)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fiat_Lux_Canticle_map.png

Edited February 6, 2017 by tartarsauce2

[BenevolentSpirit]

I don't know why but you went pretty dismissive about your actions meaning anything there, tartar. It's not like anyone is here to judge you

[Moraelin]

Well, I can't speak for him, but what I've been saying is literally that sometimes actions in a video game don't mean anything else than that it was possible and in some way interesting. But the important part is: "in some way". There's more than one way for an option to be interesting, all the way down to just it being a different button to click on.

 

Sometimes playing (among other things) an undead in WoW is NOT some kind of learning to cope with Cotard delusion IRL (a.k.a., the actual belief of being an undead), but literally just trying another option in the game. And trying a Tauren druid isn't some exploring some furry fetish side. And playing a plant in PvZ Garden Warfare isn't reflective of some wish you were, figuratively speaking, a vegetable IRL. And for that matter, most people have no problem accepting that if you play Black in chess it doesn't mean you're secretly wishing that blacks would conquer all whites.

 

I've known people playing undead or tauren for reasons as diverse as, say, women trying to look repulsive enough to not get hit on by horny teenage boys online. (Shows how little they know about horny teenage boys, I say.) Or finding it easier to find a competent gang for PvP.

 

And most people seem to have no problem with not giving any of that a second choice. You don't see people obsessing over, oh my, Timmy has been playing a lot of chess after coming back from the army. I wonder if this fixation with a game where an infantryman's highest achievement is to become a queen is trying to tell us something about his sexual orientation :wink: And he sure is letting the other guys at the veteran hall take the first move. I wonder if his playing black so often means he self-identifies as black. Or *GASP* maybe he hates the white-dominated western civilization! Surely the game lets him live a fantasy where the black armies conquer all whites!

 

It seems like only the gender choice is making some people think they must turn the armchair psychology to eleven.

[Fkemman11]

Well, I can't speak for him, but what I've been saying is literally that sometimes actions in a video game don't mean anything else than that it was possible and in some way interesting. But the important part is: "in some way". There's more than one way for an option to be interesting, all the way down to just it being a different button to click on.

 

Sometimes playing (among other things) an undead in WoW is NOT some kind of learning to cope with Cotard delusion IRL (a.k.a., the actual belief of being an undead), but literally just trying another option in the game. And trying a Tauren druid isn't some exploring some furry fetish side. And playing a plant in PvZ Garden Warfare isn't reflective of some wish you were, figuratively speaking, a vegetable IRL. And for that matter, most people have no problem accepting that if you play Black in chess it doesn't mean you're secretly wishing that blacks would conquer all whites.

 

I've known people playing undead or tauren for reasons as diverse as, say, women trying to look repulsive enough to not get hit on by horny teenage boys online. (Shows how little they know about horny teenage boys, I say.) Or finding it easier to find a competent gang for PvP.

 

And most people seem to have no problem with not giving any of that a second choice. You don't see people obsessing over, oh my, Timmy has been playing a lot of chess after coming back from the army. I wonder if this fixation with a game where an infantryman's highest achievement is to become a queen is trying to tell us something about his sexual orientation :wink: And he sure is letting the other guys at the veteran hall take the first move. I wonder if his playing black so often means he self-identifies as black. Or *GASP* maybe he hates the white-dominated western civilization! Surely the game lets him live a fantasy where the black armies conquer all whites!

 

It seems like only the gender choice is making some people think they must turn the armchair psychology to eleven.

 

I completely agree. Somebody else brought up the subject and I just kind of ran with it. It was interesting to read a few of the posts. I certainly wouldn't judge anyone for how they want to play a game. It's all just opinion anyway- and you know what they say about that. :smile:

I mean, its not like the prosecuting attorney at your trial will try to admit your game-play history as evidence for the jury to see. Because, if anybody saw my "gaming history" they'd lock me up and throw away the key! :laugh: :huh:

[BenevolentSpirit]

What choices tell about you isn't always what the most blatantly obvious interpretation is. For example let's take your soldier who likes black chess units, not because of skin color but to resemble the edgelord that resides in him instead. Or a person playing a videogame as a female character, not because he wants to be a chick, but because he is attracted to women more than men. Now let's take a tauren, he may not be into kinky furry stuff but he might feel the need to appear bigger in size compared to other people, for what ever reason.

[Moraelin]

Or the soldier may simply be better at chess than the other guys at the veterans' hall, and letting them have the first move. Since, you know, white moves first. As I was saying, there are a LOT of different ways a choice may be interesting to someone. And a lot of them don't really have a particularly deep and insightful psychological meaning. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, to reuse a cliche. Sometimes it's less about being some fantasy tribal warrior, and more about having anyone to play with. Which incidentally also works in video games, e.g., if all your friends play Horde in WoW.

[BenevolentSpirit]

I don't believe that, an action could be perceived as not having a meaning, but in the end a human is unable to act without it's subconscious reality of the world, which everything is based upon. A meaning doesn't have to be complicated and dig deep into your soul, it can be something very simple indeed, but there always is a meaning for every action, even if you don't realize it yourself. And often there is not just one, but multiple reasons why you have done something, even though you may tell everyone that it didn't mean anything at all.

[CiderMuffin]

For some people there is a deeper inner reason for others there isn't. I know a lot of people who usually play people of color or women in games that let you create your own character because the major game industry still holds onto the concept that it's better to create boring black or brown haired characters that almost always look like a different version of Gordon Freeman or Nathan Drake which leads to little representation or diversity in gaming. It's such a common thing I've been seeing people refer to these kinds of characters as "Steves", when a character type gets that common it becomes a problem and a lot of people are seeing it as it is, a problem with creativity.

 

So yea, that could be a reason why so many people want to play as characters different then themselves because boring same-old "safe" protags are actually really boring and it turns out having diversity is kind of a big thing people want.

[Moraelin]

I don't believe that, an action could be perceived as not having a meaning, but in the end a human is unable to act without it's subconscious reality of the world, which everything is based upon. A meaning doesn't have to be complicated and dig deep into your soul, it can be something very simple indeed, but there always is a meaning for every action, even if you don't realize it yourself. And often there is not just one, but multiple reasons why you have done something, even though you may tell everyone that it didn't mean anything at all.

Nobody's saying that your actions are random, if that's what you're arguing against. Yes, you have a brain, a working memory, and a very complex world model up there.

 

What I'm saying is more like, as you say, sometimes the reasons are very simple and not very insightful. In fact, most of the time.